[puzzlegirl]

People lie, cheat, deceive all the time... As I always maintain, our society lives in a lie... I am trying to be honest and already pissing off people like you who wants to continue to live a lie.. If you think men who cheat will go home and automatically tell their wives about it, you're living on another planet..

It's call self-preservation.. if you know you're going to get into trouble, you're likely to lie your ass off... would it be nice if everyone didn't lie, of course.. is it realistic.. ????

SO, if it's so simple to control as you put it, why is it not showing in the real world? Why are women complaining everywhere about their cheating husbands?? Why not just shut up about it? Why are we even having this argument and why are women so pissed about it? If men and women cheat exactly the same, then why are women blaming men all the time? Where's teh moral high ground?

If only men and women can be totally loyal to each other. I too want such a relationship. The difference between our argument is that you are living in a fantasy world and I am living in a real one.

Oh- if only there were some sort of set of principles or morals we could follow to make our lives better! oh wait... this sounds familiar.. let's look it up... it's RELIGION.
"Religion" does not work because not enough people actually follow religion. They will twist and modify a beneficial moral and add things on to suit their own purposes- they do the same with scientific evidence to "prove" connections that are only barely related. Values and morals are so difficult to apply if someone else will not treat you with the same fairness, we eventually give up on it or let our behaviour slide if we lose the willpower.

But here are a few examples (and these are basic principles taught by many religions) how religion is beneficial if we actually practiced it:
If we were not materialistic, we would contribute less to the horrors of capitalism.
If we respected others who are different, we would not try to force our rules, values, religion etc. onto them
If we valued human life and abhored murder, we would protest war and not participate.
If we loved others, we would not lie, cheat or betray because we value our relationships highly.
(Oh- and I do not say that people don't lie. People ALWAYS lie. We are social creatures and in order to preserve our relationships we try to empathize and say things that will benefit the relationship. White lies such as "You look great" and "I don't mind when you do this/that" are called as such because the problems are usually very trivial and allowing them does not affect the relationship. But lying about or omitting your involvement with someone else HUGELY oversteps this boundary.)

Extremist "religions" like orthodox Christianity add a lot of padding like specific rules and conditions and rituals that need to be observed in order to differentiate themselves. That's not a religion anymore- it's a business.
Religion is between yourself and God/Higher Power/Higher moral thinking- there shouldn't be any inbetween telling you if you have acheived it or not. Organized religion should be providing support and guidance, not telling you how to think.

Oh- well, people are always doing bad stuff in the name of religion. Have you even considered the hundreds of millions of people who live happily and peacefully because of their balanced values and morals? You only "see bad behaviour everywhere" because disruption and chaos is what people pay the most attention to. You fail to see the majority of people who do NOT do harm to others, and you don't know about them because they keep their beliefs to themselves and aren't in your face like people who are doing religion wrong.

So religion has no basis in science and is not logical. Morals are usually not! Do people stop commiting crime because they are safe, sheltered and well-fed? NO- they will find some way to hurt or exploit others if they lack a moral sensibility.

Oh- we'll never be able to live up to such morals because it's in our nature not to (i.e: we must be materialistic, compete with others, look out for ourselves, etc). No single species has accomplished what humans have been able to- adapting to our environment above and beyond the need for survival. Though tons of other species possess similar characteristics to humans, none can match the intelligence or mastery of their environment as a collective as the homo erectus. It is almost an evolutionary mishap- a complete fluke- that a species has managed to overadapt, and it commands us to evolve morals to deal with our advanced society.

Religion, morals, values- whatever you call it- are not working when if they don't benefit or improve everyone's lives (without the subjugation of others)- which is what they are MEANT to do.

You say I'm not religious and therefore open-minded... I say I'm open-minded BECAUSE I'm religious.
And no, cool, you are not open-minded. Just because you have observed or read something that contradicts what someone else says doesn't mean their view is false or useless.

I am a purely a scientific kind of guy and all pre-conceived notions will fall by the wayside if the data differs from them.

The thing is about science is that you can go into a lab and test the heck out of something and just by manipulating the circumstances you can end up with almost any result that you want. The findings that are published leave out the millions of possibilities are not the most common, but that could happen nonetheless. suzeshii points out things that you have not observed yourself, so you try to disprove them with often erroneous or unrelated information. It was either that or accuse her of being rude to you when she is trying to broaden the view of the situation. It is what I have been trying to do- get you to think outside of the box- but it seems you choose to stay firmly in your box which just can't be helped. You can say that "this is the bleak reality" but it is only your reality, and we are free to go off and create our own.