The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Hey, Lefties, It’s Sunday: Are You Finding Joy In Life?

Posted on | March 25, 2012 | 66 Comments

by Smitty

Bluegrass Pundit points to CNS News:

The more often a person attended religious services, Gallup discovered, the more often they experienced positive emotions and the less often they experienced negative emotions.
The less a person attended religious services, the more they experienced negative emotions and the less they experienced positive ones.
People who attended religious services at least every week reported experiencing an average of 3.36 positive emotions the day before Gallup called them.
People who never attended religious services told Gallup they had experienced only an average of 3.08 positive emotions the previous day.

Having rejected faith, and sought solace elsewhere, people seem to have a relatively harder time. Now, here is an interesting, possibly related, result:

But Obama’s highest approval came among those who say they seldom or never attend religious services. Among these Americans, 51 percent said they approved of the job Obama is doing.

What you do faith-wise is a big input into that self-actualization thing.
Here is a big hint, folks: rejecting the possibility of Truth is a really, really Bad Thing. Also, the State really sucks, as gods go.

Update: via Gerard, this one went a completely unexpected direction:
Very, very well played, Justin Flom.

Comments

66 Responses to “Hey, Lefties, It’s Sunday: Are You Finding Joy In Life?”

  1. Grung_e_Gene
    March 25th, 2012 @ 9:14 am

    Dude, left some weight, take a jog, do some yoga…

    You’ll get a better high than from listening to vulgar latin translations and you’ll also be doing your body some good…

    Mens sana en corpore en sana

  2. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 9:48 am

    You can actually make things better, more (dare I say it?) positive, if you admit the awful is pretty damn awful. And when you do see how damn awful awful really is, particularly when it comes to ones own life, being able to hold it in a positive framework is quite the bonus.

    For several months last year when things were very rough, a friend in a similar situation and I took turns emailing each other a paragraph describing what we were grateful for. We deliberately included nothing negative.

    Positive thinking gone amuck? 🙂 I have to say, it was healing and it helped us both to move on.

    And . . . there is that aspect that peace can underlie both discontent and content . . . and let’s not forget that a tendency toward optimism or pessimism appears to be inherited . . . well everyone’s different, some are comfortably curmudgeonlike and some are curmudgeonhood-challenged.

  3. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 10:00 am

    Optimism can make us delusional.

    Yet the cultivation of true cheerfulness and optimism, the kind not used to cover-up the ‘dark-side’, is of great usefulness.

    And America is knee-deep in the happy happy joy joy, always looking on the bright side of life schtick, has been from the 19th century on.  The Gallup survey might suggest that may be the modern day lefties are balancing some of that negative side to positivity a little.

    Ironically, a leftie might agree that there are definite limitations and downsides, in the long run, to “happy happy, joy, joy,” yet disagree in that he or she hardly think America is knee deep in it. And in fact if anything, think America is knee-deep in apathy a cynicism.

  4. In La., Santorum drubs Romney | Twitchy
    March 25th, 2012 @ 10:07 am

    […] was in Louisiana for the events, and he and co-blogger Smitty have a lot on the breakdown. Start here and scroll down. Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]

  5. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 10:09 am

    Am american friend of mine had a mom, a conservative Christian, died recently of cancer and before she diemised, ran into an “attitude of blame” which was there from some of her fellow churchgoers.

    The startof the disease, its progression, and its outcome, were her fault. And it’s almost like the people want so badly to believe that prayer always, infallably, changes things if you truly believe, and that you can visualize those rogue cells away, that if you believe and try right along with them, and yet you and your illness ultimately prove them wrong, you’re a threat to their worldview. Compassion wanes, and I kinda think they just wish you’d go away. Sooner would be fine.

    No, events didn’t go the way they were ‘supposed’ to, and this not only troubled her Mom when she didn’t need extra troubling, but it did lasting damage to one of the loved ones left to cope afterward. (Talk about worldview collapse.) I do understand “the harm arising from denying reality.”

    And all that said . . . her last weeks in particular, she exhibited a strength and peace that was unforgettable.

  6. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 10:29 am

    While most people who categorize themselves as non-believers are indeed a miserable lot, I find that there needs to be some distinctions made: most, because they are too lazy to actually delve into the philosophical underpinnings of their non-belief, usually wind up falling for anything — including base debauchery and gross perversion of their own thought systems into some sort of “anti-church” (which is incredibly ironic and humorous to watch as they go about beclowning themselves).
    However, there are those who are not mentally lazy, in fact are quite sharp in their thinking, and who do delve into and meditate on the philosophical underpinnings of their non-belief or at least upon their own thoughts, actions, and feelings.  They attempt greatly to achieve the maxim “know thyself” which likely leads them to “moderation in all things” and even a bit of “do unto others”.  
    I find them to be just as happy as any true believer; in fact, I find that their happiness often operates in much the same way and thus highly recommend it.

