I haven't paid for cable since college, and that was shared. I shoot to watch a few shows when they're on, but I can just as well hit them on the internet if I miss. Football and movies/episodes on DVD is all I really use my TV for. I don't miss it.
The problem that may occur with your argument is exactly what conditions are needed to formulate and develop life. I can see life evolving somehow to exist in those conditions, but can it begin there? I know that conditions were theoretically extreme on earth, but some parts seem a little iffy...
More conservative (NOT Ron Paul paleocon, more semi-Reaganish/Gingrich-neocon) than Republican right now. Don't equate the two, please. The current lot are political corporatist types, and so are the Dems, particularly in the Senate.
Taxes, general supply-side economic theory, pro-guns, pro-life, proactive national defense (I think Iraq was good idea, with poor execution) are some of the main points.
With Paul so highly unlikely, Huckabee is the only "change" candidate on the right. McCain is status quo, and neither he nor Romney can be trusted with a Dem congress. Obama is the only change candidate on the left. Maybe.
Think about it in those terms when you vote. Of course, whether or not you think Huck's M.O. of "change" is good or not...
As an aside, Huckabee is positioning himself now as the "compromise candidate" in a Republican convention, or as VP for McCain (McCain NEEDS him to keep the South on the right, or someone similar, particularly if Obama gets the nomination).
Though I'm still voting Republican (democrat leftist politics bother me greatly), Obama is rather refreshing in this day and age. Imagine Reagan if he were thirty years younger, or a more liberal JFK (who was interestingly conservative by today's standards). Hillary downright scares me - the FIRST dem candidate I am genuinely afraid of, particularly with a dem majority in Congress.
My head is with the right, but Obama, if he wins, will give me an interesting "let's see how this plays out" semi-optimism.
The teachings of Christ "seemed" completely new, but hatred of a brother was ALWAYS akin to murder, and lust was ALWAYS akin to adultery. He just spelled it out.
Yet those same scholars don't agree most of the time on what many passages mean. For instance, the Athanasian Creed is a conglomeration of contradictory and mostly nonsensical "beliefs" - it was written by men who could not agree among themselves exactly what the nature of God was, so they compromised. That is what large groups of learned men give us - compromise. We should not base our beliefs on the compromises of groups of learned men. Simply studying a lot does not make a person an authority on scripture, nor does it give him the authority to declare what is doctrine and what is not. Only a prophet may do so, and none of these learned men were prophets.
I disagree. Study DOES bring about authority on scripture - just like in ANY other walk of life! Would you trust a preacher who didn't prepare messages, didn't dive into the word, didn't understand what he was talking about? Without study, we cannot "show ourselves approved," we cannot test doctrine and see if it holds up to God! It's WHY we were given scripture in the first place!
Yes, Joseph Smith taught something that seemed completely new to everyone, but whether it seemed new to the people is hardly relevant. Whether scholars agree is also irrelevant; are scholars greater than God? What is relevant is whether or not he was called of God - for if he was, then everything he taught is true.
I agree with the statement, if he WAS called, then about 2000 years of Biblical study essentially gets thrown out the window!
This is what the LDS Church teaches - that one should pray to know whether Joseph Smith was a prophet, and whether the Book of Mormon is true, and if a person ponders these things, and prays with a sincere heart, with real intent, that person will receive a witness of the Holy Ghost that these things are true. Once a person knows that these things are true, it follows that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church, and that by following its teachings and coming unto Christ a person may be forgiven of their sins and saved in the Kingdom of God.
And this is where I depart from LDS teachings - that it eliminates the necessity of studying and understanding scripture BEFORE coming to some sort of knowledge - particularly regarding Mormonism's historical and theological claims. True, the Holy Spirit does move beyond man's understanding, but faith DOESN'T have to proceed from blind trust!
If the Book of Mormon is of God, then Joseph Smith was a true prophet. If Joseph Smith was a true prophet, then the church he restored is the true church. It might be added: If the LDS Church is the true church, then Jesus Christ is the head of that church, and only by and through him, in His true church, can man be saved.
No prophet taught something radically new? The entire Law of Moses was radically new, at least to the Jews in Egypt, so you're way off base there. Keep in mind that anyone who doesn't already know something of a concept will consider it radically new when it is taught to them. The teachings of Christ seemed completely new to many of the Jews - so much so that they killed him for "blasphemy". Jesus' explanations of scripture seemed just as implausible to the Jews as mine do to you.
