The Col: Well I can't hear any riots or (seeing as I live near a military base) gunfire as the Muslims in our area rise up. One I personally know is more concerned about his gadgets....

.. he's a computer nut.. loves Apple but hates Microsoft.

Artful Dodger:

Pehaps you should read or remember...

"As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not - and never will be - at war with Islam. I've made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al-Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity."


Perhaps it could be said that your bias is making you clueless.

Iamon lyme: Maybe it's all in Conservative American paranoia that he had something to hide and nowhere else. The focus on his birth certificate reminds me of an old Zen story of a monk accused of having a baby with an unmarried woman who said it was him to protect the real father.

His reply to all the accusations.. "Is that so?"
http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/isthatso.html

"Obama was in control of the story."

.. Is that so?

Artful Dodger: Then why did the Christian west teach them so well to kill?

.. Oh... It was Russians back then that they were originally taught to kill, I suppose being heathens it doesn't count in the eyes of some Western observers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382241/Barack-Obama-faces-fresh-doubts-Hawaiian-heritage.html

"Where's The Birth Certificate? - subtitled The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President - already has advance sales of 150,000 copies and is likely to enter the market at the top of Amazon's sales list. Joseph Farah, founder and chief executive of the publishers WND, claims that it will be one of the biggest books of the year, with sales of at least 500,000 copies................... His views, though, are anything but ordinary. In 1996 he seriously considered running for president under the far-Right Constitution Party banner, though he ultimately withdrew, and has made a number of wild and unsubstantiated claims, including suggestions that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lesbian, and that Muslims worship Satan.

Lot more in that article... I think that's why it took two writers to write it.

Iamon_lyme: So has Palin and other Republicans.. So do celebrities and other famous people such as those who do well in sports, those who play the religion game, etc, etc.

Singling out just Democrats as the only people who write books after leaving a job is a little one sided and only half the story.

Iamon_lyme: No I did answer it. The families paid for it. The only bill the tax payer paid for was security.

"the one most to gain from questioning Obamas legitimacy was Obama."

No.. it'll be the ones selling the books carrying on the questioning. Jerome Corsi I see from news reports is publishing yet another of his books on the 'truth' of the matter for Conservatives to read and say "I told you so". Donald Trump has also played on the birth certificate matter to boost his support in the Republican/Tea party camp.

"This is why you continue bringing it up, is it not? "

Nope. I only brought it up because it was mentioned on this board by another and used it as an example of how some Americans are still caught in political hogwash.

"You don't tell your Queen what to do or say"

Yes she does get told what to do and what to say regarding certain of her roles as Monarch. She is our Queen, not the government or our PM.

Artful Dodger: "so instead they engage in never-ending ad hominem."

Artful Dodger: Talking about Glenn Beck again.

Or this?? Politics (Artful Dodger, 2011-04-30 19:37:56)

Iamon_lyme: No voices... just reading the news and various sites over how this stupidity over a birth certificate has been playing. Some hard right nutters have even been trying to say that Hawaii is not a state of the USA.

As to Art's "In reality, there was no kangaroo court."

Kangaroo court is an expression of how some people can judge someone/thing without credible evidence. It quite fits how some hard right nutters make up conspiracies (in this case that Obama is not an American citizen) and despite proof carry on thinking they are right.

Iamon_lyme: So.. you are saying that the tea party are copying "democrat/crack party" art and making it their own? They are more nutty so you say!!

Iamon_lyme: Comply to whom? The kangaroo court that some Republican/tea party members set up.... I ask you. Under what constitutional premise or law of the USA states that the President has to answer to such bogus courts?

Is Sideshow Bob in charge??

Iamon_lyme: Long term.. as well as the financial income they generate by being a loved Royal family... they are a great tourist attraction.

As to savy.... "President Obama is not a natual born citizen therefore he is ineligible to be president".

Conspiracy theory or just plain bad form due to losing the Election?

Artful Dodger: Comparing two time dates with a 44 year gap without the relevant background data explaining aspects of demographics and vote swings due to dynamic changes in Democratic Party and Republican Party core policies...

.. Do all Americans really fall for empty figures like that?

Iamon_lyme: The families. Great thing to have a constitutional Monarchy.

Iamon_lyme: By all standards a lizard (if you know your Douglas), then there is the turkey... But at least this time side shows over birth certificates might be avoided.

... At least some cracks have been made in rip off America where the rich get richer and the rest of Americans pay for it.

Coca Cola were on UK TV tonight claiming that UK citizens would rather have a cheap t-shirt for their reward points than say a i-pod nano.. or a cheap hat rather than a nice 12MP camera.

They know us so well ..... and I bet the t-shirt and hat are made in China.

.. they wouldn't lie would they??

.. mmmm slight problem with tea party/republican election plans... do they have a credible candidate.

Iamon_lyme: The tax rates in the USA are low compared to 40-50 years ago. America's golden age was more to do with that Europe/Japan/China & Russia were rebuilding, for if it were taxation.. then why with high rates back then was America apparently doing so well?

As for globalisation..... multinational firms have been more hell bent on that, and have added more to the fall of small firms than any government has.. imho.

Übergeek 바둑이: I know they were, but the whole point of the Protestant movement was freedom away from the RCC and such abuses of religion I thought. I'll have to see if I can catch that prog on UK TV on how with a little training someone can get and be a minister healin' and preachin' in the name of God and raking in 'donations'.

Übergeek 바둑이: They tried to introduce grandparents day here... it failed.

btw you missed out St George's day.. but it's not really celebrated as much as St Patrick's day.. especially via the shops and beer sales!!

Iamon_lyme: We don't seem to have the problems you guys in the USA regarding religion, paganism and all the division's. But as the old saying goes.. America turned Christianity from a religion into a business.

Übergeek 바둑이: Mmm without the birth and the declaration within of a child born of God... ... anyways... this whole debate over needing it recognised seems to be very idolatry. Using Easter as just another reason to get angry for no real reason than just wanting to being angry at Obama yet again.

Artful Dodger: I thought the birth Of Christ was more important... or maybe that it was just a replacement for various pagan holidays celebrating the coming of the new year.

ie The winter solstice.

anyway.. with the amount of Easter eggs and Easter displays by various companies selling Easter products I'd thought it would be hard to miss.. So why do we need a President confirming an event exists we already know about?

Bwild: No. Because there is a big difference between a galaxy being the universe and 100's of billions of galaxies being the universe, each containing 100's of billions of stars.

Iamon_lyme: I find the use of the words.... overused. If God is then God is a natural being and not supernatural. As to the word paranormal.. I find it woefully overused and abused.

.. Then that must be spiritualist in me!!

Bwild: Yes there were astronomers throughout time... but most were limited by the lack of good equipment such as high resolution telescopes and thought this galaxy was it!! Just as in the past they thought the Earth was at the centre of the solar system.

I don't need to google. You may if you do, but much has been said in the news and talks on history since the launch of the Hubble Telescope, plus science/history classes of old covering such matters I still remember.

Iamon_lyme: Hell is one word, German in origin... yet the originals that were converted to German would have four words used. One of those words used is a place that is no longer... "Gehenna" aka "the ravine of Hinnom".

One other being hell on earth as in "we are legion" the division of 'God/Life' into pieces eg us/them.

http://www.concordant.org/expohtml/DeathAndJudgment/TheGehennaOfFire.html

GT: Or Doctor Who!!

Iamon_lyme: Yes.

We've got early summer here. 24oC on average over the last week. Extremely unusual weather compared to our normal April showers!!

Iamon_lyme: Not really. It is and it isn't. I think it'd fairer to say .. it just has no breathable atmosphere. Dark matter/energy exists and we can't see them, particles of ice and gases float about. The sun is giving off constant bits of matter through expulsions as well as various forms of energy. It's like visualising air and seeing in the emptiness all the other forms of energy (such as ley lines)

Same as we say Zero G.... it isn't. You still have various tugs and pulls from other stellar bodies, if we didn't.. there would be no life. Our sun causes enough curvature to cause the Earth to not want to go in a straight line. To get to the moon, you just have to get far enough away from the Earth so that the moon's gravity has enough of a 'slope' to let us slide into an intersection.

As to the kid.. yes he's still learning.. but as one old song bite use to say "don't believe the hype".. He's smart, a good IQ (though personally I think IQ can be an empty yardstick in some ways) and saying he'll out prove Einstein ... ... Maybe he'll manage to merge the Macro and Micro universes ... He has more importantly the ability to question, to look a things and probabilities. It's like when I did science as a kid. I got told lightning came from the ground up.... but that was wrong, and as I found out just recently (the final piece of the story) .. it can start from the ground or from the clouds.. both at the same time, as well as (from about a decade ago) helps to clear certain particles from around the Earth that in time could cause radiation damage to our way of life.

Just the theory my science teacher taught was incomplete from I gather the 1930's, just as how I was taught in the 70's about electrons and how they move was incomplete.</b>

Artful Dodger: Slight problem in his thinking...

.."..The little stars, they just make hydrogen and helium, and when they blow up, all the carbon that remains in them is just in the white dwarf; it never really comes off..."

If just hydrogen and helium.. where did the carbon come from? And what about the other elements??

Iamon_lyme: Basically trusting it does work as we know it does. I tried years ago after a 'dream' visualising being one and at the same time everywhere at the same time and it does do your head in as we are not use to it in a physical universe.

"The mistake many scientists make is to poo poo faith as religious nonsense, while at the same time relying on faith to move their own nebulous theories forward."

Like when in the cold war they were training psychics to spy.

.... mmmmm It makes sense now

Bwild: What to show something that anyone who's interested in the name "Edwin Hubble" would know....

"....Edwin Hubble's arrival at Mount Wilson, California, in 1919 coincided roughly with the completion of the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker Telescope, then the world's largest telescope. At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy. Using the Hooker Telescope at Mt. Wilson, Hubble identified Cepheid variables (a kind of star; see also standard candle) in several spiral nebulae, including the Andromeda Nebula. His observations, made in 1922–1923, proved conclusively that these nebulae were much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own. This idea had been opposed by many in the astronomy establishment of the time, in particular by the Harvard University-based Harlow Shapley. Hubble's discovery, announced on January 1, 1925, [8] fundamentally changed the view of the universe...."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble

... Better learn some astronomical history Bwild.

Iamon_lyme: Singularities (as the scientists say are not bound by large scale physics but quantum level physics.
......Art's point of.... "which I can't explain but then neither can physics." ... is false.

Einstein's physics do not work at the quantum level, but he was ok with that and so are the scientists today. If quantum level physics does not work they.. we couldn't be here. Electrons move by quantum rules.. Plants in their daily photosynthesis use quantum level physics to be ultra efficient in the absorption and utilisation of sunlight.

As to things being infinite..... I'm not sure it is... relatively.

"but I don't think it's because of some crack leaking gravity from another dimension into ours."

It's not a crack.. a fold, a bend, a rotation.. but not a crack... and it's still in one of our dimensions just one of the many our eyes were not designed to see.

"Scientists should stop screwing around with fancy and imaginative theories, and go back to finding simple and common sense anwsers."

.... why? It is our curiosity at the majesty of the universe that lets us understand how wonderful it is. We still are learning about our Universe, seeing as less then a hundred years ago we did not know there was one... just a galaxy as far as Earth knew!!

Iamon_lyme: Extreme gravity and the fact that atoms are basically alot of empty space. If blown up an atom would have the nucleus the size of a ball while the electrons would be circulating at say 100 metres distance. Of the main forces in the physical plane.. gravity at the moment is a weak force, it's how come magnets can pick up metal. Yet at the time of the Big Bang, gravity was millions/billions/infinitely times strongly. It seems gravity at the moment 'leaks' into one of the strange new dimensions they are now finding thanks to atom smashers. With enough mass (like a black hole) gravity has enough force to compress matter and through that, bend space and time unlike anything in normal space.

An example of bending space... our Earth's gravitational effect compared to 'zero g' causes enough difference in time that the atomic clocks used in the GPS satellites have to corrected every day by earth based atomic clocks or they would be 10's of miles out.. just from the bending effect difference of zero g and 'one g'.

Another example would be that light takes just minutes to travel from the surface of the Sun to Earth, yet through gravity and other forces takes 10's/100's of thousands of years to reach the surface.

The Col: Jews have traditionally seen Jesus as one of a number of false messiahs who have appeared throughout history.[1] Jesus is viewed as having been the most influential, and consequently the most damaging, of all false messiahs.[2] However, since the general Jewish belief is that the Messiah has not yet come and that the Messianic Age is not yet present, the total rejection of Jesus as either messiah or deity in Judaism has never been a central issue for Judaism. At the heart of Judaism are the Torah, its commandments, the Tanakh, and ethical monotheism such as in the Shema — all of which predated Jesus.

Judaism has never accepted any of the claimed fulfillments of prophecy that Christianity attributes to Jesus. Judaism also forbids the worship of a person as a form of idolatry, since the central belief of Judaism is the absolute unity and singularity of God.[3][4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism%27s_view_of_Jesus

Czuch: IF there was nothing.. recent theories suggest that "nothing" could have just been the latest expansion of a massive (weight and mass wise) singularity. We are at a point (so I gather) that much ado about the creation of the universe is ... complicated and there are many theories floating about.

Basically have a beer and stop worrying about it

Übergeek 바둑이: Still a theory though that could be applied to any planet/moon that has such items. A common problem with all this science......... we are still learning. We still are basically a planet bound race with only little data on how life might form in the realms of the universe/multiverse.

The Col: Go well with our Kevin Smith collection

The Col: We need more Buddy Jesus dolls

Übergeek 바둑이: Not from the recent shows on Discovery and the likes. It seems life maybe present on moons of other planets in this Solar system. The rules for life being present seem to be found to not be as hard as thought.

Artful Dodger: Yes.. it does. It has to do with the way some churches present God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost as something.. 'special' rather than a natural thing. Same with ghosts and the 'paranormal'

... "supernatural being" ... Does God if natural qualify as supernatural.. especially with some church's saying avoid the supernatural??

Mousetrap: Studying what it means to be human is what I thought the Bible was about. Philosophy, Bushido, Headology and such as that. But maybe it's just I've read/watched the likes of Frank Herbert, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Kevin Smith and other great writers.

Übergeek 바둑이: I do admit when it comes to physics and the nature of the universe, multiverse, strings, branes, where gravity has gotten to, quantum level physics.... etc.

.... much of the cutting edge of physics now is just theory. When Einstein developed his theory's he knew that at a certain level his theory failed... but we have black holes as a result. A vital part in the creation of galaxies.

But you do have recorded in the Bible something of interest. How did Moses manage to see events that were caused by a volcano before they arrived? Psychic senses?.. a throw back to animal senses?? God??? A mix?

"In doing so the complete absorption of stoicism into Christianity took place, and the denial of its Greek and Roman origins plunged western culture into obscurantism"

Yes, but we have now thanks to the internet and such old fashioned things as libraries... at least we do have in the UK where one can study history and philosophy of the church(churches) the divisions, relations, wars, mass murders. The lost gospels.. the roots of Moses knowledge of God, etc, etc, etc.

"Without faith Graeco-Roman (and later Christian) idealism fall apart."

Isn't the difference between enlightened and unenlightened a matter of knowing and faith that you can know nothing?

Übergeek 바둑이: It's not that simple. I like how Aristotle talks about an unmoved mover. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover


Also Origen... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen

Übergeek 바둑이: Some followers of God do.. some don't. It is in essence a matter of dogma, also as in some cases old fears and grudges. It is not how all God followers feel regarding God or other people.

http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm .... explains more and in certain respects goes away from the standard 'Bible basher' view regarding sin and evil.. or as described in such as Buddhism or Zen as ego. In the past I found most religions complement each other to an honest observer. There again as one who tends to find the likes of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Desert fathers as a more pure form of Christianity without the influences of Roman and Greek Gods imposed on God.

"You know, all the right has is talk radio. That’s it. When you see the forces arrayed against you that we were just doing the commercial for Freedom Works, that’s what I meant by that. When you see the forces arrayed against you, it is staggering."

Reminds me of...

"...Nazi propaganda strategy, officially promulagated by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, stressed several themes. Their goals were to create external enemies (countries that allegedly inflicted the Treaty of Versailles on Germany) and internal enemies (Jews). Hitler and Nazi propagandists played on the anti-Semitism and resentment present in Germany. The Jews were blamed for things such as robbing the German people of their hard work while themselves avoiding physical labour..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda

Artful Dodger:

"The same government that is subsidizing the Bible desecration has also just arrested a Welsh Assembly candidate for burning his own copy of a Quran. No hypocrisy there. None at all."

The man who burnt the Quran is a member of BNP. The defacement of the Bible was part of an exhibition titled "Made in God’s Image"

".....By the book is a container of pens and a notice saying: “If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.”

The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, which said that the idea was to reclaim the Bible as a sacred text. But to the horror of many Christians, including the community church, visitors have daubed its pages with comments such as “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all.” A contributor wrote on the first page of Genesis: “I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this............”

Übergeek 바둑이: By this post and that link Art posted. Glenn is on the left