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Minimum data speeds? Surely it depends on the device you are using and the area you are in...The bill obviously has good intentions but it'll be hard to maintain the info.

Hmmm, other nations seem to have no problem with this.

From Big Pong, Australia's worst telco,

Speed: Typical download speeds are from 1.1Mbps to 20Mbps in all capital city

Honesty in advertising is really hard and it sucks for consumers. We would all be better off if they kept lying to us.

http://go.bigpond.com/broadband/index.jsp

Their smallest plan is 2GB for $9.95 (if you have other telstra stuff to bundle) a month and shaping (no overage charges ever)

I'm an internode fanboy, but you are thinking about Telstra under Sol ($$$$$$$$$$ FOR ME!!!!), not Telstra of today (best network but higher prices).

Thanks to the story here about Bigpond's file library decision, in the process of further reading I found out about their discount offer, which they probably only want new customers to hear about. As an existing customer, I wasn't notified, though to avoid complaints of discrimination, is also available to existing customers.

Their file library decision has now saved me (cost them) $180/yr — plus I get enough extra allowance to download a Linux distro a week. Thank you Slashdot and the anonymous story poster.

(I know there are better plans from other vendors, but being so far from an exchange, I need to stick with cable to get decent speeds.)

They are obviously shutting down the public file library (they still will be caching in the background, same diff to them) so they can run up user downloads to increase profit margins in light of the future wholesale fibre broadband network. So the marketing lie, no demand with the reality a chance to up download charges http://www.bigpond.com/internet/plans/adsl/plans-and-offers/ especially considering the lowest usage cap is 2 GB.

2GB is wildly low but it all came about when Telstra were using the incumbent telco position and the support of right wing politics in order to try to establish a content distribution monopoly (low downloads limits force you to buy through their uncapped service others download charges would exceed content charges especially at 15 cents a MB say $12 per dvd no content and no media).

They have alwasy be a really bad company, years back I signed an eighteen month contact, after one month the raised the price $10 a month and introduced a cap of 3GB on a previously uncapped service, then claimed they only raised the price $10 (in reality more like a 1000% or more increase considering those additional usage charges), the ACCC http://www.accc.gov.au/ had to force them to allow users to drop the one way contracts, which I naturally enough did.

Yes set up in the .com boom along with gaming, kept alive to spin the low data caps.
Now Telstra has value eg 25GB plans for A$79.95 ~ US$70 @8Mbps/128kbps or
25 GB A$89.95 ~US$77 @30000/1000kbps Over the cap and face $0.15/MB or 64kbps until your new billing cycle starts.
http://www.bigpond.com/internet/plans/cable/plans-and-offers/

With that in mind I don't think our access is all that bad. I can get 100gigs of ADSL2+ for $50 a month which isn't too bad.

I've posted this before whenever people gush about how wonderful ADSL2+ is in Australia: it's only great when there's competition at the exchange. There are plenty of exchanges where Telstra is the only ADSL2 provider; on one of those you'd pay $149.95 for only 60Gb, and about $6000 in excess usage charges (15c/Mb) to get to 100Gb.

The rightful owner of 95 bytes of data. An amount so small that no currency exists that can measure its worth.

It can quite likely be measured in Australian currency if the downloader uses BigPong.

so what do you think they'll say when I say I do it deliberately ?

Vanishingly few people in Australia would do that, as plans in Oz normally have a monthly cap. Take a look here, for example: the cheapest plan allows you 200 MB (yes, megabytes) of data transfer per month.

How about Australia? Well, Telstra Bigpond has 21Mbps HSPA+ with probably very good coverage (can't find a link), Vodafone Australia has 3.6Mbps HSDPA with (soon to be) good coverage and Optus has a 3G/UMTS network with spotty coverage.

The United States has over fifteen times the population of Australia, yet the U.S. has long been behind when it comes to mobile phone technology. Is it the telco monopolies? Is there low demand? It's weird.

Australia? Where you get charged $150 a gigabyte for excess usage? As detailed in the light grey text in smaller font underneath the plan? Yeah, we're doing great.

