Also, none of this changes that the society has made living as a heterosexual couple cheaper than a homosexual one. Assuming that being mainly attracted to your own gender or the opposite isn't a matter of choice - that is, that you can't choose your sexual turn-ons - it's rather hard to see this as anything but unfairly discriminating against homosexuals.
Except, that from a societal point of view, homosexuality provides nothing of value outside of that relationship. Heterosexual pairings frequently provide additional taxpayers.
Considering the works were canonized into the same book, I'd be shocked if you weren't able to find consistencies in the text. What's your point?
Are you purporting that Christ advocated a strict adherence to the old law? Because Paul certainly did. He spent a lot of time writing letters to people about it. Christ, not so much.
My central argument is that there is no evidence for a god, therefore all religion is a human construct, therefore all religion is flawed.
This is based in faith, as you can never have any facts to support it. Ergo, as it pertains to spirituality, it is religious.
You seem to think that "atheism" is a religion. It is not. It's not even a philosophy. It's just a way to label someone who has no delusions about the fact that there is no evidence to support the concept of a deity. That's all.
If this were true, it wouldn't require a label, and people wouldn't feel the need to badge themselves with that label on slashdot.
Lack of evidence is hardly the only criteria for 'delusions', yet this dogmatic rhetoric belies the intention to assert your faith onto others.
Know how I can tell you're religious? You love circular arguments.
I can tell you're religious because you labeled yourself as an atheist. Didn't take me nearly as long as it did you.
I'm not wasting any more of my valuable time on you. Go learn what real logic is, learn you can't prove a negative, then maybe we'll talk. Because at that point, you'll have renounced any faith in a deity and will be an atheist yourself.
You yourself could give excellent tips on ad hominem attacks, but your logical constructions fall flat.
If ever I renounced all faith in a deity, I'd have the good sense not to simply swap my faith over to the atheist religion either. I'd just be Bob, believing what I do as I see it, just as I am today.
The problem with this argument is that it's easy to see how green cars would be good for all of us: after all, who liks to breath toxins? On the other hand, it's very hard indeed for me to see why I should care if any particular couple is composed of a man or woman, two men or two women.
Draw your family tree. Move up one level from yourself. Notice the male and female.
Is it easier to see now?
Seeing as each of us was a baby once, born of a mother, from a father, it is really the very definition of a no-brainer to support this activity going forward.
Of course, by the exact same logic, there's no real reason to prefer couples to triples or various larger communes
This seems true, on the face of things, but few western societies can make it work. Threesomes in our culture usually involve taking turns while the odd-man-out watches. Or didn't you see Friends?
Then again, I'm a firm believer that people should be able to arrange their lives as they best see fit, with the minimum interference from either governmental, religious or corporate interests.
Ah, now, don't go changing the topic. We were originally discussing encouraging behaviors, not prohibiting them. The phrase 'people should be able' absolutely does not preclude people being incentivized to do the opposite thing. Both parties are able, one encouraged, one not, but still equal in ability.
A government needs to treat its citizens equally. It either gives tax breaks for couples or it doesn't, but only giving them to heterosexual couples is unfair.
This is the truly interesting bit, isn't it?
You are correct in that there exists non-equivalence between the two, but your application of the word 'unfair' may or may not follow. The tax breaks for couples are there to encourage behavior, just as tax breaks for green cars or whatever other arbitrary thing. At this level your argument becomes, 'it is unfair for the government to encourage behavior', and that would invite the corollary of 'it is unfair for the government to discourage behavior' - which is the VERY PURPOSE of government!
(I say this as a former Christian who's now an avowed atheist. Once you really understand what religion preaches, there's really no point in continuing the charade; you just need to dump it completely.)
You actually appear to be saying it out of the need for psychological reinforcement. If people agree with you, you've made the right choice, and all that.
I can see no logical reason why the presence of human corruption in religion automatically means that there is no basis for it. Other information could be used to come to that conclusion, surely, but the evidence you're presenting here does not add up logically. I read your argument as 'since human-made malware can corrupt computers and cause great harm, then operating systems do not exist'.
