What to do with the world...what to do...

[apostoli]

I made no reference to politics ― American or otherwise. I was only referring to your bitter attitude.

I'm not bitter about anything. But I am distressed each time I turn on the evening news...

John, with your computer resources and expertise, investigate your national history. Investigate the indisputable fact of the number of your countrymen that answered the call of Nazi Germany to return to their homeland. Investigate the Texas defense of those trialed at Nuremburg...investigate the trail of tears and Jefferson's policies...

The new Rome in the last century has become very influential, so it is almost impossible to separate politics and religion in our discussions, especially when your currency demands "in God we trust", and then we watch the evening news and conclude that such is contradictory to actual practice.

If you are a capital "C" Christian you should share my distaste for the historical inhumanity exhibited by supposed "christians", irrespective of where they are domiciled.

What you seem to have missed in my last response to you, is that in my experience people are closing their ears to the message of Christianity...and I'd suggest such a situation is not a result of obstinacy but of example...

[apostoli]

Your profile says you're from Australia. Before you resume extracting planks from the eyes of every American here, you may want to reflect on your own nation's poor treatment of the Aborigines.

Nice try...

The difference between Oz and the USA's treatment of native peoples can be summed up in a few words "theft of their land and genocide were not government policy in Oz". In fact, under British law (which Oz was subject to until the 1960s) Oz governments were obligated to take a paternal approach to the native peoples. This is the cause of current dispute in Oz. Billions of dollars are spent on Aborigine services each year to little or no effect.

One must know and remember that until 1901, Australia didn't exist per se. The continent consisted of six independent, self governing nations (British colonies). So there was diversity in experience. For instance in South Australia women and native peoples had the right to vote in the 19th century. Native peoples lost that right on federation (they were considered wards of the state).

Australian history is very scant on Aborigine wars, for the simple reason we had none! Nor did we have civil wars, nor a need for a war of independence. Possibly why we term ourselves the lucky country. Nor have we been subject to such excesses of the extreme religious right such as the KKK.

We also didn't have a governmental policy of genocide or theft of native land. I was recently reading an article on your Thomas Jefferson and his approach to expansionism, most enlightening into the mindset of the era.

The native Australians are not tribal, and were simple hunter/gatherers. Consequently, they were unable to organise (still can't). They weren't even able to fend off a small community of settlers (convicts) at Sydney cove. Their biggest gripe at the time was the theft of their women.

Sure, in the past there were injustices carried out by settlers, but unlike other places in the world, there was never a government policy to exterminate them. The issue here was between settlers and the natives. The settlers saw the natives as a feral pest. The natives had a habit of killing livestock, chopping off the haunches and leaving 90% of the animal to rot.

There is a group here in Sydney, still in existence, that was successful in fending off the British and the settlers, ultimately there has been a perpetual truce. The dominant player at the time was a guy named John Macarthur. Legend has it he sat down with the natives and negotiated a settlement. The natives stopped killing his sheep willy nilly and from then on everyone was happy.

If you are interested I'll discuss the Queensland, Tasmanian & WA's histories. None of which are very interesting, but had events that are often raised.

Interestingly, at least for me, there is a high probability that I am an Australian aborigine (my mother, brother & sister certainly look the part). As an infant my mother was "farmed out" in the 1920s...

[apostoli]

Your post shows you’re a fool that doesn’t have the first clue what he’s talking about.

Possibly! Or else you have had your head stuck somewhere that has prohibited you from viewing the world in its reality.

Yeah because denominations like the Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, American Baptists, etc. didn’t exist. The US north was primarily white and Protestant at the time – are you going to argue that they were all secretly supporting slavery?

Why would I? Documented history speaks for itself! Considering documented history , you should have left out Baptists in your list...

Several years ago I had an afro-american fellow try to prove to me that all american slave owners were Jewish. I asked him about Jefferson and Washington, I am still waiting for a reply...

Yeah that’s obviously what I was saying there. Clearly someone who calls slavery a “barbarous system” supports it.

Seriously, how is it even possible to read me post this way? Saying something is “even worse” than something else means that the first thing is still bad.

Maybe! But let me ask you a simple question. As a supposed Christian: how does same sex marriage impact you personally? What impact does it have on your daily "christian" life? Does it change the price of your hamburger?

The Civil War was absolutely about slavery.

Not according to the historians. Lincoln is documented as willing to cave into the southern states to avoid war.

To quote the states’ own words for seceding, as can be found here: http://www.civilwar.org/education/hi...nofcauses.html

Georgia opens with:

“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”

Mississippi opens with:

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.”

South Carolina’s says it was because:

“The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.”

And so on. The whole “state’s rights” stuff is revisionist history.

And all these "christian" states still have major race relation problems.

