Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 7/23/04 09:58 PM, archdog wrote: i believe that banning or taking the users acount wont solve anything,its like saying that taking away guns and knives will stop violence

Yep... You're right. People will definitely find a way to write abusive reviews even while their account is gone...

There's no way it can help at all...

I suppose that means that you don't need knives or guns to stab and shoot people...

On a serious note, if taking away their power to do anything (let alone abuse) doesn't work, then what the hell would?

I think this system is good as is, Wade has sufficiently covered his ass by making a front page post about it every now and then, and everyone else is happy because they get whistle points.

Here's the back view and side view crammed into one picture

Here's my idea, the side view and top view are to come, as well as the folded out versions.

At 7/13/04 07:45 PM, TomFulp wrote:
Don't try to deposit with multiple accounts - it is easy to catch, and you will be disqualified!

I have a question here, my brother and I share an IP address. We have seperate computers but due to our internet set up we both share an IP address and have seperate accounts. I was wondering if I could tell you about this now so that if we both deposit we won't get screwed out of this contest needlessly. Anyway, I'll probably email you anyway just in case you guys don't see this.

At 7/12/04 10:02 AM, ImportRacer666 wrote: I'm still going to have to lean towards gel's idea. After all the talk that has been going on and all the different ideas, his is the only one that truly stands alone. Everyone else is still relying on the words and phrases (most of which make no sense at all). Gel's idea is original, intuitive, and easily recognizable just by glancing. My vote is still for Gel's idea.

I think his idea is good, but for a lot of people the difference between mild and extreme is not all that noticeable. It would be a little confusing. Nobody seems to be saying anything about what I've suggested though, so check out page 23 for my temperature based rating system, It is more picture based than word based (thermometers) and the words are just to supplement the pictures.

At 7/8/04 03:24 PM, PalmClease wrote: I think all these 9-17 year old gay kids are just kicking it in here to get abducted by some pervert priests.

Good call! now I'll make an equally intelligent statement: I think all these 14-21 year old straight kids are just kicking it in here to get randomly instant messaged by porn pushers. Don't be stupid, gay people are here for the same reason you are here.

Gay at age 9. BS

The reasoning here is outstanding...

My dad is dead I want a new daddy. BoooHooo. No reason to be a homo.

No it isn't, you seem to have missed that being homosexual is as a result of birth.

Glad I offended your royal gayness.

Since we're playing the insult game...

Your mother is a whore. I bet she cut herself when she found out she had you and judging by your "I hate the world attitude" I'd say her reluctance to abort your worthless fetus is the result of her Anal Bitch Christianity which she passed on to you. Your father sucks too, I'm guessing while he senselessly beat your lame mother for her inability to speak correctly after previous beatings over her ultimate stupidity he damaged you in the womb and when you came out strangled by your umbilical cord, without any blood flow to your already underdeveloped malnourished and deformed brain, you were instantly enslaved to the same crack addiction your dysfunctional parents suffered from.

On another note, you are fat, and I'm not surprised Gays bother you so much, they probably are more attractive to girls than you are. Your deep seated hatred could very well be the result of some fugly bitch wanting to go out with a known gay kid over you. It must really have burned you up to be rejected by someone who realized that a gay kid with no interest in women would be better than some fatassed, half-retarded, candidate for post-natal abortion.

Go start your own colony in canada. no one in america wants you here.

Same to you, Fucker.

Have a nice life :-)

</Flame>

At 7/8/04 03:10 PM, Andyroid wrote: To Evark

I suppose you are right it was wrong to assume I was superior
in any way, and saying things I probably shouldn't have.
I guess we should not really be bothered by what other people want to do with their lives. Thank you for showing me my faults.

I wouldn't say I showed you your faults, but more of the faults of your argument.

If you really mean this post sincerely then I'm happy to hear it; it means that you are more mature than about 90% of the people in this world in that you can admit when you are wrong (that 90% probably includes me)

If you mean this sarcastically, then next time leave more clear indications so I can respond angrily ;-)

At 7/9/04 10:58 PM, Evark wrote: You can use smiley's for each one...

-)
-|
-(
-0

I also threw together some quick symbols for this:

At 7/9/04 10:58 PM, Evark wrote: You can use some sort of a temperature bar type thing that factors in what the people right and tells you how scorching the flash is.

|+| Searing
|+| Hot
|+| Lukewarm
|+| Ice cold

I just threw this together in paint real quick to show what this would look like:

Well, I have two ideas, you can use smiley's for each one...

