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Quote (princess of the king @ Nov. 19 2009,16:19) stuart, pray tell some christians bring out the worst in me also, so you are not alone.
do not know which thread it is, i had read a comment about 'emotions' you had commented on. i believe it was elevated emotions. you seem to perceive the negative emotions as being not well received.
as i read the post, i had thought that laughter, love, hugs are all elevated emotions and they can make someone day. a honest smile has brighten my day, what of you? even a cat, has made my day brighter.
remember stuart, you are loved even though you might not want to be loved. your intelligence is very impressive, at times when you and douglas converse i cannot follow some of what is written. i do know one thing stuart, if the passion that you have to disprove christianity would ever change you would be a great gift to others.
i tend to think you would be greater then 'bozo'.
much love stuart
princess of the king,You have a heart of gold, and I wish I had an ounce of the patience you hold. Your a far better person. Kudos
The Twilight Zone.
It's a Good Life
Anthony Fremont was played by Bill Mumy.
“To the Cornfield”
http://www.nickelkid.net/docs/greats/its_a_good_life.html
Quote (Constitutionalist @ Nov. 20 2009,17:32) Quote (Stu @ Nov. 19 2009,19:56) By the way, you need to support your claim that I have used ad hom arguments before. Except in relation to creationists, who are either completely deluded or liars, I do not ad hom people. Examples of my ad homs are required otherwise you have two things wrong. Stuart
You just admitted to using ad hominem towards creationist, that would be the bulk of us, we can count your athiest crew on one hand. Thus I am in fact right.You also had absolutly no need for attacking the poster over her grammatical errors, you could have kept it on topic, but you chose otherwise.
So quit trying to balance it out as a contest as whether one of us is right or wrong.
If you cant leave the personal stuff on the sidelines then simply stay out of the game.
To the cornfield with you.
I accept your concession on both points.Stuart
Quote (princess of the king @ Nov. 20 2009,11:19) stuart, pray tell some christians bring out the worst in me also, so you are not alone.
do not know which thread it is, i had read a comment about 'emotions' you had commented on. i believe it was elevated emotions. you seem to perceive the negative emotions as being not well received.
as i read the post, i had thought that laughter, love, hugs are all elevated emotions and they can make someone day. a honest smile has brighten my day, what of you? even a cat, has made my day brighter.
remember stuart, you are loved even though you might not want to be loved. your intelligence is very impressive, at times when you and douglas converse i cannot follow some of what is written. i do know one thing stuart, if the passion that you have to disprove christianity would ever change you would be a great gift to others.
i tend to think you would be greater then 'bozo'.
much love stuart
Hello again P of the KNot sure about 'bozo'! I would be happy to wear a T-shirt proclaiming me the fool that is described in Ps 14:1 because I feel I am a demonstration that scripture is obviously wrong, not that I am nearly as good a demonstration of that as Stephen Fry or Douglas Adams or Lance Armstrong.
I believe I am loved, and love in return. I am extremely fortunate to be in that position, but none of that love is the product of my fevered brow perceiving Imaginary Sky Friends.
What if there was no one to love but Imaginary supernatural beings? Well at least there is truth, and my truth is that the universe is a scary, lonely place devoid of any gods or intent or favour, and that in itself makes it into pure beauty to behold, and even to love.
I'm not sure that I am likely to make much of a dent in christianity. I certainly would like to make sure that lies creationists make about the natural world are corrected, but I think christianity is dying fast enough that it doesn't need much help. In New Zealand, where traditional church attendance is in freefall, between the last census and the next we will drop below 50% of the population identifying as christian, for the first time in the history of the census. Our Parliament decriminalised homosexuality 20 years ago and last year we criminalised corporal punishment for children. These things were opposed by christians mainly and in them we can see the waning powers that christians wield in the political arena.
Our cat makes our day brighter too, and in fact because we are too busy to lead lives of luxurious indulgence, she does that for us!
Stuart
Quote (Constitutionalist @ Nov. 19 2009,12:13) Quote (Douglas @ Aug. 05 2009,16:37) Quote (charity @ May 25 2009,22:30) Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.
-Chinese Proverb
Very apt, and yet that's what dogmatic adherence to the Bible does.I suggest the best way to get to the bottom of God, for those who can, is simply to ask.
Forget all the human preconceptions. Start with a blank slate, and write on it only that which you know.
Then your life is no larger than that slate.
But I know it and I can rely on it and I don't need to risk being misled by other people just to make it bigger.Better to build a house on a small foundation of granite, than an acre of sand?
