Drunkard

Sounds like a fair assessment of the situation. For the record though I never tried to tell you who to have as a hero, who to worship, or anything along those lines. Your defense of ID had led me to believe at least initially that you supported it to have an equal place in science classes with legitimate science and to my knowledge the people who support ID do so for religious reasons and not scientific ones because of ID's complete lack of use of the scientific method to test hypotheses. I don't really know your true religious beliefs but perhaps I jumped the gun in assuming you had a Christian background or belief system and it was that assumption on my end that made me raise my eyebrows about Jefferson being a hero of yours. I realize that many of the founding fathers were Deists but Jefferson's book seems to take things to a further level than many of his contemporaries and was an act that I would believe most Christians would take great offense to, which is what made me surprised by the comment, even though it was just a statement and not me telling you who you should idolize. Either way making the assumption was wrong on my part given that I don't know your actual religious views. Perhaps you've shared them and I missed them or I read them and forgotten them or perhaps you consider them private and have not shared them at all which is completely fine. I'd be interested in getting an overview of what they are so I can see where you're coming from so to speak, but if you consider them private I completely understand. Either ways it's nice to have these discussions with you and the vast majority of contributors on this board. I enjoy fleshing out ideas and differences and agreements of opinion, especially when it remains civil like I believe it has.

I'm surprised you claim Jefferson as a hero when he published his own Bible which took the new Testament and removed all of Jesus's supposed miracles and statements claiming divinity.

Putting Reinhart on the 3rd line with McGinn and Gionta is a surefire way to waste his talent and ensure crappy point production. He needs to play with more taleted players, even if it's on the wing.

A design like that saves on cleaning and replacement costs over time. You could spill an entire bottle of cocktail sauce or knock a gravy boat over and nobody would even know.

Exactly. Other than Mr. Intangibles I don't think any of our center spots are set in stone. Eichel will likely be our #2 center but even that is not guaranteed.

It used to alternate with every Presidential Election (Democrats were Red in 1996 and blue in 1992 and vice versa for the Republicans) but after the circus that was the 2000 election they kept showing that electoral maps so many times that Red just became synonomous with the R's and Blue for the D's. They haven't changed it since.

Interesting stuff. Growing up around the Marine Corps I've met and known a lot of Filipino people. Most seem to be completely Asian or Pacific Islander but there are many that seem to have a mix of hispanic in their background as well and many of them will have a last name that sounds more Spanish than Asian. One of my past Filipino buddies used to call his people the mutts of the Pacific but they make some delicious lumpia. When I used to work at the commissary on base one of the cashiers was Filipino and whenever we had pot lucks for the employees she would always bring in a giant platter of lumpia. Delicious stuff.

I think the guy is Polynesian or some kind of Pacific Islander but who knows for sure. I remember the clip of him doing all the creepy smiles on Tosh.0 though. Funny stuff.

The Indian guy from Beer Fest if my memory serves me correctly.

Perfect!

I guess I'd be something like Sober or OntheWagon or something along those lines. A conservative, evangelical, born again Christian that loves guns, praying, sex strictly for procreation, and intelligent design. #RepublicanJesus in 2016#

You're a stand up guy, Neo, and even though we seem to be at odds politically I can respect you and your opinions. I know I can come across as an ass at times (imagine dealing with the louder drunken version of me at a Sabres/Canes game, rather than this sober, mild mannered version who's typing away on a keyboard at work), but I do enjoy the debate and discussion. I have my own issues and opinions on religion but it's not my intent to just dump on the belief systems of others. ID is a special case to me though, because it sneakily tries to present itself as something other than a faith based concept and as I've explained ad nauseam (to many I'm sure), so I won't rehash it again in this post. Cheers.

The hostility towards ID is the fact that people are trying to pass it off as science when it is the exact opposite of science. Yes people used to think the world was flat and other things that have proven to be false (like the earth being thousands of years old instead of billions of years) but it has been science that has proven those things to be false and given us the level of understanding we currently have. ID claims that things are too complex to have occurred without a creator so there's no other explanation for how they came to be and no need to look for any. Subscribing to ID would encourage the shift in science from using observation and measurement of facts and data to deciding things are just too complex to have developed in any way but supernaturally. As for why it's even a topic of conversation I'd say it's because we're more evolved in general so we discuss all varieties of topics. We're also the only species to discuss a host of other topics including sports, politics, cooking, the economy, and any other topic really. Personally, I think man created god and not the other way around and it all stems from being the only species that knows of its own impending demise. People saw their parents, grandparents, and family members, and other tribesmen die and it caused them stress on two levels. On one hand their loved one was dead and they missed them and wanted to be reunited with them and on the other level it made them realize that they would one day they would suffer the same fate of dying one day. To cope with this stress they imagined an afterlife where they would one day be re-united with the parents who had already died and their children who would eventually die after them. That's why even the earliest cavemen (neanderthals and cro magnon alike) both buried their dead with various tools and trinkets, tens of thousands of years before Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, or any other type of religion or scared scripture.

I understand they can differ from parrish to parrish (not sure if that's the right word or not) but all the Evangelical ones seem to favor the old testament rules over the new testament rules. Eye for an eye over turning the other cheek, gay marriage is an abomination instead of love thy neighbor, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime over feeding the poor let alone washing their feet or any of the stuff Jesus has done and/or said about helping the poor. They all seem pretty united on these principles despite claiming to be Christ like regardless of who their preacher/pastor is or in which county or state they live in.

