Athena

The 1970 recession in the US was caused by OPEC's embargo of oil to the US. I think you need to add to this fluctuations in politics. For example, OPEC embargoed oil to the US, because it didn't like the US position on the Israel and Palestine conflict. The embargo caused a recession in the US in the 1970 's. Carter told us we must conserve and he put us on a strong program for developing alternative energy. Reagan told us we didn't need to conserve and dismantled the move to alternative energy. He slashed domestic budgets to pour money into military spending, and ever since the US has been using its military might, and CIA, to "defend its economic interest". The real price of oil is our national debt, and this justifies why US citizens pay less for gasoline. They pay for the military force, that has been making sure its trading partners have plenty of oil. Of course when OPEC embargoed oil, this increased the demand for oil from wells not controlled by OPEC and this increases the development of oil in the US. Then the mid east realizes it is loosing its markets so they increase production, and this increases the supply and dumps the price, and this forces the small oil operations to shut down, decreasing the supply and the price goes back up. Saudi Arabian citizens are demanding a lot, and Saudi Arabia must sell oil to keep its citizens happy, and the same time it is pressured to not flood the market with oil and dump the price of oil. If they could not keep the citizens content with oil profits, the citizens would rebel like they did in Egypt. So the Saudi Arabian demand for schools, hospitals, roads etc. also plays into the price of oil. Does anyone think about what will happen when the oil rich countries today, start running out of oil? Their populations are increasing and the people are demanding more. How will their governments meet these demands when the oil is gone? The real price of oil is a very bad future, if we do not become very creativity in resolving future problems before it is too late.

For sure I want the game as soon as it is available. I love sim world/ city games and empire building games, up to the point where they wildly diverge from reality. I wish all the games were more realistic. I think learning by doing is far better than reading a text and trying to remember all the facts that will be on a test. Plenty of people can ace test by memorizing facts, that they hold in memory long enough for the test and then forget. This is not equal to understanding. To win a game based on how things really work, you have to actually understand how things work, and you learn how they don't work, when don't get the result you want. This is really using our brains, which makes information stick, not taking the short cut of memorizing and then forgetting. Seriously please email me of send me a PM when the game is available, or ready for testing. If I can figure out the game, anyone can, because I don't already know what needs to be known about the cell. Absolutely! yes!

Being humble is not about shame. Being humble is about wisdom, and it can go with deep feelings of gratitude and love. Yesterday was such a beautiful day, I could not help but feel grateful for all the beauty around me. It is there without me putting any effort into it. The path along the river. The trees and birds, and light glittering off the river. I am okay with being very small compared to universe I live in, because I have a good relationship with it. I really want to get into the discussion of ego, but maybe we should take that to the Psychology forum, where we might attract people who study how heads work? I know Freud talked about ego and id, and I know AA groups talk about our higher selves, and I know all the drama we experience when we are young seems so real, but really is it? I know I have embarrassed myself repeatedly by misinterpreting what someone says, seeing an insult that isn't really there, but that day I was in a bad mood and expecting the worst. How we perceive life depends a lot on what we expect to see or what we expect to happen. We create our own personal realities and can learn to create a better reality for ourselves. It is really great when people who really matter agree to create a good reality in their lives and share the improvement. People who are caught up in the born again mythology, can really experience themselves as new people. This is for sure proof that we are not necessarily who we think we are. May be I have good angels in my head? I spent many years trying to be attractive to angels, but since the belief in angels goes with a belief in demons, I want to reject the belief in these supernatural beings. A person may have a mental disorder, and we treat this with medication and counseling, not with rituals to drive the demons out. I think we better stick with science, because it has proven far more effective.

