kimmy

If "moral relativism" is such a bad thing, how come we no longer haul disrespectful youths to the town square and stone them to death as the ancient laws command? -k

I think what Canadien meant is that if all he had was your "facts" to convince him that the Bible is true, he wouldn't believe the Bible is true. In short, your "facts" are terrible. They're embarrassingly bad. They're ridiculous. They're hilarious. Nothing you've presented in this vast entire thread does anything to provide evidence that your ancient desert chumps were the recipients of a gift of divine knowledge. Maybe there are good reasons to believe... but this thread doesn't contain any of them. I just can't be bothered to go back through 1200 posts of this stuff to review your "facts", but I think they were pretty easily dismissed as soon as you posted them. However, if there are any "facts" you've provided that you don't think have received enough ridicule, bring it to my attention and I'll heap more derision on it. The ancient Greeks were producing real, actual facts in the fields of science and math long before the Bible was compiled. You gush over the idea that the Bible reports the earth was a "circle" (although, considering they had a word for sphere and chose not to use it, that might not be much to brag about.) Meanwhile, Eratosthenes not only called the earth a sphere, but also calculated its diameter, as well as its distance from the sun and the moon, with surprising accuracy. Archimedes wrote several books, each containing mathematical and scientific discoveries that are still significant. Likewise Aristotle's work in several fields. That's just a quick handful of names from just one ancient civilization. Someone with a broader background in history than I possess could provide you a much more detailed answer to that question, but my response here is good enough to answer your challenge. While your guys were certainly the undisputed experts at harvesting foreskins from their foes, the Greeks certainly contributed far more to our understanding of our natural world. -k

Well, considering they had no light source, she could just has easily have been a very ugly woman. Does that figure into the calculus? They mocked her dragons. "The size of cats," they said. MWAHAHAHA. Dany does seem to be becoming a little arrogant, though. Poor Tyrion... we all knew this is what would happen, though. His determination to stay in King's Landing... promises lots more intrigue next season, at least. Maybe he and Varys can join forces. They'd make a great team, and they both seem to be on the side of sanity. Hopefully Tyrion can exact some sort of revenge on his kinsmen. I wondered the same thing... we don't actually know who razed Winterfell, but it seems like a lot for 20 pirates to accomplish in a rush. Poor Luwin. This season's death toll was pretty light, with Renly, Roderick, and Luwin being the only major characters to buy it; and none of them spent a lot of time on our screens. There is, for sure. Osha (I had to look her name up-- I keep wanting to call her Nymphadora Tonks for some reason) has got to be the nanny of the year. Considering she was trying to kill Bran when we met her and spent most of the first season in shackles, her devotion to the little lords is pretty remarkable. Maybe she's truly heroic... but there might be an ulterior motive. Maybe she recognizes Bran's dreams/visions as something special relating to the Forest Children myths that Maester Luwin has mentioned. Surprising that Stannis made it out of King's Landing. Things didn't look good for him last episode. I assume the Lord of Onions character died when the fleet got blown up. Too bad, he seemed like a good guy. On this show, good guys tend to get undone by their allegiance to bad guys. One of my favorite moments this episode (after the incineration, of course) was the momentary look of pure delight on Sansa's face as she leaves the throne room after getting un-betrothed. Then Littlefinger shows up to remind her that she's still hooped. -k

More persecution! Richard Land, leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's "Ethics and Religious Liberty Convention", has lost his radio show over race-baiting and plagiarism. I guess he was away the day his ethics class covered plagiarism. Regardless, all of us should be very concerned about this. Because first they will come for your radio shows... and then they will come for you! Speaking of "they will come for you!", persecuted Christian Dennis Markuze has been released from rehab. Markuze is well known to members of this forum, of course, as a prolific poster. At least he was, until he was arrested for making death threats against a number of atheist writers. Speaking of Christians being persecuted for speaking their beliefs, Pastor Curtis Knapp has joined Chuck Worley on that road, courageously speaking the Bible's truth even in the face of fierce criticism. So you see, if you're saying it's barbaric to say homosexuals should be put to death, you're actually insulting Knapp's religion, calling his God a neanderthal. Liberals are so intolerant! -k

