gregjohn wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
>> alphaQuad wrote:
>>> OK, on to the relevance then. Beliefs are just that, something you want to
>>> believe but for which you have no personal experience that would justify it.
>>>
>>> What's greater then belief? When you KNOW from experience, you do in fact
>>> actually know something. Belief is more like a faerie tale.
>>>
>>> An atheist has beliefs and doesn't know anything. I am particularly interested
>>> in these people, because of what I could show them. Call me vulnerable, or just
>>> crazy, but if you only KNEW!!!!!!
>>>
>> This is vastly ironic, coming from someone that, probably, like most,
>> lump atheists into some homogeneous group that all agree with each other
>> on "beliefs". Its also even more ironic in that you have
>>
>> a) Belief that the Bible actual describes something that happened.
>> Evidence to support it - your belief that you experienced god. The
>> evidence of any of it really happening though... Hmm..
>>
>> b) Belief that such belief makes you better. Ok.. then explain why it is
>> that, other than a few exceptions, nearly all wars are religiously
>> motivated, and some of the most vile evil people today "mask" themselves
>> in your religion. There isn't a lot of evidence than believing in god
>> does anything more than provide justification for those that are "sure"
>> they are good, to do the things they want, certain in their own minds
>> that everything they do is also what god wants. Too bad no one else
>> would agree with all their choices, when made based on that criteria.
>>
>> c) And this one is part and parcel of the denial of science in this
>> country. The abject refusal, despite diseases like Alzheimer's, despite
>> nearly half the population having to have glasses, despite people losing
>> their hearing, despite the known effects of drugs on the mind, despite
>> blindingly obvious cases of people seeing things, despite the known
>> effects of fasting, which includes hallucinations, despite head injuries
>> changing people's personalities, despite "several diseases" that are
>> known to induce false religious experiences, and none of which even
>> "gets to" the neurological evidence we have now... despite "all" of
>> these things, people like alphaQuad imagine that "religious" experiences
>> are in some "special" category, for which their "personal" direct
>> experiencing of them is 100% infallible, and always right, and
>> constitutes 100% undeniable *evidence* of the existence of the main
>> character of their favorite faerie tale.
>>
>> The argument holds about as much water, based on, "knowing from
>> experience", as the fools looking for how DNA works by comparing it to
>> Chinese language characters. Its pure gibberish. The brain is not
>> reliable at telling if its "own" experiences are accurate, and even some
>> *Christian* philosophers, and members of the church, over the last 2000
>> years, including both Fancis Bacon, and St. Thomas Aquinas, managed to
>> figure that out (or at least almost do so). Why is it that, especially
>> in the US, there seems to be an absolute outbreak of people that *can't*?
>>
> 
> 
> I think the problem is that you WERE involved in a false religion, and
> mistakenly presume it is THE responsible elucidation of the text.   There is
> not anything that is so stupid or wacky or evil that it cannot be said, by some
> idiot, to be taken from the bible or the life's work of ML King Jr., or Lincoln
> or a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
> 

Show me a "true religion" that doesn't have most of its members 
practicing the same silly BS too, just on less "serious" issues than the 
ones you insist on claiming are "not true Scot..", or sorry, "Not true 
Christians", then you can talk. I didn't reach this conclusion by being 
"in" one of the crazy assed cults that I hear about all the time, I 
reached my conclusions from the realization that the **only difference** 
between those cults and your cult is how many subjects their members 
decide to be assholes about, and to what length they are willing to go 
to "punish" people for not agreeing with them. The basic failure at 
common decency between some churchy that doesn't like Darwin, so breaks 
into the local library to steal books, and burn them, and some fracking 
nut case that blows up a building, because they don't like "America", is 
the same. The only barrier between one and the other is how "strongly" 
they believe in their version of justice, and whether they can get past 
the minor inconvenience of convincing themselves that there are "proper" 
times to kill someone. And both are driven by the idea that there is an 
infallible, perfect, thing, which they both follow, which will "accept" 
this action, because in their case, they are doing it for "its" cause.

The ones that don't believe this, read maybe 1/2 of the NT, gloss over 
the rest, where Jesus does something nuts, insist that Revelations isn't 
literal, and ignore 90% of the OT, unless they need some excuse to go 
after some group, like gays, in which case they cherry pick the lines 
they want to use to support them.

Truth is, there isn't a "nice" liberal Christian alive that doesn't 
fundamentally deny nearly 100% of the OT, and gloss over parts of the 
NT. And there isn't one extremist who doesn't expound with great glee 
and excitement, as justification for their bigotry, on the very things 
that the "nice" ones reject. So, the good people ignore it, the bad 
people think it should be taken literally, and love to quote it, and 
none of them seem to really be paying any attention to any sort of 
"god", when looking for advice or justifications. What use is "either" 
the holy text, or the invisible magic man behind it, then?

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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