I see things differently. I am finding it very frustrating to have meaning discussion in these forums, including a history forum. It appears men are fact oriented, but they do not seem to consider values and meaning as important discussion. Several responded to what a good curriculum would be, but they are silent when asked what should be the purpose of education. How you determine what is a good curriculum without considering the purpose of education? And like in the history forum where they argue which country had the best fighting men? Yeah, like that is important compared to, in which country do men have the biggest cocks? Sorry, but honestly I am so frustrated by the lack of meaning in these discussions. This thread is a very important subject, considering how well men like Bush and bin Laden stir people to acts war. Especially the republican party has been very successful at destroying political competitors with gossip. I am horrified by what the media spreads round, considering I remember when gossiping was considered bad taste and shameful, degrading the person who gossiped. We valued protecting the privacy and dignity of others, knowing as we do to others, others would do to us. The power of gossip is huge, and this thread is being ignored! But if you to do a thread on the latest military weapon, it would probably get attention. When it comes to confrontation, women can be intense. Commonly females are used as the symbol of liberty, and as defenders. A problem with having them in the military is they are more apt to question authority than males are. Mother bears do not avoid confrontation when their children are concerned, and female humans are just as strong when it comes to defending children. We used to associate virtue with strength, and I have been a political activist. I don't think traditional femininity rejects confrontation, but it is wise to be selective and choose our battles carefully.

I am not sure of the value of quoting from a book. There are several holy books, and how do we decide which one is God's word and which ones are not? Of course the Christian bible focuses on Jesus, but really is this good story telling or something else? The object is to think things through. Surely Jesus was to obey his mother and father, and obey God, but did he get special messages from God that we don't get? Did he rely in what is written in the Torah and quote it as though it could not be questioned, because it is God's truth? Exactly how did he know God's truth? Might this divine being appear as Krishna to the natives of India, and as a Buddha to people in the east, and appear in the Americas giving the Inca and Aztecs and others of the America Gods knowledge?

You have written of the importance of avoiding bias a couple of times. That would be true of anyone doing science research as well. I think we can conclude it is human nature to have a bias. The counter balance is to have values and principles. I think values and principles need to be part of education from the earliest grades, especially if people want democracy, and if they want freedom of religion or to not have religion. Something needs to unite the people and create some agreements about how we behave. That is what religion has done since the beginning of civilization. If this is not done by education than what? I watched a program about alternative schools last night, and would say the chosen schools are getting a lot right. When there is a positive focus on human nature a lot goes right. Repeatedly they mentioned how teaching to score high on a test, restricts a teacher's creativity and the students do not do as well. This is a big issue for us since Bush and the "No Child Left Behind Act' . Scoring high on test is not proof of students actually learning. And I repeat, if the education is restricted to what is needed by the military, it is not a good education for everyone. Some people have different gifts, and they are cheated when education ignores them.

All social animals are controlled by the opinion of their peers. This is most evident among primates and dogs, and of course humans. An individual who is not so socially controlled becomes an out cast, and will be restricted from enjoying the benefits of the group, if not completely driving away. Our morality is directly tied to our animal nature. However, only ignorant people indulge in gossip. I am greatly disturbed by the growing popularity of gossip in our culture, and the overwhelming switch to victimizing the subject of gossip, instead of rejecting the gossiper. This is an indication to me, that we have degraded as a civilization, and no longer live up to the high standards we once had.

I sincerely thank you for the reasoning that is probably behind dumping bin Laden's body in the sea. I think you are correct about the threat of him being a martyr with remains the could give a shine all the religious power of the artifacts required by catholic churches in the middle ages. Now I am at peace with the decision. People may be very upset by the indignity, but this will be shorter lived than if he became part of religious shrine associated with supernatural powers. A second thought. The leaders who have been asked to step down, and are killing their own people, might have a reaction to this covert action. Hope they can see, while we may not be rushing in like Bush did, with the "power and glory" of our military might, that does not mean it is safe for them to continue killing citizens. Third thought. Are we witnessing a dramatic change in warfare? We have gone from mass destruction, the two atomic bombs the hit Japan, and multi headed million dollar bombs dropped on Iraq were weapons of mass destruction, to precision warfare, that eliminates the target but not the civilians and the infrastructure upon which they depend.

