The Pagans knew all along!!!!

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

Heh... wow, I guess I didn't read the origional post as closlely as I could have, or I suppose I would have reacted similarly. Way to go keeping your cool, btw.
Peace

[Baradakas]

Completely off topic I realise Baradakas, so I apologise in advance, but I can't help noticing that as I read your post above, your WGD's stand at 666, the ever infamous number of the beast.

Coincidence?

Yikes!!!!

Posting quick, useless post to alter WGD count!!!


Whew!! that was close.

[Avatar]

[Iryssa]

Good job, Baradakas...you said all the things I was feeling, but I was too angry to write with any coherence

[hamako]

I like this thread.

Sheol obviously has some deep lying resentment or anger towards the Christian faith. I make no apologies for my atheism but I don't think I'd have a go so vehemently, well not sober anyway! It's all about repsecting other people's opinions isn't it? Go easy mate....

trying to stick with the central point though, so what if Christianity has "stolen" other tradition's practices, calendar and terminology. What would you do if you fully believed you had a valid and essential message to get across?

What does worry me about Christianity is the rigorous belief that some quarters have in the authenticity of the scriptures. How can you when they are contrdictory, written from a distance (in both time and perspective) and widely varied in their interpretation and reproduction?

For me this is where Christianity has it's flaws - you can't preach adherence to the scriptures, you'd be forever chasing your tail trying to find the true way.

Regarding adn earlier point about Revelation - I studied this and it is clearly written by John teh Beloved, Jesus' best pal. It's a bit wild though, perhaps that's what happens to your head when you hole up in a remote mountain shack and have only yourself and the local herbs to keep you going. Look at some of the stuff Kerouac wrote in similar situations! (no disrespect intended.

Lastly what's so offensive about saying "erect penis"? I thought it was only us Brits who had issues with these. Got to say, I thought Sheol's point was a bit childish here though.

Religion, bound to make a man vent spleen.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

I will let you form your own opions about this.

You will? It doesn't seem like it, you've made up all our minds for us. Even if we did form interesting opinions it is quite clear that your mind is so beyond closed that the whereabouts of the many keys to your many doors and fences are all forgotten and not merely hidden but rather they've been utterly thrown away.


Again, I ask what is the value of attempting to "enlighten" someone who has hope in their faith? What does it serve? How does it help?

Should we then be ignorant? Of course not, but posts like these are specifically tailored to make mockery of the beliefs of those who have faith. It is designed not to give open-minded discourse but rather to siege the foundations of a believers faith. It seems purposeless on the surface of course, but those of faith understand exactly the source of such rhetoric. What value does this have? Who does it serve?

If a man or a woman has hope in their lives, then why would someone find a need to damage or breakdown that hope in any way, let alone the way Sheol has attempted. His whole post is an effort to suggest that such hope is folly and falsehood. He is outright and blatently calling some of us idiots, fools. He is trying to remove that which we have held sacred and close to our hearts for no real purpose.

Let's say that for some reason I read his tirade & decided that he was right & God doesn't exist & never did. All that would do for me is to make me more bitter against humanity & myself than I already am. All that would do is remove all hope from living a decent life toward the end of receiving a heavenly bounty or that in a Christian sense that my Lord & King Jesus Christ was simply a insane genius and my belief in His divinity means nothing & my soul is merely my mind & heaven will never exist & I will die and be forgotten. How hollow that world must be.

I see no purpose in denouncing someone's faith when they have lived and experienced a better possibility.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that Sheol is envious of people who can believe and can hope. So much so that Sheol must try to wittle us away from what we look forward to and to call us foolish so that he does not feel so alone or so afraid of the eventual end. It is as useful as a terrorist hating America because americans have a lot of money. It is as useful as hating a business because that business does well. It is as useless as hating a person because that person has beliefs that are not logical to him and his jealously is now completely known. It is a sick, depraved thing to try to cut someone down because you can't have what they have or because you refuse to believe in it. They have HOPE man! Leave it alone or be known as the carrion who would worm about in other people's lives when what is in them is good! They have HOPE!

