Nighthawk

He's not.

You pricks are gonna sit here and talk about it when you've heard two albums between you?

No, but the fact that you don't makes you the little boy.

As do I. I'm quite the fan of dark ambient music, which is the same as regular ambient except it's aim is to create unease rather than ease. I enjoy such dark ambient artists as Nurse With Wound. They may tarry close to industrial, but I would venture to call them industrial ambient, even though dark ambient is what they're usually called. One reason I mention them is to point out that they have some excellent album covers like these: Another industrial heavy ambient group I like is Controlled Bleeding. Their sound I find somehow prehistoric, as if it would be what I would hear if I sat on the rim of a volcano under a red sky, pterodactyls swooping overhead. Which is good, if I'm in the mood for such things. Of course, I would be remiss to discuss ambient music without mentioning the real Rick James, Aphex Twin. He may work sporadically with ambient sounds, but they, like all he does, are superbly crafted. Speaking of techno ambient, kid606 is another name of note. The majority of his work is barely contained drill n bass explosions and experimental noise, but on the odd occasion he'll drop something mellow, it's quite good, surprising even, once you've adapted to his usual brand of insanity. The Soccer Girl EP is one of the most uniquely characterized albums I know of, but it truly works well. Oh, and Boards of Canada too.

Hey, here's a nice thread I didn't get to orginally. Ying Yang Twins - Me & My Brother 1. Them Braves - 3 2. Hanh! - 6 3. What's Happnin! - 9 4. Grey Goose - 10 5. Salt Shaker - 8 6. Georgia Dome - 10 7. What the Fuck! - 4 8. Calling All Zones - 5 9. Me & My Brother - 9 10. Hard - 6 11. The Nerve Calmer - 2 12. Naggin' - 7 13. Naggin' Pt. 2 - 4 14. Armageddon - 4

