Either you have made a commitment to spend the rest of your life with the woman who is mothering your child (in which case you are married, according to the base Christian concept of marriage), or you haven't.
If someone tells me that they are going to kill another person and then goes and kills that person, why should the fact that I am a journalist make a difference in whether or not the courts/police can compel me to tell them who it is? What if the person who told me, also told me they were going to kill someone else?
Your vote would mean even less if it wasn't for the Electoral College. Just because the overwhelming number of your fellow New Yorkers choose to vote for whoever has the D after their name doesn't mean your vote counts less, it just means you need to work harder to convince them to vote the way you choose. If you don't like the way the majority of your fellows vote, take the effort to try and convince them to vote differently. The US system is not designed for the citizen to sit back and only pay attention on Election Day. The system is designed for the average citizen to actively work to convince his (or her) fellow citizens of what s/he believes. For too long the majority of US citizens have left the debate to limited number of people ("don't discuss politics in polite company"), and now they complain because their vote doesn't change anything. It takes more than just a vote to change things.
I would disagree completely. The rise of the rule of law was result of certain events specific to England. In particular the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta came into being because the Nobles were forced to band together to protect their own interests. The Nobles forced the King to accept that he was bound by law. The rule of law gradually expanded from the limited Magna Carta. The reason I don't think your theory about the weakening of religion works is that: A. The Magna Carta was signed in 1215 (before the beginning of the weakening of the Catholic Church) and B. The rule of law was much slower to spread on the Continent than in England. I would actually argue that the rise in the rule of law led to the weakening of the Catholic Church, not the other way around.
One other very important trend in England at the same time was the evolution from the rule of edict to the rule of law. In 1200 if the King (or other aristocrat noticeably higher in rank than you) wanted what you had, he took it. Which meant that as you acquired wealth you had to also acquire military power or someone would take your wealth. By 1800, there were rules which the King could not violate that regulated what he could take and under what conditions. These rules were still less than perfect (and that will always be the case), but there was a strong likelihood that if you acquired wealth, the government would not only not just take it from you, it would punish anyone who tried. Now this was imperfect, there were many people who because of their political and economic wealth could commandeer (steal) a "lesser" persons wealth, but there were lines that no one could cross and get away with it. I am sure that the fact that many of those with limited wealth were the sons (or nephews, or cousins, etc) of people with wealth and power helped this happen. For example, if Johnny Nobody works hard and manages to acquire wealth that I want and I use my greater wealth and political power to flat out take it from him, too bad who cares. Unless of course Johnny Nobody turns out to be the impoverished cousin of Lord HighAndMighty. There are several reasons why I might come to harm by essentially stealing from Lord HighAndMighty's impoverished cousin, but the vast majority of them result in the increase in the rule of law. Increase in the rule of law leads to an increase in wealth for the entire economy.
That way your vote will count for even less. A few years back, an author wrote a book doing a statistical analysis and demonstrated that an individual vote counts for more in our current "winner takes all" Electoral College Presidential system than it would in a count all the votes nationwide and whoever has the most wins system.
That's not the point. People tend to say (or imply)that the Crusades were a basis for Muslim animosity to Christians, except that the Muslims had exhibited animosity to Christians long before the crusades.
The Muslims at least had a good idea of who the Christians were, since they had been killing and conquering them long before the crusades. All of the Muslim lands that the Crusaders invaded had been "Christian" lands before the Muslims invaded them.
What the original poster said was that Christians teach that Jesus was exempt from the curse of Original Sin because he did not have a human father, that Original Sin is passed down the paternal line only. I pointed out that only Roman Catholics believe anything close to that, and the RC belief is that Mary was sinless due to the Immaculate Conception and therefore Jesus was sinless because of this, not because Original Sin can only be inherited from the paternal line. Now in what way is my summation condemnatory of Roman Catholic teachings? and in what way does what I say disagree with what you said about Mary? Please pay attention to what people actually post, not your prejudices about them.
"You would not believe how many other churches use that "distortion" or something resembling it. " You're right, since I have never heard any active member of a Christian Church, not a Roman Catholic, take a position even closely resembling that (although considering some of the ways that I have heard uninformed people explain some of my denomination's beliefs, I guess it is possible that there are people who explain it that way). I have done an informal study of the teachings of most denominations and none of the one's I am familiar with (outside of Roman Catholicism) have an understanding of Jesus' anywhere close to what you suggested (and Roman Catholcism, while IMO bizarre, isn't very close either).
