Gwazi Magnum

State-Church Separation

So Boerd said
Also, if you think Christmas trees are going to create a theocracy, you should also know that the government caused 9/11, never landed on the moon, and is spraying us with mind control agents. You would be right at home with Alex Jones and LaRouche.

Once again ignoring our arguments completely.
There is far more to Religion than Christmas trees.

If you don't understand that you either

a) Know nothing about Religion
b) Are a terrible troll

Either way I'm now done debating this until you actually start addressing the arguments being made rather than what arguments you want us to be making.

State-Church Separation

A person can claim to be something without actually being it you realize.
It's called either:

a) Lying
b) Lack of understanding on what they call themselves

Just because a person claim's they're ________ doesn't mean they're blank.
Hell often times with Religion people would claim they did ________ in the name of God. But they were furthering their own agenda's instead.
You can do this with anything, feminism, being a nationality, in support of a certain cause, a democrat etc.

Religion also gave incentive to keep people from being literate, it was a means of control. The less people could read the more they could be ordered on what to do instead of learning things for themselves. Also just because a few Intellectual's happened to be Religious (especially in a time when Religion was established fact among most people, so almost everyone universally was religious) doesn't mean Religion aided progress. It simply means it's not impossible for a religious person to want to progress knowledge/science, and it does nothing to change the fact that countless scientific work was burned/lost/prevented due to Religious fear, hatred and paranoia.

Got Spirit?

Brovo said
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I hope you never have to. It's usually very unpleasant, very strange, very confusing... Yet at the same time... There's a sort of terrifying peace to it. There's just... A certain tiny fraction of you that doesn't really make it. Some naive, happy go lucky bit that just... Remains dead. Every time you try to summon it you merely summon the event that killed it, and that eery... Quiet feeling of... Nothingness. I can't even describe it, it's just... Empty space. No, not even empty, just... Blank. Expressionless. Less than monotone. It's still chilling to think about.If this is even a fraction of what soldiers have to go through, I can understand why PTSD is so damned hard to deal with now.

You hope I never have to experience dying in such a way!? O_O
FLHFNKJLFHFKJLAHFSLHK! How dare you hope I never die like that! :P

Honestly I'd have to be a total nut case to take that the wrong way.
Like I said, I've never have to experience being close to death before. But I've had experiences that gives me a basic understanding of what it's like to have a piece of you die in the moment, and trying to bring it back does like you say bring the moment back instead. For me I think it was largely the ability to simply trust most people and ability to simply be complacent/happy in emotion/feelings/love, now my logical side just fires up each time and goes "Nope, you will think rationally. No ignoring me and just relaxing you fool!".

This is probably not the same thing you're referring you, which is why I leave it as a basic understanding (Plus I think I worded that above part a bit poorly :/).
I think more in what I consider to be what me somewhat understanding those it took that emptiness, and replaced it with a sort of alternate behavior/defense mechanism in place of it. Then again, this is more cases such as loss of a loved one, relationship going real sour etc. Nothing like going through dying yourself, I can't honestly say if there really is a kind of alternate behavior/defense mechanism that would of triggered in such a case or not.

I simply somewhat relate to what it's like to have an experience that takes away a piece of you, may it simply leave it empty or find something else to replace it with.

Driver who killed teen now suing dead boy's family

*Was about to step in to clarify miscommunication*
*See's it's been sorted out already*

Ah, Glad to see. Rare when a miss-communication fixes itself on the Internet rather than snowball. :)
And as far as your consensus goes in regards to it's important to pay attention to the legal workings and how cases are going, but media does a terrible job in representing it I have to agree completely.

State-Church Separation

So Boerd said Uh, whether he successfully implemented Communism is irrelevant. Those people who died died for Communism.

Did they? Brovo just went into a rather detailed explanation of how Communism was a system that never happen, and how they died was under a Dictatorship.
Would you like provide some proof, evidence and/or reasoning as to why it was in fact Communism or would you rather simply go "No, I disagree and you're wrong"?.

So Boerd said Regardless of your false assertions about the Dark Ages, which are patently so.

No it's rather accurate to say science and advancement was slowed down a good amount. Science and research has constantly led to things that:

1) People did not understand
2) Conflicted with the Bible

Both of those beings things people would burn evidence of and kill people over. It's well known that lots of scientific progress was lost due to Religion. On top of it such behaviour would of made many others too afraid to advance the human race, and lastly with so many people following such a Religion it leaves less people to do said Scientific research to advance humanity with.

So Boerd said People do dumb thing in the name of all ideologies or doctrines.What if your Congress thought sea levels were going to rise 20 in a decade? Or thought that killing all the academics was needed for the proletariat?

And Religion counts as one of those Ideologies, and a quite effective one since it's no longer fear of a man or something physical/observable. It's fear to a supernatural being that people were raised to believe is something on a whole other level of existence, one where any kind of question, rebelling etc is futile. I mean just look at North Korea, yes it's a political one mainly but Kim Jong effectively has people think he is a deity... Encouraging the same level of fear and obedience. To the point that people who flee the country still for years after fear to think ill of him out of fear of him knowing instantly and causing them to die.

As for your example's they'd probably do it. People all the time spout "End of the world" shit, and a ton of people buy into it. Hell I'll admit to during my later Christian days I was one of those nutter's who thought shit like "Obama is the anti-christ" and the end of the world would be from him. Also religion did kill academics, this was addressed above with the whole "Does not understand" and "Conflict's with Religion", they take it as an attack on their God/Religion so they kill them as part of their crusades, cleansing etc.

