Humans are suckers for balance; creatively yingyanging explanations for pure chance.
Exactly. We're pattern-seekers which is why we're so willing to accept answers without evidence as long as it's an answer. Any answer.
I disagree that it's unlikely that most Americans believe in anti-Spacemonster though. Believing in something for bad reasons is still believing in it. Perhaps the greatest paradox about this devil creature is that he's responsible for evil and yet his job is to punish those who commit evil.
One could justify the anti-Spacemonster character as inevitable duality rather than just a way to scare Dark Ages people into attending, and subsequently being compelled into giving everything they own to, the churches.
The former being people's reason for buying it and the latter being people's reason for selling it. They work great together.
Dante stages Hell at Earth's core; the innermost sanctum of that which was then known.
Yeah...how many Christians even realize that their perception of hell comes straight from Inferno? Three? Zero?
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.
Awesome. So I'm contemplating spilling some of my own guts over in the "Meanings" thread, but before I do, I get reminded of why I tend to avoid people altogether. Seriously, I'd rather sit in my own basement filling mason jars with urine than find myself in a conversation with someone with this sort of infantile, 12th century world view. Yet, that seems to be the bulk of the people I encounter.
Just nuke us already. Maybe something more intelligent will evolve once the radiation dies down.
“This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists, now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end times history.”
“Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand,” Bachmann continued. “When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.”
I used to find some comfort, perhaps ironically, in telling myself that religious statements such as that coming from a politician was just a pandering to the insecure rabble. For votes, for support. Over time it became quite clear that it wasn't really the case. Some of these people really are fucking bananas.
It's funny on the surface but consider that this loon was at one point leading a presidential primary race...in the year 2012! She wasn't running for emperor of Rome in 478...the US of A in 2012! A significant amount of people in this country think that someone who not only believes the end of the world is coming but fucking embraces that shit should have access to massive amounts of nuclear weaponry.
Holy. Fuckballs.
And we're worried about Ahmnadinejad.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
The Sybian wrote:I'm very curious, does most of America believe in the devil?
Highly unlikely. Perhaps another way to frame the question is "Do people who believe in Spacemonster also believe in anti-Spacemonster?" Faith-prone idealists gravitate to sacred absolutes more easily than profane imperfections. While it is increasingly difficult to attribute the odd workings of nature to a diety's doings, co-opting a devil is as simple as pie. Anti-Spacemonster is born/designed culpable whereas his counterpart is blameless and mission-driven. (And it is always a male character; if Beelzebub was Beelzeboobs, one would be more inclined to believe a feminist was the anti-CheezWiz).
Humans are suckers for balance; creatively yingyanging explanations for pure chance. Unable to conceive that Earth was anything but the center of the universe, relying on only the UrEarth as vantage point, Spacemonster was conceived as residing invisibly without and anti-Spacemonster invisibly within. As paradise was depicted beyond our mortal coil, eternal damnation was right here inside of us, the center of Earthself.
Theologically, that is an interesting construct. One's soul is presumably Spacemonsterlike but one's packaging must first perish before one's inner myth can be delivered to its ultimate destination. Consequently, upon death, Soulmonster must spirit off somewhere via special delivery and that undiscovered interval is even more obscure than the mysterious happenings that ensue between winning an auction on eBay and receiving what you bought; a mystical route as unknown to us as the destination of lost laundry socks.
One could justify the anti-Spacemonster character as inevitable duality rather than just a way to scare Dark Ages people into attending, and subsequently being compelled into giving everything they own to, the churches. If anti-Spacemonster lives inside of us all, salvation therefore lies beyond. Salvation's price tag is faith whereas damnation is pretty much free. It is worth noting that Spacemonster Himself created everything, including anti-Spacemonster; perhaps merely to sell more records. Creating the one and only entity that can potentially destroy one's self is a dubious business model; high risk development on speculative return.
Dante stages Hell at Earth's core; the innermost sanctum of that which was then known. Heaven, however, is somewhere out in the great beyond; nestled at creation's most distant environs. Of course, we have since determined that UrEarth is structured like an elaborate baseball with a solid core and that in an eternally-expanding universe, unfortunately for those souls even with the proper postage, the destination of Heaven keeps getting further and further away, pushing outward on cruise control and putting as many light years between itself and us humans as it can comfortably manage.
I like that Scalia cites, as evidence for the existence of the anti-Spacemonster, that "the Spacemonster believes in him! It's all over the Spacemonster storybook!"
And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.
Here's a guy that thinks the government is going to force him to participate in sodomy.
I don't want this cat anywhere near my sodomy.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
I've been unsuccessfully trying to get my wife to participate in sodomy for years. Turns out all I needed was some good old-fashioned government intervention. Green card, here I come.
The study authors found that Mother Teresa was the farthest thing from a saint. Instead, the study authors say, she was a cruel woman who believed that there was glory in the suffering of the sick. She made people with grave illnesses sicker by denying them medication and forcing them to writhe in pain while she squirreled away “enormous sums of money” that could have been used to help them.
Yeah, Hitchens pretty much exposed her for the evil charlatan that she was 18 years ago.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
As for me and my house, we'll serve Hendrick's martinis with blue cheese stuffed olives.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
Jerloma wrote:Allen West thinks anyone who doesn't believe in his holy book is miserable.
As for me and my house, we'll serve Hendrick's martinis with blue cheese stuffed olives.
Sounds delicious. What time does service begin?
In some ways, I have to agree with him. Fundamentalists don't have to accept responsibility for their actions, as they are following what the majikal book tells them to do. They don't have to fear consequences, because "they are right" in all of their beliefs, and G-d will do right by them. anything bad that happens is "G-d's will" or G-d testing them to make them stronger. Everything happens for a reason, right? They also have the answers for all of life's great mysteries. The Earth was created in 7 days 6000 years ago, and all evidence to the contrary is G-d testing our faith with red herrings. Sounds pretty damned good to me.
