peacefuljeffrey

Okay, from Bob's post, here are some "jokes" that just don't succeed at being funny, some because they're not based on anything TRUE, others because they're just lame: So, the fact that they're not is something to brag about? Besides, I can't think of when I EVER contemplated whether Indian teenagers are anything. I don't give a shit about Indian teenagers -- and I would never have suspected that they are "pure and chaste" given the overpopulation of India. OOOOH! SEVEN WHOLE YEARS? Wow, you're really on the cutting edge, there! Yes, and this, as everyone knows, is a distinctly American thing and as such, we should be very embarrassed about it. I'd say hundreds of millions of people living in cramped, diseased squalor and poverty qualifies it. That and the continued use of a caste system by which people are born to be spat on, and everyone accepts this as the norm. That's just stupid. Ambulance response times in the U.S. are most commonly measured in the scant minutes. Where'd this one even come from?? You're kidding, right? I put a 37 cent stamp on a letter, send it FL to NY (1300 miles) and it's there on the third day. This joke has no basis in fact. And I have NEVER in my life had a letter I sent not reach its target. I am not gonna go do a Google search to back this up, but countries all over the WORLD have really bad oil spills and slicks. It hardly qualifies as an "American joke" if it could apply just as well to three dozen countries with coastline. What is the record for homeless people bludgeoned to death on the streets of Brazil? WE DON'T KNOW YET. THEY KEEP MURDERING MORE OF THEM. Yeah, America is the only country with shitty slums where violent activity goes on. And in India, half a million people died of shock when we sent some of our Doctors Without Borders to cure their malaria, dysentery, diptheria, etc. because they didn't know what a doctor WAS. They thought he was supposed to dance around in a mask and shake rattles. What do the FRENCH call SEVEN UNIONS AT ONCE walking off the job, including garbage men, bus drivers, police, firemen, and pilots? Business as usual. LOL Again, America is the only country in the world with large cities that have polution and an economic underclass! Ethnic and national jokes are not funny unless they have a ring of truth to them, people. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

"Eight years of peace and prosperity Scandal in the White House An election is what we need From coast-to-coast to Washington" I guess good ol' Johnny Cougar can't remember that in 1993, under Smilin' Bill, the U.S. was attacked at the World Trade Center by Osama Bin Laden. Peace, huh? No terrorism? You sure, Johnny? I guess good ol' Johnny Cougar can't remember that when scandal threatened to eclipse Smilin' Bill, Billy just launched some missiles into the lives of innocents in an aspirin factory. Peace, huh? You sure things were so peaceful under Smilin' Bill, Johnny? edit: Oh, how could I forget, Johnny -- my memory must be as bad as YOURS, Johnny -- how could I forget AMERICAN TROOPS IN BOSNIA -- WHAT DID BOSNIA DO TO THREATEN THE SAFETY OF THE UNITED STATES, JOHNNY???? EIGHT YEARS OF PEACE? Under CLINTON?? ROTFLMAO what a selective fuckin' memory you have there, Mr. Cougar. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Umm, I'm talking about mainstream news people, not the ones YOU yourself would call conservative whackos and biased jerkoffs. Well, technically, I didn't actually see that one. I made that one up on the spot. I just couldn't remember the other, lame, ones that I actually have seen. They were similar. The one really dumb overused one is "Shrub." Gee. Ha ha. >Every day in the paper here there is an article about which self- >important rock star feels Bush is eroding freedom... No one is writing > articles about the gang-banging of Bush by liberal cadres of whiners. > Why won't you address this, bill? Cause I think that the SBVFT, rock stars, moveon.org, even pundits have first amendment rights, and should be allowed to say pretty much whatever they want. Freedom's a bitch, ain't it? Gee, that's pretty ironic, Bill. I'll tell you why. First of all, I never lamented that they have the right -- which I stand by -- to speak what they wish. Second, I DIRECTLY asked you, in another thread (now locked, coincidentally), what your stance on the rights of the "suspected Al Qaeda member" who tried to buy guns at a gun shop was. You neglected to answer me. It was something about the presumption of innocence of a guy who you did NOT say had a criminal history. You just weren't "comfortable" with him being able to buy a gun since he was a "suspected Al Qaeda terrorist." Now, there are LOTS of "people of interest" around this country. What other rights, Bill, would you like to see them denied (besides their 2nd Amendment rights) just because the FBI (which I'm sure you're real fond of and think is doing a terrific job in the fight against terrorism) THINKS they MIGHT have terrorist ties? So really, Bill... what's your take on allowing "people of interest" to continue to possess their constitutional rights until and unless they are convicted of specific crimes? Because from the tone of your post in that (now locked) thread, I could have sworn you didn't favor the arab guy being able to buy guns like the rest of us can! I'm sorry to have to point out that you did not say he was a criminal with a conviction for something that would prohibit him from buying guns. And if he was, well, it was YOUR example, and YOUR responsibility to make clear that the guy really should NOT have been able to make a gun purchase. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Kinda funny all the hypocrisies in your post, with your "please don't lump sum all Christians" when you do it over and over again with all Catholics... Not that I'm rushing to defend either Christians or Catholics, but you are wrong in your characterization, here. What if I were a scam artist, and you said, "All criminals kill people?" I might be inclined, since I was a criminal, to ask you, "Please don't lump all criminals together like that. Sure, all murderers kill people..." All he is saying is that of Christians, there are Catholics, and lots of others. So it may be very inaccurate, factually, to say that "Christians" do this or that, because it may be VERY true of Catholics, but, say, not of Protestants. Do you see? And the thread title is what it is for dramatic effect, poetic license, whatever you want to call it. I think you are out of line to say "lied" when all that's been done is indulging in a bit of embellishment and hyperbole. The point is, the church is pretty stupid and petty for refusing this girl the sacrament just because she can't have the "official" wheat! It's pretty personal to accuse the thread starter of being a LIAR. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Nope, but I know two people who have been. The first was a really whacko funny guy I knew in college named James P. Gray. He was the guy who did all the funny stuff when he was drinking. He was the "daddy" of a bunch of us 'cause he was a senior when we were freshman on our hall. He was on "Remote Control" on MTV back when it was big in the late '80s. He had the video tape of himself on the show, and I got to watch it once. He won big, made it all the way to the end of the show where they put him on the spinning wheel and he had to identify the groups in a bunch of videos. He got ALL BUT ONE, so he didn't win whatever the grand prize was. A good friend of mine from high school named Ian Reifowitz was on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire a couple of years ago (when Regis Philbin hosted). He won $250,000! I watched the broadcast on a t.v. in the library of the newspaper where I work. I followed along for the first bunch of questions, and my friend had to resort to using a lifeline before I would have had to! That made me proud! LOL! He told me that he and his wife used the money to pay off her medical school bills. I'm sure that took care of most or all of the after-tax income. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No. *** People that buy a steak are just buying something. People that shoot an animal and see it die, think about it. Using a knife, you feel it. No. I never killed a steak, I am vegetarian. If I recall correctly, you have argued against our right to carry guns for self defense in America. And you said you were not "anti-gun" because you own guns and hunt, but you own them under stringent laws. You recently said that you hunt and kill any and all animals that you are able to except maybe elephant and bear... but you are vegetarian and don't eat meat. May I ask why you bother to kill animals, then? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Don't you read Speaker's Corner? Don't you know how many of us skydivers are also gun nuts?! I was heavily under the influence of my brother, nine years my senior, when I was a kid running around in the woods with my BB guns. I shot birds and stuff, even a garter snake once, back then. If I was in the den, and saw a bird land on a branch at the edge of the woods through the back door, I would run upstairs to get my BB gun and be pumping it up on the way downstairs, ready to stalk and shoot it! It was thrilling and fun... at the time. One day I saw a mourning dove on a branch over the pool area. I got the BB gun, went into the back yard and stalked near the pool fence. I fired on that innocent dove and it fell to the concrete patio. It fluttered around in pain from the non-fatal shot, and eager to end its misery, I pumped several more shots into it. It seemed to resist dying for a long time. I think I had to fire upwards of five shots to finally put it to rest. That changed me. I still see that poor bird in my mind, I still can remember standing right there on the concrete near the diving board with that bloody gray bird suffering and dying, and I hate the fact that I caused it. So after that I never shot another living animal. I had become disgusted with doing so. I couldn't bring myself to cause the suffering again. Now, I'm no animal-rights bleeding heart. I'm not vegetarian. I hate PETA and its antics vehemently. I don't oppose others hunting, but I do oppose hunting any animal that will not be used for food. If I'd planned to eat that dove, I would have thanked it for its sacrifice to my nourishment, but that was plainly not the reason I killed it. I did it purely for the thrill, and I outgrew that thrill, thankfully. I guess the dove died in order to kill a useless and harmful part of me. Of course, now that I'm a pilot and skydiver I feel a kinship with things that fly. I think I would sooner kill a land-dwelling animal than one that flies, thought I'd rather not kill anything. It's a respect and love thing. I love the brethren avians. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No, really, WHY is there an absence of pundits and reporters talking about the way groups are ganging up against Bush (MoveOn.org, all these pinhead celebrities and rock stars, etc.) but they're shrieking about how unfair it is that a bunch of veterans, with experience and knowledge of John Kerry and the circumstances (the Vietnam War) in which he is touting his performance, are criticizing him?? I see t-shirts that say "Buck Fush" and shit like that, and website after website with bullshit polls about Bush (check About.com -- I saw someone in my office reading it, had never heard of it before, myself). Every day in the paper here there is an article about which self-important rock star feels Bush is eroding freedom... No one is writing articles about the gang-banging of Bush by liberal cadres of whiners. Why won't you address this, bill? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Bill, it's getting very frustrating for me when I address specific point after specific point that you raise, and then when I raise one you either don't address it at all, or you totally disregard the framework of the example I'm using and twist it beyond recognition, as you have here. It seems disingenuous at worst, and it is frustrating at best. I'm afraid I really can't force myself to continue chasing your tangents here. Maybe someone else will take up that mantle. Have fun, though. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

really? prove it. So if I took six beers from your fridge and left you three bucks on the table with a note thanking you for the two beers I took, you wouldn't come to me and say, "There were SIX beers you took, Jeff! I want the rest of my money!"? I mean, reality is subjective. How do we know -- how can we PROVE -- that the number of beers I perceive I took is the same as the number of beers you perceive I took? I guess we have to agree that indeed, as I first asserted, there are certain things in reality that HAVE to be objectively agreed upon. To insist otherwise is ridiculous. - the number of concepts about reality we would have already ‘agreed’ apon in your example in order for it to be relevant is staggering. as proven recently (and discussed here ) if my culture does not incorporate concepts greater than 2 i may perceive there to be no difference at all. If a culture does not have the ability to conceptualize values greater than 2, that culture is has objectively failed to discern a matter of objective reality. There ARE values greater than 2! This is not open to debate in which someone can say, legitimately, "Who are you to judge my culture according to the standards of your own?" That's bogus argument. I can grant only limited agreement and validity to this claim. I mean, unless you're talking about an outside observer trying to establish how many beers I took, and he happens to be from this culture that can't recognize a value greater than 2, then this person would have to grant that it was 6 beers, not 2, not 7, not 100, that I took. It's not enough to say that his "subjective perception" caused him to simply see that I took "heap big lot of beer." Since you agreed already that we had to have arrived at a whole lot of common "objective" ground even just to start the discussion, I need to ask you where you think the border of the subjective parts of reality meets the border of the objective parts. Who decides what is open to subjective interpretation? This begins to get argumentative and tangential. We are dealing with what I thought we understood to be an example inwhich you knew you had 6 beers and went to find that I had taken them all but claimed "subjectively" that there were only TWO that I needed to pay you for. Maybe in my "subjective reality," I'm so used to drinking 36 oz. beers that I perceived every three 12 oz. bottles of your beer as "one." Who knows? I just think that we'd never get anywhere if we continually parsed the "subjectivity" of our realities that way. A cop pulls you over and says you were going 75, the judge is not going to accept the idea that you thought you could go "55 gallons of gas per hour" and you were nowhere near that limit. "Oh, but judge, it's my subjective belief that that's how we judge speed." Sorry. Bzzzzt! Wrong. Bill's analogy fails in that it is not reasonable for a person to feel one part of an elephant, FAIL to continue feeling until there is no more to the elephant to be felt, and then declare the elephant fully known. If I were blindfolded and handed a rope, and told to estimate how long it was, and I pulled handful after handful of rope through my hands, estimating the length of each handful (let's say this was a reasonably accurate estimation technique) and gave a final estimation before I had reached the opposite end of the rope, how could you possibly grant that there's validity to my estimate?! I had every reason to believe I was stopping short, because I never did feel the end before I claimed the length. Because I'm an arrogant American, and everybody should reach the same conclusions that Americans reach. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If they park their car on your driveway, does it belong to you? Well, okay, they're not the same. But about the political sign, I would say you have the right to take it down if it is on your property. Shit, I would maintain that it's your right to take it down even if it's just on the easement in front of your property. Its presence there implies you support that candidate, whether you do or not. I would think you have the right to put a stop to the misrepresentation. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

