Indeed. One of the reasons there is a much higher rate of depression (and suicide) amongst mtf than ftm transsexuals is that the treatment is administered too late, after the male hormones of puberty have irretrievably shaped a male body. The result is that, while they feel and are 100% women, they are not perceived as such by society because of the scars of masculinity: the pain of being in the wrong body becomes externalized, embodied in the perception others have of them as a "surgically rearranged male".


@Trancecoach
In the second part of the report she tells the interviewer that she would tell a potential boyfriend of her origins, and that she's not interested in dating someone who's too closed-minded to care about it.

>> ^EMPIRE:

and she's a cute girl. fortunately for her, she will be able to enjoy the body she was supposed to have been born with, still in her teen years.

I Wish! My cover artist and illustrator is awesome.

My first book, The pregnant man diaries, is about Pregnancy from a masculine point of view, i.e., full of panic, fear and despair.

The second, How Parents are born, is about the first two years of a little girl in her poor dad's life.



In reply to this comment by DerHasisttot:
Are your books graphic novels? What are they about?

Is that the official terminology? "First Dude?"

Do these men feel their masculinity is that threatened, (because their wife is in the highest office of power), that First Man isn't cool enough. They have to resort to "First Dude?"

That's pathetic.

>> ^deathcow:

lion balls may be the most masculine thing on earth


"My ex-husband? Fuck his lyin' lion loins!"

---

1:36 "...lion down..."

lion balls may be the most masculine thing on earth

Tracy is fucking raw, and I get the impression that he is surrounded by people who just give him the thumbs up no matter how far he goes.

That said, there is a lot of anti-gay in poorer, under-educated communities in the US. Masculinity is seen as toughness, and any effeminate inclinations are suppressed.

I don't think it's sufficient to tell people to ignore it, that just because it's a word it shouldn't hurt them. As human beings, we tend to care about what others, individuals, groups, or society in general, think about us. One needs to feel as if they're being spoken and referred to with the appropriate respect in order to feel accepted. Maybe the words themselves don't hurt, but the intentions certainly do. So while I agree that context is everything, I don't see how you can just brush it off when somebody calls you lazy and means it negatively. Do you not care at all about whether that person respects you? What if it was a loved one calling you lazy? Would that not hurt at all?


And FlowersIn HisHair, you're right, people don't say "Jewish" and mean "anything a bit crap". It's actually used derogatorily in very specific situations when referring to somebody who is acting self-servingly. Eg. "You Jew-ed me," or "You ripped me off, don't be such a Jew". Given the obvious negative connotation behind these statements, and the clear connection between the derogatory use of the word Jew and stereotypes about Jews, I can't imagine any Jew hearing the word being use that way without feeling bad.


Which leads me back to the original conversation. I don't actually think the word "gay" is used to mean "anything a bit crap". I think it's meant to indicate that somebody is being "lame" (and yes, I know there's a slight irony in my use of the word. And not just lame, but acting like a pansy, in a non-masculine way. While the use of the word is often more general, it is most commonly to refer to someone who is acting in a way befitting the negative stereotype about "gay" people. It's not just a harmless word that has a general meaning of crappiness, but one that only has meaning because of the existing negative and harmful stereotypes about "gay" people.

However, just because people use Jew or Gay in a negative way, we don't let them have the words and declare them off limits. We continue to use it in an appropriate and respectful way. If people decide to use it in the negative way, that's might be their choice, but their use might infer something about the degree to which they accept and support certain harmful stereotypes. I'm not sure that I agree with Savage that the word is harmless.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
I do hate to disagree with Mr Savage, who speaks very well about the practicalities of sex, and whose opinion and good sense I generally trust and revere. But to dismiss this as simply the "evolution of language" is damaging, and in fact misses the point. The use of the word "gay" to mean anything "a bit generally rubbish" is itself founded on homophobia. Kids call things they don't like "gay" because they consider homosexuality to be undesirable; now how is that supposed to make gay kids, reluctant to come out for fear of persecution, feel about what they are? What if "Jewish", or "female" came to mean "anything a bit generally crap"? Would there be a serious and concerted effort to stamp out such a perversion of the language that a group had used to describe itself? You bet your ass there would.
And yes, "gay" used to mean something else, language evolves, blah blah. That's fine if the word in question doesn't identify a vulnerable group that is still fighting for acceptance and equality on an individual and global level.

