timesjoke

You were raised in a religious based environment even if you did not follow that structure yourself. By being surrounded with these religious based morals, you learned mush from it just from that exposure. As each generation comes along, our societies are more diluted with less religious based morals and more immoral and selfish behavoirs. The result is we get more individual wants and desires and less sociatial needs and desires, that selfish side is what causes the decline of morals. That is why a non-religious person has either flexable or no morals, he has no sociatial drive forcing him to put aside his personal wants or desires for the good of the society. It makes no difference what you would "like" to think is possible, it only matters what reality tells and shows us. Your own moral fiber is tainted because you like to experiment with illegal drugs and be intollerant to those of faith. You are part of the decline in society, a part of the taint but you see yourself through your selfish eyes and make excuses for your behavoir. I see no difference between your actions and the actions of these people showing this kind of programming to children because it all leads to the moral decline of society. The proof is in the pudding. We have higher crime rates, high abortion rates, high divorce rates, even gay education in our schools to show for our society moving away from religious beliefs. We even have so many negative things to show for our modern and Godless movement in society. Without this move away from religion, we would not have sayings like "my baby daddy" or "booty call". An agnostic is a fence sitter, a person who does not take sides one way or the other concerning the existence of God. So far you have directly attacked religion several times, attacked all believers of faith calling them stupid, and even said religion should be removed from society, these are things an Agnostic would never do. So, by element of elimination, you are an Athiest based on your own statements and actions. Being as you hate anything religious I could see how you would think being called a Jewish person would be an insult but being as Jewish people are respectable, devout, and follow almost all of the same moral standards as I do, I would be proud to be called Jewish. But, my own stands on religious faith are pretty clear and there would be no basis for anyone to call me Jewish. Your own attacks on all faith is what is making you look like an Athiest because Agnostic people don't do that. It was never meant to be. The DNA science has already completely removed the notion of evolution from nothing to human already so why waste time on that? Ya, and Craig keep saying he is not gay too......... It is your actions that define you. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then there is a good chance it is a duck. The two topics are linked because it is stupid to pettition for the removal of all faith based morals and then start complaining at the results of that removal. If you want to bring back morals and family values, you must bring back religious followings, the two go hand in hand no mattter how much you may "wish" they were not connected. Look around you, see the loss of morals, accept the truth no matter how painful it may be if you truly want to stop things like the intrusion of gays in schools. Or, continue to wear your blinders and witness the slow decline of society.

Maybe in your mind it is a seperate issue but reality says it is connected. If you remove the only reason for morals and family values to stick around (religion) then the result is immoral, non-family values will take it's place. Facts are facts, the further away people get from religion, the more things like gay and lesbian relationships will become the norm. Thrashing about attacking religion will not change the fact that if you push away God from our societies, this is the result, you are begging for it so stop complaining about the result of your request. Then stop acting like one. Nice fantacy but not true. As an Athiest I don't expect you to understand religion so I guess your constant mistakes about religion is expected to a certain degree but if someone is "truly" religious, they cannot be Gay. God made Adam and then made Eve to be Adam's mate, God did not create Jhony to be Adam's mate.

But who pays the bills for these artists while they develop new songs? Even if the artist did do it themselves, they still have the same problem, they create the songs, one person buys it and shares it with million sof other people so the hard work these artists went through was for nothing because everyone stole their songs instead of buying them, at least this way, the artists get something for their work because without the record company, the artist gets nothing.

While there are a few in the closet, most religious people have children and build a family, it ia a tad difficult for bill and jhony to make a child when they have no womb. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule but the gay community do vote over 90% liberal and most admit to being followers of the Athiest belief structure. Who could balme them, religion calls what they do a sin, no real point in being religious at that point now is there?

The companies still invest millions of dollars to produce these songs and if anyone downloads them for free, then they are stealing. I am not sure what kind of work anyone here does but consider working for a few hours and being told that someone stole your hours so you cannot get paid for that time, would you just let that happen or fight to get your hours back, to get paid for what you earned. Profit margin has nothing to do with anything. A Mercades Bens has a very high profit margin, does that high margin mean you have the right to steal one? I believe it is the fact that music is now just a blip of info on our computers that let's some people believe the song has no substance or real value like a car or a piece of jewelery so that makes it easier to steal it.

Considering your possitions against anything religious, I would think you should be defending these teaching methods. It is proven that most gays are Athiests. I find these things to be disturbing from a family values standpoint but with the way the world is stepping away from God and morlas, this is what takes it's place. You cannot run God out of town "and" cry when the result is immoral behavoir in that town, that is just stupid.

