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WordNet Search - 3.0

S: (adj) objective, nonsubjective (undistorted by emotion or personal bias; based on observable phenomena) "an objective appraisal"; "objective evidence"

To describe an "objective truth" as one "which will never be proven or disproven" is thus a contradiction.

Again, it is not my intention to judge or even comment upon your spirituality, which is your subjective truth. But qualifying it as "objective" carries an implication which I am not sure you intend, namely that your subjective spiritual truth is valid for all of us.

terrorists who reject modernity, oppose America, and distort Islam have killed and mutilated tens of thousands of people just this decade. Because this enemy operates globally, it must be confronted globally.

Yes, if they embrace modernity like america then they too can be a global player and get to kill hundreds of thousands of people in just one country.

Still the same old self-righteous Exceptionalism

And if the US government elected to use that authority to establish a national electoral roll, and simply made it open to state to use that roll for their state elections if they wished, most states would do so for the budgetary savings.

The problem is political ... for forty years, one political party has had a strategy of suppressing the vote turning out for the other party, and for all except six years years of that period, that party has either held the White House or had a majority in the House or both.

The electoral college itself was is an institution with its original intention destroyed by the rise of political parties. However, nowadays, most newly established democracies go to a directly elected Presidency, with all of the flaws of that institution ... certainly nobody is going to establish a system in which local communities are supposed to elect their best representative to go to the capital and help decide who the President will be.

Remember that the big spread between state populations in the US is because of the drive to gain state status with a fixed population threshold required, with some of those states then filling in far beyond the state founder's wildest dreams and some of those states emptying out. AFAIU, in the original House/Senate compromise between big states and small states, the balance was tilted substantially closer to one person one vote than the EU population weighted voting system.

Well, isn't it?

That's the one! I &heart; you. Or I owe you a beer, or something.

What's fascinating in its own right is how approximately I remembered the comment and its followup, and that someone (heh) was still able to locate it. And it was posted just over one year ago.

I got the poster wrong. I correctly remembered that Jérôme wrote the followup, but he never used the word "nutshell".

I doubt we'll ever see any search engine cope with imcomplete information like this and pull off such a feat.

Marco Mayeux, 42, the bartender of Le Relais, a Paris cafe in the 18th Arrondissement, said the ban alone had cut his coffee and bar business by 20 percent.

"A place like mine doesn't appeal to everyone; it's very working-stiff," he said. "There is a coffee-at-the-counter feel that isn't attractive anymore."

Before, clients would go inside a cafe, have a coffee, a cigarette and another coffee. But now they go out to smoke, and sometimes they do not come back, many cafe owners said.

Gérard Renaud, 57, owner of the Restaurant de L'Église in Marsannay-la-Côte, said that business was down at least 30 percent. "Now people don't eat," he said. "They come in for a coffee or a little aperitif and that is it. We are used to being busy, but now we feel lazy, and it is depressing."

Ms. Guérin is trying to sell her cafe, but has had only one nibble in this lovely town of some 3,000 people, much visited by tourists, where the renowned hotel-restaurant Relais Bernard Loiseau is just down the street.

Maybe it was discussion around agency workers, or migrant workers? ie regulations and giving workers better rights so that unscrupulous employers can't exploit them to undercut other businesses.

Great answer!!!

Sometime during the deregulation craze of the 80s, my dear old mother--a scarred child of the depression was watch the news.  She turned to me and snorted, "Fools! doesn't anyone remember what the economy was like before there were regulation on the banks?"

I have long maintained that the reason regulated economies do better the deregulated ones is that regulations permit the honest businessman to prosper.

It's not undesirable to seperate spirituality/faith and religion in its worldly manner from politics - but it has proven unrealistic.

Do you sincerely believe that this can be changed?

I believe that it is unrealistic to ban religion from politics.

no, no, no...

religion and politics make a lousy combination, as history makes only too painfully clear.

cuz 90% of religion is bad religion, and people need a certain security in order to have a decent life.

that should take precedence over religion.

keep religion personal, not political, just don't try and exterminate it.... the blowback from that is as bad as bad religion was, or worse...

golden rule...unless there was a completely new religion, baggage free and symbiotic with modern times instead of trying to resurrect the middle ages, ala taliban.

Despite this assertion, I sincerely respect anyone who comes to different conclusions and finds a different truth.

I am not the Truth, I am not God. When we stand on the Moon and find ourselves on a side of the moon so that we'll have an unobstructed view of Planet Earth, we might see Australia and New Zealand very clearly. We may proclaim: We have seen Planet Earth. This is The Truth.

But there may be another person, standing on the other side of the Moon, marvelling at all the stars around, or someone might have seen Planet Earth, clearly identifying the shape of a boot. ... None will be "wrong" or "better" than the other.

I don't deny anyone the right to not see or to see differently, but since I have seen, I'm confident that I've seen some of that Truth, not all of it, and it doesn't entitle me to anything and it doesn't invalidate anything anybody else sees or doesn't see.

I was speaking of "objective truth" - which will never be proven or disproven in its objectivity in this life, and it's always just one aspect of it, too... I tried to express both my subjective conviction and also my own humbleness in view of the fact that I'm talking about personal faith, not scientific fact.

Maybe you are standing on the other side of the Moon (no judgement implied!!). If I then talk about what I have seen and you insist that you don't share that view, well, then I could come over to your side and agree that there is nothing, or I could invite you over to my side and show you... - And if we do nothing, the stars and the Moon and the Earth may also work together and offer a different outlook to both of us. You might say: Ah, it's there! - And I might say: I had been so sure it was there; now, where has it gone?

