Wait.....WHAT?!?
Have you finally realized/admitted Trump is just a Putin lackey and anti-American tool!?
What was it? His suggesting we recognize Russian Crimea/Ukraine in violation of numerous treaties and international laws, and against our own self interests?
His praise of a power hungry dictator who recently helped gas civilians?
Was it his publicly taking an expert professional liars self serving word (Putin) over his (our) entire intelligence communities solid evidence about election meddling, meddling he now both claims didn't happen and blames on Obama's inaction, all while his administration does far less to stop future attacks that he actively encourages with his acceptance and dismissals?

Holy shit! Something got through the bubble. Mark this date for posterity.

Aesop may be a myth, not a real person but a compilation of other storytellers and fabelists. It's not clear either way apparently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop
I believe it's likely a man named Jesus existed, largely as described, I just discount all the supernatural and religious stuff. Minus that, I agree with his basic teachings as I understand them.

What makes Aesop's fables objectively good imo is (as I remember them, it's been decades) they aren't self serving or selfish lessons, they are altruistic and civic minded lessons mostly, explaining how doing right for others is beneficial to all, including ones self in the long term even when not in the short term. To be sure, they aren't all about morality, but those that were (as I recall them) were good lessons all.

Absolutely not at the cost of my rationality or sanity, which is the bare minimum price to believe such impossible, clearly debunked stories about Gods and demi Gods. If I was going to adopt a mythos, I would go Viking, it's so much more interesting and less self serving than any form of Christianity, which is largely nothing more than a poor mishmash of older religions/political propaganda from Emperor Constantine.


Besides, with no heaven or hell, I need no saving. He could only save me from the tortures he brings with him. (sin and hell)

You still haven't touched my original questions.

You see the problem there, right?
You don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so ask it to help you believe in it, even though you know it's not real (and is an insult to your intelligence and beliefs), just abandon reason and rationality until you believe (in something you know is false and harmful)....and forever after. Who's going to do that?
Edit: conversely, if God hasn't verified his word, why would you contradict him by trying to do it yourself? Don't you think he knows his own plan better than you?

No, it's kicking the key out of that lock some guy looking for money and control told you is a prison you are in that's inescapable unless you buy his key (and pay him for keeping that key for you). Rejecting religion means you reject the entire "lock/key/prison" concept.

Third choice, admit sin is a construct of humans to control others more easily and ignore it as the fraud it is.
Remember, bearing false witness is a sin (as is the pride you feel for sharing it), and just because you believe it doesn't make it less false. Better to keep quiet about stuff you can't prove, according to Christianity.

Edit: don't think I didn't notice that you didn't even attempt to answer either question.
How to reconcile the blatant self serving fact that religion requires you to believe that belief in it erases all sin besides disbelief, which must be a sin worse than murder, rape, torture, etc, and is the one sin that was not erased by Christ?

Please explain why God made his own word so easy to misidentify, mirror, confuse, contradict with fact and logic, and to use for evil.
Sounds to me like he fucked up big time by not identifying himself clearly when he speaks, and by not identifying false profits as false, thereby causing most of the evil in the world because he's lazy and can't be bothered to be unambiguous.

If Jesus died to erase all our sins, how does that cover murder, rape, torture, hate, lies, etc. but not include the one unforgivable sin of disbelief in the completely unbelievable? Pretty lame and self serving saviour imo.

We need someone to interpret these and let us know what they are saying.
Anyone?
without knowing, we don't know if this is or isn't just a self-serving propaganda video that may serve no purpose here.
(unless clearly labeled and posted as such.

Also, since this is an English speaking site, I think a proper English description is needed.

Lol, I read "imaginary Hiller" (and assumed you meant Hillary). My bad.



We have reasonable laws already.
Most things people ask for either already exist (and anti-gunners just don't know because they don't have to follow those laws), or only screw collectors and sportsmen while not doing anything to reduce risk (which I already covered, I assume you read the earlier part, eg California compliant AR15, etc).



Nobody expects to need to form a militia.
Nobody expects the country to go to hell.

The seat belt analogy is about preparedness for unlikely events.
Like, you don't "need" flood insurance in Houston - unless you do.

Owning a gun also hurts nobody.
By definition, ownership is not a harm.

Almost all guns will never be used to do any harm.
The very statement that "guns are all about hurting other people" is a non-empirical assertion.

Just shy of every last gun owner doesn't imagine themselves as Bruce Willis. Asserting that they do is a straw man.


