Posted on 08/18/2011 6:40:21 AM PDT by Haiku Guy
I try to claim that I was friends with the genius Richard Feynman...
(snip)
Last week I was interviewed for Piers Morgan's show (which used to be Larry King's show). Piers beat me up a bit for being an atheist (that's his job) and then beat me up a bit for being a libertarian (also his job). He did this by asking me impossible questions, questions that none of us, Harold, Richard, me, (or Piers), could ever answer.
He started with "How did you get here?" and I started talking about my road to showbiz and atheism and he interrupted and said he meant how the universe was created. I said, "I don't know."
(snip)
It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.cnn.com ...
during wars men walk into whitering fire because they felt the need to protect their ‘Brothers’ or ‘Defend their Country’...here in America they are given the Congressional Medal of Honor.
it is called Uncommon Valor.
I do not think I have Uncommon Valor....but I have never been tested in that way and I am happy that I have not been so tested...
so what does Uncommon Valor have in proving your point about FAITH. I for one do not see it.
Not what again...the Constitution?
what is wrong with the Constitution?
I would like to go head to head with Piers Morgan...
Silly unanswerable questions would promote a question to him from me..
I’ve watched him do this over and over.. to guests...
The boy ain’t very smart.. maybe its the writers..
BUT he wouldn’t ask Me ridiculous questions and get away with it..
I can ask snarky questions myself..
Guests should treat him like a nosy neighbor..
There are many things that are none of his business..
When searching for “new” distant planets rotating around stars, scientists admit that they cannot see the planets themselves due to the enormous amount of light generated by the stars. What they can see is the gravitational effect on the star of planets rotating around it. That is how scientist know that there are planets out there, without even seeing them. They look for the effect on what they CAN see.
We have the written Word of God, but that requires more faith than I had as a non-believer for me to hit my knees and beg forgiveness from some super being.
I needed more. I looked to an old Catholic (I am not one) source to find out the “effect” of Jesus upon His disciples, after He was gone.
That effect was the same as the gravitational effect of the planets on their stars. You can’t see them but the evidence (the effect) is right there in front of you.
You can say these men were liars but would you allow yourself to be tortured to death for something that you KNEW was a lie? Not when you could stop it at any time just by saying what your antagonists want you to say.
Why would they not do that? I contend it was because they KNEW it was true. Jesus is the Son of God, the intercessor between us and His Father. They knew that if they denied Christ before men, He would deny them before God.
They chose wisely.
“I’m a Disciple of Christ, but I love Penn Jillette.”
As a Disciple of Christ you can do nothing else.
;0)
Democracy with respect for individual rights is called a "REPUBLIC" Mr Penn Jillette.
THat was the one false note in Penn Jillette’s article. He used the stupid questions of Piers Morgan as a surrogate for a reasoned argument.
One should never confuse anything Piers Morgan says with a reasoned argument.
I think he is interesting too and best of all very non-PC. I saw him on Red Eye last night and he took exception to Rick Perry calling man made Global Warming a theory. He then went on to say he doesn’t know if it is happening or not and doesn’t think anyone else does either. He needs to find one of those dictionary thingies and look up the word ‘theory.’
He talked about that last night on Redeye also. Said he used to commiserate with other well known atheists (I forget their names) about the death threats they all get. But after a while he noticed that the threats all came from a very small number of the same kooks over and over again. He also noticed that he got a lot of mail from Christians and they were "very nice people." So he quit complaining about the kooks and no longer thinks they represent Christians.
That's a good thing about Gillette, he doesn't think he knows it all and he checks and re-checks his premises.
I wish more Freepers felt that way. I'm an atheist conservative and I'll take Christian conservatives over atheist liberals any day too.
true... that... the boy is a legend in his own mind..
That’s the similar way that I came to faith.
The Hymnal 1982 (Episcopal)
Hymn 661
They cast their nets in Galilee
just off the hills of brown;
such happy, simple fisherfolk,
before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen,
before they ever knew
the peace of God that filled their hearts
brimful, and broke them too.
Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,
homeless in Patmos died,
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
head-down was crucified.
The peace of God, it is no peace,
but strife closed in the sod,
Yet let us pray for but one thing —
the marvelous peace of God.
Words: William Alexander Percy (1885-1942),
Music: Georgetown, David McKinley Williams (1887-1978)
There are atheist kooks, but they don't represent all atheists.
I wish I could do more to convince Freepers of that.
I also came to a point where I don't care what anyone thinks about it. It doesn't make sense to. Being a Buddhist isn't about making people like me or making them understand Buddhism. Trying to accomplish that doesn't do anything for them and it doesn't do anything for me. All of my desires in that direction were solely ego-self building which is exactly what Buddhism is trying to eliminate from my mind.
That's my view of it FWIW! :-)
...that’s me, an agnostic libertarian...
If you don’t mind me saying so, I think where some FReepers might have trouble with Atheism is because the foundational documents of the United States state that we are endowed by our Creator with the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Absent a Creator, these rights can only be granted by other men. What can be granted by other men can also be taken by other men. So the existance of a Creator is, at minimum, a necessary fiction in order for Natural Rights to exist.
...upon graduation from 8th grade (no middle schools or jr hs...k-8 and 9-12 in HS) I received the Cardinals Award(dioceses of NYC) for my school for the highest grade on the final religion test....
somewhere in HS I lost it...that was 45 years ago.... ...good luck to you....I envy you...I am still looking and do not see what you obviously see...and do not expect I ever will.
I've often expressed here and on other fora my belief that the Judeo-Christian tradition has been an enabler of human liberty, and those countries which are so based have on balance done far better by human freedom than those which are not.
Yet....I personally don't believe. I can no more relate to the possibility of a universe in which supernatural beings exist than I can a universe in which 2+3 does not equal 3+2.
And because I don't believe, there are some on FR who see me as their enemy, and the enemy of America. Very much so.
I do not see you as my enemy. Not at all.
It would be interesting to discuss the origin of Natural Rights with you, but in a friendly and informative way. You come to the same positions that I have by a different path, which I find interesting.
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