Telstra: Additional usage charged at $0.15/MB.
Optus: Excess Data: $0.15/MB up to 2 GB then Speed Limited to 64 kbps

a) Raise their prices considerably on all their "unlimited" plans--sucks for the light users, who are basically subsidizing the heavy users who want to stream HD video and movies

b) Covertly start throttling back heavy users--sucks for everyone, since no one even knows how much they're being throttled and there is no option of paying a premium to escape it

c) Set download caps--sucks compared to the "free ride" heavy users are getting now, but at least it's out in the open with no throttling bullshit (and light users don't get penalized).

d) Everything stays priced the same as now, without throttling or download caps

Want to see what the future will be like with the proposed capping system? Step right up folks, and take a look at Australia's largest ISP. You get to pick from unbeatable offers such as US$28.85 for 200MB, and US$93.86/month for 60GB! Want more than 60GB? No problem. For the low cost of just US$110.94 per additional gigabyte, you can download to your heart's content! Oh, what was that? You want to watch online video? Don't worry. As part of this attractive offer, you will also have exclusive unmetered access to our partner network of music, movies, sports, games, and more! Getting excited yet? Seriously though fellas, those were not typos and this is not a joke.

Out of every Slashdot article I have seen in the past year, no single controversy has posed anywhere near this of a threat to rights online or free and open source software; and we've got an almost inconceivable "+5, Insightful" first post that effectively sympathizes with the offenders. At least take a moment to research before rushing to Time Warner's defense. Believe you me, if they are given an inch on this one, they (and all U.S. ISPs) will take a mile.

"Why does this really matter? ISPs in other countries are doing it, and businesses should be allowed to maximize their profit," you might say. Well, for starters, internet access has become a vital lifeline that is second-to-none. It has superseded all other forms of communication and media. Restrictive bandwidth policies do nothing more than perpetuate the digital divide by putting financial strain on the people who are already on the brink. This means that when Johnny's parents have home (telephone, or) cable service with a major U.S. company that offers package deals, they will likely opt to conservatively use one of the most inexpensive service plans. At this point, experimenting with things as simple as Ubuntu and Folding@Home become impractical or impossible for Johnny, unless he really wants to go out on a limb by asking for permission.

As of 2008, 5 ISPs control 56% of the U.S. market share. This means that half of the country will be coerced into using the unmetered media networks offered by their provider. What happened to the vision of net neutrality?

Here's the bottom line: if Japan and South Korea can figure out a way to provide blazing speeds at a low cost, then so can the United States.

P.S. For those opposed to the proposals, please contact your elected officials, or request that it be done on your behalf.

One particular Australian ISP I was looking at, I forget who. It may have been Dodo or something [snip] sold ridiculously low download caps (in the less than a gigabyte range) coupled with reasonable speeds (so as to very quickly eat the allotted cap up), and charged excess usage at 10c per megabyte.

Hahah, if only it was Dodo. At least then the shady tactics would be expected. No, you're thinking of Telstra BigPond, Australia's largest ISP. They're quite happy selling a 256kbps ADSL 'broadband' service with a 200mb/month limit, which charges not 10 but 15 cents per megabyte that you go over this limit.

Don't believe me? Check out the worst ADSL plans ever. I'm so sad that my grandparents were tricked into signing up for a 2 year contract for this.

While I like the convenience of Steam, let's not forget that if Steam goes belly up, games bought there will become unplayable.

They announced that in that case the games would be unlocked.

That statement's been debunked several times, if VALVe goes belly up the administrators that take over are incredibly unlikely to allow anyone to flip a switch that would destroy the value of the company's assets. It's nice that they say it, but reality won't give them any control over it in that situation.

I like to purchase games through Steam to avoid having to hunt down the games in stores, as I've generally had bad luck when trying to get game-related items from stores here. I imagine it'd be similarly useful for people that would otherwise have to expend a large amount of transport effort to acquire the boxed version of the game. Some games, like Red Alert 3, even remove their boxed DRM in favour of the Steam version, which I tend to find less intrusive (it's pretty invisible to most internet-connected users).

As for the quota issue, in Australia the ISPs began implementing quota-free services on their own networks to counteract the large amount of bandwidth consumed doing things like gaming. Several even offer Steam content servers on their own networks as quota-free. Customers with Internode and Bigpond, for example, are able to acquire most (all?) Steam content quota free so bandwidth caps are irrelevant when downloading games; the only limiting factor is speed.

