So youre complaining about bigotry and open by immediately using a somewhat insulting / offensive -- and certainly untrue-- stereotype of a particular group of people.
Wait a tic, couldnt we classify that as hate speech? Can I be the one to decide which is which? Let me know when you start having second thoughts about this whole "make speech illegal" thing.
Doesnt change the general point. Trying to legislate how people think is a fools errand, and legislating away free political speech is pretty dangerous no matter how you slice it.
The US has perfectly adequate protections on free speech. Just because you dont understand why we have them, or why we tend to protect even "hate speech", doesnt make hate-speech laws a good idea.
Im fairly certain the actual drivers are NOT.NET. The interface might be, but Id hazard that the actual drivers are C, C++, or assembly. like 99% of the drivers out there.
Well, you can sue for anything, and luckily it looks like the court rejected the claim for negligence, so your claim that it results in draconian new laws is perhaps a bit overblown.
Presumably said plist file is stored in the user's profile, where on any current OS that would mean that noone other than a superuser or the user themselves could access it.
What, for removing a partially completed and never officially released feature? What about the fact that no other mobile phone maker even provides this capability-- why doesnt anyone else get crap for that? What about the fact that none of the other top-4 phone OSes even let you access a third-party store?
The double standards applied to Google are absurd. Seriously, when I see an article recommending that you abandon Google for Bing in Time magazine (which ignores all of the times MS has assisted with human rights violations by providing customer data), you know theres something wrong with the criticisms.
Google's entire business model is "we will give you free stuff if you provide us with information-- which we will keep in-house and never share without a court order."
Its not really their fault that some people (geeks, of all things) want the free stuff but dont want the privacy downsides.
Oh jeez, you really need to stop looking at Google through your Android-colored glasses!
Wonderful ad hominem, but I dont actually have an android.
I also like how you completely didnt address any of my points. Yes, a lot of the stuff Google does with youtube is incredibly obnoxious, as is their insistence on making Google+ work despite the fact that noone really cares. None of that really has anything to do with their corporate stewardship or ethics.
Calling them "evil" for their youtube commenting policies just shows that you really dont understand what "evil" is referring to. For some people, Google's privacy policy is a lot more vital to their well-being than whether you are forced to use Google+ for youtube comments, and those people are probably really glad that Google actually honors its policies and resists overreach by law enforcement of various countries.
It bugs me to see the crap google gets when they are the least abusive of all big companies by just about any measure, and actually HAVE fought for the user on several occasions (China, warrantless data requests, posting takedowns to Chilling Effects / working with the EFF).
I guess why it irritates me so much is that Google really does seem to try to be the good guy, and they get crap for it because people seem to want to forget what their business model is and give them a hard time for being for-profit. Maybe we should boycott them, THAT will teach them to fight extrajudicial data requests!
Hearthstone has literally nothing on MTG in terms of complexity. One (fairly simple, by MTG standards) example was an abilities using words like "as though", for instance, "when this creature attacks, treat it as though it has flying", and another card which says "this card may only block creatures with flying". So, can the second creature block the first? (under MTG rules, yes). Or other cards which replace various phases of the game, eg one card which replaces the draw phase with Hearthstone's Animal Tracking ability (scry 3, draw one)-- and in doing so effectively make it impossible to deck out (since the "new" draw phase does not have a "deck out" provision).
Probably the most complicated thing in hearthstone that Ive seen is Jaraxxus, which replaces your champion with a minion.
Uncaused causes dont require an infinite regress. Believing that the universe itself is eternal would not run a foul of the infinite regress, it just creates other objections.
Therefore its reasonable to suggest that not all things need a cause.
That goes against the foundation of all scientific inquiry; the very reason people do tests is because there is an assumption that causality exists. And I would agree that not all things require a cause (thats pretty much the argument with God), but if the universe has a beginning, then it does.
This says nothing about it being limited to the universe we're in.
You havent changed the core question: now we're asking "where did whatever created the universe come from".
From the article you linked, there isnt evidence, and its not in a laboratory: t is impossible to see the singularity or the actual Big Bang itself, as time and space did not exist inside the singularity and, therefore, there would be no way to transmit any radiation from before the Big Bang to the present day We can get evidence from after the creation of the universe, but not from before.
When I used the term atheistic, I was using it in the sense of naturalistic, or "a position excluding the existence of a god". I would also object to the idea that "spirituality" has nothing to do with the world around us: the christian belief isnt that there is the real world, and then theres the spiritual wworld, and the two dont ever meet; its that there is a God who is behind the measurable physical processes.
