I do not disagree that there is much hypocrisy in Christianity, but public prayer is (and has always been) perfectly appropriate and proper in many situations. Giving thanks before you eat is one of those.
If you want to tell God how wonderful you are and/or ask him to give you stuff that you think you need (maybe you do need it, like food for the table... but plenty of stuff you ask for is probably stuff that you don’t need)... then yes, that is a matter between you and God and shouldn’t be done in public.
I lack a lot of things. I lack a hole in the head, for one thing. Saying I lack something doesn’t necessarily imply that I want to have it, nor does it necessarily imply that I ought to have it.
Another thing I lack is a sense of insecurity or whatever else it would be that might cause me to go around taking offense at people for petty imagined slights when no offense was meant.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Now show me the law, made by Congress, that would respect the establishment of a religion if the seniors were allowed to have their prayer before they eat, which really sounds to me like the freedom to exercise their religion that was just affirmed by that very amendment.
Let someone who represent the largest group of people give a blessing before the meal. Let anyone who objects, or wishes to give their own blessing or prayer, do so privately or in a smaller group in the community room or somewhere else. It’s not like you have to start eating the instant you’ve finished the prayer.
Furthermore I never said that the majority (who wanted to have the prayer) have to give the objectors a pulpit from which to announce their objections. They can voice their objection to whomever cares to listen at their table as they eat.
Way to take the verse out of context. (Yes, I know exactly which verse you’re referring to, at least from the Christian Bible. If you care to show me where in Judaism it teaches against public prayer, feel free... nothing springs to mind from the Old Testament, but I know there are other written teachings and traditions besides the Pentateuch, or Torah.)
“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’ ” — Mt. 6:5-15
It’s very specifically referring to the boastful prayers that hypocrites of that day would make on street-corners. Rather than really talking to God, they were merely going through litanies of their accomplishments and tributes to themselves, so that the bystanders would see how great they were – and God said that is all the reward they would get for this sort of “prayer”. If you have some greatness about you that you think God should reward you for, it’s a matter between you and God. Likewise if you have a request to make of God it need not be a public matter.
Giving thanks before a meal, on the other hand, is plentifully supported by Jesus’ habits; for instance:
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. — Jn. 6:11
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; — Mt. 26:26-27
This is a public gratitude to God which focuses on Him, not the person praying, and is not the sort of prayer that Jesus said to do in secret. Additionally, requesting something from God to demonstrate his power and glory was also something commonly done in public:
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of li
Who said anything about "squatters rights?" Most illegal aliens live in apartments for which they pay rent.
I’m not talking about a building that they’re paying someone to live in. I’m talking about a country they entered illegally. This is not their home. Any residence they might take up here is illegal.
If your religion forces me to sit through several minutes of rambling to a fictional entity, or endure your regular disruption of everyday life that make everybody who doesn't want to participate uncomfortable or distracts people who don't want to listen to your prayers in their social lifes
Oh, cry me a river. You’ll live. I had to read your whining pathetic post and I’m not complaining.
Basically you want to force your religious habits onto others. You said it yourself: those who don't want participate should stop their lives till you are finished, out of "respect", probably "for the children", too. Also, we're talking about dinner. Not an elective visit to a religious celebration like a Mormon funeral. Red herring and all that.
No, YOU are forcing YOUR religious habits onto EVERYONE else. If everyone except you and a couple other people want to have a prayer, you are the one forcing the issue by making a fuss.
Not at all. You are free to say you disagree with the prayer, or with the faith of the person who gave it, so long as it is done in a respectful, non-disruptive manner that doesn’t infringe on the rights of the person who is trying to pray or the other people who are trying to participate in the prayer.
I’m willing to concede that it was rude and inappropriate of him to interrupt if you’re willing to concede that blindly swallowing anything Obama says is practically like a religion.:p
It’s a process. Kindergartners are worried about cooties, skinned knees, and the sweater their mom made them wear. Grade schoolers are worried about their sneakers, getting beat up on the playground, and the sweater their mom made them wear. Junior highers are worried about their hair, their sneakers, getting beat up on the playground, and the sweater their mom made them wear. High schoolers are worried about their car, their hair, their sneakers, getting beat up on the playground, and hopefully their mom isn’t still making them wear that sweater. And so on.
