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 Family / Re: My Dad Needs Money Again! Please Help! by MadMax1(f): 2:49am On Sep 08, 2010 |
I hate the kind of psychological vampirism where a parent thinks he's done you a favour putting you thru school, and waits to recoup his 'investment'. His dad is not ill or in want, he's not being neglected, he's wasting his son's financial resources as he deems fit on business schemes,because he feels entitled. The poster's been working for two years and doesn't have his own place or a car. His money is going towards meeting these sort of obligations and 'investment payback' mentality demands. One understands people who are projecting their own fathers on the OP's and responding from that, but a parent that sends a child to school is responsible and one that doesn't is irresponsible; it doesn't make the child an indentured servant because his dad gave him an education. The poster has been made to feel he owes his father, and feels guilty because another demand is being made and he can't do a thing. He's angry and frustrated and unhappy. Maybe your dad doesn't realise how much strain you're under. Maybe they feel they should get as much as they can from you now before you get married or something. You don't need to feel guilty about saying No, even of you have the money. You have your own life. Start planning for it and aiming for what you want. Take care of your father's NEEDS when you can. He can take care of his own wants and his own business schemes. A parent wouldn't put a child under such strain. You're supposed to enjoy taking of your father, while he appreciates you, not pander to a sense of entitlement where he takes everything you do for him as his due and sees you as his personal money-producing factory. Tell him you can't help out this time. Start saving for your own place. Move out. When he needs you be there to show your love. When he wants to waste your money, like now, say NO and don't feel guilty. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 1:27am On Sep 08, 2010 |
It's really the Wheel of Time series I'd appreciate. I have far too many books, non fiction especially, I haven't gotten around to reading. Please email it to the addy you have. She'll know what to do. Thank you. I've The Master and Margarita. I haven't come across any other book by the man. Maybe he wrote just that one. It's outstanding. I always enjoy an excellent anything featuring the devil. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 7:52pm On Sep 07, 2010 |
My absolute pleasure MyJoe. I've told Sabrina to see to it. If there are other titles or authors please let me know. I do have a great many nonfiction as well. The books will be in zip folders, most likely. Will that be all right? You probably already have a zip file opener but if you don't, you can download 7Zip free from the CNET website, or any good software site. It's just to open the files, nothing more. If you don't like your books in plain text, or if the text is squished together, please open the folder with MS Word and convert to PDF. Aletheia, I've never read Matheson. A Hitchhiker's Guide is the funniest SF book ever. So English, so likeable, and yet not sparing in wit, imagination or intelligence. The first book is the best. The quality declines after that. And oh yes, Clarke is a genius. Lit is Microsoft Reader. I don't use it. If you come across the books in any other format, then please send them. He dided before completing the series. New titles added today. Hope there's stuff you both haven't read: Fear of Flying- Erica Jong Brave New World- Aldous Huxley The Devil's Alternative- Frederick Forsyth Love in the Time of Cholera- Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Chronicles of Narnia, Books 1-7- C.S Lewis 2010 Odyssey Two- Arthur C. Clarke - 2061 Odyssey Three " 3001 The Final Odyssey " Rendezvous with Rama " The Fountains of Paradise " The Nine Billion Names of God " Rosemary's Baby- Ira Levin The Bourne Identity-Robert Ludlum The Silence of the Lambs-Thomas Harris Cruel and Unusual- Patricia Cornwell Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep- Philip K. Dick Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said-Philip K. Dick Fight Club-Palahniuk, Chuck Neverwhere- Neil Gaiman The Executioner's Song- Norman Mailer The Golden Notebook- Doris Lessing Brokeback Mountain- Proulx, Annie - The Complete Works-Lovecraft, H.P L.A. Confidential- James Elroy The Remains of the Day-Ishiguro, Kazuo Children of Men- PD James As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner The Time Traveler's Wife-Audrey Niffenegger Catch-22- Joseph Heller On the Road- Jack Kerouac |
| Celebrities / Re: Angelina To Jen: Leave My Family Alone! by MadMax1(f): 10:00pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
