Labour's smoking ban killed the British pub

[MyUserName]

He's probably iggied me by now!

Nah, you have to win a couple of arguments before he goes that far.

If he is not ignoring you then you could always ask how someone could go to heaven and be in paradise if they knew one of their loved ones was in hell being tortured (although, I could not be in paradise if I knew anyone was being tortured), even if the bible is reinterpreted so hell is not torture and just 'not heaven' you will still never see them again and they will never have the luxuries you do, how is that paradise?

Or whether someone praying for help in an exam and receiving it counts as cheating?

[Gittins Gal]

Nah, you have to win a couple of arguments before he goes that far.

If he is not ignoring you then you could always ask how someone could go to heaven and be in paradise if they knew one of their loved ones was in hell being tortured (although, I could not be in paradise if I knew anyone was being tortured), even if the bible is reinterpreted so hell is not torture and just 'not heaven' you will still never see them again and they will never have the luxuries you do, how is that paradise?

Or whether someone praying for help in an exam and receiving it counts as cheating?

Crikey, I can just about hold my ground when I'm debating politics but theology... Forget it.

There was an old couple in our village when I was a kid who genuinely believed in the little people. Their garden had little ornaments of fairies, elves and little sprites everywhere.

A lovely old couple. If only all religious beliefs were so simple and innocent. That's about all I have to say about religion I'm afraid.

[MyUserName]

Crikey, I can just about hold my ground when I'm debating politics but theology... Forget it.

You would be on equal ground with him then!

There was an old couple in our village when I was a kid who genuinely believed in the little people. Their garden had little ornaments of fairies, elves and little sprites everywhere.

Did they genuinely believe or is it possible that they just pretended they genuinely believed because you were little?

[Gittins Gal]

You would be on equal ground with him then!

I'm just not going there!

Did they genuinely believe or is it possible that they just pretended they genuinely believed because you were little?

They were completely eccentric so I think they genuinely believed. Not that they tried to make me believe in any of it or anything. But it has left me with a bit of a thing for gnomes and things of that ilk.

[MyUserName]

They were completely eccentric so I think they genuinely believed. Not that they tried to make me believe in any of it or anything. But it has left me with a bit of a thing for gnomes and things of that ilk.

Oh bless them, I hope it made them happy!

[d000hg]

I'd ignore MUN's silly tirades on religion if I were you. He insists he's won fundamentally unwinnable arguments which have remained unsettled for thousands of years, and has bees in his bonnet about torture and amputees (probably an unhealthy insight into his fascination with medieval warfare).

His strategy is:

• Pose some seemingly reasonable question i.e. "why do bad things happen to good people"
• Throw the discussion back and forth until you reach an impasse
• Bring the exact same topic up agin in the next week's thread on religion (there's always one isn't there)
• You give the same answer or try re-phrasing, until it reaches an impasse again
• Repeat over and over
• Eventually you get sick and tired of having the exact same discussion and stop answering
• "You haven't got an answer", he crows, "I've won the argument"

We went through this on a few different topics, comprising hundreds of replies on my part. I blocked him not because I object to atheists having a go, but for the pure monotony of having to hear the same thing over and over and over, with little passive-aggressive digs about me in other threads when I wouldn't pay him the attention he so obviously craves -he's spent months insisting I don't have him on ignore, replying to my posts and insulting me in the hope it will irritate me enough to unblock and retaliate. I only see his quoted posts but that's more than enough

You can debate with him if you like but "ask how someone could go to heaven and be in paradise if they knew one of their loved ones was in hell being tortured" is literally a cut-n-paste of what he kept asking me like a year ago, which I answered at length at the time. Maybe he forgot that part, because if he wanted to know my answer he could just read the thread again.

[mudskipper]

I'd ignore MUN's silly tirades on religion if I were you. He insists he's won fundamentally unwinnable arguments which have remained unsettled for thousands of years, and has bees in his bonnet about torture and amputees (probably an unhealthy insight into his fascination with medieval warfare).