I see your point, and I would never want a kid to feel picked on, or alone. But if that's the way it works, then why doesn't gay still mean happy? And shouldn't gay kids be happy about the fact they're called happy? No, because the meaning of the word changed. Just like it will again.
See, what needs to happen is, you have to let the word move on. If we keep acting like the words "gay" or "fag" are bad, then they always will be. They will never, ever, ever, ever, ever just go away.
I'm incredibly lazy. I've learned not to get offended when people call me that. Even if they mean it in a negative way. What we should really be teaching people is that WORDS CAN'T HURT YOU. We need to move past the era of incantations and spells.
If what you're suggesting actually happened, that the words "female" or "jewish" came to mean "anything a bit generally crap", then people would use those words precisely because they offended people. And the more anyone tried to "stamp them out", they would just become more and more powerful. Seriously.

if a woman had that much urine in the bladder, I expect it would look like that when it finally came out o_o

the genitalia visible in the picture looks more feminine than masculine to me!

>> ^MarineGunrock:

How many women do you know that piss like that!?>> ^residue:
she's got an enormous bladder...

Counterpoint:

Aesthetics is 'a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, esp. in art.' It's typically undervalued in a capitalist society and a lot of times never goes beyond a niche market, which is odd since so many decry the 'McDonaldization' of society (and why diss McDonald's?--they exist precisely because they DO give a sh-t about their customers).

Shaving with a straight razor can be considered an art form. It's also an experience unto itself to be shaved by a pro with such an implement. You can buy machines that heat up lather at home but they never quite do it as well as the one at the shop. Also, the act of sitting prone in a chair while a stranger holds a blade to your throat is quite an impressive act of trust. There could be all the barber licenses in the world on the wall as well as a cop holding a gun on the barber...and he can still cut your throat before he's shot.

I dislike the trend to ban masculinity from society. Women are many things but (thank ye gods) they are not men. The idea of the 'man cave' is an insult when the entire home used to be a man's castle.

Thanks for reading that long long loooooong post. It certainly came from my heart!

I didn't see the comment stream as "backlash." I fully expected it. This is what humans do, it seems -- lash out, misinterpret, cherry pick one sentence and analyze it to death out of context, extrapolate, and build themselves up into fake and real outrage. Happens all the time on comment streams of longer length.

I include myself in that description, but I am trying to wean myself from doing that. It isn't productive. I know I am not 100% successful, but I do it less than I used to. I'm still learning to recognize the behavior in myself. I have learned a lot from being on the Sift.

And I think you are right -- this place is mostly guys and I don't care how old they are, the kid is still inside there and he wants to play. Women have been called a "civilizing" influence -- I prefer that idea to the negativity of the idea of Political Correctness -- and the guys are absolutely right. It sucks the spontaneous fun of reacting in the moment.

I think the best example of that is that horrible C Punch vid that Lasurus posted. http://videosift.com/video/CUNt-PUNCH

The first comment. Now that is honesty -- he knows there is something distasteful about this vid and he finds it funny. I say good on him for just telling truth.

I always bring up Louis CK as a perfect example of the lie that is Political Correctness. Here's a guy who has said some of the most objectively offensive things I have ever heard, but I am never offended. Why? Because he tells the truth. Always. If he finds something that is objectively speaking distasteful, he says -- man, this is gross and I like it anyway. It is the bone deep honesty of it that steps him back from the edge.

AND. It is tiring to keep that up when all you want to do is watch videos and react, though. I get it.

I was very interested in how you reacted to the C punch vid (with the title that offended me.) I have a couple of fantastic male friends who are not the "normal" kind of guy. Heterosexual but gentle. To hear their tales of being bullied and abused, of their struggles to find their way to be themselves in our culture that is so abusive towards its men, that only allows one image for what it means to be masculine.... it's enough to break your heart. I heard echos of that in your post. I know you say that you felt protective towards women -- well, I may be projecting my friends' experience, I may be off base, but I heard echos of my male friends' struggles in your outrage.

I know that this place is mostly male. I come here because of the science (there used to be more, but there is still some), and the smarts, and the generally progressive attitudes, and dft and blankfist having the same argument over and over again.

I believe it is inappropriate for me to "squash" the boyish fun -- if this were a predominantly female site, the men would be expected to respect the culture of that site.

