If there is any one group of people who ought to be as interested as anyone, if not more interested than anyone in the care of the earth's resources and creatures, it's Christians. The Bible extols the wonders of the earth, the parabolic vastness of the universe, and the complexity and diversity of the creatures. Yet, for all the good theology which speaks to this creation revealing the sublimity of the Creator, so-called "christians" have repeatedly found ways to condone and justify the numbingly senseless rape of the planet.

The rest of the 'christians' stand by with cow-like complacency and believe that the 'Jesus-coming-back-soon' meme abrogates their responsibility to be good stewards of the people, animals and limited natural resources at our disposal. I don't get it. Just because it is eventually going away doesn't mean we have license to treat the place like it's worthless. Hell, we're all going away - we're all temporary - that doesn't make any one of us less worthwhile. Why not extrapolate that to the rest of the living room?

Obviously if you think the American public is who's to blame for the ponzi schemes, 30-to-1 Hedge's and sub-prime CF, you know nothing about economics or Wall Street regulation.

How is it my sister's fault that she and her husband just lost their entire 401ks? Is it because of her bigscreen (10 yr old, 22") TV, or her fancy (2 bdrm falling apart) House? It must be because she's an idiot right? It's definitely not because of that "scary corporation" called GM who they've worked for the last 20+ years.

Your catch phrases of "big screen TVs" and "two cars" shows you have little grasp of what has happened and what's been happening. Then you toss on the go-to of how Americans are stupid. Nice one.

It seems the one who's getting all of his information from the teevee is you.

And I have yet to see anyone say John Stewart should run for president. This straw man is so transparent it makes my head spin.


And btw: I'm sure most of the sifter-yanks here are very smart people. The one's that I've personally met certainly are. So you're really talking to the wrong crew.



>> ^campionidelmondo:
lpgas: I wasn't trying to rant on TDS or Jon Steward. He's very good at what he does. I wasn't saying that people who enjoy TDS are idiots. I've enjoyed it for many years and even though I can't really watch it on a daily basis or anything close to that, I still enjoy watching the occasional episode. The problem is that people start thinking things like "Oh that Jon Steward should run for President" that makes me want to slam my head into the wall. If you turn to Jon Steward for political leadership you must be really fucking lost.
volumptuous: No you don't solely own the crisis as americans, but you own a big fucking chunk of it. I have yet to see anybody own up to that responsibility though. It's all too easy to put all the blame on the big scary cooperations, "those fatcats in Washington". Instead, people in the US should look at the lifestyle they've been living. A lifestyle that's waaaaaay over their budgets. They've been living on money they don't have, continuously borrowing more and more. Hey, everybody should own a house, two cars, a big fucking screen TV right? Let's worry about the consequences tomorrow. Well, tomorrow's here and it ain't looking pretty.
Also, don't change what I've said and then put it in quotation marks, that's lame...

lpgas: I wasn't trying to rant on TDS or Jon Steward. He's very good at what he does. I wasn't saying that people who enjoy TDS are idiots. I've enjoyed it for many years and even though I can't really watch it on a daily basis or anything close to that, I still enjoy watching the occasional episode. The problem is that people start thinking things like "Oh that Jon Steward should run for President" that makes me want to slam my head into the wall. If you turn to Jon Steward for political leadership you must be really fucking lost.

volumptuous: No you don't solely own the crisis as americans, but you own a big fucking chunk of it. I have yet to see anybody own up to that responsibility though. It's all too easy to put all the blame on the big scary cooperations, "those fatcats in Washington". Instead, people in the US should look at the lifestyle they've been living. A lifestyle that's waaaaaay over their budgets. They've been living on money they don't have, continuously borrowing more and more. Hey, everybody should own a house, two cars, a big fucking screen TV right? Let's worry about the consequences tomorrow. Well, tomorrow's here and it ain't looking pretty.

Also, don't change what I've said and then put it in quotation marks, that's lame...

I'm pretty fucking fed up with this blanket generalization of us Americans. We don't own the patent on stupid, and we don't own this fucking crisis on our own.

If you don't even understand the simple fact that AIG is a fucking global company with interests in every corner of this planet, Headquarters in London, Paris and Hong Kong, then you really need to stop lecturing us.

The last time I checked, the US isn't the only one who's fucked right now. Brown just stated that the UK Gov will now start printing money to bail out their own institutions. Germany's productivity is down over 20%. Brazil is down over 60%. And you're acting like it's us Yanks who are just too stupid to turn off our own televisions?

I DONT EVEN HAVE CABLE


And FYI: Us yanks do understand one thing that you obviously do not. People like Cramer, Santelli, Kudlow and many others on CNBC and elsewhere have vested interests in the stock market, and the revolving door that is K-Street/TV punditry/Politics is the nexus that continues to fuck us all over.

