JUGGERNAUT

There is a non-Christian interpretation of the Old Testament in the RSV which is unacceptable to most evangelical Christians. From an evangelical perspective the KJV is the most complete non-tainted widely available version. On the subject of birth control among Catholics: http://www.answers.com/topic/birth-control Couples seeking marriage in the Catholic Church are required to undergo counseling by a Catholic priest (pre-Canna). In the past priests led couples seeking to delay children to rhythm, today they are instructed to point new couples toward the more effective natural family planning.

Again you are personalizing the post & bating me into an argument on a personal level. It's up to a mod to stop it. In the past I would follow up with harsh rhetoric ripping you & your assertions to pieces at a personal level. I'm not going to do that any more. What is or is not representative of mainstream Christianity is not going to be found in the the small sample of Christian members here at SOXTALK. It's going to be found in credible sources of information on the subject. Since this is a sports messageboard first & foremost those sources are best found outside the SOXTALK community.

Actual Countdown to AL crown & ALC crown: NA EN:White Sox 87 52 23gr 19 EN: Red $ox 82 57 23gr 14 EN: Yankee$ 78 61 23gr 15 EN: Indians 79 61 22gr 10 EN: Twinkies 73 66 23gr 01 EN: Tiggers 63 75 25gr 00 EN: Peasants ELIMINATED Weekend action: Yankee$ host Red $ox (7-6 NYY$) Indians host Twinkies (9-7 Twinks) Tiggers host Peasants (8-4 Tigs) Palos host Halos (4-3 Palos) Rangeless host A's (8-5 A's) Go Yanks, Twinks, Peasants, , & Rangeless.

By the same token you are assuming that by doing nothing the terrorists would have been content with 9/11 & not sought to attack us further. http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html If occupational force was paramount to the terrorist movement then why isn't it reflected in the rhetoric as such? Some of their leaders have been educated in the West so they are very familiar with our culture. Clearly they would know how to craft their words such that they focused solely on our Imperialism as opposed to our culture. But that's not what is evident in their words. What is evident in their words is harsh language in respect to how our women behave & the loose society we have created. Even if you assume they are including these soley as recruiting tools it still underscores the fact that the presence of US troops is not enough to drive their masses. With respect to American Imperialism it's no surprise to any one that American companies have political clout. The greater the clout the more likely their interests are to protected by American forces. That's simply economic reality & exists in China, the UK, & other nations with strong military power. These forces are not marauders. They represent a peace-keeping force to protect legitimate state-sanctioned American interests. The Americans are there because the ruling class in Saudia Arabia share a common interest with them.

Which is why most evangelical Christians refer to the KJV as the best Bible source. To illustrate your point: There is reference of a huge army in the book of Revelations. KJV: 9:16: And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand. In a Vatican II bible in the late 60's that was translated as 200,000. Years later it was changed to 2,000,000. For your reading pleasure: http://www.cforc.com/kjv/index.html

Your post appears as bating, offensive & a personal attack & since I choose to follow the guidelines of the forum I will not resort to making generalizations of yourself. The 7 major groups of Catholics: * ULTRATRADITIONALIST : orthodox - resistant to Vatican changes * TRADITIONALIST : backbone - critical of liberalism & modernism in the Church * CHARISMATIC / EVANGELICAL : born-again - scripture > Vatican. * POPULAR FOLK (1) : Latin American - worshipping of saints & Mary. Paganistic flavor. * CULTURAL : Family Catholics - social connection > spiritual connection. * LIBERAL : modernists - human reasoning (material machines) > Bible & Vatican * POSTMODERNIST : moral-relativists - no objective truths These classifications apply to other Christian groups as well. In terms of size within the Catholic population: * ULTRATRADITIONALIST : < 10% * TRADITIONALIST : > 25% & < 35% * CHARISMATIC / EVANGELICAL : < 25% * POPULAR FOLK (1) : 25% * CULTURAL : > 70% * LIBERAL : < 25 % * POSTMODERNIST : < 10% There is cross-over which is why it doesn't add up to 100%. It's pretty obvious what groups best represent most Christian members (who actually write religious oriented posts) of this forum. You can see that in their posts. The mainstream Christians (the top 5) do not hope their birth control fails. That's not only illogical but a distortion of what I wrote earlier. What I stated was that they view conception in the midst of birth control as a miraculous event & blessing of God. It's a well known fact that natural methods are the most commonly used form of birth control in the top 4 & the pill when you include the top 5.

41 million? WOW! At their current birth rate, immigration rate, & illegal entry rate they will be the majority by 2025! Spanglish anyone?

How much did 9/11 cost us? I heard an estimate of over a trillion lost in GDP. How much did Afghan & Iraq cost us? It's going to reach $400B soon. Add in natural disaster costs & were over $1.5 trillion dollars. I'm all for spreading freedom & democracy around the world but this spending has got to stop. Our economy is crap. We can't afford to play savior to the world when we are ailing ourselves. I feel sorry for Powell. I really do. But I can imagine a much worse world if we had done nothing. When he made that statement I said to myself $250B. I was against it. Today I'm indifferent. The Madrid & UK bombings lead me to beleive that doing nothing would have brought about another attack. Terrorists have no respect for the lives & property of Americans. They delight in our destruction. They have choosen to wage a cultural war against us. Because our culture is immoral in their minds they see us as evil. We are not willing to change our culture so there is no reason to believe a peaceful solution can be found.