But they also aren't here alone. And that first poster on lasurus' linked vid KNEW it wasn't appropriate, that a line had been crossed.

Blah blah blah.

I am going to the new Pirates movie now. (Saw Thor last night -- man, was that stupid. But then, I don't know the comics, so maybe it was actually very good. I had no reference. I did recognize Stan Lee though....)



In reply to this comment by spoco2:
Very nice post

>> ^shinyblurry:

Since you asked, I'll tell you why I believe in God. Up until 8 years ago I was agnostic. I was raised agnostic, without any religion. We celebrated Christmas and Easter, but that was about it. I wasn't raised to like or dislike religion, I was simply left free to decide what I believed.
At the time I became a theist, I didn't believe in a spiritual reality, or any God I had ever heard of, because like most of the people here I saw no evidence for it at all. I actually used to go into christian chat rooms and debate christians on what I saw to be inconsistances in the bible. A lot of what people have said in this thread are thoughts that I once had and arguments I used to use myself.
Then one day it all changed. I guess you could say my third eye was opened. I had something akin to a kundalini awakening, spontaneously out of nowhere. When it was over, I could suddenly perceive the spiritual reality. I didn't quite know what I was looking at, at the time..didn't truly understand what had happened to me (though through intuition i understood the great potential of it). It was only after researching it online and finding out about the chakras did I start to understand.
It's an amazing, truly truly amazing thing to find out everything you know is wrong. It is really utterly mind blowing. This however, was the conclusion I was forced to immediately reach however, because the evidence for it was right in front of my face. Everything that I had known up until the point I could perceive the spiritual was missing so many essential elements that I may as well have been just born.
I started to receive signs..little miracles, I would call them..like stepping in front of a vast panarama of nature and suddenly seeing it at an angle impossible to human sight, where everything is in focus at the same time, that produced such startling beauty it filled me to overflowing with estatic joy. I started to perceive there was a higher beauty, a higher love that had always been there but I had somehow missed it. I started to get the point, that there was something more. That there was a God.
When I conceded it was possible, to myself, it was then that I started to hear from Him directly. He let me know a couple of things, and proved to me that I wasn't just imagining Him. He showed me that He had been there my entire life, teaching me and guiding me as a child on, only I had been totally unaware of it. He showed me how we "shared space", and that not only could He read my mind, but in some essential way that He was what my mind is. That He is mind itself. He showed me how my thought process was more of a cooperative than a solitary thing.
Now before you say I just jumped at all of this because everyone wants to imagine a loving God, etc etc..untrue in my case. When I first found out He was definitely real, i was scared shitless. Up until that point, my thoughts about God were all negative. I figured if He did exist He probably hated me. You see, that is what I had gleaned growing up in a Christian society without actually knowing anything about it.
At this point I became a theist. I thought of God as a He because He seemed masculine rather than feminine, and also I thought of Him as the Creator. I didn't know anything about the bible, or the Holy Trinity, or what a messiah was, or any of that. I thought the God I knew must not be generally known because I had never seen anything out there that pointed to a loving God.
For the next 6 yeears I was on a spiritual journey. I studied all the various belief systems, spiritual or otherwise, all the religious history..east and west, north and south. I studied philosophy and esoteric wisdom, gurus and prophets. The one I really hadn't studied though, was Christianity. The reason being I didn't believe Jesus actually ever existed so I dismissed it out of hand.
Before I knew anything about Christianity, God taught me three important things about who He is. One, He taught me His nature is triune, that God is three. I didn't understand what that meant precisely, I just knew that was His nature. He also taught me that there was a Messiah. He taught me that there was someone whose job it was to save the world. The third thing and most important thing He taught me was about His love. That He loved everyone, and that He secretly took care of them whether they believed in Him or not. He showed me His perfect heart.
What led me to the bible was this: I asked Him who the Messiah was and He told me to look in a mirror. At the time I had been away from civilization for a few months and my beard had grown out for the first time in my life. I hadn't seen a mirror since I was clean shaven. I sought one out and when I saw my reflection I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked exactly like Jesus Christ. I mean to a T.
It was then I was forced to accept the possibility that Jesus was real. To be honest, I really didn't want to. I felt like I had a really special relationship with the Father and that Jesus could only get in the way of that. I didn't even feel like I could pay Him any real respect, because I knew the Father was greater than He was. But, I couldn't ignore what He was showing me, so I started to read the bible. To my surprise, I found out it was about the God I already knew.
Everything I read in the bible matched what I already knew about God . The Holy Trinity matched His triune nature. That there was a Messiah and Jesus was it. And most of all His love, His great and majestic love, for all people, was perfectly laid out in ways I had never before comprehended. The bible was the only information on Earth that accurately described what I already knew about God. That is how I knew it was true from the outset.
So that's when I became a Christian. I couldn't ignore the evidence. My journey to Christianity was based on rationality and logic, believe it or not, albiet with miracles and spirituality mixed in. Even the miracles themselves were logical, as God showed me how He worked from a meta-perspective, and that time and space didn't restrict Him at all. So there you have it..an interesting testimony to be sure.
I am unusual in that I didn't come to God on my own. God chose me, I didn't choose Him. I might never have come to God if He hadn't. I found out later that this means I was elected..in that, before God made the world He had already planned to create me to do His will. After He woke me up it never really took much faith to believe in God because He demonstrated to me His amazing power and ASTONISHING intellect in ways that were impossible to refute. Whatever brick wall I would put up, He would smash it down into oblivion. He favored me because I stayed hungry. I knew the truth was knowable, and I gunned for it 200 percent. I would have died for it.
So I empathize with the people here. Some of you might actually be elected too, it just is not your time to know. Some are probably angry/scared/rebelliious, while still others are intellectually incurious and swayed by hyperbole. I'm pretty sure not many people here have actually read the bible. I hadn't either..I was simply arrogant at the time.
So what I would say to people here is..there is far more going on than seems apparent..if you don't believe at least that there is a spiritual reality, you're practically rubbing two sticks together. God definitely exists and will prove it to you if you humble yourself, come to Him in sincerity, with your total heart and pray. Admit you're a sinner, and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior. Anyone can know God is real. I wish I had read it earlier..would have saved me a hardship. Save yourself the trouble and find out the truth for yourself, that God is real He loves you. God bless..


