Atheists and the origin of the Universe

[89Hen]

We'd be at peace, healthier, safer, at a much higher stage of moral development in a cleaner planet if religion, especially the big three, never existed.

[Cap'n Cat]

We'd be at peace, healthier, safer, at a much higher stage of moral development in a cleaner planet if religion, especially the big three, never existed.

He's right, Buffy.

[89Hen]

He's right, Buffy.

No. He's not.

[SeattleGriz]

So, to get this baby back on track, how about the fine tuning of the Universe? Without many, many factors being met, this planet could not sustain life.

Sorry, I am at work and don't get to post much.

[D1B]

He's right, Buffy.

No. He's not.

Your religion still treats women like shit and has so for 1700 years. This has been devastating to humanity. That alone proves my case.

[89Hen]

No. He's not.

Your religion still treats women like shit...

No. They don't.

[D1B]

Your religion still treats women like shit...

No. They don't.

Bullshit.

You treat nuns like shit.
You beat women up over abortion.
You deny them contraceptives, especially in the third world where they need it most.
You prop up violent mysogynistic dictators in African and other parts of the third world.
You don't allow them to be priests.

[89Hen]

No. They don't.

Bullshit.

You treat nuns like shit.
You beat women up over abortion.
You deny them contraceptives, especially in the third world where they need it most.
You prop up violent mysogynistic dictators in African and other parts of the third world.
You don't allow them to be priests.

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

[D1B]

Bullshit.

You treat nuns like shit.
You beat women up over abortion.
You deny them contraceptives, especially in the third world where they need it most.
You prop up violent mysogynistic dictators in African and other parts of the third world.
You don't allow them to be priests.

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

You're in a cult. This type of response is to be expected.

[Gil Dobie]

Bullshit.

You treat nuns like ****.
You beat women up over abortion.
You deny them contraceptives, especially in the third world where they need it most.
You prop up violent mysogynistic dictators in African and other parts of the third world.
You don't allow them to be priests.

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

You sure do put up with a lot of hate that is thrown your way.

[89Hen]

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

You're in a cult. This type of response is to be expected.

You are anti-Catholic. Your attacks are expected.

[89Hen]

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

You sure do put up with a lot of hate that is thrown your way.

It's OK Gil. DB doesn't shake my faith. He only reinforces it. I owe him a thank you.

[D1B]

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

You sure do put up with a lot of hate that is thrown your way.

It's his stupid religion, not him. He, like you, is a victim.

[Gil Dobie]

You sure do put up with a lot of hate that is thrown your way.

It's his stupid religion, not him. He, like you, is a victim.

Victim of spirituality......hmmmmm

[D1B]

You sure do put up with a lot of hate that is thrown your way.

It's OK Gil. DB doesn't shake my faith. He only reinforces it. I owe him a thank you.

Great, hope this helps:
12/20/2012

(Reuters) - Ray Mouton was a successful young lawyer in Lafayette, Louisiana, respected in the community and blessed with a loving family, when he received a call from a vicar in the Roman Catholic diocese for a lunch meeting on a fateful day in 1984.

The diocese asked him to defend an errant priest, accused of abusing dozens of children in a rural community. Mouton reluctantly agreed to take on the task.

What followed over the next few years was the uncovering of an institution riddled with pedophile priests on a national scale and efforts at high levels in the Catholic Church to hide the problem away.

For Mouton, it meant the end of his law career, health problems, and anger, depression and guilt.

After many years of writing from his self-imposed exile in France, he finally tells his story in the novel "In God's House". It is a harrowing

I'll send you and Gil a copy soon.

[89Hen]

It's OK Gil. DB doesn't shake my faith. He only reinforces it. I owe him a thank you.

Great, hope this helps:
12/20/2012

(Reuters) - Ray Mouton was a successful young lawyer in Lafayette, Louisiana, respected in the community and blessed with a loving family, when he received a call from a vicar in the Roman Catholic diocese for a lunch meeting on a fateful day in 1984.

The diocese asked him to defend an errant priest, accused of abusing dozens of children in a rural community. Mouton reluctantly agreed to take on the task.

What followed over the next few years was the uncovering of an institution riddled with pedophile priests on a national scale and efforts at high levels in the Catholic Church to hide the problem away.

For Mouton, it meant the end of his law career, health problems, and anger, depression and guilt.

After many years of writing from his self-imposed exile in France, he finally tells his story in the novel "In God's House". It is a harrowing

I'll send you and Gil a copy soon.

This novel about the saga is pure fiction in both a legal and literary sense. It is not thinly disguised nonfiction, a fictional memoir, a nonfiction novel, or faction where fact and fiction mingle.

​None of the characters, events, scenes, action, dialogue or any other facet of the novel bears any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, and all characters, events, scenes, action, dialogue and every other aspect of the novel are solely the product of my creative imagination, and yet it is obvious my novel would have been different had I not had certain professional and personal experiences and been in a position where I was able to formulate informed impressions from which I could draw fiction. - Ray Mouton

[D1B]

More for you, Hen and Hen Jr.

"In God's House" details a powerful apparatus at work involving local politicians, expensive lawyers, insurance companies and bishops. It also reached into the Vatican, which Mouton says considered the institution above the law.

