tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18895915521121228372024-03-08T11:17:27.537-08:00Rational ResponsesIn a world that is full of misinformation and outright lies, I have tried to create a site that can provide accurate and rational responses to questions about life. We can explore the pressing questions about science, religion, government and society together. Of course, we can have some fun doing this as well.
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall" - Thomas PaineUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger427125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-14542045062341187272014-08-31T12:06:00.001-07:002019-08-11T15:39:41.021-07:00Does Genesis give a good explanation of how the universe was created?<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arial",sans-serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.2px; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><i>Genesis does not conform with what we know about how the universe came about. </i></span><br />
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1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.</div>
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<i>No, in the beginning there was a singularity that contained all the energy of the universe. The earth was not formed for billions of years after the Big Bang</i></div>
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2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.<br />
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<i>Much happened before the earth came together. And there cannot be water without a place to contain the water. If the earth had no form, there was no water.</i></div>
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3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.<br />
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<i>Early stars were among the first objects, but stars did not come together all at once or on a single day.</i></div>
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4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.<br />
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<i>This is nonsensical. A stars light is constant. The only way to say that darkness is divided from light is to be on a part of a planet where you can't see the light. </i></div>
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5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.<br />
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<i>People name things, not imaginary deities.</i></div>
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6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.<br />
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<i>Earth had still not been formed. But yes, we know from plate tectonics that land masses were formed. Which did not happen in one day.</i></div>
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7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.<br />
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<i>There is not and was not a water canopy over the earth. Gravity would not allow waters to hang over the earth.</i></div>
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8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.<br />
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<i>Ok, where is this heaven that was created with firmament? We have been above the earth and there is no heaven created of a firmament there.</i><br />
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9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.<br />
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<i>Water was not on the early earth, it came later from asteroids crashing to the earth.</i><br />
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10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.<br />
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<i>Sigh, people name things.</i></div>
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11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.<br />
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<i>Plant life on the planet started in the ocean. It did not move to the ground for millions of years.</i></div>
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12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.<br />
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<i>Even after plants came to the ground, fruits were still along way off.</i></div>
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13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.</div>
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14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:<br />
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<i>We know astrology has no basis in reality. The planets do not provide signs.</i></div>
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15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.<br />
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<i>Our sun gives us light, starlight would not allow us to grow plants.</i><br />
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16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.</div>
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17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,</div>
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18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. The sun came before the earth, not afterwards. The moon was not formed at the same time as the sun. And it owuld be impossible for plants to have been formed before the sun. They need the sun for photosynthesis and without the sun, the earth would be frozen. </div>
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19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.</div>
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20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.<br />
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<i>Life occurred in the ocean before on the land. And birds were not among the early life forms on earth.</i></div>
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21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.<br />
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<i>Fowls were just mentioned in the last verse. Did your god forget and create them twice?</i></div>
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22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.</div>
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23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.</div>
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24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.</div>
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25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.</div>
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26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.<br />
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<i>We know from genetics that mankind did not come from two original people. We also know that man evolved from more primitive primates (no, not monkeys)</i></div>
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27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.<br />
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<i>God has a form? </i></div>
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28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.</div>
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29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.<br />
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<i>There are many plants that are poisonous to humans.</i></div>
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30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.</div>
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31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.<br />
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<i>It is absurd to say that Genesis is a close account of how the universe or our planet was formed.</i></div>
<i></i><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-1944450251272719722014-08-08T19:39:00.002-07:002019-08-11T17:11:42.009-07:00Should the Pledge have been changed? <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 17.03px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">When the Pledge of Allegiance was created it did not contain the words, under God". Therefore, the entirety of the Pledge was altered when the words were added. The Pledge was written in 1892. It was not until 1954 that the additional words were added. For 62 years, the Pledge allowed Americans of ALL beliefs to proudly make a statement of allegiance to this great country. The Pledge without those two words, was sufficient to get us through WW I & II and the Great Depression. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 17.03px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">However, now, the original and completely satisfactory Pledge has been altered and made a point of controversy. If it had never been changed, then ALL Americans could still proudly make a statement of allegiance to the USA without compromising who they are and what they believe. </span><br />
<br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px/17.03px arial, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 17.03px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I am sure Christians feel the Pledge was enhanced with these words, but many disagree. Given that was never necessary to change this Pledge, it is unfortunate that one group in America has hijacked the Pledge that was meant for all citizens.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-85122357636059857312014-08-04T12:46:00.000-07:002016-04-18T14:06:41.358-07:00Does the Hebrew word Chuwg mean a flat circle like a coin or a sphere?<div class="hgroup expanded" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; border: 0px currentColor; box-sizing: border-box; color: #373a3e; font-family: "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.2px; margin: 0px; padding: 15px 15px 0px 20px; position: relative; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Here is another example of how the bible is wrong. </span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Hebrew word Chug (חוג) means a flat-circle like a coin. The Hebrew word for a sphere like a ball is Dur (דור). He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball (Dur) into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house. (Isaiah 22:18) While the Hebrew language lacked a specific term for sphere, we can tell from the way the word is used in other verses, that it is referring to a flat circle. Dur is not exclusively a word for sphere, but it is much closer to describing the earth than a circle is. Is. 29:3 And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee. Obviously the soldier would not camp around a sphere but encircle the city. The root of chûgh (or chug) is mentioned six times in the bible, and it is quite evident from its usage, in context, that it refers to a specific geometrical shape; "A circle as drawn with a compass" or "encompassed". In Job 26:10 and Prov. 8:27, chûgh is used with choq, intending "to inscribe a circle." This nominal infinitive form also appears in Job 22:14, when signifying "the circle of the heavens"In Isa. 40:22, where it denotes "the circle of the earth".43:12 uses chûgh as description of the rainbow.In Isa. 44:13, chûgh appears as mechûghah, which simply means "a compass," in other words the geometrical instrument which you use to can draw circles on a paper. In contemporary Hebrew cosmology the common belief was that the earth was formed as a plano-concave plate with slightly raised edges covered by high mountains, where the heavens were attached to the earth. In the second part of the above mentioned verse by Isaiah this becomes quite obvious when god stretched out the heavens over the earth like a canopy - which completely lose all meaning and become utterly absurd if you try to apply the text to an image of a spherical earth. However, it fits perfectly with a flat earth model. Moreover, Job 28:24, Job 37:3, Job 38:13, Jeremiah 16:19 and Daniel 4:11 all claim that the earth has ends (or edges depending on what version you read) But regardless of translation, a sphere has neither edges, nor ends. But a two-dimensional flat form does. In Job 11:9 you can read: "Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea" which also become quite incomprehensible if you try to apply the verse to a spherical conception of the world, but again corresponds completely with the idea of a flat earth . Finally, in Job 38:44 it says: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?" If the author would have had a spherical shape in mind, the last question in Job should have read "Who stretched a measuring line around it?" </span></h1>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com99tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-38799792984137185092014-07-24T09:49:00.002-07:002014-09-20T18:43:05.746-07:00Why Jesus could not be used as a sacrifice.<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">There are several verses that indicate that God is against child sacrifice. God expressly forbids it:</span><br />
