Also, some of his numbers are way off. According to the US Census (see #29), 79% of the population was urban in 2000, not ~20% as he claims.

For a breakdown of metro areas by population, look at #21 at the US Census link, "Metropolitan Statistical Areas--Population by Age". There were 131 million votes cast for president in 2008. If you want to arbitrarily define urban as 1 million people or more, there are 126.4 million voting-age people living in metropolitan areas.

Sliced a different way, according to the US Census, a presidential candidate can get to 50% of that if they take the voting age populations of just the top 12 metropolitan areas:

New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI

I don't know where he gets his numbers--maybe by using strict city limits?--but they're not even close to reality. According to the facts, in a pure popularity vote, a presidential candidate can safely ignore the rural areas and still win an election.

The electoral college is imperfect, but whatever you want to replace it with should do a better job of representing a diversity of interests--geographic, demographic, and politic--than a direct popular vote.

More of my favorite non-laugh-track comedies off the top of my head in no particular order:

Community
Scrubs
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The League
Extras

"One Meridian Plaza is a 38-floor skyscraper in Philadelphia that suffered a severe fire on February 23, 1991. The fire started on the 22nd floor and raged for 18 hours, gutting eight floors and causing an estimated $100 million in direct property loss. 1 2 3 It was later described by Philadelphia officials as "the most significant fire in this century". "
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html


This clip is a pathetic little band-aid against the piles of "weird shit" about 9/11 that still to this day should make any intelligent person think twice.

Such as:

- The alleged masterminds of 9/11 have never been produced and never put to trial, despite having supposedly been captured in 2001/02

- Total failure of the air defense system. The Pentagon was struck One hour and Twenty minutes after the attacks began, yet there was no response from Andrews Air Force base, which is just 10 MILES away and supposed to be in charge of defending the capitol.

- The Bush / Bin Ladin / Saudi families connection was never fully explored or explained.

- According to two first responders, black boxes were found, but later "disappeared" and their existence denied by the 9/11 Commision Report.

- The multiple military wargames planned long in advance and held on the morning of September 11th included scenarios of a domestic air crisis, a plane crashing into a government building, and a large-scale emergency in New York. Some fucking co-incidence huh.

- Of all the cameras around the pentagon, including the security tapes taken from local gas stations, only one blurry clip was released.

- The remains of the twin towers were quickly carried off and buried before any forensic investigations could be done.

the list goes on....


9/11 Never Forget??

You're damn right I'll never forget. You can count on it.

I do have a combat knife that is always available and I've had to open it while walking to the train and stare down a group before and they stopped dead in their tracks. I can get a weapon, but it's better off I don't have a gun. I want to help the cause not create more issues.
>> ^chilaxe:

@Stu Have you considered carrying a firearm, or a combat knife if firearms are restricted?

No, perhaps you should re-read, the bible has NO historical authority. Like a broken clock it can, rarely, be right, but I can't reasonably accept anything from it without outside corroboration

Oh really? So why is that archaelogically, it has proven to be 100 percent historically accurate?

“No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969

There have been over 25,000 discoveries which prove its historical accuracy alone. Seems like far from being right accidently, it's always on time.

Sooo...You are claiming that these books have not been under the same copy/editorship for millennia ? My point does not require a by-line match, only that the folks copying (and editing) the canonical versions are in control of both, and have incentive to make them seem more impressive. Are you claiming this was not the case?

Of course I'm claiming its not the case. It also doesn't make any sense. You don't think the jews at the time would notice that people were editing in prophecies later? They were fanatical about these kind of details..so unless you're claiming it was a gigantic conspiracy your view seems illogical. The jews were very careful about copying..the earliest manusciprs we have and the oldest ones have very few discrepencies.

Wow, nice straw split. The portion of the testimony that claims the divinity of jesus is cut from whole cloth, that is what you were talking about, that is a forgery. You wish to interpret it as a testimony of divinity, when the historical record strongly supports the contentions that these parts were not in the original text, and are not attributable to Josephus => forgery.

The vid you post takes the safety position that since the original appears to be about jesus that it is proof of his historicity. The original text, as far as we can reconstruct it, as well as all the other non-fake historical documents don't actually claim that jesus was real or divine, they only convey the story as stated by christians.

