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

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Mavinchious Maximus

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Saelune said:
Bouchie Bouch said:
Saelune said:
Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.
Hold it right there pilgrim. Saying that humanity would be better off if religion never existed is one of the most ignorant thing a person can say. Why? Because religion has been around has been around longer than complex society. It has motivated countless actions both good and bad, it has affected every civilization in one way or another. Religion has been so involved in the development of human society that it is impossible to tell whether we would be better or worse off if it never existed, no one I repeat NO ONE is qualified to make such a statement.
This whole thread is ignorant then. I see what religion does on a global scale. Its mostly bad. Its mostly murder. Its mostly opressing rights of everyone. I hear constant stories of the bad of religion, with most good things caused by religion being merely fluff tales that barely gets past the local news. I get tired of being put as the villian for hating something that has caused so much pain and suffering. But I get tired of what religion does more, so I guess I have to deal with it.
Religion is the cause of free thought and motivation for many great people in history. And most of those warlords who murder so many people in the name of religion just use their religion as a scapegoat. They are just pushing individual goals.

As many others have said, the burning of the library of Alexandria. It had early schematics for the steam engine dammit!
 

Russian_Assassin

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RiouChan said:
Same goes for Atheism.

i.e Alfred Kinsey, Napoleon Bonaparte, Than Shwe, Kim Jong Il, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jim Jones, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and finally the most evil atheist Joseph Stalin.
Hmmm, I'm an atheist and OH BOY do I feel like starting a genocide today! Meanwhile, I am going to sip some coffee out of a child's hollowed out skull and skin some people alive just for the fun of it.

Aren't we atheists horrible monsters?

Morals, good, evil, right, wrong, it's all dependent on zeitgeist. If you want objectivity, you look at the facts. Religion doesn't hurt anyone, it's the people commandeering it that do. And being an Atheist does not mean that you are automatically an immoral beast that eats babies and starts wars for amusement.

StormShaun said:
Why? Please, for the love of your god, tell me why?
 

StormShaun

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FutureJarhead16 said:
RiouChan said:
Saelune said:
Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.
Same goes for Atheism.

i.e Alfred Kinsey, Napoleon Bonaparte, Than Shwe, Kim Jong Il, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jim Jones, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and finally the most evil atheist Joseph Stalin.

OT:

1. Atheism
2. Communism
3. The Catholic Church (Since they don't follow what is written in the scriptures, they make they're own rules and imaginary Purgatory, And they killed a lot of people too.)
I'm sure his main point was that people kill in the name of god. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember reading Joseph Stalin, Napoleon or any atheists for that matter, kill in the name of atheism.
Also, I don't agree with him.
I forgot to include Catholics...
 

LoFr3Eq

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Roman Engineer: "Hey, this 'lead' metal is so easy to work with, we should make water pipes out of it..."
 

Halvhir

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It is extraordinarily difficult to pick out single things that account for our greatest tragedies. Everything is completely grounded in what came before it, and so much of our history was decided by chance and circumstance. Hitler never getting into art school is a classic answer to this kind of question; the aftermath of WWII was so integral to the current state of world politics, who knows where mankind would have gone?

For single acts of tragedy, I'd concur with the loss of the Library of Alexandria, and the collective amnesia following the Roman Empire that was the dark ages. There's just no solace in the loss of information.

Saelune said:
Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.
While I actually agree with the sentiment, you still have to separate religion itself from the people who abuse others using religion as a means. Spirituality has been part of human existence forever, from the first stories told around open fires. It's the minute people started to claim they spoke for a higher power and had the right to tell others what to do that we had a massive problem.
 

Duraji

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Anything that causes immense amounts of pain and suffering without any rational necessity for it. I'd go with religion. Not spirituality, I'm talking about tight religious dogma that affects many people based on an extreme minority's interpretation of absolute authority.

I suppose you could also look at politics in much the same way. No wonder those subjects aren't meant to be brought up in polite company! :p
 

Cynimod

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Rationalizing free-will. It helps justifies every individual's selfish desires, disdain, and lack of responsibility.
 

CM156_v1legacy

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The fact that "Epic fail" is even a sentence that we use. Really, I may sound like an old man, but do you crazy kids know what an "Epic" even is.

And even as a right wing kind of guy: Glenn Beck. He is far to alarmist. Also, DDT is a weird thing to be working towards.

Oh, and the fanfictions: My Immortal and Cloud Mows The Lawn
Avoid them if you can
 

SeaCalMaster

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Luykus said:
How about the smug coming off some people judging others who are dead and cannot explanations for their actions? But I'm kidding, really I am.

But really, I have to say the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. Without the defeat of the Second French Empire, the German Empire would never have been formed out of the disparate German States at Versailles. Sorry, Germany and the people that live there, but the united German Empire was the bane of the world (This includes Nazi Germany).
Really? Germany was OK until Wilhelm II. I mean, there was the whole Africa thing, but I don't really think it's Bismarck's fault that everyone else reacted the way they did.

