american's out source so much already. It is as if the sense of entitlement one has to demand another to do work for little or no compensation continues from the founding of the country on the backs of slaves to the present day.

The fact that no white male police officer has ever been convicted for murdering a black male in america's entire history will sadly remain a fact until the day you die. You have your entire lifetime to accept it or live in denial. So have a cookie. Trust me by the time you finish eating it you will feel better.

The question isn't whether you can be good without God. Atheists and agnostics can do good works as much as anyone else can. They love, they have kindness and compassion, and so on.

Do you know that if, when I died, I arrived at Heavens gate and I met Jesus..and He asked me this question "Why should I let you into My Heaven?" and my answer was, "because of all of the good things I did", He wouldn't let me in?

Why is that? Atheists and most religious people actually have something in common; a fundamental misconception of what goodness is.

Most people have a list of certain crimes in their mind that, so long as they have not committed them, they consider themselves to be good people. They'll say to themselves "I'm a good person. I haven't killed anyone." "I may not be perfect but I am no Hitler or Stalin". Or, they think if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, they're good people. There are some religions like that.

It's a relative goodness. Most everyone will acknowledge that they've done some wrong, but most will tell you far more right than wrong.

The problem with a relative goodness is that is all it is; it is relatively good. It is only good some of time. That is how human beings are. Goodness in Gods eyes is not relatively good, it is perfectly good. That is why the bible says there is no one good except God. The reason why Jesus won't let me into Heaven based on my performance is because once I've sinned even once I have failed to meet Gods standard; moral perfection. That is the only thing God considers good. Once there is a fly in the ointment, it is ruined.

The inference here is, if that is true then no one can get into Heaven. That's the dilemma, and that is why God sent His Son to die for our sins on a cross. Jesus had met Gods moral standard, He had never sinned. He was Gods spotless lamb, qualified to be a sacrifice for our sins on our behalf, taking the punishment that we deserve. Because of sin we are disqualified but Jesus qualifies us, that is why we need Him, why He is the Messiah.

Because Jesus took the punishment for our sins, when we believe in Him as Lord and Savior, God can forgive our sins and impute the righteousness of Christ to us. God counts our faith in Jesus Christ as righteousness. Not because we ourselves are righteous, but because He is righteous and our faith is counted towards us as righteousness. It is a legal transaction, once we believe God can dismiss our case because justice has been done for our sins by the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

So, when Jesus asks me why I should be allowed in, the only possible answer is this: "I am not worthy to get in; it is your righteousness counted to me that will open these gates. You died for my sins and rose the third day; I believed your gospel and received you as my Lord and Savior."

Atheists can be good without God, so can hindus, buddhists and even Christians. The trouble isn't whether they can be good, the trouble is that it isn't good enough.

We live in a society that is still reliant on necessary lies to be functional. For example that the wars in the middle east are not about oil, or that working every hour of your day until you die is the key to happiness. Until we can solve our energy problem (eg with thorium) and our socially destructive economic issues then lies and fake news will inevitably rule over reason because reason is not compatible with our necessary lies.

eh, kinda, sorta, maybe, could be true depending on your circumstances...

It's a pretty short treatment of a very complex topic.

Buying a home has a lot of positives.
Financially, while you might not be building equity in the first few years, eventually, you ARE building equity. Don't buy a home unless you can afford to pay the damn thing off.

There's also a big difference between rents and mortgages. Rents go up over time and mortgages (depending on the structure) generally go down (either on a reducing mortgage or as a function of your income).

Also, mortgages stop when you've paid them off. Rent doesn't. If you're renting when you retire, well, have fun paying the same rent (or more!) until you die.

Also, if you get that dream job in Hawaii... you can actually SELL your house. Or even better, rent it out.

That doesn't even cover the intangibles like the fact that you can do whatever you want to the house. Don't like that wall? Knock it down. No asking a landlord! *

Also, no property inspections and while the bank can kick you out if you don't pay... that's the ONLY reason they can kick you out, unlike renting where you can be evicted for "damaging the property", "being a disturbance" or "because the landlord doesn't like you".