Nope - the Mosaic law, particularly the Ten Commandments - were a codification of reality, NOT a statement of something new and radical. It was ALWAYS sinful to murder, steal, commit adultery, etc. No new theological matters were introduced, simply temple worship. The teachings of Christ "seemed" completely new, but hatred of a brother was ALWAYS akin to murder, and lust was ALWAYS akin to adultery. He just spelled it out.
You mean your interpretation of scripture contradicts LDS theology, right? You cannot fault a church simply for differing with your own interpretation. That's a very closed-minded position. I do not fault you for having a different interpretation of scripture, I fault you for insisting it is the only one possible. It's not just mine - it's the scholarship of centuries of Biblical study by men more learned than any of us, regarding matters which had been reasoned and more or less figured out (to a point) which a singular, theologically and historically untrained individual suddenly claimed was mostly bunk and went in a completely new direction! I don't claim to have ironclad theology, but Smith introduced something which hadn't been done in two thousand years.
I'm curious to know why you ignore things when I make good points rather than conceding that my position is, at the very least, plausible. Care to comment? Just figured discussion may be over along those lines and didn't want to muddy the waters much anymore.
On Brigham Young, at what point do should official LDS doctrine - which he taught - be separated from his personal views when he taught those views as doctrine?
Also, keep in mind that no prophet ever taught something radically new - even when Jesus expounded on the law, He clarified, and never added.
I don't debate the need for prayer to produce illumination. I have always done so and continue to find Mormonism wanting, particularly in history, the nature of God and Christ, and overall scripture interpretation (which I often find contradicts Mormon theology).
Perhaps he was mistaken? No one ever said prophets were perfect. In any case, please provide references that have Brigham Young teaching what you say he taught, since you are saying he taught it.
I am going to refer you to Wikipedia here - it's got a fairly decent article on Young, and the points of his quotes are well-referenced.
It appears you are unfamiliar with the story of how Abraham had his son Ishmael, in which the Lord promises Hagar an exceeding multitude of posterity. If that's not endorsement, I don't know what is.
Then you don't know. Abraham didn't marry Hagar (at least, it's not explicit in scripture), and the birth of Ishmael was the result of Sarah and Abraham's sin in not trusting God to provide what He promised - a child by Sarah. Re-read Genesis 16. And remember who the children of Ishmael became - Arabs and their kin. Not exactly a peaceful result.
See, you ignored what I said. In any case, you cannot prove that modern egyptologists themselves are correct (since they don't even know what all the various meanings the symbols can take on are).
Agree to disagree here. I put more weight with the Egyptologists, you with Smith.
Is it? Then why did early Christians contemporary with Peter and Paul believe it to be so, as Father Vajda's research showed?
Vajda is hardly conclusive, and not fitting with typical interpretation - particularly that of protestant circles (outside of the name-it claim-it crowd, which makes a similar assertion with little Biblical backing). As I said, the heresy of it isn't new or original...and your assertion that Paul and Peter believe it to be so comes from misinterpretation of scripture. Try reading non-LDS interpretations that may expand on what I state below. Also, if you're going to debate scripture, use something that is non-Mormon.
Jesus commanded his disciples to be perfect, even as God is perfect.
Know your Greek. Perfect here means "complete," not "without error." Take it in context as well. The "therefore" is in about how one treats enemies and persecutors.
Paul told the Romans that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
Not an assertion of divinity - just one that speaks of Christ's condescension to become man and die for our sins, so that we can inherit the Kingdom (notice the singular here - there is no speaking of a plurality of Kingdoms) of God.
Paul told the Hebrews that we will be partakers of God's holiness.
Holiness does not equal divine being. It means "set apart." We are commanded to be Holy, as He is Holy, and that is while we are STILL on this earth.
Paul told the Ephesians that we can be filled with the fulness of God.
And he is speaking to the Ephesians while they are still around - it's a statement of the present, not after death. It's talking about the Love of Christ.
Peter taught that we are promised that we may become "partakers of the divine nature".
Again, temporal, not afterward. It speaks of Christ supplying everything we need in the here and now, particularly spiritually.
John said that we will be like Christ.
NOT that we will be divine. The previous verses speak of being the Children of God.
Most of what you point out show a temporal, here-and-now nature of being like Christ, NOT in being "gods" in the hereafter. Holiness, being like Christ, having God be in and working through us does NOT make us divine. Of course, we could have two different definitions of divinity as we have two different definitions of Christ and God.