What you do has no meaning, lacks hope, purpose, and reason. It is deplorable and evil. When a person lies, it is a terrible thing. When a person deflowers something wonderful in the world, it is a far more desperate and evil thing to behold.

[Avatar]

All that would do is remove all hope from living a decent life toward the end of receiving a heavenly bounty or that in a Christian sense that my Lord & King Jesus Christ was simply a insane genius and my belief in His divinity means nothing & my soul is merely my mind & heaven will never exist & I will die and be forgotten. How hollow that world must be.

Although I agree with the essence of your post Zeph, in that it serves nothing to attempt to destroy hope, I must ask if the part I quoted above is your only reason for attempting to live a "decent" life?

Does nothing inside you suggest that you could live such a life for no other purpose than having lived it? Is the hope of reward the only motivation you can see for living "decently"?

My soul is my mind, and I will die and be forgotten. This does not make my life hollow. There are a myriad of facets to it beyond that small fear, if fear it even is.

--A

[ZefaLefeLaH]

All that would do is remove all hope from living a decent life toward the end of receiving a heavenly bounty or that in a Christian sense that my Lord & King Jesus Christ was simply a insane genius and my belief in His divinity means nothing & my soul is merely my mind & heaven will never exist & I will die and be forgotten. How hollow that world must be.

Although I agree with the essence of your post Zeph, in that it serves nothing to attempt to destroy hope, I must ask if the part I quoted above is your only reason for attempting to live a "decent" life?

Does nothing inside you suggest that you could live such a life for no other purpose than having lived it? Is the hope of reward the only motivation you can see for living "decently"?

My soul is my mind, and I will die and be forgotten. This does not make my life hollow. There are a myriad of facets to it beyond that small fear, if fear it even is.

--A

Before I believed, sure I guess I could find other purpose. But we're not talking about a simple life decision to be celibate or not, to obey all laws of the land or not, those things might offer some purpose to a life that is transcient but there really is no comparison.

For a moment, consider the possible existence of God. If you believed it, then yes, that certainly would be the only thing that truly mattered. It's why the people of the land lived. They had something more important than them that would exist after them, and not something as easy as their mere children either. There was true beauty of a spiritual nature in the land which they would shape their lives to protect.

Sheol's attack against hope is nothing less than a Kevin's Watch equivilent of the raver's attack on revelstone with the illearth stone or the decimation of the wraiths at the celebration of spring. There is no purpose or usefulness to attacking someone's hope in the hereafter. The only answer is that it was designed to cause grief and perhaps some who have or will read it to reconsider their hope in something wonderful.

As far as Sheol is concerned we that beleive might as well be believing in the Easter Bunny for grown ups or the Santa Claus for adults. But again, I ask you, how is that harmful to him? How is it harmful to us? If what we believe ends up being false then we merely lived our lives hoping for a better solution than that everything which was ever done or will be done was simple chance and nothing more. If we're right, then it was good to believe that a flower is a beautiful thing not merely because of evolution but also to be pleasing to the human eye, that an act of heroism is important because it reflects the goodness of people which would otherwise not exist, that all the evil in the world was worth it because of all the wonder in the world.

If we are simply chance & nothing more, then why is it that we are not more like the students of Gattaca? They were rather emotionless. If evolution were true, then what benefit does emotion serve? Why would hate and other negative emotions be of any use to use at all? It would appear to me that survival of the species is better served through diplomacy rather than constant bickering & strife. If rather we were only logical then there would be no war. We would find a more reasonable way to resolve our differences.

Why is a mountain beautiful when in its most logical assessment a mountain is like a pimple, a disfigurment? Why is a sunset special to us when there will be another day? Why would we stay with one person when we could have several thousand lovers over a lifetime? Why is it that we seek out God when it would be so much easier to simply go along with the multitudes and never question the motives of those that would strive to condemn faith? Is it really that hard to see God in everything all around you and everywhere?

