Hugo

Because an effect of an event is delayed does not mean it was not an effect. The Napoleonic Wars and the massive military buildup from 1780 sowed the seeds of later depression: The war was also financed through inflation, which led to monetary instability and serious lack of investor confidence. Combine that with a few bad harvests and it is completely unsurprising that economic hardship followed for many. However, absolutely none of these facts is any kind of indictment against the industrial revolution. You decried the Corn Laws as an example to support your argument, but the Corn Laws are an example of destructive state interventionism in the economy: statism. In fact, the Corn Laws would be called "protectionism" today and people such as you would probably welcome them as great ideas to stop alleged losses of jobs to outsourcing. However, now as then, these protectionist laws serve to impoverish the very people they are supposed to help and nothing more. Which ones? If it's more works of fiction I shall be very disappointed. So, you don't think that the fact that the principal witnesses in these Commissions had, by their own admission, never seen the working conditions they decried with their own eyes, and refused to testify under oath, puts these Commissions in a bad light? Why would an impartial and unbiased Commission accept such absurd testimony? Would a just court accept the testimony of a "witness" who had not witnessed the crime in question, had no expertise about the crime, its perpetrator or anything connected to it, and who refused to testify under any oath of truth? I think they would throw out the witness and advise the jury to disregard all that he had said. It is not arguable at all, because wherever "philosophies diametrically opposed to Capitalism" have been tried these benefits have categorically failed to happen. All socialist economies can be put into two categories: failed, or failing. A theory that doesn't fit the facts is wrong. Any socialist economic theory that "demonstrates" better welfare for the masses is wrong. An example, please. People have been forecasting such crises for centuries, Eureka. Their claims grow ever more ridiculous as technology advances (which should lead to less jobs, according to them), as the population grows (leading to more job seekers) and yet the free market still manages to find jobs for all. By now, their shrill cries are as absurd and laughable as the Jehovah's Witnesses who prophesied the Apocalypse in 1874, then in 1878, then 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1968, 1992, and so on. I think they have officially "indefinitely postponed" the Apocalypse at the moment, much as anti-capitalists of all stripes seem to have "indefinitely postponed" the collapse of capitalism.

Funny how the stereotypical pitbull owner is a violent and aggressive skinhead, and yet whenever a story hits the press about pitbulls the animal is always owned by an average working guy or an old person who wants a companion or a guard dog. Quite a lot of old and infirm people get viciously attacked and killed in their homes, usually as part of petty robbery. It makes me angry that, not only does the government refuse to provide them with any kind of decent police protection, it insists on banning anything they might use to defend themselves. I suppose the government expects old, bedridden people to just duke it out with thugs intent on stealing their VCR while they wait 20 minutes for the cops to show up?

The sources I cited said that the early effects of industrialization were not bad, and the sources you cited effectively said that the effects of war and statism were bad. Therefore, you still have no supporting evidence for your claims. These Commissions were run by those biased against capitalism, the people they called upon as witnesses had never set foot inside a factory although they claimed to be experts on factory conditions, and these same witnesses refused to testify under oath. Do you dispute any of this? If so, with what evidence? If not, how can you claim these Commissions are of any value as historical evidence whatsoever? Actually, if you read up on capitalistic theory, you will see that the abolition of child labour, rising real incomes and better working conditions are the natural and inevitable consequences of capitalism, due to the increasing development of the economy creating an increasing demand for labour in which the "price" for labour (wages, holidays, working conditions) will consequently grow higher. Simple market economics, as true in the labour market as in any other. In some cases. In the USA, for instance, taxation and the presence of the state in the economy actually grew after every war, rather than shrank. Germany's economic collapse after WWI was due to the fact that the German state, rather than retreating from the big-government stance necessitated by total war, actually grew. Britain did recede from big-state economic policies after WWI, and consequently enjoyed some economic growth, until 1925 when they abandoned it, and therefore entered a slump. Ask yourself who built the poor houses and who passed the poor laws. The roots of the poor houses are back in 1536, when the largely monastic voluntary tradition of caring for the poor was abolished and a compulsory, coercive system of caring for the poor with tax money was adopted. This system became so expensive that government looked for a better solution and the workhouse or poor house promised to save tax money, so they adopted it. It was a lousy solution, conditions became terrible mostly due to deliberate policy, as a deterrent for paupers in order to stop the workhouse population growing as they were becoming increasingly expensive. Basically, workhouses are a bad government solution to a problem that government created and, as such, have nothing to do with industrialization or capitalism.

