padren

If the man has any American ideals, I find the fact he subverts them to be an intellectually dishonest pedantic hack slightly more important than his capacity (or lack there of) to walk on water. I really don't care about his background either - if he's stooped to the sorts of moral cowardice he displays in that video you posted, he's long since burned any credit he could have previously gained... he could have answered the question in any number of ways without resorting to such disgusting tactics. Seriously - if you are going to hold selected passages in the Koran against all 1.5 billion people practicing Islam you better be okay with the same argument being used against Christians. If you are going to hold the atrocities of some Muslims against all Muslims (going back to 628 AD at that...) you better be willing to accept Christianity is no less bloody. Why the hell can't we just deal with the specific Muslims that do want to kill us? They do exist! They teach that the Koran instructs it's followers to kill Americans - just as abortion bombers teach that the Bible justifies killing American doctors. Why do we need to these BS generalizations to ensure an entire race or religion can be denigrated - is everything a bloody black-and-white holy war with these guys?? In short - you have to be an abject coward to beat a man with a yard stick you yourself would refuse to be measured by. Frankly, I do not call that an American ideal. PS: I have no idea what you're saying about buses.... sorry.

I do have some sympathy for people who want to ban alcohol sales, at least under certain circumstances. I mean, if you live in a town full of people who don't drink, who don't like booze, who've never sold booze - you can understand why they may be reticent about some new guy coming to town wanting to open a biker bar. I don't think it's a common situation, but it does highlight the devil's argument in the issue. Personally, I think the correct sort of law for the Senator to propose would be one that helps place the burdens (ie costs) of plastic bags upon those who buy and use them. We already do this with cars, gasoline, cigarettes and alcohol etc to one degree or another. However, the law in question would arise from an investigation - that investigation would be initiated by the claims that damage is being done and no one is taking responsibility for it. It's especially tricky because we already ignore many ancillary costs on products in our society, and picking one out over others could easily have more to do with political opportunism than justice. As I replied to Moontanman: "If plastic is resulting in a real cost to living increase for a wider swath of society than just those who use them - that's a cost that should be balanced out... but it's a ridiculously tricky process, especially with politics involved." - I don't think it's easy, but I think that if we have any chance of resolving these sorts of issues, we have to start by identifying the harm that is going on without accountability. More information, more choices, and a more honestly distributed burden of cost each are preferable (in my opinion) to bans on behavior. I would argue access to cups larger than 16 ounces hasn't killed anyone in New York - but poor diets are another story. Trying to force healthier diets through a limitation on drink sizes is not, imo, how you improve poor diets.

I'd say most laws are governed by weighing how to ensure the rights and actions of one do not unduly impede the rights and actions of others, and provide a common framework for resolving our differences and maintaining our expectations. Some laws are more restricting than others depending on severity of the situation (such as the draft - which can be either reasonable or outrageous depending on the circumstances) that they are in response to, but I think you can isolate the specific vein of laws that are designed to reduce choice as a means to help us be better. I fully understand why many liquor stores would choose not to sell booze on Sundays, but for that to be mandated into law in some places seems bizarre and draconian to me. I would complain about the heath care mandate, but the health care crisis is a greater threat to us than any foreign power at this time so at least I can respect the need for a short term "medical draft" until we get a real solution in place. In short, I think laws that clarify responsibilities and expectations (say, to drive a car) as a response to a social need (say, the harm caused by untrained reckless driving) are a perfectly acceptable way to form a common consensus within a society. When a law is passed not because there is a need for it, but because some idle idiot has delusions of engineering some grand social paradigm through restrictive legislation than a gross line has been crossed. If the paper bags are allowed to decompose, they won't be recycled into more paper bags, which means more trees get cut down. Of course if they are recycled, that's a factory's worth of carbon in the process anyway to get them back into paper bags. I haven't exactly researched the numbers of glass vs. plastic bottles (I just recycle both unless I'm not home and there's only a garbage bin nearby) but I don't see how any numbers would justify a ban. If plastic is resulting in a real cost to living increase for a wider swath of society than just those who use them - that's a cost that should be balanced out... but it's a ridiculously tricky process, especially with politics involved. If people didn't love labels they wouldn't buy designer label clothes, I don't really see any reason people wouldn't apply this to food. If someone cares more about a label than the actual information it conveys that's their prerogative, imo. I've never really encountered this outside of some vague assertion that using the word "retarded" had become offensive, but I've yet to encounter anyone who will continue to argue when aggressively contested. Have you experienced this very much?