At some point they start seeing decisions that could really screw things up if they make the wrong choice, and they should be gradually prepared to make those choices. Sex is one of those choices and you can’t protect your kids from it. They’ll do it anyway. You have only the hope that they’ve learned enough by that time to make the right decisions, or at least not to make the really bad ones, when you aren’t going to be there to rescue them.
What is troubling is that I suspect that at the same DUI checkpoint that you're outraged about they will let all the white people go after blowing, but demand, "papers please" from all the brown people - both drivers and passengers.
I’ll be just as upset over such gross violations of our rights as I would over the DUI checkpoints themselves. Not for the people who are breaking the law: they just got caught, and they deserve what punishment they get. I’ll be outraged for the people who were obeying the law who were unconstitutionally harassed.
Because the place where they sleep at night, have their clothes, their stuff, the place they go to after work, the place where their phone rings, and potentially even their wife and kids live...that's not their "home."
Squatters rights, eh? Damn right it’s not their home. They came by it illegally.
Yes, a person's worth as a human being can definitively be determined by where they were born. Does it ever blow your mind when you consider that George Washington wasn't a natural-born citizen?
A fine straw man indeed.
A person’s ethics can be effectively determined by whether they abide by the law, as it justifiably and accurately applies to them. They can also be determined by how a person acts when the law unjustly applies to them, and whether or not they will pay the penalties imposed by it. I’m not saying you have to be a Ghandi or Thoreau and turn yourself in. I’m just saying that if you are caught violating a law you should be subject to the law even if you think it’s an incorrect law.
They're willing to do things you're not willing to do.
Incorrect. I am willing to do those things. Just not at the prices they are willing to do them for.
I guarantee that if every illegal worker disappeared tomorrow, after the major upheaval and turmoil subsided the labour market would bring itself to a wage that American workers were willing to work for and employers were willing to pay. It wouldn’t be a pretty process and it wouldn’t be an ideal way to reach a solution... it’d be a major fiasco and an incredibly terrible mess, but it would eventually find a new equilibrium.
Why does one person's attempts to better themselves, and experience the liberties here in the US (which I served to help protect, in the USMC), bother you so?
I thank you for your service. I must ask, though: Why does a mass flaunting of this so-called liberty by boldly transgressing the laws of the land that you fought to help protect not bother you?
You know what’s harassment? You know what’s a violation of civil rights? Stopping 620+ drivers and forcing them to allow you to sample the very breath from their lungs just to find the 20 who were driving while intoxicated.
Some illegal alien gets stopped for an actual infraction, or picked up after committing a crime? Send them back to their country of origin.
So what you are predicting is that we will learn that lots of legal Hispanic Americans will be detained and/or harassed with demands for them to prove their citizenship.
Ok, we’ll see if you’re right.
Personally, I predict that we’ll learn that lots of illegal Hispanics were stopped for unrelated things, found to be illegally here, and sent home. That’s just my prediction, though. Oh, and I also predict that your prediction will turn out to be incorrect.
Question 1: What sort of prayer you would prefer before meals (ex: Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, moment of silence, none; be as specific as you wish)?
____________________________
Question 2: Will you, or will you not, be able to respectfully and silently sit without disrupting the proceedings if the form of prayer that is given is not according to your own religious beliefs?
____________________________
Then choose a form of prayer (or no prayer) that, based on Question 1, will appeal to the most people, and anyone who answers question 2 in the negative is an asshat who can come to meals when the food is ready to be served; meanwhile everyone else can get there ten minutes earlier and have someone give the prayer.
If the majority of the people would like to have someone say a prayer, out loud, I see nothing wrong with that. The people who do not want to participate in the prayer can sit quietly for a few seconds out of respect for the people who do want to participate (by bowing their heads, closing their eyes, folding their hands, or whatever). It’s no more than I would do if I went to, say, a Mormon funeral, and they had a Mormon prayer. If the majority of the people want to have a prayer, the rest should be respectful of that.
If your religion (or lack of religion) will not permit you to even listen to me pray, nor will it allow you to respectfully avoid making a disruption that prevents me from praying or distracts people who want to listen to my prayer, then your beliefs are intolerant of mine, not vice versa.
