>> ^Tokoki:

This is actually bringing up a good point about how little his religion is being talked about...


It might get a bit more attention if their secret rituals* go viral. We can only hope!

*http://religion.videosift.com/video/Never-Before-Seen-Footage-of-Secret-Mormon-Temple-Rituals

Comment of the month!>> ^entr0py:

I like the last bit where they fade to a picture of the Salt Lake City skyline. If you pause mid-fade at 0:21 there's some precipitation flying onto the LDS temple. Well played Fox 13.

I like the last bit where they fade to a picture of the Salt Lake City skyline. If you pause mid-fade at 0:21 there's some precipitation flying onto the LDS temple. Well played Fox 13.

I was just listing the major reason why I am not a republican. I generally agree with conservative values, and I take conservative positions on most social issues, but I also disagree with a few things so that's why I'm not a member of that party. In regards to Mitt Romney, he seems like he does care for the poor. I think he is a pretty likeable guy, for the most part. That's isn't the reason I am not voting for him, however. The reason I am not voting for him is because he is an elder in the Mormon church. His family has been connected with it since the church started, and one of his relatives helped construct the first temple. A Romney presidency means that the elders of the Mormon church will be running this country, and that isn't something that I as a Christian can support.


In reply to this comment by deedub81:
If Romney doesn't care about the Poor, why has he spent his money AND HIS PERSONAL TIME serving and helping them?

In reply to this comment by shinyblurry:
>> ^cosmovitelli:

Shiny and QM face facts: you're both too smart to stick with these evasive, ideologically motivated destroyers for much longer.
Sadly, the actual, mediocre, boring effort to do things as well as possible is all there is for us.. No amazing plan, no secret trick to simultaneously give & keep trillions, no 'wealth creators'..
Just a big pile of flawed people, some of whom are trying to make the world more relaxed, open and productive.
And some are solipsists who want OUT in any way they can imagine it might be possible - extreme wealth, private land, preferential treatment by the supernatural, sexual conquest, fame, power over others..
..or all of the above and then still desperately hurting defenseless hungry uncared-for children to acquire ANOTHER billion.. (and then trying to flee further from the anger and the pain they have unthinkingly perpetuated..)
Ryan and Romney are taking fuck you to the next level.


I'm not on board for the Romney/Ryan ticket. I'm not a republican because they don't care about the poor and a few other reasons. I'm not a democrat because it is the party of secular humanism. I cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate this election.

By your rhetorical suggestion: God created us with free will, then he created laws for us because following them is good for us and he loves us, then he said there would be consequences for not following those laws to encourage us to follow them because he loves us, then he determined that the consequences would be the worst possible thing that could happen, far worse than the real-life consequences for breaking the rules… because he loves us? It doesn’t add up. Don't give me some reductionist "let all rapists go free" argument. There's no way to explain the extreme severity of the consequences for breaking the law if the law itself was created so we would be better off. See?

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve to be completely dependent on Him for everything. They relied upon God to make their decisions for them, and tell them what good and evil was. However, because He wanted His creatures to be free to love Him, ie just not just forced to obey Him, He gave them one command. That command was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told them that in the day they ate of it they would surely die.

What lay in the fruit of that tree for Adam and Eve was their own autonomy. The fruit represented an independence from God to decide on their own what is good and evil. Rather than sitting at Gods feet and learning from Him, they would become a law onto themselves through their own judgment. What eating this fruit did was destroy their innocence forever. It ruined the perfect relationship and fellowship they had with God by turning them into rebels who would make choices apart from God.

So, rather than the law being given for the reasons you are saying, it was given to offer them a choice between obedience to God and personal autonomy. The consequences of breaking that law not only changed their nature but brought sin and death into the world. God draws the line at His standard for goodness, which is perfection. It is a zero tolerance policy for rebellion, not only for moral guidance, but to maintain order in His kingdom.

What’s wrong with robots? You said elsewhere it’s because god wouldn’t want robots. How can he want anything? He’s perfect. Does his own existence not satisfy him? Is he lacking something? Was he bored and lonely? Are we his pets?

God created not out of need, but out of the abundance of His love. He regards us as His offspring, not His pets.

Act 17:22-31

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

But he forgave us all our sins through the sacrifice of his son. Was that a compromise of his integrity? It seems he does choose to forgive us, at least once every 4000 years or so.

No, because He laid all of our sin on His Son, who bore the punishment we deserve. It is not a compromise of His integrity so long as the sin has been paid for.

Romans 4:25

He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification

You didn’t answer my questions. I know the stated purpose of sending Jesus. My question is why the situation required exactly that. Surely God, at some point, decided, "Well, they’re bad, and I want to get closer, and the exact thing required is for me to have a son, for that son to be a perfect human, for him to preach for three years and then get executed by the other humans, and then we can be closer." God decided something like that. It’s a direct implication of saying that God created everything and that this was necessary.

Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Before the world began, God knew that He would need to send His Son.

