The list gets longer
Offline Raised in the northeast as a Roman Catholic and even served as an altar boy. Never had one bad experience in the church (I know what comes to mind with catholic altar boys) but also never believed one word of the b.s. they were serving. Just ignored and occassionally laughed at religion for most of my adult life. Now, though, I have a couple kids and this has changed my perspective on a lot of things, religious "tolerance" being one of them. Further complicating my situation is the fact that I live in the south now and JEEzus seems to be everywhere. I guess I feel like I need to be open about my disbelief for the sake of my kids. If even one person had had the nerve to call shenanigans on religion when I was growing up, it would have made my own childhood a lot less confusing and maybe even more productive. Anyway, glad to introduce myself and I look forward to exchanging thoughts with you in the future.
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Welcome Mjolnir!
Hope you find this to be a place you can hang out
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Welcome!
This is place is AWESOME, we have smokin' hot babes in blue scarfs and everything!
Welcome!
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Thanks! (and I like the scarf, too)
Welcome, and g'day from Australia.
I don't think we have anywhere in Australia quite as bad as your South, altho where I live in Brisbane, in the south-east corner of an Australian state which is mostly closer to the equator than Florida, we have had periods of right-wing governments which were strongly Christian, with fundy leanings.
We did have for a while an education 'minister' ( what we call the politician in charge of education, as in the UK) who was trying to get Creationism taught in government schools.
I think that the general population was never quite as extreme as the politicians.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Thanks, Bob. I read some of your posts on other threads and really liked what you had to say. Having not traveled much outside the U.S., I am always interested in life in other countries. SPeaking of which, I recently read that Australia has surpassed the U.S. as the world's most obese nation, so congratulations on that. Judging by your picture, that's not a problem for you, though. And, as you can now see from mine, my life as an infidel superhero precludes me from getting significantly out of shape, too. Anyway, nice to meet you and I look forward to chatting with you soon.
Hello, Mjolnir. Welcome to the boards.
I love your screen-name. Though I suppose that your screen-name will have to kill my screen-name when Ragnarok comes.....
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Bob, I take it Australia is not as religious as the U.S. and not as Christian?
Welcome OP. Spidey is cool!! Glad you had the sense to dump Catholicism when you were young and tell those demoniacs in the south that Jesus NEVER existed!! See the links in my sig. for PROOF!!
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
Hey, thanks.
I do have to work at it a bit do keep in shape, as do my brother and sister, by consciously watching the diet and exercise where possible.
I have been a lot leaner, when I was regularly cycling to work, but now I am working from home I have to take time out to go for a ride or walk.
But yes, when I look around, it is a bit sad the number of really obese people around.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I don't think we have such a fundy leaning population, and are generally a bit more relaxed about things than the US.
I think we are a bit lower in proportion of Christians.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
bob, i think i've asked eloise this before, but are the kiwis just more crazy religious than the aussies or what? how does a guy like ray comfort happen? and i'm pretty sure i've seen several other kiwi evangelists.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Jormungander, should I be obliged to kill you at Ragnarok, I feel pretty confident you would simply arise from the dead after three days anyways so...what the hell, let's just skip that step. I'm pleased to meet you as well.
Welcome to the forum, spiderdad!
Lol.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Thanks. What kind of bird is that?
I don't know off-hand.
The most divisive and authoritarian right-wing government leader we had in my state, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, came from New Zealand. I think he was strongly religious, his father was a Lutheran pastor.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
It's a woodland kingfisher.
I just stole the picture from some random website.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I'm a dual national - born in New Zealand immigrated to Australia when I was eleven. Given my dad was a fundy minister in New Zealand I got a first hand view of the god thing there growing up. In the mid-60s through the 1970s there was a wave of evangelism across NZ. Billy Graham concerts might have been partly to blame. All the NZ fundy ministers tend to be of a certain age - 45-55 and that conforms with the time when things were most full on. I spent my whole young childhood going to rallys and christian camps which were a way for parents to unload the kids for a few weeks. It was very kiwi - very outdoorsy - plenty of singing and then hunting for eels or a possum-shoot or jumping in the river, canoing or whatever.
Interestingly, New Zealand is now among the least christian nations. The latest figures put atheists at 40 per cent of the population and the theist numbers there include a large contingent of jedi and satanists - New Zealand has more jedi and satanists per head than any other country on earth. You'd think most those who nominate Jedi are taking the piss. I nominated Jedi in the 2001 census in Australia for that reason. In comparison Australia has 70 per cent believers and I think the U.S. is 85 per cent.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Hi, Mjolnir!
Hmf.
You are both thieves of a culture that doesn't belong to you. There's no way you can understand it without living with the conditions that created it in the first place. Romance is okay. Fantasy is fine. Drinkin' wine spo-de-odee. Read a book or two. Just don't confuse that with the conditions that created the myths in the first place... and the models for interpreting them and implementing their "message" into a reality of life and work out in the human life in the real world.
(Fucking hell I hate people who romanticize the vikings!!!)
Does none of you have any roots of your own? Can you not please - pretty please, even - go and find some other culture to sodomize?
We - the Norse people - have lived in our lands for thousands upon thousands of years. We "grow" here. Who the fuck are you?
What the fuck do you want?
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
You might want to bite those Prozac in half from now on, dude. If that doesn't work, the try to "grow" a sense of humor. You're not that important. Sorry.
How far do you want to take this attitude?
Personally my ancient arse is highland scots - so if any of you paddle boys come near in our women in your bloody rowing boats I'm going to flick your arse with a wet beach towel.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Alright, alright, I give in. Take the tall blue girl with the long tail...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
My nationalistic pride gets touchy sometimes.
Like if for instance I was a Sioux indian (haha pun) and some rednecks were playing that they were you.
(Knowing, of course, fuck all about the reality of "you"... only what the Hollywood fantasy tells them.)
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
I laughed at religion/spirituality for many years after turning 18, and about 8 years before it. Now I'm mostly disturbed by human attempts to destroy each other over some amazingly trivial differences.
Also, I'm about as disgusted with the Catholic religion (but not the believers) as anyone can possibly be (and NOT because I'm an American Southerner.) There are days when I wish de debbil would consume the RAT-pope and send him screaming and burning all the way down to the City of Dis (Dante's Inferno). Then I watch Scarface and I feel better again.
Seriously, has anyone done a study on this? Aborted fetuses go to hell and wait for their mothers while 'there'? Book of Leviticus? How many drug addicts, cat houses, gambling casinos, snake oil salesmen, fake Stigmata hands, "FALSE Prophets", and Columbian Drug Cartels have arisen on the seemingly infinite blunders of the RCC's Vaticant? (pun!)
Ahhh... no skin off my nose, really.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)