Please validate your belief in your God

[WayneHarropson]

George Washington.....(glurge).

You are going to ask me to prove this story is true, I just know it. I can't.  ..... You may decide that it is entirely natural for a man to have four bullet holes in his coat with no injury....

Wayne, are you REALLY this disingenuous?  I've bolded the bit that - frankly - disgusts me about your responses.  You present a story that you admit you have NO way of proving - but sarcastically denigrate us for believing bullet holes "just happen"?  Sorry Wayne, it doesn't work like that - we have NO need to try and explain away a fantastic story about GW that you confess you have zero evidence for.

But HERE's an interesting thing, Wayne.  You believe this story - so you believe that your god will - somehow - ensure that bullets will not harm a person he particularly cares about.  So tell me, Wayne - why DIDN'T your god care about the people in the theatre?  Why DIDN'T he care about all those schoolchildren just a few weeks ago?

 
Their souls are with Him now.  It's not pleasant for us down here. My heart breaks for those family members.  If my premonition means anything at all it does mean that they were taken meaninglessly by victims of the outlawing of the inculcating of biblical morality in public that your precious atheism insists upon.  There is a consequence to over ruling biblical morality.  Atheism is the culprit.  You should be ashamed.

Your tale of GW makes it quite specific that your god can and will intervene in the world, and - quite specifically - stop bullets.  So if we DO accept your glurge here as true, Wayne, we have to ask searching and important questions about a god  who will intervene in some cases, but remain resolutely absent in others.

The scary thing. if you think about it, was that He is and was present. He's never absent. This isn't partilularly easy for me either.  A story I attributed to His sense of humor turned out to be not so funny in its fulfillment.  But, being the God that numbers our days he excersizes his will without our permission. 

"Job 1:21, “…Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away…”... “…Blessed be the name of the Lord.”   

He must have found the occasions at Aurora and Sandy Hook suitable to illustrate the consequences of what removing the Christian foundations from our public life are.  They are long term consequences that accumilate.  It has been fifty years since the stripping began and it has progressively (what a great term) gotten worse ever since.  If I were one of those grieving family members I'd be longing for Leave it to Beaver episodes to replace Southpark... and Batman just about now.

I mention in the introductions thread a dream I had that my leg was amputated and the opening was cauterised by a blowtorch.  That was a yawningly achingly unpleasant dream.  I did't know what to make of it, and I assumed that it was no good.  A few days later, I came upon this site.  So it turned out to be yet another slow burning joke.  Pretty funny, in a gaping hollow painful way.  What seemed at first to be for evil, now I see was for good because it was to be yet another premonition confirming that I'm on track, and that our discussions here are for a lack of a better term predestinated.

You must be beginning to hate me for saying it but yes, my amputated leg dream means I was directed here.  And if you want to let it really bug you you can put yourself in that dream, because it is you I ended up talking to.  It is you that were meant to read my story.  I really can't help it its just what happens.

It's also theraputic don't you think.  I needed that bloody stump cauterised.
When I first saw the name of the site: whywontgodhealamputees.com there was an uncanny connection to the title of my story: Why God Let Those Kids Die.
I know that, for now, I'm right where I belong. I'm enjoying it and in a very strange way I'm starting to get used to realising that when God tells a joke, it's a good one.

I can't resist telling another story I just heard the other day.  It is about John Newton and how he came to write the hymn Amazing Grace.  He was a slave ship captain and a raging alcoholic and given to debauchery.  On one of his binges aboard ship he got so drunk he fell overboard.  His men retrieved him by harpooning his leg and dragging him back aboard. I thought I knew the story but the harpoon thing I had never heard before last week.

So God saved the wretch and let him limp around with a bum leg the rest of his life as a reminder.  I read elsewhere that the tune he added his verses to was one eminating from the slaves as they sung in the hold of his ship.

Now, all of you wryly, sarcastically shockingly fly the pirate flag called whywontgodhealamputees.com and somehow I just washed aboard for part of your journey.  And though having a leg amputated and then lovingly attended to by you and that theraputic blow torch you use isn't exactly like being harpooned and dragged aboard,  but somehow in my delerious imagination, I derive some humor from the pain of it all.

I did a search and Amazing Grace has 475,000 results on youtube.  Ask John Newton what difference it makes if your leg heals while on earth or not.  His song gets airtime, his story endures and according to the blessed gospel, his soul, like those of the innocent children is alive with God.


The Newton harpoon story, my dream of amputation, coming upon this site as I did all together makes my life absolutely fascinating.  God is present.  I can't prove it to you, but He can. Believe me.