Your analogy of shops and judges is basically sound. When you pick a church - or any other institution - to marry you, you and your spouse have chosen an arbiter for your marriage. As you're interested, or bored, I'll explain my position. Firstly, while Jesus talked about a great deal of subjects and morals, he never talked about homosexuality. Either he saw nothing wrong with it or he didn't consider it a big enough deal to warrant discussion. Either way, it's hard to take that as any kind of condemnation. The Old Testament that many take as a condemnation of homosexuality is frequently ambiguous and usually misinterpreted. Leviticus is not a text of moral codes but of cultural ones. The laws it describes (such as wearing clothes of only one fiber or clipping one's beard or hair in certain spots) was designed to preserve the cultural integrity of the Jewish people against their neighbours. This becomes obvious when you consider that the word used in the Hebrew text to describe these acts, including homosexual relations, is toevah, which literally means "culturally forbidden." If the author had wanted to describe homosexuality as immoral, he would have used the word zimah. When translated into Greek, again, the word bdelygma is used, which means "ritual impurity", and not anomia, which means illegal, immoral or sinful. Leviticus 20:13 prescribes the death penalty for homosexuality, but it is very important to note that it does this as a crime of idolatry - identifying with the Gentiles - rather than as an immoral crime. Cursing ones parents was also given the death penalty for the same reason, since Jewish society revolved around the family and a strict family hierarchy, to reject ones parents constituted a severe disruption of Jewish society. In Genesis, when Sodom is described, the crime is not homosexuality. In Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, the sins for which God destroyed the city are listed as oppression and injustice, lying, lack of hospitality, and rape, never homosexuality. Regarding the story in Genesis, when read in context (considering Lot's offering of his daughters to the crowd as sacrificial victims) it seems clear that the crime of the mob was not to desire homosexual relations with Lot's visitors but to desire to rape them. Paul's letter to the Romans is misinterpreted. The Greek word supposed to mean "natural" actually means "true to oneself", and the word supposed to mean "unnatural" actually means "unexpected." Similarly, the word supposed to mean "degrading" actually means "socially disapproved", and the word taken as "shameless [acts]" means "not according to accepted norms" in the original Greek. When these correct translations are reinserted into Romans, the text is very different. Now, Paul is saying that homosexuals have rejected the norms of their society for a different way, and their acts therefore have not been accepted by society. This is confirmed when Paul says in Romans 14:14 that "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself." Furthermore, Paul's text is a piece of propaganda aimed at conversion and at unity of believers, and therefore seeks to appeal to the Judeo-Christian sense of superiority over the Gentiles, so Paul seeks to differentiate them from the Gentiles in his letter. When the original Hebrew in Corinthians and Timothy is considered, the passages are condemning lewd and unrestrained sexuality in and of itself, no matter what the orientation. Jesus's teachings in Matthew, Mark and Galatians clearly state that no act is wrong in and of itself, but only motives can be wrong. The most crucial and important teaching of Jesus was to love thy neighbour, therefore, an act that does not transgress against one's fellow man or that is not intended to cannot be immoral according to Jesus. These mistakes usually come about through reading the Bible without historical context. This is very common. For example, consider that Jesus said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. So, it sounds like it would be impossible for a rich man to enter. However, in Jerusalem one of the entranceways to the city was called the Eye of the Needle, and it was so low that a traders camel laden with goods had to be unloaded and then had to stoop down low in order to pass through the gate, and be reloaded on the other side. With this knowledge, the interpretation of Jesus's phrase becomes very different. No longer is it impossible, it becomes merely difficult.

