Joe Shmoe

I was thinking about Scientology, and how the story is about Xenu blowing up people with H bombs and the souls being the cause for our sicknesses and false religions and what not, and I got to wondering, do they have some sort of GOOD guy in their story? Think about like, every other religion. Maybe the main guy wasn't loved, but definitely wasn't just thought of as an evil jerk. Zeus, Odin, and God were feared, but not thought evil, they weren't the enemy. So who is Tom Cruise's Thor?

Honestly, since Jesus is supposed God, my bet is he'd rather have millions spent on a church. What's God's first commandment? Put me first! Worship me! Give me attention! Like all of my facebook statuses! As God says, he is a vain God, a jealous God. But what do you guys think? Does Jesus actually care about the poor more than himself? Does Mr. Jealous God also?

Just because you can make a watch doesn't mean you can make a Ferrari. Why do religious people always think that God has to be omnipotent? I mean, couldn't something with finite power still make the universe conceivably?

(Though I'm an atheist, for the record, so no need for comments like "well God isn't real." Yeah, I know, I'm just saying why do religious people feel the need to heard themselves into tough arguments by saying God is omnipotent?)

Now, praying something like your thanks could be the exception to the following thoughts, though not totally. I'm talking about praying for the Colts to win a superbowl, for world hunger to end, for a fancy sports car, for your relative to get healthier, etc.

You say that God has a plan. So clearly at the moment the Colts losing is part of this plan. But you then think that because you like the Colts, the plan made by an omniscient being should be changed? To me, praying is like saying, God, I know you thought it was a good idea for half of Africa to starve, but I would just like to point out to you that that's not so cool, you should change your mind. How do you do that with an omniscient being with a plan? (though it does happen plenty in the Bible, so I suppose it's not without precedent)

As for saying thanks, it seems the moment you feel it in your thoughts, that should suffice. For a God who knows everything, why should you need to awkwardly try to word your thanks when he can just peer straight into your brain and see, ah, Fred is thankful that he has food!

Now some people pray to talk to God and get answers, and I guess I don't have anything to question about that in terms of plans and omniscience and what not. But plenty of people pray for the things addressed. Why? Or how do you reconcile these problems?

I think we are all familiar with the image of finding Christ in the sky and being like, hah, I'm not actually dead, now go eat a bunch of ham and find my hidden Easter Eggs.

I know that there is a passage in one of the gospels where they roll back the rock and find that he is gone. But that doesn't mean Jesus is risen. It just means he's gone. Are there any passages that actually talk about Jesus's resurrection?

Just wondering. And if you do, how do you handle this proof?

1) Cookies are the tastiest possible snack I could eat.

2) Cookies are in my mind.

3) Cookies would be more tasty if they existed in my mouth as well as in my mind than to be in my mind alone

conclusion) Cookies are in my mouth.

But they aren't (yet, all this talk makes me kind of want to grab a few).

And watch me cure world hunger.

1) Cookies are the tastiest possible snack.

2) Cookies are in my mind.

3) Cookies would be tastier if they existed in every human's mouth and in my mind than in my mind alone

Conclusion) there is a cookie in every human's mouth.

Through sheer logic I can prove that world hunger isn't real. I hope you all enjoy your cookies.

Why does God hate the Egyptians and Philistines and Babylonians and all the other great empires that God destroyed or at least really messed up? Why does He only like the Jews? Are these other empires wicked? If God is the only way to get morality and God is only dealing with Israel, how can the other empires then be anything but wicked? By not revealing Himself to them, isn't God forcing them to be wicked? Why doesn't God use His infinite power to bring about peace and love and the kind of atmosphere an all loving all powerful being should be able to create? Why does He demand empires destroyed, not just their soldiers killed but their women raped and children slaughtered and cattle destroyed? If you're on God's good side maybe you can convince yourself God is all loving, but try to think about what it'd be like to be a first born in Egypt when the plagues hit. How was that all loving?

I've been lead to believe that the tree of knowledge gave them the knowledge of good and evil, right? But if they don't know right or wrong, then how can they understand that disobeying God is evil and that they should avoid it? What was to stop them from saying, whatever I'll eat the apple anyway? They don't even need the snake. They can't understand why to obey God anyway.