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<li class="spaced" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=31&passage=Deuteronomy+12:31" style="color: #663399;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Deuteronomy 12:31</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">: You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.</span></li>
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<li class="spaced" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=31&passage=Deuteronomy+18:9-12" style="color: #663399;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Deuteronomy 18:9-12</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">: When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire...Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">and its practice is described as evil:</span><br />
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<li class="spaced" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=31&passage=2+Kings+16:3" style="color: #663399;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">2 Kings 16:3</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">: He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites.</span></li>
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<li class="spaced" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=31&passage=Psalm+106:38" style="color: #663399;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Psalm 106:38</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">: They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.</span></li>
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<li class="spaced" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?version=31&passage=Jeremiah+19:4-5" style="color: #663399;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Jeremiah 19:4-5</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">: For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;">The OT doesn't prescribe or require human sacrifice. All the rules concerning what sorts of offerings were acceptable for various purposes mention only animals, birds, and grain - humans are never mentioned as an option.</span> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-60399465530155587942014-07-23T13:21:00.000-07:002014-07-23T13:21:02.891-07:00The Real Martyrs<h3>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1546 <strong>Etienne Dolet</strong>, French printer and bookseller and passionate advocate of learning, was imprisoned several times for his outspoken criticisms of the Church. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dolet was condemned for atheism and burnt at Lyons, along with his books, leaving his family destitute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1553 <strong>Michael Servetus</strong>, the Spanish physician who discovered pulmonary blood circulation (an advance upon Galen) fled the Inquisition and thought himself safe among Protestants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Big mistake. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John Calvin, the puritanical "Protestant Pope" of Geneva proved his Christian credentials by having Servetus burnt at the stake for heresy. Servetus had criticized the Trinity and infant baptism.</span></div>
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<em> "The Dutch Radicals did not forget to question, when questioning had gone out of fashion for the rest of theology."</em></div>
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– Albert Schweitzer<em>, Geschichte der paulinischen Forschung, </em>108.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1589 <strong>Francis Kett</strong>, a tutor at Bene't (Corpus Christi), Cambridge, expressed doubts that JC may not have been the great moralist Christians believed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For his audacity the professor was burnt to ashes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1600 <strong>Giordano Bruno</strong>, Italian philosopher who taught in Paris and Wittenberg, paid the ultimate price for thinking for himself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After languishing for 7 years in a dungeon of the Inquisition, where he was subjected to repeated torture, he was condemned and burned at the stake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Bruno had had the audacity to suggest that space was boundless and that the sun and its planets were not unique.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1619 <strong>Lucilio Vanini </strong>(aka <em>'Giulio Cesare' - 'Julius Caesar'</em>).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Philosopher, teacher and freethinker, in 1616 the ex-Carmelite monk Vanini imprudently published his thoughts in <em>“De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis” (“of the marvelous secrets of the queen and goddess of the mortal ones, nature."</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His ideas included the possibility of human evolution from apes and the denial of an immortal soul.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Vanini rejected Christianity as a fiction invented by priests and argued for natural explanations for miracles. As a result he had to flee from place to place to avoid Catholic persecution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he was taken at Toulouse, condemned, his tongue cut out, strangled and burnt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Thomas Paine</strong> (1737-1809) – revolutionary champion of liberty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em> "I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel."</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Bruno Bauer</strong> (1809-1882) – the original iconoclast.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Kersey Graves</strong> (1813-1883) – Quaker who saw through the Jesus fraud.</span></div>
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<strong>Arthur Drews</strong> (1865-1935) – one of the great German pioneers in the denial of the historical existence of Jesus.</div>
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"<em>The 'historical' Jesus is not earlier but later than Paul; and as such he has always existed merely as an idea, as a pious fiction in the minds of members of the community.</em>"</div>
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– Drews, <em>The Religious Problem of the Present</em>. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="unnamed1">Gustaaf Adolf van den Bergh </span></span><span class="style68"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial;">van Eysinga</span></strong></span> (1874-1957) – Dutch theologian and New Testament professor who refuted the existence of Jesus.</div>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>The End is Nigh<br /><br /><img border="1" height="124" src="http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/IMAGES/Gauvin.jpg" width="100" /></em></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>"Not only has the divinity of Christ been given up, but his existence as a man is being more and more seriously questioned.</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em> Some of the ablest scholars of the world deny that he ever lived at all. </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>A commanding literature dealing with the inquiry, intense in its seriousness and profound and thorough in its research, is growing up in all countries, and spreading the conviction that Christ is a myth.</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Jesus ... will have to take his place with the host of other demigods whose fancied lives and deeds make up the mythology of the world."</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Marshall J. Gauvin (<em><a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/marshall_gauvin/did_jesus_really_live.html" target="_blank">Did Jesus Christ Really Live?</a></em> 1922)</span></div>
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Philosopher</div>
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"<span class="quote">Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about him.</span>"</div>
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- The philosopher Bertrand Russell, "<span class="quote">Why I Am Not a Christian</span>". (<a href="http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html" target="_blank">1927 lecture</a>). </div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Dead Sea Scroll Scholar</em></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1970 biblical scholar and Dead Sea Scroll expert <strong>John Allegro</strong> argued for the non-existence of Jesus Christ. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Allegro's thesis associated notions of the godman with narcotic-induced visions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The hallucinatory plant in question was <em>Amanita Muscaria</em> (Fly-Agaric), the phallic mushroom, arguably used by early Christians and interpreted as a virgin (i.e. seedless) birth and "God come in the flesh."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Allegro was subjected to acrimonious fury and ostracised. He died in 1988.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>High on Jesus?</em></span></h5>
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<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Born Again Atheist</em></span></h3>
<span class="style16"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Evangelist who </span></span><span class="quote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>"threw out the bath water and discovered there was no baby there."</em></span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>“There is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, during his entire lifetime. </em></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed.”</em> </span></div>
<span class="quote"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– </span></span><span class="style9"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Dan Barker</span></span><span class="quote"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, <em>Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist</em> </span></span><span class="style9"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1992, p. 360).</span></span><br />
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<strong>Historian comes off the fence </strong></div>
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"I have come to realize that mythicism is significantly more probably true than historicity. This I consider as radical a departure from my previous agnosticism as my agnosticism was from my previous historicism." </div>
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– Richard Carrier, Editor-in-Chief, <span class="quote">Internet Infidels</span>, July 18, 2005</div>
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<a href="http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html">http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-37130855398885186282014-06-26T12:37:00.001-07:002019-08-11T17:13:00.252-07:00How would stars fall to earth?<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">“Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, ‘Behold, He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, or, ‘Behold, He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.“ (Matthew 24: 25-34)"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">So, I was reading this verse and this line jumped out at me, "--and the stars will fall from the sky--". </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Now a star is actually a sun and many suns are even bigger than ours. But if a star started to fall, where would it go? Unless it fell to earth, we would not really see anything unless we were tracking it with a telescope. But as a light in the sky, if a star moved somewhere else, we would not really see anything other than the same light in the sky. And what does it mean that a star is falling? There is no up or down in space. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The only way we would be aware of a star falling is if it fell to earth. And if a star fell to earth, our planet would be completely destroyed. Given that the verse says that stars, plural, will fall, then the earth would be inundated by numerous, much larger bodies. One star would destroy us if it hit the earth, and if many stars all fell to earth, the result would just be overkill.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; display: inline; float: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 13px / 18.2px "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">When a Christian says they believe that everything in the bible is completely accurate, ask them how the earth would survive being destroyed by much larger suns hitting us. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-50259533229412804742014-05-19T18:59:00.002-07:002014-06-26T12:52:19.425-07:00Being self-righteous<h1 style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: bold 18px/normal verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
