Posted on 08/29/2006 6:51:14 AM PDT by headsonpikes
Sorry 'bout that. I'm trying to read, respond and reconfigure my server. Too much for my brain I guess.
How can you pay for the feast and wine without the money? Ecclesiastes tells you how to get along in the world but warns that it is depressingly futile to live your life making that your goal.
Now, if you read to the end of the book you could have thrown 12:12 at her :-),
And a lot of other people, I'm sure. But what is your authority?
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid).Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973
LOLOLOLOL
OK (and note that it's because of the Bible, Junior, not despite it.)
Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
I guess now you're trying to tempt--after all, the more time and energy expended at GrandMaster.com, the fewer silly evo-freak threads on FR.
And leave you with nothing to complain about? Wouldn't dream of being that callous, never fear...
You are a suspect in a crime -- did you commit one? What is the due process in investigating? The investigator can't ask questions of neighbors, co-workers etc.? Stake out a home or business? All that is invading privacy, and you're still considered an innocent person.
Of course there is morality outside of Christianity.
There is no "universal" morality in the sense that all peoples/societies/religions agree on all moral issues.
At least you know where you stand in the spectrum.
No we didn't, but thanks for your opinion.
Many on the Religious Right seem to think that the Constitution endows rights as opposed to being an organizational document. Amendments IX and X should have set them straight.
If so, add me.
Another falsehood which some think will become fact if repeated enough. The misleading of people into thinking that those who believe in God do so because they are afraid of retribution is a widespread practice among those of the atheist religion.
The "fear of God" is the fear that we will displease him, not that he will punish us.
But nice try.
The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of an earthly monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses. (MOSES WAS NOT A CHRISTIAN!)
Historically, this is proven over and over again with the successive conflicts between the forces of paganism and the Judaic culture. (This includes the idolatry of cultural Marxist paganism.)
A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a faux Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy.
They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
Today, "morals" are a religious pagan philosophy of esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.
Mosaic Law (of which the Ten Commandments is just a part) is the foundation of Western Civilization. Genesis is the primary focus of the Declaration of Independence, from where our Constitutional rights are derived. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our judicial system.
And yet there are (or have been) Freepers who found no problem with slavery. None of those were atheists.
And yes, he gave you the greatest gift of all time, the gift of choice. Something which most so called conservatives are loathe to duplicate.
BTW, if you think you won't offend God by using his gift, your brain, what makes you think typing the entire word God will offend him? Or are you afraid of offending someone else?
It doesn't sound like an experiment at all. It's an odd concept to have attached yourself to.
Who's logic?
letting the sixers in on the meaning of vi?
I would really like to find and bookmark that.
Could you post a link eventually, if it's handy?
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