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Precisely my position. As a newbie, I tried the point-by-point approach to debate with these types. It wasted both my time and my lifespan. Ignoring them is not an option, since they don't go away, and doing so would leave one with large stretches of complete anonymity in this group. What's left? ...
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(Dear Moderator: Would you add this to the BCC faq?) In case there are any ex-members of the "Boston Church of Christ" looking for a support organization, here's the number of "BostonEX" in Burlington, MA: 617-272-1955. -------- s.r.c readers in New England may be interested in seeing a series of news reports about ...
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It seems faith is the only tool available for emotional purposes due to the tragedy. As such it maybe fills a need, however I'm getting tired to see children dying in pain in Sudan due to lack of food, and assuming that God takes these sufferers to heaven after a painful death. Cheers, Kent
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930425 Let's start with the name "Rosicrucian". I took me a long time to come to the conclusion that there is a difference between a *member* of a "rosicrucian" body and BEING *a* ROSICRUCIAN. So when you say that you met some 'rosicrucians' you mean "members of a group that calls themselves rosicrucian". At least th...
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I'm sure there are many people who work with neural networks and read this newsgroup. Please tell Kevin what you've achieved, and what you expect. Indeed. I think dualism is a non-solution, or, as Dennett recently put it, a dead horse. Petri
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. Of some relevance to the posts on this subject might be Deut.23:2,
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Rick, I think we can safely say, 1) Robert is not the only person who understands the Bible, and 2), the leadership of the LDS church historicly never has. Let's consider some "personal interpretations" and see how much trust we should put in "Orthodox Mormonism", which could never be confused with Orthodox Christian...
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Actually if Mr X had something to gain by his claims his account of the events would nmot be the most respected. Case and point, the resurrection. By claiming that the resurrection actually happened the early preachers were able to convert many to Christianity. However, if you read Mathew 27:38 (?) and the case for the...
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[ ... my stuff deleted ... ] Bill, you seem to have erroneously assumed that this board has as its sole purpose the validation of atheism. It doesn't. This board is used to discuss atheism as a philosophy, to share posters' experiences regarding atheism, to debunk various theisms and theism as a whole, to share re...
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I recently came across this article which I found interesting. I have posted it to hear what other people feel about the issue. I realise it is rather long (12 pages in Wordperfect) by may well be worth the read. Except for the first page (which I typed) the rest was scanned inusing Omnipage. Some of the f's have ...
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kmr4@po.CWRU.edu (Keith M. Ryan) Pontificated: Is this from the Quran (or however it's spelled)?
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Me too. Our local used book store is the second largest on the West Coast, and I couldn't find a copy there. I guess atheists hold their bibles in as much esteem as the theists. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Bob Beauchaine bobbe@vice.ICO.TEK.COM They said that Queens...
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Well, you were going well until you hit this one. Hawaii was an independent country. A coup by Americans led to a request to annex it. The US refused, but eventually did annex it several years later during the Spanish-American War. -- "On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Leftover Turkey! O...
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To you, it shouldn't matter if you do evil things or good things. It is all meaningless in the end anyway. So go rob a bank. Go tell someone you dislike that he is a dirty rotten slime bag. What's restraining you?
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Thanks for the letter, your comments helped some. As to the last comment, I certainly realize that it was not intended to sound that way. I am still trying to understand *how* a spiritual being colud truly be one and three at the same time. All of the descriptions of this are either Platonic or sound like special pl...
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Of course not. I would think that would be great _fun_, not having ever felt the joy and peace the Christians speak of with a longing gaze. This is not what I got when I believed - I just tried to hide my fear of getting punished for something I never was sure of. The Bible is hopelessly confusing for someone who wa...
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What I mean is what I said. "What I want" does not automatically translate into "what I think is right." That is, it does not translate that way for me. If you reply that "I think it is ok to kill you because that is what I decided" then what that means is that for you "What I want" does translate into "what I ...
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In other words, the right of might. In other words, the right of might. In other words, he can do it, he did it, and your in no position to argue about it. In other words, you better do what this God wants you to do, or else!
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> I would rather spend an eternity in Hell than be beside God in > Heaven knowing that even one man would spend his "eternal life" > being scorched for his wrongdoings.... Stephen, I suspect that when you and I use the word "Hell," we have different concepts in mind. When you encounter references to Heaven in term...