So stop your self-congratulatory nonsense. And if this is the last time I hear some delusional statement like "everyone in the US seem to think the TV is here to do their thinking for them" it's still too fucking late for me to not think you're an offensive, self-important fool.





>> ^campionidelmondo:
>> ^Lodurr:
This is one of the best pieces I've seen on the financial crisis. It's amazing how the financial institutions lied to the public every day on the way down.

I think you're confusing financial institutions with television. Ever stopped to think that NBCs own interests played into their reporting? Don't believe everything you see on TV, I think that got you into this crisis in the first place. It never seizes to amaze me how people in the US seem to think that the TV is here to do their thinking for them.
Oh and I'm fed up with the glorification of the Daily Show. Jon Steward is nothing more than a jester, he's only here to make jokes. He's not gonna change anything, yet people are so glad he's here and won't let people get away with anything. People should turn off their TVs and support a real voice of descent.

>> ^campionidelmondo: Oh and I'm fed up with the glorification of the Daily Show. Jon Steward is nothing more than a jester, he's only here to make jokes. He's not gonna change anything, yet people are so glad he's here and won't let people get away with anything. People should turn off their TVs and support a real voice of descent.


Then don't watch the show.

Jon Stewart is a comedian first. TDS is a comedy show. It's aired on Comedy Central. It's goal is to make people laugh. He and his crew do a great job at it. Even when he has someone serious on it he still tries to make jokes. If you look at him as being just a talk show host then you miss the point of the show.

As a side effect his show enlightens people because it shows a view of current events that the news media does not. He shows the truth of a subject matter (except for the "special reports") and then makes fun of it. Because of this formula his show has gained a lot of notoriety and credibility with many people.

>> ^Lodurr:
This is one of the best pieces I've seen on the financial crisis. It's amazing how the financial institutions lied to the public every day on the way down.


I think you're confusing financial institutions with television. Ever stopped to think that NBCs own interests played into their reporting? Don't believe everything you see on TV, I think that got you into this crisis in the first place. It never seizes to amaze me how people in the US seem to think that the TV is here to do their thinking for them.

Oh and I'm fed up with the glorification of the Daily Show. Jon Steward is nothing more than a jester, he's only here to make jokes. He's not gonna change anything, yet people are so glad he's here and won't let people get away with anything. People should turn off their TVs and support a real voice of descent.

^ When a priest in this increasingly hypothetical evangelical church throws open the doors and calls for nonbelievers to come in and explain why they're right, and you walk in, don't be surprised with what you get.

Think of me as one of those people who asks Richard Dawkins "what if you're wrong?" expecting him to be able to give an answer that's going to be relevant in their framework for understanding the world, rather than just one that will make sense to his own kind.

I'm not impugning capitalism's virtues, I'm just saying this oft-repeated phrase seems patently silly.

If wealth is money, government issues it.

If wealth is defined as assets minus liabilities, the question of "creating wealth" becomes quite silly since wealth's definition is an accounting term synonymous with "inflation-adjusted net worth", not something tangible.

If wealth is just an accounting term, every time government runs a budget surplus it's "creating" wealth, or at least moving its net worth in the positive direction.

If wealth is capital, as you say, it's not so much a matter of government not being able to create wealth, it's more a matter of how you measure it. If government builds an interstate highway, and hundreds of shipping companies spring into existence, make tons of money (after tax), and government pays off the cost of building the highways and then some, did government create wealth?

I know the Austrian answer: What those who would make this argument fail to see is that this highway choked off all the other possible things the private industry could have done and should have done, because government did this by taking money from private industry.

How is this different from if an exceptionally rich banker did the same thing? The answer Austrians give: because government didn't earn the money, therefore it must mismanage it.

In other words, because government is based on theft, government is always incompetent, and that's because it's not doing this for selfish profit -- if it were, it would be an infinitely better steward of resources. Hey, that sounds like Objectivism, or at least some amateur psychology.

How is that science, and not faith, when those are the underlying assumptions behind the theory that directly lead to the conclusion?

>> ^HollywoodBob:
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
They just want it to dwindle away naturally once all the perks religion has on behalf of nonbelievers are banished.
Naturally dwindle away once perks religion has on behalf of non-believers are banished... I don't understand that sentence. What does it mean exactly?
Regardless, the central position of some of these atheists seems to be that religion ISN'T just dwindling away. In fact, they seem quite alarmed by the fact that the opposite is happening. Therefore they are wanting to suppress/oppress religion in order to prime the dwindling pump so to speak.

