Please validate your belief in your God

[nogodsforme]

The exact same kind of stories (look at this unexpected thing that happened to me, it must be supernatural, I am so special) come out of every religious tradition. Islam, Hinduism, you name it.

So, why assume that it was the Christian god who made the books come out right? Why not attribute it to Jah or Vishnu or Yemaya? Or even Satan, considering that you were apparently stealing and got away with it.

We atheists also have had strange and wonderful things happen to us-- we have survived car crashes and recovered from illnesses and gotten jobs and won prizes and found our lost keys. We have missed the plane that later crashed, saved the kid from drowning and found the wallet full of money, too. Who was helping us, since we don't believe in or worship any supernatural dieties?

And we have also had our share of bad things happen, just like religious people. We have lost jobs, gotten sick, gotten evicted, lost our true love. But we don't ignore the bad things and thank some diety for the good things, like many religious people do. We try to figure out why things happen and try to help the good things happen more often.

When people believe in gods, demons, spirits and magic, they don't even bother to look at the facts. Why would they, when facts don't really matter? That is why the most religious places where people pray a lot and wait for god to do something have worse social outcomes than the places where people use science and rational thinking to solve their problems.

Which would you want to get if you were suffering from starvation: rehydration and nutrition from a medical person or prayers from a priest? Atheist doctors in Cuba have a better track record of keeping babies alive than Vodun practictioners in Haiti. Non-religious Norway and Japan are nicer places to live than very religious India and Afghanistan. It's a wonder that religion stays around, with such a sucky track record.

[WayneHarropson]

I’m back from my out of town job and a bit more rested so maybe I can respond to at least a few of your well considered questions.

Dumpsterfire:  From your reply #179 and 190
Thanks for your conceding that you were unnecessarily harsh on me.  That’s the kind of honesty I’d like to return to you.

If you read the entire darkknightpremonition thing I want to thank you.  It was a lot to read and I mean to make it worth your while, or at least make an attempt. 
You think supernatural premonitions are impossible or you wouldn’t be an atheist so any connections between the 23 year old story and Aurora will be dismissed by you out of hand no matter how remarkable.  To concede to any of it would shatter your belief system, and I actually respect that.  I couldn’t maintain your close mindedness but it works for you and I don’t mean to deprive you of it. 

Or should I say, if I do deprive you of it it will be the result of you finding credibility in my reporting of events that cannot be explained in any other way.  I wouldn’t be posting here if I didn’t think I’m on to something and what I’m onto needs scrutiny, so you are offering me as service I might not be able to articulate without help. 

You may dismiss the connections, and I might have tried to dismiss them to keep me from a fool’s errand (which is entirely possible I’ll admit) but when I emerged from my office after joking with the fire inspector to find that my truck sprung a gas leak, God (or whoever) was making sure that I didn’t walk away from my investigation empty handed.  For you it means nothing, but it can’t mean nothing to me because I was there.   It is so crazy that I can’t be insulted by your ridicule, I actually understand the ridicule.  It is so crazy, it just has to be supernatural.
 
The exercise of prayer is an act of faith in the unseen, and by design it excludes and even confounds the rational.  You would have preferred that my old story had an attack to make it more compelling, and you are right, that’s why I went to the trouble to investigate.  A run of the mill gas leak is different from a tear gas canister is different from a fuel pump diaphragm failure.  Every one of them is completely different, but what kind of dullard would I have been if I had dismissed the connections out of hand?  I looked into them, they connect, and where the connections were ambivalent  I was given back up support.  The boobytrap.
2. Removing prayer in schools was a big deal. You may argue all the merits of the tortured litigation and there isn’t room here for all that but why don’t we just concede here that it was Atheists that got it outlawed, not a bunch of sects that fought over minutia.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair got bible reading out of schools the year after prayer was removed.  You should be so proud.  How’d she die? In 1995 she was kidnapped, murdered, and her body mutilated, along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair, by former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters. 

I wonder if the shooters at Aurora and Sandy Hook were praying bible reading kids or if they were atheist like the office manager?  I’ll have to look that one up. 

Don’t expect me to speak for God’s mysterious ways except that they are mysterious.  The Amish incident you want an answer on is as bad as any of them.  The best I can do here is say what I said when I got one look at the Sandy Hook killer.  I feel as sorry for him, the shooter, as I do for the victims. My assertion that removing God Bible Prayer Ten Commandments from school caused all the current killing is both my premonition’s implications as well as the environment that those killers were brought up in.  If all that bible reading, prayer and Ten commandments wasn’t outlawed and shunned by society, those killers wouldn’t have been killers.  They are as much victims of the outlawing of morality as the slaughtered are. 

And that is what you and Madalyn have done, you’ve outlawed God’s morality.  The founder’s intended that students should be immersed in the bible in public schools, Thomas Jefferson famously declared it and if I’m not mistaken ordered the government to print the bibles with taxpayers money to make sure of it.
Here’s the bottom line.  My premonition means something.  It is a supernatural prophecy designed to have a very long fuse, a twenty three year long fuse.  An omniscient God gave it to me to write about twenty three years ago, and then backed up the conclusion I was drawing from it by boobytrapping my truck.   

A lot of your flaming at me for all this is somewhat understandable because we want explanations that make sense for all the tragedies that befall the innocent, but I can only report what I’ve been given to report and draw the obvious conclusions that can be extracted from them. 

Jag insists on torturing me about my “theft” He said:
Well, I'll grant you this. You did, indeed, rationalize your theft. "Making the books come out right" in no way changes that fact - you didn't pay a charge that you knew darn well should have been there, and you use that as a tool to preach about the wonders of prophetic christianity, never seeing the hypocrisy of your position.

The Bible calls Satan the great accuser.