Self-righteous Christians Defined: Is This the Norm?<br /><span class="author" style="font-size: 0.6em;">by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.godandscience.org/contact.html" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: underline;">Rich Deem</a></span><a href="https://plus.google.com/105440427757499026037/posts?hl=en" rel="author" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img height="16" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" style="border: currentColor;" width="16" /></a></h1>
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Introduction</h3>
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Christians seem to like to tell other people how to behave and act as if they never do anything wrong. They also tend to focus only upon a few moral issues - namely abortion and gay marriage - seemingly to the exclusion of more important issues, such as justice and care for the poor. Is this the kind of behavior the Bible commends or are these people acting against what biblical Christianity actually stands for?</div>
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What is being self-righteous?</h3>
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To begin the discussion, it would be good to know what the words "self-righteous" really mean. Here is the definition from the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The American Heritage Dictionary</i><sup><a href="http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/self-righteous_christians.html#n01" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: underline;">1</a></sup>:</div>
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<b>self-right·eous</b> (sělf'rī'chəs)<br />
adjective<br />
<ol>
<li>Piously sure of one's own righteousness; moralistic.</li>
<li>Exhibiting pious self-assurance:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>self-righteous remarks.</i></li>
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So, a self-righteous person is one who acts as if he is morally superior to everyone else.</div>
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Righteousness and the Christian</h3>
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If there is anything that is antithetical to Christianity, it is a person who thinks that they can be righteous by their own good works. The Bible says that all people are sinners and that none can meet God's standard for righteousness.<sup><a href="http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/self-righteous_christians.html#n02" style="color: #003366; text-decoration: underline;">2</a></sup></div>
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<sup></sup> </div>
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<a href="http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/self-righteous_christians.html">http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/self-righteous_christians.html</a></div>
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Yet, wait a minute. God allowed Noah to survive because he was a righteous man. <br />
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<span class="text Gen-6-9"><sup class="versenum"><span style="font-size: x-small;">9 </span></sup>This is the account<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-147V" title="See cross-reference V">V</a>)"></sup> of Noah and his family.</span><br />
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<span class="text Gen-6-9">Noah was a righteous man, blameless<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-147W" title="See cross-reference W">W</a>)"></sup> among the people of his time,<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-147X" title="See cross-reference X">X</a>)"></sup> and he walked faithfully with God.<sup class="crossreference" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-147Y" title="See cross-reference Y">Y</a>)"></sup></span> <span class="text Gen-6-10" id="en-NIV-148"><sup class="versenum"><span style="font-size: x-small;">10</span></sup></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-size: small;"></span></sup><br />
<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">How could Noah be righteous, if no one can achieve gods idea of perfection?</span> </span></sup></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-39547008982323702302014-05-06T08:47:00.002-07:002014-05-09T16:06:50.636-07:00Definition of Conundrum<b style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 22.71px;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: normal;">The definition of the word Conundrum is: something that is puzzling or confusing.</span></span><br />Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:<br /><br />1. America is described as capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.<br /><br />2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.<br /><br />3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives who they elect run the government.<br /><br />4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.<br /><br />5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.</span></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 22.71px;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about -yet they want America to be more like those other countries.<br /><br />Think about it! And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the USA in<br />the 21st Century.<br /><br />Makes you wonder who is doing the math.<br /><br />These three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our current government and cultural environment:<br /><br />1. We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few<br />lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics. Funny how that works.</span></b><br />
<b style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 22.71px;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">And here's another one worth considering...<br /><br />2. Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money. How come we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money? What's interesting is the first group "worked for" their money, but the second didn't. Think about it.....<br /><br />and Last but not least,<br /><br />3. Why are we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our military and cutting our army to a level lower than before WWII, but we are not stopping the payments or benefits to illegal aliens.<br /><br />Am I the only one missing something?</span></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-7846977676617086992014-05-05T15:36:00.001-07:002019-08-11T17:17:13.960-07:00Was god justified in killing people in the flood? <div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The question becomes, does God need a reason for this action? Without warning, the reader is thrust into one passage about his displeasure, and “the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and the beast, and the creeping things, and the fouls of the air; for it repented me that I have made them” (Gen. 6:7). According to God’s rhetoric and subsequent justification for his acts, it is his creation; therefore he may do what he wishes with it. There doesn’t seem to be any lengthy explanation, only the simply rhetoric of what amounts to, “I’m God and I can do what I want.” Unlike in other sections of the OT<span style="color: black;">, there is little reason given, and this makes God seem not only completely</span> misanthropic, but more importantly, a fickle judge who is prone to making snap decisions that cause widespread damage. Rhetorically speaking, the only justification he deems to offer the reader (and presumably Noah and the rest of humanity that he so quickly wipes out) is that since he is God, this is his right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">But is this a valid argument? I suggest it is not. For example, Mankind is always wrestling with the proper way to handle lab animals. We have decided that treating animals so that they experience as little pain and discomfort as possible is the humane way to deal with them. I would like to think that God would consider us more important than lab animals. Additionally, we are supposedly formed in the likeness of god, so we should have similar perspectives. So, is a worldwide flood the most painless way to kill humanity? Actually, it would be one of the most terrifying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">So, is the point for God to show that he can kill us in a terrifying way? The fact that God could kill us all anytime he wants would be the critical point. He would have accomplished the same effect by turning us all into salt, as he did with Lot's wife. Additionally, he would not have wrecked the entire ecosystem that way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">The story is absurd. Actually, the entire bible is absurd, but I shall focus on this one story. God kills all of mankind for sin. However, he allows Noah's family to survive, even though they would have been doing the same sin. How is that justified? If the sin that he killed all mankind for was so terrible, then Noah's family deserved to die as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif";">I submit that God was not justified to kill everyone in the flood. Which is good, since it was only a fable anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">Since I wrote this, I had a debate with a Christian who posted this statement.</span><br />
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<div _extended="true" class="pluck-comm-body" style="font-size: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">"God does not & can NOT "MURDER". God FORBIDS man to 'murder'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">"The Lord giveth. And the Lord 'taketh' away."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">"... we intuitively know that man & God have different prerogatives.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">It is inappropriate for men to take innocent life</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">simply because we are robbing other human beings of a God-given gift,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">& we are not to play God in that regard.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">But clearly God can play God.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">It is His role & He is not robbing when He takes away what He has given in the first place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">It is something that is under His appropriate control.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">He can take a life anytime He wants.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">Taking innocent human life is wrong for us,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">because taking life is God's prerogative, not ours,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">which means it is appropriate for Him to do it,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">not us,</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">;</span><span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype;"> & </span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">He can dispense & retract life whenever He pleases."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">- Greg Koukl</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">God is the Author of life,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">the Beginning & the End,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">the Alpha & Omega,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">in whom we live, breathe & owe our being.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">God may take His own."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype";">My response: But god not only kills people, he commands people to kill other people. If he forbids man to murder, then he is inconsistent when he requires that people kill in his name. If god can kill mankind, then he should do so and not make people carry out his dirty work. He killed people in a flood, by turning them into salt or having the holy spirit kill children like the children in Egypt, so he is perfectly capable of killing anyone he wants.