My paternal grandmother had to have her left leg removed at the knee after developing gangrene in her foot. She was 83 and had been bed-reidden for a year. She slowly deteriorated until eventually dying.

My maternal grandfather was admitted to hospital after complications with a catheter. While in there he developed gangrene. Had the doctor said to my mother that it would be better to give him an overdose she would have agreed straight away. Watching a loved one slowly deteriorate and waste away is one of the worst experiences I have ever suffered. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Every time I visited my grandfather it killed me a little inside. My grandfather was a strong and vibrant man who played sports and worked until suffering a stroke at 81. What was left in that bed was a mumbling wreck of a human being with no spark of life or anything.

We wouldn't treat dogs like that why do we do it with human beings?

To be fair, I doubt Thora and Harry were Bible bashers particularly. The majority of people with a religious belief do keep it primarily as a personal matter. It's only a small number that proselytise and even within that group, it's a smaller number who are quite such unquestioning fundamentalists as Kirkstaller.

There's a colleague I occasionally have a drink with: he's Anglican with Lutheran sympathies. And we have discussed the subject – with mutual respect. I have absolutely no problem with people like him.

And indeed, i increasingly find the subject of religion itself interesting. I've just been reading Mary Beard's Pompeii, and the chapter on religions was almost as fascinating as the one on sex.

But the fundamentalists do exist in all religions, and Christian fundamentalism is growing in the UK, I think. But even some of the fundamentalists I knew when I was growing up have nothing, that I recall, on Kirkstaller.

If only kirkstaller had lived in the vicinity....I'm sure he wouldn't have minded popping round to give us a hand with dressing her bedsores and mopping up her anal and vaginal liquid leakages! That way she may have lasted for another couple of months, died a natural death, and sailed off on a fluffy cloud to meet kirkstaller's maker? Damn!!!

this still open, shame

any thread exposing a fundamentalist nutjob for being what they are is welcome as far as I am concerned, you can agree and disagree about politics etc. but nobody can (reasonably) deny that kirkstaller is an abhorrent human being.

Did he, though? Wasn't the Bible quite clear that the messiah would be of David's line (as seemingly Joseph was)? So, either Joe was the daddy, in which case the Holy Ghost is innocent and we never had a son of god, or he is guilty, in which case Jesus was not of the line of David.

That would be an ecumenical matter

i don't disagree but i think the point has been established.

One quote I found this morning: Which firefighter do you think will do a better job? 1) The atheist who knows if he fails to rescue the baby, that’s it for that child. 2) The Christian who imagines if he lets the baby die, it will soon be in Jesus’s crowded arms. The pain and trauma will be erased allowing the child to enjoy a heavenly existence considerably better than it would have enjoyed on earth. More from the same source HERE

One quote I found this morning: Which firefighter do you think will do a better job? 1) The atheist who knows if he fails to rescue the baby, that’s it for that child. 2) The Christian who imagines if he lets the baby die, it will soon be in Jesus’s crowded arms. The pain and trauma will be erased allowing the child to enjoy a heavenly existence considerably better than it would have enjoyed on earth. More from the same source HERE

Freddie Mercury is my God. Just don't tell kirkstaller or he'll say I'll burn in hell for that.