DigitalShadow

More or less those would be my answers to the questions as well (except for the last two that don't really apply to me). I have a followup question for you. Since you said probably on the common descent question, do you believe Adam and Eve to be allegorical? How do you reconcile the scientific evidence that humans evolved with the seemingly very different religious account of the creation? Honestly this particular question has been one of the main reasons I am not a member.

The recent "belly button" thread made me curious about a few things. As many of you probably know, I am not LDS and don't believe in any particular religion, but I do find the intersection of science and religion to be an interesting subject. I would like to respectfully ask a few questions of willing participants, not to debate the answers, but to further my understanding of how science and religion interact. These questions are open to anyone, but I am particularly curious how some of the more scientific members answer these questions. Do you believe evolution occurs at all? Do you believe new species can occur through evolution? Do you believe in universal common descent, that all life on earth is related (in more than just a metaphorical sense)? How old do you believe the universe is? How old do you believe the earth is? Do you believe that the Big Bang theory is accurate? Do you believe any current prevailing scientific theories are at odds with your faith? If strong scientific evidence directly contradicted your faith in some way, would that change anything for you?

I know of a lot of families (including mine) that would be devastated and have an extremely hard time putting food on the table if we immediately gave up all our possessions. Assuming you were in such a position that you could not guarantee the welfare of your family after carrying through with such a request, would you still not hesitate in following it?

Would you truly not even question the validity and motivation behind such an odd request and so easily put the welfare of your entire family on the line? If so I admire your faith but confess I don't think I am even capable of that level of faith.

I'm ineligible for the poll, but I still find this thread fascinating. Out of curiosity, how would you answer your own question, Vort?

I believe that also from a rational standpoint dogs can't give consent since they can't directly communicate with us. While we can certainly infer certain things from their behavior, I find it unlikely that even the Dog Whisperer could accurately convey to a dog that he wanted a yes or no answer whether he could have sex with them. This is exactly why I said laws regarding this are different question altogether. When I said that I don't think people should be discriminated against for their sex life, I only meant that it was my opinion that it is unethical to do so, not that it should explicitly be made illegal. I'm really not sure what the best answer to all this is either.

Dogs can't really give consent, while a partner of the same sex can. I think there is a huge difference between "deviant sexual practices" that involve and consenting partner and ones that don't. In my opinion, whatever two consenting adults want to do in the bedroom is none of my business and I don't think they should be discriminated against for it. Whether we should make laws that explicitly lay out what minority groups are protected or not is an entirely different question though.

Sounds like standard media fear mongering to me. From the Article: That paragraph has a serious disconnect in it. IP addresses and times are really about all a news site like that would know about its visitors. If you had to register to view articles, they might be able to give a name and address as well, but a quick visit to the site in question tells me that they don't even have a place to register as a user. The only reason the article would specifically mention things like social security numbers is to scare you. If that news site is truly somehow recording my social security number every time I view an article there, there are far more serious issues with that situation. All an IP address (which is the only conceivable piece of information the site could divulge) really correlates to is a particular ISP account at a particular time which is typically shared through a router to multiple people. If you're truly that worried about your privacy and who knows what IP visited where, you should be far more outraged at the steps the MPAA and RIAA take in the name of stopping piracy.

I was with him when he bought it, there were so many red flags that went up in my mind, but he didn't feel like shopping around or listening to advice. The reason I said it couldn't have had any maintenance was because when he got it repaired they mentioned that some of the belts were worn to near the point of breaking.

When he got back from the repair shop, he handed me a slightly warped thermostat and said the problem was that it fell off. I have no idea how that can even happen, but from the shape it was in there is no way that car had been through an ANY point inspection or even had any maintenance done to it in its lifetime.

Carmax was going to be my next stop, but from the selection they had on their website it looked like they didn't even have a car under 10k to buy. I guess all in all I probably got a good deal, but the deception and tactics really get to me. Next time, if I don't see prices on the cars I'm not even going to bother looking there. Thanks for the tips, I could have definitely benefited from knowing rule 1 yesterday. :)

My friend just had a similar experience buying a used car. It was his first car so his credit would only allow a $5000 car but he figured he could pay it off quickly to build credit and at least have transportation in the mean time. A couple days after the 30 day warranty from the dealership ran out, the thermostat fell off and the engine seriously overheated. $3000 in repairs later it was up and running again, but in another couple weeks it had a total meltdown and now he has to scrap it.

The problem is that I don't think there is anything that someone could possibly do to be deserving of that much money. Perhaps if they singlehandedly cured cancer or made some other tremendous positive impact on society, I would concede they would have earned ridiculous amounts of money, but being able to get on stage and pretend you are someone else really well, or making the next catchy tune or doing whatever it is that a CEO does... those things just don't seem to have thousands of times more value to society than a person who works their butt off at 2 near minimum wage jobs just to survive.

