kobra500

You're a moderator now Anwii? god their just letting everyone in now and yes I did have truefusion in mind when I wrote that, only because I really wanted peoples takes on what I said, more than the bibles with no real input from the individual, saying that it didn't mean that I didn't want any biblical stuff providing it was relevant and I still say that an "irresistible happiness" which sounds more like "forced happiness" to me seems to take away something from me, which makes me, me. It just all sounds, for want of a better word: "eh"

Sorry, I don't think that religion is JUST born out of fear of death, there's more factors than that however, look at the religions, how many of them say that when you die, that's it. That at some point there isn't something or that you are reborn or whatever, every religion that I can think of including the ones you don't believe in and including the first religions has something to say about death. The hell part is simple, you need a threat keep people in line, hell is a deterrent of infinite volume but that's all it is, an empty threat but I think I'm write in saying that heaven came before hell, and I'm talking about in the heads of the fallible humans who are the parents of Christianity and all other religions. I don't think it's been refuted sufficiently enough the trouble with philosophy and theology is that they work on assumptions, even my own rebuttals at least to things that scientifically have no answer can be argued fully against and visa versa meaning although you can argue both sides, neither side can win. I think that the mere fact that all religions are so similar in there tales of a supreme afterlife is pretty sharp evidence for my point but I work as someone who already believes religion is man made and am simply interpreting the author(s) you see it as something more. Your explanation is too easy from my perspective and an irresistible happiness as I said though maybe not degrading certainly deals away with, in my opinion what makes me, me. and I will also add that your argument is simply, you will be happy and this deals away with anything you've said, I don't want to be eternally happy, I don't want to be eternally damned either, I want to be eternally dead.

This doesn't set out to be offensive, it doesn't really set out to do much more than convey my opinion, and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on what I have to say, but don't just quote scripture at me, I want people own, individual thoughts on the subject and what I have to say.Now this post won't really delve deep into a religious debate, that's not what I'm after, I just want to draw on a few things about the concept of eternal bliss after death and this apply's to all religious that hold that concept. I'm going to base this on assumptions, and this is opinion not science, the first is as follows. In life without suffering it's impossible to really not take for granted the good things, if you have infinite wealth you don't value your money whereas someone with £5 to their name will likely value that £5 a lot more, especially if they've got to live on that money. The same concept apply's, if you work in a morgue you become immune to the trouble that seeing death and seeing the dead gives to most people, is the same not true of happiness, eternal bliss. If you never suffer the value to you of the experiences you have that would be significantly lower, almost to the point perhaps as just plain boredom, where you will take things for granted and it works both ways, someone who escaped the slums of Africa due to charity will value their good experiences much more than I value mine at the present, they don't take the good things for granted at all because they have the knowledge of their own suffering which leads on to my second point.If you die and go to heaven, you meet all your long forgotten relatives the idea that the you won't suffer, that all your suffering and emotional baggage will just disappear, and of course it can't disappear else it would be a cold shell of your former self that went to heaven since we are the product of our experiences, secondly nothing has changed, your relatives and friends that outlived you are the equivalent of dead to you, you may as well be alive and the others dead, the only thing you've done is swap one set of people for a different set and you would have accepted that one set was dead already leaving you with more people to now accept and I don't think that now because you KNOW you'll see them again when they die it makes it any better because time will have passed and they will have moved on, it's impossible to recapture the same effect after it has passed, I think everybody had tried that and I doubt it has ever been the same the second time round. Then we come back to my first point, if heaven is eternal bliss then that seems to me to be incredibly dull, an eternity of the same anything well get boring and the lack of suffering will in my opinion devalue the experience you do have, sure you still have your baggage but after 1 million years that will be so far behind you it will be ridiculous.Isn't it easier to just die, religion is clearly born out of this fear of dying, surely even the most religious people will accept that the religions that they believe are false have death as a factor to there existence or at least they should. Though I'm talking about the God's they don't believe in. But I don't get the huge fuss around death, sure it doesn't sound fun but it is inevitable and you should accept that, acceptance shows you are healthy, wouldn't it be easier to just not exist, except as part of everyone no matter how briefly you have touched in your life, as part of their experiences however, small passed down generation to generation but never truly dieing out just becoming less and less significant. Why can't you just rest? why don't people want to? before you were born never bothered anyone before! what is wrong with the idea of the end? the end is peaceful, less than sleep, less than blackness, "nothing" a concept no one truly can understand. why not? what is so bad about it? Why do you need eternity? I would choose death any day!

