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@oromagi
I think anyone who has studied the traumatic impact of the first SARS epidemic on China would be skeptical that China would deliberately re-invoke that disease for political gain.
Then you do not understand the manipulation by Chairman Mao in the Cultural Revolution which, among other goals, purged remnants of capitalism and traditional Chinese society in favor of Communism. Guess what economic system China has mimicked in the last 20-odd years; maybe more. They purged once; they can do it again, for political gain.
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@SkepticalOne
Logic, notwithstanding, which, sometimes, cannot be justified by law, is overruled by law. On this matter, SCOTUS overrules your opinion.
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@SkepticalOne
Freedom of religion requires a government to be free of religion.
No, wrong interpretation, and Everton v. Board of Ed (1947) stipulated it. That was a bussing issue, the complaint being that public school busses should not deliver parochial school children to their school. The court found that unconstitutional because it was a service to all children needing bussing to school, regardless of type. That extends to the pledge. James Madison remarked that rather than a wall, there was an intersection of religion and government where they both met public need.
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@TheUnderdog
Sorry, thinking ahead. I’ve written it, but cannot post until my opponent posts his R3, stay tuned...
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@oromagi
Straw poll
371 respondents. To represent a population of 80M voters, potentially? Try 2,401 respondents, at a MoE of ±2.5% [it gets fuzzy with higher MoEs]
Statistically, a disaster, as most political polls are. Does no one know how this is done?
Nope. The end.
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@Theweakeredge
Although American, I do not think like most, or at least many Americans, so don't impose your platitudes on me. I look at it like driving, which, though I learned to drive here, I re-learned and have not stopped since, in Europe, specifically France. I re-learned to write, by hand, in France, and have not changed since. I maintain 24-hour clocks, and think that way, when I think of time at all, which I really consider non-existent blither. Politically, yes, I am American, but, even that is tempered by the Sermon on the Mount, to me the best political agenda ever written. Europe has dropped off the edge in that regard. Again, your platitudes work for you. Leave it at that.
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@Theweakeredge
Yeah, according to your other favorite reference, the APA, which I do not recognize as a qualified source on the matter. They change with societal winds. Sorry.
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@Theweakeredge
According to your god, Wiki [you cite it often enough to deserve deification],
Reverential capitalization is the practice of capitalizing religious words that refer to deities or divine beings in cases where the words would not otherwise have been capitalized. Pronouns are also particularly included in reverential capitalization
Seems to me, that still does not designate a specific supreme being, but generalized with the added reverence of capitalization serving the purpose of that reverence, to whichever god one individually refers, without the use of a more specific name. Hence, Allah, which is nothing more than God, an honorific in Arabic, or Dieu in French, ⨡⨡⨡ in ancient Egyptian...
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Seems to me, if a guy wants to be a woman, and vice versa, the sex change operation ought to include not just the genitals, but natural hormone balancing features, bone density and muscle-mass alignment, and, for good measure, full DNA manipulation. I don't think anything less will accomplish the task. Now we're talking an even playing field by gender, sis, or chosen.
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@SkepticalOne
And what I am saying is that the change to the Pledge to acknowledge God was no more than a generic reference to a freedom of religion; any religion. The 1A does not stipulate what deity to worship, and you full have the right to worship none. If the pledge offends you by the reference, "under God," don't say it. Is that a problem? And if someone else wants to say, "under [fill in a name]" that should be fine, too. And if someone wants to not say any pledge, why not? Most of us want the pledge just as it is. Does the majority get to have its say, too?
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@SkepticalOne
What, exactly, is the vague reference to a Christian God in the pledge, when the offering of the meaning of the addition of "under God" was to a "supreme being," and not the specified God of any religion? It is an utterly universal reference. So, what's your beef? Are you implying that we should understand it to be more specific, when it is as generic as can be? That's on you, bud.
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@Stephen
More than one way to skin a cat, and you cannot find the cat.
I deny nothing I've said:
A knowledge of Greek and Hebrew can assist in understanding the Holy Bible better, by being able to read those languages. Period.
An act of faith to ask God in all sincerity what is true and not is a valid guide to understand all truth, not just the Holy Bible, but you refuse to engage it, so, believe what you will. Argue for your .imitations; they're yours and no one can remove them but you, but you insist on carrying the baggage. So carry.
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@SkepticalOne
...not so vague references to the Christian diety in our pledge?
My #23 post to Lemming:
Oh, how I wish y'all would stop depending on Wiki as a solitary source. Such as, following through with a source indicated in the text of your reference [8] to Eisenhower to discover that the reference to "under God," the inclusion to the pledge made in 1954 during Eisenhower's administration, was a reference, not to "a Christian God," as many people stipulate, without a clue what they're talking about, but to a "supreme being," which could be understood as generic to cover all worshipped divine entities by a diverse group of Americans.One might also realize, contrary to allegations by whomever, that the nation was not established in 1619, on slavery, and not in 1776 by the Revolutionary war, but in 1788 on the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, "...in order to form a more perfect union." The rest is fronted by people with noses pushed out of shape, who also don't know what they're talking about.
