Look who crawled out from under their rock. Hope its not too cold for you this weekend up in the god forsaken frozen tundra. Tends to make people cranky, as evidenced.

Alaska has a pretty good constitution, even though it was mostly written by old white men. :-)

I suppose that's a benefit of having 48 other states go first.

you're absolutely right, that this is the issue. but i think this is, historically, a relatively recent highlight. as far as i know, most of the biblical underpinning of this relies on a kind of phraseology, a figure of speech, or a way to express a truism. i knew you before you were in the womb. there's a lot of womb talk, mostly in the OT, and the point of that womb talk is not to express when exactly god quickens that biological mass; it's to say that god had you in his plan not during, but well before your mom and dad ever hid under the bleachers. in other words...

i find the scriptural basis for quickening-at-conception uncompelling. more scripturally accurate to say you became god's child way before then. obviously that's hard to fathom, but that's what jeremiah 1:5 says, and what ephesians 1:4 says. he chose us "before the foundation of the world." hard to wrap your brain around, but there it is.

when god quickens that mass of biology is, as the saying goes, god's own mystery. but i'm pretty sure that if god knew you before the foundation of the world, he didn't choose you to be one of the fetuses that gets flushed down the toilet in the fertility clinic. but christians have chosen to believe that quickening occurs at conception, just as they choose to believe in free will, but those very same versus that champion the idea of conception-quickening also often champion the idea that your fate was also sealed before conception. bummer that.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

This is not correct. It is absolutely not about protecting life.

We know if you want to reduce abortions, you provide cheap and easy access to contraception. Also things like paying for prenatal care and paid family leave.


We know making abortions illegal doesn’t reduce abortions. It just reduces safe and legal abortions. It doesn’t save any fetuses. It just causes a bunch of women to die.

So don’t be dishonest and say this is about preventing deaths. Because that is just factually wrong.

you may find it "uncompelling" and, it seems that leads you almost to a belief in the 144K gaining ascension? But i may have you wrong there? Probably

Greater mind than yours or mine have looked at this. Me. I'm gonna take that leap of faith off the side of the pool. Into the hands of my Father

Hopefully it's not just a Endless Pool eh?

/r

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Steve

You sometimes make it too easy

greater minds than mine have looked at everything i've ever looked at, brother! but i guess i fall on the side of not legislating on this with such an iron fist. first of all, it seems to me american christianity - in the outward expression that i see, just as a spectator - has its treasure. has its kingdom. this generation of american christianity has tried to vote and legislate their kingdom here. which is fine. that's done all the time. it appears to me that there's at least one expression of islam (perhaps the dominant one) that establishes its kingdom here, rather than in the world to come, by legislation, by war, by whatever means. christianity, as i read the bible as an *originalist*, foregoes that kingdom here for the kingdom in the next world. except that nowadays, at least in america, what's critical is to create that kingdom now. here. and to make everyone - sinner and saint - live in this kingdom christians have made for themselves, so that for once (!) they get to be the persecutors.

if i was a christian there is one thing that would terrify and sober me: the possibility that, after this life is over, i'm told not that i've "run the good race," but that i've already "received my reward in full" (matthew 6 i think).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

absolutely agree

I've served a long time as a member of the State--but to establish some form of religious State would be anathema to what I've understood my oath to be.

we can leave religious States to Afghanistan [despite our best efforts, blood and treasure], Iran and Saudi

i greatly prefer our constitutionally established democratic republic. in all its imperfect glory

/r

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Steve

bravo to you sir.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

We don't need a "Bravo" How clear can this be?

One of my favorite visions of George Washington was at him in the barracks at Newburgh, NY. Recent victors over the British. The new National Army of the brand new Republic.

Yet the Continental Congress refused to pay the Continental Army. Arguments over land grants and the value thereof.

To the point that the the Continental Army was ready to march on Philadelphia and throw the 'rascals' politicians out of power

**our Nation would have died right there--at its birth**

until Washington appeared in front of them

he marched through the barrack up to the lectern and turned to address them. placed his papers down and paused to take his glasses out of his pocket

"Pardon me Gentlemen, but my eyes have grown tired in the service of our Nation."

killed the rebellion right there!

/r

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Steve

that is some thrilling shit right there. we could've used washington's wisdom and stature 150 years later, with how we dealt with the bonus army. but i digress...

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

In another thread here on the forum "Trail" does a great job of delineating how these are NOT extraordinary times. We've faced extraordinary times as a Nation and some how (God given?) we've had a Washington, a Lincoln, a Roosevelt [although my Grandfather hated him with the passion of a thousand suns].

these are, in fact ordinary times in terms of political discourse--exacerbated only by the ubiquitous of the internet. But that is offset by how concentrated in the few populated areas people were back then. This is just normal. Odd as that sounds

/r

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Steve

Guess everyone was too breathless to be bothered to post the bill was pulled

https://apnews.com/...29c30d106a85c80c7c50

Look squirrel