I wasn't sad about it before I became a Christian, so why do you think I am sad about it now and using my beliefs to shield myself from the harsh reality? Funnily enough, this is one of the things atheists tell themselves about believers to justify their rejection of God.

The reason Christians believe is because they have the conviction that they are sinners before a holy God, and that there is a judgment coming where everyone will have to answer for their life. We believe because there is a risen Savior named Jesus Christ who offers eternal life to all that will put their trust in Him.

While the editing does set things off, sadly, Bakker, Pat "what's this mac and cheese, is that a black person thing" Robertson, Jack Graham, and all their ilk are far from Poe's Law, and well into they truly believe this stuff. And so do the people who watch it, and remember they are FAR more reliable voters than any other group, and their numbers are legion. There's a reason why near 46% of American's believe the Earth to be 6,000 years old in accordance with the Bible, and among the white evangelicals that this ilk appeal to, it's 60%.

Now Mark Biltz (the guy who said he knew what day Adam opened his eyes in the Garden of Eden) is generally rejected even in most evangelical circles, so not sure why Bakker is giving him space to spread his message... though if it scares enough people into buying buckets....

What's scary is that Bakker still has a huge audience that trusts his teachings, even though we were just hours or days from a collapse whereby you wouldn't be able to buy food for six to twelve months way back in 2015... The things Bakker and Robertson have said to defend Trump and blast Obama over the years...

Incoherent to you maybe. Rambling no (my comments should roughly match up line for line as replies to your text - I didn't use quotes). Struck a nerve? No. But it looks like you've got a lot to say for someone who doesn't care for religion.

Almost nobody can remember all they read. This is not a unique claim. I'm guessing you aren't familiar with more than one major denomination - so don't speak on behalf of the others. You're pretty hung up on me needing to have remembered this thing in particular? Sorry but I didn't know this - that's why I asked (ffs). In this regard you're weak at being compassionate. I'm sorry, what is it you think I'm defending? My words? They don't need defence mate. They stand on their own.

I'd have to have some bullshit to quit it. I didn't try to shut down @newtboy (pointing out a truth of his own admission is not shutting him down - got that Mr. Reason?) and I certainly haven't been shut down myself (surprise motherfucker - I'm right here). That you can't understand the fairly straight forward last post shows a lot about you.

"To answer in all seriousness your subsequent questions:"

You missed several questions. Four in fact. I expected as much.

"The back bone of my religion" You're at it again. The retard is strong in you.

I'm not explaining away God's omnipotence. I'm making a fairly straight argument that he's not omnipotent (as in all powerful). I've used the straight forward translation of the word (the simplest argument is that omnipotent also means greatly (not all)) powerful and the refutation of your defence that he is in fact all powerful. This isn't some apologist thing, or defence of some fucked up part of the bible. I'm taking what you believe is a fundamental part of Christianity and attempting to take it down a notch. Hey, why do you think that is? (come on, say the opposite of the obvious, do it, show me how retarded you can be)

It's only a house of cards if you're not willing to give it even the slightest credence (which with your rabid atheism is unfortunately self-admittedly true). That's a great pity. Thousands of years of human culture dismissed in an instant because you're too headstrong (or butt-hurt) to give it a second thought. So much for reason.

Maybe you're not familiar with the 20th century and the clusterfuck of death that surrounded governmental experimentation (of which rejection of religion was a fundamental tenet). Look, I'm happy for you to attempt a no government society where your reason and compassion will lead everyone into quiet nirvana. But you'll be one of the first to be taken advantage of by some cold ruthless cunt who doesn't possess those abilities.

No, I seriously doubt you wish me the best. Your tirade against me demonstrates that. Hopefully you'll realise soon that you're not an Übermensch. And almost everything you now know is wrong (I sincerely hope you know that - it's a fundamental scientific tenet that we are always getting closer to the truth - wiping away the untruths we know - and yes there is research on this).

