tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74104938151183387632024-02-21T03:41:36.413-06:00The Center for Dangerous ThoughtWherein I examine that age-old question: "Am I the last freakin' sane person left on earth?"Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.comBlogger139125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-64783675796838934652012-07-05T14:54:00.000-05:002012-07-05T14:54:03.025-05:00MOVED...<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After suffering through formatting issues and other frustrations for months, I have picked up my brain <span class="GRspelling">spillings</span> and moved on over to <b><i>Wordpress</i></b>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If interested, you can find me at <a href="http://www.dangerous-thought.net/">www.dangerous-thought.net</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the way you may bump into a warning that the link redirects to a <b><i>Wordpress</i></b> page, but have no fear. It is merely one small part of my plot to undermine civilization and rule the world.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-45619903540170898192012-06-27T17:37:00.001-05:002012-06-27T17:37:37.742-05:00Why the Bureaucrats Need You Dead!<br />
<h2>
The Sky Isn't Falling!</h2>
<h4>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">And regulators are worried.</span></span></h4>
By JAMES TARANTO<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A corollary of the old man-bites-dog adage is that it's news when a plane crashes, but not when a plane lands safely. A recent Bloomberg dispatch challenges that assumption. The lead sentence: "More than a decade has passed since the last major-airline accident on U.S. soil."<br />
<br />
Come to think of it, that is news of a sort, and precisely because safe flights usually aren't news. It's been so long since we thought about accidental plane crashes that it didn't occur to us until now that the last major one was in November 2001. (It was an American Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic, which crashed shortly after takeoff from New York. At first everyone thought it was terrorism.)<br />
<br />
Now you might think that this is a pure good-news story, like if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare in its entirety tomorrow. But no. It turns out that the lack of plane crashes is bad for airline safety. Here's the second sentence: "That's great news for aviation companies and their passengers--and a complication for rule makers trying to improve flight safety."<br />
<br />
The second paragraph explains: "The benefits of aviation rules are calculated primarily on how many deaths they may prevent, so the safest decade in modern airline history is making it harder to justify the cost of new requirements."<br />
<br />
Then comes one of the most wonderful quotes we've ever encountered, from William Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation: "If anyone wants to advance safety through regulation, it can't be done without further loss of life."<br />
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<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304058404577492870211292812.html?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb_h" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">VIEW MR. TARANTO'S FULL COLUMN</a></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-4654169439073386272012-06-11T10:45:00.000-05:002012-06-11T10:47:52.671-05:00Be Libertarian With Me...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2X3QRSIXgns" width="400"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-59972240599267427882012-06-11T07:11:00.001-05:002012-06-11T07:31:58.744-05:00My Breakfast, and Lunch, With Andre...<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span><span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span><span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span>My weekend was spent as a delegate to the 2012 Texas State Libertarian Convention as well as acting as a host to the gentleman who would be, if voters were bright and attentive and the media were truly not biased, the next president of our nation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Convention had its contentious moments. Hell, we are Libertarians. It also offered hope for unity and renewed energy going forward, so I will avoid an unnecessary autopsy of said conflicts and simply report that our party is strong and poised to be a factor in many </span><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="b4928e3df0a6b77a54212cd36f65c0e211fe591b" grtype="null" id="GRmark_b4928e3df0a6b77a54212cd36f65c0e211fe591b_state:0" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">state</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and local contests this election cycle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Beyond the politics, and the pistol-sucking minutia (hat-tip to friend William Sparkman) of rules and platform debates, I would instead point to what for me </span><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="77312ccdc880cfc3c5ffe798b8be5a4c64980836" grtype="null" id="GRmark_77312ccdc880cfc3c5ffe798b8be5a4c64980836_were:0" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">were</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> the three highlights of the weekend:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The luncheon speaker on Saturday was Tom Woods, who offered a talk in two parts; 1) What Libertarians should be saying to non-libertarians to win them over, and 2) What Libertarians should be saying to each other. Dr. Woods is the author of many books on history and economics, and a powerful and persuasive speaker who offered up more gems of wisdom per minute than anyone whose name is not Christopher Hitchens I have ever heard. Google him and try to read a few of his books. It will be time well-spent.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps an unanticipated highlight was my favorite moment of the weekend. As mentioned above, I served as host to Governor Gary Johnson, former two-term governor of NM, the Libertarian candidate for president in 2012. On Saturday morning we learned Andre Marrou, who was the 1992 LP candidate for the same position, would welcome the opportunity to meet with Governor Johnson. The arrangements were made and on Sunday morning I had both the honor and pleasure to participate in a breakfast meeting of the two. That was not my favorite moment, however. Mr. <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="b3bccdf1bb9886c0c0cd2cf0d371950169556496" grtype="null" id="GRmark_b3bccdf1bb9886c0c0cd2cf0d371950169556496_Marrou:0" style="background-color: transparent;">Marrou</span> had not attended a Libertarian event since the year he ran for president, but was persuaded to stay for our Sunday luncheon where the governor was to be the keynote speaker. Most in attendance had no idea what had happened to Mr. <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="7063669005c68421c7a9f1f3cf4bf25d622fafe6" grtype="null" id="GRmark_7063669005c68421c7a9f1f3cf4bf25d622fafe6_Marrou:0" style="background-color: transparent;">Marrou</span> in the years following 1992, nor even where he lived, so the announcement that he was our special guest brought a standing ovation from the audience and a warm smile to Andre’s face. I cannot say for sure, but I would not be surprised to see Mr. <span style="background-color: transparent;"><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="bd69c24e536d2c5d31ebcf46a200fe422db472c4" grtype="null" id="GRmark_bd69c24e536d2c5d31ebcf46a200fe422db472c4_Marrou:0">Marrou</span></span> appear at a few more LP functions going forward, and that can only be a very good thing for all concerned.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The third thing that stood out was Governor Johnson’s speech at the aforementioned luncheon. It offered a strong and bold preview of his coming campaign against the Democratic president and Republican challenger. I like the governor personally, and also strongly support his effort to slay the <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="2ebeb49cd5d69afc2ba0b120bfc1bcf1e29b903c" grtype="null" id="GRmark_2ebeb49cd5d69afc2ba0b120bfc1bcf1e29b903c_duopoly:0" style="background-color: transparent;">duopoly</span> that has our nation in a clear and frightening downward spiral. His Saturday talk seemed to me to rank with his emphatic debate speech to the delegates at the LP National Convention prior to <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="226f3e588c0a8dc0c4a415a182cd4a36f6f4b91c" grtype="null" id="GRmark_226f3e588c0a8dc0c4a415a182cd4a36f6f4b91c_being chosen:0" style="background-color: transparent;">being chosen</span> as our nominee, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X3QRSIXgns&feature=g-all-esi">this video</a> which seems to have gone viral on the internet and attracted the attention of many disenchanted Republicans.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I would be remiss if I failed to reiterate what I hinted at above. Wife Pat and I had the pleasure of hosting Governor Johnson Saturday and Sunday evenings, and I have served as his “escort” on visits to North Texas on this and a previous occasion. He is a warm and modest gentleman in every sense of that word. In my time I have had beers and conversations with Joe Biden (whom I still remember fondly), hosted Bob Barr in my home, and been a guest of President Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson at their Texas ranch. There is no political figure with whom I would rather spend time, nor for whom I would rather work for their election, than Gary Johnson. I am pleased to consider him a friend, and recommend him highly to you.</span><br />
<div>
