What do you think is the greatest epic fail for humanity?

[freaper]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

Why must you ruin a perfectly good thread with extremely personal (and small-picture) rhetoric? This is Off-Topic, save it for the Religion and Politics forum, where I can ignore it easier.

OT: Getting itself trapped in an unsupportable standard of living. Talk about lack of foresight.

I answered the question. Dont be upset because I am right. Just because WW2 is a game trope, doesnt mean it is also not a serious topic. This topic is about horrible flaws caused by humanity. This is a serious topic, even if phrased lightly. Maybe you just entered the wrong one.

You're attacking religion, while you should direct your anger towards the people that abuse religion in favour of political power. Religion boiled down is about peace and love. All religions are about peace and love, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, ...

To the OP: WWII didn't start simply because of 3 men wanting to rule the world. Without WWI there would not have been a second, and even WWI isn't the sole cause for WWII.

At this moment I can't recall any epic fails, but I'm sure I passed some during my classes.

EDIT: oh wait, Antonio Meucci not receiving credit for inventing the telephone.

EDIT2: after reading some of the posts above me; I can't believe you guys actually target religion so badly. It's a CONCEPT for Pete's sake, THERE ARE HUMANS BEHIND IT!

 

[Gustavo S. Buschle]

The dark ages.

 

[icame]

The fact that hitler was allowed to do what he did for so long. If the allies had gotten off of their asses when hitler started re-arming Germany millions upon millions of lives could have been saved.

 

[MisterColeman]

Failure was not very clearly defined.

It is interesting how many people take the premise that loss of human life is bad. If it were not for disease, natural disasters, war, famine, ect. we would have starved ourselves out ages ago.

If we are going to continue without breeding restrictions and continue to improve medical technology we need to more heavily invest in terraforming and space travel because this rock is already over maximum capacity.

 

[icame]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

I'd like to, as a former atheist, offer a thought; perhaps it is not the religion that is flawed, but those who practice it? At least, I found myself opening up to the concept once I realized it wasn't god or the church I despised, it was the people that used it to justify things like intolerance and oppression. I'm a christian, I do not hate gay people at all (some of my friends are gay), and I am not opposed to their getting married. We're not all bible thumping retards out to wag our smug fingers at people that do wrong, in fact christians aren't even really supposed to be doing that.

Simply, my point is that maybe it's not the club, but the members, you should resent.


*soapbox ends*

You...

It's just surprising to see anybody write that... I thought we were in a world divided between "Christians" and Atheists, Christians who throw every verse in the bible at gays or atheists and only show ignorance and hate (they are either hypocrites or morons), and athiests who believe God is rubbish simply because of the flaws of the people that worship him...

I thought someone who sees past this, someone like you, didn't exist, I was wrong thankfully.

Peace to everyone, no matter their sexual orientation or beliefs, that will be all.

Really? I thought most atheists don't believe in god because of the scientific impossibilities (Not to mention plot holes the size of a battleship), in the bible, and because many of the teachings are rubbish (Ex. Homosexuality is wrong.) At least, that is why me and the atheists I know do >.> Doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to not believe in something because a lot of people that practice a religion are ignorant.

 

[mcattack92]

Any video on the internet where people purposly get themselves hit in the testicular region. Atleast they are removing themselves from the gene pool.

 

[sharpe95th]

I don't know about most epic fail ever, but most recent has got to be Germany closing all of it's nuclear power plants because of the Fukushima plant disaster, presumably Germany feel's it's at risk of earthquakes and unprecedentedly large tsunamis, I thought those guys were meant to be smart?

 

[Pelgrims]

Lolcats... just lolcats!

 

[Tzen003]

To quote The Good Book:

"Some say coming down from the trees was a bad idea, but others say even the trees were bad and no-one should ever have left the oceans!"

 

[Jacob Haggarty]

Nuclear technology in general.

By nuclear technology, do you mean nuclear WEAPONRY, or literally ALL nuclear technology?

Because not all nuclear technology is bad. Nuclear energy is the by far the cleanest and most effective source of renewable energy. It just need proper maintenance, and watse products need to be dealt with responsibly.

Although whether or not countries DO take responsiblity for the waste is another concern altogether.

OT: Religion


HA, had you going there... no seriously, it's the American empire


BURN again, had you going twice.

Nah, i say it's world war 3... or rather, peoples obsessions with the russians starting world war 3. Why does call of duty CONTINUE to blame the russians. ITS ALWAYS THE RUSSIANS. At the very least i would like to see a change for varieties sake. Why not say that ENGLAND instigates world war 3, or america, or even ireland. There are so many ways to make it interesting, but NO. Its got to be the big bad russkies.

