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Knuth lectures on "God and Computers" Online
pq writes "Donald Knuth talks about "God and Computers" as part of the MIT AI lab's 1999 lecture series - a live webcast is available from here, and archived transcripts will also appear there.
" Looks like three are finished already, with more coming over the next few weeks. Knuth is always worth listening to.
arrrrg. I do that consistently (mispell believe). :)
:)
Also, ammount, and untill. It's those darned myelin sheaths hardening in my head. Or maybe predestination...
As for pascal's wager, it is oversimplified. Feel free to enumerate all possible events.
Tweet, tweet.
Sure, but we can define "blue" as light with a wavelength from XXX to YYY nanometers. Blue light is both repeatable (every time I turn my blue LED, durned if I don't see blue) and measurable (use your favorite color meter). It's no problem for science. We can't directly sense radio waves or X-rays, yet both are well developed technologies.
Xtianity and most other western religions view their god(s) as omnipotient, omnipresent, and other omni- words. Those are properties that aren't repeatable (by us) and may not even be measurable (by us). And in any case, such gods aren't noted for dropping by and taking personality tests or altering the laws of physics on request. So, until a god started showing up and working miracles on a regular basis, scientists aren't going to be able to do much with him/her/it/them.
Speculation: If such a thing did happen, the best, most imaginative and flexible scientists would -- guess what -- start trying to make a science of theology. After all, you can't make supernovas or major earthquakes in the lab, yet we have astrophysics and seismology anyway. See Vernor Vinge's excellent A Fire Upon the Deep for hints of what such an Applied Theology would be like. 8-)
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
"It's not the athiests, it's the damn commies..." == "It's not the Christians, it's the damn Roman Church of the Middle Ages."
Okay? Please don't miss the point.
I'm specifically responding to this meme:
"The crusades were evil, and were conducted in the name of Christianity; therefore Christianity is evil."
Which, generalized names and events, becomes:
"If something evil is conducted in the name of a group of people, than that group of people is evil."
Now, that's crazy.
But if one does believe that, Christianity is evil because of the crusades, etc., and atheism is also evil, because of what the commies did in the name of atheism.
So, atheists who argue in this manner condemn themselves as well as Christians - i.e., it's a meaningless argument.
But you still argue that commies aren't TRUE atheists? Then don't complain when people say the Catholics of that era weren't TRUE Christians.
Maybe a few...but mostly people with negative reactions seem to be bored, not offended?
Geeks hate being wrong (I know, I am one). But that's what christianity is, telling you that you're wrong, a sinner, doomed. But you guys are so narrow minded that you can't get past that to find out that it also talks about what to do about it.
That's possibly a fair characterization of some non-geeks (and probably some geeks as well--geeks are hardly a uniform bunch!). But inasmuch as geeks actually think, and inasmuch as there is a negative reaction, maybe the problem is that they don't believe that they are wrong until it's well documented that they are? Popular opinion doesn't cut it, either. If it did, they wouldn't be geeks. So it seems to me that, if you're trying to change people's minds rather than display support for a specific viewpoint, you've hit the nail squarely on the thumb.
Please propose an experiment to test the existence of God, so it can be duly added to the annals of science.
'The existence of God' is in the realm of philosophy, not science - there is a significant difference.
AC
"Would any of you gents care for some toast?"
on the issue of "there's one true god and he's not representable by human artifacts", I would agree with you that jews and muslims probably believe in that, but christians I would think don't as they believe jesus is god, and he was deffinitly represented by "human artifact". that's probably the #1 reason you would never be able to convince a religious jew or muslim to believe in jesus as god.
Crusades: Compare to the Islamic Jihads. Probably milder than the Jihads actually.
Inquisition: It's highly overrated in the popular imagination. But take a look at what Nero did to those who refused to call him God.
Burning people at stake: Why don't you take a look at what the Germanic cultures did before Christianity came along. It even grossed the Romans out. (The Romans whose preferred method was letting people die of exposure).
Genocide is really quite common in history. Consider what the atheists in Russia did to the Hebrews. I can't remember all the details, but there were some genocidal activities in East Asia too. Oh, by the way: the Spanish were not really responsible; most of the natives were killed by disease, not the Spaniards.
In other words, learn some history bubba.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Before I get any silly responses to this:
An experiment requires a hypothesis p->q
Positive test of q does not prove p, but may support it. Negative test disproves p.
So in order to scientifically test the existence of God one must first show that the existence of God implies some q. But really, in this case, our only hope for determining some q all agree on are philosophical arguments.
I don't see how physics can disprove something metaphysical in nature.
Well, in order to be recursive, he has to be recursive.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
... we can listen to somebody fumble with a microphone for several minutes from our computers! And who says the Internet is over-rated? ;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Every atheist I know, including myself, isn't some reactionary knee-jerker but someone well versed in religous ideology, doctrine, and history. Much more so than most believers and with the added bonus of being informed on more than one religion. I'm sure I come off as typical to your average xtian, not because I'm ignorant but because I've had this conversation SO MANY TIMES before. When the religious start to criticize the non-religious its their job to read up and inform themselves, the same way I'm informed with their systems of beliefs. But this is almost never the case, as books that do criticize their religion are often frowned on by their religious establishment and are emotionaly hard on those who have been deeply indoctrined in this since birth.
In a perfect world religion is private, but its nature is to spread to keep it alive. History shows us that a lack of zeal = dead religion. And who dares take a dead religion seriously? When was the last time you heard, "That's blasphemous to Zoroaster!"
Knuth is just another modernizer of the religious myths. Without guys like him, we would be able to see how archaic they truly are. Look at cultures that don't have periodic modernization of myth like the Islamic countries. What is the consensus of the validity of their beliefs from more advanced cultures? Manily, lack of civil liberties and backwards fundie nonsense. Yet, they're at the same stage your religion was at one time. Being dictated from a god, you'd think it would be smart to remain consistant. But it isn't, so we have the Knuths of the world preaching their 'modern intelligent' views. To me its crap, to you it might be enlightenment.
How the talk of god eventually works its way into a coversation about established religion I'll never know. You can easily talk about the existance or non-existance of a god without dragging religion in the equation. Yet, most people will go from 'is there a god?' to 'is the church a valid social structure' in the same breath. This is a popular way for the religious to back up their claims and win people over with highly flawed arguments. When they argument should stay within the bounds of deism. For the most part the talk about 'god' is just a soft introduction to talk about 'my specific religion.'
About that 99% mystical part, well thats fiction if I've ever seen any. You may feel that way, but I sure don't. Every lack in someone's life doesn't mean they have bad karma or a sould crying out for freedom, it could be a million different factors and probably ordinary psychology. Your statement is about as provable as 'angels watch over me as I sleep yet no one can see them but i KNOW they're there.'
Your post really reflects that an intelligent person will do their best to rationalize their emotional beliefs to their intellect. The usual course is like you said, 'private and spiritual.' Which seems very contradictory to the goal of religion in the first place - to find truth.
I agree that Knuth isn't weak, in any tradition sense, but to me he is emotionally unable to deal with the world without a belief in a mystical supernatural force. To me that is a more of a lack of emotional strength, but not one that seriously affects one's ability to be successful in society. There's a lot to be said on how being religious helps you do better in society as a memeber of an established religion and its social perks. So its kind of a word game whether you can call it weakness. At least he's in good company, the last poll I've seen goes along the lines of 1. Xtian 2. Muslim 3. Non-religious.
Way to use the moderator points. I reply to someone who insulted me, and in a civil manner, and lose a point, while they, for the original flame, don't.
Yet another moderator marks down posts they don't agree with. And they don't even do it right. What the hell does overrated mean in this context? Sheesh.
Hmmm, I just checked to see why your post had a +1 moderation and I noticed you had a 45 karma.
Hmmm. Nothing personal, because most of my karma is based on moderation too, from when I used to moderate, but this is a bit silly... You can get yourself a +1 from just moderating posts.
I think if the +20 karma to get a +1 score has to be in effect, it should be only if you have +20 karma from posting alone.
Just a gripe about the way the system works.
The christian bashings I'm referring to are not judgements based on rationality or differences of opinions, or anything like that. What I am referring to is a bigotry based on ignorance or hatred, just like any other bigotry.
Calling Don Knuth stupid for believing in God is bigotry. Disagreeing with his beliefs is not. There are many posts here calling Don Knuth stupid, but he is anything BUT stupid.
Recent slashdot examples of bigotry: assuming that the Jesux distribution must be true because it follows the preconceived notions of what christians are like; belittling those who prayed for the earthquake victims of Taiwan, saying it was a complete waste of time, but expending much more energy in the belittling than the prayers did; and when a certain christian newletter recommended Linux, indignation erupted that christians were using that operating system.
In fact, everytime christianity is mentioned on slashdot, the topic is lost amidst accusations of stupidity, being the prime cause of wars, and inane parodies.
"What really pissed me off with people like the author I'm responding to, and the trend they are a part of, is that they're trying to get people to stop thinking."
What really pissed me off about the responder is his knee-jerk bigotry in assuming that since I'm a christian I must be trying to get people to stop thinking.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Actually, depending on how far you go into one's belief in how God interacts with the world, science cannot prove anything. For example if one was a Diest, who believe that after the creation of the universe God has made no interference with it: According to physics, physics can only explain what happens after Plank's time, (something very small, like 10^-22 seconds or such). Before then, there could be a God, and there is nothing all your science can do to discredit that in any way at all.
This'll take care of your cold, rheumatiz, corns, warts, genital herpes, acne, dry-eye, demonic possession and bubonic plague with just a daily application. Buy now and get a bottle Montgomery Finch's "Vitality Tonic", free!
Blessings comes in both Childrens and Super-Potent strength!
Expect to be similarly bored if you attend a lecture by him on the subject of pipe organs, assuming that is also a subject you don't find interesting. I don't realistically expect to find Knuth to be an enchanting lecturer on topics I don't find interesting, but that's subjective. Admirers of Knuth who have an interest in religion (I suspect Larry Wall, for instance, might fit into this category) would likely be interested in these lectures, and admirers of Knuth who have an interest in linguistics (I suspect Larry Wall, for instance, might fit into this category) might be interested in other aspects of this lecture in particular. I suspect Jon Katz might not be so interested, but that's his right, as it is yours. Please, though, don't ask people (especially the likes of Knuth and Hofstadter) to shut up just because you're not interested in what they have to say today. Some of the rest of us are trying to listen.
Note: I hope I'm not assuming too much by suggesting Larry Wall might be an admirer of Knuth.
But that's what christianity is, telling you that you're wrong, a sinner, doomed.
.. because that's it. Now if you want to teach your children that they're basically little pieces of shit that aren't worth stepping over, then that's fine. But not me.
.. not by a long shot.
.. honest discourse is honest discourse.)
And that is why it is a flawed and deeply dangerous worldview. If you are a Christian, you're taught that you are scum, a lowly, worthless piece of trash that is (as you said) "doomed." But the Good News is that maybe -- just maybe -- if you are loud enough and if you're part of God's little cosmic cheerleading squad here on Earth, you'll luck out! You won't undergo an unimaginable butchering, and you won't be thrown into a slaughterhouse for an eternity of excruciating pain. Whatta deal!
Thanks, but I'll pass. I'd rather live my life to the fullest and make the most of my days while I'm here
Thanks, but I'll pass! If for some reason you christians turn out to be right, I'd rather not spend eternity with such a vindictive being anyway. But I don't, by any stretch of the imagination, believe that you're right
(Look, I know that some of this seems pretty harsh, and I know that I was a bit overdramatic in my portrayal of Christian belief. I just want you to understand that while I don't fault you for believing what you do, I find it absolutely absurd. I know that sounds snotty, but hey
Sure. And I can accept that.
I would be a little more critical when reading a paper of yours, especially if it had something to do with a 'hot question', like the big bang, or evolution, but otherwise I don't really care.
It's not like I have no respect for anyone who is religious, it's that I don't respect particular opinion.
I can understand 'feeling' something is right. Often hunches are correct, they're good to listen to. And it's not like you can really go wrong, unless you join a church expecting tithes, or strange vows. If you keep it to yourself unless asked, it's no weirder than a nose ring or something... Odd, but just a quirk.
right....so if enough people are anti-"flat earth", a flat earth must exist.
Just because an anti-something belief exists, doesn't mean that the "something" has to exist.
Mostly, yes. The organized part of it, and the pushing of that, are quite nasty in general.
Religious beliefs in general make me question someone's judgement. I don't discount everything they think or say, but it does count into that first impression I get of them.
And it's right that it should. In the online world all we have to go by is what we say and do. We aren't judged by race, gender, age, looks, or anything else irrelevant, only our actions.
It's about Knuth expressing his Christian faith from a computer scientists point of view. He took every 3:16 verse in the bible and researched what various theologians had to say about and then put it in a book. He explains how the process relates to computer science and also touches on other theological and philosophical subjects. I can't wait until 5 and 6 when free will is discussed along with AI. Being a Computer science major (3rd year) and also an amateur theologian, I find this whole thing very interesting.
It's a "personal experience", right?
The problem with religion is that these experiences aren't reproducible - you gotta take on faith that some dude in the mountain saw visions. Did it occur to you that magic mushrooms grew back then? But no...that would be heresy...we must accept the "word" on faith.
The problem with science is that you have to reproduce it, or be ridiculed like the cold fusion guys.
Do you see the contrast?
Just a short note to all of those who have posted replies to this story, and the John Katz piece: Thank you. Except for the inevitable few trolls, all have been thought provoking.
As a person who is evaluating their faith, it is very important to me that I get the opinions of the community of which I consider myself a member. I believe myself to be Christian too. And a free thinker. And a student of science. And vehemently oppose those who would control the minds of others for their personal gain.
The atheists in the community will ask: OK, dude, if you're a free thinker, and into science, and opposed to mind control, how can you be a Christian? It's all about mind control, isn't it? Aren't your morals and beliefs spoon fed to you? In a word, no. Example: As a student of science, I cannot and will not refute the knowledge that we as a species have won, or simply pass it over because it may conflict with my ethos. There are a few places where it seems to me that science and the Bible align - I don't want waste bandwidth with a long winded proof that isn't really there, because it's based on what I believe to be true. I know you're all saying "Chicken!!!", but I've found something that works for me. My belief, my truth. Of course your mileage will vary - you're not me, are you?
Some of the Christians here will think: You can't do that, zlotnik. You must comply with the Bible in all points or you aren't a true Christian. Again, not really. Don't forget people, faith is a human thing, not a computer thing. Conflicting points do not a core dump make in my mind. I can rationalize, I can see where science does not fly in the face of Christianity - it was created by God in the first place, wasn't it? Understanding science brings us closer to God, not farther. Any good coder will tell you that you have to test a program under all conditions in order to show that it will not break under stress. Test your faith, open your mind. But bury your head in the sand if you must - I'll be busy watching the wonders of Gods universe unfold before our eyes.
BTW, to the more, um, judgmental Christians out there, as far as I understand, being a Christian basically means that you love your enemies as well as your brother, and pass judgement on none but yourself. Jesus loves sinners - you should too.
I begrudge no one their beliefs, and hope no one begrudges me mine. I have accepted my faith with an open and clear mind, and I usually keep all of this to myself. The only reason I'm spouting off like this is because the forum was there, I thought I had some valid points, and I really did want to thank all for the fantastic input. I'll shut my yap now.
Go in Peace. God bless all.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
A-theism = "Without Theism"
You are blubbering over semantics. Do you think that before people came up with the term "day-job" nobody worked in the daytime?
Anti-theism (I like the sound of that!) on the other would probably imply defiance toward theism.
So he oughtta know what he's taking about.
Better tell that to the String Theory scientists
Better also tell scientists who assume the existence of electrons, the mantle of the earth, the proton, the photon, the boson, the positron, the ozone layer, e=mc^2, etc., etc.
All these things are not observable or provable to the naked eye, but they are explained by science nonetheless.
Occasionally we hear the bible thumpers claim that evolution is a theory simply because it's not observable directly. Yet, these folks do undertake PET scans (which use positrons, just as flimsy a theory as evolution).
It's sad that an illiterate crowd that relies on blind belief and has a weak grasp on what science is, struggles to come up with good analogies and consistent "proofs". It's even sadder that they ensure their kids remain illiterate too.
w/m.
PS - your example is particularly bad because string theory is not considered proven yet. It's still in the realm of speculation at this point.
