Actually, the claim that the original manuscripts are inerrant is generally made by unreasonable Christians like YEC. More reasonable Christians realise that there probably isn't really such a thing as "original manuscripts"—at least not one that's easily conceived of—for many of the books in the Bible, so there's nothing "original" that can be inerrant in this sense.

In fact, generally the term "inerrant" is used to separate the wheat from the chaff. The traditional view of scripture is that it is that the process of reception and transmission is as inspired as the original writing—and therefore we can see (in real time by comparing manuscripts) that God doesn't care about the precise words and all the gnarly points, so the word "inerrant" is inapplicable.

That view has been lost to some extent in the protestant West, especially in America; but it is returning particularly in communities were a great many people had previously lost trust in the Bible but kept it because it was a part of their tradition, but also amongst evangelicals who realise that the scientific evidence for evolution is so strong that Genesis 1 and 2 can't possibly mean that.

Imagine meeting someone who can walk you through an argument that their god is mad at us because we don't practice racially-based slavery any more!

!

(From what I remember, it has something to do with how caucasians are the lost tribe of Isreal [insert scriptual evidence I never cared enough to memorize here] and because some guy got smashed drunk once in a tent and passed out without any clothes on.)

!!

I don't know what "the FSM" is. But the solution? I doubt there is one. But really you just have me speechless. It's very easy to use the bible to reaffirm what you already believe, because it has lots of words in it and because it's easy to care about what it says. But what you've said ... it's one of those cases where I'm not sure if you're making a comparison to people who don't exist any more, or if you're attributing these views to them!

The real world is a strange place.

Lol, the only evidence for young earth/old earth creationism is a certain tradition of biblical interpretation; the bible itself makes it look extremely unlikely that it's teaching young earth/old earth creationism. The bible only teaches that God created, but to read it as saying how and when is inept and demonstrates a complete failure of basic Biblical Hebrew and reading comprehension skills.

Would people who think x or y or z is immoral be able to buy health insurance without x or y or z for their employees and forgo the tax break? Because that would really resolve any problem—if the employer is concerned that anyone wouldn't buy insurance who really does need it, they would be covered. (Sure they wouldn't get the tax break, but why would anyone who uses the Gospel as a guide to life actually want to take advantage of it? Worse to have the money than to pay tax.)

The limitation should happen right up front. No-one should be required to buy private health insurance; it should be government provided like in every civilised country. I went to emergency on Christmas morning (in an English speaking country with private health insurance and private hospitals), and there was no bureaucracy to deal with (well, they asked for id, but I didn't have any. No problem, they just treated me, because I'm "covered" because I live in a civilised country). I didn't sign anything and I didn't get any bills for my Christmas morning mishap.

The American plan was doomed to fail from the get go. In fact, it was designed to fail from the get go. But everyone knew that, and still they let themselves be dictated to.

Isn't killing "birds (and people)" the goal of a pesticide?

*ducks*

(And yes, I realise that my comment requires a misreading of the pp. But it's a joke.)

If you're capable of keeping someone alive and everyone else safe for fifteen years on death row, why bother killing them *then*? You've demonstrated they're no threat to anyone else for that time.

Surely for most of history one of the biggest limitations to "creative output" was the fact that people needed to eat. Particularly in villages (i.e. poorer areas) you didn't necessarily have the resources for great artistic displays—unless, at least, they were popular enough everyone could benefit.

And a significant one would also have been that we just don't highly regard a lot of creative output, because it was done within a theme we would regard as too constrained to be interesting (e.g. English parish churches were decorated by the parish). But just the same, I think a lot of contemporary artistic output is disregarded as uninteresting in even a very short while (i.e. people's lifetimes—think about popular music, the way people laugh at someone for listening to a lot of music from five years ago).

We're already getting "our fair share of the world's resources"—and then some. Haven't you noticed that we are killing the world we depend on for life?

Not to mention the kings George I, II & III!

What on earth is this kind of comment? It's like "America isn't a democracy, it's a republic". No, Spain and Sweden and the UK are democratic monarchies. They are both democracies and monarchies. The UK is not a theocracy; the church is governed by the the state, not the other way around.

If you vote, you don't get what you want. If you don't vote, you don't get what you want—but you haven't wasted your time.

If it's any consolation, in these parts Scandinavia and Sweden are typically used as positive examples, and I don't think it's occurred to most people to use them badly (altho I've seen the far-right examples on the internets).

Um, it's seriously easy to make booze. You get a bunch of fruit, juice it, make bread, and then ignore the juice for a couple of weeks. What, it's illegal to have food go off now? It's impossible to prohibit that.

How do you get meth or heroin? Heroin comes from specific plants, but you don't just eat the plants whole, and even if you did many countries ban all sorts of plants; here, Scottish Thistle can't be planted; a hundred kilometres over, it must be removed.

The fact that prohibition failed in the case of alcohol is not evidence that prohibition is impossible. The fact that prohibition of meth is incomplete is also not evidence that we shouldn't try it, any more than the prohibition of rape is incomplete means we shouldn't try.

No it's not. "Province" in the context of China has a similar meaning to Canada; it's an integral part of the country. When China calls Taiwan a province, they don't mean they're a colony, they mean they're the same as Beijing and Guangzhou.

It's more like if Yorkshire had its own currency and government.