WIP

The main point was to fish for your economic philosophy since your post that caught my attention could have been interpreted as satire, and a screen name of "moderate" doesn't shed any further light on what direction we should be going in. Also, I may have been listening to too much Limbaugh this week and got so sick of his rags-to-riches stories and other "achievers" that he fauns over, that I just had to get it out there that no one can claim that they did it all by themselves and owe nothing to the general welfare of the society. Anyway, about your income bracket. Myself, I'm still at the 2nd level of our four-tiered income tax scheme, now, if you are already in the highest U.S. income tax category, you are paying the same income tax rate as Rush Limbaugh....and that does not seem fair to me unless you are also earning 50 million per year. Add to that the fact that payroll taxes like Social Security premiums have a cutoff at $100,000 according to what I've been told...so as Americans worry about whether Social Security will be there when they retire, Limbaugh, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros etc. also do not contribute anything extra on their millions of dollars of income after they make their first hundred thou. Yes, somebody who invents a new technology may have received a great personal reward, but who pays for the roads, police, fire departments, public schools, etc. after they are built? Keep in mind, I have talked to anarcho-capitalist libertarians who do not believe in any common services, including roads, bridges and police, and would privatize everything and abolish government in favour of anarchy. If you take libertarianism to the logical extreme, it ends with anarchy. Stopping short of this puts libertarians in the uncomfortable position of explaining how they decide which public services to keep, and which to privatize or abolish, since they follow a general principle that government can't run anything properly. Why not privatize police and the military? Imagine all of the inefficiencies of government that could be eliminated if you did away with the Defense Dept. and replaced all of the armed services with private military contractors like Blackwater! Yes, change the laws! Now how is that campaign finance reform thing coming along? The recent economic meltdown is good example of what can go wrong when payed lobbyists are financing the only two political parties in the system. Phil and Wendy Gramm engineered the repeal of banking reforms brought in after the 1929 collapse, and a so called securities reform bill that made it impossible to regulate the hidden derivative contracts market -- and all of this occurred with the collusion of Republican and Democratic politicians, since they were signed into law during the Clinton Administration. Many of President Obama's financial advisers, such as Larry Summers, were strong advocates of banking deregulation and a hands off attitude towards derivatives. Where does Larry Summers stand now, since he is back in the Whitehouse? It seems that unless he makes the mistake of agreeing to an interview by John Stewart, we'll never know! Democratic and Republican are essentially just slightly different flavours of the same ice cream....similar to what we have with Liberal and Conservative! But, if a person on welfare is wasting money to feed addictions to booze, cigarettes and illegal drugs, the cry goes out that they are wasting our money. When a hedge fund manager places bets with capital provided by commercial banks, pension funds and insurance companies, they are also wasting someone else's money. They are richly rewarded when their risk pays off, and face little or no hazard if they bet wrong, since they are gambling with other people's money. Now that Trump's casinos once again have filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it has to be asked 'how does he get the largest, most prestigious banks in the world to front him the money for his real estate and investment schemes?' An average person has to jump through hoops just to get a mortgage on a house, and yet guys like Trump can get millions of dollars on a handshake even though his companies declare bankruptcy every time their profit margins dip! The answer is that neither side is playing with their own money, and they are still able to stay in charge of their respective companies after they have taken shareholders to the cleaners. Right now, many of the more radical, progressive Democrats are once again getting a little disillusioned about the surprising degree of continuity between a new Democratic administration and the previous Republican one. So far, the war policy doesn't look a whole lot different than what John McCain was advocating -- the drug war policy is going to continue on in the same direction it has since Richard Nixon -- and banking and investment reform......time will tell if the Obama Administration is really intending to challenge Wall Street's power, or just tweaking the dials a little to eliminate some of the gross excesses of the last eight years.

