I'll tell you up-front that I do believe in a God and that this God is the uncaused cause that set everything else into motion. As this is a personal belief, it won't have much to do with my response to you, but I thought I'd mention it to add some perspective. By "personal belief", I mean "go form your own". I for one cannot stand the mindless group-think experience of most churches I've visited and the "security" of being surrounded by the like-minded is worthless. I think Big Questions like "is there a God?" are things you have to decide for yourself.

The massive mainstream religions have become like a corrupt government. They served a purpose and provided people something they felt they needed, but various control freaks long ago realized they can also be used to control people. Like Jim Marrs says, religion and the monetary system are the two major methods of controlling people. This doesn't mean that currency of some kind has no legitimate use (barter has lots of problems) and it likewise doesn't mean that religion can only control people.

I mean, I've read the Bible. I'm not an expert, but I can say that I'm well familiar with it, specifically the words of Jesus Christ. When I read the words attributed to him, I see exhortations to be humble, to love your neighbor as you love yourself, the importance of forgiveness, turn the other cheek, etc. I've read multiple translations and they all agree on this point. I just can't find any teaching of Jesus that can be construed as "murder, rape, torture, etc are all perfectly acceptable". Those calling themselves Christian and claiming to have read the same Bible should have observed the same.

The actual concern for this comes from the idea that the Creator wants to have a relationship with the created, rather than just watch us like an aquarium or snow globe. It's also believed that people have an inherent longing for such a connection and don't have a full life without it.

The perversion used to control people is this idea that you must behave a certain way and become a certain typecast sort of person or else you're faulty in some serious way. It's just a way to enforce conformity, not in a "top-down" way but in such a way that the conformists themselves would feel ashamed to appear otherwise.

I've also argued to more than one religious person, that I doubt a term like "god dammit" would actually offend any serious God-concept. It seems like a childish position to me, to envision God as some sort of scolding parent. I know human beings who wouldn't actually be offended by terms they dislike; why should Almighty God be more petty than they? It just makes no sense to me.

If you also had multiple witnesses providing written accounts of this, and said unicorns performed what appeared to be miracles in front of large crowds, and many people found this convincing and credible, well then you might be onto something.

My own concept of God includes a desire for us to question everything worthwhile, and this certainly qualifies. Einstein said "the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible". I personally wouldn't want to create mindless robots with no sense of awe or mystery, no genuinely satisfying curiosity; they would never reach their full potential. If I can see what would be direly wrong with that, I assume a being infinitely more advanced than myself can also see this.

If by "unforgivable sin" you refer to Mark 3:22-30 and Matthew 12:31-32, this refers to permanently rejecting the Holy Spirit. In the context of Mark 3:22-30 the Pharisees tried to falsely attribute Jesus's powers to Satan ("ruler of the demons"). This represents a conscious rejection, a misunderstanding so profound that its bearer actively resists truth, even when it happens in front of them. It's the idea of someone seeing an act of God and calling it evil. In many matters not involving religion, this is how psychotic people operate: they've convinced themselves that the wrong thing to do is expedient, justified, expected, etc and therefore good ("greater good" is a common one).

Like Bill Hicks mentioned, I personally suspect that we are God's way of experiencing Itself subjectively. That would make questioning, reasoning, and personal refinement all the more important.

Not exactly a front-page story anymore, but when I read your post, it got me thinking.

Yes but the mass media conveniently keeps forgetting to mention this. That's ... strange, because one would think such an important part of understanding the Middle East would be newsworthy. Since the corporate media considers this subject taboo, it's known only to those who had the curiosity, initiative, and appreciation of truth to perform their own research.

That's why we must preserve what little is left, for its rarity makes it finite and precious.

I like that better than adopting a defeatist attitude and assuming all is lost.

In general I would agree with you, but not in this case. That they are natural monopolies would be grounds for a summary rejection. There's no reason that cannot be a special exception.

That it got this far without being summarily rejected is problematic all by itself.

A summary rejection, now that would demonstrate the slightest concern for preserving competition.

What I observe with the majority of people: they are fully capable of being free-thinking individuals, but the main way they use this capability is to follow the crowd.

With herd animals that are prey creatures (i.e. cattle, sheep) this makes sense in terms of survival. There is safety in numbers. Stray from the herd, and you get targeted by ever-present predators.

With humans, who are at the top of the food chain and generally have no natural predators, it's just a form of cowardice. I'm not sure the DNA of fruit flies is going to provide a satisfying explanation here, at least not one that can be extrapolated to include people, fascinating though it may be.

