Do Christians need to obey Old Testament laws?

I found this question via FriendlyAtheist, who shared this big pdf file (poster size, but only 1.6Mb), with a list of questions, each answered in various ways in different parts of the Bible, and a graphic showing links between the different areas where the different answers occur.. To my title question, the poster shows:

gen 17:19, exo 12:14, 17, 24, lev 23:14, 21, 31, deut 4:8-9, 7:9, 11:1, 11:26-28, 1chron 16:15, ps 119:151-2, 119:160, mal 4:4, mat 5:18-19, lk 16:17 ≠ lk 16:16, rom 6:14, 7:4, 6, 10:4, 2cor 3:14, gal 3:13, 3:24-25, 5:18, eph 2:15, col 2:14
Those of us who don't know all the verses need a convenient way to look them up, like http://bible.cc I've linked two of the sample verses, above. I like the parallel view, showing each verse in 15 popular English Bible translations.

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Matt Taibbi reports from his front row seat at a foreclosure court trial docket

Matt Taibbi's newest article should be required reading for anyone who wants to support the desires of banks to expeditiously foreclose on home loans. Taibbi showed up at a Florida foreclosure docket to give an insider's view. You will be amazed at the conduct of the judge (it is described toward the end of Taibbi's article). Here's the link: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners: Retired judges are rushing through complex cases to speed foreclosures in Florida. Here's an excerpt:

At worst, these ordinary homeowners were stupid or uninformed — while the banks that lent them the money are guilty of committing a baldfaced crime on a grand scale. These banks robbed investors and conned homeowners, blew themselves up chasing the fraud, then begged the taxpayers to bail them out. And bail them out we did: We ponied up billions to help Wells Fargo buy Wachovia, paid Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, and watched as the Fed opened up special facilities to buy up the assets in defective mortgage trusts at inflated prices. And after all that effort by the state to buy back these phony assets so the thieves could all stay in business and keep their bonuses, what did the banks do? They put their foot on the foreclosure gas pedal and stepped up the effort to kick people out of their homes as fast as possible, before the world caught on to how these loans were made in the first place. . . . When you meet people who are losing their homes in this foreclosure crisis, they almost all have the same look of deep shame and anguish. Nowhere else on the planet is it such a crime to be down on your luck, even if you were put there by some of the world's richest banks, which continue to rake in record profits purely because they got a big fat handout from the government. That's why one banker CEO after another keeps going on TV to explain that despite their own deceptive loans and fraudulent paperwork, the real problem is these deadbeat homeowners who won't pay their fucking bills. And that's why most people in this country are so ready to buy that explanation. Because in America, it's far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi reports from his front row seat at a foreclosure court trial docket

Getting Science Under Control

After the election of 2008, we fans of the rational and provable had high hopes that government may give as much credence to the scientific process and conclusions as to the disproved aspects of philosophies promulgated by churches and industry shills. We watched with waning hope as a series of attempts to honor that ideal got watered down. But at least it was an improvement. But the 2010 election quickly reveals a backlash. Those whose cherished misunderstandings had been disrespected for the last couple of years now will have their day. As Phil Plait says, Energy and science in America are in big, big trouble. He begins,

"With the elections last week, the Republicans took over the House once again. The list of things this means is long and troubling, but the most troubling to me come in the forms of two Texas far-right Republicans: Congressmen Ralph Hall and Joe Barton."

He goes on to explain why. It comes down to them being proven representatives for Young Earth and fossil fuel interests, doing whatever they can to scuttle actual science by any means necessary. Especially where the science contradicts their pet ideas. Barton has published articles supporting climate change denialism. His main contributors are the extraction industries. Hall has used parliamentary tricks to attempt to scuttle funding for basic research. The Democrats offered to compromised by cutting funding, and he refused in hopes that the whole bill would fail. It passed. Then Hall publicly called Democrats on the carpet for using tricks to fatten the bill by the amount that they offered to cut. The Proxmire spirit lives on.

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Republicans must think Latino voters are stupid.

As we come out of the Mid-Term Elections of 2010, one thing is absolutely crystal clear: Republicans think Latino voters are stupid . . . really stupid. In state after state Republicans are running ads featuring Latino-looking figures going under, over and around fences which are or are meant to depict our Southern border. Other Republican ads make false and misleading claims about the dangers of illegal immigrants to America. We are urged to be afraid, very afraid of the Republicans’ opponents. Such appeals have even been used by Republican Senate candidate Roy Blunt in Missouri, even though Missouri was a "border state" only during the Civil War. I'll collected quite a few links illustrating this nonsense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU6Xq56CaCE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qP3DBLUOeQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uvp0Jljh6U&feature=related http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/10/roy_blunt_looking_for_illegals.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLgZ1LWLlko http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzDlN7VLmXQ&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVheLuooLUw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE6De4VqFfg Republican US Senate nominee Sharon Angle even used pictures of Mexican nationals in Mexico to try to make her point, and she used the images without the permission of the photographer. Republican jingoism and anti-immigrant distortions have been around for a long time, but now we have another far more sinister effort by Republicans to use immigration and immigrant status as a political tool. A recently minted organization calling itself “Latinos for Reform” sought to air TV ads to urge Latinos not to vote in the Mid Term elections. In Nevada, some 25% of voters are Latinos. The Tea Party, Republicans and their supporters claim that because of Republican obstructionism, which requires 60 votes to pass any bill, a comprehensive immigration bill is good reason to punish Democrats in 2010. The man who put this effort together formerly worked for the Republican National Committee and his treasurer is a Republican lobbyist. The Post Office Box of “Latinos for Reform” is the same as that of the group that gave us the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” in 2004. These efforts by Republicans and their Tea Party supporters may have borne fruit in the 2010 elections but, with some one third of the US population projected to be of Hispanic descent by the end of the century, such short-sighted efforts will only serve to alienate the Hispanic voters and encourage their voting patterns to tend toward those of the African-American community, which approach 90% Democratic support. Republicans may politically profit by their xenophobic racism, but in the long run they will likely only do themselves extreme long-lasting damage among Latino voters.

Continue ReadingRepublicans must think Latino voters are stupid.