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Probably because it IS rape. So nothing. It may work for some, but not for others: it doesn't give any insight into an overall God or overall truth of a religion- it would seem to be dependent solely on the individual, as well as individually-created. And since Christians have failed to show us how there way of li...
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| | > Mary at that time appeared to a girl named Bernadette at | > Lourdes. She referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception. | > Since a nine year old would have no way of knowing about the | > doctrine, the apparition...
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Like we have never heard of, or read these verses before? How about you read them in context, taking into consideration the times and places in which they were written; the local customs and pagan rituals; what the surrounding verses are talking about and how they interact with the rest of the Bible. There are ma...
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Well I am one of those (apparently) odd people who can sometimes control their dreams. For example, I might decide before going to sleep that I want to repeat a favourite dream, or dream about a specific place. Or if I am having an unpleasant dream, I can often (not always) redirect events to something more pleasant...
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Ouch, this is a good question. To me, not existing is worse than existing no matter what, so I will modify this question to be: would I be a Christian if it made no eternal difference in my reward or punishment? I hope this is in the same spirit you want. I personally am very goal oriented. It is hard for me to do th...
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I disagree. In the end, the *individual* is responsible for his/her own irrationality. The individual's belief in some dogmatic religion is a symptom of that irrationality. Atheists and agnostics, I would imagine, but yes, that was my point. An atheist would theoretically be just as ill-equipped to study the ph...
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: Arrogance is arrogance. It is not the result of religion, it is the result : of people knowing or firmly believing in an idea and one's desire to show : others of one's rightness. I assume that God decided to be judge for our : sake as much as his own, if we allow him who is kind and merciful be the : judge, we'll...
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Hello. I just like to share this rosary and other prayer propagation practice we do in my country. I am not sure if it is going on also here in the US or any other country. In all these 4 1/2 yrs. I've been here in Illinois, USA, I have not encountered it. May I just call it "Traveling Fatima" since I don't know of ...
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Actually, I've got an entire list of books written by various atheist authors and I went to the largest bookstore in my area (Pittsburgh) and couldn't find _any_ of them. What section of the bookstore do you find these kinds of books in? Do you have to look in an "alternative" bookstore for most of them? Any help w...
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Brian Kendig first states: I ask: Brian Kendig states: Make up your mind. And we do not end perfect either. We are never perfect. Can you name one person, young or old, past or present, that you deem perfect? Good luck. Then you lie to yourself. You do not know your shortcomings. I have clearly shown on...
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: In article <C5Mw03.9qr@darkside.osrhe.uoknor.edu>, bil@okcforum.osrhe.edu : > I'd say that what one chooses to observe and how the observation is : > interpreted and what significance it's given depends a great deal on : > the values of the observer. Science is a human activity and as such, : > is subject to the same...
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I don't have a stat, but, unfortunately, I did read generally that both smoking and belief in the supernatural (occultish garbage) is on the rise here. This is very interesting. I thing the principle is sort of the same though: all "philosophical" ideas are generally tried out and tested mostly during college year...
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Until recently I always understood the term "kingdom theology" to mean the theology of the kingdom of God, but now I have discovered that there is a new and more specialized meaning. I gather that it is also called "Dominion theology", and that it has to do with a belief that Christians must create a theocratic for...
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Everything we need to know about the seven seals is already in the bible. There is no "knowledge" of the seals that Koresh could have. Unless the FBI were to kill all publishers of the bible, it would seem the story of the seven seals would be bound to leak out.
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Archive-name: atheism/resources Alt-atheism-archive-name: resources Last-modified: 5 April 1993 Version: 1.1 Atheist Resources Addresses of Atheist Organizations USA FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION Darwin fish bumper stickers...
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Sounds as though you are confused between "what I want" and "what I think is morally right".
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Maybe before Babel,everyone including angels spoke the same language,so at Babel, God punished us by giving us languages different from the original one. So if that's the case,then angels now would be speaking in the tongue mankind spoke before Babel.
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[stuff about hard to find atheist books deleted]
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Absolutely not. I went through a "journey" of lukewarm Christianity, agnosticism, atheism, agnosticism, and now (although I know my faith is less than what it should be) Christianity again. I think it's a path many of us take.
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For your first set of questions (regarding the energy and will of Christ) I quote to you the relevant part of the Statement signed by both Eastern (Chalcedonian) and Oriental (non-Chalcedonian) Orthodox scholars a few years ago (Both families = both Orthodox churches) : 1. Both families agreed in condemning the E...
