Chastity cages and Christianity

I try to keep them straight.

 

None taken! It’s the mark of someone insecure in their beliefs that they resort to insults rather than substantiating their positions with reasoned argument and evidence. I note that you descended into this schoolyard name calling right at the point I showed your wild assertions about Stalin to be bullshit.
Btw how much time SHOULD I spend on here? It doesn’t seem like a big part of my life cos I dip in and out on my phone while doing other things, and it doesn’t require a lot of mental effort.

 

Oh no! It's the spelling police. You really are an old stodgy professor. I never said I was smart. I am the creative sort.
On a different note. I am making coconut curry squash soup.

 

I’ve stayed out of this forum since signing up, but it still boggles my mind. I am a proud card carrying Atheist, but at one time we, my spouse and I, were on a religious quest to figure out what all the fuss was about. One thing that always seemed to be an issue was sex. Particularly what the two of us did in the privacy of our bedroom. There were many other issues and contradictions as well. In the end we hung it up and decided to live our lives as we saw fit, and not let some group of people tells us how to live by making us feel guilty of everything in the world.

My advice to all of you is do what you want, and do not feel guilty about it. As long as you are not hurting anyone, you are doing well.

 

Sounds nice. I do a lot of cooking myself. Currently a bit frustrated because I tend to batch cook and freeze, want to switch to a low carb diet but have about a month’s worth of meals to consume beforehand. Plus considerable amounts of grains and other dry foods, like some sort of doomsday prepper. I’m not one, I just like eating well without spending much money and cooking from scratch.

 

I think it loses something when you freeze it. Chef Ramsey thi ks he can tell when something is frozen. I am too lazy to prep. I cook when I'm hungry and have been to the store. For Lent I usually do the daniel fast diet. No meat or processed food.
Gee. I hope I spelled all of that properly.

 

I definitely know what you mean about the guilt thing. My own experience was that Christianity seemed like a racket until I encountered the Eastern Orthodox Church. Totally different from anything in the western tradition. I’m not trying to sell it though.

 

Should we be even listening to someone that can only be caged for two days?

 

Oh I’m lazy too! But that’s where batch cooking comes in: one day of cooking makes a weeks worth of meals. Plus most stuff I make is slow cooked (tho I also pickle things and eat a lot of raw vegetables & fruit). None of it is fancy or labour intensive.

 

To be completely honest it does irritate and disappoint me that you shy away from civil discussion on these topics. Contrary to your notion of me I don’t assume I’m correct about everything and I do like to engage with people with differing perspectives in the hope of learning something new. Discussion isn’t a competitive sport, even if it follows an adversarial structure. The point isn’t to prevail, it’s to gain clarity and get closer to the truth of things.

 

That sound s like a lot of work. After using the emersion blender on the squash the soup has to simmer for a while. Got some time to post. Glad we have found some common ground.
Now back on topic. I believe when we left off you were trying to prove the existence of God using only an abicus and 30 feet of hemp twine.

 

I’ll tell you one good thing about your constitution and culture: the right to bear arms. Hold onto that one! And PLEASE get Trump back in office! He’s not perfect but he does seem inclined to pull back from messing in the affairs of other nations.

 

It doesn’t feel like “work”, it’s closer to art. My latest interest is making kefir from raw goats milk I milk myself by hand.

 

I feel like you are setting me up for something. I do agree about the second amendment. It is the most important one and it protects the others from being taken away.

 

“Setting you up”? How? Why?

 

I don't mind a good discussion, but one side usually makes adversarial by insulting the other side. I really take offense to the term sky god or similar terms. They are only used to insult those that do believe in God.
I have no problem with those that choose not to believe, but don't preach to me that there is no God. For many being an atheist has become a religion for them. I have heard it said that when you stop believing in God, you don't stop believing in something. You end up believing in anything.

 

Indeed but you seem to have got muddled up here somehow. I am a traditionalist Christian, social conservative, and old-fashioned class struggle economic leftist.
When the dispute was between you and the Jays and about religion, I was “on your side”. Then you started on about communism and it sort of flipped.

 

I’m kinda back to the land, devolved communities, all goods held in common, no king but Jesus Christ.

 

I rather feel that I was collateral damage in a shootin’ match between you and the Jays. Partly my own fault though because I can’t resist being somewhat facetious in online discussions. But it’s all well intentioned, I never get upset.
(Well, apart from with one particular bigot who is thankfully absent from this thread).
What I am not is either a liberal or a Marxist. I have a class analysis but it’s very different from Marx, who believed that the bourgeoisie and the capitalist mode of production was a necessary step in some quasi-religious (basically Hegelian) evolution of mankind. I think the bourgeoisie were and are a destructive, parasitic class, their emergence and success bound up with the great Church schism of 1054. I don’t believe in worldly progress. I look to the Ressurection of the dead and the life of the age to come.

 

Atheists just believe in one less god than you do. I do agree that some almost make a religion out of it. I try to not fall into that rut myself.

 

Thank you. We are all on a path and we all end up in the same place. Where we go after that is the big mystery and no one knows the answer. But we can speculate though.

 

The communist comment was just a joke. We use the term communist the same way people use the term moron or idiot. Sorry if that offended you.

 

The Trump comment. Over here you can't admit to supporting him or risk being ostracized by anyone on the left.

 

I’ve noticed that in other contexts. But it’s strange, because if you scrutinise what most working class MAGA folks value and what they abhor, I’d say they’re basically very close to what I think of as communists. And the people they brand as “communists” I’d see as arch capitalists and/or liberal shills.
If you show me a guy in a red hat saying that they want proper jobs with proper pay, secure communities, sense of national cohesion, and not being exploited by a blood-sucking decadent elite, I’d say “ah, you’re a communist then”.

 

Where is this utopia?

Everyone wants it but man f-s it up every time. That's why we need God.