May 21, 2011. The date of the Rapture.

Last I checked people were not considered religions. They have religions, but few are actually worshiped.

And if you read that big book you love so very much you will see its violence. If you choose not to practice those parts, then you are not a true believer. That simple.

 

You believe that he believes that I truly believe he is an idiot.

Truly. Any chance he rides in the same company as the clowns sure that the Haiti earthquake was punishment for a deal with the devil, or the other clowns sure that US military deaths are punishment from god for gay tolerance ? They smell the same to me.

 

Which big book are we talking about?? That's my main problem with some modern Christian nuts who hold the King James version of the bible as literal truth: it's a translation of a translation as well as revised edition. How one can be self righteous over the other, I can't fathom...but that's probably why I'm not very religious.

 

^^ It is a test of faith.
If you cannot overcome common sense and basic logic; and you cannot stop laughing over the comedy or crying over the horror of it all, you do not belong.

Honestly, my only problem with most religions is that they victimize the innocent. If they restricted their aggression to each other I would happily get out of the way and wish each side the best of luck.

 

"[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_long_and_prosper"]Live Long and Prosper[/ame]"

Gene Roddenberry - the creator of Star Trek, was definitely irreligious - secular humanist, but allowed the shaping of the Vulcan race - read on.

What Leonard Nimoy interjected into the original Star Trek series is very interesting to me. He improvised the Vulcan Nerve Pinch as a non-violent way of overcoming an adversary - it became part of the series.

The Vulcan Salute - "Live long and Prosper" was straight out of his Jewish upbringing - Nimoy continues to practice his faith. He is on the record of putting many elements of Jewish culture into the definition of the Vulcan race. He equated logical as being Jewish and Jewish as being logical. Indeed, being logical instead of emotional is Biblical.

It's very easy to Google or Wikipedia this up.

Live long and prosper guys.

 

I think this levity was needed.

 

Funny you would say this. Logic and emotion are not anti-ethical, and Star Trek made that point on multiple occasions. 'Faith,' on the other hand, was not in the Vulcan vocabulary.

 

Emotion is like fire - it can be good or bad. It burns people too often and shapes our thinking.

Celebration, grieving are healthy human experiences.

The emotions we often see in traffic often are bad thing better served by cooler and logical behavior.

Recently someone in person - not at PC had rubbed me the wrong way a number of times. Finally, the straw that broke the camel's back - I started to second-guess everything he said. If we are not careful, our feelings about people and things can hijack our thought processes. I definitely see that on this thread.

I read about people in Wikipedia and notice an emotional event often changes a person's beliefs.

1. One of Fred Phelps sons (Nathan) - pastor of the gay-bashing and generally mean-spirited Westboro Baptist Church is estranged and now speaking to atheist groups and will soon have a book that includes his abusive upbringing - how his Father drove him away from God.

2. William J Murray - son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, subject of the Murray v. Curlett ruling that banned prayer in US schools is estranged from his Mother, calls her evil, and runs a ministry.

In both of the above instances, the parent drove the child to another belief.

Extreme examples, but when I read about people's lifes, I see belief changes like this often based on emotional or traumatic experiences.

 

ok, reading way too much into that! Vulcan is a fictional place with no religion, no deities, and full of logic. The human actor that played a Vulcan was not infact Vulcan for obvious reasons! It does not surprise me that the human interjected human beliefs into it. But Spok is not Leonard Nimoy. Having said that, even if he was a scientologist, he would still be cool.

 

Was attempting to say Leonard Nimoy, while not necessary very religious, was definitely not as secular and I found that refreshing.

2k1Toaster - You go to great lengths to differ with me and others, reading things in my posts that simply are not there in order to awkwardly support your viewpoint....those that agree with you don't get any scrutiny at all, nor would I if I agreed with you on something substantial.

To coin a popular Star Trek line: not logical.

 

It's just past 8:00PM PST (9:00PM PDT) Friday, May 20, right now here in San Francisco. It's already Saturday, May 21 across nearly two thirds of the globe from London across the entire continent of Asia & out into the Pacific to the Int'l Dateline. It's been Saturday for an ever widening unmolested, unraptured swath of the globe for 16 hours, and will be Saturday around the entire planet for a femtosecond 8 hours from now as midnight passes the Int'l Dateline. At that point 8 hours from now a still unmolested, unraptured widening swath of the world will begin enjoying Sunday, May 22.

It is interesting that any given day of the week has a 48 hour duration. Every point on the earth experiences only 24 hours of the day's full duration, but since it takes 24 hours to sweep a day all the way around the planet, the day itself exists for 48, first as a sliver that widens until 24 hours later it covers the entire globe, and then narrows to nothing over the next 24 as the following day wipes it out of existence.

You could think of a day as a train a mile long traversing a mile at 60MPH. How long does it take the train to travel that mile? 60MPH is a mile a minute, so you might think it would only take a minute.

But it would take two minutes.

It would take one minute for the engine to get from the beginning of the mile to the end, at which time the full length of the train occupies the full mile. The caboose is just starting that mile, and it would take another minute for it to reach the end.

I'd bet money that pack of morons following the nutcase Camping has no idea their "day" will occupy some stretch of the planet for 48 hours, not 24, and that for the 24 hours they think is relevant, the world will be rapidly moving into SUNDAY, not Saturday.

 

According to them, it will take place at 6:00 pm, whatever your local definition of 6:00 pm is. Because Jesus likes to do things by time zones, apparently.

 

Well, that is a conundrum. Do the raptured arrive all at once, or a few at a time according to time zone? Being perfect, it's not possible god slipped up and the time zone was mistakenly omitted from the 6pm decree. And god is omniscient, so he must have known, back when the rapture was declared all those millennia ago, that time zones were invented - or at least revealed to a certain Sir Sanford Fleming - in the 19th century. Curious.

 

^ God doesn't need no stinking time-zones!

12 minutes till show time... got to go.

 

I thought Camping meant 6:00pm pst and whatever time that is all over the world. However, I do not know if he calculated daylight savings time. So he could be wrong again. It would be interesting to hear what his explanation would be this time.

 

It always amazes me how these Christian's that want to 'shove religion down someone's throat' always seem to pick out those who aren't religious. How do they inherently pick those who don't believe in order to corner them and attempt this mythical shoving of beliefs? Because I've asked many of my friends both atheist and believers if something similar has happened to them and they've either said no or brought up the nutjob or are so virulently anti-Christian that the mere thought along with close proximity to someone who believes in God is enough to trigger the notion that religion is being shoved down their throats. I've been around a long time and yet I can't remember one experience of this type. How do these "Christian Shovers" manage to pick this select few? :noidea:

Equally amazing is how silent it gets when these 'shoved down my throat' people are challenged for examples. Generally there is either silence, they bring up some nut job spouting their version of religion or someone else's third hand account.

Now if you want a good example of having a belief 'shoved down your throat' have a look at AGW (anthropogenic global warming) or ObamaCare.

 

i'm still here. wherever 'here' is. is that a bad thing?

 

Here is no here here, ya hear!?

 

Obviously. It means you failed the test, and you're not a true believer.

 

It's Harold Camping that failed for setting a date (for the 2nd time)...Jesus himself said he did not know when.