Board of education claims intellectual ownership of pupils' school work... ehh what??

[LozHinge the Unhinged]

Is tee-totalism also nihilism?

Not that I'm a fan of either but I like to keep informed

[jmervyn]

Really, you're all operating on the same base ideas, which as mentioned prior all reduce back down to nihilism. It's either derived from / in agreement with nature / the obvious / reality, or it's some form of sugar-coated / camouflaged nihilism... childish wonderworld that'll never come to fruition.

Wow - blast from the past! However, your claim isn't valid; Marxism and the others promise utopia/Heaven on Earth Real Soon Now, while Christianity does NOT promise it for all and pretty much puts it beyond reach behind death's veil. The 'immenentize the eschaton' concept is a very real and very dangerous one; it's similar to the Islamic "Twelver" belief that they can bring about the emergence of the 12th Imam if they just wreak enough havoc, destruction, and misery on earth.

EDIT Surprisingly relevant. Happy Easter!

“While two billion Christians around the world celebrate Easter Sunday on this 31st day of March, Google is using its famous ‘Doodle’ search logo art to mark the birth of left-wing labor leader,” Twitchy.com notes, adding that “Google’s Easter insult sparks Twitter backlash, mockery,” as well it should.
The timing of latest in-your-face politically correct homepage is oddly appropriate. As Dennis Prager has written, “You cannot understand the Left if you do not understand that leftism is a religion,” and one with its own sources of mythology.

[BobCox2]

[Stevinator]

You know Steve, I've noticed that you seem to get rather, lets say hostile, whenever the topic even tangentially touches religion. I'm sensing there's more to it than that it didn't make sense to you or something. I'll not press the issue though, just making an observation.

Not all the time, but sometimes I hear people justifying their god's behavior, and it's just so off putting. He nuked a town (or dropped a meteor on it or whatever), and no one cared. This entity is supposed to be your source of morality, and he's off killing people and no matter how much dodging goes into it, whether it's for the buttsecks or the illegal search and seizure or it's for general asshattery, it doesn't matter. Nuking towns is wrong. But we teach that it's okay. I think the idea of God itself is benign, but when you start applying all these lessons to it, it becomes very inconsistent, and frankly, often immoral.

I'm not sure what Merv is talking about below, he likes to take things and extract his own meanings from them. I have had several serious girlfriends who were religious enough to attend services/masses, but I've only rarely been obligated to go, and I just refused the eucharist when i had to. No one has really cared. It's never been the reason behind the break ups. I assume he's talking about my ex-fiance, since I've shared a lot about that. That break up was because she cheated on me, and I was oblivious. There wasn't anything i felt i was being judged on as it pertains to religion, perhaps he's thinking about someone else.

I've already covered this, so it seems silly to do so again. However, since you're a short bus perennial:

1. I refuse to concur with "Marriage" redefinition, but queer couples ought to be able to call themselves a ham sandwich for all I have to say about it. Changing the language is to change the Overton Window, as well as deny reality sometimes ('servicing' targets in war).
2. Rand Paul shared my approach recently, and for all your denial it seems the obvious off-ramp from my point of view. The Left will probably be the ones protesting this, in reality, because it will snip their OWN nuts off when it comes to both taxes and SS; allowing people to 'will' their SS is anathema to the Left as is means testing.
3. Your claims about hospitals refusing to allow visitors is essentially a canard. Of course, that won't prevent you and the Left from framing the argument against Rand's position in the most grotesque terms possible.
4. <YOU> may not be planning to start trying to shred Bibles and desecrate altars, and I am by no means convinced that you're truthful in this, but this entire issue is framed for precisely that purpose. The ACLU and other Leftist religion-haters can barely stand the wait, as I've demonstrated, and want to start filing lawsuits willy-nilly for discrimination on these newly conjured grounds.

1. Sorry to break it to you, the overton window has moved a few notches just in the last few years.
2. That's not feasible. It's not just the tax code, it's a huge list of things and all sorts of law and precedent scattered over 50 states and the federal government. Changing the tax code to be marriage neutral wouldn't fix the social security benefits issue, it would just let rand take this issue and turn it into another try at the flat tax--which is an entirely different discussion.
3. The article admits directly that it has happened, and has only recently been fixed. instead of fixing each issue indepedentaly, we could solve them all by letting them get married. the "we fixed it" argument doesn't apply to all 1000+ benefits that they're asking to be fixed. your canard is canarded.
4. And i'm okay with there being a stated rule that says no church can be forced to marry a couple they don't approve of. it's not about that and it never was. I think the IL bill to switch from civil unions to *** marriage has such a statement in it, not that it was ever an issue with civil unions.

That you challenge my opinion on this speaks volumes about yourself. So you define yourself primarily by what's between your legs, and think I may be wrong in sneering at such mentality? I remember one discussion where your motivation to 'get some' was touched on, and I thought to myself how hilarious it is that YOU accused ME of sexism and bigotry.

