But a man calling himself a woman doesn't make him a woman. The same way a mixed race person calling thsrlves white or black exclusively doesn't make it so. I disagree with that calling yourself African American means you are after freebies, I believe the intention is an honest one, possibly to try to hold on to some ideal of identity, but too much emphasis is placed on identity and race and where people fit in. That is why Barack Obama and others should not in my opinion call themselves black as they are fuelling the idea that people need a catagory, which they dont. Historical mistakes aside, of which the slave trade is only ONE of a million different acts of prejudice around the world, from ALL races, people should learn to accept that "belonging" to a race is unimportant. "mixed" race expressing exactly those ideals. The whole reason nature even allows for people of differing complexion to breed with one another is that race does not matter, and we shouldn't label each other as though it does. A black cat doesn't look at a white cat and think "your white" it just sees another cat.

of course, unlike gender which is much more DEFIITIVELY biological (determined by the BIOLOGY), race is assigned by a much less definitive standard of ancestry and asthetics

in truth, our race is not 'made' by what we call ourself, but we are permitted to call ourself whatever race we wish so long as there is anestry to back it up


so someone wih ancestry from more than one region may choose to call themself according to any one of those regions and that is what they are,, even if it may not be ALL They are

very few in america are from only ONE region of descent, as I said before, a true and complete racial id would turn up far too many races to measure as there are far too many combinations of regions for any of us to have had ancestors

,,,in any case, I think to not call oneself 'black' does not stop them from being black in terms of social experience and history and makes as little sense as deciding to no longer define where we are from (American), or what gender we are (female) or what state we hale from (ohioan),,, because in actuality none of those things should 'matter' on a grand scale

on the grand scale we are all 'human', but we are not the borg and our individuality makes us as amazing as our commonality

I dont think there is a problem in calling myself 'human' because I am

butI also dont think there is a problem in calling myself 'african american', OR Obama calling himself black (or my child or yours) because I(he, they) come from ancestry that is from both regions and therefore I(he, they) am that too

or callin mysef 'female', because I as born with ovaries ad a uterus,,,,,


these identifiers arent the problem as much as is humans wanting to categorize some humans into 'less than' other humans

instead of wanting to celebrate their seperate heritage, histories, etc,,,,

If this was true, MsHarmony, then Jesus could call himself either God or Human, or of a Mixed Race. That is so, because he has ancestry in both lines, and it's therefore up to him what race he defines himself as part of.

Ayyy... MsHarmony, you have to be more careful in your defitions of terms inasmuch as you are also a Christian.

What race did Adam and Eve of the Garden of Eden belong to? It does not matter whether they were Black, White, Red, Chinese or Greek, they were still without any ancestry. So there was no way for those two to have a racial identity.

Their children could have been therefore of no race of any kind, because the children of Adam and Eve had no forefathers and foremothers of any discernible race.

Their children too.

And those children's children, too.

And so on and so on, to today.

So according to Christian, talking about races such as Black, White, Chinese, Indian or Spaghetti-commissionaires, is nonsensical, if we allow that a racial ancestry must be involved to support the persons own choice of belongingness.

Therefore, since something must give, and we accept that races exist the following can never be true:

Racial ancestry can be used for a Christian when he or she decides what his or her race is.

In other words, racial ancestry is not a determining factor for a Christian when he or she picks a race for himself or for herself.

This is based on the words of the Bible.

Jesus can call himself whatever he wishes,, so it is true

but he also did NOT have a history of human, since he was not conceived,, he was merely placed in a human womb

difference there, no HUMAN ancestral line at all,,,

and I dont even know how to delve into a discussion of whether ancestry applies to Gods,,,

he chose to not identify himself period, in the end, leading to his charge of blasphemy

this is not about Jeus, a singular entity in world HISTORY,


its about humans some 2000 years after, with history that extends well beyond Jesus last walk upon the earth,,,,

Adam and Eves children were eventually scattered about by GOD into different groups and they labeled themself based upon similar language, or similar faith, or similar region

and again with Noahs descendants

this dispersion lead to different physical anomolies manifesting due to adaptation to environment

from Jesus to now , men have branched out many times and created their own cultures, governments, and religions

this is even noted by the mere title of 'Jew', which seperates at least ONE Group away from other 'humans'


so, for me to acknowledge, (like a jew who aknowledged their common ancestry/culture in the bible)

my common ancestry/culture with others whose ancestors came as slaves and lived as second class due to the color of their skin

is not at all in conflict with living as a christian

I still don't understand what the fuss in this thread is all about. To the best of my knowledge, human beings have always identified each other by ethnic labels.