I get what youre saying, I just want to be clear that to my mind the two do interact even if you cant testably prove the existence of God. Id also want to be clear that something doesnt have to be testable to be credible: history is not testable, but it does provide evidence which we use to make credible claims about it. Likewise, I think there is evidence which makes the existence of God credible, even if it is not testable.
I would almost agree with your statement about "believing something without proof", but I would amend it to be "something without evidence": I dont think anyone could go through their daily life if they required hard proof before accepting anything, rather than going on credible evidence.
. I'm judged for the actions of another and good deeds and intentions aren't enough to redeem me?
The Christian creed is that you are judged for YOUR actions, and for YOUR intentions (and I would challenge that your intentions are always above reproach). The other issue is, if you commit a wrong (not meeting the standard of the law, for example), you cannot pay the penalty simply by meeting that standard going forward: that is simply doing the "bare minimum", and does nothing to account for the prior deficit.
Why does God (an omnipotent, omniscient being) need to be acknowledged and honored by its creation
If God exists, and is responsible daily for your ability to take breath, it seems self-evident to me that it would be a terrible wrong to refuse to honor him for that. Im not sure I could make it more plain, as I have difficulty seeing how it is not already clear. Its not that God has some need to feel justified, noticed, or whatever; its that his station deserves it and his justice demands a response when you fail to do so.
To put it another way and use an imperfect analogy, if you were to refuse to acknowledge or pay deference to a visiting head of state, our society would consider that to be a gross faux pas. Regardless of whether said head of state was gracious about it, noticed, or cared, everyone else would see it as such, and you would still be guilty of said faux pas.
The objection to the punishment for all of that is really not to the point, either; once it is established that it is wrong to dishonor God, for God to be just he would have to enact a penalty for that wrong. So really the objection is with the idea that its wrong to dishonor God, and/or the idea that God is just. You object because you say a perfect being would not act that way, and I would argue that a being that doesnt enact justice isnt perfect.
AFAIK the term "random" refers to "non-deterministic"; that is, if you know you have a box here which you know will provide the same output as the box over there, neither one is "random".
According to wikipedia, [In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space.....[this] means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times. Which is a far sight from "everything came into being by quantum fluctuations".
Also, theres about a million problems with what you seem to be suggesting: 1) You're fundamentally suggesting that "there was nothing, and then it created something" which is even more problematic than infinite regress. 2) Quantum fluctuation is a theory about something that happens WITHIN our universe. We're talking about how spacetime itself could come into existence, not random particles. 3) Theres no evidence (and as I said theres no chance of ever gathering evidence) for something like that, so you could throw it out as a "maybe this is how it happened" (if you ignore the other issues), but never actually hold it as a belief without ignoring the whole "extraordinary evidence" thing.
I think I must have misunderstood what you were going for there. The creation of the universe is a problem that we humans are unlikely to ever explain satisfactorily.
I am convinced from a logical standpoint that there can be no explanation that does not involve something having existed eternally (which I do not believe the universe could), that is apart from the universe and capable of acting on the universe. As I said there are other reasons for why I believe in the God of the bible, but there is a reason that I don't find the atheist position workable.
From a more humanistic standpoint, I reject the idea that living my life as a good person is not enough to win the approval of a just god. The idea that I could be punished eternally for doing all the good I can in the world, but not following arbitrary customs or worshiping some deity, is nonsensical and repulsive.
That's not quite the Christian position; the position is that you stand condemned because of the very substantial bad that you (and all others) do and have done. If the standard on a test is to get a 100% or fail, its no good to point at all of the questions you got right while ignoring the many you got wrong. And if in fact there is a Christian God who is responsible for your very existence, it stands to reason that your ignoring and refusal to acknowledge or honor that God would be a very serious thing indeed.
Your post talked about how you logically approach everything, and you then contrasted it with "the majority" who you imply do not. Maybe I misread that, but thats how it comes across.
If I can try to sum up your position, you chose your religion because some things are currently unexplainable and you need to have an explanation, any explanation, for those things
Not correct. As I mentioned, I have a number of reasons for being christian, I just gave the one that was relevant to this conversation. I also have no problem with things that I dont currently have an explanation-- with saying "yea, I just dont know that". The issue I was highlighting is that the atheist position seems utterly untenable, because aside from the impossibility of evidence, it seems impossible for there to even BE an alternative explanation that does not involve infinite regress.
You don't seem to have any problems with any of the things that science does explain well, so is it safe to assume that your god is one of the gaps?
That would be the "other reasons" i mentioned. The thread, as I understood it, was not on why I in particular am Christian, and Im not willing to have that full conversation on slashdot (unless I were quite sure that there were a sincere desire to hear it from the other person, and not just to ridicule / waste time).
