georgesbluegirl

Axx, I don't think love of flesh/the world is the same as one who does not believe in God. There's also a difference between not believing in God and not believing in Jesus as God, so the interpretation gets a little foggy there too. Anyway, nothing will ever damage my great love for the Beatles! ;-)

Well, I don't. I don't believe that you have to read every incident in the Bible as literal - for example, while the Creation story is a beautiful one, the point is THAT the world was created, not exactly how it happened. Unlike a lot of people on this boards (I've had this conversation a lot here), I believe that the Bible is a collection of books that were divinely inspired BUT interpreted through the lens of the men who wrote them. Hence, I don't believe the bible is historically infallible. This also explains the great deal of neglect or rather unfortunate treatment of women in the Bible, etc. Make no mistake - I believe the Bible is the Word of God BUT it is told in the words of MAN. A lot of theologians have explained it in terms of the Incarnation: the miracle of the embodiment of the divine and the human. To call the Bible ONLY divine takes away the human side of things - the miracle seems somewhat lesser if we see it that way, almost. Remember, God doesn't originally need words - we do. Most Christian denominations preach some form of this argument - a relatively small percentage of churches overall actually teach that the Bible is completely infallible. Actually, I'm under the impression that approaching the Bible this way is a relatively recent phenomena.

Axx, I think one of the places I'm having trouble with your argument is when you say that all non-Christians are in "enmity" with God. Can you elaborate on this? This is certainly not anything that I have ever heard or been taught, or concluded myself.

For the sake of "Africa" - put down the lighter! I finalized my abroad plans and I'm going to Kenya and Tanzania next year, so it's my theme song now! On a more serious note, this discussion about what kinds of books, music, scented candles, water bottles, puppies etc. glorify God always gets a little silly. If something makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to have it! Of course, often encountering things that challenge your faith is the best possible thing - you come out stronger and smarter for it. Regardless, I burn incense, listen to Zeppelin, read Shakespeare and Salinger and I'm pretty confident I'm not a worse person or Christian for it. Give people a little credit/responsibility for their decisions. Most people who listen to "I'm In Love With A Stripper" aren't going to go out to the local gentlemen's club to find a wife, you know.

Multilateral talks including more western-sympathetic or neutral nations? I mean, I'm interested in foreign relations but I don't know. Quite honestly I haven't been following our relationship with Iran as rigorously as I should be. I'm not wholly equating the two situations (N. Korea and Iran) - that would be stupid. Clearly the Middle East has the element of extreme religious tension to make things much more difficult. I just know there has to be a better way than blindly piling troops into one of the most volatile regions in the world.

How do you finish the job when the enemy is "terror?" Honestly, we've just dug ourselves a deeper hole here...the situation in Iraq is tied to so many other things going on in the Middle East. I don't think there is a military solution for something like this. PS: Chris Hill spoke at my school today after flying straight in from Beijing and the six party talks. The man LITERALLY just solved the North Korea nuke problem...as far as it can be solved at the moment anyway. Apparently he mentioned in his talk (I couldn't go, unfortunately) that he thinks a similar strategy could be effective with Iran. See? Diplomacy can work!

Wow, that's incredible. In one of my classes the other day, we were just talking about being in the middle of the sixth (I think) major extinction event in the history of the earth. Glad we're paying attention!

Yup. And a Sunday School teacher, apparently. I figure if God created man in the image and likeness of God, and man has a sense of humor, then God has one too.

Absolutely. How else can you explain the kiwi bird or the platypus?

"Blacklisted" is probably the wrong term, you're right - although the possibility of one occurring isn't incredibly far fetched. The concern for me is that women will bear the brunt of this legislation and, as usual, few men will have to deal with it. To force men to be involved in any death certificate process would be expensive and impractical, and in many cases probably wouldn't work. There is also the MAJOR issue that in the United States, abortion is not a crime (see earlier distinction made between SIN and CRIME). This would be punishing women for taking a legal action, one that is extremely private to begin with, by putting their names into the public record. I also think that when it comes down to it, you could challenge this in courts at the federal level and it would be repealed in a second. Bottom line is this is not the way to go about affecting change - by targeting the people having abortions. How about just trying to fix the problems that lead people to abortions? This law would just make it worse for women of low socioeconomic standing who couldn't afford to get an abortion out of state.

