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Friday, February 27, 2009

Sound Off 02-28-09

So Scrip and Biggums are on their belated honeymoon, and I wish them the best. My own honeymoon was a bit of a letdown. My now ex-wife wanted to go to Orlando, which didn't excite me all that much, but it wasn't like I had any better ideas. She was very much a type A personality, and I am type B; she wanted everything planned, I was content to go with the flow and be spontaneous. In short, there arose far more arguments than romance; it was a week-long battle of wills set to the tune of "It's a Small World After All".

Today's question:

(If you're married or divorced) How was your honeymoon?
Or...
(Whether you're married or not) What would you consider a perfect honeymoon?

27 comments:

  1. Um, honeymoon?

    I somehow got away without having one.

    But, I'd like to one day.

    That "money stuff" is sort of hard for me to get my hands on.

    After getting married, my wife and I went back to our teeny tiny economy apartment and and watched an outdoors blues concert from our window. The concert was right outside our apartment, so we actually had little choice. Large crowds, loud music, streets closed off.

    And blues didn't quite set the mood for us, if you know what I mean.

    Yeah, I owe my wife a nice honeymoon, don't I?

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  2. My honeymoon was a month bumming around in Florida. My grandmother has a place in Florida where she winters so we stayed there most of the time but also went camping in the Keyes and traveled around a bit. Over all it was great.

    I'd prefer to travel internationally if I get married again.

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  3. No honeymoon for Pat and me in 1968. We were married by a Justice of the Peace in Scituate, Massachusetts at my parents’ request. We were counter-culture hippies at the time (and expecting our first child).

    A perfect honeymoon would be two very like-minded people, connected at the soul level, very compatible, with similar interests, of the same religious persuasion, true friends, bonded spiritually and emotionally before coming together physically, getting away together to a peaceful, remote, natural setting with mountains and forests and ponds and streams.....with time to relax and contemplate and write prose and poetry and just be with one another, taking walks on scenic trails, investigating nature, sleeping under the stars, taking in the wonder of Creation while seeking more of God. The Ruby Mountains near Elko, Nevada would be nice. The greater land of Israel would be ideal, perhaps participating in an archeological dig and staying on a kibbutz, followed by a missionary life as yoke-fellows, writing tracts, sharing the restored, true Gospel of the Kingdom in the End times, gathering the Remnant, hiking the hills of Judea and Jordan, fleeing persecution together, and finding strength in one another.

    Sounds like a novel someone should write.

    I did not know you had been married, Philo. Any kids? Did divorce have anything to do with giving up on God? More biographical posts requested. Help me understand the journey of how you arrived at Atheism.

    How is the zoo-keeping going?

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  4. Uruk:
    Yep, it sounds like you owe your wife a honeymoon :)

    Tandi:
    Yes, my marriage was an unequal yoke, and I've been meaning to write about her and her Church of the Nazarene. But that wasn't entirely the problem with us, and luckily there's no kids.

    The zookeeping is going well; why, I almost like being around all these animals. :)

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  5. How about asking your readers for input for Question of the Day if you are running out of ideas yourself, Philo. You could call it “Suggest-a-Sound-off” : )

    I’ll go first if you like. I suggest an “Answering the Skeptic” series in response to those horrid Dan Barker questions and answers. His views are an argument from outrage rather than logic, and I know you appreciate logic. I plan to take each question one by one and deal with them on my blog, but we could gauge the logic and Biblical knowledge of your readers by offering them as questions to sound off on.

    Example:

    Do you agree or disagree with Dan Barker’s Q&A #1. If you disagree, how would you refute it from Scripture?

    These “hit and run” snipes at Scripture and then moving on to other topics are unfair. They are like drive-by shootings at God!

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  6. Tandi asked:

    >Do you agree or disagree with Dan Barker’s Q&A #1. If you disagree, how would you refute it from Scripture?

    Hi Tandi:

    Personally, I need a little more info, if you will. I haven't read anything by Dan Barker; I don't know to which Q&A you refer. Would you provide a link of post his question somewhere? Or, do you have this question posted somewhere on your blog with a rebuttal?

