The Absolute Power of Christianity!

Originally posted by jedimiller
Yes, I like darth sidious lines in rots when he says the sith have unlimited power. And christians have that same unlimited power, but use it for good, much like Yoda takes the dark energy and turns it positive. in star wars the sith are the anti-christians.

except, in the context of reality, the christians are the historical oppressors while those in the modern world who are anti-religion (don't bring up communism, it's a form of state-worship) aren't...
hm...

let's look at today, who are the good guys?
not really the christians...

obivously you guys didn't get the idea about the swords, that even with golden, wooder or stick swords..the christians will always win!

except that they don't...
look at the world, the 2 best countries to live in (Norway and Sweden) have 2 of the highest percentages of atheists (Sweden at 80% and Norway at 40%+)

you have no special power on your side, you just have the egotism to believe you do

Madness,; you kind of overstated something there:

except, in the context of reality, the christians are the historical oppressors while those in the modern world who are anti-religion (don't bring up communism, it's a form of state-worship) aren't...

As has been discussed here as well in the news media, aethists (or to use your wording) themselves have lately been the oppressors. The removal of crosses off of the California's state flag (while a pagan goddess is still represented).
The outcry over having "In God We Trust" removed from the US monies.
The lawsuits against religious groups (christian) in public schools
The lawsuit that prevented the founder of Pap John's pizza chain from buying the land then setting up a christian oriented community.

yes, in the past christianity as well as all other religions have been the oppressors. Today though, they are the oppresssed.
just my 2 cents

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
Madness,; you kind of overstated something there:
As has been discussed here as well in the news media, aethists (or to use your wording) themselves have lately been the oppressors. The removal of crosses off of the California's state flag (while a pagan goddess is still represented).

...the pagan goddess isn't worshipped by anyone, it's a mythological symbol. the inclusion of a practiced religion is a violation of the first amendment

The outcry over having "In God We Trust" removed from the US monies.

it was illegally added to the money in the first place, thus not oppression.

The lawsuits against religious groups (christian) in public schools

exactly, they're public schools and fall under the first amendment, it's upholding the law, not oppression

The lawsuit that prevented the founder of Pap John's pizza chain from buying the land then setting up a christian oriented community.

don't know the story behind this one.

yes, in the past christianity as well as all other religions have been the oppressors. Today though, they are the oppresssed.
just my 2 cents

oppressed?
they're a majority with a massive swing in elections that treat atheists like crap and wouldn't let their kids marry one or vote one into office...

they're far from oppressed, they're just having their special privileges taken away

reply to post by madnessinmysoul

Thank you! You have more than amply proven my point!
Qudos

Edited to add, you are wrong on one point, If a group of kids (christian) want to form a group to meet in school that is prohibited. If you are Muslim or other religious groups, the door is held wide open.
Sorry to burst your bubble there. There have been numerous news stories this past year on this issue. Most of them have been discussed on this board and in many of the threads, you participated in.



[edit on 30-11-2007 by kenshiro2012]

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
Edited to add, you are wrong on one point, If a group of kids (christian) want to form a group to meet in school that is prohibited. If you are Muslim or other religious groups, the door is held wide open.

Thankfully that seems to be changing. Legally, in the last 10 years Christian kids have been allowed to form a group to meet in school. However, teachers and school boards were unwilling to honor this supreme court ruling. With groups like the ACLU threatening massive lawsuits if they dared let Christians meet on school grounds, schools had to decide where their money was best spent -- on the student body as a whole, or fighting a legal battle against the ACLU.

However, just this past year groups like the ACLJ and others have been offering free legal services to students who are having their constitutional rights denied for fear of the ACLU.

Originally posted by kenshiro2012
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Thank you! You have more than amply proven my point!
Qudos

i've amply shown that you have no point.
you claim that removal of illegal text from money is a form of oppression.

nice job trying to skew things, but i won't fall for it.

The Truth about ReligonI would have posted this video on here.. But due to the TAC I will just put this link up.. But its something you should hear out..

