Thats not at all what Im saying. Im saying that people tend to have innate areas of strength. People who are mechanics could probably also be pretty good IT people. Someone who is an artist probably wouldnt. Coal mining is probably not a good example as probably anyone could do it regardless of their innate strengths; its not a job you generally go into because you love it, but because you have to. So Im sure some of those coalminers would be good at coding-- just dont expect all or most of them to be.
Its just a generally true thing that some people are naturally inclined towards technical fields, or mathematical ones, or creative ones, and while you can try to force them out of their safe zone, theyre probably neither going to enjoy it nor be good at it.
The person working "somewhere cheaper" might also tell that 22 year old "screw you, I need to feed my starving family, you can file that 501st job application."
People complaining about outsourcing "because jobs" seem to be remarkably selfish in my book, unless theyre living in conditions as bad as the person in China who got their job.
I was going to remark on how, like just about every other tech-oriented CEO, Zuckerberg is probably pro-Obama... but it seems like he doesnt really care too much about politics either way.
But its probably still a fool's errand to paint Zuckerberg as being anti-Obama or anti-dem.
While its socially correct and karma-boosting to take potshots at how dumb politicans are, my experience with politically successful people is that they tend to be pretty sharp in what youd call "managerial" skills: figuring out the tl;dr of a subject, figuring out who to pull in, figuring out how to pull together a unified response. That is, they tend to be organizaltionally skilled.
IT / Comp sci people (especially slashdotters) seem to love touting how brilliant they are, but my experience is that they tend to have glaring weaknesses with:
* Idealizing situations and ignoring practical / human problems
* Interacting with other people
* Missing the forest for the trees
* Admitting when they might not have the answer / the best answer / the necessary skills
Because people arent interchangeable robots. Everyone's brain works differently. I tend to be lacking some in the art / creative department, and have particular strengths in the technical / mathematics fields; you could try to train me up as a sculptor, but even if you had gotten a hold of me at a young age I dont think I would have ever been more than mediocre.
Trying to stuff everyone into a particular mold is like something straight out of Anthem or 1984, and it just doesnt work.
Just because some people make terrible arguments doesnt mean that other people have to accept it when you do it.
I mean if you're saying that you intend to build strawmen and purposefully take sentences out of context to make your points, Ill just make a note to not engage with you in the future as it would be a complete waste of time. I'm not making those arguments, so its pointless to try to justify your fallacies to me because you've seen others doing them-- regardless of whether they claim to be under the same "banner" as me.
Proprietary software at least you are paying for, which DOES provide some implicit guarantees. When you get FOSS, you have no ground to stand on because there was no implicit agreement, and you have the ability to do your own audit on the codebase.
Good luck with that lawsuit, what law was broken? There was no contract and no guarantee, implicit or explicit. OSS is generally "use at your own risk".
Thats why I hate these discussions, and the hubub people are raising about the number-- as if 5 million vs 7 million vs 20 million would change the fundamental objections to the law.
Its a pity you did not log in to post this because it is quite succinct and well written, and it would save me a lot of writing in the future to simply reference your post when someone loses their ability to interpret idiom in their criticism of the bible.
You would find christians more willing to engage with you in a reasoned discussion if you didnt use strawmen. Somehow when reading ASOIAF or LotR I dont think you stumble over idomatic usages, or metaphors. Why when encountering the Bible-- if you are so sure of your case against it-- must you resort to the false dichotomy of "all of it has to be literal, or all of it metaphor"?
Christians are called to give a defense of any who ask, but I am convinced that posts like the ones you and Himmy32 are posting are not "asking", theyre just trying to be contrary and argumentative. Again: If you are so sure of your position, you should not need to resort to tactics like ripping out context, ignoring genre, and ignoring literary device.
Even our current meteorological forecasts reference a "sun set".
Why is it people's ability to parse human language reverts to a first grade level when applying a critical eye to scripture? Are you completely unfamiliar with idiomatic expression?
The big problem is that bashing christianity with statements-- whether true or not-- invariably is "popular" as measured by upvotes or moderations on whatever forum you happen to be on. Apologetic refutations are invariably less popular.
Perhaps if people want less "insanity" they should stop upvoting it.
