Comment from carolyn King
Time February 10, 2010 at 1:25 am

Thank you, Kathryn Jean!

Comment from DHFabian
Time February 10, 2010 at 1:54 am

In the States, isn’t it true that our Christianity (I can’t speak for other faiths) is divorced from it’s roots? If (formal) Christianity vanished tomorrow, why would anyone care? Sure, we would want to hang on to our traditions, and certainly to our holidays, and that’s fine. But keep in mind, we not only separated church from state but civic life from Christianity, itself, and everyone seems to be comfortable with that. After all, isn’t the US the leading war nation, not peacekeepers? And consider our social/economic priorities (these truly do define the soul of this country) — we give massive tax relief (i.e., the public pays the taxes for) the richest, and at the same time we embrace an extraordinarily harsh welfare “reform” agenda, in direct opposition to Christ’s teachings. As a country, a people, we do reject Christ’s teachings, but as any capitalist knows, there’s good money to be made in Christian holidays and traditions.

Comment from drhill
Time February 10, 2010 at 1:57 am

good stuff…as I have said before - even if the gay activists got what they weanted (so called legitimacy in marriage and acceptance in churches) they will still be unhappy, because they are cursed - and never will find peace in immoral behavior. As far as I can tell it is less about the gay agenda being accepted - and more about Judeo Christian truth being silenced…hmm…I wonder who would be behind that?

Comment from RealityBites
Time February 10, 2010 at 2:16 am

Losing our religion….. Perhaps Mankind is ready to walk out into the light from the darkness of the caves?

Lamenting religions loss is like lamenting that black plague doesn’t visit often enough, or you miss you’re club foot, or bleeding ulcer, anyone want their brain cancer back?

Evolution paused…. The fat ass of religion sitting on the stop button.

Comment from Ernie
Time February 10, 2010 at 2:51 am

Doesnt the bible say “man shall not lay down with man, it is an abomination” or is it Obamanation

Comment from Dragonminder
Time February 10, 2010 at 5:37 am

Right on, RealityBites! Religion is an anachronism, an obsolete holdover from mankind’s superstitious, unenlightened past. High time that we recognized Christianity for what it is: mythology.
To Ernie: Yes, Leviticus does say that homosexuality is an abomination, It also says that if you cannot feed all your children, you should sell the youngest one into slavery. It also says that if a son disobeys his father, he must be stoned to death, It also says that if a wife cannot bear children, the husband can take another wife without divorcing the first one. In fact, the Bible says lots of stuff that is just plain moronic. Why do you blithely disregard all of the other “abominations” in the Bible, but choose to follow the one from Leviticus about homosexuality — even though your beloved Jesus never mentioned homosexuality? Is it because it just happens to fit your own twisted bigotry? Please don’t hide behind the Bible to disguise the fact that you are a bigot. By the way, you seem to enjoy disrespecting the President in wartime. Did you enjoy it as much when we liberals called Bush the “mad cowboy?” Because if you found that “unpatriotic,” then you are also a lousy hypocrite.

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 9:33 am

drhill: “Tthey are cursed… t Judeo Christian truth.” So are the 17% of female seagulls who happen to be lesbians also “cursed”? How about bi bonobos? Or is it just not “true” that some animals are naturally bi/gay?
Ernie: the Bible also says you’re not supposed to eat pork or shellfish. Why do you need to pick and choose what you want to take from the bible?

Comment from Duggan
Time February 10, 2010 at 1:49 pm

Is it perhaps that religion (especially the believing in myths which abound in all religions) is natually losing it\’s relavence as people beccome more enlighted and educated and develop a healther attitude about the world around them? As the myths and dogmas espoused by religious leaders get revealed as nonsense, people will move towards a more rational understanding and view of their world. Additionally, religion is perhaps one of the most influencial institutions in the world that promote self degradation (we are all sinners) and submission to control by others which makes a very handy tool for political operatives to exploit in order to get people to submit to their control. This in turn causes people to tolerate the loss of freedoms, except injustice, and engage in oppression of others who might be different as manipulated by politicians, aided and abetted by religious leaders..

Comment from BJB
Time February 10, 2010 at 2:18 pm

Geoff, Duggan, Dragonminder, Reality……

Much of the law in the Old Testament (usually the ones you’ve cherry-picked here) are ceremonial or civil laws that were fulfilled when Christ came. In other words, they were designed to picture Christ and a particular aspect of His nature and/or purpose. However, laws against homosexuality (and other abominations such as stealing, lying, murder, etc.) fall into the category of moral law; the ten commandments and laws repeated in the New Testament (the era in which we now live). As it happens, homosexual behaviour is illustrated as unatural and sinful also in the NT, not merely in the OT book of Leviticus. The apostle Paul even references the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah due to this sin. There is a lot more to the concept of ceremonial/civil vs. moral law than this.

I’d encourage you to study the issue more. Perhaps you would come to realize that the “nonsensical mythology” of Christianity is not what you thougt it to be?

Comment from BJB
Time February 10, 2010 at 2:43 pm

drhill: “Tthey are cursed… t Judeo Christian truth.” So are the 17% of female seagulls who happen to be lesbians also “cursed”? How about bi bonobos? Or is it just not “true” that some animals are naturally bi/gay?

The ENTIRE universe itself and all it contains is now under God’s curse, eventually to be judged at the end of time, ushering in eternity. Originally the universe was created/designed to be perfect and everlasting; and it existed as such for a short time. However, it is because of the introduction of Adam’s sin that we now observe “unatural” behaviour in the animal kingdom. That is not to say that animals “sin”; they don’t because they are not rational moral creatures. However, all of nature including the universe itself, does suffer because of human sin and depravity; manifesting God’s curse upon it in various physical ways such as deformations, disease, death, and yes, even “lesbian” behaviour in seagulls.

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 2:59 pm

BJB: Nice to see that, in contrast to some sects (Orthodox Jews, for example), you put the blame on Adam not on Eve. Still, given that this “curse” has fallen on “The ENTIRE universe itself and all it contains is now under God’s curse, eventually to be judged at the end of time, ushering in eternity,” that seems like a whole lot of consequence just for eating an apple. So I’m sort of wondering how the “rational” part fits in.

Comment from BJB
Time February 10, 2010 at 5:37 pm

Geoff,

“Eating an apple” is the dumded down version depicted in art, kid\\\’s books, comic strips, etc. The eating of the “apple” was merely the mechanism, not the sin itself. If you read the actual narrative, you’ll understand what the real sin was. Adam (and Eve) were deceived into thinking they could be as God; having all knowledge and being equal with God. Essentially, it was a rebellious and revolutionary desire of Satan to overthrow God as ruler of the universe, with humanity (via Adam and Eve) as his willing accomplice. They disobeyed a direct command of God, lifted themselves up in sinful pride, willfully believed the lie of Satan instead of the truth of God, acted as Satan’s agent in an attempt to wrestle the creation away from God’s control, resulting in them being cursed by God. Justifiably so, don’t you think?

Since they are the represetative head of all humanity and were the caretakers of the earth, naturally and spiritually speaking, all humanity and the earth itself now inherit that same curse placed upon Adam and Eve.

Comment from Chrisofiction
Time February 10, 2010 at 8:23 pm

It amazes me, the crazy things that people can say with a straight face. The original sin story is obviously a tactic designed to encourage ignorance as salvation. \"Don\’t go learning anything, or you\’ll suffer like Adam and Eve did. Just mind your elders and tip the priests.\"

Who\’s really surprised that the church is one of the last bastions of intolerance, bigotry and sexism in the western world? We should pity them their recent inability to slaughter godless heathens, burn witches and enforce at gunpoint the agenda of the loving God\’s dictatorial representative here on dirty little, sinful, center-of-the-universe, Earth. The last couple of centuries have been hard on the holy buggers…

And isn\’t that just like a vast, ineffable omniscience, to become petulant to the point of inflicting ETERNAL PUNISHMENT ON THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, FOREVER, because some cat and his wife committed the unforgivable sin of curiosity? Why, God oughta strap \’em to a rock and let the ravens eat their livers! (Oops, sorry, I accidentally spilled some of my myth onto your truth.)

No, the only rational conclusion, with regards to God and life and heaven, is agnosticism. Atheism being the other wacky pathos, the other side of the religion coin. I say we tax the lot of them, at least until they admit that they\’re all just social clubs and/or group therapy for the mentally weak and mortally fearful.

I get it, though. Our instinct for survival plus our sapient awareness of mortality is a caustic brew–and faith IS the power to override that potentially crippling combo–but religion is nothing more than a tool of social control.

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 8:41 pm

BJB: but, not having eaten of the fruit of knowledge, how were they to know right from wrong? It’s not as if they had the 10 commandments or other rules to guide them. So that doesn’t seem very rational either in terms of the severity of punishment or in putting the tree in the garden in the first place (creating Satan?).
Then again, claiming hermaphroditic snails are “unnatural” seems kind of irrational, too, but… then there was some kind of spiders I read about, once, where the eggs hatch while still in their mother’s abdomens, and the males fertilise their sisters and then get eaten before their impregnated sisters break out of and consume their mothers. Is that also part of this curse, and did these spiders reproduce “naturally” beforehand?
And anyway, when Satan went around testing Job, wasn’t he essentially doing God’s work? And why are people supposed to pray for God not to “lead us into temptation” if that kind of thing’s the devil’s work?

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 10, 2010 at 8:57 pm

Ernie —-Eating anything that lives in water that doesn’t have fins and scales and doesn’t live in a school is an abomination. Eating anything that doesn’t have cloven hoofs and chew a cud is an abomination. Duck is an abomination. Gold and silver is an abomination because you can get ensnared by it. Women wearing traditionally male cloths is an abomination. Dishonesty is an abomination. Building a place of worship outside of Jerusalem is an abomination. Violent people are an abomination. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, murderers, those that think of evil, false witnesses, those that cause discord, are abominations. Men of perverse mind are an abomination. Every one who is arrogant is an abomination. Adultery is an abomination.

Comment from Cal
Time February 10, 2010 at 9:24 pm

Being an ardent proponent of free speech, I welcome any and all ideas anywhere, anytime. That said, I love how the anti-God crowd occasionally comes out of the woodwork to share its anger or disgust with the believers of the world. Of particular interest to me is their condescension for those who “still live in darkness.” This is a common thread among the Left in general and atheists in particular. Not content to just go about their business they feel compelled to point out the superiority of their mental faculties by their having arrived at the conclusion there is no God compared with the “cave dwellers” who disagree with them. But even that’s not enough. They have to take it a step further and ridicule those who believe in a higher power as some sort of self-affirmation to make them feel better about their decision. I seem to recall a Bible verse that says, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” Perhaps that an accurate description of those who are as certain there is no God as are their contentions that those who say there is are idiots, morons, and fools.

I’m an agnostic or maybe a Deist. But I am very respectful of those who believe and their beliefs as long as that belief doesn’t result in strapping on bombs to kill innocents in the name of religion. I find the need to belittle believers (Christians in particular and the more fundamental even more so) somewhat belittling to those who engage it. I guess it’s like ripping Sarah Palin apart. She’s no threat to anyone or anything but those on the far Left just can’t help themselves. They feel compelled to name call and criticize. Very adult. Very mature. Very intellectual. Very, well, elitist…

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 10, 2010 at 10:25 pm

“Religion is an anachronism, an obsolete holdover from mankind’s superstitious”
Odd to say the recognized religions of Atheism, secularism, Communism and the unrecognized religion of AGW are in fact all petty cults, much like the “Heavens Gate” cult, or the “Liberation Theology” cult of Jim Jones, Jeremiah Wright and Barry Obama.
Of course you could always go back to Paganism, you know the respected worship of rocks and sticks, of course you would have to bind someone up and toss him in the bog for good measure. Just love the moral relativism, ignorance of the hateful and the self proclaimed intellectualists, who like Alexander the Great, conqueror of the world, died of syphilis at age 33 having not accomplished what he claimed to have, beaten and withered, “intellect” gone, body shriveled up, angry because there weren’t “more worlds to conquer”, after failing to “conquer” this one, and much like that striving genius who proclaimed “G_d is dead” a century ago, who at the end of his life could do little more that bounce of the rubber room of the local nut hut. Strangely man has declared the death of G_d for eons, 6 millennia of written history shows either contempt or ignorance or seeing the obsolescence’s and then go on a gorge of self made little “g’s” of money, power, or prestige.
My hats off to the “wingnuts” (to borrow a phrase) who are so busy proclaiming the death and irrelevance of G_d, you may not believe in Him, but as it’s said, He still believes in you.

Comment from geoff
Time February 10, 2010 at 10:51 pm

JS: “the recognized religions of Atheism, secularism, Communism and the unrecognized religion of AGW.” “Recognised” by whom…? Logical contradiction there (nothing new): atheism as a religion. Seems like Communism is a politicial ideology.
Ah, wait: the true belief in the second coming of Ronny; this time when he “trickles down” it will work? Or is Sarah supposed to be Ronnie resurrected? Let’s see: if we all really, really believe, in lowering taxes while increasing military spending, then we can declare a miracle if we don’t end up with huge deficits!
You and your syphillis fixation, Jacky (or are you getting lonely there in your rubber room of your local “nut hut”? talk about projection!!!)! Moral relativism: lying to get into an illegal war, torturing to try and justify it, kill off about a million civilians due to neglect on the pretence of saving or “liberating” them from themselves (the way the Soviets “liberated” East Germany for all those years), spy on your own citizens on the pretence of protecting their rights and constitution.
You’re almost as shameless as Cal these days, aren’t you? Not content to spout gibberish, you’ve also got to sprout a great huge honker full of hypocrisy.
You should join Cal on the Colbert Show: Cal, Colbert & Spratt (CaCaS for short).
And, since “He still believes in you,” the entire universe has been cursed because of what someone might once have done in a garden before he/she/they knew the rules.
Question: just how did you get from Jim Jones to Alexander the Great? Got a random gibberish generator rigged up there?!?
LOL. ROFL. You can’t make this crap up, honestly… this goes way beyond surreal.

Comment from JimG
Time February 11, 2010 at 8:14 am

Let me get this straight: Just because some pre-literate post-cavemen believed in a bunch of made up mumbo-jumbo, we are supposed to follow suit? Will someone please explain to me why? I was never whipped or threatened into believing any of this religious stuff as a youth and as a result am happy with myself and my relationships with others and my community as an adult. I live a moral life. I treat my fellows with the same treatment as I would expect for myself. I believe in kindness to strangers in need, and helping the poor. My parents (particularly my Mom) taught me to be this way, not the Church. Mom never went to church, she had to cook Sunday dinner (a real Italian feast), so you can’t say that that is what influenced her. People performed good acts in one way or other in all phases of mankind’s history no matter what faith or even no faith. Some of the best people I have known are gay, lesbian, agnostic or (heaven forbid!) atheists. Some of the most intolerant, cruel, unfeeling, amoral creeps in history were known to be highly religious people. I think common sense, respect for all life, pursuit of knowledge, and love are universal and should always prevail over cruelty, injustice and ignorance. Unfortunately, the latter are espoused all too often by religious leaders and their media proxies by way of their antiquated beliefs which they adhere to under fear of “damnation” whatever the heck that’s supposed to be. When I was a kid, I was lightly threatened by the “boogie man” if I did not behave, but it was a joke. Still I got the message. It was Mom’s will, not God’s, that guided me. Thank you Mom!

