damnthing

I wholeheartedly recommend the entirely guilt-free, sin-free, hell-free, (equally) fact-free, fun-filled, strippers and beer heaven, pirate enforced, Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster RaMen There is no dealing with established religious zealots, their belief is their belief. Now ideally each of those beliefs would be freely held but privately celebrated. But no zealotry requires a certain amount of exhibitionism, of look-at-how-holy-I-am-ism and their religions require an amazingly large amount of magical thinking and woo,. There is only one way to deal with religious zealotry and that is with equally absurdist, non-nonsensical, fantastical zealotry. The CotFSM has won soundly in Kansas is is winning globally. Enough of this foolish seriousness along the lines of the above video (in which he makes great points but is soooooo serious, as is Richard Dawkins and Spong (I feel like there should more to his name, but oh well)). The FSM is so antithetical to the mainline religions that it's enough to make Martin Luther roll over in his grave. Religidiots only want to espouse their beliefs, they have no interest in anyone else's and take copious amounts of umbrage, along with nasal cartilage disjointment, in other words there is no talking to them. Sooooooo, the Flying Spaghetti Monster RaMen comes to the rescue, bringing enlightenment, frivolity, jocularity and eternal inebriation. I'll see your cross, and raise you pirates. So which will it be, a heaven where it's all hushed tones, people you hoped you'd never see again, nothing but white everywhere (I suppose to make POC stand out more), harps and boring eternity. Or rather, volcanoes spewing beer and strippers (or rum and nuns, or vodkas and latkes or wine and twine, or bois and toys, it's really whatever you want it to be). Nope, I think we all agree that religion is nonsense but why give it the gravitas that the religious demand it deserves. Trying to convince any zealot that their entire belief system is a fantasy is nearly impossible. Instead, beat them over the head with a rubber chicken named the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Sic pirates on them, march wearing colanders on the head, force the world to accept the nonsense that is The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or to deny ALL of them equally. RaMen, May You Be Touched By His Noodley Appendage

Which is why fb is a good place to avoid. So what else happens here? Are we like the only four people (besides Mr. Dan) who visit here? And are we just preaching to the choir?

Well that's unfortunate as I don't do fb, it's a little too creepy and controlling for my tastes. And thanks for the welcome.

Hubble Deep Field photo " This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind.Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view represents a "deep" core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years." The description used was 'like looking through an eight foot long drinking straw. https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0611b/ https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0611b/zoomable/ <------ this one is pretty cool From here https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/10/18/this-is-how-we-know-there-are-two-trillion-galaxies-in-the-universe/#3bb3f55b5a67 there is an estimated (low count) of 176 billion galaxies in the visible universe, with the upper limit thought to be closer to two trillion galaxies. "I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." J.B.S. Haldane 1927 And from here https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane "God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles." . . . Haldane was making a theological point: God is most likely to take trouble over reproducing his own image, and his 400,000 attempts at the perfect beetle contrast with his slipshod creation of man. When we meet the Almighty face to face he will resemble a beetle (or a star) and not Dr. Carey [the Archbishop of Canterbury]." "The conservative has little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires. " " There does not seem to be any particular reason why a religion should not arise with an ethic as fluid as Hindu mythology, but it has not yet arisen. Christianity has probably the most flexible morals of any religion, because Jesus left no code of law behind him like Moses or Muhammad, and his moral precepts are so different from those of ordinary life that no society has ever made any serious attempt to carry them out, such as was possible in the case of Israel and Islam. But every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. This is no doubt an argument for Christianity as against other religions, but not as against none at all, or as against a religion which will frankly admit that its mythology and morals are provisional. That is the only sort of religion that would satisfy the scientific mind, and it is very doubtful whether it could properly be called a religion at all."

Thank you Pete, and Jonathan earlier

So this place is pretty quite, except for this thread, bit surprised that it's not more active.

Thank you, stumble my way through this thread, interesting 'discussion'

Good without a god, what better motto could one have