Seriously, if it could be made to handle Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, it would be interesting to identify which books share authors. I'd be very curious especially about the ones who's authors are more disputed such as the book of Hebrews, the gospels, and the Tanakh/Pentateuch.
My original post was in response to db32 statement that the problem with creationists is a "piss-poor" understanding of probability and this statement:
It seems funny to me that the whole thing stems from "the probability of that happening is so small that it couldn't possibly happen". No...the probability of that happening is so small that it makes it a near miracle that it happened. That is the whole damned point of probability. Determining the frequency of an event that COULD happen. I am in no way asserting that I have as much knowledge about science as any other ordinary person on here. I would however assert that I probably have more knowledge and understanding about things of a spiritual nature than most unbelievers on here. Science and faith in God should not ever be used to discount each other. Science should be used to explain that which can be explained and observed using the scientific method and faith in God should be used to explain the things of the spiritual world and life.
I agree that from a strictly scientific perspective, the theories of evolution are the most probable of any other explanations about the origin of species. For myself, I believe in a spiritual realm which involves a God based on my own experiences. Because I believe in God, I subscribe to His account of creation which made everything in a mature form, such as the universe, the earth as well as every living thing on it. If God does exist, do you not agree that He would have the power to make everything in it's current form, showing the evidence of it's prehistoric nature? Just think, He didn't make a fetus, He made a Man.
If someone wants to base their entire belief about why we are here strictly on science and that which is seen, that is their choice. Honestly, I don't believe any person has the capacity to fully reject the fact that there is a God because He built into every person a sense or knowledge of their creator, all they can really do is suppress the truth, in unrighteousness as the bible says. I don't believe in atheists and if you are one and think I'm full of crap, ask yourself if you would pass a lie detector test with the question "Do you believe in God?"
Well, I suppose that if I knew for a fact that the only two explanations were an improbable event or God, I would find it easier to believe in God if that's where the odds were pointing. I don't see how this is the case, though. Here's a start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
You're not a Christian because you don't have the stomach to sacrifice young girl to Chicomecoatl once every September, are you? So that's what the Christian Supply Store is for!
Since you've already stated that this is a waste of time, I am going to respond to what I think is important for me to say and be done. As for reading Dawkins books or any of the other atheist books, if you could point me to one that contains understandable and acceptable answers to pretty much every question about life, I would be more than happy to read it, until then, I will stick with the bible that already has done so. It sounds as though you are doing the same with rejecting any sort of spiritual truths based on what other people are saying, just like what happened during your "religious" life. I can understand where you're coming from because I went through the something similar, I grew up in a "religious" family learning and doing "religious" things until finally I was so disgusted with the hypocrisy of it all that I moved out on my own while still in high school. For around 6 years, I was in the darkest time of my life, rejecting my faith for what the world had to offer. At a certain point, God called me back and I started seeking after the truth for myself instead of just going off of what other people had to say. I don't mean to sound cliché but I do pray that whatever is keeping you from God at this point, that either you will come to your senses to remove it before God chooses to remove it the hard way, it's so much less painful when we follow directions and can avoid discipline in any situations. Just know that like the prodigal son, if you do decide to come back, He will run to meet you and welcome you back with more love and blessings than you can imagine, trust me, I experienced it myself.
As for the sacrifice story you spoke of, it's in Judges 11:34-40. Here's a commentary from Chuck Smith which goes along with my initial thought of her sacrifice not being commanded by God but was something Jephthah not only unwisely vowed, but also sinfully carried out.
Now, number one, God had forbidden human sacrifice. There is a question of whether or not he actually killed her. The burnt offering sacrifice was actually a sacrifice of consecration unto God. And there are some commentators who teach that he gave her to God to perpetual virginity. In other words, to keep her from ever marrying and she was consigned to a life of celibacy because of the vow her father had made. That is possible, it isn't probable but it is possible. From the apparent reading of the text he did this awful thing and actually sacrificed his daughter unto the Lord.