Comment from Buffet
Time February 11, 2010 at 9:59 am

Why is the comments section so hard to read, i.e. the bottom portion of man lines is missing?

Comment from Call Me Conservative, but…
Time February 11, 2010 at 12:39 pm

Hey Geoff:

Regarding what the Bible says about shellfish etc…Jesus said “It is not what goes into a mans mouth which makes him a sinner, but what comes out of it”… There is no biblical justifcation for or exoneration of homosexuality in MEN “who lay with a man as with a woman”, nor any mention of the sexual behavior of or God’s judgement judgement of other species. To that end, your argument is complete nonsense to those who actually read, study, and believe the Word of God. If you’re going to make accusations, at least know the material.

Comment from BlackTantalus
Time February 11, 2010 at 1:44 pm

At some point, rational people realize that Christians worship a zombie and then get on with their lives.

Comment from geoff
Time February 11, 2010 at 2:17 pm

Call Me Conservative, but… : there seems to be some contradiction between what is considered “natural” and “unnatural” behaviour. It is supposedly “unnatural” (or an “abomination”) for humans to do some things which animals do, and for a long time it was argued that homosexual behaviour (like murder and war) was something only depraved/sinful humans do, but further research has proven that this is not the case. So it always seems to me that people (ab)use the Bible to justify what they themselves disapprove of (”unnatural” behaviour), whether or not they can actually prove what God might or might think or want. This is especially evident when you contrast current “fundamentalist” religion against the “natural theology” common in England during the early 19th century.
Was also wondering: which translation of the Bible do you read?

Comment from BJB
Time February 11, 2010 at 2:31 pm

Geoff,

As for the eating of the fruit, they DID know it was wrong. God gave them a direct command to not eat of that tree; yet they willfully did so anyway. It has nothing to do with the ten commandments, but rather their willing pact with Satan to become as God and replace Him as ruler.

Yes, Satan (an angel) is a created being. Originally he was called Lucifer, a name to reflect his brightness, goodness, power, etc. However, in pride and vanity he attempted to overthrow God; thus he was cast out of Heaven and into the earth.

Job was indeed physically afflicted by Satan. Satan wanted to “prove” that the only reason Job served God was because of his great wealth. Obviously, he was mistaken. I think your question boils down to the sovereignty of God. Is He in control of ALL things universally or isn’t He? And what is His ultimate purpose in all of His actions, for example allowing Satan to afflict Job with unspeakable suffering, or allowing us to be tempted of Satan? Why do we see such seemingly “unnatural” traits and behaviours in snails or spiders? If God is supposed to be so good, why does He allow any of this evil at all?

The short answer is to ultimately bring glory to Himself. That’s the sole reason why God does anything, including creating you and me. The difficulty for us is to not only wrap our finite minds around this utterly strange concept, but to receive it as truth - a feat that can only be done with much humility and faith.

Comment from geoff
Time February 11, 2010 at 2:44 pm

BJB: there’s a difference between knowing right from wrong & obeying a command. The Nazis obeyed a whole lot of commands knowing them to be wrong.
The question is, doesn’t the Lord’s Prayer ask God not to tempt us? Doesn’t that suggest that Satan/Lucifer is doing God’s work the way Judas (in some apocryphal texts) did God’s work, too?
“To ultimately bring glory to Himself.” Wasn’t one of the lessons Job was supposed to learn was that you aren’t supposed to question or try to understand His “mysterious ways”? “Utterly strange” motive, indeed.

Comment from BJB
Time February 11, 2010 at 2:51 pm

Call me Conservative….

“nor any mention of the sexual behavior of or God’s judgement judgement of other species. To that end, your argument is complete nonsense to those who actually read, study, and believe the Word of God.”

Actually, Geoff does have a point there and it isn’t complete nonsense. In fact it makes perfect sense in light of the curse upon creation, a concept clearly illustrated in the Word of God. Maybe you should read and study more.

Comment from BJB
Time February 11, 2010 at 3:26 pm

Geoff: Absolutely there is a difference between knowing right and wrong & obeying a command. However, I think your analogy of the Nazis is inappropriate….unless of course you think God is evil. On the contrary, since God is good and Adam being in perfect relationship with God at that time, PERSONALLY KNEW that to be true. Therefore, he would have known any command from God to be good, right, and life-giving. Yet he chose to disobey it anyway.

“The question is, doesn’t the Lord’s Prayer ask God not to tempt us? Doesn’t that suggest that Satan/Lucifer is doing God’s work the way Judas (in some apocryphal texts) did God’s work, too?” In short, yes you are correct.

Through his suffering, Job was brought to a place of humility, being reminded of his finiteness versus God’s infinity and omniscience. Questioning the “mysterious ways” of God is sinful ONLY IF it’s done out of unbelief, rejection, or rebellion. On the other hand, understanding God’s mysterious ways is not something our finite minds can ever FULLY grasp. Yet it is our duty in this life to learn as much as we can through the study of His Word.

As an aside……this is also a motivation for scientific study of the universe. It’s one of the important ways we can “pry into” the mind and ways of God.

Comment from Crofia
Time February 11, 2010 at 3:53 pm

What you have written makes no sense. You should learn logic and not just string random things togther, making conclusions from things that don’t support them.

Comment from geoff
Time February 11, 2010 at 3:56 pm

BJB: “It’s one of the important ways we can “pry into” the mind and ways of God.” British “natural theology” ca. 1820 or so.
There have been various heretical groups over the ages who tried to argue that the “God” of the OT was the “devil” of the NT (otherwise why give us all kinds of sources for temptation and then punish us for being tempted?). I just don’t see how, before eating of the tree of knowledge of good & evil, anyone can know that a command must necessarily be “good, right, and life-giving.” This is why the “curse” laid on the whole universe seems somewhat excessive: following or disobeying a command is neither good nor evil without that knowledge (whereas the Nazis knew that what they were doing was evil); nor is blind obedience necessarily a reflection of the rational facilities with which we were endowed.

Comment from Anthony
Time February 11, 2010 at 4:49 pm

This article points-out an interesting fact: Europe, and to some extent, America, is loosing its Christianity. That is, both the European and the North American Continents are secularizing very quickly.

This reminds me of a prophecy made by Jesus The Christ, which is couched in the form of a rethorical question.

Here is what he said:

\"In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And, there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, \’Grant me justice from my adversary\’.
\"For some time, he refused. But, finally he said to himself, \’…because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won\’t eventually wear me out with her coming!\"

\"…Listen to what that unjust judge said. And, will not God bring about justice for his choosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?

\"I tell you, he well see that they get their justice, and quickly.

\"However, when the Son of Man returns, do you think he will find any faith on the earth?\"

In his rhetorical no question, Jesus prophesized that faith in Him would dwindle to such an extend that he would find little, to no, faith in Him when he returns. We see this prophecy being fulfilled even as we read the current headlines.

Comment from maria
Time February 11, 2010 at 5:21 pm

I have found that Christianity as it is practiced in this country is certainly not based on the following of Christ. Christianity is a business. as can be witnessed by Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and others. The Catholic church did not put an end to the pedophile business until they were sued and insurance companies threatened to drop them. It’s about money honey. Many of the practices that have evolved in Christian churches are man-made and do not reflect the teachings of Christ. Celibacy was mandated because it allowed the churck to keep all of a priest’s wordly goods. If priests cannot marry this ensures that any inheritance remains with the church. Follow the money and the rules become crystal clear. For many, myself included, my faith is far removed from my religion.

Comment from dan reynolds
Time February 11, 2010 at 5:32 pm

The message of Christ, as the word of God incarnate, is much more powerful than anything man can do to mess it up or misinterpret it. Christ IS Truth and the Truth is the Truth is the Truth. Christ\’s message of love is not a philosophy. When people see truth, the can deny it all they want; they can refute it all the want -..it doesn\’t change what truth is.

The human race should worry less about the status of religion and more about how they live their lives.

Oh, and the notion that religion and scientific discovery are in anyway exclusive is ludicrous. How could God have done anything else BUT create an orderly, unimaginably complex world and universe? I wouldn\’t expect anything less!

Comment from BJB
Time February 11, 2010 at 5:49 pm

Geoff: Adam DID have knowledge of good because he was created perfect and without sin. At that point in history, Adam had a direct relationship with God - there was no conflict yet. When God told him plainly of which tree to eat, Adam did understand and received it as truth - your Nazi analogy doesn’t apply. However, under Satan’s influence Adam tried to “rationalize” whether the command was good or evil, causing Adam to rebel - plunging all of humanity into a sinful nature. Again, the sin was not merely disobeying a minor command; it was an act of rebellion due to the motives behind the act.

Yes, some Gnostics and other radical sects throughout history have tried to make the charge you are attempting to make. In the end, you have to decide if you’re going to believe God or not. “Did God really say?” or “Is God really good?” is the old tactic Satan always uses to cause us to question God, minimize or refuse to see our own sin, and ultimately rebel.

Comment from BJB
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:03 pm

Maria, I think we can all agree that the examples you’ve “found” are a bunch of frauds and charlatans. Even the non-believers can see that! Unless of course they are being intellectually dishonest or are ignorant of what true Christianity is. Instead of making broad generalizations, I’d suggest you perhaps do a little more searching. There are still plenty of Christians who follow Christ in spirit and in truth - although they are becoming a rare breed.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:05 pm

Been listening to the news and religious programing and reading Caglepost the last few months. Learned a
lot. It’s wonderful to have a full understanding of how a scripture applies to real life
and proper Christian thinking.

The second great commandment only applies as long as ALL of the following conditions are met:

1. You have money.
2. I don’t have to give up money, time, benefits, or anything else that I’ve earned.
3. I perceive you work as hard as I do.
4. I perceive you took advantage of every opportunity.
5. I perceive you are a lucky person.
6. I perceive you made every correct choice in life (like I did).
7. I don’t actually see you (as I avoid going to such neighborhoods).
8. Your parents didn’t make any bad choices (so you had the advantages I had).
9. You were born with genetics at least as good as mine.
10. You are pre-birth or within sight of death (anything between doesn’t count).
11. Your job is of the proper level.
12. You are correct in your political positions.
13. You take care of yourself and don’t do anything to harm yourself (physically,
mentally or financially).
14. You’ve been frugal and saved money.
15. Your God is My God.

Comment from Stug
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:13 pm

Cal, \"They have to take it a step further and ridicule those who believe in [anything different] as some sort of self-affirmation to make them feel better about their decision.\"
- Sounds like you\’re describing the way you, Jack, SOLP, etc. react to any non-right-wing comments posted.

\"I find the need to belittle believers (Christians in particular and the more fundamental even more so) somewhat belittling to those who engage it.\"
- So you feel that it is ok to belittle people who engage in a different political ideology, but that ardent believers in Bronze-Age mythologies deserve more respect. Interesting.

\"…the far Left just can’t help themselves. They feel compelled to name call and criticize. Very adult. Very mature. Very intellectual. Very, well, elitist…\"
- LOL! Stop, stop! I can\’t take any more! Given that you, Jack and SOLP are the origin of the majority of the name calling and criticism on these boards, the hypocrisy is just too much to bear. I think I\’ll save this quote for later.

Comment from southpaugh
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:18 pm

The so-called immutable word of god is myth from the outset, and has been amended, abridged, interpreted and translated to suit the political and personal agendas of bishops, cardinals, popes and kings literally for millenia. The famous \"sleep with man as with a woman is an abomination\" verses from Leviticus is a case in point. The original never mentions homosexuals at all, but refers, with a homonymic about temple sacrifices, to either the sacrificial animals or the revered and honored volunteer temple prositutes common for fertility rites. Truly, sleeping with ritual sacrificial animals as with a woman would be an abomination. But, the more likely context is meant for men who sleep with temple prosititutes, male or female, both of which were common, as if with one\’s wife, is an abomination. So, you see, the whole debate is based on political fabrications evident first in the English language\’s definitive King James Version. All faithful who suggest we heathens study the so-called word of their god would do well to find out the history of their beloved texts before assigning them the authority they so dearly wish to bestow upon them.

Speaking about history, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus were Roman soldiers martyred were lovers who were married in the church by a bishop. In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the \"sweet companion and lover\" of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus\’s close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as \"erastai,” or \"lovers\". In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.Contrary to myth, Christianity\’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual.

Comment from Just another vet
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:18 pm

I find it sad that religion has hijacked morality, that so many people think that to be moral one must also be religious. What is even more sad is that most of these individuals believe that any one that does not adhere to their own religion is eternally damned, even if they are in another sect of the same religion!

Politically, I lean to the right, and tend to vote Republican, but I detest the extent to which religious fundamentalists have taken over the Republican party.

Though Karl Marx\’s writings lent to the effort to create a government that was intollerant of religion, unfortunately the result was Communism. Unfortunate, not because it recognized religion as a threat to freedom, but because Communism rapidly devolved into a form of government that was intolerant of almost all freedoms. However, this does not diminish the importance of Marx\’s original words:

\"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.\"

Even more telling is what Charles kingsly wrote four years later:

\"We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable\’s hand book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order. \"

I hope for a day when we treat today\’s religions like we treat the ancient Greeks and Roman gods. Interesting mythology that has influenced our culture, but hardly worthy of basing our law and behavior on.

Comment from Jim
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:31 pm

Strange how any discussion of religion brings out the crazies (both pro and con). But our constitution guarantees that government will not establish any religion or prohibit free exercise of worship. It’s the last clause that many seem to overlook. Religion should probably never be argued about because the argument is unwinnable. It’s not hard to argue that there is no God because there’s no proof of it. That’s what faith is, believing in something of which there is no proof. I guess faith is what I have.

Why some are so outraged when they see a cross on a hill in California or “in God We Trust” inscribed on a coin, I’ll never understand. But unbelievers, you play an important role. What will the preacher do when the devil is saved?

Comment from VanCanGuy
Time February 11, 2010 at 6:54 pm

It is time that we as a species stop being constrained by the illogical and irrational insanities of the “religious”. Religions have far too long enjoyed a free hand in our society. We are not allowed to question them or hold their beliefs to the test of science and logic. Too often these insane beliefs hold back our social and cultural evolution by hiding behind ridiculous and unfounded superstitions.
Whether we are talking about that pedophile Mohamed or the very dubious story of Jesus Christ (based on various other ancient myths) we are told that these groups should be allowed to force an unnatural belief system onto unwitting children. We are told that their insane creeds (like Sikhs carrying knives) should not be questioned nor held to the same standards as normal citezenry. It is time we start openly challenging these belief systems and start openly confronting the irrationality of their lunacy.

Comment from Chrisofiction
Time February 11, 2010 at 7:32 pm

God kills mothers and puppies, people. Mothers and puppies!