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-33260306283634515552014-05-05T15:33:00.001-07:002019-08-11T17:33:36.989-07:00Pascal's Wager<div style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Whenever I debate with Christians, there comes a point when they will say something to the effect of, "If you are right, then at least I led a good life, however if I am right, then you will end up in Hell." This is, of course, Pascal's Wager. It also begs the question of whether or not they actually led a "good" life. I have known many Christians who cheated, lied, fornicated and stole, among other "sins". Whether their lives were any more moral or better than others is highly debatable. In addition, it assumes that the atheist did not live a good life, which is very insulting. If you are not familiar with the idea of Pascal's Wager, let me provide some background information. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Pascal’s Wager is the idea that regardless of whether the existence of God can be proven through rational means, one should live their life as though God does exist, because living your life that way means you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. <span lang="EN">It was proposed by a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist named Blaise Pascal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, there are several problems with this idea. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">First, it assumes that there are only two alternatives to choose from; belief and disbelief in the biblical god. However, that is not accurate. There are thousands of different gods that mankind has dreamed up over the centuries. Therefore, he must also choose the correct deity to believe in. If the Romans, Hindus, Aztecs, Muslims, early Greeks or any of the thousands of other gods were correct, then the Christian is in as big of a problem as the atheist. Now, I am sure the Christian is not worried about whether the Greek or Aztec gods of old are the correct deity. Yet, why not? Millions of people have believed in these gods, with the same devote fervour as current day Christians. It could also be possible that the true god has not yet been revealed. It has been said many times, that there is little difference between a theist and an atheist. A theist does not believe in all of the thousands of other gods that mankind has thought up over the centuries, they just believe in the one they think is correct. An atheist agrees that all the other gods are myths and fables, we just add one more to the list; the one the theist believes in. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Second, even if the Christian God is the correct deity, there is still a problem of deciding which of the 30,000 Christian sects worships him the correct way. If the Catholics are right, then the Protestants have a problem, and of course, the reverse is true for the Catholic. If the Mormons are right, then most of the two billions Christians in the world have a huge problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial";">Keep in mind that Pascal was a Catholic, and he was advocating for the Catholic version of Christianity. This always make it even more ironic when Protestants invoke his arguments. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Third, if you only say you believe in order to hedge your bet for getting into heaven, it is doubtful that an all knowing god would let you in anyway, since you really did not believe. You simply went through the motions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fourth, it assumes that God would only reward a believer no matter what other circumstances exist. It is certainly possible that God would reward rational and researched </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">reasoning and punish blind or feigned faith.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Consider this argument given by Thomas Jefferson: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">"</span><span style="color: black;">Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Richard Carrier adds to this idea with this statement: "Suppose there is a god who is watching us and choosing which souls of</span> the deceased to bring to heaven, and this god really does want only the morally good to populate heaven. He will probably select from only those who made a significant and responsible effort to discover the truth. For all others are untrustworthy, being cognitively or morally inferior, or both. They will also be less likely ever to discover and commit to true beliefs about right and wrong. That is, if they have a significant and trustworthy concern for doing right and avoiding wrong, it follows necessarily that they must have a significant and trustworthy concern for knowing right and wrong. Since this knowledge requires knowledge about many fundamental facts of the universe (such as whether there is a god), it follows necessarily that such people must have a significant and trustworthy concern for always seeking out, testing, and confirming that their beliefs about such things are probably correct. Therefore, only such people can be sufficiently moral and trustworthy to deserve a place in heaven — unless God wishes to fill heaven with the morally lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fifth, it makes the assumption that a person can make themselves believe. This is, of course, nonsense. A person either actually believes something or they do not. You cannot force yourself to believe something. If someone was standing over you with a gun and said you either believe that green Martians are ruling the planet or I will kill you. You might tell them you believe. You might profess it wholeheartedly. You might sign a declaration to this statement. But you would not believe it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So, does Pascal's Wager hold up to scrutiny? I wouldn't bet on it.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-25755170153714335242014-05-05T15:15:00.001-07:002019-08-11T17:30:53.670-07:00The age of the Earth<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One thing I constantly hear Creationists say is that people only believe in a old earth to allow Evolution enough time for all the changes in species that they claim occurred. This is, of course, nonsense. Darwin published his book on the origins of man in 1859. However Geologists had determined that the earth was far older than 6,000 years before Darwin published his book. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hutton" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-decoration: none;" title="James Hutton">James Hutton</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> is often viewed as the first modern </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologist" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-decoration: none;" title="Geologist">geologist</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">.</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-59" style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-59" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[59]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> In 1785 he presented a paper entitled </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Theory of the Earth</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> to the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Edinburgh" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-decoration: none;" title="Royal Society of Edinburgh">Royal Society of Edinburgh</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">. In his paper, he explained his theory that the Earth must be much older than had previously been supposed in order to allow enough time for mountains to be eroded and for </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sediment" style="background-color: white; background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; text-decoration: none;" title="Sediment">sediments</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> to form new rocks at the bottom of the sea, which in turn were raised up to become dry land. Hutton published a two-volume version of his ideas in 1795 (</span><a class="external text" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12861" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent), url(data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 100% 50%, 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #663366; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; padding-right: 13px; text-decoration: none;">Vol. 1</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">, </span><a class="external text" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14179" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent), url(data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 100% 50%, 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #663366; line-height: 22.399999618530273px; padding-right: 13px; text-decoration: none;">Vol. 2</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Followers of Hutton were known as <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonism" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Plutonism">Plutonists</a></i> because they believed that some rocks were formed by <i>vulcanism</i>, which is the deposition of lava from volcanoes, as opposed to the <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunism" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Neptunism">Neptunists</a></i>, led by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Gottlob_Werner" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Abraham Gottlob Werner">Abraham Werner</a>, who believed that all rocks had settled out of a large ocean whose level gradually dropped over time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The first <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_map_of_Georgia" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Geologic map of Georgia">geological map of the U.S.</a> was produced in 1809 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Maclure" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="William Maclure">William Maclure</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Maclure1817_60-0" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-Maclure1817-60" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[60]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-61" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-61" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[61]</a></sup> In 1807, Maclure commenced the self-imposed task of making a geological survey of the United States. Almost every state in the Union was traversed and mapped by him; the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_Mountains" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Allegheny Mountains">Allegheny Mountains</a> being crossed and recrossed some 50 times.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-62" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-62" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[62]</a></sup> The results of his unaided labours were submitted to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Philosophical_Society" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="American Philosophical Society">American Philosophical Society</a> in a memoir entitled<i>Observations on the Geology of the United States explanatory of a Geological Map</i>, and published in the <i>Society's Transactions</i>, together with the nation's first geological map.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-63" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-63" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[63]</a></sup> This antedates <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_(geologist)" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="William Smith (geologist)">William Smith</a>'s geological map of England by six years, although it was constructed using a different classification of rocks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Lyell" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Sir Charles Lyell">Sir Charles Lyell</a> first published his famous book, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Geology" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Principles of Geology">Principles of Geology</a></i>,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-64" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-64" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[64]</a></sup> in 1830. This book, which influenced the thought of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Charles Darwin">Charles Darwin</a>, successfully promoted the doctrine of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformitarianism" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Uniformitarianism">uniformitarianism</a>. This theory states that slow geological processes have occurred throughout the <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="History of Earth">Earth's history</a> and are still occurring today. In contrast, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophism" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Catastrophism">catastrophism</a> is the theory that Earth's features formed in single, catastrophic events and remained unchanged thereafter. Though Hutton believed in uniformitarianism, the idea was not widely accepted at the time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Much of 19th-century geology revolved around the question of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Age of the Earth">Earth's exact age</a>. Estimates varied from a few hundred thousand to billions of years.