Cyrrylia

Well...um. That is not rational. The proposal is invalid from the start, as from the very beggining it assumes that Christianity is right. As well, it fails to account for any other possibilty. It assumes in its nature that the only two possibilities are "Christian God" or "No God" which is simply not true. There could be many gods, or maybe the doa, or another god that is not the Christian one, or one supreme thing that pillows all of reality like in Hinduism. Also, it assumes that belief is all you need to get a reward. I do not think I need to tell you the ongoing debate of "Faith VS Good Works." Sure they do. An atheist would not want to waste his life rotting in jail. The point for them is to enjoy life, as that is all there is. You can not enjoy life by being in jail, or getting yourself caught in the death penalty, or any other punishment. It is within their best interest to keep to the law. Unlike theists, their punishment comes from man. It still exists for them however. I would not say that. Christians enjoy life by serving God. Athiests enjoy life in whatever way they see fit. I can not say which enjoys life more for sure, but I would say that Christians and Athiests enjoy life equaly. Their enjoyment just comes from different things. Suppose you are an Atheist. You are gardening, because you enjoy gardening. Suddenly, a Christian missionary comes up and tries to save you. But you are busy. You are tending to your garden. You do not want to have to go and stop. To you, they are bothering you during your hobby time. Furthermore, they may interupt your dinner. They may interupt your favorite show. They may catch you when you are trying to shower. They can appear at inconvienent times. Thus, you are bothered. You are just trying to enjoy your time on Earth. But they keep bothering you. Also, you may be in a train, on a plane, on the bus, ect. And the person next to your decides to interupt your quiet thinking time with the "Do you know Jesus" question. That is how they can. I am not saying that Christians in general bother them, but that evangelising must be annoying for them.

So I am back now. I never said it did. And thousands of Legal immigrants drive regardless. And for one, while yes, they could ride a bus, or bum rides, in some cases, not many are going to pick up a strange mexican guy on the street. Also, buses do not go everywhere. Okay. Let us check all this. Obviously they do not put into income tax...usualy. Nor do they put into social security...usualy. You do know that some purchase elligal documents so that they appear legal, which means they act like legal immigrants. They get their minimum wage, you get your income tax and social security. And we still get our cheap products for those that do not. Urg this has never happened before. I just now, got a date for prom, so my mood has changed mid argument. Meaning I no longer care too much to prove anything. So, instead of detailed cynycism infused arguments, you get links to graphs. Auto insurance rates rise lower than normal inflation. Case closed: http://www.iii.org/media/industry/addition...005autooutlook/ On health care. The industrialized world's median health care cost per capita is 2193, and the rest of the industrialized world provides health care for ALL of its citizens. Our median health care cost per capita is 5267, and not everyone is even insured, so saying that an extra 12 million people is the cause for double the cost of health care is wrong. I am done with this for now. I no longer feel like arguing. I feel like dancing. Maybe when I feel less happy, I will come back. Tommorow or something. Maybe even later on today.

Then this is an argument for another time. This is not a call for a change in the immigration policy, this is a call for an official language. Different thread we can discuss this. The argument was that this was something that happens often. It does not happen often. We are in agreement. So the original text in which I too the arguments from is, as I said, wrong. That is a different argument. What I said was in response to your income tax argument, not the "They should not be here at all" argument. I can not argue with that, it is true. They are illegal. Actualy, you would have to pay more for practicly everything. The only thing I do not think would be affected would be miraculously, gas prices. And why do you bring the homeless into this? That is a completely different topic. Another time. It would not even be this easy. You can not just "let them learn to be Americans." We have different local cultures for a reason, and because the cultures are in fact, local, we can not just teach it out of them. Normaly, an immigrant will assimilate only because his culture is not represented anywhere in the country he moved to. Here, for instance, African American culture is everywhere, and there is no way to get rid of it. Aswell, which culture do we adopt universaly? White culture? African American culture? Hispanic culture? Chinese American? Do we combine them all? The nations policies have led to this devision by allowing freedom to do what one wants, and to pursue ones happiness. We allow these devisions because people in the past had their own culture from their country, and we were not mean enough to force them to convert. Thus, their culture only vaugly assimilated, and they still retain a completely different culture than other Americans. Do you propose to get rid of this freedom? You said that a criminal does not deserve equal benifits. By criminal, you mean illegal immigrant. Illegal immigrants do not have equal benifits. Thus, the argument that they do not, is not valid.

