For Dan (and Darwin and Skeptic): What I Believe (long)
stillsunny
I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
However, for some reason, my unwillingness to violate that FAQ has
now become something that angers, and the subject doesn't seem to want
to go away. I'll try to be as precise as possible, although the
subject resists precision, and I'll also try to include what I believe
influenced what I believe, and what other beliefs derive from the more
specific ones. It won't be complete, but I hope it will be fairly
representative. If you are offended by god talk, please stop reading.
Like most people, I believe those things which fit a broad overview of
the sum total of my life experience.
I believe in god. Or, more accurately, I believe in a specific
phenomenon that I attach a loose and extremely misleading label to
called god.
I was raised in an Episcopal church. I learned the language that
accompanies the religious experience. However, there's not much
actual reading of the bible that accompanied that childhood, so my
basic "understanding" of god was, god is good. Period. The rest of
the definition was kind of left to me to fill out. The furthest I
ever thought about it in deep theological terms was when I finally
encountered someone talking about hell, thought about it, realized
that even I could never send someone to eternal torment for anything,
and decided someone had made a mistake, because "god is good."
I quit going to church at about age twelve or thirteen. I had begun
to see the people there as hypocritical, the time I spent listening to
sermons and getting up and down to kneel as a waste, and the sermons
boring. My parents at that time were going through a particularly
nasty divorce, and I suspect that my lack of desire to go to church
was fine with my mother, since the church contained so many mutual
friends, and my father still attended.
An important aside, with respect to my father. I recall reading once
that people's first impressions about god are generally formed by
their fathers, at least insofar as the western depictions go. I have
a _great_ father. He's loving, and non-judgemental, and honest, and
friendly to everyone, and forgiving, and generous, and has an
extremely good sense of humor. I think that's an influence, too.
However, about the time I left the church, I began to be aware of the
ways religiosity manifested throughout the world, and in my neck of
the bible belt in particular. The anger, prejudice, and hypocrisy
were easy to see. I grew up during the era of the Bakkers and
Swaggarts, and Reverend Falwell (who, in case any of you don't know,
is a racist who started christian schools in response to integration).
My not very deeply thought out opinion at that time was that if that
was what religion did to people, I wanted no part of it. I'm not sure
what my "classification" would have been then, but I suspect I fell
somewhere in the neighborhood of apatheist. I thought it was possible
a god existed somewhere, but I sure didn't see any evidence of that
first "god is good" in any of the manifestations of the religious, and
wanted nothing to do with it.
Then I went to college, and I ended up falling in love with philosophy
(and more specifically, the wisdom of one or two excellent
professors). I also took some comp religion courses. Suddenly I was
hearing the same questions approached from different minds, minds that
did not necessarily include god in their equations. I realized that
humans have been seeking answers to the same questions forever, coming
up with elegant and beautiful ideas in an attempt to encompass a
universal philosophy. They *resonated* with me, and made me kind of
idly wonder if I'd missed something the first time around.
Fast forward ahead to about four years into my marriage. We had two
small children, and life was as hard as it's ever been. Without going
into details, let's just say that my waking hours were exhausting, and
gray, and hopeless, and I cried every single day from the pressures of
trying to work, go to school, and be a decent mother to two very small
and demanding children. I almost never saw my husband, and there was
not one penny extra anywhere.
And I got angry one night and started yelling at god. Why? There was
no one else to yell at. I couldn't yell at my husband; he was working
as hard as I was. I couldn't yell to my mother or father, because I
have always had a deep aversion to airing dirty laundry about my
husband to my parents, which I have always thought underhanded and
dishonest. I couldn't yell to my friends, for the same reason. There
was no one left to pour all this anger and bitterness and unhappiness
on, and I was full up.
Let me be clear -- at that point, I wasn't particularly convinced
there was anything there *to* yell at. God was simply a convenient
"ear", if you will. And I'm afraid I wasn't particularly reverent in
my approach. I _cussed_ god. I demanded answers. I lay for a long
time, tossing and turning, pouring out every bit of poison to this
mythologized something I didn't even really believe for sure was
there, and demanding an accounting. And absolutely nothing happened.
I recall specifically muttering, in disgust, "Fine, then. Fuck it. I
guess I'll just go to sleep." I rolled over, closed my eyes -- and
suddenly, god. Light. Gorgeous, brilliant, *aware* light, from
behind a corner to my left. I'll try to describe it first, and then
I'll tell you what I've found since then. This is where it gets
difficult to pin down, because I'm going to have to lay out and
differentiate specific things which I "got" all in this big rush, and
some of them seem contradictory, even as I write them.
I *recognized it*. There was some immediate sense of already knowing
it, like, "Oh, *there* you are!"
It was already part of me, as I was part of it -- separate enough so
that the "me" that is me could see it, but not separate in the sense
of "oh, that's something different."
Incredible benevolence. Incredible *awareness*. Incredible peace.
Incredible wisdom. Most of all, incredible *love*, not like I was
being loved, but like I was an active and automatic part of love
itself. Not one whit of anger, and not one whit of judgement. And
more importantly, a sense of touching on eternity, galaxies and worlds
and the unfolding of life and motion and patterns. Even reading this,
I know it's not making sense, but it was as much a cognitive sensation
as an emotional one. You know that feeling when you've been wrestling
with a difficult problem, math or science or trying to create
something just right, and all of a sudden, *whoosh*, it all falls into
place and you know exactly how the whole thing works, or is going to
work? Like that, times a thousand.
It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
I was fortunate, I think, that I wasn't actively involved in church,
but also that I had some language to put to it. I wandered around for
days, wondering if I was insane, and not much caring if I was. As far
as religious language, it supplied the label -- god. It at least gave
me some handle to *begin* thinking about it, because humans, I think,
do need language to talk and think and learn and understand. I've
been exploring ever since, in every direction I could find.
I am aware of newish research into "the god spot." I know that people
all over have claimed what sounds very much like this experience from
dabbling in drugs, from epileptic seizures, from magnetic hats(!),
from sudden epiphanies -- and even, sometimes, for no discernable
reason at all. That there is a specific part of my brain associated
with this phenomenon is completely non-threatening. There's not one
thing I think or know that *isn't* associated with my brain, and I'm
aware that the brain itself is divvied up to handle different
functions. I'm also aware that I could be completely insane, but I
don't think I am, and don't think my behavior indicates such to other
people. What always strikes me is not the different means people have
gotten to this same thing, but the commonality of the experiences,
across religious beliefs, and even including those who have no god
belief at all. I think, if I were insane, the experience would be
more specific to *my* brain only (thinking I'm Napolean, or seeing
demons or angels or something).
The essentials seem to be:
Feeling of peace
Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
Incredible feeling of love
There are, obviously, many beliefs secondary to that experience.
I'm back where I started -- god is good :-)
God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Diety" is misleading.
God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
being."
Because I am aware that not everyone has had one of these sorts of
experiences, and because there was no judgement at all in the
experience itself for *anything*, even the doubting and cursing god, I
can only assume that judgement isn't part of that at all. In fact, I
suspect that people who cling to religion have other reasons for doing
so besides only that epiphany kind of experience.
Because it was so much like touching the sum total of everything, I
have never thought of god in supernatural terms. For me, god is --
everywhere, and in everything, and my joy and delight is looking and
seeing it (though I can't always). I recognize it best in other
humans, because I *am* human, and it manifests every time I see
someone do random kindnesses, or offer forgiveness, or sacrifice a
luxury for the wellbeing of another. I see it in the budding and
unfolding of a seed, and in the constant motion of the ocean; in
sunsets and diatoms and babies and stars and fire and -- well,
everywhere. I see it all over alt.atheism. And it's funny, I see it
more in evidence here, often, because it seems that on religious
newsgroups, people are so committed to their "language" and
delineation of this thing I find impossible to delineate that they're
defensive and angry. For me, prayer is hearkening back to that
experience, quieting myself enough to touch it, at least in part, and
I believe that it helps me be the sort of person I already want to be,
anyhow.
Is it logical? Probably not. Is it provable? Certainly not. It's
not even testable, and I think Kronk gave a fairly good outline of why
it's not, (involving a box with switches, if you'd like to look it
up). Could it be just a brain fart? Sure, but it was compelling
enough that I can't ascribe that to it -- because it seemed that I
*learned* something I didn't know, which something hasn't been
contradicted in my life. Is the moniker "god" necessary? Nope. I've
met people who call it something different, and honestly, in many
ways, "god" has become so overburdened with doctrine and theology that
it's almost misleading. But for me, that experience will always be
named "god," and it would be as illogical for me to deny it,
personally, as it would for you to believe it only on my say-so.
To all of you who have offered kindness on the two other threads,
thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think it's human nature to
want a "group", a place of community, and alt.atheism is that for many
of you. It is a "community" of unbelievers, and that you would
challenge a member of that community in a diatribe against one who is,
by definition, *not* a member of the "no god" community is touching in
the extreme. It also affirms my faith, if you will, in human beings.
Now, to wrap up some loose ends.
Skeptic, there ain't nobody here but us chickens. But for me, when I
look deeply into my fellow chickens, I see god, exactly as I saw it
that one long night.
Darwin, you and I had one decent conversation one time, where I did
touch on what I believe. I enjoyed that exchange, and thought you did
as well. I have no idea what I may have done to offend you to the
point I've seen on those two threads, but whatever it is, it was
certainly not intentional.
And Dan, I have no idea what prompted this sudden animosity. There
have been times in my life I've responded in anger, though I usually
feel horrible about it fairly soon afterwards. I've never set out to
intentionally hurt someone, either physically or emotionally. I can't
help but see your actions as exactly that, your characterization of
what I am and/or my motives as intentionally designed to hurt my
feelings. You did.
You asked what I "called" myself these days. I call myself a person.
My name is Sunny. Having stepped out of a box that included specific
theologies that I don't care to embrace, and finding that all the
"boxes" have the same sort of thing, I have no desire to limit what I
can learn or think by entering another one. You're correct that I do
not want to talk about god with you. There are several reasons, but
the primary one is that I've not found that you are able to do so with
any sort of emotional distance. I think the word "god" is associated
to you with "hell," with horrible feelings and fears. To put it in
terms consistent with my admittedly offbeat theology, if god is that
awareness of love, and the kingdom of heaven is the *awareness* of the
awareness, then hell is the lack of that -- the feeling distanced and
angry and hateful, because you feel separated and can't convince
everyone to join you there. Talking about god with you feels too much
like keeping you in hell, and I have no desire to do that.
I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
live them than convince anyone else of them.
Sunny
Dan Fake
> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
> However, for some reason, my unwillingness to violate that FAQ has
> now become something that angers, and the subject doesn't seem to want
> to go away.
Actually, some are just curious about what you do and
don't believe and why. You don't have to patronize us
in order to express a view.
> I'll try to be as precise as possible, although the
> subject resists precision, and I'll also try to include what I believe
> influenced what I believe, and what other beliefs derive from the more
> specific ones. It won't be complete, but I hope it will be fairly
> representative. If you are offended by god talk, please stop reading.
Sheesh, stop with the patronizing, already.
>
> Like most people, I believe those things which fit a broad overview of
> the sum total of my life experience.
>
> I believe in god. Or, more accurately, I believe in a specific
> phenomenon that I attach a loose and extremely misleading label to
> called god.
>
> I was raised in an Episcopal church.
Bing - Spong connection.
> I learned the language that
> accompanies the religious experience. However, there's not much
> actual reading of the bible that accompanied that childhood, so my
> basic "understanding" of god was, god is good. Period. The rest of
> the definition was kind of left to me to fill out. The furthest I
> ever thought about it in deep theological terms was when I finally
> encountered someone talking about hell, thought about it, realized
> that even I could never send someone to eternal torment for anything,
> and decided someone had made a mistake, because "god is good."
>
> I quit going to church at about age twelve or thirteen. I had begun
> to see the people there as hypocritical, the time I spent listening to
> sermons and getting up and down to kneel as a waste, and the sermons
> boring. My parents at that time were going through a particularly
> nasty divorce, and I suspect that my lack of desire to go to church
> was fine with my mother, since the church contained so many mutual
> friends, and my father still attended.
>
> An important aside, with respect to my father. I recall reading once
> that people's first impressions about god are generally formed by
> their fathers, at least insofar as the western depictions go. I have
> a _great_ father. He's loving, and non-judgmental, and honest, and
> friendly to everyone, and forgiving, and generous, and has an
> extremely good sense of humor. I think that's an influence, too.
>
> However, about the time I left the church, I began to be aware of the
> ways religiosity manifested throughout the world, and in my neck of
> the bible belt in particular. The anger, prejudice, and hypocrisy
> were easy to see. I grew up during the era of the Bakers and
> Swaggarts, and Reverend Falwell (who, in case any of you don't know,
> is a racist who started christian schools in response to integration).
Wow, you might as well pick on Stalin and Hitler, but please,
do continue.
> My not very deeply thought out opinion at that time was that if that
> was what religion did to people, I wanted no part of it. I'm not sure
> what my "classification" would have been then, but I suspect I fell
> somewhere in the neighborhood of apatheist.
Oh, come on, surely you can use the word agnostic.
> I thought it was possible
> a god existed somewhere, but I sure didn't see any evidence of that
> first "god is good" in any of the manifestations of the religious, and
> wanted nothing to do with it.
>
> Then I went to college, and I ended up falling in love with philosophy
> (and more specifically, the wisdom of one or two excellent
> professors). I also took some comp religion courses. Suddenly I was
> hearing the same questions approached from different minds, minds that
> did not necessarily include god in their equations. I realized that
> humans have been seeking answers to the same questions forever, coming
> up with elegant and beautiful ideas in an attempt to encompass a
> universal philosophy. They *resonated* with me, and made me kind of
> idly wonder if I'd missed something the first time around.
Seeking answers and you're into philosophy courses, here. OK.
>
> Fast forward ahead to about four years into my marriage. We had two
> small children, and life was as hard as it's ever been. Without going
> into details, let's just say that my waking hours were exhausting, and
> gray, and hopeless, and I cried every single day from the pressures of
> trying to work, go to school, and be a decent mother to two very small
> and demanding children. I almost never saw my husband, and there was
> not one penny extra anywhere.
Post-partum depression, perhaps?
>
> And I got angry one night and started yelling at god. Why? There was
> no one else to yell at. I couldn't yell at my husband; he was working
> as hard as I was. I couldn't yell to my mother or father, because I
> have always had a deep aversion to airing dirty laundry about my
> husband to my parents, which I have always thought underhanded and
> dishonest. I couldn't yell to my friends, for the same reason. There
> was no one left to pour all this anger and bitterness and unhappiness
> on, and I was full up.
Sounds like a bit of despair, there.
>
> Let me be clear -- at that point, I wasn't particularly convinced
> there was anything there *to* yell at. God was simply a convenient
> "ear", if you will. And I'm afraid I wasn't particularly reverent in
> my approach. I _cussed_ god. I demanded answers. I lay for a long
> time, tossing and turning, pouring out every bit of poison to this
> mythologized something I didn't even really believe for sure was
> there, and demanding an accounting. And absolutely nothing happened.
> I recall specifically muttering, in disgust, "Fine, then. Fuck it.
Just pausing here, for a moment of reflection.
> I guess I'll just go to sleep." I rolled over, closed my eyes -- and
> suddenly, god. Light. Gorgeous, brilliant, *aware* light, from
> behind a corner to my left. I'll try to describe it first, and then
> I'll tell you what I've found since then. This is where it gets
> difficult to pin down, because I'm going to have to lay out and
> differentiate specific things which I "got" all in this big rush, and
> some of them seem contradictory, even as I write them.
