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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://forums.drabblecast.org/\nSecretnude's Drabble Poetry Corner\nhttps://forums.drabblecast.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327\nI will sleep meow\nPosted: Wed May 28, 2014 12:37 pm\nby secretnude\nThe Almighty Cosmic Cat\nwatched all that\nand said 'I will sleep\nmeow' as his TheoCat\nand the followers of that\nterrible ruler\nas a rule\ndid weep\nthen died\nas the formerly oppressed people also cried\nblood to even the score.\nThe Virtual Sentient Soul\nParametric Examination\nof the people that\ndied in this Cute Nation\nmeant that\nalmost nobody had a 'Clean' Soul\nand almost whole groups\nof the Cute Troops\nof that\nCute TheoCat\nwent to that\nawful mostly offline mass storage\nin their age\nthey called 'DLL Hell'\nwhere things don't go well.\n### Links ###\nPrevious viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&p=48937#p48937\nCosmic or Celestial Cat viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&start=1440#p48665\nDeity Pet Origins viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&start=1480#p48749\nTheoCat viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&p=48888#p48888\nGoto Hell: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&p=45764#p45764\nIn DLL Hell where things don't go well\nIn DLL Hell\nwhere things don't go well,\nthe Troops of that\nTheoCat\nfelt betrayed\nas they Prayed\nto that\nAlmighty Cosmic Cat\nnow as sleep\nas they do weep.\nThe TheoCat\nwas now naked and bound\nas his soon as his Troops found\nhis Sole\nby chance\nwhere things never tend to go well.\nwas now subjected\nto all the punishments he inflicted\nvia his conflicted\nCute Troops\nnow did Troop\nand cut the sexual parts\nbut the parts\ndo grow back\nbut the Troops\nonce again cut 'em back.\nTheoCat punishments viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&p=48911#p48911\n\"Stop for the Cute Heaven's Sake!\"\nof the Cute TheoCat\nall now in DLL Hell\nwhere things never\ngo well\nalso did break\nthe TheoCat's\nback with a hellish rake.\nshouted\nto \"Stop for the Cute Heaven's Sake!\"\nand his Words\nshouldn't be doubted\nsince his Words\nshould still be the Word\nseem to be asleep somehow.\nthe torture\nto stop\nbut the Troops didn't drop\ntheir torturous\nand reacted\nby starting to attack\nwith a hellish stick that\nmade the TheoCat\nspeechless without\na doubt.\nNext viewtopic.php?f=70&t=5327&p=49094#p49094\nA martyr for Science, being selfless and heretical\nMaybe Science has it's saints and martyrs too\nand in my view\ndying for the Truth is the most selfless act\nthat one can enact\nin reaction\nto the hypocritical actions\nof Dogmatic\nthat base their assertions\non the 'Infallable'\nPapal Authority.\nIt's quite hard to imagine a Human\nbeing 'Infallable'\nand yes the Church\nis Human\nbut the Church\ndid inhuman\nthings in the name of preserving Orthodoxy\nand eliminating all Heresies.\ncould be classified as a heresy\naccording to some strict interpretation\nof Judaism\nfrom which Catholicism\nand later Protestantism\nlater emerged via a Schism.\nSome authors have characterized Bruno as a \"martyr of science,\" suggesting parallels with the Galileo affair which began around 1610.[39] They assert that, even though Bruno's theological beliefs, or perceptions of them by others, were an important factor in his heresy trial, his Copernicanism and cosmological beliefs played a significant role in the outcome.\n\"It should not be supposed\", writes A. M. Paterson of Bruno and his \"heliocentric solar system,\" that he \"reached his conclusions via some mystical revelation....His work is an essential part of the scientific and philosophical developments that he initiated.\"[40] Paterson echoes Hegel in writing that Bruno \"ushers in a modern theory of knowledge that understands all natural things in the universe to be known by the human mind through the mind’s dialectical structure.\"[41]\nIngegno writes that Bruno embraced the philosophy of Lucretius, \"aimed at liberating man from the fear of death and the gods.\nEarth revolves around the sun, and that the apparent diurnal rotation of the heavens is an illusion caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis. Bruno also held (following Nicholas of Cusa[citation needed]) that because God is infinite the universe would reflect this fact in boundless immensity.\nThe universe is then one, infinite, immobile.... It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobile.[34]\nBruno also asserted that the stars in the sky were really other suns like our own, around which orbited other planets. He indicated that support for such beliefs in no way contradicted scripture or true religion.