-k

I think that if we looked at any number of works by ancient philosophers, we could find more ideas with lasting merit. I think that if we looked at any number of works by ancient scholars, we could find more ideas that have made more lasting contributions to our understanding of the natural world. As a science book, the Bible is full of fail. As a moral guide, the Bible has a few nice ideas and an awful lot of bad ones. -k

This is the reason I've been sticking with my plan to not read ahead of the TV show. I want to feel the all the jaw-dropping surprises that are waiting, and I think watching it unfold in live action is a real treat. It's also the reason I have been trying very hard to avoid this thread, despite the temptation to peek. I just watched episode 9 last night, and was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I loved the final scene with Cersei and Tommen, and the vial and the throne room door. I enjoyed the Hound's rather abrupt abandonment of Joffrey. It of course makes perfect sense that he's haunted by fire... and Joffrey has treated him like crap since day one. Sandor's soft-spot for Sansa was something that's long been hinted at, and despite his professed love of killing, he has an odd sort of nobility to him. Hopefully he can get around to hunting down his horrible brother now. Then he can join this mysterious Brotherhood everybody has been talking about, or maybe get together with Brienne of Tarth and raise immensely large, powerful, and unattractive children. One night last week my cat woke me up in the middle of the night, and while I was trying to get back to sleep, it suddenly hit me that Robb is going to regret letting Roose Bolton talk him into sending Roose's son to retake Winterfell. I'm not exactly sure of the specifics, but I suspect we will hear news on that front tomorrow night. It occurs to me that we don't actually know what Jaime Lannister was up to during his brief escape. He might have visited Roose with an offer that was too good to turn down. The handling of Robb's bannermen is once again a little confusing. In season one they more or less turned Lord Greatjon into a composite character that represented the whole group of them. In season two, we have no sign of Greatjon, and Roose Bolton-- who I don't think has even been given a name on TV yet-- is everpresent at Robb's side. I liked the scene with Theon and Yara Greyjoy in episode 8. In front of her dad and her men, Yara is all about busting Theon's balls, but when she sends her men away so she can talk to him alone, she's like "We both loved our mother and endured our father... please, don't die too far from the sea." Like the other women on the show, she has to keep up a strong front. As I write this, it occurs to me that many of my favorite scenes on this show are conversations where the characters reveal a little of what's behind their facade. We're almost at the end of season 2, and it seems almost like they could just hit "reset" and restore peace to the kingdom. Tywin turns to Loras and says "thank you for your assistance. Let this mark the end of hostilities between our lands." Jaime returns to King's Landing, Sansa (if she took the Hound's offer) returns to Winterfell, and nobody needs to go to war anymore. Robb and Tywin call a truce, Robb returns north to kick the crap out Theon and his kin. If everybody were sensible, they wouldn't need to be at war anymore. But somehow, you just know that's not how it's going to happen... Reading through the thread, I have seen a lot of controversy about Rather Attractive Roz. She might be, kind of like Greatjon, a composite character. My thoughts are that when she's been on the screen, there's generally been a purpose, even though the sex and nudity has been entirely gratuitous. In the first season she was a prop that allowed the show to provide some characterization for characters like Theon and Littlefinger and Grandmaester P. In season 2, more of the same: she was our "eyes" in the scene where Joffrey's men murder the infant in the brothel, and in a scene that makes the extent of Joffrey's sickness more clear. The books only have a certain number of "point of view characters", and as readers we have access to their thoughts and memories. On TV, we don't have POV characters, but neither do we have access to thoughts and memories unless a character shares them with you. As a would-be writer, I have found that one of the hardest things to do is provide expository information in a way that doesn't seem forced or hand-held or clunky. And it's that much harder in live action, because it has to be conveyed to the viewer in real-time through dialog. So, in season one we had Littlefinger telling us why he was going to betray Ned Stark in a long-winded monologue while Roz had sex in the background. And unfortunately that was about as clunky and forced as it could have been. It's tough to do exposition well. I do think that's the intent with Roz, though: she's a device through which we get to observe characters. Whether she's been helpful in that regard is debatable-- I'd say for the most part yes-- but I think that's the intent. I agree with the complaints about pacing. On a related note I've been a little annoyed that many of the characters vanish for episodes at a time. It sometimes seems a little haphazard-- "we've got a couple of minutes left to fill this episode, why don't we have a shot of Jaime talking to a rat in his cell?" A few odds-and-ends: -the scenes with Tywin and Aria were wonderful, all of them. Charles Dance owns the show whenever he's on the screen. -pretty much any scene where Cersei and Tyrion were together was also great. My favorite was the conversation where Cersei lets down the wall for a moment and talks about how guilty she feels for raising a piece of crap like Joffrey. I've also enjoyed Cersei's little chats with Sansa. She's a ruthless, wicked, evil woman, but she does have a great clarity of purpose-- do whatever it takes to make sure her children "win". Even though she sees Joffrey for what he is, her dedication to him seems absolute and unflinching. -k

