Fasting plays a role in most major religions. Science has shown specifically why fasting can improve mental clarity, which likely plays a big role in why it's used for so many spiritual moments.
Intermittent fasting or occasional moderate fasts are also popular among people trying to optimize...
Due to requests in this thread, here's another poll.
Humanism DIR is currently blue because of two votes (and it was a tie, which defaulted to the status quo of blue). Most DIRs are green, and a smaller subset are blue, which is the somewhat stricter color:
-For any DIR or discussion...
Sexism is hard to quantify. But in some ways, it can be tested with controlled experimentation.
One example:
Source.
It's a free country and women can be anything, and that's true. But when women are under-represented in areas, a chunk of it is because of discrimination like this...
One thing I've always found strange about Christianity, is the priorities it tends to have. Love and humanitarianism, are not large priorities usually.
For example, the Nicene Creed is essentially the definition of all mainstream trinitarian Christianity, formed by early councils in the...
So I've been reading a lot of blog posts by author Chuck Wendig, mostly about writing, but he also wrote some good ones on gender and sexism.
Boy Toys, Girl Toys (kind of his main gender/feminism article)
25 Things to Know about Sexism & Misogyny in Writing and Publishing
Manly Men Tales
I...
Some people go to psychic mediums, pay hundreds of dollars, and then are told by the psychic medium things that their deceased loved one supposedly wishes to tell them.
It's a fairly impressive product, because it's generally quite expensive, invisible and intangible, and usually phrased in a...
Anybody else watching Arrow? I'm loving it.
It's a modern telling of the comic book hero Green Arrow, who is a vigilante that primarily uses stealth, a bow, and some technology to stop crime. He's kind of like Batman, but on a smaller scale (no tanks and stuff) and he's willing to kill. The...
I found this amusing.
Archeologists discovered a sealed Etruscan tomb from 2,600 years ago, and there were articles about the remains of a prince with a spear inside. Apparently inside there was a large platform with the skeleton of a high ranking person with a spear placed next to him, and...
Most (but not all) religions have a narrative.
The narrative, generally, speaking, can be thought of as three parts:
1) The Problem- a description of the world as being in a less than ideal state
2) The Goal- a description of a paradise or bliss that is preferable
3) The Method- the proposed...
I've heard people say that money or material possessions aren't all that important because you can't take them with you when you die.
The question here is, what do you believe you can take with you to the afterlife? Some people believe that they'll basically get their bodies and personalities...
Elon Musk, who has brought you fine things such as Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors, has been releasing hints about a speculative transportation technology for a long time now, and today he finally released the alpha designs.
You can read about Hyperloop here on the Tesla Motors blog, where he...
Suppose you like someone's personality, have fun, but the person is underweight . Like, you can see a good portion of the ribs but they're not starved-looking. A woman perhaps isn't too curvy, maybe a bit flat-chested, kind of scrawny. A man doesn't have much muscle or fat, kind of scrawny...
As the U.S. military is moving along on a path to potentially open up front-line and elite combat units to women by 2016 or so, new unisex uniforms available in 16 sizes were recently announced that have been tested with 600 female soldiers and are a more balanced compromise for fitting both men...
On a scale of 0-10, with 0 being very low and 10 being very high, how would you rate your overall life satisfaction? How satisfied are you with your life? It's a similar concept to subjective happiness, but a bit broader and more cumulative over a lifetime.
The poll is set up so that other...
The rules for this forum are pretty self-explanatory but here are a few points.
-Before starting a debate thread, get the other person's agreement to have a one-on-one debate first, either through a private message, or through agreement in another thread. Do not start a debate thread to call...
What are your thoughts on most of the world's naming systems?
In the majority of places around the world, women are typically expected to replace their own family/last name with their husband's family/last name upon marriage. Even where women typically keep their own names, the children of...