Society & Culture - 29 August 2006

for there to be peace on earth....
if any?

2006-08-29 20:25:24 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Cultures & Groups

2006-08-29 20:24:49 · 24 answers · asked by Señor Badass 2 in Religion & Spirituality

Why people are not thinking about the future after we die?
Why people are always thinking there needs and happiness of this temporary life?
Who can help us to obtain the real world after we die?
Is the bible can give us the true way of salvation?
What is the different between man who walk to God's way or biblical way and man who walk on human way

2006-08-29 20:22:14 · 22 answers · asked by vbprogrammer 1 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 20:20:57 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 20:20:48 · 24 answers · asked by Michael 1 in Other - Society & Culture

Is it true once a cheater always a cheater?? I cheated on a guy i was with for a year but it was when i found out he was gonna be done with me and was sleeping with two other girls. WEll he is gone and im with a wonderful guy and i do my best to be loyal. I hope i always will you think so?? I LOve this ONE

2006-08-29 20:19:54 · 18 answers · asked by subarubatmanboy 1 in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender

can someone who has never read the bible still believe in god and say that they believe everything in the bible is true??

a co-worker said it isnt possable because a person could say the bible says anything and i'd have to agree because i dont know if its true or not and he was too stubbourn to understand that i said i believe in the bible, not man. but i havent read the bible. do i have false faith or blind faith or no faith at all?

2006-08-29 20:18:36 · 18 answers · asked by psycho_nextdoor 1 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 20:17:43 · 7 answers · asked by Black Atheist 1 in Religion & Spirituality

that God wont give u the spouse he would've if you'd only obeyed him? And when u have kids they'll cause trouble like Absalom did with David?

2006-08-29 20:17:34 · 15 answers · asked by Anonymous in Religion & Spirituality

"A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism” ~ Donald Morgan

Let's consider the cosmology of Genesis. In biblical times, people thought that the earth and heaven were all that there was... and that the earth was essentially a 'terrarium' (you might want to look that up). They thought that the sky was a solid object, called the 'firmament', and that the sun, moon, and stars were affixed to it. So, essentially, heaven is 'on the other side of the sky'.

The story of Genesis is comprised of the myths, superstitions, fairy tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant bunch of Bronze Age fishermen and wandering goat herders, lifted from the oral traditions of other cultures, and crafted into a tale that incorporated some of their own folk tales and pseudo-history. This collection of ignorance provides the basis for the Abrahamic death cults of desert monotheism... Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The cosmological aspects of Genesis are perfectly understandable, if you contemplate it in the proper context. At the time the bible stories were concocted, the perception was that the earth was the object and the center of creation. Why? Because they had no reason to think otherwise. Today, as we advance science, we stand upon the shoulders of all the scientists that came before. Back then there were no shoulders to stand upon... so they did the best they could with what they had... their senses and their imaginations.

* They had no concept of 'outer space', and so they conceived that in the beginning all that existed were dark waters.

* They had no concept of 'nothingness'. Remember, the concept of 'zero' wasn't invented (discovered?) until thousands of years later. With that in mind, the term 'void', as it is employed in Genesis, can not refer to 'nothingness'... it can only be applied in its alternative definition, which is 'empty'. So, the waters were dark, formless and empty (devoid of content).

* They thought that all of creation consisted of the earth and an unseen 'heaven', and they thought that the sky was a 'thing'... a substantive 'firmament' (the sky) that was created by god to separate the waters and differentiate earth from heaven, when both were created.

# They had no idea that Earth was a planet, orbiting the sun.

# They had no idea that there is no firmament... that the sky is not a 'thing'.

(If you don't believe that they thought the sky was an object... a solid barrier... consider the Tower of Babel, that they were building to reach heaven. Apparently, God ALSO thought that the sky was an object, since it concerned him so much that he confounded their speech, so as to disrupt their project and keep them from reaching his domain. God must be pretty much of a dumbass, if he doesn't even know the actual configuration of the universe that he created. So much for the 'inerrant' bible.)

* They thought that the sun was a light that god had placed upon the 'firmament' to differentiate night from day.

# They had no idea that the sun is a star... the center of our solar system.

# They had no concept of 'stars' in the same sense that we understand them today.

* They had no idea that night and day were a consequence of the earth's rotation.

