peacefuljeffrey

The good ones get plenty of press for going to bat for and protecting the bad ones, be it from exposure, or later from prosecution. They get press for reassigning the bad ones to places where no one knows of their crimes against children. They get press for covering up the crimes of the bad ones. It's rather like when a cop is found to have been abusive of his authority, maybe hurt or killed someone wrongly, and they assign him to a desk job, as if that makes it okay for the public, and he got his comeuppance. Bah! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, if you grant that, then we seem to be on the same page as far as whether any given religion is actually worshiping a god that truly is really out there existing! Wow. So it seems that you're granting equal validity to all religions regardless of whether they map creation and god in the same way -- and even regardless of whether they map them in contradictory ways. In the end, then, all we're talking about is the earthly function that religion serves: calming people's natural fears of the unknown and of death. Providing comfort and stability to life. But certainly not telling them how it ACTUALLY is, and what TRULY awaits them at death. Because how could the Hindu vision of it be true if the Christrian vision of it is also true, and the Native American vision of it is also true? You're right. Because we will never know who has identified and is worshiping the one, singular true god that actually exists unless that god steps in and makes himself known to all. That would put to rest the competition between religions. I dare say that people who had dedicated their lives to any given religion would give it up cold if god himself actually came down from on high and exposed himself for real to the people of earth. Shit, if god made himself unquestionably known to me, I -- an avowed atheist -- would de facto believe in god right there on the spot. So if god truly wants to have humans believe in him, trust him, have faith in him, and LOVE and ACCEPT him, if he fails to show himself to us (which would be the easiest way to make us believe, accept and love him) he is fighting his own chosen battle with both hands tied behind his back, needlessly. But back to your concept that all religions are equally valid: that is only true if what you want out of religion is NOT to truly know the real god, but to simply take worldly comfort, even if it's from things that give no reason for being believed, a la fairy tales, as you seem to be talking about in the following paragraph: I put to you that religion in all its forms is so jealously and pettily guarded that it ends up being responsible for so much hatred, enmity, strife and distrust that the harm that arises from it far outweighs the comfort we get from it. It's like how you would enjoy wearing a diamond ruby and sapphire crown if every day you wore it you had to fend off threats of robbery and death because you chose to wear and display it. Not worth the harm. Better to be poor and have no one with a reason to rob and kill you. So if all the religions that claim to have god identified and understood (or, at least, have his rules understood) are equally valid even with conflicting dogma, I surmise that there really is no god waiting for us upon our death. And if that's the case, the only value of religion is how safe and secure and good it makes us feel on earth; and due to all the hatred and death that religious conflict brings us here on earth, I believe that is is beyond useless, it is harmful, and should be given up. Atheists have very little to hate each other about. At least, if conflict arises between atheists, it would probably generally be about economic and living issues, which can be compromised on a whole lot more easily than religious ones can. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

This is such a pollyanna "wish-we-were-living-in-Utopia" post! Of COURSE there SHOULD be no need for ANYONE to carry firearms in a civilized society. The problem arises from the fact that within "civilized society" are pockets of people who behave in a very UNcivilized manner, robbing, raping, and murdering. It is as protection against the possibility of being victimized by such a person that I carry a gun, as do many other people. Who gives a shit about what civilized society SHOULD be? We are forced to deal with what it IS. And I don't live on Central Park West in a $2.5M apartment. I live in south Florida, and crime is not anything to scoff at here. I don't have to go far from where I live (in a decent neighborhood) to be in crack- and prostitute-central. Sometimes, although I avoid it when possible, I actually have to travel through bad areas. Sometimes people from the bad areas travel through here. It's far better to have the means of protection right here with me at all times, when it's no particular burden for me, than to have to rely on having the time and opportunity to get a coherent phone call through to 911, adequately inform the police of my location and what is happening, AND have them be able to meet me there before a criminal has had a chance to do the harm that he intends to do to me. Does that sound like a long shot? It should, because it IS. Look, don't take digs at America as though we can't show that England is wallowing in its very own crime wave. The studies and reports are all over the place. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Okay, wonderful, in order to cite how well everything is going, you cite me an article whose tone, overall, is that despite a claimed "drop," there is still a noticeable crime problem! Did you manage to miss the fact that the general tenor of that article was NEGATIVE? It sure as hell wasn't a "Hey, cheer up, people, everything's getting better!" article. And oh, it said "Scotland," not "U.K. overall," right? Levels are still up for England, I know that for sure. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