Wow, thanks for that detailed reply. Forgive me, but I've broken it down to basics here. Can you confirm that I've understood you correctly?:

OK, so in short:

- You were an atheist from birth.

- You had a dramatic and sudden spiritual awakening and began to perceive an extra spiritual dimension in the material world around you.

- You began to have visions that were akin to out of body experiences or remote viewing, but with an extra dimension of spiritual perception. You interpreted these experiences as little miracles, and that they were provided by a higher being: a god.

- At this point god spoke you directly and explicitly, and proved to you that you were not imagining him. He explained that he permeated *everything*, including your being, and that in many respects he *was* you.

- Over the next 6 years you studied, and were guided and tutored directly by god who explained to you more specifically about his nature, and what the bible was all about.

Or to break this down even further!:

You believe there is a god because, after a sudden spiritual awakening he spoke to you directly and proved to you that he exists.

Have I got the basics correct here? Just the very basics?

Bareboards2, this is a great post. As a male, I often feel disgusted by my own sex. I am very aware of the female perspective on the world, and the issues women must deal with at the hands of fucking idiotic 'men'. This is from having both casually studied the subject, and well... just giving a shit about the women in my life. In addition I have all these grand ideas about humanity improving itself.

I rarely post on here, but felt compelled to. For me, that video makes a joke out of violence against women. The way the guy spoke, all that, and then the action, plus the laughter that followed. I briefly considered 'oh equality issues, guys do videos like this all the time, what is wrong here?' but then rejected it quickly. A video like this would be more acceptable if it was two women doing jackass style jokes. But it isn't. Instead we get a video of a man 'punishing' this woman, that makes light of very real, and horrible issues in the world.

Most people on the planet are idiots, this includes a hell of a lot of ignorant men who can hardly empathize with another person, let alone the opposite sex. I also tend to find a lot of insecure men, who are so concerned/insecure about themselves in general, that they latch onto masculinity. They tend to feverishly defend anything that could shatter this, or make them think outside the box, which includes acknowledging women's continued inequality. Not saying everyone talking back about this is like what I've described, but some of them sure end up looking like it regardless.

I just wanted to say there are plenty of men out there that ARE aware of these issues, and care. Even if a lot of ignorant guys get loud. Dystopianfuturetoday made a great post as well.

