Now THAT I could get into. If only I wasn't a poor teacher who dropped $500 on Guinea Pig surgery only to fail her car inspection the next day and be told she needs all new tires. :/ All this right before Christmas. Hooray.

But I'll buy that telescope one day.

 

Tire buying tip: DO NOT simply call a tire place and buy tires from them and have them installed there. They almost never have the best deal on tires. The first time I bought tires for my s2k, I did that and paid something like $130 per tire. The next time, I was smarter.

What you want to do is, read the size information listed on the side of your tire. It'll be something like 245 40r17. Not necessarily that set of numbers, but that format. Punch that in on a few tire websites (tire rack, discount tire direct, etc.) and order from them, then have the tire store install them. When I did that I ended up paying a good bit under $100/tire.

 

I was planning on going to this place called Discount Tires. I'm not sure if that's a national chain or not. Anyway, they've always been good to me in the past. And in between, I've gone there when some other place messed up my umm... wtf is that called where the air goes in the tire? Anyway some other place messed it up, and so all the air drained out. They fixed it for me for NO CHARGE even though those were factory tires. But I'm taking the bf with me juuuuuuuuuuuuuuust in case. He reviews EVERYTHING online first. Almost to a fault. It took us a year to buy a tv...

 

Oh. Okay. Yeah, I think discount tires is the physical store chain of discounttiredirect.com. They should be good. I don't have any of those close to me, so I have to order mine from them and then have a local place install for me.

 

lol, "whatever god I believe in is real, and if you don't believe the same thing I do, you're crazy". Spoken like true dogma that has existed for thousands of years, regarding whichever god the speaker happens to have grown up with in his culture.

 

I use "discount tires" and haven't had any issues at all. They have 2 stores here in san angelo texas. And when I go get a flat fixed For Free (I drive out on ranches and run over mesquite and sticks and whatnot) they do rotation and stuff for free Also! Good deal for me.

 

I agree. The bible says God created everything. It doesn't specify, "and God said, 'I shall make all sorts of creatures and have them remain exactly how they are and not ever change."

I don't know that I'd use the word "foolish." There tend to be at least some scientific explanation for most miracles we experience. And plenty of people smarter than me have not been believers. That being said, I definitely believe God is the one behind my miracles.


The one I talk about most of all was my bike crash. I was 14. My mom ran the sound board at the church (irony) we were going to at that time, so we had to show up like an hour early. So I started bringing my bike. After a while I got sort of into biking. I even put a speedometer on it. That was a mistake, because the presence of a speedometer only makes you want to go as fast as you can. It froze at 30mph when I crashed.


The church had a sort of double parking lot-- one big one at the top of the hill, then there was a little half-helix driveway that took you to the secondary lot a ways down the hill. What i would do is, I'd get the bike up to speed in the top lot, then race down the driveway and across the bottom lot to see how fast I could get it to go. And then one day (one of the only days I ever forgot to bring my helmet) I crashed. I don't remember any of it, but this is what people have told me:


At the time I crashed, there was a family coming up the main driveway which took people by the secondary lot, up to the main lot. Their daughter watched me crash. After they parked, she want and got my brother who was skateboarding on the other side of the church and gently informed him of what had happened.


"Hey, Nate crashed on his bike and he looks like he's dead."


He went and got my dad who came out to see if I was alright. I was sitting up at that point. He yelled out to me and asked if I was alright. To which I replied, "I can't see." He came down and waved his hand in front of my face and I didn't react. I was completely blind. No vision whatsoever. And there was blood coming from my ears.


They called the ambulance, which took me to Greensburg hospital, from where I was taken by life-flight helicopter to Pittsburgh Children's Hospital. They said I'd be in the hospital for three weeks at the minimum, and that the blood likely indicated a skull fracture. My sight returned about two hours after the accident. They couldn't find any skull fracture on the x-ray. And I walked out of that hospital after three days.


Plenty of people have suffered much less-traumatic injuries and been much more severely injured. I could have been blinded for life. I could be deaf. I could have never woken up. I could have had permanent brain damage. But aside from the fact that I lost my sense of smell, (and I also partly blame my crappy hearing on whatever made blood come out of my ears) I have no lingering side effects.


There are scientific explanations for what happens, sure. The blindness can be caused by swelling. Any number of things can cause blood to come from a person's ears. But I don't care. It was a miracle. And no one can tell me it was anything other than God.

 

This outlines the luxurious viewpoints we have in a first world country. If something beneficial or lucky happens to us, that means our personal god exists, no matter how many billions of people live in starvation, disease [with horrifying low survival rates for infants- and the deaths aren't usually short and painless] tyrannical rule, and poverty every day.

 

Is that a feature of first world civilizations or the milk jug prayer denial aspect of supernatural belief? I've a feeling there's been alot of "God chose me over those that died" in less civilized societies, even Leading To that oppression once pride sets in.

 

You realize that the majority of the world doesn't get the luxury of considering those 'little things' that keep us up to our high level of living standards to be 'miracles' right? You and I are lucky enough to be in the top few percent of the world's population that gets the luxury of considering those little things 'miracles'. Visit most of the world's population and tell them about your little daily miracles lol.

 

A little bit of both, probably.

 

This 'balance' you keep talking of is a non sequitur. There's no 'balance' in the world that has to include your god.

 

Cancer and wars, by definition have numbers built into them, based on the type of cancer and the severity of the war. A certain percentage of people survive. Its not like since there's no god, all people would die in a war. So at the very end not a single person is standing. Of course people survive. And of course there's stories of luck, its a bell curve. Some will die, some will survive, and some will beat the odds to survive. No god is needed for any of that, only simple common sense.

 

Not really related, but several years ago I left work and when I got home there was a message on my answering machine from the Buffalo police department, asking me to call some detective immediately. I called him, and he asked me if I was an employee at so-and-so, I said yes, and he told me to go outside and look at my car, and then come back in and tell him what I saw. I thought I was being accused of a hit and run or something. So I went outside and noticed that my license plates were gone. To make a long story short, someone had stolen my license plates while I was at work, put them on another car, and used that car in an attempted robbery at a drug store.

 

Well, the fact that you think the 'deity' you believe in actually interacts in our world actively, defines that entity quite a bit. It depends what you mean by 'belief'. Do I believe in an active myth that has attributes, such as a being that can interact with our daily lives. No. Do I believe there are things in the universe we don't yet know about. Of course. Most of the things in the universe we don't yet know about. That doesn't mean that it makes sense that any man made idea of a god or entity exists. That's another non sequitur, and a god-of-the-gaps fallacy. Just because we have gaps, doesn't mean we should fill them with our preconceived ideas. I know you're not this type of person, but that kind of thinking is analogous to the creationist who says "evolution has too many gaps". And when you fill in a gap with a new fossil, they say "now you've just turned one gap into 2 gaps. One on each side" lol.

Anyway I have no 'belief' if by 'belief' you mean some organized myth that has no evidence. But I do have acceptances. I accept what we know about the universe, and am excited to learn more. The idea of any type of god or divine being or deity was born when man evolved a brain sophisticated enough to fear the world.

 

haha, I probably wouldn't have noticed it for a week, if the crooks hadn't been caught. The cops down at the station were trying to give me a hard time about not noticing the plates were missing, and I was kinda like "screw you guys. No one checks that sort of thing everyday", but I said it in a more polite manner.