Try reading some non-LDS material and theology.
Eastern Orthodox writer Dr. Seth Farber ("The Reign of Augustine," The Christian Activist: A Journal of Orthodox Opinion,
I have already commented on this sufficiently here. On a related note, I spoke with my father who grew up in the church before 1978 (he was 18 at the time). His recollection is that the only thing the church taught about blacks was "Everyone on earth will eventually receive the priesthood. We just don't know when." There is nothing racist about that (quite the opposite).
If that's the case, how do you explain Young's position? He adamantly proposed what I was talking about.
God gave David and Solomon the privilege of having multiple wives. They abused that privilege, and it was taken away. I may have to dig some into this, but everything I can tell from the Bible is that plural marriage was NEVER endorsed by God. Allowed, yes, endorsed, no. No Biblical character ever had good consequences come about because of plural marriage.
Perhaps not as a whole (from a modern secular perspective... Egyptology is a vague science at best, unlike mathematics), but how did he even get a single character right?
IANAE (I Am Not An Egyptologist), but hieroglyphs are pictures. Not to discount the difficulty, but I imagine when faced with concentrating on their meaning, I could probably get it. Have you ever asked, "how did he get ANY of it wrong if he was divinely inspired?"
The "charlatan and treasure hunter" persona that anti-mormons are so fond of portraying is demonstrably not true. Joseph once had a short-term job (that is, he needed a job to feed his family) as a gold digger, a venture that was very unprofitable. And a charlatan? He was constantly working in one effort or another - whether that be traveling to preach, farming, planning and constructing a city (Nauvoo which, by the way, was way ahead of its time in terms of street layout, and formed the basis of the street layout of Salt Lake City), running said city, running a rapidly growing church... You get the picture. He never let other people provide for him while he sat around doing nothing. He never sat around doing nothing. Does that sound like a charlatan? I didn't think so. Charlatan!=laziness. He was a failed treasure hunter. He was definitely a hard worker - I put him in a category with Mohammed, in that he was extremely intelligent without training...which is why he formed the church without real theological knowledge.
Well there's at least one: I recall a Roman Catholic Dominican monk named Father Joseph Vajda who did his masters' thesis on the LDS Church's belief in man's divine potential. He found that some of the LDS beliefs have striking similarities to early Christian beliefs on the subject. How could Joseph Smith pick beliefs that were closer to Christian roots than contemporary churches, when he had no access to documents describing the time? You yourself say he had no theological experience. The article I linked to explains it better than I can. Ummm...that man could be as God is the first heresy. Try reading the first few chapters of Genesis - it was the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve. That man could "be like God" as it were, is no original idea and can easily be derived by mis-reading scripture (as was done several times in the article).
The doctrine about African-Americans wasn't Joseph Smith, but it beared through several of the prophets, including Young. It was actively practiced.
On plural marriages, it was practiced in scripture but never endorsed by God - simply allowed. The LDS only recinded the practice AFTER government pressure, and there are still super-fundamentalist groups that practice it (and one wonders if they still would were it still legal).
Looking at the book of Abraham from a non-mormon historical perspective, it's laughable how Smith - a charlatan and treasure hunter with no theological experience (proven historically) could even pretend to know how to translate it. NO secular translation comes close to what he proposed.
Were there any non-Mormon scholars who would uphold ANY tenets of Mormonism, I might listen to you, but I'm too well-educated historically and theologically to take their claims seriously. Most, if not all, non-Christian scholars and historians hold SOME part of the Bible to have historical accuracy. You cannot say that about the Book of Mormon.
Well... except the ones that marry 13 year olds and follow changed mormon beliefs
There, fixed that for you. Plural marriage and the view of black people as "marked" by the curse of Cain were once core beliefs, and may still be if they weren't aiming for wider acceptance.
I'm about the same way. Actually, I'd probably still play off-and-on if it wasn't for the monthly fee. It's not worth it to me to pay $15 to maybe play 2-3x a month. When I was on 4 hours every other day, yeah, I got my money's worth.
Of course, I DID by the original version off of a guy selling store returns on ebay for eight bucks. Fixed a minor glitch, and it worked fine.
I'm now currently enjoying a copy of Starcraft I got for $2 at a flea market. With Brood War.
Slashdot Mirror
Heck with that, give me the pirate radio of Sealab 2021!
Can I have your credit card and bank account #'s, then?
