Really? So you've never received any medical treatment whatsoever then? You only drink rain water you've collected yourself?

Only meat hunted and killed by himself - let's not be having any of those namby-pamby, ungodlike meat hygiene inspectors checking it's safe, eh?

No paracetamol; no sun lotion - where does such idiocy stop?

The OP's idiocy is as infinite as his imaginery god.

A stroke is not a "thing" like a brick, or a budgie, Nicklinson's stroke didn't "enter the world", it does not physically exist. A "stroke" is a word used to describe a particular sequence of physical events that occurred in his body.

I'm not sure if Nicklinson "rebelled against god" but I'm damn sure Gary Barlow's baby didn't so how come your big man killed that, then? Or have you some further crackpot explanation of why such deadly conditions kill off even the newborn who have rebelled against fsck all?

I have a thing or two to add to this conversation .
I would like to say that Kirkstaller ain't a bad bloke if you take the time to have a chat instead of just slating him for his views on religion .

Whatever your opinions on the subject it has affected all of us in a big way .

Apart from christenings , weddings , and funerals , think how much of the music you listen to by great performers would never have reached your ears if it hadn't been for the singers being discovered in church/gospel choirs ? I'm guessing quite a lot of it . Just take a look at the number of Afro-American female ledgends .
The likes of Jones , Westenra , and Jenkins came from choirs . Any Saints fans having a dig at religion should pause and have a think about the roots of their club song .
Can you see where I am going with this bit ? Think that is enough on that subject for now .

Back on topic . If you are able to make a decision on wether you want to end your life then it should be allowed . Counselling and assistance should be given . It would allow people to reach the end of their life with some dignity , and allow family and friends to say a final farewell whilst their loved one is still breathing .
As far as I am aware a doctor can choose DNR . Doctors and family are allowed to switch off life-support . What is so different , or wrong about the patient making the choice ?


By the way . How many of you will be singing Abide With Me at Wembley on Saturday ? I know I will be doing so if I get there .

Oh dear.

So we should keep religion, because we get some chart hits and football anthems out of it.

Great plan. I'm convinced. Perhaps we should also keep burning at the stake, I love bonfire night.

Very true.

All diseases?

I wouldn't bother, he's done his usual runner. If and when he comes back it will be with some other meaningless waffling metaphysical bullshhit, the MO is to ignore points he finds too difficult, in the hope they'll go away.

When Adam and Eve sinned (Genesis 3), they brought evil, sickness, disease, and death into the world. Sin has been wreaking havoc on the human race ever since. Consequently, we are all faced with the inevitability of death, and many of us are made to endure years of pain before meeting our maker. Even sadder is the fact that our rebellion was so serious that even some young children and babies do not survive for long in this fallen creation.

Often things happen to us that we simply cannot understand. However, instead of doubting God's goodness, our reaction should be to trust Him. We will never be able to fully understand God and His ways. It is wrong for us to question why God allows something to occur. We simply have to trust that He is loving, good, and merciful – just like Job did – even when the evidence seems to indicate the opposite. Sickness and disease are the result of sin. God provided the “cure” for sin in sending Jesus Christ to die for us (Romans 5:icon_cool.gif. Once we are in heaven, we will be free from sickness, disease, and death. Until that day, we will have to deal with sin, its effects, and its consequences.

I personally don't believe in your or any other god. I also don't have a problem with anyone having a faith or a religious belief, each to their own.
Serious question, Where did all these diseases come from? Did God make/send them?
Also, are there lots of different gods or do all the religions worship the same god under a different name? Who's god was here first?

Leaving aside the fact that this is just a childish scary-fairy story-

No, they didn't. They were seemingly two brand new model creatures, who had the capacity to do no such thing. Their boss (god) was the only person with the capacity to bring anything into the world.

Second, you breathtakingly assume the perfect reasonableness of condemning untold billions of future people to some of the most grim and most evil things imaginable, because your god's prototype ate a fscking apple. I accept, though find it amazing and pathetic in equal measure, that you do not see any degree of overkill in that.