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-65" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-65" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[65]</a></sup> By the early 20th century, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Radiometric dating">radiometric dating</a> allowed the Earth's age to be estimated at two billion years. The awareness of this vast amount of time opened the door to new theories about the processes that shaped the planet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some of the most significant advances in 20th-century geology have been the development of the theory of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Plate tectonics">plate tectonics</a> in the 1960s and the refinement of estimates of the planet's age. Plate tectonics theory arose from two separate geological observations: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafloor_spreading" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Seafloor spreading">seafloor spreading</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Continental drift">continental drift</a>. The theory revolutionized the <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_sciences" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Earth sciences">Earth sciences</a>. Today the Earth is known to be approximately 4.5 billion years old.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-age_earth_66-0" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology#cite_note-age_earth-66" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">[66]</a></sup></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-85709240875122361882014-03-14T21:06:00.002-07:002014-03-14T21:06:59.099-07:00Atheist charities<a href="http://www.squidoo.com/Atheist-Charities" rel="nofollow">http://www.squidoo.com/Atheist...</a><br />
<a href="http://www.thinkatheist.com/notes/Secular_charities" rel="nofollow">http://www.thinkatheist.com/no...</a><br />
<a href="http://techskeptic.blogspot.com/2007/12/atheist-charities.html" rel="nofollow">http://techskeptic.blogspot.co...</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-54824568205625257582014-03-14T21:06:00.001-07:002014-06-22T17:26:17.005-07:00Why do theists disable posts?One thing that constantly amuses me is when I see some headline on You Tube or some similar medium that claims that a Christian has won a debate or an argument with an atheist. Or it states that the theist has some compelling argument for their belief. When I click on the link to see what is going on, the ability to post a comment has often been disabled.<br />
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x_zmTpiZEU<br />
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck9-nAWjeBk<br />
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The links provided above are such examples. I am not stating that atheists have never done this. However, I have never seen an example of when an atheist has done this. I also find the claim that the atheist was bested is humorous. Now, I may be biased, but I think the atheist holds their own, if not actually winning the argument. But regardless of my opinion, why not allow people to post their own view on the debate? Could it be that many people disagreed that the Atheist was defeated? Hmmm.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-71980306662197003892014-02-27T15:31:00.000-08:002014-02-27T15:31:03.044-08:00One of my favorite satires. Letter to Dr. Laura<h1 style="color: #37628d; font-family: georgia; font-size: 30px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px;">
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Dear Dr. Laura,<br />
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Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that<nobr>Leviticus 18:22</nobr> clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.<br />
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I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.<br />
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a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord <nobr>(Lev 1:9).</nobr> The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?<br />
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b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in<nobr>Exodus 21:7.</nobr> In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?<br />
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c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness <nobr>(Lev 15:19-24).</nobr> The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.<br />
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d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?<br />
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e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. <nobr>Exodus 35:2</nobr>clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?<br />
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f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination <nobr>(Lev 11:10),</nobr> it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?<br />
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g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?<br />
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h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by<nobr>Lev 19:27.</nobr> How should they die?<br />
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i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?<br />
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j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them?<nobr>(Lev 24:10-16)</nobr> Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? <nobr>(Lev. 20:14)</nobr><br />
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I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.<br />
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Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.<br />
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Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', arial; font-size: 12px;">Read more at <a href="http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp#MBrPmvzUjSYoMLAb.99" style="color: #003399;">http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp#MBrPmvzUjSYoMLAb.99</a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-19704350772087923292013-09-01T10:09:00.000-07:002013-09-01T10:09:04.084-07:00Are the Ten Commandments the basis for a moral and strong society?<div class="post-body">
<header>The following is the introduction to an article that states that the Ten Commandments are the only solution for the world's problems.<br />
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"There is only one solution to the world’s problems, only one prescription for producing a near-heaven on earth. It is 3,000 years old. And it is known as the Ten Commandments. Properly understood and applied, the Ten Commandments are really all humanity needs to make a beautiful world. While modern men and women, in their hubris, believe that they can and must come up with new ideas to make a good world, the truth is there is almost nothing new to say. If people and countries lived by the Ten Commandments, all the great moral problems would disappear."<br />Read more at <a href="http://joeforamerica.com/2013/08/solution-worlds-problems/#ImZkYcFTX1xxeE1f.99" style="color: #003399;">http://joeforamerica.com/2013/08/solution-worlds-problems/#ImZkYcFTX1xxeE1f.99</a><br />
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I have this to say on the matter. Does it not seem odd that this all knowing god did not bother to give these Ten Commandments to Adam and Eve or their kids. No, he waited until after humankind was so evil that he had to wipe them off the face of the earth. Would not the knowledge of these Ten Commandments have helped to prevent the people from becoming so deprived? Did he give these commandments to Noah and his kids? Hmm, no, actually he did not do it then either. He waited quite awhile longer. He did not even give them to the Hebrews until they had left Egypt in the million man march across the desert that left absolutely no traces. <br />You might think that if these Ten Commandments were so important, that god would have provided them right from the start. Or at least as soon as Adam and Eve screwed up right at the beginning. You know, since god is supposedly all knowing and everything. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-66706421308879769952013-08-20T11:50:00.001-07:002013-08-20T11:50:29.038-07:00Rabies and prayer<strong>The miracle of Jeanna Giese</strong> <br />There are so many examples of the power of prayer, but one in particular deserves special consideration because it is so well documented. In December of 2004 a girl named Jeanna Giese survived a bite from a rabid bat through prayer. Hundreds of newspapers (including the Raleigh News and Observer in my home town) ran stories about the miracle of her recovery with headlines such as "Rabies girl in miracle recovery." In Raleigh, the headline was "Web weaves global prayer circle - Petitions circle the world as girl beats rare case of rabies." [Source: by Sharon Roznik, Raleigh News and Observer, December 17, 2004] <br />
The summary of the story goes like this. Jeanna was in a church service in Wisconsin when a brown bat fell into the aisle. She picked the bat up and carried it outside. No one gave it a second thought. A month later it was obvious that something was wrong. Soon Jeanna had a full case of rabies. No human has ever survived this disease without being vaccinated. Up until 2004, full-blown rabies had been 100% fatal. According to the article, a global prayer circle helped Jeanna survive. Once she got sick, Jeanna's father called friends and asked them to pray for Jeanna. People around the world heard about her story through the press and by word of mouth. They prayed. They sent emails. They passed the word along. Millions of people heard about Jeanna's plight and they said prayers for her. And the prayer circle worked. Through the power of God, Jeanna recovered. Jeanna was the first human to survive rabies without the vaccine. Dr. Charles Rupprecht of the CDC in Atlanta called Jeanna's case a miracle. The family and everyone in Jeanna's huge, global prayer circle know that God heard their prayers and answered them. This is amazing stuff. The dictionary defines a miracle as "An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God." [<a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=miracle" saprocessedanchor="true" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0072c6;">ref</span></a>] So we must ask a fundamental question: Did an all-loving, all-powerful God hear the prayers from Jeanna's worldwide prayer circle and then reach down from heaven to help Jeanna? Did God actually interact with Jeanna's body, making the impossible happen and curing her case of rabies through a divine miracle? Or did something else happen? <br /> <a href="http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm">http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm</a><br />
