Sorry, we’re a bit slow here -the link is months old – but this could explain how god helped Manuel get to Guinness Book of Records size.
Tag Archives: Religion
God does it again
The world’s heaviest man has lost body weight equivalent to a couple of adult males. Guess who’s responsible? Well, God, of course.
Alongside his copy of the Guinness World Records lies another text, The Bible.
“I have Claudia, my mother and God to thank,” said Manuel. “I am happy.”
You’d think a conceptual ruler of the universe would have better things to do than supervise an individual’s diet, but he must be working in his usual mysterious ways.
However, I’m afraid that the notionally all-powerful one might have been falling down badly in his new cosmic personal training role, to let Manuel Arribe get to weigh half a tonne in the first place.
Ex-archbishop sees News of the World as moral force
If you live outside the UK you probably don’t have newspapers like the News of the World. Just thank Freya. It’s not even possible to describe them adequately but the link might give you some idea of their idea of “news”
The NoW recently lost a privacy case based on its deeply unpleasant activities – paying dominatrix prostitutes thousands to secretly film a client (who was already paying more than my month’s salary for an evening of their services) and to add a fake Nazi element because his long-dead father had been a well-known fascist.
(Well, it makes a change from Amy Winehouse. Just don’t get me started on the Amy Winehouse coverage.)
You might think “comically distasteful, but definitely none of my business.” The good old News of the World tried to pretend this was somehow our business because his father had been famous in the 1930s and because he’s the boss of Formula One or something.
Well the guy won his court action and got a fairly huge sum, plus they have to pay some part of his incredibly huge legal fees. This seems fair enough to me, and nothing to do with freedom of the press. I can’t see what the private behaviour of the Formula One Boss has to do with public interest. To be honest I don’t even know what Formula One is. But, even if I did, I can’t believe I would base my private morality on the actions of its multi-millionaire boss.
Not so Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently. He has written – in the News of the World, no less (LOL) that this judgement set a dangerous precedent.
Without public debate or democratic scrutiny, the courts have created a wholly new privacy law. In itself that’s bad enough.
But, as a Christian leader, I am deeply sad that public morality is the second victim of this legal judgement.
Unspeakable and indecent behaviour, whether in public or in private, is no longer significant under this ruling.
D’uh? D’uh, again? So, to the Archbishop, the News of the World’s use of techniques normally associated with blackmail isn’t “unspeakable and indecent” behaviour? Fear of the gutter press is a pillar of public Christian Morality?
More from the ex-Archbishop-
In the past, a public figure has known that scandalous and immoral behaviour carries serious consequences for his or her public profile, reputation and job.
Today it is possible to both have your cake and to eat it. But a case can be clearly made for a direct link between private behaviour and public conduct.
If a politician, a judge, a bishop or any public figure cannot keep their promises to a wife, husband, etc, how can they be trusted to honour pledges to their constituencies and people they serve?
Can the ex-Archbishop not see the difference between being the boss of some racing sports association and being a politician or a judge? Is this man’s public exposure actually doing any service to his wife? Who else is he supposed to have made promises to? What’s his constituency?
Lord Carey is upholding a view of “morality” that barely touches upon any version of the concept that I can recognise. I started to disentangle the contradictions in this argument and its bizarre conceptual basis but I gave up because it seems so self-evidently ludicrous.
I can only assume that the Church of England doles out a really mean pension to its ex-leaders, so they are reduced to producing moral underpinnings for the NoW’s prurience. Please, up the man’s stipend, ffs, Church of England. Thor only knows what shameful activities he may be forced into next in the search to earn a crust.
The BBC Must Not Waive Court Costs!
Sorry, this is a petition that I had meant to publicise a while ago (hat tip: Nullifidian).
Basically a bible bashing crackpot took out a frivolous court case against the BBC for the “Jerry Springer – The Opera” show and lost. In losing he has been saddled with court costs which are really not cheap. Now, the slimebag has decided that it would be the “decent thing” for the BBC to waive the costs and, in effect, all the British licence payers should fund his pointless posturing. This is the message:
I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:
“BBC and Avalon must NOT Waive Springer Costs”
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bbc_springer_green?eI really think this is an important cause, and I’d like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It’s free and takes less than a minute of your time.
So, if you are a British licence fee payer, please take a trip and sign the petition.
The Church’s One Foundation
Conservative Anglicans have carried out a strange coup to form a church within a church. On first consideration, non-believers might welcome the increasing disintegration of a major world religion. But, in fact, the impact seems to be far from good, with fundamentalists seeking to snatch control of the Anglicans’ global organisation and moral authority.
The group said it would stay inside the Anglican Communion, but with its own statement of theology and council of archbishops. ….
The move underlines the alliance’s independence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and makes clear that it will no longer recognise Dr Williams’ traditional role as the leader of the world’s Anglicans.(from the BBC)
The BBC has a few soundbites about the issues that divide liberal and fundamentalist Anglicans. These basically come down to views on gays and women.
The BBC’s “debate” between Paul Eddy, from the UK Conservative Anglican network, and Californian Bishop Marc Andrus shows the staggering gap in intelligence and goodwill between the two camps. Andrus so outclasses Eddy as to make him look like a simple-minded fool. (OK, I guess that is no great feat.)
Ironically, Paul Eddy said that the Anglican communion must be paramount, with everybody holding to the same doctrine, which seems to conflict with the GAFCON plan to set up its own international power network within the church.
And how about this from Paul Eddy on “THE NEED TO CONVERT PEOPLE OF OTHER FAITHS”?
The Great Commission [Jesus’s instruction to the disciples to spread his teaching] remains as relevant in 2008, whatever the political and religious tensions, as it did 2,000 years ago. The Church in Africa is experiencing huge growth – in Muslim countries among others. It is a Biblical mandate which orthodox churches believe in.
A Biblical mandate to convert? To convert Muslims, even? Argh!
Sunny Hundal had some things to say about Eddy, when he discussed an article, in a new rightwing magazine, Standpoint, by Bishop Nazir-Ali. This bishop is the most senior UK churchman on the conservative side, in the battle for the soul of the Anglican communion.
In fact, the type of society Nazir-Ali wants isn’t far from the utopia that conservative Muslims want to develop, except it’s a different religion.
Hundal said that Nazir-Ali, disappointed that Rowan Williams was chosen as Archbishop rather than himself, is launching a power play, gathering a posse of supporters and gaining media attention through the manipulation of fears of Muslims.
.. for example, he backed a motion by the Church of England’s General Synod member Paul Eddy on evangelising other faiths (but focusing on Muslims to guarantee headlines). Paul Eddy just happens to be a PR consultant who has worked with the purity ring campaign and Christian Concern for our Nation. Remember CCFON from the Channel 4 documentary on Christian fundamentalists?
Well, yes, I certainly do remember it. Here’s the Youtube link to the Channel 4 programmes about the fundy response to the HFEA Bill.
Converting Muslims is a bit of a theme with Paul Eddy. In March, according to Anglican Mainstream
A traditionalist Anglican has said he will continue with a campaign for the Church of England to work explicitly to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Paul Eddy, a lay member of the General Synod, has come under intense pressure from bishops to withdraw his plan.
Apparently this contentious motion is to be put to the Synod on 4-6th July, over the objections of almost all senior church figures..
You might understand the Church of England being unable to successfully face off an aggressive PR consultant, them being so unworldly and all. You can understand the right-wing press being happy to jump on any conservative bandwagon, that’s their social role.
But, I am a bit miffed that the BBC is happy to treat this guy as a handy rent-a-speech chap. The BBC is surely no stranger to the wiles of PR consultants. OK, there’s a dull issue that’s got to be aired on TV or the website in a couple of hours.. They’ve got his phone number…. Lazy.
So I really hope that that Channel 4 documentary becomes required viewing for any members of the General Synod.
Mail tries to make Pratchett look a prat
With the headline “I create gods all the time and now I think one might actually exist” the Daily Mail distorts the content of its interview with Terry Pratchett.
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
But it is true that in an interview I gave recently I did describe a sudden, distinct feeling I had one hectic day that everything I was doing was right and things were happening as they should.
It seemed like the memory of a voice and it came wrapped in its own brief little bubble of tranquillity. I’m not used to this.
Experiencing a feeling of transcendence is REALLY not the same as a belief in god. Pratchett himself is aware of this.
For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?
Me, actually….
I don’t think I’ve found God, but I may have seen where gods come from
Most non-believers have experienced transcendence. Feeling awe at the wonders of the universe doesn’t necessarily equate with belief in a divine being. Pratchett’s a fantasy writer. He earns his living by dabbling in myth and metaphor. Throughout the Diskworld series, he plays with the ideas of gods and religion. He treats them as any other component of his imaginary universe.
Pratchett has some sort of brain disease (possibly Alzheimer’s but he has had an alternative diagnosis.) A voice in his head sounds more like a neurological symptom than a religious conversion. If the voice manifested as an instruction to wash his hair in chip fat and stand on a window ledge hollering, the Daily Mail would hardly present this as proof of a divinity.
The whole tenor of the Daily Mail presentation is to suggest that Terry Pratchett has had some sort of religious conversion, in the face of his own words. This is pretty absurd, and would hardly matter to anyone but himself, even if it were true.
The sleb-obsessed press, such as the Daily Mail, treats us as if we are under the spell of any remotely-famous people. Pratchett is a well-known non-believer. So the Daily Mail credits his beliefs or lack of them as somehow influencing the rest of the population. However, if Dawkins were to become a Russian Orthodox priest, it wouldn’t matter to the average non-believer. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to become a Jain, millions of Anglicans wouldn’t suddenly follow him.
Rushdie interview
Salman Rushdie spoke about religion and atheism, in an interview on the Canadian CBC news site
Q: ……. Is this a comment on the current vogue for atheism?
A: Maybe it’s making a slight comeback. In the ’60s and ’70s, religion was in extreme retreat. It really felt as if that subject was over. The idea that we would have to reckon with religion as a major force in public life would have seemed absurd, if you had suggested it to me when I was in my 20s.
For someone of my generation, what’s been shocking is the way that religion has rushed back and returned to public life. And it’s only happened since the 1980s. In the Eastern hemisphere, it’s the rise of radical Islam and here it has to do with the Christian right.
Absolutely right. Ideas that seemed twenty years ago to have only historical value are now powerful mass motivators.
Rushdie says that he differs slightly from Hitchens or Dawkins in that:
… I have no problem with religion, as long as it’s private. If people find it consoling or uplifting or nourishing – not my business. Why should I dictate to people what they should enjoy? I may think they’re dumb, but it’s not my business. Where it becomes my business is when it comes into the public arena and is a social and political force that seeks to impose certain norms on society. Then, I think it becomes a malicious force.
Well, yes. I tend to agree with him here. We all have an infinite number of false beliefs and they are noone else’s concern, no matter how dumb, unless we act upon them in ways that have an impact on other people.
But, playing Devil’s Advocate, religion can never really be a wholly private matter. It’s socially transmitted. A patchwork of individually derived superstitions is one thing. A (more-or-less) internally coherent belief system is another. It requires central authority to propagate its ideas. mechanisms for transmitting its message and, apparently, having been organised, it needs to strengthen its internal cohesion by defining non-believers as other. (*)
Can you have a personal god belief that’s not produced through society? It doesn’t seem likely. Believing in a concept of “gods” isn’t an automatic response to the wonders of the universe. Otherwise, people wouldn’t bother to indoctrinate their young into their belief systems. We would all be born fully formed christians or muslims or hindus or whatever. Or, at least, all religions would be singing from the same hymnsheet.
I’m not convinced that a personal god can be so easily separated from socially organised belief. However, if anyone knows what can happen when you challenge organised religion, it’s Salman Rushdie. So, I take his point that individual folly hardly matters when mass folly is so dangerous.
(*) Sorry, sociological and philosophical pedants, I know I am reifying religion here. It’s just a rough description, OK?
At last, a use for a cathedral
A video on the BBC site shows parkour, performed to organ music, in preparation for an arts festival in Portsmouth Cathedral.
A joy to watch, even for the few seconds in this clip, and no religious subtext.
Religious stupidity (Is this an oxymoron?)
The silly – albeit flattering – view that atheists are not as stupid as religious people, according to some deeply spurious IQ -based research, has suddenly got a boost from an unexpected quarter.
“God is not just for the stupid, say Christianity’s clever people”, according to the Telegraph.
Who are these clever people?
“The Christian think tank Theos “
Well, that still makes none, by my reckoning.
The post about this daft research on the Register also brought a swathe of Christian commenters who all seemed to know their “IQ” to the exact unfeasibly high last digit. (Thereby suggesting, if nothing else, that a high level of belief in the objective validity and accuracy of IQ scores correlates with a high level of belief in, well, anything.)
Nice comment, from “Carl”
I always thought that the reason that there were less stupid comments on El Reg articles on a Sunday was because IT pros don’t work weekends – now I know it’s because they’re all at church…
The Atheist Thirteen
It has been a while, but it seems we’ve been hit by another “meme” – this time it is the Atheist Thirteen from Nullifidian. For anyone who has already read Null’s post, I must apologise that a lot of the responses are similar.
(Null, if you read this – why is it called “Atheist 13” when there are 10 questions?)
Rules: If you’d like to take part, copy these questions, and answer them in your own words on your own blog.
Q1. How would you define “atheism”?
“A lack of belief in anything divine.”
Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
Not at all. While Religious Education at school talked about the various religions there was never anything resembling a serious effort to convince me any particular religion was more valid than any other (or even more valid than no-religion at all). This is the case even though I went to Church Sunday school for quite a time.
Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?
Idiocy.
Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?
Astrophysics and related disciplines – astronomy, space travel etc. (I only picked astrophysics because Null beat me to Astronomy).
Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?
I’d like people to stop talking about an “atheist community” as if it were a homogeneous group that shared more than a single idea. I cant think of any real meaning of “community” that seems to apply to the global network of atheists.
Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?
“That’s nice, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?”
Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?
God is really kind and benevolent but if you dont bow to his ever wish, no matter how capricious, you will suffer worse punishment than you can imagine for all of eternity. It is self refuting unless the person is a genuine idiot – and then it isnt worth refuting. Just wait until they forget to breathe and die.
Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?
That there isn’t an Atheist Community.
Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?
Dawkins because, although I used to hate him, he has grown on me. I like his “posh English scientist” TV demeanour. Hitchens is too arty and there isn’t enough scientific rigour in his comments. Harris really annoys me and I don’t know Dennett well enough.
Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?
The Pope, because it would be a MAJOR achievement… (Unless he is, as I sometimes suspect, not really a Catholic).
Now name three other atheist blogs that you’d like to see take up the Atheist Thirteen gauntlet:
This is always the hard part. There are zillions of good atheist blogs but tagging them all would be close to insane. There are a lot of good ones who will be annoyed if they are tagged and a lot of good ones who will be annoyed if they aren’t tagged. For this, almost insurmountable, challenge I have picked three from our blogrolls at random:
- The gorgeously designed and always entertaining “X is …“
- The Snarling and Growling “Grumpy Lion“
- The militant Bligbi.
Please don’t be upset if you have been missed out – if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged. Likewise, if you are one of the three above and don’t want to be tagged, I am OK with that.
For entertainment purposes only
Matthew Parris is much saner than a former Tory MP has any right to be. He proved this again with a good piece in the Times. He was arguing against thought crimes.
I am driven to my wits’ end by my fellow humans’ feeble grasp of principled reasoning. .
I feel your pain, brother!
He discussed the new proposal that “anyone found with drawings (or computer-generated images) of child sexual abuse will face up to three years in prison.” Parris pointed out that making images of abusing real children is genuinely different from making imaginary representations, however repellent such imaginary images are.
Maria Eagle, the Justice Minister, said that the move was not intended to curb creativity or freedom of expression but to tackle images that had “no place in society”. Crikey – the intellectual sloppiness!….. The logical extension of Ms Eagle’s principle is almost boundless.
That is, there are an endless number of things that “have no place in society.” But, as soon as we start restricting expression to things we like, we start down a dangerous road. Surely, almost every TV show or Hollywood movie shows things that we don’t want to be true. And not just the endless shootings and stabbings in crime shows and action movies. What about the bickering morons portrayed in soaps? These definitely should have “no place in society”.
In fact, if it was left to me, there is no end to the things I don’t think have a place in society. Luckily, it’s not left to me. Thank your personal deity for that, all you women carrying miniature dogs in your handbag and masquerading as Paris Hilton, for example.
In fact, on the topic of deities – personal or otherwise – Parris extended the point about attempts to outlaw people’s chosen means of expression, however repugnant, to the issue of the new law
requiring fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to stipulate explicitly that their services are for “entertainment only”
He pointed out that this principle should surely apply equally to faith-healing and, indeed, to all churches.
Is Parliament aware of any harder evidence for the efficacy of faith-healing than for the reliability of clairvoyance? I’d like to hear it. Otherwise, let the collecting boxes in church display a sign “for entertainment purposes only” and let Catholics buy candles to light “for entertainment purposes only”; and let trips to Lourdes be sold “for entertainment purposes only”. And let the raiment of the priest administering the Sacrament be embroidered likewise.
Imagine the churchyard billboard: the Power of Prayer (for entertainment purposes only).
Well, we can but dream… All the same, if laws to save people from their own gullibility are going to be passed, why should more mainstream official churches be exempt?
How religions spread
Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests. (New Scientist article about research by James Dow.)
Now who could argue with software? It’s not as if software can only give out results in the way it’s been programmed to or anything….
By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish
Theories on the evolution of religion tend toward two camps. One argues that religion is a mental artefact, co-opted from brain functions that evolved for other tasks.
Another contends that religion benefited our ancestors. Rather than being a by-product of other brain functions, it is an adaptation in its own right. In this explanation, natural selection slowly purged human populations of the non-religious. (From the New Scientist article)
I am basing my opinion on a cursory reading of a pop-science version of real research that I have only skimmed (and I expect some more careful reader will comment to challenge my surface arguments with facts.) But, I take this to mean that the algorithm seems to indicate that telling convincing lies has evolutionary advantages. No surprise there. Otherwise politicians would have long been extinct.
But, are lies about gods in some other even-more-genetically-advantageous category than just regular lies? This experiment appears to favour the religious only when others help them:
Under most scenarios, “believers in the unreal” went extinct. But when Dow included the assumption that non-believers would be attracted to religious people because of some clear, but arbitrary, signal, religion flourished
So, this research actually implied that belief in lies was not a successful survival strategy? Unless the goalposts were moved to make it one?
I assume that the arbitrary attractors could arise from activities such as like embedding lies in interesting stories. Some myths are somehow compelling. Narrative is attractive. (The attractiveness of narrative is itself something of an evolutionary mystery.) All the same, I am largely unconvinced by the explanatory power of the arguments, the choice of variables and the specific values assigned to them
However, science being science – i.e. developed through experiment and debate rather than through accepting erroneous beliefs because they come with clear but arbitrary attractive signals – I can test it out. The software can be downloaded under the GNU public licence. This is so admirable a way to conduct and spread research that I have to tip an oversized conceptual hat to James Dow.
Speeding to sanctuary
Someone being chased by police for speeding sought sanctuary in a Northern Ireland church. And, amazingly, found it.
When police tried to follow they were blocked by members of the church.
You have to remember this is Northern Ireland before you move next to a church and start a whole new career as a criminal mastermind.
The last instance I could find of someone claiming the medieval right of sanctuary was the case of Viraj Mendes who took sanctuary in a Manchester church about twenty years ago, to avoid being deported back to Sri Lanka. He had a rather more morally defensible position. He was afraid he’d be killed in Sri Lanka. He wasn’t just dodging a speeding ticket.
In any case, sanctuary didn’t even work for him in the end.
The stand off lasted 760 days before police battered down the doors with sledgehammers and removed him.(From the BBC)
Disappointingly for that new master-criminal career, the BBC said that
the right of sanctuary had no legal force for centuries
(Try telling that to the congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church in County Tyrone.)
Will wonders never cease
Aside
Blimey. The subtitle “Archbishop sees sense, sort of” was tempting here, but I resisted it. A news item on the BBC today is titled ‘Respect Atheists’ says Cardinal. Basically, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, has called for more understanding of atheists! Wonderful. He also reportedly said: “Believers may be partly responsible for the decline in faith by losing sense of the mystery and treating God as a “fact in the world.‘” Strangely, I agree.
Faith Blinds
(Old news from the department of simple answers)
My time away has meant that some of the weird and wonderful nonsense over the last few weeks has escaped the harsh light of reality. Take this little blinder posted by Joanna Sugden to the Times Online on 2 May 08.
The article is titled: “Is the Bible science fiction?”
Simple answer: “Yes” (Or slight variation: “No, it is fantasy fiction”)
Why is there any need for more debate? Strangely, debate there is… As you can imagine, the article talks about “debate” as to the veracity of Noah’s Ark. It seems that some people over the age of six actually think that two of every species on Earth was crammed into the Ark to survive a world flood. Wonderfully, IMDB list a film about this under “Science Fiction Literature” which I think is a GoodThing™.
Equally great is the predictable response of the loonies.
The first to kick it off is Rick Beekman who is certainly a “person of faith” (and, I suspect with no real evidence, an American):
I believe the story of Noah’s Ark. I also believe all the stories in The Bible.