Until fairly recently, I would have described myself as a libertarian, and I have to say now that after observing the steady erosion of government services and regulation in the U.S. over the last 25 years (and more recent attempts to import this management philosophy to Canada), that the most prominent self-proclaimed mouthpieces for libertarianism are almost certainly employed by the super-wealthy and the religious right to weaken the political structures for two goals: 1. churches and religious institutions once again become the only sources of services for the poor and needy. Faith-based initiatives (that are still being carried out by the Obama Administration) funnel government money into the hands of the religious authorities. The incentive for starting this policy by the Bush Administration was that the Catholic Church and other churches have figured out from their loss of influence in Western Europe, that people start to drift away from institutional religion when they are not in need of a church as an economic safety net. In tandem with privatizing social services is the policy of gutting public education, in favour of charter schooling and direct subsidies that will go in large numbers to churches that can offer cheaper private schooling. Having the churches once again in charge of educating our children is the grand goal of the high priests, since they will once again be able to mold and shape the worldviews of future generations to suit their needs and goals -- dark ages here we come! 2. the over-exaggeration of selfish values of personal achievement is being used to instill a fatalistic philosophy that people end up where they belong, regardless of their outcomes, and the failures have only themselves to blame for their lack of success, since they had every opportunity to achieve that Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Rush Limbaugh and other "self-made" millionaires and billionaires did -- which is complete bullshit, but I'm trying to deal with that fallacy elsewhere. If most people mired in poverty-stricken ghettos believe they are personal failures and make no attempt to petition for relief, then the filthy rich have a vast docile, impoverished class of people who will work cheaply and do not even have to worry about the civil unrest that usually accompanies a society that goes through a rapid deterioration of living standards. Since most libertarians are secular materialists (the Ron Paul evangelical libertarians seem to be a minority), it has perplexed me over the last 2 or 3 years that I could not get any of the leading libertarian bloggers to reconsider the merits of advocating continued shrinking of government when there are clear examples of religious and corporate despots stepping in to fill the void for their own purposes. Besides being rigid idealogues, I have to wonder how many are advocating anarcho-capitalism because the message appeals to an educated audience that consider themselves liberal freethinkers, and would otherwise want nothing to do with religious and corporate tyrants.

Read what Dawkins actually had to say in the Selfish Gene first. Here's a short synopsis from Wikipedia. Dawkins's point was to change the emphasis from species level to gene level evolution by natural selection. He started to develop his theory when he noticed that some creatures have genes that are still replicating (coding new proteins), even though they are doing harm to the organism. It seemed to him that the gene is a "selfish replicant" trying to make as many copies of itself even in situations where it could harm or even kill the organism it is part of. This does not say that there is always a power struggle between a species and its genetic replicants, so it does not conflict with the theory that a lot of evolutionary change can occur at a species level, either through competition or cooperation, as in Lyn Margulis's example of how simple eukaryote cells got the mitochondria. Dawkins has been criticized for being overzealous in trying to claim that genes are almost the sole agents of change, and trying to refute claims by biologists such as E.O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson - who did major research on social insects like ants and bees - that there must be some group level mechanism of evolutionary change as well as species and gene level evolution. But Dawkins's theory has held up in light of what has been discovered in the last 20 years of mapping human and animal genomes -- most creatures, including us, are loaded with junk DNA that serves no purpose other than making more copies of itself in the DNA molecule. The only benefit it serves the host is that it makes mutations less lethal, since they are less likely to occur in genes that actually code proteins and make things in the body.

So, how did this thread go from the pope's crazy claim that condoms cause AIDS to the merits of viagra? Nevermind! Rather than start a new birth control thread, it would be closer to the original theme to mention an interesting little report from Huffpost blogger Vanessa Richmond, who knocks down the claim that soaring U.S. teen pregnancy rates are caused by an oversexed media culture, with the obvious question why would Canada's teen pregnancy rates be so much lower than the U.S. numbers if that were true? Lots of interesting links in the article...especially the ones that detail the failure of the one and a half billion dollar abstinence education programs.

Well, there have to be rungs on the ladder before you can talk about incentives. Right now the conservative/libertarian ideologues who preach the dogma of rewarding achievement, conveniently ignore the fact that they are trying to destroy all of the rungs on the ladder, from: free education to free health care to minimum wage laws to defunding public transit to affirmative action programs -- everything that could help someone from meager beginnings compete with someone like a George W Bush, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and guaranteed Ivy League admission as a legacy applicant -- gets kicked out by the economic libertarians who claim that any and every social institution is unfair to the people who already have most of the gold.

