ouisey-so, you’re a double agent? That’s pretty cool!
I never would have thought.
I do know of people trolling there, actually-but I won’t say who. I wouldn’t mind posting there for a good discussion-but it scared me when they banned a woman who was saying she was being battered-and they said it was because she didn’t sign her name.
Those guys over there are are scary!
SSSHHHHH! Don’t blow my cover! That message board is ruled with an iron fist. If they do see me posting on this site, they will ban me, and I’ll have to come back as another incarnation. The moderators especially love to ban the posters who argue against them a little too effectively. I’d love to see Polycarp’s reply to some of their posts, but he wouldn’t last long on the board.
Once in a while, you’ll get people posting that take the whole submissive wife deal a little too far…even for the patriarchs. These are the people who think they ought to be able to discipline their wives by spanking them, or whatever. I think the patriarch board is worried about getting too weird in that regard, so they ban them. Really, I’d love to talk to them, especially the women who think they ought to be disciplined. It sounds kinda kinky.
Guin, isn’t this dangerously close to the Ms. forum fiasco here?
Guin, ouisey, you think maybe I ought to head over there and look into things? I have the Y chromosome to be eligible to post! :eek:
As long as they don’t post any links back to here, or mention our board over there, I guess we’re safe. Still… It seems a bit risky, and we don’t need another invasion like what happend with the Lft Bhind board.
It aint just one sect, kid. What I hate about religion is that it is a really easy thing for bigoted, chauvinistic simpletons to latch onto and therefore promote ignorance. Naturally, there are exceptions, but it is this potential (which is so often realized) that I hate. Once you decide you can’t be wrong you’ve done gone and fucked up.
DaLovin’ Dj
I think we should send Polycarp over there as an undercover agent. We could get him sunglasses and a walkie-talkie set. It would be cool. Guin, d’you think Geoff and I should visit that site, too? Not that we could do one-thousanth as well as Poly. 
Well, heck, I’m a man, maybe I should head over.
Esprix
“Gentleman dopers, Poly and 'Sprix,
Doomed from here to Eternity,
Lord, have mercy on such as we…”
Maybe it’s tough love 
Do they have this smiley on their board? ;j
You wouldn’t last a week!
Trust me-it’s NOT the Ms. boards. I can’t see anyone from there stumbling over here.
Well, at least not someone who isn’t in intelligence!
Oh shit. Poly, Esprix-that would be WILD!
Why do they ban people who post at other boards? That’s pretty scary?
I saw some of the elders saying that their wives should stop listening to their neighbors.
I really liked the woman though who thought she had no authority over her sons.
ouisey-rest assured, your secret is safe with me.
Just don’t tell them about SAAN.
Polycarp, Esprix, I’ve got the fedora. Which of you brave courageous souls wants to wear it? I don’t think my trenchcoat would fit. Although, maybe if I lowered my voice a bit (I’ve sung tenor) and stuck with the initials . . . Hmmmm . . . . .
CJ
(Charles Jones?)
What happened with the Ms. boards? I ask, because patriarch posters were informed that posters from the Ms. board were trolling us, led by the spirit of Satan. I thought they were just asking questions, but there you go.
On the patriarch board, if you’re seen as not being Christian, you will be booted out. What’s christian is up to the moderators. An un-christian thing to do would be to post on the SD message boards.
It is very scary the amount of ignorance that exists on those boards, but that’s what you get when you’re raised not to think for yourself, as many of the women on there are.
Sue
Scary.
I think the Ms. posters were just lurking or something-I’ll look it up. And then someone went to their site, and were banned for going there.
I wonder what they would think if a Catholic posted there…
I was on a site that recently, someone was angry because I used the Rosary in my sig-they were offended by “Mary, Mother of God”…Um, duh? You’re Christian-you believe Jesus is God and all that-so wouldn’t Mary be the Mother of God, if you believe that?
Some people…
Jesus, Esprix, that was the funniest thing I’ve heard all day! 
You’ll have to change your sig, though, if you go into this intelligence carreer. 
Polycarp, have a peek over there, eh?
