On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:11:37 GMT, Jim Elbrecht opined:

escapee wrote:
-snip-
He got lucky and probably wasn't serving in wartime. If I am wrong, I thank you
and all your family for the service he did in combat, and during any training he
did for our great nation.

You're an ignorant putz. You should than every soldier no matter
where or when they served. If we don't have soldiers serving in
peacetime then we might as well close our doors forget this whole
democratic experiment.

I think I wasn't making myself clear. I do thank all soldiers regardless
whether or not we are at war. I'd go out of my way for any soldier, anytime,
anywhere. But thanks for the intelligent response of calling me a putz.

Since it seems to matter to you [as you hide behind a alias], I am a
combat veteran-- I joined the Marines in 1968 and chose to go to
Vietnam. To even imply that soldiers that serve during peacetime
don't deserve every bit of the thanks of a grateful nation as those
of us who mucked through some war zone is the height of ignorance.

I never said or implied what you perceived I said or implied. Thank you for
your service regardless where or when. I'm glad to see you have your anger in
check.

I love America. Freedom, however, is not free.

Nice bumper sticker--- use your head.
-snip-

Jim



Need a good, cheap, knowledge expanding present for yourself or a friend?
http://www.animaux.net/stern/present.html

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:11:37 GMT, Jim Elbrecht opined:

(...)

I love America. Freedom, however, is not free.

Nice bumper sticker--- use your head.
-snip-

Jim

Um, the above is a direct quote of our leader, President Bush 43.


Need a good, cheap, knowledge expanding present for yourself or a friend?
http://www.animaux.net/stern/present.html

In article ,
wrote:

wrote:

I didnt see any of it, and I went to school with vets. How much of
this did you
actually see in NY?
-snip-

Just as a datapoint-- I came home from Vietnam in July of 1970 to
rural upstate New York.

I was *never* disrespected, and was even thanked a few times. I also
drank for free for 30 days until I reported to first North Carolina,
then Virginia---- Nobody ever gave me shit about my service.

This seems the realistic history. Not entirely, but to a surprising
extent, the "spit on & called baby killers" cliche is urban folklore;
making it "hippies" who did it heightens the fantasy element of folklore
memory. Rather like other bits of urban folklore, the stories are always
re-told as "this happened to me" or "this happened to my best friend,"
when it is just a tale retold, that if it happened rarely didn't happen
the way it was told or to as many people who retell the folk tale. Where
are the photographs of hippies at airports & shipyards & train stations
with "Baby killer!" signs waving at all the soldiers they magically knew
they'd be seeing arrive all sorts of places. There is a derth of
contemporary editorials & photographs & film footage proving this
preposterous widespread youth-culture assult on fellow youths ever
happened.

If some dorkpizzle of a highshool dropout once followed a soldier through
the streets of Manhattan yapping at him as a baby-killer, that hardly
reflected the behavior of hippies, let along the peacenik
make-love-not-war hippies who'd be more apt to annoyingly give a soldier a
flower with all the endearing qualities of a Jew for Jesus harrassing
Jews.

It happened rarely to few, but in hindsight, everyone thinks or pretends
they saw it happen personally. All the boys in my social class went to
Vietnam; some never returned; some returned heroin addicts or otherwise
messed up in the head; some were so antisocial from their experience they
literally had to go live in the woods for ten to twenty years. Others
became activists & advocates for vets who were injured by their experience
in Vietnam. Some let their hair grow out or otherwise joined (or returned
to) the mainstream of youth culture, & some few became & remain to this
day antiwar activists; others got themselves a Harley & a pot belly & a
wooly beard & preferred THAT subculture. Most just returned to their
lives, a little older & a lot different than they would've been without
the experience of losing an unjust war, & bonded best with fellow vets who
knew what it all meant, & were often a little quiet about it all around
others, unless it was dragged out of them as I would often drag it.

But most returned to families & friends, who loved them & were proud of
them, & interacted in a completely healthy manner with an extensive social
circle, among whom everyone had a brother, cousin, or friend who'd been to
Vietnam, & never disrespected soldiers in the least.

