The "christian" that acts like that and spews hate at Homosexuals and other people that are "immoral" are NOT christians, they are a wierd sect of extremists that seems to have taken hold.
...I wonder if you have considered the likely opinions of Jesus on the subject (I'm loosely interpreting your term "christian" above as "follower of the teachings and example of Jesus Christ", correct me if I'm wrong). Jesus at various times spoke against immorality in various contexts. For example, he said that a man who divorced his wife (except for reasons of immorality) committed adultery, and caused the wife to become an adulteress. There are a couple of passages where it is implied that Jesus gave stern warnings to women who had "operated in the red light district" to cease and desist from that immoral lifestyle. And for the icing on the cake, Jesus endorsed the Mosaic Law very explicitly -- which is not generally considered friendly to homosexuality.
So I realize rants like yours above are really popular these days, but am I the only one who thinks that makes no sense whatsoever, except in sort of a politically correct, touchy-feely, but largely mentally disconnected thought process? In other words, if speaking against "sexual immorality" is your litmus test for who is a real Christian, maybe it will turn out that you are not the real Christian, at least in a historical sense. Maybe you are inventing a new religion.
Jesus registered disapproval of a lot of stuff, but I don't recall any instance where he spewed hate.
Take e.g. his handling of the adultress whom the hyper-religious wanted to stone to death.
I find it more likely that the person driving like a jerk and breaking the law to have a "jesus fish" on their SUV or Minivan.
The only circumstance where I've observed religious people driving rudely is in the immediate neighborhood of a church when services let out around noon on Sunday.
And of course, it's not all of them - just the crowd of rude ones that catches your attention.
I certainly have noticed this. I live in San Francisco, and I count on average 1 prius parked on the street for each city block I drive. They are everywhere.
I am continually frustrated with these drivers because they a) Drive overly defensively, to the point where you cannot make normal predictions about driving behavior. b) The cars have poor acceleration, so the cars always appear to go very slowly for no good reason. c) I have seen more Prius drivers fail to use their turn signals. I do not know why this is.
I always get the impression that the drivers of PT Cruisers are the rudest/craziest class that is defined by what you drive.
Rudest parking, OTOH, is big trucks/SUVs/hummers and young guys with working class "sports cars".
I have never met a cyclist that stops at stop signs when no cars are around. I live in San Francisco; I have never seen a cyclist come to a 4-way stop sign with no other cars coming in any direction, and completely stop. I have never seen this. Ever. So I don't believe you.
Where I live now, I don't think I've ever seen a *motorist* come to a complete stop at a stop sign, even if there are *lots* of people around.
In the book "Freakonomics", about how the statistical tools economists use can bring some light to other areas of social study, the tale is told of a guy who ran a business model of dropping off bagels at office coffee rooms around town, with a voluntary-contribution box, and kept meticulous records for many years of his repayment rate. Turns out the upper floors (as in, upper management) and near corner offices and so on, had the lowest rate.
The authors were careful about drawing conclusions, though they entertained by speculating - was it "have to run to my important meeting, that's more important than digging around for change, my time is worth $900/hour"
Probably quicker to drop a C-note out of your wallet than to dig in your pocket for change.
If I were a billionaire, I probably wouldn't think it was worth my time to collect change in the first place (in the unlikely event that I still did my own shopping).
Which is it? Wealthy people are more likely to become dicks, or the kind of people who would openly behave this poorly tend to become wealthy? I'm curious as to whether or not having large amounts of money corrupts an otherwise mild-mannered person [...]
Well, you could always get a research grant, give someone a big pile of money out of it, and see what happens.
Shouldn't have any trouble rounding up experimental subjects.
Now the constant invocation of God by politicians makes a lot of sense...
Marx's famous/notorious comment was apparently less about religion per se (as religionists tend to take it), than about how religion is used by our "betters" to keep us down.
Up to a point, then they become moral again because it no longer means as much. I think it occurs once you get past the billionaire mark: Examples: Warren Buffet, Bill Gates...
Bill was the richest man in the world for a rather long time before he started trying to make the world a better place.
I would say a religion that denies that man has a capacity for selfishness would off the bat have a mark against it for being grounded in fantasy, demonstrable in a single day in the life of the average person.
I agree: that would be an evidence-based approach, and any religions claiming that could be stricken off the list.
However, of all the religions mankind has ever had (that we know of), how many would this strike off the list?
Also, almost half the world's population follow religions that claim that the book of Genesis is divinely inspired, yet it contains manifestly contrafactual claims. By your approach, we can strike those religions off the list right away.
