I actually liked the number symmetry at the start, I used to doodle things like that back in school..so it had me captive. I really hate this practice of Christianity, the bait and switch. This is a common Christan practice which I hate. Offer you something with strings attached. It is explicitly manipulative and dishonest.

To me, the lessons of Jesus, like MLK or Gandhi, don't need any help being awesome. They especially don't need acts of deception to introduce it. Grace, love, and forgiveness is an easier sell than a potato slicer...it doesn't need tricks. Understand, I don't post this to be anti-christian or pro-agnostic humanist, but rather, to tell the story that I find this duplicitous behavior a shame to Christendom. It is an unworthy association to grace and redemption, putting it in the same category as network news, Nigerian emails, and traveling salesmen.

I literally just finished Red Dead Redemption last night and the one thing that I said to myself was "needs more aliens." FFS Hollywood delivers.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty ace. Good pacing, excellent casting so far... and when it came to the violence, I'm glad they kept it graphic yet didn't use it everywhere. A very well done first episode I thought.

Will be interesting to see how it involves as I think Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption director) has only directed this first/pilot episode.

It irritates the shit out of me when people have a clip of a window that gets covered in blood splatter.


Window(|) - head(o) - gun(=) diagram: | o = . In this diagram, the gun shoots the head and we end up seeing the splatter from the other side. Well, guess what, dickhead director? In order for the blood to come out the back side, pellets need to come out the back side. If the blood hits the window, why didn't the pellets? The only movie I can think of that did this was the Shawshank Redemption, when the warden offs himself and the window behind him shatters.

Take a note, filmmakers.

Glad to hear everything's okay in RL!

So, to answer your first question, yes, I have read the Bible and many Buddhist sutras (particularly the Lotus Sutra). I'm familiar with some parts of the Koran, but have not read it in its entirety. What knowledge I have of Hinduism comes from Hindu friends.

Your interpretation of these religious texts is that they promote an obedience to a God or gods. For sure the Buddhist sutras do not, as most sects of Buddhism do not believe in sentient gods per se but in an innate (non-sentient) life force that we all share. But leaving that issue aside, I don't see how you can't have both themes (love thy neighbor/obey god). You couched it as an "either/or" solution, but why does it have to be? There's no logical reason why you can't follow your individual deity and treat other humans with compassion and respect. In fact, in most cases the themes go together--by treating other people with compassion and respect you are following the commands of your deity.

But let's take it further than that. I'm just going to quote you here: Of course you dont have to [interpret the Bible that way], and most religious people dont, read or interpret it that way. Wouldn't you agree that if most people don't interpret the Bible as a form of control, then really your interpretation is not the representative of Christian belief? For certain some people do interpret those religious texts as you have-- fundamentalists, for instance. But I would hardly consider them the majority of religious people or the average representative of religion. In short, just because you’ve interpreted a particular religious text in a particular way, it doesn’t mean your interpretation is by any means “correct” or mainstream.

On a side note, I agree with you that there's a lot of f'd up stuff in many religious texts. Take the Old Testament for example and the bloodshed and wars described within it. However, we’re looking at religion as a whole--not just superficially at the religious text but how that text is interpreted and how the people who follow that religion conduct themselves in daily life. One problem with this, as I mentioned in the last post, is that the most vocal nutcases are usually the ones that you see in the media and not your "average" religious person, so it is easy to form a biased perception of virtually all religions if you’re not associating with members of that particular religion on a daily basis. If you ask the majority of Christians what the major theme of the Bible is, you’ll almost certainly get some answer regarding love and redemption—not your interpretation or violence and control.

To address your second question about empirical evidence about the benefits of religious belief--there's lots. I don't have time now to find all the links. You’ll just have to Google it. I've seen the studies--legit ones on both physical and psychological health published in JAMA and other peer-reviewed sources--and they were enough to convince me. Very few counter-examples have been published with the exception of a recent one in 2010 that showed a correlation between religious belief and obesity, but it was such a small sample size that it could have been a chance finding or attributable to other factors (it drew its participants predominately from African-American /Hispanic communities which typically have worse health-care access than other ethnic groups).

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised at your next argument about MLK. You seem to be stating that it wasn’t MLK’s religious beliefs that prompted him to take action. All I need to do to refute this is point you to any biography of the man or his numerous speeches where he clearly states that his religious beliefs have led him to believe in both the moral imperatives of equality for all people and non-violence as a means of achieving this. Was religion the thing that made him what he was? Absolutely. Same with Ghandi. And Mother Theresa. And the Dalai Lama. And a host of other people who have attempted to or succeeded in changing the world for the better.