I can also state the christian story, as a matter of historical record, without validating it or accepting it myself, the fact that christians existed is not proof that jesus did.

lol..so, when a historian talks about someone in history, its not evidence..what kind of evidence do you want? Photographs?

"Josephus includes information about individuals, groups, customs and geographical places. Some of these, such as the city of Seron, are not referenced in the surviving texts of any other ancient authority. His writings provide a significant, extra-Biblical account of the post-Exilic period of the Maccabees, the Hasmonean dynasty, and the rise of Herod the Great. He makes references to the Sadducees, Jewish High Priests of the time, Pharisees and Essenes, the Herodian Temple, Quirinius' census and the Zealots, and to such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and a disputed reference to Jesus (for more see Josephus on Jesus). He is an important source for studies of immediate post-Temple Judaism and the context of early Christianity.

A careful reading of Josephus' writings allowed Ehud Netzer, an archaeologist from Hebrew University, to discover the location of Herod's Tomb, after a search of 35 years — above aqueducts and pools, at a flattened, desert site, halfway up the hill to the Herodium, 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem — exactly where it should have been, according to Josephus's writings."

Read that? His writings were so accurate that we were able to find a mans tomb 2000 years later. Turn off your schitzophrenia for a moment. You're claiming Jesus isn't a historical figure, even though this historian, whom you say is accurate for Cyrus, verifies that He is. I'm not talking about whether He is divine, just that He existed. You can't have it both ways. He's a historian who obviously checked his sources..he's isn't telling stories, he is relating facts. You just want to throw the ones you don't happen to agree with.

I see what you did there, let me see if I can recreate your "logic":
1)I claim the testimony has been forged
2)Therefore I must accept Josephus as completely unreliable
3)Therefor the bible is the only source of the story
4)Therefor the claimed historicity of the events depends on the bible
5)Therefor for the Cyrus claim to hold the bible must be divinely inspired

Step 2 does not follow, most of Josephus is considered sound. The fact that your predecessors felt the need to lie in his name does not invalidate all his writings, only those which we have reason to believe have been altered. As it turns out, your boys tended to do a pretty unconvincing job in their historical revisionism.

Again, forget about the divinity claims which were interperlations. He records the existence of the historical person of Jesus. So, if its good enough for Cyrus, its good enough for Jesus. You can't have it both ways. Your pathogical unbelief is amusing, but unwarrented. So your only sources are one that claims Jesus is real, and another that claims God frees the slaves. Again, not helping your case in any respect.

The Bible is a storybook, that's all. A conspiracy to me, is a cover up of a crime.

You've convinced yourself pretty well with your strange arguments. Just because the Bible cites historical architectural knowledge doesn't mean there's a God. It just means that the people who wrote it at the time obviously took inspiration from their time period and what existed. It doesn't mean EVERYTHING they wrote is now true, they just had a reliable backdrop to their story, why would they write about a places and gatherings and cities and nations and locations that didn't exist, when they are wanting to trick people at the time? Surely it's a requirement to portray the world correctly and then use your lies in preaching to trick people to believing it.

I don't know how you can be so misguided to think proving the bible's archaeological facts leads it to prove all the crazy beliefs of a God and Satan and a Virgin birth, etc.

I can write a book about WW2, citing all the battles, bombs dropped, people killed, gatherings etc, and then just add in a load of stuff about how Hitler was actually secretly taking orders from a magical Unicorn called George who hated everyone, and that the allies were being advised by a giant Elephant called Bob who was kind and benevolent. So apparently in 2000 years, people like you will believe it all because all the archaeological data was proved in my story.

Talking about Christian's persecutions means nothing, brainwashed people are brainwashed, they think they will go to heaven if they do good, and go to hell if they stop believing in God. So no matter what persecution there is, until they are actually allowed to see sense, they will continue to believe in God and teach their children to believe in God.

Also I'd look at the surveys the other way, 79% of the people in the survey didn't believe in God, and 90% don't pray weekly. Then in the other survey 80% of the scientists aren't spiritual. That's a good amount of people who are sane. There has to be at least some crazy scientists otherwise we might miss out of some discoveries.

