The media battle to sway American public opinion is in full swing (remember Jeffers Media Theory: No story makes it into the MSM without sponsorship from a very powerful special interest group). "Iran's leader say Egypt heading for an Islamist Revolution!"
ROFL!!! LMAO!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOL!!!!!!
Dude, they are going to string you up on the Yardarm soon enough! Two years ago, Iran was able to steal the election and crush the opposition... now I doubt they last the year.
The battle between the West and the Islamic extremists has been forever changed by the power of the internet.... and not just the Islamic extremists... ANY religious extremism is going to be brutally overcome by the Web. The same forces that are going to wipe the floor with the former bottleneck (choke point) in our educational system have made it very difficult to come up with uninformed believers.
Remember the movie "The Da Vinci Code"? Released in 2006, filmed in 2005, based on the 2003 book by Dan Brown... the book inflamed many Christians who simply were not informed enough of their religion to know of the significance of the Council of Nicea. These types of incidents are to be no more in the era of the Web (I saw street demonstrations in Nashville after the movie came out. Unreal.)
Have a position? Be prepared to defend it, to others AND yourself, in the face of TRUTH. Abortion? Death Penalty? War? People support things that they have been censored from seeing, things they support in the abstract... that censorship has been permanently lifted, and when people see the truth of a thing they frequently feel differently than when they only think of it in the abstract, or when they have been pitched by charismatic snake oil salesmen. Just ask anyone who has seen the physical results of an actual abortion... or who has been to Dachau or Hiroshima...
All of the major religions have made massive changes and admissions because of the advance of science, some more than others. The earth is NOT the center of the universe. The sun does NOT revolve around the earth. The earth is NOT 6,000 years old. Man shares the same genes found elsewhere in the natural world. Some of these dogmas are harmless to believe (and none of them suggest that G-d does not exist, either)... others... like the justifications used to kill infidels... not so much.
The Arab world, and the larger Muslim world, is being affected by the information age just like everybody else, and all of their regimes are doomed. The problem for the West is that the West liked those regimes. They could be bought, and cheaply. They were only too willing to sell out their people and keep the Oil flowing at rates that met the agendas of the ruling classes. Those days are drawing to an end.
Politically, voters in the West will blame whoever is in office when the people of the Middle East and North Africa come to their senses on their oil resources... and therein lies the rub... and rub it will, and roil our politics, too... and we'll get over it. One way or another.
Politically, voters in the West will blame whoever is in office when the people of the Middle East and North Africa come to their senses on their oil resources... and therein lies the rub... and rub it will, and roil our politics, too... and we'll get over it. One way or another.
40 comments:
Looks like Jordan is next in line. Domino theory redux?
Best,
Dan
Jeffers agree with everthing except the Da vinci thing.
I think those people understood exactly what they were protesting. The Da Vinci code came with the premise that Jesus was never considered divine until the council of Nicaea. He passed off a story as history and in the process did a great disservice to the truth. I have read quite a few of the early church fathers and the unanimous though is that Christ was divine within the early church. The earliest deviation of this was the Gnostics who did not argue whether Christ was Divine but whether he only appeared to have a real body or if he just appeared to have a real body, thus he could not have really suffered as a human (this would have denied the suffering of the cross and thus salvation through Christ). Most Gnostics thought that anyone who could attain divine or esoteric knowledge from the divine. Not all Gnostics were Christian either; some thought Christ stole John the Baptists preeminent spot and others had various other beliefs. Really this is a huge topic in itself so I don’t want to stray too far. The point was though that most if not all the early divisions before the council thought that Christ was divine (100-240). In the 200’s there were many sects that went different ways on the whole thing and thus the Nicaea council was called to provide a final opinion on the material that they had. The council was called mostly because the early Egyptian church based in Alexandra was having a division called Arianism. The basic divide was if the “son of God” was created by the father and was a son in actual creation or whether he was the son in relationship as the early church taught (subject to the father, made of the same nature as father, God head). Because Arias taught that the pre-incarnate Christ was created and therefore inferior to the father. The Da Vinci Code was a fraud because it was a complete revisionist history of the events and had no context, but it was just a movie. The problem is that they acted like it was history. The people that protested knew what they believed even if the those outside the church did not.
To bad rational people that are willing to finally accept the science of things (humans sharing 97% of orangutans DNA, fossils showing humans are millions of years old, you can't turn sticks into snakes, why does God hide?, having an invisible force doing all the heavy lifting, instead of respect by merit) cannot reconcile that there is no evidence of a diety of any kind anywhere. Old men use religion to rule minorities, women and children. Simple as that. More education and more information will indeed put this to an end.