* They thought that the moon was a 'lesser' light that god had caused to travel across the firmament to enable man to differentiate the seasons, and provide illumination at night.

# They had no concept of the moon as a satellite.

* They thought that the stars were tiny lights that god had placed upon the firmament to provide for omens. (Some thought that the stars were 'holes' in the firmament that allowed the 'light of heaven' to shine through.)

# They had no idea that the stars were suns, just like our own sun.

# They thought the eyeball-visible planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn) were 'wandering stars'.

# They had no idea that the planets were actually sun-orbiting bodies, just like earth.

* They had no idea that the earth, itself, is a planet.

# They had no clue as to the actual nature of the earth, our solar system, the place of our solar system in the galaxy... or even of the existence of our galaxy. (Up until very recently, we didn't even know that there were other galaxies. Our galaxy, when it was first known that there actually WAS a galaxy, was thought to be the whole universe.) From their perspective, the 'earth' and 'heaven' (i.e., whatever existed on the other side of the sky) represented all that there was. A terrarium.

I do not say this things to disparage what they thought back then. They were trying to do what science is trying to do today... trying to understand reality. Today, we have technology and disciplined meta-procedures (scientific method) to help us extract answers from nature.

Back then, they did not.

Today, we have 'theories' to provide consistent explanations for what we are able to observe in nature, supplemented and validated by the additional information that we are able to extract from nature by means of our technology, our disciplined methods and our intellectual tools (mathematics, logic). Most of our theories are incomplete, so we continue to work on them... because we know that they are incomplete.

Back then, they did not have disciplined methods, and they did not have the technology to extract answers from nature. The only information they had access to was what they could see with their own eyeballs. There was no technological knowledge base or scientific context in which to interpret their observations, so they had to appeal to their imaginations... and the 'supernatural'... in order to make sense out of what they saw. Actually, what they really achieved was deluding themselves into thinking that they knew the truth. Amazingly, over time, this delusion has become codified, institutionalized, and incorporated... complete with franchises.

Basically, Genesis can be thought of as a 'theory', concocted by people who were constrained by lack of technology, methodology and intellectual tools... but they sure weren't constrained by lack of imagination.

Today, we try to interpret Genesis in the context of what we know to be true of the universe... galaxies, stars, planets, moons, gravity, orbits, inclination of the earth's axis, planetary rotation, etc. They problem is that Genesis can't be interpreted in terms of those things, because Genesis was written by men, based on oral traditions, and those men did not know about those things. They could only write about what they could see and what they could guess about the reasons that lay behind what they saw. In any event, it provided them with a mechanism to quell the innate anxiety that comes with fretting about how and why they came to be here.

They guessed wrong.

So... I think that the cosmological aspects of Genesis require a literal interpretation... no metaphors... no allegory... no hidden meaning. The key, though, is in understanding that the literal interpretation does not lead to a description of the way things ARE... it leads to a description of the way they THOUGHT things are. It leads to a naive description of reality, concocted by people who were doing the best they could with what they had.

It is absolutely appalling, though, to realize that hundreds of millions of people, TODAY, including participants in this forum, BELIEVE that this ignorant bovine excrement is actually TRUE.

2006-08-29 20:15:48 · 27 answers · asked by superdave 1 in Religion & Spirituality

I'm starting a gang in a videogame online, and I need various ranks for my forum users in the community. I need about 10 of them... things like 'thug, or 'kingpin...

2006-08-29 20:15:30 · 2 answers · asked by aaron.lattin 2 in Other - Society & Culture

Is it just me, or does it seem like people are just having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that we are just a species of animal. Why don't we want to realize that we are just something that evolved on this planet at some time in the earth's history that cannot be historically accounted for in any of the world's religious doctrines. They all say things that have been proven wrong by today's technology. I think our world can start to move in the right direction if we can all just get out of the dark ages and give up our supernatural imaginations. After all, sooner or later, some big rock is just going to crash into the earth and wipe out mankind anyway. Then maybe someday, someone will be digging up our bones along with the dinosaurs' and wonder why these animals weren't recorded in their crazy religious text.
Food for thought.