OT: Hmm.... Belgians in the Congo? Leeches? The US Senate's response to The Economic Consequences of the Peace? It's hard to pick one (other than the Holocaust and other such obvious ones, of course)
 

EllEzDee

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Cogwheel said:
Honestly, for me, it's a toss-up between one of the things mentioned above, and burning down the library of Alexandria.
Care to elaborate? My only source, Wikipoodia, seems to think such an event happened on 4 occasions; which are you talking about?

Saelune said:
Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.
We get it, a lot of people hate religion, but the world stopped caring about such biased opinions a long time ago. How are the casualties religion causes "still going strong"? When did part of the world take up arms against another religion (The Crusades don't count, that was quite a while ago)?. Religion in the past was simply abused by the powerful by inciting fear in their subjects. What about wars, death and destruction committed in the name of "liberty"?

lacktheknack said:
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.
Oooh ho-ho, feel - the - burn.

As for myself: colonisation. Had the Americas not been discovered and forcibly colonised, we wouldn't have had to suffer the North American and South American wars of independence, nor would entire cultures have been needlessly wiped out.
 

Lunar Templar

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Saelune said:
Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.
seconding this, cause well, they're right :p

also, racists, hating on some one for being a dick, fine, hating on some one for being lazy, fine, hating on some one for having a different skin color, fail most epic

also gonna add a general lack of acceptance of other peoples 'likes and dislikes', this is a massive problem every where, but seemingly more so on the internet
 

Cogwheel

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EllEzDee said:
Cogwheel said:
Honestly, for me, it's a toss-up between one of the things mentioned above, and burning down the library of Alexandria.
Care to elaborate? My only source, Wikipoodia, seems to think such an event happened on 4 occasions; which are you talking about?
...Did it? Okay then.

All I know is that the library was burned down (I guess I'd be referring to the last time it happened) completely, and everything in it was lost. Seeing as the library and the knowledge it contained were both something of a big deal, it being gone is quite a shame.

You seem to know more than I do on the subject, really. In any case, I better leave this thread since it seems to be turning into quite the mess (should've seen that coming).
 

Icehearted

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My vote is more personally biased, but I think the American economic system. Anything goes capitalism is why we root for the underdog, but celebrate people that step on them to get to the top. Too many of us are poor, too many of us barely get by, and still a low percentage of us not only get increasingly wealthier, we do so without concern for each other. Perhaps universal health care flies in the face of capitalism, but thanks to capitalism medicine that costs only about a nickel in communist countries can bankrupt the working class.

But hell, what are a few hundred lost jobs as long as CEOs can still write themselves nice fat bonus checks for a job well done?

Apparently, it's just un-American to look out for each other unless there's money to be had doing it.

I vote this over WW2 because in the long term more people have died and will die from poverty related disease, illness, hunger, etc across the world, because American capitalism is not only about every man for himself, it's also apparently contagious.

I want off this world.


Saelune said:
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*
 

bushwhacker2k

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Overall I think just the general lack of empathy and open-mindedness is mankind's greatest downfall.

Some people feel a need for religion because they feel like without it there's no purpose to existence, some people feel ostracized by religion because it has a point of view which greatly differs from their own and it's no lie to say a lot of negative things have been done in the name of religion.

I'm not ignoring the loss of life from WWII, but I recently learned there were a large amount of technological developments during WWII. Whether it was a direct result of the war, I don't know, but it is worth noting that there are often more things to take into account than actually are.
 

EllEzDee

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Cogwheel said:
EllEzDee said:
Cogwheel said:
Honestly, for me, it's a toss-up between one of the things mentioned above, and burning down the library of Alexandria.
Care to elaborate? My only source, Wikipoodia, seems to think such an event happened on 4 occasions; which are you talking about?
...Did it? Okay then.

All I know is that the library was burned down (I guess I'd be referring to the last time it happened) completely, and everything in it was lost. Seeing as the library and the knowledge it contained were both something of a big deal, it being gone is quite a shame.

You seem to know more than I do on the subject, really. In any case, I better leave this thread since it seems to be turning into quite the mess (should've seen that coming).
I really don't, i'm terrible at pre-medieval history, and all "4 occasions" happened before 600BC. I really just googled it when i read it.
Still, utter destruction of knowledge is fucking horrible.
 

CM156_v1legacy

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Kitsuna10060 said:
Saelune said:
Religion. All of them. No single incident of death will ever do more damage than religion has. Their casualty numbers still going strong.
seconding this, cause well, they're right :p

also, racists, hating on some one for being a dick, fine, hating on some one for being lazy, fine, hating on some one for having a different skin color, fail most epic

also gonna add a general lack of acceptance of other peoples 'likes and dislikes', this is a massive problem every where, but seemingly more so on the internet
And you don't see the problem in this post at all?

OT: The largest failure would have to be the Iron age. Back in mah day, we only had the Bronze age. And we liked it!
 

Darkstorm091

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I'm probably going to sound like a environmentalist even though I'm not, but I think our greatest failure as a race is our disrespect for the land around us.

We cut down trees to make room for cities and civilization, destroy mountains for precious stones, and in general have no respect for the cycle of life. It's almost like we feel we're above it. Rather than working with nature we openly work against it, and we are the only living being on earth that does this. Granted, we've gotten better at watching out for the planet, but we still treat the planet like shit sometimes.