So the first round of the debate is over with.  It seems to be going pretty well so far.

Who Saved the Saviour?

I ran across a piece on google today that suggests Jesus actually survived the crucifixion and went on to live in India afterwards.  Some of it is a little weird, but makes for a cool read.

And lol.  Who gives a shit what Jesus really looked like?  I mean, it's kinda funny to picture him bald with a unibrow, but c'mon, what does it really matter?

Man, you guys keep getting the wrong idea about this whole thing.  I'm not trying to convert anyone.  I'm not trying to change anyone's mind.  I don't care what people believe, and I don't feel like I have some sort of responsibility to ENLIGHTEN.

Overall, as I stated earlier, this is just a debate to prove that two people from completely different backgrounds can discuss a sensitive topic without wanting to kill one another.  There are quite a few people here on GW who could benefit from that idea.  I'm also hoping to get more ridiculous responses from uber-Christians who want to save my soul or see my burn in hell or whatever.  It is NOT the typical "ARG I'M CHRISTIAN" versus "LOL FUCK UR GOD" shit.

Ayolark, I messaged her back with some of your topics and some of my own.  I'll drop in and let everyone know which topic we've decided upon when she gets back to me.

As a sidenote, I published Cruelty and Violence:  Jesus Christ today.  It's quite possibly the most offensive CaV yet, so I'll let you guys know if I get any more ridiculous emails from pissed-off Christian folk.

yeah, seriously. she's 61 years old dude why are you trying to ARGUE with her. just let it go!

Um, she's asking me to.  I had no idea who she was until she messaged me and was all like "hay let's do internets debate"

I don't know what makes her seem more unstable, being a h4rdc0re christian that randomly tries to convert myspace peoples or being a vegitarian.

Either way, she's prolly not the type to bring home to mommy.

As annoying as it can be at times, I actually do get some degree of amusement out of people who use myspace as a means to convert people.  The whole "I am a prophet, I can see into your wounded soul" thing made me lol many times. 

I have to confess that after I posted Cruelty and Violence:  The Old Testament, I went around and joined 7 or 8 Christian blog groups and invited all of their members to my blog just to see what sort of hilarity I could provoke.  Needless to say, it worked. 

Well, this isn't some sort of grand dragon quest to defeat Christianity and wipe it from existence.  A lot of people who subscribe to widely held ideas simply will not change their minds no matter how well your present your opinion, and I'm well aware of that.

I'm mostly doing this because people seem to get a kick out of reading my posts and the ridiculous responses some people come up with.  There is a definite comedic value to it.  However, it's also a way for me to sharpen my teeth on some real world issues and provoke intelligent discussion rather than using my blog for "well, went to the doc today and found out i got butt cancer zomfg". 

Rather than disprove the Christians, I'd like to set an example for people who want to debate the issue.  I'd like me and this old lady to be one of the few who prove that controversial topics can be discussed rationally without having to resort to flaming.

Ayolark, I think you just singlehandedly solved the problem.  That's enough to keep me up to my eyesockets in debate until, well, Jesus returns. 

Completely off topic here, but lol at the "heathen punkbag" thing.

Yes, that was the highlight of my hatemail. 

On a somewhat related note, I messaged this random chick cause she was vegetarian and her profile said she loved animals I'm like, "Hey that's cool I do also!"  Then she messaged me back basically saying Christ is the truth and tried to convert me.

Yeah, I hate it when that shit happens.  I've got three different Christians on my back right now who are trying to get me to jump on the bandwagon.  It makes for semi-relevant discussion, but it's mostly just annoying.

So recently I published a couple of blogs that brought a bit of attention to my myspace.  As a result I received a lot of hilarious hate mail and an invitation from a 61-year-old lady to participate in a series of debates concerning the Bible and Christianity.

The Cruelty and Violence series is obviously biased, and I never really had any intent for it not to be.  It's just a funny interpretation of certain selections of scripture.  Some of it is serious, and it has caught the attention of some pretty crazy religious people and a few more atheists.  One lady says she's gonna fast for seven days and spend the rest of her time this week in a prayer closet in the hopes of interceding and ultimately saving my soul so that I get to go to Heaven when the world ends next week.

