Outside of fly-by-night evangelist speakers, I can assure you this is not the case. Being in the ministry is not lucrative...
GOP Candidates Back Off From Signing Pledge that Praises Slavery
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Outside of fly-by-night evangelist speakers, I can assure you this is not the case. Being in the ministry is not lucrative...
I never said tax increases always work.
Success is obviously less common than failure in human endeavor.
However
Life is a gamble and risk can be rewarding so it can be construed as cowardly not to try something this time because things don't always work as expected.
No guts no glory.
So compassion for the sick and lame only?
Everybody else is on their own then.
I thought personal salvation was supposed to be earned by some selflessness.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Where does it say that the church gets to steal your tithe, right out of your paycheck?
It's voluntary.
I knew you wouldn't understand the difference between God and government.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Still being argumentative, I see. You really want to pick nits over this stuff? Show me where I said 'only.'
Salvation can't be earned. It's amusing to see someone who has never read the Bible try to mock what it says, because you clearly don't know what it says.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
How about when you see that it fails time after time, in country after country?
What then?
You're a simpleton if you still think it can work.
But hey, why don't we do an experiment.
Next time you do your taxes, don't take any deductions and see if that makes your household more profitable.
Come on man; sack up.
Life is a gamble and risk can be rewarding so it can be construed as cowardly not to try something this time because things don't always work as expected.
No guts no glory.
No, but your argument was premised on that assumption.
Without that premise, the argument that Bush's tax rate cuts contributed to the deficit is worthless.
cammerfe
Dedicated LVC Member
ford nut
Local nut case
Never said it did, but it does advocate to tithe correct?
I do understand to keep God out of government.
Something Michele Bachmann struggles with.
Hopefully it will be her undoing.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Actually, you did say it. You tried to equate tithing with the government confiscating tax money from our checks without our permission. That dog won't hunt.
God commands us to tithe out of gratitude for giving us the breath and ability to earn a living and out of recognition that all we have comes from Him. In return for tithing, He promises to bless us.
This has nothing to do with what these big megachurches do with their tithe money, such as erecting huge shiny buildings while neglecting their members' needs, something that personally disgusts me.
FYI - I tithe to my Dad's ministry, not to a big church. Tithing is a personal choice and reflects a person's relationship with God.
Before you start snarking about the Bible, you'd best learn what you're talking about.
Ah, so you're running from your own trolling post and back to topic, eh?
That's a new one, but not surprising.
Don't worry - Rick Perry will defeat her and then MaObama.
ford nut
Local nut case
Nope.
Say or advocate to tithe, which leads to corruption as we all have seen.
Members or any person less fortunate?
Don't they help the poor, or just members?
Nope
I can stick on topic, can you?
Does your fathers ministry help the poor?
Or just members?
As far as knowing the bible, you know better then that foss.
I know about the book.
I'm not trying to mock the Bible, I only critisize those who use it for their own advancement, a sentiment you purport to share based on your megachurch comments.
Fossten - forget Mark 12?
I figured you would like Perry - any man who organizes a prayer meeting using gubernatorial letterhead and staff seems to be your kind of guy - and the group he chose to fund his little prayer meeting - why the American Family Association, who believes that the First amendment really only applies to Christians - their 'sort' of Christians at that...
Middle America sort of likes the First - I don't think that they will vote for someone who is so closely associated with a group that wants to dismantle it.
Perry and Bachmann are both religious zealots - something Middle America avoids like the plague...
And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words.
And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?
Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.
And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar's.
And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.
And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?
Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.
And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto him, Caesar's.
And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.
I figured you would like Perry - any man who organizes a prayer meeting using gubernatorial letterhead and staff seems to be your kind of guy - and the group he chose to fund his little prayer meeting - why the American Family Association, who believes that the First amendment really only applies to Christians - their 'sort' of Christians at that...
Middle America sort of likes the First - I don't think that they will vote for someone who is so closely associated with a group that wants to dismantle it.
Perry and Bachmann are both religious zealots - something Middle America avoids like the plague...
So, I assume you think Kathleen Sebelius (head of Obama's HHS) is also a "religious zealot" for organizing and attending prayer breakfasts as Governor of Kansas.
The New Yorker is very good at eloquently stating non sequitors that confirm liberal bias.
there are just as many or more logical arguements against, so we'll throw that out.
