I reposted one of my other posts in the Fuckyoulist group, and here's the thread that ensued:
http://community.livejournal.com/fuckyoulist/8105084.html.

I recently came across a wonderful internet company called Crosswalk.com.  Their mission statement was very comforting to me regarding the nature of their work:

Mission

As a Christ-centered, for-profit corporation, we will create value for our customers, employees and shareholders by:

• Bringing glory to God in all that we do;
• Equipping people to grow in their faith and the practical application of it in their lives;
• Enhancing fellowship, communication and relationship-building within the Christian community; and
• Encouraging and enabling personal involvement in the care of those who are spiritually, emotionally, physically or financially poor.

They also have a very scripture-centric statement of Faith, saying additionally, "We believe that the Bible is God's written revelation to man and that it is verbally inspired, authoritative, and without error in the original manuscripts."

They, in fact, wrote a story a bit more than a year ago about the crisis of Bible illiteracy in our nation today in an attempt to promote the reading of it.  If all of our predominantly Christian nation read the Bible, our problems would not be so great as they are.   <a href="http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/?adate=10/14/2005#1356622">The important story about Biblical illiteracy is here.</a>

<a href="http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/preface.html">I found the link to that story here.</a>

http://www.amazon.com/gp/discussionboard/discussion.html/ref=cm_rdp_st_rd/002-2139572-1088001?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0199291144&store=yourstore&cdThread=Tx1TGCZ26PPEB9X&reviewID=R396JHO923TTF8&iid=0199291144&displayType=ReviewDetail

Read this review and the comments.  I didn't read all the comments, but it sounded like the second guy, Scott Stratton, was saying some things I agree with.  The first commenter is wrong as far as I see it.

Sure, the truth can be depressing--but only if you don't search for the "whole truth."

Think about these few ideas I hold pretty close to my heart:
1)  You can't know anything absolutely--not even that you can't know anything.
2)  Why should we want an answer to the question "why" so badly, when all we can hope to do at bottom anyway is live or die?
3)  It is wrong of me to speak of myself as one person.  When I probe my head, I can separate my processes and think from multiple perspectives.  There is my ego--and then, I find that my ego is separated into distinct other egos.  There is also a "universal" perspective, which can inform me when I'm living primarily by my ego or my more automatic functions... and occasionally, I think totally from the universal--it's a feeling akin to zen... distinct from the other parts in its absolute application of number (1) up there.
4)  The only thing I have ever experienced is my own existence.  When I cease to exist, the only thing I will ever have experienced is my own existence.  "Oblivion" isn't the right word... the bottom line is that "infinity" and "life" mean exactly the same thing as far as my experience is concerned.  To further explain how I reach this idea... My knowledge about myself is in my brain.  It is in material.  I believe it isn't spiritual because it can be erased by brain damage.  When I die, my knowledge about myself disappears along with my brain.  I am always something else.

How is it that Mormons can believe in polygamy and Jesus?

Ideas evolve with human beings... they are transmitted by language in the realm of experience, and become part of a person's established net of ideas or don't--the point is, somehow, ideas stick with a person and are measured against each other somehow as he gains in experience.

A person is prevented from feeling rational if he is forced to accept conflicting ideas as true. For instance, it is a difficult task for most people to understand light as being both matter and wave. The average adult regards quantum mechanics as a scary subject because it is difficult to explain without reference to larger objects, which do not exhibit clearly (in every-day experience) quantum behaviors. If those same adults were made to understand that all things obey quantum mechanics, they would feel more at ease with it.

A person may be taught from the time he is an infant that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and that God's true word is recorded in the Bible--all that at the same time that he is taught that the Earth is covered by rocks and fossil records which may be used to learn about its history. He may be told that the Bible is confirmed by archaeological scholars to be a real history at the same time he is told that the Earth is much older than the Bible says it is. These things contradict each other, so he does not feel rational. When someone tells him that this is normal--that something called faith bridges the gap between the things that don't match up and erases the meaning of their irrationality--then he feels that he can accept this, and will hold fast to the idea.