Comment from Stug
Time February 11, 2010 at 7:39 pm

Jack, \"Odd to say the recognized religions of Atheism, secularism, Communism and the unrecognized religion of AGW are in fact all petty cults, much like the “Heavens Gate” cult, or the “Liberation Theology” cult \"
- Odd indeed, particularly since you only listed one \’religion\’, Atheism, as it requires as much faith, in the absence of evidence either way, to believe that God doesn\’t exist as it does to believe that He does exist.
Belief in AGW, or climate change, doesn\’t require a leap of faith so much as the capability of understanding the science behind it and the self-discipline not to allow what one wants to be true to obscure what the facts actually show. Now, if you want to elevate the climate change deniers to cult status, since they choose to believe in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, that I could understand. They\’ve even already got their own prophet in Phil Brennan.
As to secularism and Communism, they are political ideologies, not religions, or even cults. No more so, at least, than your vaunted conservatism is. For that matter, given that one of the tenents of modern conservatism is the unquestioning acceptance of anything that Rush says as fact, merely because he said it, I would put conservatism much closer to cult status than either of your two listed political ideologies. To continue the analogy, I guess this would give the tea-party equivalent status to scientology. It too has a large following, full coffers and some national name recognition, but in the end, nobody in the established parties actually has much respect for them.

\"Strangely man has declared the death of G_d for eons, 6 millennia of written history shows either contempt or ignorance or seeing the obsolescence’s and then go on a gorge of self made little “g’s” of money, power, or prestige.\"
- Since your span of \’written history\’ extends to include some of the earliest pictographs, long before anything like written language as we encounter it existed, and some two to three thousand years before Christianity was even a tribal cult, much less a world religion, it is difficult to understand how man has been declaring the death of God for all that time. Unless, of course, you are including the declared \’deaths\’ of all of the tribal and cultural dieties during this time period. This being the case, you have now put Christianity and Islam on equal footing with the rest of the pre- and post-Christian mythologies, most of which have \’died\’.
As for \"a gorge of self made little “g’s” of money, power, or prestige,\" you have just listed the three pillars of the Republican party, to which all else is secondary.

Comment from Jim
Time February 11, 2010 at 8:10 pm

DHFabian, only a liberal could conclude that because a tax cut for all income groups means everyone pays less of the money they have earned means that the government is somehow paying for the rich. The top 5% of wage earners in this country pay over half the federal income tax. Almost 40% of the lower income people in this country do not pay any federal income tax. They receive all the benefits and none of the burden of the federal bureaucracy. The lowest income people even get refunds for taxes they do not pay, what is fair about that? You do not have a leg to stand on by claiming that if the government takes only 38% of my money instead of 50% I am being rewarded. The government does not give anyone its money, it takes our money and gives it to others, and the congressmen can say look what ;I; gave you!!

Comment from Call Me Conservative, but…
Time February 11, 2010 at 8:14 pm

Hey Geoff: Sorry to take so long getting back to you. I have several versions, but am most familiar with the NIV. I teach Sunday School to teens, and this one is easier to use than some others. But I don’t think it matters the “version” of the bible…it matters more how you read it. I am not a literalist, but I beleive there are certian obvious truths. To suggest that the human form was created for anything other than Hetero encounters is just not supported in nature, and clearly is an “abomination” historically in every culture. I am not a gay basher either…my nephew and some of my friends are homosexual. But I cannot condone that lifestyle anymore than I can an alcoholic’s, drug addict’s, prostitute’s or any other lifestyle reflective of poor choices. Call me Conservative, but gay ain;t the way!

Comment from Cal
Time February 11, 2010 at 8:36 pm

The tolerance the Left so often speaks of is not real tolerance. It is nothing more than giving a pass to certain groups they view as poor, helpless victims in need of their wonderful help. But that tolerance ends abruptly when they run into someone who says, “I believe abortion is murder” or “I believe the Bible is the Word of God.” Then the fangs and the claws come out along with the hate-filled rhetoric condemning these people as ignorant cave dwellers who are somehow less than human because they’ve arrived at a different conclusion on a very important personal matter.

Tolerance? Yeah, uh-huh. “You betcha!” Just look at the turd BlackTantalus laid if you’ve still got any questions about the loons feel about Christians. Nice.

I’ll take a God-fearing Christian from any denomination over a “tolerant liberal” any day of the week as friend, a neighbor, or a co-worker. Oh, yeah, and twice on Sunday…

Comment from Escritor de Tejas
Time February 11, 2010 at 9:12 pm

GAWD…another GEOFF-A-THON, an \’auslander\’ Canadian with waaay too much time on his hands who consistently pokes his pernicious snoot across the border and stirs ANYTHING just to make it stink more than it already does, has successfully injected himself into a debate which is obviously beyond his limited scope of awareness. As a Canuk, this bozo is poxed by socialism; and his warped view of existential realities is found somewhere on the fringes of the Twilight Zone. Furthermore, trying to get a post in edgewise between his apoplectic rants is as difficult as debating a doorknob. As to the excellent (as usual) article by Kathryn Jean Lopez, her take is obviously well thought-out, researched and presented with enviable clarity. Particularly her salient and incisive comment near the end of her article: \"But if your idea of the Constitution is that it protects the fundamental liberties of all citizens (which happens to be the way the document is written), then — quite literally — everyone wins when those liberties are vindicated.”
As the Founding Fathers might well have responded in unison, in the vernacular of the day: \"SO MOTE IT BE.\"

Comment from geoff
Time February 11, 2010 at 9:24 pm

Escritor de Tejas: “Furthermore, trying to get a post in edgewise between his apoplectic rants is as difficult as debating a doorknob.”
Actually that’s more or less what I think of Caliban’s Tolstoyan (or is he more a Bulwer-Lytton kind of guy) productions & the foamy Splat. Or Spratt.
Why anyone would want to name himself after a character in a nursery rhyme is beyond me, but… it’s not as though he even tries for even a veneer of credibility, eh?

Comment from Glen
Time February 11, 2010 at 11:14 pm

The problem we have here in the states is that religious organization are being given public money to perform public (secular) functions. When such organizations perfolrm governmental functions, they are using public money and therefore must be held responsible to observe non-sectarian standards. Of course any private organization that does not care to observe secular standards need only refuse public money.

Historically Christianity has no coherent standards. Saints Peter and Paul were about preparing everyone for an imminent end of the work ca. 150 AD (or earlier). Some Christians thought the Old Testament was irrelevant to their new sect. Other Christians formed communist societies. Even today we witness Christians commiting mass suicides (Reverend Jones) and targeted assassinations for the glory of Christ. Thus far, no Christians have come to terms with the fact that neither Joseph or Mary (Jesus’ parents) ever associated themselves with Christianity. There is no evidence that Jesus himself was much concerned much about anything beyond the reform of Judaism and Jews.

Comment from Glen
Time February 11, 2010 at 11:17 pm

typo…”end of the world,” not “end of work,” although that would also be the case.

Comment from geoff
Time February 11, 2010 at 11:21 pm

Glen: I can’t remember when it was decided that you didn’t have to first convert to Judaism before becoming a Christian. Seems like circumcision was a contributing - or prohibitive - factor.
There’s the other one that, if it had not been consumated, then Joseph & Mary weren’t legally married, right…?

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 12, 2010 at 12:07 am

Gg, tcp
\"Logical contradiction there\"
What\’s the matter Gg, birds eat the bread crumbs again? I\’ll do the Amilama ding dong thing and diagram it all out, real simple like. You get a good a nap in and ole\’ uncle Jack will \"splain it all simple like, monosyllabic \’n every thing.
Later, our own lil’ professor puddin\’ head.

Comment from Richard Schloss
Time February 12, 2010 at 1:19 am

BJB, Sorry, but when people start quoting Scripture to me as absolute justification for why they\’re convinced they\’re right and I\’m wrong, they just sound like raving lunatics to me. To the poster who vilified \"atheists and the Left\" (guilty on both counts) for being \"elitist\" because we aren\’t completely tolerant of those whose beliefs defy rational thought: When someone insists that Creationism is true and evolution is false despite all the scientific evidence, I can only conclude that he or she is an idiot. Case closed.

Comment from BpBlacky
Time February 12, 2010 at 2:54 am

How does all of that Bible thumping correlate with Buddists, Hindus, Confucious and other religious groups who view the Bible as an interesting book, religions that are perfectly legal and accepted under our Constitution in our country? Their views are just as much important to them as yours are to you and carries the same weight as yours does!
As Senator Barry Goldwater once said about the Bible, it\’s a Good Book but it\’s Not The Only Book!

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 12, 2010 at 3:12 am

Stug

Main Entry: re·li·gion
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈli-jən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back — more at rely
Date: 13th century
…
3 ARCHAIC : SCRUPULOUS CONFORMITY : CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4 : A CAUSE, PRINCIPLE, OR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS HELD TO WITH ARDOR AND FAITH

“only listed one \’religion\’, Atheism,”
So since the courts have independently acknowledged Atheism, secularism as a religions, Liberation Theology of Jim Jones, Jeremiah Wright and his student Barry Obama, Heaven’s Gate, oddly your professed belief Paganism was also mentioned, along with the cult of “intellectualists”. Gee it wasn’t that long a post, I didn’t think it required redundancy or variations of the “rocks and stick” cults. As for Communism, as one man sees it, ” As a young student for the ministry in an earlier incarnation,
“my peers and I sometimes discussed whether communism is a religion. Some said no, because communism is atheistic, and some said yes, because communism is a comprehensive belief system and provides a framework for total devotion. In the end, of course, we agreed that the answer depended upon how one defined religion.

Apart from definitional or theological issues, social scientists may well ask whether communism functions psychologically and sociologically as religion among its everyday adherents. Researchers could focus productively on such questions as the similarities and differences between Western religions and communism in their processes of socialization, their mechanisms for engendering reverence and devotion, their uses of perfect exemplars (Jesus and Lenin), and their means for sustaining belief and coping with disbelief.” Quote “Sam McFarland Department of Psychology Western Kentucky University”

“doesn’t require a leap of faith so much as the capability of understanding the science behind it”
It does if you follow the “dumping of data” by it’s chief “climatologist” Mr. Mann, who, true to his word dumped any incriminating “old data”, oddly as he said he would in his e-mails. I quote one source…
“Whatever is shown, just keep it in context. There is no way a clear scientific point with all the caveats and uncertainties can come across in such venues. However, I do agree with Stossel’s premise (though I don’t know what the piece will actually look like so I may be disappointed) that the dose of climate change disasters that have been dumped on the average citizen is designed to be overly alarmist and could lead us to make some bad policy decisions. (I’ve got a good story about the writers of the TIME cover piece a couple of months ago that proves they were not out to discuss the issue but to ignore science and influence government.)
From: John Christy
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Some science…

I could go through a litany of statements similar to this from AR2 on ward through AR5 preliminary reports.
Apparently you are among the “believers” who feel that anyone who disagrees with the product, simply doesn’t understand the science, I’ve been on this since 1976, when did you start to “understand the science? ” I was simply curious as to how we could simultaneously be going into an ice age and be destroyed by global warming, kinda the ultimate “fire and ice” phenomena wouldn’t you say?

“written language as we encounter it existed”
Odd that we just started writing shite down, apparently out of the blue. Did someone get a Parker pen set for Christmas and thought, hey this would be great for writing something down? Cuz the guy with the square wheel thought he was going to make a mint on something that “wouldn’t just roll away”. According to one simplistic source “The Babylonians lived in Mesopotamia, which is between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They began a numbering system about 5,000 years ago”. Another points out ” The oldest petroglyphs are dated to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, other writing systems such as pictographs and ideograms began to appear.” Now is palaeontology just too hard for me to get? Perhaps hidden magic/science the “little people” just are too dull witted to get? Thought I grabbed a number some where in the “middle” to be sure, conservatives are like that. You do understand that “hidden knowledge” is one of the “identifiers” of a religion, by many?

“As for “a gorge of self made little “g’s” of money, power, or prestige”
No, actually a little closer to home for you, like aL Gore whose “religious faithful” have given him almost $100 million, or Comrade Teleprompter ordering the EPA to brand your exhale as a “noxious gas” so we can see “electric rates necessarily skyrocket”, and standing tall for America by sighing over our rights “in concept” to the EU socialists. Stating “The deal centered on “transparency, mitigation and finance,” he said. “We worked to establish a consensus around these three points.” You’ll be hearing more on the “fiancé” part through “mitigation”, not so much on the “transparency” part. Were you part of that “consensus” too?
As I’ve tried to simply show, there is an intrinsic internal need for a larger “I”, call it paranoia, call it the larger consciousness, I simply call it G_d. For me He exists, like the wind I can’t see but can watch the effects of, for you apparently not. For America is still a Christian country, contrary to Comrade president Teleprompter and not “one of the largest muslim countries in the world”, one of the largest countries in population and yes all people from all walks of life are welcome, but we simply are not a notable “Islamic” country and certainly not an atheist country. Don’t like “religion” or bible quotin’ stuff, “fasten your seatbelt and put a helmet on, you’re in for a bumpy ride”
So Stug what have you made as your “little “g” god”? Family, friends, job, booze, drugs, intellectualism, self, all of these and more can qualify as “A CAUSE, PRINCIPLE, OR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS HELD TO WITH ARDOR AND FAITH”.
Have a great day. Huge your children and wife, and I wish you well.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 12, 2010 at 4:02 am

Gg
“You and your syphillis fixation”
Yea, actually your fixation, along with your little “g” god, the crazy mr. G_d is dead Freddie Nietzsche, you know the philosipher who had the “howard johnson suite” at the nut hut he was so “smart”? You might want to work on the delivery a bit, it kinda makes you look like the little fat kid in the corner with a band aid one his tongue from “licking the flag pole” in all of this “anecdotal global warming” an wot not
.
“Recognised” by whom”
I like the formal “whom” shows class for a stupid question, both atheism and secularism and a whole host of “ism” cults have been legally recognized by the courts, but then you being so foreign to our countries laws one could understand your ignorance, having common knowledge of your abilities, we have come to expect nothing less and you certainly “completely” show it each time you post. To be fair, sometimes you are just mildly stupid, kind of like the kid everyone sends out for a left handed monkey wrench (hint, they don’t exist, I don’t want you to go looking for one and feeling, well stupider than usual).

“an illegal war”
The truly ignorant are always the last to know, were you referring to the French in Canada and their raids into “the colonies” murdering men, women and children and precipitating King Williams war (again, hint 1690), an equally disastrous English led imbecilic European disaster or the war that was the culmination of the breaking of 17 UN sanctions, under 2 US presidents, with the express authorization of Congress and the UN?
Maybe you meant the murder of 1 million Rwandans by the machete wielding teens under the ever glazed eyes of the UN Blue hats with only one gallant soul, Dallaire, again whose boots you couldn’t in your life time be able to lick. You are kind of the poster toad of moral relativism and hypocrisy, you must have a special talent for it.
“kill off about a million civilians”
I see your math is as good as your history teachin’, “An independent UK/US group, the Iraq Body Count project (IBC),” found these figures accurate.

2003 12,049
2004 10,751
2005 14,832
2006 27,652
2007 24,522
2008 9,214
2009 1,951

100,971

So, the tragic loss of 100,000, killed mostly by the “freedom fighter thugs” you support, freeing 31 million people who couldn’t throw off the chains of So Damn Insane (hey didn’t your French, Russian and German friends take money from him to stave off the good guys?) versus 800,000 to 1 million you and your “high” minded little country couldn’t protect from machete wielding teenagers.
Yea, geoof, you’re quite the moral arbiter aren’t you? Ever figure out who the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was or why the Canadian Supreme Court ruled the vaunted Canadian health care in breach of your sad little Constitution?
You might want to bang the keys faster, doesn’t look like you can get off of the first word, watt, beein all so high ‘n smart licke.
You dolt.

