Strega

@Strega – “Understanding the distinction between right and wrong – that in itself demands a cohesive definition structure around the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.”

– I agree – I think it’s perfectly valid to use the concepts “right” and “wrong” without defining them, but there comes a point when they do need to be defined.

I define “right” a…[Read more]

@Strega – something terrible happening is what I had in mind. Car crash, getting burgled, falsely arrested, that kind of thing.

@Strega – I don’t believe in horoscopes any more. It’s not so much that they’re vague, as that they’re true for everyone.

“Honestly Simon, if you took one set of tarot cards and did hideous disrespectful things to them, and took a duplicate pack that had had some kind of opposite attention, I don’t know, a spiritual blessing I imagine, do y…[Read more]

@Strega, I think your question is an interesting one, but it can only be answered if life after death exists. You’re right, I don’t really know the answer, but I have a recording of what is supposed to be the materialised – real – 3D – spirit of a 2-day-old baby who had “passed” thirty years earlier. This recording is from 1949 at a home circle…[Read more]

@Strega,
In one of the oddest Bible versus God showed Moses his ass…

Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put theein a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with…[Read more]

“experiencing the “tendency to thrive” of all living things.” – also, nurturing it is part of spirituality and established religion. @Strega, this is real, not imaginary, that’s the whole point. It’s based on firm evolutionary biology. But it’s also THE main fact/value crossover.

I think my analytical approach is valid, but it’s also a bit…[Read more]

@Strega Thanks, good to be here. Been a while and I’m shocked at the redesign. Did everyone have to re-register? Is all the history lost? Seems like there should be a FAQ or notification of some kind.

@Strega 90 percent of the time, hunting uses a long gun (a shotgun or a rifle) that would be very difficult to conceal. Handguns can take deer but they’re suboptimal to say the least. Smaller animals can certainly be dispatched readily with the tiniest of handguns shooting a mere .22 LR round–but how many of your neighbors subsist on squirrels…[Read more]

@Strega
I have witnessed on occasion southerners become a little extra-southern in the presence of non-southerners. The accent becomes a little thicker and the language and expressions a little more colorful. I wonder if you experienced some of that.

It sounds like you were in mah neck o’ the woods. I live about 30-45 minute drive east of Baton Rouge.

@Strega and @Simon Thanks!

Sigh. Smiting was a lot of fun @Erock68la in the first four millenium, but to be honest for the last two I’m just kind of half winging it. Every time I blow the top off a volcano, whip up a hurricane or start some tsunami…it doesn’t wipe out an entire race or obliterate a city full of innocent children as it used to. Ever since my son was flayed…[Read more]

@Strega – in a very real way, you’re right about your dog Peach, because the raw material of compassion from one living creature to another is this tendency to thrive. When Peach licks you and you feel happy, he invokes your tendency to thrive. Peach hasn’t gone into your brain and injected it with happy chemicals, he has set off a predisposed…[Read more]

@SteveInCo – of course, no need to apologise. & @Strega, What I mean by the evolutionary basis for mysticism, of which the quote from Christine Cainer is an example, is the inbuilt tendency of all living things to thrive, and to seek survival. These tendencies are not conscious, but automatic, and are a direct result of evolution and natural…[Read more]