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My martial arts training has varied. I have taken Tak Quan Do, Japineese Shodokan, Ishanroo, Ninjitsu, and Tang Soo Do.

I live in the Tampa area (Oldsmar) I know Chris from high school. (9th grade) and yes I have stories.

Later

Sorry

The stories will have to wait, I am leaving for New York for the next week. When I get back I will tell you guys about the Momma lama.

later

Well I promised you guys a story about Chris so here is the first one.

"The Mamma Llama" or "The Adventures of Chris in nature part 1."

A long time ago Chris and I were roommates living in Brooksville (somewhere in the mid north of Florida.)

My mother owned 40 acres up there, and part of our rent was to help with taking care of the many animals that she had on the property.

My mother had horses, cows, goats, emus, geese, chickens and, of course, llamas.

One day one of our llamas (Her name was Suki) had a baby llama, everyone was so happy, the baby had been born over night and everything went perfectly.

Well the next morning my mom wanted to check out the baby llama. Now llamas are very protective and they can become troublesome when not controlled, especially when messing around with their young. Of course the capture of the baby llama fell to me and Chris.

We developed a cunning plan: I would dash in and grab the mamma llama (Suki) around the neck, once I had control of Suki, Chris would then slip in and grab the baby taking it to my mother and sister who would be waiting nearby. Yes our plan was simple and direct what could go wrong? Well I will tell you.

The first part of the plan went off perfectly, I ran up to Suki and hugged her around her neck I also planted myself so she could not move around. Chris started in

Now this is the point that I knew we had made a terrible miscalculation in our plan. I had hold of Suki well enough but I did not have control of her head. Suki's head turned on Chris like a gun turret and I herd a rumbling from inside Suki's throat. Now llamas can spit and not just watery fluid either it is a green mucus from inside their stomach far worse than any lugi you may have seen, and it sprays out in what seems like gallons.

Knowing this I wanted to warn Chris of the danger he was heading for, I yelled "Chris look out!" This, it turned out was about the worst thing I could have done, because at that moment Chris was getting his arms around the baby llama and he was looking down. When Chris heard my warning he looked up towards me and that is when Suki let her wad go! You guessed it, splat right in the face I believe his mouth was open and everything. If you have ever seen the Muppet show and seen the Muppets running panicked with their arms flailing, then you have a good impression of Chris backpedaling from spitting range. I think Chris spent the next week in the shower. I didn't blame him.

Oh and the baby llama was fine.

Later

In one of the earlier posts someone asked about my philosophy regarding atheism. My views are these; I have studied the world around me, science, and religion, not just Christian religion but many differing ideas and beliefs. The conclusion I came to first was that there was no Christian God, followed shortly by there are no gods.

With my friends I debated these ideas, Chris had already come to this conclusion while I still just suspected. Together we tested and observed several common mythological ideas. The event that I remember most clearly is a time Chris and I went to a book store in Countryside mall and looked at an astrology book.

Chris and I were born 2 days apart we are both Virgos. This is not evident by just looking at our individual natures, but at any rate Chris decided to do a test without my knowledge. He looked into the book and began to read the description of Virgo.

Every positive trait seemed to fit, every negative trait was not so bad to deny, so I admitted that I mostly fit into the Virgo category. Then Chris turned the page toward me, he had read Cancer not Virgo. We checked further, the wording of every astrological sign was written with such generalization that almost every person on the planet will fall into every category to some degree or another.

From that moment on I asked questions about everything supernatural, I kept a keen eye out for deceptive or generalized wording. I started to do my own checking looking into hypnosis, prophecy, mind reading and of course, religion. In nearly every incident of a hit (correct guess) the wording of the text was so generalized that it was almost impossible to not get a hit eventually. In the case of misses (incorrect guesses) they were far more numerous and generally left unmentioned.

My newfound curiosity and skepticism kept me on a search for truth.

What I have discovered in my so far, full life was easy for me to assimilate, I was not force fed religion and had none of the guilt or anger one feels when they realized that they have been lied to for their whole life.

What I did encounter was the sadness and concern for my soul that the religious people in my life began to feel. They hounded me relentlessly, trying to save me. I retaliated with my newfound information and someone got hurt.

I realized.

One: I lived in America and if people want to worship green jellybeans they have the right to, just as I have the right not to.

And two: Atheism is not for everyone, I found that some people genuinely need a God figure in their lives. I do not have to agree with it but I could accept it.

It was my journey and I found my answers, I do not need for everyone to agree with me.
I have seen enough to say that religions are not all bad; many people derive a sort of comfort from their beliefs, that's very cool, good for them. But just as I discovered that atheism is not for every one, I knew that religion was not for me.

My enduring hope is that mainstream religions can begin to respect other beliefs as equal to their own. I hope to be an example to that ideal.