\nIn 1584, Bruno published two important philosophical dialogues in which he argued against the planetary spheres (Christoph Rothmann did the same in 1586 as did Tycho Brahe in 1587). Bruno's infinite universe was filled with a substance—a \"pure air,\" aether, or spiritus—that offered no resistance to the heavenly bodies which, in Bruno's view, rather than being fixed, moved under their own impetus (momentum). Most dramatically, he completely abandoned the idea of a hierarchical universe. The Earth was just one more heavenly body, as was the Sun. God had no particular relation to one part of the infinite universe more than any other. God, according to Bruno, was as present on Earth as in the Heavens, an immanent God, the One subsuming in itself the multiplicity of existence, rather than a remote heavenly deity.\nBruno also affirmed that the universe was homogeneous, made up everywhere of the four elements (water, earth, fire, and air), rather than having the stars be composed of a separate quintessence. Essentially, the same physical laws would operate everywhere, although the use of that term is anachronistic. Space and time were both infinite. There was no room in his stable and permanent universe for the Christian notions of divine creation and Last Judgement.\nIn Bruno's model, the Sun was simply one more star, and the stars all suns, each with its own planets. Bruno saw a solar system of a sun/star with planets as the fundamental unit of the universe. All these planets constituted an infinite number of inhabited worlds, a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism. According to Bruno, an infinite God necessarily created an infinite universe, formed of an infinite number of solar systems, separated by vast regions full of aether, because empty space could not exist (Bruno did not arrive at the concept of a galaxy). Comets were part of a synodus ex mundis of stars, and not—as other authors maintained at the time—ephemeral creations, divine instruments, or heavenly messengers. Each comet was a world, a permanent celestial body, formed of the four elements. Bruno's cosmology is marked by infinitude, homogeneity, and isotropy, with planetary systems distributed evenly throughout. Matter follows an active animistic principle: it is intelligent and discontinuous in structure, made up of discrete atoms. This animism (and a corresponding disdain for mathematics as a means to understanding) is the most dramatic respect in which Bruno's cosmology differs from a modern scientific understanding of the universe.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno\nPapal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church that states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error[1] \"When, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.\"[2]\nThis doctrine was defined dogmatically in the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870, but had been defended before that, existing already in medieval theology and being the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.[3]\nAccording to Catholic theology, there are several concepts important to the understanding of infallible, divine revelation: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Sacred Magisterium. The infallible teachings of the Pope are part of the Sacred Magisterium, which also consists of ecumenical councils and the \"...ordinary and universal magisterium.\" In Catholic theology, papal infallibility is one of the channels of the infallibility of the Church. The infallible teachings of the Pope must be based on, or at least not contradict, Sacred Tradition or Sacred Scripture.\nThe doctrine of infallibility relies on one of the cornerstones of Catholic dogma: that of petrine supremacy of the pope, and his authority as the ruling agent who decides what is accepted as formal beliefs in the Roman Catholic Church.[4] The clearest example (though not the only one)[5] of the use of this power, referred to as speaking ex cathedra[6] expressed since the solemn declaration of papal infallibility by Vatican I on July 18, 1870, took place in 1950 when Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as being an article of faith for Roman Catholics.[7] Catholics consider this authority apostolic, and of divine origin.