However, I am convinced that God did not require it of him nor would God require it of him. Under the law where your first child actually was to be given to God, God made provisions for the redemption of the first child with an animal. And I'm certain that God would have allowed Jephthah to make a substitution for his daughter in this case.
We must remember that in the society that was surrounding the children of Israel in those days, human sacrifice of your children was a very common thing to the pagan gods. In the worship of Moloch, in the worship of Baal, the common practice was the sacrificing of your children unto god, unto your gods. In the uncovering of the houses of the Canaanites, in the foundations of the houses they discovered many jars with the skeletons of babies. They considered a good luck omen to actually bury your baby in the foundation when you build a house sacrificing it unto the gods and so forth. And it was common practice among the pagans by which the children of Israel surrounded. But it was something that was strictly forbidden by God. So if Jephthah did it, he did it of his own will, not because God demanded it. It is a very horrible thing. It is hard for us to understand. We cannot really blame God. You say, "But why did God allow her to come first out of the house? Why didn't she chase the cat out in front of her or something?" That I don't know. My final thought on it is that yes God is sovereign, but He also gives man free will as well as giving Satan dominion over the earth.
The difference between God and faeries is He spoke to use through His prophets and came to our world as a man and proved Himself to be God, changing our entire civilization 2000 years ago and before.
As for being a dualist, read the linked book for more detail but in a sense, this would be two forces of equal power of good and evil. The problem with this is in order for one to be good and one to be evil, there has to be a base to measure good and evil, thereby requiring a higher power to draw good from, thus returning the a singular higher authority.
I have evidence for what I believe in based on the bible (which does require a certain amount of faith to believe), you have no evidence to say there isn't a spiritual realm (this requires even more faith to reject since you have no grounds to do so other than our own minuscule human intellects).
I believe evolution is possible in the cases where it can either be observed or is statistically probable.
Laughing at someone because they hold a different view than yours is incredibly rude, arrogant, and close-minded.
Rejecting the truth about God based on a few "contradictions" that you heard of or have a hard time understanding the situation/context will not be a very strong argument in a hundred years when you are standing before God on your day of judgment.
No other religion's so-called "gods" came to man and not only said that they were god, but also proved the way Jesus did in His lifetime.
The Old Testament was given to show us that no man is capable on his own power to be worthy and acceptable to God. The law contained no mercy, and no grace. It was intolerant to corruption and demanded justice for people's sins. Under the New Testament, we are offered grace and mercy and forgiveness of sins, no longer under the law since Jesus fulfilled the law.
Abraham was still a man who sins but was saved by his faith. God asked him to sacrifice Isaac as a test of his faith, as well as who Abraham loved more, his son or God.
I have to head home at the moment, I will attempt to reply to the rest of your statements when I get a chance.
First of all, I am in no way a professional in science or theology and from what I've heard from you so far, I take it neither are you. When you say the bible is "contradictory", this would imply that you've studied it for yourself, knowing the location and context of the suggested "contradictions" and could not only successfully debate them here and now with me, but also any one of the great theological minds of the past 2000 years. Do you honestly believe that these questions/statements that you are making here have not been brought up before and thoroughly quashed? Where's the smoking gun from the death of authority of the bible? Like I said in the OP, read some professional Christian apologetics before you come out making baseless claims rooted in a hard heart that rejects the light with prejudice seeking only to remain in darkness.
If you ever wondered what the whole "born again" thing is all about, before we come to Christ, it's like being a child in the womb, warm and comfortable in the darkness, but in this case, we have a choice to be born into life. Should you choose to remain in the old life, in the comfort and pleasures of this world, you will ultimately die.
I was in fact saying exactly what you are saying, that truth IS discretely boolean, true = 1 or on, false = 0 or off. In my post, I was arguing against the idea that truth is relative in response to your earlier statement that "how could anybody" (know the truth). Generally when somebody says this sort of thing these days, they are referring to truth being relative in the sense that truth is whatever someone believes (my apologies if I mistook you in having this illogical idea about truth)
See my other post in response to me ignoring your other points.
