Tired_Old_Man

A while back the following was posted: From Reverend Mel White: I've spent more than 50 years reading, studying, memorizing, preaching, and teaching from the sacred texts. I earned my master's and doctoral degrees at a conservative biblical seminary to better equip myself to "rightly divide the word of truth." I learned Hebrew and Greek to gain a better understanding of the original words of the biblical texts. I studied the lives and times of the biblical authors to help me know what they were saying in their day so I could better apply it to my own. "Even when we believe the scriptures are without error, it's a risk to think our understanding is without error." How can you proclaim that scriptures translates scriptures if scriptures must be translated into English for you to read it? The Reverend White has learned how to translate scriptures, while you depend on others to translate scriptures for you. Is it not possible that the people (who's translations you depend on) may have colored the context of scriptures with their personal agenda consciously or subconsciously? If scriptures truly did translate scriptures, then anyone could look at them and read them in the language that he understood. Now that would be a miracle befitting of a divinely inspired book, a miracle befitting of a divinity. But who are we to question God's ways?

I think when they said "no evidence", they meant "no real evidence" or "no evidence that can be supported scientifically". I could say that I was abducted by an alien last night and there would be evidence; my testimony. But, there would be "no real evidence" or "no evidence that can be supported scientifically".

The problem is not that you have stated your beliefs, but that you have belittled the beliefs of other members.

Some of the Republican candidates want to send more troops to Iraq.:help: Just like in the Veitnam era, they believe everything will work out ok if we just use more force.:frusty:

Not according to scholars who read the bible in the language it was written in. Or should I say interpret the bible from the language it was written in? BTW, how come you did not address the example I gave about why judges have ruled that man-woman marriage laws are invalid because of the 14th amendment?

What did Giuliani do on 911 that anyone else would not have done? Giuliani is pro-gun control Giuliani is pro-choice Giuliani is pro-gay marriage Giuliani became famous as a prosecutor winning convictions in high profile organized crime trials. Most of his convictions, however were overturned on appeal. Giuliani is is not a very stable family man as proven by one annulment (after 14 years), one divorce and three marriages including, when he was caught dating a woman, he announced on a TV press conference that he was separating from his wife (which was news to her). Nice way to treat a woman, huh?

That was a very nice post. You will not be belittled or held in contempt for being a freak or fanatic here. Many other Christians, both Conservative and Liberal, have debated with Ron as have atheists and agnostics. Ron has brought together every stripe of human life (of the LBT members who post here) except for a few, but not in fellowship, but against his pushiness and self-righteousness. Even some members who normally lean toward his side have pushed back from his statements. Self-described Conservative Christians have found fault with Ron's demeanor. Maybe if Ron had posted the Beatitudes of Jesus instead of his Christian Right approach, he would have brought us together in a spirit of love for him, rather than a war against his technique. THE EIGHT BEATITUDES OF JESUS "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Gospel of Matthew 5:3-10

"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another" John 13:34,35. Student, 16, Finds Allies in His Fight Over Religion By PATRICK McGEEHAN NEWARK, Feb. 19 — A Kearny High School junior on Monday drew some legal heavyweights into his battle with school officials over a teacher’s proselytizing in class. The American Civil Liberties Union, the People for the American Way Foundation and a partner from a large Manhattan law firm stood beside the student, Matthew LaClair, as he and his family threatened to sue the Kearny Board of Education if their complaints are not resolved. Last fall, Matthew, 16, taped the teacher, David Paszkiewicz, telling students in a history class that if they do not believe that Jesus died for their sins, they “belong in hell.” On the recordings, which Matthew made surreptitiously starting in September, Mr. Paszkiewicz is heard telling the class that there were dinosaurs aboard Noah’s ark and that there is no scientific basis for evolution or the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. Since Matthew turned over the tapes to school officials, his family and supporters said, he has been the target of harassment and a death threat from fellow students and “retaliation” by school officials who have treated him, not the teacher, as the problem. The retaliation, they say, includes the district’s policy banning students from recording what is said in class without a teacher’s permission and officials’ refusal to punish students who have harassed Matthew. Matthew and his parents, Paul and Debra LaClair, are demanding an apology to Matthew and public correction of some of Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in class. The LaClairs filed a torts claim notice on Feb. 13 against the school board, Mr. Paszkiewicz and other school officials. Such a claim is required before a lawsuit can be filed in New Jersey. “The school created a climate in which the students in the school community held resentment for Matthew,” said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the A.C.L.U. in New Jersey. She said Kearny High School had “violated the spirit and the letter of freedom of religion and the First Amendment.” Ms. Jacobs added that the A.C.L.U. would support the LaClairs if they sue the school board and might join the action. Richard Mancino, a partner with Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which is representing the family, said he did not understand why school officials would not “stand up for this student, who had the guts to raise this constitutional issue.” Instead, Mr. Mancino said, they appear “to have adopted a shoot-the-messenger policy.” Angelo J. Genova, a lawyer in Livingston, N.J., who is representing the school board, said Kearny school officials had addressed Matthew’s complaints and had reaffirmed their commitment to the separation of church and state in the classroom. Bernadette McDonald, president of the school board, said in a statement: “We took his concerns very seriously. The result was that we have received no further complaints about such religious proselytization in our schools.” Mr. Genova said the school board had hired Edwin H. Stier, who was director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice from 1977 to 1982, to independently investigate Matthew’s harassment allegations. For his part, Matthew said he recognized that “there are going to be a lot of consequences” at school from the Monday news conference. He said he had already felt hostility from students after the school switched his history class from Mr. Paszkiewicz to another teacher. The district would not disclose what action it had taken against Mr. Paszkiewicz, who is teaching the same course to a different group of students. He has taught in the district for 14 years. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/n...65b3&ei=5087%0A