Since you asked, I'll tell you why I believe in God. Up until 8 years ago I was agnostic. I was raised agnostic, without any religion. We celebrated Christmas and Easter, but that was about it. I wasn't raised to like or dislike religion, I was simply left free to decide what I believed.

At the time I became a theist, I didn't believe in a spiritual reality, or any God I had ever heard of, because like most of the people here I saw no evidence for it at all. I actually used to go into christian chat rooms and debate christians on what I saw to be inconsistances in the bible. A lot of what people have said in this thread are thoughts that I once had and arguments I used to use myself.

Then one day it all changed. I guess you could say my third eye was opened. I had something akin to a kundalini awakening, spontaneously out of nowhere. When it was over, I could suddenly perceive the spiritual reality. I didn't quite know what I was looking at, at the time..didn't truly understand what had happened to me (though through intuition i understood the great potential of it). It was only after researching it online and finding out about the chakras did I start to understand.

It's an amazing, truly truly amazing thing to find out everything you know is wrong. It is really utterly mind blowing. This however, was the conclusion I was forced to immediately reach however, because the evidence for it was right in front of my face. Everything that I had known up until the point I could perceive the spiritual was missing so many essential elements that I may as well have been just born.

I started to receive signs..little miracles, I would call them..like stepping in front of a vast panarama of nature and suddenly seeing it at an angle impossible to human sight, where everything is in focus at the same time, that produced such startling beauty it filled me to overflowing with estatic joy. I started to perceive there was a higher beauty, a higher love that had always been there but I had somehow missed it. I started to get the point, that there was something more. That there was a God.

When I conceded it was possible, to myself, it was then that I started to hear from Him directly. He let me know a couple of things, and proved to me that I wasn't just imagining Him. He showed me that He had been there my entire life, teaching me and guiding me as a child on, only I had been totally unaware of it. He showed me how we "shared space", and that not only could He read my mind, but in some essential way that He was what my mind is. That He is mind itself. He showed me how my thought process was more of a cooperative than a solitary thing.

Now before you say I just jumped at all of this because everyone wants to imagine a loving God, etc etc..untrue in my case. When I first found out He was definitely real, i was scared shitless. Up until that point, my thoughts about God were all negative. I figured if He did exist He probably hated me. You see, that is what I had gleaned growing up in a Christian society without actually knowing anything about it.

At this point I became a theist. I thought of God as a He because He seemed masculine rather than feminine, and also I thought of Him as the Creator. I didn't know anything about the bible, or the Holy Trinity, or what a messiah was, or any of that. I thought the God I knew must not be generally known because I had never seen anything out there that pointed to a loving God.

For the next 6 yeears I was on a spiritual journey. I studied all the various belief systems, spiritual or otherwise, all the religious history..east and west, north and south. I studied philosophy and esoteric wisdom, gurus and prophets. The one I really hadn't studied though, was Christianity. The reason being I didn't believe Jesus actually ever existed so I dismissed it out of hand.

Before I knew anything about Christianity, God taught me three important things about who He is. One, He taught me His nature is triune, that God is three. I didn't understand what that meant precisely, I just knew that was His nature. He also taught me that there was a Messiah. He taught me that there was someone whose job it was to save the world. The third thing and most important thing He taught me was about His love. That He loved everyone, and that He secretly took care of them whether they believed in Him or not. He showed me His perfect heart.

What led me to the bible was this: I asked Him who the Messiah was and He told me to look in a mirror. At the time I had been away from civilization for a few months and my beard had grown out for the first time in my life. I hadn't seen a mirror since I was clean shaven. I sought one out and when I saw my reflection I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked *exactly* like Jesus Christ. I mean to a T.

It was then I was forced to accept the possibility that Jesus was real. To be honest, I really didn't want to. I felt like I had a really special relationship with the Father and that Jesus could only get in the way of that. I didn't even feel like I could pay Him any real respect, because I knew the Father was greater than He was. But, I couldn't ignore what He was showing me, so I started to read the bible. To my surprise, I found out it was about the God I already knew.

Everything I read in the bible matched what I already knew about God . The Holy Trinity matched His triune nature. That there was a Messiah and Jesus was it. And most of all His love, His great and majestic love, for all people, was perfectly laid out in ways I had never before comprehended. The bible was the only information on Earth that accurately described what I already knew about God. That is how I knew it was true from the outset.

