I did not get the same impression from this campy video. When they said $88,000/y goes to keeping an inmate in prison, I know it's not their puny wage. It's the cost of the corrections process, infrastructure and the like. I'm upvoting this video for making a valid statement, despite the oversimplification.

>> ^tsquire1:

Although the bill is screw up, this video is too.
It explains the situation as if the prisoners themselves are going to get the money spent on prisons, not the prison capitalists. This is absurd. It's not like somebody locked up for a bullshit crime is getting rich here. Blame the 1%, the the people whose being is criminalized.
And on that note, the video never attempts to deconstruct the prison system in the first place and instead maintains a blame on the people in the cells, and not the system that forced them in there.

>> ^quantumushroom:

If you support gay marriage, you support polygamy by default.

Bullshit. Polygamy is defined by wikipedia as a marriage which includes more than two partners. Or would you prefer websters, which defines it as marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time. The fact that a marriage contains two wives or two husbands does not make it polygamous.

>> ^quantumushroom:

At least you, @ChaosEngine have the stones to actually support both. I'd even go so far as to agree with you, with the exception that I'll freely admit there are/will be many unforeseen problems with both gay marriage and polygamy.


We've had gay marriage (actually civil unions but marriage in all but name) in NZ for years now. Society has failed to collapse. Are there potential issues with polygamy? Undoubtedly. Hell, I'll admit that there are potential issues with gay marriage. Thing is, there are issues with marriage, period. Even in a committed monogamous heterosexual marriage, there's all kinds of problems, because people are flawed. Being gay or polygamous doesn't make them any more or less flawed. I'd prefer we dropped the polygamous angle now, since it's derailing the conversation. I don't mind debating it, but I feel it's orthogonal to this issue.

>> ^quantumushroom:

I don't equate pedophilia with homosexuality. What I dispute is your confidence that within 20 years, whatever authority you believe the State will have to prevent pedophile "unions" will still exist.

Well, the state grants the marriage licence. I see no proposal to change that, so the authority will remain intact. As for allowing pedophile "unions", how does gay marriage affect that? Age of consent is a well defined concept that applies to everyone, heterosexual or homosexual.

I really am getting tired of repeating this, but context, nuance, judgement. Think is not a four letter word. The world is not black and white, and it is an oversimplification to view it as such. War is sometimes justified, lying is sometimes the right thing to do and I am comfortable making the distinction between a union of two consenting adults and an adult and a child. Why? Because I can weigh up the merits of each individual case and make a judgement.

>> ^quantumushroom:

If no one here has a problem with california or any state revoking election results, aka the will of the people, welcome to fascism.

Fascism? Are you actually serious? Leaving aside how much fascists really don't like homosexuality, you have completely failed to understand democracy.

There are already well defined limits on the will of the people. To use your own analogy, how would you feel if california had passed an amedment legalising pedophilia?

>> ^hpqp:

Can't upvote such oversimplification, even if there are truths at the core of his talk. Blaming terrorism entirely on aggressive capitalism, for example, is just plain wrong.


Videos are for slapping people in the face with thesis statements, nuance and detail is for comments.

Can't upvote such oversimplification, even if there are truths at the core of his talk. Blaming terrorism entirely on aggressive capitalism, for example, is just plain wrong.

Answer the following questions:

Did WWII end the Great Depression?
Did the US have the cash to pay for all the expenses related to the war?
Did the US borrow at the time a record amount of money?
Did the US as a result become an economic super power, with its people more well off than they had ever been in its history?
Was borrowing a butt ton of money then "economic suicide"?

Your oversimplification of the US economy down to personal finances doesn't work.

@hpqp

Thanks for the heads-up about the post. And thanks for clearly detailing your position on the matter. If I may, I’d like to explain my opinion on the topic.

Is it wrong to “criticize Islam?” In a civilized society that values free speech, clearly the answer is no. But free speech is a two-way street. If it is acceptable to criticize Islam, then clearly it is just as acceptable that such criticism be open to criticism in return. In short, just because a person thinks their opinion on a particular matter is correct doesn’t make it so. And if a person can’t handle someone disagreeing with their opinion… well we all know the adage about people who live in glass houses.

