Are we trully messing with gods land?

[Azred]

An interesting set of circumstances, I must admit. However, their claim that they have always been "God's Chosen People" is one thing that has always made many dislike those who are Jewish. God doesn't play favorites, and he certainly doesn't care about something so trivial as "promised land". [img]graemlins/laugh3.gif[/img]

The stubbornness on both sides, Israel and the Palestinians, is what prevents peace. It is that simple.

[harleyquinn]

Originally posted by Azred: An interesting set of circumstances, I must admit. However, their claim that they have always been "God's Chosen People" is one thing that has always made many dislike those who are Jewish. God doesn't play favorites, and he certainly doesn't care about something so trivial as "promised land". [img]graemlins/laugh3.gif[/img] The stubbornness on both sides, Israel and the Palestinians, is what prevents peace. It is that simple.

While I agree with your comment about the peace process (I'm so sick of this eye-for-an-eye crap, it's a never ending cycle), I don't agree with your other statement. Not that God doesn't have favorites, but that your statement makes it sound as if that attitude is a strictly Jewish belief. Sorry, but I've gone to the churches/temples of many faiths and each and every one of them preached how they were the ones going to the promised land and that they would be saved and so on. That's why inter-faith marriages are still, even in this day and age, hard to get because it's hard to find priest, rabbis, or whatever, that will perform them.

[Stratos]

Well Grojlach putted it quite bluntly, so I´m going to be a little more diplomatic ( no offense meant Grojlach [img]smile.gif[/img] )
If I drop a cheese sandwich on the floor and two of it´s sides align in a north-south direction I´m sure I would be able to find something about that in the Bible. ( i.e. it´s very cryptic)
Seriously, I also think that this is basically nonsense and I don´t think it has any meaning at all unless you are an American and a Christian. When did America become Gods chosen land? It deals with the Israel-Palestine conflict but we should also remeber that there are 250 or so other countries in the world where terrible disasters didn´t happen or at least not more than usual.

As for the weather disasters, I´m not an expert on these things, but isn´t early autumn or autumn in general THE season for storms etc.

Personally I´m not very bothered if some people want to believe this, I mean is their choice, but I would be VERY concerned if people act politically according to this. If I understand this correct the author of this want us to abandon peace projects that have a chance of ending a pointless and seemingly neverending conflict just beacause the US had some unususally bad weather a specific year.

[ 05-13-2003, 09:51 AM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

[Grojlach]

Originally posted by Stratos: Well Grojlach putted it quite bluntly, so I´m going to be a little more diplomatic ( no offense meant Grojlach [img]smile.gif[/img] )

Don't worry, no offense taken. And you're making some valid points. [img]smile.gif[/img]

(btw - due to the many rephrasings of my points above, there are some spelling errors acting like a thorn in my flesh now which I failed to notice before; like "it would only strengthens". And there are probably more. Grmbl... Just don't mind them. [/perfectionist])

[ 05-13-2003, 10:00 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Vaskez]

The way I understand it, the Old Testament is meant as a historical background. The New Testamenent supersedes it. Therefore that is what's valid. So even if you approach it from a Biblical point of view, the promised land stuff and Israel being God's chosen people is in the Old Testament therefore superceded by anything said in the new Testament. However, Jews don't acknowledge the New Testament IIRC so this fits in with Jewish but not Christian views.

I don't want to poke holes in the theory or anything but the first premise about the "Perfect Stoprm" is all wrong. he perfect storm refered to was not one storm, and it doesnt just happen once every hundred years. (The once every hundred years thing is soooo over blown)

The Perfect Storm was due to not one, but three storm systems. There was one coming up the atlantic coast of the US, there was one coming east southeast out of Canada and then there was the odd but not unheard of one coming west accross the atlantic. These three storms merged and conditions were such that they ended up reinforcing each other. The portion that came west screwed the sailors out of Newengland since they were used to dealing with just the west to east storm fronts but they would have been ok with just the one front had the other two not merged and magnified the issue...There was nothing mystical or all that unusual about the "Perfect Storm" ....just my [img]graemlins/twocents.gif[/img] added to the pot.