All that said, there are plenty of reasons not to buy, and they are highly dependent on your income, ambitions and the local property market.

Just don't ever buy anything where your mortgage is more than 30% of your take home pay.


* you should really ask an engineer and your local government in case your house falls over and/or you need building consent.

Genesis 3 - The Fall

Now the Caterpie was more crafty than any other Pokemon of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Caterpie, Caterpie, Caterpie, Caterpie” And the woman said to the Caterpie, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you DIE.’”

But the Caterpie said to the woman, “Caterpie, Caterpie.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her common law husband who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves thongs. But the woman was a feminist so she did NOT wear a bra. And Caterpie evolved into Metapod and Metapod thusly evolved into Butterfree and said to them, "Butterfree, Butterfree, Butterfree."

What ugly bullying.
Wasn't someone trying to convince me on another thread just today that Christians don't do this (and worse) anymore, and that my similar experiences as a child in Texas being treated as an anathema for honestly admitting my lack of faith was the exception rather than the rule? I'm sad to see that that is not true, and the bullying and unfair treatment by authority is alive and well and so popular in some places that people think nothing of bullying children on national television and disqualifying them from a talent competition for their private beliefs, and apparently even get the poor kid's parent's support for their derisions and admonitions.
*quality example of what I feel and fear is normal Christian "love and acceptance" of others.
I only wish she had said "I don't just believe in things that I have no evidence for because other people do." or something else sounding thoughtful and well considered rather than 'I've just never had anything to believe'. That sounds naïve rather than thoughtful to me, even if I agree with her conclusion.
I loved her answer to what happens after you die, it's like Stan said on Southpark....it's probably much like it was before you were born....nothing.

In video games when you do something stupid in order to make some serious moves and if you die but you pull those moves off you have to say "worth it". This gets a serious WORTH IT!

@serious-fase:

better to have loved and been raped than to never have been loved at all. that's my silver lining. also, it is both a joke and my opinion, as i both love and hate my now deceased rapist. yeah, i'm being cheeky but so wut.

too complicated for me to give a shit if my fucked up life and sense of humor triggers someone. try sitting in group therapy with me, sucka. fuck your conservative sensitivity. boo fucking hoo. it's rape. it happens. people get over it and laugh. we don't have to live like goddamn trolls under a bridge just because we are rape victims. honestly, stfu.

i wrote something similar in a therapy session after forgiving my rapist and being annoyed at people that coddled me because i'm a "victim". great, i'm a victim? fuck you.

honestly, if you're not over your rape trauma, don't watch a fucking rape joke video. JESUS. if the world wasn't so overly protective of this shit, maybe we wouldn't be laden with our constipated emotional issues and ineffectual pharmacological solutions which turn into accidental overdose victims every goddamn day. if you can't laugh, that's when you die.

your psychiatrist and therapist and all those tools that convinced you to take all of those drugs and wear the cap of the victim: FUCK. THOSE. PEOPLE.

OOOOORRRR if you like self worth at the cost of a censored life of half triggered social anxiety: Riiiiiiiiiiide the train to proper thoughts and chilled out operational defintions that make doing business and living healthy in corporate america a snap! just shame people for laughing at things that hurt you. and convince others that not shaming others into this is not right. oooohhh, that's the moral thing to do!!!

yeah, no thanks on that one -- laughing at what hurts me most is the only thing that gives me the will to keep living. you wanna shame me for laughing at my problems? that's a bunch of HORSE SHIT. talk about rape -- let's talk about the rape of our fucking minds every fucking day by institutions that teach us this bullshit philosophy.

i'm just tired and hungry -- and i had a good fucking laugh at this video. before you respond to me, fuck you, don't bother. i don't wish to discuss how i deal with my victimization through humor and even if you do -- not reading it

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er, by the time of the Last Crusade, Indy has seen:
- the literal manifestation of the power of god melt Nazis faces
- some magic rocks burning an Indian guy

I think it's pretty safe to say that Indy has accepted that in his fictional universe, the supernatural is real. Hell, if I saw what he'd seen by that point, I'd be a god-fearing Christian.

