Taken from Conservapedia's evolution page:

"The great intellectuals in history such as Archimedes, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin did not propose an evolutionary process for a species to transform into a more complex version. Even after the theory of evolution was proposed and promoted heavily in England and Germany, most leading scientists were against the theory of evolution."

What are they trying to say? How is this even relevant? Why is the fact that historical figures before Darwin's time didn't propose an evolutionary process for a species to transform into a more complex version relevant at all? Isn't that why we hold Darwin up as the father of the theory in the first place? Because he made the proposing first?

Could the following paragraph be included in the automobile section?:

"The great intellectuals in history such as Archimedes, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin did not invent automobiles. Even after the invention of the automobile most leading scientists did not drive or use automobiles."

The whole paragraph doesn't bring any information to the table but it does subtly suggest that the Theory of Evolution is academically controversial. Wait, isn't that bias?

So is Conservapedia against bias as a principle or do they just not like being disagreed with?

Meh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Education_and_academic_career

PhDs in natural sciences are closer to the literal meaning of "Philosophy" (love of knowledge) while philosophy departments generally focus on the history of philosophy (covering all sorts of archaic nonsense from Socrates to Sartre while minimizing philosophers who actually did something worthwhile i.e. scientists and mathematicians, like Pythagoras, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Thomas Jefferson). At Oxford there is a Classics course, and then there is a more useful and more rigorous version which discards the ancient bullshit, called modern classics or PPE. Dawkins got a PhD in zoology, which is a "hard science", unlike what often passes for Philosophy.

>the Hebrew deity spells his OWN name YHVH

Sometimes is absolutely correct.
Exodus 3:13-15 :
"
Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?"

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM (hayah) has sent me to you.'"

Moreover God said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: 'The LORD (YHWH) God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.'"
"

Once again Pat Robertson demonstrates his bigoted and =willfull= misrepresentation of the word of God for political purposes.

So not to get into a conversation with myself here, but in case anyone else cares:

I asked mother Google and discovered that the piece in the video is "Asturias" by Isaac Albeniz. However, Robbie Krieger (The Doors' guitarist who wrote Spanish Caravan) was asked if parts of the song were lifted from that, and he said no, but parts were actually derived from "Granadinas". In fact, the owners of the rights to Granadinas sued The Doors but won only the publishing that was earned in France, where they resided. The strange part is that I don't hear a clear resemblance between the song and Granadinas, but the main theme of Asturias is almost exactly the main theme in Spanish Caravan. At any rate, there is your useless music fact of the day.

Yes, South Park does show the need to rid at the very least the tax church status.

They sued, CC never rebroadcast it, Isaac Hayes (chef douchebag) left the show (Get down with your bad OTVI self)

Scientology is SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Not only is he off a couple of years with some of his predictions, he also wrong about some of them. Of course, he's right about some, but that doesn't make his guessing revolutionary is any way, it only makes them pretty good guesses.
I've talked to people who for years before it happened said the US would feel the ramifications of their actions in the middle east, but I'm not sure we should start calling them prophets even if they started to claim they managed to decipher their predictions in the bible.

The Isaac Newton thing was funny I thought. He devoted more than half a entire century to the bible, eh? They make is sound like he did nothing else, which of course is complete boulderdash.
Also, the skipcode thing made laugh out loud. Conspiracy theorize much? Seriously, we've covered this in the sift before with the video that showed that the versions of the bible we have today is far different from the original ones. I mean look at the printed torah page of their Chanukah code. Good job on finding two words by doing two different skipcode keys, one of the words being backwards. This might just be me being sceptical, but it does reek a bit of conspiracy theory, wouldn't you say? Especially when they show us the Saddam thing. Taking a couple of letters here and there and then putting them together to make "fire on the third of shevat" is creating a meaning that isn't there in my mind. To close this part of my arguments, I'll quote the holy man from this clip, talking about his so called discovery "When you analyze in the proper way..." Analyze in the proper way indeed, and add proper meaning to the proper analyzation.