One of my great friends was a navy sea in vietnam, afterward a professor
of navigation in the NROTC program at the University of Washington, where
I worked. Grant never imposed his experiences on anyone, but if you were
interested, & asked why he limped, or what he did in the war, hooboy was
he a bundle of tales, most of them heroic. He never suffered the guilty
syndromes of so many vets because his job was essentially to drop behind
enemy lines & bring back downed or captured soldiers -- that's an
experience you live through, if you live through it, with a good
self-image. He was also not afraid to admit the war was pointless &
unjust. And one of his experiences was the discovery of a Me Lai-like
village where every inhabitant had been killed from a helicopter -- the
only survivor was a kitten, which Grant put in his jacket, & when a
helicopter came for a pick up, the kitten remembering what the previous
helicopter had done, filled Grant's jacket full of liquid catshit. The cat
remained a base pet to the end of the war, a reminder to everyone that
there were indeed baby killers among them, atrocities being one of the
universal facts of war.

So vets as well as peaceniks knew all too well that the baby killers were
real, & that even if anyone did get put on trial for their crimes, the
worst they faced was a short time of house arrest, or so the very public
case of Lieutenant Caulie indicated. So yes "baby killer" was a term that
was abroad. But I was not unique in that era in having nearly all the boys
of my family, & in my neighborhood, drafted; most of them came back okay,
but not all of them did; & nobody loved them less or dishonored them in
any manner, we were just glad that the ones who were all right were with
us again, & grief stricken over the ones who were not all right.

People posting on UseNet "I was a vietnam vet, & where was my welcomne
home parade" or "those drug-addict hippies spat on me & called me a baby
killer" sound like delusional guys with some justified anger still
festering but entirely misplaced, since it was the government & not their
fellow youths of the era who ****ed up so many lives. Some indeed came
home so damaged by the war their own families turned away from their
crippled personalities. I personally never met a vet who thought he should
have a D-Day style parade, but I knew plenty who were eager to be again
present within the warm regard of family & friends, including peacenik
family & friends.

But just as often, even those who were indeed damaged by their experience
returned to face the love & caring of friends. I am thinking of Cliff (not
his real name, as he could easily be reading this), who before his Vietnam
experience was a pretty normal outgoing hippy sort of a guy who could
party with the best of us, laughed easily, loved to get high, & was an
admirable artist. The guy who came back never laughed, never spoke above a
whisper, & his artwork had shrunk to the size of postage stamps. He would
never tell any of us what happened, leaving us to this day to wonder if he
was damaged by experiences he can never reveal, or just by going overboard
in his eagerness to be high & causing some physical damage. But when Cliff
went into another of his suicidal depressions, we peacenik hippies would
scour the neighborhood to find where he was holding up this time, bring
him back to the group house on Capitol Hill, & sit with him all through
the night until the black clouds left. Never for a moment was he a spat on
babykiller -- he was our friend who saw a little too much action, & we
still encouraged his artwork, strangely tiny though it had become.

A great many of my generation were harmed by that war one way or another.
The villification of some imaginary style of hippies is an easy scapegoat
for people with seriously mistargeted anger issues. But it was NOT a
generation of dopefiend draft dodgers vs baby killers. It was just our
generation, & the real division were the Haves who could get out of having
to go all or could go as officers, & the Have-nots who had no choice. We
were all hurt by that war, to one degree or another, & if some damaged
people need to invent soothing lies about how the worst thing about it was
the hippies, well, if that soothes them so be it. In the real world, of
course, even so-called hippies served.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:12:50 GMT, escapee wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 03:45:22 GMT, (The Watcher) opined:

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 16:14:29 GMT, wrote:

if you take all the speeches he said and quoted out of context you could make him
sound like he was selling his mother into slavery if you wanted. it is called cut
and paste. it is made up. it is a lot of bushwa.

So when he's quoted one time saying the exact opposite of what he said the other
time it's made up? If that was true, it would be easy to deal with. The question
on his message forum doesn't seem to think it's quite that easy to deal with.
They seem to think there is some justification for the perception that he has
been Flip Flopping. Of course, they are his campaign people. What do they know?


If you are talking about voting for this war, you would be skating the issue.

That's only one of the many Flip Flops Kerry is quoted on.

