DebateAnything.com / Debate Lounge / Religion, Philosophy and New Age

"Proud non-reader" Kanye West turns author

Patrick — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:32:39 GMT

What civilization has been waiting for. A book by an ignorant cretin. Well, at least he doesn't seem to have any self-esteem issues. :hehe:

[quote]"Proud non-reader" Kanye West turns author

By Mark Egan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rapper Kanye West does not read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one that he would like you to buy and read.

The Grammy Award winner, known for his No. 1 albums and outspoken statements on everything from racism in America to the banality of Twitter, is the co-author of "Thank You And You're Welcome."

His book is 52 pages -- some blank, others with just a few words -- and offers his optimistic philosophy on life. One two-page section reads, "Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!" Another page reads "I hate the word hate!"

"This is a collection of thoughts and theories," West, 31, said in an interview about his spiral-bound volume, which was written with J. Sakiya Sandifer.

West said he put his thoughts in a book because "I get paraphrased and misquoted all the time." He calls his wisdom "Kanye-isms."

"My favorite one is 'Get used to being used,'" he said.

[url=http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE54P5L820090526]continued[/url]
[/quote]

Drink, Drink, DRINK

SAMSON — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:50:51 GMT

Hey, I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day..

Losing Salvation

Fat Ike — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:48:04 GMT

yes in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the holy spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the son of god and put Him to open shame for ground that drinks the rain which often falls upon it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled receives a blessing from God but if it yields thorns and thistles it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned

Warning: FM, Pagan Thread

SAMSON — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:05:51 GMT

Aren't Pagan descriptions of Creation AS accurate (or more so) than The Bible?

What percentage of humanity do you think will go to hell?

Patrick — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:58:43 GMT

Just curious.

Couple Ordered to Stop Holding Bible Study at Home Without Permit

Patrick — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:29:25 GMT

Can't happen here, eh?

[quote]Couple Ordered to Stop Holding Bible Study at Home Without Permit

Pastor David Jones and his wife Mary have been told that they cannot invite friends to their San Diego, Calif. home for a Bible study — unless they are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to San Diego County.

"On Good Friday we had an employee from San Diego County come to our house, and inform us that the Bible study that we were having was a religious assembly, and in violation of the code in the county." David Jones told FOX News.

"We told them this is not really a religious assembly — this is just a Bible study with friends. We have a meal, we pray, that was all," Jones said.

A few days later, the couple received a written warning that cited "unlawful use of land," ordering them to either "stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit," the couple's attorney Dean Broyles told San Diego news station 10News.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522637,00.html[/quote]

Texas Breast Cancer Patient Fired for being an Atheist

Patrick — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:24:43 GMT

Ain't we livin' in a great country?

[quote] Texas Breast Cancer Patient Fired for being an Atheist

Meet Amanda Donaldson, a Stage III Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Breast Cancer Patient. In a recent blog entry her husband claims she was fired from her job by her employer Dr. Dawson at ‘El Dorado Chiropractic’ because of her illness and for her lack of religious beliefs.

May 4th was Amanda’s first day back to work since April 14th because of her mastectomy, the surgical removal of the entire affected breast. Mr. Donaldson claims that “a few hours into her shift he(Dr. Dawson) again brings up that she needs Jesus in her life and she respectfully declined.”

In a reply email to AtheosToday, Mr. Donaldson stated that his wife was then terminated. “She was told to leave. She was told ‘Her attitude towards God was no longer welcome in his business’.”

[url=http://atheist-r-evolution.com/news/?p=154]continued[/url]

[/quote]

With regards to Family and Gender Roles....

Dick Tator — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:21:46 GMT

All I was saying in the other thread is I think both parents have a role to play.

Boys need their father to emulate so they know how a man is suppose to act. This doesn't mean that they don't need their mother. They should see how their father interacts with their mother so they will know how to TREAT a woman. A father should always include his wife in all decisions and treat her as an equal. A father should always be strong but loving. Firm but caring. Boys need that proper perspective. All to often boys don't have this and they either grow up having been raised by women with NO proper male influence in their lives or they grow up with a BAD male influence in their lives.

I guess if I had to choose, though, I would suggest that a woman who is with a man who is a bad influence on the kids or doesn't treat her properly should leave. Sometimes people stay together "for the kids" but that really just hurts the kids... Boys who grew up seeing abuse or being abused usually grow up to be abusers themselves. The woman should leave, that that doesn't mean there should be no male influence in the boys life. An uncle, grandfather, or even Big Brothers/ Big Sisters programs would help.

Boys need their mothers, too. Boys need their mothers to be a nurturer and caregiver. Boys need their mother to be a woman that they respect and fear. They need to have an undying love and respect for her and for any sisters they have, as well. Boys that are raised in an environment where they are taught to respect women are less likely to be abusers.
_____________________________________________________

Girls have much the same issue. They need a mother to show them how a woman should act. They need a mother who has standards for her children but is there for them no matter what. She should be loving towards her husband however she should be strong with him too. She should always have a voice in things like household finances and other important decisions. The mother and father should have joint accounts even if only the father works. The mother should have her own personal account and so should the father. The mother should be seen as taking an active role in all things and NOT someone who simply goes along with the father's decision. Even if she plans on going along with his choice she should be aware of what is going on and not blindsided.

If a girl grows up seeing this, she will be a strong woman who is not dependent on a man. I know too many women who have no idea how their money is spent, not even money THEY earn. Women are not slaves and girls should not see their mother being treated like one. If both parents work, then both parents should help out in the home. If only one parent works, then the nonworking parent should handle a majority of the chores however, that doesn't mean that the working parent should be a lazy slob and not pick up after themselves. A girl should grow up knowing that a marriage is a cooperation and not a dictatorship.

Girls that grow up in a household where the mother is controlled and abuse usually grow up and end up with someone like her father. They get abused but think of it as normal because they have been conditioned to think that way. They think that they should give their check to the man and be his little "Beverly Cleaver". These are the girls that say they want to leave, "but I love him". Girls need their mother to show them how to be strong and independent and their father to show them the proper role of a man.

Toughlove

SAMSON — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:58:33 GMT

Recently Fat Mike told me he thought that "Toughlove Was BS" I've done [URL="http://www.toughlove.com/our_programs.asp"]some research[/URL]: Here are ; [B]THE TEN BELIEFS OF THE TOUGHLOVE® PROGRAM [/B][QUOTE] • Family Problems Have Roots and Support in the Culture.• Parents are People Too.• Parent’s Material and Emotional Resources are Limited.• Parents and Kids are not Equal.• Blaming Keeps People Helpless.• Kid’s Behavior Affects Parents and Parents’ Behavior Affects Kids.• Taking a STAND Precipitates Crisis.• From a Controlled Crisis comes the Possibility of Positive Change.• Families Need to Give and Get Support in their Own Community in Order to Change.• The Essence of Family Life is Cooperation, Not Togetherness[/QUOTE] What is BS?

the solemn hidden meaning of tarus birthday

fat mike — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:10:13 GMT

not many realize but tarus bd has a deep spiritual significance

The Amazing Catholic Bullshit Generator

Patrick — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:37:43 GMT

Kind of funny to think that there are any conservative Catholics left out there, given how liberal the entire hierarchy is these days. But ol' Zmirak at Takimag.com just keeps tilting at the same windmills...