I assume that the demise of the registry will mean police will no longer kick down your door with their pistols drawn shouting "WHERE ARE THE GUNS? WHERE ARE THE GUNS?" when they arrive at your home for a routine noise complaint. So I am guessing option B. -k

The scientific "facts" you've provided are really unimpressive. It takes willful suspension of disbelief to interpret any of the scientific "facts" you've provided as evidence that the Bible is the result of divine inspiration. And the historical "facts" you've provided are equally unimpressive. Such-and-such was a real place? Of course it was. So what? Every fib and tall tale starts off in a real place. Let's consider a few different facts: Fact-- the Bible has been rewritten and retranslated and edited throughout its history. Fact-- mankind has outgrown the barbaric "morality" laid out for us in the Bible. Fact-- miracles have become awfully unimpressive with the advent of modern scientific method, communication, photography, and so on. God used to flood the entire earth, annihilate entire cities, transform people into salt, and all kinds of stuff like that. Now the best he can do is burn his son's face onto a grilled cheese sandwich or conjure toilet-water from the ground for Christians to drink. Fact-- Christianity is, literally, the belief that you are so awful that God had to kill himself. -k

We've heard everything you have to say, and you've heard everything we have to say. So why do you want a debate? The truth is, you don't want to debate, you want an audience to evangelize to. Shrieking "it's a baby! it's an infant!" over and over isn't going to persuade anybody. It's not a baby. It's a fetus. They're not the same. -k

http://www.timslaw.ca/about/ It was taken from a website that's advocating for a law. Can we be sure that a mentally ill person has been "cured" when they are released back into the public? About as much as we can be sure that a criminal person has been "rehabilitated" when they're let back out into the public. The idea that Vincent Li could be free as a bird after beheading a man just a few years ago is extremely upsetting to people. I'm not sure what can be done about the situation. I don't think keeping a man in permanent custody because people are mad is an option. -k

What could you possibly bring to a "debate" that everybody has not already heard thousands of times before, betsy? I'm sure you've been visiting some pro-life websites and you've got some fresh evangelizing material to try out. Trust me, we've heard it a thousand times. And why would you think it'll be persuasive this time when it wasn't persuasive the first thousand times? -k