And you don't see possible media complicity in the fact that reporters are not pointing out, in questions to "the Johns," that there are biased, questionable groups trying to make the Republicans look bad for the benefit of the Democrats? I mean, Kerry has all but screamed that SVT is a front for the Republicans... What is MoveOn.org, then? Isn't there a guy in charge of that who was some high-up in Kerry's campaign?? Aren't they smearing Republicans so that Kerry benefits? But the media are asking no questions about them to Kerry/Edwards, giving it no coverage. Strange. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, since you're not allowed to bring your gun in... (Kev, I know, I know -- you CAN in PA!) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'll bet that lesbians go through a lot less crap than gay men go through. LOL!! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

really? prove it. So if I took six beers from your fridge and left you three bucks on the table with a note thanking you for the two beers I took, you wouldn't come to me and say, "There were SIX beers you took, Jeff! I want the rest of my money!"? I mean, reality is subjective. How do we know -- how can we PROVE -- that the number of beers I perceive I took is the same as the number of beers you perceive I took? I guess we have to agree that indeed, as I first asserted, there are certain things in reality that HAVE to be objectively agreed upon. To insist otherwise is ridiculous. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Then they should not make grandiose, sweeping claims to understand the whole elephant -- most especially not to the point of telling other people what the elephant wants them to do! (I know, your next excuse is going to be that they didn't know they were not experiencing the whole elephant. BTW, don't use "seeing the whole picture" when discussing a "blind men" analogy.) There is a huge difference between claiming an understanding, based on "what little we know," of how light will behave if we do certain things -- this is predictable and provable because it is demonstrable -- and claiming that based on "what little we know" of god that we can say what the nature of life and the afterlife are. People have seen NOTHING of god and are claiming to be able to tell us how he wants us to live. That is not NEARLY the same as people observing natural constants and at least understanding the little bit they can experience and experiment with firsthand. You need to keep your analogies more apropos. This one is out there in left field. Summarizing: it is fair to scientifically observe thunderstorm activity and use that knowledge to predict future thunderstorm activity. You are not trying to use your thunderstorm knowledge to predict earthquake activity! It is NOT fair to claim knowledge of god just because you have a book that's been twisted and distorted for numerous thousands of years by corrupt officials of the church, which book was never written by god's own hand in the first place, and then also, to top it all off, claim that you can use that book's "wisdom" to deal with issues the book never dealt with, like nuclear power, stem cell research, cloning... The "incomplete understandings" you talk about in the scientific community are not at all analogous to the incomplete understanding of a god or a universe we can't begin to see. Just because we don't know how all genes work does not mean we can't make square tomatoes that won't roll off a shelf, or produce artificial insulin to help diabetics. Should we act as though we understand nothing until we understand all things? Of course not. But at the same time we should not pretend to understand all things just because we understand some. I am not talking about being prohibited. I'm talking about the risks presented by the human/social realities. I would not go to Israel, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, right now, because of what dangers there are there. (I left out places like Colombia, Jamaica, Philippines, and Brazil because while dangerous, those places are dangerous for reasons other than religion. You can blame leftist maniacs, and criminals, for that, instead.) K2 may be dangerous, but it is not VOLATILE. Things don't just ERUPT on K2 the way suicide bombers do. If you prepare yourself for what to expect on K2, you have a good chance of surviving it intact. How do you protect against suicide bombers except for giving them a wide berth by staying out of the area where they are known to frequent? You pointed out that even atheists are responsible for this sort of thing, and I admit that sometimes they are. Far less than relgious zealots, though. And I'm saying that when Mao Tse Tung or a Josef Stalin murder millions, it is often not to do with their being atheists, but with the fact that they want to exercise their brand of control, and force people to live by their philosophies, and they want the riches and power that come with that kind of control. That's bullshit hyperbole. We are nowhere near close, unless for your example you wish to rule out loads of countries worse than us simply because they're not FIRST-world countries. I can prove ANY rule if I am allowed to rule out everything that disproves my rule, Bill. We are not a conqueror state, no matter how you try to dress it up like we are. If we really were trying to conquer and force other countries to live in our image, you'd know it. For one thing, we wouldn't keep replacing our leadership at regular intervals. We'd let one sovereign rule for decades to get the job done. Your claim that we are not resolving our disputes any more peacefully than a fundamentalist country might is SO absurdly false that it's laughable. How many treaties of various types have we signed with various countries? Why are the U.S. and Russia still on the map?: that was the biggest, longest conflict at all, and we