Comment from michaelg
Time February 12, 2010 at 7:21 am

All these interpretations of what the bible says and doesn’t say, what it means and doesn’t mean just support my
long-held belief that the book belongs on the fiction shelf in libraries.

Comment from Call Me Conservative, but…
Time February 12, 2010 at 12:16 pm

Richard and Michaelg: You certainly have the right to your opinions, but I hope you like it hot! : - )

Richard: In response to your post: “When someone insists that Creationism is true and evolution is false despite all the scientific evidence, I can only conclude that he or she is an idiot. Case closed.”… There is no reason that Craeationism and Evoloution must be separated in the development of Mankind…and those that think so on either side of the argument have closed minds. There is an abundance of evidence to suggest that evolution is actually a part of the creation model, and it is not self limiting, If as you say the case is closed, so is your mind!

Comment from Glen
Time February 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm

geoff….Mary was apparently pregnant when Joseph married her. Back in the day, it was not unusual for some folks to say that the children of unmarried women were the descendants of Gods. At any rate, fertility was a much more positive, important asset back then. One guess is that she may have been impregnated as a house servant in a Cohen family, given Jesus’ later taste for religious activities.

The problem of uncircumcized Christians (meaning non-Jews) primarily divided Paul from the original apostles in Jerusalem. If you read Galicians 1.18 -1.24 (presumably originated by Paul), it states that Paul avoided visiting Jerusalem for a number of years (probably because of this same issue). Later (perhaps 50-75 years) on, the author of Acts 21.15-26 papered over the split. It is of interest that James, brother of Jesus, as well as the original apostles, was hostile to the participation of non-Jews in the movement.

Comment from geoff
Time February 12, 2010 at 2:23 pm

Glen: \"Mary was apparently pregnant when Joseph married her.\" An interesting take on the situation.

Comment from BlackTantalus
Time February 12, 2010 at 3:01 pm

I wrote a political meditation with 388 points (and growing) titled, Why I Am Not A Republican. Not surprisingly, many of those observations explain why I am not a Christian . . . #81: I do not believe in zombies.

Comment from BJB
Time February 12, 2010 at 3:27 pm

Glen: “The problem we have here in the states is that religious organization are being given public money to perform public (secular) functions.”

I agree this would be problematic…..but in what way is this happening?

Comment from BJB
Time February 12, 2010 at 3:51 pm

BT: “I wrote a political meditation with 388 points (and growing) titled, Why I Am Not A Republican. Not surprisingly, many of those observations explain why I am not a Christian . . . #81: I do not believe in zombies.”

Why do you necessarily associate the Republican party w/ Christianity?

Comment from BlackTantalus
Time February 12, 2010 at 4:28 pm

The observation was incidental, and after the fact.

Comment from Stug
Time February 12, 2010 at 6:50 pm

Jack,
Your reply was interesting, though I notice that you used \"4 : A CAUSE, PRINCIPLE, OR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS HELD TO WITH ARDOR AND FAITH\" as your choice of definitions for religion. Of course, by this definition anyone who follows a particular NFL team may be said to be a religious adherant of the team, and sometimes this isn\’t too far from the truth. This also has the effect of rendering any discussion of religion in politics useless as cleanliness is the \’religion\’ of the OCD whereas slovenliness is the \’religion\’ of the lazy, and neither has anything to do with politics. For the purposes of having an actually useful discussion that might actually have a bearing on the topic I chose to use the prime definition as opposed to the catch-all at the bottom of the list: \"THE SERVICE AND WORSHIP OF GOD AND THE SUPERNATURAL\", which is what most people are referring to when speaking of religion.
I have heard that Atheism is recognized as a religion, as it should be given that it requires faith to believe that God doesn\’t exist when that is as unprovable as His existence.
Secularism is defined as: \" indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations\", and is hardly a religion so much as a point of view. Though if using your catch-all definition that relies on actions rather than faith as the defining factor then I can see your including it, along with the Colts fans.
Paganism, not my \"professed belief\" by the way, though I would be more inclined to follow that than Christianity, is obviously a religion, as is any other that follows a belief in the supernatural.
The rest are political ideologies, plain and simple. They may be followed religiously, or even take the place of religion in some cases, but they are not supernatural in nature and, ergo, not religions per se.

\"…the dose of climate change disasters that have been dumped on the average citizen is designed to be overly alarmist and could lead us to make some bad policy decisions.\"
- I don\’t disagree, but this is a qualification of the degree of risk inherrant in climate change, not a denial that it is happening.
\"Apparently you are among the “believers” who feel that anyone who disagrees with the product, simply doesn’t understand the science,\"
- True enough, if the product you are referring to is anthropogenic climate change, the deniers either don\’t understand, or choose not to believe, the science.
\"I’ve been on this since 1976, when did you start to “understand the science?”
- Gee, I don\’t know, junior high? Your listing of 1976 correlates with the Time magazine article regarding the impending ice age I suppose. Never mind that there were more papers published the same year that dealt with warming as opposed to the one or two that Time based their article on. I see deniers bring that up quite often in an attempt at confusing the issue.

\"Thought I grabbed a number some where in the “middle” to be sure, conservatives are like that.\"
- You did, and I don\’t take issue with that. Your original comment was \"…man has declared the death of G_d for eons, 6 millennia of written history shows either contempt or ignorance…\". My issue was with your assumption that because rudimentary petroglyphs exist that they were somehow declaring the death of God. Those that dealt with religion in any form would have had nothing to do with the Christian God in any case. The Christian God is just one in a long line of dieties, imagined or otherwise that people have worshipped. Most of those have \’died\’, for lack of a better word, as their respective religions ceased to be followed, there is no reason to believe that Christianity, Islam, etc., won\’t share the same fate eventually.
But fear not, they will likely be supplanted by a new \"truth\" at that point that people will cling to as they scoff at those who could have believed in the mythology of Christianity even as modern Christians scoff at those who believed in the Roman, Greek and Norse pantheons. Never mind Zororastrianism, the religion most prevalent when the earliest writing systems were developed, and which most modern Christians are unaware of even though many of the major tenents of Christianity were lifted directly from it. Heaven and Hell, the virgin birth, the resurrection, judgement of the worthiness of a soul for entrance into Heaven, none of this was original to Christianity. How is it that a religion purporting to be the \’Truth\’ can denounce as false the earlier religions from which they stole all of their ideas?

\"So Stug what have you made as your “little “g” god”? Family, friends, job, booze, drugs, intellectualism, self, all of these and more can qualify as “A CAUSE, PRINCIPLE, OR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS HELD TO WITH ARDOR AND FAITH”.\"
- Yes they can, but they do not qualify as a religion when the discussion involves a comparison to an organized religion such as Christianity, and are useless in a discussion of religion and politics.

Comment from Stug
Time February 12, 2010 at 7:11 pm

Cal, “But that tolerance ends abruptly when they run into someone who says, “I believe abortion is murder” or “I believe the Bible is the Word of God.”
- Not true, most people on the left have no problem with people who believe as you say. It is when they say “I believe the Bible is the Word of God, and I’m going to force you to live by those words in spite of their irrelevance to society today.”, that, as you say, “the fangs and the claws come out” as we try to protect our personal freedoms from those who would take them away to satisfy their sense of propriety.
Most on the left are tolerant of others beliefs and willing to let them live as they wish. What we are not tolerant of is the intolerance of those who believe that way, and their unwillingness to let others live as they wish.

“I’ll take a God-fearing Christian from any denomination over a “tolerant liberal” any day of the week as friend, a neighbor, or a co-worker.”
- I’d take a God-fearing Christian as a friend as well, also a liberal, a conservative, a Muslim, an Atheist. That’s what being tolerant means. That is what has made our country great. It is also what makes your brand of intolerant conservatism a closed and insular ideology which is not only un-American but, regardless of its short-term successes, is doomed to failure in the long run.

Comment from Cal
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:06 pm

Richard Schloss writes, “When someone insists that Creationism is true and evolution is false despite all the scientific evidence, I can only conclude that he or she is an idiot. Case closed.” The case isn’t closed, your mind is. This is EXACTLY what I’m talking about. This is an elitist, holier-than-thou approach to dealing with people of faith. (I just read CallmeConservative’s post who also said Richard’s minds is closed. I wasn’t stealing his thought. Guess we both arrived at the same conclusion.)

I read Richard Dawkins’s book “The Blind Watchmaker” about fifteen years ago. I found it fascinating and about 1/3 of the way through I remember thinking, “If he can take this idea to a logical conclusion (which would be there is no Watchmaker) I’ll become an atheist.” He skillfully made his arguments demonstrating how something as complex as the eye could have evolved from single-cell organisms and then took us all the way back to crystalline RNA. But he lost me when he suddenly changed course and said, “We have no idea how crystalline RNA made the jump from inorganic to organic compound but since we’ve clearly established there is no God, we need concern ourselves with yet unanswered details.” I closed the back which reinforced by belief that atheism is every much dependent of faith as is theism. One can boldly declare there is or is not a God but decisive proof has never been found. The theories of intelligent design are as reasonable as those of evolution (which, btw, does NOT try to explain how life originated, only how it has evolved or changed over time using natural selection.) The truth is, we have NO real idea how life began. We know only that there have been modifications over time. If castigating those who’ve come to a different conclusion makes you feel superior, by all means, castigate away. But it seems to me we should be able to be respectful of ALL beliefs from extreme Christian fundamentalism to hardcore atheism and everything in between as long as we’re not using religion (or the lack thereof) as an excuse to take innocent life. ymmv.

BpBlacky. Bible “thumping” is just another pejorative term to denigrate those who believe the Bible to be the Word of God. If they’re delusional, it’s no harm to you. Contrary to popular belief, no one is “shoving their morals” down anyone else’s throats. We all have a right to our beliefs and to support candidates who share them. Is Roe v Wade “legislating morality?” I’m not sure why you chose the word “correlate” when trying to connect Christianity with other major religions using the term “Bible thumping.” Perhaps you meant to imply Christians are somehow too narrow in their outlook or in their tolerance of other religions. I don’t think that’s true at all. Christianity has a healthy respect for other beliefs and a call to try and bring to Christ through evangelizing. That isn’t oxymoronic. If you have “The Truth” then the highest form of love would be to share it.

At any rate, the hatred is palpable and it makes me wonder if perhaps there might be some cause to explain it that’s greater than “I just don’t like them.” I have the same difficulty understanding the absolute hatred of Israel and Jewish people, but then I’m neither Muslim nor a liberal so I tend to like and respect both Christians and Jews. And moderate Muslims, for that matter.

Stug. You’re unbelievable. It’d take forever to find it but a few months ago you sent an unbelievably intolerant heat round down range against religious people. I’ve challenged you on your selective application of tolerance on at least one other occasion, too–maybe twice and I believe wrt to things you’ve said about people of faith. I hope you really do believe and practice what you’re saying today. I have liberal co-workers and neighbors and get along with them quite well. We just never discuss politics and it’s all sunshine and roses. But I wouldn’t want to spend time with them voluntarily anymore than they’d want to hang out with yours truly.

Comment from Art W
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:13 pm

Stug: “Most on the left are tolerant of others beliefs and willing to let them live as they wish.”

I’m so sick to death of hearing about how ‘intolerant’ conservatives are and how ‘tolerant’ the left is. Oh the left, they are so tolerant and have such superior mind set. If only we could all be like them, the world would be such a better place. Puke.

Right. The left is so tolerant, Kinda like when our local Elementary School started teaching 6 year-olds that gay relationships were perfectly normal. This is a little beyond the “live and let live” philosophy you make liberalism out to be. Jamming homosexual relationships down our kids throats more closely meets this statement (also supplied by you):

” . . . unwillingness to let others live as they wish.”

Oddly, and against your image of how conservatives think, my wife and I do not go out of our way to teach our kids that gay relationships are wrong or ‘bad’. In fact, we try not to mention it at all. Even though it’s not an easy conversation (in fact, it’s damned uncomfortable) explaining how it came to be that Little Billy has two moms and no dad, we do our best to not disparage or say anything that might be repeated by young mouths and offend another. Set aside the fact that Little Billy is the kid frequently acting out in very odd ways (like pulling his pants down on the bus and telling other kids he wants to ‘murder’ their dads) - because that might not have anything to do with the his ‘family unit’ and, even if it did, it would probably be societies fault anyway. All we ask is that schools teach our kids the core courses and let us, as parents, handle the rest. Yet we, as conservatives, are the “intolerant” ones.

The tolerant left can hand out Planned Parenthood pamphlets on every street corner - no problem, but let a religious group arrange a meeting to discuss pro-life options and the ‘tolerant’ left goes bonkers. Hand out condoms to kids in High School - no problem, but try to convene those same kids to merely talk about abstinence . . . all hell breaks loose. 85% of Americans have and are happy with their current healthcare . . . screw’em, the ‘tolerant’ lefties know what’s best for them and, come hell or high water, will jam it down their throats to prove it to them.

All your talk of ” . . . the left are tolerant of others beliefs and willing to let them live as they wish” is pure bullshit. It is the left that is working overtime (which, by the way, is about the only “Change” I’ve seen in Washingtin) to take away individual liberites. When it comes to that lofty goal, those lefties sure burn the midnight oil.

Comment from Cal
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:15 pm

Stug, As a post script I’ll just have to take your word for “most people on the left.” What I see here on Cagle is only a microcosm and what I see on television isn’t the entire picture either. I don’t like being painted with a broad brush so if my perceptions are sweeping too many into what I think I see, I’ll be the first to say I’d be happy to be wrong.

Each time a religious article appears here, I see people posting who rarely do or are first timers and it’s usually a pretty blistering indictment on Christians for being ignorant cave dwellers or haters like Nazis. Not all religions are attacked. It’s usually just Christians and especially those who hold to the fundamentals of their faith. If most on the left are just indifferent and are happy letting believers believe and do their thing, that’s great. I just tend to see a constant stream of diatribes criticizing and belittling. But as I said, this and the boob tube aren’t reflective of an entire segment of society. I’m just tryin’ to call ‘em as I see ‘em. Again, I hope you’re right. Er, left. Er, “moderate.” Cheers!

Comment from Cal
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:19 pm

Okay, post post script. I watched the Tim Tebow ad during the Superbowl after hearing from NOW how disparaging it was to women. It came and went so fast I missed the theme and then saw Tebow hugging his mom. It hit me that I\’d just seen THE AD! I didn\’t hear anything that sounded controversial but the next day I read about how violent it was because he \"tackled\" his mother. Uh, did they watch the Betty White ad? Did they see the scantily clad women hawking beer? That was okay and the Tebow spot was demeaning? What am I missing? Okay, I\’m really done.

ArtW. Well said, as usual.

Comment from Art W
Time February 12, 2010 at 8:41 pm

Cal: “I watched the Tim Tebow ad during the Superbowl after hearing from NOW how disparaging it was to women. It came and went so fast I missed the theme and then saw Tebow hugging his mom.”

