Phi for All

Indeed. Religion loves to insert and then establish itself as the ultimate benchmark for authority. I suspect that pledges made "under God" (despite the warnings in Matthew that ewmon pointed out) started as a way to strengthen those pledges, and over time church leadership encouraged people to believe that only such pledges were valid and trustworthy. Isn't it interesting how a person's oath isn't good enough without God to punish the forsworn, yet virtually every conservative person I know (Justin included, I'm sure) takes a great deal of pride in telling you that their word is their bond? Actually, when someone tells me their word is their bond, I will generally trust them until they prove otherwise, but when someone swears to God they're telling me the truth, it always makes me suspect their veracity about everything else they've told me.

Of course, squirrels and mice are scrambling quickly to catch up to this current technology, but it's apparent that the felines will have air superiority well into the foreseeable future. Representatives from the bird community were unavailable for comment.

The concept of law predates Judaism, if that's where you're going. Law predates recorded history, since some of the first recordings were about the various laws that were in effect at the time. One can easily imagine that the first primitive gatherings of early men were to decide what was acceptable and what was not within their society. And one can also easily imagine that fertile women were a favorite topic of those decisions. Why would such decisions need to be "up-to-date"? Why does it matter? Are you assigning some sort of arbitrary cutoff date for this information's relevance? I was married in the front room of the house my fiance and I had just bought together, looking out towards the 60-foot pine tree that the original owner of the house planted on the day he and his fiance were married. The man who performed our ceremony was licensed to do so, but had no connection to any church or religion. I have a marriage license, signed and registered with the State of Colorado. Are you telling me I'm not married under your guidelines? I consider taking the oath of office a ceremony. In fact, they even call it The Swearing-in Ceremony. Gerald Ford didn't even have an inauguration when he took over for Nixon, he just had a Swearing-in Ceremony. Swearing an oath to tell the truth in court is also a formal ceremony, witnessed by officials and punishable to those who foreswear themselves. But I don't consider either to be religious ceremonies, even with the Bible and the mention of God.

I also strongly suspect that marriage naturally gravitated to churches in order to strengthen the vows involved. The added threat of endangering your "immortal soul" was probably seen as an incentive against oathbreaking.

If marriage is a religious institution, then a government that separates religion from state has no right to intervene. But just because historically marriages have been performed in churches doesn't necessarily make marriage a religious institution. I would challenge the idea that marriage is inherently religious in nature. Formal marriage bondings happened before organized religions, usually as a diplomatic way to join tribes. So historically, marriage predates religion. Marriage is basically a contract performed as a ceremony with witnesses to acknowledge its validity. Marriages can be performed without any religious context whatsoever. If you want to change the definition of marriage to require religious content, you're going to have to explain it to all the people who have marriage licenses signed by a Justice of the Peace in a secular ceremony held in a government office. Good luck. Hopefully not too far off-topic, but is it a religious ceremony when a politician is sworn into office, just because they swear on a Bible?

But for people who have utter, unbending faith in the Abrahamic god, how can they not question something that appears to them saying It is their God and It wants them to kill their child? Couldn't this be Satan in disguise? In fact, isn't it more likely Satan in disguise since killing children isn't supposed to be a virtuous act these days? Wouldn't it still be insane to believe God wants YOU to kill your child, instead of taking that child in all the myriad ways It could on It's own?

! Moderator Note jozef, highjacking someone else's thread with your own theory is NOT allowed here. If you have an objection with Relativity, you must start your own thread in Speculations, show your arguments and back them up with supportive evidence (and be prepared for quite a few counter-arguments). Please don't take any more threads off-topic. Thanks for your understanding.

With a sideways grip, aren't you also defeating the strength of your muscles against the recoil? The straight-up grip is much stronger and more designed with the way the hand and arm muscles work, it seems to me. Also, with a semi-automatic, aren't you running the risk of hot casings coming back at your face instead of off to your right and behind?

Thomas Kelly guessed has been suspended for 1 week for ignoring requests for clarification, giving vague and misleading answers, and preaching.

I agree completely. I tend to be more conservative with regard to fiscal policies, more liberal with social issues. In fact, I think a more conservative approach to spending on social issues would probably be a more representative approach than either major party has currently. Oooh, I forgot about that one. I think it's a sorry attempt to corral the religious vote when Republicans try to legislate all this personal intrusion into our lives. It's hard to reconcile that stance with the platform Eisenhower and Reagan ran on. That's a very interesting perspective. If they'd grow a spine and stop vacillating on smart, effective use of funds I could almost agree with you. I still want a different voting system so more perspectives can be represented. I'm tired of two-sizes-fits-all.

What person are you talking about? And what did they ask? I find your lines of reasoning extremely uninteresting, and I haven't seen anyone who seems to disagree with me. Your arguments aren't really as provocative as you seem to think. Most of the members who only post in the Religion section have better a better and broader understanding of the topics they discuss. Please don't take this as a personal attack. I reference only your arguments, not you as a person.

I find this style of argument to be intellectually dishonest. You ask questions and when valid, supported answers are given you ask other questions that require us to provide you with years of science education. This is a discussion forum, not an elementary school classroom.

Why would anyone EVER conflate government experts using the latest technology with what's written in the New Testament? That seems a specious argument at best.

It seemed irrational (idiotic? I guess, considering such a large movement) for the Tea Party to form and immediately start griping about taxes at a time when middle class taxes had just been reduced. Why didn't they start the party under Bush? And they've done some other fairly idiotic things, like putting together lists of things the Obama administration is spending money on without understanding the expenditures in context. If it sounds pointless, it must be pointless, right? I felt the same way about neo-conservative Republicans. How can you be a small government Republican who doesn't want us to be the world's police and be a neo-conservative at the same time without seeming idiotic? Mitt gives me no hope either. "Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that." Seems idiotic, but I guess it will make a lot of money for those privatized prisons his buddies want to build.

Isn't the distinction between deism and theism that a theistic deity stays involved to rule and a deistic one did the early work and is now off elsewhere, not pulling the strings? If so, I'd say your statement is wrong. There is much more evidence to support abiogenesis than there is to support your purple alien thesis, so my explanation is more trust-worthy than yours. Its "pretty scientific words" have a great deal of work and rational thought behind them.

QFT.

Really? Higher beings distribute their DNA on asteroids and then leave it to chance that they'll form life elsewhere in the universe without their direct manipulation? Sounds more like deism than theism to me. As I said earlier, faith to me is complete and unwavering acceptance of a concept that has no supporting evidence, so I don't use faith at all. I trust the explanation that there was time and components enough for a fundamental biochemical reaction to start the "spark of life" here on Earth. Exogenesis is a less attractive explanation to me, mostly because DNA is unlikely to survive the ravages of space during the vast time required for it to be deposited. The question of our origin actually doesn't intrigue me as much as our development since then.

Isn't what you're describing more like deism than theism? I think, for the purposes of using rational thinking as the standard for this thread, all theistic approaches are still based on accepting knowledge that's not supported by any evidence, thus the single categorization. Do you have an example of a theistic concept that's not based on faith in unobservable deities?

The biggest insult in equating Einstein with JP Morgan Chase is Einstein had scruples.

The rooster.

No one said there's no possibility.

Wow, it's quite deep on the end off of which you have gone.

Hah! My wife thought having a bag full of Saiga shotguns was ridiculous. Now I can tell her about the napalm catapult on the roof!

Nobody knows you as a person. The reputation points are for what you post. Perhaps this misunderstanding is at the heart of your dissatisfaction. Members criticized your ideas and you thought they were criticizing you.

Hey, that's OUR ball! Just sayin'.