Aside from the fact that I myself am atheist, no I am not. I'm calling this one numb-nut all of the prior things. It was made by An atheist supposedly for atheists, not by atheists for atheists. =P
Foolish people like this. Oh they slay me so.
Annoying, irrational, unneeded and all around foolish. Such a temple lacks need or want from those it is meant to be for.
Interesting enough of a question.
-Personally I do not believe terror is as tangible as the "war" would have people think. You cannot defeat something that arises subconsciously within humans. It is like trying to fight the ideas of good or evil.
-No a war is not the right solution, take out the possibility that the US went into different countries for resources or personal gain and you are left with a pointless war. To protect oneself, ones people and one's country are fine, but to bombard other countries because of one attack? If I recall I do not believe contact was even made to attempt to solve things peacefully.
- Perhaps work toward a more peaceful solution. Also I don't believe that the US or any country should try to push their ideas onto a struggling nation. (Democracy.) Freedom was fought for by countries in the past; now it would seem that those who fought for it are trying to simply hand it to other countries who do not have it. While "freedom" is great, what happens after they have it? Without having to struggle for freedom and without having to come together as a nation or obtain it what will they do? Would they know to band together and maintain peace and freedom or would they split into factions of people again.
-Would have, could have, should have.
-I'm not sure if there is a right solution to fight a thing such as terror.
-Personally I do not believe it is realistic to believe that you can fight terror or defeat it. By defeating one person's terror (one nations: the US) you cause another nation immense amounts of what you fought. Was it worth fighting to "end" terror for one country put cause it in several others? Who really benefits?
If you take into account that many people who discuss politics online also watch traditional media then no. Of course this isn't to say that everyone listens to it or watches it to begin with. The thing is that people who are already biased will remain biased even when using a different medium to share their beliefs.
Simply a myriad of overly general statements from a random blogger.
Well think about this, Jesus was not born on the twenty-fifth of December. The date known as "Christmas" was once the beginning of a Pagan holiday to celebrate a harvest that usually came around that time. To my knowledge his birth date was not actually recorded in any holy book.
Though I already knew it: http://www.essortment.com/
Well put it this way. Heracles (Hercules) may very well have been a real person who was well thought of by his peers and showed great promise/ performed great deeds. Give or take some years and legends began to arise of his supposed divinity as the son of Zeus. Then came his "miracles" most of which being less fantastical than those of Jesus (Most of which not all.)
When it comes to Jesus the same thing is present, he may have existed and performed commendable deeds. Perhaps he had a bit of knowledge of medicine that seemed foreign to those around him. Perhaps the "healing of a blind" was just treatment of said person who was only temporarily blind though they believed him to be permanently so.
Give or take a few years and many different renditions of the bible began to come about. Each "generation/rendition" of the bible that came out features Jesus having more and more fantastical powers.
If you think about it most Roman/ Greek heroes share quite a bit in common with Jesus. The more time passed, the more divine or gifted they became. (In text at least.)
I can't help but feel I've heard my argument elsewhere actually. Ah here we go: http://www.youtube.com/
Regardless if Noah and his children were the ONLY ones to serve him, he would have had to know this would happen. He has a divine plan, thus he mapped everything that would ever happen.
Yes marriage in the Christian sense is simply to be between men and women, however the act of being gay or lesbian is not a sin by the bible. However laying with another man should you be a man or another woman should you be a woman in the sexual sense, is a sin. I say sexual sense because Jesus laid next to a man to keep him warm if I can remember correctly.
While they as far as we know America's Founding Fathers were not Atheists, they were however not Christian. Most of them seemed to have critical problems with Christianity or rather what had come from it in their time. The country was formed for religious freedom, not Christianity. See the Constitution for your proof.
On top of what has been argued already to rebut this point I would like to add to it. Aside from the fact that you may encounter another religion's God at the end of your days, how can you be so sure of God's reply due to someone being Atheist? By saying that you know God WOULD damn said person for not believing in you, you would be calling yourself God. You cannot know another person's thoughts, nor can you know a deity's thoughts.