Here's another delerious story with some like minded pain humor.  http://tinyurl.com/WaynesVirtualBaby

[wheels5894]

They're souls are with him now.  It's not pleasant for us down here. My heart breaks for those family members.  If my premonition means anything at all it does mean that they were taken meaninglessly by victims of the outlawing of the inculcating of biblical morality in public that that your precious atheism supports.  There is a consequence to over ruling biblical morality.  Atheism is the culprit.  You should be ashamed.

Look, Wayne, you keep on insisting that the lack of prayer in schools brought about the school shooting despite the fact that you have been shown other ways of understanding it. So, please, now shown us how you worked your way to this conclusion. We have a shooting carried out by an apparently deranged killer. How can you come to the conclusion you have about this?

[wright]

There is a consequence to over ruling biblical morality.  Atheism is the culprit.  You should be ashamed.

As Anfauglir already said, with no evidence that atheism had anything to do with this or the other tragedies you want to ascribe to it, there is no reason for me or any other atheist to feel shame.

[kaziglu bey]

<snipped for utter lunacy>

I can't believe that you continue to go on about how this Newtown school shooting is a result of a lack of morals stemming from atheism. It's truly unbelievable that you assert this nonsense. Your holy book could be called "Chronicles of the brutal God Yahweh and the stories of the people that he killed" and it would be totally accurate. Yet you consider a lack of this sadistic dictator to be responsible for more of the same happening? Please. Your credulity goes to eleven.

This sad, sad argument of yours utterly ignores what I pointed out here. Churches and church property, and pious, worshiping people, are not magically protected by God. The number of church shootings was highest in 2012 that is has been in over a decade. This, all while people like you claim that a lack of God this, turning our backs on God that, is the cause of violence, even though religious places and people are not bulletproof.

Of course there is also no evidence, at all, that links a rise of secular humanistic values with increased violence. When Anders Breivik murdered a lot of people in a largely atheistic Norway, it was big news because that shit doesn't happen every day there. It's not every day in Norway that someone decides to kill for fun, but it's so commonplace in America, where roughly 85% of the people profess a religious faith.The most violent, ignorant, backwards, intolerant, racist states in the US are in the Bible Belt. The most horrific and sadistic governments in the world, where women are killed for being raped, and children are set on fire, are those that are run according to Holy Books. You can't overlook this yet you do anyways.

All throughout history it has been religion demanding cruelty, war, and bloodshed in the name of God, and implementing slavery, and fermenting bigotry and misogyny, and encouraging child abuse, and worshiping human sacrifice as every single person who calls themselves a christian does. It's always up to secular culture to teach religion how to behave.

If non-religious values, and the value of scientific inquiry and skepticism, had not arisen during the renaissance, Good True Christians like yourself would still be burning women who dare speak out against them men at the stake, and treating black people like cattle, and rejoicing at the sight of a native village wiped out by smallpox, and cultivating the culture of abject ignorance and servility and unquestioning faith that is likely to be the downfall of human civilization.

But sure, blame the atheists. We'll be your scapegoat. Throw your sins on us, because Jesus doesn't seem to ever be coming back to take them from you. Ignorant APE.

[WayneHarropson]

There is a consequence to over ruling biblical morality.  Atheism is the culprit.  You should be ashamed.

As Anfauglir already said, with no evidence that atheism had anything to do with this or the other tragedies you want to ascribe to it, there is no reason for me or any other atheist to feel shame.

No reason to take it personally wright except that if you agreed with what Madelyn Murray O'Hare did in removing the beneficial effects of Judeo Christian principles from public life, and to remanding them to the status of open ridicule as they are now in education, that is your evidence.  Were you here when I mentioned the manner in which Madelyn, and two of her family members died.  What kind of moral restraints did the office manager have when he mutilated them?  Christian ones?  Or Atheist ones?  Hey, thankfully you are not all killers, but your philosophy of denying God and the threat of eternal judgement leaves the door wide open for those others of you who have taken that logic to its  conclusion. Just to remind you, the office manager killed and mutilated them.  I ask you, why shouldn' t he have under the atheist philosophy?

[WayneHarropson]

Look, Wayne, you keep on insisting that the lack of prayer in schools brought about the school shooting despite the fact that you have been shown other ways of understanding it. So, please, now shown us how you worked your way to this conclusion. We have a shooting carried out by an apparently deranged killer. How can you come to the conclusion you have about this?

I'll only add here that I use the removal of prayer as one example of the atheist initiatives. If you read my story I refer to the whole institutionalized animus against the founders faith and principles.  The rabid offense taken at the mention of christian principles has had its full effect over fifty years.  My premonition is like another 9/11 judgment that atheists can take the full blame for.

[ParkingPlaces]

  Their souls are with Him now.  It's not pleasant for us down here. My heart breaks for those family members.  If my premonition means anything at all it does mean that they were taken meaninglessly by victims of the outlawing of the inculcating of biblical morality in public that your precious atheism insists upon.  There is a consequence to over ruling biblical morality.  Atheism is the culprit.  You should be ashamed.