And should he have posted that question here instead?

Hear me out. So humans are supposed to be created in God's image. Now, maybe you say that doesn't mean his physical image, but please don't just resort to that. Come up with something more creative. So God should be able to grow beards, right? Now, it is a sin to cut the side of your beard (look at Orthodox Jews for example). God cannot sin. So God cannot cut the sides of His beards.

Now God has been growing facial hair for all of eternity, right? So there is an infinite amount of hair in heaven. How can there be any room left for angels or humans?

Here's a few examples... (source: http://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.c... )

Retinal arteries/veins lying on and in front of the retina of the eyes. Many causes of blindness come from this defective design. (Is God blind? maybe that's why He doesn't see all the suffering in the world)

Larynx too highly placed, leading to common choking deaths. (Maybe Nietzsche was right- God could be dead!)

Knees similarly are not strong enough with the tibial cartilage in two legs for human weight, jumping down, and running. If we had 4 legs it would not be so bad. How often do you see cats with knee problems? (Can God create a rock so heavy He cannot lift it? Yes, because His knees couldn't handle the stress of lifting it.)

Appendix is a seemingly useless relic of evolution that often gets infected and ruptures in a life threatening peritonitis unless removed quickly. (It seems like bad news bears if God got appendicitis.)

What about the Laryngeal nerve? Is God's as ridiculous as ours? It starts in the brain, then runs all the way down into the chest, loops around the heart, and comes all the way back up the larynx. Does God's do that too?

A little background: the immaculate conception is actually about the birth of Mary, not about the birth of Jesus. From what I've been lead to believe, the immaculate conception is basically removing the original sin from Mary so Jesus didn't catch it in the womb or something. Why could God just decide, yeah, well for you Mary there's no original sin, but then Jesus still had to go die? Why couldn't God just do that for everybody and skip the whole crucifixion business?

So, when I ask why Jesus had to die, why God couldn't just wave His hands and say, poof, say you're sorry and you can go to heaven!- Christians tell me that to wash away our sin, Jesus had to die, or something along those lines. So, for us to get into heaven, we had to kill Jesus. But if we had greeted him warmly, subscribed to his teachings, and learned to love each other without killing him- then we would be doomed to Hell?

How do you make sense of this paradox- that heaven requires murder, while love would lead to Hell?

Please don't tell me about what color the solid is...

I had the reaction Fe + CuSO4 which yielded FeSO4. I was wanting to know what color FeSO4 and Fe2(SO4)3 are. Please cite sources if possible. Thanks!

Determine whether each of the following functions is a solution of Laplace's equation uxx + uyy = 0. (Select all that apply.)

u = x2 - y2

u = ln(sqrt(x^2 + y^2))

u = e-x cos(y) - e-y cos(x)

u = x2 + y2

u = x3 + 3xy2

u = sin(x)cosh(y) + cos(x)sinh(y)

So my old nano's itunes is on an ancient desktop that will stop working any day now. First, how can I get the itunes library from the desktop over to my laptop? Secondly, how do I get that library to sync up with my ipod touch? I'm not really tech savvy so feel free to talk to me like a six year old. Thanks!

My physics teacher has been giving us sample AP multiple choice tests and grading it as +1 for right, -1 for wrong, and -1/4 for a blank. He claims this is how it's graded by the college board, but I find that a little hard to believe, I think it's graded as +1 for right, -1/4 for wrong, and 0 for a blank.

Does anybody know for sure how they grade it? Please provide a source if possible, like from apcentral.collegeboard.com or something like that.

I went to sparknote's help section, and found something telling me to put the author's name and stuff, but I can't find anywhere the author of the sparknotes pages that I'm using.

(their advice http://cgi.sparknotes.com/citing.epl )

clearly the author they're referring to in that isn't the author of the work being analyzed, as Brian Philips didn't write Shakespear's Hamlet...

I need to cite this page:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

I went to sparknote's help section, and found something telling me to put the author's name and stuff, but I can't find anywhere the author of the sparknotes pages that I'm using.

(their advice http://cgi.sparknotes.com/citing.epl )

clearly the author they're referring to in that isn't the author of the work being analyzed, as Brian Philips didn't write Shakespear's Hamlet...

I need to cite this page:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.