Jag accuses me of being a thief for having received a blessing and a gift.  He dismisses out of hand the admittedly unbelievable circumstances of not only how I acquired the gas but how it all came to my attention.  If I must defend myself from this slander I guess I must.  For the first tank of gas I filled a nearly empty tank in a Toyota pickup. I have absolutely no idea how much gas. It could have been eight to fifteen gallons.  I don’t even know the size of the tank.  I don’t know what the charge was. I didn’t take a receipt, I never do.  When we first looked at the charge online the station information was there, the time was correct and the charge was  one dollar.  Of course I knew that had to be incorrect, and I didn’t make a habit of checking charges online and maybe the full charge was going to come up later. 

My daughter was going out of her way to honor my request and showing an admirable amount of concern that she pay the full amount and it was really a kick to be able to say to her: “Ok, give me a dollar”  That is hysterically cool! She wasn’t satisfied and asked me a couple of days later, then and only then did I discover that not only did the one dollar disappear but the additional tank in my fifteen gallon mustang tank was also not on the bill. 

Jag.  How much gas did I put in my mustang and what should the charge have been if the needle was just half way between a quarter and empty?  What was the price at the pump?  Do you remember my saying I never take a receipt? I never look at the charge and I wouldn’t remember it if I did.  What exactly would an atheist do in this situation?  What would Jag do?

I’ll tell you what I did.  I accepted it for the wonder it was absolutely guilt free.  Do I think anybody got cheated?  No I don’t.  Did I perpetrate a theft?  You need to think I did don’t you? 

Here is something else.  I never have even since looked to make sure that every charge I have put on that card has been registered correctly, though I amused myself with the imagination for a moment.  Do you know why I never checked subsequent charges?  It is because that incident was so perfectly orchestrated that I just knew the whole affair had run its course.  My daughter and I got the message, and it was a one time thing.

I wish I could answer all your concerns. Like what about the starving in Africa whatever.  I am grateful that you have read my accounts of the supernatural and I appreciate your responses.  If I utterly failed in not running down the lost gas charges in my need to imagine my Christian God rewarding my daughter for cleaning her truck, then I guess I’m a hard case.  God have mercy on me.

Someone, maybe dumpster said that I had put up my best stories first.  Not really, just the most current. 
I know I haven’t answered all but please be patient, I’ll try to keep up
Thanks again for reading.

You are not going to believe this, I have another Gas leak story!  I really do! But I’ll wait until I respond to those that have read my  http://tinyurl.com/MercuryMontclair    Story lest I get even further behind.
I am so grateful for your input, and please forgive me if I failed to answer your concerns.
Wayne

[12 Monkeys]

Why would an all powerful being that can create a universe,kill millions,command his followers to kill millions,kill his own son be afraid of crossing a doorway because someone stopped people from praying in schools so others would not feel uncomfortable?

 Your thinking is flawed,If these people(victims) had Jesus in their hearts,why would God not be present?

 As far as a non believer being murdered by another non believer,it has happened before,will happen again. Andrea Yates told the police that God told her to drown her kids,is she lying,crazy or the scariest of all,telling the truth as she See's it?

 Are the Westboro Baptist's right? is God angry because his followers ignore the Bible? They(a majority of the free world) now allow women to speak in public,work,hold titles over men.Equal rights for people of different ethnic origins,for gays,women. These are ALL things God is angry about,not just removal of prayer

 And finally your Bible tells you to humbly pray in private not to openly pray,so your argument for prayer in schools is null and void.

[ParkingPlaces]

Don’t expect me to speak for God’s mysterious ways except that they are mysterious.  The Amish incident you want an answer on is as bad as any of them.  The best I can do here is say what I said when I got one look at the Sandy Hook killer.  I feel as sorry for him, the shooter, as I do for the victims. My assertion that removing God Bible Prayer Ten Commandments from school caused all the current killing is both my premonition’s implications as well as the environment that those killers were brought up in.  If all that bible reading, prayer and Ten commandments wasn’t outlawed and shunned by society, those killers wouldn’t have been killers.  They are as much victims of the outlawing of morality as the slaughtered are. 

And that is what you and Madalyn have done, you’ve outlawed God’s morality.  The founder’s intended that students should be immersed in the bible in public schools, Thomas Jefferson famously declared it and if I’m not mistaken ordered the government to print the bibles with taxpayers money to make sure of it.

First of all, you can pray all you want in school. But only privately.

Second: Mass killings by crazed people with guns. It can't possibly be caused by the mass closure of mental institutions during the Reagan administration. It can't possibly be caused by changes in mental health regulations that made it incredibly difficult, rather than pretty frickin' easy, to get a disturbed person involuntarily placed in a mental facility. It can't have anything to do with the pressures brought on by higher population density, increased financial inequality, frustration with bureaucracies, unreal expectations of reality brought on by mass media, fewer social or coping skills being taught, the unwillingness of society to deal with bullies and other misfits early, the refusal of gun nuts to negotiate towards any sort of sanity in gun laws, or anything else. Only the halting of open prayer in public schools.

Hmmm. I went to school. Before prayer was halted. I still became an atheist (in 1961 or 62) when I was 10 or 11. So apparently a) prayer being legal didn't affect me too much and b) despite my lack of belief, I have yet to shoot anyone.

Your effort to keep it simple and make all of this a black and white issue is typical of responses that will never fix anything. Not counting your ego, which is in fine shape. The United States is a society which glorifies the rugged individual, the pulling up of ones own boot straps. It glorifies money as the biggest measure of success, with beautiful spouses and McMansions being important too. It sets high expectations and unrealistic demands. It provides a social atmosphere where I am allowed to move into a town where you have a small business, and if I am savvy enough it is perfectly acceptable for me to put you out of business and destroy your financial world as long as I am being a good businessman. It is fine for me to move my megastore into a small town and put every small business in that town into bankruptcy, because my right to succeed transcends all other rights. And this is with or without the bible, with or without prayer in school.

Most of the shooters in these mass shootings (I know, we outlawed prayer in theaters back in 1979 and they haven't been safe since) have been disenfranchised single males with expectations of entitlements but a failed economic and/or social track record. When you create a competitive economic atmosphere, there are going to be loosers. When you create a competitive educational atmosphere, a competitive mate-seeking atmosphere, and create losers as a byproduct of the process, don't expect glitter and roses as the only by-products of failure.