If God exists, then the devil and evil are real & they also exist. If evolution is true, then how come animals do not torture each other? Why is it that they do not commit horrific deeds of evil like purposefully chewing on their enemy's faces in the night while they are asleep? There have been manhunter lions, but if there were ever truly evil creatures they were so few and far between as to be considered less than 1/millionth of a percent. Yet we have serial killers, rapists, arsonists, thieves, adulterers, and so many other terrible kinds of people. Every single one of you has done something wrong on purpose, by choice.

But if evolution is true, then certainly the animals would also exhibit these things as well. They wouldn't just attack us or each other for food or out of fear, they would do it to cause harm and rip and shred as slowly as possible. Some would. Surely some would. But no. This isn't the case.

In the end, it doesn't matter what I say. If we lived near each other & I showed you an answered prayer you would say that it was simply coincidence. If I give you examples such as these neutral animals of the world, you will have some other way of explaining it away.

Consider this. A man is not very happy with his life. He finds it shallow & vain. Many of us do. So someone says, hey, I have a remedy. The man says, tell me please if it will make me happy. The someone says, it may be more complicated than that, but it will give you hope. The man says, tell me please. The someone says, Jesus Christ. The man says, go away, I want nothing to do with you.

Strange isn't it?
Is it that the man is so worried about being accepted that he cannot have an open mind for God?
Is it that God is real and the man is rebelling against Him?
What real reasons do people have for not believing in God?
I've heard about bad church experiences. Interesting though. Those are people. God is God. People make mistakes. People are hypocritical. God is God.
I've heard about people being mad at God for taking someone too early. At least this makes sense anyway.
But what real reason does the man find such extreme distaste for Holy matters? My viewpoint is that such harsh & firm denials prove God's existence more than ever. Why would a man, for no purpose at all, strike out against his friends and family or strangers or coworkers simply because they belive in God? Why would this man attack people's beliefs & try to get them to not believe in God? What purpose does it serve? Who is gaining from such an act? Does the man gain from it? Does the Christian gain from it? Do the people on the sidelines gain from it? Who does this serve? What usefulness is there in it?

[Avatar]

Aaah Zeph...A beautifully eloquent response to a question I didn't really ask.

It is not difficult to see god all around us if we believe. But those things that reflect, for you, the essential spiritual beauty of the world remain, regardless of our acceptance, or definition, of god.

Flowers are no less beautiful, mountains no less grand. We have something that will exist after us, and it will exist whether we assume god created it, or whether it's simply a wonder of nature. A random event of blind chance does not make any of these things less than what they are.

I certainly don't condone Sheol's method, there is always a better way to say what you think, or believe. Idea's or assumptions can always be questioned, and it is up to us if we choose to question destructively or constructively.

But none of the things you mention are any less deserving of our wonder than they would be if god had not created them. And perhaps they are more worthy of wonder for being random, or unintended. Chance is not a solution, it is a cause. An act of heroism is important because it reflects goodness, but does wonder make up for the evil? It is wonderful in spite of the evil. Wonder gives us something to hold in opposition to evil, not to excuse it.

I certainly agree that the survival of our species will be better served by diplomacy than by war, but this has come about only through our advancement. Today, war could literally mean the devastation of our world, and even the excercise of logic may reach the conclusion that war is the only alternative, for those that way inclined.

Although the lack of gods existence may mean that there is no devil, it does not mean that there would be no evil. The role that emotions play in the sadistic nature of man may well also be true, but again, our own advancement has brought these emotions to levels where they are no longer "natural" feelings. Consider: Have you never seen a cat toying with a broken-backed mouse? What percentage of the entire worlds population are killers/rapists/arsonists/thieves? Perhaps more than one millionth of a percent, but clearly not any kind of majority.

Hope does not have to reside in god, or in christ. Hope can just as easily be found in humanity alone. In our wishes for a better future, and our aversions to a worse past.