I do thank you for at least attempting to overcome your own obvious cognitive dissonance in sincerely wishing me peace at the end. It reminds me so much of people who claim to have a religion of peace after their brothers blow some people up. Lol.

Next up. SDGundamX with what he's sure will this time be the final blow as all bow before him with his unassailable reason and compassion that nobody else can possibly challenge.

Bye for a while. I've literally got work now and won't be back for about 28 days. I will be back though. Talk then.

Atheism is not a "belief system". Atheism is a rejection of a single claim.

Claim: "God/Gods exist."
Atheist: " I don't believe you."

Nothing like a belief system regardless of claims to the contrary.

@newtboy
i like the 'failing liver" analogy.
appropriate and easily understood.

and i can understand where milkmandan is coming from,but my perspective is more aligned with yours newt.

what consistently baffles me,is how so many people are willing to simply accept this short term strategy from our politicians.

there is no surprise when corporations push for this,they are just focusing on their own interests and bottom line,which is short term profit.

or the politicians who bow to their neoliberal masters to receive those tasty campaign contributions.

or even the banks,who again focus on their short term gains.

these players are all behaving as they always have:for their own self interest.so there should be no shock or surprise when they act exactly as they have always acted.

but when i see everyday,normal people defend the behavior and actions of oliticians,financial institutions and multi-national corporations.it baffles me as to why they would choose to do such a thing.

we can understand why those players seek to retain a system which benefits them,their shareholders and their bottom line,but that system no longer serves the interests of the people,community and society as a whole.

so why make arguments defending it?

it is,quite frankly,killing us slowly as a species.

look at germany.
that country has slowly been recruiting,educating and now poised to corner the market in:new energy,renewable energy and are leading the world in breakthrough technologies in all energy fields.

germany has long played the long game.
they now dominate the entire EU in finance,and are now focusing on dominating the globe with new energy technology.

and what are we doing here in america?
pushing through more and more neoliberal policies that immiserate the working poor,both here and abroad.desperately continuing our destruction of entire ecosystems to exploit our natural resources for:oil and gas.military conflicts,which only make this country less safe,all to exploit other nations and extract THEIR oil and gas,and the cost in human lives is absolutely indefensible.

all of it.
every single bit of it for short term gains for an extremely small minority.

and here we are,with trump opening the flood gates to further exploit and destroy our natural resources with no thought or plan for the future.no investment in our communities,nor our society as a whole.

and for those who wish to make an argument that hillary would be better.i will only concede that on a domestic level this may have been true,but hillary is a neoliberal corporatist,and she would have pushed for even MORE military intervention in the middle east.MORE sanctions against countries unwilling to play ball,in order to politically squeeze them out,and even MORE of this countries policy of "regime change" to exploit and extract from those countries their precious resources.

i strongly suspect Iran would have been next on her agenda.

so when are some of these people going to step up,and realize that both trump AND clinton are (or would have been) disasterous for us as a community,a nation and as a species?

because they both only offer short term solutions to long term problems.and those short term solutions only benefit a minority of the population.

we could turn this ship around TODAY,right now,if we so choose.
we need more politicians like elizabeth warren and tulsi gabbard.we need more integrity in our media and journalists willing to do their job and criticize power,not bow to it just for access.we need the people to become engaged and confront their representatives,and make them uncomfortable,not treat them as celebrities.

and we need to reject the system where rich people choose who we get to vote for,and begin to dismantle this two party duopoly.

because trump vs hillary?
this election cycle has just revealed that both these candidates are not the disease,but rather the symptom of a very broken,and dysfunctional political system.

we need to begin to invest in the future.
and reject the status quo as no longer being viable for the continued existence of the human species.

and with the newly energized american public,who are growing in numbers daily,and is a direct response to the unmitigated disaster that is trump.there may be hope for us yet.

because if we stay on this trajectory,we are fucking doomed.