I would say that a religion that correctly describes the behaviors and motivations of humans would get a mark in its favor.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I would give those religions "+0" rather than "+1". It's trivially easy to make claims that are true; we could easily make up a religion that had lots of marks in its favor.
In relativity they say there is a speed limit for particles. We always assumed that it was the speed of light. It could in effect be slightly faster then light and causality is maintained.
What if causality is a faulty assumption. Goes against our intuitions, sure, but so do lots of other things physicists have discovered.
One guy writing a "funny" article in which he is the third guy on a website to criticize some ideas and writes it sort-of in the style of a scientific peer review is not actually sending an idea around for scientific peer review. Headline and summary failure.
I get e-mail from one google group that I joined long ago, and occasional invites to edit a google doc, but when I try to log in with the relevant e-mail address, it says it can't find a matching account. Is it letting me do those things without an account?
Will google searches work if I forbid cookies unto them?
WTF is this kind of privacy-spilling even legal?
Will widespread complaints make them roll it back, like BoA's ATM card fee?
Slashdot Mirror
Disney's Lorax = Crusty?
And Crusty = Homer.
That's funny... I always hear progressives saying they also support our troops. Are you telling me I'm wrong, and only "conservative dickweeds" do?
"Conservative" dickweeds support the arms industry.
The promise the troops an elevator, but only give them the shaft.
The "christian" that acts like that and spews hate at Homosexuals and other people that are "immoral" are NOT christians, they are a wierd sect of extremists that seems to have taken hold.
...I wonder if you have considered the likely opinions of Jesus on the subject (I'm loosely interpreting your term "christian" above as "follower of the teachings and example of Jesus Christ", correct me if I'm wrong). Jesus at various times spoke against immorality in various contexts. For example, he said that a man who divorced his wife (except for reasons of immorality) committed adultery, and caused the wife to become an adulteress. There are a couple of passages where it is implied that Jesus gave stern warnings to women who had "operated in the red light district" to cease and desist from that immoral lifestyle. And for the icing on the cake, Jesus endorsed the Mosaic Law very explicitly -- which is not generally considered friendly to homosexuality.
So I realize rants like yours above are really popular these days, but am I the only one who thinks that makes no sense whatsoever, except in sort of a politically correct, touchy-feely, but largely mentally disconnected thought process? In other words, if speaking against "sexual immorality" is your litmus test for who is a real Christian, maybe it will turn out that you are not the real Christian, at least in a historical sense. Maybe you are inventing a new religion.
Jesus registered disapproval of a lot of stuff, but I don't recall any instance where he spewed hate.
Take e.g. his handling of the adultress whom the hyper-religious wanted to stone to death.
Then compare it to Fred Phelps and his ilk.
I find it more likely that the person driving like a jerk and breaking the law to have a "jesus fish" on their SUV or Minivan.
The only circumstance where I've observed religious people driving rudely is in the immediate neighborhood of a church when services let out around noon on Sunday.
And of course, it's not all of them - just the crowd of rude ones that catches your attention.
Maybe it's related to partially to Prosperity Theology. "If I'm blessed by God with all this prosperity then what I want to do must be morally right."
I.e., if God didn't want me to be a dick, why did He give me all of this money?
I certainly have noticed this. I live in San Francisco, and I count on average 1 prius parked on the street for each city block I drive. They are everywhere.
I am continually frustrated with these drivers because they
a) Drive overly defensively, to the point where you cannot make normal predictions about driving behavior.
b) The cars have poor acceleration, so the cars always appear to go very slowly for no good reason.
c) I have seen more Prius drivers fail to use their turn signals. I do not know why this is.
I always get the impression that the drivers of PT Cruisers are the rudest/craziest class that is defined by what you drive.
Rudest parking, OTOH, is big trucks/SUVs/hummers and young guys with working class "sports cars".
In the context of wealth disparity, character and morals are orthogonal, and money is the consequence of character.
Paris Hilton?
It's about perceived superiority. There's an inherent tendency to be dismissive of others we perceive to be 'inferior' in some way
See also: Atlas Shrugged.
I have never met a cyclist that stops at stop signs when no cars are around. I live in San Francisco; I have never seen a cyclist come to a 4-way stop sign with no other cars coming in any direction, and completely stop. I have never seen this. Ever. So I don't believe you.
Where I live now, I don't think I've ever seen a *motorist* come to a complete stop at a stop sign, even if there are *lots* of people around.
