Toadfish Monastery

I hope you enjoy it, David. For 70p, you really cannot go wrong. They're worth 100 times that.

Swato, i've loved or liked every film i've seen that I knew was based on HPL's books, although some more than others. I'll start a thread over in the film section on this, as I believe it needs some serious discussion, lol.

Quote from: Sibling DavidH on February 27, 2012, 06:27:39 PM
Scrib, you don't know what his face looks like.

Says the guy who looks like Catweazel...

Hi Scrib, thanks for the welcome. Ignore David. He knows not what a mirror is.

Aggie, my sense of humour is very questionable.

You refer to but one definition of atheism. This is where it gets tricky, as there are a number of definitions, some new, some old, that cause confusion amongst people. I take atheism as either a complete lack of belief or a denial (as you point out), but surely a denial of any and all deities does not necessarily have to mean that you take a fundamentalist position? There has to be an idea behind a fanatic, and to me, a simple lack of belief, or denial of gods, doesn't appear enough. The fanaticism enters when you entertain other ideas, such as a strong "them and us" attitude, which is frankly hard not to do, which can then lead on to other thoughts, such as "all religious people are dumb", which itself leads onto yet other ideas. Atheism itself does not hold an ideology as such, but individual atheists can do.

EDIT: Shouldn't have clicked that button, lol. You mention The Rolling Stones as an example of religion without supernatural gods, but the 'Stones don't make any claims to godhood, and neither do they require anyone to worship them. They merely wish people to buy their music and listen to it, just as all bands do, and it is the fans who become fanatical on their own. Through your argument, you could even relate political ideologies to religion. There is an ability and a need in many human beings to become obsessed with one thing or another, and to virtually worship it, and this is what people do. It doesn't necessarily make it a religion. As for Buddhism, it is one of the only religions I feel has even an ounce of credibility, and tend to leave it off of my critique of religion in general. I've seen some interviews with the Dalai Lama, and I must say that he seems a pretty sensible guy.

That's what should have been included in the Bible. That's the Jesus who kicked buttock. Also, what's with exams for virginity? Some men have a real fetish for it. I've read excerpts here and there of different non-canonical texts, but nothing in its entirety (where it exists). I really must do that soon.

Keeping slightly on-topic, i've often wondered about Judas Iscariot. Why is he hated, and assumed to be evil (touched by the devil), so to speak? He was only doing what he was destined to do (no free will again?) so that we could all be "saved". If he hadn't have done that, we would all be damned. When I learnt of a gospel of Judas, and read some of the stuff from it, it said pretty much what i'd been thinking.

Quote from: Swatopluk on February 27, 2012, 11:30:57 AM
And the art section has become a place to go insane since I overran it. Also, once I get more fluent, you risk regular doses of Cthulhuism in Icelandic in addition to the English, German, French and Latin samples already present.

Oh, R'lyeh? Thanks, but I only accept Cthulhuism in the original language. I do this in memory of Pth'thya-l'ya, who is now in Y'ha-nthlei. Always remember:-

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn (In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming)

Quote from: Bluenose on February 27, 2012, 12:12:38 PM
Greetings and salutations from the land downunder.  

Watch out, we are famous for topic drift.

Oh, and have a Captain's Delight XO on the house!

Hi and thanks. There must be a lot of men at work in the land downunder. I also thought that Australia was famous for continental drift? I'm used to topic drift, and I have also experienced it whilst reading a few threads here, so no need to worry. Err, is a "Captain's Delight" something...special?

Hi Griffin. Thanks for the welcome. I won't get lost, although I now know what you mean by labyrinthine, having browsed a little, although i'm not sure where this moat is that David tells me of (Hi David!) *sidles towards PoN* I mean, I don't want to go down there, obviously, but it appears not to exist *sidles closer towards PoN* I'm sorry David, but this moat you talk about? *begins to sidle up beside PoN* Where the hell is iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit? *splash* Damn hidden moat. *drip* *climb* I bet PoN stood next to it on purpose? *drip* *climb* Just you wait until I get back up this wall! *drip* *climb* I'm sick and tired of PoN treating me like this, I really am. *drip* *climb* Now where was I? *stands dripping on PoN's new shoes*

I think I better warn you. I like bad jokes, and have a different sense of humour (see Lionel Richie reference in thread title), sometimes going off on tangential paths.

