This is complete bullshit - a kung-fu version of people fainting and being cured at the alter of a super-church. Until we see someone launching a flying kick and then just stopping mid air like they hit a wall, then fuck right off. Nothing here is not reproducable by the likes of Derren Brown.

Ha! I was thinking the same thing!

You can move 2 short pieces of dolly track along one after the other. Once it's left piece one and is on piece 2 you have ages to move piece 1 and put it in front again.

You have 2 ropes, one that he's hanging from when the video starts, and a second that he's attached to that's slack when the video starts that's attached to the top of the rock face some distance away to the left (see 15 seconds where he says "there's the anchor") That 2nd "anchor" rope is the one that swings him out.

*dupeof http://videosift.com/video/Gaming-Frog - but I don't got da power!

My point was that I was raised a catholic, not that I was bound by it's teachings and dogma. I had even stopped going to church when the real questioning began and would have considered myself agnostic just as you said you were when god revealed himself to you.

Futhermore I am entirely open to the possibility that there could be a god, but as there is no evidence to support the claim that there is, I remain unconvinced.

But if there is a god, hey there buddy, feel free to strike me with a lightning bolt in a "Road to Damascas" type situation. If you really exist then we should all love to know the truth about it.

I'll let you know when he calls!

That's my whole point: to claim *that* would be bullshit.
I know from the personal testimony of those above that many did at one stage feel they had a genuine personal connection with God, and that having had that it should have provided the required proof, and made walking away near impossible.

But I'd rather hear from shiny himself, and not have us feel that someone answered for him, so what about it shiny?

Let's cut to the chase here Shinyblurry:

You say that there's a John Smith (let's use that as a synonym for your god) , who lives close by, and he has absolute knowledge of the universe, and nothing can be known with certainty without his direct contact with me.

Let's for argument's sake say that, through whatever means, I become convinced by you that there is indeed this guy John Smith who does indeed have all this knowledge...

So how can I get to meet this wonderful John Smith gent? Does he actually even exist? Is he entirely made up? Is his existence some form of delusion, like a folk legend about fairies at the end of the garden? Have you dreamed of him while high on drugs? How can I work this out?

You say proof has to come through personal revelation by sincerely inviting him into your life, but this is *entirely* false. I was brought up a catholic, went to religious schooling, was baptised, made my communion, and confirmed, I preyed to him regularly. I did more than just invite him into my life, I spoke to him, and sometimes even pleaded with him, but I have never, ever, received any indication of any kind, no matter how minuscule, that he actually existed.

Even Matt Dillahunty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillahunty) was raised a Baptist, and sought to become a minister, but now he is one of the world's most highly regarded proponents of secularism and atheism.

And what about all the existing ministers that leave religious orders and become atheists? There are currently organisations set up in the USA (such as The Clergy Project - http://clergyproject.org/) to help these people integrate back into society. I also personally know an ordained priest who left the priesthood on becoming an atheist.

Without you first proving that your god exists I can't entertain any notions that he may have any knowledge about anything. You've told me that this can be done by inviting him into your life, but this is entirely and demonstrably false.

In the absence of any proof / revelation that this omnipotent all knowing god of which you speak even exists, I'm afraid the knowledge you claim that he has must remain unproven too.

Jump the first hurdle of a god's existence, until then we're wasting our time debating what you claim he knows.

Yeah seems fake to me too. No direct evidence, but it was too easy for him to get the guitar off the guy (he wasn't even using a guitar strap, which just about any guitarist would to be able to play while standing up) and he didn't react at all when it was smashed.

[edit] and literally 20 seconds later:
http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/10065799.Video__Dom_Joly_goes_undercover_in_The_Malls/

It's Trigger Happy TV's Dom Joly.

For the rest of you, here's some quotes from shinyblurry from another thread, just so you know where he's coming from.

----------------------------------

shinyblurry says...

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..

-------------------------------------

That's what he *says*, but he certainly does not offer and proof / argument for this. Sure he waffles on and offers some form of malformed circular logic, but no proof.

Shinyblurry we've talked about this before, and I know you claim that you've gotten your "knowledge" of "God" from your direct explicit conversational contact with him, and a perceived personal manifestation of his presence, but personal experience doesn't stand as any kind of argument / proof for his existence.

I could say that they Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appeared to me in my room last night and told me that eating lettuce was immoral and Justin Bieber is his earthbound minnion. But I'm sure if I told you that's you'd not believe me and look for some kind of proof.

But then by the same logic Hovind has no grounds to make an assertion either, because he is subject to the same laws of not having absolute knowledge as he is not a god himself. ===> back to square one.

So your argument is flawed too, because a perceived "revelation" is *not* the same as being demonstrably an actual god.

But yes, the kid should not have made a claim to absolute knowledge to the non-existence of a god.

Here's a quote for you. The husband of the deceased:

“The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day.

“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning Savita asked if they could not save the baby could they induce to end the pregnancy. The consultant said, ‘As long as there is a foetal heartbeat we can’t do anything’.

“Again on Tuesday morning, the ward rounds and the same discussion. The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita [a Hindu] said: ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do.

“That evening she developed shakes and shivering and she was vomiting. She went to use the toilet and she collapsed. There were big alarms and a doctor took bloods and started her on antibiotics.

“The next morning I said she was so sick and asked again that they just end it, but they said they couldn’t.”

At lunchtime the foetal heart had stopped and Ms Halappanavar was brought to theatre to have the womb contents removed. “When she came out she was talking okay but she was very sick. That’s the last time I spoke to her.”

source - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/1114/1224326575203.html
The Irish Times

Now, do you think they should have removed the source of that septicaemia sooner?

(Bias declaration: I was within feet of the people pictured on the front of this video above)

>> ^harlequinn:

From the linked article "An autopsy carried out by Dr Grace Callagy two days later found she died of septicaemia “documented ante-mortem” and E.coli ESBL."
The risk of septicaemia is the same whether the baby dies by itself or whether the baby is killed by Drs (i.e. an abortion) - in both cases the baby is born dead and it is the medical intervention itself that presents the risk for complications. This is well documented in medical literature.


She was screaming and vomiting in her hospital bed for three days>> ^harlequinn:

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^harlequinn:
From the linked article "An autopsy carried out by Dr Grace Callagy two days later found she died of septicaemia “documented ante-mortem” and E.coli ESBL."
The risk of septicaemia is the same whether the baby dies by itself or whether the baby is killed by Drs (i.e. an abortion) - in both cases the baby is born dead and it is the medical intervention itself that presents the risk for complications. This is well documented in medical literature.

You want to maybe post some of that literature? Because if not, you're just a fucking liar.

Not posting any literature doesn't make me a liar - it just makes you uninformed - sorry, "fucking uninformed".

Well oritteropo, I tried

Fantastic.

*promote