I might burn in hell for this ...

The BBQ Pit
21

Well, these people were Canadians. Maybe they will be reincarnated as a higher life form.

KIDDING! I’m KIDDING fer cryin’ out loud.

As Drew Carey says when discussing the Pope and his Popemobile: “If he’s afraid of dying what the hell chance do you and I have?”

The death rate on this planet is high, almost 100%. Chances are that we will not escape this statistic. When and how may or may not be under our control. Some believe that God created the universe. I can create tiny hairs in the sink when I shave in the morning. Some believe that God is eternal. I won’t last a century. There’s not much of a comparison there.

So, what would we have God do with a crippled girl that can hardly walk? Let’s just have Him kill her so we won’t have to look at her and be uncomfortable. There have been our own attempts to elevate the human race to physical perfection, most notably by Adolf Hitler (and others). This is not exactly a ringing endorsement for the efforts and criteria of humankind.

OK, maybe that’s unfair. If not a debate on aesthetics, how about a broader philososophical debate on whether it is better to exist with a different set of physical attributes or to not exist at all. I’m diabetic. Yeah, it sucks to have to inject myself with a needle every morning. So what? Would I rather not live at all? I can laugh, I can make music, I can participate in this silly forum, I can work, I can think. Where would we draw the line? Stephen Hawking can’t talk or walk. Let’s snuff 'im.

I don’t understand why things are. And, I really doubt that I can understand why things work the way the do. Someone compared life to a tapestry, and all we can see is the back of it, which is chaotic and doesn’t seem to make sense. It is only by looking at the front that we can see the pattern. Someone else said that now we can only see things through a dim, distorted mirror, and that only when we see God, that it will become clear.

Oh yeah. This is the Pit, and not GD. So fuck Microsoft and Intel. May the horned demons of Ixpah smite you like the last six.

22

Speakeasy, that could be true. But my theory is much more fun to believe.

23

I think Jean-Paul Sartre said it best when he said:
"La vie est absurde et Dieu n’existe pas."

I’ll have to check his oeuvre for Tornado references though.

24

This seems to have turned into a religious debate even though that really wasn’t my intent. As I have read the posts it has taken my mind off of the grim happenings of Friday a bit.

I should thank some of you for your input using my best pit etiquette…

tbea95 - If there is reincarnation then Canadians would be reincarnated as Canadians, there is no higher form of life that I know of. They don’t call me the uppity fucking Canuck for nothing…

Fredicus - Who are you calling wimp you gnat squicking traumatophiliac?

Freak - I agree with you on the $cientology thing, I had my own share of run ins with those paranoid goat felching bastards. I don’t mean that the felching was done to a paranoid goat (that would be cruel) but that these felchers are some of the most paranoid freaks I have ever had the dipleasure to meet. Maybe I will make it back on the SP list if I keep this up… $cientolgy kills. Thetan rhymes with Satan. Hubbard was an aelurphiliac and wrote fucking awful books. How am I doing?

Archer - I don’t need any excuse for what I do or do not believe in. I am an agnostic because religion doesn’t make sense to me. Neither do you at times.

Lisa - I experience pain on a daily basis and I can be pretty cocky anyways. Suffering just pisses me off and makes me cranky. Joy is good. I have a lot of that too.

If life were eternal we would run out of things to talk about or do. We would eventually get bored, depressed, and eventually start beating the shit out of each other for entertainment.

Who would want to live forever anyways?

There are still a bunch of people who won’t be showing up at work tomorrow morning… there isn’t enough time for anyone to get over something like this.

25

Feynn: I know what the words mean. I just wondered how you can mix the two, since by definition you don’t accept the various holy books as true–if you did it would constitute proof, at least to you.

Maybe it’s just me–I’m what is defined as a “hard” agnostic, so to me it looks like you’re trying to go two different places at the same time.

fredicus said:

Oh yeah? Tell you what, bunky–you ever find any proofthere’s nothing out there, you give me a call.

26

MysterEcks,

=====================

you ever find any proof there’s nothing out there

=====================

Ever considered a career in organised religion, you could be a natural.
ROFLOA

27

Feynn,

I kind of like the Ant Farm theory myself. I think the entity we refer to as God got this planet (universe?)on his 4th Birthday. He played with it for a while, watched us for a while, and we (the humans alive at the time) were more likely to catch a glimpse of him, or evidence of his existance back then. (Maybe he showed the thing to friends and relatives, and that’s where all those other Gods come from).

Lately, we’ve been stuck in the basement with all the other old toys, and we don’t rate a visit anymore. The Universe is not infinate, it just seems that way to some of us sometimes. The real surprises will come when we learn to get beyond the previous limits of human existance. I think he will be as surprised as we will (the humans living at the time) if we manage to get beyond the basement and into the living room, while he’s watching the tube or entertaining guests. It may be amusing to pass some of the other toys in the basement, and see what else has been left there for a while.