The idea is transmitted by language. Its use as a mask for irrationality and as a declaration of the failure of rationality prevents it from being questioned. It is an idea that protects itself. It is a virus, transmitted from person to person; once inside a person, it reproduces and is given to their children.

Christianity is a virus. It causes people to suffer in Africa and South America for very obvious reasons. It causes people to suffer in the United States for less obvious reasons. Some people would go as far as saying that it causes good things, as well--but this is not true. The aid which Christian organizations gives to the poor transmits the idea to these poor people as well, and prevents them from searching themselves, from trying to live a different life because things are okay in the end--why bother? Thus it also garners support for its misdoings in other places and to other people. The faithful homeless support the transmission of AIDS in Africa. The existence of the armies of Christ support the purpose of the armies of Allah.

You people want God too much; you want Him so much that you will do anything to have Him.  The only reason you want Him, however, is that someone once told you about Him.  Imagine how different it would be if the question had never come up.

If God sent AIDS and syphilis to punish sexual deviants, did he send this cold I caught to punish people who get sneezed on?

And why do people think they should bless people who sneeze disease into the air?

Just wanted to make my introduction. My name is Alexei, and I'm from North Carolina. I'm an undergrad at the University of Rochester. I'm not politically confused, but I am hard pressed to give anyone a general idea of what I tend to put stock in. NC is not really the most progressive state in the union (but at least it's not SC! kidding, kidding... but really.), so I'm enjoying the difference in mentality up here in NY.

I don't like George Bush. I'm close to being very anti-government on a lot of things. I also don't like being called a liberal and being referred to as the priveleged son of my parents, because that's something no one knows about. I don't like when people talk about "the left" and "the right." I'm not religious--not the way I see it. Actually, I would call myself an agnostic except that that means more than agnostic to a lot of people--even to most true-to-word agnostics (I think) it means something specific which I wouldn't mean if I referred to myself as agnostic. I think that people everywhere are basically brainwashed by one or another thing, and that frequently this is why no one can get the point across without a firm yet meaningless counterpoint being spit back at them. I would not be surprised if the guys outside with flyers about the apocalypse are correct--... -of course- if everyone listens to their respective fundamentalist leaders on the religious importance of the war it will all come down to what they're predicting. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy; same with the call to World War III. It's pretty desperate.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say I think it's hopeless.

Admittedly, that last post was kind of pretentious and banal--but then, so is this sentence.

Scenario:
Boring person A is walking on the street toward boring person B.
Person B is also walking on the street toward person A.
Recognizing one another, they each stop to say hello and talk a while.
After their exchange, person A indicates to person B that the door before the two of them is his own destination.
Person B indicates that he must get to his destination now.
Person A says goodbye to person B.
Person B says goodbye to person A.
Person A enters the door.
Person B continues walking.

Life and death?

I read an article by Stefan Wolpe last year, and I think he was writing about something similar to what I've been thinking more for several months now--that there isn't anything to be understood in music, at least not necessarily (although it's possible I'm totally off base and even at the opposite end on this). It's a sensation. You maybe think of listening to your culture's classical and popular music as tasting pasta with pesto or bunny track ice cream or apple pie, and then you try listening to something you haven't heard before and it's like pasta with apple sauce or pesto ice cream or bunny track pie. You taste and experience and maybe think about it and make your own understandings, although they aren't in the music--they're in your head.

Anyway, I went to this concert last night and it was just the thing. I wish I hadn't fallen asleep a few times during the last piece on the program, but I didn't feel too bad. It was a long concert and the last item was maybe 25 minutes long. Speaking of long, I've been thinking about going to this percussion thing next Friday night... it starts at 9 pm and ends at 2 am and consists of two sets. Sounds like something I haven't witnessed before.

So I'm not pro. So what? So you're going to tell me I don't have any credibility?

I hear a lot that when I finally get into the real world, I won't think the way I do. How is the world I'm living in right now not real? Even if everything is a cardboard cutout, I don't think I could be convinced that it isn't real as long as it functions. If it stops functioning, I'll say that it doesn't do what it seems it would do, but then the reality will be that it works in a new and different way.