I am happy to engage people on why I believe the bible to be accurate, but it is helpful at the outset to discard rumor and myth; if someone has told you that the Bible was written by such and such as a single work at such and such time, that is incorrect. Likewise, if they tell you that the Bible is a single genre, they are also not correct.
I tend to avoid rationalwiki because 99% of what I have seen on there is deliberately misleading/out of context, like this discussion on "the earth stands still" / "sun rises". If the context were posted, with all of its simile and metaphor, noone would be having this discussion because it would be crystal clear that those particular passages are not literal but idiomatic. The sad truth is that people going to rationalwiki are almost never looking to have a rational discussion but to be argumentative.
Joshua is a historical record. Yes, the claim is that the sun stood still (relative to the earth).
Habakkuk is more prophetic and a lot more poetic; I'd have to study that verse but I dont think he is recording historical fact there given the context of the book as I remember it.
That Psalm is very clearly using metaphor and simile. Some of those comparisons we still use today.
I didnt say none of it should be read literally; some parts are clearly meant factually and others are clearly not. When Solomon talks of "everything is a vanity and chasing after the wind", I think a reasonable person can see that and understand he is talking about futility, not an actual chasing of wind currents.
I like how people defend this stupid bullshit by saying that it's not meant to be taken literally. Guess what? Even if it's not meant to be taken literally, it's still just as retarded as ever.
Why is using an idiom that we still use today "retarded"? You've never heard the phrases "solid as a rock", "immoveable as the earth", or "the sun rises"? For goodness sake, theres even a famous Hemmingway novel titled "The Sun Also Rises", why does noone remark on how retarded Hemmingway is?
The Bible has many books in many genres. Psalms is neither scientific treatise nor historical record; its a collection of songs and poems. It uses simile, allegory, and metaphor.
And if it's not meant to be taken literally, then why do idiots buy into *any* of it?
Because there is such a thing as "genre" and "context". In the Psalm being referred to, the following literary devices are used Simile:
* The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment
* he stretches out the heavens like a tent
* You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment Metaphor:
* He makes the clouds his chariot
* and rides on the wings of the wind.
* He makes winds his messengers,
* flames of fire his servants. Anthropomorphism:
* The high mountains belong to the wild goats * [The springs] give water to all the beasts of the field; Hyperbole:
* teeming with creatures beyond number
I dont think its unreasonable to look at all that, see something like "the sun rises" or "the earth is immoveable" and think "yea, thats yet more poetic language". Contrast with Chronicles or Kings where there is a focus on facts and a lot less poetic language, and you can see a clear differentiation of genre.
I have found that generally people making claims like
since it's obviously rife with stories that aren't literal
tend not to be well versed in what it actually says and instead are repeating things theyve seen elsewhere, which tend to be quite wrong (for instance Zeitgeist's claims about Osiris / Jesus, or the claim that the Bible says pi=3). There is a sad irony, because all too often the people crying for Christians to listen to facts and be reasonable are neither interested in fact nor in a reasonable discussion.
Dont bring facts to a bible-bashing discussion; people dont want to hear truth, they want to spout things they heard on Zeitgeist no matter how wrong they are.
I have to wonder how the folks here got through middle school lit if terms like "sun rises" and "earth's foundations" are presenting problems for them.
Oh good grief you're going to a part of scripture that is literally poem, and looking at a psalm where the context is about the scale of God's power. Its not making a cosmological argument about the status of the earth.
And if you really want to be pedantic about it, the earth IS stationary relative to the people writing about it. Movement is relative to context, and as the context is the earth, the author is technically right even though thats completely not what he was talking about.
And Ecclesiastes? The whole book is about the repetitive nature of the world and how nothing seems to ever change. It too is using poetic language; as if you've never heard of the sun rising and setting.
That is completely not correct. You cant "patch" the 2.4 kernel into a 2.6 kernel; theyre different dev branches. If you mean that theres simply an upgrade path for replacing the one OS with the other, the same is true of Window; and its no good to claim that the issue is that its not free, because you knew that when you bought a commercial OS-- just as if you had bought RHEL 4.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats not at all what Im saying. Im saying that people tend to have innate areas of strength. People who are mechanics could probably also be pretty good IT people. Someone who is an artist probably wouldnt. Coal mining is probably not a good example as probably anyone could do it regardless of their innate strengths; its not a job you generally go into because you love it, but because you have to. So Im sure some of those coalminers would be good at coding-- just dont expect all or most of them to be.
