8:00 AM Mr. Brown
8:15 AM Mr. Silver
I like the picture: "Not the meteor in Dallas".
Really?
8:15 AM Mr. Brown
LOL
8:21 AM Mr. Brown
I brought my Stephen King book today.
It has all the short stories in it.
8:28 AM Mr. Silver
I'll give some credit to him on the short stories.
I tried to read some of his long-form work during his most famous period, didn't like it and never went back.
8:32 AM Mr. Silver
He was a very inefficient storyteller in long form.
I'll dare to say, to the offense of his fans, he is "boring". Perhaps he's improved since, but it's probably too late for me to be convinced to try again. I like some of the movies.
8:45 AM Mr. Brown
He always has a good concept at the beginning, but then he strives to find more to write.
8:50 AM Mr. Silver
He's filling pages is what he's doing. Melville and Hugo were wordy too, but they made you feel like they were talking about something.
9:20 AM Mr. Brown
Catholics have more than one god.
9:20 AM Mr. Blue
Don't tell them that.
9:20 AM Mr. Brown
Technically, because they worship the angels and the saints.
9:21 AM Mr. Blue
They aren't gods.
9:21 AM Mr. Brown
But they are worshiped like gods.
9:21 AM Mr. Blue
No they're not.
9:21 AM Mr. Brown
Then why would you pray to a saint? You're only supposed to pray to God.
9:22 AM Mr. Blue
Well, I don't anyway.
9:23 AM Mr. Brown
At least with Jesus, they are saying he is God and God's son all in the same being.
9:25 AM Mr. Brown
Now if you pray to a messenger with the intent of it getting the message from him to God,
then that's different.
9:25 AM Mr. Silver
(always busy during these...sigh)
9:25 AM Mr. Brown
LOL
9:27 AM Mr. Silver
You pray to a saint to intercede on your behalf. He's the “messenger” you mentioned.
It's supposed to be like asking a favor of someone who can grease the wheels for you.
9:28 AM Mr. Brown
I still would rather pray to God directly, or a form of God.
I'm not going to ask my grandpa to talk to God for me. “Hey grandpa, can you butter Him up for me so I get a new car?”
LOL
9:34 AM Mr. Blue
You can pray to whomever or whatever you want, it won't do anything.
9:34 AM Mr. Brown
Actually it does a lot. It can put you in a better place. Give you hope to keep living
in bad situation.
9:35 AM Mr. Blue
I’d rather do something constructive.
9:35 AM Mr. Brown
Kind of like that joke of the guy that is lost at sea and prayed to God for help:
A boat came by and he refused it, saying “My Lord will save me.”
A helicopter stops by. “My God will save me.”
So he drowns.
In Heaven he asked God why he did not save him.
“I sent a boat and a helicopter, what else did you want?”
9:43 AM Mr. Silver
As far as the benefits of prayer...well, it's mixed.
On the one hand, depending on what your motivation is and your expectations, you can get a morale boost out of it, or stress release.
It can be a re-centering act to proceed from.
9:50 AM Mr. Brown
Its usually beneficial, unless that is all you do.
9:51 AM Mr. Silver
Well if you use it to beg, or bargain, or only because you were told to, or it's just a habit. That's pretty worthless.
9:53 AM Mr. Brown
Yeah.
9:53 AM Mr. Silver
Saying a Rosary is ridiculous. I had to do that in school.
"If she heard it at all...she heard it the first time, sister."
9:53 AM Mr. Brown
Better to ask for some guidance then start doing something.
9:56 AM Mr. Blue
When has God answered a prayer of yours?
9:56 AM Mr. Brown
It's not a matter of a true answer in the sense of you getting an immediate response or anything. Its more like somebody is guided to help you that normally would not have.
9:57 AM Mr. Blue
Example?
9:57 AM Mr. Brown
When my friend was dieing. I kept asking for God to help the doctors to fix him. To help them figure out what was wrong because they didn't know. Then, finally, after all that praying somebody figured it out and started the right treatment.
9:57 AM Mr. Blue
Credit the doctors and modern medicine.
9:58 AM Mr. Brown
But when a doctor gets a gut feeling that a problem is one thing, what is the gut feeling?