We have national instant check systems in place. Did he pass the check or not? How long was his "wait"? Are you talking disingenuously about a fifteen minute wait for the check results to come back, or are you legitimately talking about a five-day waiting period? (I'm not aware if Oregon has a multi-day wait at this point. Some states are still more restrictive than the national instant check.) And, um, not to be a nit-picker or anything, but where do you stand on the presumption of innocence, as protected by the Constitution? "Suspected Al Qaeda member," huh? Found guilty in a court of law of some crime? Or just "you don't like the idea of a guy of questionable allegiance being treated as innocent when he wants to buy a gun"? Because if he IS a convicted criminal, there are laws that dictate he CAN'T have a gun -- the waiting periods don't enter into it, since that can be checked instantly. And his being suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda, if never charged and proven, is utterly irrelevant to his right to buy a gun, only his status as a felon or non-felon is relevant. Nice try, though, with the blatant appeal to emotion and xenophobia. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Ummm... overall in your country? The ban didn't take effect only in the area in which you live, dude. And who cares if the crime went down 5% locally if it went up 40% or more elsewhere? I think that's bogus. If that were true, then the study of criminology would have to be broken down into subsets like "British Criminology," "American Criminology," "Texan Criminology," "Floridian Criminology." There are certain human truths at work here, that don't know borders. One of them, a prime one, is that criminals do not fear a disarmed victim. It is YOU who bear the burden of justifying the change -- you went from allowing gun ownership to forbidding it. NOW you want US to justify the change BACK to the way things WERE!!?! You're hysterically funny! Your "status quo" is a rising tide of violence, robbery, rape, theft, burglary and murder. If you contest this, I guess you have to take it up with the BBC, whose website posts numerous articles each week about violence rising in the U.K. Are they lying, or fictionalizing their news? Or are you being all pollyanna about how your gun control has solved all your problems and glossing over real world issues that face your society? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

"Now who's being naive, Kay?" Do you really think that the anti-gun lobby only engages its anti-gun-ness in response to real-world incidents and dangers?? Consider the fact that violent crime is at like a ten or fifteen year low in the U.S.; is lower in places with concealed carry laws than without; and gun-related accidental deaths have declined in every year, steadily, since statistics began to be kept. And yet the anti-gun lobby still is active in trying to take away our gun rights. So let's not pretend that "being on our best behavior" is going to keep that particular wolf away from the door. Puhlease. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Except with those people who carry their concealed guns into the bar and get drunk anyway, and *whew* manage to not have any fights or shooting incidents, thank goodness! The law serves its purpose for everyone but anyone who wants to carry concealed into the bar despite the law. And um, since the guns are concealed, no one knows how often the law is flouted, do they. For all YOU know, Douva, 75% of all bar patrons might have concealed guns that you, by definition, don't know about, and nothing is happening. Or maybe 0.002 percent are carrying guns and that's why there are few incidents that we hear about. How could either of us claim that we know how many people are or are not carrying concealed guns in bars, since by definition the guns are not seen or detected? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Ah. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I forgot to mention how amateurish the technical skills of the writers of that site are. It's like it was written by a high-schooler. (And before anyone starts on me, I already know that I didn't do a great job on my Omen/bookshelf story either. I was in a rush and I'm tired.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Dude! Doesn't she get SORE?! ROTFLMAO!! (I'll say you must have a fantastic relationship! That going down both days alone must take some serious devotion!) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

There are boards for people who ride bicycles?? How laaaaaame! LOL! I guess if it's not about the sky, I just can't see caring about it. Oh, well, that and guns and knives. I can see caring about that. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

EXCELLENT! Have a great time skydiving again! When I read "10 years out of the sport," I kinda frowned and wondered how anyone could skydive and then spend ten years not skydiving, but then before I got deep into that I saw the part about doing it again. Rock on!