As for Pascal's wager, I've always viewed it as the height of moral cowardice. If you want to believe in God and you're not shoving your beliefs down everyone else's throat (looking at you, ISIS, evangelicals, catholic church in Ireland, etc), go nuts.

But don't believe because you're afraid of hell. If you're a good person and you die and it turns out there is a god, if he condemns you to eternal suffering for not believing in him, then fuck him, he's an asshole and I wouldn't want to spend eternity under his thumb anyway.

Yes, it is well beyond hope to think that THIS video makes a retraction proper.
The clip does not show a single person go into the water, water that had at LEAST 5-10 cameras pointed at it the entire time...yet they don't have ANY footage of ANY cop going even ankle deep....they have footage of 2 cops that took off their belts, one of which MAY be damp below the waist, or maybe not.
If I see you drowning and I take off my belt and stand around talking to my friends while you die...did I save you? Did I even try?
We have seen multiple angles of the pond with the car sinking in it, but absolutely zero footage of any cop even wading in, much less ALL the cops diving in to save the 3 girls. Every cop that didn't TRY is a murderer IMO. They have a clear legal DUTY to TRY...it's what they're paid to do.

It sounds like this department would benefit from water proof body cameras. The word of the police is less than worthless, they are professional, trained liars that lie as part of their job. I don't trust what liars say. You are free to trust admitted professional liars all you like, but I won't be following you down that rabbit hole.

Yes, we are at the point where, if cops CLAIM they did the right thing but still had terrible results as if they had NOT done the right thing, it clearly didn't happen with out proof that they did the right thing. That's what happens when you do the wrong thing so consistently, you lose the benefit of a doubt.

They are all still liars and murderers...even if what they claim, that one officer waded in and tried to save them, is true (and by no means am I saying it is), the other dozen cops sat back and did nothing but wait for death. EDIT: They could easily have made a human chain from shore to the car and saved all 3 with no 'danger' besides dirty uniforms.

Death of an Innocent

This morning you were sentenced unto death
without a trial. You were conceived to die
before you had a chance to catch a breath
of life, or feel the wind, or watch the sky,
or smell a rose, or walk upon the earth.
You were so helpless and so very small,
a bit of life-to-be before your birth,
With no one here to plead your cause at all.
Last night your mother wondered, as she tossed,
if you were someone special, And she cried
for little hands, and lips forever lost;
This morning she surrendered and you died . . .
if you had lived, her daughter or her son,
Could you have understood what she had done?


And yet we care more for a cow.

I lost myself inside someone else
I couldn't see the lines between her and me
On a darker road, the fear I've shown
With eyes of stone, he walks alone
What are you afraid of?
All the years fade away
What are you made of?
From the ties that hold us down
What are you fighting for?
To feel them all
What are you dying for?
To be free
Who tonight will change your life
To jump on a plane and land a
Thousand miles away
Just to see what we came to be
Inside my eyes
There's no chance of losing
When there's no chance at all
As time goes by, I forget why
From a distant view it might still be true
There's a part of me that lives for you.

I look at ultrasounds too. While I understand the sentiment of wanting to show that it's not just a lump of tissue, and it's certainly not a lie, it is also completely unnecessary. The government forcing you to do this is a violation of your rights.

Also, withdrawal of support is not the same as murdering. Even if you believe a fetus is alive and deserves the same protections as any human being, a woman should still have the rights for an abortion. The ethical arguments is thus:

If in some hypothetical situation, an adult human such as yourself, became completely dependent on my body to survive, your right to life does not trump my rights to my body. You cannot force yourself to leech off of my body for the next 9 months. I have the right to refuse you and let you die. It may not be a nice thing to do, and should be avoided whenever possible, but it is my right.

It is strange to me when conservatives who support small government and individual rights (including those who support laws like stand your ground, which lets you kill another human being), does not understand this concept.

Also promoting abstinence has been proven to be ineffective compared to education about birth control.