Your Last Day

[Freakshow]

I would tell whoever it was to piss off and then get back to the usual routine of work hard, play hard.

[yod]

No offence intended GB but since there is no god and we are but a tiny mote within a speck within a microscopic dot in the circle of firelight we like to refer to as the Universe which is itself dwarfed by the infinite gulf in which it sits it's not gonna make a blind bit of diference whether I live or die today or tomorrow.

Even the greatest men and women of history will be as nothing in the end. It's all futile.

We're very likely to get struck by a large rock soon anyway since we are reaching the part of the galaxy that's stuffed full of flying debris (yeah - the solar system orbits the galaxy too didn'tcha know) We get hit every so often like clockwork - last time was attributed with wiping out the dinosaurs. (with a bit of assistance from flood basalts - also referred to as Super Volcanoes - not to be confused with Super duper Volcanoes which are similar but wear blue spandex)

GB - tell me, did you used to walk through London with one of them sandwich boards saying "THE END IS NIGH - REPENT" or anything like that?

HERESY!! HERESY!! You will be judged and found wanting by some big dude who knows stuff....apparently

dontcha know the world is flat and the centre of everything and the sun and moon goes around us.......
thats why Galileo was persecuted by the catholic church, at least he had the last laugh....did they ever apologise i wonder?? hmmmm

[Finn]

Bit different to Hawkins musings that there are an infinite number of universes that exist in different dimensions, each occupying the same interdimensional space.

Stephen Hawkins would know. He's an alien. Just listen to the way he talks.

[inlinefour]

Yeah, the first time was when you called me a short bald prick.

Don't forget the comment about the gay bike that you was riding.

First time was open heart surgery, 50/50% chance that one was...

[Sanx]

HERESY!! HERESY!! You will be judged and found wanting by some big dude who knows stuff....apparently

dontcha know the world is flat and the centre of everything and the sun and moon goes around us.......
thats why Galileo was persecuted by the catholic church, at least he had the last laugh....did they ever apologise i wonder?? hmmmm

Yes, they did. John Paul II apologised for the trial of Galileo, the Inquisition, the persecution of the Jews and gypsies, the oppression of women and ethnic minorities. He forgot to mention Honda riders, sorry, homosexuals though.

Basically, JP2 was trying to seek forgiveness for 2000 years of oppression and violence carried out in name of their 'all-merciful' imaginary friend. The article linked to provides a number of examples:

The Crusades
Pope Urban II, anxious to assert Rome's authority in the east, sent a military expedition in 1095 to reconquer the holy land. The crusaders ravaged the countries they passed through and massacred the Muslim, Jewish and even Christian population of Jerusalem after capturing it in 1099. After 200 years of conflict Muslim armies drove them out for good, but the crusaders' symbol of the red cross remains provocative.

The Inquisition
The attempt to combat suspected apostates, Jews and Muslims at the time of the Reformation spawned tribunals in Europe and the new world that tortured and executed thousands. Ecclesiastical queasiness about flowing blood led to the use of racks, thumbscrews and red-hot metal instead of blades; 2,000 people were burned at the stake during the tenure of Spain's first grand inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada.

The Holocaust
Pope Pius XII never publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of Jews, even when they were being rounded up and deported from Rome. His silence is partly blamed for the failure of Germany's Catholics to resist Hitler. Anti-Jewish Catholic doctrines such as the claim that the Jews murdered Christ were said to have ideologically underpinned nazism. Vatican officials allegedly helped Nazis escape Europe after the war.

Of course, we can add to this:

The Vatican and AIDS

The Vatican's fundamental opposition to contraception which is directly linked to the massive spread of AIDS (and the resultant deaths, suffering and poverty) in catholic countries in Africa and South America. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, claimed that "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom.". In Kenya, were 20% of the population is HIV+, condemns condoms for promoting promiscuity and repeats the claim about permeability. The archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael Ndingi Nzeki, said: "Aids... has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms". In Lwak, near Lake Victoria, Gordon Wambi, the director of an AIDS testing centre, said he cannot distribute condoms because of church opposition and that priests were telling their parishioners that condoms were deliberately laced with AIDS to kill Catholics.

