What would YOU want to hear at church?

Everyone does. Everyone clutches lies, too. So what?

Prove it. Prove Hinduism is a lie. Prove Paganism is a lie. You can't. That means you have no idea what is a lie and what isn't. Everyone';s holy book says theirs is the right one. That's the idea behind faith. Different people's have different faiths and all faith is, is the hope that what you believe is true, actually is true. No-one can prove any other faith is a lie however much conviction they have. But I don't imagine that you can get that idea.

After which you neurotics should wonder about whether or not it was right for one to seed Europa

That's called prejudice. And prejudice makes people blind to anything that contradicts their beliefs.

Newt Gingrich hasn't had the chance to do that yet.

If you guys are going to get neurotic about it, picture how with the electromagnetic spin into hyperspace you can see red, green and blue, plus one another circuit love, hate and fear.

Pretend... hmm... I dunno... how many levels of pretending are their?

The level of French Canadian women feeding you as much pea soup as I got Alberta pheasant?

The level of how much you could have made more money going into space taking over the galaxy as only French Canadians could have?

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Anyway...if we get gangsters economically converted to working on protection, we have security.

Such a question only Real Canadian can answer...

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Your defense is going to be to be to feed them secret God-legal toxins after climate change and Monstando-****ing-up-what happens-after-Lucifer-MBAs-get-told-to-feed-their-evil-master-a-lot-now-because-he-is-not-photosynthetic.

After that, get every bit of information it took your great, great grand-parents to live on land, and love God as much in order for your grand-kids to turn out as kool as I did from mine.

In my great-great grandfather's day periodically Butch Cassidy would ride in and ask for boarding for himself and his buddies and his horses.

It was distant dry Wyoming prairie with nobody having any money and they were there because theye didn't have the guts to kill themselves in Europe before taking a stinking ship across plus a rotten train to be dumped in the middle of a place so desolate the only blessing was the antelope being the second fastest running animals on the planet after the cheetah (Cheetah evolved in North America but migrated over into Africa, which is probably why they are the fastest, and Antelope the second fasted).

The options were for my Great-great grandfather to feed Butch Casidy plus feed his crew plus feed his horses for the equivalent of $1500 per day stolen from railroads moving money from the east coast to buy the gold dug in San Fransisco, or for Butch Casidy to use his gang power to take it.

My great-great grandfather took Butch Casidy's money and put up his horses.

I do not mean to get judgmental nor right-and-wrong about anything here, but picture how back then in order for Wyoming to be colonizing for a person to be willing to live there one had to be idiotically poor, and a guy comes in offering to pay the equivalent of $1500 per night to take care of his horses and feed his crew, such that the only people to be found to chase him had to be hired from Pinkertons from NY.

In the mean time, Heavenly Father is looking for mud-wumps to do better from chaotic evolution than He had done from creation.

Dumbhole Lucifer probably thinks that all the disfuctional human-souls cast to him are a bonus when in fact they are an entropy trap, demonstrating once again how Heavenly Father is going to wrang His brain about wonder whether or not He is good or bad, representing once again how it was obviously logical for the female spirit of the Holy Ghost to come along when She did.

In the mean time we have to both control our use of earth-planetary resources plus use our super-mammalian intelligence to take over first the solar system, and then the galaxy, while figuring out a way to deal with evil souls.

In the old days my great great grandparents would just kill them.

What about if now we use those USM experiments to put them through hell in order to find out if they are remediable or not?

If they are not, I will do it. It's a Belgian-22, which I know none of you would ever talk about.

Seriously... nobody now knows how harsh natural selection was 300,000 years ago, and nobody knows how belovedly intelligent and precise it can be now.

Our only problem is real evil idiots getting in control of the Vatican and rules of being a normal Canadian.

Thank you adopted. A good laugh at the start of the day, sets the tone.

Deliberately setting out to fulfill the predictions of self proclaimed prophets does not a saviour make!! I do accept that there are those who choose martyrdom as a life's goal. Personally, I prefer experimentation with humour.

I understand there are those who opt to believe they are Vampires as well as those who have chosen to be their hunters as a life's goal. One thing about earthly life, it is varied and wonderful. Human needs never fail to amaze.

That's not an arbitrary attitude of the believer -- that's part of the content of the message being believed.

Which is why people like you are treated the way you are.

Yes.

But you don't think you're actually making a logical argument against the Biblical God here, do you?

You'd save yourself a lot of conflict if you'd scroll back. It's not a hard thing to do....

You aren't the Biblical God....

Which is why I don't believe a word of it. Think about what Mark Twain said, "and Man created God in his own image" for a minute. This god of yours displays some very human traits: petty jealousy, insecurity, anger, rage, violence. He is all lovey dovey until you piss him off. Then he drowns everybody or burns them in a lake of fire. Sounds just like a lot of South American dictators and their death squads. This is not a god I can respect. In fact, if I believed he existed, I would treat him just like any other despot out there - with contempt. But I don't believe that your despot exists, so I don't usually give it a whole lot of thought. But I do pay attention to those who believe in him because they are potentially dangerous to the rest of us.

