What's on your mind today?

[jcm]

media whore

[jrosebud]

Last night the apartment building directly behind our house caught fire.  The flames were only 50 feet from our house with a path of dry trees in between.  My hubby and our neighbors sprayed them and our roof with garden hoses for thirty minutes before the fire department came.  I was terrified.  Today I am reminded how lucky I am to have a home and a family that is safe.

[curiosityandthecat]

media whore

I prefer the term 21st Century Digital Boy.

Last night the apartment building directly behind our house caught fire.  The flames were only 50 feet from our house with a path of dry trees in between.  My hubby and our neighbors sprayed them and our roof with garden hoses for thirty minutes before the fire department came.  I was terrified.  Today I am reminded how lucky I am to have a home and a family that is safe.

Yipes. Glad to hear you all are safe. I think about fire at my place all the time... but then I remember that it was the fire chief in the 1960s who built the house I live in, so I think it's just my paranoia. Hah.

[rlrose328]

jrosebud, I'm so happy you are safe!  What a close call and reminder that all can be lost in the blink of an eye.  Was there damage to your property at all?  Are you close with your neighbors and can find the source of the fire??

[Asmodean]

media whore

I prefer the term 21st Century Digital Boy.

[jrosebud]

jrosebud, I'm so happy you are safe!  What a close call and reminder that all can be lost in the blink of an eye.  Was there damage to your property at all?  Are you close with your neighbors and can find the source of the fire??

We had some damage to the things in our back yard from the high-powered spray of the firehoses.  And some of the boards of our fence were ripped off so that people could get through to spray the trees and debris that fell from the building.  We were very lucky.  Had the firefighters not come when they did, the trees would have been more than just a bit singed and it would have spread quickly to our roof.

The source of the fire was improperly discarded smoking materials.  We found out this evening that the poor guy died of smoke inhalation.  He was only 20 years old.  

[silentone13]

I have to say, a good drink every now and again is a great thing, best relaxer I know.

[MysticalChicken]

Jeez, I haven't been on here in a million years.  I would have made a new post but I don't like making new posts just to say "I'm back", especially if I don't think anyone remembers me in the first place.  The main computer died (and is still dead!) back in April, but I bought a second-hand laptop in June or July so I can get back online without having to pay financial vampires Verizon 99 cents a day to use my crappy little cell phone browser that crashes every five minutes anyway.  And then I couldn't remember the URL for the forums until it suddenly came back to me today.  (Well, Google helped a little.)  Anyway.  I've been working on writing a book (fantasy fiction) and learning German on http://livemocha.com (very very awesome site, what I've learned has mostly stuck with me, and it's completely free).  I'm 99% done with German 101, all I have to do is one more speaking exercise, and then I have three more courses to go (German 102, 201, and 202) and hopefully I'll know enough to carry on a conversation.

[jrosebud]

Jeez, I haven't been on here in a million years.  I would have made a new post but I don't like making new posts just to say "I'm back", especially if I don't think anyone remembers me in the first place.  The main computer died (and is still dead!) back in April, but I bought a second-hand laptop in June or July so I can get back online without having to pay financial vampires Verizon 99 cents a day to use my crappy little cell phone browser that crashes every five minutes anyway.  And then I couldn't remember the URL for the forums until it suddenly came back to me today.  (Well, Google helped a little.)  Anyway.  I've been working on writing a book (fantasy fiction) and learning German on http://livemocha.com (very very awesome site, what I've learned has mostly stuck with me, and it's completely free).  I'm 99% done with German 101, all I have to do is one more speaking exercise, and then I have three more courses to go (German 102, 201, and 202) and hopefully I'll know enough to carry on a conversation.

Who could forget a mystical chicken?  Willkommen zurück!