Lol. 'Team Aniston' newsies at work. A 'pal' gave them the story. These tabloids. One is getting its behind sued right now for saying Pitt and Jolie were breaking up. Seriously; no idea they were dating while Pitt was still married to Aniston. I read a Jolie interview back then on the rumours, where she denied it, saying her father cheated on her mother, and it devastated her mother, so she could never date a married man and play that same role. Interesting. |
| Celebrities / Re: Angelina To Jen: Leave My Family Alone! by MadMax1(f): 9:34pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
I got the story all mixed up then. And the woman is doing 'gen-gen!' and telling Pitt's mother who she can be friends with? A likely story. |
| Celebrities / Re: Angelina To Jen: Leave My Family Alone! by MadMax1(f): 9:01pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
spikedcylinder: Really. I recall the announcement of their separation came long before anything about he and Jolie. He and Aniston kept hanging out after that and everyone thought they'd be getting back together and all that, but it didn't happen. Well. Takes two to tango. I don't get how Jolie's the 'home-wrecker' and 'husband stealer' while Pitt gets no blame at all. She broke into the vault they hid him in and stole him from there? He's responsible for his own marriage. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 7:47pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
Your post is missing, aletheia. |
| Celebrities / Re: Angelina To Jen: Leave My Family Alone! by MadMax1(f): 7:21pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
kadman: Lol. Hater.  Jolie didnt wreck that marriage; that's just a spin that sells tabloids and Aniston movies, even trashy ones like Marley and Me. I remember she and Pitt announced their marriage was over in January 2005 cos I was logging into my mail and it was on Yahoo front page. Pitt and Jolie hadn't even met then, I think. That was later that year. Even if their marriage hadn't crashed and Pitt was actually cheating, Pitt is responsible for his own marriage, not Jolie. Aniston and Pitt wrecked their own marriage jere. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 5:13pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
If he's this angry, and he is angry, his devotion and religious zeal at the time must have been extreme. But his dad was an unusual man, sha. A moslem, and he didn't give a rat's little tail what religion his wife followed. And decades back too, not even the present. Now [i]there'[/i]s a man. Reading some interesting internet statistics. The most searched for and googled word is 'God' The second most searched for and googled word is 's.ex'. God before s,ex. Interesting. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 5:13pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
I'm almost sure those books have been sent by now. I have the Card books. Thank you. I've read but don't own Jordan's Wheel of Time series though. Do you have them? I'm not sure a favourite SF author is possible. I just have favourite books. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is near the top. Clark not only showed the imagination of a god; in some places, he wrote like one. It's amazing to think he wrote this before men had actually left the planet; before Armstrong and space shuttles and space probes and the Voyagers. Everything in the book came from his mind. It's a gigantic achievement. I was intrigued when HAL the robotic contraption was driven to neurosis by guilt, the overlap between his compulsion to obey orders at all costs and the necessity of keeping a secret. His makers had created a human being. When he begged for his life, terrified of oblivion, I was moved to tears. But it was Bowman's journey, and its resolution, that made my jaw drop. An astonishingly beautiful book. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is really good too. Only an English guy could have written that. Which are your favourite books and authors? |
| Religion / Re: Happy Birthday Deepsight by MadMax1(f): 5:06pm On Sep 06, 2010 |
Hope you had a great Birthday, Deep. Wishing you many more great years ahead. |
| Religion / Re: God Did Not Create The Universe by MadMax1(f): 1:11am On Sep 05, 2010 |
