BS: What's Up With God These Days???

Subject: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 09:50 PM

I donno... Seems like He/She used to be on top of everything and now scurryin' around trying to get His/Her term papers in on time...

I mean, yeah, He/She still comes thru but it's like at the last minute... Ain't just me... Lotta other folks seein' the same thing...

Is it that His/Her little D- experiment has backfired so badly that He/She is like Bernie Madoff robbin' Peter to pay Paul???

Like I said, I donno... What I do know is that He/She still delivers but He/She ain't as prompt as He/She used to be???

Never mind...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Amos
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:02 PM

What's a little D experiment????

Anyway, ask the mirror. It won't lie to you.



A

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:42 PM

"He/She ain't as prompt as He/She used to be...

"Lord, give me patience.....right now!"

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:44 PM

Even god can go into fuck it mode now and then.



Cosmologicaly speaking it is true that the solar system is moving into the plane of the universe where even empty space is more crowded. We are usually above or below the plane of most of the orbiting matter in our Galaxy the Milkey Way.
But now that we are plunging into to denser areas, there is more friction, matter, encounters, gravity, energy vectors etc.

Things are gonna heat up a bit and show their underlying instability.
Its like the earth has entered the NYC subway after spending most of its time in the suburbs. A few elderly elbows may get thrown our way.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 10:44 PM

You know how it is, Bobert: When they know they've got your love and loyalty they no longer have to deliver so quickly.

Works like that every time.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Apr 11 - 11:11 PM

Yeah, Eb... As per usual, well said...

Kinda like any "slackers"???

(That was a joke, Big Guy...)

I mean I'm startin' to get what Voltaire meant when he said "God is a comedian playing to an audience afraid to laugh"...

B-bear

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 12:20 AM

"But now that we are plunging into to denser areas, there is more friction, matter, encounters, gravity, energy vectors etc."

Thanks, Don. I mentioned about three years ago that I thought time itself was slowing down. Maybe that's why.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 12:28 AM

...either that, or maybe God doesn't write a script for us to perform.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: J-boy
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 12:37 AM

Counting every sparrow that falls has gotta be a tough gig.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 01:17 AM

These days????...Jeez, "It's all one big day"--Janis

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: michaelr
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 01:35 AM

Finally realized he's fucked it all up, sulking in a distant corner of the universe.

The future's here, we are it, we are on our own.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 01:38 AM

Talk about being lost.....

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 01:42 AM

I get really confused by the whole he/she/it thing about god/God and or whatever he/she/it might also be like the trinity crap. I humbly suggest we do away with all of that and just refer to whatever "it" is as "Fuckwit." Now let's see how much better things read that way by reviewing the edited version of Bobertz' opening post................

I donno... Seems like Fuckwit used to be on top of everything and now scurryin' around trying to get Fuckwit term papers in on time...

I mean, yeah, Fuckwit still comes thru but it's like at the last minute... Ain't just me... Lotta other folks seein' the same thing...

Is it that Fuckwit's little D- experiment has backfired so badly that Fuckwit is like Bernie Madoff robbin' Peter to pay Paul???

Like I said, I donno... What I do know is that Fuckwit still delivers but Fuckwit ain't as prompt as Fuckwit used to be???


Quite a significant improvement isn't!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 02:26 AM

"maybe God doesn't write a script for us to perform." -Joe-

,,,,

But, then, what is He for then, Joe?

I mean, like, if he created it all for a purpose, He must have presupposed some function for Himself in it all, no?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 03:53 AM

I reckon God has finally put on his 'Let My People Go' T shirt...got a few beers out and is sitting there....watching..watching...and waiting.

I think he's kinda pleased with what's going on around the Planet at the moment, despite the terrible pain and suffering that seems to be at every turn, because there's a huge amount of human beings waking up, wanting a very different world, realising that change now HAS to come if we are to survive as a Species, as a Planet...

I've never felt so Hopeless and yet...so Hopeful about this world as I do at the moment...because the more Bad I see, the more Good I see riding over the hill determined to deal with all the shit going down.

There have always been FAR MORE Good People around than the Bad Guys, but the more dominant brains seem to belong to those without any compassion or empathy....but even that is now being recognised world wide, as people at last start to understand that there are different brain patterns for different reasons...and even the most dominant brain pattern, if caught early enough, can hopefully be placed on a positive path, rather than a negative one...

I believe we have to go through all of this terrible turmoil to get to the other side...It's gonna be a rough ride...I've seen it coming for years, as have many, many others. The bubble *had* to **EXPLODE!** not just burst quietly...

And Mother Nature's added her part to all the human crap going on, tired of how we treat Her..sickened at what we are doing, what we are inventing, what we are allowed to happen. So maybe she added some damned powerful ingredients to her normal recipe, ingredients that would blast the planet apart in various places, blast our feelings of safety, contentment and well-being apart too...

But maybe, just maybe, those ingredients will end up not ruining the cake, but binding it together in a way no-one imagined....

Maybe God is sitting there, burping contentedly now and then, watching his own version of Independence Day, where his People don't get hit from outside forces of the outer planets, but by Inner Forces from their own Planet, from their own Spirits..

This film has several endings.....

WE have the Power to write the ending we all so desire.

It isn't up to God, it isn't up to The Dictators, The Bankers, or The Corporate Bastards...The Ending lies with us, the Ordinary People of this Planet who have to transfrom from Worriers to Warriors to Save the Day...

I'm glad that God has let go, because only in Letting Go, only in finally Standing Alone will we realise that we have to Stand Together.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 04:31 AM

Welcome back Spaw.


You were missed....


I'm trying to improve my aim.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 07:26 AM

Rapparee never misses a term paper.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 08:28 AM

Like contempletive blind people daring to touch an elephant and report their small limited findings of what is clearly standing in their path, we all give a viewpoint of whats up with thing we have decided to call an elephant.

When the elephant is quiet, it tenses its ears and listens beyond the horizon, when Ebbie pulled its tail it made a deep rolling groan.
When Spaw pulled what he thought was a tail it bellowed and shrieked so loud it scared all of us. When Bobert stroked a tusk he thought of a mobile forest. When 999 thought he found a mouth, it smell bad and there were no teeth. When Amos touched its lips he noticed a tongue touching him back and thought, everyone must surely know this is an elephant. When Max felt the elephant he downloaded and backed it up. When Joe felt it he thought it was overly aggressive but was wrong. When little hawk felt its foot he went on and on but the elephant got the jist of it right away. When Voltair touched the elephant, he laughed.

But none of them lived in the dimension of time to realize that the elephant had seen its baby fall lifeless 3 days ago. All the other elephants registered their grief and concern. The younger ones tried to lift the lifeless baby fifty or more times and would come back and try again.

Life senses compassion but it can be driven crazy with uncaring unrelenting predatory attacks until life lashes out blindly at the blind. When land food and water grow short and we are hunted and killed day after day year after year we remember. We remember until that is all we have for a memory. Being attacked. Uncaring encounters. The rare helping hands that betray us over time. The memory of the child and its valient struggle. We never forget.
Perhaps if we could we would not go crazy and not go to war.

I don't know if the elephant is slower or faster. I don't know how massive it is or where in the universe it is going. I know there are scars unseen. I know fewer human people ever pause to lift the lifeless child of someone outside their family.
All the elephants do.

Attributing our humanity to another animal is not a compliment. Its not even a cute thing. For if you think man is in god's image, and if it is true... you are as sure as shit going to get mightily stomped.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 08:31 AM

but moreover what Lizzie said...

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Musket
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 09:13 AM

Sheffield Wednesday 2.1 Colchester

See, God was busy with us at Hillsborough yesterday, getting our first home win since Megson became manager.

This took all his strength, wisdom and conjuring tricks to perform this feat, hence he overlooked the rest of the universe.

I'm sure you can have him back from today, although we have a few sticky fixtures before the season ends, so we may get greedy.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 09:23 AM

Some stuff here reminds me of something McG of Harlow said on another thread,

'What have our ancestors ever done for us?' He was being facetious, something I think was missed by the poster he was addressing.

When I see flowers in spring, geese returning, trees beginning to bud--we live in a beautiful world. I'm not about to attribute OUR screw ups to a Divine Being. WE did it, all by ourselves.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stu
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 09:45 AM

Spaw - brillant.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 02:25 PM

God has morphed into an amorphous "It". What is "It"?
Morphed in to a hermaphrormorphedite?/

Why is "It" would be a good question.

If you applied electrodes to the brain, could you effect instant conversion to "It"?

Neuro-theology? The mental approach to "It".

If you wear the right clothes, will this convert you to "It"?

Everyone knows that "It" takes sides in a war.
"It" of course is right and everyone else is wrong.