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  7. Hi Uruk,

    I am referring to Philo's 2/21/09 Daily Sound-Off Bible Quiz post from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, those 50 questions, remember? Dan Barker is the Co-President of this organization. You can click on Philo's link and get to the quiz. Or go to ffrf.org. I am not suggesting we answer the question here and now. I hope Philo will give it its own topic heading. But you can begin your preparation of answers to some of these questions if you are willing. I would enjoy the discussion. : )

    Maybe you have another suggestion for Philo to post as a Sound-off Question? He may not like my idea.

    I am about to download an mp3 of Dan Barker debating Kyle Butt. Should be interesting. Link is here:

    http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/2009/02/kyle-butt-vs-dan-barker-debate-mp3.html

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  8. The first question is a great example of taking portions of the Bible out of context to make it say whatever you want. By looking at the first part of the chapter and the last ten commands of the chapter one can come to the conclusion that the last ten things were written on the tablets. If you read the entire chapter you will see there are a number of commands by God in between and nor does it state that any of those commands were on the tablet. It states that the same commands were on the tablet as the two before it then goes on with his other instructions.

    Its too obvious. Personally I don't find his questions intellectually stimulating enough to look at any more of them. If its a drive by shooting then I'd rather just wait untill they drive by rather then shoot back.

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  9. Zee:

    It’s more a case of total misrepresentation and underhanded deception! These lies should not be allowed to stand. The Scriptures themselves plainly refute the man. How does he get away with this? He also makes a snide remark about women as property and mocks the meat and milk ordinance, both of which deserve to be commented upon and the record set straight. If Barker was not so influential, I would not be concerned. But his organization, books, etc. are leading multitudes astray. The Biblical illiteracy in our day is appalling, and frauds such as this guy take advantage of ignorance and/or disillusionment.

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  10. Tandi:

    He has no influence on me. The world is full of idiots if you feel led to comment and set the record straight on this one then more power to you. I don't even think you are being dramatic at all this time. Rip him a new one.

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  11. Hi Tandi,

    It's not so much that I'm out of ideas as it is the fact that I've just bought a PS3. I'm a middle-aged video game junkie and proud of it!

    Well, I'm also out of ideas too. Video games do tend to soften the gray matter (though they improve the hand-eye coordination). Anyway, I took your suggestion and requested suggestions for future sound offs. Isn't it against your religion to aid and abet atheists??? XD

    Regards,
    Eric

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  12. Tandi:

    Oh, I get it now. I was confused about what you were saying. I'll have to look back and think on that one.

    Philosobot:

    You lucky dog, you.

    Video games are a thing of the past for me.

    Play a round for me! Just don't neglect your zoo keeping. :-D

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  13. We're getting married in October, and going down south somewhere, probably Florida, for a fossil hunting trip. I'm really excited; we collect fossils in Minnesota, but we're eager to see other areas and what they have to offer. It sounds like the PERFECT honeymoon to me, obviously, or I wouldn't be going! :)

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  14. Hi Sunnyskeptic. You and my co-blogger Scriptulicious would get along swimmingly. He called me yesterday from the Virgin Islands... the Virgin Islands, mind you... to tell me about the fossils he found. :)

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  15. Are you sure finding a fossil wasn't some sort of innuendo for cougar hunting?

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  16. We pretty much plan on organizing most, if not all, of our future vacations around fossil hunting. :)

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  17. Hey Sunny,

    I just got to reading these posts. Organizing a vacation around fossil hunts...ummmm, wow. I love it. So funny too that I had called Philo from the Dominican Republic to report my fossil finds. I have not followed up my field findings by collaboration with any reference works, but I know that these were some of the youngest pre-C/T fossils I have ever found. Here in Chicago we are limited to the Silurian. In Michigan and Wisconsin I find Silurian and Devonian. South of Chicago I find Carboniferous. On the islands that I sampled in the DR I find enormous limestone deposits with nautiloids and possible trilobites. I only wish I could have fit more in my pockets and/or had a chisel to remove some from their embeddings.

    Oh, and there was some psuedo-"amber" fossils with entraped insects for sale in the markets. They were so obviously fake as evidenced by the presence of grasses and modern taxa of insects. I mean, really, modern flies and grasses present in pre-Cretaceous amber? Maybe it would have fooled a creationist, but, armed with the intellectual refinement and thinking of an evolutionist, I saw right through that forgery.