In the past, there was virtually no difference between a person's nationality, ethnicity or race, because they were perceived as being the same thing, and ethnic groups kept to themselves within their own nations. We see examples of this phenomenon in the descriptions of the numerous racial groups recorded in the Tanakh (a.k.a. Old Testament).

The modern-day concept of "race" has nothing to do with ethnicity. Instead, it has everything to do with physical characteristics. The last time that I checked, the primary races of humans are labeled as Mongoloid, Negro and Caucasian.

People of two different races can actually be members of the same ethnic group, as seen in the Harry Potter movies. Potter-philes are aware of the fact that, at the end of the Harry Potter saga, Ron Weasley's brother George, who is racially Caucasian, marries his classmate Angelina Johnson, who is racially Negro. George and Angelina are racially different but ethnically the same.

In another thread, I mention an article in Latina magazine in which certain Latinas express their anger toward people who won't acknowledge those Latinas as being Latinas. One Latina in particular is a native of Panama, but because she is racially Negro, people in the USA keep calling her an African-American, which upsets her because she isn't an African-American. Latina actresses who are racially Negro frequently complain about the way that they are typecast. They want to play Latina roles, but casting directors keep wanting them to play African-American roles. At times, such false typecasting can work in the favor of a Latina*, but the Latina still wants her Latina ethnicity acknowledged.

In short, it is foolish at best to assume that two people aren't ethnically the same because they aren't racially the same.


(*Latina actress Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario benefited from having the role of Nyota Uhura in the 2009 Star Trek movie. However, her Latina ethnicity was front and center when she gained the role of the title character of the 2011 movie Colombiana.)

I agree.

There isn't a problem with it as long as one doesn't separate one's self from other Christians because those other Christians are members of a different ethnic or racial group. The Christian faith transcends all racial and ethnic differences.

To me....the only thing that matters is cool or not cool.

Race and beliefs are two things I couldn't possibly care less about.

I believe so too

the person is more than any one thing about the person, and what matters is the total picture,,,

I merely noticed terms that seem to be interchanged(mixed up) quite a bit and wanted to comment,, but I think my thread title was entirely misunderstood....lol

My impressoin has been that he was conceived, not inceived. His conception was immaculate, that's why he is man, because though it lacked in maculation ("mucking around" comes from the same linguistic root; mucking is playing with dirt... uncleanness... blemishes), it was still enacted by a type of conception.

Plus his life started when his mother gave birth, and that was way after his conception.

This last bit can be argued, though, I admit that. But can't be argued against successfully, or maybe it can. We don't know it yet -- that's why courts and lawmakers won't touch this with a ten-foot pole.

It's not about Jesus, you're right, it's about races. I am just calling the attention to a special case, where the lineage distinguishes between species, not races, or rather, between types of things (living things, the human side) and almighty, omniscient creators (on the god side of the family.)

MsHarmony, you just endorsed the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution.

I think you would be better off accepting that a Christian, a true Christian, must by faith reject that races exist.

If you keep this up, you will be lead to reason that following Satan's word is the only true religion in the world.

I mean, you went from Christian to straight Darwinist.

You have to stop this trend before you become a Satanist, only because your self esteem does not allow you to admit to having been wrong.

It's better to admit to being humanly wrong in an opinion, than as a Christian, to accept the existence of races, or to insist that family lineage has to do with belonging to one or another race.