Its just a generally true thing that some people are naturally inclined towards technical fields, or mathematical ones, or creative ones, and while you can try to force them out of their safe zone, theyre probably neither going to enjoy it nor be good at it.
The person working "somewhere cheaper" might also tell that 22 year old "screw you, I need to feed my starving family, you can file that 501st job application."
People complaining about outsourcing "because jobs" seem to be remarkably selfish in my book, unless theyre living in conditions as bad as the person in China who got their job.
I was going to remark on how, like just about every other tech-oriented CEO, Zuckerberg is probably pro-Obama... but it seems like he doesnt really care too much about politics either way.
But its probably still a fool's errand to paint Zuckerberg as being anti-Obama or anti-dem.
While its socially correct and karma-boosting to take potshots at how dumb politicans are, my experience with politically successful people is that they tend to be pretty sharp in what youd call "managerial" skills: figuring out the tl;dr of a subject, figuring out who to pull in, figuring out how to pull together a unified response. That is, they tend to be organizaltionally skilled.
IT / Comp sci people (especially slashdotters) seem to love touting how brilliant they are, but my experience is that they tend to have glaring weaknesses with:
* Idealizing situations and ignoring practical / human problems
* Interacting with other people
* Missing the forest for the trees
* Admitting when they might not have the answer / the best answer / the necessary skills
Because people arent interchangeable robots. Everyone's brain works differently. I tend to be lacking some in the art / creative department, and have particular strengths in the technical / mathematics fields; you could try to train me up as a sculptor, but even if you had gotten a hold of me at a young age I dont think I would have ever been more than mediocre.
Trying to stuff everyone into a particular mold is like something straight out of Anthem or 1984, and it just doesnt work.
I sort of feel like I've seen this multiple times on slashdot before:
http://hardware-beta.slashdot....
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
Even more hillarious, the first one from 2003 has comments indicating that it, too, is a dupe.
This may be the mother of all dupes.
Just because some people make terrible arguments doesnt mean that other people have to accept it when you do it.
I mean if you're saying that you intend to build strawmen and purposefully take sentences out of context to make your points, Ill just make a note to not engage with you in the future as it would be a complete waste of time. I'm not making those arguments, so its pointless to try to justify your fallacies to me because you've seen others doing them-- regardless of whether they claim to be under the same "banner" as me.
Proprietary software at least you are paying for, which DOES provide some implicit guarantees. When you get FOSS, you have no ground to stand on because there was no implicit agreement, and you have the ability to do your own audit on the codebase.
Good luck with that lawsuit, what law was broken? There was no contract and no guarantee, implicit or explicit. OSS is generally "use at your own risk".
Thats why I hate these discussions, and the hubub people are raising about the number-- as if 5 million vs 7 million vs 20 million would change the fundamental objections to the law.
Its a pity you did not log in to post this because it is quite succinct and well written, and it would save me a lot of writing in the future to simply reference your post when someone loses their ability to interpret idiom in their criticism of the bible.
You would find christians more willing to engage with you in a reasoned discussion if you didnt use strawmen. Somehow when reading ASOIAF or LotR I dont think you stumble over idomatic usages, or metaphors. Why when encountering the Bible-- if you are so sure of your case against it-- must you resort to the false dichotomy of "all of it has to be literal, or all of it metaphor"?
Christians are called to give a defense of any who ask, but I am convinced that posts like the ones you and Himmy32 are posting are not "asking", theyre just trying to be contrary and argumentative. Again: If you are so sure of your position, you should not need to resort to tactics like ripping out context, ignoring genre, and ignoring literary device.
Even our current meteorological forecasts reference a "sun set".
Why is it people's ability to parse human language reverts to a first grade level when applying a critical eye to scripture? Are you completely unfamiliar with idiomatic expression?
The big problem is that bashing christianity with statements-- whether true or not-- invariably is "popular" as measured by upvotes or moderations on whatever forum you happen to be on. Apologetic refutations are invariably less popular.
Perhaps if people want less "insanity" they should stop upvoting it.
As far as I know that is not what the theory of relativity is; it refers to relative frames of reference (in terms of time / speed), not location.
it's just a work of surrealist fiction
Its not one work.