EDIT: Hi Aggie. Thanks for the welcome!

Quote from: pieces o nine on February 27, 2012, 02:33:10 AM
ROLAND!     

Welcome to the Monastery!

Errr, do I know you?

Sorry, but I couldn't resist that one. Feel free to punish as you see fit, lol. Thanks for the welcome. I'm off to bed now (it's gone 2am), but i've managed to delve in a little. Read you soon.

Hi there. Is anyone else here into fishkeeping at all? By that I mean either a garden pond (lakes included), or an indoor aquarium (freshwater or marine, coldwater or tropical). I used to sell fish (live ones) for a living (8 years, just over). My dad owned a 4' (120cm) long tropical freshwater aquarium for years, and got my mum's dad into it for a while too. Dad also had a 6,000 gallon (27,000 Litre) pond with ornamental carp (Koi/Nishikigoi) for most of my teenage years and some of my twenties, so you could say that I grew up around fish. I also kept coldwater aquarium fish myself for a few years, but as I worked ridiculous hours each day looking after fish, I eventually gave them up.

For a while, I skirted the idea of setting up a tropical marine aquarium, and invested a lot of time into researching it, reading so much material, but eventually gave up on the idea, as I wouldn't be able to trust anyone to look after them whilst I was on holidays, and I do like going away when i'm off work (although the average goldfish or freshwater tropical fish wouldn't need much more than a simple feeding whilst on holiday). I still pine after doing so now, but it takes time and dedication to look after fish if you want to do it properly, especially marines, and the one thing I hate is people wanting an aquarium and expecting it to look after itself, leading to inevitable fish deaths.

So if you love fishkeeping, and have an aquarium you want to share, please do so. Also, if you have any problems with fish, or are just thinking of setting up an aquarium, i'll be more than willing to impart what advice I can to you. After eight and a half years, you tend to pick up a little knowledge which pretty much stays with you.

Those are pretty much my own sentiments too. Atheism is not a belief system, and although what's being suggested sounds interesting, it should be dedicated to something far more worthwhile than a lack of belief in any deity. A monument to our achievements, and the evolutionary process that got us here would be better, but then we have many places which already do this, in one part or another. I live near London (just outside it, actually), and there are so many museums and art galleries to visit, it's a little overwhelming, not to mention the wonderful theatres in the West End if I want to worship at the altar of visual literature (probably the wrong analogy to use, but...).

I took my Turkish friend to the National Gallery almost 2 months ago, and showed him Van Gogh's Sunflowers (he's only in the UK for a few months). He also went to the Natural History Museum with some other friends. He'd never been to a proper art gallery or museum before, at least not on this scale, but this, I hope, will open his eyes to just a little of not only how we came to be, but also of what we have achieved, and of what is possible for us in the future. This is worth far more than a building that could just as easily be dedicated to a lack of belief in Russell's Teapot, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn, which of course it technically is.

For clarification, what you call public schools in the US, we call state schools in the UK. What you call private schools in the US, we call public schools in the UK. For the purposes of clarity, i'll use the UK versions (sorry to my US sistern and brethren).

I'm all for decent funding of state schools. I was educated in one, albeit a good one, but I was also motivated to a degree with a willingness to learn, which was partly due to my nature, partly due to my parents. State schools are there to ensure a certain educational level within the general population, and we are all obligated to contribute to this, as we all rely on those educated there. As has been said, if I have to interact with someone in my life, it's bad enough that I have to deal with the large number of seemingly ignorant and uneducated there are now, without removing yet more funding from the schools who give them what they (laughably) have already.

Education is for education's sake, and the more of it there is, the better our society's potential. We need to instil a love of learning into our youth, as they are the future. To avoid a future with most people being woefully uneducated (not that it doesn't seem as such right now) is scary to the point of making me feel ill, and I am more than willing to devote a percentage of that money to prop up the state school system in my country. It may not be perfect, not by a long shot, and the solution to the current attitudes to education in many is another issue altogether, but it is the best we currently have.

Sure, you can advocate reducing the military budget by half, but do you seriously expect that to happen under the current system, where most major politicians who decide these things are beholden to either the military-industrial complex, big business, or both? Without a major social revolution, that just ain't gonna happen.

