neretva

I felt a stab of pain when I read the headline. It is horrendous to lose mom, as all of us who have gone through it can relate. It is a metaphysical body blow, and it takes those of us who feel about our mom as you did about yours several months to gain perspective, and even years to be at peace with it. The best policy short term is to just cry, and be around loved ones as much as possible. Life is so damned temporary, and that really hits home when mom or dad passes on.Prior to the loss of our parents we are playing the flop. With their passing, we squarely reach the turn.

Correct. Letting the inefficient companies fail is the only moral choice. Bail outs do not bail out, they delay the inevitable, causing more ultimate pain than they cure.The auto companies must be allowed to live or die on their own steam. If Detroit folds, which won't happen, so be it. The sooner the better for all involved.

You're probably too old and bitter for that at this point. You probably gave up introspection a long time ago. Christians have such a terrible view of mankind and of life in general that it is no wonder they invent a Heaven to escape to after their corporal lives terminate.The kids on the street were actively proselytizing. Just rookies following the orders of the Senior Christians. Young and still with enough positive energy to be affected by sincere conversation. But they were broken souls, every last one of them. As are you if you define yourself as "born again", which is a euphemism for on

It is irrational to "stand behind" a President with whose philosophies and positions you fundamentally disagree. Obama is a President who we must watch and defend against at every turn. His goal until I see something to the contrary is to turn us into an irrelevant nation like Canada or France. I hate this jingoistic garbage that he now the President of "all the people". He is not. He is someone to be suffered, not supported. His programs and policies must be thwarted, not embraced. I will change my view when he gets into office and DOES NOT seek to implement the collectivist platform espoused

Nope, just the typical loosely observed Catholicism prevalent in the neighborhood. However I knew it was all lies from the get-go. That my friends and cousins never questioned any of it was always a great curiosity to me.

I do love the "walk with Christ" imagery. Like having a little familiar on your shoulder gently guiding you, providing moral and spiritual compass in a confused windy world. Never alone. Father Jesus by your side, "walking" alongside you down life's meandering paths, providing loving guidance at each uncertain fork. It's silly to me. But if you need to use that and it keeps you straight I have no problem with it.But please don't sell it as something that should be spread to others. It is a bad way to live. Not the worst way. Just a bad way.I used to argue with many "born agains" who used to ru

Sorry dude, you don't get to claim dominion over the term soul. It is defined secularly and is more properly and rationally contained within the field of philosophy, not religion. But you mystics are so used to invention and imagination as solutions to your own inadequacy, that you have an entire language and vernacular dedicated to amorphous descriptions of precisely nothing.Please return to your Bible class, you have no business in the real world.

Yes to both, but I won't discuss it further in this thread. I've grown bored of this argument lately. I am firmly convinced that when one is "born again" (dopey term, but there it is), a part of the brain dies. I believe the condition to be permanent and irreversible, barring a Lance Armstrong class recovery.Sad, really. All babies are born atheists, then their parents intentionally disable them by indoctrination, killing a part of their soul in the process. One day this will be viewed as wanton butchery, but today it is normal child-rearing.

That's fine, until the broccoli lovers insist that everyone else eat broccoli too. Which they currently spend millions to do.

Perfect. I love it. Excellent characterization of the religious view of life. That life is a misery to be suffered until something better is granted in the undefined and undefinable hereafter. For the secularist: Life is all there is, and is limited by time. Therefore "as good as it gets" is beyond good enough. Life is a splendid journey to be treasured and revered BECAUSE it is limited by time. Even the difficulties and strife are to be treasured, because we exist to treasure them.

Here's the difference. The goal of my "hatred" as you call it, is to have a society free from oppression and powerlust at the hands of envious mediocrities who promise the ignorant an imaginary Nirvana as payment for handing over their lives.I simply want to be free of them. I would never attempt to export my beliefs through use of the police power of the state.Believe me, if the Christian Conservatives had their way, their REAL way, they would resemble Islam and would simply kill anyone in their way. Fortunately, one of the beauties of our system is that the Founding Fathers knew, despite the

You're going to Heaven. I'm in Heaven. Such is the differerence between a deist and a secularist. Good luck with that. I hope it lives up to your imagination.