Yes, such attacks serve no purpose in the "scheme" of things, and athiesm may merely be a different face of belief (or fear), but Hope is something we can all have, regardless of our beliefs.

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

But if evolution is true, then certainly the animals would also exhibit these things as well. They wouldn't just attack us or each other for food or out of fear, they would do it to cause harm and rip and shred as slowly as possible. Some would. Surely some would. But no. This isn't the case.

Listen, I know this is a different thread. But seriously. You n33d an AM radio show. d00d, 4 r33l.

I was going to make a response to these posts, but since I would just be 'laying seige' to someone's hopes (*cough* shutdown of all possible reasonable discourse *cough*) I think I'll just stick to my radioshow recommendation.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Aaah Zeph...A beautifully eloquent response to a question I didn't really ask.

Yes, I know. I was still mostly speak to Sheol and others like him.


At any rate, you skirted an important point. A cat might play with a mouse that has a broken back, and we might even consider it to be cruel, but it is truly an evil to the cat? Is the cat doing this because it "knows" the mouse still feels pain & the cat is recreating some kind of "Se7en" or "Saw" kind of hatred against the mouse?

The point is are animals capable of evil?

Now some might say that acts of evil are survival of the fittest, an end result of evolution in our present stage of it. But is this truly an evolution? The first sin mentioned in the Bible after the fall of Adam & Eve is murder. There was no evolution to humanity's evil. Once it was there, it was there. And I gotta tell you, if I lived as long as some of those people of the Old Testament, I would extremely evil. I wouldn't be worried that I was getting older & I should cut it out before it got too late. I'd have centuries to reform myself. So I'd be taking pliers to puppies faces and whatever else satisfied my boredom. A lot of people might think that's pretty sick but in reality we all were teenagers once and we all did things then that we'd be ashamed to admit. But if you could live for 600 years or more then it might be that it was quite average (*read normal) for kids of 112 years old to be acting out.

Anyway, if life was merely a set of chances and nothing more then instead of emotions we would have some extra senses like the shark. Emotions are of no value from an evolution standpoint. They are completely illogical and dangerous to the species. Evolution would have stamped out such nonsense quickly after the mistake arose. We would all be Gattaca children living a relative, if not sterile, peace. A mountain would be merely a disfigurment of the earth. A sunset would be merely another day among many. There would not be any war but there would not be any art or fiction. Those things of beauty would be useless to us. There would be no disease or famine as all of our resources would have stopped such things from existing, and because we did not waste resources on such petty things as sitcom television or making beer. And yet there would be no passion for anything, no love for a girl or a boy, just business relationships if even that. No one would own a pet, because no joy could be derived from it. We would all be in perfect health, but none of us would rock climb or parachute or bunji jump or ski. There would be no purpose in having fun. We would be the epitome of logic to the pity of living without a God.

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

So I'd be taking pliers to puppies faces and whatever else satisfied my boredom. A lot of people might think that's pretty sick but in reality we all were teenagers once and we all did things then that we'd be ashamed to admit.

Listen... I don't know if you are aware of this, but that isn't actually the case. In fact, that's actually a little disturbing. I think after careful consideration that I am, in fact, against you getting an AM radio station.
If God is what keeps you from taking pliers to puppies faces, then I don't have any problem whatsoever in your belief in Him, and I hope it only increases and flourishes.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

That one had me laughing.



All I'm saying is that we've all done things we're ashamed of. I tend to exaggerate those things to the extreme in order to bring it out of the ordinary. If I said that I burned one of my sister's dolls at the stake when I was 11, that wouldn't really seem so bad. If I said I took some of my father's collector coins & spent them on candy, that doesn't have any impact. But both were quite wrong & I'm sorry about doing one of them.

[Avatar]

Animals are as capable of evil as they are of good. We can't imagine the cats motives, but for the cat, I doubt that there is evil. Evil exists only as a human extrapolation of our abilities or potential. Our very advancement makes it possible, perhaps because we have perverted the "reward response" designed to reinforce pro-survival tendancies.

And I disagree that emotion cannot be a result of random chance, or evolution. Afterall, emotion is what motivates a mother to defend her child or a person to protect others. It can be seen as a desireable response. Emotions have grown out of the biological foundation of "preservation of the species", or rather, "preservation of the individual".

I certainly don't believe that only the existence of god makes us appreciate beauty, or percieve some value in it. A certain spirituality perhaps, but that doesn't require god. Only an awareness of the awesome wonder of the world. It is, as I said, no less wonderous for being accidental.

--Avatar

[ZefaLefeLaH]

You see, I knew you could rationalize it away.



Yep, I completely agree with you, emotions are a trait of survival. I mean if I lust for a woman I'm not with then that certainly is healthy and normal. If I hate someone so much I want to press in their eyeballs with my thumbs, that's real useful to the species. Killing someone for pleasure is a definate icon of evolutionistic thinking.

Sorry to be so sarcastic, but you seem to be thinking that just because most people don't do or think about these things makes it a non issue. I'm saying that because we think about them all the time makes it a real issue. I mean who's buying Faces of Death, Natural born Killers, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th part 1000, Ringu, Cops, Jerry Springer, Fear Factor, Jackass, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.????????

We all love to see people in pain. Someone hits their head on a post and the first inclination we have is to laugh at them. Someone falls asleep at a party & we write on their faces with permanent ink (well maybe not you, but don't fall asleep at one of my parties!). Kobe Bryant gets accused of rape & we all want him to be in prison. It doesn't matter if he did it or not, we just want someone to suffer. Martha Stewart goes to prison, we say 'good'. Yassir Arafat is going to die & we hope it hurts a lot too. Someone cuts you off on the highway and you wish damage to him, an accident, a ticket, your fist in his face. The you flatten your face against the window as you pass by a serious accident hoping to see some blood or someone's amputated arm lying across the pavement. Some crazy woman cuts off her husband's penis and it becomes the stuff of office jokes. A guy trying to rob a place gets caught in a chimney and is heard screaming hours later and we call him a dumbass that deserved it. We love it when people suffer. It's entertainment.

The problem with much of society today is that we are so desensitized to horror and evil that we simply accept it. When I was growing up "Leave it to Beaver" & "The Brady Bunch" were the sitcoms of the day. Now we've got "Desperate Housewives" and "The Sopranos". Let's cheat on your loved ones & kill everyone. No one notices that entertainment has slowly degenerated because it is so subtle over time. There isn't much in the way of violence in the music of the 60's & 70's, but rap and death metal artists are paid millions of dollars to tell us to kill our wives, girlfriends, just about anyone. Visual artists are putting up poop and vomit & getting paid to have it on display. It's an ugly, ugly world out there.

I just don't see how evolution could play into making us more and more horrible as we become more and more "civilized". How many serial killers were there before 1900? How many afterward? If anything we are devolving.

[Avatar]

I certainly don't disagree with your evaluation of our society as desensitised, nor with your examples of it. Everything you have said in regards to this is quite true.

The more civilised we become though, the more opportunities there are for us to be "horrible". Additionally, our increasing "civilisation", if you want to call it that, has made it more possible for people to get away with things like that, at least in the sense of our need to be absolutley sure of a persons "guilt".

In the 1900's, punishment was quick, sharp and often brutal. By far the majority of people never had the opportunity to indulge in such pursuits, by simple virtue of the fact that too much of life was taken up with actually surviving.

Of course, advances have also made us more aware of these "aberrations". The fact that we know of no, or very few, serial killers in the 1900's doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't there. They had a much better chance of escaping even notice, let alone capture, because of the (now) less advanced methods of forensic, criminal and psychological investigation.

And we may well be devolving, at least emotionally/spiritually. But evolution per se is not responsible for these characteristics.

Evolution has no "purpose", evolution is not concerned with moral and ethical implications. It merely focuses on physical improvement. People with bigger brains had a better chance of surviving, so brains got bigger.