Thanks for the welcomes. It will take me a while to wade through everything, but i'll get to replying to as many threads as possible eventually, although not necessarily in any semblance of order.

Don't worry about the squidlings. As a lover of the FSM, and a follower of the cult of Cthulhu, i'm more than used to their tentacled ways.

Facebook can be quite insidious if you are not careful, yes. The company knows all your information, so if you don't want them to know whatever it is you do, you follow the above advice and use different browsers/browser profiles, or just don't put the info there in the first place. As for not letting certain people know certain things, you really need to delve deep into the settings to customise them to your liking. For most people that's a real pain in the buttocks, but if you don't want your employer knowing stuff, you can stick them in a group all by themselves, and block them from viewing that info. Failing that, don't add the boss!

I have pictures of my friend and I molesting bronze statues in Bratislava, one of them showing me taking Napoleon from behind (he was bending over a bench; what was I expected to do under the circumstances? ), and many others of me and assorted people in varying states of drunkenness, but nothing that I would consider to be a serious cause for concern to an employer (unless they were a fundie). I've also been deep into the settings to disallow friends of friends from viewing my profile. I thought i'd stopped anyone but friends viewing my profile by selecting the correct settings for this, but it turns out that there's a sub-setting that's hidden deep down, and this has a tick box for friends of friends. That was a little tricksy to find.

For the really paranoid, visit the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and read some of the stuff on there.

In answer to the OP, it is a disease of certain people to make certain assumptions. Such is the human condition. I would have politely said that I was not a Christian (maybe "I'm a godless heathen" or "I deny Jeebus" would work well), and that the only requirement I wish for my daughter's future relationships is her happiness; nothing more, nothing less. If I was feeling especially naughty, I may have taken a leaf out of Pieces' book, and mentioned something about Paganism or Satanism (not LaVeyan (sp.) ), but then I have a nicely evil streak in me.

There are so many people like this, who think that they're being nice when they say things like this, as to them it's the height of achievement. No wonder there are so many issues in our society, when the most a woman is expected to achieve is to marry a rich Christian (shouldn't that be an anathema to a Christian, what with the camels and eyes of needles?). The same is true when dealing with loss and bereavement, especially of a child. They think they're saying something nice, such as "God will look after her in Heaven" or "God has a plan for us all" (does that last one negate free will?), when what they really mean is, "I have no idea what to say, so i'll use the same tired old platitudes in the hope that you agree with me". It may not be meant to offend, but it's definitely a "them and us" attitude.

To cover the shrooms (lol), St John was definitely on something when he wrote or dictated that book. I'm surprised it was kept in, especially when you realise that there were people back then who were prescient enough to know what would happen. Then again, considering how many conflicting things there are in the Bible, and not just between the OT and the NT, it's not surprising at all.

There's nothing wrong with writing books that are obviously influenced by drug intake (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Naked Lunch come to mind), but to pass one off as a religious text shows true self-delusion. Unfortunately, hallucinogenics have a long history with "helping" humankind commune with the gods, from tribes in the jungles of South America, to European shamans, to mad old men sitting alone in caves in the middle eastern desert. What St John did was nothing but one of the oldest pastimes of our race (apart from prostitution), and we are unfortunate enough to be having to deal with the decision made over 1500 years ago to base [part of] an entire religion on it.

I've never truly understood the rationale behind wanting the world to end. It's almost as if the people who enthuse over it cannot deal with the current one.

As much as I am tempted to use the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here, I am not intellectually bankrupt, so will have to agree. An idiot is an idiot, no matter where they are from, or what they claim to ascribe to. We all have the capacity to be an a**, and this article proves it. There are far better ways to voice your disagreement to something.

Great thread with a nice evolution. I'll stick my nose in here and give my thoughts:-

I do not believe in the existence of any god(s). The nearest I would ever get to our race being created is in an alien race, who evolved through natural selection, influencing our evolution some time in the past, kind of like 2001: A Space Odyssey. The nearest i'll ever come to believing that a being created our universe is that this being also evolved through natural selection, developed/evolved to the stage where their power was large enough to create universes, created one, then left it alone. We may one day have the power to do either ourselves, and hence become "like gods". I find the idea of a personal god to be somewhat elitist.

