Dear Shockadelic,

<<If either is the case, we will never know The Answer.>>

That's sad, because then DiamondPete will still be looking for one, forever, what a torture.

As far as I am concerned, I don't need "The Answer", I can live quite happily without it.

Were you ever upset upon waking up from a dream, about not knowing how it started and how it ended?

Dear Belly,

<<Y WHAT IF IT WAS YOU?>>

Should I get a machine-gun and shoot everyone wearing a blue shirt (because my tormentor wore a blue shirt at the time)?

<<Mostly art the hands of SERVANTS OF CHURCH/GOD?>>

A servant of church is not necessarily a servant of God!

Shall I repeat it?

A servant of church is not necessarily a servant of God!

Once more to be sure you understand:

A SERVANT OF CHURCH IS NOT NECESSARILY A SERVANT OF GOD!

Y that upper class newspeak is lost on me.
Been washing the piggery out have you.
Hogwash came to mind.
I am researching the Catholic Church world wide and its crimes against children.
I may even agree, in fact should, that such perpetrators are not Christians.
Why did mums and dads send the kids there? because they thought/think they are.
Being of lessor intelligence than you, probably true,am I wrong for questioning how you can tell a bad Priest from a good one?
Surely we do not have to wait for a victim to tell us?

But it isn't likely to happen any time soon, is it Yuyutsu.

>>Once everything is discovered, science will be used up and dead, curiosity too<<

It is a pretty big universe, you know. That "everything" is quite a lot of stuff, when you think about it. So I doubt that boredom is likely to set in just yet awhile.

But I do find this a little puzzling.

>>Once you reach that stage, then perhaps out of sheer boredom, you will begin asking yourself those questions that really matter, those questions which science cannot access, those questions that do not pertain to the objective world, those questions to which no empirical evidence can exist, those questions which go beyond facts.<<

Actually, quite a lot of people are unprepared to wait for the full revelation bit, but instead are already spending a reasonable percentage of their thinking time pondering notions that will never be cracked by logic, or reason.

Women, for example. We know that they have a particular chemical make-up, can be seen, weighed, measured and - to some extent - categorized. But show me a man who says "I understand women", and I'll show you a stand-up comedian, and expect a punchline to follow immediately.

No, we don't need to exhaust our understanding of "everything" scientific, simply in order to turn our attention to the eternal mysteries of life.

And in the cold light of day, science is unlikely to persuade anyone here away from their existing belief systems. It is just possible however that science might one day discover that a part of the brain that we have inherited from our ancestors is more susceptible in some people than others, to emotions such as fear, or a desire for security, or just simply a need for companionship/fellowship. That will still not be an "answer" to why some are religious and others not, but it might at least provide a working hypothesis.

And while it might give a clue as to "how" , it will still leave the question "why" essentially unanswered,

Dear Belly,

<<am I wrong for questioning how you can tell a bad Priest from a good one?
Surely we do not have to wait for a victim to tell us?>>

You are not wrong at all, these are excellent questions!

So we have two questions.

The first is very difficult to answer unless you are well and truly spiritually evolved - only then you may be able to tell whether a particular priest is indeed religious or not. There may be good indications, but no absolute and definitive external/objective criteria.

Fortunately, you don't need to know the answer for the first question in order to answer the second, which is whether the priest in question is likely to molest your child.

This second question is mundane, it does not require understanding of religion: I can try to advise you there, but no better than others who never heard of God.

Try for example to avoid sending your kids to institutes with poor records such as the Roman-Catholic-Church. If you must, then have the priest-teacher undergo a polygraph test first; or maintain constant supervision; or take up remote learning.

The best course of action IMHO is to prepare one's child or grandchild, to talk with them in advance, to explain them the dangers, to teach them assertiveness, to assure them that you will not be angry at them if it happens, that if they tell you about it then you will get them out of there. My parents did just that, long before any public awareness. There is no substitute for good parenting.

For that you don't need religion, just common sense.

Dear Pericles,

Nice try, but before science can ask 'why' some are religious, it must first find out 'who' are religious. That's incidentally Belly's first question. Science can find accurately which human-bodies go to church, use beads, etc., it can then correlate such information with their brain-waves and detect patterns, but how can it possibly find who is approaching God when it has only empirical data at its disposal?

Yuyu and Shocky can waffle on with their "beliefs", page after page after page.

But ....

They can't escape that there's ....

No ghosts

No heaven

No spirits

No supernatural life

No Gods

No god

No deity

No deities

No devil

No angels

No demons

They hate being told that. It really offends them. Too bad.

Y Good morning.
You speak in tongues, as far as I can make out.
I see no answers to last nights late line ABC TV.
A story of mass rape and a Church welcoming the offender back after his prison term.
I see a duck and dive game in your words, maybe I am wrong?
Show me the concern for the victims, the loathing for the perpetrators.
Tell me of you thoughts that why our first known Christian Church has 6 times the offenses than all other churches.
Maya those who some claim warn us this world ends this year.
I shudder at the long walk, the last walk, those children to be sacrificed took.
Yet far more committed suicide after their treatment at the hands of Catholics.
Do we need God?
Well we need every God to have morals, even if like all Gods they are imaginary.