Thoughts and questions from God Delusion

[pocaracas]

but they'll get there in time.

Cheers!
(I was going to write "amen", but since you're brit, this sounded better)

Until that happens, we just have to keep writing the same things over and over again.

[Cyberman]

Don't be silly. Of course God can't grow an amputated limb. That's something humans and nature can't do.

Unless you're a starfish or similar creature. Even a skink can shed its tail to escape the clutches of a predator and grow a new one later. Why haven't we been blessed with such abilities? Aren't we supposed to be "the paragon of animals"? (This isn't aimed at you or the points you've raised, knight, but there are people who do argue this as - ahem - gospel truth.)

However, if you happen to have some collagen powder made from pigs' bladders handy, anything could be possible.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, and glad to hear it. A good sense of humor goes a long way in this context I think. And not taking oneself too seriously.

Social lubricant...and everybody loves a little lube..amiright?

I get it. I was making the point that most of the atheists (or apparent atheists) I've met didn't seem like the type who were capable of or interested in a serious, civil conversation on the topic of the existence of god(s).

This probably isn't any more true of atheists than it is of theists.

Not at all, but which part are you calling bullshit? Basing belief on experience or the claim that my mother's tumor disappeared after prayer? That of course is something that could be "scientifically" verified. You may not believe me just because I said it happened; frankly I would be skeptical of someone else who said the same thing and I'm a believer in God and prayer. However, I assume you would agree that this is something that one could have evidence for. Like if you were the physician (who understood the ultrasound or whatever imaging technique was used), recognized the unmistakeable image of the tumor, and then re-imaged the patient a day or week or whatever later, and found no trace of the tumor. I'm not saying this would convince anyone that her prayer "worked" or that God exists, only that there was a tumor, and now there isn't. My point is that for my mom and others who have such experiences, the experience is strong (subjective) evidence for the existence of God.

No, of course you wouldn't be saying that(because then you'd be obliged to substantiate it), but if you weren't, one would be at a loss as to explain why you brought it up. Guess I get to call bullshit again, and as per the above, RE:civil discourse...well, this sort of thing verges on breaking that right off the bat.

BTW, this spontaneous regression is so common that it now has a name and people are seriously studying it. See the Wikipedia article. Here's a quote from it: " In a carefully designed study on mammography it was found that 22% of all breast cancer cases underwent spontaneous regression." (There is a reference for that stat, which refers to a peer-reviewed medical journal.)

Sure does, and no connection to any god or any prayer has been found.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying this is evidence for anything other than that this kind of thing happens sometimes (not usually, but often enough to be recognized as "real".) I suspect most doctors and scientists don't try to hypothesize how or why,

Actually they do, you linked me the wiki..check the references?

since there is likely no known physical mechanism by which it could be explained. Of course ignorance is no threat to science or naturalism, etc. Quite the contrary, it is its raison d'etre.

So maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but if you say, "bullshit that could never happen", I would reply, "sure it can, and does".

Or maybe you're weaseling around after having blatant bullshit called blatant bullshit. Civil discourse becomes yet another victim of conversational dishonesty.

Actually it is. I'm here because TGD challenged my thinking sufficiently to reexamine the question. I am coming at it from the theist side (as opposed to the first time I came at it, which was from the atheist side), but I am coming at it, and taking it seriously.

LOL, another "former atheist"? Or did you simply examine this from the "atheist prospective" fed to you...by theists.....?

Well, atheism is not superstition, I guess technically it's not anything positive at all, only the denial of theism. But atheists generally do have positive philosophies (naturalism, materialism, humanism, pick-an-ism.; "get your -isms here!" ) about the nature of the universe and our place in it, and they certainly influence public policy. Your statement is assuming that atheism is true and theism is false. If that is the case, I agree with you. However, for those who consider this an open question and a personal decision, then I don't see the difference. It's forcing one's personal views on others either way.

No assumptions required. We looked, we didn't find what we should have, end of. It's not my fault that your fairy tales ended up being fairy tales, now is it? I didn;t have to make any assumptions, no one else had to make any assumptions on the matter either. The truly depressing bit, is that every-time we went looking we actually -did- assume to that we would find god..or corroboration of gods fairy tales.

