Of course, the only way the 'big bang' theory can have ANY credibility is if it were determined to be eternally cyclical.....expansion - contraction ad nauseum....

So fine, you want me to speak from experience? That would be better, right? IF you want me to speak on Christianity from my personal experience I would be glad to. I would be glad to tell you about the sadistic nuns at my Catholic school. I'd be glad to tell you how they loved using metal rulers to rip apart my knuckles. I'd love to tell you how they loved using the long wooden pointer across the back of my legs. I would be glad to tell you how these good Christian women loved to berate people in front of there peers, (does this style sound familiar?) to the point of reducing them to cowering, pant-wetting, terror stricken children.

Or perhaphs you would like to hear all about my stint as an altar boy. Would you like to hear all about the good Christian man and leader of our devout flock, Father Michael. Would you enjoy hearing of his "behind" the scenes antics.

If that's not enough, how about my own good Christian family. When I brought home my Jewish girlfriend they were mortified. How could I do this to them, they asked. Now there is a good Christian response to my bringing home someone I had feelings for. Oh, and how about when I told them we were getting married. "Only if she converts" was all I heard. Ah yes, the good Christian doctrine. Isn't it wonderful?

If these personal experiences with all these good Christians isn't enough, maybe I could tell you what my younger sister had to go through at the hands of these good Christians.

So what is it? Your stomach still in good enough shape to take some more of these wonderful anecdotes about all the good Christian experiences I've had?

And thanks for dredging up all those wonder memories. Thanks for erasing nearly 3 years of therapy. Thanks for pushing all the right buttons, getting my heart rate up dangerously high again. What? Did you read an early post of mine where I indicated I was a heart attack survivor and decide, yeah! that's the good Christian thing to do! Looks like today's good Christians are pretty much the same as yesterday's good Christians.

http://www.ospreyclassifiednetwork.com/classifieds/defaultobit.asp?newspaper=Kingston+Whig+Standard

Here's a direct link to my local newspaper's obits. I thought the good Christian thing to do would be to help you to easily check if your good Christian deeds will bear any fruit.

Why are you people still discussing this? Creationists deal with fantasy and evolutionist deal with reality. Such a simple concept which appears to be beyond the grasp of most of you

Humankind is a flea bite on the existence of the universe. Deal with that reality and you will understand your importance

Why are you people still discussing this? Creationists deal with fantasy and evolutionist deal with reality.

Other way around Fuzzy. Creation is reality. Evoulution is Fantasy.

Bakerstreet:

I wanted to add that atheists do believe in God. After all you do have to acknowledge something before you deny it right?

Motion:

I am at a loss for words. Hang in there.

I believe in reality. I know what I can feel, what I can touch, what I can see. As far as I'm concerned the world was created 45 years ago. Prove me wrong...

I believe in reality. I know what I can feel, what I can touch, what I can see.

You lack faith that's all. Not your fault.

I can not touch the moon. Does that mean it is not real? Because although I can see it that might be a illusion.

I can not see, or touch the core of the earth? does that mean it does not exist?

You guys are funny!

You are so sad. I do have faith. I have faith in the things around me, the things I can see, the things I can touch. Why do you seek more? Is the world so empty that you should seek more? I am satisfied with what I have. I know there is so much to this universe and life that I do not understand. It fills me with a sense of wonder. I wish to explore this wonder myself, not to explain it away with some all powerful being. If you do that, the wonder will be forever beyond your grasp. It is I who pity you for the loss of your wonder...
[Message Edited]

Fuzzy.....proof it's older than 45?.....I'm 49....[and I didn't fail math]....

Jafo... prove to me you existed before I did

Fuzzy: No matter what you are anyone else says I will not lose my faith.

I believe in God
I believe Jesus was his Son
I believe God created the Earth
I believe these are the Last Days

Nothing will change these deaths, even death itself.

And it is written "Blessed are those who are persecuted in the name of Jesus"

Bring it on... make fun of me.. I do not care you will not change me.

Nothing will change these deaths, even death itself.

Nothing will change these Beliefs (I meant to say!)

Fuzz man.....prove to me I didn't.....

Kona, we do not make fun of you. You ask us us to respect your faith. We do. Please respect our individual faiths too. My belief is in the wonder of this universe. It is a wonder I do not understand or recognise the purpose of. But it is something I will not simply explain away. I will spend the rest of my life searching for an answer. I will not find that answer. So be it. The next generation will contine the search. But to simply give in and explain everything away is such a loss.