Hmmm. This certainly clarifies things. Hawkings was merely arguing that a 'God of the Gaps' isn't necessary, and it isn't. Excerpt from an article from another thread. It made no sense for a scientist as smart as Hawkings to make such an absurd claim as 'God Did Not Create the Universe'. He said no such thing: Hawking was accused of "missing the point" by colleagues at the University of Cambridge in England. "The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing," said Denis Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. "Hawking's god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge. "Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative," he added. Fraser Watts, an Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science, said that it's not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God. "A creator God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe, and , it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not. That view is not undermined by what Hawking has said." Hawking's book -- as the title suggests -- is an attempt to answer "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything," he wrote, quoting Douglas Adams' cult science fiction romp, "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy." His answer is "M-theory," which, he says, posits 11 space-time dimensions, "vibrating strings, , point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space." He doesn't explain much of that in the excerpt, which is the introduction to the book. But he says he understands the feeling of the great English scientist Isaac Newton that God did "create" and "conserve" order in the universe. It was the discovery of other solar systems outside our own in 1992 that undercut a key idea of Newton's -- that our world was so uniquely designed to be comfortable for human life that some divine creator must have been responsible. But, Hawking argues, if there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it's less remarkable that there's one with conditions for human life. And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 12:51am On Sep 05, 2010 |
I didn't know that. I just got the following titles, if there's any you've been looking for: The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimov 2001: A Space Odyssey- Arthur C Calrke The Moon is a Harsh Mistress- Robert Heinlein The Dispossed- Ursula K LeGuin Ringworld - Larry Niven Gateway- Frederick Pohl Titan- John Varley Atonement-Ian McEwan Sandkings- Neil Gaiman Speaker for the Dead- Orson Scott Card The Horse Whisperer - Nicholas Evans The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles Lord of the Flies-William Golding Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy- John Le Carré The Ninja-Eric van Lustbader One Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy The Satanic Verses- Salman Rushdie The Color Purple- Alice Walker The Golden Keel- Desmond Bagley Humboldt's Gift- Saul Bellow Take care. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 6:36pm On Sep 04, 2010 |
I inferred the comparison from the quote you pulled. What do you know? Another SF freaky freak.  Have you read Frank Herbert's 'Dune'?Winner, the Hugo Award Winner, the Nebula Award Winner, 1975 Locus Poll for All Time Best Novel Winner, 1987 Locus Poll for All Time Best SF Novel Winner, 1998 Locus Poll for All Time Best SF Novel before 1990 I was rolling my eyes at all the hype, and then I read it. It's really good. I don't know if any of the Dark Tower books won awards, but books 2 and 4 are certainly deserving of nominations at least. |
| Religion / Re: God Did Not Create The Universe by MadMax1(f): 6:09pm On Sep 04, 2010 |
Interesting. Sorry about the presumption, lol. I thought you said something about changing beliefs to suit whatever's currently fashionable or something. I know a bit about the movie and game world since I'm a bit of a games freak (Long live MGS. Long live the king.) And simulation software is already being used, from pilot training to military strategising. So from the advances in these technology comes the extrapolation that the whole world, the universe itself, is one giant simulation. Like The Matrix na. You've seen the movie featuring Reeves and Fishbourne and Moss, yes? It pretty well sums up your theory. |
| Business / Re: Fed Govt To Remove Fuel Subsidy By New Year —aganga by MadMax1(f): 1:29pm On Sep 04, 2010 |
Nonsense. Why import fuel in the first place? Why not repair and build refineries? Why has that been so hard to do? Singapore is much tinier, has less money, doesn't have a drop of oil, yet has almost 20 refineries. Useless lot, mortgaging the future and fate of an entire country to satisfy private ambitions. |
| Religion / Re: Revelation! Revelation! Revelation! by MadMax1(f): 1:04pm On Sep 04, 2010 |
She obviously meant they have no fear of God but revere money more than God; it counts for more; they reckon with money more; they worship it, money is their God, etc. Of all the things you saw here, that was the great fallacious lie? Ah well. Just hopped in to see what the revelation!revelation!revelation! was. Wasn't disappointed at all. |
| Religion / Re: God Did Not Create The Universe by MadMax1(f): 1:00pm On Sep 04, 2010 |
