Vera Mont

Yes. They can also murder and maim, enslave, torture, rape and imprison us. No anti-suicide law ever stopped a terrorist, an assassin, a revolutionary...

Only in the final stages of illness, when the patient is incapable of doing it alone. And that's the only time that assistance is legally available. T...

No, they want to liberate everyone from the oppression of others. The hallmark of American progressive politics is the striking down of conservative l...

Not at all! The very oldest written legal code was decreed by Hammurabi, king of Babylon. Monarchs don't generally make arbitrary decisions over civic...

Then we should probably stop torturing them. At least for the holy season. I've been giving likes to the new submissions, but withholding comment, bec...

It's more likely because, at any age, they are believers in Law and Order - that is, top-down governance, chain of command, bosshood (they prefer to c...

Where it began doesn't really matter to people who are alive now. What they want is a functional - rather than a nominal democracy, but they don't kno...

You don't need to respond. I have a different perspective on the cause-effect chain, that's all.

Good enough to have a pretty firm grasp on the sequence of events. Not good enough to follow your line of deduction from 4th c BCE Athens to 20th c Am...

All divination does that. And the stories of Native North Americans shamans, and the icons of Eastern Orthodoxy. They are meaningful as the beholder m...

Or, you could just lie on your back and stare at clouds for the same result. The difference is, clouds don't charge a fee.

But not necessarily you, and not necessarily now, and not necessarily relating to the question you want answered.

That's it! It's more inclusive than any other heading. More kinds of interesting question can be asked.

It has resonance in long cultural association with myths and folk-wisdom. The symbology is generally recognized, and carried over into dreams and mass...

Yes. I simply meant that "That's the wrong question" is often a way of changing to the subject, or turning a discussion in direction other than the OP...

Not just they; all of you. Faith in deities, faith in science, faith in humanity, faith in Good... all the same.

So, if someone asks such a question, you don't need to answer it. If you do want to discuss some aspect of the same subject from the perspective of th...

A general statement of most people of faith.

It is to them! They're not telling a deliberate lie or a hurtful one; they're telling the child what they hope is true - and in some cases, it is. It'...

Yes, but I enjoyed reading your take on it.

It sometimes annoys me, especially when it appears to be a ploy to change the subject or the perspective. I'd like to tell such respondents: If you wa...

Good people are always involved, whether they want to be or not, and they are usually forced to do bad things. If you choose not to know how many good...

Sorry. I'm old; i have gaps. If you'd done the pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back 'o each one, telling what each one was, I'...

Like being Doctor Who's sidekick for the running?

Fascism is alive and well. The only thing that was smashed was a nascent empire, like all the empires before that tried to take over the planet. Some ...

He was okay with the better-late-than-never kind of salvation in the NT. So is Muhammad, come to think of it. I knew a Muslim man once who was quite s...

Been there, done that, got the plastic mesh mask... and, on the whole, I'd rather grow tomatoes.

Not at age 3 or 4. That's the thing, see? Parents project their ideals, their hopes, their wishful thinking forward, onto the next generation, because...

A closeup would be appreciated. She looks like a goer. Me, I'm the next thing to a shut-in since Covid, which has been stomping around our streets for...

There may be a kind of fatalism involved: I'm going to die young anyway; why should i deny myself these pleasures while they last? I did feel that way...

I concede, that's true. Some people are able to accomplish much with citizen action. And, quite evidently, anyone can be president. And, as to the com...

We each know what we mean by it. But there are factors that seem more more nearly universal. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613092/ Good documentary.

Faith: a belief held in the absence of evidence. ? Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

As in influencing policy? Seriously, which farm-hand, miner or railway porter ever got within sniffing distance of active leadership? As an idea, that...

Name two cats that are not deranged. They all have their peculiar styles, and it's not for me to judge which is best for them. I prefer the fat, spoil...

Thanks for the positive responses. It is only okay: I set my sights too low. This is literally true, except for one small lie at the end: she does alw...

My SO quit salaried jobs and switched to contracting, so he wouldn't be around when that happens -- with depressing regularity. I have witnessed the f...

Me three.

General satisfaction with one's life, work, environment and relationships. I'm unhappy about the world at large, anxious about old age and physical fr...

Mostly, yes. Whatever may be going on out there, my personal life is good.

Sadly, I haven't been around long enough to know much about the posters, so i can't even begin to guess who writes what. One things that surprised me ...

I wish you well.

Fine. I dislike being so often swept up in raid on Dawkins et al, just because I also call myself atheist.

I was impressed with Hairpin and deeply touched by Good-bye Buzz; liked the Porn Shop and the Shittyass Ghosts very much, and several other less much....

Then those atheists should support those claims. I don't know exactly who made what claims and how they justified it. All I claim is my own disbelief,...

this is my favourite of all the submission. have a couple of close runners-up, but this is gold.

I wasn't trying to describe anything. I was pointing out that 1. Humans use tools 2. Technology (the spawn of scientific discovery) and Religion (the ...

Which part of "humans use use tools... etc" is unclear? Your hope is shared by many; I never disputed your 'position' and I believe that you are corre...

Does it? Then record this: I have not judged and never condemned anyone on hearsay. Fun fact: Offering somebody the means of death is a big bad deal. ...

She claimed. OK. Did he force anything on her? So far, it doesn't sound like much of a crime. But that's not what I was answering, was it? (Are her pa...