My major objection to people like Sam Harris is not that I believe religion or in particular Islam is some off-limit topic of criticism. No. My major objection to Sam Harris is that rather than criticize Islam he instead tries to inspire fear of it—and, by association, Muslims as well (i.e. No one lies awake at night worrying about the Amish—but those Muslims on the other hand…). Many of his arguments seem to be based on fear, misunderstanding, exaggeration, oversimplification, and in of some cases apparent intentional misrepresentation of not only Islam but other religions such as Jainism as well. They often lack any sort of evidence (i.e. Islam is the religion causing the greatest amount of suffering in the world) yet we are expected to swallow their truth without doubt. And when someone raises these criticisms of his supposed criticism? Rather than actually defend his claims and provide solid evidence in support of them he instead insinuates we’re just too “liberal”—too culturally relativistic— to see the danger that he sees.

Sam Harris is free to criticize Islam. In fact, I’m eagerly looking forward to the day when he actually starts doing so (in the dictionary sense of the term). In the meantime, I dismiss his arguments as both unsupported and intended to intentionally stir up both fear and prejudice against Islam and its followers.

Next, I’d like to address the issue of Islamophobia—prejudice against, hatred, or fear of Islam and Muslims. Islamophobia doesn’t exist? I think the 200,000 Muslims killed and 50,000 Muslim women raped during the Bosnian Genocide would disagree with that statement. So would Iranian-American Zohreh Assemik, who was sliced with a boxcutter, kicked, had her hand smashed with a hammer, and had anti-Muslim slurs written on the mirrors of her nail and facial salon. So would pretty much anyone who played Muslim Massacre: The Game of Modern Religious Genocide in which you get to kill not only terrorists but Muslim civilians as well.

Frankly, @hpqp, I’m surprised. All of our conversations on the Sift have been reasonable, if a bit passionate at times. I think you would be just as shocked if I were to suddenly proclaim there is no such thing as Antisemitism as I was to read your statement in this thread. Islamophobia (as defined above) is quite real. No, claims of Islamophobia should not be used to shut down criticism of Islam (any more than claims of Antisemitism should be used to squelch criticism of Israeli policies). But that’s a far cry from claiming Islamophobia doesn’t exist, isn’t it?

You seem like a reasonable guy. I know you’ve tried your best to explain it to me but I still don’t understand why you believe so strongly that Islam itself—and not particular interpretations of Islam—are such a threat. So let's do something different. I’ve asked you this before, but you didn’t reply, so I’ll ask you again—what do you/Harris hope to achieve with all of this vitriol? What’s the goal? What do you hope to see happen? What’s the endgame? I ask these questions because I think the answers will really help me see where you are coming from and to understand your point of view.

The gaps are fundemental..here are some more quotes:

"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Carroll, Robert L., "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion ...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. ...Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

"He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration...The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (George, T. Neville, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

"Despite the bright promise - that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

"It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions." (Wills, C., Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

"So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction." (Weinberg, S., Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p.

"We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology..." (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984.)

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood (Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

"As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)

"Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record." (Padian, K., The Origin of Turtles: One Fewer Problem for Creationists, 1991, p. 18.)

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163.)

"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

"One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged." (Ruse, "Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution," 1984, p.101.)

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 57.)

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.22.)

"To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis," 1983, p. 81.)

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163.)

"Gaps in the fossil record - particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution - are not surprising." (Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)

"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140.)

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)

"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)

"We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups." (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, "Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

>> ^Drax:
Shiny, it's kind of like you're saying,
Ok, we have: . -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and O
Then we find . -> o -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and o
or o and O
Basically, the more evidence we find.. the stronger your argument gets! <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/oh.gif">
ok, that last part's just a joke.. but seriously.. the other parts ARE your stance.
It's either that, or you're looking at o and e and expecting to find æ, which just doesn't happen.

I'm not offended by anything you said. I deal with innumerable rejections on practically every conceivable angle, from the pagan to the satanist to the atheist to the nihilist to yes, the ex-christian. The things they all have in common is the misunderstanding of biblical truth, the mission of Jesus Christ, the state of creation, good and evil, and the sin nature. I'll try to answer to your statements.

Love and justice are not pitted against eachother and I am not sure why you say that. For instance, would it be loving to allow your children to just do whatever they want without consequence? We see the kind of children this creates every day; ones with no morals, empathy or wisdom. Children need boundries or they're going to hurt themselves. It's up to the parent to set those boundries, and enforce them. If you give a child a rule without enforcing it, they will just roll right over it and you. Now, take it up a notch. What kind of society would we have if we didn't have punishment for capital crimes? People will argue against the justice of a Holy God but not blink when someone gets sentenced to life for murder. How is it any different? That's every bit as permanent as Gods justice, ultimately, yet we as a society are okay with it.