[PipeBox]

Got to debate and discuss with the last of my Christian friends, at least the last one firmly in the faith.  The first question was the ever-classic "Why do you not believe in God," which is about the most useless thing one could ask.  It's the broadest question but it begs for a short, sweet, primary answer to be immediately debunked.  Anyway, I won't bore you guys and gals with all the details.  Suffice it to say I brought up all the scientific problems with a fundamentalist world view and he never adequately explained any of them away, and a few he avoided outright such as the travel time of light through the universe and the oldest stuff we see being about 11.7 billion years old.  He was shocked that the fossil evidence and sedimentary layers were evidence supporting evolution and a very old earth, and it's a shame I got side tracked because he appeared to legitimately believe that evidence was on his side.   Anyway, I got a few religious shots taken at me, and I got called a "child of darkness," and that's what's really on my mind.  I've made a few jokes, even on these boards, I think, about being evil, but it's different when a friend says it to you with perfect conviction, an absolute certainty that they are right and you're an agent of the devil.   I realized then not a word I was saying to him mattered to him.  He won't give it any thought, not beyond for making apologist replies to.  Because everything I said to him, no matter how grounded in fact was poisonous to him and I'm an enemy of God.  It makes me want to discard all theistic arguments in the future out of spite, like they do arguments of reason.  When you debate a Christian, they hear you, but I'm betting they don't often listen.  Being treated as though you exist for the sole purpose of deceiving them is demeaning, and used all too often to discard our arguments out of hand.  It sickens me.

I never anticipated I'd react like this, but I guess joking about it would have made him feel vindicated.  Heck, he probably feels vindicated about it anyway.  I guess on the bright side he's praying for my soul, so it isn't like it is complete malice and I daresay we're still friends if not more distant ones, but I'm not sure it's worth debating or trying to explain my views to any theist anymore.  They have to want to know, they have to be willing to listen, they have to be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.  In that light, it seems futile.  

[Steve Reason]

Got to debate and discuss with the last of my Christian friends, at least the last one firmly in the faith.  The first question was the ever-classic "Why do you not believe in God," which is about the most useless thing one could ask.  It's the broadest question but it begs for a short, sweet, primary answer to be immediately debunked.  Anyway, I won't bore you guys and gals with all the details.  Suffice it to say I brought up all the scientific problems with a fundamentalist world view and he never adequately explained any of them away, and a few he avoided outright such as the travel time of light through the universe and the oldest stuff we see being about 11.7 billion years old.  He was shocked that the fossil evidence and sedimentary layers were evidence supporting evolution and a very old earth, and it's a shame I got side tracked because he appeared to legitimately believe that evidence was on his side.   Anyway, I got a few religious shots taken at me, and I got called a "child of darkness," and that's what's really on my mind.  I've made a few jokes, even on these boards, I think, about being evil, but it's different when a friend says it to you with perfect conviction, an absolute certainty that they are right and you're an agent of the devil.   I realized then not a word I was saying to him mattered to him.  He won't give it any thought, not beyond for making apologist replies to.  Because everything I said to him, no matter how grounded in fact was poisonous to him and I'm an enemy of God.  It makes me want to discard all theistic arguments in the future out of spite, like they do arguments of reason.  When you debate a Christian, they hear you, but I'm betting they don't often listen.  Being treated as though you exist for the sole purpose of deceiving them is demeaning, and used all too often to discard our arguments out of hand.  It sickens me.

I never anticipated I'd react like this, but I guess joking about it would have made him feel vindicated.  Heck, he probably feels vindicated about it anyway.  I guess on the bright side he's praying for my soul, so it isn't like it is complete malice and I daresay we're still friends if not more distant ones, but I'm not sure it's worth debating or trying to explain my views to any theist anymore.  They have to want to know, they have to be willing to listen, they have to be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.  In that light, it seems futile.  

Yeah I know the feeling. My realization that everything I had believed in was a lie or not true, pretty much ended my friendship with my best friend of 30 odd years. Instead of a friend, I'm now a non-believer that is lost that apparently he can't associate with. We live in different cities now, and he is married with children, so we would never be as close as we once were, but even if we were still in the same town, it wouldn't matter. When I told him, I just was just basically giving him a heads up so that he would know I was not quite the same person if I happened to see him (this was by email and were thinking about meeting up), but he immediately went into preaching mode. He was as nice as he could be, but things had clearly changed. I had no intention of making anything change between us. He's always been very conservative, but also pretty open minded, and I really just thought he'd say he was sorry to here it, but that it was cool. But no, he immediately went into preaching with Christian gobbledygook and such. I thought our friendship was stronger than that. I knew it was over.

