Moontanman

Hehehe, as people around here say, "you got that right"... Maybe he will arrive on an alien space craft... It's disheartening to live here and try to be progressive, being an atheist is almost illegal... and I live in a relatively liberal city, a university town... My oldest son who is gay lives in Chapel Hill/Cary area (actually Cary = Containment Area for Retired Yankees) as does my youngest son. It is more progressive there due to several universities in the area but make no mistake is it still part of NC and subject to the inane silliness that is southern politics... and the NC conservative right is aware of the communist liberal university agenda, i hear about it incessantly...

Phi for All, I've watched this battle since I first became politically aware, I remember when the religious fundamentalists and the political right mated and gave birth to what we now call neoconservatives. It was an unholy union if there ever was one and that movement courted big business like a whore at a sales convention. Now the religious conservatives, drunk on the money and power from the support of big business who assert that the only possible answer is capitalism unchained, are too powerful to be effectively opposed and these fundamentalists vote republican because god tells them too and they think science and rational thought are a satanic conspiracy... I think we are loosing, loosing badly but I did see a ray of sunshine today, I was in traffic for about 30 minutes and among all the jesus saves and vote for god bumper stickers I actually saw a science before superstition bumper sticker, it looked pretty lonely...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OP5EnaaYjQ

Does this Sort of thing indicate our political/economic system is corrupt/broken beyond repair?

JustinW, you have really pissed me off with your attitude on this... I have hesitated to respond because of two things, first I wanted to get my act together so i didn't come off half cocked and mainly because I don't believe I have the right not to be pissed off... so i started to decided to just ignore you and go on but I can't... But do you seriously think that anyone has the right to impose their religious beliefs on others? If you own a business and think that birth control is wrong then you shouldn't use it. Don't wrap that rascal, don't use an IUD, don't take the pill, stand on a street corner and tell everyone how evil and sinful birth control is. But to deny someone who does not believe the way you do birth control is wrong. If you own a business why is it your right to deny contraception to others? You can't say it's due to the expense, it has to be because you desire to control what others do. The religious right has a big problem with birth control, mainly because it empowers women, listen the what the republicans are running for president and you can see this. they pretend to hide behind not wanting abortion but they oppose all birth control. But lets get beyond birth control, if your religion deems antibiotics as against your religion do you get to deny coverage for antibiotics? Do you get to require prayer be tried before medicine? Or in place of medicine? If your religion thinks a blood transfusion is against their favorite fairy tales teachings then do you get to deny coverage for blood transfusions? You honestly seem to be an intelligent man, do you think that just because the exceptions are due to religion it will always be a religion you agree with? If your religion says it's ok to beat your wife then do you get to refuse to pay for medical treatment resulting from an employee beating his wife? I cannot believe you would go for that, freedom of religion protects everyone from religious tyranny, ignore that not your own peril but at the peril of our entire country... Again, it;s difficult for me to believe you are naive enough to believe that this, yes, people will treat you badly at the first opportunity.. if they think god demands it! Who gets to decide what god demands? I am not going to waste the time of either of us to retype all the links to really horrible transgressions against the rights of individuals that are currently being voted on and in some cases passing right now in state legislatures. Transvaginal utrasound? Good god man, think about it, can you imagine how bad it will be once the religious actually gain control? Do you really want to bet that when the religious gain the control they seek it will be your personal religion that will be in control? Do you really think everyone who calls themselves Christians are really on the same side? Not many years ago Christians were killing Christians, go back a couple centuries and it gets much worse, do you think only witches were burned at the stake? It's why our founding fathers supported the separation of church and state. It's really difficult to believe an intelligent man like your self cannot see this, religion with out controls is dangerous, it kills people who disagree, to say it can't get like that and still be in power is really ignoring history and human nature... As long as men are in control we need to be protected from religion, no way around it... Do you know that Catholic Nuns have been required to take birth control pills by the Church? http://www.propinoy.net/2010/11/24/thy-condom-come-thy-pill-be-done/ So the Church remains steadfast and absolute against artificial contraception? Not always.

Evidently all the way....

It is weird that the people who seem to most persecute LBTG people are themselves attracted those they want to punish for being attractive. I know there is probably some deep physiological reasoning behind it but that will never make it fair. If you think of it this idea of somehow punishing someone who you are attracted to is deeply ingrained in us as kids (ever notice how little boys hate little girls and they hate boys as well? Most people grow out of this childish behavior) and even as adults some men will be hateful to women who they see as attractive but unattainable or undesirable in some way. Too pretty or too plump or too something, people with an anti social personalty will do this sort of thing. I honestly have no idea why, i think one of the terms used now days is "slut shamming" Hell of a note, you can't win for loosing.... I honestly hoped our society was trending away from that disgraceful behavior but over the last 20 years or so i have to admit I was fooling myself, we are diving deeper into that hole. Yes Xittien, I to am glad you are here, you are a human being, no other label is really important but what lies behind your eyes is who you are and where real beauty lives...

Ok, you had said earlier was that you had breasts and had them removed... that confused me, so you were physically male and are now physically female?