Someone turned a lamp on, maybe? Someone spiked your drink
before you went to bed? Drugs, perhaps? Stroke? With all the
stress, were you partaking in any mood-altering or consciousness-
altering substances? Were said substances in use by anyone you
were in contact with, at the time, and if so, could any of those
substances have made their way into you?
>
> I *recognized it*. There was some immediate sense of already knowing
> it, like, "Oh, *there* you are!"
> It was already part of me, as I was part of it -- separate enough so
> that the "me" that is me could see it, but not separate in the sense
> of "oh, that's something different."
> Incredible benevolence. Incredible *awareness*. Incredible peace.
> Incredible wisdom. Most of all, incredible *love*, not like I was
> being loved, but like I was an active and automatic part of love
> itself.
Wow, please track that down. If there are no side effects, and if,
of course, it's approved by the fascists who happen to run our
country (like that's ever going to happen), I'd like to try some of
that. A recent story about scorpion stingers comes to mind ...
> Not one whit of anger, and not one whit of judgement. And
> more importantly, a sense of touching on eternity, galaxies and worlds
> and the unfolding of life and motion and patterns. Even reading this,
> I know it's not making sense, but it was as much a cognitive sensation
> as an emotional one.
What's not making sense? You saw a light and you got a rush.
> You know that feeling when you've been wrestling
> with a difficult problem, math or science or trying to create
> something just right, and all of a sudden, *whoosh*, it all falls into
> place and you know exactly how the whole thing works, or is going to
> work? Like that, times a thousand.
>
> It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
> barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
> love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
>
> I was fortunate, I think, that I wasn't actively involved in church,
> but also that I had some language to put to it. I wandered around for
> days, wondering if I was insane, and not much caring if I was. As far
> as religious language, it supplied the label -- god. It at least gave
> me some handle to *begin* thinking about it, because humans, I think,
> do need language to talk and think and learn and understand. I've
> been exploring ever since, in every direction I could find.
A light and a rush. Seems to me you're tying your childhood god
goodness (you know, a lot of synapses were built at that time) into
an experience with a light and a rush (associative reasoning, a common
human trait - see the image of "the devil" on one of the World Trade
Center pictures - has to do with the human desire to associate and tie
in events/pictures/images/feelings into areas of consciousness they can
identify with, like words, other events, other pictures, other images,
feelings at other times, claims about magic super-beings like allah, etc.).
>
> I am aware of newish research into "the god spot." I know that people
> all over have claimed what sounds very much like this experience from
> dabbling in drugs, from epileptic seizures, from magnetic hats(!),
> from sudden epiphanies -- and even, sometimes, for no discernable
> reason at all.
Your god-spot reference pertains to nothing but a part of human con-
sciousness, not revelation of ultimate power of a "being", overwhelming
love of a "being", horrible hate from a "being", or any other "being"
extant that which is part of you and within you. You're merely associating
an experience with aspects of you that were fed into you during your
childhood. Not science or rationality, simply begging for a "good god"
to be the explanation for a light and a rush you had one night.
> That there is a specific part of my brain associated
> with this phenomenon is completely non-threatening. There's not one
> thing I think or know that *isn't* associated with my brain, and I'm
> aware that the brain itself is divvied up to handle different
> functions. I'm also aware that I could be completely insane, but I
> don't think I am, and don't think my behavior indicates such to other
> people. What always strikes me is not the different means people have
> gotten to this same thing, but the commonality of the experiences,
> across religious beliefs, and even including those who have no god
> belief at all. I think, if I were insane, the experience would be
> more specific to *my* brain only (thinking I'm Napolean, or seeing
> demons or angels or something).
You're really taking one thing (good god - impressed upon you in child-
hood and, it appears, reimpressed upon you during your philosophy
explorations), and superimposing it upon an experience with light and
a rush. People have claimed visions, extra-terrestrial abductions, seeing
ghosts, etc. over the entire span of human history, but you know what?
Not one iota of evidence exists that any of said claims were anything
but a result of the goings-on within the human brain. Similar to mirages,
just like people "witnessing" a person committing a crime and, later on,
discovering that what they though they saw never happened (see the
unreliability of eyewitness accounts for details), just like not one iota
of evidence exists that anyone has ever had any contact with the virgin
Mary, or extra-terrestrials, or any of innumerable claims which almost
always ...
key point, here ...
... almost always tie a supernatural or otherwise profound event to
something from a plethora of myths/stories/fantasies circulating in the
culture in which the profound event is claimed.
Why did you have no compulsion to tie the light and the rush into Allah
or Shiva or Zeus or Odin? Because none of those concepts were placed
in your vulnerable brain as superbeing good/bad realities when you were
growing up as a child. You merely used a storehouse of conscious and
subconscious references to a good god and, through associative reason-
ing, labeled the light and the rush "god".
>
> The essentials seem to be:
> Feeling of peace
> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
> Incredible feeling of love
>
> There are, obviously, many beliefs secondary to that experience.
> I'm back where I started -- god is good :-)
> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Deity" is misleading.
> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
> being."
Now, you've left your light and rush and are now speaking of generalities
and claims for which you have nothing but a light and a rush to use as
a leverage point for a good god fantasy.
> Because I am aware that not everyone has had one of these sorts of
> experiences,
If you look at the general public, and take a poll of who has had lights
and rushes, you would get replies along the line of eyewitness accounts
of crimes, many imagined events, many empathetic event claimers,
many "I don't think so, but there was that time ..." ...
The one key bit of evidentiary material you're overlooking here, aside
from any evidence (extant your claim) that the light and the rush occurred,
is something defining the light and the rush with feelings you had when
you saw a light and had a rush and calling all that a word, god, which
is used by billions to imagine something totally apart from your good
bright god light.
> and because there was no judgement at all in the
> experience itself for *anything*, even the doubting and cursing god, I
> can only assume that judgement isn't part of that at all. In fact, I
> suspect that people who cling to religion have other reasons for doing
> so besides only that epiphany kind of experience.
You're forgetting the vulnerable nature of children and how they believe
what they're told, about Allah/god/Jesus/whatever, and how they carry
that burden with them their entire lives, you and me included.
> Because it was so much like touching the sum total of everything, I
> have never thought of god in supernatural terms. For me, god is --
> everywhere, and in everything, and my joy and delight is looking and
> seeing it (though I can't always).
Can I join your commune? (-:
> [skip continued dance with a light-rush as god]
Thanks for having the courage to disregard the holy FAQ and share
your light-rush story with us. When you have an iota of evidence
that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
reason, please get back to us.
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
> Sunny
Elroy Willis
<snip>
> I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
> enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
> them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
> I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
> such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
> And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
> live them than convince anyone else of them.
Thanks for sharing that.
--
Elroy Willis
EAP Chief Editor and Newshound
http://web2.airmail.net/~elo/news
*nemo*
news:W_4T7.226126$3d2.10...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
<snip>
> Thanks for having the courage to disregard the holy FAQ and share
> your light-rush story with us. When you have an iota of evidence
> that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
> thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
> reason, please get back to us.
Dan, give it a rest - there's a good lad. Sunny wouldn't have gone to this
trouble if it hadn't been for you pestering her. She hasn't asked you to
join her in believing anything, and she has been nothing but courteous with
all the atheists here when talking with us about all sorts of subjects,
religion included.
If you feel you must have fights with someone, why not go bang heads with
Boatwright? no doubt he'd be happy to call you a fool and tell you all about
his planet density priofile theory.
>
> - - -
>
> Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
> http://danfake.home.att.net
>
> >
> > Sunny
>
>
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.att.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
**************************************************
A little hedonism never hurt anybody...
**************************************************
George Ricker
stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote:
> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
No apology is required. It's not proselytizing when people invite you to
share your views, which seems to be the case here.
<SNIP> Sunny's discussion of what she believes and why deleted. Those
who are interested should seek out the original post.
> I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
> enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
> them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
> I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
> such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
> And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
> live them than convince anyone else of them.
>
> Sunny
I realize you didn't direct this at me, but I did want to respond
anyway. Speaking for myself only, I've always taken the position that
each of us has to find his or her own way through life and whatever
beliefs help you do that - so long as the practice of those beliefs
isn't destructive of the lives and liberties of others - are obviously
worthwhile to you. I may disagree with them. I may even find them
absurd. But when it comes to your personal values and how you reach
them, the only perception that really matters is your own.
And as long as you aren't trying to ram them down my throat or impose
them on anyone else, I can ... and do ... wish you joy in them.
Lots of people use the word "God" as an intellectual and emotional
place-marker to account for longings, ideas and experiences that they
can't otherwise account for or to serve as a provisional answer for
questions that seem to have no answers.
The trouble with that practice is that "God" has so many possible
meanings that it's virtually meaningless. It is, in terms of any sort of
useful communication among people who hold diverse veiwpoints about gods
and religions, a null concept.
Anyway, I was interested to read what you had to say and appreciate you
sharing it with us. It has been my experience that most theists can't
(or, at least, aren't willing to) discuss what they think with that much
candor.
--
George Ricker
"Goddidit" is not an answer. It is a pietistic
method of begging all questions.
Dave W
> Dan Fake <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:W_4T7.226126$3d2.10...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>
> <snip>
> > Thanks for having the courage to disregard the holy FAQ and share
> > your light-rush story with us. When you have an iota of evidence
> > that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
> > thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
> > reason, please get back to us.
>
> Dan, give it a rest - there's a good lad. Sunny wouldn't have gone to this
> trouble if it hadn't been for you pestering her. She hasn't asked you to
> join her in believing anything, and she has been nothing but courteous with
> all the atheists here when talking with us about all sorts of subjects,
> religion included.
>
> If you feel you must have fights with someone, why not go bang heads with
> Boatwright? no doubt he'd be happy to call you a fool and tell you all about
> his planet density priofile theory.
> >
> > - - -
> >
> > Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
> > http://danfake.home.att.net
> >
> > >
> > > Sunny
> >
> >
>
> --
> Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
>
>
>
>
Well said Nemo. In my short time here Sunny has earned a great deal of
respect from me, FWIW. She took the time to answer the challenge. She
had/has no obligation to justify her beliefs to you (Dan) or anyone else.
BTW thank you Sunny for sharing your story.
--
Dave W, Technician a.a.#1967
EAC Telecommunications Technical Services
Taos Hum Engineering Group
Darwin
wrote:
I would also like to thank Sunny for sharing her views with us. I
also believe Dan's response was outstanding, and I have nothing to add
to it, except for a quotation from an exchange Sunny and I had.
I asked her if she knew the cause of religious experiences. Here is
the exchange.
Darwin:
>How would you identify the cause?
Sunny:
As noted, either some brain thing that generates these things (and I'm
not, repeat not, talking about all the various mental glitches which
tend make people think they're Napolean). The question then would be,
why? Of course, I've read the speculations about overcoming fear of
death, and that might be it. I SIMPLY DON'T KNOW [emphasis added].
The other possibility is that there is something perfectly normal and
natural and luminous which we are too engrossed in living to notice.
Here is another quotation:
Darwin:
Well, how do you explain the experiences we are discussing? I'm not
>really clear as to what your position is.
Sunny:
Explain them? Dunno. Unless I'm missing something, it's one of two
things.
There's either *something* -- an awareness, something -- that humans
have the ability to apprehend, and which is reflected in the
commonalities referenced in the various experiences, or there's a
piece of the human brain which, for whatever reason, *generates* these
experiences.
<end quote>
Notice her conceding that she does not *know* the source of these
types of experiences, and compare to her most recent post in which she
identifies the source.
--
Darwin - aa # 1985
"We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and
discoverers-thieves planting flags, murderers carrying
crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of
dreams." -Peter S. Beagle, in reference to Tolkien's
Hobbits.
Liquid Grace
"Dan Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:W_4T7.226126$3d2.10...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
> > First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> > I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
>
> And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
> Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
>
Dan, you fucking jerk,
You pester Sunny for an answer, you get one, then you wanna make nasty,
snide remarks.
Well, fuck you. Sunny is a friend. You're an annoying twat. Mostly, I've
ignored that, but it's the truth, you are.
It seems to me you're less interested in talking to Sunny about what she
believes than taking potshots at her, which is stupid and ridiculously
unfair.
What's the matter, Danny-boi? You jealous because people actually *like*
Sunny?
Give it a rest, asshole.
Grace
Elroy Willis
> Elroy Willis <e...@airmail.net> wrote:
>> stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in alt.atheism
>><snip>
>>> I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
>>> enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
>>> them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
>>> I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
>>> such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
>>> And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
>>> live them than convince anyone else of them.
>> Thanks for sharing that.
> I would also like to thank Sunny for sharing her views with us. I
> also believe Dan's response was outstanding, and I have nothing to add
> to it, except for a quotation from an exchange Sunny and I had.
Dunno if you've read georgann's Damascus Road experience, but it
has a lot in common with Sunny's. Both of 'em were going through
troubled times when they had them, and both admit they were under
emotional stress. I think the brain-seizure idea, or the shutdown of
the part of the brain that's trying to deal with a stressful situation
idea explain things quite neatly actually.
Lord Calvert
>has a lot in common with Sunny's. Both of 'em were going through
>troubled times when they had them, and both admit they were under
>emotional stress.
Compare that to Abraham Lincoln's rejection of religion after the death of his
son and in the midst of the Civil War. Which conversion was healthier?
Rich Goranson, Amherst, NY, USA (aa#MCMXCIX)
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the
strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. -- Thomas Paine
Dan Fake
>
> "Dan Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:W_4T7.226126$3d2.10...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > "stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message
> news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
> > > First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> > > I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
> >
> > And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
> > Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
> >
> <snip>
>
>
> Grace
She told us her beliefs, I responded. Calm down.
You want to be friends with Sunny, be friends with
Sunny. Don't let my disbelief in her god light upset
you. Sheesh.
Dan Fake
I'll never think of a light in quite the same way again. Thanks, Sunny.
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
> --
Liquid Grace
You miss the point, Dan, as usual.
It's not your disbelief, it's your incredibly rude and snide way of
addressing it.
What's the matter, you don't like your own medicine?
Grace
Kronk
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
>> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
>
>And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
>Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
You have made your disdain for the playground guidelines here quite
evident--and yet here you remain. Why don't you go start your own
group? Perhaps alt.youcantconvertme.nyah.nyah.nyah.
>> My not very deeply thought out opinion at that time was that if that
>> was what religion did to people, I wanted no part of it. I'm not sure
>> what my "classification" would have been then, but I suspect I fell
>> somewhere in the neighborhood of apatheist.
>
>Oh, come on, surely you can use the word agnostic.
She seems to prefer apt words. She's funny that way.
>> Fast forward ahead to about four years into my marriage. We had two
>> small children, and life was as hard as it's ever been. Without going
>> into details, let's just say that my waking hours were exhausting, and
>> gray, and hopeless, and I cried every single day from the pressures of
>> trying to work, go to school, and be a decent mother to two very small
>> and demanding children. I almost never saw my husband, and there was
>> not one penny extra anywhere.
>
>Post-partum depression, perhaps?
That's it. Blame the hormones. Overlook all the obvious factors she
just described.