<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span><span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span><span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-61149956597242075192012-06-06T13:22:00.001-05:002012-06-06T13:31:12.986-05:00I Will Try to be Polite, But...<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Today I received what seems like the umpteenth appeal from Mitt Romney, or at least his campaign, for my "support", which is <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="2187b54779910098ec86df01f270e35bd323181c" grtype="null" id="GRmark_2187b54779910098ec86df01f270e35bd323181c_politicese:0">politicese</span> for <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="2187b54779910098ec86df01f270e35bd323181c" grtype="null" id="GRmark_2187b54779910098ec86df01f270e35bd323181c_money:1">money</span>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Allow me to explain what it would mean for me to support Mr. Romney, who I am sure is a reasonably fine fellow in many regards. It would mean in essence that I believed that someone who believes that a here-there-to unmentioned angel was sent from god to visit and provide an updated revelation to a petty convicted felon in upstate New York, that not only was the Garden of Eden an historical fact and place, but that its location was somewhere in Missouri that no one has quite stumbled across just yet, that Native Americans were really the Lost Tribe(s?) of Israel, that Jesus found time (and a previously undisclosed form of transportation) during his short duration on earth to visit said Lost Folks, and that wearing a special kind of magic underwear could and would make you a better person, was fit to be president of the most powerful nation on earth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hell, I don't even believe that someone who believes all that, and much more I have not the time to mention, should even be permitted unsupervised home visits, much less allowed to ascend to such a high and prestigious office.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But here's the thing, even if I believed all of the above was sane and logical and defensible, I still could not and would not lift a finger nor spend a bad penny on Mr. Romney's behalf. You see, I also believe marriage is a civil right whether a band of bronze-age, cattle-sacrificing nomads believed so or not. I believe that no American should be summarily executed without a fair trial, nor detained without the ability to exercise their rights under habeas corpus. I believe that taxation without representation applies every bit as much to our grandchildren as it did to our forefathers, and that it is unconscionable for us to leave them 50 to 100 trillions of dollars in debt simply because we cannot screw up the moral courage to bring federal government spending under control. I believe that for too long we have served as both the world's policeman and financier, and we now need to refocus our efforts and our treasure on our problems rather than on someones else's. Finally, although I could go on like this for a very long time, I believe that we have destroyed too many lives and invested far too much of our resources fighting an unwinnable "War on Drugs".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So no Mr. Romney, or whoever is sending me these mailings, you can save yourself any and all additional printing and postage, because I believe on one hand you are batshit crazy, and on the other you are merely more of the same. Believe me when I say I have my fill of both.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-10135115774342812432012-06-01T13:42:00.002-05:002012-06-01T13:44:48.640-05:00What Carnivores and Prey Animals Can Teach Each Other<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A "Science and Religion" blog is running a "discussion" under the following headline:</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What Believers and Atheists Can Teach Each Other</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Taking their lead, I just might do a bit and title it "What Carnivores and Prey Animals Can Teach Each Other". Seriously!</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The only thing a religious person can teach me is how they have finally decided to keep their cosmic fantasies to themselves, which means from this moment forward refraining from attempts to impose their peculiar world views on others in general, and me in particular, whether through government mandates, undermining of the educational process, especially as it pertains to Science, and/or one or another form of ecclesiastical imperialism.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am, by the way, most ready to return the favor. As soon as the religious get out of my face, I swear to stop bitching about them being in my face. It only seems fair.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-65379077545478469702012-05-30T17:40:00.000-05:002012-05-30T17:45:50.228-05:00Hari-ed?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Talk about surreal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I did some shopping at my local Market Street grocery this afternoon. I was checking out, preparing to pay with my debit card, when the cashier began ringing a bell and dancing up and down, soon to be followed by the bag girl.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Had </span><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="694ad00bbe9d6c3a1f3e353ba0fa6f1449268661" grtype="null" id="GRmark_694ad00bbe9d6c3a1f3e353ba0fa6f1449268661_i:0" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> been in Britain I would have been nonplussed, here I settled for </span><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="18faf4bccca7aa179c4761e33dd7feba34549dd5" grtype="null" id="GRmark_18faf4bccca7aa179c4761e33dd7feba34549dd5_slackjawed:0" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">slackjawed</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. Was Market Street now hiring </span><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="30a663fbfed7446601e650251d5deda2f65fe763" grtype="null" id="GRmark_30a663fbfed7446601e650251d5deda2f65fe763_Hari:0" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hari</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Krishnas? Was I an unwitting participant in a cosmic joke?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fortunately, nothing so bizarre. Shortly the cashier paused her bell ringing to inform me I had won free groceries. Sure enough, the register screen was displaying $0.00 where seconds before it had read $208 and change. I shop there all the time, and had no idea they even did such a thing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And 208 bucks beats a gaggle of </span><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="6b2372d557fb9bf5791a9e20e9154a1986d99f81" grtype="null" id="GRmark_6b2372d557fb9bf5791a9e20e9154a1986d99f81_Krishnas:0" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Krishnas any day</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-30661261468358481932012-05-30T11:50:00.000-05:002012-05-30T11:51:01.924-05:00Worth Considering...<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span>For all my Progressive/Liberal friends who, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, still subscribe to the mantra that more government regulation and/or involvement in the banks, or healthcare, or whatever, will make those things safer, cheaper, fairer and so on, I offer up some info on one example where the U.S. <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="4b1489166afb4ecb41838a9ec5209b44a902887a" grtype="null" id="GRmark_4b1489166afb4ecb41838a9ec5209b44a902887a_did:0">did</span> actually deregulate an industry:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1978, Congress deregulated the airline industry. Between 1950 and 1978, the Civil Aeronautics Board had received 79 applications for startup interstate airlines, and rejected every one of them, effectively protecting the business and profits of a handful of <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="1bfe3ca0e0d54b67df4b974bd6a7d4efde525347" grtype="null" id="GRmark_1bfe3ca0e0d54b67df4b974bd6a7d4efde525347_legacy carriers:0">legacy carriers</span>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since 1978 however:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Airline fares have fallen eighteen percent in real dollar terms,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Airline safety has improved year after year and air travel is now safer than it has ever been,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Air travel has been opened up to the vast majority of Americans. Prior to 1978, <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="7b467e866c43052975ca68fd2bdf219359690197" grtype="null" id="GRmark_7b467e866c43052975ca68fd2bdf219359690197_fewer:0">fewer</span> than 20% of Americans had ever flown on a commercial airliner, today it is estimated that 85% have done so, and</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Competition has increased dramatically, with airlines such as Southwest, Jet Blue, Horizon, and Virgin America (to name just a few) forcing what is left of the legacy carriers to reorganize, retool, and rethink their approach to the business.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Faced with these results, and the fact that most large industries are still heavily regulated, over-regulated actually, how can anyone argue that federal regulation or control is a good thing, or that the public interest would not be better served with far less regulation as opposed to more?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ernie Hancock has famously stated that "There are only two kinds of people in the world, those who want to be left alone and those that won't let them". I submit that the forces of regulation are manned entirely by "those who won't let them", and that they are what stands between Americans and cheaper, more accessible <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="723e3b48683361e25fce7dc27dd86ef7da845c35" grtype="null" id="GRmark_723e3b48683361e25fce7dc27dd86ef7da845c35_healthcare:0">healthcare</span>, lower bank fees, better energy sources, and on and on. The cost <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="f3826078e89735c3bb219d271e56df660e99139d" grtype="null" id="GRmark_f3826078e89735c3bb219d271e56df660e99139d_to:0">to</span> progress, and fairness, is enormous.</span></div>
<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-84467619703484271552012-05-21T17:14:00.000-05:002012-05-21T17:14:11.323-05:00Penn "Smokes" the PresidentPenn Jillette takes President Obama to task for his cavalier attitude about, and harsh treatment of,<br />
non-violent drug offenders.<br />
<br />
<br />
.