In the book "Freakonomics", about how the statistical tools economists use can bring some light to other areas of social study, the tale is told of a guy who ran a business model of dropping off bagels at office coffee rooms around town, with a voluntary-contribution box, and kept meticulous records for many years of his repayment rate. Turns out the upper floors (as in, upper management) and near corner offices and so on, had the lowest rate.
The authors were careful about drawing conclusions, though they entertained by speculating - was it "have to run to my important meeting, that's more important than digging around for change, my time is worth $900/hour"
Probably quicker to drop a C-note out of your wallet than to dig in your pocket for change.
If I were a billionaire, I probably wouldn't think it was worth my time to collect change in the first place (in the unlikely event that I still did my own shopping).
Which is it? Wealthy people are more likely to become dicks, or the kind of people who would openly behave this poorly tend to become wealthy? I'm curious as to whether or not having large amounts of money corrupts an otherwise mild-mannered person [...]
Well, you could always get a research grant, give someone a big pile of money out of it, and see what happens.
Shouldn't have any trouble rounding up experimental subjects.
You don't think rich people work hard, do you?
Sure; Paris Hilton is the very paradigm of the Puritan work ethic.
Seriously, ISTM that if you're rich, it's either because (a) you've lived your life for money, or else (b) you lucked into it by birth or something.
Neither STM like something that would do much to promote an ethical sense.
Then why does most religions covet it?
It's not safe for the likes of you and me to handle it, so it should be turned over to the experts.
Is the number of traffic violations really a good metric for morality?
In D&D terms, it's a measurement on the Lawful-Chaotic axis, not the Good-Evil Axis.
Now the constant invocation of God by politicians makes a lot of sense...
Marx's famous/notorious comment was apparently less about religion per se (as religionists tend to take it), than about how religion is used by our "betters" to keep us down.
It can be an opiate, even if it is true.
Up to a point, then they become moral again because it no longer means as much. I think it occurs once you get past the billionaire mark: Examples: Warren Buffet, Bill Gates...
Bill was the richest man in the world for a rather long time before he started trying to make the world a better place.
I would say a religion that denies that man has a capacity for selfishness would off the bat have a mark against it for being grounded in fantasy, demonstrable in a single day in the life of the average person.
I agree: that would be an evidence-based approach, and any religions claiming that could be stricken off the list.
However, of all the religions mankind has ever had (that we know of), how many would this strike off the list?
Also, almost half the world's population follow religions that claim that the book of Genesis is divinely inspired, yet it contains manifestly contrafactual claims. By your approach, we can strike those religions off the list right away.
I would say that a religion that correctly describes the behaviors and motivations of humans would get a mark in its favor.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I would give those religions "+0" rather than "+1". It's trivially easy to make claims that are true; we could easily make up a religion that had lots of marks in its favor.
In relativity they say there is a speed limit for particles. We always assumed that it was the speed of light. It could in effect be slightly faster then light and causality is maintained.
What if causality is a faulty assumption. Goes against our intuitions, sure, but so do lots of other things physicists have discovered.
One guy writing a "funny" article in which he is the third guy on a website to criticize some ideas and writes it sort-of in the style of a scientific peer review is not actually sending an idea around for scientific peer review. Headline and summary failure.
You're new here, aren't you.
So even if Indy only had his signature Fedora and Leather Jacket and no fridge, he would have survived the blast with just a few scratches.
Though it probably would have blown his hat off, and raised puffs of dust from his jacket.
A good plot twist would have been to have snakes in the fridge.
Assuming that the survival rate function is continuous, then the intermediate value theorem would prove you right.
You also have to assume that the 50% point lies somewhere in the range of f(0)..f(infinity), though intuition strongly suggests that it does.
An interesting question is, what is the range of distances where a fridge makes a difference in your chances of survival?
George Lucas must be dumber than I thought if he really thought there was a 50/50 chance of survival.
Maybe he was speaking on the assumption that there was a 50-50 chance of being in reality vs. a fantasy world.
And not a very good one at that.
The kept postponing IJ4 to make sure they had the perfect script, then settled for this drek... They might as well have made a prequel.
Now that is funny.
Hope it doesn't get me busted for DOSing Teh Google.
More confusion here...
I get e-mail from one google group that I joined long ago, and occasional invites to edit a google doc, but when I try to log in with the relevant e-mail address, it says it can't find a matching account. Is it letting me do those things without an account?
Will google searches work if I forbid cookies unto them?
WTF is this kind of privacy-spilling even legal?
Will widespread complaints make them roll it back, like BoA's ATM card fee?