DV82XL said:

I used to be sure of about monsters under the bed when I was young, along with the Easter bunny …

You mean that there is no Easter bunny?! Please say that this is an April Fool’s joke. Who is going to deliver all of those eggs on Sunday?

        Ray said:

To the one who says “prove God’s exists” I say: He proves it to me all the time; maybe you just haven’t been paying attention. You can look for him at an organized place of worship and you may find Him in the books of the Bible, but you might rather meet Him at sunrise on a secluded mountain top:-)

I used to be sure of about monsters under the bed when I was young, along with the Easter bunny. the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus, and the other Cofgods of Western culture as well – but I grew out of them, just like I grew out of the superstitions of Catholicism

When religion doesn’t serve God’s purpose, it doesn’t logically follow that all religious activity should cease.

To the one who says “prove God’s exists” I say: He proves it to me all the time; maybe you just haven’t been paying attention. You can look for him at an organized place of worship and you may find Him in the books of the Bible, but you might rather meet Him at sunrise on a secluded mountain top:-)

        Gordon said:

That was a powerful documentary, even with some scenes being a bit pink or green.

What I found amazing was the point at which the guy looked at the camera and said “There are certain people who I call murders because they murdered ray” and obviously refreshing Judas Priest.

I felt offended by that.

Here’s a guy who’s friend is dead because they had a suicide pact and he could have stopped it. He could have said “no that’s crazy. Put away the gun and calm down.”

He didn’t.

His friend probably didn’t have the guts to do it alone and so it was James Vance who is responsible for being the one who went along and made it happen.

Then he tried to kill himself and look at what he did.

Blew his face to pieces and completely destroyed any hope he had at any kind of a normal life.

He did that to himself. All the pain and disfigurement is his fault.

It’s amazing to me he can sit there and not fess up like a real man or a decent responsible human and say he’s sorry for his role in it and he regrets what he did to himself.

He has to skapegoat it to some band who has nothing to do with him other than he listened to their records.

I completely agree. I find his reasons, or rather reason, behind the ’suicide pact’ with his friend to be both poor and ignorant. Scapegoat is the perfect word. His cowardice and shame forced him to attempt to condemn a band which had no aid in his mistake. Ridiculous.

        Steve Satak said:

A gazillion Christians have looked to Him for their salvation. Most have found it.

Prove it.

        Steve Satak said:

Meh. You belong on Internet Infidels, not this blog. You really can’t or won’t see where your motives lie, or how little there is between you and that poor sod with the messed up face.

Self-victimization indeed. Submitting to your extended rants vs actually addressing the topic of the blog is the very definition of that term.

Let us leave the question of whether I belong here or not to the owner. This blog, by the way, is devoted to skepticism, which in fact begs the question of why you are here. Surely you did not expect a warm welcome with your diatribe about submission did you? No, you came here to lecture us for not following your particular delusion, so you shouldn’t be surprised with the reception you get. In fact you are not – it’s why you came here whether you admit it or not.

Your faith is so weak that it needs the reinforcement of assumed persecution to remove the fear that results from your own doubt.

Self-victimization indeed. Submitting to your extended rants vs actually addressing the topic of the blog is the very definition of that term.

        Steve Satak said:

Your spiritual pride, your determination to perish rather than submit (or be thought a sucker) is the exact same sort of motivation which propelled those two fools into suicide. Small wonder they blame everyone but themselves. Small wonder you ridicule anyone who suggests that perhaps you do not exist on your own, that man is not the measure of all things.

On the other hand all I see from you is the conceited arrogance of one who has never bothered to understand the very theology he pretends to profess and only comments in places like this to masturbate his ego with his own self-righteousness. So intense is your need for self-victimization – so inebriating is your self-absorption and so lacking are you in any capacity for empathy — that, for all the noise and rhetoric, the arguments you make have this kind of immature schoolyard tribalistic self-absorption at its core.

You don’t submit to any deity – you hide your egotistical fear that you are a nothing in the greater scheme of things behind some fairytale that you will never look at close enough to see it for what it really is.