Yes, I quite agree with your controversial stance. Raising your kids to know the difference between right wrong is better than protecting them indefinitely. But since I’d rather ignore obnoxious people who are selfish enough to do what they please without respecting the common space between people, I’d appreciate it if they kept it private. For example, if you’re one of those people who likes to get obscene in front of kids, I’d rather someone puts you away than having to go out of my way to avoid you.
What do you mean by censorship? If you’re talking about taking provocative art out of the public arena and making sure that nobody that can be negatively affected, such as children, is the audience, then yes, art should be censored. If you mean censoring art in a selective forum that has a mature audience only, or an audience that is fully aware of the subject matter and will not be offended, then no, that would be awful. For example, I damn well appreciate it when a sleazy scene in a movie is left out of family entertainment on television. People who want to see it in full can rent the DVD or subscribe to an adult channel and view it in private.
Being an ordinary person, putting your faith in prayer is different from pressing a button.
That way I see it, God is all-knowing, wise and ‘listens to all your prayers’ - how and when He chooses to answer them is His decision. Like your prayer, your patience will be rewarded. The same way as a good child would respect his/ her parent’s wish to, I don’t know, not eat too much ice cream and grow up not obese.
At the same time, if you pray with true conviction, would you not agree that the effect your love for the patient and for God would have is a medicine for the soul (which in fact, I consider the true self)?
To me, it’s not wasted time at all, unless you were too busy praying to attend to the physical needs of the patient, which would just be shirking.
I suppose my minimalist statement didn’t come across as clearly as I thought it did. The atheists can whine all they want about how there’s no God and throw tantrums to say that God is a foolish, silly concept but in the end it doesn’t make the slightest difference – the atheists will continue arguing, and believers will continue to hold on to their beliefs.
However, and the reason I’m on this side along with others who say that god is fake, is that God is too easily attributed to anything and everything. I mean, you have sensible people who worship everything from idols to animals as well as people who call a human (who was no doubt a manifestation of God), God Himself, so I guess pasta can have its merits too.
Anyway, I’d just like to add that God is above petty spaghetti, invisible pink unicorns and the like. Anyone who’d like to fool around with noodly appendages is free to do so on his/ her own time, but all that silliness doesn’t get more than a smirk.