In fact, that goes for any public setting... not just a prayer. If the majority of the people want a couple of troublemakers to shut up and be quiet so that they can hear the person who is talking, their right to hear the speaker should overrule those few people’s right to be noisy and disruptive.
The problem is, that HTML code is meant to be displayed by a browser in human-readable form. You have no idea what the HTML code of that webpage will look like in order to have a machine interpret the results, and even if you figure out how to machine-parse the results they could completely change their HTML tomorrow and your interface would break.
For instance, this is an example of a simple scraper.
Perform any Google search, then paste this code into the Address bar and press Enter:
It works. But it is extremely sensitive to the exact HTML of the search results page, and I have no idea whether it would work tomorrow. Google might decide to change the HTML template for their search results and the scraper would most likely need to be changed.
It’s not a fully-automated tool, therefore not a robot. It scrapes the page only once at a real user’s direct request.
As such it is no different from a browser (which also scrapes – downloads, parses, and translates into useful format – a page once at a user’s direct request)...
or, for that matter, any different from the IE search interface that the/ie path was meant to support!
So... if somebody performed a search that would return illegal content (child porn, say), the Google search API terms would prohibit you from removing those listings even if you wanted to try to detect and remove such things from the results...
Sounds almost like Google is endorsing the content they provide, to me... like they just guaranteed that none of their results would contain illegal images. Because if they did, and if you knew this, then you would be lawfully required to filter them out (based on your knowledge of it)... which Google forbade.
Slashdot Mirror
Google doesn’t have any ads on their search results page.
And yes, I made sure to use a browser that didn’t have Adblock to double check before I said that.
I do not disagree that there is much hypocrisy in Christianity, but public prayer is (and has always been) perfectly appropriate and proper in many situations. Giving thanks before you eat is one of those.
If you want to tell God how wonderful you are and/or ask him to give you stuff that you think you need (maybe you do need it, like food for the table... but plenty of stuff you ask for is probably stuff that you don’t need)... then yes, that is a matter between you and God and shouldn’t be done in public.
I lack a lot of things. I lack a hole in the head, for one thing. Saying I lack something doesn’t necessarily imply that I want to have it, nor does it necessarily imply that I ought to have it.
Another thing I lack is a sense of insecurity or whatever else it would be that might cause me to go around taking offense at people for petty imagined slights when no offense was meant.
Bullshit. Your freedom of religion does not give you the right to prevent other people from exercising their own.
Ha! What a joke.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
Now show me the law, made by Congress, that would respect the establishment of a religion if the seniors were allowed to have their prayer before they eat, which really sounds to me like the freedom to exercise their religion that was just affirmed by that very amendment.
Let someone who represent the largest group of people give a blessing before the meal. Let anyone who objects, or wishes to give their own blessing or prayer, do so privately or in a smaller group in the community room or somewhere else. It’s not like you have to start eating the instant you’ve finished the prayer.
Furthermore I never said that the majority (who wanted to have the prayer) have to give the objectors a pulpit from which to announce their objections. They can voice their objection to whomever cares to listen at their table as they eat.
Way to take the verse out of context. (Yes, I know exactly which verse you’re referring to, at least from the Christian Bible. If you care to show me where in Judaism it teaches against public prayer, feel free... nothing springs to mind from the Old Testament, but I know there are other written teachings and traditions besides the Pentateuch, or Torah.)
“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This, then, is how you should pray:
“ ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’ ”
— Mt. 6:5-15
It’s very specifically referring to the boastful prayers that hypocrites of that day would make on street-corners. Rather than really talking to God, they were merely going through litanies of their accomplishments and tributes to themselves, so that the bystanders would see how great they were – and God said that is all the reward they would get for this sort of “prayer”. If you have some greatness about you that you think God should reward you for, it’s a matter between you and God. Likewise if you have a request to make of God it need not be a public matter.
Giving thanks before a meal, on the other hand, is plentifully supported by Jesus’ habits; for instance:
And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. — Jn. 6:11
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; — Mt. 26:26-27
This is a public gratitude to God which focuses on Him, not the person praying, and is not the sort of prayer that Jesus said to do in secret. Additionally, requesting something from God to demonstrate his power and glory was also something commonly done in public:
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of li
He's still out there somewhere, sometimes posts on Slashdot.
