Of course not........... Of course I am not wrong. Just wait until September 14, 2004...... and then we will see if what I have said is right or not!

Yes........ such is a wonderful thing!

Such as yourself......... I presume!

1) I was pretty sure you were making fun of Dovina for suggesting so in the first place. 2) Nurturing, even by a robot, is not morally neutral. There is a rather interesting and amusing note in the memoirs of Master Wellington-Beeves concering an Irish infant abandoned in a forgotten back courtyard at Cambridge and somehow allowed to grow to maturity more-or-less undisturbed, but that's hardly applicable to this discussion. 3) It's hard to say there's "very little correlation between high church-going levels and low murder rate", because the moral influence of religion extends to most nonbelievers, as Dovina has demonstrated. You can't say a moral is innate simply because the practical reason for it has been forgotten or become irrelevant. I can't imagine what reason might have been for the refrigerator thing, but the condemnation of gayishness, especially gayish monogamy, was probably at some point pretty practicaly, involving political and species-minded motivations. At any rate, gayfear still has to be learned (and unlearned).

I believe all practical religions have some conception of hell, and that it's probably not possible to believe in a good afterlife without believing in a bad one. Note that the few religions which have tried to do away with their ideas of hell (e.g., modern, ecumencial, American Christianity, for the most part) are all colossal wallowing failures.

thanx for being so nice!

bow'ls

I’m a believer sometimes and in some ways, nonbeliever in others, existentialist in feeling responsible for my acts with the dread and anguish that responsibility sometimes brings, moral sometimes and in some ways, amoral in others. Another way of saying I’m wishy-washy, changeable, and justified therein by virtue of womanhood? Every issue is like a new day for me, even if it’s been hashed over for centuries. My day is ending while yours begins, a result of our positions on the globe, and its position relative to the sun. My yours reveal some new slant or freedom from a new slant, maybe the knitting of an ancient culture into your own.

By all means, hop on the soapbox. By the way, please vote. 10 means you want me for President, 9 and below mean you're for those bums, Bush or Kerry.

While this is true for those religions that send unbelievers to hell, I was referring to the comfort of knowing your loved ones are safe and alive and that you will be reunited with them. I would like that comfort, but know I cannot have it.