You talk about arbitrary choices, but it's people making the choice, not God. If it were Gods choice exclusively, He could just override everyones will. However, If God overrode your choice, would that be love? You know it wouldn't. Yet, He keeps the door open your entire life. He is constantly reminding you and warning you, and not only that, but looking out for you. Love is a two way street. If you refuse to accept Gods forgiveness, how can you blame Him for not forgiving you? It's your personal choice and your personal responsibility to own up to your sins.

Your statements about Jesus fall a bit short as to the specifics of Gods plan. Far from being a mockery of justice, it was a perfection of it. For there to be perfect justice, every sin must be punished. For there to be perfect love, everyone must have a chance to be redeemed. Both of these seeming contridictions are reconcilled in Jesus Christ. I'll explain..

This is a fallen creation, due to the sin of one man, Adam. It is imperfect. Thereby, everyone born into it inherits this imperfection, which is the sin nature. God gave us the law to give us the standard of behavior which leads to perfection, and thus back into perfect relationship with God. The problem was that no man was capable of fulfilling this law, because Gods perfect justice requires a sinless life. Jesus was the first to be perfectly obedient to God and lead a sinless life, thus fulfilling the law. The law was given because of sin and was fulfilled by the sinlessness of Christ. Just as one mans sin caused creation to fall, one mans sinlessness redeemed it. Because He perfectly obeyed the Fathers will and fulfilled the law, when He took on our sins He earned no condemnation for them. It's because of His sinlessness that He was able to be the perfect sacrifice.

So now because of all this, man has a chance to be perfected and again enjoy perfect relationship with God. Jesus made a way for mankind to be reconcilled to God. Justice has been done on the issue of the original sin. So now, this is justice: that the one who rejects Christ stands condemned. The only way to escape punishment is be saved by the grace of God. That is what justice is after Christ fulfilled the law and broke the power of death. We are spiritually perfected by the indwelling of Gods Holy Spirit, so that we are remade in the image of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be a new creation in Christ, to be born again. Thus we are no longer held accountable to the law, because the penalty has already been paid. Rather, we are under grace.

Yes, God is sovereign, and He has every right to judge His creation as He chooses. Yet, He Himself has never violated any of the rules he has laid down. That gives Him justification. Also, you seem to think people are innocent, when they're not. There is no one good, not one. How shall an unrighteous sinner judge a Holy God? Read the book of job for what a ridiculous proposition that is. He is the author of history and our lives..how shall a child instruct Him? We don't have any right to tell God what to do..none of us are justified. We're all hypocrites. Your personal sin makes you completely unqualified to judge God, yet here you are saying He is a hypocrite and a liar and a fool.