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@Dr.Franklin
Well, yeah. Zed is Zed, alright. In this corner, I'm approving of the Brit. After all, I am one, too, if I go back far enough and in one arm of the family.
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@Dr.Franklin
Glad you like it.
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@Greyparrot
My opinion of the credibility of YouTube is about as sour as that for Wiki. Tell me what YOU think.
Too Lame;Didn't Watch
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@Double_R
So, according to the rationale, Biden should go shoot that guy. He hasn't. I'm not5 advocating shooting anybody. What I do advocate is knowing who's responsible and dealing with that. I include dealing with the pandemic and its causes, and let "I am science" strw in it for a while.
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@Dr.Franklin
that explains everything
What does that explain? Aren't you a meist, too? I am. But -ists are a dime a dozen. I'm left-handedist, but not leftist.
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@FLRW
Clearly, Melania disdains communism, so just admit you're misinformed on this matter and move on. I don't mean by your discussion of Slovene history - that's all good, but irrelevant to this discussion.
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@TheUnderdog
An agnostic is unsure if God exists.
I'll accept that definition, and appreciate the the position. I think its clear I am a theist, further, that I believe God to be a living, physical being whose only desire is that we ultimately become like him, associate with him, and do things for and with him as we engage eternal progression.
I suggest your research into a concept called theosis. I discuss it in a current debate I'm in with Bones, which he initiated,
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3101-thbt-the-god-of-the-christian-bible-likely-does-not-exist. Go to my 3rd round argument. [Read the rest as well if that is of interest.] I'd actually appreciate your vote when we get to that point.
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@RM
I acknowledge your longevity and expertise. You're saying DebateArt is a figment of imagination; that it is David, Lead Moderator [formerly Virtuoso], who really is the creator of the site?
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@TheUnderdog
I would start with a language that at least uses characters with which you are familiar in English, such as one of the derivatives of Latin, before trying to tackle Latin. Yes, English uses Roman characters, but, in keeping with my first suggestion, you cannot immerse yourself in Latin anywhere, being effectively a dead language that is used in medical and legal worlds, but they memorize those words and short phrases, and I'll wager, by experience [my brother is a physician] that they have no clue about the language beyond that which is memorized. You can't memorize a language. French, Spanish, Italian, are good starts.
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@FLRW
Hint: Melania is not Russian. And the Trump Tower deal fizzled. Happens, in business. Of the >530 businesses the Trump Org has amassed, six have failed, because Trump took them to bankruptcy for failure to produce. He does not tolerate failure to succeed. That's still a 99.8% success rate. Tell me when you have that many businesses under your belt, and are as successful. I'll listen, then. Until then... you don't know of what you speak regarding running multiple businesses.
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@TheUnderdog
DebateArt: the creator of the site. That's his moniker. Mods are administration, not the head.
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Covid is real, but I also think it was contrived to do the damage and loss of life it has caused, and disruption of social freedoms. I'm convinced it was the Chinese government, and some other willing players I will not mention who developed and released it to weaken the West; the US in particular. Too many seek our downfall. I also think it will happen again with a different virus; so much has been learned by this exercise, and no one is done trying to take us down. May not be China next time. Time to prepare, now.
Prepare: pay your debts; be unencumbered. Increase your cash on hand.
Prepare: store food and supplies, weapons to protect yourself.
Prepare: create a personal 72 hour kit, and one for each family membert to escape if you must leave your house briefly: food, supplies, cash, clothes. Don't wait until the need is at hand. Make it. now.
Prepare: have different means to cook food that does not depend on electricity.
Prepare: resolve that death is just a door one may need to walk through.
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Just to avoid a one-on-none conversation:
Because it's too hot, even for summer in June:
On October nights the nights rise on slowly sundown
Skies of deep blue, red; the scattered whites appear
And drift in night by some great solar wind.
Orion, the great hunter, goes a-crunching for his prey.
Here, the night of soft advance, the wind turns on itself
In sudden sighs to know all ways: the shiver of trees
And how the leaves will wither in their time
And fall away. The great Fall comes of wrinkled fruit.
And one man crunches long to know the roots of reason;
What is, once was, once was and will become.
Is it so cruel that nature keeps her secrets well?
Near the edge of the wood
The grass is keen to every sigh
And leans to me, loves me.
On October nights, the nights rise
On old leaves steeped like dying stars;
They wait as a faithful beaten path
To guide me to my prey.
