He forgot to mention that three of those donors would be bovine.

I for one welcome our new Minotaurus Overlordus

PS: I am a Texan.

What would it take to start one? And how do you ensure it stays quality as it grows?

Things would be more fluid if we changed our voting system. Instead of "pick 1 out of many" we should have approval voting or a ranked voting system. Pick 1 out of many always converges to a 2 party system when people vote out of fear that another party will get elected. Those that fear Republican rule vote Democrat. Those that fear Democrat rule vote Republican.

Approval voting is the clearest method to understand. You vote "yeah/nay" on each option and the winner is the one with the greatest yeahs. This allows people to broaden their support of alternate parties while still getting to cast their fear-based vote. This is the only way that I see for the alternate parties to emerge without some significant scandal causing one of the current parties to implode.

Thanks for pointing that out.

That is the best analogy I've come across for the situation. Well Done!

Would you call that a religion, then? Or a philosophical approach to life? Although, the support structure around Osho and most big Gurus becomes quasi cultish. At that point the heirarchy between "guru" and "accolyte" needs to be examined for whether or not it is really a healthy relationship model for two humans to engage through.

I think Galileo and Descartes might disagree with your proposal. Once the sacred cows start being threatened, the pretense of endorsing skeptical inquiry evaporates as well.

Is the statement "God exists" genuinely up for skeptical inquiry to a Catholic? Most attempts at questioning the existence of God on the part of the religious has been laughable. They can't see all the assumptions that have been made in their conceptualization and linguistic process. Real skeptical inquiry requires questioning all the tacit assumptions which subconsciously guide the mind to select for confirmation bias and circular justification of preconceptions.

Skeptical Inquiry quickly segways into the question of epistemology and when is it appropriate to form beliefs. Epistemology segways into perception and fallibility of classification, ontology formation and ontology revision. In order to get to any kind of objective perspective to answer ontological questions of this nature, one must first become neutral and self-aware. Be able to see how making an assumption has ripple effects in the belief system. The presence of a concept can skew how we interpret our experience in order to be consistent with the concept.

The "benevolent" aspects of the agendas are the vector by which the other memetic ideas infect the host attendants. Most will kick you out if you start challenging the other ideas that are included alongside of the "benevolent" ones.

besides, I would hardly call the ideas "benevolent" if I first have to believe I've committed mortal sins and require saving from those sins. In essence it attacks the self-esteem in order to get you to buy into the idea of being redeemed.

It is the nature of skeptical inquiry to erode the belief system. It can hardly be called a "religion" if there is no belief system being promoted and no dogma being encouraged to be bought into. In this case apriori definitions are sufficient and complete empirical investigation is unnecessary.

Can you think of any organization which would be accurately described as a "religion" which encouraged each person be skeptical of all beliefs, to challenge them and erode them? This would include challenging and skeptically investigating whatever tenets were the foundation of forming the organization.

Even if you could only reduce the idea of a religion to a family of resemblances such an organization (assuming it lived up to its own ideals) would hardly resemble any cluster of things which we could label "religion".

There is a kind of agenda to which all churches and religion can be lumped under, and that is the discouragement of skeptical inquiry in favor of promoting an unverifiable belief system. I suspect that is what the GP meant in indicating they have an "agenda".

While it is true every entity which has a desire also has the agenda to fulfill that desire, when someone highlights the existence of an agenda within a class of entities, they are carving out a set of agendas which are typical among class members and atypical for entities outside the class.

It is a common speech act (see the field of pragmatics) that when a universal attribute is invoked to describe a particular set in contrast to its complement, the nuance of meaning shifts to highlight the distinguishing features which are universal among and contribute to the classification of the set members.

Just re-read the second amendment. The sentence structure is obtuse, but I finally see the interpretation of it that you have put forward and agree it states that in order to have militias to protect the people, the people shall need to be armed. Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't read it that way yet, but that is clearly how it is meant. As an aside, I often wonder how the constitution might have been written differently if the founders had lived in the modern era, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Bombs which can level city blocks, are these considered arms and a right which shall not be infringed?

Unless the person is using speaker phone, the guy or gal on the other end of the line can't be heard. But a man-in-the-middle would hear the other person. As for texting, I do have an expectation of privacy as the viewing of the screen is typically limited to just me.

Can you define for me what a "well regulated malitia" is and how the general populace passing a background check for gun ownership is sufficient to constitute a well regulated militia?

It is easy to be anonymous when nobody cares who you are. If he were a celebrity with public interest, a very different result would occur.