First, let's invite Jesus to show himself to me, like he promised he would do, when asked nicely. Usually I ask for Jesus to show up in my den where I'm typing this reply, would that do? OK, I just issued the invitation yet again, let's see if it works!
What a taunting "invitation". You say "come over to my house and watch the game" then leave the door locked, the knocker gone and the doorbell disconnected because you're sure your invitee won't show.
I'd strongly suggest that you get your cognitive priorities straight, with observation first, beliefs afterwards.
As I've said before, I believe because God has revealed himself to me.
Imagine what the world would be like if everyone acted as Jesus taught. No more war, no more poverty, no more hate.
"Cheese" not made from milk is only cheese if you consider margarine to be butter. Wikipedia: "Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products." The dictionary:a food consisting of the coagulated, compressed, and usually ripened curd of milk separated from the whey.
Yes, I'm Christian, and no, I can't speak for God, but I will speak up for him. When you erase a program you've written, is that murder? It's exactly the same thing. EVERYBODY DIES. Everybody. The six months or 115 years you live is nothing, a femtosecond in a year. This fragile shell I wear isn't me, it's a vehicle.
With Isaac, yes, God told him to sacrifice his son, then stopped him. Then a few thousand years later sent his own son to be sacrificed for us. Yes, It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid, and it hasn't become invalid, it was validated -- the price of sin is death, and Christ paid that price for all of us. Every time I do wrong he gets hit with that cat-o-nine-tails again.
The message of Christianity is love and forgiveness. The penalty for adultery was death by stoning, when they were about to stone the adulteress, what happened? "Go, and sin no more". Jesus took the decimal 10 commandments and condensed them to a binary 10 commandments: Love God above all, and love your fellow man as yourself.
I *can* tell you that what Christians have done is basically wrong from start to finish. The very second anyone starts telling people they must behave the way some book of fiction specifies, they're stepping on toes they have no right to step on.
Christ agrees with you. "Judge not, lest you be judged yourself."
From blue laws to suppression of knowledge and science to absconding with the institution of marriage, our society is rife with social retardation that derives significant portions of its methodology from the underlying dogma and the interpretations [of men] that spring from it.
You'll get no argument from me there. People suck.
You have no idea what the government spends money on, do you?
I live in Illinois' state capital. Half the people I know work for the government. You know where most of the money goes? Politicians' rich cronies; the Bloom Building, for example. The government, under Governor Thompson loaned a rich guy (who is now in prison, got caught up in the Blago mess) the money to build it, then paid rent on the building until it was paid off, then bought it from him at a very inflated price.
That's where your tax money goes -- to the rich. Food stamps don't benefit the poor, they benefit the poors' employers, who would otherwise have to pay more.
Section eight housing doesn't benefit the poor, it hinders them while helping their landlords (I've known Section 8 landlords and tenants). An apartment that might fetch $300 on the open market rents for $250, the landlord gets $500, and rents are driven up for everyone, especially the poor. Who, by the way, are paying the landlord's property taxes and interest as part of their rent, while the landlord gets to deduct the taxes his tenents paid for him from his income tax.
The God damned system is rigged. You, sir, are the one who has no damned clue where your tax money is going. It's going straight into the pockets of the 1%.
Wow, we sure have some ignorant moderators. Who doesn't know that cheese is made from milk? And since someone earlier made a joke about milking a cow, it's both overrated AND redundant.
Please, slashdot, bring back the old style metamoderation, at least two moderators are so uninformed that they think "cheese is made of milk" is insightful.
Yes, but only for a short while. Your saving him didn't change anthing at all. You believe he has no soul, nor do you. You're only here for an infinitessimally short period of time, and absolutely NOTHING you ever do will have any long-term consequences; in the end, you're just dirt. If I torture and kill you, who will care 500 years from now? Nobody. All on this earth is vanity and nothing but vanity.
Morality comes from us and our actions.
Your morality is within you, not from your actions. Your actions merely illustrate your morality, they come from your morality.
Meaningless would be sitting in a cold stone church asking for things to be made better, then not lifting a finger and going home
Yes, that would be meaningless, unless there was nothing you could do to affect the situation. Praying for the pain to go away and not seeing a doctor is meaningless. Being told you have six months to live an praying is not.