>> ^shinyblurry:

You think the bible is a conspiracy? lol..first of all most of the people who started the church were martryed for their beliefs. If they knew it was a lie, they wouldn't have died for it. The romans persecuted and martyred Christians for hundreds of years. There simply was no advantage to being a Christian in those days. It was very likely to get you killed.
And for being made up it sure is historically accurate:
"Now of course, archaeology could never prove that the Bible is divinely inspired, but it can help build a case for the historical reliability of the Bible. And it certainly has. For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible's detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations.
In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out archaeologically, it has been found to be 100% accurate. The Bible has proven so accurate that archaeologists often refer to it as a reliable guide when they go to dig in new areas.
Nelson Glueck, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine and who is considered one of the greatest archaeologists ever, wrote: “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” [Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969), 31.]
These are the words of a man who has who has been credited with uncovering more than fifteen hundred ancient sites in the Middle East. [ “Archaeology: The Shards of History,” Time, December 13, 1963, accessed November 18, 2010.]
There have been more than 25,000 discoveries within the region known as the "Bible Lands” that have confirmed the truthfulness of the Bible."
And it looks like some atheists just aren't as religious and dogmatic as you are..take for example this statistic from the 2008 Pew survey:
According to one underreported 2008 U.S. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey, 21 per cent of atheists expressed at least some certainty of belief in God or universal spirit, and 10 per cent admitted to praying on a weekly basis.
Nor should we be surprised to learn that more “than 20 per cent of atheist scientists consider themselves to be ‘spiritual,’ according to a Rice University study.” From the Religion News Service: “The findings, to be published in the June issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, are based on in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists from 21 of the nation’s top research universities.”
Seems that yours is the world view that isn't quite matching up to reality..

You think the bible is a conspiracy? lol..first of all most of the people who started the church were martryed for their beliefs. If they knew it was a lie, they wouldn't have died for it. The romans persecuted and martyred Christians for hundreds of years. There simply was no advantage to being a Christian in those days. It was very likely to get you killed.

And for being made up it sure is historically accurate:

"Now of course, archaeology could never prove that the Bible is divinely inspired, but it can help build a case for the historical reliability of the Bible. And it certainly has. For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible's detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations.

In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out archaeologically, it has been found to be 100% accurate. The Bible has proven so accurate that archaeologists often refer to it as a reliable guide when they go to dig in new areas.

Nelson Glueck, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine and who is considered one of the greatest archaeologists ever, wrote: “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” [Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969), 31.]

These are the words of a man who has who has been credited with uncovering more than fifteen hundred ancient sites in the Middle East. [ “Archaeology: The Shards of History,” Time, December 13, 1963, accessed November 18, 2010.]

There have been more than 25,000 discoveries within the region known as the "Bible Lands” that have confirmed the truthfulness of the Bible."

And it looks like some atheists just aren't as religious and dogmatic as you are..take for example this statistic from the 2008 Pew survey:

According to one underreported 2008 U.S. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey, 21 per cent of atheists expressed at least some certainty of belief in God or universal spirit, and 10 per cent admitted to praying on a weekly basis.

Nor should we be surprised to learn that more “than 20 per cent of atheist scientists consider themselves to be ‘spiritual,’ according to a Rice University study.” From the Religion News Service: “The findings, to be published in the June issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, are based on in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists from 21 of the nation’s top research universities.”

Seems that yours is the world view that isn't quite matching up to reality..





>> ^Mazex:
I don't think he hates God, because that would mean a God exists for him to hate, maybe he hates the idea of God. I think he like most sane people hate the idea that people brainwash their kids with dribble from a book that a load of people conspired to write and revise so that they could influence the world, control/enslave uneducated people and get rich off them for 2000 years.
There's a very simple reason for having the view of atheism, God has not been proven to exist, there is no empirical evidence, and there is a lot of logical reasoning behind why it is a lie and why religion only prospers from indoctrinating children and weak minded people, and can not prosper from trying to convert educated people into it.
Religion has only come so far because of human fear. Soon once our lifespans will increase much more and we will hopefully advance medicine far enough that people won't be as afraid of death any more and there'll be a massive shift away from religion, in the same way education shifted people away from it in the industrial era.
>> ^shinyblurry:
You do know atheism is a world view, don't you? Hitchens couldn't provide any reasons for his view..yes he definitely hates the judeo-christian god, that's clear..but this is a philosophical argument..and Hitchens failed on every point to provide any compelling reasons for his views. I've always been of the mind that two reasonable people can come to a reasonable agreement based on the facts. And I think William Craig was reasonable here..he gave hitchens every opportunity to refute his arguments, which he failed to do

It logically follows from the premise hpqp..but as I just stated to xxovercastxx, I've clarified it to state..Was the Universe created by a supreme being? Again, a philosophical question and not a religious one.