If you don't want to talk about this do you say, "Shhhhhh---"It"?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Wesley S
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 02:50 PM

It's been said before: "Man plans - God Laughs".

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 02:54 PM

Those big telescopes keep showing us how much bigger the **universe** is than we ever imagined. If there are billions of galaxies, and billions of stars in each galaxy, it sure seems like a purty big job for the best 'omnipotent creator' to manage on a daily (whatever 'daily' means) basis!
Why, I'll bet just answering prayers about sports teams takes up... oh.. micro-seconds. Add in the contradictory requests for special favors..("Please help US defeat OUR enemies... and by the way, heal my little dog's broken toe.") must keep him/her/it busy until lunch time deciding whose side to take. Then, picking a few lucky folks to survive catastrophes (earthquakes, plane crashes...etc..) would make a creator miss coffee break.

awww... I suppose I miss the point. A fully qualified omnipotent God really works 24/7..or as they say in Giant Galaxy NGC 6872, 384/79, so he/she/it has a lot of.... ummm... time on its non-hands.

But..perhaps we ALL miss the point, and daily management of all those details is sub-contracted to lesser gods-in-training, who might not keep up on things. I suppose they would have millennial reviews of their performance, but then it would a bit late for some of us short-lived denizens of minor planets, hmmm?

Anyway... since we are all just guessing about that 'ultimate reality' stuff and what the REAL rules are, many will just keep tossing out...(up?) prayers and burning incense and sacrificing goats and condemning infidels in hopes that they gets some special notice.
Ya' never know...






who...me? cynical? naawwwwwww....

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 02:58 PM

Or Wesley, the converse, "god plans, man laughs".

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Amos
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 04:19 PM

Bill:

You're missing the point. God is in Heaven. Right? And the set known as Heaven contains God. But Jesus teaches us the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Therefore for each "you" the set "you" contains the set "Heaven" which contains the set "God". Therefore the minimum number of instances of the entity "God" is the number of beings to whom the Scriptures can be addressed, theoretically all humans. Therefore the infinite powers of God exist within every human and they can pray all they want and get answers or not without any fear of consuming too much bandwidth in the communication protocol.

Now that we've dealt with metaphyizzicks,. how are You, Bill?


A

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: michaelr
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 06:41 PM

Amos - as Heinlein stated decades ago, "Thou art God".

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: olddude
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 06:59 PM

He is up to the free will thing as always .... if we were just birds we would just peck for food and fly around, but we think, we decide, we act as we see fit. God gives the tests, we get the lessons whatever they are. One cannot understand life or the hand of the creator, one accepts it. All we can do.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Amos
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 07:35 PM

Right on track, MichaelR!

From this point of view what we get are "Initialization Self-Test Routines".

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 07:53 PM

Thank you Donuel,
I have cut and pasted your amazing words to read again, probably many times. If only more Humans would be willing to lift the lifeless child outside their family, then surely we would have a more peacefull world.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: maple_leaf_boy
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 07:56 PM

I thought that what Al Pacino said (near the end of "The Devil's Advocate") about God was interesting. Does anybody else remember it? It's kind of spooky the first time you hear it.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 08:35 PM

Amos.. me & metaphyizzicks always had an awkward relationship. I was never so amused as when I read graffiti in the Men's room of the Methodist Student Union at the Univ. of Kansas, asking...rhetorically, I presume, "Can a metaphysician be sued for malpractice?"

So...could I get a Venn diagram of your theory?

I am fine, thanks...and will be better is Spring ever arrives. How's by you and the weather and radition?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 08:45 PM

Amos, yes mirrors do lie. I looked into one this morning and had the realiza/revelation that I'm getting better looking every day. I just had another look and--it's true. BUT, my eye doctor says I'm having some visual difficulties and I need glasses. Beauty is in th/she was a sight to be held.

[guest 999, you must remember to sign in]

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 10:08 PM

Bill, Amos has expressed it perfectly in his post of 03 Apr 11 - 04:19 PM .

Since "heaven" (a perfect state of being and consciousness) already exists inside everyone in a potential state (not yet fully tapped into on the conscious level, perhaps...but still there available to tap into at any time)...and since God is reputed to be "in heaven"...God is inside every being's own conscious and subconscious potential at its most positive level.

And it's totally up to each of of us whether we decide to tap into that and make use of it...or not. Most people make partial use of it, whether or not they have any outward beliefs about it, because every time they rise to the best that's in them, they make use of it. When they turn negative, they deny it.

All the errors people typically make when they speak about "God" (whether they're for or against the idea of "God") seem to come from the fact that they think of God as being separate from themselves. That's their fundamental error, in my opinion. God isn't separate from anyone, God is simply the highest possibility of good that already pre-exists IN everyone...simply waiting to be expressed.

That's not an exterior being. It's an interior quality of every living thing. In my opinion. "God" is a common cultural term used to refer to it...but that term is only a signpost that points toward something...as are all words. They merely are signposts...auditory and visual symbols...that point the analytical mind toward something, and that something is beyond being confined to words and it cannot be experienced through words. It can only be experienced directly, by making use of what is already within you and putting it into action. People do that. Some call it "God". Some don't. Some call it courage, kindness, compassion or love. It doesn't matter what you call it, it only matters how you use it.

And that's why the Kingdom of Heaven (like God) is within you, not "out there" somewhere. You find it by looking within...and bringing forth the very best that is latent within your own nature.

Easy to say. ;-D Not so easy to do. The easiest way (in the short term) is just to spiral down...like water going down a drain...and that's what people do when they become lazy, greedy, fearful, and negative. They turn away from the best within them, because it looks like too much work or not enough fun or something along that line.

In the much longer run, however, following the negative paths down seemingly easy and convenient spirals turns out to cause a great deal of pain and suffering. And that can bring about dramatic re-appraisals in some people. Religion terms that as "repentance".

It's an interesting factor in spiritual evolution, don't you think? ;-) In the long run natural selection works against greed, laziness, and other forms of negativity, because they are self-destructive.

I look upon evolution on 2 levels, you see. Physical/mental/emotional (the incarnate body-mind being)...and spiritual (that which the body-mind being is temporarily projected from). And I consider those 2 levels as being intimately related in a very coherent and useful fashion. They are meant to work together toward a common end, which is to evolve higher.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 11:57 PM

"In the beginning, God created Man in His own image...and ever since, Man has been trying to return the favor!"..........Problem is, you keep thinking that the 'God' man created, speaks for the 'other' one! No wonder a lot of you don't like him!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Apr 11 - 11:58 PM

Good point. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 02:22 AM

Well said, Little Hawk.

Seeing God as an external authority, as The One Who Calls the Shots, is but one view of God. It's the stereotype, but how many people actually follow this stereotype in their beliefs?

It's a stereotype that tends to make people of faith look ridiculous.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 06:18 AM

Could it be that YOUR expectations have acustomised.

You know, acclimatised to the inevitable episodic lull in the chaotic system we call life, the universe and everything.

One thing history has taught me is that you can't predict the future by analysing the past in minute detail and betting everything on the prediction. The human brain can't cope with the shear number of permutations available. And computers aren't clever enough yet.

Talk to God and see if He/She/They can answer.

Me? My faith is in human nature. Some good, some selfish, some psychotic, some aspergers, some "not like me". And Shit Happens. Carry that shovel!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Andy Jackson
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 07:02 AM

I with you Mr Red especially shit happens, it doesn't always have to be somebody's fault, it just does.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:24 AM

He/she is probably shaking his/her head with despair right now wondering why the heck he/she bothered.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Wesley S
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:27 AM

"One thing history has taught me is that you can't predict the future by analysing the past in minute detail and betting everything on the prediction."

Or - as an old cowboy once told me back in Texas - "You can't see your future in a rear-view mirror".

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 10:50 AM

See Randy Newman's That's Why I Love Mankind

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 01:12 PM

Naw, Patsy. ;-D He/She would have to be a separate and limited being (like us) to fall into despair. But I get your humour about it.

Shit does happen, yes. The important thing is how you choose to react to it when it happens. Does it become a disaster (despair) or an opportunity (for growth)(or just acceptance...which might be a form of growth)?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 02:48 PM

"Since "heaven" (a perfect state of being and consciousness) already exists inside everyone in a potential state (not yet fully tapped into on the conscious level, perhaps...but still there available to tap into at any time)...and since God is reputed to be "in heaven"...God is inside every being's own conscious and subconscious potential at its most positive level."





The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell

                by Algernon Charles Swinburne

One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is:
Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.

What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under:
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt:
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover:
Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.

Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight:
Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.

Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels:
God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which:
The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

More is the whole than a part: but half is more than the whole:
Clearly, the soul is the body: but is not the body the soul?

One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two:
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.

Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks:
Then the mammoth was God: now is He a prize ox.

Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew:
You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.

Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock:
Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.

God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see:
Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 03:07 PM

You're just being silly to even bother quoting that, Bill. ;-) It's completely beside the point, and it's intention is to ridicule.

The point is that the road to higher evolution, thus greater consciousness, lies inside each one of US...not out there in some kind of external all-powerful ruling deity. The road to higher evolution is not imaginary. It's a real factor in our lives. If people call their own higher potential "God", that's just a word that points toward their own higher potential. It's a cultural label. If they then start to imagine that higher potential as being separate and outside of them....and something to be appeased and bargained with and feared...that's their mistake, but it doesn't in any way invalidate the fact that they DO have a higher potential within themselves.

It is the word "God" you have trouble with, Bill, and the word "heaven" and you wish to attack the words, I think. The words are nothing more than signposts. You are reacting to the signposts, while I am talking about what the signposts point toward, what they allude to, that goes way beyond religion. Religion has attempted, however, to define it in various ways, and that has led to cultural words...labels...such as "God". Or "enlightement". Or "perfection". Or "evolution". Or "love". Etc...

People develop strong loyalties to one or another of those labels, likes and dislikes for the labels themselves, and from that point on they stop thinking...they just react, either positively or negatively, to the label, to the word and they forget to think about what it points toward.

And they fight with each other about nothing. And miss the point entirely.

Your Mr Swinburne has nothing useful to say. He's like a snotty-nosed brat in the schoolyard, amusing himself by going "na-na-na-na-na" at the skinny kid with the glasses, and imagining how much cooler he is than that kid.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 04:25 PM

"...and it's intention is to ridicule." well, to shorten a point anyway...

I could type another long screed explaining in tedious detail how linguistic metaphor is confused with reality and poetry, and used to obfuscate and complicate the entire process of coping with it all....but...........

oh..he ain't MY Mr. Swinburne...and HIS poetry was to reply to one by Tennyson. I think Swinburne & I have a similar feeling about how exactly to express how such internalizing of conceptual hyperbole looks when dissected. If I simply critique it in technical format, I get suggestions that I need to 'open myself' to the wisdom and subtleties of ..... I'm not sure what. Sometimes I DO the critique, sometimes I leave a parody or silly remark....mostly for others, since YOU are already committed to the metaphor.

" The poem is a parody of Tennyson's "The Higher Pantheism." Swinburne writes in a letter of January 15, 1870: "I looked at Tennyson's `Higher Pantheism' again -- not bad verse altogether, but what gabble and babble of half-hatched thoughts in half-baked words!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Wesley S
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 04:48 PM

Have you heard this Steve Martin song yet??



Athiests don't have no songs

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: John P
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 05:41 PM

Bobert, getting back to your original question, God is only slowing down in the monotheistic religions. It's what always happen when we give someone a monopoly.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 06:47 PM

In line with the original question, I remember when, as a kid who tried praying and was confused about non-responses, I was told "sometimes NO is an answer and no answer can just mean 'no'."

You can imagine how I took that, given that I was already showing early signs of skepticism.....

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 07:13 PM

If you know the extension of the deity you would like to reach, please press 1 now.

If you are calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line and God help help you.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 07:20 PM

That's what they told me.... you want answers? "God help you!"

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 09:57 PM

Bill D

I dreamed the Venn diagram and right outs side the perpendicular 248th dimension (which was gravity) there was the infinite outside energy vector that was God. Yep we are inside God's guts.

I will give you the link to the venn diagram

BTW do you have a 3-D computer?

IT won't help, the diagram is 248-D

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Apr 11 - 11:27 PM

The Higher Pants of a Nutball

by J.G. Farthington Fuckwitt



One, who is young may wear diapers and a little older short pants.
One who is really old wears diapers and might smell just like Gramps

When pants are pulled higher they can go to the armpits
If they go iny higher ya open the zipper ta git to yur lips.

Iffn pants went to the sky you'd fall right out the cuff
But iffn they shrank to half size the pain would be mighty tough


Now when pants fit jus right ya don't feel a sensation
The size of your package is left to imagination.

Best of all is when they come off, to have a real good time
Which is usually watching the game which aint no crime.

You come into this world all naked and bare with no gall durn pants
so when I go ta heaven I'll prloy be naked, Oh hell I proly see Gramps

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:15 AM

Bobert, your original question was just plain silly...but you probably knew that, right? ;-)

Anyway, Amos already answered it perfectly in the 2nd post on this thread.

He said, "...ask the mirror. It won't lie to you."

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:59 AM

It's an interesting factor in spiritual evolution, don't you think? ;-) In the long run natural selection works against greed, laziness, and other forms of negativity, because they are self-destructive.


Not at all true. Selfishness is just another evolutionary move. It might bring destruction, but if it brings more destruction to the generous than the selfish, the baddies prosper. Just the way the world is.

And, LH and Amos, mirrors do lie. Perhaps you've never met an anorexic, or heard of Michael Winner.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 03:17 AM

I said "in the long run", Paul. And I am correct about that. Just look at the present dilemma of people on planet Earth and you'll see that. In the long run the greed and selfishness of humanity has put them and many other species on the planet in grave danger of survival.

In the short run, selfishness and greed appear to be a clever way to get ahead. In the long run, they prove self-defeating.

But if you want to believe the contrary, feel free to exploit all your selfishness, greed, and other such aggressive impulses to the maximum degree possible...become a very successful "baddie"...and when you finally have no friends left, when most people despise you, and you're in jail or awaiting execution for your crimes, write me with your retraction. ;-D

Furthermore, mirrors do not lie. But sometimes the people looking into the mirrors lie to themselves about what they are seeing. This is the case with the anorexic. It is also the case with the egomaniac or the naricissist, I suppose. It's also the case with people who don't respect or who even hate themselves. In any case, the problem is definitely not with the mirror, and the mirror does not lie.

But Amos's statement was not about that anyway. It wasn't about the image. It wasn't intended literally. It was about looking within yourself...not at the mere surface appearances. Surface appearances are rather trivial, but what's within you is crucial. What's within you is determined by your consciousness, your philosophy, and your general attitude.

And THAT is the crux of what most religions and philosophies are actually about when they begin: what's within you. Religions start out being about that. Then the bean counters, bureaucrats, and literal minds take over...they turn the religion into a power structure, and they use it to betray just about everything that religion stood for when it started out. (Although, there are always some honest people within a religion who continue honestly looking within themselves instead of seeking power and material gain...they aren't the ones you usually hear about, because it's the bean counters who generally end up making most of the noise and exercising most of the control.

This is also true in government, in the business world, in academia, in the military, the police force...everywhere. And that's because most people are really not that mature. They haven't reached a point where they're willing to look honestly within themselves yet. They only look outside themselves.

And they will scoff at the very idea of looking within, laugh at it, call it a weakness, because they prefer to remain exactly as they already are: ignorant, stupid, small-minded, scared, cruel, and most of all: self-satisfied.

And why not? They already have all the answers! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 11:06 AM

"You can't see your future in a rear-view mirror".

Thanx 4 the quote Wesley.
Much more succinct.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 11:24 AM

Evolution of life spirit and knowledge is a lofty and even a comfy definition of god within ourselves. Yet survival of the fittest/greediest/aggressive, will not yield to that lofty notion.

Contrary to LH's idealism, The biggest baddest Baddies will not go to jail, will not lose friends or face execution. The crimes of the greastest theft or abandonment of children or the elderly and not even for the abject killing of people via innumerable strategies that can be attributed to the most powerfully greedy, they will not be held respondsible.

You may say that is exactly why we need a new status quo, a new systemm a new raison d'etre a new spirituality. Indeed that is a lofty generous wonderful spirit and I celebrate your call for hope and change.

Cynical as it may sound my friend, even a new system will be subject to the same corruption by the fittest and the greediest.
The evolution of god or soul is subject tot he unseen hand. What I see in the irror to the Universe is that the unseen mover is dark energy and dark amatter which will continue to push the world of light to entropy in a natural process of life and death on the grandest scale there is.


That is no reason to abandon having the best time possible while we are here. But it won't change the fact that all things change and all things go away.

Little Hawk you introduced (small p ) plitics int the conversation and said it is the fault of people who have not yet looked within themselves effectively.

They do believe me, and they choose what will pay them most reliably.

Today Congressman Paul Ryan introduced his dismantling of Medicare to save 6 Trillion dollars over 10 years.
HE prefaced his remarks with "We OUGHT to have a social safety net, BUT it is old and frayed and it needs to be removed and replaced.

hoo boy People OUGHT to help the elderly to survive but it is not our fault if they have pre existing conditions.

