Delta1212

I've backed up creationists in evolution arguments before because the person arguing for evolution, while correct in the abstract, was apparently right by coincidence and had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. Simply sharing an opinion with someone is no gurantee that they're going to leap to your defense, especially if you're not conducting yourself well in the discussion. You've received a range of responses from hostile to helpful and you've been quite dismissive of all of them in favor of stating that you simply aren't interested in discussing the matter. I'm not surprised that people aren't jumping to support you if you're not willing to engage even slightly.

Well, ok, nevermind then. Good luck to, I guess.

Alright, well, how aware are you of the history of the Bible? As in, who wrote the various parts, how the different books were selected to be a part of the Bible, when "the Bible" as a single unit came into being, who put it together and what the various alternatives and materials that got "left on the cutting room floor", so to speak, were?

Well, I'm not really asking you to prove anything to me, and I'm not going to criticize you for any of your answers, although I may provide alternate perspectives. I'm just curious about what leads you to believe what you do. I find it to be a fairly good practice to periodically question why I believe the things I do, including some foundational belief, because it helps me define what I believe, smooth out or at least recognize inconsistencies in my own opinions and better understand people with beliefs that differ from my own. I think self-examination of one's own beliefs is important to developing as a person, even if one doesn't ultimately fundamentally change what those beliefs are. Mostly, I'm just curious about what it is you believe and how much you know about the history of those beliefs, which is something I think anyone should be interested in regardless of what their beliefs are.

Ultimate Infinity, before I ask, let me preface this by saying that I remember what it was like to be 16 and still largely coming to grips with what I believed about the world and trying to figure things out. I'd gone down a somewhat different path than the one you find yourself on, but regardless of what direction you're heading in, it's still a period of time where you're trying to navigate both what it is that you believe and how that relates to the beliefs of those around you, and I respect that process, so I'm going to try to avoid being too attack-y, even in instances where we may not agree. I also think you seem like a fairly genuine and respectful person this far, and so I'll try to reflect that back to. Now, on my own part, I'm fairly interested in the history and development of religion, and I've had some decent exposure to it and especially on the history of the Bible in particular as my father took and eventually began leading a Bible study class that deals with that history pretty in-depth. So my question to you, for starters, is: given what we know about the history of the Bible and how it was put together, what about it has convinced you that it is absolutely the word of God?

*Of course not. *They'd need to begin with an upside down period.

Apparently, it's only illegal if he did it intentionally vs sending a blast email to everyone on a mailing list his campaign purchased. As long as he doesn't actually accept any donations from them, in the latter case, his campaign isn't breaking the law; it's just completely incompetent. You just had to say that, didn't you? You post it and Rasmussen almost immediately starts taking a poll that puts Donald up by 4 points. Granted, it's still the only one, Hillary's average across all recent polls is still over +4 and, again, it's a Rasmussen poll which pretty much means you have to assume it's giving an extra +5 to the Republican candidate based on it's historical error consistently trending in the same direction, but still.

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-guide-to-proper-comma-use-2013-9 http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/commas/ http://www.sandhills.edu/academic-departments/english/commaguidelines.html I tried to find something a bit more "hard academic" but there doesn't seem to be anything easily linked to for any of the major style guides specifically on comma use that covers everything or even most of it, (or t least nothing I could find with light to moderate searching) and there's not much that would be more authoritative than that, since all punctuation rules are by convention when you really get down to it. That said, part of the confusion probably arises from the fact that there are some places where commas and common pause points in a sentence naturally coincide. But that's not a reliable indicator of anything, as there are lots of places where commas are mandatory that do not mandate a pause in natural speech as well as places that people tend to pause where a comma would be inappropriate. The rules for semi-colons and colons are also pretty specifically defined and are directly related to function and not to how long you should pause. A semi colon links two independent clauses without a coordinating conjunction, or it replaces a comma in, e.g., a list where the items within the list contain commas so as to avoid confusion. A colon is used before naming something that the preceding sentence was describing or to introduce a list. (We're discussing three types of punctuation: commas, colons and semi-colons). Again, you may or may not pause for various lengths of time in a place corresponding to the position of any of these punctuation marks, but even in the instances where you do, the pause is generally not what they are signifying.

