On Jan 26, 3:55 pm, Michael Gray <mikeg...@newsguy.com> wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:12:03 -0800, DanielSan





<danielsan1...@gmail.com> wrote:

Michael Gray said the following on 1/26/2008 12:58 AM:

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:30:20 -0800, DanielSan
<danielsan1...@gmail.com> wrote:

Michael Gray said the following on 1/26/2008 12:14 AM:

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:30:55 -0800, DanielSan
<danielsan1...@gmail.com> wrote:

John Baker said the following on 1/25/2008 10:20 PM:

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:26:20 +1030, Michael Gray
<mikeg...@newsguy.com> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:51:40 -0800, Steve Knight <wool...@comcast.net>
wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:18:31 +1030, Michael Gray
<mikeg...@newsguy.com> wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:05:20 GMT, Doc Smartass
<gek...@astroskivviesboymail.com> wrote:

The devil wants to control you.
The LORD wants to lead you!

Implying that the devil is equally powerful as the Father the son and
the holy ghost, the virgin mary gabriel, etc etc all put together!!

What an embarrassing claim to make.

  I understood it pretty much the same way. To me it implied two
equals wanting the same thing.

A bit like:
"17 Coca-colas refresh nearly as well as one Pepsi"
As an advert for Coke.
Yet fools fall for it!

Unbefuckenleivable what the theist brainwashing can do to a once
cogent mind.

That's what makes religion so comtemptible. It gets then when they're
kids, before a cogent mind even has a chance to develop.

I wouldn't mind religion, per se, if it was in a similar vein as Santa
Claus.  That is, something magical for the kids to have a wonderful
childhood with, but then, afterwards, the kids did away with childish
things.

I do not share that emotion.

And that is your call.

I consider the lie of Santa on an equal footing as the lie of Jesus or
YHWH or the Rainbow Serpent.

That's fine.  However, I enjoyed Santa as a kid and I don't really see
the point in taking that away from them.  However, once they get old
enough, they find out.  *shrug*

My dad is an atheist and my mom a Wiccan and they taught me Santa.
However, they weren't too secretive about it.  On Christmas morning,
they'd have us kids wait at the top of the stairs and "turn the lights
on the tree".  It took nearly 30 minutes to plug a cord into the wall,
but I was fooled for about 3 years.

However, by age 4 or 5, I began to think something was up, so one year,
I heard my parents talking downstairs and the sound was coming through
the heating vent in the floor, so I pressed my ear to the heating duct
and heard:

"Okay, the handlebars go into this tube here," and so forth.

The next morning, there was a bike sitting there near the tree.  Santa
Claus was no longer real.

It is my belief (and my belief alone, though others may share it) that
children need a bit of magic in their youth.  However, if a 40-year-old
still believes in Santa...well...

And each time that I have persued this argument to it's logical end,
my interlocutors have moved to my side.

Care to join them?

Not really, no.

Santa is God on training wheels.

Exactly.  As Paul's letters to the Corinthians said:  Put away childish
things when you grow up.  You don't need Santa, God, or a rainbow
serpent to live a full life; throw them away as the childishness they are.

Of course, that's my opinion only.  :-)

I see your points, and you explained them logically and in an adult
manner, for which you are to be commended.

And I can understand whence your positive and negative emotions to
this "thingy" arose.

Pasteur introduced a weakened for of a virus in order to stimulate the
innate human immune system to recognize a malignant invader, and to
gear it to repel the virulent form at a potential later date.

Perhaps that is how I should see Santa, (at least for mentally robust
kiddies)?
A form of acquired inoculation AGAINST unthinking acceptance of the
pronouncements from upon high, through innate "bitter" experience?

Well, the way I saw it later down the line when I became an adult, is
that Santa and God, et al, can help in the short run, but ultimately
hurts in the long run.

When I learned that it was my parents actually doing the hard work for
me and my siblings, I loved them even more than if they just went to
sleep as we did and some magical being brought the presents to the house.

I think Santa actually takes something away, ultimately, from the
parents, just as God actually takes something away from the hard work of
our forebears.

It's like saying, "I did all this hard work, but I won't get any credit
for it; some fantastical entity will."  I hear people on TV thanking God
for helping them pull through surgery and I'm like, "No, it's the
surgeons' hard work, you *****!  Thank THEM!"

Again, that's only my viewpoint.  :-)

And a similar one to mine, with the exception that I cannot abide
deliberate deception on anything.

Michael, kiddo, lighten up a little. There's "deliberate
deception" (like someone telling a bald-faced lie for personal gain),
and then there's "deliberate deception" - like keeping your friend at
your house until all the people coming to *their* house for their
suprise birthday party can arrive.

It's a matter of motivation. If your deliberate deception is meant
only to add fun and whimsy and presents to somebody's life...what's
the big deal?