I like the way I heard it put once: if you argue it was about states’ rights, the state’s right to do what?

and as a supposed "christian" what is your opinion of "states rights" verses "human rights"?

You said there was a place/time “where Catholics, Jews and negros could be tortured and murdered”. There has never been a place where that was legal.

Possibly not "legal" but common practice. I was remiss in not including Mormons. We shouldn't forget the Missouri massacres conducted by the "christian" religious right.

Unless you just mean that there were times it happened, which would be a completely empty argument since someone from every group has killed someone else from every other group.

All in all this post is honestly just strange. Is there something going wrong in your life and you’re taking it out on here or something?

In simple terms, don't preach unless you practice...

___________________________

ps: I think you and your Agonistae/Circumcellion type fellows have missed my point. America has become the "Christian" example to the world. And unfortunately, the world has rejected your example. How do we fix this perspective?

[Zeta_Metroid]

Documented history speaks for itself!

Your claim was that “all of white American protestant ‘christianity” supported slavery. I’ve just listed multiple mostly white American Protestant groups that specifically did not, and given an argument for that not being the case in general. What’s your actual reply to the arguments presented?

Considering documented history , you should have left out Baptists in your list

Notice I specified the “American Baptists”? The issue of slavery was so divisive that churches were breaking fellowship with each other, contrary to your claim that “all of white American protestant” supported slavery.

Maybe!

No. No one else but you with your bizarre, bitter ax to grind would have interpreted what I said as potential support for slavery.

As a supposed Christian: how does same sex marriage impact you personally?

The specific practice has little effect, but the cultural acceptance of homosexuality legitimizes something that harms the lives of people I know.

Not according to the historians.

Every source I’ve been able to find disagrees with you. According to here, “historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery”.

Its noted here that “In his second inaugural address in March 1865, Abraham Lincoln looked back at the beginning of the Civil War four years earlier. ‘All knew,’ he said, that slavery ‘was somehow the cause of the war.’ Few historians in the decades since Lincoln spoke have doubted the basic truth of Lincoln's statement…”

And its stated here that “Ralph Mann is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado. On a warm, April day, he leans back in his office chair in CU’s Hellems Hall, the sun streaming through a south-facing window, and renders his judgment.

“The war was about slavery,” Mann says.

But like most professional Civil War historians, Mann’s expert opinion contradicts the view of about half of America…”

So you’re wrong: most historians hold that the war was about slavery. A bit ironic for someone who was saying “most Ameicans are ignorant of their own history”.
Now it turns out that you’re not just ignorant about history, you’re ignorant about historians!

Lincoln is documented as willing to cave into the southern states to avoid war.

How does “the President was reluctant to start something that would kill hundreds of thousands of his countrymen” evidence that the war wasn’t about slavery?

And I ask: cave in to the southern states on what?

And all these "christian" states still have major race relation problems.

You’re exaggerating. A major race relation problem would be like something you see in Syria where a huge chunk of Kurdish people weren’t considered citizens and were oppressed to the point they rebelled against the government.

In all of those states every race is equal under the law and there are efforts to make sure every race has equal opportunities.

and as a supposed "christian" what is your opinion of "states rights" verses "human rights"?

Don’t change the subject, answer the evidence I provided there. Every state that issued an official declaration of the reasons for their secession said explicitly that it was about slavery.

Possibly not "legal" but common practice.

Find me a place where it was “common practice” for Catholics, Jews, and blacks to be tortured and murdered.
Also, be sure to define a minimum standard for what counts as a “common practice”.

America has become the "Christian" example to the world. And unfortunately, the world has rejected your example.

As opposed to ancient Christians who the world just loved right?

[apostoli]

Your claim was that “all of white American protestant ‘christianity” supported slavery.

I made no such claim. You have simply accused yourself!!!

I’ve just listed multiple mostly white American Protestant groups that specifically did not, and given an argument for that not being the case in general. What’s your actual reply to the arguments presented?

Read the news reports of the 1960s & 1970s. In fact, watch your nightly TV reports. Nothing much hs changed in "christian" america in the last 60 or so years.

Notice I specified the “American Baptists”? The issue of slavery was so divisive that churches were breaking fellowship with each other, contrary to your claim that “all of white American protestant” supported slavery.

I never advocated or suggested that "“all of white American protestant supported slavery". Albeit there is enough documentary proof to prove the point. Notice, you misspelt your advocacy ...

No. No one else but you with your bizarre, bitter ax to grind would have interpreted what I said as potential support for slavery.

Do you have an political adversion to same sex marriage?

The specific practice has little effect, but the cultural acceptance of homosexuality legitimizes something that harms the lives of people Iknow.

How so, I've known committed christians that have been in homosexual relations for in excess of 20 years.