<br />Well, guess what? Something else did happen. Her doctor cured her and using the same technique, others have cured more people who had rabies. And the story was wrong about no body surviving rabies without being vaccinated or cured as well. How unsurprising. <br /><br />"Last year a team of researchers from Peru and the U.S. made a discovery that challenged one of the most widely held assumptions about rabies—that the virus is nearly always fatal unless doctors administer a vaccine before it reaches the brain. Based on the results of blood tests, the scientists learned that half a dozen villagers in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon had previously been infected—probably through bites from vampire bats, which are common in the area<br /><br />But instead of suffering the agonizing deaths for which rabies is infamous, the villagers had recovered and apparently developed immunity to further infection.<br />The discovery put the Peruvians on a short list of people who have survived rabies without a vaccine. The best-known member of that select group is Jeanna Giese, a Wisconsin teenager who lived through the disease in 2004, also after contact with a bat. Out of desperation, Giese's physician improvised a risky treatment that included putting the girl into a controlled coma, which apparently allowed her body enough time to destroy the microscopic intruder. Doctors have since refined the treatment, now known as the Milwaukee protocol, and tried it on at least 39 other never vaccinated patients. Five more people have survived.<br /><br />The mixed success rates, and the 2012 Peruvian study, underscore how little scientists know about rabies, despite its long history as a menace to humanity. Based on accumulating evidence, though, researchers now recognize that not all rabies infections are equal or universally fatal. Many different <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=animals" saprocessedanchor="true" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0072c6;">animals</span></a>, including dogs, bats, foxes and raccoons, carry various strains of the rabies virus. The varieties hosted by bats and foxes appear to be weaker, and some people's immune systems may be able to defeat them without a vaccine."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rethinking-rabies&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_HLTH_20130820" saprocessedanchor="true" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0072c6;">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rethinking-rabies&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_HLTH_20130820</span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-40543410454205751542013-06-26T17:19:00.000-07:002013-06-26T17:19:46.858-07:00'Ex-gay' group says it's shutting down; leader apologizes for 'pain and hurt'<h1 class="gl_headline">
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By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News</div>
A Christian ministry that led the so-called ex-gay movement, which professes to rid people of their homosexuality, has announced that it will shut down, and its leader apologized extensively to gays for causing “pain and hurt.”<br />
The ministry, Exodus International, was founded in 1976 and claims more than 200 branches, churches and counselors in the United States and Canada. It had insisted that people could overcome same-sex attraction through prayer and therapy.<br />
Mainstream psychiatric and medical groups have said that the movement, also known as reparative therapy, is unfounded in science and can be harmful. The American Psychiatric Association said 15 years ago that it could cause depression, anxiety and self-depressive behavior in patients.<br />
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The president of Exodus, Alan Chambers, <a href="http://exodusinternational.org/2013/06/i-am-sorry/">said late Wednesday on the ministry’s website</a> that he had “conveniently omitted my ongoing same-sex attractions” but now accepts them “as parts of my life that will like always be there.”<br />
Addressing gays, Chambers, who is married to a woman, wrote: “You have never been my enemy. I am very sorry that I have been yours.”<br />
“I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced,” he wrote. “I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change.”<br />
He added that he could not apologize for his own biblical beliefs about sex and marriage but would not fight gays on their own beliefs or their push for rights.<br />
In a statement, Exodus International, which describes itself as the oldest and largest group of its kind, said that its board of directors had decided to close down after a year of talking and praying about its place in a changing culture.<br />
Polls show that a narrow majority of Americans, a steadily growing share, support gay marriage, which has been legalized in 12 states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court is preparing to rule on two landmark gay-rights cases.<br />
“We’re not negating the ways God used Exodus to positively affect thousands of people, but a new generation of Christians is looking for change – and they want to be heard,” Tony Moore, an Exodus board member, said on the organization’s website.<br />
Chambers, over the past year, had caused turmoil in the ex-gay movement by changing course and saying that reparative therapy could hurt gays and that there was no cure for same-sex attraction.<br />
"I do not believe that cure is a word that is applicable to really any struggle, homosexuality included," Chambers told <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/47975787/ns/us_news-life/t/christian-group-backs-away-gay-cure/#.UcRTvfkQa24">The Associated Press</a> last year. "For someone to put out a shingle and say, 'I can cure homosexuality' — that to me is as bizarre as someone saying they can cure any other common temptation or struggle that anyone faces on Planet Earth."<br />
Evan Hurst, the associate director of Truth Wins Out, a leading organization opposed to the ex-gay movement, <a href="http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressrelease/2013/06/35762/">applauded Chambers on Thursday</a> for “honesty, integrity and authenticity.”<br />
“It takes a real man to publicly confront the people whose lives were destroyed by his organization’s work,” he said.<br />
"Alan Chambers, and the rest of the Exodus leadership, has fully and completely come to the realization that their so-called 'ministry' has done harm to thousands of people,” said Ross Murray, of of gay rights advocacy group GLAAD. “They are coming to the right decision to end that harm now."<br />
California last year become <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/30/14159337-california-becomes-first-state-in-nation-to-ban-gay-cure-therapy-for-children?lite">the first state in the nation</a> to ban such therapy for teens under 18 years of age. New Jersey's state legislature is weighing similar legislation.<br />
<i>Did you undergo therapy at Exodus International? Want to share your thoughts on Exodus' decision to shut down? You can write reporter Miranda Leitsinger with feedback: miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com </i><br />
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This story was originally published on <span class="dateline">Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:05 AM EDT</span></div>
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<span class="dateline"><a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/20/19056718-ex-gay-group-says-its-shutting-down-leader-apologizes-for-pain-and-hurt?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=6">http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/20/19056718-ex-gay-group-says-its-shutting-down-leader-apologizes-for-pain-and-hurt?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=6</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-4324355145288258012013-06-07T09:06:00.003-07:002015-08-11T12:00:10.293-07:00School prayer and the ConstitutionIn 1992, the Court ruled in Lee v. Weisman that prayers at public school commencements are an impermissible establishment of religion: "The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people," wrote Justice Kennedy for the majority. He dismissed as unacceptable the cruel idea that a student should forfeit her own graduation in order to be free from such an establishment of religion.<br />
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Our founders wisely adopted a secular constitution, the first to derive its powers from "We, the People" and the consent of the governed, rather than claiming divine authority. They knew from the experience of religious persecution, witch hunts and religious discrimination in the Thirteen Colonies, and from the bloody history left behind in Europe, that the surest path to tyranny was to entangle church and state. That is why they adopted a secular constitution whose only references to religion are exclusionary, such as that there shall be no religious test for public office (Art. VI). There were no prayers offered at the Constitutional Convention, which shows their intent to separate religion from secular affairs.<br />
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"There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter our civil affairs, our government would soon be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed."<br />
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- Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890<br />
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"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -James Madison <br />
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Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? (James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance," addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, pp. 459-460. According to Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, pp. 39 ff., Madison's "Remonstrance" was instrumental in blocking the multiple establishment of all denominations of Christianity in Virginia.)<br />
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"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate."<br />
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- Ulysses S. Grant, "The President's Speech at Des Moines" (1875)<br />
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Thomas Jefferson, author of the sweeping Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, stating that no citizen "shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever..." and that to "compell a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of [religious] opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical."<br />
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"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law 'respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."<br />
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- President Thomas Jefferson, 1802 letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut<br />
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Jefferson's Danbury letter has been cited favorably by the Supreme Court many times. In its 1879 Reynolds v. U.S. decision the high court said Jefferson's observations "may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment."<br />
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Supreme Court Cases Opposing Religious Worship in Schools<br />
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McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 212 (1948).Struck down religious instruction in public schools. The case involved school-sponsored religious instruction in which the sole nonreligious student, Jim McCollum, was placed in detention and persecuted by schoolmates in Champaign, Illinois.<br />
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Tudor v. Board of Education of Rutherford, 14 J.N. 31 (1953), cert. denied 348 U.S. 816 (1954).Let stand a lower court ruling that the practice of allowing volunteers to distribute Gideon Bibles at public school was unconstitutional.<br />
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Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).Declared prayers in public school unconstitutional.<br />
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Abington Township School District v. Schempp, 374. U.S. 203 (1963).Declared unconstitutional devotional Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public schools.<br />
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Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S., 97, 104 (1968).Struck down state law forbidding schools to teach the science of evolution.<br />
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Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980).Declared unconstitutional the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.<br />
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Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 72 (1985).Overturned law requiring daily "period of silence not to exceed one minute... for meditation or daily prayer."<br />
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Jager v. Douglas County School District, 862 F.2d 824 (11th Cir.), Cert. den. 490 U.S. 1090 (1989).Let stand a lower court ruling in Georgia that pre-game invocations at high school football games are unconstitutional.<br />
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Lee v. Weisman, 120 L.E. 2d 467/ 112 S.C.T. 2649 (1992).Ruled prayers at public school graduations an impermissible establishment of religion.<br />
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Berger v. Rensselaer, 982 F.2d, 1160 (7th Cir.) Cert. denied. 124 L.E. 2d 254 (1993).Let stand ruling barring access to Gideons to pass out bibles in Indiana schools.<br />
