What’s the first thing you think of when you mention Wrestling?

nathankp88

What is the first thing?

It should certainly be the WWE/WWF depending on your age, it could be the multitude of stars such as Hulk Hogan, The Rock or Stone Cold. One name however is intertwined between all those past, present and future stars and that is the name McMahon. 

With Christmas now behind us, i decided on writing my first blog about this brand close to my heart, The WWE. The WWE is now celebrating its 50th anniversary, very much like a time traveler it has stood the test of time. This DVD encapsulates a history of a company through 4 generations of McMahon’s, from the beginnings of a regional wrestling entity to the now multi branded corporation that has body slammed the hearts and minds of many an individual.

The DVD begins with a run through of the WWE history, beginning with the WWE’s early days being run…

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Do you celebrate Christmas?

A Christian decided to point out that many atheists have Christmas trees and we are therefore all hypocrites.
I would like to know if you guys celebrate Christmas?

I send presents, I view this as giving thanks to all the people in my life that have been around for me the past year.
I eat Christmas dinner. This is because roast dinner is my favourite meal… and this is just an epic version of roast dinner.
I decorate. This is mainly because I live with people who do in fact celebrate Christmas, partly because it makes the place look pretty and I suffer from depression and it helps make it look less gloomy at this time of year, and a little bit because I grew up in a Christian house hold and I’m used to having decorations at this time of year and I’m not about to ruin my flatmates’ fun by refusing them some shiny stuff for month because I’m more moral than them.
I also listen to Christmas songs. This is because I used to be in a choir and I learnt a lot of really well written music that just so happens to be about Christmas, how catchy they are, I shop in supermarkets and they annoy my boyfriend and that’s funny sometimes.

But I fail to see what this has to do with the birth of Christ and so no…I do not celebrate ‘Christmas’. I have fun at a time made easy to have fun. Shoot me

Apparently as a Christian you need to aquire certain skills in order to safely speak to a homosexual

This is a post from Ray Comfort:
How to Witness to Homosexuals

Homosexuality is a hot issue. Open your mouth against it nowadays, no matter how casually or even lovingly, and you will almost certainly be accused of using “hate speech.” There is, however, a way around this for the Christian.

When I meet a homosexual, I never talk about his sexual orientation.  This is because I care about him and want to share the gospel, and I don’t want him to be offended before I do that. So I witness to him the way I witness to any heterosexual.  I ask if he thinks he’s a good person. When he predictably says that he is, I take him through the Ten Commandments—has he lied, stole…n, and blasphemed God’s name? When I ask about lust (see Matthew 5:27-28), I don’t mention gender. After seeing his transgressions in the light of God’s Law he will understand his guilt—and that he’s headed for Hell and desperately in need of the Savior.

Before he saw his sin, he was proud and self-righteous, but now he’s humble of heart. That means he is able to be reasoned with, without being defensive.  So I tell him that to be saved he must repent of all sin and trust alone in Jesus. I then show him what “sin” is, by referring to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (which lists those who will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven): “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”  I gently tell him that if he has a problem with the list, he should take it up with God, because it’s His list.

Is it biblical to use the moral Law (the Ten Commandments) when speaking with homosexuals?  It certainly is: “But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for…fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine” (1Timothy 1:8-10).

This is my response:
That is sickening. You speak as if homosexuals are a special case, a thing, a type of person that cannot be reasoned with, someone that you have to turn into something else before you may speak with them, like you need special tactics like a dog handling certificate or something. They are not second to you, they are in fact above you. This can be seen by the fact that they have seen themselves for who they really are and can accept the truth about themselves (which is a difficult thing to do with hateful people like you in the world), whereas you are still hiding behind lies and misleading words and backwards thinking that you can’t move forward from. It takes a lot of courage sometimes to accept yourself (not just because of sexual orientation but for a load of other things too) because there is this long list of things you can be and things you can’t be, but the bottom line is if you are a loving kind person it doesn’t matter where your love comes from or who it goes to, you aren’t hurting anyone and it doesn’t need to be the source of emotional pain. People like you make it painful, people like you let it hurt to be a certain type of person. A freethinker, a homosexual, a woman, etc etc. I am all three of these things and you lie to me constantly about a God who loves me but wants to send me to hell for being myself. Wake up Ray, it just makes absolutely NO sense, no matter how much I think or how much I try or how much I talk to people or read the bible, there is no sense in it. And who are you to drive a young man or woman to suicide for fear of a living hell from others like yourself. You are immoral and unjust and you should look in the mirror every day and feel guilt and shame like so many innocent loving people do each and every moment of their lives because of hateful messages based on fear of the unknown from millennia ago.

Faith

My first post spoke of how faith is a cop-out. But how about faith defeating itself?

