Dispelling the usual nonsense about the Galileo affair.....

[brokenshoelace]

Remarkably, Cali is more level headed when he talks about tennis.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Nadal is a non-believer - where does that fit it?

In hell. :lolz:

 

[calitennis127]

:laydownlaughing
If only Nalby shaved closer, he would have won at least 5 Wimbledons. Add a suit and a tie, you are looking at a couple FOs as well...:snigger

Yeah, exactly what I am saying.

Complete shallowness on your part, again.

Maybe if you had read some of the Classics instead of just 21st century pseudo-scholarship, it would come naturally to you to understand the basic and self-evident connection between one's spiritual life and one's life habits & character.

Maybe if Nalbandian was more disciplined as a result of greater adherence to his borne religion, he would not have showed up at Toronto 2006 and lost 6-2, 6-1 to Davide Sanguinetti, no? Maybe he would have been more professional on a regular basis, no?

Cali...stop...please...believe whatever you do, cookie monster, tooth fairy, zeus...

Murat, please keep believing 70 false things about every issue you ponder, such as:

- Neoconservatism is not a secular ideology (one of the most laughably dumb things I have ever heard from someone who follows politics)
- Pope Pius XII tacitly supported the Holocaust
- Stalin's crimes had nothing to do with atheism, but were just the result of him being one really bad apple
- Americans - the people who have turned the trashy Kardashians into international celebrities - are a highly religious people, simply because to pollsters, many say they believe in God
- Christopher Hitchens had a more peaceful approach to world affairs than Pope John Paul II
- Thomas Jefferson would have supported gay marriage

You are wrong on every single point, and any rational mind open to evidence can find it out. But, go on and keep believing all of that. Keep sipping the Kool-Aid of your retarded religion.

 

[calitennis127]

Remarkably, Cali is more level headed when he talks about tennis.

Who asked for your interference on this thread? It does not need to be afflicted by wooden-box constraints of literalism and banality.

 

[calitennis127]

Nadal is a non-believer - where does that fit it?

No one ever said that to be a successful tennis player, one has to believe in God or be a practicing Christian. There a huge range of factors that go into being great at anything, and one's spirituality is just one factor. Nadal's athletic genetics, natural ability, background in Spain, and coaching influences are much more significant in the grand scheme of things than whether he believes in religious mythology or doctrine.

But, when it comes to players of similar ability and background, often the "small things" make a big difference. The purpose of my Nalbandian-Del Potro comparison was to say that the clear difference in discipline and consistency between the two owes in large part to their different levels of commitment to their religion. Del Potro is by no means highly devout, but he at least goes to Church once a week and does the basics. It shows in the respect he has for his job. Nalbandian has the typical 21st century skepticism about Christianity and he fell away from the Church; and this was reflected in his continuous slovenliness about his career and disrespect for his job/opportunity.

 

[calitennis127]

Nadal is a non-believer - where does that fit it?

In hell. :lolz:

Yeah, exactly what I was saying. Genius.:lolz:

But we do know that for Nadal, hell would probably be playing Nalbandian in Bercy. That's one religious fable we can all agree is valid!

 

[calitennis127]

It's also funny how murat, the man invoking Jefferson on this thread, had nothing to say about the readily available information on Jefferson's belief about homosexuality.

Jefferson is considered America's embodiment of the Enlightenment and the ultimate free-thinker. He is considered one of the greatest minds in Western history. He was also non-Christian and anti-Christian in many of his personal beliefs. All agree that he was a brilliant mind. Yet to him, homosexuality was so repulsive and self-evidently unnatural/immoral that it deserved to be punished by the dismemberment of a limb and castration. He placed it in the same category as rape.

Amazing, isn't it? Someone bright and brilliant (a transcendent mind), not under the influence of the Bible, STILL thinking that homosexuality was unnatural and immoral. Just absolutely amazing, huh?

 

[brokenshoelace]

Remarkably, Cali is more level headed when he talks about tennis.

Who asked for your interference on this thread? It does not need to be afflicted by wooden-box constraints of literalism and banality.

Nobody. I just figured it would be funny to come here and poke fun.

 

[calitennis127]

Remarkably, Cali is more level headed when he talks about tennis.

