They sure do elect some fine 17th century fellows over in Louisiana.
Appearing before the Republican Women of Bossier with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) cast the November elections as a choice between godlessness and Christianity. He also called bipartisanship impossible.
“We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle — one is going to have to win,” Fleming said.
We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we’re going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation. So we’re going to have to win that battle, we’re going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things.”
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
I would have called this piece “Oh just shut up and go away”.
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That too.
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Well, in all honestly, the founding Fathers of this country were Pagans disguised as Christians. Few Americans know this because they don’t do independent research. They believe everything that comes from history books which were bought by private corporations and rewritten to dumb down the masses. Excuse me if I sound too much like a conspiracy theorists but its true. We want God to bless America but nobody wants to bless God. This country has been going downhill since the separation of church and state. The crime rates and teen pregnancy rates have sky rocketed since 1964 when Bibles & prayer was banned in our public schools. Things are likely to get worse because this is all Biblical Prophecy. America is the New Modern Day Babylon.
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Crime rates in this country have been on the decline since 1992. But hey don’t let the facts get in the way of your conspiracy theories.
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And btw how do you account for the much lower rates of crime and teen pregnancy rates are far lower in Western Europe, societies that are far more secular than ours. I think the only one lacking in undertaking independant research is you artisitcsphysics, all you’re doing is spouting the the right’s talking points.
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Crime rates have been on the decline??? Teen pregnancies have been on the decline???? Perfect example of disinformation at its finest. Smh. Yeah thats just what abc, nbc, msnbc, cnn, fox and the rest of the disinfo agents want you to believe. The Government wants people in this country to believe that things are not as bad as they seem. Because if people really knew how bad the numbers are there would be anarchy. Like I said before, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! “Damnation without investigation is the height of ignorance.” -Albert Einstein
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Yes crime rates have been on the decline in this country since 1993 when they peaked, steadily down hill since. I didn’t say anything about teen preg rates in this country dropping. I said the rate in Western Europe is lower than it is here and they are far more secular than we are in this country. Also since you’re so keen on research you should look up teen preg and divorce rates by states, you will find that the rates are higher in the so called Bible Belt states and far lower in the more progressive coastal states. And yes of course I understand that anything that doesn’t agree to your skewed way of thinking of course is a govt. plot. How convenient for you!
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Brian i’m not talking about Europe lol I’m talking about the U.S.! And i’m not talking about STATE to STATE teen prego rates. I’m talking about them as a WHOLE. Smh. But if you want to go there ok. The reason why teen pregnancies rates are higher in those “Bible Belt” states as you call them is because coastal states have higher abortion rates. Duh! *Really man, that was too easy.* You ever thought about retiring from blogging??? Maybe you should take that in consideration;) But you are right about Divorce Rates though. But its not just “the Bible Belt” states. Christian Divorce rates are at 50%, period. And just for the record, everyone who claims they are Christians are not always Christians. I could give examples but the night is growing weary. Goodnite, Brian
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Wrong again, KS & NV are in the top ten of state abortion levels. While abortion levels are higher in some coastal states, they are not in all. Do you bother to look anything up before you go running to your keyboard?
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Brian I was about to ask you the same thing. “Do you bother to look anything up before you go running to your keyboard?” You must get all your information from Wikipedia <——————Another unreliable source. Smh. I would hate to see what grade you would get on College Midterm papers.
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Somebody tell me what ‘Smh’ means!
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it means shaking my head
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Speak in tongues too?
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artist – I stopped over at your site and I must say, you have got a really beautiful daughter. She’s a treasure. You must be very proud.
Brian is right – the crime rate has been going down for almost 20 years. By the way, I went to school in the 50’s at parochial schools. But all my friends went to the public schools and so I know there was never prayer in their schools and as far as I know there hadn’t been since WWII. I’ll guess some schools in the south had prayer, maybe they got aggressive about it and had ot be slapped down by civil courts.
Secular, religious, it really doesn’t matter in terms of crime, civil behavior, whether people are bad or good . . .. we are people.
By the way, I’m with you quite a bit on the matter of corporate control. Now there’s a REAL problem.