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility\nThus uncensored versions of the Talmud influenced early medieval attitudes toward Christianity. In addition, mention should be made of the vehemently anti-Christian Toledot Yeshu (The Life of Jesus), a Jewish biographical narrative about Jesus, which probably appeared in its complete form around the 10th century. In it, Jesus is presented as the product of a rape--a disrespectful rebel who achieved supernatural powers by stealing a holy name from the Temple. In recent years, many Christian groups have reconsidered their traditionally hostile attitude toward Judaism, which has in turn, led many liberal Jewish theologians to soften their attitudes toward Christianity. Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Religion: A Companion, published by Oxford University Press.\nIn its very earliest days, Christianity was seen by the Jewish teachers as a Jewish heresy\nhttp://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs ... nity.shtml\nWe are all Heretics.\nI celebrate being Heretical\nsince in a Theoretical\nmanner if we use Set Theory\nto determine who can be classified as a Heretic\nwith a 'Union' of all that's heretical\nto any belief\nsystem, we are all Heretics!\nWe should never\nor even presume\nthat one belief\nis superior\nor inferior\nto another belief\nwithout objective evidence that the belief\nis indeed harmful\nand awful\nnot only\nto our Sacred or Secular 'Dogmas'\nbut also to Humanity.\nDogmas\nmight be the enemy of 'Free Thinking'\nsince Dogmas\ntend to resist all efforts at debunking.\nDuring a sermon in our Reformed fellowship I was taken aback by a statement made by our pastor who said,\n“You know, we need to understand that we all possess some heresy. There is no way we all have it down perfectly. We are actually all heretics in some area and until we are open to and humbled by this we will remain blind and never move forward toward the truth. As Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty,’ Jesus replied. ‘But you remain guilty because you claim you can see’ (John 9:41).”\nLikewise Roger Olson humbly confessed:\n“Everyone harbors some heresy in his or her heart and mind. The only question is–how serious are the heresies one holds? Of course, nobody thinks they harbor any heresies (in the sense of theologically incorrect beliefs).\n“…I have never met a Christian who was one hundred percent theologically correct. Scratch hard enough and you’ll always find some heresy beneath the surface (if not on the surface). That’s true for me as much as for anyone else. If I thought I held no heresies, I’d think I had already arrived at the fullness of truth–something even the apostle Paul did not claim.”\nhttp://godslovewins.com/blog/arent-we-all-heretics/\nFreethought or free thought is a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, or other dogmas.[1][2][3] The cognitive application of freethought is known as \"freethinking\", and practitioners of freethought are known as \"freethinkers\".[1][4]\nFreethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or the intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena.[5]\nA line from \"Clifford's Credo\" by the 19th-century British mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford perhaps best describes the premise of freethought: \"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.\"\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory\nWhen we talk constructively we don't fight\nROU Killing Time wrote: I spent the first 15 years of my life raised in the Catholic tradition, (to the point that I seriously considered the priesthood.)\nPersonal events and constant challenging from my brother, a university trained expert in philosophy left me in the philosophical position of classical atheism as you describe.\nI was once\na serious\nCatholic that once\nconsidered semi seriously\nbut my\nambitions were more shaped by\nFather who\nhas an Engineering\nDegree who\nis also God\nfearing.\nI lost my fears\nof 'God'\nin my teen\nIt had been\na hard journey being\na lone Atheistic Human Being\nin a sea of Catholics that\nare sometimes quick to judge people\ndespite of the refusal of Jesus to judge people.\nthe 'Majorities'\nshould engage in a meaningful dialog\nwith the 'Minorities'\nsince dialog\npromotes understanding\nand we get peace through mutual understanding.\nScientific Proof that Gordon Gekko was right....\nstrawman wrote: Have you ever seen Michael Douglas and Sean Penn in The Game?\nI am prepared by experience and every Darwinistic survival impulse to seek security. My goal is to be Michael Douglas. Then I am shaken by the discovery of sudden powerlessness: the discovery that all such security is an illusion I have trusted. Illness, war, a random misfortune, the loss of a loved one...\nTo suffer and to survive is a paradigm shift. A spiritual awakening, if you will. And each of the characters who experience this powerlessness is fundamentally changed.