[quote="shagdrum]Not everything can be proven empirically and to demand "evidence" for materialism is to demonstrate an ignorance of what materialism is.[/quote]
i think you're confused. i wasn't demanding evidence of materialism from you.
seems you're the one who doesn't understand it.
i was looking for any convincing evidence for the supernatural. just as philsophically logical arguements can be made in science, it is then backed up by experimental proof. that is all i asked for.
ANY experimental proof. if you can make a "logical" arguement, then you can take it to the next step.
using fosstens timescale, thats better than 6000 years to come up with something. anything. discovery institute has been at it long enough.
don't worry. i won't hold my breath waiting.
Correct, and they undermine your argument.
Which, again, assumes materialism. Without that assumption, there is NO justification for the standard of empirical judgement that you constantly attempt to confine the debate to.
Not all logical/philosophical arguments can be backed up with empirical proof. In fact, the majority of them can't. This is not because the empirical evidence disproves them but because the very nature of the topics in question negates the possibility of empirical or "experimental" proof on those topics.
There are limits to science and the scientific method.
Oh, as far as everyone here stroking their ego by demonizing a woman as "stupid", consider this...
August is upon us, beaches beckon and Michele Bachmann has set the self-improvement bar high. She recently told The Wall Street Journal, “When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring von Mises.” The congresswoman may be the first person ever to dribble sun lotion on the section of Ludwig von Mises’s “Human Action” wherein the Austrian economist (1881-1973) discussed “the formal and aprioristic character of praxeology.”
I seriously doubt anyone in this thread would find it easy to keep up with Mises' writings. If Bachmann was anywhere near as "stupid" as is being implied here, she likely would not be able to grasp Mises' writings at all (as I suspect most of the people mocking her here are unable to do). Here is an example of his writings...The elements of social cognition are abstract and not reducible to any concrete images that might be apprehended by the senses. To make them easier to visualize one likes to have recourse to metaphorical language. For some time the biological metaphors were very popular. There were writers who overworked this metaphor to ridiculous extremes. It will suffice to cite the name of Lilienfeld. [1]
Today the mechanistic metaphor is much more in use. The theoretical basis for its application is to be found in the positivist view of social science. Positivism blithely waved aside everything which history and economics taught. History, in its eyes, is simply no science; economics a special kind of metaphysics. In place of both, Positivism postulates a social science which has to be built up by the experimental method as ideally applied in Newtonian physics. Economics has to be experimental, mathematical and quantitative. Its task is to measure, because science is measurement. Every statement must be open to verification by facts.
Every proposition of this positivist epistemology is wrong.
The social sciences in general and economics in particular cannot be based on experience in the sense in which this term is used by the natural sciences. Social experience is historical experience. Of course every experience is the experience of something passed. But what distinguishes social experience from that which forms the basis of the natural sciences is that it is always the experience of a complexity of phenomena. The experience to which the natural sciences owe all their success is the experience of the experiment. In the experiments the different elements of change are observed in isolation. The control of the conditions of change provides the experimenter with the means of assigning to each effect its sufficient cause. Without regard to the philosophical problem involved he proceeds to amass "facts." These facts are the bricks which the scientist uses in constructing his theories. They constitute the only material at his disposal. His theory must not be in contradiction with these facts. They are the ultimate things.
The social sciences cannot make use of experiments. The experience with which they have to deal is the experience of complex phenomena. They are in the same position as acoustics would be if the only material of the scientist were the hearing of a concerto or the noise of a waterfall. It is nowadays fashionable to style the statistical bureaus laboratories. This is misleading. The material which statistics provides is historical, that means the outcome of a complexity of forces. The social sciences never enjoy the advantage of observing the consequences of a change in one element only, other conditions being equal.
It follows that the social sciences can never use experience to verify their statements. Every fact and every experience with which they have to deal is open to various interpretations. Of course, the experience of a complexity of phenomena can never prove or disprove a statement in the way in which an experiment proves or disproves. We do not have any historical experience whose import is judged identically by all people. There is no doubt that up to now in history only nations which have based their social order on private ownership of the means of production have reached a somewhat high stage of welfare and civilization. Nevertheless, nobody would consider this as an incontestable refutation of socialist theories. In the field of the natural sciences there are also differences of opinion concerning the interpretation of complex facts. But here freedom of explanation is limited by the necessity of not contradicting statements satisfactorily verified by experiments. In the interpretation of social facts no such limits exist. Everything could be asserted about them provided that we are not confined within the bounds of principles of whose logical nature we intend to speak later. Here however we already have to mention that every discussion concerning the meaning of historical experience imperceptibly passes over into a discussion of these principles without any further reference to experience. People may begin by discussing the lesson to be learnt from an import duty or from the Russian Soviet system; they will very quickly be discussing the general theory of interregional trade or the no less pure theory of socialism and capitalism.