"At least we still have reality on our side...since it's well know that it has a liberal bias." If you consider a comedian a reliable way to determine the nature of reality. Personally, I prefer learning about reality from reality, not from someone who makes his living appealing to the bias of "liberals".
Actually, no. That sounds like a distortion of Roman Catholic theology(which as far as I know, no other Christian group agrees with). According to Roman Catholic theology, Jesus was sinless because Mary was sinless because of the Immaculate Conception (which was the conception of Mary). I may still have that wrong, not being Catholic, but it is closer than your understanding.
Every time a "campaign finance reform" law has been passed the primary effect has been to make it harder to remove incumbents from office. The biggest problem with our electoral system is incumbency. If you look, most cases of corruption involve politicians who have been in office for many years. "When in doubt, vote the In's out."
ACORN activists have been caught in several cities, in several election cycles, of turning in massively falsified voter registrations, yet so far the response has been "isolated incidents". My response was to your claim that liberals favor investigations of allegations. In recent history liberals have favored investigations of Republicans, but rarely of Democrats.
"iberals traditionally support doing an investigation if there is suspicion of something, finding out who is guilty, and then punishing."
That's why everyone is demanding a thorough investigation of ACORN, oh that's right no one is crying about the lack of investigation. BTW, ACORN is an activist organization that among other things does voter registration drives and strongly supports Democrats. In the last couple of elections there have been issues in several different cities with voter registration forms turned in by ACORN activists.
The evidence that Wikipedia has been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies is that a woman who was a major contributor on the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing was a graduate student who investigated it for Pierre Salinger, but he came to suspect that she worked for MI-5. Note: not that he discovered that she worked for MI-5, just that he thought she did. Pierre Salinger is a man who in his later years demonstrated a gullibility for conspiracy theories.
"Well then relocate your servers to Antigua."
The owners of SL don't want to relocate out of the US. Don't you remember the case from several months to a year ago where the US arrested the executives of a company based out of the UK (I think, it might have been a Scandinavian country) that had transferred winnings from online casinos to US players (and vice versa) when said executives changed planes at a US airport? (I may be garbling the details of this case, but the relevant portions are correct. If anyone has a link to the article or remembers more exactly please post).
Absolutely, if someone competent had bought Amiga things might have been very different. However, that doesn't mean that Commodore killed Amiga, since if they hadn't bought them there probably wouldn't have been an Amiga (except as a sort of vaporware, which maybe a handful people would have been able to get one of).
This is just a follow up to the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act. Once they get the filters in place, for some strange reason, any site which criticizes an incumbent will somehow be blocked by these filters. Of course, the porn will still get through, just like the big money interests still get to the politicians. It is only the little guy that McCain-Feingold got out of the campaigns.
It is still somewhat of a stretch to say that Commodore buying Amiga led to its demise, since while the Amiga Corporation developed the Amiga, they never brought it to market. As that Wikipedia article you linked stated, the first model came out after Commodore bought the company.
President Bush Spent $10 Billion on AIDS in 2003 and has increased the amount every year since. Bill Clinton spent about $5 billion in 2000 his last budget http://clinton4.nara.gov/ONAP/accomp.html#Investme nts and if you will follow the link you will see that they were talking about how much they had increased spending over previous years. I know that is shocking to people who get their "news" from the NY Times.
Yeah that's right that paragon of scientific virtue of a Democratic President was so much better on embryonic stem cells because when he was President Federal money could be used for all stem cell lines equally---not at all. And by the way there is no requirement that fetuses be discarded, you just can't use federal money to do studies on them. This is a classic example of Democratic science, President Bush spends more federal money on embryonic stem cell research than any previous President, but according to Democratics he is anti science because he puts limits on what it can be used for. Or he supports spending more money on AIDS than any Prssident before him, and he is uncaring. As for SDI being viable in the 80's, was going to the moon viable in 1962? Reagan never said that SDI would be available soon, he said we should start working on developing it. And if SDI is still not viable, why are the Russians so upset about us putting part of it in Poland?
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Either you have made a commitment to spend the rest of your life with the woman who is mothering your child (in which case you are married, according to the base Christian concept of marriage), or you haven't.