Unless your name is Robinson Crusoe, you have no real claim to being a self-made man! If, like Robinson, you are living on a deserted island, and have made your own place to live, procured your own food, and made all of your own tools and everything else you need, you have no real claim that you owe nothing. Otherwise, you received a basic education from a school that everyone chips in to support, whether they still have children in school, or even whether they have had kids of their own. You drive on roads that are payed for out of the taxes of people who may not own cars to begin with, and if you take public transit, you are using a service that is primarily supported through taxes. Nobody thinks of the little things, but all of these self-made men who owe nothing to others, don't seem to notice their own dependence on services provided for the benefit of everyone. Now, even though there are people who because of mental illness or drug abuse, are not able to pay their way, most of us would rather provide at least for the survival of people on the margins rather than live in Calcutta, and watch people starving to death on the streets! As for the rich -- I'll get into this further at another time, but attention needs to be focused on those who have created a system where those at the top of the pyramid are allowed to leverage other people's money on their own risky real estate investments (Donald Trump for example), and then declare bankruptcy when they've over reached and ran out of cash -- or the Wall Street crew that are finally getting attention for placing over-leveredged bets on stock and commodity markets, and then have their firms go bankrupt or seek government bailout money, all with no loss of their own personal wealth. Do these people deserve their money? ONe thing is for sure, if middle class people keep seeing their wealth decline as they watch the superrich get fatter, some form of action will be taken against them. Many third world nations that have this huge gap between rich and poor either go through revolutions, or the few at the top have to use the army on their own people to maintain order and keep themselves safe.......so much for democracy! Is that the direction greedy conservatives and libertarians want to go? Because, aside from all of the carping about income redistribution, part of the benefit is a peace dividend. If we end up turning into Mexico, it is not the super rich who will suffer. They are protected in their gated compounds with private armies. The less wealthy Latin Americans actually have to send their children to private schools in the U.S. and Canada, primarily because of the threat posed by gangs who kidnap their children and hold them for ransom. Sometimes greed and selfishness comes at a high personal cost.

And who are the people who present evolution as competition? It is the same creationists who write the books he has likely been reading at his own church. Evolutionary theory recognizes that there is cooperation between species for mutual advantage; a good example of the principle of symbiosis was provided by biologist Lynn Margulis who demonstrated that power plant of all eukaryote cells - the mitochondria, actually began as a separate organism, and the two cells joined together as one organism for mutual advantage.

It would help if you would explain who is taking from whom!

No, it is only a slippery slope because the vast majority of liberals and conservatives are moral relativists! That's right. I said it! You conservatives are just as much moral relativists as most liberals are, even though you make claims of having "real" values. But what good are they, when you can't give rational reasons to explain how they benefit society. The only thing I heard from the religious right against gay marriage is that it says in the "book" that marriage is between a man and a woman, so what? We don't live in a theocracy. And, the Bible itself is the slippery slope towards legalizing polygamy when the Old Testament section sanctions polygamy and the New Testament equivocates on the issue. Why shouldn't gay couples be allowed to the benefits of marriage that everyone else has access to! They represent a biologically-defined minority of the population that is not going to increase or decrease whether their relationships are recognized in law or not. Homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice like plural marriage would be. There are still going to be gay couples whether the state recognizes them, so what is the benefit to society of denying their rights? Real ethical standards should be guided by how they benefit or harm society, and a quick study by sociologists and anthropologists of societies that practice plural marriage indicate that it cannot coexist with a modern, democratic society. From the previous debate, I can name a number of reasons why it is a bad idea, right off the top: 1. where it is a cultural standard in traditional societies, polygamy always means one man of relatively greater wealth and status, owning a number of wives. This may have made sense in societies that are constantly at war, and have a disparity between the ratio of men to women, but in most of the world today, there are equal numbers of men to women, so that means one rich old patriarch with lots of wives, and therefore lots of children, and a whole bunch of men who can't get any, and have the potential of destablilizing the community. That's why the Saudis send their surplus young men off to get killed by waging jihad, and the North American version - the polygamous Mormons, find stupid excuses to have a whole bunch of teenage boys excommunicated. Just check out the scandal of the Lost Boys for the details. 2. Polygamy is almost never polyandry. It's not about women's freedom to choose who they marry or how many spouses they have: it's about women being owned by men. So, there may be a few middle-aged cougars out there marrying their boy-toys, but the standard is going to be some old religious patriarch, who is married to 20 women. 3. In the case of the polygamous Mormons, so far, most of the families are on welfare or food stamps. The men in these "families" cannot financially support all the women and children, and the women are generally not permitted the freedom to choose a career and work outside the family compound. The same goes for Muslims who have brought extra wives over from their homelands. They have to set them up as unwed mothers on the dole, because they wouldn't otherwise be able to support them. Sounds like you are sliding down that slippery slope already!

