WWIII???

[DJL 232]

On 10/18/2019 at 2:11 PM, RonD1120 said:

I have only heard it mentioned once by Dr Hank Lundstrum, Tampa, FL in the mid-1980s. Based on what I know now I believe the ritual would involve human sacrifice with a very high probability of it being an innocent child.

If by child you mean "Kid" and it involved seasoning and shis kabob skewers then Yes, I have sworn my soul to Satan.

[ryoder 1,382]

So let me get this straight:

If I don't swear allegiance to Ron's imaginary friend, that means I am swearing allegiance to his imaginary enemy???

[DJL 232]

On 10/20/2019 at 2:24 PM, RonD1120 said:

The difference is that an acid trip at Burning Man wears off and must be repeated to duplicate the effect. Being born-again does not wear off.

That is why I stated that to reject it after it has happened to you requires some seriously evil ritual(s).

Since I'm the person who is the subject of this conversation regarding how I went from a rather Agnostic upbringing to becoming a Christian and believing in Christ and the religion of Christianity and then ultimately leaving it when I grew older I can assure you that I did not kill any children and swear myself to Satan in order to leave the Christian faith.

[RonD1120 58]

9 minutes ago, DJL said:

Since I'm the person who is the subject of this conversation regarding how I went from a rather Agnostic upbringing to becoming a Christian and believing in Christ and the religion of Christianity and then ultimately leaving it when I grew older I can assure you that I did not kill any children and swear myself to Satan in order to leave the Christian faith.

I'm curious, did you ever experience being born-again? Or, did you simply attend church and participate in church activities?

[mbohu 77]

5 minutes ago, ryoder said:

So let me get this straight:

If I don't swear allegiance to Ron's imaginary friend, that means I am swearing allegiance to his imaginary enemy???

Yes. Exactly

...and that is of course the case with every worldview and belief system. If you are IN that belief system you cannot generally see anything beyond that. So: If your worldview is dualistic in any kind of "you are either with us or against us" sense, then anyone who isn't "with you" is clearly with "the enemy". You cannot possibly conceive that someone doesn't accept your assumptions and categorizations at all and therefore is neither. (like in your case: You do not even accept the reality of either a god or a devil--while his entire world consists only of the conflict between those two)
Your entire world consists of these 2 opposites, there can be no third. Religious views are only the most obvious examples.
You can see it on this Forum all the time: Let's say you haven't posted here for a long time (so regular visitors don't already know--or think they know--your political beliefs), and you post something that is perceived to be questioning some point someone makes: You will be immediately assumed to be falling into a specific category, based on which point you were questioning. So: You may question a statistic put up by a gun-rights activist, and in the next post you may be attacked for your (assumed) views on abortion--even though you never posted anything whatsoever about that latter topic. This happens on "both sides", because generally people cannot conceive of a world, where someone does not fall into whatever categories their mind has set up in order to make sense of the world.
For an example, look at the thread about car breathalizers, where people who posted completely irrelevant, humorous comments then got attacked for their supposed views on gun-rights.

Some world views are narrower than others, for sure--but we ALL do that!

[DJL 232]

17 minutes ago, RonD1120 said:

I'm curious, did you ever experience being born-again? Or, did you simply attend church and participate in church activities?

You're not the authority on what it is to have a relationship with Christ and what it is to be a Christian.  What you're describing as a "born again experience" is in your world and in your brain, I've never heard someone describe such an event as you do and do not think it has anything to do with an assessment someone's devotion.

I did not "simply attend church and participate in church activities".

So to answer your question, no I didn't have a acid trip when I decided to follow Christ and the teachings in the Bible.

Edited October 21, 2019 by DJL

[RonD1120 58]

5 minutes ago, DJL said:

You're not the authority on what it is to have a relationship with Christ and what it is to be a Christian.  What you're describing as a "born again experience" is in your world and in your brain, I've never heard someone describe such an event as you do and do not think it has anything to do with an assessment someone's devotion.

I did not "simply attend church and participate in church activities".

So to answer your question, no I didn't have a acid trip when I decided to follow Christ and the teachings in the Bible.

Thank you.

[DJL 232]

2 minutes ago, RonD1120 said:

Thank you.

So does that mean I don't need to kill a human to leave the church?

And to clarify, I'll need to know this before sunset today.  Asking for a friend.

Edited October 21, 2019 by DJL

[Stumpy 256]

1 minute ago, DJL said:

So does that mean I don't need to kill a human to leave the church?

And to clarify, I'll need to know this before sunset today.  Asking for a friend.

Nope. Common sense and a modicum of critical thinking is all that is required.

[DJL 232]

2 minutes ago, Stumpy said:

Nope. Common sense and a modicum of critical thinking is all that is required.

Ok....anyone know where I can find the anti-venom for a Gaboon Pit Viper.  Again, asking for a friend.

[wmw999 2,121]

4 minutes ago, DJL said:

So does that mean I don't need to kill a human to leave the church?

Well, since you didn't kill a small child, either your experience wasn't really "born again," or else you haven't really left the faith. 

It's kind of like using the dunking stool to check if someone is a witch. If she floats, the devil did it; if she sinks, she's with God -- because she's dead.

Wendy P.

[normiss 622]

23 minutes ago, DJL said:

Ok....anyone know where I can find the anti-venom for a Gaboon Pit Viper.  Again, asking for a friend.

Personally, I'd go to Mike Kennedy first.

Make sure your aircraft loans are current before calling him.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

3 hours ago, ryoder said:

So let me get this straight:

If I don't swear allegiance to Ron's imaginary friend, that means I am swearing allegiance to his imaginary enemy???