I believe everything in the bible to wholly be the inspired Word of God. One thing most unbelievers struggle to understand is how God can be a loving God, while being a just God. As for your list, I have no adverse convictions concerning the situations and/or context in the scriptures:
"genocide" - Commandment of God to judge a wicked nation "infanticide" - included in "genocide" (wasn't actually completed properly) "rape" - Was actions of men, not commandment of God "murder" - There are two translations for "kill", one being kill in the sense of judgment or capital punishment, the other being "murder" which is done in hatred (read the book I linked for further knowledge on this) "stealing" - I'm not aware of commandments from God to steal, I suspect this would fall into the category of men's actions "genital manipulation" - This was to be done as a sign of the covenant established by God with the children of Israel for them to remember that they were set apart from everyone else, His chosen people.
If you have specific verses that you are struggling I would be happy to go over them (please do not cut and paste from some website as this is annoying and totally a waste of time)
I addressed the other points in my post about faith so I will not regurgitate it here.
magical plains of existance The spiritual realm is not hard to understand if you look at if from the perspective of the different dimensions on a piece of paper. A line is the first dimension, a square is the second, a cube would be the third (you are here). The spiritual realm would be like looking at all three dimensions on a piece of paper. Keep in mind that in the first dimension, you would have no way to imagine the second, the same would be from the second to the third and so on. Just because we can't see it or even imagine what it would be like doesn't mean that it's not there. All we can hope to know is if somehow God comes into our dimension and gives us a speck of knowledge, which is exactly what He did when He spoke to the prophets and most directly, was born into this world as a man Himself.
I see that you missed the fact that I wasn't talking about science being relative, I was talking about truth. I do however understand that science is striving to find the truth, but without the hope of ever knowing it (as we have seen throughout the ages).
and you yourself have no insight or evideence of what is true or not (how could anyone) I don't mean to sidestep the rest of your post, I can address it if you truly want my view, but you have hit the very core of the problem. The notion of relativism is nothing new, but is fundamentally flawed in the fact that it is self-defeating. By truth, most people are actually talking about perspective and/or preference, which has nothing to do with reality.
To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true As Aristotle plainly puts here, truth is by nature intolerant. Until a person finds the truth, they are in error. Jesus said to Pilate "those who are of the truth here My voice", to which Pilate replied "What is truth?"
As for my evidence in the truth, I have confidence in the authority of Jesus who not only claimed to be God, but proved it by miracles, healings, resurrections while He was alive, but when He did die, He raised Himself from the dead, showing Himself to not only the disciples, but also more than 500 eye witnesses, most of who went to their deaths on the basis of His witness to them.
I see that you do not understand what faith really is. In order to have understanding, one must have knowledge of that which is to be understood. The definition of faith in the bible is "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Heb 11:1. Step away from theology and think about that definition of faith in regards to you stepping on a plane. Once someone obtains the knowledge of who God really is and comes to understand Him, it is not a big deal to have faith in what He says to be true through the evidence He provides us of the things not seen. Sometimes it is through these evidences that people come to understand who He is.
If science has never, and can never disprove that there is a god, in which way has it been capable of disproving any specific gods of ancient holy texts? I beg you to please present your strong reasons for such a statement.
Does not a three dimensional cube also consist of squares (2D), lines (1D), and points? Why is it such a stretch that 1 omnipotent God can consist of multiple parts or functions?
Proof exists in mathematics where there is no possibility of falsification. Science makes no claims of proof, only theories, which can become laws based empirical evidence. Take Newton's theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of gravity later superseded it and is now law. Personally, this is a bad example because I believe the theories of evolution are far from being made laws because there are far more answers that have yet to be answered than have, seems to me far from conclusive.
At which point does one draw the line that believing in the improbable requires more faith than believing in a sovereign, omnipotent God? I understand the notion behind unbelief but at a certain point, from the outside, it really just looks like grasping at straws to avoid responsibility for one's own sins.
Please understand that I am in no way rejecting the work that science has accomplished, I just get irritated when people use science to try to explain something that is not within the scope of it's intended purpose, studying observable facts and creating theories based on experimentation. Remember, there is no such thing as "proof" in science, only fact, hypotheses, theories, and laws.