Since this thread was started by a Republican toady for the expressed purpose of denigrating everything about Barack Obama, and the teleprompter is used to infer that Obama is cut from the same cloth as George Bush -- in other words, incapable of original thought -- this would be a good place to inform everyone of one thing Obama can do which George can't -- write his own speeches, books and editorials, for example: Barack Obama: A time for global actionBy Barack Obama Tribune Media ServicesPublished: March 23, 2009

Another hurdle has been cleared in the quest to explain the origins of the first life forms on Earth. One of the mysteries standing in the way of a theory of abiogenesis is that all of the plants, animals, microbes on Earth consist of proteins made of "left-handed" amino acids. Amino acid molecules can be built in two ways that are mirror images of each other, and experiments that have been done which try to simulate early earth conditions, starting with the Miller-Urey experiments almost 50 years ago, the pattern has been for an equal number of left-handed and right-handed amino acid chains to be created. So, explaining how living organisms break this symmetry has been a stumbling block for years. It's similar to the problem astrophysicists had with explaining why the universe is likely exclusively made up of matter, when particle accelerators create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Now , with the discovery that many asteroids contain a significant higher amount of left-handed amino acids, it seems that left-hand bias originated in space, and the popular theories that organic molecules used to make the first living things has another point in its favour: Over the last four years, the team carefully analyzed samples of meteorites with an abundance of carbon, called carbonaceous chondrites. The researchers looked for the amino acid isovaline and discovered that three types of carbonaceous meteorites had more of the left-handed version than the right-handed variety – as much as a record 18 percent more in the often-studied Murchison meteorite. "We found more support for the idea that biological molecules, like amino acids, created in space and brought to Earth by meteorite impacts help explain why life is left-handed," said Dr. Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "By that I mean why all known life uses only left-handed versions of amino acids to build proteins." http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_rel..._astrobiologist Add to this, the recent discoveries that: 1.that perishable RNA molecules, believed to have been the carriers of genetic information before the more durable DNA molecules were formed, could have survived in pools of sulphuric acid and 2. from computer modelling of the early solar system that microbes deep underground could have survived the heavy impacts that occured about four billion years ago, it seems we are getting closer to explaining the origins of life on earth.

Yeah right! Naturally, coming from you, nothing is said about the greedy Republican bastards that created trickle-down economics and the notion of turning everyone into investors. Sifting through the wreckage of the subprime mortgage meltdown, the first lie that jumps out is the picture painted by rightwing radio that the mortgage buyers were blacks with zero credit scores -- no jobs, no saving or other assets which would used to qualify for a conventional mortgage. The shocking truth is that by 2006, the majority of customers that got railroaded into subprime loans by Countrywide and other fraudsters could have qualified for a regular mortgage! Considering the crazy add-ons in the subprime contracts like escalator payments and interest-only payments, the question should be why aren't the people who wrote up these contracts being rounded up and sent to jail? Instead, just like the executives at failed banks, they have been allowed to take the money and run. The proportion of subprime ARM loans made to people with credit scores high enough to qualify for conventional mortgages with better terms increased from 41% in 2000 to 61% by 2006. However, there are many factors other than credit score that affect lending. In addition, mortgage brokers in some cases received incentives from lenders to offer subprime ARM's even to those with credit ratings that merited a conforming (i.e., non-subprime) loan. For example, brokers for one lender could earn a "yield spread premium" equal to 2% of the loan amount -- or $8,000 on a $400,000 loan -- if a borrower's interest rate was an extra 1.25 percentage points higher than the lender's prime rates. On average, U.S. mortgage brokers collected 1.88% of the loan amount for originating a subprime loan, compared with 1.48% for conforming loans. Payouts for subprime loans have traditionally been higher, in part because these loans sometimes took more work and the approval rate could be lower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis A couple of years ago, CanadianBusiness ran this hilarious little puff piece about the wonderful derivatives market that included a kindergarten-level explanation of credit default swap contracts: Today one of the largest derivative markets is the market for credit default contracts, where you can buy a contract giving you the right to sell a certain corporate bond at such and such a price. That ensures the value of your portfolio in the case of default by the company issuing those bonds. But the concept has been extended to any number of products. You say your company makes fertilizer and you want to hedge your risk against a natural gas price spike (fertilizer production uses tons of natural gas)? Derivatives. You say you're organizing a massive outdoor festival and want to hedge against the possibility of being rained out? Look into weather derivatives, which are contracts that pay out according to temperature and rainfall patterns. In that sense, derivatives are a simple tool to help businesses manage the natural ups and downs of the business environment. And then, boys and girls, when subprime mortgage holders all over the world knocked on AIG's door to cash in their credit default contracts, the sky fell and we realized once again that real prosperity comes from making real goods and providing real services -- not pushing around worthless paper IOU's! During the last 8 to 10 years of the phony economic prosperity, the financial services sector in the U.S. grew to almost 30% of the U.S. economy. Now that the bubble has burst, new university graduates will go to work in real industries instead of creating new money scam derivatives.

