Bible-beater pilots

"John Harlow" wrote in message


What "argument" other than "it serves no need being there" do you
need?

Why should I care? Why put dead presidents on the money? Why put anything?
*Any* decoration you put there will offend somebody so why bother in the
first place?

Sheesh. The energy you're wasting on that would be better directed to
something *really* worthwhile - like eliminating the DC ADIZ.

--
John T
http://tknowlogy.com/tknoFlyer
__________

"Wdtabor" wrote in message ...


To loose your license, you have to be consistently grossly negligent, commit a
felony, or forget to pay your renewal.

So, what goood does the license do that the private sector has not already done
better?

Will they issue you insurance without you showing a license? If not, then the
insurance company is relying (partially) on a government function to weed out
some of the undesirables.

But you still haven't made a case that the insurance industry is providing any
"better" service to anybody other than you.

There are some truly lousy dentists around with valid licenses. You have
to do
a lot more to loose your license than to become uninsurable.

What do you think this guy's rates will be?

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/ch...ws/7296916.htm

Well I like Douglas Adams. From Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest
thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from
its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious
mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with.
It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix
formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve
signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has
supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a
Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to
you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear
decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your
Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so
mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some
thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the
NON-existence of God.

The argument goes like this:

`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith,
and without faith I am nothing.'

`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It
could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so
therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly
disappears in a puff of logic.

`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that
black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's
kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune
when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well,
That about Wraps It Up for God."

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers
to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more
and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.


*****************************
-lance smith

You missed my point - I'm not saying God will give you the answer to
everything you don't understand - I said that God will reveal His nature to
you - that is the essence of real wisdom.

Humankind being what it is, we tend to think we have a right to understand
everything. I myself did all the things you spoke of - raised Catholic,
studied all the religions, etc.

I'd like to understand why God allows such things as Hitler, Stalin,
terrorism, pain and suffering of innocent children, etc. but have come to
realize that His ways are greater than mine. Again, it is the conceit of man
that we have a right to understand - that's what Satan promised Adam and
Eve - "You shall not surely die... God knows that when you eat of it your
eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

We place ourselves at the level of gods, thinking that if we can reason
something out, we can then understand it and thereby bring it under our
control. That is the essence of our "sin" - we think we have a right to
ourselves and to control our destiny.

We were created by God for His purposes - not ours. He is the Supreme
Being - not us. We don't care for that and want to bring God down to our
level by saying that we understand God. And when we can't do that, we say He
doesn't exist (I did that for some time) or that He is in nature or that He
doesn't care or that He is dead or anything that help us understand what's
happening.

Like I said, focus on the simple truths. That's not something the world
cherishes today.


John

On 24 Nov 2003 03:27:43 GMT, (Blanche Cohen)
wrote:

John T wrote:

No, that was just in there as a preemptive strike against those that
might argue that the reason all those other companies went out of
business is because MS has a better produce, they do not. There is the
rare exception where a quality product won out over the bully but I
think it was only because that product had been around for a long time
before MS tried to take them out, and their product had a large and
strong following as well as being of high quality.

MS bought Fox Software because it was a competitor to
Access. For a while, MS put the Access front-end on FoxPro but
in a short time, FoxPro went away. At the time, FoxPro was
far superior to Access. Don't know about it anymore.

Foxpro is still being sold and is up to version 8.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/in...663c1&type=ovr








randall g =%^) - PPASEL+Night - #320 only 346 short
http://www.telemark.net/~randallg
Lots of aerial photographs of British Columbia at:
http://www.telemark.net/~randallg/photos.htm

John wrote:

We were created by God for His purposes - not ours. He is the Supreme
Being - not us. We don't care for that and want to bring God down to our
level by saying that we understand God. And when we can't do that, we say
He doesn't exist (I did that for some time) or that He is in nature or
that He doesn't care or that He is dead or anything that help us
understand what's happening.

Like I said, focus on the simple truths. That's not something the world
cherishes today.

The simple truth that you believe yourself - and everyone else - to be
chattel? The simple truth that you assign your morality to some outside
party, and will do anything you believe it commands of you? The simple
truth that you believe you've no choice in the matter because you're merely
property?

It's little wonder that religion serves as a tool for manipulation of the
masses by those with malice or greed in their hearts.

But remember: you were just following orders.

- Andrew

"John" wrote in message
hlink.net...
You missed my point - I'm not saying God will give you the answer to
everything you don't understand - I said that God will reveal His nature
to
you - that is the essence of real wisdom.

I have been hearing that one for over 50 years but have never experienced it
nor have I ever met anyone who has. Could you provide real life examples
from average Joe type folks. Zealots need not apply.

"Wdtabor" wrote in message
...
I like arguing politics, and I will even venture cautiously into religion,
but
I find it far to polarized a battlefield to argue the relative merit of MS
and
it's competitors quality.

Amazing what the world has come to when religion evokes less of an emotional
response than the choice of a piece of software.

On 24 Nov 2003 14:25:12 -0800, (lance smith)
wrote:

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's
kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune
when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well,
That about Wraps It Up for God."


I like Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of theological blockbusters:

"Where God went Wrong"
"Some more of God's greatest Mistakes"
and
"Who is this God Person anyway?"




randall g =%^) - PPASEL+Night - #320 only 346 short
http://www.telemark.net/~randallg
Lots of aerial photographs of British Columbia at:
http://www.telemark.net/~randallg/photos.htm