I wonder if thehonest, poor and vunerable original Tea Party folks expected the REAL DEATH PANELS would come from the Billionaire branch of the Tea Party.

(how it will be replaced will be giving mondy to govenors to spend as they like and giving private insurance companies the competition to insure those that will be the best bets.)





but back to God.

In GOd we Trust













as far as we can throw him.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 12:57 PM

LH, having an intelligent discussion about religion (an oxymoron if there ever was one) means that definitions have to be precise so each party knows what the other is talking about. A vague "gawdy talk" has no precision, no real meaning except to one side who is promoting it.

Wesley, Steve Martin, BTW, has contributed to that change. There are others also.
Tim Minchin for example. Tom Lehrer. More each day. Stay tuned.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:04 PM

Tom Leher

If any songs are to come out of WW III, we better write them now.

The Pholsophy of George Carlin: "IT will all end in a great steaming pile of shit"

Even those who sought a better path while holding on to their faith got burned The little guy keeps tryin

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:42 PM

"LH, having an intelligent discussion about religion (an oxymoron if there ever was one) means that definitions have to be precise so each party knows what the other is talking about."

That's right, Stringsinger. ;-) But it's never going to happen here, simply because there are way too many different people all talking at (not to) each other at the same time. Too many cooks spoil the soup and obfuscate that conversation.

Were any two of us here to get together by ourselves in real 3-D life and talk at some length about religion, we could gradually get a clear picture of exactly what the other person means when he speaks of "God", "religion", "evolution", and many other things like that.

But it won't happen here, because too many people are all talking at once.

And I know it won't happen here. ;-) (shrug) I gave up a long time ago expecting that anything would EVER end up being clearly communicated on this forum so that everyone in the conversation understands clearly what the hell everyone else is talking about. It just ain't gonna happen! No effin' way.

So, the only reason I bother to talk here is:

1. I'm addicted to doing so.
2. It's something to do for a few minutes whenever I feel like it.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:46 PM

"I will give you the link to the venn diagram

BTW do you have a 3-D computer?

IT won't help, the diagram is 248-D"

Can I hook up 124 2-D computers in parallel? Or failing that, I could just have Amos put his mind to it and send me an image thru a wormhole.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 01:51 PM

Donuel, you're quite correct about those biggest "baddies" at the top of the power chain...they usually get off scot free.

However, I do not envy them the lives they have. I would not wish to change places with them.

What I was speaking about was more the collective sense of a whole humanity...and what happens to most people who behave simply according to their most selfish impulses...it usually doesn't pan out well for them in the long run. One can always find specific exceptions to such generalisations.

The high and the mighty usually die quietly in bed, surrounded by all their money and possessions. Whether they have "won the game" at that point is a matter of opinion. ;-) Is it really true that "he who dies with the most toys wins"?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I think that he who lives in the most positive and loving way wins...because what he won was each happy day that his attitude gave him while he was here.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 02:29 PM

Amos got worms?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:04 PM

"Is it really true that "he who dies with the most toys wins"?

I am getting on.... you will know in a few years.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:08 PM

Toys = fun. It's simple arithmetic and it depends on the toys. There's a can of worms for yas.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:09 PM

The tarot cards are drained
And God's been acting strange
He gave up throwing bibles at the wall
His ministers complain
But nothing much has changed
I s'pose He's tryin' to forget about it all

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:31 PM

999... great stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:33 PM

Why, thank you gnu. I had that in a song when I was seventeen. Had a heckuva time recalling the lyrics. Nice of you to say.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Amos
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:36 PM

Long-term evolution is abetted, not hindered, by altruism.

Although physically it is possible for mirrors to lie, the lie is usally imposed by the looker. And metaphorical mirrors (such as where one should look to know what is up with God) are not capable of lying.


A

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:38 PM

999... I was gonna say cw it quick but I couldn't recall if I had heard it in one of your songs and just forgot and didn't want to embarass myself... in any case, it "sounds like you" and it's damn good stuff. It just sounds like one of your songs. Get thee to a geetar eh.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:40 PM

A... cool dude. Pass that over here eh.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:52 PM

Bill D: "That's what they told me.... you want answers? "God help you!"


.....or...just ask Him, then honestly LISTEN, and IF you get no reply, then blow it off. Problem is, to all those who won't even ask, when others are trying to tell you, that some answers come as a life changing EXPERIENCE, is like a bunch of happily married people, trying to convince some frigid bitches, that there really are orgasms!!!...but you gotta be willing to get laid!!!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:55 PM

Not sure I follow your logic GfS... are you saying masturbation is the answer?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 04:55 PM

Having the faith and discipleine to do self hypnosis in the mind set that guiding your intent with clarity and patience, your prayer will be answered is not in dispute.
IT works.

But there are millions of people adding baggage onto the process for profit , power or ego reasons, that the whole world suffers for the fighting inside and between brand names of self hypnosis. Brand names such as Christian, Islam, and even some of the on prosletizing religions.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:15 PM

gnu - He's saying that those who categorically refuse to look for something (because they don't "believe" in it or aren't interested) are extremely unlikely to find it. This would be true of anything one could look for, material or otherwise. If you have no interest in it, and you are unwilling to do any work to find it, then you very probably will not find it. ;-)

People who are unwilling to look within themselves, for instance, are most unlikely to find what's in them, aren't they? I've known thousands of people like that. Their attention is entirely on what's outside of them. Their criticism is entirely for what's outside of them. Their desires are entirely for what's outside of them. They (some of them) even tend to imagine a God that's entirely outside of them! They will never look within themselves...the reason, I think, being: they're afraid of what they might find. Or else they're just too distracted by the outer world to ever even think of looking within.

That's what the philosopher was referring to, I think, when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:22 PM

"...just ask Him, then honestly LISTEN"

and you know it's 'honest' listening how?


GfS.... as you might imagine, my personal opinion is that what one 'hears' in that process is subjective. It may be a good answer, and one 'may' even feel that it comes from some metaphysical source...and 'asking' may be something like giving ones self permission to ummmmm... 'desire' certain answers. It is really complex trying to 'run around behind yourself' and monitor your own motives, but to me that is a better metaphor than positing a 'Him' and doing this complex mental exercise as if I was 'listening' to an external source.
Some clever person...(ah..Google says it was G.E. Moore) once said: "Theology is the finding of bad reasons for things we are going to believe anyway." I have suspected for many years that most prayer follows a similar path.

Far be it from me to tell anyone how THEY should process those times when answers and/or help are needed and no obvious way of coping is evident.... but I simply don't function like that.

One more example: An old Donald Duck comic book had Donald & his nephews on a trip, and deciding where to go by flipping a coin at major intersections....they even called the practice "Flipism". What you learn from coin flipping is that, while the coin is in the air, you usually know how you hope it will land. I think it is much the same with praying.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:29 PM

There is no way of corroborating something like that, Bill. It can be experienced, perhaps, but it can't be proven.

Is that a problem? I don't find it a problem, I just deal with my own inner experiences myself, as best I can, and I am not in any way concerned as to whether I can prove them to anyone else...because I KNOW that I can't, and what difference would it make anyway? The experience isn't real for someone else until they HAVE it.

One's own inner experiences convince in a way that outer opinions cannot, but that doesn't mean they have to convince anyone else. That's not what they are for.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 05:52 PM

Well.. some of my most interesting "inner experiences" are dreams....and many of those I certainly HOPE are not indicative of reality. I am reasonably confident that many dreams reflect my 'frustrations' and allow me to process stresses without taking up waking energy, but the details are simply accessing memories and associations. I also suspect that conscious "inner experiences" have many of the same origins and should be ..... hmmmm... "taken with a grain of salt."

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 06:02 PM

Yes, dreams are interesting inner experiences, and they probably do have a great deal to do with processing one's various frustrations and desires, etc...

They are a real inner experience (mental activity with effects on the nervous system), but they aren't any kind of real outer experience. They can probably show you some useful stuff about your emotional and mental states, if you understand them well enough.

They do access memories and associations. The part that would interest me is "Why this memory...as opposed to millions of others? What's the connection."

I think dreams have meaning and are not just random, but there's no way of proving that.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: gnu
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 06:16 PM

Too deep for me. Especially when when someone else answers for others. I am gone. gightgnu.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 06:16 PM

"... have meaning and are not just random.."

Not just random. But some parts are quite random. Those little neurons can be triggered by some odd order of other little neurons firing.
Why else, when dreaming of attending some vague folk event, would I insert as I did last night, Jeri (our Jeri) remarking the she needed a cigarette and had to go outside? The basic dream I have lost the details and relevance of...but I'm SURE it wasn't 'about' Jeri OR cigarettes....my strange little neurons just added that in....randomly.
So unless you ascribe to the notion (as a friend of mine does) that nothing is truly random, it is hard to maintain that dreams **have** meaning. WE give them meaning after the fact.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 06:37 PM

Well, I think everything has meaning...at some level. I don't claim to know all the levels, though. ;-)

I tend to agree with your friend that nothing is truly random. But many things appear random, because we have very limited information to go on, and very limited means of acquiring that information.