Every source I’ve been able to find disagrees with you. According to here, “historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery”.

Its noted here that “In his second inaugural address in March 1865, Abraham Lincoln looked back at the beginning of the Civil War four years earlier. ‘All knew,’ he said, that slavery ‘was somehow the cause of the war.’ Few historians in the decades since Lincoln spoke have doubted the basic truth of Lincoln's statement…”

And its stated here that “Ralph Mann is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado. On a warm, April day, he leans back in his office chair in CU’s Hellems Hall, the sun streaming through a south-facing window, and renders his judgment.

“The war was about slavery,” Mann says.

But like most professional Civil War historians, Mann’s expert opinion contradicts the view of about half of America…”

So you’re wrong: most historians hold that the war was about slavery. A bit ironic for someone who was saying “most Ameicans are ignorant of their own history”.
Now it turns out that you’re not just ignorant about history, you’re ignorant about historians!

Digress all you want. Look at the after effects of your supposed "justifiable" wars... Lets start with the constitutional challenge against inter-marriage...

[Zeta_Metroid]

I made no such claim.

I knew you liked revisionist history but I didn’t think you’d try to pull it on something that happened yesterday.

I said of slaveholders that “they were corrupt Christians who had set up a barbarous system that flagrantly violated the Bible”. Then you said “you have just defined all of white American protestant ‘christianity: = ‘barbarous’”.

So if I call slavery supporters barbaric, and then you say that I would be calling all white American Protestants barbaric, what does that mean you’re saying?

Read the news reports of the 1960s & 1970s. In fact, watch your nightly TV reports.

Can you show me some specific examples that you feel support your point?

Nothing much hs changed in "christian" america in the last 60 or so years.

Is all of this weirdness coming from a hatred of the US or something?

Saying racial attitudes are unchanged is ludicrous. Interracial marriage used to be illegal in some areas, but now strong majorities in every race say they’d be fine with someone in their family marrying someone from another race, according to Pew’s report here.

For more, see this article: http://journalistsresource.org/studi...-social-survey, which has a slew of data showing consistent positive change.

Do you have an political adversion to same sex marriage?

I don’t have strong feelings on it one way or the other – the main problem is our culture’s approval of homosexuality.

How so, I've known committed christians that have been in homosexual relations for in excess of 20 years.

Everyone always breaks out the unverifiable anecdotal evidence when it comes to homosexuality, but if you look at the actual research then it’s clear that heterosexual relationships are more beneficial than homosexual relationships.

The main problem with same-sex relations is that they are processed differently by the brain than heterosexual relationships are – and in a way that means they have diminished quality.

When we look at it, there's a clear emotional and psychological difference when it comes to the effects of monogamy in homosexual vs. heterosexual relationships. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2906147/ notes that in their study, "[Homosexual] Couples with monogamous and open agreements did not differ significantly in their relationship satisfaction. This is in line with previous findings (Blasband & Peplau, 1985; Kurdek, 1988; LaSala, 2004)…"

Which, according to here: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~nchristenfeld...ite%202001.pdf, is in stark contrast to heterosexual couples, as “In all cases but one, the more exclusive the sexual relationship, the greater the emotional satisfaction reported”. The fact there was only one single exception is quite notable, since their data was drawn from all those in a sexual relationship from a sample of “3,432 adults”.

We see the effects of this manifest behaviorally. As can be seen here: http://i.imgur.com/KxcUMOt.png, according to the book The Male Couple (written by two homosexual psychologists who were themselves a male couple - so as unbiased a source as could possibly exist), in their study, "all [homosexual] couples with a relationship lasting more than five years have incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships".

And according to here: http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/F...of_HIV.10.aspx, even among homosexuals in relationships, their number of outside sexual partners stays very high. In their study "Men with and without a steady partner had [an average of] eight and 22 casual contacts per year, respectively".

And according to the paper "A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men", among older homosexuals it was reported that just "2.7% had had sex with 1 partner only". This can be seen here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...&as_sdt=0%2C47.

So we see a clear difference at the psychological and the behavioral level. Heterosexual relationships have the highest quality when its truly a relationship between you and your partner for life – we can see how those bonds deepen over time and the relationship improves continually. With homosexual relationships however, we do not see this occur. There is no continually deepening psychological bond, and behaviorally monogamy has no influence and brings no benefit. So they are not in what the brain would recognize as true relationships – they are essentially just friendships where the friends have sex.

And we can actually see the difference between how the brain views such friendship relationships vs. its relationship with its life-partner. A study here: http://kyb.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_upl...ve_%5B0%5D.pdf describes an experiment where brain activity was monitored while women viewed pictures of their children, their friends, and their partners, and then “The activity specific to maternal attachment was compared to that associated to romantic love”. It was found that different “types of attachment activated [brain] regions specific to each”. (Though there were of course also “overlapping regions in the brain’s reward system” that were triggered by each).

