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I have had Thomas L. Thompson’s Mythic Past Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel on my book shelf for years and finally got around to reading it a few months ago. Dr. Thompson rejects the generally accepted idea that the Israelites arrived in Biblical Israel as invaders of an already existing civilization, conquered and replaced it. (A stand that caused him much opposition in his field and was detrimental to his career.) Thompson basically asserts a gradual evolution of already existing cultural elements.

Suppose you wanted to have a conversation about God with someone. If there is to be any communication you’ll have to both mean the same thing by the words you use. The most important word in such a conversation will be God, and at least some minimal assumptions of what God is have to be made to have the conversation.

Some definitions from the dictionary
conservative |kənˈsərvətiv; -vəˌtiv|
adjective
holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation
noun
a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes,
ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [aiming to preserve] ): from late Latin conservativus, from conservat- ‘conserved,’ from the verb conservare
liberal |ˈlib(ə)rəl|
adjective
• open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values
• favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms
• favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform
noun
a person of liberal views
ORIGIN Middle English : via Old French from Latin liberalis, from liber ‘free (man).’ The original sense was [suitable for a free man,]

The trip to Toronto has been great. Oh didn’t post that we were on our way did I. On the way home now and will be glad to get out of the cold.

Well beyond everyones expectations (except for the folks in New Orleans) the Saints have won and the Colts will have to sneak out of Miami in the middle of the night with their tails between their legs just as they did from Baltimore all those years ago. When I lived in Maryland the Colts were my team….until they packed up and sneaked out of town in the middle of the night.

The theft of the computer I used to do my programing for the site cost me my Shutterbug and iWeb files.  I foolishly had deleted the backups of these files from my host.  But the silver lining is that I’ve simplified everything and created a more logical structure to the sites.

If you visited during the last few days you were greeted by a message that the site was unavailable.  That was because I locked everything down.  I did that because we were burglarized and all our computers were stolen.  I’ve brought the site back up now since I think I have successfully blocked any access by anyone who may have found access information on the computers that were stolen.

Let’s see now, a bunch of incompetent, greedy multi-millionaires and billionaires spent the  last 8 years spending millions of dollars lobbying a bunch of millionaires called the Congress of the United States to let them do anything they wanted to our economy and succeeded  in destroying it, and now a lying incompetent multi-millionaire President of the United States and his $200,000,000 golden parachute Secretary of the Treasury says we (that is the less than $100,000 a year income taxpayers) have to cough up $700, 000, 000, 000 for them or we will all lose our jobs, our savings, and

It occurred to me today that the Obama campaign is failing to address a very big concern of the voters.  The voters of the country have lost all faith in government.  His ideas and plans and policies are right but voters are not hearing from him what they are hearing form the other side and that is what is making them support McCain. McCain is constantly hammering home the idea that Washington is out of touch, Washington is corrupt, Washington is the cause of the country’s problems, Washington is the enemy of the people.

Liz and I were both delegates to The Clark County convention which was a disaster.  About 4 times as many people showed up for the convention as expected and the convention had to be reconvened weeks later to complete the voting.
Again, both Liz and I were selected as delegates to the Nevada State convention which met in Reno.  This was better run, but ran about an hour or two behind schedule all weekend.
Even though President Bill Clinton came to Reno to address the convention, the results of the caucuses were reversed at the convention.