I haven't paid for cable since college, and that was shared. I shoot to watch a few shows when they're on, but I can just as well hit them on the internet if I miss. Football and movies/episodes on DVD is all I really use my TV for. I don't miss it.
The problem that may occur with your argument is exactly what conditions are needed to formulate and develop life. I can see life evolving somehow to exist in those conditions, but can it begin there? I know that conditions were theoretically extreme on earth, but some parts seem a little iffy...
Slashdot would certainly cease to exist.
/ducks
More conservative (NOT Ron Paul paleocon, more semi-Reaganish/Gingrich-neocon) than Republican right now. Don't equate the two, please. The current lot are political corporatist types, and so are the Dems, particularly in the Senate.
Taxes, general supply-side economic theory, pro-guns, pro-life, proactive national defense (I think Iraq was good idea, with poor execution) are some of the main points.
With Paul so highly unlikely, Huckabee is the only "change" candidate on the right. McCain is status quo, and neither he nor Romney can be trusted with a Dem congress. Obama is the only change candidate on the left. Maybe.
Think about it in those terms when you vote. Of course, whether or not you think Huck's M.O. of "change" is good or not...
As an aside, Huckabee is positioning himself now as the "compromise candidate" in a Republican convention, or as VP for McCain (McCain NEEDS him to keep the South on the right, or someone similar, particularly if Obama gets the nomination).
Though I'm still voting Republican (democrat leftist politics bother me greatly), Obama is rather refreshing in this day and age. Imagine Reagan if he were thirty years younger, or a more liberal JFK (who was interestingly conservative by today's standards). Hillary downright scares me - the FIRST dem candidate I am genuinely afraid of, particularly with a dem majority in Congress.
My head is with the right, but Obama, if he wins, will give me an interesting "let's see how this plays out" semi-optimism.
Ummm...HEAT RAY!!
Did you NOT read/listen to/see/experience War of the Worlds? You're the FIRST puny human I'm using this thing on! And no common cold is gonna stop me!
Yet those same scholars don't agree most of the time on what many passages mean. For instance, the Athanasian Creed is a conglomeration of contradictory and mostly nonsensical "beliefs" - it was written by men who could not agree among themselves exactly what the nature of God was, so they compromised. That is what large groups of learned men give us - compromise. We should not base our beliefs on the compromises of groups of learned men. Simply studying a lot does not make a person an authority on scripture, nor does it give him the authority to declare what is doctrine and what is not. Only a prophet may do so, and none of these learned men were prophets.
I disagree. Study DOES bring about authority on scripture - just like in ANY other walk of life! Would you trust a preacher who didn't prepare messages, didn't dive into the word, didn't understand what he was talking about? Without study, we cannot "show ourselves approved," we cannot test doctrine and see if it holds up to God! It's WHY we were given scripture in the first place!
Yes, Joseph Smith taught something that seemed completely new to everyone, but whether it seemed new to the people is hardly relevant. Whether scholars agree is also irrelevant; are scholars greater than God? What is relevant is whether or not he was called of God - for if he was, then everything he taught is true.
I agree with the statement, if he WAS called, then about 2000 years of Biblical study essentially gets thrown out the window!
This is what the LDS Church teaches - that one should pray to know whether Joseph Smith was a prophet, and whether the Book of Mormon is true, and if a person ponders these things, and prays with a sincere heart, with real intent, that person will receive a witness of the Holy Ghost that these things are true. Once a person knows that these things are true, it follows that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church, and that by following its teachings and coming unto Christ a person may be forgiven of their sins and saved in the Kingdom of God.
And this is where I depart from LDS teachings - that it eliminates the necessity of studying and understanding scripture BEFORE coming to some sort of knowledge - particularly regarding Mormonism's historical and theological claims. True, the Holy Spirit does move beyond man's understanding, but faith DOESN'T have to proceed from blind trust! If the Book of Mormon is of God, then Joseph Smith was a true prophet. If Joseph Smith was a true prophet, then the church he restored is the true church. It might be added: If the LDS Church is the true church, then Jesus Christ is the head of that church, and only by and through him, in His true church, can man be saved.
So who'll be the first genius to fling a toilet bowl through it?
Nope - the Mosaic law, particularly the Ten Commandments - were a codification of reality, NOT a statement of something new and radical. It was ALWAYS sinful to murder, steal, commit adultery, etc. No new theological matters were introduced, simply temple worship. The teachings of Christ "seemed" completely new, but hatred of a brother was ALWAYS akin to murder, and lust was ALWAYS akin to adultery. He just spelled it out.