Seems to me there are 2 general sorts of attitude out there, Bill. One is: "This all has meaning."
The other is: "This happened randomly, therefore it has only the meaning we choose to give it."

I favor the first approach. You seem to favor the second. Either one makes perfect sense within its own basic set of prior assumptions.

Religions all assume that there is an inherent meaning behind things.

Anti-religious movements seem to assert that there is not...and that we simply make up what meanings we choose to.

That is why I am essentially more in sympathy with a religious viewpoint than with a decidely anti-religious viewpoint, because I cannot sympathize with a philosophical viewpoint that asserts (at the heart of itself) that its own life has no essential meaning. That, to me, is a complete denial of whatever makes life noble, beautiful, and worth living.

You would say, I presume, that we make up the various ideals we aspire to. I think that we rise to them...if we are willing to...and that they were already there. I do not think we are an accident in a meaningless Universe nor do I think anything else is.

And I can't fathom why anyone would want to think so, why they would want to minimize their own essential value to that extent...unless it was just for the glory and satisfaction of being "right" (meaning someone else is therefore "wrong")... ;-D Small potatoes, that is....like a few crumbs on a bare, cold plate. I think a society is headed straight to the trash heap when it stops believing in anything except material gain and tactile things that can be proven. That was the Soviet theory: that man lives by bread alone. That all can be set in order that way. I think they were very wrong about that. Man craves not just bread, but nobility, beauty, love, and a higher purpose in life. Man craves meaning. Take it away, assert that we are just an accident, and that it came about randomly, and you have ripped the pschological heart out of people's lives.

All they have left then is material gain, material considerations, and intellectual pride...which delights in being "right" merely for the sake of being "right", but has no greater purpose in mind.

I am not arguing FOR organized religions, by the way. I'm arguing against the denial of there being an inherent meaning in life.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 06:39 PM

I HAD A DREAM..............................................that I woke up.

Like that, Bill?

By the way, Little Hawk seemed to get it right....he must be 'experienced'!

Meanwhile, the frigid virgins prattle on.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 08:12 PM

Well.... this is beginning to feel like my old Philosophy prof. did, who got SO frustrated when a 2-3 hour seminar was ending, because every point he made led to 2 others. He always had to just 'stop', and try to get back to the general topic next time.

"Seems to me there are 2 general sorts of attitude out there, Bill. One is: "This all has meaning."
The other is: "This happened randomly, therefore it has only the meaning we choose to give it.""

I think there are intermediate positions. 'Meaning' is a human concept, and yes, to me it is assigned BY humans, though many of the assigned meanings are almost automatic and quite obvious. What is becoming more & more obvious (thru understanding of physics and the newer branches of physics) is that life seems to be 'inevitable' given certain conditions...and once life happens, it has certain built-in characteristics....like reproduction and sustaining itself and avoiding danger & discomfort. Then, when life becomes so complex that it can engage in reflexive analysis of itself (like you & I) it sorta cannot avoid labeling its own conscious AND sub-conscious interactions with the Universe...and with whatever it has come to see AS itself. Thus, we 'discover' moral principles and at the same time can contemplate the pros & cons of ignoring them!

If you really need to believe that "life has an ...essential meaning" that we somehow can reflect on, ask yourself when we acquired this ability and comprehension? Back when 'our' ancestors were hardly different than Chongo's, was there innate 'meaning' in our primitive thoughts and reactions? (I ask traditionally religious folks this about 'souls'. Did we have souls 4-5 million years ago? If not, when in the evolutionary process did we acquire them?)
    I DO see the sense you call 'innate meaning', but this doesn't mean that I reject a certain sense of randomness. I see certain conditions called 'life' as determined, but the subjective organization of data ABOUT life being ***functionally*** random, in that 'rational' beings could...and as this discussion shows... DO assign various meanings to our own experience.
   Now if you prefer to call this process/inclination/attitude...etc. "inherent meaning", I guess I see your reasoning, but the very condition that allows you to 'choose' that interpretation also allows me to choose a different interpretation of the linguistic formulation(s).

Thus, a lot of our interminable debate on these topics is just a matter of not accepting very basic definition of terms and presuppositions. (Which I 'think' supports my general attitude better...but of course, I would)

(BTW...some of this is similar to Kant's argument that certain 'principles' are discovered and logical....and can easily be shown to agree with both of us-- up to a point)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 09:52 PM

I'm not sure what your post meant, all the way...BUT, 'morality' is NOT the path of how you hear from God. 'Morality', is the result of hearing from Him. Because once you have a REAL experience with Him, at His choosing, everything changes..and unless that happens, there is no 'rap' than can talk you into anything as real...nor any amount of things you can do 'for' Him....as if He needs our help. Actually, the best thing is not to DO anything for Him, but get out of the way, and let Him do things THROUGH you!

GfS

P.S. Including music!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 10:24 PM

Hear, hear!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 10:33 PM

"'Morality', is the result of hearing from Him. "...etc...

Well.... ummm..... I kinda FEEL moral, even without your definition.

"...once you have a REAL experience with Him, at His choosing..."

I'm not sure whether to quibble with "REAL" or the idea that 'He' just hasn't bothered with me yet.

I actually never expected YOU, GfS, to move from just debating/discussing various issues to plain old preaching. What you believe in is your business, but you need to be VERY aware that there is a good reason that it is CALLED 'belief', and that what you believe is simply not obviously true to everyone.
I can 'respect' others' beliefs, but at the same time I can be quite ...... (looking for the right words..) 'resentful'?... no, more like 'insulted', that anyone would suggest that I am just ignorant, or stubborn or deluded...or whatever.. because I *think* about these things and do not just accept the admonition to "...get out of the way, and let Him do things THROUGH you!"
   That is a slippery way of saying "be quiet and let us believers tell you what WE know to be the **truth**!"

I BEGAN in a church.... I found problems with having theology spoon-fed to me, and have spent 'about' 55 years now sorting out how to approach it all...from detailed studies of comparative religion to graduate studies in Philosophy...and 12-15 years of comparing notes here at Mudcat. *wry smile*

There is only a small difference in 'flavor' between what Little Hawk expounds and what YOU just told me. Those 55 years have sensitized me to the similarities....

I often wonder where this 'sanity' is that you reside in, but I'm beginning to get an inkling of your basic neighborhood.


g'night

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 10:35 PM

"hear, hear"?? about music?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 11:17 PM

Ain't my place to say, but that's never stopped me before. I do not get along with GfS, nor GfS with me. Point finale. I can live with that. BUT, when GfS speaks what he/she perceives to be a truth, Kant, Nietzsche, whoever, matters less than GfS's truth at the time it's said.

I respect that you are much smarter than I will ever be, Bill. However, I've been in the presence of extremely smart people before, and sometimes they have been wrong.

When people read Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" and subject it to miniscule philosophical examination, it loses some of its impact. His remark about people being turned into numbers affected me. I don't mean you haven't understood it, but I do mean we have not internalized it in the same way.

GfS accused me a few days back of being drunk or stoned or both when I posted a something to a new-found friend of his/hers. I was neither. And that's why I will have nothing to do with him or her. I can live with that also. But you, being as smart as you are should know better. I don't give a rat's ass what any of the philosophers said. They were just people like us trying to find their way. That was written as one guy to another.

BM

PS I ain't drunk or stoned now, either. But I'll fix that in a few minutes.

B

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Apr 11 - 11:19 PM

Well, I also feel that there is something beyond me that works through me when I write really good songs and when I sing them at my best, and the better I am at surrendering to it, the better are the results. This can be seen as rendering service or it can be seen as tuning in. Whatever is working through me, I don't call it "Him", but I do recognize that it's happening. I might just as well call it "Her", but I think that it's beyond naming. Sometimes I call it the Spirit of Life. That works for me.

I began in an atheist household. Maybe that's why I'm not carrying a big chip on my shoulder against religion (as many here do). I've met too many good people on both sides of that issue to go stereotyping them just because of what side they're on.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 03:35 AM

Calling a spade a shovel isn't stereotyping. It's calling a spade a shovel.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 03:51 AM

I would say I recognize the spirit of life or god or any other name one wishes to place on the subject that may or may not cause a heretical condemnation in certain countries that would lead to stoning or beheading.

I respect the conceptual faith that you describe little hawk. In another part of the world you could get in trouble for such speech.