FOR SHAAAAAAME...

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

I know you won't reply to this, but know that I agree with you.

It's one thing that we humans invented a bunch of arbitrary belief systems to instill ourselves with a sense of importance, and also to provide ourselves with a shoulder to cry on when the shit hits the fan......it's a COMPLETELY different thing, when we use that arbitrary belief system as justification for the slaughter of billions of people, Not to mention the fact that it's willingly used as an impediment to human progress.

So yeah, you're right, in the long run, the institutionalization of Religion has done more to harm the human race than any single war in our history.

 

[Zhadramekel]

Sliced bread or M Night Shyamalan

 

[klasbo]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

Edit: I wont bother responding anymore. I firmly stand by my view on this though. But I am being called a villian for hating something that hated me first for being different.

I am not wrong for hating murderers. I am not wrong for hating people who trample on freedom. I am not wrong for being for equal rights. Those all describe what religion often is.

And no, Im not a troll. A troll just wants to anger people. I merely want a better world.

Damn, you got a lot of shit for this opinion. And you know what? I can see why you have this point of view and to a certain extent I agree. The only difference is that I don't believe religion was our biggest fail, I believe letting scripture and religion run our countries was.

[...]

It's been holding us back and beating us down and it still is to this very day. It isn't a coincidence that the chains that bind us get looser when religions grip on our society does as well. There is nothing wrong with religion as long as they're off in there little corner doing whatever they want with other religious people, but there's a serious problem if it is in the hands of some self righteous king or a greedy politician. And trust me, there's always going to be a self righteous king and a bunch of greedy politicians.

I think we can combine, simplify, specialize and generalize all in one go here:
The biggest epic fail is not letting go of religion in (relatively) recent history.

A lot of advancements have been driven by a conflict of interest, and we shouldn't neglect the (albeit costly) positives former tragedies have given us. (A common and beaten-to-death example is the technological advances as a result of WW2.)
But I think we're past the objective "need" for internal conflict (within the human race) as a catalyst for advancement. I think we've come to a point where we can make the world better not by following fairy tales or by defeating enemies, but because we understand the collective needs of the human race. Not understanding that making the world a better place is a big enough reward in itself is an epic fail.

-----

But I think my "favourite" fail is this:
Thomas Midgley Jr., the man behind the idea of putting lead in gasoline (totally not poisonous) and Freon (totally not among the most dangerous/impossible-to-get-rid-of greenhouse gases out there). He is the person who has contributed the most to pollution of all time ever!
Also, his death is an odd combination of tragic and comedic; read the wiki article.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

I'd like to, as a former atheist, offer a thought; perhaps it is not the religion that is flawed, but those who practice it? At least, I found myself opening up to the concept once I realized it wasn't god or the church I despised, it was the people that used it to justify things like intolerance and oppression. I'm a christian, I do not hate gay people at all (some of my friends are gay), and I am not opposed to their getting married. We're not all bible thumping retards out to wag our smug fingers at people that do wrong, in fact christians aren't even really supposed to be doing that.

Simply, my point is that maybe it's not the club, but the members, you should resent.


*soapbox ends*

You...

It's just surprising to see anybody write that... I thought we were in a world divided between "Christians" and Atheists, Christians who throw every verse in the bible at gays or atheists and only show ignorance and hate (they are either hypocrites or morons), and athiests who believe God is rubbish simply because of the flaws of the people that worship him...

I thought someone who sees past this, someone like you, didn't exist, I was wrong thankfully.

Peace to everyone, no matter their sexual orientation or beliefs, that will be all.

Really? I thought most atheists don't believe in god because of the scientific impossibilities (Not to mention plot holes the size of a battleship), in the bible, and because many of the teachings are rubbish (Ex. Homosexuality is wrong.) At least, that is why me and the atheists I know do >.> Doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to not believe in something because a lot of people that practice a religion are ignorant.

Atheists read the bible wrong (assuming they even read some of it), it wasn't meant to be a book of science at all, allot of the stories can be seen as merely symbolic and not literal occurrences. It was meant to teach faith through the examples it gives and PEOPLE were used to write it, they saw things happen and interpreted it in their own primitive way (it was a primitive time) and wrote it down to teach the lessons of faith, not science. Science we can pretty much figure out for ourselves. There will be plot holes, sure but that is either because we haven't studied it well or didn't make the right conclusions or simply because of the fact that the bible has been written by humans who only wrote what they saw, which left some flaws in the writing and then got further flawed when it was rewritten and reinterpreted a hundred times over and from one language to a different language each time.

