well, where do i begin.(why did i have to remember this at 4:00 AM? now im gonna creep myself out)

get your popcorn out, this will basically be a horror flick.

first, I must say, has anyone seen the movie "The Exorcism of Emily Rose"?

if you have, do you know those random red hooded things that appear randomly throughout the movie?(at least i think it's the right movie, i forget)

well, this may sound rediculous, but i think those things are real. they crave on fear, and many christians have encountered them in at least one point of their life.

(google: "why do i keep seeing these hooded figures?" and look at the results, they are all going to be pretty similiar to what i'll be talking about).

a pastor at our church, years ago once asked if anyone has ever encountered them, and dozens of people raised their hands(and it was a small church).

i haven't encountered one yet, so i should consider myself lucky.

my mom has encountered these things plenty of times, so has my brother, once, so has many people in my family and plenty of christians overall(this is way before that movie came out, btw, my mom first encountered one, when she was like 12 in the 1970's)

one time, my mom was dreaming, and felt a hooded figure near her while my four month old brother and her were sleeping in a chair, she said she felt the hooded figure slowly raising its hand up to stab her with a knife, she began speaking in tongues in her mind(which is a biblical language, look it up), then the thing disappeared, and when she woke up, the chair that her and my brother were sleeping on, moved across the entire room.

another time, she said she encountered one while me, her and my brother and my cousin were sleeping a room over at my aunt's house,(i was like 1 or 2 and my brother was like 8 or something).

and she sees the room get incredibly foggy and everything in the room became shades of red, then she'd get paralyzed, not able to move, and she could feel these hooded beings crowd around the side of our bed, and since she was paralyzed she couldn't turn her head to get a good look at these things. so she could hear these things talking really weird in some creepy demonic-sounding language.

She tried calling me and my brother to help, but her mouth couldn't even move since she was paralyzed with fear and she began speaking in tongues in her mind, since she could not even move her mouth. and she could hear the things begin screaming really loud and they disappeared out of the room, after they left, the room became normal colored and she could move and talk again, so she woke us up right away.

my brother also encountered one while he was in pre-school or 1st grade or something(I forget), he said he saw something in a red hood, walking from classroom to classroom, and the other kids couldn't see it.

I also remember in 8th grade, i randomly got into a conversation about these hooded figures with some girl in my class, funny thing is, THAT BITCH KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT. she said she was a christian and born into a christian family. her and her sister saw a red hooded figure laying in grass at her school, spitting out liquid. lol

also, my last creepy shit for the night, when my mom was living with my dad, before me and my brother were born, she said she woke up, and the sheets were pulled from her bed, and into the hallway. which was a pretty far distance. she says she saw a small figure that looked like it was made of smoke or something walking across the hallway, and its feet weren't even touching the floor.

so yeah, that motherfucker was levitating.

yeah, i know at this point that you guys must think me and my whole family is crazy, or high or some shit, but many people who we know and don't know have seen the same exact thing, and strange thing is, that they were all christians.

(seriously, google: "why do i keep seeing these hooded figures?" and look at the results they all are pretty similiar to what i'm talking about, or watch the exorcism of emily rose(at least i think that's the movie's name)).

also, i didn't believe this either until i began hearing that many other people encountered these same exact things, and i've encountered similiar situations within the past few years, but i've never had any kind of absolutely obvious signs of one being near me, like some other people.

yeah.

edit: wait what? it took me almost an half an hour to write this? lol

I —- —– – - —, – – —– – — —— – — —— – —— —, —-, – —– —- — ——- – —– —- —- – — ——– – — —–.

Mankind evolved from a bunch of apes running around Africa.

We have craploads of credible evidence already including new discoveries that are slowly filling in the holes in the fossil record. – —- —- - —– – —– — —– - —- —- — —- – ——- —— – ——- —- ——.