Later

Testing for gods: You can't really disprove something, but you can rule out its logical existence.

Every person has a different point at which an argument can convince them. The following methods helped me reach mine.

For much of my life I held religion and faith with sort of a lazy indifference. I really did not care one way or another, if there was a God great, if not, so what? This attitude put me in a position to be truly unbiased when looking at the evidence.

Look at Astrology from my previous example. This one turned out to be very easy; we determined that it was most probably bogus due to the fact that every sign was deliberately written to be agreeable and relevant to everyone. After all humans have much in common with each other as long as the writer sticks with basic human concepts he will be agreeable to almost everyone.

In fact when you look at prophesy, speaking with the dead, and fortunetelling similar methods are used.

I also began taking a hard look at the numbers involved, when someone told me that disasters come in threes I looked at their criteria. I found things like, two events in very short order and another two in short order six months later, but this was still considered a hit (in their mind) because six months was not to long to wait for event three to take place and the fourth event became the beginning of the next three.

As I researched I began to see a pattern, these people were willing to put aside logic and conflicting evidence to keep their belief from being spoiled.

I really had never done this to any great extent so it seemed odd to me. I looked deeper.

I began to look into religions, how could they be so inspiring and be wrong?

I began with history, (a subject I liked anyway) I looked at religions of the past, I looked at the history of modern religions, I looked at the history in religions. In almost every case the histories of nations and the world differed from the histories in the religious texts. And the histories in the religious texts differed from each other. If I was to believe that history, (the mostly neutral evidence backed discipline) was suspect the religions must have really good solid proof. After all why would anyone believe them?

As you know what I found instead of proof, were more people putting aside logic. I began to go to the faithful and ask questions, many did not even know why they believed in God the answers varied but the bulk seemed to indicate that they were supposed to. Some of the ones I talked with got angry, "how could you doubt God?" "The Bible is all the proof you need!" So I finally read the thing. I was appalled; it was more violent than any other book I have read to date. It differed on many levels from what I knew to be true of the world around me. Reading the Bible was the worst advice a religious person could have given me. What I saw in that book did not even remotely resemble the warm fuzzy God I kept hearing about. Even the almighty peace lover Jesus says some disturbing things. I delved deeper and looked at both skeptic and theistic information.

The skeptics sited research, translations, artifacts, and they admitted when there were things that they did not know.

The theistic were another matter all together, they sited events in the Bible as evidence of their historic accuracy, they used old discredited artifacts, they used language like we suspect, it must have been, and leads us to believe. They also used all of the old arguments, people and places in the Bible are real therefore the whole Bible must be true. They claimed to know everything about history and it was the guys with evidence that had it wrong. I herd everything from science conspiracies to tricks of the devil.

As I continued my research I began to realize that the Christian god had absolutely no evidence to support it. I questioned faith, why when I sat in church did I not feel the "spirit"? Why when I read the Bible did I not understand the "true nature" of Christ?

My conclusion, was because I was not conditioned to.

As I continued my search I found this to be true of every deity religion I studied, faith was central to understanding and I cannot fake faith, nor did I want to.

At this point I just became agnostic again not really caring one way or another, modern religion seemed harmless enough.

I found myself in Desert Storm; our convoy was stopped because a vehicle further up the line had broken down. We got out and looked around. I came across a scene that should have been horrific but seemed funny at the time. There were several dead Iraqis there having been burned alive by some napalm like bomb or another. I looked down at one, he had died face up, his eyelids were burnt off and his lips had been pulled back by his skin as it shrank, exposing black teeth. It appeared that he was looking up smiling at me. One of the other soldiers in my group said something like, "Allah sure screwed these guys." And finished with "My God can beat up your God." He seemed to sing it like a kid would and did a little jig to accompany it. As this poor fellow smiled up at me, I realized that he probably did die believing that he was protected by Allah and that he was going to be having sex with virgins for eternity. I doubted this to be true in fact I knew it was not true. But he probably believed in Allah as much, if not more than most Christians.

In my mind the dangers of religion/faith began to manifest, and my dancing buddy was not helping matters, to me his thinking was just as dangerous. My next conclusion was this; if God was the foundation of religion, and religion was dangerous and pointless then what was God? Since there was no evidence to support a God, anyway, I felt safe concluding that his existence fell somewhere between slight and impossible.

I have cooled down somewhat since then but that moment has always been with me, funny this is the first time I have told this story to anyone.

Much of what I did in the army is classified, not because it was inherently dangerous or special, but because of the technology being used. So I do not talk about my time there. This story will surprise Chris, Greg, my Mom and even my wife.

Mad, please forgive me I really do try not to be condescending, in fact I strive no to be a hypocrite. But to me faith seems like more logic dodging. I really do not have a problem with people of faith, I just do not understand it, believing something without evidence and accepting something as extreme as an all powerful being in the sky, on a feeling, seems unusual to me. I doubt you can explain why you believe in God any more than I can explain why I don't.