Most who voted for this Iraq occupation and war did so under the guise of there
absolutely being an existence of WMD. Clearly, Collin Powell said to the UN
there absolutely were nuclear weapons, along with biological and chemical
weapons and they knew they had them. Facts are, they knew no such thing.

There are currently many in the position of having a say who have concurred
today that, they never would have voted for this occupation and war based on
this non-specific reason. There are no WMD. None.

You mean WMD's like the Chemical Weapon Sarin or the Chemical Weapon Mustard
Gas, which have been used in Iraq?

They'd have been used by
now.

Yes, they have. I know many people want to change the meaning of Weapons of Mass
Destruction to no longer include Chemical Weapons, but I'd prefer not to do
that. That would seem too much like lying to me, and since everybody claims they
want to stick with the truth, I think we should. Some Weapons of Mass
Destruction have already been found in Iraq, which indicates that there are
probably others there. Records from before the war indicated that Saddam Hussein
buried tons of chemical weapons. Burying them does not destroy them. It just
stores them for later retrieval.

Many of the members of Congress voted for the 87 million dollars who are now
saying they never would have approved that package if they knew then what they
know now.

20/20 hindsight is handy, but nobody has it available at the time decisions are
made. We all have to make decisions with the information that's available at the
time.
It ain't what you know that gets you. It's what you know that just ain't
so.-Josh Billings

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:26:20 GMT, wrote:

Rules of critical thinking

1. who is quoting the text? what do they have to gain from quoting that text?
2. read the quoted speech in its entirety.
3. Apply ALL rules of critical thinking to ALL sides equally.

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 00:57:40 -0700, (paghat)
wrote:

(snip)
Hooboy, I gave you a resource for dozens of Vietnam war memorials, few of
which are for the dead only, except the cemetery memorials which weren't
on the resource list I linked you to.

Yes, and NONE of them addressed the point I was referring to, which was what
this COUNTRY did for the returning veterans.

If you actually gave a fat dog's ass
about honors paid to vets you'd've at least looked at the link.

I appreciate all the efforts each state makes, but don't think that makes up for
the country's ignoring them(at best). The states didn't send them to Vietnam.

Your heart
might be in the right place, but when you spout off without even an ounce
of knowledge, you sound like a nut. When the information is before you &
quite easy to check, & you say you SERIOUSLY can't see that any of these
many memorials exist, it shows you're reacting from a position of
blindness & distaste for the facts, justifying your position by remaining
unaware of reality, rather than basing your positions in sound reason &
factual information. So just try to believe it. There is NO SHORTAGE of
Vietnam war memorials. Who knows, you might even bite the bullet & vote
for Kerry if you'd replace kneejerkism with knowledge. There are plenty of
things vets have every reason to be righteous about; lack of memorials is
hardly one of them.

I can't bite the bullet enough to vote for Kerry. He's already shown me enough
of himself that I don't think he's fit to run a Dog Pound.

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:39:19 GMT, wrote:

http://www.thewall-usa.com/

the three soldiers .... now, I always thought memorials were to those who died so
how many memorials are there to those who served in WWII?

Isn't the new memorial they just dedicated on July 4th for those who served in
World War II?

In article ,
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 04:44:33 GMT, (The Watcher) opined:

They often object to my religious affiliation, too, since I carry a Life
Member card in American Atheists.

Okay, so here are more things we agree on. I am also an atheist, but I am a
practicing Buddhist. Buddhists do not believe in creation or creator, so it
can be considered atheist.

The wheel of illusion, which is the material universe as snare, is a
creation of gods. Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods, whether
Hindu or Christian gods, they may well all exist, Buddhism does not deny
them. It posits instead that gods, like the rest of us, are trapped in
this shared wheel of illusion. And whether its the million gods of tantric
& northern buddhism, or just a shitload of bodhisattvas who linger to help
us escape, Deities they are, so this cannot be likened atheism, despite
that the Mormon heads of the national offices of Boy Scouts of America
decided heathen Buddhist scouts & Unitarians can no longer earn religious
merit badges because they must be athiests.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:47:54 GMT, escapee wrote:

(snip)
You gave me one example of your belief of his lying, but he didn't lie.

No, he just "selectively told the truth". That's even better than outright
lying.