It seems that the doomsayers of the industrial revolution are the revisionists. As the sources I cited say, their work is based on wildly inaccurate and biased evidence. All of this is true. It's also true that it's only true because of the massive increase in taxation, government (military) spending and national debt due to the Napoleonic wars. It is not a secret that massive wars bankrupt nations, and the Napoleonic wars were indeed massive. Had they not happened, these problems would not have arisen. The answer, then, is that the fault lies not with industrialism but with the wars and the states that waged them. Indeed, were it not for industrialisation, Britain might not have survived the Napoleonic wars at all. I think it's a given that the only reason Britain was able to defeat Napoleon in the long run was by outproducing him in war materiel, due to the more industrialised British economy. The Corn Laws are a good example of exactly what I am opposed to: state interference in the economy and state power. It was pushed through by landowners who dominated Parliament and wanted to protect their profits. The Chartists and the Peterloo demonstrators were not protesting industrialism, they were protesting government interference and government power. Obviously, since prosperity is difficult at best when government interferes in the economy. What you have said doesn't support your argument, it supports mine.

While we're on the subject of gay marriage and churches, it's my opinion that any Church that opposes homosexuality is being fundamentally anti-Christian and rejecting the teachings of Christ and the word of the Bible. In my opinion, a church that rejects homosexuals is, in actual fact, a satanic temple. If the government was to shut any of them down or any were to collapse financially due to a lawsuit I would shed no tears. If anybody is interested I'll be happy to explain my position further, but before I go into a long and possibly quite rambling explanation I'll gauge the level of interest first.

A miracle? Seriously, what's your explanation - that HIV appears by magic wherever sodomy is to be had? HIV is transmissible by anal sex, but I've never heard it proposed that HIV is created from nowhere by anal sex! I take back my earlier comments. Obviously we do need more sex-ed in schools. It's funny how everybody claims to have homosexual friends. Given that they're maybe 1-3% of the population, they would have to be really, really friendly people. Every gay man would have to befriend 30-100 straight men. I don't believe that a marine who uses the term "faggot" for an insult has any homosexual friends, quite honestly. Personally, I think the probable explanation is that homosexuality is a malfunction of the sex drive. We have sexual urges to get us to reproduce, thus ensuring the survival of the species, and homosexual attraction cannot produce or appear to produce offspring. This malfunction seems largely due to environmental factors beyond the control of the individual. Being a victim of sexual abuse in the formative years seems to be common among homosexuals, as do other symptoms of psychological disorder such as tendencies for substance abuse, severe self-esteem problems, extremes of promiscuity (usually a sign that the subject is searching for acceptance and affection) and suicide. There may be some kind of genetic predisposition, too, but hard evidence of that has been elusive. However, that's assuming that humans are the same as animals, and we do have many characteristics that distinguish us from all other kinds of life on earth, for example, the use of representative pictures and other abstract concepts. Bearing that in mind, it may be that human sexuality is not like animal sexuality. Anyway, regardless of the cause, it's no business of ours what consensual acts other people get up to, no matter how perverted or unnatural we consider them. There's a good book you can read on this, BD6. It's called Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, and you can read it online. You could also say that the purpose of the eyes is not to stare at VDUs for 8-16 hours a day, that the purpose of the digestive tract is not to ingest vast amounts of refined sugar and carbohydrates, that the purpose of the adrenal gland is not to give you road rage when some jerk cuts you off, and so forth. What are you going to do - legislate us back into a Hobbesian "state of nature"? Is it naturally perfect if we suffer the Hobbesian short, brutal and nasty life, being eaten by mountain lions or dying of typhoid? A lot of stuff isn't natural. Scientologists think that even the human race isn't natural. "Better luck next time"?

See here.

I'll grant you most of that, but you still have to acknowledge that all of those problems were worse before the industrial revolution. To summarise, your complaint is not that the revolution made things worse, but that it didn't make things better fast enough. If you keep repeating it, that doesn't make it a fact, you know. The evidence that mercantilism still exists is plain to see: import tarriffs, job protectionism and anti-outsourcing, government industry, government contracting, etc. are all part of mercantilist policy. Adam Smith never advocated any of those, quite the opposite, in fact. So if you call what we have today "capitalism" or "liberalism" then you're simply confusing your terminology. Your argument is akin to saying, "I take the word 'black' to mean the word 'rapist', therefore, I think all blacks should be imprisoned." I was discussing the East India Company as it was in the 18th Century, prior to the American Revolution.