My wife Tina thinks I am crazy, because I occasionally pull up next to a car with an "I Support our Troops" or "Support the Troops" sticker at a red light and say to the driver, "I am glad that you want to bring our troops back from Iraq too?":clap2: She thinks I will get shot one day, but I think that it will take a kryptonite bullet to hurt me.:faint:

Hockey, polo, soccer, lacross are all basically the same game. The difference is only what part of the body or what implement can touch the ball or puck. While there is a lot of action in those sports, they do not have the obvious strategies of (American) Football or Baseball.

The word slave has been changed to servent in many of the modern translations of the New Testament. But the meaning is the same. The 14 amendment says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. If Tina loves Freddie and Freddie loves Tina, and they both are over 18, Tina can marry Freddie by (any) state('s) law. If Robert loves Bill and Bill loves Robert, and they both are over 18, Bill can not marry Robert by (any) state('s) law. If Joan loves Jane and Jane loves Joan, and they both are over 18, Joan can not marry Jane by (any) state('s) law. That violates the underlined statement of the 14th amendment which precludes Tina and Freddie from having more protection under the law than Bill and Robert or Jane and Joan do under the laws of the states. That is why the Republicans (with the backing of the Christian Right Political Movement) are trying to pass a constitution amendment against same gender marriage.

New Testament Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT) Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)

Let me know when you find one of these candidates.

So we are left with two choices: #1. Do not vote #2. Vote for the lessor of two evils Choice #1 (although requiring free will to make the choice) leaves us impotent at choosing our government. Choice #2 forces us to use our God given free will and to exercise the greatest gift God has given us; the human brain. While your choice for #2 may be different than mine and my choice may differ from many of the other members of LBT, I will not criticize the other members as being anti-Christian or anti-bible. We all have to decide which part of the very contradictory aspects of life to vote for.

If everything were Black and White, life would be so easy. In the vast majority of elections, one candidate is against same sex unions and against abortion, while the other candidate is for same sex unions and pro-choice. That would make it simple. However, the candidate who is against same sex unions and against abortion, is invariably also for cutting food stamps for the poor and Medicaid (medical care for the poor), and for giving tax cuts for the rich (who have less of a chance of entering the Kingdom of Heaven than a dromedary has to pass through the eye of a needle), while the pro-choice, pro-Gay-rights candidate is for helping the poor with food stamps and medical insurance. Jesus Christ spent much of his time helping the poor and infirm. So which is the greater good and which fulfills the wishes of Jesus to a larger extent, stopping abortion and gay unions or helping the poor? I will not even get into the support of killing innocent Muslim civilians in Iraq or the killing of innocent people in US prisons who were too poor to hire a decent attorney by the anti-abortion, anti-gay-rights candidates. Well, too much into.

I hope you are working at a company that you own, because if you are working for an employer, you are stealing his time (='s money) by posting here at LBT.

Paul, Peter and John are not Jesus Christ.

NASCAR racing uses replicas of real cars so modified to have almost no relationship to what they represent. I guess they allow fans to think they are driving the same cars as their heroes, but except for appearance, the cars are nothing alike. The big races are 500 miles with laps of about 2.5 miles around. Some are 400 miles. If you want to see the passion, get a feel for feelings of the fans and see way people discuss NASCAR, take a look at R U a NASCAR Fan...Let's Talk in the Lap-Band Talk Lounge.