No two pairs of eyes will ever see the same, even when they look at the exact same thing in the exact same moment. ...

Sometimes it is difficult to accept ideological concepts and classification because someone doesn't clearly identify with one or the other because he/she has been inspired to develop a very different ideology that doesn't fit into the polarity of just two ideologies at hand - plus those situated between the two poles.

hi lily, good diary, good questions...

i've met more delusion among socalled religious people than any other groups, and have known atheists fully as kind and human as any prompted by fear of hell or desire for heaven.

just as gay people don't have a real choice in being gay, either they feel that way or they don't, so i believe it to be with religion.

i felt god in a place no rational argument will convince me to be deluded, because what i experienced went so far beyond any other feelings i had had, and like you, those feelings gave me strength to face difficulties, and a more positive, peaceful attitude to negotiating them.

i found most churches suffocating, some too cloying, some just a place for a group hug when i was lonely.

i miss not having a church i'd really want to join, but the word of god is written in nature, as taoists and sufis believe, not just buildings.

i love to go into empty churches and sing my heart out, but the services and belief systems of christianity, especially catholicism leave me cold, and even angry sometimes, as i contrast the god of spring flowers and all that is renewed afresh with the doleful, lugubrious, sanctimonious miserable-sinner cant that is served up by today's 'messengers of jesus'.

i also am aware of how much the power of the papacy acts as a drag on italy's evolution, the whole edifice of catholicism, with its holy rings to kiss, ferragamo shoes, unctuous venality, ugh...

i find a masked shaman, gibbering under the effects of inhaling dmt, capering in a clearing, less ridiculous.

if jesus existed, (i believe he did, but of course could be wrong), that's one thing, the greatest story ever told some say, just another desert legend, say others.

but to me it doesn't matter.

the word 'god' has as many meanings as there are people to hear or read it.

some atheists make gods of their own, though they wouldn't admit it, probably.

i have even envied atheists during dark nights of the soul, but i wouldn't trade the grace i have felt that was numinous away to get rid of spiritual pain, that has its role in making me aspire to be better, and which rewards me in ways that make it infinitely worth it, not that i feel i have a choice, for even if i were crazy enough to try and defy god's will and act out some evil, i know that it would make life much more difficult to live...i am blessed to know that mu conscience is not only a puny little scrap, but it's connected to something which inspires faith in me that we are being helped, whether we know it or not.

most posters here are skeptics, but just because one feels no need personally for religion, it's still, as in wales so wisely said, a very very powerful agent in affecting history and politics, with blowback in the least expected places.

it's not going to get wished away, much as many might wish it were so. i understand their reasoning and even respect its logic, it just seems faithless to me, though of course that's just my perception, as we all have faith, conscious or unconscious in something, even as simple as 'it's worth getting out of bed in the morning, i have power to make the world a little better through what i do with my time and energy'.

plenty of people do it without it being harnessed to any ideology other than kindness, just like some are sexually satisfied and delighted by the opposite gender.

the arguments between the 'faithed' and the 'others' have been the most anguished and dare i say fruitless debates we have here at ET, but they come around regular as clockwork.

and i enjoy them, because i see faith trying to speak for itself through some, and the counter-arguments are anything but facile or shallow, in fact they are extremely on point, however much i might not share the latter, i feel my own relationship with god is deepened immeasurably more than if i just hung out with folks of like heart.

i guess what fascinates me most is the psychology of faith and the innateness of the religious impulse.

for some that's as interesting as watching paint dry...

tibetan buddhism goes deepest, imo, to addressing the fear of annihilation that lies at the root of all pathology, pathology that is steered by undue and inappropriate desire, that leads to a soul vacuum, into which pour all manner of half baked superstitions, charlatan exploitations etc, in reaction to which we have a host of intelligent people who throw the baby of belief out with the bathwater of useless mind-stuff.

their own inner void-undealt-with creates a need in them to trash what they do not understand, in other words embrace an absolutism that is as absurd as any fundy belief, simply because it forms a shell of prejudice, another defence mechanism against open-ended reality.

i sympathise, because, but for the grace of the spaghetti monster, i could easily have ended up on that road.

but now the good part is that the more grateful i am to god for having saved me from unbelief, the more the mystery of 'whole-ness' reveals its beautiful, nuanced complexity, making me more grateful, which adds to this glorious, harmonic virtuous cycle, where one can feel grateful to someone greater than oneself, who knows my best interests and can help me protect them from those who arrogantly would try to abrogate my right to worship in my own manner of choice.

i've lived in muslim, buddhist, christian, hindu and secular societies. all have major clues, but all miss the entire picture by themselves, imo.

all have let their own politics deviate them from their original founder's message, however the buddhists seem the most cheerful, tranquil, humble and humorous, and that's the dividend i pray my worship to yield, the personality i believe god is helping me reshape myself to become.

maybe some atheists don't need god to help them, they're strong enough to do it alone. i admire their strength and even the faith in reason it represents, thoroughly noble that they even cared to give the issue any serious thought.

i am not made of such stern stuff, alas.
to find spirituality i had to go further upriver than religion, and there's still so very far to go...

there are some incredibly inspiring people who are sharing this planet, whether they are religious or not should be as irrelevant as what colour socks they wear.

it's mostly a very private thing, pretty damn difficult to blog about.

A for effort, we'll see if people still want to give it another whirl, by the comments.

i look forward to seeing more of your writing here.