I find it interesting that there is this notion that to believe in God, one must check their brain at the door. Christianity is simple enough for a child to understand and deep enough to satisfy the greatest minds in human history. If you truly value reason, I challenge you to some serious works in Christian apologetics, both modern and ancient. I suggest the book "mere christianity" by C.S. Lewis - http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt
So what happens if you pop a DVD into a freshly installed WinXP system and try to play it? You have to buy/steal a copy of WinDVD or some other crappy dvd software. On linux, you type a few commands and you're enjoying your goodies.
Stoo
After first using MythDora 3.2, then going through the learning curve of setting up a MythTV box from scratch on Fedora 6 with the atrpms software repo, I'm curious how well this new MythDora 4.0 works after the initial install in terms of required tweaking.
I'm pulling down the torrent now and will post on how well it goes if I get a chance to install it tonight.
Stoo
Not only do the ubuntu systems come with monitors, they also have a core2 duo instead of celeron, 1GB RAM instead of 512, and 250GB HD instead of 80GB.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, if it could be made to handle Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, it would be interesting to identify which books share authors. I'd be very curious especially about the ones who's authors are more disputed such as the book of Hebrews, the gospels, and the Tanakh/Pentateuch.
These guys have done several spoofs with linux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjpn3L3bSJQ&NR=1
I agree that from a strictly scientific perspective, the theories of evolution are the most probable of any other explanations about the origin of species. For myself, I believe in a spiritual realm which involves a God based on my own experiences. Because I believe in God, I subscribe to His account of creation which made everything in a mature form, such as the universe, the earth as well as every living thing on it. If God does exist, do you not agree that He would have the power to make everything in it's current form, showing the evidence of it's prehistoric nature? Just think, He didn't make a fetus, He made a Man.
If someone wants to base their entire belief about why we are here strictly on science and that which is seen, that is their choice. Honestly, I don't believe any person has the capacity to fully reject the fact that there is a God because He built into every person a sense or knowledge of their creator, all they can really do is suppress the truth, in unrighteousness as the bible says. I don't believe in atheists and if you are one and think I'm full of crap, ask yourself if you would pass a lie detector test with the question "Do you believe in God?"
In Christ's love, stoo
In Christ's love, stoo
As for the sacrifice story you spoke of, it's in Judges 11:34-40. Here's a commentary from Chuck Smith which goes along with my initial thought of her sacrifice not being commanded by God but was something Jephthah not only unwisely vowed, but also sinfully carried out. Now, number one, God had forbidden human sacrifice. There is a question of whether or not he actually killed her. The burnt offering sacrifice was actually a sacrifice of consecration unto God. And there are some commentators who teach that he gave her to God to perpetual virginity. In other words, to keep her from ever marrying and she was consigned to a life of celibacy because of the vow her father had made. That is possible, it isn't probable but it is possible. From the apparent reading of the text he did this awful thing and actually sacrificed his daughter unto the Lord.
However, I am convinced that God did not require it of him nor would God require it of him. Under the law where your first child actually was to be given to God, God made provisions for the redemption of the first child with an animal. And I'm certain that God would have allowed Jephthah to make a substitution for his daughter in this case.
We must remember that in the society that was surrounding the children of Israel in those days, human sacrifice of your children was a very common thing to the pagan gods. In the worship of Moloch, in the worship of Baal, the common practice was the sacrificing of your children unto god, unto your gods. In the uncovering of the houses of the Canaanites, in the foundations of the houses they discovered many jars with the skeletons of babies. They considered a good luck omen to actually bury your baby in the foundation when you build a house sacrificing it unto the gods and so forth. And it was common practice among the pagans by which the children of Israel surrounded. But it was something that was strictly forbidden by God. So if Jephthah did it, he did it of his own will, not because God demanded it. It is a very horrible thing. It is hard for us to understand. We cannot really blame God. You say, "But why did God allow her to come first out of the house? Why didn't she chase the cat out in front of her or something?" That I don't know. My final thought on it is that yes God is sovereign, but He also gives man free will as well as giving Satan dominion over the earth.