Whether or not the "homosexuality is wrong" writing was part of this series of disastrous rewritings is for the reader to decide, and whatever you decide, you can't go judging or hating others for doing something you interpreted as wrong, it's not your place to judge them, they need to sort themselves out and according to true Christian teachings (according to my opinion) you can only care for people, let God judge them. Also, you don't go to hell for being homosexual, and it is the opinion of some that the ACT of homosexual sex is the sin, not being homosexual.

I myself personally think that the scriptures on homosexuality desperately need reevaluation because the writer of one of the bible scriptures that I know of that wrote it as a sin was listing it amongst other sins and probably didn't really understand homosexuality and was threatened by it and thus interpreted it as sin.

Allot of what I say could be wrong, I'm not an expert at debating and I can't always explain things properly.

Also, you might not have a need for faith and that's fine and really not my business but this is just what I think.

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

To be completely honest, and no offense to anyone here, but I think the greatest "fail" of humanity is that we're still here.

We have mere hundreds (maybe thousands, tops) of people holding the majority of the wealth of this world in their hands, we have entire countries starving while adjacent countries are stuffing their fat faces, and regardless of this unevenness we're still presently consuming far more than we're able to replenish. And to top it all off, we the parasitic species we are have actually humored at the idea of colonizing other planets once we sap this one dry!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we need to commit mass genocide on the spot. But unless we can come up with some sort of miraculously fast regrowing food/fuel supply, something that we can make ourselves in order to sustain ourselves, we are and always will be a parasitic species.

A species, IMO at least, that should not see itself breeding past this planet, much less this galaxy.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I would make this a poll, but theres really too much here

This came to me from seeing a book in the store that listed the 100 greatest failures in the history of humanity. In it, number one, was World War II, and I mostly agree. With over 77 million lives lost(estimated) in the period of less than ten years as well as economic collapse, the rise of global super powers and leading into the dawn of the cold war. All because a few rotten, truely evil, SOB's wanted to change the world to better fit their view of a "perfect" world.

There were others too. Scandals, genocides, uprisings, the blood diamond confilct was what in my opinion, really, really bad.

So what epic fails do you know of? Thoughts?

NOTE: these studies were based upon loss of human life, economic and political turmoil, and the outright lack or non-exsistent source of reason of why they happened in the first place

I would say WW1 was a bigger fail than WW2. While the casualties were not as high in WW1, at least there was a significant change brought about by WW2 that has prevented another conflict on a similar scale since. WW1 was born out of next to nothing and achieved next to nothing. As well as this so many of the casualties in WW1 were just down to generals on all sides being mostly foppish retards, rather than that level of sacrifice actually needing to be made.

 

[icame]

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

I'd like to, as a former atheist, offer a thought; perhaps it is not the religion that is flawed, but those who practice it? At least, I found myself opening up to the concept once I realized it wasn't god or the church I despised, it was the people that used it to justify things like intolerance and oppression. I'm a christian, I do not hate gay people at all (some of my friends are gay), and I am not opposed to their getting married. We're not all bible thumping retards out to wag our smug fingers at people that do wrong, in fact christians aren't even really supposed to be doing that.

Simply, my point is that maybe it's not the club, but the members, you should resent.


*soapbox ends*

You...

It's just surprising to see anybody write that... I thought we were in a world divided between "Christians" and Atheists, Christians who throw every verse in the bible at gays or atheists and only show ignorance and hate (they are either hypocrites or morons), and athiests who believe God is rubbish simply because of the flaws of the people that worship him...

I thought someone who sees past this, someone like you, didn't exist, I was wrong thankfully.

Peace to everyone, no matter their sexual orientation or beliefs, that will be all.

Really? I thought most atheists don't believe in god because of the scientific impossibilities (Not to mention plot holes the size of a battleship), in the bible, and because many of the teachings are rubbish (Ex. Homosexuality is wrong.) At least, that is why me and the atheists I know do >.> Doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to not believe in something because a lot of people that practice a religion are ignorant.

Atheists read the bible wrong (assuming they even read some of it), it wasn't meant to be a book of science at all, allot of the stories can be seen as merely symbolic and not literal occurrences. It was meant to teach faith through the examples it gives and PEOPLE were used to write it, they saw things happen and interpreted it in their own primitive way (it was a primitive time) and wrote it down to teach the lessons of faith, not science. Science we can pretty much figure out for ourselves. There will be plot holes, sure but that is either because we haven't studied it well or didn't make the right conclusions or simply because of the fact that the bible has been written by humans who only wrote what they saw, which left some flaws in the writing and then got further flawed when it was rewritten and reinterpreted a hundred times over and from one language to a different language each time.