It's spontaneous generation. Evolution is commonly used to refer to the joint processes of abiogenesis, common ancestry and speciation, and this is how I have used it several times in this thread. The point eludes you. If there is no God, an earthquake just happens and is not bad or good. If you believe this (which, as a confessed atheist, you are bound to), what does the existance of God change? If we establish that unto itself, an earthquake is not bad, a God creating a world in which they occur does not therefore make it bad. Yes, that's much of the reason theistic evolution is foolishness. But there are two flaws in your statement. One, if there is no God, evolution is neither cold, nor brutal, it just is. With no God, nothing is good or bad. Two, if God created the world in six days, after which time it became corrupted with sin, it becomes irrelevant. Wrong, because unless God is good, there is no good. What do we have to compare with or measure it by otherwise? If God is evil, that would mean there is a higher standard by which God may be judged, which there is not. If he is a liar, we're doomed because we have no way of overcoming his lies. Furthermore, if the standard of good comes from God, and God is a liar, there is for all intents and purposes, yet again no good or evil at all. This time not because there is no standard, but because we have no information about said standard. Overly simplistic logic. Is it wrong to steal bread to feed your starving family? I can't believe you'd question it. If we, say, innoculate the smallpox virus into extinction, is that good or bad? Well, it depends on your perspective. It's certainly not good for smallpox. With no God, everything exists with no governing standard, because no one can say whose perspective prevails. Even something like torture. Is that bad? Not for sadists, no. Whose to say their perspective is wrong? Majority. That's what it all comes down to. Without God, there is no right or wrong, only majority, which is an extension of self preservation. Why do you think they wouldn't? You seem to think people are basically good, so why do you think this? Say this again with the assumption that he exists. It doesn't work. That might sound good, but it isn't true. Your emotional capability is one thing, but you are most certainly intellectually capable of believing it, which is the realm of sense and evidence. The fact that many people smarter than you do believe it is testament to this. This is a self defeating argument anyway because it's essentially saying "Even if I wanted to believe in God, he won't let me." The point was that you used an arbitrary definition. So you're not as big a hippie as you could be. That's a fallacy. If evil was good, then you couldn't ask the question of whether it was good to create evil. There wouldn't be any. The real question should be, by the way, is it good to create the ability to choose evil? It is. Cruelty being evil is your standpoint, not mine. You've used God being cruel as evidence of his nonexistance more than once. Your idea of hell being pointless is no longer relevant because all you've said is that "Nobody deserves it because that's just what I think." So you need to come up with something else or concede the point. That's not answering it, that's restating the question. Why could no crime fit that harsh of a punishment? Cause that's how you feel? This just downplays the significance of rejecting God. If that's worse than killing and terrible crime, then it's very much relevant. Everyone on the planet is fully capable of coming to a saving belief in God (if they genuinely aren't, God will save them anyway). Saying otherwise is just whining. If you claim that you can't believe in God because it doesn't make sense from an intellectual standpoint, you're a liar because people smarter than you studied it longer and better than you and believed it. If you claim you can't because you're "emotionally incapable" (whatever that means), it's called sin. Nobody is so deeply entrenched in sin they're incapable of escaping it, because all that's required is God's help, yours for the asking. Hey, did you know I'm black? I listen to hip hop, I walk with a swagger, my black friends call me nigga and I even wear my cap backwards. But... my skin says I'm white. So, if Hitler did all of those things, but Catholicism says killing people is wrong... he's not a Catholic. This is why James says those things about works. Claiming the name of something is meaningless if your actions clearly demonstrate that you're not adhering to it's precepts at all. I'm glad it came out that you don't understand this because it's an important part of the discussion at large. It's in the Bible too. The Pharisees spent their entire lives devoted to every nuance of scripture. They memorized the entire old testament. They didn't sin (theoretically). But Jesus said they were some of the worst sinners of all. Why wouldn't I be ok with it? The only way I wouldn't be is if killing was a worse sin than rejecting God. Unless you're saying some sins are just too harsh to be forgiven... but if you say nobody deserves to go to hell, I don't think you'd say that. So, unless Hitler is beyond forgiveness, this point isn't a point anymore. Absofuckinglutely. God never told you to do anything you'd morally object to though. God was Austrian? That... that sounds like a difference. Yes, the difference is that Hitlers does not have the authority to make such judgements, while God does. Well, yes it would make him loving. That's really not difficult to theoretically comprehend. You must be quite slow if you're incapable of addressing concepts using guidelines you disagree with. It's not hard at all. That's what we had initially and we ruined it. If he did it again, we'd ruin it again, and he knows this, so he's not going to. Furthermore, why should he? I wouldn't think you'd consciously hate it for this reason, but I think you do. If it were true, everyone who hears it would know it on some level. They would supress and deny because they love sin, but it doesn't make it untrue. They hate it because they can't escape it. If it was all based on positivity (and if that's what you want, you suck), then at the first sign of inconvenience we would abandon it because it has no tangible essence, it's just a promise, the same way we don't want to go to school when we're in first grade. Sure, we need to go to school to make money and survive and be happy, and somebody might try to explain that to us, but we don't listen or care. Furthermore, consider why someone would want you to be a christian. Financial gain? Commonly yes, but God likes those people less than you, so it doesn't count. Why else? Because they want you to be with God and happy forever. God and Christians are not threatening you with torture. As you alluded to, it's a self deafeating concept. It's "This is the way it is, I want to help you because I love you." not "Do this because if you don't I will punish you." I've explained that God has no choice but to send you to Hell, if you consider Hell the absence of his presence, which I do and is a fair assumption. The fact that he went so far out of his way to help you shows how much he isn't threatening you. If you take all of this and on top of it willfully fight God more, you deserve what you get. Yes, by the way, most professing Christians are not, and spread fear and hate motivated by greed and ego. This has no effect on truth. No, it's intelligent. Assuming it's true, which it isn't, but even if it were, it's the best course of action. If God's a prick who'll torture you for not believing in him, believe in him, or you're an idiot. What they should do, however, is look at the verse and agree with it because it's so obviously just and true. Now take all the things I've just said, and you'll see why your Santa Claus analogy is wrong and why I can't respond to it.

Tallahassee.

I went once, and it just resulted in being told how much of a sociopath I am. So I quit.

I thought you never said that?

Incandenza was right about this album. (He said it was good.)