Getting back to the guy in the funny hat, I was under the impression that the Catholic Church had changed its absolute stand against condom use within marriage, a couple of years ago, when East African Church officials were bombarded with the simple question of how women married to migrant workers were supposed to protect themselves from getting AIDS when they were certain that their husbands were having sex with infected women during the months that they were away. But from the news stories surrounding the pope's Africa trip, he repeated standard Church dogma that any methods which interfere with procreation are sinful. Here is another question from Bonnie Erbe, of U.S. News and World Report that should have been asked: The Pope is correct in saying that AIDS cannot be eradicated by condom use alone. Clearly, when young women are raped or otherwise forced into sex against their will, the men abusing them will not commit to use condoms. But instead of offering these women useless verbiage, the Pope could have offered the vast resources of the Church to distribute anti-viral foam to young married women in AIDS-infested areas. Foam is the only form of AIDS prevention that young wives completely control and can use without their husbands' permission. Distributing anti-viral foam to young married women would help prevent the spread of AIDS while still creating the babies the Church so desperately needs to fill its pews. But Pope Benedict made no mention of offering such help to African AIDS victims. He showed no understanding of the terrible lives these women endure, or the damage done to their children, many of whom are born HIV-positive or with AIDS. So, how about those antiviral foams! Is it a sin to interfere with the HIV virus's right to infect its victims in the same way that every hurdle put in front of a sperm cell is a sin? Surely someone has asked Catholic Church dogmatists this question before!

Really! You think they're not thinking about sex because you're the last one they are going to admit it to, if you handle sex ed in a manner similar to what you do here: railing about sin, followed by bragging about how many girls you f####d back in your day, followed by more anguish about sin and immorality.....you'll be the last one to know if they are engaging in any sort of sexual activity. Try the non-confrontational approach instead. Say, if you're thinking about it (which you probably are) make sure you know how to use condoms, oral dams, etc. and bring them along even if you think there is the slightest chance they might be used. Better safe than sorry. I've always been a Pink Floyd fan, but I always hated "Another Brick in the Wall part 2," thanks for knocking it right off my playlist! I'd like to hear from some of the female members of the club in regards to your point about young women being pressured into having sex. What I suspect is that most teenage girls get used to the fact that guys are always trying to see how far they can get, and they will either tell them to f@@k off, or will start the negotiating process to see what the guy is willing to do for them. Or the girl may just decide that she wants to have sex! When you talk about debasing young women and sex being sacred, it sounds like you have divided the female half of the population into madonnas and whores -- bad girls have sex, good girls keep their virginity.....this is 2009 b;y the way, not 1959.

Oh yes he has! For the simple fact that when asked about his views on evolution, he responded that he was a Christian, and no one has the right to question his religion. Personally, no topic should be off limits, and that includes religious beliefs, but this idiot was asked for his opinion on a scientific theory, not about his stupid religion, and that should disqualify him immediately from having anything to do with decision-making in regards to scientific issues.

