anonemouse

The thing is, I would imagine that many people would be willing to discuss their beliefs. But you don't come across as sincerely asking about their beliefs, you come across as asking people to defend themselves and their choices. Maybe you don't mean it that way, but that's the way you appear. It comes across as interrogation, not discussion. And to be honest, it's offensive. I (and many other people here) wouldn't go out and ask people to defend their belief in God. I would ask them about their beliefs and share my beliefs and I would leave it at that. You can have a great discussion that way, and no one feels like they are being attacked. This is a great example of what I am saying. Calling someone's beliefs "salad-bar" is offensive.

Gadgetlady, this is one instance where you are wrong. I wasn't talking about Ron. I wasn't even thinking about Ron. I was talking about evangelists in general. Surprisingly, not everything in this thread revolves around Ron. Sometimes, we are just having a conversation about faith.

That's great. I also think that everyone should take this approach, no matter what they believe in. I know that I am always analyzing my life, my experiences, my beliefs, my knowledge, and what I am learning to see if I should change my beliefs. So far, I haven't seen or experienced anything that makes me consider changing my beliefs. But I still search for knowledge and try to shape my beliefs around that.

But you would feel that what they had been doing was attacking your faith, correct? Otherwise, why drop the conversation?

Again, just hang in there. You are almost done!

That's true, but I think people should know when to back off. That's one thing I really respected about my former roommate's boyfriend (he was Mormon). He would ask about your religion and he did the door-to-door thing, but if you said you didn't want to discuss it or that you had no intention of converting, he backed off. He was seriously interested in knowing what other people believed in. The type of people I am talking about that I have a problem with are the ones that don't know when to back off. They will start conversations about faith (which I have absolutely no problem with), and then constantly nag you to convert, telling you that you will go to Hell for believing the way you do. You know, the ones that have no intention of seriously discussing YOUR faith or beliefs, just converting you to their own. To me, that is an attack on my beliefs.

Sexuality cannot be changed. There is a clear difference between sexuality and sexual behavior. A heterosexual is going to always be a heterosexual, even if they engage in homosexual behavior on a dare. Your sexuality is defined by who you are deep down attracted to, not who you sleep with. I could go out and find a woman to sleep with, but that doesn't mean I'm attracted to her. If I did that, I would be engaging in homosexual behavior, but I wouldn't be a lesbian. You can change who you sleep with, but you can't change your sexuality. How does two men marrying infringe on anyone else's rights?

Yes, but if he was serious and very persistant about converting you, always implying that your faith wasn't good enough, wouldn't you see that as an attack on your faith?

The lapband itself rupturing wouldn't kill anyone, they'd just lose restriction. She could have had stomach problems caused by a lap-band, though, because I think I have heard of people that wound up with the blood supply to the stomach being cut off, and I believe it may have caused a death. But that's super rare, and people would have had symptoms long before dying of it. I would say it is extremely, extremely doubtful that a lap-band killed Anna-Nicole. They would have reported it by now, since it would have been found during the autopsy.

Thank you for apologizing. The thing is, Ron, sometimes you were attacking people that were simply giving honest answers, not being sarcastic or making digs at you. Of course, this led to more conflict, because if you are going to be attacked for being honest and sincere, you might as well get attacked for doing something worth being attacked for. And so it became a nasty cycle.

Some sort of sound wave, isn't it? That's about all I remember from the college physics class I took and failed.

Yes, it is.

Ron, I've never liked you. Just like you've never liked me. The best I can do is be civil.

Luckily, the office manager at the new surgeon's office says she will be able to submit my file to insurance as soon as she gets all the clearances from the other office. They are also going to try and work with me to get my surgery consultation appointment and the required nutrition classes on the same day, since I live about 7 hours from Memphis.

Oh, yeah! Bad lighting, bad records, birds that fly in at the wrong angle for me to tell if it is the male or female, birds managing to stick their heads behind a branch right as they are passing the food to the nestlings so that I can't see what it is. Some of the videos show the birds with bands on their legs before they were supposed to have been banded, which makes it lots of fun when trying to identify them. This is what I get for changing my thesis project three times. I get stuck with the crap project that my advisor has had multiple people making videos for, for the last three field seasons. Oy. It's just so hard to get motivated enough to actually work on it, you know? Every time I am in the mood to work on it, I run into a road block and have to get input from my advisor, who is the world's busiest man (he is a full professor, has at least 15 grad students, and is editor of a major ornithological journal). Of course, it takes him several days to weeks to respond. About half my tapes weren't working with the camera I have, so I went to him to see if he could fix it. He had them for three or four weeks before he gave them back to me with another camera they would work in. It was the same way when he originally gave me all my tapes. He gave them to me in October, but it was December before he gave me the records I needed to actually identify the birds I was watching.:):frusty::fear:

Take the chance and get it fixed ASAP. Like you said, they won't pay for a ticket. Ask your boss to pay to have it replaced and tell him that you will pay him back when you get reimbursed.

Yep! Actually, I really need to work on my thesis. I have about 70 videos of birds feeding nestlings that I need to get data off of so that I can do the presentation I have scheduled in April. I am WAY behind. Mainly due to LBT. It's addictive, damn it!

I feel like dancing! I was kind of bummed because I was supposed to be busy all weekend doing stream sampling (getting wet in a stream while looking for aquatic bugs, basically) for my analysis of aquatic ecosystems class, but I just got an email from the professor saying that it was canceled. We got a ton of hard rain yesterday, so apparently the streams are too high to do any sampling. This is wonderful, especially since it is supposed to be cold and snowy tomorrow!:clap2:

Well, I just heard back from the new surgeon's office again. Apparently, they received all of the file except for all of my clearances, which doesn't help a hell of a lot. So now I am going back and forth through email with people from both offices. If they can't fix this, I'm just going have to go directly to the psychologist, nutritionist, and pulmonologist, and have them send the clearances again.

Gadgetlady, I hope you realize that despite our differences, I do enjoy discussing these things with you. I think you'll find that most everyone else here is the same. We can discuss things civilly. While I do consider you to be anti-atheist in some respects, you and Ron are vastly different. You will actually sit and listen to us and have a civil converstation. Ron, on the other hand, blows up when people don't see things his way. I think that if we were in any other thread, we could still have a civil discussion, but there is so much bad blood that I am not sure it is really possible in this one (unless we all put you-know-who on our ignore lists).

I just emailed the new surgeon's office, and the person I talked to said that they hadn't received my file from the old surgeon's office, which was supposedly faxed last Friday. These freaking delays never end! If it isn't one thing going wrong, it's another.

Gadgetlady, I have a message for you.

You are SO lucky. I LOVE Anna Maria Island. Go have some food at Bones for me, please! :clap2: Have you ever been to Mote Aquarium or Pelican Man's Bird Sanctuary in Sarasota? If you haven't, you should go. They are both pretty good. Oh, and go to the Ringling Art Museum (also in Sarasota) and tell me how it was, I haven't had the chance to go to it when I've been down there (last time I got a nasty bite on my foot from an ant or spider that made my entire foot swell up like a balloon, so I couldn't do a ton of walking). If you haven't seen it already, you need to go to the antique car museum in Sarasota, it is really interesting.

Nah. I think we just piss him off and he tries to type too quickly.

Don't forget the firewood and lighter fluid for the bonfire!