-------------------- "And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
You know, if I had a fiver for every supposed judgement day I've lived through I'd have...*counts*...twenty five quid and it's not even 2012 yet. What is it about the turn of a century that drives people like this batty?
quote:So much to my astonishment, I got raptured. I was sitting at my desk, working, when suddenly there was this flash of light, and I found myself standing at the gates of heaven, facing Saint Peter. He checked my name against the Book of Life and nodded.
"Go right on in," he said.
"Great," I said. "Am I the first from the Writers Guild to get here?"
He frowned and checked the book again. "I don't see them here."
"None of them?"
"Look, if you're not even going to try to be serious --"
"Okay, okay, no offense meant. I guess it'll be okay...I can still talk with Poe and Dorothy Parker and Twain and Byron and --"
"Sorry, they're all in the other place."
"So you're saying there are no writers in heaven?"
"No, none."
"Then why am I being let in?"
"We've seen your stuff. You call that writing?"
"I see. Well, will there at least be a chance for a q&a session with god?"
"Pardon?"
"Well, I always wanted to ask him a few things, like when he warned Adam and Eve about the apple, why didn't he warn them about the snake? And how could they make an honest decision about the warning 'ye shall surely die' when nothing died in the garden? And --"
"Sorry, there are no q&a sessions in heaven."
"Oh. So what do you do up here?"
"Well, mainly we hosanna."
"Hosanna."
"Right. Hosanna means job well done. So we sing hosannas to god for all of eternity."
"Forever?"
"And ever."
"So basically all I have to look forward to is singing "job well done" to salve god's ego for all of eternity, no breaks, no movies, no time for reflection, no Citizen Kane...that's it?"
"Correct."
With that, I picked up my bags and came home.
As Twain said: "Heaven for the climate, Hell for the conversation."
posted
Does this guy really want to go through all this again in five months? He should have said five years, or something. I mean, look at him. He won't be around then, anyway.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
When the co-author of the Left Behind series calls your idea bullshit you know your screwed. Know I can't wait for the "Mayan 2012-ers" to be proven wrong. They erk me so.
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
The thing is, this guy is just too old and too far gone to ever be convinced that he's wrong. When October comes and goes, he'll just come up with some other day, and he'll keep doing this until he's dead of old age.
Now if it was just the ramblings of some deluded senior citizen, then it wouldn't be a big deal. But the problem is that this guy has followers who based their entire lives around his faulty predictions. Now I suppose you could say that these people got what they deserved, but what about the child whose future college tuition was given away by their idiot parents? Is that child to blame?
The family of this guy seriously needs to lock his ass away in some mental hospital so that he can no longer be a danger to other deluded people.
Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:Now I suppose you could say that these people got what they deserved, but what about the child whose future college tuition was given away by their idiot parents? Is that child to blame?
Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but either way the responsibility still lies with the idiot parents. It's no different than how any religious belief shapes and influences how a child is raised really. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
Personally I don't see the point in trying to predict the kind of "end of the world" event religions seem so fixated on. I mean, you'd think any omnipotent god would be able to spot when someone has done whatever they're supposed to do to get into the not-completely-buggered-club out of a true sense of faith and devotion and which just did it out of fear because they believed the ramblings of some nutter who just so happened to guess right. It smacks of cheating to me.
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: I mean, you'd think any omnipotent god would be able to spot when someone has done whatever they're supposed to do to get into the not-completely-buggered-club out of a true sense of faith and devotion and which just did it out of fear because they believed the ramblings of some nutter who just so happened to guess right. It smacks of cheating to me.
I think that's the crucial difference between religion in ancient times (a moral and legal code enforced by a higher power) and modern times. Some people need extra incentive to do the "right" thing, even today. Existentialism and moral relativism haven't been rationalized in everyone's world view yet. And for some it probably never will.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Being one of the "Religious Wackos" on this forum all I can say is that Jesus himself said that "No man knoweth the day or hour". So anyone that wants to claim they have figured out the end does NOT know their Bible.
Matthew 24:36: But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Yeah, but he also said he'd be coming back within the lifetimes of the people who were there at the time, so clearly his predictions are about as trustworthy as Camping's.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: Yeah, but he also said he'd be coming back within the lifetimes of the people who were there at the time, so clearly his predictions are about as trustworthy as Camping's.
Maybe he came back in their lifetimes and just retired to some beach. I could easily see them dropping an ending with "and he never paid his share of the rent and was a total slob after his resurection".
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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