[quote]

[url=http://www.takimag.com/article/the_amazing_catholic_bullsht_generator/]link to Takimag[/url]

But I’m kind of partial to our own papist device. It does my Catholic heart proud to see what we’ve come up with. It whirs at every level of American Catholic discourse, from the bloviations of certain bishops, down through some Catholic columnists, to ordinary bloggers and local pastors in the pulpit. Large sections of those helpful documents produced by America’s bishops in the 1970s and 80s on economics and military policy were clearly squeezed out of The Generator, along with much of what the bishops say today on immigration.

In The Faithful Departed, Catholic journalist Philip Lawler shows how The Generator enabled various bishops to write earnest thank you notes to pedophile priests, praising them for their “ministry,” and vague reassuring letters to anguished parents that spoke of “compassion,” “therapy” and “legitimate concerns.” The pastoral letters of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, which appear in his paper The Tidings, seem to have been entirely produced by The Generator—which must be running day and night in the basement of his extraordinary new cathedral.

Here’s how The Generator works: Presented with a complicated problem that requires balancing the interests of groups with competing claims, it will draw selectively on Biblical references and Church documents to churn out rhetoric that simultaneously:

1) Clouds essential distinctions in a pink, emotive haze.
2) Suits the user’s political sympathies, institutional interests, or unspoken emotional needs (e.g., socialism, cover-up, or envy).
3) Presents the speaker as a gentle, vulnerable soul who’s acting only out of compassion, whose motives it would be wantonly cruel to question.
4) Casts his opponents as blind, cruel, or hypocritical.
5) Pretends it is not attacking anyone, but gently and bravely pointing to “deeper truths.” Hence any polemical reply amounts to beating up on Jesus.
[/quote]

are we all merely puppets

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:02:27 GMT

[B]are we all merely puppets.[/B]In the few years that I have been surfing the web, I've probably seen countless threads concerning human free will. The standard argument is that if god knows everything, we don't have free will. While for now I will not comment on those charges, I would like to focus on other aspects of free will and god.I doubt there is a religious person here that would not allude to certain godly acts that hinder or prevent free will. However I would still rather focus on another aspect of humans and free will.Now, if everyone could kindly turn to Exodus and the case of the ten plagues. It can be stated from the text that the Pharaoh was a stubborn old mule. Several times indeed he refused to let Moses people go. However, in the later plagues we see the Pharaoh relent and yet...It is god that makes the plagues continue and the slaves remain slaves:[B]Ex 10:20 'but Yahweh made pharaoh stubborn....’Ex 10:27 'but Yahweh made pharaoh stubborn....’Ex 11: 10 'but Yahweh made pharaoh stubborn....’Ex 14:4 "I shall then make the pharaoh stubborn....”[/B]My question, and the point of this thread, is how do I know, how do any of us know that it is not god making us stubborn? Can any religious person out there give me a substantial and decent answer to that?I have been an atheist since I was about ten, and know all too well that regardless to what anyone ever says, I can never be a religious man. So, how can you justify that my atheism is because of me and my free will, and not god making me stubborn - and thus removing my free will?"For what reason would god do that?" You might ask. The answer can be found in exodus 14:4 -[B]"I shall then make pharaoh stubborn and he will set out in pursuit of them; and I shall win glory for myself at the expense of pharaoh and his army"[/B]So, I must conclude that it is entirely possible that myself, and all atheists, are merely puppets on god's string - designed to somehow make him look better.Are we being led to our demise just as pharaoh was? Do I have free will, do I have a choice in the matter, or is god giving himself glory by leading me to a pit of death merely for kicks?Any decent answers ?

prophets as leaders

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:02:18 GMT

what do you think are the leadership attributes of prophetic voices, both from hebrew scriptures, and prophetic voices today?

10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:01:24 GMT

taru wuz here;

Legalism

fat mike — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:56:06 GMT

of course believers are very preoccuppied with this term-there's some pretty important scripture about discriminating between the Spirit of the Law and the Letter of the Law-but there's a general use for the term also-people who ignore the meaning of the various rituals and protocols and insist on observance of every infintesimal detail-in a way it's almost better to deal with the kind of authoritarian environment we have in Texas-because the Boss mentality is almost always-i dont have time for that schlock-everyone sings the high praises of Hammurabbi for his codified law-i'm not sure he was such a good guy-the idea that we can make a mechanical and logical set of rules without reference to our intuition and experience seems appealing to the young but i dont know anyone who has any confidence in it after the age of 40...

god loves u all

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:55:57 GMT

dont be deceive by satan

Fred Phelps is a sick person

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:45:27 GMT

From wikipedia: [QUOTE]Phelps says he is an old school Baptist, which includes John Calvin's doctrine of unconditional election, the belief that God has elected certain people for salvation before birth. He says that almost nobody is a member of the elect, and furthermore that he and the members of his congregation (mostly his family) are the only members of the elect, because they are the only ones not afraid to publish the current relevant application of the word of God — in particular, that "God hates fags."During 1993–94 interviews with the Topeka Capital-Journal, the four Phelps children (out of thirteen, Mark, Nate, Katherine and Dotty) who had left the church asserted that their father's religious beliefs were either nonexistent to begin with or have dwindled down to nearly nothing. They insist that Westboro actually serves to enable a paraphilia of Phelps, wherein he is literally addicted to hatred. This statement would serve as the inspiration for the title of the book about Phelps' life, which was never published due to fear of lawsuit, but became public when the author sued the publisher, who maintained that it was a work for hire and therefore could not be taken to another publisher, attaching a copy of the manuscript to the suit as an exhibit thus making it public record. The record was eventually sealed, although the document had already been released over the Internet.Two of his sons, Mark and Nate, insist that the church is actually a carefully planned cult that allows Phelps to see himself as a demigod, wielding absolute control over the lives of his family and congregants, essentially turning them into slaves that he can use for the sole purpose of gratifying his every whim and acting as the structure for his delusion that he is the only righteous man on Earth.[17] In 1995, Mark Phelps wrote a letter to the people of Topeka to this effect; it was run in the Topeka Capital-Journal.[18] The children's claim is partially backed up by B.H. McAllister, the Baptist minister who ordained Phelps. McAllister said in a 1993 interview that Phelps developed a delusion wherein he was one of the few people on Earth worthy of God's grace and that everyone else in the world was going to Hell, and that salvation or damnation could be directly obtained by either aligning with or opposing Phelps. As of 2006, Phelps maintains this belief.[17] Phelps and his family picket up to approximately six locations every day, including many in Topeka and some events farther afield. On Sundays, up to 15 churches may receive pickets.[[/QUOTE][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps#Fidel_Castro[/url]This guy hosts sites that sicken me.Godhatesfags.com, Godhatesamerica.com, etc.He is sick. Shows what Christianity does to people..