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="230" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wWWOJGYZYpk" width="300"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-29243443542567317482012-05-17T15:44:00.000-05:002012-05-17T15:45:27.818-05:00The Law of Unintended Consequences...One more example, two actually, of how Government Poisons Everything:<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="240" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MD9vK5bCS7I" width="420"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-34116972606595880732012-05-15T09:49:00.000-05:002012-05-15T09:50:13.236-05:00Real Money...<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A Libertarian friend, Jeffrey Jones, sent me the following info. It portrays as well as anything I have seen the awful impact out of control government spending and a money-printing Federal Reserve have had on our real wages and inflation. Imagine how much better off we'd be today if we were paid in gold, even without receiving a raise over the past 50 years. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Average wages in 1959: $5,016 - or 143 oz. <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="0660bab20fa9b24e515f64924facd17b2801e4e2" grtype="null" id="GRmark_0660bab20fa9b24e515f64924facd17b2801e4e2_of:0">of</span> Gold</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Average wages in 1977: $15,000 - or 120 <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="961125d81cb176dccec6fa8e97319e40a1d46356" grtype="null" id="GRmark_961125d81cb176dccec6fa8e97319e40a1d46356_oz:0">oz</span> of Gold</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Average wages in 1999: $28,970 - or 104 <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="08e7bf74856952356a91083898ed0c206d4b4ac2" grtype="null" id="GRmark_08e7bf74856952356a91083898ed0c206d4b4ac2_oz:0">oz</span> of Gold</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Average wages in 2008: $41,335 - 53 <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="61bd256c46a5cb3149686d287f8f91ee0f961669" grtype="null" id="GRmark_61bd256c46a5cb3149686d287f8f91ee0f961669_oz:0">oz</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span>of Gold</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And they say Ron Paul is nuts!</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-21362905790766746912012-05-10T17:55:00.000-05:002012-05-10T17:55:09.254-05:00Epicurus, Lucretius, and Thomas Jefferson<br />
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is God willing to
prevent evil, but not able?<br />
Then he is not omnipotent.<br />
Is he able, but not willing?<br />
Then he is malevolent.<br />
Is he both able and willing?<br />
Then whence cometh evil?<br />
Is he neither able nor willing?<br />
Then why call him God?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Attributed to Epicurus, circa 300 BCE<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the strictest sense, Epicurus probably was not an
Atheist. He at least claimed to believe
in the gods of ancient Greece, but at the same time curiously asserted that
they were not at all concerned with humankind.
Being <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="062a63495c3d404aa0618e12f9ddc89ae6c83055" grtype="null" id="GRmark_062a63495c3d404aa0618e12f9ddc89ae6c83055_gods:0">gods</span>, what <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="062a63495c3d404aa0618e12f9ddc89ae6c83055" grtype="null" id="GRmark_062a63495c3d404aa0618e12f9ddc89ae6c83055_need:1">need</span> might they have of us, or concern as to how we
lived? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Other contributions of Epicurus include the promotion and
further explanation of the atomist hypotheses generally attributed to
Democritus, an early stab at a hypothesis of evolution, and the supposition
that the earth was not the center of the “world”, nor for that matter was the
sun. Rather, he wrote, the stars were
all suns like ours, and as such they would be surrounded by planets like our
earth which would be inhabited by “other races”. Further, he asserted, death was not to be
feared – <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="8fc49cebd994750469021ef0bd8788cf28b4f982" grtype="null" id="GRmark_8fc49cebd994750469021ef0bd8788cf28b4f982_for:0">for</span> we were dead before we were born. Death was simply the atoms which composed our
body rearranging themselves once again.
(And all this 300 years before a questionable and gory series of events
in Palestine set human progress back at least a thousand years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He may be best known however for his philosophy that living
a life of pleasure was the highest ideal to which we can aspire. <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="3dd6e467b495b3616ba4420454e183555f4af554" grtype="null" id="GRmark_3dd6e467b495b3616ba4420454e183555f4af554_By:0">By</span> “pleasure” Epicurus was not referring to copious
amounts of rich food, great wine, or sex, but rather to the simpler pleasures of
learning, discourse, moderation, and living without fear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Only three letters and a few small scraps of his writing is
all we have left of Epicurus; all, except for the epic poem <i>On the Nature of Things</i> by the Roman
writer and philosopher Lucretius. The
Roman’s work itself was nearly lost to us, only to be retrieved in the 15<sup><span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="fa6af6e97d010a98b5bfb9dc17862112afda402e" grtype="null" id="GRmark_fa6af6e97d010a98b5bfb9dc17862112afda402e_th:0">th</span></sup>
<span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="551883c880b3bcd56f802b4e23ed5f6a1cccc226" grtype="null" id="GRmark_551883c880b3bcd56f802b4e23ed5f6a1cccc226_century:0">century</span> by Poggio Bracciolini, a Papal secretary. Many historians credit the rediscovery of Lucretius’
work with providing an impetus for: first the Renaissance, and later the
Enlightenment. We know that many
Enlightenment figures such as Montaigne, Locke, and Diderot owned copies of, and
made frequent reference to, <i>On the Nature
of Things</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And here’s the thing:
Thomas Jefferson owned at least five copies of the multi-volume poem,
and referred to it frequently. You
certainly recall his phrase “<span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="f6779097aa32bb7e51192d9b44a46c09c8bbc08e" grtype="null" id="GRmark_f6779097aa32bb7e51192d9b44a46c09c8bbc08e_…:0">…</span>life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”, the
last phrase of which is pure Epicurus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the past, upon reading Jefferson’s phrase “<span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="729cf3166ad3d443f945ab515a591996f1144d4b" grtype="null" id="GRmark_729cf3166ad3d443f945ab515a591996f1144d4b_…:0">…</span>Nature and
Nature’s God…”, I have always assumed he was making a reference to the Deist
god, a deity which after the act of creation went off to play Bridge, or
perhaps badminton or something, with the other gods and was thus unconcerned
with mere mortals or anything else in nature.
(Sorry Christian revisionists, T.J. <span class="GRcorrect" grphrase="f9c37563ae78713c76ab52dfc761b655e2461c95" grtype="null" id="GRmark_f9c37563ae78713c76ab52dfc761b655e2461c95_was:0">was</span> not one of you.) What if,
however, Jefferson was instead referring to Einstein’s god; nature and the laws
of nature themselves? Einstein was familiar
with Lucretius and thus Epicurean thought, just as was Jefferson. I recently found what could be considered at
least strong circumstantial evidence:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a letter to William Short, dated October 31, 1819,
Jefferson answered in response to an inquiry as to his guiding philosophy, “I
am an Epicurean.” Further, “I consider
the genuine (not imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything
rational in moral philosophy…” In his diary, John Quincy Adams attributed a
similar response to Jefferson during an 1807 dinner conversation. At the very least we can rule out
Christianity as being at the core of the author of the Declaration’s moral
core.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Proof? Perhaps not. Stronger evidence however than the Cult of
Torture and Human Sacrifice can offer, and that is a start.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-54026706168272873462012-04-27T10:22:00.002-05:002012-04-27T10:22:42.145-05:00SENDING HIS SON TO ISRAEL<br />
<div>
<div>
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<div class="yiv1485084003MsoNormal">
<b>A Jewish
businessman in Chicago decides to send his son to Israel to absorb some of the
culture from the Jewish Homeland. </b></div>
<div class="yiv1485084003MsoNormal">
<b> </b></div>
<div class="yiv1485084003MsoNormal">
<b>When the
son returns, the father asks him to tell him about his trip.<br /><br />The son
says, "Pop, I had a great time in Israel. By the way, I converted to
Christianity."<br /><br />"Oy, vey," says the father, "Vat haf I dun?"<br /><br />He
decides to go ask his friend, Jacob, what to do.<br /><br />Jake says, "Funny you
should ask. I too sent my son to Israel, and he also came back a Christian.
Perhaps we should go see the Rabbi and ask him what we should do."
</b></div>
<div class="yiv1485084003MsoNormal">
<b>So they go
to see the Rabbi.<br /><br />The Rabbi says, "Funny you should ask. I too sent my
son to Israel. He also came back a Christian. What is happening to our young
people? Perhaps we should go talk to God and ask Him what to do."<br /><br />The
three of them pray and explain what has happened to their sons and ask God what
to do.<br /><br />Suddenly a Voice loud and clear from Heaven is heard,
"Funny you should ask. I, too, sent my son to
Israel. . .
