ewsieg

I learned about 'soaking' today, which my guess was one Mormon teenager that convinced his naive girlfriend this was a thing or possibly just joked about it. The thread is pretty funny, yet you have a ton of "Miguy" type people that clearly think most Mormon teenagers do this and go to far with it. As the thread gets going, you tend to realize the joke is on the anti-religion folks that actually fall for this stuff, not on the story itself.

ok, so you're looking at an extremely high level. G2 was talking more about the chemistry of the brain. Psychologists would know less about that than Psychiatrist and even psychiatrist tend to know more about how different medicines can assist in dealing with mental illness, they would be considered experts in how certain drugs assist in dealing with mental illness, but even they are not in the labs producing the medicines in the first place as that's not their expertise. As for what G2 was talking about, how humans are able to hold and interpret thoughts and how our brain deals with them, psychologists might be good at helping a person understand those thoughts, but they aren't delving into how the chemical reactions inside the brain are related, if at all, to how a person deals with things.

They are not brain activity experts, that would be more a neuroscientist.

So a person arguing against the belief in a God is using Psychology to refute Chemistry? This doesn't pass the smell taste.

That certainly is the case with some people. I don't think I know anyone like this, but I do see them on TV/Twitter. Well, I suspect my daughters catechism director is like this but I haven't talked to her enough to know for sure. I do know folks like you though, who can't bypass any chance to mock someone that embraces religion. Unless I missed it, I see 5 or so pages of most folks being ambivalent to religion. Seems like myself and Oblong are the biggest "pro-religion" posters in this thread and we both kind of said we can take it or leave it, but see it benefitting others.

One thing I always do love to see is people that claim religion is the root of all evil and the problem with the world is that they complain how it leads to such horrible intolerance. Yet those that are so steadfast in these beliefs, tend to be some of the most intolerable people, ridiculing others regardless if it effects them in any way.

For reference, Catholicism supports theistic evolution In short, the belief of the Catholic church is that God is the originator and the more we learn about science, it will only teach us about how God did it.

I don't think this is a legitimate depiction, Jesus was around about 2000 years ago, dinosaurs were like 6000-8000 years ago. Math doesn't add up.

What?!?!?! Next thing you'll tell me the party that supports the old, sick, and women had a party official steal from an old women and her Dem AG friend ignored a firewall she setup to make it look like she was being ethical in order to help push this official into a judge position with the help of her Dem governor friend.

I would gather that depends on who the PM is, they do meet weekly and discuss all matters. This would actually be more akin to sending Jane Hartley over to the UK, who doesn't have the authority or ability to set policy and we have no idea if those that do have that power listen to her.

This is kind of like arguing that US money has no value since there is no gold standard anymore. The crown is still the head of state, thus it's ambassador.

There is an argument there is no Netanyahu without Hamas, but there still would be Hamas without Netanyahu. There were legitimate chances at a two state solution that Netanyahu was not a part of and also did not happen at no fault of the Israeli's. Netanyahu and his supporters pointed to what Hamas said is their goal, to eliminate Israel, pointed to the failed two state policy attempts rejected by Palestine, and sold to his supporters that if you can't reason with them, you need to be strong to ensure they can't conquer you. At a high level, it's legitimate reasoning. What comes after is the issue with Israel. That Netanyahu gov't wants to remain in power, it must to save Israel is their thinking, so then it helps prop up Hamas because it ensures it's people are reminded of the enemy. This only ensures the fighting. Israel isn't clean in this situation either and nothing wrong with pointing that out, but it's still not comparable to what Hamas has and would like to do to Israel.

You can certainly make the argument though that while 1967 was a pre-emptive attack from Israel, they were responding to attacks on them. In war, you lose or gain land. They gained a lot. To achieve peace, they gave back land to Egypt and Syria. Even though no peace was offered they even walked out of Gaza. Settlers in the West Bank were actually a first line of defense. If no peace is offered, why not just use what you already took? Again, simplistic/high level view, but it once again is not comparable to what Hamas has done, whenever they get a chance too.

Some certainly are, but many on the left in this country seem to take Hamas out of the equation and point to just what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. To say it's a nuanced and complex situation still does not give it justice. I'm not a fan of what Israel has done in some of the disputed territories, but at the same time, Israel is the one that has been consistently attacked and has still given land back over the last 60 or so years. They have sat at the table and agreed to a 2 state solution, they have been willing to accept peace, the other side hasn't.

