Clive Durdle wrote:Just reading John Loftus and he discuses omnipotence and omniscience and asks, why do theists not pray to change the past?

Asking for amputated limbs to regrow is easy, come on, why don't theists pray to change the past? Ask and ye shall receive!

If you have faith as a mustard seed...

chairman bill wrote:Well, after that nuclear meltdown in the US that killed nearly 3 million people last week, I prayed to the Invisible Pink Unicorn (bbhhh) & she made it never happen, so it does work. Of course, making it never happen, means no one really remembers it, because it never happened. I only remember it because I was the one whose prayer was answered.

Darwinsbulldog wrote:Praying to change anything is blasphemy, because all that occurs is by god's will.

Matthew 17:20 (KJV) And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you

Clive Durdle wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:Praying to change anything is blasphemy, because all that occurs is by god's will.

Matthew 17:20 (KJV) And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you

So Jesus blasphemed?

And Igor, the above quote from the Gospel of Matthew is precisely what all those snake handlers etc assert.

Isn't praying to move mountains simple stuff, just needs a Vogon fleet. Getting Eve not to like apples though...

Darwinsbulldog wrote:Sure he did. I can't recall the exact chapter and verse, but Jeebees did tell his "dad" to fuck off on more than one occasion.

Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ultimate etymology is uncertain, but that the word is "probably cognate" with a number of native Germanic words with meanings involving striking, rubbing, and having sex.[7]

"Flen, flyys and freris"
The usually accepted first known occurrence is in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century.[8] The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris ("Fleas, flies, and friars"). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk", here by replacing each letter by the previous letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in coeli, quia fvccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, "They are not in heaven, because they fuck wives of Ely".[9] The phrase was coded likely because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy;[8] it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. (The stem of fvccant is an English word used as Latin: English medieval Latin has many examples of writers using English words when they did not know the Latin word: "workmannus" is an example.) (In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for "woman.")

Older etymology
Via Germanic
The word has probable cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German ficken (to fuck); Dutch fokken (to breed, to beget); dialectal Norwegian fukka (to copulate), and dialectal Swedish focka (to strike, to copulate) and fock (penis).[7] This points to a possible etymology where Common Germanic fuk– comes from an Indo-European root meaning "to strike", cognate with non-Germanic words such as Latin pugno "I fight" or pugnus "fist".[7] By application of Grimm's law, this hypothetical root has the form *pug–.

Yet another possible etymology is from the Old High German word pfluog, meaning "to plow, as in a field." This is supported in part by a book by Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, in which he discusses the "primitive play of words" and the phallic representation of the plough, including its appearance on a vase found in an archaeological dig near Florence, Italy, which depicts six erect-penised men carrying a plow.

The original Indo-European root for to copulate is likely to be * h3yebh– or *h3eybh–,[citation needed] which is attested in Sanskrit यभति (yabhati), Russian ебать (yebat' ), Polish jebać, and Serbian јебати (jebati), among others: compare the Greek verb οἴφω (oíphō) = "I have sex with", and the Greek noun Ζέφυρος (Zéphyros) (which references a Greek belief that the west wind Zephyrus caused pregnancy).

There is a theory that fuck is most likely derived from Flemish, German, or Dutch roots, and is probably not from Old English roots.[8]

Via Latin or Greek
There may be a kinship with the Latin futuere (futuo), a verb with almost exactly the same meaning as the English verb "to fuck". From fūtuere came French foutre, Catalan fotre, Italian fottere, Romanian futere, vulgar peninsular Spanish joder, Portuguese foder, and the obscure English equivalent to futter, coined by Richard Francis Burton. However, there is no clear past lineage or derivation for the Latin word. These roots, even if cognates, are not the original Indo-European word for to copulate, but Wayland Young argues that they derive from the Indo-European *bhu– or *bhug– ("be", "become"), or as causative "create" [see Young, 1964]. A possible intermediate might be a Latin 4th-declension verbal noun *fūtus, with possible meanings including "act of (pro)creating".

However, the connection to futuere has been disputed – Anatoly Liberman calls it a "coincidence" and writes that it is not likely to have been borrowed from the Low Germanic precursors to fuck.[10]

Greek phyō (φύω) has various meanings, including (of a man) "to beget", or (of a woman), "to give birth to".[11] Its perfect pephyka (πέφυκα) can be likened[citation needed] to "fuck" and its equivalents in other Germanic languages.[11]