Biblical answers to your questions

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:36:02 GMT

If you have a sincere and honest question, I would love to give you a Biblical answer. I know in part and don't know all of the answers. However, I have fun trying to provide the biblical response to your honest questions. I cannot answer a question that the Bible does not provide an answer. Ask away if you so CHOOSE to respond. :woot:

How many souls will go to Hell in the name of science?

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:41:35 GMT

Lucifer has used a very strong tool, a mixture of pride and false education to enslave many people in a strong deception that finds a way of substituteing God with the Ape.The question I ask my fellow christians is, How many souls will be lost to the deception of false science?Viking

A Buzzflash Guest Contribution

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:41:02 GMT

by Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.[QUOTE]The unfolding of events over the past 7 years and the recent emergence of certain key facts point to the prospect of an ominous conclusion: before the summer is up, America will be brought under martial law with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at the helm.In May 2007, Bush posted a national continuity policy to the White House Web site that bypasses Congress and puts him in charge of all three branches of the federal government if there is a "catastrophic emergency" -- vaguely defined to include anything from a destructive hurricane to a terrorist attack. This leaves democracy in America dangling on a thin thread of chance that such a "catastrophe" doesn't happen.On Wednesday, Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said he has a "gut" feeling that Al Qaeda will launch another terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland sometime this summer. Chertoff's "gut feeling" comes on the heels of the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which maintains that in the past year, Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure and has grown stronger along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.This information is disconcerting in itself. But it becomes even more so when considered in the context of the Bush administration's unrelenting quest for power. Consider these facts, for example: The September 11 attacks were foreshadowed by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in its report on Rebuilding American Defenses (2000) when it stated, "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor . . ." This would not be significant were it not for the fact that the Vice President, among other key members of the Bush Administration, were founding members of PNAC.This neoconservative organization also prescribed forced regime change in Iraq and buildup of a permanent U.S. military presence there. The primary goal for invading Iraq was not to quell tensions or stop the threat of terrorism posed by the Hussein regime but instead to advance U.S. interests in the region through military force. The 2000 report stated, "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Regime change was therefore pretense for the invasion.Clearly, the invasion of Iraq was never conceived as a means of stopping Saddam Hussein from instigating terrorism. This was made plain in the official British documents known as the Downing Street memos, which said that Bush was attempting to make the facts "fit" the policy in order to justify invading Iraq -- since Hussein's WMD capability was in fact "less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." The redeployment of U.S. troops and special forces to Iraq was done in spite of the fact that the hub of Al Qaeda was in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So the Bush administration permitted Al Qaeda to regroup and strengthen in Pakistan and Afghanistan to pursue its ideology of global dominance in Iraq.Add to these facts that the Bush administration has displayed consistent disregard for the rule of law by canceling habeas corpus, disregarding the Geneva Conventions in the torture of prisoners of war, using signing statements to override congressional lawmaking authority, eavesdropping on Americans without court warrants, summarily refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas, firing federal prosecutors for political reasons, outing a covert CIA agent, threatening to jail journalists for disclosing leaked government documents, censoring mainstream media and infusing it with government propaganda ("prepackaged news" staged by PR firms working for the government), placing "gatekeepers" in all federal agencies who report directly to the White House, eliminating legal protections for government whistle blowers, arresting peaceful protestors, manipulating the terror alert system to instill fear in Americans, and stacking the Supreme Court.In a press conference on Thursday regarding the war in Iraq, Bush indicated that he will not be discouraged by what the American people believe. He said that, while he preferred to be loved, he had to do the right thing.Do what is right by whose standards? Not those of the generals; and certainly not those of the majority of Americans. While the mainstream media brought out its analysts to comment on Bush's press conference, none drew the obvious conclusion. In a democracy, it is the will of the people, not that of a single man, that is paramount. But, according to Bush, respecting the will of the American people would be nice if it happened to accord with his own will, but not in the least essential to shaping U.S. policy, even if that policy happened to affect the lives and limbs (and tax dollars) of the American people. This is dictatorship (or "decidership") at its core, not democracy.All of these facts, among others, point to the willingness of this administration to stop at little or nothing to advance its ideology. It has proven its resolve to lie to the American people, violate their civil liberties, and discount their will. It has shown little respect for the rule of law or the U.S. Constitution.So, this summer (or sometime before the 2008 presidential elections), will America officially become a totalitarian state brought under martial law by a ruthless dictator? If Chertoff's gut is right, just add the current national continuity policy and the conclusion follows.Like a game of chess drawing to a close, there is a chilling aura that the final checkmate is imminent. In the least, democracy in America is in grave danger and at best dependent on chance.[/QUOTE]Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D. <[url]www.elliotdcohen.com[/url] > is a media ethicist and critic. His most recent book is The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government are turning America into a Dictatorship. He is also first prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.I never seem to be able to get the words out so smoothly...But I have been telling everyone this was going to happen for 3 years now... wasn't exactly sure back then when it would occur, but due to recent events I agree whole heartedly.An attack is imminent very soon. It's the only way these clowns can try to get away with the bullshit they have done. No matter what you people do, Do Not give up your arms!!!!!!!!(Protect your 2nd amendment rights while you still have them)I am serious, this is going to happen...And Congress knows it!!!Remember Bushy had a signing statement that said he was expecting a catastrophic attack on the US Government?... Well here it goes boys and girls... Before the end of the summer maybe, but surely before the elections next year.Buckle up, we're in for a heckuava ride!

Evolution: A theory in crisis:

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:34:25 GMT

Who says so? Darwin himself!!!Please feel free to look at [url]www.darwin-theory-of-evolution.com[/url]The thought of the possibility of Evolution goes way back before Darwin.To the days of men like Greek Philosopher Anaximader who believed that man came from animal.The original concept of evolution is that any genetic mutations that help a species survive are passed on to the offspring.Some people believed that breeding animals helped prove this.However Darwin himself said,"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly be formed through numerous, successive, slight, modifications his theory would absolutely break down.That the theory of evolution would be absurd in the highest degree.

Jihad etiquette

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:35:44 GMT

For Fat Mike: "Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?"