I am happy to engage people on why I believe the bible to be accurate, but it is helpful at the outset to discard rumor and myth; if someone has told you that the Bible was written by such and such as a single work at such and such time, that is incorrect. Likewise, if they tell you that the Bible is a single genre, they are also not correct.
I tend to avoid rationalwiki because 99% of what I have seen on there is deliberately misleading /out of context, like this discussion on "the earth stands still" / "sun rises". If the context were posted, with all of its simile and metaphor, noone would be having this discussion because it would be crystal clear that those particular passages are not literal but idiomatic. The sad truth is that people going to rationalwiki are almost never looking to have a rational discussion but to be argumentative.
Joshua is a historical record. Yes, the claim is that the sun stood still (relative to the earth).
Habakkuk is more prophetic and a lot more poetic; I'd have to study that verse but I dont think he is recording historical fact there given the context of the book as I remember it.
That Psalm is very clearly using metaphor and simile. Some of those comparisons we still use today.
Im not sure what you're asking with Isaiah.
I didnt say none of it should be read literally; some parts are clearly meant factually and others are clearly not. When Solomon talks of "everything is a vanity and chasing after the wind", I think a reasonable person can see that and understand he is talking about futility, not an actual chasing of wind currents.
I like how people defend this stupid bullshit by saying that it's not meant to be taken literally. Guess what? Even if it's not meant to be taken literally, it's still just as retarded as ever.
Why is using an idiom that we still use today "retarded"? You've never heard the phrases "solid as a rock", "immoveable as the earth", or "the sun rises"? For goodness sake, theres even a famous Hemmingway novel titled "The Sun Also Rises", why does noone remark on how retarded Hemmingway is?
The Bible has many books in many genres. Psalms is neither scientific treatise nor historical record; its a collection of songs and poems. It uses simile, allegory, and metaphor.
And if it's not meant to be taken literally, then why do idiots buy into *any* of it?
Because there is such a thing as "genre" and "context". In the Psalm being referred to, the following literary devices are used
Simile:
* The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment
* he stretches out the heavens like a tent
* You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment
Metaphor:
* He makes the clouds his chariot
* and rides on the wings of the wind.
* He makes winds his messengers,
* flames of fire his servants.
Anthropomorphism:
* The high mountains belong to the wild goats
* [The springs] give water to all the beasts of the field;
Hyperbole:
* teeming with creatures beyond number
I dont think its unreasonable to look at all that, see something like "the sun rises" or "the earth is immoveable" and think "yea, thats yet more poetic language". Contrast with Chronicles or Kings where there is a focus on facts and a lot less poetic language, and you can see a clear differentiation of genre.
I have found that generally people making claims like
since it's obviously rife with stories that aren't literal
tend not to be well versed in what it actually says and instead are repeating things theyve seen elsewhere, which tend to be quite wrong (for instance Zeitgeist's claims about Osiris / Jesus, or the claim that the Bible says pi=3). There is a sad irony, because all too often the people crying for Christians to listen to facts and be reasonable are neither interested in fact nor in a reasonable discussion.
I believe Genesis 1 talks about the creation of a large number of celestial objects, including the sun, moon, and stars.
Dont bring facts to a bible-bashing discussion; people dont want to hear truth, they want to spout things they heard on Zeitgeist no matter how wrong they are.
I believe if one reads that particular passage you'll find that the measurement hit ~3.1395.
...are you being serious?
I have to wonder how the folks here got through middle school lit if terms like "sun rises" and "earth's foundations" are presenting problems for them.
Oh good grief you're going to a part of scripture that is literally poem, and looking at a psalm where the context is about the scale of God's power. Its not making a cosmological argument about the status of the earth.
And if you really want to be pedantic about it, the earth IS stationary relative to the people writing about it. Movement is relative to context, and as the context is the earth, the author is technically right even though thats completely not what he was talking about.
And Ecclesiastes? The whole book is about the repetitive nature of the world and how nothing seems to ever change. It too is using poetic language; as if you've never heard of the sun rising and setting.
That is completely not correct. You cant "patch" the 2.4 kernel into a 2.6 kernel; theyre different dev branches. If you mean that theres simply an upgrade path for replacing the one OS with the other, the same is true of Window; and its no good to claim that the issue is that its not free, because you knew that when you bought a commercial OS-- just as if you had bought RHEL 4.