Agreed. Some parents certainly are not fit. As a parent though, I would want my government to err on the side of giving parents the benefit of the doubt when the call is close, which I think the U.S. government currently does, more or less. I think the logical implications of Dawkins' suggestion of somehow prohibiting parents from raising children in a religious context go way past that though, into tyranny. I mean why not just go the whole way and do the Brave New World thing? Would be more efficient to just take reproduction out of the hands of people altogether. Just harvest some eggs from willing (or not) women and genetically engineer the citizens needed for the ideal society. Screw the parents. (More hyperbole there. )

I really don't know who's proposing anything of the sort, if you could point out such a person I can lend you my pitchfork (i get to keep the torch) and we can mob them together.

Roight. That's what I meant by saying it was a rhetorical device. But that also opens the door for atheist shit-wits to storm the houses of religious families (at least metaphorically/politically, if not literally)

Oh, not literally? Then I don't give a shit.

and demand the kids be liberated. I can imagine that some of them think The Brave New World sounds pretty good, and wouldn't consider it hyperbole.

Which ones?

True, but who is going to be the judge? You? I sure wouldn't want that job, and as I said, if someone's going to judge me as a father, they better have a damn good reason to take my babies away from me if they try.

LOL, no, no not me. I suppose I could be the judge if i'd put the extra couple of years in, but it's not my bag.

Really, even if God is a terrible evil forced on weak-minded children, is it worse than taking kids away from their parents? Certainly and in every case?

Under those circumstances.......yes?

Math. e^i*pi + 1 = 0, therefore God exists. Q.E.Dizzle! (Joking of course!!!)

Ah, a torturer of small children...hehehehehehe. Like you already.

[Faith No More]

I think the parental problem could be quite lessened if parents taught their kids that relgiious beliefs were beliefs and nothing more to allow for the child to make up its own mind, because in my opinion, the problem is not so much parents passing on their religious beliefs but their insistence to peddle their beliefs as truth, which I assume is what Dawkins is truly objecting to.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

G'day Jack.

In my opinion, Richard Dawkins seems to be a brilliant scientist.He is also a clever debater,reasonable writer and polemicist. However,he has nothing original to say and often says some absurd things .EG when he strays into the area of child rearing. In short, a popularist.

I am pretty much underwhelmed by Dawkins and really don't care all that much what he says outside of his discipline of evolutionary biology..

IF I wanted to argue philosophy with a presupposition apologists, (but i do not) I might begin with Epicurus on evil. Then perhaps move straight on to Russell, from whom Dawkins seems to have lifted many of his ideas. I would NOT quote either Richard Dawkins nor Chris Hitchens.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Yes, n is able on his time. Armageddon
Then he is not omnipotent. Wrong premise.
Is he able, but not willing? He is able and willing.
Then he is malevolent. Wrong he is love.
Is he both able and willing? Yes
Then whence cometh evil? Lucifer my dear. Only one angel learn about evil and loved it entirely
Is he neither able nor willing? Wrong he is both.
Then why call him God? Because he is perfect and there can only be one God.
-Epicurus

THE most influential book I read in my 20's was 'Why I Am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell.

[Mystic]

Here is a problem with the issue of parents not teaching their kids religion.

The parents truly believe in their religion.
Kids rely on what their parents teach and believe as true.

It's true parents can tell their kids, you don't have to follow the religion I follow, but if their kids would ask them, do you know it's true or do you believe it's true, the parents will reply in affirmative and the children will naturally trust their parents choice.

It's something we are pretty much hard-wired to do. We wouldn't survive if it wasn't for that.

We had to trust them from the birth, and it paid off, but eventually we grow up.

The problem is we have a heavy bias later on. That heavy bias would be there whether our parents enforce their beliefs or don't.

The heavy bias is almost inescapable because we don't realize it. We think we have overcome it. But the truth is we thought in every way to confirm our bias, and didn't think outside of that.

This is true of most people (90%), then you have the other (10%).

The scary thing is with the 10%, they range from all sorts of stances and religion. It's not that the 10% leaving the thoughts of their parents all come to one conclusion.

This tells you, even when we leave our original family bias, we are left with other factors that will lead us away from the truth.

[jacklegger]

I apologise in advance for not having the concentration span right now to read through your entire post, though I did give it as full a consideration as I'm able. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that leaped out at me.

No apology necessary! I appreciate your time and consideration.

First, while I do happen to have what you generously term a dynamic vocabulary, I would never insist that others treat my words as anything other than what they're worth or that I am smarter than you merely on that basis. If the atheists you describe represent the totality of your experience, you're about to get a pretty comprehensive education here I suspect.

