Sam Samson

instead of just plain banning them, how about making them smarter? wouldn't it be great if they would just deactivate by themselves after a set time period? I imagine that wouldn't be too difficult to set up in the age of 1.000.000 $ smart bombs.

looky looky, a fun thread! who woulda thought? let me chip in: the author of the bible code just wants to sell paper. his theories are not credible. he mentions every other character of history - even hitler, clinton, etc. - but never the central one of the bible: Jesus Christ. what does the bible code say about him? I for one wouldn't mind knowing. the bible code attempts to read between the lines. why not just read the book as is? the first three chapters of genesis don't discuss the scientific ramifications of creation in detail, because this would be beside the point. the bible deals primarily with sin, the foremost problem of man, and redemption, the solution to this problem. biblical christianity deals with these points: God made man good. man has fallen by his own choice and became bad. God desired to restore man. to this end God became man in Jesus. see Jesus - see God; hear Jesus - hear God; Jesus' acts are God's. on the cross Jesus took the sin of man upon himself. the cross was an altar. Jesus hanging there was a sacrifice. Jesus died and suffered in the place of sinners. on the third day Jesus rose phyically from the dead. everybody who believes this and calls on God to save him receives new life. the believer is now spiritually born again and God lives in his heart. when he dies he goes to live with God. go tell this to all nations. that in a nutshell is biblical christianity, that's what the book is about. as to creation: I believe the world is much older than 6000 years. but I believe God spoke it into existence like he said he did. a major refurbishing happened there several thousand years ago, and as a consequence the globe became hospitable to man. then man was instituted as the "god" of this world, fell, and since the fall the devil runs the show. ( 2 corinthians 4, 4 ) . until Adam's lease runs out and the outfit defaults back to its original owner: God. as to dinosaurs: did men and dinos live side by side? unlikely. but read Job 41. God describes an animal in that chapter which - to me - looks an awful lot like a dinosaur. ...have to go. but I'll come back and say something about prophecy and the end of the world. (hey! send me 100 bucks and I tell you the exact date ;) )

stick with it, ferret! eh, that denoir guy is just scramblebrained. and that he is for blix-krieg is no surprise. blix is a swedish civil servant. you can't rise any higher in sweden than becoming a civ. I've been giving the deep fissures appearing between europe and the US over iraq some thought. you know: why is it that they're going rabid with anti-americanism and anti-semitism (again) without being able to present a coherent strategy of their own? (12 years of inspections haven't brought us any further. what do they want? another 12 years? they might die of smallpox thanks to saddam in the meantime.) three points come to mind: the US is basically a religious, in many parts a decidedly christian nation. europe deems to have overcome the religion upon which their civilizations were founded. thus they are angry at the percieved backwardness of the US and mock it. second: the US is a capitalist country, believing in hard work and making good money. europeans are at heart socialists, priding themselves in their cushy welfare states (now approaching bankruptcy, while the capitalist US is the hyperpower of the world, showing europe's underlying philosophy to be faulty. arrgh, the anger! the shame! there's only one remedy: fullscale denial! third: europeans don't believe in the significance of the nation state. they currently seem driven to abolish what is left of their once great nations and desperately try to melt into something grander (?), like the european union, to me a benign form of the old soviet union. they love fuzzy terms like "international community." there's nothing in them that makes them believe in their individual nations. all sing the high praises of being part of some group. the US on the other hand has since its inception believed that it had a call, that it is the "city on a hill", meant to be a beacon to the world. and it is! the current iraq crisis is just baring these fissures in the trans-atlantic relationship.

