bbcrud

Wow.

At least I know where to buy beachfront property now.

matt_a

I was speaking about the future...kinda like the model shows. By the time that will occur, we will have spent billions rebuilding it. Oh, BTW...contrary to popular belief, Bush didn't cause the hurricane. The damage would have happened no matter how prepared we were to deal with the aftermath.

matt_a

*edit* double post

HeathenBrewing

To be less obtuse: Is one life worth more than one million?

Way to duck the question.

Thousands of academic papers and scores of academic books have been written on the subject. Heres a good one:

Ancient Christian Gospels Their History and Development
by Harvard Professor Helmut Koester

Where to start.....how about he christians sacraments? Christians are initiated into their faith by baptism. They hare a sacred meal of wine and bread, which they believe become the blood and flesh of jesus.

And generations before jesus, pagans practiced baptism and pagans shared sacred meals with their gods. Pagans even ate sacred meals that were the body of their gods. The first christians took the basic ideas of their culture and adapted them to their new faith. They built a new religion out of old parts.

What of virgin birth? Krishna was born of the virgin Devaki. Savior Dionysus was born of the virgin Semele. Buddha too was born of a virgin. The old Teutonic goddess Hertha was a virgin impregnated by the heavenly Spirit and bore a son. Scandinavian Frigga was impregnated by the All-Father Odin and bore Balder, the healer and savior of mankind.

How about baptism? Homer mentions the washing of hands before prayer, and the purification of an entire army with water [Iliad, 1.313].

The Greeks even has priests, kathartai, who specialized in purification with water. After the conspiracy of Cylon in Athens in 632 BC, a fellow named Epimenides of Crete purified the entire city -- with water [Diogines Laertius 1.10.3].

Mithra's followers celebrated the sacrament of taurobolium -- baptism in the blood of a bull, with the result of "Salvation." Pagans at Gerasa celebrated the Maioumas, rites in which women bathed and were purified in a sacred pool outside town.

New members into the Mysteries of Isis / Osiris began their initiation with a sprinkling of purifying waters brought from the Nile. The result of the baptism and initiation? Salvation.

There is no contemporary record that jesus existed. None. There is no christian record. There is no non-christian record. Its part of mainstream modern scholarship.


And that is also not what you initially said.

bbcrud

I know he didn't cause it. I was just taking a shot at him for screwing up everything else afterward and then lying to cover up when people started making noise. Remember him saying that nobody could have predicted the scale of the damage? Then remember the video of him being told the damage was going to be huge?

I just think about all the people on the Gulf that STILL don't have their lives back on track, then I think about all the money wasted in Iraq (not the war, the Haliburtons) and that reminds me of his do nothing approach to problems like the pre-911 intelligence and GLOBAL WARMING.

Scientists are not saying that last years storms were an anomaly, they're saying it looks like it's going to happen again because of the warming of the oceans, and what is Bush doing? We'll... letting ABC Extreme Makeover - Home Edition point out to the world that nothing has been done for the folks in Mississippi.

Maybe we should write the damaged communities off because they are just going to get wiped again? If so, somebody in government needs to say that and tell people to move on. New Orleans is not going to support rebuilding in the flood-prone (poorer) sections of the city. That sounds terrible but what else can they do?

matt_a

LOL...WOW! Both of you (HeathenBrewing and bbcrud) have each posted something I look forward to responding to. I'm having a very busy day at work today and I just can't devote the time it will take to answer properly. I will try to later tonight or tomorrow. I did want to say that I've enjoyed this so far. It's been good discussing these topics without anyone getting hateful or childish. Catch up with you guys later.
-Matt

bbcrud

This is a pretty good thread. Even if we get a little off-topic here and there.

If I still had my coffee shop I'd build a customer base around the two of you!

wibblywobbly

Think about what the rising sea level means to the insurance companies. They are not going to insure anyone that could even remotely be effected...or charge so much only the super-wealthy could afford it.

So either the government picks up the tab and subsides everyone's insurance (they do this in Florida for Hurricanes) for mega $$$, the government rebuilds everyone's houses after they get destroyed, even if they have no insurance (like they are doing in New Orleans) for even more $$$$...or....everyone moves to North Dakota....

Get ready for your taxes to go up soon. And people are going to have to seriously reevaluate where they live.

HeathenBrewing

Nor should they insure houses built in NO. As I have previously mentioned, if you look off the cost of NO you see MANY oil rigs pumping up crude from under the city. With the weight of the city increasing every year (people, new buildings, etc.) combined with the loss of the foundation, it’s a wonder why ANYONE would want to live there now that nature has wiped out the town.

bbcrud

I was hearing that the city will not be extending services (police, sewer, water, etc) to parts of NO that are "lower" than the rest.