Our "psychological" evolution is up to ourselves, and perhaps to society in general. Evolution makes us more efficient, not more tolerant. In fact, that "psychological evolution" may be in direct opposition to evolution as a biological process.

And as for the "emotional" aspects of evolution, they (emotions) do indeed play a role in the search for "species" betterment. That lust that you mention, is what remains of our drive to procreate. They desire to kill someone, is an offshoot of your desire for survival. A part of you decides that your life would be better without that particular person.

Although, as I mentioned before, these days such things apply more to "individual" betterment or survival than to that of the species as a whole. But then, on thinking about it, I doubt that animals actively consider the species when they breed, or kill the weak. It's probably individual for all living things, individual is just more meaningful when applied to humans.

--Avatar

[ZefaLefeLaH]

You argue your side well but it still doesn't really explain it to me.

I guess this is a time to agree to disagree.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Wow, I was just reading an anti-Christian post in another forum.

Originally the post was about a gay parade, but that thread got deleted because a lot of people expressed their distaste of the subject. So then someone made a post, "Why was the gay parade thread deleted?" and at first people talked about why they thought it was deleted. But then someone brought up God & all the "educated" people got upset & started beating the crap out of the Christians and this got the Christians mad & they started yelling back & this made the gay people mad & they started beating their chests & grunting & foaming at the mouth. In short, the thread disintegrated as do most all threads about God in a public forum where people are supposed to be "open-minded" & "tolerant" & "mature".

The most interesting thing I saw was that the gay supporters (this does not mean they were all gay) were willing to talk about the previous topic & find out why it was deleted. If someone anti-gay got mouthy they were all too happy to fight with them about it. When the Christian viewpoint came in though, they saw this as intolerant as well, even when it wasn't really stated that way.

Also, a lot of people said things like "I'm not gay, I just don't feel that this was the place for it" and it wasn't the place for it. Just as Christian or political views didn't have a place there. But I wasn't too surprised to see that wealthy, educated men were more intolerant of Christianity than they were of homosexuality.

As a matter of fact, I can't find a single forum that is public and meant for debate between adults that has more animosity for any subject at all more than they do for Christianity. We could be talking about Lacy Peterson's murder and someone might say, "Maybe that chick just had it comin', ever think of that?", and while that might get people pretty upset it is nothing compared to how people react when you mention the name Jesus Christ. I've seen righteous anger about pedophiles, suicides, drug users, homosexuals, rapists, thieves, abortion, politics, science theory, history, other religions such as Buddhism, Muslim, Hindu, whatever, anything of contention between people; but nothing gets people more angry than Christianity. Once you say God, Jesus, Lord, Christ, Holy Spirit, heaven, all the even-minded, gentle-spirited, good people of the forum jump in and attack it like it is the cloned body of Adolf Hitler being trained as a mad scientist experiment.

Is there a purpose for this? Nope. It doesn't serve any rational purpose at all. Is it helpful? Nope. It causes confusion and in some cases depression, disillusionment, and a lot of self-doubt. If they had something so basic as an imaginary deity wrong for all their lives then surely they're wrong about a lot of things, or maybe they're just stupid. All the nice people you like on a forum that seem good are basically messing with someone's mental, emotional, and spiritual foundations; playing a game with someone that has built up a belief system that has become an essential essence of who they are.

Well, I've decided that I'm not going to play that game. I'm not going to perpetuate the hate any longer. Every single time a Christian says, yes but look at this; the non-Christian shrugs and says, so and makes some bland assertion that their heart and soul mean nothing at all. It's like a seesaw, a teeter-totter. . I'm right, I feel good about it. No, you're wrong and I celebrate that you are wrong.