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  18. oh, clarification, why would these have fooled a creationist? simple: the creationist flood/fossil model makes no reliable predictions for the order in the fossil record. Though it does not happen, fossilized grasses could be fossilized in any of the sedimentary layers according to the creationist-flood model. However, because grass is a rather late development in botanical evolution, it is not found prior to the Jurassic (at the very oldest). Yet, as we know, grass today is a ubiquitous organism--permeating habitats that are wet, arid, tropical, continental, tundra, low-elevation, high-elevation, semi-arid, etc. etc. So, grass in amber from an area characterized by fossil flora and fauna antedating grass, by evolutionary standards, would be okay to the creationist drones.

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  19. "Maybe it would have fooled a creationist, but, armed with the intellectual refinement and thinking of an evolutionist, I saw right through that forgery."

    Unfortunately, they managed to hoodwink you with counterfeit Cohibas. :)

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  20. wow, that is sad. $35.00 worth of counterfeit scrap. will call in early pm

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  21. More vocabulary and science lessons! You both keep me busy learning and researching. So I gather a cohiba is a cigar? And I understand the Dominican Republic is teeming with these amber fossils. Fascinating. Were the fakes offered for sale as real? Or just tourist souvenier replicas? Script, I hope you go on a fossil hunt and find something that will convince you (and others) beyond a doubt that fossils came from Noah's flood and catastrophism in recent history, not millions of years ago. I wonder if there is suppression of truth in this regard.

    Philo, please get going with some posts. Script is very busy...but you are probably just playing your PlayStation too much. : )

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  22. Hi Tandi: Cohibas are indeed a brand of cigar; my understanding is that the Cuban Cohiba was originally rolled for Fidel Castro himself, and are considered quite a status symbol among cigar smokers. Scrip purchased a box of 10 panatellas (a size which is 1 cm in diameter and about 11 cm long) for $35. He could have been taken for a great deal more, though, because an actual Cohiba panatella runs about $10/cigar!

    It's actually been a few days since I played with the PlayStation; I've been busy packing, cleaning, and sorting through things that I want to keep from the things I want to get rid of... not to mention preparing my taxes and getting a root canal. Add to these things a jury summons for next week, and I couldn't have asked for a better March! :P

    On the bright side, I got all of my security deposit back already from my landlord, it's a beautiful sunny day here in Chicago, and the Lord Krishna loves me.

    Just kidding, he doesn't exist either. :)

    ~Eric

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  23. Hello Tandi,

    No disrespect, but what about all of those fossils that I have found that show they could not have been deposited by a global, one-time Flood?

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  24. Hello Tandi,

    The insect-laden amber was for sale, often as ornaments affixed to a necklace. Enough people must buy them (on the negotiation scale) to make it profitable. It appears as though it is amber-tinted plastic into which modern insects and grasses are placed.

    Now that I know I bought fraudulent cohibas, I would not be surprised to learn that there were a lot of frauds for sale. Biggums noticed a number of times that there were souvenirs with stickers indicating Asian manufacture, etc.

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  25. Hello Script,

    Re: Fossils

    I have not finished the Prothero book....or any book on fossils....so I know next to nothing on the subject. "Geologist" though not an Evolutionist himself, assures me that Noah's flood did not leave one single fossil (this is the Gap theory guy). Yet other Creationist sources have a different opinion. I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! How can there be such divergence of views? What about the resultant catastrophism after the Flood? Couldn't that have left the fossil record? I will be studying this subject with considerable interest. My hope and expectation is that the Creationist view will win in the end.

    From what I have seen on some webpages today, the insects in amber are quite beautiful and amazing! They must have quite a story to tell....and I am ready to listen.

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  26. Hello Eric,

    Okay, you are excused for busyness also. But if you find a block of time, you may want to gravitate over to Uruk’s blog and join the discussion. There is a new poster, Ginx. He is a lapsed Catholic engaged to a lapsed Orthodox Jewish woman, both atheists now. Intelligent, articulate, philosophical, academic types. He is getting annoyed at me and Zee and our “bumper sticker” comments. Sounds like he would enjoy a more in depth discussion with fellow erudite skeptics. : )

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  27. That is not a problem. I was also engaged to a jewish woman once. You might find it interesting that why our engagement was canceled by her father. It was due to Cohiba Siglo VI. I was a passionate smoker then. But after she left. I left smoking. But she got no notice of that.

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