Next, let’s talk about the Hitchen’s challenge. I find the challenge ridiculous. Why should religion have to be somehow separate from daily life? All religions are deeply concerned with secular life—with how we live and act. Furthermore basic psychology tells us we don’t act because of any one reason but due to a complex interaction of many reasons, some of which are conscious and some unconscious, and which in the end are in our own self-interest. Hitchen’s challenge is a straw-man argument—replace religion with some other construct such as democracy or music and you will be equally unable to find anyone who meets that challenge (by promoting democracy you protect your own rights; musicians may love music but even they need to sell songs in order to pay the rent and will compose for money).

I think equally ridiculous is the argument that things such as genital mutilation have no other possible explanation or cause than religion. Wouldn’t misogyny be a much better and more rational explanation than religion? Clearly religion is used to fuel the misogyny but it would certainly be a mistake to assume that the misogyny couldn’t exist without religion. Let’s take another example—the Spanish Inquisition. The cause of that tragic slaughter was clearly secular in nature—having finally wrested the southern part of the country from Muslim rule, Ferdinand and Isabella chose Catholicism to unify a country in which many different religions co-existed. In short, religion didn’t cause the Spanish Inquisition; plain old political power-struggles did. Religion was simply the vehicle through which it was carried out.

And this is really what I’ve been saying all along—that religion is not, as you keep painting it as, the cause of humanity’s problems. It is a tool—a tool that, can be used for great good or great evil. As the folks at religioustolerance.org state: “Religion has the capability to generate unselfish love in some people, and vicious, raw hatred in others. The trick is to somehow change religions so that they maximize the former and minimize the latter.”

Later on, they go on to state that they feel that religion overall has a positive effect on society. That pretty much sums up my view of religion. If you do away with religion, you throw out the baby with the bath water. You lose the Martin Luther King Jr.’s, the Ghandi’s, the Mother Teresea’s, the Dali Lama’s of the world. It’s too a high a price to pay. For me, it’s all about dialogue—talking with others, getting them to see the common ground we all share, respect each other, and, as they said on their website maximizing the good and eliminating the bad.

As long as we keep talking—as you and I have been doing through these threads--we will keep moving forward. But I believe the instant dialogue ends—the instant you demonize the” other” and refuse to engage with them--you’ve planted the seeds of the next conflict: the next Spanish Inquisition, the next Bosnian massacre, or the next 9/11.

You greasy sack of shit. Yes, the Obama folks fired her, and there is plenty of blame for them. But even after this has been clarified you still try to peddle that garbage.

Check this out: http://mediamatters.org/research/201007220004

AFTER she says she referred him to a white lawyer, she then talks about her own narrow-mindedness, and how she recognized it and overcame it. You purposely leave this out of your commentary. She then helped him out and that white man now credits her to this day for helping him keep his farm. You would want people to focus on the NAACP nodding their heads in agreement without mentioning the context (Sherrod's father having been murdered by white men, among many others at the time).

You do not have any shame Bobknight. You and Breitbart both.

>> ^bobknight33:

Andrew Breitbart posted the video on his site Monday at 8:18 a.m. By mid-afternoon Shirely Sherrod had been fired. Fox News didn’t report the story until later that evening. Who’s to blame for her firing? Fox News? Breitbart? That is absurd.
By mid afternoon of the same day, Ms. Sherrod’s boss, Cheryl Cook, called her and fired her because “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight”. In fact, she did not appear on Beck that night. He made no mention of her whatsoever. She did appear on Beck the following night though, and he was DEFENDING her. The first mention of the Shirley Sherrod tape on Fox News was on Bill O’Reilly’s show which aired at 8 p.m. That’s almost five hours AFTER Sherrod was fired.
The edited video posted by Andrew Breitbart on his website, BigGovernment.com, wasn’t edited to exclude Sherrod’s racial “redemption”. The video that appeared on his site actually INCLUDED Sherrod saying “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white….it is about white and black… but it’s not…you know… it opened my eyes because I took him to one of his own.” On his website, Breitbart says:
In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.
Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

Andrew Breitbart posted the video on his site Monday at 8:18 a.m. By mid-afternoon Shirely Sherrod had been fired. Fox News didn’t report the story until later that evening. Who’s to blame for her firing? Fox News? Breitbart? That is absurd.

By mid afternoon of the same day, Ms. Sherrod’s boss, Cheryl Cook, called her and fired her because “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight”. In fact, she did not appear on Beck that night. He made no mention of her whatsoever. She did appear on Beck the following night though, and he was DEFENDING her. The first mention of the Shirley Sherrod tape on Fox News was on Bill O’Reilly’s show which aired at 8 p.m. That’s almost five hours AFTER Sherrod was fired.

