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Raf

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Everything posted by Raf

  1. "Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can't even hold a job parking cars!"
  2. "He came to me too. I've been wishing for this since I was 10 years old, I don't want him to die. What can we do that we're not already doing?" "He needs to go home."
  3. If "you shall not pass" doesn't ring a bell, you haven't seen Fellowship of the Ring.
  4. "But in Latin, Jehovah starts with an I" "Jay..!" :) I'm caught up on my main three. Time to catch up on Arrow. This may take a while.
  5. Diabolos ex machina. Mick had to do what he did to set up the finale. Ohhh kaaayyy
  6. The Fellowship of the Spear episode of LoT was pretty good, although I did not like the ending. I expected different from Rory. That's as far as I've gotten.
  7. Jessie Martin is Broadway caliber too. Rent. Outstanding voice.
  8. On the other hand, Day-O on Legends of Tomorrow was THE low point of the series.
  9. I have vague memories of that wedding.
  10. Thank you and thank you
  11. I am a reporter. I cover criminal trials. I cover a lot of criminal trials. I probably know more about the law regarding crime than you do. However, if you were arrested, and I tried to represent you in court, I could probably go to jail for that. Regardless of the (assumed for the sake of argument) fact that my knowledge of the subject is greater than yours, it does not mean in any way shape or form that I am qualified to practice law. The developers of the REV have as much business constructing a new translation of the scriptures as I have practicing law.
  12. Ok. Invoking the cheating is ok after a bazillion days rule. The Name of the Game
  13. That's why we play the game... clever. And what is the name of the game?
  14. And I respect your right to draw your own conclusions. We shared a lot of experiences, including some I look back on now and realize I was wrong. There IS such a thing as coincidence. In August of 1989, everyone at TWI was thinking about the same themes; it should surprise no one that those themes would recur in conversations public and private. Intuition is not revelation. But I don't want you to think for a second that you did me any disservice, either by providing information or withholding it. You are not responsible for my journey except insofar as you wanted the best for me and offered what you thought was best. And vice versa. You know full well that I devoured the scripture, that I sought its answers about everything. We all fall short of its ideals (often regretfully but, surprisingly, sometimes mercifully). I take responsibility for my decisions. I don't blame God for anything, not for the consequences of my actions and not for the tragic developments that resulted in the sudden loss of a friend's wife, the sudden loss of a brother, the gradual loss of a sister, the impairment of a child. God is to blame for none of it. Nor do I give him credit as a matchmaker. He heals disease, in some cases with a capricious whimsy indistinguishable from ransom chance, and in other cases with a success rate that seems remarkably dependent on professional medical intervention. "Pray for Sally. She's going into surgery tomorrow. Pray for those doctors' hands." Psst. It's the doctors. It's the medicine. It's the training. It's biology. You know what it's Not? Magic. I don't want this to sound harsh, and forgive me if it does, but I believed in God in the first place because I was gullible as a 4-year-old. Because I was a 4-year-old. My daddy told me, and that meant it was true. And for me, the ONLY question was "what does the Bible say?" From 4 to 40. The notion that it was wrong? That what it says carries no intrinsic credibility? Utterly foreign to me! But if you approach that book with the same impartiality that you approach any other holy book, it begins falling apart real quick. Job. Job only makes sense if you make it a work of fiction. As fact, it is relentlessly cruel, and it makes God out to be a right foul git, as they say in England. Rationalize it all you want: God is a major jerk in that book. Unless you want the lesson of Job to be sh*t happens and it's not God's fault. Then it's cool as a story, as long as real people didn't have to die so that Yahweh could win a bet he already knew he would win. You know? As long as an infinitely wise Creator doesnt really think you make up for the loss of your family by just getting a new bunch of kids and that makes it all better. And that's just Job, man. Cummins wrote in Demonstrating God's Power that the closer you look at the Word of God, the more perfect it becomes. There is not enough wash to clean that hog! We all knew the Bible stories happened, until we realized some couldn't have. Like Noah. Like Abraham. Abraham! News flash: if a voice in your head tells you to kill your son, there is one and only one moral response. And that response is NO! NO WAY! NOT GONNA DO IT. HAYL NO. Abraham said yes? And that makes him someone to admire? That makes him someone to lock up! Remember the time Abraham pimped out his wife by pretending she was his sister, which totally wasn't lying because, ew, she was? But the local king wanted her because she was smoking hot. You know, for a 70-year-old. Remember that? Remember buying that? Remember that time Jonah was hanging out with Pinocchio and Gepetto in the whale' s belly? Alive of course. No, wait, dead. I guess it depends on your denomination. Anyway and he gets spit up and, cool, he's ok. And we know this happened... because... he said so... Stop. Rtight now. Imagine, right now, you, with your brain, are told by the holiest person you know... I spent 72 hours in a whale' s belly. Now convert or perish! And the whole city... Doesn't convert. No record that city ever had that kind of conversion. You wouldn't buy that with my money and a guarantee. Point is, true, the evidence did not change. But by all means, keep examining it with all the devotion we claim to bring to the task. But turn on your critical thinking skills, too. Claims are being made left and right. Claims that can be tested left and right. Test them! Or don't. I'm good either way. I'm just answering for myself because I was asked, and despite the lack of sincerity of the person who did the asking, I've opened the door. To anyone who's read this far and has been struggling with doubts, hit me up with a private message. You are not alone. It's ok. There is life after religion. And it's beautiful.
