I love how all of this "help" the government offers in the form of sub-standard services is "SOOOOOO NEEDED" by society BECAUSE the tax the hell out of us to provide so many "SERVIVES" to the community.

I've been doing grad research on many philanthropic organizations in my city and "corporate citizenship" in the past few months. It's all about tax-deductable (that is, they pay less taxes for actual, real, needed government work to provide these donations for "servives") donations to non-profit organizations in the community. I grew up in a poor family. My father supported a family of 6 (4 kids). We're all white. I was one of the kids with "reduced lunch." He never tried to live beyond his means. With hard work and high test scores I applied for many and received enough scholarships to attend collage with minimal debt. This is DESPITE the fact that MANY more scholarships are offered to blacks, women, homosexuals, and other minorities. ALL of these "programs" and "servives" that are supported by the government (through direct support and tax-deductable corporate donations) never helped my working-class father and his family with a DIME.

My point is that most of the programs and services offered by the government to alleviate poverty don't do ANY good. Most of the people really working hard to improve their situation never seen an OUNCE of help from them. Their money mostly goes to help drug addicts buy more drugs and maintain a higher standard of living while changing nothing else. It DISGUSTS me that people like my father had to live and raise a family with less (while making such a low income) in order to support so many programs that never actually help the people they are claimed to be helping.

Helping those in need is a great aim. Doing it at the cost of putting more people in need while not actually helping those in need is disgusting. And that's the most any politician has ever actually done.

I hope someone makes a site for Obama where he's smoking crack and singing welfare carols.

>>With a balance of power, the parties are required to compromise and develop more pragmatic solutions.<<

This would be ideal. In reality, the party backing legislation just bribes enough people of the other party with billions of dollars in "earmarks."

You are correct. That's why I hate hearing all this talk about bipartisanship. I LIKE it when they're gridlocked. It means they can't mess things up more, which is what they do best. It was designed this way for a reason.

The system requires a real public sentiment to unlock Congress and get big things done. Unfortunately, our two party system has left us with "socialist" and "more socialist" candidates for the white house this year. So regardless of what people want, this is the change coming.

>>it's simple as this, you or me can not judge who is part of a religion and who isn't --that's just taking ourself into the position of God which is extremely diss-respectufull<<

How does God come into play here? You can bring up God and call something disrespectful, but you're still not making any sense. Religions are socially defined and constructed. The people who created/take part in religions define them. They define their dogma and doctrine. They make up the religion and determine what standards there are for their religion. Maybe everyone who accepts Jesus as their "personal Lord and Savior" is a member. Maybe only those who believe in the trinity and follow certain moral practices is a member. These standards are determined by the communities of religions who make up those religions.

Religions did not come to humanity from God. They are constructed by people, made up of the people who take part in them in whatever structure the religion has set up (by human beings, not God). As such, they can decide whatever they want to be their beliefs. And they can decide how closely one must follow those beliefs, however specifically, in order to accept that person as a member of their religious tradition.

The question is, who are you to tell them they can't determine what constitutes their religion?

>>now on the basis we judge these people to be religous or not are just someone's interpretations<<

No they're not. Religions have set forth the standards by which they define themselves. Some people just don't meet those standards. It's not a matter of interpretation.

>>omeone who is very religous and very devoted but his interpretations will be different from another person because some of the factors that play a role in his interpretations<<

Such a person, if their "interpretations" are at odds with a religion's doctrine, is probably not a member of that religious community. He/she may be a part of the broader community, such as a nondenominational Christian, but if he/she has significantly different doctrine than the Catholics or various Protestant faiths, then he/she is not a member of those religious communities, while still being a nondenominational Christian. But Christian is not Catholic or one of the various Protestant faiths; they have doctrine, and if someone does not agree with that doctrine, then they're not a member of that tradition.

>>SURE, his interpretations could be true, they could really be the exact points of that religion<<

And there's NO ONE better to judge this than the members of that religion's community. And they all have doctrine. Whatever a person's interpretations are, if they are not the interpretations of that religion, then the person is following some other faith than that religion. Religions are socially constructed (for the 900th time). I don't know if you're talking about divine revelation when you use the word "true" here, but regardless, if a person's interpretation is not that of a religion, then the religion will not identify the person as a member of their religious tradition/community. A person can call themself ANYthing they want. I can call myself a devout Muslim. But that doesn't mean anything. Muslim clerics wouldn't call me Muslim. And they'd be totally right.