I hoot whenever I see that 'experimental computeism'. This MyJoe will not kill persin. Seriously, though, you might consider elaborating on the alien origin of the universe theory. It's genuinely interesting. How should one take it, though, coming from you; since you say now you'll be changing religious theories like clothing. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 12:03pm On Sep 04, 2010 |
Fantastic, especially the early books. Good like Pullman's His Dark Materials series, but with more complicated underpinings. I hope you're not, however, suggesting they come close to LOTR. They do not. Tolkien invented and laid the foundation of the unique formula later writers copied; creating worlds and races from scratch, with its own langauge and culture and religions and philosophies and economy. Later fantasy writers studied and used that, from Herbert to Pullman to Jordan. Jordan borrows a little from Hindu mythology and religious philosophy for the grounding of the series. But no one matches Tolkien. He was a poet and a visionary, and that book is the synthesis of both qualities. The LOTR movies were spellbinding. The book is even better. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 10:54am On Sep 04, 2010 |
Absolutely fascinating. Makes sense. You beat up a herbalist, lol. I had no idea this would be so long. Sorry about that. I just coloured it up to make it easier on the eye. The interesting thing is, other atheists weren't doing your thinking for you. You did your own research. You had your own ideas about how things ought to be if there was a God, you sought to see if things were indeed so, they were not. I'm sorry, but did you really need anyone to tell you much in the bible is the work of human beings? All you had to do was read it. I understand the cover that comes with deep indocrination. When cold facts rip it away, that conviction, based on falsehood and blind faith, will be destroyed. After that all you will see will be things that will confirm your new ideas. This world is so messed up, it passes understanding. See, I know there is a God. Only things are not exactly like we've been told. I went thru a similar phase. Indoctrination. I was reading the bible one day and many things in it made no sense. Deuteronomy and all those rules. They were so petty and intrusive, so mean, so small minded. If any kind of a God wrote these things, it's not a God I can respect. The OT books where 'God' would talk and talk, promising to deal with Israel the LovePeddler. Sometimes truth can be unpleasant. It was either there was actually a God that was saying these things, he was a petty cosmic bastid, and I'd better make my peace with it. Or it wasn't God. Further examination of the OT only deepened my disgust. So I was done with believing for its own sake. I did find out later that books like Isaiah and Jeremiah wasn't God himself talking, all those 'I the Lord will do this and that', but a compedium of the preaching of the prophets after decades of ministry. The book of Isaisah is 60 years of the prophet's preaching. Jeremiah is almost 4 decades. They would get a 'word' or a 'vision', and they would preach in the most effective, attentiongrabbing way, to the Israelites. All the 'I the Lord will do this and that' is THEM talking. Like if Adeboye dies and they put his preaching together, and some of his preaching includes places where he says 'I am the Lord that changeth not. I will do a new thing in your life', etc. When you read it you'll think it's God talking, when it's Adeboye preaching. So it was with the OT Prophet books. Though much in the books of Moses leave much to be desired, the OT prophets are actually quite intriguing and a different kettle of fish altogether. Nevertheless I wasn't accpeting a bible because I'd been told to. And nobody's secondhand faith would do either. Do you know what God is to many people? He is the sum of all their religious activities. He is Sunday school plus quiet time plus night vigils plus evangelising plus all the rest. If you take those things away, their God falls flat. That is why most churches keep their members close and engross them in activity all week, wasting their time. But they get that good religious feeling. I rejected all that, was angry and went into cynical atheist mode. Do you know when I knew for absolute certain that God existed? Early this year. But the OT is a non-issue. It's Christ I need, not the Jews. I need Christ, but no Jewish cultural or religious beliefs, doctrines, rules or systems. I have my own culture, replete with all that. There's the idea that Christianity means accepting everything in the bible, but that's pure nonsense. The bible only became 'essential' to Christianity five centuries ago. Christians had existed, the disciples had functioned with power, early Christianity had flourished, without a bible. The bible means something now only because the