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Thank you Miss Moe and yes I am very proud! Can’t wait till she starts talking;)
But on another note, the media can really throw the veil over our eyes when it comes to issues that really matter. Like our kids and what they are being exposed to. I’m sure you can agree with me when I say that this Generation is being exposed to more negative things (and to a greater extent) than Generations in the past. I’m not too worried about these old filthy rich politicians. I’m worried about the coming Generations. You should read my post about Gay Marriage being legalized in California. http://artisticphysics.com/2010/08/15/gay-marriage-in-california-legalized-immorality/
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Wow, what a surprise you’re a homophobic bigot too. Well you could just knock me over with a feather.
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Homophobic? Naw, I just know the difference between right and wrong. You obviously don’t.
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Yeah you are, dance around it anyway you want, you’re just another homophobic bigot using religion to rationalize your hatred. It’s a very old tired story. It’s people like you who make me very grateful I wasn’t raised a so called “Christian” and was spared all that baggage of hatred and fear.
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Hateful??? Homophobic??? You obviously didn’t read the blog post in its entirety. Well, I’m not surprised because its plain as day you don’t read anything. Neither would I be surprised if you were illiterate. You probably have a 13 year kid running your blog and writing your responses. Am I talking to Brian??? lol
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Quote lifted from AP’s post on teh evilz gheys!:
“Wrong will always be wrong and right will always be right.”
And I suppose you have the authority to judge what is right and what is wrong? Your magic books give you that right? Your particular magic book thinks slavery is a perfectly fine practice, so I guess we made a mistake getting rid of the institution slavery. Because at one time slavery was “right” and would have been always “right”. I suggest you stop from making absolutist statements such as the one quoted above because they are clearly quite impossible to defend.
Another little gem from AF’s page: You don’t have to be Religious to see that Marriage is between a Man and a Woman. All you need is a little common sense.
I see that you have appropriated the term common sense in your battle against the hated homosexual people. Back here in non religiously deluded rational land ‘common sense’ would dictate that Marriage would be between two people who love each other and want to commit their lives to each other, regardless of gender.
Your post is long on saying that Gay Marriage is wrong and short on specifics on WHY it is wrong. I hypothesize that really past saying ‘god and my magic book’ say that its bad, you have nothing else that, as Brain says, is not homophobic or bigoted in nature.
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And Arb, you know this but it always bears repeating. In history and back to Bibical times, marriage was understood to be an economic contract, not a religous one. Men bargained for progency. Women bargained for economic security and the safety under the status of a male, as she didn’t have that status by herself.
Marriage is a CIVIL institution. It always has been. If religions want to add the requirment of a ceremony in front of clergy to make it legal in the eyes of that religion, fine. They have done so for a millenia. But those rules are for them and shouldn’t be applied to all of us.
As a civil contract, marriage must be available to all.
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And here we go, another person (besides Brian) lacking comprehensive reading skills. Instead of picking out certain parts of the article (which you disagree on based solely on EMOTION) you should read it in its ENTIRETY. Until you do that I will be ignoring you.
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another person (besides Brian) lacking comprehensive reading skills.
And this would be the part where you start attacking other people’s character rather than attempting to defend what you said.
instead of picking out certain parts of the article (which you disagree on based solely on EMOTION) you should read it in its ENTIRETY.
I quoted highlights, as they are representative of the specious nature of your arguments. Plus, this thread is not about your post. I did not want to derail Moe’s thread anymore than necessary, and therefore only picked some of the more atrocious highlights of your screed to quote.
If you would like a full take down of your execrable diatribe, please let me know I would be happy to oblige you at my blog.
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No thanks, but you are welcome to come to my blog. 😉
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Wow, Mystro did reply and laid out a polished rebuttal of the hate masquerading ‘common sense’ that AP wrote.
I’m curious to see whether or not we can get a non weasel answer out of him. His first reply was palavers, not addressing any of Mystro’s points just quibbling about “understanding scripture”.
For one who made a big dead about responding to posts in their entirety AP is failing. 🙂
Mystro is a welcome co-author of my blog, his work is always well reasoned and worth reading.
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I was listening to discussion on Fox radio (I’m not a screaming right winger, but I do listen for the right’s perspective).
I was amazed that they mostly demanding to know the source of the funding of the project. They kind of grudgingly admitted it was legal.