His strategy is:

• Pose some seemingly reasonable question i.e. "why do bad things happen to good people"
• Throw the discussion back and forth until you reach an impasse
• Bring the exact same topic up agin in the next week's thread on religion (there's always one isn't there)
• You give the same answer or try re-phrasing, until it reaches an impasse again
• Repeat over and over
• Eventually you get sick and tired of having the exact same discussion and stop answering
• "You haven't got an answer", he crows, "I've won the argument"

We went through this on a few different topics, comprising hundreds of replies on my part. I blocked him not because I object to atheists having a go, but for the pure monotony of having to hear the same thing over and over and over, with little passive-aggressive digs about me in other threads when I wouldn't pay him the attention he so obviously craves -he's spent months insisting I don't have him on ignore, replying to my posts and insulting me in the hope it will irritate me enough to unblock and retaliate. I only see his quoted posts but that's more than enough

You can debate with him if you like but "ask how someone could go to heaven and be in paradise if they knew one of their loved ones was in hell being tortured" is literally a cut-n-paste of what he kept asking me like a year ago, which I answered at length at the time. Maybe he forgot that part, because if he wanted to know my answer he could just read the thread again.

I never saw your answer to that one - I remember NAT's answer, but not yours - can you humour us?

[mudskipper]

NAT's answer...

http://forums.contractoruk.com/gener...ml#post1706408

[d000hg]

Short version: God knows best so if that's how it happens it must, by definition, be right.

I've concluded since that while we can maybe accept this on an objective, unemotional level - if you believe God is just and perfect you have no logical alternative - we are unable to really grasp it as a practical reality because we're not capable of that. It's perhaps a little akin to soldiers dying in war... objectively it is right to fight sometimes but if you were standing on the battlefield witnessing the atrocities first hand, you probably would struggle very hard to hold that truth in your head at the same time, you'd have to distance yourself from it.

A poor metaphor, NAT's better at this stuff. But in summary I don't understand how one can be happy with this situation, but I trust the person in charge knows better than me.

[MyUserName]

I'd ignore MUN's silly tirades on religion if I were you. He insists he's won fundamentally unwinnable arguments which have remained unsettled for thousands of years, and has bees in his bonnet about torture and amputees (probably an unhealthy insight into his fascination with medieval warfare).

*yawn* Yep, he have me there although I would say obsession rather than fascination and it is with anywhere and time that people are being harmed rather than just in the medieval period.

His strategy is:

• Pose some seemingly reasonable question i.e. "why do bad things happen to good people"
• Throw the discussion back and forth until you reach an impasse
• Bring the exact same topic up agin in the next week's thread on religion (there's always one isn't there)
• You give the same answer or try re-phrasing, until it reaches an impasse again
• Repeat over and over
• Eventually you get sick and tired of having the exact same discussion and stop answering
• "You haven't got an answer", he crows, "I've won the argument"

*yawn* yep got me again, just have a look at the weekly threads on religion where bring up the exact same topic again and again and crow about winning arguments.

We went through this on a few different topics, comprising hundreds of replies on my part. I blocked him not because I object to atheists having a go, but for the pure monotony of having to hear the same thing over and over and over, with little passive-aggressive digs about me in other threads when I wouldn't pay him the attention he so obviously craves -he's spent months insisting I don't have him on ignore, replying to my posts and insulting me in the hope it will irritate me enough to unblock and retaliate. I only see his quoted posts but that's more than enough

Actually for a good while I had no idea he had me on ignore until he suddenly announced he was putting me back on ignore again (hence he must have been reading my posts whilst he was ignoring me to decide to they warranted his not ignoring me anymore or something) but that he still read post from people he ignored (apparently you can choose to see them anyway). I reply to his posts but not purely for his benefit as there are other people on here who are normally taking part in conversations. The part about me continually insulting him is just lies *sigh*. I rarely insult people on here or in real life.

How he knows that I insisted I was not on his ignore list when that is hardly the kind of thing people are going to regularly quote is currently unspecified.

You can debate with him if you like but "ask how someone could go to heaven and be in paradise if they knew one of their loved ones was in hell being tortured" is literally a cut-n-paste of what he kept asking me like a year ago, which I answered at length at the time. Maybe he forgot that part, because if he wanted to know my answer he could just read the thread again.

His response at the time was that is was a good question and he would think about it but he never came back to the thread to reply that I am aware of.