Mister P-Mosh

Part of the problem that people can't really do much about is the content of their food. You mentioned eating burgers, but did you know that eating a salad from McDonalds is less healthy than eating a big mac? Are you aware of how much the portions have increased at restaurants, to the point where a single serving is now the size of what an entire family used to eat at many places? I have researched this stuff like crazy lately, and I think it's helping me a lot. The food industry in general is just as bad now, if not worse, than what was described in "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The quality of our food is really horrible and the things that people do in the name of profit is sick and they should probably be shot for giving us the stuff to eat that they give us (by this I mean what is found at restaurants, stores, etc.) I'm a big fan of organic foods now, but even that is not tightly regulated. It's just better on average. I also prefer to buy meat that is range fed and not slaughtered by the big companies because they work more slowly and are less likely to drop my food in a pool of blood and feces, and they are less likely to decapitate their coworkers and leave their blood and guts in the food. Of course, there's also exercise, which if people would just go take a 30 minute walk around their neighborhoods or at a park every day, they would see a big improvement from that alone (even better to go to a gym.)

You misrepresented what I think. I find NAMBLA disgusting, but as adults if they want to write stories about sex with kids, as long as no children are involved in any way, that is their right (no matter how morally opposed to them I am.) On the other hand, food companies are advertising to children, not just amongst themselves. Granted, there is a huge amount of difference in scale between molesting a kid and feeding them small amounts of drugs, feces, etc. but both are bad. If McDonalds executives want to write stories amongst themselves about selling food to kids, that's fine. I just don't think that they should be allowed to actually carry through with the act. We don't let cigarette manufacturers advertise to kids, why should we treat fast food any different? It's just as bad for you.

While you may be correct in your case, and I will have to search for the statistics I saw in reference to this, I'll give you the reasoning behind it. Parents have at most 6 opportunities to provide their children with good eating habits per day (assuming three main meals and three snacks, which is still a huge amount), but they are advertised to by companies like McDonalds whenever they watch TV, as well as when they are at school or when you drive past it. I forget the amount of times per day on average that advertisements for McDonalds are seen by children, but it's higher on average than the parents. Granted, the vast majority of these occur on weekends, but in a week it still averages out with junk food advertisements holding a clear lead over parents, even ignoring peer pressure from friends. Also, I may have been wrong in saying "McDonalds" specifically, because the study may have been fast food restaurants in general, but I forget. If I have time to look I'll try to find it on google. You can do the same if you wish.

You would be suprised though. The things you mentioned actually can have merit and be a good reason for a lawsuit. McDonalds has more of a chance to push their propaganda to kids than parents have a chance to talk to them (McDonalds has hundreds more opportunities a year to influence kids than parents do.) So if you are suing because you grew up brainwashed by McDonalds (which most kids are) then I don't see a problem all that much. More kids know who Ronald McDonald is than they know who George W. Bush is. It shouldn't be legal to advertise something as unhealthy as fast food to anyone under 18, or possibly even sell it to them. The coffee case was because the coffee wasn't just hot, it was boiling, and left third degree burns on the woman. You can't drink stuff that is still boiling in the cup, and it's not good for them to put something like that in a flimsy cup. There is a sane amount of "hot" that hot coffee should be. You can't drink something that would blister the inside of your mouth. Cigarette companies make cigarettes to be extra addictive, and they advertise to children. They should be held as responsible as we held cocaine dealers...or change the drug laws to not hold any sellers or manufacturers of addictive drugs liable and end the sham "War On Drugs." Of course, the good thing about the lawsuits is that the cigarette companies can't directly advertise towards children anymore, although they still use a lot of sexual advertising and hidden phalluses in the advertising they do make.

Science works by measuring effects of things. If devil spirits exist, then there must be a way to measure their effects on people. I think this holds particularly true of sin, since none of us are perfect and you would think with how many sinners there are we'd be able to provide a large enough sample to be able to measure scientifically the effects of devil spirits on people. I guess I take a more scientific look on life than other people, because I expect to be able to have evidence of something before I believe in it. If you can't prove or disprove devil spirits, then there is no reason for me to believe in their existence. If I can't prove that the Christian God is the one true god, then there is no reason to find Christianity any more valid than I do the religion where the Earth is on the back of a giant turtle or belief in Athena and Zeus.