@eric3579
agreed,and i suspect most people struggle with this,but i think he made a really important point that we all need to address,and that is our own bias.

too many people for far too long have sought information that aligns with their own narrative,their own,personal and subjective understandings.we see those who identify as conservative reject anything that does not adhere to their own,narrow worldview,and we see those who identify as progressive do the exact same thing.

and yet if challenged,BOTH will stubbornly declare that their information is solid and without reproach.this is statistically impossible.

another great point he makes is how some people have been conditioned to accept opinion and conflict as somehow being "news".

he also makes a point on how some news outlets have done shoddy and poor work,but we should not throw the baby out with the bath water.while this may be true,i feel he was far too lenient on those who profess to be journalists.he gives them a pass for doing mediocre work,because that is what many journalists do in this new climate of:partisan hackery,access and propaganda.

so when we talk about "mainstream media",we are talking about only a few,monolithic corporations who DO have an agenda,and that agenda is PROFIT.

so we can look back to the run up to the iraq war,and see how phil donahue was fired from MSNBC for being critical of the war.the highest rated show on that network at that time.so if PROFIT is the model,then donahue being fired makes no sense..UNLESS you consider that the owners of MSNBC were general electric,who at that time were heavily invested in military contracts on the dawn of a new war.

so the profit was not from advertising from donahue's show,but rather the billions in defense contracts general electric was poised to receive from the impending iraq war,and donahue's criticisms of that war had the possibility to affect the profits of general electric.

and that is the one point that is missing from mr green's take on the mainstream media:their inability or outright refusal to criticize the current corporate establishment,and how many journalists kneel at the altar of their corporate masters.

so while he makes a lot of great points.that particular glaring omission is disturbing.

speaking only for myself i tend to only consume independent media,and focus on journalists who have earned my trust.

ultimately it is up to us to decide who we trust and who we are suspicious of,and to discuss those important issues among ourselves to better refine our understandings.

when radical right wingers,who lean towards an authoritarian,dogmatic way of approaching certain subjects,yet will attempt to disguise their bigotry,prejudice or hatred under the banner of "free speech",or nationalistic pride" and even sometimes "common sense" (because in THEIR world view,thats what it is to them:common sense).

they receive pushback,and rightly so,because you have to allow them to express their ideas in a public forum for the diseased and twisted philosophy to be exposed for the shit ideas they were in the first place.

but if you disagree with their philosophical viewpoint,and deal with that disagreement by shouting them down,calling them horrendous names,disrupt their chance to express those ideas you disagree with,and in some cases..engage in violence..you lose the moral high ground,and whatever solid argument you had to either destroy,or at least reveal their position for the shit idea you think it may be.will be automatically dismissed by those looking from the outside in.

because you have engaged in tactics that lessen what could have been an extremely important point by becoming the very thing you state you oppose.

you do not fight authoritarian fascism.....with authoritarian,and sometimes violent...fascism.it does not work,in fact the only thing it does it weaken your position and make you look like the very thing you are opposing.

in the free market of ideas,philosophies,ideas,viewpoints,political positions all need to be openly aired in this market to be either accepted as 'good' and "worthwhile" or "of substantial consideration",or be rejected for the shit ideas they are,but they need to be openly spoken and/or written in order for people to even consider those ideas.

when you shut down any and all opportunities for a person to even SPEAK about these ideas,and using tactics that can only be considered "bullying' and "shaming".you shut own any and all conversation without the idea itself being challenged,and BOTH sides go to their respective corners still convinced of their own "righteousness",and nothing was actually addressed.

both the ultra left and the ultra right are guilty of this tactic,and in the end we all lose,but especially those players in their particular realm of ideologies.

because now they can sit happily and contentedly in their own little,tiny echo chamber bubble with their other,like-minded people,and congratulate themselves on their own righteousness.even though they were the ones who shut down all challenge,all criticism and all scrutiny.