Third, as you have previously explained, when god created the prototypes, he already knew what they would do, and so what he would do in retaliation, to the billions who had nothing whatsoever to do with the original "offence". So he nevertheless made them that way, and thus by doing so HE deliberately inflicted these things, not they.



and all because humans 1 and 2 ate one lousy apple? And you are a fan of this guy?


Serious? One apple? Are YOU serious?


I wondered how long it would be before the usual vicars' cop-out was trundled out - "It may seem inexplicable to you, my dear, but god works in ways you cannot understand, ergo he must have a good reason for X and Y and Z, because, why, er, because well, he just does."


What is good about what he did to all mankind as a result of some guy biting into an apple? Name one thing.


No, it is the archetypal fair question. What could be wrong about it? And surely, as Captain, at least the Pope should be told, so he could explain it to his team?


No. We really, really don't. We simply have to make a judgment on what such a god must be like, if he existed, based on the evidence of what we see and what we find.


How come? What sin did Gary Barlow's baby commit that caused its sickness and death? or did it die because of the apple? If so, can you explain the procedure for baby apple-related death sentence because clearly most babies aren't picked, and I don't get it.


What rot. As an omnipotent being, why not just wave a finger and correct the original design fault? If this was true, how did and how does it cure any stillborn baby?

So the original design plan was to make humans live for ever with no death option, but also to breed (hence Adam and Eve having two sons who then re-bred with their mother etc etc).

Thats a bit like putting two rabbits in a box and coming back three years later and NOT expecting the box to be full to bursting with rabbits.

Its one dumb master plan.

God gave mankind free will. Adam and Eve chose to ignore the only commandment they were given. They had everything they could ever have wanted, but yet they wanted more - they wanted to be God. Satan tempted them into doing the one thing God had forbidden.

Adam and Eve falling into sin does not mean that God is the author of sin, nor that he tempted Adam and Eve to sin. The fall serves the purpose of God’s sovereign plan for creation and mankind. This must be the case, or else the fall of mankind would never have happened.



Eating an apple from the tree of knowledge was the original sin - we have since learned a plethora of new ways to break the commandments given to us from God. Sin continues to thrive and thus disease and death thrives.



God did not make us "this way". We used our own free will chose to rebel against him. God, being all powerful and all knowing, knew that this would happen, but it is part of his soveriegn plan.



This is where faith comes in.



He gave us his son, so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).



Captain? Please. The Pope is a fallible human just as much as you and I.



The only evidence we should look to is God's word - both flesh and written. To do otherwise is to break the First Commandment.



Good question.

In Psalm 51:5, David wrote, “[iSurely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me[/i.”

David recognized that even at conception, he was a sinner. The very sad fact that infants like Gary Barlow's daughter sometimes die demonstrates that even infants are impacted by Adam’s sin, since physical and spiritual death were the results of Adam's original sin.



God did reconcile with us through his son Jesus Christ. He is the only way we can be at one with God once again (John 14:6).

This is mental.

Is it going to happen every fortnight?

Crap plan by god though really, he knew it was all going to go tits up before he even started, but he still did it. Reminds me of the time I decided to go diving down to the bottom of a lake after two bottles of cheap Israeli vodka.

What's this "sovereign plan" business? Don't think I've heard about that before.

Can you explain to me how biting into an apple equals "wanting to be god"? You fail to consider my question, which is what was so bad about eating an apple? It may have been against the rules, but WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT IT? You don't address the question at all of why all descendants should be condemned to death and to suffer diseases etc for something that was not their doing.


Who created Satan? You also overlook that god [iknew[/i that if Satan was allowed to tempt his creations, they would succumb, yet you weirdly still blame them.


To any rational person reading this fairy story, indeed it does. In any meaningful sense. A reasonable analogy would be giving a kid in a garage full of petrol some matches and some lighters to play with, and telling it not to touch them, then blaming the kid for the explosion.


WTF is "the fall of mankind"? But at least you admit that in the fairy story, it was all planned by god. This makes it weird that you do not blame god when his plans come to fruition, but I understand that logic isn't your strong suit.