2006-08-29 20:14:08 · 15 answers · asked by jkippol 1 in Religion & Spirituality

WHAT IS THE TRANSLATION OF THIS ISLAMIC WORDS IN ENGLISH PLZ
ELSALAMO ALIKOM =عليكم السلام
WA ALECOM ELSALAM=و عليكم السلام
ALIIH EL SALAM=علية السلام
SALA ALLAH ALIIH WA SALIM=صلى الله علية و سلم
INSHAA ALLAH=ان شاء اللة
RADIA ALLAH ANHO =رضى الله عنة

THANKS FOR U ALL BROTHERS

2006-08-29 20:13:41 · 7 answers · asked by why? 2 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 20:12:24 · 18 answers · asked by Lambada 2 in Religion & Spirituality

it will be to late by then....

2006-08-29 20:11:44 · 34 answers · asked by John Skerry 1 in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender

2006-08-29 20:11:09 · 15 answers · asked by askin for timepass!!! 1 in Mythology & Folklore

2006-08-29 20:09:35 · 26 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Society & Culture

2006-08-29 20:08:09 · 19 answers · asked by birdie 1 in Religion & Spirituality

what church will accept me?

2006-08-29 20:07:43 · 24 answers · asked by Anonymous in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 20:07:39 · 6 answers · asked by shehro 1 in Religion & Spirituality

what do you think about the story The Lathe of Heaven?could we ever be that way?

2006-08-29 20:05:22 · 4 answers · asked by Pooks 6 in Other - Society & Culture

Are you sure after you die your going to heaven?
Why people cannot realized that we need a salvation?
Why people always making sins and can't change their life and direct to God?
Do you believing that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life?

2006-08-29 20:03:03 · 20 answers · asked by vbprogrammer 1 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 20:01:44 · 14 answers · asked by hin 1 in Other - Society & Culture

2006-08-29 20:00:45 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Cultures & Groups

I've had the worst luck all my life. What have I done to deserve this? No one I know has bad luck like me. I've even gone to people who remove curses. Nothing seems to improve anything. No mean answers please, I already feel bad enough.

2006-08-29 19:59:26 · 16 answers · asked by fly boy 3 in Other - Society & Culture

...just lead to the government giving a bigger subsidy

OR

...just lead the government to give a bigger subsidy


Indonesia is hoping that the prices will not be extremely low or high. The extremely high price may cause social political unrest in this country which will JUST LEAD TO THE GOVERNMENT GIVING A BIGGER SUBSIDY. It may also cause inflated capital crude which results in the increase in oil production costs. While the too-low prices will make the oil and gas production activities become stagnant and investment become discouraged. Eventually, it will create a disincentive for the development of alternative energy.

Thank you.

2006-08-29 19:59:07 · 7 answers · asked by Verdi 1 in Languages

I am not interested in stupid answers, neither am I interested in hearing anyone preach about their own religion. I really want to understand why are Muslim men allowed to haev four wives? I heard from a Muslim friend that this is because Mohamad took in a few women under his shelter away from the enimies. And wasn't really 'marrying' them. I just want to understand this.

But in my country, this is not 'approved' of anymore in this modern age.

2006-08-29 19:58:54 · 21 answers · asked by (coco) 3 in Religion & Spirituality

There used to be intelligent, thought provoking questions on here...I don't need anyone to tell me that I'm a f*****g f*g or that I should burn in hell or whatever---I already know that.........I don't need anybody criticizing my lifestyle.....or anybody asking if during anal sex you ever get s**t on you..or if lesbians really just need to have a good man for once in their life...or if you dreamt that you were a woman who kissed madonna and you think you could be gay....I don't need you to come onto this site to tell me that you disapprove of my lifestyle...I've heard all that before...but......What happened to the intelligent people with the intelligent questions (my apologies to those of you who are still here)?

2006-08-29 19:55:48 · 17 answers · asked by Anonymous in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender

don't misunderstand. I don't have a problem with it. I just don't get it. If I disagreeded with something or didn't believe in it, I'm not sure I would even go to those questions to respond. Much less get so worked up over it. I ask this not to provoke but to understand.

2006-08-29 19:53:54 · 32 answers · asked by the answers are there 2 in Religion & Spirituality

2006-08-29 19:51:26 · 18 answers · asked by Anonymous in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender