BS: Onward Christian Soldiers

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 10:32 AM

Truth be known my friends, the fish do tend to get bigger. My wife says I am compensating for other things. I sometimes stir thepot wwith you cause the music section gets boring but I would do anything to help any of you any time. But don't tell anyone

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 10:42 AM

I know the feeling. I have been empathetic and altruistic to a fault.
I think I overdid it since it has led to a kind of poverty that have left the children without any seed money to start life as specially abled individuals. Autism etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 10:59 AM

I have a twisted sense of humor at times. I figure god must also, he made me, and a giraffe. I am a bad work in progress for sure but I try. Mostly fail but still try except for my cussing which is something I am working on.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,#
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 11:38 AM

"Jello is to philosophy as coal is to Newcastle."

Arbuthnot Waldenheim III

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 01:29 PM

Interesting posts dan. I knew a lady from a neighbouring church who had an experience like that. She died properly this year, but she did so confidently , particularly, I think from the experience she previously had, more so.   Had another story at home bible study group this week from a woman saying that her grandchild had an experience of a significant improvement of her blind condition. She had just been to specialists who, she said, were blown away by it. It was not a full restitution however, but was of a improvement in a condition only known to get worse.. No explanation offered just "keep the faith"

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 01:41 PM

I wonder if anyone else noticed that in Stevens post where he told the ridiculous story, about marzipan spaceships , with the aim of making theism look ridiculous, that the applications he made about breaking the laws of nature, and science apply equally , nay, more so, to his own philosophical worldview.    And then he demands ref for the children studies. Although I could tap them out here, had he read carefully , one was in the body of the post, including I think where Dawkins admitted he had himself believed as a child !.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 01:53 PM

I don't have to try to make theism look ridiculous. The idea was to invent a parallel tale to theism which you could read without your theistic blinkers on. My tale was, in most regards, far less ridiculous than yours as it happens, but that was accidental. As for the rest of your post, I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 02:41 PM

The noodly one will smite thy marzipan idolatry!!

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Jimmy
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 03:18 PM

"The Secretary of Treasury [State] and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly."

In 1979, the attorney general issued all Iranian students to report to their local immigration offices. While 7,000 were in violation of their visas, 15,000 Iranians were forced to leave the U.S.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,#
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 09:10 PM

Here's what Snopes has to say about that, Jimmy.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,turnd
Date: 09 Dec 15 - 11:53 PM

Steve Shaw, good lesson. Awkward Thomas 

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 04:15 AM

Very good reflection , turned, thanks for posting.          And guest no. Whatever....the noodle one is a lie too.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 05:17 AM

The noodly one will hear of your heresy. He will smite thee with a plague and a boil on your bum. His dire prognostications are saucy and delicious.

(Don't listen to those turncoat bastards in The Reformed Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster though. They are first up against the wall come the rinsing of the almighty pasta bowl.)

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 05:22 AM

Don't forget, Pete, noodliness is forever!

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 05:54 AM

Those 14 people that were killed by terrorists are just collateral damage to the hate mongers here.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 06:01 AM

Any evidence for your disgusting slur?

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 07:41 AM

In Yemen, Human Rights Watch investigated six selected airstrikes since 2009 and concluded that at least 57 of the 82 people killed were civilians, including a pregnant woman and three children who perished in a September 2012 attack

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 07:49 AM

Hmm. The lovely Thomas story isn't true, of course, as dead people drained of all their blood can't come back to life, but it does at least illustrate that asking for evidence is perfectly valid. Sticking his fingers into Jesus's various orifices must have seemed quite convincing, but, as the laws of nature had clearly been breached, had I been Tom I'd have still been looking for an alternative explanation. Let's try putting two possibilities side by side (I've made the second one up):

1. Jesus, his traumatised body bled dry (a soldier had stabbed him in the side, just to make sure), had died nailed to a cross. A couple of days later, he was back to life, walking, talking and handing out more good advice.

2. Jesus was in fact one of a pair of identical twins, the other chap having been kept hidden since birth for 33 years. After the real Jesus had snuffed it, he was brought out of hiding and paid a considerable sum to have himself authentically mutilated. After a thorough briefing by Jesus's old mates, he emerged to make a very good fist of impersonating the real McCoy.