If American ISPs follow the Australian ones with the quota-free content servers and such we might find the number of people downloading games from Steam won't decrease when hard caps are implemented (since traffic on their own networks is essentially free they're likely to offer it).

Before any mods mark this as a troll, let me point out that Tel$tra still charge $150/GB for excess downloads on their broadband plans.

You obviously haven't seen overage charges in action.

For example: http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/cable/fineprint.jsp

$150/GB so the $37,500 a month from that one big downloader easily covers 100 paying customers, in fact they make 10x as much.

So instead of a cap which people complain about, an overage charge that has the big downloaders begging to be cut off. Some other ISP will offer cheaper overage rates when they see it can still be profitable to have those big downloaders

To add to OP, with Bigpond's "download limits", if you exceed your cap, you get charged 0.15c per extra megabyte downloaded, which works out to be $150 per a gigabyte see here, in comparison to Westnet for example, another Australian ISP which charges $6/GB (see: here.

I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but for most ISP's other than Bigpond, a scheme called "shaping" is in place for nearly all plans, so that when you exceed your download limit, your internet speed gets slowed to 64kbps for the remainder of the month (as opposed to paying for any excess you use). Bigpond have slowly been introducing their plans that "feature" unlimited downloads (shaping) - which have been a defacto standard for most other ISP's for long before. Bigpond sales have also been known to flat out refer to these "Liberty" plans as "unlimited downloads", without explaining the concept of shaping (believe me - I have had to explain this to several people).

As a subsidiary of the previously state-owned monopoly, Bigpond is a joke. I went from 256kbps @ 12GB for $60AU per month (believe me - not my choice) with Bigpond, to ADSL2+ speeds (realistically for me: 1MB/s~) @ 21GB (now 30GB) for $60AU a month with my current ISP (iiNet). On top of that, Bigpond tends to be rated far lower in customer service (see: here) than most other ISPs.

http://www.perlmonks.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_(programming_language)
http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/
http://srfi.schemers.org/
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
http://www.quickref.org/
http://java.sun.com/javase/reference/api.jsp
http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://cprogramming.com/
http://www.stackoverflow.com/
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cbook/
http://yutaka.is-a-geek.net/
http://www.gotapi.com/
http://www.open-rsc.org/
http://www.users.bigpond.com/robin_v/resource.htm
http://www.geocities.com/orion_blastar/contact/
http://en.wikibooks.org/

Hi there all you programming langauges. I've called you all here because we need to talk. There's some things I need to get off my chest.

SNOBOL

If the world revolved around writing backgammon games, baby, you'd be the end all be all. But you're bloody useless at anything else. You're pretty but uselss.

Logo

You wear me out. I have to tell you to do everything.

FORTH

DARLING I MISS YOU. Where are you?

Prolog

You look good on paper, but you scare me. Remember that time in Beverly Hills? You have some very odd friends. And what's with the pink ties?

Algol

Oh algol. We had some great times together. But there is life after college, really.

Lucid

Lucid: you aren't. You should have been called "heroin".

PL/I - http://www.users.bigpond.com/robin_v/resource.htm

PL/I you are the perfect ex langauge. There's nothing to like about you and I don't miss you. Hell I don't even remember you that well any more. You're so damn difficult even your name cant be used in a URL because you screw that up. Put skip THIS, bitch.

Forth come back! All is forgiven. Let's just you and me go someplace and dup dup dup. Or was that postscript. No no, she's just a friend.

Aww dammit. Forth? Honey?

SNOBOL - http://www.snobol4.org/

Logo - http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/logo/programming.html

FORTH - http://www.phact.org/e/forth.htm

Prolog - http://www.logic.at/prolog/faq/faq.html

Algol - http://www.algol68.org/

Lucid - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Lucid

PL/I - http://www.users.bigpond.com/robin_v/resource.htm

The thing to bear in mind for an average family in the near future a broadband connection has to provide the following simultaneously. Four video VOIP connections, high definition legal streaming (certainly not low res youtube) to four different screens at the same time and various file downloads and uploads, including large emails with attached video, video instant messaging and, the legal purchase and burn of DVD content.

So 250 gig can get readily chewn up, of course can't complain, in Australia this is an example of one of the worst plans available http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/adsl/plansandoffers/default.jsp, that's right a whole 200MB/month, that's right Mega Bytes, combined with the booby trap of $0.15/MB excess charges, on broadband, major bills for people who often can least afford it (incumbent monopoly phone company for them VOIP is an obscene word).