The ones who don’t believe it are the usual group of scoffers..Atheists..Secular Humanists.Those Who generally think everything has an Explanation based on their worldly but non-spiritual understanding of Events in the Bible they deem “Impossible”.
Word salad. This is nothing but an assertion of his belief with an appeal to ridicule against anyone who disagrees. The unusual capitalisation is always a good sign of a nutjob – I hope he doesn’t have access to firearms. After this start, he continues:
The reason for these stories is to teach we lowly humans what God has done..And what he can and will do.
Scary. I find myself agreeing with the insane. Dear Toutatis save me. Actually, the bit I agree with is the reason of the story. They are not supposed to be factual representations of the past. They are there to “teach” (for want of a better word) people about their belief system. This subtle fact is lost on Rick – despite the fact he worded it in quite a good way, I suppose that was just chance. (Monkeys, typewriters…) Anyway, after a bit more drivel he finishes off:
In Genesis 8 v 4 we read where the Ark rested upon Mt. Ararat as the waters receded.
Sattelite Photos confirm taken in 1972 that something very large is encased in Ice on top of that Mountain.
How could any large Ship get up there unless Water rested it there as The Bible says?
WTF? Seriously, what sort of insane leap of faith is this? How did “something” become a “large ship” in the space of a full stop? Quantum physics be damned! (Why is water capitalised?) Critically, why have none of the ultra rich evangelical groups over the world got a more recent ultra high res photograph to confirm – or just gone there on an expedition? Madness like this gives me a headache.
My faith in human nature is restored by a run of sensible comments, but then Rick returns:
John;
God our Creator can do whatever he pleases. He usually does things to suit his purposes not necessarily for what we think. He knows The end from the beginning. God could have chosen to just let everyone drop dead except the chosen animals etc and of course Noah and his family. There is no human now or past or in the future who is any match for the Wisdom and creator.
Ah the way of the madness runs true in this one. This at least shows there is no science in the bible or in creationism. Basically this is Rick saying he doesn’t care what feeble evidence there is, he knows his Invisible Friend can do things other people can’t. Well done Rick. There are seven year olds kicking themselves in shame at this…
More sensible refutations are made – thank Heimdall for the human race – then someone called CESEELEY chimes up with their own brand of wisdom:
One of the main points of stories like Noah’s Ark is to help one from the Old Testament into the New Testament so that one will learn to walk in the Spirit after being Born Again, Baptized and given the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Ah, here come the erratic capital letters. Wonderful. Still it is all gibberish.
Our bodies were designed by God to be guided by the Holy Spirit. That is what those scripture about the Holy Temple imply.
Eh? Is this going anywhere? This is more drivel – why use 1 word to say something when eight hundred and ninety four will do… Comments on Times Online are moderated so a human actually decided this was relevant enough to the thread to let through (and about 50% of mine get knocked back… hmmm).
If you want to experience the more Abundant Life that Christ promised and have become Born Again and Baptized by immersion, then start taking Roman 12:1-2 seriously in your life so that you can prove what is God’s perfect will for your life as compared to His permissive will.
Ok, I’ll stop here. It doesn’t get any better. It is just a string of meaningless drivel with little relevance to the topic other than it seems to want every one to become a Born Again lunatic. I am a touch confused about his “perfect will” being different from his “permissive will” though…
Not to be out lunatic’d, Rick returns:
To All;
Seems I am the only one on this thread who believes the Story of Noah And His Ark.
God, I hope so…
I guess God Really did’nt ask Adam to name all the animals Either..(Genesis 2 verses 19 & 20).
Well done for taking a step in the right direction. Why did God let Adam name the echnida such a bloody awkward name? Oh right, he didn’t because Adam would never have seen one..
According to the “Experts” on this thread there is no possible way God could have brought all the animals to Adam from all over so Adam could name them.
Erm, yep. See, after a while everyone starts to agree with the lunatics.
Another one has stated the story of the flood is a Babylonian myth.
Yes, some one did state that. I thought they were being charitable instead of just calling Rick insane. Obviously Rick just likes using words, because he doesn’t even try to refute the claims any more – he just repeats them. He does, however, save the best till last:
I Just Wanted All Of You To Know All Of You Are Dead Wrong…But the Good News Is I’m Not Upset And Love All Of You!!
Wonderful. Don’t you just love the shift key… How would we spot lunatics without it.