I swear I am not a Cylon...

Leoben Conoy · #1 08-10-2008, 09:29 PM

Hi to everyone! I usually don't know what to say in these things, and I try to refrain from going out of my way to pathetically try to impress people or whatever... so I'll just stick to who I am, what I like to do, and so on.

I firmly believe no matter what we are, we should be the man or woman we want to be, right up to the day we die. I was born into Lutheranism (Missouri Synod), and raised Mormon. Around age 11 I realized I didn't actually believe because prior to that moment, I was too young to really contemplate the nature of the Mormon faith. Around age 13 I expressed this desire to leave, and I did suffer physical and mental abuse because of it, but I always resisted, both non-violently and I did physically resist as well, and eventually my parents split due to their own incompatibility and my mother, whom I chose to live with, left the Mormon church and that part of my life finally ended.

As far as I can recall, I've always believed in the ideals of the republic and the necessity of a secular, free society. Religion, faith, and beliefs we take for granted should be private as far as public society go, because if the founding fathers were mostly Muslim and deist, I doubt we would like the fact they'd be calling for a Muslim society based on the fact the founding fathers would, in this scenario, have been Muslims themselves. As I said before, regardless of what we are, we should strive to be what we want to be. Since the United Kingdom is based upon absolute monarchy, I'm sure we could apply the poor logic of the religious radicals in the United States and say Britain should return to despotism. This is not so, and I am grateful to democratically-minded people for resisting any efforts to undermine our republic and parliamentary democracies millions over a period of thousands of years have given their lives for, one small freedom at a time. Such a system shouldn't be thrown away when the human race has worked so hard to establish it.

I don't consider myself a particular label aside from "secular", because my philosophy on life is a mixture of Nietzschean nihilism, Confucianism, Enlightenment ideals, etc, while my religious views are foremost secular, but I do have private, personal beliefs which can be classified as "pantheist".

That being said, I think no one's life is more important than another, unless of course, you must defend yourself against someone who is physically about to kill you. I do not believe in exacting revenge, thus, capital punishment does not agree with my morality. Any state which has the right to kill its own citizens is a state which can abuse that power. I believe everyone has the right to a trial by a jury of their peers. I feel that the military tribunals established by the current American administration are unconstitutional because the people they are trying are not members of any military, domestic or foreign, and because an American military tribunal only applies to American military personnel, strictly speaking. I never supported the war in Iraq, and I never believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, much less was working with al-Qaeda, much less was seeking uranium from Nigeria, because:

1. Iraq's weapons infastructure was non-existent, its WMDs had either gone inert (biological weapons go inert) or been destroyed during the Gulf War and the war with Iran during the 1980s;
2. Ba'athism is an Arab secular socialist movement, and al-Qaeda is a Sunni theocratic movement;
3. The uranium from Nigeria claim was a fabrication, and Iraq's only nuclear research facility was bombed by the Israelis over a decade prior to the Iraq War;
4. The Senate confirms all of this.

But I don't really care about the war anymore. I'm rather disappointed with the Democrats because I voted for them in the last elections for Congress, and they never made good on their promise to end the war, and I'm disappointed with the Republicans because they're far too willing to kill people to achieve their goals. I don't like either party, quite frankly.

But anyways, I look forward to productive conversations with everyone here.

~Leoben