It's the difference between absolute and relative truth. There were no beautiful sunsets before someone came along and observed them as such. Those rights do not exist outside of human perception.

I'm not really sure. It really depends on the priest or official you're asking. Their abilities to reason, and the depth with which they have chosen to study or interpret any given text or theological doctrine varies just as much as anything I suppose. Sorry for the assumption, it is the internet, and I know how godless all you heathens are. (I'm an atheist though, not that it matters. Tone is hard in text.)

A little more obvious and straightforward: don't try to deep fry anything in your skivvies, it's going to be painfully awkward to explain at the hospital, no matter how much you're craving said fried food. A little less obvious and straightforward: I dropped the pot because I tried to do something beyond my own ability, get help when you need it, and learn that it doesn't make you any less of a person if you have to ask for help.

Yay for reductionism. Adam and Eve being an allegory for obedience has nothing to do with its ability to be used as a foundation for the theological doctrine of original sin. It's a bit like saying that a car can't be used to carry birthday balloons because it is used to carry people the rest of the time. It has, magically, or rather like many other things in the universe, the ability to serve many purposes at once. I do however, tend to forsake the supernatural aspects of religion in these discussions. It's very easy to walk into a religious debate and go "You know you guys aren't really drinking the blood of a 2000 year old religious icon right?" and completely sideline any sort of real anthropological dissection of religious texts.

Nope, not messing . . . though not sure how to prove that. It was 3 or 4 in the a.m. and most of our water and coke bottles were filled with not water, however.

First-generation American, parents from Peru and the Dominican Republic. I'm currently in school for Biochemical Engineering, though I'm thinking about Civil Engineering instead. I love STEM, but finished my last two years of high school at an arts school, majoring in sculpture. I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy novels, writing, playing D&D with my two gaming groups, video games, table top games, fashion, and dancing. I came to the realization the other day that I'm probably the only person that owns Zumba for the Kinect and Skyrim and plays each just as much as the other.

I devoured books during my childhood. By age 11, I was carrying around tomes heavier than the rest of my backpack. I think there isn't a specific "age" where certain things are appropriate, but rather levels of maturity and intellectual appetite. Since my mother did not like reading, and English was her second language, I could pretty much take home anything without explicit sex on the cover home. I took advantage of this early on, graduating from things like Goosebumps in the 2nd grade to reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels in the 3rd and 4th. There are certain themes that might be completely inappropriate for most children, though. I was handed Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series as a 14 year-old and never quite recovered.

Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent. In the interest of maintaining rigor, we’re actually depleting our pool of brainpower.

Community college students face an equally prohibitive mathematics wall. A study of two-year schools found that fewer than a quarter of their entrants passed the algebra classes they were required to take.

This is a failure of instruction in middle and high school. The kind of algebra on entrance exams are things I learned in elementary school and that most of my peers had no issues learning. This kind of failure to learn algebra hasn't existed for more than one, maybe two generations.

Lowering the standard does absolutely nothing in solving the education issues being faced in the U.S. today. If we have become more interested in fixing statistics than actually educating our children, the battle is already lost, and we should indeed think about investing stock in Brawndo.

Without getting too deep into Christian Dogma, Catholicism maintains that God expressly gave free will to humans so man is left to freely choose the right path, and this in turn makes God's creation of humans valid, as opposed to a selfish act of vanity (Making creatures that have to and can only love and worship you).

Adam and Eve, however, is an allegory about the importance of obedience. The devil represents temptation, obviously, and the point of the story is really - "Listen to your parents (elders, superiors), or bad shit will happen." Parents, elders, superiors, and in this case, God, create guidelines so you don't accidentally kill yourself and learn to function well within the society you want to exist in. The difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is what those guidelines are meant for.

In the Old Testament, it was quite literal, a set of rules that helped you not to die in the society and times it was written in. It is widely accepted among religious scholars that most of the Old Testament is not expressly the "word" of God, but rather the intentions of a loving, fatherly Creator working through the interpretations of the religious leaders of the time. I.E., God wants you to be happy and healthy, and I, as Abraham, have learned some things that will keep you this way - don't ingest certain types of food, don't kill other people, and don't lie with other men to keep our numbers up and people stop enslaving us.

In the New Testament, the guidelines are about emotional and social well-being. The allegories start to be about sharing, caring, and loving the rest of humanity as much as possible. It's more of a "one-size fits all" mentality meant to promote understanding, self-sacrifice, and acceptance of others.

Adam and Eve is the first allegory in the bible because it's the first thing we learn as humans - to trust and obey the judgment and wisdom of those responsible for our care.

The idea of human rights is completely a human-construct. They do not actually exist.

I've dated a couple of transgendered men and women, and this is absolutely true. I've wasted many long nights trying to explain that their definition is just as valid but not more valid than hetero-normative men and women. It never ceases to amaze me how many of my "liberal", left-wing, alternative lifestyle friends are so completely and irrevocably narrow-minded.

The word cunt has never been used to designate an entire group of people as a subclass of human. Like cgod explained, no group of shifty looking pms-riddled women is going to beat me senseless at the mere mention of the word. I've also have never found the word cunt offensive in a sexist way, and neither does anyone I know.

After years of religious schooling, this is one of the things that really makes me seethe. Not only is there no standing for the rejection of LGBT in Christianity, judgment of others is completely "against God's will." Casting judgment of others or professing to know God's will is like saying you are God (which is considered blasphemy, the greatest sin you can commit as a Christian). The New Testament is nothing but the Christian God saying leave the judgment up to me, y'all just need to love each other and play nice. Being hateful towards any group or person is explicitly anti-Christian.

I learned Spanish first, English second. From my visits to Peru, most people know bits and pieces of English, so it's whatever words they know plus words in their own language thrown in to make sense. Most of the time those words will be preceded by an "eh" sound, and the ending made less fluent. Spanish tends to flow one word into the other, and when someone is mimicking an American, for example, they will stop after each word and pronounce the ending in a ridiculous, abrupt manner. They also will slow down their speech, and add a bit of a snooty drawl to it.

Ramesh Raskar: Imaging at a trillion frames per second

I tend to go into a "hermit" mode where I don't go to social events for long periods of time and I use Facebook to assure people I'm still alive by posting a rant or two, or sharing a link that might cheer up a friend. I also use it to keep tabs on other friends like this, who might suffer from some sort of social anxiety or depression, and live too far away for me to randomly drop in on.

I don't use Twitter.

I use Reddit to see what people are talking about in any one particular theme. I'm a bit guilty of using it like my morning paper, to see what events went on that I hadn't heard of.

I'd slab looking at/learning from content on Hubski under the 7th habit. Sharpening the saw of the mind?

Mental and emotional fortitude. I rarely lose my cool when confronted with a bad situation. Some people tend to mistake this in me for apathy... I just don't freak out. I can assess a situation and find a solution quickly and effectively, while still being able to process it emotionally later. When I spilled half a pot of boiling fry oil on myself while alone in the house, I got myself to the bath and applied cool water to get as much of the oil off as possible, gathered my things, then called my mother for a ride to the hospital. I didn't cry or stress, and even made jokes to the nurse at the front desk while most of my left leg was covered in hand-sized boils.

If you take away all the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, it's just another boy meets girl show over and over again, with a bit of action and suspense thrown in. Honestly, I think the Doctor Who trend among nerdy girls stems from a sort of "I want to be rescued from my mundane life" mentality that plenty of girls - nerdy or not - idealize. Doctor Who just happens to be that guy for girls who like science fiction right now.