So Boerd said Nobody is taking about establishing a state church, we are talking about things like Christmas Trees and "Under God" in a voluntary pledge. If you think those things will cause a governmental collapse, you are silly.

Actually we are... When you say Church and State that means giving Church the political power to rule. Which means the whole of that religion is going to pour through. Not just the minor parts like Christmas tree's or saying "Under God", but also stuff such as Homophobia, teaching said Religion was fact.

And depending on how the Religion on top cherry pick it could also imply the day of Sabbath, stoning of disobedient children, the allowance of rape, execution for blasphemy etc.

Even if they were fairly moral with the cherry picking and most of the Bible's ugly bits/most of the bible didn't show itself you've still got the issue of political choices are now based on "What does the book say" or "What does God say" rather than using intellectual reason and debate.

Got Spirit?

Brovo said
The mind is a funny thing, that's for sure.

The mind and human nature is conditioned/made to do a ton of crazy/unimaginable things when near death as a last attempt to live.
I can't speak from experience yet though, but there are ton's of stories of people doing extraordinary things or seeing extraordinary things.

State-Church Separation

So Boerd said
Better question, why should there be any particular insulation from religion? Hypothetically here in the US, a school could distribute Communist Manifestos but not have a moment of silence for prayer. What exactly is the practical difference?

One is a political system focused on running/organizing people in a practical way, the other is belief in something without proof or evidence and using it as a means to judge people and tell them what they can and cannot do. Plus in a sense note we already do this with Democracy basically, anyone can go around (even in school) and say "I love democracy, Democracy is the best". Hell when I was little schools basically made students do presentations on "How great a country Canada is" and put stuff like being a democracy as one of the reasons. But if someone went around and did the same for Communism, Marxism etc. that would be a different story.

Education already shows both political and religious bias when it shouldn't be, but both are accepted because they do it with the most popular religion/political ideology in the area.

State-Church Separation

Vortex said
You would be surprised how many people want the church in more areas of Goverment, or at least in my town, and I wager that if people in my town want it to happen then there has to be somebody like that in the inter webs.

Remember this is the Internet, which as Thunderf00t puts it is where religion goes to die.

It's an open source of information and sharing, where any question can be answered with a bit of looking, questioning things is actually encouraged and it's easier to find like minded people who are probably shunned off by the communities they live in. Even though an online community can largely agree that it's obviously a good thing to seperate church and state, that doesn't change that a good amount of a local population may want church and state to be the same thing.

Got Spirit?

Just two days ago I took control of a ton of vines and spread them out over about an 80ft radius.
Me and some friends were travelling to this cave and these wolves attacked us, and almost none of us except this one friend of mine whose basically a giant robot fox is good at fighting close up. So I caught all the wolves in vines to prevent them from swarming us. Then I also shot fire from my hands to burn the wolves down while they were caught in the vines... Oh wait, that was D&D.

Well there's that one time my friend turned me invisible... I tore a vault door open, placed it back on and then said out loud "It was the wind". Oh wait, that's also D&D.

Basically what's I'm getting at here is that I don't believe in spiritual gift's and the like.
I think it's possible that someone is born with a gene that gives them a unique (if minor) characteristic, that's how evolution allows us to change over the generations.
But anything like that would do to genetic variance/chance, and not due to spiritual intervention or anything of the sort. And note when I say unique characteristic I mean stuff such as advanced hearing, sight, taste, maybe their brain works in a unique way or they have an insane amount of stamina. Maybe they have a sixth finger that gives them a better grip. But nothing out of fantasy or fiction like mind reading, fire bending, flying (within one generation/a handful of generations) etc.

Minimum Wage

So Boerd said
Numbers source forthcoming. They are from Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, the former a professor at George Mason, the latter an economist. When I first cited Prof Williams I was unaware of his libettarian bent so I will find a more neutral source to back it up.In the meanwhild, Gwazi proved the point I was making about the racists and the minimum wage. The racists, particularly outside the south, could not get business to ban black labor. So instead they stole the only means the black people had to compete with a unionized and much larger white workforce by creating a minimum wage to prevent the blacks from undercutting them. It was only a trivial step to negotiate closed shop with management. Since blacks were banned from many unions, the unions had succeded in keeping blacks down.The overtly racist union is a thing of the past, but their policies are still around, still oppressing the black man. Denis Kearney is a perfect example of the racist union leader. Google him and have your minds blown.So the party which was instrumental in defending slavery, which had a KKK member very high in its ranks up until the early 2000s, which tried to filibuster Civil Rights is still doing its darndest to keep blacks down. Minimum wage prevents young blacks who cannot get good educations, particularly as the war on Charter Schools continued, from getting work experience and thus ever moving up. It does not end the cycle of poverty, it perpetuates it.Nobody finds it the least bit connected that the minimum wage corresponds with an enormous migration of blacks from the south?

You're confusing side effects and outside influences with actual motivation.

Did minimum wage cause more white people to get hired? Yes, but was that the motivation/reason for it? No.
The point of minimum wage as to allow people enough money to be supported and survive without being in poverty.
But naturally the more paid workers get, the highly quality of education/performance they expect so naturally people who came from more well off and better educated communities got hired more.

And just so happens due to a number of factors such as immigration, past slavery etc that those better educated communities were majority white, so more white people got the job simply for the education they had, not because of the fact they were white.

Though this is the exact same point I just argued above, and you seem to be ignoring it completely (or simply cherry picking and twisting what you want to hear).

Dervish said
I have it on good authority that when that happens, you can all combine into a single Megazord.

The only three ranger megazord in existence, and stronger than all the others combined. :P

I want to see this megazord now... XD