Yes, you're just repeating your statements of faith. I get that you believe that, and it's definitely circular, as is the idea of using Scripture to interpret Scripture. Were you born believing that, or did it happen at some later point in your life?  Perhaps you could describe how/when you started ...

Well, that's interesting, of course.

But it doesn't really get at what I'm trying to talk about - you say that you discovered you had always been Lutheran, meaning that you believed things that were in line with Lutheran theology.  How you came to believe those things is the real question.

Well, you've accused me of being an "unbeliever", finding religious belief "ridiculous", and "projecting" so far.  It's almost as if you're trying to start a fight with me. I already gave you a good example from my beliefs, that people are basically good. Beliefs, parti...

We're not going to get anywhere if you continue to misconstrue my point of view. I'm not sure why you want to do that - it makes conversation difficult.  I majored in religious studies, and seriously considered the ministry several times - I'm not hostile to religion nor do I find religious belief &...

That's one of the interesting consequences if you don't believe in the ability to choose your beliefs. Traditional Christian theology, as expressed many times in this thread, is that God offers you the opportunity of salvation, but you have to choose it, if I understand that correctly.  And, that ch...

The highest grade I saw was a "C", so nobody's actually ranked very highly at all.

Well, we just disagree about this, apparently.  Can you give me an example of a religious belief that you have that you feel you aren't choosing on any level to believe?  I don't need to convince you that my view is correct, but I'd like to understand what you're saying. Liking Hawaiian shirts isn't...

You don't have to change your beliefs, especially if you don't have any compelling reasons to do that. The important thing to me is to understand that belief isn't knowledge, and that on some level we choose what we believe. Then it's ok for me to believe one way, and for other people to believe dif...

Since it's a choice, I could choose to believe that there is no human nature, or that people are born basically bad. But there are reasons I don't make those choices, and there are reasons that others make different choices than I do. I'm not saying it's a capricious choice - people have reasons for...

I don't know how to be clearer. Religious doctrine generally deals with things that are ultimately "unknowable", and thus a matter of belief.  Which set of beliefs people pick is a choice. One can choose to believe in Christianity, or Judaism, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, etc. For example, I ...

It is a choice, whether or not somebody's aware of that. And, it may be based on various things, some of which are conscious and others unconscious.  But ultimately faith is a choice - that doesn't mean it's a random capricious one. People don't really understand that at times, and just think that w...

You misunderstand, Benko.

I mean changing the culture of corruption in politics.

Even then, it doesn't always happen - there seems to be some sort of unspoken agreement not to go after former presidents, probably because the current ones don't want that to happen to them after they leave office. Also, I find this constant investigating of political scandals a bit annoying.  It's...

Well, generally speaking, politicians are a nasty lot, and I don't like them, and they do lots of things I don't like or approve of - and they're often found to have broken a law as well. But, our system operates according to an "innocent until proven guilty" system. And, I find that many ...

Not at all.

I'll just wait for the investigation to conclude rather than jumping the gun.

It's definitely a matter of will - it's a choice to believe certain things. As is your choice not to believe them. Both of which are fine with me. But I think this insistence that people "prove" their religious beliefs is off-base.  They don't have to do anything of the sort - they have a ...

She may have done something very wrong, but I'll wait for the FBI investigation to conclude before deciding myself. Something like 8 separate investigations of the Benghazi issue have been completed, led by R, and all concluded no evidence of wrongdoing, and yet there are those who still maintain sh...

Right.

But in order to sell the bonds, they have to find buyers, and if everybody wants to sell, that may be difficult.

I think MG has a point about those.

They are required to buy back shares at any time and give cash back to sellers.  That cash has to come from somewhere, and if there are a lot of sellers and few other buyers of those shares, where would that money come from?

I don't know for sure either way.

But, it seems possible to me that information that was previously not classified later gets classified for any number of reasons.

I agree with most of that. Certainly that's one of the fundamental questions - why believe the Bible rather than some other religious texts? But I think that the nature of religious belief is outside of what can be "proven" or "correct" or "true" - it's just a choice to...

Well, I'm not at all sure that's true.

It could easily have been determined to be classified well after those e-mails.

We'll see what the FBI investigation concludes - my guess is that she won't be found guilty of any major transgressions.

Interesting thread. It's clear that believers have a self-reinforcing set of circular logic that sustains their beliefs, and that no challenges from outside that circle would be effective at challenging them.  Sometimes even challenges from inside the circle (ie. Bible passages) don't work at all. B...

So, if I get this right, a bond etf is as safe as holding individual bonds?  Although that way, you don't have a guaranteed buyer if/when you want to sell.

Well, the question there is whether or not those e-mails contained classified information back then.

If things have become classified since then, it's much less of an issue.