Charismatic Chaos

You were taught to expect a transformation.

As I pointed out, you felt what you were taught to feel. You helping people has never been the issue. The issue is that you deny what Jesus said.

It isn't my assertion. It's what you said, in Message 312: "The reason that I believe this is not entirely due to the indoctrination of religious dogma by the churches that I have attended."You experienced what you were taught to expect. I don't dismiss your experiences. I dismiss your interpretation of your experiences - not because they are different from anybody else's but because they're the same. You interpret your experiences the same way as other fundies interpret their experiences because you have been taught to interpret them that way. On the contrary, I have a pretty good idea because I have heard the same interpretation from a lot of other people. Well, there you go. Your pre-existing beliefs were supported. Confirmation bias. This is what bugs me most about believers. If there are things in life that are "unexplained", why do you insist on explaining them? And why do you refuse to accept any explanation but your own? That is not how debate works. You're supposed to debate the point made regardless of whether your counterpart believes it or not. Maybe you really don't understand how absurd that sounds. You actually put the voices in your head before the only external source you have. What arrogance. What hubris. No he didn't. His beliefs were pretty similar to yours. I turned it against stupidity and lies. Resources have always been scarce. The way humans react is by getting together and producing more resources. I have not made any charge against you. I don't know why you're so defensive about that. No. He doesn't. He never did. But the principle attributed to Him is a good one. ringo is responsible for doing it himself. Nobody else is going to do it for him. It already does. Get a grip on reality.

No. The criterion for recognizing that somebody is in a (mind-control) cult is that they refuse to look at any sources outside the cult.

And you interpreted your experience the way you were taught to interpret it. And you simply can't grasp the idea that IF God exists, it would be an immense coincidence if He happened to be anything like the God you learned about. Among most groups of believers there is little controversy - Mormons, Scientologists, etc. One of the hallmarks of a cult is lack of controversy. Nonsense.

That's circular. On the contrary, it is much easier to encourage somebody to fit in by conforming with everybody else. As I have said before, you'd have to have a monumental ego to believe that a god would seek you out and ignore billions of others. That has not been established. There's nothing in your "experiences" to indicate that. It's just something that your handlers have told you to parrot. You experienced something. So did Muhammad. There's no reason to think your experience was different from his. And yet you don't even try to support your claim. I'm not. I'm labellng your version as a cult. The context is Message 335: "This is what bugs me most about believers. If there are things in life that are "unexplained", why do you insist on explaining them? And why do you refuse to accept any explanation but your own?"Some other explanations include

• other gods: Aten, Baal, Cthulu, Dagon... Zeus
• aliens
• mental illness
• plain old being wrong

Nobody cares what you consider acceptable.

Yes, *your* version, just like the US is *your* country. They're every bit as likely as your God. They're more evidenced than your God. We know that life exists. And mathematically, it's almost inevitable that some of it is more "advanced" than we are. The only part that's unexplained is how they could have got here. Now that is crazy. We're a social species. Mass hysteria exists. Wikipedia Why do you have that in your mind when I've told you so many times that it isn't true? I told you only yesterday that my father's beliefs were similar to yours. That's what I was taught.

I'd be mad at the leprechauns if they existed - keeping the price of gold artificially high, little bastards.

Many years ago (and many end-of-the-world scenarios ago) somebody said that in the future you would need a shotgun, a bicycle, canned sardines and gold coins. Nonsense. The likelihood of anything has nothing whatsoever to do with its usefulness, either real or imagined. What on earth has need got to do with it? There IS mass hysteria. There always HAS BEEN mass hysteria. It has nothing to do with your silly apocalyptic scenarios.I'm saying that your "experiences" of god, your whole religion, might well be a form of mass hysteria. No. You really don't. Economies collapse on a pretty regular basis. It's never the end of the world.Climate change won't be the end of the world either. Where I live will likely improve - but if we become a tropical paradise we'll have the damn tourists.And human nature is not what you portray.

What if the Mexicans tell him to go back to Spain?My ancestors came to Canada from Ukraine - but they were not Ukrainian. They moved to Ukraine from Poland - but they were not Polish. They moved to Poland from the Netherlands; I don't know how they got there - it was four hundred years ago.I always wonder how far back the "go back where you came from" is supposed to go. Maybe we should all go back to the Olduvai Gorge.But of course the racists don't care where you, "go back to." What they really mean is, "get away from here."

I dismiss your dismissal. That was easy. *cough* cult leaders *cough*

That's too broad a definition. Racism implies that one group is superior to another group and assumed superiority results in the gathering of power to the "superior" group. You are not racist if you are powerless.

You contradict yourself. You can not have racist behavior without power.

He would find the same Pharisees that He found the first time - mouthing, "Lord! Lord!" while passing by the half-dead traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

Yes, your dictionary definition says exactly what I said, "Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination....[/qs]