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --
Yes, that does work. When people see how much you care about God then they become interested. It does help to try to focus on the positive things about God instead of the negative. People hate to be brought down, but they do like to hear the good things that will happen.
Just a thought.
I always wondered whether someone's theism (or
atheism) would affect coding style.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I don't think two conflicting beliefs can be true, I think that your beliefs are just as wrong as you believe those of others to be.
Every religion thinks that all the others are wrong, and to those of us outside religion, they are all equally wrong. I mean, amongst all possible beliefs, what are the odds of yours happening to be true? I'd rather play the lottery, thanks.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Sir, you have one helluva nerve to label my hyperbole as "poor quality." I consider it to be quite zany, and even uproarious. Don't you get it? He's converting all of his TeX documents to groff because he found out Knuth was a Christian. Ha! Ha! Ha! Isn't that even mildly amusing? Don't you think it does a pretty good job of poking fun of how most non-Christians overreact to Christians? He threw away TAOCP too! Ha ha ha! OHHOHOHOHOHOHOHOH
That lecture kinda brings new meaning to the phrase "Deus Ex Machina"
One last thing one of the ministers of state is even blind and takes his guide (seeing eye) dog in with him.
That's nothing. In the US, all of our politicians are blind.
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --
fact: it's impossible for karma to go above ten from meta-moderating or being meta-moderated. Once your karma reaches ten, you can only get higher by actually having posts moderated up. So that means someone has to have AT LEAST +10 karma from posts being moderated up to get the bonus, assuming they already got the first ten karma from meta-moderation.
proof: 1. Rob said so. 2. Try it yourself! I did.
Therefore, I challenge you: You say that every religion has something where they are provably wrong. Name one thing that is wrong about Christianity. This is my challenge to you.
Ok, if you think that hell is torture by God you are mistaken. It is complete seperation from God. It is what life would be like without any of God's gifts. Incidentally, you can get out of it for free by accepting Jesus as the Lord of your life.
Didn't any of these guys watch 'The Matrix'? Last thing I need is my damn toaster telling me my shirt doesn't match my shoes!
"That religious experience is unintelligible
proves nothing whatsoever. *All* experience is
unintelligible; try explaining 'blue' to a blind man."
"Sure, but we can define "blue" as light with a wavelength from XXX to YYY nanometers. Blue light is both repeatable (every time I turn my blue LED, durned if I don't see blue) and measurable (use your favorite color meter). It's no problem for science."
The problem with your assertion is that is it in some sense backwards. Blue light was first identified by its color--then its wavelength was found. The only reason one can say that light is blue because its wavelength is so many nanometers is because someone measured the range of wavelengths associated with light that was already perceived as blue beforehand. That puts you back where you started. How did one perceive that the light was blue in the first place?
Knuth is such a great guy. i'm listening to lecture #1 right now. :) JonKatz (and other assorted trolls) ought to listen to this - not all Christians are crazy, stupid, or preachy. SOme actually do have a clue. :)
:)
I've read Knuth's "3:16 - Scripture Verses Illuminated" as well, it's a beautiful book. Good insight into the verses presented as well. (It would take a computer scientist to invent a scheme such as this
Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Your generosity and openness of mind moves me. It really does. Please continue praying for the poor benighted souls who Are Wrong.
Or, alternatively, FOAD. If there is something more annoying than a fire-and-brimstone Christian is a sweet-talking one. Bleh.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Lordy! :) Where to take that subject? We are gods, the machines our creations? The machine is god (or will be) and we are subject? God is a machine?
illegitimii non ingravare
"Christian bashing is the last refuge of the bigot in this era of political correctness." I spent a long time scouring my personal views for bigotry -- homophobia, race distaste (not ever quite open hatred) and the like. Some of it came from my parents. Some of it I picked up from the people surrounding me. But being a skeptic and being required, by my own beliefs, to maintain an open mind, eventually forced me to reevaluate what I believed.
However, even at this stage in my life, years of being "bashed" by Christians still leaves me sore. I used to be pleasantly tolerant of religious views, and styled myself agnostic. At 20, I realized it was time to shit or get off the pot, and I chose the label "atheist." It's one I wear with some pride, like a particularly deep scar. It means I've weathered the well-meaning (sometimes not-so-well-meaning) criticism that there's something wrong, unholy, unamerican, or crazy about my refusal to believe in what cannot be demonstrated to me.
Religion is not the source of all the violence and hatred that's attributed to it, but the uncritical frame of mind it encourages IS. So now when I see someone claim that God did it for them, or God is watching over them, or in fact that God is this that or the other, my bullshit filter kicks in and I speak up. Christians view this as "bashing," or "persecution." Let me tell you, if you're a white male Christian in America you haven't got the faintest idea of what persecution is. That's just what open criticism feels like . . . as skeptics and science continue to grow in our society Christians should accustom themselves to more of it.
Show me a reason for attributing anything to an invisible God, and I will change my view. Atheism is basing your view on what IS rather than what you WISH. But if I walk up to a group of Christians and start preaching atheism to them, it would no doubt be viewed as an assault. If you can't adequately defend the corpus of your belief against open skepticism you can try coming up with better arguments, or you're free to change what you believe. It's your choice, after all. Bigotry doesn't factor into it. Prejudice, maybe, but I'm only judging you on what you've chosen to call yourself, which in my mind simply translates as "uncritical thinker." Thirty years of allowing this to be shoved in my face is enough. The cuffs are off. When I encounter piss-poor reasoning, I'm going to criticise it as harshly I've been criticised my whole life.
Lordy! :)
Where to take that subject? We are gods, the machines our creations? The machine is god (or will be) and we are subject? God is a machine?
illegitimii non ingravare
Well if they were milder than the crusades then no problem. (??!) I'd like to see your "mildness scale" for wars of religious conquest. What the what is that?
Inquisition highly overrated eh? Spanish not at fault either? Very very interesting.
Let's see centuries of Christian persecution can be ovelooked because other groups did "bad things" too?
I don't think anyone *reasonable* has ever claimed that Christians are the only source of nastiness in world history but just because there have been other oppressors too doesn't magically relieve Christianity of its heavy burden. I don't think there are any *reasonable* Christian thinkers who claim otherwise.
Your post smacks of gross bias and a smidgen of unobjectivity. Sorry to say.
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
Will someone who has listened to the "webcasts" tell us what this is all about?
sorry.. had to be done :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Man then proves that white is black and black is white and gets run over at the next zebra crossing.
- I said it was pointless
Below is another possible interpretation for any who care to read it and are annoyed by the "God will torture you all!!! MWUHAHAHA!!" concept, which in my opinion simply defies logic. If you don't care, then my apologies in advance for wasting bandwith.
:-)
"...And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them:
All mankind was brought back to life to live on earth again. After all, that is what earth was created for to begin with -- to be a home for mankind. Why create earth just to eventually send everyone somewhere else?
and they were judged every man according to their works.
At this point, God was revealed to all, after having stepped aside for millenia so that we could try governing ourselves. After all our faults and errors resulted in the problems we [have in our present day], "love your neighbor" didn't seem like such a bad idea. The case for God's rules having been made by example, by comparison to the results of [our present day, when such rules are not followed by everyone], most people now saw the benefit of treating others with kindess and love, and strived to perfect their own characters and do good to others -- not because they were commanded to, or out of fear, but because they now understood that everyone treating everyone else with love was a necessary condition for the eternal happiness of all mankind. However, a few still preferred to be selfish. They perhaps hid that selfishness and tried to "go along with the program", but deep down they made no effort to correct the condition of their own hearts. And after a long time, mankind was then judged on their efforts to perfect their characters and to eliminate hatred from their hearts. Most were judged to have learned the value of goodness and love. A few were judged as having made no effort to do anything but wish for the old days when they could exercise hatred over others.
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire"(Revelation 20:10-15).
And at that point, the second death arrived, and all those who had refused to cast aside their selfishness were destroyed -- not tortured, but destroyed -- since if they had not made any efforts over the long time they were given, they were surely not going to do so in the future, and because a life lived in such selfishness would eternally affect the happiness of everyone else. At that point, death and the grave (sheol, hell) were also destroyed and the rest of perfected mankind lived forever on earth.
-----------------------------
Sorry, I respect anyone who chooses not to believe, and I don't mean to evangelize or annoy people. I generally stay out of these kinds of discussions for just that reason. All I wanted to do with this post was offer the suggestion that maybe "God", if He does exist, truly is good, and his supposed flaws are really the flaws of interpretation by selfish people ready and eager to condemn others to eternal torture of some kind while they, the supposed do-gooders, get to look down from "above" and laugh. In my opinion, the concepts of eternal torture and an unfair God are flawed, and I think they were given the skewering they deserve by the last page of the Onion's "Our Dumb Century".
Sincerely, a humbly anonymous coward.
For the purpose of argument, suppose that there is a God, and that he is the only God, and that he made all the rules. The only way to get to heaven is to obey all these rules. *
If everyone came up with a system of beliefs on their own, what is the probability that any would come up with the correct set, and therefore know the correct way to live in order to get to heaven? If this God loves the people, and wants them to get to heaven, wouldn't it make sense for him to find/invent ways to get more people to believe in him? Religion naturally has a tendancy to spread from one person to the next and to organize itself so that its message can be more effeciently spread. eg: I am quite sure I know the one Truth, and so naturally I am going to tell everyone I know (especially the ones I care about) that truth so that they can get to heaven. An organized religion is just one that a large group of people believe in.
However, I do believe that things can be carried to far. One person can gain too much power within the group, and begin to use that power for his own good, and not for the spreading of the religion to other people. ** A major example of this happened in the middle ages. The Catholics of the day were really into selling petitions (I'm not sure that is what they called them, though) that would get your loved ones out of pergatory. You paid some money to the priest, and he would give you a piece of paper that said the person you were petitioning for was forgiven of a specific sin, and could leave pergatory. This is not a concept that is in the Bible anywhere, but never the less, the religious leaders of the time duped nearly everyone into believing it. Only those who could read latin could read the Bible (because they said it was a sin to read the Bible in other languages) to find out that the Bible said nothing of these petitions. This is one of the points the Martin Luther's 99 thesis brought up.
Organized religion is not bad, but it can be corrupted just like any other organization. Yes, there are people who just blindly follow the religion that they were taught, and it's really sad. If they profess to be Christians, then I feel sorry for them because they don't know what they are missing, and they won't really benefit from it. The Bible says that they are as good as dead, essentially. (notice that there is a distinction between someone who is not a Christian and says that they are, and someone who is a Christian but doesn't say they are. I feel sorry for both, but the latter will go to heaven, the former will not.)
*: note that this is not actually what the Bible teaches! The Bible teaches that there is one God who created every thing, and that you get to heaven by _faith_, not just by following all the rules.
**: (ok, yea, in one sense religion is like a virus in that they both try to spread themselves, however religion can only spread if the person it is spreading to accepts it: religious beliefs can not really be forced on someone as a virus can, so it isn't really a virus.)
But you're right. It was a typo. Anyway, I hadn't intended to turn it into a programming problem, merely to put things into perspective.
After all, determining deity-space is easier said then done. E.g. what about buddhism and reincarnation in general? Three rebirths and you're out (into the pool of fire)?
What about pagean beliefs? E.g. all the bible, release 1.0, has is an arch-angel that quit. Whereas wodanistic/odinistic beliefs do have a hel (single l), but that wasn't such a bad place at all. Sure, no valkieries and eternal fighting followed with great banquets and free mead for all, but otherwise much like home.
Now, if there has indeed been mutual influence of holy writ, and the bible has the right of it then that can only lead to the conclusion that the pagean beliefs were true as well. For if they were not, thus imaginary, then surely they could not have had any influence on the one true text.
Since it is hardly likely that merely parts of them were right and thus existed/exist, all must of necessity have been right. Guess what that does to Pascal's little wager?
Nope, no piddly questions for me. *grin*
I would go with your answer of personal choice and freedom if it weren't for a few things... God has, according to the stories, taken it upon Himself to have a direct hand in the actions of mankind in the past, and that's what I can't reconcile. For example, Moses' stone tablets, and indeed that entire quest in which God not only assisted Moses in leading his followers out of that land, but in which, on several occasions, God gave Moses the power to perform supernatural acts in the process (the parting of the Red Sea, et al). The Great Flood. Soddom and Gamorrha (sp?).
That's what I can't fit into it.. if the answer for God's _physical_ departure from the lives of people today (and in the last thousand years or so) is that God wants to give us complete free will to do as we will choose, then why did He at one time have a direct hand in the actions of His Children?
You missed the point (or the important point, anyway). He stated, correctly, the religious experience is proof to the person who experiences it. Whether it can be proof to others is not at issue: it can't be, at least not directly.
Oh how I wish the faithful would leave it at this. Unfortunately many religions see fit to condemn those who do not share their beliefs and experiences. They seek to either convert people to their beliefs or impose their beliefs on others in the form of laws based on their morality or their beliefs in what their god tells them should be done. Perhaps if more religious people would acknowledge that not everyone shares their beliefs and experiences, we'd have a lot less war, violence, hate, etc., in this world. Maybe not. But at those things would be for a different reason, and probably one that's a bit easier to address than religious beliefs that are held on the basis of a personal experience that cannot be verified or duplicated by anyone else.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
OK, I can't comment broadly about creation stories in any religion except my own, so I'll stick to that.
Firstly, I think that you're mischaracterizing the Genesis debate within Christianity (unsurprising, the "Genesis as scientific proof" side gets most of the press time). But (as far as my limited knowledge goes), writers in the Patristic period (early few centuries of Christianity) understood quite well that (1) our knowlegdge of the physical world is provisional at best, and (2) texts such as Genesis have a moral purpose, are were not meant as treatises on "natural philosophy." A quote from that period is that "the Scriptures are meant to tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go." Since this was more than a thousand years before Darwin, I don't think this counts as "backtracking."
My point is, if you want to engage seriously whether and how science does or doesn't impinge on the truth claims of a religion, you have to understand what those truth claims are and how they are held within that religion.
Sure, but we can define "blue" as light with a wavelength from XXX to YYY nanometers.
True, with the caveat (which I needed as well for my own post) that we don't see light at all; at best, blue is a pattern of activation in the brain, often, but not always, triggered by light of x wavelength striking the retina.
More problematic is experience itself, which was the subject of post. You *can't* explain experience in terms of anything else; it's atomic and cannot be reduced. You can explain the physical (re)actions that accompany experience, but that tells you nothing about the experience itself. Saying that blue light is x nanometers tells me a lot about light and gives me a working definition of 'blue', but tells me nothing about the experience of blueness. This is the dreaded qualia problem that philosophy has thoughtfully dropped on our heads just as we were getting a handle on neurology.
The problem is that at this point we have a lot of people who've had religious experiences, but no physical correlate to those experiences, and no objective evidence that God exists. Objectively speaking, we can't say God exists; subjectively, those who have had such experiences have all the evidence they need. It's very possible that this will all be explained in the coming decades (I'm not foolish enough to say years), but it is also possible that it will not. Should that happen, we would be faced with the possibility that God exists, but is only accessable through direct experience and beyond the reach of science as traditionally formulated.
This is a sensible statement if and only if God doesn't exist. If on the other hand, God exists, then the people who believe in Him, actually demonstrate better judgement than those who, wrongly, claimed he didn't exist.
Now, of course, you can't prove that God exists. You also can't prove that He doesn't exist. If you accept the latter statement, then people who believe that God doesn't exist, hold this belief on faith - at least in part. If you claim that such a belief is not held on any faith at all, then kindly produce your proof of His non-existence.
There are only 3 positions that you can have w.r.t. belief in God. You either believe He exists, believe that He doesn't exist, or you don't know. I'm guessing, from your statement, that you believe that God doesn't exist. Certainly you wouldn't make that statement if you believed in God. If you didn't know, then you'd have to hold out the possibility of belief in God being accurate, and thus the possibilty that the people who believe in God being worthy of respect. Thus I'm concluding that you believe that God doesn't exist.
If that's true, then you're in a somewhat difficult position. You are neccessarily saying that faith is insufficient for holding a belief. You thus put yourself in the position of believing that faith is not enough, and yet claim that God doesn't exist - a statement made without proof. This means that by your own standards, you must prove your belief that God doesn't exist, or cease to hold it because holding it on faith is not sufficient.