original message has been lost and distorted, and we take what we can get and try to sift the truth from the lies and additions. The Bible itself is part of the distortion, so it is both a problem and part of the solution. Nevertheless Christ did not bring a religion; He brought the way to God. It's the equivalent of what Buddhists call the Short Path, even if they mean different things. Who Christ is, Why he is, What he brought functions within ANY religious system, which is why he modified Judaic rules as he saw fit, but he did not replace it or introduce a new religion; 'I have not come to erase the law but to fulfil it.' Or something to that effect. And the fulfilment of the law, he says, is Love. It is why His disciples called themselves followers of the Way, but still functioned within the Judaic system, merely holding that Judaic rules did not bind gentiles. What Christ is, what God is, functions above any religion, which are all man-made systems, a way to understand and navigate spiritual terrain, nothing more. Religions reflect reality only to varying degrees, and no complete truth is to be found in any single one. Christ and God are above religion, above the works of human hands, above the thoughts of men. One thing I can't figure out. God is there. He sees these stuff. People are being led into error and mistakes. He had to know the origins of the bible. (By the way, no one knows for sure when the NT were written. When they say 50 AD or AD 70, they're counting from the approximate year of the BIRTH of Jesus, not his death. So those books were written approx 50 to 70 years from the year of his BIRTH, not his death. The current word is there are older documents and those dated are copies of copies of copies. Who cares though? My faith doesn't rest on how old the documents were. All I care about is what is true and what is false. So many things are false and man-made in religion I can't reconcile myself to it. I say I'm a Christian because I believe in Christ, but wild horses can't drag me to church. Not unless it met my needs and it isn't a silly bigoted church. It's not too much to ask that anyone who leads a church should have a PhD in Theology, and know something about the religion, instead of going to some absurd 'Bible school' and coming to tell me the Edden story is literal and all those rules in the OT were from God. They're so manmade it's almost painful to read them.) So if God knows all thse things, sees all these things, the evil people do in the name of religion, forced conversions and lies and fraud and all the rest, why does he allow it to go on? Why no interference? I'm still at that, and it seems it's not only non-interference now; it's been a policy of non-interference from the start, and so it will continue. There is no overstating the importance of the choices human beings make of their own free will. If your mother is surgically tied to your side, so you have to carry her about, and she sees everything you do; the awareness, her constant there-ness, WILL distort your will, will distort your choices. You will not be true to yourself, you will make choices based on the awareness that she is there. You will never become Mazaje, just a pale, stunted version with his mother on his back. But since you're independent of your mother, and she doesn't see all you do, you're free to be yourself. Now imagine if GOD were strapped to your side, so you carry him about everywhere you go. How in the blue ocean can you ever express your will, so that the wheels and the laws governing things, hinged on free will, continue to turn? How can you freely make the choices that are so important, that must never be coerced but come naturally from your soul; to lie or not to lie, to steal or not to steal, to murder or not to murder, to war or not to war? You cannot. If free will is not free, then all of this, our lives and existence here, makes no sense. And so you have a God that is present, but who removes every visible sign of his presence, so that humanity can be true to itself. So that there is no coersion. Whatever you do, love, hate, kill, must be truly and freely chosen, and not a fake thing you chose because you can look out your window and see written in the sky, I AM WATCHING YOU. So He seems to be completely absent, and human beings express themselves in all their unrestrained and glorious evil. Right from time. They're free to take a bible and add whatever they want. They're free to tell others what to believe. Others are free to choose to believe or not. They're free so torture and kill in the name of God. No one will interfere. But there are consequences for every single thing we do; wheels within wheels, constantly changing possibilities. Sometimes people say free will and choice is an illusion. Steven Pinker asks, 'If a man