- Lie about using a wrist strap, - You're going to crack under the pressure? Grow some balls
If you honestly fry the RAM from ESD, are you really going to be that cheap? Ram is what, $8 a gig now? Usually part of growing up is learning what "personal responsibility" is.
and that they now have to process a warranty return and lie about using a wrist strap.
In the last 5 years doing IT work, I have NEVER used a wrist strap. I have probably installed well over a terabyte of RAM, totalling well over 200 sticks, as well as building 30-40 computers, and NEVER had a component fried when I was done with it.
See, when you open the METAL CASE of a computer, youre touching METAL, and discharging most of the ESD you have built up, so having someone fry a stick of ram in that manner is really pretty rare, especially if you mentioned "hold it by the heat spreader, NOT the pins"-- as even if you do discharge on the heatspreader, I dont think it would do very much.
Its also per gigaBIT, not gigabyte. Multiply by 8 and you have $22.40 sticks dropping to $6.40. I do remember it being around $20 a gig a while ago, and if you check current prices RAM is about $8 a gig now.
Can the average PC user....be trusted not to screw anything up inside a desktop or laptop PC when installing RAM sticks?
From personal experience, yes. Show them a picture of where the ram slot is, how to insert it, and "make sure the notch lines up", and generally they either figure it out (80%), or call for help (20%).
Non-techies arent morons, you know, and installing ram is intentionally very hard to screw up.
On the flip side, if they are running as admin, they only have to click "OK". Its better, but it doesnt protect against PEBKAC:(
protected mode...this is why they target the addons...
IIRC Protected mode isnt a huge barrier, as its been broken. Addons are targeted because they are wildly insecure, installed on a huge userbase, and are cross-browser-- so even though a very large minority(?) of users are on chrome / firefox, they are still trivially targetable.
bitlocker
I dont understand why someone wanting full disk encryption would pay the extra money for ultimate rather than simply getting TrueCrypt, TBQH
SSD TRIM
Agreed, though Im not sure how they had the foresight to implement that before SSDs really hit it big.
Including a virus scanner with windows would a terrible idea. If you have a virus scanner monoculture, every virus will know how to bypass said scanner.
True, except that it occasionally needs to be completely disabled to get things to stop breaking, when it insists on trying to do IPv6 AAAA lookups on a domain network where no IPv6 configuration was done. There are several articles on this, and it is quite bothersome.
XP supported SSDs; it does NOT support TRIM. There is a big difference.
UAC
XP has something similar, though, called RunAs-- several of my clients machines are set up so that if they attempt to install a program, a runas window pops up.
integrated backup
Ive personally found none of the integrated backups that windows has had to be terribly useful; but at least NTbackup supported tape, and individual file backup (rather than the all or nothing that 7 has)
GPU accelerated desktop
I dont know that its "Useful" persay, but granted that is something XP cannot have outside of someone rolling their own explorer replacement
snap and peek
There are window managers for XP which do those things, and as I understand it are better, though I have not used them. Personally I like snap, but it is only occasionally actually used, and it is rather clunky 50% of the time.
jumplists
Are nice, but again I dont know the last time I actually used one.
A lot of these things are theoretically nice, but changing how I use programs every 2 years doesnt strike me as a particularly good use of time. Vista and 7s mistake IMO was thinking that just because something looks good on paper, and in theory works if youve never used a computer before, theyre forcing office workers and professionals with years of experience on the same GUI dating back to Windows who-knows-what to fundamentally change how they do things-- and not always for the better.
I still need regular access to the Network Connections applet (ncpa.cpl), and its kind of obnoxious that they hid it behind about 5 clicks when it is the MOST useful applet for networking; Im sure I have many other such complaints but that was the biggest regarding their GUI house cleaning.
Ive heard arguments like this for things like Sharepoint, and usually what it really means is that "we have a solution, we're just not sure what the problem is yet".
Windows search is a pig. Ive had to disable it for example in Outlook because it slows everything down, or just plain breaks search. Most of the small things you list can be tacked on after the fact if you want them. 7 is nice in a lot of ways, but theres not a lot that it does that XP couldnt do, and 3rd party apps tend to do those things far better.
The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP
I tend to agree, except when it just plain doesnt work, or when I install a new program-- and then typing 'calc' pegs the disk as OpenOffice loads, rather than the calculator app. Or when you want to open the command prompt with "cmd", but the system sees youve written a script somewhere on your computer with a.cmd extension, and assumes you want to use that. Good it may be in some scenarios, but its not a hands-down improvement.
Regardless, the GUI stuff can to some extent be tacked on-- there may have been work done to bring GPU acceleration to the desktop (why again?) which XP cannot replicate, but the start menu? Please. Launchy handles that sort of thing if you really want it anyways.
After all, if you really have heard the claim 30 times over, surely it should be easy to refute?
I have, and they are-- I could likely dig up several Amazon.com posts from a year ago where I refuted several of your points. But the thing is, when youre willing to make flat out false statements in challenge to my position (such as your assertion that the bible punishes rape victims for not screaming, when that verse does not use or imply "rape" in ANY English translation I could find-- but rather heavily implies consent), there can be literally-- and I mean literally-- no end to the objections. Whether or not they have merit seems, in the end, to be of little importance. And this has been my experience. I no sooner finish my 3 hour long explanation of one thing, having answered each question about each piddling point, when some other objection is raised("Bible claims pi is 3!" is a favorite of mine), which I must spend more time refuting... only after countless hours and explanations to find out that there was NEVER honest inquiry or debate in mind, but merely a driving desire to ridicule, shame, and stand on a soapbox as much as possible.
