I wasn't sad about it before I became a Christian, so why do you think I am sad about it now and using my beliefs to shield myself from the harsh reality? Funnily enough, this is one of the things atheists tell themselves about believers to justify their rejection of God.

The reason Christians believe is because they have the conviction that they are sinners before a holy God, and that there is a judgment coming where everyone will have to answer for their life. We believe because there is a risen Savior named Jesus Christ who offers eternal life to all that will put their trust in Him.

Careful, if @bobknight33 sees you saying that he'll respond with some pretty harsh criticism. I'll pull quotes from his profile to simulate what he would say.

"Cuba citizens live as long and pay less? That Communism is better? That Cubans live shit life's but have live as long? Sign me up for that stuff... Then I 'll build a boat out of trash bans and float 90miles to tot the USA for a worse life. Sign me up for that stuff.

Every group that a has money at stake are trying to influence the people / governments one way or another in their favor.

All those hard line [prices] are only starting negotiating positions.

Trump is punking the shit out of liberals. Too funny. No real evidence or facts. just "sources" for liberal media false hype to continue its 24/7 anti Trump narrative."

I do. If they told her to sit, and she sat, problems solved.
She continuously said "don't touch me". They didn't need to if they told her to sit instead of letting her get on her bike and ride it. She clearly had an issue with being touched, they could have recognized that and used it, instead they exacerbated things.
You are expecting an irrational girl to act rationally. Impossible. That doesn't make her right.

You are also focusing on the part that, while more harsh than necessary imo, was understandable and you're intentionally ignoring the part most people find outrageous, macing her when she posed zero threat. Defend that.

If I'm not under arrest, I'm leaving. I don't talk to cops, so I'll be no help in their investigation anyway, none at all. I hope I get arrested for that, I can use the money.

Again, if her being injured was really a concern, pushing her over her bike, against a wall, to the ground, then carrying her like they did is the worst possible thing they could do...so I think the 'for her safety' thing is pure bullshit.

Your video, Jeff Sessions Tells Prosecutors:Prosecute Drugs More Harshly, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I disagree, we've been treating our pilots like precious snowflakes for far too long. Science has shown that the quickest way to improve skills is with harsh judgement and verbal abuse.

Harsh.

But fair.

Maybe more simple would be to observe that from the evangelical interpretation, if you were to go out and kill every person that failed to live up to the law, the global population would be zero. From there it is hardly rational to believe that Jesus was teaching anyone was supposed to go around meting out judgement. I don't find it such a harsh leap of logic then to read the old testament laws stating if person X commits crime Y they must be killed as being admonitions against the crime. I think it's not that bizarre to read them as the act of stoning others as not a law itself, but a sentence, and a sentence that Jesus death rendered moot.

Again that doesn't jibe with the text, or his exact words "For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"
That also contradicts the theory that his death ended the laws....."until heaven and earth pass away" clearly is a different thing from 'until I, Jesus, pass away'.
This is clear that the letter of the laws, not just the spirit of love, are the focus here, and anyone ignoring a single jot will be judged harshly.
In the old testament, those punishments are for failing to live by the specific, set forth rules as written, not failing to live up to some underlying, contradictory, unwritten, hidden message of love behind them.

That's not what the bible says. It's what 3rd parties have told people it says. It also clearly warns about those people....warns against listening to them, and tells you what happens to them....they are called the least, which I interpret to mean considered unworthy of heaven so are sent elsewhere.
It clearly, unambiguously, undeniably tells believers to murder infidels themselves, personally, with rocks. Any other interpretation ignores clearly written specific and detailed instructions in favor of insane mental gymnastics to think " You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God" somehow, inexplicably means 'love and tolerate them with respect and kindness' and not 'go murder them ASAP'.

Evangelicals have never once lived up to your theory of what they believe, they can't even follow the basic golden rule. The respect they demand for their beliefs is never returned to others, in my experience.
Evangelicals in practice usually take the entirety of the Bible as a message telling them they should go out and force others to love their version of God and the righteous, not all people, and without a hint of humility, and that they must accept the grace of their version of God or else are deserving of hatred and damnation.


Edit: As I read it, Jesus said follow every letter of the old laws, but instructed people that he without sin should cast the first stone (that would have been him, wouldn't it?). The old laws said he who casts no stones is committing a horrendous sin and should themselves be stoned to death. Believers somehow don't see the contradiction, while I see nothing but.

i wont judge you too harshly for liking koontz.
but i read him after i read the old school masters.so i recognized many of his plot lines.

but he does have a smooth style,which i call "crapper"reading.
you know,a book you keep in the loo and read a few pages while you do your business?
koontz is perfect crapper reading.