I don't want to ban religion, I think it's dangerous and I've given examples why, but if you practice a religion because you think it makes you a better person and in doing so don't deny others their chance at a full and happy life, that's fine.
I'll settle for two simple things:
1) Get religion out of school curriculums. I don't care if kids want to pray or don't believe in evolution, so long as the Church hasn't forced the school to provide time for prayer and label evolution as "Just a theory". And if you don't want your kids having sex fine teach them not to have sex, but if we're going to have any kind of sex ed programs they should be comprehensive not abstinence only (which we know doesn't work).
2) Strip religion of it's political power. When a piece of legislation's only basis is Bible verse, it shouldn't even be allowed on the ballot. Faith based governmental programs, they can go too. And lets also get rid of tax exempt status for churches, if they've got the millions to spend on advertising and propaganda campaigns they can do their part to pay for our government.
The above suggestions aren't terrible or drastic. I won't expect to see them ever put into practice, but it'd be nice to see more people advocating them.


1) Religion is and has been out of public school curriculum for quite some time now. As per sex ed, well I havent been in High School for almost 10 years but when I was we were NOT taught abstinence only. It should be noted that I graduated from Sapulpa, OK, THE buckle of the Bible Belt.

2) I am 100% FOR separation of Church and State. I'm pretty sure this is just an over the top statement but, "When a piece of legislation's only basis is Bible verse, it shouldn't even be allowed on the ballot" if you actually believed this is what happens then perhaps our government and system of laws is FAR more muffed up than we realize.

Rid tax exemption from religion? I'm positive now that this is an angry rant rather than a constructive, thought out, criticism. Firstly, take away religious tax exemption and probably more than half of non profit charities bankrupt overnight. My dad was a minister for almost 40 years. I think the largest congregation he ever pastored was somewhere around 400. Most were 50-200. You may not be familiar with pastoral income which is understandable but NO ONE gets into the ministry for the money. That's not to say that the "megachurches" dont bring in a substantial amount of income. They do. And yes, there are churches or pastors who DO take unfair advantages of these exemptions (most notably Benny Hinn and his nutjob squad).
From a business standpoint, a Church is a nonprofit organization. Take for example my dad. The money he received as "salary" came from the offerings of the congregation. My dad being a good steward took a small fraction of it as his pay. The bulk of it went to bills. It costs money to lease a building to hold services. It costs money to power and heat/cool this building. What was left after that went to community outreach programs. Food drives, house care services, holding services for the Nursing Home (at their request) etc etc. If we wanted to attend things such as church camps or youth conventions, that money came out of our pocket or from fundraisers.
In fact most pastors that I know, and I know a whooooooooole lot, have 2 or 3 jobs. Pastoring is a part time job for most BECAUSE of the "pay".

Anyway, it's understandable the frustration, it really is. I am not exempt from this. But feeding off of one's emotions and acting out of anger are no ways to solve problems

There were good and bad Choggie times, Swampgirl knows that better than anybody. Towards the end there I couldn't abide by many of Chog's actions. JD is right, it was a tantrum and a Sifticide (although the videodrome channel would have been cool).

Genie's out of the bottle now folks. Dag and Lucky have spent years keeping this place nice for us, being the ultimate stewards of community by determining what "hurts the Sift". Daddy's gone away, now. We can do anything we want. Even resurrect one terror of an account. I'll vote on that!

Good thing Mom's around.

So I take it that your problem is with all politicians rather than Obama himself?

My problem is inconsistency. To see people who pored with microscopes for the tinest reasons to lambaste Bush all of a sudden put a moratorium on intellectual honesty for Obama... That's how I know they're zombies. To preach vigilance, debate, and criticism with one guy, and demand a cease-fire for 'theirs'? If you're intellectually honest you apply the same rigorous standard to EVERYONE. If you don't, then you're a zombie.

I am loyal to no party. I consider all politicians 'the enemy' - persons to be viewed with distrust, suspicion, and wariness. I go in assuming that whatever they're up to is bad, and needs to be stonewalled, limited, or outright rejected at face value. I'm consistent. That's how I know I'm NOT a zombie. I hated Bush's idiotic 'bailout' and I hate Obama's idiotic so-called 'stimulus' passage. I'm willing to call Bush a horrible president, a terrible leader, and a bad steward of the economy for his reckless overspending agenda. Boo. Hiss. Down with Bush! And you know what? Same goes for Obama. It's only been 2 weeks, and he's proving he's as bad as Bush, and he's lining up to be even worse. And some of you think he's a great guy because he apologized for something stupid like this? :eyeroll:

To pennypacker here, anyone who says a nice thing about Obama is a zombie. And anyone who says something negative about Bush has "Bush Derangement Syndrome".

I don't mind people praising or criticizing substance. I hate it when they fixate on idiotic non-issues and use them to paint persons or issues with a broad, brainless brush. Too many people hate Bush for the way he talks, and love Obama because he can make a flowery speech - and that's all they need. Want to criticize Bush? Fine - but criticize substance. You want to praise Obama - fine - but PLEASE praise substance and not vapid idiotic posturing like this faux 'apology'.