You accused all believers of being stupid and directly attacked all religion. Calling me stupid to start every post is not a way to have a light discussion. You told me I needed to read carefully what you said when it was you who could not understand the topic but attacked me from your misunderstanding, it is you who needs to take more time to read before you respond. Why is it your uneducated estimates are so profound but a prefessor in European history gives his estimate and you say they are lame? All estimates are lame, we have no provable numbers but they are clearly not even a speck compared to the deaths caused by Athiest killers who killed over 100 million people in the desire to remove all religion from the world. Of course you don't want to discuss something that proves that Athiests in power have committed the greatest killings ever seen. It is not even close, hell we can double even your inflated estimates and we can't even get to 5% of the killings caused by the Athiest movement. I gave the example of Mao Zedong who killed 40 million people just himself and you have nothing to say. If you refuse to even consider the facts, why are you having this discussion? It is the "anger" people like you show tword religion and those that follow it that is relivant. Lighthearted by calling all believers stupid? Stop talking down your nose to me about religion and we can keep it lighthearted but don't ask me to take it easy when your every post is an insult to my life and belief structure. It does not matter what you "think" it matters what you can prove. Most killings are done by Athiests, that is proven fact. sheik-yerbouti You got your hands over your ears yelling so you don't have to accept the truth and I guess that is okay for you if you prefer to be ignorant of the facts but those of us that require a few facts to base a decision need more than a desire for certain things to be true. Hitler and Stalin were Athiests, this is fact, every historian agrees with this fact, who you are to say all people educated in this area are stupid and only you know the truth is really incredible. If I say I am a black man, does me saying it make it true? The same holds true for people who "say" they are religious. In truth few are really religious but still there are many who truly are. Being baptised is irrelivant. Going to church is irrelivant. Saying things in public is irrelivant. Have you ever heard the old saying "actions speak louder then words"? The actions of Hitler and Stalin proves beyone doubt that they were not Christians, combine with that fact statements like Hitler saying he only believed in evolution and all religion needed to be completely removed from the world and you can see who a person "truly" is no matter what else they claim to be. I will tell you like I told Johnny5, if you are not capable of understanding how a person can offer a false public face, then you cannot understand this topic. And no, non-religious people do not tend to help others, it is their selfishness in their hearts that precludes them from helping other people. That is why there are no non-religious groups in places like Darfur helping people. But here is your chance to prove me wrong, name a non-religious group that is in Darfur helping like the religious groups (non-government).

When you jump on me to Read when you completely missed what was being discussed, you prove your not capable of debating in a honest and fair way. You were talking down your nose at me and being a smart ass on top of that. Your last reply was honestly juvilile and insulting and unless you can grow up, I will simply ignore your posts from this point on. I clearly said my number was a guess, what part of "guess" did you have difficulty understanding? Under the areas of a guess, I believe a guess made by professionals in the field would be better then from you who is not in the field, either way, even if we doubled the number, you still have horribly tiny numbers of deaths compared to those killed by Athiest followers. Let's consider this: Mao Zedong killed 40 million people himself, mostly by famine, he was an Athiest. This one Athiest killer makes all deaths in the world for "purely" religious reasons look like nothing. By the way, if you cannot understand the difference between Hitler's public face and his real feelings, you should not be involved in these kinds of discussions. Just because your own attacks against religion sound just like his attacks, that does not mean you must try and defend him to defend yourself.

It is difficult for most of us to remember being that age but many times kids under this kid of pressure will do exactly the opposite of what their parents tell them to do. Being informative is more then most kids this age will get because they feel like they cannot talk about this stuff with their parents, so they act in an uninformed way without ever telling them just to avoid the lecture. This is called the school of hard knocks and why should FW drive them away by adding more pressure than is already there? FW is making them feel comfortable to keep her involved by not putting more pressure on their backs and in that way, she can still keep them aware of all aspects of their decision, something that would be impossible if they did not feel comfortable with having her involved.