Personally, I can respect people who believe in God. I understand people who say they don't know. But I have a very difficult time with people who claim that God definately does not exist. That is such a difficult proposition to logically justify. And if that person can't see the difficulty... well that calls into question that person's judgement.
Cheers.
- Mark
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
The poster is also suggesting that we all take a person's decisions/judgements/achievements on a completely independant field with a bit more salt if that person is religious. Therfore he is implying that religion corrupts people more-so than other activities. This would be like saying well, if a person wears jeans to work he must be an idiot. Or anyone sexually promiscous must not have anythign important tos ay. Connect to unrelated topics is idiotic. That is what the poster (who I replied to) is suggesting. "The guy is making a judgement on something that is completely certain, that being someone's belief in religion" When I said certian, I meant it is uncertain wheter god does or does not exist, perhaps you should reread my comment. The original poster just sugar-coated the basic idea that all religous people are idiots. What I'm saying is that all religous people aren't idiots. I know quite a few religious people. He is asserting they are all idiots, that appears to be his opinion. Mine is, they aren't, I expressed that in my comment, perhaps you should be the one rereading comments. To counter his opinion, I provided examples of people who contributed something most of us consider useful. Thus mathematically, his assertion -- theorem -- doesn't hold true because their are cases that break the rule. Note: I'm not saying being atheist is wrong in any way shape or form. I'm just saying being religious is not a sign of idiocy as the original poster suggests it is.
I understand that explanation, too; but, my point was that a being of truly superior morality (if that moral system resembled in any way the one that is in place among the people, and if it resembled the commandments given to Moses) would be compelled to intercede in some way. To simply observe acts of violence and suffering, especially those acts committed in His name, is...well, morally questionable.
Put another way, how would God respond to a mother's question, "Why did you let me die? Why did you let those people, your Christians, murder me in your name? Couldn't you have prevented the stake from burning? Couldn't you have at least changed their minds?"
That the people committing those acts were wrong I don't disagree with. What I am curious about is how a morally perfect deity fits into this? According to the stories in the Bible, and the actions observed today, God is neither passive nor active in the affairs of humans; He's been both, and I can't find an appropriate pattern to those times when He has been one or the other.
Keep in mind, I'm not attacking Christianity.. I would be truly delighted if someone could provide an answer or explanation that I understood.
Actually, many very serious philosophers on both sides have reached the conclusion that objective truth *requires* the existence of God - that is, that nothing can be certain without God.
This has led those that believe in God to recognize that there can be no truth apart from that which He reveals to us, and at the same time, has led many of the modern postmodern philosophers to the nihilistic conclusion that nothing matters or can matter because nothing can be objectively true in a world where one begins with the premise that God cannot exist.
Ultimately, you have two choices: A world with God, in which things are knowable and objective truth exists, or a world without God, where nothing is knowable and nothing can have any meaning whatsoever.
The bleak nihilism that is the hallmark of postmodern thought is not simply a trendy blackness - it's the inevitable conclusion of a logical train of thought that begins with denying the existence of God - and even the most atheistic of philosophers freely admit this.
Finally, some are trying to draw a distinction between theology and science. Theology *is* a science - in fact, until this century, everyone would have been exposed to "the queen of the sciences" as theology was known then. (You can learn a lot by reading old books! Do so, and you'll discover how rare real critical thinking has become in our society, how few of us are prepared to do any at all, and how wrong much of what you may have been taught truly is...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
HeeHee! Watch me utilize the bible to my own benefit!
And for you New Testament sticklers: See how easy it is. You can do it too! Its fun!I'm afraid I can't find any that denounces slavery, oh well [shrug].
Two points, one of which is a direct grappling with your argument, and another which sidesteps it.
Grappling:
You could indeed tell me that God personally appeared to you and told you that you are Christ reborn. However, in accordance with what I described above, I'd expect you to outline for me some way I could have a personal experience which would verify the truth of what you were saying. That the Bible and some other religious texts do this is part of the point I was trying to express.
Of course, you could give me some crack and/or a tape of subliminal messages and stick me in a sensory deprivation tank and who knows what I might personally experience and end up beleiving. I wouldn't find such a proposition reasonable, but that's going to vary from person to person -- and does. Which is, of course, one reason why matters of faith don't lack for variation.
Sidestepping:
The ideas I posted aren't really meant to provide a watertight argument (I'm not sure that watertight arguments truly exist, except perhaps where you can narrow your assumptions, a la axiomatic mathematics. Other than that, there may only be good models). They're really meant to suggest a principle and/or outline a path one can choose to pursue in search of quality of existence. Viewed as objective arguments (intellectual objects) to be held at an arms length, they'll hold little impact on anyone. Which may be what some people want. But when they're lived in a way that seems "good" and/or "right" to the person in question, that's when they're really tested.
Tweet, tweet.
Well, I don't actually think that miracles have ceased since the times you mention, but they certainly aren't as public and spectacular as the ones Moses worked ...
There are two very good little volumes by C. S. Lewis on just this subject -- Miracles and The Problem of Pain. He works through a number of arguments on just this topic. If you don't want to fund my web habit via Amazon, I'm sure a paper library near you should be able to find them. :^)
And that's all I'm going to say on Slashdot about this. This has been a good discussion; thanks.
in OH (Columbus, Akron,etc area): Roadrunner Cable Modem, $40/month .....
I suppose I have a more cussed view of things. I believe in God, because I believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead. I won't get into the details of why I find that to be the case, but I'll point you to a couple books which get into fair detail: Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" and Clark Pinnock's "Reason Enough." I treat faith as going beyond the evidence, but not per se against it. If the Resurrection happened, then whether I believe it happened or whether you believe it happened doesn't make it any less a part of the fabric of reality. "Everyone needs to determine for themselves what they believe in," may be true, but only if one acknowledges that what one determines for oneself is not arbitrary, but may very well be wrong.
I will listen to your complaint as soon as you show me how two conflicting beliefs can both be true. You don't want tolerance, you want me to conceed that any belief is equally true. That is superficially and obviously false. The closest you can come is that all beliefs are false, but I don't buy that.
DO I refuse you your right to believe them? No. God gave you the right to believe them, who am I to take it away? But I will never, ever agree to a lie to assuage your notions of politeness. You, sir, are the one who is trying to make me give up my faith.
-- Slashdot sucks.
"3). Has there been a female president?
Well, obviously not, but I don't think you can blame the Christians on this one."
I wasn't mentioning gays, buddhists, and women in order to point out that Christians repress them (although that too is questionable)... but instead to make comparisons to truly persecuted groups.
~m
Thank you
--
PanDuh!
Is there anyway to save the stream to a wave file? I have tried vsound under Linux but it doesn't seem to work. Does anyone do this?
A + theism = lack of belief in god.
A + moral = lack of morals
A + symmetrical = lack of symmetry
You are the one telling me that there is a god. I being from the jungles of Borneo have no concept of God and/or Christianity ( I was taught to worship a tree), and thus do not deny God anymore than I deny the existence of FrooFroo the Invisible Pink Unicorn, nor Beebo the Magical Talking TreeFrog, nor Eswina the Dancing Hippo of Power (who lives in my backyard), nor Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo.. shall I go on?
I agree that some people feel the need to preach at times and in places that are entirely inappropriate. Likewise, I agree that there seem to be scientists and Christians alike who seem unable to reconcile the Bible with science. (I'm not sure all the scientists are atheists, though.)
However, I would like disagree with some of your implications. One is that a belief in Christianity is something can should (or even can) be an entirely private affair. It is not appropriate to talk explicitly about one's faith everywhere all the time. Christian faith entails a relationship with God that is very private. But what you believe in has consequences in your actions, whether that is Christianity, or sportsmanship, fairness, compassion, justice, etc. Your belief or disbeleif in Christianity, whether stated or not, will affect your decisions about politics, education, etc. and there is nothing wrong with that.
As to whether it's real or not is imporant, I believe that what is true about the world is important and has consequences. If, for example, there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God who sacrificed his Son so that people who weren't worthy could be redeemed, I think that is an important thing. I can well understand and respect that many people don't believe that that is in fact the case, but it seems to me that it's an important question.
Nah. Nerf(tm) objects maybe, nothing more. No flamethrowers required. :^)
First thing, I was referring to the posts that were submitted during a discussion on Christianity..of course the total number of Slashdot posts on all subjects do not show anti-christian slant, and I think my post was quite clear in saying that. I am referring to the point that when christianity is brought up in this forum, *most* posts seem to be against it. And my point is that it is the feeling of more than just a *few trolls*.
Second..what's your point with bullet point 2 on your list? Just because someone is a troll doesn't mean they are any less/more anti-christian. It still is an anti-christian post.
Third, saying Slashdot has a anti-christian slant does not imply I think the moderation system has anything to do with it. As most people who profess to be interested in free thought and discussion browse with a -1 threshold it would be irrelavent even if there was such a bias.
Please don't fill me with the Kumbaya Slashdot tripe that seems to say that people here are any more/less openminded about things. That's just crap. There is alot of bias in this forum and a lot of stereotyping, just like the rest of the world. If you have a problem with that statement, that's your issue, not mine.
1.) The Universe began, and God started it.
*slice*, *cut*, *chop*, *wittle*...
2.) The Universe began.
See how much more simple and uncomplicated it is now?
"Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable."
... neither can anything else
I believe (or hope) he meant 'non-observable' in the objective sense: colors are 'non-observable' because objectively there are only wavelengths of light or neural activation patterns. Nevertheless, color exists. If God's existence is purely subjective (e.g., 'God' is a feeling instead of being) then he is non-observable in this sense. Of course, he's not really much of a God then, but it's never bothered psychologists, so who am I to complain....
God is irrelevant because it is unknowable. Even if you claim to "know god", your experience is unintelligible to me (and everyone else).
(1) You can't argue that God is unknowable without knowing that he is unknowable. See the problem? Logical silliness aside, if those who 'know god' actually know anything (a big 'if', but one that is rather difficult to disprove) then god isn't unknowable. Either way your statement is incorrect.
(2) That religious experience is unintelligible proves nothing whatsoever. *All* experience is unintelligible; try explaining 'blue' to a blind man. While this makes it an increadible pain in the ass to study, you can't just dismiss it, as the behaviorists learned a few decades ago.
a ridiculously long troll thread, now made longer by pointing it out. DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!!
+&x
2) Abraham Lincoln,
I will give you that one... I had forgotten all about good ol' Ave.
3)Non-US "Christian" nations have had female leaders.
Well, I guess I didn't specifically mention that I was primarily refering to the US. There are many nations in the world where Christianity isn't quite the bane of humanity's existence and where Christians ARE really persecuted and where they don't care if you are queer, one-eyed, obese, a worshiper or satan, or are female. The US, however, is not one of those places.
~m
Basically every group has some history of it, so don't attribute innocence of your group (or apply a martyr attitude) by ignoring past crimes against personal beliefs.
I didn't. In fact, my point was the same as yours: every group is unfairly persecuted at one time or another, some more than others.
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could man!" -Larry and Bob in VeggieTales
Good points.
... God, and so on.
/. has been. "If you believe in something unlikely, with no proof, then it displays a certain lack of judgement."
My answer to this is that it takes a certain level of proof for us to believe in something. If we would believe anything because it's possible, we'd be wandering around thinking we're brains in jars hooked up to some interesting VR equipment, etc.
I'm familiar with the arguments, like that you can't prove something doesn't exist just by looking in 99.99% of the places it could be...
But, this means that there's as much chance that Elvis WAS taken by Aliens, as that there is a Xian God, as that there is a
There isn't any proof for these. And these are all things that seem fairly unlikely. It would be a safe bet to say that in a large forest, a tree probably fell over in the last week, because that's the nature of dead trees and forest contain trees. That's something you can, without direct evidence for this time, form an opinion about based on other evidence.
To apply this standard to the existence of the Xian god, it is very unlikely that a god exists. It's not like there was ever a time that gods roamed the Earth performing miracles for humans to document properly. So this isn't just the extension of a known trait, like some trees fall, therefor another tree could fall. This is something completely without precedent or support.
The only 'evidence' of a god are the words of people who have a vested interest in believing, and want to validate their beliefs. The bible contains very few instances of actual manifestations of god, and these aren't written by the people who saw them. And if they were, they still weren't witnessed by independent third parties who collaborated their testimony.
That falls far short of establishing enough (any) proof for me to believe in something that contradicts my experiences.
There is some ammount of 'faith' involved in disbelieving something. But I count myself more as an agnostic/athiest than a complete disbeliever. I just thing it's silly to believe without proof, and that's what my argument on
If I asked you if you thought that bananas were intelligent, and the secret rules of earth, would you say that they might be, and you could form no opinion, or would you say that it was very unlikely? Ditto on the god thing. We can't know for sure, because nobody has defined what a god is. If we found 'the Q', would they count? And we also can't prove something doesn't exist just by not finding (Maybe it's shy.) All we can do it point out flaws in the arguments and 'proof' that it does exist and state that it's fairly unlikely.
I think the burden of proof is on the side of those trying to get you to believe in their omnipotent diety that created and controls the world, yet deliberately created evidence that contradicts the proof of it's existence, yet allows people to carry out holy wars in its name, and have contradictory religions all based on supposedly accurate logs of its actions, but at the same time requires their prayers, etc.
Then there's the whole problem of all the religions. If one religion is right, then the rest are wrong. So even if there was a god, it could be one of twenty or so different gods or pantheons, which are mutually exclusive (Our god is omnipotent, and he exists, therefore yours doesn't...) So, even if there is a god, it's a losing bet that it's the Xian god.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that ALL evidence points to there not being a god, and NO evidence points to there being a god.
Irrelevant. You don't get a lock on truth by making false statements and then telling people to not bother about them. Genesis is not making no claims at all--and it easily could have. So as I said, there's an observed absence of a lock on truth here. (Not that this rules out "most truth" or somesuch.)
Do we have evidence that the answers to any of these questions matter? If not, one can comfortably be a theoretical agnostic (you know you can't know in theory) while being a practical theist or atheist (the majority of the evidence that actually matters points in such-or-so direction).
I can't prove that a God exists, and neither can I prove that it doesn't (Ichoran, a greater abundance of arguments does not a proof make). So, I decide that I don't know, and maybe I'll solve the problem, and maybe not.
More arguments doesn't make for a proof; it does usually make for more evidence (though the evidence isn't necessarily good). Can you prove that you can't prove whether or not God exists with no more than a reasonable amount of effort? If not, the stance of not being able to know is a very weak one--yet most agnostics simply assume it. I think there's a good case to be made, but it still has to be made. (Which you more or less have.)
**: (ok, yea, in one sense religion is like a virus in that they both try to spread themselves, however religion can only spread if the person it is spreading to accepts it: religious beliefs can not really be forced on someone as a virus can, so it isn't really a virus.)
Just a quick thing: What would you call teaching religion to children? For it not to be forced parents would have to teach the kids critical thinking skills and present their beliefs after they are capable of critical thinking. And how many parents do this? 1% ?
And this is one of the huge problems, people are brought up to believe in whatever their parents believe in. And it's a locked in cycle, they are taught not to question religion, thus ensuring the next generation believes in the same. And then, all these people without critical thinking skills get attracted to the easiest answers, thus the rise of fundamentalism. And I hope we can agree this is a bad thing.
Some of this is rough and maybe offensive to you, but I'm tired and hope you interpret it appropriately.
For example, Christianity tries to claim that God is good, but unfortunately He created me without the inclination to believe in Him, for which I am set to languish in Hell for eternity. Thanks a bunch. How good is free will when you're basically faced with the choice of a.) Go with God's will or b.) suffer for it?
Heh, you've hit upon one of my other hangups with Christianity; people use the terms "Free Will" to explain a lot of things in the religion and the stories of the religion, but is it really free will if you must bend to God's will, or suffer in Hell otherwise? That seems to me more an illusion of free will than the real thing; true free will would mean that a person was free to investigate the religions of the world without punishment afterward.
I don't know. Christianity, in its entirety, isn't for me. But it does seem to do for many people whatever it is that they need it to do, and I'm fine with that.
Actually, I almost hope that I'm proved wrong when I die; I hope that I'll get a moment to ask God a few questions before He sends me to Hell for being a blasphemer and heathen. *grin*
Scientific evidence. The order of appearance of organisms in Genesis is wrong, for instance. Actually, I'm overstating the case: we can only deduce that the order of appearance in Genesis is highly likely to be wrong. All religions that I've paid much attention to have felt the need to explain physical phenomena; all religions that I've paid much attention to have gotten it wrong. It's hardly their fault: the "correct" answers are complicated, and the religious answers were given before we knew how to find answers of that complexity.