\nI haven't watched this Michael Douglas flick\nand he seems to stick\nto roles that acts like a 'Poster Child'\nfor the kind of selfishness that isn't mild.\nThe movie 'Wall Street'\nwas quite a feat\nthat was meant to defeat\nand mock the selfishness\nand the emptiness\nof the 80's 'Pursuit of Wealth'\nbut it ended up as rallying cry for the wealthy\nthat greed\nis very healthy.\nSome greed\nmaybe healthy\nand very little greed\nmay breed\nno ambition\nas was the condition\nin the defunct Soviet Union\nand its Satellite States\nthat Capitalist America once did hate.\nEgalitarianism is not all it's cracked up to be. A new study shows that inequality and social hierarchies can be good things—within certain limits.\nGreed really is good, as are income inequality, bullying across class lines and even the iron fist of the political strongman—in certain contexts, at least. That’s the conclusion of a new study from the University of Oxford, just published in Nature Communications. Using mathematical models of human social groups, the researchers found that when communities are hierarchically structured—meaning that there is a potential for high inequality too—the individuals at the top tend to make more of an effort in the interests of the group than those at the bottom, including competing with outside groups and facing potential danger in the process.\nThe authors detected that behavior across nearly all cultures, and cite corresponding studies of chimps, blue monkeys and ring-tail lemurs, showing that higher ranking individuals tend to venture closer to the perilous border of the group’s territory during patrols, and high-ranking females will join the males in combat with other groups. In return, the lower ranking members are allowed to become what is known as free-riders, hiding behind the skirts of the big shots and contributing little on their own. The price for this protection? Don’t cross the dominant members of your own group or they’ll direct their power—and ire—at you too.\nStudies like this always raise illuminating and troubling questions and are easy to exploit by nearly anyone with a social or political agenda. (See? There really is such a thing as the safety net turning into a hammock; the makers versus the takers really do exist. Or: See? Bully-boy behavior is the stuff of the apes, something egalitarian societies—and homo sapiens as a whole—ought to have left behind by now.)\nBut, as in nearly all matters of human behavior, the reality is more nuanced than ideology allows for. Throughout history there is a long tradition of powerful people who serve the group in some way being rewarded with more power still. Famous generals become Presidents (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower), not just because everyone knows their names but because they’ve proven their fortitude in battle and can prove it again if dangerous outsiders come calling. If you’re confused about Vladimir Putin’s stratospheric approval numbers at home even as he has made Russia an international pariah—at least in the eyes of the West—be confused no more.\nWe tolerate too the enormous wealth some inventors and industrialists accumulate because at least part of the time, they make our lives better too. (Thank you for the cars, Mr. Ford, and for the iPod, Mr. Jobs.) Admittedly, we’re a lot less tolerant when wealthy and powerful people create things that benefit only other wealthy and powerful people—(Thank you for, um, the $25 million condo that nobody I know will ever remotely be able to live in, Mr. Trump)—but we’d rather have an economy that rewards ambition than one that smothers it.\nFree-riding is more complex than it seems as well. There’s truth to the fact that in the past, at least, welfare could be a disincentive to work, especially when the work that was on offer was unappealing (you try working a deep frier all day) and paid little more than the free money the government was giving you. But there’s a limit to that—especially when it comes to arguments against extending long-term unemployment benefits.\nhttp://time.com/41680/greed-is-good-science-proves/\nGreed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.\n--Gordon Gekko\nDefending Greed as 'Moral'\n3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.\nIf all lived\nlike Christ, what economic system\nwould we live\nin and where's the incentive\nto be inventive?\nThe Capitalist System\nhas 'greed'\nin its roots and the elimination\nkills ambition\nand ambition\nis frowned upon in the Bible.\nIf we all lived Biblically\nwould there be a Bill Gates\nor a Steve Jobs\nthat some might hate\nbut they made so many jobs.