i'm not talking about every word of every page. i'm talking the big stuff... the miracles. stopping the sun, resurrection, things that just don't jive with our understanding of the way the universe operates. If you don't believe that miracles happened, and the bible is a somewhat accurate (simply using bible as a placeholder) description of what took place... where the hell does divinity come into the equation?

how the hell do you know the god you worship except by what others have told you and the texts? you trace the knowledge, and it comes back to people believing what they believe because they read, heard or witnessed miracles. And a carpenter had some nice things to say about morality. If Jesus isn't divine, is it religion or a lifestyle choice?

As they say, even if there's a god, it doesn't mean you know what the fuck he's all about.

do you even know what would happen if the earth stood still for a day? I don't, but i imagine it involves massive tidal waves and every civilization on earth collectively shitting itself.

i don't like religious extremists for obvious reasons. I don't like religious moderates on the one hand because they work to allow for the growth of religious extremism, and on the other hand because they are intellectually bankrupt. At least the fundamentalists stick to one view of the universe. It might be wrong, but they have no cognitive dissonance.

either the religious text is the word of god or it isn't. saying it's allegory means that you're waving away the miracles as something other than actual. which undermines the authority of the work.

I may like the little old lady down the street. but i have absolutely no respect for her position.

Jeebus either walked on water or he didn't, he either rose from the dead or he didn't. physics either governs our reality or it doesn't. you can't have both. and if he isn't the son of god, literally and actually, then his moral authority is bankrupt. Tell me you think it's good morality that you're cherrypicking from the bible, but don't tell me it's truth.

yeah, but at least they're shooting in the general direction.

faith healing is like trying to throw a hail mary... in golf.

all contracts will require both parties to give something up that they don't necessarily want to give up.

in this case, the employer gives up money for the employee giving up time. calling the price of a transaction "duress" is moronic. i'm not calling you stupid for disagreeing with me, i'm calling you stupid for trying to make a stupid point.

that's stupid, and you're stupid for saying it. you've broadened the scope of "duress" to be meaningless.

ha, shows how much you know, bigfoots don't die.

in my community, my local public library was situated a quarter of a mile from my middle school. Served as day-care, spent so many hours there, playing reading and generally being underfoot for the poor librarians. I think i also learned to love reading there too. since there was not much else to do. :)

thank you public libraries and tolerant librarians.

eric cantor, and cantor lost because he didn't spend enough time at home. the GOP is going to miss him and his constituents did themselves a disservice.

no we are not, as david deutsch put it, a catastrophe whose solution is a ton of money is still a catastrophe. the economic cost of current solutions is catastrophic in an of itself.

climate is changing, more energetic systems means higher highs and lower lows. hurricanes and tornadoes oh my. our farms are where the good weather is... which means any change at all would be catastrophic for our economy, our shipping lines and all.

any rise in global average means more water in the oceans, so you know floods... and less land.

stop being facetious.

that's why the greatest generation was the greatest generation... oh wait.

moderate islam is the fertile ground from which extreme islam springs. You've got polls all over the place that say that a significant minority of the islamic populace support the actions of suicide bombers. lots in the 20-30 percent range felt sympathy for their motives. I acknowledge the majority of muslims wouldn't consider killing others. but if they don't want to be painted with the same brush as terrorists, they might want to stand a bit further from them.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.... :) i am familiar with muslims, and i view the ones that i know as a quirky bunch. I'm still trying to convert one of them to "no religion" but that's a sisyphean task. anyway.

fathers, mothers, brothers, sons. when they don't denounce violence, they tacitly promote it. moderate islam isn't culpable for the actions of extreme islam, but to a certain extent it is responsible for its existence.

because they would be counted right?

you give them too little credit. there's absolutely no reason it can't be malicious incompetence :)

you forget one important thing. you've got enough servicement and women to walk away from their post to make a difference, the uprising wouldn't have been necessary. you seem to forget, we're all americans, we're all human. "the Man" isn't some alien entity, it's just people, trying to keep this behemoth of a nation going.

we may disagree on how to solve problems, and sometimes we may be blinded by our preconceived notions. but i have enough faith in america to believe that mass uprising in response to mass oppression is a very unlikely scenario. Brother mother father son, every boogie man in your mind has a family.

what would happen if the gubermint just released a list of people who they thought were likely to take a plane out of the air? no enforcement. The liability on the airline's part is not worth the airfare.