a breath mint, a candy mint, or maybe just the holy spirit

I think I remember reading that prayer thing, and I think I remember it later being debunked. You know how I am about studies, if you already believe something it’s no problem to design a study to prove it. Studies have to be studied. Generally the more interesting studies hit it big in the papers while the subsequent, more boring, debunking studies never get past the last page.

I remember way back in seventh or eighth grade I was kind of interested in all that paranormal stuff. Michael Weber and I used to do experiments where one of us looked at a number and the other tried to guess what it was. I think we did a little better than the odds, but not much. All these things like ESP and predicting the future, and astrology, they have all these anecdotal evidence, but whenever a hard objective study is done on them they reveal zilch, but like I said, debunking theories are boring.

I overstated when I said the Unitarians didn’t believe in god. They believe in the cosmic marshmallow (as opposed to the hairy thunderer of the hard shell Baptists.) They are probably like you deists where they sit around and try to figure out his nature, which sounds to me more like you are talking about morality than an actual being.

That Trinity thing is crazy man crazy. It all goes back to the early days when some folks (the Arians) thought Jesus was more like a man, and others (the catholics) thought he was more like a god. But back in those days, as you know they didn’t do things like the Unitarians and the deists, they settled their differences with swords, because what is better than dying for your faith? Somehow that resulted in the trinity so that Jesus could be both, and they threw in the holy ghost who nobody knows who the heck he is. I see where you mention that the holy spirit is in the bible, who is he there?

You say if god didn’t want us to improve ourselves he wouldn’t have given us the desire to do so, but conversely if god didn’t want us to sin, he wouldn’t have given us the greater desire to do that. Like I said earlier I think you guys are just discussing morality, which is fine just fine, but when you drag in the holy spirit and the gang, the next thing you know you are eating fish tacos on Friday while all your pagan and atheist pals are whooping it up over pepperoni and sausage pizza.

When I was flipping the coin I was thinking that since 76 we have had equal election victories for the reps and the dems. Of course I have always been for the dems (except for 60 when I was inexplicably for Dick, but that was around the time when I believed in ESP too), and I assume that you would have been for the reps, so we might as well have flipped a coin. Well I have never believed, as all those pols claim to believe, in the wisdom of the American people. The best thing about democracy is not that we choose the best leaders, but that if we lose, we know we get another shot four years later so we don’t have to get out our swords.