Finally, what would the reason be for writing a coded message in the bible? Did they do it for laughs or perhaps to make sure it couldn't be rewritten differently? It has been changed, however, so scouring it for hidden messages is a waste of time unless you've got the originals, or the version of it when the alleged code was entered in.

"President Kennedy appeared once" Hehe, what are the odds of the word Kennedy appearing once when taking loosely connected letters randomly from a huge chunk of text?
Sadly, the people "working" on this are probably too far gone in this to possibly see the absurdity of it. I just hope this thing will die out in the coming decades, with the people currently pushing it onwards. We don't need more this sort of madeup coincidence.

Upvote for the fun of rampant conspiracy theories and their use of music. Also the end results. But perhaps the experts and sceptics didn't "properly analyze" the data

I heard from someone that Isaac Newton was once hit in the head by an apple. In revenge, Newton invented gravity and now the Earth hits apples for all eternity. It's totally true, just ask science.

In all seriousness, though, Newton was awesome. W00t one for Newton!

It got me on Isaac the bartender on The Love Boat, Larry on Three's Company, Hawkeye's shrink Dr. Freidman on M.A.S.H... but I GOT HIM on Ernest T. Bass from The Andy Griffith Show!

Some decent action scenes in this flick but I won't even get into how shabbily done the movie was translated from Isaac Asimov's work + the original screenplay for it, in his own words, "The first truely adult science-fiction film.", which this was not. Not to mention all the advertisements. The image of (thanks to Maddox) Will Smith pissing on an ad-riddled Isaac Asimov's grave always pops into my head whenever I see this now.

Deja Vu
Dionne Warwick
Music: Isaac Hayes
Lyrics: Adrienne Anderson
Orchestration: Gene Page
Background Vocals: Barry Manilow, Ron Dante

(note to self: besides the "Honey Wrestling," Lithuania is looking more and more appealing...)

I do not have faith that a competitive free market is a workable scenario for ALL services and/or products, even. Fact of the matter remains that, for many services offered under a competitive free market, the efficiency is actually quite low.

Yaroslavvb - you mentioned health care...do you realize that, for many URGENT procedures, here in the U.S.(cancer treatment, for one), in many cases there's no real "waiting list," but many patients often die waiting for their insurance companies to negotiate the terms of the treatment with the hospitals?

Cancer treatment is, of course, only an example - many other examples can be found with a simple craigslist ad, as often the most urgent cases do not reach the hospital until all of the details between insurance companies and service providers get resolved.

In my opinion, the insurance system is an incredible fraud. It exists to minimize risk, essentially, which allows many conspicuously expensive lawsuits to occur simply because, when it comes to court, it ends up being one person and his lawyer versus somebody else's insurance company. The risk to be minimized is often not explained, and falls on the "common person" to pay the penalties of, as the insurance companies often do not explain the technicalities of the risks they cover(nor do "common people" expect their language to be convoluted in such a way as to deny them service on a technicality).

It is also another opinion of mine to have noticed that the risk that is often to be minimized by such fraudulent insurance companies is often the risk of loss of stability - a stability which never existed in the first place, and still does not exist, no matter how much insurance a person has.

No - I think that the answer to American health care problems can not be solved by private industry. To me, the entire system that we are upholding, in such a way, makes an excellent analogy to Isaac Asimov's conception of Trantor in his "Foundation" series of books - that the United States is, in essence, a country mostly devoid of manufacturing and production capabilities(except for many insignificant, and essentially useless products like movies and music), and exists only to attempt to serve as a bureaucratic "glue" for what may some day become a global empire.

There's just one catch - the "common person" can not see beyond the forest for the trees, so a "global empire," to them, is quite nonexistent - even if those humans that do not represent the "common person" perceive it any differently. For this reason, a system to minimize risk, to attempt to hold onto "stability" as desperately as it can, can not exist for long.

Please note that "common people" represent 99.x% of the population of this planet. When it comes time that they are truly fed up, they tend to act with swift, and often painful, consequences.

One could generalize and say that they are not "civilized," but I ask you - what benefits have we gained from subscribing to this wonderful invention known as "civilization?"

