<p>Did someone really just say that the rich, who pay more taxes than anyone else in this country, weren’t paying their “fair share”? That’s hilarious. What would be a better percentage to pay? 60%? 80%?</p>
<p>I posted this earlier.</p>
<p>[Who</a> pays taxes - and how much? A tax day perennial. - Apr. 15, 2009](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/15/pf/taxes/who_pays_most_least/]Who”>Who pays taxes - and how much? A tax day perennial. - Apr. 15, 2009)</p>
<p>The top fifth of households made 56% of pre-tax income in 2006 but paid 86% of all individual income tax revenue collected, according to the most recent data available from the Congressional Budget Office. </p>
<p>Narrowing in further: The top 1% of households, which made 19% of pre-tax income, paid 39% of all individual income taxes.</p>
<p>The trend is similar if you count income taxes, social insurance taxes, excise taxes and corporate income taxes (such as capital gains) combined. The top fifth of households paid 69% of all federal taxes. The top 1% paid 28%.</p>
<p>@cuse0507- yes, lol, someone did. A classic uninformed liberal. JUst to clear it up the “Someone” was itachirumon. Anything in qoutes were his previous claims, andything reading “ME” or ANSWER:" was my (delmonico) response. </p>
<p>@ BigEastBEast- thanks for simplifying what i was saying, and yes ur 100% on, on the tax thing. this itachirumon is simply ignorant; it’s the paramount problem with every liberal. </p>
<p>@itachirumon- im not gonna be on for a llittle while but ill respond to any more stupidity u want to spew when i get back on the forum</p>
<p>^I’m not the stupid one around here del, you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, there’s a difference between giving a description of a suspect and racially profiling you ignorant jacknape. I’m speaking about RACIALLY PROFILING someone for a crime they clearly didn’t commit because they happen to have been born the same race as the person who supposedly did it. </p>
<p>I love how you use qualifiers like “uninformed liberals” and feel that I’m ignorant. I’m pretty sure I wasted you last night in our debate.</p>
<p>One more thing: You said you had a “response” to me, this is the same response you posted about 10 pages ago. I assumed you had something new. I already addressed all of this.</p>
<p>It’s funny how most Americans blindly accept the illusion that there’s a difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Both work for the same plutocracy. But yeah, let’s keep talking about gay marriage.</p>
<h2>^I’m not the stupid one around here del, you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, there’s a difference between giving a description of a suspect and racially profiling you ignorant jacknape. I’m speaking about RACIALLY PROFILING someone for a crime they clearly didn’t commit because they happen to have been born the same race as the person who supposedly did it. ~ Itachirumon</h2>
<p>I went into a further detail concerning “Racial Profiling”, so feel free to respond.</p>
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<p>Yes, I know what an appeal to authority fallacy is.</p>
<p>Ironically, you Christians who argue “the Bible says so” or “God says so” are doing just that appeal — the Bible and God are walking, talking, appeal to authority fallacies devoid of reason.</p>
<p>The reason I mentioned it is to see that perhaps, if you take the smartest people in human history, the ABSOLUTE smartest, and that they are all atheists, that just might be slap in the face enough to wake you up from delusion land. But no, even that is impossible.</p>
<p>Logic and reason will not be listened to. That has already been done several times in this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/893497-do-you-believe-there-god.html?highlight=ultimate+disproof[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/893497-do-you-believe-there-god.html?highlight=ultimate+disproof</a></p>
<p>But plz don’t open up that can of worms again, lol.</p>
<p>Anyway, Einstein was most certainly an atheist, at least in the terms you and I leave. He didn’t believe in a personal God but thought that there could be deeper meaning and mystery and spiritual forces in the universe. Sure, there could be. We haven’t discovered 5% of what exists in this universe or how it works.</p>
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<p>Most of these beliefs are based on reason and not ‘evidence’ per se, so appeals can be useful.</p>
<p>And the other Christian ‘geniuses’ you guys listed are either obscure, or not as ‘ingenius’ as you think.</p>
<p>Descartes:
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<p>But he wasn’t that bright anyway
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<p>Anyone else that lived before 1800 (can you come up with someone modern who is actually super genius?) not only had no idea what atoms or evolution was (they probably still believed Zeus caused storms) and feared - rightfully so - that they would be put to death for being an atheist, quite possibly by the Pope’s own imperial army that would practice Jesus’ work by impaling people on large sticks and raping peasants.</p>
<p>Peter parker’s entire argument consists of, “Oh, shoot, you guys actually found some evidence to refute my idiotic claim that no one intelligent has ever been a Christian. Well that’s okay because they weren’t even that smart anyway.”</p>
<p>Why can’t gay people just accept that they can’t get married and move on?</p>
<p>peter_parker: You’re fighting a losing battle – there’s a good reason why people like Dawkins doesn’t debate Creationists/most Christians anymore. If you’re relatively certain (read: heavily emotionally invested) regarding a God/supernatural force, it’s pretty useless to debate them. “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into,” as they say.</p>