I left out another important detail of the family centric or religious American. They typically have between 3-5 children. Some more, few less. There are of course exceptions. Some can't have any. Great pity is felt for them & no one talks about. The children are spaced apart between 2-3 yrs. Sexual discussion with friends & family is pretty much taboo. Relationships are discussed but sexual details are left out of it. That's between a 10-20 year commitment to the children just to see the last one reach the age of 5. To some that might seem crazy but like a mastercard commercial the act of making a son or daughter & raising it is priceless. Looking at recent immigration trends the vast majority of them are either religious or family centric. I draw the distinction because I consider religious to be devout & family centric to be cultural. So if you are looking for future trends it's likely to lean more conservative. The educational paradigm that gave strength to liberalism in America has weakened substantially & will continue to do so. This is the result of commercializing education. This allows parents to essentially customize their children's education. Even IL has embraced this notion as home schooling & supplemental education is becoming more commonplace. Adding it all up & you come to the conclusion that conservatism is here to stay. It's just easier to sell

The question repeated again & again is why should I care? The answer depends on one's cultural background & moral beliefs. Marriage is considered by most Americans to be a sacred & morally pure institution. It is true that both divorce & adultery taint that but generally speaking people do not get married with the intention to commit adultery or file for divorce. It's safe to say that most Americans view sodomy & lesbianism as immoral acts of behavior. They are rooted solely in pleasure with no possibility of procreation. As such most Americans view the idea of allowing immoral behavior into the morally pure institution of marriage as something unacceptable. That's not to say religious or family centric Americans don't practice birth control. They do. But I doubt very much that condoms are the norm. Natural methods & the pill are more common. There's a moral reason behind this. There is no desire for a full proof method. The idea of there being a chance of conception is something that makes them feel really good. Believe it or not it feels like a miracle or blessing from God when it happens against the odds. Even couples who have a hard time conceiving a baby cling to hope & prayers that a miracle will happen for them. Speaking to some of them you get a sense their sex is even better with that engrained sense of hope. That doesn't mean they ignore medical technology. On the contrary they embrace it. They view that as a form of a blessing from God as well. I've made several generalizations here & no doubt there are exceptions to them. But I hope it gives a better understanding of why most religious & family centric Americans seem adamantly against gay marriage.

One of the tenets of the Christian faith is to evangelize. Of all the religions you mentioned the Christian religion is probably the most driven by a sense of community. I think Arnold did the right thing. He articulated his personal opinion on the issue but then recognized that he is a representative for the voters in CA & deferred to their vote. That inspires voters trust.

$52B !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Shock with no Awe. I heard that LA had a windfall of revenue from the casinos but that doesn't matter. People at the Federal level get paid a lot of $$ to assess these things when it comes to budgeting. Regardless of whether it was the state of LA's responsibility or the Fed the cost of neglect is crazy in comparison to the cost of prevention. They both share the blame.

It's not going to be easy that's for sure. I'm thinking of a form of arbitration. Assign 2 people per adoption case. One for & one against. Each has the opportunity to conduct a monthly interview & assessment & make recommendations before the judge. The judge then makes a decision on which recommendations will be enforced. Failure to comply would risk the adoption rights. I would even extend this process to non homosex HH including ex-convicts, ex drug users, single persons, & other classification which could be considered unknown. I don't know if it's the best approach but I am a technocrat as much as I am a Christian so logically the best I can come up with. I do believe that technology is going to help greatly in the matter. Eventually there will both screening & testing technology available that will help define the process. Without diverging too much it will be interesting to see the impact on the population when screening technology becomes available. If you follow the science & believe that profit potential is the driving force behind scientific applications it's inevitable.

Cockroaches .. what are they good for .. absolutely nothing. Kill em all! The sooner the better. Seriously, I agree with you on bio-diversity but I also fear that technology will weaken the economic incentive to preserve & nuture it. I for a new economic reality to take hold before then.

Thank you. Experiment concluded. You have taken the debate to a wider scope which begs to ask the question should homosexual partners be given the same status in adoption rights as heterosexual couples? I say no. There should be greater scrutiny appled to that which we do not know. It's virtually an unknown as to whether homosex households will have an adverse affect on the rearing of the child. It should allowed but initially only in a limited scope that we can easily analyze & collect data on before expansion.

I just want to say that personally I have been making statistical arguments in favor of Mark Buerhle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland, & many others for years now. I likewise made such arguments for Contreras. It is very nice to see that these players are finally living up to the potential that I argued was present in their stats. You can see the difference this year. As the resident optimist around here I use to have to look deep & hard to bolster my confidence in them. Those posts are long since history. It's a joy to simply look at the big four (ERA, IP, WHIP, K) & see their talent. I can only hope that one day I will be able to do the same with the hitters. Until then I will continue to look mostly at RON (runners on) numbers to see the upside in our lineup.