From wikipedia:

"During the presidential campaign of 1800, the Federalists attacked Jefferson as an infidel, claiming that Jefferson's intoxication with the religious and political extremism of the French Revolution disqualified him from public office. But Jefferson wrote at length on religion and many scholars agree with the claim that Jefferson was a deist, a common position held by intellectuals in the late 18th century. As Avery Cardinal Dulles, a leading Roman Catholic theologian reports, "In his college years at William and Mary [Jefferson] came to admire Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke as three great paragons of wisdom. Under the influence of several professors he converted to the deist philosophy." Dulles concludes:

“In summary, then, Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death; but did not believe in supernatural revelation. He was a Christian deist because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher. He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God. Jefferson's religion is fairly typical of the American form of deism in his day. ”

Biographer Merrill Peterson summarizes Jefferson's theology: “First, that the Christianity of the churches was unreasonable, therefore unbelievable, but that stripped of priestly mystery, ritual, and dogma, reinterpreted in the light of historical evidence and human experience, and substituting the Newtonian cosmology for the discredited Biblical one, Christianity could be conformed to reason. Second, morality required no divine sanction or inspiration, no appeal beyond reason and nature, perhaps not even the hope of heaven or the fear of hell; and so the whole edifice of Christian revelation came tumbling to the ground.”

Jefferson used deist terminology in repeatedly stating his belief in a creator, and in the United States Declaration of Independence used the terms "Creator" and "Nature's God". Jefferson believed, furthermore, it was this Creator that endowed humanity with a number of inalienable rights, such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". His experience in France just before the French Revolution made him deeply suspicious of Catholic priests and bishops as a force for reaction and ignorance. Similarly, his experience in America with inter-denominational intolerance served to reinforce this skeptical view of religion. In a letter to Willam Short, Jefferson wrote: "the serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous."

Jefferson was raised in the Church of England, at a time when it was the established church in Virginia and only denomination funded by Virginia tax money. Before the Revolution, Jefferson was a vestryman in his local church, a lay position that was part of political office at the time. He also had friends who were clergy, and he supported some churches financially. During his Presidency, Jefferson attended the weekly church services held in the House of Representatives. Jefferson later expressed general agreement with his friend Joseph Priestley's Unitarianism, that is the rejection of the doctrine of Trinity. In a letter to a pioneer in Ohio he wrote, "I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings or priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."

Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but he had high esteem for Jesus' moral teachings, which he viewed as the "principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform [prior Jewish] moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state." Jefferson did not believe in miracles. He made his own condensed version of the Gospels, omitting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection, primarily leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible. “[The Jefferson Bible] is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw.”

However, early in his administration he attended church services in the House of Representatives. He also permitted church services in executive branch buildings throughout his administration, believing that Christianity was a prop for republican government.

Church and state:

For Jefferson, separation of church and state was not an abstract right but a necessary reform of the religious "tyranny" of one Christian sect over many other Christians - and of the interference of the state in affairs of religion. Following the Revolution, Jefferson played a leading role in the disestablishment of religion in Virginia. Previously the Anglican Church had tax support. As he wrote in his Notes on Virginia, a law was in effect in Virginia that "if a person brought up a Christian denies the being of a God, or the Trinity …he is punishable on the first offense by incapacity to hold any office …; on the second by a disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy …, and by three year' imprisonment." Prospective officer-holders were required to swear that they did not believe in the central Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

From 1784 to 1786, Jefferson and James Madison worked together to oppose Patrick Henry's attempts to again assess taxes in Virginia to support churches. Instead, in 1786, the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom, which he had first submitted in 1779 and was one of only three accomplishments he put in his own epitaph. The law read: “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

One of Jefferson’s least well known writings is: "Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make half the world fools and half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world"- Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia.