An unlikely event is not a miracle, do you count all the times you hesitate but no dump truck comes by? Get real, statistically unlikely things happen, they've happened to me doesn't mean god was protecting me anymore than it means that a woman who didn't hesitate and was run over was killed by gods lack of warning her was that a miracle as well? Why not? You have a very low bar for what a miracle is... Is every breath you take a miracle? Is the chemistry that keeps you body alive on a micro scale a miracle? Is anything, in your way of thinking not a miracle? Come on njaohnt, be a bit more discriminating than that... I remember a story about a guy who lived someplace, i think it was someplace near the north sea, but anyway he decided to kill himself, he methodically taped up his windows and doors and turned on the natural gas and laid down to take a nap. His brother, or some relative called him just before he went to sleep, and in their conversation it came up that he was killing himself (I can't remember all the details) but his brother told how much god loved him and how he was lucky because the natural gas where he lived was almost pure hydrogen and was not dangerously poisonous. He told him to shut off the gas and he would be there as quickly as possible to help him untape his windows and talk some more about god. so the guy turns off the gas and sits down to wait on his relative, took out a cigarette to relieve his nerves and.... well the windows didn't need to be untaped... Which part of that was a miracle? The relative who called at the correct moment to keep him from being suffocated? Or lighting up the cigarette to calm his nerves as he waited? Or the miscommunication about the danger of hydrogen gas?

I'm not sure what you mean by transgendered but I see no reason to treat you any different than i would any other person I ran into on the street. My oldest son is gay, one of those no one would suspect unless he told them. He was drummed out of the Air Force ROTC and lost his scholarship due to be outed by some of his friends and beaten severely. I don't see why people feel this way unless they themselves are threatened because they feel an attraction they cannot handle. My son had seen many of his friends thrown out of their family when they "came out" he was terrified I would do the same even though he knew I had gay friends both male and female. I guess the example he had seen in his friends scared him. The fact he was afraid of me bothered me more than anything else. I felt shame because he felt he needed to fear my judgement. Emotions are weird aren't they? I love my sons, both of them are fine young men and i proud of them and their accomplishments. Kids are cruel, they look for differences and then conflate them into reasons to bully and otherwise terrorize others. Adults often carry these cruel childish behaviors into their adult lives and for some reason religion often seems to fan the flames of this behavior. I wish I had some words of wisdom here but for the most part i told my sons, yes both the straight one and the gay one, to be who they are and always be proud of that and to not let others dictate their self worth...

And I did, it didn't quite work out the way you thought did it? ID, creationism, two sides of the same counterfeit coin, they are both not only depend on lies to exist they are not supported by reality in anyway. If you really are wondering about this stuff then think of this, Evolution is the absolute best supported theory in all of science, nothing in biology makes sense with out the light of evolution. Your Idea of God, which ever god you believe in, might very well be true but even if god is real and even if the Christian god is the real god, evolution is still mostly true and ID or creationism is totally false. It's lie, a lie perpetrated by liars that want personal power with out the effort of real knowledge, people who want to control everyone with lies and false promises. If you are really looking for information i am going to give you what I think it the absolute best guy to explain it, he gives links to his sources and you can read the texts of his videos if you want. Of course you can ignore this and go on trying to find a silk purse attached to a sow but for once actually look at something besides what you want to hear. Sometimes the truth is difficult to adjust to when the evidence counters what you want the world to be like... If you insist then feel free to continue to live in darkness, it's really your choice...

What's your program?

It never ceases to amaze me how believers always assume anyone who doesn't believe the way they do or in what they believe in has never bothered to actually read their religious texts and really really if we would only read we would see how their favorite fairy tale is really really the obvious truth... horse feathers.... it's an insult to begin with...

I did not misquote wiki, ID and irreducible complexity have been shown over and over to be false. Your repetitious claims will never make this not true and sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming na na na na na will not make the reality of the situation go away...

Well then, you need to report me, in fact I think I'll report me....

The technology exists to watch everyone, if not all of the time, a great deal of the time. I know it sounds crazy but it does worry me, no I don't believe there are cameras in my TV but the technology exists to make it so, a theocracy just might have the will to make it happen...

I hesitate to start this irreducible complexity horse feathers... but here we go... again.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity Your examples of things that cannot evolve fail miserably, are easily refuted. Have been shown to be horse feathers many times on this forum. The tactic of simply telling the same horse feathers over and over will not make irreducible complexity true...

Actually, and this really is true, it's cheaper for a business to provide health care that includes contraception than it is to provide health care that does not... It's cheaper for the insurance carrier due the cost connected with pregnancies... This argument has nothing to do with actual costs... it's because of the religious right and their opposition to any form of birth control because it might empower women, hard to keep em bare foot and pregnant if they can take birth control... God help us if a woman can actually have sex anytime she wants, the world will come to an end...

If a beer finds me I hope it's Sam Adams cherry wheat...

It would have to be a pretty damn big tree but no it would not kill the tree to hollow it out, it might make it weaker and result in the tree being blown down...

I live in the middle of the bible belt, I understand exactly where you are coming from. When I meet a person for the first time often one of the first questions asked is "where do you go to church" then if you say you don't go or that you go someplace they feel superior to they begin active proselytizing. To me it's astounding that other wise intelligent people suck this slop up like it was cream and strawberries... I see no reason to hunt a baited field, we get plenty of people here asserting their personal brand of horse feathers... The real trick is trying to figure out how the republicans can field candidates who are no better than Moe, Larry, and Curly... And people are behind them like it is the best thing possible...

Sho nuff...

it might be interesting to not only know the out of date phrases but what they have been replaced with as well. Drugstore Cowboy = Poser... If you ever come to Wilmington, NC let me know, I'll take where they still do that in the original parking lot/small building of the drive-in restaurant that has been in operation here at least fifty years, my wife's parents ate there when they were dating... they still serve the same flat burgers... Ok, it's that kind of attitude that ended my career as a polyester maker, I was very good at making the finest Dacron, oh yes....