Of course, if you chop religion up into small enough pieces, then it's difficult to find counterexamples (especially if the fragmentation was the result of a counterexample becoming widely known, with half refusing to believe the counterexample and the other half denying that the religion claimed something that the counterexample disproved; e.g. the argument about how literal Genesis is within different arms of Christianity). However, if you look at this with a historical perspective, it wasn't that the religion had the truth originally; rather, observations shifted the religion. This strongly argues that current religions have the same problem.
Of course, this doesn't mean that religions aren't religions which are partially true or even mostly true.
(If anyone wants to complain that this isn't a proof, only a probability argument, and therefore doesn't count as an objective measure, I would simply mention that *nothing* about the physical world is provable, so such a strict definition is useless.)
As a christian I plead to Rob, "PLEASE STOP POSTING RELIGOUS STUFF TO SLASHDOT." All that happens is the athiests bash christianity and declare it evil, then the fundamentalists come in here and make us look like unforgiving nazis (did you ever read the words of Jesus, he did help prostitutes and lepers, so can you). There are SO many disrespectful geeks on both sides it makes me angry to even view the post let alone the bigotted remarks.
Also: All you who generalize that Christians hate Jews and Muslims are completely off the mark. If I hated Jews I'd hate Jesus, just because Judas backstabbed Jesus doesn't mean I hate jews either. Just because the Quar'an claims Jews and Christians are dirty and unfit in the eyes of god doesn't make me hate Muslims. Many of you overgeneralize.
If we are already atheists, aren't we already in a way seperated from God? So how does that really punish us?
Incidentally, you can get out of it for free by accepting Jesus as the Lord of your life.
What if my rational mind never lets me fully accept Jesus as my saviour despite my best efforts? Wouldn't God know that I was just worshiping Jesus to get a free ticket outa hell? What would happen then?
>What would you call teaching religion to children? For it not to be forced parents would have to teach the kids critical thinking skills and present their beliefs after they are capable of critical thinking.
hmm.. I disagree here, I think teaching religion to children is good. But teach them about several religions, after all, religion played a big part in history. Good and bad things were done in the name of some god or other, and denying kids the knowledge of religion in general is denying them a part of history that cannot be ignored.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
You're right. But that was the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately, religious belief is often abused for sociological and political purposes.
-- Slashdot sucks.
1). Would George Bush have ever been elected president if he had been Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist dare I suggest... GAY?
Possibly, if he hid it or maintained the pretense of hiding it. Being a hypocrite is a bigger requirement than being a christian, credibility-wise. GB Jr has raised so much dough by bringing the Republican party up to modern standards of hypocrisy.
2). Has there ever been a president who has been of a religion other than a Christian-based one?
I'll name two: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Both were Deists, a viewpoint which is historically related to Christianity, but is clearly different from it(for example it reject divine inspiration for the Bible, holds knowledge to be gained through rational inquiry, rejects the divinity of Jesus, etc.) Interestingly, they were in opposite political parties with very different views on government.
This kind of thing was more or less in the air in 18th c America. I've been recently reading Ben Franklin's autobiography (highly recommended: he truly was the geek's geek), and he definitely thought like a Deist.
3). Has there been a female president?
Well, obviously not, but I don't think you can blame the Christians on this one. Its only a matter of female candidates moving up through the ranks now. Even a state like New Hampshire has all of its top posts held by women, and they don't think it is any big deal. The real question is when the double standard for behavior for female presidential candidates will be relaxed. These days we expect, and even require male candidates to be able to project traditionally feminine qualities (empathy, crying etc.), but its a sure bet that the first female president will be a ball-busting harpy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...formerly known as RA2Wav. There is a trial beta here.
Only problem is, it's Win32. Good thing is, RealPlayer G2 for Win32 runs on the latest CVS of WinE, so there's a good chance StreamRipper and its companion, PNM downloader X-FileGet, will run.
Keep an eye on these guys. The upcoming version of StreamRipper does RA to MP3, CD-ripping and other nifty things, and the upcoming version of StreamVCR handles G2 servers, RTSP and some MMS streams.
Hope this helps!
...My first choice would be that there exists a "perfect" Creator with perfect moral standards that (according to the texts of the religion) has had a direct hand in some of history's relatively minor incidents, but has been idle during some of mankind's darkest hours. It has been, for me, a direct contradiction with itself, and I haven't heard yet from anyone that can provide a sufficiently acceptable explanation (I'm agnostic, not atheistic).
...For example, innocent people were burned at stakes in the name of that God. I would think that true moral superiority would have compelled your God to have intervened. He could have been subtle about it, come in the dreams of the persecutors, stopped them somehow (omniscience _and_ omnipotence, right?). But it never happened.
...So, either your God is not morally superior (and Christianity has erred), or human values and moralities don't match that of God's (and Christianity has, again, erred... "Thou shalt not kill", handed down from God himself, right?), or your God simply didn't have the ability (and Christianity errs again, in casting this God in a light of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence), or God does not exist (and Christianity has erred).
...I'd be interested in hearing a decent rebuttal. Well thought out, please. I don't pay attention to ranters, because nothing I could say would change their minds, and nothing they would say will be rational enough to change mine.
No he never said or implied "worse".
...only wiped out a few whole native cultures... Oops."
:-)
You were the one who started the comparisons:
YOU: "And you have gross abuse of power by putative Christians throughout history, but its probably nothing to compare to what has been done by non-Christians."
(See the comparison)
The Anonymous Coward disagreed with *your* comparison by posting:
"Probably nothing to compare to... crusades? Inquisition? Burning (a lot) of people at stakes? Torture? The spanish missions in old mid-america?
Nowhere does he state Christianity is therefore *worse* than any other sociopolitical system. In fact since he *quotes* you I think the obvious implication is that he's taking issue with what he is quoting: that is the "probably nothing to compare to" line above meaning Christianity is not as bad as the others.
You respond by posting a list of assorted non-Christian nastiness. Which is all fine and good but doesn't do anything to prove your (not his/her) *your* initial comparison. That was my point - which I obviously didn't explain well enough since instead of saying "damned fine point there" you said I wrote "foolish nonsense". But don't worry I was fine.
In your last post you have *changed*!
You changed to "no worse than" from your original "nothing to compare to what has been done by non-Christians". If you had said "no worse than" instead of less worse than at the beginning the AC would not have had a point to make and we could have avoided this whole thread in the first place.
Finally, here and in earlier posts you continually assert that it was disease and not the Spanish who did in North American aboriginal cultures. Well that is simply a distortion of history. Here is a nice summation of Europeans affect on Native society:
"The arrival of the Europeans brought
unprecendented change, havoc, and death. Armed with the ethnocentric view that European cultures, values, lifeways, abilities, achievements, &
religion were more advanced, were better than anything the Indians had, the Europeans seized the native peoples' lands & resources, destroyed their
socieities & cultures. Coupled with this was the spread of European diseases which decimated the Native American population. By the seventeenth
century, more than fifty million native of North & South America had died as a result of war, enslavement, & disease in what may have been, in the words of the historian Alvin Josephy, "history's greatest holocaust by far." Over the next three centuries the Native People of North America struggled against the virulent racism, patronization, condescension, & policies of
formed assimilation--the determination to stamp out Indianness--of the ever-expanding European based societies. By the beginning of the
twentieth century, the Indian population in North America had dropped to an all-time low of some 250,000 - 350,000 people, most of whom were living
(& dying) on reservations as little more than political prisoners. Denied freedom of religion, the right to govern themselves & manage their own
affairs, & having their Indianness literally beaten out of them by all manner of prohibitions & punishments, they nevertheless persisted."
It was not disease that sacked the cities of Mexico. It was not disease that forced the natives of South America into slavery to work in plantations. It was not disease that hunted the natives of Cuba down until the last one was dead. It was not disease that caused the U.S.-Indian wars of the late nineteenth century. It was not disease that tore apart families and forced thousands upon thousands of native children into Christian "residential schools" well into *this* century where their own culture and language was beaten and brutalized out of them.
Yes it was disease that was responsible for the deaths of so many. No dispute.
But look at 14th Century Europe. Disease (the Black Death) came along and depopulated much of Europe. What happened? Did European culture fade? The survivors carried on and European culture came back stronger than ever.
I think there was *a lot* more than just disease or even mostly disease at work in the Americas. Arguing otherwise is self-deception.
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
God is not bullshit. You may have been standing up for your beliefs but by claiming that MY GOD, NOT YOUR GOD is BULLSHIT is totaly disrespectful. Either way it is pointless talking to you as I don't need to find God for you that's your own job (which you have failed so far).
Atheism usually isn't organized, though. Since you postulated that the organization made the virus, doesn't that mean that atheism isn't as much of a virus?
As far as it being as belief-based as religion...in theory perhaps it is, but in practice I find that atheists are on average more willing to critically examine their own beliefs than are theists. Inasmuch as critical examination moves one away from belief towards knowledge, in practice atheists are less belief-based.
*sigh*
Please define "having a lock on truth," because the more we go round, the less I'm sure I know what you mean by this. It's certainly not a phrase that Christians use, in my experience. We might speak of Christianity being "true", or "containing the fullness of truth", or being "inerrant," but nobody I know or have read ever says that Christians "have a lock on truth." (Sounds like a system call to me --
int fd;
fd = open("truth", O_RDONLY);
if (fd < 0) {
perror("the truth isn't out there");
}
if (flock(fd, LOCK_EX) < 0) {
perror("unable to attain lock on truth");
} else {
printf("truth locked for exlusive access");
}
)
The traditional Christian (and before that, Jewish) understanding of how Genesis is supposed to be understood within the tradition is far from irrelevant here. If you want to insist on ignoring it, you're free to -- but then you're simply setting up a straw man.
The Babelfish (a small fish you put in your ear that allows you to understand every species in the universe by devouring the audible noise and excreting the meaning) disproved the Theory of God because having creating something so incredibly useful to the galaxy that can only come from god, violated teh first rule of Godhood, No Physical Proof. I believe the quote goes something like this "And God disappeared in a puff of logic."
+&x
I don't agree here. although myself I do not believe in a god, I have met several people who were both capable of critical thinking, and deeply religious. One advice for everyone who wants a good discussion about religion: try a monk (I'm serious here). I have found that the monks that I talked to had seriously given thought to the existence of god. Deciding to spend your life in his serviuce is a big step for anyone, and usually a well thought over decision. Oh, I also found those same monks to be quite openminded, but it may have something to do with the order they belonged to, the Norbertines (sp?) have a bit of a reputation of being rebellious. And I must say.. those monks spouted quite a bit of foulmouthed language about the pope and a few bishops. some would make the average /. christianbasher proud ;)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
You missed the point (or the important point, anyway). He stated, correctly, the religious experience is proof to the person who experiences it. Whether it can be proof to others is not at issue: it can't be, at least not directly. Your example points out one reason why. But since that was never in question, it is irrelevant.
No route to host
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
That's a quote from Ghostbusters, the movie.
I rather tend to think that faith is a subjective thing. To have faith in something is to believe it because you feel that it is right. To me, religion's purpose is to give meaning to that which science cannot explain. Science (and I speak as a physics major) can explain the how of things. It cannot explain why.
Personally, I believe in God. I don't expect my belief to have much effect on you, because belief is a subjective thing, and everyone needs to determine for themselves what they believe in.
--Phil (Slashdot method #47 for starting a flamewar: mention religion.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Quite simply, you are.
Judging someone by what they say is the least bigoted thing you can do. And I didn't even write Knuth off, I just said I'd be more careful in examining the rest of what he says.
Please define "having a lock on truth," because the more we go round, the less I'm sure I know what you mean by this.
Maybe I don't know what I should be meaning--I wasn't the one who originally used the phrase. However, I took it to mean that there were no true statements that were contradicted by the ones with a lock, and that there were no false statements put forth. (This is essentially the same as "inerrant".)
Furthermore, I'd require that you be able to communicate the truth. If you can't communicate, the knowledge is irrelevant (and therefore isn't much of a "lock").
If the traditional interpretation was that Genesis was a fable with little to no basis in reality[1], it was somehow forgotten and--given the number of biblical literalists today--hasn't ever been fully remembered. This isn't exactly locklike behavior. But at this point it's getting rather silly; if I define the standards for having a lock to be high enough, no one will be able to meet them. If you define them low enough, someone will. Perhaps we should quit already, while we're only behind?
[1] (E.g. "README: To install, rcp the hqm.1.7.tgz tarball, explode, grep * for D_INST_DIR and pipe to rpm." "Huh????" "You have to interpret that in context. You see, they mean click on the crossed-out goldfish icon." "Oh.")
Other replies to this post mention indoctrination. Indoctrination is not automatically a bad thing. 1 : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : TEACH Especially with really young kids (
As for fundamentalism, that is not a bad thing. Sure people use it that way to mean an extreme belief system where nothing new can be introduced, no new ideas are valid or whatever. All it means is that you belive in the basic core set of beliefs, and not nessecarily all the trappings that some people add to that core belief. As an example, Catholics have a lot of things like confessionals and "hail Mary" type things that are essentially rituals, and are never mentioned in the Bible, but aren't nessecarrily bad (might not do you any good, but won't really hurt either). Compared to a good Catholic, I'm fundamentalist because I don't believe any of those things are worth anything.
--(Wild guess) - Monty Python's Life of Brian?
(G)
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
> Since you postulated that the organization made the virus, doesn't that mean that atheism isn't as much of a virus?
Not quite; I said that I thought of organized religion as a kind of social virus. Just because there isn't a "church of Atheism", doesn't mean that it isn't a virus, or that it isn't (at least a little bit) organized. By organized, I don't necessarily mean that individuals all go to the same building to get the same information; that's simply a very high level of organization. A lower level of organization would be one in which multiple individuals shared viewpoints or beliefs that they did not arrive at individually.
I agree that, on the whole, the atheists I've met are, on average, more willing to critically examine their own beliefs. However.. have you ever tried convincing an atheist that a God in some form might exist? You'll get about as far as trying to convince a Christian that God doesn't exist, yet atheists can't really offer any more proof for their belief than Christians can.
Put another way, atheists have at least considered the universe and the existence of a God at some point (that's almost a requirement of that belief), but that doesn't mean that they're any more willing to reconsider that belief than anyone else is.
One other point I'd like to make: I think that there will always exist some tenets of the universe which mankind will not solve. Every answer that we find to a puzzle simply spawns another question or puzzle; it is fractally complex. What I'm getting at is, at a certain point, "knowledge" becomes worthless, and all that a person has to go on is belief. Either you believe in something, or you don't, but knowledge (by itself) probably didn't influence your decision, because knowledge simply cannot provide the answers to the philosophical questions of existence.
Bertrand Russell said that, with few exceptions, people will adopt the belief system of their environment, which is evidence that people are not individually evaluating their beliefs in a thorough manner. I would tend to agree.
well.. that SHOULD make you happy, go for it ;)
As long as you don't force it on others, that's just as good a religion as any other (although most religions do have a little more content than that. the 10 commandments in the bible mostly aren't that bad an idea)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
In that context, I agree with you. Teaching _about_ religion is good; that's education, and knowledge, and that's what will keep humanity from regressing back into a modern dark ages.
But I don't agree with indoctrinating anyone with a particular set of beliefs before they have a chance to critically review them, as Lightn said. Present them with the information and let them choose.
Pretty much, although the various Christian groups's claims of "inerrancy" or "infallibility" are actually more limited than is popularly understood. Example 1: evangelical/fundamentalist groups speak of the Bible being "infallible" and "inerrant in the original manuscripts" -- but recognize that (a) translators can screw up or slant things, (b) individuals and groups are capable of screwing up their interpretations (obvious, given the disagreemnts between groups), and (c) there are areas of ambiguity where differences of understanding are quite legitimate. Example 2: When Roman Catholics speak of the Pope being "infallible," it is only "in matters of faith and morals and when speaking ex cathedra (formally on behalf of the entire Church)". Ex cathedra pronouncements have happened exactly twice in history, so it's not as if this means that the Pope can never be wrong.
Both groups also have the idea of "development of doctrine" -- that is, we refine our understanding as we both (a) work out the theological implications of the core truths that have been accepted from the beginning, and (b) work out the relationship of those truths to what we understand of the world around us.