If you hadn't been taught Christianity by your [parents, community, etc], would you have come up with it on your own?
I wasnt, really. Id say I became a christian in my early 20s.
Slashdot Mirror
So youre complaining about bigotry and open by immediately using a somewhat insulting / offensive -- and certainly untrue-- stereotype of a particular group of people.
Wait a tic, couldnt we classify that as hate speech? Can I be the one to decide which is which? Let me know when you start having second thoughts about this whole "make speech illegal" thing.
Because it would cause a backlash with their viewers. It certainly wouldnt get them arrested, though it might get them fired.
Surely you see the difference between the two?
Doesnt change the general point. Trying to legislate how people think is a fools errand, and legislating away free political speech is pretty dangerous no matter how you slice it.
The US has perfectly adequate protections on free speech. Just because you dont understand why we have them, or why we tend to protect even "hate speech", doesnt make hate-speech laws a good idea.
Im fairly certain the actual drivers are NOT .NET. The interface might be, but Id hazard that the actual drivers are C, C++, or assembly. like 99% of the drivers out there.
That behavior also predates 1984.
Pretty sure the idea for the memory hole came from the soviet purges. See also: Nikolai_Yezhov.
In other words, the communists didnt get the idea from Orwell, Orwell got the idea from the communists.
Well, you can sue for anything, and luckily it looks like the court rejected the claim for negligence, so your claim that it results in draconian new laws is perhaps a bit overblown.
If you include the encryption key with the backup, it doesnt matter either way. If you dont, its not a terribly useful backup.
Presumably said plist file is stored in the user's profile, where on any current OS that would mean that noone other than a superuser or the user themselves could access it.
They deserve to get crap for *this*
What, for removing a partially completed and never officially released feature? What about the fact that no other mobile phone maker even provides this capability-- why doesnt anyone else get crap for that? What about the fact that none of the other top-4 phone OSes even let you access a third-party store?
The double standards applied to Google are absurd. Seriously, when I see an article recommending that you abandon Google for Bing in Time magazine (which ignores all of the times MS has assisted with human rights violations by providing customer data), you know theres something wrong with the criticisms.
Google's entire business model is "we will give you free stuff if you provide us with information-- which we will keep in-house and never share without a court order."
Its not really their fault that some people (geeks, of all things) want the free stuff but dont want the privacy downsides.
Oh jeez, you really need to stop looking at Google through your Android-colored glasses!
Wonderful ad hominem, but I dont actually have an android.
I also like how you completely didnt address any of my points. Yes, a lot of the stuff Google does with youtube is incredibly obnoxious, as is their insistence on making Google+ work despite the fact that noone really cares. None of that really has anything to do with their corporate stewardship or ethics.
Calling them "evil" for their youtube commenting policies just shows that you really dont understand what "evil" is referring to. For some people, Google's privacy policy is a lot more vital to their well-being than whether you are forced to use Google+ for youtube comments, and those people are probably really glad that Google actually honors its policies and resists overreach by law enforcement of various countries.
Theres some kind of irony in you crying about this in public.
Apps dont generally work that way. Crashing part of an app generally crashes the whole thing.
They're such a convoluted mess of dependencies that you can never tell what disabling one of them might do to the rest of your phone.
So clearly, breaking them is the better option? Im not sure if Im following the logic here.
It bugs me to see the crap google gets when they are the least abusive of all big companies by just about any measure, and actually HAVE fought for the user on several occasions (China, warrantless data requests, posting takedowns to Chilling Effects / working with the EFF).
I mean I guess you can cross your fingers and hope that companies like Yahoo and MS dont do things like spill the beans on Chinese dissident bloggers or work with the Chinese gov't to create a bugged version of Skype for China, but I wouldnt hold your breath.
I guess why it irritates me so much is that Google really does seem to try to be the good guy, and they get crap for it because people seem to want to forget what their business model is and give them a hard time for being for-profit. Maybe we should boycott them, THAT will teach them to fight extrajudicial data requests!
Hearthstone has literally nothing on MTG in terms of complexity. One (fairly simple, by MTG standards) example was an abilities using words like "as though", for instance, "when this creature attacks, treat it as though it has flying", and another card which says "this card may only block creatures with flying". So, can the second creature block the first? (under MTG rules, yes). Or other cards which replace various phases of the game, eg one card which replaces the draw phase with Hearthstone's Animal Tracking ability (scry 3, draw one)-- and in doing so effectively make it impossible to deck out (since the "new" draw phase does not have a "deck out" provision).
Probably the most complicated thing in hearthstone that Ive seen is Jaraxxus, which replaces your champion with a minion.