Life seemed to start out normal for Rick Selfridge. He had two parents who loved him and five siblings who were close to each other. “The only problem I had was the fact that in grade school I started to stammer, and kids can be cruel. It really hurt; but to compensate, I started to tell jokes, kind of self deprecating humor. I didn't’t really start drinking until 18 years old.”

He goes on, “Things didn't’t get bad until my mid 20s; and then the drugs started up. I was very functional for several years, but the drinking and drugging just continued over the next few decades. During that time, I was also very promiscuous, going from relationship to relationship. Finally, I hit bottom when I was evicted from my apartment in May of 2005.”

www.sundaybreakfastmission.org...

I think what's most interesting about going to church is meeting people who have testimonies like these. My testimony is strange and paranormal, but in going to church, I've had the great opportunity of meeting others who have very normal human experiences. We all have battles with various things ranging from drugs, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, financial hardship, family fractures, alcoholism, marital distress, the list goes on seemingly indefinately. A power of Christianity is giving the burden up to God through trust and belief in His son Jesus Christ, and then doing what He says to do as the right course of action. A new believer gets shocked and surprised that when s/he starts to do so, the problems get untangled and healing begins. This doesn't mean Christians have no problems, it only means we have a very large supporter to help us out of the mess.

[edit on 8-12-2007 by saint4God]

Mod Edit: Trimmed down large amount of quoted material

[edit on 2/7/08 by FredT]

Every now and then I come across something in my life that hits the "Stop" button in my life. It was a message that was sent to me about two weeks ago (I'll not include the person's name). It hit me heavy, causing me to think about this thread. To give some context, I've been talking with an ATS member through U2U for a few weeks. Their situation is not good...so the only thing I could do from my chair all the way across cyberspace was to ask for an angel to be sent. The response was surprising, though I should know better by now:

well last week end i tried commiting suicide- i put a plastic bag over my head and tide it off- i was there till i was seeing colors, i don't know if you really wanted to hear that but i saw somthing else through the bag and i felt a presence in the room. i tore off the bag and i went into a deeeeep trance were things blurred together and got misty but i felt and saw the angel that you sent me and it put its hand on my face and it brought me back.

Thanks.

when i wanted to commit suicide tehre was to many stressing things going on, i was selfcouncious real badly, i am in this #ing facility place and i hate it and i hate everyone there and when i leave i have to go back to my problems and i hate everything and its just to much for me to bear at some times, but thanks for that angel it really saved me

I made sure to let my friend know that it wasn't me that deserves any kind of thanks, all I did was ask God's help. I am very grateful that the response was "yes" from The Absolute Power of Christianity (God).

[edit on 7-2-2008 by saint4God]

except, in the context of reality, the christians are the historical oppressors while those in the modern world who are anti-religion (don't bring up communism, it's a form of state-worship) aren't...
hm...

There you are again madd Bum rapping Christians and now I see you are covering your fallacious assertions with disclaimers before anyone say them. Well your disclaimers are also wrong In past threads You assert that the crimes and failings of some Christians (acting inconsistently with the teachings of Christ at that) disproves the whole edifice of Christianity but that the crimes and failings of some atheists (acting consistently with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective morality!) should on no account be held against the philosophy of atheism. The same thing again I see but Atheism has a tag and you are it.

You contend that no war in history has ever been created by non-belief. Yet, when you are told that 176 million people lost their lives in wars during the last century, created by non-believers like Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler, to name only a few, you reply that those wars fought were fought in the name of ideology or this time you call it the state lol and not 'atheism'

You think that religious wars have killed more people than any other kind of war, even though the largest wars of the last 200 years (World War I and II, Civil War, etc.) had no discernable religious causes.



You adamantly refuse to recognise the historical fact that "scientific atheism" was both a foundational philosophical position and an actual policy of the Soviet Union from the time of Lenin on, responsible for untold persecution, torture, suffering, humiliation and death far in excess of the numbers of the "victims" of Christianity.

It is your ignorance of history by constantly repeating grossly exaggerated numbers of victims of Christian Inquisitions, crusades and witchhunts dredged up from various unscholarly hate sites and passed off as historical fact.

