Xena - If making laws for the safe use of the roads is an infringement of personal liberties, then the knee jerk reaction would be to repeal laws against drunk driving, speeding and so on in the name of personal freedom.
That'd be silly, and would infringe others right to life and liberty from hospital beds for those injured by reckless drivers with their hands and minds caught up in phone calls (or affected by drink, or dreams of the race track, or whatever) and not the powerful machine they're controling.
This does show up a weakness in rights based thinking compared to thinking what creates the best result overall.
What harm is there in requiring that people use cell phones anytime they're operating dangerous equipment? It infringes a minor civil liberty? Gimmie a break.
Max
Max Divergent
JoinedPosts by Max Divergent
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140
Should Hand Held Cell Phones be Outlawed While Driving??
by minimus ini use a cell all the time.
some states want to outlaw the use of these phones while driving....got an opinion on that?
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Max Divergent
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140
Should Hand Held Cell Phones be Outlawed While Driving??
by minimus ini use a cell all the time.
some states want to outlaw the use of these phones while driving....got an opinion on that?
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Max Divergent
What's wrong with more laws? I say give as as many law as we need to increase the common good.
If the quantity of laws is a problem, we'd do better to repeal some old ones rather than ignore new hazzards in the name of some silly, ignorant, stupid notion that it's always bad to make new laws when new dangers and hazzards come along.
We should outlaw anything that uses the driver's while operating a motor vehicle such as cell phones, make-up application, coffee, smoking etc. A fine of about US$200, or US$600 if they are involved in an accident (their fault or not), would be about right I reckon.
Max -
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Serena Williams loses @ Wimbeldon then thanks her god Jehovah.
by BLISSISIGNORANCE inyep, as pis#*ed off as she obviously was at losing to a young russian..............did i say lose????????
sorry, i meant got thrashed................she then proceeded in her speech to say "and i thank my god jehovah for getting me here.
" or something to that effect!
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Max Divergent
Hi Dan - It'd make little difference.
Maybe they'll be cotton-balled for life and all will be well for them forever whatever they do - they strike as sane and sensible ladies... but if they ever cause more harm or embarresment to Brooklyn than benifit, they'll be lent on. What happens then will be behind closed doors and incomprehensible and inaccessible to the media.
If things went badly, the thing would be well managed by the WTS and would probably be played down by the Williams' too.
I really hope we never count these girls amongst the numbers of people spat out and harmed by the JW's, but odds are they're not totally immune to the strictures of JW-ism for life.
My memory is that Michael Jackson was (very) strange when he was a JW, but went off the planet after he was DF'd (or DA'd or faded or whatever...)
Most high profile JW's are male, I wonder if being women will make a diffence for them? If so, would it be helful or harmful to them?
Max -
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Creation vs Evolution? or Creation and Evolution?
by azaria ini believe this has been touched on in an earlier post but thought id start my own.
i know that im going out on a limb here.
a number of times ive hesitated before submitting a post or response.
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Max Divergent
Hi Azaria - Bill Bryson's recent book 'A short history of nearly everything' (ISBN 0385 408188) goes into the background of how people figured out the age of the earth and how several people came to similar conclsions before Darwin - including a Monk.
Bryson usually writes funny travel books full of really sharp observations about people, but he says he suddenly realised how ignoragnt he was about science. He decided to go and talk to all the best scientists and then write a book for ordinary people to get an idea of science and how life got here.
By what you said above, I really think this would be a great book for you to read.
Regards, Max -
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Serena Williams loses @ Wimbeldon then thanks her god Jehovah.
by BLISSISIGNORANCE inyep, as pis#*ed off as she obviously was at losing to a young russian..............did i say lose????????
sorry, i meant got thrashed................she then proceeded in her speech to say "and i thank my god jehovah for getting me here.
" or something to that effect!
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Max Divergent
The WT tells us to wait on Jehovah in dealing with non-complient JW's, He will deal with them in His time.
I'd suggest that these poor girls have DF/DA ahead of them, one day when they're not quite ready for it but the WTS is.
Max
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Creation vs Evolution? or Creation and Evolution?
by azaria ini believe this has been touched on in an earlier post but thought id start my own.
i know that im going out on a limb here.
a number of times ive hesitated before submitting a post or response.
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Max Divergent
I don't think evolution disproves the existance of god.
It certainly disproves literal applications of Genisis and the Jehovah style God as a truthteller via the bible - but both those things are already thoroughly discredited anyhow. If someone belives in that, it's not for want of proof it's not an accurate explantion of the universe.
All evolution really does is open up the spiritual quest to broarder and deeper thought and investigation with more accurate information about the origin of life and the universe than the Jehovah/Jesus/bible idea allows for.