Who asked for your interference on this thread? It does not need to be afflicted by wooden-box constraints of literalism and banality.

Nobody. I just figured it would be funny to come here and poke fun.

Well, thanks for stopping in. Nice to see you.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

Cali, you have beaten so many straw men that I lost count.
Let me tell you what's fundamentally wrong with your position, and why that does more harm than good in this world:

Your position is the only correct one. The books you read are the only good books. The god you believe is the only god. The history you know is the only one valid. So far so good. But on the other side, somewhere, there is another guy, who believes as stubbornly as you on different gods, books, history. You don't give an inch, he does not give an inch...

That pretty much sums up the history of violence on earth.

 

[calitennis127]

Okay, I have to go back and take care of some unfinished business on this thread. Finally have a chance to do so.

As to the rest of it, your argument is typically and passive-aggressively all over the place. I don't buy your argument that the diminution of Classical education in the US is down to leftist educators.

You are partially right. "Conservatives" (by which I mean the mainstream right) do deserve some blame for the cutting of Classics and frankly the study of any foreign languages, due to their bestial obsession with economics and "the economy" and their contempt for philosophical thought.

However, there is no question that leftists explicitly targeted the Classical curriculum out of self-hatred for their own cultural traditions. I was just trying to dig up a passage in a book I have on ancient history, but I have so many piles of books that need organized and I can't quite find it at the moment!

I'd say it was more ill-served by conservatives cutting education funding, which always ended in cutting out languages, art and music, especially, and in early education, where it is fundamental.

The problem with conservatives and education is more of a cultural one than an economic one. We have more than enough money being pumped into our education system of waste and fraud. The last thing we need is more going into it.

The fact that we are surely educating to testing is a travesty, and we agree on that,

And so does Jonathan Kozol, who I made a thread about that unfortunately no one responded to because it probably made them feel too uncomfortable.

If you think the fact that Texas basically controls how textbooks get written in this country is not an issue, then you are the one that needs to get your priorities straight, my friend. It's not as simplistic as evolution. It's about one state controlling the educational conversation.

Okay, so would you be complaining if that state was a supposedly enlightened state such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, or super-segregated New York? I doubt it.

The people of Texas are not stupid. They have their own civilization and culture worth respecting. The only reason anyone has made a big deal of their influence on education is the left's infantile obsession with evolution, a subject that 99.9% of people in the Democratic Party or at major newspapers know absolutely nothing about.

Frankly, it makes no difference what people think about evolution as far as daily life goes. A man or woman can be a completely functioning individual in society while believing absurd things, whether that Saddam Hussein was tied to Osama Bin Laden, or that Barack Obama would bring "change we can believe in", that the world is 5,000 years old, or that Rafael Nadal is as good a shotmaker as David Nalbandian.

You care about the loss of the classics? Care about that. I got an excellent education at the University of Texas, (in my own opinion,) but the Texas state legislature is not what I'd like to see controlling how text books get written for the whole country.

Why exactly? Do your concerns have to do with anything other than gay rights and evolution?

I'm sure that calculus and biology courses will still be on offer across the country if the Texas state legislature controls textbook production. No need to worry Moxie.

 

[calitennis127]

^ The Bible is two large documents that hold conflicting views about a lot of things. The Old Testament condemns homosexuality (the much-quoted Leviticus,) the New only in Paul, never Jesus. But let's not get into the other things that the Bible proscribes against or condones, which most of us all wholly ignore, good Christians in the lot, (such as not mixing meat and dairy, eating shellfish, beating your wife, divorce, etc.)

See, this is why the Protestant Reformation was one of the lowest moments in Christian history. It has resulted in everyone analyzing the Bible independently and chaotically, with no overarching wise authority to be a final arbiter.

I don't personally care what folks like the early Adams' and the other founding fathers might have condoned. I know what they aspired to, for the country. Their smaller 18th C. aspirations are not where we should finally rest our own. What they conceived this country as is much in keeping with where we are, and in that sense we could image they'd be proud. (And I have as much right as you do to assume what they'd have wanted as you do.)

We may both have a right to our views, but that doesn't mean this right is anything significant. The question is what the truth is. And I'm afraid that in many fundamental ways we have strayed from the better and most significant ideas of the founders.