The edited video posted by Andrew Breitbart on his website, BigGovernment.com, wasn’t edited to exclude Sherrod’s racial “redemption”. The video that appeared on his site actually INCLUDED Sherrod saying “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white….it is about white and black… but it’s not…you know… it opened my eyes because I took him to one of his own.” On his website, Breitbart says:

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

Andrew Breitbart posted the video on his site Monday at 8:18 a.m. By mid-afternoon Shirely Sherrod had been fired. Fox News didn’t report the story until later that evening. Who’s to blame for her firing? Fox News? Breitbart? That is absurd.

By mid afternoon of the same day, Ms. Sherrod’s boss, Cheryl Cook, called her and fired her because “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight”. In fact, she did not appear on Beck that night. He made no mention of her whatsoever. She did appear on Beck the following night though, and he was DEFENDING her. The first mention of the Shirley Sherrod tape on Fox News was on Bill O’Reilly’s show which aired at 8 p.m. That’s almost five hours AFTER Sherrod was fired.

The edited video posted by Andrew Breitbart on his website, BigGovernment.com, wasn’t edited to exclude Sherrod’s racial “redemption”. The video that appeared on his site actually INCLUDED Sherrod saying “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white….it is about white and black… but it’s not…you know… it opened my eyes because I took him to one of his own.” On his website, Breitbart says:

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

I thought he was already blind.

Anyhoo, I call "bullshit". Prolly setting up some "God healed me so I could continue his work" sorta thing. His already blind viewers/listeners eat that sort of shit up.

If he truly IS going blind, then fuck him. Some people have just caused so much damage they are beyond redemption, in my mind. Child rapists, mass murderers, FOX talking puppets. Fuck him.

>> ^shole:

how the hell did they film these without the damn radscorpi- er, i mean, mountainlions killing him in the first five minutes


They said something about a "panorama" mode in the article.

[redacted]

Are you really a doctor? I always wanted to meet a rich and single doctor, I happen to be single as well... This club you talk about, sounds interesting... where is it? Can I meet you there? Do you look like lady gaga as your name implies? Will you love me?

>> ^sexygaga:

Life is so lonely. I am a doctor, rich and single at present.
The best club　for seeking rich singles,　and sexy beauties,
And the only place to be your own sexy milfs!!
S /u / g / a / r / b / a / b / y / m / a / t / c / h /// d/o/t/ C/O/M

Your video, Red Dead Redemption timelapse: "World in Motion", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 8 Badge!

Fixed. Cheers.>> ^LarsaruS:

Your link to the article points to this video on VS.
Just thought you should now.

If we can trust Wiki I did the research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesque_art

Subject matter

Most Romanesque sculpture is pictorial and Biblical in subject. A great variety of themes are found on capitals and include scenes of Creation and the Fall of Man, episodes from the life of Christ and those Old Testament scenes which prefigure his Death and Resurrection, such as Jonah and the Whale and Daniel in the Lions' Den. Many Nativity scenes occur, the theme of the Three Kings being particularly popular. The cloisters of Santo Domingo de Silos Abbey in Northern Spain, and Moissac are fine examples surviving complete.

A feature of some Romanesque churches is the extensive sculptural scheme which covers the area surrounding the portal or, in some case, much of the facade. Angouleme Cathedral in France has a highly elaborate scheme of sculpture set within the broad niches created by the arcading of the facade. In Spain, an elaborate pictorial scheme in low relief surrounds the door of the church of Santa Maria at Ripoll.[6]
Around the upper wall of the chancel at the Abbaye d'Arthous, Landes, France, are small figures depicting lust, intemperance and a Barbary ape, symbol of human depravity.pic P Charpiat

The purpose of the sculptural schemes was to convey a message that the Christian believer should recognize wrong-doing, repent and be redeemed. The Last Judgement reminds the believer to repent. The carved or painted Crucifix, displayed prominently within the church, reminds the sinner of redemption.
Ouroboros, single and in pairs at Kilpeck, England

Often the sculpture is alarming in form and in subject matter. These works are found on capitals, corbels and bosses, or entwined in the foliage on door mouldings. They represent forms that are not easily recognizable today. Common motifs include Sheela na Gig, fearsome demons, ouroboros or dragons swallowing their tails, and many other mythical creatures with obscure meaning. Spirals and paired motifs originally had special significance in oral tradition that has been lost or rejected by modern scholars.

The Seven Deadly Sins including lust, gluttony and avarice are also frequently represented. The appearance of many figures with oversized genitals can be equated with carnal sin, and so can the numerous figures shown with protruding tongues, which are a feature of the doorway of Lincoln Cathedral. Pulling one's beard was a symbol of masturbation, and pulling one's mouth wide open was also a sign of lewdity. A common theme found on capitals of this period is a tongue poker or beard stroker being beaten by his wife or seized by demons. Demons fighting over the soul of a wrongdoer such as a miser is another popular subject.[8]