What you're asking is the equivalent of asking for proof that the Bible contains a man named Jesus. Even the most cursory study will demonstrate it. And, no you cannot. If you're angling at the infant salvation issue, allow me to make a bold statement. Babies do deserve to go to Hell. I know I'm a sick bastard, but hear me out, I'll reference it again in this reply. I just believe he doesn't send them there out of mercy alone. Well, for one, and could mean both things... it just doesn't sound that way in English. It's not a wrong translation so much as a confusing one. I have explained why that would be the case, and whatever you regard as liberal translations , the Greek is the Greek. And the Greek word can mean a number of things. We need context to determine which, and context we have. If you don't like the verse in Acts to support salvation without baptism, although I don't know why you wouldn't, I can give you others. There's one grain of truth. They're born sinners, a state, by the way, of which Adam and Eve are given too much credit. Baptism is not required for them, as it isn't for anyone else, but especially not for them as it is a rite for those already saved, of which babies are incapable of being. They do not go to the lake of fire, as God saves them through an act of mercy. If this were not true, I would be saying that we are all born as something of a clean slate, and at some point in time we sin, and are condemned to hell at that point in time. This is not my statement at all. You might be horrified at the idea of a baby being a sinner, or even at the loose idea of sin being hereditary, but it's not so hard to imagine. A crack addict will have a baby addicted to crack, and that's of no fault of the baby, but it's still true. Sin is not an act, it's a state of being. So, just like a baby will be a crack addict and incapable of doing crack, a baby will be a sinner and incapable of sinning. This is why God saves them outright. It says he wept, for one. You can't treat this as if it occurs in a vacuum either. You must take into account everything else said about children, of which is under discussion. I say so. The last sentence was the most important part. They aren't judged by their belief, it just allows the penalty to be paid. This is absurd. For one, where would you get the idea that the devils have dead faith? What do they have to have faith in? They can't be saved, because Jesus didn't die for them, and they're not even the same... species is too weak a word... essence as us. Using them as a comparison is insanely off base. For faith to die, it had to have been alive at some point. It saved you then, and once saved, there's no going back. James' point, on the other hand, was that an empty claim of faith with no external evidence is usually not faith at all, it's just that; an empty claim. Did you even read it? All you did was state the same thing again. I know Calvin can be a little hard to follow, but come on. Ok, try this... if you graduate from high school, they give you a diploma, but if you drop out, go down to the printers and get yourself a diploma, are you a high school graduate? Let me throw a baptism analogy in while I'm here. If you get sick and miss your graduation ceremony, are you not a graduate? Yeah, and learning the difference between right and wrong was what they did. That's what I mean by exception that proves the rule. It was a very simple situation, God told them not to do something and they did. God didn't give them sin as a punishment, he told them not to do it because it was sin. As if he had told them not to touch the stove because it would burn them. Job was in the middle of a spoken conversation with God at the time, foo. It is talked about in the old testament. Isaiah 14, for one. But it's different. Hell is an English word, remember. Sheol is sometimes described as a place of torment, but it can't be Hell because of what the NT says about hell. It could almost be saying that we all go to a kind of holding cell when we die, and some are tormented there, why and how is unknown. Maybe because they know what's going to happen and it's just a matter of waiting now. And eventually those people are thrown away, never to be in the presence of God again. It's a complicated issue. I hardly think Jonah meant that they should be killed and then go to heaven. The point is, Jonah said "No, don't show any mercy." and God didn't say, "No they, deserve mercy." or "I work in mysterious ways." or "Just do what I told you." he showed mercy on behalf of these 120,000. That means they are in a seperate class than the rest of the sinful city. This does not directly display his eternal judgement, but it is an indication. If he says they deserve mercy, which he did, if he does end up killing them, it's only natural to expect that he would show mercy to them where it really matters, if he will on the superficial level of the Earth. That's exactly my point. Regardless of what's in the story, a story is a story. But you've said the Bible can be dismissed because there's a God in it. If there was a story about the Civil War with a hobbit in it, would that then mean the Civil War didn't happen? I validate your overall point, but you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you say the Bible can be verified in some things, and on the other, you say God being in it negates the whole thing. Realistically, God being in it should negate nothing except God himself, if you take that stance. And then it's just a question of Is There A God? all over again. Philosophically, I say yes. Abiogenesis for one. Now, if there is, the question is, can we know him, and which one is he? The Bible is one idea. But you attempt to discredit it because of the very thing it's being read for. Except that those stories contain illegiemizers with no counterbalance, unlike the Bible. But does it mean there's evidence against the civil war? You have applied this principle to the Bible. What sets the Bible is apart is that is is entirely self contained in it's logic. God by his very nature overrides what would disprove him. This may look simple, but try to write a book comparable to the Bible which is as logically self sufficient (without ripping it off), you'll find it to be pretty much impossible. Even the closest comparisons, the Koran and such, fall under scrutiny. The Bible just doesn't. There is evidence of God, by the way. The universe.

I'm your huckleberry...

