Prediction: God will strike down all those fascist dispensationalists.

[Sephirstein]

That is all...

[ixion]

1. nope... I don't think god gives a hoot...

or perhaps South Park was right when they said that Earth was just a big reality TV show, and that the more we fight, the more entertaining it is.

Frankly, I've felt for years that if there is a god, he/she/it has a very cruel sense of humor.

[Tyler Durden]

5. One of the main themes of "Breakfast of Champions" (Vonnegut)

One of his characters named Kilgore Trout is a failed science fiction writer who has written a book called "NOW IT CAN BE TOLD" where the Creator of the Universe comes to the only man with free will to tell him that the rest of creation consists of unfeeling robots, and all of history was designed "...to get a reaction from Y-O-U!"

[ixion]

6. yep... BOC is one of my favorite Vonnegut books...

:hi:

[TreasonousBastard]

7. I think it was Voltaire...

who said God is a comdedian with an audience afraid to laugh.

[karlschneider]

10. I was thinking there was another line in that quote but I was mistaken...

but here's a cool site http://www.brainyquote.com

and more from Voltaire
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/v/voltaire131520.html

[tom_paine]

8. I'm afraid I agree, ixion -- check this out

If God didn't stop Hitler, Stalin, Marcos, Baby Doc, Idi Amin, etc.

She sure isn't going to stop the Busheviks.

I am also wondering if you saw that 1980s "Twilight Zone" entitiled "Small Talent For War"

The plot in a nutshell:

Alien ship lands, alien comes to UN, tells UN the Earth will be destroyed because of humanity's "small talent for war".

The Amerikan delegate pleads for 24 hours to show them what we can do about thsi problem. Even though the alien doesn't see what we can possibly do to save ourselves, he grants the request.

All night long, the UN works to create, for the first time, Total World Peace. When the alien returns, the delegates are justififably proud as they present the alien with the Comprehensive World Peace Treaty.

"Mankind has finally made common cause against our primitive savagery," gloats the Amerikan delegate (this was back when the Amerikan leadership were sympathetic characters, unlike today).

Can you see where this is going?

The alien laughs and tosses the treaty aside with a smirk. Apparently the Human Race was the result of a seeding experiment by the alien's race to breed warriors to fight for them across the galaxy.

Whoops.

"You fight erratically and clumsily. You're weapons are shockingly crude and what's worst is, in your hearts, you long for peace."

Game. Set. Match. Alien beams back up as darkness descends on the Earth.

The alien's final words:

"I thank you for a most amusing day. As your fine earth actor Edwin Wynn once said, 'Dying is easy, comedy is hard.'"

[PurityOfEssence]

12. Hey, wait a minute; that's a Moliere quote!

When lying in bed with life ebbing away, some idiot said that it must be hard to die, knowing that you won't be buried in consecrated ground. Moliere responded "farce is harder", and then died. Player to the bone, he knew how to make an exit.

Of course the league of revisionist non-theatre types are now saying that he didn't write his plays, instead attributing them to Pierre Corneille. Shades of the Edward de Vere silliness...

[neverforget]

2. Or at least karma will smack them hard......

[MikeH]

3. I Am Reminded Of Luke 17:1-2

Jesus said to his disciples "It must needs be that trials and tribulations will come, but woe to those by whom they come. It would be better for such to have a millstone rung around their neck and be thrown into the sea..."

I wonder if this might apply to those who are eager for the Great Tribulation to come, and help to facilitate it, in the hope and expectation of being raptured away while the rest of world goes to hell.

I think that beliefs such as dispensationalism, and believing that these are the end times, pander to people's baser, rather than nobler desires and apsirations.

[tom_paine]

9. As if the Busheviks and now, to a lesser extent, we, aren't

pandering to people's baser instincts.

In a nation such as ours trending towards Imperial Orwellian Oligarchic Totalitarianism and ultimately, Civil War, you will see more and more of people's "baser instincts".

The day we let the Busheviks kill off the Old Republic and crown themselves Emperor, our fate was preordained. Not by God, but by the forces of human history, which are nearly as inexorable.

[Ladyhawk]

4. Theological disputes seem so silly from the other side.

I can remember when I participated in them. :D Now, it seems plain silly.

[PurityOfEssence]

11. Quoth Frank Zappa: "The meek shall inherit nothing."

If you're waiting for the big assumption to tidy up things for you, you've already lost.

It's better to assume that there's nothing there, and that anything accomplished will be done with great effort and with only the toil of like-minded humans to help you in the face of deeply entrenched power and privilege. This is yet another reason I dislike the concept: it puts the believer in a childlike slave-mindset awaiting some pat on the head or permission to get going.

Yes, religion brings many good things. No, the overall accounting of it all is not in its favor.