If a group of fundamentalist Christians was building a center in a spot that upset some of the neighbors, and liberal groups demanded to know if the money was coming from an unsavory source, fox would defend the Christian’s privacy to the death.
Apparently because of collective guilt, Muslims at least forfeit the right to privacy that right wingers would insist on for themselves.
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That was my reaction too when I first heard this nonsense about ‘where’s the funding coming from?’ A church or a synagoge or a temple or a mosque is built by its congregation who raise funds – within and without. Such nonsense and so insulting – the assumption that ‘these Musims’ can’t possibly have money of their own.
It’s all been very ugly. Makes me ashamed.
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I guess Vitter’s competing world view is that it’s okay to visit brothels.
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As long as the whores are christian and have accepted Jesus as their savior.
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I must say this was an interesting thread. I do wonder about artisticphysics. How he responded to Brian in NYC’s easily researched and well known facts astounds me. I suppose I am not used to arguing with a person who considers simply denying claims and calling the claimant a 13 year-old. I suppose there’s no winning that kind of argument.
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desert you just described the entire tea party movement, LOL.
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What are these facts you keep alluding to? It smacks of the devil to keep mention facts when they go against what [insert your delusion of choice here] ‘s will. You do not want to burn forever do you?
😉
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You can have facts but the semantics of your argument still fall as being incoherent. You both are welcomed to my blog (even Brian) and give feedback on as many as my posts as you like. Whether it be negative or positive. Unlike some people (I won’t say names) I don’t bash people’s statements. I’m too mature for that. Ya’ll are so worked up on Gay Marriage you forgot about “Freedom of Speech.” lol smh
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No thanks, I don’t frequent hate sites.
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Look up the definition of hate.
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artisticphysics,
You really got everyone ganging up on you. And calling you names like homophobic bigot. Why we all cannot discuss without the personal insults is beyond me. I see that if someone cannot compete on the idea level , they must lower the level to the personal.
Ms Holland,
” Such nonsense and so insulting – the assumption that ‘these Musims’ can’t possibly have money of their own. ”
I believe that since it has been far more than a few Mosques where terrorist recruiting has gone on, this is very relevant. Certainly not insulting, certainly not nonsense. Since most of the money for terrorism comes from abroad, it certainly is not nonsense to see if the Mosque money comes from the same sources .
” In history and back to Bibical times, marriage was understood to be an economic contract, not a religous one. Men bargained for progency. Women bargained for economic security and the safety under the status of a male, as she didn’t have that status by herself. ”
Where do you get that ? In almost every ancient culture marriage was a religious contract ahead of economics. Religion was the envelope that wrapped the economic innards. Please show me secular marriages in the ancient world.
The Arbourist,
My favorite Atheist.
” our particular magic book thinks slavery is a perfectly fine practice, so I guess we made a mistake getting rid of the institution slavery. ”
I always learn new facts when I read your words. Here I never knew that no Atheists practiced slavery. You know what else I never knew. The Abolishionists must have all been Atheists. It must have been that damn ‘Uncle Toms Cabin’ book I read that gave me the false impression that they were all a bunch of Christian holy rollers. I even thought that the most dedicated anti slaver of all time, John Brown, was a Christian. I thought that ‘magic book’ told him to die for his beliefs. But I must be mistaken .
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Thats the reason why I stopped replying to them. I was told the best response to a fool was silence. Thats why I stopped commenting. The guy above came over to my blog entry thinking he could dilute my statements but failed utterly. Its been almost a day and I still haven’t heard anything. He’s probably somewhere talking to atheists trying to get more OPINIONS rather than facts about the Bible. But I completely agree with everything you are saying. Married was looked at as being SACRED and not economical. And as far as the Mosques go, the so called “terrorists” have ALWAYS been funded by who???? OUR GOVERNMENT. Thank you for an intelligent response. And thank you for being educated!
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The guy above came over to my blog entry thinking he could dilute my statements but failed utterly.
Actually, his arguments stand as you have not refuted the majority of his points (nor satisfactorily refuted the one about slavery), but rather have chosen to dither and handwave about different types of slavery and trying to justify that certain types of god sanctioned slavery is just fine and dandy.