Buddhism is not a religion, it is an atheistic philosophy and ethical practice that fulfills many of the same social rituals as a religion
Not athiestic, polytheistic. I spent a year in Thailand while in the USAF and knew a LOT of Bhuddists. They burn incense to various gods, and have ornate little "spirit houses" outside their homes so the spirits will inhabit the beautiful little spirit houses and not their homes.
Even among those that formally identify as being Christian, many no longer attend any sort of church or participate in any of the primary religious rituals
There have been long stretches of time, sometimes years, when i didn't atten church. Usually it's when the pastor of a church I'm going to says something incredibly stupid and wrong, like "God hates fags" or prays for President Bush to have continued wisdom (actually happened), which is like praying for the ocean to have continued dryness.
A Christian doesn't NEED a church. Any Christian can perform a baptism or communion. Christ himself said "whenever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be there."
t is quite plausible that another 10 to 20% of the US population that are nominally Christian are really socially Christian but have little to no actual belief in the Christian creed, do not attend Church or do so only very rarely
Sadly, there are people who attend church weekly who are like this. I know one woman who calls herself a Catholic but unabashedly states that she doesn't believe God exists.
Christianity in the US is heading for a financial crisis due to declining membership that could wipe out a number of smaller denominations or lead to some sort of consolidation
Christianity itself isn't declining, but the various denominations are. The church I attend (a very large, rich church) is nondenominational. I think the reason for this is that many denominations have beliefs that aren't really backed up by scripture, such as the Mormons and Southern Baptists who think drinking is a sin, despite the fact that Jesus was a drinker.
having "In God We Trust" on US currency is also a clear violation of established human rights
I'd say it's also unconstitutional.
It makes us no better than countries seeking to establish Sharia and entrench Islam as a state religion.
Well, that's pushing it a little I'd say, to the point of hyperbole. When some TV preacher or politician says "the US' laws are based on the bible" I say "then why is pot against the law but adultery is perfectly legal?" If the US were truly a Christian nation, there would be no poverty in the US.
As to critical thinking, once God has shown himself to you, no amount of critical thinking is going to make you not believe. Elephants are pretty unbelievable untill you've gone to the zoo. If it weren't for people actually knowing God, religion would have died out centuries ago.
You will never find a hidden thing that you don't believe in.
Well, since the chance of getting killed by an asteroid is higher than getting killed by a terrorist
Incorrect. Can you point to a single instance of anyone ever being killed by an asteroid? That's not to say that fear of terrorism in the US are justified; your chances of being killed by lightning are greater than your chances of being killed by a terrorist.
For two, most switches use the first digit being a "1" to denote the beginning of a long distance call.
No, 1 is the country code for the US. You used to didn't have to dial 1 for a long distance call back when you had to dial 0 to get a human operator to connect you to a foreign country. Dialing 1 is a recent phenomenon.
Call me a cynic but when a person feels that there is something 'missing' from their life, it amazes me how many 'religions' will offer to show the way for a 'small fee'.
I don't know what religion you're talking about, but it isn't Christianity. They'll ask for a tithe, they'll ask for charity donations (my church is collecting right now to feed some 80 poor families this Christmas, when the kids who normally get food at school are off of school), but none I've heard of demand it, and I wouldn't set foot in such a church..
you need faith to really understand it and embrace it without question
Nope, every preacher I've heard does his best to explain what the bible says and what it means.
Oh, and don't worry about the old testament*, it doesn't really apply"
Nope, that neither, and I've visited lots of Christina churches of many denominations in my sixty years.
If there is a god, surely s/he will make contact directly rather than allow a referral fee to be paid.
He does, but don't expect him to talk to you when you obviously are unwilling to listen. People believe in God because God has revealed himself to them. Sorry you haven't been so lucky.
I like the way he's surprised that if you do a search for "inflamed anus" or something, you might get a hairy-arsed old geezer's flaming ringpiece
If he was told "inflamed anus" he wouldn't have to google. More likely it was a medical term, in Latin. Look up "vitrectomy" if you want to see some really gross pictures of eyeballs.