I think it's more along the line of:
If you've experienced an intense emotional reaction to something religious, you've been 'born again'. If you later decide that it was only an emotional reaction, not the influx of the 'holy spirit' (or his son or whatever), then you are swearing allegiance to the 'enemy' and slaughtering children. 

Funny thing: I recently had a friend tell me that some "missionaries" warned him about Satanists sacrificing kids, that there are more missing children around Halloween because of it and that the Satanists prefer to torture their victims because the 'fear hormones and adrenaline' make the meat better (shades of "It!" no less). I didn't feel like arguing with him - he believes in Reiki healing, that microwaves make water toxic and some of that type of crap too. 

[yobnoc 142]

4 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

Thank you.

Maximum points awarded for a superb troll-like response.  This hollow "Thank you." couldn't possibly smell worse of contempt.  Well done; you've left no doubt on how elitist you are about your brand of woo.

[JoeWeber 2,298]

55 minutes ago, yobnoc said:

Maximum points awarded for a superb troll-like response.  This hollow "Thank you." couldn't possibly smell worse of contempt.  Well done; you've left no doubt on how elitist you are about your brand of woo.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't thank you he was thinking. And what the hell are you doing back? I thought I aborted you.

[yobnoc 142]

1 hour ago, JoeWeber said:

I'm pretty sure it wasn't thank you he was thinking. And what the hell are you doing back? I thought I aborted you.

Oh it must have been that Satanic protection ritual I did.  Glad that kid didn't die for nothin. 

[JoeWeber 2,298]

10 minutes ago, yobnoc said:

Oh it must have been that Satanic protection ritual I did.  Glad that kid didn't die for nothin. 

And still there are some who think atheist's are insensitive to their victims. 

[RonD1120 58]

10 hours ago, yobnoc said:

Maximum points awarded for a superb troll-like response.  This hollow "Thank you." couldn't possibly smell worse of contempt.  Well done; you've left no doubt on how elitist you are about your brand of woo.

It was a serious response to a serious question. I thanked DJL because I was thankful.

In your paradigm, even the slightest comment must be attacked. Dr Hawkins addresses that behavior in his book Power vs Force.

[yobnoc 142]

4 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

It was a serious response to a serious question. I thanked DJL because I was thankful.

In your paradigm, even the slightest comment must be attacked. Dr Hawkins addresses that behavior in his book Power vs Force.

Lying is ok as long as you flagellate yourself afterwards and ask for forgiveness, amirite?  I don't think you're convincing anybody.  That was a serious response in your mind, I'm sure, but it oozed with "Thank you for proving my point that you were never a 'true' Christian." 

Anybody else get that vibe?  Because, unlike Ron, I'm willing and able to practice self-reflection if I've made an error in my perception.

[Skwrl 56]

19 hours ago, wmw999 said:

Well, since you didn't kill a small child, either your experience wasn't really "born again," or else you haven't really left the faith. 

I bet he's not a true Scotsman, either.

[JoeWeber 2,298]

17 minutes ago, Skwrl said:

I bet he's not a true Scotsman, either.

That must be some sort of ultimate insult. I know I said ouch and I'm not Scottish.

[Rick 67]

1 minute ago, JoeWeber said:

That must be some sort of ultimate insult. I know I said ouch and I'm not Scottish.

I had to google that

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[Skwrl 56]

20 minutes ago, Rick said:

I had to google that

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Yeah, sorry if my humor is a little obscure. 

My point is, start with Ron's two premises:

• you can't be 'born again' unless you've had this transformative religious experience
• if you've had this transformative religious experience, you can't leave the faith unless you go through some bizarre Satanic ritual

Several of us have pointed out that we know people - or are people - that once considered themselves 'born again' but have since left the faith.  Those people we are or know *didn't* perform the bizarre Satanic ritual.  (Maybe we left because our faith simply changed, or we grew up, or we started to realize life is more complicated than we were led to believe, or whatever.)

Ron's response is that those people weren't truly "born again", which is basically a classic "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

[Rick 67]

1 hour ago, Skwrl said:

Ron's response is that those people weren't truly "born again", which is basically a classic "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

I believe you got it correct and I learned what "no true Scotsman" means. Thank you.

I have run into this before. I had a friend that was always preaching to me. He told me once that I must truly believe in Jesus because I am a nice person and helped other people along the way. No matter how many times I told him I did not believe in his religion. 

The message I got was for him no one cold be moral except through faith in a supreme being.

The last straw was when he was at my house and I had the daily paper sitting on the table and the top story was something about the foster care system in Florida deciding if gays should be allowed to be foster parents. His tirade about turning kids gay, blah blah blah really showed how much hate he has in his heart.

So I pointed out what good parents my lesbian friends are and how great their kids turned out and I cut ties.

[JoeWeber 2,298]

2 minutes ago, Rick said:

I believe you got it correct and I learned what "no true Scotsman" means. Thank you.

I have run into this before. I had a friend that was always preaching to me. He told me once that I must truly believe in Jesus because I am a nice person and helped other people along the way. No matter how many times I told him I did not believe in his religion. 

The message I got was for him no one cold be moral except through faith in a supreme being.

The last straw was when he was at my house and I had the daily paper sitting on the table and the top story was something about the foster care system in Florida deciding if gays should be allowed to be foster parents. His tirade about turning kids gay, blah blah blah really showed how much hate he has in his heart.

So I pointed out what good parents my lesbian friends are and how great their kids turned out and I cut ties.

Good on you. There's a time for political correctness and a time to stand up for what you know is right. But there should be no time for the slandering of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters by the willfully ignorant.