hey guys

[Dwood]

sup? Did i miss much?

[Higuy]

Hi

[ThePlague]

Who are you?


































No you didn't

[Dwood]

To be expected! I love this place. We need more producers, it would seem.

Will I ever develop for Halo again? We shall see. I may consider doing those old ideas I had going a while back. It seems so.

Why was I gone? I went on a 2 year mission for my church (lds.org or mormon.org) to wisconsin. My laptop seems to have not re-grown its missing L key or P key. It's a unique thing typing without it. :O Limburger cheese is the most nasty cheese I have ever tasted. So I purchased some for family for them to try. Then, I left it in the last home I was in before coming back to Utah.

CRAZY.

EDIT: I've been away from 95% computer usage (besides email basically) for 2 years. It's been good to reconnect with reality.

PS: the galaxy s4 is a SWEET PHONE.

[Roostervier]

this place is all but dead, youre wasting your time.

[Dwood]

this place is all but dead, youre wasting your time.

Yeah, but I can't help but keep coming back...

[Limited]

Has it really been 2 years? damn.

How time flies when your not-so-favourite-member-decides-to-quit-and-go-some-other-place-for-two-years-with-a-church.

How was your trip? Any particularly inspiring things you want to share?

[Bodzilla]

great to know you where being productive and not completely wasting your time!
welcome back

Was just doing some Googling because i had a heart attack when i saw LDS.org.
It'd been a while so i got it confused with the FLDS.

Good to know your standard level of crazy mormon rather then batshit insane level~

[Dwood]

Has it really been 2 years? damn.

How time flies when your not-so-favourite-member-decides-to-quit-and-go-some-other-place-for-two-years-with-a-church.

How was your trip? Any particularly inspiring things you want to share?

(answering seriously)
Well, besides the typical "everyone ought to be mormon" stuff you might expect from a person who went on a mission for their church... There are a couple of things that I've seen as a missionary, that are particularly troubling- First one is, when I would try to talk to people, especially about God and inviting them to learn about Joseph Smith, his First vision, et cetera, it's this: Too many people are happy with mediocrity. They get into grooves and things like that, where they're comfortable, don't really want to explore and discover more truth.

My logic for me living my religion is this: If there really is a God who plays an active part in our lives, then he wants us to seek him out. He doesn't want us to sit around and have Him do all the work. If we want to know of the reality of His existence, then it requires action on our part. (Such as personal communication, or prayer) If the Bible is a true book there HAS to be a way to know for ourselves if it's true. Humans, we lie to each other, we tell half-truths, things like that. If there is a God who is who he says he is, then there is a way for ourselves to discover him. If God plays no role, (eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die) or if there's a God who's going to save us only because we say: "I believe in you Lord, I'm a sinner" then it's not really a God that makes a positive impact. Sure, we say we believe in God, but that doesn't make us better people... You see what I'm saying?

Seek out the truth, explore, read, understand, don't stop until you've found it. Some say grow where you're planted. I say screw where you're planted, find the light, find the good soil and GROW THERE. If you aren't a better person each day then you're no better off than you were before. I would talk to so many people that just "believe" in the bible, and you know, that's great, but they had no real personal relationship with God besides the relationship with their pastor and what he told them. Sure I listen to leaders of my church, but that's only because of my personal relationship with God first. If that wasn't there, if I did no exploring (reading, prayer, etc), I'd be as atheist as any of us.


great to know you where being productive and not completely wasting your time!
welcome back

Was just doing some Googling because i had a heart attack when i saw LDS.org.
It'd been a while so i got it confused with the FLDS.

Good to know your standard level of crazy mormon rather then batshit insane level~

Lol thanks. Yeah, you know, the whole father mother should be active in kid's lives thing gets pretty crazy!

brb doing laundry.

If anyone wants to talk, I'm on AIM, dazerlaz3r or xfire (dazerl)

[Bodzilla]

not to be a dick or anything but everything it's incredibly ironic that a person of religious "faith" try's to seek out truth.
If you did that it wouldnt be faith at all, because you'd go to the conclusion supported by the evidence.

[TVTyrant]

not to be a dick
Anything beginning with this automatically fails its own concept

A better lead in would have been "sorry to be an intolerable asshole, but..."

[Bodzilla]

am i wrong.