Okay, my turn. I can't believe I didn't remember this until just now -- remembering it gave me a creepy chill. I don't claim that this is paranormal, it's just weird and spooky. I grew up in a house in Smithtown, Long Island. The house was built in 1971 shortly before we moved in, and then I was born in September that year. Our family always had a collection, ever-growing, of books, both paperback and hardcover. Time came when we must have had oh, a rough guesstimate, two to five hundred books. My dad, my brother and I built some rough, unfinished bookshelves out of pine in the basement, which was also only semi-finished. We used it for laundry, the spare gas range, the big freezer, and half of it was a bedroom for my brother after college for a while. A few of the books we put on those shelves kinda creeped me out. One was called "The Cats," which was about some plague that makes the cats of England go nuts and kill people all over the place. Another was "The Exorcist," which had some creepy photo on the cover, I think it was of the girl making a scary face close-up to the camera. The other was "The Omen," the original, and on the cover was a drawing of little boy Damien standing there backlit and in shadow. One time I was down there looking through the books, I guess as a teenager. I took "The Omen" down off the shelf and flipped through it -- not reading it, because I didn't want to get creeped-out by reading a scary passage inadvertently. But I did examine the pages, and, here is the part that still weirds me out and I can't explain -- this book, the only one out of hundreds was worm-eaten!. There were holes through the paper as though maggots or something had been boring through it. I did not see any worms themselves, live or dead, but the holes were pretty unmistakeable. We never had any kind of suspected spiritual infestations in that house. It wasn't particularly old, and only one family had lived in it before we moved in, briefly, and we were never aware of any tragedy surrounding them, although I'm still curious about why they moved out of a brand-new house after only a few months. One time, my sisters, who shared a bedroom, said that late at night, a bunch of stuff shook in their room. I don't know if I was in the house at the time it was said to have happened, but I don't recall such shaking. When my brother was a teenager, he and his friends used to go into the woods on the south side of the house to play with BB guns and stuff. Up until about 10 years ago, there was an old house on the property next door, and it had been built in the 1800s as a farmhouse. The area around us had been farmland, apparently. Well, Smithtown historical records indicate that the graves of the farmer and his wife (name not known to me) are in those woods somewhere. My brother and a friend of his had found the headstones during those early years there, in the '70s, and -- get this -- tried to lure ghosts back to our house by taking the headstones with them! (I guess they were small or flimsy stones. My brother told me about this, but said that carrying the stones was hard work, so they gave up the effort, and they had not been able to get the stones all the way back to the house. Don't go thinking that I believe anything ghostly came of the moving of the headstones, or that I think it's connected to the book worm thing. But years later, a town paper reporter/historian guy came to our house asking to see the woods next door, because an issue had arisen involving a developer who had bought the property and wanted to put houses up where the woods are. Since town records indicated graves in the woods, the development could not take place for fear of disturbing them, unless they could be located. I volunteered to lead the historian through the woods, but we weren't able to find the stones nor the graves. That was probably a good thing, because the inability to locate the graves meant that the developer schmuck could not thorougly destroy all the woods that were there -- he had to give a wide buffer to the suspected site of the graves. So the story about "The Omen" being the only book on our shelves that had been eaten at by worms is my only creepy story. I'm pretty sure that when my parents sold the house in 2000, I threw it out when we were packing stuff up. I sure didn't want it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Um, some people like the effect of telling stories that get a rise out of others. This is inconceivable? It is exactly what I remind myself of when people tell stories that are incredible and insist they are true. That's the whole nature of hoaxes. Have you never read books on the allegations of paranormal activity that have been debunked thoroughly, and how they were debunked? Check out the Time Life series on the unexplained. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That Warrens site is just silly. A lot of the alleged actions taken by the people involved in these "hauntings" are totally irrational. Like those people keeping the creepy doll, or even the Warrens keeping the creepy doll. Why on earth is there no mention of attempts to destroy it? I thought fire is like the "universal purifier," but no one tried to burn the doll? It's kept in some CASE now? I thought it TELEPORTS! Ohhh, is it a "magic, blessed" case?? If a doll could make a car stall in order to cause the power steering and brakes to lose power, in an effort to harm the car's occupants, couldn't it just jerk the steering wheel at a bad moment and cause the car to hit head-on traffic? Duh. These are creepy ghost stories, sure, but anyone can post a story. Proving it's real is a different thing altogether. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That better be videoed and posted!! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Those shots are all most excellent!