    Of course, that posits the question: what is happiness?
    Because there are many believers who are just as mentally lazy in their beliefs and have turned the same into a debauched twisting of religious faith.  Their “happiness” is the happiness of the fool, the coward, and the covetous rogue, and in a sense their religious observances are a blasphemy and an insult to the Divine Creator.

  7. Wombat_socho
    March 25th, 2012 @ 10:46 am

    If you think this is about endorphins, you have hold of the wrong end of the mind/body/soul  connection.

    Also, I refer you to The CrackMC regarding the benefits of yoga and all that other New Age nonsense.

  8. A Sunday Reflection On A Deck Of Cards « That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    March 25th, 2012 @ 10:47 am

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  9. ThePaganTemple
    March 25th, 2012 @ 12:07 pm

    Faith is important, but I think where the positive thinking comes in has as much to do with being a part of a greater overall community. A church is a kind of community, neighborhood support system made up of close friends, relatives, and associates where everybody joins in to one degree or another and gives each other strength and even a sense of purpose. So its no big surprise that people that are involved in that have a healthier, more positive outlook than those that are not.

  10. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 12:28 pm

     In my life and work i have seen the harm arising from denying reality
    and/or people unable to see the value of compassion. Telling someone it
    is “just a story” is not always effective in easing suffering when
    life’s challenges are occurring. equally unhelpful are suggestions to
    just be happy….

    Of course the positive thinking that’s attributed to regular churchgoing activity
    gives many people the permission to appreciate being a “have” because
    they have had the “right thoughts” and therefore feel no responsibility
    to take actions to make a difference on the planet.

    Anyway, be happy!

  11. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 12:51 pm

    There should be a poll taken on lefties who attend Atheist conferences every weekend. If their moods are shown to be more positive than your average church/mosque goer…that proves what exactly?

    Note: No churchgoers who wanted to “just be happy” or are truly happy were intentionally harmed in the making of this post.

  12. Quartermaster
    March 25th, 2012 @ 1:01 pm

    I’m sure Smitty has pretty much the same feelings I do when he sees the posts above.This isn’t about “positive thinking” or any other such nonsense. This is about a relationship with God and Hi Son, Jesus Christ. Note well, the headline does not mention “happiness,” but “joy.” Nor does Smitty mention happiness in his post, nor do the quotes mention happiness. There is an immense difference between joy and happiness.Read Richard Wurmbrand’s “Tortured For Christ” sometime. He was not a happy man dwelling in communist prisons for 14 years before being deported from Romania, but he had joy. TPT, Animika, and Grung_e_Gene know nothing of what Smitty has posted.As the Apostle Paul put it, and so very well, about people that refuse to give what God is due, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,  And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.  For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:  Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.  Romans 1:21-32Paul described a US society overtaken by unbelief in the 21st century quite well.

  13. Tennwriter
    March 25th, 2012 @ 1:05 pm

     Yes, denying reality aka We’re Made By God is bad for you, and a lack of compassion aka let those unborn babies die causes much horrific results.

    And the Prophet of Gaia, Al Gore has permission from his goddess to greenhouse up th eplace in his mansion because he’s just so doggone special.

    Mirrors are wonderful things, Anamika.  So is reality.

  14. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 1:15 pm

     Hey read the original Gallup poll and commentary on which this blog post is based upon.

    Note well, the headline does not mention “happiness,” but “joy.”

    The Gallup post was about which group has better “moods.”

    This is about a relationship with God and Hi Son, Jesus Christ.

    The evidence from Gallup doesn’t make any difference between Christians, Muslims and Jews! who attend relegious services regularlyand have better moods than the rest.

    TPT, Animika, and Grung_e_Gene know nothing of what Smitty has posted.

    Maybe I don’t, but I strongly object any misrepresentation of facts via a single Gallup poll to support your stupid Christian agenda and your sense of self-righteousness.

  15. ThePaganTemple
    March 25th, 2012 @ 1:55 pm

     Hey now let’s not slam Gaea for the actions of some of her idiotic “followers”. Isn’t that akin to attacking Christ for the actions of, oh I don’t know, Fred Phelps maybe?