Sure, that's reasonable.
Well, I would dispute both that (1) the understanding of Genesis as "not a science text" has been forgotten by more than a vocal minority of Christians in recent history, and (2) that the Genesis account has "little or no basis in reality" (for example, the idea that the universe had a beginning was unthinkable to Aristotle, yet modern cosmological theories support this -- but who knows, the cosmologers might change their minds again). But that would get us deep into the whole origins debate ...
That's probably the wise thing to do. :^)
*chuckle* Cute.
Perhaps you missed the point of my last post. You are the one that is claiming that faith is insufficient as a mechanism for establishing a thing as true. Therefore, if you wish to claim, definatively that God does not exist, you must prove it because you're the one who doesn't accept beliefs on faith. A believer who challenges you on this is only asking you to follow your own standards.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that ALL evidence points to there not being a god, and NO evidence points to there being a god.
Really, ALL evidence? To support that claim, then you have to explain how we got here. And I don't mean how we as humans came into being. I mean, that there is existence at all. Isn't the fact that there is stuff in the world evidence for the existence of an originator of the stuff?
I'm not really interested in pursuing that argument, though. The argument that I'm interested in following is this: if I see something that you don't, does it mean that it didn't happen? So for example, imagine I get together with a group of people and we have a meeting. During this meeting we agree on some issue. On the way home, everyone except me gets killed in a car accident. What you are suggestinng is that since I'm the only one left who experienced the meeting, the meeting didnt' happen.
Now it is certainly the case, that I may not be able to adequatly convince you that the meeting happened. And I may also not be able to convince you of the things that transacted in that meeting. But the reality is that the meeting happened, you just didn't experience it. Therefore you discount its existence in its entirty? You don't even hold out the possibility that the meeting existed and that you just aren't able to collect the evidence?
The point is this: are you sure that you can you discount faith experiences as legitimate experiences? Perhaps you haven't had one, but does that mean that no one in the world can possibly have had one? And just because you haven't had one, does that mean that they aren't real?
"Ah hah!" you might say. "Faith experiences are not repeatable and can't be independantly reviewed." Very true. But there are lots of things that *ARE* true, that are not repeatable and not capable of being independantly (e.g. the agreement in the meeting above). To claim that you're not convinced is one thing. To claim that they are false is another thing. The latter takes an act of faith.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
OK, before I really reply to this, I've got a question for you, that I've been just _burning_ to spring on someone here in Slashdot. *grin*
I noticed that some of the first things you mentioned were, "..the only way to get to Heaven...", and "...correct set [of beliefs]..."
So, here's my question: what does religion mean to you?
I've seen lots of people talk about what's needed to get into God's kingdom, or that they want to find the objectively "correct" religion... and, without hinting at a third answer, I think they've all strayed from religion's original purpose. Whether or not you agree with that, I'd still be interested in hearing what it means to you.
I'd just like to add brief commentary on the two points you made. And please don't flame me, I'm merely providing skepticism for discourse :)
1st point was that the supernatural is impossible to disprove. While this may be technically true, it is also true by this rational that invisible elephants are walking down the street, that there really are witches, and hordes of other blatantly wrong yet unprovable things. If something does not exist but by definition cannot be proven to exist it can only be proven to exist by existing, therefore, if it is never proven to exist, many choose not to believe in it so as to not fall into a trap.
2nd point was: physicalism doesn't account for some things which we observe about ourselves. We may not understanding everything about our world right now, however, look at history. Almost every great discovery about the world around us has disproven some line of superstition already in place to disprove it. The world was flat and we'll fall off? no its round. The world is a few thousand years old? no its much older. The sun was a god flying around the world? NO its a star we orbit. add your own slew of superstitions and old religious beliefs. Following this model you can assume we may not ever understand everything around us, but it's another trap to try to simply say "if I cannot explain it using science, there MUST be a supernatural explanation."
In conclusion, just because something doesn't make sense now doesn't mean try to explain it using religion, it means we need to put more money into research and maybe THEN we'll understand it.
Perhaps, but atheists typically offer more arguments. Christians not infrequently cite as their primary evidence that God exists that "I just know He exists." In my experience, atheists will at least give a somewhat plausible argument against the existence of gods.
Actually, agnostics are often the worst of all (!) because they often simply state that you can't know, or that they don't know, and expect that their statement is enough. (In the former case it is a belief/religion; in the latter, in the absence of arguments, it may not be religion but it's rather lazy.)
I didn't say that people of christian culture were to be excused. Read what I said and try again.
I said that the depredations suffered under regimes of Christian cultures were no worse and might be a bit better than those seen under other religious systems. I mean, there are religious systems out there that practice human sacrifice! Today!
Jeesh. Please answer what I said, not your own foolish nonsense.
-- Slashdot sucks.
I don't recall saying anything about God.
If you think that all mystical experiences are religious, I continue to recommend getting out more.
--
How would his religious choice adversly affect his thoughts on computer science? RELGION is not a virus. It will not cause you to stop thinking!
What's interesting (and anyone who's taken a serious philosophy course knows you sunk yourself here) is that you can't prove, rationally or not, that your view of "do stupid things" is correct and their view is wrong.
For instance:
You may believe that someone helping the poor simply because they believe in the value of human life because they believe in God is not rational. That may be so, for you.
As a good deconstructionist would say though (who would argue against God and faith along with you), it doesn't matter if its not rational for you, it just matters that its rational for them. In fact, faith is a very rational matter for most people of faith.
If I believe in God, it is for a reason. You can't prove my reasoning wrong. It may very well be faith. But it takes no more faith for me to believe in God than it takes for you to believe in an unproven, light-hearted attempt at an explanation of evolution that any biologist will give you.
Does it matter that I think your views are irrational? Not really. Does it matter that you think mine are? Ditto.
One of us may be right, and the other wrong, but this presupposes a universal "rightness" and "wrongness" which is typically the view of the God-fearing Judao-Christian mindset, not that of an individualist secular-humanist who thinks only things tangibly provable are real.
That, and you're out-numbered by far. So even by law of averages, most people beievein God and/or the supernatural and are not by your exstimation rational. Does this mean that you're not human because you don't fit the mould? No.
Be reasonable -- my arguments are, yours weren't. I guess people of faith can have more reason that rationalists?
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Not at all.
Promiscuity doesn't seem to be a good indicator of intelligence. But, being religious seems to be a good indicator of a lack of critical thought. Not of bad thought, but just a lack of critical thinking, examining what you are told.
I'm not asserting that any religious people are idiots, let alone all of them. Some of them are, but that's not at all what I said. You didn't even bother to read the posting, just started spouting off.
While its true the Knuth seems to stay true to his intention of discussing his views on god (or rather on Christianity), the title of lecture series "God and Computers" is a little misleading in this respect. I was expecting some sort of tie in between his experiences with working with controlled, deterministic computers, and his views of the universe, meaning, and god as a whole.
Not an approach for random study of the Christian bible...
-
Although I can empathize with your statement, I don't agree with it. Not posting religiously-related articles to Slashdot won't make the disagreement over religion go away, it will just let you ignore it a little easier.
There are individuals on both sides of the fence that are brash, bull-headed, and disagreeable. I think that if some of them were any dumber, they'd need to be watered daily...
But don't detract from what could prove to be a really interesting discussion for those that are willing to discuss it. Most of us could stand to learn something from the other; I could probably find something interesting about your religion, and you could probably find something interesting about my lack of it.
Not posting these articles won't make the disrespect that you hate go away. It will just propogate it.
I consider the argument of "I know He exists" to be valid as long as the discussion doesn't involve converting me or telling me I'm mistaken because of that revelation. I'm not going to believe in God simply because someone else does, but likewise I consider that argument to be sufficient grounds for belief for the person making that statement.
AFA atheism: Having read most of the evidence of God's nonexistence, I'm not terribly impressed. Of course, I have never believed He could be proven (not) to exist objectively, anyway. Since the only proof of His existence I take seriously is the experience of his His existence (which, as stated above, only works for the experiencer), I am immune to disproof, as well.
agnostics are often the worst of all (!) because they often simply state that you can't know, or that they don't know, and expect that their statement is enough.
Actually agnosticism is terrible simply because it doesn't fit into the logical spectrum for position about God. All (well, almost all) agnostics don't believe in God (or they wouldn't be agnostic) which should make them atheists. The problem is that in many people's minds atheism == antitheism, and many agnostics don't want to be associated with blatant antitheists. (I'm an atheist, incidentally; the insidious sound of antitheism is purely accidental.)
"We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He reall wants people of a particular sort... the point is not that God will refuse you admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character. The point is that if people have not got at least the beginning of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a 'Heaven' for them -- that is, could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakeable kind of happiness God intends for us."
-- CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p 78&79/190.
"Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole with all your innumberable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature that is in harmony with God, with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be one kind of being is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness.
-- same work, p 86/190.
Tweet, tweet.
10:1 odds the god equation resolves down to the key sequence "iddqd". That'll teach them that the one true god is John Carmack!
--
Win98 sux without these 1337 toolz !!
Right, so far. Assuming that that religion and that "someone else" disagreed, of course. I can't think of any religion that claims that everyone else is 100% wrong (yes, including Christianity). "There is only one God, and He is not representable by human artifacts" is a truth statement that Christians recognize as true when a Muslim or a Jew says it as well.
Wow. That's an amazingly broad statement.
First problem: how do you know this? Have you studied all religions? What criteria are you using to find them objectively false? Two examples -- I know practically nothing about the traditional religion of the Lakota Sioux, so I would have no basis for claiming that their religion has some objective error (my ignorance doesn't disprove anything). So, I could not make this claim about the Lakota religion. Second example -- I know slightly more about Hinduism. While I disagree with Hinduism on religious grounds, I'd be very interested to know how you've managed to falsify it "objectively".
And, of course, since I am a Christian, I think you're mistaken about there being anything "objectively true" that contradicts the Christian faith. But full-scale apologetics is rather off-topic to Slashdot, so I'll leave it at that. Feel free to mail questions/flames/whatever if you want more elaboration.
--If Knuth is a Bible-believing Christian and he saw "maybe-Knuth-is-a-god" as the dept. for his article, he would 1) Probably be disconcerted, and 2) Probably want to make it clear ASAP that he's not. So, I figure I'll save him the trouble. ;-)
& version=NIV&passage=Acts+12 )
:)
--The reason for this: Acts 12:21-24
21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people.
22 They shouted, "This is the voice of a god, not of a man."
23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and
died.
24 But the word of God continued to increase and spread.
( http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?language=English
--Nuthin' personal, just wanted to point it out.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Hmmm. A well-said insight into how an athiest would see it.
Pascal's wager, though, takes the reverse tack on the same premise. Map out the event space:
------------- God Exists --- God Doesn't--
|*I beleive**|**Big Payoff*|****loss******|
|**I don't***|VeryBig Loss|****gain******|
------------------------------------------
If you're thinking 50/50 on the God Exists/Doesn't, beleiving gives you a better expected value.
If you don't see the same odds, the expected value might change. Also, you may adjust the payoffs/losses scheme according to your perspective.
Also, some folks see immediate (within lifetime, if not 6-8 weeks) benefits in beleiving and living a certain way _now_.
But the point about trying to scare an athiest with hell is great!
Tweet, tweet.
a negative score!
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
After trying to read some of this guy's stuff, I've learned to recite the company line: "Knuth be da man, dude" When pressed on what I actually like about his books, I change the conversation quickly in the hope that no one finds out I can't get out of chapter 1. Guess I shouldn't have read the newspaper in math class way back when.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
His effort to come up with an improved bible translation reminds me slightly of Jefferson's Bible; but which way is going to provide the best spiritual guidance- Good end result control, or better parity checking?
But some would argue that beauty itelf is mystical, regardless of whether there is a God.
I am not the Messiah!
Only the messiah would deny his divinity!
Alright... I *AM* the messiah!
*all bow down* Messiah!!
sound familiar?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The MIT student newspaper had an interview with Knuth about these lectures, and gives some insight. http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N5 1/knuthtlin.51f.html. Basically just Knuth expressing his religious views.
If I see one more post here about how geeks are victimized, or how Christians are victimized, or any other self-proclaimed martyrdom, I hereby make an insanity plea in advance, because I will not be responsible for my actions.
GET OVER IT EVERYBODY. You are not a victim. Yes, you - the person staring at a screen reading this post right now. The world is not against you. There is no mass conspiracy to wipe out/shun your particular group. So stop defining yourself by the wrongs inflicted against you. If you consider yourself a part of a particular group and you feel that the other group is "profiling" you or abusing you, I suggest you look more closely at the other group, and see what they are really about.
I think you will find there is plenty of room in this world for both groups, and that they are not mutually exclusive.
That is all.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Before I go anywhere with this, I think someone should take a moment to make the distinction between religion, and organized religion. Religion, by itself, is simply a personal system of beliefs in some form of supernatural drive behind the universe. That doesn't (to me) show any evidence of a lack of critical judgement, it simply shows that the person looks at the universe a little bit differently from someone else.
Organized religion, however, _does_ rely on people not thinking for themselves. You couldn't have a massive organized religion if each of the members came up with their own viewpoints on what God is, or means to them, or on the meaning of life or the universe.
I think organized religion is a sort of virus.. it is a social idea, spread from one individual to another, using each individual as a host through which to propogate (lest anybody think I'm bashing religion, I might add that atheism is just as much a religion [and "virus"] as Christianity or any other religion; atheism is simply a belief in the impossibility of the existence of any deity. It's still a belief, without any scientifically observable foundations).
I can count on one hand the number of times I have met a Christian individual that was brought up to properly examine their beliefs and belief system for what it was or is. Likewise, I don't have the physical capacity to recall the number of individuals I've met for whom the opposite is true; they are taught Christianity (or any other religion), and then they are taught that to question that religion is to commit a sin.
It's that sentiment, I think, that the previous posters have been referring to.
Let's see here:
;-). There's a fair number of religious people who don't even believe in God, for example. Would you say that a pagan stating that his 'gods' are simply psychological in nature is full of crap? That he's just attempting to cover his archaic beliefs with rationalizations and modernizations?
Every atheist I know, including myself, isn't some reactionary knee-jerker but someone well versed in religious ideology, doctrine, and history. Much more so than most believers and with the added bonus of being informed on more than one religion.
With the caveat that there are a lot of reactionary knee-jerk atheists who you don't know, this is absolutely correct. 'Believers' tend to be fairly poor at theology. Theologians on the other hand, make interesting adversaries.
I'm sure you do sound like a generic atheist to most Christians; you sound like a generic atheist to me as well, humble atheist that I am. Actually, you come across as excessively arrogant, irrational (later on) and a tad narow-minded--a rather poor example for the rest of our bretheren. Perhaps all my work in philosophy has raised my standards too far, but I can't see having a reasonable discussion on religion with you. This, however, is much more fun and reasonable.
But it isn't, so we have the Knuths of the world preaching their 'modern intelligent' views. To me its crap, to you it might be enlightenment.
This strikes me as being problematic. Presumably at least some of the modernizers (emphasis on 'some') are trying to find the truth of the matter; thus the modernization. This seems to me to be no different than physicists building new theories from old (except that physics works, of course
About that 99% mystical part, well thats fiction if I've ever seen any.
As is that. If you read 'mystically' rather loosely, as I did, you could drop virtually anything in that slot, e.g. for mathematicians it might be elegance (that's a stereotype, but it works here). For a (good) artist, it might be beauty or 'truth'. 'Mystical' is a very flexible word; I think you're reading it too narrowly.
Your post really reflects that an intelligent person will do their best to rationalize their emotional beliefs to their intellect.
I can't believe you would use that in this argument. It's so typical of atheists it's almost cliche. If nothing else, it can be turned back on you so easily.
Which seems very contradictory to the goal of religion in the first place - to find truth.
Hmmm, except that my 'religion' isn't about Truth. I firmly believe that we can't know the Truth about the world--definitely not through religion, but not through science, either. My religion is about nothing more than what I do: when I write, my religion is about expression and creation. When I'm study, it's about knowledge and understanding (not Truth, however). Simply stated, my religion is what I care about most. I apologize in advance if this doesn't mesh with your definition of religion.
I agree that Knuth isn't weak, in any tradition sense, but to me he is emotionally unable to deal with the world without a belief in a mystical supernatural force.