Two questions. It is easy for your god to sanction the death of 20 kids, so why hasn't he gotten me killed. If he is angry about this prayer thing and I'm one of the non-prayers, why have I survived 50 years as an atheist while a bunch of little kids, many of whom I'm sure attended church regularly, couldn't make it the third grade. The purpose of taking it out on them instead of someone like me is what?

Second. I'm a nice guy. I haven't done any of the bad things that you say have run rampant since '62. I've never owned a gun or a tear gas canister, I've never robbed a bank or beaten up a little old lady for her social security check of raped anyone of either sex or torn the label off of my mattress. Now I know that you think voting for Obama is pretty terrible, so I'm not completely sin free in your eyes, but I'm a lot closer than a banker or a Faux News commentator.

And I should mention that we can take a lot of flack from theists but your constant accusations that we, as atheists, are the cause for every ill in the country are somewhat irksome. Note that we are at best 20% of the population, and were a much smaller political force in the '60's, so there were a lot more people then just ourselves who wanted or agreed to that change. Now I assume you put Democrats in almost the same category as atheists, so I guess that would account for a lot of it, but there isn't really a need for you to continuously insult us at that level. If you want to make fun of someone for saying something you consider silly, that's fine. We do that to you.  My opinion of theists who believe at your level isn't any higher than your opinion of us, but I see no need to try drilling esoteric and hurtful taunts your way.

At least not yet. If you want to take the fun out of this conversation, be as damning as you want. We know how to throw our gloves off too.

[WayneHarropson]

Let me ask you.  Did you agree with Madelyn Murray O'Hare's successful initiative?  Of course I'm going to continue to use her as an example because she is so emblematic of what this issue is about.  And her demise is also emblematic of its effects.  If you are not proud of what she did, say so, and I'll ease up on you.  If you aren't proud of what she did then tell me what other initiatives to destroy America's moral fiber you would disagree with so I can cut you some more slack.  I'm addressing you as an atheist group, I don't mean to get personal and call you APEs or anything, but you do need to defend the record of destruction your heroes have perpetrated.

Oh by the way, that is 475,000 hits on youtube, not on the internet.  How did John Newton do that?

[ParkingPlaces]

Let me ask you.  Did you agree with Madelyn Murray O'Hare's successful initiative?  Of course I'm going to continue to use her as an example because she is so emblematic of what this issue is about.  And her demise is also emblematic of its effects.  If you are not proud of what she did, say so, and I'll ease up on you.  If you aren't proud of what she did then tell me what other initiatives to destroy America's moral fiber you would disagree with so I can cut you some slack.  I'm addressing you as an atheist group, I don't mean to get personal and call you APEs or anything, but you do need to defend the record of destruction your heroes have perpetrated.

Madelyn Murray O'Hair (If you're going to hate someone, at least have the decency to spell their name right) was a troubled woman who happened to be an atheist. I have never considered her a role model or a wonderful person. I do not disagree with the school prayer thing at all, and I can assure you that far less intense individuals would have asked for the same thing soon thereafter if she had not started the ball rolling.

I did not mourn her disappearance/murder/whatever it was. I remember feeling bad that her son and granddaughter got caught up in the thing and died too.

I agreed with her atheism, but not her methods.

Please note that she was not involved with the removal of prayer from schools. That was via a different Supreme Court case. I'm not denying that she supported it, but she was not a part of the case that resulted in the banning of prayer. The reading of bible verses? Yep. That was directly due to her, but I've little doubt that it would have been banned soon thereafter because of the previous prayer ruling anyway.

I was a bit young to be aware of those particular cases, and they didn't change anything at my school anyway. I became more aware of her as a young adult when I discovered that not believing in god had a name and that some folks were quite vocal about it. If you'll remember, back then information did not flow quite so freely, given the lack of the Internet or anything remotely similar. I read magazines and newpaper articles and knew that she existed, and also knew that she was a bit over the top at times. I can assure you she was never a "hero" the way Christopher Hitchens or other currently prominent atheists are. And not all of that current crop have my total support.

I remember that when Ms. O'Hair died, I wasn't the least bit surprised. She had been living on the edge far too long.

In short, I pick my heros better than you pick my heros.

[ParkingPlaces]

Oh by the way, that is 475,000 hits on youtube, not on the internet.  How did John Newton do that?

Wow, that's impressive.

This guy currently has over 1,192,000



How did he do it?

[ParkingPlaces]

One more thing, Wayne. Go to the main page and search for Madalyn Murray (leave off the O'Hair because it is often misspelled) and you will find that in the 4 plus years of this site she has been mentioned only 20 times. The search engine hasn't quite caught up with todays discussion, so it is a few times more than that. Todays posts have probably doubled it.

Does that sound like a hero to you?