Atheists will tell us, 9 MILLION women were put to death as witches by Christian fanatics in pre-Enlightenment Europe. You assert that the 300 Protestants put to death under the reign of "Bloody Mary" in 16th century England stand as absolute proof of the inherent evil of Christianity but the tens upon tens of millions killed by Marxist regimes under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot in the 20th century have absolutely NOTHING to do with the profound atheism inherent in these regimes.

You continually argue that Hitler was a "real Christian" even when he and his fellow Nazis were slaughtering millions of people (and you "conveniently" ignore the very obvious distinction between someone claiming to be a Christian and someone actually living as a Christian, and the fact that the Nuremberg prosecutors denounced Nazism as fanatically ANTI-Christian!), The only thing I see so anti Christian nowdays is the cult of Atheism and you prove it more and more with every post that you either work for someone to write this stuff or you have issues we don't know about but Ill tell you this,, I don't see Atheists getting a bunch of money togther to help the homeless feed the poor like Religious people do.

Of course that would be the time we can actually make a distinction for atheism is when it suits them. Otherwise they are nameless faceless people that hide behind the anonymity of there belief in nothing that stands for nothing is about nothing. so how can you know who they are whet they do good? Oh he has alol the facts for that but call them an organized group and he denies it.

let's look at today, who are the good guys?
not really the christians...

Spoken like a true Atheist against Christianity,, if you or anyone doubts it just do a quick look at his posts and you will see this person makes it his mission to make disparaging remarks about Christianity as if Christians burned his house down. He does it at every opportunity using the same false statistics and the same convenient double standards. When he needs Christians numbers to reflect more of a minority in debating there true strength in numbers , he invalidates them as twice a year church going people who mist likely don't have much faith. But when he needs those numbers to reflect an atrocity to prove how aweful they are then those are all Christians whether they are LIVING LIKE ONE OR NOT.

It is a Bias that discredits his every intention.

except that they don't...
look at the world, the 2 best countries to live in (Norway and Sweden) have 2 of the highest percentages of atheists (Sweden at 80% and Norway at 40%+)

Have you been to those Countrys Madd? I have and I wouldn't want to live in either one. Nice places to vistit but the FACT is the best place to live IS THE PLACE YOU LIKE!

so your stats are meaningless.

you have no special power on your side, you just have the egotism to believe you do

Power assumed is power indeed.

- Con




[edit on 7-2-2008 by Conspiriology]

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul

the pagan goddess isn't worshipped by anyone, it's a mythological symbol. the inclusion of a practiced religion is a violation of the first amendment

How do you know it isn't ? YOU think GOD of any kind is a myth and that you have Science to prove your claims, if those same Atheist inductive argumenst regarding GOD as myths then the Christian GOD is no less a myth then anyother yet you see it as threatening. You are using Chusrch and state to assist the atheist agenda to dismantle the Christian faith.

You can't have it both ways.

There are religions that don't have a GOD like Scientology and Athesim.

it was illegally added to the money in the first place, thus not oppression.

No it wasn't

exactly, they're public schools and fall under the first amendment, it's upholding the law, not oppression

Yes the Atheist will pay the ACLU to keep the Bible out of public schools but they will argue the virtues of having books about wicca in the same school.

yes, in the past christianity as well as all other religions have been the oppressors. Today though, they are the oppresssed.
just my 2 cents

oppressed?
they're a majority with a massive swing in elections that treat atheists like crap and wouldn't let their kids marry one or vote one into office...

Is that so?? and how do we do that Madd YOU don't have a Atheist uniform or have it tatoo'd on your forehead? How would we even know who they are to oppress?

they're far from oppressed, they're just having their special privileges taken away

Ahh so thats what this is about? that we have special privleges?

Christians are the pillar of America they are the backbone of this country they have defended it and fought for it and sacrificed for it .

Whats has atheism done besides whine about things they act like Vampires when ever they see the word Christ or a symbol of it while anything pagan is ok. The won't tolerate looking at a nativity scene but will tell you if the porn bothers you just look the orther way.