If he
is so glaringly lying, there'd be a lot more on the tip of your tongue. It
wouldn't be a labor to find the lies in your mind. They'd be right up there.
If you think Michael Moore is dishonest, you have to come up with a lot more
than an opinion to convince me. You didn't see Fahrenheit 9-11, yet, you say he
is dishonest in it. Interesting.

Nope. Read my post again. I didn't see Farenheit 9/11, yet, I say he is
dishonest. Got it? If you can quote me saying he's dishonest in Farenheit 9/11,
go for it. I'm usually more careful than that. If I had to guess, I'd probably
guess it's full of blatant lies, half-lies, and "selective truths", along with
lies of omission, but since I don't have to guess, I'll just go with what I do
know. I know he lacks integrity.

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:43:27 GMT, escapee wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 04:39:45 GMT, (The Watcher) opined:

One of his biggest whoppers was his little cartoon of anti-gun propaganda.
During the cartoon(and elsewhere in the movie) he insinuated that people buy
guns because of fear. Some people do, but that's not the ONLY reason. Of course,
he didn't mention any other reasons, since other reasons might interfere with
his "mission". I own plenty of guns, and I didn't buy them out of fear.

While you have no way to determine why people other than you buy guns, this is
not a lie.

I can talk to them. In fact, I have talked to a lot of them, and I don't recall
EVER talking to anyone and hearing them say fear was their reason for buying
guns. I'll take their words over Moore's, since they haven't proven they're
liars yet.

It's a fact we have the highest mortality rate in the world as a
direct result of all the guns we have laying around.

A "direct result" of that? Interesting. I have about 20 guns "laying around".
I've had them laying around for years and haven't had any fatalities or even
injuries with them. Is something wrong with my guns?

That is not propaganda,
it's a fact. I had a neighbor, a cop in Austin tell me to go out and buy a shot
gun and a 38 in case. In case of what?

In case you have to defend yourself. You buy car, health, and life insurance,
don't you? You buy them in case you need them, or do you buy them because you
FEAR car accidents, illness and death?

Someone is going to storm my house?

Possibly. If someone decides to "storm" your house, or merely attack you, you
will have to decide what to do. Your choice is to either defend yourself or let
them do what they want. You may also want to dial 911, but until the cops
arrive, you're on your own. That's why the cop told you to arm yourself. The
police in the US have no legal or moral obligation to protect individual
citizens. The only person obligated to defend you is you, if you choose to do
it.

Why would he be driven to recommend that? He said it's for protection.
Protection from what? I live in an upper middle class, bedroom community in a
rural area. There's that, and I don't remember a cartoon about guns. I do
remember his factual reporting about how the NRA held their rally's in Columbine
the days after the shooting...and at other parts of the country. I saw the
leader of the NRA say something like, (paraphrase) you will have to take it from
my cold dead hand...when making reference to his rights to own a weapon.

Right, but the World Trade Center attack was planned for several years, probably
begun during the Clinton years, at least. Also, other terrorist attacks have
happened under other presidents, so this one isn't unique.

Have you read Richard Clark's book, or heard or saw him on the myriad interviews
he gave? This current administration was aware of it and did nothing. Rice
said in her testimony that info was regarded as "historical information." When
President Clinton went after Osama and started bombing, the political right
insisted it was wagging the dog because of the Lewinsky scandal.

Did you know your current president has drastically cut funds for Vets
hospitals, stateside?

Wouldn't surprise me. Every president does that in "peacetime".

That some Vets have to drive four hours to see a doctor
and it takes about 4 months to get an appointment?

Doesn't surprise me either. I first joined the Army in 1975, and I've seen many
of the benefits eroded since then, with many more on the block.

It doesn't look like they liked us much before George Bush became president.
They were attacking us before he became president, so it's quite a stretch to
claim his words "caused" more terrorist attacks.

So you don't think Bush's use of the term "crusade" was poor judgment? You
don't think Bush's mantra "God told me I'd be president so I could do this." It
doesn't tweak you at all that a man who doesn't believe in evolution is running
our country? That he is insisting Christianity be brought into these Muslim
nations? Sure terror attacks happened before. Nothing like the terrorist
attack we have launched on a country, Iraq, which has nothing to do with 9-11.
That, and the way this administration protects the Saudi's by having six secret
service officers guarding their embassy. What other embassy do we guard? None.

