Goddess

He is NOT a feminist. He is perfectly willing to bow to Islam's wishes to make women cover themselves, use the side entrances to buildings, sit seperately from the men and be second class (I'm reluctant to say "citizens" because women in Islam are barely viewed as human.) Definitely NOT a feminist.

Today we call that "schizophrenia". I do agree with your statement: Blackbird, although we disagree on most things, I do appreciate your kind and respectful way of conveying your beliefs.

Also, just curious, Blackbird, if you have ever investigated the history of which books were chosen for the Bible (and why) and why certain other ones, like the Nag Hamadi and other gnostic texts were left out?

Is the KJ version not also a "translation"? Therefore subject to the same translating errors and deliberate spurious additions as any other translation?

I don't. I "created" my children too, just like you believe God did. But I don't expect them to "worship" me - I expect them to grow up and be independent beings who don't need me to micromanage their lives. And I would absolutely step in if my children were in trouble, pain or fear. I think the perfect time for God to have stepped in was when children were being shovelled into ovens in Auschwitz. But he did not. His choice was to not step in. His choice has been to not step in for over 2000 years of human misery. You may see that as complettely "reasonable". I do not. This is a common misconception - that life has no purpose without God. My life's purpose is likely much the same as your's - to be a good, kind, compassionate person who respects, appreciates and forgives others. To continually better myself. Our motivations are likely different though - I am a good person because I want to be. I don't try to be a good person because a deity tells me to. I wouldn't live my life any differently if I believed in God. The proof of this is that I know many people who claim to be religious and go to church and preach Bible verses but "prove false to it's power" - they are some of the worst, least compassionate, least forgiving, least giving people I've ever known. Yet some of the best people I've ever known - don't believe in God, have tattoos and never step foot inside a church. You don't need to believe in God to be a good person and exhibit "Bible qualities".

I have read Behe's book. https://ncse.com/library-resource/review-michael-behes-darwins-black-box The Argument from Design: The most common reasoning that I encounter is that the order in nature indicates that someone ordered it. Therefore, there must be a supreme being. A common illustration is of a man walking on the beach. He encounters a watch. Would he think that the watch was formed by the random forces of nature? Of course not. That would be foolish. Yet, we look at the order and complexity of the human body, the animal kingdom, the beauty of our planet, and the vastness and complexity of the universe, and think it came about by chance – absurd! Well, there are more than a few holes in this reasoning. For example, how does one define order? I can watch crystals forming spontaneously. They are complex and ordered, yet they are not arranged by anyone. They form because they follow simple rules (actually conveniences more than rules), and repeat them many times. On the other hand, I can look at my pen, which is simpler than a crystal, and know that it was manufactured. How do I know that? It is because I have seen pens before and I know where they come from. In other words, we recognize design, because we know which items in our society have been designed. We need independent understanding of the mechanisms behind their construction to judge whethere they are designed or a product of natural processes. If I see a completely alien item, I may not know if it were designed or formed naturally. So, are humans formed by the repetition of basic universal rules, or were they designed? The answer is that we can’t tell by looking at them. Additionally, this argument ignores the fact that humans reproduce, whereas watches do not. Reproduction introduces variations and selection into the mix. Humans can and do change spontaneously over the generations. We can see it happening. Watches do not change spontaneously over the generations. We can see it not happening. The biggest flaw in the argument from design is that it leads to an infinite regression. If the universe is so ordered that it could only have come from a superior creator, then how much more must that creator be ordered? If humans must have been designed, then God certainly must have been designed... and his God, and his God, and so on, with each one being more complex than the previous. You can’t just switch off the logic at an arbitrary point. If logic demands that order requires a creator, then the creator must have a creator. Evolution and creation begin at the same point – Something came from nothing. The universe is simpler than God. So, if something had to come from nothing, it might as well have been the universe. Evolution wins this round because it has no need for an unnecessary middle step.

The argument presented here, encapsulated: 1. Complex natural systems CAN evolve gradually through the accumulation of many small useful steps; 2. Systems claimed to be "irreducibly complex" are often NOT; 3. Even systems that ARE irreducibly complex can have functional precursors and evolve gradually.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics I can’t count the number of times that this law has been quoted to me by fundamentalists posing as engineering experts, most of whom couldn’t define thermodynamics if their life depended on it. To put it simply, the argument asserts that the second law of thermodynamics requires systems to increase in entropy over time. In other words, if left completely on their own, things decay, disintegrate, and become more random. So, evolution violates this law by proposing that life has ordered itself, actually becoming less random, all by itself. Creation, on the other hand, supports this law, because it begins with a state of ultimate order. The first refutation involves the poor definition given by creationists. The second law of thermodynamics actually states: "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." One of the problems with this is that the idea that order does not come from disorder is actually a spurious addition and simplistic misapplication of the law. We see seemingly spontaneous order all the time – snowflakes, crystals, sand dunes, etc. So, the second law does not say what creationists claim that it says. If order cannot come from disorder, why does it keep happening? The other problem is that even if we grant them their definition, it would only hold true in a closed system. The earth is not a closed system. Huge amounts of energy are added to our earth every second of the day, in multiple forms, such as heat, light, and radiation. We are also affected by the forces of external gravity and momentum. In our universe, we find pockets of spontaneous order, but we also find vast tracts of disorder. If you sum the total of entropy in the universe, you find that it does indeed increase, just like the second law states. So, the second law of thermodynamics does not indicate a creator. This claim shows a complete lack of understanding, not only of the law that it cites, but also of the nature of evolution. https://app.box.com/s/uclytd91jd

Since he's a creationist, I bet he disagrees with the time frames for evolutionary processes that other scientists affirm. For instance, if he believes the earth is only 6000 years old, as "young earth creationists" believe then, yes he would be correct. That might not be enough time to produce life. The phone number illustration, was just that - an illustration. Simplified for better understanding of how it works.

Evolution doesn't say things happened purely "by accident". It says that accidents introduce random variations and that successful variations are selected by natural processes. https://app.box.com/s/uclytd91jd Let’s take a look at a simple example. Assume your phone number is 10 digits long and consists of numbers between one and six (simply to correspond to the number of sides on a dice – no other reason). It could be something like 214-635-4125. If you throw a dice 10 times, the odds of coming up with this number simply by chance would be one in 60,466,176. I wouldn’t be placing any bets on this happening. But, let’s introduce a selection bias into this trial. Every time you throw a correct number, it gets locked in place. You can then throw again for the remaining numbers. On your first pass through, you should get one or two correct numbers (well, 1.67 to be exact). On your second pass through, you should get another one. Eventually, you will need to make multiple throws to get a correct number. Statistically, you should have the number within 60 throws. That’s a far cry from over 60 million. What we have just done is take a random occurance and overlay it with a non-random selection bias. So, how does this work in the real world? Well, let’s look at another example. In West Africa, malaria is a huge killer. However, there is a genetic variation that allows people to be much more malaria resistant than those who do not have it. The odds of this mutation arising spontaneously are slim. Let’s make up a large number. Assume that the odds are one in ten billion. Now, take the historical population of West Africa (possibly between a few thousand in times long passed, and hundreds of millions today). Add up the number of people who have ever lived in this area throughout history. You now have a situation where this mutation should have occurred. Once it has occurred, the person who has it is likely to be long lived, increasing his/her chance of passing this mutation on to more offspring. Before long, the success of the mutation has allowed it to become widespread. In order for millions of people to end up with this mutation, it does not have to occur millions of times. It only has to occur once, and then be successfully preserved and replicated. This is only one of many real life examples. It is true that favorable mutations are extremely rare. But, there are a lot of living things, and a lot of time has passed. When one of these favorable mutations occurs, it usually gets locked in place by its own success, then spreads like wild fire. Unsuccessful mutations tend to make people very unsuccessful, possibly even killing them immediately. These mutations are quickly discarded. And, this isn’t the only non-random factor in evolution. Favorable traits make a person or animal more attractive to the opposite sex, increasing their likelihood of passing on favorable genes. They are less likely to fall victim to predators. As well, some characteristics are adaptations (rather than mutations) that enter the population through repetition. So, you can calculate the “odds” of evolution happening by random chance, but what’s the point? Evolution never said it was totally random.

And when he is no longer useful to them, they will dump his arse so fast, he won't have time to think about how much jizya he's paying or object to his wife being forced into a hijab and his daughter being whisked off to a backward country for her FGM.

https://app.box.com/s/uclytd91jd THE FLOOD One of the more colorful stories in the Bible is the story of the flood. It is a story that appeals to the imagination. It contains all the elements of a good children’s story - animals, crime and punishment, sweeping events that captivate the reader’s interest, and a happy ending. In fact, children’s literature is precisely where the flood story should end up, placed along side Mother Goose and Cinderella. There are many reasons why the flood story as told by the Bible could never have happened. For instance, the amount of water required to cover the highest mountains would be astronomical. It is physically impossible for the atmosphere to absorb that much water, and drop it as rain. Even if it could be done, five miles of water hovering over the heads of the pre-deluge earth would have created atmospheric pressure so intense that they would have been as flat as pancakes, not to mention the fact that they would be in complete darkness due to the blocking of light from the sun. Core samples of arctic ice show no evidence of either a global flood or a pre-flood tropical climate. Then there is the fact that several civilizations, such as the Egyptian and the Chinese, have written histories that predate the flood. The pyramids were built about two hundred years before the flood, and show no water damage. And, of course, the zoological difficulties are huge. How could fresh water and salt water fish survive in a common pool? And, did Noah drop off kangaroos in Australia on his way to Ararat? The list of arguments against the literal interpretation of the flood account is so long that it would be tiresome to go through it all. Besides, others have already done this better than I can. Most people don’t take it seriously, anyway. I would like to take a completely different approach. I will assume that the flood story is literally true in all of its details, and follow the logic through to its inevitable conclusion. Particularly, I am concerned with its motivation. To begin, a short recap of the events is in order. The Story of the Flood After the creation of the human race, things went along on their merry way for a long time. If you follow the list of who begat whom, and how long each of them lived, you come to the conclusion that Adam was created around 4000 BC. But, after about a millennium and a half, trouble started to brew. Some angels became inflamed with lust for human women and took on human form. They mated with humans, forming a race of huge bullies. Things got so bad that God decided that he would wipe out all life from the earth and start over again. It turns out that in all the earth, there was only one good man. So, God told this man, Noah, to build a huge boat that would house samples of every form of non-water based life. Then, after working for 100 years, God loaded Noah, his family, and all the animals onto the ark, and then it started to rain. By this time, it was around the year 2400 BC. It rained for 40 days and nights, during which time, enough water fell to cover even the highest mountains. When the earth was wiped clean, the waters receded, and Noah let his family and the animals out of the ark to begin repopulating the planet. At this point, we must pause a moment to consider the nature of angels. According to the Bible, angels are direct creations of God. They do not reproduce. As well, they do not have the inherited original sin of Adam and Eve to taint them. They are perfect. This does not mean that they are incapable of sin. It merely means that they are incapable of accidental sin. If an angel sins, it is because he meant it. It also means that if an angel feels sexual desire, it must have been placed there by his creator. In order for an angel to become inflamed with lust for a human woman, it would be necessary for the angel to have a sex drive of some sort. If they were completely neuter in every way, they would find human women about as attractive as we find rocks. For this story to function, God must have created angels with sex drives. Conclusion # 1: Angels are created with a sex drive. Now that we have established this unusual fact, let’s continue. Notice that the Bible says that the angels found human women attractive, and they took on the bodies of men. Also, notice that it does not say that any of them found human men attractive, and none of them took on the bodies of women. This leads us inescapably to our next conclusion. Conclusion # 2: All angels are men. Some of you may be tempted to jump ahead of me, but let’s go slow, and develop this carefully. Our next area of inquiry is regarding the possibility of angelic reproduction. Jesus gives us some insight into the nature of angelic interrelationships: “For in the resurrection, neither do men marry, nor are women given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven.” - Matthew 22:30 (NWT) In addition to this direct statement, we note that there is no reference anywhere in the Bible to female angels, angelic marriage, or angelic reproduction of any sort. This leads us to our next conclusion: Conclusion # 3: Angels have no natural outlet for their sexual urges. Finally, I must add some information regarding the quantities of angels. The book of Daniel makes reference to “ten thousand times ten thousand” standing before God. A quick multiplication shows that there are one hundred million angels present in this scene, and there may be others as well. Also, angels have been in existence for a long time. The Bible says that God rested after creating Adam and Eve, so any angels that exist must have been created before them; therefore, angels are ancient. Conclusion # 4: There are lots and lots of angels and they have a lot of time on their hands. Now, for the slower ones among us, who have not yet figured out what I am getting at, let’s put all four conclusions together, and finish this off: · Angels are created with a sex drive · All angels are men · Angels have no natural outlet for their sexual urges · There are lots and lots of angels, with lots and lots of time With this logic in mind, we can deduce that heaven must be like a huge prison shower room. I suppose that there are some people who have always had this concept of heaven, or at least hoped for it, but you will have to admit that this is not the mainstream viewpoint. If it were, the Cistine Chapel would be restricted to adults only. I think it’s safe to say that this exercise illustrates just how ridiculous is the story of the flood. These conclusions, although absurd, are the natural outgrowth of the story, itself. In order for the events of the flood to get off the ground, this must be true. So, choose for yourself: either heaven is a massive San Francisco bath house, or the story of the flood is just another yarn. Update Subsequent to publishing this article, one of my loyal readers took me to task regarding the proper view of angelic sexuality. Here is how he explained it to me: The angels were able to observe humans. They saw humans, particularly the males, having a jolly good time engaging in sex. Therefore, they decided to get in on it - sort of as a detached experiment regarding what they were missing. Now, this explanation has a couple of problems with it. First of all, this is not what the text says. The text plainly says that they found women attractive while they were still in heaven. Also, if they weren’t all stuck on the idea of sex with women, some of them could have materialized as men, some as women, and they could have come to earth and boinked each other’s brains out. No harm done, and no need for a flood. Secondly, using this logic, there would be no reason for angels to take on human form. Based on my keen observations around the barnyard, bulls seem to enjoy sex every bit as much as humans, and considerably more frequently. If angels just wanted to go slumming, they would have been better off to join the cattle family. Now that I think about it, I would really like to hear this story retold with a bovine variation. Face it, people. If you believe in the story of the flood, there is just no getting around the idea of horny angels. When you get to heaven, don’t drop your harp.

Agree, except on the "impressive results" (I think you were being a bit sarcastic, given your next sentence? ) Niger's infant mortality rate is almost 83 deaths for every 1000 live births. In comparison, Canada's is 5/1000 live births. I'm a firm believer in not having more children than you can look after physically, and emotionally.

This may come as a shock to you, but most women do not dress just to please men. Yes, some may do that on a daily basis (maybe they have an addiction to male attention? Low self-esteem? I don't know....), and occasionally I like to dress up and I love it when my man thinks I look nice, even sexy sometimes. Edit to add: I'm sure, from your posts here that you are not one of those men who think women dress exclusively to be seen as a sex object.

There was a thing on the news last night, too, about China no longer accepting our recyclables and how it will affect Canada. Of course, the doomsdayers predict a reversal - where China is now environmentally up to standards and Canada will be plunged into a 3rd world garbage dump type scenario. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the other, I'm sort of just learning the whole trade picture. So thank you, everyone, for clarifying so many questions I had with your comments on this thread.

Yup. Would you want your wife or daughter to be treated like that in the workplace? If not, don't do it to someone else's wife or daughter.

WTF are they teaching you in science over there???

You think?? Only Muslims can get away with crap like this: (from its free energy system thread) Anyone else here would be set straight, but again.....deafening silence.

And I already know all the excuses you will use for why it's okay for Muslims to say this and act on it, so don't bother.

Can;t you just picture Hillary sipping her coffee this morning.....