To sum up I guess I am back to lazy indifference, up to the point of being confronted, or judged by the faithful. Than I strike back.

Later

Mad

[Not that I'd argue in favor of astrology, but what was your sample size?]

Boundless, I still have not stopped exploring these ideas. I check new material often. nothing new in 20 or more years.

[but I doubt that he thought Allah was going to protect him.]

When I wrote the word protect, I was referring to his soul. I should have been more specific.

[At a certain point, you have to take certain premises as given, and that moment is an act of faith.]

Illogical here is referring to the personification of something in the lack of understanding.

I just do not get it.

I do not feel what the faithful feel when I am in church, I do not see beauty everywhere, there is plenty of beauty, but there is an equal amount of ugliness out there, now thinking about it I would say ugly has the bigger numbers.

I have looked at the data with every sense I have, there has been nothing that anyone has told me, shown me, made me feel, that leads me to a conclusion of God. I cannot just start believing that my car is a jellybean and I can't just decide to believe in God devoid of a powerful reason. Going through the material again and again checking new sources when they are available has shown me nothing new. I do not see it, I do not feel it, I do not hear it, it is not written in nature, I do not see a god when the rain falls, what do I have left? My gut? ..... Still nothing

I have a relatively neutral attitude on the subject, so if faith held any real answers/power or was at all miraculous, I would have been drawn in deeper. The fact is it is unsubstantiated belief and there is nothing that shows that a God belief is beneficial in any way, except as a placebo and this can often be as harmful as helpful.

I am probably sounding condescending again but I can't verbalize it any better.

If five people look at an object but none of them can agree on what they saw, one guy says a man, another says a tree, the third says a star, the fourth says a rock and the last is not sure, and we were not there to see it, what did they see? I say nothing can be decided at this time, you say God. The difference is I do not see a reason to call the questionable object intelligent.

My reasoning: There are too many differing opinions to make a real guess as to what was seen. I do not know that any of the people are inherently trustworthy; I do not know if any suffer from mental illness, in short their histories are suspect. So I cannot even trust that they really saw anything. They can't all be correct but they can all be wrong, the object could actually be a cloud that took different shapes as it crossed the horizon, or they all could be making up stories. It really does not matter, what matters is the data is not trustworthy.

1. What do you get from Christianity/faith that keeps you believing? If nothing why believe?

2. What is your reasoning for a belief in God?

3. If that same whatever (answer to #1 part 1) can be attained from a non spiritual source does that make faith pointless?

Later

Illogical here is referring to the personification of something in the lack of understanding.

[Mad: I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that sentence. Can you explain?]

Ill try

We do not understand the attraction of molecules completely; does that mean that some invisible man is putting them together? No, the attraction can and probably is a natural occurrence that follows specific laws. This is the same thinking I apply to questions like, the creation of the universe, and why we are here at all. I will admit science does not hold the answers, but just because we do not understand it completely does not make it the product of a thinking being. It could be a completely natural and common occurrence, and until I see more information on the subject I will not jump to a conclusion of an intelligent being as its source.

[Mad: You probably want to be cautious about including such feelings in the category of evidence]

You are correct; I never rule anything out if I do not understand it completely. Religion is a good example of this I do not know where the happy vibes are coming from in the faithful, I think it comes from their own emotional state, but I can never be 100% sure about it. The point I was trying to make here was; if the objects that the faithful say bring them so much peace, comfort and protection/happiness/understanding does not work on someone who was objective about religion, then it should be clear that it holds no special powers or meaning. The reason that I bring this up is because many of the faithful that I have talked with site these things as their proof, and also assert that if I were to do the same I would also feel as they do. I did and I don't.

[Mad: And if you really want to stick to an unbiased perspective, you're better off not even bandying about the term "fact"]

Yea I know, I just got carried away. What can I say it happens.

[Mad: But the fact that we can't all sing the same song shouldn't bar anyone in particular from going it on their own.]

I guess I missed with this point also, let me give it another try.

The five different versions of what was seen represent religions from around the world. Every culture has its own differing story. My argument is this, if man cannot come to the same conclusions when he looks for God, can there really be a universal God? I will agree that yes could be the answer, but if I weigh the evidence equally think the real chances are slight to impossible.

[Mad: The only way I can see out of that paradox is to assume the existence of something that can act without external causation, and it seems immanently reasonable to assume that such a thing would be God.]

This is where I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I see absolutely no reason to call out the God card in the absence of understanding.

This mentality has been used to justify the gods of rivers, droughts, weather anomalies, diseases, astronomy, the wind, and human emotion.

I am not saying that you do not have a good reason to believe what you do. You mentioned that your life has unfolded in a way that led you to your belief. I totally respect that, it is no different for me, I just came out with different results.

Later