The impossibility of experimenting means concomitantly the impossibility of measurement. The physicist has to deal with magnitudes and numerical relations, because he has the right to assume that certain invariable relations between physical properties subsist. The experiment provides him with the numerical value to be assigned to them. In human behavior there are no such constant relations, there is no standard which could be used as a measure and there are no experiments which could establish uniformities of this type.
What the statistician establishes in studying the relations between prices and supply or between supply and demand is of historical importance only. If he determines that a rise of 10 per cent in the supply of potatoes in Atlantis in the years between 1920 and 1930 was followed by a fall in the price of potatoes by 8 per cent, he does not say anything about what happened or may happen with a change in the supply of potatoes in another country or at another time. Such measurements as that of elasticity of demand cannot be compared with the physicist's measurement, e.g., specific density or weight of atoms. Of course everybody realizes that the behavior of men concerning potatoes and every other commodity is variable. Different individuals value the same things in a different way, and the valuation changes even with the same individual with changing conditions. We cannot categorize individuals in classes which react in the same way, and we cannot determine the conditions which evoke the same reaction. Under these circumstances we have to realize that the statistical economist is an historian and not an experimenter. For the social sciences, statistics constitutes a method of historical research.
In every science the considerations which result in the formulation of an equation are of a non-mathematical character. The formulation of the equation has a practical importance because the constant relations which it includes are experimentally established and because it is possible to introduce specific known values in the function to determine those unknown. These equations thus lie at the basis of technological designing; they are not only the consummation of the theoretical analysis but also the starting point of practical work. But in economics, where there are no constant relations between magnitudes, the equations are void of practical application. Even if we could dispose of all qualms concerning their formulation we would still have to realize that they are without any practical use.
Today the mechanistic metaphor is much more in use. The theoretical basis for its application is to be found in the positivist view of social science. Positivism blithely waved aside everything which history and economics taught. History, in its eyes, is simply no science; economics a special kind of metaphysics. In place of both, Positivism postulates a social science which has to be built up by the experimental method as ideally applied in Newtonian physics. Economics has to be experimental, mathematical and quantitative. Its task is to measure, because science is measurement. Every statement must be open to verification by facts.
Every proposition of this positivist epistemology is wrong.
The social sciences in general and economics in particular cannot be based on experience in the sense in which this term is used by the natural sciences. Social experience is historical experience. Of course every experience is the experience of something passed. But what distinguishes social experience from that which forms the basis of the natural sciences is that it is always the experience of a complexity of phenomena. The experience to which the natural sciences owe all their success is the experience of the experiment. In the experiments the different elements of change are observed in isolation. The control of the conditions of change provides the experimenter with the means of assigning to each effect its sufficient cause. Without regard to the philosophical problem involved he proceeds to amass "facts." These facts are the bricks which the scientist uses in constructing his theories. They constitute the only material at his disposal. His theory must not be in contradiction with these facts. They are the ultimate things.
The social sciences cannot make use of experiments. The experience with which they have to deal is the experience of complex phenomena. They are in the same position as acoustics would be if the only material of the scientist were the hearing of a concerto or the noise of a waterfall. It is nowadays fashionable to style the statistical bureaus laboratories. This is misleading. The material which statistics provides is historical, that means the outcome of a complexity of forces. The social sciences never enjoy the advantage of observing the consequences of a change in one element only, other conditions being equal.
It follows that the social sciences can never use experience to verify their statements. Every fact and every experience with which they have to deal is open to various interpretations. Of course, the experience of a complexity of phenomena can never prove or disprove a statement in the way in which an experiment proves or disproves. We do not have any historical experience whose import is judged identically by all people. There is no doubt that up to now in history only nations which have based their social order on private ownership of the means of production have reached a somewhat high stage of welfare and civilization. Nevertheless, nobody would consider this as an incontestable refutation of socialist theories. In the field of the natural sciences there are also differences of opinion concerning the interpretation of complex facts. But here freedom of explanation is limited by the necessity of not contradicting statements satisfactorily verified by experiments. In the interpretation of social facts no such limits exist. Everything could be asserted about them provided that we are not confined within the bounds of principles of whose logical nature we intend to speak later. Here however we already have to mention that every discussion concerning the meaning of historical experience imperceptibly passes over into a discussion of these principles without any further reference to experience. People may begin by discussing the lesson to be learnt from an import duty or from the Russian Soviet system; they will very quickly be discussing the general theory of interregional trade or the no less pure theory of socialism and capitalism.