The Vatican and Child Abuse

The John Ray report, commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, discovered accusations against just under 4400 priests in the US alone - about 4% of the total priesthood. Further investigation, criminal trials and compensation claims uncovered a failure of the church to report these acts to the Police and routine systematic attempts to cover such incidents up, even reassigning priests to new areas where they would not be known. The Vatican issued a document in 1962 entitled "The Crime of Harrassment" which instructed Bishops with how to deal with clerics that sexually propositioned parishioners. The document called for such incidences to be dealt with in secret. The problem was known as far back as 1741, when Pope Benedict 14 issued Sacramentum Poenitentiae constitution that warned (amongst other things) of the incidence of sexual abuse in the clergy.
The Magdalene Laundries in Ireland were virtual prisons run by the church for women accused of having committed 'sins of the flesh'. Women were taken to these convents (surrounded by 20 foot brick walls, topped with broken glass), beaten and made to work in the laundries, often for the rest of their life. Attempts at escape were met with beatings. It is estimated that 30,000 women and girls were imprisoned in such institutions; the last of which only closed in 1996.

The list of abuses goes on and on. The Catholic church, like every other religion on the planet, has a blood-soaked history.

[avgas]

I would ride and see all my family and friends, just relax and try and let it all go.
However in the final minutes all hell will break loose in my head, i will get on the bike, i will open the tap and i will race the sun.
Live Or Die Trying

[Oakie]

Quickly plan my funeral service
Say goodbye to KB (quickly)
Probably wouldn't go for a ride
Spend the rest of the day with my family, reminiscing, giving advice to my girls for the future and having the best goodbye possible. If I knew the time of my demise I'd try to go out to the song 'Always look on the bright side of life'.

[yod]

Yes, they did

well bugger me with a bent fish fork....you are full of interesting little titbits arent ya nice

cheers for that

pity they never managed to add 2 and 2 and figure out that the rest of their little system was built on baseless assumptions as well....ahwell, ya can't win em all

[Sanx]

well bugger me with a bent fish fork....you are full of interesting little titbits arent ya nice

cheers for that

pity they never managed to add 2 and 2 and figure out that the rest of their little system was built on baseless assumptions as well....ahwell, ya can't win em all

Reason and religion are not happy bedfellows.

[McJim]

Reason and religion are not happy bedfellows.

Crikey Sanx - my interjections were meant to be jolly little amusing prods for the believers (while trying to avoid being absorbed into The Scottish Thread) you appear to have some very specific points in your soliloquy. I fear we will be seeing this thread in red shortly...in fact it will look a bit like a cardinal itself!

[Sanx]

Crikey Sanx - my interjections were meant to be jolly little amusing prods for the believers (while trying to avoid being absorbed into The Scottish Thread) you appear to have some very specific points in your soliloquy. I fear we will be seeing this thread in red shortly...in fact it will look a bit like a cardinal itself!

I've just finished reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great. It's all a little fresh in my mind. That and having to listen my my fundamentalist Jewish relatives rationalise a return to the dark ages over the last month, I'm a bit more sick (revolted by, would probably be more accurate) of religion now than I have been for a while.

[young1]

Well with the state of my marriage at the moment, I would tell my ex (of two weeks) that she wasn't going to my funeral and that I was dying of Aids!!

[mstriumph]

I would cut both of Grahameeboys hands off so when my day is up, I would go down in history for being the person who saved KB from pointless threads like this one.

I mean come on.

machine's just told me to spread it around abit before i can ....... etc., et al

nevertheless, well said, that man!!

[mstriumph]

........................or somewhere remote with a good book and a bottle of vodka

aghhhhhh nooooooooo - not a GOOD book - 'cause if i died before i found out how it ended it'd kill me ....

[Coaster]

Mmmm. The mind boggles. Would the motivation be the money or the world famous Scracher black pudding? Could be both I s'pose.

Definitely the money - I don't like black pudding! That ranks up there with tripe