The first amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
FALSE "Separation of Church and State" was a coin termed by Thomas Jefferson to describe the effects of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. (Thomas Jefferson, as President, in a letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 369)
That was later reaffirmed by supreme court decision
In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State." (Justice Hugo Black, U. S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education, 1947. Quoted by John M. Swomley, Jr., Religion, The State, & The Schools, New York: Pegasus, 1968, pp. 21-22.)
The authors of the constitution, the mentors of the authors of the constitution, the supreme court, and the text of The Cosntitution Of the United States of America tell me you're full of it.
Children aren't allowed to organize and hold voluntary prayer groups on school property.
False - they can do so and did so my entire time in school
Many schools have prohibited children from wearing crosses.
False, that is an unconstitutional restriction on their freedom of expression
A judge has been prohibited from putting the ten commandments in his courtroom.
True, because a court room is a government facility and therefore placing religious reference to any religion in that court room is unconstitutional. So is asking someone to swear on a religious text.
If I had to swear in court I would demand a copy of the constitution to swear upon.
Nowhere do I see congress making any laws.
Then you are BLIND AS A BAT - how about The Department of Faith Based Initiatives, how about the state-level bans of gay marriage in opposition of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Ammendment to the US Cosntitution How about the attempts to ban stemp cell research and abortion for religious reasons
ALL ARE ATTEMPTS TO LEGISLATE RELIGION BECAUSE THE ONLY MOTIVIATION FOR THE LAW IS RELIGIOUS ALL ARE ATTEMPTS TO FORCE PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN THE RELIGION(S) THAT SPONSOR THE POSITION
I do, however, see the court system, via lawsuits from athiests, "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Then you are hallucinating and listening to propagandists liars like Pat Robertson and James Dobson.
The Courts uphold The Constitution of the United States of America
The Constitution states that the GOVERNMENT MAY NOT SPONSOR OR INHIBIT RELIGOUS EXPRESSION - that means government employees, while at work, may not do anything to support or inhibit religion as they are acting as agents for the government.
You attempt to cite examples above of the Free Exercise clause being restricted - and yet they're all dishonesties that were debunked over a decade ago.
When the public school system says my child can't pray because of some fscking lawsuit, they're prohibiting the free exercise of her religion.
AND NO SCHOOL SYSTEM DOES - The law [constitution] states that the school cannot lead them in prayer - if the student wishes to spontaneously engage in prayer on their own they are allowed to do so as long as they are not doing it in a manner disruptive to class (such as being loud)
I find that fact that people get their ideas of morality from inflexible authoritarians extremely disturbing.
The if-it-doesn't-harm-others (or does-least-harm if no other option is available) doctrine of relativistic morality much more insightful because the same conclusions can be reached over and over with an unbiased reasoning process and all relevant information.
So technically speaking this is ethics not morality that I subscribe to. Ethics are vastly superior to "morality".
Even more distrubing: i know many christians who cannot fathom this ability to deduce right-and-from from a does-least/does-no harm doctrine - they basically demostates that they do not have an internal sense of right/wrong: the definition of a sociopath is someone who cannot tell right from wrong*
*not all christians, but a fairly sizable minority
[humor]"God, why does religion look like a mental disorder? God are you there?"[/humor]
Atheists and agnostics (and any other minority religious group) merely want their rights respected - that means government out of religion, no religious displays on government property, no teaching religion-as-fact in schools (comparative religion class = A-OK if it includes all the major options including atheism/agnosticism), no state-sponsored prayer (no atheist has ever said you cannot spontaneously pray in school so long as you're not disrupting class - only that staff members cannot do things to encourage prayer, and therefore religion).
At the same time we will continue to support your right to be religious - even if we are completely personally against the existance of religion (as I am myself - i try to stamp out religion by attempting to reason with people.)
posting a book is not evidence - posting quotations froom a source that has already been established to be credible, like; oh i dunno - one of the big universities perhaps - something that has been peer-reivewed you know.
anyone can right a book and make claims - only a good piece of peer reviewed research is an authoritative source from which you can cite evidence.