As sometimes happens when we open our (virtual) mouths in public discourse, my sentiments probably didn't come out as intended. In hindsight I probably should have omitted my comments about past experiences with atheists. I know better than to generalize about people and those experiences are pretty much irrelevant. So I apologize to any atheists I may have offended. The sentiment I had was that I really hope to find a civil and even kindhearted (which doesn't need to exclude direct, strong passionate, etc.) discussion forum, and that so far people have treated me very well here. I don't know the stories of others here yet, but it is humbling for me to admit that after 25 years of living and thinking and believing as a Christian, I'm seriously contemplating whether I was a fool. The quote from St. Paul (or the Apostle Paul, for my Protestant brethren) comes to mind, "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we (Christians) are of all people most to be pitied." If there is no God, then much of my life has been a waste of time at best, and I recoil to think what it may be at worst. So my mental state is a bit raw, and if I were to run into unthinking ad hominem attack and clever name-calling as a would-be response to serious questions, I would be very disappointed. Not because I don't like being called names. I'm a college professor for goodness sake, I'm almost immune to it. Sometimes it's hilarious and I laugh right along. But I would have to turn away from here and look elsewhere for help in this journey, and though it seems weak to admit it, I think I could use some help.

Can't we all though? Roight, so I will leave that at that.

Second, I would love to see how you can justify this without tying yourself in knots:

[quote]For example, if one's experience of elves is limited to reading Tolkien and imagining them - which I love to do - I would posit that this is a less reasonable basis for believing they exist in our universe than say, praying to God for healing from uterine cancer and having an apple-sized tumor "spontaneously disappear" overnight, confirmed by medical imaging by a non-religious physician (which happened to my mother, FWIW) is a basis for believing in God.

At the risk of over-egging this particular pudding, how do you determine that belief in a god and its alleged actions is more reasonable than belief in elves and other weird and wonderful Tolkien inventions?

Good question and a fair challenge. I'm not aware of any universally accepted standards of reasonableness, so at best I could appeal to common sense, though that ultimately leads to the same problem. Whose common sense?

I said the above in the context of pointing out that faith in general, and belief in god specifically, is subjective. I can elaborate now and say that in my experience (as a pastor especially) most people who believe in God do so because of their experience, not because of any philosophical or theological argument. In fact, many Christians don't even know a philosophical or theological argument for the existence of God, and don't feel the slightest need to learn one. For many, proving God exists is like proving they love their spouse/child/father/parent etc. There's no need to do so, and it would probably be impossible anyway. They know they love their loved ones because they experience it. They know God exists because they experience it/him. They may be wrong to make such an analogy - maybe love can be reduced to physics and objectively identified, whereas God cannot - but right or wrong this is what a lot of people do. Furthermore, in my brief study of epistemology (one class in college), I learned enough to be dangerous. If we want to pick nits, it seems that one could challenge that anyone knows anything. "S knows that P if..." There are many ways to finish that sentence, and again we are back to the problem of not having an agreed upon standard, in this case for even what it means to know something.

But bottom line: you're right, there's really no way (that I know of) to determine reasonableness when it comes to elves and gods.

Finally, re: Dawkins saying that "raising children in a religion is tantamount to child abuse and possibly worse than sexual abuse." Let's be clear on what he actually said on this point, lest we tilt at men of straw. Let's look at what the Professor actually wrote:

I love that turn of phrase, "lest we tilt at men of straw". Is that Shakespeare? Google failed me so I must reveal my ignorance. (But I can integrate the snot out of functions. Does that count? Count - get it? Hee hee.) ((There needs to be a "Danger, lame teacher jokes ahead!" emoticon... ))

Ok, back to the matter at hand. Here's the particular quote I was thinking of when I wrote the above: (my bold added)

"Once, in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place."

In every instance where he makes the direct comparison - both of them, you'll note - he is referring to the psychological damage of conditioning a child that its only worth is to burn in hellfire forever... Even then, Prof Dawkins uses the conditional "arguably".

