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[miauw62]

There was a lot of fountains and luxurious gardens in the Middle East in the Middle Ages, though.
(At least, according to my history lessons :v)

[Furtuka]

Its pigs tendency to eat everything and lots of it stacks

[Eric Blank]

This whole week, man, all of it, has been nothing but stressful. I've got my finals week coming up and I'm not ready, I already know which classes I'm going to fail and that if I'm not careful I can fail the rest, and then my family is driving me up a wall too. My brother's being the usual insufferable ass who thinks nobody elses' concerns matter and he pays no heed to anyone's pain, but if you dare insult him or ask anything of him or do anything he doesn't approve of then oh boy you better watch out because he'll throw all the tantrums. All of them, whilst punching you. I shut off the car when we stopped at the post office, and he threw a tantrum about that. His girlfriend is still a stupid, lazy whore who pretty much acts just like him too. Yesterday she caught a hummingbird that flew in the door and couldn't figure out how to get back out and stuffed it in a box with some straw and water and waited for us to get home so we'd take a picture of it, and my brother went and let it out which is exactly what I intended to do anyway, and she threw a fit about it for the rest of the night and we had to sit there and listen to them argue it out while everybody but me got drunk.

Then I sat on a fucking wasp that was in my parents' bed. My ass still hurts. There's wasps fucking everywhere. That shack is seriously too fucking small, and now the county officials are riding our asses because it's legally too small to live in, but there isn't shit we can do because we can't afford to start building an actual house yet. And I still have to sleep in the fucking armchair. I'm really starting to hate that chair.

I feel like a rubber/gel stress penguin thing. Like I'm being squeezed so hard my head is going to explode and whoever's squeezing me at the time is going to lose their arm. I need a penguin to squeeze so bad...

[RedKing]

One of the best explanations I heard for why Jews weren't allowed to do X was because their non-Jewish neighbors did. From being uncircumcised to eating pork to wearing multiple fabric types together, to mixing dairy and meat. By prescribing cultural norms that were counter to the people around them, it helped reinforce an insular Jewish identity as different from those around them. It's also once reason they've resisted assimilation so incredibly well all over the world. (Except in China, because China is The Borg.)

[TD1]

Also, all the Ten Commandments apply specifically to Jews. Love thy neighbour? Sure, as long as he's a Jew.

Of course, that's not what it means now, merely the original one. Evolving truth, and all that.

[Akura]

Bleh. When the semester is over I'm going to be out of work, hopefully just until next semester, which is probably 2-4 months.

Aside from the fact that my stepdad is going to ride my ass nonstop about it from the second I mention it, I'll need to find something to pay rent and saveup to attend classes at the very college I work at. Most likely my sister could get my a job where she works(hooray, nepotism), but to hear her tell it, it's not that great a job.

[Knit tie]

As an Orthodoxal Christian, I can say that we consider the Old Testament to be kinda the un-play-tested edition of the word of God, and the New testament to be kinda the errata'd one. Like if the God went "Okay here's a totally cool and practical book, follow it to the letter!" and then his son actually went down to earth and saw that the instructions weren't working at all and went "Look, here's a new version of the Good Book, it has much less vindictive punishment for doing things that aren't really related to your spiritual health, like mixing fabrics, and much more general tips on how to be a totally cool bro and not a jerk, and also note this really big and important part about spiritual development and how it's much more important than anything you can do with your body and how all these rules about having a beautiful transcendent soul explicitly override all those rules about behaviour because those rules about behaviour are only supposed to guide you onto the path of spiritual development and not be the ultimate manual on how to live because that really didn't work last time and and the word of God is really like a good piece of literature and meant to be interpreted and anyway I have to go and die in horrible agony now because my dad still hates you for eating that literally goddamn apple and is only gonna start really loving you after I suffer for each of you on the cross, so bye!"

And then the Jews went "Jesus didn't really come and we still obey the Old Testament!"

And the the Muslims went "Okay this Jesus guy really did come but we are gonna follow these teachings Muhammad gave us which are actually also about love and tolerance and don't focus on abusing women but you won't be able to tell that with at all those fanatics killing each other throughout history, unfortunately."

So yeah.

[TD1]

The Muslims believe Jesus to be a prophet. They believe Muhammad to be a prophet. The set of rules they decided to follow is revealing.

And fair enough to the Jews. Jesus did exist, at least as a human I think, but the part of the bible than details his birth is historically inaccurate, and logically too. There was no consensus.

Also, if Jesus were supposed to be born of the line of David, and that was ensured through his father, how does that work with his mother being a virgin? It tried to conform to the prophesy of Micah, but didn't quite make it logical.

And, given that God is omnipotent and omniscient, he shouldn't need Jesus to edit his work, as before it was written he knew what would go wrong, and should have been able to fix it.

[Willfor]

Do remember that He faced continual communication problems even with his most devout followers. There's a good reason they're (we're) often compared to sheep in the texts, the most hard-headed and stubborn of all of the barnyard animals. It's not really any wonder He decided to show up Himself. I ascribe a good deal of problems on our side to human error.

[Knit tie]

Revealing what, exactly?

And yeah, the Bible isn't really the most historically accurate book. Huge parts were misinterpreted or creatively adapted by translators, and even the original is sometimes very vague.

Edit: Miscommunication with God all the way! Also the humans never really followed God's directives, like how he said that hate is from the Devil and the Catholic church and, hell, the Orthodoxal one too are waging wars of hate on homosexuals.

And we should really stop discussing religion, it's more inflammatory then asbestos dust.

[Willfor]

While I can understand your concerns, the larger text looks a lot more un-chill than I think you were trying to put across in your message, and may cause you some problems/escalate the situation more than it has to go.

[Knit tie]

Thanks for telling me, I was kinda overly involved there. It's now fixed.

[Putnam]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison

well that took me 10 seconds of research to find a non-Christian member of US Congress :I

Don't just make claims without any research.

[Frumple]

... did anyone besides granolakey^(sp) graknorke (who I sorta' doubt was being entirely serious) actually make the claim that there were no non-christian members of congress? I think I missed it...

[Graknorke]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison

well that took me 10 seconds of research to find a non-Christian member of US Congress :I

Don't just make claims without any research.

So it's only the politicians with special titles that do that "So help me God" thing?
Regardless, I think you put a bit too much weight into a comment intended to be in no way factual from multiple pages ago. And it wasn't even far from accurate, if that table posted when this discussion was relevant was posted. "Most" isn't much better than "all" when talking about representation of groups.