My dog believes in me.

so does mine!


http://cotac.com/~knight/ZZZ/Zhora2.jpg

Funniest far side cartoon I ever saw was two fleas camping on the backside of a dog sitting around a campfire...one flea looks to the other and asks:
"Do you really think there's a dog out there?"

Serge.. I saw a post of yours on another BBS, & I'd like to chat with you....
Hit me up on icq 112771690

shit!

I make about 500 posts a day all over the net,
now I have to scratch my balls what were you taking about....

was it in reference to
http://spamwealth.com ?

Scratching your balls helps you think Serge? That's a new one!

yes, but only if I scratch MINE!
;-)))

Gee.. can't get that man to talk about anything...lol
Now he's not russian either..lol

I don't think we have a drop in a bucket's worth of knowledge as to what all there really is out there, or what things are really about, or that we will ever know..
All we know is from the human perception of things.. We basically learn what we need to know in order to survive, with the exception of a few.
Does anyone know what actually takes place when a mother knows that her sibling is hurting or has been harmed even though they are thousands of miles apart? Or a child that knows all about the personal life of some older guy, since passed, that lived in another country?
And the guy who was afraid of water for no reason; only to find out, quite by accident, that the phobia was due to the fact that he had been a submariner in a past life and drown when the sub was attacked. He proved without a doubt that he knew things that he could not have known otherwise. I could go into detail about that one, but this isn't the topic.
All I am saying is.. just because we can't explain some things, or some things seem unbelievable, we have a tendancy to create our own explanations where they are no longer unexplainable; making us ok with it.. I think this is because of our standards of perceiving and thinking. Things DO happen that we can't explain.. things DO exist that we can't explain. But we choose to bury our heads in the sand because if we accepted these things as being true in their actual form, then the total thought/belief process would be fedexed to Hell (no pun intented) in a handbag.
Some scholars have said that if the Dead Sea Scrolls were translated in the terms of their day, religion as we know it would vanish.. maybe not a bad thing, unless of course you are a believer in religion.
Just one more thing.. If God does exist, who made him a religious entity? That was a manmade thing, just as religion itself is.

Oh well.. it made sense to me.. :)

Right on Lady Sharlot, I agree 100%!

The trouble with Pascal's Wager is that Pascal was more a genius as mathematics than psychology. Looking at belief formation, while someone might acknowledge that he SHOULD believe in God, a belief in God is highly unlikely to result from that acknowledgement, that is simply not how beliefs come about.

eroswebmaster:

I respect both sides of the debate, and I have every bit of respect for your argument. I just don't think the fact that people find God when they face death validates faith in any kind of rational way.

Also, I think you mistook my argument as being atheistic. I'm not an atheist. My argument, if you read it again, has encouraged agnosticism... for people to just admit they don't know. In that respect, I think we're on the same side.

But I am taking an active side for agnosticism. I think people tend to assume agnostics are just people who haven't decided yet. It's actually a school of thought that encourages disbelief one way or the other.... to keep an open mind, so that answers might come some day. If those answers come in the form of a voice in your head, unfortunately, then that's actually called delusion.

Speaking of which, doesn't it bother you that so much of religion has come from voices in people's heads? God told Moses, and God told Abraham to kill his son, and God told Jesus... if God told me to kill my son, I wouldn't be glorified in a book for my devotion to God - I'd be locked up, and rightfully so. Yet so many lives have been lost throughout history due to these schizophrenic people who were hearing voices. People devote their entire lives to following the instructions of the voices in people's heads 2000 years ago.

I never said to face death validates faith...but what it does is put our little asses and big ego's in check...especially those who think they are above believing in any deity. (and no this is not pointed at you.)

Now other life changing events that I have either experienced first hand or events members of my family have had have validated my beliefs.

I occasionally (secretely) leave GFY for a couple of weeks at a time to get some work done. I returned just in time to see a debate of great interest to me: "is there a god?"

So far I've enjoyed it. I've laughed, and chuckled, but nothing made me laugh as much as the above statement.

"...the FACT the he had been a submariner in a past life..."

LOL AHAHAHAHAHAHA
Are you joking? Damn. Hey either way it was freakin' hilarious.
The ideas of past lives sounds just as crazy as the idea of religion.

man learns 3 years to talk and for the rest of his life he learns how to keep his mouth shut!
;-))

i got a bit of a chuckle out of that one too.. :)