Here's another one of those opposite day replies. I'll let you reread that. Or skip it.

Yeah, we've already covered this; you don't believe in shame, or morality, or pretty much anything that expects humans to behave better than animals. No need for rehash.

No I just don't abide YOUR morals. I find your positions on some things morally objectionable. That's not a lack of morals, it's just different ones. Ones i happen to think are better since you frequently talk about perpetrating violent behaviors on people with whom you have political differences (real or imagined).

*************************************************
It's buried in some old threads; Steve felt "judged" when he was trying to score some Roman Catholic poon-tang, as I recall. See above "shallow" discussion.
*************************************************

I'm not sure what this is in reference to. the last practicing roman catholic girl I dated never made my lapse from the church an issue.

Glurin's recognition of the 'final straw' was already identified in at least one of the links, plus I'd already pointed it out. Sorry, that's not just reading comprehension failure, that's a devotion to hatred of God. Given your expressed desire to eliminate religion and the religious, plus your absolute disbelief in any "higher power", I'm surprised you suddenly express dismay and horror at the thought of wiping out a large city of r@pists, thieves, and worse, amongst whom not even ten nice guys can be found.

In all seriousness, I find the report of a lack of good people less than trustworthy. I find the idea that it's okay for god to just kill people after he's commanded us not to to be a little unsettling, and the fact ath it doesn't bother people is also unsettling.

I'd also like to mention i did not say i wanted to kill religious people. I wanted to change their minds. I also did not say I wanted to use the force of government or god to do so. And as for eliminating the organized religions themselves, yes i would hope that as people moved to a saner understanding of god (or none at all), they'd realize that the time they spend in church isn't getting them any closer to heaven. Even christianity says you only need to love Jesus. weekly donations and silly rites are unnecessary.

That said, it's not like you know feck-all about it in the first place; you're taking an extremely shallow and uninteresting look at something, recognizing that you don't like feeling guilty for a lot of stuff you've done, and are passing judgement on the entirety to make yourself feel better about yourself.

You keep saying things like this but I don't know where you got it from. Why would i feel guilty when i don't agree with what the bible says is right and wrong. i can't even tell half the time because it seems to disagree with itself.

No different from most of the Left:
Actually, there's a pretty handy list:

1. Liberals are relativists and hate Christians because Christians believe in absolute truth.
2. Liberals do not want anyone to say that immorality is immoral.
3. Liberals are selfish and are more interested in their "feelings" then they are with what is right for others.
4. Liberals misunderstand what Christians really believe.
5. Since liberals see themselves as the superior enlighten ones they do not recognize that taking a position against their position is not automatically hate.
6. Liberals do not want to listen to what makes sense, they would rather listen to their senses.
7. Liberals ignore the clear evidence of the result of their philosophical positions influence on the last 40 years. It had been a social disaster and they do not want to hear it.
8. They see Christians as intellectually inferior.
9. Liberals see Christians as wanting to impose their religion on them when in truth it is the liberals who have used the courts system to impose their secular humanism religion on all of us.
10. Liberals are spiritually lost and blind to the truth of the gospel.

Well, first off, i don't like being labelled politically because I'm not consistently liberal or conservative. that said i'll play your game and react to what appears to be a list you've copied from an email chain:

1. Life has grey ares, that's not relativism. Also, I reject that christians believe in absolute truth. If the nature of their god changes over time, then the nature of their "truth" changes over time. Furthermore, modern christians have tossed aside a lot of archaic rules in leviticus. If they thought morality was timeless and absolute, they'd still be practicing such things.
2. I call you immoral all the time.
3. "what is right for others" implies relativism. I thought there was only one right and one wrong?
4. Christians misunderstand what christians believe. No one can follow it really because there are lots of different types of them and they don't seem to agree. Heck two different priests will give you two different takes on a story. When I compare my old study bible to the craziness you cook up, they don't match.
5. I can differentiate hate from simple disagreement.
6. yes. I prefer reason to blind faith.
7. That's a specious argument I've seen several times. This society is still dominated by christians. it's not like they left or something. Also, a disaster for whom? For every "disaster" we could point to a lot of causes. This could be it's own thread.
8. No, but your arguments in areas like these leave a lot to be desired.
9. First you say there are no atheists, but now you say they run everything? No one has imposed anything on the christians. they have all the power. YOu can't say there are barely any atheists but that they still control you. that's silliness.
10. Muslims say the same about you.

See #8 above. J/K, actually, but despite your surprising understanding of the difficulty in applying ancient theological belief to a modern context, you subsequently fall for the Satanic trap that involves a kind of "fallacy of novelty". Just because Christian morality is old does NOT mean it's wrong, any more than the fallacy of believing it's right because it's old would be. Smarter minds than yours, and mine, recognized long ago that the Bible is a remarkably legitimate codification of the human condition, and that Enlightenment Christianity is a remarkably sound and functional worldview.

