ivan

shit - arch is right - i shoudl stay the hell away from anything involving religion - it was the one rant of my teenage years it took a decade to shut off. i don't know if there's ever been a constructive argument about religion. i think the horror of being forced to sit through mass after mass for 18 long damn years did irreparable damage. it bugs me that i still have all that brain space filled up w/ all that garbage, that i can walk back into a catholic church and still remember when to kneel, to stand, when to break out my wallet and what to say after snack-time. so, why not lighten things up w/ another dead guy words? a guy certainly cooler that charlton heston, who had no end of funny things to say about religion and as such had the best attitude for countenacing its silliness, a man who wrote a "wholly remarkable book...more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? " some douglas admas' pearls: "He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife. " "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. " "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." "He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." "I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it." "If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves. " "The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate." "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" "I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." "If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian."

"summertime rolls" by jane's addiction Fell into A sea of grass And disappeared among The shady blades... Children all Ran over me Screaming tag! You are the one! He trips her as Her sandals fail She says stop! I'm a girl... Whose fingernails are made Of mother's pearl... Yellow buttercup Helicopters Orange buttercat Chasing after The crazy bee Mad about somebody... Me and my girlfriend Don't wear no shoes Her nose is painted pepper Sunlight... She loves me I mean it's serious As serious can be... She sings a song and I listen to what it says: If you want a friend Feed any animal... There was so much space I cut me a piece With some fine wine It brought peace to my mind In the summertime... And it rolled Summer.... oh... Oh.... the summertime rolls

and yet one of the most fantastic examples of christian horseshit came during the reformation as christians slaughtered each other and their children by the bushels in the name of discerning "true" christians from "christian pretenders." you can't be a christian and believe in fighting. ever. for any reason. and so pretty much every christian that ever lived was a "christain pretender."

why is it the religion tangents that alwasy get this notable nod?

smiff - 5 gallon buckets?

it's too late!

how about a mohel at your next bris?

Though they may both be "good guys", it remains that, mentally, Bill is an adult of consideration and TTK a deluded, troubled adolescent. but have you met bill?!? to say someone is deluded is to imply there is a proper way to understand the universe, which is, itself, a pretty adolescent idea at any rate, i'm bored to death by fucking white-bread honkies - both them boys are high-powered mutants, bog's own proto-types...

good lord - i'm all for the ladies letting the girls free, but damn, heather looks like an albino zulu-princess w/o a bra!

i realize this, but like your mama probably said, you're judged by the company you keep. christians have tolerated and even embraced enough assholes in their time to have ruined their potential good name forever. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude the central message of christ is "be nice to everybody" - that we should all be pacifists, a laudable and noble idea, and one that damn near 99% of christians hypocritically reject as "unrealistic" and yet still have the balls to claim they're "christian" i have no problems w/ the amish or the quakers - but then that's b/c they're actually pretty true christians, eh?

i'd say quite the opposite: if anyone believes christians love thy neighbors, they're fucking idiots. even the "idiots guide to history" has ample evidence of christians raping, pillaging and destroying every goddamn thing around them. the general rule for christians is: be nasty little bastards like men always have, but cloak it in a lot of happy horseshit. oh, and be offended when the heathens have the temerity to notice your hypocrism. that said, i'm willing to concede there have been rare instances of christians actually turning the other cheek and being something other than aggressive assmunches. and i'm not saying aethists are any better at being "good" people - they're just more honest about being assholes.

did someone say something about beacon? i can clamber round on friday after school (3 pm)...

that wasn't the experience of AIM members in the '70s - still, i'd concede your larger point, of course we don't use tanks to run over protestors on a regular basis (did shoot up some protestors at kent state though, and that whole anti-civil rights thing in the south was a weeee bit violent).

i'm afraid i'll need a picture of said heather before i can agree to this

again, this isn't the fault of communism, but the thousands of years of acquiesence the chinese have had for totalitarian governments

is it me or is this exactly how "mein kampf" reads?

china's hardly your archetype communist state - for fucks sake, they've abandoned all the central economic concepts of communism and just kept the despotic elements that were in keeping w/ their ancient traditions of government fearing communism is weak-sauce. history has clearly shown that communism doesn't create an international brotherhood. the communist nations of vietnam, cambodia, china and russia all fought wars amongst themselves and only managed anything like cooperation when being attacked by the west. china isn't funding the cominterm like the ussr in the 20s/30s. mainstream belief in communism died there after the cultural revolution just like in russia after stalin. china's not trying to do shit but get rich now (whihc i'll grant, can still put our nations on a collision coure, since the lord jesus has clearly given us the right to the riches first).

bring yer surf boards! hmmm - wake up ball-early only to slog aroudn in the deep, gloppy avy snow or climb sun-kist rock in a t-shirt while drinking beers? there's a tough decision to make...

what is your worst fear of china? do you fear that they will become like the ussr in the 20s and 30s and promise a world wide exportation of communism and the overthrow of all capitalist nations? i detest what the chinese have done in tibet, but how is it qualitativly different from what we did in annexing all of the american west? the powerful alwasy fuck the weak, and we americans have been quick to use the 2 fundemental forces you refer to (force and propaganda) plenty in our past.

It was amoral atheists who infected the world with this and other genocides, some of whom *were* raised Christian (or Jewish in the case of Stalinist Russia), but hardly were practicing believers, but go on and delude yourself. I'd like to see far more good people of faith than faithless atheists who arrogantly say "fuck j****". No, fuck you. i'll grant you that stalin and mao were aethists and monsters, but history has a much longer list of moses and jesus-lovers who were every bit as bad; folks who sincerely ascribe themselves to a hocus-pocus religion have wrecked more havoc on this earth than the enlightened few who have cast aside the boogeymen of their primitive ancestors. the bottom line is to fear anyone who thinks they have the whole world figured out for themselves and everybody else in it - aetheistic, aggressive communism was a relgion in that sense. most christians seem incapable of seperating their belief in the big-guy in the bathrobe from the corollary belief that, being part of the faithful, they then have the right to tell me how to live my life. i'm an apathetic aestheist - the universe means nothing more than what i choose it to mean, there is no great calling, and i don't give a shit what you believe in or how you live you're life, just leave me the fuck alone about it.

and this thread is now the excuse for me to impart the obscure bit of trivia i have crawling around in my head - today's the 63 anniversary of the liberation of the buchenwald concentration camp (and i doubt a single one of them would have given a shit what anyone in this board had to say about anything)

Hey you mindless, ignorant, moron. Ask these guys what they think of your comment above! Better yet, ask me: it was 2 faced bullshit christians that did that shit to the jews and who make up the majority of the current administration - we could use a few more fuck jesus/moses/ahuramazda types.

"it's made out of people - people!"

on the plus side, a return to cold temps after a big warm spell oughta bring out some more alpine ice to play on