:-)
:-|
:-(
:-0

Or you can use some sort of a temperature bar type thing that factors in what the people right and tells you how scorching the flash is.

|+| Searing
|+| Hot
|+| Lukewarm
|+| Ice cold

At 7/8/04 02:39 PM, PalmClease wrote: AirSpiritX

You are 13 years old and think your gay. You claim to have known this at 9 years of age. Ever think that your mom and dad not getting along has led you to total and utter confusion.

Uh, it isn't that unrealistic. I'm pretty sure you knew at around age 9 or 10 that you liked girls. I know that when I saw my first sex scene without nudity at age 7 I said I wished the camera had moved down a little (to see the woman's breasts). Hell, my little cousin at age 4 saw something on HBO with naked women on it and said "Mommy, I like 'dem boobies." So yes, age 9 is an age where you can know whether or not you are gay.

Your 13 years old and confused. You can’t even vote on the topic yet you give your two cents.

While he cannot vote, which is true, he is not confused, his two cents show this quite clearly that he has one argument that he is sticking to. Calling someone confused is simply refusing to listen to their reasonable argument just because it was spoken better than yours but conflicts with your beliefs.

All I have to say about people being gay is, If it is love then its okay with me.

It is OK regardless of love being a factor or not. They should be allowed to have marriages just as corrupt as us heterosexuals have.

Come on your 13 years old. Live your life...(there is no way you even know yourself at age 13.) I mean you can’t even go pick up your boyfriend in a car.

I started dating my girlfriend at age 16, I had my permit but I couldn't go pick her up in a car. I know people who started dating at age 14 and dated for three years, all the way through being able to pick people up in a car. People do know themselves at age 13, they just don't know the world at age 13. Humans generally know themselves pretty fully at around age 6, and then ten years later they usually have had enough interaction with the world to know the world.

Don’t let your deadbeat dad affect your sexual preference.

That didn't affect his sexual preference at all, he knew he was gay before his father left, and considering he has lesbian parents I would say his father didn't leave because he was a deadbeat, but probably more realistic is that his father left because his mother was a lesbian and didn't want to be with his father any more.

Don’t care if I offend you, your 13 and need discipline.

You probably did offend him, I would take much offense if I was 13 and was being told I was wrong by someone older than me. This isn't about discipline, he can learn how to handle things on his own terms.

At 7/8/04 02:23 PM, Andyroid wrote:
What you said about " sex not being needed" is utterly and scientifically true, yet you probably lack the comprehension of the fact that seemingly the function of the male in almost every specie of animal is to MATE.

What's your point here. The purpose of Viagra was originally to help heart problems by allowing blood to flow better. It is now used differently. The purpose of every interstate highway in America is so that Military troops can move back and forth through the country. It is now used differently. The argument about sex between male and male or female and female being un natural is just a way to refuse to accept something different. Your argument is faulty anyway. The world is geared towards change and evolution... its how we got here, we evolved. Sex may have originated between male and female only, but now it is accepted between anybody, because we've evolved and now we know that that sometimes happens.

Yes, what you also said towards the churches was true also.
Yet be reminded that God did not intend for this to happen, yet people lack the common sense to see that.

Common sense has nothing to do with it. The people you say 'lack the common sense to see that' are people who do not believe in God, so they do not particularly care what he reportedly intended. I personally do not care what God intended at all, and the government should not care either due to laws that seperate church from state.

Gay sex or mariage for that matter really doesn't bother me.
I am truly honored to be in the presence of such knowledge of numbers!But remember that the other half of the people in the survey DO mean they love each other.

His point was not that Gays love each other more, it was just to discredit people who say that gay marriage shouldn't happen because of a higher chance for seperation.

Sure the companionship of the same sex is easier and somehow safer,

For gay people, yes... just like you and I are much more comfortable hugging members of the opposite sex.

yet the fatherhood AND motherhood towards the child is far more POWERFUL than the just motherhood or fatherhood.

Someone seems to say different, and I would be inclined to agree because he tends to cite more sources.

So the real message is that gay marriage can and will happen whether we like it or not.But only one parent figure can and will alter the child's mind to a bad or sometimes worse condition,concerning the determination of the same sex newlyweds.