And when we look at the effects that deepening these special bonds between partners has, its exactly the opposite of what we see. As we saw just now, lasting, monogamous homosexual relationships are virtually nonexistent, and they have an extremely high interest in sexual partners other than their significant other. However, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2387250/ describes an experiment where a species of ape – titi monkeys, specifically – were given a procedure which increased their bonds with their mates. It was observed that “males [who] had…been part of a previous [brain] lesioning experiment…which resulted behaviorally in increased interaction with their pair-mates and apparent ‘strengthening’ of the pair-bond. Specifically, post-lesion the males were more often in physical contact with their mates, were less likely to break contact, and spent more time grooming their mates. They also displayed less behavioral arousal (arching, tail-lashing) towards strange females than they did pre-lesion”.

But as we saw, among homosexuals, interest in other mates increases if anything as time goes on. So by all evidence, homosexual relationships are a very different phenomenon from heterosexual ones as far as the brain is concerned. This explains why sexual exclusivity does not bring increased relationship satisfaction, like it does for heterosexuals: the brain’s systems specifically for bonding with its life-partner that that study observed are not being used.

Digress all you want.

How is this a digression? Slavery has been one of the main topics of our discussion so far.

Look at the after effects of your supposed "justifiable" wars... Lets start with the constitutional challenge against inter-marriage...

Could you elaborate on what you’re saying here?

[lilpixieofterror]

I knew you liked revisionist history but I didn’t think you’d try to pull it on something that happened yesterday.

I said of slaveholders that “they were corrupt Christians who had set up a barbarous system that flagrantly violated the Bible”. Then you said “you have just defined all of white American protestant ‘christianity: = ‘barbarous’”.

So if I call slavery supporters barbaric, and then you say that I would be calling all white American Protestants barbaric, what does that mean you’re saying?

I'm sure you're glad Samus Aran isn't around, but you'll find that apostoli hates America and American's in general. I dealt with him a few years ago over this sort of nonsense and it seems it went in one ear and out the other. Yes he loves revisionist history and he hates America and Americans too, so don't bother to discuss anything with him to change his mind because you will not.

[Zeta_Metroid]

I'm sure you're glad Samus Aran isn't around, but you'll find that apostoli hates America and American's in general. I dealt with him a few years ago over this sort of nonsense and it seems it went in one ear and out the other. Yes he loves revisionist history and he hates America and Americans too, so don't bother to discuss anything with him to change his mind because you will not.

Ah thanks for the warning - its ironic that he's using racism to justify what amounts to racism of his own

And I am glad she's not since if Samus Aran were around he'd probably be telling her "historians will tell you that the Aether War had NOTHING to do with Phazon, it was all about dimension's rights"

[Cow Poke]

Ah thanks for the warning - its ironic that he's using racism to justify what amounts to racism of his own

I see this so often....

Me: I think Obama's foreign policy stinks out loud
Response: You hate blacks.

[lilpixieofterror]

Ah thanks for the warning - its ironic that he's using racism to justify what amounts to racism of his own

Pretty much. Hating somebody based upon their country of origin is just as bad as hating somebody based upon their race, color of their skin, etc. Plus, his knowledge of American history is lacking (ironic, considering that he attacks Americans for not knowing our history). Just a few problems:

1. The civil war might of had state rights as part of the issue, but slavery was the major issue of the war.
2. Plenty of abolitionist where white and Christians. In fact, many stops along the underground railroad were at church's and major religious figures in both the North and the South.
3. Anti slavery movements started up North. Our second president (John Adams) was a major anti slavery advocate (he once talked about how he never hired slaves to do any labor around his house and always chose free men, even though they cost more) and he was also a religious man too.
4. The Republican party, was founded as the anti slavery party.

It isn't that hard to figure out that American's were not united in their views of slavery in the least bit. Even a quick glance of the history of America should dispel the myth that all white Christians were slave owners. The facts do not support such nonsense.

And I am glad she's not since if Samus Aran were around he'd probably be telling her "historians will tell you that the Aether War had NOTHING to do with Phazon, it was all about dimensions' rights"

Most likely. Don't worry, as long as you don't start sucking energy out of people, I will not tell her where you're at.

[Cerebrum123]

I'm sure you're glad Samus Aran isn't around, but you'll find that apostoli hates America and American's in general. I dealt with him a few years ago over this sort of nonsense and it seems it went in one ear and out the other. Yes he loves revisionist history and he hates America and Americans too, so don't bother to discuss anything with him to change his mind because you will not.

She's part metroid now, so they probably wouldn't fight as much.