The context here is that of a family, and towards procreation. 'Leave his father and mother' has a meaning, placing the origin of the human within a family. Or are we to assume Christ thought it was non-obvious that males and females are the only source of offspring? Since homosexual unions cannot produce offspring, it inherently follows that heterosexual marriage would be encouraged. Further, children are better prepared psychologically when interacting with role models from each gender.
I read it as homosexuality being folly and heterosexuality being the perfect union. This doesn't, though, mean that homosexuality is wrong any more than it is wrong to do any other non-optimal thing. And as a society we ought to encourage the optimal things, surely, but that doesn't mean we prohibit the other choices, per se.
4-6. So homosexuals don't get into heaven. They probably wouldn't want to go there anyway. That doesn't excuse persecuting them here on earth.
This lines up with what Christ would say as well, from my understanding of it. Seeing something as sinful and wrong for yourself doesn't and shouldn't invite a real Christian to sin. Could you imagine Christ himself advocating the suffering of these people? I cannot. This kind of judgement is for God and God alone.
Please do note as well, that Cor, Tim, Rom, and others were written by Saul/Paul - formerly a Jew and persecutor of Christians. It seems logical that his understanding of Christianity would lean harder towards the Old Testament than even that of Christ himself. Saul never met Christ, nor heard him speak, so there's a definite dose of 'consider the source' going on here, in my opinion.
Also note that whatever came out of Christ's visit to this planet that was NOT influenced by Saul was either persecuted into oblivion or willfully excluded during the canonization process.
My own view of events is thusly:
1) God speaks to the Hebrews, etc, and they begin to form a religion
2) Time passes and man's hubris massively screws up the message
3) Christ comes with the original, true message, and 'reboots' the religion back to what it was meant to be
4) Saul and company go to work about corrupting it back to what it was before Christ came
5) Once things are corrupted enough by the followers of Christianity, Christ will come again
In this view, I recommend focusing on that which Christ did and said, and reading as little of what Saul wrote as is humanly possible.
And see, this is exceedingly ironic, almost dizzyingly so. Those "rich people" are (usually) old people, and will feel the least pain from this change.
Oh 'you aint seen nothin yet', I don't think. Unless you're already in your fifties, your rate is about to double, due to the 3:1 ratio law.
Did anyone REALLY think that the older folks would pay less. Not even. The younger will simply have to pay more, to maintain the ratio, as per the law.
Oh and if you have a high-deductible plan, you can kiss that goodbye as well. All plans must carry the 'minimum features' or they're illegal. Enjoy those rate hikes as well.
It goes deeper than this as well. Imagine the immediate implications of 'guaranteed issue for children'. While it is certainly compassionate to provide insurance automatically to even the most gravely ill child, the charity will stop at the hospital's bills to the insurer. There is an assumption of profit on the part of the insurer, but once that runs out rates will either have to go up or the insurer will have to go out of business.
Gravely ill, yet previously uninsured children are generally declined today because caring for them costs an inordinate amount of money. Passing a law that bars denying them isn't going to make the bills disappear. All it will do is drive for-profit businesses into reconsidering their goals. Many will either fold, or more likely, will simply stop offering coverage for children, and individuals of any age, whatsoever.
There's no triviality here. You could keep your old plan, yes, but the changes that the bill causes would make that a colossally stupid move. The implicit promise was that you could keep your FREEDOM to choose a plan you liked. This is decidedly not the case, because your current rate and benefits aren't going to keep you happy for very long. Again, due to the inflation we're inevitably about to see.
The only legal issue is whether they are using that separate e-mail account properly for political business, or whether they are improperly using it to conduct official government business, which would be a violation of the law for circumventing the archiving and disclosure laws.
You just used more words than the summary to sum up the summary. Why?