[WayneHarropson]

Madelyn Murray O'Hair (If you're going to hate someone, at least have the decency to spell their name right)

First off, I'm incapable of hating anybody. Without spell check I do my best with no disrespect.

You would do well to consider a picture as a whole.  She spread a rotten philosophy from a rotten heart and all of the effects are rotten.  She doesn't even have you for a friend because you understand her to be a bad actor, yet somehow you embrace her essence.  I would re evaluate if I were you.

As I was typing PP said:

One more thing, Wayne. Go to the main page and search for Madalyn Murray (leave off the O'Hair because it is often misspelled) and you will find that in the 4 plus years of this site she has been mentioned only 20 times. The search engine hasn't quite caught up with todays discussion, so it is a few times more than that. Todays posts have probably doubled it.

Does that sound like a hero to you?

I say you do well to distance yourself from her. And while you are at it maybe you should take a close look at your philisophical origins to detect whether what influenced your perspective didn't come from the same rotten place as hers.     

[ParkingPlaces]

I say you do well to distance yourself from her. And while you are at it maybe you should take a close look at your philisophical origins to detect whether what influenced your perspective didn't come from the same rotten place as hers.   

I was an atheist before I ever heard of her. She had no influence on me. Your insistence that she did is plain wrong. That you have to distort atheism so much just to have a good argument against it does not bode well for you.

Added: My influence? I went to church. The silly stories cured me pretty quick. I, for one, don't fall for impossible claims. Don't sent me to school and have the teachers there tell me how the story of Achilles is a myth and then to church and tell me the story of Moses in the basket is true. Patently ridiculous.

[Dante]

And your god murdering those children isn't rotten? And to call us amoral?


Maybe you should rethink your position.

[shnozzola]

............what influenced your perspective didn't come from the same rotten place as hers.   

What a horrible thing to say.  You do not know us, you do not know why we believe the way we do, you do not know our life experiences.  Like so many, you have absolutely no idea what the atheist perspective is.  I'm glad the christians in my immediate family have a different way of practicing their christianity than you do.

[WayneHarropson]

Wow, that's impressive.

This guy currently has over 1,192,000

How did he do it?

Whoops.
Now I get to make a profound clarification.
I have no idea how many hits any individual Amazing Grace youtube video has gotten, I didn't look at that.  I'm talking about 475,000 separate youtube videos with Amazing Grace in their titles.  There are pages upon pages, reams upon reams, ad infinitum (to exaggerate only to be absurdly happy to distinguish what I'm talking about from what you thought I was talking about.)  Do the search yourself and see how many pages you parse to give up finding the end of it all.  I picked a really good one for you though, you really don't need to watch them all to get my point.  You should see the movie that those clips are from.  I't good. 

Sorry PP I'm taking advantage of you here.  I love you for you for your effort.
You have to admit now, that is impressive. 

[ParkingPlaces]

What a horrible thing to say.  You do not know us, you do not know why we believe the way we do, you do not know our life experiences.  Like so many, you have absolutely no idea what the atheist perspective is.  I'm glad the christians in my immediate family have a different way of practicing their christianity than you do.

Wayne, you said that, before coming here, you had imaginary discussions with an atheist in your head (or something like that). I'm guessing in real life we're a lot different.

And as for the video stuff. You have to give me accurate information before I can properly make fun of it. Be more careful next time.

[William]

.... take a close look at your philisophical origins to detect whether what influenced your perspective didn't come from the same rotten place as hers.

Hitler's "philosophical origins" were Christian.

Jesus' "philosophical origins" were Yahweh.

Yahweh's "philosophical origins" were a bunch of bronze age goat herders ....

[WayneHarropson]

What a horrible thing to say.  You do not know us, you do not know why we believe the way we do, you do not know our life experiences.  Like so many, you have absolutely no idea what the atheist perspective is.  I'm glad the christians in my immediate family have a different way of practicing their christianity than you do.

Actually shnozzola as I said before, my attack is pointed at atheism not you in your idealised notions of what it means to you.  I do stand by the need for you to re evaluate for the sake of those slaughtered kids.  I make no apologies that their deaths can be attributed to Atheism deleterious effects in insisting Judeo Christian morals be expunged from the social fabric.  I'm hoping Atheists with good conscious would wake up to that reality.  I like you shchnoz, can I call you schnoz?

[WayneHarropson]

What a horrible thing to say.  You do not know us, you do not know why we believe the way we do, you do not know our life experiences.  Like so many, you have absolutely no idea what the atheist perspective is.  I'm glad the christians in my immediate family have a different way of practicing their christianity than you do.

Wayne, you said that, before coming here, you had imaginary discussions with an atheist in your head (or something like that). I'm guessing in real life we're a lot different.

My imaginary atheist is much more cooperative.

