The Hall of Fire

I will peep in here, because I am another one that has felt the wrath of people coming down on me when I thought I was making the most bland of observations about religious topics.... Anyhoo, (takes big deep breath) No conversation can take place about core religious/philosophical beliefs unless one...

Though ya'll can feel free to argue about it elsewhere, for the sake of this discussion, I'd like to assume for this discussion that Jesus existed, taught pretty much what is attributed to him, and really did inspire his disciples to go out and preach. :) :poke: We could split that off into TE if p...

Frelga - There are multiple James in the New Testament, one, called James the Just, is widely regarded nowadays to be Jesus' brother or half brother, or in the Catholic tradition, his cousin. In any case, he WAS known to be the first head of what was considered the Jerusalem church, and was signific...

Well, then I will pull a "kushana" on you and offer evidence for Jesus existing as a result of what occurred well after the "possibility" of his life and death. Why on earth would the Romans be so perturbed about James, the brother of Jesus, the leader of the Jerusalem "Chri...

I didn't claim that he had, nor would I. The Elizabethan Age had plenty of lights. I was responding to the previous regarding existence. I don't think any artist could qualify for "Most Important" under even a broad definition of Important. Well, lots of people "existed" in that...

I am so fortunate, where I live, our state has a ban on capital punishment written into our state constitution, so it never has been an issue here, and we are fine with it just the way it is. We have had our share of terrible crime perpetrators, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gien, etc., but, IMO opinio...

Gratiously settled, yov and elf, but the distinction between Jesus and many others whose acts are questioned is that there is no contemporaneous confirmation by unbiased sources. That Shakespeare existed is irrefutable. That the man from Stratford wrote the plays is sometimes contended (by silly pe...

I cannot offer one, but there are several that come to mind as being very important to WESTERN thought and progress, although I cannot say what influences they may have had on other cultures at the time. 1. Isaac Newton 2. Copernicus 3. Albert Einstein 4. Gregor Mendel 5. Charles Darwin 6. Archimede...

Oh, stupid me, I KNEW he was not pardoned, but had his sentence commuted. My faux pas!! It changes the very gist of my post.

Just... immoral? For myself, I don't think I would categorize it as "immoral", Anth. I genuinely believe that President Bush believed that he was doing the right thing, and did so despite the possible negative political consequences. That really reflects my conflicted feelings about Presi...

As for "devaluing life" by hunting, I respectfully submit: balderdash. This kid does not represent "hunting" as a culture, he represents a queer subset. There are still many Canadians and Americans for whom hunting is pretty much a necessity, and those hunters do not "deval...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/02/monster.pig.ap/index.html How extremely sportsmanlike this story has turned out to be. Aside from my disgust about taking 11 year old boys onto game farms for a "hunt", it now turns out the entire hunt itself was a near total sham. Releasing a farm raised ...

So, I am not getting the point here. The facts that Cho WAS involuntarily restrained in a mental health facility sometime in 2005 for at least a weekend and then sent before a Virginia court magistrate who ordered him to undergo outpatient counseling which was never followed up on and now authoritie...

I do not know if what I keep reading on various news reports is making me feel reassured that the fact that Cho was a resident alien or of Korean descent seems to be of LITTLE impact here or not. But the latest stories picked up by the Chicago Tribune among others, indicates that Cho seemingly wrote...

Oh, yes, I am sure on a campus of over 26,000, that all Koreans automatically know all the other Koreans.... Sad I would never make that connection. OTOH, the chances that the shooter purchased the guns from a local registered gun collector/dealer second hand (and thus without a background check) a...

I do not think that the fact that the shooter was a resident alien from Korea is likely to create any huge outcry against immigration in general, or stereotyping of Asians, he came here as a child with his parents in 1993, I believe, and he would have been all of 9. I do feel simply AWFUL for his fa...

Latest update: There is no suspect in custody, and only one person of interest, who (from lack of the very vague information) is not in custody at this time, and who SEEMS to be someone else entirely from the dead gunman. Possibly the rival/third party/otherwise known to be involved in the so-called...

Jny - Everything I have read so far indicates that the dorm shooting IS indeed by the same now dead shooter who then went on to Norris Hall, the engineering building. AP News and the Washington Post now report the death toll at 32. It has been confirmed that (some) students were shot in (a) classroo...

Both CNN and ABC interviewed the authorities in charge on the scene, and stated that it was as far as they know, one gunman, who is dead. A student on the campus had chilling video shot on his cell phone outside the engineering hall - there were at least 27 audible gunshots in just that few minute c...

I know I am infrequently here, but I found this article to be very interesting, both in the actual study, and the reactions to it, especially those reactions of the current administration which has been pushing it. Study: Abstinence programs no guarantee I am particularly interested in this since on...