They are a competing religious cult and have turned public schools into churchs. That is why you see so many home schooled kids these days.

I think we need to have evolution taken out of schools because it is injecting the Atheist religion into schools the same way they say ID does.

This is why they stress Atheism is no religion so they can hold that monopoly but when you see the up coming Richard Dawkins tour, they call him the HIGH PRIST as he "Preaches" the virtues of Atheism to convert the religious to Atheism.

Thats his peoples own words. Like the Christian Scientist who looks at the universe seeing the existence of a creator, Atheists had leanings to the other direction to see where it could be possible man is nothing more then a cosmological fart and Atheism is the celebration of man without meaning.

- Con

[edit on 7-2-2008 by Conspiriology]

Originally posted by Conspiriology
(acting consistently with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective morality!)

And neither does christianity. You have an opinion you call 'god' which you suggest should make morals 'objective'.

That's not objective. You just think it is

Originally posted by Conspiriology
How do you know it isn't ?

well, there is no evidence to show that it is worshiped, so the chances of it being worshiped are slim to nil... and if it is worshiped, the numbers don't even register

YOU think GOD of any kind is a myth

and you think any god but your own is a myth
so i'm really just excluding 0.001% more gods than you are.

and that you have Science to prove your claims,

well, depends on which claims... scientific ones, yes. the existence of god? there is no proof that said being exists.

if those same Atheist inductive argumenst

could you highlight these arguments for me?

regarding GOD as myths then the Christian GOD is no less a myth then anyother yet you see it as threatening.

i don't see the christian god as threatening
i see the christian religion as threatening
in fact, i find any religion somewhat threatening, though to different degrees

You are using Chusrch and state to assist the atheist agenda to dismantle the Christian faith.

if your faith rests entirely on being placed in the public sphere by acts of government, i think you're missing the point of your messiah's teachings.

You can't have it both ways.

i'm just following the law of our great SECULAR nation.

There are religions that don't have a GOD like Scientology and Athesim.

atheism is not a religion. please prove to me how it is
and scientology has supernatural claims, thus qualifying it as a religion...
...and it believes that each individual is a potential universe-making deity...

it was illegally added to the money in the first place, thus not oppression.

No it wasn't

so it's always been on our money?
and the words "in God we trust" aren't an endorsement of monotheistic religion?

Yes the Atheist will pay the ACLU to keep the Bible out of public schools but they will argue the virtues of having books about wicca in the same school.

...wow, you're really good at this "repeating myths" thing...
the bible can be found in any public highschool library
the issue is the bible being used as a TEXTBOOK

Is that so?? and how do we do that Madd YOU don't have a Atheist uniform or have it tatoo'd on your forehead? How would we even know who they are to oppress?

it's like don't ask, don't tell...
it's ok that we're atheists, so long as we don't say we are
but the second we kind of sort of mention that we are, we're slammed.

Ahh so thats what this is about? that we have special privleges?

well...you do have an endorsement of your religion on money and in the pledge, both added in the 50s

Christians are the pillar of America they are the backbone of this country they have defended it and fought for it and sacrificed for it .

so have atheists.
there are atheists in foxholes as well.

Whats has atheism done besides whine about things

well...we've made most of the significant scientific advances of the last few decades...
we make up the majority of the scientific community, the fruits of which all of humanity enjoys

they act like Vampires when ever they see the word Christ or a symbol of it while anything pagan is ok.

well...not really. we only have a problem when we see those things in government sanctioned situations.
and we'd have a problem with the government putting up a pagan symbol without putting up other religious displays alongside it

The won't tolerate looking at a nativity scene but will tell you if the porn bothers you just look the orther way.

we don't care about nativity scenes, so long as they aren't sponsored by the government...
and the government isn't sponsoring porn, so you've made the logical fallacy of false comparison

They are a competing religious cult

again you repeat this defamation without a backing logical argument.

and have turned public schools into churchs.

really?
i was in a public school and was openly mocked by my classmates for being an atheist on several occasions...