\nNot all people\nwould probably be able\nto live in such a Utopia since some might disagree\nand want to stay in the Free\nwhere we get\nthat are very good.\na new line of argument has opened in the moral defense of greed, a change that was augured and embodied above all others by Ayn Rand. Rand understood that, when someone defended greed by an appeal to the common good, he was also conceding that greed could be checked by it. As the moral foundation for free markets, such an argument was entirely unacceptable to Rand, who took aim at it in her 1965 essay What is Capitalism?\n“Implicitly, uncritically, and by default, political economy accepted as its axioms the fundamental tenets of collectivism,” she declared in a sweeping indictment of the Invisible Hand tradition. “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve ‘the common good.’” That may be so, but it is “merely a secondary consequence.” Instead, capitalism is the only economic system in which “the exceptional men” are not “held down by the majority” and in which (as she said elsewhere) the “only good” that humans can do to one another and “the only statement of their proper relationship” are both acknowledged: “Hands off!”\nA woman who titled a collection of essays The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand was given to brackish candor. Yet at a time when many people think that the common good is more often imperiled than empowered by unbridled greed, she provides an alternative defense of the acquisitive instinct by appealing to an ethics of gross achievement and a formulation of personal liberty that looks with suspicion and disdain on any talk of civic duty, moral obligation, or even prudential restraint. Her aim was simple: To relieve greed, once and for all, of any moral taint.\n“I think greed is healthy,” an apparent acolyte told the graduating class at Berkeley’s business school in 1986. “You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” The speaker was Ivan Boesky, who shortly thereafter would be fined $100 million, and later go to prison, for insider trading. His address was adapted by Oliver Stone as the basis for Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech in Wall Street. An exhortation to shareholders of a sagging company, it reads like a corporate raider’s war cry, with Gekko the grinning avatar of Agency Theory.\nSuch a blunt endorsement of greed today remains far beyond the mainstream. If we tolerate greed, it is because we accept the hard bargain of the Invisible Hand. We believe that greed can do good, not that it is good. That, we are unwilling to say.\nBut for the most part, I don’t think we don’t say very much about greed, not comfortably at least. Perhaps that is the inevitable price of an economic system that relies on the vigor of self-interested pursuits, that it instills a kind of moral quietism in the face of avarice, for whether out of a desire to appear non-judgmental or for reasons of moral expediency, unless some action verges on the criminal, we hesitate to call it greed\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... ea/360265/\nThe “Protestant/Calvinist Work Ethic\"\nCalvin held that one's good works can't influence whether one is chosen by God to be \"saved\" or not. However, in practice, Calvinism does require a life of systematic and unemotional good works (interpreted here as hard work in business) and self-control, as a sign that one is of God's chosen \"elect.\" Thus, ascetic dedication to one's perceived duties is \"the means, not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnation.\" (Ibid., p. 115) One must prove one's faith by one's worldly (i.e. economic) activity and ascetic self-control.\nBy founding its ethic in the doctrine of predestination, [Calvinism] substituted for the [older Roman Catholic] spiritual aristocracy [or \"elite\"] of monks outside of and above the world the spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints of God within the world. It was an aristocracy which… was divided from the eternally damned remainder of humanity by [an]… impassable and … terrifying gulf …. This consciousness of divine grace of the elect and holy was accompanied by an attitude toward the sin of one's neighbor, not of sympathetic understanding based on consciousness of one's own weakness, but of hatred and contempt for him as an enemy of God bearing the signs of eternal damnation. (Ibid., pp. 121-122)\nNow, it's rather natural, if one is a Calvinist, to be constantly looking for any little indications that God does approve of oneself, that God has predestined one to be redeemed, that one is \"of the elect\" of God. And how might God give any promising little hints? Well, material success is one way. If one has a successful business, God seems to be smiling on one! And as for those poor destitute farmers who just lost everything they owned due to a drought, well, God is all-powerful, and must have decided that they should suffer. And who are we miserable sinners to disagree, and thwart the plans of God?