MaxedOutMama

What is about about religion that scares so many people? The vast majority of people who express their faith, do so quietly and in a community of like minded believers. They, like most Americans, hold the concept of 'live and let live,' dear. Most Americans do impose their belief on others nor do they support those who do.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to lump all believers together, regardless of their affiliation. We talk about the 'moderate' right, or the 'moderate' left, but when we talk about religious people the word 'moderate' is never spoken or implied. Religious people, it is assumed, are, well, religious. Enough said.

The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing other's loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas.
--W. C. Jones

Outside of time, what appears to us as happy coincidence from the perspective of a locked and linear flow of time may be simply the brushstroke of the master painter who simply... is.

Outside of time, scientific rules for the behavior of the universe may simply be the rules by which God chooses to use color and line and shading.

Inside time - inside our three dimensional box, flowing through a multi-dimensional universe, our explanations (scientific or otherwise) will always be found wanting. There will be miracles and there will be science. I see room for both - so long as we recognize our limitations and the resulting limits on what we can definitively conclude.

The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.

Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory.
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The scientific method requires that an hypothesis be ruled out or modified if its predictions are clearly and repeatedly incompatible with experimental tests. Further, no matter how elegant a theory is, its predictions must agree with experimental results if we are to believe that it is a valid description of nature.... Note that the necessity of experiment also implies that a theory must be testable. Theories which cannot be tested, because, for instance, they have no observable ramifications (such as, a particle whose characteristics make it unobservable), do not qualify as scientific theories.
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Like any good scientist, you may question the range of situations (outside of science) in which the scientific method may be applied. From what has been stated above, we determine that the scientific method works best in situations where one can isolate the phenomenon of interest, by eliminating or accounting for extraneous factors, and where one can repeatedly test the system under study after making limited, controlled changes in it.

Our tendency to underestimate the power of random processes to create order leads us to seek explanations where none are needed. Our tendency to be satisfied by well-formed utterances that are devoid of content compels us to accept explanations when none are provided.
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Luckily for us, the human brain tends to search for and hold onto the most rewarding view of events, much as it does of objects.

Our ability to find and embrace the most rewarding view of the circumstances that befall us is nothing short of remarkable, which is why people adapt so quickly and so well to almost every form of tragedy and trauma.

...we are surprised when experiences we once feared and avoided turn out to be much less awful than we had anticipated, and we are deeply surprised when they turn out to be blessings in disguise.
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Surprises such as these are curious events, and curious events beg for explanation. The proper explanation is that we have brains that avidly pursue the most rewarding view of things. The other explanation is providence. If there is a God who watches over us, who guides our hand when we are uncertain, who leads us to places we might not otherwise go, then unanticipated good fortune makes perfect sense.

The arrogance and hubris that can breed bad science maps perfectly onto the MSM. After all, not unlike scientists, journalists are an elite corps, chosen from on high and trained to distribute knowledge and information to the lowly masses. In the case of science, the lowly masses largely don't understand it, and certainly don't have the resources to do research. So the scientists do all the work and we trust and believe them. This trust fills the scientists with a unique power, and sometimes, power corrupts.

As for journalists, the lowly masses trust and believe them because they don't have the time or resources to go get the news facts themselves. Therein lies the temptation and ultimate progression: trust, power, corruption.

The movie depicts Edmund's guilt very poignantly. This is like breaking the first commandment of the atheist religion -- nobody shall ever be made to feel guilty for their choices, no matter what the consequences of those choices are.
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We must be tolerant; we must understand that everybody is weak, and nobody should be made to feel bad about their actions...

...except those who insist that people deal with the consequences of their actions. These people are the real evildoers. C.S. Lewis and Aslan and their ilk, who pretend like we are given "choices" in life, that we aren't just robotic/animalistic manifestations that have some degree of control over our lives and actions. The crime for turning on the lights on our comfortable little atheist party? Vehement condemnations by Polly Toynbee and investigation for "hate speech" by a university committee.
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By shifting the moral discourse from issues of right and wrong to issues of tolerance and intolerance, evangelical atheists (by which I mean the antireligious types who have a very evangelical-like need to force everybody to agree with them and seek out arguments with religious points of view) have certainly not made us a more "tolerant" people and culture.