That is why you see so many home schooled kids these days.

no, that's because their parents want to keep the children ignorant of proper science and instead completely mold their children to have identical beliefs to their own instead of allowing them to think for themselves.

I think we need to have evolution taken out of schools because it is injecting the Atheist religion into schools the same way they say ID does.

evolution doesn't = atheism
every catholic i've met believes in evolution, and i've met quite a large number of them
i know a christian evolutionary biologist on top of that.

This is why they stress Atheism is no religion so they can hold that monopoly but when you see the up coming Richard Dawkins tour, they call him the HIGH PRIST as he "Preaches" the virtues of Atheism to convert the religious to Atheism.

and it's called having fun and poking ourselves a bit.

Thats his peoples own words.

yep, our own satire...

Like the Christian Scientist who looks at the universe seeing the existence of a creator,

most people who are both christians and scientists believe in evolution...

Atheists had leanings to the other direction to see where it could be possible man is nothing more then a cosmological fart and Atheism is the celebration of man without meaning.

atheism isn't a celebration of anything, it's a lack of belief.

Originally posted by Conspiriology
There you are again madd Bum rapping Christians and now I see you are covering your fallacious assertions with disclaimers before anyone say them. Well your disclaimers are also wrong In past threads You assert that the crimes and failings of some Christians (acting inconsistently with the teachings of Christ at that) disproves the whole edifice of Christianity

well, they're not really acting inconsistently with the teachings there...the bible is quite inconsistent on the issues.
it kind of exalts and praises genocidal acts

....so...yeah...

but that the crimes and failings of some atheists (acting consistently with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for objective morality!)

neither can religion
even if your entire premise is correct, and you have god giving us morality, it's not objective. it's subjective. it's god's subjective view.

could you please show me what's objective about your morality?

and look at your bible for the code of morals provided...

oh, and why didn't the christians in nazi germany (the majority at the time) stop the holocaust carried out by their leader who also happened to be a christian?

should on no account be held against the philosophy of atheism. The same thing again I see but Atheism has a tag and you are it.

atheism
isn't
a
philosophy
it's a single position.

if people do something, they don't do it in the name

You contend that no war in history has ever been created by non-belief.

yep

Yet, when you are told that 176 million people lost their lives in wars during the last century, created by non-believers like Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Hitler,

ummmmm.....hitler loved jesus. hate to break it to ya, but you're quite ignorant on that issue.

and none of those wars were started in the name of non-belief
and mao never started a war...he participated in the revolution, but he didn't start it...

to name only a few, you reply that those wars fought were fought in the name of ideology or this time you call it the state lol and not 'atheism'

well, let's see...
(christian) nazi germany: expansionism... (not blaming christianity for starting anything there)
soviet russia: communism...
communist china: communism....

could you show me an act where someone said "we need to start this war because we don't believe in god"?

You think that religious wars have killed more people than any other kind of war, even though the largest wars of the last 200 years (World War I and II, Civil War, etc.) had no discernable religious causes.

i actually never said that nor have i thought it...
i say religion has killed people
i say religion is bad
if something is bad, you get rid of it.

You adamantly refuse to recognise the historical fact that "scientific atheism" was both a foundational philosophical position and an actual policy of the Soviet Union from the time of Lenin on, responsible for untold persecution, torture, suffering, humiliation and death far in excess of the numbers of the "victims" of Christianity.

they weren't killed in the name of atheism, they were killed in the name of politics and power.

were chistians killed because they were christian, or because christianity posed a threat to the ruling communist regime?
it's the latter.