Agreed . . . it was half over before I realised it was ‘THE’ spot that had all the pro-infanticide (um, I mean, “tolerant” folk on the left) going whacko.

Did they change the ad under pressure . . . or was that what all the fuss was about?

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 13, 2010 at 12:47 am

“A CAUSE, PRINCIPLE, OR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS HELD TO WITH ARDOR AND FAITH”
Is one of the 4 definitions of “religion” given in the online of two that could apply to a whole host of “followings”, including AGW even if it were fact, not presumption?
I agree to a fair degree that many things being called “religion” shouldn’t be, like atheism, I’m fairly sure there are things that are called “science” that you would agree are far from science. If I say my wife can can, does that make the definition used wrong?

“effect of rendering any discussion of religion in politics useless as cleanliness is the ’religion’ of the OCD”
Only if you don’t believe they aren’t anyway, by the circular nature of “discussions” of belief versus unbelief, and why I generally try to avoid them, but also if you ignore that OCD or any other physical manifestation of psychological maladies as being normative behavior and would therefore not “religions”, but if worshiped could.

“Your listing of 1976 correlates with the Time magazine article Your listing of 1976 correlates with the Time magazine article”
Actually never saw the Time article, but the research papers and other forms of study I have read since then, doesn’t make me ignorant. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Thermodynamics, physical science studies, like College classes in Material Science, math Calculus, Stat’s, and more, doesn’t preclude my being able to understand “the science”, you on the other hand have aL Gore, I’ll put my ability to read the “science” up against “the inventor of the internet” any day. I’m sure you’re a whiz-bang on your job technicalities, why wouldn’t I be, again? I’ve worked in construction requirements, i.e. understanding what flows and the parts of the processes from Boston to Hong Kong. Do you think honestly that air pollution is more of a risk factor than land and water based pollution whether it’s municipalities “by-pass” pumping raw sewage in to clean water, or chemical factories dumping their crap, soup dejur, into the Mississippi or Great Lakes.

“the deniers either don\\’t understand, or choose not to believe, the science.”
Apparently some of the very respected names in climatology, like Landsea, Christy and Shunichi Akasofu, maybe I should forward your and GL’s concerns that neither do they “understand the science”. There is still a school of scientists promoting the “next ice age”. I admire your “hidden knowledge” as to how 0.117 anthropomorphic CO2 addition is “the cause”, flying in the face of past warming trends over the studied 11,000 years of direct and indirect data, well at least the data not dumped. We certainly don’t misunderstand the fact of warming periods have occurred and we are in one, the science isn’t settled except in the mind of the little Belgian guy who asked, “but what about the billions?” That ain’t rocket science.
You do know the probability that the “science” isn’t accurate enough to predict the cause and effect of 3% of all GhG’s on the other 97% naturally occuring, with approximately 50% of the variables unknown? At least according to “real scientists” like the 3 previously mentioned, along with a slew of others. I guess, politically making an “enemies list” of “deniers” makes sense, what again is the problem with the suggestion by the lead author of AR3 that qualified scientists in opposition to the anthropomorphic contributions, may not be the tilting of the balance of the natural cycle (the other 97.2% of the GhG, not to mention the effects of the Sun’s Min’s and Max’s which seem to correspond better to the data of warming and cooling periods than C02 emissions. Maybe you have that “secret knowledge” they don’t give us “damn“ conservatives. Then we could build you a temple of contemplation of science or something, oh yea we have the UN’s IPCC, never mind.
While I’m glad the growing number of IPCC scientists are coming out admitting that the “fight was fixed”, the revelations of phony data, the stated global cooling over the last several years, as is “anecdotally” apparent with snow in all 50 states and cold climates like Rome, even the leaked e-mails showing the absolute willingness of Mann and Jones to “do what it takes”, witnesses attesting that IPCC authors were making the case “so that the Americans would have to accept”, doesn’t dissuade your AGW certitude, quite an leap of faith, if I may say so.

“rudimentary petroglyphs”
Man today as always presumes an evolving being, 1st century AD were “so much smarter than 5th century BC, if you read the books, I have never been convinced that the “psyche” of man has changed, yes the “toys”, understanding, even the petroglyphs had meaning to those that made them, many are suspected to represent, extra normal experiences or beliefs, Judeo-Christian principles have been “codified” as “oral traditions” perhaps (remembering that the Egyptians and other Semitic languages were one of “written sources) and then written (apparently they did get the Parker Pen set) over the last 3500 years, some of the “creation myths” go to civilizations that predate Abraham who also had written histories. I watch as TLC, DISCOVERY, hell, even PBS occasionally will have “pieces” (documentaries) of factual studies that tend to put the “myths” into the might have been true class. Like the studies written of in a book I believe GL read, “In Search of Noah’s Flood”. As far as I can humbly tell they are as “factual” as a paleontologist taking a piece of bone and then tell us how the “dinosaur” looked, sounded an felt about his mother.
As far as the Christian stuff, each of us are offered the “gift” we can choose to accept it or reject it, no hard feelings, apparently there is a down side if not accepted, but unless truly felt, as one “guy” put it “many are called and few are chosen”, I’m pretty sure I’m not the one doing the “choosing”.
“mythology of Christianity”
You do understand that it’s only “mythology” if it isn’t true, like the “myth” of MM-GW? I’ve personally watched hundreds of people whose lives were enhanced by following the Christian principles, as I’ve watched the winds across Lake Michigan or the Pacific Ocean, we live in a country based on them and the most successful country in the world, peace under the Christian philosophy has been far more prevalent that with out it. Name a rock and stick belief that helped tame the Vikings, Saxons, Celts, Romans, and Greeks, including “intellectualism”?
You do recognize that the greatest presumption of the “American experiment” was the belief that some guy down the block gave you “certain unalienable right”, like the loon from the north was, so then Slim from down the block says you don’t have the right to vote, like the Dem’s did in the pre and post war south, it was the “religious zealots” that said that is against God’s law, not the atheists or the rock and stick people, nor was it the secular, intellectualists.
Good luck with that whole thing.
Nice to chat with you, I somewhat like the new format, lost my log/resources, don’t like the inserting \\\\ in each of the quote mark. Oh well, maybe I should pay more for the service, huh.
Keep smiling.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 13, 2010 at 12:59 am

Stug
“Most on the left are tolerant of others beliefs and willing to let them live as they wish.”
So I guess the Union thug was actually being “tolerant of others” when he bit off the finger of the 65 year old on the otherside of the street he had to cross to show his “respect with divergent beliefs”?
Or the rabid G-8 “protesters” in Seatle a few years back and looted the stores they destroyed in riots.
Or even your statement that the “deniers” of AGW, just don’t understand the “science”.
BTW, we do understand science, and we understand phony science,

Comment from Bruce
Time February 14, 2010 at 1:56 pm

Organized religion has the opportunity to lift mankind to a higher level, but somehow fails to fulfill this promise. Somehow the things that seemed cool about religion when I was younger, e.g. the Golden Rule, somehow have lost their luster of late. Religion seems to be used more often as a justification for forcing your morals on other people than it is to better everyone’s condition. What a shame. And no wonder people lose interest in it.

Comment from geoff
Time February 14, 2010 at 8:43 pm

Bruce: unfortunately the people who do the organising are, generally, just people, subject to the same failings as the rest of us. Historically, it has always been so: the 30 Years’ War, Inquisition, Crusades, Holocaust, etc.

Comment from geoff
Time February 14, 2010 at 8:58 pm

Bruce: then again, when you get someone saying something like “It would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again,” what can you expect? Was God keeping you safe & secure & prosperous all this time, or your soldiers, democratic institutions, rule of law…?

Comment from Stug
Time February 15, 2010 at 11:15 pm

My, my, so many responses.

Cal, \"a few months ago you sent an unbelievably intolerant heat round down range against religious people.\"
- Did I? Against religious people as a whole, or directed against something particular? I don\’t doubt that I did, as I said I\’m tolerant of others beliefs, religious or otherwise, but that tolerance ends when the intolerance of their beliefs impinges upon others.

\"I’ll just have to take your word for “most people on the left.”\"
- Feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I don\’t claim to speak for, or know the minds of, anyone but myself. \"Most people\" being a relative term assuming that the majority of any group aren\’t extremists. Jack\’s response to my use of the term was to highlight an example of some fool who bit off somebody\’s finger. I suppose that guy is about as representative of the left as the guy who murdered the abortion doctor is of the right.

\"Not all religions are attacked.\"
- Well, you let me know when some upstart Bhuddist starts throwing up inflammatory posts and we\’ll get \’em!

\"I just tend to see a constant stream of diatribes criticizing and belittling.\"
- Yes, well, I tend to skip over SOLP\’s posts myself, your\’s and Jack\’s I read in spite of it. Everyone plays that game to some extent. You seem to believe that tolerance should equate to allowing others to walk all over you and not speaking out. It doesn\’t work like that. I have no problem with the majority of people believing in the \’truth\’ of Christianity, though I don\’t agree with them. I will not be tolerant, however, of their attempt to teach Creationism as a science comparable to evolution to my kids.

Art, \"Jamming homosexual relationships down our kids throats more closely meets this statement (also supplied by you):
” . . . unwillingness to let others live as they wish.”
- I agree, I don\’t think homosexuality should be an agenda that is advanced in schools. However, when it comes up in discussions, and it will come up, it should also not be stigmatized. It would be fairly simple to explain that some relatively small percentage of the population is homosexual, and while that is not the norm for the majority, it is also not something to be reviled any more so than you would the percentage of the population that happens to be left-handed.

\"your image of how conservatives think\"
- I\’m sure my image of how most conservatives think isn\’t any more warped or out of tune with reality than your own image of how most liberals think. I\’m sure the majority of both groups are relatively centrist, for their own ideologies. But that would make for boring commentary on the boards so you and Cal and Jack speak of all liberals as if they were on the far left fringe and I speak of conservatives with the same broad brush. It\’s good to hear that you don\’t go out of your way to teach your kids that gay relationships are wrong, though why it should be uncomfortable to speak about I don\’t understand.

\"the fact that Little Billy is the kid frequently acting out in very odd ways (like pulling his pants down on the bus and telling other kids he wants to ‘murder’ their dads) - because that might not have anything to do with the his ‘family unit’\"
- Statistically speaking, Little Billy probably comes from a Christian home with a mother and father.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 16, 2010 at 2:27 am

“Little Billy probably comes from a Christian home with a mother and father.”
So are you conseeding this is a Christian nation?

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 16, 2010 at 2:41 am

Jack, I’ll repeat the morals I’ve learned on Caglepost about our “christian?” nation and the people that claim to be the most supporting of the principles of Christianity.

The second great commandment only applies as long as ALL of the following conditions are met:

1. You have money.
2. I don’t have to give up money, time, benefits, or anything else that I’ve earned.
3. I perceive you work as hard as I do.
4. I perceive you took advantage of every opportunity.
5. I perceive you are a lucky person.
6. I perceive you made every correct choice in life (like I did).
7. I don’t actually see you (as I avoid going to such neighborhoods).
8. Your parents didn’t make any bad choices (so you had the advantages I had).
9. You were born with genetics at least as good as mine.
10. You are pre-birth or within sight of death (anything between doesn’t count).
11. Your job is of the proper level.
12. You are correct in your political positions.
13. You take care of yourself and don’t do anything to harm yourself (physically,
mentally or financially).
14. You’ve been frugal and saved money.
15. Your God is My God.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 16, 2010 at 4:25 am

“Organized religion has the opportunity to lift mankind to a higher level”

Oddly it has (even for a short period, Islam), the most predations “religion” has been Islam, but in terms of shear brutality, the “intellectualists” of communism has the pure “unholy” lead in numbers of murder and vacuous societal contributions, two countries in particular killing up to 150 million for “the religion of the state”, killing their own people without territorial, economic, social gains, or gains in much of anything but the elimination of dissenting voices. These are revered by the “intellectualists” with awe and as inspirational. Uncle Joe, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, Che t-shirts, Viva Fidel support of the willfully ignorant for failed 3 rd world countries whose bulk populations live in miserable abject poverty.

“Historically, it has always been so: the 30 Years’ War, Inquisition, Crusades, Holocaust, etc.”

Wow, such a list of “crimes, oddly, murderously paling in comparison to the brutality in all of history to the 16 million dead, 21 million injured in WW I, started by an Anarchist. 62 to 78 million dead in WW II, started by the “religion of the Aryan Race”, of course the cap really has to go to Russia with a murderous estimate of 50 million of their finest citizens, started by Communist/Atheist and the “gold” capper of 100 million killed by Chairman Mao and “the good guys” the “intellectual” left loves to idolize.

Holocaust deaths

Jews 5.9 million
Soviet POWs 2–3 million
Ethnic Poles 1.8–2 million
Romani 220,000–1,500,000
Disabled 200,000–250,000
Freemasons 80,000
Homosexuals 5,000–15,000
Jehovah’s Witnesses 2,500–5,000

Pretty ecumenical while not listing the entire estimated 15 million, all “non-Aryans”, Most would not be so stupid to consider WWI or WW II as anything but political wars, by “really smart people”.

Ah, I see the “Crusades”, odd, I would assume this would be the Islamic crusade to conquer the world starting in the 7th century bleeding out up to the 19th, which decimated the mid-east, North Africa, India, Eastern Europe, Italy, and Western Europe. Truly a gluttony of murder and mayhem, Muslims having killed more Muslims than any other people to date, with the second being perhaps Genghis Khan. Perhaps the second greatest murderer of Christians would have to have been perhaps Muslims, the third Tamer the Lame. Of course the Islamic Jihad still continues from the fount of the first real act of it’s founder attacking and forced conversion of his neighbor.

30 years war casualties were said to be, “Much of the destruction of civilian lives and property was caused by the cruelty and greed of mercenary soldiers.” I don’t quite think of greed, bubonic plague, other diseases or famine to be very religious, organized or not.

Now the Inquisition was purely Religious of it was said, “The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period; Henry Kamen estimates about 2,000 executed, based on the documentation of the Autos de Fé, the great majority being conversos of Jewish origin.” Unfortunately, “The decree of expulsion was issued in January 1492. The number of Jews who left Spain is not even approximately known. Historians of the period give extremely high figures: Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Don Isaac Abravanel of 300,000. Modern estimates are much lower: Henry Kamen estimates that, of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews, about one half or 40,000 chose emigration.”

I believe the Great Salah al-Din killed that many in taking Cairo to keep the Caliphate out of German (the Franks) hands, and decapitating the infidel Shia rulers, literally.

If you live in America, you live in the “freest” country in the world, America was the greatest experiment in history, the founders intentionally based it on Christian principles. I’m reminded of Thomas Paine’s letter to Franklin or Adams saying that he was going to France, because, “the atheists who had taken over the revolution” there were running too much blood in the streets and “would ruin the revolution”. The French were said to be “great philosophers” and great intellects.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 16, 2010 at 5:22 am

GL
-I’ll repeat the morals I’ve learned on Caglepost about our “Christian?” nation and the people that claim to be the most supporting of the principles of Christianity.-
I would assume that would include you also, or do you simply deride “fundamentalist Christians” as one who really, really knows the source reference, but not accepting the mantle of “Christian” in a Christian nation, cynical and hypocritical all in one stroke? Say it ain’t so Joe, say it ain’t so.