Now suppose you were forced to believe that one of these stories was true (a lie, of course, as they're both egregiously false). Which one would you choose? The extremely unlikely scenario of the twin brother, which at least managed not to break any laws of nature, or the one that requires an unprecedented miracle to restore a battered two-day-old corpse back to vigorous life? Take yer pick: it's a choice between faith and reason, isn't it, and I know which one I'd choose. Only if forced to at knife-point, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 08:23 AM

If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 08:40 AM

Not if he emigrates to Outer Mongolia you can't.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 09:33 AM

More Christian Soldiers in action:

NEW YORK (AP 10 Dec 2015) — A severed pig's head was left outside a mosque in Philadelphia. An Islamic center in Florida was defaced. A Sikh temple in California was vandalized by someone who mistook it for a mosque.

"The spike in anti-Muslim incidents began with the Paris attacks and has intensified with what happened in San Bernardino and now with what Donald Trump is proposing," Ibrahim Hooper, lead spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday.

"The ground had been primed for this kind of harassment by the ongoing demonization of Islam," said Hooper. "After 9/11 there were hate crimes on the edges of society, but now it's in the mainstream with the leading Republican presidential candidate saying Muslims are not wanted in America."

The FBI, which keeps statistics on hate crimes committed nationwide, said data about 2015 will not be available until next year. But the Anti-Defamation League said it has tracked more than three dozen incidents since the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris."We're talking at least three dozen that we're aware of and I'm sure there are many more incidents that haven't been reported," said Oren Segal, the director of the ADL's Center on Extremism.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 09:43 AM

Since then, how many Muslims have been killed by Christians other than the ones killed in military actions directed by the Christian Commander In Chief?

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 09:48 AM

Give it time, Guest Asshole, just give it time.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 09:51 AM

People can choose, people switch at will
The goal of real evil is tto disrupt the right to choose your path. When faith in God in your path becomes a complete collective only directive, you get the pig head stuff and jihad. And all that we see. Evil wants people to no longer be free will beings.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,olddude
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 10:09 AM

Everyone is born with the light of the Creator inside them. We are given unrestricted free will to choose our private path in life. At anytime a believer can become a non-believer or the opposite because of our free will and the light of God inside everyone. Evil knows this. True evil is to disrupt your journey, to take away your free will and your path as it may be. We all die, if you get someone else s money or land or wife or whatever else this carnal world has to offer, when you die, it is all gone anyway. It is a short lived victory for evil. The true face of evil is to take away the path to God or your path through life as you choose. That is the real goal here. There is nothing wrong with people getting together in a church or whatever to strengthen their private journey. However, when personal paths become a common authoritarian path then true evil succeeds and destroys the light of God. That is the goal. This is why we get the situation we have today. Anyway no preaching cause I am not, just saying my path for what its worth if nothing else.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 10:34 AM

Light of God is in every person, our job is to figure out what we will do with it. Give in to evil or good.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 11:00 AM

I will close Guantanamo in my first year of office.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 11:06 AM

"Everyone is born with the light of the Creator inside them."

Not me. I was assembled from just a few elements according to a blueprint that took three and a half billion years to evolve. I'm a winner because the chances of that particular egg and that particular sperm coming together were almost, but not quite, nil. And all that's a fact, and I personally find it infinitely more wonderful and awe-inspiring than any strange notion of a creator's light shining within me. If I try to be a good chap, perhaps I can cast some metaphorical light on the world in some small way, but it'll be my light, not someone else's.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 11:37 AM

Yep, I've checked thoroughly and there doesn't appear to be any sort of light shining in me. I've even tried standing in front of a mirror in a darkened room and there doesn't seem to be any sort of light leaking out of my various orifices ... you'd think there would be, wouldn't you? I suppose it could be in a light-proof bodily cavity but then you would have thought a doctor would have detected it by now, wouldn't you? Internal lights - that's a new one on me!

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 12:48 PM

Your choice, your path I don't care what other's choose. Free Will

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 01:30 PM

"......three and a half billion years to evolve........and all that's a fact....          No, all that is a philosophical choice made by you to accept on faith what you cannot demonstrate to be true.   It is your free will choice to adopt a godless worldview, even though it is contrary to observational and experimental observations of science.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 01:48 PM

Oh right! Does this mean that you can demonstrate the existence of God experimentally, Pete? What experimental design did you use and how did you analyse the data? Have you got round to publishing your results yet? This is exciting - you could be in line for a Nobel prize!!

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 02:09 PM

I have no desire to demonstrate anything. If that was the bar over which science had to leap, there'd be be no science and no human progress. And if you could give me one single piece of experimental or observational evidence to support a Godly "worldview", I'd be all ears I would, honest.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 03:30 PM

How to sneak chocolate into an American cinema.