The impossibility of experimenting means concomitantly the impossibility of measurement. The physicist has to deal with magnitudes and numerical relations, because he has the right to assume that certain invariable relations between physical properties subsist. The experiment provides him with the numerical value to be assigned to them. In human behavior there are no such constant relations, there is no standard which could be used as a measure and there are no experiments which could establish uniformities of this type.
What the statistician establishes in studying the relations between prices and supply or between supply and demand is of historical importance only. If he determines that a rise of 10 per cent in the supply of potatoes in Atlantis in the years between 1920 and 1930 was followed by a fall in the price of potatoes by 8 per cent, he does not say anything about what happened or may happen with a change in the supply of potatoes in another country or at another time. Such measurements as that of elasticity of demand cannot be compared with the physicist's measurement, e.g., specific density or weight of atoms. Of course everybody realizes that the behavior of men concerning potatoes and every other commodity is variable. Different individuals value the same things in a different way, and the valuation changes even with the same individual with changing conditions. We cannot categorize individuals in classes which react in the same way, and we cannot determine the conditions which evoke the same reaction. Under these circumstances we have to realize that the statistical economist is an historian and not an experimenter. For the social sciences, statistics constitutes a method of historical research.
In every science the considerations which result in the formulation of an equation are of a non-mathematical character. The formulation of the equation has a practical importance because the constant relations which it includes are experimentally established and because it is possible to introduce specific known values in the function to determine those unknown. These equations thus lie at the basis of technological designing; they are not only the consummation of the theoretical analysis but also the starting point of practical work. But in economics, where there are no constant relations between magnitudes, the equations are void of practical application. Even if we could dispose of all qualms concerning their formulation we would still have to realize that they are without any practical use.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
What's your point? Are you about to raise a straw man here, that I'm advocating not paying taxes? Good luck with that. You might want to think about the definition of the word 'render.'
His religious denomination or faith doesn't matter to me a bit. I'd vote for an atheist if I thought he espoused conservative, American values. And I'd vote AGAINST a Baptist if he was like, say, Jimmy Carter. But this raises another question: Does it bother you that Obama claims to be a Christian, and went to a racist church for 20 years, and admits that he prays for God's help in making decisions?
Oh, but we can't talk about that, NOR can we talk about Obama's record (you won't see him running on it, I guarantee it).
Let's try to destroy the GOP candidate because there is no other way Obama can win, right fox?
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
No, tithing doesn't lead to corruption. You are unable to support that logical leap. Sin leads to corruption. Tithing leads to blessings from God, and I can attest to that personally.
Objection, argumentative? Who is 'they' that you are referring to here? I was being hypothetical.
Yes it does. Next question.
Knowing 'about' something isn't the same as knowing something. But thanks for admitting you have a very thin Biblical knowledge base.
Today's unnecessary self inflicted hot dog campaign photo !
Did she just blow her campaign LOL!
Getting your picture taken like this in a campaign calls into question
your common sense, not to mention your ability to get elected…
And Marcus, well talk about a freudian slip
Look at that self loathing face.
Truth or Dare?
Do I hear a turkey being pardoned?
Monty Python rules!
I'd put my money on Michelle in a contest.
"See Marcus, this is how you do it"
ROTFLMAO
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Bachmann's gaffe is so rude looking it blows Obama's away!
It's too rude to run in the MSM but passed around on the internet it is getting the yuk yuks it deserves.
Now that Perry has entered the race she's finished anyways.
She comes in like a rock star Lady Gaga, robotically repeats her non sequetorial talking points and answers then scoots.
Perry works the tables like a wedding groom and talks to people.
He's a seasoned pro with some accomplishment (he can claim) who already looks presidential.
Perry's an evangelical but nobody is asking him if he's a flake so he may be the candidate with the right measure.
Obama's away!It's too rude to run in the MSM but passed around on the internet it is getting the yuk yuks it deserves.
Now that Perry has entered the race she's finished anyways.
She comes in like a rock star Lady Gaga, robotically repeats her non sequetorial talking points and answers then scoots.
Perry works the tables like a wedding groom and talks to people.
He's a seasoned pro with some accomplishment (he can claim) who already looks presidential.
Perry's an evangelical but nobody is asking him if he's a flake so he may be the candidate with the right measure.