jefferiah

No your comments about me being white and male. Now, how can you prove an employer is discriminating? Does the fact that he has more employees from a certain group suffice?

Thats racism, and sexism. I am quite aware that I am not a homosexual black woman American Woman. But I still don't think the law should have power over this, because not all uneven-ness in society can be attributed to discrimination. And in such cases, the law you impose will create further discrimination.

Yep and I know some black ones who agree with me wholeheartedly. Hmm does being a white male discount my opinion. Perhaps I should have refused to answer such a race-based question. The problem with it is that the law will actualy be directly responsible (because of these policies) for disciminatory hiring. Because if not all uneven-ness in society is attributed to discrimination (and I think its safe to say that not all of it is), then in these cases people will be forced to hire in the future based on a discriminatory policy. When the Law does not impose its will on such matters it keeps its hands clean of it. But when it attempts to impose policies on it, it will become a guilty party to the discrimination.

No. It sounds nice on paper though. If you come into my office lets say and there are 10 women working there and only one man, will you just automatically assume that I was discriminating against males in my hiring. Or, how about this, in a society free from discrimination, do you think that by some strange chance numbers of race, sex, creed would just evenly pan out, and that if they did not discrimination is implied? And if that is not always the case, then there will be a great many cases where the law is actually going to force the employer (who may be non-discriminatory) to commit discrimination in hiring.

I think you should know my answer by now. My right to work or anyone's right to work is not the question. I have a right to work. But it is not my right to be hired in someone else's businesses. Nor does the right to be hired belong to any group. It is someone else's right to do the hiring. The one who runs the show.

And how many women were applying for the job, and as Dancer stated how many had at this point had a decent amount of seniority. Do you think that the government should have the right to tell people who have built a business who they can hire?

Well I am not on any Board of Directors and I am surviving. Do you think I should just live with the way things are, not being on a board of directors and all? How can one expect to survive without being on a board of directors in a corporation?

Do you think I should have the right to tell the owners of a company who they can hire?

No, this is not what I am saying, and I have made it clear in my arguments that I do not think this can be the truth in all cases where there is not proportional gender representation in the workplace. But these policies are obviously being enacted for that purpose, wouldn't you say?

I haven't attended church in years. I have no membership in any church. When I was a boy I went to a United Church. And I hated Sunday school. And I refused to sing songs too. There is nothing in the Bible which says you have to give money to Christian colleges (by the way I think all colleges make money or else they would be hard to keep running), and I think I have expressed my dissent from Catholicism. I do not know what Christal Cathedral is, and I still don't know who Oral Roberts is. I did not participate in this conversation until it began to change topic.

Yes, Margrace and since I am the owner of the Vatican, The Christal Cathedral and each one of the plethora of Christian colleges and I was the one who bought Benny Hinn his mansion (and I still find time to post on Maple Leaf Web too), I sure have a lot to lose. (Note: This post contains sarcasm.)

And they have been given the opportunity to read your views and which you fail to substantiate. And am I preventing them from making up their own minds. You have a right to post your things from your sources, and I have a right to post mine. This is not preventing you from anything. Do you expect that when you say things you will not be challenged? That does not sound like the policy of the open-minded to me. Look, the fact is Margrace...Acharya, Harpur and others are quoting things out of thin air. Even Mithraic scholars do not agree with the similarities between Christ and Mithra, and in the literature which exists concerning Mithra nothing confirms the claims of your folks. So unless they have copies of Mithraic texts that no one else knows about, they are plain making this stuff up. And there is nothing close-minded about actually reading Eusebius and finding out that he does not say what Harpur says he does. Read the link I provided yourself. You are open-minded, right?

This is not an argument, Margrace. I provided you with a direct link to the work of Eusebius in question. You can read it yourself and see that it says absolutely nothing similar to what Harpur says it does. Instead you chose to say well why would Harpur say it in his book, and why has no one challenged him. M. Dancer provided you with 4 links to challenges. In the Tektoniks site he gave you there is also a link to a page concerning the Mithra hoax.