It is not insanity to demand enforcement of the constitution. The christian religion is defined by it's history and it's present: it is the oppressor, and the tool of the oppressor. It is filled with jingoistic ethnnocentrics who will stop at nothing to force their religion upon others - religious displays on public property are one of the mechanisms for that./This does not apply to the minority of christians who are not insane//All religious is stupid, but I will support your right to be stupid while simultaneously arguing with you about your stupidity*
*Go ahead, mod me troll - i'm speaking mind and getting modded troll for doing so is par for the course.
Passive smokers inhale a complex mixture of smoke that is now widely referred to as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Passive smoking was first considered as a possible risk factor for lung cancer in 1981 when two studies were published that described increased lung cancer risk among never-smoking women who were married to smokers. Hirayama89 reported the findings from a cohort study in Japan, which showed that among nonsmoking women, those whose husbands smoked cigarettes were at higher risk for lung cancer than those whose husbands were nonsmokers. A case-control study in Athens reported by Trichopoulos and colleagues90 shortly thereafter replicated this finding. Additional evidence rapidly accrued so that by 1986 two important summary reports were published. The National Research Council reviewed the epidemiologic evidence and concluded that nonsmoking spouses who were married to cigarette smokers were about 30% more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmoking spouses who were married to nonsmokers, and that this relationship was biologically plausible.91 Almost one fourth of lung cancer cases among never-smokers were estimated to be attributed to exposure to passive smoking.91 The 1986 report of the Surgeon General also judged passive smoking to be a cause of lung cancer,14 an inference corroborated by the 1992 review15 of the evidence and risk assessment by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which classified ETS as a known human (class A) carcinogen. Estimates indicate that passive smoking accounts for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States.15
Pregnancy and smoking: when adjusted for maternal smoking during pregnancy, the effects of current smoking on the children's lung function were markedly decreased and were no longer significant. Boys showed greater ETS-related deficits in all these measures of lung function than girls" [which translates to: ETS is bad, but smoking while pregnant dwarfs it]
parent: It's not going to hurt you. Just learn not to flip out over little things man. It's scientifically proven that it IS going to hurt you -- and demeaning your opponant by calling them "little man" is pathetic.
I could go on and on and on with the evidence. You ahve fallen into the FUD marketing by the tobacco companies and their lap-dog politicians when you say there is no evidence.
The first doctor to ever discover the health effects of smoking (in 1950!) was a smoker. He quit on the spot. [he died recently - may he RIP]
because they CHOOSE to - i'd say intentionally choosing to be offended by a word instead of an intention is rude itself and an attempt to censor the other person.
You continue to operate under the assumption that swear words are inherently offensive - they are not, it's just sounds, just phonomes - you choose to find the word itself offensive
(as long as he isn't bitter enough to hate Christians).
those are becoming few and far between in Bush's "America"
Tolerate christians band togeather, stand next to us atheists/agnostics in defense of the seperation of chruch and state - show the fundamentalsts they will not be tolerated.
Educating those kids helps the overall economy by providing skilled workers to all fields and reducing the crime rate.
Remove the governments' "burdeons" on raising your family and all you'll be doing all day is subsistance farming and hunting and keeping ruffians out of your house by force.
and you won't have guns to do it because there won't be any industry.
Nobody implied that it didn't. That doesn't mean that it also doesn't rest at the feet of a president who ignores his PDB's and the warnings of his predecessor.
The judgement was against them for older ones who started and became addicted before they were forced to disclose - people who continue to smoke, or (especially) start now are MORONS.
