Aaaanyway, haven't you seen "The Reaping?" All them frogs and such are sinners who were never gonna make the cut to begin with. The rapture's already doin away w/ the bats and bees...

Ok i better stop now before i bring down a bolt myself  ;)

All those Christians praying in the open in large groups are destroying America by inviting God's wrath. Indeed, God probably delivers exactly the opposite of what people praying in public ask for. The more "pray-ins" at gas stations, the higher the price of gas will go!

Such irony... God punishing America for praying, not because we celebrate cultural and sexual diversity.

[Were this truly a Christian nation, there would be laws banning public prayer. Check you Bible.]

His precise request is...

"Instead, he says anyone who wants to follow his example should keep it simple. "God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say.""

How might God deliver us from high gas prices?

(1) Provide a leader for our nation who will push for conservation and alternative energy?

(2) Bring on a depression that will lower gas prices because no one has a job that permits them to buy even the cheapest fuel?

(3) A conflagration in the Middle East that pretty much eliminates gasoline as a fuel and, therefore, no one will be concerned about high gas prices?

(4) Exterminate the human species by cooking us, drowning us, destroying our crops, infecting us with disease... the results of global climate change.. therefore delivering us from high gas prices?  Oh crap... his prayers have been answered!!!!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR!

Remember the episode of The Twilight Zone where a guy wishes he were leader of a small but powerful nation, a nation the will change the course of history? He finds himself transported to a bunker under Berlin just as the Russians are approaching. Ooops.

People who are taken in by these kinds of scams really do deserve to be ripped off.  Remember the PTL club?  Did anyone ever feel sorry for the schmucks who sent the mortgage money to Jim Baker?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

He can deliver you from just about anything by snuffing out your life.

Biofuelist preachers do double GHG, don't lower energy prices, and suck up huge tax dollars from beleagured americans who are already losing their jobs and homes over high energy prices and climate disaster.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Exterminate the human species by cooking us, drowning us, destroying our crops, infecting us with disease... the results of global climate change..

I've been very restrained as far as promoting GMOs is concerned and you decide to try to bring it up here, where we already have a perfectly enjoyable controversial topic?

Believe in one or the other?

Well, first I don't believe in a God who intervenes in human affairs or ocassionally shows up as a bush or something to communicate important laws to illiterate peasants who never seem to get the message straight when they pass it on to others.

That said, God and GMOs are not mutually exclusive.

Let's suppose we're talking about the Old Testament God. God created humans in His image. Therefore, it is quite reasonable the humans themselves would be creators and manipulators of life. I'd say the Bible directly supports use of GMOs. Like Father, like Son, like all God's children.

Let's suppose we're talking about God the Creator, the God of Deists, the God of our nation's founders. All is natural. There is no supernatural. And we are provided with all we need for survival and happiness. That includes our brains, reason, science, technology. We show our gratitude and respect for the Creator by sharing the bounty and providing for other creatures' survival and happiness. If GMOs are used to preserve the natural world, then they are okay... the Creator and GMOs are not mutually exclusive.

I now you return you to your regularly scheduled topic.

How does a person work with a Diety like that?!! One never knows when he or she might piss him off and get life on the planet reduced to a few members of each species! That's why it is dangerous to pray. If He is out there, we should all keep a low profile, ignore Him, and maybe He'll wonder off to play on some other planet.

At least you don't have a bass boat.  (Gotta tease the new guy.  FNG.  Hehehey.)

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Dont mind drx. He does a good job on himself....resorts to pre-pubescent name calling and the like.

btw...I have a flatbottom skiff which I can wear a number of hats in. You might catch me w/ a fly rod, shotgun, or d.o. meter. Its nothing pretty...all about utility.

<<
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
>>

"Closet," by the way, is 16th-century English for any secluded room, not necessarily very small, perhaps a bedroom, and NOT the four-by-four space where you hang coats and stick the vacuum cleaner.

We are definitely on the same page about the OT God.  And one of the annoying heterodox habits of evangelical Christians, on top of their fundamentalism, is their readiness to read the Old Testament as exactly as authoritative and normative as the New Testament.  In orthodox Christianity, by contrast, the Old Testament texts need always to be interpreted in the light of the New Testament gospel.

