The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.

As a linguist... so as to be able to address "gentic program" (his paraphrase)for I too would perfer to stay on the safer side of the political discussion. I am interested in the Wolfram "program" but Indeed I will, if you respond spend some time reading this thread in toto first. Thanks in any advance.

'Suffice to say Mike asked why no one went after the Taliban. And, well... we did go after them. Rather efficiently, actually.'i was not talking physically Dan,let me clear this up its my fault because i use the word 'attack'too much, however i am always referring to the war of words which i feel are a lot better than the war of force.did Jesus ever say ,go kill and heaven is yours - NO
what i am trying to say is he is not the bad guy but so called followers of him ofcourse,they might be , i have no way of knowing they have ulterior motives , but attacking (words) Jesus wont achieve much.

Mike, I was leaning on your "tone" but I guess the question was in 11 by WK and I only was putting up indeed a physical notion of sucide vs murder to which it would hard to say to say if capital punishment by a wrong law would not be murder even if WK might have said sucide no matter what cells were involved if instead I for instance fall off the chair I am on...

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As a linguist... so as to be able to address "gentic program" (his paraphrase)for I too would perfer to stay on the safer side of the political discussion. I am interested in the Wolfram "program" but Indeed I will, if you respond spend some time reading this thread in toto first. Thanks in any advance.

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See, here's where I sheepishly admit I don't know enough about Chomsky to get what you're saying. I tried googling for it, but couldn't find anything. Do you have a link to any papers on the subject?------------------
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Dan Carroll

Mike: When did I say anything about killing in Jesus' name? (Although there are those who do. People will whip out any old justification for their actions, whether it fits or not.)The Taliban tried to impose their will through force of arms. The response was a greater force of arms.Christian orginizations in this country try to impose their will by touting the validity of their faith. The response is to question the validity of that faith.That's what the initial post seems to be doing... questioning Christianity's validity. Had Jesus tripped on a banana peel and knocked his head for our sins, would Christianity have been the widespread chartbuster it is now?If not, is it only the grotesqueness of his death that people are responding to?You may see that as an attack, but I see it as a question worth asking. Especially if the religion being quesitioned is going to continue trying to be the basis for widespread influence on society.------------------
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Dan Carroll

'If not, is it only the grotesqueness of his death that people are responding to?'no people are not responding to this you are , by asking these types of questions (jail death).
if your wondering what christians respond to ,it is his words of wisdom.His promise of eternal life,his resurrection,his forgiveness,need i go on.

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need i go on.

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Yes, because you totally dodged the main question.Had Jesus died by some ludicrous, unimpressive means, would Christianity be as widely accepted?------------------
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Dan Carroll

Had Jesus died by some ludicrous, unimpressive means, would Christianity be as widely accepted?------------------irrelevant to me Dan because as i said earlier he did not die in a prison.He lay down his life for us of his own accord , therefore what ifs are meaningless with me.

Well, fine, but they're kind of fun for the rest of us. So why not leave us be with our what-ifs?

1. According to the Father there HAD to be the shedding of the blood of Jesus. The sacrificial lamb of the OT could not be strangled, etc. It had to have the blood shed. Jesus became the once and for all sacrificial lamb sacrifice. Why? Because, say the scriptures, "the life is in the blood." Hebrews 9:22 "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission." (of sins)2. God does nothing important on earth, except he reveals it to his prophets first. Why? So you all and I can know this is of the true god, the supernatural god and not the false gods. So the mode of death MUST follow in line with what was foretold.In Psalms 22:15-18 (about 1000 BC) David prophesied the messianic cross; "They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. "They part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture." This all, clearly describes the crucifixion. The prophet Zachariah, about 400 BC prophesied the piercing of the messiah as when the soldiers pierced his side. It's somewhere in Zechariah chapter 12. There's other OT prophecies to this effect such as in Isaiah, etc.

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According to the Father there HAD to be the shedding of the blood of Jesus ... "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission." (of sins)

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Why? Is there a good reason for this, or is this just another whim of the murderous deity who you would have us believe constructs such a world with perfect foresight?

Is this really a fair question? This seems akin to Buz asking us something like "why are the fundamental laws of the universe the way they are, and not another way?"I'm willing to allow blood-redemption as a fundamental axiom of Buz's Christian worldview. It's certainly no more arbitrary than any physical constant, I'd say. Anyway Buz provided the bible quote so that's sufficient evidence to me, within the scope of the Christian worldview.Challenge his worldview if you like, but I don't see this being a fruitful way to do so... Just my two-hundreths of a dollar.

crashfrog writes:

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I'm willing to allow blood-redemption as a fundamental axiom of Buz's Christian worldview. It's certainly no more arbitrary than any physical constant, I'd say.