you guys realize that the UN, an agency I have come to frown on recently, only truly legitimized 2 wars since it exists? korea and the gulf war. where was your whining and protesting in 99-kosovo? was that a legitimate war? it didn't carry any UN-nod. btw: what would the UN be without the US and a handfull of western european nations? a conglomerate of third world fiefdoms and two dozen arab dictatorships. not exactly a haven of free thought and democracy. the french haven't won any wars since napoleon's time, and the first fierce fighting the GIs of WW2 experienced was in africa - against the french, before they were subdued and integrated into the allied effort. the french have never forgiven the americans that it was them who liberated them from the germans. even de gaulle himself worked against US interests, trying to establish france as a third power between the US and the USSR. (a joke of course.) france's chIraq tries to establish a european antipole to US-might, which I find exceedingly cynical. iraq's prime weapons merchants were the ones now protesting US policy the most vehemently: france, germany and russia. they (f and r) are also the only ones who have signed greasy oil deals with their favorite dictator. most of you are against this war because it is george w bush, a conservative, who leads the effort. where it a liberal you would fuss as much as the NOW-gang did during clinton's abuse of power with an intern: noddadall. where are the protesters' signs telling saddam to cooperate? why is everybody sucking up to a guy who killed more than a million folks in wars and kills around 200.000 people annually even now? employing rape, torture - executing some by sticking them into acid tanks? some of us here will look really foolish when in a few weeks the iraqi people will dance in the streets, cheering US (and hopefully british troops) on as they roll into baghdad. this war will hopefully be a quick and lasting triumph for all freedom-loving people. ...and how we'll pay for repairing iraq? with its oil-money, of course. the people who got liberated will foot the bill and not think anything of it. I hope none of you will ever live under somebody like saddam - and then be confronted with protesters protesting your liberation.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Bernadotte @ Feb. 15 2003,23:41)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">And my quoting relevant statistics after Noone tried to convince us that the IDF has not killed children is not provoking conflict.<span id='postcolor'> problem with those killed palestinian minors is that the palestinians won't release them for examination by a coroner. why? because they might find ak-slugs in them instead of m16 ones? awful thought, ain't it? since I suppose most of you don't read arabic, you can read interesting articles at www.memri.org. these are articles out of real life arabic newspapers.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (bn880 @ Jan. 24 2003,04:42)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">if more 1 person arrives at the truth, what is so strange about it? if the truth is really that, more than one person will arrive at it sooner or later. at least creative thinkers. just like two fairminded students of algebra and arithmetic will inevitably arrive at the conclusion that 1+1=2. or do you think that's relative too? <span id='postcolor'> I think you are right about that... but the example is simple, what you are discussing (God as truth) is much more complicated. Â To arrive at a definite conclusion, nearly impossible. Â You will have to judge what people wrote through the millennia. Â That is, unless you personally somehow know this God. Â <span id='postcolor'> bn880: maybe I did meet God. what would be so special about it? millions have. maybe this encounter did totally change my life. maybe it did turn me from a life as a petty pusher on the streets into a leader at what I'm doing now. God still saves, you know. as to the value immanent in life: what do you think about hierarchies of value? or hierarchies in general?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Oligo @ Jan. 24 2003,10:35)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Sam Samson @ Jan. 23 2003,23:43)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I believe in degeneration, btw, not evolution. the whole thing is a hoax. remember the piltdown man?<span id='postcolor'> Hhmh. Having witnessed evolution first hand, it is a little hard for me to call it a hoax. Overally, the universe is degenerating all the time, since overally entropy is increasing. However, local evolution does happen (like on Earth), but at the cost of more entropy increase somewhere else (namely the sun in our case).<span id='postcolor'> oligo: wow! you saw it? honestly though, I believe you witnessed mutation, not evolution. (why don't you ask your professor what he thinks? I'd be interested to know.) let me argue along the line of information, since DNA obviously contains information. (actually in the most economical, powerpacked way possible, utilizing mere molecules! would you say that information ( in the scientific sense of the word ) necessitates or presupposes. - a sender? which implies: - a plan and thus a person planning? - semantic content (= a message). semantic content is foreign to matter. - information serves a purpose. the quality of a purpose-serving invention demonstrates the genius of the inventor. - matter by itself doesn't create concepts. (a bridge doesn't span itself across a river just because a few folks want to get to the other side.) - the building blocks of matter don't have any psychic properties. they don't plan and don't think. they don't create goals and then pursue them. only intelligent beings, capable of using information, can do that. let me simplify: before you is a pile of boards and nails. what is necessary to build a hut out of those? - the will to do it, - the strength, - the time, - and an idea of what kind of hut you want to build. now look at a car consisting of 10.000 pieces? what do you need to create that? more of the above: - more tenacious will - more power - more time - a more specific plan a space shuttle? more of the above. what do you need to create a supercomputer consisting of roughly 15 billion pieces, 300.000 miles of cable, gazillions of random access and long term storage memory, water cooled, weighing 3 pounds / 1.5 kg? (I'm talking about the human brain.) what do you need to arrive at a product like that? nothing - and long time periods? no. not according to the established laws of science. you need more of the above: greater willpower, more energy, more time..., you get the drift. since matter by itself is not self-organizing, who told it to organize the way it does?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tovarish @ Jan. 24 2003,04:49)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Sam Samson @ Jan. 23 2003,23:43)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">just like two fairminded students of algebra and arithmetic will inevitably arrive at the conclusion that 1+1=2. or do you think that's relative too?<span id='postcolor'> Well...actually....sort of! I remember one Algebra and Geometry teacher who once showed our class "mathematical proof" that 1+1=1, and dared us to disprove it. For a full 75 minute period we couldn't, so he finally showed us a stuble flaw in the formula. Too bad that at an after-graduation camping trip I fed my remaining high-school notes to the bonfire, I know I had that one written down somewhere .<span id='postcolor'> let me pick up what tovarish said: the truthlike appearance of a falsehood! one wrong hypothesis ( H=0, not H=1 ), one wrong switch in the railroad system, can throw a whole theory way off. and evolution theory is a large conglomerate of hypotheses. one hypothesis is many times just a sub-hypothesis of another one. calculating the veracity-probability (VP) of such a complex theory as evolution... I'd say you'd arrive at something like VP < 10 raised to the power of -1000.