Sorry to burst your self created bubble but most religions place far more constraints on the "strong" to the benefit of the weak overall.
What the anti-religious atheist's seem to want today is unconstrained entitlement for some "minorities" while keeping the so called strong in religious shackles. We see this most prominently in feminism but all liberalism is infested by it.
Eventually the spin won't work anymore.
PP,
It is my observation that the radical atheists object most strenuously to the idea that there is a higher power than they in the universe, and that there is a Natural law and the existence of right and wrong. Mostly they are a bunch of narcissists. Socialism draws them like moths to the flame, as it provides an outlet to radiate their magnificence upon the masses. A higher power detracts from their glory and genius. Of course, those who disagree are eventually plowed into the earth....
Regards,
Coal Guy.
CG
I wholeheartedly agree with your observation. The myriad problems such narcissism spawns presents us with more dangers than the proverbial hydra heads.
Dex:
Not disagreeing with your well informed position. There are a great many folks not so well informed.
While I may not share your strong faith, I share a belief in Christian philosophy - so many of our opinions and beliefs may or may not be right, but some things are obvious. Right and wrong; The sanctity of Life; strength of character, faithfulness, loyalty, family and community.
Bur:
I don't know why you say the things you do.
PP:
Of course that is correct... but that is going to fall on the deaf ears of the Left.
Coal Guy:
You and I tend to see things nearly identically... nothing to add to that.
I am much more optimistic about the potential outcomes in the Arab world than many in the media... these are human beings, with a long history and culture from which to draw on.
Greg,
While I agree that the internet makes it nearly impossible to stop the flow of news, it also makes it easier for the watchers to watch. It is a double edged sword.
Regards,
Coal Guy
Coal Guy:
Excellent point.
At this moment momentum is firmly on one side of the boat... but I need to noodle that... because that is very true.
I would add that not only is the internet a rich source of facts it is also a rich source of disinformation.
ChrisInGa
ChrisinGa:
And that's true, too... but certainly not more than when the only data comes from a censuring government.
Cause its the facts, Jeffers. Even you were dabbling in it there for a minute in your writeup. Unless you commit to nothing but "faith" and a lot of convenient explanations as to why "little Timmy's cancer that killed him was God's plan that we just aren't meant to understand yet," no self-respecting investor can allow such nonsense to get in the way of evaluating the world factually.
It's tough to have what it takes to take that next step. Saying it is all a bunch of historical hooey. The science is right there for you. Go with it! Or is your "community" demanding you toe the line and ignore what your (common) senses say?
Interesting blurb from Agora 5-Minute Report today ....
"Crude prices are holding steady a hair below $92 a barrel, after a big Egypt-fueled run-up Friday and yesterday.
Of course, that’s West Texas Intermediate, the stuff that flows into the tank complex at Cushing, Okla., where ***inventories are near record highs***. Brent crude, the standard in much of the rest of the world, is pushing $100, thanks to declining supplies in the North Sea and high demand in Asia."
Bur,
It takes a certain arrogance for you atheists to think yourself intellectually superior to the likes of Thomas Aquinas, Galileo or Sir Isaac Newton. You go ahead and indulge yourself I’m not up to it.
Best,
Dan
We dont ask for much, Dantheman. Just a little proof, courtroom proof, is all that is required. Jeffers is on the cusp of accepting the very possible: that for thousands of years one group (mostly old men) used the thought of "god" to scare and intimidate others (minorities, women and children) into feeling bad about themselves and to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.
Now this isn't totally a negative thing. We should give credit where it is due. Thanks to the Salvation Army (a Christian organization), which is one of the biggest supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous, many families are intact today because they gave drunken parents a choice to get better. And many children benefited hugely from this.
Never said I was superior. I just ask for something other than "just have faith."
So do tell Bur, what did these "mostly old men" who called on god to coerce minorities and women and children into doing, that they normally wouldn't have done?
Just what did they do?
I am especially interested in what these old men coerced minorities into.
Bur,
The gospels would hold up in a court of law. The gospels are the testimony of multiple eye witness of the same event by highly creditable witnesses. Matthew was a tax collector, Luke was a physician and John was a preacher- Pillars of the community. Moreover their belief is not just conveys by their word but also by their own actions; no one willingly faces, and ultimately suffers, death for that which they do not believe.
