Belief is consequential. People act on them whether the beliefs are sane or insane... For the recent gentleman who tried to kill Congresswoman Giffords... Jared Lee Loughner: army reject with a troubled past | World news | guardian.co.uk Sound like the rants of a tea partier.
Some have been compelled to for years on threads like this one - the ones claiming to be more rational. Some one finds a few bad apples predicting the Rapture on May 21, 2011 to "discredit" all Christianity and even theism in general - many threads like that....of course the killer in Tuscon was going to be mentioned - I totally expected that. Previously in this thread I suggested if a hybrid skeptic attempted to state all hybrids are crap because the Chevy Mailbu hybrid and Honda Accord hybrid are crap, that thread would not live long. Yet this thread goes on and on with EXACTLY the same kind of flawed reasoning. The irreligious have called themselves reasoning and rational...on many threads like this I see venting instead. Cherry-picking bad poster boys like the Rapture prediction and piling on, do you know how rational that looks? I don't spend much time on threads like this one for the same reason I don't post much on gearhead threads that bash hybrids and the like - it's anything but an honest discussion, driven by feeling instead.
It wouldn't help their odds of winning if they advertised their belief. I do strongly suspect that there are many people who approve of the good that many religious groups often do but claim to believe in one religion for social and business purposes. BTW, I found out that we have one Athiest Congress Critter. Members of the 111th United States Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Obviously, I cannot tell anybody what to do and I'm not even a mod, but I think it would be a nice idea if we kept this thread on the title topic, and left discussion of the maniac to the politics forum, where there's already a typically virulent shout fest going on.
They do it to expose the hypocrites that claim to be tolerant for the intolerant angry fools they are. :nod:
There is little if any evidence for the rapture contained in the Bible. But by the Grace of God when I behold my Lord and Savior I shall be rapturous! Can't wait to see you there maybe we can discuss our differences over supper and the most kick nice person bottle of wine either of us has ever sipped, it would be cool if we could talk Jesus into performing His first miracle again, John 2: 1-11, eh?
I knew a homeless man when I was working at the shelter, who was a born-again Christian, who insisted I would go to heaven whether I believed it or not. If Hiram was right you may be raptured in spite of yourself. Of course, I don't think he was. But I could be wrong. Hiram became my model for the prophet of the tree frog religion I invented, based on the notion that heaven may not be an enjoyable place after all. Christians think that god will reward believers with an eternity of pleasure. But the question of whether or not there is a creator, and the question of the nature of that creator, are two very different matters. It's entirely possible that the world was created by someone who has our best interests at heart, but who's idea of pleasure is vastly different than ours, and his idea of a reward might be something we'd much rather avoid. As for me, I'll stick with the FSM and the beer volcano, on the assumption that in heaven beer does not make you drunk unless you want it to. Trebuchet's "kick-nice person bottle of wine" might be all right for the French, but I prefer the taste of beer.