Faith is not what we believe, it is what we seek. True believers are not people who know the answer, they are people who seek the answer. As yet there is no answer, that is something you can believe...

God! I need to get laid

No problem sweetie...

hehe China!

motion I'm sorry to see that up there *sigh*
"try" not to lose any faith in God you have left (if any at all) over what other "ppl" have done to you...

Kona,

Nothing will change these Beliefs

Even if God Himself came to you and told you otherwise?

motion,

Sorry to hear about the events of your youth. There's no question that such people were not really working for God, but only for their dogma (and doing badly even at that).

That's one of the reasons I eschew religion in favor of God. Far too often, religion corrupts the true meaning of God for the interests of a few humans.

Take care.

Motion: nothing you described are "good Christian experiences". To call them such is to lie to yourself, and to at least partially excuse the people who harmed you by making a villain of their religion.

Pedophilia and physical abuse isn't specific to religion, I think that is obvious to anyone. I could relate the deaths and torture of untold millions at the hands of atheists in China and the Soviet Union, how rape and torture are still used today to 're-educate' the religious there. The purges in those two countries silenced over 100 million people. It would be wrong of me to blame those things on atheism, or communism, and it is wrong, though understandable, for you to associate your awful experiences with God, Creationists, or Christianity.

All creationists are not 'bubba', all nuns are not abusive, and all priests are not pedophiles. I have a great deal of sympathy for you, and I am sorry this dredged all that up, but I stand by my belief that forcing blanket definitions on literally billions of people who believe in a Creator is wrong. I hope that you will find eventually that you were wronged by people, not by God or spirituality as a whole.

I hope that you will find eventually that you were wronged by people, not by God or spirituality as a whole

indeed! Ghandi remarked, when asked about his intense interest in Jesus, that when he met a christian who followed the teachings of Christ he himself would become more interested in being a christian.

Fuzzy - you can't see, hear, smell, or touch gamma rays, but if a competent authority puts up barricades and a warning sign you'll react in "blind faith" like the rest of us and stay the hell away.

humorous note: ( to me, anyway ). we had four adamant atheists on our gunship crew during the vietnam war, and at various times i observed 2 of them praying aloud with great intensity when the anti-aircraft flack got so thick that we could have lowered the landing gear and set down on it.
that old saw "no atheists out in the forward foxholes" does have some truth to it.

I'd be glad to tell you how they loved using metal rulers to rip apart my knuckles. I'd love to tell you how they loved using the long wooden pointer across the back of my legs.

You must've been a baaaad boy...

Just kiddin'

motion I can relate more than you might know...

Bakerstreet, I've a few question's for you...

Your God is all powerful correct?

Then where was he when the child was abused and raped or murdered?
You God can see and knows all, correct?
Did your God not know this was taking place?
If your God knew this.
Knowing it was taking place why did your God not stop it?

ok, on to another few question and then the two sets combined.

If you and I were standing in a house and we looked into the door of a room where we heard a child screaming is pain, fear and total anguish only to find some Male raping the child while beating them in the face and you moved to enter the room but I put my hand to your shoulder to stop you. You turned to me and I put my finger to my lips and pulled you from the room where you asked me.

Why did you stop me?
and I replied ( suffer the children. )
What does that mean?
and I replied ( Free will. )

Would you listen ot me, would you have even let me pull you from the room?

If you wouldn't have stopped to listen to me, why not?

If you wouldn't let me pull you from the room, again why not?


--------------------

Now, if as another human being you would have absolutly nothing to do with a person who stood by and knew a child was being beaten,raped and or murdered.

Or you would have take action with violence against the person doing such a thing.

Would even see my lack of action as criminal and less than human.

How in the world can anyone justify your God's lack of pity, love, compassion and everything else of a positive nature in not ending such things from happening because of some really ignorant self serving phrases in some book that humans wrote?

Most will probably say that your God is above reproach, is not to be questioned, can not be known and all other kinds of mystical blather as if it is proof that it is the reason for such deference of what is right.

Free will
The earth is ours to rule
No one can hear the true voice of God because God's voice is so powerful all that heard it would die
No one can look upon God because his light is so bright they would burst into flame
No one can know God or his mind because he is all powerful and to attempt to do so would drive a normal mortal to insanity

and on and on and on

On another note, how can you claim to know that those who abuse under the banner of God are not in fact doing his work? You as I, would want to think so, that your God would never be such, but how do you know 100%? From a book and some stories passed down over generations with all the revisions and addendums applied?

