Hello Everyone

[Shai Hulud]

Hmmmm this one might be ok. I'll sit over here in my cynical chair for a bit and observe. Nice enough to deserve a baby carrot. Here. (Hands over the bag).

Welcome.

Thanks for the carrot and the welcome, I'll try to be okay!

Hi Shai, nice to see you over here. There are quite a few people here on TTA too.

Mama, yes Shai is one of the good ones [emoji106]

Hey ukatheist, nice to see you too!  And thanks for saying I'm one of the good ones.  (You know, I never noticed how often I link stuff in posts until hitting this 30 day and 30 post rule.)

Welcome!

Didn't the Bene Gesserit spread tailor-made superstitions purposefully so they could exploit them later to control local populations  when needed?

They did!  And now to geek out some...it was neat to see how the Atreides survivors used that to their advantage, and we see that Paul is declared to fit the messianic definitions of the Kwisatz Haderach, in addition to the legends the Bene Gesserit had already laid out about a mother and child seeking safety.  Then Paul's son becomes God Emperor...but neither of them, we find out in the post Frank Herbert books, was the real  Kwisatz Haderach.  So all that religious mania, all those jihads, all that worship...it was all for a lie.  Also if memory serves, the BGs compiled the Orange Catholic Bible that was in use at the time of the Corrino dynasty.

Welcome!

Thanks!

Howdy, Woof.

Thank you!

'Sup, Shai? Pull up a chair.

Thumpalumpacus, hiya.  And not much, I was terribly bored the other night, so since AF kept popping up on TTA, thought I'd give it a look around. Now though, just replying before beginning to grade some Finals.  (Well, some more Finals...actually pretty fortunate.  My colleague in the next office decided to have no exams, only papers, and has 440 pages worth of stuff to read carefully and comment on, whereas I have about a thousand pages of multiple choice questions to go through...and I unintentionally made 2 sections answers almost entirely A.  For which one of the students who feels comfortable around me jokingly said, "You made them all A? What sort of sick bastard are you?")

Hey, Shai, thanks for stopping by. I hope you like what we've done with the place.

Thanks Mister Agenda!  It looks like a pretty nice place.  Must admit to holding my tongue in another intro thread when someone said a Christian forum would kick off atheists really quick though. One Catholic board I'm on has had an atheist poster since 2006, and he's not banned yet.  Do you mind if I inquire, what is the agenda?  Is it the....atheist agenda...that all the Evangelical megachurch leaders insist is real?

Nothing to apologize for.  I was enjoying it so much I cried when it was over.  Looking forward to the second installment.

Thanks Whateverist!  I'll try to continue contributing something decent.  Fun other story I think you all can appreciate, which might not go over the best with some of my co-religionists.  It's not exactly mainstream, but there is a charismatic movement inside of the Catholic Church, a lot like the Pentecostalism that's in a lot of "non-denominational" churches these days.  Some friends convinced me to go with them to a Night of Worship in grad school and be prayed over by this Franciscan priest with terribly bad breath.  Every person in front of me in the line had fallen backwards into the arms of the "catchers" after being prayed over due to being 'slain in the Spirit' if my terminology is correct, so it was a bit nerve wracking.  My turn arrives, the priest raises his hand to my forehead and prays, and says Amen.  I stand there, he stands there, after a few seconds I go, "So...now what Father?  Do I go back to my pew and pray?"  He decided I should, and seemed a bit upset, he'd never had someone fail to fall backwards before like that.  Got stares all the way back to the pew too. 

I didn't see any snarkiness at all. Either you are very good at moderating yourself or I'm used to the theist or two that go beyond snarkiness here. The former, I'm pretty sure.

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Thanks, appreciate that.

Hello from Tennessee!

Hi Steel Curtain!  Hello from Wisconsin, land of cheese, beer, and disturbingly high levels of Creationism! (In all seriousness, we had a Christian group on campus bring in a speaker from the Wisconsin Creation Education Center the other year to tell everyone how evolution doesn't exist.) Thanks for the welcome!

Welcome!

Thanks for the welcome Aegon!