I don't know what book your authoring but mine is vastly different from yours, I'm trying to think of a suitable analogy. The expression 'the best things in life are free' is an expression and should be treated as such, I think you are looking too deep into it, what it's saying is the BEST, the truly great and things people derive meaning from within life are those things that you can't buy in a supermarket, on Amazon. or bid for on ebay. My laptop for instance, using it I enjoy, maybe your right maybe it is just contentment, but happiness and contentment are not exactly add odds with each other, are you happy whilst content and content whilst happy? the definitions are ambiguous at best. Anyway I do distinguish between "do material possessions bring happiness" & "do material possessions lie at the root of happiness" are different questions in my opinion. one is very shallow and to me asks: "does my bicycle bring me happiness" well sure I love riding my bicycle, I would go as far to say my bicycle makes me happy. The latter asks "yes but does it truly make you happy" it is a much deeper question and here I'd have to agree with your point to some degree, It's all very well having a bicycle but eventually I'll get bored of riding it, but you know what never gets tiring, riding my bicycle for hours with friends, I could do that forever and it would never get old, friendship it seemed you can't get bored of, that's more what I meant, and maybe I meant what you said, material possessions make you content and they bring happiness to you for the time you use them but the "free things" in life never get old, never get tiring, and sure you fall out with friends, you fall out of love and there are sad bits and angry and annoyed bits, No one is truly happy 24/7 regardless, life has to have suffering else how do you understand the truly good bits, a perfect world would be dull at least in my opinion. But yeah food for thought. I suppose I can conclude with the question stated above "are you content whilst happy and happy whilst content?"

As many will know I'm not religious, nor am I spiritual but I fancy myself a philosopher. To summarise the title "do material possessions bring happiness". Well the answer is a resounding yes of course they do, If I buy a game I have fun with that video game I am happy and therefore, the possession has brought me happiness. But I'm being unfair, taking a literal interpretation to a question which isn't asking "do material possessions bring happiness" but is more asking "do material possessions lie at the root of happiness" or at least that's how I choose to interpret it. Well they say the best things in life are free and I'd have to agree, love, hate emotion in general, social interaction, family, sex (unless you pay for it in which case it isn't free), and friendship etc. these things are more important and bring more jubilation than sheer wealth of possessions. Me and my friend walked to the pub and back today in a lovely village 4 hour round trip today and I had more fun talking than any of my possessions could provide for example.So in conclusion, no possessions do not lie at the root of happiness and while they do bring happiness they are far lesser than many of the more social and free experiences you can have in life. I will also add you don't need God or to believe in some other spirit or supernatural agent to come to this conclusion, you can get what people take from God, namely encouragement, strength, willpower from those around you and give it back also, and you will be a happier individual for it!

I don't think $100 a year is that bad, for one I can easily earn $1 a day by posting so over if you can get $1 every 3 days your laughing, and also - I'll hold you to that opaque. $100 dollars for hosting is no biggy and while the lack of addon domains is a shame I'll admit, I think perhaps opaque should perhaps open them up as a feature (It may help him sell more domains).

Short, Sweet and to the point, I like it. Firstly Hello and welcome to Xisto, enjoy your stay. Secondly a formality: Please check out the readme for more information on the rules etc of Xisto. You can also find this link above the shoutbox. If you want to know anything else about Xisto, the forum or Mycents then feel free to ask. Otherwise with repetition, enjoy your stay, make good quality posts. I hope you will be a real asset to this forum.

I was on farmville and played it religiously, but now day I don't play any facebook games, I use facebook as facebook to connect with friends, I admit some people do spend there lives on the various facebook games, my aunt in particular plays: Country Life, Farmville, Petville, and countless others everyday. It's kinda sad in a way but hey. Whatever boats your float.

Well that weird, I don't think I can think of a time when Windows Troubleshoot actually fixed the problem, though actually the connections issue resolver on vista is actually quite impressive how it actualy gets to the bottom of issues.

The shoutbox tbh has always had issue with time, and I don't know why, to be honest I don't really use it any more. I would say that I haven't seen it reorder posts but I as I said I hardly ever post so it's not suprising.

Now if you'd had asked me 1 year ago the Xbox 360, but we are now one year later and I would say the PS3. Feature wise now I would say it offers more in the way of things I want to use it for (BBC Iplayer in the UK) It features bluray which I will admit I've never used but I'm sure It will be a wise buy for the future. It's come down in price a lot which is good and the choice of games is moving up to reach the Xbox, I think that people may have been right to say the PS3 will have a longer life and I think feature wise the PS3 is now really strongly competing with the 360, same for titles.

Well I pick up objects close to me and fiddle with them all the time, its to do with being bored, its not OCD it's more likely you just have an inability to do nothing, like me in a lot of ways, you can't just sit there, you are always having to be doing something and it's mostly sub-conscience. It's not a problem but it can annoy others but that is their problem.

I liked Truefusions reasons, I hadn't thought about that, the main reason is it makes your site look proffession, if you got it from a free website templates site, it is samey, any no. of people could have had that template. If the site doesn't require link backs then it is really up to you, I agree with what you're saying bani but I still think that people sometimes (not always) have good reasons to hide there CMS or there template designer. What if it was a php template, anyone could find the template and then use the code to find a weakness, much like what truefusion said.

I don't believe we evolved from modern day monkeys or monkeys in the sense you are speak and neither does anyone else who has any basic understanding of evolution, the "Monkeys" we evolved from are in fact now extinct, and are referred to casually as Old World Monkeys. Secondly, you're right just because I believe it doesn't make it true, what does make it true however is the insurmountable amount of evidence among many fields within biology that has established evolution i.e. change over time is a fact and micro evolution and macro evolution have both been observed and you can look all this up for yourself. You aren't required to believe it however, you are required to admit that you are ignorant of evolution. You are also required to realise that by not believing you are disbelieving a scientific fact (Evolution i.e. change over time, speciation and genetic mutation are all fact however, it is a theory as many part of evolution are not facts and are still debated by scientist i.e. aspects of social evolution). There are also countless examples of intermediate fossils and we have a very and increasingly full fossil record showing gradual evolution of species. So my reason is valid and your reason is also valid but I would say yours is the thought process and mine is the genetic reason, both are related.

Haiti isn't just a poor nation, its the poorest nation in Western Europe. and the damages are humongous. The worst thing was the nut job who blamed the earthquake on a deal they made with the devil 200 years ago (same guy who blamed New Orleans on a Lesbian Comedian) name escapes me but how harsh is that.Well, I wish them all the best, I hope the support makes it there okay and that the problem is sorted out quickly and efficiently.

Well I agree cheating is a big problem and having never cheated on anyone and to the best of my knowledge been cheated on I can't say for why exactly. I will add that Humans aren't sexually monogamous. Social monogamy is in our nature however, which is what cheating falls under. Thats the scientific reasons, and if your interested this article: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ you must remember that we are products of evolution and although we have the ability to go against our own nature, it doesn't make it easy. and it doesn't make you any less guilty of wrongdoing it's just a scientific viewpoint on it.

In the first couple of paragraphs you seem to be saying people cannot put themselves into other people shoes enough to make the right decision but in reality much of the time you are better, much better to be out of your own shoes, unbias and uncorrupted. Take this issue, your friend wants to drop out of college, there's only 5 months or so left before the end of the course and he could walk away with a qualification, so I was critical of him. I told him, what are you doing you wasted all this time on the course and now you want to drop it, you've done all that work. Now he wants to drop out of his course because he's not enjoying it but sometimes in life you have to do things you don't want to, it's in the job description, he shouldn't drop out its a waste of time for him to do so, he should stick it out, get the qualification, go to university. But don't you see? Because I'm not doing to course, I have no opinion on the course I can offer him a objective viewpoint compared to his primarily subjective opinion. If you do wrong you aren't likely to notice yourself, until someone points it out: Is critical of you. No you can't put yourself in others shoe's but people over react and therefore, being outside of there shoes is where you ought to be.As for the rest you discuss a different issue, where you are talking about breaking down people, I was merely adding about constructive criticism. For the rest I will simply say that there are people out there who try to control others, they enjoy it, they would be harmless if it weren't for how many people get drawn into it. Put under the thumb etc.

Well this is the bit where all the members who have been here for a while race to be the first one to post you with the rules, the faq etc (prehaps in aid of a trap award nomination). But you seem to have sorted yourself so well done for that. Hope you enjoy your stay here at Xisto

Prison is meant for two things, the punishment bit is just a side effect of what prison is about and the two things are: Segregation, the person is not fit to stay in society, as they have already proved to everyone that this is the case by committing a crime, when there sentence is over hopefully they will be fit to re-enter the world, but not everyone is, some never will be. The second is rehabilitation which ties in, prison is meant to rehabilitate criminals allowing them to exist in harmony with society not against it which I have already said. Prison offers drug rehabilitation, anger management and other help groups but the person has to want to change, some don't and some can't (socio-paths and psychopaths being key examples). The reason you get time off for good behaviour really is prisoners who behave in theory will behave in the real world, not always the case I know.Prison isn't punishment, although it is, its necessary. But what do you suppose? Think of a system that segregates people and can be done on mass which provides a minimum level of safety for employees that also rehabilitates as best it can despite the large cost. You'll struggle, and people can't just be rehabilitated because you want them to, they have to want it and this is key. The people are the broken ones, not the system.As the saying goes. "You don't want the time don't do the crime" and the other great one "you reap what you sow." yes they could have got married, had kids but they chose not to, they chose to lie, cheat, steal, kill or a mixture there of. Okay it might not be there fault, it could be that they were abused, or in other ways they have been led to think these things are acceptable but for everyone safety they have to be segregated. This is a utilitarian society. The majority outweigh the minority.

Thats okay, I can read old english fine Know we don't have WalMart here in England, we have ASDA which is owned by walmart but it's not really the same as Walmart... I'm glad you agree, thin pages do suck.

Well of course outside forces affect you, thats a given, both metaphorically and physically. Planets give off gravity which to a varying degree I suppose you are feeling if the moons is strong enough to move the current. What it isn't true to say is that any of these forces have the power to influence whether or not you'll have a good week or not. They just don't. The only way these horoscopes etc work is by believing something will happen to you, people subconsiously make it happen or will add meaning to an event which slightly is decribed by the horoscope attributing it to the planets. In truth the horoscope is bound to say something that you can see meaning in because it has to be so broad as to allow everyone to gain meaning from it. It's safe and I am certain to say that the planets alignment don't affect our day to day lives unless we make them affect our lives by believing in astrology and almost making it right semi-intentionally.

It took me ages to focus in on the black, I got the b staight away but reading it as a sentence was pretty tricky to get my eyes to focus in on.

There is belief in the supernatural, which in some cases is understandable even if I don't share your belief, but a belief in Astrology is just downright stupid, I'm not even going to waste my breathe arguing the point, It is just the biggest load of rubbish ever invented, if you truly believe that planets affect you and secondly that must mean that the prediction made by the teller must match with everyone of your starsign, and you believe that you will get find solace in something that happens to you today because you phoned up a no. charging 50p a minute then you are so gullible, so lacking in common sense that you might as well just blow your money on chocolate before you end up giving your bank details to some Nigerian scam artist who's father died and is offering to pay ?5,000,000 into your bank account. If you think I'm joking, I'm not; I count people who believe in astrology at the same level of idiocy as people who get fooled by an email. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Words to live by. please excuse the fact I have used too many comma's and not enough periods, I do that sometimes, don't ask why!

I don't want to buy one from you, but I'm sure the Christians here can do a better job of finding one with Thicker Pages, they might know one or even own one they can recommend me.