In one sound of one leaf under foot
Is told all secrets of the wood.
I go crunching in October nights
And dead leaves break into their voice
And whisper of warriors, wanderers and me,
Of Orion crunching through his stars,
Of Adam, hungry at the tree.
Skies of deep blue, red; the scattered whites appear
And drift in night by some great solar wind.
Orion, the great hunter, goes a-crunching for his prey.
Here, the night of soft advance, the wind turns on itself
In sudden sighs to know all ways: the shiver of trees
And how the leaves will wither in their time
And fall away. The great Fall comes of wrinkled fruit.
And one man crunches long to know the roots of reason;
What is, once was, once was and will become.
Is it so cruel that nature keeps her secrets well?
Near the edge of the wood
The grass is keen to every sigh
And leans to me, loves me.
On October nights, the nights rise
On old leaves steeped like dying stars;
They wait as a faithful beaten path
To guide me to my prey.
In one sound of one leaf under foot
Is told all secrets of the wood.
I go crunching in October nights
And dead leaves break into their voice
And whisper of warriors, wanderers and me,
Of Orion crunching through his stars,
Of Adam, hungry at the tree.
©1972 by fauxlax
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To my thinking, DebateArt already has a president, if that is the nomenclature to use, and I don't see that elections for a new President are warranted. DEbateArt is the President. I acknowledge that President, alone. The rest of yous are counterfeits. Fuggetaboudid.
Always wanted to use Hugh Grant's most famous attempt at speech.
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@oromagi
Oh? Who, exactly, did Biden shoot when our energy sector was attacked, creating lines at gas stations throughout the South? Hmmm? By giving Putin an open door to other than the 16 holies? When words, alone don't stop anything? I saw nor heard any shots at anybody. Biden is probably incapable of shooting anybody, even his own foot. Biden has not closed the back door by any means, That is a Biden failure. Trump is no longer the President. So, celebrate
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@MisterChris
See my #23 responding to Lemming.
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@SkepticalOne
Sorry, I didn't reference which response by Edge to which I was speaking . It was his #2.
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@ Stephen
rendering the holy Christian bible written in English useless, pointless and redundant.
Nope, wrong again by complete misinterpretation. My post #15 to Conway was in response to his #6, saying
I think it would seem to be some sort of reference to the Qur'an, which is properly rendered in Arabic.
I'm saying that translating holy writ in any other language that its original is flawed by errors of syntax, corruption, and culture. You're so bent on my claiming the Bible to be a farce, you can't see the forest for the trees. Again, for the umteenth time, I recognize the Bible's translation from Hebrew and Greek was not done from original texts, was done with poor understanding of the relative cultures, which beget language, and by corruption. I have also said there are means to find what is truth and what is not, but you refuse to acknowledge the means and refuse to try. That's on you, bud, completely. Put your finger back in your pants and shut up.
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@Lemming
Oh, how I wish y'all would stop depending on Wiki as a solitary source. Such as, following through with a source indicated in the text of your reference [8] to Eisenhower to discover that the reference to "under God," the inclusion to the pledge made in 1954 during Eisenhower's administration, was a reference, not to "a Christian God," as many people stipulate, without a clue what they're talking about, but to a "supreme being," which could be understood as generic to cover all worshipped divine entities by a diverse group of Americans.
One might also realize, contrary to allegations by whomever, that the nation was not established in 1619, on slavery, and not in 1776 by the Revolutionary war, but in 1788 on the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, "...in order to form a more perfect union." The rest is fronted by people with noses pushed out of shape, who also don't know what they're talking about.
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@Lemming
That was the whole point of Everson v Board of Education. The Court did not see a distinction between public and parochial schools with regard to bussing. The point was, neither parochial, nor public education was conducrted on busses, so why not provide the service for both?
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@Lemming
as well as a separation of church and state.
Show me those words in the 1A. They are not there. Jefferson is chiefly responsible for the phrase becoming popular, but at the time when Madison was composing the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Jefferson was separated from church and state, residing in France as our minister of same - like an ambassador today. However, reading other commentary outside the Constitution, being a prolific writer, Madison is clear that his thinking was more proximal to the idea that church and state had intersections, not a wall; that both could cooperate in some regard to work together for the common good. "Whether this is a convenience of interpretation has been a raging debate ever since the modern era introduced the question in the Supreme Court decision of Everson v. Board of Education (1947), which upheld a New Jersey law allowing government funding of school buses to deliver children to school, including parochial schools. The New Jersey law stipulated the bus service because it applied to all children, regardless of religious belief, or no belief whatsoever."