I like the concept, but if the process is broken then the concept get's lost in the end.

I will say this much, if there is a God then they are not much more than a powerful child who creates and then turns it's back for something of newer and improved interest.

Or a child with an etch-a-sketch who spends hours upon hours making a picture only to shake it out of existance to doodle some more...

p.s. just so you know, I would have emailed this but for some reason verizons email servers are on the blink again after an improved upgrade and my email will not be online until tomarrow some time.

I do know that bow or broil and forever toil seems a bit to much for me to swallow. Also that if there is a God I really have a desire to ask some question and then to hell with him, or me, whichever doesn't really matter...

Ah but Bakerstreet, communism in China and in the Soviet Union WAS a religion too. I see no difference in the Cult of Stalin or Mao and the cult of Jehovah or Yaveh. Both tell you what you are allowed to believe in and what you are not.
Atheism can also be a religion, ironically. After all, isn't "Athiest" also a checkbox on forms next to "Christian", "Muslim" and "Buddist" when they ask for your religion?
When the French (those people you love so much ) crusified their priests on the doors of their churches after the 1789 Revolution, they did no better than the abuse the priests  had been doing for centuries.

Organised thought control is dispicable (hehehehe! I can't help but hear Silvester the cat as I typed this), whether it's not in the name of God, or in the name of no God.

I'd like to tell a little story here.  About 7 years ago or so, when I first started chatting online, I met a woman from Tennessee. We chatted often and I become relatively close to her, to the point where she started telling me some personal stuff. She was unhappy. She was married and had 4 children. You see, she believed that her place on earth was to obey her husband and make sure that he always had what he needed. God, she told me, made Man in his image.  Not humanity, no man. And he made woman just so the poor fellow wouldn't be so lonely. Women's role, is to have children, raise them to be good christians, keep the house clean and comfortable for hubby, and to always obey him. He was the boss. No discussions, no compromises. If he wanted to beat her, he had the right to do so, cause he was the boss, he was the law. And if she wasn't happy about it, divorce was not an option either. A good christian doesn't divorce. And what did her parents think of it? Well, they said that he he beat her, it was because he wasn't happy; and if he wasn't happy, it was her fault. Make him happy, and he won't beat you.
I could not believe it. This was a shock to me. This is the 20th century for goodness sake! Who trapped you in the middle ages? I kept telling her. Get out of there, take the children and run! Nope, can't do that, she said. I'm a Christian, and I can't leave my husband. 

And she told me that it was how it was where she lived. She wasn't some freak living in the woods; that's how it is here in Tennessee, she said.

Is that true? Any American here can confirm that in some US states, people are no better than fanatic islamists in Bagdad or Kaboul?

This is where religion gets you, imo. And that's why I'm so passionately against it.

humorous note: ( to me, anyway ). we had four adamant atheists on our gunship crew during the vietnam war, and at various times i observed 2 of them praying aloud with great intensity when the anti-aircraft flack got so thick that we could have lowered the landing gear and set down on it. that old saw "no atheists out in the forward foxholes" does have some truth to it.

yes it does for sure.

I have a friend who is a Minister that was a butter bar in Vietnam. He had an older brother who went into seminary and he went to college. Then he volenteered for Vietnam, 3 months before he came home he was at a small SF base with a Firebase down below the helo pads. They had been being probed at different time at night over the past few weeks and they got hit hard and almost over run. He said he promised God that if he lived he would finish up his tour and when he got home he would work for God until his dying day.

He was good to his word and to this day believes God kept him alive, couldn't have been the fast movers, spooky, medivacs and cobras, or the other men fighting and dying beside him, had to be God I guess...

He is a great guy and every time we get together he asks with a look and I refuse with a smile.

The man across the street is a priest who escaped from Poland before it broke away from the USSR. He was part of the origional Solidarity movement and one of the other guys he worked with just kind of vanished one night. THen he was picked up and taken to the police station and a Polish KGB man came to question him, it happened to be a friend os his from their days of youth. He went into the military after school and my neibhour went to the church, there wasn't much of a choice at the time. Anyway after a few hours of questions his childhood firend told the others to leave the room, he then was told to get his family together and leave, not just the city, but Poland because in 48 hours they would come for him. They now live in Canada and come here in winters, the church owns the house across the street and there is a B29 pilot who lives there which I help out with odd jobs and things when he needs it and someone from the church can not make it over quick enough...

he also made a deal with God in WWII...