Maybe 'god' is out there but of a very, very different nature to what people's religions tell us 'he' is.
I say that becuase it's hard to see the difference between what enlightend religionists and athiest scientists say sometimes once you get past the 'I [do/don't] believe in some sort of a god' banner statement.
Max
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Creation vs Evolution? or Creation and Evolution?
by azaria ini believe this has been touched on in an earlier post but thought id start my own.
i know that im going out on a limb here.
a number of times ive hesitated before submitting a post or response.
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Max Divergent
For me, I think science has a clear answer on HOW life got here, but not WHY (not yet, anyhow). There are better answers on that deeper question from those with more spiritual outlooks (although I don't beleive in God myself).
Max
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Picketing Duluth Georgia convention
by Junction-Guy ini believe i finally found the perfect venue for me to picket, duluth ga, which is just outside of atlanta.the conventions there are the 2nd and 3rd weekend in august.
i know absolutley no one in georgia and there are no chances i could run into any family members there.
there are a couple of conventions before then in s.c. and johnson city tennessee, however for various reasons-monetary and otherwise i am choosing georgia.
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Max Divergent
Aaron2 - If they're happy, that's fine. I was very unhappy, but felt under extreme pressure to pretend to myself and everyone else that I was one of the 'happiest people on earth' TM . How many JW's are really happy? I don't know about LDS, but I'm very sure many, many JW's are very miserable becuase of the tennants of their religion and the guilt and fear tactics used to manipulate them into staying an being a part of the thing.
The JW's train people to campaign constantly to change peoples religion so as to bring 'improvments' to their lives - it's hardly suprising that once people see through the nonsense that they reverse the focus of the campaign and fight back - JW's used to do a lot of picketing, including of churches on Sundays.
I don't know how effective/counter-productive picketing might be, I personaly probably wouldn't do it. But the sight of the picketers did stick in my JW mind, and sites like this and others helped me accept that there was happiness outside the JW's.
Max
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Belief-O-Matic says I'm a Mormon
by rocketman ini took the "belief-o-matic" survey at beliefnet yesterday, and it looks like i am a mormon.
the survey matches your beliefs on various matters to the creeds of the world's religions and assigns a percentage.
i was 100% church of jesus christ of latter-day saints.
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Max Divergent
Well, I'm OK... I think...
2. Secular Humanism (98%) 3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (89%) 4. Liberal Quakers (87%) 5. Nontheist (79%) 6. Theravada Buddhism (74%) 7. Neo-Pagan (73%) 8. Bahá'í Faith (66%) 9. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (58%) 10. Taoism (58%) 11. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (54%) 12. Reform Judaism (52%) 13. New Age (51%) 14. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (43%) 15. New Thought (43%) 16. Orthodox Quaker (37%) 17. Sikhism (37%) 18. Mahayana Buddhism (36%) 19. Scientology (36%) 20. Jehovah's Witness (28%) 21. Eastern Orthodox (19%) 22. Islam (19%) 23. Jainism (19%) 24. Orthodox Judaism (19%) 25. Roman Catholic (19%) 26. Seventh Day Adventist (15%) 27. Hinduism (7%)1. Unitarian Universalism (100%) -
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Is there proof of Evolution out there? help needed
by trumangirl ini've faded, but i still would like to have faith in a creator/god.
but i am really not sure if my belief in god is the result of being brought up a jw and being stuck with a particular world-view.
the best thing i can do is challenge myself by reading some material that explains proof of the evolution, but i have not seen anything that does this yet, i've only seen explanations of the theory, not the proof.
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Max Divergent
Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker is fantastic, I only got through the first third of the book (the science was over my head after that) but it resolved a lot of stuff in my mind.
The way the WT describes evolution makes it sound a fanciful and silly 'theory', but (whether we evolved or not) what they portray as evolution is not what science describes it as.
For example, they say in the blue creation book if you put a dismantled watch in a box and shake it all about for a zillion years, you'll never get chance events resulting in the rebuilding of the watch - so how could amino acids evolve into life by chance?
But the watch analogy is false becuase there's only one pre-determined way the parts of a watch can go together to work. Also, if two bits that shoud go together in a proper assembly of the watch did so by a chance, the same chance forces can take them apart again just as easily.
But life is much more complex than a watch - it can go together many, many ways and when the right biological things start to happen they tend to stay intact and propogate. That means a random set of events can start to actually get things happening towards building life, given A LOT OF TIME - all the errors are discarded, most of the good results are retained and propogated.
All up, I reckoned that if the WTS resorted to false arguments to critisise evolution, then they were probably on weak ground discussing the physical realities of it all. There's also a line by line critique of the blue creation book online somewhere - it destroys the WTS's credibility on creation.
Enjoy.
Max