if your ideas,and/or philosophies cannot withstand a modicum of scrutiny or criticism,then maybe those ideas were shit to begin with.

so shouting someone down,and being so disruptive as to make it impossible for that person to even begin to articulate their position,is not a "win".you did not strike a blow for equality or justice,because you pulled a fire alarm,or violently attacked a person you disagreed with.

you lost your moral high ground,and anybody who may have been on the fence,or was simply curious and wanted to hear a differing opinion.saw how you behaved when your ideas were challenged,and they outright dismissed you and your cause.

the only people you have left in your circle are the very same people who agree with you already.so enjoy the circle jerk of the self-righteous,but do not delude yourself for one second that you are "right",or have struck a blow for "justice" and "fairness".

i have been accused of being "anti-sjw", a 'closet bigot" and (this is my favorite) 'a cis-gender white privileged oppressor".

as if the goals i seek are not dissimilar as everybody elses:equality,fairness and justice.

but when i point out the wrong headed tactics of attacking innocent people just trying to listen to a persons opinions,which may possibly be:racist,bigoted and antithetical to a fair and just society.that is when i am attacked,and it is done so with the most arrogant of presumptions,with little or no evidence to back up their personal attacks upon me.

because i had the audacity to question the tactics of the protesters,and defended that speakers right to free speech.

you are free to express whatever little thought pops into your pretty little head,and i have the right ridicule you relentlessly.you are free to espouse your opinions and philisophical ideologies,but you are NOT free from offense.

because,ultimately,in the free market of ideas,if your ideas are shit.someone WILL call you out on them,and if you think the tactic of shouting people down,disrupting their lecture and/or attacking the attendees somehow makes you "right" or your cause "morally justified".it does not.it just makes you look exactly like the people you are disagreeing with,and not for nothing..it kinda make you look fucking stupid.

so let those people talk.
let them make their ill-thought arguments.
allow them to spew rhetoric and propaganda,and do what should be done in a free market of ideas.

destroy their argument,with logic,reason and a sense of fairness and justice that appeals to the majority of us.

and i mean,come on,let's be honest.there are certain portions of the population that are true believers.you are not going to change their minds but for those who are NOT fundamentalist,dogmatic thinkers,use your brains,talk to them,destroy those who propose ill-thought and bullshit arguments to reveal them for the sychophants they are.

don't be attacking them.
do not engage in violence,or disruptive behavior.
because then you lose any credibility before you have even begun.

that's my .02 anyways,take it for what it is worth.

I'm surprised he had to wait that long. Children waiting for transplants tend to be pushed to the front of the waiting list.

I hope the new heart lasts him a good while, preventing rejection is getting better and better all the time.

I'm not about to become any manner of expert either, but the mental gymnastics you suggest aren't nearly as exotic as you describe.

The very basic explanation usually given is old testament versus new testament. That of course is an oversimplification though and leads to your obvious come back about what gets kept/rejected and the irreconcilable contradictions.

The more specific response given next is that Jesus teachings a couple centuries after your passages was basically tell all the scholars of the day they had missed the entire point. Hating your neighbour and wanting to kill him but refraining just because you feared hell was zero degrees better than just killing him. all the intent and evil is already there. Thus, the new message that everybody is guilty under the unchanged law and the punishment is nasty. This message was wildly unpopular and ended with him being killed. Theologies differ, but the widely agreed next step was that his death was accept as payment for everybody's wrongs and thus he was the path to saving everyone from the death the letter of the law demanded.

You don't need to believe a word of that, but to say it's trivially obvious it's the wrong interpretation just isn't true. It is not a bunch of mental gymnastics at all, it is the pretty clear explanation and teaching Jesus gave in the Bible. Rejected with all the enthusiasm you want, but your grossly misrepresenting the beliefs of millions of people today by insisting that murder the unbelievers is the only rational way to read the Bible.