I dont see how christianity (belief in the sacrifice of the son of God)

is at odds with darwinism, or any other ism,,,


the bible itself says that mans language was confused, so thats a change that could be called an 'evolution'

we see with our eyes that genetics leads to certain traits in offspring, and that traits that influence survival are likely to be the genetic traits passed down by the survivors

also something that can fall under the 'evolution' umbrella


I of course believe God made a complex being in man that is capable of adapting and surviving

I do not believe that he made those men from apes or mindless apelike creatures,,,


so there is much interchangablity that requires no change to satanism or turn from christianity


I am of african heritage as sure as I am an american, there is nothing unchristian about me aknowledging that either...

First of all, nowhere has anyone (except for Xians) has ever said man evolved from apes. Second of all, there is no set scientific (legitimate) marker to separate man into races (except the ability to fight malaria, which change over time). Third of all, I forgot what my point was

I think people spend way to much time and effort in these race matters. You skin is only the outside shell,after you crack it open and look inside thats who you are,

thats true, but knowledge is also power, and we do need to retain knowledge from the past instead of starting each moment naive and clueless...

In his book Rocks of ages: Science and religion in the fullness of life, zoologist Stephen Jay Gould writes, "Darwin did not use evolution to promote atheism or to maintain that no concept of God could ever be squared with the structure of nature."

In his book Finding Darwin’s god, biologist Kenneth R. Miller writes, "Does evolution really nullify all world views that depend on the spiritual? Does it demand logical agnosticism as the price of scientific consistency? And does it rigorously exclude belief in God? These are the questions that I will explore in the pages that follow. My answer, in each and every case, is a resounding ‘no’."

In a letter to a college newspaper, biologist Mark Buchheim writes the following:



[Mark Buchheim, “Letter to the editor: an educated response”, The Collegian Online (University of Tulsa: 2005), http://www.utulsa.edu/collegian/article.asp?article=2569 .]

On his blog, sociologist Mark A. Foster writes, "There is as much evidence for evolution (most of it genetic) as there is for the heliocentric model of the solar system (that the sun, not the earth, is its center). There is no other side of the coin. Accepting evolution, however, does not mean that one rejects of God or the soul." [ Mark A. Foster, “The Captain’s Personal bLog”, My Looking-Glass Selves (Sociosphere: 2001), http://editorials.sociosphere.com/arc20020301.html .]

So, no, msharmony didn't stop being a Christian by acknowledging how different races of humans came into existence.

On a website produced by atheist writers, atheist philosopher Keith Augustine writes, "In utilizing methodological naturalism, science and history do not assume a priori that, as a matter of fact, supernatural causes don't really exist. There is no conceptual conflict between practicing science or history and believing in the supernatural." [Keith Augustine, Naturalism (Infidels: 2009), http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/ .]

Anyway, a person's racial characteristics don't determine a person's potential. It is what's inside the person that determines what the person is or becomes.

Dodo David, and MsHarmony,

I am sorry, I probably am too vain to expect that you guys follow my posts and follow my reasoning.

What I proposed was a closed system of logic, with a few premisses. It is not a complicated issue, but one has to pay attention.

And one most definitely does not need to bring in quotes from experts.

All I did, was that I kept to the utterances of MsHarmony to 1. her own definitions, and to 2. the Christian dogma.

I did not bring in any outside premisses beyond these two.

My proof stands, and I believe if someone scrutinizes my logic as based on the premisses, then he or she won't miss my point.

I am saying, however, that I am not important enough for people to pay attention to what I say, and I am definitely not important enough to have my words mulled over and scrutinized before one wants to criticize them. I can't expect anyone to do that. I would be unreasonable if I did.

However, you criticized my conclusion because it did not agree with your opinion. You looked at the final conlcusion I made, and you decided it was wrong, without considering the foregoing.

I insist that I made no mistake in the logic. If you want to find fault, find the premiss that's wrong; but on probing, MsHarmony also remained adamant on holding the original premisses true.

So I did not create the premisses, I did not create the logic; all I did was USE the logic and applied to already established and again defended premisses.