First off, what you quoted is not in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book 2 Chapter 17. Secondly, we already had a thread on here concerning the Mithra connection, which is also an old argument which gets raised over and over, and then is debunked quite rationally. First off most of the so-called similarities between Mithra and Jesus, are not even true. Nowhere in the wealth of Mithraic literature is there any mention of his being born of a virgin, but he was born out of a rock. No twelve disciples. If you are looking in the works of people like S Acharya or someone similar they are simply fabricating Mithra facts out of thin air. Or else she has Mithraic texts that no one else possesses. Mithraic scholars emphatically deny these so-called similarities. Since I have already posted on this topic I will just quote one of those posts....saves a lot reading for me. "The similarities between pagan mystery cults and Christianity are very skewed. Nowhere is Mithra said to have been born of a virgin or born on December 25th. There is no mention of his death. There is no source which says he had 12 disciples. There is no documentation of shepherds attending his birth. Actually there is very very little documentation on the subject of Mithra or Mithras. Alot of this stuff you read on websites claiming the similarities is very very very skewed and ridiculous. Most of these claims are based on stretching what sources you have. As I said Mithraic scholars do not even accept this nonsense. And also even though the pagan religions pre date Christianity, alot of the material they are citing is not pre Christian writing----but actually pagan writings from about 400 AD. They beg borrow and steal from every pagan religion to find a similarity, and where the similarities aren't they invent them through very liberal interpretation. Christianity is based on Judaism. The death of Jesus parallels the death of the Passover Lamb. The entire Last Supper is based on the Passover. This is where the real striking parallels are. And Messianic Jews are the best to explain them. The mention of pagan Baptismal ceremonies also require a great deal of stretching. The comparison is often made between Osiris being drowned in his coffin. Somehow this now becomes the equivalent of Christian baptism. Or the agrarian mention of cycles and rebirth of vegetation becomes Ressurection???? " http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index.php?showtopic=9621

I always find it funny that so many people who claim to think nothing about race can spend so much time looking to see how many people there are of a certain race. I think that sort of thinking is kind of akin to the one which seeks a token black man. If you go the church I went to when I was growing up Margrace, you would most likely have never been able to pick out a black man in the congregation. Were they not allowed in our church? Well, actually, through none of my doing, there are very very few black people in the rural area where I live, until recently. (However for many years you would have seen a black man in our church, only not in the congregation but at the pulpit.) I remember a girl who moved here lamenting how terrible our high school was because there were only two black people. "It's pathetic," she said. Were black people barred from the school? No. There were relatively few black people living in the town where my high school was. Were black people being barred from moving to the town? No, again. Things just don't magically always even out in nice numbers. I wonder do people in China lament the presence of a vast majority of Asians?

That is not the reason for which people do not support such hiring policies. The reason is that they feel such equalization policies are based on a logical fallacy which presumes that equality can be acheived by making even results. I am someone who tends to disagree with the logic behind these policies as well. The prejudgement is made by those who argue for it that in any case where an inequality of a race group or a gender group is prevalent among a workplace that it must be due to discrimination. I think that is a large presumption. Another presumption is the one which says those who reject such socialist policies must be biased against a certain group. A friend online told me that at a company where he works they have such a policy, and that even though the male quota is filled, the company is required to turn down male applicants for positions which they are applying for left and right, while it just so happens that few females are applying. I understand that there are cases of discrimination as well, but I don't think that enacting a system where people will be chosen on the basis of their sex is advisable when in many cases it is never established that they were choosing males based on their sex either. This is social engineering, and it is something I am very strongly against. Does this mean I want women to stay out of the work world? Suppose a company already has its male quota and that now it advertises a job opening. A man and a woman both apply. The man in this case just happens to be the better candidate for the job. The company is forced to hire based on sex though, and there you have it. Where people have proposed the same thing in the political field I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how it could work without superceding democracy. A law which says you must hire based on someone's sex is, IMO, a silly solution to the problem of people being hired based on sex.

I don't know if you are actually serious Mike, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt since I don't think there is any harm in explaining this to you. When he says "even in Canada we've prosecuted..." the surprising element is not the prosecution of the slavery but that there were actually cases of Islamists who felt free to hold slaves at this day in age in Canada.

"Gerald Massey [1828 – 1907 AD] in his Lectures [published privately c1900 AD, but written over several decades prior to this], described many of the concepts we now associate with an Astrological Age [though the concept had yet to be given this name] some forty years before Jung first writes on the subject. He describes the effect of Precession as moving the Vernal Equinox into the Sign of the Fishes, whereas it had previously been in the Sign of the Bull. He uses 2155 years for the length of what we would now call a 'Platonic' Month. He looks forward to a new Messiah, "when the Equinox enters the Sign of the Waterman about the end of this century", [which for him would be the end of the nineteenth century] i.e. the start of what we would now call the Age of Aquarius. In this latter respect he is very different from Jung's decidedly non-Messianic view of a New Age." http://www.geocities.com/astrologyages/ger...seywaterman.htm