One of the more annoying things about being liberal is even on the left it's a pretty wide brush, and I'm pretty sure if you call yourself liberal there's a whole swath of the wing you just try to tune out as benign fruitcakes - I know I do. Some liberal policies have really been irritating me lately though, so I feel like venting: Green policies that aren't green yet limit choice: I wonderfully discovered we don't allow plastic bags at groceries anymore, and have to pay for paper ones. I have never once thrown out a plastic grocery bag unless it was destroyed or hopelessly dirty. I'm not especially green, but I reuse every single one for garbage cans and to pick up after my dog. Now, I have to buy special plastic bags to be shipped from who-knows-where to do the same thing, while I get paper bags that are so useless they go straight back into the recycle bin - which in itself is not without it's carbon footprint. Of course, I could get a canvas bag (and God knows how much natural or food producing land world-wide is lost to demand for cotton) to shlep around with, wash every stinking time something leaks - but even this results in a larger carbon footprint, and I am still having to buy plastic bags I wouldn't otherwise. It's not just that the entire premise is flawed, it's that there are liberals who genuinely believe they can somehow pass laws to force us to make better choices than we could conceivably make for ourselves on our own, and by doing so they'll make us better people. All through the gentle touch of limiting choice. Personally, find the entire vein of reasoning as repulsive as the one that compels some conservatives to force a woman to have a wand shoved up in places before "allowing" her to make her own choice about her pregnancy. The New York 16oz cup limit is also of the same bent and equally inane, imo, and I honestly think this stuff gives liberals a bad name. I can't even imagine the mindset that thinks things like this are a good idea. Anyway - comments and vents welcome.

Wow, I watched that video, and he appears to be everything wrong with a politician: 1) Blames Islam for people killing in the name of Islam.... the fawk? He can prattle off dates about when Islam got all stabby (because Christianity was soooo not stabby in 620 ad ) but when it comes to saying anything substantial, either he is just unable or unwilling to give any sort of nuanced answer - which of course the crowd loves. 2) He all but states his actions are beyond reproach - not in general - not to Good Honest Christian Americans... but he doesn't have to explain himself to Dirty Stabby Muslims because "You attacked us" and... I guess when he's decided you are beneath him, he doesn't even have to treat you like a person. So far, all I see is dishonesty, indecency, and intellectual corruption. If you have to bad mouth people and quote entirely unrelated numbers just to drum up an emotional response, that's intellectually corrupt. If you treat someone as less than a person because you don't like their religion (not them, not their actions, but the actions of a handful out of the 1.5+ billion practitioners) than I can't quite use the word "decency" to describe them. If he tried be honest, or decent, or decided an intellectual conversation was worth more than sycophantic pandering I'd probably find him less repulsive, but you'll have to actually outline what makes him appealing as I can't see it. Can you cite some sort basis for him, not being a total whiny insipid snot? P.S: I would support Adam West though, even if he ran as Adam We. That kid's got class.