“I think I should do it this way, even though normally I'd do it this way.”
9:58 AM Mr. Blue
"Gut" feeling is your brain pointing you in a certain direction, either based on available evidence or a past experience.
10:04 AM Mr. Blue
Instead of praying you could do something, I don't know, constructive.
I guess "constructive" is relative.
If praying helps you, that's fine. But there's no evidence anywhere that praying does anything other than give someone a boost, psychologically, in thinking that they're not alone in the world.
10:02 AM Mr. Silver
I certainly don't “pray” in any conventional way...it feels too goofy.
If I'm talking to spirits or beyond...I just talk to them. There's no formality. I don't have to tell them who they are.
10:04 AM Mr. Silver
Like my “saying grace at the table” story from way back:
"Mr. Silver...thank God for bringing dinner."
"Why...He's right there."
"Say it in a nice way."
"Thanks."
"No no...with some formality."
(God) "Geez...is she kidding? This is just awkward."
"God didn't even bring the KFC...I'm the one that picked it up."
(God) "Seriously..."
10:06 AM Mr. Blue
Just because you don't understand how the weather works, that doesn't mean God controls it.
10:09 AM Mr. Brown
Well He may not stop the rain in a flood, but He may send somebody in a boat.
LOL
10:09 AM Mr. Blue
No. A person with a boat makes a decision on whether or not to row to your area.
10:10 AM Mr. Brown
"Hmm. I've got this strange feeling I should go this way. I feel like somebody may be over there."
Either that is God helping you with pushing you that way, or we really do all have a connection, mentally, when all signs point to nobody being over there. Including somebody else already checking and telling you. But you get a feeling you should go there anyway.
10:13 AM Mr. Silver
Animist with faith that I am, I'm more Deist than that Mr. Brown.
Stuff just works.
Is it more complicated with unseen activity than we can understand? Yes!
But I don't really see God, or a team of agents, interceding and moving stuff all the time in the background. Or doing so for you when you ask.
This is the thinking-path that leads to predestination of all the universe under an omniscient being.
And I don't believe in omniscience or predestination.
10:16 AM Mr. Blue
Just because you don't understand something, it doesn't mean "God did it".
That's called "God of the Gaps", and there are plenty more arguments against it than I can provide.
10:23 AM Mr. Blue
God used to control the Sun and Moon and stars, and diseases and sickness, and tides, etc.
10:23 AM Mr. Blue
We now know for a fact he doesn't control that stuff.
LOL
10:24 AM Mr. Silver
"Now"? There were ancient Greeks that said it, privately.
10:25 AM Mr. Brown
The Great Creator will intervene when He feels the need too.
LOL
10:25 AM Mr. Blue
That doesn't mean that God, or a God, didn't set all those things into motion. Which leaves me open to Deist possibilities. But God is absent now. There is no evidence of a God intervening anywhere on anything, ever.
"Hunches" and "gut feelings" and hypothetical scenarios don't do it for me.
10:26 AM Mr. Silver
Why should a god intervene when the system isn't broken?
10:26 AM Mr. Blue
Right, he wouldn't. And he hasn't. The universe just goes.
10:27 AM Mr. Silver
"The hurricane is working as designed...but I'll just F- with it."
No
10:27 AM Mr. Blue
"I gave this guy cancer, but I'd better save him from this cancer because his buddy Mr. Brown over here asked Me too."
(Sorry if that sounds callous.)
10:28 AM Mr. Silver
That's one of the things so sick about the predestination peeps: you could very easily boil all existence down to "This is just a movie, we aren't even real, no experience we are having is actually happening.”
Yeah...Whatever...
10:58 AM Mr. Silver
All this being said, my "Pondering the Nature of God as Creator" personality did come up with one way to be Deist and have an active God.
It comes up occasionally to make me smile.
11:00 AM Mr. Silver
Follow me here...
Assuming He did the design of the universe as written....and stuck us in as bits like Himself.
He failed to account for our ability to figure stuff out.
And being God, and able to do whatever He wanted and make it work because He said so...
He...
Well...
He kind of...
Sort of...
He went and published a lot of outlines, and rough and 1st drafts for parts of it... (oops)
He faked a lot of the rules and data.