In Christ's love, stoo
The difference between God and faeries is He spoke to use through His prophets and came to our world as a man and proved Himself to be God, changing our entire civilization 2000 years ago and before.
As for being a dualist, read the linked book for more detail but in a sense, this would be two forces of equal power of good and evil. The problem with this is in order for one to be good and one to be evil, there has to be a base to measure good and evil, thereby requiring a higher power to draw good from, thus returning the a singular higher authority.
I have evidence for what I believe in based on the bible (which does require a certain amount of faith to believe), you have no evidence to say there isn't a spiritual realm (this requires even more faith to reject since you have no grounds to do so other than our own minuscule human intellects).
I believe evolution is possible in the cases where it can either be observed or is statistically probable.
Laughing at someone because they hold a different view than yours is incredibly rude, arrogant, and close-minded.
Rejecting the truth about God based on a few "contradictions" that you heard of or have a hard time understanding the situation/context will not be a very strong argument in a hundred years when you are standing before God on your day of judgment.
No other religion's so-called "gods" came to man and not only said that they were god, but also proved the way Jesus did in His lifetime.
The Old Testament was given to show us that no man is capable on his own power to be worthy and acceptable to God. The law contained no mercy, and no grace. It was intolerant to corruption and demanded justice for people's sins. Under the New Testament, we are offered grace and mercy and forgiveness of sins, no longer under the law since Jesus fulfilled the law.
Abraham was still a man who sins but was saved by his faith. God asked him to sacrifice Isaac as a test of his faith, as well as who Abraham loved more, his son or God.
I have to head home at the moment, I will attempt to reply to the rest of your statements when I get a chance.
In Christ's love, stoo
First of all, I am in no way a professional in science or theology and from what I've heard from you so far, I take it neither are you. When you say the bible is "contradictory", this would imply that you've studied it for yourself, knowing the location and context of the suggested "contradictions" and could not only successfully debate them here and now with me, but also any one of the great theological minds of the past 2000 years. Do you honestly believe that these questions/statements that you are making here have not been brought up before and thoroughly quashed? Where's the smoking gun from the death of authority of the bible? Like I said in the OP, read some professional Christian apologetics before you come out making baseless claims rooted in a hard heart that rejects the light with prejudice seeking only to remain in darkness.
If you ever wondered what the whole "born again" thing is all about, before we come to Christ, it's like being a child in the womb, warm and comfortable in the darkness, but in this case, we have a choice to be born into life. Should you choose to remain in the old life, in the comfort and pleasures of this world, you will ultimately die.
In Christ's love, stoo
I was in fact saying exactly what you are saying, that truth IS discretely boolean, true = 1 or on, false = 0 or off. In my post, I was arguing against the idea that truth is relative in response to your earlier statement that "how could anybody" (know the truth). Generally when somebody says this sort of thing these days, they are referring to truth being relative in the sense that truth is whatever someone believes (my apologies if I mistook you in having this illogical idea about truth)
See my other post in response to me ignoring your other points.
In Christ's love, stoo
"genocide" - Commandment of God to judge a wicked nation
"infanticide" - included in "genocide" (wasn't actually completed properly)
"rape" - Was actions of men, not commandment of God
"murder" - There are two translations for "kill", one being kill in the sense of judgment or capital punishment, the other being "murder" which is done in hatred (read the book I linked for further knowledge on this)
"stealing" - I'm not aware of commandments from God to steal, I suspect this would fall into the category of men's actions
"genital manipulation" - This was to be done as a sign of the covenant established by God with the children of Israel for them to remember that they were set apart from everyone else, His chosen people.