  16. ThePaganTemple
    March 25th, 2012 @ 1:59 pm

    Quartermaster, how many Christians do you know that can undergo the kind of “torture for Christ” you refer to? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest they are probably a very small minority. Granted, they’re there, but they’re not the majority, by a long shot. I stand by what I said. Without a community of fellow believers, faith becomes a lonely proposition. Yes, it can be a bedrock of strength, but its not the same as having a church community to fall back onto for strength and fellowship. 

  17. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 2:28 pm

    Belief in anything (even atheism) if a case of individual quest to find some meaning, value, and reference for one’s life is always in the end a lonely experience.
    The trick is to not let the realization of this turn your mood black and your feet towards nihilism — to be comfortable in your own skin as it were, briefly.

  18. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 2:29 pm

     Some brains are so deeply STAINED as to be unwashable!

    Nonetheless, we can try…

    In all, it is a classic and a masterpiece!

  19. Gary
    March 25th, 2012 @ 2:41 pm

    If we try and fail, is it so bad to wear a stained brain in public? Isn’t there some way to draw attention away from the unsightly spots…wear little floral hats or something?

    Little floral hats or even those tight black do-rags would be preferable to way most religionists attempt to draw attention away from their Original(ly) Stain(ed) brain by trying to convince you (and themselves, of course) that about 2,000 years ago, there was a guy who died for you, even though you weren’t even born yet.

    I guess all the billions of people who died, and presumably went to Hell before he made his noble sacrifice on everyone’s behalf, were just plumb out of luck.

    –Gary

    Don’t Stain My Brain (With Your Superstitious Bullshit)

  20. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 2:59 pm

     
    Re. Gary

    If we try and fail, is it so bad to wear a stained brain in public? Isn’t there some way to draw attention away from the unsightly spots…wear little floral hats or something?

    Yeah, we can try.

    Remember that little hat worn by ‘Capt Spaulding’* in ‘The Devil’s Rejects’?

    How did that work out for him?

    * It occured to me some readers may not be familiar with the maniac ‘Captain Spaulding’, so here is a link or two to pictures.

    Little floral hats or even those tight black do-rags would be preferable
    to way most religionists attempt to draw attention away from their
    Original(ly) Stain(ed) brain by trying to convince you (and themselves,
    of course) that about 2,000 years ago, there was a guy who died for you,
    even though you weren’t even born yet.

    Tut tut, my man.

    Tiny hats of any description, are always our best defense against satan and his minions.

    You see, tiny hats are actually ‘energy condoms’, and properly positioned (over either right or left brain hemisphere) prevent spiritual contamination, by the ‘liberal media’ as it cum-shoots its wad randomly out into the ether, thus to trickle down onto our sleeping, naive heads.

    I guess all the billions of people who died, and presumably went to Hell
    before he made his noble sacrifice on everyone’s behalf, were just
    plumb out of luck.

    Naw. You see, god itself ordained that all such salvatory measures would be entirely retroactive.

    I mean, what use is it to be god, if you don’t have that sort of reality-warping power?

  21. richard mcenroe
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:08 pm

    Probably, but on the other hand, most of us face much less formidable torments.  Once, those who would deny our faith were clinging to empires based on the assumption of their own divinity; now, it’s little people basing their opposition on a few feet of public grass for a Nativity creche.

    Of course there are some Christians who face the old school test even as we speak: the Christian convert sentenced to death, if not already executed in Iran, or the Copts fighting for their existence in Egypt.

  22. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:10 pm

    And who pray tell, are the ones with such brains?

    People of religious faith?  How so more than a person of no religious faith who has attempted, in their rejection of the same, to set up a religion of the opposite?  This I believe is where a lot of atheists fall short in their own beliefs; if you’re going to be an atheist, have the courage to not make a religion out of it (because that rather defeats the point).

  23. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:15 pm

    …and by thus turning yourself into a sham and a hypocrite it must be pretty unjoyful, so there you have it

  24. smitty
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:18 pm

    The trick is to not let the realization of this turn your mood black and your feet towards nihilism

    I wouldn’t call Christ a ‘trick’, but He has indeed had this effect on my mood and my feet, in this very context.
    Seriously. Without the knowledge of an absolute Truth, the relative truth of assertions like “Mother Theresa was a better person than Joseph Stalin” comes into question.
    Why, in the absence of Truth, should one not go for mass-murder status?

  25. smitty
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:19 pm

    Very well said. Thank you.

  26. Gary
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:20 pm

    Well, ok, I was not familiar with the good Captain so thanks for the pictures. The hat certainly does make all the difference. It lifts him from a common maniac to a fine respectable patriot…or, at least an ordinary patriot.

  27. smitty
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:26 pm

     your sense of self-righteousness

    It is an earmark of a false expression of Christianity that self-righteousness ever be visible.
    Quite the opposite is the case. Deeper understanding of perfection should drive a humble understanding of one’s own imperfection. Hopefully the Holy Spirit grinds the Christian over time into a better lens for focusing the light of God.
    However, admittedly, that’s not always the case.

  28. smitty
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:27 pm

    Conduct this survey, then. I should be interested in the source of their joy, if any.

  29. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:38 pm

    Trick in the sense that for a lowly person to pull it off is usually a task of near impossible proportions — a miracle or a great magical occurance.  The Christ has had an effect on you — and in it he plays his “trick”, that of getting you both more clearly outside and inside of yourself (not all tricks are bad things after all — as the video shows us).  

    I think it’s possible to not have religious belief and yet belief in some things akin to absolute truth — it’s incredibly difficult because you are disavowing belief in a higher order, in the divine which puts you in that position of “don’t believe anything, fall for everything” (which can be copiously exampled), but for some it is likely possible.  Because it is so hard that is likely what makes people such as that so rare, and why so many wind up going so wrong with it — but kudos to those who can.
    Perhaps it is because it creates a tendency to deny the eternal trick as actually being out there; I suppose one would have to deny it actually.

  30. Gary
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:43 pm

    Ask in total positive expectation that you feel free from guilt and you will be cleared. If you totally think you’re getting forgiven, there is no longer any use or impulse to rethink old unpleasantries…your mind stops, innocence and light is naturally restated.

    If you believe in love and love love, you think on it and dream (feel) on it and like any other dwelled upon thing, it grows stronger, the default of your being.

    Sadly, I was recently reminded of why it isn’t so simple to agree to a religion even if the main theme is love. Waiting at the home schooled testing center, I talked to a nice lady, also waiting, who was a Russian immigrant from the socialist anti-religion era who had become a proud American Baptist.  She wiggled in the topic of religion and at that point was off for the verbal religious races.

    I never speak of religion or spirituality or philosophy with most anyone as I find it far too complicated. She surely did enjoy it, though, and at first presented a lovely picture, especially as a person who had been unable to engage in such things due to government promoted persecution (her words more or less).

    As she gained momentum, she said several times that they love the sinner but hate the sin…. and also revealed that the reason she took her kids out of public school was that homosexuality was being taught as an ok thing for a lifestyle choice. The latter was not a casual mention, it seemed to fuel some kind of inner battle in her that made her keep repeating it a little more vehemently.

    There is something about the word ‘sin’ that gives it a diseased meaning compared to those usual things we don’t like out kids to do. A person could say, “don’t do that or you’ll get into trouble or you’ll get hurt or you’ll get stupid” or most anything, but it seems as if calling something a sin and someone a sinner changes everything and creates, not just a normal series of activities, beneficial or detrimental, but creates an emotional cage of sorts that traps both the so-called sinner and the so-called forgiven ones in a two dimensional world where the imagination serves the cage instead of reality or free flowing fantasy.

    When I was a kid, I recognized the flavor of the above and called it artificial lemon flavored cardboard. It still seems to fit and sadly, I haven’t met one person yet in my life who followed one religion for very long in a group with others who didn’t end up artificial lemony and cardboardy.

  31. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:53 pm

    As a critic of organised religion, i am not in the same camp as late Christopher Hitchens. I allow that some good may come of it. I’m sure there are many Christian advocates who are thoughtful, heartful, wise, self-examining without being self-flagellating, etc. I’m sure these people exist in all the Great Monotheistic Religions, and exemplify the best they have to offer, which may be considerable.

    However wonderful these “liberal” — it’s a positive word for me, but you can choose a better word if you want — advocates and exemplars are, and however numerous, they still have a long way to go to dispel the image of religion as reactionary and patriarchal, and all the negative baggage that goes with that, such as sexist, warmongering, homophobic and in other ways intolerant. THIS is the public face of religion afaict, represented by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the current and most Popes and Ayatollahs and Likud wallahs. And never mind the Saudi Wahhabis. THESE folks are not fringe. Millions of people align with them, and until “leaders” like them are thoroughly dispatched to scuttle back under their rocks, no amount of “good works” will redeem them. Religion, via these “leaders,” ENABLES violence, hate, ignorance and intolerance.