I saw that and it was too good not to post here.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Wesley S
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 03:41 PM

"Oh right! Does this mean that you can demonstrate the existence of God experimentally, Pete? "

Tell you what. Let's compare your proof that a God does NOT exist side by side with Pete's proof that he DOES exist and we will see which one wins. And "because I say so" doesn't constitute proof.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 03:55 PM

It's logically impossible to prove a negative, Wesley.

By the way, it's Pete who is making the claims and assertions - not me.
I am merely expressing (somewhat facetiously, I admit) scepticism and doubt - there's nothing wrong with that - unless, of course, you claim to possess a deeply irrational quality called "faith".

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 03:55 PM

As I've said a million times, or twenty, or eight anyway, I have no proof of anything. I don't WANT to prove anything. I LIKE not being able, or wanting, to prove anything. Accumulating evidence to which one applies reason does not permit proof. That's how we make progress. Once you've proved something, that's the end of the quest. That isn't how I operate and it isn't how science operates. If pete has proof, well I'd certainly take a look. But I don't want the quest to end. The beauty of life is that we can always keep looking, stay curious and use our brains. Once we believe that God did everything, the quest has ended. The brain is no longer needed. It was probably never used enough in the first place. Actually, God would be quite cross about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 03:58 PM

Look not I will ever tell you what to believe or not. I only stated what applies to me. It is your life and your path through life. Me I am in your corner either way and that's the truth. Would I be delighted if you choose god, yes and if you don't I am still in your corner and respect your life decisions. No preaching no bad guys. We all muddle through life doing the best we can as we see it. Occasionally write a good song on the way

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 03:58 PM

The progression of humankind.

IF a daddy human and a mummy human really, really love each other ....

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Wesley S
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 04:16 PM

"It's logically impossible to prove a negative, Wesley.

By the way, it's Pete who is making the claims and assertions - not me.I am merely expressing (somewhat facetiously, I admit) scepticism and doubt - there's nothing wrong with that - unless, of course, you claim to possess a deeply irrational quality called "faith"."


Translation: Because I say so.....

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 04:23 PM

My old boss used to think a white light shine out of his arse. But he was mistaken.

Most people in The UK at any rate don't choose whether to believe or not because the question frankly doesn't arise. The term atheist means rejecting theism. I haven't rejected it any more than I reject the agricultural policies of Mongolia.

So I'm not an atheist

Bit of a bastard for pete and his attempts to lower the intelligence of rational people by claiming they have a superstition.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 04:55 PM

I thought any rational debate had got beyond getting dragged into the "you can't prove God doesn't exist" nonsense?

There was a bloke called Wesley who was born just down the road from where I live, albeit 300 years ago. He too believed in the god concept. But I bet he could have made a far better argument for it than claiming normal people can't prove him wrong.

I do know he dismissed the very idea of using religion as a military tool, so his brother Charles, the prolific hymn writer would never write anything glorifying soldiers as a means to any end.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 05:18 PM

What do you mean by that, Wesley? Are you really saying that faith in the supernatural, for which there's no evidence, can be rational? Care to expand on that?

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Greg F.
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 05:24 PM

And the hits just keep on coming! Another Christian Soldier steps up:

ABC News Wednesday, December 09, 2015 10:03PM
Castro Valley, Calif.

A group of Muslim men say they were attacked at Lake Chabot Regional Park in the East Bay, and the confrontation was caught on camera. The woman yelling at a group of Muslim men about hate could now face a hate crime charge herself.

Denise Slader, who works for the California Department of Corrections, is the woman in the video. She tells police that she is the real victim because she was videotaped against her will.

"I know she's a born again Christian, very religious." one neighbor said.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: olddude
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 06:15 PM

I guess they never got around to reading the part that reads 'that which you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me'

And evil just rejoices.. Very sad

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 06:36 PM

This is just to comment that I can never be reminded of the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" without being reminded of a book about the friendship between a young Londoner (Bow) and a certain mysterious girl, and the joke which they shared on a walk after church one Sunday. But to tell more here would be thread creep. So I started a BS thread of my own. The subject line starts with the name "Fynn" should you feel the slightest interest.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 06:37 PM

"Translation: Because I say so....."

Oh, come on, Wesley, surely you can do better than that?

I am questioning - not asserting anything. I can't help noticing, though, that asking pertinent questions about unexamined and/or unsubstantiated beliefs does tend to make some people very uncomfortable.

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 06:52 PM

Don't worry about thread creep, keberoxu. We're experts at it! Your aside is a delight. Kudos!

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Dec 15 - 07:40 PM

I will stop the rise of the sea.

[?????]

Subject: RE: BS: Onward Christian Soldiers
From: GUEST,gaudēre
Date: 11 Dec 15 - 12:58 AM

Evil gloats--