You mean your interpretation of scripture contradicts LDS theology, right? You cannot fault a church simply for differing with your own interpretation. That's a very closed-minded position. I do not fault you for having a different interpretation of scripture, I fault you for insisting it is the only one possible. It's not just mine - it's the scholarship of centuries of Biblical study by men more learned than any of us, regarding matters which had been reasoned and more or less figured out (to a point) which a singular, theologically and historically untrained individual suddenly claimed was mostly bunk and went in a completely new direction! I don't claim to have ironclad theology, but Smith introduced something which hadn't been done in two thousand years.
I'm curious to know why you ignore things when I make good points rather than conceding that my position is, at the very least, plausible. Care to comment? Just figured discussion may be over along those lines and didn't want to muddy the waters much anymore.
On Brigham Young, at what point do should official LDS doctrine - which he taught - be separated from his personal views when he taught those views as doctrine?
Also, keep in mind that no prophet ever taught something radically new - even when Jesus expounded on the law, He clarified, and never added. I don't debate the need for prayer to produce illumination. I have always done so and continue to find Mormonism wanting, particularly in history, the nature of God and Christ, and overall scripture interpretation (which I often find contradicts Mormon theology).
Perhaps he was mistaken? No one ever said prophets were perfect. In any case, please provide references that have Brigham Young teaching what you say he taught, since you are saying he taught it.
I am going to refer you to Wikipedia here - it's got a fairly decent article on Young, and the points of his quotes are well-referenced.
It appears you are unfamiliar with the story of how Abraham had his son Ishmael, in which the Lord promises Hagar an exceeding multitude of posterity. If that's not endorsement, I don't know what is.
Then you don't know. Abraham didn't marry Hagar (at least, it's not explicit in scripture), and the birth of Ishmael was the result of Sarah and Abraham's sin in not trusting God to provide what He promised - a child by Sarah. Re-read Genesis 16. And remember who the children of Ishmael became - Arabs and their kin. Not exactly a peaceful result.
See, you ignored what I said. In any case, you cannot prove that modern egyptologists themselves are correct (since they don't even know what all the various meanings the symbols can take on are).
Agree to disagree here. I put more weight with the Egyptologists, you with Smith.
Is it? Then why did early Christians contemporary with Peter and Paul believe it to be so, as Father Vajda's research showed?
Vajda is hardly conclusive, and not fitting with typical interpretation - particularly that of protestant circles (outside of the name-it claim-it crowd, which makes a similar assertion with little Biblical backing). As I said, the heresy of it isn't new or original...and your assertion that Paul and Peter believe it to be so comes from misinterpretation of scripture. Try reading non-LDS interpretations that may expand on what I state below. Also, if you're going to debate scripture, use something that is non-Mormon.
Jesus commanded his disciples to be perfect, even as God is perfect.
Know your Greek. Perfect here means "complete," not "without error." Take it in context as well. The "therefore" is in about how one treats enemies and persecutors.
Paul told the Romans that we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.
Not an assertion of divinity - just one that speaks of Christ's condescension to become man and die for our sins, so that we can inherit the Kingdom (notice the singular here - there is no speaking of a plurality of Kingdoms) of God.
Paul told the Hebrews that we will be partakers of God's holiness.
Holiness does not equal divine being. It means "set apart." We are commanded to be Holy, as He is Holy, and that is while we are STILL on this earth.
Paul told the Ephesians that we can be filled with the fulness of God.
And he is speaking to the Ephesians while they are still around - it's a statement of the present, not after death. It's talking about the Love of Christ.
Peter taught that we are promised that we may become "partakers of the divine nature".
Again, temporal, not afterward. It speaks of Christ supplying everything we need in the here and now, particularly spiritually.
John said that we will be like Christ.
NOT that we will be divine. The previous verses speak of being the Children of God.
Most of what you point out show a temporal, here-and-now nature of being like Christ, NOT in being "gods" in the hereafter. Holiness, being like Christ, having God be in and working through us does NOT make us divine. Of course, we could have two different definitions of divinity as we have two different definitions of Christ and God.
Try reading some non-LDS material and theology.
Eastern Orthodox writer Dr. Seth Farber ("The Reign of Augustine," The Christian Activist: A Journal of Orthodox Opinion,
If that's the case, how do you explain Young's position? He adamantly proposed what I was talking about.