I compared your words to Hitler's words and yes, they sound similar, I have no idea who you are in reality and never will in this environment. I know in many ways people are very different on internet "worlds" compared to their real lives so most likely you are not anything like Hitler, you are just sounding like him when you attack religion the way he did. To be compared to the most modern leader of Athiest values that really lived his hope to remove religion and not just talk about it? So the "millions of deaths in Europe" is just a crazy claim as I point out right? Being as you completely missed the point let me post what I was responding to again: Do you see anything about the crusades in that statement? Being as I was quoting his comment about millions of people being killed in Europe maybe that represents a clue as to what I was talking about when I offered the 20,000 deaths number? Maybe? You did know that Jerusalem is located in Israel right? But, being as you decided to talk about the crusades, There are wild numbers of claimed deaths connected to the crusades and honestly, most of these numbers are just silly as far as I am concerned so I have just had a long messenger discussion with my buddy and he pulled in a few of his history "friends" and after an hour of back and forth offers of one number and the next, the decision was that there is no proven number but the educated "guess" these guys came up with was around 200,000 total deaths for all of the crusades combined including death from imprisonment (died in captivity but not killed first hand). So, we are still a long way from the 100 Million killed in the name of the Athiest "religion".

I am a child of both worlds. I still have a huge collection of records including collector picture discs but I also liked almost all the songs included in each album where these days, it seems like the artists put two good songs and the rest is filler on their albums so why pay 15 bucks for two songs? My music interests cover most of the spectrum these days (was a metal head when I was young) so to cover everything I like, I need to keep it simpler. Even with only being selective on the music I collect, I still have over 150 GB of songs, I consider that a lot.

I believe you hit the best point in this discussion. It is where this person takes the "private" and make it not only public but screaming it out by advertising their "services" to the public. If you are taking your personal things and making them public to the point it is a business for you, then you must accept public opinion of you in all areas of your public life. I believe it is normal to have standards for employment to include appearance and even personal life where it bleeds over to the reputation of the business.

First of all, I would like to add my own respect to you FW, you seem to be a very rare woman, capable of both being supportive and informative without getting your personal views in the way of things, I tip my hat to you. I completely agree but I also see FW's point, she is wanting to let the girl do the right thing but as with most young people, they hate to face what they feel ashamed of, so she will most likely keep putting it off until her mother finds out by accident, and that will hurt the mom a lot, I hope she can see past it. Myself, I would tell the girl to tell her mom or I will. It may upset the girl but in the long run, there will be less mess now than if she lets it "slip" down the road. Parents sometimes need to be parents instead of friends and do the right thing, telling the mom is the right thing. But, it is easy for me to say, I am not there. Either way, my prayers go out to these two. FW, how is your son taking this? Keeping his mouth shut?

Please take the time to read what I already posted, Hitler did use public statements at the beginning of his time in power as a control measure, like many people use misleading public faces but it is his private mind and his actions that define him. As clearly pointed out in the quotes I provided, when Hitler was talking to his top leadership and setting out the theories and concepts he believed in, Hitler was against religion and thought it needed to be completely removed from the world. In fact, if you compare what Hitler said to what jhony5 has said here, you can see they sound very much alike. I am just wondering what professor got you to believe such trash when the facts clearly show very few deaths in connection to religious based battles while 100 million are directly connected to Athiest leaders. Please provide some kind of support for this claim of "millions" killed in medievel times by the church in Europe because I just got off the phone with a European history professor for the University of Florida and he never heard of such garbage. He told me of a few documented cases but to the best of his knowledge, there were only about 20,000 deaths reliably assigned to those problems relating to religious reasons. There were many battles and deaths during that time but only the most inept would assign all deaths to religious reeasons when most were for power, land, and even a few cases of insult where an arranged marriage was ended, that caused more deaths than all the religious deaths combined during that time. Again, terrorist attacks get a lot of attention so a couple thousand "sound" very powerful (that is why they do it) but combined, you may have about a million deaths directly assignable to religious zeal over the years while Athiest killings are over 100 million, clearly the Athiest agenda is the more harmful. Look at it another way, we have the guy pushing the Athiest agenda here calling all religious followers stupid, that is typical of all athiests, they cannot just follow something themselves, they are driven to insult and attack religion any way possible. I have been a Christian my entire life and have never called a non-believer stupid. If follow my Christian beliefs and I turn out to be wrong, I still provided a great deal of service to my comminity and world (remember, the only non-government groups helping in places like Rwanda are Christian) so I have nothing to be ashamed of. If I am wrong, fine, I will never know but my good deeds will still remain. If you follow your athiest beliefs and turn out to be wrong, you will find out your wrong pretty fast and will not have any good deeds to speak for you. It is a gamble, and you are fully allowed to take that gamble, that is the right of free will God has made possible for everyone, just stop trying to pull me down with you, there will be plenty of others to keep you company.

