mererdog

My mother did not take care of us while she was pregnant, and I had a difficult birth. That brings up an interesting thought about legacies. The only thing my wife knows about her mother is that she was a prostitute who used heroin and cocaine during her pregnancy. It is completely possible the woman turned her life around and built herself a nice positive legacy. But, to my wife, she will always be a crack-whore.

Another good thing to remember: Don't hold your breath. Things change, but not always on your schedule.

If I go out the way I came in, I will be naked and covered in my mother's blood. Not a good look. Anyway, our ability to accurately predict the future is not exactly perfect. Our lives are filled with unintended consequences and other surprises. But we need to be confident in our ability to shape the future, in order to be motivated actors. It makes life interesting. We all more or less have an idea of what our legacy will be made up of, and we are all more or less wrong about it. Fun stuff.

The planet could be destroyed tomorrow, leaving no one to remember you and nothing that bears your mark. The universe is short on guaranteed futures.

A good laymans understanding of quantum physics convinced me that either the scientists are full of **, or the universe is just not something I am equipped to understand. Branes hurt my brains.

I would love to know your reasons.

The apparent result is the same, but the actual result might differ. The distinction I make there is important because ignorance is not protective- what we don't know can hurt us. If a tiger is hiding, it will seem as if the tiger does not exist... right up until it pounces. Expressing openness to the possibility of a hidden God is fundamentally different than apologetics. In the first, a person is admitting ignorance of the truth. In the second, a person is attempting to prove that they know the truth, even if only that they know the truth is unknowable.

My wife's family has a few examples of people who are Catholic purely for the sake of better schooling options for their kids. An old friend joined a church for free day care. Many years ago, I probably would have joined First United Methodist in Charlotte, NC, if it had been a requirement for their "Thursday's At First" program. I really enjoyed hanging out with the retirees, helping put together care packages for prison inmates, ripping and rolling sheets into bandages, and learning how to quilt. And the food was amazing, of course...

It is also about the process of assimilation. As Buddhism spread, it was picked up by cultures that already had deeply entrenched religions. Rather than simply replacing the old with the new, many cultures would reframe the old stories in a Buddhist context and rename the old gods using Buddhist terminology. You bring up a good point, though. I have often wondered how the need of the clergy to acquire food from nonclergy has shaped the religious landscape through the ages. The constant need to prove your importance in order to keep the old begging bowl full can't have been without effect

That is only true for some forms of Buddhism. There are Buddhists who consider Buddhas to be divine figures capable of answering prayers and getting people into an afterlife paradise. In that context, it would matter whether or not any specific Buddha existed.

Yet they are the rules you agreed to when you accepted the TOS, and the rules that determine whether Brother Kevin will continue to be willing to host your posts on the servers he pays for.

If a man tells me he was born in Maryland, I will probably take him at his word, because there is no danger posed by getting it wrong. It doesn't matter to my life whether or not any given Roman emperor lived, so it is harmless to accept those stories as true, even if they are lies.

The problem is that I was not at all uncertain about it. I was convinced, and so I acted as if it were true. It made any real long term planning an impossibility. It made impulsivity and recklessness seem rational.

"Articles, texts, and any other information not written by the poster must be properly credited to the author of said work. You are permitted to post articles, so long as they are within the scope of the forum policies. If you did not write the article in question, you must provide the author's name and source of the article. (A link will do, where applicable.) Posts that do not have proper sourcing information will be removed at admin discretion." Forum Copyright Infringement Policy

I was in school when the Challenger shuttle exploded. They had wheeled a television into every classroom, and we were all watching it live. Even the kindergarteners. It took a long time for the principal to come over the intercom and tell the teachers to shut off the televisions. Ive talked to a lot of people around my age and this happened to pretty much all of us. That experience was on my mind a lot after the initial shock of the 9/11 attacks. I cant even imagine how that news cycle effected the kids. Footage of the planes hitting the towers, or at least still shot of the towers on fire, were basically inescapable for months. When I was young, I expected to die young. The news media essentially promised me that it eod happen. I was going to get murdered by a Super Predator, catch a random bullet from drive-by, or catch AIDS from a needle washed up oln the beach. These were real fears for me. The daily ritual was an hour of local news followed by an hour of national news, followed by PBS' News Hour. I definitely knew who my senator was. But I was convinced that I would die young. That conviction also seems to have been fairly common among people who are around my age. We are a generation vaguely suprised to still be breathing.

Did you look behind the couch?

Although, if you agree with the arbitrary declarations, the line between following orders and doing what you want gets extremely blurry. And when the arbitrary declarations are open to interpretation, that line more or less disappears...

Feeling like a hypocrite is more easily avoided than looking like a hypocrite. As long as my motives remain consistent, it is easy for me to ignore inconsistencies in my actions. Beyond that, when your morals are dictated from without, moral consistency only requires Doing What You Are Told. Where rules are inconsistent, consistant rule-following requires acting inconsistently, which can cause a person to look like a hypocrite without actually being one.

The common assumption is that peace can only be attained through violence. That assumption causes people who love peace to glorify violence. And it isn't just a religion thing. In my experience, most atheists hold to the same assumption, allowing them to think of themselves as men of peace even while they are in the midst of acting violently. Its a case of using the ends (peace) to justify the means (violence).

Yes. After they were given direct evidence. Talking bushes and angels in the sky... None of that ringing any bells? As for Pharoah, Exodus 9:12.

A corollary is the often repeated mantra "And I won't feel guilty about it, either!" Personally, I try not to be that guy. As with everything, I am not 100% effective at it. The fact that I try is comforting, though.

According to the Bible, Moses and Saul were both nonbelievers, until they were shown direct proof of God. They weren't called by faith or expected to believe the accuracy of rotting texts. And you just don't have Christianity without those two. Even though he was told that those who believe without evidence are blessed, he was still given the evidence he needed to go from Doubting Thomas to Fully Convinced Thomas.

"Never do with a miracle what you can do with a chisel and hammer." -mererdog's Guide To Lazy Godding Vol 72: You Didn't Need The Other 71 Volumes

Complication, or clue? Directly before the bit Pastor Dave originally quoted is 31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” 33 But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” 34 Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” Peter claims to be willing to suffer and die for Jesus. Why would he think Jesus wants that of him? We later see Peter use violence and deception while attempting to avoid that same suffering and death. Role modeling, or cautionary tale?

Yes. I've seen ancient Egyptian temples. You can pack a lot of text on a wall. I suppose I worded my question poorly, since it isnt an either/or kind of thing. You can have some copies that have a ten thousand year shelf life and others that are easily portable. So the question is why only have copies that rot?