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:33:12 GMT

I know this is long, but it's a fascinating and worthwhile read.[url]http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/...currentPage=all[/url]There's more after this, so just click the link. It's safe, it's the NewYorkerOne morning last July, in the rain forest of northwestern Brazil, Dan Everett, an American linguistics professor, and I stepped from the pontoon of a Cessna floatplane onto the beach bordering the Maici River, a narrow, sharply meandering tributary of the Amazon. On the bank above us were some thirty people—short, dark-skinned men, women, and children—some clutching bows and arrows, others with infants on their hips. The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations. It is a language so confounding to non-natives that until Everett and his wife, Keren, arrived among the Pirahã, as Christian missionaries, in the nineteen-seventies, no outsider had succeeded in mastering it. Everett eventually abandoned Christianity, but he and Keren have spent the past thirty years, on and off, living with the tribe, and in that time they have learned Pirahã as no other Westerners have.“Xaói hi gáísai xigíaihiabisaoaxái ti xabiíhai hiatíihi xigío hoíhi,” Everett said in the tongue’s choppy staccato, introducing me as someone who would be “staying for a short time” in the village. The men and women answered in an echoing chorus, “Xaói hi goó kaisigíaihí xapagáiso.”Everett turned to me. “They want to know what you’re called in ‘crooked head.’ ”“Crooked head” is the tribe’s term for any language that is not Pirahã, and it is a clear pejorative. The Pirahã consider all forms of human discourse other than their own to be laughably inferior, and they are unique among Amazonian peoples in remaining monolingual. They playfully tossed my name back and forth among themselves, altering it slightly with each reiteration, until it became an unrecognizable syllable. They never uttered it again, but instead gave me a lilting Pirahã name: Kaaxáoi, that of a Pirahã man, from a village downriver, whom they thought I resembled. “That’s completely consistent with my main thesis about the tribe,” Everett told me later. “They reject everything from outside their world. They just don’t want it, and it’s been that way since the day the Brazilians first found them in this jungle in the seventeen-hundreds.”Everett, who this past fall became the chairman of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Cultures at Illinois State University, has been publishing academic books and papers on the Pirahã (pronounced pee-da-HAN) for more than twenty-five years. But his work remained relatively obscure until early in 2005, when he posted on his Web site an article titled “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã,” which was published that fall in the journal Cultural Anthropology. The article described the extreme simplicity of the tribe’s living conditions and culture. The Pirahã, Everett wrote, have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition. Everett’s most explosive claim, however, was that Pirahã displays no evidence of recursion, a linguistic operation that consists of inserting one phrase inside another of the same type, as when a speaker combines discrete thoughts (“the man is walking down the street,” “the man is wearing a top hat”) into a single sentence (“The man who is wearing a top hat is walking down the street”). Noam Chomsky, the influential linguistic theorist, has recently revised his theory of universal grammar, arguing that recursion is the cornerstone of all languages, and is possible because of a uniquely human cognitive ability.Steven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive scientist, calls Everett’s paper “a bomb thrown into the party.” For months, it was the subject of passionate debate on social-science blogs and Listservs. Everett, once a devotee of Chomskyan linguistics, insists not only that Pirahã is a “severe counterexample” to the theory of universal grammar but also that it is not an isolated case. “I think one of the reasons that we haven’t found other groups like this,” Everett said, “is because we’ve been told, basically, that it’s not possible.” Some scholars were taken aback by Everett’s depiction of the Pirahã as a people of seemingly unparalleled linguistic and cultural primitivism. “I have to wonder whether he’s some Borgesian fantasist, or some Margaret Mead being stitched up by the locals,” one reader wrote in an e-mail to the editors of a popular linguistics blog.I had my own doubts about Everett’s portrayal of the Pirahã shortly after I arrived in the village. We were still unpacking when a Pirahã boy, who appeared to be about eleven years old, ran out from the trees beside the river. Grinning, he showed off a surprisingly accurate replica of the floatplane we had just landed in. Carved from balsa wood, the model was four feet long and had a tapering fuselage, wings, and pontoons, as well as propellers, which were affixed with small pieces of wire so that the boy could spin the blades with his finger. I asked Everett whether the model contradicted his claim that the Pirahã do not make art. Everett barely glanced up. “They make them every time a plane arrives,” he said. “They don’t keep them around when there aren’t any planes. It’s a chain reaction, and someone else will do it, but then eventually it will peter out.” Sure enough, I later saw the model lying broken and dirty in the weeds beside the river. No one made another one during the six days I spent in the village.In the wake of the controversy that greeted his paper, Everett encouraged scholars to come to the Amazon and observe the Pirahã for themselves. The first person to take him up on the offer was a forty-three-year-old American evolutionary biologist named Tecumseh Fitch, who in 2002 co-authored an important paper with Chomsky and Marc Hauser, an evolutionary psychologist and biologist at Harvard, on recursion. Fitch and his cousin Bill, a sommelier based in Paris, were due to arrive by floatplane in the Pirahã village a couple of hours after Everett and I did. As the plane landed on the water, the Pirahã, who had gathered at the river, began to cheer. The two men stepped from the cockpit, Fitch toting a laptop computer into which he had programmed a week’s worth of linguistic experiments that he intended to perform on the Pirahã. They were quickly surrounded by curious tribe members. The Fitch cousins, having travelled widely together to remote parts of the world, believed that they knew how to establish an instant rapport with indigenous peoples. They brought their cupped hands to their mouths and blew loon calls back and forth. The Pirahã looked on stone-faced. Then Bill began to make a loud popping sound by snapping a finger of one hand against the opposite palm. The Pirahã remained impassive. The cousins shrugged sheepishly and abandoned their efforts.“Usually you can hook people really easily by doing these funny little things,” Fitch said later. “But the Pirahã kids weren’t buying it, and neither were their parents.” Everett snorted. “It’s not part of their culture,” he said. “So they’re not interested.”A few weeks earlier, I had called Fitch in Scotland, where he is a professor at the University of St. Andrews. “I’m seeing this as an exploratory fact-finding trip,” he told me. “I want to see with my own eyes how much of this stuff that Dan is saying seems to check out.”Everett is known among linguistics experts for orneriness and an impatience with academic decorum. He was born into a working-class family in Holtville, a town on the California-Mexico border, where his hard-drinking father, Leonard, worked variously as a bartender, a cowboy, and a mechanic. “I don’t think we had a book in the house,” Everett said. “To my dad, people who taught at colleges and people who wore ties were ‘sissies’—all of them. I suppose some of that is still in me.” Everett’s chief exposure to intellectual life was through his mother, a waitress, who died of a brain aneurysm when Everett was eleven. She brought home Reader’s Digest condensed books and a set of medical encyclopedias, which Everett attempted to memorize. In high school, he saw the movie “My Fair Lady” and thought about becoming a linguist, because, he later wrote, Henry Higgins’s work “attracted me intellectually, and because it looked like phoneticians could get rich.”As a teen-ager, Everett played the guitar in rock bands (his keyboardist later became an early member of Iron Butterfly) and smoked pot and dropped acid, until the summer of 1968, when he met Keren Graham, another student at El Capitan High School, in Lakeside. The daughter of Christian missionaries, Keren was brought up among the Satere people in northeastern Brazil. She invited Everett to church and brought him home to meet her family. “They were loving and caring and had all these groovy experiences in the Amazon,” Everett said. “They supported me and told me how great I was. This was just not what I was used to.” On October 4, 1968, at the age of seventeen, he became a born-again Christian. “I felt that my life had changed completely, that I had stepped from darkness into light—all the expressions you hear.” He stopped using drugs, and when he and Keren were eighteen they married. A year later, the first of their three children was born, and they began preparing to become missionaries.In 1976, after graduating with a degree in Foreign Missions from the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, Everett enrolled with Keren in the Summer Institute of Linguistics, known as S.I.L., an international evangelical organization that seeks to spread God’s Word by translating the Bible into the languages of preliterate societies. They were sent to Chiapas, Mexico, where Keren stayed in a hut in the jungle with the couple’s children—by this time, there were three—while Everett underwent gruelling field training. He endured fifty-mile hikes and survived for several days deep in the jungle with only matches, water, a rope, a machete, and a flashlight.The couple were given lessons in translation techniques, for which Everett proved to have a gift. His friend Peter Gordon, a linguist at Columbia University who has published a paper on the absence of numbers in Pirahã, says that Everett regularly impresses academic audiences with a demonstration in which he picks from among the crowd a speaker of a language that he has never heard. “Within about twenty minutes, he can tell you the basic structure of the language and how its grammar works,” Gordon said. “He has incredible breadth of knowledge, is really, really smart, knows stuff inside out.” Everett’s talents were obvious to the faculty at S.I.L., who for twenty years had been trying to make progress in Pirahã, with little success. In October, 1977, at S.I.L.’s invitation, Everett, Keren, and their three small children moved to Brazil, first to a city called Belém, to learn Portuguese, and then, a year later, to a Pirahã village at the mouth of the Maici River. “At that time, we didn’t know that Pirahã was linguistically so hard,” Keren told me.There are about three hundred and fifty Pirahã spread out in small villages along the Maici and Marmelos Rivers. The village that I visited with Everett was typical: seven huts made by propping palm-frond roofs on top of four sticks. The huts had dirt floors and no walls or furniture, except for a raised platform of thin branches to sleep on. These fragile dwellings, in which a family of three or four might live, lined a path that wound through low brush and grass near the riverbank. The people keep few possessions in their huts—pots and pans, a machete, a knife—and make no tools other than scraping implements (used for making arrowheads), loosely woven palm-leaf bags, and wood bows and arrows. Their only ornaments are simple necklaces made from seeds, teeth, feathers, beads, and soda-can pull-tabs, which they often get from traders who barter with the Pirahã for Brazil nuts, wood, and sorva (a rubbery sap used to make chewing gum), and which the tribe members wear to ward off evil spirits.