An honest to God cult of personality - formed around a failed steak salesman.
-Pruitt
Jerloma wrote:Here's a guy that thinks the government is going to force him to participate in sodomy.
I don't want this cat anywhere near my sodomy.
It's no surprise I never heard about this law forcing people to engage in sodomy and forcing Christians to convert to "their religion," whatever that may be. Damned Liberal Media didn't even report this law, because they want to hide it from us.
An honest to God cult of personality - formed around a failed steak salesman.
-Pruitt
Here's a guy who's upset at the Nobel prize committee for giving one to Peter Higgs because the Devil. Also, the Hadron Collider was built to disprove the existence of God.
STOCKHOLM --Another strange Nobel Prize has just been awarded, this time to two scientists whose goal it was and is, to deny God.
The atheists have become so desperate to disprove God that their urgency to do so suggests the panic that only the devil himself would express during these last days.
We are approaching the finish line of time-- limited time for the enemy to take as many away from God as possible. And there seems to be no end to the means being exercised to accomplish Satan's goals in his final skirmish against God.
...
And how did this :"proof" surface? First of all, the scientists involved managed to raise and spend $10 billion dollars to build a "Particle Collider." which would be the world's biggest atom smasher, built in a 17 mile tunnel under the Swiss-French border. That is 10 BILLION dollars, with a B.
The goal was to find a subatomic particle that would be called, The Higgs Boson, but became better known as, The God Particle, from whence everything sprung.
This, of course would mean that it was all spontaneous combustion, there was no higher intelligence involved....yep...God does not exist, and this settles it.
Ten Billion Dollars spent in an effort to disprove the existence of God. Think how far that amount of money would go to improve education, communities, cities, libraries, museums, and the lives of so many.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
sancarlos wrote:I'm just guessing, but I'm pretty sure the average godless swamper has more fun than your average fundamentalist.
Well, Syb's depression is bringing down our average.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
American Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ. His presentation will be part of a one-day symposium entitled "Covert Messiah" at Conway Hall in Holborn (full details can be found at http://www.covertmessiah.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).
Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.
Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
While his conclusion is correct, his research is bullshit. Real scholars/historians don't hold seminars to reveal their studies. They have it peer-reviewed and published as if it were a scientific theory. The Romans didn't need religion to control people, they'd just kill you.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
Jerloma wrote:Here's a guy who's upset at the Nobel prize committee for giving one to Peter Higgs because the Devil. Also, the Hadron Collider was built to disprove the existence of God.
Yet again, they fail to understand the concept that Atheists aren't obsessed over a being they believe doesn't and never has existed. Why is this a difficult concept? I guess the Twilight series popularity threw him.
An honest to God cult of personality - formed around a failed steak salesman.
-Pruitt
"If Bachmann is right and Jesus really is on his way back, it'll be the first man she ever saw coming."
Nice.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
Oprah tells the lady who swam from Florida to Cuba that she's not really an atheist because she's in awe of nature.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
After reading Scottie's link to this guy's bio, I'll give him a pass. Assuming it is actually true. Born to a homeless, mentally ill prostitute, horrifically abused by foster parents, sold for $200 to a raging alcoholic who physically and mentally abused him. Then it gets worse, he became addicted to marijuana and acid! All seriousness aside, I love clueless fundies. Addicted to weed, eh? Or even acid, for that matter. The alcohol addiction I'll grant him, but I tend to doubt it was actual addiction versus the overwhelming need to escape the horrors in his life.
An honest to God cult of personality - formed around a failed steak salesman.
-Pruitt
As I'm watching the washed up white actors playing gangsters in that trailer, (Michael Madsen, Vincent Pastore), I think, 'there is one missing'. I just needed to be patient.
Who knows? Maybe, you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away and held for ransom.
Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago
Oh yeah…
Bishop of Limburg Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is accused of spending more than 31m euros (£26m; $42m) on renovating his official residence.
Calls were made for the bishop to resign after he was accused of lying under oath about his spending.
He was criticised for a first-class flight to India to visit the poor.
But his official residence is at the heart of the criticism, after renovations were originally costed at 5.5m euros.
German media are reporting that the residence was fitted with a bath that cost 15,000 euros, a conference table for 25,000 euros and a private chapel that cost 2.9m euros.
Well, it's not like he was starved for cash -
Bishop Tebartz-van Elst - and his spending habits - had become infamous in Germany, where many people pay Church tax to the state. The tax raised 5.2bn euros for Catholics and 4.6bn euros for Protestants in 2012.
Nice racket.
"beautiful, with an exotic-yet-familiar facial structure and an arresting gaze."
I went in expecting to see a silly movie, and came out having experienced a strange glimpse into a curious cultural phenomenon, a new kind of Christianity that advertises itself with McMansions that God built. For a religion started by a martyred egalitarian hippie who hung out with lepers and prostitutes and was executed by The Man, its supposed adherents sure seem obsessed with Earthly wealth. It’s a bad movie, but a fascinating watch.
At the barbecue, Miles meets Vanessa, played by Adrienne Bailon, whose crucifix necklace roils betwixt the twin mounds of her heaving cleavage, so lovingly sculpted by God for the purpose of tempting breast-men back into the fold. Have mercy. So begins the love affair (MONTAGE!) between the repentant gangster and the titular church girl, who makes him sleep on the couch in his own eight-bedroom house after their third or fourth date. Church can be cool, but fornicating is still the devil’s plaything.
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. - God