You either have absolutely zero evidence for your beliefs and therefore accept that it’s highly plausible that you’re completely wrong as it’s based on faith alone. Or you do have evidence, and therefore you don’t have faith…So what is it? Do you have faith, in probably nothing, or is God real and you can’t have faith in Him?

I call bull

The founding fathers said…

The founding fathers said it was “…self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

So are we?
Well according to the Bible, we all come from the same ancestral source. From Noah and his sons “was the whole earth overspread” (Genesis 9:19) and obviously before that we have the whole Adam “the first man” (I Corinthians 15:45-46) and Eve, “the mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). Galatians 3:28 does say, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” So we know that Christianity views us as being created equal.

By now we have established that I am not a creationist so my first problem with this is the use of the word ‘created’. Maybe we should explore simply: Are all men born equal or something to that effect.

I was inspired to write about this after watching the London Marathon today. All the people at the front are (at half way because that’s when I’m writing this): MUTAI, Emmanuel (KEN) BIWOTT, Stanley (KEN) KIPSANG, Wilson (KEN) LILESA, Feyisa (ETH) KEBEDE, Tsegaye (ETH) MUTAI, Geoffrey (KEN) ASMEROM, Yared (ERI) ABSHERO, Ayele (ETH) KIPROTICH, Stephen (UGA) CHIMSA, Deressa (ETH)

Notice anything? There’s a reason for that, it’s called genetics.

Even identical twins, who, genetically, are the most closely linked of all people, have differences. Contrary to popular belief, they often don’t even have identical DNA, even though they came from the same fertilized egg

.

Ok, you may argue that there is a difference between ‘same’ and ‘equal’. I hear you, it’s a fair point, but why are the women running the marathon not running in the men’s race? because they just don’t compare. Their finishing times are different.

You scream for gender equality but we just aren’t equal, look at any sport. I play rugby for example, I’m not allowed to play on the men’s teams and that’s fine by me. I’d be killed. This is because they weigh more, they are stronger, they are faster. Now there is the odd female who can prove herself against males but the strongest woman won’t compare to the strongest man, and if this woman is held up as a symbol to us females that we can do whatever men do it could be dangerous. It would create an expectation that cannot be met, our goal posts will be too far and women would always disappoint in these areas.

So I’ve covered racism and sexism (to put it bluntly)…but so does Christianity

Racism:

• Thus saith the LORD of hosts … Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ***. (1 Samuel 15:2-3)
• Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. (Hosea 13:16)
• Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants nor will they look with compassion on children. (Isaiah 13:18)
• But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. (Exodus 11:7)

And sexism:

• Corinthians, 14:34-35: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”
  
• Genesis, 3:16: “and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
• Leviticus 27:3-7: “And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver… And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels”
• 26:34, 29:29 “And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. … Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.”

So according to the bible we are not equal either…

That clears that up, for once, science and religion have something to agree on

How did this all start?

I subscribe to the Big Bang Theory. Being a theory, it has not been proven. Some theories are around for so long that any doubt cast over them again and again being disproved makes them tantamount to facts such as evolution and gravity etc. but the Big Bang Theory is still not quite there. 

So this is why the Big Bang Theory gets my vote:

The measurable acceleration of the universes expansion rate – scientists can use this data to rewind the observed behaviour of the known universe and this all comes together in a tiny, superheated state about 14.5 billion years ago…you may call this god for now if you wish… I’m not bothered

The oldest stars in our own galaxy are between 12 and 13 billion years old. They formed no more than a billion years after the universe itself began; the result of 14 billion years perfectly matches the most recent calculation…ok not definitive proof, but it’s supporting evidence and this is important to build a picture

There is an abundance of certain radioactive elements among the stars, these can be used to calculate backwards as we know their rates of decay. This data points to these elements being produced at least 12 to 13 billion years ago, about the time we would expect them to have formed if the universe began about 14 billion years ago… further support.

The Big Bang Theory predicts microwave background radiation, the measures of this radiation all converge to suggest a superheated state just over 14 billion years ago and a current level of 4.5% baryonic matter. This is, if we measure it now, what we have and no other theory can explain this acoustic peak…and in if nothing else explains it better (or at all) then one must assume (for the time being at least) that it is true and lets face it, holy scripture doesn’t explain any of it in the slightest

There’s more evidence for it too, but I don’t want to harp on, say too much science, or have a long arse blog post

There’s some evidence against it though, here’s some examples.There are some smart ones, and some stupid ones, but I’ll try and be serious, I’m quoting these from around the web, so some may be more point of view than science

Conservation of angular momentum.This matter which is said to have created the planets would all need to spin in the same direction as the object it came from. So therefore, all of the planets should be spinning in the same direction. However two of them are not. Venus and Uranus spin backwards…although this is usually explained using theories of collisions with other bodies

The Big Bang theory also ignores the First law of Thermodynamics, which says: “matter cannot be created or destroyed”. Those who believe in the Big Bang theory are also either unaware of, or ignore the “Second Law of Thermodynamics” which says: “Everything tends towards disorder”….this reminds me of my RE lessons at school, when I told the teacher I subscribed to the Big Bang theory she said “If I put a watch in a box and exploded it, there wouldn’t be any design or structure, it would just be chaos so an explosion couldn’t have caused the universe”…I think if you look at the size of the pieces it’s just gravity pulling them into order, of course it won’t last for ever and it could be decaying as the laws suggest, just because it looks beautiful and regimented doesn’t mean it’s not just a snip-it in time and that if you put on a fast forward it wouldn’t seem a bit more like chaos from an explosion

So as I said before there are other things to point out but I won’t list them all…for the most part it’s people claiming we have choice to believe two things universe created by something or universe created it’s self…and obviously nothing creates itself so it must have had a creator.

I don’t need to explain to any intelligent readers that the last point is completely redundant do I?

 

So how did it all start? With a Big Bang most probably

 

What’s worse than being a Christian

Or any religion to be honest, I tend to refer more to Christianity as that was my upbringing.

Well not much.

 

I ask you this: you are standing in the street and you see a someone stealing someone else’s belongings and you stand by and do nothing, you do not try and prevent the crime, you do not phone the police or get help, you do not ask to see if the victim is ok…you just walk on. Sound like you? Sound like the person you want to be?

Ok on the face of it you’ve done nothing wrong but by allowing this behaviour to continue it could be argued that you are as bad as the thief. I personally wouldn’t go that far, but it certainly makes you wrong. You made the wrong choice; a bad decision.

And so when presented with religion you can be a part of it, you can stand back and let it be, or you can say something.

“Hey, Religion…stop that”

Sometimes just questioning something that someone is doing is enough to make them stop and think an perhaps change their behaviour, the same could be said for organisations as large as these…

 

So what’s worse than being a Christian? Watching someone being a Christian

“In fact, ‘athe…

“In fact, ‘atheism’ is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘non-astrologer’ or a ‘non-alchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.” – Harris

So what is atheism? I don’t mind the name personally, it’s just a word after all, it describes me and it allows for an understanding of myself from others when I say it.

But there is a problem: a-theist.

Why should I have to define myself according to others, I am not a believer in a God. I’m using a negative to describe myself. It suggests that I’m wrong in a kind of way. Even gay people aren’t spoken about in that sense: a-hetero, or a-straight? like a straight person gone wrong? That’s a disgusting notion and I know that if I went around referring to people in that way I’d get in a lot of trouble, so why can people talk about me like that? Why do I talk about myself like that?

I mean in all honesty I’m not sure that there is a would I would rather…In an ideal world you wouldn’t have to tell someone you were atheist because everyone would have (excuse the pun) ‘seen the light’ and we would just refer to those nutters who still try to contact a kind of creator being and ask for some forgiveness as a theist, and that word would have a changed meaning, no longer the norm.

But I’m more than just an a-theist. Not only do I not believe in an almighty lord and master to rule over us (and let’s face it do some pretty sick and twisted stuff-more on that later) who is fallible by the way, he says so himself in the bible, and who is not all knowing either (again more on these points later). I am against religion…a kind of anti-theist I suppose. There are lots of reasons I feel this way, but like the Christians I hate the sin and not the sinner…I don’t blame people for wanting a God, wanting to shift blame and responsibility of life on to someone/thing else. I don’t blame people for wanting someone to talk to, to be a part of a society, who want an explanation for the things that science is still looking for etc.

I do blame the ignorance. I blame the self loathing message that many religions give, I blame institutions of worship for lying, for brainwashing and for seeing themselves as above and beyond the laws; the laws of science and the laws of the land. I see the dreadful things that religion has done and I hate it. I understand it…but that does not make it right.

So I can sit in my own little word, not believing in God, having no effect on any one. Or I can open my eyes (the reason I found out I was atheist in the first place) and see the damage and the ignorance of large scale religion.

And once you’ve done that…there is no sitting in your own world.

“Faith is the g…

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” – Dawkins

I am asked what I believe in.
I say nothing.

But it’s hard to tell whether this is true or not, I suppose it depends on your definition of the word ‘believe’. I regularly use the word believe in everyday language, however this is not how it’s meant in this context.
Here I mean a belief; faith or trust in something unsubstantiated, without rigorous proof.

Well I have opinions, I have suppositions, and further to this I can guess…but not without backing, not without thinking about things (and I mean really thinking; critically and deeply).

This is why I say I have no faith.
This is why I am atheist.
There is a lot to suggest I am right.
There is nothing to suggest I am wrong…but I’ll keep searching