Knuth aside, this contradicts your statement above. Is religion about dealing with the world, or seeking truth? I'm more inclined to believe the former, but neither are complete explanations.
This also seems to be a ploy, carefully executed flamebait more than anything else. You probably actually believe that, but I'd love to see you prove it.
I've been dying to ask a more vocal atheist about this: how do you view the 'Philosopher's God'? That is, the God whose purpose is not to comfort or create, but to fill an ontological gap in the world. Whitehead, for example, created a God, in the loosest possible sense of the word, because physics does allow mathematics a place in the universe, even though it clearly (to him and others) exerts an influence. (This is the oft stated curious tendency for mathematics to work everywhere, from molecular biology to cosmology.) He's wasn't particularly fond of his God--he was an avowed atheist most his life--but it seemed the only logical conclusion. Was he emotionally unable to deal with the world?
Jefferson didn't really create his own translation, he just cut'n'pasted the parts of the Gospels he liked into his own book....
Knuth just made an effort to provide an idiomatic translation of each verse mentioned in 3:16, not the whole Bible. Which is a good strategy, IMO.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/23/colum bine/index.html Those kids werent killing christians, they were killing people, anyone they could aim and shoot at, some just happend to be christians. If a few had been jews, I guess you'd have some wackos calling them nazis too. Typical that christianity would take something and twist the facts to further its goal of controlling the masses. Never trust a christian speaker, they only present one side of a story, with selected facts, and shady arguments.
...I do, of course, disagree with the both of you. *grin*
Agnosticism isn't about laziness. It simply says, "I don't know, and I don't think it's possible to know, right now". There are good reasons for this; as an agnostic, I've examined evidence for both the existence and lack of existence of a deity of some form, and there simply isn't enough evidence to make a properly sound scientific argument.
Human beings have existed on the planet for a very relatively short amount of time, and society and organized culture for even shorter a period of time. It is a sign of immaturity if we, as a race, decide that we can right now find the answer to every question, instead of concentrating on those questions which can be solved, and solving the others at a more appropriate time.
Can you tell me what the universe was like before the Big Bang? Can you even tell me what light and gravity really are? Is time truly infinite? Or is time simply a human invention, perception of one event after another, much like the human ability for pattern matching? These are things we don't know the answer to, yet, and they're very simple problems compared to the problem of the existence of a deity, deities, creator, or creators.
Omniscience is, I think, self-contradictory (it's been a while since I ran through the proof on that one, properly). Does that mean that any deity that might exist is not omniscient, or does that mean simply that our notion of omniscience is completely invalid?
Agnosticism isn't about saying, "I don't care about the solution", or "you can't [ever] know", it's about "it's really stupid for us to fight over this, when none of us knows. Let's think about it." At least, that's the direction I take on it.
I can't prove that a God exists, and neither can I prove that it doesn't (Ichoran, a greater abundance of arguments does not a proof make). So, I decide that I don't know, and maybe I'll solve the problem, and maybe not.
Fence-sitting? Maybe. I know it frustrates a lot of people; some people seem to like to argue, and they take offense at people who say, "this argument isn't going to go anywhere, it's pointless to argue about it, so let's get a cheeseburger and think about it some more".
James: Agnostic != Atheism; atheism says that God _can't_ (or does not) exist. Agnosticism says that God might exist, or God might not exist, but that we don't know.
Best of all, agnostics are the most open-minded, so if anybody out there can convince me that God indeed does or does not exist, I'll go along with it. Have at it. *grin*
Wow. If this Michael Portillo guy had just had sex with little children or his dog, his ratings would have hit 100%!
<apology
I'm sorry, but Katz's repeated slams of Christians have really annoyed me pretty badly. Expect bitterness for a while.
</apology
-- Slashdot sucks.
I'm a coder. I test my programs under all conditions. They crash. That's the purpose of testing them; as it is written in TAOCP: "Errs and errs and errs, but less and less and less". If your faith doesn't crash, you don't test hard enough (especially if you don't adjust it, you are obviously adjusting the test set).
I'm not a natural born atheist. I believed in Santa Claus and the easter bunny, in angels and so on (and certainly in God). I stopped believing in the easter bunny at the age of three, when I found out that actually the parents are doing that. I found out later that the parents also were doing what was supposed Santa Claus' and the angel's work. When I watched a very interesting exposition about Echn'aton, I even realized that this God, the christian one, was just an invention of an egyptean pharao, which got dragged over the mists of time. It took me some time to realize this.
I studied other religions, and found out that there are some without gods (buddhism, taoism), and even further, some without faith (confucianism). Instead of using some mysterious sources for knowing what is good and bad, these religions argue, or even use *rational* arguments to prove their point. They still may be wrong on the premises/results, or don't go deep enough, but a moral that is explained by showing how ethic behaviour is better for you in *this* live on the long run is much more "modern" than christianity with it's pesimistic human picture ("all men are sinner") and it's questionable moral source (a god originally invented by a pharao who had political problems with his priesthood, and still carrying all the legathy of the egyptean after-life believe).
It is much easier to follow Confuzius telling "Do unto others as you want others do unto you", because he explains this sort of optimistic tit-for-tat game. He doesn't explain it in 20th century game theory words, but it's close enough. And this Jesus Christ, 500 years later, has no better reason to explain the same rule by telling you that God loves you?
I'm much happier with Don being a god, and TAOCP being the bible, as with him talking about God and the Bible.
And now let's stop this Atheists slam FUD-spraying Christians (if you don't believe, you'll go to hell) and go back to the Windows Loser slamming!
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
Persecuted, you say? Christians are neither persecuted nor oppressed in this part of the world. By declaring yourselves victims, you do a great disrespect to those who are (or were) actually persecuted due to their religious beliefs; the Jews in WWII (actually, throughout most of history), the pagans, and (dare I say) the athiests. Btw, Your religion has started more wars and claimed more lives than any other in the name of your god. Your "bullshit" proves nothing except that you are a nincompoop.
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
Oh damn, I think he reversed the byte order - he's really talking about Dogs..... =)
--
Better tell that to the String Theory scientists, who are facing the enormous challenge of understanding the way the universe works at scales under 10^-30cm. This is unobservable, and one estimate I have read is that it will take 10-15 years to complete the mathematical work on current hypotheses (perhaps a bit less if they can make some large scale observations of cosmic background radiation from satellites).
Interestingly, I have heard one scientist describe solving String Theory as working towards providing us with a "God Equation"
Your comments sound a bit hippocritical. What if I said "What's with all these people that won't quit telling Christians to quit talking."
See what I mean.
He didn't say anything about Christians. He said ORGANIZED religion (of whatever sect) is a crutch for week-minded people. But he didn't say: "organized Christian religion"
> So, you have gross abuse of power by atheists (think Stalin), including abuse of Christians. - - You can't classify all athiests as one group. Being an athiest does not mean sharing the beliefs of Stalin, or any other athiest, for that matter. There are no athiest "holy texts". Athiesm has no dogmas -- athiest beliefs are entirely personal, and one athiest may be entirely different from another. The only thing we share is lack of a belief in god. Attributing Stalin's misdeeds to athiests in general is like attributing the radical beliefs of white supremacist groups and crazy fundie zealots to Christianity in general -- ridiculous! -
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
Sorry but I guess I am not priveledged enough to see this so called webcast since where I live (Ohio) the telephone company forbids such things as "webcasts" by providing overpriced underperforming services and those which would be ideal are way overpriced. Sprint... bastards.
>But being a skeptic and being required, by my own
>beliefs, to maintain an open mind, eventually
>forced me to reevaluate what I believed.
This touches on something that I've given a little thought to, but not enough: I am a Christian, and I have (somewhat aggressively) studied all sorts of skepticisms and proofs and whatnot, and even discounting my own personal experiences with God, I've had a hard time seeing how a person could objectively discount the existence of God. In my experience, few people with naturalist worldviews take their views to a logical conclusion... but perhaps more thought is required.
>Religion is not the source of all the violence
>and hatred that's attributed to it, but the
>uncritical frame of mind it encourages IS.
I don't think that religion *necessarily* encourages an uncritical frame of mind; in my religious experience, a consistent theme has been study: of my (our) views, of others' views, etc. This is not a symptom of blind acceptance.
Some people do accept blindly, and that, of course, is foolish, regardless of what it is that they believe in. Moreover, I think that secular powers/organizations/groups (the government, many special interest groups, etc.) are just as guilty of pushing beliefs without proof or thought as religious organizations are often thought to be. As a Christian, I feel perfectly safe endorsing scrutiny of my own beliefs because they do stand up under examination. (If I were a fraud, I would probably encourage ignorance and blind faith.) God is a rational God, and belief in him can (and should) be logically coherent.
>Show me a reason for attributing anything to an
>invisible God, and I will change my view.
Surely you don't mean that literally? Here's a good reason: it's more reasonable to believe in the supernatural than to believe in stock physicalism (ie, all that exists is matter and energy and there is nothing supernatural) because a) the supernatural is impossible to disprove and b) physicalism doesn't account for some of the things that we observe about ourselves. The philosophical proofs and discussions about each of those are way too long for this forum, of course... if you're interested, email me and I'll see if there are any good summaries online.
Maybe that's not a sufficient reason, but it's a good one. Here's another good one: lots of smart, critical thinkers have believed in an invisible God; therefore, it's possible to believe in an invisible God without automatically becoming stupid or ignorant.
--
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your post is also perfectly, purely irrelevant to the present discussion, but that's okay
Fundamentalist:Christian::Islamist:Muslim
Well, that's close enough for government work, anyway.
Okay, now that you've dragged this little bit of disinformation into it, your post suddenly looks familiar. I saw the same bizarre claim on an anti-semitic right-wing kook website somewhere. (IIRC it was Christian Reconstruction, but I'm not certain). The problem is, it's dead wrong. Zionism has always been primarily a secular movement. Not exclusively, but primarily. Most Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews reject Zionism on the grounds that G-d will reestablish the state of Israel and the Temple when He damn well pleases, and that it is blasphemous for people to do it themselves. Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, was an atheist. David Ben-Gurion was an atheist. The major Kibbutz movements are secular and always have been, since the 1920's.
Orthodox/ultra-orthodox Jews are religious fundamentalists. There certainly are religious Zionists, but they have never been the driving force behind the movement.
You're entirely missing the very important distinctions to be found among Judiasm as religion, the Jewish people as an ethnic group, and the modern state of Israel as a nation-state.
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yeah? Where's your god NOW?
LDAA #$80 BITA 0x40 BNE END
A couple of points from a non-believer's subjective POV: 1. If God exists and gave us the ability to think rationally, why would the only way to accept his existance be to abandon his gift and think irrationally (believe)? Wouldn't it be wrong to not use what he gave you (rational thinking)? 2. All of what current believers know and believe is based on what other people have said, written, or translated. If a whispered rumour can't make it through a chain of ten people without being altered, why would a story make it through two thousand years of retellers and translators, all with their own agenda, and still bear even the slightest resemblance to the original? 3. Why would a person who believes for selfish reasons (face it - being "good" so you can live happily ever after and not be toasted in lava is selfish) be more entitled to a reward than a non-believer who is "good" and expects no reward whatsoever? In a truly just universe, it would seem only the second person would be worthy of a reward. 4. If God exists, wouldn't he make believing the correct version easy enough to prevent the millions and millions of deaths in the last millenia due solely to religious conflict? How benevolent is it to let us fight it out to prove who is right in the absence of other evidence? 5. Isn't a believer trying to "recruit" that drives people away from believing by annoying the heck out of them actually hurting his/her god by pushing people away? If God exists and wants people to believe, why are these recruiters so _incredibly_ annoying?
Read my original post. My point is that anywhere you look, regardless of religious context, these kinds of atrocities happen.
His counter-argument was what about "all the usual suspects" (crusades, etc.), with an assertion that these somehow showed that Christians were worse than others. I replied with counter-examples of equal atrocities in just about every area of the world.
The point is that people suck. And I cannot regard a "politicized" Christianity as Christianity at all. But insofar as those committing these atrocities were the result of a Christian culture, they were no worse than atrocities found in other parts of the world.
Oh yeah... You or someone took issue with me not holding the spaniards responsible for wiping out whole tribes of Indians (by disease). Repeast after me: Louis Pasteur didn't come along till the 19th century!
-- Slashdot sucks.
The "lt" isn't short for "left", it's short for "less than". So instead of "&rt;", you want ">". :)
I'd just like to know what Knuth thinks about Jesux :)
For whatever reason, God wants us to freely worship him. He wants us to follow his ways out of love, not fear. And the felt prescense of God in anything but the most mitigated way would overwhealm us.
A lot of otherwise rational people believe in God. And I think you will find that the ones who take God very seriously at all are all judeo-islamo-christian. Really, the only differences between these systems theodicy is the approach to atonement.
Besides, believing in God makes me happy. Why shouldn't I? Remember, I do not try to force you to believe, I just ask that you give me the freedom to believe without slandering or harrassing me.
-- Slashdot sucks.
2) Abraham Lincoln, one of America's most-revered presidents. While not a believer in a non-Christian religion, he expressed great doubts about Christianity. At 25 years old he wrote an essay disputing the divinity of Christ. Before being elected to the House of Representatives, he declared in a published handbill "That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true". Yet he was elected to the House, and later to the Presidency. There you go.
3)Non-US "Christian" nations have had female leaders. Margaret Thatcher comes to mind. If you think most Christians have a problem with a female president, you have a very simplistic (might I say like a fundamendalist) view of the matter.
The lecture series is about things that I learned about things
:)
Good try though
Can your IM do this?
From the Knuth lecture page:
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Knuth is literally a computer's GOD, he is very well known for his serie a kind of Encyclpaedia of computer programing "The art of computer programing" were generations and generations of developers have studied, he has also done a lot of research in sorting and seraching algorithms, algorithm complexety, hash coding, grammar attributs, compilation, programming languages, he his also very well known for Tex (wich became LaTex) and Web (nothing to have with the WWWW) two typseting programs and many other things. I simply can't believe how a single person was able to do as many things.
Gee, and I always thought that any ol' atheist who wakes up after death will be screaming as they are sent a-flyin' into a hot molten pool of fire.
On the second thought -- maybe it's not a hot molten pool of fire -- maybe it's being locked in a large lecture hall with Jon Katz at the podium.
PS: rejoyce is the act of getting back with your old girlfriend Joyce. rejoice is the act of celebrating.
"It's not the athiests, it's the damn commies..." == "It's not the Christians, it's the damn Roman Church of the Middle Ages."
Wrong. "Sharing" the lack of a belief is not analagous to sharing a belief. For example: I don't believe that the Earth is hollow. Neither does Charles Manson. By your logic, that
means that Manson and I share the same belief system.
Well, we don't.
atheism is also evil, because of what the commies did in the name of atheism.
They didn't do it in the name of atheism. They did it in the name of communism. Communism is not defined (like atheism) by the absence of belief in some arbitrary fairy-tale; rather, it is defined by the presence of belief in an arbitrary fairy tale. When you stand back and take a long cold look at communism, it looks a hell of a lot like a religion -- mainly because it behaves like one, and its adherents behave like religious fanatics.
you still argue that commies aren't TRUE atheists?
He never said that. Doctrinaire Soviet Communists are "atheists" in the sense that they don't believe in God. However, they do have a belief system which has all the characteristics of a religion except for the fact that they substitute "historical inevitability" and "the will of the people" for "God". BFD. It waddles, it quacks, it's a duck.
I'm specifically responding to this meme:
"The crusades were evil, and were conducted in the name of Christianity; therefore Christianity is evil."
Since your position is indefensible, you're wisely directing your attacks at strawmen and red herrings. In fact, the Crusades are just one example of a phenomenon which has been widely observed for many centuries: Most religious belief systems don't leave room for compromise. You can't peacefully coexist with a religious fanatic any more than you can peacefully coexist with a devoted Communist. It's not enough for these guys to live their own lives in their own way, they have to make you do it too -- because it's "the Right Way to Live!" Ethical systems with a utilitarian foundation are easy to deal with, because we can all basically agree that it's a bad idea to screw people. You don't screw me, I don't screw you: No problem. (Christ seems to have understood this: "do unto others", "render unto Caesar", "go and sin no more", etc.) Religion, at its core, is really the belief that "goodness" is abstract and arbitrary, which translates easily into the notion that extremely destructive actions can nevertheless be "good". When your concept of "goodness" ignores the human consequences of your actions, it's real easy to get there. As evidence, look at the damn Communists. Or at your own crowd.
don't complain when people say the Catholics of that era weren't TRUE Christians.