God gave David and Solomon the privilege of having multiple wives. They abused that privilege, and it was taken away. I may have to dig some into this, but everything I can tell from the Bible is that plural marriage was NEVER endorsed by God. Allowed, yes, endorsed, no. No Biblical character ever had good consequences come about because of plural marriage.
Perhaps not as a whole (from a modern secular perspective... Egyptology is a vague science at best, unlike mathematics), but how did he even get a single character right?
IANAE (I Am Not An Egyptologist), but hieroglyphs are pictures. Not to discount the difficulty, but I imagine when faced with concentrating on their meaning, I could probably get it. Have you ever asked, "how did he get ANY of it wrong if he was divinely inspired?"
The "charlatan and treasure hunter" persona that anti-mormons are so fond of portraying is demonstrably not true. Joseph once had a short-term job (that is, he needed a job to feed his family) as a gold digger, a venture that was very unprofitable. And a charlatan? He was constantly working in one effort or another - whether that be traveling to preach, farming, planning and constructing a city (Nauvoo which, by the way, was way ahead of its time in terms of street layout, and formed the basis of the street layout of Salt Lake City), running said city, running a rapidly growing church... You get the picture. He never let other people provide for him while he sat around doing nothing. He never sat around doing nothing. Does that sound like a charlatan? I didn't think so. Charlatan!=laziness. He was a failed treasure hunter. He was definitely a hard worker - I put him in a category with Mohammed, in that he was extremely intelligent without training...which is why he formed the church without real theological knowledge.
Well there's at least one: I recall a Roman Catholic Dominican monk named Father Joseph Vajda who did his masters' thesis on the LDS Church's belief in man's divine potential. He found that some of the LDS beliefs have striking similarities to early Christian beliefs on the subject. How could Joseph Smith pick beliefs that were closer to Christian roots than contemporary churches, when he had no access to documents describing the time? You yourself say he had no theological experience. The article I linked to explains it better than I can. Ummm...that man could be as God is the first heresy. Try reading the first few chapters of Genesis - it was the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve. That man could "be like God" as it were, is no original idea and can easily be derived by mis-reading scripture (as was done several times in the article).
The doctrine about African-Americans wasn't Joseph Smith, but it beared through several of the prophets, including Young. It was actively practiced.
On plural marriages, it was practiced in scripture but never endorsed by God - simply allowed. The LDS only recinded the practice AFTER government pressure, and there are still super-fundamentalist groups that practice it (and one wonders if they still would were it still legal).
Looking at the book of Abraham from a non-mormon historical perspective, it's laughable how Smith - a charlatan and treasure hunter with no theological experience (proven historically) could even pretend to know how to translate it. NO secular translation comes close to what he proposed.
Were there any non-Mormon scholars who would uphold ANY tenets of Mormonism, I might listen to you, but I'm too well-educated historically and theologically to take their claims seriously. Most, if not all, non-Christian scholars and historians hold SOME part of the Bible to have historical accuracy. You cannot say that about the Book of Mormon.
That's true. I and others I know could read fairly well on advanced levels, but it was abstract concepts which really held us back til later.
Mormons. Not a whole ton of people knows what's down in that temple...and the Vatican has some mysterious storage as well.
Well... except the ones that marry 13 year olds and follow changed mormon beliefs
There, fixed that for you. Plural marriage and the view of black people as "marked" by the curse of Cain were once core beliefs, and may still be if they weren't aiming for wider acceptance.
I'm about the same way. Actually, I'd probably still play off-and-on if it wasn't for the monthly fee. It's not worth it to me to pay $15 to maybe play 2-3x a month. When I was on 4 hours every other day, yeah, I got my money's worth.
Of course, I DID by the original version off of a guy selling store returns on ebay for eight bucks. Fixed a minor glitch, and it worked fine.
I'm now currently enjoying a copy of Starcraft I got for $2 at a flea market. With Brood War.
Yeah, I may be cheap, but I ain't easy.
Don't live near any toll roads. Yet another asset of not living or working in a big city or up North.
Repeating yourself over and over again doesn't make you more right.
Not just that, but his erratic behavior had a tendency to distract his opponents. He played both brilliant chess AND head games.
Probably both...of course, they do overlap quite often.
Catching air on the moon? SWEET. It may be worth losing the buggy just for the photo op.
They probably just want to make donuts on the moon. I would. THAT would be cool.