" </b></div>
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</div>
</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-25656992818249076052012-04-25T09:00:00.001-05:002012-04-25T09:00:41.572-05:00A light-hearted look at "Alternative Medicine"...<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
“By definition”, I begin<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Has either not been proved to work,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or been proved not to work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know what they call “alternative medicine”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s been proved to work?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Medicine.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Science adjusts its beliefs based on what’s observed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be
preserved.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you show me<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That, say, homeopathy works,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I will change my mind<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll spin on a fucking dime<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I will run through the streets yelling<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Water has memory!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is
Infinite<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Excerpted from “Storm”, by Tim Minchin.<o:p></o:p></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-21839919723600595922012-04-22T10:13:00.000-05:002012-04-22T10:13:54.823-05:00Ohio executes cult leader for 5 Killings<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The above headline, from an Associated Press article, is a couple of years old now.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I do not normally read such stories because I am opposed to
the Death Penalty for a number of reasons. But that is not the
point today. The story continued:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“LUCASVILLE, Ohio - Ohio executed a religious cult leader Tuesday for
murdering a family of five followers who were taken one at a time to a barn,
bound and shot to death. The youngest was a girl just 7 years old.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Jeffrey Lundgren, 56, died by injection at the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility. ‘I profess my love for God, my family, for my children,
for Kathy (his wife). I am because you are,’ Lundgren said in his final
statement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The evidence against him in the deaths of the Avery family — Dennis, 49,
Cheryl, 46, Trina, 15, Rebecca, 13, and 7-year-old Karen — was compelling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Upset by what he saw as a lack of faith, Lundgren arranged a dinner
hosted by cult members. Afterward, he and his followers led the family members
one by one — the father first, young Karen last — to their deaths while the
others unknowingly cleaned up after dinner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Lundgren shot each victim two or three times while a running chain saw
muffled the sound of the gunfire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Lundgren argued at his trial in 1990 that he was prophet of God and
therefore not deserving of the death penalty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">‘It's not a figment of my imagination that I can in fact talk to God,
that I can hear his voice,’ he had told the jurors. ‘I am a prophet of God. I
am even more than a prophet.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Lundgren formed the
cult with about 20 members in the northeast Ohio town of Kirtland after he was
dismissed in 1987 as a lay minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of the Latter Day Saints church.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">He said God commanded
him, through interpretation of Scriptures, to kill the Avery family, who had
moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow his teachings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I found the following
three passages riveting:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Lundgren
argued at his trial in 1990 that he was prophet of God and therefore not
deserving of the death penalty.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">"It's
not a figment of my imagination that I can in fact talk to God, that I can hear
his voice," he had told the jurors. "I am a prophet of God. I am even
more than a prophet."</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He said God
commanded him, through interpretation of Scriptures, to kill the Avery family,
who had moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow his teachings.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Upon reflection on
those three passages, I believe we can all agree that one of the following
statements must be true. Either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 3.75pt; margin-left: 13.5pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in; vertical-align: top;">
</div>
<ol>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Jeffery Lundgren was stark-raving mad;</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Jeffrey Lundgren was lying about his communications with God and
his status as a "prophet"; or</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Jeffrey Lundgren was telling the truth; that is, he was in intimate
communication with the Almighty, he was HIS ordained prophet, and he
killed the Averys on God's command.</span></li>
</ol>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Those are the only
choices. One <b>must</b> be true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But which is it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Frankly, unless you
are a devoted member of Mr. Lundgren's cult, I am absolutely certain that you
have not chosen #3.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Every reader in
general, and especially those who profess Christianity in particular,
has opted for either explanation #1 or #2.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"># 3 is out of the
question. Dismissed. Impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But why?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Atheists and
like-minded secularists have an excellent reason for their choice: If
there is no God, then #3 is not even a remote possibility. Their response
needs no further explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What about those of
you who are Christians, Mormons, Jews, or Muslims however? Why do
you reject the third option? Indeed, how can you?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Your entire belief
system is based on the conviction that one or more times in the past, a Deity
communicated His wishes and instructions directly to a human or group of
humans. You are certain of this. There is no question in your mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But if God did
communicate with man in the past, how can you be so sure that He was not in
communication with Mr. Lundgren? Jerry Falwell claimed that God
spoke to him every day, so why not to Mr. Lundgren?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">And God has, according
to the Bible, often ordered His followers to kill others, including little
children. The God of the Old Testament several times displayed an
extremely bloodthirsty and vengeful persona, so how can you know He did
not instruct Mr. Lundgren to off the Averys?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">You believe that if we
all do not accept, worship, and fear this God, He will cast us into Hell and
torture us for eternity. That's pretty serious, even
vicious, stuff. Why then is it impossible to believe Mr. Lundgren
was telling the truth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The fact is I have a
clear, concise, and rational reason for rejecting option #3.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 9.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">No adherent of any
"revealed religion", including Christianity, can make the same claim. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-74551082068828889622012-04-20T18:47:00.002-05:002012-04-20T18:47:30.835-05:00Open Mouth, Insert...President?Politicians sometimes say the damnedest things. Take the Democratic governor of Montana for instance. Obviously sent forth by the Obama campaign as an attack dog now that Mitt Romney is the presumed GOP candidate, the governor went for every negative angle he could find, including pointing out the Mitt's father was born in a polygamous Mormon settlement in Mexico. That would certainly hurt Mitt, he opined, because polls show American women by a large majority detest polygamy.<br />
<br />
True enough. The history is that polygamy was illegal by the US, and was thus eschewed by the Latter-Day-Saints in order to gain statehood for Utah in the late 1800s. Some Mormons who considered the practice to be an important part of their faith demurred, emigrating to Mexico, where they peacefully continued to adhere to the original doctrine.<br />
<br />
However Mitt's father was not polygamous, nor was his grandfather. In fact one has to go back to his great-grandfather to find an ancestor who engaged in polygamy.<br />
<br />
As unlikely as that connection is to cause a problem for Romney, there is however another candidate for president whose <b><i>father</i></b> was polygamous before, when, and after that candidate was born. <br />
<br />
That candidate? Barrack Obama.<br />
<br />
So much for zingers.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-21533573632205184762012-04-19T15:28:00.001-05:002012-04-19T15:28:47.793-05:00They are not to be trusted...<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
Yesterday I watched a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Member after member took turns making
statements, other than that not a damned bit of work was attempted.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
Many of those speaking though referenced a single, and to my mind
dangerous, theme:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to simplify
the tax code, and we can do that by eliminating or reducing deductions and then
lowering and flattening rates. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
Sounds simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sounds clean.
Unfortunately this is Congress of which we are speaking, and they are not to be
trusted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
In 1986, under conservative icon Ronald Reagan, taxpayers were
convinced to give up a series of deductions for what was essentially a
two-bracket (15% & 28%) tax code.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(There was also a clawback provision whereby the extremely rich paid and
even 28% on all income, but that effected very few.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
It took Congress only four years to demonstrate that they couldn’t be
trusted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1990, a new top bracket of
31% was added, and then under Clinton brackets were adjusted and a fourth one
tacked on with a 39% tax rate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
essentially a single decade Congress took back everything granted when we gave
up our deductions in 1986.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
If you believe that it won’t happen again, you are precisely the
damned fool that the vultures in Congress want you to be, indeed expect that
you are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There can be no tax reform that
allows Congress to give voters the bird whenever the mood strikes them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only effective tax reform must include
the repeal of the 16<sup>th</sup> Amendment, the abolition of the IRS, the
institution of a consumption tax with a requirement of a super-majority to
increase rates, and the passage of a balanced-budget amendment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anything short of all four would be a willfull
and deliberate fraud on the people. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again.<o:p></o:p></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-90557697775131309532012-04-18T07:50:00.000-05:002012-04-18T07:50:08.476-05:00A "Heads Up":<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
From the 12th through the 16th centuries, monks laboring in monasteries
would routinely scrap the ink off the ancient manuscripts in their libraries in
order to reuse the parchment to copy scripture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thusly, untold ancient texts were lost to mankind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
It was an act then of incredible serendipity that in 1417 one Poggio
Bracciolini, rummaging through the library of a monastery in Italy, opened and
recognized an extraordinary work by the ancient Greek poet Lucretius, a contemporary of Cicero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its 1700 plus lines <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">De Rerum Natura </i>(On the Nature of Things) summarized the atomic
theory of Democritus and the atheism of Epicurus, as well as laying out an
ancient theory of evolution. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bracciolini
obtained permission to copy the text and over the following couple of decades
distributed it to other scholars across Europe, giving birth to the Renaissance