You're trying to hard to stretch "equal justice" into something more vague than it is, because it does your argument in. It's not at all a vague concept. It's very specific, and gets argued in the Supreme Court all the time, where it wins. (Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, etc.) That we are not there yet does not mean we don't strive for it. Everything in our history proves that it is our goal.

Okay then, please provide one official document that uses the phrase "equal justice" and then please explain to me how it defines the purpose of the United States, in a permanent all-encompassing sense.

I can't actually believe that you brought in Shariah law, since that would be the equivalent of the Bible being the only law of the land here, rather than a non-theology based civil law, which we are supposed to be governed by. I'm assuming that you would find shariah law abhorrent here, and so is a really desperate reach as an example in your argument.

The Bible allows for a separation of church and state, due to Christ's admonition to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The Christian Middle Ages were a time of very decentralized government. Europe was not a totalitarian theocracy like Saudi Arabia.

That aside, my point about "equal justice" is simply that the phrase "equal justice" standing on its own is vague and hollow, without more specific content backing it up. Such content varies on a culture-by-culture basis.

 

[Moxie]

^ The Bible is two large documents that hold conflicting views about a lot of things. The Old Testament condemns homosexuality (the much-quoted Leviticus,) the New only in Paul, never Jesus. But let's not get into the other things that the Bible proscribes against or condones, which most of us all wholly ignore, good Christians in the lot, (such as not mixing meat and dairy, eating shellfish, beating your wife, divorce, etc.)

See, this is why the Protestant Reformation was one of the lowest moments in Christian history. It has resulted in everyone analyzing the Bible independently and chaotically, with no overarching wise authority to be a final arbiter.

You're looking for an over-arching arbiter as to what the Bible 'actually' means, as a finite and immutable thing. That has not been the choice of many thinkers, not just Reformists. In the Jewish tradition, the Bible is debated all the time. What's wrong with debating the meanings of ancient texts and their relevance to modern society?

 

[Moxie]

You're trying to hard to stretch "equal justice" into something more vague than it is, because it does your argument in. It's not at all a vague concept. It's very specific, and gets argued in the Supreme Court all the time, where it wins. (Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, etc.) That we are not there yet does not mean we don't strive for it. Everything in our history proves that it is our goal.

Okay then, please provide one official document that uses the phrase "equal justice" and then please explain to me how it defines the purpose of the United States, in a permanent all-encompassing sense...

That aside, my point about "equal justice" is simply that the phrase "equal justice" standing on its own is vague and hollow, without more specific content backing it up. Such content varies on a culture-by-culture basis.

As I said before, your notion that 'equal justice' needs to be defined as to the overall notion of the US ideal is simply cynical. You push your other points too hard, to pretend that "equal justice" isn't an American ideal. Rather than an official document, I offer you the Pledge of Allegiance. Shoved down school children's throats for decades. With the debatable phrase "under God," added in the 50s. I would suspect you'd be more in favor of the Pledge than I am, and in the favor of the "under God" proviso. However, as we have all been indoctrinated by it, it finishes, "…with Liberty and Justice for All." Try again to explain to me that "equal Justice" isn't an America ideal, or is such a malleable concept.

 

[House]

You guys remember that time that anyone on the Internet successfully convinced someone else of thinking differently?

Yeah me neither.

 

[calitennis127]

As I said before, your notion that 'equal justice' needs to be defined as to the overall notion of the US ideal is simply cynical.

That has to be the most feeble and irrational objection you could make. So I am simply being "cynical"? Well, "cynical" in this case must mean rational. You have no problem with people analyzing the Bible and asking hard questions about Christianity's validity. Well then, why am I not allowed to question vague notions from the Enlightenment's secular religion which apparently can never be questioned, or else you'll just accuse me of "cynical" heresy?

You push your other points too hard, to pretend that "equal justice" isn't an American ideal.

Please consult what I said. It was very clear. I am asking you to define what "equal justice" means in an all-encompassing and permanent sense. Yes, people often make reference to "justice" all the time. It is a political platitude: "social justice", "economic justice", "legal justice", "equal justice". But references to "justice" are not unique to America. You can go to any Western country and hear references to the need for "justice". America is not unique for it. Furthermore, what exactly "justice" means is a philosophical question and it is highly contextual. Libertarians and Marxists, for instance, have different notions of what "justice" is. So if you are going to refer to "equal justice" as an American ideal, you need to quote specific legal documents that are binding in state and federal law.

