Yeah, it’s a shame that the board died, but I was surprised it lasted as long as it did.

No, I’m not posting anywhere now. I miss it sometimes. I’m definitely thinking about putting the long talked about blog together. Interested?

Pretty sad, given that there were some good discussions back in the day.

Are you posting anywhere now? I know you had talked a long time ago about putting a blog together with several contributors.

There is nothing about this election that will cause real change. The differences are, I guess measurable, but ultimately not terribly significant.

Hey Myr! I’m just testing to see if I can use html tags.

Scorp

But put that aside for the moment, and consider that my post was almost certainly not directed at you. Sure, you call him a Marxist, but you’re not sounding the alarm bell that Obama is going to start massive forced wealth distribution as soon as he takes office. Sure, taxes would go up, which is forced wealth redistribution (and which, as a libertarian, I do not think is good policy unless you are also reducing spending in order to really balance the budget), but that’s not the kind of fear-mongering that is being pushed on the right at the moment. They’ve gone way beyond that, helped along with inflammatory rhetoric by the Palin and conservative talking heads.

Obama is not going to turn America into some kind of grand socialist/communist experiment. We’re a country that is actually right of center compared to most of the world, and Obama isn’t going to suddenly become a monster such that we should all collectively be “scared” of an Obama Presidency.

Only Christians? What is the measurement? Health? Wealth? Reported happiness? Marital longevity? You can’t measure satisfaction with the afterlife, so that’s out. What geographic range are you going to use? Even the poorest in the United States are unlikely to be as poorly off as the most extreme poor in Africa (many of whom are Christians and many of such Christians who end up starving, losing children, etc.)

So, no, I think the first problem is that you can’t agree on the appropriate parameters of any such study . . . not without a God that actually allows Himself/Herself to be tested. So that isn’t a flaw of man, it is an element of God that, happy coincidence!, prevents anyone from deriving non-subjective, non-anecdotal, legitimate study-based evidence.

I also am not in favor of the bailout. It was government policies that created this mess, and I don’t think that more government is the answer. But politicians can’t stand the accusation that they stood by and did nothing, so instead they decided to meddle some more, spend some more of our money. One can only hope that they do indeed recoup value when the economy recovers and the currently-worthless instruments (hopefully) recover value and are sold off.

I watched the whole Biden-Palin debate, but wasn’t planning on doing a blog entry about it. Bottom line: Biden won, but Palin did so much better than I think anyone expected that McCain may actually see a bump. Bottomer line: The format of the debate was intentionally set up to keep both VP candidates from screwing up, so we saw exactly what the parties wanted us to see–softball questions, no follow-ups, very, very little by way of direct exchange or challenge. It was designed to be idiot-proof . . . victory!

I actually liked some of what Palin said about responsibility and limited government, too bad it’s just lip service, the way it’s been with the Republican Party since the early 80’s. No one should fool themselves, McCain isn’t a small government conservative.

Also, Biden could have hammered global warming much more–if you don’t believe in anthopogenic causes of global warming then *you’re not going to believe that humans lowering their carbon footprint is going to make a difference*. Biden couldn’t have hit that topic lighter if he used a feather.

Anyway, just some thoughts on the debate.

Everyone invents their own truth. When it comes to interpreting the Bible, there is only the subjective. Are the Ten Commandments absolutes? Does the Bible prohibit homosexuality? Is the Earth 6,000 years old? How much do the Gospels deviate from the historical life of Jesus? Is there a Q Gospel? Is the end to the Gospel of Mark original or added later, and if added later what does that mean? Under what circumstances is divorce religiously authorized? What rites must a person go through during life to achieve eternal salvation? Does the Bible support the view of the superiority of the Aryan race? And for *every* question there may be a different meaning depending on which language you use–Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English (the many English interpretations)..

There are a million questions; those questions matter; everyone believes something different or some different combination of the millions of different ways to interpret the books of the Bible. For anyone to assert that the Bible is an objective reflection of anything is nonsensical, because even if it is, no one can agree on what its words actually mean.

“And why not?”

Because it is neither fair nor just.