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Zurf - it is a banjitar or 6 string banjo.
Jermoe - I bought one new guitar online and it was fine. I did try it out at my local music store. The problem with the banjo is that I have been searching for one for several years, without success. The shop that sells them is a 5 hour drive from home. They do have a no-questions asked return policy. I am torn.

I see the bill as an attempt to protect profits. Whether that's good or bad is for each person to decide. However, the internet has always been about freedom. Censorship, in any form, violates freedom, and we have had many freedoms legislated away in the last ten years.
So, I guess I'm agin it!

No need to apologize, cj. If we all agreed on everything, the world would be aboring place to live.
I believe in courtesy, but PC is a crock.
Take care,
Randy

Me, too! Having avoided these types of discussions over the years, it is refreshing to not be told that I am hell-bound, or evil, or under the influence of Satan, which is where these discussions usually end up. It is nice to be able to agree to disagree, amicably, giving no offence and receiving none. Well done, indeed!

By the start of the fourth century, there were innumerable "gospels" in and aound the Roman world. The gnostic books were purged from Christianity by 325 AD, by edict from Constantine and with the compliance of the various bishops who attended the Nicean conferences. This was done to "unify" Christianity with a set of dogma that was universal. All other interpretations of scripture, and the various non-compliant gospels were effectively eliminated.
The books that we now call the bible were debated, often heatedly, to pare down the canon that we recognize today. As an example, the choice of four gospels, was arrived at quite arbitrarily, four being the number of the four elements, ie earth, air, fire and water. The "jewishness: of the church had been pushed aside.
The term "gnostic", for centuries was equated to heresy. Gnostic believers thought that the secret wisdom of Jesus was the basis for their seperateness from the other, to them, simpler beliefs of non-gnostics. They paid the price and were virtually eliminated, along with all their gospels.
The New Testament, it must be understood, did not exist as a collection until the fourth century. The gospels that we now use as scripture were, for the most part, writtten at least a generation removed from being contemporary with the life of Jesus; some as much as 100 years after Jesus' death or more. This in and of itself does not make them invalid, but when reading and studying them, one must be aware that these books were written and re-written several times before being canonized as scripture. The "original" books of the gospels were already interpreted in disparate cultures, and in different contexts.
Jesus central message of love one another, or that which you do to the least of my brethren you have done to me still come through. Early Christianity was initially a Jewish sect. Jesus was, to his core, a Jew. By the fourth century, that Jewishness was purged from the religion. Pagan holidays were incorporated into Christianity, even the date of the "12 days of Christmas" come from the Saturnalia, the feast days surrounding the winter solstice.
I'm not really trying to de-construct the Bible, simply trying to understand its roots, and thereby gain a deeper understanding of the central message it contains. Christianity, with its message of peace and brotherhood is still the central message. Much of our modern interpretation of that message has been overlain with "tradition", which subtly changed the message to conform to the dogmatization of that message. The simple truth of its message is still valid, but biblical scholars understand that our modern interpretations of scripture are different than what was the original import of what was a radical departure from existing beliefs. When Christianity became exclusive, rather than inclusive, that central message of hope was put on the back shelf, in favour of uniformity, rather than diversity.
I suppose that for me, personally, the bible is not the literal "word of God". If interpreted literally, the bible uses phrases like "God spake" or "thus sayest the Lord", but is not written in the first person by God. By some mystical process, early scholars took books of wisdom and knowledge and layered them with an attempt at uniformity. I agree somewhat with cj - one can come to an understanding of sorts of the mind of God, but the literal meaning must be secondary in order to gain this understanding. I contend, though, that my interpretation is as valid as the next, because I have reasoning powers
In this, then, I understand the "gnostic" gospels reason for being. Gnostics recognized that the deeper understanding of Jesus' message was not reliant on dogma, but rather on personal awareness of the complexity of that message. Did they get it right? For them, yes. Their interpretation of Jesus' life was what they saw and understood. The disparity was the result of three centuries of thought and study, and they came to different conclusions about the nature and mission of Jesus, prior to the canonization of what we now call the Bible.

Teach her 12 bar blues. Seriously. With that, she can do virtually any pop song, with mnor variation. Just the chords, mind. Start with key of C - kids have high voices.

It makes sense to me, too. I disagree with your conclusions, wholeheartedly, but I understand your position, too. My difficulty with the Genisis stories differences, as in order of creation, as an example, is that they both cannot be correct, if read literally. I tried, when I was searching for truth, to understand why there were such blatant contradictions in those accounts of the creation, from a literalist perspective, and to try to reconcile the differences.
The only way for me to reconcile the differences was to assume that one or both were allegorical, which led me to study the bible in a different way. I re-read the bible, and came to understand that the allegorical messages of the Old Testament stories were far more profound than if interpreted literally.

There is beauty in the underlying truths about humanity that are contained in the Bible.

The first and seconds laws of thermodynamics are not negated. Earth is not a closed system. It recieves VAST amounts of outside energy from the sun, and the stars. Therefore, these laws do not apply, directly or indirectly, to the ToE.

The big bang is interesting, though. Think of a black hole, in space. It's gravity is so profound, that not even light escapes it. When that point of singularity is arrived at, time ceases to exist, as it slows down until it reaches the singularity. If you think of the big bang as the first singularity, there is no "prior" to the big bang, since time cannot begin until the bang occurs.
An excellent source to read is anything by Steven Hawking relating to black holes and the big bang. This does not break the law of causality in quantum physics.

The problem, as I see it, for literalist Christians, is that they are under the impression that if science conflicts with the bible, then science is wrong, whatever the observable facts are, and if you so believe this, you have every right to do so. My problem is that literalists are not content to abide their beliefs, but insist on selling that belief as science, when it is clearly not, to the point of trying to inject into our school system. If the "creationist" theory had one iota of scientific, ie verifiable, proof, then I would consider it. It simply doesn't. It is religion, dressed up as science, without any actual science being done. To teach it as science is, put it bluntly, a lie.

Katie and CJ, I am in no way trying to de-convert you. For me, science requires evidence, faith does not. As I said in an earlier post, the two do not relate to each other, and should not. Science is never about faith, and faith is never about science. They are not necessarily opposed, rather, it becomes a comparison of apples and oranges, completely different fields.

The problem, auxi, is the word "theory".
The term doesn't mean what you think it does when science is involved.
Gravity is a "theory", but research has supported this theory to the point that we successfully landed men on the moon, using this "theory". In much the same way, biological science uses the "theory" of evolution in everything from finding cures to diseases to remedying heart problems to a host of other medical research. Without the ToE, modern biology would not exist.
A scientific theory arises when a researcher observes verifiable events, records them and uses these observations to support his or her hypothesis. This theory is then published for peer review by other scientists, who examine the data, and attempt to reproduce the same results. If the data is not verifiable, then the theory is debunked. However, for over 150 years, since the publication of "The Descent of Man; On the Origins of Species", all of the scientists on the planet have tried to refute it. In the process, certain refinements are made, but in those 150 years, no scientist has sucessfully refuted the ToE, only strengthened and refined it.
A scientific theory is not simply an unverifiable hypothesis, rather is subject to rigorous peer review, by other scientists who attempt to poke holes in it, or look for missing elements to refine the theory. The theory of evolution has passed this test for 150 years, and has been strengthened by new breakthroughs in genetics; mapping the human genome, as an example.

The problem with the AiG people, the Ken Hamms of the world, is that they do not accept the theory because they believe in a literal bible, and the ToE doesn't mention God, since, of course, God is not scientifically verifiable. The ToE does not attempt to answer the question of the existence of God. It does explain the periodic rise and fall of species over the course of the planet's history, and the adaptation by organisms to a changing environment. That is all it does.

