Bible-beater pilots

Jay Honeck wrote:

I'll post here when I do.

I wouldn't do that, if I were you. There are still many places in the U.S. in
which claiming to hear voices like that is a straight ticket to the looney bin.

It's gotten better, though. They burned Joan d'Arc.

George Patterson
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can
be learned no other way.

Who claims to "really understand scripture"? I have some questions for
that
person.

Such as? If I don't know the answer, which is very possible, I know
someone who
will.

Start here....
http://users.adelphia.net/~jimswanson/DrLaura.htm

If you get these, I can come up with plenty more.

"H. Adam Stevens" wrote in message


I argue that it is explicitly unconstitutional for Congress to make a
law placing "In God We Trust" on a government document or "Under God"
in the Pledge of Alliegance.

Not necessarily. As long as the law passed does not endorse any specific
religion, it is within the bounds of the US Constitution.

Congress is
explicitly prohibited from making any law whatsoever "respecting an
establishment of religion".

They have not done so. That's my point. It's fine if you want to make a
case that "In God we trust" should be changed. You just don't have a
Constitutional argument for your case.

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

"Teacherjh" wrote in message


But...if that's the bias of the majority of the Members, where's
the harm?

The harm is that the whole point of the constitution is to protect
the minority against the tyranny of the majority.

My statement was specifically regarding the prayer offered at the opening of
sessions of Congress. Nothing more. Such a prayer can hardly be considered
"tyranny of the majority."

That said, I'll spend money no matter what is printed on it. So send
me some if you don't like what it says.

Completely agreed!

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

In article , "John Harlow"
writes:


Just get the heavy hand of the government out of the way, and the free
market
will take care of things better, chewaper, and without trampling our
liberty.

Hey Don, do you think we should have gone into Iraq?




Yes

This is another place where I disagree with many Libertarians, and my opposing
opinion has been published in the national newsletter.

And I really don't care if we found WMD's or not.

There are two world views that support entirely different paths. One is that we
are engaged in World War 4 (WW3 having been the cold war) against
Islamofascism. Islamofascism is not a country, it is a politcal movement that
has the support of some fraction of the Moslem world in numerous Moslem
countries.

If you are of the view that we are at war with Islamofascism, as I am, then
there is no need to justify Afghanistan, Iraq or any other location the war
takes us, independently, any more than we needed independent justification to
invade Tunisia or Normandy in WW2. We fought the Nazi's where we found them and
we have to fight the Islamofascists and their supporters and hosts wherever we
find them now.

If you do not see us as being at war, then it makes sense to analyse each move
independently rather than as part of a larger strategery.

Choose your world view. After that, either Iraq is a brilliant stroke of
strategery or it is an unjustified invasion of a soveriegn nation.

I believe we are at war, and that if we fail to win it decisively now, our
grandchildren will wind up trading nukes with a much larger and more advanced
Islamofascist threat.

--
Wm. Donald (Don) Tabor Jr., DDS
PP-ASEL
Chesapeake, VA - CPK, PVG

"H. Adam Stevens" wrote:

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message

Correct. Now. Who's claiming that Congress has made such a law and what
law is
it that they made?

Placing "Under God" in the pledge of alliegance.

They passed a *law* to do that?

George Patterson
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned
no other way.

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message ...


Placing "Under God" in the pledge of alliegance.

They passed a *law* to do that?

Of course they did. How do you think it go there?

The pledge was written in 1892, but adopted officially by act of congress in 1942.
The first Supreme Court challenge to it came in 1943 . Another congressional act,
signed by President Eisenhower, in 1954 added "under God."

My statement was specifically regarding the prayer offered at the opening of
sessions of Congress. Nothing more. Such a prayer can hardly be considered
"tyranny of the majority."


Rethink that. Instead of a Christian prayer, Congress faces Mecca and prays to
Allah. Most congressmen are Muslim. Nothing more.

You don't think there would be a subtle "tyranny of the majority" present here,
when every day the highest ruling body of the nation acknwledges its
subservience to Allah? It's the same as having our pilot certificate be
printed with Buddah on the background.