Yes, I know who the gnostics were. That's why I gave you that link, because obviously you didn't. The term agnostic was invented in 1863, and as you saw, the gnostics have been around practically since Christ came into the world. So in no sense is the word gnostic the opposite of agnostic, historical or otherwise.

Btw, I'm not wrong. As I said before, do your research, especially before you correct someone. Deism is a type of theism. As far as quoting the bible for evidence..obviously a historical record of Jesus Christs life and times is evidence. It's also an extremely accurate historical document:

"Now of course, archaeology could never prove that the Bible is divinely inspired, but it can help build a case for the historical reliability of the Bible. And it certainly has. For the past 150 years archaeologists have been verifying the exact truthfulness of the Bible's detailed records of various events, customs, persons, cities, nations, and geographical locations.

In every instance where the Bible can be, or has been checked out archaeologically, it has been found to be 100% accurate. The Bible has proven so accurate that archaeologists often refer to it as a reliable guide when they go to dig in new areas.

Nelson Glueck, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine and who is considered one of the greatest archaeologists ever, wrote: “No archeological discovery has ever controverted [overturned] a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.” [Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969), 31.]

These are the words of a man who has who has been credited with uncovering more than fifteen hundred ancient sites in the Middle East. [ “Archaeology: The Shards of History,” Time, December 13, 1963, accessed November 18, 2010.]

There have been more than 25,000 discoveries within the region known as the "Bible Lands” that have confirmed the truthfulness of the Bible."

It is exceedingly rare that you find an atheist who actually understands the bible well enough to create a coherent theological argument, for or against, let alone understands the meaning and could apply it. I've never met one, personally. I'm willing to concede that its possible one may exist. I wouldn't say more than one though.

Most of the atheists I've met don't know anything about it, are just ignorantly and arrogantly railing against something they've never read and don't understand, accusing theists of being brainwashed when they themselves are merely getting all their information from the atheist group mind. I've found that the law of ironic hypocripsy is universal in all cases.

Thanks for the clarification -- I have never done the research to understand what that whole 3/5 person thing was about.

But why are you laying this at the feet of Mathews? Bachmann is the one who brought up slavery, in the context of the Tea Party goals. How the heck is this Mathews fault?



In reply to this comment by bobknight33:
From Wikipedia..

"The Three-Fifths compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in which three-fifths of the population of slaves would be counted for enumeration purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives. It was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman.

Delegates opposed to slavery generally wished to count only the free inhabitants of each state. Delegates supportive of slavery, on the other hand, generally wanted to count slaves in their actual numbers. Since slaves could not vote, slaveholders would thus have the benefit of increased representation in the House and the Electoral College. The final compromise of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers reduced the power of the slave states relative to the original southern proposals, but increased it over the northern position."

Obliviously it wasn't to end Slavery.
Even though Chris Mathews has a valid point our country needs move on. Slavery is dead. Blacks have the same rights as anyone else in this country.

The TEA Party was created in part of all those fed up with Bush and RHINO republican who weren't fiscally responsible.

From Wikipedia..

"The Three-Fifths compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in which three-fifths of the population of slaves would be counted for enumeration purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives. It was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman.

Delegates opposed to slavery generally wished to count only the free inhabitants of each state. Delegates supportive of slavery, on the other hand, generally wanted to count slaves in their actual numbers. Since slaves could not vote, slaveholders would thus have the benefit of increased representation in the House and the Electoral College. The final compromise of counting "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers reduced the power of the slave states relative to the original southern proposals, but increased it over the northern position."

Obliviously it wasn't to end Slavery.
Even though Chris Mathews has a valid point our country needs move on. Slavery is dead. Blacks have the same rights as anyone else in this country.