And as for the video stuff. You have to give me accurate information before I can properly make fun of it. Be more careful next time.

I only wish I was smart enough to set that beauty up on purpose.

[WayneHarropson]

.... take a close look at your philosophical origins to detect whether what influenced your perspective didn't come from the same rotten place as hers.

Hitler's "philosophical origins" were Christian.

Jesus' "philosophical origins" were Yahweh.

Yahweh's "philosophical origins" were a bunch of bronze age goat herders ....

 That is astute.  I mean it! I love that stuff.

By the time Christianity in all its bizarre and wicked religious forms got to America it had some serious baggage.  Somewhere in that mess was some mother singing Jesus loves me to her child and that child's children and the ones of those that learned enough not to listen to Satan's fake version went on to organise some effective Christian movements. 

When the pilgrims escaped the version enforced by kings in Europe they had a unique opportunity.  It was a society with no King but King Jesus.  Did you know that that was the official motto of the revolution? 

The Catholic form of Christianity held sway in large part because of it's (tyrannical) compatibility with monarchies.  It was all corruption because it was all tied to the political system.  Catholics were outcasts in America until they could prove that they were free of those well entrenched corruptions, but what made America's generic forms of Christianity fresh and new was freedom of religion, freedom of conscious.  They got to read the scriptures and come to their own conclusions and do it in an atmosphere without fear of persecution from the corrupt.  All the glories of the American experiment grew out of this fabulous fresh and free to discover what Jesus was all about.  And it worked.  It really worked.  They knew not to put other non Christian religions on par with Christianity and when someone said the word religion they would have blanched if you had mentioned a non christian one.  That was false religion of the devil.  Of course they fought among themselves as families often do, and it may have been nasty at times but they all had the Constitution protecting them so peace abounded, the gospel and the people spread across the land.  {Insert Glory Glory Hallelujah chorus here.}

Hitlers Germany knew to use Christianity just long enough to gain control and then like every other tyranny began jailing or executing the uncooperative clergy.  Same ol' Same ol'.
Not so America. 

Next chapter:
 Atheists infiltrate and let off a big fat stink bomb in the middle of everything and  that's where I'll  have to leave you hanging.  My eyes are watering it stinks so bad.
I have a constitution class to attend now.  I get my diploma tonight, actually it's a certificate but that's just a technicality.

[ParkingPlaces]

^^^When you want to put limits on good people who would do you no harm, who would advocate no violence, who would accept your existence peacefully, then what you seek is not freedom. It is tyranny, with you in charge.

Don't mix the two up. It makes the discussion somewhat difficult.

[William]

Next chapter:
 Atheists infiltrate and let off a big fat stink bomb in the middle of everything and  that's where I'll  have to leave you hanging.  My eyes are watering it stinks so bad.

The truth is under no obligation to smell nice.

[wright]

No reason to take it personally wright except that if you agreed with what Madelyn Murray O'Hare did in removing the beneficial effects of Judeo Christian principles from public life, and to remanding them to the status of open ridicule as they are now in education, that is your evidence.

 

I don't really take it personally. And since you haven't presented evidence to support your contention, I'm more puzzled than anything else. For instance, what do you see as "open ridicule" in education pertaining to "Judeo Christian principles"? Can you give some specific example?

Madalyn O'Hair hardly succeeded in removing "Judeo Christian principles from public life". She certainly played a part in stopping state-sanctioned promotion of religion in US public schools, but you're really giving her too much credit. Students are still free to pray on their own, bring and study their bibles in their free time, organize religious clubs, even proselytize to other students within limits. And that's just in the public schools. I find it amazing that you and some other Christians still don't think that's enough.

Were you here when I mentioned the manner in which Madelyn, and two of her family members died.  What kind of moral restraints did the office manager have when he mutilated them?  Christian ones?  Or Atheist ones?

I've been following this thread. She and her relatives were killed by a bad person, who could just as easily have been Christian as atheist. Neither, AFAIK, puts any real constraints on personal morality. If it were true that Christianity had a positive moral effect and atheism a negative one, then the US and much of Europe would be far better off in terms of domestic violence and Japan far worse. Instead, I see quite the opposite.

Hey, thankfully you are not all killers, but your philosophy of denying God and the threat of eternal judgement leaves the door wide open for those others of you who have taken that logic to its logical conclusion. Just to remind you, the office manager killed and mutilated them.  I ask you, why shouldn' t he have under the atheist philosophy?

He shouldn't have murdered them because virtually every functional society in human history has agreed that's unacceptable. A community of hunter-gatherers can't last with such maladaptive behavior running rampant, much less a modern nation of almost half a billion people. The vast majority of human beings manage to coexist without resorting to homicide, despite what the mass media might tell you in order to sell ad slots.