Whether or not the "homosexuality is wrong" writing was part of this series of disastrous rewritings is for the reader to decide, and whatever you decide, you can't go judging or hating others for doing something you interpreted as wrong, it's not your place to judge them, they need to sort themselves out and according to true Christian teachings (according to my opinion) you can only care for people, let God judge them. Also, you don't go to hell for being homosexual, and it is the opinion of some that the ACT of homosexual sex is the sin, not being homosexual.

I myself personally think that the scriptures on homosexuality desperately need reevaluation because the writer of one of the bible scriptures that I know of that wrote it as a sin was listing it amongst other sins and probably didn't really understand homosexuality and was threatened by it and thus interpreted it as sin.

Allot of what I say could be wrong, I'm not an expert at debating and I can't always explain things properly.

Also, you might not have a need for faith and that's fine and really not my business but this is just what I think.

I thought it was supposed to be a book of ultimate truths? If it is then shouldn't everything it in be correct? Shouldn't every teaching be perfect? Shouldn't there be no plot holes, and nothing that goes against the laws of our universe (Science)? If this book is so full of truth how can anything in it need reevaluation? If the rules it sets forth can simply be changed when it is required what is the point of believing in it at all, but thats just my thinking I suppose.

I also have only noticed people calling the stories metaphors only when it has been proved to either be impossible or never happened at all, but I could be wrong.

 

[Terminate421]

Thanks for brightening my day by telling me Religion is an epic fail.

Adolf Hitler being born is the largest epic fail, just look what he has turned Germany into.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Honestly, for me, it's a toss-up between one of the things mentioned above, and burning down the library of Alexandria.

We actually needed World War II, without it I dread to think what war we could have had a decade later.

And I have to agree with Burning down the Library, even thinking about it makes me mad.

Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.

Spoiler

He does have a good point. Regardless of the fact that people will kill each other anyway, a massive amount of bloodshed has been committed in the name of religion. That's not trolling. It's a fact.

It is also a fact that religion is one of the few reasons the middle ages didn't turn into a free-for-all bloodbath. It is also the fact that Christianity and Confucianism were both used to unite a large pool of people with different ethnical-cultural backgrounds, prevent civil wars, hell, even Islam did this. It is also a fact that the Church is responsible for a large section of charities and freedom movements (the Church is, at the moment, an advocate of gender and race equality ). Almost every religion has been teaching people to be "good", not to murder, to be respectful and etc., which was the basis for Law for a great deal of human history (and is still so today). It is also a fact that it keeps helping people today ( just see how many ex-drug addicts, alcoholics and porn-stars were helped by the church).

But he didn't know that, he doesn't care enough to do so and most likely neither do your (assumptions). Religion has been, for the most part, uniting people, and ensuring peace. But no, most of today kids on the internet saw the words "Religion = Cursade/Jihad" and started to spew misinformation left and right. Yes, due to religion bad things have happened, but this is mostly people being people, far from the worst thing in history.

Spoiler

Not to mention that new archaeological evidence suggest that Temples may pre-date agriculture leading scientists to believe that the first cities may have been build on spiritual foundation

One could argue that Fascism prevented inter-war Germany from descending into anarchy. But it eventually led to bloodshed anyway, because Fascism does not tolerate conflicting ideologies.
Invoking a higher moral authority is not a feasible long-term solution to anything, because the people at the top care about nothing but power and will eventually come full-circle and do what psychopaths do but under a different pretext.
By the same token, the ulterior motive of any religious charity is to instil convert the people they are helping to a certain ideology. Yes, helping your fellow man is noble regardless of your beliefs, but it's wrong assume that it is a faith in the supernatural that inspires people to do so.

Morality is an outcome of our evolutionary past; religion is just a framework for it to work in. People can be 'good' without the carrot-and-stick of eternal bliss, or the threat of eternal suffering.

 

[Trolldor]

Not religion so much as the religious mindset, the delusional belief in a single doctrine, a single method of approaching all the world's ills. From Christianity to Socialism that wilful ignorance, the dogmatic adherence to a single mode of thought. The arrogant pretension to special privilege, to superiority, that divine mandate to rule.
The greatest crimes humanity has ever witnessed were committed by those convinced of their own righteousness.