Gods judgement became a stumbling block for you, and so you abandoned Him and now claim He isn't worthy of your love. Yet, has He ever stopped loving you? Has He written you off like you did Him? Who is really worthy here, and who isn't? If you had just persevered through your misunderstandings, the answers would have been forthcoming. Yet you gave up and then your thoughts became futile and your heart was darkened. This is always about personal accountability to God. Everything you've mentioned here is an excuse for something you failed to live up to. Sorry if that is harsh but I have to tell you the truth. God is Holy, and worthy of worship and all praise. He is worthy of our love, though we are not worthy of His. Yet, even though you abandoned Him the door is still open. It is only your refusal to be reconciled and obey Him that is causing this issue of your understanding. Being an ex-christian who knows the bible, you should know that. I pray you find the truth and repent and be reconciled once more.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since January 21st, 2011" href="http://videosift.com/member/shinyblurry">shinyblurry
Sigh, I was trying to avoid being drawn into a theological conversation about love and judgement, but I guess I asked for it.
There are some major theological and philosophical problems with your resolution of justice and love. Let me go into a couple of them. But before that, let me say that I am not hatting on your faith right now. These are just my personal waxing on Christianity. I am no some master of theology, but I am also not naive of the bible and basic logical constructs. Understand, that I am not trying to drag you down or give you excess flack, you have had your fair share of that lately. BUUUUT since you did take the time to write something else, I thought I would return that favor.
First and foremost, you can't resolve what is unresolvable. Love and Justice are pitted against one another in certain instances. There comes a point where you can't be loving and just...you must make a choice. For instance, if your wife cheats on you, you have a choice. You can either forgive her or your can choose not to ignore it and break off the relationship. This has a few oversimplifications like, you could still be with them but also hold it against them, but that goes against the other idea of love, which is forgiveness (so they wouldn't be in a loving relationship anymore). At the end of the world, God makes an arbitrary choice, he decides to not love people who didn't accept Christ, and decides to continue to love those whom did. For the damned, the statement of Corinthians "Love never fails" surely has lost all meaning to them...love wasn't enough.
Second of all, if God is ok with transferring blame from those who are damned to those who are not, then he is forbidden to be the referee in any gaming event I control. It is a mockery to the ideals of justices to let the innocent suffer for the deeds of the wicked. I can't think of a MORE unjust act. The entire "idea" of salvation is a rosy picture. But if you actually care about justice, the idea of salvation flies right in the face of it. Either God isn't as loving as he would say he is, or he doesn't care about justice as much as he says he does. One must be true. God must either not be all loving, or not care about perfect justice. There is no need for judgement if both those things are not true (fucken double negatives!). Would you punish your neighbors dog for peeing on your rug when it was your own dog? Punishment is non-transferable if you really care about justice, period.
Also, it is a mockery to justice that Jesus still gets to go to heaven, even after being made sinful in our stead. Let us take another example. Let us say I am a murderer. I start racking up the kills, become the number one murderer of all times. Then, I get caught. On my behalf, the richest, most affluent political figure in the world decides to accept all the punishment for my crimes. For some crazy ass reason, everyone goes along with this idea. Being so rich and powerful, he is able to get all the charges dismissed. So he and I get away with the most hideous crime of all time, and no punishment is dealt out, to anyone. Is this justice? If it is, God once again can't be the ref any any sporting events I control. Jesus was made imperfect for our sake. Imperfect things do not go to heaven. Jesus should not be in heaven, period. If he is, then the God never really cared about the charges anyway, or doesn't really take justice very seriously.
I also don't understand how the Bible is able to claim the punishment for sin is death, when everyone dies anyway...even the saved. O ok, so I guess their spirit gets to live on or something, but who's spirit died in their steads? I can tell you it wasn't Jesus's, because he is supposedly chilling in heaven. The fact is, SOME will suffer death from sin, others will not. The saved are a special case where the rules needed for their salvation aren't needed because no one is going to die from their sins anyway. I mean Jesus might of literally died, but we all do that, so Jesus didn't save anything there. What you mean is a figurative death, and Jesus is surely not figuratively dead either. So no one died for Christian's sins, and no one died for the damned sins...sucks to be the damned. Once again, God can't see over any sporting events I frequent.
Also, I don't think the Bible supports the claim of "It's not that God wants to punish you...". For instance, in Romans it talks about how God specifically makes vessels of wrath.
"What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?"
They have a name for that in Chess, they are called pawns. And while Chess is only a game, it does seem to me that God is more playing a game with us than loves us or cares about us, from the bibles perspective that is. Romans gives way to this even more with:
"“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”"
Reasons? I want to, I'm God, shut up. Misunderstanding, I don't think so.
"One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?"
This is the kind of flack an adult gives out when a child catches him doing something wrong. And while in many cases, it is the child's very naive understandings of the world that lead to this situations, many times, they are justified in the question and more importantly, and answer.
I should point out, that I used to be a 5 point Calvinist. Formerly, I used to look at Romans as the great justifier of predestination. It was a power verse of immeasurable theological insight. When I read it now, I have only sadness. It isn't like this is a trivial question to ask God, but in Romans, he brushes off our very important question like he doesn't give a flying fuck. Sadness. Granted it is Paul, not Jesus, but it is still "His word". Deepening sadness.
I have about 6 more points but I have already gone on for far to long. I hope this doesn't get stolen by atheists as ammunition to fire against Christians. Nothing would make more sad than my own personal insights being used to hurt someone. These are but a few of the troubles that lead me away from Christianity being the answer for my life. I actually hope I am wrong. I hope that other people will get to enjoy heaven, even without me. I would hope that there is an actual just God out there, looking out for us, protecting us, making sure the wrongness in the world is "taken care of". But as for wrongness, I only start to see more and more of it in the bible. What used to be a shining beacon of hope, is now a book of how not to care about justice and love.
To this day, though, 1 Corinthians 13 is still what I use to define love. It is also the root of my deconversion. The love I see in 1 Corinthians 13 does not exist in the God I read about in the rest of the bible. That is all, sorry if I cause you any pain or strife with my words. Or, indeed, anyone other person of faith that reads this. If that be the case, than I have failed in great way.

@shinyblurry

Sigh, I was trying to avoid being drawn into a theological conversation about love and judgement, but I guess I asked for it.

