"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." ― James Thurber

Also, am looking down on preparations for filming for a movie starring some people who, if I happen to see them in person, will make me lose my shit with excitement!

Ooh, that is a good cast!

I am sorry for all of you allergy sufferers.

So are sinuses and lower backs.

And knees!

Not if you take the D

I giggled. I don't know why I find dick jokes endlessly funny. I spend a lot of time going "HA!" at hockey announcers, too.

So are sinuses and lower backs.

And knees.

Don't Double Up on the D! heh

Was your church a Cumberland Presbyterian Church? Rejection of predestination was one of the factors behind its formation. I should note that one of the things Presbyterians are best at is schisming.

Not that I'm aware of, though I suppose it could have been among the ones that rejoined PCUSA back at the turn of the 20th century. Note that I don't ever recall hearing anything about specifically rejecting predestination either, but I first encountered the concept when learning about Scottish history in college.

I'm assuming this is true, and it's made me the happiest I've been all day.

[link]

I grew up in a family that went to church (southern Baptist) and I remember on a trip talking with my youth group leader about how I just wasn't feeling it, that faith thing. She said she was worried for me, and that was that. I had decided then that you can't fake faith to yourself, so what was the point, and then later on logic kicked in and I was "if you're real, you are such a jerk".

Growing up in a church of car salesman didn't help. I'm pretty sure they got commissions on how many people they baptised. I kept refusing because I didn't mean it, and wasn't a baptism more about declaring publicly that you believed, beyond that other stuff? I refused to be a lying liar because my dad's friend was pressuring me.

Kind of like how later, in the army, I refused to get married to a fellow soldier for the benefits because it offended my idea of the institution of marriage, that it should be real, with love, and to mean "until death do us part" and not "I want extra cash for off-base housing".

My flavor of hippie agnostic Judaism is pretty much "make the world better than you found it" and "that golden rule thing? that was us" and "make real, tangible amends for your shit to real, tangible people" and "try to do better this year than you did last year"; but also "G-d? Completely optional, but I'm still vaguely uncomfortable spelling the whole word out even so."

And then I married a lapsed fundie who has thoroughly researched and annotated arguments both for and against (and hilarious stories about) the craziness he grew up with. Fascinating stuff, but the whole Jesus-and-salvation business is outside my reality.