response 134 of 209:

Aug 7 01:43 UTC 2003

russ, can you be any more dense?  However I notice you are not the only one.
Sigh!

Certainly I believe and accept that atoms exist.  Protons, electrons, mouns,
and every other sub atomic particle.

I also believe in God.

There is just as much visual evidence for each.

response 136 of 209:

Aug 7 04:51 UTC 2003

re #133:  There are a couple kinds of magic that have been believed in.  One
draws on some power inate to the magic user.  This is basically the kind of
magic we saw on "Bewitched".  The official doctrine of the old time Catholic
Church was completely in agreement with modern science on that one - there
ain't no such thing.

Another form of magic works by calling on supernatural beings to act on your
behalf.  The Christian Church used to believe in this in a big way (and still
believes in it in somewhat smaller ways).  There are two main variations to
this recognized by the Church:  calling on God, or calling on the Devil.

The "calling on God" variation is basically praying for a miracle.  Catholic
priests used to do lots of this stuff - blessing crops, finding lost
objects, healing the sick - all by invoking God.  Astute observors noticed that
they had simply taken up all the roles previously occupied by pre-christian
witches.  Various reformers wanted excise all this hocus-pocus form the
Church.  That's a core part of where Protestantism comes from.  It's all been
trimmed back a bit in the modern Catholic Church as well.

Any supposed magic conducted by any means other than conventional prayer was
considered to be the other kind:  calling on the Devil.  Didn't much matter
if people claimed they had never made a pact with Satan - if they appeared to
do magic and weren't clergy, then they were assumed to have a pact with Satan,
any other kind of magic being officially impossible.

So, no, Jesus wasn't a witch.  If he'd made a pact with Satan to allow him
to walk on water, then he'd be a witch.  I'm not sure whether he actually
is supposed to have had inate power of his own (being an aspect of God and
thus an exception to the rule that humans can't do magic) or whether it was
just God doing things for him in recognition of his faith.  I think the
latter.

Of course, Harry Potter doesn't appear to call upon the power of Satan
either.  The book seems to be assuming that magic power is innate in certain
individuals.  The claim that the book is Satanic rests on the old theory that
no humans can have such power, so, somewhere in the chapter breaks, Harry
must have slipped off and sold his soul to Satan in exchange for power.

Of course, this logic has some cogs loose.  You could equally well argue that
Star Trek is Satanic because faster than light travel is impossible, so
Captain Kirk must have sold his soul to Satan.  I guess some people have
trouble with the concept of fantasy.

response 138 of 209:

Aug 7 14:07 UTC 2003

Can someone explain to me the evils of "The Coneheads"?  I'm still stuck on
that . . .

response 140 of 209:

Aug 7 16:28 UTC 2003

Oh man.  You're joking, right?

response 142 of 209:

Aug 7 21:21 UTC 2003

It should be noted, too, that (according to other news reports) the 
book-burners also fried up some Bibles that were not of the godly King 
James version.

response 144 of 209:

Aug 7 22:34 UTC 2003

Bruce, can YOU be any more dense?  There is a huge amount of
reproducible evidence for atoms; every one of the essential
experiments gets re-verified millions of times a day, in the
world's chemical plants and oil refineries (even ignoring
chemistry labs).

In contrast, there is NO way to reproduce the revelations on
which you base your beliefs about abortion.  None.  If they
could be reproduced and verified, there wouldn't be more than
one religion worldwide, just as there is one science worldwide.

Your claim that everything not visible is equivalent is absurd.
You can't see microbes with your eyeballs either.  Does that mean
that incense and voodoo chants are equivalent to antibiotics when
trying to get rid of them?  Some people believe that.  They're WRONG.

What really gets me about you, Bruce, is that you put more outward
credence into the unsupported dogma fed you by some clergyman than
you do in the verifiable evidence of the world.  It's obvious that
you have more emotional energy invested in it.  If you actually
gave weight to beliefs according to the certainty with which you
can verify them, dieties would rank somewhere below theories of
Jimmy Hoffa's resting place.

response 146 of 209:

Aug 7 23:08 UTC 2003

russ, you have absolutely no idea what I believe or why I believe it.  And
as I have said before, my position on abortion is not religious, but
humanitarian.
, and to some extent constitutional.

As far as proofs of God verses atoms, while I see the interactions of atoms
every day, I also believe I see the interactions of God every day.

Believing in science does not equate a disbelief in God.  Just because you
choose to disbelieve, to think you can make me.

response 148 of 209:

Aug 8 05:56 UTC 2003

re: 135- Yeah. Sort of. Wanna come do my upteen loads of laundry so I can
sit in a nice, hot, wet bath instead? <eg>

response 150 of 209:

Aug 8 16:47 UTC 2003

Given that the byline is 'Tamara Audi', it might be safer to assume the author
is female.

response 152 of 209:

Aug 8 18:07 UTC 2003

Yes.  If one happens to be a termite.

response 154 of 209:

Aug 8 21:23 UTC 2003

Bruce said in #146:

>my position on abortion is not religious, but humanitarian...

Humanitarian concern for organisms which cannot think or even feel?
(Brain patterns characteristic of consciousness do not appear until
the 30th week.  That is SEVEN months, the THIRD trimester.)  What
about humanitarian concern for the woman... or is she irrelevant?

>and to some extent constitutional.
 
The same Constitution which refers to "citizens born or naturalized"?
I don't think so.  If those excuses were horses, you'd have shot them.

response 156 of 209:

Aug 9 03:49 UTC 2003

I don't disagree with Bruce's distaste for abortion.  Society would be much
better if it was much rarer.

I like to think I know a bit about science, and I certainly believe
firmly in science, but I'm unaware of any scientific basis for deciding
if abortion is OK, or for making any other moral choice.  Science is useful
for getting your facts straight, always a good first step in addressing
a moral issue, but it won't resolve the moral issue.  That's a values
issue, and there is no science of values.

So I disagree with the tendency of some pro-choice people to dismiss the
nastiness of abortion, and say isn't bad or it doesn't matter.  But also I
disagree with the pro-life idea of banning abortion.  Depending on how you
implement such a law, it is either absurdly ineffective or a brutal
intrusion into the private lives of adult women.  Most likely both.

You can argue about whether or enforcing a law against abortion would be
more or less evil than abortion itself.  I really don't care.  I think
there are lots of things we could do that would be more effective than
illegalization and be less of an imposition on women.  Some of those should
plainly be attempted before we even think about banning abortion.