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What would you accept as sources? This very thing has been written in lots of books. You could start with Erich Fromm's _The Dogma of Christ_.
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The problem is that you imagine him inside this huge wall, unable to see reality. While he imagines the same about you. Clearly we have a case where relativity plays a big role concerning looking at opposite frames of reality. Cheers, Kent
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: > : >I think you're letting atheist mythology confuse you on the issue of : (WEBSTER: myth: "a traditional or legendary story... : ...a belief...whose truth is accepted uncritically.") : How does that qualify? : Indeed, it's almost oxymoronic...a rather amusing instance. : I've found that most atheists...
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I don't know either. Truth be known, so little is known of angels to even guess. All we really know is that angels ALWAYS speak in the nativ tongue of the person they're talking to, so perhaps they don't have ANY language of their own. Well, we are told to test the spirits. While you could do this scripturally, t...
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[re. Conner's questioning of the blissful afterlife as a reason why many joined the early Xian church] Do you mean Hyam Maccoby's _The Mythmaker_?
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[...] That brings up an interesting question. If this interpretation is correct, how would these people be getting into Heaven before Jesus opened the gates of Heaven?
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I've been following this train of talk, and the question of dismissing atoms as being in some sense "not real" leaves me uneasy. It seems to be implied that we obseve only the effects, and therefore the underlying thing is not necessarily real. The tree outside my window is in this category... is observe the l...
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Then delete the "unfortunately". Now tell me that the two statement say effectively the same thing. And to save everyone a couple of trips round this loop, please notice that we are only obliged to use force to preserve self. We can choose *not* to preserve self, which is the point of pacifism. And in this case...
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I would label him rather an original Christian, not a Pauline Christian, though. Sad that the original church lost the game. Cheers, Kent
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> When Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words: "Blessed art thou > among women" (Luke 1:42), it appears that this places Mary > beyond the sanctification of normal humanity. But Deborah says (Judges 5:24): > Blessed among women shall be Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, > Blessed above all women in the tents. ...
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Word is that the ones he let go were not his. --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------Visit the SOUNDING BOARD BBS +1 214 596 2915, a Wildcat! BBS------- "Foot" the Bill: let's get a new President.
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Gregg, you haven't provided even a title of an article to support *your* contention. You also have no reason to believe it *is* an anti-Islamic slander job, apart from your own prejudices. Why, yes. What's a mere report in The Times stating that BCCI followed Islamic banking rules? Gregg *knows* Islam is good, a...
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[On secrecy in LDS ceremonies. --clh]
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#|> # #|> #Noting that a particular society, in this case the mainland UK, #|> #has few religously motivated murders, and few murders of *any* #|> #kind, says very little about whether inter-religion murders elsewhere #|> #are religiously motivated. #|> #|> No, but it allows one to conclude that there is nothing inher...
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Um, Kent... just what *have* you been doing with his wife?!? ;-D
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According to CNN last night (Saturday 4/24/93) he has now found bullets in two of the corpses, in the head (that would indicate that the bullets were aimed at killing the humans). Cheers, Kent
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Arthur Clarke may have quoted the comment about knowing you're to be hanged in the morning concentrating a man's mind wonderfully, but the source of the comment is Samuel Johnson. (Pardon me if you already knew that.)
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If a Christian means someone who believes in the divinity of Jesus, it is safe to say that Jesus was a Christian. -- "On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Leftover Turkey! On the second day after Christmas my truelove served to me... Turkey Casserole that she made from Leftover Turkey. [d...
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Archive-name: atheism/overview Alt-atheism-archive-name: overview Last-modified: 20 April 1993 Version: 1.3 Overview Welcome to alt.atheism and alt.atheism.moderated. This is the first in a series of regular postings aimed at new readers of the newsgroups. Many groups of a 'contro...
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I have a copy. Why are you interested? Lance
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This may sound argumentative, but do the pro-homosexual crowd give the same support to church members that are involved in incestuous relationships? If we do a little substitution above, we get: "although by no means all episcopalians are sympathetic to incestuous men and women, there certainly is a fairly larget...
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Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
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Welcome. Hm. I get a little queasy around the phrase "aren't morally responsible", perhaps because I've heard it misused so many times. (I remember in college some folk trying to argue that a person who was drunk was not morally responsible for his actions.) In general, most folk can't control their dreams, but per...
