found a foolproof strategy to boost your ELO

Me to my dog:

"You're the most adorable thing I've never eaten alive"
[Dog continues to whine for me to feed him in an adorable way]
"But I have to warn you..."
[Whines]
"My hunger is proportional to your adorable-ness"
[Whines]
"Well either way, one of us is about to eat"

Anyone else talk to their pets like this when no one is around?

Only me?

Ok then.

No but that was cute llama

#73, yeah we can play, why don't we play chess 960 so it's pure skill instead of memorizing shet, or we can at bullet, and if I can't wipe you out, my friend Benjamin Bok will put you in your place real quick like spit in the ocean. Bye bye after work we can bang

Speaking of eternal damnation, isn't it nice when coolout doesn't pop into a forum and ruin everything? This has been kind of fun.

Look at the original post, I said pray to follow the Will, Thy will, not about winning games, the winning games will come natural as a gift of being grateful and steadfast for what abilities have been bestowed. For example, we shouldnt pray about riches or hot women or to obtain things, but rather to have the defects from us removed and for all the sick and suffering and those that didn't have a fighting chance in the life. And etc, there is more And as a result of that, it will propel us in our endeavors. Work in progress.

That may be good advice for living.  I'm not a believer myself and don't follow it, but it's a reasonable account of what religion, at its best can offer.  Maybe it's not even entirely different from how I, as a nonbeliever, aspire to live.

What it's not is a "foolproof strategy to boost your ELO."  Which is why people are rolling their eyes.

I do find the attitude you describe to make a better case for god than the clumsy, watered down ontological proof Thrillerfan was offering (which was more compelling but also wrong in Anselm's more sophisticated version).  Except that that I find that attitude harder to take seriously, when, time after time in contemporary American Christianity -- including in your initial, ludicrously titled post -- its sincerity is immediately undermined.  Again and again in contemporary Christianity, at least the now dominant fundamentalist sort, when people pay lip service to being humble, they fail to let that be anything more than empty rhetoric that gives them cover to then turn around and push a very strong and very untrue suggestion that, in the end, if you just believe, you'll be blessed with prosperity and success in this world.

It's a shame, because the thing that has always marked the greatest theologians (in Christianity, and also in other religions) is a profound sense of doubt and uncertainty that contemporary self-satisfied fundamentalism can't abide.

LOL llama though

Tlay80 #91, those types of Christians you are talking about sound like the Jehovah's witnesses and Mormons that come up to your door and knock and attempt to explain to you something that you've probably already heard legions of times. They may be polite, but once you take the time to listen you will see that their teaching are similar to an ancient heresy than to the Gospel taught by Christ and His Apostles. It's not enough to believe. If you keep willfully going against the Moses laws and the teaching of Christ then His sacrifice is not going to save people purely on belief. Hebrews 10:26 shows this when Paul was speaking to the Greek speaking Jews who were expecting another sacrifice and were turning to Judaism. I personally went on an 18 year bewilderment and crooked wandering path where I did anything I wanted and did lots of vices and sensual pleasure s. I am still a bad person I have some crooked ways to correct but am in much better place than before. But I have made improvements and will keep seeking even though I am highly prone to worldly ways and very impulsive. One book that helped my faith alot was The Screwtape letters it showed how my intellect was deceiving myself in how I act towards people

Thank you for saying I had wise words, I felt good hearing that but Its not me it's people's smarter than me and I'm just regurgitating it

If prayers does increases your rating all religions people should be in 3k+ but they aren't so I guess it doesn't. 

God doesn’t help…
I tried in 1982.
I was in court on a charge…
The judge asked me if I had any mitigation
I said.
“As God is my judge, I am innocent.”
The judge without hesitation said
“He’s not. I am! You're not. Six months. Take him down.”
—-
Been an atheist ever since 😉

True.

You're not allowed to get help from third parties.

I don't doubt it.  What I want to know is how long it took you to figure that out. . . that is, how long did it take for you to see the connection between the cause and the effect?  What was the process like?

But ... then ...  where did that thing come from?

Curiously, I've noticed the same about certain types of religious folks.

If God clapped his hands, wouldn’t that be a Big Bang. Oh well, it’s just a theory. 

The infinite regress argument, as Thriller has pointed out, is just dumb. It is argued that an infinite regress is impossible, therefore there must have been some creator. There are so many problems with this:

First, it's an exceedingly naive and pre-twentieth century view of time. Einstein has taught us that time is relative and that it cannot be separated from space. For the photon, there is essentially no such thing as time. Time for it stands still. To it, it's the same time now as it ever was or ever will be. Time started at the Big Bang and there was no such thing as "before" the Big Bang because time didn't exist. I know it's hard, but try to wrap your brain around it and do some research.

Second, it just begs the question of where did the creator come from and the answer is that the creator has always been. Well this is dumb, why is a creator more likely to have always been than just the universe has always been. Factor in the notion of relativity, and we just don't know what's going on. You can decide that it must be a god, but that's just your faith. It could be anything. It could be that in "reality" everything is happening instantaneously but from our perspective we're just unaware of it. We literally do not know what the hell is really going on. We can't even figure out why gravity works or what's holding our galaxy together.

And third (I could go on more, but I'll stop here), even if you can prove the necessity of a god as an explanation (which I absolutely do not grant), the flavor of god you choose is up to you. You believe that it's a Christian god, because a book tells you it's so, but you can no more prove that it's a Christian god any more than you can prove that it's a Spaghetti Monster.

That said, prayer is still cheating.

umm... in before the lock?