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Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000).Barred student-led prayers at public school functions.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-19539726352876239092013-05-11T11:15:00.001-07:002013-05-11T11:15:36.645-07:00The President on the Deaths of U.S. Embassy Staff in Libya the day after the attack<div class="rtecenter" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 20px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">
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THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Every day, all across the world, American diplomats and civilians work tirelessly to advance the interests and values of our nation. Often, they are away from their families. Sometimes, they brave great danger.</div>
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Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi. Among those killed was our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. We are still notifying the families of the others who were killed. And today, the American people stand united in holding the families of the four Americans in our thoughts and in our prayers.</div>
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The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack. We're working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats. I've also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world. And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.</div>
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Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.</div>
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Already, many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya. Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans. Libyans helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens’s body to the hospital, where we tragically learned that he had died.</div>
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It's especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save. At the height of the Libyan revolution, Chris led our diplomatic post in Benghazi. With characteristic skill, courage, and resolve, he built partnerships with Libyan revolutionaries, and helped them as they planned to build a new Libya. When the Qaddafi regime came to an end, Chris was there to serve as our ambassador to the new Libya, and he worked tirelessly to support this young democracy, and I think both Secretary Clinton and I relied deeply on his knowledge of the situation on the ground there. He was a role model to all who worked with him and to the young diplomats who aspire to walk in his footsteps.</div>
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Along with his colleagues, Chris died in a country that is still striving to emerge from the recent experience of war. Today, the loss of these four Americans is fresh, but our memories of them linger on. I have no doubt that their legacy will live on through the work that they did far from our shores and in the hearts of those who love them back home.</div>
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Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. </div>
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As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe.</div>
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No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.</div>
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But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers. These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity. They should give every American great pride in the country that they served, and the hope that our flag represents to people around the globe who also yearn to live in freedom and with dignity.</div>
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We grieve with their families, but let us carry on their memory, and let us continue their work of seeking a stronger America and a better world for all of our children.</div>
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Thank you. May God bless the memory of those we lost and may God bless the United States of America.</div>
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On CNN's<span style="color: black;"> </span><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2012/09/30/exp-mccain-reacts-to-the-attacks-in-libya-ambassador-rice.cnn"><span style="color: black;">"State of the Union"</span></a> on September 30, Candy Crowley asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) why he thought it took the administration 17 days after the Benghazi attacks to give a "sort of definitive statement" that terrorists orchestrated the attacks.</h2>
While moderating Tuesday's debate, Crowley forgot the timeline and facts she commanded two weeks earlier, and she inexplicably took President Obama's side when Obama and Romney were arguing about whether Obama referred to the Libya attacks as acts of terror on the day after.<br />
Romney correctly said Obama did not refer to the Benghazi attacks as acts of terror the day after. When Obama boldly lied and claimed that he had done so, Romney looked startled. Then, Crowley jumped in and said Obama had indeed said the day after the Benghazi attacks that those acts were acts of terror.<br />
Obama did say "acts of terror" on September 12, but he was not referring to the terrorists attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, which the Obama administration tried to claim was the result of spontaneous protests in response to an obscure anti-Muhammad Internet film.<br />
Hours later on Tuesday evening, Crowley went on CNN and said Romney "was right in the main, but he just chose the wrong word," but the damage was long done by then.<br />
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<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/10/17/Flashback-Crowley-Said-Obama-Took-17-Days-To-Claim-Benghazi-Attacks-Were-Acts-Of-Terror">http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/10/17/Flashback-Crowley-Said-Obama-Took-17-Days-To-Claim-Benghazi-Attacks-Were-Acts-Of-Terror</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-54923341305535314262013-04-18T17:30:00.002-07:002013-04-18T17:30:24.195-07:00Are the Ten Commandments the basis for the first Ten Amendments to the US Constitution?<br />
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I hear this comment often, “The Ten Commandments are the structure of our Bill of Rights."<br /><br />Is that right? Lets take a look at the first Ten Amendments.<br /><br />I. Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Petition – Freedom of Religion is actually the opposite of what the Ten Commandments requires. The other aspects of the First Amendment have nothing to do with the Commandments.<br />2. Right to keep and bear arms – Has nothing to do with the Commandments<br />3. Conditions for quarters of soldiers – Nothing to do with the Commandments<br />4. Right of search and seizure regulated – Nothing to do with the Commandments<br />5. Provisions concerning prosecution – Nothing to do with the Commandments<br />6. Right to a speedy trial, witnesses, etc. – A slight connection with bearing false witness, otherwide, nothing to do with the Commandments.<br />7. Right to a trial by jury – Nothing to do with the Commandments<br />8. Excessive bail, cruel punishment – Nothing to do with the Commandments<br />9. Rule of construction of Constitution – Absolutely nothing to do with the Commandments<br />10. Rights of the States under Constitution – Nothing to do with the Commandments.<br /><br />Other than the coincidence that there were initially Ten Amendments and there are Ten Commandments, there is only one slight resemblance between the two documents, which has to do with bearing false witness. The Freedom of Religion is actually the exact opposite of what the Commandments require. Are the Ten Commandments’ the structure of our Constitution? Complete nonsense.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-2046150594484448022013-04-18T17:28:00.002-07:002015-08-11T12:01:58.816-07:00Change and evolution<span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.4;">One component of evolution that gets glossed over by creationists is the reality that the animals that exist today did not exist in the past. When you start going back over the history of animals, you see an interesting pattern. There is a groupings of animals based on geological timeframes. There are no rabbits or tigers (as well as thousands of other animals that exist today) in the Paleozoic area. So, either god is doing multiple creations, (which contradicts the bible) or there was some mechanism that brought rabbits and tigers into the picture when they were not there originally.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the concept that change cannot turn one species into another species is accurate, then the dilemma of how these new animals came into the picture still remains. Animals that did not exist 300 million years ago exist today. Trying to get around the timeframes by claiming that the world is less than 10,000 years old, falls apart by other sciences, such as astronomy or geology. The cat kind had to exist in the first place in order for a tiger to have changed from it. And the fact is a cat kind was not around at one point. So, something else allowed tigers and all the other cat kinds to exist today when then they did not exist in the past. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looking at the evolution of motorized vehicles is a good example. Starting with a simple Model T car, you see that basic design expanded into motorcycles, trains, airplanes and rocket ships. Now there is obviously a different component here. Mechanical vehicles cannot reproduce themselves. Animals can. And when you look at animals, you see the same basic design that has expanded into different sizes shapes and abilities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are there issues with the theory? There are aspects of evolution that are not full understood yet, no one has ever argued that it is fully understood. However, every year, the information continues to build and develop a better way of understanding the process. As with many scientific ideas, the people who argue against evolution refuse to acknowledge that science is an ever growing body of information. They want to claim that if it cannot be explained today, then it will never be explained. ID relies on a double-standard. While Evolution scientists are expected to explain and predict everything, ID is points out issues and then triumphantly declares that evolution is wrong. When mistakes in ID are pointed out, the proponents of ID simply move to a new area of attack. When Darwin proposed his theory 150 years ago, Darwin didn't know, for example, about the details of DNA. Just as discoveries in physics have made tremendous progress since Newton, biological evolution has come a long way in the past 150 years. But evidence keeps confirming the general model that Darwin proposed (common ancestry, natural selection, etc.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What people who protest against evolution fail or refuse to grasp, is that it explains the diversity we see today. No other theory can accurately make that claim. And when they say that change occurs, but there is a limit, they need to explain exactly how that limit occurs, which they never do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have you ever wonder why creationists sell their theories to the general public rather than trying to get them published in scientific journals? They know that they have <i>zero</i> scientific validity, and any real scientist would see that. "Creation Theory" has no mechanism, therefore it is <i>not</i> a scientific theory. It isn't a question of whether it's a good theory or a bad one. It isn't a question of whether it's better than evolution theory or worse. It's the simple fact that Creation Theory does<i>not</i> fit the requirements of a scientific theory <i>at all</i>. From a scientific standpoint, there <i>is no such thing</i> as Creation Theory; the term is simply a misnomer that people have applied to an irrational religious belief.</span><br />
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One of the great strengths of evolution is that many different lines of evidence each point to evolution.Amazingly, the more that scientists study these lines of evidence, the more and more the lines agree on life's exact evolutionary history. Within the accuracy available to us, we get the same history of life over and over. Have a look at the multiple lines of evidence and how they each independently suggest evolution.</div>
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Paleontology shows us that organisms have changed gradually over time, as reflected in the fossil record.</div>
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Biogeography shows us how new species only arise near very similiar species. Similar species share a common time and place.</div>