Christian policy is about hatred for man, hatred for Reason, control of behavior for the express purpose of accumulating power, and propagating the expression of fantasy as a substitute for reality. And I am definitely NOT advocating UNITING behind a President who plans to destroy the principles of the Founding Fathers by trashing Freedom in favor of collectivist statist economic slavery. Obama is going to crash, burn, and explode and I will do whatever I can to hasten the public's understanding of his Leftist programs as they begin to crystallize. He is going down hard in my estimation and th

It was a joy watching the hateful Christian Conservatives writhe in pain at the prospect of a huge shift to the left for social policy. Their evil plans to control our souls have been officially SHORT-CIRCUITED. Abortion is safe. Gays will figure out how to marry. Evolution (reality) will be taught in favor of creationism (fantasy). And best of all, Obama gets to push the Court Left, Left, Left. And that's the gift that keeps on giving long after we get control of our economic senses and elect the next Republican to fix the Socialistic mess Obama attempts to create with the economy.If Christia

The Bible was written by men and for men. It has nothing to with anything BUT men. It is an atrociously stupid document that needs to be trashed, not read.

Reverend Wright wanted it, now he's got it. God has damned America.Let the 2012 Presidential campaign begin. As the move to the left inevitably crashes and burns the economy, we can look forward to a proper Republican candidate in 2012 or perhaps even 2016. One who espouses proper laissez-faire capitalism and removal of an oppressive government from our daily lives.But until then: A societal cancer has metastasized this evening. We can only watch in horror as the train leaves the tracks and careens and cascades down the mountainside, rewarding the lazy and the mediocre at the expense of those

Grandma dies on election eve. Do we need any further proof that there is no God? Ship it.

Being poor should only be a problem for those who are poor. Being poor is almost always a personal choice, not an existential inevitability. The government should not even be concerned with this at all. Poor people have several choices. Better themselves to eliminate the problem. Or ask for charity.

The Earth has always heated and cooled, and will always heat and cool. There should be no political position on this subject. It is a fabricated issue. Most environmental issues are phony excuses to stop progress and punish achievement.Environmentalism is a form of philosophical terrorism with hatred of productivity as its motivating force. Socialist-collectivists also share this envy and hatred of quality. Which is why you will almost find these 2 pathetic groups in political lockstep.

How will you know it is not Satan guiding your vote?The short, and long, answer is: you won't.

If you define spirituality as something outside the knowable world, then you are operating in the imaginary. There is reality, and nothing else. Within reality, there is that which we know, and that which we don't. All that we do not know is knowable but hasn't been learned yet.Some people choose to imagine a spiritual dimension that is outside the knowable world. It does not exist and cannot exist, but they postulate it anyway, emote over it, are motivated at times by it, and attempt to find fellowship with others who have imagined something similar.Any phenomenon that is unknown to all of us

Beyond the known forces of the universe are the unknown forces that will one day become known as our epistemological methods progress and evolve.There are no unknown forces that CANNOT be known. They are unknown only so long as our capabilities for observing and integrating them remain insufficient. Our inability to comprehend all of reality at the present time should offer no excuse for us to lapse into the imaginary, as we have done with God. However, it is so much easier than reconciling ourselves to the notion that we may never learn every truth in the universe. Our species will exist for

Not deluded, just broken in one area. But God is an excellent circuit breaker for you and the vast majority of people. The ability of the mind to compartmentalize this dysfunction and use it for cosmic motivation rather than conception/action is innocuous most of the time. The beauty of atheism is that you feel the same rapture at observing and participating in reality that the religious feel in escaping into their imagination. It is a much more pure and visceral joy because it is based in the real world rather than a supernatural imaginary construct. It is also a more heroic position as it r

By the way, it has been some time since Daniel released a "reunion with Jesus" blog. He has been busy kicking butt in the real world of poker tournaments, but I have to predict that it is only days or weeks before Daniel will issue a mea culpa about ignoring Jesus and the psychological consequences thereof. I could almost save him the trouble and write it myself...

Why live in such fear? This is such an amazing beautiful existence that is over in an eyeblink, why is reality something you try so hard to avoid?