I can't, like I said, expect you guys to notice that, but that's a fact.

As such, I believe you have the right to beleive what you like, but please don't say that I am wrong, when I am not.

It is not a question of opinion whether I am wrong or not here. The premisses were given (which are not my own, by the way), and defended; and I applied logic to it. Anyone who accepts the premisses can't say I was wrong in the conclusion. Yet they do. When I wanted to save them in the argument, they still insisted on all the premisses they established.

So I won't take blame for the conclusion. I don't believe the conclusion is right, but I don't beleive the premisses are true, that's the reason. If someone believes that the premisses are true, they must believe the conclusion.

So much for that.

I am not going to discuss this any farther. If you want to know that I am right, keep re-reading the thread; but nobody will required this of you, the least of all me.

But then the price for you in that will be that you can't argue with me that I was wrong in the conclusion.

Yes, you then can't argue, because all I can do is present a valid logical conclusion on a set of premisses. If you reject that, and the validity in that, there is nothing more I can do to convince you.

So... please understand what I said, and if you don't, then please don't say I am wrong. What I said was a list of premisses, and my logic. NOT JUST THE CONCLUSION. Very important, this is.

If you don't want to take the bother to understand what I said, then so be it, I won't hold it against you, but please cease and desist from arguing.

------------

The reason I say that DD did not understand what I said was that I presented a closed system. Quoting outside authors is not the way to defeat an argument; the way to defeat is to show that either the premisses are wrong, or else the logic applied is faulty. By quoting outside sources proves neither the one, or the other way to prove my argument wrong.

Therefore the very fact that sources were quoted, shows me that my words here were not all read, only the conlcusion, mainly, and that's a bit frustrating for me, I am sorry.

hmmm, let me reread one line at a time

MsHarmony, you just endorsed the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution.


THIS IS TRUE< I DO BELIEVE HUMANS HAVE A CAPACITY TO EVOLVE/ADAPT

I think you would be better off accepting that a Christian, a true Christian, must by faith reject that races exist.


I DONT KNOW WHY I SHOULD ACCEPT THAT RACE DOESNT EXIST< I DO ACCEPT THAT RACE IS NOT A RELEVANT VALUE FOR THE SOUL< BUT IT IS A VERY HISTORICALLY RECOGNIZED CATEGORY BY WHICH PEOPLE TRACK THE SPREADING OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE EARTH AND THE COMMON EXPERIENCES SHARED IN THE SPREAD



If you keep this up, you will be lead to reason that following Satan's word is the only true religion in the world.



TO BE HONEST< I REALLY AM NOT SURE WHAT THAT MEANS, NOT SURE WHY ANYTHING POSTED WOULD LEAD TO THE ABOVE LOGIC,,,,


I mean, you went from Christian to straight Darwinist.

NOT TRUE I NEVER STRAYED FROM CHRISTIAN AS IT DOESNT NEGATE DARWINISM (which has several MODERN variations)



You have to stop this trend before you become a Satanist, only because your self esteem does not allow you to admit to having been wrong.


HONEST AGAIN< NO CLUE WHAT THIS MEANS OR UPON WHAT IT IS BASED..



It's better to admit to being humanly wrong in an opinion, than as a Christian, to accept the existence of races, or to insist that family lineage has to do with belonging to one or another race.


I DONT BELIEVE AN OPINION CAN BE 'WRONG', BY NATURE OF IT BEING AN OPINION,, ALTHOUGH PEOPLE CAN HAVE FALSE BELIEFS,,,,AND FAMILIAL LINEAGE HAS TO DO WITH BELONGING TO A DISTINCT HUMAN FAMILY IN THE SENSE OF SHARING A SIMILAR JOURNEY AND PATH ACROSS THE EARTH

ALTHOUGH WE ARE ALL PART OF A BIGGER FAMILY CALLED THE HUMAN RACE, WE ALSO HAVE OUR OWN UNIQUE FAMILIES WHO RAISE, LOVE AND SUPPORT US MORE CLOSELY AND INTIMATELY

I DONT KNOW WHY I SHOULD ACCEPT THAT RACE DOESNT EXIST<
Because your opinions, combined with the Christian belief, lead to this conclusion in order to reconcile your opinion with Christianity's tenets.