[JeffPT]

I'm not being dismissive. I'm just not ready to speak for others capacity.  I don't think I'm that special, just that I beg a lot.  (pray)

What does you praying have anything to do with what happens?  I mean that.  Seriously.  You are asserting things again, yet you have no proof of it at all.  You only imagine it does.  As does every other person who does a rain dance, kneels toward Mecca, or pokes needles into voodoo dolls.  None of it works but you all think it does.  Prove to anyone that it works and show us the evidence.  So far, you've given nothing that a rational person would deem useful.     

My claims of unusual frequency for me are that I'm not surrounded by many people who have shown me their list of incidences.  Nothing scientific in my claim, it is a great queston though.

Then you admit that you could be wrong about it, and the frequency at which unusual things happen to you could be the same as everyone else, right? 

I get your point.  I can only assure you that if I was knowingly telling a lie that my nose would drop off, or grow or whatever.  I'm not kidding about any of it, and I can't prove it either.  It is a testimony that you will just have to make with what you will.  Thanks for entertaining it as far as you have.

I'm not insinuating that you're lying. I'm insinuating that you don't have any evidence for making the claims that you do and it seems to be a major trend with you.  You might really believe that you get more than the next guy, but your beliefs about it have nothing to do with whether or not its true. 

I express my desire for honesty and you need to insult it.  That's ok.

I'm sorry if you don't like it Wayne, but your position deserves ridicule.  It's ridiculous.  Ridiculous things should be ridiculed.  It might be the only way to get you to see just how dumb it is and take a second look at the thing you're asserting.  How else do you get through to someone who is immune to reasonable and logical argumentation, and blinded by faith?  If you've got another idea, I'm listening. 

I get your point about the gas.  The only thing you are missing is that if I interpreted the message accurately as God meant it for me to be interpreted because of God's specific way of communicating to me,  God may just be laughing at you right now.   

God isn't real Wayne.  And if God isn't real, then what do all three of the 'gas' instances lead up to?  Vague coincidence.  Not even serious coincidences, but vague ones.  I don't hear God laughing.  Neither do you. 

At some point you have to start at a neutral standpoint and ask yourself whether or not it's possible that all 3 of those things were completely unrelated.  Step outside of your God belief and examine whether or not God has to be real in order for all 3 of them to have happened.  What conclusion do you come to?  It's not difficult. 

You're take on them is completely without merit or proof.  You're just assuming they are connected for no apparent reason.  It is completely non-sensical. 

If you know bible stories, you know that miracles can be abstact.. donkeys talking bushes burning, birds feeding a man, manna from heaven, flaming tongues of fire.  It's all weird stuff.  Abstract, but to those to whom the message is meant, meaningful, and if I may say worthy of fully documenting for further scrutiny and edification.  Thanks for helping me with it.

I know bible stories.  And if you were to read stories about talking donkeys, burning bushes, people rising from the dead in any other book, you'd dismiss them out of hand as fictional tales.  The bible is just a book, Wayne.  It deserves no more respect or different consideration than any other book ever written, and furthermore, if you DO give it special consideration, then you are adding a personal bias to your assessment of one book over another, and that is special pleading.  A big, fat, juicy fallacy.   

Maybe.  Critics say they are dark and tend to give the villain more attention than the good guy, and the good guy is dark in his own right.  Think about that.  Maybe God thinks that's a bad combination, dark heroes fighting dark villians.  Try thinking like god and you may find the over all message is one that needs to be gassed.

A dark good guy?  Kinda like a 'good guy' God that lets children get slaughtered because it's somehow better for the universe if they die rather than live? 

A few million people have seen it and gone on with their lives like any other movie.  Why don't you think about that?  If God didn't want the movie made, would he have allowed it?  What about all the people he didn't scare out of the movie with a gas leak?  Considering that well over 80% of this country is Christian, it seems he let shit loads of Christians go in without a hitch.  Yet you, in your narcissistic world, believe you're special.  That you're something different.  I got news for you Wayne.  You're not.  You just think you are and it's embarrassing to see.  If you could see it from the outside... how you felt like you had to apologize for your prayers causing the gas leak... as if you're little self-imposed lunacy had caused the theater to shut down... it's absolutely stupid.  Really, it is.  As deeply deluded as you are, I think making fun of you is just about the only way to get a point across to you.  And even that has a slim chance. 

Do you actually believe that you think like God does, Wayne?  You ask me to try thinking like God as if that will let me see things differently, because I assume that's how you approach it.  You think like God.  I don't know if I've ever heard such an egocentric, narcissistic position in my life.  For someone to actually claim that they know how God thinks... It must feel real good to have convinced yourself that the most powerful being in the universe is looking out for you specifically and shitting on everyone else.  I bet you'd fight real hard to keep hold of that delusion, wouldn't you?  The problem is that it's not true.  Atheists are just as happy and healthy as everyone else.  If I were the God of the bible, I'd be hammering on the atheists.  Yet He's not.  Maybe He's not real after all? 