Cars - do not release non-threshold carcinogens and non-threshold toxicants Factories - do not release non-threshold carcinogens and non-threshold toxicants, they're banned from doing so (AFAIK, if they're not they should be) Busses - see cars Chemicals - um.. care to qualify that Don't have to associate with smokers to be exposed to Environmental Tobacco Smoke - ETS is a mix of non-threshold toxicants and non-threshold carcinogens. The definition of "non-threshold" means that there is no known safe level of exposure (ie any exposure is harmful)- furthermore the risk of cancer from NTCs is accumulative with exposure Since it's a NTT/NTC blend that means if you can smell it your rights have most definantly been violated - i can smell it driving down the highway, walking down the street, BLOWING IN THE WINDOWS TO MY OWN HOUSE FROM MY NEIGHBORS HOUSES.
Learn the difference between rights and license [Hint: license is an exercise of a right that violates the rights of others so is therefore not a protected exercise of that right] Go take some biochem classes. [Hint: exposing others to NTT/NTCs = poisoning them]
BDSM isn't degrading when it is consentual - so my statement didn't apply to it.
I understand very well how you could (normally reasonably) make that presumption though.
but i don't get my jollies off on it.
to each their own.
The tobacco companies flippiantly and knowingly lied about the health effects of their products.
Plus exposing third parties to cigarette smoke against their will, no matter how dilute, is a violation of their right to bodily integrety (read: not to be poisoned by some asshole) and should therefore cause smoking to be outlawed.
1 foolish 2 even more foolish than 1 - if 1 wasn't foolish then 2 still would be foolish 3 i agree from a completely secular perspective 4 foolish 5 so long as they deserve it 6 Defense (and i don't mean "preemptive defense") is always justified - especially defense of the weak when you are strong (saving people from genocide?) 7 you're damn skippy! (ie 100% agree) 8 Taxation is not theft - go take an economic class - you wouldn't even HAVE a job and money if it wasn't for the fact you pay taxes to maintain police, roads, courts, hospitals, power, gas, water, etc etc etc. 9 Yup 10 completely moronic, espeially the anarcho-capitalistic "business regulations are wrong" - please take economics 100 - even ADAM SMITH (you know, father of capitalism) recognized THERE MUST BE RULES otherwise there will be abuse
Maybe Christians are tired of seeing the proliferation of these things throughout society, because they see them as harmful to people whether they are Christian or not.
Sucks to be them - what hey see as harmful and what IS harmful are two completely different things
Maybe if more Christians took more of a stand and told people to stop swearing, drinking, screwing around or watching porn the society at large would be more courteous, have less drunk drivers, and broken marriages.
Christianity, especially not fundamentalist christianity, is not the answer to this.
First and foremost you have to prove swearing is harmful - a swear word is just a word, you choose to take offense. Now words can be used in a way that is intended to be harmful - but i can intend to insult you by calling you a "feces eating dog fornicator" without ever swearing.
The very concept of "swear words" is anathemic to free thought
No sexual relationships before marriage is equally unhealthy as too many - just unhealthy in different ways - and no sexual relationship with the person you are going to marry before you marry them can, and does, cause divorces
Drunk driving is unlawful, against even relativistic morals, etc - you don't need religion to say drunk driving is bad- and religion doesn't ameloriate the rate of alcoholism.
Broken marriages now.. that's something really ironic for a fundamentalist to preach about. It has been shown that the divorce rate among the most fundamentalist christians is TWICE that of the divorce rate among atheists and agnostics - and that the divorce rate between the two is pretty much linearaly related to the level of fundamentalism the couple is involved in. A nice example of this is Rush Limbaugh, or my fiancee's biological father is another good example of this.
Sure, anybody can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean that their activities don't end up hurting other people directly or indirectly, Christian or not.
Yep my looking at porn (alone and with my fiancee), farking my fiancee (and only two other girls ever before her), and swearing are really harming you!
oh the humanity!
PS: not all porn is tasteful, stuff that is really degrading to women is not only NOT HOT, but is pretty disgusting
I'd rather see privated completely deregulated electrical service as well.
When will you anarcho-capitalists actually take economics 100.
Given A) A service that has a near zero elasticity of demand in relation to price B) Is infrastructure
(Things Fitting A&B: Roads, Water, Sewer, Power, phone, cable, electricity, gas) You CANNOT deregulate, you CANNOT expect the "Free market" to ensure quality and low price.