So forgive me if I am less than willing to answer such assertions when they dont even come from YOU, but from another site. I understand that, at times, others may state a point better than you do; this is why I mentioned CS Lewis' Mere Christianity. But if you want to rely on others to make your arguments, then why could I not do the same and point to the volumes upon volumes of apologetic work by Spraul, Van Til, Keller, and the rest? They certainly have expertise that surpasses mine. No, the issue is not whether there are athiests who happen to be more clever than I am, or whether there are apologists who are more clever than you, but whether or not yours and my positions hold water. And to cite a youtube video that 30 seconds in gets basic points of fact (ie, what the bible actually states) wrong is unimpressive, and really damages your credibility, as does turning to the Onion in ANY kind of serious conversation.
I would be more than happy to go into detail on one of the above points, but I just feel more and more we are going in circles in 30 different topics simultaneously. Want to discuss the incarnation, and how it saves? Love to. Want to discuss why rejection of God merits death? Great. Set the parameters, I dont want to give the impression I am evading, but to argue so many topics simultaneously while giving none the depth they require for a proper answer is not helpful to anyone, and presumably the purpose of such a discussion is to better understand the other's position, and to seek out the weaknesses in our own; or else to pursue truth. So choose an area of discussion, ask your question, and I will be happy to go into all the depth you need (or that I can give).
I only have time for a very abrieviated post here.
What is the purpose of punishment?
Because for some reason, I and apparently a large portion of the human race have something inside us that screams against the idea of the guilty going unpunished. Paul outlined why he thinks that is in my quote in the previous post, Ive heard athiests attribute it to herd instinct / survivival mechanism or whatever, but regardless it seems to be there.
, because families do forgive minor things
I suppose I should have clarified above that I do not think forgiveness precludes justice. I can envision a scenario where a son grievously wrongs his father, a judge, who must pass a rather harsh sentence on him to uphold justice, even while having forgiven the son. I do not think simply pretending the wrong never happened qualifies as either forgiveness OR justice.
Disobey God in that you ask for a king, and 70k people die?
Im going to answer this FIRST in the hope that it lays this particular point to rest. They SPECIFICALLY rejected God as their king. They SPECIFICALLY rejected his command to "not be as other nations" when they asked for a king "as other nations had". There really isnt much bigger of a rejection they could do, unless you look a little ahead to where kings actually start instituting idolatry as a national pastime. If that isnt clear enough, Im sorry, I cannot make this point any clearer.
Gideon was ordered to count his men, so he would know how many to send home.
And David was not; the two are different situations. David counted his armies for the EXPRESS purpose of knowing his military power.
This point is largely becoming a distraction however; I cannot believe this is among your biggest objections for all the explanation it requires.
you've repeated your own assertion, so I've repeated my own counterargument.
Because I see nothing that youve said which causes issue for my explaination. Everyone and their father who has exposited that passage has come to the same conclusion I did on my first read after about 30-40 minutes of cross consulting the earlier, relevant passages. If God commands something, implicitly or explicitly (and the "implicit" part generally isnt rocket science), you obey it. Gideon did, David did not (the counting WASNT (IMHO) the sin-- it was the lack of trust and the pride).
Did he have a choice in the matter?
This is irrelevant. Additionally, I dont recall it saying one way or the other, but you dont get the impression that David was unwilling in any way-- certainly he never really tried to abdicate.
As I said, not the whole truth -- in this case, a lie of omission.
Just because you do not tell everyone everything there is to know about something, does not make it a lie of omission-- your statement is deeply misleading. Lies of deception involve omitting specific truths to foster false assumptions-- deception must result. God told them what they needed to know, did not tell them the bits that would not only be unhelpful, but would be a temptation. If God had told them all you demand, you would be asserting that God did wrong by telling them something that would drive them to sin.
Is the point, then, that they would have lived forever if they hadn't eaten the apple?
Yes.
Because what the snake said was also true. They didn't die right away, and they did gain knowledge, becoming like gods in their ability to know right and wrong.
Untruth=/=lie. The power of the snake's suggestion was that it was not untrue persay, but it was a lie-- it was highly deceptive. That disobedience did indeed bring "knowledge" of evil, in the intimate sense of know.
would think he meant that eating the apple is imminent death
Your family must be very different than mine..... [several statements about views on my murder scenario]
Well, clearly our views on morality and justice diverge quite a bit, so I can see where we arrive at different conclusions. I dont think the prospects are terribly good of me trying to convince you to change your view of familial homicide, and my intention in all of this was more or less to defend my position on God, rather than that. I hope at least you can see where I come from, regarding the punishment vs the infraction.
in favor of focusing on what actually matters.
I would respond that whatever it may seem to us, there are no "minor" sins in the sense that they can be "just forgotten". You can forgive someone even while justice demands a punishment-- though again, I do not know if you will agree with my conception of justice as something absolute rather than subjective.