Look the the ants in the ant farm - they go about their lives, convinced that the ant farm is the entire world. The kid who used to look in on them everyday, then every month, has now forgotten he ever had that farm. He has now grown up, turned twenty, and will move out of the house soon. To the ants it has been like an eternity, (let’s say there was enough food to allow them to exist). Maybe when the kid is getting his stuff packed, he finds the farm in the basement and is surprised the ants are still alive. He may place it into a more prominent spot and ask his parents to take care of it, or let the ants out, into the back yard. They discover a whole new world, new ants they never met before, etc. I’m sure something similar will happen to the human race on this planet. (Let’s not get other animals into this, we have no idea what they’re thinking).

The way this thing may play out is we may see him more often once we find our way outside our current confinement, or we may never get past the basement door, run out of fuel and cease to exist. I prefer the former. That way we can get this place re-furbished, and maybe a few more million years of a decent existance.
So when the disaters occur I don’t really blame him. I’m still ready to hope (and pray?) that we get noticed, but not demand that he correct all wrongs, and fix all that’s broken (yet). I do wish that we could get along better, so much of the unnecessary suffering could stop. But Natural Disasters are, well, not acts of God.

Live, and let live, until the gas runs out.

28

fredicus said:

Rolling On Floor Leaking Out Anus?

29

You know what I find really funny? That you all say, “Shit happens. It was just weather.” That’s all fine and dandy, and even true. It was just the weather. Now, just for a moment, pretend that was your family out there camping. Some other family member would be comforting you right now saying something like, “God had a reason. God needed so and so in heaven. It’s HIS devine plan.” These family members that comfort you saying these things KNOW it was just the weather and god had nothing to do with it. Yet they still say things like this. That is such bullshit.

The last funeral I went to contained some similar reasoning but it all came from the same person, which made it even more amusing. The deceased became so in a car accident. A totally unexpected surprise attack. During the funeral, the minister kept saying that she was needed for some plan of god’s in a place called heaven. At the same time, he was saying that things like these happen and there is nothing that we can do about it. At the same time saying that this god had planned the whole thing. Weird. First it’s, “Shit happens.” Then it’s, “It was all one big plan.” It’s confused people like this that make me happy I’m not such a nut.

I’m Atheist. At the same time, if I were a Christian, I wouldn’t put so much faith in something that had never presented itself to me. That is to say that, if god could cure all and make everything sunshine and roses, I wouldn’t trust it to anyway. I’d still stop at the RR tracks if the red lights were flashing. I’d still look both ways before crossing a street. I still wouldn’t tie bricks to my ankles and jump off a boat in the middle of the ocean. Religion is, IMO, a matter of trust. And it just isn’t a trust that I have.

30

MisterEcks,

Re :

Agnostics are wimps …

Are you capable of an intellegent answer ??
I laugh at you insultingly whilst you propound the mainstream religious line of crap, yet you claim to be agnostic !!

How can you be agnostic AND accept the " prove it " line ??
Whats to prove ??

You want proof ?? Ask it of those that fed you the line in the first place !!

Schmuck

31

Bill Cosby said, after the murder of his son, that he hated when people came up to him and said it was God’s will. He said that he didn’t believe that. But he does believe that it’s God’s plan that we have free will. And that means that some people will deliberately choose to commit horrible acts of violence, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

I believe we will be held accountable for our acts - good or bad - at our death. And since God doesn’t give us the date and time of our death in advance, by design, we’d better be prepared for judgement day should a freak tornado hit our house tonight.

It’s really a pretty good plan if you think about it.

32

I’m sure the campers appreciated the lesson.

33

hmm. What I don’t understand is if we need those types of lessons and reminders in our life to keep us humble, then when “god” created us, why didn’t he make it so we were naturally humble? I mean, if a universe without consequences made us arrogant, sadistic bastards, then why didn’t he just make a universe without consequences and make us better people. And it seems to me that if he created us, he also created our minds and morals. So I ask, why didn’t he give us better ones?

If a tornado is just weather, and God created weather, then why doesn’t he make better or worse weather?

34

Sigh. I really hate religion sometimes. It sure makes life more confusing, especially when the free-thinkers among us are threatened with eternal damnation because we don’t believe every single thing in the Bible is literally true.

But to answer the OP, I kinda subscribe to the “Oh God!” school of thought, assuming that God is out there as advertised. In the movie, God told John Denver (or was it the guy in the sequel?) that since we have free will, there’s no guarantees that we will all live to a ripe old age or that nothing bad will ever happen. However, God will take care of us after we die. Okay, so it’s a lame example. Beats hitting my head against the brick wall of Life’s Mysteries.