You remind me of Republicans that complain that Black people are welfare queens (so they can redirect money out of welfare). Or Republicans that complain that Trans people are pedophiles in hiding (so they can pander to religious zelot voters). Creating a straw man and then getting mad about the straw man (rather than the real people) is self serving.


* Only the rarest few people think they are Roy Rogers. That is a straw man that does not apply to just shy of every gun owner.
* You don't need a gun for home defense... unless you do.
* Differences in likelihood of death armed vs unarmed is happenstance.
(Doesn't matter either way. Googled some likelihoods : http://www.theblaze.com/news/2013/02/15/how-likely-are-you-to-die-from-gun-violence-this-interesting-chart-puts-it-in-perspective/
You'd have to suffer death 350'000 times before you're at a 50/50 chance of your next death being by firearms.)
[EDIT, math error. Should say 17'000 years lived to reach a 50/50 chance of death by firearms in the next year]
* Technically, even 1 vote gets someone elected. You don't control who is on the ballot.



NRA and NSSF are on life support. They have to fight the influence of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, most major newspapers. They are way outclassed. Current events don't help either.
The "big bad NRA" rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. As is the rhetoric that the NRA only represents the industry.

-sceherazade

Was gone for the weekend and it turned into word fights (almost)...

It is so hard to carry on a discussion... the heat too easily turned up. Sorry if I contributed in the heat.

Thing is, I don't think any of us need to argue for God's omnipotent or his non-existence. God can select to do or not do anything he wants. He can choose to reveal Himself to a believer or a non-believer, or NOT to. What's the point. It has been argued for millennia and I doubt we are "The Chosen One(s)" to end this. And I think, most of us in our Western society, whether you're Christian or not, we know quite a bit about the Bible CONTENT. But the 99.99% of us non-Bible-scholars probably don't know the exact CONTEXT of the tough stuff. The churches avoid them too for obvious reasons.

For me the important things is, there are really horrible things done in history (and present) in the name of religion. Allow me to be a bit self-serving and consider these terrible, inhumane events as evil beings hijacking their religions so they can get away Scot-free. We can't allow that in this day & age. Hold the evil doers & hypocrites accountable, not the religion.

When I read the Bible, I see all the crap that makes no sense too, but I see the discrepancy as humanity making progress. There are so many years between us & the Bible's original writings (or oral pass-me-downs), words & meaning invariably changed (and not always for the better). Could it be the clear-as-day word "gossip" (its Hebrew equivalent) was not part of its language yet? Therefore Paul said those sexist things (in our modern eye)? Or just people speak funny in those days? I can't be sure.

So, I *try* to figure out the meaning of those difficult Bible verses by keeping the context of Jesus' teachings in mind. I mean, come on, all he want is us all having compassion towards each other, be respectful of God and oh, there's the promise of heaven. Like, THAT'S IT, that's the gist of it. Anything else is pretty secondary & incidental to me. The part that concerns between human-human interact? Yes, it's hard to put in practice. But it's not hard to understand what's needed to be done. E.g. If someone offends my religion, should I go on the defensive and then all Super-Saiyan retaliation mode? Or should put my focus into finding out why he offended me and try to understand the reasoning behind it, and if possible, do something positive about it? I believe Jesus asks of us the latter.

Thing is, as a Christian (granted, some Christian might not consider me one that much, maybe?), I'm OK to leave a lot of things in the Bible in the "gray zone"... because it is *I* that haven't the smarts to comprehend what's written fully. But I do think I understand its purpose enough to know what I need to do to be better. The world is full of hurt, we can't just standby and focus on sometimes pointless fights (ironically I'm typing this post, lol, mea culpa, but hope it's worth it), better put more energy on making things better -- like Jesus, arguably the most progressive thinker/doer of its time, wanted to make the world a better place. Jesus didn't spend his time setting up a religion, he was there for a peace & compassion revolution.

Seriously sad that when the topic touches on religion, there're way too much stereotypes & presumptions on every sides. I see the reality as far more nuanced. I can understand, and in fact conditionally support, a lot of the abolition of "Religion" with its ritualistic practices in today's society. I really don't trust anyone loudly proclaiming themselves "devout" but support sexist/racist/unjust policies. The smell of hypocrisy, ulterior motives & power corruption are too great. Don't sheepishly give them the political & God forbid... military power to do great harm to humanity. History has proven that time & again.

What is your security clearance level. It must be the highest level for you to make such a statement....unless you're just speaking out of your ass based on nothing more than Trump's worthless word.

My regret is that education in our country is so bad that he can dupe so many like you into believing him over literally everyone else in the government that could know the evidence, all of which say there's certainly something there, but maybe not directly Trump and Putin colluding.