Oh we'll definitely find life out there, of some kind. Whether or not it will be intelligent life or more importantly intelligent life we can remotely understand is up for debate. It has been mentioned that due to the exponential increase of technology, if we become capable of interstellar travel, we'll take over the entire observable universe in less than a million years. Since there have been several billion years of time for life to evolve elsewhere, the big question is why it hasn't found us yet. Either rapid, cheap interstellar travel is impossible and we're reaching the limits of technology (which seems hard to believe), all advanced civilizations blow themselves up, or we're actually the first ones. Alternatively we are not the first ones and the aliens above us think of us as only slightly more intelligent than an ant and consequently don't give a shit about our contact attempts because its like a dog barking at you.

i'm agreeing with cesque.

you both are trying your best to turn this into a flamewar.

Currently anti-theist, trying to become a post-theist but its hard.

Explanation:

I'm an anti-theist in the sense that I'm an atheist who believes religion is harmful to humanity (a militant atheists as some theists would say).

A post-theist is someone who believes that whether or not there is a god, humanity is post the point of needing religion, making any debates about belief obsolete.

Also, I don't see how blackhole's original comment was offensive, "god is an asshole" is a valid argument considering all the terrible things that he has supposedly done to humanity (see old testament).

I sometimes say religion is something humans like to hold on to. As I said before, it's difficult to fathom nonexistence after death, and there are many things about religion that sound appealing. But the things that surprise me are why people would want to believe in the biblical "God will destroy humanity" or "You must pay tithing or you'll go to hell". I know these exist for moral reasons, but I also believe that people are using these to take advantage of other people. Tithing for LDS, which was meant for temple construction and various other religious things, was used to fund Proposition 8. And since people are often so reliant on religion, these scare tactics work well.

Of course, I have nothing against the people who believe for themselves. Your experiences are your own. I just have a thing against organized religion (the ones with prominent leaders, mostly) because I can't really think of one without a glaring flaw.

I won't forget hearing about one of the LDS leaders making an anti-homosexual comment, and the thousands of suicides that followed. I won't forget my friend who committed suicide because his own religion didn't accept him. That's why I'm a little bitter.

I don't like suppressing myself for the sake of being delicate. We're all adults. I hope I don't have to tag all my posts with a disclaimer saying "these are my opinions, don't take me so seriously." That's all they are. Opinions. I have no facts backing me up, and that's all this blog was asking for, right?

While I can't say I personally found blackhole's comment offensive, I can see how someone would, and I have nothing else to say on the matter. And to the rest, I don't know where Cesque's (and JID's) sporadic response(s) came from, as the topic had been derailed multiple times before Cyrus came along. I don't see why you say Cyrus is flaming, I don't see how he's diverting the conversation. He posted a few digressing phrases in response to others, where Juurian is the one who posts the off-topic remarks everywhere.

Just lighten up everyone, and stop assuming everyone else is out to ruin your fun.

Okay maybe I'll read the comments after I fill out the survey.

I'm a nihilist, so I don't think anything matters, but I'm nihilistic about nihilism, so I don't think the fact that nothing matters really matters at all. So I kind of make "morality" up as I go, and none of it is right or wrong, it just is. The most plausible god that could exist is about as likely as a teapot Bertrand Russel once launched into space. So, umm, no. And on the extremely remote chance that there was a god, I'm partial to Bakunin's "even if there is a god it would be necessary to abolish him" idea.

Evolution, but saying you "believe" in evolution is kind of like saying you "believe" in global warming.

Nothing is undeniable, if I wanted I could deny reality and declare myself a brain in a vat. Credible evidence? I'd be surprised if we haven't found some already, but it doesn't really seem that important.

I doubt we'll ever find any, but hey, 100 years ago they had a lot of doubts we would ever leave the atmosphere. I guess if Carl Sagan thought we would then maybe it's not too bad a speculation.

edit: The reason bigots are bigots isn't because they offend people, it's because they're retarded. So fuck your religion, no disrespect. Cornell West and Martin Luther King Jr. and James Connolly are still pretty cool. Oh shit, no, wait, Wikipedia says James Connolly wasn't actually catholic. So umm… Ralph Nader?

I know that we're not talking about social science here, but god (or lack thereof) fuck it this is why Milton Friedman is still an influential economist.