>> I guess I'll just go to sleep." I rolled over, closed my eyes -- and
>> suddenly, god. Light. Gorgeous, brilliant, *aware* light, from
>> behind a corner to my left. I'll try to describe it first, and then
>> I'll tell you what I've found since then. This is where it gets
>> difficult to pin down, because I'm going to have to lay out and
>> differentiate specific things which I "got" all in this big rush, and
>> some of them seem contradictory, even as I write them.
>
>Someone turned a lamp on, maybe?
I wish I could call you a total idiot, because that would be the
charitable interpretation of an idiotic remark like this.
Unfortunately I know you aren't one, so that was apparently
mean-spirited belittlement intended to suggest Sunny might have been
too stupid to realize it was only a lamp. That makes you a total
jerk--which is something worse than being a total idiot.
>Someone spiked your drink before you went to bed? Drugs, perhaps? Stroke?
At least here you might be drawing on your own experiences.
>With all the
>stress, were you partaking in any mood-altering or consciousness-
>altering substances? Were said substances in use by anyone you
>were in contact with, at the time, and if so, could any of those
>substances have made their way into you?
I can understand why you have to believe her experience was an
artifact of brain activity. What I can't understand is why it is so
important to you to make her believe it.
>> I *recognized it*. There was some immediate sense of already knowing
>> it, like, "Oh, *there* you are!"
>> It was already part of me, as I was part of it -- separate enough so
>> that the "me" that is me could see it, but not separate in the sense
>> of "oh, that's something different."
>> Incredible benevolence. Incredible *awareness*. Incredible peace.
>> Incredible wisdom. Most of all, incredible *love*, not like I was
>> being loved, but like I was an active and automatic part of love
>> itself.
>
>Wow, please track that down. If there are no side effects, and if,
>of course, it's approved by the fascists who happen to run our
>country (like that's ever going to happen), I'd like to try some of
>that.
Okay, now you look like a drug-hungry jerk.
<...>
>> You know that feeling when you've been wrestling
>> with a difficult problem, math or science or trying to create
>> something just right, and all of a sudden, *whoosh*, it all falls into
>> place and you know exactly how the whole thing works, or is going to
>> work? Like that, times a thousand.
>>
>> It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
>> barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
>> love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
>>
>> I was fortunate, I think, that I wasn't actively involved in church,
>> but also that I had some language to put to it. I wandered around for
>> days, wondering if I was insane, and not much caring if I was. As far
>> as religious language, it supplied the label -- god. It at least gave
>> me some handle to *begin* thinking about it, because humans, I think,
>> do need language to talk and think and learn and understand. I've
>> been exploring ever since, in every direction I could find.
>
>A light and a rush. Seems to me you're tying your childhood god
>goodness (you know, a lot of synapses were built at that time) into
>an experience with a light and a rush
It surprises absolutely no one that this is how it seems to you. What
infuriates you is that this isn't how it seems to Sunny. That's just
your tough luck. Your analysis of this event is never going to
compete with her experience of this event.
>(associative reasoning, a common
>human trait - see the image of "the devil" on one of the World Trade
>Center pictures - has to do with the human desire to associate and tie
>in events/pictures/images/feelings into areas of consciousness they can
>identify with, like words, other events, other pictures, other images,
>feelings at other times, claims about magic super-beings like allah, etc.).
And your stream-of-consciousness writing suggests your association
engine could use a wee bit of attenuation.
>> I am aware of newish research into "the god spot." know that people
>> all over have claimed what sounds very much like this experience from
>> dabbling in drugs, from epileptic seizures, from magnetic hats(!),
>> from sudden epiphanies -- and even, sometimes, for no discernable
>> reason at all.
>
>Your god-spot reference pertains to nothing but a part of human con-
>sciousness, not revelation of ultimate power of a "being", overwhelming
>love of a "being", horrible hate from a "being", or any other "being"
>extant that which is part of you and within you.
In the first place, she wasn't suggesting it was anything more. She
was saying she is aware of these other interpretations of her
experience. In the second place, Ramachandran himself has not
ventured any theological implications of his research.
>You're merely associating
>an experience with aspects of you that were fed into you during your
>childhood. Not science or rationality, simply begging for a "good god"
>to be the explanation for a light and a rush you had one night.
If that explanation satisfies you, then feel free to believe it. But
you sure don't seem very satisfied. Instead you seem like someone
desperate to have everyone agree with him. You seem like someone who
is very insecure in his beliefs.
>You're really taking one thing (good god - impressed upon you in child-
>hood and, it appears, reimpressed upon you during your philosophy
>explorations), and superimposing it upon an experience with light and
>a rush. ...
Give it up already.
>> The essentials seem to be:
>> Feeling of peace
>> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
>> Incredible feeling of love
>>
>> There are, obviously, many beliefs secondary to that experience.
>> I'm back where I started -- god is good :-)
>> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Deity" is misleading.
>> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
>> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
>> being."
>
>Now, you've left your light and rush and are now speaking of generalities
No, she is describing other cognitive aspects of the experience. It
was you who oversimplified it to "light and rush" in the first place.
>and claims for which you have nothing but a light and a rush to use as
>a leverage point for a good god fantasy.
All she has claimed is that she had this experience and that she has a
certain interpretation of it. She is completely entitled to make
those claims.
>> Because I am aware that not everyone has had one of these sorts of
>> experiences,
>
>If you look at the general public, and take a poll of who has had lights
>and rushes, you would get replies along the line of eyewitness accounts
>of crimes, many imagined events, many empathetic event claimers,
>many "I don't think so, but there was that time ..." ...
>
>The one key bit of evidentiary material you're overlooking here, aside
>from any evidence (extant your claim) that the light and the rush occurred,
Just what sort of supporting evidence that she had this experience is
she supposed to produce?
>is something defining the light and the rush with feelings you had when
>you saw a light and had a rush and calling all that a word, god, which
>is used by billions to imagine something totally apart from your good
>bright god light.
I defy you to come up with a definition of godhood that billions won't
disagree with.
>> Because it was so much like touching the sum total of everything, I
>> have never thought of god in supernatural terms. For me, god is --
>> everywhere, and in everything, and my joy and delight is looking and
>> seeing it (though I can't always).
>
>Can I join your commune? (-:
You want drugs that can give you the experience she had and you want
to join a group that can give you the outlook she has. Your ambition
to be more like Sunny is laudable, but you aren't going to follow her
any of those ways.
>Thanks for having the courage to disregard the holy FAQ and share
>your light-rush story with us. When you have an iota of evidence
>that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
>thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
>reason, please get back to us.
Your (exceedingly rude) challenge to her was to describe her position.
She did that, and did so with grace and patience. You responded with
sneers, insults, belittlements and jibes, extending none of the
courtesy that she extended to you, and now you are trying to sneak the
bar up. Your behavior is a disgrace, and if you had any shred of the
humanity you claim to promote, you'd see that.
Kronk
Dan Fake
Cat-kettle-black, and incorrect.
>
> What's the matter, you don't like your own medicine?
Actually, I was quite considerate. I just don't believe her light
was god, and I explained in a very well-reasoned manner why
I disagreed with her assertion that the light/emotions she felt
were revelatory of something she chooses to call a good god.
Simple difference of views, don't you think? She has the right
to see god in everything, most of the time, and I have the right
to see naturalism, in everything, all of the time. Simple, really.
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
> Grace
Dave W
<Sprays air freshener>
Liquid Grace
I never said I wasn't, see below.
>
> >
> > What's the matter, you don't like your own medicine?
>
> Actually, I was quite considerate. I just don't believe her light
> was god, and I explained in a very well-reasoned manner why
> I disagreed with her assertion that the light/emotions she felt
> were revelatory of something she chooses to call a good god.
> Simple difference of views, don't you think? She has the right
> to see god in everything, most of the time, and I have the right
> to see naturalism, in everything, all of the time. Simple, really.
>
Tell me you're not really this think, Dan.
Grace
Dan Fake
> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 17:39:02 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
> >> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> >> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
> >
> >And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
> >Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
>
> You have made your disdain for the playground guidelines here quite
> evident--and yet here you remain. Why don't you go start your own
> group? Perhaps alt.youcantconvertme.nyah.nyah.nyah.
What would your group be called? alt.cranky?
>
> >> My not very deeply thought out opinion at that time was that if that
> >> was what religion did to people, I wanted no part of it. I'm not sure
> >> what my "classification" would have been then, but I suspect I fell
> >> somewhere in the neighborhood of apatheist.
> >
> >Oh, come on, surely you can use the word agnostic.
>
> She seems to prefer apt words. She's funny that way.
There is no such word as apatheist, but I trust you know that.
Not against inventing words, am I, but it seems agnostic would
be accurate, based on what she said.
>
> >> Fast forward ahead to about four years into my marriage. We had two
> >> small children, and life was as hard as it's ever been. Without going
> >> into details, let's just say that my waking hours were exhausting, and
> >> gray, and hopeless, and I cried every single day from the pressures of
> >> trying to work, go to school, and be a decent mother to two very small
> >> and demanding children. I almost never saw my husband, and there was
> >> not one penny extra anywhere.
> >
> >Post-partum depression, perhaps?
>
> That's it. Blame the hormones. Overlook all the obvious factors she
> just described.
It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
>
> >> I guess I'll just go to sleep." I rolled over, closed my eyes -- and
> >> suddenly, god. Light. Gorgeous, brilliant, *aware* light, from
> >> behind a corner to my left. I'll try to describe it first, and then
> >> I'll tell you what I've found since then. This is where it gets
> >> difficult to pin down, because I'm going to have to lay out and
> >> differentiate specific things which I "got" all in this big rush, and
> >> some of them seem contradictory, even as I write them.
> >
> >Someone turned a lamp on, maybe?
>
> [skip uncalled for and harsh insults]
In an altered mental state, a state of despair she admitted she
was in, and with any stimulus of which she may or may not
have been aware (see the Physician's Desk Reference and read
up on how substances can impact perception - also, consider
naturalistic conditions, severe depressions, despair, all placed
in evidence by Sunny, and ponder the naturalistic situation she
was in).
>
> >Someone spiked your drink before you went to bed? Drugs, perhaps? Stroke?
>
> At least here you might be drawing on your own experiences.
No, it's a valid question based on a consideration of possibilities
of naturalistic conditions, aside from her severe stress, which
might have impacted her perception.
>
> >With all the
> >stress, were you partaking in any mood-altering or consciousness-
> >altering substances? Were said substances in use by anyone you
> >were in contact with, at the time, and if so, could any of those
> >substances have made their way into you?
>
> I can understand why you have to believe her experience was an
> artifact of brain activity. What I can't understand is why it is so
> important to you to make her believe it.
Actually, she conveyed no consideration of naturalistic explanations
for her condition. That's a typical indicator of the way someone who
is prone to or vulnerable to suggestion would tie an altered conscious-
ness event to a childhood religious perception. Unless the naturalistic
explanations are explored, and possibilities of naturalistic explanations
are taken into consideration, it would be difficult for Sunny to know
what happened and why, choosing to instead lean on a childhood
religious indoctrination as the leverage point for "the" explanation
rather than a wide scope of explanations for which no supernatural
influences are required or desired.
As for verity, if one isn't interested in pursuit of verity, why bother
thinking about anything, just follow and turn off the old gray matter.
Surely you aren't suggesting Sunny is better off by dismissing any/all
naturalistic explanations for her experience, are you?
>
> >> I *recognized it*. There was some immediate sense of already knowing
> >> it, like, "Oh, *there* you are!"
> >> It was already part of me, as I was part of it -- separate enough so
> >> that the "me" that is me could see it, but not separate in the sense
> >> of "oh, that's something different."
> >> Incredible benevolence. Incredible *awareness*. Incredible peace.
> >> Incredible wisdom. Most of all, incredible *love*, not like I was
> >> being loved, but like I was an active and automatic part of love
> >> itself.
> >
> >Wow, please track that down. If there are no side effects, and if,
> >of course, it's approved by the fascists who happen to run our
> >country (like that's ever going to happen), I'd like to try some of
> >that.
>
> Okay, now you look like a drug-hungry jerk.
Actually, your insult is uncalled for and a pleasant drug experience,
legal, is quite appealing to many - if you're an anti-drug-taking / pro-
demonization of drug-taking type, I assure you, we're at opposite
ends of the drug war / drug usage issues ...
>
> <...>
>
> >> You know that feeling when you've been wrestling
> >> with a difficult problem, math or science or trying to create
> >> something just right, and all of a sudden, *whoosh*, it all falls into
> >> place and you know exactly how the whole thing works, or is going to
> >> work? Like that, times a thousand.
> >>
> >> It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
> >> barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
> >> love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
> >>
> >> I was fortunate, I think, that I wasn't actively involved in church,
> >> but also that I had some language to put to it. I wandered around for
> >> days, wondering if I was insane, and not much caring if I was. As far
> >> as religious language, it supplied the label -- god. It at least gave
> >> me some handle to *begin* thinking about it, because humans, I think,
> >> do need language to talk and think and learn and understand. I've
> >> been exploring ever since, in every direction I could find.
> >
> >A light and a rush. Seems to me you're tying your childhood god
> >goodness (you know, a lot of synapses were built at that time) into
> >an experience with a light and a rush
>
> It surprises absolutely no one that this is how it seems to you. What
> infuriates you
I'm quite calm, so your statement is absurd.
> is that this isn't how it seems to Sunny. That's just
> your tough luck. Your analysis of this event is never going to
> compete with her experience of this event.
Actually, if you want to believe god was in her light, feel free. I choose
to explore the naturalistic explanations as Sunny offered, in her state-
ment, no considerations of naturalism. Only she knows if she's thought
of the event "outside the box" of religion and considered the naturalistic
explanations as apart from her god claims.
>
> >(associative reasoning, a common
> >human trait - see the image of "the devil" on one of the World Trade
> >Center pictures - has to do with the human desire to associate and tie
> >in events/pictures/images/feelings into areas of consciousness they can
> >identify with, like words, other events, other pictures, other images,
> >feelings at other times, claims about magic super-beings like allah, etc.).
>
> And your stream-of-consciousness writing suggests your association
> engine could use a wee bit of attenuation.
My association engine? She's the one seeing god in bright lights, not I.
>
> >> I am aware of newish research into "the god spot." know that people
> >> all over have claimed what sounds very much like this experience from
> >> dabbling in drugs, from epileptic seizures, from magnetic hats(!),
> >> from sudden epiphanies -- and even, sometimes, for no discernable
> >> reason at all.
> >
> >Your god-spot reference pertains to nothing but a part of human con-
> >sciousness, not revelation of ultimate power of a "being", overwhelming
> >love of a "being", horrible hate from a "being", or any other "being"
> >extant that which is part of you and within you.
>
> In the first place, she wasn't suggesting it was anything more. She
> was saying she is aware of these other interpretations of her
> experience. In the second place, Ramachandran himself has not
> ventured any theological implications of his research.
>
> >You're merely associating
> >an experience with aspects of you that were fed into you during your
> >childhood. Not science or rationality, simply begging for a "good god"
> >to be the explanation for a light and a rush you had one night.
>
> If that explanation satisfies you, then feel free to believe it. But
> you sure don't seem very satisfied. Instead you seem like someone
> desperate to have everyone agree with him. You seem like someone who
> is very insecure in his beliefs.
You seem like someone choosing to toss insults without a clue of
naturalistic explanations for Sunny's experience. If you wish to support
Sunny, don't pander to her god trip, help her understand the possibilities
which exist for her experience, help her explore that which she experienced
so she can either 1) be more comfortable with her god explanation, having
thoroughly explored and dismissed all alternative explanations, -or- 2) be
free of her dependence on magic beings which don't exist as anything but
fantasies of the human imagination.