We guard every embassy as far as I know. BTW, I don't like Bush either. I don't
plan on voting for him either. I just don't think the fact that he's a bozo
makes Kerry any better.

Nope, I was just answering what YOU had posted. You had just denied that they
had not found a SHRED OF EVIDENCE that there were WMD'S IN IRAQ. I was pointing
out that they had. Don't you want to be shown when you make a false statement?
Would you prefer to continue to go around making a false statement?

The amount of chemical weapons found was hardly a reason to invade a country.
That should also be pointed out to you who didn't say they found so little it
wasn't considered.

The comment was that NONE were found. Since some were found it's obvious that
some were there, and I'd be willing to bet more are there. In fact, even
Saddam's own people admitted he buried tons of chemical weapons somewhere in
Iraq. Those weapons could be dug up later.
(snip)
We will probably disagree on many things, but we agree on one thing, the
soldiers should never, ever be harmed or put down or shunned for any reason.
They are doing their job, and that is torture enough.

It can actually be fun sometimes. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:32:05 GMT, wrote:

they found decades old CONTAINERS with traces of things.

In addition to the binary round they found set up as an Improvised Explosive
Device. Binary rounds are not that old.
BTW, do you know when and
what sarin was originally developed for? what are the tests and how specific are the
tests for various compounds?

Sarin was developed from insecticides, which it still works for. If you make
poison strong enough, it'll kill most things. Binary artillery rounds are dead
giveaways. They are only used for one purpose, to deliver chemical weapons.

In article ,
wrote:

http://www.thewall-usa.com/

the three soldiers .... now, I always thought memorials were to those
who died so
how many memorials are there to those who served in WWII?

War Memorials honor all veterans, & the Wall specificlaly is officially
the Veteran's Memorial Wall. There may be a vietnam vet somewhere who
doesn't feel an affinity for the Wall, who does not believe it has
diddly-shit to do with the living, but I've yet to meet him.

As for WWII, the National WWII Memorial is specifically defined as
honoring the 16 million who served as well as the 400,000 thousand who
died AND the millions who supported the war from home.

On the Pittsburg Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the plaque reads in part:

"Welcome home to proud men and women.

Those who served, served
Those who gave all, live in our hearts
Those who are left, continue to give.

As long as we remember
There is still some love left."

Memorial Day itself honors all who served. It may be a special time to
visit the gravesides, but the day is for all who served, but also for all
who supported those who served, living or dead.

The real answser to Watcher's ridiculous assertion that such
commemorations don't exist for Vietnam vets I already corrected with this
long list of Vietnam war memorials:

http://www.vietvet.org/vietmems.htm

And that long list is but a small percentage of the memorials that exist;
this book lists many more, & the book is bargain-priced:
http://www.sandystrait.8k.com/memorial-info.html

There are nearly 400 listed in that book, & no state lacks such memorials.
If you've not time, energy, or physical ability to visit even the nearest
ones, do at least take an e-journey to some of the web pages linked from
the vietvet.org page I provided. If each of us will honor vets even to
that small degree, arguments about how they've never been honored won't
have to sound so damned silly.

So yes, even us peacenik lefties of the Vietnam & Hippy era, who've been
charged with spitting on vets & calling them baby killers, in reality care
a great deal. If only the ****ers & moaners would make an effort beyond
merely assuming!

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 16:57:02 GMT, (The Watcher) opined:

That's only one of the many Flip Flops Kerry is quoted on.

Not a flip flop. He, with many others were duped. Lied to by Collin Powell,
Rumsfeld and Bush/Cheney. Name some more.

You mean WMD's like the Chemical Weapon Sarin or the Chemical Weapon Mustard
Gas, which have been used in Iraq?

They never existed. Trace amounts were discovered. Trace. They are not WMD's.
They'd be W'sMD, which is why they are called WMD.

20/20 hindsight is handy, but nobody has it available at the time decisions are
made. We all have to make decisions with the information that's available at the
time.