There are two seperate issues in my opinion with both Bachmann and McCarthy: 1) The dark language of spooky scary bad people bent on destroying the country is clearly directed at impacting popular opinion, without adding a single bloody piece of information. I don't care how legitimate or not any given issue is: fear mongering is fear mongering - pure and simple. Real legitimate issues (including any real commies or radical Muslims illegally influencing our society) can and should be dealt with - without fear mongering. Is that too much to ask? 2) There is less interest in isolating and prosecuting any genuine threats than in painting (with the widest possible brush) any and all political opponents as complicit either through ignorance or through willful intent (due to "a general hatred of 'Merican Freedumbs" etc) which runs entirely counter to the American ideal of free assembly and association. If we want to bring up McCarthy style tactics - why don't we root out the Wall Street agents that have very clearly, publicly and shamelessly infiltrated all levels of our government? Those bastards have penetrated all levels of our economy to the depth that I doubt I'll ever walk in a straight line again - and they are all unpunished - but you want me to be afraid of Muslims now? Please - show an example of how our rights or way of life could be in anyway subverted through such dastardly infiltrations. If someone leaks classified material we have processes for prosecuting that, and I'd be willing to bet both China and Russia expend way more with way better results to that end than all the Islamic nations of the world combined. Lastly, I have no idea who these "politically correct types" that pretend they have a right to not be offended are... but I recall a bunch of them freaking out over a Mosque or rec center or something in New York being built... wait, nope those were rugged thick skinned conservatives who got all offended. Maybe I am thinking of those crazy liberals who felt offended because even though it didn't affect them, some dudes wanted to get married and... no wait - those were conservatives again. I know - it's those libbies who insist that they'll be offended if you don't use the Christian-friendly phrase "Merry Christmas" during the holidays, because hearing a non-Christian use a phrase like "Happy Holidays" is so very politically incorrect... wait, who are the rugged individualist again, and who are the thin skinned whiners that take offense to everything? It's almost as if fear mongering and generalized debasement of entire swaths of society with no regard for the precision of the brushstrokes results in something less than productive and balanced policy towards genuine threats. I guess we need to root out all the McCarthyists! They are infiltrating the government!

Three words: Drunken Dinosaur Jousting Would probably require some upgrades on the animatronics (sic?) but nothing a few extra hundred horsepower couldn't solve.

Search results aside, you seem to be using a metric that includes popularity - not only who is most influential, but is commonly known as such. For instance Galen is well known by name (unlike whomever invented fire) but his name isn't well known to most... yet he had a tremendous impact on the course of western civilization, if for no other reason than because as a result of his work, a lot more people lived and went on to influence the world their own ways. I would not be surprised if many of the people who made Jesus influential in the first 1000 years of Christianity owe their lives to the influence of Galen's work. Additionally, for all the good things Galen was able to contribute to medicine, he also got enough things wrong that aspects of medical treatment were arguably stunted - leading to a lot of other people dying of bloodletting than may have otherwise. He was not just an early practitioner of medicine, but an early pioneer of the practice of medicine. While the topic is an interesting way to examine the impacts of lots of people and consider them, it has very little value as a competitively ranked list - to determine who is more influential, you have to examine a million versions of Bizarro-Earth that are entirely theoretical. While some arguments may still be easy enough to refute if they contain internal contradictions or fallacies, most evaluations are "equallyish valid and untestable" and reflect more about the person's unique definition of influence than it contributes to establishing a broader consensus with a common definition of influence. It's a pretty subjective topic at any depth - for instance, who was more influential, Jesus, or the people who wrote his stories down? You could argue they would never have written a thing without Jesus, but no one would even know who Jesus was if they hadn't written about him. Additionally, for all the stories around Jesus, those people who picked through and selected the texts that eventually became the New Testament could easily have had a greater impact than Jesus himself. The fact that those people could have added, removed, or edited any of the texts ascribed to Jesus (whether or not they did) had to have had a huge impact on everything we know today about Jesus. Of course, I have no idea what those Bizarro-Earths would actually look like, but I think there would be some pretty radically different ones as a result. For an extra layer of subjectivity - even if someone is a Muslim that doesn't think about Jesus at all, what influence did the Catholic Church, with the holy crusades and whatnot have on Islam? It may have been inevitable that some major western power would go tromping through that part of the world had the Catholic Church not been seeded early to fill the vacuum, but in our history Christianity has had a huge impact (wanted or not) on the eventual shaping of contemporary Islam... which undoubtedly worked both ways. It's a fun topic, but definitely quite subjective.

How does that make Issac less of a religious man, or his works less scientific in nature? For bonus points: If all the "rational thinkers" of the day had rejected Newton's contributions to science outright "for persisting in his sky fairy beliefs" would you say the church would be more or less power today as a result? So is manifest destiny, equality, self defense, protecting the poor, protecting the job creators, protecting jobs, protecting the environment, imminent domain, and many more. Luckily none of those things are only those things - including religion. Religion done badly is good at justifying irrational evils, but so are most things that are done badly. You don't need religion to justify irrational evils, only fear. Another bonus question - which "evil" is more irrational? 1) The idea that just about any law abiding citizen has the right to own a gun, based on an anachronistic reactionary revolution-era constitutional amendment 2) The idea that a government has the right to decide whether average law abiding citizens have the right to bare arms If people are getting away with using religion as a tool for justifying irrational evils... just perhaps more rational people need to be involved in the dialogue*? * again to be clear simply shouting "Sucks to your sky fairies!" does not constitute getting "involved" in the dialogue.