Infrastructure doesn't follow the normal rules because it's something that should not be duplicated concurrently - imagine having two roads systems, or two seperate water systems, power etc - there isn't the space to do it and the costs are prohibitive. This prevents normal competitive practices of the free-market and favors large intrenched monopolies
Have you not been paying attention? power was deregulated in some areas - it resulted in artificially created roving blackouts to give the impression that demand exceeded supply so that price-gouging could occur.
Adam Smith himself said that capitalism needs enforced rules to keep all parties treating each other fairly - why can you not recognize this?
You would also be castrating the internet and preventing tons of functions it was intended to be capable of performing from being performed.
You can kiss any type of peer to peer activity goodbye; and contrary to the RIAA and MPAA's assertions there are millions of legal uses for p2p communication.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no seperation of church and state.
The first amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
FALSE "Separation of Church and State" was a coin termed by Thomas Jefferson to describe the effects of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. (Thomas Jefferson, as President, in a letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 369)
That was later reaffirmed by supreme court decision
In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State." (Justice Hugo Black, U. S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education, 1947. Quoted by John M. Swomley, Jr., Religion, The State, & The Schools, New York: Pegasus, 1968, pp. 21-22.)
The authors of the constitution, the mentors of the authors of the constitution, the supreme court, and the text of The Cosntitution Of the United States of America tell me you're full of it.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/ quotations.html
Children aren't allowed to organize and hold voluntary prayer groups on school property.
False - they can do so and did so my entire time in school
Many schools have prohibited children from wearing crosses.
False, that is an unconstitutional restriction on their freedom of expression
A judge has been prohibited from putting the ten commandments in his courtroom.
True, because a court room is a government facility and therefore placing religious reference to any religion in that court room is unconstitutional. So is asking someone to swear on a religious text.
If I had to swear in court I would demand a copy of the constitution to swear upon.
Nowhere do I see congress making any laws.
Then you are BLIND AS A BAT - how about The Department of Faith Based Initiatives, how about the state-level bans of gay marriage in opposition of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Ammendment to the US Cosntitution
How about the attempts to ban stemp cell research and abortion for religious reasons
ALL ARE ATTEMPTS TO LEGISLATE RELIGION BECAUSE THE ONLY MOTIVIATION FOR THE LAW IS RELIGIOUS
ALL ARE ATTEMPTS TO FORCE PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN THE RELIGION(S) THAT SPONSOR THE POSITION
I do, however, see the court system, via lawsuits from athiests, "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Then you are hallucinating and listening to propagandists liars like Pat Robertson and James Dobson.
The Courts uphold The Constitution of the United States of America
The Constitution states that the GOVERNMENT MAY NOT SPONSOR OR INHIBIT RELIGOUS EXPRESSION - that means government employees, while at work, may not do anything to support or inhibit religion as they are acting as agents for the government.
You attempt to cite examples above of the Free Exercise clause being restricted - and yet they're all dishonesties that were debunked over a decade ago.
When the public school system says my child can't pray because of some fscking lawsuit, they're prohibiting the free exercise of her religion.
AND NO SCHOOL SYSTEM DOES - The law [constitution] states that the school cannot lead them in prayer - if the student wishes to spontaneously engage in prayer on their own they are allowed to do so as long as they are not doing it in a manner disruptive to class (such as being loud)
I find that fact that people get their ideas of morality from inflexible authoritarians extremely disturbing.
The if-it-doesn't-harm-others (or does-least-harm if no other option is available) doctrine of relativistic morality much more insightful because the same conclusions can be reached over and over with an unbiased reasoning process and all relevant information.
So technically speaking this is ethics not morality that I subscribe to. Ethics are vastly superior to "morality".
