Gemma Therese

The times in our lives when we don't "feel" close to God -- during these times, our relationship with Him is actually at its strongest. Faith in God is not about "emotion", it is about our fidelity to Him.

That is very watered down.

Gemma Therese

Philosoft

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Philosoft

Words close together do not a meaningful sentence make.

Amos

If you know "Zamjatin" the Russian author you don't need to know John of the Cross.

Autonemesis

Like Groundhog Day?

Autonemesis

"I'm like that all the time." -- Steven Wright

Proxima Centauri

Well Gemma Therese, I've seen a lot of you on your, "Hello again" discussion thread. You talk as if you are our friend. Many Sec Webbers wish you nice things, like chocolate. I'm afraid I don't see you as a friend.
You risk doing some of us psychological damage. You have this neurosis over hell. Protestant and Catholic Christians are often force fed stuff that develops a neurosis like yours. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> Many of us are former Christians (ex-tians). Many of us were taught to be neurotic the way you are. Then we saw that a loving God allowing hell made no sense and deconverted.
Folk who have recently deconverted come to this website for help settling with their new rationalist position. The last thing they need is you stirring up all the shit they were force fed while they were Christians.
Sometimes a misguided friend does more harm than an open enemy. I hope the strongest debaters on the Sec Web take you on.

Hey Koyaanisqatsi!

[ August 10, 2002: Message edited by: B.Shack ]</p>

Demigawd

"But it's the soul that is sentenced to eternal damnation."

That's what makes Terry Pratchett's Eric all the more frightening. An eternity of absolute, mind-numbing, office-space banality.

Gemma Therese

I think you need some help to work out your animosity towards Christianity.

I bet you are young.

Gemma Therese

Oxidizing Material

Dear Gemma Therese,

Over the past months you seem to have wedged yourself into the secular website to help us poor, betrodden infidels who for some reason beyond your limited comprehension, don't believe in god.

Now, while the base fact may not have sat well with you, the fact that you dig it deeper and deeper is beginning to get, how you say, annoying. See, the secular web is a forum for infidels to discuss their lives, problems, amusing quips of the day, politics, secularism and other such things. Every now and then a misguided Christian will wander in and see the godless heathens who are currently not burning in hell as your god so aptly wishes. They'll spout off some hellfire and brimstone, repent now, Jesus saves and various other cliches until they realize that it's against God's word to be using the internet or even sharing the same bandwidth with us godless child eating heathens spawned from hell, but that's how it goes. Usually, they're tagged with either of two names: "Troll" if they're jaded towards us, or "Target Practice" if they're just confused as to where they are (Jesus cookies have surprising hallucinigenic effects).

You, on the other hand, don't fit perfectly into either, so we're forced to create a "third" category if you will. We'll call this category "Doesn't Get It". So far, we've lumped Mr. Vir the Nazi 14 Year Old and possibly Eternal the Yappy into this category, and you tally up the female roster quite well. Allow me to explain the position.

You see, in the category of "Doesn't Get It", we are faced with the people who either don't understand who they're speaking to, or they aren't very good at interpreting words literally (ooh, like they'd have THAT problem).

Trebazi didn't seem to understand that people nowadays are opposed to fascist world views and the fact nobody really cares about whatever his intelligence quotient is. But he was there, despite hundreds of infidels telling him "We don't care" over and over things we had already heard, things that were pissing the general population off, and things that were downright wrong.

So what does he do? He continues to blather on and on about nothing! The kicker here is that when he was refuted, proved wrong or presented with a question or tidbit he couldn't deal with, he'd take a page of essays explaining to him the error and reply with an irrelivant comment that really had nothing to do with anything. IE, if you gave him 3 pages of text explaining why fascism is wrong in today's world, he'd simply say something to the effect of:

"You spelled "inconsistancy" incorrectly. Therefore, you are stupid and not worth my time. Next please."

We see the same pattern emerge in your postings, as this thread provides us with one such example. People here aren't avoiding christianity or are scared of it or whatever, the fact is WE'VE COME TO TERMS IN OUR OWN OPINIONS THAT RELIGION IS NOT FOR US. For your own sake, accept the fact people will have different opinions than you in life and they don't influence your life! We don't force atheism on anybody. We don't claim atheism to be the "One True (tm) Choice", we don't believe in a god or series of gods. Where here, then, is the word or phrase you don't understand? I'll break it down slowly so maybe you can figure out what's beind said:

Shut. The hell. Up.

Got that one? Let's meet your roommate, Eternal.

Where to start with Eternal? Probably one of the biggest clueless theists that has ever "graced" the board. You'd think he'd stop after the first 20 topics or so that all related to the same thing, but boy, did he prove us wrong! Never getting the hint, racking up page after page in his topic of people telling him how he was wrong, but no, it was relentless. You also follow this pattern to become a sort of Eternal-Trebazi hybrid, a Eternazi, if you will.

See, because no matter how much you believe it, we're not going to drop to our knees and convert to the Christian way of thinking. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. We've already established with ourselves and one another our "beliefs" or lack thereof. It's like the man who chooses to walk 10 minutes to work every day because he likes the exercise and the insane group of people who follow him pleading with him to buy a car or else they'll beat him up. He's not going to relent, and they're not going to sell him a car. But yet there they are, trying anyway with vauge veiled threats, "proof" that their car is the best because the manual says so, phrases such as "You believe walking is the best but YOU KNOW a car is better" and other such things. Again, in short, STOP TRYING TO SELL US A CAR/CHRISTIANITY. We're not going to relent. You're wasting both our time.

So as much as you don't understand it, we're not interested in your religious tripe. Please stop trying to sell it to us. Don't reply to this with a disconnected one line sentence and think you can go off and pray for more of us sinners to see the light because it won't happen. You have your truths, we have ours.

Leave us alone.

Thank you.