There are some major theological and philosophical problems with your resolution of justice and love. Let me go into a couple of them. But before that, let me say that I am not hatting on your faith right now. These are just my personal waxing on Christianity. I am no some master of theology, but I am also not naive of the bible and basic logical constructs. Understand, that I am not trying to drag you down or give you excess flack, you have had your fair share of that lately. BUUUUT since you did take the time to write something else, I thought I would return that favor.

First and foremost, you can't resolve what is unresolvable. Love and Justice are pitted against one another in certain instances. There comes a point where you can't be loving and just...you must make a choice. For instance, if your wife cheats on you, you have a choice. You can either forgive her or your can choose not to ignore it and break off the relationship. This has a few oversimplifications like, you could still be with them but also hold it against them, but that goes against the other idea of love, which is forgiveness (so they wouldn't be in a loving relationship anymore). At the end of the world, God makes an arbitrary choice, he decides to not love people who didn't accept Christ, and decides to continue to love those whom did. For the damned, the statement of Corinthians "Love never fails" surely has lost all meaning to them...love wasn't enough.

Second of all, if God is ok with transferring blame from those who are damned to those who are not, then he is forbidden to be the referee in any gaming event I control. It is a mockery to the ideals of justices to let the innocent suffer for the deeds of the wicked. I can't think of a MORE unjust act. The entire "idea" of salvation is a rosy picture. But if you actually care about justice, the idea of salvation flies right in the face of it. Either God isn't as loving as he would say he is, or he doesn't care about justice as much as he says he does. One must be true. God must either not be all loving, or not care about perfect justice. There is no need for judgement if both those things are not true (fucken double negatives!). Would you punish your neighbors dog for peeing on your rug when it was your own dog? Punishment is non-transferable if you really care about justice, period.

Also, it is a mockery to justice that Jesus still gets to go to heaven, even after being made sinful in our stead. Let us take another example. Let us say I am a murderer. I start racking up the kills, become the number one murderer of all times. Then, I get caught. On my behalf, the richest, most affluent political figure in the world decides to accept all the punishment for my crimes. For some crazy ass reason, everyone goes along with this idea. Being so rich and powerful, he is able to get all the charges dismissed. So he and I get away with the most hideous crime of all time, and no punishment is dealt out, to anyone. Is this justice? If it is, God once again can't be the ref any any sporting events I control. Jesus was made imperfect for our sake. Imperfect things do not go to heaven. Jesus should not be in heaven, period. If he is, then the God never really cared about the charges anyway, or doesn't really take justice very seriously.

I also don't understand how the Bible is able to claim the punishment for sin is death, when everyone dies anyway...even the saved. O ok, so I guess their spirit gets to live on or something, but who's spirit died in their steads? I can tell you it wasn't Jesus's, because he is supposedly chilling in heaven. The fact is, SOME will suffer death from sin, others will not. The saved are a special case where the rules needed for their salvation aren't needed because no one is going to die from their sins anyway. I mean Jesus might of literally died, but we all do that, so Jesus didn't save anything there. What you mean is a figurative death, and Jesus is surely not figuratively dead either. So no one died for Christian's sins, and no one died for the damned sins...sucks to be the damned. Once again, God can't see over any sporting events I frequent.

Also, I don't think the Bible supports the claim of "It's not that God wants to punish you...". For instance, in Romans it talks about how God specifically makes vessels of wrath.

"What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction?"

They have a name for that in Chess, they are called pawns. And while Chess is only a game, it does seem to me that God is more playing a game with us than loves us or cares about us, from the bibles perspective that is. Romans gives way to this even more with:

"“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”"

Reasons? I want to, I'm God, shut up. Misunderstanding, I don't think so.

"One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?"

This is the kind of flack an adult gives out when a child catches him doing something wrong. And while in many cases, it is the child's very naive understandings of the world that lead to this situations, many times, they are justified in the question and more importantly, and answer.

I should point out, that I used to be a 5 point Calvinist. Formerly, I used to look at Romans as the great justifier of predestination. It was a power verse of immeasurable theological insight. When I read it now, I have only sadness. It isn't like this is a trivial question to ask God, but in Romans, he brushes off our very important question like he doesn't give a flying fuck. Sadness. Granted it is Paul, not Jesus, but it is still "His word". Deepening sadness.

I have about 6 more points but I have already gone on for far to long. I hope this doesn't get stolen by atheists as ammunition to fire against Christians. Nothing would make more sad than my own personal insights being used to hurt someone. These are but a few of the troubles that lead me away from Christianity being the answer for my life. I actually hope I am wrong. I hope that other people will get to enjoy heaven, even without me. I would hope that there is an actual just God out there, looking out for us, protecting us, making sure the wrongness in the world is "taken care of". But as for wrongness, I only start to see more and more of it in the bible. What used to be a shining beacon of hope, is now a book of how not to care about justice and love.