It obviously had nothing at all to do with the fact that the leadership of those countries at those times consisted of screaming psychotic fucktards. No. Nothing at all like that.
That's completely true, and also applies to the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and every other horror done "in the name of God." God isn't happy with any of these people no matter what they profess to believe or disbelieve.
To consider atheism a religion is to completely belittle actual atheism
It neither belittles religion nor athiesm. Athiest simply means "no dieties." Religion is about worship, the survey should have "mammon" as one of the religions, because most people, whether athiest, agnostic, antitheist, or Christian, really worship money above all else.
Which ironically (or hypocritically) is Christianity's (and Islam's and Judism's) greatest sin -- worshiping something other than God. Go to church on Sunday, evict a poor person because they can't pay rent on Monday... pure evil in God's eyes.
Reread the thread. AC posted a comment about Assange
Which is why there's an "offtopic" moderation and why you shouldn't respond to offtopic comments. This entire thread is offtopic, and every comment in it should be moderated as such.
I could take the charity deduction, but I don't. A tax dodge isn't charity. So yes, someone reading your comment doesn't take all allowable deductions.
The current crop of GOP senators are very business friendly
That's a euphamism for "worker-hostile". "Oh, no, don't raise taxes on the billionaires, make the roofer pound nails until he's 70. Oh, and cut down the amout of doctor visits he can go to as well, medicare costs too much."
"We've definitely seen a uptick in the use of heroin," Sangamon County Undersheriff Jack Campbell said. "We believe it's tied to the difficulty it is now to get the precursors to make methamphetamine. In other words, the meth users have switched over to heroin."
Slashdot Mirror
First, let's invite Jesus to show himself to me, like he promised he would do, when asked nicely. Usually I ask for Jesus to show up in my den where I'm typing this reply, would that do? OK, I just issued the invitation yet again, let's see if it works!
What a taunting "invitation". You say "come over to my house and watch the game" then leave the door locked, the knocker gone and the doorbell disconnected because you're sure your invitee won't show.
I'd strongly suggest that you get your cognitive priorities straight, with observation first, beliefs afterwards.
As I've said before, I believe because God has revealed himself to me.
Imagine what the world would be like if everyone acted as Jesus taught. No more war, no more poverty, no more hate.
"Cheese" not made from milk is only cheese if you consider margarine to be butter. Wikipedia: "Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products." The dictionary:a food consisting of the coagulated, compressed, and usually ripened curd of milk separated from the whey.
If it isn't made from milk, it isn't cheese.
Yes, I'm Christian, and no, I can't speak for God, but I will speak up for him. When you erase a program you've written, is that murder? It's exactly the same thing. EVERYBODY DIES. Everybody. The six months or 115 years you live is nothing, a femtosecond in a year. This fragile shell I wear isn't me, it's a vehicle.
With Isaac, yes, God told him to sacrifice his son, then stopped him. Then a few thousand years later sent his own son to be sacrificed for us. Yes, It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid, and it hasn't become invalid, it was validated -- the price of sin is death, and Christ paid that price for all of us. Every time I do wrong he gets hit with that cat-o-nine-tails again.
The message of Christianity is love and forgiveness. The penalty for adultery was death by stoning, when they were about to stone the adulteress, what happened? "Go, and sin no more". Jesus took the decimal 10 commandments and condensed them to a binary 10 commandments: Love God above all, and love your fellow man as yourself.
I *can* tell you that what Christians have done is basically wrong from start to finish. The very second anyone starts telling people they must behave the way some book of fiction specifies, they're stepping on toes they have no right to step on.
Christ agrees with you. "Judge not, lest you be judged yourself."
From blue laws to suppression of knowledge and science to absconding with the institution of marriage, our society is rife with social retardation that derives significant portions of its methodology from the underlying dogma and the interpretations [of men] that spring from it.
You'll get no argument from me there. People suck.
"As I said before"? Whoever you are, log in or get an account.
it's my belief that you can't really 'fix' an addict until they want to be fixed.
Addicts and rehab counselors agree with you.
You have no idea what the government spends money on, do you?