It was sad to find out that apparently our friendship was centered around our mutual Christianity--and nothing else. And it's weird, a year or two before that we got together for a concert and he spilled his guts to me about the infighting at his church (my former church) and how it was tearing him up inside. I did my best to make sense of it for him and why god would let it happen and all that nonsense-- even though by then I was really not feeling it. Looking back at that, I see how much he needs to believe, and it may have been at that point that he shut down his mind completely and decided to believe no matter what, and I might have been a part of that. It makes me shudder.

So yeah, pipe, I wish I could say something to console you, but your friendship is probably over. All I can say is don't be an enabler and be who you are.

[MariaEvri]

Im thinking about last nights dream. I was good ffriends with DIO and he signed my guitar which looked like a small black buzuki!

[Wraitchel]

Pipebox,
Most likely, it is futile to debate evidence for or against the existence of god with a christian. We reject their bible, the source of most of their so-called evidence, and they, in turn, reject science. Have you noticed? Fundamentalists are very skeptical of science. Some of them actually believe that satan has placed misleading evidence in the rocks, and even the stars! Most of them believe that scientists are foolish to place more faith in their own powers of reason than in the word of god. You cannot win.

Perhaps it would be more effective, not to mention more to the point, to talk with them about how exactly your faith unraveled. They are bound to have doubts, themselves. How can anyone with a brain not doubt christian doctrine with its doublespeak and complete absence of logic. If it sounds like I am advocating anti-testifying, I am. I think religion is a cancer that should be eradicated from this world. I am an evangelical atheist.

I have a very dear friend. We’ve been close for 23 years. She is a fundamentalist christian and wife of a preacher. She and I do not talk about religion. I think she knows, though I have not said, that my faith died about 21 years ago. I also think she is afraid that if we talk about how my faith unraveled, hers might too. She cannot go there. Her life would blow up in her face. If we were to have that talk, though, I would tell her that the first thread to unravel was guilt. I never felt that I had done, or could do anything to merit eternal hell. I believe in my own fundamental goodness, and I work hard every day to manifest it, as do many non-theists I know. Any god who would burn us for being unable to wrap our brains around christian doctrine sucks. Next I would point out how fundamentally barbaric the notion of blood sacrifice is. If some world leader was demanding blood sacrifice at tax time, we’d nuke the jerk, but the god who accepted the blood sacrifice of the world’s only perfect man gets constant praise. Not from me, thank you very much. I’d rather burn. Finally, I would point out that of the people I know personally, the most christ-like ones, the ones who are putting themselves out there for the things they know are right, are not christians. The christians I know, my friend included, are too busy worrying about the state of their own sorry souls to care about the environment or the atrocities our government is committing around the world, or the many people who are starving and suffering the results of our greed. I could go on and on. Christianity makes me really, really mad. Christians, though...well, I just keep reminding myself I used to be one.

[Steve Reason]

So I listened to this idiot preacher named Chip Ingram while was out driving the other day. Man is that guy nuts. He was talking about "sexual immorality" or some such thing. Man you should have heard this guy. It''s no wonder why Christians think sex is dirty and why so many of them are sexual misfits. According to him you shouldn't even be thinking about sex unless you're married and you're thinking about your spouse. Everything this nut said went against human nature and the natural order of things. I know what such thinking can do to a person because of my years as a Christian. I was messed up for a long time, and still have to fight feelings of guilt and shame when I'm with someone, or even thinking about it.

it's not nearly as strong as it once was, but when you get that stupid shit drilled into your head for a good part of your life, it can mess with your mind. It still shocks me when I hear garbage like that.  

[rlrose328]

It's his ilk that are causing Kevin Smith so much trouble right now with his new movie, "Zack and Miri make a Porno."  The MPA wouldn't approve the poster because of the word "Porno." (Okay, maybe the tiny pieces of heads at the bottom of the poster might have something to do with that... but honestly, the "Showgirls" poster I've got in my bedroom is more risque than that!!) Theaters in some states won't show the movie because of that word.  Philadelphia won't put the ad for the movie on its bus stops.

Kevin used the whole Porno thing to explore the love story... and now he's facing the repressive American public with a WORD they don't like.

We don't have a lot of money for extras right now but we'll do the theater for Kevin on this one.  :blink: