XYZ

I bow down to the Yamster anyway.

The Latin alphabet can be written different ways, with different fonts, to seem whimsical, staid, childish, antique, foreign, experimental, light-hearted and any of a number of other things. Can Chinese characters be written in different fonts?

Some kind of Cliff's Notes would be good.

I've been away.

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Al...

Not a baiting or trolling question... Some people might be offended, but that's not my intent.

What I want to know is this - there's an old cliche regularly bandied about here on R&S about how atheists can understand right and wrong.

For me, the question is simple - it's my conscience.

When people actually ask how someone who doesn't believe in some musty old book can have learnt right from wrong, it makes me wonder if they ask the question because they have no conscience themselves?

Or do they just suppress that conscience when it contradicts their musty old books?

Or has that 'bald' hair colour come back into fashion?

And how can I break it to the poor boy that it's unrequited?

Please _don't_ cite anti-homosexual scripture. That's not my question.

All right. The Bible is against homosexuality. Let's take that as a given for the moment. Now, anti-homosexual Christians regularly describe homosexuality as a 'choice'. Christians speak a lot about the importance of 'free will' - of _voluntarily_ heeding God's word.

So to that end, why _would_ a secular government's laws reflect scripture? Would it not be more 'Christian' for a government to allow Christian people the legal right to gay marriage, just so that 'good Christians' could reject that?

What does it please God to know that people refrain from 'sinful' behaviour _because they are forbidden to do it_? Should it not be that Christians were legally _allowed_ to but resisted the temptation?

Isn't that the Christian message?

Does scripture attest to that?

He's a pretty strong wrestler...

When a Jew speaks about 'descent from Isaac', I understand we're to take it literally - but 'Jewish' (or rather 'Hebrew') is very regularly described as an ethnic group anyway. Islam, of course, isn't (even though many Westerners treat 'Muslim' and 'Arab' as synonyms) - yet a lot of Muslims compare themselves to Jews by saying that they are 'descendents of Ishmael'. I was thinking today how odd that was. Can anybody shed some insight onto it?

What exactly does 'inspired' mean here? 'Inspired' like someone might say 'Mother Theresa really inspires me' or 'inspired' like Cyrano de Bergerac 'inspired' Christian?

Okay, it's Asia Carrera's question, not mine, but I still think it's a good one...

It struck me that the idea of a soul 'resting' after death is rather contrary to the Christian perception and, if anything, implies a rather agnostic approach to the afterlife. We don't wish the dead heaven or eternal glory or a seat at God's right hand or anything like that - we wish them a peaceful rest... Is the phrase Christian in origin?