Ah ha, I finally got you are from the UK. That explains a lot. You are so lucky to have any music at all. In the states all the arts have been cut out of education, unless a child is in a more affluent neighborhood, where people pay higher taxes and can give their children are better education. It kills me to know we cut music from education when is so related to comprehending math, not just memorizing math facts. People can not advance to the higher math without a good comprehension of the basics. Further more, image how exciting a history class, presented through music and art would be? People with no education in the arts, can not begin to imagine how much they have to learn from the arts, and this could be considered a crime against humanity. Some people seem to prefer an education fit for robots, to science fit for human beings. UK, the primary purpose of education in the UK was to teach their young how to be good Englishmen. This country has so many names, I am sure which to use, but I want to say, they were resistant to education for technology, because they wanted to protect their class system. However, war obviously changed that. War changed the purpose of education in both the Uk and the US which were both focused on good citizenship in their unique ways. They both opposed the German focus on education technology, but for different reasons. The US was more accepting of technology, but remained focused on education for citizenship, and good moral judgement, until 1958. That is when we had a military officer for President. Eisenhower, praised the Germans for their contributions to democracy, and education for technology is an equalizer. In England, and to a degree in the US, your social position at birth remained very important. Education for technology destroys this social structure. I totally agree with you, and suspect you might be older than Keelanz. Like what did you do when there was talk of invading Iraq? Those educated some years ago, might rush to a geography book, or history books and independently research Iraq, unless they are Christian and rely on their church for information. I know I jumped on the Internet and learned about the Baghdad Railroad and how all the European countries wanted control of this region before WWI! I think this need to do our own research is the result of earlier education, preparing us to rely on ourselves for information, instead of on "authority". The media, the church, nor any other "authority" defines reality for me. I do my own independent studies. But education for technology prepares everyone to rely authority. This is essential to the rapid development of technology. No way could we advance technology so rapidly if we did not rely on the work of the work others. This learned reliance on authority, goes with specialization. Instead of preparing everyone for well rounded individual growth, we are specializing people through education. See how nicely this goes together? People are specialized and learn to rely on authority, and this is not democracy we defended in two world wars. This is the path of authority over the people, because life is just to complex not be ordered by the bureaucracy above them. The secretary and receptionist who once knew everything, is now just an extension of the phone, and word processor, with extremely responses and no authority of any kind. And whenever possible, this person is replaced by a computer, totally dehumanizing us and devastating any personals liberty and power we might have. We have become like a Star Trek society run by a computer, and think education good for programming computers is the best education we can have. I forgot to say. What should be mandatory in education and is essential to our survival, is an understanding of the resources we consume. We must know the supply of these resources and the rate of consumption, and how changes in supply or consumption rates will effect the economy. That we can do this today, gives us a huge advantage over earlier civilizations where the masses were ignorant of such things, and therefore, could not use such information to avoid problems that led to wars and sometimes the destruction of their civilizations. Our college educated economic experts are horribly, horribly ignorant of things like what oil has to do with the world economy. I read economic books, and they are like a story about Alice in Wonderland. They are all theory and devoid of down to earth reality.

Not many people in history would define civilized as you have. All the men we labeled as "so in so the Great", were men who lead armies such as Alexander the Great. In the US, every time a president commits an act of war, his popularity goes up in the polls. This is not true of all cultures, so we should not assume this is just human nature. However it certainly is true of cultures when the dominant belief about god is one of a fearsome, jealous, revengeful, war god, who promotes killing and taking land as something god fearing and god loving people do. Never forget, war is good for religion and religions is good for war, because this is a dominating fact our lives, and in 1958 the National Defense Education Act focused education on the rapid development of technology for military and industrial needs, because people who worship this god have a history of war, and they can not trust each other to not engage in war. With ability to fly across oceans and drop atom bombs, the US has to take military preparation seriously, and it did so by imitating German bureaucracy and Germany education. Education since 1958 is far from the education that John Dewey had influenced. John Dewey was a leader in education for indpendent thinking and many older Christians absolutely hate him and what he did to public education. From reading what people have said in the post about education, I think most of you would be in favor of what John Dewey achieved. However, let us talk about the 1958 change, because this is what has most of your opinions of what schools should teach. More math, more physics, more foreign language. Do you realize this is the military preference, and there are other choices? I would bet those who suggested other choices in the other thread were older people, whose ideas of what is best were shaped before the 1958 Act dominated education in their area. I was in school the day teachers were informed their purpose of education had been changed. They were dazed as if in a state shock. Please get, this is a change in the purpose of education, not just an adjustment is subjects taught. We might consider the economic troubles of Germany and Greenspan's "error" that lead to our own economic collapse, because our reality today is the Military Industrial Complex, and this was first explained by a Prussian General before WWI. Modern warfare is about defending a nation's economic interest, and it requires education for rapid technological development for military purpose. Also, it requires technological development for the economic growth that is essential to having the most expensive military force on earth. We have been on the path Germany followed, and we are getting to learn the history of Germany through our own experience of walking down that path. We might not be overly concerned with the change in public education if were not for the social and cultural ramifications. We are no longer the democracy we defended in two world wars, so when you say education should civilize us, what kind of civilization do you want? What does this have to do with the subject of the purpose of education? Earlier you express concern that people learn to think for themselves and this is in line with John Dewey's influence on education, so you could be on topic if you had better informed about the history of education. Like the Greeks we were focused on well rounded individual growth, until 1958, when we became focused on specialization, and this is devastating to our democracy. Specialist do not have the breadth of knowledge to be well informed voters, nor to be elected officials. Education for technology, prepares everyone to rely on authority, instead of being the authority. Our previous education for good moral judgment, assumed each would be his/her own authority. You have a point to make. It just isn't supported by what you know about education. Perhaps this discussion should have begun by contrasting Sparta's education with Athens? Then there might be a clearer understanding of the relationship between education and culture, the relationship between US and what it defended its democracy against? Absolutely Keelanz. It is not just a good purpose of education for people to learn how to achieve mutual understanding. It is also the purpose of democracy! Either your parents, or your school, or your independent research, has done a good job with your education. I sincerely would like to know how you know what you know, so it can be replicated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden Evidently bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan and his body was dumped in the sea. I don't know. Sounds fishy to me.