Maybe I misunderstood him, but I didn't think he was limiting his criticism to teaching children that "their only worth" is to burn in hell forever. I understood him to mean the problem is "bringing the child up Catholic in the first place", which is to say teaching them about hell yes, but also about forgiveness and redemption and salvation and heaven and God's love and loving and being loved by other people and many other not so nasty things as well. I agree that he does talk several times about teaching children about hell, and how this is a great evil. If that's all he meant by "bringing the Child up Catholic" then I misunderstood and I think he could have done a better job at being explicit. For what it's worth, I don't know of any religion - maybe one exists - that teaches that the only worth of children or anyone else is to burn in hell. The Catholic Church certainly doesn't teach that. No doubt some Catholics could be rustled up who think that, but you can find crazies of any stripe, including atheists. It's harder to say what Protestants teach, since for the most part they believe in private interpretation of the Bible, which for the most part they take as their sole rule of faith and morals. Which as a former Protestant convert to Catholicism, I feel justified in saying, as my wife and I often do to each other, that that is just "making shit up", if you'll excuse my salty language. The teachings of the Catholic Church are easy to find for anyone who's interested (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church), and I assure you you will not find such a vile, evil teaching anywhere among them. To say that hell exists, and that people under certain circumstances may end up there, is very different from saying that people's "worth" is to go there, as in they are worth no more, and will certainly end up there, deservedly so. The Catholic Church actually teaches quite the opposite. Unlike some of the fundamentalist Protestant groups who believe in "the total depravity of man" (basically there is nothing good in a human and we are all deserving of hell from our mother's wombs), the Catholic Church is very big on the dignity of people. John Paul II was a champion of human dignity, as was Mother Theresa. BTW I'm still trying to get my head around why some atheists vilify these two, especially Mother Theresa. She loved and comforted the unloved and outcast of society. She wasn't out to convert Hindus or anyone else to her religion. In most cases she didn't talk to people about religion, especially dying people for whom she was caring. She even got flak from fellow Catholics about this and some wanted her censored because she wasn't forthright about being Catholic. She wasn't worried about Hindus or anyone else going to hell because they weren't Catholic or Christian, she was worried about their suffering in this life, and more than anything else, their dignity. Her mission was to give people dignity, especially the lowest of the low in a society that robbed them of it.

Roight. Had to get that off my chest. Anyway, I agree again, if anyone teaches children that they are only good for the fires of hell, that is awful and should not be tolerated in a civil society. But I don't know anyone who does that and can barely imagine it.

Then you immediately follow up with the remark that he is a civil and charitable man, thus such shocking opinions are granted a free pass. This is, I have to say, an unwarranted and unfair dismissal, akin to saying "oh, don't pay him any attention; he's old and set in his ways".

I think you may have misunderstood me. I did say he was civil and charitable, but I did not say therefore we can dismiss his shocking opinions. I said I was surprised to find the holder of such shocking opinions to be civil and even charitable in some cases. This is because I usually find that people who hold shocking (to me) opinions, like "Mother Theresa was a hypocritical and evil whore who deserves more than anyone to burn in hell, if such a place exists" (to paraphrase and amalgamate some comments I've read), are also rather mean and uncivil in general. I think Dawkins' comment about "bringing up a child Catholic" (or any religion) as being psychologically worse than sexual abuse (even with the conditional "arguably" or "possibly") is pretty extreme - not hateful by nature, as the comments about Mother Theresa are - but in terms of the objective content, on par with the sentiment that Mother Theresa was evil and deserved to go to hell. So it was uncommon and surprising for me to find that someone who holds that opinion is able to discuss it rationally and civilly, even acknowledging and to a large degree understanding the opposing point of view. That was quite refreshing, as I said before.

---

[quote='jacklegger' pid='332115' dateline='1346793794']
praying to God for healing from uterine cancer and having an apple-sized tumor "spontaneously disappear" overnight, confirmed by medical imaging by a non-religious physician (which happened to my mother, FWIW) is a basis for believing in God.

It's amazing how god never ever is recorded history managed to grow arms and legs of people that prayed for it, but can switch your body to eliminate a foreign substance, as it's supposed to do. Our bodies kill defective cells every day, they just become out of hand when we lose that ability or the defect masks itself very well... Doctors don't understand well all the nuances in cancer... they just know statistics and try to group cancers in a way they can categorize them... but there's still so much to learn.
That's where the famous "god of the gaps" steps in. Doctors, the scientific experts in the field, are incapable of treating, but the problem gets fixed, hence god.

On the other hand, taking it from stimbo, why "hence god"?, why not "hence Gandalf"? or "hence allah", or "hence galadriel"?

Sorry, didn't read anything past this sentence...
[/quote]

No worries. One sentence is enough for a good exchange. In reverse order, why not "hence Galadriel"? (my favorite of the bunch - she's hotter and scarier in the book than Gwyneth Paltrow is on screen...)