-ALL of the following conditions are met-
Yea, I’ve seen it, chose to ignore it for the most part, unworthy of you.
Quite the “fundamental” view you’ve seemed to have concluded. Lacking in the essential understanding of what has been said, it would seem to me. I guess your vantage point of -one size fits all-, i.e. -mega churches are bad- etc, you do remember that rather broad-brush statement don’t you? While “there is wisdom in many counselors” I would have to add that there is confusion and conflict also, you seem to have fallen victim to these.
-Agape- love, that of loving Grace of forgiveness bought in blood by the perfect sacrifice for those who only can desire perfection is the only condition, truly sought, that can be found, unconditional forgiveness for our imperfections and failures. Your “conditions” are not mine or anyone’s who simply doesn’t want accept them, any condition, one solution. If you have “learned them on Cagle” I’d suggest you go back to the source documents and look them over or you stand in the shoes of Job’s three friends, and sit “in the seat of the scornful”. Oddly we all sit in the perfect seat of ignorance, some are simply more comfortable than others, usually the “I’m so smart intellectuals”, looking down on “the little people from on high, instinctively knowing what’s best for them”.

For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

Apparently the “finished” is completed in one commandment.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 16, 2010 at 5:34 am

GL/Stug

Perhaps you science guys can explain to this dunce why Phil Jones would say the following,

“B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods. ”

“N - When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean - and what don’t they mean?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well. ”

Apparently the only concensus is that there is “now” no concensus.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 16, 2010 at 5:32 pm

“A CAUSE, PRINCIPLE, OR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS HELD TO WITH ARDOR AND FAITH”

I quote Phil Jones, Scientist and “holder of secret knowledge”…
R - Why did you ask a colleague to delete all e-mails relating to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC?

This was an e-mail sent out of frustration at one FOI request that was asking for the e-mail correspondence between the lead authors on chapter six of the Working Group One Report of the IPCC. This is one of the issues which the Independent Review will look at.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 16, 2010 at 6:22 pm

Apparently the “finished” is completed in one commandment.—-Actually two.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 16, 2010 at 6:40 pm

Everything he did is repeatable and has been repeated by other scientists. That is a basic of all science. When the results are the same every time it becomes accepted……Just like boiling water at 212F—100C sea level pressure. One needn\’t boil every cup of water in the world to prove the case.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....017905.ece

Phil Jones

On the question of the science, however, he remains bristlingly defiant. He may have tripped up over the FoI requests, but nobody has laid a glove on the science. To prove his point, he spreads the table with graphs, tracing the outlines with his fingertip. He shows how the warming trend plotted by the CRU precisely matches the plots from two independent sources in America. “There, you see!” The three coloured lines precisely overlay each other, proof positive of scientific probity.

So have you found even ONE research university or even ONE research government agency anywhere in the world who\’s conclusions agree with you? Gee, I would think that would be as easy as finding someone that would say water boils at a different temperature.

Comment from Cal
Time February 16, 2010 at 8:33 pm

Stug, I don’t think we’re that far apart on what tolerance means. We, like society, just have different groups to which we apply it. And I agree tolerance doesn’t mean embracing or accepting. It means “putting up with.” You’re also right in saying both sides employ the term to their advantage. The left uses it to support minorities, gays, and transvestites. The right uses it to support the groups it tends to favor. You can’t tolerate your children being exposed to creationism and I’d have a fit if mine had ever been taught that “two mommies” is as normal as mom and dad.

Good Life, as always, tries to makes his point by using hyperbole, exaggeration, and telling only part of the story. It isn’t that a person can’t make mistakes. It’s making them intentionally and repeatedly with no effort to correct them and still expecting society to spread the safety net wide. He fails to take personal responsibility into account and gives everyone a pass for everything. He often talks about balance, shades of gray, and looking at the whole picture, and yet insists unbridled handouts are the answer. In opposition to his own philosophy of “to every thing there is a season” he only knows the charity side of the equation. There is NO balance with some sense of responsibility for one’s actions and decisions. GL ignores the former and focuses only on the latter. There is no consequence for bad behavior, only reward. This, in turn, provides incentive to maintain the bad behavior as only good things result from bad decisions. It’s as though those who made good choices are where they are because they just “won life’s lottery” and the same for the ones who mucked it up. They’re not responsible, they’re victims. He will continue to make these kinds of unbalanced, outrageous statements because to be completely fair would cause him to have to confront his long-held belief that love means giving without merit.

Adults are like children. Children need hugs and kisses at some times, talking to at others, and a spanking at others. Not beatings. Spankings. Our butts are made in just the right way to absorb an occasional paddling administered precisely because you love your child. That is always followed by a talk with your arm around him or her explaining why the behavior was wrong, how much you love them, and why the behavior can’t be tolerated. Too many people confuse that with adults who slap, strike, punch, or shake their children. One is abuse, the other is an essential part of genuine love, discipline, and good child rearing. Refusing to discipline is as much child neglect as not feeding or supervising them. But the Dr. Spock-Left has told us to only use time outs and positive reinforcements which is why we have so many whiny, insecure adults who feel entitled to all things. They are all about “me” and the immediate gratification of their wants.

No thanks, GL. I don’t want any part of your idea of love. Those who can not work deserve our help. Those who can need incentive to do so, not 18 years of freebies to encourage having another child out of wedlock then staying at home doing drugs while “raising” them. Love only = spoiling. Discipline only = anger and resentment. Love AND discipline = real love.
There really is “a season to everything” not just a lifetime of summer.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 17, 2010 at 4:30 pm

There is no consequence for bad behavior,——-Certainly there is a consequence for bad behavior. I have never said to provide luxury or even an average lifestyle. I have always advocated basic food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and education. You are the one that keeps saying that I offer more than that. When you help someone you need not adopt them. That gray area is my position.

What you hear me saying is what you expect me to say as you have given me a label and in your mind there are only two labels: LIBERAL–CONSERVATIVE If you ain’t one you are the other. Because of this black-white thinking you can’t get to the point of helping those in need receive the basics of life be cause a person is DESERVING—IRRESPONSIBLE Nothing in between. And of course, if they are deserving they don’t need help because they got what they earned, and if they are irresponsible they don’t need help because they got what they earned. So no one needs help. You are off the hook.

The punishment that you so desire to inflict is the lifestyle of living at the bottom. You see it as a “reward” to not starve, to have shelter from the cold, to have enough clothing to get a minimum wage job, to have enough medicine to live without pain. By giving those basics you say we “reward” bad behavior. Well, I guess Jesus was a raving liberal because he did not ask if anyone deserved starvation, deserved medicine, deserved the basics of life. He gave every time someone asked. Did they continue their abuse of the system after he walked on? We aren’t told. I imagine some continued to beg from society and take from those that had extra to give. I imagine that there were the DESERVING and there were the IRRESPONSIBLE. Jesus didn’t “gate cut” them. And he didn’t say that since some are irresponsible, I will give to none, lest I encourage that irresponsibility. Jesus made no one wealthy. He gave no one a desirable lifestyle. He took care of the basic needs of life.

That is all I have ever advocated. The basic needs of being human. Nothing more, nothing less. And I guarantee you, no one wants to live on just the basics of life. That is NOT a REWARD. That is treating a human as you would treat an animal in need. Mat 12:10-13

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 17, 2010 at 4:50 pm

Love AND discipline = real love.———I agree 100%. Whenever spanking comes up on this forum, I’m with you. I’m also with you in a need to teach a person how to get and keep a job. I’m with you that they need to try to go beyond starvation living. I’m with you that we don’t need more liberal drug laws.

The problem is: You can’t work at McD’s without some education. You can’t work at McD’s if you don’t have basic clothing. You can’t work at McD’s if you don’t have anywhere to sleep. You can’t buy enough food with wages from McD’s. You can’t work at McD’s if you aren’t feeling well.

OK, adults can be compared to children. Would you consider it child abuse if you denied your children enough food? Would it be child abuse if you denied them basic clothing? Would it be child abuse if you required them to sleep outside winter and summer? Would it be responsible of you do deny your children education?

Would it be rewarding bad behavior if you gave your children a balanced meal? Would it be rewarding your children to provide them a building with heat in the winter? Would it be rewarding your children to give them basic clothing? Would it be rewarding your children to make sure they are physically well? Would it be rewarding your children to make sure they could do reading, writing, and math? Do all of these rewards make your children more likely to spend their lives living off of your labor?

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 17, 2010 at 7:04 pm

\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…..017905.ece\"
Did Jayson Blair write the article or special science editor aL Gore?

\"Apparently the “finished” is completed in one commandment.—-Actually two\"
Perhaps for you, for me it\’s as simple as \"And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.\", all else flows from there. You can be as fundamental as you want, life is an open book test and God apparently grades on a curve.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 17, 2010 at 7:10 pm

“I have always advocated basic food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and education.”
Odd in our conversations you offer only a “hand out” not a “hand up”, there is no dignity in that what there is, is an inevitable expectation of more, like Pavlov’s dog and the bell. what Johnson created was a nation of “expectation”, what JFK wanted was a nation willing to serve our fellow human beings.

Comment from Cal
Time February 17, 2010 at 8:46 pm

Good Life, While we’re chasing each other’s tail on posts alternating between GW and welfare…

It’s a fun twist of irony that this article is entitled “Losing Our Religion” as we see the proponents of man-made global warming lamenting the death of theirs.

Good Life, here are just a handful of reputable scientists who disagree very strongly with your agencies and universities conclusion.

1. Timothy F. Ball, University of Winnipeg.
2. Robert M. Carter, Geologist, Marine Geophysical Lab at James Cook University in Australia.
3. Vincent R. Gray, Coal chemist and founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
4. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences.
5. Garth Paltridge, Retired Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and retired Director of the Institute of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Center.
6. Hendrik Tennekes, Retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
7. Antonino Zichichi, Professor emeritus of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists.
8. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, Mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
9. Sallie Baliunas, Astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
10. George V. Chilingar, Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California.
11. Ian Clark, Hydrogeologist and professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.
12. David Douglass, Solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester.
13. Don Easterbrook, Emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University.
14. William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University.
15. William Happer, Physicist Princeton University.
16. William Kininmonth, Meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology.
17. George Kukla, Retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
18. David Legates, Associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware.
19. Tad Murty, Oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa.
20. Tim Patterson, Paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada.

I could list another 50 but this is a pretty good cross section of the scientific community who doubt man is causing any warming and/or have serious issues with the data. Somehow, I’m guessing these folks are familiar with your “agencies and universities” notion and yet somehow, they don’t seem to be as smart as you. Strange, don’t you think?

Maybe if they’d just look at the WHOLE picture, they’d be persuaded, too!

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 18, 2010 at 12:38 am

Posted 2 as you know, you don’t get to pick and choose what you want to believe the “should have said”.

here’s another list of people you should have reocgnised
When we compiled an honor roll of global warming skeptics he came out near the top. That list will be on our next TV special, “Global Warming: Meltdown” which will air on KUSI-TV on Thursday, February 18th, at 9 PM. Here is our list. If you Google each of these people and read their blogs, website, papers and bios, you will get a whale of an education:

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., U of Colorado
Dr. William Gray, Colorado State University
Dr. Fred Singer, SEPP
Dr. Pat Michaels, CATO
Dr. William Cotton, University of Colorado
Dr. Tim Ball, University of Winnipeg
Dr. Tim Patterson, Carleton University
Dr. David Legates, University of Delaware
Dr. Ben Herman, University of Arizona
Dr. Robert Balling, Arizona State University
Dr. Neil Frank, former director of NHC
Drs. Craig, Sherwood and Keith Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama
Dr. John Christy, University of Alabama……………………………………………………………Remember him?
Dr. Madhav Khandekar, IPCC Reviewer
Dr. Bob Carter, James Cook University
Dr. Chris Landsea, NOAA…………………………………………………………………………..Remember him?
Dr. Will Happer, Princeton University
Dr. Ross McKitrick, University of Guelph
Dr. Will Alexander, University of Pretoria in South Africa
Dr. William Kininmonth, formerly head Australia’s National Climate Centre
Dr. Christopher Essex, University of Western Ontario
Dr. Willie Soon, Harvard Astrophysics
Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Harvard Astrophysics
Dr. Tom Segaldstad, University of Oslo
Dr. Henrik Svensmark, physicist at the Danish National Space Center
Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen, Director of the Danish National Space Center
Dr. Chris De Freitas, climate scientist, the University of Auckland
Dr. David Deming, Associate Professor of Arts and Science at the University of Oklahoma
Dr. Vincent Gray, IPCC Reviewer
Dr. Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University
Dr. Doug Hoyt, formerly senior scientist Raytheon
Dr. A.A. Lyubushin, Institute of the Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences
Dr. Gary Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study
Dr. L.B. Klyashtorin, Russian Federal Institute for Fisheries and Oceanography
Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chair, Poland Scientific Council
Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, IARC Founding Director of the IARC……………….Remember him JSER? one of the 1000 most quoted scientists
Dr. James O’Brien, Florida State University
Dr. Richard Courtney, IPCC Reviewer and UK Parliament advisor
Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, Former Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Richard C. Willson, Principal Investigator, NASA ACRIM Experiments
Dr. Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide
Dr. Marcel Leroux, French climatologist, a former Professor of Climatology at Jean Moulin University
George Taylor, CCM, former Oregon State Climatologist
Joseph D’Aleo, AMS Fellow, CCM, ICECAP
Anthony Watts, Watts Up with That
Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit
Dr. Jay Lehr, Senior Fellow, Science Director, Heartland Institute
John Theon, Ph.D., former NASA project manager, atmospheric physicist…………Oh yea, the guy with no Cred’s Hansen’s boss
Mike Mogil, CCM, Weatherworks

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 18, 2010 at 12:51 am

I quote

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 16, 2010 at 11:25 pm

I’ve seen it with religious friends over and over. Once they decide their church/faith/way is true, any attempt to show them problems with their belief system is seen as temptation from the Devil.——–I see it every time I communicate with Cal, Jack, or Art. No evidence, just “This is what I WANT to believe so it must be so.”

If you want to believe that 0.117% of GhG is the total cause of GW, knock your self out, but just keep your F…ing hand out of my pocket and my families and away from my freedoms.
Like you and the \"body mass\" shot you\’ll take if anyone breaks into yoour home.

I hope you are a better Communications professor than a \"scientist\", should be, aL Gore only has a liberal arts \"government\" degree, and he\’s been able to bilk people like you and Professer Gg out of a hundred million dollars.
Have a nice day, keep your \"if they were more like me they\’d be ok\" thinking to yourself.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 18, 2010 at 2:36 am

Timothy F. Ball, University of Winnipeg

http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/.....ccresouces

Tried your first and he’s not a climatologist (he’s social geography, ie. how humans deal with each other) and isn’t at the University of Winnipeg but I did find a whole page that lists the stand of the University.