I am really enjoying the thread about what is the best school curriculum, but through the history of education, the purpose of education has changed many times, and the purpose of education is not being addressed in the thread about curriculum. Why spend the money to educated anyone?

Our IQ testing test a limited range of intelligence, because it is done for a purpose. This started with the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and the purpose was to help teachers identify which students are best suited for higher education. And let us be clear about this, it was done for military reasons. Identifying who might excel as an artist and become our next Michelangelo was not deemed necessary. Neither IQ testing nor education for technology, promotes this kind of intelligence. Vocational training is technological education even if it stops with high school wood shop, which by the way has been cut out of the budget, because it is not deemed necessary by the military so it is not what the federal government is going to fund. Education can mean something besides preparing everyone for a job, and perhaps humanity is better served if we keep that in mind? Perhaps thousands of people are being cheated out an education and a good life, because it is not the best education for them. Not all of us excel in the subjects deemed necessary by the military.

Oh dear, now there are more questions to ask. All human beings are influenced by their parents and peers. Was Jesus different? Would Jesus have been just the same no matter who his parents were and who his peers were? Like we are talking about him learning, right, and it is the parents who are the first teachers. Might he have learned differently if he had different parents? What was different about Jesus that made it possible for him to remain perfect, and if he were different in this way, why not manifest him as an angel? Satan was an angel and didn't remain perfect, right? Angels can screw up, so why was a human sacrifice needed? I think we can think of this human sacrifice thing in many ways, so I ask the question again, why was a human sacrifice necessary? What did a human sacrifice change in the universe? I guess there was a disconnect, but I do not understand how that happened? I do not know the Candide position nor what that has to do with the topic. The question about Jesus being disobedient is interesting. Who or what could he have disobeyed at age 2, age 8, age 14, age 20, age 30? Who or want corrected him and how?

I need a lot of clarification. I have a vague of concept of Zoroastrian darkness and light, but not a good understanding of how the darkness and light becomes Satan and God, and demons and angels. Perhaps this is a question of spontaneous generation? Animation verses materialism? Of what is an angel or demon made? What are the elements? We have pictures of angels that are beings with wings. I am not sure I like the idea of a being with wings being inside my body? I absolutely do not like the Christian idea that I can be possessed by demons and Satan. Now if we say God is in everything, I am cool with that. Quantum physics goes nicely with Eastern philosophy. But angels and demons, and a Satan, that is a different thing. That needs more clarification.