Besides that principle, sometimes you can learn far more quickly without handicapping yourself with ideas and knowledge you haven't tried or tested properly. Sometimes you can derive original thoughts unique to yourself and see things other people can not – as they only see what they are told to see.
One single small apparently insigificant fact can sometime demolish whole schools of established thinking.
Quote (Stu @ Nov. 20 2009,22:06) Quote (princess of the king @ Nov. 20 2009,11:19) stuart, pray tell some christians bring out the worst in me also, so you are not alone.
do not know which thread it is, i had read a comment about 'emotions' you had commented on. i believe it was elevated emotions. you seem to perceive the negative emotions as being not well received.
as i read the post, i had thought that laughter, love, hugs are all elevated emotions and they can make someone day. a honest smile has brighten my day, what of you? even a cat, has made my day brighter.
remember stuart, you are loved even though you might not want to be loved. your intelligence is very impressive, at times when you and douglas converse i cannot follow some of what is written. i do know one thing stuart, if the passion that you have to disprove christianity would ever change you would be a great gift to others.
i tend to think you would be greater then 'bozo'.
much love stuart
Hello again P of the KNot sure about 'bozo'! I would be happy to wear a T-shirt proclaiming me the fool that is described in Ps 14:1 because I feel I am a demonstration that scripture is obviously wrong, not that I am nearly as good a demonstration of that as Stephen Fry or Douglas Adams or Lance Armstrong.
I believe I am loved, and love in return. I am extremely fortunate to be in that position, but none of that love is the product of my fevered brow perceiving Imaginary Sky Friends.
What if there was no one to love but Imaginary supernatural beings? Well at least there is truth, and my truth is that the universe is a scary, lonely place devoid of any gods or intent or favour, and that in itself makes it into pure beauty to behold, and even to love.
I'm not sure that I am likely to make much of a dent in christianity. I certainly would like to make sure that lies creationists make about the natural world are corrected, but I think christianity is dying fast enough that it doesn't need much help. In New Zealand, where traditional church attendance is in freefall, between the last census and the next we will drop below 50% of the population identifying as christian, for the first time in the history of the census. Our Parliament decriminalised homosexuality 20 years ago and last year we criminalised corporal punishment for children. These things were opposed by christians mainly and in them we can see the waning powers that christians wield in the political arena.
Our cat makes our day brighter too, and in fact because we are too busy to lead lives of luxurious indulgence, she does that for us!
Stuart
In the UK the collapse of organised religion is quite possibly more advanced and corporal punishment for children has been criminalised for a long time – albeit with some complexities over European law vs British law and if smacking is acceptable or not.Distasteful as I find organised religion in the massive misleading of the population in general, and with related drawbacks I'm not convinced that it provides a net benefit to society to remove it.
I don't know enough to say if the decline in law and order in this country over the last few decades – most notably in the youngest end of the population – is related or not, but it strikes me you should tamper with social forces carefully, and ideally in the awareness that maybe the average person has a psychological need to believe in something – an ideology – whether a religious one or not.
Maybe as somewhat of an outsider I'm unnecessarily cynical, I just don't think the shape of society that is coming instead is any better – and possibly even worse.
I should have been clearer about the corporal punishment thing: New Zealand banned corporal punishment in schools in 1986, but only last year repealed the section of the Crimes Act that said the parent of a child, or a person in the place of a parent “is justified in using force by way of correction towards a child if that force is reasonable in the circumstances.”
I agree that there is little to be gained from dismantling the various christian sects, indeed I would fight for the right of any group to congregate for engaging in whatever lunatic rites they wished, so long as it was not illegal or harmful. I do thing there is a case for dismantling the Catholic church on the grounds that it systematically covered up child abuse. There would be nothing to stop Catholics meeting and following their bizarre rituals but the whole nasty edifice of the RCC heirarchy is immoral to the core, and should be brought to account. The other mainstream churches need no help in their self-destruction: they will die along with their aging congregations.
I think there are some problems with youth culture in the UK, having observed it living in South London for 2 years just recently, but I don't think any religion is the answer. If anything one of the problems is the mushrooming of faith schools that prevent the interracial and interreligous lifelong friendships that might help to make communities more coherent and unified. I think the genie has escaped the bottle on the issue of binge drinking and the whole issue of parents knowing where their children are of a Saturday night. That will be a very difficult one to claw back, and we have a milder form of the same problem in NZ.
We are going through changes that must have parallels in every century. There are up sides to those changes as well as down sides.
Stuart
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