Replies to post #82413 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[otraque]

Would you be shocked to find out that the strident moralist Bennett was an free-wheeling addicted gambler in Las Vegas as he moralized to all about him---and made a lot of bucks doing so--a great deal of which he lost in Vegas.
Would you be surprised that Limbaugh was heavily addicted to drugs as he denounced druggies.
Would you be surprised that the raging moralist O'Reilly made numerous ultra obscene phone calls to a woman who he could fire in a minute if he wished to.
These all part of the public record.
Woody Allen made a GREAT MOVIE called CRIMES and MISDEMEANORS, you should see it: but , on the otherhand, don't, as it would go right over your head.
Plus the writer, director is DAMNED, per your absolute conviction, and condemned to eternal hell-fire because he doesn't find the man Jesus as having to be accepted as his savior.
Your kind of Jesus i can see him salivating in anticipation of casting the Dalai Lama into eternal hellfire for not believing in him as his Savior(That the Dalai Lama is a clear cut Saint, is, of course, IRRELEVANT).
You know what, the Jesus you cultist preach is one mean vicious cruel Dude(can you handle the word "Dude?")
Also , for anyone to say unless you believe in me you is burnt toast is like maybe an egomaniac? Think so!
i don't think G-d is an egomaniac, i honestly can not conceive of any high being demanding belief in them in order to be saved.
If you bothered to do ANY scholarship regards how the Gospels came about, there be key significant bits there that , for reasons of building dogma, was put into the mouth of Jesus by writers writing long after the biologic life of Jesus had ended.
But any such searching and research would of course be SATAN tempting you, i suppose.
Know who Hans Kung is??
Great scholar, RC priest; he teaches, from decades of research , that Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew and he had no intention to found a religion--he truly believed the end was at hand.
Thinking and searching and studying the mystery of man, animals, and even bacteria, is fascinating.
As i like to say, we exist because of ALL life that preceded us.
The cat i pet and love its' kind was here long before my kind.
One can NOT own a cat without realizing it is EASILY as important to the Higher Power as man.
But then for you evolution is not a reality.
You would fight to destroy knowledge and enlightenment, and i ask why????
I say because you are AFRAID. Truth frightens you.
Max90 aka WellesLamont

[Zeev Hed]

Yayaa was not banned, just requested to stop spamming.

[goodluck]

I would be interested to see a comparison on divorce rates between "born again" Christians who believe the Bible and all others. I would be surprised if the bias were not strongly skewed to more divorces among the latter. I would be shocked to find that family values were more "observed" amongst the "blue" voters.

You're assuming that if two people remain married, their marriage is a "good" one. And that if two people get divorced, they don't have "family values."

Both Kerry and Bush were interviewed on the "Dr. Phil" show over the past couple of months. Kerry's interview focused on how he, his wife and daughters dealt with the divorce. By all accounts there, at least, they dealt with it very well. His first wife had to deal with depression and not liking the life that his political affairs made necessary. They split, but made sure that their daughters didn't suffer from the split. Teresa Heinz-Kerry said she went to more sporting and other events of Kerry's daughters than she ever did with her own three sons, because Kerry insisted that they go--he would fly back from Washington in order to attend. He was dedicated to making it work, as was his first wife.

I lived across the street from a family dedicated to the Bible. The husband ruled the family with an iron hand. His wife--who spoke with my wife and a couple of the other women on the block--was depressed and miserable, but followed his Christian beliefs that the husband was boss. She was utterly passive in the relationship. They moved around quite a bit, every two or three years, from what I could gather. He spanked his daughters with some regularity, teaching them that life was harsh (according to one daughter, who told this to my daughter in a matter of fact tone of voice). The children bore the marks of psychological beatings in their voices, manners, faces and body language.

You may respond by saying that this wasn't a "true" Christian upbringing. If so, I would agree. But the larger point here is that a family is not honkey dorey just because a divorce doesn't happen. Or that people don't have family values just because it does. One often doesn't know what happens behind the closed doors of our nuclear families.

[OrangeFluffyCat]

"In Texas, the divorce rate is 4.1 per thousand people; and the percent of people unmarried is 32.4 percent. In Massachusetts, the divorce rate is 2.4 per thousand and the percent unmarried is 26.8 percent. By Kurtz's Norwegian logic, if you want to save marriage, adopt Massachusetts values, not Texan ones. I think it's more complicated than that." (Sullivan could have chosen more alarming contrasts to Massachusetts, like Arkansas and Wyoming, where divorce rates average seven per thousand residents, a few points above the national average.)

A shortage of self-identified Catholics is not the reason why Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi regularly rack up divorce rates twice those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York. The best explanation is surprisingly straightforward and uncontroversial among people who study the social patterns. Northeasterners tend to have relatively high levels of household income and education, and these two social advantages are strongly associated with family stability. Northeasterners also tend to put off marriage until a later age, a habit likewise associated with lower divorce rates-and higher socioeconomic status. "These [markers] also happen to be the same characteristics that correlate with liberalism, which is why the low divorce rate in Massachusetts has to do with the fact that Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the union," says David Popenoe of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey. ("Social rootedness" is also often mentioned as discouraging divorce in places like New England, where people tend to be less transient.)

But don't take the US government's word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.

The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people."


Google it, you'll find all kinds of references. This isn't a new subject. I've seen studies back 10 years, and know it goes farther than that.

[punkle]

MLSOFT, while I do not know too many "born agains," there seems to be one constant in the ones I know: they have a very dark past. Alcoholism, drug addiction, and infidelity are constant themes before they decided to "find God" again. Some seem to stay the course with their new found hope and others eventually revert to old habits.

They generally are not very social people and seem to be one step away from going postal - yet they are always looking for more folks to join their cause.

I'm sure my experiences are the minority but they are what they are.