What about believing in God is mutually exclusive with reason? The middle ground (in my opinion) is rather simple - if someone doesn't want to eat pork for religious reasons, that's their prerogative, when they don't want you to eat pork because of their religion without a convincing reasonable secular basis then "they've left the middle ground." I am pretty sure that's the only way a plurality of religions (including the lack thereof) can exist in a single society, is there something I missed? Should we assume no such coexistence is possible, and just have the believers and nonbelievers battle it out on pay per view to see who takes it all? I have no patience for people claiming their favorite sky fairies have placed demands on how I must live my life and I am sure I've made that rather caustically clear in these forums more than once... but seriously: Isaac Newton managed to be rational 6 days a week, go to church on Sundays, and still do more to advance every disciple of modern science on Sunday afternoons than most people (atheists alike) will contribute in a lifetime. You can be religious with no other belief than "this universe was intelligently created" and that doesn't have to be based on anything other than a feeling - fundamentally, that belief is as reasonable as any other. Personally, I don't believe the question of God is relevant to my life at all, and for all intensive purposes I'm an atheist functionally. I am all but certain that when I die my "self" will no more exist than it did before I was born - that my life is but a few moments in between oblivion. When I die I doubt there will be a single thing of me left to care about a single thing I did while alive. Being alive of course, I love the hell out of it and plan to do everything I can before I die. That of course leaves me trying to figure out what's worth doing while I'm alive, and frankly no amount of reason will ever determine that. Reason is a vital tool I use to shape my understanding so I can better determine what I feel like doing, but reason doesn't provide any quintessential existential tools to figure out what's worth doing. Reason does help sort out what things aren't worth doing (ie, what is fruitless or counterproductive) towards a goal, or what is likely to be productive towards a goal - but it doesn't offer any quintessential truths about those goals' value to a temporary entity just passing through. There could theoretically be some sort of "Pinnacle Argument of Reason" that does answer that fundamental question of what's worth doing - but I've never heard it. Until I hear it, I wouldn't know if it's stronger than how I feel about what's worth doing. If I heard it, I wouldn't know if I would agree, or if I'd be unreasonable or if the reasoning was insufficient. There's lot I don't know about what a "rational basis for determining what's worth doing" would look like, but I am sure that there's no bloody need for a consensus at that level for us to be able to live in a functional society! So why can't we skip blaming the root of "religion" for all the irrational evils of the world and address the actual blatantly sick mentalities that are disturbing to most religious and non religious people alike? The idea of teaching creationism in public schools should disturb any religious person in the United States that believes this country is supposed to protect religious equality. The idea of denying a woman's right to make her own medical choices (including to carry a pregnancy) based on a religious argument should also be disturbing - it disturbed Supreme Court Justices Warren E. Burger (Presbyterian), Harry Blackmun (Methodist), William O. Douglas (Presbyterian), William J. Brennan, Jr. (Roman Catholic), Potter Stewart (Episcopalian), Thurgood Marshall (Episcopalian) and Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (Presbyterian) to vote 7-2 in Roe vs. Wade against Byron White and William Rehnquist. We have a secular legal and legislative framework in this country because it provides a common framework for everyone. A real nice feature is anyone can make a rational reasonable secular argument regardless of their religion. Some people are really into helping the homeless, some for secular reasons and some not. Regardless of why it matters to them personally, any proponent can make a case for why society should care in a secular fashion. Claims can be made and evidence weighed, without religion ever being a factor. What's wrong with that approach?