It also shows the devastation of the victims and their families - shame, anger and frustration as well as physical damage. Many were told that to seek redress would be disloyal to the church, adding further conflict to their emotions.

Mouton himself suffered verbal abuse and even death threats in the community for defending Gauthe. He was accused of trying to extort the church for exorbitant fees.

He put up an insanity plea for Gauthe but the priest himself insisted he was sane. He was sentenced to 20 years.

However, a senior jurist in Louisiana involved himself personally in Gauthe's case. Instead of going to a prison that was a treatment facility for pedophiles, the priest was sent to a prison where juveniles were held. He was released after serving only half of his sentence.

Gauthe was picked up in Texas soon after his release for molesting a 3-year-old boy, but put on probation rather than being sent back to prison.

Mouton's marriage broke up and he became an alcoholic.

"It was a cataclysmic event. It broke me in half. I did fall from grace," he said.

It took many years but subsequent events have vindicated Mouton as widespread sexual abuse by priests came to light across the United States and the world, from Ireland to Australia.

The church and its insurance companies have paid out more than $2 billion dollars in the United States, bishops have been disgraced, and its reputation has suffered to the point that the faithful have deserted in droves.

Yep, religion is harmless.

[D1B]

Great, hope this helps:
12/20/2012




I'll send you and Gil a copy soon.

This novel about the saga is pure fiction in both a legal and literary sense. It is not thinly disguised nonfiction, a fictional memoir, a nonfiction novel, or faction where fact and fiction mingle.

​None of the characters, events, scenes, action, dialogue or any other facet of the novel bears any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, and all characters, events, scenes, action, dialogue and every other aspect of the novel are solely the product of my creative imagination, and yet it is obvious my novel would have been different had I not had certain professional and personal experiences and been in a position where I was able to formulate informed impressions from which I could draw fiction. - Ray Mouton

And of course you leave this one out:

This novel is about truth, not facts. - Ray Mouton

Here the rest....http://www.raymouton-ingodshouse-thenov ... ng_no/cee5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gil Dobie]

D1B doesn't know there is a differenct between spirituality and religion.

[D1B]

D1B doesn't know there is a differenct between spirituality and religion.

What are you doing here? Seriously, GTFO and let the adults argue.

[Gil Dobie]

D1B doesn't know there is a differenct between spirituality and religion.

What are you doing here? Seriously, GTFO and let the adults argue.

I see 89Hen, who is the other adult?

[D1B]

Bullshit.

You treat nuns like shit.
You beat women up over abortion.
You deny them contraceptives, especially in the third world where they need it most.
You prop up violent mysogynistic dictators in African and other parts of the third world.
You don't allow them to be priests.

Only one of those is accurate, and it's the one with the biggest "who cares?" factor.

Here's Joltin Joe's theological here on the Vatican's crackdown on nuns and "New Inquisition":

Küng sees the Vatican's attempt to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as "medieval."

Jason Berry
December 18, 2012

TÜBINGEN, Germany — Fifty years ago in this medieval city with its steep hills and the sprawling campus of one of Germany’s great universities, Hans Küng and Joseph Ratzinger were priests and theology department colleagues.

Emerging out of the University of Tübingen, Küng and Ratzinger were the youngest and most influential progressives to advise bishops in Rome at The Second Ecumenical Council, or Vatican II, which began in the fall of 1962.

When Vatican II concluded in 1965 it unleashed an historic movement in the church toward greater engagement in the daily lives of People of God, as the council documents called rank and file believers. A new sensibility for justice and individual rights arose in the church that would grow to 1 billion Catholics worldwide, with missions of activism in many of the poorest countries on earth.

Back in Tübingen, Küng, a native of Switzerland, and Ratzinger, who had grown up in the Nazi darkness of his native Germany, soon found themselves at odds over the sweeping changes in the church, and a theological debate that would echo across Europe and the global church.

Now on the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, Küng, an internationally renowned scholar, and Ratzinger, known as Benedict XVI since his election as pope seven years ago, are even more at odds. Of the many issues that divide them, Küng sees the attempt to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as a sign of myopia, a failure of vision.

“You cannot deny that Joseph Ratzinger has faith,” says Küng, in a coat and tie, seated in his office, speaking in calm tones in the blue twilight. “But he is absolutely against freedom. He wants obedience.”

“He is against the paradigm of Vatican II.” Küng pauses. “He has a medieval idea of the papacy.” ...

Küng sees the clergy abuse crisis and the crackdown on the leadership council of American nuns as symptoms of a pathological power structure. By his lights, the impact on church moral authority, and finances, is a crisis rivaling the Protestant Reformation.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news ... nquisition" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gil Dobie]

You sure do put up with a lot of hate that is thrown your way.

It's OK Gil. DB doesn't shake my faith. He only reinforces it. I owe him a thank you.

D1B and Cap'n Cat are the expandspanos of religious threads.

[D1B]

It's OK Gil. DB doesn't shake my faith. He only reinforces it. I owe him a thank you.

D1B and Cap'n Cat are the expandspanos of religious threads.

Good one, dork.

[Col Hogan]

D1B and Cap'n Cat are the expandspanos of religious threads.

Good one, dork.

Do you have to pay this guy royalties every time you use his picture???

I bet you'd owe him a boatload of $$$