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I think you have are addressing the wrong issue. The situation is more like: we both see some elves. This is established as fact since we can both touch them etc. Then one of us says, the elves have always been with us. The other says, no no there was a time before elves were here. Which is the positive argument?
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It isn't. It's usually treated as being about as reliable as any other single, uncorroborated source of information about a person for whom there is no other evidence. What do you mean when you say it contains mirables. I just opened mine and not a damned thing happened. Is there some special way to do this?
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[material deleted] [deletions] I don't necessarily object to the secrecy but I do question it, since I see no Biblical reason why any aspect of Christian worship should involve secrecy. But I am interested in your claim that early Christian practices "parallel" Mormon temple ceremonies. Could you give an exampl...
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isaackuo@skippy.berkeley.edu (Isaac Kuo) states in reply to deleted article about no-knock searches, arrests In general no-knock raids are to preserve evidence, like drugs, which can be flushed down the toilet. They are not the standard way to arrest a violent felon like a bank robber. If there is no need to searc...
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Paul's statement only asserts that that particular choice was not a matter of karmic fulfillment of the past, just as the fate of the man born blind (John 9) was not. There is no question here of the simplistic idea of karma as a machine that is the sole determiner of one's destiny. Even the eastern traditions, or ...
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The initiations ceremony for Knights ous is almost as secretive as that for the Mafia. What are the phases of initation and why the secretiveness?
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ites: I realized that my generalizations would probably have problems under scrutiny from various Asian points of view. They need to be discussed in detail, indeed. But for the purposes of this newsgroup and thread thus far and in this newsgroup, I risked oversimpli- fication. My main purpose was to emphasize tha...
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Are you sure you want to include Chalcedon here? I presume that you mean the description of Jesus as fully human and fully devine. Almost everyone would consider the majority of Copts and Armenians, and the Jacobites, as Christians, yet for 15 centuries it has been maintained that they disagree with the Formula...
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Uh oh, Michael; you typed "hell" and capitalized it to boot! Now Peter Nyikos will explain that you're not a real Christian! BZZT! Sorry Michael--the Nyikos Inquisition pointed out that I was hell-bound after one mildly scurrilous pun on "revealing oneself." Admitting to masturbation--well, I'm just shocked!
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Easy vs. Hard .....Easy on who? I had a rare very personal talk with my mother last year. She said that when she and my father were raising we four children, they did not try to raise us in this world as strictly as they were raised in their Norwegian Lutheran community. They felt that we would be alienated from them...
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I'm wondering if anyone knows the answer to a rather trivial question which I've been thinking about: What was the process used to divide the Bible into verses. I believe Jerome divided the New Testament, but I've never seen any discussion of *how* he did this. It seems rather arbitrary, as opposed to, for example, mak...
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I just received some new information regarding the issue of BCCI and whether it is an Islamic bank etc. I am now about to post it under the heading "BCCI". Look for it there!
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Probably not! The jesus freak's post is probably JSN104@PSUVM. Penn State is just loaded to the hilt with bible bangers. I use to go there *vomit* and it was the reason I left. They even had a group try to stop playing rock music in the dining halls one year cuz they deemed it satanic. Kampus Krusade for Khrist peopl...
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This will not, of course, deter the several die-hard Koreshies on this net, who will probably claim that the Tarrant County medical examiner (Dr. Peerwani) was coerced by the FBI into faking this evidence. Either that, or they'll claim the FBI shot them. The rest of us might contemplate the difficulty of determining...
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The following partial summary of a Theory of the Universe includes a little-known description of the CREATION of our Solar System: LARSONIAN Astronomy and Physics Orthodox physicists, astronomers, and astrophysicists CLAIM to be looking for a "Unified Field Theory" in ...
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This discussion on "objective" seems to be falling into solipsism (Eg: the recent challenge from Frank Dwyer, for someone to prove that he can actually observe phenomena). Someones even made the statement that science is "subjective" and that even atom are "subjective." This is getting a bit silly and the word "object...
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(Deletion) It has. There is a guy running around in Switzerland who claims to have been conceived similarly. His mother says the same. His father is said to be a bit surprised. But anyway, there have been a lot of Messiahs, and many have had a similar story about their birth. Or their death. A list of Messiahs co...