Well, I generally don't like them either, although I thought it was ok on Aquemini, but that's such a good album... I don't know, I'm probably a bit more forgiving. The Pimp Trick Gangsta Clique stuff isn't too bad. The best, however, is the intro to Amerikkka's Most Wanted, with the single greatest soundbite ever: "Fuck all ya'll". Actually nothing on that album was too bad either.

Sure can sing though. And produce.

I have used graphology to determine that you are latently homosexual.

That's a stupid thing to say.

That's like calling a Star Trek convention a swinging singles club.

Pfft. She's not a chick.

That song pisses me off because it was released as "I Wonder If Heaven's Got A Ghetto" quite a few years earlier, and that was definitely a superior song. They slapped a catchy hook on it and rereleased it to suck the man's corpse even dryer. Firstly, that's yet another reason Biggie is the better martyr, the 2Pac cottage industry, but I must say that this is one instance where the song's better when the guy's dead.

Uh oh.

No. King Diamond is cool, no matter what he tells you.

Wasn't it explicitly stated all along that he would come back?

Fool.

I assume you remember that I don't deny evolution. I deny an atheistic abiogenesis (which shouldn't even be a question) and common ancestry. Circular reasoning because without God there is no good or bad. If there is no God, then something like an earthquake is not bad, it just is. If you accept that this can be the case, what does allowing for a God change? You might say it becomes bad based on the standards which are implied by God's existance, however, those standards are that God is the definition of good. So, if God doesn't exist, there is no evil, and if he does, he is not cruel or evil. That's inescapable. For one, that's all negated by the fact that things can be good an just for one person to do and wrong for another. Pretending that we are all under the same standard is just playing dumb. And God's standard, of course, is entirely different from our own. Your sense of right and wrong couldn't exist without God, as demonstrated above, it would be, at best, a sense of self-preservation. This is all rooted in an underestimation of God and an overestimation of yourself. Just like if everyone deserves to suffer for an eternity, allowing some of them to escape it isn't justice. But God is that too. Disbelief is always rejection, rejection is not always disbelief. Even if that were true, you're being offered a chance out of Hell. Are you going to sit there and evaluate it? "If not going to Hell means I have to admit I was wrong, I'd rather go to Hell!" What are you, 15? Well I say that the definition of cruel is donating money to charity. Or maybe you're just a simpering hippy? That's not what I meant, but the point has been fleshed by now, so we can drop it. I meant that you were implying both of those things idependently. Oh what a tangled web we weave... this is all predicated on the idea that Hell is evil. The only way to come to this conclusion is the belief that inflicting suffering is evil. You are in fact, of this opinion on the surface, and have said as much, although it is untrue. By this definition, a dentist is cruel and evil. So now you are forced to admit that such classification is not regardless of circumstance. This establishes that Hell is not evil as a concept unto itself, it becomes a question of how it is applied. You would probably amend your stance to say that needless pain and suffering is evil, so the question becomes, what is needless? It's now a question of justice. You know that you can't sit in judgement on who deserves Hell and who does't, so you've taken the stance that nobody deserves it. Why is this? What is it about a person that makes them so inherantly good that they are beyond deservance of Hell? I don't know where you get the idea that Hitler went to Heaven, for one. At most he was loosely described as a Catholic and even that's not true. You didn't really address what I said, but instead reiterated the flawed viewpoint that heaven is something to be earned. You say on the one hand that nobody deserves hell, but on the other hand it's worse than the gassed jews went there and not Hitler. So Hitler deserved Hell more than them? I thought nobody deserved it at all. The extension of what you're saying is that everyone deserves heaven. How could you support this? If God saved everyone, no questions asked, then he's not really saving them from anything, as there was no chance of them going to Hell anyway. And if he did that, everyone would have some innate requirement of salvation. Precisely. You hate it because it's intolerant. It tells you what you don't want to hear. You take offense to the fact that someone would tell you that you're going to Hell and need to change your life. You're flabbergasted at the unmitigated gall. If you were a worthless wretch, on the other hand, you should be on your knees giving thanks that someone would deign to show mercy on your pathetic soul. You hate Christianity because if it were true, you'd have to admit that you need it. Closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears won't make it go away, however. If you think everyone should be positive and love each other and there shouldn't be any mean messages of judgement, you're gay and I want you to go to Hell. Hey, you know what else the Bible says? "God [...] is [...] Satan." OMG WTF?!?