Waving frantically ... 'I'm' the market!

The brand I smoke is made with organic tobacco ... no additives. In addition, the paper has no accelerants to keep the product burning on its own. However, the sin taxes over the years have raised the price per pack to hair raising levels, especially harsh now that I'm on a limited budget, buuuuuttttt [see what I did there?] ... I've always been a conscientious social pariah. I carry my own ashtray and only smoke outdoors [currently in our designated area] even when I owned my own home. For me it's been a stress reliever and a social outlet as it gets me out of the apartment. I'd be a hermit otherwise so I continue to justify the expense.

As for pot my favorite form is ingestion but, with the change in our state marijuana laws last year, I no longer have the option to obtain the products in sufficient dosage [and dependability] that I once was provided. I'm no Betty Crocker so the chemistry of producing accurate and effective efficiency is out of my wheelhouse [plus the process really stinks up the place]. So mostly I vaporize the flower from the most potent Indica money can buy with my PAX 2. No burning of vegetation like smoking.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

Funny, but flawed it's own way.

Let me preface this commentary by saying I am not in any organized religion. I go back and forth in believing in God and also not being able to find proof he exists, basically an agnostic theist. So this is not in any way an attempt to 'prove' anything other than that I disagree with the way the video is portraying the biblical tale. I also know there are far more egregious examples than this story of God as an uncaring, flawed being with an uncertain temperament.

First, this story is one of the 'go to' stories that most atheists or anti-religion people look to for a clear example of the 'wrongness' of the bible or God. The reason is, if you don't take anything else into context, this story is massively damning! What god would call for a mass genocide out of the blue, right? Certainly not one people consider to be good!

But, if we look at the context of the bible in the Old Testament, we see that this is not wholly out of line for the character shown of God. If we take the statements of the bible as literal, then God has already shown he will destroy any threat to those he considers his 'chosen people'; even those who are/were part of that group.

In this case, the Amalekites were descendants of Esau. Esau was the brother of Jacob (later named Israel) and was supposed to inherit the blessing of his father, as well as command over the 'chosen people' of God. Esau was of rough nature and was a hunter. Once he was starving and went to Jacob, who tended the fields (sort of the Cain and Abel bit all over again), begging him for a bowl of lentil soup. Jacob told him that he would give him the bowl if Esau would pass his birthright (blessing and command) over to Jacob, since obviously Jacob was more able to care for his people than a solitary hunter. Esau agreed, but never really meant it, he was just hungry and was willing to say whatever he needed to so as to get that soup.

Jacob was dead serious though, so he took the birthright and became Israel, the leader of God's chosen. Esau was livid and swore to murder Jacob, who fled. Esau never got the birthright back, but he did sire the people who became the Amalekites, who in turn swore vengeance on Israel-ites.

This becomes important as time goes on, because basically every single time the groups encountered one another, the Israelites tried to be peaceful but the Amalekites always attacked.

By the time Saul was king, God chose to have him go and destroy the Amalekites, deeming them beyond saving. As he had told Moses during the first Amalekite attacks, he had Samuel tell Saul to blot their memory from history, wiping them out completely. Saul chose not to do this, sparing their king and some animals. Because of this, God replaced Saul with David.

So, now we come to the main part of the discussion. Like I said, this story is used quite often to show the capricious nature of God. However, like I said, it uses the story out of context. Now that we have the 'historical' description of the origin and ongoing nature of the conflict, we can put it into context.

If you are going to dissect the nature of 'God' as shown in the Old Testament, you have to look at the information given to show that nature. The bible says he is all-knowing, but it also says that he gave mankind free will. If you look on God as more of a creature running a simulation, he hopes that humanity will come to follow his rules of their own accord, even though he knows many will not. He chooses Israel and his descendants to be his 'messengers' to the other people that have chosen not to follow his rules, basically they are his missionaries that he hopes will lead his simulation to the proper conclusion.

Any group or race that tries to eradicate his messengers is a threat to his simulation, so he eventually will deal with them harshly. Sodom and Gomorrah, The Great Flood, and other examples of God deciding that he needs to protect his 'messengers' and clear off the playing board. In the case of the Amalekites, by this time period mentioned in the story, we are talking about generations of them trying to destroy the Israelites. So, God tells Samuel to tell Saul that they must be wiped from the playing board. Saul exercises his free will, therefore David enters the picture.

If you look at free will and God's choice of his messengers, as well as his protection of them, you get this story situation. By telling Saul to wipe them out, God is saying that he has tried to look the other way, but the Amalekites will never stop as long as they exist. Therefore they must be dealt with in a manner that will prevent them from rising as a people in the future and attempting harm to his messengers again.