Wow, imagine starting out on life with that on your head, I hope they don't do that. While having a child now will be difficult and change their plans, I hate to see anyone burdoned with ending a life. Recent studies have shown that most women have depression issues much later in life after having an abortion so it is like paying a bad price later for a decision made today. If they do this, make sure the girl gets lots of support, it will be messy. Man, as a parent I am sure you want to knock some heads together, what do you do? Are you trying to give advise or keeping your distance?

You make a very good point but I don't believe we can say everyone that downloads a song feels buying the song is like buying a rolex. Sure, there are some people that would never buy any songs because they don't have the money so I say your right on that front, but many people like me rarely watch tv and instead listen to lots of music and will buy it if they can't get it for free. I rarely buy an album, I tend to use the services where you just buy the songs you want. They have done some of that too but it is harder to go after them, they only make the tool, like guns, people have to misuse them. I agree that they just went way overbord on this case and are trying to make an example but when you look at the overall picture, will anyone be discouraged by this one person being busted so hard? We see stories about drung driving killing people all the time but nobody pays attention, I don't think even one person will stop just because of this case.

No, when they rant like you have been doing, you call believers stupid, when you get called out for calling them stupid, you twist it around and say we are stupid in a backward way ("I have no idea how an intelligent person can subscribe to ideas that are so obviously wrong"), but no matter how you twist the words, you are still saying someone must be stupid to believe and that is the problem with your athiest attacks on religion. We love our children but to science, there is no way to prove that love exists so are you telling me that just because science cannot prove love exists that it does not exist? Fact, life comes from other life, life cannot come from nothing. DNA is proven to be the defining factor for life and all life must follow it's DNA. Scientists have wasted billions of dollars on the futile attempt to create a living cell from nothing. Every expert has attempted and failed miserably. All the fancy theories and assumptions cannot explain how life was possible without life creating it. Hitler used religion as a control element in his early days and public speaking, but it was not his true belief structure. Anyone who reads the works about his "private" discussions can see his true mind on religion: Hitler's Table Talk - Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953 Night of 11th-12th July, 1941- 19th October, 1941, night 13th December, 1941, midnight 9th April, 1942, dinner Hitler's actions against the Jews and his candid and private statements against Christianity proves beyond doubt he was an Athiest.

A recent award in a civil case brings illegal downloading back to front page news: http://www.kctv5.com/entertainment/14273183/detail.html?rss=kan&psp=news How many of us know people that have downloaded more then this lady? Where do you guys stand on this issue and how does the law see it in other Countries? My own views tend to lean tword protecting companies that invest the money to make things like movies and songs. Without them spending many millions to prodice the stuff, it is not there for anyone to see, or to steal. I don't think there is any question about the companies losing money because if we can download it for free, we will not buy.

Well, I knew there were too many concepts being brought up to truly discuss them in one thread so I will back off and maybe we can make new threads some day later to give them the attention they deserve. I do want to say this about God though. You seem to concentrate a lot of energy on calling believers stupid, claiming things like storms and such as the reason we believers follow the teachings of God. While your idea could explain how an uneducated and isolated village could have a "local" diety, it cannot explain how Christianity can be followed all over the Earth. I know I am not the smartest man on this Earth but I am far from an uneducated and isolated villager running in fear from lightning. The very fact that a religion like Christianity can endure many different cultures and Countries speaks more for it's truth than many other factors. You can duck and dodge the facts for yourself if you like but you can't just remove the fact that when Athiests get power, they tend to be destructive, that is recorded history, not a made up theory. Athiests are responsible for ten times more killings than all the religious based killings put together. The Spanish Inquisition caused the deaths of about 10,000 people and some say up to 100,000 people died from mistreatment in jails(depending on what historian you talk to). The many other "famous" stories are very sensational sounding but in reality, they are tiny, the Salem witch hunts for example claimed about 30 lives, hardly deserving of the "press" it gets. Even Muslim fanatics kill very few, a few thousand on things like 9/11 but most of the time, it is only a few people but the attention given these attacks is vary large, so they sound significant. Athiest leaders are credited with over 100 million killings, yes, 100,000,000 people have died in the persuit of spreading the Athiest "religion". You and all other Athiest followers have every right to not believe in God if you wish, I fully support your right to follow whatever belief structure you like but it is when you try to tear down established beliefs in established communities you are doing wrong. As far as what effect things like Santa clause can have on the minds of children, I cannot see how it can be bad. I was raised that way and I would assume you were too. As someone else said, it goes to imagination building and our imaginations are how we leap over problems, we find solutions that would be impossible without an imagination.

