Jamie123

It reminds me of an episode of Frasier, where Frasier and Niles are unhappy to discover that a new club has opened in town, and they're not members of it. They don't even know what sort of club it is, but they are determined to join it. After a bit of wangling and string-pulling they manage to become members, and discover it's actually a health and fitness club. For a little while they are happy, until they discover that there's a door they're not allowed to go through because it leads to the "Gold Member" area, whereas they're only "Silver Members". So it's back to the wangling and string-pulling until they finally manage to become Gold Members. They're happy again for a while until they discover yet another mysterious door in the Gold area. Furious, Frasier believes that some deeper paradise is being withheld from him (Platinum membership maybe?) so he storms through the door and finds himself out in the alleyway amongst the trash bins. End of episode.

This was yesterday actually, but I heard the song "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again" for the first time ever.
"Tell Your Heart To Beat Again" - Danny Gokey (Lyrics) - YouTube
I've never needed this message more than I do today.
 

This was yesterday actually, but I heard the song "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again" for the first time ever.
"Tell Your Heart To Beat Again" - Danny Gokey (Lyrics) - YouTube
I've never needed this message more than I do today.
 

This was yesterday actually, but I heard the song "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again" for the first time ever.
"Tell Your Heart To Beat Again" - Danny Gokey (Lyrics) - YouTube
I've never needed this message more than I do today.
 

"Joseph's coat annoyed his brothers,
But what made them mad,
Was the way that he would talk about
The dreams he often had!"
(Great musical! I first saw it when I was 11 and loved it ever since!)

Today is my 34th anniversary. My wife is over 200 miles away, while I lay in a hospital bed with a C. diff infection. Feeling a bit blue. But as a chance to reflect on the unparalleled blessings God has showered on an unworthy soul like myself, I feel humble and deeply grateful.
Sorry for the FB-like post, but I'm not much into FBing stuff like this.

"Joseph's coat annoyed his brothers,
But what made them mad,
Was the way that he would talk about
The dreams he often had!"
(Great musical! I first saw it when I was 11 and loved it ever since!)

Happy weekend everyone!

I just tried listing them all: Oddly enough I can easily list my teachers between ages 5 and 16, but after that it gets fuzzy. Some stick in the memory - like the math professor who taught us to do "carculus", but I couldn't for the life of me remember who taught me business studies.

I think I'll give Discord a miss. I used to get into a lot of "bad stuff" there. Though I've cleaned my life up (or more precisely God has cleaned my life up) there's no point raking up old temptations.

I think I'll give Discord a miss. I used to get into a lot of "bad stuff" there. Though I've cleaned my life up (or more precisely God has cleaned my life up) there's no point raking up old temptations.

I think I'll give Discord a miss. I used to get into a lot of "bad stuff" there. Though I've cleaned my life up (or more precisely God has cleaned my life up) there's no point raking up old temptations.

I disagree. It doesn't mean "make no provision for tomorrow" but "spend your day so that if tonight you find you must lay your life down, you will have no regrets"

What do you call bears without ears?
 
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I finally got it. It took me a while, but I finally got it.

I finally got it. It took me a while, but I finally got it.

I disagree. It doesn't mean "make no provision for tomorrow" but "spend your day so that if tonight you find you must lay your life down, you will have no regrets"

I bought some kitchen towels this past summer that had pictures of lemons and the saying “Easy Peazy, Lemon Squeezy”.

I disagree. It doesn't mean "make no provision for tomorrow" but "spend your day so that if tonight you find you must lay your life down, you will have no regrets"

Nice to see you back @Jamie123

"Hoppety Goes to Town"
No sex or violence. Just plenty of anthropomorphic bugs, none of whom ever get squashed despite a preponderance of rotoscoped human feet descending all around them. Having said that though, there's plenty of politically incorrect humour - like when Hoppety gets electrocuted and changes (inexplicably) into an Indian...sorry - "Native American"...doing a war dance.
I won't even mention the "blackface" jokes...
I believe in America it's called "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" - parodying the title of another movie called "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town". The problem is, if you didn't know that there was a movie called "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" you'd be totally confused, 'coz there's no character in Hoppety called "Mr. Bug". (Unless of course "Bug" is Hoppety's surname.)
I first saw it when I was about 10, and again when I was about 19 (when they were doing a season on Fleischer Brothers' animation - starting with Betty Boop*). Interesting titbit: Hoppety Goes to Town was the last project that Dave and Lou Fleischer worked on together. (Some have suggested that they never even spoke to each other again.) Which is a pity because their movies were getting better. Their first feature length movie (an adaptation of Gulliver's Travels) was nothing very special, but "Hoppety" was better. OK it's not up to the standard of Disney's animation of the time, but still better than their first effort. Who knows - if they'd gone on, they might have been serious rivals of Walt Disney.
Nevertheless, it was "Gulliver" that was the hit, and "Hoppety" the flop - partly because it's release coincided with Pearl Harbour. (I mean the actual attack - not the movie [he added stupidly]). It was so bad that it was donkey's years before Paramount dared invest in another animated movie.
*Did you know that Betty Boop was originally a caricature of actress Helen Kane?