If someone tells me that they are going to kill another person and then goes and kills that person, why should the fact that I am a journalist make a difference in whether or not the courts/police can compel me to tell them who it is? What if the person who told me, also told me they were going to kill someone else?
Your vote would mean even less if it wasn't for the Electoral College. Just because the overwhelming number of your fellow New Yorkers choose to vote for whoever has the D after their name doesn't mean your vote counts less, it just means you need to work harder to convince them to vote the way you choose. If you don't like the way the majority of your fellows vote, take the effort to try and convince them to vote differently. The US system is not designed for the citizen to sit back and only pay attention on Election Day. The system is designed for the average citizen to actively work to convince his (or her) fellow citizens of what s/he believes. For too long the majority of US citizens have left the debate to limited number of people ("don't discuss politics in polite company"), and now they complain because their vote doesn't change anything. It takes more than just a vote to change things.
I would disagree completely. The rise of the rule of law was result of certain events specific to England. In particular the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta came into being because the Nobles were forced to band together to protect their own interests. The Nobles forced the King to accept that he was bound by law. The rule of law gradually expanded from the limited Magna Carta. The reason I don't think your theory about the weakening of religion works is that: A. The Magna Carta was signed in 1215 (before the beginning of the weakening of the Catholic Church) and B. The rule of law was much slower to spread on the Continent than in England. I would actually argue that the rise in the rule of law led to the weakening of the Catholic Church, not the other way around.
One other very important trend in England at the same time was the evolution from the rule of edict to the rule of law. In 1200 if the King (or other aristocrat noticeably higher in rank than you) wanted what you had, he took it. Which meant that as you acquired wealth you had to also acquire military power or someone would take your wealth. By 1800, there were rules which the King could not violate that regulated what he could take and under what conditions. These rules were still less than perfect (and that will always be the case), but there was a strong likelihood that if you acquired wealth, the government would not only not just take it from you, it would punish anyone who tried. Now this was imperfect, there were many people who because of their political and economic wealth could commandeer (steal) a "lesser" persons wealth, but there were lines that no one could cross and get away with it. I am sure that the fact that many of those with limited wealth were the sons (or nephews, or cousins, etc) of people with wealth and power helped this happen. For example, if Johnny Nobody works hard and manages to acquire wealth that I want and I use my greater wealth and political power to flat out take it from him, too bad who cares. Unless of course Johnny Nobody turns out to be the impoverished cousin of Lord HighAndMighty. There are several reasons why I might come to harm by essentially stealing from Lord HighAndMighty's impoverished cousin, but the vast majority of them result in the increase in the rule of law. Increase in the rule of law leads to an increase in wealth for the entire economy.
That way your vote will count for even less. A few years back, an author wrote a book doing a statistical analysis and demonstrated that an individual vote counts for more in our current "winner takes all" Electoral College Presidential system than it would in a count all the votes nationwide and whoever has the most wins system.
That's not the point. People tend to say (or imply)that the Crusades were a basis for Muslim animosity to Christians, except that the Muslims had exhibited animosity to Christians long before the crusades.
The Muslims at least had a good idea of who the Christians were, since they had been killing and conquering them long before the crusades. All of the Muslim lands that the Crusaders invaded had been "Christian" lands before the Muslims invaded them.
What the original poster said was that Christians teach that Jesus was exempt from the curse of Original Sin because he did not have a human father, that Original Sin is passed down the paternal line only. I pointed out that only Roman Catholics believe anything close to that, and the RC belief is that Mary was sinless due to the Immaculate Conception and therefore Jesus was sinless because of this, not because Original Sin can only be inherited from the paternal line. Now in what way is my summation condemnatory of Roman Catholic teachings? and in what way does what I say disagree with what you said about Mary? Please pay attention to what people actually post, not your prejudices about them.
"You would not believe how many other churches use that "distortion" or something resembling it. " You're right, since I have never heard any active member of a Christian Church, not a Roman Catholic, take a position even closely resembling that (although considering some of the ways that I have heard uninformed people explain some of my denomination's beliefs, I guess it is possible that there are people who explain it that way). I have done an informal study of the teachings of most denominations and none of the one's I am familiar with (outside of Roman Catholicism) have an understanding of Jesus' anywhere close to what you suggested (and Roman Catholcism, while IMO bizarre, isn't very close either).
