Ebola bites back

[Sean Hayden]

I rejected religion as a kid. It was too obvious to me that it couldn't be real. "Point to where in my body you think the soul exist" kind of thing.

But I did give religion a shot my first time doing any real jail time. I forgive myself though. I was a young white guy whose mom had made it out of poverty to the burbs suddenly surrounded by real hard asses.

It helps too that on subsequent visits I didn't return to religion. Hey, it didn't work the first time right?

[Sean Hayden]

No new information! --bleh, thankfully I haven't run into a single open creationist at school. There can't be too many going for a science degree.

My cousin, now retired, but a PE teacher and all round bollock ache born againer managed to remain a YECist all his life. He’s a king sized cunt to boot.

I remember how it felt to discover someone close to me took the bible literally. I still can't believe it. We had a fight because of Noah, Noah man, fucking Noah, you know the guy with a big boat? Apparently he really did save all the animals.

[laklak]

My nephew is about a curmudgeonly an atheist as there is, but his wife is an evangelical. She's toned it down a lot, not nearly as bad as her parents who stopped going to one church because they allowed a guitar during hymns and it doesn't say anything about musical instruments in the Babble. I just don't get it, I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut.

[Sean Hayden]

Those guys are the worst. I'd kill myself if I found out I was like that. What's the point of living? Everything's a sin.

Can you imagine the shit their pastors hear? I heard a pastor complaining once --begging really-- for the men in his congregation to stop equating lust with sexual attraction. Apparently loads of guys were seeking constant forgiveness for being horny or turned on by a woman! "I'm a horrible person. I looked at her butt and I wanted to fuck!" --yeah me too dumbass, she's got a great butt! Thank god!

[Svartalf]

I rejected religion as a kid. It was too obvious to me that it couldn't be real. "Point to where in my body you think the soul exist" kind of thing.

But I did give religion a shot my first time doing any real jail time. I forgive myself though. I was a young white guy whose mom had made it out of poverty to the burbs suddenly surrounded by real hard asses.

It helps too that on subsequent visits I didn't return to religion. Hey, it didn't work the first time right?

Well, I was indoctrinated into the religion from an early age, and it took me a long time to start doubting that God was Good and Loving. Basically, a life of b ad knocks got me there. Once I was there, I still was not fully ready to renounce it, I thought maybe, just maybe, that I was being put to some kind of testing, and maybe I should become a priest (well, it's not like I looked like I could become anything meaningful anyway)... so I read, really read the New Testament (the Gedeons had done a distributions of NT+psalms volumes in my uni, so I had the material to do the study)... and it was then that I really got that chretinity was absurdity piled upon nonsense... basically, you had to be stupid or self deluded to believe in that stuff... should have guessed that before, I had had the same experience when I read the Book of Mormon and concluded it was quite an egregious forgery.

So my conclusion was that either there was no god at all, and that if there was one, it was not conform to biblical preachings and unworthy of worship.

I'm still at that stage, having had no real proof of the nonexistence of supernatural things... though I've also utterly failed to find any evidence of their existence. I tried the God delusion, and was dispappointment with the Dawk's discourse, so I guess I'm still on the fence with the other agnostics.

I'll know if there is an after life soon enough, in the meantime, I try to make my earthly one as pleasant as possible.

[Svartalf]

My nephew is about a curmudgeonly an atheist as there is, but his wife is an evangelical. She's toned it down a lot, not nearly as bad as her parents who stopped going to one church because they allowed a guitar during hymns and it doesn't say anything about musical instruments in the Babble. I just don't get it, I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut.

Don't get it either, if it's not expressly forbidden (and let's face it the babble says nothing definite on the conducting of holy celebration), there's no reason to nix what Jesus did not, if it can enhance the office and celebration, it's ad maiorem dei gloriam and thus not only permissible, but laudable...

I wonder how the lady's parents take to, oh the horror, Xian rock...

[Svartalf]

Those guys are the worst. I'd kill myself if I found out I was like that. What's the point of living? Everything's a sin.

Can you imagine the shit their pastors hear? I heard a pastor complaining once --begging really-- for the men in his congregation to stop equating lust with sexual attraction. Apparently loads of guys were seeking constant forgiveness for being horny or turned on by a woman! "I'm a horrible person. I looked at her butt and I wanted to fuck!" --yeah me too dumbass, she's got a great butt! Thank god!

Problem withj that is that there's actual babble text on it, Jesus hisself saying that he who has looked at a woman with lust has committed the sin in thought...so the self flagellating morons have actual grounds for their attitude.

[laklak]

They justify banning instruments because somewhere it says something like "lift up your voices in praise", but it doesn't mention guitars. And certainly not a Stratocaster.

[Svartalf]

well, a capella is fine, but there's no interdiction of having instrumental support for the voices...

and where is that command to raise voices in praise? Gospel? epistles? OT?

[Sean Hayden]

Those guys are the worst. I'd kill myself if I found out I was like that. What's the point of living? Everything's a sin.

Can you imagine the shit their pastors hear? I heard a pastor complaining once --begging really-- for the men in his congregation to stop equating lust with sexual attraction. Apparently loads of guys were seeking constant forgiveness for being horny or turned on by a woman! "I'm a horrible person. I looked at her butt and I wanted to fuck!" --yeah me too dumbass, she's got a great butt! Thank god!

Problem withj that is that there's actual babble text on it, Jesus hisself saying that he who has looked at a woman with lust has committed the sin in thought...so the self flagellating morons have actual grounds for their attitude.

You know how it goes though. Pastor says that's just a poor translation based on the tendency to view the Greek as the original. But if we take Jesus as a first century Jew and compare his teachings with contemporaries, then we find the sin of lust here is closer to idolatry than mere sexual attraction, yadda, yadda.

[Sean Hayden]

I did say I gave it a fair shot, even read the Torah in Hebrew for awhile.

[Svartalf]

N ever learned enough Hebrew to go visit Israel, let alone read the Torah... and given the closeness of the Septuagint to the original, I'm not sure the gospels are so badly translated.

[Sean Hayden]

Oh, I don't doubt there are serious problems with a lot of what the Jesus/Paul as a Jew crowd think the bible actually says. Everyone's got an interpretation and an agenda.

[Svartalf]

problem is that Paul, and possibly Peter too, fucked royally with what Jesus preached... Paul nearly wanted to convert the Gentiles to Jewishness, even if later councils nixed on that.

[Rum]

I rejected religion as a kid. It was too obvious to me that it couldn't be real. "Point to where in my body you think the soul exist" kind of thing.

But I did give religion a shot my first time doing any real jail time. I forgive myself though. I was a young white guy whose mom had made it out of poverty to the burbs suddenly surrounded by real hard asses.

It helps too that on subsequent visits I didn't return to religion. Hey, it didn't work the first time right?

I rejected it too - which is to say I grew up in a vaguely C of E family where I was taught to say my prayers every night and went to Church once a year. My parents were, for the time, more or less agnostic but religion was part of the weave of society then, even if it was fading.

In my case it was the full 'conversion' thing when I was 16 and belonged to an outdoor activity youth organisation which was really a cover for evangelical hijinks.

It didn't last long thank goodness. Even so as an 'apostate' I was informed that the way to heaven was now barred to me for life. Told by the people who had earlier told me that god was Love.