Heh. No kidding.
http://slashdot.org/~Falconhell/journal/249604
http://slashdot.org/~squiggleslash/journal/249758
http://slashdot.org/~gmhowell/journal/250222
http://slashdot.org/~squiggleslash/journal/250282
In fact 2 days ago he registered a new sock puppet...
Who said anything about "squatters rights?" Most illegal aliens live in apartments for which they pay rent.
I’m not talking about a building that they’re paying someone to live in. I’m talking about a country they entered illegally. This is not their home. Any residence they might take up here is illegal.
If your religion forces me to sit through several minutes of rambling to a fictional entity, or endure your regular disruption of everyday life that make everybody who doesn't want to participate uncomfortable or distracts people who don't want to listen to your prayers in their social lifes
Oh, cry me a river. You’ll live. I had to read your whining pathetic post and I’m not complaining.
Basically you want to force your religious habits onto others. You said it yourself: those who don't want participate should stop their lives till you are finished, out of "respect", probably "for the children", too. Also, we're talking about dinner. Not an elective visit to a religious celebration like a Mormon funeral. Red herring and all that.
No, YOU are forcing YOUR religious habits onto EVERYONE else. If everyone except you and a couple other people want to have a prayer, you are the one forcing the issue by making a fuss.
Here's an idea: why don't you start replying to your own posts?
He already does.
Not at all. You are free to say you disagree with the prayer, or with the faith of the person who gave it, so long as it is done in a respectful, non-disruptive manner that doesn’t infringe on the rights of the person who is trying to pray or the other people who are trying to participate in the prayer.
I’m willing to concede that it was rude and inappropriate of him to interrupt if you’re willing to concede that blindly swallowing anything Obama says is practically like a religion. :p
It’s a process. Kindergartners are worried about cooties, skinned knees, and the sweater their mom made them wear. Grade schoolers are worried about their sneakers, getting beat up on the playground, and the sweater their mom made them wear. Junior highers are worried about their hair, their sneakers, getting beat up on the playground, and the sweater their mom made them wear. High schoolers are worried about their car, their hair, their sneakers, getting beat up on the playground, and hopefully their mom isn’t still making them wear that sweater. And so on.
At some point they start seeing decisions that could really screw things up if they make the wrong choice, and they should be gradually prepared to make those choices. Sex is one of those choices and you can’t protect your kids from it. They’ll do it anyway. You have only the hope that they’ve learned enough by that time to make the right decisions, or at least not to make the really bad ones, when you aren’t going to be there to rescue them.
What is troubling is that I suspect that at the same DUI checkpoint that you're outraged about they will let all the white people go after blowing, but demand, "papers please" from all the brown people - both drivers and passengers.
I’ll be just as upset over such gross violations of our rights as I would over the DUI checkpoints themselves. Not for the people who are breaking the law: they just got caught, and they deserve what punishment they get. I’ll be outraged for the people who were obeying the law who were unconstitutionally harassed.
Because the place where they sleep at night, have their clothes, their stuff, the place they go to after work, the place where their phone rings, and potentially even their wife and kids live...that's not their "home."
Squatters rights, eh? Damn right it’s not their home. They came by it illegally.
Yes, a person's worth as a human being can definitively be determined by where they were born. Does it ever blow your mind when you consider that George Washington wasn't a natural-born citizen?
A fine straw man indeed.
A person’s ethics can be effectively determined by whether they abide by the law, as it justifiably and accurately applies to them. They can also be determined by how a person acts when the law unjustly applies to them, and whether or not they will pay the penalties imposed by it. I’m not saying you have to be a Ghandi or Thoreau and turn yourself in. I’m just saying that if you are caught violating a law you should be subject to the law even if you think it’s an incorrect law.
They're willing to do things you're not willing to do.
Incorrect. I am willing to do those things. Just not at the prices they are willing to do them for.
I guarantee that if every illegal worker disappeared tomorrow, after the major upheaval and turmoil subsided the labour market would bring itself to a wage that American workers were willing to work for and employers were willing to pay. It wouldn’t be a pretty process and it wouldn’t be an ideal way to reach a solution... it’d be a major fiasco and an incredibly terrible mess, but it would eventually find a new equilibrium.