So nothing was ever said about counting the armies you have
There was a pretty clear "dont rely on your own military strength" command given to David (and Im not sure it was ONLY implicit-- its been a while since I was there in the Bible), and he violated it.
I can only imagine what God would've done if Abraham had refused to sacrifice his son.
The situations are far different. Abraham was not a king, demanded by a people who refused to listen to God. His punishment was giving them the king they demanded, warning them that said king would bring them oppression and death, and then punishing them when the king they demanded disobeyed the Lord. You could perhaps think of it as a delayed judgement for utterly rejecting the Lord in demanding a king to "be like the nations around them", though this doesnt capture the whole picture (basically 1 Samuel thru 2 Samuel).
But God didn't tell the whole truth about the Tree of Knowledge. He certainly wasn't honest about his intentions for Abraham's son -- that, or he was fickle, commanding one thing, then another.
God told them what they needed to know, and what he told them was truth. Indeed they did die (both physically and spiritually)-- why do you think "and then he died" is repeated so much in Genesis?
Abraham's son was a picture of the very gospel-- their sins demand a blood payment, but God provided the lamb. It points to Christ.
But to keep this covenant, he led the Israelites on a campaign of genocide.
The canaanites rejected God; he was using the Israelites as a method of judging them, much as he did to the Israelites with the Babylonians, and the Babylonians with the Assyrians.
there's still the question of how much suffering this actually is
Thats not really an important question; that man has come up with more horrendous ways to die doesnt minimize the facts that it was A) a criminal's death, B) a painful death, C) a slow death, and D) a public death. He was scourged, ridiculed, and staked to a cross, left to hang for several hours as he slowly bled and/or suffocated to death, and arguing that "its not really THAT bad" is pretty disingenuous.
If he had really "paid the price", he'd be in Hell.
I dont know that that follows, or how one would come to that conclusion. The price was paid by the slaughter of an "unblemished lamb", one without sin, through both the shedding of his blood and his forsaking by the father. Some have speculated that He did indeed suffer in Hell; presumably they follow the same line of reasoning that you did. Either way, I dont claim to be an expert on the mechanics of propitiation, except that I believe the penalty was paid at or around when Christ uttered "eloi eloi, lama sabacthani", as that seems to be when he was cut off from the father.
Im sorry, but I dont intend to watch that youtube video, especially given its title; I am w
These posts are getting long enough and time is scarce enough that I will just try to hit what seem to be your biggest objections, or (to be honest) the ones I can answer offhand. If I miss a particularly important one, do let me know.
The problem is first, this doesn't always seem to be the case, and second, the punishment is nearly always disproportionate to the crime
I think we (along with most people) would agree with the following-- that while it may be bad to murder a stranger, it is worse to murder a friend, and much worse to murder a parent. We see such familial crimes as worse in part because the one doing the killing owes so much to the one he murders. It would seem to me that if you extend that idea to the one who you owe the very conception of existence to, the punishment for even minor crimes would be correspondingly magnified. This is in fact a fairly central part of the idea of why we need a savior, in Christian doctrine-- the crimes we commit are against one with such high standards, and to whom we owe so much, that no attempts by us can ever exonerate us. A "presidential pardon", so to speak is needed, though the crimes must still be paid for-- this is the core of christian theology.
Take 1 Chronicles 21:9-14. First, why punish David at all
David's sin was lack of trust. IIRC earlier in either Samuel or Chronicles, the Israelites were told NOT to construct large armies, but to rely on the Lord. David's intention was to perform a census for the express purpose of judging his military readiness, a clear violation of the implicit command to trust.
But if you simply take the Bible as historical fact, you don't know God is perfectly just and holy
You can clearly see that he is a God who values covenants, truth, and "holiness" (perhaps best defined as being set apart, isolation from moral corruption) highly enough to put a high price on their violation; and (if you allow the gospels to be included in "historical") has love enough to pay the penalty himself, in what physically can be described as a rather horrendous way to die, and spiritually defies comprehension ("eloi eloi, lama sabachthani" seems to imply a complete separation from God, which in Christian theology is rather incomprehensible in its magnitude). Those speak quite a bit to God's holiness and love, even aside from epistolary letters, prophetic writings, or psalms.
Holiness in particular is shown by the very particular laws of the mosaic covenant-- a part of their purpose being to demonstrate the extent to which Israel was not to live like other nations, imaging a God who is in so many ways not like other (man-made) gods. If that doesnt quite cut it for you, Im sorry, but it is a discussion that could in and of itself take up the remainder of this post, and I dont know that I have adequate knowledge to essentially write up a systematic theology on the attributes of God-- there are books enough for THAT.
Genesis 3:14. What am I missing?
What would be obvious to any reader above the age of 14 as metaphorical language if they did not know it was the Bible, and therefore see it as a target ripe for ridicule and misinterpretation. I cannot comprehend of a Jew ever reading or hearing that read, and concluding that snakes subsist on dust--especially since the word 'akal, as I understand, has as part of its meaning a figurative eat.