The issue at hand here is what exactly "equal justice" means and specifically why that phrase justifies "gay marriage" almost 230 years after the Constitution was written and, moreover, why the vast majority of Americans never even contemplated the notion of gay marriage for two centuries if it was inextricably linked to a clear conception of "equal justice".

Thomas Jefferson was one of the most cosmopolitan and cultivated men in world history. He was a polyglot political theorist and a great mind of the highest order. He also detested institutional Christianity. Yet, he viewed homosexuality as so unnatural that he saw the suitable legal punishment for it in the state of Virginia as dismemberment of a limb and castration. I guess Jefferson didn't get the memo on what "equal justice" meant, did he?

Or - maybe he did. And it just had nothing to do with gay marriage at all. Interesting.

Rather than an official document, I offer you the Pledge of Allegiance. Shoved down school children's throats for decades. With the debatable phrase "under God," added in the 50s. I would suspect you'd be more in favor of the Pledge than I am, and in the favor of the "under God" proviso. However, as we have all been indoctrinated by it, it finishes, "…with Liberty and Justice for All." Try again to explain to me that "equal Justice" isn't an America ideal, or is such a malleable concept.

Moxie, there is absolutely no inviolable or inevitable connection between the phrase "with Liberty and Justice for All" and then justifying gay marriage. None whatsoever.

The vast majority of Americans in American history - including the most well-educated and most prominent - never even contemplated the notion of "gay marriage". This has basically been a movement started in the 1990s. The way they defined liberty was in the traditional Roman sense. Have you ever studied, for example, the debates on the Constitution? Both sides (Federalists and Anti-Federalists) in the 1780s took names such as Brutus, Sentinel, and Cincinnatus in their public letters, invoking ancient Romans who fought for liberty.

Words like "liberty" and "justice" are hollow, vapid terms without any specific cultural backing. This is one of the great insights of the brilliant David Hume, who regarded Locke's postulating about rights as a crock.

 

[calitennis127]

You guys remember that time that anyone on the Internet successfully convinced someone else of thinking differently?

Yeah me neither.

The same could be said of many different forums.

 

[calitennis127]

You're looking for an over-arching arbiter as to what the Bible 'actually' means, as a finite and immutable thing.

No, I am looking for an over-arching arbiter as to the doctrines we should draw from the Bible. That is called the Catholic Church.

That has not been the choice of many thinkers, not just Reformists. In the Jewish tradition, the Bible is debated all the time. What's wrong with debating the meanings of ancient texts and their relevance to modern society?

Absolutely nothing. However, what I do detest about the modern world's approach to the Bible is how it is encouraged for every individual to feel he or she has the ability and the perspective to judge the Bible as well as anyone else. The result is that so many people in the world today approach the Bible with absolutely no humility. They cherry-pick a couple unpleasant-sounding verses and they say "Ha! See how stupid and ignorant that sounds? How can people in the 21st century read this garbage and think it has any relevance to the modern world? Good grief."

What this implies is one of the dumbest things anyone could believe - essentially, that prior generations of human beings who revered the Bible were dumb, irrational savages completely inferior to modern human beings. Well, as a matter of historical fact, those prior generations created the modern world. And, as a matter of science, genetics shows that the IQ of one's grandparents is not too far from the IQ of oneself. So if your grandparents were Church-going Latin Mass Catholics and you happen to be a 2012 Obama voter who wears a Jason Collins jersey, the difference is not in IQ, but in culture and beliefs.

There have been many brilliant Christian theologians over the centuries who grappled with the same questions we do in the modern world when examining the Bible. Yet, so many people today think that they are the first ones in history to realize that the Bible has some inconsistencies or that it says some unscientific things. In thinking that way, they are showing their own ignorance.

 

[House]

You guys remember that time that anyone on the Internet successfully convinced someone else of thinking differently?

Yeah me neither.

The same could be said of many different forums.

Your point is....that I'm right?

Thank you??