Blog Heap o' Urantiana Links

What is the difference between courting and dating?

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at February 16, 2013 03:23 PM (PxYrx)

Briefly, courting is dating with a purpose, and that's marriage. It isn't dating just to play the field or have fun. Usually the guy asks the parent(s) for permission to court the daughter. So while you're "dating" so to speak, you're serious about it and you're learning whether the person is marriage material. And from people I know, the courting process doesn't last years and years like some dating relationships can. At some point you fish or cut bait.

Posted by: I lurk, therefore I am (Hard! Hurry hard!) at February 16, 2013 03:28 PM (X11b6)

The boys have to spend time around the girls parents and the parents get to know each other before they're allowed to go out anywhere on their own. That's part of it.
My friends attitude is he wouldn't let some 18 year old kid he didn't know take off with his pickup for a few hours. He's sure not letting him "borrow his daughter."

Posted by: teej at February 16, 2013 03:30 PM (tF9LY)

St. Malachy prophesied that the final pope would be "Peter the Roman", which is interesting because no pope to date has chosen the name of Peter out of respect for Peter the Apostle. There has also been speculation that the final pope would be black. Even more curiously, there is a black cardinal in Ghana, Peter Turkson, who is believed to be a frontrunner and whose name has come up in previous discussions of papal appointment.

Cardinal Turkson has said in the past that "if God would wish to see a black man also as pope, thanks be to God." Catholic Church chronicler Rocco Palmo has called Turkson the lone Scripture scholar in the Pope's "Senate", and believes that his status as a potential "papabile" has been elevated due to his 2009 appointment as spokesman for the Second Synod for Africa.

Outside of the Church, there are also many who believe that Turkson is the favorite to take over as pontiff. Even the London bookmakers believe he's the top choice. Odds comparison site Oddschecker.com lists Turkson at best price odds of 4/1, and as short as 2/1 with some firms. Francis Arinze, the Nigerian Cardinal, is also a huge favorite with the bookies.

There are some who insist that Malachy did not say that the last pope he mentioned would be the 112th pope, insisting that he was merely the last, and theorizing that there could be more popes to come between Benedict and "Peter the Roman". However, this is not a belief that everyone subscribes to and many believe that "Peter the Roman" will be both the 112th and last pope of the Catholic Church.

Malachy's prophecies are taken very seriously as they've been uncannily accurate to date. Will the Catholic Church get its first black pope? Will "Peter the Roman" lead us into the End Times? These questions are set to be answered by Easter, which comes this year at the end of March, when the papal conclave announces their decision.

It is time for us to pull apart the institution of marriage from the definition of a legal union.

Marriage should be determined by the church, whatever church you belong to. Some religions agree to same-sex marriages, others do not.

On the other hand, the state should not meddle with the definition of marriage, but focus instead on determining the legality and requirements of civil unions.

Marriage -- and the relationship between partners and their God -- should be defined by the church.

Civil unions and their legalities should be defined by the state.

It would breach the idea of freedom of religion to force a priest or pastor who does not believe in same-sex marriage to perform such a union.

The division? The government should issue civil-union licenses that could be referenced for legal/insurance matters. Churches should continue to perform marriages as they see fit. The churches' determinations would not affect couples' legal standing in terms of taxes, benefits, etc.

seeking to have his marriage annulled after discovering that his Indonesian wife of 19 years had been born a man. … said that he and his wife had decided not to have children because he had two by his previous marriage and she fooled him by pretending to menstruate, using sanitary towels, "to conceal the truth". … "Even during sex, I never noticed anything."

Google is set to begin covering a cost that gay and lesbian employees must pay when their partners receive domestic partner health benefits…. The increased pay is largely to compensate these workers for an extra tax that heterosexual married couples do not pay. [Root of the problem: IRS defines marriage because of income tax, therefore putting the government in charge of religion, in violation of the First Amendment. Related webwork: Freedom to Marry]

The outer reaches of our solar system may have been shaped long ago by a close encounter with another star that tore up both nascent planetary systems like colliding buzz saws, astronomers said today.
The dramatic encounter, if it occurred, might even have deposited an alien world into our midst.
 The scenario was devised to describe unexplained observations of the solar system but is based on speculation about actual events. The resulting computer simulations suggest a range [of] possible outcomes for a close celestial brush shortly after the planets formed, about 4.5 billion years ago.