But being in Canada it takes no bravado or courage to speak your truth as you see fit. Think of it as a luxury that will allow you to collect and focus your imaginative energy more freely there, and how fortunate you are to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 11:55 AM

"you are much smarter than I will ever be, Bill"

good thing this is in the BS section!

"Smart" ain't the issue... I don't make that kind of comparison. I just have a different history and viewpoint. I have my reasons for approaching it like I do and have worked for those 55 to examine & refine them.
I respect YOU, Bruce ....for seeing and coping with stuff *I* never could.

Now... I will drop this. I am going to West Virginia for a musical folk weekend and no sense taking this with me....

Take care all........

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 12:31 PM

You too take care, Bill, and have a great time.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 12:40 PM

I know I'm lucky to be where I am, Donuel. If I was, however, visiting in Saudi Arabia or somewhere like that, I would not talk publicly about my spiritual ideas there, I'd just keep it quietly to myself and outwardly show respect for the local conventions, whatever they might be. That wouldn't hurt me, and it wouldn't hurt them either.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 08:48 PM

God called me up this afternoon and asked, "What's up with Bill D these days?"

I said, "Come on....you can't be God! God's supposed to be omniscient." and I hung up on him. Or her. Whatever...

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 10:59 PM

Awwww... I thought I had disguised my voice. If I had fooled YOU, I intended to start a cult and make millions.........

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: reggie miles
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 01:38 AM

Interesting thread. I don't feel up to joining in on the more in depth aspects of this conversation but I did want to say that I find myself including much of what was mentioned in the previous posts in some of the songs that I write. I've never gone out of my way to play or sing what some might consider "Godly" songs but the occasional obscure gems do find their way into my set list, now and then. However, I've written what I call "truth songs" (my term) for songs that relate exactly some of the ideas expressed in many of the previous posts in this thread. Then, too, I also have my fun with some of the same.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 01:54 AM

As with 'Reggie', I don't do songs that are 'religious' in nature, but also like Little Hawk, I do stuff of truth. I draw a HUGE distinction between 'spiritual' (truth being in there), and 'religious', which is usually a distortion of spiritual truth...nor do I name any 'religious or spiritual figureheads' in my stuff.....matter of fact, most of my most recent stuff is instrumental along the lines of musical scores and/or soundtracks.....but if they don't conjure up deeply personal emotions, along those lines, its back to the studio, in the basement...but, fortunately, so far, I've been blowing people's minds, at the concerts.

So, I'm happy.....

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 02:08 AM

Passed by a Church of God today named the Church of God in Deliverance...........I pulled up out front and someone inside was yelling, "Squeal like a pig........"


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Musket
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 04:53 AM

Interesting notes above about not singing religious songs.

Back when I was a teenager, practicing in my Mum's front room. Her friend had called for a cuppa and they could hear me through from the kitchen. I was learning a traditional song, "Our Captain Cried All Hands."

My Mum's friend, being deeply religious, told my Mum that I shouldn't put non religious words to hymn tunes. My Mum mentioned this to me, and I told her that "He who would valiant be" was written after the original sea faring song to the same tune.

Mum told her friend this, and was told "Once God has taken a tune, it is his for ever more."

So, perhaps we shouldn't wonder what is up with God these days, as there are always those to describe his answers eh?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 06:17 AM

I liked a line from the old BBC serial 'The Borgias' where Rodrigo Borgia (the Po0pe) is asked why he is spending all his time running the Vatican State, rather than attending to spiritual matters and replies that God was perfectly capable of doing that himself, but needed help when it came to temporal affairs. I always felt that the opposite attitude (as typified by Mary Whitehouse) verged on the blasphemous.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 10:48 AM

I'm just here to spread Joy. Have you seen her?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 11:02 AM

The revolutionary poet and singer, Bob Dylan performed in China after Chinese authorities excised and censored every song that had anything to do with change, revolution,prison, freedom, or God.

What made it to the stage were songs like 'Freight Train' and Viva Los Vegas. 'Endless Highway' was silenced before he finished the song.

Oh well ya gotta serve somebody.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 02:17 PM

"censored every song that had anything to do with change, revolution,prison, freedom, or God."


Now, THERE you have a truly dangerous government. And a truly dangerous religion too...the Chinese government's religion, I mean.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: John P
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 05:28 PM

Little Hawk: That is why I am essentially more in sympathy with a religious viewpoint than with a decidely anti-religious viewpoint, because I cannot sympathize with a philosophical viewpoint that asserts (at the heart of itself) that its own life has no essential meaning. That, to me, is a complete denial of whatever makes life noble, beautiful, and worth living.

I have an anti-religious viewpoint, or perhaps I should say anti-deist. Yet I still feel that my life has meaning. Your dichotomy doesn't work, and is somewhat insulting. You sound like the folks who say that no one can be moral without a belief in God.

And: the Chinese government's religion, I mean
The Chinese government doesn't have a religion. Please find different words to use to express your meaning, which I understand quite well (as in please don't bother explaining it yet again). You could say that they put the same care and intensity into their political philosophy as religious people do into religion, but then what's the point of calling it a religion? You could say that their belief in their political system is as strong as a religious person's belief in God, but why not just say that they believe strongly in their system? Is my overriding desire to brush my teeth every day a religion? Is folk music my religion?

The word "religion" means either a belief in a god or an organization that administers a belief in a god. Nothing else is religion. As a non-religious person, you're willingness to call other stuff religion is off-putting.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 06:07 PM

I understand you perfectly, John. But I don't particularly feel like wrangling about it. One doesn't have to be a deist to have a spiritual sense about life, or to find the kind of positive purpose and meaning in life that I think people need. I very much doubt that you define the word "God" the same way I do anyway, so I think we'd be wasting our time beating this particular dead horse around the block, don't you?

Yeah, I think there's a vast amount of other stuff (entirely apart from belief in a deity) that people practice in just the same blind and fanatical and pigheaded way that so many do their organized religions, and to much the same deleterious and self-deluding effect, and if I want to call it a "religion" when they do that, there's nothing you can do about it, is there?

I don't see any point in you being "insulted" by what I say, but I guess that's up to you.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 10:42 PM

BRAVO, Little Hawk!!!

Whether people believe in a 'religion' or not, does NOT preclude the FACT that there is 'something' bigger going on, in this universe, than a bunch of people's stupid opinions on what to call it!!...and order it out, to accomplish some other stupid notion of 'righteousness'!!...
However, being in step, with not only the 'universe' but having a conscious sense of ONENESS about it all, sure makes life fuller, and slicker access to tapping into it!!

Ya' think it was supposed to be that way???

"You gotta serve somebody"....Dylan

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 10:57 PM

Some people subjectify God as the Universe and all its components.

The interesting fact is that when you start looking at the very small, "God's Creation" begins to pixilate into particals, some of which do not break down into anything smaller.
IF you look at the incredibly big you see a web like network of filiments composed of galaxies that look very much the same as living tissue.


I'm not saying that the Milkey way is a polyp on a rectum by a hemmroid in the bowels of God...perhaps we are merely an inflamation.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 11:05 PM

We are whatever we truly decide to be.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 11:09 PM

...and some people have great difficulty deciding. Therefore they have great difficulty accomplishing much of anything.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 12:50 AM

Little Hawk: "...and some people have great difficulty deciding. Therefore they have great difficulty accomplishing much of anything."


....except frustrating those of a kind heart, extending a friendly hand to them!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 04:25 AM

"The word "religion" means either a belief in a god or an organization that administers a belief in a god. Nothing else is religion."

Presumably you mean that Hiduism (many gods) and Buddhism (no gods) aren't religions.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stu
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 07:09 AM

Some forms of Buddhism aren't a religion in reality, they are a way of life that doesn't need gods. Zen is totally without deities of any kind, and Tibetan Buddhism can be practiced without any supernatural beings being involved (although there are other spiritual realms, but you could ignore these even if you wished).

What both these paths have in common is an encouragement to question everything, even a the most fundamental level. Nothing is taboo and can accommodate all aspects of science without problem or any compromise of personal values. In fact, if you keep up with developments in physics (string theory) and psychology (visualisation exercises, the nature of human suffering) the there are correlations regard views of the nature of reality that are intriguing and in the study of the workings of the human mind.

These paths eschew the myopic dogma of western/arab theist religions and are all the better for it. Not for them the ignorance of continued adherence to ancient texts written by unknown authors who in all probability were expressing their own views rather than transcribing the word of God; all this filtered through long-lost political, social and philosophical viewpoints that don't translate to the modern world and encourage the arrogant, ignorant and idiotic viewpoint of

"let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

One of Buddhism's central tenets is respect for all living things, and the appallingly misguided little passage above is the exact opposite of that, a licence to destroy that which we don't understand.