That's not what the source I cited says. The general population saw great rises in life expectancy, real income, literacy and so forth. The big misconception seems to be that, before the industrial revolution, life was great. It wasn't. The overwhelming majority of the population was illiterate, would die early (45 or so), have no choice but to follow the profession of their fathers and eke out a subsistence level of living at best. Mercantilism still exists today. Look at all the trade tarriffs and taxes. Look at crown corporations in Canada, or Halliburton, General Dynamics or Raytheon in the USA. With the rifle and the bayonet. The East India Company generally forced Indian peasants to sell their produce at below market prices and forced them to buy their goods at far more than they were worth. They would have made a killing were it not for the massive corruption within the company that burnt up all profit. Then they decided to try and make America buy all their surplus tea, the Bostonians threw it all in the harbour, and the rest is history (well, it all is, but you get my point).

The modern Agricultural Revolution began in about 1750, at much the same time as the appearance of capitalism and free markets. It's funny that ever since this time, we have had the continual massive advances that have succeeded in eradicating famine, whereas since the beginning of agriculture around 12,000 years beforehand, very little had changed and famine was an ever-present fear. This is due to the economic systems. Serfs had little reason to strive for new methods and technologies since all their produce was taxed, landholders had little reason to demand them since economic growth didn't really happen and increased prosperity was granted by royal fiat rather than trade. But when you move farming towards a freeholder system, suddenly farmers have incentives to be more productive. Population vs. arable land was very favourable in Russia too, even more so in the Ukraine, and yet those countries have suffered innumerable famines, even in the 20th Century. Britain has a population that is far in excess of what its arable land can support, and yet famine in Britain of the last few centuries is almost unheard of. The closest thing would be the Irish potato blight, but that is a drop in the ocean compared to Russian, Ukrainian or Chinese famines. The modern transportation that has been developed and implemented under the free market?

What kind of response is this??? The trading activities of the East India Company were conducted at gunpoint - are you seriously telling me that armed robbery constitutes "free trade"? Liberalism and mercantilism are two very different concepts. Please don't mix them up.

No, I note that nothing you have said has been simplified to common sense. It amounts to "because I say so" or "because I feel like it" - there are no underpinnings to your arguments. You're clearly not a moral absolutist since you believe that the state can do things that would be called criminal in the individual, but you've also denied being a nihilist, so that puts you somewhere in the middle, and where is basically down to where you feel like being and nothing more justifiable than that. No, "you" did it for 85 years, and then the great experiment of the USA came crashing down in a horrible, bloody war. Ever since then, the USA has been just like any European power - big government, mercantilist economics, international meddling, standing armies and gunboat diplomacy. Ironically, they are worse off now. I think only a fool would argue that Germany is better off having suffered massive and near-total destruction of property and incredible loss of life, twice, and then to have been split asunder and had part of its population subjected to the brutality of Soviet communism. Yes, yes and yes, all before Hitler. I take my tax refund because it was my money in the first place. I think I have a right to my own property. I've never drawn a penny of welfare, disability, unemployment or any other government stipend in my life. This isn't really true (see our debate from before), but in any event this wasn't capitalism but what capitalists call state capitalism or mercantilism (Marx was mistaken in lumping mercantilism and capitalism together, as he would have known if he had read Adam Smith, who was a capitalist and spent a lot of time debunking mercantilism). State capitalism is a horrible mixture of free markets and state interference. In essence, the state creates a "free" market and then becomes a player in it, and obviously, with armies, police forces and hangmen the state-player has a massive advantage. The government meddles in the economy, skewing it all over the place and creating monopolies, often at gunpoint e.g. the East India Company, price fixing, unemployment, shortages, and so forth. Argue against capitalism if you will, but don't argue against mercantilism and call it arguing against capitalism.

But nevertheless, you must agree that the free market has utilised those developments most effectively, and fostered new ones due to the profit motive. Where the food market has failed in capitalist nations, it has been because of the abandonment of capitalism (e.g. the government price-fixing of food during the Great Depression causing food shortages). When the agricultural industry has been left alone, it has not failed to provide. Famine is unheard of in Western nations. No, that's wrong. Mao tried to force industrialisation, draining the peasantry off the land, and then tried to force collectivism (Jung Chang). Lenin and Stalin caused the Bread Wars and the massive famines of the 20s and 30s as direct results of their collectivist policies (Nikita Kruschev, Robert Conquest et al). If you have alternative sources or evidence I'd like to hear them. But for you to state that centralised agriculture did not cause famine, without anything in support, is like saying "Day is night." No, I dislike being forced to share under threat of violence and expropriation. Furthermore, "cash" is representative of goods and services. So your contention is that government rewards are something concrete, which I might want or might not but have to accept anyway, whereas profit from industry can take the form of whatever I want. Being sane, I choose the private option. I don't believe in any company, but I believe that the competition between companies will cause them to want to offer the best for the least - in goods, in labour policies, etc.