This reminds me of the “Steve Project”. The creationists put a list in the NYT of “scientists” that didn’t believe in evolution. It was found that none of them were in a science that dealt with the subject. So the biologists started a list of people in the field named Steve that did believe in evolution. Last I knew they were past 10,000 and every one was Steve (or the foreign equivalent) and every one was in the field.

If you are going to make a list, use people in the field, not random “scientists”. And check out what the university says.

OH YES, I do remember Christy. Do you remember what it said directly above his picture? Do I have to go through the whole list and disqualify every one? I only had to look at these two and eliminate them both.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 18, 2010 at 2:54 am

I know your Bible says what you WANT it to say. But this is what the Bible says for those of us that want the Bible to instruct us rather than we instructing the Bible on what we WANT it to say. I’m sure your Bible has this edited out. At least your eyes won’t see it as you tell them the facts and instruct them what they can and can’t see. So they only see the Gospel According To What Jack WANTS To Believe.

Mat 22:40 On these TWO COMMANDMENTS depend all of the law and the prophets.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 18, 2010 at 5:10 pm

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., U of Colorado——The first of your second page……He wants changes in the report but doesn\’t support your position. Again, you think that anyone that asks for any change supports your position. That is a bald faced LIE. The people on your list call for changes but DO NOT deny human climate change. YOUR LIST IS A FRAUD. Look at what the people are actually saying.

Find someone that actually says that man isn\’t a factor. That has the expertise to make the claim.

http://sciencepolicy.colorado......009.01.pdf

Pg. 65, 67 (references on 66)

Climate science has proven to be enormously valuable in detecting and attributing recent changes in the climate system. Science has shown that the climate system is undergoing unprecedented changes that cannot be explained solely by natural factors. Unless both natural and anthropoginic forcings are included, climate model simulations cannot mimic the observed continental and global scale changes in surface temperature, and other climate related biogeophysical phenomena, of the last 100 years. Under scenarios of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, climate models estimate that the climate system will continue to change for many more decades and longer.

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/lueci/.....o_1999.pdf

The influence of anthropoginic landscape changes on weather in South Florida.

Comment from Cal
Time February 18, 2010 at 8:47 pm

Good Life, You looked at one name and quit. You do know people move around within academia, don’t you? Excellent research technique, my friend. Here’s the entire link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....al_warming

I won’t spend any more time beating my head against your wall of resistance. As with who really is a Christian, only your point of view matters. Between Jack, Art W, and I we’ve shown very clear problems with the data used to create the science from which conclusions are drawn and political decisions made. We’ve explained the extremely low levels of a trace gas that occurs naturally and why it isn’t a threat to either the climate or civilization. We’ve pointed out the collusion among key members of the global warming support community and the ways they manipulated data, lost important data, and blocked efforts from opponents to publish materials containing contradictory information.

Jack is absolutely in assessing your personality disorder. You are like many others I’ve know over my lifetime who are absolutely convinced they are the sole possessors of the Truth. Not the truth, but THE Truth. In contrast to your stated belief that you are flexible and open to shades of gray, you are incredibly rigid and inflexible. That’s always what happens when you _know_ you’re right and especially when you have God to back you up. “If God be for us, who can be against us”, right?

You’ve chosen to meld your religious and political viewpoints which is perfectly fine. But what isn’t okay is letting those with your viewpoint pass legislation to support using someone else’s hard money to support programs they don’t believe in. Again, using YOUR money is charity. Using someone else’s is thievery.

The earth is NOT warming and man is not the guilty culprit. You’ve bought into the greatest scientific hoax of all time. It had one purpose. To redistribute wealth on a global scale. Kyoto and cap and trade would have moved some $12 trillion from wealthier countries to poorer ones. The effect on the overall climate would be so negligible as to be almost unmeasurable but the effect on the world economy would be enormous. I can’t help but believe you know this full well and support AWG precisely because it would “spread the wealth around.” You seem far too smart to buy into the poor science so the only reasonable explanation is that you favor leveling the global economic playing field. But then again, you’ve dogmatically bought into the notion that Christianity is about fulfilling the two great commandments so I suppose anything is possible.

From AWG to the meaning of charity to the idea that America is a “Christian nation” leading crusades against the helpless folk of the world, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I do admire your gentlemanly outlook and desire to help others. I think you fail to see that many of us do as much or more than you for others because we don’t agree in doing it through the government. Such is life.

I don’t care to care involved in Bible bashes but that same Bible tells us, “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the word of God is preached and every man presses unto it.” Doing “Christian” things does NOT make a man a Christian. A man must _become_ a Christian by receiving Christ. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” That’ epitomized in the most important verse in the Bible which is John 3:16. We are also told in your same Bible, “For by grace are saved, through faith. And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God. Not of works lest any man should boast.” If we could be reconciled to a holy God by keeping commandments, Christ had no need to die on a cross. Good works follow salvation, not vice versa. The Law you speak of was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It was a mirror to show us no one is perfect. A mirror shows us we need to shave. We don’t pull the mirror down and try to shave with it. We get out a razor. Keeping those two commandments means NOTHING if that’s all you’re doing. “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” In other words, all the good a man can offer God outside the blood of Christ is like a menstrual rag. Worthless. So if your hope of heaven/reward/afterlife is what YOU’RE doing, you’re no better off than any other lost soul whose trusting religion or his good works to save his sinful soul. (That’s free of charge.)

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 12:13 am

Good works follow salvation,—–I agree fully. Works are nothing….But works reflect the heart.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 12:26 am

Cal——I’m willing to spend what time I have to go to the original sources. But I don’t have time to go through a list of names that someone throws at the wall and hopes something sticks. Give me a few random names that you think are most supporting of your position. Please look them up first so you can eliminate people who obviously don’t have the expertise (both a dentist and a brain surgeon are scientists that work on your head but hardly interchangeable) {and one can have an opinion about the others area of expertise, but that doesn’t make it valid} Or who’s argument is that climate change is slower than most others think or we aren’t as far down the road as others think. Just because it may be slower or may be further away doesn’t prove it doesn’t exist. Especially when Christy and Pielke blatantly say there is man made climate change.

Comment from Art W
Time February 19, 2010 at 12:35 am

GoodLife: “Especially when Christy and Pielke blatantly say there is man made climate change.”

Christy also said this:

‘When one talks about climate models and observations, I am reminded of a climate scientist who one time said:

“My model is right; it’s the real world that is wrong”.

Which pretty much says it all”

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 12:41 am

we don’t agree in doing it through the government. ——-I don’t think it should be in the realm of government either. But those who should won’t. They find a list of excuses, some of which I’ve put on this site. So the government must protect it’s stability. Hungry people tend to disrupt that stability.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 12:47 am

That was probably related to Christy’s feeling that the models need to give clouds more credit. That’s the problem with a quote taken out of it’s original place.

Comment from Cal
Time February 19, 2010 at 7:51 pm

Good Life, Here’s a link to the top ten skeptics. All you have to do is click on the arrow to read a bit about who they are and what problems they have with AWG. This thread is about to drop off.

http://www.businessinsider.com.....ics-2009-7

As to government meeting the physical needs of its citizens, it doesn’t take a genius to see what that philosophy is doing to our economy. We are at a very precarious place because of unbridled spending. We risk financial collapse and the inability to help anyone. The US is in the position of being able to cause world collapse. If we don’t stop spending AND cut government drastically we may indeed fall off the financial cliff. Social security and medicare are killing us—literally. They have to reformed very soon or the house of cards is coming down. Democrats crucified Bush for trying back when it was still taking in more than its putting out. So now what? Cheers!

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 9:40 pm

Cal:—I’m not a “Johnny come lately” to spending. I was against the deficits for the last 30 years. That train didn’t start with the last election. Reagan ran against Carter saying the debt hat reached $1T. Then he doubled it. (granted part was to reduce the recession [which is what is happening now]) But when the recession was over Bush 1 redoubled it in just 4 years. Then Bush 2 redoubled his dads redouble. For some reason this didn’t bother the right.

At least I’m consistent in what I believe. I don’t look at a label and say anything with the correct label is good and anything with the wrong label is bad. Increasing spending and tax cuts in a recession is good. Increasing spending and tax cuts in good times is bad. Ever since the Reagan recession ended we did the wrong thing by cutting taxes and increasing spending. Hence, a massive debt and no money to bring us out of it without borrowing.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 10:38 pm

Cal—Did you read this before you gave it to me? Haven’t had time to look at any but the first, but gee, this is another Christy that thinks the models need change but doesn’t deny man made change. This is the same as Jack’s “controversy argument. If there’s a “controversy” about the models it doesn’t mean that both sides don’t support man made change. There is just disagreement on speed and where we are on the track.

Freeman Dyson

While he does acknowledge the mechanism by which man-made greenhouse gasses can influence the climate, he claims current models are way too simplistic to capture what’s really going on in the real world. I

Comment from geoff
Time February 19, 2010 at 10:41 pm

Cal’s list:
“Freeman Dyson… does acknowledge the mechanism by which man-made greenhouse gasses can influence the climate, he claims current models are way too simplistic to capture what’s really going on in the real world.” Yes, well: Newtonian physics is also simplistic; all scientific experiments performed under controlled laboratory conditions are also simplistic.
“Bjorn Lomborg is… not an outright denier, but rather he thinks the current approach to global warming is misguided and that the costs of drastic, short-term action are too high.” He would rather pass the costs on to our kids and hope someone else comes up with a magic wand in the meantime.
“Myron Ebell… works for the free-market thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute.” And that’s it?
“Kiminori Itoh… does not reject the notion of global warming entirely, but instead claims that the causes are far more complex than the anti-carbon crowd would have you believe.” So: Dyson redux.
“Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, isn’t a thought leader, per se, in the climate skeptics scene — but the mere fact that he has come out as being a skeptic and has a Nobel Prize makes him important.” A skeptic: good.
“Will Happer… does acknowledge long-term warming, he thinks the influence of CO2 is vastly overstated.”
Ian Plimer: “‘When plate tectonics ceases and the world runs out of new rocks…’” ‘Nuff said. LOL. “Other reviewers, including scientists, criticised the book as unscientific, inaccurate, based on obsolete research, and internally inconsistent.”
“The book is critical of the IPCC, which he claims has allowed “little or no geological, archeological or historical input” in its analyses. If it had, the book asserts, the IPCC would know cold times lead to dwindling populations, social disruption, extinction, disease and catastrophic droughts, while warm times lead to life blossoming and economic booms – suggesting that global warming, were it really caused by humans, should be welcomed.” Warmth also leads to expanding deserts, rising sea levels, droughts, more severe storms, etc. The Middle East used to be quite pleasant: the Garden of Eden, Babylon, the Cedars of Lebanon, Meroe down in Sudan… I somehow don’t suppose Ian bothered to talk to many historians, either.
Michael Crichton: a novelist.
“Alan Carlin is an EPA economist who wrote a paper calling global warming a “hoax.” It’s not really important what he said or what he believed or even whether his argument makes any sense at all. What’s important is that he’s become a right-wing celebrity over the belief that he was censored by the EPA for being a heretic (hence getting to appear on Glenn Beck).”
“Patrick Michaels is… widely quoted as a global warming skeptic. His basic belief is that we’re in a long-term warming trend and that Carbon Dioxoide has got little to do with it, as each additional greenhouse gas molecule has less and less of an effect.” So: no specific straw breaks the camel’s back; they’re all guilty.
Well: really convincing. How many of them belive in global warming but just can’t be bothered to do anything about it? one famous for being famous (and appearing on Glen Beck), a few simply skeptical, one a novelist.
This is really the best you can come up with? The 9-11 conspiracy theorists can do a whole lot better than that: I’m still wondering how Atta’s wallet could get picked up off the street.
But anyway… just keep waving those teabags, following that Taitz woman, and citing Michael Chricton.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 10:53 pm

Cal—Number two. Again, not a denier. The \"controversy\" isn\’t denial.

Bjorn Lomborg

While he does acknowledge the mechanism by which man-made greenhouse gasses can influence the climate, he claims current models are way too simplistic to capture what\’s really going on in the real world. I

Comment from Art W
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:06 pm

Goodlife: “Then Bush 2 redoubled his dads redouble. For some reason this didn’t bother the right. ”

Yes, it does bother us.

Then the great BO came to town and is making those deficits seem like pocket change.

That bothers us even more.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:06 pm

Myron Ebell M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. His main job is to provide material to the media in the form of quotes to newspaper reporters and participation in live interviews on the subject of climate change.

Number 3. NOT a scientist. A lobbyist that talks mainly about the costs of climate change.

I’d like to suggest that the debate about climate change include, for once, a fair assessment of the benefits alongside the declamations of harm.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:08 pm

Kiminori Itoh—-Same “controversy” not denial.

Like many others, Itoh does not reject the notion of global warming entirely, but instead claims that the causes are far more complex than the anti-carbon crowd would have you believe.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:13 pm

Ivar Giaever

It seems he doesn’t think there should be as much agreement in any realm of science, so he expressed skepticism in order to bring about controversy and get more climatologists to look more deeply.

PHYSICS—specialty “experimental discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in… superconductors”

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:19 pm

Will Happer

Again, not a denier. He just doesn’t give as much credit to CO2 and thinks water vapor, etc. has a greater effect. And he thinks the overall effect will be far less than others.

The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:25 pm

Ian Rutherford Plimer

Geologist that makes millions in mining coal. No scientific research.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:31 pm

Michael Crichton—was an American author, producer, director, screenwriter, and medical school graduate, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres.

author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next (the final book published before his death), Pirate Latitudes

This is the “scientist” you want to follow?

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:38 pm

Alan Carlin—An economist that has never done scientific research.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 19, 2010 at 11:43 pm

Patrick Michaels—-
Again. We have a “controversy” over intensity, how much is happening and how far down the road we are.

In interviews Michaels has said that he does not contest the basic scientific principles behind greenhouse warming and acknowledges that global mean temperature has increased in recent decades, though he is widely regarded in the media as a global warming skeptic. He contends that the changes will be minor, not catastrophic, and even beneficial in many cases.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 20, 2010 at 1:11 am

Goodlife
\"does not reject the notion of global warming entirely\"
Are you off your med\’s like the good “professer” Omicron, just who is saying the earth isn\’t warming?

\"Christy that thinks the models need change but doesn’t deny man made change.\"

You do realize what “forcing CO2” means don’t you?

You also know that of the 97% of CO2 is naturally occurring and that 98% is recycled to earth through the natural processing of the atmosphere, but only a retention of 2% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is retained at any one time, comprised of both natural and MM co2. I understand the concern of several of those who have indicated that is their problem with the IPCC contention that it is 0.117 % of all GhG\’s that have caused the heating of the world and as the eminently qualified climate change scientist, Henny Penny has said, \" the sky is now falling\".

Doesn\’t seem to follow the how MM cause and effect, though does he? Of course you have the vaunted IPCC head bobble chiefs forcing conclusions on everyone, I.E. Chris Landsea, Christy and other \"lead authors\" of AR reports, documented from AR2 on.
Let\’s see you have Mann dumping that \"moldy data sets\" before any FOI requests and Jones, not only \"sloppy housekeeper\" of his temperature data (though admitting it wasn\’t sound anyway) but hated the spelling errors in his e-mails to his fellow liars \"in the science community\" and dumped them, and then you have the Indian “scientist” saying he lied to influence “local politics” about the whole Himalayan glaciers melting, or the taking of a F—ing high schoolers report as “science fact”, hell I guess I’d take anything from climbing magazines as opposed to the guy who posts here whose apparent pseudonym Omicron reveals that he is from the “pod planet”. You do know that Jones and Mann were the main peer reviewers for the project don\’t you?

