Ex Nihilo

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Everything posted by Ex Nihilo

  1. This is one of the best posts I've read on this forum. A true liberal isn't a statist or a fascist, he's a progressive libertarian. I come from the standpoint that government should ensure that its citizens be free from the force or fraud of others, but a thoughtful person sees how protecting the public from discriminatory and desceptive trade practices and environmental pollution fits into those parameters. Libertarianism isn't so much for privatization of governmental functions, its about maximizing all peoples freedoms. Freedom for only those who can afford it is no freedom at all.
  2. I know all about vhem....I like how all of you can see the bright side of pandemics. I'm surrounded by armchair optimists. As for me I want to live, make and multiply
  3. The question is whose death. If you mean your own, then by all means. Life is a right not a burden. But this topic is about risking the lives of others, potentially half the human population, just so some labcoats can play around with microbiological uranium. Noone's liberty is so precious that it should be bought at the price of a life not willingly given and to say otherwise is monstrous.
  4. I know this will peg me as the Trotskyite of the group but I think its just common sense that the folks with the mandate given to them by the people to guard the health and safety of the public are perfectly fit to stop programs that represent such a serious threat...or maybe I don't understand how the state's police powers work in a democrati republic. Besides, one man's inexcusable restraint is another's just just regulation. I've said it before, in the hierarchy of rights life is of greater value than liberty and where one is at odds with the other, life trumps liberty.
  5. I disagree with your interpretation of history, but even if that were the case, I for one am not willing to risk half the human population on a toss up. However, if you really think that killing ourselves off is great way to make the world better, shouldn't you go first? If you really back this policy, shouldn't you consider suicide or at the very least sterilzation? I feel like I'm listening to Scrooge say that te widows an orphans should hurry up and die and decrease the surplus population! p. s: I do not actually recommend you or anyone else actually kill themselves...I am merely using a rhetorical device to show ridiculousness of this argument. You have lots to live for...so does everyone else, Thats why shouldn't even toy with the ideaof releasing manmade plagues
  6. I hope all this is just tongue and cheek. These comments are a tad bit scary...and inaccurate. Look at the effects of Africa losing millions to slavery or now being ravaged by aids. Where's the economic boom? Where's the evolutionary jump. All disease makes are widows, orphans, and corpses. Maybe do a little research into the influenza pandemic of 1918. For me, national and international security concerns may trump the interests of scientific discovery when we have the ability and desire to create something that is a worldwide existential threat.
  7. Hi All, I recently had a very strange dream: I dreamed I was present at Christ's crucifixion. He was suffering terribly. He took a breath, and as he inhaled, I was immediately pulled toward the pupil of his eye like an extreme close-up until I went into the complete blackness of the pupil of his eye and then into another scene in the same motion. It was the scene of some sin being committed in the old testament but instead of the original perpetrator committing the sin it was Christ himself doing it. I keep moving into the pupil of his eye and into another scene of sin that happen earlier in the old testament, over and over again back through the time of the old testament, each time Jesus took the place of the original sinner. I saw Jesus behead John the Baptist. I saw Jesus throw Daniel to the lions, and Jesus toss Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace. I saw Jesus steal Uriah's wife. I saw Jesus strike the rock in the place of Moses, I Jesus worship the golden calf. It moved faster and faster back in time...all the way back to the beginning. I saw Jesus kill Abel. All the way back to the Garden of Eden, I saw Jesus there with the serpent biting into the cursed apple. Again I flew into the pupil of his eye, and I was brought back to the exact moment I had left Jesus on the cross, finishing his breath, and then he said, "It is finished!" Then I woke up, with the feeling that a great truth had been revealed to me, "He became our sin, so that in him we become God's righteousness." I work through a lot of spiritual questions through dreams. Do any of y'all do the same? I'd love to hear your stories. Thanks!
  8. True, we are looking at a snapshot not the end-game. I agree that government is getting into more and more areas of life, but only because there is a widening awareness that human actions have consequences that cannot or are not being regulated extra-governmentally. I believe Thoroeau was right:the government that governs best governs not at all, and when men are ready for it, that is what they will have. Perhaps that's the next great trend.
  9. I think Fawzo is right to point out that laws can be generally viewed as examples of societies' growing realisation that "darkness" in a particular form exists and which manifests itself as injustice to others and taking steps to change in such a way that combats that darkness. Actually, it's a great litmus test for gauging human self-awareness and development. It takes a LOT of people agreeing with a proposed law to get it passed, it gets vetted, debated, reviewed over and over again before it finally gets voted on. I can see where an issue like child labor bans, which was especially detrimental to monied industrialists, would have to have enormous popular and support and will to overcome the economic arugments that politicians are all too susceptabile to. I think it shows self-awareness and growth writ large. It shows societal movements of consciousness. In fact, you can track self-awareness and growth by watching the trends of lawmaking over time. Beginning in earnest in the 70s and up until today, environmental justice has been a large part of the legislative landscape. I think it shows that a large segment of the public has recognized how man's greed and ignorance has harmed the earth and all those who share it. Now, I see universal access to basic human services and resources as being a new stage in the development of human social self-awareness. Examples include projects like ending hunger, providing affordable access to healthcare or universal healthcare, looking for alternative and renewable sources of energy...all of these I see as ways in which we as a society have become cognizant in our own failings that have created huge inequalities and inequities that cannot be fully justified in the light of human suffering and poverty.
  10. Kind of like the god who became a pig and forgot he was a god. We just need to wake up and see who we really are!
  11. Happy, Love'm all. Youv'e got my libertarian spirit all fired up. I gotta go donate $10 to the Ron Paul Campaign Best advice I ever got came from my 1st grade teacher: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit"
  12. I've never really gotten into the whole "evil is the absense of good" thing. To me, evil is all too real. It's not enough to describe evil like a glass that's empty of good water--it's full of something else: poison!
  13. Good one Songster! I too love the wise words of the older generation. But alas, not all of them had you grandfather's eloquence...I used to work to work for an old lady when I was twelve who used to say "you can smell yer own ass before anyone else can." Which had some profound meaning that was lost on me at the time.
  14. Hi Hexalpa, I agree with a lot of this theory, although I didn't know this is what it was called. In fact, when I read the biblical accounts of Creation in Genesis, I am forced to think that 2 creations happend, one that was orderly and perfect, as in Genesis 1, and one which was backward and filled with imperfection in Genesis 2. I often think of the first one as the spritual creations, something like the creation of the world of forms,commanded into perfect existence by the One. The second a copy that worked backwards...the man was molded out of mud (material substance?) by gods who then trap a soul inside this material cage. This world had dos and don'ts, this world had creatures that were capable of defying the will of the gods, which negates the first aspect of god: ominpotence. Things happen outside of the gods' knowledge: negating the second aspect of god: omniscience. And the gods walk in the cool of the garden, searching for Adam, negating the third aspect of god: omnipresence. Once the creatures disobey them, they dole out curses to the creatures who do only what they have been allowed to do, and only do so in their ignorance, which negates things we normally associate with god, like justice and forgiveness. And lastly, he told them that I they ate of the tree they would die that day, yet it did not happen. Can god lie? This makes me think that the god in one story is very different from the gods in the other. How can the two be reconciled? Emanation theology answers a lot of questions. I'll definitely have to study it more. Any book recommends???
  15. Mystic Christianity, Our Unitarian Gospel...both free on Kindle (yay!)
  16. One day I want to get into woodworking. Your work gives me inspiration.
  17. Very cool! Buttons are the best. I ran for student council once. My favie part was making cool buttons...always a great way to be creative.
  18. Nice work! Can you recommend any books or sites that can show how to do this?