Does everyone know about Benny Hinn? He is as bad or worse than Falwell in exploiting the elderly, the disabled - people that cannot afford the donations he asks for. He advertised himself as a faith healer. The routine would be he would cite scripture or a prayer place his palm on the forehead of a person who was waiting with hand raised toward the sky and they would fall back into the hands of two attendents and be unconscious. People were allegedly being cured of blindness, getting up out of wheelchairs and walking, etc... Then a television network exposed him. He was living in the most expensive hotels, being cheuffered around in a stretch limo, constantly attended by bodyguards, etc... His own personal wealth was in the hundreds of millions. I think it was NBC that roasted him on national TV. They followed up on many of the "cures" only to find that they were phoney.

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National Debt =

Everyone I know who was raised an atheist is still an atheist. Some folks I know who are atheists were raised in religious households. I do not know anyone personally who was raised an atheist & became a fundamentalist. That person may exist, but I'd be shocked if said person didn't suffer a massive brain injury before the "conversion."

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Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

I remember Benny Hinn, he of the bad comb-over & orange-pink makeup & white suits. For years, I thought Benny Hill was simply doing an impression of a fundie preacher.

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Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

Yes, I have. Interesting book, Maybe they'll make a movie on it, but they should probably do The Hobbit first, seeing as they like to go backwards in the timeline.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

you should be shocked then. If you want to include "agnostic" into those that start not believing, and then later believing, I could list off hundreds that I know, if you just want to keep it as "atheist" and those that were raised that religion is completely phoney, than my list drops to about a few dozen.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Interesting. So, did they fall from great heights & land on their heads? I just don't see how someone could be raised w/o belief & then have it inculcated in them. Based on my experience, I thought most adults were immune from catching this mind virus if they avoided it as children.

It could be all the drugs people my age did while in college. LSD often made me think I was talking to god. 'Shrooms gave me visits from demons. But I'm pretty sure it was just the drugs.

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Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

Problem with a movie on the Silmarillion is it would need to be days long. The Silmarillion spans several thousand years, not the several years of the LOTR trilogy or the several months of The Hobbit.

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

my a bit hostile, eh? perhaps they saw the light. its not innoculation, its a belief. people can change their minds as they mature and grow older and wiser (well that applies to some people. others dont seem to mature and grow older and wiser. they just grow older)

Nah, I think the culture permeates them with nonsense god talk & they take Pascal's wager later in life. The rest of us are happy with reason & common-sense.

And it is inoculation. With the most virulent forms of mind-f*cks of all time. Religion is dangerous & leads people to kill others for not believing in the same made-up myths & fairy tales. People don't need it to act moral; in fact, they apparently need less of it. Morals precede religion----just look at our primate relatives. I don't see them placing stone reminders not to covet their neighbor's bananas all over the damn place. Yet, they still have human-like emotions, disdain murderers & thieves in their midst, etc. And they didn't even need some made up fairy tale creature to tell it to 'em. Surely you're smarter than a chimp.

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Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

There have actually been scientific studies done on why people believe in God/gods (there is currently a three year one going on right now)

Findings suggest that:

Because of the natural design of human minds. Human minds, under normal developmental conditions, have a strong receptivity to belief in gods, in the afterlife, in moral absolutes, and in other ideas commonly associated with “religion.” Further, our natural endowment goes a long way toward making religious rituals and other practices a nearly inevitable feature of human sociality. In a real sense, religiousness is the natural state of affairs. Unbelief is relatively unusual and unnatural.