Love your reply and POV. You got it pretty much 100% right IMO. I admit, as I Christian, I went in from a far more cynical perspective because this "wholly uninterested god" is way different from the God of the Bible. Not that God didn't bring some crazy disasters on humans in the OT, but damn, not this way or purpose as in the videos.

I don't mind people mocking God or Christians or overly religious zealots of any faith. Many are wholly deserved to be mocked. People (that includes me, God knows I'm a dumbass, lol) need to be held responsible for their own crap & offensiveness and be called out.

Still, I feel this series is not helping any discussion, just good for a laugh (maybe?) and some decent video editing & production. It's harmless if seen as a philosophical piece.

I'd love to see some intelligent, cool-headed no-trolling discussions on the pros & cons, history & evolution of religion and such. But it's really tough when religion is so politicized (especially in the USA) and often hijacked for self-serving purposes. (Godly man Roy Moore my ass!)

I live in Canada, and I would call myself a Christian in public here, but in the US? No freaking way... it's not out of fear of being mocked and anything... it's that I hardly see me as anything similar to those "evangelicals" from my own limited exposure to them in US media. It's like they're a different (offensive) beast.

Do not mock the deadly Basselope.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/ivxrwhndst6e0mzlluns.jpg

Come on @newtboy

She was being coached, she did smash her racket, she did run her mouth.

Not every instance of coaching gets caught. Unlucky or bad execution.

Most smashings of rackets are punished.

Do men really get away with that level of verbal abuse?
I believe she in fact got a lot of leeway because she is Serena, black and at home.

Preferably she should have gotten a sterner warning first to shut up or be hit with a game penalty.

She would be out of a basketball game, football game, golf tournament. In baseball and hockey she would be mocked for being a crybaby.

Men should not get away with this childish behaviour either.

So... because there are comedians who mock Nazis we need more Nazis? Are you suggesting comedians be locked in concentration camps like he did with Mexicans?

That's dark. Even for you. You're starting to go full Adolph on us.

While it's all great fun mocking the old guy from Up crossed with Statler and Waldorf, it really doesn't gain anything.

People who hate him and Trump will laugh, people who support them will use it as evidence of the vast media conspiracy.

The real trick is actually getting through to people like him. Make him understand why the things he's done are wrong, why housing immigrants in a tent city without adequate protection and little to no recourse for the crimes committed there (including rape) is illegal. He'd probably just point out that the very fact the men are raping the women in an unregulated tent city goes to show how bad the Hispanic gene pool is, never understanding that any large enough group, regardless of ethnicity, upbringing etc. would commit similar crimes if placed under similar circumstances. Hell he defends his pussy-grabbing President out of the opposite corner of his mouth.

Educate your young people, America. Not just in math and science, but in Philosophy. That's the only way to create a morally advanced society. People shouldn't just judge right and wrong by what they're told, they should have an adequate education to figure it out for themselves. He was told (many times) what he was doing was right, so it doesn't matter that a judge came along and handed him a sentence. He believes he's right, simply because he lacks the mental capacity to understand otherwise.

Isn't that right, @bobknight33 ?

What was important in this video was seeing someone doing some hard thinking, and making a decision that goes against a big part of his identity because he decided it was the right thing to do.

That's such a hard thing for a person to do, and it happens really rarely. I just watched someone change themselves for the better, and the first comment is a dipshit mocking him.

This is all part of the pitch, he's mocking the Big Bang, so if he equivocates it with crazy and irrational, he hopes to sway the teen opinion

I am open to rational answers, but not hokum. Using mythos to prove mythos is no answer.
I've said I'm not open to suspending rationality or sanity, you say that means I won't listen to you....um.....

The entirety of Christianity hinges on one thing; the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a historical event and can be investigated that way. Jesus Christ is a real person who lived 2000 years ago in Israel. This isn't mythos and there is good evidence to believe it happened.

How do you know there's no FSM? I've seen exponentially more evidence of his existence than Yahweh's. I've eaten pasta. I absolutely believe in it more than Yahweh, but that's not a high bar.
Edit: How do you know there's no Allah? Odin? Zeus? Mythra? Mot? Cthulhu?

We both know that the fsm is a joke religion invented to mock Christianity.

The scripture tells us that men have worshiped other gods for thousands of years, but that what they worship are demons. So I believe those beings exist, but they aren't what they claim to be. One of Satans primary tools to deceive mankind is false religion. He provides supernatural confirmation of these religions. There is a desire in mans heart to worship God, and it gets corrupted so that man is willing to worship just about anything. In western culture, men idolize money, materialism, carnal lusts, even themselves. Our idols are less obvious but they are still idols.

