'Only been doing dots regularly in the last decade. I have ventured into many art genres over the years.
>> ^chingalera:

>> ^dotdude:
If the original description says what needs to be said, I see no point in trying to reinvent the wheel.

That coming from an artist whose recurring spark of imagination has been firing dots for the past half century....( < there's a few more for ya!)
A combination of laziness and a creative decaying orbit brought on by societal demands on the psyche. Not everyone can be funny, clever, entertaining with words, or enthusiastic for life when free-will be continually usurped and wage-slavery robs energy and time.
Pay your taxes, obey the laws, and microwave your dinners, copycatz!!!

>> ^dotdude:

If the original description says what needs to be said, I see no point in trying to reinvent the wheel.


That coming from an artist whose recurring spark of imagination has been firing dots for the past half century....( < there's a few more for ya!)
A combination of laziness and a creative decaying orbit brought on by societal demands on the psyche. Not everyone can be funny, clever, entertaining with words, or enthusiastic for life when free-will be continually usurped and wage-slavery robs energy and time.

Pay your taxes, obey the laws, and microwave your dinners, copycatz!!!

Christ, can you two just get a room and be done with it? I'm tired of seeing your entire conversations played out in the "Newest Appreciated Comments" section!
>> ^pumkinandstorm:

In reply to this comment by ant:
Oh please. Your screen is too small. You need a bigger screen with bigger (dots per inches) DPIs. ;
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by ant:
I am not little. I am big:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/pictures/wanted.gif
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by ant:
And smaller.
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by ant:
Bah. What about your current age?
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
http://stellaween.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/toddler-catwom an.jpg
There ya go...that's me. wshhhhhhhsnap


Why thank you, I always look younger in my catwoman outfit. Must be the mask.


You're one to talk "little" ant!


I have my ruler here...you're only 1/2 inch wide and about 3/4 inches tall based on that picture...not the best picture to demonstrate your massive size.


Nice try...but I have my doubts. Gotta run! Reusing a Terminator clip from earlier in the day (since I'm running out of fresh material) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRxaXmXvjnU

In reply to this comment by ant:
Oh please. Your screen is too small. You need a bigger screen with bigger (dots per inches) DPIs. ;

In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by ant:
I am not little. I am big:
http://zimage.com/~ant/antfarm/about/pictures/wanted.gif

In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by ant:
And smaller.

In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by ant:
Bah. What about your current age?

In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
http://stellaween.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/toddler-catwom an.jpg

There ya go...that's me. *wshhhhhhhsnap*


Why thank you, I always look younger in my catwoman outfit. Must be the mask.


You're one to talk "little" ant!


I have my ruler here...you're only 1/2 inch wide and about 3/4 inches tall based on that picture...not the best picture to demonstrate your massive size.


Nice try...but I have my doubts. Gotta run! Reusing a Terminator clip from earlier in the day (since I'm running out of fresh material) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRxaXmXvjnU

>> ^messenger:

I've never watched a single episode. The theme song used to scare the crap out of me after The Polka Dot Door and I'd run upstairs.
Upvote for the info.


I am not into Dr. Who series either, but I <3 its theme song!

I've never watched a single episode. The theme song used to scare the crap out of me after The Polka Dot Door and I'd run upstairs.

Upvote for the info.

i Draw Girls Dot Com .... HAHAHAHAHA! =oD

It's one thing to say that enough isn't being done for veterans and the buck stops with the Commander-in-Chief, but is Romney blaming Obama directly?

No.

Obama "wants" a lot of things for everyone, he just chooses to ignore the part where someone has to pay for it all.


>> ^Payback:

>> ^quantumushroom:
Dishonest title.

In what way?
-Suicides up
-Obama wants to skrink support for suicides
Not a lot of distance between the dots to connect.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Dishonest title.


In what way?

-Suicides up
-Obama wants to skrink support for suicides

Not a lot of distance between the dots to connect.

@shinyblurry

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve … to maintain order in His kingdom.

I can't tell if you're disagreeing or off topic. I'll state again what I think I have heard you say or suggest: God gave us humans free will. He loves us, and knew what would be the best way for us to live, so, out of love, he gave us a set of laws to follow for our own good. In order to encourage us to follow those laws, he established hell as punishment for choosing to violate those laws: the worst possible eternal torture.

Have I made any mistakes in there?

[me:]What’s wrong with robots? You said elsewhere it’s because god wouldn’t want robots. How can he want anything? He’s perfect. Does his own existence not satisfy him? Is he lacking something? Was he bored and lonely? Are we his pets?

[you:]God created not out of need, but out of the abundance of His love.

I said and I meant "want" (not "need"). You've said many times that God wanted/desired us to exist and behave in certain ways, and you used words like "(un)satisfactory" to describe God's opinion of us/robots, and so forth. Any understanding of those words necessarily implies a lack of something. You cannot want/desire/be unsatisfied unless that thing addresses your lack of something that would make you better off in some way. Every single human action can be attributed to a lack or want (or need). But a perfect all-powerful God would have none of these. He would be at Nirvana, a persistent state of satisfaction with nothing but the self. So "want" and "perfect" make a contradiction. Can you address either my founding statements or my logic?

[me:]You didn’t answer my questions. I know the stated purpose of sending Jesus. My question is why the situation required exactly that. Surely God, at some point, decided, "Well, they’re bad, and I want to get closer, and the exact thing required is for me to have a son, for that son to be a perfect human, for him to preach for three years and then get executed by the other humans, and then we can be closer." God decided something like that. It’s a direct implication of saying that God created everything and that this was necessary.

[you:]Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Again, you didn't answer. Why did it have to be Jesus? God is all-powerful, so he could have sent a puppy or a bamboo plant or a paramecium to bear our sins and be killed. Or he could have decided it required 40 children of his to be sacrificed. Why just one man?

Before the world began, God knew that He would need to send His Son.

Because being in the image of God isn't about what God looks like, it is about being imbued with His personal attributes. We resemble Him in our better nature, not our appearance.

Cool. Is there Biblical reason to assert that this is the correct interpretation of "in his image"?

[me:]What I’m getting at is the arbitrariness of the consequences … forever, and they lost paradise. For one sin?

[you:]I understand what you're saying. You're not going to see the picture before you connect all of the dots. I'll keep supplying you the dots as I am able. I think I explained this particular question to you in more specific detail this time around, as to why the separation occurred.

I'm asking you all this to see if there's ever going to be an end or a logic to the trail of dots without having to presuppose the conclusion that gave rise to the dots in the first place. Every dot seems to give rise to another dot. Like you say about secular morality, it's a recursive chain of dots off to infinity, each dot raising more questions than it answers. Such a system would, by literal definition, not be rational: if it goes on to infinity, then it can never be rationalized.

He knew before He created that His creation would rebel at some point, and He took the necessary steps to reconcile it back to Himself at the end of time. He didn't screw up, but He did create beings capable of screwing up. To allow for the real possibility of good, He also had to allow for the real possibility of evil.

Are humans satisfying to God in whatever capacity we were created?

When scripture says "the law" what it is reffering to is the Mosaic law that was given at Mt Sinai … What we had in the beginning was not a law, but simply a choice.

So humanity had no laws from God for all that time (hundreds or thousands of years) until Mt. Sinai? We were allowed to do anything at all we wanted without fear of any punishment from God?

There may well have been evil intent in these voter ID laws, and in fact, they may be doing their best to reduce the voter rolls with unfair voting hours. I'm not defending those tactics.

$30 every few 5-10 years is trivial by any measure. However, in researching the topic, I discovered that in Wisconsin, you can already get a free ID for voting purposes: "If you are a U.S. citizen, will be at least 18 years of age by the next election, and would like a Wisconsin ID card to vote (although it's not currently required), please check the ID for FREE box when completing the MV3004 (Wisconsin Identification Card (ID) application) or when applying online" http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/drivers/drivers/apply/idcard.htm

In the case of someone who does not have a birth certificate, there are processes in place to resolve that. You do not lose your identity when you lose your identification papers, it's just a pain to fix it. In this case, the state lost the papers, and it is the responsibility of the state to re-certify the birth of the person in question. Most likely it can be done with a court appearance and a few sworn statements, if there's no other way of proving identity.

Even if the intent behind this bill is evil and unjust, the requirement of identification at the voting booth is neither unreasonable, nor unjustly burdensome. The _burden_ is the same for everyone, a half-day in the DMV.

By your rhetorical suggestion: God created us with free will, then he created laws for us because following them is good for us and he loves us, then he said there would be consequences for not following those laws to encourage us to follow them because he loves us, then he determined that the consequences would be the worst possible thing that could happen, far worse than the real-life consequences for breaking the rules… because he loves us? It doesn’t add up. Don't give me some reductionist "let all rapists go free" argument. There's no way to explain the extreme severity of the consequences for breaking the law if the law itself was created so we would be better off. See?

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve to be completely dependent on Him for everything. They relied upon God to make their decisions for them, and tell them what good and evil was. However, because He wanted His creatures to be free to love Him, ie just not just forced to obey Him, He gave them one command. That command was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told them that in the day they ate of it they would surely die.

What lay in the fruit of that tree for Adam and Eve was their own autonomy. The fruit represented an independence from God to decide on their own what is good and evil. Rather than sitting at Gods feet and learning from Him, they would become a law onto themselves through their own judgment. What eating this fruit did was destroy their innocence forever. It ruined the perfect relationship and fellowship they had with God by turning them into rebels who would make choices apart from God.

So, rather than the law being given for the reasons you are saying, it was given to offer them a choice between obedience to God and personal autonomy. The consequences of breaking that law not only changed their nature but brought sin and death into the world. God draws the line at His standard for goodness, which is perfection. It is a zero tolerance policy for rebellion, not only for moral guidance, but to maintain order in His kingdom.

What’s wrong with robots? You said elsewhere it’s because god wouldn’t want robots. How can he want anything? He’s perfect. Does his own existence not satisfy him? Is he lacking something? Was he bored and lonely? Are we his pets?

God created not out of need, but out of the abundance of His love. He regards us as His offspring, not His pets.

Act 17:22-31

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

But he forgave us all our sins through the sacrifice of his son. Was that a compromise of his integrity? It seems he does choose to forgive us, at least once every 4000 years or so.

No, because He laid all of our sin on His Son, who bore the punishment we deserve. It is not a compromise of His integrity so long as the sin has been paid for.

Romans 4:25

He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification

You didn’t answer my questions. I know the stated purpose of sending Jesus. My question is why the situation required exactly that. Surely God, at some point, decided, "Well, they’re bad, and I want to get closer, and the exact thing required is for me to have a son, for that son to be a perfect human, for him to preach for three years and then get executed by the other humans, and then we can be closer." God decided something like that. It’s a direct implication of saying that God created everything and that this was necessary.

Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Before the world began, God knew that He would need to send His Son.

If you want to know more about what it means in the image of God, read this:

http://www.gotquestions.org/image-of-God.html

It told me almost nothing. It says that the definition of "the image of God" is everything that makes us different from other animals, and everything intangible about us, as if that’s what God looks like. It compared naming pets and enjoying music to being God. Weird.

Because being in the image of God isn't about what God looks like, it is about being imbued with His personal attributes. We resemble Him in our better nature, not our appearance.

What I’m getting at is the arbitrariness of the consequences and why God would have created such random consequences. Look at them with a critical eye, if you can: Adam and Eve committed one sin, and for that their nature was changed forever, and that of their descendents forever, and they lost paradise. For one sin? You believe that God created such a heavy consequence for the first offence ever committed by innocent people – and people without "knowledge" mind you, because they hadn’t eaten the fruit yet. I cannot.

I understand what you're saying. You're not going to see the picture before you connect all of the dots. I'll keep supplying you the dots as I am able. I think I explained this particular question to you in more specific detail this time around, as to why the separation occurred.

God got to enjoy his creation for about 45 minutes before it screwed itself up, and from then on we’ve been a disappointment to him. Yet, as you’ve stated elsewhere, God created us for his pleasure. He knew what would happen, so he screwed up. He couldn’t even create himself a pleasing race of pets. Dogs have free will, understand good and bad, and are extremely pleasing as companions. Why couldn’t God create as good for himself as he did for humans? The whole story doesn’t hold water.

He knew before He created that His creation would rebel at some point, and He took the necessary steps to reconcile it back to Himself at the end of time. He didn't screw up, but He did create beings capable of screwing up. To allow for the real possibility of good, He also had to allow for the real possibility of evil.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

That's a defence mechanism against whatever the opposite of apologia is. Reason, maybe.

Or it's absolutely true.

The only consistent model is that God himself created sin and evil by creating the laws, because if he hadn't created the laws, there would be no sin or evil in the world. This understanding is consistent with your statement A and in spirit with C, if you understand C to mean, "We created evil by breaking his law".

Sorry, I should have clarified this a lot more. When scripture says "the law" what it is reffering to is the Mosaic law that was given at Mt Sinai. This law was given because of sin, and sin was already in the world at that time. This really goes back to the beginning with what I described earlier. What we had in the beginning was not a law, but simply a choice. It was given not to keep us from evil but to give us freedom to choose to obey Gods will. You can't freely obey someone if you don't have a choice not to do it. You can't love someone without the choice not to love. The law came into play after all of this, and that is a whole other discussion.

>> ^messenger:

stuff

It's great that he saved the dog. It's also completely irresponsible that he stopped his car in the middle of a busy highway to do it. I've worked far too many fatalities on the highways simply because people weren't thinking ahead and did something stupid like this. Next time, pull over and call the HP or DOT.