Your Sex Life, Evolution, And the Christian Right-A Theory

[newcrasher]

@E-Sabbath

Nobody knows… they told her ‘Peek-a-boo’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/scott.htm
(Apparently, this man’s son made up the story)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/30/bernall/print.html
Or transferred it. Looks like the person who it was actually about was going ‘Oh, god’, and… the gunman let her live. Huh.
So… story’s completely turned around.
Have a nice day!

From the Salon article:

Schnurr was down on her hands and knees bleeding, already hit by 34 shotgun pellets, when one of the killers approached her. She was saying, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, don’t let me die,” and he asked her if she believed in God. She said yes; he asked why. “Because I believe and my parents brought me up that way,” she said. He reloaded, but didn’t shoot again. She crawled away.

So it was actually a girl named Schnurr. My bad.

[Stoid]

@newcrasher

BOLDING MINE

So beliefs in something outside of the natural world (supernatural as you say) are fragile, yet we are supposed to find inherant truth in your beliefs built on your tiny bit of experience in this vast world…interesting.**

You aren’t* supposed * to do anything. I was extremely specific and detailed about labeling my beliefs as my beliefs.

** And seeing that none of us have ANY experience after death, whatever you believe about it has no more “scientific” certainty than mine. It is your BELIEF of what happens outside of this life, or, the supernatural. Yet you posit your theory and call it “inarguable”.**

Pardon? What are you talking about? I never posited any theory about what lies beyond this life. Nothing, none, zero. My theory had entirely to do with the behavior and psychology of people who are religious, nothing supernatural about that. You have no idea what I believe about life after death or of things outside our perception (except that its obvious that I do not believe the basic stuff taught in the major religions).

** Tell me about the fragility of the 1000s who have died for their faith as martyrs. I myself believe that God is love and that I receive his love freely and offer it freely. I would never deny my faith, at gunpoint or under any threat. It in a strong faith, and I would gladly lay my life down for another, as there is no greater love, per Jesus. **

Dying for your faith as a martyr does not, in my opinion, remove the possibility that one has doubt. And in any case, I said “vast majority” not “everyone without exception”.

** How about the girl killed at Columbine, Cassie Bernall. She was asked by her killer, “Do you believe in God?” “Yes, I believe in God,” she said. “Why?” the gunman asked. But he did not wait for an answer. He shot Cassie Bernall dead. How weak was her faith?**

I have no idea. But if I had any faith at all and I was staring down the barrel of a gun that had just been used to kill others nearby, I’d be clinging to that faith with everything I had just to cope…that would be the entire point of my OP, precisely, writ large, multiplied by 100. Let me repeat it in plainer speech: Fear of Death Makes Us Turn To Gods For Comfort. My mother left the Catholic church without a backward glance when she was 17 years old. Raised all her children as heathens, for want of a better term. She became an ordained minister in the Church of Religious Science (a metaphysical church) in her 60’s. Now she’s 82 and in frail health. Guess who suddenly, after 65 years, needed to make confession? That doesn’t illustrate unshakable faith, it illustrates a person facing the end of their life covering their ass just in case.

** Its the love thing, man. That’s what matters.**

I completely agree…I can just experience and share and live the Love Thing completely independent of the Jesus Thing. In fact, I find it works much better that way, just like the Morality Thing. The most genuinely moral people I have ever known are much more often than not agnostic or atheist, but that discussion is really a whole thread of its own, I’m not going to hijack my own thread to go there.

** I think what you have illustrated is your inability to experience anything beoyond the empirical. Perhaps it is your fear that will not allow you to believe in something bigger than yourself. I dunno really. But you have not illustrated how my faith or beliefs, or that of anyone else, is fragile.**

And I think your participation in this thread has illustrated my points perfectly.

[Stoid]

@newcrasher

From the Salon article:

So it was actually a girl named Schnurr. My bad.

Actually…
[ul]
[li]A girl named Schnurr, your bad,[/li][li]she did get to answer, your bad, [/li][li]he didn’t shoot her after speaking to her, your bad, [/li][li]she didn’t die, your bad, [/li][li]and to top it all off, you used her as an example of perfect faith when what she actually said amounted to something not much more convincing or meaningful than an explanation about why she opens Christmas presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, or why she butters her bread when she makes a sandwich: because her parents brought her up that way. Hardly a resounding testament to unshakable faith.[/li][/ul]