Which Religion is the One True Religion?

Good morning Setanta.

Good morning sir . . . i hope that all is well with you and yours in Merry Old?

Yep thanks

Looking forward to the George Galloway Show later today.

Pity i won't see it live . . . don't have cable. It should be on C-Span, though, if you are able to access that channel.

I will be in a fantasy land with a friend, and we will be attempting the conquest of 16th century Japan. Altogether, a far more entertaining prospect than reality.

ooooh!

well have fun and watch out for any sharp swords or pointy things

There are an awful lot of those lying about.

When you take in the Circus at the Senate, be on the lookout for sharp words and pointed remarks.

So, Setanta, what do you choose to believe in?

The ultimate perfectability of human nature.

I see we look forward to the same thing. How would you expect this to come about?

Trail and stupid error after stupid error after stupid error . . .

I wouldnt presume to answer for Set
but perhaps the sterilisation of certain a2kers would be a useful start

Whereas i am ethically opposed to eugenics, that suggestion has a very visceral appeal.

History is certainly full of that. Where do we go from here?

Having been born before the years had numbers, my wife and I are well past any relief from such a remedy. Somethin's gotta give. Wadaya say we arm rassle for it?

This suggests that the human race has reached an impasse, and must choose a different method. I could not agree less.

Yes; but we seem to keep repeating the errors. Am I mistaken? Have we actually made progress? Give me an answer that would satisfy someone whose baby has just been obliterated by a suicide bomber.

If anyone can answer this, I am sure it would be you. I mean that with sincerity.

well if you really are that old neologist, arm wrestling sounds fine to me

but then I'm very weak

I refer you to your use of "seem." That was a cheap shot, referring to someone whose baby has just been obliterated by a suicide bomber. Anciently, it was an accepted practice to rape the women, and kill every child, to assure that one's "race" would survive while the other was exterminated. If you suggest that the situation of casual violence today even approaches, either proportionately or ultimately, the scale of such slaughter heretofore in human history, i will accuse you of being either a naif or a liar. Again and again in human history, unique events have taken the entire race, eventually, beyond a life which was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Those who harp on the notion that this remains the case to the same extent that it was even as recently as a millenium ago are either playing fast and loose with the truth, or with a deck serious short of cards.

I offer this with complete respect:

Right: 6,000,000 dead Jews notwithstanding. Genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia may be ignored as we journey side by side with Sisyphus and Setanta pushing our boulder up the mountain of futility.

Whoever wrote the book of Genesis must have been very wise to have put into the mouth of the serpent the assertion that humans would be better off setting their own standards for right and wrong without subjection to God. I think this is what you and I are quibbling over, is it not? Thousands of years and still an issue. . .

Steve, I made the challenge because I thought it might be the only way I could have a chance against the likes of you and Setanta. When the brain fails, try the bicep. I'm a certified trainer, much more suited to advising you on your bench press than I am arguing the esoteric.

What a complete lack of understanding you show. When the Mongols and Tatars raged across Eurasia, killing untold millions, filling bags with ears, because there were too many heads to carry on their saddles, raping, burning, pillaging everywhere they went, the misery did absolutely nothing to alter the murderous habits of monarchs and tyrrants throughout the regions of effect.

When Hitler killed six million, not simply Jews, but Gypsies, Slavs, Homosexuals, and many, many other descriptions of those who fell afoul of the "final solution"--the world tried to pretend it didn't know. But no one could look at the camps, the ovens, the mass graves once the Allied armies overran them, and ignore the meaning they held for all of humanity. People vowed "never again," and for all of the failures since then, there have been successes as well, and slowly, slowly, it dawns on the human race that such things are not right and are not to be tolerated. No government many openly advocate such behavior and sit, honored and respected, at the table of nations. Only through lies and deceptions can such things now occur, or through the apathy of the world community--because they are universally recognized to be antithetical to civilization.

And that is because history demonstrates that human nature is perfectable.

Spare me your snotty and hypocritical references to your "holy scripture," they are "whited sepulchres, full of rotting flesh and dead men's bones."