>>but we DO NOT know that for certain, we can only assume that<<

Yes we do. Many religions publish literature making their doctrine as clear as you could possibly want to know it. Since they decide what constitutes their religion, this is essentially working with the purest, most certain facts about those religions as possible.

>>, but we should not say this is our religion<<

Unless, of course, we actually accept the doctrine of that religion and it is, in fact, our religion?

You're a nondenominational Christian? You keep mentioning God and his role in judgement as if it has anything to do with this thread. You can be a nondenominational Christian. Everyone has their own interpretations. And since they're just bread and butter Christians, that works. But nondenominational Christians are not Catholics. They are not Lutherans. They are not Presbyterian. They know it and so do members of those faiths. It's not a matter of judging someone to examine their doctrine and see where it is the same/is not the same as someone else's.

>>all we have our assumptions of interpretations and everyone interepts them differently<<

The doctrine set forth by religions' brilliant speakers of the past is "assumptions of interpretations"? Some of them even wrote in English! It's not rocket science to read words and comprehend them. Maybe to you it is.

In your country, you are as respected for picking up lard as an educated person?

Say what you want, that's why you are not in charge. Though I'm sure they tell you you are very valuable, you are appreciated. I'm glad that's enough to make you feel warm inside. But it doesn't make for an educated voice.

>>other than assumptions we don't really know what it means to be a part of that religion.. <<

So you're speaking only about certain religions? Which ones? We've explained at length that many religions make it very clear what it means to follow them.

Insofar as religions are socially defined and have very developed dogmas, we have a perfect idea of their values. We (the people involved in those religions) CREATED those values. We decided the values. We chose the texts. We created the doctrine around those texts and values.

You're AGREEing with YOURSELF. This makes as little sense as your proposal. You refuse to accept that people create the meaning in these religions. You keep referring to religions as if they are some traditions handed down to us by some God that we can never fully understand or live up to. They are created and maintained by PEOPLE. It's the people in a religion that determine that religion's course.

People live up to the standards and values of their religions every day. You're offensive to claim that they don't have every right to say "I am a Christian" when the word "Christian" is defined as describing them.

That mature humility includes the awareness of the limitations of all of man, The_Yell. Doesn't that seem to suggest the need for MORE checks and balances, perhaps a democratic system, instead of empowering one not so mature and humble?

Are you suggesting that only by empowering someone with the backing of GOD can we resist a fuhrer and the mob?

Those passages are about accepting what really can be "known" of "God" and accepting this to hold a more mature understanding of God. While this doesn't lead us to some ultimate divine knowledge in thought like a Gnostic would claim, I doubt there are any Gnostics in here. OR ARE THERE.

Ultimately they're about right acts as love of God, not some piece of knowledge we can never have.

>>my point is, all we have are assumptions for which we can never know what was actually meant or if we were supposed to have assumptions and interpretations --> which is why we can't represent religions<<

Sacred texts don't fall from the sky. Early Christians developed the Bible and decided what texts went in. There is a history of values behind their choices. It's not just a matter of 'well this text is in the book, now if only we knew what it meant...' Each text has a historical context, sometimes we even know the ethnicity of the writer. We have a good idea of important values expressed in the texts and that's why they were chosen in the first place.

>>we can never know what that religion was really meant to be, <<

Religions are socially constructed. There is no magic moment that Moses had that we're trying to look back to figure out. I feel like I've said this before. Whatever a church's dogma and doctrine is, it is. This will generally include some amount of interpretation of ambiguous passages already.

hummy's way more sober than I am. Thank you hummy, that was concise.

Soth, you just managed to miss the single biggest thing Socrates tried to get people to realize. "Both points" are not the same thing. One accepts the limitations of our knowledge and the other does not. For instance, what it goes on to say accepts the limitations of our knowledge and you do not. You do not accept that you do not know. You jumped right into a claim that this meant "godlessness" just after the passage explains why this is the highest form of monotheism. Then you went on to some sort of utilitarian judgement that this couldn't make sense because it doesn't lead to a direct system of science or math to determine justice.

I should dig through the book for references to history that are examples of the things that we really do find man strives for. Then maybe you'll see that it's getting more at the fundamentals than what specific ways you 'strive' to fulfil your basic human needs. You are impossible and quite foolish.

I like those, Sir SupAll.