Here is something I wrote on another forum that explains why I think his followers are dangerous:
If the religious right were not so politically active, most people wouldn't bother debating them on forums. But they pose a threat to everybody else's freedoms by pushing their beliefs forward in the political arena. Gay marriage, abortion, evolution are constantly under threat.

Back in the 80s, when I lived in Quesnel, the religious right mobilized and managed to get control of the hospital board of directors. They instantly banned abortion. All the doctors and nurses walked off the job.

About that time, Quesnel had one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies in Canada. A coalition of health, education and social workers tried to bring in Family Life Education which would have included a sex education component. A public meeting was called. The churches mobilized their congregations to shut it down. The high school valedictorian was one of a panel that included members of the groups pushing to bring this program to the schools. She got up to speak to the need for valid information when congregations started yelling and booing her.

Mikes had been set up in the audience and they were immediately commandeered by the religious to spout all kinds of hateful comments toward those trying to address the problems of teen pregnancy and drug and alcohol abuse. One young girl, who looked like she had been having a really rough time of her short life managed to get a hold of a mike and begged and pleaded to have access to information. People started throwing stuff at her, a lady spit on her and another man rushed up and knocked her down. People started yelling that she should be taken outside to have the devil beaten out of her.

Friends of mine who supported the proposed program were terrified they were not getting out of the hall alive. I was so livid with rage that if someone had of handed me a gun I may have opened fire.

I think you become less coherent as the thread goes on.

I dont argue against the biblical god, it is a mythical concept, and therefore does not need to be argued against.

Perhaps the Mayor or Fire Chief's (or the Priest's) pregnant daughter(s) would have made a better speaker than the virgin queen of the local high-school. Was that you in real life?

The PRIEST's daughter? Hope you're talking Anglican. Otherwise, there's some 'splainin' to do....

Great now you know my story, lol.

The only place to experience Bach is in a Church.

If you ever get the opportunity, hit it up. It's amazing.

It is the irrational mind state that religious fervour that can reduce believers to, that is frightening. Allowing "faith" to overrule common sense, is somewhat like choosing madness over sanity.

A very few can use faith to achieve sublime states of being, but for the average person it seems to induce mob thinking and violence. Seems Quesnel had more than a few religious maniacs at that point in time. Imagine attacking children for voicing their beliefs.

Immensely.

The Masons really knew how to create great acoustics in their structures. Not sure if they still do. The modern version of the organization seems a little watered down from their glory days.

Vaulted ceilings - acoustic sweet spot centred on the projection wall.... Guess with a mike and a PA, they don't really need it now....

Start 1, start another at 0:07 and the 3rd one at 0:13,

On the vanity of this conversation:

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into." -- Jonathan Swift

"We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us."
Mark Twain

On the futility of attempting to browbeat converts:

"I am what I am" -- Popeye the Sailor Man

I would like to hear that they've all been closed, their ministers and priests given pensions, and the residual billions given as a hand up to the poor and disenfranchised; about whom the churches effect the posture of giving a damn.

Job training and food goes a helluva lot farther than "praying for peace - or rain"




I is what I is -- Nuggler.

Man's salvation on this planet comes through love of neighbour, not through appeals to one god or another.

Mankind will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Wish I could remember who said that.

Humans evolved the ability to reason, yet so few actually use it properly. IOW, "Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do." - James Robinson

"Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning". - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." - Ambrose Bierce

Diderot.

There are two possible outcomes of your humanist manifesto:

1. If there is no afterlife, even Nietzsche realized how pointless such a pursuit is; or
2. If there is an afterlife, then superficial "charity" will not be charity at all -- at best, it will be merely a distraction from proper charity -- like enjoying the in-flight movie while your jet is crashing.

I agree with all that... thanks for sharing.

1. Pursuing an afterlife is pointless if there is no such thing. The purpose of life is to live it. [quote]or
2. If there is an afterlife, then superficial "charity" will not be charity at all -- at best, it will be merely a distraction from proper charity -- like enjoying the in-flight movie while your jet is crashing.

What the hell is "superficial charity" or "proper charity"?

"Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do." - James Robinson

"Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning". - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." - Ambrose Bierce
"Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do." - James Robinson
Yep. People believe in gods and will turn themselves inside out looking for arguments as to why they believe in gods and can't handle arguments against gods' existences.

"Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning". - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Yep. If faith sounds cool, that's enough. Never mind reasoning it out.

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei
Yep. Billions of popes, imans, etc. pushing beliefs has nowhere near the value of a single layman who investigates, gathers evidence, analyzes, and concludes.

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." - Ambrose Bierce
IOW, one's logic is limited by their preconceptions. It results in closed minds.

How true is that. Religious belief is never reasoned is it?? It is simply blind.

Denis Diderot