resolved it "cold" -- no war, no bloodshed, no radiation, no flames. We are CONSTANTLY in diplomatic dances with other nations specifically to NOT have to resort to war and violence to resolve disputes. How can you be so out of touch with this fact that you can mischaracterize us as unpeaceful? Your statement appears to have been made in a vacuum, with no acknowledgement of how things really are resolved from day to day by our diplomats. If we conducted ourselves as recklessly violent as you imply, the earth would be a smoking ruin at this very moment. We are FAR more peaceful than the fundamentalist nations. And like I said, fundamentalists, by their nature, cannot and will not be satisfied until they get EXACTLY what they have demanded from the beginning. There is no compromise, unlike with atheists. Now you're arguing in FAVOR of war? I don't get it. Of course I would not have appeased the Axis. But there is a difference between appeasement and negotiating a compromise that you maintain the ability to enforce by military might. And if, as was evident in WWII, your enemy won't honor anything less than total victory, then you fight, as we did. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Ditto. I couldn't live with myself voting for a liar who cares more about running people of other cultures out of a bible than he does about constitutional rights. Whether Kerry deserved his medals in Vietnam or not, at least he fucking showed up, which is more than GWB can say. Two words. Fuck Bush. So you don't like Bush for pushing an unjust war, but you respect Kerry for showing up for a different unjust war. I just want to make sure I have your meaning straight. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I certainly do. If someone is going to claim, "This is truly how the universe is set up and run, and this is god and this is what god is," and then I can easily point out logical fallacies in the stuff he tells me, the whole thing falls apart and is not credible. I'd better not bet my immortal soul on it being right, then. edit: Unless of course he admits to me that it's all just a quaint story, some sort of parable, and is not to be taken literally: in which case it's pretty useless to me if I want to employ it as a means of actually understanding the universe around me. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

None of them is right, and I will add that your analogy is absurd and flawed from the start (by design, I suspect, to help you "prove" your point). NONE of them actually experienced the whole elephant. They stopped WAY short of examining everything there that they could feasibly find. It would be nothing for the first guy to have moved from the ear, to the head, to the trunk, back to the tusks, the neck, the body, the feet, the tail -- all contiguously. But per your example, you had him stop short and issue a VERY premature conclusion that all the elephant was was an ear. Specious, Bill, and very transparent. See, I may be perfectly free to believe that, but what I CANNOT obtain for myself, despite my freedom to believe what I wish, is freedom FROM the harm that religion causes around me. I cannot go to certain parts of the world, to see their beauty and experience their customs, because religious animosity causes them to be WAR ZONES. If I choose not to believe in your baseball bat, that doesn't mean that I won't feel it when you whack me in the head with it. That's the problem with religions. They don't allow those who don't wish to involve themselves the freedom to stay uninvolved. Take a look at the crusades, and the sadistic missionaries of Christianity who offered conversion or death to those that they called "savages." Pretty hard to steer your life clear of all the harm that religion does when it seeks everyone out. Come on, Bill, there's no contradiction there. I DID say that they occasionally have strife about economic control issues. And that's a leadership issue, not a one-on-one atheist-to-atheist thing, anyway. Besides, I have NO data whatsoever to support your claim that these people avow a disbelief in god. But again, I didn't say atheists never have issues of conflict. I said that it's a hell of a lot easier to resolve border disputes and economic disputes when religion is not involved. You can give an atheist some economic concession, or some land concession, and mollify him. But with a religious person, for example the people who are currently fighting to own the "holy land" in the middle east, who is going to yield there, when to them, possessing that sacred land (oh, who cares about being told not to worship idols, anyway?!) is all that matters? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

perspective. you can only define an event from a single perception of it. yours. Then why do religions claim to have the one single perspective that is valid and can tell you how the universe was created and how you should live, and the nature of god? Regardless of our limited powers of observation and experience, there still is one objective reality, at least in a material and energy sense. If you and I both put our hands on the same stove burner, even though I may have a higher tolerance for the pain than you have, we still will burn the same because we're made of the same stuff and touching an object of the same objective temperature. So god is really not subjective, and existing only per our own individual perceptions of reality. God, if he is what he is said to be, is an existing entity on his own, and his makeup does not vary depending on what each individual person thinks of him. If god is actually 6'2", 230 lbs, why would that be different for you or me? Why would you "perceive" him as a shriveled old man, at 5'3" and 135 lbs? If reality is so subjective, why can't I arrive at the airport and get on my flight at 7:45, if the plane left the airport at 7:30 per its actual schedule? Why can't I "perceive" myself flying on that same airliner on the way to L.I.? "Perception is reality," right? I guess there's a limit to the validity of that, huh? Like maybe god can't really be a million different ways just because a million different people want to think of him in a million different ways. Maybe god is ONE way, and lots of people are believing in something false that they made up in their OWN MINDS. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You have to beleive in the religion in order to beleive in original sin. If you don't buy into the Catholic religion as defined by the Vatican you don't need to concern yourself with eternal punishment. But the people who DO believe in that crock of shit actually DO tell me that it actually DOESN'T matter whether I don't believe in it! They say that REGARDLESS of not believing in god and heaven and hell, if I don't accept god's salvation I'm going to hell! You make it seems as though religion is like a law against speeding, where if I simply tell the cop I don't believe in speed limits, I won't be given a ticket and forced to pay a fine. The Christians themselves constantly contradict what you said. The constantly maintain that even those who don't believe are still subject to god's law -- because according to them, those who don't believe are incorrect in their non-belief! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

There is a very big difference between not believing in a religion and being anti religion. I don't believe in them, but I'm not against it at all. Believe in whatever the fuck you want to as long as it doesn't directly harm me or my family, because then I'll kick your ass Uh, see, that's the problem, and that's why I AM "anti-religion." If I had my preference, NO one would bother believing in religion. If there are any religions that DO leave everyone the fuck alone and worship privately and quietly, they aren't a large enough proportion of all the religions out there to really make a difference. Instead, MOST religions engender hatred, distrust, strife and killing between them and other religions. They have since the dawn of humanity. They are a problem, and despite the fact that they often claim to preach peace, they achieve the exact opposite, and they prevent peace. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

LOL!! EXACTLY!! And I think that the way it works is this: anyone who doesn't chance upon the true knowledge of god and his true rules for living as humans, despite misdirection by all sorts of religious know-it-alls, is fucked for all eternity because they didn't worship the right god the right way. Only those who luck upon the right religion and follow, by chance the one right set of rules lost in all the bullshit ones, only those are going to heaven. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's a cop-out so that religious people can prevent god from taking blame for making us imperfect. I thought the bible said that god "created man in his own image." It's hedging, to say that, "Oh, yeah, well, he created the first two in his image... but all the mutations and stuff are the fault of those two." And the idea that all the descendents of Adam and Eve are held to pay for their sins in the garden of eden is just SICK! If my dad robbed a bank and then died of a heart attack two years later and had never been caught, and then the authorities find the evidence of it, should I have to do 10 years in federal prison because of what he did that I had no part in choosing? God holding us to pay for A &E's sins is probably the most FUCKED UP thing about Christianity. Hey, I have a question. If, as the Led Zeppelin song says, Saint Peter is at the gates of heaven (see: "In My Time of Dying"), um, what was there watching the gates of heaven before Saint Peter had his life on earth and became a saint and the gate keeper of heaven? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Thank you! That's exactly my point. I've stated that here in SC numerous times. No one ever really comes up with an adequate rebuttal. If you were created as a perfect being in a perfect world, how would you ever learn a thing? That's the point: free will = learning opportunities = why we're here. Where did one overall god of all humanity set down clearly that the whole reason for living is simply to go from not knowing things, to knowing them? You state it like it's authoritative from god that the meaning of life is to learn stuff you didn't know before. I hardly view that as the final word, since as has been pointed out, there are hundreds of different "gods" and hundreds of different belief systems. Who says that if we were perfect creatures created with perfect knowledge, that there would be no enjoyment or purpose to life? That's a fallacy. Skydiving would not be enjoyable as a sensual experience if you were perfect? Watching a sunset, or birds fly, or schools of fish swim would not be enjoyable just because you were perfect? God must have a pretty horrible existence, then, because he gets to watch his imperfect reality from a perspective of perfect being and perfect understanding. I didn't realize, though, that this universal truth you mentioned had been handed down to humanity by one single true god and accepted by all mankind. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"