insincere

It is almost unknown to have a major fraud among scientists, or doctors, or even football players.

What makes religion so much easier for a snake oil salesman?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y&gl=GB&h...

Should we make gun-ownership illegal?

I was surprised that 92% of circumcisions are performed without anaesthetic.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/he...

That's got to hurt.

Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo - who was hitching from Milan to Beirut to promote world peace - has been found murdered in Turkey.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7344381.st...

Ms. di Marineo's trip was intended to show that ordinary people in the middle-east were good folk who could be trusted. Instead her murder will make people afraid of Turkey.

I don't think Ms. di Marineo was being fair. All countries have opportunist murderers - and it only takes one.

The 'Brides on Tour' stunt has done more harm than good. But wasn't this always going to happen?

Is it fair to trust people to such insane lengths?

I am used to having my answers reported by fundies who can't deal with them. I nearly always appeal.

I just had an appeal upheld! Not only has my answer been reinstated, but it seems the reporter will 'lose influence'.

I wondered where to post this. I decided on R&S because it is a miracle.

should she be encouraged to attend the procedure?

Why or why not?

Would this lead to an increase or a decrease in elective circumcisions?

When circumcision first became popular in America (around the 1860s) the main benefit its proponents claimed was that it made masturbation more difficult and less pleasurable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_advocacy

Since then there have been many claims for different benefits of circumcision - most of them hokum - but no-one ever questioned that the procedure makes a penis less fun.

Americans still circumcise, but nobody seems to say that this is to make masturbation less fun anymore.

Why are modern Americans in denial about this?

Do all the smaller holes give us proof of lesser Gods?

What about really tiny holes?

I keep my woman in her place

And don't do it by half.

She loves it when I'm masterful.

(It always makes her laugh).

When I first saw 'Hard Candy' I found it a badly-made and disappointing film. But I watched it again last week - to clarify some ideas I'd had about it in the meantime.

If you don't know the film it is about a 32 year old photographer who takes a 14 year old girl back to his house (we never discover his actual motivation). The teen then rapes, tortures and finally murders him.

There is a preposterous plot twist at the end, which makes it all OK, but what bothered me was that I cannot imagine a film where a 32 year old man rapes, tortures and murders a 14 year old girl getting made at all - let alone winning 'best film' awards.

Is it that violence against men is currently more acceptable in our society? Or is it just that modern women have a greater need to be entertained by this sort of storyline?

I don't have an issue with the real thing - an adult can do as he likes.

But I notice torrentialflame just changed sex (and this happens regularly here).

Always male to female - any ideas?

what does His watch look like?

who has decided to block you?

I'm starting to get rather proud of my list.

Throughout the 1800s the LDS church promised that one day it would send missions to the Moon to convert the inhabitants there. (Moonmen fashions were described in detail by Brigham Young).

http://www.lds-mormon.com/moon.shtml

Do the LDS still have such missionary intentions - or have they decided to abandon their lunar brothers to damnation?

The latest UN report confirms that almost every country on Earth still discriminates against women.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7331813.st...

This is in spite of a commitment from 185 member states to redress unfair laws by 2005 at the latest.

Thinking about this: I can see that in my country women are still very much second-class citizens. But at the same time I can't think of any particular legal or social change which would be likely to redress this.

You can't make people in general change the way they think.

Are there ways in which you think your country (wherever it is) could make things fairer for women by actual legislation?

because it thwarts His Divine Purpose.

What about antibiotics, antiseptics, clean drinking water, and washing your hands after going to the toilet?

how is it possible to do anything that merits eternal damnation?

I could understand if an eternity of sinning deserved seventy years of hellfire.

The other way about is just silly.

When one points out the obvious nonsense in the Bible, a standard Christian answer is that the text has been mistranslated at that point.

Yet this argument is always used by people who have not themselves bothered to learn the original language.

Is this because such people prefer a Bible with errrors?

says something which is false, this is only because it is really true?

I found a website which explains that rabbits don't chew the cud, but they do chew the cud (because the Bible says so).

http://members.tripod.com/~GaryCooper/rabbit.html

Is this what we need to remember when we talk with believers: that they don't really mean what they say?