Have you ever thought that life just isn't fair? Even just a little bit. Imagine, if you will, people who feel life isn't fair who can't conjure up alternative scenarios, but who can conjure up a gun. Some of them will use the weapons.

But you think that the mere inclusion of prayer in our schools will fix this. That, because you are incredibly moral and twice as good as anyone else, that the fact that you pray a lot is the deciding factor. And that enforced prayer would alter the fabric of society so fast and so well that the Columbine boys would come back to life and ask for a do-over.

I've been the victim of three crimes. One, a stolen bike. Another when my car was broken into and an empty backpack was stolen out of the back seat. And three, a business partner to stole $5,000 and another $5,000 in computer equipment and disappeared, destroying what we had built. He was an ordained minister, and when I tracked him down, he was the head minister at a medium sized church in Indiana. After he stole from me. He prayed daily, and apparently got his wish. God let him steal from me. So I'm guessing that the mere inclusion of prayer in daily life does not always lead to meticulous behavior.

Just for the record, he graduated from high school in 1960, so he could legally pray in school and he was still a jerk. How do you explain that?

I'm not mad at him any more. Its not worth my time to fret over yet another a**hole in the world. But to me, he is living proof that prayer is not a cure-all. Yet that is what you are claiming.

I could have stolen something was about three years ago. I went to the store and bought a fairly small amount of food. I was talking to a friend behind me in line and not paying any attention to the cashier. I paid and walked out with my groceries, and got thinking about how much it had cost me. It seemed to be too little. I checked my receipt and saw that I had not been charged for a $5.00 item. I pulled it out of the bag, walked back into the store and paid for it. That's how evil this particular non-praying human is. So prayer may not be the only frickin' variable.

I repeat. The world isn't black and white. No one fix is available for mass killings any more than any one fix is available for any of the kinder, sweeter single-victim killings that our society endures.

By the way, you are wrong about Jefferson and the bibles in school thing. That never happened, but christians love to tell the story anyway. Truth not being their biggest concern. You guys pray not to get shot but you don't bother policing your own behavior. I have heard the claim for years. I asked a friend, a history teacher who is a christian (his daughter just graduated from a northwestern bible school last year) if the story was true and he did some research and  that it was not (history being so important to him that it transcended his religion). This was before the Internet, so I had no links for that, but I found this story this evening and it sounds like the one that Chuck told me in about 1990.

http://wthrockmorton.com/2012/09/04/david-bartons-u-s-capitol-tour-did-congress-print-the-first-bible-in-english-for-the-use-of-schools/

Which happened, by the way, 19 years before Jefferson even became president.

But don't worry. You have your own permission to tell it any way you want.

P.S. I have to finish this with an observation of mine that I have presented here before. It references something you said in the first paragraph of yours that I quoted. Since you're new, I get to say it again:

It's a good thing that the lord operates in mysterious ways, otherwise there would be no other way to explain what he does.

P.P.S. 12, I loved your last sentence in the above post. But I'm guessing it is not in his personally abridged version.

[Anfauglir]

You think supernatural premonitions are impossible or you wouldn’t be an atheist so any connections between the 23 year old story and Aurora will be dismissed by you out of hand no matter how remarkable.  To concede to any of it would shatter your belief system, and I actually respect that.  I couldn’t maintain your close mindedness but it works for you and I don’t mean to deprive you of it. 

Transference? 

You made a big thing that you run things past your "invisible atheist friend" (i.e. you imply you do not have a closed mind).  Yet every REAL atheist says you are wrong.....and you refuse to accept any of our comments.  Do you not feel that that makes you as close-minded in your beliefs as you accuse us of being, for fear it may shatter YOUR belief system?

[wheels5894]

I think the problem here is that there is a lack of clear thinking which results in these stories being seen as premonitions or acts of god. Surely the first thing one would do with these stories is to see if there is actually a rational and normal, everyday explanation for these events.

One thing that is not considered for the cinema story is just plain, old coincidence. As is pointed out earlier in the thread, it would be an odd god indeed that gives a person a 20 year warning of something but still the recipient of the message fails to understand it until the event is over and does so in retrospect. One would expect a god to manage to stop events if it was giving a message 20 years prior to the event. the alternative view, that there are no connections at all between the events, apart from there being a Batman film involved, suggests that it is that connection, together with the presence of police on each occasion, that means the events are joined together. After all, noting a the earlier event predicted what happened at the latter apart from the coincidence of the same film.

As far as the fuel is concerned, why not just look at the way technology works - especially in the hands of people not very good at using it. That $1 was charged rather than the proper price could easily just be a technology fail - there is absolutely no need to bring in an imaginary deity to explain it - indeed, as an explanation, Occam's razor would remove the extra party, god, as extraneous.

the point I am  making is that there are simple everyday explanations to the things in the stories and it is only the work of someone with a strong faith and the need to satisfy it that creates these linkages to a deity. Whether or not there is a deity does not matter in this discussion as it is clear there are normal explanations on hand. We can only, justifiably look to a deity to help explain something when there are not other explanations for an event. Bringing is  a character who exists only in a person's faith really doesn't explain much. 

[pianodwarf]

You think supernatural premonitions are impossible or you wouldn’t be an atheist

A small correction, here: atheists don't necessarily reject the supernatural altogether, they merely lack belief in deities.  Most atheists are, in fact, naturalists, but there are a few exceptions, so be careful not to make that assumption.

The exercise of prayer is an act of faith in the unseen, and by design it excludes and even confounds the rational.

Not at all.  If you believe in intercessory prayer -- and it appears that you do -- then it should be a readily testable phenomenon because it has effects in the natural world.  If, for example, prayer increases the likelihood of recovering from illness, we should be able to see that people who receive prayers recover from illness at a higher rate than those who do not.  And, in fact, this idea has been tested.  I'll let you Google the results, if you can't already guess what they are...

2. Removing prayer in schools was a big deal.

Yes, it was.