Both sides suck, i'll give you that, but it's like comparing Trump to Biden. One side is way suckier. Israel is still in a vengeful response mode and is still taking steps to act like a westernized military. They are not perfect, nor is anyone claiming that. There has been walk back on some statements by the press and Biden about beheaded babies, but there are still first responders that claim they saw it. As for burned babies, that has not been walked back, the only thing is that officially we do not know yet if they were killed and later burned, or burned alive. Entire families were burned alive in their safe rooms which I guess you could argue means they weren't burned alive as flames didn't cause their death, just the heat from their house on fire around them. When one side claims they only killed children and killed and raped women, but is defended with a c'mon, don't accuse them of beheading or burning them alive, they're not savages....you're not talking about a moral equivalency. As a whole I expect IDF soldiers will spend their lives seeking forgiveness for innocent lives they took, or simply lives they took, Hamas fighters will just be wondering when they'll be able to strike again.

My daughter is in her confirmation year as a Catholic. The church she's at, because of the priest IMO, has moved into the culture wars and she hates catechism and going to church as a result. She's telling me she doesn't believe in God and I can't tell her she's wrong as I don't really have any strong opinion either. I want her to feel apart of something bigger though and a sense of community which I do think the church can provide. Although, maybe not the one we're currently in. After communion I speak to "God", I'm not sure if I'm actually speaking to him, speaking to myself which may contain a bit of God (as in all of us), or simply acknowledging the awesomeness of our situation in this universe, whatever it is, it gives me peace. Just this past weekend our priest talked about the 'truth', how the truth is always the truth and it can't be changed. Surprisingly he went after straight people living together outside of marriage and not gays which was a nice change of pace. In his truth, we can't be good people and get to heaven, you have to believe in God, follow all commandments and when you waiver ask for his forgiveness to get there. If God doesn't care about the person I am, and more about if I sufficiently apologized to him, pretty sure I don't want in anyway. Afterwards we went to lunch and she asked why the church would care about two people living together. This is where I defended the church though and tried to explain that maybe the reasoning behind the churches thoughts may not be based on fact, it doesn't mean that they are completely in the wrong. I let her know that statistically, most studies show living together before marriage leads to increased divorce rates and gave her a few reasons why that might be. ....and yes, even though i'm Catholic, Joseph absolutely banged his wife prior to her "magically" getting pregnant.

At some point, after he secures the nomination and before the general, Trump will go through a 2-3 week stint where people will say 'he looks presidential' and he'll focus on some serious issues talk. He will go right back off of the rails, but he'll take some folks on the fence that get worried it's all about retribution and are hesitant to vote for him with him though.

Transporting all of those bodies can get expensive when gas is high. At least he was smart enough to buy a diesel. This is 2023 and everyone listens to true crime podcasts now. Often they aren't caught until they make a mistake and bring unwanted attention on themselves. I figure another week or two before someone uncovers he's not Markwayne, but actually .... Ba ba ba ba baaaaaa .... Mark Wayne Mullins.

Agreed and i've been up front about this before, cheating on taxes and lying about where they live for political gain is where I hope we can go back to with our political candidates. You know, the good 'ole days.

battlecreekenquirer.com/story/news/2014/04/18/michigan-rep-rashida-tlaib-pays-back-property-taxes-makes-donations-to-charity/7893289/ She claimed it was a mistake that she made for 5 years in a row. She only legally had to pay back 3 years, which she did. Outside of this, her own father claimed she didn't live in the house she claimed she lived in so she could be eligible to run for a district as a state rep. That would have tax implications as well.

NK would be happy to do it, assuming they were paid enough to do so. Of course they would just start building them again. I just looked it up, looks like part of it was reaffirming an agreement to denuclearize the peninsula that Kim made with South Korea in 2018. For reference: nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/full-text-u-s-north-korea-agreement-signed-trump-kim-n882246

you forgot tax evader.

To be fair, I didn't object to that either although I understood the argument against it. There was a lot of behind the scenes work for China/US to even determine if meeting was worth it. That's your traditional foreign policy standard process. Trump's was more on the fly. IIRC, we got an agreement out of Kim to remove nuclear weapons from all of Korea, although I have no idea if there was any 'bite' to that agreement or just something both could sign for popularity points. I do remember soldier remains were shipped back to the US, so there was still value in that meeting.

As one of the conservative voices on this forum, I'll readily acknowledge the D party is the party of hand outs, but I don't think poor people are better off with D policies. Maybe a little short term help, but long term, nah. Granted, I'll concede that argument is a tough one to make when the opposing party has changed it's fiscal policy from maintaining a strong economy to 'starving the beast (gov't)'.

Not that there are too many educated Trump voters, but if you run into one, don't bring up tarrifs. Most put in place by Trump are still in place under Biden.