It is your ignorance of history

says the man who called hitler an atheist and said that mao started wars.

by constantly repeating grossly exaggerated numbers of victims of Christian Inquisitions, crusades and witchhunts dredged up from various unscholarly hate sites and passed off as historical fact.

now you're telling me that i'm doing something i haven't done...
i have yet to post numbers on the issue.
and you also label anything that disagrees with your position as a "hate site"

Atheists will tell us, 9 MILLION women were put to death as witches by Christian fanatics in pre-Enlightenment Europe. You assert that the 300 Protestants put to death under the reign of "Bloody Mary" in 16th century England stand as absolute proof of the inherent evil of Christianity

well, the witch hunts weren't just women...
and the women who died were killed for purely religious reasons
blody mary's killings were essentially political. the religion thing was really just a label there....

but the tens upon tens of millions killed by Marxist regimes under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot in the 20th century have absolutely NOTHING to do with the profound atheism inherent in these regimes.

well, you betray your ignorance of communism by labelling stalin, mao, and pol pot as marxists...

they were killed for purely political reasons, just like

You continually argue that Hitler was a "real Christian"

well, i say that anyone who is following the bible and likes jesus is a christian
especially when s/he is saying they're a christian.

even when he and his fellow Nazis were slaughtering millions of people

ahem...crusades?
they were real christians
seeing that the bible has plenty of genocidal activity in it...you can't really write off an act of genocide as something that would exclude someone from being a christian.

(and you "conveniently" ignore the very obvious distinction between someone claiming to be a Christian and someone actually living as a Christian,

well, considering that christians can't agree among themselves as to who is a "real" christian....

and the fact that the Nuremberg prosecutors denounced Nazism as fanatically ANTI-Christian!),

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler

well, the expert on nazism, hitler, kind of would disagree.

The only thing I see so anti Christian nowdays is the cult of Atheism

now you're comparing us to nazis on top of the defaming (and unbacked) claim that we're a cult?

and you prove it more and more with every post that you either work for someone to write this stuff or you have issues we don't know about but Ill tell you this,,

wow, now you're resorting to ad hom.

I don't see Atheists getting a bunch of money togther to help the homeless feed the poor like Religious people do.

really? do you ignore the entire bill and melinda gates foundation?
that's an atheist organization
warren buffet, an atheist, has given several billion dollars to charity
andrew carnegie, also an atheist

those are 3 of the 4 greatest american philanthropists in history
all atheists.

It is a Bias that discredits his every intention.

i made a claim and, instead of providing evidence to support your decision, you went into a rant that didn't even address the issue.

Have you been to those Countrys Madd? I have and I wouldn't want to live in either one. Nice places to vistit but the FACT is the best place to live IS THE PLACE YOU LIKE!

so your stats are meaningless.

well, the stats had to do with health care, life expectancy, crime rates, education, and those apparently meaningless things to you...

Con, much of that post is a C&P from elsewhere. Plagiarism is considered a form of dishonesty.

Whhhaaaa!

Very well said!
Here, here!

[edit on 7-2-2008 by Clearskies]

Thread posters here will note removed posts. Please take the time to read a policy announcement linking to a thread dealing with the reason these posts were removed.

I suggest everyone read this.

Originally posted by melatonin

quote]Originally posted by melatonin
This is unbelievable

What? some atheist copy pasted the paraphrased paragraph to google and find something similar? DID YOU HAPPEN TO NOTICE THE LINKS UNDERNEATH THOSE?:??

Or didn't you copy paste that to the alert ?
Or is it that a writer can not assume common sense by the reader that a copy paste of the first paragraph of the United States Constitution was something HE THOUGHT I was trying to pull a fast one and have them think I AUTHORED IT
By the way THAT HAD THE LINK TO IT ALSO

until you know the name on my Birth Certificate,, the name "-Love Con" is perfectly within the law as NOT laying claim to who authored it because love con isn't my name.

I think you ought to quit focusing on what YOU think plagiarism is and concentrate on what it isn't and it isn't

Most of my post was regarding historical events with historical people and I don't know how many ways you can recite history without rearranging dates and times with the wrong people or reciting something authored under the public domain.

I could have changed all that but then I would have had Hitler in Russia and the Holocaust in china! Id be re-writing history or re-inventing it.

This wasn't the copy paste of a science fiction story IT WAS HISTORY OF EVENTS HAVING NO "CREATIVE" writing to them. The thing that bothers is that it was true and made the point.


Did you not see "Dawkins" name next to everyone of his quotes!