This may be war - but the enemy is profoundly unsatisfactory. Osama bin Laden does not fit the bill.
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Yes, the act was unequivocally wicked, but once you've said that, what then?
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Yet sandwiched somewhere between anti-US ranting and William Shawcross's "We are all Americans now" (as if the only moral course were to park all brains at the US embassy), there is a reasoned position. Military intervention and cruise missiles are justified - but only with a high chance of doing good.
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The only place the US can impose a just peace quickly is in Israel.

So now Turkey has become another case of collateral damage in the spreading calamity of the Iraq war.
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Turkey tried to protect itself from contamination with the war by denying US troops access through its land to northern Iraq. But it was a natural target for Al-Qaeda fundamentalists attempting to turn back the clock to an Islamic Dark Age. To them, Turkey’s ever strengthening democracy is a Western abomination.
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No sign was given of serious intent to intervene in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The president leaves unabated alarm that the US will cut and run from Iraq to suit the presidential election timetable and not the needs of Iraqis.

As the war progresses in Afghanistan, the quid pro quo must come for Palestine. It will not wait: Afghanistan may not be resolved unless Palestine gets justice at the same time.

When I wrote recently about the need for Israel to withdraw back to its 1967 borders and dismantle its aggressive settlements, a sea of email accusations of anti-semitism swept in from all the over the world.
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Why care about Palestine now and not last year? Because it matters now, like the Taliban matters now. There is a right time for dealing with long-running oppressions - Serbia and Kosovo, or East Timor. Whatever the reason, when the chance comes it has to be seized and Tony Blair must urge the president to act loudly and decisively now, so all can see some good come of this.

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls.

...the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

...here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right.

...adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes.
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Holiness drenches the Chronicles.
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Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come.
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Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.

Gibran Tueni, An-Nahar's general manager, linked the killing to the 14 February bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and 20 other people and to another explosion targeting an opposition lawmaker who escaped with serious injuries.

"The Lebanese security authorities and the remnants of the Syrian system in Lebanon, and directly the Syrian regime from top to bottom, is responsible for every crime and every drop of blood spilled," Tueni said at the scene.

...it occurred to me that the hostile reception of Narnia on the part of many of the "anti-Christian coalition" (see here for example) had less to do with the movie's underlying (Christian) theology/mythology (which I thought was not at all emphasized) than it had to do with what must have been their intense identification with Edmund, whose inner conflicts and whining bitterness with its concomitant desire for power (especially over his siblings) leads him to betray his family and Narnia to a cold and ruthless evil.

In Iran, President Ahmaddamytree figures that half the world likes his Jew proposals and the rest isn't prepared to do more than offer a few objections phrased in the usual thin diplo-pabulum.

We assume, as Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and other civilized men did 70 years ago, that these chaps may be a little excitable, but come on, old boy, they can't possibly mean it, can they? Wrong. They mean it but they can't quite do it yet. Like Hitler, when they can do it, they will -- or at the very least the weedy diplo-speak tells them they can force the world into big concessions on the fear that they can.
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If a genocidal fantasist is acceptable in polite society, we'll soon find ourselves dealing with a genocidal realist.

I have heard the phrase repeated to me a few times by stunned liberals…”I don’t understand it, you’re a Conservative, but I still find I like you…”
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I’d been a Democrat and a liberal all my life and never heard Republicans described, in my family or in my neighborhood, or by my fellow Dems as “evil” until the Clinton campaign of 1992, where all of a sudden right and left no longer denoted differences of opinion, but became absolute, moral judgements.
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Really, it’s pretty basic. We’re supposed to treat others as we would like to be treated.

While the 'can't we all get along' idiots want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, the reality is that it will take a lot more than that to overcome racial, religious and cultural differences.
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Want to make a difference? Want to make our world a better place? The formula to succeed in those endeavors is not a secret. We need to work harder at reaching into ourselves, to do the best we possibly can. We need to make the necessary committments to make those efforts bear fruit. If we do all that, those changes we seek will come to pass.