Jose


--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

Verbs Under My Gel wrote:
snip
Can we stop with the religious trolls, already? If that's not an
option, can we at least have some Judaic (?), Islamic, Hindu, Jainist
(?), etc. tracts thrown in for variety?

Yours in Ras Tafari (almighty God is a living man),
Zippy

************************

One of the things that attracted me to Zen Buddhism was the story of
several monks sitting around discussing religion. One of the rules of
the conversation was no one could mention God. If anyone slipped up and
did, they all laughed so hard they fell over.

That's an appropriate attitude.

************************

I don't know of anyone today actually practicing Christianity. What
most people consider Christianity is actually Paulism, created by a man
who never met Jesus except in a vision, a fanatic anti-christian who
after his "conversion" became a fanatic pro-christian, diluting whatever
message Jesus had by encrusting the faith with his fanatical ideas,
wrapped in the practices and beliefs of the culture he lived in.

The church he created went to war with a group called the Gnostics, who
basically said "The Truth" (whatever that was) had to be passed from
person to person, and that each individual was responsible for his or
her relationship with God. The Paulist church believed that contact
with God was only possible through the authority figures of the church.

The Gnostics were mostly killed, their books were mostly burned, and
subsequently the Paulist church shaped the world's view of
"christianity." The victor decides how the history will be written.

Some of the foundations of modern "christianity" came about because of
political considerations. The divinity of Jesus was decided at the
Council of Nice in 325 CE, not by the bishops, who could not settle the
matter between them, but by a declaration from Emperor Constantine, who
allegedly felt a divine Christ would be better for building a Christian
empire.

************************

I heard an interesting viewpoint recently on Judaism. While Judaism is
considered a monotheistic religion, this person says that early Jews
actually worshipped multiple gods, that all the different names for God
that you find in the Old Testament are actually different gods
worshipped by the early Jews, and that after the concept of One God was
developed, this was "spun" into One God, Multiple Names.

************************

I figure religions are so important to so many people, that the need for
religion must spring from some basic need common to all people. My
theory is that there is a force in the universe, that I can only
describe as "The Tendency Toward Organization", that is a counter to
Entropy (the tendency toward dissolution or chaos).

Matter organizes itself into atoms, molecules, etc. Hydrogen gas clumps
together and organizes itself into stars. Dying stars spew out heavier
elements that end up organizing themselves into planets. Amino acids
organize themselves into self-replicating strands of DNA.

This goes on until we end up with animals and plants trying to organize
things outside themselves, culminating (to this point) in humans who try
to reorganize the surrounding world to suit them.

Part of the need to organize is the need to explain where all this
organization came from. That's the basis of religion, trying to explain
the events of the world we observe, trying to get some control over
those events.

The idea of this "tendency toward organization" as a counter to entropy
occured to me when considering one thought experiment used to demostrate
the one way nature of entropy.

Take a coffee cup. Throw it on the floor. It shatters into pieces. No
matter how many times you pick up the pieces and throw them on the
floor, they will never reassmble themselves into a coffee cup. Nothing
"in nature" will do that. Thus the inevitable entropic dissolution of
the universe is demonstrated.

Except -- how was the coffee cup formed in the first place? The problem
with the thought experiment is that it assumes that something "man-made"
is not "natural," that we humans are something "other" than nature.
This is a viewpoint that is basic to the Abrahamic religions: people are
above or apart from the rest of nature.

Obviously this is not true. Obviously the cup was formed from
components by some process. This process is different from the process
used to destroy the cup, but that does not make it something apart from
nature. Obviously, at least within the scope of the thought experiment,
humans counter entropy.

Nothing's ever that simple, but it seems to me that this property of the
universe, this 'tendency toward organization', might be the underlying
basis for the beliefs in "a higher power."

************************

How's that, Zippy?

grin

--
David Hill, Backsliding Buddhist
david at hillREMOVETHISfamily.org
Sautee-Nacoochee, GA, USA

filters, they're not just for coffee anymore

Religion is based on faith.

Science is based on doubt.

--

FF