Cheney shoots someone (I'm not kidding)

"William Claspy"
Since you "won" this argument two years ago, I've been toddling along,
thinking Darwin was an athiest. Now you say agnostic. I'm so confused!

On one of the blogs I read, someone is using a sig line I like, though I
don't know whether it's an original thought or attributable to someone else.
That disclaimer out of the way, the quote is:
"I'm an agnostic. I'd be an atheist if it weren't for Mozart."

Joe F.

In article . net, rw
wrote:

That English language, she sure is a funny thing.

She sure is. For one thing, the "i before e except after c" rule has
exceptions.

My mom, who went to school on the Upper East Side in the 1920s, was
taught an extra couple of lines to this rule:

"Or when sounding like 'ay'
As in 'neighbour' and 'weigh'."

I was never taught this, but it might have helped.

Lazarus

Calif Bill wrote:

Why, you going ballistic? Did not say Weaver was a good guy, just said the
government was totally out of line. Maybe why the judge and jury said the
same thing and sent him a few million of our tax dollars. They were also
out of line at Waco. So you agree with everything the government does if
the party in charge is Democrats, and hate everything if the party is the
Republicans?

I realize I'm a little late to this party, but I see this
misrepresentation so much and I can't help but comment. Ruby Ridge
occurred on Bush's watch. Waco happened soon after Clinton took office,
and barely days after Reno was appointed. The "investigation" was
started while Bush was in office, and she basically went along with the
recommendations of the law enforcement officers who had been on the case
all the time. There is also some evidence that she was mislead by BATF
agents involved (given incomplete or false information).

Yes, in retrospect she probably should have gotten more involved
before authorizing the raid (and as the chief LEO, she wound up falling
on the sword), but to lay the blame completely at her and Clinton's feet
is misleading.

And to characterize either Ruby Ridge or Waco as a "Democrat vs.
Republican" issue is totally false.


Chuck Vance (HTH)

On 2/26/06 5:36 PM, in article
et, "rw"
wrote:

You should read his autobiography.

Um. RW, it would seem that you don't really enjoy having your leg pulled,
but I'm just pulling your leg. Honest.

Sorry 'bout the spelling thing.

:-)

Back to the salt mines,
Bill

William Claspy typed:
On 2/26/06 5:36 PM, in article
et, "rw"
wrote:

You should read his autobiography.

Um. RW, it would seem that you don't really enjoy having your leg
pulled, but I'm just pulling your leg. Honest.

It's not a matter of enjoyment, but one of realization. ;-)
--
TL,
Tim
-------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj

Lazarus Cooke wrote:
In article . net, rw
wrote:

That English language, she sure is a funny thing.
She sure is. For one thing, the "i before e except after c" rule has
exceptions.

My mom, who went to school on the Upper East Side in the 1920s, was
taught an extra couple of lines to this rule:

"Or when sounding like 'ay'
As in 'neighbour' and 'weigh'."

I was never taught this, but it might have helped.


FWIW, I attended grade school at Alta Elementary, Alta, Wyoming in the
late 1950s. I was taught the same rule. I think it helped. I've taught
it to my kids as the schools failed to.

Russell

Who is always grateful for Thunderbird's spell checker.

Jonathan Cook wrote:
[Sorry Bill, yours is the only post I see to respond to]


wrote:


Kevin Vang wrote:

In article BiYLf.463$pE4.280@trnddc04,
says...


And sadly, brutality seems to be a human trait more often exacerbated by
religion than subdued by it.

But let's give credit where credit is due -- Stalin, Mao, and Hitler,
the current holders of gold, silver, and bronze in mass murder, were all
atheists.

Hitler was not an atheist.


Over all of human history, saying "religious" people are responsible
for most of the brutality committed is like saying people with four
fingers and a thumb on each hand are responsible for most of the
brutality. But as Kevin points out, since atheism has been a named
and viable societal choice, it hasn't done too bad itself...and that
might be an understatement.

Nevertheless, Hitler wasn't an atheist. Furthermore, he exploited the
long history of Christian antisemitism in Europe.

"Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But
for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion."
-- Steven Weinberg

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

In article . net, rw56
says...
Nevertheless, Hitler wasn't an atheist. Furthermore, he exploited the
long history of Christian antisemitism in Europe.


No doubt -- Hitler was a shrewd politician, and knew how to play to the
crowd. It's hard to sort out what he actually believed in, but it seems
to be some sort of mystical force of destiny embodied in the German
people, more specifically in himself. Whether that counts as theism or
not I suppose is a matter of semantics.

Kevin
--
reply to: kevin dot vang at minotstateu dot edu

Kevin Vang wrote:
In article . net, rw56
says...

Nevertheless, Hitler wasn't an atheist. Furthermore, he exploited the
long history of Christian antisemitism in Europe.



No doubt -- Hitler was a shrewd politician, and knew how to play to the
crowd. It's hard to sort out what he actually believed in, but it seems
to be some sort of mystical force of destiny embodied in the German
people, more specifically in himself. Whether that counts as theism or
not I suppose is a matter of semantics.

The notion that Hitler was an atheist is a product of Christian
disinformation. Here are a few (of many) Hitler quotes that bear on the
question of his religious beliefs:

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.�

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of
the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting
for the work of the Lord.�

“I say: my Christian feeling tells me that my lord and savior is a
warrior. It calls my attention to the man who, lonely and surrounded by
only a few supporters, recognized what they [the Jews] were, and called
for a battle against them, and who, by God, was not the greatest
sufferer, but the greatest warrior. . ."

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We
have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and
that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it
out.�

“The anti-Semitism of the new [Christian Social] movement was based on
religious ideas instead of racial knowledge.�

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Lazarus Cooke wrote:

As wolfgang elegantly suggests, the whole history of Christianity is of
people slaughtering and torturing each other.


To assert the whole history or Christianity is of people slaughtering
and torturing each other is to simplify the whole history of attempted
genocide to a simple cause. The systematic genocide that I have family
ties to involve the Turkish assault on the Armenian people in the early
1900's. Some historians have tied the cause of that attempt at Genocide
to a desire of a Muslim Turkish government wanting to purge Turkey of
Christians. I read a quote in some history book when Hitler was asked
how the world would respond to the *solution to the Jewish problem*, he
supposedly said that no one remembered the Armenians. And by treaty the
Turkish leadership escaped accountability for their actions.

That somebody in an authoritarian position decided he/she wanted
someone different disposed of, and needing an excuse to make it happen
used Christianity for that excuse is not the same as Christianity
caused the killing. What is unfortunate that people of the same
religious stripe are often so easily led to join the mob so to speak.

In much the same as people like to point out most Muslims don't go
around blowing up car bombs in a crowded marketplace, most Christians
don't sit around planning to blow up a buddhist colony because they are
buddhist. Hitler may have professed a membership in a religious
setting, but he was no more a "Christian" than Stalin was.

As a microcosm to this entire genocide thing, one need look no farther
than ROFF where liberal white male athiests can't get along with each
other while they argue with the conservative white males.