Buddhists strive to live their lives with compassion for all living beings, the ability to allow others to exist as they wish, and their main motivation is selfless love. Unlike the theist religions, which bang on about love but are actually intolerant and (in reality, contrary to what their main scriptures say) anthropocentric in their view of the world.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stu
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 09:12 AM

Mind you, I think some Gnostics got close . . . at play in the fields of the Lord.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 09:30 AM

ALL religions are man's way of reaching God.......ever wonder what God's way of reaching man are??

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: John P
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 09:56 AM

Dave MacKenzie ,
I think you know what I was talking about. Stop quibbling, it makes you small.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Musket
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 11:16 AM

The flying spaghetti monster considers his noodly self to be a deity rather than a God.

Pastafarians consider themselves however to be members of a religion.

He is a monotheist wriggly critter, but to those with meatballs keeping their ears apart, he represents a religion.

I suppose that by signing up on a webpage, you are a member of that religion by informed consent. A lot more consent than having your head washed as a baby?

Just a thought. I haven't but a mate of mine who posts on these pages has, the silly sod.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 11:34 AM

John P.

I think I know what you're talking about, and I don't think you know what I'm talking about. As I've said elsewhere, is religion compatable with belief in God? Ask Steve Shaw about his experiences as a Catholic.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 12:01 PM

Ian, may I make a suggestion???
Get up from the computer and eat something...you sound hungry!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Musket
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 01:08 PM

Too hot for spaghetti.

In terms of the question, "Is religion compatible with belief in God?" I might try to make a more serious contribution.

I am not religious, get rather annoyed when friends and family tell me I am a Christian as opposed to a practicing one, (debated the census, no matter,) and see myself as free from superstition and irrational thoughts. Sounds pompous?   Yeah, I suppose it does, but no more than those who convince us of a series of events / attitudes / thoughts of imaginary deities.

Whilst I am not religious, my academic past was in an area of physics so am conversant with Newtonian laws through to probability at the quantum level. So I see where Einstein was coming from when asked if he was an atheist. No, he said. For atheism must by definition reduce to chaos. the laws of physics work in every case, everywhere we look. Chaos cannot create such a state.

Makes you wonder.

Even if atrophy does preclude intelligent design after all.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Amos
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 01:37 PM

LEt's not get crack-potted about the definition, which comes from the Latin religiare or possibly religiens:

"relegare "go through again, read again," from re- "again" + legere "read" (see lecture). However, popular etymology among the later ancients (and many modern writers) connects it with religare "to bind fast" (see rely), via notion of "place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods." Another possible origin is religiens "careful," opposite of negligens. Meaning "particular system of faith" is recorded from c.1300."

"•A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

In modern usage, there are two distinct definitions, one more general (a set of beliefs) and one theistic. To deny the validity of one or the other definitions is just sophomoric and disingenuous.


A

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 01:43 PM

"Is religion compatible with belief in God?"

Compatible???? Seems like an odd choice of words in that sentence.

Some religions require belief in God, a god, or various gods. Other's don't. Some are based on worshipping the powers of Nature. Some are philosophical and ethical treatises, and do not advance the idea of any kind of deity at all, but of a coherent and rational order of things. Some political religions are officially absolutely against all "religion", and yet they go through all the same outward motions and psychological exercises, such as: having holy books that all members must read and live by, having sacred rituals that all members must participate in, demanding exclusive loyalty to the order, wearing symbols and clothing that reflect the order, following rigid rules set out by the order, idolizing the prophets and founders of the order and setting up graven images of them for the faithful to bow down to, aggressively prosyletizing to convert the rest of humanity and making war on those who resist, etc...

And yet they claim to be against religion! Ha! I find this tragically funny...or maybe just tragic, period. They are the very thing they despise and wish to stamp out, they just don't know it. They succeed in matching and even outdoing some of the most fanatical religions in recorded history. Who comes to mind? Well, the Soviets, the Maoists, and Pol Pot, to mention 3 examples.

The Nazis were another example of a fanatical political religion, although they did not claim to be against traditional Christian religion...in fact they made much use of it in encouraging their troops and their citizenry...but it was quite clear that their real religion was to worship the Nazi Party, its philosophy, its symbols, and its founders. Their tolerance of the conventional forms of Christianity that they willingly accepted and used was a much secondary matter, just a good practical way of helping to motivate the general rank and file in the German population. After all, they were fighting against "Godless Communism", so it was important to emphasize to Germans that the Nazi regime stood for godliness. ;-) (so they pretended...and most of them probably believed it too)

Every German soldier in the regular forces had a belt buckle on which was inscribed the words: "God Is With Us" (in German). And I'm sure most of them believed "He" was. Why wouldn't they? Only the rank and file of soldiers in an officially atheist force like that of the Soviets or Mao would hesitate to assume that God was on their side. ;-) In their case, their peculiar form of faith would cause them to dismiss the concept of "God" utterly and replace it with a quite different set of mental bulwarks...equally rigid, but different labels to believe in.

Seems to me that they all do much the same thing, but they put a different set of outer clothing on it, that's all. They give it different names. They all give themselves over to some remote higher authority, take a huge leap of faith in putting their trust in that higher authority, obey its dictates, follow its orders, and sacrifice themselves upon its bloodstained altar.

I regard it as equally sad in every case, whether or not they call it "God", "the Party", "the Fuhrer", "the King", "The Empire", "the church", or "the Fatherland" that they are killing and dying for.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 02:32 PM

well put,little hawk.

jack-methinks you misread genesis.dominion does not have to be selfish or cruel.in fact other texts in the penteteuch exhort kindness to animals,a feature i suspect was ahead of it,s time.
best wishes. pete.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 04:05 PM

Entropy vs evolutionary growth and development can be viewed as stages of the same process and not antitheticals.

"We are what we want to be" Well sort of but limitations do exist.

It can be frightening for the scientific mind to venture outside a standard model and view the unuverse from a point of view that differs markedly from a peer accepted reality. I celebrate those with the courage to do so. We stand upon the shoulders of the giants who chose to take that frightening step.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 04:09 PM

Hear! Hear!

The thing I most fear is the suffocating tyrrany of the conventional mind (whether in science, government, society, and/or religion).

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 09:01 PM

Years ago I thought Little Hawk stood for a conservative closed minded conventional sheeple of a reactionary right wing fascist thug with diminutive stature.

Hey I was wrong. But the only way I learned how wrong, was by reading your posts in entirety.



6 years later, I finished

whew.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 09:04 PM

Little Hawk: "The thing I most fear is the suffocating tyrrany of the conventional mind (whether in science, government, society, and/or religion)."


OR, all of them together, being controlled by a regime, propaganda or social pressure!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 10:12 PM

Damn right, GfS!

Donuel, I shudder to think how much time you have lost if you actually sat down and read ALL my posts! Time that could have been used to far better purpose. Ouch! ;-) "Little Hawk" is a name that stems from Native American traditions and has nothing to do with present day political viewpoints. Crazy Horse had a younger brother named Little Hawk, for instance, and it was a pretty common name back then.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 11:17 PM

WELL FINALLY!!!

This fuckin' thread has been tied up in phlegm bag of self interest for so long I figured it was hopeless. But now we have come around to something real and important and a favorite Mudcat topic.........

CRAZY HORSE

And of course The Infamous Crazy Horse Webcam with the thrill of live action mountain carving.

Geeziz......Gives me a boner every time I think of it!!!!



Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 01:28 AM

Matter of fact, Spaw, I was checking out the old Crazy Horse monument camera earlier today...or yesterday...well, back prior to midnight, that is.

It was tremendously exciting, as always.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 03:01 PM

I guess it's quite a relief that there's something out there that can still give you a boner, eh, Spaw? ;-) Thank God for the Crazy Horse webcam!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 04:55 PM

That and a Cheeseburger as you can see by reading the Cuba thread.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 09:40 PM

For a minute I thought the Crazy Horse House was next to the Mustang Ranch.....then I figured it out!

Then I thought of: " BS: What's Up With God These Days???"....Then I remembered these lyrics, (Last lines from last verse)....:

"And if I love my self enough,
Loving you won't be so rough,
'Cause I'll have so much Love to give the earth."

...and I figured, that if God was up to anything these days, He might just be getting a kick out out His people, doing just exactly that!
Snap Now, and avoid the rush!

It's been both an honor, and a pleasure!!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 09:44 PM

Addendum (more of the verse:

But befor I love another man,
I've got to Love myself,
And appreciate what little bit I'm worth,
And if I love my self enough,
Loving you won't be so rough,
'Cause I'll have so much Love to give the earth."

(Better context.)

