Posts by THE GLADIATOR

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NOAH as annotated by Ricky Gervais

by Terry in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln64dyflgt4.

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THE GLADIATOR

Ricky Gervais is always entertaining. Good video.

"And God is not gay guys."

Maybe, maybe not but if God hates men enough to kill them, God may well be a lesbian!

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The real danger of "end times" thinking

by new22day in

if the world is going to come to an end doesn't it drain one's motivation to make the world a better place?

is religion just giving people a free pass to apathy and letting them off the hook?

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THE GLADIATOR

"Because faith in Christ and God includes doing as they taught... part of which is helping others, taking responsibility, making amends and fixing our messes (at least trying to)"

Yeah, I got a wife to do all that!

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Old Photos never die....they just fade away...

by Terry in

jw
friends

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151548779165466&set=o.2574865769&type=1&relevant_count=1&ref=nf.

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1977/78 at the writer's guild theater.. .

Why Did You Get Baptised

by God_Delusion in

hi guys,.

so then, why did you get dunked?

were you pressured into it too, or did you do it because you honestly thought it was the right thing to do?.

THE GLADIATOR

Baptism offered extra stamps on my card which had to be full in order to survive Armageddon and get into the new world.

With so little time left the six-fold stamps on offer for this act of devotion were irresistable.

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Didn't Jesus symbolically give a blood transfusion for all of mankind?

by yadda yadda 2 in

jesus poured out his life blood, his soul, on behalf of mankind.

the wine taken at the memorial of christ's death represents this life, given as a sacrifice to atone for adamic sins.

jesus said that unless you eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, you have no life in yourself.

Given long enough, escapism through magical thinking has a profoundly negative affect on a person’s ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Once the ability to distinguish between the two is lost, our ability to navigate the world we function in can become irreparably damaged.

Hard as I try to live and let live and remain neutral, it saddens me to see decent people slowly surrendering their independence and rationality on the altar of magical thinking. I have watched it break up families and ruin lives. Jehovah's Witnesses are only one small group enslaved to magical thinking. The world abounds with magical thinkers and enslaves billions of people.

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Where do we go when we die?

by cptkirk in

what would happen if we did not have religion to give some at least inference to (at the very least) our subconscious, that there is some type of afterlife?

what would we tell kids when they ask us what happens when we die?

what would we tell kids after these shooting massacres?

THE GLADIATOR

Dead people don't go anywhere.

That's what the word 'dead' means.

46

Crazy Religions

by Qcmbr in

i was reading a good article regarding the relative 'craziness' of faiths (blog) and they mentioned a lot about mormons.

in short they talked about the socially accepted craziness (as opposed to actual mental illness) of mainstream , culturally accepted faiths v those that are relatively new.

we see scientology as more crazy than catholicism if we fall into the trap of judging without consideration but when examined all religions have very crazy elements.

THE GLADIATOR

Understandably, calling all religious beliefs crazy is provocative and immediately causes anyone with religious beliefs to become defensive. I tend to put religious beliefs in the category of magical thinking. We all indulge in magical thinking one way or another. It can provide a form of escapism from the reality or life and death. People collectively spend billions of hours watching fiction films and reading fiction books in an attempt to escape into the world of magical thinking.

As long as we know we are being entertained by fiction and can separate it from reality, there is no problem. The difficulty arises when we begin to believe in magical thinking. In time we start to believe we are special, next we believe we have special powers. Perhaps we can hear God talking? Perhaps an invisible version of our self can fly during the night attached to our body by an invisible cord? Or start to build an invisible body which can survive physical death? We start to seek out like minded people who also believe in magical thinking. Anything becomes possible, but only in our mind and the minds of those who share our irrational belief.

Like an addictive drug, magical thinking escalates and alters the mind’s grip on reality. Evidence is absent and fiction becomes fact. Given long enough, escapism through magical thinking has a profoundly negative affect on a person’s ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Once the ability to distinguish between the two is lost, our ability to navigate the world we function in can become irreparably damaged.

Hard as I try to live and let live and remain neutral, it saddens me to see decent people slowly surrendering their independence and rationality on the altar of magical thinking. I have watched it break up families and ruin lives. Jehovah's Witnesses are only one small group enslaved to magical thinking. The world abounds with magical thinkers and enslaves billions of people.

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