>
> >You're really taking one thing (good god - impressed upon you in child-
> >hood and, it appears, reimpressed upon you during your philosophy
> >explorations), and superimposing it upon an experience with light and
> >a rush. ...
>
> Give it up already.
No.
>
> >> The essentials seem to be:
> >> Feeling of peace
> >> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
> >> Incredible feeling of love
> >>
> >> There are, obviously, many beliefs secondary to that experience.
> >> I'm back where I started -- god is good :-)
> >> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Deity" is misleading.
> >> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
> >> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
> >> being."
> >
> >Now, you've left your light and rush and are now speaking of generalities
>
> No, she is describing other cognitive aspects of the experience. It
> was you who oversimplified it to "light and rush" in the first place.
No, she's embellishing an experience and speaking of claims apart
from that which was her experience - read her claim, carefully, and
think, rationally.
>
> >and claims for which you have nothing but a light and a rush to use as
> >a leverage point for a good god fantasy.
>
> All she has claimed is that she had this experience and that she has a
> certain interpretation of it. She is completely entitled to make
> those claims.
Who said she wasn't entitled to make claims? I'm exploring the
naturalistic side of the claims which she offered no information
or consideration of, in her post. She may have gone to great lengths
to explore the naturalistic explanations for her experience. We just
don't know because she didn't offer any information on that.
>
> >> Because I am aware that not everyone has had one of these sorts of
> >> experiences,
> >
> >If you look at the general public, and take a poll of who has had lights
> >and rushes, you would get replies along the line of eyewitness accounts
> >of crimes, many imagined events, many empathetic event claimers,
> >many "I don't think so, but there was that time ..." ...
> >
> >The one key bit of evidentiary material you're overlooking here, aside
> >from any evidence (extant your claim) that the light and the rush occurred,
>
> Just what sort of supporting evidence that she had this experience is
> she supposed to produce?
I didn't ask for any, and as with all claims, from Moses talking to God
to Jesus rising from the dead, anyone can claim anything. Only by
exploring the nature of the claim, distinguishing facts from fiction,
ascertaining what exactly is going on as opposed to what is being
claimed as the default explanation, may the possibilities and probabilities
be explored and discerned.
>
> >is something defining the light and the rush with feelings you had when
> >you saw a light and had a rush and calling all that a word, god, which
> >is used by billions to imagine something totally apart from your good
> >bright god light.
>
> I defy you to come up with a definition of godhood that billions won't
> disagree with.
>
> >> Because it was so much like touching the sum total of everything, I
> >> have never thought of god in supernatural terms. For me, god is --
> >> everywhere, and in everything, and my joy and delight is looking and
> >> seeing it (though I can't always).
> >
> >Can I join your commune? (-:
>
> You want drugs that can give you the experience she had and you want
> to join a group that can give you the outlook she has. Your ambition
> to be more like Sunny is laudable, but you aren't going to follow her
> any of those ways.
I was merely pointing out that her statement was something like
what a commune member would say.
>
> >Thanks for having the courage to disregard the holy FAQ and share
> >your light-rush story with us. When you have an iota of evidence
> >that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
> >thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
> >reason, please get back to us.
>
> Your (exceedingly rude)
Considerate and kind.
> challenge to her was to describe her position.
Describe her belief.
> She did that, and did so with grace and patience.
She did so with an absence of consideration of naturalism, as if
she had an experience and jumped to a conclusion that it was god
in her light. Now, as stated previously, if she has gone down the long
list of naturalistic explanations, she cared not to share that with us.
> [skip insults/untruths]
Sunny does not need your insults/untruths to support her position.
She's claimed god in a light.
If she wishes to discuss the subject further, I welcome her views on
naturalistic explanations for her experience. If not, there you have it,
there it is, Sunny has experienced god in a light, believe it or not.
Dan Fake
I sense you want me to support Sunny's feeling that she experienced
god. I am interested in exploring her experience, for I'm not one to
merely accept a claim as if a claim is worthy merely by it having been
made. What did Sunny experience? Did she experience god? Is it of
greater value to support belief in god for those who choose it or is
it of greater value to support open-minded search for verity, wherever
that search might lead? I choose the latter. Perhaps you choose the
former. Such is life.
maky m.
news flash: mickey is a nobody other than a poster - just like you and me.
MEow
<e...@airmail.net> on Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:40:33 -0600 wrote:
>stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in alt.atheism
>
><snip>
>
>> I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
>> enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
>> them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
>> I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
>> such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
>> And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
>> live them than convince anyone else of them.
>
>Thanks for sharing that.
I want to thank you too, Sunny. I really enjoyed reading it.
--
Nikitta - Female with gender-ambiguous name
Lifelong atheist #1759. EAC - Spanker of Theists
AFV Bitchiness-Club
"Hey, what other physicist has tires *this* big, baby?" JIM (afdaniain)
Martin Crisp
wrote (in message <0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com>):
> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
[snip]
You weren't.
Thanks, btw.
Have Fun
Martin
--
Kinky:
What I do that you wouldn't
Perverted:
What you do that I wouldn't
Kerry
What took some courage to do, and I tend to feel is probably understood
better by most who are labelled by the religionists strawman "atheist"
than those who profit from the guilt and control freaks of the world.
<snip some>
> It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
> barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
> love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
<snip some more>
> The essentials seem to be:
> Feeling of peace
> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
> Incredible feeling of love
<and just aa little more>
> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Diety" is misleading.
> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
> being."
This bit here is a view that I believe is that which is in common with
three of my inspirations; Gautama Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and the
one who was burned at the stake only a little over 400 years ago for his
heresy, Giordano Bruno. The last one was the only one of the three who
was murdered for his beliefs and is one reason (of many) that using the
word "god" is rejected in total [by me] for that which has been
prostituted by religion for temporal power and wealth at the expense of
humanity. So in a nutshell.... why bother with a word (god) that is not
understood by those who claim the earthly riches they accumulate and the
masses they subjugate, or is in anyway an apt description of the greater
and indescribable power of that in which includes the whole universe.
Stick around and don't be bullied by anyone.
I'm one who has stayed around this group on occasions *because you have*
shared your journey to where you are now. The word *god* is the sticking
point. Well.... stick that word, and find another. What you wrote above
is a damn good start, but as long as that word is used.... the arguments
follow. (Sunny is what we all are.... in a condensed form)
Kerry
aa #1773
Kronk
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Kronk" <vo...@isp.com> wrote in message news:3c1d0c06...@news.gvtc.com...
>> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 17:39:02 GMT, "Dan Fake"
>> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
>> >> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>> >> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
>> >
>> >> My not very deeply thought out opinion at that time was that if that
>> >> was what religion did to people, I wanted no part of it. I'm not sure
>> >> what my "classification" would have been then, but I suspect I fell
>> >> somewhere in the neighborhood of apatheist.
>> >
>> >Oh, come on, surely you can use the word agnostic.
>>
>> She seems to prefer apt words. She's funny that way.
>
>There is no such word as apatheist, but I trust you know that.
>Not against inventing words, am I, but it seems agnostic would
>be accurate, based on what she said.
Nothing in what she said suggests she took an epistemological position
regarding the knowability of gods. What she did describe was a
position of indifference with respect to theistic matters, and the
word she used conveyed that sense admirably. I don't care whether it
was her or someone else who made up the word, it's still a good one
and certainly better than "agnostic" in this application.
>> >Post-partum depression, perhaps?
>>
>> That's it. Blame the hormones. Overlook all the obvious factors she
>> just described.
>
>It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
>considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
And you seem to be fabricating supernaturalistic alternatives where
there are none. All the factors she described as contributing to her
low spirits were perfectly natural. If I had been in her situation, I
very likely would have found them completely ample to get me depressed
as well. My objection to your hormone theory was not that it was
naturalistic, it is that it was superfluous considering an ample
explanation had already been given. It also smells a bit of sexism,
but I'll have to leave it to the women to decide if it was offensive
on that count as well.
>> >Someone turned a lamp on, maybe?
>>
>> [skip uncalled for and harsh insults]
>
>In an altered mental state, a state of despair she admitted she
>was in, and with any stimulus of which she may or may not
>have been aware (see the Physician's Desk Reference and read
>up on how substances can impact perception - also, consider
>naturalistic conditions, severe depressions, despair, all placed
>in evidence by Sunny, and ponder the naturalistic situation she
>was in).
This is the hazard of stream of consciousness writing combined with a
short attention span. You started to write a sentence and then lost
track. However, making my best guess as to your meaning, if she was
experiencing perceptual impairment to the point she was confusing a
lamp with god, I think it very likely she would have had an awareness
of the impairment itself.
>> I can understand why you have to believe her experience was an
>> artifact of brain activity. What I can't understand is why it is so
>> important to you to make her believe it.
>
>Actually, she conveyed no consideration of naturalistic explanations
>for her condition.
In the first place, that is not a response to what I said. In fact it
just further betrays your preoccupation with getting her to see it
your way. In the second place, she did not specifically divorce her
experience from nature. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if she
considers her god integral with nature.
>That's a typical indicator of the way someone who
>is prone to or vulnerable to suggestion would tie an altered conscious-
>ness event to a childhood religious perception. Unless the naturalistic
>explanations are explored, and possibilities of naturalistic explanations
>are taken into consideration, it would be difficult for Sunny to know
>what happened and why,
And even if the naturalistic accounts are explored, it will still be
difficult to know what happened and why. We have very little
understanding of how the mind exists on a substrate of chemical
reactions.
> choosing to instead lean on a childhood
>religious indoctrination as the leverage point for "the" explanation
>rather than a wide scope of explanations for which no supernatural
>influences are required or desired.
>
>As for verity, if one isn't interested in pursuit of verity, why bother
>thinking about anything, just follow and turn off the old gray matter.
>Surely you aren't suggesting Sunny is better off by dismissing any/all
>naturalistic explanations for her experience, are you?
I'm not convinced she has dismissed naturalism, and when it comes to
curiosity, intellectual integrity, and a willingness to test and
examine her own views, she right up there with the best in this group.
>> >Wow, please track that down. If there are no side effects, and if,
>> >of course, it's approved by the fascists who happen to run our
>> >country (like that's ever going to happen), I'd like to try some of
>> >that.
>>
>> Okay, now you look like a drug-hungry jerk.
>
>Actually, your insult is uncalled for and a pleasant drug experience,
>legal, is quite appealing to many - if you're an anti-drug-taking / pro-
>demonization of drug-taking type, I assure you, we're at opposite
>ends of the drug war / drug usage issues ...
I am fiercely protective of my brain chemistry. I have never consumed
more than a few ounces of alcohol in any given year of my life, I
avoid caffeine, nicotine, and aspartame, I'm very careful around
volatile fumes, there is no way I would mess around with recreational
drugs, and it would only be the most dire circumstances that could
compel me to take even legal affect-altering drugs. Simply put, I
regard taking drugs that alter the fundamental operation of your brain
to be a dumb way to entertain yourself.
And I vigorously oppose the war on drugs. It clearly does far more
harm than good. If it were up to me, I would sweep it away and
reclassify drug abuse as a health issue instead of a criminal issue.
I would make help as available as possible, but confine criminal
charges to cases where drugs were used in a way that harmed or
seriously endangered others.
>>...Your analysis of this event is never going to
>> compete with her experience of this event.
>
>Actually, if you want to believe god was in her light, feel free.
In case you haven't picked up on it from my posts, I'm a strong
atheist. I believe no gods exist.
>I choose
>to explore the naturalistic explanations as Sunny offered, in her state-
>ment, no considerations of naturalism. Only she knows if she's thought
>of the event "outside the box" of religion and considered the naturalistic
>explanations as apart from her god claims.
She's aware of the alternate explanations. She made that very clear
in her post.
>You seem like someone choosing to toss insults without a clue of
>naturalistic explanations for Sunny's experience. If you wish to support
>Sunny, don't pander to her god trip, help her understand the possibilities
>which exist for her experience, help her explore that which she experienced
>so she can either 1) be more comfortable with her god explanation, having
>thoroughly explored and dismissed all alternative explanations, -or- 2) be
>free of her dependence on magic beings which don't exist as anything but
>fantasies of the human imagination.
My views are available to Sunny whenever she wants to explore them.
It is entirely her business what she would like to consider and at
what pace. That is not pandering in the least.
>> >> The essentials seem to be:
>> >> Feeling of peace
>> >> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
>> >> Incredible feeling of love
>> >>
>> >> There are, obviously, many beliefs secondary to that experience.
>> >> I'm back where I started -- god is good :-)
>> >> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Deity" is misleading.
>> >> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
>> >> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
>> >> being."
>> >
>> >Now, you've left your light and rush and are now speaking of generalities
>>
>> No, she is describing other cognitive aspects of the experience. It
>> was you who oversimplified it to "light and rush" in the first place.
>
>No, she's embellishing an experience and speaking of claims apart
>from that which was her experience - read her claim, carefully, and
>think, rationally.
Okay, I've looked at it again. She first describes the affect of the
experience, then its cognitive impact. She does not have the luxury
of directly imparting her experience to our minds, so she is
describing it in terms she hopes can approximate her impressions. She
appears to be making claims for a reality apart from her experience,
but that is an artifact of our perspective. She explicitly does not
separate her experience from an external reality--as we normally do
with our perceptions.
>> >Thanks for having the courage to disregard the holy FAQ and share
>> >your light-rush story with us. When you have an iota of evidence
>> >that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
>> >thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
>> >reason, please get back to us.
>>
>> Your (exceedingly rude)
>
>Considerate and kind.
In Orwellian terms perhaps.
>> challenge to her was to describe her position.
>
>Describe her belief.
>
>> She did that, and did so with grace and patience.
>
>She did so with an absence of consideration of naturalism, as if
>she had an experience and jumped to a conclusion that it was god
>in her light.
She described what she believed. It is not incumbent upon her to
justify that belief to your satisfaction.
>Now, as stated previously, if she has gone down the long
>list of naturalistic explanations, she cared not to share that with us.
That wasn't part of your challenge.
>> [skip insults/untruths]
>
>Sunny does not need your insults/untruths to support her position.
Absolutely nothing I said was in support of her position. She is a
theist, I am a strong atheist. We are at opposite ends of the
god-belief spectrum. What I'm attacking is your behavior. She
deserves better. And frankly, rationalism deserves a better advocate.
>She's claimed god in a light.
>
>If she wishes to discuss the subject further, I welcome her views on
>naturalistic explanations for her experience. If not, there you have it,
>there it is, Sunny has experienced god in a light, believe it or not.
I believe she had the experience she described and has interpreted it
the way she explained. And that doesn't bother me in the least.
Kronk
Dan Fake
> [skip]
(Sunny is what we all are.... in a condensed form)
No, Sunny is similar to some aspects of what those who
once believed in god were ... Those who no longer believe
in god are highly unlikely to see/feel/experience god in
a light ...
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
> Kerry
> aa #1773
Liquid Grace
> "Liquid Grace" <liquid...@youspammingfreak.mailcity.com> wrote in
message news:u1q302b...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > "Dan Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> > news:OH7T7.167426$WW.10...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > > "Liquid Grace" <liquid...@youspammingfreak.mailcity.com> wrote in
> > message news:u1q08s2...@corp.supernews.com...
