LOL @ RunningMan. I saw a comedian do a skit once, can't remember who but it was probably Carlin, as it was very Carlin-esque...anywho, he said agnostics were nothing but scared atheists. As part of the act, the guy stood on stage and said "I don't believe in god", then took a big step to the right and cowered with his hands over his head: "oh please god, if you're real don't smite me with a lightning bolt".
AllAlongTheWatchtower
JoinedPosts by AllAlongTheWatchtower
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34
Is agnostic different from athiest? How so?
by wanderlustguy ini know the answer, because i am agnostic.
it is strange to me that people assume if you say you are agnostic that it means you don't believe in god.
from wiki.... agnostics claim either that it is not possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of god or gods; or, alternatively, that while individual certainty may be possible, they personally have no knowledge.
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hindered prayers says my wife...so I stopped
by oompa ini really have never understood prayers too well or how they are answered or not.
i really think it is more of a self-help type excercise.
aren't there some really funny experiences in the yearbooks on prayers answered!?
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
Prayer has always seemed weird to me, even when I was a believer, and I'm now atheist; I don't even say "bless you" when someone sneezes because I feel it would be hypocritical to invoke the blessing of a deity I no longer believe in, preferring to say "gezundheit" (sp?) instead. This has long been a bone of contention between my wife and I, to a greater or lesser extent, usually lesser.
When I did pray, I felt ridiculous doing it-after all, god supposedly knows our every thought, so what could you possibly have to say to him? And the prayers I heard others say when the occasion called for it were no better, I always had secretly cynical thoughts about the wording or phrases used... "Lord, we would ask that this food nourish our bodies" etc etc... My inner self said, well if it's nourishing food, it will, if it's junk food, it won't, what's the point of saying such an inane thing? (And yes, it tasted the same whether prayed over or not, loved that comment, lol.)
I can still vividly recall once when I was a child, awaking early for some reason or other (about 4 am, my father worked construction most of his life and usually had to get up VERY early to head to work) and happened to enter the living room where my father was down on his knees praying in the dark. I hadn't known until then that this was his usual routine, and at first I thought something was wrong, maybe he dropped something, or wasn't feeling well... I asked if I could help, or was he ok, something along those lines, and he just ignored me...to this day I'm not sure if he was so engrossed that he didn't hear me, or if he purposely ignored me because I was interrupting. I remember standing there for a minute or so, with no idea what to do, until I realized no answer was forthcoming, and quietly backed out of the room. Left me with an eerie feeling, and somehow left out, I suppose.
"sounds like a Verision commercial...Can you hear me now?" - loosie
That reminds me of a joke I heard once...something about an Italian priest and an Irish priest trying to out boast each other over who was more devout, the Italian priest brags that there is a longdistance phoneline direct to god in the Vatican, the Irish priest responds "oh yeah, we've got one of those too, but from Dublin it's a local call".
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Favourite 80s video game
by 5thGeneration injust in some crazy posting mood today.. mine was galaga.
man, was i good.
http://www.tripletsandus.com/80s/80s_games/arcade.htm.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
Space Invaders (or was that late 70s?), Asteroids, Tron, Galaga, Spy Hunter (which I became really good at, I always took the offramp for the boats, being a poor kid I had to make my quarters last, since I could play Spy Hunter for around a half hour or so, I usually bee-lined straight for it.) Oh yeah, and that one where you piloted a ship which started as a bi-plane and updated through different eras to a jet and then a space ship...Time Pilot?
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Favorite Zep song
by IP_SEC inthis might be a bad time to post this because all the zep fans are prolly in bed .
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2881331813317701650&q=led+zeppelin+what+is+what+should+never+be&total=62&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0.
edit: sorry what prompted this post is several zep songs have been mentioned on several threads tonight .
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
Ramble On
I liked Led Zep for a long time before one day it finally occurred to me that the lyrics said "Gollum, and the evil one..." and it clicked for me: holy cow, they were Tolkien fans! I read the books long before the movies came out and (re)popularized Hobbits and Ents and Orcs, and played D&D for years, so realizing that just made me like them more.
Having been raised in the WCG, which is very similar to JWs, I was of course never allowed to own the albums, only got to hear at friends', on the radio, etc...I often misheard lyrics or wasn't sure what they actually said, and usually without much chance of verifying or correcting what I thought they were. For anybody interested, it's called a mondegreen (laid him on the green) when you hear something incorrectly and believe it to be true, fascinating stuff...
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"God Boards"
by AllAlongTheWatchtower inyou've probably all seen them; those church message boards in some prominent place along the road so passing drivers can read them.
most are simply informational, like "sunday services at 12pm" or the like.
some use little witticisms to gain attention, and these are the ones i'd like to talk about.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
I'm resurrecting this moldy old topic because I saw another groaner:
"A church is a gift from God-assembly required."
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Quotable Quotes; Please Add Yours ...
by compound complex inthe endeavor to compel all men to think alike on all subjects,.
culminated in the great apostasy and the development of the .
great papal system; and thereby the 'gospel,' the 'one faith,'.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice" -Known by me as lyrics in a Rush song, origin may lie elsewhere though.
"Do not be like the cat, who once having walked across a hot stove, will never do so again...but neither will it walk across a cold one" -Mark Twain
"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese" -seen on net, source unknown.
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Misuse of "impaled"
by RebelWife inthe jw use of this word gets my knickers in a right twist!
when someone is impaled, it means he is run through with something.
the thing he is run through with is the thing he is impaled on or by.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
Good Topic. Being a non-JW myself, when I first heard of the JW belief in the stauros "torture stake", the mental image I conceived of was influenced by a History channel special I had seen a few years prior, on Vlad the Impaler; who literally did impale his enemies on sharpened stakes. I had to ask folks on this board just what the hell was meant by it, before I understood that JWs think of it as more of a cross sans that pesky crossbeam, rather than an actual stake with spear-like implications.
I don't remember the topic's name, but I remember asking something along the lines of "if JWs believe the bible, and according to the bible not one bone was broken in Christ's body, then how can they believe in some 'torture stake' being rammed through his body without even so much as a rib being cracked?".
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Jehovah is responsible for latest cougar attack
by cultswatter inin the early days the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
the tyrannosoras rex would tear into the brontosauras with great shrieks of glee from jehovah and the angels.
the large dinos are all gone but some of the smalller ones survived.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
Aww shucks...I opened this thread hoping to find out that god had a change of heart about the typically puritanical stance of Christianity on sex, and had sent an invading army of MILFs to rehabilitate humanity.
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Why we are in Iraq? (History of oil)
by IP_SEC inthis is a long video but cut up into smaller chunks.
would be interested in your thoughts.. .
part 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ecd6361ls.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
I'm always irked by people on various international sites I am a part of, who imply or outrate state that the US went to war strictly for oil. I am not naive enough to think it played NO part, but I always like to point out to such individuals the following things:
Gas in my area was about $1.05 just prior to 9/11. I bought gas a couple days ago, it was $2.70; where's all this oil we got? Supply and demand says that if there were more oil now, it should be CHEAPER... so where is my .75 cent gas? I could sure use it, being a pizza delivery driver.
The war has seen thousands of air support missions...each fighter jet carries and burns about 10,000 gallons, I believe...anybody care to find the figures for this supposed ill-gotten oil, and compare it to the amount of oil EXPENDED in the Iraq campaign? This point is no doubt related to my first point.
According to this site, the USAF uses roughly 7 million gallons of aviation fuel per DAY, and spent 5.8 billion dollars on fuel alone in 2006. Aviation fuel is highly refined, volatile stuff. I have no idea how many gallons of it can be obtained from 1 barrel of oil, but I'm betting the ratio is not good:
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I Can't Believe it! I got DF'ed!
by RollerDave inyes my friends,.
rollerdave has been disfellowshipped, but not by any elder, and without anything approaching process.. i believe i had previously mentioned the ugly situation my niece finds herself in:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/18/136762/1.ashx.
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
My condolences on your tough day and generally screwy situation, which you manage to relate in an entertaining way (yes, I've been following along).
RE the missing coolant: How's the heat working in your van? Silly question in the middle of summer, I know, but I once owned a Chevy Beretta that made coolant vanish like David Copperfield was driving. It turned out to be a bad heater core. Check your passenger side carpeting and floorboard area for dampness of any kind. Apologies if you know about this possibility already and I seem condensending.