    Bravo to the congregations and dioceses and whatnot that are evolving beyond religion’s sordid history of yada yada litany to a bright, open, life-affirmative, celebratory and human religion. May they make the patriarchy a rump end. Until then . . .

  32. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 3:58 pm

     O ye of little faith.

    Not that that’s a bad thing, no not at all.

    Blind faith and dumb belief in what amounts to no more than the finger crossed, often desperate, hope that somehow or other, their pie-in-sky, airy-fairy superstitious wishful (and vain)thinking is going to “save” or rescue or get them off the hook of having to work out their own salvation for THEMSELVES, turns many, if not most, religionists into sad clones and unhappy clowns.

    The circus of religion comes complete with a Ringmaster who tells the performers what hoops to jump through and which tightrope to walk.

    Step right up, folks:

    We love the sinner, but hate the sin.
    Jesus loves you and so do we.
    Come into our tent and enjoy eternal life.

    And be sure to visit our sideshow where you can see many other freaky tenets of the faith.

  33. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:02 pm

     When you feel you have to defend your religion, you’ve already launched a convincing argument against it.

    Anyone who needs a religion to fall back on, or any belief system or conceptual framework for that matter, is settling merely for second hand information and perhaps a shaky, if at times comforting, faith in that which is unseen, unfelt, and not directly experienced.

    Knowers of reality are not bound by any doctrine, dogma, creed, or any so-called religious authority.

    In fact, they are not bound by anything.

  34. ThePaganTemple
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:03 pm

     Who are you trying to convince with all this negativity, us or yourself? I’m speaking here as someone who considers himself a thoughtful agnostic, especially when it comes to literal interpretations of scriptures. But it doesn’t bother me that much if people want to be steadfast believers in things I consider unlikely at best. Why does it bother you so much?

  35. Garygggary
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:19 pm

    Anamika:

    I for one have a strong spiritual belief in gravity. Gravity has guided my steps, inflicted just punishment should I make mistakes, and not for one moment has gravity let me down and left me wandering into space going downstairs.

    Also I strongly believe in the weather, the wind and the rain and calm days. For instance I strongly believe that when the temperature goes up it gets warmer and when the temperature goes down it gets colder.

    I also believe in the sunrise and sunset.

    And Time. I used to believe in tomorrow and yesterday but I gave up when I discovered today, which, unlike tomorrow and yesterday are never there when you want them; today is always right here, but best of all I believe in now, the only place things get done.

    Finally I strongly believe in breathing in and out, everyday, on a regular basis. It works whether done as a spiritual practice or not.

    There are probably a lot of other things I believe in but they escape me for the moment.

    Call me polytheistic if you will, but all these things happen by themselves and co-operate together marvelously without some bugger in the sky having to pull strings and controlling the whole shebang, as I have already voiced strong disapproval about in a a previous post.

    The Bible Koran, and Torah thumpers might do their bit but they all seem a bit superfluous really. I suppose it does give folks something to talk about, poor things.

  36. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:29 pm

    Re. Gary

    Believing in Gravity is no big deal, since we experience Its divine grace each day every time we try to leap over tall buildings in a single bound.

    Same thing with breathing. In fact I experience its very presence even as I exhale.

    You really can’t call yourself a TRUE believer unless you pay much more than lip service to stuff like karma, reincarnation, Original Sin, Eternal Damnation, and the fact that God has only One Son and wasn’t even married to His mother.

    Until then, you’ll have to remain confined within the ranks of the wishy-washyists who only believe in that which they can directly experience for themselves, and in their own deeply personal way.

    If you really want to be counted as a true believer, you have to believe in what other people tell you is true and deny your own inherent, fundamental, and dare I say God-given, intelligence.

  37. smitty
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:30 pm

    This sounds quite a trick, indeed.

  38. Gary
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:52 pm

    Cripes almighty what on earth is going on here?

    (he said putting his head on the guillotine)

    Anamika, you seem to want to keep baiting Smitty with issues you already know his views on.

    Smitty, Why on earth do you try to respond to convince her like a misbegotten son.

    I asked Anamika previously whether she was Smitty’s mother.

    Certainly sounds like one.

    And Pathfinder’s wife, goodly and accomplished woman that you are, why on earth do you try to convince her. 

    There is no way she will be convinced. ( as you probably know already)

    That said!

    I await the descent of the blade.

    Good wishes to all before the end

    –Gary

    Yours in the resurrection

  39. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 4:53 pm

     Xianity has far too much baggage in terms of history and fairy-tale beliefs for me to adopt it but i can stretch to accept that it might be a good thing for some people. Just as Islam might seem a fairly dismal and unattractive thing from the outside, we can understand that Sufism can exist within the context of Islam and be very liberating despite Islam’s whatever excesses.

  40. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:02 pm

     

    Yours in the resurrection

    Well you might want to consider that whole resurrection idea in the light of this definition:

    Christianity — The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.”

    Not that I think Jesus is a Jewish Zombie, mind you, but frankly, I do believe that most Christian true believers are certainly zombie-like in their belief that simply dropping down on one’s knees and “confessing” Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior somehow gets them a “Pass GO! Collect $200” ticket to some airy-fairy Heaven of their own wild, imo, imagination.

    But hey, why not give it a shot anyway?

    There’s nothing to lose.

    And who knows, maybe All Eternity to gain.

    Halleluia!

    And by all means,

    Praise the Lord!

    Sister Anamika

    Glory!

  41. ThePaganTemple
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:04 pm

     It’s not just a good thing for some people, its a good thing for society. It’s not for me, but I do understand that without it, people will flock to something else that might not be nearly as positive overall.

  42. dwduck
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:04 pm

    Or, more likely, you just invented everything between “diemised” (sic) and that final “And”, because it’s what you want to believe anyway.

    Six days hath ye for trolling…the seventh, ye shall rest.

  43. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:07 pm

    If that is the case, then there are many “non-believers” who “settle for secondhand information”; in fact, they seem to wind up seeking all manner of goofy things to believe in in place of the very thing they stridently wish to not believe in.
    Thus they become a pale parody of the very people they most look down their nose at.
    In this regard they are not faithfully subscribing to what they profess at all, rather they are just rebelling out of some emotional and/or ego driven need…much like those who blindly subscribe to a religion, but who have given very little thought and honest contemplation to the matter — the artificial lemonade flavoring, to use another commentor’s description, rather than the real thing.

    And some believers in a religion feel no need to defend themselves against anything, being quite secure in their own beliefs and any defending would  amount to merely getting those who have some strange compulsion to harass them off their backs.

    As with everything, it usually cuts both ways.

  44. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:14 pm

    Well, if anyone has a sense of humor and lightheartedness, it’s the Divine Creator — we’re the ones with all the hangups due to over seriousness!

  45. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:17 pm

    LOL! Now that’s hoot: I am far from goodly and hardly accomplished.  In fact, I know myself to be pretty much perdition bound because of my dark, dark heart.

    And I have no desire to reach out to Anamika at all — I just like pestering people, because I’ve got a cruel soul.

  46. Pathfinder's wife
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:22 pm

    Oh my goodness; I find myself so in agreement with ol’ Pagan here that the desire to kiss him/her on the cheek is overwhelming.

    Truly, it must be a sign of impending apocalypse! lol!

    Perhaps Anamika is not as sure in her/his beliefs as he/she would like to think — thus feels the compulsion to go a preaching! (Anamika: sorry dear, but Hitchens or Condell I find you not to be, and most likely any dinner conversation with the likes of you would be utterly devoid of charm  — which I think those fellows and people like them could most likely provide…stained brains indeed, such a pity).

  47. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:33 pm

    cuts both ways

    That’s the key, isn’t it?

  48. DaveO
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:46 pm

    It would be interesting to see the numbers on those American who respond according to how orthodox or traditional/evangelical their faith is and their religion is (even how hard-core their priest/pastor is), as opposed to the mainline denominations that consider Xt or whatever to be boorish and inconsiderate of modern sensibilities.

    In the past, the more hard core one’s faith/religion/priest was, the happier the person was.

  49. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 5:53 pm

     I would LOVE it if you could somehow, in your flapping around, like a fish that’s been tossed on a barren shore, come up a real good insult or some truly stinging insults for me.

    It would be fun to see how creative you could be.

    As it is, at this point, you couldn’t insult me even if you tried. 

    Go ahead, and see if I care.

    I’m only prone to insults to my intelligence.

    Stupider still, however, is your effort to promote your truly infantile true believership in airy-fairy fantasies and whispy ethereal fantasies while you REAL 3-Dimensional world falls apart and crashes and burns while you’re in the very act of telling others how WRONG they are for not believing in the same SILLY things that you do.

  50. Anamika
    March 25th, 2012 @ 6:02 pm

     It is a well known fact that animals in a farm/captivity which are well tended tend to be more happier/secure (less worries) than the average member of their specie that roam free (survive in the wild.)