If that were true, then there would be a big push to go back to those ways. back then there was no intarwebs. why are you still here, satan?

This is the fallacy of novelty in disguise. Do you REALLY believe that things have been oh-so-much better, from a purely social context, over the past 40 years that your theology has been the dominant one in the U.S.?

First, i don't have a theology. second, I'm not sure what problems you're talking about. in my lifetime, despite some financial hoopla, the world has become a safer place, where there is less fighting, less hunger, a greater spread of technology, longer lifespans, better quality of living--yes the last 40-50 years or so have been pretty good compared to the first 50 of last century and frankly, much better than the ~100 years before that and so on. You can get your knickers up in a bunch because a bunch of people (black people mostly) are getting locked up for really dumb reasons (drug related stuff), and leaving their kids to fend with their moms, but otherwise, what so terrible has happened? What will history say about the period from 1950-2013? Will they say it was awful, society broke down completely because schools gave out too many ribbons? history won't care about your culture war. The too many ribbons thing is a fad that will turn around because

Atomic energy, man on the moon, the internet, globalization, 9-11, big recession.

Oh, and just to annoy you, first black president.

So no, i don't think the last 40-50 years were so awful.

I was going to use a great phrase referring to that sick Socialist Jesus claim, but I'll use it here: You believe that we can immenentize the eschaton. I don't, and I know that your belief causes evil and suffering.

I'm not sure where you get this idea. A desire to make the world better does not equate to bringing heaven to earth or utopia. And I don't have to presume that your beliefs cause evil and suffering, they already have.

You just hate anyone who believes there is, and probably would like to kill someone who reminds you that He died for you to have a chance better than the Sodomites.

God is one thing, that Jesus's death somehow absolves me of any responsibility for my actions (as long as i apologize to one of his earthly minions) is where I think things go off the rails. And the puzzling bit about it is, if I buy this, then suddenly I won't want to sin anymore, (a provably wrong assertation) since his followers sin frequently, that's just added absurdity. Since this is a main tenet of all christianity I'm comfortable saying that all christians are at the very least, partially wrong about the nature of the universe.

The fun part is the holy book is written so vaguely, that while followers get to teach their youth things, when we learn enough to question these stories, you simply change what the story is all about and say i'm not smart enough to understand it. That seems like a cop out on the order of "well that's just a parable".

Anyway, since you're still having that reading comprehesion thing, I don't endorse killing anyone. You're wrong all the time, about nearly everything. Even when you're technically right you're still on about it for the wrong reasons. So much that it makes me sad. But I don't hate, nor do i want to kill you. Quite the opposite, i hope that you manage to not say anything so terrible that you find yourself banned. I've said as much before.

The answer to this is that the J00ish culture matured as ancient peoples realized that God's wrath didn't need frills.

Less frills? You say that a complete and utter change in the nature of god happened because his followers decided he no longer needed frills? That's basically admitting that they made it all up. I'm very surprised to see you post that, i always thought you were a very devout believer.

You don't think so? What would you call WW1, WW2, and World Communism? That's a hell of a lot of death & suffering that you're suddenly NOT? laying at God's doorstep.

I don't think it's fair to attribute to god that which is clearly people. If there is a god, it's not its fault we blow each other up because we disagree about his nature or what it wants the world to look like.

As for the communism, militant atheism is just another church. Killing people because they have irrational beliefs in deities is just as bad as killing them for having the wrong irrational beliefs in deities (or irrational beliefs in the wrong deities or both). You're the one who has the strange desire to kill, injure and maim people who disagree with you (often in ways that I find uncomfortably specific). I find such people more interesting.

[jmervyn]

Due to popular and loudly stated acclaim by the Forum populace, I'm not playing.

[Stevinator]

oh, I figured we were safe in here since it was already a political thread.

[jmervyn]

oh, I figured we were safe in here since it was already a political thread.

Apparently not; I'm intending to bulk-post kittehs and lolcats for a while.

At most, I might drop something like this, regarding Jim Carrey calling me a heartless mofo:

[Stevinator]

Oh, he's just desperate to get back in the news. Has he done anything in the last like, I dunno, 10 years? I feel like the last thing i remember seeing him in was batman. They've done a reboot on that, that's their third installment, so it's been a while.

[jmervyn]

Oh, he's just desperate to get back in the news. Has he done anything in the last like, I dunno, 10 years? I feel like the last thing i remember seeing him in was batman. They've done a reboot on that, that's their third installment, so it's been a while.

I was mildly interested in Kick *** 2, now I'll wait until I can find a used DVD. I don't boycott (it's stupid & pointless); I just don't support.

[BobCox2]

Shhh!

You sound like the kind of guy I can't introduce to a really good hole in the wall restaurant.