If you like your health insurance, you can keep it? Umm, no
This one is amusing, by the way. It is technically true. However if you change any single feature, ZING, you're under the new law. Good luck outlasting that medical price inflation for more than a few years...
NOTE: all of the videos were complete streamed before starting the playback. Also Pause is better than Playback because nothing is suppose to be running.
Wait a minute! You mean I have to let a video download for three minutes to find out it wasn't what I wanted and move on? I don't know what site you're on, but that isn't YouTube.
What do you mean "man hours"? Transcoding can be scripted and automated with ffmpeg. You could probably produce the requisite HTML5 with Perl. No humans are involved in day-to-day operations of such a system, so where are the "man hours" you complain about?
Perl writes itself, does it? Never changes, works as is forever, etc?
This. My own wife was one of the rolleyes crowd right up until the WalMart store cancelled all the tracks she had purchased. THEN the lightbulb came on, and she got it. However, she only now checks that they are mp3's, so you couldn't necessarily call her a copyleft champion or anything.
These questions should have been asked in the beginning of the war not after. What were US plans on handling prisoners of war (or enemy combatants)? What is the final objective of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? What are the war ending criteria? How to exit the war, what sort of rebuilding is necessary?
Reminds me of teenage sex, actually.
"How am I supposed to find a job and support a wife and baby??"
"Tough cookies, son, you should have thought of that before the clothes came off..."
Slashdot Mirror
Also, none of this changes that the society has made living as a heterosexual couple cheaper than a homosexual one. Assuming that being mainly attracted to your own gender or the opposite isn't a matter of choice - that is, that you can't choose your sexual turn-ons - it's rather hard to see this as anything but unfairly discriminating against homosexuals.
Except, that from a societal point of view, homosexuality provides nothing of value outside of that relationship. Heterosexual pairings frequently provide additional taxpayers.
Considering the works were canonized into the same book, I'd be shocked if you weren't able to find consistencies in the text. What's your point?
Are you purporting that Christ advocated a strict adherence to the old law? Because Paul certainly did. He spent a lot of time writing letters to people about it. Christ, not so much.
My central argument is that there is no evidence for a god, therefore all religion is a human construct, therefore all religion is flawed.
This is based in faith, as you can never have any facts to support it. Ergo, as it pertains to spirituality, it is religious.
You seem to think that "atheism" is a religion. It is not. It's not even a philosophy. It's just a way to label someone who has no delusions about the fact that there is no evidence to support the concept of a deity. That's all.
If this were true, it wouldn't require a label, and people wouldn't feel the need to badge themselves with that label on slashdot.
Lack of evidence is hardly the only criteria for 'delusions', yet this dogmatic rhetoric belies the intention to assert your faith onto others.
Know how I can tell you're religious? You love circular arguments.
I can tell you're religious because you labeled yourself as an atheist. Didn't take me nearly as long as it did you.
I'm not wasting any more of my valuable time on you. Go learn what real logic is, learn you can't prove a negative, then maybe we'll talk. Because at that point, you'll have renounced any faith in a deity and will be an atheist yourself.
You yourself could give excellent tips on ad hominem attacks, but your logical constructions fall flat.
If ever I renounced all faith in a deity, I'd have the good sense not to simply swap my faith over to the atheist religion either. I'd just be Bob, believing what I do as I see it, just as I am today.
The problem with this argument is that it's easy to see how green cars would be good for all of us: after all, who liks to breath toxins? On the other hand, it's very hard indeed for me to see why I should care if any particular couple is composed of a man or woman, two men or two women.
Draw your family tree. Move up one level from yourself. Notice the male and female.
Is it easier to see now?
Seeing as each of us was a baby once, born of a mother, from a father, it is really the very definition of a no-brainer to support this activity going forward.
Of course, by the exact same logic, there's no real reason to prefer couples to triples or various larger communes
This seems true, on the face of things, but few western societies can make it work. Threesomes in our culture usually involve taking turns while the odd-man-out watches. Or didn't you see Friends?