\nhttp://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~bgoodric/Th ... merism.htm\nWe Catholic\ndo 'envy' a bit the Countries\nthat have the Protestant Work Ethic.\ncan indeed hold back economic\ndevelopment and if Religion\nsay greed\nisn't moral when the economic\nsystem is based on greed\nwe may get economic\nacross generations.\nCalvin's Doctrine of Predestination\ndoes augur elimination\nof 'Good Works' into consideration\nin Heavenly Salvation\nsince God\nalready decided your fate\naccording to your faith\nand your fate\nis up to God\nand God\nThis alone\nfreed the Protestant Merchant Classes to be 'Greedy'\nunlike the more Charity\noriented Catholics that are now more needy.\nRe: Secretnude's Drabble Poetry Corner\nby strawman\nThe Capitalist system is fundamentally nothing more than the freedom to create, chose, and interact with others. As in many areas of life, there is a tension between unfettered freedom and moral values, and this tension manifests itself in laws, fees, taxes and regulations. These are restraints on free activity.\nSince at various stages the restraints range from minimal to stifling, the blanket term \"Capitalist System\" seems too broad to cover all the ground. Also, \"Greed\" is not the same thing as its older brother, self interest. Aside from Gordon Gecko, Greed is seen as negative, while self-interest is simply assumed as natural, right?\nCarnegie was 'Greedy'\nstrawman wrote: Also, \"Greed\" is not the same thing as its older brother, self interest. Aside from Gordon Gecko, Greed is seen as negative, while self-interest is simply assumed as natural, right?\nAndrew Carnegie provides a perfect example of how both greed and giving can work together. In the late 19th century he was the richest man in the world, and in 1889 he wrote a piece called “Wealth” where he argued that the adult life of an industrialist should comprise two parts. The first part was the accumulation of wealth. The second part was the distribution of that accumulated wealth to benevolent causes. Philanthropy, Carnegie argued, was key to making the life worthwhile.\nAnd Carnegie was no piker when it came to giving. By the time he died, he had given away 90% of his wealth (equivalent to $4.5 billion today) with the remainder to be distributed by others.\nIn Rush’s parlance, Carnegie fed many people via both greed and charity. By creating the heart of what became the most valuable company in the world, Carnegie provided food and shelter to tens of thousands of workers around the world and hundreds of thousands of family members. Whether you call it greed or self interest is immaterial. It supported hundreds of thousands of people and it gave Carnegie the resources to give to charity. Carnegie’s giving did not simply feed a man for a day. On the contrary. He wanted to prepare recipients to feed themselves for a lifetime. The majority of Carnegie’s giving came in the form of financing universities and libraries around the world where men could improve their lot in life through education. His was a gift, but he required something from the recipient in order to take advantage of it. Be it studying or reading, the recipient of Carnegie’s largesse was involved in the improvement of his own condition.\nAt the end of the day, as usual, Rush was right. The good Carnegie was able to do was driven by his pursuit of his own self interest. Same deal with Gates, Rockefeller, Ford and even Mark Zuckerberg. The result was that they improved the lives of their workers, their customers and the recipients of their gifts… but it all started with a profit motive. And it’s true on a national scale as well. America became the breadbasket and economic engine of the world through the pursuit of profit. That profit motive and the success it created allowed the United States to become by far the most generous nation in the world.\nhttp://www.redstate.com/diary/imperfect ... m-success/\nGreed n. = Covetousness\nCovetousness n. = Acquisitiveness\nAcquisitiveness n. = A desire or propensity to acquire possessions\ni.e. Greed is seeking to maximise private property, by desire or propensity.\nAt what point is greed not rational self-interest? Is there an upper-bound on greed?