Posted on 09/10/2013 10:07:53 AM PDT by Hoodat
Maybe Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss the idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control last week on the sidelines of the G20 conference. Putin sure doesn’t care that Obama’s taking credit for the proposal, or that the administration is posturing like a Mob enforcer. “The only reason why we are seeing this proposal,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, “is because of the U.S. threat of military action.”
Right, Putin is laughing to himself. Whatever. If Obama wants to sell it like a Christmas miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue that’s fine with Putin, because Putin won.
Reset with Russia was originally a strategic priority for the Obama administration because it saw Moscow as the key to getting Iran to come to the negotiating table. Putin, from the White House’s perspective, was destined for the role of junior partner. Now Putin has turned “Reset” upside down. By helping Obama out of a jam with Syria, Putin has made himself the senior partner to whom the White House is now beholden. Accordingly, when Putin proposes the same sort of deal with Iran, with Russia having established its bona fides as an interlocutor for Syria, Obama is almost certain to jump at it.
What’s unclear is whether Obama understands that his foreign policy legacy will be to have ruined the American position in the Middle East, our patrimony of the last seven decades. If the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled weakness, the Russian deal screams surrender. The real surprise is that it’s not Iran kicking the United States out of the region under Obama’s watch, but Putin. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Pivot?
I cannot, nor have I ever attempted to.
What would motivate you to ask me to try?
And so do I, dearest sister in Christ! Earnestly, fervently.
Lord hear our prayer!
Pivot - to rotate on a point, and go off in a completely different direction.
The sincere belief that it would do you some good to contemplate the origins from which phenomena arise.
I'm trying to get you to see the "big picture" here, while you seem to prefer bumping blindly around in the weeds of doctrinaire Darwinism....
Darwin's theory does not explain as much as you evidently think it does. And matters it does not explain, it tends to ignore.
I believe you should examine the source of the idea that I have not. It is apparently flawed.
p.s.: It tends to ignore, even to deny, what it cannot explain.
Show me any theory that does not.
Well, if you have been contemplating origins — e.g., of the universe, of its order, of life, of mind — what have you come up with by way of explanation?
I have concluded that the universe, and life itself is a result of divine creation, and that there is no scientific evidence or logical reason that life cannot have been designed and created with the ability to evolve. The theory of evolution is the best explanation we currently have consistent with the physical evidence.
“.... the autonomy we call “you” is necessarily bound to your particular collection of molecules at any given time...”
Spirited: There is an exception, one that terrifies dogmatic materialists: out-of-body experiences, NDEs, etc.
Freud the materialist was badly frightened when the demon-haunted Jung demonstrated his “powers” to him.
It may well be that lurking behind the dogmatic denunciation of spirit, soul, angels, demons is fear of their existence.
In any case, the spirit or soul is what has the power of free will and choice. That is where morality is attributable, not in the “collection of molecules”.
Thus far, we are in complete agreement.
The theory of evolution is the best explanation we currently have consistent with the physical evidence.
And yet Darwin's theory seems motivated by the desire to obviate the very idea of divine creation. Indeed, for some people, that is its entire appeal. Which is why Richard Dawkins has said that Darwin's theory permits him to be "an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Do you not see the inherent conflict between your first and second statements?
The operative words in your second statement are "consistent with the physical evidence." I suspect that Dawkins believes that only physical things are real. God not being a physical thing, therefore, He does not exist. He is merely an illusion of superstitious, ignorant minds.
So how can He have created anything at all?
OMG that is sooooo funny! :D
I don't try anthropomorphize theories. It's a theory, not a person. It doesn't have "desires".
I wouldn’t go so far as to say Putin “saved our boys from dying in Syria”....that’s a real stretch. He simply played the card Kerry and Obama gave him....Obamas the one one wanted a way out of his corner...not Putin. He just stands by and waits for Obama to leave and opening....
Putin’s a snake in the grass and no friend of the American people...do not drink his venom.
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