Suppose I took a fine-toothed comb and a similarly naieve understanding of metaphor and literary techniques to a book on the origins of the universe-- I seem to recall that I would be led by one of Hawkings books (The history of the universe, I believe, though it has been over 10 years), that I would be led to believe that gravity is "LIKE a trampoline"-- what, it is made of nylon? Come on, I know youre more intelligent than that; someone who argues so well cannot be so desperately ignorant of metaphor. And yet I see objections
do you justify saying that the inquisition either was not propagated by Christians, or was not a Christian thing to do?
I do not say that no Christian would be capable of those acts; but it is a very unchristian thing to do. And 1 John 2 would indeed make me wonder whether they were christians (though I have the advantage of hindsight, so Id rather not go much further than that).
I'm not sure what you mean by "errors of judgment" in this case, but "errors of interpretation" -- by what metric do you judge which is and is not a correct interpretation?
If the interpretation finds itself at odds with the rest of scripture, I would call it erroneous. I see no error in a God saying "thou shalt murder" and "vengeance is mine alone", and then using one nation to judge another (seeing as the Bible also states that God is worthy to judge all nations). I see an error if man were to take said passages and decide it was a moral obligation of Christians to use war to force a religion on others (yes, crusades are included). One was God enacting his just judgement on a nation, another was man imposing his will on others.
That depends what you mean by "truth". If you mean that the Bible is historically true, that the events it described actually did happen, then God is a monster of incalculable evil.
Only if you skip the parts about His covenants, which man violated, and his perfect judgement and his holiness. Then, yes, you might be able to make the claim that he is not qualified to punish wrongdoing. But I certainly hope that you do not mean to claim that, in an absolute sense, anyone who was punished (according to the OT), was innocent by any large stretch of the imagination. Remember, if you go with the supposition "The Bible is truth from God", you also have several passages talking in language such as "none is righteous, no, not even one" (Romans 3, Isaiah, Psalms, probably several other OT and NT books).
The only way around this is to accept a further "truth", that when the Bible says God was doing something just, it was, because the Bible is true.
Conversely, if your starting point is to only accept some of what the Bible says as hypothetically true, I can guarentee you will be able to show contradictions. I have no problem explaining the specifics of why certain actions would be just when done by an almighty creator, and not when done by man (though given the length of these posts, Im not sure this is the place for such a discussion).
But you're actually proving my point. You haven't presented an argument for how you know God is just. You've only asserted that he is, and therefore, anything he commands is just. And I hate to Godwin this, but Hitler did believe he was doing God's work,
I would rather at this point simply point to the first few chapters of Mere Christianity, since merely quoting from it doesnt do it justice (ha, pun intended), but when you speak of Hitler's injustice, surely you are appealing to some absolute, internal sense of justice which you assume I share? If you have the kind of mind I think you do you will rather enjoy the first few chapters, whether or not you agree with them.
Regarding the "truth" of the Bible, this is especially circular. Even if you know it's from God, how do you know it's the truth? Because God is just, right? But how do you know he's just?
Because when you take the facts and attributes of God, and then view His actions, you do not need the Bible to say that "it was just" (which in fact it does not) in order to come to that conclusion. When you look at the Bible as a whole, you can see a kind of consistency which is really rather hard to explain in terms of "religious elite of 500BC conspired with religious elite of 500AD and tampered with thousands of historical scrolls...".
The two are the same. If you are without the belief that there is a theos, that is practically the same as the belief that there is no theos. And given that etymologies do not perfectly define a word, you are losing sight of the fact that in modern english, athiesm is an ism (to quote wikipedia, "a principle, belief or movement"). It is a lack of certain beliefs, but it also describes certain beliefs in and of itself-- it is an active, rather than passive rejection of theism.
I dont know what the fuss is about, unless it is discomfort at the idea that everyone has a belief system of their own, even if they would prefer to think of their own as mere rejection of all others. To say you believe nothing would imply that you reject even your own views, opinions, and ideologies.
He was trying to reform the country to oust a dictator who has been exploiting his country for the last 30 years. He cant openly say what his goals are, but I really dont think if you had to live in Zimbabwe you would be rooting for Mugabe.
Sure, they can fuck up. But they would have to kill millions of people and subvert dozens of democracies to start to match the misery caused by secret dealings by the State Department and the Executive Branch.
Which, if your allegations are correct, STILL doesnt explain why it was necessary to leak each and every unrelated embassy wire. How does the Zimbabwe situation relate to the State Department's "atrocities" again?
The people of Zimbabwe are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves if they want to live under a dictator there is no need for western govs to manipulate them.
While we're at it lets throw out all anti-trust laws, union protections and the like. People can decide for themselves whether or not they want to get exploited by gigantic corporations, right? Oh wait we tried that, and it doesnt end well.
"Free market" and "democracy" arent magical answers to all evils, you know.
You live in a dream world. Also, automatically voiding account passwords runs into a small issue when the account in question is root-- you going to start locking out the roots of the world?
What if wikileaks got their hands on all of VeriSign and Thawte's CA private keys? Should those be leaked? How do you intend to mop up the damage of THAT automatically?
This is the real world, some secrets are necessary in order for anything meaningful to occur. You can debate over which secrets are necessary and which are not, but claiming none are is ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
- Lie about using a wrist strap, - You're going to crack under the pressure? Grow some balls
If you honestly fry the RAM from ESD, are you really going to be that cheap? Ram is what, $8 a gig now? Usually part of growing up is learning what "personal responsibility" is.
and that they now have to process a warranty return and lie about using a wrist strap.