----------

"If you keep this up, you will be lead to reason that following Satan's word is the only true religion in the world."


TO BE HONEST< I REALLY AM NOT SURE WHAT THAT MEANS, NOT SURE WHY ANYTHING POSTED WOULD LEAD TO THE ABOVE LOGIC,,,,

This was an extrapolation, and as such, I believe it has no truth value, inasmuch as it projects the future, and no human can do that accurately or even nearly accurately. I admit this was not a logically sound statement, but it was an approximation, which included the assumption of "if this trend continues", which is not guaranteed at all.

So this, that you'd become a Satanist, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

----------


"I mean, you went from Christian to straight Darwinist."

NOT TRUE I NEVER STRAYED FROM CHRISTIAN AS IT DOESNT NEGATE DARWINISM (which has several MODERN variations)

Well, as far as I can see, Darwinism is rejected by any Christian who is faithful. I am not a practicing Christian, furthermore I am an ateist, but all I see whereever I go, is that the validity of Darwinism is fought with tooth and nail by Christians. I can't see into the mind of each Christian, so I take their commonly accepted and agreed-upon tenets, which are Christian tenets.

To wit, the RC church and the pope insist that the world is approx. 6 (or 8?) thousand years old, and so do the Evangelists in America. This is a given, as stated in the Bible, it is a Christian tenet. To go against this, is blasphemy.

And six thousand years of a world in existence does not allow for any evoltuion to take place, in its sense of species separation, and selected survival due to environmental changes. This does not happen in 6 or 8 thousand years.

This is what I meant when I said that to accept Darwinism is anti-Christian.

To me this means that anyone who says Darwinism has worked, is blaspheming the bible.

In other words, you can't play for both teams, as they say in England.

You have to choose a side, you are either a Christian, or a Darwinist. Darwin's theory irrevokably necessitates that the world is much older than 6 or 8 thousand years. Christians, who must by definition believe that the bible is truth, because it's god's word, irrevokably and necessarily must believe that the world is only six or eigh thousand years old, not a moment older.

One team says it's definitely more than 8 thousand, if Darwinism is to be believed, the other team says it's definetely at most eight thousand, which is the age of the world, so Darwinism can't be believed. No way. (Again, age could be six thousand, not eight thousand.)

You can't say that the world is more than eight thousand years old and at the same time and in the same respect it is eight thousand years old or less. (or six.) Therefore you can't say you are both a Darwinist AND a Christian at the same time and in the same respect, because those would need that you beleive tha the world is both older AND not older or equal to six (or eight) thousands of years.

Therefore you must choose a side, to avoid contradicting the oldest philsophical argument-cruncher and falshood proof, the law of reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity, which is that the world is both older and younger, categorically, than a certain age.)

---------

"You have to stop this trend before you become a Satanist, only because your self esteem does not allow you to admit to having been wrong."


HONEST AGAIN< NO CLUE WHAT THIS MEANS OR UPON WHAT IT IS BASED..

The above makes little sense, due to its prophetic nature, but the bottom quote does make a lot.

If you don't see the logic that lead up to the conclusion which is the bottom quote, well, I am sorry, but that I can't help. My reasoning is solid, and not complicated. You don't see that, and believe me, I have no resentment if you don't see my logic. This is neither your fault nor mine.

"you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

We are all autonomous beings that are diverse in abilities and in our motivations, which motivations can also affect one or anther of our abilities when trying to apply them to a situation. That's a further lesson based on the quote below and your inability, perhaps bourne out of resentment, in seeing the quote below as true. I stand by the quote below, but you don't need to accept it. You are human and so am I.

"It's better to admit to being humanly wrong in an opinion, than as a Christian, to accept the existence of races, or to insist that family lineage has to do with belonging to one or another race."

I have to add now, that it is not only better, but it seems it is infinitely harder, too, to do this admission.