> > > >
> > > > "Dan Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> > > > news:E17T7.167351$WW.10...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > > > > "Liquid Grace" <liquid...@youspammingfreak.mailcity.com> wrote
in
> > > > message news:u1psdvd...@corp.supernews.com...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Dan Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> > > > > >
news:W_4T7.226126$3d2.10...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > > > > > > "stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message
> > > > > > news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
> > > > > > > > First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in
> > > > particular.
> > Tell me you're not really this think, Dan.
>
> I sense you want me to support Sunny's feeling that she experienced
> god. I am interested in exploring her experience, for I'm not one to
> merely accept a claim as if a claim is worthy merely by it having been
> made. What did Sunny experience? Did she experience god? Is it of
> greater value to support belief in god for those who choose it or is
> it of greater value to support open-minded search for verity, wherever
> that search might lead? I choose the latter. Perhaps you choose the
> former. Such is life.
>
No, you dolt.
I want you to address Sunny in the same respectful manner that she addressed
you originally.
She told you want she experienced and what it meant to her - after, I might
add, you rudely badgered her into it - and you treated that long, well
thought out missive with nothing more than veiled contempt.
Again, you totally missed the point. Why am I not surprised.
Grace
Dan Fake
> >
> >It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
> >considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
>
> And you seem to be fabricating supernaturalistic alternatives where
> there are none.
I've just skimmed the surface of naturalistic explanations
for people imagining god/lights/good feelings ... How you
might attempt to justify a claim that there are no natural
explanations is beyond me. [skip long-winded attempt to
pay homage to Sunny's god light]
Dan Fake
To your requests/demands/inaccuracies/insults ...
Sunny thinks she saw/experienced/felt god in a light.
I don't think she did. Sheesh, you need to increase
your meds ...
Kerry
>
> "Kerry" <clea...@aircleanse.com.au> wrote in message news:3C1D31B5...@aircleanse.com.au...
> > [skip]
>
> (Sunny is what we all are.... in a condensed form)
>
> No, Sunny is similar to some aspects of what those who
> once believed in god were ... Those who no longer believe
> in god are highly unlikely to see/feel/experience god in
> a light ...
>
Sorry. I should have made it a bit clearer. As the word sunny
was the first word in the sentence I used a capital S. To put
what I meant in another way..... all of us are condensed forms
of the sun and it's light.
Kerry
Heathen Bastard
sun...@sccoast.net wrote:
> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
> However, for some reason, my unwillingness to violate that FAQ has
> now become something that angers, and the subject doesn't seem to want
> to go away. I'll try to be as precise as possible, although the
> subject resists precision, and I'll also try to include what I believe
> influenced what I believe, and what other beliefs derive from the more
> specific ones. It won't be complete, but I hope it will be fairly
> representative. If you are offended by god talk, please stop reading.
Well, to my mind, this doesn't constitute a breach - you *were* asked
what your beliefs are. I don;t notrmally read this sort of thing, even
so - but I generally make exceptions in your case,as I find your writing
to be cogent and interesting.
I find your story quite interesting. As a datapoint, your beliefs seem
to be parellel to my wife's; she hasn't had any sort of epiphany, as you
have - but you & she are on the same page. She was raised Unitarian.
After reading you story, I would not consider you a theist; I think that
you explanation of what God is (for you) makes you sound like a
pantheist. There's no "theo" in you belief structure.
Your rejection of religion also explains a lot about why you get along
so well here in a.a.
<snip interesting story>
--
// "If you're not part of the solution, then I'll \\
\\ just get a stronger solvent." --Me //
\\===\\ Heathen Bastard: BAAWA Knight, //===//
\\===\\ cussard extraordinaire, certified loon //===//
Dan Fake
Oh, good point.
ath...@home.com
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
>> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
>
>And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
>Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
>
<snip>
>> Fast forward ahead to about four years into my marriage. We had two
>> small children, and life was as hard as it's ever been. Without going
>> into details, let's just say that my waking hours were exhausting, and
>> gray, and hopeless, and I cried every single day from the pressures of
>> trying to work, go to school, and be a decent mother to two very small
>> and demanding children. I almost never saw my husband, and there was
>> not one penny extra anywhere.
>
>Post-partum depression, perhaps?
Diabetes perhaps Dan?
I'm serious about this.
This is beyond the pale even for you.
You know damn well diabetics have sometimes been mistaken for drunks
and some have actually died in drunk tanks.
This is not a flame.
What you are doing here doesn't make any sense.
Please try to get a grip.
atheist@home#1554
ath...@home.com
Cat-kettle?
It's pot-kettle Dan.
Is there anybody there that you can talk to?
Some of what you are posting is incomprehensible.
atheist@home#1554
Dan Fake
>
>
> [skip]
Actually, the reply to Sunny regarding naturalism was
worthy of consideration. Do try to ponder naturalism
vs. supernaturalism, and the worth of resisting the
temptation to support faith, won't you?
Dan Fake
> [skip]
>
> Cat-kettle?
> It's pot-kettle Dan.
You're right.
> Is there anybody there that you can talk to?
There? Perhaps you meant to say here ... and yes,
I'm speaking to you. Are you listening?
> Some of what you are posting is incomprehensible.
Oh? I suppose you're more receptive to insults being
tossed around ... sorry, not sorry that I'm not into that
scene ...
Mark Richardson
wrote:
<snip personal story>
Thank's for that Sunny - it is brave of you to show us something of
yourself - and thereby risk giving ammunition to your "enemies".
Although if anyone uses your story against you it wont be you that
will be damaged!
>I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
>enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
>them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
>I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
>such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
>And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
>live them than convince anyone else of them.
>
Here Here!
I feel *exactly* the same way.
Cheers, Mark.
--
Mark Richardson mDOTrichardsonATutasDOTeduDOTau
Member of S.M.A.S.H.
(Sarcastic Middle aged Atheists with a Sense of Humour)
-----------------------------------------------------
Ted King
<sun...@sccoast.com> wrote:
> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
> However, for some reason, my unwillingness to violate that FAQ has
> now become something that angers, and the subject doesn't seem to want
> to go away. I'll try to be as precise as possible, although the
> subject resists precision, and I'll also try to include what I believe
> influenced what I believe, and what other beliefs derive from the more
> specific ones. It won't be complete, but I hope it will be fairly
> representative. If you are offended by god talk, please stop reading.
>
> My not very deeply thought out opinion at that time was that if that
> was what religion did to people, I wanted no part of it. I'm not sure
> what my "classification" would have been then, but I suspect I fell
> somewhere in the neighborhood of apatheist. I thought it was possible
> a god existed somewhere, but I sure didn't see any evidence of that
> first "god is good" in any of the manifestations of the religious, and
> wanted nothing to do with it.
>
> Then I went to college, and I ended up falling in love with philosophy
> (and more specifically, the wisdom of one or two excellent
> professors). I also took some comp religion courses. Suddenly I was
> hearing the same questions approached from different minds, minds that
> did not necessarily include god in their equations. I realized that
> humans have been seeking answers to the same questions forever, coming
> up with elegant and beautiful ideas in an attempt to encompass a
> universal philosophy. They *resonated* with me, and made me kind of
> idly wonder if I'd missed something the first time around.
>
> Fast forward ahead to about four years into my marriage. We had two
> small children, and life was as hard as it's ever been. Without going
> into details, let's just say that my waking hours were exhausting, and
> gray, and hopeless, and I cried every single day from the pressures of
> trying to work, go to school, and be a decent mother to two very small
> and demanding children. I almost never saw my husband, and there was
> not one penny extra anywhere.
>
> It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
> barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
> love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
>
> I was fortunate, I think, that I wasn't actively involved in church,
> but also that I had some language to put to it. I wandered around for
> days, wondering if I was insane, and not much caring if I was. As far
> as religious language, it supplied the label -- god. It at least gave
> me some handle to *begin* thinking about it, because humans, I think,
> do need language to talk and think and learn and understand. I've
> been exploring ever since, in every direction I could find.
>
> I am aware of newish research into "the god spot." I know that people
> all over have claimed what sounds very much like this experience from
> dabbling in drugs, from epileptic seizures, from magnetic hats(!),
> from sudden epiphanies -- and even, sometimes, for no discernable
> reason at all. That there is a specific part of my brain associated
> with this phenomenon is completely non-threatening. There's not one
> thing I think or know that *isn't* associated with my brain, and I'm
> aware that the brain itself is divvied up to handle different
> functions. I'm also aware that I could be completely insane, but I
> don't think I am, and don't think my behavior indicates such to other
> people. What always strikes me is not the different means people have
> gotten to this same thing, but the commonality of the experiences,
> across religious beliefs, and even including those who have no god
> belief at all. I think, if I were insane, the experience would be
> more specific to *my* brain only (thinking I'm Napolean, or seeing
> demons or angels or something).
>
> The essentials seem to be:
> Feeling of peace
> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
> Incredible feeling of love
>
> There are, obviously, many beliefs secondary to that experience.
> I'm back where I started -- god is good :-)
> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Diety" is misleading.
> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
> being."
> I'm fascinated by religions, because I'm fascinated by humans. I
> enjoy talking about them, exploring them, learning new things about
> them, looking for things I find resonant or true or universal in them.
> I do not enjoy talking about them when the person I'm talking to has
> such an obvious emotional vested interested in one perspective only.
> And as far as my own personal beliefs go, they're mine. I'd rather
> live them than convince anyone else of them.
>
> Sunny
From a translation of the Tao Te Ching by S. Mitchell:
"A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret."
Sunny embodies the light.
(Well, mostly.)
: )
Ted - a dim bulb.
Michelle Malkin
wrote:
>First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
is no problem with your discussing them.
Michelle Malkin (Mickey)
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
aa atheist list #1 ULC list #3 SMASH member
High Priestess Bastet of the non-Church Temple of Si & Am
EAC Bible Thumper Thumper BAAWA Knight Who Says SPONG!
makym# SPONG!!
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
http://questioner.www2.50megs.com/
http://www.geocities.com/hypatiab7/
Dan Fake
> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> wrote:
>
> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>
> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> is no problem with your discussing them.
I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
Dethstryk
> Sunny thinks she saw/experienced/felt god in a light.
> I don't think she did. Sheesh, you need to increase
> your meds ...
Yet you have to be a complete dickface in saying it.
--
Dethstryk aa #75C
BAAWA Knit
http://www.cox-internet.com/dethstryk/
"I just can't bring myself to drive two hours to see a light show when a
few properly administered pharmaceuticals will give the same effect."
- chib, alt.atheism (11.18.2001)
Dan Fake
> [alt.atheism] Dan Fake (dan...@worldnet.att.net):
>
> > Sunny thinks she saw/experienced/felt god in a light.
> > I don't think she did. Sheesh, you need to increase
> > your meds ...
>
May the forces of Sunny's god light lead you away from
the darkness in your heart ... or, put another way, in a way
you might come closer to comprehending, insult not, and
be at peace.
Kronk
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Kronk" <vo...@isp.com> wrote in message news:3c1d3924...@news.gvtc.com...
>> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 21:19:00 GMT, "Dan Fake"
>> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> > [skip]
>> >
>> >It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
>> >considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
>>
>> And you seem to be fabricating supernaturalistic alternatives where
>> there are none.
>
>I've just skimmed the surface of naturalistic explanations
>for people imagining god/lights/good feelings ...
You also just snipped to take a remark out of context.
>How you
>might attempt to justify a claim that there are no natural
>explanations is beyond me.
And how you got that from anything I said is beyond me.
> [skip long-winded attempt to
>pay homage to Sunny's god light]
You do realize that the posts you cut up and misrepresent remain
available for anyone to refer back to, don't you? When you snip to
take a quote out of context, or snip bits you can't respond to, or
when you give a complete mischaracterization of what you snipped, you
only succeed in making yourself look deceitful, cowardly, and/or
deranged. If you are fooling anyone at all, it's you.
Kronk
Bored With the Boring Again
wrote:
[snip essay for brevity]
Thanks. That was well said. I myself was curious as to what your
beliefs were but was afraid to ask, not because of what -you- might
say, but for fear of attracting yet -more- of the childish squabbling
which seems to be surrounding you as of late.
Erikc (alt.atheist #002) | "An Fhirinne in aghaidh an tSaoil."
BAAWA Knight | "The Truth against the World."
| -- Bardic Motto
Awarded title of "Defacto CLuM" by "kansan" 2001-05-12
======
Remove god to respond.
======
At one point in time, many of us actually had Jesus as
our personal lord and saviour. Unfortunately, we later
had to dismiss him for incompetence, gross negligence,
misconduct and consistent failure to show up for work.
======
Religious people believe IN god.
The religious right believes they ARE god.
======
"Hey, who needs a conscience when jeezuz died for our sins?"
-- Ahriman
raven1
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com...
>> First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>> I have always respected the prohibition against proselytizing.
>
>And now, let's hold hands and bow to the almighty FAQ ...
>Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...
You misspelled "plonk"
<plonk>
Dan Fake
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 00:03:01 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >"Kronk" <vo...@isp.com> wrote in message news:3c1d3924...@news.gvtc.com...
> >> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 21:19:00 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> >> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> > [skip]
> >> >
> >> >It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
> >> >considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
> >>
> >> And you seem to be fabricating supernaturalistic alternatives where
> >> there are none.
You wish to retract or change your statement?
Gobbs
For a second there, I thought you were talking
to Skeptic (aka Boggs). Same difference.
Dan Fake
>
> <plonk>
Still into the band thing, I see. Cool.
Dethstryk
>> > Sunny thinks she saw/experienced/felt god in a light.
>> > I don't think she did. Sheesh, you need to increase
>> > your meds ...
>>
>> Yet you have to be a complete dickface in saying it.
>
> May the forces of Sunny's god light lead you away from
> the darkness in your heart ... or, put another way, in a way
> you might come closer to comprehending, insult not, and
> be at peace.
Don't edit my posts, fuckchop.
--
Dethstryk aa #75C
BAAWA Knit
http://www.cox-internet.com/dethstryk/
"God bless the relentless slaughter of the English language."
- dephile, SA Forums
Dethstryk
> It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
> one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
You missed something? How surprising..
--
Dethstryk aa #75C
BAAWA Knit
http://www.cox-internet.com/dethstryk/
"Only through your limited viewpoint, You think you know how I exist / Easy
to turn my back on the system, Hard not to be an atheist.."
- Anthrax, "Invisible"
stillsunny
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>>
>> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
>> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
>> is no problem with your discussing them.
>
>I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
Not with you, ever again.
You asked what I believed. I gave as clear an answer as I am able. I
knew, when I did so, that your purpose was not "curiosity." You
wanted it laid out, so that you could play with it, offer sarcasm and
ridicule, and attempt to retranslate it in terms you're more happy
with. You, like every other preacher I have ever known, want to
superimpose what you want to be true over what I experienced. You
want your own theology to be applicable. I think, as I do not trust
them to interpret it for me, it would be inconsistent of me to trust
you.
Further, I have no reason to trust you at all.
You said, at the end of your comments to my message,
> When you have an iota of evidence
>that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
>thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
>reason, please get back to us.
I will never have that evidence, and we both know it. I will take
that as my cue to excuse myself. And since you clipped it, I'll
restate the reason (although I'm reasonably certain you'll clip it
again as insult, and offer something smarmy in return). I do not
enjoy discussing *anything* with *anyone* who has an emotional
investment in making me see things their way. If you want to talk
about hell, talk to the person who handed it to you.