The current administration gave an absolute statement that WMD definitely
existed and they (Iraq) had them. They knew where they were, they were certain.
That was what they told the Congress. They lied. If they didn't lie, they were
absolutely incompetent and deserving of being fired.



Need a good, cheap, knowledge expanding present for yourself or a friend?
http://www.animaux.net/stern/present.html

In article ,
wrote:

it is a dirty little secret our leaders and especially all the
chickenhawks want to
ignore is that any normal mentally healthy person goes to war is going
to come home
changed and not for the better.

I know many, many, many vets. Some are damaged human beings either
physically or emotionally. The majority are healthy-minded productive
intelligent. Yes, all were changed by the war. But some came home with a
heroic sense of self, with greater wisdom about the meaning & nature of
war than those of us who were never in one can ever quite grasp. I believe
Kerry was changed for the better by his experience right down to the
war-wounds. I think Bush was changed for the worse by having been a
draft-dodger.

War changes everyone, but your "and not for the better" is just wrong.
I've seen people far more messed up by the loss of a pet cat than by
having been soldiers. Some people were just born to be victimized by
existing. Others transcend even the most horrific things, whether ongoing
childhood rape, or getting their legs blown off jumping out of a
helicopter. The greatest of our species tend to have revealed their
greatness BECAUSE of such traumas; while those whose mettle was never
tested never had to find out if they were capable of greatness.

War even changes who stays behind: Mothers whose sons were killed, or
whose sons returned less than they once were, how changed is she? I
stopped freeway traffic in peace marches when I was a kid, but the thing
that haunts me most is not the peace rallies, but my memories of friends I
played with in early childhood who died in Vietnam still teenagers. When
Bush gleaned my neighborhood & sent so many of the able-bodied men & a few
of the women off to Iran, I fell into a depression remembering the last
time this happened, when I lost friends forever -- & for as little
justification.

I have corresponded since the 1970s with a friend in Canada. He was a
Black Panther activist who could not come home from Canada evem when his
grandmother died. At the time, even though Carter gave amnesty to many who
went to Canada, he did not do so for those who did so AFTER they were
called up; & so that heroic fellow who jackasses will call a draft-dodging
****** locked himself in a bathroom & slit his wrists during grief over
the loss of that old woman who had raised him, whose last wish in this
world was to see him before she died. Someone found him before he bled to
death thank god, & he recovered from the depression of losing his entire
family & having the entire course of his life changed, merely for refusing
to fight in an unjust war. He became a successful author & screenwriter &
college professor, but I've no doubt he'll always be gloomily haunted by
the events of his youth, even as am I.

I spoke in another post of a friend who left for Vietnam a happy-go-lucky
sort of guy, & returned a broken man who never again spoke above a
whisper. On the opposite extreme, before my cousin Ralph went to Vietnam,
he was a kind, gentle, sweet, intelligent young man. When he returned, he
was STILL a kind, gentle, sweet, intelligent young man -- with a depth of
experience that made him even greater than he had been.

Life IS change. Even horrors can change some of us for the better.

-paghat the ratgirl


it is a service that is going to be life long for
each individual. like all species we have a big built in inhibition
against killing
those of our own species. training and having people break that
inhibition does
lasting damage. Ingrid

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:09:43 -0700, (paghat)
opined:

The wheel of illusion, which is the material universe as snare, is a
creation of gods. Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods, whether
Hindu or Christian gods, they may well all exist, Buddhism does not deny
them. It posits instead that gods, like the rest of us, are trapped in
this shared wheel of illusion. And whether its the million gods of tantric
& northern buddhism, or just a shitload of bodhisattvas who linger to help
us escape, Deities they are, so this cannot be likened atheism, despite
that the Mormon heads of the national offices of Boy Scouts of America
decided heathen Buddhist scouts & Unitarians can no longer earn religious
merit badges because they must be athiests.

-paghat the ratgirl

H.H. The Dalai Lama said in my presence, while being asked if Buddhists were
atheists, answered "Yes, Buddhism can be considered atheist since we do not
believe in creator nor creation." I said nothing of deities which are
bodhisattva's or anyone in the existence of samsara. Buddhists do not believe
you pray to a god or gods for things. It's not like that. But I suppose you
know everything about Buddhism so I should give up now.


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