I don't know that, hence why I used the word "seems"

Frankly, I don't believe any one person, CEO or movie star, "deserves" that disproportionate of an amount of resources. It gets to the point where you're just making more money for the sake of having more and more money. I know that some people use their wealth and influence to really try to make the world better, but that seems to be a very small percent of the ridiculously wealthy.

He clearly said $8,000 "out the door" and it was even written on the paper, but the finance person and everyone else looked at me like I was an idiot when I told them that I thought the actual price was $8,000 rather than $8,000 + my deposit. It was 11pm and we hadn't eaten dinner yet and I had already signed everything but the very last piece of paper which happened to be the only one with all the pricing clearly laid out.

As you can probably tell, I need to vent a little. Words can not describe how much I hate car shopping. I honestly don't know much about cars at all and know even less about haggling, so this one event somehow manages to combine the two areas that I have the LEAST expertise in. Before yesterday, I had only been car shopping once just after I got married. We got a brand new fully loaded Mazda 3 and probably paid way too much for it, but I still love that car and don't regret the purchase. So we finally decided we needed 2 cars and wanted a relatively cheap, reliable used car and decided to look around a bit. I quickly learned that it is not possible to casually look at cars. The first place we went was very infuriating. I told them that the only things I had in mind were cost and reliability and wanted to see what there selection was on less expensive end. They proceeded to show me three cars they thought I would like and made me test drive them before telling me even the slightest hint of cost and even then they only wanted to talk to me in rough monthly payments and I couldn't seem to get a straight answer out of them on anything. Basically they want me to pick out the car I like most, then negotiate price with me, but that is opposite of what I wanted to do because how much I like the car strongly depends on the total debt it is going to set me back. The second place we went to appeared much nicer and more straight forward, but getting a cost estimate before trying to negotiate about buying it was still like pulling teeth. Finally I test drove one that I liked, it had low mileage, seemed rather reliable from the googling I did from my iPhone and I thought I could get for under 10k. This was only the second place I had been so I didn't want to make a decision yet, but he said to come in and see if he could make me a deal. Stupidly, I agreed and we started talking about actual price since this seemed to be the only way to get a "real" price out of someone. After filling out the initial credit check information for us, he comes back saying the retail price was 14k, but he would give it to me for 12k. I told him that was way too much and asked where he was getting those numbers because the bluebook estimate I saw was around 10k. He went back and looked up some stuff and printed out a bluebook estimate that included all the specific features and came out to 10,400 which seemed more in line with the limited stuff I looked up online and he said he would give it to me for 10,000. I told him that we were still looking and unless he could give it to me for a very good deal like 8,000 with all the fees included, we were going to look elsewhere first. He went back to talk to his manager or whatever and to my surprise came back and said we had a deal. What I didn't realize until I had already signed nearly all of the financing was that apparently an "OTD" offer refers to how much you are paying aside from your deposit, so really the offer was 11,000 including all tax and fees since I had a 3,000 deposit. The base price ended up being 9,500 which is still nearly 1,000 under the bluebook listing but I am seriously unhappy about being 3,000 more in debt that I thought I would be and that it was not made clear when we transitioned from talking about the actual price of the car to a number on top of what I was already using for a deposit. Alright, done ranting now. So if you managed to get through the whole thing, did I get ripped off? Is 1,000 under bluebook (not including tax and fees) at least a decent deal?

I can't watch the video right now because I'm at work, so could someone sum up for me exactly what freedom are we losing here?

I woke up this morning, looked out the window and pondered just staying in bed today.

I think the evil part comes in when they take the monthly fee, then look for any reason (or even make one up) to keep from having to fulfill their end of the contract and reimburse the expenses. Obviously I know not all of them are like that, but I can understand some frustration with the industry.

A few observations from a (relatively) unbiased perspective: - I don't think superdad intends to use the information learned here to mock LDS beliefs since the other summaries seem to make reasonable efforts to be fair. - I'm sorry superdad, but from one atheist to another, I think your site is a bit unintentionally condescending. For example, repeated assurances that you're not trying to make anyone feel dumb. - I understand Vort's concerns and can see how he might get the wrong impression since many of the slides on the front page of the linked appear counterproductive to the stated purpose of the site. I disagree with how he went about showing his concern, but that's just how he is and I've seen him tear in to plenty of theists as well.

Glad to see this is a friendly thread. I tried golf but could never get in to it. I took a semester long class and by the end of it, I could still only get the ball to go reasonably straight about 20% of the time.

Are you trying to make some type of meaningful point here? Obama plays a round of golf on average every one and a half weeks. So what? If you are trying to imply that he is spending more recreation time than the previous president, I highly doubt golf is the only recreational activity either of the men participate in and simply looking at one particular activity is a rather ridiculous and underhanded comparison.

How would you teach common sense?

What is "the majority" and exactly what "same story" are they referring to and how closely do the accounts really match? The article is very light on details and sources. I also wonder how well accounts match up between different cultures and belief systems. I'd also like to point out that dreams aren't completely random, they are synthesized from the world people know, so it is no big surprise when they have common themes.