Specifically, I am referring to a return to federalism, with the vast majority of citizens' government coming from the state and local levels. You know, the way this system was intended to work.

Or any soy product that has not been fermented...

Most of the time that's correct, but I see it with surprising frequency on level terrain. I think most of them are simply not paying full attention to the road; perhaps they're fiddling with a cell phone.

It's the same reason people sometimes fail to notice that the light has turned green. I mean, why should they pay attention, it's not like they're *driving* or anything...

Apparently this is confusing some of you. So I'll explain how it works in the USA.

Hypothetically, let's say you cause a car accident, as in this imaginary accident is 100% your fault. As a result of this accident, another person is injured and requires medical care. Your own car insurance policy has a line item called Bodily Injury Coverage. That coverage would pay for the injured person's medical expenses.

The injured person would not file a claim with their health insurance company (assuming they have one) because you, as the person who caused the accident, are held responsible for any expenses you caused to the injured person.

I was simply asking if car insurance works that way overseas. Instead of a private insurance company that you may or may not have, you have NHS. While the NHS is provided as a public service, the care they provide does have a cost. I wanted to know if NHS bears that cost even when there is an at-fault party who caused the problem, or whether in those specific cases, the at-fault party (via their car insurance liability policy) was expected to cover it.

You could ask me that, yes. Or you could put just a slight bit of thought into it and consider that there is a more reasonable alternative, which is that the drunk driver's insurance would cover this as part of liability coverage. Perhaps NHS could kick in if that's unavailable?

There's loads of ways this could be done, and since I am not knowledgable about the nuances of laws governing nations across the Atlantic, I ask questions instead of making assumptions. That's all.

I don't like replying to my own post, but I thought of something that was worth adding. What is happening now to the word "libertarian" is just like what happened to the word "hacker".

If you say "that guy's a hacker" the average person will imagine something nefarious, probably criminal, perhaps something involving identity theft. They aren't likely to picture a hobbyist and technology enthusiast who, by means of skill, manages to get devices (that they legitimately own) to perform creative and useful functions (which harm no one) that were never envisioned by their original makers.

The difference is, "hackers" have gotten so much negative attention in the mass media that the original term is gone and it isn't coming back. The only rational response is to accept this and move on. I don't believe "libertarian" is at that point yet, though it's heading there fast. Is reclaiming a word so important to me? In and of itself, no, not really. What's important to me is for people like you to wake up and realize how easy it is to manipulate you, to prevent you from ever entertaining entire categories of thought and philosophy and thereby to steer your thinking, merely by toying with words. I think that deserves some importance.

I'm a little-'l' libertarian and I think simple, reasonable, easily-understood regulations like this are not only perfectly acceptable, but highly desirable. As a libertarian I want minimal government. A government that does not provide reasonable regulations is less than minimal and therefore a failure. Minimal is "greater than nothing", you see, and something greater than nothing but still less than minimal is ... still a failure. I can't break it down any more simply than that.

I've never actually met or corresponded with an anarcho-capitalist who called themselves a "libertarian" (which is what you and so many others are ignorantly assuming to be representative of libertarian thought), though I have corresponded with multiple anarcho-capitalists who called themselves "anarchists" or "anarcho-capitalists". Their ideas were interesting to be sure, but just like communism, seemed designed for a species other than our own. That's why I don't count myself among them.

The problem here is that your standard "progressive" and "conservative" political schools of thought have millions of members and powerful parties backing them. That means they have great PR. Both would be quite threatened if reasonable libertarian thought really caught on. It's not exactly shocking that reasonable libertarian thought is seldom portrayed, except by individuals like me. Of course it will be distorted, misrepresented, and shown in only its most extreme and unworkable forms, until the average person finds it distasteful like an automatic reflex. Like I said, it's called PR, and it's quite common in politics. It only works because it depends on your ignorance.

Do you self-report the km driven per year, or do they have some type of system in place to track this?

Perhaps, but I really doubt so many people are attempting to hypermile in SUVs, large pick-up trucks, and other vehicles unlikely to be chosen for such a purpose. I also doubt hypermiling is so popular that I would see it every day I drive, though I admit I haven't surveyed a representative sample so I don't know that.

Observing the same drivers, they tend to accelerate v.e.r.y s.l.o.w.l.y and will randomly speed up or slow down for no apparent reason. I would expect a hypermiler to know that accelerating more quickly and then maintaining a steady speed is more fuel-efficient. Finally, to hypermile one must put continuous effort into a conscious awareness of one's driving habits, which (as explained in my lengthy post above) is inconsistent with other behaviors I see that cannot have a constructive purpose.