Best,
Dan
Folks, I meant only to say that one of the great powers of the Web is its ability to inform peoples decisions and belief.
No society or civilization has ever existed for any length of time without some form of belief system coalescing... and, for the most part, nothing good comes around in its absence...
If you dont know the power of old men ruling over their families/social units since day one, Preppy, there nothing I can say that will convince you.
That's what dads' do. Use anything and everything (including a mysterious, unseen, all-knowing being) to remain relevant and in charge in human society. It is done even today.
This goes back a year or two to my contention that the people left the American farms 100 years ago mostly because they didnt want to live under "old dead white man" rule anymore, and that model wasnt coming back, no matter what Farmer Jeffers' wants. :)
The Word Of God" and the Bible were often used to lord it over other humans who didn't want to submit to the old dead white man's authority.
Dan, the gospels and the Bible were written by thousands and re-edited by hundreds of thousands, all of whom are now dead. Dead people dont testify in court. :)
LOL this coming from the guy who says he wants facts?
You give us generalizations based on what? Your feelings?
Some made up mass migration, which I have never seen written about, based on flight from rural white men? Some feminist talking points perhaps?
Let's hear some facts. Some actual examples of mass coercion and forced behavior that you elude to.
Greg
Your observation is correct it also allows much more cohesion to mass movements than we have ever seen in the past. Word can spread far and wide in short order. A benefit typically only seen and used by the military for the last few decades.
PP, are you denying that huge members of the population of the US left the farms a 100 years ago and "fled" to the cities, so that now the rural population is down to around 1-2% of the US population?
Fleeing old dead white male overlords isnt the only reason, of course. Easier, more profitable work was one reason. Cleaner lives (without dirty pigs) was another.
The question is, when all those advantages evaporate as energy and credit tightens, are all these woman and children going to go BACK to the farms? You'll have to drag almost all of them first. They know what narrow-minded, God-fearing, zero tolerance (and zero-entertainment) overseers await them. :)
Greg,
I'm with you on the thing about Mid East despots being cheap for the US to buy. That is why the US is on the wrong side of too many conflicts. It is expedient on the short run. In the long run, that does not serve our national interest. It is lousy.
Regards,
Coal Guy
PP,
I've stopped trying to debate Nancy. There are no new ideas and nothing to learn, just reruns of the same baseless propaganda. A friend of mine used to say, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."
Regards,
Coal Guy
You are of course right Coal guy.
I was only trying to point out to casual readers what he (bur) was actually pushing.
Now if I remember right the main migration from rural to urban didn't really happen until the dust bowl era and then during the depression. Neither of which were caused by any white female flight.
In fact as late as the 60's numerous families lamented their disconnect from the land and the loss of the family farms. As late as the 90's we had large scale celebrity movements to save what was left.
Yet as usual with lefty feminist fueled anti white male propaganda Bur refused to even enlighten us on his "Minority coercion" claim. He uses a large scale economic and ecological disaster to claim flight from white men. Now we see that is sheer made up BS. Yet I am interested just what movement Bur's boogey men conducted against any minority group in the name of religion or using religious dogma to force some behavior, as he claims.
Crybaby's opinion is nothing, I ask openly for others to see the paper thin arguments and expose the lie for what it is.
PP,
It is so outrageous that it is hard not to take the bait. What amazes me is how widely spread these opinions are. They have little or basis in fact, yet are ubiquitous. I believe that the MSM are using mass marketing techniques to spread this manure. Marketeers are VERY good at what they do. Consider the increase in use of bottled water. Ask around and be amazed at the number of people that believe that their tap water is dangerous to drink. How the hell did they do it?
Regards,
Coal Guy
Bur,
I hesitate to post this. I usually do not post in discussions where someone appears to not just disagree but who comes across as angry about the subject. I am posting this just to put the info out there.
This is research done by not just 'religious' historians but secular as well. There is really no serious academic disagreement about the information in this post.
http://carm.org/hasnt-bible-been-rewritten-so-many-times-we-cant-trust-it-anymore
Bur,
The gospels have been transcribed by thousands and translated mainly by William Tyndale. Moreover, when compared against the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Authorized Version of 1611, e.g. the King James Version, is accurate. This should not be surprising since the transcribers tended to be devout, and with a large number of transcribers all focused on one text shenanigans that you would expect today, would not be possible.
What do you mean dead people don’t testify in court? Have you ever heard of an affidavit? Impending death, from say terminal cancer, is a key reason to seek an affidavit, which will then be admissible in court.