Even more distrubing: i know many christians who cannot fathom this ability to deduce right-and-from from a does-least/does-no harm doctrine - they basically demostates that they do not have an internal sense of right/wrong: the definition of a sociopath is someone who cannot tell right from wrong*
*not all christians, but a fairly sizable minority
[humor]"God, why does religion look like a mental disorder? God are you there?"[/humor]
Atheists and agnostics (and any other minority religious group) merely want their rights respected - that means government out of religion, no religious displays on government property, no teaching religion-as-fact in schools (comparative religion class = A-OK if it includes all the major options including atheism/agnosticism), no state-sponsored prayer (no atheist has ever said you cannot spontaneously pray in school so long as you're not disrupting class - only that staff members cannot do things to encourage prayer, and therefore religion). At the same time we will continue to support your right to be religious - even if we are completely personally against the existance of religion (as I am myself - i try to stamp out religion by attempting to reason with people.)
posting a book is not evidence - posting quotations froom a source that has already been established to be credible, like; oh i dunno - one of the big universities perhaps - something that has been peer-reivewed you know.
anyone can right a book and make claims - only a good piece of peer reviewed research is an authoritative source from which you can cite evidence.
I am an atheist and I have trained myself out of using religious statements from convention - I say gesundheit for example.
and yes I do find the religious references that creep into everything offensive - because they're a prime example of christian ethnocentrism.
It is not insanity to demand enforcement of the constitution. The christian religion is defined by it's history and it's present: it is the oppressor, and the tool of the oppressor. It is filled with jingoistic ethnnocentrics who will stop at nothing to force their religion upon others - religious displays on public property are one of the mechanisms for that. /This does not apply to the minority of christians who are not insane //All religious is stupid, but I will support your right to be stupid while simultaneously arguing with you about your stupidity*
*Go ahead, mod me troll - i'm speaking mind and getting modded troll for doing so is par for the course.
A) Cars, Busses - if you're correct - move to a hydrogen economy - this doesn't refute my statement about cigarettes
1 _suppl/21S
1 22/2/409n g-and-lung-disease.htm
parent: There has never been any study that remotely suggested that dilute second hand smoke has any appreciable effect on health.
Wow you're dead wrong. Incoming source citations.
http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/full/123/
http://www.epa.gov/nceawww1/ets/pdfs/etsch8.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/ncea/ets/pdfs/acknowl.pdf
Passive smokers inhale a complex mixture of smoke that is now widely referred to as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Passive smoking was first considered as a possible risk factor for lung cancer in 1981 when two studies were published that described increased lung cancer risk among never-smoking women who were married to smokers. Hirayama89 reported the findings from a cohort study in Japan, which showed that among nonsmoking women, those whose husbands smoked cigarettes were at higher risk for lung cancer than those whose husbands were nonsmokers. A case-control study in Athens reported by Trichopoulos and colleagues90 shortly thereafter replicated this finding. Additional evidence rapidly accrued so that by 1986 two important summary reports were published. The National Research Council reviewed the epidemiologic evidence and concluded that nonsmoking spouses who were married to cigarette smokers were about 30% more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmoking spouses who were married to nonsmokers, and that this relationship was biologically plausible.91 Almost one fourth of lung cancer cases among never-smokers were estimated to be attributed to exposure to passive smoking.91 The 1986 report of the Surgeon General also judged passive smoking to be a cause of lung cancer,14 an inference corroborated by the 1992 review15 of the evidence and risk assessment by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which classified ETS as a known human (class A) carcinogen. Estimates indicate that passive smoking accounts for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the United States.15
Increases Severity of Asthma: http://www.chestjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/
Harder to detect, nonthreshold exposure to lower levels of ETS could account for worsening more than 1 million cases of asthma in children. http://www.emedicine.com/ped/byname/passive-smoki
Pregnancy and smoking:
when adjusted for maternal smoking during pregnancy, the effects of current smoking on the children's lung function were markedly decreased and were no longer significant. Boys showed greater ETS-related deficits in all these measures of lung function than girls" [which translates to: ETS is bad, but smoking while pregnant dwarfs it]
parent: It's not going to hurt you. Just learn not to flip out over little things man.
It's scientifically proven that it IS going to hurt you -- and demeaning your opponant by calling them "little man" is pathetic.
I could go on and on and on with the evidence. You ahve fallen into the FUD marketing by the tobacco companies and their lap-dog politicians when you say there is no evidence.
The first doctor to ever discover the health effects of smoking (in 1950!) was a smoker. He quit on the spot. [he died recently - may he RIP]
yes since you found one poor source it means my source that did it's own research instead of using the government is wrong yep.
Source: The Fundamentals of Extremism - which in turn cites over 900 other scholarly works to support it's various statements, that being one of them.
because they CHOOSE to - i'd say intentionally choosing to be offended by a word instead of an intention is rude itself and an attempt to censor the other person.
You continue to operate under the assumption that swear words are inherently offensive - they are not, it's just sounds, just phonomes - you choose to find the word itself offensive
I believe millions of crimes are deterred annually with a weapon drawn. More guns, less crime.
and yet, mysterously, i've never seen a gun nut able to present evidence of this.
(as long as he isn't bitter enough to hate Christians).
those are becoming few and far between in Bush's "America"
Tolerate christians band togeather, stand next to us atheists/agnostics in defense of the seperation of chruch and state - show the fundamentalsts they will not be tolerated.
I'm a well paid software developer and I pay 35%
Educating those kids helps the overall economy by providing skilled workers to all fields and reducing the crime rate.
Remove the governments' "burdeons" on raising your family and all you'll be doing all day is subsistance farming and hunting and keeping ruffians out of your house by force.
and you won't have guns to do it because there won't be any industry.
Nobody implied that it didn't. That doesn't mean that it also doesn't rest at the feet of a president who ignores his PDB's and the warnings of his predecessor.
The judgement was against them for older ones who started and became addicted before they were forced to disclose - people who continue to smoke, or (especially) start now are MORONS.
Cars - do not release non-threshold carcinogens and non-threshold toxicants
Factories - do not release non-threshold carcinogens and non-threshold toxicants, they're banned from doing so (AFAIK, if they're not they should be)
Busses - see cars
Chemicals - um.. care to qualify that
Don't have to associate with smokers to be exposed to Environmental Tobacco Smoke - ETS is a mix of non-threshold toxicants and non-threshold carcinogens. The definition of "non-threshold" means that there is no known safe level of exposure (ie any exposure is harmful)- furthermore the risk of cancer from NTCs is accumulative with exposure
Since it's a NTT/NTC blend that means if you can smell it your rights have most definantly been violated - i can smell it driving down the highway, walking down the street, BLOWING IN THE WINDOWS TO MY OWN HOUSE FROM MY NEIGHBORS HOUSES.
Learn the difference between rights and license [Hint: license is an exercise of a right that violates the rights of others so is therefore not a protected exercise of that right]
Go take some biochem classes. [Hint: exposing others to NTT/NTCs = poisoning them]
So many words to change nothing - if anything your post MAKES MY POINT that swear words are something you merely CHOSE to be offended by.
Are fundies getting divorced more often because they are more likely to get married in the first place?
They corrected for that - and the marriage rate is almost identical
No i'd say it's different than swear words - i should have further clarified my definition of degrading women.
Making them appear to be powerless, subserviant, sex slave, etc as opposed to being willingly engaged in a sexual act that they take pleasure from.
I said it was distasteful and disgusting to me - not that it should be banned.
BDSM isn't degrading when it is consentual - so my statement didn't apply to it. I understand very well how you could (normally reasonably) make that presumption though. but i don't get my jollies off on it. to each their own.
I disagree with your assertion that a belief cannot be factually incorrect.
74% christians (inclusive of all flavors, inc catholicism) 16-17% atheist/agnostic the rest is mostly buddhist and islamic IIRC
The tobacco companies flippiantly and knowingly lied about the health effects of their products.
Plus exposing third parties to cigarette smoke against their will, no matter how dilute, is a violation of their right to bodily integrety (read: not to be poisoned by some asshole) and should therefore cause smoking to be outlawed.