"I'm Taking My Baby to Satan"

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:33:23 GMT

taru wuz here;

Muslims Furious as Prostitutes Don Traditional Islamic Dress

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:30:49 GMT

Kenya: Muslim leaders have demanded immediate action from the government as many prostitutes discard scanty outfits in favour of the buibui, a loose gown and head covering worn by Muslim women.Religious leaders fear that respectable women will be detained as prostitutes if the practice continues. Some Muslim women are considering abandoning the garment altogether, saying it has lost it's respect.Some of the prostitutes say they wear the garment to hide their identity. "I'm better off wearing the buibui so I look respectable. I can avoid arrest. I am just trying to get some money to live on," said one prostitute.Link: [url]http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7007922386[/url]Ever heard of the pregnant nun costume? Strippers dressed like nuns? Welcome to the club Ahkmed.

Future worlds tallest building (Burj Dubai) progress pics

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:32:03 GMT

Bush is the antichrist!

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:30:13 GMT

[url]http://www.bushisantichrist.com/\[/url]Of course!

The computer, the newest proof that there is a God:

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:21:48 GMT

Mankind is the most intelligent of all of the animals on the face of the Earth. Atheists and Intellectuals have said repeatedly that all we have and create is simply of our own doing. So let us take a look at the computer for a moment.Here we are on the internet right now, interconnected and able to communicate because of the technology made possible by years and years of mankinds hard work and a slow movement over the last few thousand years of technological progress.Mankind, the most intelligent animal on the face of the earth, with all of his skills and development and with all of his abilities took thousand of years working hard to continue to progress to get to this point.The computer could not be in existence today without all of the hard work and sloe progress from mankind working dilligently to better its way of life.Then there is mankind itself, which has its own computer, the human brain.Our brain is capable of processing and storeing knowledge much like the computer, however we go far past the computer in abilities. We are able to make our own dessisions, we can think, we feel, we love, we walk and talk, we drive our cars and fly our planes, we are able to build and create.The computer of our brain is much more sophisticated than the computer you are on right now.However even though it took mankind, the most intelligent being on this planet thousands of years to get to the point of development that he is capable of makeing the computer, and even though the human brain and mankind is more sophisticated than the computer.Atheists and Intellectuals choose to believe that the human brain was capable of existence without anyone being involved of helping to create it.As sophisticated as your computer is could it just have come into existence slowly all by itself? Of course not.Neither can the human brain.Sophisticated material, be it metal or biological in form, needs a intelligent form of life to create it. It does not happen all on its own.God is the answer to the question. That is where we come from, there had to be a intelligent form of life to invent humans and everything else we see every day.Viking

Rock is the devil!

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:29:09 GMT

and science proves hell.[url]http://www.av1611.org/hell_proof.html[/url][url]http://www.av1611.org/rock.html[/url]These have to be the two stupidest articles I have ever read..

Fact is so much more hysterical than fiction

Fayebelle — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:28:16 GMT

You just can't make shit like this up- 10 Commandments for Drivers :jesus: [url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070619/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_road_rage[/url]

Fifty ways to irritate an atheist, a lesson for the religious.