What do you make of the endemic famines suffered by countries with centrally planned agricultural industries? How do you explain that the number of famines suffered by nations utilising free-market foodstuff production is so close to zero as to look like a rounding error? Many, many things are impossible for the individual, and yet the free market creates them (railroads, skyscrapers, jet airliners, airlines, etc).

Firstly, that your position is indefensible. It's just your opinion, and it isn't founded on any underlying principle or simple law. Simply put, your ideas are held because you are personally comfortable with them, not because of any theory of ethics or morality or any empirical evidence. Secondly, that your assumption that the public could "police" the government has to be false if you also believe that people could endorse a government you find reprehensible. After all, Hitler came to power constitutionally and had the mandate of the masses, and if the German people failed to monitor their own government, what makes you think Americans never would? Strawman argument. I think we should assume that the farmer wants nothing from the government, either. That's your response?

This hasn't really answered my question. My point is that there are some things that you would consider as going "too far" in the interests of national security. You don't draw the line at snooping in your bank account, but at inspecting the electoral ballots. Some wouldn't find even that objectionable. Stalinism is, as political philosophy, the belief that any act committed for the cause of advancing socialism is inherently moral. Consider that the point at which you draw the line is purely arbitrary and indefensible. No, not really. The bar analogy involves private ownership, shareholding and so forth. Let me put it another way. Let's say I live in the US, and I say to the government, "Listen, I don't like you and you don't like me. So here's the deal: I stay on my farm, that I own, and I'll never leave it again, and in return you won't charge me any taxes ever again." Obviously, the government wouldn't accept that. Why do they have the right to tax me? Do they own my farm? Why do they own it - because the majority (i.e. other people) said they could? So you can steal somebody else's property, as long as you can get a bunch of people to agree with you? If an individual doesn't have a right (e.g. appropriation of anothers property), how can he defer that right to government? Oh, you're on the way. Did you recall Blackdog's summary of how the PA violates the constitution and operates in privacy and secrecy? Very probably, but I'm sure people would be outraged, and the administration would be in serious trouble for passing such an Act without good reason - hence the wait for 9/11 before the Act was passed.

Funnily enough, dissatisfaction with Islam and a view that it has been "corrupted" are as prevalent in that religion as in Christianity, starting with the Kharijites in the 7th Century and, crucially, the reforms of Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab. However, the roots of Islam are the distortions of the Judeo-Christian religious foundations by a warlord named Muhammed, who sought to harness religious fanaticism to fuel his ambitions of war and conquest. There have been a few attempts at reconciling Islam with the parent religion and pacifying it, most notably by Muhammed Abduh, Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muhammed Iqbal. None of these have become widespread, and the Bahai movement became a religion in its own right.

What about food and water? Those are definitely "public goods", so by your rationale, shouldn't the state be running the foodstuffs industry and the water supply?