Jefferson sought what he called a "wall of separation between Church and State", which he believed was a principle expressed by the First Amendment. This phrase has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause. In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he wrote: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

Jefferson refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and thanksgiving during his Presidency, yet he did do so as Governor in Virginia. His private letters indicate he was skeptical of too much interference by clergy in matters of civil government. His letters contain the following observations: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government", and, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government". Yet, Jefferson advocated the influence of religion in abolishing the institution of slavery in America stating, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”

While the debate over Jefferson's understanding over the separation of Church and state is far from being settled, as are his particular religious tenets, his dependence on divine Providence is not nearly as ambiguous. As he stated, in his second inaugural address: “I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations."

choggie

Firstly - I agree with almost everything said by Jewish Voice for Peace (http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org) - see the first comment of my previous post: http://www.videosift.com/video/Jews-Who-Oppose-Israeli-Violations-of-Human-Rights

Of critical importance is that Jerusalem should "be shared in a manner that reflects its spiritual, economic, and political importance to both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as to all Jews, Muslims and Christians." I don't feel that any one faith has a better claim on Jerusalem than any other. This is because all the faiths stem from the same Abrahamic tradition, and Jerusalem is one of the two great cities of Abraham. The other is Mecca.

I also feel the same way about Mecca - I don't believe that it should only be for Muslims. In the West people are more acquainted with the story of Abraham's younger son Isaac, and the origins of the city of Jerusalem. The story of Abraham's oldest son Ishmael, and the origins of Mecca are less well known. From Genesis we learn that when Isaac was born, his mother Sarah insisted that Abraham's oldest son Ishmael and his mother Hagar should no longer live with them. Abraham was reluctant to do this, but the book of Genesis tells us that God told Abraham to follow Sarah's wishes and He would look after Ishmael. We are then told that Hagar took her son into the wilderness of Paran (to the south). Later, Ishmael and Hagar were passing through the valley of Baca. They were dying of thirst - but this did not reduce their trust and faith in God. Seeing this, God rewarded them by causing a spring to gush forth from the barren land. In Genesis we read that 'God heard the voice of the lad' crying out for water as he lay in the sand. But then God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well of water. We also read about this in Psalm 84, verses 5-6, where it says: "Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are the ways of them who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well." So we know where the miracle happened: the valley of Baca - Bakkah in Arabic. Bakkah is the old Arabic name for Mecca - Makkah in Arabic. The spring came to be known as Zamzam and it became a place of pilgrimage because of the miracle that occured there. A sanctuary was established there by Ishmael and Abraham - known as the Ka'ba.

The Ka'ba was the first sanctuary of the Abrahamic tradition, and it predates the Temple of Jerusalem by about a thousand years. Jews went on pilgrimage to the tabernacle in Mecca for over a thousand years. It was only after the sanctuary became polluted with pagan idols that they stopped coming. Christians also went on pilgrimage to Mecca. When Muhammad entered the Ka'ba sanctuary to destroy the pagan idols - the only idol he did not destroy was a statue of the virgin Mary and baby Jesus which had been left by Christian pilgrims.

Since Jews, Christians and Muslims all trace their faith back to Abraham (and ultimately God) then they should all have equal access to the cities of Abraham.

But this is just my opinion - and one that some people are bound to disagree with!

Unfortunately, this is *dead "video has been removed due to terms of use violation" (but YouTube has lots of replacements)...

Andrés Torres Segovia, (February 21, 1893 – June 3, 1987) was a Spanish classical guitarist, and later nobleman, born in Linares, Spain who is considered to be the father of the modern classical guitar movement by most modern music scholars.

Segovia claimed that he "rescued the guitar from the hands of flamenco gypsies," and built up a classical repertoire to give it a place in concert halls. In recognition of his contributions to music and the arts, Segovia was ennobled June 24th, 1981 by the King of Spain (S.M. el rey Juan Carlos) who elevated Segovia into the first hereditary marquess of Salobreña.

Leyenda (Asturias) is a work of classical music written by the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. Originally written for piano in G minor, it was Francisco Tárrega who transcribed it for guitar and put it in its most recognizable key, E minor. It is the most famous section in a suite entitled "Suite Española" (Op. 47), noted for its delicate, intricate melody and abrupt dynamic changes.

Honestly if this doesn't get at least 100 votes, am leaving VS. Because next to the dynamite appeal of Jake Shimabukuro, Andrés Segovia is a thermonuclear weapon.