One more time, my questions were 1.why is God's word so easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate? (Edit: especially given that properly interpreting it is allegedly the only way to escape eternal torture, seems like a set up.)

Any truth is easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate. This isn't a phenomenon unique to the scriptures; this is the reality of living in a fallen world. Corrupt men distort truth for their own gain. Look at the political situation in our country; how is what politicians do different from what prosperity preachers do? It really isn't.

The fact is that the gospel is very simple to understand; even a child could understand it, and they do. Gods word is very clear about our need for salvation and how to obtain it. It's man who overcomplicates it, distorts it for gain, or deliberately conceals the truth. Trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and believe He was raised from the dead. You don't need to be a theologian to understand that.

2.why is disbelief apparently worse than murder, rape, and slavery and so not covered by Jesus's sin erasing sacrifice and the only sin that's totally unforgivable.

How did you come to the conclusion that Jesus didn't die for unbelief? We all have unbelief that needs forgiveness which we receive by repentance. His atonement is not automatically transferred to everyone; the condition of receiving forgiveness is to believe. If you don't believe you won't receive forgiveness because you failed to meet the condition, not because unbelief is worse than murder necessarily. Dying without forgiveness for your sin is the problem, not that it can't be forgiven, but it can't be forgiven without repentance. It's kind of like this:

Let's say you had cancer and the only cure was in Los Angeles. You had no way to get there but God sent you a car to get you to Los Angeles and get the cure. When it arrived you didn't believe it would take you there so you didn't get in. A short time later you died of cancer.

So what was the reason you died? It was your unbelief that stopped you receiving the cure, but it was your cancer that killed you. In the same way it is your unbelief that keeps you from coming to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, so you will die in your sin.

I am interested in and open to an actual answer to either or both if you have one. It won't make me believe, but it might help me understand those who do a little better.

I'm happy to answer your questions newtboy..I just didn't want it to turn into another internet argument. I appreciate your candor

That's cute, the rating advisory at the beginning lists "religion" among the movie's offenses.

Sadly this is just a mock trailer, but I've seen worse things kickstarted.

haha, that things just a tad bit more aggressive. Saddly it looks like someone made a automated gun aiming rig and decided to dress it up by plopping an egg shaped styrofoam mock up in the center of it rather then actually build the guns into the egg shaped object like you are supposed to. They didn't even bother with building the same ai as the robots into the gun firing routine (complete with sound effects beeps). The whole portal thing was a complete afterthought.

And that's exactly the reason I never liked the show, it's the same old, shitty stereotypes. This show masks its mocking of geeks and nerds by making them main characters and adding more detail to their interests.
Other than that, it's the same misogyny and lazy jokes that rely on the laughtrack to work at all that you can find in 'Two and a half men'. Yeah, Tigerblood Charlie Sheen was right, Chuck Lorre is a hack.

Very analogous to Westboro Baptist "church" stooges. They (ab)use their constitutionally protected rights to free speech to say the most offensive and provocative crap that they can come up with, specifically with the intention to incite a (violent) reaction against them. Why? Because pretty much the entire Phelps family are lawyers, and they know that they can generally win any assault case that they can provoke people into. All that hate they spew boils down to a stupid, petty moneymaking scam.

Is the Seattle Nazi that devious and cunning? I doubt it. Probably just a crazy / fucked up guy, as Maher said. That doesn't excuse his fuckwittery, but it does reinforce Maher's argument that punching the guy is NOT the best response.

Morello is awesome, with RATM and Audioslave, and now Prophets of Rage, etc. But he's dead wrong on this issue, and comes across as a bit of an "internet tough guy". Outside of just ignoring them, I kinda think the only way to one-up these people is to know the law, what constitutes assault etc., and essentially beat them at their own game (ie. provoke them into doing something to you). On the other hand, there's something to be said for using using passive-aggressive snark to mock / humiliate them in a nonviolent way, ala the Foo Fighters:

https://videosift.com/video/Man-MOCKS-COPS-gets-TAZED-calls-upon-GOD-and-gets-AWAY#comment-775380

Mock if you must but I used to love this game. And don't forget that the other side of the board has chess, checkers, parcheesi, and backgammon. But all things must pass and as we get older we move on to more exciting sports like curling.

I'm not generally into needless violence, but they both looked so damned happy and were clearly both willing to take a chance of being knocked out. The whole scene is so pressureless and so full of smiling, relaxed people, that none of this even seemed violent to me.

There's a certain type of person, often they'll be MMA practitioners, who just don't care about being knocked out, at all. Getting put to sleep is only a problem to them if you shit your pants while you're out. And from what i understand, it's seen as somehow a little unfair to mock someone for it, unless they were acting like a tough guy beforehand.