Note: chewing is fine, only affects you
1 foolish
2 even more foolish than 1 - if 1 wasn't foolish then 2 still would be foolish
3 i agree from a completely secular perspective
4 foolish
5 so long as they deserve it
6 Defense (and i don't mean "preemptive defense") is always justified - especially defense of the weak when you are strong (saving people from genocide?)
7 you're damn skippy! (ie 100% agree)
8 Taxation is not theft - go take an economic class - you wouldn't even HAVE a job and money if it wasn't for the fact you pay taxes to maintain police, roads, courts, hospitals, power, gas, water, etc etc etc.
9 Yup
10 completely moronic, espeially the anarcho-capitalistic "business regulations are wrong" - please take economics 100 - even ADAM SMITH (you know, father of capitalism) recognized THERE MUST BE RULES otherwise there will be abuse
3/10 on the "correct statments"-ometer
Maybe Christians are tired of seeing the proliferation of these things throughout society, because they see them as harmful to people whether they are Christian or not.
Sucks to be them - what hey see as harmful and what IS harmful are two completely different things
Maybe if more Christians took more of a stand and told people to stop swearing, drinking, screwing around or watching porn the society at large would be more courteous, have less drunk drivers, and broken marriages.
Christianity, especially not fundamentalist christianity, is not the answer to this.
First and foremost you have to prove swearing is harmful - a swear word is just a word, you choose to take offense. Now words can be used in a way that is intended to be harmful - but i can intend to insult you by calling you a "feces eating dog fornicator" without ever swearing.
The very concept of "swear words" is anathemic to free thought
No sexual relationships before marriage is equally unhealthy as too many - just unhealthy in different ways - and no sexual relationship with the person you are going to marry before you marry them can, and does, cause divorces
Drunk driving is unlawful, against even relativistic morals, etc - you don't need religion to say drunk driving is bad- and religion doesn't ameloriate the rate of alcoholism.
Broken marriages now.. that's something really ironic for a fundamentalist to preach about. It has been shown that the divorce rate among the most fundamentalist christians is TWICE that of the divorce rate among atheists and agnostics - and that the divorce rate between the two is pretty much linearaly related to the level of fundamentalism the couple is involved in. A nice example of this is Rush Limbaugh, or my fiancee's biological father is another good example of this.
Sure, anybody can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean that their activities don't end up hurting other people directly or indirectly, Christian or not.
Yep my looking at porn (alone and with my fiancee), farking my fiancee (and only two other girls ever before her), and swearing are really harming you!
oh the humanity!
PS: not all porn is tasteful, stuff that is really degrading to women is not only NOT HOT, but is pretty disgusting
Why can't there be more Christians like you?
me=athiest, and tired of having my rights trampled
I'd rather see privated completely deregulated electrical service as well.
When will you anarcho-capitalists actually take economics 100.
Given
A) A service that has a near zero elasticity of demand in relation to price
B) Is infrastructure
(Things Fitting A&B: Roads, Water, Sewer, Power, phone, cable, electricity, gas)
You CANNOT deregulate, you CANNOT expect the "Free market" to ensure quality and low price.
Infrastructure doesn't follow the normal rules because it's something that should not be duplicated concurrently - imagine having two roads systems, or two seperate water systems, power etc - there isn't the space to do it and the costs are prohibitive. This prevents normal competitive practices of the free-market and favors large intrenched monopolies
Have you not been paying attention? power was deregulated in some areas - it resulted in artificially created roving blackouts to give the impression that demand exceeded supply so that price-gouging could occur.
Adam Smith himself said that capitalism needs enforced rules to keep all parties treating each other fairly - why can you not recognize this?
You would also be castrating the internet and preventing tons of functions it was intended to be capable of performing from being performed. You can kiss any type of peer to peer activity goodbye; and contrary to the RIAA and MPAA's assertions there are millions of legal uses for p2p communication.