I wish you no ill will, Dan. I sincerely hope you get past whatever's
making you see monsters everywhere you turn, and making you think
somehow that nastiness is love, and sarcasm is prohumanism. I think
you're a smart man in many ways, and there's something to be learned
by all of us, from all of us. I truly and honestly hope you find a
way to live in a manner consistent with the rather noble principles
you espouse in your philosophy.
But I will not ever discuss my personal beliefs with you again.
Sunny
Dan Fake
> [skip]
>
> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
like you have no intelligence.
Gobbs
So what would make you happy Dan? Would you have all
the atheists in the newsgroup proclaim that Sunny is
delusional & deceitful, but you, Dan Fake, are god?
Fuck off, you arrogant dickhead. I'd take Sunny any
day over the likes of an ignorant little pissant as
you. You & Skeptic are the worst alt.atheism has to
offer. The two of you really do deserve each other.
Heathen Bastard
<nzdT7.168281$WW.10...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, "Dan
Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
Dan, you're getting tiresome, again. Bye.
<plonk>
Dan Fake
You're the one with the emotional investment in the god light, so
don't get all snitty about it. As for talking about anything, my door
is open. Since I'm a naturalist, don't be surprised if I explore every
naturalistic angle when pondering the nature of life's mysteries ...
>
> I wish you no ill will, Dan.
Oh?
> I sincerely hope you get past whatever's
> making you see monsters everywhere you turn,
Hey, you're the one seeing god lights. I'm not seeing monsters,
but if I do, I'll be more than happy to discuss it openly and in
an objective and critical manner, something you seem unable to
do when it comes to your god light (I'm now petting my invisible
pink furry friend, WOW, it's smiling and is one with the good
side, like your god light, and I'm only doing so to light-heartedly
offer an opportunity for us all to take the whole god show a bit
less seriously - WOW is purring and cooing ... oh well, so much
for the light-hearted approach ... back to reality) ...
> and making you think
> somehow that nastiness is love, and sarcasm is prohumanism.
Please, my firm confidence that naturalism explains all does not
mate to your attributions which are solely a revelation of your
insecurity about the existence of your god, a god you feel *must*
exist, for reasons only *you* know, not I, for any time anyone
tries to explore your beliefs, you run and hide and claim victim
status.
> I think
> you're a smart man in many ways, and there's something to be learned
> by all of us, from all of us. I truly and honestly hope you find a
> way to live in a manner consistent with the rather noble principles
> you espouse in your philosophy.
>
> But I will not ever discuss my personal beliefs with you again.
Because you fear I might explore the naturalistic explanations,
thereby obviating your need to see that god is "the" explanation?
Sheesh, fear of no god, never have I seen it with more clarity
than in your case.
You need not appeal for sympathy, here. You offered a god light
and I inquired about naturalism. Since you seem to have no interest
in naturalistic exploration of your god light and appear to be close-
minded to any non-god point of view on the topic, I'll just file
your story under the "yet another religious claim" file, to be dis-
cussed in the future at which time you may be more open to
naturalistic exploration of the experience. Chill.
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
> Sunny
Dan Fake
> Dan Fake wrote:
> >
> > "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com>
> > wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> > > On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> > >
> > > No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> > > about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> > > is no problem with your discussing them.
> >
> > I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
> >
> > Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> >
> > It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's
> > been one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
>
Somehow, I don't think my happiness is something you
are interested in, but hey, maybe you feel cussing at
someone makes them happy ... go figure ...
Jeff Graham
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
If it is, can I be pope? Or at least a cardinal...
--
Jeffrey L. Graham - a.a.# 1946 - BAAWA Bard,
ULC Imam, Saint and High priest
EAC Dept of Hymn Parodies
High Priest of Guinubis
ICQ 55638228
http://jeff_9921.tripod.com/templeofguinubis/
http://jeff_9921.tripod.com/religioushumour/
If beings experience pain and happiness as the result of some God's creation then [they] must have been created by a wicked god since they suffer such terrible pain.
- Buddha (Devadaha Sutta)
Personal replies may be posted to alt.fan.jeffrey-graham (if your server doesn't carry it, ask for it).
stillsunny
wrote:
>stillsunny wrote:
>
>What took some courage to do, and I tend to feel is probably understood
>better by most who are labelled by the religionists strawman "atheist"
>than those who profit from the guilt and control freaks of the world.
>
><snip some>
>
>> It was like touching eternity, and finding that it's not cold and
>> barren and unconcerned, but that it's active, and informed by an aware
>> love and wisdom, and that I'm part of it.
>
><snip some more>
>
>> The essentials seem to be:
>> Feeling of peace
>> Feeling of being *part* of the whole thing
>> Incredible feeling of love
>
><and just aa little more>
>
>> God is awareness, but not a separate being. "Diety" is misleading.
>> God is everywhere, in the sum total of all things, and beyond; what
>> Spong, I think, struggles to enunciate when he calls god "ground of
>> being."
>
>This bit here is a view that I believe is that which is in common with
>three of my inspirations; Gautama Buddha, Apollonius of Tyana, and the
>one who was burned at the stake only a little over 400 years ago for his
>heresy, Giordano Bruno. The last one was the only one of the three who
>was murdered for his beliefs and is one reason (of many) that using the
>word "god" is rejected in total [by me] for that which has been
>prostituted by religion for temporal power and wealth at the expense of
>humanity. So in a nutshell.... why bother with a word (god) that is not
>understood by those who claim the earthly riches they accumulate and the
>masses they subjugate, or is in anyway an apt description of the greater
>and indescribable power of that in which includes the whole universe.
Thank you for your comments. That sounds really dry, doesn't it? I
don't mean it to. I'll try to explain.
Words are icons. They mean, or evoke, what we associate with them. I
learned the word "god" before I knew one thing about how that word or
name has been used in harmful ways. The name "god" was what I was
using prior to that experience. The word "god" is what will forever
be associated, to me, with that experience. I'm quite aware (as
Stoney has said :-) that the letter sting is undefined, and and that
it means all sorts of things to all sorts of different people.
But people do like language. In fact, there are some theories that
say our intelligence and capacity to learn is directly related to our
capacity to give language to our lives. Because I'm interested in it,
in so very many ways, I need a word to attach to it. And in fact,
when I go through the different theologies of different belief
systems, I read (into them perhaps) shadows and reflections of the
same thing. I have no other word to call it, though if you have one,
I'll be happy to try it out. (I already tried Tao, and it just didn't
work for me).
>Stick around and don't be bullied by anyone.
>
>I'm one who has stayed around this group on occasions *because you have*
>shared your journey to where you are now. The word *god* is the sticking
>point. Well.... stick that word, and find another. What you wrote above
>is a damn good start, but as long as that word is used.... the arguments
>follow. (Sunny is what we all are.... in a condensed form)
I thank you for reminding us that we are all made of the stuff of
stars (I read your later message).
We are. And really, that's all I got from that experience, anyhow.
Not an intellectual, well, yes, I guess we are, but an emphatic,
*yes*, we are part and parcel of this whole thing.
Sunny
>Kerry
>aa #1773
Dan Fake
news:heathen_bastard-DE...@news.newsguy.com...
> In article
> <nzdT7.168281$WW.10...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, "Dan
> Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message
> > news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> > > On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> > >
> > > No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> > > about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> > > is no problem with your discussing them.
> >
> > I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
> >
> > Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> >
> > It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
> > one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
>
> Dan, you're getting tiresome, again. Bye.
> <plonk>
Heathen Bastard? Never heard of you. ...
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
Dan Fake
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 03:24:03 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >"Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> >> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> >>
> >> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> >> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> >> is no problem with your discussing them.
> >
> >I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
> >
> >Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> >
> >It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
> >one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
>
> If it is, can I be pope? Or at least a cardinal...
Not up on my latin, so I'll just wing it ...
Deux papala desta capula augustus capernum
I now annoint thee Pope of alt.atheism ...
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
>
stillsunny
>In article <0bcp1u8ruest6ae1p...@4ax.com>, stillsunny
><sun...@sccoast.com> wrote:
<snip>
>From a translation of the Tao Te Ching by S. Mitchell:
>
>"A good traveler has no fixed plans
>and is not intent upon arriving.
>A good artist lets his intuition
>lead him wherever it wants.
>A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
>and keeps his mind open to what is.
>
>Thus the Master is available to all people
>and doesn't reject anyone.
>He is ready to use all situations
>and doesn't waste anything.
>This is called embodying the light.
>
>What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
>What is a bad man but a good man's job?
>If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
>however intelligent you are.
>It is the great secret."
<just a note; glad Ted occupies the same atmosphere I do>
Michelle Malkin
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Dethstryk" <jema...@tcainternet.com> wrote in message news:Xns9179E363A7724je...@207.126.101.100...
>> [skip]
>>
>> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
>
>Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
>like you have no intelligence.
>
What insults? You seem to have snipped his entire message.
You've been doing a lot of this lately. Taking lessons from Skeptic
(now posting as Boggs)?
Lord Calvert
>>one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
>
>If it is, can I be pope? Or at least a cardinal...
Everyone is a Pope!
http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/popecard.gif
http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/old_pope_card.gif
Rich Goranson, Amherst, NY, USA (aa#MCMXCIX)
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the
strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. -- Thomas Paine
Kronk
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Kronk" <vo...@isp.com> wrote in message news:3c1d811e...@news.gvtc.com...
>> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 00:03:01 GMT, "Dan Fake"
>> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >"Kronk" <vo...@isp.com> wrote in message news:3c1d3924...@news.gvtc.com...
>> >> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 21:19:00 GMT, "Dan Fake"
>> >> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > [skip]
>> >> >
>> >> >It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
>> >> >considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
>> >>
>> >> And you seem to be fabricating supernaturalistic alternatives where
>> >> there are none.
>
>You wish to retract or change your statement?
Of course not. However, since you have apparently lost all track of
context, I'll reconstruct the series for you.
Sunny gave a number of reasons why she was at a very low point,
including exhaustion, work, school, two kids, money problems, and
hardly getting to see her own husband.
You:
Post-partum depression, perhaps?
Me:
That's it. Blame the hormones. Overlook all the obvious factors she
just described.
You:
It's a question. Calm down, you seem to find naturalistic
considerations to be unworthy out of hand. Why?
Me:
And you seem to be fabricating supernaturalistic alternatives where
there are none. All the factors she described as contributing to her
low spirits were perfectly natural. If I had been in her situation, I
very likely would have found them completely ample to get me depressed
as well. My objection to your hormone theory was not that it was
naturalistic, it is that it was superfluous considering an ample
explanation had already been given. It also smells a bit of sexism,
but I'll have to leave it to the women to decide if it was offensive
on that count as well.
In case you still don't understand, the critical bit is that you
intimated I was objecting to your post-partum suggestion because I was
finding naturalistic considerations unworthy. And clearly, that would
only make sense if the alternatives were supernaturalistic. But no
factor Sunny offered was supernaturalistic. That only leaves your
imaginings as the source of the implied supernaturalistic
alternatives.
Was that simple enough for you to follow this time?
Kronk
Michelle Malkin
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>>
>> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
>> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
>> is no problem with your discussing them.
>
>I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
Why should she, if she doesn't want to. You aren't God, you know, to
demand what you want. Since God doesn't exist, you're out of luck.
>
>Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
Because you haven't entirely escaped from your old religious mindset
and keep applying it where it don't belong?
>
>It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
>one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
But, if everyone in alt.atheism agreed with Father Dan, everything
would be just peachy dorey, eh?
Gobbs
>
> "Gobbs" <go...@anti-septic.com> wrote in message news:3C1D7A57...@anti-septic.com...
> > Dan Fake wrote:
> > >
> > > "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com>
> > > wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> > > > On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> > > >
> > > > No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> > > > about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> > > > is no problem with your discussing them.
> > >
> > > I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
> > >
> > > Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> > >
> > > It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's
> > > been one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
> >
> > So what would make you happy Dan? [skip]
>
> Somehow, I don't think my happiness is something you
Don't be silly, Dan. I would like to see you
happy. Maybe you wouldn't be such an asshole.
Gobbs
>
> "Dethstryk" <jema...@tcainternet.com> wrote in message news:
> Xns9179E363A7724je...@207.126.101.100...
> > [skip]
> >
> > Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
>
> Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
> like you have no intelligence.
You & Septic have this in common too: You're
utterly dishonest, you snip posts _without_
acknowledging it, and take the poster out of
context. Then you whine when someone calls
you an asshole for doing so!!! Twin sons of
different mothers, perhaps?
Michelle Malkin
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
You really CAN'T give up, can you, Dan? Sunny said that she will not
discuss her beliefs with you anymore, yet you continue to discuss her
beliefs. She has as much as said that she has plonked you as being
untrustworthy. I'm doing this for certain (and not for the first
time).
Sorry to remove part of your limelight...
PLONK!
ath...@home.com
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
><ath...@home.com> wrote in message news:3c1d3e4c.100377630@news-server...
>> [skip]
>>
>> Cat-kettle?
>> It's pot-kettle Dan.
>
>You're right.
Yes I am and you were wrong.
The mistake itself didn't make any sense Dan.
You substituted an inantimate object for a living creature.
A person who is mentally exhausted might do that, or one who is drunk
or on drugs, or a stroke victim, but a normal person with a normally
functioning brain would not.
>> Is there anybody there that you can talk to?
>
>There? Perhaps you meant to say here ... and yes,
>I'm speaking to you. Are you listening?
No, I meant there.
You are *there* Dan relative to where I am.
You just made another mistake a normal person would not make.
You are making lots of mistakes Dan.
Why don't you just tell me you are not having a problem with your
insulin and let's work from there?
But then if you are and it's passed a certain point, how the hell
would you know?
>> Some of what you are posting is incomprehensible.
>
>Oh? I suppose you're more receptive to insults being
>tossed around ... sorry, not sorry that I'm not into that
>scene ...
You have been very insulting to a number of people all night.
You are being very aggressive and somewhat out of character.
atheist@home#1554
Dan Fake
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 04:54:00 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >"Dethstryk" <jema...@tcainternet.com> wrote in message news:Xns9179E363A7724je...@207.126.101.100...
> >> [skip]
> >>
> >> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
> >
> >Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
> >like you have no intelligence.
> >
> What insults? You seem to have snipped his entire message.
> You've been doing a lot of this lately. Taking lessons from Skeptic
> (now posting as Boggs)?
Are you really that dense? When someone calls you a name,
an epithet, a curse word, why would I, in my reply, repeat
the insult? I normally don't. Deathstryk, in another thread,
threw together about 7 insults and I listed them all because
it appeared silly. I assure you, repeating insults is something
I usually avoid doing. If you like insults, add it to your FAQ,
something like "insults should be included in posts so we know,
in your reply, the exact insult you are replying to" ... sheesh ...
Dan Fake
> Dan Fake wrote:
> >
> > "Dethstryk" <jema...@tcainternet.com> wrote in message news:
> > Xns9179E363A7724je...@207.126.101.100...
> > > [skip]
> > >
> > > Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
> >
> > Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
> > like you have no intelligence.
>
What a shame, your tendency to rely on insults.
Dan Fake
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 01:17:29 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> ><ath...@home.com> wrote in message news:3c1d3e4c.100377630@news-server...
> >> [skip]
> >>
> >> Cat-kettle?
> >> It's pot-kettle Dan.
> >
> >You're right.
>
> Yes I am and you were wrong.
> The mistake itself didn't make any sense Dan.
> You substituted an inantimate object for a living creature.
> A person who is mentally exhausted might do that, or one who is drunk
> or on drugs, or a stroke victim, but a normal person with a normally
> functioning brain would not.
You're being silly and presumptive and insulting, to boot.
>
> >> Is there anybody there that you can talk to?
> >
> >There? Perhaps you meant to say here ... and yes,
> >I'm speaking to you. Are you listening?
>
> No, I meant there.
> You are *there* Dan relative to where I am.
> You just made another mistake a normal person would not make.
> You are making lots of mistakes Dan.
> Why don't you just tell me you are not having a problem with your
> insulin and let's work from there?
> But then if you are and it's passed a certain point, how the hell
> would you know?
You're being silly, again, and insulting, again. 1) Stop playing
the role of my mother (I have one, already), 2) Stop playing the
role of my psychologist (my ex-wife serves that role, and one
psychologist is more than enough, I assure you), 3) Stop playing
the role of my doctor (you aren't qualified).
>
> >> Some of what you are posting is incomprehensible.
> >
> >Oh? I suppose you're more receptive to insults being
> >tossed around ... sorry, not sorry that I'm not into that
> >scene ...
>
> You have been very insulting to a number of people all night.
Hey, here's my chance, Pot-Kettle-Black ... did I get it right?
Oh joy. You are being a real pain in the you-know-what and
I'd appreciate it if you follow my simple instructions, above.
> You are being very aggressive and somewhat out of character.
Discussing Sunny's God has you (and quite a few others) all in
a fit. Take a chill pill. I assure you, she's one tough cookie. My
little inquiry into her god experience is not going to shake her
faith in humanity. As for your concern for me, thanks, stop
already ... much more concern, and you'll drive me crazy ... (-:
Dan Fake
No, but don't worry about it.
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
> Kronk
Dan Fake
I replied to her post. You really are being thick tonight.
> She has as much as said that she has plonked you as being
> untrustworthy. I'm doing this for certain (and not for the first
> time).
She's upset I questioned her belief in god.
>
> Sorry to remove part of your limelight...
>
> PLONK!
Fine. Note to group - don't offer Sunny naturalistic options
when she discusses her faith ... but, aside from Sunny, keep
in mind, this is alt.atheism, and disbelief really is OK ...
Dan Fake
No, you see, happiness and insulting someone are disconnects,
usually. However, maybe that's the way you make friends. Doesn't
work for most folks, though.
Dan Fake
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 03:24:03 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >"Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> >> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> >>
> >> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> >> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> >> is no problem with your discussing them.
> >
> >I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
>
> Why should she, if she doesn't want to. You aren't God, you know, to
> demand what you want. Since God doesn't exist, you're out of luck.
Your reply to what I said is a non sequitur. I didn't say she should,
I didn't say I was God, I didn't demand anything and odd you'd
mention no god existing in a thread whereby I've been excoriated
by you and others for questioning Sunny's claim that she experienced/
felt/saw god in a light.
> >
> >Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
>
> Because you haven't entirely escaped from your old religious mindset
> and keep applying it where it don't belong?
No, actually it's because your statement sounded like what a priest of
alt.atheism might say.
> >
> >It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
> >one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
>
> But, if everyone in alt.atheism agreed with Father Dan, everything
> would be just peachy dorey, eh?
If you threw out the FAQ, we'd all be blessed, my child.
ath...@home.com
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
<snip>
>Fine. Note to group - don't offer Sunny naturalistic options
>when she discusses her faith ... but, aside from Sunny, keep
>in mind, this is alt.atheism, and disbelief really is OK ...
I think I'm the only one left listening Dan.
But I'm finished now as well.
Goodbye, good luck and good riddence.
Plonk!
atheist@home#1554
Kronk
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:n0tq1u87oor3l0mqm...@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 03:24:03 GMT, "Dan Fake"
>> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
<...>
>> I will never have that evidence, and we both know it. I will take
>> that as my cue to excuse myself. And since you clipped it, I'll
>> restate the reason (although I'm reasonably certain you'll clip it
>> again as insult, and offer something smarmy in return). I do not
>> enjoy discussing *anything* with *anyone* who has an emotional
>> investment in making me see things their way. If you want to talk
>> about hell, talk to the person who handed it to you.
>
>You're the one with the emotional investment in the god light, so
>don't get all snitty about it.
You sad, clueless man. She has every right to be hurt and offended by
your behavior, but as usual, her overriding concern is for your
well-being. And in return, you dismissively characterize her reaction
as a snit. It just betrays the depth of your disconnect with other
humans.
>As for talking about anything, my door is open.
You aren't interested in talking. You aren't looking for an
interchange of ideas and perspectives. You just want to preach your
gospel of naturalism at her some more.
>Since I'm a naturalist, don't be surprised if I explore every
>naturalistic angle when pondering the nature of life's mysteries ...
You are nothing like an explorer. Your mind is made up, locked up,
and fortified against any revision. You think you have arrived at
Truth, and your certainty in that conviction is unshakable. You have
decided in advance that you know the limits of nature and there is no
conceivable demonstration which could make you consider expanding your
view. You expect Sunny to be open to your view while you haven't the
slightest intention of ever being open to her view. If you had any
scientific inclinations, you would always be open to the possibility
that you could be wrong. If you had any confidence in your position,
you wouldn't need to cling to it as an article of faith.
>> I sincerely hope you get past whatever's
>> making you see monsters everywhere you turn,
>
>Hey, you're the one seeing god lights. I'm not seeing monsters,
>but if I do, I'll be more than happy to discuss it openly and in
>an objective and critical manner,
When you think Sunny is some sort of deceitful temptress bent on
luring hapless atheists into the trap of theism, you are seeing
monsters. There is no trace of objectivity in what you've been
posting recently.
>something you seem unable to
>do when it comes to your god light (I'm now petting my invisible
>pink furry friend, WOW, it's smiling and is one with the good
>side, like your god light, and I'm only doing so to light-heartedly
Oh yes, jeering, japing, sneering, mocking, derisive, sarcastic
ridicule of the "light-hearted" variety.
>offer an opportunity for us all to take the whole god show a bit
>less seriously - WOW is purring and cooing ... oh well, so much
>for the light-hearted approach ... back to reality) ...
If you were secure about your perception of reality, you wouldn't need
to take refuge in childish and unfunny lampoonery like this.
>> and making you think
>> somehow that nastiness is love, and sarcasm is prohumanism.
>
>Please, my firm confidence that naturalism explains all does not
>mate to your attributions
Indeed. It is your behavior which merits you those attributions. And
you do not come across as confident. And your naturalistic
explanations will only go a short ways because our knowledge of nature
is still extremely rudimentary. You have no idea how the fundamentals
of our reality were established, you can't invoke nature to explain
nature, and we have a worm's eye view of complex systems. If you were
to scan a living brain, you could map out the activity down to the
firings of the individual neurons and still have no clue whatsoever
that there was a mind at work in all that activity. We happen to have
the benefit of an insider's perspective to let us know that there is
indeed at least one mind in there, but given the enormous number of
interactive events that take place in the universe, are you really
dead certain that there isn't some larger transcendent mind? If so,
what is the basis of that certainty?
>which are solely a revelation of your
>insecurity about the existence of your god, a god you feel *must*
>exist, for reasons only *you* know, not I, for any time anyone
>tries to explore your beliefs, you run and hide and claim victim
>status.
Her letting you know you succeeded in hurting her feelings was not
some ploy to obtain the perks of victimhood. It was for your benefit
in the optimistic (some would say unrealistic) hope that you might
gain some insight into the effect you have on others.
>> But I will not ever discuss my personal beliefs with you again.
>
>Because you fear I might explore the naturalistic explanations,
>thereby obviating your need to see that god is "the" explanation?
>Sheesh, fear of no god, never have I seen it with more clarity
>than in your case.
More likely because you are rude, pushy, arrogant, abusive, offensive,
insulting, derisive, snide, dishonest, cowardly, contemptuous,
condescending, childish, irrational, insecure, dogmatic,
disrespectful, peevish, and smug.
>You need not appeal for sympathy, here.
Because Dan the humanist freelover has none.
>You offered a god light and I inquired about naturalism.
Are you an insufferable blithering idiot? Just inquiring.
>Since you seem to have no interest
>in naturalistic exploration of your god light
What is the basis of your notion that Sunny's god is something apart
from natural reality?
>and appear to be close-minded to any non-god point of view on the topic,
Says the man whose mind is irrevocably made up.
>I'll just file
>your story under the "yet another religious claim" file,
You could have done that right at the beginning. You already knew she
was a theist and that you would reject whatever she had to say on the
matter.
>to be discussed in the future
Not bloody likely.
>at which time you may be more open to naturalistic exploration of the experience.
You're the one with the mind clamped shut. You're the one who would
never consider an exploration of alternatives to your own views. And
for all you know, she is already a naturalist--merely embracing a
larger Nature than you do.
Kronk
ath...@home.com
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
<snip>
>As for your concern for me, thanks, stop
>already ... much more concern, and you'll drive me crazy ... (-:
You got it.
atheist@home#1554
*nemo*
news:1BfT7.228057$3d2.10...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
<snip>
> > I sincerely hope you get past whatever's
> > making you see monsters everywhere you turn,
>
> Hey, you're the one seeing god lights. I'm not seeing monsters,
> but if I do, I'll be more than happy to discuss it openly and in
> an objective and critical manner, something you seem unable to
> do when it comes to your god light (I'm now petting my invisible
> pink furry friend, WOW, it's smiling and is one with the good
> side, like your god light, and I'm only doing so to light-heartedly
> offer an opportunity for us all to take the whole god show a bit
> less seriously - WOW is purring and cooing ... oh well, so much
> for the light-hearted approach ... back to reality) ...
>
Man, I thought I'd seen some nasty, awful posts from religious nut cases
directed at atheists in the past, but this sarcastic little parody posted
from an atheist to a theist is among the nastiest. If this is your version
of "love and understanding," I'd really hate to see what happend when you're
blindly angry at someone.
I hardly ever <plonk> atheists, but I think you've more than earned it, Dan.
Goodbye, mon.
<PLONK>
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.att.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
**************************************************
A little hedonism never hurt anybody...
**************************************************
/\tomkinder
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 09:24:20 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> >Fine. Note to group - don't offer Sunny naturalistic options
> >when she discusses her faith ... but, aside from Sunny, keep
> >in mind, this is alt.atheism, and disbelief really is OK ...
>
> I think I'm the only one left listening Dan.
> But I'm finished now as well.
> Goodbye, good luck and good riddence.
>
> Plonk!
No, you weren't, but now I'm afraid he'll be all alone.
<PLONK>
> atheist@home#1554
> >- - -
> >
> > Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREEASS
--
/\tom
aa #1984
/\tomkinder
> "Heathen Bastard" <heathen...@heathenbastard.com> wrote in message
> news:heathen_bastard-DE...@news.newsguy.com...
> > In article
> > <nzdT7.168281$WW.10...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, "Dan
> > Fake" <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > > "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message
> > > news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> > > > On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in
particular.
> > > >
> > > > No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point
blank
> > > > about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> > > > is no problem with your discussing them.
> > >
> > > I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism
...
> > >
> > > Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> > >
> > > It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's
been
> > > one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
> >
> > Dan, you're getting tiresome, again. Bye.
> > <plonk>
>
> Heathen Bastard? Never heard of you. ...
I'm sure that hurt his feelings OH so much.
> - - -
>
> Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREEASS
> http://danfake.home.att.net
>
> >
> > --
> > // "If you're not part of the solution, then I'll \\
> > \\ just get a stronger solvent." --Me //
> > \\===\\ Heathen Bastard: BAAWA Knight, //===//
> > \\===\\ cussard extraordinaire, certified loon //===//
/\tomkinder
> "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message
news:njer1u09hten4d5js...@4ax.com...
> > On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 03:24:03 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> > <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > >"Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message
news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> > >> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> > >> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in
particular.
> > >>
> > >> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> > >> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> > >> is no problem with your discussing them.
> > >
> > >I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism
...
> >
> > Why should she, if she doesn't want to. You aren't God, you know, to
> > demand what you want. Since God doesn't exist, you're out of luck.
>
> Your reply to what I said is a non sequitur. I didn't say she should,
> I didn't say I was God, I didn't demand anything and odd you'd
> mention no god existing in a thread whereby I've been excoriated
> by you and others for questioning Sunny's claim that she experienced/
> felt/saw god in a light.
Just because she's a beautiful person REGARDLESS of her beliefs doesn't give
you the fucking right to try and tear her a new one! To quote Snatch "Now...
fuck off!"
> > >
> > >Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> >
> > Because you haven't entirely escaped from your old religious mindset
> > and keep applying it where it don't belong?
>
> No, actually it's because your statement sounded like what a priest of
> alt.atheism might say.
>
> > >
> > >It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's
been
> > >one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
> >
> > But, if everyone in alt.atheism agreed with Father Dan, everything
> > would be just peachy dorey, eh?
>
> If you threw out the FAQ, we'd all be blessed, my child.
>
> - - -
>
> Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREEASS
Gobbs
>
> "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message news:sodr1u0dlfu16ovdf...@4ax.com...
> > On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 04:54:00 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> > <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> > >"Dethstryk" <jema...@tcainternet.com> wrote in message news:Xns9179E363A7724je...@207.126.101.100...
> > >> [skip]
> > >>
> > >> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
> > >
> > >Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
> > >like you have no intelligence.
> > >
> > What insults? You seem to have snipped his entire message.
> > You've been doing a lot of this lately. Taking lessons from Skeptic
> > (now posting as Boggs)?
>
(Dan asks himself, as he stares into the mirror)
When you're dishonest, people are likely to call
you names. Whining about insults _after_ you've
done your best to earn them just makes you look
like a pussy, on top of being an asshole. :-(
Gobbs
>
> "Gobbs" <go...@anti-septic.com> wrote in message news:3C1D926A...@anti-septic.com...
> > Dan Fake wrote:
> > >
> > > "Dethstryk" <jema...@tcainternet.com> wrote in message news:
> > > Xns9179E363A7724je...@207.126.101.100...
> > > > [skip]
> > > >
> > > > Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
> > >
> > > Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
> > > like you have no intelligence.
> >
> > [skip insult]
>
What, your tendency to snip? Oh, you call it
"skipping", isn't that special?
Gobbs
[snip]
> Man, I thought I'd seen some nasty, awful posts from religious nut cases
> directed at atheists in the past, but this sarcastic little parody posted
> from an atheist to a theist is among the nastiest. If this is your version
> of "love and understanding," I'd really hate to see what happend when you're
> blindly angry at someone.
>
> I hardly ever <plonk> atheists, but I think you've more than earned it, Dan.
>
> Goodbye, mon.
>
> <PLONK>
Congrats, Dan. You've almost alienated as many
of your fellow atheists as your buddy Skeptic.
You should feel real proud of yourself, loser.
Gobbs
>
> "Gobbs" <go...@anti-septic.com> wrote in message news:3C1D9196...@anti-septic.com...
> > Dan Fake wrote:
> > >
> > > "Gobbs" <go...@anti-septic.com> wrote in message news:3C1D7A57...@anti-septic.com...
> > > > Dan Fake wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > "Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com>
> > > > > wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
> > > > > > On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
> > > > > > about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
> > > > > > is no problem with your discussing them.
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
> > > > >
> > > > > Why does your reply remind me of something a priest might say ... ?
> > > > >
> > > > > It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's
> > > > > been one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
> > > >
> > > > So what would make you happy Dan? [skip]
> > >
> > > Somehow, I don't think my happiness is something you
> > > are interested in...