I live in Illinois' state capital. Half the people I know work for the government. You know where most of the money goes? Politicians' rich cronies; the Bloom Building, for example. The government, under Governor Thompson loaned a rich guy (who is now in prison, got caught up in the Blago mess) the money to build it, then paid rent on the building until it was paid off, then bought it from him at a very inflated price.
That's where your tax money goes -- to the rich. Food stamps don't benefit the poor, they benefit the poors' employers, who would otherwise have to pay more.
Section eight housing doesn't benefit the poor, it hinders them while helping their landlords (I've known Section 8 landlords and tenants). An apartment that might fetch $300 on the open market rents for $250, the landlord gets $500, and rents are driven up for everyone, especially the poor. Who, by the way, are paying the landlord's property taxes and interest as part of their rent, while the landlord gets to deduct the taxes his tenents paid for him from his income tax.
The God damned system is rigged. You, sir, are the one who has no damned clue where your tax money is going. It's going straight into the pockets of the 1%.
Wow, we sure have some ignorant moderators. Who doesn't know that cheese is made from milk? And since someone earlier made a joke about milking a cow, it's both overrated AND redundant.
Please, slashdot, bring back the old style metamoderation, at least two moderators are so uninformed that they think "cheese is made of milk" is insightful.
BTW, I'm offtopic. Waste your mod points on me.
It seems the concept that violence is a last resort has disappeared from policing
Maybe they read "Foundation" and took "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" to mean "violence is the first refuge of the competent"?
Your a fucking idiot.
Is there a word for "hilarious irony"?
You're just another reason why Boomers don't trust anyone over 90
We also don't trust anybody under 91.
I was thinking the same thing. Did someone jam the breaks
Breaks? You mean jam the fissures in the asteroid? What are you babbling about??
If I see a dying man and give CPR, that saves him
Yes, but only for a short while. Your saving him didn't change anthing at all. You believe he has no soul, nor do you. You're only here for an infinitessimally short period of time, and absolutely NOTHING you ever do will have any long-term consequences; in the end, you're just dirt. If I torture and kill you, who will care 500 years from now? Nobody. All on this earth is vanity and nothing but vanity.
Morality comes from us and our actions.
Your morality is within you, not from your actions. Your actions merely illustrate your morality, they come from your morality.
Meaningless would be sitting in a cold stone church asking for things to be made better, then not lifting a finger and going home
Yes, that would be meaningless, unless there was nothing you could do to affect the situation. Praying for the pain to go away and not seeing a doctor is meaningless. Being told you have six months to live an praying is not.
Buddhism is not a religion, it is an atheistic philosophy and ethical practice that fulfills many of the same social rituals as a religion
Not athiestic, polytheistic. I spent a year in Thailand while in the USAF and knew a LOT of Bhuddists. They burn incense to various gods, and have ornate little "spirit houses" outside their homes so the spirits will inhabit the beautiful little spirit houses and not their homes.
Even among those that formally identify as being Christian, many no longer attend any sort of church or participate in any of the primary religious rituals
There have been long stretches of time, sometimes years, when i didn't atten church. Usually it's when the pastor of a church I'm going to says something incredibly stupid and wrong, like "God hates fags" or prays for President Bush to have continued wisdom (actually happened), which is like praying for the ocean to have continued dryness.
A Christian doesn't NEED a church. Any Christian can perform a baptism or communion. Christ himself said "whenever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be there."
t is quite plausible that another 10 to 20% of the US population that are nominally Christian are really socially Christian but have little to no actual belief in the Christian creed, do not attend Church or do so only very rarely
Sadly, there are people who attend church weekly who are like this. I know one woman who calls herself a Catholic but unabashedly states that she doesn't believe God exists.
Christianity in the US is heading for a financial crisis due to declining membership that could wipe out a number of smaller denominations or lead to some sort of consolidation
Christianity itself isn't declining, but the various denominations are. The church I attend (a very large, rich church) is nondenominational. I think the reason for this is that many denominations have beliefs that aren't really backed up by scripture, such as the Mormons and Southern Baptists who think drinking is a sin, despite the fact that Jesus was a drinker.
having "In God We Trust" on US currency is also a clear violation of established human rights
I'd say it's also unconstitutional.
It makes us no better than countries seeking to establish Sharia and entrench Islam as a state religion.