Therein lies a huge paradox with the belief in a supreme God. It's sort of like the question, "Can God build a rock so big that even he can't lift it?" While that question is silly, it does bring up a good point. If God did not invent evil, and Satan did, then that means that Satan has an equal ability to create, which is against what is in the Bible. If God did invent evil, then he is not "love" or fully representative of goodness because he has a dual nature, which also goes against other parts of the Bible. If God did not invent evil at all, and simply created an environment where evil could occur, then he is just as guilty of the evil that happens in the world because he set the world up in such a way that evil would happen, has the power to do something about it, and fails to do so. It's like a parent leaving a loaded gun in your toddler's toybox and absolving themselves of responsibility because the toddler, with it's inferior mind, made the wrong choice and accidentally killed themself. I know you don't see it that way, and we live in a country where your beliefs are protected (although I can't say the same about mine) so there's no problem. Don't take any of what I am saying as a personal attack or an attempt to get you to give up your beliefs. I just find it curious how the logic of religion works, and from my perspective it involves some strange things such as not holding God accountable in a consistant manner.

I bet we could start a whole new thread on just this sort of thing alone. It's the reason I'm against the beef industry, the advertising industries, and other things that make kids physically older than they should be and influence them to be very sexual at early ages. Of course, the parents have much of the blame, but it takes guts to be a parent and not take your kid to the mall or allow them to read magazines and watch TV.

However, you have failed to prove the existence of spirits, or even the effects that they have on people. If we can treat mental illness by medication, and in some cases even cure it with surgery, then how does that fit in with the theory of evil spirits? What makes your belief in devil spirits any more real or valid than the belief in body thetans?

If God didn't make homosexuality, then who did? Obviously, anyone with the capability to create things outside of what God did must be equal to God themselves, right? Otherwise, if God created everything, then he's also the creator of death, murder, rape, and evil in general.

Actually, that law is insane. It basically means that if you are in a situation anywhere in public where you feel threatened, you have the "right" to kill the person that you feel intimidated by. I guess it's good that this law wasn't passed before the Terri Schiavo circus, because I imagine that quite a few angry people would have been legally murdering each other then.

Please don't bring up the big bang, evolution, or any other scientific facts that are misconstrued all too often by both sides of the argument. A seperate thread would be ok but to add it to this one which is already debating about gays in such a way that won't really help ex10 is probably going to get worse. We should start another topic.

Like it says in Matthew 48:17 "And Jesus told his disciples, "Whoever amongst you sins, I f%$*ing HATE YOU GET AWAY FROM ME! EVIL SINNING &*(&*!!!!" Oh wait, no, Jesus taught something else than how to be a hateful SOB, didn't he?

Does your church speak out against homosexuality or something other than just the kids at her school? If your church isn't viciously anti-homosexual then I would point that out in contrast with the kids at her school. If your church leaders do openly and repeatedly focus on homosexuality more often than you think they should, then perhaps you should point out that they are just men interpreting the Bible and focusing on the things that are important to them, and that it's ok to disagree with them as they are not infallible. You should definitely mention that fact to her, she will appreciate it. That question is actually very similar to one that I've always had that helped me become an atheist. If God is all-good, all-knowing, exists outside of time, and all-powerful, then he is responsible for everything that happens. I don't see how any real personal responsibility could exist in a world where the God that made us and everything else would have known ahead of time that we would sin, and that things like death would come to exist because of the shortcomings he programmed into us. In effect, the way I see it, there can be no biblical God if he made us imperfect, because that would either be non-loving or flat out evil, by the standards he supposedly created. If there were a God, then why would he create a child molester and create children that are vulnerable to be murdered and raped by him? Why would a loving God have created Hitler, knowing full well that he would be responsible for the grisly murders of millions? Sorry that I can't say that I found any real answer in the years that I've had this question as well, but I do think it's good that you care enough about your daughter and that she is comfortable enough to ask you. I can't say that I ever had the same opportunity having grown up in TWI.

I could never be a teacher. If someone else's kid came up and started hitting me, I'd want to throw it across the room and through a window. However, knowing me, if it were my own (hypothetical) kid, I'd probably spoil it and make it bad like that kid was anyway... It's a good thing I'm not going to be a father anytime soon. :-)