And I thought I knew some crazy religious folks…
**dalovindj wrote:
It aint just one sect, kid. What I hate about religion is that it is a really easy thing for bigoted, chauvinistic simpletons to latch onto and therefore promote ignorance. Naturally, there are exceptions, but it is this potential (which is so often realized) that I hate. Once you decide you can’t be wrong you’ve done gone and fucked up.**
So, because there’s the potential for abuse, you can hate ALL religions?
So, because some corporations can potentially be abused and illegally manipulate the market, we ought to hate all corporations?
Because some members of a minority group will abuse the law and rob or kill or rape others, we ought to hate ALL members of that minority?
That’s the logic you’re using and I find it disgusting.
**MGibson wrote:
Well, does he? He killed the first born son of every Egyptian in what is now celebrated as Passover. He destroyed two cities full of people because they were wicked sparing only a handful of people one of which was turned into a pillar of salt because she dared to turn back and look at the city. Hell, he wiped out all of humanity except for a handfull in a great flood! Based on that I’d say that the God of the old testament certainly didn’t love everyone.**
You might want to try accusing the J/C/I God of some actual crimes. Everything you mentioned there is a myth. There’s no evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood or even the final Plague. All but a handful of followers don’t believe in the truthfullness of those stories.
That’s a crock, and you know it. The majority of Chrisitians believe that the miracles of the Bible happened. Face it, if you don’t have miracles, you don’t have God.
As anyone who has read my posts, I find religion, all religion, to be a relic of a primitive past that humanity can do without. It is possible to practice a kind, merciful, and charitable system of ethics without subscribing to anthropomorphic personifications of the forces of nature. As far as religion encourages irrational belief in the supernatural, I find it to be a brake retarding the progress of the human race.
I dunno about a majority, gobear, but I’d have to agree with the tenor of your post that a large proportion do. The annoying part is that these stories are, to any intelligent reader, believer or not, clearly myth – which is of course not to say that there was not a historical analogue to what is reported, but the way in which it is reported is so mythopoeic that insistence on its literality simply drives me berserk.
I’m curious as to how you would frankly evaluate my POV, which suggests that there may be an entity with total awareness who was the instigator of all of nature and who pervades it, guiding it predominantly if not exclusively through the laws governing how it operates. I grant that my conception is anthropomorphic; being a human rather than a thranx, I use a conception of what He is like based in human terms rather than thranx terms. But I’m aware that my conception fails to report the totality of what and who He is. (AFAIK, it’s not for nothing that his name translates to I AM; aware existence is the essence of what He is.)
Historical analogues? (Shrugs shoulders). Most of the events of the OT, such as the Exodus, have yet to be borne out by external evidence. That’s not to say that one is prohibited from believing in Moses and the miracles of the OT. It seems to me that if you take away the miracles of the Bible, especially the Resurrection, you take away the raison d’etre* of the Christian faith. Certainly, that’s what the apostle Paul taught.
There may be such an entity–after all, I can’t conclusively demonstrate that he doesn’t exist. But I can examine the claims made for such a being’s existence and then see if they warrant credit.
“God loves all his creatures, but if you make him angry, he’ll seal you in a fiery inferno for all eternity. God is all good and all powerful, but he can’t or won’t prevent natural disasters, children getting cancer, and so forth.” Frankly, there’s no difference between the existence of a petulant, arbitrary deity and the random workings of a mechanistic universe.
As far as anthropomorphizing, I don’t refer to a human conceiving of Deity in human terms as opposed to a thranx, but to the origins of gods in general.
“Why is it raining? Tlaloc is watering the earth with his blood.”
“Why is there thunder? Thor is swinging his hammer.”
“Why do we have winter? The goddess of spring has gone underground to be with her husband, the god of death.”
Gods were invented to explain natural phenomena, to reinforce communal taboos, and to sort out the individual’s duties to his society.
If you wish to believe in Yahweh, or Osiris, Marduk, Odin, Zeus, or Quetzalcoatl, go ahead. I just think that belief in the supernatural is taking refuge from the real world into fantasy.
I disagree. I think most people have an intrinsic need to acknowledge a sentient being in control of it all. I know I do.
The thought of hitting oblivion when I die makes me want to cut my throat right now. It hasn’t been that fun or a ride…I’d like to get off now, please.
OTO, the thought of someone, something knowing what the hell is going on in this screwed up place gives me a feeling of comfort, and of some sort of right to live. I tried the agnostic/atheist thing and got depressed out of my skull.