I also hate people who tell you when someone is killed or dies too soon that “God has a plan for him/her”. I have a friend who converted to Mormonism some ten years ago when she met her now-deceased husband. He died in April, and she’s telling me that the members of her church are already asking her if she wants to attend “get-togethers” for widowed members of the church. Jeez, scarcely three months later, and she’s already thinking, “Oh well, he had a good life, time to move on, why grieve when he’s with the Lord?” I just can’t get my mind around that, for some reason. It makes religious faith look like a convenient way to rationalize the fact that one didn’t really like his/her spouse that much to begin with!

35

Having delusions of adequacy, fredicus? Well, as I will demonstrate, that’s not the only thing you believe without cause.

I’ll see if I can explain it to you…but I may have to use some big words, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to follow it.

Example #1–MysterEcks (“ME”) versus Theist (“T”)

T: “There is/are God/Gods/Spirits/Something out there.”

ME: “Yeah? Prove it.”

T: “Well, the Bible/Koran/Torah/Whatever says–”

ME: "No, I don’t mean tell me what somebody told you, I mean prove it.

(The conversation inevitably deteriorates from there, since all T can do is parrot hearsay and cite ridiculous stories. This frequently ends with T resentfully consigning my immoral soul to Hell–don’t ask me why some of them think they have that power–and getting even madder when I snicker over it.)

Example #2–MysterEcks (“ME”) versus Atheist (“A”)

(Pay attention here, fredicus.)

A: “There is nothing out there.”

ME: “Yeah? Prove it.”

A: “I don’t have to prove anything. I’m not asserting anything.”

ME: “Yes you are. You’re asserting that there’s nothing out there.”

A: “But it’s obvious–”

ME: "No, I don’t mean tell me what you thought up all by yourself, I mean prove it.

(The conversation inevitably deteriorates from there, since all A can do is claim that since T can’t strap wings onto his arms and fly it means airplanes can’t possibly exist. A is unable to consign my immoral soul to Hell–which must be frustrating–though he occasionally mutters “Goddammit!” during the conversation, and gets even madder when I snicker over it. Dumber examples of the species will occasionally claim I must be some sort of theist since I decline to accept their illogic.)

In other words, theists and atheists are opposite sides of the same coin. Both have decided they know something they can’t possibly know, on the basis of nothing they can prove. Atheists have a lot in common with theists, whether either of them likes it or not.

I’d like to thank you, though, fredicus–you have provided an excellent example of why some atheists are as bad as some theists when it comes to going off the deep end if somebody dares to not believe exactly as they believe. And you’ve given me the opportunity to piss off nearly everybody in the thread–how can I not appreciate that?

(Incidentally, you might wanna lose the double punctuation. It’s just ducky for awhile, but it looks pretty stupid after 7th grade.)

36

I have wondered about this many times myself.

Yesterday, a tourist from Pennsylvania attending a religious conference with his wife and children was hit by a 25 lb piece of concrete falling off a building. He’s in critical condition.

The irony didn’t escape me as the news reported that the entire religious convention would be praying for him. I mean, this is a totally random act, not attempted murder (as in the case of Ennis Cosby), nor weather. This horrible freak accident happened to a super religious guy with a family. Oh, but I suppose according to the Christians it’s not God’s fault - it’s the building’s!

Doesn’t sound like the kind of god I’d worship. And the responses above have make me even more perplexed.

37

Bravo MysterEcks! A man of my own heart! I think of Atheism as being the new religion. They act like science is an unbreakable law. Shit, we don’t even know what science is yet. We don’t know half of what there is to know, and they’re making assumptions about universe. Their faith is just as blind as the others. A blind man insulting another blind man’s lack of insight.

Besides, when you get right down to it, no one can prove anything. And when you don’t know anything, the possibilities are infinite. And when you know half of everything, that infinity is only sightened somewhat.

38

Freak, I find myself agreeing with you (again).

Those who claim to have all the answers (Athiests) and rag on those of us who acknowledge that there are still more questions (Agnostics) really chaps my ass.

Now, where did I leave that ointment?

39

Over on the nightstand. But christ man, clean the applicator this time. Ewwwwww…

40

Cogitoergosum:

Now what fun would that be???

If there is a god (I think so) then he is a sentient being and would get bored if we humans were unthinking creatures. How fun would childeren be if they never had their own thought? If they did everything you told them to without thinking and never had an independent thought or got in trouble they would not be much fun.

Theory:
God creates disaster in all forms so we can learn. People die that is a fact. How they die doesn’t reflect on them in any way but and it is sad that not everybody dies in their sleep when they are 120 but agina what fun would that be. I like the fact that we never know what is going to happen next.

BTW - It doesn’t matter that the campers died because this is my dream and they really didn’t exist anyways i am just conjuring them from my imagination. Oh yeah if any body prove me wrong I will give you a cookie.