<p>There’s more than enough evidence to render God a laughable concept, especially considering that he isn’t needed to explain anything (this is the same as saying that there’s no need to invoke Bill Clinton to explain why a hot stove works. We know why hot stoves are hot without the need for Bill Clinton). Of course, the moment you say “There’s a lot we still don’t understand,” people will misinterpret that wildly as “There’s still a big chance that supernatural logic is right.”</p>
<p>Yeah, there’s tons we still don’t know. But we know more than enough to push concepts like God out of the picture. If someone doesn’t even have a basic grasp of natural selection/evolution/abiogenesis/quantum mechanics/cosmology/physics/statistics/logic/psychology, it’s going to be very hard to show them exactly why we know so much about why God is silly nowadays.</p>
<p>It takes a lot of knowledge and intellectual inquiry to really delve into the deeper implications when it comes to the existence of God in our universe, but unfortunately only a few are really capable of grasping all the science/evidence we have out there.</p>
<p>I didn’t say no one intelligent has ever been Christian. Far from it.</p>
<p>I’m saying the top 0.01% smartest of the world tend to be atheist.</p>
<p>Also, read this again: [MADATOMS</a> - WHAT YOUR OPPOSITION TO GAY MARRIAGE MEANS by Rick Paulas - Artist: Josh House](<a href=“http://www.madatoms.com/site/blog/what-your-opposition-to-gay-marriage-really-means]MADATOMS”>http://www.madatoms.com/site/blog/what-your-opposition-to-gay-marriage-really-means)</p>
<p>Especially “what your excuse really means” section - I agree with the author’s conclusions, lol.</p>
<p>LegendofMax, you are right. I just like debating every once in a while.</p>
<p>I would say there are many intelligent Christians/theists/etc. They are all just woefully misinformed/ignorant of the evidence.</p>
<p>Oh and some quotes you missed from Einstein:</p>
<p>“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”</p>
<p>“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”</p>
<p>And my favorite:</p>
<p>“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.” ;)</p>
<p>Here’s the thing, though: Atheists aren’t out to say “God absolutely and 100% does not exist” – which is the stigma typically associated with the view. Atheism is the LACK of belief, hence “a-theism.” Agnosticism typically implies “There’s not enough to tell one way or the other,” as if the probability split between the two is 50/50. Einstein most certainly did not believe in the 50/50. Defining all these belief systems gets a little tricky.</p>
<p>But, at the end of the day, Einstein didn’t believe in anything remotely close to what most Christians/etc believe in. His views are much closer to that of atheists.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily “out to say,” but certainly believe – just as Muslims and Jews and Christians and Hindus, etc. believe that “God(s) absolutely and 100% do(es) exist.” By definition. One can believe in the supernatural and be atheist, however.</p>
<p>And legendofmax, the evidence you have presented is not an argument against God, but rather a statement that his involvement may be getting smaller. The idea of God disappearing when science has explained everything has obviously been brought up unceasingly in philosophy (e.g. early 20th century), but the fallacy therein lies with the assumption that God needs a purpose, versus is a purpose himself. It is evident that one cannot empirically disprove God (at least in the scientific sense).</p>
<p>“we know more than enough to push concepts like God out of the picture.”</p>
<p>Sounds to me like that’s exactly what you’re trying to do.</p>
<p>Einstein believed in intelligent design. He did not believe in the Christian God for the same reason as many atheists: he could not reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, loving God allowing all the evil and suffering in the world today. Despite this, he did believe in a powerful being creating the universe, which seems to me to be directly opposite the views of most atheists.</p>
<p>Yes, we do know enough to push God (as most of you define it) out of the picture because it’s an extremely unlikely concept. I’m not saying such a God is impossible or that it certainly does NOT exist, but this is no different from me saying that I do not believe Zeus, Thor, Apollo, the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus exist either.</p>
<p>^You forgot about the Easter Bunny.</p>
<p>Baelor: Yes, when I said “Atheists aren’t out to say ‘God absolutely and 100% does not exist,’” it was supporting the notion that “his involvement may be getting smaller.” It’s still an “argument against God” in the sense that it’s not in God’s favor if only by the support of more plausible concepts that render God unlikely. God falls outside of the scientific method in many regards because he’s typically defined as such. </p>
<p>There’s no way to disprove God, but this is like me saying, again, that you can’t prove Bill Clinton isn’t somehow necessary for hot stoves to become hot. Of course, to push the analogy further, “aBillists” might even go so far as to say that we’ve found Bill Clinton himself and he’s outright claimed that he has nothing to do with the nature of hot stoves getting hot. The aBillists have also studied the nature of hot stoves, thermodynamics, light/particle interactions, chemical compositions, etc – and understand how stoves become hot. But the Billists will always say “Well you can’t disprove the small chance that Bill actually is involved… he works in mysterious ways, after all!”</p>
<p>Surely you can see the frustration.</p>
<p>“If triangles believed in a God, they’d give him three sides.”</p>
<p>^Bad analogy.</p>
<p>Kill Bill Clinton and then incinerate him. Check to see if hot stoves still work.</p>