One item that Western media often neglect to mention about Iraq is the state of the economy – or how well the economy is doing. According to Wikipedia, the growth rate (real rate, not nominal) for Iraq in 2004 is 52.3 percent. And the prediction is that the economy will continue to grow. The forecast according to the Economist will be 26 percent for the year 2005-2006.
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And no one (whether the Bush administration or the current Iraqi government) should takes credit for the economic growth. The credit belongs to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Iraqi people. There are several thousands new businesses are being registered every year (there are thousands more businesses that ignore the registration rule). It is the new enterprising spirit that allows a 52.3 percent growth in the worsening security environment (2004 is the most violence year since the fall of Baghdad).

In a move that would have been inconceivable only months earlier, Saddam Hussein loyalists are urging Sunnis to vote in Thursday's poll and warning al-Qaida fighters not to launch attacks.

As political and security tensions rise before the parliamentary elections, fighters in the Western al-Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from those loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
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Most election posters back two Sunni politicians, Saleh Mutlak and Adnan al-Dulaimi. Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia and former prime minister who ordered a US-led offensive that devastated Falluja last year, has some appeal, fighters said.

The nation's long housing boom will end not with a bang, but with a prolonged whimper as homeowners suffer through stagnant pricing that could last years.

That was the consensus of economists gathered in Chicago to consider whether a so-called housing bubble will end in a crash. Their (sic) say it won't.
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The problem is that rising mortgage rates are putting an end to the easy money that underpinned increasing home prices, said Richard Brown, chief economist of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Washington.

Homeowners and buyers have been searching for any signs that the nation’s robust housing boom may be going bust – especially in light of recent reports that the market is cooling. But NAR’s chief economist, David Lereah, assures us there is no reason for panic. The housing market may be slowing down, but it’s still strong and healthy.
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“Balloons don’t burst,” he says. “You can put air in a balloon and it expands or you can take air out and it shrinks. Various metro markets got real hot over the last four years. Air went into those balloons and the prices went up. But now, air is coming out of the balloons. We’re hearing a hissing sound not a pop…there’s a soft landing ahead.”

Bob Semmens, a 60-year-old retired pressman, has heard that sound. After he offered up his 3,000-square-foot colonial, with three acres and a swimming pool, in early July for $759,000, he sat back to wait for the frenzied offers.... But "very few people were even coming out to look," Semmens recalls. After four months, he was about to take the house off the market until next spring. But then he struck a deal -- for $620,000, an 18% price cut.
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By October, agents had 2,908 existing Loudoun houses on the market, an increase of 127% over a year earlier. The average time on the market had climbed 62%, to 42 days, since the fall of '04. And in just two months, from August to October, the median sales price for houses dropped from $506,100 to $480,000.

With regards to Paul Martin's announcement this morning of a ban on handguns; would someone please enlighten me as how this will stop the spree of shootings in Toronto as well as violence in other cities.

Like the long gun registry, this will be another money guzzling fiasco who will make criminals out of already law abiding citizens;not to mention it is an attempt to shore up Liberal votes in the big urban centres of Canada.

The sad part of this whole announcement is not only will it make criminals out of already law abiding citizens; but the real criminals who get caught with illegal weapons will continue to be allowed to walk away from our to soft justice system with a mere slap on the wrist.

—Jason Roy | New Glasgow

I am proud to live in a country that is intolerant of guns; we set a good example and we live in relative peace and safety. That's more important to me than someone's gun collection. Handguns do not belong in this century. They are archaic and barbaric.

For all the problems that they cause, it is not asking too much to request that those who collect them or play with them simply get a new hobby.

Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. In our tradition the State is not omnipresent in the home. And there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence.
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For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law.
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The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution.
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The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.

In the legislative record there is considerable evidence that many supporters of McCain-Feingold specifically wanted the law to silence criticism of their own performance in office.
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You can easily find quotes from across the political spectrum explaining why members of Congress find the speech of these citizen groups distasteful. But for brevity’s sake, let’s focus on Sen. McCain. These groups, he once said, “often run ads that the candidates themselves disapprove of.”
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Sen. McCain went on: “Further, these ads are almost always negative attack ads, and do little to further beneficial debate and healthy political dialogue.”
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But perhaps most important, campaign finance regulation is based on the notion that government must be empowered to act on and order the lives of citizens without influence or pushback from those very same citizens. The “reformers” believe that politics should be reserved for the folks inside the Beltway who can handle it.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

"Man nurtures the suspicion that God, at the end of the day, takes something away from his life, that God is a competitor who limits our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we will have set him aside," Benedict said.

