So maybe you can answer the first question ?

Well, it's just the appearance you give old boy...

I always thought that given enough rope, you'd eventually hang yourself.

Anyway seeing how it's the season of goodwill and almost Christmas Day, I'll try and forget it.

If that doesn't have too many religious overtones for you of course.

happy Christmas everybody.

And Bil, as Dick says, no-one has supported peaodophile priests.

But peadophile priests, believe it or not, is not what Christianity is about.

It is about the love of Jesus, which we poor, imperfect and SINFUL Christians accept as our salvation. Today is the day we celebrate his birth.

Happy Christ-mass everybody.

and happy winterfest and a merry solstice as we celebrate Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun.

I’ve listened to a few carols today, before going out to hug a tree. Well, I didn’t so much hug it, but gave it a good shake to dislodge some mandarins I couldn’t reach.

All the Gods provide comfort for the believers and I see nothing wrong in that.

So do drugs, alcohol and TV soaps.

My old headmaster used to say to us 'Learn some science at least. It will help to protect you against the con men.'

Alcohol, drugs and soaps do not replace Gods, although soaps come close, they’re wall to wall tonight from what I can hear from an adjoining room.

I was brought up to believe in the Western God, the protestant version, and married a catholic woman, and for all the slight difference between the two versions of the same religion, we got a lot of stick where we lived, both of us.

Neither of us tried to indoctrinate our children and informed them of their choices in their mid-teens.

Probably about that time, I decided that my Western God was no different to the other Gods in other parts of the world. It didn’t stop me attending my Church, although it was mainly on important occasions, like weddings, christenings and funerals.

On several occasions I have witnessed at close hand the comfort people derive from their religion in times of trouble. Quite recently, I spent nine days visiting a close family member in a hospice. She knew that she was dying and accepted the inevitable.

Her beliefs provided her with a great deal of comfort during that time and I was proud to be sitting at her side when she set out on her final journey.

The hospice had a small chapel and I visited it after she left. It comforted me when I fell on my knees to pray.

My mother told me that at the end of my first day at primary school, I came home and announced that I was never going to be a robber or a priest.

Make of that what you will. We married in a registry office, our children were never baptised, and like my father I want neither grave nor marker, but to go the bake and shake route. I always admired him for that. So when I die, I want the church to have no part.

I don't mind if someone believes in Santa claus, and that helps them to go easier into that good night.

I tho will not. I choose to rage against the dying of the light, and I will not kneel to anything alive or dead.

You can force me down, you could blackmail me down, but I will not kneel willingly, and you would never be able to turn your back on me in complete safety after that event.

If there is a god, I will stand in front of him, and if he doesn't like it, then he shouldn't have made me this way.

Our son was not baptised as a baby, because we believe that baptism is only for believers, that you can't have it done by proxy. In other words, people have to make their own choice about it and make their own promises before God. I was baptised by full immersion at the age of 31.

My sister and brother-in-law, devout atheists, didn't have funerals, although they did have memorials, when friends and family gathered to pay their last respects and share memories. I was able to go to my b-i-l's last year as I was in the UK at the time.

After my ashes are scattered, I'd like people to have a party, have a drink and remember the good times. The only black allowed would be little black dresses.

So no black ppl.then ?
Never had you down as being racist.