So what happens when, as in the vast majority of cases, the child molester is either a relative or a friend of the family? Why would daddy shoot himself when he's the one molesting the kids? Not only that, but as satisfying as it would be to shoot a molester, it's not just to do what you are asking for. People who molest kids don't turn purple or have any other easily identifiable features to prove they are guilty. All that you have in many cases is the word of a kid vs. the word of an adult, and in some cases such as divorces, one parent (often with the help of psychiatrists) get the kids to lie about molestation. Are you willing to murder innocent people just because there is a chance that they might be a molester? It's one thing to catch someone raping your kid and put a bullet between their ears. That's defense. However, you have no right to murder someone just because there is a chance that they could be a child rapist. That's what we have the justice system for. Yes, there are problems with it, but that requires us to fix it so we can use a legal, fair basis for determining who does these evil things and who is really innocent. If you want to go around shooting people because they "look like" they might have molested a kid, you'd be better off in Iraq. The thing is, there are very few "anti-gun idiots" around. They have no political influence, they have fewer numbers than the pro-eugenics movement. However, fear-based groups like the NRA like to trump up a fake "anti-gun" agenda that doesn't really exist, so they can keep getting your money and get pro-NRA politicians elected. By the way, I am a former NRA member, and a proud gun owner. However, I'll never give another cent to that corrupt political group that runs off of making people afraid ever again. If they were honest and stuck with their programs of teaching gun safety and working towards acceptance of those types of things, I'd gladly donate money and sign back up. Unfortunately though, they've gone to a group of political lunatics fighting against their own shadows.

That is a good illustration of why I semi-jokingly call the U.S. the worlds biggest middle eastern nation.

I won't give any specific advice right now, but find someone who has already done this and talk to them, at least pretending to be a potential customer. Get any materials they have, find out what they do, what their rates are, etc. Also, make a trip to a bookstore and read up all you can on both the technical details of what you need to know and even more of the management details. Most small businesses fail because the person who starts it knows the work that needs to be done, but has no idea how to handle the "business" side, e.g. accounting, contracts, managing resources, government paperwork, etc.

The worst are those idiots with the Nextel phones. Sure, if they work where they need walkie talkies it's understandable, but there's no reason to be loudly asking your wife whether she wants maxi pads with or without wings over the walkie talkie when you are walking around the grocery store while she loudly responds.

That depends on your definition of decadence...the real evil is not just when two men have sex, or when an athlete gets paid millions to throw a ball through a small hoop with a net. The real evil is the mass murder of thousands of innocents (including your own), stealing from the poor and the middle class, forcing your religious views on others, etc. Nothing else comes close.

It's kind of difficult to criticize someone and not look like an @$$ if you don't even know enough about him to know his name. It was Joseph Ratzinger, and it is now Benedict (but not Arnold) XVI. This guy.

I don't like Ratzinger at all. He's the one that said that a politician that comes out in favor of abortion rights should be refused mass (he was the one behind the controversy about John Kerry), he's called gays evil, belittled religions other than catholicism, and is a mysogenist. He also seems to have religious views closer to Opus Dei and fundamentalist Christians than any Catholics than I know. On the other hand, this is the guy that may be the right one to fight the child abuse and change the public perception of how the church deals with molesting priests. While I doubt he wouldn't call them to the Vatican, line them up in the streets, and shoot them...he is the type to at least excommunicate them and call the cops on them. He's made some statements against the molesters (although he included homosexuals in it as well) that were very clear and strongly against it. The other thing is about his Nazi past. I can't really blame the guy since he was forced into it at a young age, and after being stationed at a place where he was to guard slaves, he wrote letters condemning his leaders and eventually went AWOL which was punishable by death. I don't think that you can associate this with any sort of white supremacist views or anything like that.

That had to be the worst movie I've ever seen.

Actually, prison doesn't help them at all for the most part. Also unfortunately, child molesters have a really huge chance of doing it again if they are released back into the public. If there were a pill that someone could take and it would prevent them from ever being attracted to a child again, then that would be great and we could cure them. Unfortunately, we don't really have a reliable way of curing them right now, and because they have such a high chance of doing it again we can't trust them in public.

Actually, you have a wrong understanding of what the ACLU is doing. Rather than try to defend them myself, I'll just post their explanation from their own site: I think that the specific of what they are defending is similar in some ways to how people are suing gun manufacturers when a murder is committed with a handgun. They are not advocating NAMBLA in any way, just trying to avoid a precedent being set that could be used against the free speech of anyone. Imagine if your church were sued if they were to have an internet site that said atheists are bad. Free speech is free speech, and criminals are criminals. You can't punish the first, and you should punish the latter.

One child raped and/or murdered is one too many. Here in Houston, a baby was murdered recently when some @$$hole apparently shot up the vehicle he was in with his dad and sister right after they went for ice cream. However, I'm not sure that these things are happening any more than usual. The media like to latch onto "themes" that they can present as an epidemic, which then generates more talk about that theme and makes more news. I would guess that these types of tragedies happen just as often now as they have every year for the past years indefinitely. It's just that right now the media want to put it in our faces to get us to watch their shows, and patronize their advertisers. As far as what to do with these guys, I wish there was a punishment fitting for them, but even death is too good for them.