AP: In order to rid the world of their destructive influence, the children of Israel under God’s guidance, dealt with them in several ways. One of those ways included forcing the wicked nations into slavery.
Yes, indeed wisdom such as quoted from AP above is the sort of Godly guidance we need to have. Way to go, christain apologetics for slavery, how perfectly atrocious. The case for the relevancy of the bible has been strengthened.
Anyhow, contrary to any crowing about people failing utterly, AP has still not replied to the corpus of mystro’s comment, hypocritically ignoring the very standards he/she set for others as a precondition to reply to his statements.
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He didn’t have an argument. Thats why he can’t come up with an INTELLIGENT response. Mysto is outdone. And so are you. He is probably smarter because he actually realizes it, unlike you.
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It is okay, you can just admit that you cannot reply reasonably to my or Mystro’s assertions.
This is not debate, as you have not stuck to the arguments or even followed your own rules, but rather decided on creating strawmen and going the ad hominem route disparaging those who call you out on your own particular set of specious arguments.
You did not answer the following (quoted from AP’s comment section):
1. Then you say that homosexuality somehow falls under this category: “Marriage is between a Man and a Woman. All you need is a little common sense.” Now here is your first fallacious bit of ‘reasoning’. One cannot simply say “its common sense” and then go on as if the point was established. One has to say why its common sense. You know, actually provide a reason…
2. But as you haven’t shown why homosexuality is wrong, (and no one has, by the way. They just go on and on why they personally don’t like it) there is nothing for the gay community to admit, nor is there anything for them to recover from (response to your psychology reference). If you want to say that there is, you are going to have to show why.
3. Once again, you try to assert a claim true without backing it up. In what way is homosexuality not natural? A simple definition of natural is ‘phenomena that occur within nature’. Thus, rabbits and trees and humans are natural, whereas leprechauns, round squares, and invisible sky fairies are not. By that definition, to determine weather or not homosexuality is natural, all we have to do is see if it occurs within nature. And it does. It has been a part of human society as long as there has been human society, despite the great variety of human societies over the centuries. Thus, it IS natural. But maybe that’s not what you mean by ‘not natural’.
4. So, to sum up, you give no reason why homosexuality is unnatural (and even if you were to do that, and I doubt you can, you give no reason why that would mean it is immoral), you give no reason why marriage should be between a man and a woman, and you give no reason why social problems are caused by a lack of your religious dogma. You provide exactly zero reasons to think that homosexuality is wrong on any level.
5. And you know what it’s called when you call a group of people evil, wrong, immoral etc without any good reason? It’s called bigotry. It’s called hate, albeit hate that is disguised so well, you don’t even realize you’re doing it. And when you use that bigotry to support legislation that would take away the rights of said group, again for no good reason, it is indeed a civil rights matter. It would be an infringement on equality, liberty, and morality of the worst kind.
There, a listing of just a few points you did not reply to in any sort of reasonable fashion. I’m sorry to waste Moe’s time, but your actions have been intellectually dishonest and demand the record be set straight. So the onus is on you to defend your claims. Do so, or go away, at least on this particular topic as so far you have no leg to stand on other than “godsaidso” and that does not wash here in the real world.
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Here I never knew that no Atheists practiced slavery.
There you go again Mr.Scott constructing strawmen in one sentence to demolish with your very next sentence. Good work on misrepresenting my position and then thoroughly skewering what I did notsay. 🙂
The Abolishionists must have all been Atheists.
Wow, christian pro and anti slavery camps both whose basis was the bible. The point is that depending on who is reading it, the message it gives and therefore the solemn Word of God’ can be very different. The bible was the document in the room for every session of torture during the Inquisition. The very same bible was in the hands of the Abolitionists as they fought against slavery. Put the potentially harmful mythology away and think, analyze, and judge the world using the rational tools at your disposal.
So why then continue to insist that bronze age wisdom is relevant today? For the most part it is not and it is not a good guide for dealing with the complex questions and issues we face today.
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artisticphysics,
” I was told the best response to a fool was silence. ”
Sound advice. I generally argue them into silence. That would make me the fool, but I gave up a long time ago worrying what others think of me.
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[I generally argue them into silence.]
Ummm . . .
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