Why do people still let this shit occur?

[vonkaar]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't compare you to the 8-year old case... I called you out when you talked about Mormons not being Christ-like. You responded by talking about Jesse Jackson.

So

and ditto to Leah

[brinstar]

logical arguments to mindia

[brinstar]

oh look he's still logged in

wonder what dazzling gem of self-justifying faux-piety he's typing up now

[vonkaar]

yeah...

I don't know why I keep coming back. I think he's the most successful troll I've ever known. I'm constantly falling in the trap.

oh well

[Narrock]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't compare you to the 8-year old case... I called you out when you talked about Mormons not being Christ-like. You responded by talking about Jesse Jackson.

So

and ditto to Leah

Wanna know a secret? I have yet to meet a Mormon I didn't like. Just like the old cliche goes. They are so friendly, family-oriented, and peaceful people. And I salute them, tip my hat, and laud their efforts to helping California's "Yes on 8" campaign. My issue with mormons is that they refer to themselves as Christians, yet they deny the holy trinity... the very core of the Christian faith. Then on top of that, they have 2 bibles, the second of which being "The Book of Mormon." I guess, in a way, I can't be overly upset with their misguided beliefs because I'll venture to say that 90+% of Mormons were born into that faith, and thus they think their way is the "right way." I have a broad scope of Christianity, having been raised with it (my dad is an elder in their church -- Lutheran Church LCMS), having left it in my late teens and early 20's in college (the "liberal" period of my life), then going back to it, doing bible study years later, and coming back to it.

The other issue I have, is with atheists. These self-proclaimed "free-thinkers" and "Intellectuals" who put themselves above Christians and think they are more intelligent, open-minded, blah blah blah are so damned irritating if something can't be explained through physics or one of the other sciences. I'm quite surprised by their arrogant and bizarre narcissistic elitism. Some of the most intelligent people throughout history believed in God: Einstein, Hawking, Pascal, etc.

Anyway, it seems like we've been down this path before. And soon after, you hit me with the banhammer. lol

[Narrock]

yeah...

I don't know why I keep coming back. I think he's the most successful troll I've ever known. I'm constantly falling in the trap.

oh well

Troll? Surely you do know the definition of what an internet message board troll is, and certainly, you cannot label me as such.

And you still have this as one of your sigs:

Narrock wrote:Hey you know what Ralph? If you don't want a kid... don't have sex. It's pretty simple.

Tell me how that quote relates to anything going on in my life right now.

[leah]

vonk why are you nyah-ing at me?

also: Lutheran Church LCMS is kind of redundant, no? (LCMS born and raised, baby)

[Narrock]

vonk why are you nyah-ing at me?

also: Lutheran Church LCMS is kind of redundant, no? (LCMS born and raised, baby)

Not really Leah. The Lutheran Church has a couple "factions" so to say. One is LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) and the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America).

[leah]

i know that, duh (like i said, born and raised LCMS). but you said "Lutheran Church LCMS" which in effect is "Lutheran Church Lutheran Church Missouri Synod." thus, redundant.


SEMANTICS!!

[Narrock]

I just looked up the Lutheran Church on Wikipedia. There's actually several different "factions" or "sects" or whatever you want to call them. Check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelica ... in_America

[KaiineTN]

Einstein wasn't an atheist, but he certainly wasn't fond of religions.

Einstein distinguished three styles which are usually intermixed in actual religion. The first is motivated by fear and poor understanding of causality, and hence invents supernatural beings. The second is social and moral, motivated by desire for love and support. Einstein noted that both have an anthropomorphic concept of God. The third style, which Einstein deemed most mature, is motivated by a deep sense of awe and mystery. He said, "The individual feels ... the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves in nature ... and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole." Einstein saw science as an antagonist of the first two styles of religion, but as a partner of the third style.

I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them. In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary. Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evaluations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

[vonkaar]

vonk why are you nyah-ing at me?

also: Lutheran Church LCMS is kind of redundant, no? (LCMS born and raised, baby)

sorry, I was saying 'ditto' to what you said.

[Narrock]

Einstein wasn't "religious" but he did believe in God.

Einstein regularly read the Bible, Old and New Testaments alike (which he continued to do throughout his life). He was taught the rudiments of Hebrew, but never mastered it, and he avoided the course for the traditional Bar-Mitzwa. He revelled in mathematics and music, especially in playing the violin, but recoiled from rigid orthodox rites such as those regarding kosher food, 3 compulsory rules, and Talmudic ways of thought. He began to develop a distrust of all authority, including biblical and religious authority. He had an unusually independent attitude of mind, critical but not sceptical, which was accentuated by his resentment against the authoritarian discipline of his German schoolmasters. This led him to give up his uncritical religious fervour in order to liberate himself from what he spoke of as "the only personal", but without becoming atheistic or hostile to religion.
He never lost his admiration for the fundamental ends and aspirations of the "Jewish-Christian religious tradition", and had no doubt of the significance of what he called those "superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation". 4 It was in this independent spirit, as "a typical loner", as he spoke of himself, without personal religious commitment, but with deep religious awe, that he cultivated and retained throughout his life unabated wonder at the immensity, unity, rational harmony, and mathematical beauty of the universe.

Later in life in a speech delivered in Berlin, he gave this illuminating account of himself:

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there.

And he had some nice things to say about Jesus:

Particularly interesting for our understanding of what Einstein held about God was his marriage to Mileva Maric, whom he had met in the physics classes, who belonged to a Greek Orthodox family in Serbia. While it was not personal belief or religious faith but physics which brought them together, there can be little doubt that it left some imprint on what he was to think and say of God, evident in the use he frequently made of terms such as "transcendent" and "incarnate" to speak of "the cosmic intelligence" which lay behind the universe of space and time, which seems to indicate that there was rather more than just a way of speaking in what he said and thought of God. This is clearly reflected in an interview which Einstein later in life gave to an American magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, in 1929:

"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"

"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."

"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"

"Emil Ludwig's Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."

"You accept the historical Jesus?"

"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." 7

In view of this interview it is understandable that Einstein is reported to have said that Christ Jesus was the greatest of all Jews

[brinstar]

PIN number

Personal Identification Number number

[Gypsiyee]

Admit it Gyps. You wanna sin with me now

shit, you caught me!

and to answer your question, Vonk, I told Jonathan mid-season that I think the Cavs have it this year. we'll see! we haven't watched much this season at all - didn't get league pass. I highly doubt we'll let that happen again, because he's been one hell of a sad panda without it.

[leah]

ATM machine!