It's all fake. 

Go ahead. Maybe you do.  Don't misinterpret what I'm saying here.  The re-warder thing is a bible verse, if God was lying about it take it up with him.

If only he were real, maybe I could. 

You ask what I cannot provide beyond what you have already read.  If you don't see anything extraordinary in what I say happened, leave it at that.  I'm doing my best, and I'll try harder, if I can think of how.  I have a bunch of stories like this.  I think that they are worth writing, because I'm not writing fiction, I'm reporting incidences.  i hope you can forgive my my fascination for it all.

Your fascination comes from the fact that your agency detection system is way the hell out of whack.  You simply don't have the brain power or the knowledge about probability and statistics to overcome that imbalance and come to a different conclusion than the one you're coming to.  Strange things happen all the time to everyone.  As I said before, in 42 million minutes, you're going to get that.  You even admit that coincidences happen, yet when they happen in a way that seems to fit with your preconceived notions about the universe, you take those coincidences to mean something different.  Yet it's not proof of anything and you know it.  Only things that could not have happened without the intervention of a deity should be taken as some sort of evidence for God.  Nothing else.  Even if something as highly improbable as Adam Lanza's social security number being 143-98-2294 and your own phone number being 143-998-2294 is FAR more likely a pure coincidence than it is the hand of God.  Know why? Because there are millions of phone numbers and millions of social security numbers! 

But I find it profoundly believable not because I'm gullible, but because I know the God that is able to protect.  It's the God that stopped me short of a slaughter of cows on the road.  You may decide that it is entirely natural for a man to have four bullet holes in his coat with no injury, and so there  is nothing to report. The Indian, Washington, and I might beg to differ.

If you believe that your prayers affected a gas leak in a movie theater, then absolutely yes, you're gullible.  That's really stupid. 

Did you know that Adolph Hitler survived 16 assassination attempts by his own people?  What does that say to you about God?  Is that just a coincidence?  Could someone who believed that there was a god and that god was evil not point to this as absolute evidence of the supernatural?  If you asked good ol' Adolph before he died whether or not God was watching out for him, would you really be surprised if he said yes?   This same thing is all you're doing here.  Nothing more. 

I hope my responses so far have helped.  the rest of your post was pretty angry.  I'm not dismissing it, but I'll leave it for now.
Thank you for the time you spent.
Wayne

I was nicer than you deserve, as have been most of the people you've encountered here so far.  You've insulted our position many times and I deleted an entire paragraph at the end of my post before sending it, because it was angry ranting that frankly you have coming.  You're judgement of us stems from a long history of being told how evil and awful we are, yet you goad us on by calling atheists rude, amoral, and telling us that atheism caused the deaths of those children.  How do you expect us to react to that?  How would you react if we said your religion was responsible for their deaths?  A bit upset, right?  Shocking!  Yet you're nipping and pecking at us with sly little digs every so often with the idea that we mean old atheists are going to attack you for it and slide right on in to that stereotypical spot you already took us for, yet we restrain ourselves as best we can under the circumstances.  It won't change your opinion of us though, because you're too deeply deluded to think otherwise. You'll just go back to thinking of all of us as those bastards who took away my right to shove my religion down other people's throats!  Excuse me for thinking you're being a dick about it. 

And you harp on Madelyn Murry O'Hare as if she represents every one of us and frankly, it pisses me off.  She didn't believe in God.  That's the thing we all had in common with her.  That is the sum total of atheism.  You keep talking as if atheism is some sort of view on the world, but it's not.  It's just a big, fat, 'Nah' to your position.  It says nothing of what we DO want for this world.  And if you bothered to take the time to get to know any atheists and step outside of your stereotyping, you might find that we're better and nicer than just about all the Christians you know.  As far as M. M. O'Hare goes,  I agree with some of her positions but not all of them.  I'd assume you have something in common with theists like Fred Phelps, Jimmy Swaggart, and David Koresh, but you don't see me bashing you with those people, do you?  Do their actions speak for you?  If not, then cut the crap.   

Everything bad that you've been told about us is likely a lie and you've been led to believe it because your side isn't winning the intellectual battle; so making you hate us is easier than fighting our points on even terms.  It's been going on for 2000 years, and you are a prime example of the outcome.  You bought it, and it's just easier for you to think bad things about us than to work at finding out the truth.  You know we're bringing up good points.  You know we're smarter than you, and you're probably disconcerted on some level that the smarter people don't buy the bullshit God stuff. 