Uh... not really. You can't say that because then you could say that straight parents warp a child's mind that was originally gay into being straight, it doesn't work that way. People are born liking either the same sex, or the opposite sex. It never changes halfway through their life or is affected by anything anybody says. Why do you think pedophiles have to be cataloged? Because they always have and always will like little children, and nothing anybody does ever will change that.

BUT! Both backgrounds of the father and mother could trigger a more positive attitude or behavior,etc. in the child's mind.

Essentially you are saying here that you need to have straight parents to be a good kid, which is total bull. Gay parents certainly would never abuse each other, that much is for sure, and patterns of abuse are often learned when children grow up with a father figure who beats their mother. They learn that it is OK to hit people when you are upset.

Furthermore, Heterosexuality is more potent than any same-sex marriage can punch, concerning the child's welfare.

You just said the same thing, see my above response.

I rest my case.

It is best to rest a case that isn't faulty, and this is usually done when you've made some stunning conclusion that makes it impossible to argue further due to the sources you have drawn from and the argument you have formulated. Neither is the case here.

P.S.: My intentions were to enlighten Airspirit. Not to offend in any way.

Bad choice of words, enlighten makes it sound as though you are superior to Airspirit and need to show him the 'truth' or something similar. That in itself is offensive, not to mention saying that homosexuals are less adept at child rearing than other couples.

At 7/7/04 03:51 PM, -Dr_Feelgood- wrote:
What do you mean bullshit? It's real. He said it. And you don't wanna hear that because you love that sow.

No, it is bullshit. The point he is making here is that all of these congressmen support the war in Iraq only so long as they don't have to pay any price for it. They are getting tons of money to be in congress and represent the people, but they aren't doing it very effectively, they are just agreeing with Bush because congress is Republican controlled. Nobody wants to go to war because nobody wants to send their children off to die in some foreign country. Moore's point here is that Congress is supporting Bush and his twisted agenda more than they are supporting their own constituency, ie. they aren't doing their job.

The war in Iraq was optional, we went in when we could have let the UN handle it for the most part. But trigger happy Bush got us in there and now we have paid the price in American lives.

If he didn in fact say that then I would say it was taken out of context. My bet is what he said was "if people support the war then they deserve to have their children die in it instead of that vast majority that doesn't support the war."

At 7/6/04 11:32 PM, red_skunk wrote: We had to respond to 9/11/01?

I guess I can see that point, but we've fucked over this country, and I don't see why we shouldn't fix what we've started.

Naw, the opium doesn't play into it at all. Was just catching myself when I said "no value".

oh... a funny ; )

Meh. This way works.

no it doesn't, everyone hates us for it, and has the same outcome if we named any other reason for invading. We are hardly ever right, but we still seem to think we are. My point here is we need to just back out of other countries if we aren't going to handle them correctly afterwards.

Personally, I think the whole reason everyone has to wait this long is so that they can learn a little patience and planning. If you could vote as soon as you became a teenager you would fall right into the trap all teens nowadays fall into of wanting everything right now. Nothing happens right away. Having to wait until you are 18 is a perfect example of this, and so is the fact that it takes two months from the time a president is voted on for him to be sworn in, another four years until the mistake of a wrong president can be changed (with certain exceptions excluded) and it just takes a lot of time for everything. Having to wait makes it so that people can develope a little bit of a plan, and won't just go in ignorantly and screw everything up.

Besides, why are you so eager to have a say in choosing what political party gets to vote for the president. Our system doesn't even allow us to influence who the president is at all. In the end we are voting for a group of people (electors) that will determine the president themselves. Legally, they aren't obligated to vote with their party. There have been exceptions. The only thing our vote helps to do is determine which party gets to pick the electors, and then the electors can do whatever they want, really. The system is stupid as it is but you can't change it, why? because you have no say, why? because you aren't mature enough to handle having a say, why? because it takes humans a while to develope that.

Somebody said that you can be wise at any age, I say thats bullshit. When someone is truly wise it means they have experienced almost everything from almost every perspective and saw almost every outcome.

At 7/6/04 12:57 AM, red_skunk wrote: Afghanistan is worthless. Besides the opium. I don't think we ever truly envisioned a vibrant 'democracy' or anything of that nature.

Unfair? *shrug*

Uh... then why the hell would we go into a country and put it in shambles if we had no intention of fixing it. I'm saying we should finish what we start, and not just get out without any clean up. And since you didn't use commas it sounds like if there wasn't opium then we would have envisioned a vibrant 'democracy'.