The answer is simple. My mom didn't pray to Galadriel, she prayed to Christ. She asked God (Jesus Christ) to heal her and he did - at least that's her interpretation of her experience. My point was and is that this subjective experience is (part of) the subjective basis for her belief in God, and that furthermore, most people who believe in God do so on the basis of subjective experience.

As for the reasonableness of her conclusion, and other possible explanations for the regression of her tumor, I agree with what you say about cancer. I'm not a physician or a biologist, but I know that the body heals itself. My wife is a student of naturopathy and has a mentor who has "cured" cancer patents with herbs and other natural remedies. Many of them were sent home to die by their medical doctors, who could do nothing more for them. My wife and her colleagues would argue that the herbs cured the patients, and that the odds of these patients spontaneously getting better instead of dying like almost all of the other people sent home to die who do not receive such treatments, argue overwhelmingly for the efficacy of herbs. To them it is self-evident that the herbs worked. Medical doctors on the other hand, often dismiss the treatment and the regression as a coincidence, statistically inevitable in a large enough sample. Either could be right. One argument is probably stronger than the other, and it probably varies case-by-case.

Also, I mentioned the Spontaneous Remission Wikipedia page in an earlier reply in order to point out that this kind of thing is recognized by mainstream science to occur. It's not considered proof of anything in particular and is probably being studied by people in controlled experiments as we speak. Fine and good.

It seems that people who don't believe that God would act in this way (either because he doesn't exist, or doesn't do miracles, or whatever) sometimes feel threatened by the unknown, and think that if they admit that such a thing happens - not that it could happen, but that it did (so we're not talking about probability anymore) and does on a more or less regular basis - that somehow that will force them to admit that God does exist and is the explanation for this phenomena. But I'm not arguing that and I don't think it's a compelling argument in any case. What I've said several times is that it is compelling to the individual who has that experience. It's tantamount to a positive response to the common retort, "if God comes down here and does some miracle or gives me a sign, then I'll believe in him, otherwise, not".

Bottom line: miracles are never a good or philosophically sound argument for the existence of God, IMO. There is almost always another explanation for the phenomenon, and even if there isn't, a good scientist would just say, "well I don't know that yet; maybe it's a good area for someone to research".

[Cyberman]

I hope you'll forgive me that, again, I'm not in the right frame of mind to actually go thorugh your response in the detail it deserves but I fully intend to give it my best shot when I'm feeling more capable. Now...

I think you'd be surprised at just how many people who do hold opinions similar to Richard Dawkins re: religious indoctrination of children, or the amalgamation you gave regarding Mother Teresa - though I'd be very surprised to see it expressed in quite that fashion - anyway, you'd be very surprised how many of us are actually very nice people in real life. We may hold opinions that at first blush appear shocking to you, possibly because you may mot have come across them on that from or even at all, but that's all that divides us when push comes to shove.

Actually, when it comes to the woman named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu who went on to become the self-styled Mother Teresa, I'm afraid one of us is in for some shocking disillusionment if you think she was a champion of human dignity. I'd better leave the details until a better time, though for now I'd recommend taking a look at the three-part video Hell's Angel by Christopher Hitchens. I can imagine various parts of your lower intestines just flinched when you saw that name but he devoted a good part of his time to unmasking what he described as "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud" and was interviewed, briefly, by the Vatican as a 'doubter' over the farcically fake miracle that was attested as part of her beatification.

As to Prof Dawkins and the quotes about child abuse (and I realise I'm addressing these in reverse order, of sorts): as you will note from the quotes I gave from the book we are using, there are only two instances when the comparison is drawn between religious indoctrination and child abuse. One was an off-the-cuff remark after a lecture, while the other was a question to psychologist and cult survivor Jill Mytton (full fifty-minute interview here - unfortunately Channel 4 are being arsey again and so I can't watch it in this country unless I do it via a proxy. So I hope the video hasn't been removed or anything - I'd hate to give out false information on purpose).

Even granted the 'shocking' nature of such opinion, I don't think there can much of case made that such indoctrination virtually (and in many case actually) from the cradle doesn't leave scars. Yes, there is all the redemption and the grace and all that fluffy stuff, but as you agreed there is also the threat of hell for unbelievers; which can be a potent one but most especially in a child's most impressionable and formative years. Remember also that even if that child is convinced s/he is going to heaven, that conviction comes with the knowledge that other people whom s/he loves might end up in hellfire, including mummy and daddy. How can that not leave scars?