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Developmental biology shows us that an organism builds on ancestral features as it develops from a single cell.</div>
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Morphology shows us how organisms adapt ancestral features to new uses, even when there are more efficient solutions elsewhere in nature.</div>
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Genetics shows us that we can group species by similarity of genes. These groups even share unused DNA.</div>
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All these lines of evidence not only suggest that evolution happened, they also agree on the course of its history.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-13243055841430285392013-04-18T17:24:00.003-07:002013-04-18T17:24:35.318-07:00The new pope is cheap. <br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pope Francis, who is known to be frugal, has decided that Vatican employees won't be getting the new pope bonus that traditionally comes with the election of a new pope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the past, the Vatican's 4,500-plus workers — both religious and lay — would receive an extra little something upon the death of one pope and another upon the election of his successor: In 2005, the total reportedly came to 1,500 euros (nearly $2,000) apiece.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that given tough economic times — the Vatican posted a 15 million-euro deficit in 2011 — "it didn't seem possible or appropriate to burden the Vatican's budget with a considerable, unforeseen extra expense."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, given that b<span style="background-color: white;">ankers' best guesses about the Vatican's wealth put it at $10 billion to $15 billion, it seems rather silly for the Vatican to stop providing this bonus. Afterall, it is hardly a common expense. New popes hardly are an annual event. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-66648740919382803582013-04-14T16:48:00.000-07:002013-04-21T02:47:34.670-07:00Are there atheist churches?<br />
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That there are atheist churches and by default, that atheism is a religion is a strange argument for a religious person to make on the face of it. Is it supposed to strengthen the atheist’s position or weaken the theist’s one? In reality it’s a sign they have run out of arguments.</div>
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Still, this argument is widely made, and so it needs to be addressed. Atheism is simply a disbelief in god(s). As someone once said, if atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby. And not playing golf is a sport.</div>
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That really ought to end the discussion right there. Clearly, a mere lack of belief in something cannot be a religion. In addition, since atheism has no sacred texts, no tenets, no ceremonies, what exactly is the religious aspect of atheism? Even theists that are making this argument already know all that.</div>
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But yet, they keep making the claim. I don’t know what they mean – I don’t read minds. So, they must be referring to certain activities of atheists – writing books and blogs, financing bus ads, joining atheist groups, etc. They think atheists are “religious in their atheism” – the word “religious” being used here colloquially to mean something felt very strongly, or followed enthusiastically. But this definition of religion is so broad that virtually anything people enjoy doing very much, or follow strongly or obsessively, is a religion. It’s a definition of religion that is so broad that it’s meaningless. In reality, most of the things that people follow enthusiastically, are just hobbies. And ironically, although not collecting stamps is not a hobby, getting involved in atheist activities (writing books and blogs, attending atheist meetings) might well be a hobby for some people. But a hobby is not a religion.<br />
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<a href="http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2009/06/atheism-is-not-a-religion.html">http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2009/06/atheism-is-not-a-religion.html</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-91919141210876311632013-04-02T14:33:00.003-07:002013-04-02T14:33:37.237-07:00Tracie Harris' "Who would die for a lie" A four part video that discusses why people do that very thing.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHEiBvB-Xu0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHEiBvB-Xu0</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmK_UmQDfFI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmK_UmQDfFI</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MhK7A345k">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6MhK7A345k</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1av4DR39Kg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1av4DR39Kg</a><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1889591552112122837.post-70045121015720151792013-04-01T17:25:00.000-07:002013-04-01T17:25:05.238-07:00Pluto's 'Gate to Hell' uncovered in Turkey<br />
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Pluto's 'Gate to Hell' uncovered in Turkey</h1>
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<img alt="" height="394" id="bill-m--fink7094016C-2E5F-C4E9-31D8-E77784DE155B.jpg" src="http://m.static.newsvine.com/servista/imagesizer?file=bill-m--fink7094016C-2E5F-C4E9-31D8-E77784DE155B.jpg&width=600" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="600" /><div class="photo_credit" style="border: 0px; color: #aaaaaa; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;">
Francesco D'Andria</div>
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A digital illustration shows the ancient Plutonium, celebrated as the portal to the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By Rossella Lorenzi</strong></em><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://news.discovery.com/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #336699; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Discovery News</a></strong></em></div>
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A “gate to hell” has emerged from ruins in southwestern Turkey, Italian archaeologists have announced.</div>
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Known as Pluto's Gate -- Ploutonion in Greek, Plutonium in Latin -- the cave was celebrated as the portal to the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology and tradition.</div>
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Historic sources located the site in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now called Pamukkale, and described the opening as filled with lethal mephitic vapors.</div>
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<a href="http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/lost-cities-120618.htm" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #336699; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTOS: The Hunt for Lost Cities</a></h2>
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“This space is full of a vapor so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Any animal that passes inside meets instant death,” the Greek geographer Strabo (64/63 BC -- about 24 A.D.) wrote.</div>
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“I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell,” he added.</div>
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Announced this month at a conference on Italian archaeology in Istanbul, Turkey, the finding was made by a team led by Francesco D'Andria, professor of classic archaeology at the University of Salento.</div>
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D'Andria has conducted extensive archaeological research at the World Heritage Site of Hierapolis. Two years ago he claimed to discover there the tomb of Saint Philip, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ.</div>
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Founded around 190 B.C. by Eumenes II, King of Pergamum (197 B.C.-159 B.C.), Hierapolis was given over to Rome in 133 B.C.</div>
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<a href="http://news.discovery.com/history/tomb-of-jesus-apostle-110801.htm" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #336699; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ANALYSIS: Tomb of Jesus' Apostle Found In Turkey?</a></h2>
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The Hellenistic city grew into a flourishing Roman city, with temples, a theater and popular sacred hot springs, believed to have healing properties.</div>
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“We found the Plutonium by reconstructing the route of a thermal spring. Indeed, Pamukkale' springs, which produce the famous white travertine terraces, originate from this cave,” D'Andria told Discovery News.</div>
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Featuring a vast array of abandoned broken ruins, possibly the result of earthquakes, the site revealed more ruins once it was excavated. The archaeologists found Ionic semi columns and, on top of them, an inscription with a dedication to the deities of the underworld -- Pluto and Kore.</div>
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D'Andria also found the remains of a temple, a pool and a series of steps placed above the cave -- all matching the descriptions of the site in ancient sources.</div>
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“People could watch the sacred rites from these steps, but they could not get to the area near the opening. Only the priests could stand in front of the portal,” D'Andria said.</div>
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According to the archaeologist, there was a sort of touristic organization at the site. Small birds were given to pilgrims to test the deadly effects of the cave, while hallucinated priests sacrificed bulls to Pluto.</div>
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The ceremony included leading the animals into the cave, and dragging them out dead.</div>
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<a href="http://news.discovery.com/animals/mysteries-and-myths-explained-by-animals-and-insects-130328.htm" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #336699; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Top 10 Animal Mysteries and Myths Explained</a></h2>
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“We could see the cave's lethal properties during the excavation. Several birds died as they tried to get close to the warm opening, instantly killed by the carbon dioxide fumes,” D'Andria said.</div>
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Only the eunuchs of Cybele, an ancient fertility goddess, were able to enter the hell gate without any apparent damage.</div>
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“They hold their breath as much as they can,” Strabo wrote, adding that their immunity could have been due to their "menomation," “divine providence” or “certain physical powers that are antidotes against the vapor.”</div>
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According to D'Andria, the site was a famous destination for rites of incubation. Pilgrims took the waters in the pool near the temple, slept not too far from the cave and received visions and prophecies, in a sort of oracle of Delphi effect. Indeed, the fumes coming from the depths of Hierapoli's phreatic groundwater produced hallucinations.</div>
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“This is an exceptional discovery as it confirms and clarifies the information we have from the ancient literary and historic sources,” Alister Filippini, a researcher in Roman history at the Universities of Palermo, Italy, and Cologne, Germany, told Discovery News.</div>
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Fully functional until the 4th century A.D., and occasionally visited during the following two centuries, the site represented “an important pilgrimage destination for the last pagan intellectuals of the Late Antiquity,” Filippini said.</div>
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During the 6th century A.D., the Plutonium was obliterated by the Christians. Earthquakes may have then completed the destruction.</div>
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D'Andria and his team are now working on the digital reconstruction of the site.</div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.59375px;">This is a great example of how people in the ancient world made reference to what they thought was aspects of the supernatural, but were completely natural, albeit, deadly occurrences. </span></span></div>
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