So that's when I became a Christian. I couldn't ignore the evidence. My journey to Christianity was based on rationality and logic, believe it or not, albiet with miracles and spirituality mixed in. Even the miracles themselves were logical, as God showed me how He worked from a meta-perspective, and that time and space didn't restrict Him at all. So there you have it..an interesting testimony to be sure.

I am unusual in that I didn't come to God on my own. God chose me, I didn't choose Him. I might never have come to God if He hadn't. I found out later that this means I was elected..in that, before God made the world He had already planned to create me to do His will. After He woke me up it never really took much faith to believe in God because He demonstrated to me His amazing power and ASTONISHING intellect in ways that were impossible to refute. Whatever brick wall I would put up, He would smash it down into oblivion. He favored me because I stayed hungry. I knew the truth was knowable, and I gunned for it 200 percent. I would have died for it.

So I empathize with the people here. Some of you might actually be elected too, it just is not your time to know. Some are probably angry/scared/rebelliious, while still others are intellectually incurious and swayed by hyperbole. I'm pretty sure not many people here have actually read the bible. I hadn't either..I was simply arrogant at the time.

So what I would say to people here is..there is far more going on than seems apparent..if you don't believe at least that there is a spiritual reality, you're practically rubbing two sticks together. God definitely exists and will prove it to you if you humble yourself, come to Him in sincerity, with your total heart and pray. Admit you're a sinner, and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior. Anyone can know God is real. I wish I had read it earlier..would have saved me a hardship. Save yourself the trouble and find out the truth for yourself, that God is real He loves you. God bless..



>> ^TheSluiceGate:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Well, according to the dictionary:
dict.org
Atheism \A"the ism\, n. [Cf. F. ath['e]isme. See Atheist.]
1. The disbelief or denial of the existence of a God, or
supreme intelligent Being.
merriam-webster.com
Definition of ATHEISM
1archaic : ungodliness, wickedness
2a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity
a·the·ism   /ˈeɪθiˌɪzəm/ Show Spelled
[ey-thee-iz-uhm] Show IPA
dictionary.reference.com
–noun
1. the doctrine or belief that there is no god.
2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
The definition of atheism is very clear; the belief that there is no God. If you don't really believe that, IE .0001 percent, then you're not an atheist. You can't just reinvent the definition so you have no burden of proof. That .0001 might as well be 99 percent for all the difference it makes. Personally, I think the definitions people are trying to use today for atheism are extremely intellectually dishonest.

The problem here, as MaxWilder suggested, is that arguing about what the word atheist means is just semantics. We could both quote dictionaries until the cows come home, but it would make no difference to the central argument. It's for reasons like this that other new terms such as "rationalist" or "humanist" are being coined all the time as a way of distancing traditional atheism from the word atheist itself. I realise now that me trying to clarify the manner in which many people commonly define their lack of a belief in a god is actually quite pointless. I'm even going to disregard that you didn't respond to the reason why it doesn't take faith to be an atheist. This thread needs to be brought down to brass tacks.
Let's simplify the central point here, the central point of both the video you posted, and of all the arguments in this thread: Can you give one reason why you , shinyblurry, personally believe that there is a god? Just your one best argument for a god's existence.
For my part, and in the interest of fairness, I will tell you briefly how I arrived at being an atheist. (You can comment on this separately if you wish, but please, not before addressing the above question!)
I was about 13 years old when, as a child brought up a catholic and attending weekly mass, I began to question the morality of the god described in the bible. I looked at the atrocities he committed and asked myself what I would think of a real flesh and blood person alive today who behaved in the manner of the actions attributed to him in the bible, and whether or not this person would be worthy of the praise and admiration heaped upon him. This central idea led to an increased questioning of all the aspects of the religion I had been brought up in, and an awareness that although there were many great ideas and philosophical truths in catholic teachings, there was no conclusive proof either in the bible, or in the world in general, for the existence of a supernatural god of any kind.
So if you, shinyblurry, were recording a video in the style of the one that you have posted, what would you be saying on camera was the one central reason for your belief?

ok.
i have stated this previously and in multiple posts.
lets define "god" for a moment.
and lets accomplish this without any religious influence or overtures...none.
because lets be honest,religion acts like it has the secret key to the hidden doorway.
which i find not only repulsive but dishonest.