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And if you look at the Bible, it is filled with symbolism attached to blood. One of the theological reasons presented for why god preferred Abel's sacrifice over Cain's is because Abel's was a blood sacrifice. Many people also claim that Cain didn't give the best of his fields, but the Bible doesn't directly say so. And given the supremacy of the blood sacrifice, there is a significant theological point that it was generally understood that the reason Abel's was preferred is because of the blood. After all, look what happens next: Cain spills Abel's blood.Let's not forget that the reasoning put forward by the Jehovah's Witnesses regarding the taboo against blood transfusions. Let's not forget the rules for keeping kosher and how blood is supposed to be handled. You are not allowed to consume blood.So I think it's fair to say that while perhaps modern Christians might be able to handle a Christ that wasn't killed violently, the early Christians coming from a Jewish culture that had a strong symbolism over the shedding of blood probably wouldn't have accepted it.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

If this bevy thinks it understands all this (taking all the posts since Dan responded to me... then answer this
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&Dear Dan,
I had asked that question because you seemed against the praxis of resolution of "fear" post 9-11, at least I thought I felt what the pres said existed but I am open to chnage my mind like I did with Clinton and as this thread was on the "media" it appeared to me that you might, not having any communication with you, that perhaps that is what you may have felt "faith" to be.I have a video of Noam that is revealing enough for not only did he discuss this stuff with Focoult on TV he asserted some strong claims against the media that I have felt applies in a microcosm to c/e issues but not much more.There is a crucial claim with respect to genetics that his linguistics made because he said so for there is otherwise no reason to assert that just because a bunch of traits are numerically taxomoically numerous that that imples a phylogeny and yet on a superficial understanding I have of Noam that is level of biological thinking and yet he did not settle for this but for the claim that there is a "program" a genetic program that gives similarity and hence a linguistics commonality. Intellectually this was an in thing and he may have been one of the first advocates for all I know of the history of this idea but even showing the details of lingusitic divisions match an argued for social relation (that the believers need to be given things to divert their attention from what is really going on and prop up their "faith" on par with sports information...) and the anegativity in my original query to you a cladist would further argue the baraminc "sister group relations " as well to which we would go "outside" of language and into potential falsifications of any claim of a prior "geentic program" such that for instance the word of GOD could indeed have operative manifestations that NO LONGER would be intellectually within and yet it appears that Chomsky's claim against the NY TIMES can be made agaisnt his own linguistics itself.I recently heard him on NPR an was very much offended had how far he as taken his notions to where evey thing depends on the particular useages of prefixes and this makes the transimtters of the wordings equally liable to words themselves.The elite however, and not the masses will only change by change in language use so that if the situation is to be better for the kind of content in this thread then Chomosky's work must in due corse be addressed but as you can read I am more insterested in direct biological subjects than making the extrapolation that Gould may have written in this context as, p115 "Finally, in rereading the ORIGIN, I was struck by another, quite different, use of the argument from imperfection - onte that had entirely escaped mu\y notice before. Darwin showed little sympathy for our tranditional and venerable attempts to read moral messages from nature. He almost delighted in noting that natural selection unleashes a r3eign of terror that would threaten our moral values if we tried - as we most emphatically should not - to find ethical guidelines for human life in the affairs of nature. But I hadnent realized that he sometimes presents the apparent cruelties of nature as imperfections pointing to evolutio by natural selection - imperfections relative to an inappropriate argument about morality to be sure, but imperfections that trouble our souls nonetheless, and may therefore operate with special force as suggestive arguments for evolution."I first wanted to exclude if perhaps you were using Chomsky's version of this rather than Gould's.for if I ever life to test an idea about cell death and prefernetial fertilization the quote following may be shown to have a simple genetic ezplanation and Darwin's explanation could fall the like his pangenes did but Chomsky could still linger even in THAT biology which is why I was more sensitive FIRST to him than to what i have a better chance of intellectually contributing to.You all semed to think there was more but it is not fun and I wish I could recline with Mike's lizard drink but alas the reality is perhaps indeed less about the violence and more about trying prehaps wrongly of seeking* mutants as NOT grotesque. It has been a long day ago that I looked at bovine mutants as amphibians but this is not grotesque, has nothing to do with perception vs observation in evolution as anti-creation, and still may be the SOUL to which Gould referred but to speak for THE CHURCH, I will not.

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did Jesus ever say ,go kill and heaven is yours - NO

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Matthew 10:34
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."Luke 22:36
He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."Romans 13:4
For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.