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Hang With Friends

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Location: Earth
Members: 879
Latest Activity: on Wednesday

Come on in, pull up a chair!

Picture yourself spending some time with congenial friends, sharing your lives and pictures from your cell phones." They're curious about that cool game, song, movie, camping trip, art show, or other event that fascinated you. You talk about all kinds of stuff, poetry, styles, personal achievements, relationships, and bad days. You can share your inner child, and laugh together. They sympathetically listen to your feelings about serious topics like politics or climate change, even when they don't agree.

Personal validation comes from paying attention to one another, giving more than you get. Everyone respects you and themselves, despite our amazing range of personal tastes and interests. They'll tell you they don't agree with an idea or behavior without implying you're a bad person or somehow deficient. It's an "I'm OK, You're OK" kind of fellowship, where nobody tries to make himself look better by picking on somebody else.

Nobody here is into mind games. A discussion started with a loaded guilt-throwing question will be deleted.

This group is not intended to compete with other groups on topics they cover but to "fill in the cracks." Whenever a discussion dwells at length on a topic for which there's an existing group, we urge you to provide members a link to that group to continue along their tangent.

A comment is a shout-out, which will get lost in a few days, because the comment wall is just a random stack.

Please start a discussion to share stories, photos, and videos. Replies will pop up in your "latest activity" and a conversation can develop from the feelings and thoughts you contributed. Groups are built on discussions.

Discussion Forum

Degrees of Doubt: The Claims and Credentials of Ravi Zacharias (The Thinking Atheist)

Started by Loren Miller. Last reply by Chris May 17. 1 Reply 2 Likes

Anyone here ever run onto an apologist by the name of Ravi Zacharias? I've seen his name dropped multiple times on YouTube as supposedly being THE ONE APOLOGIST that no atheist wants to cross swords with, because of his facility with christian…Continue

Tags: Ravi Zacharias, Steve Baughman, The Thinking Atheist, Seth Andrews

The Most Hated Woman in America (The Thinking Atheist)

Started by Loren Miller. Last reply by Gary S Apr 19. 7 Replies 3 Likes

Before Aron Ra and Matt Dillahunty, before Dawkins or Dennett or Harris or even Hitchens, there was Madalyn Murray O'Hair. In the midst of an America where Christianity was being flaunted as a defense against the godless communists of the Soviet…Continue

Tags: Frank Zindler, The Thinking Atheist, Seth Andrews, Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Proud Dad is REALLY Proud Now!

Started by Loren Miller. Last reply by Todd Williams Apr 12. 16 Replies 6 Likes

As some of you may or may not know, my daughter is a television news producer, currently working in Nashville, Tennessee. Her assignment is the morning news, which means she blasts herself up at umpti-ump in the morning to organize and prepare a…Continue

Tags: Emmy, news, television, daughter, dad

attacking ideas (TheraminTrees)

Started by Loren Miller. Last reply by Grinning Cat Apr 4. 1 Reply 4 Likes

Attacking ideas is a considerable portion of what we as atheists do. Why attack ideas? Ideas earn attack when they don't serve people, not just us but those who adopt said ideas, mistakenly thinking that they have value when they don't. Our…Continue

Tags: ideas, Islam, TheraminTrees

bending truth, or "We Can All Be Manipulated" (TheraminTrees)

Started by Loren Miller. Last reply by Grinning Cat Apr 4. 40 Replies 6 Likes

The following is one of TheraminTrees' most thorough-going pieces, wherein he looks at the process and techniques whereby a "religious" organization (which will sound VERY familiar to most of us, once introductions are made!) takes a person who…Continue

Tags: indoctrination, truth, manipulation, TheraminTrees

The Playboy Interview: Richard Dawkins

Started by Loren Miller. Last reply by Loren Miller Mar 28. 16 Replies 4 Likes

I suppose it was the news that Playboy magazine was returning nudes to its pages after a year's hiatus that sufficiently perked my curiosity to check them out again. I hadn't looked at Playboy since perhaps 2008, when I began to recognize that I…Continue

Tags: Richard Dawkins, Playboy

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Comment Wall

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Comment by Plinius on January 19, 2016 at 7:16am: I like it, Ian, clear and well told, but I don't like that depression.

You reminded me of my own "spider", so I'll put it here:

Between hope and fear

on a silken thread

..

from cantilever window

to the window-frame

I build security

without a doubt.

..

I’m a spider.

Comment by k.h. ky on January 18, 2016 at 7:55pm: Ruth, I hope all goes well. Everyone I know has had a good outcome.

Ian, l like your poem very much.

Joan, what's the temps in your area? We are down to near zero. We will be before morning.

Kelly, being gay is still punishable by death in many places. Sad but true. And religion is always behind it in one way or another.

Comment by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on January 18, 2016 at 7:04pm: I didn't understand your comment, Joan. All I saw was a 2014 weather map image, no commercial or commentary.

Great poem, Ian.

We thought twenty one was cold, Randall. The grandkids sound great.

I see your point about musicians, Loren.

<sigh> On a personal note, my respiratory problem has cleared enough, so I'll get the cardiac cath tomorrow. I'll be out of touch for over a day if I get a stent. Bye for now.

Comment by Loren Miller on January 18, 2016 at 6:18pm: [sigh] First Bowie, and now Glenn Frey of the Eagles. 2016 is NOT starting out kindly to musicians.

Comment by Joan Denoo on January 18, 2016 at 1:22pm: Ian, your poem on depression moved me. The phrases offered a visual of unexplainable thoughts:

Like a spider that has

spun in vain in an empty room

where only dust moves

I also am intrigued by the way your lines form an hour glass. It gave me a shiver when I made the connection of being in the empty room to

grit our teeth and move toward

the light, every step a modest victory.

Thank you for sharing.

Comment by Joan Denoo on January 18, 2016 at 1:09pm: Although this is a commercial for a product, I send this because of its photos and commentary on climate change. Climate change is a fact, what is not so certain is the cause. A conspiracy? I can't imagine humans behaving in such a way. Perhaps the most popular and common theory is not correct, science often goes down a mistaken path. However, the beauty of science is its ability to self-monitor and make mid-course corrections.

I liken science to a plane flight from Los Angeles to Bejing, it is off course 99% of the time and makes corrections along the way around the planet.

Comment by Ian Mason on January 18, 2016 at 12:44pm: After a lot of prevarications and distractions, I've finally started to translate some of my poems from Danish to English. Here's one to start with, about getting through a depressive episode:

A Spark

Like a spider that has

spun in vain in an empty room

where only dust moves

we try to reach for the impossible.

All efforts seem wasted,

all labour worthless.

Nothing helps.

Nothing.

Again

a new attempt.

We stretch, breathe

blow on hope’s tiny spark,

catch sight of a single sunbeam,

grit our teeth and move toward

the light, every step a modest victory.

Comment by Randall Smith on January 18, 2016 at 8:28am: I had my eyes checked the other day. All good except for cataracts forming. To be expected at my age.
Spent a couple of hours with my 3 grandkids yesterday. Holding the 2 month old baby was a special treat. He was taking me all in, smiling and "talking". A real charmer.
C-c-c-cold this morning, -4 on my thermometer. The wood burning furnace is cranked up full throttle.
Last night's Democratic debate was the same ol' rhetoric. At least they stuck with the issues. Nothing "birther-like".
Happy Martin Luther King Day.

Comment by k.h. ky on January 16, 2016 at 10:36pm: I just watched the movie The Imitation Game. The story of Alan Turing the man who helped break the Enigma Code (helping to end WWII) and is later prosecuted for homosexuality.
An excellent movie.