Either way, the debate that this lady has invited me to is going to be a departure from Cruelty and Violence.  I'd like to have a serious, objective analysis of Christianity and the Bible.  I don't want it to turn into a huge flame war.  I'm willing to make valid arguments and not write every reply with the intent of offending people.  The only problem is, well, which aspects of the Bible and/or Christianity are good for debate?

At times GW seems to be a hotbed for religious/political debate.  For those of you who participate in those, which topics did you enjoy discussing the most?  The Bible is a very broad topic, and I'd like some specific examples of sections that make for a good debate and analysis. 

(keep in mind i'm not asking you guys to turn this topic into a debate/flame war...i'm asking for TOPICS, not ARGUMENTS)

Discuss.

That's a pretty intense story mike. I'm glad you're putting your life back together.

Yeah, it was kinda hardcore there for a while.  It was the first real low point I hit in my life and I wasn't really prepared to cope with some of the shit that was going on.  I guess that happens to everyone sooner or later, though. 

Unlike a lot of people, I don't attribute the shit that happened to drug use.  It was the product of a series of bad decisions I started making during my second semester of college.  Before my little fall from grace, I had a number of scholarships and was getting everything paid for by the state or federal government.  I didn't pay for tuition, housing, food or books AND I was getting an extra $2000 every semester to use for whatever I wanted.  By the end of my first year of college I had lost most of my scholarships and had to take out some loans just to be able to go back for my first semester of my sophomore year. 

All in all, I'm glad that I experienced it.  I started acting stupid after I got with my ex-girlfriend and she started playing head games with me.  I'd get all stressed out because of her and worry more about relaxing than doing my homework or going to class.  This went on for about a year before it finally ended with me dropping out of school, losing my job and going to jail for three days.  I'm lucky to have gotten out of it without having a nasty criminal record.

I learned a lot from that whole situation, and I feel that I know what to expect if and when things get shitty again.  As it stands, I can go back to college for one semester and get my GPA back up to the point that it was before everything kinda blew up in my face.  I won't be able to get all of my scholarships back, but if I'm lucky I can appeal and reclaim most of them.  Even if I can't, I can still take out loans and pay them back once I get a real job. 

Random unrelated story.

The first time I ever tried mushrooms was the dead of a Canadian winter. A foot of snow on the ground, probably -20 or so.

I was doing alright until I realized the meaning of life.
Just hit me, of course. And I was still stable enough to know that EVERYONE, when tripping, discovers the 'meaning of life,' but forgets the next day. I was not about to let that happen.
So, unable to find a writing utensil to jot down my brilliant epiphany, I did the next best thing. Taking off my socks to avoid getting them wet, I walked outside into the snow and freezing night to write the message into the snow with my footprints. My companions finally realized where I'd gotten to, and ran outside to get me and bring me in, despite my insistances that everything was fine, because my feet were in the process of turning into snowshoes.

They warmed me up - apparantly my toes were turning blue, I don't recall - and eventually, we fell asleep.

The next morning when I stepped outside, I was alarmed to see 4-foot letters spanning not only our frotn lawn, but also the neighbor's.
The meaning of life, according to my mushroom-altered brain, is;
"Life. It's just a penny in the rain."

That's awesome. 

A friend of my dad's took a bunch of acid way back in the day and went to go see a movie with my dad and a couple of his friends.  Dad had a cassette player in his car, and he was listening to "The Black Widow" by Alice Cooper when the guy started to trip really hard.  He began to see hundreds of spiders coming from the roof of the car.  Pretty soon he was ripping at the interior and thrashing around screaming that they were all over him, so my dad had to stop the car and throw him out on the side of the road.  They went on to see the movie and found him hiding in a ditch later on that night.