To understand why there are biblical literalists, one must understand that until the advent of the "enlightenment", the bible was the only source of science. Gallilleo proved that the Earth was not the center of the universe, the the planets revolved around the sun, and that moons orbited other planets. The observable movement of the planets in the night sky was verifiable, and replaced the earth-centric universe that biblical literalists took for granted. This was the beginning of modern science, where chemistry replaced alchemy and asttronomy replaced astrology. In the next few centuries after the enlightenment, science made tremendous bounds and human knowledge increased astronomically.

Then, in the latter half of the 19th century, a pastor and religious scholar went through the bible, with an emphasis on prophecy and a reliance on a literal intrepretation of the passages. He worked out, on paper, using rather cherry picked biblical passages, to support what is now called the "rapture" theory. At the time it was written, biblical scholars called it a mishmash, a made up theory without biblical validation.

This pastor then got his theory annotated into a King James bible version known as the Schofield bible, with its footnotes and sidebars, and it seemed all very scholarly, since the annotations were added to the pages of the bible. The Schofield bible was the largest selling bible in the United States for decades, and by the 1890's, a movement formed around this "rapture" idea, They formed the original Fundamentalist movement, which, has, of course, mutated into what we have today in North America' a stiuation where the 20 or so percent of Christians who consider themselves fundamentalists, setting the agenda for less evangelical churches to be pushed into the background.

One must be aware that the original writers of the bible were, some 3800 years ago, bronze age, semi nomads who would consider the modern world incomprehensible. Modern technology did not exist. There were no telescopes, no microscopes, no electricity and no one person or persons who spent their time doing science. We are talking about a fairly primitive society. I speak of the Old Testament here. There was no such thing as science 3800 years ago, at least not in the sense that we think of it today. It would be unwise to read literal truth into stories written then by people who didn't even recognize "zero" in mathematics.

The bible is silent on evolution. Evolution is silent on the bible. They are irrelevant to each other, one concerning itself with the unobservable and unverifiable, ie faith, and the other with the observable and verfifiable, science. They are mutually exclusive, in the final analysis, as Gallilleo observed while recanting his solar centred universe, the Earth still moves.

The universality of worship has not necessarily been universal, but early in man's evolution, once our brains developed the reasoning skills necessary for survival, that large brain must have been working on the solutions the questions of life, death and the whys, while developing tools and survival strategies.
One of those survival strategies, for humans, was to band together for mutual protection. These bands lived mostly in isolation from other bands of humans, which meant that outsiders from other bands were often avoided, another survival technique. The unkown was dangerous.
With the questions that arose from the expansion of human capacity for reasoning, it would have been quite natural for humans to explain the unexplainable with the concept of a god, or gods.
Early "religions" were naturalistic, ie, nature itself was god, and humans attributed nature with supernatural existence, because the processes of nature were not understood, in the sense that science, as we know it today, was non-existent. Life was too harsh and dangerous to spend time with science.
Today, in isolated regions, like the rain forests of New Guinea or Amazonia, this is exactly what we find, particularly where population growth is fairly static.
Once humanity expanded its populations, and larger communities developed, humans had more time to devote to the metaphysical. Evidence for this is in the emergence of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and the Meso-American cultures. Each had unique religions and gods, developed in isolation from each other, with distinct moral codes and beliefs.
These larger communities, though, maintained their "tribal" nature, based on their cultural, agricultural and economic development, still in isolation from each other.
As populations grew, cultures merged and absorbed earlier "religions", until the present day, where there are very few non-monotheistic culturres left. Some, like Bhuddists, don't even require a god, per se.
As man evolved, so did religion and religious beliefs and customs, as they are still evolving today. A Christian from the 1600's, transplanted to today, would barely recognize the religion practiced today, if at all.
In a sense, man did come up with the concept of god, in order to explain that for which, at that time, was not readily explainable, and the placation of capricious nature gods required some form of worship or sacrifice or ritual, and this, I think, is the universal "worship" to which you refer.

Roy Clark has the most amazing, chubby little fingers I've ever observed. He was a master picker, with very few in his league.

One of my favourite learn to sing while you play songs is "Standing on a Rock" by Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Great tune, easy to play and bluesy enough for some improvisation.