and its natural offspring, The Enlightenment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Among thinkers who were influenced by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">De Rerum Natura</i> were Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Thomas More,
Niccolò Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Thomas Jefferson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, and lest I forget, Christopher Hitchens
(He included a passage as the very first piece in his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Portable Atheist</i>.). Quite a fan club.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
I mention all this because of a book I recently discovered, <span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393064476/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=skepticcom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0393064476" title="Order the book
from Amazon"><em><span style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Swerve:
How the World Became Modern</span></span></em></a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In its pages, recently the recipient of a 2012 Pulitzer Prize, Stephan
Greenblatt tells the story of the manuscript’s rediscovery and its influence,
as well as highlighting some of the work’s more compelling contributions to
modern thought and perhaps even the "sexual revolution".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I am
loving it, and I highly recommend it. Get it and read it before the Religious Right hears about it and tries to have it banned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-9834786338520221982012-04-17T14:22:00.001-05:002012-04-17T14:22:29.943-05:00Incredibly...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Reports out of Afghanistan today indicate that Muslim extremists poisoned the water at a school for girls in order to prevent the girls from being properly educated, causing outrage to erupt among American Christians.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">In other news, American Christians today rallied against the teaching of the theories of evolution and the Big Bang in public schools.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Yeah. No shit.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-35385030749108822432012-04-17T13:30:00.000-05:002012-04-17T13:30:00.843-05:00Why I am supporting Gary Johnson<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
Gary Johnson is NOT the most libertarian
candidate seeking the LP presidential nomination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lee Wrights, whom I genuinely like and admire,
probably fills that bill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is not to
say that I agree with Lee on every issue, but I can guarantee that whatever the
question posited, Mr. Wrights will give the Libertarian answer 100% of the
time, and mean it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Bill Still may have been the
most erudite of the candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say
may have been because he appeared to withdraw during the TX LP debates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem with Mr. Still, as with Carl
Peterson, another accomplished and dedicated libertarian, is that he was a
one-trick pony seeking to lead a nation with more than one problem and thus desperate
for more than one answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">R.J. Harris likewise has withdrawn,
which is too bad because he along with Wrights and Johnson was a capable
candidate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">That given, of the candidates above
why did I choose to support Governor Johnson?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">To be brief I will cite what
for me were two overriding factors:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Though
perhaps not the “purest” Libertarian (though I am not sure what that really
means and truly do not like so differentiating among Libertarians), Governor
Johnson is decidedly and happily a classical liberal. He believes the
government which governs least is the government that governs best, a fact he
has clearly demonstrated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I personally
gravitate toward constitutional Libertarianism, desiring the smallest
government necessary to guarantee my rights to life, liberty, and property, but
also recognizing that only a government of political equals can effectuate
those ideals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore calls to
eradicate the income tax and replace it with nothing, for instance, while crowd
pleasers ring hollow without an accompanying vision for what is to follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Governor Johnson supports marriage equality,
an end to the war on drugs, ending foreign aid as well as our support of the UN and World Bank, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an end to the income tax and IRS (But by replacing
at least some of that revenue with a consumption tax while we responsibly wind
down many of the programs that have brought us to the real possibility of economic
implosion.)</span></li>
<li><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Gravitas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Governor Johnson is the only of our
candidates who can look the American people in the eye and say regarding the
downsizing of government, “I have done that successfully, and it is not
difficult if it is really what you want to do.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The authority and authenticity arising out of having left a state
government smaller and a state better off economically when he left office than
when he first entered government, is something that not only can no other LP
candidate say, but that none of the candidates of the two “major” parties can say
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could be a
game changer.</span></li>
</ul>
<!--[if !supportLists]--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I understand why some of my
friends would choose to support Lee Wrights because it grieves me that I
cannot. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me it comes down to a
long-range plan spanning more than one election cycle, and the conviction that
our candidates must not appear “radical” to a basically centrist American
electorate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They must identify us with
what is best about the American system, and not as a party anxious to throw out
the baby with the bathwater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Please note: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am speaking of perception here, not reality.
Jan Carlzon, the former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, once famously said that
if a customer found a soiled tray top on one of their planes, they were likely
to assume that the airline was also sloppy with its engine maintenance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise, we also need
to be aware of such consumer tendencies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">That said, I urge your support for Governor Gary Johnson. Visit his <a href="http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/front">website</a> and see for yourself.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-90785469128234284822012-04-13T10:38:00.001-05:002012-04-13T10:38:57.280-05:00Time to leave the GOP tent?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
In the mid-1990s, the Republican Party left me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
I know that sounds trite, but I had been originally attracted to the
GOP by Barry Goldwater and a handful of other small-government, classical-liberal
politicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course Senator Goldwater
got clobbered in his presidential run, but just twenty years later Ronald
Reagan swept to victory on the wings of his proclaimed (small-l)
libertarianism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
Unfortunately President Reagan failed to govern as a libertarian, with
ever-more bloated government and exploding deficits as well as clandestine wars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The final straw came with the Gingrich/DeLay
betrayal of the Contract with America, an episode which left me no doubt that
the Republican Party never had any intention, nor ever would, of returning our
nation to real constitutional government.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
Luckily for me I found the Libertarian Party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am under no delusions the LP will enjoy
massive electoral success anytime soon, it is too weighted down with an anarchical
wing that is simply not reality-based, along with archaic rules that make it impossible
to effectively build a party capable of actually winning majority support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But still we soldier on, if for no other
reason than the LP is the only political party in the U.S. that still stands
for government confined by constitutional limits and the individual as supreme
per the classical-liberal philosophy of our Founders.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
What is intriguing to me is the number of liberty-leaning folks, some
of them friends, who doggedly stick with the Republican Party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One only has to review the history of state
legislatures and Congresses when they have been controlled by the GOP over the
past twenty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The drumbeat is
always the same, the people’s business, not to mention the Constitution, is a
distant second to an undeniably anti-science, theocratic, misogynous,
interventionist, and militaristic agenda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is as if the Islamic Parties of God occupied the very soul of this
once-proud party.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">
The time has come, it seems to me, to permit the GOP to collapse under
the weight of its own self-righteous arrogance. Rick Santorum?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Michelle Bachman?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Newt Gingrich?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Twenty-first century America does not need a
flat-earth political party any more than, I would say even less than, a
fascist-corporatist party under the guise of liberal-socialism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No real lover of liberty can, in good
conscience, remain any longer within their bronze-age tent.<o:p></o:p></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-59562925617448386472012-04-10T16:50:00.000-05:002012-04-10T16:50:08.152-05:00A Question for Mr. Romney:Rick Santorum is kaput, leaving open the possibility, however minute, that there is a just god.<br />
<br />
So now our attention turns to Mitt Romney. It would be interesting of course to corner Mr. Romney with a question or two about magic undies, or the baptism of long-deceased folks of other-than-Mormon persuasion. The hell with the minor weirdness of the religion he espouses however, I say let's cut to the core of Mormon Moronic silliness. Let's ask Mitt "Where in the hell is the steel mill?"<br />
<br />
The following will explain in detail what I mean, and why it is a question every Mormon, and particularly every Mormon who would be president, should have to answer. It was written several years ago by Frank Zindler. Mr. Zindler is a linguist, and a member of the Board of Directors of American Atheists.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b></b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">HOW DO YOU LOSE A STEEL MILL?<o:p></o:p></span></b></b></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: large; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By Frank R.
Zindler<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The next
time Mormon missionaries come calling at your door, invite them in.</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">You have an obligation to educate them. But before you
can bring them to understand the error of their ways, it is necessary to get
their attention - I mean really get their attention. This you can do by asking
them, as you help them remove their coats, if they are wearing their magic
underwear - their so-called "temple endowments." Ask them to explain
the theory behind their magic unmentionables; especially ask for the reason why
up until 1923 they were made with open crotches - and then ask them if their
long johns can protect them against logic and science.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The missionaries will probably be a
bit surprised to hear that they need protection against logic and science, so
you will have to show them some of the ways in which Mormonism is falsified by
science. For example, the Book of Mormon implies that Jews fleeing from
Jerusalem shortly before and after 600 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) made
their way to South or Central America and turned into Indians. Of course, the
magical aspects of this story lie outside the scope of science. Nevertheless,
if Jews were transformed into Amerindians just a few millennia ago, there are
ways in which scientific methods could be used to falsify or verify the fact. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Recently it has been possible to
work out the genetic relations of all the major human populations in the world
by comparing the DNA molecules carried in the mitochondria of human cells.
Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell, and they are inherited only along
the maternal line. In a seminal paper published in the British journal Nature, </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_1"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Rebecca Cann
and her coworkers analyzed the mitochondrial DNA </span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">from all major groups of humans on the planet and
found that all human mitochondrial DNAs could be derived from just a single
woman living in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago. (Of course, this does
not mean that all humans living today had only one ancestor alive at that time;
it simply means that all mitochondria, as a result of hazards of transmission,
are derived from just one female of that prehistoric generation.) Although it
is difficult to identify all the twigs on the genealogical tree in the article
cited, it is clear that the authors did not find any surprising link between
American Indians and Jews. They refer to "Asians or American
Indians," and Jews aren't even mentioned - presumably because they do not
differ significantly from other Caucasians. Mormon apologists are invited to do
their own DNA comparisons. Until they do, we may consider the
transmogrification of Jews into Amerindians mere fantasy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Archaeology is another science that
has much to say about the Mormon idea that Mesopotamians and Israelites came to
America around 3000 and 600 B.C.E., respectively, and originated the cultures
and populations of the New World. When Joseph Smith saw how easy it was to pull
people's legs, he made up an incredible story about Jaredites escaping from the
Tower of Babel in Mesopotamia, building barrels which were more barrels than
boats, and floating to America in these sealed vessels - after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"the Lord caused stones to shine in
darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not
cross the great waters in darkness"</i> (Ether 6:3). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Smith's disciples swallowed
this story without a smile, Smith stretched their legs further. The kingdom
founded by the Jaredites - I'm not making this up - was known as "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the land of Moron</i>." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In addition to the Jaredites, Smith
created Nephites and Mulekites to help populate ancient America and take part
in a drama so taut and exciting that Mark Twain referred to their history as
"chloroform in print." (Twain seems to be confused in the area of
anesthesiology. Readers will note from the Book of Mormon quote above that
Smith's book contains Ether in print, not chloroform.) The Nephites are
supposed to have escaped Jerusalem shortly before the destruction of the city in
587 B.C.E., the Mulekites shortly thereafter. The Nephites sailed east from
Palestine and came ashore in South or Central America. The Mulekites are
inferred to have crossed the Atlantic and landed on the Caribbean coast of
Central America. Just what it was about the American environment that caused
all these Caucasians to turn into Amerindians is unclear, but most Mormons will
tell you it was "sin" that did it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Fauna Of The Book Of Mormon</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Smith published his
"golden bible " in 1830, he gave elephants to his Jaredite actors,
along with asses, cows, oxen, and horses. While this may seem startling to
readers today, in upstate New York in the 1930s there was nothing odd about this.
Thomas Jefferson had discovered the remains of an extinct mammoth, and it was
probably widely assumed that ancient Amerindians had domesticated elephants in
the way that modern Indians have done. I doubt that many rural New Yorkers then
knew that the Amerindians had had no horses or cows until they got them from
the Spaniards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although horses originated in North
America, they - along with the various American species of
"elephants" - went extinct many thousands of years before anything
that could be called civilization had evolved in Central or South America. At
no time were cows present before the advent of Hispanic culture. </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_2"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">No certain
remains of pre-Columbian horses, asses, or cows have ever been found in the
Americas.</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Even in the improbable event that
rare, relict populations of wild horses in the remote regions of South America
or elsewhere managed to survive the mass extinction of the American mega-fauna
that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, it is an archaeological
certainty that no horses ever pulled the chariots of Jewish Aztecs or
Babylonian Mayas - or should it be Babylonian Aztecs and Jewish Mayas? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No animal-drawn wheeled vehicles
were ever used in pre-Columbian America. No chariots. The reason is that there
were no suitable draft animals to pull them. Despite Joseph Smith's claim that
his ancient American Christians had cows and oxen, none existed in America
before the Spaniards brought them. With only the exception of the bison and the
reindeer - notably scarce in Mexico where the major Book of Mormon
civilizations are alleged to have existed - no animals existed in America
suitable for pulling chariots or wagons. The closest thing to an American draft
animal is the llama, but during the entire domestication history of this Andean
animal it was used to carry packs, not to pull vehicles. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It goes without saying that this
problem worries Mormon apologists a great deal. Arguments both ingenious and
specious have been constructed to deal with it. In his book An Ancient American
Setting for the Book of Mormon, John Sorenson, one of the most imaginative of
the apologists to deal with this problem, argues that it is very difficult to
know exactly what the ancients actually meant by such words as horse, cow, or
chariot. Typical of his modus operandi is his attempt to explain away the fact
that no pre-Columbian cows have ever been discovered in America:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But
isn't it obvious that the "cow" of the Book of Mormon was our
familiar bovine, straight out without all this hedging</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">No, it is not at all obvious. First,
we are trying to find out what the Book of Mormon really means by the words we
have in English translation; we are not trying either to simplify or to
complicate the matter, but only to be correct. In the effort to learn the
truth, nothing can be assumed obvious. Second, there is a lack of reliable
evidence - historical, archaeological, zoological, or linguistic - that Old
World cows were present in the Americas in pre-Columbian times. The same is
true of some of the other creatures mentioned in the Nephite record, where
modern readers may feel they are already familiar with the animals on the basis
of the translated names. In these cases we have to find another way to read the
text in order to make sense of it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So what might the Nephite term
translated by Joseph Smith as cow actually have signified? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sorenson goes on to suggest that the
"cows" to which his prophet referred might actually have been deer,
bison, alpacas, or llamas. Stretched out over the space of many pages, this
type of argument is effectively seductive. But it suffers from a most serious
defect. If we were dealing with ordinary translations done by ordinary
scholars, his point would be very important. But we are not dealing with an
ordinary translation done by someone with nothing more than a doctorate from
Oxford. We are told on the title page itself that the Book of Mormon is
"an account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the
plates of Nephi ... To come forth by the gift and power of God unto the
interpretation thereof Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord,
to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile - </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_4"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The interpretation thereof by the gift of God,</span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">" <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Several pages later, in the "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith</i>,"
we are told: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There were two stones in
silver bows - and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is
called the Urim and Thummim deposited with the plates; and the possession and
use of these stones were what Constituted Seers in ancient or former times; and
that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If Sorenson is correct in his
suggestion that the cows and horses referred to in the Book of Mormon aren't
really cows and horses - even though the book not only was translated with the
aid of Urim and Thummim, but interpreted "by the gift and power of
God" - Mormons are on the horns of a terrible dilemma. If god told Joseph
Smith to translate deer or llama as cow, he is either incompetent or a liar. If
god lies about llamas, why wouldn't he fib about </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/faith_def.htm"><span style="color: maroon; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">faith</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">? Of course, the Thummim may have blown a transistor,
or the angel Moroni may have forgotten to provide the batteries for the Urim.
On the other hand, it might all be the fault of the typesetter! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Returning to the subject of
chariots, we may observe that chariots tend to be possessed of wheels. Contrary
to the divine revelation claimed by Joseph Smith, the Amerindians never made
any practical use of the wheel. The only native wheels known to archaeology are
the great stone wheels used for calendars and the wheels found in children's
toys. If delicate wheeled toys have survived the centuries, should not
full-fledged chariots and carts have survived also? If the societies in
question had wheeled vehicles for a period of more than three millennia, would
we not expect to find wall paintings of them in Mexican temples and tombs?
Wouldn't we find proud murals of Aztec kings driving their chariots in
triumphal parades? Would we not see pictures of humble farmer-serfs tilling the
king's fields with horse-drawn ploughs and hauling produce to the king in
oxcarts? Once again, we see the falseness of the Mormon prophet's
"inspiration." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When one reads works of fiction such
as the Bible or the Book of Mormon, it is absolutely necessary to play the
what-if / then / what game. One should ask questions like, "What if Caesar
Augustus really did proclaim a census where everyone had to return to an
ancestral home to be counted? What would have happened then?" <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the case of the Book of Mormon,
we may ask "What if the ancient Amerindians did have horses and chariots?
What are the implications?" For one thing, we would expect to find the
remains of stone bridges and highways - not footpaths - all over the continents
of North and South America (or at least all over Central America, if the Mormon
revisionist geographers are to be considered). To be sure, we do know of the
great highways that the Incas built. But alas for the Book of Mormon, the Inca
highways were built a thousand years after the close of the Mormon story.