Best,
Dan
Coal guy,
I had a history prof get red in the face mad when in the middle of his “Columbus was an evil man who set out to slaughter and enslave the poor little Native Americans” tirade I pointed out: Columbus was trying to find a sea rout to the Asian spice markets and he thought he had landed on an isle off of India which is why he called the natives Indians.
Best,
Dan
Has anyone seen Richard Fernandez’s Race for the Keys article. He is probably right that that our government loves their secret police and the race is on the secure the crown jewels of the Mubarak regime. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I reckon.
Best,
Dan
I and bur had these same debates a yr of so ago. He just throws out empty rhetoric and has no basis for any of it. He is not particularly smart or deep and it showed in his post. For God sakes he thinks science is not a philosophy of observing the universe and the things within it. Metaphysics is the basis for all scientific discoveries. He fails to realize that just because something can be defined mathematically does mean that there is a physical reality that actually corresponds to it. Here is a great little anecdote about this
“Suppose we want to find the number of men required for a certain job under certain conditions. Every schoolboy knows such problems, and he knows that he must begin by saying: “let x = the number of men required.” But the substitution introduces a whole range of possibilities that the nature of the original problem excludes. The mathematical symbol x can be positive, negative, integral, fractional, irrational, imaginary, complex, zero, infinite, and whatever else the fertile brain of the mathematician may devise. The number of men, however, must be simply positive and integral. Consequently, when you say, “let x = the number of men required” you are making a quite invalid substitution, and the result of the calculation, though entirely possible for the symbol, might be quite impossible for the men. Every elementary algebra book contains such problems that lead to quadratic equations, and these have two solutions, which might be 8 and -3. Say. We accept the 8 as the answer and ignore -3 because we know from experience that there are no such things as negative men, and the only alternative interpretation- that we could get the work done by subtracting three men from our gang-is obviously absurd. So we just ignore (one) of the mathematical solutions, and quite overlook the significance of the that fact-namely that in the language of mathematics we can tell lies as well as truths, and with the scope of mathematics itself there is no possible way of telling one from the other. We can distinguish them only by experience or by reasoning out the mathematics, applied to the possible relation between the mathematical solution and its supposed physical correlate?”
If you don’t understand the point I am making then you are probably bur. Just because the universe can be explained away in some mathematical theory does not make that theory correct. The big bang proved creation from nothing, Ex Nihilo. The scientists of the day were perplexed because if the universe was not oscillating model or a steady state model then it literally appeared from nothing. There is scientific model for this whatsoever.
This leads to these specific observations
1. An actually infinite number of things cannot exist
2. A beginning less series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things
3. Therefore, a beginning less series of events in time cannot exist.
4. What started it then, that is metaphysics and why science has no answers?
5. This implies a first mover
Don't waste your time on him. As the saying goes "don't throw you pearls before pigs"
Please tell the all-powerful, all-knowing, God who hides, apparently in fear, even though he is all-powerful, who allows children to die in pain from cancer, etc., for reasons we cant possibly understand, to show his face, his real face, and I promise we wont harrass him.
Failing that, my position is that, over thousands of years of history, the "god" fable, which cannot be proven, which cannot be "affidavided," which cannot be seen as much but a great way to control people, is not realistic, and has given itself a life of its own. A similar belief in a head of lettuce as God is easily constructed using the same logic as the believers use.
But, I'm not going to change anyone's mind. Keep praying.
Bur,
You must be 15. You have almost no real thoughts or reasoning ability. You basically just told me you don't believe in God because he has not talked to you. Your emotional senseless response is what I would expect out of a semi neurotic self hating lib. I won't respond to you anymore, it is a waste of time.
Pro 18:7 a fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.
Dex, I wont change your mind no matter what I say. But I like for you to say things anyway. :)
DexTurd, PioneerRacist and the rest of the crew here like to pretend they are intellectually superior yet then go on to proffer the same tired arguments for religion. Bureaucrat is right-- the evidence for your beliefs is sketchy at best. That's fine, believe what you want, but don't expect anyone else to and don't go forcing it upon others.
Incidentally, PP are you retarded? You ask when old white men coerced minorities. Have you heard of slavery? Or their treatment of the Indians? Of course, in your narrow little racist world you think that Norse Supermen were here first, right?
Dex, nothing I love more than a self-righteous Bible thumper who quotes bullshit from a made-up book to prove his point about Gawd and Jebus.
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