OK, so obviously those examples I mentioned wouldn't be enough to outrage you. Let's consider another (it's hypothetical, but not outside the realms of possibility). Let's say that, in the interests of security, the government is going to monitor voting. Instead of a secret ballot, we're going to issue voters ballots with their name and SSN at the top. Then we can monitor people who might be "traitors" or "security risks" - those who vote for the Communist Party, or the Islamic Jihad Party, or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with free votes, we're just checking up on people. If you don't do anything wrong, you have no reason to fear. Of course, this is assuming nobody in the electoral system would be tempted to sell such information. The media would probably be very interested in which celebrities voted for which party, and potential employers might be interested in applicants political affiliations. We could take it a step further, and decide to detain anyone who votes in a dubious fashion as they leave the polling booth. Not to imprison them, of course, just to detain and interrogate them (under the Patriot Act, naturally, so they don't get habeas corpus, legal representation, the right to appeal to a court within 24 hours of being arrested, or the right to a trial by jury). We just want to find out if they're dangerous, or if they know anyone who is. Nobody innocent of wrongdoing need be afraid. Sounds good? So America is the government's house? They own it, they can tell people how to behave, or to get out? How does that work? Does the Republican Party own the USA right now? You hope. A lot of Germans never knew about the Final Solution until after the end of the war. Consider that most of the Patriot Act allows investigations and arrests to be carried out in secret, often without judicial oversight. In history, each growth of American government power and intrusiveness has followed a war. The Civil War was followed by the economically active government, with the first national debt (still not repaid, to this day). WWI was followed by the embryonic welfare state and the economic interference that led to the Great Depression, WWII was followed by the completion of the welfare state, the Cold War led to McCarthyism and the Red Scare, and the War on Terror has become the excuse for the Patriot Act. It's good, old-fashioned Machiavellian politics and Orwellian manipulation. Just distract the public with a foreign war, externalise the enemy, fool them into thinking you're protecting them, invoke nationalism and jingoism to get them to support your cause, demonise your enemy (Indian savages, Southern slavers, Hohenzollern butchers, Nazi warmongers, godless Commies, fanatical Islamists) and so forth. It's the oldest game in the book, and it goes back to before the ancient Greeks - although they were the first culture to really perfect the kulturkampf and militaristic patriotism.

Given the number of police states that have existed in history, that contention is patently ridiculous. Government can't spy on every citizen, but it can spy on 99% of them, and it can certainly terrorise the other 1% into silence. If you obey the law? Whose law, and to what extent? What if the growing security state demands the right to snoop through your bank account and credit history, to monitor your internet activities, to track the movements of your car, or even to insist that you wear a tracking device wherever you go? Your promise to "monitor" the government sounds great at first glance, but when will you say, "too much"? What if others disagree? Any compromise on freedom/security is purely arbitrary opinion and thus indefensible. He who trades freedom for security shall receive neither. The fact is that you aren't getting security, you see, you're getting the promise of security from other individuals and, in exchange, you are giving them ever-increasing amounts of power and money. What happens if these individuals ever decide that you are the enemy? What if they decide that the most important issue is their continued domination, and a threat to security is something which compromises their power, rather than that which threatens the citizenry?

Because you seemed to be saying that death is inevitable, and the mode and timing are therefore irrelevant (non sequitur, but I digress). That sounds like quite a nihilistic attitude to me, so I'm asking if that is what you actually believe. My answer is that it is foolish to wonder how anarchy would protect its people without realising that anything anarchy 'does' (in as much as an absence of something could do anything) could not fail to be better than government, which actually kills its people. Any method of protection or even no method at all is better than active persecution and murder. If I protect you badly or don't protect you at all, that's still better than my trying to hurt you or steal your possessions, right? So, let me make sure that I understand this. The government passes the Patriot Act, and you accept it, and you talk of trusting the government and a belief that it will do the "right thing", whatever that is (you seemed to deny the existence of any moral absolutes above). But when a judge strikes that Act down or a part thereof, you assume his motives must be selfish in some way. This is inconsistent and self-contradictory. If you sacrifice something, there is a recipient of that sacrifice. To whom are you sacrificing your civil liberties, BD6, and why do you think that's wise?

Neal, There was another point of yours I wanted to touch on, too. That's completely backwards. Living according to Christ's teachings is the most important thing, more important than "accepting" Christ in the way you speak of. "Not everyone saying to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?' And yet then I will confess to them: I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness." -- Matthew 7:21-23 Therefore, according to Christ himself, it is certain that Mahatma Gandhi (for instance) would be allowed into paradise since he lived his life according to the will of God and the teachings of Christ - pacifism, compassion, love for all men and disdain for material goods - even though he was a Hindu and did not accept Christ in the way you mean. Similarly, there are many who fit into the category Jesus decried, people who claim to be Christian and to have accepted Jesus into their hearts and yet lead a very un-Christian life.

BD6, I really don't care what you think of my taste in music, number of friends, social life, hobbies and interests, children, family, pets, favourite colour, shoe size, zodiac sign, etc. etc. Either get back to debating the topic, or get lost.

You see, you're back at it again. It's pointless to respond to any of your allegations because I cannot disprove any of it on this forum. I will, however, say that it's a sign of a very weak argument when you spend more time insulting your opponent than refuting his points.