Slowbalt

1: Does God exist? If yes, why do you think so? If no, why do you think not? I could not say whether God exists or not because there is no way to be 100% certain but we can talk in probabilities. I do not believe in the Christian God or any other anthropomorphic god that intervenes in daily life. I believe in a life force or maybe an interconnectedness of everything. Does anyone really believe in Zeus or Wotan or Thor? Why not? 1(a): Can the existence of God be proven or disproven scientifically or logically? Not with 100% certainty but again, we can talk of what is more likely or not. I can not disprove the existence of the tooth fairy or leprechauns but there is very little evidence of their existence and one could rationally come to the idea that they are unlikely to exist. 2: How do you think the universe was created? (i.e., Not just the big bang, but what cause it) It is very difficult to speculate on what happened before the ability to measure started. From my understand of scientific literature we have been able to measure back to a few milliseconds after "Big Bang". Since we don't have/understand the ability to measure before, the possibilities are endless and we have no evidence that I am aware of swaying us one way or another. Personally I don't find it all that important who banged, or what banged as I don't see that causing any impact on my existence. 2(a): Is there a sound basis for the theory of intelligent design? There is a somewhat coherent logical argument that "God did it". This argument is already based on the premise that God exists so it is logically sound but the premise, imho is not supportable. 3: If God exists as an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being why does evil exist? I have never heard a valid explanation of this myself and I can't think of a way evil could exist with the benevolent and loving aspect of the Christian God. A couple questions to the forum: Can Free Will exist with the all knowing and all powerful God of the Christian bible? If God has the power to listen to prayers and take action on them, how is it moral for God to allow innocent people to be raped, amputated limbs not to grow back, and war not to end?

I want to become an eco terrorist when I grow up.

I'm headed there now. Just about to get onto 40 and the rain has stopped....for now, haha

Either that one or the Droid Bionic. Can't go wrong either way

This question doesn't really have any value to it as either way my child would be doing the "right" thing in your scenarios. I would actually prefer option 3 that says no because it is wrong and then explains WHY it is wrong and uses logic and reasoning to do this..... Before a child understands, they are simply reactive bags of flesh, interacting to stimulus with response. You seem to think that spanking is akin to "hitting" or "punching in the gut". It would seem that you may have a misunderstanding of how I use the term "spanking". A spank is a short term pain as a CONSEQUENCE to a questionable action. I am not saying that your methods are inferior or wrong, just that they are not the only way and spanking in the proper context is not only beneficial but preferential. My mom said that too:rolleyes: your kids WILL mess up and they WILL lie to you....this is a fact of our present culture. I do agree that trust and respect are very important, I disagree that fear and consequences are not important when used properly.

^^^^That's annoying. I have had ATT for a few years and I can honestly say it is the best cable(fiber) I have had. The speeds are awesome (up to 24mbps in Worthington). I liked TW when I had them but I would say go for ATT. I have also received great customer service as well as all kinds of free offers.

Tim is the hippie in a discussion, haha. I do not have kids because parenting is such an incredibly large responsibility and I am too selfish. I believe in spanking children, as well as teaching respect and open communication. Young children are exactly like young animals....in fact they ARE young animals. Spanking is a way of enforcing the "no" command. Once the child has been conditioned to it, the "no" can be just as effective without the spanking but sometimes might still need to be reinforced. It is very important to never punish a child out of anger , but only because they have done something deserving of punishment. Punishing out of anger is what promotes fear, rebellion, and possibly hatred. Anger punishment IMO would also be a crossover into abuse. This woman is obviously not the best parent and she is either lazy, uneducated or possibly both if she thinks the bible is going to parent her kid. Once a child begins to understand the order of things, they can begin to learn values and social protocol. Parenting skills are on the decline as our true values are more and more replaced with corporate values.

My grandma has had one of these for about 5 years and she hasn't had any major issues with it. It is a really cheap car though but if you are only looking for a beater, that seems like a decent price. I'd at least check into it.

I don't have television.

Maybe the one that you envision. Is there some fundamental reason why this cannot work? Check out this link and then we can be talking about the same idea of a resource based economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zeitgeist_Movement This doesn't seem like such a bad idea at all. Thoughts? Emotional outbursts?

It all depends on what you mean by "value" i guess. When it was on the gold standard it was at least related to an amount of tangible stuff. Before that we had coins of a certain amount of metal, and many other "placeholders". I'm not sure why you claim that money is the only way out of an agrarian society but even if it is that's not where we are right now so I don't see how that would stop us anyway. Money is needed for our current lifestyle because it is based on the monetary system. Why is it better to stay with the way it is rather than look for ways to change it? Is there nothing about how the system works that should be changed?