To this day, though, 1 Corinthians 13 is still what I use to define love. It is also the root of my deconversion. The love I see in 1 Corinthians 13 does not exist in the God I read about in the rest of the bible. That is all, sorry if I cause you any pain or strife with my words. Or, indeed, anyone other person of faith that reads this. If that be the case, than I have failed in great way.

Ahhh the quotes. Always a pleasure when folks don't use them and freak out how many hits the combination of everyday-word and you-need-a-degree-in-hyperphysics gets them. That's the cost of oversimplification, if google only used a query language as sole input method...

This video brings something very important to light. I will never recall a single one of his sweeps or any of his technically impressive double tapped solos. When he remains true to the song's melody, it's straight forward, ordered, and stands out.

Pop music strives for the perfection of appealing to what the human brain craves: simplicity.

This is a baroque cover of a classical song. People will disparage the original as simplistic, boring. But the Classical period followed the Baroque period for a reason.

It's often forgotten that punk was not an outright rejection of pop music; it was a stripping down of pop music. It was an oversimplification, welcomed by many.

I'm drunk and don't have much in the way of a conclusion to tie my thoughts together, but the more astute readers will understand what I'm getting at.

I know the video is an oversimplification, of everything, but anyway, to play the game I would change the main analogy a bit. From farming people to farming minds. Actually the farming term is narrow and loaded. Manipulating belief systems sums it up. Working with an ideological framework that the public is cued to have to herd them in the right direction. The more simplistic the cue (and reasoning) the better, as it is easier to change the cue later. Like a war on a verb or action like terrorism. But this all depends on the belief in the authority that is framing these situations. If you believe in the authority framing the situation (dichotomies are the most simplistic and usual way to frame something), then you'll follow their cues...through one hoop then the next..etc. And I'm a drunken rambling creature and I think I'll stop typing.

>> ^Pprt:

Maybe if the developing world had used their millennial wisdom to discover that you don't poop where you drink it would be less of a problem.



1 part truth
1 part over-oversimplification
Stew in brain of dick for 15 seconds
Presto!
Your typical youtube comment is done.

>> ^Popo:
Some may find Pat Condell irritating, I find him necessary, we need intelligent loudmouths to offset the horde of religious fuckheads spouting hatred.


Do we? Personally I'm not against religion, I'm against "fuckheads", as you put it. A lack of reasonable debate, replaced by oversimplification and over-emotional shouting to the exclusion of actually listening to what others have to say is a much larger problem than any actual opinion can be. Anyone willing to sacrifice intellectual honesty for perceived political gain is no friend of mine.

What I'm reading here is that what you really want is a purely democrat government with no possibility of Republicans blocking anything. I don't see that as the intentional design of the American government. Checks and balances are needed either way no matter who has a majority. I'm in favor of the option of a filibuster for this very reason. You say this option, when executed prevents any real reform from getting done, but that's an oversimplification. The point of the filibuster is to demand that bills and laws that are acceptable to more than just one party and that sufficient debate occurs before passing a bill.

If the republicans have the option to do it and decide not to do it, than in my eyes, that is fulfilling the requirements of a proper bill to be passed. Equally, if enough of both parties can agree to vote on cloture, than the bill can potentially pass. Democrats have used this filibuster often in the past to block bills that Republicans tried to ram through the governmental system without due consideration. It's a great option to have in place even if it tends to piss some people off in some cases. "What do you mean we don't get everything we want no matter what?!" is what that anger boils down to. I've frequently and openly opposed the idea of either party having a monopoly in our government and frankly I don't know how anyone here could think otherwise, because when the opposite party has that power, they must regret having ever thought that way. It seems to me that liberal Democrats are feeling upset that after 8 years of a republican president--4-5 of which were under pure republican rule (none in which they had the universal ban-hammer that is the 60 vote supermajority)--they didn't get everything that they wanted when the power changed hands. Of course they didn't. Now, they can. With 60 votes, cloture is imminent on any filibuster.

I'm not doing what you have said above by any means. I'm not opposing everything to be left in the right when anything fails. I'm supporting something and opposing parts of it... as are many. The intention is not to block legislation. The intention is to pass quality legislation.

I suspect that the supermajority that the Democrats possess is not going to last... Their simple majority likely will however.