WoW, this discussion can be split into 10 different segments and still be complex but I will try and keep my reply as short as possible considering how many concepts have been brought up. First, God made man, man made religion in his feble attempt to worship God. Man has never been capable of doing anything perfect so it is not a surprise that man would not be capable of designing a "perfect" religion to worship God. This explains why there are so many different religions. There is no command from God to follow any one religion but he does give us some basic principles to follow in this life. Yes, some people have used religion to do bad things but again, that is man's actions, not God's. Second, even Richard Dawkins (the biggest athiest "preacher") admits that religion is a moderating factor for society, it helps to keep people together and allows for structure and peace in that society. Every successful society that survived the test of time had a common belief structure that bound them together. That is not to say ony one specific set of beliefs is needed, just that there is a shared structure. As we saw with Rome, every indicator of the fall of Rome can be traced back to it's change in belief structure that made Rome strong. Third, in every place Athiest beliefs have taken hold over the direction of a Country (the leaders) we have seen massive death as a result. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, are responsible for killing ten times more people than all the religious based killings combined. Fourth, All laws are based on a standard of morals, and morals are all based on religious principles from a historic basis. Yes, it is possible for non-religious people to have good morals but it is religion that gives us a line drawn in the sand, a solid place to base our moral standing on while without religious standards, morals become flexable and subject to intrepretation. Example: it is now okay to kill an unborn child up to the day of birth. A thing called partial birth abortion is one of the most horrendus things anyone could ever see but is completely legal in most Countries including America. From a religious stand, it is immoral to kill an unborn child for selfish reasons but from a non-religious stand, it is completely acceptable. fifth, holidays and things like Santa put magic into a child's life. In reality, the world is a horrible place where people are sometimes killed for no reason at all. If we want to be completely honest with children, we should be showing them how many murders are committed each day because that is the pure reality of life. Children have plenty of time to find out the truth life has to bring, I see no reason to rush them into that ugly world and take away what innocence they can have for such a short time in this world. Seeing the look in a child's eye when they wake up Christmas morning and see what Santa brought them is something I could never take away from a child. Again, there are many complex issues being discussed here and it will get difficult to expand on them all at the same time. I have a lot more I can add if we want to go further but a complete post for all these points by me would be long to say the least. Louis

Well, as usual, it is the kids that always pay the price for the mistakes of their parents. If it makes you feel any better, there was a story of a 10 year old girl giving birth a couple days ago with the daddy being 13, imagine how bad that could be. Clearly this is a bad situation but I hope the new addition will be loved and not just tolerated as many children are these days. Well Feckless, are you ready to be a granny?

Guns: Man has been fighting wars for as long as recorded time, and gangs are simply fighting the only war they can to follow their instincts. Think of man like a wild animal with survival instincts and desires. Society asks him to overcome his desires and instincts for the good of the group but there are those that cannot let go of those instincts, they cannot conform and will gather with others that have the same frame of thought as they do. (Birds of a feather) But, I can see certain factors adding to their need to fall back on their instincts instead of conforming to society, and the number one reason is the destruction of the family unit IMHO. We have kids growing up without parents, even the lucky rare ones that have both parents at home still have both working outside of that home and too tired at the end of the day to give their children the attention they need, but when we look at most gang members, they tend to be from single parent homes with little or no contact with their fathers. With the divorce rates and the never married mother numbers growing so rapidly, I would not look to it getting any better any time soon. smoking: There is no arguement that second hand smoke is bad for all that breath it, and adults should have the right to choose if they want to take that risk or not, children on the other hand do not have the ability to get away from the smoker though and I feel smoking around children is as wrong as it can get. I used to smoke but never smoked in my home or in a car where my kids would be forced to breath my smoke, it was my addiction, not theirs.

America accounts for a very small percentage of the world's population but we do most of the major work in areas of humanatarian aid or military action and to be honest, I wish we would step back more and let these other nations that keep using their veto powers on the UN security council step up and take action for a change. China has burma under her wing and without China, we can't do anything to help anyway.

Well, there is that possibility, that is why we were asking for more info about the form of the bombshell. It must be interesting to say the least being as she has not added more yet, you know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

I'm with BrotherMan, don't keep us on pins and needles, tell us what she dropped.