If you want to know more about what it means in the image of God, read this:

http://www.gotquestions.org/image-of-God.html

It told me almost nothing. It says that the definition of "the image of God" is everything that makes us different from other animals, and everything intangible about us, as if that’s what God looks like. It compared naming pets and enjoying music to being God. Weird.

Because being in the image of God isn't about what God looks like, it is about being imbued with His personal attributes. We resemble Him in our better nature, not our appearance.

What I’m getting at is the arbitrariness of the consequences and why God would have created such random consequences. Look at them with a critical eye, if you can: Adam and Eve committed one sin, and for that their nature was changed forever, and that of their descendents forever, and they lost paradise. For one sin? You believe that God created such a heavy consequence for the first offence ever committed by innocent people – and people without "knowledge" mind you, because they hadn’t eaten the fruit yet. I cannot.

I understand what you're saying. You're not going to see the picture before you connect all of the dots. I'll keep supplying you the dots as I am able. I think I explained this particular question to you in more specific detail this time around, as to why the separation occurred.

God got to enjoy his creation for about 45 minutes before it screwed itself up, and from then on we’ve been a disappointment to him. Yet, as you’ve stated elsewhere, God created us for his pleasure. He knew what would happen, so he screwed up. He couldn’t even create himself a pleasing race of pets. Dogs have free will, understand good and bad, and are extremely pleasing as companions. Why couldn’t God create as good for himself as he did for humans? The whole story doesn’t hold water.

He knew before He created that His creation would rebel at some point, and He took the necessary steps to reconcile it back to Himself at the end of time. He didn't screw up, but He did create beings capable of screwing up. To allow for the real possibility of good, He also had to allow for the real possibility of evil.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

That's a defence mechanism against whatever the opposite of apologia is. Reason, maybe.

Or it's absolutely true.

The only consistent model is that God himself created sin and evil by creating the laws, because if he hadn't created the laws, there would be no sin or evil in the world. This understanding is consistent with your statement A and in spirit with C, if you understand C to mean, "We created evil by breaking his law".

Sorry, I should have clarified this a lot more. When scripture says "the law" what it is reffering to is the Mosaic law that was given at Mt Sinai. This law was given because of sin, and sin was already in the world at that time. This really goes back to the beginning with what I described earlier. What we had in the beginning was not a law, but simply a choice. It was given not to keep us from evil but to give us freedom to choose to obey Gods will. You can't freely obey someone if you don't have a choice not to do it. You can't love someone without the choice not to love. The law came into play after all of this, and that is a whole other discussion.

>> ^messenger:

stuff

>> ^chingalera:

Ok...That version of the theme.....It's like a hammer drill to the temples


I kind of like it. I wonder who made that remix.

Ok...That version of the theme.....It's like a hammer drill to the temples

This is sad, pathetic and frightening. Is this ever done in synagogues, or churches, or temples, when some provocative or propagandist material against those religions is published? No. But because of the violent bullying of crazed Islamic crowds (incensed by hate-mongering mollahs) the Norwegian police (and politicians all over the "civilised" world) thought it necessary to go and publicly distance themselves from an insignificant piece of propaganda and (here specifically) ask that the Muslims keep their acts within the purview of the law.
I would find that last point highly offensive to the Muslims, but when you look at what happened over a few cartoons far less antagonistic than the anti-Islam film, I can see why it would seem necessary to some.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by kulpims.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Thai-Temple-Tourists-Teasing-Tigers

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by pumkinandstorm. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Sounds bad. But just leaning my head back and trying to look behind me gets the temple of my head far enough out that I could theoretically shoot myself in the head without hitting myself anywhere else. I can see it being a possibility. But they really suck at frisking if they couldn't locate the gun on the guy, and that in and of itself is something that should be looked into....at the very least he could have killed both of them or someone at the station when they brought him in. That's where my suspicion lies, that they failed to find a gun in the first place not that he could have shot himself in the head. After all they are supposed to be professionals, and there was two of them...finding a weapon as big and bulky as a gun should be in their wheelhouse.

No sarcasm. An exercise most Law enforcement instructors perform is showing recruits what a person is capable of doing while handcuffed. Behind the back doesn't limit you that much if the palms are facing each other. A person handcuffed in this fashion can still access and control a handgun, including shooting forwards or his own head.

I'm not making any comment on this specific incident because there are too many possibilities, but I'm just saying that what Cenk is saying is impossible is actually easily possible. >> ^Sagemind:

Um, Huh? (Sarcasm?)
>> ^TheSofaKing:
It's 100% possible to shoot yourself in the temple while handcuffed behind the back... regardless of what hand you are.

Um, Huh? (Sarcasm?)
>> ^TheSofaKing:

It's 100% possible to shoot yourself in the temple while handcuffed behind the back... regardless of what hand you are.

It's 100% possible to shoot yourself in the temple while handcuffed behind the back... regardless of what hand you are.