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:25:12 GMT

FIFTY WAYS TO IRRITATE AN ATHEISTSome foolproof methods to irritate your favorite atheist. Just be careful how you use them. 1) Ask them why they are bitter against God.2) Tell them that if there's no God, they might as well go out and kill people.3) Ask them to pray with you. 4) Insist that there is a God, and show them where in the Bible it says so.6) Tell them that the universe is too complex to "just exist," and must have been created by a God who "just exists."7) Make up statistics.9) Accuse them of persecuting you.10) Post inane arguments on the Internet, and never follow up on them.11) Tell them they know in their hearts that God exists.12) Before starting an argument, say "they're are an atheist? That means they're going to hell!"13) After losing the argument say, "I pity you."14) Accuse them of willfully ignoring the "obvious truth."15) Witness for Jesus, and completely ignore anything your competition says.16) Tell him you don't care what you say or prove, you will still have your faith.17) When given a Bible verse that looks bad, tell him that's what the verse says, but that's not what it means.18) Argue that the Bible stories are not myths . . . they're parables. And they're all true!19) Tell him that Moses wrote the Books of Moses.20) Explain that the lack of proof doesn't mean it didn't happen.21) Repeat something over and over, as if that made it true.22) Repeat something over and over, as if that made it true.23) Repeat something over and over, as if that made it true.24) Tell him that he acknowledges Christ every time he uses "A.D." -- which, of course, stands for "After Death."25) Accuse him of being an agnostic, since he isn't 100% positive that God does not exist.26) Insist that the Bible is meant to be taken literally -- all except that verse he just showed you.27) Tell him that God works in mysterious ways.28) ...and we're too small to comprehend his reasoning.29) Point out that the fact that he talks about God so much proves God's existence.30) If a plane crashes killing 300 passengers and crew, but one little girl survives with only third-degree burns, tell him that this miracle proves the existence of God.31) Insist that Noah's Ark and the Shroud of Turin are real.32) When he shows you a verse about genocide, ask him how he dares to question the morality of God.33) When asked to prove a statement you made, say that you already proved it.34) Tell him that we all fall short of God's grace.35) Insist that faith is the only logical answer.36) No matter what he quotes from the Bible, say that it's out of context.37) ...and when he points out that the quotes are in correct context, tell him you need to be a Christian to understand the true meaning of the Bible.38) Tell him you must study the Bible for many years to reject Christianity.39)if he points out that you reject Islam despite never having studied the Qu'ran, say that you have faith, and faith is all you need.40) Ask him how he knows God isn't real if he can't see the air.41) Sigh, shake your head, and say "I just know that someday you'll need Jesus."42) Talk about how you used to be a miserable, sinning, drug-abusing, alcoholic, sex-addicted, spouse-beating criminal until you found God.43) Tell him that God loves him, even if he doesn't love himself.44) Tell him about Christ's plan for salvation for the billionth time.45) Refuse to debate. 46) Attribute every apparent error in the Bible to mistranslation.47) ...and then pull up a mistranslation from Isaiah to prove that Jesus fulfilled prophecy.48) Smile smugly and tell him that there are no atheists in foxholes.49) Quote Psalm 14:1 to him. 50) Use only circular reasoning.

Goddess In America

Fayebelle — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:24:38 GMT

Not just Boe this time[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/us/14goddess.html?em&ex=1182052800&en=36ecc45f65f1d14e&ei=5087%0A[/url]

Lamb of God

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:20:20 GMT

you take away the sins of the world.

NO Ass-Pan-Ollie!!

SAMSON — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:20:53 GMT

WTF.....I spent 3 years in Highschool learning to speak Ass-pan-Ollie, and spent a summer in Costa Rica speaking Ass-Pan-Ollie. But as far as I'm concerned, while I'm in the USA, I'm GONNA SPEAK ENGLISH. Is this so wrong? You wanna speak Ass-Pan-Ollie? Then stay the hell in Messko, or Niggeragua, or Humpaburras, or El Slobberdoor, or whereever fucking morally corrupt fucking place you came from.

You To Can Be A Bible Puncher.