1. My grandmother tried to convince my 17 year old mother to have me aborted, but failed.

2. I flew in a plane for the first time when I was two and remember the air steward taking my unfinished glass of juice, because it was almost time to land.

3. I have been in close contact with dozens of venomous snakes, but never been hurt.

4. I fell in love with Persephone and her story, listening to an audio cassette in my school library at the age of 9.

5. I wasn't satisfied with my parent's explanation for the word 'rape' when I heard it on the news at the age of 6. I could tell they were lying.

6. I was the cultural representative of my school in senior year.

7. I was the first in my family to go to University.

8. I was the first woman in my family to delay marrying until after the age of 17.

9. I climbed Uluru not long after Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo.

10. I used to sail 12ft Thorpes on the Brisbane River. My crew was a beautiful transvestite called Alison.

11. I dreamed of being multi-lingual as a child.

12. I love foreign languages and wish I could have kept up my German and Spanish as well as I have my Japanese.

13. I was a hostess in a Yakuza bar in Osaka for one night only.

14. I love being pregnant, giving birth and being a mother.

15. I wish I had had a lesbian relationship at least once.

16. I let my art lecturer sleep with me once because I believed it was an honour to be in his bed.

17. I drove solo across Australia once, never getting a flat or hitting a roo.

18. I meditate and am learning Chi Gung.

19. I sometimes talk to the dead and they tell me helpful stuff only they and their relatives know.

20. I know that our limited perception of reality is the reason we experience fear, anger and hatred.

21. I keep dream journals for my children. I have recorded their dreams since they first learned to talk about them.

22. My daughter reads my mind and lets me know she can do it, by bringing up whatever subject I am silently thinking about at the time.

23. I know that people I encounter are really me in another form.

24. I don't read/listen to the news/t.v. any more.

25. I will walk across Australia next time.

Don't hate on Killborn! He was a little dry, but I liked his style on this show. Especially when he danced. I remember the days before he had a live audience, you'd just here the producer/camera guy laugh.

The funny thing is Killborn got the Show that SHOULD have gone to Stewart. Jon had been guest hosting the Late Late Show on CBS at least one day a week for a while. When the host retired I was REALLY looking froward to Job getting his own show (the first since MTV), I never imaged CBS would pull the chair out for Killborn instead!

Honestly, I'd still like Killborn to host a show. Maybe he should start a YouTube channel.

I really didn't expect Steward to hang around as long as he has (though I am greatful). I was sure he would leave in 2001 when his contract was up, he was doing more movies. I was really suprised when he resigned for another five year stretch. After that he seemed to give up Hollywood entirely (how long ago was Big Daddy?)

The original question was, "Why is/isn't life sacred to you" so I'll try to stick to that. You actually had a number of different topics in your original question, but I'll do my best and take a stab at it (a rather ironic saying, considering we're talking about sanctity of human life and I want to stab at it).

First of all, why? For me personally, it's because I'm a Christian and believe all people are made in the image of God (you asked why). That makes human life pretty darn sacred to me. So even though our reasons behind it are probably very different, I would still agree with thepinky in saying that human life should be preserved at almost any cost.

However, just preserved just doesn't cut it. To live doesn't simply mean to exist. As a Christian I would say that life includes relationships with my neighbors (and I don't just mean my physical ones), a relationship with God, exploring our world and being good stewards of the Earth, promoting education, creative arts, and peace between different nations and people groups, and a whole slew of other things. In the Old Testament, death was not merely ceasing to exist, but the opposite of life. So the promotion of life is very important to me because of what I believe (again, you asked why), but it means a lot more than simply keeping someone alive in the physical sense.

In your example of the friendless suffering person I do think keeping him/her alive is the ethical choice, but you can't really stop there. Actually caring for the person means looking into why he/she is suffering and to be a friend. Going out of your way time and time again to be a friend to a depressed person can be irritating and time-consuming, but being ethical is not about the easy-route.


By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness--the desire to see others than the self-happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy.

What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven--a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves," and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all." Not many people, I admit would formulate a theology in precisely those terms; but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds. I do not claim to be an exception; I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of loves needs correction.

I might, indeed, have learned, even from the poets, that Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness; that even the love between the sexes is, as in Dante, "a lord of terrible aspect." There is kindness in Love; but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness (in the sense given above) is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object--we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled; the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished. It is for people who we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms; with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. - C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain

I gotta say the today tonight footage, makes me go ?????????? Stewards of credibility they are not.

Having said that I've got a 1 year old so I checked if there is mercury in her vaccinations, and in Oz at least, there hasn't been the merc in them since 2000

Martha Steward knows how to "ball til you fall"