look, you floosiedoosiewoosies: the president's party just won by a landslide in the november elections, this being only the second or third time in 153 years. normally the president's party loses seats, like it did during clinton's tenure. count the last national elections to be the belated nod for the prez and his policies by a previously sceptical populace. now DON'T give me that whine about bush being an illegitimate any more. EVER.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Jan. 23 2003,23:31)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Everybody has an agenda. At least theirs does not involve killing a lot of people.<span id='postcolor'> well, why is it so out of the question that the leaders of the anglo-saxon world are trying to forestall just that? the killing of thousands? if we just fold up now and go home without removing saddam, mideast radicals of all stripes will feel they got their way: they'll figure the west is divided, decandent and weak. then they'll do again what everybody here seems to be scared witless of: they'll go on killing thousands IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. (osama: "take that mr rogers!") they proved that they don't have any qualms about that. your backing down won't change that. they don't understand your love of peace and your great moral superiority over W. they'll think you're weak and will despise you for it. more planes in skyscrapers, more ricin-attacks? do you want that?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Bernadotte @ Jan. 23 2003,01:02)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Sam Samson @ Jan. 22 2003,23:27)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">MY perception of the truth is original and far from handed down/institutionalized.<span id='postcolor'> </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Sam Samson @ Aug. 28 2002,00:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">...something good about God....<span id='postcolor'> Uh-huh. Â All 60,000 of you singing in unison about how original YOUR perceptions of truth are. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (Can you spot Sam? Â He's the original one.)<span id='postcolor'> a little touchy, are we, eh? so you still are with fatah after all. balsh clearly doesn't know why he's laughing, but watch out for bernie, he's got a looong memory, not forgetting - and finding! - what I wrote half a year ago. compliment. (just make sure you don't forget the stuff I wrote.) well, about your scorn of individual originality... reality check --- logic kicking in: if more 1 person arrives at the truth, what is so strange about it? if the truth is really that, more than one person will arrive at it sooner or later. at least creative thinkers. just like two fairminded students of algebra and arithmetic will inevitably arrive at the conclusion that 1+1=2. or do you think that's relative too? :o :o :o :o :o genes... renegade: judging from the pic in your avatar you're a genetic mutant, perhaps foreshadowing the next step of evolution: homo caput mortuum. I believe in degeneration, btw, not evolution. the whole thing is a hoax. remember the piltdown man? from nothing comes nothing, or am I seeing this wrong? maybe some of the moral fundamentalists among us could enlighten me about the evolution of morality and conscience out of premordial slime?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Bernadotte @ Jan. 22 2003,10:23)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Sam Samson @ Jan. 21 2003,21:o9)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">how do you get back out of that - doubtlessly subliminal - self-weaved choke-hold your thoughts have on your perception of the real truth?<span id='postcolor'>I know... Trade it all in for an institutionalised choke-hold on your perception of the real truth. <span id='postcolor'> MY perception of the truth is original and far from handed down/institutionalized. otherwise I'd hardly be hanging around here talking about it. I'd be settling into the comfort zone large institutions usually provide. btw, are you still with fatah?