Then again, I'm a firm believer that people should be able to arrange their lives as they best see fit, with the minimum interference from either governmental, religious or corporate interests.
Ah, now, don't go changing the topic. We were originally discussing encouraging behaviors, not prohibiting them. The phrase 'people should be able' absolutely does not preclude people being incentivized to do the opposite thing. Both parties are able, one encouraged, one not, but still equal in ability.
Since all humans are fallible, I see no reason to take what one person says about the nature of the universe at face value.
This, of course, is logical. It would likewise include your own pro-atheist statements, would it not?
Whatever your answer, lets stay on topic. The unsupported statement you made was:
Once you really understand what religion preaches, there's really no point in continuing the charade; you just need to dump it completely.
Human fallibility is a given, and since even atheists are human, cannot itself be a basis for atheism, can it?
A government needs to treat its citizens equally. It either gives tax breaks for couples or it doesn't, but only giving them to heterosexual couples is unfair.
This is the truly interesting bit, isn't it?
You are correct in that there exists non-equivalence between the two, but your application of the word 'unfair' may or may not follow. The tax breaks for couples are there to encourage behavior, just as tax breaks for green cars or whatever other arbitrary thing. At this level your argument becomes, 'it is unfair for the government to encourage behavior', and that would invite the corollary of 'it is unfair for the government to discourage behavior' - which is the VERY PURPOSE of government!
It really is a neat puzzle, is it not?
(I say this as a former Christian who's now an avowed atheist. Once you really understand what religion preaches, there's really no point in continuing the charade; you just need to dump it completely.)
You actually appear to be saying it out of the need for psychological reinforcement. If people agree with you, you've made the right choice, and all that.
I can see no logical reason why the presence of human corruption in religion automatically means that there is no basis for it. Other information could be used to come to that conclusion, surely, but the evidence you're presenting here does not add up logically. I read your argument as 'since human-made malware can corrupt computers and cause great harm, then operating systems do not exist'.
The context here is that of a family, and towards procreation. 'Leave his father and mother' has a meaning, placing the origin of the human within a family. Or are we to assume Christ thought it was non-obvious that males and females are the only source of offspring? Since homosexual unions cannot produce offspring, it inherently follows that heterosexual marriage would be encouraged. Further, children are better prepared psychologically when interacting with role models from each gender.
I read it as homosexuality being folly and heterosexuality being the perfect union. This doesn't, though, mean that homosexuality is wrong any more than it is wrong to do any other non-optimal thing. And as a society we ought to encourage the optimal things, surely, but that doesn't mean we prohibit the other choices, per se.
4-6. So homosexuals don't get into heaven. They probably wouldn't want to go there anyway. That doesn't excuse persecuting them here on earth.
This lines up with what Christ would say as well, from my understanding of it. Seeing something as sinful and wrong for yourself doesn't and shouldn't invite a real Christian to sin. Could you imagine Christ himself advocating the suffering of these people? I cannot. This kind of judgement is for God and God alone.
Please do note as well, that Cor, Tim, Rom, and others were written by Saul/Paul - formerly a Jew and persecutor of Christians. It seems logical that his understanding of Christianity would lean harder towards the Old Testament than even that of Christ himself. Saul never met Christ, nor heard him speak, so there's a definite dose of 'consider the source' going on here, in my opinion.
Also note that whatever came out of Christ's visit to this planet that was NOT influenced by Saul was either persecuted into oblivion or willfully excluded during the canonization process.
My own view of events is thusly:
1) God speaks to the Hebrews, etc, and they begin to form a religion
2) Time passes and man's hubris massively screws up the message
3) Christ comes with the original, true message, and 'reboots' the religion back to what it was meant to be
4) Saul and company go to work about corrupting it back to what it was before Christ came
5) Once things are corrupted enough by the followers of Christianity, Christ will come again
In this view, I recommend focusing on that which Christ did and said, and reading as little of what Saul wrote as is humanly possible.