More than unfair its also just not right. We always claim to be on the side of right when we are invading countries and its about time we acted like it.

Here, let me lay it out for you guys how I see it:

The reason Foamy flash gets consistently good scores like it does and has such mindless fanboys and enemies is that it is like McDonalds. McDonalds provides cheap food fast that is always the same quality (the hack could be like a chicken head, or toad). Not necessarily good or bad, just the same quality. Foamy provides cheap entertainment fast that is always the same quality. Therefore, he will always get the same scores regardless of what anybody thinks about it. If everyone who hates it stops watching he will have a 4.00 or above average for every new flash he makes. Don't stop watching his work, don't stop hating the series, just stop being so whiney about it.

Honestly, I don't get a chuckle from his flash movies every time, I watch every foamy I see if its in the 50 most recent. Why? Because they are consistent. IllWillPress has established himself already and it is consistent with what Newgrounds users like. Its aimed at people who hate society because it rants about society, it is short and Americans have the shortest attention span known to man, it is amusing and a lot of people on Newgrounds vote submissions down based soley on humor (if you don't believe me check out something like Bitey of Brackenwood's lowest scores).

To be honest, Foamy series usually get a 2 out of me, because that is what the series is too me, nothing too new or interesting.

At 7/5/04 11:33 PM, red_skunk wrote: What is your point? Afghanistan was a much easier target to invade. True, we could of sent a lot more troops and supplies, but what are you advocating? Turning ever conquest into a huge multi-billion dollar extravaganza?

My point is that we just ignored Afghanistan after we finished ruining it. The only reason Iraq is getting so much money is it is still in the public eye due to the media's short attention span. Afghanistan needs probably just as much money as we spent in Iraq put towards rebuilding efforts, yet it is being short changed which I don't think is fair.

And it wouldn't matter if every conquest was a huge multi-billion dollar extravaganza, it should be a quality overthrow and rebuilding that dictates when we are done with a country, not loss of interest or gain of interest elsewhere. I'm just saying we need to slow down and take things one step at a time, otherwise we'll find ourselves overcommitted in too many places at once and will end up inneffective in every place we are in.

At 7/5/04 06:31 PM, Blamm3r_4_Lif3 wrote:
i'll tell u y. the feds are fuckin morons and gay themselves.

What? That has nothing to do with it. Gay marriage is about equal rights. If gays can't get married then the constitution is being violated. They can't do that which is why gay marriage is becoming more and more realistic every day.

they probably think gays will teach us all a lesson, that everyone should be happy and head back to hippyville(ala the 60's).

Hmmm, well in the 60's being gay was still widely unaccepted. And not too long before that it was treated as a mental illness and gays were committed for treatment.

but u look at some of the more famous gays. Jeffery Dahmer was gay and he killed a load of people, ate thier flesh and kept their heads on his kitchen counter! so all u "whats teh prob with gay's?" ppl can go and shove ur head up ur ass where it belongs!

Hmmm. Name another gay person that did anything that bad. Just one. There have probably been over a thousand cases of something exactly like that with straight people.

gays should be set up in a line and shot in the head with one bullet that goes thru all their skulls at least. at most shoot off their nuts so they never fuck again, man or women.

So, you want an atrocity far greater than Dahlmer ever committed to be done to gay people. You have no grounds to be upset with his actions if you wish such a thing to be done to other people just because of their sexual preference.

now stfu

The person you responded to was on the same side as you (although not quite so insanely). Why are you telling him to 'stfu'? Clearly you need to follow your own advice.

At 7/5/04 06:50 PM, Blamm3r_4_Lif3 wrote:
you listen here you little fuck, i may be a self-opinionated bastered but i aint relegious.

Uh, he didn't even use the word religion in his post. Nobody accused you of being religious at all.

i go through ridicule and slander every day cuz i like 2 read. but do i go in the corner or go home crying? no i dont. i be a man and suck it up.

Congratulations. Have you ever endured threats of murder because you read? Have you ever seen on the news fellow readers being brutally hazed, beaten, and then killed because they were readers? Besides, gays are men too who suck it up... just in a different way ; )

gays are cowards and i do not show respect for cowards.

Not at all. Do you know how much courage it takes for them to come out and say that they are gay when they know it will open them to ridicule and an unjust hatred for the rest of their lives?

by the looks of things, you my friend are a coward, ur fuckin sig pic and confessions...jesus...