The make-up of the human mind is such that we feel the need to anthropomorphise everything, from plants to animals to the sun, and this is evident wherever you go, and whatever your culture. The god of the Bible is very much a human one, showing fear, jealousy, love, hate, etc, as is plain to see if you read it in any depth. People have always wanted to know "why", and without the scientific means to answer this question, we turn to an otherworldly being to explain this.

As to the historicity of Jesus/Yeshua/Joshua/Joseph/whatever name he may or may not have had, I believe that these teachings came from somewhere. Obviously they had to come from someone originally, and I will echo what many in this thread have said, and conclude that the gospels most likely came from many sources, and people embellished them over time. Look at how people innocently embellish things now, and for the reason that they are trying to help out, and think how much more that may have gone on in the past.

Then we come to the arbitrary books in the Bible, and how they were cherry-picked at the council of Nicea. The creation of the Roman Catholic Church was a political and philosophical manoeuvre, and not strictly a religious one. The story had to be reasonably familiar to the Roman people, who were used to many gods with many aspects, so a trinity was a nice compromise, not to mention omitting anything which questioned the divinity of Jesus. There were a large number of gospels floating around, many of which belonged to the Gnostics. Some of them were so esoteric as to be worthy of the base beliefs of the Mormons or the Scientologists (Jesus as an alien, or aliens bringing us here as slaves, etc), and some had Jesus performing miracles as a child and being very mischievous (like killing other kids). It's no wonder most didn't make it into canon, as they were frankly considered too bizarre for most people to accept, or gave over the "wrong" impression of Jesus. I come once again to people thinking that they're "doing the right thing" by embellishing stories to prove their authenticity, but who just end up causing issues hundreds or thousands of years down the line.

How much more different would Christianity have been if a slightly different set of books were included? And why weren't more books/letters from Peter included, considering he was the first bishop of Rome (Pope)? I think the Gospel of Peter was one of the ones which questioned the divinity of Jesus, so its authenticity was called into question (nothing new in that attitude).

Judaism has survived because it is very insular, and traditionally promotes a strong sense of "in-crowd" membership, where once you join, you are automatically "one of them". Islam has survived for similar reasons, but also through war and the occupation of foreign lands. Although proselytising isn't a requirement, it is a given when invading another country to occupy, dependent upon the local religions. Apostasy being a punishable offence is also a strong reason to stay within the religion once you are there. With Christianity, it has a little of both of the above. It was virtually forced upon the Roman people by decree of the Emperor, but done in such a way that it was like giving up all the other gods for just one (or three) instead of taking them away altogether, but we mustn't forget the way Christianity was integrated with the different forms of Paganism throughout the Roman Empire at the time, so that it once again wasn't too much of a change. Christianity was also forced upon people in bloody ways from time to time.

Saying this, any religion will change over time, and in 2,000 years, maybe one like Mormonism will be in the same situation that Christianity is today. Who knows? As to the question of records, have you seen the depth of truth distortion on the internet? What if opinion pieces are the only things that survive to that time, and these same opinion pieces are pro-Joseph Smith or anti-Joseph Smith? What a huge difference that will make, not to mention if a site such as The Onion or its ilk were to survive in its entirety with no contextual basis existing alongside it!

This is interesting. I wonder what's in "sweet" cat treats, such as those Cat chocolate drops, that attracts them. I'd often wondered why a cat (or a dog, for that matter) would have a different form of chocolate to humans. Now I know why.

My dog loved chocolate, although he'd mainly have the doggy chocolate drops, rather than human chocolate. Not that he'd ever stick his nose up at human chocolate. He used to love it so much, it would make him drool just thinking of it (read: begging for it).

Quote from: pieces o nine on January 24, 2012, 02:57:36 AM
Moufette was never one to pass up a nice, cold iced tea...

Hi Mr/Mrs/Ms O'Nine. I hope you washed the glass after the lovely Moufette finished drinking.

Quote from: pieces o nine on January 24, 2012, 02:57:36 AMDom prefers Earl Grey served hot.       

Just like Captain Picard? Dom sounds awesome!

To be honest, when I first saw this thread's title, I had thoughts of an entirely different nature, such as "Just add sugar to the pot."