Bay 12 Games Forum

Mundo's cleavers with both blackfire torch and rylai's are kinda' hilarious. I would never, ever, seriously suggest trying it in a non-lulz build, but for that... it's amusing.

Teemo's shrooms with the torch also appear to be a g'damn nightmare, made worse by TT being rather small. It's great fun

Yeah... it does seem to start slowing down a bit around midnight my time (GMT -6), stays fairly sessile until a bit past daylight. So it's not terribly uncommon for it to be pretty dead 'round here when I first wake up, heh... or go to sleep. Or occasionally both. Depending on the day.

*more tumbleweed*

_{Rollin' rollin' rollin, Rawhiiiide}

Which... now I have to go listen to that song again

Internet has trouble transmitting actual warmth and cuddles. For the time being, anyway.

Does anyone else have a bunch of proposals on the ballot in their state? Here in Michigan, there are six... and all of them aren't just referenda, they're amendments to the constitution. You see, MI never passed a public referendum law... but they can still be accomplished, because the state constitution can be modified by public vote. It's very stupid.

Huh... thinking on it, how common is that sort of thing? I know Florida's doing it (I'm probably going be voting yes on three of 'em; two for tax easement for disabled veterans and military families of deceased soldiers, one for tax easement on low-income elderly in older homes), but I wasn't aware it wasn't a normal thing among the states.

There's at least one really shitty one I expect to pass, though (Amendment eight, which basically gives private religious schools and shit like that a free run at public money. Whoever put down the language of that amendment needs to be drug out and shot a few times. Maybe just in extremities, I'unno.), and a few more that's more than a little iffy. Eleven total, and that's not a terribly high number as my memory serves me -- looking back through ballotpedia roughly confirmed that... as well as noting that most amendments in this state apparently get passed. Somewhat worrying, that.

Gah, no. Everything asked to a theology student is rightfully asked to any believer of the theology in question, and at some point (preferably quite early in their existence as a believer) said believer should be asking the same questions. Not understanding your own dogma is just... bad. Part of the whole point of religious belief (qua spirituality, anyway... qua social organization may be a different situation...) is to further your understanding of that belief system, not just sit on something some critter at a pulpit spewed out. If you're not engaging your belief system whole heartedly, pretty much every single major religious figure, from what I understand, blatantly says you're doing it wrong.

Lay worshipers tend to get some easement in regards to ethical code, but that doesn't really extend to understanding of their holy text and/or dogma.

The reason that believing in Jesus specifically is the only route to salvation is due to not accepting his sacrifice and therefore being stuck with original sin, while believing in him and accepting that sacrifice gives you another chance.

Original sin's kind of an interesting thing, mostly because it's not necessarily biblically supported; there's room in the text for the interpretation, iirc, but nothing particularly explicit. You can blame most of its dogmatic existence on Catholicism in general and Augustine in particular.

As I understand it, insofar as original sin goes, even if you do accept its original existence (and there's plenty of ground not to), at this point it's utterly irrelevant regardless as to if you're a believer or not. It's one of the reasons Jesus was supposed to be as awesome as he's considered to be and his sacrifice as important; when he did his thing, he absolved pretty much all sins of that sort, for everyone, period. Christ was by and large (though, as in all cases with a body of text of the nature of the Bible, there's exceptions) a pretty decent fellow.

If you're trying to take the high road with things (it's fair to note that many, often especially those claiming Christian belief, don't.), "Jesus as the only route to salvation" is closer to Buddhist practice than anything -- a practical rule and action set for obtaining happiness in this life and the next. The path to salvation is to walk as Jesus; to act as he acted, to love as he loved, etc., so forth, so on. This is a thing guaranteed, the belief system says, to bring goodness (happiness, an improved situation for yourself and those around you, a reduction of harmful acts by yourself and those you interact with, etc.) into your life. The metaphysical beliefs inherent to that are (or were; it's incredibly important to know that the people who wrote the bible had a wildly different perception of reality and metaphysics), so far as I can tell, supposed to be necessary consequences of doing so.

Personally, I think a lot of people nowadays strongly overstate the belief aspect ([cynic]often, it seems, as a method to cover their own asses and believe themselves to be achieving salvation despite not actually doing shit to achieve it [/cynic]) of Christian theology. I've been fairly well convinced for a while now that if Jesus came across an atheist, or an agnostic, or someone of wildly different theological precepts, so long as those people were working the good works and generally being awesome to one another, Jesus would distribute righteous brofists and probably chip in with whatever was going down.

Grapefruit salad?

Even better idea, that. The bowl can be a small watermelon or pumpkin or somethin'.