There are a whole lot of things that much organized religion does in this country that is outright appalling, but does it have to be as simple as "religion vs. reason" or can their be middle ground? Personally, I'm a hard agnostic, but I don't find fault with anyone for believing in God - I don't even consider the belief to be unreasonable. Where it goes all wrong is when people choose to apply "faith" to the outright denial of reality as it's superior but it's not just religion that does that, nor is it all religion. If a group of religious people want laws that favor their faith specifically and disfavor others then by definition they do not believe in living in a society with an egalitarian perspective on religious plurality. We need to reject that mentality, not religion itself. Where the discussion starts to get difficult, is when atheists as theists alike start to discuss where things go wrong, it often gets put back to the whole original "belief in God" thing. Instead of getting hung up on figuring out why someone believes in a God, why not ask why they don't believe in an ever so incrementally better God? Like a version of Christianity that can co-exist with a plurality of religions (and lack there-of) within a society that doesn't panic over the hurricanes a gay pride parade will bring? I think a lot of Christians are pretty tired of the fundamentalist arms of the church and are especially frustrated by anti-scientific rhetoric, but they aren't going to magically turn their religion off either. If atheists don't have more to add to the discussion of religion in the 21st century than "sucks to your sky fairies" then we'll basically be left out of it. I understand how frustrating it can be to try to engage in a conversation in a reasonable way with people who filter everything you say against a core belief that isn't even claimed to be reasonable. At least atheists try to live up to that claim. However, that doesn't mean they are incapable of seeing reason, aren't drawn to reasonable arguments, nor that they can't eventually reconcile their faith with facts. It's far easier for someone to reconcile their faith with science than it is for them to discard their faith entirely.

By that argument, non-human entities aren't capable of good either. I'd be happy to argue that animals can be, if not evil, at least jerks. Males often murder the offspring of other males, just to rape the female mothers - I believe that is observed in all sorts of mammals from bears to dolphins. Meerkat females of high social status will kill the offspring of lower status females so those females can spend more time playing nanny for their offspring. Whether you feel this is not evil and is "innocent" because the critters' instincts are natural - there is no less pain and suffering for that fact. All this is just the suffering we see caused by nature. The sheer volume of life that experienced truly horrific existences - solely because evolution has to try "nearly everything" before natural selection favors the few variations that help reproduction. If you're really lucky, that will correlate to less suffering, or if you're a praying mantis - having your head bitten off. Nature produces nice pretty rivers too, but it takes a very long time of water going just about everywhere, until it carves the most efficient path. In terms of nature and evolution, even the "order" we see that makes for the biological equivalent of "pretty rivers" you can't forget the banks are sandbagged with millions of dead who did nothing to deserve suffering other than be randomly born with genetic handicaps that assure their deaths. Nature never "drives" a species forward, it corrupts their genes so they go in every direction, and the one direction that doesn't include total and complete die off becomes what people call "forward" since that's the only place you'll find any survivors of the species. Even then you have to be really lucky, because most species arrive at dead ends anyway - no matter what they overcame to get there.

The only answer then is to develop a time machine. I think it'll take a lot of work though - probably tons of people working for generations. Perhaps the best solution is to have lots of children, and teach them physics?

It boils down to whether a minority of humans should be allowed to exercise their basic human rights to the point of causing massive near-extinction level events. Of course, if it's reproductive rights, we are then talking about whether a minority that becomes a majority should be allowed to have that power - whether the discussion arguably happens before or after that minority becomes the majority being beside the point. I would personally argue, that if humans decide in the end not to run ourselves into extinction (whether by over population or any other issue) then it will be because we've managed to find some balance between our natural instincts, our intellectual understanding of the world, and how to live contently without creating problems with our neighbors. Any legislative effort to enforce a reproductive policy at the expensive of basic human rights would only undermine progress towards finding that balance. It would suppress people's drives, which retards growth and diverts the suppressed population's efforts towards eroding and bypassing the oppressive policy, when they could be learning about how much better life is when you have access to birth control. In short, being afraid that a bunch of people "acting like animals" will lead to a crisis is no justification for acting like a bunch of animals.

Trying to set shoes and underwear on fire to blow up a plane in the air is a very different sort of attack than hijacking a plane to use as a weapon. It's also worth noting that in those cases, it was again passengers on the planes that thwarted those attempts - not all the people sending luggage through x-rays, groping children and old ladies, and wide-net no fly lists. How many terrorist attacks have been thwarted by fighter jets? They did a lot more than that - they figured out what was happening, reacted to the new information, and changed their strategy accordingly. I am not saying that there is no place for improved security procedures - but airport security is nothing more than dinner theater. A friend of mine left the country and came back and it wasn't until she was back in Miami that she even realized she had a giant hunting knife in her carry on purse for the whole trip - it went through x-ray both times, it just didn't show up buried in the loose change in the bottom... of course if they found toothpaste on the scan they'd have dug through everything, but they didn't.... and yet again the sad charade we call airport security grinds along at umpteen dollars an hour. If you think Al-Qaeda is sitting around plotting how, if only they could get around the TSA they could finally make an attack again you're missing the point - Al Qaeda knows US airport security is a joke. The last three attacks I am aware of (Flight 93, the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber) were all thwarted by passengers, and all got past airport security - the last two were even post 9-11. Am I missing some stellar TSA work somewhere? What terrorists have been caught trying to board a plane with explosives? If you really stopped fearing the dog, you wouldn't be staring at a 12 foot brick wall every time you set foot outside your house, you'd be able to chat with your neighbors instead of just hear them walking around on the other side of that wall, and your kids would be playing in the sun instead of under the shadow of a bloody massive 12 foot brick wall. That's almost as silly as saying "You're not afraid to speak freely" because you feel safe behind a wall of self-censorship. If you're scared to live your life, you haven't gotten past the fear simply because you're not afraid to not live your life.

They only succeeded in 3 out of 4 attacks on 9/11 - if you recall, the fourth plane went down before it could be dropped onto a target. That wasn't because of the TSA, the DHS, enhanced interrogations or any of the policies we now have to keep us "safe" - it was the fact that passengers were able to crowd-source with other civilians (often family members) 1000s of miles away thanks to cell phones that (even in 2001) could connect and maintain calls despite being captives in the back of a 757 screaming through the air. Just the consumer technology to achieve that in itself is pretty amazing; it's a testament to our passion for open, unfettered communication. A free and open press also had a lot to do with it - had we been the sort of society to impose a media blackout during an attack, the results of Flight 93 could have been very different. They never attempted that sort of hijacking again because the main trick they used to pull it off (that civilians would cooperate if they believed only a ransom was desired) failed within 29 minutes the last time it was used. Just consider that when "wheels up" occurred on flight 93, no one had heard of a plane being used as a bomb. The hijackers didn't take the plane until 9:28, and the passengers cooperated until 9:57 when they figured out what was happening. Sorry, but I just can't give that one to the "successes on the war on terror" when it was "American civilians just being civilians" that stopped Al Qaeda's plane dropping strategy in it's tracks, only minutes into the first and last day to ever be used.

People are afraid to fly - they are afraid of tiny bottle of liquid they might miss that could cause them a huge delay or the pair of rogue clippers that could get them chastised by the TSA. No one I know thinks terrorists are scary, just the people "protecting" us from them. I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree about the civil liberties issue then, I've never felt that knowing someone personally was a prerequisite for being concerned with their civil rights. We march John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson through the legal system without giving into the fears that civilized law may be too soft for such monsters, I think we can address due process for enemy combatants sometime before the end of hostilities in the War on Terror. Unless that's too scary, of course.

Other than fear, why would Americans forfeit so many civil liberties for so long? We still have the PATRIOT Act, US citizens can be killed by presidential order, we have the TSA groping people in airports, "due process" no longer means "legal process" if the person it applies to is scary enough, we have indefinite detainment, we have gitmo, waterboarding, warrantless wiretaps.... As bad as the money problem is - the shift socially since the Clinton era remains painful every single day. I don't know about anyone else, but as much as I appreciate the gains we've made, the sheer change in mood adds a rather stark contrast between what I see day to day, and what I remember. There is next to no faith in the three branches of government anymore, in the people we elect, in the economy or our global position in the future. If you can't see the fear, it's because it's too deeply buried under exhaustion and resignation.