Some Catholics of that era probably were true Christians (in the sense that they tried to live according to all of Christ's teachings); take St. Francis of Assisi for example. But the ugly truth is that a hell of a lot of "Christians", then as now, ignore the parts they don't like and use their religion as an excuse for bad behavior. And ugly fact number two is that religion, by its very nature, is just about the most convenient and effective excuse for bad behavior that the human race ever invented.
The problem with this is that you suppose that, by default, our religious beliefs are private affairs, but history gives a rather different impression of religion and your "personal spirituality" seems to be an invention of the past two-hundred years.
I've seen that on bumper stickers and license plates. It's kinda scary.
Christianity as I understand it says no one is good.
Christianity, as practiced and believed by most "Christians" says that Christians, while not perfect, are damn well better than everybody else. St. Paul, by the way, warned against this. Nobody seems to have listened.
KJV or NIV :).
So when Donald Knuth talks, people listen. Shame he's infected with that Christian meme, though... B-) (ducks objects thrown from /.'s Xian section, dons asbestos longjohns)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Doubtless Knuth will be able to turn it into an engaging book; a followup of sorts to 3:16 would be a very nice thing to see; I'm sure I'll acquire it once available...
Although I still have to say that I'd put higher priority on at least a preprint Vol. 5/6 of TAOCP. That would provide at least draft form for all of the series, what with The Stanford Graphbase at least providing the flavor of Vol. 4.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
In what WAY am I "persecuting" you? In what way are you suffering? Is it that painful for you to hear a point of view different from your own?
If you equate "disagreement with your views" with "persecution of your person", then you've proven my point: As long as I am free to think for myself and to worship as I please, you'll believe that you're being harmed somehow, and you'll do what you can to put a stop to it.
If you don't like that fact that Presidential candidates believe in God, then don't vote for them.
My point was that a non-christian presidential candidate is not politically viable. This fact makes your claims of persecution look pretty ridiculous. If professing Christianity were political suicide, then you could use that as evidence that Christians suffer for their beliefs, but that's just not the case. In national politics, professing atheism is political suicide. Yet you claim that national politics is dominated by professed atheists. Hello?!
Consenting adults are one thing, kids and dogs are another thing entirely. The point is that in England, which is a free country, people recognize this fact -- while the US is still dominated by junior religious comissars like you.
-- Slashdot sucks.
How do you say "Knuth, God, TeX, Open Source, Free Software, and GNU" in one breath?
:-)
Gnuth!!!
Sreeram.
A response from a believer's point of view:
I believe that I have summarized your points clearly - they are numbered, and my response follows:
1. Christians must abandon rational thought - that's just "wrong"
God expects me to use the gifts that He has given me - rational though is one of them - I'd better use it! Faith is not the antithesis of rational thought. If you think so, you are mistaken.
2. The message of Christianity has been communicated through people, and people cannot even get through the "telephone game" without destroying the message:
If you are speaking of something that is
a) generated by human thought, and
b) transmitted by human power, then your theory is correct.
If, however, it is generated by One with transcendant power, and transmitted with His guidance and control, it's another matter. The Bible is an amazing book - it's far more than you make it out to be.
3. "Being good" is a selfish motive for salvation. Shouldn't God reward those who are not selfish?
You miss the central teaching of Christianity. This is no small surprise, given that our culture and televangelists make it seem to be "being good." The message of Christianity is:
a) You are not perfect (and God is) [Romans 3:23]
b) Jesus Christ came to earth and died for your imperfections. [Romans 5:8]
c) You can be saved through faith in Him. [Ephesians 2:8-9]
It's not about being good! You cannot be good enough to make up for your imperfections!
Only a perfect person is worthy of a great reward.
4. If there's a God, why is it so hard to know what Truth is? (There are lots of religions.)
God has made it easy enough to understand, but, quite simply, we do not want to, because we'd rather do our own thing. [John 3:19]
5. It's not nice to scare people, and some Christians are really annoying!
If the Bible is true, then someone telling the truth about what will happen is quite loving. (Many people are not kind or compassionate in communicating with others. That is wrong. BTW - I find many so-called Christians annoying, too.)
But to get to the central point, if you were going to drink hemlock, thinking it would be refreshing, wouldn't it be loving of me to tell you that it's reall poison?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
*sniff* I'm being repressed! Everybody hates me, and it is so unfair. Honest. No matter what I do, they are out to get me. It's because I'm a Christian, so everybody makes fun of me all the time. And I'm a geek too, and that's bad so everybody blames everything on me. I am on the verge of extinction because there is a mass conspiracy plotting my doom, and I am being shunned by society.
Plus I have diarrhea.
He's one of those slimey Christian types
I'm sorry, but this has hit me pretty hard. Knuth is a Christian? I had no idea. If I had, I would have never started reading his books or using his software. I have just finished dumping his "Art of Computer Programming" books in the trash outside, lest my possession of these tomes be construed as an acceptance of his vile and filthy lifestyle. I do not give such acceptance, and it saddens me to hear such news about a man that I once thought a great deal of. I almost wish I hadn't started reading this article, but I suppose that it is for the best that I know the real truth.
*sigh*
I'm off to convert my LaTeX documents to groff.
Yeah, what Khalid and MrSippery said. Plus he's done (and is doing) a lot more including non-computer related stuff. Check out his WWW site:
http://www-cs-staff.Stanford.EDU/~knuth/
>Atheism isn't a lack of belief in God; it's the belief that there is no God.
Oh, all us atheists must be mistaken. Incidentially, Christianity isn't a belief in he existance of the isreli god, it's a belief in the superiority of chrisitans over all of that non-christian scum.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Athiest
Well, my college professors (some of whom are older than god) certainly thought so. "When somebody asks you if you're a god, you say, 'YES'!"
Heheheheh. I have proof that pink elephants exist. I don't have objective evidence, but just lick this here stamp...
Let me preface this by saying it is merely a what-if exercise, since I have not studied studied theology in seminary. I did read a few philosophy books, though.
I would rephrase the first assumption of your point in the opposite direction: our moral system resembles God's character. That may be important. If we accept the idea that God did create the universe and the idea that creation reflects His nature, we come to the idea that physical laws (like gravity) and moral laws (like those against murder) are similar.
One might as well ask, "Why do I fall when I step off of my roof?", but that doesn't really help.
Another piece to consider is the concept of divine justice and mercy. If you believe that God is all-knowing and all-loving (presupposed here, supported and explained in another argument), His view of justice and mercy is greater (as in, not limited by a certain amount of time or in scope to only a certain amount of people). I hate to use the word 'ineffable', but I think we bump up against human limitations quickly when attempting to understand Someone purported to be much greater than we are.
Another idea is much simpler. Does God make anyone do anything? (This is different from the question "Can God make anyone do anything?") It comes back to the free will argument again. (Standard Christian reasoning goes that God did not want a race of robots who love and obey Him because they were 'programmed' to do so -- He would rather some chose to do so, knowing that some would not.)
The previous poster's mention of God's purpose may help explain the pattern you bring up. The question there is, "What is God's purpose in acting in the world? Is it to enforce a standard of morality or is it to find a way to bring humanity back into relationship with him?" Christianity chooses the latter as His primary purpose.
What would I pick as an acceptable answer out of these? I would say that God allows moral choice (knowing that some will choose to do evil) and allows the consequences of these actions. If you are to believe Christianity, one day all wrongs will be righted and justice will prevail (tempered with great mercy, if you also accept their anthropology).
--
QDMerge 0.4!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I love you too man.
-- Slashdot sucks.
> And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.
> whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire
So if death and hell are cast into the fire, where does it say that people will suffer for eternity? I don't see a "burn, baby, burn" in the bible?!
Yep. The majority of Christians (or Budhists, or Tsoists, or Moslems, or...) share this in common with the majority of atheists.
Let's face it. Some people are just assholes.
When your in the lake of fire screaming for mercy, your going to wish you hadn't tossed around the name of the Almighty in such a nonchalant manner.
I've often thought there was something of the Deist in Lincoln, or certainly a kind of enlightment style of rationality. The Gettysburg Address sounds to me more like the description of a scientific experiment than a description of a great battle.
Lincoln often gets painted as the morose, super-compassionate president, but I think he was arguably the most intelligent president ever, excepting perhaps Jefferson. As a young lawyer, he decided his reasoning wasn't up to snuff, so he bought himself a copy of the Euclid and taught himself geometry This fact alone makes him one of my Geek heroes (along with Ben Franklin, who if he were alive today would almost cetainly be a hacker).
Apparently Euclid helped him out, because as a lawyer it was said that he would calmly allow every non-essential point then demolish his opponent with a few deft strokes of logic.
I'm not a Christian, or an atheist, but I think he's right. Atheism is believing that there is no god, agnosticism is believing that there might or might not be a god but you don't know.
Main Entry: atheism
Pronunciation: 'A-thE-"i-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French athéisme, from athée atheist, from Greek atheos godless, from a- + theos god
Date: 1546
1 archaic : UNGODLINESS, WICKEDNESS
2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity
from http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
You see, the hypocritical secular humanist atheist liberals (and members of false "religions" like Buddhism and Judiasm) are persecuting us Christians, and violating our right to freedom of religion every day of their lives!
How so, you ask? Easy!
They refuse to take orders from us. Our religion requires us to give them orders, and it requires them to obey. The free and unimpeded practice of our religion requires us to interfere in their private lives by means of legislation. We are required to force their children to pray to our God, we are required to send police officers into their bedrooms to put a stop to their immoral conduct, and the list goes on. But they keep trying not to let us do these things! It's true that we've had a lot of success in many areas, but as long as we're not entirely free to practice our religion, we are (in principle) not at all free to practice our religion. And as the saying goes, "if one man is not free, then none are free". Therefore, if our freedom of religion has been abrogated in this manner, than so has everybody else's freedom of religion. What that means, in simple terms, is that as long as a Buddhist is not forced to practice Christianity -- in fact, as long as he is even allowed to practice Buddhism -- he is being denied the freedom to practice his own religion (Buddhism)! It's an all-or-nothing proposition.
I hope this clarifies the bizarre persecution complex evinced by members of a religion which has totally dominated this country for more than 200 years. Name me a presidential candidate who hasn't professed conventional faith in the Christian God. Name me a self-described "born-again" Republican front-runner who has lost any significant support due to his religious views. Heh. Christian fundamentalists (as starkly opposed to sincere practicing Christians) have political power wildly out of proportion to their numbers. Nevertheless, they continually and quite hysterically paint themselves as "victims" of ill-defined persecution, in order to get sympathy and grab even more power.
Enough is enough. The "help-me-I'm-a-victim" game is annoying but understandable when played by somebody who really has gotten the shitty end of the stick[1], but an enormously powerful and wealthy political force like Christian fundamentalism is another matter entirely. Coming from them, it's just plain disgusting.
------------------------------
[1] My sympathy for some "victims" probably seems offensive to the fundies, and I don't blame them. After all, they feel equally offended by all of Christ's teachings, including his explicit prohibition of divorce.
This error came from MySQL (not mSQL), which does scale well (it handles Slashdot, doesn't it?)
but it won't scale at all if you don't set the max_connections variable high enough.
The majority of Christians (or Budhists, or Tsoists, or Moslems, or...) share this in common with the majority of atheists.
I don't entirely agree. For one thing, atheists don't often go around slaughtering the, uh, "unbelievers" (so to speak), and a lot of religions do that kind of thing from time to time. And from what I've read, Christianity can easily tie with Islam for Most Asshole-genic Religion. Not all religions promote idiocy to the same extent as those two.
Let's face it. Some people are just assholes.
True, but assholery has causes and exacerbating factors. An asshole religion can go a long way in both departments.
Finally, bear in mind that I carefully said "some" Christians. Most Christians that one meets are pretty damn tolerant. I've even met a few decent fundies, believe it or not.
It is irrelevant whether you can find verses to condemn slavery. People have great fun condemning Christians based on behaviours undertaken by a few who called themselves Christians, even though their actions were not at all biblical.
It is an historic fact that the abolition movement was lead by Christians, specifically Quakers. Read up and learn. If we are to be held responsible for wickedness done in the name of Christianity even though it was not Biblically based, should we not get the credit for good done in the name of Christianity even though it was not Biblically based?
I really, really, really wish that those who try to criticize Christianity on the basis of its history would learn some history first.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Looks like three are finished already, with more coming
;-)
Haven't I heard this about Knuth's work before?
Well I had the MySQL errors, now I'm on to another set:-
1 .rm?title=Donald
This server has reached its capacity for the requested url.
pnm://media.cmpnet.com/technetcast/tnc_mit_dk_0
To think I actually read DDJ and they cant even run a simple audio / video stream, back to consulting my preist on matters programmatic I think, although if I go Protestant I can do it without the guilt.....
Sarcasm? Whats that?
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
In these talks, Knuth makes the extremely important point that is missing from so much of what we perceive about Christianity in the Western world today - religion is a private thing, as personal as a lover and just as sacred. In the first talk, he speaks of teaching at Stanford, and refusing to answer students' questions about God and politics. Could this possibly be because he's weak and unable to discuss the subject, or is it more likely that he recognizes what the Religious Right refuses to, namely that God's (however you define him/her) place is not in politics or education or courtrooms, but in the hearts of those who find him/her real?
Is it real? Will it save your life? Is it even Christianity if you don't smear it in your friend's faces? The overwhelming feeling from a scientist who cannot help but feel a reverence for the tradition and the mystery that is human existence is: who cares? What matters is not whether or not you dip or sprinkle, but whether or not you need it to feed your soul.
Many scientists are knee-jerk atheists, being unable to reconcile Genesis with the overwhelming evidence for something different. However, maintaining a spiritual life is not about adhering to the tenants of a specific doctrine. Having not done the research, it nevertheless seems safe to say that Knuth, as a man of scientific mind, cannot reconcile some of the tenants of his faith to what he knows to be true, and has yet found a way to embrace it as a valued and necessary part of his life.
There's a lesson here. Whatever brought us here, whatever keeps us cranking along in life, be it evolution, creation, or something else, there is a piece in 99% of us that is mystical, that asks for some outlet. Accepting Christianity as an outlet does not mean succumbing to the stupidities that are fraught within it, just as they are fraught within every other religion, in varying ways. It does mean acknowledging one's own need for the unknown, and a way to interact with it.
Well, there have been very few opportunities for atheists to slaughter people who disagree with them. They haven't been in power in very many places or for very long. However, their track history hasn't been entirely spotless - U.S.S.R. and China were never known for their - uh - wonderful humanistic policies. And grouping the rest of atheism together with them will make as much sense as grouping all Christianity together with the Crusades/Inquisition, so I don't feel too guilty in doing so.
So, just wait awhile, and when they've got more power I'm sure atheists will eventually have the opportunity to repress them wacko religious folks.
Actually, I just came back from Knuth's 3rd
lecture (well...had dinner first). It was on
translating Bible verses without knowledge of
Hebrew or Greek. Yes, I came in saying to everyone
around that "Knuth is God", etc. But the lecture
was horrible. Well...at least it was extremely
uninteresting, IMHO. Maybe some of the other
lectures in the series will be better (maybe first two were), but
that looks doubtful. Art of CP, TeX, good math are all well and supernatural, but
3:16 (what he talked about today) is not. He sounded more like a preacher and less like a diety; that and he can't really give a presentation. Well...I'm going to go back to my altar now...
-----------------------------------------------
how much bandwidth has been wasted by this sig?
...there is no spoon.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Saying that religious people are the cause of bloodshed is simply idiocy. More wars have been waged for political reasons that religous reasons. Even the often used example of the Crusades is incorrect because it began for purely political reasons. It just so happened that the Pope backed it and recruited armies based on a false religious context.
Also, athiests have never truly been in power during history, so you cant blame religion for wars at all. Russia and China are the only non-religious run countries that I can think of, and they arent exactly utopias. It is the people in power that cause the problems in society, not religion.
Oh, and by the way. I am an athiest, not a religious zealot. I just dont agree with blaming religon for all of the world's problems simply because our leaders happen to be religious.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"When your in the lake of fire screaming for mercy,"
,"?
Shouldn't that read... "When you're in the lake of fire screaming for grammar
Just wonderin'.
~m
>>You make all of humanity look bad before his eyes.