In the last 5 years doing IT work, I have NEVER used a wrist strap. I have probably installed well over a terabyte of RAM, totalling well over 200 sticks, as well as building 30-40 computers, and NEVER had a component fried when I was done with it.
See, when you open the METAL CASE of a computer, youre touching METAL, and discharging most of the ESD you have built up, so having someone fry a stick of ram in that manner is really pretty rare, especially if you mentioned "hold it by the heat spreader, NOT the pins"-- as even if you do discharge on the heatspreader, I dont think it would do very much.
Its also per gigaBIT, not gigabyte. Multiply by 8 and you have $22.40 sticks dropping to $6.40. I do remember it being around $20 a gig a while ago, and if you check current prices RAM is about $8 a gig now.
Can the average PC user....be trusted not to screw anything up inside a desktop or laptop PC when installing RAM sticks?
From personal experience, yes. Show them a picture of where the ram slot is, how to insert it, and "make sure the notch lines up", and generally they either figure it out (80%), or call for help (20%).
Non-techies arent morons, you know, and installing ram is intentionally very hard to screw up.
UAC
On the flip side, if they are running as admin, they only have to click "OK". Its better, but it doesnt protect against PEBKAC :(
protected mode...this is why they target the addons...
IIRC Protected mode isnt a huge barrier, as its been broken. Addons are targeted because they are wildly insecure, installed on a huge userbase, and are cross-browser-- so even though a very large minority(?) of users are on chrome / firefox, they are still trivially targetable.
bitlocker
I dont understand why someone wanting full disk encryption would pay the extra money for ultimate rather than simply getting TrueCrypt, TBQH
SSD TRIM
Agreed, though Im not sure how they had the foresight to implement that before SSDs really hit it big.
No real complaints on the others, though.
you still have to download a virus scanner
Including a virus scanner with windows would a terrible idea. If you have a virus scanner monoculture, every virus will know how to bypass said scanner.
decent IPv6 support
True, except that it occasionally needs to be completely disabled to get things to stop breaking, when it insists on trying to do IPv6 AAAA lookups on a domain network where no IPv6 configuration was done. There are several articles on this, and it is quite bothersome.
SSD support
XP supported SSDs; it does NOT support TRIM. There is a big difference.
UAC
XP has something similar, though, called RunAs-- several of my clients machines are set up so that if they attempt to install a program, a runas window pops up.
integrated backup
Ive personally found none of the integrated backups that windows has had to be terribly useful; but at least NTbackup supported tape, and individual file backup (rather than the all or nothing that 7 has)
GPU accelerated desktop
I dont know that its "Useful" persay, but granted that is something XP cannot have outside of someone rolling their own explorer replacement
snap and peek
There are window managers for XP which do those things, and as I understand it are better, though I have not used them. Personally I like snap, but it is only occasionally actually used, and it is rather clunky 50% of the time.
jumplists
Are nice, but again I dont know the last time I actually used one.
A lot of these things are theoretically nice, but changing how I use programs every 2 years doesnt strike me as a particularly good use of time. Vista and 7s mistake IMO was thinking that just because something looks good on paper, and in theory works if youve never used a computer before, theyre forcing office workers and professionals with years of experience on the same GUI dating back to Windows who-knows-what to fundamentally change how they do things-- and not always for the better.
I still need regular access to the Network Connections applet (ncpa.cpl), and its kind of obnoxious that they hid it behind about 5 clicks when it is the MOST useful applet for networking; Im sure I have many other such complaints but that was the biggest regarding their GUI house cleaning.
Ive heard arguments like this for things like Sharepoint, and usually what it really means is that "we have a solution, we're just not sure what the problem is yet".
Windows search is a pig. Ive had to disable it for example in Outlook because it slows everything down, or just plain breaks search. Most of the small things you list can be tacked on after the fact if you want them. 7 is nice in a lot of ways, but theres not a lot that it does that XP couldnt do, and 3rd party apps tend to do those things far better.
The start/all-programs menu for Win7 is vastly superior to XP
I tend to agree, except when it just plain doesnt work, or when I install a new program-- and then typing 'calc' pegs the disk as OpenOffice loads, rather than the calculator app. Or when you want to open the command prompt with "cmd", but the system sees youve written a script somewhere on your computer with a .cmd extension, and assumes you want to use that. Good it may be in some scenarios, but its not a hands-down improvement.
Regardless, the GUI stuff can to some extent be tacked on-- there may have been work done to bring GPU acceleration to the desktop (why again?) which XP cannot replicate, but the start menu? Please. Launchy handles that sort of thing if you really want it anyways.
After all, if you really have heard the claim 30 times over, surely it should be easy to refute?
I have, and they are-- I could likely dig up several Amazon.com posts from a year ago where I refuted several of your points. But the thing is, when youre willing to make flat out false statements in challenge to my position (such as your assertion that the bible punishes rape victims for not screaming, when that verse does not use or imply "rape" in ANY English translation I could find-- but rather heavily implies consent), there can be literally-- and I mean literally-- no end to the objections. Whether or not they have merit seems, in the end, to be of little importance. And this has been my experience. I no sooner finish my 3 hour long explanation of one thing, having answered each question about each piddling point, when some other objection is raised("Bible claims pi is 3!" is a favorite of mine), which I must spend more time refuting... only after countless hours and explanations to find out that there was NEVER honest inquiry or debate in mind, but merely a driving desire to ridicule, shame, and stand on a soapbox as much as possible.