Whether you love him, hate him, or feel indifferent about him he raises some good points though and I tend to agree that if Jesus was an American living today he'd be more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. The only issue I can see him siding with the R's on is abortion but by sheer numbers that pales in comparison with respect to lives lost when you consider their other platforms are being pro gun, pro capital punishment, pro war, and cutting entitlements for old and poor people in favor of tax cuts that predominantly go to the wealthy. From his book he seems to have much more socialist tendencies. My other statement about Evangelicals and their apparent preference for the old testament over the new ones didn't come from Maher, it's just something I've wondered. I've asked a few Evangelical types the same question and tey always just seem to dodge the question.

I agree. Evangelicals in particular seem to love to pick and choose the parts of the Bible they want to follow but the most surprising thing to me is that more often than not, they seem to favor passages in the Old Testament particularly when it comes to stances on homosexuality, war, helping the poor, roles of women, etc. Jesus never said a word about homosexuality and they lays on the hippie stuff pretty thick about helping the poor, turning the other cheek, love your enemies, and all that jazz. You would think Christians would place a greater weight/emphasis on the New Testament since it's about Jesus and they aspire to be Christ-like, but they only seem to do that when it suits them such as ignoring the parts about working on the Sabbath, wearing clothing made out of two fabrics, and things of that nature. Bill Maher did another bit about Jesus is a liberal and God the Father is the Republican because he'll smoke your ass if you screw up.

I remember on a different Sabres board I used to post on someone put a link to where they were selling that thing after they first switched to the slug. If I had only had $5,000 laying around that I didn't need for bills at the time, I would have bought it. It would have been awesome to have hanging over the fireplace where I could turn the smoke on everytime they scored while watching them on center ice.

Bill Maher brought up the same dilemma when Bin Laden was killed. According to the New Testament acts like that shouldn't happen and shouldn't be celebrated by people who follow the teachings of Jesus and try to emulate his works and way of thinking/acting. As an atheist I have no such requirements so I happily celebrated the death of Bin Laden and would celebrate the demise of people like that who prey on the sick, stupid, and/or old. It makes me wish there was a God just so I could see what happens to the folks who abuse it for their own selfish needs. I would especially like to see how the ones from Westboro Baptist Church or even the guys like Swaggert and Haggert who exemplify the epitome of hypocrisy.

They are a minority but they have to power to cause serious damage to the educational system and that's why people like Bobby Henderson are needed to balance out the crazy.

Whiskey, The problem with your previous statement in the politics thread is that it's not just the people from the creation museum who put saddles on the dinosaurs. If it was, it really wouldn't bother me so much. There are actual cases that have happened such as the ones in Kansas, Florida, and Texas where there want to teach out right falsehoods like the young earth theories in schools during science classes instead of actual science, or they want to gice them equal time with actual science. While ridiculous on the surface it causes real damage by teaching kids factual falsehoods and wasting time that could be spent teaching actual science. ID is literally teaching creationism without using the word god and trying to hold it up as a scientific equal to natural selection without it meeting any of the actual scientific criteria.

That would be fairly accurate I guess although I would probably word it differently. Scientists who support ID are completely ignoring the scientific method in order to support an agenda that is faith based and not fact or evidence based. If I were a god fearing person I would probably try to square the circle with science a completely different way and try to posit that God put the big bang into action and then took a hands off or laissez-faire approach which allowed evolution, natural selection and everything else to materialize into what the universe is today. Unfortuantely the laissez-faire approach can't really be accepted by most people of faith though because all the religious scriptures tend to require god intervening in various capacities through fires, floods, locusts, plagues, being a single parent with a son, and various other examples. I could be wrong but I imagine a lot of this stems from the desire to believe that humans are just too important to have not even been on the scene right from the first week like they are supposed to have been according to Genesis. However, there should be some wiggle room in th timeline because there's a quote in the old testament about a day being a thousand years in the eyes of God or something to that effect (it's been more than a decade since I've read the Bible). That melding of time should allow the blurring of the timeline to account for stuff like the big bang, primordial soup, evolution, and so on but many fundamentalists don't take that out and still try to insist on young earth theories. The sad thing is that there are living trees on this planet now that are older than they claim the earth to be.

It's all good man. I honestly wasn't sure either way but I've seen the "you can't prove he doesn't exist" argument before so I added my statement. I'm sure it's no surprise but I'm an atheist, mostly because the agnostic stance seems like a cop out. I used to have a much more anti-religion than I am now, but the beauty of atheism is that it doesn't even take the effort of a hobby. The one area that makes me militant in my stance against religion though is when they try to pass off theology as science. I think it's dangerous because it weakens the education level by taking time away from actual science and leads to a general dumbing down of our society. The statement should probably be there's no proof of God rather than the definitive there is no God so I see your point as well.

The onus of proof falls on the person making the claim which would be the people claiming intelligent design. It isn't the job of actual scientists to disprove the existence of a benevolent creator. See Russell's teapot for the classic example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Their findings are also peer reviewed by other experts in the field. Something that can't be done with Intelligent Design because they don't produce verifyiable or measurable data. http://www.skeptical-science.com/science/claims-peer-review-intelligent-design-examined/ Great defense to your point of view. I don't think any of those 7 people post here though. I guess I can see why you prefer pseudosciences. It's easier to pass the buck than to defend your position.

Not all scientists because if you assemble a big enough group of people you are bound to include some people with idiotic ideas but the overwhelming majority dismiss it as absolute nonsense. I skimmed the articles and they read as hogwash with religious overtones. "There is no possible explanation for the complexity of life other than intelligent design". Really?! Sounds scientific to me. I can't figure it out so it must be a magic man in the sky. What a great lesson to teach children. Having trouble with a big problem? Just give up and assume something supernatural. Lets just give up on trying to find real answers because it's hard.