Wink,

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 01:50 AM

I don't recall if you can get cheeseburgers in Cuba, Spaw, but I guess probably so. Anyway, there are plenty of little food stands there making hot food, and the stuff's all home-cooked fresh right on the spot instead of pre-made and microwaved. Tastes great! It looked a lot more like traditional small-scale family-run capitalism to me than what I see happening around us in North America. There are no corporate chain stores in Cuba, no McDonalds, Burger King or anything like that. (I'm not talking about the big tourist resorts. I'm talking about the regular places where the ordinary Cubans go in the cities and towns.)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 11:28 AM

There is nothing definitive so far on the Cuba thread that gives me a rating on any cheeseburgers which they might produce. My contention is simply that you are not providing proof of paradise without the ability to get a "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Sorrowfully, until Jack the Sailor showed up, I seemed to be the only Jimmy Buffett fan on the thread..................

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 11:36 AM

I found the following on the www.

"Huge burgers are great! Four of us ate cheeseburgers, fries and tip and it was under $20. I stop by every time I go through Cuba."

I have have no idea what tip is, but yer not being force to eat it. (Spaw, let that one go!)

That should settle your qualms. (And let that one go, too!)

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 02:51 PM

But, Spaw, I was not the one who asserted that Cuba is a "paradise". I merely said that the conditions for ordinary people are considerably better in Cuba than they are in most other Latin American countries such as Mexico or Trinidad. "Better than" does not = "paradise", does it?

It is Ron Davies who has resorted to the extraordinary exaggeration and hyperbole of labelling Cuba as a "paradise" (or pretending that I labelled it as a "paradise", which I most certainly did not), therefore it's up to him to prove the concept, not I. Cheeseburgers notwithstanding. ;-) I am ignoring his silly thread, because it's just another exercise in futility, and going there would be like looking for good trout fishing spots in the Mojave Desert.

Since the Cubans understand the concept of ground beef, buns, cheese, and necessary condiments though, I am quite sure you can get a decent cheeseburger in Cuba if you just ask for one. And it will be home cooked as you watch. My guess is, you would love the place.

Too bad your stupid f-ing government doesn't allow you to go there, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 06:12 PM

Fishing in the Mojave Desert

Hesperia Lake Park
7500 Arrowhead Lake Rd Hesperia 760-244-5951 7am-5pm

Catfish (use chicken liver, mackerel, or shrimp, with a marshmallow)
Jess Ranch Lakes
11495 Apple Valley Rd Apple Valley 760-240-1107 www.jessranchlakesnews.com

Rainbow trout (use Power Bait or nightcrawlers), catfish, bluegill, and bass.
No license required
Over age 12, $17/5 fish; children $7/2 fish; $3 non-fisher ( 13 years or older)
Pay $3.50 per Trout Angling Pond - Limit Fishing on 2 Lakes - Bass Lake for Float Tubers
First fish certificates
No skunk policy
Fri, Sat, & Sun, 7am-4pm - Trout stocked year round every Friday from their hatchery.
Mojave Narrows
Regional Park Victorville 760-245-2226

Catfish, trout, bluegill, croppie
Hours 7:30am-5pm $3
fishing license for anyone 16 & older ($10.25); no rental equipment.
Fish planted every other week.
Silverwood Lake Marina Hwy 138 Summit Valley 760-389-2299

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 06:16 PM

How come nobody is swimming TO Cuba FROM Florida?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 06:20 PM

Sorry, Little Hawk. It was too good to miss.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 06:48 PM

How come nobody is swimming TO Cuba FROM Florida?

Because there are some fantastic cheeseburgers in Florida!


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 07:56 PM

GfS - For the exact same reason that no one is illegally emigrating from the USA and Canada south to Mexico and the rest of Latin America by swimming south across the Rio Grande under cover of darkness.

They're materially and financially poorer than we are, so they attempt to emigrate illegally. Illegal immigrants always flow from a poorer place to a richer one. Poor people swim and take little leaky boats. Rich people (meaning us) drive cars, get on planes, and go on paid vacation packages to the places that the poor people swim from.

My point was not that Cubans are better off than WE are. It was that they're far better off than most other Latin Americans are, and if any Latin American country was a short boat ride from Florida, they'd be trying to swim to Florida!!!!!!!!!!   NOT BECAUSE OF FUCKING SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BECAUSE THEY ARE FUCKING POOR!!!!!!!!!!!!! Poorer than we are...materially speaking.

They're not poorer in spirit, though. I've been there, and they make the average North Americans look like a bunch of overfed, bored, lazy, unhealthy lost souls, so maybe we're not really as "rich" as we think we are.

999 - Right. ;-) I evidently picked the wrong desert. Should have said "the Sahara".

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: GUEST,999 -- from the www
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 08:05 PM

Can you go fishing in a desert?


What! In the driest place in the world? But the answer is yes! In places like the Sahara Desert in Africa, people can fish in the many underground streams which lie on top of a layer of clay beneath the sand.

The water feeding these streams comes from nearby mountains where rain does fall. This mountain water sifts through rocks down into the desert valleys. Even though some rain does fall on the hot dry desert, the heat causes it to evaporate before it hits the ground.

So, all a hardy and determined fisherman has to do is dig down through the sand, have some patience, and he may very well land himself some fine freshwater fish.

These same underground streams create oases in the desert and supply water to the millions of date palm trees that grow there!

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 08:41 PM

Well Bruce, that doesn't get you too far on the cheeseburger front but you might be able to get one helluva' decent Fish Tail Sandwich! I dunno' if Fish Tail has any rating on the Paradise Meter. Maybe Buffett could write a new verse or something...............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 08:45 PM

Don't forget to order a large fries and a milkshake with that cheeseburger. And some cheesies. And potato chips. And a beer. Build a strong and healthy body. Soon you will look just like Hermann Goering.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 11 Apr 11 - 01:16 PM

The reason that people are not going to Cuba is that there is a U.S. government ban on going there. That would explain part of the one-way traffic.

Cuba is not a paradise and neither is the U.S. for many people.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 11 Apr 11 - 01:21 PM

It seems that Republicans are what's up with god these days. They want to use god to ruin women's health. (close down Planned Parenthood).

Senator Kyle is the new spokesperson for god these days. He never meant for his statements to be taken as the truth.

God seems to be fueling the Tea Party movement as well.

They're serving god up at the National Prayer Breakfast coming up soon.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Apr 11 - 06:13 PM

Canadians go to Cuba in droves, because there is no Canadian ban on Cuba. Our government may be just a tad less insane and reactionary and power-mad than the government of the USA is. (Did I say "may"? Ha!) That's the theory I'm going on, and I've seen more than a little evidence to support it...ever since I was 10 years old.

I wouldn't flee TO the USA, but I might very well flee FROM it...to a great variety of other places. This is not to criticize ordinary American citizens. They're the hapless victims of their government, and they should not be blamed for the crazy things it does in their name, supposedly on their behalf. All they have to vote for, after all, is 2 corrupt and phony political parties who were bought out a long time ago. Kind of like an electoral choice between Hitler and Mussolini. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 03:44 PM

LH, mostly we agree but on the point that American citizens are hapless victims, I must vociferously protest. Americans are not hapless victims but many of them are asleep, they need to wake up and take control of their government, taking to the streets, shouting from the rooftops, sweeping the corrupt politicians out of office, informing their fellow Americans about how they are being duped by corporate lobbyists, apologetic and enabling members of congress, speaking out against Fox News and its lying agenda, an equivocating president, and a blanket of mis and dis information. Americans are not hapless victims. They are deliberately misinformed by the media, the corporate propagandists and lobbyists in the government, and the Republican attempt to destroy public education in this country.

Hapless victims they are not. Hoodwinked, some are.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 03:51 PM

LH religion may have outlived its usefulness. I consider the devotion to a political system such as Stalinism, Pol Pot, Nazism, or any other mind-numbing overarching
mode of thinking or non-thinking a form of religion.

What's up with god these days is that the notion of god is becoming obsolete.
It requires an obedient suspension of inquiry, skepticism, or the ability to think outside of that box.

Subject: RE: BS: What's Up With God These Days???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Apr 11 - 05:21 PM

Yeah, sure, Stringsiner, I think of all those political creeds as religions too. And I've said so many times.

As for the notion of "God" becoming obsolete...well, maybe it's a certain type of God you're objecting to. It depends, you see, on how you define "God"...whether you think of God as a separate being outside of you or as something entirely other than that.

But I'm growing absolutely weary of even attempting to talk to people on the Internet about such matters...or really about much of anything that is of any serious import, so think whatever you want to about it. It really makes no difference to me. I would prefer at this point to just walk away. If we were meeting in 3-D life, then it would be worth talking about at some length and I trust we could reach some level of mutual understanding.

Here, it's as useless as pounding sand.