Protestants and Catholics spent a long time trying to kill each other for myriad reasons. Can you find a Catholic or Protestant leader in your area, or even your country that takes your view of things as accurate?

Poolcleaner simply observed that he appreciated being able to agree to disagree with diverse groups of people. He added a throw away comment that atheists can be the worst for disrespecting each others beliefs though. You took umbrage with that, and are still here proceeding to not only condemn theists for their beliefs, but are going beyond that and ADDING beliefs they themselves REJECT to condemn for those too.

You have to see the problem/irony in this, no?

Well said, as always.

Every time I get pulled down the rabbit warren of despairing at the insanity of both the entrenched left and the entrenched right it's tough to pull back out and find a response other than attacking the malicious wrong mindedness. What I get pulled back to though, and your post reminded me of again is that the better response is to unite the middle. The response to birthers looking to build walls and ban muslims isn't to unite the left as a counter, but we should instead be uniting those of us in the middle. The response to safe spaces, rejection of dissenting opinions as 'triggering', and calls for vigilante rape-culture when faced with due process should not be met with the uniting the right as a counter, but uniting the middle.

If we unite the middle, we can tell both the extreme right and the extreme left exactly how disgusting the silent majority find their behaviours.

Sounds like an exercising in rearranging the furniture on the Titanic to me.

In a world where discrimination and separatism is qualitatively and quantitatively on the rise, people in charge must be ecstatic that they can appease people without having to do anything meaningful that might piss off the extremists on the right, or "shareholders". And people are so used to being told that change is only possible through incremental adjustments that they'll eat it up like candy and think this is progress.

"People people people, if you're going to call someone a filthy tranny and throw fast food at xem on public transport, at least use the proper pronoun when you verbally abuse xem."

When there's a hole in the boat and you're taking on water, the least of your concerns should be about what language you use to describe the in-rushing water or shape of the hole, nor arguing over the colour of the material you use to repair it.

I'm sure some people will see this as a victory. Until next time they apply for a job and not get hired due to transphobia. And the manager of the company, with a gleam in their eye, begins the rejection letter with 'Dear bun/bunself', then sniggers to themselves and says "fucking trannies."

What I'm trying to say was summed nicely in a tweet i saw the other day:
ALTRIGHT/NEO NAZI: your all going to the gas chambers!!!
NEOLIBERAL: you're*

If this is the extent of what activism is able to achieve, i should say that the establishment/elite have won by pacifying and declawing the protesters. It's no longer about breaking the shackles of oppression. We can't go around breaking shackles everywhere - think of the effect on the economy? And what about people getting hit by shrapnel? No, instead the LGBTQ community will be given multi coloured chains, the black community will be given slightly longer chains, and we'll pad the shackles with silk so that everyone is much more comfortable. Don't complain about the concept of being chained, instead complain that your chain is not as nice as the next guy's chain.

It's as though the great struggle of protest and civil disobedience has been taken over by the liberal intelligentsia, and the worst kind of discrimination faced by a 20 year old middle-class university student with rainbow coloured dreadlocks and a nose piercing is the letter they receive about their student loan that begins "dear sir/madam". So they go out and march about it and think they've made progress when they get their own pronoun. In their life, in their experiences, they are treated equally in other respects, so they think they ARE fighting inequality.

But for the working class male or female transsexual who gets filthy looks and a seat isolated by themselves on public transport, to travel to their entry level job where they've been skipped over for promotion for not looking the part, or getting the right level of respect from the trans-phobic staff, getting snide whispered comments from customers about the size of their hands, getting abuse yelled at them as they travel to have a night out at the ONLY trans-friendly bar within a 20 mile radius....... I get the feeling that receiving a letter with the correct pronoun isn't exactly going to change their fucking lives.

To remove a weed, you go for the roots. Some wanker calling you him/her when you prefer bun/bunself is not the root of this problem. The problem is that they are trans-phobic, not the language - which is just the tool they use to discriminate against you. To change the language and think that you've won is a bit like redefining room temperature and claiming you've warmed everybody by a few degrees.