lets see if we can agree on a few things.i shall use the monotheistic religions as example because using all 4500 would be..tedious:
1.god implies masculine.this is obviously a falsehood.why would god need sexual organs?
2.we are all made in gods image.again a falsehood.having never seen god how can we know?
3.the bible/q'ran is the written word of god.(i wont include the torah because jews do not make that pronouncement).again this is false,some basic research will reveal this statement to be an utter fallacy.unless of course you are a fundamentalist,and in that case..carry on with your wars of attrition /looking at you fundmantalist christians and muslims).
4.god loves you.unless you break these rules and in that case he has built a special place for you to burn for eternity (varying degrees of understanding here,even fundamentalists struggle with this obvious hypocrisy).conclusion=bullshit.


ok.i am going to stop because i could do this all day.
my basic point is that it is RELIGION that makes the claim that it is THEY who hold the keys to the gate.that only through THEIR understanding could any of lowly humans ever think to have salvation.
religion is man-made with tangible texts,doctrine and dogma and in being so is subject to criticism.as it SHOULD be.
these institutions define god and then attempt to compel through fear and..well..fear..to get people to comply.
in my opinion it is these very institutions which hinder the growth and development of us all as a species.
fundamentalism is the stunting of the spirit and the stagnation of the mind.
none of what i am saying here takes away from the poetry,literature and wisdom from the bible..it is RELIGION which perpetrates that crime.

everybody still with me?
am i making sense?
ok..now lets define god and lets do it in a way that religion will never do because it will make those institutions irrelevant.
(which ironically was the EXACT thing jesus was attempting to do..but i digress)
lets consider "god" an entity with immense consciousness.
let us for a moment imagine this consciousness giving birth to the universe from itself.
what is the first thing to come in to existence besides energy?
time.
and when that happened what else became evident?
everything became relative due to this added dimension.
let that sink in a bit because it has huge implications.
ok..
now if we continue on this thread of thought.this would mean that the universe is literally god.
every molecule.
every atom.
god.
and what if this creator put out only one simple edict for his construct?
create.
thats all.he sets the rules and puts only one line of code=create.
and everything his creations creates is part of him and he..it.
good..evil..arbitrary terms used to relate subjective realities focused from a singular perspective.
the creator does not notice them because all of it is the same to the creator.
WE make those very human definitions.
lets imagine for a second that the universe has a consciousness.one that we may be aware or unaware of,but we know we are an individual.
we have consciousness.
we do NOT know if a plant has a consciousness that we can measure but we may some day.
now if we are a part of this incredible creation called the universe and we have consciousness.this means we are aware of not only ourselves but the universe around us.
this means we experience creation on a daily basis.manifesting in so many dynamic ways:love,loss,anger,violence,wonder,imagination,making love,cheeseburgers with a cold beer etc etc
and in that light would not the creator experience its own creation subjectively through our experiencing his creation?

now this is not a new idea,in fact it is quite old but it does have the quality of not needing any religion,nor doctrine or dogma.
why not?
because in essence YOU are god and god is YOU.
if i had postulated something like this as early as 100 yrs ago i would be burned at the stake.
why? religion.
but this is the basic definition i use when i use the term "god".
it is also the reason why i have no urge to preach or proselytize.
the only thing i try to do is recognize that i do not hold the key nor the answers but i seek them and that is my path.
yours is your own and the only thing i can do is recognize that you are a spiritual being (whether you believe that or not) and respect your choices on how you wish to live.
because..in the end..they are YOUR choices.

now please understand i share this with you not to convince or to invite ridicule but rather to offer a different definition.
to me life is amazing in the very simple act of breathing.
of loving..
and arguing..ah..many thanks for those in my life for the glorious arguments.
this life is precious if only for those simple things.
is there an afterlife?
i believe so,what it looks like i have no idea but i know it wont be THIS life.
so cherish those who you care about because this is one helluva ride,and i am glad you all are here to enjoy it with me.

for those of you still here.
thanks for coming to the show!
dont forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses!
and thank YOU BRM for taking the time to discuss things of this nature with me.

Thanks for saying it.

You've spared this sift a lot of bullsh!t posts of "outrage" if I had said it.

>> ^legacy0100:

These men might have been a gay couple.
Not that gay men can't be masculine, but they have easier time allowing themselves to be feminine than straight men do.