It's not for emphasis. It's used before a conjunction that connects two full clauses. A comma is not really a pause. It's there to help parsing sentences where distinctions between possible meanings are made through timing and intonation. The actual punctuation used is based on the structure of the sentence rather than how the sentence is said with any kind of direct correlation. Commas tell you about the relationship between words and phrases in a sentence (which can impact how you then enunciate the sentence) rather than representing any specific sound, intonation or pause in and of themselves.

The ship's veterinarian is just taking our temperature.

In what way is consciousness uniform?

I must not be getting enough sleep because I initially read that you were going to have teaching duties and be "supervillain of students." This seems cool, too, though. Congratulations!

I had come to the same conclusion that you did.

So, Boris Johnson has officially taken himself out of the running for PM: http://metro.co.uk/2016/06/30/boris-johnson-announces-he-wont-stand-to-be-leader-of-the-tory-party-5976522 I guess he realized that presiding over a train wreck, one way or the other, is probably not going to be good for the career of whoever finds themself in the conductor's seat.

Popular people are more likely to receive help from others and have more opportunities to reproduce. People who want to be popular are more likely to seek behaviors that will result in them being popular than people who don't wNt to be popular. Popularity seeking may therefore have some degree of reproductive advantage.

Would you care to take a crack at defining an alternative that would be more democratic?

Not disagreeing.

It is a flaw that is, to some extent, inherent in a democracy.

Can you explain how a referendum as a way to make a decision fails any of those three characteristics? Assuming that all votes are weighted equally, then you check off equality under the law. Assuming that everyone has the freedom to participate in the voting process, you have political freedom. And assuming that the results are followed in accordance with whatever laws exist about how the process should operate and how the results should or should not be implemented, then you have rule of law. That's all three characteristics. Now, sure you could have a referendum on whether to strip those features from a system, but any democracy, no matter how it is configured. It is difficult to create a democratic system that completely disallows the possibility of a vote to undermine or end democracy. The fact that this possibility exists does not make the system cease to be democratic. You also still haven't explained where the charge that because something is the 'most democratic' that it must therefore be the 'best form of democracy' came from. Because you were hitting that strawman fairly hard and I would appreciate an acknowledgement that it was, in fact, a strawman rather than just abandoning the line of attack when called out on it.

The problem is that it's access to the sea runs through non-London parts of England, which means that the city would have to rely on the country it just seceded from for shipping access.

Yeah, I think I must have mistyped and it auto-corrected to refused instead of recused.

Who said "best" though? I said it was the most democratic. Which, a straight vote by the people is the most democratic. That doesn't mean that it's the best form of democracy or the one most likely to lead to good results. But it's certainly the most democratic.

There are only two ways in which Scalia's presence or absence would make a real difference to the outcome: If there is a tie (and the lower court ruled in along the same lines as the "liberal wing" of the Court) or if Scalia would have been able to sway one or more Justices to his side who voted the other way without his voice there acting as a persuasive force (most likely affecting Roberts or Kennedy). Or if one of the Justices recused themself, but yeah, otherwise most decisions that get handed down won't be overly affected right now. Scalia's loss is going to be most acutely felt when he is replaced. Even if it's with a relatively non-partisan moderate, that's going to shift the Court to the left simply because it loses a hard pull to the right.

You're saying that the definition of democracy is an opinion but that a value judgement about whether something is right or wrong, and in fact morality in general, is a fact and not an opinion?

I'm not completely disagreeing, but just because it leads to ridiculous outcomes doesn't make it undemocratic. A referendum is probably one of the most democratic ways of doing anything. That's a fact that doesn't change just because it has the potential to lead to stupid outcomes.