Permanent Majority........

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Originally Posted by JS

Yes, I would agree with Marvin. I remember the photo of your lovely bride on RTF and if she is not a woman, she certainly has ME fooled! ;-)

I need a little help though with the “poor morals” thing. I have been confused about that for most of my life.

I was born and baptized a Methodist and accepted the things I learned in Sunday School ... “God is Love” rings a bell.

Then I spent most of my childhood in an assortment of boys’ homes and foster homes. The first family were strong in the Church of the Nazarene; strict fundamentalists. Church twice on Sunday, Wednesday night and prayer meetings the rest of the nights. With them I learned that poor morals included smoking, dancing, girls wearing lipstick, and movies. Some other stuff too, I forgot.

Next stop was a boys’ home run by the Quakers. Pretty strict religious teachings again, uppermost was that war is evil and a true man of God will be a “conscientious objector” and refuse to serve his country in war.

Then was a family of Lutherans which seemed pretty mainstream. I went through the Confirmation classes and learned all the quotes and things to say in church. Not much shocking there.

By the time I reached adulthood, I considered myself a spiritual person and thought I knew what it meant to be a “good person” but had pretty much tuned out of organized religion.

Married a Catholic (woman) 34 tears ago and though I have never converted ... something about having been previously married ... I do go to church somewhat regularly with her. I find the Catholics to actually DO the most good toward our fellow man of the religions I have been exposed to. They say it is immoral to use any form of birth control and the abortion issue is a priority that overrides most everything else. Not sure where they stand on molesting little boys but IMO action speaks louder than words.

And while we’re at it, I may as well offend the Mormons. Though most of them claim to have changed their position, there was a long time when it was fine to have a nice “binder” of wives!

Now why am I confused??? All these folks are reading out of the same bible, right? So while I agree with you that “morals are morals”, how in hell am I to decide which ones are “poor morals”.

This is a serious question.

JS

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The "Ten Commandments" are a solid guideline.

Serious answer.

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Pete, The Catholic church was the first Christian church and "their" bible has all the original parts that made up the book. Later Christian groups decided to omit parts that they did not agree should be part of their book.

Terri

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Terri
The first christian church was recorded in the book of acts. The book of Acts is the blue print for a christian church. No more alters,no more tabernacles, people met from house to house and pretty much every thing changed radically. The catholic church started in the 325 AD or something like that. That's about when the nicene(sp) creed started. There is a ton of history on it .
Pete

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Originally Posted by MooseGooser

I currently work for a MAJOR medical device manufactuer.

As of jan 1,, a 3% tax on SALES and revenue,, not Profit,, will go into effect, to help pay for Obamacare..

This company has manufacturing in Asia.. There prototyping ,,reserch and develpoment MAY move...

Its wait and see right now..

Its all about that tax that can be avoided..

Its directly hurting Jobs where I work.

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It gets better...I posted this before and is fact from a retired democratic aid.

Hidden in bills as riders to the American public:

- Home sales fee 3.8%
- Non-eco car sales fee 1.2%
- EPA fee on homes that do not meet the Dems standards BEFORE sale (windows, roofing, hvac, washer/dryer, water heater, water/elec fixtures)
- Private school fee
- Agriculture fees on rancher and farmer (passed to consumer markets)
- Service fees for repair shops, barber shops, ammo, guns, conventions, waste, etc...

The next wave of legislation:
- Fees on 401k, benefits, selling stock, social security, inheritance tax is an additional $5K per $100K.
- ID not needed to vote
- Expand role of President (unlimited - do away with pledge, reduce military, disband USMC, expanded executive powers to override congress and no more budgets.)
- Obama wants to dismantle the CIA.

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Originally Posted by road kill

The "Ten Commandments" are a solid guideline.

Serious answer.

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The ten commandments ARE a good place to start, but that’s not as simple as it sounds either. Many of them are ambiguous and open to interpretation. And the interpreters, even the aforementioned churches cannot even agree on interpretation. This is the entire point of the difficulty of assessing someone else’s morals.