Moreover, we know that it was runners and llamas carrying packs that traveled
these highways, not horses with chariots or oxen with carts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If horses and chariots were a common
part of Amerindian life in ancient times, we should find words for horses and
chariots in all the native languages - especially if they are all corrupt forms
of Hebrew and Sumerian, as implied by the Book of Mormon! We should find words
for bit, bridle, harness, wagon, headstall, snaffle, martingale, etc. If the
Amerindians had plows to go with their horses and oxen, as Smith's novel
clearly implies, we should find some - including steel ones (see discussion of
steel in last section of this article). We need to know, moreover, why the only
tilling tools we have ever found in the Maya territory are fire-hardened digging
sticks and stone axes. Why would people so on making stone tools if they had
access to iron and steel ones? As we shall see, all archaeological evidence of
pre-Columbian agriculture paints a picture which is totally incompatible with
the European-style agriculture implied by the Mormon stories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mormon Agriculture</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Joseph Smith concocted the Book
of Mormon, he just assumed that the ancient Amerindians had the same kind of
agriculture as that which he knew in upstate New York. Consequently, he had his
ancient characters growing wheat, barley, corn, and flax, and planting
vineyards for wine, and being able to understand the symbolism of the olive and
trees. Now, of course, Smith was right about the corn - that is, maize. But is
there anyone of Smith's day who had not heard of "Indian corn," or
did not know that corn had come from the Indians? What Smith did not know,
however, was that corn was but one of three staple crops raised by the Indians
of Central America - the region in which the discovery of ruined civilizations
had triggered enormous amounts of speculation in the time of Smith's youth. The
other two major crops were squash and beans. These were supplemented by such
things as avocados, amaranth, etc. You can search all you want in the Book of
Mormon, but you won't find any mention, apart from corn, of the crops actually
raised in ancient America. Incidentally, we have numerous cases where these
crops have been preserved in archaeological sites and are easily identifiable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What does archaeology tell us of the
presence or absence of the crops Smith claimed were the staples of ancient
America? No remains of wheat or domesticated barley have ever been found. In
fact, the one possible pre-Columbian specimen of barley discovered at a site in
Arizona is of a species different from the species of domesticated barley
allegedly brought from the Near East. And what of flax? No dice, again.
Fortunately for lovers of truth, the Mormon apologists cannot simply say we
haven't been looking in the right place, or that the remains of these plants
have all perished with the passage of time. The reason for our good fortune is
the fact that these domestic plants are all flowering plants. As such, they
produce pollen - in great abundance. If the so-called Mormonic civilizations
had been growing these crops for even a few decades - let alone the thousands
of years allegedly chronicled by the Book of Mormon - every soil coring taken
in Central America should show traces of wheat, barley, and flax pollen. Pollen
is one of the most indestructible natural objects known. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An example of the type of research
that shows Book of Mormon agriculture to be nineteenth century fantasy is David
J. Rue's 1987 paper in <i>Nature</i> titled "Early Agriculture and Early
Postclassic </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_5"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Maya Occupation in Western Honduras."</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> By studying soil corings from Lake Yojoa and Petapida
Swamp, both in western Honduras, Rue was able to reconstruct the agricultural
history of the area from a time 4770 years before the present up to modem
times. He could tell from pollen when the region was forested, when the forest
was cut and burned for agriculture, what crops were grown and for how long.
Although he found clear records of pollen from corn (maize) and amaranth - two
Amerindian staples - he makes no mention of wheat, barley, or flax pollen.
Perhaps the Mormon Church would like to pay him to go through his cores again,
looking more carefully for the mythical motes that should be in them if the
Book of Mormon be true! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Silks And Linens"</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Smith created the costuming for
the characters in his unhistorical novel (that was quite a while before god
told him he should be sleeping with more than one woman), he had no knowledge
of the types of cloth known to the ancient Amerindians. So he saw no problem in
having his ancient Mexicans wearing linens and silks. Now linen is made from
the fibers of the flax plant, specifically the species known as Linum
usitatissimum. This species is native to the Old World and was unknown in
America before the coming of the Spaniards. It is quite certain that this
species of plant did not grow in America during the three-thousand-year period
allegedly chronicled by the Book of Mormon. The reason we can be so certain is
that flax pollen of this species has never been found in any soil corings. It
is unthinkable that flax for linen could have been grown commercially and not
have contributed its pollen to the spore library yearly accumulating at the
bottoms of lakes, swamps, and ponds. Ordinary soils unearthed by archaeologists
should contain it, along with the pollens of wheat and barley, as we have
already noted. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Instead of weaving flax fibers into
linen, the ancient Americans wove cotton into cloth. In fact, the ancient
Mexicans were weaving cotton fabrics by the year 5000 B.C.E. - at least two
millennia before the time of the Jaredites, the mythical escapees from the
Tower of Babel, who Smith claimed had floated to America in a barrel! Will
readers be surprised to learn that the Book of Mormon makes no mention at all
of cotton? Neither god nor Joseph Smith seems to have known what the Mexicans
were substituting for fig leaves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Smith's imposture in the Book of
Mormon goes even further, however. He has many of his characters wearing silk -
some as early as 600 B.C.E.! Now this is funnier than is immediately apparent.
The manufacture of silk began in China and was kept as a trade secret for
several thousand years. Although silk fabrics had found their way from China to
the Mediterranean world by the time of Aristotle, no one in the West knew how
silk was made. It was not until the year 552 C.E. that two Nestorian monks, who
had lived in China, smuggled a small number of silkworm eggs out of China and
brought them, together with the method for making silk, to Constantinople. This
means that the Mormon prophet Lehi, who allegedly escaped from Jerusalem more
than a thousand years before this date, before the Exile, could not have
brought a knowledge of sericulture to the New World. Although remains of
ancient fabrics have been found all over the Americas, no one has ever found
remains of pre-Columbian silk. The closest thing to silks made by the
Amerindians were fabrics spun from rabbit hair or the fibers of ceiba pods. Although
moths of the silkworm family (Saturnidae) do exist in the Americas, it is all
but impossible to unwind the agglutinated and tangled silk fibers from their
cocoons. Smith could not have been more off base if he had written that the
Jaredites were selling nylons on the black market. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<a href="" name="Nephite_Money"></a><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nephite
Money</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Book of Mormon assumes a money
economy existed in ancient America and gives names and values for a variety of
gold and silver coins:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Now these are the names of the different
pieces of their gold, and of their silver, according to their value ... <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; text-align: left;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border: inset #EBCD23 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: inset #EBCD23 .75pt; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"></td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: inset #EBCD23 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: inset #EBCD23 .75pt; mso-border-left-alt: inset #EBCD23 .75pt; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Leaving the Mormons to worry about
how to make change for a "limnah," we note simply that although the
ancient Americans had gold and silver in abundance, they never made coins or
evolved a money economy. They used jade beads, obsidian blades, and even cacao
beans as media of exchange. Never did they mint coins or create a standardized
system of metal money. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Any single one of the archaeological
impossibilities we have pointed out thus far should be enough to convince an
unbiased scientist that the Book of Mormon is a fiction. All the more so, if we
combine all the individually convincing evidences together, we must see that
the fraudulence of the Book of Mormon is proven beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Remember this the next time youthful "elders" knock on your front
door. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moronic And Mormonic Metallurgy</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According to the Book of Ether, the
Jaredites knew how to make steel: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And it
came to pass that Shule was angry with his brother ... Wherefore, he came to
the hill Ephraim, and he did molten out of the hill, and made swords out of
steel for those whom he had drawn away with him; and after he had armed them
with swords he returned to the city Nehor, and gave battle unto his brother
Corihor </i>... (Ether 7:8-9) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According to </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_7"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Mormon
apologist David A. Palmer,</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> this steel
making occurred around the year 2500 B.C.E.! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This precedes by more than a millennium the
time at which ironworking (let alone steel making!) came to Mesopotamia, the
region whence the Jaredites allegedly had come! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the fact that the "Morons"
possessed weapons of steel, they didn't do too well. According to Paimer, in
the year 2430 B.C.E. the "Moron population (was] reduced to 30 by
wars." (There is no evidence that Palmer snickered when he penned the
quoted line.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But Morons were not the only ancient
Americans alleged to have worked in steel. Nephites also, before they were
transformed from Jews into Indians, worked in steel and other metals around the
year 575 B.C.E.: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And I [Nephi] did teach my people to build buildings, and to work in
all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and
of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores, which were in great abundance</i>.