You may argue all the merits of the tortured litigation and there isn’t room here for all that but why don’t we just concede here that it was Atheists that got it outlawed, not a bunch of sects that fought over minutia.

Sure... as the lawyers say, "I'll stip to that."

Madalyn Murray O'Hair got bible reading out of schools the year after prayer was removed.  You should be so proud.

I am.  Or would be, if I'd had anything to do with it... it happened before I was born, so I'm sort of "proud by proxy", as it were.

How’d she die? In 1995 she was kidnapped, murdered, and her body mutilated, along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair, by former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters.

"And this is my point:"

I wonder if the shooters at Aurora and Sandy Hook were praying bible reading kids or if they were atheist like the office manager?  I’ll have to look that one up.

While you're at it, why don't you check to see whether they were both wearing shoes.  (Are you wearing shoes, too?)

If all that bible reading, prayer and Ten commandments wasn’t outlawed and shunned by society, those killers wouldn’t have been killers.

That's quite a claim.  Can you support it?  At all?

And that is what you and Madalyn have done, you’ve outlawed God’s morality.

We most certainly have not.  Atheist activists insist on separation of state and church, but you will almost certainly never find an atheist saying that a religion should be outlawed or that believers should be deprived of their rights.  (Believers depriving atheists of their rights, on the other hand...)

The Bible calls Satan the great accuser.

What does that even mean?  And what's your point in mentioning this?

[screwtape]

Hi Wayne


This response was for another member, but I have some input for you.

You think supernatural premonitions are impossible or you wouldn’t be an atheist...

Not exactly.  To be an atheist is simple to reject a single claim - that gods exist - for lack of evidence.  It is not a categorical rejection of all supernatural entities, though that is usually how it turns out.

so any connections between the 23 year old story and Aurora will be dismissed by you out of hand no matter how remarkable. 

Not for me, at least.  There is a lot going on there, in your extraordinary claim.  For one, the brain is pattern detector.  It often makes connections where none actually exist.  Ever see faces in the clouds?  That is your pattern detecting brain at work. That is why we need things like statistics, multivariate regression analysis, and computers.  Those are tools that help us find actual links and correlations and discard the apparent links that are just our perceptions. 

I think it is safe to say that I can look back over 23 years of my life and find numerous events that could be interpreted as "supernatural premonitions" to any other event.  They brain does that and justifies it, as yours has. 

The key is to ask what is more likely?  Is a universe where you received a premonition 23 years in advance more or less likely than a universe in which two unrelated events coincidentally seem related to you?  I think it is less likely. 

I have not seen any evidence from you that establishes you indeed had a "supernatural premonition".  That is not to say any of the events you describe did not happen.  I am just saying, there are simpler, more likely explanations that do not require introducing the "supernatural"

I have to ask, what good is a 23 year old premonition?  Did it help you navigate life?  Did it lead you to that critical point?  Did you even recognize it as a premonition at the time? 

... and I actually respect that. 

You shouldn't.  If the goal is for us to have the most accurate understanding of reality that we can, then we need to update our beliefs with new, more accurate information.  If we reject data out of hand because it conflicts with our current understanding, then we are not allowing for better understanding.  And what you are saying is, you respect that sort of willful ignorance.  You get an F minus for that.

However, you have not provided data.  You have provided a story and then given an interpretation that looks like you jumped to based on your prior biases.  That sort of thing need not be accepted at face value. That is not closed mindedness.  That is healthy skepticism.

I couldn’t maintain your close mindedness but it works for you and I don’t mean to deprive you of it. 

That kind of insult is not necessary and is not going to win you any friends.

It is so crazy, it just has to be supernatural.

Wayne, we call this an Appeal to Ignorance.  It means, because you cannot explain it, you assign supernatural agents to it.  I find that to be a rather primitive impulse.  Our savage ancestors 100,000 years ago did this.  We need not indulge in this sort of thing today, given all we know.  My cell phone once turned on unexpectedly.  How did that happen?  Was it ghosts?  Demons?  Jesus H Christ?  Or was it some physical quirk in the electronics which I am not knowledgeable enough to explain? 

When you make appeals to ignorance you indulge in a kind of arrogance.  You are saying you are not knowledgeable enough to explain it and no one else is either.  Wayne, you are not the smartest man to have ever lived and smarter people will come after you.  Calling your experience "supernatural" is an end to inquiry and an invitation to ignorance. 

The exercise of prayer is an act of faith in the unseen,

No it's not.  It is an expression of your desires in the hope that the universe will change to suit your wants.

and by design it excludes and even confounds the rational. 

By design?  Why would something be irrational by design?

2. Removing prayer in schools was a big deal. You may argue all the merits of the tortured litigation and there isn’t room here for all that but why don’t we just concede here that it was Atheists that got it outlawed, not a bunch of sects that fought over minutia.

Nope.  about 2/3 of the lawsuits to get prayer out of school were brought by minority religious groups - Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Mormons and Catholics.
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,18025.msg400179.html#msg400179

Madalyn Murray O'Hair got bible reading out of schools the year after prayer was removed. 

references please?  Murray's suit was formally known as Abington School Dist. Vs Schempp.  Schempp was a Unitarian who did not want hid kids hearing biblical readings without him there to interpret it and discuss it with them.  The school was trying to teach biblical literalism and he didn't want that.  The Supreme Court agreed.

You should be so proud.  How’d she die? In 1995 she was kidnapped, murdered, and her body mutilated, along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair, by former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters. 

Your point here is what?

Don’t expect me to speak for God’s mysterious ways except that they are mysterious.

In other words, you haven't got a clue. 

And that is what you and Madalyn have done, you’ve outlawed God’s morality. 

Not at all.  Removing official prayer and bible teaching in public schools has allowed religious freedom to thrive.  It means people get to teach their kids what they want, rather than have them taught state sanctioned doctrines. 

The founder’s intended that students should be immersed in the bible in public schools, Thomas Jefferson famously declared it and if I’m not mistaken ordered the government to print the bibles with taxpayers money to make sure of it.