More shocking tales of Persecuted Christians in America, and more specifically Persecuted Christians in North Carolina. Despite their victory in amending their state constitution to ban gay marriage, it has been a tough month for Christians in North Carolina. First, there was Pastor Sean Harris, who received all kinds of negative attention after telling his parishioners that they should beat their kids straight. "Crack that limp wrist!" Harris even gives his followers a "special dispensation" to do so. As I understand it, in church-talk that phrase means permission to disregard the law in serving the church. hmm. Anyway, despite a non-apology apology and some clarification, Pastor Harris has suffered mightily for speaking the Lord's truth. Pastor Harris has been, figuratively speaking, crucified for his comments by liberal secularoids who don't respect his religious views. Then Pastor Ron Baity argued for the return of anti-sodomy laws and Pastor Tim Rabon came out with the same kind of "man on dog" type rhetoric that made Rick Santorum a household name. They escaped the kind of persecution that Pastor Harris has received, luckily for them everybody was still so shocked from what Harris said that their own comments went relatively unnoticed. But that was just the preliminaries. The real persecution of Christians in North Carolina started when Pastor Chuck Worley spoke to his congregation about how he would approach the gay rights issue. His solution: a concentration camp. The merciless persecution of Pastor Worley came swiftly. His church website has been taken down, his phones have been taken off the hook. He has been talked about and ridiculed on national TV and all over the internet. Even many Christians have attacked him. Here's a guy who has had a 1200 seat church in this community for decades, and here he is being pilloried for preaching the Bible. What's so wrong with a concentration camp for gays? In fact it shows that the Pastor has become much more compassionate towards gays than he was in 1978, when he said they should be lynched like in the good ole days. Where is the respect for this holy man's religious views? Even his faithful congregation have not escaped the persecution. This week, and crucified her as well. And by crucified, I mean he asked her softball questions and let her make a fool of herself.A demonstration is planned, and Maiden NC is set to be invaded by a bunch of liberal secularoids who are going to wave signs and tell this poor pastor that he is wrong for preaching the Bible. Oh those poor North Carolina Christians. Take heart! After all, the Bible tells you that if you're not suffering for your beliefs, you're not doing it right. -k

I don't think there's anybody who doubts that Bethlehem was an actual place. People are just skeptical about this story that some virgin gave birth to a magic baby there, and finding a relic that proves Bethlehem existed centuries before this miraculous even will do little to convince people that it actually happened. Certainly it would be much more surprising if the authors had set this story in a place that *didn't* exist. After all, if I was writing a story I wanted people to believe, I would set it in Toronto or Phoenix or Prince George, not Minas Tirith or Winterfell or Gotham. On a completely unrelated note, I've unearthed startling new proof that London, England is a real place, which should go a long way towards confirming my belief that the events described in the Harry Potter books are not fiction. -k

The argument about abortion is often cast as clash between womens' rights and religious doctrine. But this article argues that religious doctrine has actually shifted dramatically during recent history due to political influences. The ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy Meal Food for thought. -k

Whatever. Clearly there's a discrepancy between their reluctance to prosecute Zimmerman and their zeal for prosecuting this woman who shot her ceiling. -k

I think it's funny. I see it as being about on a par with parodies of The Last Supper that replace Jesus and the apostles with familiar faces from pop culture. Or parodies of Michelangelo's God and Adam painting that have God lighting Adam's cigarette or so on. Putting a silly contemporary spin on classic artwork is fun, and to me it seems like this painting is in a similar vein. -k {reminds me a bit of the episode of The Simpsons where Mr Burns hired Marge to do a painting of him.}

I doubt that Dawkins will stop doing any of the things that have earned him such dislike from people like yourself, betsy. He'll remain an outspoken opponent of religion, whether people you wish to call him an atheist or an agnostic. His message will be the same and he will keep pushing it. Few people who call themselves atheists would be willing to state with absolute certainty that no god exists. For the same reason that few people would be willing to state with absolute certainty that no unicorns exist: it's unprovable. To interpret that as some kind of rhetorical victory for Team Jesus is a silly and intellectually dishonest argument. Question: "Can you prove that unicorns don't exist?" Answer: "No, I can't prove it." Headline: "Dawkins open-minded on existence of unicorns!!" "Agnostic" isn't a position in the middle between atheism and theism. It's not a belief that each position is equally valid. It's the opposite of "gnostic". "Gnostic" = we can be certain. "Agnostic" = we can't know. "Atheist" is the opposite of "theist". "Theist" = belief in the existence of god or gods. "Atheist" = disbelief in the existence of gods. "Gnostic" and "agnostic" are adjectives that can describe a theist or atheist. Most atheists would consider themselves "agnostic atheists", meaning they don't believe in a god but don't believe it can be proven one way or the other. Dawkins, like almost every other atheist, is an agnostic atheist. On the other hand, most theists, it seems to me, would be considered "gnostic theists", meaning they believe they know for certain that their god is real. It seems to me that logically speaking, the onus is on the person making the affirmative claim. And the label "militant secularists" is hilarious. I think people have a serious lack of perspective on what "militant" actually means. Militant Christians shoot people at abortion clinics. Militant Muslims strap bombs to their chests or fly planes into buildings. Militant atheists put up billboards and criticize religion on the internet. -k

betsy! I thought you had been raptured! Where have you been? Stuck in the belly of a whale? Wandering through the desert? Buried? It looks like you've been resurrected about 6 months behind schedule. -k

So it seems to me that there are two separate questions in this thread, and I'm not sure that they're actually related. The first question is, how did people like Zuckerberg and Gates become billionaires in the first place? And the second question is, why aren't there more women in technical fields? Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergei Brin... people whose ideas made them billionaires. Would J.K. Rowling belong on that list? She also became a billionaire based on her ideas. Unlike the others, her ideas were literary characters and stories, rather than technology. But aside from that, it seems to me that it's quite similar. The root of it is that none of these people are billionaires because of their technical expertise, they are billionaires because they connected with the mass market in a way that their competitors didn't. Why Facebook and not Myspace? Why Google and not Webcrawler or Lycos or Yahoo? Why MS Windows and not any of the supposedly superior competitors it has had at every stage of its life? Why Harry Potter and not some other teen hero? Why Twilight? How did Stephanie Meyer get hundreds of millions of dollars? If success was a reflection of technical skill, Stephanie Meyer would be broke. She's a terrible writer. Stephanie Meyer has hundreds of millions of dollars, while many much better writers toil in obscurity. Why? Stephanie Meyer had an idea that connected with some vast audience. I think that's the real source of wealth, and I don't think it's the exclusive domain of men. Why aren't there more women in technical and scientific fields? That's a good question. I've written about it before: If at some point I do return to university, it'll probably be in an engineering field, because I have become very interested in technology now. But if I'd gone into university right out of highschool, I probably wouldn't have even considered it. My dad and my long-time special guy are engineers. They've both told me that they have never met any mediocre or below-average female engineers, because mediocre and below-average women don't go into engineering in the first place. The few women who do venture into these fields are likely exceptional individuals to start with. But they're a small percentage of the students in these programs at universities. Women now outnumber men in universities, but the bulk of them remain in areas that have always had higher female participation. I don't know if there's a cultural reason for that or if it's biology. I think that business and law used to be seen as male fields, but that changed at some point. Maybe the arrival of sexy lady lawyers on TV helped it along, who knows. But I bet that at some point, people were making arguments to explain male prevalence in business and law as biological too. -k

"metallurgical bonding engineer." Well the Kings are apparently now the most unstoppable force the hockey world has seen since the '88 Oilers. This is a rather surprising turn of events. -k

It's possible to build a small, light car that is also safe-- build a strong enough frame and build in enough restraints and padding to keep the passengers from getting bounced around inside, and even a tiny vehicle can keep you save. The car described-- the tubular cage is glued rather than welded-- doesn't sound very rugged, however. Compressed air is an interesting choice as a power source. I wonder how well it works. -k

On the gay marriage front: Pollster advises Republicans: "you're screwing up." Jan van Lohuizen was apparently a prominent pollster for Dubya, and he offers this advice to Republicans: stop shooting yourselves in the foot. He says that public attitudes are rapidly shifting towards support of gay marriage, and that even the majority of Republicans support some form of legal marriage for homosexuals. von Lohuizen suggests that Republicans could sell this to conservatives as a small-government, pro-liberty position. On a related note, Christian writer and speaker Rachel Held Evans advises Christians: "you're screwing up." She titles her opinion piece "How to win a culture war and lose a generation". She cites research showing that intolerance is one of the main forces driving young people away from the church, and that the overwhelming public impression of Christians-- even among young Christians themselves-- is not "loves their neighbors" but rather "hates gays". Held-Evans is afraid that the current involvement in the "culture wars" is doing tremendous long-term damage to the church. -k

I am. I'm also an "adult beverage logistics and distribution consultant". Which is to say, I still waitress a few nights a week. -k

Yes, they did finally get around to laying charges, after a month of outrage threatened to explode into civil unrest... they'd originally not intended to prosecute him because they saw no evidence to doubt his "self defense" story and because of the "stand your ground" law-- a law that sounds tailor-made for Ms Alexander's situation. -k