Is is just me, or does this title fit a good portion of the people that post in the Rant & Raves? Personally, I am a Heterosexual Conservative, God-fearing Christian, but to each their own. Before you get all froggy & jump, I have many friends from all walks of life & that includes homosexual liberal.....well, I don't know any atheists.

Basically, I just wanted a reason to post this pic. Ya'll can Rant & Rave about it. Have fun & I'll enjoy reading.

TOM: So the daughter of the gal in the news not too long ago who caught on fire happened because she left the car door open while she was pumping gas and her daughter slid across the seat and caused a spark? I thought they determined it was because her daughter was talking on her cell phone. She actually did leave the car door open and her daughter slid across the seat to get out. I am confused because it sparked (!) so much talk at the time about not using your cell phone while pumping gas.

:heh: :heh: :heh: True story: My parents got a new 1955 Chevy and Dad sent off for those gosh awful plastic carseat covers and put them on the seats to protect whatever that carseat material was that they used back then. One morning in the dead of winter Dad slid out of the car to go to work. Mom slid across to drive home and Dad bent down and to give Mom a quick kiss goodby. Actual sparks were generated between their lips. Dad wasn't injured, but Mom sustained a burn about the size of a fever blister on her lip. Dad always said it wasn't the seat covers, it was his electrifying kiss. Mom wasn't amused. :tired

TOM: So the daughter of the gal in the news not too long ago who caught on fire happened because she left the car door open while she was pumping gas and her daughter slid across the seat and caused a spark? I thought they determined it was because her daughter was talking on her cell phone. She actually did leave the car door open and her daughter slid across the seat to get out. I am confused because it sparked (!) so much talk at the time about not using your cell phone while pumping gas.

Cell Phones and Gasoline pumping

Wow that was GREAT!!! I should go there more often.

I kept thinking how lucky I'd been all these years, using my cell phone while pumping gas. I read the article about the girl getting burned because of a cell phone spark and I saw the sign go up at our pumps, and I have been warning everybody ever since. I even warned a guy who was doing it while I was pumping gas. I showed him the sign too. This is all too funny!

I have to say I LOVE this thread - it is nice to read things from people that hold the same opinion as me, but it is also nice see sensible Christians having intelligent discussions with Atheist and other beliefs. I have spent all day catching up and laughing out loud at many of them.

One question posed intrigued me greatly - did you go directly from being Christian to Atheist or did you claim to Agnostic at some point (paraphrasing)? This got me to thinking - I have been Agnostic since high school always believing that meant I didn't believe in a higher power, but I didn't preach against one and that being Atheist meant you preached against a Higher Power. This is from dictionary.com

—Synonyms Atheist, agnostic, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.

I guess after reading this I better start saying I am Atheist :omg: and Wheetsin you need to change your name - you are obviously not the Token Atheist on this board~!:clap2:

I am married to a believer, but it is not an issue for us. We just don't discuss religion very often. He respects my rights not to believe and I respect his to believe. I have allowed my oldest child to make his own choice - he is 14 and Atheist now, after attending several different churches and Christian schools. Our 4 year old will be allowed to make her own decision also. I have never hidden my opinion from them, but I have tried not to unduly influence them.

BubbleButt - you are so right about not making an issue. As an old OR nurse myself, I was often called to pray before surgery. That was neither the time or place to discuss my belief, nor was it my patient's business.

thank you all for your insightful posts, I don't think I can contribute anymore than has already been said. I am an "Atheist" who believes in the golden rule and the 10 commandments. Man's laws written by man that if followed by everyone would eliminate many if not all issues that cause war and strife.

One stereotype that has been broken - us fatties are some how less intelligent than skinny people and that we don't do anything all day but sit around and eat! :clap2: Obviously most people on this thread are well rounded in more ways than one!

Missy

Hi and welcome to you. I thought that I would answer your question even though my answer will not be typical, I believe, of most of the gang who post here. It is true that I am an atheist but my parents, a Jewish father who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, and my mum, a Scot who had tried many spiritual avenues including witchcraft, were people who were fairly loosey-goosey by the time that we showed up.