I agree entirely, with the one stipulation being age of consent primarily (in the contemporary sense) applies to adult sexual relationships - marriage or otherwise. My point is that where consent ages are low, they are that low because people got in the habit of marrying off their young daughters as property, which is tied to fertility far more than the girl's personal development. It is not that simple because Christians do not, and never have agreed on what is a sin. As I mentioned twice before, these little disagreements have literally led to Christians burning Christians over the semantics. I know the church has evolved a lot since it's "burny days" and that is great, but the only real consensus that came out of it is that it's probably a little over the top to set people on fire who disagree about scripture. The actual disagreements have never gone away, and GBLT issues are just a few of the modern ones. It's not like Christians agree on contraception, abortion, sex education, adoption, sex before marriage, divorce, interfaith marriage, interracial marriage, Sunday services, prayer, graven images that are not of The Lord, graven images that are of The Lord, saints, popes, bishops, cardinals, angels, demonic possession, non-Christian holidays, coffee, alcohol, drugs, blood transfusions, modern medicine in general, underwear, rock music, any music newer than rock music, Ireland, profanity... do I need to go on? The GBLT stuff is just high on the radar at the moment, but there is always vehement disagreement among Christians about what is a sin.

Well, that only applies to people who define marriage a certain way - not everyone considers the possibility of pregnancy a necessary component for a complete marriage. I certainly do not, nor do most Christians that I am aware of, since most Christian churches are happy to marry sterile couples and many marry homosexual couples. Secondarily, the age of consent is only tied to the capacity of the minor party to understand the implications of their actions on par with their partner - any tie to the age of fertility is a vestige of when daughters were property, and only had value when they could married off and give a husband sons. Which Christians??? I understand some Christians consider LGBT people (unless you want to debate if it's a lifestyle or intrinsic) simply as people, while others say they are okay only if they don't profess they are Christian, and yet other Christians condemn anyone who is LGBT regardless of (or lack of) faith. What you are saying is only true for some Christians, but you can say almost anything and it will be true for some people within any large demographic, religious or otherwise. I am still unconvinced this hair can be split. Side note: I would have taken issue with some of the hearsay comments, but what is going to be illuminated by reaching either consensus? If Mark and John's accounts are not considered hearsay, they are still thousands of years old and still have been copied many, many times. We still have no reason to place any more merit than any other historical eye witness accounts recorded in that era, and even if we thought they were accurate eye witness accounts, we still have to acknowledge that we only have access to a small surviving subset of documents and as such everything is still conjecture. If Mark and John's accounts are considered hearsay then... it still doesn't affect any of the above factors. It doesn't change a single thing, and remains moot. (This is still in the Politics section, right?)

Why does it matter what the Bible says with regards to whether someone is Christian? Aren't Mormons Christian, even though they have their own prophet that "set the record straight" long after the time of Christ? What about the New Ageish panhandler homeless guy, that believes he's not only Christian but that the NT and OT are completely wrong, because Jesus talks to him in his head? Why were Protestants burned by Catholics as heretics? In my opinion, it's because the Catholics at the time didn't like the idea of a group of people also calling themselves Christian, but following a different interpretation. At the time the Catholics were basically the defacto Christians of the era, and if anyone had the right to set the term, it would have been them... yet burning people alive did not stop Protestants from calling themselves Christian and even the Pope couldn't win that Terminology War. I don't doubt you've been exposed to a lot of ministers who have reinforced a very specific concept of Christianity for you - but what I don't understand is how that leads to such a sweeping generalization. If you had gotten a different outcome in "birthplace roulette" you could have grown up around Unitarians and any number of New Age Christian variants. You could have been surrounded by only Mormon priests. Had the original group of Ministers that influenced you been different - would you have a different view of what a Christian is? Would it be different enough that, if any of the actual ministers you talked to were to pop on this board, that you'd feel they were the ones not Christian? If we create definitions that way, we inherently over-weight the ones we are first exposed to, which is based on truly random variables - not a good basis for consensus forming or creating a versatile terminology.

Out of curiosity, if being pro LG marriage (ie, fixing the religion) makes you automatically not a Christian, just how would you spot a Christian who was fixing their religion? It's like you are defining a group based on whether they contain an attribute that bothers you, while being bothered that everyone in that group has that attribute. There are openly gay and lesbian clergy in Christian churches - they still have religious tax exempt status and still get to call themselves Christian Churches as protected under the Constitution, so really I don't understand the distinction here.