(2 Nephi 5:15) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As we have seen, the Book of Mormon
story covers a period of time stretching from 3000 B.C.E. to 400 C.E. During
that period, many millions of people possessed of steel and brass technology
are alleged to have lived and died somewhere in the Americas. It is strange,
therefore, to note that no one has ever found any steel artifact datable to
Pre-Columbian times. Although a few ancient objects made of meteoric iron have
been discovered in America as well as in Eurasia, no objects made of smelted
iron have ever been found in America - even though billions of such things
should have been made if the Book of Mormon story were true. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now, of course, the defenders of the
Mormon kingdom might say we just haven't been looking in the right place. Alas
for the apologists, the Book of Mormon tells us precisely where to look for
such artifacts. It claims that between one-half and one million steel-owning people
died all at once, in one spot, around the year 400 C.E., in a climactic
battle at "Hill Cumorah." According to Mormon tradition, Hill Cumorah
is a glacial drumlin situated near the upstate New York town of Palmyra. It is
the site of an annual "Mormon Pageant." Mormon revisionist
geographers, however, place the hill in the Tuxtla Mountains, in the Mexican
state of Veracruz. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If the Book of Mormon were true,
either the hill in New York or the hill in Mexico should be one enormous pile
of rusted iron (from the swords and other steel objects) and phosphate (from
the bones of all the people slain). It would be a valuable source of scrap iron
and phosphate fertilizer! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As crazy as all this may seem,
there's more to the Mormon story which is even crazier. According to the Book
of Ether, there was an earlier battle in which even more people were slain at
one spot: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And it came
to pass when Coriantumr had recovered of his wounds - . . He saw that there had
been slain by the sword [more steel!] already nearly two millions of his
people, </span></i><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_8"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">and he began to sorrow in his
heart;</span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men,
and also their wives and their children </span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">... (Ether 15: 1-2) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Assuming that "mighty men"
would comprise from one-third to one-fifth of a population, we must conclude
that six to ten million Jaredites deposited their steel and their bones at the
site of the battle in question. If the Mormon writer David Palmer is correct in
his belief that Hill Ramah (where the Jaredites died) and Hill Cumorah (where
most everyone else died) are the same hill, and that both are to be identified
with Cerro El Vigia in the Tuxtla Mountains, it would seem that satellites
equipped with magnetometers should be able to verify the fact easily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But neither iron nor phosphate is
found at Hill Cumorah in New York, nor will it be found - I am prophesying - in
the volcanic Tuxtla Mountains in Veracruz. Not surprisingly, the Mormon Church
conducts no mining operations at the Palmyra site. The only thing of importance
occurring there is the annual falsification of American history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In concluding our discussion of how
Mormon mythology has fallen on its own (steel) sword, we must make one final
observation. If millions and millions of people made and used weapons and tools
of steel for a period spanning more than three millennia, not only should
archaeologists find plentiful remains of </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_9"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">swords, chariot
axles, anvils, sickles, and many other iron-based artifacts,</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> they should be finding the </span><a href="http://nowscape.com/mormon/zindler1.htm#foot_10"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">remains of
steel mills </span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">all over the
territory covered by Smith's cast of characters! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is perfectly conceivable that one might
lose a steel sword. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But how in hell can you lose a steel mill? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Ask the missionaries the next time they call. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</b></span><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-15566004918220884452012-04-06T14:51:00.000-05:002012-04-21T09:38:39.181-05:00Thank you god...One of my favorite parts of the recent Reason Rally was the performance of Tim Minchin. Other than his cynical comment about the reason for the Rally, "It's amazing really, that 300 years after the Enlightenment, we have to have a rally for the fucking obvious", perhaps my favorite part of Mr. Minchin's performance was his piece "Thank you god (for fixing the cataracts of Sam's mum)". Following are some of the lyrics:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">"Thank you, Sam, for
showing how my point of view has been so flawed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">I assumed there was
no God at all but now I see that’s cynical. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">It’s simply that his
interests aren’t particularly broad.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">He’s largely
undiverted by the starving masses, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">or the inequality
between the various classes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">He gives out
strictly limited passes, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">redeemable for
surgery or two-for-one glasses.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">I feel so shocking
for historically mocking. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Your interests are
clearly confined to the ocular. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">I bet given the
chance, you’d eschew the divine <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">and start a little
business selling contacts online.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Fuck me Sam, what
are the odds that of history’s endless parade of gods <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">that the God you
just happened to be taught to believe in <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">is the actual one
and he digs on healing, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">but not the
AIDS-ridden African nations, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">the victims of the
plague or the flood-addled Asians, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">but healthy,
privately-insured Australians <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">with common and
curable corneal degeneration?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">This story of Sam’s
has but a single explanation: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">a surgical God who
digs on magic operations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">It couldn’t be
mistaken attribution of causation, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">born of a
coincidental temporal correlation, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">exacerbated by a
general lack of education </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">vis-a-vis physics in Sam’s parish congregation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">And it couldn’t be
that all these pious people are liars. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">It couldn’t be an
artifact of confirmation bias, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">a product of
groupthink, a mass delusion, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">an Emperor’s New
Clothes-style fear of exclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">No, it’s more likely
to be an all-powerful magician <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">than the misdiagnosis
of the initial condition, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">or one of many cases
of spontaneous remission, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">or a record-keeping
glitch by the local physician.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">No, the only
explanation for Sam’s mum’s seeing: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">they prayed to an
all-knowing superbeing, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">to the omnipresent
master of the universe, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">and he liked the
sound of their muttered verse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">So for a bit of a
change from his usual stunt <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">of being a sexist,
racist, murderous cunt, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">he popped down to
Dandenong and just like that, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">used his powers to
heal the cataracts <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 125%; margin-bottom: 9.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 125%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">of Sam’s mum – of
Sam’s mum!"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #4b5d67;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-716819474506866862012-04-06T09:53:00.000-05:002012-04-06T09:53:09.288-05:00You gotta wonder...I spent 10 years living in Gainesville, FL (Go Gators!) before settling at least temporarily just north of Dallas, TX. Occasionally however, our of morbid curiosity I suppose, I like to check out the latest news on the Gainesville Sun website. This morning I was not to be disappointed.<br />
<br />
Item the First: Apparently the pizza wars have heated up, at least in Lake City, FL. It seems two former managers of the area Domino's franchise are in the local jail awaiting trial on arson charges. You guessed it, when the local Papa John's began to cut into their sales (and bonuses) they decided the best approach would be to, ah, eliminate the competition. Gas cans with finger prints left at the scene are just some of the evidence involved.<br />
<br />
And Number Two: A Gainesville area man's body has been pulled from an underwater cave in one of the many natural springs that dot the Gainesville area. Friends and family said that the diver "died doing what he loved most". Which, it seems from the number of similar deaths that occur every year from the same pursuit, was being incredibly stupid.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7410493815118338763.post-54580429874124057562012-04-05T19:53:00.000-05:002012-04-05T19:53:21.608-05:00A Little Easter Quiz...As we approach the date of what is unquestionably Christendom's most immoral, grotesque, and disgusting holiday, I would posit a few questions for the consideration of its celebrants:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>On what day was the "Last Supper"; Passover or the Day of Preparation?</li>
<li>If, as the Gospels agree, the disciples fell asleep when with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, how is it the Gospels still can report everything Jesus said and did?</li>
<li>How is it possible, do you suppose, that during Jesus' crucifixion a great earthquake would occur, renting the curtains in the Temple, opening graves, and leading to the dead walking around Jerusalem and talking to people, and yet not a single government official, scribe, or startled resident recorded such an incredible event for posterity? Not a single, contemporaneous account to corroborate the claims of accounts written three generations later? And lastly</li>
<li>Who went to visit Jesus' tomb on what is now called Easter Sunday, what did they find, and what did they do?</li>
</ul>
<div>
Don't rush...we wouldn't want you to get anything wrong, and be especially certain when answering the first and last questions above that you consult all four Gospels.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02030936411280813325noreply@blogger.com2