Nope.  Not Jefferson.

together with James Madison, Jefferson carried on a long and successful campaign against state financial support of churches in Virginia. It is Jefferson who created the phrase "wall of separation between church and state"
...
Following the Revolution, Jefferson played a leading role in the disestablishment of religion in Virginia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_religion

He even rejected the supernatural:

Jefferson cut and pasted pieces of the New Testament together to compose The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (the "Jefferson Bible"), which excluded any miracles by Jesus

You are not very well informed.

Here’s the bottom line.  My premonition means something.  It is a supernatural prophecy designed to have a very long fuse, a twenty three year long fuse.  An omniscient God gave it to me to write about twenty three years ago, and then backed up the conclusion I was drawing from it by boobytrapping my truck.   

ipse dixit.  You have not really given anyone a good reason to believe your conclusion is the accurate or most likely one.

[Jag]

The Bible calls Satan the great accuser.

What does that even mean?  And what's your point in mentioning this?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Wayne was trying to imply that I'm either Satan, or acting on Satan's behalf, by "torturing" him over his gas theft. I could be wrong about that, but it seems to make sense, given that he follows that declaration with several paragraphs explaining that he's neither a thief, nor a hypocrite. This indicates to me that his comprehension of the words "hypocrite" and "theft" isn't very clear, as his explanation amounts to a list of excuses for why it's ok to insist that this obvious error is a sign of god's favor. Oh yeah, also that he didn't really steal the gas because he doesn't know how much the charges were.

I'm not even going to touch his definition of "torture", as it's ridiculous.

And Wayne? I'm not a "he", I'm a "she". No big deal - it's the internet, not RL -, but I thought I would correct you before we go any further.

Edited to correct  grammar error

[wheels5894]

Just for the record the Hebrew 'ha satan', Satan, as used on the beginning of the Book of Job means 'the accuser'. Maybe think of it like the prosecution counsel in a trial.

only the NT writers seems to have linked this character in the divine court, the Lord of Flies 'belezevoul' that Elijah has to deal with to end up with Satan as the devil, alias beelzebub, for a hell that the OT never even thought of.

Those NT writers had a great imagination!

[Jag]

^^^That makes a great deal of sense. In light of this explanation, I accept the title, assuming that we are on the right track in figuring out what Wayne was getting at.

Edited to add: should I change my screen name to "Jag the Accuser"? Or maybe, "Jag, sometimes AKA Satan (The Accuser)"? I'd hate to lose my history, but it might be worth it...

[WayneHarropson]

Warning - while you were typing 7 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post. 

Looks like my work is cut out for me.

I need a tutorial on how to insert small quotes from you all.  When I highlight a small portion and hit insert I get the whole content.  And it doesn't seem to appear in the preview like it does in yours.

Until then I'll do my best, but I know I'm falling short of replying to you all as I'd like.

What I do appreciate is that some of the merciless comments are from time to time balanced by others with a moderated view.  My comment about Satan being the accuser comes from the reality that some of you want to treat me as though I am somehow guilty of some egregious character fault underlying the remarkable incidences I describe.  You remind me of one of my ex wives.

I was minding my own business one day several months ago when some madman burst into a theater in Colorado with a can of tear gas.  It was a batman movie.  A six year old girl died. I was minding my own business when finding out from my local authorities that there was no threat, just a gas leak in my 'God answers prayers' story from 89. That at first blush dampened down the connection between the two incidences, but minding my own business couldn't save me from what would happen next.  My joke about having been responsible for the 89 gas leak to the fire inspector was immediately followed by a gas leak in my truck. 

I love reading all your well thought out explanations and sarcastic remarks. Especially the sick puppy blazing that goes on that seems to ignore and dismiss how this premonition really works in all its detail.  I'll do my level best not to dismiss any legitimate points you may make but as you look over all the back and forth in all its faults and merits that there may be a message in all this that has nothing to do with me.

I cannot answer all the the confusion that my prophecy lets loose upon the atheist landscape, for I am not the author of any of it.  I am a reporter only.  As a reporter I have admitted my Christian bias, but my Christianity doesn't answer all of my questions about why-this and why-that let alone all of yours.  In that respect, we have something in common.

All I can do is say the first story was about God moving a mountain to answer a prayer.  I typed it with two fingers on a typewriter because it was so remarkable.  I had no Idea just how remarkable it was, until now.  That is twenty three years... remarkable.  I think a few of you would benefit from reading through it in its entirety one more time before commenting because there are certain subtleties built into it that might have escaped you the first time through. 

I don't want you to think that I am dismissing all your scepticism, I actually understand it.  Your kind of critical thinking, (the cohesive of it) is the kind of analysis that commends men, but there is something to this message that over rules all of your scrambling and posturing and defending of the atheist faith.  It isn't me.  It isn't my ability to respond to all of it which I will surely fail to do.

What follows as you can tell is a quote:

(her)Alternatively, let's say that it WAS a warning from god.  That Wayne has indeed been able to identify after the fact that one was a prediction.  As someone up there said, what IS the use of a prediction that nobody can understand until it has happened?  It's no use as a warning, certainly.

(me)I can see a use in it.   It was nothing but a story about an answer to prayer until the Aurora massacre.  Now it is a warning and an explanation of current events. 

You are onto something here.  Can you imagine what I would have looked like if I had known what the real implications of the gas leak were?  I would have been bound to protest Batman movies at the very least.  What I think is fascinating is that instead of my being the kind of prophet that proclaims the future, (which even I would have a hard time believing) am now able to point back and say that it was an omnicient God that knew the future.  That's different.  That's supernatural.  It's not me.

(her)And let's look further: what IS Wayne saying about the original gas attack?  Is he saying that his god deliberately set it up as a warning to his followers of what might happen?  If that's the case, what does that mean?  Does it mean that - without the intervention of his god - the attack would NOT have happened?  Which of course begs the question as to why, if this god can and will intervene, it did NOT intervene to save people in the shooting incident.

(me) I think what it means is fifty years of banning God's influence in schoolchildren has a cumulative long term and (God forbid)  a irreversible effect.  That's the warning.  Somewhere it is written that there is only one way to tell if a prophet is truly a prophet, and that is if what he prophecies comes true.  That is a no brainier. But lucky me, I had no idea what I was writing was prophetic or I would have spent all this time in sackcloth standing on a corner with a sandwich board but instead I get to tell the story and proclaim it while it is being fulfilled. 

To me at the time I thought it was God's sense of humor as the title denotes.  Now it's not that funny.  Not only isn't it funny, it is really quite dire.  It is as dreadful as can be. There is at least one theological scholar among you here that should be able to attest from their knowledge of the bible that this not only could be serious, but rather cataclysmic.  If God did in fact gas that 1989 theater, he did it for the sole reason that I would write what I did about it at the time, not so much to entertain my daughter and I.  I'll forgive myself of being flippant about it then because I couldn't have known what it portended.

(her)And if it was a warning....when did you deduce it was a warning, Wayne?  At what point did you realise "that gas attack at a Batman film means there will be a gun attack at a Batman film!".  In other words, was god's message clear to you - a staunch believer - far enough in advance for you to act upon it?

I'm acting on it in the only manner I know how and with all the fervency I can engender, and have been since Colorado.  It's a burden assigned to me, I have to trust that the same force that got my fingers typing in 89 can fulfill His purpose in me now.  It isn't me.

(her)And if it was.....what did you do, Wayne?  Did you campaign tirelessly against Batman films for those 20+ years?  Did you picket all showings?  Continually demonstrate and issue warnings about the incident?  Because if you DIDN'T do so - and since clearly this warning was one that only YOU understood - are you not in a very real way culpable for the deaths in 2012?  If you KNEW what was going to happen - and did nothing - does some of the blame for the deaths not lie squarely at your door?
[/quote]

(me)There's that old deluder Satan accusing me again. I'll try to do better.  Really I will.

I ascribe to the well documented and hightly censored reality that Thomas Jefferson did in fact declare the necessity of using the bible in schools.  I'll not take the time to reel off a bunch of quotes here, but for the curious I'll refer to a book by William J. Federer called America's God and Country Encyclopedia Of Quotations.  With short introductions Federer simply quotes the men that devised our Republic.
Example:
Thomas Jefferson, while President of the United States, became the first president of the Washington D. C. public school board, which used the Bible and Watt's Hymnal as reading texts in the classroom. Notice why Jefferson felt the Bible to be essential in any successful plan of education:

"I have always said, always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens".  TJ

  If I were the Devil  Paul Harvey

[wheels5894]

Wayne,

There are tutorials on quoting here. Have a read through - its not that hard and makes posts easier to follow.

[jaimehlers]

Like it or not, school-sponsored prayer doesn't really accomplish all that much on its own.  It's simply a way to help indoctrinate a belief, but if a person doesn't have the belief to begin with, they aren't likely to care.  Furthermore, it distracts attention away from what actually causes things like school shootings.

[screwtape]

Hi Wayne. 

I think you are a very confused guy.

(me) I think what it means is fifty years of banning God's influence in schoolchildren has a cumulative long term and (God forbid)  a irreversible effect.  That's the warning. 

Typically a warning is something that is given or received before an event of consequence occurs.  If the warning is an event of consequence, well, it's not really a warning is it?  It is just a random event.  If I shot you in the chest with a .38, you would probably wonder why there was no warning.  Or if it was a warning, you would probably lament that it did you no good. 

And if the effects are irreversible, that might also cause us to ask, just how is that a warning?

There is at least one theological scholar among you here that should be able to attest from their knowledge of the bible that this not only could be serious, but rather cataclysmic.

Wayne, it is serious.  But not in the way you think it is.  It is serious because lots of people before you have fancied themselves prophets and it usually turns out poorly for them and for people who come in contact with them. 

For example, about 20 years ago there were a couple knuckle-dragging losers named Ron and Dan Lafferty.  They were fundamentalist Mormons.  They thought they were prophets.  They did not get along well with the wife of their brother Allan.  So you know what they said god told them to do?  Yep.  god told them to kill Allan's wife and his 16 month old daughter.  So they did.  When they were tried for murder they were found to not be mentally ill.  They were just very religious.  Ron got the death penalty.  Dan is still in jail and claims to be the either the second coming of Jesus H or possibly Elijah.

So Wayne, I suggest you get your head screwed on straight and drop the prophet bullshit.  It will get you nowhere, except jail or the loony bin.

"I have always said, always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens".  TJ

F minus. That is a lie frequently quoted by the religious.  Please punch yourself in the balls for that.
References:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/3/10/111937/740
http://fakehistory.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/questionable-quotes-jefferson-and-the-sacred-volume/


And Paul Harvey may indeed be the devil.

[nogodsforme]

Wayne, you have not addressed my post at all.

The places in the world that rely on religious belief (mainly fear) to control people are not as nice, in general, as the places that rely more on rationality and science to solve problems. Where would you rather live and raise a family:

1)prosperous and peaceful Japan or Denmark, surrounded by immoral atheists
2)war-torn Afghanistan or impoverished Haiti, surrounded by devout praying believers in god

In the US, there have been numerous deadly shootings recently in places other than supposedly "godless" public schools. Like the aforementioned movie theaters, shopping malls and even churches. How would forcing people to listen to religious teachings in school reduce mental illness or access to deadly firearms? You have no real evidence of this, only goundless hope.

I was a JW kid, and forced official prayers or religious teachings in school would have been miserable for me. For one thing, we did not believe the kind of Christianity that the school would have taught. Unless you think the school prayers should all be run by Jehovah's Witnesses?

For another thing, school was one of the few places to experience something other than the constant religious influence of my home-- to learn about holidays like Halloween, Christmas and Easter, for example, which we did not celebrate.  As it was, students prayed all the time in school--I prayed every day before eating lunch, for example-- and nobody prevented it or even commented on it. That is still the case. Nearly every US student is religious and can pray all they want. How does this make a school "godless"?

Finally as a black female person, I would much rather live in today's US than in any time before the 1970's. Prayer or no prayer, it is better to be able to live where I want, vote, attend any institution of learning, hold any job I am qualified for, marry the man of my choice. I could even run for president-- although my being an atheist might still be used against me. None of those advances came from waiting for god to change the world.

[WayneHarropson]

Paul Harvey's the Devil Huh.  Good grief.

[Nick]

Paul Harvey's the Devil Huh.  Good grief.

No, "Good Day".

[ParkingPlaces]

Wayne,

We knew you were coming, so we provided this tutorial on how to quote:

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,16778.0.html

Question: This morning I was chopping firewood, and making some kindling. I missed the wood and hit my hand with the ax blade, which was no biggie because I wasn't hitting hard and I was wearing gloves, but it slid my hand down the log and a sliver poked through my gloves and stuck in my finger. I was listening to "Lay Lady, Lay" on my iPod at the time.

So the next time a guy beats his girlfriend to death after sex with a 2x4 (or a hatchet) , and his girlfriend happens to be a surgical assistant who wears gloves at work, am I to take my experience as a premonition? In other words, how to you differentiate very loosely tied events that have nothing to do with premonition with ones that you think do qualify as premonition?

We live in a world where coincidence happens all the time. A world without coincidence would be even creepier, because special forces would be required to prevent it. Where do you draw the line between coincidence (Batman) and normal human activities that occasionally include the same comic book character reference?

[nogodsforme]

Paul Harvey's the Devil Huh.  Good grief.

If by the Devil, you mean "the great deceiver", then, maybe yeah.

I used to listen to Paul Harvey back in the 1980's -- how could you not when he was on everyday on a zillion stations? He seemed like a fairly nice man with a distinctive radio voice. But he was also known to, well,  play fast and loose with the truth, esp. in his "the rest of the story" segments. He just made that stuff up or relied on urban legends or assumed that something was true because it fit his conservative POV.

I remember one segment about a boy that did something or other that was courageous, and the tag line was something like , "that boy.....was George Washington." No history book included the story he had told, and I have no idea where he got it, since he never gave any references. But how can you object--George Washington was brave, wasn't he? So what if it didn't really happen....don't you think it could have happened that way?

He also read advertisements as if they were news stories: "A new discovery by scientists that will help women lose weight....." and then at the end he tells you that the " new discovery" is actually product x and the cost is just 29.99 if you act now. What made this so slimy is that I'll bet a lot of listeners shelled out the dough for brand x, thinking it was really a new scientific discovery, because Paul Harvey said it was.

And Paul Harvey would not lie. But he did lie. Knowingly. Every day. To an uncritical, god-believing patriotic American audience that wanted to feel good about the US. Quack merchandisers loved him, because he would endorse any product as long as he "believed in it". And was paid to endorse it.

In other words, he was an entertainer, not a journalist. And like Rush Limbaugh, he would deny that he had any political influence whatsoever.

So, he may well have been Satan. But he's dead now.

[WayneHarropson]

Wayne, you have not addressed my post at all.

The places in the world that rely on religious belief (mainly fear) to control people are not as nice, in general, as the places that rely more on rationality and science to solve problems. Where would you rather live and raise a family:

1)prosperous and peaceful Japan or Denmark, surrounded by immoral atheists
2)war-torn Afghanistan or impoverished Haiti, surrounded by devout praying believers in god

Sorry.  I don't have answers to everything, and I don't proport to.  You have talked yourself out of God because of contradictions you don't understand, and I agree that there are contradictions that can't be understood.

The purpose for my posts here have to do with what validates my belief in God and I attribute the supernatural to God.  My stories are of the supernatural events in my life and the conclusions I draw from those events.  Some on this forum go beyond simply disbelieving the events are supernatural and accuse and slander me of evil deeds and intentions, which does more to invalidate their arguments than it does to call into question my conclusions.

You and I have for the last fifty years lived in a nation that has turned away from its founding principals and the result is atheists have an upper hand whereas Christians used to.  Now we see the effects and at a time so late in the game that the virtues afforded by Christian principles in public life are gone.  You talk admiringly of other cultures that you believe to be better than America is now, and it is possible that you are right.  Did you know or remember what it was like in America prior to 1962 when Atheists took control of schools?  Do you think Atheism has improved crime in America since then?

Would someone please respond to why the mass killers of today are any different than Madelyn Murray O'hare's Office manager? 

And please make your case that believing in God, obeying the Ten Commandments and prayer would not have changed the actions of these killers.  All I hear are crickets.

Wayne,

We knew you were coming, so we provided this tutorial on how to quote:

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php/topic,16778.0.html

Thanks I got it and it makes it much better.  With a little practise maybe I'll get it right.

Question: This morning I was chopping firewood, and making some kindling. I missed the wood and hit my hand with the ax blade, which was no biggie because I wasn't hitting hard and I was wearing gloves, but it slid my hand down the log and a sliver poked through my gloves and stuck in my finger. I was listening to "Lay Lady, Lay" on my iPod at the time.
[/quote]
 I can't help you with your dilemma, sorry.   
Not everything is a premonition. 
Did you see this one?  http://tinyurl.com/MercuryMontclair
It's about spiritual protection that I refuse to recognise as personal intuition.  I actually have a bigger premonition story than the Batman one, but I'll lay off the premonitions for a moment and mix it up.

I want to thank those who have actually read the Darkknight premonition from beginning to end because it is evident from your questions.  Its really obvious when someone hasn't.  I especially like it when you correct other posters errors who obviously didn't bother to read it.  I'm getting some attempts at pemonition parodies that are pretty juvenile, but I can't and don't expect everyone to read my whole story, so all this is to be expected.

Don't misunderstand me, I like juvenile as much as anybody else, but if I risk responding to a lame attempt at satire, with the sarcasm it is asking for, and then discover the person is dead serious, then that's not good either.
Cheers.

[ParkingPlaces]

Did you see this one?  http://tinyurl.com/MercuryMontclair

Yep. You do realize that had you kept going 90 mph, you would have been past that point before the cows got out on the road, don't you.

[Anfauglir]

And Wayne? I'm not a "he", I'm a "she". No big deal - it's the internet, not RL -, but I thought I would correct you before we go any further.

Don't worry about it Jag - Wayne thinks I'm a "she" when I'm really a "he".

Interesting that Wayne is prepared to patronisingly suggest that people read HIS glurges more carefully, while at the same time not being able to pick up a fairly universal symbol at the side of people's posts.....

[Anfauglir]

Question: This morning I was chopping firewood, and making some kindling. I missed the wood and hit my hand with the ax blade, which was no biggie because I wasn't hitting hard and I was wearing gloves, but it slid my hand down the log and a sliver poked through my gloves and stuck in my finger. I was listening to "Lay Lady, Lay" on my iPod at the time.

I can't help you with your dilemma, sorry.   
Not everything is a premonition. 

Very true.  That is why Nogods asked the following question in her post, which you decided NOT to address:

So the next time a guy beats his girlfriend to death after sex with a 2x4 (or a hatchet) , and his girlfriend happens to be a surgical assistant who wears gloves at work, am I to take my experience as a premonition? In other words, how do you differentiate very loosely tied events that have nothing to do with premonition with ones that you think do qualify as premonition?

I've bolded the pertinent part of the question.  How DOES one determine if an event is a premonition (or warning) or not?

[wheels5894]

On a careful re-read of the 1989 story of Wayne's - the one in which he thinks his god had and entire cinema complex evacuated to show Wayne how important he was - and, actually, what we have here is a story which concludes with Wayne understanding the gas leak problem as a fulfilment of his prayers about the film - that evil, dreadful Batman film. There is no suggestion that there is any prediction in the story, no suggestion that there is anything to be said past the event itself.

Thus the linking of the old story with the recent news story is entirely the result of a re-evaluation by Wayne. There are only two things in common with the stories, the cinema and the film. Nothing else matches, so what made the first story a premonition was Wayne, 23 years after the event when there was no use for the premonition as the events had unfolded.

Dictionary.com defines premonition as -

1. an intuition of a future, usually unwelcome, occurrence; foreboding
2. an early warning of a future event; forewarning

The first story does not match either definition of the word as there was no indication of a future event. Thus I claim that without the suggestion of a future event Wayne has noticed a coincidence and not experienced a premonition.

So, in answer to the question posed by Anfauglir, the difference has to be the suggestion in the first event that it is point towards  another, future event  which would ideally be recognisable from the original event details. Anything less is just a coincidence.

[screwtape]

Paul Harvey's the Devil Huh.  Good grief.

Wayne, I find it rather dismissive that this is the only part of my post you saw fit to respond to.  It is literally the least important part of my post and had nothing to do with the point of the topic.  Around here, we call that dodging the issue. 

If it will help you get on topic I will retract my statement.  Paul Harvey is not the devil.  He was just a dickish old crank.  Better?  Now please take another look at my post.

[ParkingPlaces]

^^^ He didn't see that one coming. 

[WayneHarropson]

Paul Harvey's the Devil Huh.  Good grief.

Wayne, I find it rather dismissive that this is the only part of my post you saw fit to respond to.  It is literally the least important part of my post and had nothing to do with the point of the topic.  Around here, we call that dodging the issue. 

If it will help you get on topic I will retract my statement.  Paul Harvey is not the devil.  He was just a dickish old crank.  Better?  Now please take another look at my post.

Screwtape.  Can you understand that your hellish nastiness  for the sake of being offensive makes me question everything you have to say?  Yes I'm dismissing your other statements as argumentative for the sake of being contrary, because I can't be sure when you are serious. Why should I waste my time?

Get a few people here to agree with your comments about Paul Harvey, collect them and submit that consensus view to me.  I have a feeling I'm arguing with a troll.

 

[WayneHarropson]

On a careful re-read of the 1989 story of Wayne's - the one in which he thinks his god had and entire cinema complex evacuated to show Wayne how important he was - and, actually, what we have here is a story which concludes with Wayne understanding the gas leak problem as a fulfilment of his prayers about the film - that evil, dreadful Batman film. There is no suggestion that there is any prediction in the story, no suggestion that there is anything to be said past the event itself.

Thus the linking of the old story with the recent news story is entirely the result of a re-evaluation by Wayne. There are only two things in common with the stories, the cinema and the film. Nothing else matches, so what made the first story a premonition was Wayne, 23 years after the event when there was no use for the premonition as the events had unfolded.

Dictionary.com defines premonition as -

1. an intuition of a future, usually unwelcome, occurrence; foreboding
2. an early warning of a future event; forewarning

The first story does not match either definition of the word as there was no indication of a future event. Thus I claim that without the suggestion of a future event Wayne has noticed a coincidence and not experienced a premonition.

So, in answer to the question posed by Anfauglir, the difference has to be the suggestion in the first event that it is point towards  another, future event  which would ideally be recognisable from the original event details. Anything less is just a coincidence.

Thanks for taking the time. Really. I'm not 100% sure premonition is the best term for what it was for the very reason you site.  It certainly wasn't a premonition to me in 89.  I only saw it in retrospect as a premonition.  Let's simplify it without the term premonition.  This is one of a number of things I wrote 20 years ago that meant nothing at the time, but means something now.  I'm not ready to tell the most devistating of them to you because this one needs its attention first.

I understand and apprediate the scrutiny my claim actually deserves.  I don't even mind if I don't persuade any of you that God set this whole thing up. (which he did).  I do appreciate those of you who recognise and admit that we are detectors of patterns, and my purpose isn't to convince that that really is a dog in the cloud, but that God is omnicient and has spoken to me to prove that capacity. 

If you don't mind, could you now comment on the coincidence of the gas leak in my truck after talking to the fire inspector?  It's all part of the package.

My other example is a mindblower.