Why does one person's attempts to better themselves, and experience the liberties here in the US (which I served to help protect, in the USMC), bother you so?
I thank you for your service. I must ask, though: Why does a mass flaunting of this so-called liberty by boldly transgressing the laws of the land that you fought to help protect not bother you?
You know what’s harassment? You know what’s a violation of civil rights? Stopping 620+ drivers and forcing them to allow you to sample the very breath from their lungs just to find the 20 who were driving while intoxicated.
Some illegal alien gets stopped for an actual infraction, or picked up after committing a crime? Send them back to their country of origin.
So what you are predicting is that we will learn that lots of legal Hispanic Americans will be detained and/or harassed with demands for them to prove their citizenship.
Ok, we’ll see if you’re right.
Personally, I predict that we’ll learn that lots of illegal Hispanics were stopped for unrelated things, found to be illegally here, and sent home. That’s just my prediction, though. Oh, and I also predict that your prediction will turn out to be incorrect.
It is very simple to solve this democratically.
Question 1: What sort of prayer you would prefer before meals (ex: Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, moment of silence, none; be as specific as you wish)?
____________________________
Question 2: Will you, or will you not, be able to respectfully and silently sit without disrupting the proceedings if the form of prayer that is given is not according to your own religious beliefs?
____________________________
Then choose a form of prayer (or no prayer) that, based on Question 1, will appeal to the most people, and anyone who answers question 2 in the negative is an asshat who can come to meals when the food is ready to be served; meanwhile everyone else can get there ten minutes earlier and have someone give the prayer.
If the majority of the people would like to have someone say a prayer, out loud, I see nothing wrong with that. The people who do not want to participate in the prayer can sit quietly for a few seconds out of respect for the people who do want to participate (by bowing their heads, closing their eyes, folding their hands, or whatever). It’s no more than I would do if I went to, say, a Mormon funeral, and they had a Mormon prayer. If the majority of the people want to have a prayer, the rest should be respectful of that.
If your religion (or lack of religion) will not permit you to even listen to me pray, nor will it allow you to respectfully avoid making a disruption that prevents me from praying or distracts people who want to listen to my prayer, then your beliefs are intolerant of mine, not vice versa.
In fact, that goes for any public setting... not just a prayer. If the majority of the people want a couple of troublemakers to shut up and be quiet so that they can hear the person who is talking, their right to hear the speaker should overrule those few people’s right to be noisy and disruptive.
It’s probably far more stable (with respect to the underlying HTML that can be scraped) than their standard search results page...
http://www.google.com/m/search?q=hello+world&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g6-k0d0t0&fkt=2581&fsdt=8531&csll=&action=&gl=us&source=mog<oken=0d10d1b858de8&safe=active
google.com#div(leftnav)
Yes, and contains utterly nothing of value.
In fact it is immensely easy to “interface” with that page. You just download http://www.google.com/search?q=insert+search+terms+here.
The problem is, that HTML code is meant to be displayed by a browser in human-readable form. You have no idea what the HTML code of that webpage will look like in order to have a machine interpret the results, and even if you figure out how to machine-parse the results they could completely change their HTML tomorrow and your interface would break.
For instance, this is an example of a simple scraper.
Perform any Google search, then paste this code into the Address bar and press Enter:
It works. But it is extremely sensitive to the exact HTML of the search results page, and I have no idea whether it would work tomorrow. Google might decide to change the HTML template for their search results and the scraper would most likely need to be changed.
It’s not a fully-automated tool, therefore not a robot. It scrapes the page only once at a real user’s direct request.
As such it is no different from a browser (which also scrapes – downloads, parses, and translates into useful format – a page once at a user’s direct request)...
or, for that matter, any different from the IE search interface that the /ie path was meant to support!
So... if somebody performed a search that would return illegal content (child porn, say), the Google search API terms would prohibit you from removing those listings even if you wanted to try to detect and remove such things from the results...
Sounds almost like Google is endorsing the content they provide, to me... like they just guaranteed that none of their results would contain illegal images. Because if they did, and if you knew this, then you would be lawfully required to filter them out (based on your knowledge of it)... which Google forbade.