[Dwood]

am i wrong.

If I may re-interpret your prior statement, what you're saying is that religion is something that makes one stop exploring. Which then brings your assumption that exploration will for everyone no matter what, come to the conclusion of there being no God, correct?

I think that's a fair enough interpretation. What I concede is that if there is a God that doesn't care about us, doesn't make demands on our personal lives to do anything to be better, treat each other as equals, with respect, et cetera, that god's existence doesn't matter. We may as well live as atheists.

What I'm saying is that in order to explore, I don't need to know the factual answers, even though I know that if we are diligent we will always discover and learn and grow more and more. Part of that exploration also requires honest tests, what they are also include personal reading and personal prayer as well. Just because I'm Mormon doesn't mean I've stopped and am unwilling to learn of others' point of views.

Are you willing to, for example, read the Book of Mormon and pray to know for yourself if God is there? If not, then I can promise you you will never have first-hand knowledge of the existence of God, more particularly, that God has a body, he's our father, loves us, and plays an active role in our lives and makes real demands.

[DEElekgolo]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Bodzilla]

no.

In this day and age where we know more then ever before and everything ever solved has been proven to not be magic Faith is the denial or cohesive rational thought in favor of ideologies. There is no truth seeking in religion, if there was it wouldnt be a religion, it'd be science.

[Bodzilla]

also this is fun, welcome back

[Skyline]

Well we know what actually happened to dwood these past 2 years now, he was being indoctrinated.

[ThePlague]

He now has 3 sister wives

[Dwood]

He now has 3 sister wives

Pffff wish lol


no.

In this day and age where we know more then ever before and everything ever solved has been proven to not be magic Faith is the denial or cohesive rational thought in favor of ideologies. There is no truth seeking in religion, if there was it wouldnt be a religion, it'd be science.

I'd have to disagree with that statement. Our religion is one in which we invite people to explore, learn, and discover truth for themselves, as stated above.

[=sw=warlord]

http://lolimage.com/img/ups/45142742251331028034.jpeg

[Donut]

As somebody who was raised catholic and went to private religious schools, I always had a really hard time trying to believe in a god. One day this pastor came in and had a little sermon where he essentially told everybody that it was ok to question your faith. This was a relief to me because I thought I was doing something wrong because I questioned the existance of a god. Bear in mind this was when I was like... 9 or 10 years old.

I put religion on the backburner for a while after I got into highschool. It was still something that was kind of there, but it didn't have much bearing on what I did. I found myself resenting a lot of the arbitrary restrictions catholicism put in place, such as not eating meat on fridays during lent (or something). There's also the whole bit about repressing your sexuality.

I started taking a 2 year physics course in highschool. I failed miserably at first, but then one day something clicked. I altered the way I was looking at the problems, and suddenly I was acing every test. I went from the worst student in the class to the best. I learned the science behind a ton of things I previously didn't understand, and I changed my methods of thinking so that I could logically deduce the answer to something when I wasn't immediately sure. At this point, religion was still on the backburner.

I don't remember specifically when, but one day I came across a video on youtube from TheAmazingAtheist. As much shit as that guy spews, it made me consciously think about religion again. Almost immediatley I decided there was no persuasive evidence to support the existance of a god, and threw religion away entirely. I also realised it was ok to identify as an atheist.

I don't know much about mormonism, but being raised catholic is straight up indoctrination. In a way, I both resent and appreciate my religious education, because it fucked with my head for the longest time, but now I can pin point all the reasons why I don't believe in or support any religion. I'm still fucking embarassed at the amount of bias I had against any sort of information that conflicted with my beliefs before I came to this conclusion. Learning about Luther's 95 theses and how corrupt the church was (and still is)? That was history. Of course it's all better now!


tl;dr being raised religious broke my head, and studying physics fixed it. Then I explored my religion and the history behind and decided it was all bullshit.

E: Lol warlord I was thinking of that exact quote.

[Warsaw]

In response to the question, "What is God, and what is Truth?"

"If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God, but the light is not the goal of the search; it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it! Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God is the byproduct of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished, not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe; God looks astonishingly like we do! Or, we turn to look at our shadow and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose: which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty…and in all its flaws, and in so doing better understand the world around us."