So he's just stood up to you and your senseless babbling and you are calling him a coward. You are the coward. You can't stand the thought of gay marriage because you are deathly afraid of it. It scares you that people consider you on the same level as gay people, doesn't it? Gays are equal and deserve equal rights. Period.

At 7/4/04 11:43 PM, red_skunk wrote:

At 7/4/04 11:22 PM, Evark wrote: ...Everyone has heard about the 87 billion budget he approved for Iraq. I think the figure for Afghanistan was something like a couple hundred million dollars, a paltry sum compared to Iraq.

FYI - that $87 billion went to a lot of places. You can look it up yourself, but offhand I think it was something like;
30-something billion directly to the Iraq war effort
~13 billion to continuing Afghanistan operations
& then the rest went into general pentagon spending.

Don't quote me on the exact numbers, but it was something like that. Afghanistan was considerably more than a couple hundred million, and we're still there.

About 1 billion was put into the funding for rebuilding Afghanistan. 20 billion of the 87 was put into rebuilding Iraq. The rest I've looked around for but I am not quite sure where it went. I think mostly to replace damaged equipment from these two wars. Thats a ridiculous inequality though. 1 billion for Afghanistan vs. 20 for Iraq. Unfair by any standards

At 7/5/04 01:23 AM, ReiperX wrote: Hey Evark, its a pain in the ass to read your post. If you are quoting someone and break it up please put a : and a space before the paragraph you are quoting, that way it grays it out so it doesn't cause so much confusion when we are trying to read it all, or mark your comments somehow like with a - or something. Would make life easier.

sorry, I wasn't quite sure how the whole reply thing worked. I had tried to put the colon before it in previous posts but I guess I forgot the space afterwards and didn't think it worked because of that. Thanks though, I'll do that in other posts. For now just keep in mind that if you are reading a paragraph I wrote, then the ones above it and below it are what the other person wrote.

At 7/4/04 11:54 PM, red_skunk wrote:

At 7/4/04 11:48 PM, Evark wrote: The more I think about it the more similar those two are.

He was kidding. The forum went through a "Bush = Hitler" phase that I'd rather avoid happening again =P

Oh, then I, uh, was kidding too.

(sorry guys, sometimes I get carried away and can't tell tone online, it is difficult sometimes.)

At 7/4/04 03:17 AM, deepthrought wrote: You all speak of proof, but how can you say Moore has proof, was he there to sit in on all the meetings with the president regarding post 9/11 affairs? no. So dont tell me about facts, the only facts he has are the ones he think sound plausable or ones that are something a child could come up wth like a death toll.

Oh, so you have to actually be there to have proof of something? Thats ridiculous. He has proof in that he researched the topic, and found information regarding it after looking at many different sources. You don't have any proof that he is wrong about what he says anyway, you weren't there when he filmed it, you didn't sit in with Moore when he found all this proof. That argument is completely unsound.

As for yelling at bush and blameing him for 9/11 thats rediculouse, i mean cmon. Do you think that if he was forwarned about 9/11 he would have just sit back and watched the planes fly? No.

He was forewarned about this possibility. A memo was given to him that some time during the summer of 2001 an attack may take place that would use US commercial airlines to attack US soil. He also didn't react very well when 9/11 actually happened. Moore has footage of Bush when he is told about the planes hitting the towers. He sat there for about 10 minutes afterward not doing anything at all. He didn't want to do anything because he was afraid, and had no idea what to do. The look in his eyes tells me that.

He would have done something, thats why we are at war, thats why we spend so much on defense is to protect ourselves.

We are currently at war for completely different reasons. Maybe at first it was to get Osama Bin Laden, but it quickly turned away from his country, and that reason. We didn't even capture Bin Laden before we moved on to the next country. Bush is currently at war to cover up for his 10 minutes of frantic inaction when he was confronted with the WTC attacks.

I bet Moores movie didnt say anything about Clintons defense cuts did it? Of course not.

Why would it? Its a movie on president Bush, besides which, defense cuts weren't the cause of 9/11, it was Bush's inability to handle our intelligence correctly.

So dont tell me to look at the facts when your not presenting me with any.

watch the movie, that presents the facts you seek, just not in the tone of voice you wish to hear. Ours isn't any different so you might as well.