And it isn't that my faith has been damaged here. Perhaps it has been dented along the way or perhaps it has grown slightly. I don't expect to evangelize anyone here and nor do I expect to be torn away from my belief. But I've fought through these kinds of battles before when I was a younger Christian & I needed help. I cried myself to sleep on many nights struggling with how someone described Jesus Christ as a spaceship or that the book of James seems to describe a no win situation and that I'm doomed to hell or that only 144,000 Jews go to heaven and no one else makes it in or that you could easily lose your salvation and that I already have or that you could not so easily lose your salvation but how will you ever know for sure. I cried a lot of tears & people hurt me & I kept fighting because something within me said that people would not be so damned cruel about it if what I believed wasn't true.

There is almost nothing you can do that is more damaging than to debunk someone's religion. Even among inter-Christian groups I've always been careful around someone's faith in Mormonism or Catholic views which while I don't agree with them, at least they have the bravery to live in a world full of hate for Christians around the globe and throughout its 2000 year history. If you get someone to disbelieve in a certain type of Christianity in the hope that they'll come to your camp, you may find it far more likely that you'll never see that person in church again anywhere. And when you talk to them about God again, they may just tell you that they no longer believe it and a bitterness will be in their voice. A cold harshness that dates to the fight they fought and lost.

Some people become doubters in Christ and live their lives alternately believing and doubting all the time. To put this in perspective, it would be like seeing the sky blue & then orange all the time. It isn't fun. I've seen people's faces change before my very eyes and I know what they have been stricken with.

Every single time I've said something here, or anywhere, someone else (and almost always a majority of them) are waiting in the wings to rationalize it away with some godless logic. It's tiring: as if I've wasted those minutes, that time, entirely. While I'm writing it, I'm expecting that someone read it in the future & feel better about their beliefs. They'll say, man Zeph got it right (if maybe a little harsh with the examples of puppies & pliers, but he got it right) and I'm better for it, more solid in my faith. But almost instantly another black bird comes down to play the scavenger and scrape through my post like it is a meal for debate entirely ignorant of the heavy price they may be dealing someone younger in their beliefs or insolent in not giving a damn about it in the first place. And so my post is wasted, just some scraps to be pecked at by birds that don't give a rat's a$$ who they hurt while they are busy feeding their need to debate.

I think that it is a matter too close to my heart to not speak of passionately and because it is so important and always, every time, so brushed over with nonchalant disdain that I should resist speaking of it further: at least here in The Close. So for me, the doors of The Close have closed. I don't wish to feed the ravenous birds of contempt any longer. It is not that I cannot defend myself. I've plainly brought many an interesting argument here. But I'm so tired in my soul and tired in my heart to continue defending my faith against a group of people who aren't interested in it at all in the least except to peck at it when it arrives. All those I thought I might have helped in all the forums that might have read something I was given by God to say was washed away in the dirty water of yet another rebuttal. Almost never was there a time when someone would say, that's a beautiful thing you wrote there, and then left it alone. Nope. Always something to blacken the plate for those who might have come hoping for some type of spiritual enlightenment. In fact, it isn't enlightenment that you will ever find in a public open-ended forum such as this with regard to religion. No, you will only find a seeker of truth and a crusher of hope.

Good day to you all. May it be well with you in The Close.

[danlo]

I'm sorry it has to be that way for you Zeph. It should be apparent by now that I never argue religion, chastize anyone for their beliefs, or try to impose my beliefs. I think it really sucks that anyone would have to go to this "Hell-place" but if you need your special faith to stop you from doing unforgivable things so be it. I simply don't believe in Religion or Hell--I do believe in the creative life force that sustains all--but I'll never begrude anyone their own belief system as long as it doesn't harm me or others. If you're saying that many people have kneejerk reactions to the mere mention of Jesus Christ, then that's very bad, they really need to stop and think. He was/is a great example and such a decent guy, I must say...(whether one chooses to believe in him as the Son of God or not)

So, even tho I never, really, post here, I wish you'd come back...

[Baradakas]

You are certainly welcome here Zeph. Please bear in mind that, although everyone is free to express thier opinion here, not all of them do so in as courteous a manner as others. I apologize if you feel that I have expressed views in a fashion that have offended you.