Marinus

I think life eternal would always turn out to be Hell, where ever one would spend it, but if I would have a choice in the matter, I wouldn't spend it with a being that condemns other beings to eternal torture for thought crimes. If you read the bible, Satan is clearly the better, more reasonable guy anyway.

It's not like there are any Christians around that give a shit about what Jesus had to say. Yeah, the convenient parts of course, but the rest is simply ignored. Luckily Jesus forgives everything including the fact that you still didn't sell your laptop and donated the money to the poor.

I think toleration of religious beliefs (to a certain extent of course) is a great good, but respect is a little bit too much to ask. Faith by its very definition is belief without proof, and that's just stupid. People are free to have faith but they really should keep it to themselves.

No it isn't, even after all this time it's kind of tasteless to compare the Christian hobby of torturing innocents to death in public displays to the burning of objects.

But it sounds like the end of the RMS Euro. If it's all the same to you I'm still heading for the same lifeboat as "Unsinkable Merkel" is in. That's true, a majority seems to want to stay in the Eurozone. Preferably if we pay for it of course. And why not, it's not like they can pay it themselves. This is becoming suspicious.....

Attached is the Occam's Razor. It's a reasoning tool. Maybe it will be useful to you and others. http://crayfisher.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/occam.jpg

According to a German source Greek army uberbobo Frangoulis Frangos has said the following: "Ich wünsche mir, dass die Demokratie funktioniert. Ich werde mein Mandat direkt an den dann gewählten neuen Verteidigungsminister übergeben. Aber ich möchte Euch auch noch etwas sagen: Zweifelt nicht an den Kapazitäten der griechischen Armee. Ich wiederhole: Die Armee hält sich zurück. Aber es ist eine starke, stille Macht, die einen ohrenbetäubenden Lärm machen wird, sollte dies notwendig sein.“.“ translation (German confirmation please!) http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2012/06/13/griechischer-verteidigungsminister-droht-mit-%E2%80%9Ebetaeubendem-laerm-des-militaers/ I myself wish the democracy functions. I would hand over my mandate to the newly chosen Defence Minister immediately. But I want to say you something else: Do not doubt the capacities if the Greek Army. I repeat:The Army holds back. But it's a strong, silent power that will make a ear-deafening noise if that would be necessary. I know enough..... *gets cola & popcorn* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uc01ASDJT8 I wish I could to say that it was fun while it lasted, but it wasn't.

I'm an European living in the Euro-zone and I've yet to meet the first European whose stance to any aspect of the Euro, including it's relation to the Dollar might be described as "gleeful". So I find it very hard to believe that a chunk of the small community of people from the Eurozone on here, expressed such sentiment. But maybe skydivers are notorious Europhiles, who knows. As for the Dollar being out-competed by another currency: that's only a matter of time AFAICS. If you as a county keep on heading to your own iceberg on full speed, the down-fall of the American economy won't be anything less than spectacular. FYI I'm not gleefull about that because that'll be our problem too. I won't even kick in that open door.

No thank you, I only needed to read the 12 steps to make my Bull Shit Detector smoke and burn out. After I did some reading on it, I decided that AA/AN is some odd variant on the theme of Abrahamic religion which may have a placebo-effect on addiction. In my mind it's between acupuncture and anthroposophic medicine in the category of pseudo-medical nonsense.

I know a lot of believers who're rational intelligent people until they start talking about their faith. For some reason they manage to overwrite their common sense and rationality in favour of idiotic believes. Interestingly at the same time they're perfectly able to reason why other religions are false.

You mean because of the possible extradition to the US?

There's a third possibility, the Eurozone partly collapses, and the remainder forms a economic/political union. I would prefer this over a complete failure of the Euro, and a situation in which we have to pay for the Mediterranean for an indefinite time. And there's probably even more possible outcomes btw, it's a very complex situation that could have many different outcomes.

Personally I wouldn't know why not. I would make clear that I'm not at all interested in (converting to) his religion and decline the tract, but in the end I don't really care about whatever he believes as long as he does do his job. If he insists to evangelize to me after that, that might be a problem, as I would see it as very disrespectful towards me. In my neck of the wood it would be seen as very unprofessional to evangelize to costumers, btw.

two things. Europeans that are/were gleeful about the Euro? You must have imagined them because those never existed. We know we're fucked, America still seem to have faith in it's economy. Unfortunately faith won't be enough to save it, nothing is I'm afraid.

You mean people who talk about tools when they really mean guns? that kind of thing?

It doesn't really matter what you would expect, but statistics do matter and show that the gun violence in the US of A is much, much higher than anywhere else in the Western World. I'm not against private ownership of guns, but the average American gun laws are just moronic. Not that I care, there's enough Americans so we can afford to loose some of you to the epic fail AKA the right to bear arms for absolutely everyone.

Nah, it's more or less a joke. Heineken is biggest flaw is that it's utterly unremarkable, and it's a shame that out of our not insignificant beer culture that's the one that's exported all over the world. It's our Big Mac: an overpriced mass-product that lacks any quality or originality but that happens to be popular all over the globe.

And I for one offer my apologies to the world on behalf of my peopl for the abomination that's commonly referred to as Heineken. If it weren't for the fact that we redeemed ourselves with offering the world the wonder of Grolsch we should be nuked into oblivion for it. Just one look at the bottle tells us that Grolsch is bloody brilliant: http://www.grotescheur.nl/wp6/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Nederland-034-Grolsch.jpg

So you ideal school is strictly secular? So no bible study and prayer groups, no religious symbols, no references to God at all?

It sounds like something that would work great in a totalitarian society. Strip people of their identities and replace it with an identity that's desired by the state.

Those are in the low average range. It's already mentioned that German motorists are thoroughly trained and that cars have to meet high standards to be allowed on the road, but I think the general mentality of German motorists is also an important factor. They're generally both law-abiding and defensive/social drivers IMO.

Decline would be the better word, down-fall is a bit too extreme indeed. I'm aware of the fact that it's normal for people to think they live in the end-time, but I think the things I fear are more realistic threats than loose morals and rock and roll. There's a God chance that the USA and Europe will experience an economic collapse in the near future, and this could lead to all kinds of misery.

Of all the beers and pilseners our combined countries have to offer you choose Heineken? But if it all goes down, at least it'll make the news very interesting. Actually I like the idea of a truly united Europe including my hypothetical grand-kids waving the European star spangled banner and stuff, but I just don't see it happen. At least not any-time soon.

I sometimes think this could be the beginning of the downfall of Western Civilization. Things are in a dire state on both sides of the pond, but at least Europe is finally united: http://media.caglecartoons.com/media/cartoons/216/2012/05/24/112332_600.jpg

It's not only the Germans who get tired of paying for "all the other" failed states. Other than that: at least we've some states in "our union" that understand that you can't spent more than you receive. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ Good luck with that in the coming years!