In reply to the reasons to doubt the Gospel of Judas: This is true. This gospel will not cause any real problem to any Christian. No Gospel is held by the majority of scholar to be writen by the people they are atributed do. In fact, there is only one where it is considered to even be a possibility, and it is still doubted upon. The main reason for this is that if you were in ancient times trying to write a gospel, you must attribute it to somebody who was there, or who would know, or else you would look like a fool and your gospel would not be taken seriously. While this is true, it is misleading, as it implies that the gospels in canon where writen close in time to the events. At least 3 generations had already passed by the time the first one was authored. The "modern" church rejected it, because it did not agree with their statement of faith. Undoubtedly some other gnostic sect accepted it. The church accepted gospels and such, not on any real valid reason, just on what agreed with them. And nobody would actualy believe that Judas wrote the gospel of Judas. I find this argument funny, because 3 of the gospels of canon were writen long after the names attributed to them should have died. I would agree. It is amazing how radical some of the gnostic texts are. And yet, the Gospel of Thomas in particular is interesting in that not only was it writen very very early, it seems to have been based on some of the canonical gospels, or the same thing they were based on, as the Gospel of Thomas has passages and ideas that are similar, if not identical to the other 4. I agree. Everybody wrote early books and attributed them to early apostles. Even the ones we have in canon were not writen by those who they are atributed. Also, I must say that these other crazy gospels are just their version of what they beleived to be the truth. Who knows, maybe they are right. That would be very bad though.

All of it is spoken of in detail in The Sillmarillian. I also skipped the appendix and prologue, so I do not know if they spoke of it to give readers a bit more backstory. Oh do not worry. I do not think I will be leaving anytime soon. Have you ever read "Ice" by Shane Johnson? I realy enjoyed that book. It is a Christian Alternate History/Sci-fi book. I do hope that the sequal will be published.