It has always been thought that the cockroaches will out live us. I no longer believe that. I'm certain we will find the means to destroy any species with the advent of nano-tech. It's potential for destructive capacity is at least as equally strong as it's potential for creative capacity. I do not believe that natural selection will be able to overcome a real-time adaptive entity in the species that we control. Nano-tech comes with remote control

Correct. That is why it is the precursor to cyborg-tech which in turn is a neccessity for long term exploration in space.

We are actually debating two issues in this thread. The first is gay-marriage. The second is condescending style of posts. Please re-read your post & try to imagine how it sounds to someone who is devoutly religious. Ask the question is it condescending? I'd prefer the mods take no action. We are learning here. I simply want to point how that it would be natural for me as a devil's advocate to echo the same style in a reply. As to what you said naturally I disagree with your references to unequality, condemned to hell, & how sad, & dark ages model. Those are all very condescending to a devoutly religious person. Likewise they are anything but true from my personal experience. She's the boss & I'm her right hand man. Why? Because my religious culture makes it so. Yes we believe in equality of minds but we also believe that the Mother has a higher standing in the HH. And when the kids are departed she will still have that standing. That standing requires me to filter my thoughts when we don't agree on something. To be as gentle as possible in disagreement. One of the things that drew me to messageboards in general is the need not to have to filter thoughts. I'm a tough SOB in the presence of males & the ego desires an outlet for that. It represented a vacation from normal life. I can be raw, bold, unafraid, & unabashed in my thoughts. But things have changed now & discretionary filters are preferred. I do not expect the institution of marriage to evolve as you suggest. It is more likely to be marginalized as the institution itself has weakened substantially after the "if it feels good it must be right" philosophy swept through the major markets in the world. Furthermore advances in technology might further eradicate the need for the institution in our lives. This phenomenon is present in Japan & elsewhere in Asia as the number of single persons & never married continues to grow. It is more likely that 25 yrs from now the entitlement issue will have evolved but the cultural side will be so segmented that it will be a "to each his own" philosophy.

It's the new me. Respective & cordial. I disagree that this is this generation's civil rights issue. IMHO there is simply not enough support for it to be considered as such. Likewise with media segmentation occuring on a mass level these days I think it's going to be very difficult for such support to manifest itself. It is more likely that government's will move away from marriage altogether to better deal with issues of divorce & alternative lifestyles. I've decided to try a different experiment first. I am going to put forth my best effort to represent the minority opinion in a respective & cordial way. Let's see what happens.

Teach me. Please explain to me what in this thread demonstrates such an intention. If you are referring to other threads my condescending style then was no worse than many others. But I have been enlightened to the new guidelines so that style is gone. I believe this thread is good evidence of that. No personal attacks on my part nor use of terms that personally belittle another member. It's the new me The control for the test would be that the id has no prior history of taking a position contrary to the majority here at SOXTALK. same-sex marriage entitlements: Is there any poll data relating to issues specific to entitlements? That would be interesting. Simply ask the question of whether you would be in favor of re-writing marriage entitlements to include co-dependants married or otherwise.

There is a way that I can prove/disprove the claim. Afford me the opportunity to test it. Allow me to create a new id that always takes the majority position. After 1 month's time I will reveal that it's really me Juggs & we can then look at the activity generated. Short of that there is plenty of evidence in the posts & threads. Including the topics I have created. Getting the thread back on topic, the issue is complex as it pertains to entitlements. I believe the Fed's recognition of marriage is based on where you reside. If that state recognizes your marriage then the Fed does. If that is the case then there is not much reason to debate this nationally. There may be some entitlements afforded to you out of state but the vast majority of them are based on your state of residency. It does not take a lot to establish some form of residency in another state. If entitlements were the central focus of the debate then it would not be unreasonable to suggest that same-sex resources could pool together to establish residency for all said couples in a state that recognizes their marriage. This can be established in a multitude of ways.

I can site historical references of where if you follow the money technology has blossomed. I will agree that new technologies can arise outside of the money flow & change the world. But in order for that to happen someone with wealth must see a profit in order to invest in them. it must make good economic sense. That is the world we live in today. As for the networking of computers there is a history of protocols that chart it's progression. All of them were driven by economic factors.

I'm going to risk this post getting wiped out to clear the air on this. I firmly believe that if I had posted that I was 100% in favor of same-sex marriage or 100% in favor of Darwinism none of this activity is generated. Nor would a mod bother me. I could easily articulate posts supporting these positions & then there would be no opposing viewpoints in the forum. That type of bias does not sit well with me. Which is why I will continue to articulate the opposing viewpoints if for no other reason but to demonstrate that this is an open-mined forum.

If I had written a post like this there is a good likelihood it gets wiped out. I likewise don't agree with the suggestion that I shouldn't have the right to reply to posts personally directed at me. Other's have this right. No one is compelled to read my posts. They have ways to avoid them. But it sure is interesting how much activity they generate around here. No. Not mocking or anything of that nature. Simply CYA.