The TEA Party was created in part of all those fed up with Bush and RHINO republican who weren't fiscally responsible.

It could be worse, she could be putting hot sauce in his mouth and making him take cold showers. Don't worry, I'm sure this kid will grow up just fine without any sort of discipline whatsoever.

And to all those who said it was sick, that she was an unfit mother, or even went as far as to say what she did was abuse, about this video; would you say the same about this woman?

In an article from The New York Times, Dr. Shari Barkin, chief of the division of general pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University says:

Many parents’ discipline methods don’t work because children quickly learn that it’s much easier to capture a parent’s attention with bad behavior than with good. Parents unwittingly reinforce this by getting on the phone, sending e-mail messages or reading the paper as soon as a child starts playing quietly, and by stopping the activity and scolding a child when he starts to misbehave.

“How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I need to get off the phone because my child is acting up’?” asked Dr. Nathan J. Blum, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “You’re doing exactly what the child wants.”

I argue that this kind of reinforcement only sets this child up for negative attention seeking behavior for the rest of his/her life. And in my opinion this is just as (if not more) abusive as putting hot sauce in someone's mouth or making them take a cold shower as a form of punishment. When that mom told her kid to do something he sure as shit did it, maybe it was done out of fear (and im still not advocating that, just trying to shoot down people who call it child abuse) but it's better that he's afraid of authority imho than unyielding.

This boy is the kind of person that's gonna grow up to be a career criminal, constantly disrespecting authority. The other boy will hate hot sauce, cold showers, and probably his mother. I'll pick the latter any day.

>> ^probie:

>> ^BoneRemake:
>> ^probie:
Fake.

Woman and children died in the fiery explosion, we dont call that fake. We call that media chum.

Yeeeeaaah. It was a joke.
And only one person died; a utility worker, not women and children. We call those facts. And I'm not your chum, friend.


I have always liked France in the moonlight.

>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^probie:
Fake.

Woman and children died in the fiery explosion, we dont call that fake. We call that media chum.


Yeeeeaaah. It was a joke.

And only one person died; a utility worker, not women and children. We call those facts. And I'm not your chum, friend.

>> ^probie:

Fake.


Woman and children died in the fiery explosion, we dont call that fake. We call that media chum.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

You know - quite frankly - I don't see why people think Tom Hanks is that great. I remember him when he first came on the scene in "Bosom Buddies". He was moderately amusing, but no more so than Peter Scolari was. He did some bit parts in Family Ties, and did that lousy D&D TV movie "Mazes & Monsters". He did nothing exceptional.
Then he went on to do crappy comedies like Money Pit, Dragnet, Bachelor Party, and Joe Vs. The Volcano. He wasn't very good in any of them. His acting in these shows was one-note. Swap Hanks in Splash with Hanks in Money Pit and there is no difference. He was servicable, but he wasn't that great.
But I think "Big" for some reason started making people think he was a good actor. In the 90s, studios were always trying to turn comedians into "serious" actors. Robin Williams tried it with Patch Adams and Good Morning Vietnam. Jim Carrey tried with "Truman Show", et al. With Hanks, it was A League of Thier Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Forest Gump, and Philadelphia. I see very little difference between "80's Hanks" and "90's Hanks". He isn't a better actor than he was way back in "Mazes & Monsters". He's still the same old one-note Tom Hanks. He just has a better movie. You could take a potted plant and stick it in Forest Gump and get the same result. Some of his performances like in Polar Express and Angels & Demons are cringe-worthy.
So I don't see why Tim Allen has to take the shot here. He's shown at least as much acting "ability" as Tom Hanks. Hanks just got lucky and happened to end up getting better roles and more credit than he deserves.

Forrest Gump may be a cliche now, but his performance in it was great. He was great in Philadelphia and The Green Mile as well. For pure strength of acting, I think you've got to go with Cast Away. Not many actors can carry a movie all by themselves with only a volleyball to interact with. If you want a role that really steps out of the norm, try The Ladykillers.

Hanks may not be one of those guys who completely transforms himself for a role, but I still think he's solid. Tim Allen has never acted, to my knowledge. He plays himself in all his roles.