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:17:09 GMT

[B]YOU TO CAN BE A BIBLE PUNCHER.[I] a guide[/I][/B]Planning a career in online Christian fundamentalist apologetics? How about the exciting world of Young-Earth Creationism? Witnessing to, and debating with, atheists and other hellbound unsaved sinners on the internet can be hard work, so you need to familiarise yourself with the tried and tested methods used by fundies all around the world. After completing this simple training course, the shadow of doubt will never again flicker across your mind whilst listening to the lies and deceptions of those ignorant infidels who disagree with your self-evident truths.[B]1) Inerrancy[/B]First and foremost, the Bible is the absolute, literal word of God. Contrary to popular opinion, it contains none of the following:• errors of any kind• contradictions• absurditiesWhen you understand this, dealing with those who claim to have found a contradiction is simplicity itself: there are no contradictions, so he cannot have found one! You see? Easy, isn't it? If your opponent continues in his error after having this explained to him (nice and slowly), elaborate on your answer using an appropriate response from the following list:• That translation is incorrect - in the original texts a different word is used, so it is not a contradiction.• He is taking the verses out of context, so there is no contradiction.• Satan has blinded him to the truth. There is no contradiction, and he should pray to be shown the correct meaning.• This is only an apparent contradiction. That is not the same as an actual contradiction.• If the verses are interpreted correctly, it is obvious that there is no contradiction.• There are no contradictions in the Bible, so this is not a contradiction.• The contradiction is caused by his anachronistic thinking. The word [insert word here] had a different meaning back then.Having just demonstrated that the supposed contradictions do not exist, you have now proved that there are no contradictions in the Bible, reinforcing your claim that it is truly the unsullied Holy Word of God.[B]2) Science[/B]There is but one measuring stick required to determine the truth of any claim - how it compares with Holy Scripture. More precisely, how it compares with your personal reading of Scripture. So, if some secular humanist scientists dare to dream up a theory (or "wild guess", as it is more accurately known) that apparently conflicts with the teachings of the Bible, clearly these egg-head mad professors have made yet another idiotic mistake, possibly under demonic influence. How do we know they are mistaken? See "1 Inerrancy".Conversely, when science agrees with the Bible we should applaud the brave, Bible-believing investigators for supporting the Holy Word and showing the glory of Creation. But usually they are wrong.Never forget, the atheists are quick to use the findings of science as "evidence" in their arguments, but this is because materialism and science are their god and religion. They want the men in white coats to save them from the God they know will judge them.There are many things which science cannot explain. However, you can explain these things instantly and simply by saying "God did it". Perhaps the atheist will say "Well, we don't yet know how the Big Bang happened, and maybe never will, but we're working on it". Easy solution - God did it. Problem solved. However, some atheists are stubborn in their evil ways and you may have to repeat this scientific explanation to them many times before they accept it. Of course, when scientists eventually do come up with an answers for such problems, be prepared to patiently explain to them that this is what your religion taught all along, if interpreted correctly.[B]3) Debating techniques[/B]Here we delve into the murky world of online debating with heathens. You can witness to lost souls in USENET newsgroups (such as alt.atheism and talk.origins), or in message fora on their websites.[B]3)Self contradiction[/B]In a heated argument, you will often find yourself losing track of your previous posts, and the atheist will often accuse you of contradicting comments you made earlier. As your words are Bible-based, it stands to reason that they should therefore be correct at all times. Refer to "1 Inerrancy". Alternatively, remember that, as slaves of The Evil One, atheists will do their best to twist your words and attempt to confuse you. If this appears to be happening, ignore their comments and pray for strength.[B]4)Logic and reason[/B]These are the playthings of the unbeliever, and you should have no truck with them. Faith in the Lord is all you need. The atheist will try to imply that God should be bound by the rules of logic, but God invented logic and so cannot be constrained by it! The more illogical and unreasoning you are, the harder it becomes for atheists to refute your statements. They will scream "But that doesn't make sense! It is logically impossible!" - be that as it may, your faith will tell you that you are correct. With God, all things are possible - including impossible things. What more do you need?[B]5)The burden of proof is on the skeptic[/B]"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" you will be told. But just who is making the extraordinary claim here? You, who simply observe the Creator's hand in all things, or the infidel who against all logic and reason denies the very same. Clearly, it is incumbent on the unbelievers to support their ludicrous assertions that there is no God. Ask them if they can prove God does not exist. Ask how they can be so arrogant to make this claim, when they have not searched the entire universe for God. They will come back and ask you to disprove the existence of Zeus, Vishnu and unicorns, but you should dismiss such childish nonsense - there is no comparison between the fairy-tale gods of other religions and the Truth of Christianity, Their inability to disprove God is evidence enough that He is real. If they cannot overturn your theory, they are clearly being unreasonable by refusing to accept it.[B]6)Repeating yourself[/B]After spending a few days debating with a group of atheists, you should leave them alone for a week or so. This will give them time to come to terms with the truths you have revealed. Also, it will provide time for new people to join the discussion. This allows you to return to the forum once more and repeat your statements, unchanged, for the benefit of newcomers. We recommend storing your longer arguments in a text file, so it can be easily cut-and-pasted into the forum. If the forum regulars object, explain that, having already corrected their misconceptions, you are now simply trying to reach the new members and those who still unreasonably reject the truth. If they are civilised people, they will respect this and stand aside. Repeat this technique until you are banned from the board or placed in everybody's killfile.[B]7)Huge posts[/B]To take the wind out of your opponent's sails, reply to the smallest query with pages and pages of text. Ideally, you should spend a couple of hours writing this yourself, but if you don't have the time cut-and-paste relevant (or, if possible, irrelevant) information from other Christian websites or resources. Try to spend at least ten kilobytes explaining why they should pray more, why they should fear Hell, how Christ died for their sins, why prominent Christian philosophers and scientists disagree with them, how long-dead Christians have already proven them wrong, and so on. Ask as many obscure questions as possible. If they are truly sincere (which, being atheists, is impossible) they will answer all of your points. If they fail to answer all of your points and questions, victory is yours. Make a note of this humiliating defeat and remember to bring it up often when dealing with this particular individual. (This is also a handy technique to use during a live debate with evolutionists. )A variant on this theme is to post numerous verses from the Bible to support your argument. Why bother with a hundred words of explanation, when a single verse will do it all for you. Simply post the verse that refutes the atheist, and then maybe two or three more referring to hellfire. As the verses are known to be true, little more need be said on the matter. If the atheist predictably comes back with a counter argument, post the same verses again but suggest that he actually read them this time.[B]8)Grammar and spelling[/B]- Are not important, as long as the Spirit guides you. If you are criticised for being unable to form a sentence in English, or using words like "athiset", "Noahs arc", "evolotin" and "revilatian" - worry not. It is not the trivia of punctuation and spelling which is important, but getting the message of God across.Consider this excellent example. To the untrained eye, the writer may appear to be an illiterate, ignorant dolt, but just feel the love in his words:"i was wonder if you yourself knew that darwin disowned his theroy in his last days knowing that fossils show species suddenly appering not sight mutations made over long periods of time. the fact is eveolution is total improvible."Only the coldest of hearts could not be moved by such testimony. This is the sort of level of incoherent drooling you should be aiming for.You should combine a flimsy grasp of the English language with your own distinctive writing style. The following are quite fashionable at the moment:• writing everything in lower case without any punctuation at all this can be quite difficult to read but is very easy to type which is a bonus dont you think• ALTERNATIVELY, WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPS. THIS MAKES YOUR IMPORTANT MESSAGE STAND OUT AND PEOPLE WILL TAKE NOTICE OF IT AND REALISE THAT YOU REALLY MEAN IT.• short, disjointed.....sentences separated by long......strings of dots.....this makes you look quite.....thoughtful as if you are......pausing every now and......then.• Overuse of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! can emphasise the point you are trying to make!!!!!!!!!!!! Question marks also work well, don't they???????????????????????????• Show ur mastery of the Internet by using words like "u" instead of "you", "2" instead of "to" and "too", "ur" instead of "your" and "you're", and u 2 can spread the gospel 2 other kewl d00dz.If English is not your first language, all the better. The way you present your argument says a lot about you, so pick wisely.[B]9)Knowledge of the subject[/B]Whether you are talking about evolution, the origins of the universe, basic human anatomy, or the structure of the solar system, there is no need to concern yourself with learning anything at all about the issue. See "1 Inerrancy". By definition, those who disagree with you are wrong, deluded and possibly perverts, so it is a bad idea to pollute your mind with their religious beliefs. All the evidence in the world is no match for a single grain of the True Faith.If they say "But evolution doesn't work like that! You are completely clueless!" remind them that evolution doesn't actually work at all. Has a cow ever given birth to a dog? Do we see hydrogen turning into people around us? If we "evolved" from chimps, why are there still chimps? Why do we not see amoebae sprouting legs and talking? These harsh insights will cut through their dogma like a hot knife through butter.If discussing evolution, try asking for a complete list of transitional fossils from ape to human. They may provide you with a few dozen examples, but it is hardly complete, is it? How can you be expected to accept such shoddy evidence? Go on to inform them that those are not transitional fossils anyway, as there are no transitionals. Clearly God created all species individually, otherwise they would have no trouble finding the evidence. The gaps in the fossil record are therefore solid evidence for creationism.If they refer you to papers or websites showing that the universe is billions of years old, refer them in turn to Genesis. Explain how carbon dating methods have been shown to be hopelessly flawed. For instance, when the Turin Shroud was dated, the so-called experts put it around the 14th Century, instead of 33AD. This obviously calls into question all the other radiometric dating guesses they will throw around.[B]10)Definitions of words[/B]Words can often mean several different things. For example, the word "set" has dozens of meanings : a set of things; a badger lives in a set; a jelly will set; you can set something down on a table; you can set up a meeting; and so on. Words mean what you need them to mean at any particular time. This is a common reason why you will find atheists misunderstanding things - they think you mean one thing, when actually you were talking about something else. It's hardly your fault if they are unable to keep up, is it? For example, Genesis speaks of a mist rising from the ground to water the Earth. This can mean : mist, rain, dew, fog, clouds, water vapour, condensation, snow, hail, sleet or any other conceivable form of precipitation. Let the Spirit guide you in this matter, and if the atheist claims you are mistaken or contradicting yourself, let the Spirit guide you once more to the true definition of the word. This may happen many times, as you can easily misinterpret the Spirit's guidance[B]11)Mental gymnastics[/B]Lying for JesusBeing economical with the truth, making up data on the spot and ignoring conflicting evidence are all handy weapons in your arsenal. The important thing is to convince the opponent of the veracity of your claims. Just how you go about this is unimportant. Feel free to refer to other fundamentalist works, whether or not they have been supposedly "discredited", "refuted" or "demonstrated to be false" - the ICR website and publications, Jack Chick tracts, Dr.Dino's website and videos, Answers In Genesis, things you remember hearing from other fundies or as a child in Sunday School, and so on. When comparing the works of God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians against deviant secular humanist scientists, who are you going to believe?Remember, you are here to save their immortal soul from the burning fires of Hell, not educate them in stuff they don't really need to know anyway. If you have a dubious argument based on fictional data, but it works, then there is no problem. The vital matter is bringing souls to Jesus and how you go about that is immaterial. The ends justify the means, and in this case the "ends" are souls being saved. Such a noble and worthy goal itself justifies any means you see fit to use. Physical force is generally frowned upon, although there are clear historical precedents for this. Use your own judgement.Don't forget, the Lord is watching at all times, and will certainly forgive you as long as you are spreading His good news. So go to it![B]12)Compartmentalisation[/B]In this world, what you know to be true often conflicts with the reality around you. To be a soldier for Christ it will help enormously if you can master the technique of mental compartmentalisation. This means you must be able to keep your scriptural knowledge away from the secular knowledge that allows you to function in wordly matters, e.g. at your place of work. For example, even though science is clearly mistaken about the processes involved in radioactive decay (see the "carbon dating" example above), if you worked at a nuclear power plant it would be necessary to assume the opposite was true - otherwise it would be impossible to build nuclear reactors. Likewise, a good fundy astronomer knows that the correct date of the universe is about 10,000 years at most, but must be able to examine galaxies millions of light-years away and explain them according to the secular model of cosmology. Being able to hold two (or more) sets of mutually exclusive thoughts at once is extremely beneficial to the up-and-coming fundy on the internet.Remember, something might be "true" while you're at work or sitting an exam, but it's still completely wrong, and you should switch back to the "Christian Compartment" in your brain whenever possible.[B]13)Wilful ignorance[/B]Ignorance is bliss, and what is more blissful than reading the Word Of God? You will often find yourself accused of this "crime", but why should you waste time trying to learn how the unbelievers lie to themselves? You don't need to read a book on evolution to know that it is wrong. You don't need to read a book about the so-called Big Bang to know that it is a delusion.It is the atheists who are wildly ignorant for not reading the Bible! Sure, many of them say they have read it, but this is clearly a lie - if they've read it, how come they don't believe it?Don't waste your precious time trying to get to grips with their overly-complicated theories, when you have a much simpler theory that you already know is true.[B]14)Conclusion[/B]There you have it – Christian Thought For Beginners.All you need to do now is decide how to sign off your devastating arguments. There is classic arrogant abuse, such as "Ha ha ha what an idiot! God made it all! Get an education."; or patronising the opponent - "I'll pray that God opens your closed mind and eyes"; a selection of obscure Bible verses, maybe; and finally, the ever popular subtle threats of hellfire - "Well, I've told you the Truth, I only hope you like it HOT after you die".Don't forget what you've learned : return a week later and post exactly the same assertions that you started with.[size=1]with thanks to adrian barnett[/size]