\nhttp://objectivistanswers.com/questions ... from-greed\nWhen Andrew Carnegie read in the Newspaper that Rockefeller was the richest man in the world, he got jealous! He was not happy that he was named the Second richest man in the world. So he set out to become number one. He started manufacturing steel and put it to many uses such as making steel bridges and rails for trains to run on and steel beams for New York’s sky scrapers.\nHe still was not the richest man in the world so he hired Henry Clay Frick who was known for his underhanded ways when it comes to making money. Frick forced Carnegie’s steel workers to work longer hours for less pay.\nFrom the blood and sweat of the underpaid workers production is increased! With the extra money Henry Clay Frick constructs the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and retreat for the Wealthy! He is told by officials that constructing this retreat will weaken the dam. The weakened dam collapses on Memorial Day 1889 in which thousands of people in the valley were killed sweeping the town away. This historic event known as the Johnstown Flood leads to Frick’s down fall.\nThe irony of this is that a telegraph was sent to the Telegraph Office in Johnstown warning that the dam was about to collapse but this warning went unheeded because the Telegraph Office had heard this warning several times previously. They did not seem to take into account that the rain was coming down heavier than usual on this day.\nThe steel workers revolt against the long hours and lower pay!\nThey set up a union and strike. They barricade the plant to keep Frick from hiring workers to replace them. Meanwhile Carnegie stays out of the United States to keep from being blamed.\nFrick hires the Pinkerton Guards to keep the workers from barricading the plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was more powerful than the American military at that time. It was an over kill effort in which many steel workers were shot and injured. The government had to call out the National Guard to restore order!\nhttp://business.wikinut.com/The-War-bet ... /3r9815_t/\nJust change the names of these characters to some otherworldly names, and this might make an interesting piece of syfi.\nby ROU Killing Time\nI wouldn't say I ever feared God so much as I feared being God. I haven't ever, nor do I now believe in salvation at the barrel of a gun*. But as you have correctly noted, we are all heretics (in someone's eyes) and I'm certainly well certified as being crazy.\n*it's my personal belief that Jesus went to extreme lengths to dispel that myth.\nExpose a Calvinist position in a mostly Catholic nation\nROU Killing Time wrote: we are all heretics (in someone's eyes)\nOur Catholic Family was Heretical\nsince in the dialectical\nbetween a Calvinist \"poor aren't blessed\"\nand a Catholic \"poor are blessed\"\nour Family chose\nto expose\na Calvinist position\nin a mostly Catholic nation.\nIt was a matter of convenience\nas we are wealthy\nand Catholic guilt is very unhealthy.\nMe and my brother saw the hypocrisy\nand conveniently\nleft all that guilt that's unhealthy.\nMaybe Calvin is right\nand the Catholic nations\nare less Holy than Protestant nations\nbut I might\nalso point out that Japan\nis rich and a Nonchristian nation.\nGod must smile at the nice\nJapanese.\nif one is a Calvinist, to be constantly looking for any little indications that God does approve of oneself, that God has predestined one to be redeemed, that one is \"of the elect\" of God. And how might God give any promising little hints? Well, material success is one way. If one has a successful business, God seems to be smiling on one! And as for those poor destitute farmers who just lost everything they owned due to a drought, well, God is all-powerful, and must have decided that they should suffer. And who are we miserable sinners to disagree, and thwart the plans of God?\nSomething about sending rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike comes to mind.\n(I'm fairly certain I'm not a Calvinist.)\nI suppose my main heresy is a willingness to question the journalistic infallibility of the bible while understanding why Jesus' sacrifice was a perfect solution to what had previously been an insoluble problem.\n(Namely that a perfectly just God must condemn all sinners to eternal death.\nThe scripture say all men are sinners.\nTherefore all men are doomed to die.\nOr else God is not just, and therefore is not God. A theological catch-22.\n(One can perhaps imagine God saying \"oops, I have to damn my entire creation.)\nThen Jesus comes along and lives a perfect life according to the rules.