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@Conway
You mean like the Holy Bible should only be properly rendered in Hebrew and Greek? Translation is fine as long as it is done correctly, by people who understand both the from and to languages, but more especially when they understand the relative cultures, which produce language in the first place. Translation merely by dictionary comparison usually fails because dictionaries are poor teachers of culture.
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@Theweakeredge
"...the liberties of a nation cannot be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God." - Thomas Jefferson
"...our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and was wholly inadequate for the government of any other."' - John Adams
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@3RU7AL
"impulse-control"
can be learned by personal commitment
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@oromagi
So, it's okay to remind Putin?
So, it's okay to ramble on Trump, because he can take it [TLDR], but Biden is weak, so let's cut him a break?
So, it's okay to pontificate, and it comes down to just that? It takes so much blab to justify Biden?
Somebody has has a nose pushed out of shape, and it's all just snot.
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@3RU7AL
My can-do attitude was caused. By me. My father taught me the principle of free agency and he said, "Go do it." So, I did. He did not tell me what to decide; he left that up to me.
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@3RU7AL
Without memories, the mind is incapable of thought.
Who told you that? Your sock puppet? Not a relevant, nor credible source. Never had amnesia? Amazing what can be thought, in spite of it.
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Please, Mr. Putin, these 16 enterprises are really important to us, so if you could please not hack them? The others are open season.
That's Biden's approach to peace through strength: give concessions. You know, kind of like giving Putin open season on a pipeline to Germany, but shut down ours. Maybe we could cede Alaska back to Russia? Why not? It's just a State. We have too many for Biden to count now, anyway. No need to stress the man out. Certainly, Oba'a didn't know how many States there were, so its all good.
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@Wylted
How is thinking well of people inaccurate? Is someone else in charge of your thoughts?
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@3RU7AL
What if you lack "impulse-control" ?
Get it. It's called self-improvement. It's called refusing to think like a victim. I know today's psycho babble is all about victimization, but, what if I decide I'm not a victim to everything around me? I have. "Oh, poor mer" is not in my vocabulary.
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@3RU7AL
Yes, still another who says aberrant behavior is at the root of all bad actors. Sure, but what is the cause of aberrant behavior? A tumor in the brain, says Eagleman, as if he can stop at that. But, the tumor is not root cause. Tumors can develop for a variety of reasons, some of which we cannot control. So, we control what can be controlled and take out some of the root cause that can be rooted out. How? By controlling our consumption. No, what we consume is not the only cause of tumors that can cause bad behavior, but why not eliminate the potential of that which we can control? Have a care for what goes in the pie hole, or is that out of your control, too? Does mommy still feed you? I trust not. So, decide to control what YOU put in your body, and not just in the pie hole. Why don't more of these eggheads figure that out? Mommy still feeding them, too?
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@Wylted
Neither are Hispanics, asians, africans middle easterners or any variety of indian.
Wouldn't it be easier to say hate should not be tolerated by or for anyone?
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@Bones
I recommend you read Sam Harris's book on free will.
That 100-page wonder is the epitome of the brain tumor he proposes as cause of a serial killer’s attitude, and that, therefore, he is victim of his own killer propensity. Absurd hogwash. We are what we consume, by our choices. We consume all kinds of toxins easily avoided just by the preference [guided by free will, by the way] to eat fresh food, and not all the processed junk congregated in the middle aisles of grocery stores. I shop the perimeters, by my choice, where fresh foods are marketed. And, I also grow my own. Let alone all the other junk we should not consume at all: smoking, liquor, drugs. Or an excess of anything. Even water kills, if consumed in too great a quantity. It’s called drowning.
Well, the brain consumes, as well. There’s a lot of brain junk food out there, such as provided by Sam Harris, just to tell me I don’t make my own decisions of my own volition? I am not a trained dog. I am a sentient human, able to think and act for myself on my own choices thought through and developed by critical thinking, even before I knew what that was. Sam Harris is a buffoon who never figured out he didn’t need to pee his pants as a toddler. He pees his brain on a constant, adult basis.
Shame on you for believing the stain.
The best argument I ever heard against the limitations of determinism [or any other limitations on human potential] was offered by Richard Bach, who said, "Argue for your limitations. They're yours."
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@Polyglot
If those students are paying you for an hour, and they get 55 minutes of instruction, you're cheating them. Lower your rate.
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@Bones
You want to know my first inclination? It just didn't make sense to me to suck in the smoke from a burning tube. Seeing the hacking smokers went through did not impress me as something that was good for me. Then, I noted the stupidity of smokers tossing their butts out car windows. The litter at curbs was disgusting. I disdained smokers for their carelessness of not using ashtrays except in their own homes. Very inconsiderate. I didn't want to be one of them. Fire hazard, too. When I started driving, I honked whenever someone threw their butt out the window. Even if it was not a personal health hazard, I'd be opposed to smoking.
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