And you make his so called creation look like a race of illiterate, inbred, idiots.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The Crusades were certainly started for religious reasons but many of the nobles, especially younger sons with no prospect of inheritance at home, followed them for political reasons. The redirection of the 4th crusade by the Doge of Venice to attack the *Christian* Byzantine Empire instead of the holy land is a particularly notable point where politics triumphed over religion in the crusades (although it may have been impossible without the dislike of the Catholic westerners for the Orthodox Byzantines).
"For one thing, atheists don't often go around slaughtering the, uh, "unbelievers" (so to speak), " is that a joke or what? ever heard of Mao and Stalin? they slaughtered millions and millions of people. The Soviet Union was officially atheist. China and North Korea still are and they really suck As a Jew I'm know of the yevesekes (Jewish leninist atheists) who persecuted religious Jews (including executing some) and attacked Russian Christians. Anyway, Knuth is a great coder and isn't running around attacking people. So stop attacking him because of his beliefs.
---
With bullshit like this, we Christians do have proof that we are being persecuted. If you don't like that fact that Presidential candidates believe in God, then don't vote for them. This is your problem not ours. This is proof Christians aren't the problem.
It sounds as if you're trying to turn science into a religion. You are making it an article of your faith that stuff outside of science is "dumb".
Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable. It can't. It wasn't designed to. But neither does it deny the existance outside of observation, it merely states that such knowledge is outside of it's domain. Trying to use science to disprove the existance of God is like trying to use a hammer to saw wood.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Thanks for that, now downloading at a whoping 0.9K/s on my 2mb/s ADSL link, I think they need to get some more bandwidth, or do us all a favour and post it on a few mirrors / Usenet, as anyone with an IQ in double figures and more than 30 seconds in the tech business would know that that chance of this being /.ed is 90%+.
If this site was using mod_perl they could have persistent connections to the db which may have solved the problem. They seem to be using php. Does it have such a feature?
Running a db server on the same machine as the webserver is a bad idea.
Connecting to the db as root is a bad idea unless they removed most of root's priveledges.
Before you try to scare people you should consider what scares them. Promising a hell to someone who believes in no afterlife whatsoever is hardly a threat, now is it. Consider the alternative... It is what scared most believers so much they took religious insurance to try and ward it off. Your hell is actually an atheists heaven. Yet an atheists reality is your worst nightmare.
So who is scaring whoom here?
Who are you gonna demand evidence from? The Pope?
You can't confirm or deny for sure that God exists. You may be able to tear apart the Bible, but that doesn't mean God doesn't exist. Proof that God exists? What about proof that God doesn't exist? I mean, where would you find proof that God exists? If God comes up and destroys some city? It could be that in doing so, God might disrupt the universe. See, God can break laws of physics and such, but then anything can happen, and everything goes into chaos. There is no logical reason to discount God as a possibility. Think about it.
There is such thing as being fooled by facts and math. Look at Numerology: 9/9/1999 = 9+9+1+9+9+9= 4+6 = 1+0 = 1. Uh oh, it must be the end of the world. Yeah, I know, it sounds pretty stupid, but you could probably fool quite a bit of logical people if you attached enough stuff to it. Say something like "See how there is this pattern in all the stars and such, and through the universe...". Probably quite amazing how much you will believe that is on TV, without questioning the evidence. All those Investigative Reporting shows, documentaries...etc. Seriously, you see some show that says airbags are dangerous and how some people got decapitated and you go "Oh no! Don't want that!" But you don't realize that they only pose a threat to certain people and that they might actually save your life.
Just because there is evidence does not mean anything anyway.
Well, I could continue my rant, but I've decided to stop.
"It's the underlying slave mentality and world hatred of it all that's so perverse."
What slave mentality? Some religions may have it, and even some christian denominations, but the Bible does not command people to be slaves of others. I am not required in the Bible to submit myself to a priest. Personally, my politics border on anarchism. My life is between me and my God. But the Bible contains more than religious lessons, it also contains descriptions of political and cultural norms. Perhaps this is what Neitsche was refering to. It was a great debate in the early christian church (and detailed in the book of Acts) whether non-jewish christians had to follow the cultural norms of judaism. The answer was no.
As to a "world hatred", this is partially true. Some christian denominations, particularly eastern, are deeper in to this than others. But this is only natural. The world is truly a rotten place. Pick up the newspaper on any given day and you'll see that this isn't a perfect place. But this doesn't deny the good that is also present in the world. In Neitsche's day, the prevalent christian teaching was that this world was thoroughly evil and that our lot in life was merely to endure through to the end. It's no wonder he ended up thinking what he did. But this is not what the Bible teaches (much of what people see christianity as is not what the Bible teaches either...).
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
We see many examples of people who believe things without proof. That is faith. We see them do stupid things because of their belief in that faith. That is the proof that faith is bad.
It's not that without faith, nothing is ever bad, but if you base your beliefs on rationality, you're more likely to change your beliefs when they aren't representative of the world.
If you believe what you're told, for example "God exists" without demanding evidence (and i don't mean the ambiguous and self-contradictory Bible), you're not cool - you're just plain dumb.
That is true. Maybe a bit harsh, but true. Especially the part about "without demanding evidence."
People can be lied to, or be wrong. If you look for evidence and find faked evidence, or a liar offering to teach you, that doesn't make you stupid. What makes you stupid is to not look for evidence, and reject it when you find it.
Almost everyone on /. would laugh at someone who believed company benchmarks without demanding to try the product himself. Especially with companies like MindCraft around who do everything possible to distort the truth. Why should we be less critical of someone who believes, with less evidence, in the existence of a god?
It doesn't make them a bad person, but it doesn't indicate a very critical mind.
We've already had a woman Prime Minister, and there are gay members of parliment, only the newspapers / TV actually care if they are gay, most of the rest of the population only care if they are any good e.g. an ex-minister was jailed not that long ago for perjury, which contrasts nicely with Clinton. Oh and one guy by the name of Micheal Portillo actually went up in his ratings after disclosing that he had homosexual experiences while at university and he is in the Conservative Party (our version of Republicans). One last thing one of the ministers of state is even blind and takes his guide (seeing eye) dog in with him.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
One word - Babelfish
Nuff said
Of course, that only applies to AMERICAN Christians of the past ~two hundred years. Christians have faced a lot of persecution throughout history and in many (most?) parts of the world today. We American Christians are just extremely fortunate to be living here.
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could man!" -Larry and Bob in VeggieTales
Please try to honestly answer these questions:
1). Would George Bush have ever been elected president if he had been Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist dare I suggest... GAY?
2). Has there ever been a president who has been of a religion other than a Christian-based one?
3). Has there been a female president?
What you are neglecting to recognize when you say "Christians are being persecuted" is that it is VERY difficult to persecute a group on a national scale when that group is very squarely in the majority and very clearly holds the support of the population. You may be mocked, you may be ridiculed, and you may be taunted by \.ers for a blind belief in your God, but you most certainly are not a victim who has been persecuted for your beliefs. In fact, \. is likely the ONLY place where you are forced to defend your beliefs in ANY way. I am sure you feel no shame or fear when walking down the street wearing a cross around your neck, whereas Americans who are gay or who are black can honestly be afraid of major persecution.
I know it is easy to call yourself a victim these days, but please take a look at the situation and be honest, if only with yourself.
~m
Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable.
No one's making a religeon of science here (although many do that). God is irrelevant because it is unknowable. Even if you claim to "know god", your experience is unintelligible to me (and everyone else).
Re: the arguments against xtianity: Neitsche said it better than anyone else. If you want to be challenged, as a christian, read the "Antichrist". It has little to do with zealotry ala Pat Robertson. It's the underlying slave mentality and world hatred of it all that's so perverse.
support gun control: take guns from cops
video stream: http://www.technetcast.com/av/tnc_mit_dk_02.rm.
He's one of those slimey Christian types: he'll probably try to repress you!
<apology>
I'm sorry, but Katz's repeated slams of Christians have really annoyed me pretty badly. Expect bitterness for a while.
</apology>
-- Slashdot sucks.
I'm almost at the end of "The Pearly Gates Of Cyberspace - A History of Space From Dante to The Internet", a really excellent read on how our concept of space has developed though the ages, from religous soul "space" to the Net, I dont quite agree with the ending, but the history is fascinaing and well worth a read.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Apparently, Mr. Knuth's being a christian has deeply offended a lot of you. My guess would be that you're much, much more intolerant of other people than any imagined intolerance on christianity's part.
Geeks hate being wrong (I know, I am one). But that's what christianity is, telling you that you're wrong, a sinner, doomed. But you guys are so narrow minded that you can't get past that to find out that it also talks about what to do about it.
I could of course mention the fact that it was geeks killing christians at Columbine, but that's grossly unfair. Just as unfair as all these posts here blaming religion for all the atrocities in the world.
Christian bashing is the last refuge of the bigot in this era of political correctness.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
What about all of the Christian-based persecution of [insert other religous beliefs here] more than 200 years ago? The Crusades? Western expansion of early America? Southern Christian attitudes during mid-1800s slavery? Historical persecution is still persecution. Basically every group has some history of it, so don't attribute innocence of your group (or apply a martyr attitude) by ignoring past crimes against personal beliefs.
"We see many examples of people who believe things without proof. That is faith. We see them do stupid things because of their belief in that faith. That is the proof that faith is bad."
You are mischaracterizing faith. It is much more than blindly accepting what someone else is telling you. It is accepting something because you *know* it to be true.
Every person with faith has strong and compelling evidence for that faith. But just because that evidence is not scientific, or is meaningless to you, does not make it any less evidence. I agree that "blind faith" is not very smart, but a faith bolstered by evidence, scientific or otherwise, is certainly not stupid.
"It doesn't make them a bad person, but it doesn't indicate a very critical mind."
I could go on and on about the great critical minds in history who were people of faith. But I won't, look them up in your own history books.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Do the following. Take the number of "anti-Christian" posts, then seperate
- The posts based on humor
- The posts based on idiot trolls
- The posts based on actual ant-Christian feelings
then compare these numbers with the number of hits Slashdot gets, and you will find that only a few number of people post actual anti-Christian posts. Even then people have the right to express their feelings, even if they are anti-Christian. To say that Slashdot has an anti-Christian slant (implying that it is either organized by the moderators, or that huge numbers of anti-Christian people are posting) is simply lunacy. By ignoring the actual material, frequency, and quality of the supposed anti-Christian posts, you are fueling the desire of a few Christians to say "hey, we are being persecuted, we are victims!"Sure, some people who post on Slashdot may have problems with Christianity. Some posts are Christian in nature. Just acknowledge that some people have feelings both ways without bringing down the forum itself.
Is that a devotee of old IBM mainframe systems? Or someone who likes General Tso's Chicken? Ohhhh... you said Taoist. In the words of the late Emily Litella, "Neever miind."
Fundamentalist:Christian::Islamist:Muslim::Zionist :Jew
The fool below who claims that Christians enjoy no persecution in our society has been moderated directly up.
Oh yeah. For all you who whine about the evils of the religious right: THEY ARE NOT THE MAINBODY OF CHRISTIANITY! And stop your whining: have you people any idea what has been done to Christians in the past and in other countries? Our religious started out with its founder executed. As far as I know, at least 5 of the original twelve apostles were killed by the government of the time.
Why? Because people suck and power corrupts! And whatever group is in power will abuse it. So, you have gross abuse of power by atheists (think Stalin), including abuse of Christians. The Jews are documented to have done some pretty unpleasant things to their enemies (looked in Israel lately and the way they treat the palestinian Christians). Even Eastern faiths are not immune: look at the ethnic conflicts in India/Pakistan sometime. Or consider that the pacific half of WWII was caused by Shinto (the Japanese national religion) racism in addition to its obvious, secular causes. And you have gross abuse of power by putative Christians throughout history, but its probably nothing to compare to what has been done by non-Christians.
I can't speak for any other faith system, but calling yourself a Christian does not make you a Christian! Christ himself said so:
Of course, the trick is telling who is and who isn't a "real" Christian. The answer is that you can't. But if you devote yourself first to God then, like numerous Christians who stood up against injustice from the church (notably Dietrich Bonhoeffer in WWII, but also many, many others) you will know what God is calling you to do. Or, as the verse above continues: But, I guess I'm speaking to people who won't listen.Listen people: I don't slam you. I have in fact walked out of churches when they became to vehement in condemning people of other faiths (not because people of other faiths are right: universalism is an absurdity, but because I can respect them as other peoples attempts to pursue God even when they are wrong). All I ask is that you exercise some care to get your facts straight before you slander me and my brothers.
Oh yeah: for being such repressers, I find it interesting that Christian sentiment was what led most abolitionists to want to abolish slavery.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Need I say more?
-- Slashdot sucks.
God IS real.
Unless declared an integer.
(unfortunately not mine, although I don't know where I got it)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Well.... you can. Sortof.
The basics of the argument I'd make are pretty much covered in the movie "Contact" (can't remember if the book is the same; it's been too long). The long and the short of it is that you can have a personal experience that is confirmation enough to convince you. The catch is such experiences are rarely observable by a third party (although some effects are usually observable). They are therefore "personal", which some folks take to mean "false".
The experiences are, however, sort of repeatable. The conditions under which such things are experienced are published, too. Though not necessarily well understood -- that's another catch.
Sigh. A slashdot post is probably not the best vehicle for the nuances of these ideas. But give 'em some thought, and realize this: if you're looking for proof in the words of the Bible (or any religious text), you're not using it the way it was meant to be used. In my experience, it has a lot more to do with how you live.
Tweet, tweet.
You have such a subtle yet deep way of using that term of yours, the 'asshole' one. I bet you've convinced dozens, if not hundreds of us to your view with your witticisms.
Such a well-educated and enlightened point of view and vocabulary must come after years of study. Please, pray tell, what school or monestary did you attend, so that we may all rush there to become enlightened?
Yeesh. They never stop whining.
Listen twerp, nobody cares. I don't discriminate against xians, I discriminate against all religions equally, as they all indicate the same complete lack of understanding.
And as for the voting thing. I don't. But unfortunately your poor little repressed self and hundreds of millions of others, are unable to vote away from the church line.
You are anything but repressed. You'll never be happy until you can have anyone who disagrees with you 're-educated'. 'Bullshit' like this post, and the one you replied to just proves that not everyone is a close-minded overly-sensitive uneducatable puke like you.
Take your sorry-ass self-pity off to a religious site where people are programmed to care.
Senor, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Not anytime soon, I hope ;)
--
PanDuh!
I'm not telling Christians to quit talking. In fact, most Christians (btw, I am not a Christian) aren't talking. I have several friends who are Christians, and they do not go around trying to convert everybody. Nor do they complain about Christians being treated unfairly by the world at large.
I am irritated, however, by the vocal minorities of the respective groups that seem to be reasonably successful at giving their entire group a bad name.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
When your in the lake of fire screaming for mercy, your going to wish you hadn't tossed around the name of the Almighty in such a nonchalant manner.
Ah, yes, this is why fundies amuse me so much. Whenever it comes down to it, it's always 'you'll regret not bowing down, because GOD WILL TORTURE YOU FOREVER! BWAHAHAHA!' Indeed, I'm sure that I could be made to crawl by pain; but so could I by any human torturer. I know my limits. But why would I worship someone because of their power to give pain? Why would I worship Pinochet's crew of torturers, or Charles Ng, or all the other mad and cruel ones? Power does not equal right; power does not equal good.
It's why I've never feared not believing; if the God that tortures for non-belief is true, he is not worthy of worship, and the only right path is not bow your head to madness, no matter the pain. And I've never understood why people who shout so loudly about the need for virtue worship darkness so fervently.
Laura
I won't discount someone because they are religious, but I will examine what they say carefully because of the evidence that it's tainted.
You are mischaracterizing faith. It is much more than blindly accepting what someone else is telling you. It is accepting something because you *know* it to be true.
Well, if you *know* it to be true without a lot of evidence, then that seems to indicate something unflattering about how hard you are to convince.
Coward
The name of it was "AntiChrist"... its my autobiography, Muah-ahahahha ha *cough*.. ahem
Coward
The poster of your reply wasn't bashing, just expressing an opinion. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. You are demonstrating that you don't want to accept other's opinions, just a "I'm right, everyone else is wrong" attitude. The guy is making a judgement on something that is completely certain, that being someone's belief in religion. You may need to read the post a few times to understand what the person is trying to say.
Coward