Ah ha. I had trouble finding it. I did find a book on Church History but I was not sure if that was it. So I took Book 6 Chapter 1 of this Church History and compared with the Book 6 Chapter 1 of Eccles. History on the U of Calgary site. Same book. And the following chapters in both respective Book 6s matched as well. So here is Book 2 Chapter 17. Whatever your source is that is telling you that this is saying a certain thing, they must be giving you a very very liberal interpretation Margrace. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.vii.xviii.html

But every Christian is aware that Christmas is a holday invented afterward. Nobody knows Margrace what time of year the events of Jesus' birth happened or if Jesus really was (in Kris Kristofferson's words) a Capricorn. The story of Jesus birth was written well before anyone knew it was even going to used as a holiday for the month of December. The fact that Massey was an Egyptologist has nothing to do with his authority on Christian history. He was also a Druid and a person who wrote books making similar claims that New Agers, like Acharya does today, based on just as little, or a convenient lie here and there. Thus the comparison. Can you please quote this passage from Eusebius for me? I can't even find book 2 online. U of Calgary has 5 and up. What I am guessing I will find is that someone is misrepresenting Eusebius' talking about Christian symbolism, which predates Christianity and enter into the realm of Jewish tradition. In fact one could say from a Christian perspective that Passover is a foreshadowing prophetic drama the Jews performed for years without knowing its meaning until it was fulfilled. Since Eusebius wrote some apologetic works claiming authority of the scripture it would have to be a very liberal interpretation of some chapter.

Ah, re-read what I said Margrace. I said that Massey is what we would today call a new ager. I anticipated this at the time.

I read just fine, Margrace. The problem is I do not have time tonight to read all of Ecclesiastical History. Can you please tell me the chapter? Usually when people ask for a citation they don't get told to read an entire volume.

Granted, but your lighting candles would not elicit such a response from me. Massey most definitely would. Just because one can make the accusation flippantly, in this case I think I am quite justified. I am not aware of the passage by Eusebius. But it still does not sway me. He was a church father perhaps, but not the only one. You will have to provide me with a citation for this, and also Augustine. Now this last part of your claim is the most ridiculous thing you have ever said. I was pointing out that if there were any Christian laws which in those days could have been employed to keep people under control, they were not found in the Bible, but in Catholic doctrine. Whether or not that was their intention, I will not say. But I do disagree with a great deal of the extra-theology. So do you think my theological dissent from Catholicism is the same as saying Catholics are of the Devil? The funny part is that when I refer to new age, you accuse me a jumping to a conclusion to make an accusation against someone, and then you return with this, Margrace.

Revelation is at the end, I would assume because it does not fit with the others in the New Testament which is grouped into Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, then the Epistles, and then finally Revelation. I don't suppose it would have fit in the other groups. Many of the epistles would have been written before some of the gospels in all likelihood as well. Tradition has it that John wrote his Gospel in old age, and that he lived past the age of 100, outliving the others. So that would mean the epistles were all written before his Gospel. The Gospels deal with the life of Jesus. The acts of the apostles with their adventures. The epistles a collection of letters to different churches. Then Revelation, as a prophetic book, about what is to come....is quite suitable as the final book.

This is all a very elaborate story concocted 1000 years later of something which could have happened. I can do the same thing. Gerald Massey would qualify as a new ager today, and alot of their writings, like the Theosophists before them, could easily be given the same charge he gives the Bible. They manipulated facts and history left and right to make everything kosher with their own views. More than making the charge that the Bible was edited in a certain way, they go beyond that and try to tell you what it really said----2000 years ago----based on nothing but their own preconceived notions of what it should have said. Gerald Massey and the Theosophists would be better candidates to accuse of the daydreams of controlling, me thinks. Remember Margrace, that no one could even read the Bible until the press. And when that happened the people should have been even more submissive being exposed to the words which you say were concocted to keep them sheepish. But the response to being able to view scripture for the first time was not one of sheepish submissiveness, but rather a theological revolt. Aside from the fact that the New Testament says that people should respect authority (which seems to me to be quite reasonable, within reason), there is absolutely nothing in the NT that would enable greater control. The Roman Church at the time had things, but they were not things which were found in the Bible, but things they added and wrote in other seperate documents. There was nothing about the RC "indulgences" in the Bible. Nor about the power of the priest to perform "transubstantiation" which they said was necessary to salvation. Various writings of the Roman Church helped to solidify their own political power, but all of these writing are not to be found in the Bible. This is why when the press was invented and the Bible distributed that people began to have this theological revolt. Because they were able to read the Bible themselves, which in no way bound them to some religious organiztion dominated by the laws of men, but rather freed them from it.