Then you have the Nobel whinning aL Gore, let’s see a recap of Liars, cheats and thieves and an odd lot of space cadets on the side of AGW, boy Goodlife your argument has to be carrying the day like the last biblical debate where you had to offer apologies for your obvious errors, hardly as many as you made. Like the “good” comrade president who is continually claiming to be listening to the people on the government take over of health care while he’s trying to figure out how to force down our throats the single payer part while calling on congress to \"stop the madness of the out of control spending\".

(You do know that the big eared buffoon has spent over 3 times more than Smirkey don\’t you, or is that news there in Kansas?)

When the eminently qualified, but absent minded professor Jones was asked “When scientists say \"the debate on climate change is over\", what exactly do they mean - and what don\’t they mean?” He said, “It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don\’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.”

I’m assuming GL you understand that he was stating that there is no consensus or “settled science” for the cause in a CYA sort of spineless way and you can be a man about it and admit it?

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 20, 2010 at 1:22 am

“I know your Bible says what you WANT it to say. ”

Not really, or I’d be for retroactive abortions of Liberals as being outside the Darwinian “curve”, on the brighter note 18 gold medals so far for the 1st place USA even though they are only 92% silver content. The Little countries are stuck somewhere at 1/3 of that, of course they apparently had to get one of the competitors killed to accomplish that.

“Mat 22:40 On these TWO COMMANDMENTS depend all of the law and the prophets.”

36″Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39AND THE SECOND IS LIKE IT: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

As always your cut and paste jobs need trimming. Whereas, A=B and B=A

As I stated,

“Apparently the “finished” is completed in one commandment.—-
to which you replied
“Actually two”
My reply…
“Perhaps for you, for me it\’s as simple as “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”, all else flows from there. You can be as fundamental as you want, life is an open book test and God apparently grades on a curve.”

Since you’re the fundamentalist, how do you interpret the “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” in your theosophy?

And yes that is rhetorical.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 20, 2010 at 2:51 am

no consensus or “settled science” —–There seems to be a consensus in the fact that not ONE research university and not ONE research government agency doesn’t acknowledge man made climate change. Where there isn’t a consensus is in how far we’ve come and how fast we are going. Cal gave me the top 10 “skeptics” and they either acknowledged man made climate change or hadn’t done any research on the issue. And I know you, Cal and Art have done your best to find a researcher that disagrees with man made climate change. Bottom line, you have found none. I have no doubt that there has to be one somewhere but then there is still a “flat earth” club. So what percent to you is “consensus”?

As far as “settled science”, you have not heard me say that. Nothing in science is settled. Gravity isn’t “settled science”. In just the last few years it was discovered that the formula of gravity that took men to the moon is off. Traveling just the distance to the moon the calculations are off by several meters. Going to Mars or beyond it becomes a factor.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 20, 2010 at 2:53 am

fundamentalist,—–I’ve been called a lot of things in life, but I think this is the first time anyone called me “fundamentalist” in regard to religion. I’m the one that criticizes “fundamentalists”.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 20, 2010 at 2:59 am

Cal
You see the \"circular\" effect of the conversation with our \"Daft\" \"science ex-sperts. I especially like the \"channeling\" of the one of \"probably\" means.
Inconveniently, IPCC has not helped the liberal cause by their wholesale whoredom, what is left in the center of the room is a batch of communist style thugs trying to divvy up the worlds cash supply with fallacious science that does show, yea it’s hotter than during the last 2 or 3 ice ages, but dawgon it if we feed the stupid enough BS, they’ll eventually die from the lack of substance as one of the 1000 most quoted scientists indicated, climate science is \’ancient astrology\’, and in the JSER report that GL has so often tried to cite, the consensus was “Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.”
So my friend, like any liberal would do found his paper and called that the “group report”. Frankly, I thought more of him than that, that’s more on the level of professer Omicron of the star system Canadia.
Like the comrade leader said, a big enough lie, often enough, to the stupid enough….

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 20, 2010 at 3:20 am

-There seems to be a consensus in the fact that not ONE research university and not ONE research government agency doesn’t acknowledge man made climate change.-

Well if you warp the original challenge (below) and ignore the JSER findings (above), you’d still be wrong.

-Comment from GoodLife
Time January 25, 2010 at 3:06 am

In fact I challenge you to find a nonpolitical government agency who’s conclusions support you. I challenge you to find a university doing research in the area that supports you (I suppose Falwell’s university et al might but they don’t research).-

I believe this was your “gold standard” criteria, or are the sands shifting on that like ‘bama’s “honest really” pledge to have the health care debates on C-SPAN and no new taxes on ANYONE MAKING UNDER $250,000/YEAR? (sadly he apparently spent too much) Thank G_d he’s not only a one term president, but a one trick pony. Fortunately his $3.8 trillion budget has $2 trillion in tax increases and $1.6 trillion in borrowing from the fellow Comrade “friends”. Of course this is without Cap N Tax the hell out of em and total global health care nuclear war.

As I have already said,
“Gee, then it would be “but did you do it while standing on your left ear”
then it would be “but did you do it while standing on your left ear, while on a trampoline”
then it would be “but did you do it while standing on your left ear, while on a trampoline, while whistling dixie”

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 20, 2010 at 3:23 am

-I’m the one that criticizes “fundamentalists”.-
But you sound quite the “literalist” all of a sudden, would that then just make you a hypocrite?
Oddly, I’ve not remembered even one liberal christian who ever did anything but put the religion of liberalism first, let alone his neighbor, or G_d.

Comment from Cal
Time February 20, 2010 at 8:42 pm

I really expected this thread to be gone today and I rarely drop in on Saturdays but my wife’s visiting grandkids, so…

Good Life, My efforts have been to show you there are real issues with the science–not to say there is NO evidence of any kind on the warming side. These men don’t necessarily “deny” global warming. They are reputable scholars who recognize their are problems either with the data or with its conclusions. It’s like talking about the theory of evolution and saying, “There appears to be change over time in various species but I have serious issues with certain aspects of the theory.” Even that’s not a perfect comparison, but the point is millions of us believe the vital threat to mankind has been hyped for political reasons. No one says warming hasn’t taken place. No one denies man hasn’t played some small role it. However, the data used to arrive at conclusions and the modeling used to predict the catastrophe Al Gore, et al, predict, have HUGE problems. There is almost always a kernel of truth even in the worst scientific work. The small number of dead gay men studied DID have smaller hypothalumuses. But the reason is very likely just a correlation, not cause and effect. And yet studies like that are touted as _proof_ homosexuality IS inherited. Why? Because if it can be shown it’s genetic, then this lifestyle can be put on a par with heterosexuality, gay marriage must be sanctioned, and a ton of money is made available from the government.

We’ve also attempted to show the evidence indicates there have been periods at least this warm in the past before man fired up the first gas engine or coal plant. There is no budding catastrophe. The focus needs to stay on clean water and fresh air. Not letting industry dump raw sewage into rivers, no smokestacks belching out sulfur dioxide, etc. But cutting back on CO2 emissions is downright silly. When I hear discussion of taxing farmers xx of dollars for each head of livestock because they expel CO2 or methane in their poo, my head spins with disbelief. And when I hear of an outright scheme like cap and trade proposed by the very people who hate corporations and stand to profit from the commodity exchange, I know this is nothing but a hoax being used to propagate changes that will cripple industry, redistribute wealth, and make billions for the new titans of green.

You read the knuckle dragger comments here all the time. Folks like ArtW, Jack, and I are hardly of that ilk. There are just far too many Americans who are very well read on the subject who aren’t buying it and that, too, convinces me it’s a sham. Anytime only one side (conservative or liberal) is buying into something almost exclusively, it ain’t science, my friend. It IS scientific, but it’s all built on poor data and exaggerated conclusions. I don’t want Miami under water in 2070 any more than anyone else. But until I see better data and more reasonable conclusions and something to show me the earth is still warming at an alarming rate (which it isn’t) I’ll remain a strong skeptic–like the sampling of names I provided.
Cheers!

Comment from geoff
Time February 20, 2010 at 8:51 pm

Cal: “|No one says warming hasn’t taken place. No one denies man hasn’t played some small role it.”
No? Inhof, maybe? Cal’s own insistence the world has been getting colder since 1998?
Seems semantics can be a wonderful game.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 20, 2010 at 10:39 pm

Jack—None is so blind as he who won’t see. I thought that was a metaphorical statement until now. You type out the passage of the two great commandments then you say the second is irrelevant because you don’t WANT to follow it. That isn’t interpretation. I can debate interpretation with Cal. At least his mind isn’t so closed that he doesn’t even see the second. But somehow you have trained your mind to totally blank out what what you don’t
WANT to see. Even the lawyer that asked the question wasn’t able to discipline his mind to the point of blanking out words he didn’t WANT to hear. Yet you can type them out and not even see them.

Now that I’ve thought about it for a day. Every issue, you know what you WANT to see and hear. So EVERYTHING supports that WANT. Even if it is totally against you, your mind only sees support.

Amazing……Totally amazing.

Comment from GoodLife
Time February 20, 2010 at 10:50 pm

Cal—Thank you for your statement. If we can agree there is a problem , we can work on an acceptable solution. And that solution doesn’t have to stop work on other pollutants. In fact it may compliment it.

Comment from geoff
Time February 20, 2010 at 11:45 pm

GoodLife: better be careful how you start your posts or the Caliban will start calling you a “psycho freak.” And maybe Rob will start talking about targeting you, too.
“But until I see better data and more reasonable conclusions and something to show me the earth is still warming at an alarming rate (which it isn’t).” Hmm: does this mean Cal at least recognises that the world is warming, or is he still trying to insist that it has been cooling since 1998, despite what everyone else seems to think (NASA, for example; national weather services, etc.). What “data” does he mean? Something better than temperature records? Carboniferous geology? Didn’t Washington State have a record warm January? Isn’t the southern hemisphere suffering a heat wave right now?
He’ll take the word of a novelist, an economist, a mining engineer… holding up various sceptics as idols, most of whom accept global warming but only seem to question what to do about it. And Cal the typical conservative worried about taxes, says “NO!”

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 21, 2010 at 10:44 pm

“AND THE SECOND IS LIKE IT”
“Whereas, A=B and B=A”

“Perhaps for you, for me it’s as simple as”

You do understant that G_d tells us that if we don’t “love our neighbor, we don’t love Him” and conversely, “if we don’t love Him, we can’t love our neighbor”?
along the lines of ….

23Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
24Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Matthew 5

You’re welcome to believe anything you want, including that the koran is equal to the Bible is equal to the Bhuddaist teaching is equal to the communist manifesto, I don’t care what you believe, that’s between you and the God or god you either believe in or don’t, but you have a grasp of Biblical understanding only a smidge above East German geoff, tcp and Stug or the Lesbian who “knew that David was “gay” because he took an “outer cloak” from his friend Jonathan or Elton John’s perception that “Jesus was a gay man”.
Believe what you want or need to.
As I said, it’s an open book test and the G_d that I understand grades on a curve, but only for now. Frankly, I would rather be wrong for the sake of you, Stugg and even EGg, tcp. If I’m wrong, no one looses, if you’re wrong, buckle your seat belts and put on your helmet, it’s going to be a rocky ride.

Comment from Sprat Revealed
Time February 21, 2010 at 11:17 pm

Poor Jack. Presumptious, bordering on outright blasphemy. Arrogant. Spiteful.

I’m not a Christian, nor do I believe in any religion. However, my understanding the variations of Christian religions is rather high. And from what I know, Poor Jack, is that saying something like this:

“As I said, it’s an open book test and the G_d that I understand grades on a curve” and then threatening people with conversion “or else” type threats is probably enough to get you your well deserved journey down the iver Styx.

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 22, 2010 at 3:33 am

I would have entitled this \"Odd to a Village Idiot\", but it does seem to be rather bad form to point out the obvious.

\"bordering on outright blasphemy\"
Thank you your ignorance, Professer EGghead, your genius is best shown in the \"iver Styx\".

You do know that in the Religious Left there is no \"down side\", well except for that “coming from nowhere, going no where equally fast thing”, kinda the \"you are the EGg man, you are the EGg man\", born of apes and pond scum \’n stuff\" , as a Buddhist you receive the “now you’re a dung beetle” award if you “screw up” Cosmically speaking (again just who decides this?), as a communist you are the ”spiritual son” of Chief Satan worshiper Karl Marx (this is where the other, funnier and brighter Marx brothers dumped him like a box full of toad stools), I’m going to guess that would be viewed as the “outright blasphemy\" Captain Omicron, even in your theosophy as an \"a-thiest\" or communist.

Oddly, blasphemy only exists if there is actually a G_d and I have said something to have been untrue or a lie or contemptible toward Him, who you don’t believe in. Now your point would be, just what?

“my understanding the variations of Christian religions is rather high.”
Really, then which believes in the Covenant of Grace? (Grading on a test)

Which calls for the actual reading of G_d’s laws, from a Biblical perspective? (open book test)
\"then threatening people with conversion “or else” type threats is probably enough to get you your well deserved journey down the” iver” Styx.\"

(Oddly, my friend Stugg uses this allusion quite a bit as I recall, and as an \"a-theist\" and former/kinda sometimes Pagan, are you calling my friend a \"blasphemer\"?)

\"IF I’M WRONG, NO ONE LOOSES, if you’re wrong, buckle your seat belts and put on your helmet, it’s going to be a rocky ride.\"
That is according to the various version of Torah or KJV or LB or NSV, which in the conversation of Christian doctrine GL and I were having, and just which \"Christian religions\", (an oxymoron (how fitting for you) since there is only one with many doctrinal differences) would that be? Always interesting question, since most non-religionists tend to not know \"religions or cult\" difference, like the reference to the Jim Jones Liberation Theology \"Cult\" and comrade president teleprompter\’s shared beliefs of the wrong rev. Wright?

Do tell.

Yea, here’s some serious “hell fire and brimstone” stuff here. I’m guessin’ you know as much about “variations of Christian religions” as you do about the causal factor of CO2 in “Global Warming” mr. Henny Penny, at 0.117% of all GhG\’s where statically 98% of all CO2 is recycled which would mean that ratio would be maintained at all times, statistically insignificant just like the 0.001% of the plausible “major” contributory cause, water vapor.

I’ll let my Soul be watched out for by someone competent, not you, thank you, since you apparently don’t believe in that soul stuff, what’s it to you if you have the sin weight of a feather?

Oddly, sir Sprat Revealed, you would have only revealed quite a bit of shear ignorance on the subject you so “il-illumined”, but thanks for the “drive by”, always dizzying, that circular logic you seem to possess. Please don’t drive when on the med’s.

Have you actually found more that just the two of you to pound on the keys?

Comment from Jack Sprat
Time February 22, 2010 at 3:50 am

Sprat Revealed

The long and short of it would be that you don’t know “Jack”.

Have a nice day : >