[TVTyrant]

As a person with no religious education and who has pretty much been told my whole life what the "truth" is (aka believe in the sciences), I have a hard time condemning religious people. I am terrible at math. I scored a 1450 on the reading and writing sections (combined score) on my SAT, and scored a 1750 overall. I can't go through the math that makes physics real. I don't understand the math that makes it real. But I believe in some aspects of it nonetheless, and that is called faith.

I wish I had grown up in a place where there was more of an emphasis on science and mathematics so I could claim that my beliefs weren't based on faith. Is it too late now to change my understanding? No. But I don't really care about science because my experience with it in the American "education" system was so frustrating and discouraging. So I take some of it on faith, and for other things I look back to naturalism and the concept of evolution to base my life philosophy on.

I defend people who are religious because I feel most atheists are following a faith as well. Most of them aren't fucking math geniuses who can whip out the actual formulaic concepts that prove their claims on why there is no God. Yet I see almost all of them beat their chest and condemn people who do the exact same thing that they do. Some religious people are simply intolerable, but in just as many ways so are atheists.

[Pooky]

I've known a lot of people who say they believe in God "just in case". That is, they'd rather believe in God on the off chance He does exist rather than risk going to Hell. That to me just seems cowardly. I'd rather say "fuck God" and believe whatever I want than follow a religion out of fear that something might happen. To me, morality is most profound when it comes without the threat of eternal damnation. I am who I am because I choose to be.

[n00b1n8R]

Welcome back, glad you've been doing something you feel is worth while for the past few years, though I never noticed you were gone :v:

[Dwood]

Welcome back, glad you've been doing something you feel is worth while for the past few years, though I never noticed you were gone :v:

Glad to be back! Well, it's less about personality, than noticing that the "recent posts" keeps getting updated less and less. In some ways I'm happy that my presence being no longer here not being noticed is a good thing, in others i'm sad. Such as, I'm sad in that I didn't produce enough to make a noticeable impact, but on the other hand, i'm glad that I didn't post a super ton lol.

[Siliconmaster]

Oh hey, there's stuff going on in this forum. That's strange. Hi everyone.

[Bodzilla]

wort wort wort

[TVTyrant]

I've known a lot of people who say they believe in God "just in case". That is, they'd rather believe in God on the off chance He does exist rather than risk going to Hell. That to me just seems cowardly. I'd rather say "fuck God" and believe whatever I want than follow a religion out of fear that something might happen. To me, morality is most profound when it comes without the threat of eternal damnation. I am who I am because I choose to be.
Yeah, I agree. If there is a God I doubt he's the God of fire and brimstone and genocide that the old testament makes him out to be. In fact, I'm almost certain that people who take the old testament as fact are extremely irresponsible. I'm curious to see if raising my own children (once I have them) in an environment where Thor's adventures and the Edda are the main stories told to them as children would actually make them pagan or not.

[Dwood]

wort wort wort

"die, so I can collect your head!"

[Bodzilla]

Yeah, I agree. If there is a God I doubt he's the God of fire and brimstone and genocide that the old testament makes him out to be. In fact, I'm almost certain that people who take the old testament as fact are extremely irresponsible. I'm curious to see if raising my own children (once I have them) in an environment where Thor's adventures and the Edda are the main stories told to them as children would actually make them pagan or not.
44ilZq3R900

[Dwood]

I found something I missed: BioShock Infinite. :O

[PopeAK49]

The Bible? TL;DR.

[TVTyrant]

44ilZq3R900
I do have it both ways. There are some things that are simply objectively wrong. And it doesn't come from god or whatever. Subjective morality comes from religion imo. If you read the bible (which I admit I mostly haven't), there are shit loads of contradictions.

My rule is, would Ned Stark do it? If yes, then it's probably okay. If not, then it's probably wrong.

[PlasbianX]

Religion was created by man to control the masses.

[TVTyrant]

Religion was created by man to try and explain a universe he was not yet equipped to understand, and then it went somewhere weird.
ftfy

[Patrickssj6]

ftfy
nt rly

[Donut]

I don't know... I can see early humans attributing natural phenomena to some "magic force" just to try to understand what was going on. I can also see some shrewd leaders then taking advantage of these beliefs to form organized religions with the intention of controlling the masses.

[=sw=warlord]

The original "Gods" were the land and sky who mated to created everything else you see.
How that got distorted to how many religions see things I really don't know.