[4,500,000,000 years ago the enormous Angona system began its approach to the neighborhood of this solitary sun. The center of this great system was a dark giant of space, solid, highly charged, and possessing tremendous gravity pull. -Urantia Paper 57 (1934)]

today, in Nevada, the life of an 11-week-old unborn baby and the future of his or her 32-year-old mother hang in the balance as a judge considers whether or not to order the woman to undergo an abortion and sterilization against her will. … [woman] suffers from severe mental and physical disabilities attributed to fetal alcohol syndrome, is currently in the final weeks of her first trimester…. has epilepsy and is said to have the mental and social capacity of a 6-year-old. The circumstances surrounding her pregnancy are unknown…. family suspects she may have been raped, but it’s possible the sexual encounter that led to her pregnancy was consensual. On several occasions, [she] has left her group home for hours or days at a time to engage in sexual activity with men at a local truck stop…. wants to carry out her pregnancy [although] she knows she will be unable to care for the child. [Adoptive parents] support her decision, are following all the prenatal protocol for high-risk pregnancies, and have already lined up six qualified couples who are eager to adopt [her] child once he or she is born. However, when Washoe County Social Services became aware of Elisa’s pregnancy, the department issued an informal report requesting that the Court set a status hearing to address the potential health effects Elisa’s pregnancy could have on her and her unborn child, and possibly override the mutual decision made between Elisa and her parents to have her baby. [Emphasis added. It's like that old 1950s TV sitcom, Government Knows Best, right?]

“Although the news stories alone did not increase stress levels, they did make the women more reactive, affecting their physiological responses to later stressful situations,” lead author Marie-France Marin was quoted as saying in a press release by HealthDay. “Moreover, the women were able to remember more of the details of the negative stories. It is interesting to note that we did not observe this phenomenon amongst [sic] the male participants.”

My eyes are up here, Hill! [Photo]

Now every child's favorite game, "Horsie," comes to life!

The most powerful sky-scanning camera yet built has begun its quest to pin down the mysterious stuff that makes up nearly three-quarters of our Universe.

The Dark Energy Survey's 570-million-pixel camera will scan some 300 million galaxies in the coming five years.

The goal is to discover the nature of dark energy, which is theorised to be responsible for the ever-faster expansion of the Universe.

118 106 Men are bad in this way: you're telling a story--a funny or impactful one--and in the middle of it, they interrupt and comment, thinking that the place in which they interrupted is the point. Their interruption ruins the punchline or the impact. Yes, we are. I am. I try not to do that, but sometimes I still do. But being guilty of this, I know why I do it to women especially. Men seem to know when to leave a rising inflection, or some other vocal signal that the story is not over. Women often seem to drop something that sounds final, and then the listener finds out it was just a way station.

According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt's Great Pyramids… those "symbols of paganism…" Bahrain's "Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs" and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, to "destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not…" a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity….

"A quote from an 1899 book by Winston Churchill, "The River War", in which he describes Muslims he apparently observed during Kitchener's campaign in the Sudan" "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient" Rome.

A: You know it’s interesting you bring up the virus. That is actually a question I had for you. Are you familiar with Urantia?
C: Yes.
A: OK. It also talks about that there had come a virus on the outer seventh sphere of the Universe. It equated the virus with fear, war, and amnesia. Do you agree with that?
C: Yes I would actually describe the way the virus was created was like a virus spreading around the galaxy. A mutation, an anomaly, an error, something that was also described in very old Gnostic texts from the last 2000 years and even earlier. So that this anomaly, this error needs to be corrected now. That is what we are doing. And this correction mechanism has reached its (?) right now.
[Like many references to the revelation, nothing of this sounds much like what I think the Urantia Papers say, but then again, I've said something similar myself.]

Now, let’s cut through the drivel: play-acting at being married with someone to whom you have not committed will delay that commitment, or finding the person you really want to commit to. Acting like someone’s wife, when that person has not wed you in front of his family and friends, will just make you feel like you’re in a perpetual audition – because you’re in a perpetual audition. Not to go all Ayn Rand, but you wouldn’t take that from an employer (it would be “hire me, enough already, or I’ll find another job”); why do you take that from a man?

At the heart of this great argument lies the assumption on the part of the anti-religion camp that this is a battle between reason and obscurantism, between rationality on the one hand and knuckle-dragging ignorance and prejudice on the other. And of course, that anti-religion camp is on the side of reason, and thus of intelligence, science, progress and freedom; whereas religious believers would undo the Enlightenment and take us all back to the dark ages of credulity, superstition and the shackling of the mind.

462 453 #440 What is wrong with them, to say something so reprehensible to a wonderful person like Jane? It's beneath contempt. It's just so hard to believe anyone could be so vile.
Posted by: Hummingbird at April 07, 2012 01:04 AM (R5yLq)

It is a glimpse into the nature of evil.

Mostly, evil is boring. It tries to shock, but falls into predictable patterns of behavior. It depends on good to create space for it to work. It contributes nothing but hate and bile, but wants nothing more that to be the focus.

Posted by: cthulhu at April 07, 2012 01:09 AM (kaalw)

Billions of potentially habitable planets may exist within our galaxy, the Milky Way, raising new prospects that life could exist near Earth, a study has found.

Richard Clark Rodgers was born January 1, 1916 and died March 14, 2012. He is survived by Lillian, his wife of 70 years. He is also survived by sons Dick (Linda), Bozeman, MT, Stephen (Mary), Edinburg, VA, and Greg (Mikki), Tucson and by his daughter Mary (Jim), Tucson and many grandchildren and great grandchildren. Richard was the rector at St Luke's Episcopal Church in Bartlesville from 1947-1966 and was involved in the transition of Jane Phillips Hospital to Jane Phillips Episcopal Hospital. Richard and Lillian retired to Tucson in 1983 after his career as an Episcopal priest in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. Memorial Service were held at St Alban's Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ at 2pm on Saturday, March 17, 2012. [Father Rogers, thank you for answering my silly childhood questions about God in a way that told me, even if we can't know the whole truth, we can find answers. Thank you for being there that strange day when I reached out for help. Your smile continues to light my heart.]

[A horror story of an ending to a beautiful marriage. What their attacker deserves, only God can justly mete out. They deserve to be remembered and honored.] An 85-year-old woman was sexually assaulted and battered to death by a home invader who also shot her 90-year-old husband in the face with a BB gun. Nancy and Bob Strait, who had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in December, were discovered by their daughter at their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Both the pensioners were rushed to hospital where Mrs Strait, who was nearly blind, died from her injuries.

Modern technology allows prospective parents to learn the sex of a fetus, and many of them use that knowledge to exercise a preference for sons. Absent such intervention, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. But as Mara Hvistendahl reports in her 2011 book "Unnatural Selection," the number for boys per 100 girls has risen to 112 in India and 121 in China.

It was once assumed that the general preference for male offspring would subside as countries became richer and women became more educated. But in country after country, that has proved false. … "female feticide" is so common in Canada that he believes "doctors should be allowed to disclose this information only after about 30 weeks of pregnancy — in other words, when an unquestioned abortion is all but impossible…."

Selective abortion, however, does not target only girls. Recent screening advances now make it easier and safer to detect Down syndrome in the womb… A survey reported in the American Journal of Medical Genetics found that only 4 percent of parents with Down syndrome children regret having them — and nearly 99 percent of the people with the disorder said they are happy with their lives&hellip.

David Reimer was hailed by scientists as a triumph of nurture over nature. But as his suicide shows, this was a terrible mistake.

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs — her daughter, Rebecca, 38. Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises — a mother.

36 200 years spans approximately 6 generations...if you think about a family business, it usually runs through 3 generations of family members before it goes tango uniform or the family sells it off. Perhaps the distance of time from founding to dissolution isordained in some regard — based on what different generations value and reject.

Less than two weeks after finding out about the tumor, the McCartneys decided to go ahead with open fetal surgery, a procedure that had been successfully completed fewer than 20 times worldwide. It would be the first time the operation would be conducted at Texas Children's Hospital. But with Macie's heart getting weaker by the day and excess fluid building up around it, there wasn't much time to deliberate.

In this post, I will argue that Paul was in fact a widower at the time of his writing.

When Mary Coleman died in May 2009, two days after she fell to the floor at her sister's house, her sister and nephew decided there was nothing they could do about it and went out for pizza. … police found her mummified remains more than three months later …

An Illinois Circuit Court judge upheld the state's decision to drop adoption and foster care service contracts with Catholic Charities Thursday, ignoring the group's claims that their contracts were discontinued because of its religion-inspired policies.

…racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard. The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

MOUNT DORA, Fla. -- A man and woman were arrested early Monday after they were found living with three children, one of whom had second-degree burns, inside a garbage-filled car in the parking lot of a Mount Dora Walmart… 1987 Cadillac Coupe Deville… said they had been living in the car for about three days.

A man herding reindeer in Russia's Arctic found the perfectly-preserved, 40,000-year-old body of a baby woolly mammoth. The creature's carcass was sticking up out of the permafrost

Pato Banton initially burst onto the international reggae scene in the same wave of British artists that included his friends and colleagues Ranking Roger and UB40. Over the years, Banton's music and lyrics have retained the lighter pop appeal of those performers, while incrementally adding depth and profundity. At this point in his career, Banton has become one of reggae music's most individual and powerful artists. ... Banton's motivation for making records clearly is not based on marketing strategies, however, as he has frequently worked on projects with a spiritual, rather than commercial, impetus. Banton has appeared on a series of religious albums titled "Words of Christ." Banton does not use his own lyrics on these works, but rather serves as a narrator, reading texts from the Urantia Book, also known as the Fifth Epochal Revelation, the central work of an esoteric Christian splinter group. "I've been very blessed to find the Urantia Book. After 21 years of studying it, I'm convinced that it is a revelation for the human race," Banton says. "It's a gift from the angels." Tenets of Rastafarianism also figure in Banton's lyrics, but he cherishes his role as a Urantian prophet. "It's become a tool not only that I give to people but also that I can use for my own edification," he says. Banton, who says he has the gift of revelation, explains that it becomes manifest in many ways. "In my travels, there have been times when I've seen miracles before my own eyes. I have to give thanks for those times," he says. "I don't talk much about them, because I don't want to freak people out or make people think that I'm anything special, but there have been times when God has used me to do certain things, and I just stand there in awe."

Italian officials have detained a German couple who abandoned three young children earlier this week. The couple claims they had run out of money and had no food for their children. They could still face charges, though.

Feminism is better termed femisogyny because it is an ideology which hates all things feminine in women

21 percent of white fathers, 44 percent of black fathers, and 35 percent of Hispanic fathers live apart from their children. Twenty-seven percent of absent fathers say they have not seen their children even once in the past year. ... 26-year longitudinal study which says that the strongest factor indicating whether children practiced high levels of empathic concern for others in their adult years was whether they had an involved father in their life.

Be near them, Lord Jesus, in the midst of this great horror. Gently touch their wounds and gather together the pieces of their shattered hearts, for they will need every fractured piece of it in the days, weeks and years to come.

When it comes to sexual relationships and cohabitation among consenting adults, Utah takes a permissive approach. If a guy wants to shack up with a lady, that's fine. If he wants to shack up with several, no problem. He can father children by different roommates, with no fear of the law. But if he marries one woman and represents three others as his "spiritual wives," like Kody Brown? Then he's committed a felony. Not because of the stuff that goes on behind closed doors. It's the public act of claiming to be part of a lifelong "plural marriage" that raises the specter of jail. … Brown went to court claiming that his constitutional rights have been violated in various ways. Though it may come as a surprise to hear, he's got a perfectly reasonable argument. … Brown isn't asking the state to officially accommodate his chosen form of matrimony. He's just asking to be let the hell alone. … Other people, after all, are exempt from such control. Turley says Brown and his women "would not be prosecuted if they claimed no religious obligation and merely had casual or purely sexual associations." He notes, "Monogamists are allowed an infinite number of sexual partners, and consequently have the right to bear children with multiple partners, so long as they do not claim to be committed to such partners in a union or family."

Lamb and Lynx Gaede, the dimpled tween rockers whose Nazi-themed pop band, Prussian Blue, sparked an exuberant media firestorm several years back have grown up — and had a change of heart. "I'm not a white nationalist anymore. My sister and I are pretty liberal now." "Personally, I love diversity," Lynx seconded. "I'm stoked that we have so many different cultures. I think it's amazing and it makes me proud of humanity every day that we have so many different places and people."