But id like all of your honest opinion on something, We are at war, we spend alot on our milittary, we are the number 1 hated country and with that we have enimies. are we to sit back or are we to defend ourselves?

If we hadn't been so trigger-happy in the first place we wouldn't be at war. If we weren't so anxious to go in and tell everyone what to do because we are so high and mighty then everyone wouldn't hate us. We wouldn't need to defend ourselves if we hadn't fucked it all up in the first place. Now that we've screwed up we need to make amends, and then ensure nothing will happen, not continue to attack and create more enemies for ourselves.

And if they attack us are we to just fend them off so they can continue or are we to show some spine and fight back, show them we are not weak and that we will not surrender, If you are thretened with your life i tell you what, you will do whatever it takes to to save it, even if it means takeing another.

Yes, we are to fend them off and then take it into their territory to ensure that they won't attack us again. We don't need to attack pre-emptively because they might not even want to attack us at all. Ever see the movie Minority Report? I think it has a very valid moral that we all ought to heed.

And dont give me self sacrifice bull, America isnt going to let those 3000 people die in vain, so we started a war, and guess what, dont act so surprised when someone dies in war, because thats what people do, they die in wars.

Yes, we started a war, and then didn't finish it before we moved on. We started a second war because of the possibility of Saddam having something that might be able to hit us and that he might use against us, maybe. That is too many maybe's for me to take when it comes to invading a country.

And for ever service man who dies out there i salute and pray for because they are over there defending my rights to freedom because think what you want but freedom isnt free and someone has to pay the price of freedom.

They aren't defending your rights to freedom. They are helping Bush continue his agenda. I respect service men, but not to the point of reverence. You like freedom, yet you support Bush... this must mean you have never heard of the US Patriot Act. This essentially allows anything in the Bill of Rights to be considered Null and Void if you are suspected of being a terrorist. What if I called you a terrorist and said you were doing business with an orginization known to have terror links. You could be taken into custody and indefinitely held without charges after being phone tapped and searched without a warrant. Bush doesn't support freedom and you seem to be his fanboy, so I'm honestly surprised you want freedom.

At 7/4/04 10:29 PM, NiceOutcastAnderson wrote: Indeed. The sad thing is, the more sarcastic we sound about this "ban liberal ideas" etc, the more one overdone topic keeps popping up in my mind (which should be checked out right away)

"Is Bush Worse than Hitler?"

Hmm, now that you mention it there is a striking similarity. Rises to power questionably. Personally responsible for many deaths. In question with law at one point. Starts attacks on people based on very vague "terrorist" definition. Starts persecuting those inside own country by passing legislation that allows basic civil rights to be taken away. Huge scandals where prisoners are being kept, not as bad as mass murder, but sexual torture isn't anything to scoff at either. The more I think about it the more similar those two are.

At 7/4/04 10:21 AM, Peter90688 wrote:
And Clinton is any better? Clinton is the reason 9/11 wasnt prevented. If he did his fuckin job we wouldnt of had it. Stop listening to the liberal media. Oh and btw, Clinton fired missles...so I guess hes not the PEACEFUL liar you thought he was. So you want to live in a socialist country? You want Kerry to win right? You just proved your incompetance.

Uh, Clinton was better. Clinton cannot be held responsible for 9/11... he wasn't the president at the time, George Bush was, and since he handled it so horribly, it makes much more sense to me to have Kerry in office.

You've also just essentially told us that you consider everything the liberal media tells people as poison and that you would never ever listen to it. That makes you unqualified to debate, since you only listen to one side of the story.

Uh... who cares if he's peaceful or not, he's the president so he needs to be able to act. Bush on the other hand is downright trigger-happy. He's invaded two countries in rapid fire succession without finishing what he started in the first before he moved on to the next. Everyone has heard about the 87 billion budget he approved for Iraq. I think the figure for Afghanistan was something like a couple hundred million dollars, a paltry sum compared to Iraq. Bush has essentially screwed up pretty badly in everything that he's set out to do.

Uh.. I guess if liberals want a socialist country you want to live in a feudal country?

Wanting Kerry to win doesn't say anything about our competence, it just says something about who we think is more qualified and will better handle the duties imposed on him. Bush's track record so far is (much) less than perfect, and Kerry offers us the chance to have someone in office who will handle situations in a way that more people find more acceptable.