I have a good grasp of copyright law from having written software for so many years. I know what the difference is between what I can and can't do. BUT THE OPINIONS WERE MINE I would know I spent enough time writing them.

Jeeez this is the same thing I used to see when I was working as a software developer and people would be saying you stole someones work because the string used to cause an event is the same one code they used. WHEN THE FACT IS IT IS THE ONLY STRING THAT WILL CAUSE THE EVENT.

So who ever that is (I assume an atheist) that you quoted from Mel,, I suggest he learn what plagiarism IS NOT. If I were to hold all you to the same standard you just wrongfully deleted my post over, I am sure most everyone would have paraphrased the begining of a story or copied a paragraph that is like the examples given below as examples of what most people think is plagerism and what SOME people do as a cheap shot to send as an alert to remove a post that nails home a point they didn't like

Take for example:

"Evolution is taught in every public school in America, and not without consequences, as Darwin’s Deadly Legacy documents.Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 people and themselves in the worst school shooting in U.S. history. Their goal was to bring death to more than 500. Harris wrote on his website, “YOU KNOW WHAT I LOVE??? Natural SELECTION! It’s the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.”

Now how much of the above paragraph do you have to change or remove?
This is the kind of thing all writers do,, they have journals of recyclable paragraphs. I see many people like Maddness use the same statements over and over also and he is perfectly within his rights too as they are what plagersim isn't

The most over blown mistake I see by self appointed forum lawyers that get so indignant about something they apparently don't know about,

This is the part of the historical events that were part of that paragraph that when added to it would be the creative idea from the author.

""Evolution is taught in every public school in America, and not without consequences, as Darwin’s Deadly Legacy documents."

That's it the rest is basically facts of history and anyone that thinks that is plagiarism would have a hell of a time proving it. Unless ,, I guess you can use a thesaurus and change things like "Killed 12 people" to "Murdered a Dozen people" but doing that is only establishing the same message and no creativity was stolen. Words used synonymously don't work in REAL cases of plagiarism so why bother using it in cases where there is none.

Plagiarism or sloppy cut-and-paste?

Coulter, Chapter 1 of Godless: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.
Portland Press Herald, from "Maine Stories of the Century": The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.

Coulter: A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil.

The History Channel: The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground.

In the first pair of sentences about the Dickey-Lincoln Dam, Coulter's copy is almost word-for-word the same as the copy from the 2000 Portland Press list, with the only difference being a minor shift in verb tense (present to past, "is" to "was").

But is copying an item from a list plagiarism? Even with the list item being copied nearly word for word, the case for calling this plagiarism is questionable at best. Why?

If you look at the various definitions of plagiarism, the underlying theme is the concept of the theft of creative work or ideas from another person. Some people define it is a willful reproduction of the work of another, while more stringent standards hold it to be any reproduction of another's work, willful or subconscious.

Regardless of details, the key to plagiarism is the theft of a "creative" work or "ideas". Does a list item meet the standard of "a creative work or ideas" needed to support a charge of plagiarism? Despite the almost verbatim copy, I'd argue that it most likely does not.

The claim that the second passage contains evidence of any plagiarism at all is frankly nonsensical.

- CON

Originally posted by Conspiriology
So who ever that is (I assume an atheist) that you quoted from Mel,, I suggest he learn what plagiarism IS NOT.

It actually seems that Springer has a good grasp of plagiarism, and I certainly do.

Take for example:

Now how much of the above paragraph do you have to change or remove?

Why am I even getting in this discussion? Just read the link.

Con, you lifted large chunks of text verbatim, without attribution and external tags. And it's not the first time. It's so obvious when you do it, and I can actually pick it up easily. Indeed, I am actually expected to pick it up in my line of work. It is dishonest, it is lazy, it is theft of intellectual property, and it does make the baby jesus cry.

It's a pain in the rear, as poor MIMS has to reply not just to your own stuff, but large tracts of other people's work under the guise of your thinking. What you do is almost like an internet gish-gallop.

See it as tough love, you wanna be playing the harp in a duo with jesus don't you

[edit on 8-2-2008 by melatonin]