So forgive me if I am less than willing to answer such assertions when they dont even come from YOU, but from another site. I understand that, at times, others may state a point better than you do; this is why I mentioned CS Lewis' Mere Christianity. But if you want to rely on others to make your arguments, then why could I not do the same and point to the volumes upon volumes of apologetic work by Spraul, Van Til, Keller, and the rest? They certainly have expertise that surpasses mine. No, the issue is not whether there are athiests who happen to be more clever than I am, or whether there are apologists who are more clever than you, but whether or not yours and my positions hold water. And to cite a youtube video that 30 seconds in gets basic points of fact (ie, what the bible actually states) wrong is unimpressive, and really damages your credibility, as does turning to the Onion in ANY kind of serious conversation.
I would be more than happy to go into detail on one of the above points, but I just feel more and more we are going in circles in 30 different topics simultaneously. Want to discuss the incarnation, and how it saves? Love to. Want to discuss why rejection of God merits death? Great. Set the parameters, I dont want to give the impression I am evading, but to argue so many topics simultaneously while giving none the depth they require for a proper answer is not helpful to anyone, and presumably the purpose of such a discussion is to better understand the other's position, and to seek out the weaknesses in our own; or else to pursue truth. So choose an area of discussion, ask your question, and I will be happy to go into all the depth you need (or that I can give).
What is the purpose of punishment?
Because for some reason, I and apparently a large portion of the human race have something inside us that screams against the idea of the guilty going unpunished. Paul outlined why he thinks that is in my quote in the previous post, Ive heard athiests attribute it to herd instinct / survivival mechanism or whatever, but regardless it seems to be there.
, because families do forgive minor things
I suppose I should have clarified above that I do not think forgiveness precludes justice. I can envision a scenario where a son grievously wrongs his father, a judge, who must pass a rather harsh sentence on him to uphold justice, even while having forgiven the son. I do not think simply pretending the wrong never happened qualifies as either forgiveness OR justice.
Disobey God in that you ask for a king, and 70k people die?
Im going to answer this FIRST in the hope that it lays this particular point to rest. They SPECIFICALLY rejected God as their king. They SPECIFICALLY rejected his command to "not be as other nations" when they asked for a king "as other nations had". There really isnt much bigger of a rejection they could do, unless you look a little ahead to where kings actually start instituting idolatry as a national pastime. If that isnt clear enough, Im sorry, I cannot make this point any clearer.
Gideon was ordered to count his men, so he would know how many to send home.
And David was not; the two are different situations. David counted his armies for the EXPRESS purpose of knowing his military power.
This point is largely becoming a distraction however; I cannot believe this is among your biggest objections for all the explanation it requires.
you've repeated your own assertion, so I've repeated my own counterargument.
Because I see nothing that youve said which causes issue for my explaination. Everyone and their father who has exposited that passage has come to the same conclusion I did on my first read after about 30-40 minutes of cross consulting the earlier, relevant passages. If God commands something, implicitly or explicitly (and the "implicit" part generally isnt rocket science), you obey it. Gideon did, David did not (the counting WASNT (IMHO) the sin-- it was the lack of trust and the pride).
Did he have a choice in the matter?
This is irrelevant. Additionally, I dont recall it saying one way or the other, but you dont get the impression that David was unwilling in any way-- certainly he never really tried to abdicate.
As I said, not the whole truth -- in this case, a lie of omission.
Just because you do not tell everyone everything there is to know about something, does not make it a lie of omission-- your statement is deeply misleading. Lies of deception involve omitting specific truths to foster false assumptions-- deception must result. God told them what they needed to know, did not tell them the bits that would not only be unhelpful, but would be a temptation. If God had told them all you demand, you would be asserting that God did wrong by telling them something that would drive them to sin.
Is the point, then, that they would have lived forever if they hadn't eaten the apple?
Yes.
Because what the snake said was also true. They didn't die right away, and they did gain knowledge, becoming like gods in their ability to know right and wrong.
Untruth=/=lie. The power of the snake's suggestion was that it was not untrue persay, but it was a lie-- it was highly deceptive. That disobedience did indeed bring "knowledge" of evil, in the intimate sense of know.
would think he meant that eating the apple is imminent death
Your 'quote' is bogus.
The best thing about slashdot is that you know 80% of the posts make up 20% of their content.
Your family must be very different than mine..... [several statements about views on my murder scenario]
Well, clearly our views on morality and justice diverge quite a bit, so I can see where we arrive at different conclusions. I dont think the prospects are terribly good of me trying to convince you to change your view of familial homicide, and my intention in all of this was more or less to defend my position on God, rather than that. I hope at least you can see where I come from, regarding the punishment vs the infraction.
in favor of focusing on what actually matters.
I would respond that whatever it may seem to us, there are no "minor" sins in the sense that they can be "just forgotten". You can forgive someone even while justice demands a punishment-- though again, I do not know if you will agree with my conception of justice as something absolute rather than subjective.
