Raf

So at this point it looks like I'm on the outskirts of this storm. It won't be great for us, but it could be a whole lot worse. I'm on the southeast coast of Florida, and this storm (Hermine? Ian?) Is headeded up the west coast of the state. That means a lot of wind and rain, but hurricane conditions? Ok, maybe...

By the way (no pun intended), if you had told me in 2002 that 20 years from now I would be an atheist and oldiesman would be a Catholic, I'd have said you were insane.

It was late August of 2012 when I confronted myself about my wavering faith. I was coming to terms with my sister's impending death (from ALS) and my son's autism diagnosis. A lot of people don't believe me, but those two issues did not lead me to doubt God. Rather, they exposed the doubt that was already in my heart. How? I remember asking people to pray for my sister, but I don't remember asking to pray for her healing. And not once did I pray for my son's deliverance from autism. Just for strategies and help coping. That's how I remember it, anyway. I could be mistaken. But I do know at some point in both those experiences, the notion of a miracle was not seriously entertained. I think one of the things people don't understand about losing faith is that it's not a decision. It's never one thing. It's a realization. Over a great deal of time I realized I was not praying the way I used to. Years of asking for something and getting nothing taught me to ask for nothing. The long, slow realization about the nature of the Bible could not be overcome. And, as a straw that broke the camel's back, my search for evidence that first century believers in a position to know for a fact that Jesus was raised went to their deaths rather than renounce that faith... turned up not a solitary shred of supporting evidence. I finally realized there was no longer any belief that I held that could qualify me as a Christian. I had to sort through my thoughts and feelings. Reject God outright? No, I would have to know EVERYTHING to know that (spoiler alert: that's bulls#!t). So I told myself I was agnostic. Then I realized that being agnostic is not incompatible with being atheist. One is a "lack of knowledge" claim. The other is a "lack of belief" claim. You could be both. Most atheists are. I eventually came to the conclusion that the agnostic/atheist dichotomy was not a discussion worth having. Most people don't subscribe to it, and you end up sounding defensive for no reason. When it comes to the existence of any god worth discussing, I am an atheist. Period. When it comes to the existence of some abstract concept of gotchagod, I'm agnostic, but only to the extent that such a god defies definition and testable attributes. Why am I not agnostic? Because Yawheh is a fictional character whose attributes changed over time according to what his creators needed for storytelling purposes, much like Superman and Captain America. He had a wife once. Israel went from recognizing many gods, of whom Yahweh was fiercely jealous, to acknowledging only one, which mad His jealousy wildly irrational. All those other gods? Oh, they didn't exist. Or they were demonstrations of Satan's power. Except Satan is an imaginary character too, whose attributes are comically vague. He bad. No good things. Accuser. Needs Yahweh's permission to murder Job's family. And Yahweh GRANTS IT. What the bloody... Anyway, back from THAT tangent. So now it's been 10 years. Now and then I feel an urge to explore some facet of what I once believed. Not often. For example, I believe the 12 are largely fictional characters. Not all of them. Peter, James and John were real. Judas was a fake. Paul (who certainly existed) refers to Jesus being seen of "the 12" not because Judas was still alive after the crucifixion, but because the story of his betrayal had not been made up yet. But they're just mental exercises at this point. My main concern with religion is that government stays out of its way and that it stays out of government's way. I guess we can say it's not a phase.

Great idea, George. We can all post map screencaps when storms emerge, but this is a great way to keep us posted all the time

You haven't read the site. Your assessment of its content and purpose is without value.

It's honestly bullshit, Bolshevik. It's holding posters accountable for what dishonest people did with their posts. Posting on Waydale was no different than posting on GSC, which you would know if you READ THE DAMN SITE, but you won't do that because your lie depends on maintaining a false narrative of what happened there. The nerve. To go on a website patterned after Waydale, that is in many ways Waydale's legacy, and act as if Waydale was just as much a cult as TWI? I'm not gonna say what you can do with yourself, but you do have my permission to use a cucumber wrapped in barbed wire to do it.

I'm done with your BS, dude.

The truth doesn't bother me but your lies do. f-you right back, bro.

Bolshevik, you are seriously out of line with these accusations. Someone fed you a line about Waydale and you're repeating b.s. as history. Respectfully, you haven't the slightest f'ing idea what you're talking about.

Could not

Dupe

That's a ... pity.

Even Nicolas Cage looks like he has no flipping idea what he's doing in this movie, which scored upon release exactly one positive review out of 50 collected by Rotten Tomatoes. Kirk Cameron starred in the original as TV journalist Buck Williams (the character was a news magazine or paper reporter in the books. I forget which). Cage plays the airline pilot [mixed metaphor: airplanes don't have a helm] whose daughter Williams eventually marries in the books. In the upcoming sequel "Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist," Cage's role is being taken over by (wait for it) Kevin Sorbo (late of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and God's Not Dead: Christian Efforts to Misrepresent Just About Everything).

I think they trained us to be jerks by example, but I think it could have been avoided. I did not agree with everything everyone taught, but I respected the hell out of a lot of these Corps trained "jerks."