this is one busy thread! interesting where you guys get your info, greenleft.xyz not that I'm really amazed, mind you. btw, did you know that the recent anti-anti-terror demonstrations in DC were sponsored by the communist workers world party? that's the entity behind a.n.s.w.e.r I heard it was great. narco-terrorist spokesmen spoke..., an imam called for the bringing down of bush-cheney-rumsfeld (the "real" axis of evil.) then the field chanted "allahu akbar." another brilliant speaker, malik zulu sabazz, said that in his view george washington and rudy giuliani are the real terrorists, not bin laden. democrats rangel and conyers called for a reintroduction of the draft, so all american families would feel the pain and share in the sacrifice. (an obvious attempt to whipping the populace into a frenzy.) seems you anti-anti-terror guys here are in good company.

clarification: I'll have to say that I believe a person is born innocent, which qualifies as good in the context of my worldview. but every person arrives at the age of accountability sooner or later, usually around age 9 to 12, and invariably does something evil, knowing full well, that the act is bad. in that moment something dies in that person. it is sort of like a personal fall. subsequently an inner development downward - a moral deterioration - sets in, unbeknownst to the person - he might actually think he's merely coming of age and losing his naiveté. truth is: the person is becoming bad. the world suddenly looks colder than it used to. the person knows what is good, but doesn't have the desire or the energy to do it; he or she actually finds him- or herself frequently doing wrong things, totally unable to stop himself - but doesn't want to own up to his or her helplessness in the matter, of course. so that person starts to make excuses and finds scapegoats for his shortcomings, rather than taking responsibility, which would be a step towards personal liberty. all those conflicting thoughts coming from the conscience of such a person - affirmations of good, rejections of those affirmations, consciousness of guilt, desire for innocence, denials of guilt, excuses , etc - weave a tangled web, in which somebody can get so caught up, that in his striving for moral equilibrium - innocence, actually - a person in the end works himself into such absurd notions as "good is bad" and vice versa, or that good is altogether relative. (indeed helped by the "social conditioning" many of us constantly refer to.) how do you get back out of that - doubtlessly subliminal - self-weaved choke-hold your thoughts have on your perception of the real truth? I see that many suffer from inner ailments, sublime and slick as soap; there are repressed angers, nebulous feelings of bondage, but folks have no clue as to how to get rid of them. MY answer is easy: accept God as a reality, and acknowledge that you're not perfect - I mean, just say it! accept that you need a guideline for your life. then accept that God's Word - by that I mean the bible - is true, and use it as your guide. the effect, in my experience, is... liberating. by the way: the first words the devil said in the bible are: "has God really said...?" (Genesis 3, 1.) he questioned God's Word. what are you doing?

nope, buddy. the poison gas was created in a german-furnished laboratory. I think they even gave them the dogs to test the installation. ...there was something like that in libya too, wasn't there? why, if not for disarming and trying to bring stability into the region would the US get involved in anything like a conquest of iraq with its subsequent occupation and the responsibilities that brings with it? oil? come on! think again. it's not about oil, for crying out loud. if it were, we could buy it from him real cheap. saddam is more than eager to buy the west off, as his deals with france and russia clearly show, if we would just let him go on and tinker with his various weapons programs. the mid-east is a snakepit, and it's not the US' fault. but I believe the US would take its responsibility to nation-build serious, if it were in the situation of having to care for that people. it worked with japan. US policy even helped make friends out of germany and france, with their formerly "inheritable enmity." it recreated europe in its image, ushering in the greatest period of freedom and prosperity that continent has ever seen. but I admit... the mideast might prove to be a toughie. the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled is much greater down there.