At 7/1/04 03:56 PM, Bubba_Phat wrote: I do not see how one can believe that there is no divine being or beings. This is why:

Matter is physical. We are made of matter. But what are our thoughts? Our decisions? They are not matter. How can you think with just matter? You need a soul. If you think souls can create other souls, then how was the first soul created? God created us in spirit, and our physical selves are just here for this life.

I'd like to see if any atheists can prove my theory wrong.

Well, I consider myself one, so here goes:

Souls don't exist, just bodies. Thoughts are controlled by the flow of information (read: electricity) through neurons that are all connected via the "central nervous system" to your brain, the center of all these thoughts. Computers don't have souls, and they calculate all sorts of things, as well as do stuff like opening their drives when you click the disk eject button in the D drive.

Souls don't make other souls, bodies make other bodies. its called Chemistry, learn about chemical reactions and the properties of matter sometime. (I guess its also Biology, the point is, learn about how matter behaves). There is no way some random thing has the power to just make things appear, and you have no evidence otherwise, other than your own inability to understand how you work. People used to call things magic before they knew how they worked, you are doing the same thing.

Occam's razor slices the theory of a god to shreds. I think its definitely more intelligent to assume something that hinges upon the meeting of two chemicals randomly is true over something that hinges upon the existence of an all-powerful being that nobody can prove exists. Its pretty convenient to be unable to prove something you believe in when it comes to telling others they are wrong.

Besides which, picture a scene you see in the movies, two young lovers bustling with excitement rush into the house, offering to do chores and then they finally just burst it out...

"Mom, Dad... we're getting civilly unified!"

It sounds ridiculous.

At 7/4/04 12:31 AM, darkmage8 wrote:

At 7/4/04 12:13 AM, Evark wrote: There should be a difference between Marriage and Christian Marriage.

But that IS a civil contract. It DOES give all the rights of marriage without actually having the "holy" ceremony. And don't fish me that 'Marriage in india" excuse, because you know as well as I do that it's not the indian-american population that is effected by this, please.

uh.. affected, but yes, I understand your point, but you don't see mine. Everyone is having a problem with calling it marriage. This way makes both sides happy. It isn't what Christians believe marriage is, but it can be called marriage because thats what gays want.

You're basically trying to tell me that gays and lesbians gain a second class status through the civil concract, which is complet, pardon my french, bullshit. By nationalizing the Civil Union, all rights, for all people, are guarenteed. You know and I know that the word "marriage" represents a cultural institution, how can you tell the majority to strike such an essential part of their culture just so people can have a word?

It isn't bullshit at all. By saying they can not get married, but have to get a civil union, you are essentially telling them that they can't have what everyone else has, but this is just as good. Seperate is inherently unequal... anyone know where that is from? Marriage represents whatever we want it to represent. It isn't a trademark, so the church can't claim it as such and the government can choose to define it however they wish. It is unfair (read: Unconstitutional) to define marriage as something exclusive to people who are heterosexual. The whole point of having the change from Marriage to being split into Christian marriage and just marriage is so that 'the majority' you profess doesn't have to strike such an integral part of their culture from their lives, while at the same time allowing equality.

You keep throwing divorce and ignoring everything else. There are religions that make divoirce a living hell, if they even let you get it at all, like Catholocism. Why? Because the doctrines are important to them. I've yet to hear any evidence that proves that this isn't a battle over a word.

Nobody denies it, it is definitely a battle over a word. Whoever is throwing divorce in is missing the point. The point is it is unequal to say someone can not do anything based on their sexual preference, including getting married. By saying someone can only get a civil union, or contract, or whatever you call it, it feels unequal. How would you feel if someone said you couldn't drink Coca Cola, but you could definitely drink Pepsi? (or your favorite drink vs. something not as good) After all, they both will quench your thirst, right?

You and I know that it is unfair to do tell someone that. That is why gay marriage needs to be allowed, and not some worthless substitute such as a civil union.

At 7/3/04 12:35 PM, 36noir wrote:
There should be a difference between Marriage and Christian Marriage. This minor difference would still allow only Christians to marry under the church, where as the rest can marry strictly under the state.

Just to let you know, that is the most intelligent suggestions I've heard to this problem yet. That makes everybody happy. What the hell kind of Christian would argue to having the name of their religion put in front of their (suddenly) most sacred rite? I think that pretty much would solve everything, gays could marry, and Christians could marry under different definitions. The only problem I see with it is when Gays start wanting a Christian marriage...