It still doesn't paint God in a perfect light, but makes him more of a tinkerer. He keeps creating flawed inventions that choose to follow their own path and not his. The sad thing is, if you assume that he is all knowing, he knows this is going to be the end result. He creates angels and they turn on him. He creates humans and they turn on him. Then he creates Jesus, a combination of god and human, who doesn't turn on him. It is almost like he decides to create a Hero unit that can show the other simulations an easier path to winning.

Realistically and analytically, I know it doesn't make perfect sense. That is why I have my struggles with wanting to believe and then not being able to logically. If you choose to look at God as being a flawed creature (again, assuming that you believe he exists), the whole thing sort of makes more sense. In any case, we all have our own opinions and beliefs. I hope that my wordy post has explained how I try to work through mine.

Huh, this criticism feels more like a Zero Punctuation-type review to me in that it grossly exaggerates actual flaws to make them sound far more problematic than they actually are. He's asking us to view the movie from the perspective of someone who has never heard of Star Wars and that's just so preposterously stupid that I had a hard time getting through to the end of his video. The whole point of this movie is that the lore and the world has already been established--there's no need to re-tread everything and explain every connection. It's not meant to be a "stand-alone" film--nor were Empire or Return of the Jedi, which also rightly assumed that people watching the movie had seen (or at least understood the major plot points) of the previous films.

Personally, I find his criticism of the characters wholly lacking as well. Why did he not like the characters? Why did he not find them compelling? I personally loved them all. One flaw in the movie is that there are so many things going on that most of the characters don't get enough screen time for us to get really deeply attached to them, but then again none of the characters are meant to survive the movie so that could be intentional? Certainly a few of the characters (Baze, Chirrut, and Bodhi) suffer from being one-dimensional as a result of this.

Fair enough if he doesn't want to check the character box because of that, but he never explained why the story and emotion boxes weren't checked. I mean, my wife cried both at Jin's father's death and Jin and Cassian's deaths. They were the three characters that were the most fleshed out of the cast. We understood their motivations and their internal conflicts (Jin's father between protecting his family and helping the Empire, Jin's struggles with trust after the feeling of betrayal at being left behind by both her father and Saw Gerrera, Cassian's struggles with duty and morality further complicated by his growing feelings for Jin). And their deaths were meant to underscore the harsh reality of the rebellion for the common foot soldier.

For me, this movie is probably the 4th best Star Wars movie to date after the original trilogy--much better than The Force Awakens, in my book. It's fine if Plinkett disagrees, but his video is completely disappointing as it doesn't really explain or give examples of how he came to this opinion. He just makes a blanket statement and then proceeds to monologue as if we should take his opinion as fact without him offering any evidence.

woah woah woah woah.

It's one thing to accuse Obama of being a muslim, a communist, a kenyan, the founder of ISIS, but calling him "the Nickelback of presidents".... that's fucking harsh!

Also *quality Trump burn at the end
#phonedrop

No magnetosphere. That means along with no water or air, you have to live in a microwave on 'thaw'. Sounds pretty harsh to me.
Maybe we would be better off reversing global warming on Venus and terraforming it.

BUT.....
Average black men do not undergo racial sensitivity training to dissuade them from those subconscious and conscious biases....police do....and are PAID in part to not hold biases.

So lets get this straight...you admit there is a CLEAR, HUGE racism problem that permeates the police department, and all (or near enough to all to say "all") officers suffer from it, but you go on to say it's not acceptable to treat them like they're racists?!? I'll just say I disagree. They have consistently shown racist tendencies, and a willingness to stand behind those that act on them. Until that changes, I think it's acceptable to assume that, baring evidence to the contrary, they will not treat a black 'suspect' fairly...up to and including killing them for nothing.

Turnabout is fair play. I agree, it's not the best, most civil, or even productive way to see it, but when your option is 1)give each officer the benefit of a doubt that he/she might be that 2% completely non racist officer with the penalty of being wrong being possible death, or 2)assume the officer is racist and protect yourself as best as you're able, it's 100% understandable if people decide to protect themselves. I do not ADVOCATE people reacting that way, I do accept that some will, and don't judge them for that, in the same way you wish to not pre judge police for their past actions.

It's 100% on the police to rid themselves of this appearance that 98%+- of them ARE racist, as well as the organization as a whole. It's not it's worst members, it's nearly all it's members AND the system that monitors them. If it was 2% that was dealt with harshly when they surfaced, I would agree with you.