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I'm for the moment interested in this notion of the 'leap of faith' established by Kierkegaard. It clearly points out a possible solution to transcendental values. What I don't understand is that it also clearly shows the existentialism system where any leap to any transcendental direction is equal. In other words I...
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This all would also implicate that in order for the sinning 2 month old baby to get forgivance, he or she has to ask for help from Jesus. Somehow I find this a little bit amuzing. Cheers, Kent
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I see what you are getting at (or at least I think I do). Correct me if I am mistaken, but I *think* you are asking me if I still believe that we should uphold all of the Laws pertaining to capital punishment for such things as adultery, rape and other heinous crimes. As you may recall, Jesus was confronted by this ...
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being gay and Christianity are not compatible should I would absolutly love to have the time and energy to do so. The problem is to be totally fair I would have to go throught this type of search on every issue I belive in. I don't have the time, resources, or ability to do what you ask. Maybe you should pray that ...
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#Frank, unless you didn't realize it, you are just now involved #in a debate where we have various opinions, and each entity #has its own frame where the opinion is expressed. I think I #don't need to state the dreadful r-word. So, it's _sometimes_ correct to say that morality is objective, or what? After all, I coul...
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The 24 children were, of course, killed by a lone gunman in a second story window, who fired eight bullets in the space of two seconds...
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Hmm...are you a Taoist? Imposing limits *does* do something useful...it gives you something to go beyond. I tend to be a bit critical of any stratification of Taoism. I especially tend to frown on any suggestion that "orthodoxy" or "classics" have any special place in Tao. So rather than debate what "Taoism *RE...
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: However greatly we extoll Mary, it is quite obvious that she is in no : way God or even part of God or equal to God. The Assumption of our : Blessed Mother, meant that because of her close identification with the : redemptive work of Christ, she was Assumed (note that she did not : ASCEND) body and soul into Heaven,...
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[writing to someone else] Can we get back to using the terms "strong Atheist" and "weak Atheist" rather than this "hard Atheist" and "soft Atheist". I can imagine future discussions with Newbies where there is confusion because of the multiplication of descriptions. [rest deleted]
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Marhaba Nabil, If we posit two minds in Christ, the mind of the logos and the mind of the human Jesus, then we must admit two wills. A mind is not a mind without a will. I know this has been dealt with in past Church prnouncements, but there is a philosophical problem here that should examined. T. V. Morris argued...
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For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, Ephesians 2:14
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no its not. its due to the fact that there are two issues here: Religion and religion. religion is personal belief system. Religion is a memetic virus. people loudly proclaiming their beliefs are crossing the border from religion -> Religion. people that want to "save" others are firmly entrenched in Religion ("me...
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We have reached the point in our society when there are certain crimes that are so heinous that to merely be accused with them one is automaticly considered guilty and deemed not to have any natural rights much less civil rights. Among these are drug abuse, sexual perversion, and political incorrectness. Today Billa...
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You can tell your friend from me that I was in a publisher's warehouse one time and saw thousands of copies of The Joy of Cooking and every one of them was syllable-perfect. I have since sold all I own and become a follower of The Joy of Cooking. The incident I mentioned convinced me, once and for all, that The Joy ...
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Several replies to my post have said that I should get to know Christian homosexuals before judging them. I maintain that I was not judging them by saying that homosexuality is wrong. I would like to look at the responces to my post and make a general sterotypical evaluation of the people who responded to th...
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"broken" Again, as the original poster of the article, I apologize if it implied that atheism = brokenness. Such was not my intent and I apologize for any hurt feelings in the process.
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: : If the Bible is such incredible proof of Christianity, then why aren't : the Muslims or the Hindus convinced? : : If the Qur'an is such incredible proof of Islam, then why aren't the : Hindus or the Christians convinced? If God exists, why aren't atheists convinced? --
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Dear fellow Christians, I had a dinner last night with a bible study group which I am in. We had a discussion about the difference between Christianity and Islam. And I was shocked to hear that our bible study teacher said that Mohammad was indeed a prophet but of Satan. I said, "What??" I did not believe tha...
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BR> From: wpr@atlanta.dg.com (Bill Rawlins) BR> Newsgroups: alt.atheism BR> Organization: DGSID, Atlanta, GA BR> The problem is that most scientists exclude the BR> possibility of the supernatural in the question of BR> origins. Is this is a fair premise? I utterly BR> reject the hypothesis th...
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