By the bible Atheist, Christian, and other are all God's children. Would he really damn his children simply because he provides no proof of his existence yet wishes for them to believe and worship him? Aside from that his divine plan would show that he knew they would not believe in him. Or does being given free will eliminate the fact that he still knows what decision's people will make? I do not think so.
If it is within reason then yes I will hold the door. Sometimes I do hold it for prolonged periods of time.
People who watch the television or play boardgames with their family spend time at home. You sit in front of a monitor when you are on this website, do you not? It has been proven many times that video games are often used as scapegoats for violent behaviour by their parents. Video games that are violent should be discerned from real life, as if you are chopping the head off of a zombie you would not be able to do that in real life. If you believe people to be zombies and you are the sole person left alive and must end them, you are already lunatic beyond belief. Quite the contrary, many games require you to think about new and interesting things often, take the game Frozen Synapse for instance. Frozen Synapse generated random levels each time you play a game, even if it is the same "level" within the story mode. No level is ever the same, thus you must think tactically and differently every time. Also there are many games that are created specially to work the mind, some for children and some for older age groups. Video games themselves do not lead to addiction, in this generation of video games social aspects are greatly implicated into the games. Through these social aspects people make friends whom they wish to spend time with as anyone else does by working a standard job. For single player games... I can assure you not many people are addicted to single player games. Often gamers develop a personal life related to that game if they are so addicted as you generalize them to be. If one is so addicted to a Massively Multiplayer Game then they often have a large group of friends within that game. Many gamers already have a proper education or are working to improve their education, also quite a few gamers especially those I know are already greatly intellectual in their own right. Other things that are forgotten about such as... remembering or wanting to eat are unnatural occurrences that those who do not delve into gaming generalize as the whole community. Gaming is this day's Rock N' Roll, and will remain as such until it is more widely accepted.
You take small insignificant sentiments overly serious quite often. You should be able to tell these from serious or strongly believed points. Thus you must either be truly ignorant to this fact or are simply throwing your opinion around for mere entertainment.
Regardless of all that, my point still stands that you are not Obama. You were insulting Church for calling Obama a moron if I can recall correctly, not because of the nonsensical argument she provided.
You are tired of arguing with people on mindless hatred, then take the initiative to not argue and save yourself the annoyance.
The fact still remains that you could not even look at the article, you are not forced to read it. If people just ignored the nonsensical idiocy that others spread then said person will eventually disappear.
I completely understand how you feel, but you can avoid it by not paying the person mind.
*Church is a female
I get the points of your argument full well, but you are not Obama as far as I can tell. My point is that you could have ignored the argument all together, or simply proved the evidence wrong instead of lashing back. It is going down to Churchmouse's level. However, I do understand your annoyance and agree, but you are still not the President of the United States of America, you are not the one being insulted.
Perhaps because you are not said person whom is accused of being a moron. What is the saying? "Be the bigger person." Or something along those lines, you could have ignored that and debated the "evidence."
While I did mention popularity, I did not mean to stress it as I felt it was a minor part of my argument. I also believe that my saying: "If such a party existed I doubt the public majority would side with another, killing the party system." Was quite the opposite to what you took from my argument.
The points I wished to stress more were:
The education of those involved with said party, would they be adequate? If they aren't they still have a say and can still vote up and have their also undereducated friends vote and imbalance a decision for the worse. As well if a group of people are extremely biased and rule off of that bias and not law, the party would not work.
If the party worked in the stricter sense I mentioned holding close to the website, those uneducated and biased can vote another person's vote into nonexistence. Thus those who banded together could rule the party and its decisions and not the vast majority.
I also based my argument on strictly "based off of the website," terms. So in my mind anything that can happen here, could happen within the party especially if it were to hold power.
If people can follow others around here and vote them down several times, basing a political party off of that would allow the same. If someone does not like a person, they can discredit them without even giving a reason. Because on here you do not need a reason to down vote someone, you would not need one in said political party.
With these taken into account I would say that a strictly Create Debate based political party would be the opposite of an improvement. However as I also said that if the party did not follow the ideals and guidelines of Create Debate so strictly, it could work.