I like how this thread opened with a question about whether or not Obama is a Christian, and has now spiraled into a side debate on what Christ was actually about - which I think highlights why these sorts of "investigative reasonings" about label application tend to be so fruitless. Most of the time, the conversation devolves into debating the definition of the label (ie, what is a Christian, and the citing of "evidence" based on "historical" documentation of Christ's actions and teachings) to determine whether it can be applied to the person in question, and the actual action/statement the person did to trigger the whole conversation becomes secondary. Honestly, I feel like debating "who Christ was" based on surviving written works is like trying to debate "what a Vampire is" based on the written works of Twilight through Dracula - you are creating a selective definition in a discussion which will only be valid for the participants of that discussion. If you try to enlarge the discussion circle, you'll immediately run into people that took no part in forming that definition and vehemently disagree with it. Whether that is someone insisting that "it is possible to be both Christian and coexist in a tolerant, diverse society" or insisting that "it's simply wrong to call anything that sparkles a vampire" boils down to context... but the end result is yet another discussion about definitions. The fact that Obama spoke up on an important and controversial social issue and the implications of that event are notably absent from this thread. Even a question like "Will most American Christians view Obama as a Christian after his statement on same sex marriage?" can create a productive debate, because it's anchored in a real sociological context. You can at least use the same definition for Christian as the Federal Government does then, which is basically anyone "referring to themselves as a Christian." Assertions can then be backed up with polls and other data, and the subtler issues of whether anyone can be Christian and still be okay with homosexual love / sex / lamp / etc can be retired unless there is enough interest for a separate thread.

Well, with regards to the OP I want to add that if Obama is not Christian because he supports gay marriage, then by that logic if (potential future US President) Romney doesn't give 10% of the US Federal Budget to the Mormon Church, he's "not really a Mormon." John F. Kennedy didn't take marching orders from the Pope but he was able to be both Catholic and a US President. The President is like a guy you pay to house sit for you and water the plants - he's not supposed to turn your pad into the church of his preference. I also have to object to the simplistic definition of "Christian" - how effectively we define the term ourselves individually will help us understand people we meet that happen to call themselves "Christians" but it's still nothing specific and absolute. Lots of people call themselves Christian, many of whom are not considered Christian by other Christians which may or may not be reciprocal. This rather minor point of language literally led to that whole burning people alive business. I know the people who did the burning called themselves Christians, as did those being burned - but which ones were the real Christians? Can Christians burn each other at stakes and still be called Christians? Is communication aided in any way by arbitrarily changing who you acknowledge has the right to call themselves Christian? The idea that it's even possible to determine if Obama is a "Christian" because of some perspective on some social issue is ridiculous - what would it give you? You get an entirely useless definition of "Christian" since it won't help you communicate anything to anyone. You really have two choices: you can either decide that Obama is a different kind of Christian than your used to because he supports gay marriage, or you can decide you and some mob have the definitive authority (who bestows that, Websters?) to bar all dictionaries from putting Obama's face next to the definition for Christian. I don't mean to be snarky, but there's so many "tags" (Christian, Progressive, Patriot, Conservative, Moderate, Liberal, etc) placed on people (especially politicians) they just get buried under labels. The idea of debating whether or not a label is fitting for a politician is kinda maddening. The idea of saying "well he's not a Christian then" is no less a dead-end than saying "well he's not a patriot then" about George W. because he failed to send his daughters to Iraq. We get a bunch of fanfic definitions for common words and absolutely nothing about the actual people or issues discussed.

The idea that "it would be good" to strategically sacrifice a basic human right for an entire gender simply to stack seats in Congress with (D)s instead of ®s goes to the heart of why we cannot move forward legislatively in this country. Even the idea of strategically stacking a 50% majority (or a super majority, if that's the new minimum) as a prerequisite to progress is ridiculous - the Congress and the Senate need to be places of debate, discussion and refinement of our policies. If the only discussion is which of the two parties can get full control to push their party's legislation through without discussion, then we're already so far off point that little good can come from it. We're not a one party system sort of government, but we are getting close to becoming a "one party for 2-8 years at a time" system of government and frankly, I honestly prefer the current "no party system" where nothing gets done to that.