That all depends on where you derive meaning from. Right now, at a time when we live in a world that has thousands of nuclear warheads that can wipe us all out, and are charging headlong into an ecological disaster, fueled by overpopulation, overexploitation of the planet's resources, I'd say it would be a good time to start questioning a lot of things that have been taken for granted. So, God is every mystery in nature? Does that mean God disappears, or shrinks as we learn more about the world around us?

Huh! Sounds like you threw a lot of big words together to try to claim that the dog-eat-dog struggle between the rich and the poor in England was the real inspiration for Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Read Darwin's "On the Origin of the Species," where he explains the reasons why he developed a theory of common descent of life. It needs to be emphasized that Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution -- the first person to propose that present-day animals evolved and became more diverse over time, was the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Darwin's contribution was to provide a method (natural selection) for how evolution takes place. And if all that gobbledy gook about Malthus and the struggle for survival in 19th century England is a reference to Social Darwinism, Thomas Malthus and Herbert Spencer were the ones who tried to adapt Darwin's theory to human society, no doubt as a means to excuse the greed of the upper classes and lack of consideration for those on the margins of society. Maybe Sir Frances Galton can get an honourable mention as well, since he used natural selection to promote eugenics. Galton argued that social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums were allowing inferior humans to survive and reproduce........he could have fit right in with today's conservatives.

I have nothing against people believing that prayer will help them, after all, there are situations where nothing else seems to work! It may be placebo effect, and the Placebo Effect should not be denigrated since there is actually a mountain of evidence showing real physical effects caused by believing that a certain pill or some other medicine will cure an ailment. It shows how much mind and body are connected. A personal prayer cannot be scientifically evaluated, and that's why people who spend money to prove religious and supernatural claims like the Templeton Foundation, studied intercessory prayer. Because if praying for others could be proven to have a physical effect on the person, it could potentially be used as a scientific proof for the supernatural............so, they will likely keep funding tests until they get the results the desired results.

Actually the only honest studies of intercessory prayer have proven that praying for others is as effective as clairvoyance, telekenesis and foretelling the future........in other words, it doesn't exist! I think the nail in the coffin for this belief should have been the Templeton Fund-financed studies that were done a couple of years ago, with the intention of proving the efficacy of prayer. But, unfortunately, just like the people looking for evidence of astral projection, Templeton and others will keep on funding research until they get the results they want. Under controlled conditions, not only didn't the prayers help the sick, but people who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse; maybe they figured they must be really in bad shape if people are praying for them: In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. Researchers emphasized that their work can't address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said. They also said they had no explanation for the higher complication rate in patients who knew they were being prayed for, in comparison to patients who only knew it was possible prayers were being said for them. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12082681/

Except that is a little more complicated than that when trying to figure out how people put their beliefs together. From some of the polling data I've read about religious beliefs, many people are way out of step with their own church's dogma without even realizing it. Many believe that their pets can go to heaven, just as many believe that most people, even non-Christians including atheists can go to heaven. To me it indicates that a lot of people consider the narrow-path salvation doctrines that they are taught, to be immoral and undefensible, so they just ignore them and say something like most people will go to heaven. I suppose that there will still be some people calling themselves Christians and going to church even if they don't believe in selective redemption, since the U/U's are already there, either believing everyone goes to heaven, or in some cases not even believing in literal heaven and hell and life after death.

That is only one version of creationism called Young Earth Creationism, that doesn't prove that you don't fall into one of the other brands. So you believe in theistic evolution! But just like the Intelligent Designers, you still need evidence for some supernatural force guiding evolution. And that also raises philosophical problems if you combine the traditional version of an interventionist God with evolution by natural selection, since the Earth's history is billions of years of animals and plants struggling against each other for survival, sometimes flourishing, only to eventually be wiped out by extinction events, some of them like one that occurred 250 million years ago, almost wiped out all complex multicellular life on earth and in the oceans. Why would the creator described in the Bible use this method to make a world? It's easy to see how it could naturally evolve since life simulator computer programs start to diverge into predators and prey species without any prior instructions in the program. But I'll leave it up to the believers to figure out how it can fit together in one package. And many people move in the opposite direction. I tried a number of different versions of Christianity and even explored other religions before I decided that they weren't answering the questions that I wanted answers for. I thought he said he's a Catholic; don't they qualify as people of faith?