I have multiple personalities, which one is the real me? Seriously how do we know who we are? The young people are looking for themselves, and the old ones are trying to forget. Good grief, I don't want to remember my whole life. I work hard at forgetting much of my life and so do others. I totally get the value of Zen Buddhism and letting go of the ego. I appreciate the Hindu image of a god crushing the ego, under his foot. I much rather think of myself becoming one with the Tao, than being an individual in an unknown after life. I also want to reply to what you said of angels, demons and saint? Without bodies, what can a spirit experience? What is knowledge without experience? Check yourself for how you know you are you, where is the feeling that is the knowing you are alive and you are you. Consider if you were cloned and there were another body identical to yours, but not of the life experience you have had. Would that body be you or a separate individual? Now if you don't have a body how do you experience life?

It is nice to begin the day with a laugh and big smile on my face. It was once the intent of the citizens of the US to bring heaven to earth, and I don't think New York or LA are many people's idea of heaven. However, with our female mayor, I think Eugene, Oregon is making a good effort to bring heaven to earth. The nature rehab projects have brought back more birds and more varieties of birds and plant life. But we perhaps need to be aware of the human tendency to understand perfection from our human point of view. Much thinking, from the most primitive to the most technological, tends to think that everything in the universe exist for our benefit. This has been counterbalanced to some degree by the tribes who think of humans as being brothers and sister to all other animals. Like it isn't all here just for us, but we shared it all with other souls. How does that play into your thoughts of perfection? And of God, what is a perfect God? I like Hindu concepts. Out of the one came the many. I do not think the East Indian concept of perfection would be the same as the western concept of perfection. I think our concerns for perfection make us type A personalities. Can we love a God with all our hearts, who is not a perfect God? If God is all things, would this not include imperfection? And back to what is a perfect God? Hum, interesting how this line of thinking tweaks my thoughts. Perhaps A tripolation is the best to answer. Was Jesus born perfect? What was the need for him to be born? Why didn't he just come to us as an all powerful angel? Must a God be unchangeable, or forever metamorphising? Can a spiritual God who can not experience life have knowing? What is knowledge without experience? How about this, matter is constantly changing. Is God manifest in matter or separate from it?

Totally awesome fellows. Those were the most intelligent post about education I have seen in over 10 years on the Internet. I am seriously intimidated now, because we have voices from Sweden and India and each excels in different areas of human development. It is one thing to judge what is the best education for my country, the US, and quite another to say what is best for the whole world. It would be a terrible loss if India stopped being India, or Sweden were no longer Swedish, or Germany German. My biggest concern is the US has stopped being what it was. This rips my heart, and considering its importance as a world leader, perhaps we should ask ourselves how our position as world leader has changed? I am very thankful for Obama and Hilary because they are doing the best that can be done to get us back on track, except they are missing the education component of what makes a nation as it is. What made each nation as it was, was in part resources and environment, and in part their dominant religion, and Savithru is so right, their language! The west has used linear logic and this promotes the advancement of technology. The east has used wholistic or cyclical logic and this is best for metaphysics. Surely we are doomed if we loose the logic of the east, because technology without the wisdom to use it is the worst thing that can happen. Better we all be ignorant farmers than for us to have technology without wisdom. So I encourage each nation to be careful to preserve their uniqueness, and know, this comes through education. At one time, religion was the only education the masses had. Education in the sciences is a twenty century phenomena. In the US science was at first driven with a childlike discovery of the world and absolute heart warming thrill to know that through science we can save lives. While the US had some education in science, its main purpose was education for citizenship, and this became a federal mandate in a last ditch effort to prevent the Civil War. As we know, this did not prevent the Civil War. When the South realized what the North was doing though education, it began printing its own text books. Still even though education did not prevent the war, we continued to educate our children to make the US a united and strong Republic. This was liberal education and was modeled after Athens education for well rounded individual growth. Any education of democracy, must begin with Athens, I believe, and it should include the study of world religions. I hate to do this, but jumping over a lot of important stuff. Germany was actually a leader in education, and for military reasons the US replaced its liberal education with Germany's model of education for technology for military and industrial purpose. Now everyone posting seems to favor this technological purpose of education, but what of humanity? Please, I caution you. Education is like a genii in a bottle. The defined purpose is the wish and the graduating students are the genii. Zeus' greatest fear was that with the technology of fire, man would discover all other technologies, and then rival the gods. Is not this what we have done? We are technological smart, but how wise are we? Only highly moral people can have liberty. How moral are we? There are two ways to have social order, culture or authority over the people. Germany was known for being authoritarian, and we are now the nightmare of people living under bureaucracy that controls every aspect of our lives, that Tocqueville wrote of in 1835. Once upon a time, every educated citizen in the US understood we defend our liberty by being moral people. Today the leaders of our financial system are so immoral they have taken down the economies of the world, and we elected a president who should probably on trial for war crimes. Enough, the first thing education must do, is prepare everyone for good moral judgment. We have gone from being perhaps the most moral nation in the world, to what we defended our democracy against, and we did this by changing the purpose of education for military reasons. Marat, thank you! This may be more important than you realize. I just recently had this argument with my family, and they totally shot me down, because the word "that" is in published literature. Using the word "that" instead of "who" has become acceptable, and I suspect this has everything to do with education for technology, and I would not be surprised if gas chambers did not become the solution to social problems.