Let me add some things to this story. My wife is overweight. Her BMI is over 30. I have a Lap-Band. My son will be a candidate for a Lap-Band if he doesn't change his eating habits. His BMI is over 31 and rising. Brooklyn's mother is overweight. Her BMI is over 30 and she yo-yo's about 60 pounds up and down continually Her mother just had a gastric bypass. Everyone in that family skips breakfast, and eats double or triple portions at dinner except Brooklyn. We went out to an Italian restaurant for Mother's day last year. My wife and I split one meal. My son order two meals. The two boys (that I call grand-children, but are really step-grandchildren, 20 and 13 at the time) each ordered dinners with double Entrees. Brooklyn was given a children's meal, but her mother not only ate her own meal, but 2/3's of Brooklyn's meal because they let Brooklyn eat the bread placed on the table at the beginning of ordering (bread is Brooklyn's favorite food), so Brooklyn wasn't hungry when her meal came. Yes, I know that I am fighting a losing battle, but I will not give up. Brooklyn does not like meat. We make sure she gets Protein when she is here with us. I also make sure that Brooklyn understands (or will understand before long) that we, (grandma and grandpa) and her parents were children too. We show her pictures of ourselves as children and pictures of my son (her father) as a child. We continually reinforce the idea that we all started as babies. I make sure I tell her of mistakes that I made as a child and that her father made as a child so that she will understand that she can become “smart” as she grows up. I try to teach her things about life. When she asks a question, I don't just answer yes or no, or because. I try to explain why and of course I try to bring it down to her level. My son says she is only 6, just like he said that she was only 5 or 4 or 3 as I have tried to teach her things throughout the years. I always try to make teaching playful and I believe that a child's mind can be stimulated by abstract ideas if the ideas are made less abstract by analogy to concrete ideas. No, I do not teach her (my passion) politics, but I tried to explain to her why advertising can not be trusted on TV. TV advertising holds more weight with children than the word of their parents or the word of God. TV is the great teacher, but it can be the teacher of wrong just as easily (maybe be more easily), as the teacher of correct ideas. Regrettably TV has become Brooklyn's babysitter as it has become the babysitter and therefor the primary teacher of values to most of the children of the current and last generation. Whenever we go to visit my son's home, Brooklyn is either watching TV or on her computer (Windows XP, 2.6ghrz CPU, 80gb hard-drive). Yes, she has her own PC (shared with her brother).

Brooklyn often claims that she is full halfway through her meal and then 5 minutes after the table is cleared, she asked for a "treat" (candy, Cookies, donut, etc.) A problem that I may not have addressed in this thread is that Brooklyn's mother has the smallest food variety of any adult I have ever met and when I serve one of her children something they have not eaten, I get "But I don't like that". "Have you ever eaten it?" "No, but I know that I don't like it." And then the mother (if she is around) chimes in with, “They don't have to eat what they don't like. I never did and I turned out OK.” Brooklyn is our only grandchild by blood. Her mother has 3 children by a previous marriage. The others are 21, 19 and 14 respectively. We have known the 14 year old since he was 7. Whenever he stayed with us because his mother and my son asked us to babysit, we got the same answers as Brooklyn gives us now. They do not eat a healthy balanced diet, so we give them balanced meals when we take care of them. We have babysat the 14 year old for over a year, but when we have family dinners (Christmas, Thanksgiving, ect.) we serve balanced meals. When we eat at their home, it is the same few foods every time. We do not believe in cleaning the plate, but we do know how much Brooklyn eats. I always give her less than she can eat and tell her that she can ask for more when she finishes. If she knows there is no special desert coming, she cleans her plate on her own. I would never help a child defeat her “feel full” mechanism. I hope I do not sound defensive, but those are the facts.