  15. I didn't say it was about me. I said the trope is about my being unfair by setting arbitrary standards. Anyone could be unfair by setting arbitrary standards. And don't be so hard on yourself. You're not being slithery. And I, of course, never said that was the purpose of SIT. I said that was a characteristic of Biblical SIT, which it is, and it is a testable characteristic, which it is. Really, I don't see why this is so difficult to follow. The Bible says A. I'm just saying A too. But you insist A is not really A, and I'm being unreasonable by insisting that it is. I think it's not a matter of me misinterpreting scripture. We've been over that. I'm the only one holding the Bible to its claims. You sure aren't. I do, however, see a persistent pattern of you misrepresenting ME. But that's deliberate, and we all know it. Paul, in I Corinthians, reproved the congregation for thinking that SIT made them more spiritual, not for thinking SIT actually produced a language. He was reproving them for saying "look at how spiritual I am! I speak in tongues!" You know, like you're doing. But he never questioned the sincerity of what they were producing. He even defined it: Speaking in tongues. Which are languages. Which is a testable claim. You can dance around the Biblical claim all you want, but the way I see it, you're talking yourself out of what the Bible clearly says in order to hang on to a practice that makes you feel good but doesn't produce anything distinguishable from someone who admits faking it. You're faking it because it feels good. You're not faking it? Then according to the Bible, you're producing a language. And that language is...? I thought not. No idea where I'm getting that impression. Ooh, looky here at your previous post... ADD I have one and only one criteria that I've pinned all my trust and efforts to, he says. This, he fails to realize, is a consequence of the earlier conversation. You see, unlike the other side in this "debate," I have actually set forth criteria that can prove the claim I am making is false. When it comes to the statement "speaking in tongues is genuine," you guys have gone to tremendous lengths to make the claim non-testable. You are suddenly better linguists than every linguist out there. The failure of any linguist anywhere to ever verify that the product of SIT is a language, ever, doesn't impress you because no one can ever prove something is not a language. "Goo-goo-goo-ga-ga-ga" could mean "Jesus is Lord, Hallelujah" in a language that has not been heard since Cain and his wife built a city in the land of Nod. Well how do you know that's not how they spoke? Were you there? Ok, fine. I can't prove any sample of any SIT is a fake. None. I can't prove any of them are fake personally, I think the other side in that debate is being ridiculous at that point, but I'm not a linguist and I'll even accept that ridiculous handicap because I don't need it to demonstrate my point. I, on the other hand, am not worried about being wrong. My "faith" doesn't crumble if you speak in tongues. In fact, I happily accept the likelihood of the supernatural... IF you actually speak in tongues and produce something I can't produce when I'm faking it. See, when it comes to the statement "all modern SIT is faked," I cannot PROVE that statement, but you can disprove it. Science refers to that form of hypothesis testing as "falsifiability." It basically means that you only need to find one example of me being wrong to shoot down my hypothesis. See, that's the beauty of this. You don't even have to prove YOU'RE not faking it. You just have to prove someone, somewhere isn't faking it. But the only way to do that is by producing what the Bible predicts: an identifiable language. But but but... ONE. I need ONE example. Just one. So this whole objection to my sole criterion for buying your claim is predicated on the fact that you can't find a single person on earth who speaks in tongues and produces a language. Unless, of course, you stack the deck by having the story hinge on anonymous strangers who live on the other side of the planet. One. Anywhere on earth. Just one, and I'm wrong. And you can't even do that. And I'm the one being unreasonable.
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