Well, that's pushing it a little I'd say, to the point of hyperbole. When some TV preacher or politician says "the US' laws are based on the bible" I say "then why is pot against the law but adultery is perfectly legal?" If the US were truly a Christian nation, there would be no poverty in the US.
As to critical thinking, once God has shown himself to you, no amount of critical thinking is going to make you not believe. Elephants are pretty unbelievable untill you've gone to the zoo. If it weren't for people actually knowing God, religion would have died out centuries ago.
You will never find a hidden thing that you don't believe in.
say faceless in this case specifically since RIAA was formed specifically to prosecute cases like this
That's completely wrong. The RIAA was formed to come up with a frequency rollover standard.
Well, since the chance of getting killed by an asteroid is higher than getting killed by a terrorist
Incorrect. Can you point to a single instance of anyone ever being killed by an asteroid? That's not to say that fear of terrorism in the US are justified; your chances of being killed by lightning are greater than your chances of being killed by a terrorist.
For two, most switches use the first digit being a "1" to denote the beginning of a long distance call.
No, 1 is the country code for the US. You used to didn't have to dial 1 for a long distance call back when you had to dial 0 to get a human operator to connect you to a foreign country. Dialing 1 is a recent phenomenon.
Call me a cynic but when a person feels that there is something 'missing' from their life, it amazes me how many 'religions' will offer to show the way for a 'small fee'.
I don't know what religion you're talking about, but it isn't Christianity. They'll ask for a tithe, they'll ask for charity donations (my church is collecting right now to feed some 80 poor families this Christmas, when the kids who normally get food at school are off of school), but none I've heard of demand it, and I wouldn't set foot in such a church..
you need faith to really understand it and embrace it without question
Nope, every preacher I've heard does his best to explain what the bible says and what it means.
Oh, and don't worry about the old testament*, it doesn't really apply"
Nope, that neither, and I've visited lots of Christina churches of many denominations in my sixty years.
If there is a god, surely s/he will make contact directly rather than allow a referral fee to be paid.
He does, but don't expect him to talk to you when you obviously are unwilling to listen. People believe in God because God has revealed himself to them. Sorry you haven't been so lucky.
I like the way he's surprised that if you do a search for "inflamed anus" or something, you might get a hairy-arsed old geezer's flaming ringpiece
If he was told "inflamed anus" he wouldn't have to google. More likely it was a medical term, in Latin. Look up "vitrectomy" if you want to see some really gross pictures of eyeballs.
It obviously had nothing at all to do with the fact that the leadership of those countries at those times consisted of screaming psychotic fucktards. No. Nothing at all like that.
That's completely true, and also applies to the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and every other horror done "in the name of God." God isn't happy with any of these people no matter what they profess to believe or disbelieve.
To consider atheism a religion is to completely belittle actual atheism
It neither belittles religion nor athiesm. Athiest simply means "no dieties." Religion is about worship, the survey should have "mammon" as one of the religions, because most people, whether athiest, agnostic, antitheist, or Christian, really worship money above all else.
Which ironically (or hypocritically) is Christianity's (and Islam's and Judism's) greatest sin -- worshiping something other than God. Go to church on Sunday, evict a poor person because they can't pay rent on Monday... pure evil in God's eyes.
I imagine it would be technically trivial to simply require that *both* numbers link to emergency services.
In Illinois they're rolling out 211, only not as an emergency number. 211 now links you to non-emergency government services like food stamps, etc.
Reread the thread. AC posted a comment about Assange
Which is why there's an "offtopic" moderation and why you shouldn't respond to offtopic comments. This entire thread is offtopic, and every comment in it should be moderated as such.
I could take the charity deduction, but I don't. A tax dodge isn't charity. So yes, someone reading your comment doesn't take all allowable deductions.
The current crop of GOP senators are very business friendly
That's a euphamism for "worker-hostile". "Oh, no, don't raise taxes on the billionaires, make the roofer pound nails until he's 70. Oh, and cut down the amout of doctor visits he can go to as well, medicare costs too much."
The GOP is the party of unbridled greed.
I think you're misremembering that news article. They were finding that the addicts were replacing Oxycontin, not meth, with heroin.
Nope, Here it is.