Describing the rate as "Broadband Speeds" is about as useful as describing the performance of a supercar as "roadworthy" (there's your car analogy).

For reference, in Australia not only does the incumbent Telco consider 256/64kbps to be broadband, but they also describe it as "Fast".

I've seen some rankings that put Australia ahead of the U.S. in terms of broadband conenctivity, purely because of advertised speeds. As an Australian, I find this highly amusing.

For example, you can readily get a 30mbit cable connection here. Telstra Bigpond's cheapest full-speed cable offering is $39.95 a month... And includes 200 megabytes of data. After which you pay 15 cents for each additional megabyte. (And they charge for uploads as well as downloads.)

Yes, you can get fast, reasonably-priced internet access here. And if you use it, you'll hit your monthly quota in one minute.

The smaller ISPs mostly don't engage in such blatant theft, but all of them have download limits, often quite small. Which would you prefer: 6mbit speed with no limit, or 24mbit and 5GB a month?

Maybe it's the fact that Pig and Human DNA have been succesfully combined. Or maybe it's the fact that the so-called "missing link" was in fact a pig tooth.

You call $1NZD per GB "terrible"? Wow, you should see what it's like over at BigPoo where it is $150AUD per GB extra.

To be fair, after they removed OpenOffice.org and anti-viruses, they added Ubuntu main, restricted, and universe repositories to their unmetered area, for Gutsy and Hardy. See http://files.bigpond.com/ for details.

No, they are not restricted to only getting what is offered by the ISP, however, any downloads that come from BigPond's servers are free of charge for Telstra BigPond customers. When you consider the outrageous prices that they have on their plans, you will quickly understand why their customers would be annoyed, possibly even outraged, at losing free access to OpenOffice (or any other program) bigpond.com plans

I did look at signing up with BigPond, but when I looked at the lovely fine print regarding excess usage charges ($0.17/MB) as well as their higher than average plan costs ($79.95 a month for 25GB @ 1500/256kbps) PLUS home phone line rental of about $30 a month

It is a big deal when compared to the bandwidth and data caps offered by Telstra to their customers

http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/adsl/plansandoffers/default.jsp

In the Australian market, Telstra is a state run ISP and phone company. While they do not have an outright monopoly, they own the vast majority of the countries infrastructure. Almost all other ISPs use Telstra's infrastructure, so there is little competition. With Telstra's home use internet connection (as is the case with all home internet connections) you have a limited amount of data you can download per month. A basic account only offers you 200MB of downloads per month. You are charged on a per MB basis for exceeding that amount. Telstra does not count the downloads from a limited number of sites, so downloads from those places are free.

Removing OpenOffice from one of these sites means that many people who are on the smaller Telstra plans will have to PAY to downloaded it.

And if you live in Australia, and you don't like it then it's just tough. Almost all other ISPs have similar pricing structures as Telstra, because Telstra is selling the connections to them and they setting the prices. An un-metered domestic internet plan in Australia means that your connection speed is dropped back to dail-up speeds when you reach a certain limit.

For an idea of how expensive internet connections are in Oz, look at the pricing here:

http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/adsl/plansandoffers/default.jsp

This is news for people who live in Australia.

To put in perspective the entry level plans have measly bandwidth quotas from 200mb to 600mb per month. Then to add further insult to injury any additional usage is charged at $150 per GB.

However don't think all Aussie internet is as bad as this, there are many competing ISPs so you would have to be a complete idiot to sign up to Bigpoo.

The truth is even funnier. In the linked article, clicking on the link to "BigPond Office" takes you to docs.google.com. Wow. Wonder if the author intended to link to this site instead...

...are available here.

Looks like plans capped at anywhere from 200MB to 60GB per month, with a $0.15/MB (AUD, not USD) overage charge on some plans. On one plan (Liberty plan), they severely throttle your bandwidth once you hit the limit.

I would say the metering makes this a problem, but Telstra broadband isn't aimed at nerds. It's aimed at the average person who, let's face it, probably hasn't heard of open office.

