By the way, I’m becoming increasingly jealous at all this talk of gay relatives. As a Unitarian Universalist, liberal, progressive, tolerant, loving person I do not know of a single member of my family who is gay who I can publicly show love for, march in parades with, and defend and support. It just isn’t fair!
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
Raphael, I’m available as a loaner-lesbian through PFLAG, for those poor unfortunates without gay relatives such as yourself!
Sorry to say this about your family, digigal1, but if that’s how they act after they became born-again, they need to be re-born-again until they get it right.
Your child(ren) may (God willing?) be gay, so there’s still hope.
Too damn many laws trying to protect us already. If you need those labels(I’m sure you’re joking) you need to thicken up your skin.
As for Gild, same thing. Too damn many labels. We can’t protect you from everything. If you had a label, what would you have done, not review the album? If you buy an album, and the band starts preaching a message you don’t like, don’t buy another one of their albums. You don’t have to have the government protect you from everything. Or do you?
One of the guy’s that works for me used to hope(half kidding) his daughter would grow up to be gay, so he wouldn’t have to pay for a wedding. So much for that idea. Seems like gays are hell bent on getting married these days.
OK, if you’re “sure” I’m “joking”, what’s the point of the comment? Is it for the benefit of your less astute conservatives who may not be “sure” I’m “joking”?
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
I only vant that she should be happy. 
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
Thanks! Consider yourself adopted.
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
Bye, later.
Andrew
im Lds ( latter-day-saint) a.k.a. Morman
on south african television, starting in september, there will be a ‘B’ warning added to the well known list of 'V’iolence, 'N’udity, 'S’ex and 'L’anguage
this ‘B’ will be to warn viewers of Blasphemous Content
so, there will be a warning to indicate that in this following program, the existence of god will be questioned
this is the god NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY PROVE EXISTS!! and i’ll be warned about program-content that may not be based on the assumption that god exists
too many labels?
by far
lose all of them, or play ball and give me the labels i want as u give the rebo’s the labels they want
it’s only fair
damn straight i wouldn’t have reviewed it
and it’s not a case of buying one album and not buying another
not with this christianity crap
i’ll be up on stage at their next gig demanding my money back
while of course the labelling is a little far-fetched, i certainly agree upon the turnoff of a blatant christian preaching.
have any of you non-belivers noticed what i like to call “christian nice” (as opposed to “normal nice”)? by this i mean you feel that a hardcore christian is not being nice out of sheer kindness but out of an insatiable need to spread christianity like a plague. this is something that really makes me angry.
but also i want to say a quick thing about the vegan statement, just because i think it needs to be said. i have been vegan for two and a half years and im not the preaching type. but nevertheless i am grouped with the peta crowd (while i would not consider myself extreme on the issue, since i dont preach my beliefs, i certainly support everything peta does). people will tell me how annoying those people are and then immediately after interrogate me on my eating habits and tell me what i should be eating and why what i eat is wrong. so in short i cant go a single day (literally, during the school year) without being harassed (people sneaking chicken onto my plate, trying to give me gelatin candy while insisting they checked the ingredients, and putting butter or cheese on something i was going to eat merely out of spite). the next time you see someone with brochures featuring a dead cow or something, rather than whining about the three and a half seconds of discomfort they may have caused, just remember that they are just returning the favor, in a much, much reduced fashion.
my dislike for religion basically stems out of the restrictions it places on intellectual advancement (this only applies to some people, not everyone). think joyce. i had a mormon friend (no offence to the mormon crowd) who i simply could not argue with about anything because any evidence i offered he would throw away because he did not believe it. in one case, we were arguing about vegan/vegetarian diets (see above) and i was talking about human evolution over the last tens of thousands of years, and he stopped me and said that since he believed the world was created six thousand (or however many) years ago, this evidence meant nothing to him. so people like this essentially create their own little world where everything they make up is true and outside influences cannot gain entrance at all. how can one argue with something so irrationable? its impossible.
“christian nice” aka “passive aggression”? most christians i’ve met suffer from this because they’re inwardly frustrated that the things they force themselves to believe are true actually have no logical grounds for being. like trip was saying with the guy and the evolution, although i don’t claim him to be passive agressive or anything. but if christian ideology could be proven with logic, this common case would be eliminated.
then again, you’re not much better off if you rely on science for everything. then you’re just depressed, as opposed to depressed and replacing your depression with fabricated beliefs which result in constant inward frustration and outward aggression.
what’s funny though is that people who believe in stuff like christianity still subscribe to scientific laws, and people who believe in science still subscribe to some form of ethics. both of these people have a very loose grasp on these things, and when questioned with reason (having to respond with the reasons of their applied doctrine) they give an answer that supports them not supporting the said thing (ethics, science). but there is a point where these things touch on the same plane, or else they would be totally incompatible with each other.
i would propose that ethics are inextricably linked with logical operations of causality used by science, which is why this situation arises, and i also would have to correct trip in that the restrictions placed on intellectual advancement only come from religions whose doctrine wholly relies upon an individual’s “believing in it” and not “logically comprehending its truth”. not all religions are founded on belief, but i think all of them employ some sort of “belief” or “faith”, even when logic is present. the only difference is through one you can know what things are true and what things are not true, and through the other you get “christian nice” when you let it run your existence.
For the record, because us lefty, atheist, veggie eating weirdos have to stick together, I was, of course, being tongue in check with the vegan comment. I have a lot of respect for vegans, and sometimes, though not often, wish I were one. As for the being picked on, my daughter takes a bit of flack at school from her friends, a) for not believing in god (hmmm, wonder where she got that?), b) not eating meat (hmmm, wonder where she got that?), and, believe it not the biggest abuse is a result of c) not drinking soda (now that I have no idea where she got! 
)
Cheers,
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
I think you are trying to psycho analyze how Christians must feel Zach, and in the process you are way off base… Christians do not force themselves to believe, we simply do believe and we do not need logical grounds to back up what we believe because that is not necessary for our faith based lifestyle. Now some people might get aggresive in debate, but that happens on both sides of the fence.
That’s true personal faith as I understand it. There’s alot of false faith out there as well. The kind where people for one reason or another conciously decide to believe something which they actually don’t. Someone feel obligated to buy the whole religious package to fit in with the crowd at the temple of their choice. Then it must be frustrating to be confronted.
On a related note, “Life of Pi” is a really good book. Since people who read this thread obviously have some interest in religion, i thought I’d recommend it.
Zod, that is an interesting pair of quotes from John Kerry. What is your intention for using them as your signature?
I can guess but would rather you tell me.
Nah, go ahead and guess, I’ve already had to explain it in about 4 other threads… 