...if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell (or some other obnoxious article of doctrine such as that a woman is the property of her husband), it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds. I am persuaded that the phrase 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell.

To put it into perspective: you clearly take issue with the opinion that raising a child Catholic can be so damaging. That's fine, that's a topic worth debating. How would you feel if the word "Catholic" was replaced by the word "Muslim"? Or "Hindu"? Or any of the thousands of religions and sects of those religions practised in the world at this moment?

I think another large part of the problem is one of labelling a child as "Catholic", or "Protestant" or indeed as anything other than a child. As I understand it, he was trying to emphasise that there can no more be a "Catholic" child than, for instance, a "Republican" child, or a "postman" child; all are equally ridiculous. To quote Prof Dawkins again, "Even without physical abduction, isn't it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about? Yet the practice persists to this day, almost entirely unquestioned."

I love that turn of phrase, "lest we tilt at men of straw". Is that Shakespeare? Google failed me so I must reveal my ignorance.

Nope - that's a Stimbo original, though I did steal heavily from Don Quixote. Glad you like it.

---

but they'll get there in time.

Cheers!
(I was going to write "amen", but since you're brit, this sounded better)

Until that happens, we just have to keep writing the same things over and over again.

I think you may benefit from a little help with your english, if you'll indulge me. "Cheers" is a term we generally reserve either as a toast when raising a glass of falling-down water or a pint of the good brown stuff to each other, or else as a synonym for "thanks". I can't tell from context if you were going for either meaning or something else entirely.

On a related note, I've come across people who think that "cheerio" is just a jollier way of saying "cheers", when in fact it actually means "goodbye".

[greneknight]

I love that turn of phrase, "lest we tilt at men of straw". Is that Shakespeare? Google failed me so I must reveal my ignorance.

Nope - that's a Stimbo original, though I did steal heavily from Don Quixote. Glad you like it.

Nonsense, Stimbo old chap, Cervantes didn't write that. He wrote this (since you like to be pedantic): "Vamos a luchar con todo tipo de hombres, incluyendo las hechas de paja".

Cheers!
(I was going to write "amen", but since you're brit, this sounded better)

Until that happens, we just have to keep writing the same things over and over again.

I think you may benefit from a little help with your english, if you'll indulge me. "Cheers" is a term we generally reserve either as a toast when raising a glass of falling-down water or a pint of the good brown stuff to each other, or else as a synonym for "thanks". I can't tell from context if you were going for either meaning or something else entirely.

On a related note, I've come across people who think that "cheerio" is just a jollier way of saying "cheers", when in fact it actually means "goodbye".

Pocaracas is Portuguese so he didn't know what "cheers" meant in England. But "cheerio" is an old-fashioned way of saying goodbye. We still use it but most people say "cheers" for "bye" in England now. I have a theory we are desperately looking for the European "Ciao" and "Cheers" might just fit the bill. Everyone in Europe says "Ciao" and it's used not just as "goodbye" but also as "Hi". Sorry, by "everyone" I mean the non-Germanic people. I was in the Czech Republic and everyone used "Ciao" too as both a greeting and goodbye. I mean Czech is so different from Italian but it's widely used all over the Czech Republic. The time will come when we in England will use "cheers" for that same function. See if I'm right.

[Jackalope]

Simple. Just show me a SINGLE belief of mine that is silly. I am a Christian but I haven't got a single silly belief that's comparable to a belief in fairies, elves and pixies.

Didn't you say in another thread that...

I don't believe in a personal God and my idea of a God is that he's a mere metaphor for goodness

I'm not sure that the above wasn't just rhetoric, please forgive me if my assumption that it's not is incorrect. Meanwhile, I'm going to run with it.

Now, I'm the kind of person that prefers to take someone at his word, and you say you're a Christian, and I'm cool with that. However, the above quote doesn't sound like any kind of Christian doctrine I've ever heard (I'm trying really, really hard to NOT invoke a "No True Scotsman" here, really).

Frankly, I'm not sure what I would call it. Perhaps some form of deism? I don't know.

So I guess, given the above statement, I'd say the silliest thing you've said is that you're a Christian.

I jest. You actually seem closer to an agnostic atheist than some self-described atheists I've run across. Either way, regardless of what you believe or self-describe as, you seem all right to me. We get a lot of "personal interpretations" of Christianity around here, and yours is one I can identify with. ...even if I don't understand it.

Kudos to you, sir - here, have a rep point, on me.