\nJustice now demands that Jesus, and He alone must be judged \"not guilty\" by virtue of having never sinned.\nYet, he is condemned to die sinless.\nEven Pilate in his seat of Roman authority finds no fault, yet crucifies him to keep the peace (and likely spare himself crucifixion should he fail as Governor to keep the peace.\nBut here we have a similar catch-22.\nGod has damned the only sinless man, therefore God is not just and therefore is not God.\nUnless Jesus wasn't just a son of man (as we all are, after all) but is also the son of God, and by inheritance God himself.\nIn which case he can do whatever He wants, including destroying mans false conclusion that all men sin so all men must die. <non sequitur>\nAt this point I can here Jesus muttering \"over My dead body.\"\nAnd making the sovereign decision that love and forgiveness trumps a rigged system from which there can be no escape.\nThey call it \"grace\" but it's no different than any earthly mother or father finding it ridiculous thought to kill their children for making a single mistake.\nWhen I look at my sons and daughter that's certainly a no-brainer for me.\nMy own parents have forgiven countless of my errors and sins.\nTo suggest that I (in my role as father) or my parents in their role are more loving and forgiving than God, well that just seems silly on the face of it.\nSo I see Jesus role in all of this as taking back what man stole from Him by claiming perfect knowledge of God, and his judgement, and mankind's certain doom at this perfectly just God, and revealing that God's true nature is much like the love any parent feels when they see their child for the first time, except that it is expressed with perfect grace. A gracefulness that would lead him to die by torture, rather than to be cursed to live in a divine hell of His own making, where He would have to watch everyone of his beloved children or brethren or parents (in his role as son of man) die a tortuous death upon a cross while He was forced to look on in the name of justice.\nHe would rather die Himself, in the name of grace.\n/end of my heretical theosophical rant.\n(I hope Miss Grimsley will be graceful enough to forgive the grammatical errors in the previous diatribe, or else I'm certainly damned for sure.)\nThe Jesus Bug\nThe question would be, why should Jesus appear\nat that particular juncture\nof time for sure\nand what about those that failed to hear\nthe 'Gospel'\nto dispel\nthe so called Original Sin?\nIs God condemning previous Generations\nof his 'Creations'\ndue to the Original Sin\nor an imperfection\nof his own 'Purrfect'\nCreation?\nSome of His 'Creations'\nyou see\nsee no need for Salvation\nand the mere mention\nof the need for Salvation\nreminds me of a certain bug\nthat my mind can't sweep off the rug.\nA Jesus Bug\nis also known as a Water\nStrider.\nROU Killing Time wrote: I suppose my main heresy is a willingness to question the journalistic infallibility of the bible while understanding why Jesus' sacrifice was a perfect solution to what had previously been an insoluble problem.\nJesus bugs. One main characteristic that sets gerrids and other true bugs apart from other insects is that the front wing is only half functional. Rather than using it for flight, it acts as a membranous covering and the thickened part is by where claws develop. Consistent with the classification of Gerridae as true bugs, gerrids have a mouthpart evolved for piercing and sucking, gerrids distinguish themselves by having the unique ability to walk on water. Gerridae, or water striders, are anatomically built to transfer their weight to be able to run on top of the water's surface. As a result, one could likely find water striders present in any pond, river, or lake. Scientists have identified over 1,700 species of gerrids, 10% of them being marine.[2]\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerridae\nEntirely possible (and actual biblical precedent) that it may be the only people in need of salvation were those that believed they were in danger of damnation, and that others, such as yourself, already had the law to love others as yourself already written on their hearts.\nSome of the most Christian souls (if you'll allow the term) that I know are atheists.\nI can't imagine a God torturing a good person for honestly not processing their world view in terms of \"diety\" and \"created\" any more than I believe I'm salvation at the barrel of a gun.\nBut as I say. I'm a heretic.\nLet's translate this to a more modern terminology.\nIn the beginning was the Meme, and the Meme was with God, and the Meme was God.\nAnd thus was self-reference born allowing for the Meme \"I Am\" to be.\n(or not to be.)"