So nothing was ever said about counting the armies you have
There was a pretty clear "dont rely on your own military strength" command given to David (and Im not sure it was ONLY implicit-- its been a while since I was there in the Bible), and he violated it.
I can only imagine what God would've done if Abraham had refused to sacrifice his son.
The situations are far different. Abraham was not a king, demanded by a people who refused to listen to God. His punishment was giving them the king they demanded, warning them that said king would bring them oppression and death, and then punishing them when the king they demanded disobeyed the Lord. You could perhaps think of it as a delayed judgement for utterly rejecting the Lord in demanding a king to "be like the nations around them", though this doesnt capture the whole picture (basically 1 Samuel thru 2 Samuel).
But God didn't tell the whole truth about the Tree of Knowledge. He certainly wasn't honest about his intentions for Abraham's son -- that, or he was fickle, commanding one thing, then another.
God told them what they needed to know, and what he told them was truth. Indeed they did die (both physically and spiritually)-- why do you think "and then he died" is repeated so much in Genesis?
Abraham's son was a picture of the very gospel-- their sins demand a blood payment, but God provided the lamb. It points to Christ.
But to keep this covenant, he led the Israelites on a campaign of genocide.
The canaanites rejected God; he was using the Israelites as a method of judging them, much as he did to the Israelites with the Babylonians, and the Babylonians with the Assyrians.
there's still the question of how much suffering this actually is
Thats not really an important question; that man has come up with more horrendous ways to die doesnt minimize the facts that it was A) a criminal's death, B) a painful death, C) a slow death, and D) a public death. He was scourged, ridiculed, and staked to a cross, left to hang for several hours as he slowly bled and/or suffocated to death, and arguing that "its not really THAT bad" is pretty disingenuous.
If he had really "paid the price", he'd be in Hell.
I dont know that that follows, or how one would come to that conclusion. The price was paid by the slaughter of an "unblemished lamb", one without sin, through both the shedding of his blood and his forsaking by the father. Some have speculated that He did indeed suffer in Hell; presumably they follow the same line of reasoning that you did. Either way, I dont claim to be an expert on the mechanics of propitiation, except that I believe the penalty was paid at or around when Christ uttered "eloi eloi, lama sabacthani", as that seems to be when he was cut off from the father.
Im sorry, but I dont intend to watch that youtube video, especially given its title; I am w
Last time I checked, investigation was a part of due process, especially when it involves a court order or warrant.
The problem is first, this doesn't always seem to be the case, and second, the punishment is nearly always disproportionate to the crime
I think we (along with most people) would agree with the following-- that while it may be bad to murder a stranger, it is worse to murder a friend, and much worse to murder a parent. We see such familial crimes as worse in part because the one doing the killing owes so much to the one he murders. It would seem to me that if you extend that idea to the one who you owe the very conception of existence to, the punishment for even minor crimes would be correspondingly magnified. This is in fact a fairly central part of the idea of why we need a savior, in Christian doctrine-- the crimes we commit are against one with such high standards, and to whom we owe so much, that no attempts by us can ever exonerate us. A "presidential pardon", so to speak is needed, though the crimes must still be paid for-- this is the core of christian theology.
Take 1 Chronicles 21:9-14. First, why punish David at all
David's sin was lack of trust. IIRC earlier in either Samuel or Chronicles, the Israelites were told NOT to construct large armies, but to rely on the Lord. David's intention was to perform a census for the express purpose of judging his military readiness, a clear violation of the implicit command to trust.
But if you simply take the Bible as historical fact, you don't know God is perfectly just and holy
You can clearly see that he is a God who values covenants, truth, and "holiness" (perhaps best defined as being set apart, isolation from moral corruption) highly enough to put a high price on their violation; and (if you allow the gospels to be included in "historical") has love enough to pay the penalty himself, in what physically can be described as a rather horrendous way to die, and spiritually defies comprehension ("eloi eloi, lama sabachthani" seems to imply a complete separation from God, which in Christian theology is rather incomprehensible in its magnitude). Those speak quite a bit to God's holiness and love, even aside from epistolary letters, prophetic writings, or psalms.
Holiness in particular is shown by the very particular laws of the mosaic covenant-- a part of their purpose being to demonstrate the extent to which Israel was not to live like other nations, imaging a God who is in so many ways not like other (man-made) gods. If that doesnt quite cut it for you, Im sorry, but it is a discussion that could in and of itself take up the remainder of this post, and I dont know that I have adequate knowledge to essentially write up a systematic theology on the attributes of God-- there are books enough for THAT.
Genesis 3:14. What am I missing?
What would be obvious to any reader above the age of 14 as metaphorical language if they did not know it was the Bible, and therefore see it as a target ripe for ridicule and misinterpretation. I cannot comprehend of a Jew ever reading or hearing that read, and concluding that snakes subsist on dust--especially since the word 'akal, as I understand, has as part of its meaning a figurative eat.
Suppose I took a fine-toothed comb and a similarly naieve understanding of metaphor and literary techniques to a book on the origins of the universe-- I seem to recall that I would be led by one of Hawkings books (The history of the universe, I believe, though it has been over 10 years), that I would be led to believe that gravity is "LIKE a trampoline"-- what, it is made of nylon? Come on, I know youre more intelligent than that; someone who argues so well cannot be so desperately ignorant of metaphor. And yet I see objections
"if you are involved in criminal activity, you may be involved in a lengthy investigation".