Oh and the storm happened during the regular storm season...there just was nothing all that mystical about it.

[ 05-13-2003, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Thorfinn]

Actually, I'm pretty sure a west-to-east storm is not that rare at all. They even have a name for it -- a nor'easter... If not, no storm would ever hit the eastern seaboard, except those coming from the west. And we know that is not true. The saltbox construction common in the Northeast is designed to minimize the impact of the winds off the ocean, moving west-to-east.

In statistics, we call this "data mining" -- picking discrete data points, then looking for something that these points have in common, even if there is no proposed mechanism to suggest the two are related. (This is a common technique among anti-smoker researchers, BTW. ) And if you think about it, if you assume that if need be, the data miners would have used a storm in Alaska or Hawaii, they are looking for severe weather anywhere in a region of, what 1/8 the surface of the globe? By definition, 32% of the globe is suffering from severe weather at any point in time, since severe weather is defined as anything greater than one standard deviation from the normal conditions. So the odds that you could find something, somewhere to correlate with only 11 data points are pretty good...

[EDIT]
Oh, and did I mention that the eleven points chosen were just a few of the thousands of possible interactions that the US has had with respect to Israel. Obviously, the author chose only those that had a corresponding severe weather incident...
[/EDIT]

[ 05-13-2003, 10:29 AM: Message edited by: Thorfinn ]

[Stormymystic]

Me personaly, Although I remeberthe dates of some of the storms, I do not see what is so IMPORTANT about the dates, we were tring to have peace, my mother is always telling me that Israel is going to orecive all of its land back and it is close to completeing this, but I am unsure. As for the author, this is out of a whole book on the bible so what should a non beliver belive? this our your oppions? I am not saying you are not right nor am i saying you are, I am just lost

[Thorfinn]

Now this is just my own personal opinion, but...

The faith of your parents and grandparents means something to them, and must mean something to you, or you would not be asking. It is impossible to form a rational argument either proving or disproving that your parent's faith is misplaced. That is why it is called faith.

I don't know, but I have seen the lives of people change dramatically for the better as their faith increased. My own included. It is perfectly acceptable to call it "data mining", as the more you reflect on your blessings, the more blessings you realize you have, but it may be something more. I am hardly an objective, impartial observer on that matter.

I don't know what Israel's borders will eventually be, though I highly suspect someday they will be larger than Mr Bush is proposing, because I do not believe that the Palestinian extremists will give up violence against civilians, and I do not belive Israel will give up retaliating against those they think orchestrated the attack. Thus, I think a permanent Palestinian state is a notion only the truly naive can accept. Sorry for the aside. Your mother may be correct that they will eventually have whatever happens to be the ancestral lands, but it really doesn't make any difference in the way I am going to live my life.

What I am saying is that it doesn't matter to me whether the prophecy is correct or not. Jesus' commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself, and as long as you do that, I doubt it really matters to the way you live your life, either.

[Azred]

Originally posted by harleyquinn: While I agree with your comment about the peace process (I'm so sick of this eye-for-an-eye crap, it's a never ending cycle), I don't agree with your other statement. Not that God doesn't have favorites, but that your statement makes it sound as if that attitude is a strictly Jewish belief. Sorry, but I've gone to the churches/temples of many faiths and each and every one of them preached how they were the ones going to the promised land and that they would be saved and so on. That's why inter-faith marriages are still, even in this day and age, hard to get because it's hard to find priest, rabbis, or whatever, that will perform them.

True. Most faiths have, at some point, claimed to be the "one, true faith". I was mentioning the Jewish faith because stormymystic's article was about Israel. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

Thorfinn, what you call "data mining" is also called "the law of fives". If you look for something hard enough and with enough ingenuity, you will eventually find it.