Which solar scientists? And how are they so certain when the ones cited in the article mentioning solar forcing as a possibility, not an absolute fact. Some people claiming to be experts seem to be absolutely sure they know all the answers. So, you don't even thing all of the dust and noxious gases pumped into the atmosphere during a volcano have any effect on the climate! I recall that when Mount Pinatubo erupted, the cloud of ash circled the globe several times; it seems hard to believe that so much could be dumped into the atmosphere all at once without having any effects! I do know that after several years of mild winters, we had a couple of cool, rainy summers and bone-chilling cold winters immediately after the Pinatubo eruption. I had the unfortunate opportunity to discover that the contractor who built the house where I used to live, buried the watermains between three and four feet deep when during the winter of 93/94, every home in the neighbourhood had their pipes burst. It was the first time in years that the frost line went below three feet and the City Manager had changed the rules on new construction allowing for shallower placement....so that winter really stands out in my memory. I don't think I have ever referred to climate models in any posts I have made on the subject, but the questions I want answers for include: if the climate is really getting colder, why are the majority of glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic still melting, some at an increased rate: http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/ and do climate change deniers believe that CO2 levels are increasing? Do they claim the increase is just natural causes or do they acknowledge the contributions of 6.7 billion people? Is there any evidence that manmade CO2 increase will be reduced on its own without some concerted international effort? Can CO2 be continually increased without raising global temperatures and increasing the amount of energy in the weather systems? If a claim is going to be made that the global temperatures can continue to increase without detrimental effects here on land, what about the oceans, which are absorbing half of the carbon dioxide that's pumped into the atmosphere. Can the amount of CO2 in ocean water keep increasing without decreasing oxygen levels or leading to acidification of the oceans? From everything I've read about this subject, I still can't figure out how climate change deniers square the circle! The arguments against taking action on climate change resemble creationist arguments against evolution -- they are based on picking apart claims they disagree with, without acknowledging that a claim that a climate model is wrong does not automatically make them right about their claims that we can go on pumping oil and digging coal and burning down forests without worrying about what effects we'll have on the earth's biosphere.

The Original Sin doctrine may not be as crucial in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox churches, since they teach that a person can work towards their own salvation, and can move towards being reconciled with God. But if Old Testament stories of creation, the flood are allegories, what about Moses and the Conquest of the Holy Land, or the story of the Sin of Onan, which I was surprised to discover that it is the source of this crazy dogma of semen being sacred and only intended for procreation, and thus making abortion, birth control, using condoms etc. all sins since they interfere with the sperm having the opportunity to fertilize the egg cell. The Protestant fundamentalist understanding of Original Sin like the ones found in Lutheranism and the churches that sprung from Calvinism are the ones who really lean on a doctrine of Original Sin representing the total depravity of the human race and our inability to redeem ourselves, and therefore justifying sending everyone to hell who doesn't meet with whatever proscribed conditions are given for salvation. It is used to get around the problem of how a just and benevolent God can send people to hell, since they teach that all descendents of Adam and Eve are totally depraved and deserving of death, and would all be in hell without the undeserved act of benevolence provided by the Son of God acting as the scapegoat for the sins of the world etc. etc. So take away a literal Adam and Eve, and you take away the idea that we have inherited sin from an unfortunate couple that lived 6000 years ago.