I've heard too many stories about people having bad trips on acid and shrooms, which is why I'm not too tempted to try them.  I'm good on running away from a large boot that's trying to eat me or seeing dead people in the walls.

Do you ever feel paranoid or depressed or has your drug use ever had an adverse effect on your schoolwork?

Eh, I used to smoke pot pretty often during high school and college.  My dad's been big on pot since he was a teenager, and he introduced me to it when I was around 14 years old.  His reasoning was that he'd rather have me do it with him than go out and do it with my friends and possibly get into some sort of trouble because of it.

My senior year of high school and my freshmen year at college were probably the years of heaviest use.  I always got together with a good friend and toked up and played X-box Live or talked about things that were on our minds.  It was cool for a minute.

Shortly after I decided to take some time off from college things started going to shit for me.  I smoked often and started hanging out with a lot more people who were into pot.  It got to the point where there was almost always someone chillin' at my apartment and smoking their weed with me for free.  The apartment turned into a bit of a flophouse as a result of this, and we ended up moving out two months before the lease was up because I couldn't find a job and there were simply too many people sleeping on the couch or in the floor.

After that, pot started losing its appeal to me.  It seemed to have a different effect when I smoked it.  I didn't feel like talking or playing video games anymore.  I was kinda sick of everyone around me and I didn't know who I could trust anymore.  I spent a lot of time wondering if I would ever go back to college or if I would end up slaving away in a factory somewhere for the rest of my life. 

I became extremely introverted.  I would hang out with only one friend of mine, and even then I might say three words the whole time we were chilling together.  Weed started making me feel sick instead of relaxed and careless.  Sometimes I would dry heave or I would feel like my teeth were going to fall out.  I would get high, look at the people around me and ponder on how I didn't really relate to any of them. 

I finally stopped smoking about six months ago and I never really have the urge to pick it back up again.  Most of the people I know who smoke pot have graduated from high school but still seem to be trying to hang onto their teenage years.  My girlfriend's little brother used to sell the shit and still smokes on a daily basis.  He doesn't try to work, treats his girlfriend badly most of the time and only wants to sit around and play video games.  When his girlfriend moves out of the house with me and my girlfriend, he's gonna be left alone in a house that should be condemned with no electricity or running water.

I don't doubt for a second that his pot smoking habit has a lot to do with his apathy.  It made me the same way for a while, and I ended up in a pretty bad situation because of it. 

Getting high has only made me paranoid a couple of times, though.  Usually because I was dumb enough to smoke with people I hardly knew in places that I didn't know how to get back home from. 

At my lowest point, I woke up one morning when I didn't have to go in to work at the factory and smoked a joint by myself.  No one was at the house, and I took my dad's shotgun and held it under my chin for a few minutes.  I thought very seriously about killing myself, but I kinda lost my nerve and came to my senses. 

I still stayed in a really bad funk for about 6 months, though.  I talked to myself more than anyone else.  Everyone thought I was really strange for a while, because in a group of people I showed absolutely no interest in talking to anyone.  I would just kinda sit around and watch everyone else interact without saying anything.

I've managed to do pretty well now that I've moved back to my hometown and hooked up with an incredibly cool girl.  I'm going back to school this semester and moving into another apartment at the end of this month.  I'm prolly gonna become a manager at my job.  I enjoy being sober more than trying any types of drugs.  At the most I'll go to the bar and see some music and down a few beers or a couple of shots and play pool with my girlfriend.

I'm cool with people who choose to do drugs but still have a life, though.  I don't see a whole lot that's wrong with it if you can still manage to not live with your parents or go to jail because of it. 

i heard that proper ganja was hard to come by in the states, but hash was relatively easy... is this true, or false? or dependant on state?

I live in Tennessee, and I've never really seen hash.  Pot, however, seems to be in abundance.  I've seen it in pretty much every county I've lived in.  I've bought it from countless people and smoked it with even more.  Hell, up until a couple of weeks ago I could have gone out of my room, walked across the hall into my girlfriend's brother's room and bought a fuckin' pound if I had the money and wanted it.