points a gun at me and tell me to do this or he will shoot and I obey, have I made that choice? Is my will free?' But others can impose their will on you. They can enslave you, conscript your sons and make them die meaningless deaths in foolish wars.Then there are the things that our genes do; they play a part in who we are and the choices we make. The influence us; the attraction we feel; they just want to perpertuate themselves and they are completely unscrupulous. A little thing and you start having 'feelings' for someone you barely know, sexual fantasies, and will sleep with them in a wink if you can. It's your genes, which have not evolved beyond the recent contraceptives we've devised, and so push you to have intimacy, and entice you with all sorts of romatic and yummy feelings to make it exciting for you, so you yield. You can't get her out of your mind. He touches you and you feel a jolt of electricity. It is not easy for people to be faithful to their mates, men especially; given the war they're fighting with their own natures. And yet men and women do it every day. By choice. Our genes play an important role in our make up. But they do not govern us. We do make the choices. In spite of his genes Steven Pinker remains voluntarily childless. In one of his books he says, If my genes don't like it, they can jump in the lake. We do have free will. We do make our own choices. In spite of everything; in spite of genes, in spite of other people, in spite of God. We're free to look for God. We're free to find Him. I have yet to meet a person who earnestly, unquenchingly sought God and did not find Him. It is simply not possible. He is God. He is a terrifying thing. He is not an abstraction. He does not have to indulge our fancies because we think we're special and it's up to Him to play according to OUR rules. He loves us. I know that means nothing now, but istis true. It is the truest thing in the universe. We are not the only works of his hands; what a joke that is. The whole universe,so large human beings cannot grasp it, teems with life. There are many universes, not just this. There are other things that aren't universes, that are beyond us. It sounds crazy, unreal, but it's true. For me, anyway. Each man must chart his own course, must find his own way. I'm so sorry for what happened to you. For your disappointment with religion and man-made doctrines. It must have been agonising for you. God is not in the works of human hands, in the rituals of religion. He comes to us in spite of those things, not because of them. And we cannot dictate the terms, that this is how things must be if we must believe. Things are simply the way they are. We can only seek to understand how it is, not impose our own wishes on things only dimly glimpsed and understood. If you have no cause for belief, then no one can hold you to task for not believing. Especially since God is not obvious, but sometimes maddeningly elusive. He's there to be found ONLY if he is sincerely sought. And God is NOT religion. They're TWO different things. Bertrand Russell, a man after my own heart, was asked what he would say if he died and suddenly found himself before God and asked why he didn't believe. He said,"Evidence, God, evidence." 1 Like |
| Religion / Re: God Did Not Create The Universe by MadMax1(f): 9:45am On Sep 04, 2010 |
mantraa: Don't get your ideas mixed up. Hawkings is a physicist, not a theologian. That you understand a process doesn't mean anything except that you understand the process. It says nothing about God. It's not his job to tell you which God created the universe. I've been reading his books since A Brief History of Time. In the 19th century, even before the discovery of atoms, Physics said it had discovered everything there was to know. How wrong that was. They're just finding stranger and stranger things. They aren't even done with the atom, as it keeps getting smaller and smaller when they found it didn't end with electrons and protons. In one article Mr hawkings declares the physicists understanding of the universe may be close to complete, and that God isn't necessary in the process. He's entitled to an opinion, but until an alien civilisation comes here to say 'We Come In Peace,' Mr Hawkings speaks neither for physics nor for makind. Jenwitemi has pointed it out. He's just clutching at straws. Physics knows far too little and can not make sweeping pronouncements about 'God'. He has no evidence for anything he's saying. It's just his own inferences. CS Lewis pointed something out. A Maker cannot be discovered within his own creation. He is apart and distinct from it. Just like an architect can build a house but he himself doesn't comprise a wall or a window in that house, or an engineer can build a car but he himself isn't within the car as the tyres or engine or passenger seat, so God cannot be found within the universe he has made, but outside of it. If an alien civilisation created the universe, but they are light years away, they are still within this universe, a part of it, and so were created themselves, and so did not create the universe. There is nothing any scientist will find that will say there's no God. It's like exploring a house or a car, not finding its maker within it, and fashioning theories that will eliminate them having a maker at all, and feeling very clever about it. Science is illuninating but science is just human beings and human beings can be very stupid. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 8:52pm On Sep 03, 2010 |
This Nuclear,ehn mazaje: Wow. Extremely interesting. Were your own choices involved at any time? Sure, it must have been the dear old folks at first, but was there a time you chose either religion? Did you go along devoutly, learn a few hard facts, say evolution vs Genesis, science vs biblical literalism, or the history of the bible,etc, and grow disenchanted? Why did you leave Islam? Did you try other religions besides the two, a religionless worship of your own devising, anything at all apart from Christianity and Islam? How did you make the transition to atheism? Was it easy for you? Did your family give you grief over it? I'm sorry, I don't mean to probe. If you're not comfortable answering I'll quite understand. |
| Religion / Re: God Did Not Create The Universe by MadMax1(f): 8:27pm On Sep 03, 2010 |
Experimental computeism rotflmao!!! My sides! good lord. But the new theory is interesting. An alien seedling eyeview of the universe fits in with people who believe life began here from alien origins. |
| Religion / Re: God Did Not Create The Universe by MadMax1(f): 7:50pm On Sep 03, 2010 |
Jenwitemi: The bolded part has said it all. For arguably the most intelligent man on the planet, Hawkings far overreaches himself. I had to stop at the Matrix conspiracy theory though. I don't get that part. There's a civilisation that created this universe? Do you mean that in the 'Lobsang Rampa: The Hermit' sense? How did you arrive at this? Isn't that quite a leap from your previous theory; we are all pieces of God? We're like pods planted by an alien civilisation; complex computer programming. Really intriguing. Isn't it all just semantics though? Replacing 'illusion' with another word, something spacy and upbeat and sexy; 'computer program'? Is that essentially what 'getting with the 21st century gig' means? A new slang for old concepts? Are you really saying something new here? Whatever it is, it's interesting. |
| Literature / Re: A Mean Consensus - A Short Short Story by MadMax1(f): 6:35pm On Sep 03, 2010 |
nuclearboy: I just saw this a few mins ago and have told someone to send the Ayn Rands. If it's pdf, it's fine. If it's in zip, please use winzip or 7zip to open them. You can download 7zip free at CNET. It'll' take only a few minutes. Author of Everlasting? Myne White: Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is the greatest fantasy novel of all time. It will likely never be beaten. It has a science fiction counterpart in Dune by Frank Herbert. Nothing King has written has a prayer of approaching either of these books in quality except The Stand. It's not his most 'interesting' work; that would be The Dark Tower series. But it is by far his best. The Stand is the only book he's written to make it to the 100 greatest novels of all time lists. I can't imagine him beating it. That would be quite a feat. It's like saying Tokien's just written something that beat Lord of the Rings. I'm not really a diehard King fan. But I'm intrigued. I'll take a look at Under the Dome one of these days and see if he's really done it. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 8:14am On Sep 03, 2010 |
I'm looking at my last three posts. I sounded pissed? Seriously? I know Mazaje too well for that. He's just being his usual entitled contrary, albeit interesting, self. A real discussion would have been lovely, even if we don't agree, but one gets a litle tired of argument for argument's sake. Enjoyed your submission. Wish it had been a little longer though. mazaje: [color=#000099]Argueholic. What were you orginally? Moslem? Christian? Buddhist? Animist? Everyone was originally something. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 9:46pm On Sep 02, 2010 |
Argueholic. A day will come when the question will be settled, for you, once and for all. Enjoy that atheism of yours while it lasts. It has an expiry date. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 8:55pm On Sep 02, 2010 |