What the 3 Brits did was dumb, but they should not have been threatened or attacked. It would be nice if we lived in an Enlightened society where ignorance was looked at and then the looker would just turn away. I guess if the 3 Brits had driven up to Harlem with signs on their cars saying "Martin Luther King was an Asshole", they would have gotten a similar reaction. But why? Why do people think they need to hurt anyone who says (or does something) that insults one of their sacred cows? If a man came up to my wife and I in a mall and said to me, "Your wife is a (fill in the blank with something vulgar)", yes a confrontation could definitely start and escalate. But if the same man came up to me and said that the hometown baseball or football teams stinks, then where is there a need to do anything other than walk away? I would hope, in fact, to be able to avoid any more than just a verbal exchange in the situation involving the insult of my wife. Many years ago, in the year we were married in fact (1967), a man grabbed Tina's ass right in front of me in a bar. I banged him around until the bouncers pulled me off of him. I was young and hotheaded, but a physical sexual attack is different than a man wearing a tee-shirt with a slogan or picture that I find offensive or a car with a sign on it that I find offensive. We are too ready to fight in order to come to the defense of ideas or people we worship. Carlene was right about the “NASCAR Sucks” reference. People down here (in Florida) talk about these NASCAR drivers as if they were on a first name basis. I worked for Home Depot for about 8 months after coming to Florida and one day they announced that Tony Stewart and his Home Depot Special would be in the parking lot the next afternoon. Next day, my shift finished a little while before Tony Stewart got there and I went straight home without waiting. Many of the other workers came in on their day off or came in early to see the driver and the car. The next day, I was challenged in the lunch/break room for not staying. One woman told me. "You don't ever disrespect NASCAR or county music". I could not stop laughing even as some of my coworkers told that they were going to beat my butt. Maybe, some people need to hate people who are different than themselves. Maybe some of those people also need to hurt people that they hate.

When I was a child, my parents had a friend who had daughter about my age. The parents did not believe in telling their children about sex. The daughter had her first period while home alone at about 12. She knew that she should put topical disinfectant medication on open wounds, so thinking she was bleeding from inside, she drank a bottle of topical wound disinfectant and died. I think it was iodine or Mercurochrome, but I am not sure since it was about 50 years ago.

If medical scientists came out with a 100% effective and safe vaccine for HIV and AIDS prevention, would any prudent parent say no to their child getting the vaccine based on the "mixed message" of sexual impropriety being condoned? If the vaccine only worked if administered prior to puberty, would parents turn it down for their children? Remember, in this hypothetical situation, the vaccine is "100% effective and safe".

ATLANTA - A Jewish organization is demanding an apology from a Georgia legislator for a memo that says the teaching of evolution should be banned because it is a myth propagated by an ancient Jewish sect. State Rep. Ben Bridges denies writing the memo, which attributes the Big Bang theory to Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Bridges has long opposed the teaching of evolution in Georgia classrooms and has introduced legislation requiring only that "scientific fact" be taught. Marshall Hall, president of the Fair Education Foundation, says the Republican lawmaker gave him approval to write the memo, which has been distributed to legislators in several states, including California and Texas. The memo asks readers to challenge the "evolution monopoly in the schools" by logging onto Hall's anti-evolution Web site, http://www.fixedearth.com . "Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," says the memo, which has Bridges' name on it. "This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic 'holy book' Kabbala dating back at least two millennia." The Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to Bridges on Thursday chastising him for the memo and demanding him to apologize. "Your memo conjures up repugnant images of Judaism used for thousands of years to smear the Jewish people as cult-like and manipulative," wrote Bill Nigut, the league's Southeast regional director. The league sent a similar letter to a Texas lawmaker who circulated the memo to members of the Texas Legislature's budget-writing committee. State Rep. Warren Chisum told The Dallas Morning News in Thursday editions he was trying to do a "Good Samaritan" deed for Bridges. "If that's a sin, well, shoot me," he told the newspaper. But in a letter to Mark Brisman, director of the league's North Texas/Oklahoma chapter, he wrote, "I sincerely regret that I did not take the time to carefully review these materials and recognize that I may have hurt or offended some groups including some of my dear friends," according to The New York Times. Hall, a 76-year-old retired high school teacher who said his wife ran Bridges' election campaign, said neither the memo nor his Web site is anti-Semitic. "I think they tar people with that brush a little too readily," he said.

We live in a country with the best weapons. But we also live in a country with primitive feelings. In this day and age, we still have debates over the what could be the first woman, the first Black, the first Mormon or the first Hispanic president. We still single them out for these meaningless differences. "All men are created equal" is something that very few US Americans actually believe in, no matter what they say. The biggest difference between the North and the South is how much more the people of the North keep their prejudices secret or low key. That's why the chance of getting beat up for being different is higher in the South, though if the Brits in the "YouTube" piece had been beaten, many people in the North would have applauded in private, but spoken out against it in public. But the USA is not that much different than most of the countries of the world. What makes it appalling is that most Americans think they are better, but sink to the same level as the people of the countries that they despise, while at the same time berating those countries for being backward. Remember the outrage when the Afghani was on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity? Were the people in the Alabama gas station any different from the Afghan public who wanted the convert executed?