If you have specific verses that you are struggling I would be happy to go over them (please do not cut and paste from some website as this is annoying and totally a waste of time)
I addressed the other points in my post about faith so I will not regurgitate it here. magical plains of existance The spiritual realm is not hard to understand if you look at if from the perspective of the different dimensions on a piece of paper. A line is the first dimension, a square is the second, a cube would be the third (you are here). The spiritual realm would be like looking at all three dimensions on a piece of paper. Keep in mind that in the first dimension, you would have no way to imagine the second, the same would be from the second to the third and so on. Just because we can't see it or even imagine what it would be like doesn't mean that it's not there. All we can hope to know is if somehow God comes into our dimension and gives us a speck of knowledge, which is exactly what He did when He spoke to the prophets and most directly, was born into this world as a man Himself.
In Christ's love, stoo
I see that you missed the fact that I wasn't talking about science being relative, I was talking about truth. I do however understand that science is striving to find the truth, but without the hope of ever knowing it (as we have seen throughout the ages).
In Christ's love, stoo
As for my evidence in the truth, I have confidence in the authority of Jesus who not only claimed to be God, but proved it by miracles, healings, resurrections while He was alive, but when He did die, He raised Himself from the dead, showing Himself to not only the disciples, but also more than 500 eye witnesses, most of who went to their deaths on the basis of His witness to them.
In Christ's love, stoo
I see that you do not understand what faith really is. In order to have understanding, one must have knowledge of that which is to be understood. The definition of faith in the bible is "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Heb 11:1. Step away from theology and think about that definition of faith in regards to you stepping on a plane. Once someone obtains the knowledge of who God really is and comes to understand Him, it is not a big deal to have faith in what He says to be true through the evidence He provides us of the things not seen. Sometimes it is through these evidences that people come to understand who He is.
In Christ's love, stoo
How about "those who worship the creator instead of the created"?
In Christ's love, stoo
If science has never, and can never disprove that there is a god, in which way has it been capable of disproving any specific gods of ancient holy texts? I beg you to please present your strong reasons for such a statement.
In Christ's love, stoo
Does not a three dimensional cube also consist of squares (2D), lines (1D), and points? Why is it such a stretch that 1 omnipotent God can consist of multiple parts or functions?
In Christ's love, stoo
Proof exists in mathematics where there is no possibility of falsification. Science makes no claims of proof, only theories, which can become laws based empirical evidence. Take Newton's theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of gravity later superseded it and is now law. Personally, this is a bad example because I believe the theories of evolution are far from being made laws because there are far more answers that have yet to be answered than have, seems to me far from conclusive.
In Christ's love, stoo
At which point does one draw the line that believing in the improbable requires more faith than believing in a sovereign, omnipotent God? I understand the notion behind unbelief but at a certain point, from the outside, it really just looks like grasping at straws to avoid responsibility for one's own sins.
Please understand that I am in no way rejecting the work that science has accomplished, I just get irritated when people use science to try to explain something that is not within the scope of it's intended purpose, studying observable facts and creating theories based on experimentation. Remember, there is no such thing as "proof" in science, only fact, hypotheses, theories, and laws.
In Christ's love, stoo
I find it interesting that there is this notion that to believe in God, one must check their brain at the door. Christianity is simple enough for a child to understand and deep enough to satisfy the greatest minds in human history. If you truly value reason, I challenge you to some serious works in Christian apologetics, both modern and ancient. I suggest the book "mere christianity" by C.S. Lewis - http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt
In Christ's love, stoo
The release notes page was already hosed before this hit slashdot. Go here.
Check here.
So what happens if you pop a DVD into a freshly installed WinXP system and try to play it? You have to buy/steal a copy of WinDVD or some other crappy dvd software. On linux, you type a few commands and you're enjoying your goodies. Stoo
After first using MythDora 3.2, then going through the learning curve of setting up a MythTV box from scratch on Fedora 6 with the atrpms software repo, I'm curious how well this new MythDora 4.0 works after the initial install in terms of required tweaking. I'm pulling down the torrent now and will post on how well it goes if I get a chance to install it tonight. Stoo
It's an Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950, not ATI.
Not only do the ubuntu systems come with monitors, they also have a core2 duo instead of celeron, 1GB RAM instead of 512, and 250GB HD instead of 80GB. Sounds like a good deal to me.
CTRL+K will do the trick.