And see, this is exceedingly ironic, almost dizzyingly so. Those "rich people" are (usually) old people, and will feel the least pain from this change.
Oh 'you aint seen nothin yet', I don't think. Unless you're already in your fifties, your rate is about to double, due to the 3:1 ratio law.
Did anyone REALLY think that the older folks would pay less. Not even. The younger will simply have to pay more, to maintain the ratio, as per the law.
Oh and if you have a high-deductible plan, you can kiss that goodbye as well. All plans must carry the 'minimum features' or they're illegal. Enjoy those rate hikes as well.
It goes deeper than this as well. Imagine the immediate implications of 'guaranteed issue for children'. While it is certainly compassionate to provide insurance automatically to even the most gravely ill child, the charity will stop at the hospital's bills to the insurer. There is an assumption of profit on the part of the insurer, but once that runs out rates will either have to go up or the insurer will have to go out of business.
Gravely ill, yet previously uninsured children are generally declined today because caring for them costs an inordinate amount of money. Passing a law that bars denying them isn't going to make the bills disappear. All it will do is drive for-profit businesses into reconsidering their goals. Many will either fold, or more likely, will simply stop offering coverage for children, and individuals of any age, whatsoever.
"Keep your plan" indeed.
The implicit promise was that you could keep your FREEDOM to choose a plan you liked.
Most people never had the freedom to choose a plan they liked. Either take whatever crappy insurance your employer chooses or nothing at all.
Point being, now they will no longer have even the crappy coverage they used to have. At least until single payer comes along to save the day.
So?? So???
There's no triviality here. You could keep your old plan, yes, but the changes that the bill causes would make that a colossally stupid move. The implicit promise was that you could keep your FREEDOM to choose a plan you liked. This is decidedly not the case, because your current rate and benefits aren't going to keep you happy for very long. Again, due to the inflation we're inevitably about to see.
Scripting is a non-zero-effort technology. It isn't a huge effort, but it certainly is more effort than not worrying about it at all.
The only legal issue is whether they are using that separate e-mail account properly for political business, or whether they are improperly using it to conduct official government business, which would be a violation of the law for circumventing the archiving and disclosure laws.
You just used more words than the summary to sum up the summary. Why?
If you like your health insurance, you can keep it? Umm, no
This one is amusing, by the way. It is technically true. However if you change any single feature, ZING, you're under the new law. Good luck outlasting that medical price inflation for more than a few years...
THIS!
And, to add, Obama ran into this PRECISE issue when he wanted to use his personal Blackberry after he was elected.
He damn well knows better, and we can prove it.
I think the penalties should be double for willful disobedience, especially from the POTUS.
In the US, typefaces cannot be copyrighted.
...yet.
NOTE: all of the videos were complete streamed before starting the playback. Also Pause is better than Playback because nothing is suppose to be running.
Wait a minute! You mean I have to let a video download for three minutes to find out it wasn't what I wanted and move on? I don't know what site you're on, but that isn't YouTube.
What do you mean "man hours"? Transcoding can be scripted and automated with ffmpeg. You could probably produce the requisite HTML5 with Perl. No humans are involved in day-to-day operations of such a system, so where are the "man hours" you complain about?
Perl writes itself, does it? Never changes, works as is forever, etc?
This. My own wife was one of the rolleyes crowd right up until the WalMart store cancelled all the tracks she had purchased. THEN the lightbulb came on, and she got it. However, she only now checks that they are mp3's, so you couldn't necessarily call her a copyleft champion or anything.
I'd guess though that the trademark, art, and sound assets were certainly in violation.
These questions should have been asked in the beginning of the war not after. What were US plans on handling prisoners of war (or enemy combatants)? What is the final objective of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? What are the war ending criteria? How to exit the war, what sort of rebuilding is necessary?
Reminds me of teenage sex, actually.
"How am I supposed to find a job and support a wife and baby??"
"Tough cookies, son, you should have thought of that before the clothes came off..."
Responsibility for one's decisions and all that.