Posts by Merry Magdalene

29

Imaginary Friends can help you get over divorce Apparently

by Crumpet in

its been suggested to me by someone who clearly is not aware of my atheism that adopting an imaginary friend could help me find my purpose in life after a relationship breakup.

it annoys and perplexes me although i realise everyone has a right to their own opinion.. however my opinion is this:.

my husband hasnt left me - i've never had a husband and i certainly hope i never have that misfortune or get ill enough to suffer such poor judgement as restricting myself to the bed of one person for the rest of my life when i personally am certainly not willing to keep such a promise.

Merry Magdalene

{{{{{Crumpet}}}}}

I continue to appreciate your expressing your thoughts and feelings so openly and genuinely, and then to discuss them with others whose responses all vary wildly according to their own thoughts and feelings, without compromising your integrity.

I think whoever's outreach triggered this thread had every right to do so and I appreciate their caring enough to share with you what has benefited them. And I likewise think you had every right to respond as you have, and I am glad we can all talk about it according to our own perspectives.

I humbly submit that God is the Real, the only ultimate reality, and we are all each other's imaginary friends

~Merry

p.s. love ya tij

48

Hi, it's me again

by fullofdoubtnow in

jw
friends

it's really great to be back on here, i've missed you all so much.

i'm home for the weekend, and feeling a lot better than i was earlier in the week.

i picked up an infection and felt really awful for a day or two, but it's ok now.

Merry Magdalene

So happy to see you posting again!!!

31

I'm back..JW's at my door left stunned and in tears

by toladest in

jw
friends

well, i'm back after a couple years away from this site.

i still recognize a lot of names here, but there are a lot of new ones too.

i wanted to share an expierience i had with two witness "sisters" at my door a couple weeks ago.

Merry Magdalene

Welcome back to the forum Toladest. Thank you for sharing what you have. You done good.I say a prayer for that man's victims and all victims of the WTS, and I hope the sisters you talked to won't wrap themselves back up in their comfortable fog too tightly. But if so, hopefully you kindled a flame in their minds and hearts that will be able to dispel it for good someday.

~Merry

24

Einstein's apocalyptic vision coming true?

by SWALKER in

"if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.

no more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

" ~albert einstein .

Merry Magdalene

The drought in the northern-tier states left pitiful honey stocks to keep the bees strong over the winter, and the varroa is back in force. In addition, a mystery malady, dubbed “Colony Collapse Disorder,” is sweeping through the apiaries, leaving many hives almost completely devoid of adult bees, which appear to abandon their hives and disappear. Apiculturists are looking at a number of potential culprits, from bad weather to bad corn syrup to genetically modified corn to pesticides to miticides, and many suspect the problem is compounded by the presence of the varroa mite, which weakens colonies so that invading pathogens pack a particularly destructive punch. (Scientists suspect the 2005 die-off was exacerbated by a viral event.) http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16891&gclid=CJHOxYrrvYsCFR9FQAodtE3tcg

Sounds like a complex problem.

Twenty years ago, when a beeyard failed, bad beekeeping practices could most likely be blamed for the collapse. Today, the problem lies with the precarious, single-cropped, single-minded state of modern agriculture. It is too unvaried, too big, and too much is being asked of the bees that service it. “Modern agriculture is pushed harder than it ever used to be,” said Miller. And it is being kept aloft by ever more fragile wings. The bee is the smallest visible link in the chain, and its illness is illustrative.

This annual bee migration isn’t just a curiosity; it’s the glue that holds much of modern agriculture together. Without the bees’ pollination services, California’s almond trees — the state’s top export crop — would produce 40 pounds of almonds per acre; with the bees, they can generate 2,400 pounds. Honeybees provide the same service for more than 100 other crops, from lettuce to cranberries to oranges to canola, up and down the West Coast.

Interesting.

~Merry

5

Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

by CaptainSchmideo in

jw
friends

and in his memory, i want to be first to say this statement:.

kurt's in heaven, now...".

if you haven't read his last book, you won't "get" that sentence.

Merry Magdalene

~Merry

25

Google earth adds Crises in Darfur, you must check this out

by needproof in

jw
friends

anybody not yet familiar with google earth should try it, www.earth.google.com - offers maps and satellite images for complex or pinpointed regional searches.

recently google have added satellite shots of sudan, where a mass genocide is taking place whilst we go to bed each night in our safe and sound environments (relatively).

up to 300,000 people dead so far - why the hell doesn't blair or bush do something about this seeing as though they are so beset with helping other people (bs)... .

Merry Magdalene

http://www.afrol.com/articles/13921

The population of Darfur is presently, as the UN puts it, suffering from "the world's worst humanitarian crisis." It is well documented that the Khartoum government bares much of the responsibility for this immense suffering, which the UN calls "ethnic cleansing" and the US yesterday called "genocide". It is however also well documented that the US through its closest African allies, helped train the SLA and JEM Darfuri rebels that initiated Khartoum's violent reaction, as afrol News reported on Tuesday.

While the US and UK governments are urging the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Sudan due to Khartoum's "acts of genocide" and to stop the humanitarian crisis, many Asian and African countries are sceptical to the sudden rush to condemn Khartoum. They suspect that the real interests behind the proposed sanctions and opening for the use of military force against Sudan is motivated by other than humanitarian motives to meet the Darfur crisis - a crisis which the West actually helped create.

After all, Sudan is believed to hold Africa's greatest unexploited oil resources, even greater than those of the Gulf of Guinea. US oil companies are barred from operating in Sudan and other Western companies are chased from the country by the Washington administration. The Canadian oil company Talisman Energy is even facing charges of "complicity in genocide and war crimes" in a US court due to its past engagements in Sudan. At present, Asian oil companies dominate the field in Sudan.

http://www.energybulletin.net/925.html

The fighting in Sudan's Darfur region, which is being reported in the world press as 'ethnic cleansing' and a 'humanitarian crisis', reportedly stems from attempts to gain control over the oil resources in the region, claim Arab sources.

These Arab sources find it interesting that such skirmishes occurred when a peace agreement that would have brought an end to 21 years of north-south conflict was about to be signed. The sources point out that oil fields have recently been discovered in Darfur.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,14658,1503470,00.html

A millionaire British businessman, Friedhelm Eronat, was named last night as the purchaser of oil rights in the Darfur region of Sudan, where the regime is accused of war crimes and where millions of tribespeople are alleged to have been forced to flee, amid mass rapes or murders.
....Documents seen by the Guardian suggest that Mr Eronat, who lives in a £20m house in Chelsea, swapped his US passport for a British one shortly before the deal was signed with the Sudan regime in October 2003.
US citizens are barred from dealing with Sudan under sanctions dating from 1997.
The disclosure that Britain is serving as a base for questionable African oil transactions comes in the run-up to the July G8 summit at Gleneagles, at which Tony Blair's central theme will be the need to help Africa.
The documents show that Mr Eronat may have been acting for China, which has been prominent in the new "scramble for Africa" and its oil deposits. Two Chinese corporations were given an option to buy 50% of Mr Eronat's newly acquired stake in the Darfur field. The option expired last year. It is not known whether China took it up

http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/1265/2007/02/7-174635-1.htm

"The main reason behind Darfur is oil. There is no other reason for this area to have blown like this," the LA Times quotes an oil industry consultant who's involved with some of Sudan's major oil companies. The consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says it's going to get worse.

http://www.anti-imperialism.net/lai/texte.php?langue=3§ion=BQ&id=24868

When dealing with modern imperialism, the solution to the mystery is likely to be found on the principle of cherchez l'essence – look for the oil. And sure enough it turned out that Darfur was harbouring substantial oil deposits. It is also rich in natural gas and in uranium. It now turns out that the oil deposits in question are likely to rival in size and extent those of Saudi Arabia.

Having been caught with its greedy fingers round the cookie jar, US imperialism is now trying to claim that actually it is the members of the Sudanese government who are the greedy ones. However, the true picture is that the Sudanese government is working to suppress rebellions fomented in the region by US imperialism.

~Merry

147

Merry Becomes A Muslim (a bit long)

by Merry Magdalene in

who is merry?

i was born in 1965, the same year that malcolm x was assassinated.

my father had committed suicide a few months into my mother's pregnancy so we lived with her parents until she married again when i was about 18 months old.

Merry Magdalene

Thanks, Jelcat, for your input. Very interesting. And I appreciate your trying to make the point about blood again.

Abaddon:
I don't think I missed any point about menstration Merry. I know there are other parts of the cleaning routine for men and women, it's just Allah, in contradiction to all known medical science, thinks a menstrating women CANNOT be clean. Or do you think menstrating surgeons take a day off to avoid infecting their patients with girl cooties? Y es, I do deliberately try to make it sound ludicous; because it IS. Not Islam being ludicrous, but thinking Allah can be guilty of such silliness being ludicrous.

Honestly, there is nothing in Islam indicating that there should be any superstitious fear or disgust toward menstruation any more than any other cause of bleeding! Islam does not promote ignorant superstitions but warns people against them. Surgery is fine while menstruating, just not formal prayer, because one cannot wash for prayer after bleeding if one is continuing to bleed. Surgery has different cleanliness requirements than Salat. That is all.

I think we should. The lies of (big-C literalistic) Creationists of both Christian and Islamic persuasion make many sincere people think ANY acceptence of evoluton as rejection of god. Such an opinion is the result of a total misrepresentation of evolution by those same Creationists.

I am interested in exploring this more as it is a topic I know little about. From what I have been able to discern so far it seems to me that some creationists got drawn into a false debate against evolution due to claims made by both materialists (trying to use evolution to disprove God and creation) and other creationists (trying to do the opposite). One of Allah's names is translated "the Evolver" so I have no problem with the idea of creation through evolution. My problem is with saying that everything came from nothing or was just always here, without a Creator that exists outside time and space and beyond our comprehension. I recently was researching the entropy versus evolution debate and found that my own uninformed opinion may well have been quite mistaken on that. I am still reading.

So you DON'T hold Sunni views about the Mahdi? ALthough your comments NOW show it is not neccesarilly an immediate hope, you do realise before I mentioned it, it did sound like it was very soon. Interesting (and I'd fully expect you to point out such things about me :-)

Sorry, I didn't intend to make it sound soon. Some Muslims do feel this way due to various "signs." I prefer to cultivate a sense of readiness that comes from not knowing when, just as I don't know when my own death will come, so it is best to do all we can right here and right now. And all I said was that no one mentioned the Mahdi in my quote, nor did I. You were reacting to something that wasn't there.

I do feel valued equally.
Maybe if you lived in Turkey or Iran, you'd feel differently. Maybe you feel valued equally because you are isolated from any Muslim community and can approach Islam as an anchorite (female hermit), interpret it in your own way, and not be forced on a daily basis to experience it as your sisters in Islam do. Prehaps your feeling of equality would be tempered if you actually had experience of dealing with 'born-in' MUslim males.

I am glad that Jelcat addressed her own experience with this as I have none of my own other than on-line. I don't recall the context of my above statement, but I don't think I meant that I feel valued equally by men (which is not of primary importance to me) but by God, as expressed through the Qur'an. I know how men can be. I grew up around males who often made a point of letting me know that females are inferior to males, and none of them were Muslims and not all of them were religious in any way. I watched with great interest a documentary by a Muslim woman called The Mosque and Me (I think) that looked into some of the male prejudice against females in mosques throughout Canada and America. She also spoke to a Muslim scholar who showed that such mens' prejudice was not supported by the Qur'an or the Sunnah and should be corrected.

Thanks for the on-going discussion. Some people don't like to debate with me IRL, thinking I want them to immediately capitulate and agree with everything I say or else shut up. I don't. How can you ever get to the meat and marrow of things that way? Best wishes for a good week.

~Merry

31

Are you a "Leader" or a "Follower"?

by JH in

jw
friends

i'm a "loner", so no one is following me, and i'm not following anyone.. maybe i tend slightly towards being a follower, but it better be worth my time, or i'll be back to a loner once more.

.

Merry Magdalene

Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes neither.

~Merry

15

Ex-jw, inactive mormon, and now what?

by olvidado in

jw
friends

after 4 years of having lurking through this forum (except one time that i asked an username and used it once),i have decided to participate in this.

i am spanish, i have been living in a small town in the north of spain almos my whole life (except one year in leicester-england), but currently i am lving in germany.

my story: i have been brought up in a catholic family, but the religion was never important in my familiy.

Merry Magdalene

Welcome Olvidado. Thak you for sharing your interesting experiences with us. I hope you enjoy it here and find much benefit.

~Merry

142

The Need To Question Atheism

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

the need to question atheism this need to question atheism stems from the fact there are some individuals.

on this board that subscribe to such.

the questions stated are not for some.

Merry Magdalene

I have heard many athiests claim that if only God would reveal God's self to humanity with obvious proof (also claiming this would be a very simple thing) they would no longer be athiests. But I have long disagreed, suspecting that many would still not believe in God but would sooner assume that someone was just pulling an elaborate trick, a grand illusion, or else that they themselves had gone insane and therefore could not trust their own perceptions. The Qur'an says the same thing.

In imagining this occuring, I think there would be some God-believers who would feel the same way about this manifestation as atheists and would not be certain if it could be trusted as real. There would be others, believer and non-believer, who would accept it.

Interesting to ponder. On what are our assumptions about reality based? What challenges those assumtions? How do we respond to those challenges? And why?

~Merry