What is with the quotes in this thread? Did I break them? The first one is a valid argument. They are illegal. However, the second argument is not. Again, they pay sales tax, they boost both the Mexican economy and ours by proxy, they work harder for less, ect. By proxy, they put plenty into it. The fact that is not official means that you have no valid argument. Once it is official, go ahead. Former immagrants did not have to learn English. And some never did. Do remember that there are American hybrid languages still spoken like Cajun. You do not need to be proven legal to get these forms in your language. It is assumed by default. Thus, we must provide them to everybody who asks. Normaly, when people who do not speak spanish appear in schools, they are lumped into the same class, where somebody is contacted who can speak their language and paid a horribly large sum to come teach them. Nothing? You can say you agree. Haha. I said the same thing. How funny. Okay. I do not understand They have to. They need to get around. It has worked so far. Immigrants, legal or not, usualy end up speaking our language within 2 generations at most. Hmm. I must ask you to actualy list what they are "taking" and then compare to what they are giving. I would say that you would find them doing more good than harm. And actualy, Mexico would be very happy if we all came here. They are already encouraging Americans to immigrate there for retirement and such. Valid argument. They are illegal. But, if you hold this, you must not hold to your arguments pertaining to our lack of an official language. It is not a legal requirment for them to even bother at all to learn out language. Okay. Fine. Tell me exactly what you believe this. Tell me everything bad that they do, and I will later tell you everything good that they do, and I will correct you, you will correct me, and let us see if we could not quantify the economic impact they realy are doing. Socialy, I find them mildly annoying, but economicaly I like them. Lots of cheap labour allows lower priced goods for us, which allows for more consumerism. More people also helps consumerism, which puts more money into our economy. They send money back to Mexico, which the families then spend in Mexico, which boosts the Mexican economy, which then has more money to import more goods from the US, creating a mutual benifit. ------------------------------------------------------------ But it is not yet. So untill then, "They do not bother to learn English" is not a valid argument. And they do. I again show that I learned nothing about my heritage, and neither in fact, did Silentprayer. You would not say that the fact that they do work harder for less than mimum wage trumps the fact that they pay no income tax? The benifits of their labour allows cheaper prices for goods. We can thus afford more. Withought them, we must pay more for goods, but maybe we have more money for medical aid. Only for those who qualify of course. There are other benifits to them, but I spoke of them already. It is illegal to hire them. But it is hard to catch them. Companies do not want to be caught, and some politicians gain money to "overlook" a few. Which I do not care about. Cheaper goods for me. A national sales tax can be debated in another thread, but just to say, I do not agree with the idea. In order to be "American" we need a unified language, heritage, culture, ect. Which we have none of. As a country, we will be hard pressed to unify culturaly. Other moshed up countries have an easier time because they pretty much killed all of the locals/thourougly bred them out. We, in the sake of compassion, did not do this. We were Americans, we were better than that. Slightly... They do not get equal benifits. Equal benifits would require things like them gaining a minimum wage. The argument is not valid. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- One, it depends on where you live. If you live in a community, you must abide by those rules. You live there. Nobody however, is forcing you to live there. At any time you may leave. They have a right to impose rules and regulations on you, regardless of how horrible they may be. This holds true for companies. If you do not like it, you may quit. They offer employment to you, they have the right to have any rules they wish. And one instance does not mean the country if failing. (regarding the middle school) The thing was satire. It was not serious. It employed sarcasm to make a point that it is unjust for illegals to be here. Other countries are other countries. We allow this. They may or may not. Equality does not have to work both ways when countries are run differently. They add resources by working for less than minimum wage, and their very existence adds to our population. More people means more people buying, which adds more money. The companies that hire them do have to pay income tax, which added with what the illegals add, probably ballences out. While I absolutely despice Democratic fiscal policies, I would not agree with this statement. But then again, I do not agree with social security at all. There are plenty of jobs. I live in central Texas. We have plenty of illegals here. Yet, I have been working hard to *not* get a job. There are so many "Help Wanted" posters everywhere that I do not actualy have any excuse at all to not have a job. I do not understand your last sentance. Here is a sidenot from me: By standard wage, I assume you mean the minimum. The minimum wage is where it should be. Raising it would increase the price of goods, negating what it was supposed to do. Increasing minimum wage also lowers employment in the unskilled lowerclass, which is who it should be helping. Also, the labour that is done at minimum wage I feel is overpayed. You can literaly be a signpost, and make 10 dollars an hour. To stand there. That is way too much. Burger flipping is not hard work. Minimum wage is exactly what you deserve, if not more, for such menial, unskilled labour. It also decreases the incentive for unskilled workers to gain skills. If I can live comfortably by burger flipping, why do I need to do anything else? The cost of labour increase would also lower economic growth. All in all, the minimum wage is perfectly fine, if not too high. Be poor, and you get free health care. So yes, anybody can. If you make too much, quit your job. Just remember that free health care is horrible, and will always be horrible, as it is free. You are better where you are, than getting free healthcare. Okay. For one, how much do you all make? For another, can you realy show, maybe in a graph or something, that the US government is willing to give many free handouts to illegal immigrants, which seems to be what you implied. The company can do whatever it wants. It hired your husband. If the government did not jump in, then obviously they did not find your case good enough. I suggest finding a better lawyer. If your case realy is as bad as you make it out to be, it should not be hard to find a decent lawyer and have another go, with better results. And? Mexico *is* a different country. The way we handle it has nothing to do with the way they do. A setback for them then. I do not agree with granting them amnesty anyway. Then actualy get opinions that are consistent with the law. The law allows for such bad things as not being granted work leave, to be required to not show certian things ect. So, if your argument is what the law says, then many of these others are not valid.

Forgive me, but I do not actualy see an answer to my question there. What is "this"? Well, one, if there was no God, and they are right, then they have the right idea. Two, I feel you overgeneralize them to be a bunch of selfish evil people who can not possibly be nice.

How so?

This thread makes me sad. Sure, you can not like illegal immigration, but you must not like it for a valid reason. For the sake of simplicity, I will simply refute everything on that little letter thing and a few other easy things. Everybody can get free medical care, because Democrats exist. It is like saying that you do not want people drinking your water, despite you living in a river. Everybody can get it. It is just poluted. (afterall, free medical care is not that great) Well for one, you probably would have this. And two, America does not have an official language. This means that it is a perfectly valid thing to have these here. See above. America has no official language, so it is our duty to provide forms in many languages. That is interesting, considering that those going to school here who do not know English, do not get taught by for instance, Spanish speaking teachers regardless. The most they have is a single room where you both, try to learn what everybody else is learning, and learn English so you can get out of there. That is also interesting, because I do not remember ever having a class on Mexican culture and history. I am hispanic, and I do not know anything about Mexico, other than the dates it got independance from Spain and France. Wonderfull. Because outside, when I look, I see just the American flag. I do not even see the Texas flag. And our school is 80% hispanic. You would think that if this happened so much, it would have happened here. They feed everybody at breakfast and lunch. Do you mean for free? Yes you will. You do not need to be legal to get one. You do need to be legal to get insurance. Hence they do not have it. America does not have a official language. Nobody is required to speak English when they move here. Okay. America is a free country. Why would you get negative comments or complaints? Illegals do not get nice jobs, they have to pay the sales tax, and they on average work for less that minimum wage, for longer hours. The average Illegal family makes about 10 thousand less a year than even a legal immagrant family. Everybody should be nice to everybody. On economic strain: Illegals provide much cheap labour, pay sales tax, increase the Mexican economy by sending money over there, which in turn increases our economy as Mexico does buy things from us, they work more, they make is so that our country does not have negative growth, provide for more consumerism ect. Sorry to say that Illegals are at the very worst, nuetral in the workings of our economy. Great, considering you can not vote if you are Illegal. And again, America has no official language. Certainly is a good thing that we have national debt because we charge interest on ourselves, and when we borrow money, we turn around and lend it out at higher interest. Makes national debt rather meaningless.

From their end, they see it as mindless pestering. Afterall, "What if [they] are right and it is all false?" Then you are just preventing them from enjoying the short life they have to the fullest. How could you possibly bother them like that? I just wanted to show how they see it...

Did you hear about how they found new indermediate speciese between Homo Erectus, and Homo Sapian? They have not named it yet.

I just registered, mostly because of this topic. It bothered me for a few reasons. I would assume the bible to have many more words than even all of Harry Potter combined. While they seem bigger if you stack them together, remember that the Bible is writen on very thin sheets of paper, in very small text, and still manages to be of substantial size. But who knows anyway? Furthermore, you assume that all children read these books quickly, which is simply not true. Reading pace varies greatly amongst people, and I see no reason to assume that all children just somehow manage to read these books quickly. Obviously because they were good. Good story, good characters, gripping narration, good character development ect. Although I found LOTR horribly boring, due to his style. I still know all about the stories, because I find the stories fascinating. But, impossible to read in actual book form. You seem to assume that this is only possible with such fantasy books. Any *good* book is supposed to be highly enjoyable, and thus, "force" you to not put it down. Does not matter what genre it is. Please give examples of 2 and 3 in either LOTR, or Harry Potter. Both are sometimes critisized (LOTR, far more than HP) for being to Black/White, in their ethics. Their is a definitive "Right" and "Wrong" in both, so much so it borders unrealistic. Besides, the most "sexualy stimulation or inuendo" present in the likes of Harry Potter, is Harry's inner conflict with stupid teen crushes, which everybody goes through. Hardly bad. And this is downright wrong, no doubt sprung from not knowing the full story. Gandalf and Sauron are not "magic users" they are both of the Maia. Think of them as lesser angels. They are just called "Wizards" because that is what the translation of the word that Man refers to them in Westron. If you did not know, Westron is the "common language" in LOTR, and the story is supposed to be translated into English from that and the various elvish languages. We know much about Sauron. For instance, he was a servant of Aul