A Buddhist is not an atheist. They aren't synonyms. The Buddhist's concept of 'God' is subtle and deep, and they know there are occult forces, spiritual realms and different states of being. They know some of what human beings are capable of. Not so with our garden variety atheist. It's up to each man to define his own atheism. We take theism as simply the certainty that there is no God, in any shape or form, the 'rational' variety that's so fashionable now, with everything else that naturally follows from that. If one has no basis for belief then atheism is fine. By 'nothing supernatural' he meant it in the atheistic sense. I meant it in the 'natural but not yet fully understood sense'. The brain-dead have after death experiences. So do the clinically dead. When you're clinically dead, not a single cell of the trillions in your brain is functioning, talkless of generating an after life experience in a realm outside the physical. After death experiences are independent of the physiognomy, be it brain, lung, liver or their left pinkie finger. One man not only died after being wounded during the Rwandan genocide, his corpse was rotting in the primary school they were hiding in, after several days of death. He returned to his body, after an ADE. When he woke, he scrapped maggots out of his mouth so he could talk. The people hiding in the classroom from Hutu mauraders forgot the danger outside and fled in terror. It took some convincing to summon them back. His name is Emmanuel something. I'll look for his surname but you've enough to google the story, I think. One of his arms had decayed so badly it had almost fallen off. Mazaje seems to have an overwhelming need to 'disprove' or ridicule things he knows nothing about. To compartmentalize spiritual things in his mental atheistic briefcase, everything neat and tidy and accounted for. And there's that enormous sense of entitlement he carries about, because he's an atheist. He comes in here and expects people to scramble furiously to 'convince' him, as if explanations are due him. He casually dismisses one man's experience as a 'lie' from his all-knowing perch on Nairaland, never mind that the man doesn't live in a vacuum, he published a book, and if he's lied he would have long been exposed for a fraud by now; at least by the hospital staff involved. It did not happen. But a careless dismissal suits our maz's fancy. After death experiences are lies? It's their brains? Yeah. Whatever makes you comfortable, baby. I'm all about comfort. nuclearboy: Yes. Please go ahead. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 7:56am On Sep 02, 2010 |
Mazaje, There's nothing supernatural about after death experiences. Why issue yourself a headache over stuff that wasn't meant for you? Most of the after death experiences here were of atheists lol. I find it fascinating that it happens irrespective of religious belief. I find it fascinating that smarter atheists than you who actually underwent the experience found atheism impossible after what they saw. I put two experiences of atheist university professors there. Maybe you should go tell them it's their brains. It seems not to have occurred to them. How easy that must have been for you to say, though that's long been debunked. Attaboy. Sherlock Holmes has saved the day again! How do you do it, Mr Holmes? There are millions of the stuff. Everybody who dies goes through it. We have these stories only because they returned, a minority among the dead, as most do not.They were simply people who died. When you die your spirit will leave your body and see stuff, and you can tell yourself whatever it is you want to tell yourself then. 'Don't panic, Mazaje. It's the brain under duress.' See how that works for you then. If your dismissal does something for you; validates your beliefs in some way, by all means treat yourself; dismiss away. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 3:14pm On Aug 30, 2010 |
Lovely. Thank you. This Yogi guy was Hindu Occult. He translated one of the Hindu holy books into English. These are stuff he taught his Hindu occult initiate class in 1904 and 1907. They just put his class teachings into a book. He definitely didn't borrow from Rosicrucianism. They may have borrowed from him and others; most of these doctrines and ideas have been around for centuries, and so aren't new. |
| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 2:14pm On Aug 30, 2010 |
Sorry if the formatting isn't too smooth. I'm copying from a digital book, and cutting and recutting to fit the allowed attachment size here. Final one.
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| Religion / Re: The Problem With Dreams, Visions And Clairvoyance by MadMax1(f): 2:11pm On Aug 30, 2010 |
Four
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. Greeks and Trojans?(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (of 79 pages)
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