[TVTyrant]

The Norse Gods were all anthropomorphised traits of the world that they built stories into, trying to explain why the world was the way it was. There was a lot of war and death in the North because of their tribal lifestyles, thus Valhalla made that lifestyle rewarding. Things that were physically strong were attributed to Thor. Death is the one and only truth, thus Odin has one all-seeing eye. Tyr uses a spear and is the true God of war, representing real warfare at a greater level (such as what the Goths acted out on the Romans) rather than the small battles the Norsemen were used to seeing.

Religion has only become a tool to use against the masses relatively recently imo. Catholicism and Islam (including all possible offshoots of the two) are the ones that I would point at as being really kind of fucked from the start in their purpose and message.

[Rosco]

I've always felt the same way bodzilla does about how much some religions have pulled us back, even baffles me it has relevance in today's society.

But one odd lunch time recently I went out of curtesy to a sikh temple with one of my friends who happened to be partially religious.. felt more like a community effort to be good people (how the temple is funded etc) and feed everyone above everything else.. that and the bandana wearing screams pirates. I'd say it's probably the only religion that doesn't grind my gears, but that's because I never even knew the people I knew were sikh until I actually asked them!

(I'm interested in what you think of them bod, but please remember i'm seeing the charitable values as a great thing that they uphold, beyond that i'm completely in favour of science)

Also welcome back dwood, i remember you used to messaged me on xfire sometimes lol, speaking of which what do you think of the mormon's story in that one episode of south park?

[Bodzilla]

well the sikh are pretty awesome chill dudes. D2T Agony was a sikh.

I've never seem them do anything controversial or take part in witnessing for their religion or anything of that sort. I honestly dont know anything about their religion, other then it's one of the largest in the world, they cant cut their hair or beards, they wear a turban and carry a ceremonial knife.

I've never seen them try to influence legislation or education and for such a large religion to fly so completely under the radar for most people, they must have some rather cool passive social and community values or we'd have honestly heard more. On that front they can do what ever they want.

In terms of their beliefs i honestly dont know enough to criticize, yet if they still hold to supernatural phenomenon i'd still obviously side with the facts.

[TVTyrant]

Most Americans confuse them with Muslims

:smithicide:

[Rosco]

well the sikh are pretty awesome chill dudes. D2T Agony was a sikh.

I've never seem them do anything controversial or take part in witnessing for their religion or anything of that sort. I honestly dont know anything about their religion, other then it's one of the largest in the world, they cant cut their hair or beards, they wear a turban and carry a ceremonial knife.

I've never seen them try to influence legislation or education and for such a large religion to fly so completely under the radar for most people, they must have some rather cool passive social and community values or we'd have honestly heard more. On that front they can do what ever they want.

In terms of their beliefs i honestly dont know enough to criticize, yet if they still hold to supernatural phenomenon i'd still obviously side with the facts.

Well one of the things that I appreciated, being an outsider.. one with absolutley no religious interest whatsoever obviously.. I didn't feel like I was out of place which is something every other religion has made me feel when i step in their respective buildings.. they realise you're not a necessarily a follower, but they're still welcoming and happy to see you, they don't care if you don't have the full on beard features or turban etc. I feel other religions could learn so much from sikhs, they've done it right.

[Higuy]

I'm not much of a religious person and I don't really like to get into it either (debating wise). My mom is a big one and goes to church a lot, I go a little bit here and there to make her happy. I don't really care about the religious-ness of it but I find that some of the teachings are good - like be a better person, don't hate, etc. One thing I do like that my church does is help family's with food that are struggling. It's not like their trying to spread religion or anything either, the church simply fills bags with nutrious food, delivers them to a school, and the kids take the home with for the weekend. But quite honestly I don't see the need for religion in this day and age. With ever changing technology, science continues to prove religion wrong over and over. Like Rosco said though, the Sikh's seem to have it right.

[Bodzilla]

Most Americans confuse them with Muslims

:smithicide:
No one has ever accused america of having an informed well educated public.

[TVTyrant]

No one has ever accused america of having an informed well educated public.
We did okay














in the 50s

[Warsaw]

No one has ever accused america of having an informed well educated public.

To be fair, I don't think that the public of any nation has ever been accused of that. That's why they are the public.