The blurry line between religious and crazy

Interesting choice of example.A decision not to attend the combine is one that many pro athletes make. It is not surprising that someone would agonize about it, pray about, or waffle about it.The sitting in the airport part is silly, but ultimately harmless. There is no need for any of us who are not NFL team owners to care if it is crazy. I mean it's just sports which is of no real consequence. Of course fans don't think that way, and it is fans that you are going to find on message boards.On the other hand I know a story about a pastor who prayed for an adult to recover from cancer who 'expressed disappointed' that her flock member under went conventional and successful cancer treatment. The whole episode was very hurtful to the family.I remember another story where a person in who assumed that a salary mistake by her company was a 'gift from God' she'd been praying for. Much to her surprise, the company eventually noticed the mistake and sought to get its money back. Crazy or not crazy?

I was aware of that. I just don't find the distinction of any great consequence. Your questions seems to be drawn to whether acting on religious belief is crazy. Does Faith actually say that God told her the earth was 6000 years old? I cannot recall her ever saying that.I was taught that if your drinking causes life problems then you are an alcoholic. I would draw the line on what constitutes a belief that renders you crazy in a similar fashion.Football players sometimes show up at the combine and perform at the same, sorry levels they've always performed at. Is that a crazy delusion?

To the extent that credentials reflect experience and knowledge, those things are worth considering. While those things are not guarantees that a speaker has merit, they are surely indicators, and can add weight to whatever intrinsic merit the person has. Bill Gates might be able to talk convincingly about making it without a college degree, but perhaps I could not.My favorite anecdote about experience regards something that happened during the birth of my first child. One of the nurses told my wife to expect some 'discomfort'. Since my wife 'believed' that she was already feeling actual pain and not mere discomfort, she asked the nurse whether she had given birth and of course the answer was no.My son is now an adult, but my wife and I still laugh about the unconvincing nurse whenever we talk about the births of our children. She threatens me with a smackdown whenever I speak about birthing discomfort. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

We might do it that if we had any respect or grudging admiration for the ability to achieve the outcome. We might instead recoil from a description of the murder of millions and judge the result on a horror scale.

Not just to pick on your post, but it is currently the last post in this thread taking the position that the Nazi's were efficient.One might note that killing and taking people's stuff in a situation in which you need fear no reprisal from the local government is easilly going to be profitable. So if you must insist on describing the result of huge benefits as being efficient, then we should at least consider the inputs and outputs and then the end result of having your country reduced to ruble and having to pay back your ill gotten gains whenever the rest of the world can manage to find them.

Efficiency is a ratio comparing results to some base. I haven't heard a single defense of efficiency that even promotes some way of comparing an inefficient killing and taking machine to a non-efficient one. Yes, a monstrous number of people were killed, so the Germans were quite successful and effective. Efficient? Give me some way to judge.And the idea that the Germans were extremely effective at hiding what they did is just nonsense. Just keeping the Jews away from the front lines was enough to keep what they were doing out of the Allies face. That plus the large amount of indifference about the Jews through-out Europe and the US probably explains a lot.Effective is not the same as efficient.

More efficient at killing that dropping two nukes on Japanese cities? How about calculating the death rate in dollars of gasoline per death? Nuking Japan Certainly cheaper and more efficient, if you insist on that kind of characterization, than stuffing people in a bunch of railroad cars.Yes, I understand that you said "before", but I'm just saying. I'd suggest that the Battle of Gettysburg was more efficient in wiping out life than were the Nazi's despite the fact that fewer people died.

No one is minimizing efficiency. Just distinguishing it from brutal thoroughness. No need to misuse words just to give Nazi's some props. And calling such action zunprecdented was also wrong. And not even all Germans were Nazis. We don't demonize Nazis because it is trite and not because were all just like them.

You aren't the only person participating in the thread. If you want to make up your own definitions, then it is not legitimate to criticize others for using more correct ones. Efficiency and thoroughness are quite obviously different.I've been quite clear about what I mean by efficient. If instead, as you now claim, it was all about the dictionary, then your silliness about being offended is easily seen to be nonsense. Obviously the people saying that the Nazi's were not efficient are not saying that the Nazi's did not succeed.The distinction between the two descriptions, efficient vs. thorough, is that the later simply gives the Nazi leaders the credit for being determined, evil, murderers that they were, while calling them efficient suggests something quite different. Well it turns out that murdering a bunch of innocent, largely unarmed people using an army is not all that special. We've seen any number of people manage to do it. Not everything is about you personally. Yes, that term has been used in this thread. My comment was in response to your statement that the Nazi's are us. They aren't us. At the very least they are not me and you can tell me if they are you. Taken out of context as you do here, the statement is a bit easier to attack.

What's up with the "t" in Nazi? That reminds me of those old comic books in which the Ratzi was used instead of "Nazi" apparently in some attempt not to offend.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.