 
 

Did someone say “Lemon Squeezy”?


 
Another pet peeve—and maybe I’m just getting jaded because of my profession—but the ratio of people who invoke the phrase “for the children!” versus the people who are actually willing to do hard things for the welfare of those same children, is something on the order of ten to one.  

I suspect that is too narrow a definition of "want". When we say that God "wants" something (i.e. that we should become His true disciples) are we talking about things "temporal, flashy or earthy"? Yes, many people do perform their duty against their immediate wants, but do they not also "want" to avoid the later shame of not having done their duty? I don't think the argument is dismissed quite so easily as this.
True...but do you not also "want" to act in a logical rather than an illogical manner, because that will ultimately lead to greater happiness? Again, the problem here is defining a "want" as only something immediate and carnal. Our "wants" exist on many different levels.
Like askandanswer, you are defining a "want" too narrowly. A want could be a very spiritual and noble thing, as well as a bestial or sensual thing. Did you (for example) not want to be baptized? I was (like most Anglicans) baptized as a baby, but I can remember later on wanting very much to be confirmed. And it had nothing to do with any sensual or carnal pleasure. (In fact it was in total opposition to the sensual sins I was struggling with at the time.)
I have a book somewhere by Alistair McGrath - an introduction to theology - which asks the questions "could God draw a four-sided triangle" and "could God create an object too heavy for himself to lift" and "could God commit an evil act" - from which he develops the theory that divine omnipotence cannot be summarised as "God can do anything". He ends up with the conclusion that God's omnipotence means that He is unlimited in His ability to achieve His purposes. (Or words to that effect - I don't have the book to hand.)
Cringeworthy or not, he raises points which I think deserve thoughtful consideration. Even if we don't agree, it's instructive to consider why we don't. And don't forget he's a kid. A clever kid I grant you, but a kid all the same. We can cut him some slack.
Thanks for clarifying that. I guess the idea of "free-will-on-loan" has more to do with the Arminians (originally an off-shoot of the Calvinists, who were similarly preoccupied with divine sovereignty).
Isn't that rather like saying that "free will" is deciding whether to chuck your litter in the bin when there's no one looking, and "moral agency" is the same when there's a policeman watching?
OK thank you. I stand corrected.
One could argue that Jesus still "wanted" to obey his father because he loved Him, and this was for him (being who he was) a stronger desire than his wish not to be crucified. Though I agree that "thy will" and "my will" presented as a dichotomy is rather suggestive.
You are falling into the same trap as everyone else, namely of thinking that a "want" can only be something"bestial", or "sensual" or "irrational". I could just as easily argue that you wanted to get better, and your rational mind told you that getting better required you to take your medicine, Therefore you took your medicine (on the occasions when you did) not because you wanted the taste of the medicine but because you wanted the benefit of its other properties - namely its ability to make you better.
It's exactly the same as with the pneumonia medicine. The drug addict is presented with two wants - the want for the drug, and the want to be free of his addiction. His "bestial" self will choose the drug, while his "rational" self will realise that greater long-term happiness will be had by resisting it. It could still be argued (though I wouldn't do so myself other than to play "Devil's advocate") that he is still responding to the stronger want.
I think you are basically correct, though not for the reasons you have given.
This comes closer to what I think myself. Let me try to explain (though it's not going to be easy)...
CosmicSkeptic's arguments have a hidden assumption about what the human "will" really is: namely that it's a causal machine which takes inputs in the form of wants and produces outputs in the form of actions. It is like a thermostat responding to the relative strengths of "hot" and "cold" and adjusting the heating or A/C accordingly. But that is in essence also his conclusion, so the argument is circular.
You see the same sort of idea in Freud - the idea of "man as a machine" whose actions are programmed into him by "complexes" which can be explained in a causative manner. But if the mind is nothing but a mechanism, where is the...whatever-it-is...that experiences the effects of its operation? I was never convinced by Freud: if I had gone into psychology, I would be a Jungian, not a Freudian. (Most likely I would have driven myself nuts.)
I mentioned in my original post that even if the want>action model is (at some level) correct, perhaps God has a kind of "freedom" which goes beyond it. (I put the word "freedom" in quotes because I don't know how to define it.) But perhaps we also have that same sort of freedom ourselves: either "on loan" from God as the Arminians would claim - or perhaps inherent as Jane Doe says - or perhaps (in kind of "Pullmanish" way) as a result of original sin. Quite what this is I could not really contemplate - but could an entity ever really contemplate itself?
In a similar vein, I remember once seeing Susan Greenfield on TV talking about how consciousness was a "sensation" which we would one day - by science - understand. I thought at the time that this was wrong: a "sensation" requires someone (or something) to experience it, and would not that experiencer need to be conscious in order to do so? You stand at the beginning of an infinite regression. To make sense of anything there has to be something "above and beyond" - and that whatever-it-is could be the real seat of free will. But what that whatever-it-is is...
Pope said "Know then thyself presume not God to scan". Maybe both are unattainable.
(And by the way, thanks to everyone for replying!)