I don't know what is worse, religious people or atheist? I think both are pretty threatening. How about metaphysics, the study of the nature of being and reality? Here you need God as you need the X in algebra. That is a totally cool thought and what Jefferson and Cicero meant by the Pursuit of Happiness. Jefferson risked everything for the cause of democracy, and spent his fortune promoting the idea of free public education for everyone. He argued this is the only way to assure a strong republic. I will state again, the Statue of Liberty holds a book for literacy and a torch for the enlightenment that comes out of being literate. That said, I am not sure God does not exist and that we are not on course. I am saying I share agreement with book. I think our future begs us to consider the possibility of God's existence, because we can not maintain, but must transition to a New Age. If we fail to make that transition, well, you know about dinosaurs. Like them, we are hitting a wall, and things will get or worse. I think what happens is our choice, and if we do not choose well, things will not get better.

Perfect and so true. Science alone is not good enough. The scientist who worked on the atom bomb, jumped for joy when they heard their bomb did exactly what it was supposed to do when it fell on Japan. However, a split second later, some of them realized the human implications and they no longer felt so joyful. When one of the gods gave man fire, Zeus's biggest concern was, that with the technology of fire, man would learn all other technologies and then rival the gods. It seems obvious to me, this is technology without the wisdom to use it. We need more than science to discover nature, and keep more and more people alive for longer and longer periods of time, or science for killing and destroying with nuclear bombs far more powerful than the first ones we unleashed. We need wisdom, and that is the the realm of metaphysics, the study the nature of being and reality. This is the study of God.

Your explanation of our relationship with angels, is just like my understanding of the relationship with Greek gods and goddesses, which are also archetypes,and we can seek their aid through incantations. I wasn't meaning to question the DNA of angels. but the origin of the concept, and your explanations leads us to the Greek consciousness. Yes, the Islamic understanding matters very much, because we are speaking of a consciousness that was shared thousands of years ago, in an effort to dismiss the idea that a God has chosen people, and only His chosen people received the word of God through a special messenger and no one else. That is the mythology problem isn't it? Concepts of good and evil are pretty universal. However, when someone thinks his holy book, is the only correct explanation of God's truth, and those who do not interpret this holy book the same way, and do not share exactly his belief in God's truth, must be of Satan and is God's enemy, then we have BIG PROBLEM. Marat, that was beautiful reasoning. Interesting reasoning and yes, angels have free will. That is why Satan is a bad guy; he used his free will. Along the lines of your reasoning, isn't Satan the personification of ego? Is it not our ego that holds us separate from God? If we give up our egos, are we not one with God?