I figured that the parents had us done up Episcopalian/Anglican for we were born during the Eisenhauer era and this bizness of religion was still a big deal at that time. We could say that we didn't believe in any of it and that we prefered to sit at home and watch cartoons and chat with our father. We would sit around the kitchen table in our pajamas while mamma Green would haul herself together, put on her most responsible clothes and set off for church, ignoring her childrens' pleas that she not go, that she stay at home.

She never made my dad go to church and much, much later on in my life I discovered that he was a Polish Jew, one who had survived the Holocaust, and a guy who was comfortable in his atheism. Occasionally she would drag me, the oldest kid, or my second born brother to endure these dreadful churchy experiences. In general she did leave us alone and would strike out on foot for these churchy events on her own. She never derived any joy from them and much later on, long after the times became more liberal and she had dropped her church going ways, I became aware that she had been the only one who was valiantly carrying the flag of normalcy for those crazy Greenz during the 1950s.

Though my parents have pulled some pretty crazy stunts with respect to us, their brats, I find myself quite fascinated by both the social and spiritual revolutions which must have marked their early years.

My two kid brothers never had any exposure to religion and even though I was shopped off to an Anglo-Catholic boarding school, one that was run by Anglo-Catholic nuns, at the age of ten, religious passion never did manage did make sense to me. It is important that fellow LBTers understand that I have often regretted my lack of the religious gene or whatever you want to call it but I still don't git it.

Our weddings and our funerals are held without spiritual/religious types. My parents were deeply offended when their friends began to die off and these rent-a-minister types would show up in order to mouth a few platitudes during the funeral rites. They felt that it was disrespectful. We swore that we never pull the same stunt and we haven't.

I am a huge fan of the show on the Discovery Channel Mythbusters and they totally busted the Cell phone myth..

Tired Old Man is right.. it's the static created when sliding across said seat or static created when getting in and out of the car.

T

The sign is nice to see, but it is not accurate.

Smoking while fueling: Definitely a no-no.

Cell phones: They can not cause a fire at a pump.

Why should you close the car door?

I'll tell you later.

About 7 years ago, I drove my company truck to the company gas pumps out past where the airplanes park while waiting to be towed to the terminal gates. As a crew chief, I carried a walkie-talkie and I had my personal cell phone. As I was fueling, my cell phone rang and I was speaking to Tina when the guy (who is supposed to fuel the vehicles) yelled from the control house. Stop talking on that cell phone before you blow the pumps up. At that same time, I heard from my walkie-talkie, “Avionics Crew Chief, you have a Radar problem on flight 609", I answered "copy that, I will be out there as soon as I fuel my truck".

The guy came flying out of the control house screaming at me about my cell phone.

Ok, here are the facts:

#1. Even though very other year, an e-mail goes around warning you of cell phone gasoline fueling fires, it is a myth.

#2. The walkie-talkie that I was using puts out 10 to 100 times of the power of the cell phone and therefor would be 10 to 100 times more dangerous than a cell phone. But because no one puts out bogus e-mails about walkie-talkie's blowing up gas pumps, no one worries about them.

#3. The cell phones of 7 to 10 years ago and some of today's transmit whether you are talking or not in order to knew where the closest cell tower is, so if they could blow up a gasoline pump, they would whether you were talking or not.

#4. Today's cell phones put out even less power than the ones from a few years ago.

OK. Now for the answer for why you should close the car door.

#1. The gas fumes may get into the car.

#2. And most important. If it is a dry (low humidity) day and you get into the car while fueling and slide across the seat, when you get out, there may be a static discharge between you and the car. These static discharges can be thousands of volts and they can blow a car up (and have blown cars up) in the presence of gasoline fumes.

Wow, and yet they still have "No cell phone" stickers on the pumps.

Green thanks for the welcome and explanation. BubbleButt thank for info.

I don't think the thread turned out anything like the originator thought it would - I wonder if they gave up and started another one?