"There emerges in us the suspicion that the person who doesn't sin at all is basically a boring person, that something is lacking in his life, the dramatic dimension of being autonomous, that the freedom to say 'no' belongs to real human beings," the pontiff said.

...imagine a weather forecaster that was using 1960's technology and 1960's era understanding of weather and weather forecasting, standing in front of chalkboard (yes, that is how they did it back then), drawing, erasing and making smiley faces along the way.

That particular meteorologist might be regarded as an anachronism from the Middle Ages- quaint, funny and might even be regarded with a touch of nostalgia.

In fact, the mighty 'political analysts' of the left are those 1960 era weather forecasters, more often wrong than they are right.

Most Republicans support maintaining or even increasing the number of troops in Iraq, but most Democrats and Independents want U.S. troops to be decreased or withdrawn. Among war opponents, 44 percent want all troops removed now. Just 12 percent of those who think going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do agree.

Six in 10 say they would agree with President Bush’s statement that removing U.S. troops from Iraq now would be "a recipe for disaster."

Several Democrats joined President Bush yesterday in rebuking Dean's declaration to a San Antonio radio station Monday that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong."
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Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking House Democratic leader, have told colleagues that Pelosi's recent endorsement of a speedy withdrawal, combined with her claim that more than half of House Democrats support her position, could backfire on the party, congressional sources said.
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"What I want Democrats to be discussing is what the president's policies have led to," Emanuel said. He added that once discussion turns to a formal timeline for troop withdrawals, "the how and when gets buried" and many voters take away only an impression that Democrats favor retreat.

"We have not blown our chance" of winning back the House but "we have jeopardized it," said a top strategist to House Democrats, who requested anonymity to speak freely about influential party leaders. "It raises questions about whether we are capable of seizing political opportunities or whether we cannot help ourselves and blow it" by playing to the liberal base of the party.

Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said that while Pelosi estimates more than half of House Democrats favor a speedy withdrawal, she will lobby members in today's meeting against adopting this as a caucus position.

Dr Charoen Chuchottaworn, a bird-flu expert at the Public
Health Ministry’s Department of Medical Services, said doctors concluded after
reviewing the history of the past two cases that both victims presented very
mild symptoms of avian influenza and neither had any physical contact with
chickens or birds.
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This left doctors no clues as to where the patients became infected with the H5N1 virus and showed that the avian influenza had moved from causing severe human infection to milder cases.
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Signs of possible human-to-human transmission were closely observed in Vietnam, where 10 clusters of probable human transmissions were detected in which the victims had no contact with infected poultry, Charoen said.

Thailand and Indonesia had one official cluster, he said, but the Indonesian cluster showed clear-cut evidence because a child contracted H5N1 without going to an infected area, as her father had.

Officials from the WHO and a variety of member countries meeting in Geneva this week will broach the topic of naming the next pandemic as part of discussions aimed at charting risk communications strategies for that eventual outbreak.

The idea is to get out ahead of the media in a bid to ensure that whatever name the next pandemic gets tagged with doesn't leave a historical black mark on the country or region from whence the causative flu virus emerges.

"One of the things we've been worried about is the potential for stigma," Dick Thompson, spokesperson for the WHO's communicable diseases branch, explained Tuesday.

"...I think that we have a responsibility to think through what kind of stigma this might produce and see if we can do anything about that."

Thompson has some experience naming diseases. He was among a trio of WHO officials who came up with the name severe acute respiratory syndrome for a disease that is now much better known its catchy acronym, SARS.

Dr. David Heymann convened the meeting that led to the selection of that name.
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In 2003, Heymann, Thompson and Denis Aitken, who worked in the office of then-director general Gro Brundtland, batted around a bunch of ideas for about 15 minutes. They were looking for a name like AIDS - something that would stick to the disease, Heymann said.

"It was kind of fun."