Myspace makes a difference

Fayebelle — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:19:27 GMT

In case anybody has missed the story of Kaleb on myspace- I'm putting the link here. The reason that this is in the Religion forum is because all this family is asking for are prayers (not such a tall request considering their situation) Kristy updates her blogs daily if you want to follow Kaleb's progress[url]http://www.myspace.com/kristyreynolds[/url]

Jesus, Your Attorney At Law

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:18:38 GMT

"I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God."Would you go to court without an Attorney? I sure wouldn't, and neither should you. If you live to be 100 years old, your life in relation to eternity will not be even as large as a single atom is, in relation to the universe.Because you love Me, I will rescue you; I will protect you, for you acknowledge My name. You will call upon Me, and I will answer you; I will be with you in trouble, I will deliver you and honor you. With long life I will satisfy you and show you My salvation. If I am for you, who can be against you? Who shall separate you from My love? Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate you from My love. My love for you endures forever!With All My Love,The Lord

Party Politics, by Robert Service, excerpted

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:18:30 GMT

Robert Serrvice wrote Comrades: A World History of Communism and is considered an expert on the subject.[url]http://www.newstatesman.com/200706110044[/url][B]Party politics[/B]Robert ServicePublished 07 June 2007Communism destroyed millions of lives, but its critics are now branded "neocons". Why has the left's poisoned love affair with it endured? Communism, like nuclear fuel, has a long afterlife. In country after country across Europe - from Russia to Albania - it has been discredited for its record in power. No government in Africa or the Americas subscribes to it except the Castro regime in Cuba. In Asia, the communist flag is waved in Vietnam and China without anyone denying that the economic future lies with capitalism; only North Korea stands by the basic precepts of Marxism-Leninism.What happened in the October 1917 revolution in Russia was an ideological bank robbery. Its leaders were nothing if not daring. Lenin and his party took over a state and then declared that no other kind of socialism was worthy of the name. They instituted a red terror. They seized hold of an entire economy, persecuted all religious faith, imposed a one-ideology media and treated society as a resource to be mobilised on their whim. These are historical facts that no communist in the 1920s sought to deny. Quite theopposite: the facts were advertised by the Communist International as the only way to do away with "bourgeois rule" and induce the birth of true socialism.A minority of socialists around the world accepted this case, formed communist parties and joined the Communist International. None of these parties, except for the Mongolian one, stood a serious chance of coming to power until after the Second World War. Geopolitics changed after 1945. The Yugoslav communists had won supremacy in wartime. The Soviet army, being the occupying force elsewhere in eastern Europe, imposed a communist state order east of the river Elbe. In 1949, China experienced a communist military and political take-over. Ten years later, Cuba went the same way.In doing the research for my book Comrades: A World History of Communism, I tried to find whether there was a basic pattern to the regimes that resulted. The conclusion was a stark one. In all cases of durable state communism, there was some approximation to the Soviet "model". A single party kept itself in power without concern for electoral mandate. A nomenklatura system of personnel appointment was introduced. Religion was harassed. National traditions were emasculated. The rule of law was flouted.The political police was ubiquitous and ruthless; labour camps were established. Foreign travel permits were made hard to come by. Radio and TV broadcasts from abroad were banned. A prim public culture was installed.This was the pattern despite the many national differences. Popular music in Cuba remained lively and beautiful even though its exponents could not take themselves and their instruments to other countries. In Poland, the Catholic Church was allowed to function in the open. In China, there was some pride - except during the cultural revolution of the late 1960s - in those emperors who had governed a unified nation.[URL="http://www.newstatesman.com/200706110044"]........More....[/URL]

Was the church helping WW2 warcriminals?

Ghost — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:14:42 GMT

taru wuz here;

Chinese Productivity and Pr0n

SAMSON — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:16:15 GMT

taru wuz here;