I didn't mean that chiropractors can't help people with back or joint pains. When I had a serious back injury 20 years ago, all my doctor gave me was two prescriptions - one for tylenol 3's and one for a muscle relaxant to relieve back spasms. I went to a chiropractor, and felt better after each session, but I realized after a few visits that I would be visiting the chiropractor every day, for the rest of my life. Fortunately my doctor also gave me a referral to a physiotherapist; I had to wait a few weeks for the first appointment, but when it started, the therapist let me know up front that my degree of recovery would depend on how much work I was willing to do on my own. She taught me exercises to relieve spasms and strengthen abdominal muscles without reinjuring my back. Over time I was able to completely recover, and I don't think the chiropractor would have been interested in my recovering to the point where I no longer needed his services. But again, what makes me leery of chiropractic is that even if a modern practitioner is one of the ones who claims to use evidence-based techniques, he has built his foundation on a false belief in energy forces in the body. There are also many chiropractors who openly advocate other quack alternative medicines like homeopathy, and are against vaccination of children. Well, I didn't exactly say you couldn't be a Christian and believe in evolution, since there seem to be thousands of different versions of Christianity out there, and it's impossible to figure out how some of them put together their theology. Also, there are some theologies like Universalism, taught by Unitarians/Universalists which teach universal reconciliation, so it doesn't matter what your professed beliefs are, nobody goes to hell.....and that's probably why Christian fundamentalists find their teaching more horrifying than atheism, Islam, Buddhism, witchcraft and everything else. Fundamentalist preachers gain their money and their power and influence over the congregation, by essentially having people try to purchase their way into heaven by sending tithes (10% of income) to the church, and agreeing with every stupid idea the preacher comes up with! I found it fascinating that during a period when I used to post on the C.A.R.M. discussion forums run by funamentalist preacher Matt Slick, that they had subforums for atheists, Buddhists, New Age, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons.....everything imaginable for the fundamentalist Christian to argue with, except for Unitarian/Universalists! That was the one and only group that was not allowed on CARM, and one of the forum rules was that anyone caught teaching or promoting universal salvation or other universalist doctrines would be immediately banned! Why would a fundamentalist Christian be willing to debate atheists, Muslims and other Christian sects that they consider non-Christian, and yet be unwilling to even talk to a small group of Christians who think everyone goes to heaven? Doesn't sound like they could be very threatening! Except for the fact that the fundamentalists are more concerned with punishing people they consider wicked and having the wrong beliefs, and having power and influence over people motivated by a fear of hell.

I sidestepped nothing! You used that condescending dodge again to evade answering for the intolerance of your own fundamentalists. If you have no longterm memory capacity, that's your problem, because I've already discussed the religions I grew up with and experienced as an adult, with you on prior occasions. But my religious experiences does not answer my questions. Your continued implication that I just met the "wrong" kind of Christians is about as meaningful as "Islam means peace, and terrorism, female circumcision, and public stonings, are caused by culture, not religion." You try to play the same kind of gambit every time you evade answering why Christian fundamentalists are oppressive! I have identified myself as a secular humanist frequently -- what more do you need to know? You know very well that fundamentalist Christianity promotes creationism out of an open hostility to scientific theories that don't fit with a God-made world that is 6,000 years old. Scientists and academics are presented as representatives of a godless, antichristian establishment, so they will immediately block out every story about dinosaurs or hominid fossils that occasionally crops up in the news, and take the advice of trusted religious authorities even on issues like stem cell research, global warming, gay rights, and drug policy. What's worse, is that the "pro life" groups openly call doctors and nurses at abortion clinics "murderers!" It doesn't take a genius to realize that using such inflammatory, loaded language acts as an encouragement to every crackpot who starts making anonymous calls to clinics, finding out doctor's personal addresses and phone numbers, becoming stalkers and every so often moving on to the next level of becoming killers -- all because the message that abortion is murder at every stage and every Christian is obligated to do everything in their power to stop abortion, was drummed into their heads relentlessly on a continual basis. And how many influential fundamentalist spokesmen like Falwell, Hagee and Robertson became active cheerleaders for rushing to war as they latched onto the Bush/Cheney agenda of invading Muslim countries using apocalyptic language from Revelation to instill a view that a endtime battle with the forces of Islam is inevitable, and part of Bible prophecy? Is that really much different than Shiite Islamists, who are waiting for their 12th Imam to crawl out of a hole somewhere and lead them to victory against the infidel armies that have invaded Muslim lands? It may be to someone who's in the tank with one side or the other, but those of us who see all religious apocalypticism as insane, there is no difference! Well thanks for at least making that clear! If you have mentioned that point before, it certainly hasn't accompanied many of your tirades about Muslims. Nevertheless, your solution is unworkable in a democratic state since specifically excluding immigrants because of their religion would be thrown out of court at the first court challenge.....any other ideas? Get over yourself! Nobody follows you around or cares who you have and don't have on your ignore list! It's a feature I have never bothered using and apparently neither do most of the people using this forum. If your comments stand out to me, it is only because of the fact that you are on opposite sides of every issue that I read.