I have to say I LOVE this thread - it is nice to read things from people that hold the same opinion as me, but it is also nice see sensible Christians having intelligent discussions with Atheist and other beliefs. I have spent all day catching up and laughing out loud at many of them.

One question posed intrigued me greatly - did you go directly from being Christian to Atheist or did you claim to Agnostic at some point (paraphrasing)? This got me to thinking - I have been Agnostic since high school always believing that meant I didn't believe in a higher power, but I didn't preach against one and that being Atheist meant you preached against a Higher Power. This is from dictionary.com

—Synonyms Atheist, agnostic, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.

I guess after reading this I better start saying I am Atheist :omg: and Wheetsin you need to change your name - you are obviously not the Token Atheist on this board~!:clap2:

I am married to a believer, but it is not an issue for us. We just don't discuss religion very often. He respects my rights not to believe and I respect his to believe. I have allowed my oldest child to make his own choice - he is 14 and Atheist now, after attending several different churches and Christian schools. Our 4 year old will be allowed to make her own decision also. I have never hidden my opinion from them, but I have tried not to unduly influence them.

BubbleButt - you are so right about not making an issue. As an old OR nurse myself, I was often called to pray before surgery. That was neither the time or place to discuss my belief, nor was it my patient's business.

thank you all for your insightful posts, I don't think I can contribute anymore than has already been said. I am an "Atheist" who believes in the golden rule and the 10 commandments. Man's laws written by man that if followed by everyone would eliminate many if not all issues that cause war and strife.

One stereotype that has been broken - us fatties are some how less intelligent than skinny people and that we don't do anything all day but sit around and eat! :clap2: Obviously most people on this thread are well rounded in more ways than one!

Missy

Another Atheist weighing in! I have to say that while I was raised in the Christian faith (Disciples of Christ, to be exact) for eighteen years, I never considered myself a Christian, per se. Even as a child, the faith and spirituality never resonated with me. It was nothing more than a sometimes violent, always unbelievable story. To top it off, I was completely turned off of it by the people I saw that used their Christianity to excuse their own bigotry and prejudices.

Yes, it does. But what I was referring to was voting according to MY beliefs. If I did that I would have to vote anti-abortion.

When you set aside personal horror at abortion and look at science, I see the point of those that don't see my personal horror. That's why I see both sides and I fully understand both sides. I don't agree with either extreme, but I still see both sides of the issue.

It isn't right for me, so I won't have one. It is right for another so I won't prevent them from getting one.

Being gay isn't right for me so I won't be gay. It is right for another so I won't prevent them from living their life as responsible adults.

I understand, but I believe that most pro-choice voters feel much the same way. No one is pro-abortion.

Carlene, help. Do we mean that warning labels are unwarranted?

Well of course not. TOMmy just likes to argue, don't you know?

Warning labels are a GOOD thing. Except when they state the obvious - such as the admonition not to insert a heated curling Iron into a body cavity. Can you seriously imagine that anyone would EVER do that?

Well of course not. TOMmy just likes to argue, don't you know?

Warning labels are a GOOD thing. Except when they state the obvious - such as the admonition not to insert a heated curling Iron into a body cavity. Can you seriously imagine that anyone would EVER do that?

Ouch, I burned my hand.:help:

Being smarter than both the label writers and you guys, I inserted the iron in my body cavity handle first so as not to burn my butt.

I forgot about taking it out.:faint:

Ouch. Reminds me of an ER nurse friend of mine who told us about a young man who had a love affair with a light bulb. It had a dark ending.

EWWW! Don't even want to think about that one!

On another note, now that I've been reading more posts since mine from yesterday, I see that most of you guys aren't any kind of bashers at all. In fact, a lot of you seem to be big fat (but shrinking!) smart a$$e$ like myself! :biggrin1: I'm really glad I found this forum and I promise I'll try not to take everything so seriously from now on...

Eddie: You've caught onto our fun quicker than most. Glad to have a fellow serious and smart a-hole aboard.