We can see that Telstra is aimed at the average Aussie by examining what they offer in the way of broadband. Their plans are as a rule more expensive than what the competition offers (not sure how that works considering they are the wholesaler as well as a consumer ISP) and often come with hefty "hidden" charges (usually $0.15 per Mb referece) for going over miniscule download limits. The reason they get away with this is slick marketing and plenty of muscle politically from previously being the government monopoly telco in Australia. Many normal people think Telstra BigPond IS broadband, and don't know about other ISPs.

In contrast, nerds are aware that there are many ISPs in Australia (well at least in the capital cities) and can research plans on sites such as http://whirlpool.net.au/. The nerds, who would be likely to download open office, would generally be on better plans with other ISPs where the size of the open office download isn't going to be an issue.

And, if you recall:

http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=6327

I can suck to be an altar boy or in the company of unscrupulous priests, lay people and just about any adult, usually male, if they can't mate/date with their own age groups, or at least anyone older than a minor, is not an invalid, and is not in a shotgun wedding.

Anyway, Bindeez are being banned:

http://www.bigpond.com/news/topstories/content/20071106/2082480.asp

Well, hell, just read this google search string:

http://www.google.com/search?q=priest+ghb+boys&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I got ADSL In 1996 , back when it was 1.5 Mb download and 120Kb upload, today, eleven years later
I get 8 Mb download and 385 Kb upload, at about 30 percent higher pricing.

Woe, you really got it hard there, as you read the following table, please keep in mind that 1996 comment:


256/64kbps
                      $29.95 200MB
                      $59.95 12GB

1500/256kbps
                      $39.95 400MB
                      $69.95 12GB
                      $99.95 25GB

8Mbps/384kbps*
                      $59.95 600MB
                      $89.95 12GB
                      $119.95 25GB
                      $149.95 60GB

* 20Mbs download on some exchanges


So you must be thinking Uganda or something but no, those are the price figures from Australia's biggest telco as of today.

Yes, that figure down the right hand column is a download limit. Yes those prices are in AUD...

1$AU ~= 0.84$US

(Source: http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/adsl /plans/default.jsp)

In flight Quantas internet $60
Ticket to Australia $2000
Your face when you work out the price of $0.15/MB over 200 mb of usage
Priceless

http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/cabl e/plans/

You've hit the nail on the head..and pretty soon broadband in this country is going to be stuffed!
Wait..oh I see.."digital robber barons".. not "digital robber baron".

Oops, Sorry...I thought you were talking about Australia there for a minute. My Mistake.
We've only got one digital robber baron.

OK, I'll take that back: I should have said "no realistic plans". Two divisions for the whole of Australia is hardly credible. There was no railway line to Adelaide in 1942, unless they parachuted in at Alice Springs -- the line to Darwin was only completed a few years ago. And imagine the attrition rate marching through the desert for a couple of months! It's nearly 3000km; there'd be nothing left by the time they got to Adelaide, even if they'd met no resistance. It's a ridiculous plan.

This site (which supports the idea of a Japanese invasion plan) has a slightly different story: Nagano instead of Yamamoto, 3 divisions instead of 2, limited objectives (occupation of Darwin and the north, no drive south). That seems more plausible but it also wouldn't lead to the conquest of Australia. But that site does a lot of reading between the lines, it seems to me; there was a lot of competition between the Japanese Army and the Navy and some of it was just political, ambit claims, not realistic planning.

Anyway, my larger point remains: at no time was an invasion of Australia ever a concrete Japanese plan (in the sense of something which at some point in time was intended to be carried out, rather than just a vague proposal), and they never had enough resources for the job. Yes, Australians stopped the Japanese at Kokoda; but they didn't stop the invasion of Australia, because that was never going to happen. (Or rather, if it did, it would quickly have become a disaster for the Japanese, and conversely a major victory for the Allies.)

A simplification of a Bigpond offer (simplified in making it as expensive as possible) actually has 0.0003 cents per kilobyte for the first 10 GB (in this simplified version its impossible to download more then 10GB). So no, 0.002 cents per kilobyte isn't outrageously cheap.

I've been an iPrimus ADSL residential and business customer since their first ADSL product - which was 1.5Mbit, unlimited data, for something around A$120/month - an absolute bargain at the time (2001). They soon realised that unlimited data was an unsupportable offer and drastically restricted it (along with all other ISPs).