There...I said it...
I mean, why flesh it all out, right?
It's not like we humans would go poking around...incessantly...and start spotting the inconsistencies.
But we did, and it forced Him into having to retro-actively adjust and complicate the universe to explain all the stuff He glossed over. AND it has to fit with everything else He already botched together.
The first time Man said "But that doesn't make any sense...and no, Faith doesn't cut it."
God said "Oh crap...um...um...where's my notes?!?!"
11:09 AM Mr. Silver
So I giggle over the possibility that the Universe used to be simpler, and there was no need for answers until we went looking.
Sort of like the quantum mechanics problem of a particle changing simply because it's measured.
11:10 AM Mr. Blue
Heh, I get it. I think I’ve considered that too. Once we reach an "edge", He has to start filling it in. Kind of like a map in a video game.
11:11 AM Mr. Silver
Kind of.
God has to be tearing His hair out over gravity.
Despite the increasingly sophisticated math to observe and use gravity, researchers just won't stop picking at the fact that it simply doesn't work and makes no sense.
11:13 AM Mr. Brown
If He can't figure it out, then how will we figure it out?
LOL
11:13 AM Mr. Blue
He has to arrange an explanation that works first, so we can find it. And so far he's got nothing.
11:13 AM Mr. Brown
“Um, I'm all powerful. I just made gravity. It didn't need an explanation. It didn't matter how it worked.”
11:13 AM Mr. Silver
Yup.
11:13 AM Mr. Blue
We start looking, He has to make a reason for it for us to find.
11:14 AM Mr. Silver
It's really the same glossing over as Star Trek technology:
"We have artificial gravity".
"How?"
"Uh...it's technical."
"I'm a physicist, please explain.”
"Oh...um...shit...give me a minute...”
11:17 AM Mr. Silver
That's why the faithful get into Heaven!
God "You aren't going to ask a lot of technical questions are you? No? Ok...head on in...grab a harp and halo and wings."
11:18 AM Mr. Brown
“These wings shouldn't work. Why do I need a harp?”
“You know what? Go to Hell!!!”
There could be some credence to the “Oops. I put the Tree of Knowledge too close to the humans.”
11:20 AM Mr. Silver
Hehe.
Anyway...I've pondered that scenario several times.
“The Unfinished Design Theory”
11:30 AM Mr. Brown
OH crap! I did not think they would sail to the end of the world. I'd better make it round.
11:35 AM Mr. Silver
Why not...and all the stars were affixed to a big dome to start too.
“Didn't-Account-For-Intelligence Design”
(Later... - Mr. Silver)
12:58 PM Mr. Blue
1:09 PM Mr. Silver
Mmmm...giant shrimp.
1:12 PM Mr. Silver
“It just goes to show that the more you look, the more you find,” NIWA principal scientist Ashley Rowden said.
1:18 PM Mr. Silver
A spokesman for God reported the Creator as irritable and 'very busy in R&D right now'."
1:51 PM Mr. Brown
I like this one https://imgur.com/gallery/JPO9s
1:54 PM Mr. Silver
Eee!
Funny though.
One of my favorite tattoo tales is the punker girl being brought into an ER, unconscious. Her injury required attention 'down below', but when they went to shave her, not only was her pubic hair dyed green, but she had "Keep Off the Grass" tattooed above it.
In recovery she noted the missing hair and someone had written "Sorry, had to mow the lawn." on her groin with a Sharpie.
1:58 PM Mr. Brown
LOL
1:59 PM Mr. Silver
My second favorite tattoo story came from one of my college buddies who was a navy corpsman.
2:02 PM Mr. Silver
An injured sailor is brought in unconscious from hard partying and fighting on liberty. The chief medical officer came to assess the situation and saw that the patient was wearing fishnet stockings.
"God GOD! Get those stockings off of that sailor!"
"Sir, we can't sir!"
"That's an order, medic! Get them off him!"
"We can't sir, they're tattooed on!"
2:04 PM Mr. Blue
Heheh
2:04 PM Mr. Brown
LOL
2:10 PM Mr. Blue
Lieutenant Ed Wood.
2:10 PM Mr. Silver
LOL
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