One of us is definitely living in a dream world. That person should wake up and take a look at reality, not listen to the person feeding them self serving lies....lies like everyone in the media, intelligence community, courts, foreigners, any democrat, and any republicans that wake up are just haters making up false charges under oath, and he's the only source that's reputable (all proven lies and history notwithstanding).

As usual, you have it all wrong.
The left wanted Comey fired for making false statements designed both in tenor and timing to harm Clinton's chances.
They are up in arms because it's blatantly obvious that Trump didn't fire him for his statements last June or July, they thought him their hero in November and said so clearly right up until yesterday when he moved to expand the investigation into Trump's campaign. If he was going to be fired for his actions last summer, that would have happened in January, not yesterday.
Trump IS under investigation. First, the only evidence he isn't under investigation is Trump's unsolicited self serving claim that he said that, second, do you think the investigator tells the target they're being investigated? Not unless they are colluding, like the house committee did.

The FBI and house committee both said there is clear, undeniable evidence, but it's classified so far. Trump could fix that today, but he won't, he's too busy having closed door meetings with the very Russian diplomats he's accused of colluding with. (Edit:and they just released in house photos of the meeting, no press was allowed, showing smiling and laughing Trump and the diplomats arm in arm clearly having a great time, a pretty stark contrast to his meetings with allied presidents and diplomats that were often decidedly unfriendly and standoffish) That's not snark, it's fact.

If the investigations were a witch hunt, Trump would want them publicly investigated thoroughly so the evidence would prove it....not stymie them at every opportunity and repeatedly fire the investigators while clearly being caught lying about the investigation and why he fired them all when he did.

Taping foreign diplomats is, unfortunately, the norm these days (and for decades or longer), and anyone with 1/4 of a brain would know (keeping in mind that Carnivore came to light decades ago, and Snowden clued us in to far worse surveillance of ordinary people daily) that calls to and from Russian diplomats would be recorded, and the fact that he was 1. surprised his team's conversations with numerous Russian agents were recorded, 2. didn't understand that when you call someone who's obviously going to be under surveillance you will also be recorded, so you shouldn't lie about it, and 3. jumped directly to making a specific unsupported and outrageous accusation directly against Obama that could not be true as he described it shows, at best, a criminal level of naivete and a tenuous grasp on reality or, more likely, a sociopathic penchant for lying to distract from his self serving illicit actions. (Wow, nice run on sentence, huh?)

I won't address the sad state of news, but it is impossible to deal in fact without contradicting Trump's daily 3am rants complaining about things he clearly doesn't understand, so "anti-Trump" is really pro-fact, something even faux can't completely ignore, try as they might.

Torn.
I want to upvote the idea that one should be quite suspicious of 'news' and understand that a combination of single, third-party source laziness and overt bias makes most reporting biased if not pure fiction,
but,
I can't upvote the 'everybody is lying to you, except me. Only trust me and no one else' self serving bullshit. Dore is not above using bad/unreliable/unverifiable sources or biased reporting himself, and by claiming he is the only one offering the truth, even in jest, he's putting himself in a group of self aggrandizing narcissists like Trump, Alex Jones, and Glen Beck.

Agreed. My boss is a self-serving asshole who changes his mind constantly and either takes credit or passes the blame whenever he can.

Can you be good without god?
I submit you can ONLY be 'good' without god, because acting a certain way out of fear of retribution from the sky daddy is not being 'good'. To be 'good', you must act properly because it's beneficial to others, acting properly because it benefits you is self serving, not good.
Could be a *quality movie, certainly a quality discussion that should take place.
*doublepromote

Anybody got a length? The way it played on my computer, it didn't show a progress bar or length....I didn't know if I was in for 2 min, or 2 hours (it was the former).

It's his contention that absolute compliance is your only acceptable recourse in every situation, even when the police are violently violating your rights, stealing from you, and lying about it, and his further contention that any abuse can be remedied by civil lawsuit ...which is patently ridiculous. (and he conveniently ignores that police officers are protected from civil suit by law, and can't be sued personally).
Also his BS contention that 99% of the time, when a cop shows up to any situation, they dominate....then why aren't near 99% of cases solved and 99% of those who flee captured instantly? It's simply a line cops use to pretend that near 50% of chases and fights end up lost. (or used to the last time I saw stats)

If he had said 'your best bet to avoid injury and further charges is to just comply'. I would agree, it's the rest of his speech that I found self serving and misleading.

So, he has a minimum number of tickets/charges to write every week, he gets penalized for not being as zealous as possible (or not writing enough), but he says there aren't quotas because they don't call them quotas? And you accept that? What?