Anyway, the plans cited above are competitive with other major ISPs: Netspace's comparable plan is $69.95, though quotas rise to 50GB (split between peak and off-peak). Bigpond offers a 512kbps 'unlimited' (really 10GB, after that, it slows to 64kbps) also from $69.95. Their 20GB/1.5Mbps plan starts from $129.95, or more than 8 times the service in Toronto (and it's still not unlimited). Internode's 40GB/512kbps is exactly the same price.

As for 'ii', do you have that service installed? Is it generally available like the other ADSL providers? Are you trying to compare apples and oranges? I'm discussing products available today, not ADSL2 and other exotics that might be available in the future.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/adriansbruce/cartoons /nerd!.jpg

"After inventing fire, the wheel and Art, Trevor (Modern man) is introduced to a new word... NERD!" (by a Nethanderal)

It has been those that have changed the world, advanced it, that have been called Nerds or Geeks by the great unwashed that couldn't rub two sticks together to make fire, or program their VCR. NOT everyone is a geek.

Sounds like you would be fine with a PPC Mini. My advice would be to wait until the Macworld announcement when you might be able to get one for a drastically reduced price.

BTW, if you have 68000 classic apps, you may want to check out Basilisk II for OSX. This will probably become more popular in the near future. Remember that this won't help with PPC classic apps.

While travelling recently I saw satellite internet being used on the islands in Thailand and also in the remote bush is Australia. For more info see Telstra Satellite Broadband (notice 1-way & 2-way options) and then this more general page. The only thing is that it was

Political correctness isn't about rudeness, it's about not "offending" a certain group, where being offended does not correlate with rudeness but with imagined slights. An example from answers.com shows how insane this is, as the PC term hearing impaired is active in conveying the impairment, while deaf is just neutral. It's not just people being stupid, it completely muddles the languages, making communication more difficult than it already is.
See here for more.

Besides, is someone has an infected PC, disconnection is a friendly action. It kicks them up the arse so they have to find out what is going on, and it prevents them being zombied.

Especially friendly when you may be paying AUD$.15/mb for the privilege of being a zombie.

http://www.bigpond.com/internet-plans/broadband/ad sl/

I'm guessing these people who don't understand the effects of spyware/viruses are the same people who don't understand what a 200MB allowance is. Not only would this save the network, it would help with disputes with customers at the end of the month when it comes time to bill for usage.

The earth would have suddenly come into existance a tad over five millenia ago.

And there I was thinking that the earth was only 6000 years old!

Fuckwits.

Damien

My ISP does. They also offer spam-filtering for an extra monthly fee.
I guess there really is one born every minute.

Vivendi/Universal may not be the only people to get angry at Valve for their use of Steam to distribute HalfLife2.

Currently the Halflife2 preloads are optional downloads, but there is no indication of the *size* of these downloads. Outside of the USA many people are charged for excess downloads on Broadband.
As an example, http://www.bigpond.com/ (Telstra Bigpond) here in Australia charges AU$0.15 per extra megabyte. One of the recent preloads was approximately 1gb of data. An unsuspecting family which was already at it's download limit would be up for AU$150 in charges for that download alone (which happens in the background, and can continue after a reboot) - close to double the price of the game itself.

When will the first "Customer sues Valve" postings begine ?

Note: Please don't change the topic to "ISPs shouldnt charge for excess" - the point is that some still do.

Re:Occam's Razor (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12, @02:47AM (#10225852)

...It [Occam's Razor] is, however, used to discredit the belief that there is a supreme being. I (and a lot of other people) do reject the belief that there is a surpreme being.

[3] For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
-- Romans 12:3 KJV Bible at umich.edu

[6] But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
-- Hebrews 11:6 KJV Bible at umich.edu

"I don't believe it if I don't see it!"

An atheist once said in a debate that he could never believe in anything that he could not see, taste, hear, smell, or touch. His opponent asked him how he knew he had a brain, if he had never seen, tasted, heard, smelled, or touched it.

The atheist replied that even though he had never seen, tasted, heard, smelled, or touched his brain, the fact that brain experts had always found a brain in everyone they examined meant that the probability was high that he too had a brain. But he admitted that on this line of reasoning it was possible he may or may not have a brain, just as there may or may not be a God.

--Why can't atheists find God? (And how you can help them to find Him.)