"At least we still have reality on our side...since it's well know that it has a liberal bias." If you consider a comedian a reliable way to determine the nature of reality. Personally, I prefer learning about reality from reality, not from someone who makes his living appealing to the bias of "liberals".
Actually, no. That sounds like a distortion of Roman Catholic theology(which as far as I know, no other Christian group agrees with). According to Roman Catholic theology, Jesus was sinless because Mary was sinless because of the Immaculate Conception (which was the conception of Mary). I may still have that wrong, not being Catholic, but it is closer than your understanding.
What do you mean on the Ninth Day? Haven't you ever read Genesis, the rest of the creation story takes place "In the Big Inning".....cue the groans.
Yes, the problem is the more they implement DRM the less music people buy. I am not sure that there is causation here, but there is correlation.
Every time a "campaign finance reform" law has been passed the primary effect has been to make it harder to remove incumbents from office. The biggest problem with our electoral system is incumbency. If you look, most cases of corruption involve politicians who have been in office for many years. "When in doubt, vote the In's out."
Sorry, I misunderstood the emphasis of your comment.
ACORN activists have been caught in several cities, in several election cycles, of turning in massively falsified voter registrations, yet so far the response has been "isolated incidents". My response was to your claim that liberals favor investigations of allegations. In recent history liberals have favored investigations of Republicans, but rarely of Democrats.
"iberals traditionally support doing an investigation if there is suspicion of something, finding out who is guilty, and then punishing." That's why everyone is demanding a thorough investigation of ACORN, oh that's right no one is crying about the lack of investigation. BTW, ACORN is an activist organization that among other things does voter registration drives and strongly supports Democrats. In the last couple of elections there have been issues in several different cities with voter registration forms turned in by ACORN activists.
The evidence that Wikipedia has been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies is that a woman who was a major contributor on the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing was a graduate student who investigated it for Pierre Salinger, but he came to suspect that she worked for MI-5. Note: not that he discovered that she worked for MI-5, just that he thought she did. Pierre Salinger is a man who in his later years demonstrated a gullibility for conspiracy theories.
"Well then relocate your servers to Antigua." The owners of SL don't want to relocate out of the US. Don't you remember the case from several months to a year ago where the US arrested the executives of a company based out of the UK (I think, it might have been a Scandinavian country) that had transferred winnings from online casinos to US players (and vice versa) when said executives changed planes at a US airport? (I may be garbling the details of this case, but the relevant portions are correct. If anyone has a link to the article or remembers more exactly please post).
Absolutely, if someone competent had bought Amiga things might have been very different. However, that doesn't mean that Commodore killed Amiga, since if they hadn't bought them there probably wouldn't have been an Amiga (except as a sort of vaporware, which maybe a handful people would have been able to get one of).
This is just a follow up to the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act. Once they get the filters in place, for some strange reason, any site which criticizes an incumbent will somehow be blocked by these filters. Of course, the porn will still get through, just like the big money interests still get to the politicians. It is only the little guy that McCain-Feingold got out of the campaigns.
It is still somewhat of a stretch to say that Commodore buying Amiga led to its demise, since while the Amiga Corporation developed the Amiga, they never brought it to market. As that Wikipedia article you linked stated, the first model came out after Commodore bought the company.
President Bush Spent $10 Billion on AIDS in 2003 and has increased the amount every year since. Bill Clinton spent about $5 billion in 2000 his last budget http://clinton4.nara.gov/ONAP/accomp.html#Investme nts and if you will follow the link you will see that they were talking about how much they had increased spending over previous years. I know that is shocking to people who get their "news" from the NY Times.
Yeah that's right that paragon of scientific virtue of a Democratic President was so much better on embryonic stem cells because when he was President Federal money could be used for all stem cell lines equally---not at all. And by the way there is no requirement that fetuses be discarded, you just can't use federal money to do studies on them. This is a classic example of Democratic science, President Bush spends more federal money on embryonic stem cell research than any previous President, but according to Democratics he is anti science because he puts limits on what it can be used for. Or he supports spending more money on AIDS than any Prssident before him, and he is uncaring. As for SDI being viable in the 80's, was going to the moon viable in 1962? Reagan never said that SDI would be available soon, he said we should start working on developing it. And if SDI is still not viable, why are the Russians so upset about us putting part of it in Poland?