God, as I work on answering to your question, is atomic particles and the forces which manifest reality as we know it. This is the Tao of all things, and as the water we drink once passed through a living dinosaur, so all things come from the Tao and return to the Tao. All that ever was, or will be, is in the beginning, and change is constant. Kind of like a Kaleidoscope I think. All the pieces are there but the picture is always changing. I don't experience God, so I do not know what is so for God, but I experience me and the concept of perfection is an interesting one. I am the perfect me, and I don't know how much I can change and not be me? Compared to others, I may fall short of perfection, but that does not change the fact that I am the perfect me. My body sure is far from perfection, and my brain does not work nearly as well as I wish did, and what I know is extremely limited. How I perceive life has changed a lot over the years. Yet I am and always have been the perfect me. Like no matter how faulted we are, can anything or anyone else be a more perfect one of a kind? Hum, come to think of it. What would happen to the fabric of the universe if there were no Satan? Could there be a more perfect Satan? How much a part of God is Satan? If God creates all things, what separates God's creation from God? Oh dear, what if God is scizophrenic, and both himself and Satan? Sorry if this seems off topic, but a belief in Satan is very much a part of our belief in God, so it seems necessary to add to Satan to this discussion. Or to clarify there is a God, but no Satan, because we are talking about belief system, right? Because we do not directly experience God, we can only talk about belief systems, not about God. Included in the belief system of God is Satan, angels and demons, as well as human nature. When we rely on the holy bible for a definition of God, we are also saying we are born into sin, and like the angels are fallen and disconnected with God, and in need of being reconnected with God. We have associated sin with evil and with Satan and with darkness and death. We can know, given the right stimulus a neutron will fly through the air, but we can not know which one. Might I suggest the same is so for human souls and God. God knows the beginning and knows the end result, but may not know which human souls will go through the right slit and or the left slit, or which ones will do nothing at all.

In the thread about the existence of God, I focus on the mythology of religion. Christianity is a mix of mythologies. In this mix of mythologies is the concept of angels. I goolged the origin of this concept of angels, and the concept comes up in Hebrew, Greek and Persian thinking without clear evidence of there being a first angel thought. The concept seems to begin a concept of a messenger, and evolves into a concept of a messenger from God. That would make Satan a messenger. We are told his message is a lie. Jesus, is also a messenger from God. The bible tells us in the beginning is the word, and Jesus is the word. So Jesus is an angel of God's truth, and Satan is an angel of the lie. The rest of the angels are not born either, and I do not know how they come into existence, nor how demons come into existence. May be they just pop into being like atomic particles? These are things we might want to think about if we are going to discuss the reality of God, and how well holy books inform us about this reality. Here is a link for information about the origin of the concept of angels. http://www.angelsghosts.com/angels_history

Thank you, thank you, Mooeypoo. I am sooo needing to talk about this inequality. Let me begin with my college experience, with a professor who insisted the only research papers he would accept were those listed in the abstracts. That is because the research listed in the abstracts has to meet a standard. A society concerned with technological correctness may not realize the problem with this. The problem is, this standard is a male standard and women think and communicate differently. Women can learn to do things the male way, but God forbid this need to do things the male way, continue to dominate our lives. The idea about what is important research, can be completely different for women and men, and to this day, it is men controlling the research and if it is accepted or not. For example, my term paper was about middle age women. Guess what? This is not a subject of male research, and there were not enough papers in the abstracts for a term paper. Let me clarify, the male professor had chosen the subject, for this gerontology class, and he knew the abstracts did not offer enough research for a paper, yet he refused all the research done by women, and there was a lot of it! Because the research directly applied to my life, I read it and was thrilled to learn so much about myself and what I shared with other women. My professor's lack of information about middle age women, due to his selective reading, and frankly, his lack of interest in understanding women, of course meant I got a low grade, but I hope my paper influenced him. It sure made a big difference in my life and my sense of self value and esteem. I can now stand up to a man who shoots me down, because I know I do not stand alone, and this is not just about me. I have done the research of the research. And it goes further than this. I participate in a history forum, and at first I was thrilled with all the history the men knew. A year later, and I am thinking, oh my God, these guys know a lot of facts, but have no the sense of meaning! I might as well be talking to my dog, as trying to have a discussion of meaning with these guys. I see so clearly how we could invade Iraq and devastate the lives of these people, and do so prepared to defend oil wells, but not prepared to defend the citizens after we destroyed the social, political and economic structures that held their lives together. My heart aches for the women who fled with their children and are forced into prostitution because they fled to a country that does not allow them to work to support their children. They are prostituting themselves to fed their children, knowing their families will kill if they find out what they are doing to survive. Men just are not thinking about such things as they argue about which country has the best fighting men, and which country had the best military strategy. What these guys think is important doesn't come close to what women think is important. Now I am more impressed by what men don't think about than by what they do think about. However, when a man does think of both what men think about and what women think about, he is a totally assume guy. There are such men, but unfortunately, not enough of them.