No, it mustn't. The fall of mankind [imay[/i have happened because this was the case; or alternatively this might [inot[/i be the case at all, because the whole fairy story is a load of bunkum. The latter is the obvious choice.


If it was, why do you not think that god's infinitely disproportionate over-reaction to it is as utterly absurd as it sounds to us non-believers?


According to your tall tale, he wrote the script, he designed the model, he knew exactly what it would do, so he is 100% responsible. I'm surprised even you can't see that one.


That only counts for brainwashed believers. As god does not exist, there is no such thing to me as "his word". People who do not believe the fairy stories by definition aren't going to accept the fairy story as being evidence of itself, but the question would be why do believers so uncritically swallow every single thing however ludicrous, just because it is in some collection of old texts? Especially given some of the ramblings (Mintball is the expert on them) contained in the same works which even you would surely dismiss as lunatic?

It's like claiming that because the fairy story about Red Riding Hood says there was a talking wolf, this is evidence that there was a talking wolf. Even people convinced that Red Riding Hood is literally a true account, and not a fairy tale, would concede that it is not evidence of its own truthfulness.


This is unacceptable. A new born baby cannot be a "sinner". What sin can it commit?

Why just some babies, why not all of them?

Please try to use logic and reason if you try to answer. Throwing in more random quotes from your particular book is as useless as it is self-fulfilling. This stuff just the [iproposition[/i; it is not, and never can be, [ievidence[/i of its own "truth", for the reason I have set out.

I'm just interested in how mankind could create life (bacteria and viruses) when this is supposedly the sole province of God. Doubt I'll get any kind of sensible answer, mind.

depends who you listen to LRR - according to the Witnesses the ONLY God is called Jehovah - there is no other God according to :


Isaiah 43:10-12

Common English Bible (CEB)

10 You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
my servant, whom I chose,
so that you would know and believe me
and understand that I am the one
Before me no god was formed;
after me there has been no other.
11 I, I am the Lord,
and there is no savior besides me.
12 I announced, I saved, I proclaimed,
not some stranger among you.
You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
and I am God.

Personally, I don't have a clue - I was a believer for nearly 50 years but became an agnostic - I, like most people respect anyones views but don't have to agree with them

That's interesting. When God appeared on the scene, there was definitely no existing God in residence. Must be right, cos he says so.

So, how did God get formed then? There was no pre-existing God to form him, and obviously, he couldn't form himself before he existed.

Secondly, if God created everything, how come there was a "before God", and who created that?

Wow, 50 years is a long time to believe in/follow something and then not. Must have been hard.

well, after decades of praying and asking for help I suddenly had a string of circumstances where people stabbed me in the back and famlily illness and other bad things made me realise that there just cannot be a God by any name - I basically lost the faith because if a God did exist then he/it wouldn't put me and my family through the pain we are suffering - all pleas for help were ignored - many, including Kirkstaller will say that it's either a punishment for past sins or a 'test' of faith - I used to actually believe that but realise that this not actually the case.
I believe in the afterlife though but don't see how that has to be intrinsically linked to any deity or higher power

I respect anyones religious or non religious beliefs but I believe the bible is a fictional work which was compiled over the centuries to be a user manual to life, a historical storybook for people to read about life few thousand years ago and a work of propaganda and blackmail to get people to hand over their money and services to the church in exchange for eternal life

I think we will get eternal life (or go to hell) but don't see how any God needs to be involved in the process - Kirkstaller and the like will call me contradictory of course but that's what I feel.

anyone interested in learning about God & believing etc should read the Book of Romans written by Paul which is interesting and quite persuasive - it's quite thought provoking and easily the best bit of he bible for me for those looking to be converted

Tell you what, I'm in Birmingham tomorrow and Thursday night so I might dig out the Gideons bible from the bedside drawer in the hotel room and have a read of that.

On the other hand I've just downloaded "Marley and Me" onto the eReader so I might read that instead, and of course Thursday night is always Big Wok night in Brum...

This kind of sums it up for me. The bible & other religous books are like everything, open to interpretation. It's these interpretations, (along with all the problems they cause) that I'm not keen on.