And as for the quote by Rocky Twyman -- whoever he is -- , that is of course simpletonian religion, that one prays to God only when no one else can help.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Instead, he says anyone who wants to follow his example should keep it simple.

"God, deliver us from these high gas prices," Twyman said. "That's all they have to say."

>>

The prayer, "God, deliver us from these high gas prices," does NOT mean, "God, lower these high gas prices."

All it means is, "God, have mercy on us who are burdened by high gas prices, and make conditions such that we may endure them."

In principle, there is nothing in Twyman's prayer that runs counter to the wisdom of Tom Friedman and his environmentalist fellow-travelers, that gas prices ought to be high -- whether or not Twyman realizes that.  What he is praying for more radically, is that our society might evolve, sooner rather than later, so that its members, especially its disadvantaged members, may no longer be burdened by high gas prices; rather, that life may be comfortably livable, in spite of the difficulty of affording gas.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

It is getting harder to find such a place. Down here in Appalachia they worshipped in brush arbors by the side of the road before churches were built.

You could always find solitude and peace in the mountains before they started blowing them up. It is hard to meditate or concentrate with all the blasting and equipment shoving the mountains over into pristine valleys.

There will be no peace in the valley for us until this environmental nightmare is stopped. The gods of avarice and greed have visited us in the name of the coal corporations that ravage the land.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

The problem is obvious. Smoking is to blame for your ills but you don't want to admit that. Instead you try to find ways to keep your habit and make it less harmful. Maybe you go to light, or ultra light cigarettes for a while. Maybe you try chewing tobacco.

The real solution to getting sick from smoking is simple; don't smoke or quit if you do. Anything else just postpones the inevitable.

So enviros are advocating the only real solution to fossil fuel "smoking" produced ills. We all know that. But the oil companies like the cigarette companies are constantly trying to say that oil smoke doesn't hurt anyone or isn't addictive (hehe) and all the while trying to sell more and more of their product.

As consumers we have to start thinking realistically about what we are doing to our planetary body. About the effects of our second hand oil smoke on all of the creatures that share the planet with us and stop trying to postpone the inevitable.

Mike Johnston

That's very different then, nevermind.

I blame those damned bass boated bastards with sonar and fishing maps for selling all our fish to the tourists.  Their latest travesty is starting the fishing season early and disturbing the fish while spawning.

They have done this for years with the bass, turning smaller lakes into tiny panfish pools.  The idiots fish right over the spawning beds, distracting the bass elders protecting their eggs, then the tiny panfish eat all the eggs.

The bass are the only ones who can eat the spined bluegills and sunfish without getting choked, so when this predator is eliminated by early fishing, it is a tragedy for the lake's biodiversity.

Now these numbskulls have moved it up so all the species are under assault during spawning.  A GOP panderer to the asociation of fishing guides did it.  Gotta pay their monthly bass boat and gas guzzling SUV/truck payments.  That's why I'm kind of touchy on the bass boat issue g8.

As far as ethanol, go ahead and talk your talk, this provides a good opportunity to bash it from time to time.  The public will come around on ethanol and Barack will kill it eventually.  But biogas and organic farming, that's the biofuel that can save the climate.

Sorry I called you a doo-doo head.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Caniscandida?

But in the Bible, hard work and resourcefulness receive no praise in themselves.  I can only think of that passage at the very end of the Book of Proverbs, in which the prudent and industrious housewife is praised for getting up before dawn to begin her duties.

In Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son (Gospel according to Luke 15.11-32), the elder son who works obediently and hard, and does not squander the family wealth, not only does not get the big celebratory bash that his reckless spendthrift brother gets, but comes across looking cold-hearted and mean.

Then, by way of explaining the saying, "Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first," Jesus tells a parable (Matthew 20.1-16) about day-workers, set to work in a rich man's vineyard, but hired at different hours of the day.  Those who are hired an hour before the whistle at quitting time receive the full daily wage, no less than those who were working since dawn.  The latter bunch complain, thinking (not unjustly) that they deserve more than the guys who worked for only an hour; but all they receive is a gentle rebuke, for not appreciating the rich man's generosity toward the late-comers, and for forgetting that they themselves received no less than what they contracted to receive.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.