Haha. I had to keep explaining to people that global warming was NOT responsible for the temperatures in January...climate change would never happen that fast/dramatically. Unless you believe that Dennis Quaid movie. Anyway, it might have been weird but El Nino let me take a beach trip in January that involved me actually going out the the beach!

Oh yeah, he almost never breaks character. Fantastic. The one thing I did love on the Colbert Report side of the O'Reilly extravaganza was when they brought the book out WITH THE DISCOUNT STICKER ON IT. THAT was awesome.

He's Christian actually, a practicing Catholic, if anyone cares... Regardless, he's HILARIOUS. Did anyone else see the Bill O'Reilly stuff????

Oh but I agree we're getting off topic. Oops, sorry...just couldn't let that one go...

Well, it probably just means more women would go to get abortions out of state, if they could afford it. If they can't afford to go anywhere else, they're stuck in-state and potentially blacklisted for life. Great.

Okay well first of all I said "IN MY STATE." So there's that. Second of all, white people still make up like 75% of the population, so of course there are going to be more people NUMERICALLY of white origins on death row. Theoretically, around-ish 75% of the population on death row should be white, right? Wrong. As the stats Hamburgers! just posted demonstrate, the numbers are almost equal for African-Americans and whites, despite the fact that black people make up only about 12% of the population. This shows the skew - the PROBABILITY of being sentenced is much higher if you are black (also just as a note I was talking about cases that go to capital trial as opposed to sentencings, but the point still stands). Trust me, it's very hard to argue there's not a significant racial bias.

Yup. A private organization is allowed to fire you for saying something that they consider appropriate. But you can still SAY it - that's not illegal. Hence the hateful actions of the "God hates fags" group (pardon my language, I hate that word). Disgusting.

I love the way he satirizes the people who use the name of God for political gain, if that's what you mean.

Healthcare for the CHILDREN, not the parents. And although I'm not sure of the legal specifics, I'm positive that you can't prosecute children for a parental action over which they had no control. The CHILDREN are not breaking the law. They are innocent. That is what I ask everyone to keep in mind.

Oh yeah, white people have it SO hard in America. Let's get real. Aside from my moral issues with it, one of the reasons I'm against capital punishment in a practical sense is because of the extreme arbitrariness that it allows (something like 95% of trials that could become capital trials don't), which inevitably leads to a HUGE discrepancy between how people of different races are prosecuted. In my home state at one point the statistic was that a black man who had killed a white man was TEN TIMES more likely to go to a capital trial than a white man who had been accused of murder. Seriously.

In this country's legal system, your parents are responsible for making decisions about your well-being until you are 18. Applying that principal here, why should the actions of parents who choose the enter the country illegally have repercussions for their children, who are by all measures innocent?

My point is that most women don't feel that way, though. Again, from a biological perspective, it wouldn't make sense if they did.

I know several women who did. They also had funerals for them. They mourn too. Well, I believe this is a significant exception rather than the rule. I know many women who have had miscarriages, and while there is certainly always sadness involved, nothing on the kind of level you're describing could be called commonplace. The fact is that the natural and social response to a miscarriage, especially an early miscarriage, is very different from that of having a newborn die. It makes sense from a biological perspective (as many things do...), since early miscarriages are quite on the usual side of things.

So do all miscarriages get death certificates, too?

Whoever thinks that teenage girls WANT to be pregnant is nuts. It's every girl's worst nightmare (and I'm only a few years out of high school myself). Girls who never had sex still got nervous thinking about it. I agree with the earlier assessment - if your friend gets pregnant you're obviously going to be kind and supportive, but it's not right to equate that to wanting pregnancy!