If you march for equal rights, fair pay, fair treatment then people are going to see that and join your protest because they also want those things. Those things will solve the problems faced by the trans community, feminists, masculinists, minorities alike! And through common goals and by supporting each other en masse for simple, unified goals like EQUALITY, progress will be made, change will happen. It is a concept called solidarity and seems to be going out of fashion, but our grandparents knew.

The objective for the establishment is to drive a wedge between groups of people so that their demands are more manageable, and they can be turned on each other. Feminists, masculinists, LGBT, everyone... can't you see how better off you'd be marching together for common values that lie at the core of what every human wants?

Wall of text, sorry... and I know it looks like i'm being insensitive. So congratulations, genuinely, for getting someone to use your preferred pronoun if that makes you feel better. But whilst people have been fighting tooth and nail to get their own pronoun (in civilised settings only), we've suffered huge leaps backwards in freedom and tolerance behind their backs whilst they were bent over intently concentrating on the finer detail of what their ideal equality looks like.

What he's talking about here is "cliche", but cliche's have themselves become so cliche, it's no longer effective to use that term to describe them.
This same phenomenon is found extremely widely in literature and music. I stumbled onto this following college, after being trained to have a critical eye for creative work, when I found myself hating everything that humans produced but not understanding why.
My personal theory is that 1) we've not yet learned to teach creators how to identify and cultivate truly unique ideas, and 2) the structure of our current systems for fostering creative work require said work to appeal fundamentally to the largest possible audience, which is easiest when a universal language (visual, auditory or written) exists.
We're trained to build on existing ideas, which is critical for success, but not how to reject established ideas and instead find new ones that are capable of maintaining familiarity, or communicating their core concepts without need of educating the audience.
It's an interesting evolution of process that I'm sure we can find in other areas of the human experience, beyond the field of creative media.

Look, democrats are obstructionist, sure, but what you're saying is that a guy who speeds to get to work is as bad as a drunk driver who speeds through school zones because they're both basically just disobeying traffic laws. There's a world of difference and conflating the two is simply inappropriate.

I notice from your sentence length, grammar, and use of buzz phrases that you don't have an especially good grasp on any of this, so I'll leave it at that. Add in your aversion to actually being forced to think about your positions and I know all I need to about you.

If you'd paid any attention to me, you wouldn't have made any of the obvious factual mistakes you have here, so it's apparent there's no means of getting through to you, except, perhaps, life experience and/or more education than you have at the moment (though I suspect you'd reject that too).

Right, so you're basically advocating shutting down the federal government to get your way. Sorry, elections have consequences. The GOP lost control of both houses in Obama's first two years. They could have had positive influence on Obamacare, but they decided to claim instead it was a socialist takeover of health care, intended to kill grandma. That's the Republicans' fault for getting their butts handed to them in the election. That wasn't because they backed down.

Obamacare wasn't shoved down your throat. You had a vote like everyone else. Boo hoo, your side lost. Do you see me saying everything the Republicans and GWB did was shoved down my throat, even though I didn't like a lot of it? Nope.

Your sister has Crohn's. I never said she didn't. My wife had diabetes for most of her life and recently went through years of dialysis before having a simultaneously kidney and pancreas transplant, which she's still dealing with the anti-rejection meds.

Your sister's medical condition doesn't make your BS story true about what Obamacare did to her premiums. I laid out EXACTLY how Obamacare would work in her situation, and you introduced nothing that proves what I said wrong. Instead, you thought you'd claim the righteous indignation ground and assumed that my immediate family didn't have very serious medical conditions to deal with as well, and then resorted to name calling.

Just remember, your friendly neighborhood HeroPsycho told you Clinton will crush Trump in the electoral college. You can try and ignore reality all you want, but the inevitable is coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.