Sounds fair to me.
do you justify saying that the inquisition either was not propagated by Christians, or was not a Christian thing to do?
I do not say that no Christian would be capable of those acts; but it is a very unchristian thing to do. And 1 John 2 would indeed make me wonder whether they were christians (though I have the advantage of hindsight, so Id rather not go much further than that).
I'm not sure what you mean by "errors of judgment" in this case, but "errors of interpretation" -- by what metric do you judge which is and is not a correct interpretation?
If the interpretation finds itself at odds with the rest of scripture, I would call it erroneous. I see no error in a God saying "thou shalt murder" and "vengeance is mine alone", and then using one nation to judge another (seeing as the Bible also states that God is worthy to judge all nations). I see an error if man were to take said passages and decide it was a moral obligation of Christians to use war to force a religion on others (yes, crusades are included). One was God enacting his just judgement on a nation, another was man imposing his will on others.
That depends what you mean by "truth". If you mean that the Bible is historically true, that the events it described actually did happen, then God is a monster of incalculable evil.
Only if you skip the parts about His covenants, which man violated, and his perfect judgement and his holiness. Then, yes, you might be able to make the claim that he is not qualified to punish wrongdoing. But I certainly hope that you do not mean to claim that, in an absolute sense, anyone who was punished (according to the OT), was innocent by any large stretch of the imagination. Remember, if you go with the supposition "The Bible is truth from God", you also have several passages talking in language such as "none is righteous, no, not even one" (Romans 3, Isaiah, Psalms, probably several other OT and NT books).
The only way around this is to accept a further "truth", that when the Bible says God was doing something just, it was, because the Bible is true.
Conversely, if your starting point is to only accept some of what the Bible says as hypothetically true, I can guarentee you will be able to show contradictions. I have no problem explaining the specifics of why certain actions would be just when done by an almighty creator, and not when done by man (though given the length of these posts, Im not sure this is the place for such a discussion).
But you're actually proving my point. You haven't presented an argument for how you know God is just. You've only asserted that he is, and therefore, anything he commands is just. And I hate to Godwin this, but Hitler did believe he was doing God's work,
I would rather at this point simply point to the first few chapters of Mere Christianity, since merely quoting from it doesnt do it justice (ha, pun intended), but when you speak of Hitler's injustice, surely you are appealing to some absolute, internal sense of justice which you assume I share? If you have the kind of mind I think you do you will rather enjoy the first few chapters, whether or not you agree with them.
Regarding the "truth" of the Bible, this is especially circular. Even if you know it's from God, how do you know it's the truth? Because God is just, right? But how do you know he's just?
Because when you take the facts and attributes of God, and then view His actions, you do not need the Bible to say that "it was just" (which in fact it does not) in order to come to that conclusion. When you look at the Bible as a whole, you can see a kind of consistency which is really rather hard to explain in terms of "religious elite of 500BC conspired with religious elite of 500AD and tampered with thousands of historical scrolls...".
Let's not strawman, shall we?
The two are the same. If you are without the belief that there is a theos, that is practically the same as the belief that there is no theos. And given that etymologies do not perfectly define a word, you are losing sight of the fact that in modern english, athiesm is an ism (to quote wikipedia, "a principle, belief or movement"). It is a lack of certain beliefs, but it also describes certain beliefs in and of itself-- it is an active, rather than passive rejection of theism.
I dont know what the fuss is about, unless it is discomfort at the idea that everyone has a belief system of their own, even if they would prefer to think of their own as mere rejection of all others. To say you believe nothing would imply that you reject even your own views, opinions, and ideologies.
He was trying to reform the country to oust a dictator who has been exploiting his country for the last 30 years. He cant openly say what his goals are, but I really dont think if you had to live in Zimbabwe you would be rooting for Mugabe.
If you think putting it on wikileaks really helps towards that end in Zimbabwe, you may be in for a disappointment.
Sure, they can fuck up. But they would have to kill millions of people and subvert dozens of democracies to start to match the misery caused by secret dealings by the State Department and the Executive Branch.
Which, if your allegations are correct, STILL doesnt explain why it was necessary to leak each and every unrelated embassy wire. How does the Zimbabwe situation relate to the State Department's "atrocities" again?
The people of Zimbabwe are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves if they want to live under a dictator there is no need for western govs to manipulate them.
While we're at it lets throw out all anti-trust laws, union protections and the like. People can decide for themselves whether or not they want to get exploited by gigantic corporations, right? Oh wait we tried that, and it doesnt end well.
"Free market" and "democracy" arent magical answers to all evils, you know.
You live in a dream world. Also, automatically voiding account passwords runs into a small issue when the account in question is root-- you going to start locking out the roots of the world?
What if wikileaks got their hands on all of VeriSign and Thawte's CA private keys? Should those be leaked? How do you intend to mop up the damage of THAT automatically?
This is the real world, some secrets are necessary in order for anything meaningful to occur. You can debate over which secrets are necessary and which are not, but claiming none are is ignorant.