You're just wrong Wayne.  You really are.  God isn't real.  It's completely fake.  My advice to you is to take the time to explore what the other side is saying about God before dismissing it.  We have really good reasons to think that God isn't real, and if you haven't explored them, then what makes you think you can claim you're right?  Many of the people here are ex-Christians, meaning they've seen both sides of the question and decided where the truth was.  Maybe you should do the same at some point.  You're intimately familiar with one side of a very 2 sided argument.  Stop mentally masturbating with Fox News and Glen Beck and start listening to the other side of the argument. 

[Willie]

This guy currently has over 1,192,000

Oops, you left out a few zeroes. That video has over 1.1 billion hits, not 1.1 million.

[ParkingPlaces]

No reason to take it personally wright except that if you agreed with what Madelyn Murray O'Hare did in removing the beneficial effects of Judeo Christian principles from public life, and to remanding them to the status of open ridicule as they are now in education, that is your evidence.  Were you here when I mentioned the manner in which Madelyn, and two of her family members died.  What kind of moral restraints did the office manager have when he mutilated them?  Christian ones?  Or Atheist ones?  Hey, thankfully you are not all killers, but your philosophy of denying God and the threat of eternal judgement leaves the door wide open for those others of you who have taken that logic to its  conclusion. Just to remind you, the office manager killed and mutilated them.  I ask you, why shouldn' t he have under the atheist philosophy?

This needs to be expounded on, even further than what Wright just said. This will sound mean. But it is intended to bring you to your senses. You're clearly not a bad person. But you have a shortage of good thoughts.

What do you imagine an atheist philosophy to be? Do you imagine that not believing in a god is the basis for all sorts of neer-do-well activities, intended to culminate in the complete and total destruction of all that is good? Do you really have to caste us in such a light? Is this inherent sordidness required before you can really truly put us in our place?

It is past bedtime in prisons, to I must not be in one because I am typing instead. My atheism is not a gateway drug to duplicitous behavior and all around a**holeness. It is merely a view of the world that I trust is true. It does not guide my behavior. Other than it keeps me off your doorstep offering pamphlets. It does not determine my moral qualities. I too am accountable for being a human being. I too am to be arrested if I steal or harm or swindle. I too am expected to contribute to my society and add to its value, rather than detract from it. I too enjoin with others when injustice and/or selfishness threatens innocent individuals or groups. And I too can be trusted with your loved ones and friends in any circumstance.

Your insistence that atheism=immorality condemns you. Not legally. But morally. Because if you insist that such a thing is true, you disqualify yourself from being a sane member of society and join the rabid ones for whom freedom means only agreeing to agree with them or else. Your inability to picture any human not like you as a member of your society makes you as evil as a KKK member, as inflexible as Westboro Baptist Church, as uninformed as a Fox News viewer. You, in your search for freedom, are binding your own hands behind your own back and proclaiming yourself free. You are covering your mouth with duct tape and mumbling that you are the only one speaking clearly. You are pouring cement around your own feet and complaining that others won't let you float. You are lighting the bonfire under your own feet thinking that one nation, under god, ought to be too hot for others to survive in. You have sprung a trap on yourself, and are laughing fiendishly at the fools that dared underestimate you. And dying at the same time.

Do I have a philosophy. Probably I do. But it is steeped in knowledge, compassion, honesty, caring and sharing, not the selfishness required to insist that others do everything my way. I do not insist that every thought that does not match mine is communistic or darwinish or stinky or despicable. I understand that a monoculture of any social order will be so vulnerable to even the most trivial of enemies that its lifespan is measured in weeks. And I value the survival of my species, not the enslavement of it.

I understand that tiny worlds such as yours can never be as beautiful as ones that include real stuff. I understand that tiny worlds such as yours have little room for other ideas, by default. And I understand why tiny worlds such as yours fit easily on the back shelf of history.

To this point, virtually all of your arguments have been against an imagined alignment of evil forces. Just as you make up an atheist friend to talk to who, presumably agrees with you by the end of every argument, you too make up who you are. You pretend the width and breadth of your intellect; you pretend the level of wisdom; you pretend the content of your history; you pretend the perfection of your future. And then you ask us to suffer for you.

You've ignored far too much of what we've said to ever convince me that you've paid attention to anything, anywhere. If these exchanges we've had with you typify your approach to life, then you don't have the ability to realize that you don't have the ability. As I have always said, 20,000,000 NASCAR fans can't be right, so they watch races instead. Please buy a lifetime pass.

[ParkingPlaces]

This guy currently has over 1,192,000

Oops, you left out a few zeroes. That video has over 1.1 billion hits, not 1.1 million.

Well, I was on my iPad and the screen isn't that big. 

Thanks for the correction. It proves you have Amazing Grace. And Gangnam Style!

[WayneHarropson]

You're just wrong Wayne.  You really are.

I read the whole thing and truly appreciate your passioned position.  For my part i will respectfully, disagree.
Thanks again for the time you have spent and for reading my testamonies of God's direction.