I'm not sure why you are taking this personally but I am trying to do my own research about different perspectives of money. No offense to you or anything. These are all your thoughts, not mine. These are all things that have happened but the key word is technology here. We currently have it and it has always been advancing and it will probably continue to do so. None of the things you mention need to depend on the monetary system and were created by technology. There are changes that would need to be made to lifestyle and culture over time to accommodate things, I would presume. Actually last week I traded home made sausage for home made beer. Not everyone needs corn, silly. I just used that as an example. Why do we need power companies anyways? You base your reason against something based on a hypothetical in the first place. Just interested in finding out how people feel about the monetary system and why it is beneficial( or isn't). No need for anyone to take anything personally.

I think this is somewhat subjective. People in power now have control over money. Look at how much people make on wall st. This require no hard work and little intelligence. As far as life in the past, sure there were items that we didn't have that benefit our life but it wasn't so bad. People where happier in general, had control of their lives, had clean water to drink, had non tainted food to eat, etc. I have no problem with acquiring money, I am just curious how people feel about the current system. You seem to view it as a "lesser evil" if I am understanding you correctly. You understand money has no real value and that this could crash at any time due to this but it is the best we have so why change it? Is this correct or am I out of the ballpark here?

I am not saying this is the best or the only way but why are you against this idea?

No, I was actually referring to a resource based economy. It would create a world very much different from the current US for sure. I am not referring to money backed by something but using the "something" in and of itself. It has been argued that money and now credit is simply the evolution of our trading system in that it is more convenient than carrying around bushels of corn and whatnot. My concern is that anything that has value because it represents something else of value is easily manipulated for the betterment of those that have control over this system. We managed to get by for quite some time before this system and I am just trying to get perspectives on how people view the current system and potentially what could feasibly replace it, if this is even wanted in the first place.

That was interesting but to elaborate I am not trying to make this a "White man keeping the colored man down" or anything like that. Just want to discuss money, where it comes from, who benefits from this, etc.

I somewhat feel that in our culture the banking system is very much like slavery. I say this because we are taught to value the "American Dream" to have a house, a car, kids, etc. In order to do these things most people need to take out loans. Healthcare is tied to the job you must work in order to make the payments so the people in general become less outspoken and more docile because their (and the rest of the family's) livelihood depend on that paycheck coming in. We are taught to value "owning" stuff and this keeps the economy afloat as things break or become old we buy new widgets to occupy ourselves and create a feeling of artificial happiness. Instead of being forced to work for the rich, white man, we are working for the rich white shareholders.

You want the real story of this kind of stuff? Watch it here for free: http://documentaryheaven.com/conspiracy-of-silence/ BTW this website is a great resource for just about anything you want to find out about.

Switch to VZW then! Haha, but seriously though I get dropped calls on 270 near sawmill every once in awhile but I think it's my phone as it's getting a bit long in the tooth. I use to drop calls like clockwork near 605 and morse rd though but I rarely drive that way now.

Thanks for putting this up as it is very straight forward with how things actually work behind the scenes. How do you feel about this system though? It works currently so is it beneficial to continue using it? Are the risks worth the benefits? Are the banks too powerful because of this? Any perceived problems with the system?

VZW upgrades the network more than any other carrier to my knowledge. IIRC last year was the first year that ATT spent more money on the network than VZW. The point though is that no matter how good a system is, there will be people taking advantage of it. If I just combine these, then you answer your own question. This is the way of things. No provider is perfect everywhere. I used to have ATT (Cingular at the time) and it wasn't bad but my GF's VZW cell got better reception out at national trails so I switched. I have been all over the country and very rarely have troubles and that's why I stay with VZW. Some carrier is usually better in a certain spot but in most metro areas they are usually all decent at least. I figured I would go ahead and step in since Brian gets butt hurt when someone breaks down his posts!

I am not doubting that. The point about the bank not having enough money to pay cash was a smaller point of the grand scheme here. That is that money only has value because we believe it does. There is no inherent value in money. The great depression was partially triggered by a run on the bank and what is stopping that from happening now? A resource based economy seems more "real" and helpful I guess. I am just looking at gauging how people feel about this. Think of it like this, you want to buy a house so you go to the bank and get a loan. You put up some collateral for this loan (usually the house itself). The bank does NOT take the money it has and gives it to you, it creates the money and gives you money that did not exist before. As you pay back this "loan" you are paying back interest which further creates money that doesn't exist. There is not enough money to pay back all the outstanding debts owed and there never will be. Bankruptcy and inflation are products of this system. Let's say something happens and you can no longer pay the mortgage on the house. Since it is collateral on the loan, the bank takes the house even though it has not "lost" anything! This same idea is also how the US and other countries operate in foreign countries. We loan a government monies. They can't pay it back so we take their resources instead. @Lt. Aldo Raine Yes, that is my car. I'm sure there is a point there somewhere though.

I was reading through another thread and stumbled upon a very interesting post by "Troublemaker".

I think you would be fine with that one. Like not Brian sort of said, Intel is better than AMD in general but AMD is not terrible or anything. Mine is an Intel dual core 2.0GHZ 1gb and I get along just fine so I would say go for it.

Intel chips generally perform better but depending on what you are doing with the computer. you may not even notice. To best answer your question it would be helpful to know what you do with the computer. Audio/ video editing/browsing/movies/etc?