Sense of Liberty: Developed by the British colonists, not the motivations of colonialism. As well many of the philosophies introduced in the American Sense of Liberty came from French philosophers. Voltaire, John Jacques Rousseau, etc.
Christianity: The British colonists sought to leave the form of Christianity that was practiced behind until it could be "mended." The type of Christianity they adopted was due to the fact that they wanted to get away from British styled Christianity at the time.
(Corrected by Axemeister.)
Language (English): As far as I know English has not been declared American. If you consider them adopting English because the colonists, at least the British ones, were British and considered themselves British then I have a feeling you should read up a bit more on that Era.
If we are on the subject we should also speak of how Great England was taken by the Romans and that its people were taught Latin and then developed at some point to English into account. By the English people accepting and adopting Latin you logic would also say that it was borrowed and then called English. Which it was not. Or perhaps Germanic touches to the language if you so please.
English itself took much from other languages and while it is considered "British," it is also considered "Australian," "American," etc.
Though yes, The United States is more borrowed than it is original due to the fact that it was not exactly set out to be original. However the examples you gave were not exactly the best, even for a strict British to United States sense.
I am not quite sure how to take this but, no The British Empire should not be tainted by the slave trade. As it has been for several hundred years. That is about all I can say on the matter, aside from the fact that no the United States has not kept the racism and what not longer. Some of the people of the United States and other Countries have kept the feelings. I would not pin something onto a country because a few people participate in it.
The induction of children to a site with a majority populous of "mature" users would require moderation. Based on a person's age they would be allowed to access either junior or regular debate. If one was to head into the other it would require they are approved for it, perhaps a test or such. Should one lie to gain access to either of the two moderation would weed them out. The problem with this however is that it would require more work on the side of Create Debate, scripting and heavier moderation/staff interaction. So with a junior forum and all other restrictions I suppose why not.
Also it depends upon the child, are they able to handle such a site? Some would need parental supervision, others no. For use in the classroom a debate could be created and moderated by the teacher for use when it has enough replies. Through banning and removing of vulgar people/ posts it could be used in a classroom. Though should it be used outside of a class, I am not entirely sure.
Yet without the existence of humans, a God could not be assumed thus his "creation" of good and evil would not exist. So to its end, the world without humans would be a world without the knowledge of God thus a world without the knowledge of good and evil. By this it would come to play that good and evil are man made concepts.
Taking things out of context to attempt to discredit someone is unsightly. If you are to respond, do so. Do not take what another says out of context in hopes to win over them.
How many do you actually feel would take the initiative to interact with said political party? If such a party existed and people became involved, would the need for said "party" exist. If such a party existed I doubt the public majority would side with another, killing the party system.
Some are not quite as educated or are very biased and with those uneducated or extremely biased opinions come unreasonable disagreements. Those arguments cannot be discredited, in a Democratic society at least. As well, if we were to do such and base it off of the website, people would be allowed to argue thus increasing one sides proportion to the other through disproving which would discount the vote. Which again in Democracy should not be done. As I said before, if we were to base it off the way the website runs then arguments would break out within the political party.
Note I am taking "based on this website," more strictly than just the idea of arranging ideas. However this does not have to be the case in such an occurrence, it gives something to debate about. If I were to take it less strictly... I would be supporting your answer right now. While I support the idea in a less strict sense, taking the idea strictly opens more room for debate.
If it be decreed, so shall it be carried out.
...If such an order is backed by law, which it is then it should be followed. An order is an order, it must be followed should it not be ludicrous and within moral reason.
Is this not a re-post? Regardless I will quote myself here as I did there.
"Evil... Good... Though you may strive for the same thing... You dub evil and good, yet you do not take into account, that they are manifestations of the same thing."
By my rationality the concepts of Good and Evil come from decisions made by individuals based on their moral compass. By this logic yes the concepts of Good and Evil are merely human concepts and no larger plan exists for them. Without the existence of Humans and their moral compasses then the concepts of Good and Evil could not exist.