> >
> > Don't be silly, Dan. I would like to see you
> > happy. Maybe you wouldn't be such an [skip insult].
>
No, you see, happiness and being an asshole are disconnnects.
I'm happy to insult you Dan, so long as you're being an asshole.
Liquid Grace
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> >Fine. Note to group - don't offer Sunny naturalistic options
> >when she discusses her faith ... but, aside from Sunny, keep
> >in mind, this is alt.atheism, and disbelief really is OK ...
>
> I think I'm the only one left listening Dan.
> But I'm finished now as well.
> Goodbye, good luck and good riddence.
>
> Plonk!
>
See it and raise you...
<Plonk>
Grace
Adam Marczyk
news:u1sa2i8...@corp.supernews.com...
I killfiled him a long time ago, and I'm glad I did so now. Even from
reading other people's posts in this thread, I can see Dan's behavior is
unconscionable. He's being a complete jackass. I make it my policy only to
argue with theists who are rude or obnoxious, and Sunny's about as far from
either of those as you get. She has every right to believe what she wants,
and she's at least as nice as anyone else on this group.
--
a.a. #2001
"Blasphemy is a victimless crime."
Director, EAC Black Monolith Division - "My God, it's full of stars"
Operative: EAC Electronic Warfare Division
EAC Subversive Fiction Division
http://www.ebonmusings.org ICQ: 8777843
MEow
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> on Mon, 17 Dec 2001 04:54:00 GMT wrote:
>> [skip]
>>
>> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
>
>Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
>like you have no intelligence.
>
me of the "Beep" sounds used on American TV.
--
Nikitta - Female with gender-ambiguous name
Lifelong atheist #1759. EAC - Spanker of Theists
AFV Bitchiness-Club
"Do you mean they answered the phone?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How on earth did you managed to make them do that???????" Amynthas (Sheddie)
Dan Fake
> The alien which happened to be occupying the body of "Dan Fake"
> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> on Mon, 17 Dec 2001 04:54:00 GMT wrote:
> >> [skip]
> >>
> >> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
> >
> >Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
> >like you have no intelligence.
> >
> I thought you said you were against censorship? Your editing reminds
> me of the "Beep" sounds used on American TV.
Don't know why folks are fascinated with insults. Replace
[skip insult] above with "fuckchop". Don't know what
"fuckchop" means, reminds me of lambchop ... I'm not
into repeating insults, usually, but for you, I'll make an
exception ... as for all that came before, I suggest one gets
a newsreader that allows easy clicking on items in order in
a thread -or- use http://www.google.com as they have a
cool thread thing going on in there (or at least they did last
time I checked) ...
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
Dan Fake
> Liquid Grace <liquid...@youspammingfreak.mailcity.com> wrote in message
> news:u1sa2i8...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > <ath...@home.com> wrote in message news:3c1dbc3e.132624850@news-server...
> > > On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 09:24:20 GMT, "Dan Fake"
> > > <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > <snip>
> > > >Fine. Note to group - don't offer Sunny naturalistic options
> > > >when she discusses her faith ... but, aside from Sunny, keep
> > > >in mind, this is alt.atheism, and disbelief really is OK ...
> > >
> > > I think I'm the only one left listening Dan.
> > > But I'm finished now as well.
> > > Goodbye, good luck and good riddence.
> > >
> > > Plonk!
> >
> > See it and raise you...
> >
> > <Plonk>
>
> I killfiled him a long time ago, and I'm glad I did so now. Even from
> reading other people's posts in this thread, I can see Dan's behavior is
> unconscionable. He's being a complete jackass. I make it my policy only to
> argue with theists who are rude or obnoxious, and Sunny's about as far from
> either of those as you get. She has every right to believe what she wants,
> and she's at least as nice as anyone else on this group.
And, her views are subject to examination ... may allah be praised ...
just threw that in, for grins ...
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
>
Darwin
Taking issue with her beliefs is attempting to 'tear her a new one'?
To quote Snatch "Now...
>fuck off!"
Maybe all of you who admire Sunny so much should take the opportunity
to learn from her. When's the last time you eve heard Sunny tell
someone to "fuck off"? I think it's interesting that the trait you
all admire in her so much is the very one most of you don't possess.
I guess that's to be expected, though.
--
Darwin - aa # 1985
"We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and
discoverers-thieves planting flags, murderers carrying
crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of
dreams." -Peter S. Beagle, in reference to Tolkien's
Hobbits.
MEow
wrote:
>>>It's almost like alt.atheism is turning into a church (or maybe it's been
>>>one all along, and I just missed that key element) ...
>>
>>If it is, can I be pope? Or at least a cardinal...
>
>Everyone is a Pope!
>
>http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/popecard.gif
>
>http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/old_pope_card.gif
>
>
Yeah! I'm a pope too!
Eh - What do I use it for? ;0)
--
Nikitta - Female with gender-ambiguous name
Lifelong atheist #1759. EAC - Spanker of Theists
AFV Bitchiness-Club
"oh! don't worry, i didn't mean that as a threat.
i'd be very sad if we lost our german froupies due to my pyromania. " kristen (afdaniain)
Mike Smith
="Adam Marczyk" <ebon...@hotmailNOTexcite.com> wrote...
=> I killfiled him a long time ago, and I'm glad I did so now.
=> Even from reading other people's posts in this thread,
=> I can see Dan's behavior is unconscionable. He's being
=> a complete jackass. I make it my policy only to argue
=> with theists who are rude or obnoxious, and Sunny's
=> about as far from either of those as you get. She has
=> every right to believe what she wants, and she's at
=> least as nice as anyone else on this group.
=
=And, her views are subject to examination ...
Of course they are. What you're doing is different.
If you treat people in the real world the way you act
here in aa, insulin levels will be the last thing you have
to worry about.
=may allah be praised ... just threw that in, for grins ...
Nice try.
__________________________________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Mike Smith | aa #1164 | Founder of SMASH
__________________________________________
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God
- Psa. 14a
Whoever saith 'thou fool' to his brother shall be
liable to burn in hellfire. - Matt 5:22.
Lord Calvert
>>
>>Everyone is a Pope!
>>
>>http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/popecard.gif
>>
>>http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/old_pope_card.gif
>>
>>
>Yeah! I'm a pope too!
>
>
>Eh - What do I use it for? ;0)
You can use it for toilet paper..
You can use it to get the gunk out of your fingernails.
You can show it off to your friends and impress them.
You can show it off to your enemies and make them jealous.
You can do anything imaginable and quite a few unimaginable things with the
Pope (or Mome) cards.
Just remember that every person on the planet is his or her very own Pope!
So please treat them right.
Rich Goranson, Amherst, NY, USA (aa#MCMXCIX)
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the
strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. -- Thomas Paine
Dan Fake
> =And, her views are subject to examination ...
>
> Of course they are. What you're doing is different.
In what way?
> If you treat people in the real world the way you act
> here in aa, insulin levels will be the last thing you have
> to worry about.
Naturalism is OK as is disbelief (when considered logically
and rationally) and as you are well aware, in the real world,
disbelief in magic beings is quite a challenge to pull off,
socially, even amongst groups of disbelievers, as many
disbelievers find faith admirable for society in general and
individuals in particular. Not all that different from the
newsgroup scene, come to think of it ...
>
> =may allah be praised ... just threw that in, for grins ...
>
> Nice try.
Thanks.
- - -
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
> __________________________________________
MEow
wrote:
>>>>If it is, can I be pope? Or at least a cardinal...
>>>
>>>Everyone is a Pope!
>>>
>>>http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/popecard.gif
>>>
>>>http://www.poee.org/images/pope_cards/old_pope_card.gif
>>>
>>>
>>Yeah! I'm a pope too!
>>
>>
>>Eh - What do I use it for? ;0)
>
>You can use it for toilet paper..
>You can use it to get the gunk out of your fingernails.
*After* I've used it as toilet paper? ;0P
>You can show it off to your friends and impress them.
*After*...? ;0P
>You can show it off to your enemies and make them jealous.
>You can do anything imaginable and quite a few unimaginable things with the
>Pope (or Mome) cards.
>
>Just remember that every person on the planet is his or her very own Pope!
>
>So please treat them right.
>
Yeah! - But what do I use being a pope for? ;0)
--
Nikitta - Female with gender-ambiguous name
Lifelong atheist #1759. EAC - Spanker of Theists
AFV Bitchiness-Club
"My dog, my dog! Why hast thou mistaken me?" Humbug (Sheddie)
Bored With the Boring Again
<dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"stillsunny" <sun...@sccoast.com> wrote in message news:n0tq1u87oor3l0mqm...@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 03:24:03 GMT, "Dan Fake"
>> <dan...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >"Michelle Malkin" <hypa...@home.com> wrote in message news:rb1r1u4sl2tjurt03...@4ax.com...
>> >> On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 11:54:04 -0500, stillsunny <sun...@sccoast.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >First, apologies to alt.atheism in general, and Mickey in particular.
>> >>
>> >> No apologies necessary, Sunny. Dan, an atheist, asked you point blank
>> >> about your beliefs in this newsgroup. Under the circumstances, there
>> >> is no problem with your discussing them.
>> >
>> >I don't think she plans to discuss them, further, not in alt.atheism ...
>>
>> Not with you, ever again.
>>
>> You asked what I believed. I gave as clear an answer as I am able. I
>> knew, when I did so, that your purpose was not "curiosity." You
>> wanted it laid out, so that you could play with it, offer sarcasm and
>> ridicule, and attempt to retranslate it in terms you're more happy
>> with. You, like every other preacher I have ever known, want to
>> superimpose what you want to be true over what I experienced. You
>> want your own theology to be applicable. I think, as I do not trust
>> them to interpret it for me, it would be inconsistent of me to trust
>> you.
>>
>> Further, I have no reason to trust you at all.
>>
>> You said, at the end of your comments to my message,
>>
>> > When you have an iota of evidence
>> >that your light-rush story is revelation of some all-powerful good
>> >thingie extant your imagination, a thingie you call god for some
>> >reason, please get back to us.
>>
>> I will never have that evidence, and we both know it. I will take
>> that as my cue to excuse myself. And since you clipped it, I'll
>> restate the reason (although I'm reasonably certain you'll clip it
>> again as insult, and offer something smarmy in return). I do not
>> enjoy discussing *anything* with *anyone* who has an emotional
>> investment in making me see things their way. If you want to talk
>> about hell, talk to the person who handed it to you.
>
>You're the one with the emotional investment in the god light, so
>don't get all snitty about it. As for talking about anything, my door
>is open. Since I'm a naturalist, don't be surprised if I explore every
>naturalistic angle when pondering the nature of life's mysteries ...
>
>>
>> I wish you no ill will, Dan.
>
>Oh?
>
>> I sincerely hope you get past whatever's
>> making you see monsters everywhere you turn,
>
>Hey, you're the one seeing god lights. I'm not seeing monsters,
>but if I do, I'll be more than happy to discuss it openly and in
>an objective and critical manner, something you seem unable to
>do when it comes to your god light (I'm now petting my invisible
>pink furry friend, WOW, it's smiling and is one with the good
>side, like your god light, and I'm only doing so to light-heartedly
>offer an opportunity for us all to take the whole god show a bit
>less seriously - WOW is purring and cooing ... oh well, so much
>for the light-hearted approach ... back to reality) ...
>
>> and making you think
>> somehow that nastiness is love, and sarcasm is prohumanism.
>
>Please, my firm confidence that naturalism explains all does not
>mate to your attributions which are solely a revelation of your
>insecurity about the existence of your god, a god you feel *must*
>exist, for reasons only *you* know, not I, for any time anyone
>tries to explore your beliefs, you run and hide and claim victim
>status.
>
>> I think
>> you're a smart man in many ways, and there's something to be learned
>> by all of us, from all of us. I truly and honestly hope you find a
>> way to live in a manner consistent with the rather noble principles
>> you espouse in your philosophy.
>>
>> But I will not ever discuss my personal beliefs with you again.
>
>Because you fear I might explore the naturalistic explanations,
>thereby obviating your need to see that god is "the" explanation?
>Sheesh, fear of no god, never have I seen it with more clarity
>than in your case.
>
>You need not appeal for sympathy, here. You offered a god light
>and I inquired about naturalism. Since you seem to have no interest
>in naturalistic exploration of your god light and appear to be close-
>minded to any non-god point of view on the topic, I'll just file
>your story under the "yet another religious claim" file, to be dis-
>cussed in the future at which time you may be more open to
>naturalistic exploration of the experience. Chill.
My first impulse is to insult you, but I'm going to bite my
(figurative) tongue and try to be civil.
Goodbye, Dan. That response (and many of your previous responses as
well) were absolutely uncalled for. I don't believe in all the stuff
Sunny does either, but I'm not berating her for it. It took
king-sized (whatever the female equivalent is) cojones to come forth
with her belief in a group like this, and of the lot of us, you lived
down to her worst fears.
You asked what she believed in, she answered, and you ripped into her
like a chainsaw through a log. And you're still going at it. Give it
a rest already, hunh?
I don't know what your problem is, but I think you need to go find out
what it is and deal with it.
Until then, <plonk>
Erikc (alt.atheist #002) | "An Fhirinne in aghaidh an tSaoil."
BAAWA Knight | "The Truth against the World."
| -- Bardic Motto
Awarded title of "Defacto CLuM" by "kansan" 2001-05-12
======
Remove god to respond.
======
At one point in time, many of us actually had Jesus as
our personal lord and saviour. Unfortunately, we later
had to dismiss him for incompetence, gross negligence,
misconduct and consistent failure to show up for work.
======
Religious people believe IN god.
The religious right believes they ARE god.
======
"Hey, who needs a conscience when jeezuz died for our sins?"
-- Ahriman
MEow
>> >> [skip]
>> >>
>> >> Don't edit my posts, [skip insult]
>> >
>> >Don't spew insults. You're beginning to appear
>> >like you have no intelligence.
>> >
>> I thought you said you were against censorship? Your editing reminds
>> me of the "Beep" sounds used on American TV.
>
>Don't know why folks are fascinated with insults. Replace
>[skip insult] above with "fuckchop". Don't know what
>"fuckchop" means, reminds me of lambchop ... I'm not
>into repeating insults, usually, but for you, I'll make an
>exception ... as for all that came before, I suggest one gets
>a newsreader that allows easy clicking on items in order in
>a thread -or- use http://www.google.com as they have a
>cool thread thing going on in there (or at least they did last
>time I checked) ...
>
why, but it did.
--
Nikitta - Female with gender-ambiguous name
Lifelong atheist #1759. EAC - Spanker of Theists
AFV Bitchiness-Club
"And what is your problem with a whore. Most offer something of real value
at a fair price. Not something that could be said for religion." Woden (a.a.)
Daneel
(BTW, have you read Eric Gill's post about consciousness some
months back?)
bye
Daneel [aa #323 | U of E student #000666]
**********************************************************************
"I'm a doctor, and I want my sausages!!!"
_from John Cleese's 'Fawlty Towers' BBC series
----------<SPAM BAIT>----------
tos...@aol.com ab...@aol.com ab...@yahoo.com u...@ftc.gov
ab...@hotmail.com ab...@msn.com ab...@mindspring.net
abuse-n...@uu.net ab...@dialsprint.net ab...@earthlink.com
postm...@attglobal.net ab...@bellsouth.net ab...@sympatico.ca