“Thou shalt not kill”. Do I take that literally? If so, it may mean “I shall not kill a deer”. I don’t believe it means that, but the PETA people do. And they can support their belief using that commandment.

To the Quakers it means you shall not take a human life EVEN in the defense of your country. And THEY can also support their belief if you accept the literal meaning. If we don’t accept the literal meaning, then we’re back to interpretations.

Pete points out accurately that we are NOT all reading the same bible. But it DID all come from the word of God. The bibles are just various interpretations and even they do not agree. Crap, now we even got Pete and Teri arguing over which bible came first! :p

Road kill, I am not trying to be antagonistic, and I’m sure not going to argue religion. I’m just trying to make the point that if there really IS an absolute truth, you can’t tell someone else what it is. Nor can someone else tell you. It’s futile.

No one will be persuaded to change their views by an internet conversation. But that’s not important. What is important is understanding WHY we won’t persuade that other person ... how do they form their views. If we asked each other and listened to their answers and tried to understand their reasoning, even half as hard as we try to “win the argument”, maybe we would be a little more willing to accept human differences and not so quick to assess an opposing view as immoral. Then again, maybe a lot of us just don’t want that.

JS

Pete, the first Christian church was started by Jesus. The bible that Jesus used was called the Septuagint which contained all the books of the old testament. After the death and resurrection of Jesus the Jews rejected the Septuagint as it supported Christian teachings. 1500 years later, the Protestant Revolt took place. The leaders went with the Jewish canon formed after the establishment of the Christian church. Seven books used by Jesus were rejected by Martin Luther. Both Catholics and Protestant have the same number of books in the New Testament.

Terri

Terri
They didn't have bibles back then. . Jesus read from scrolls The septuagint was put together by 70 men. It is the Greek Old testament. it is a great tool for researching the bible. It is fairly modern . JC was killed before the first century church started. He had to die and rise before this could occur.
The scrolls originally had no punctuation,,no chapters and no verses. You can see the error of man by where he put many of the chapter breaks and verse breaks. They put many of them in the middle of a thought or story. Punctuation was also hit and miss,,,sometimes changing the whole meaning of a verse enough so that some religions have built their doctrines around these errors.

Pete

Nicely put.

Pete, you are correct there were no bibles, but I was referring to the scrolls that Jesus used and taught as being the part of the bible we know today as the old testament. I believe that Jesus started the first Christian church, he started the movement. The Catholic church traces there leaders back to Jesus and the Protestants trace their leaders back to the Protestant revolt. Before the revolt the leaders were Catholic. As for the errors in the bible, there are many due to human error or misunderstanding, but those errors are not limited to just the seven books removed my the Jews and Martin Luther.

Terri

[QUOTEPete, you are correct there were no bibles, but I was referring to the scrolls that Jesus used and taught as being the part of the bible we know today as the old testament. I believe that Jesus started the first Christian church, he started the movement. The Catholic church traces there leaders back to Jesus and the Protestants trace their leaders back to the Protestant revolt. Before the revolt the leaders were Catholic. As for the errors in the bible, there are many due to human error or misunderstanding, but those errors are not limited to just the seven books removed my the Jews and Martin Luther.

Terri][/QUOTE]


If someone was to use mostly lets say "mormon produced materials" they would be able to prove that Moroni did in fact give Joseph Smith a new revelation. But if they used many of the non denominational resources they would be able to prove other wise. So much of this is what angle does one approach this from. Also when a person is raised to believe a certain thing it is very difficult for them to see differently. Lots of factors in play concerning this subject. But there are easy ways to sort these things out

Pete

Pete, sorry you were raised to believe a certain thing and it is difficult for you to see things differently. I have attended several different churches, studied several different types of religions, both Christian and non Christian. I have never been a member of any. I have no religious agenda. I'm as non-denominational as one can get, but I believe in one God and that Jesus is my Messiah.

Terri