I'd prefer a relationship with a skydiver, for sure. I want to share that between me and her. Of course, right now I'm not dating a jumper OR a whuffo, so I'll have to play it by ear. I don't know if I should be looking for a girl who already skydives, though. So many people have warned me about those...! If it ends up being a whuffo, she better be someone who wants to convert to jumper in short order, or it won't last. How many weekends would a whuffo girlfriend tolerate me being gone skydiving? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I didn't use them as evidance. Read some of the Society for Scientific Exploration papers. Yeah some are far fetched, while others are intresting. Still why are some of the brightest minds in the world curious about certain things that cannot be explained. It's all about keeping an open mind. So some of the brightest minds in the world are curious about "the unexplained." That doesn't mean that the things they can't explain are truly "paranormal," and just because the "brightest minds" are curious about something doesn't mean that the far-out explanations offered by some of the crackpots we hear from are true. There is no incongruity between having bright minds curious about these things and being skeptical about the origins of the strange occurrences. Bright minds being curious about "weird events" is not some sort of evidence, much less proof, that there is legitimacy to the claims of paranormal activity. Bright minds have been known to investigate claims of things and find them false, you know. If I claimed I could foretell lottery numbers two weeks in advance, and the brightest minds got "curious" and investigated my claim, that alone would not give it any more legitimacy than it actually merits -- which of course would be none. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[SuperTroopersRamathornVoice]"Mother...of...God..." [/SuperTroopersRamathornVoice] That reference is lost on me, I've never seen the film Then you need to go rent it right fucking meow! Blue skies, - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!! A SuperTroopers reference...Ok, you're acceptable. I aim to please. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Due to man's own freewill. Man fucked up. Then Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden. After that they fucked up, down, sideways, upside down... per christian theology, Man was designed to 'fuck up' it isnt as if God were unaware of the flaws he built in his creation, or the temptations he placed before them....there is something pathalogical in a God who sets up unavoidable 'traps' for his loved creations... 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. Awareness of this truth raises the spectre that god just created us to amuse himself, like setting up an ant farm and watching them piddle around, then maybe flooding it, or shaking it, introducing a competing insect species to fight with. Everything we are and can be and can do is directly the result of god, and the way he made us. (I say this hypothetically since I don't even believe in a god, or that he made us.) So if he wants to punish us for succumbing to the weaknesses he built into us, that's fucked up and I won't respect or capitulate to it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I agree... Though I don't think it is proven... but I do agree that religion was most likely developed as a way to soothe the discomfort of "knowing essentially nothing about who we are and why we're even here," as Jeffrey put it. It can be uncomfortable at times... but it also makes the mystery that much more interesting. What I don't like is when people take the huge leap from keeping that comfort system because it provides that comfort to asserting that they really have mapped out god, the universe and everything. I want to shake them and say, "Don't you remember, this is all just an illusion, to fool yourself into feeling some control and understanding over your reality. It's not REALLY the way the universe is constructed -- we don't KNOW that!" - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Scooter? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Due to man's own freewill. Man fucked up. Then Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden. After that they fucked up, down, sideways, upside down... I didn't fuck up. It's SICK and FUCKED UP to judge ME, and hold eternal punishment over MY head, because some alleged ancestors were the ones who sinned. Dude, you wouldn't accept being punished for some theft that your grandfather committed 70 years ago... why would you accept -- and think proper -- god judging you for what Adam and Eve are supposed to have done? Don't you think that is a fucked up, sick way for a god to be? He's supposed to be just, fair, righteous, loving, forgiving... and yet he visits the sins of our ancestors on us AT BIRTH?! A god like that can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned. I'll take a shit on such a god before I'll worship it. That's just NOT RIGHT. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The problem with saying "no one is right or wrong" and then using the apple analogy is that it does not apply aptly. We are talking about how to determine what is meant by the so-called word of god, when it is written confusingly, and even contradictorily. This is not an issue of everyone seeing the same object before them and having different names for it! This is about determining rules for living and worshiping. One guy says that bible passage A means one thing, and another guy says passage A means a different thing altogether. GOD MEANT A SPECIFIC THING. If one guy got it right, anyone who didn't have the same conclusion that he had has it WRONG. And if neither got it right, they're both wrong. Is it arguable that god gave his word but consents to having it interpreted in 8 million different ways? Or do you think he's kinda pissed that people have TWISTED it to mean what suits them?! Because that is truly what happened, if you wanna be realistic about it. You said, "because someone 'didn't agree' with certain points of view and "created" a "custom" religion to fit them." As soon as you take god's word and make a variation on it, now it's YOUR word, or "god's word as twisted to suit YOU." That's not nearly the same as living by god's word. That's avoiding the parts that you don't feel like living under, and agreeing to live under only those that you don't find unpleasant. Like being a good churchgoing catholic but having screwed 14 girls before you ever got married. "Oh, god isn't really upset about stuff like that." No, that's YOUR interpretation, but how do YOU know god isn't really pissed off about it? It IS against his rules, you know. But people cherry-pick the rules they want to let themselves be governed by. That's not truly adhering to the word of god. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"