Uncaused causes dont require an infinite regress. Believing that the universe itself is eternal would not run a foul of the infinite regress, it just creates other objections.
Therefore its reasonable to suggest that not all things need a cause.
That goes against the foundation of all scientific inquiry; the very reason people do tests is because there is an assumption that causality exists. And I would agree that not all things require a cause (thats pretty much the argument with God), but if the universe has a beginning, then it does.
This says nothing about it being limited to the universe we're in.
You havent changed the core question: now we're asking "where did whatever created the universe come from".
From the article you linked, there isnt evidence, and its not in a laboratory:
t is impossible to see the singularity or the actual Big Bang itself, as time and space did not exist inside the singularity and, therefore, there would be no way to transmit any radiation from before the Big Bang to the present day
We can get evidence from after the creation of the universe, but not from before.
When I used the term atheistic, I was using it in the sense of naturalistic, or "a position excluding the existence of a god". I would also object to the idea that "spirituality" has nothing to do with the world around us: the christian belief isnt that there is the real world, and then theres the spiritual wworld, and the two dont ever meet; its that there is a God who is behind the measurable physical processes.
I get what youre saying, I just want to be clear that to my mind the two do interact even if you cant testably prove the existence of God. Id also want to be clear that something doesnt have to be testable to be credible: history is not testable, but it does provide evidence which we use to make credible claims about it. Likewise, I think there is evidence which makes the existence of God credible, even if it is not testable.
I would almost agree with your statement about "believing something without proof", but I would amend it to be "something without evidence": I dont think anyone could go through their daily life if they required hard proof before accepting anything, rather than going on credible evidence.
. I'm judged for the actions of another and good deeds and intentions aren't enough to redeem me?
The Christian creed is that you are judged for YOUR actions, and for YOUR intentions (and I would challenge that your intentions are always above reproach). The other issue is, if you commit a wrong (not meeting the standard of the law, for example), you cannot pay the penalty simply by meeting that standard going forward: that is simply doing the "bare minimum", and does nothing to account for the prior deficit.
Why does God (an omnipotent, omniscient being) need to be acknowledged and honored by its creation
If God exists, and is responsible daily for your ability to take breath, it seems self-evident to me that it would be a terrible wrong to refuse to honor him for that. Im not sure I could make it more plain, as I have difficulty seeing how it is not already clear. Its not that God has some need to feel justified, noticed, or whatever; its that his station deserves it and his justice demands a response when you fail to do so.
To put it another way and use an imperfect analogy, if you were to refuse to acknowledge or pay deference to a visiting head of state, our society would consider that to be a gross faux pas. Regardless of whether said head of state was gracious about it, noticed, or cared, everyone else would see it as such, and you would still be guilty of said faux pas.
The objection to the punishment for all of that is really not to the point, either; once it is established that it is wrong to dishonor God, for God to be just he would have to enact a penalty for that wrong. So really the objection is with the idea that its wrong to dishonor God, and/or the idea that God is just. You object because you say a perfect being would not act that way, and I would argue that a being that doesnt enact justice isnt perfect.
AFAIK the term "random" refers to "non-deterministic"; that is, if you know you have a box here which you know will provide the same output as the box over there, neither one is "random".
According to wikipedia, [In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space.....[this] means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small times.
Which is a far sight from "everything came into being by quantum fluctuations".
Also, theres about a million problems with what you seem to be suggesting:
1) You're fundamentally suggesting that "there was nothing, and then it created something" which is even more problematic than infinite regress.
2) Quantum fluctuation is a theory about something that happens WITHIN our universe. We're talking about how spacetime itself could come into existence, not random particles.
3) Theres no evidence (and as I said theres no chance of ever gathering evidence) for something like that, so you could throw it out as a "maybe this is how it happened" (if you ignore the other issues), but never actually hold it as a belief without ignoring the whole "extraordinary evidence" thing.
I think I must have misunderstood what you were going for there. The creation of the universe is a problem that we humans are unlikely to ever explain satisfactorily.
I am convinced from a logical standpoint that there can be no explanation that does not involve something having existed eternally (which I do not believe the universe could), that is apart from the universe and capable of acting on the universe. As I said there are other reasons for why I believe in the God of the bible, but there is a reason that I don't find the atheist position workable.
From a more humanistic standpoint, I reject the idea that living my life as a good person is not enough to win the approval of a just god. The idea that I could be punished eternally for doing all the good I can in the world, but not following arbitrary customs or worshiping some deity, is nonsensical and repulsive.
That's not quite the Christian position; the position is that you stand condemned because of the very substantial bad that you (and all others) do and have done. If the standard on a test is to get a 100% or fail, its no good to point at all of the questions you got right while ignoring the many you got wrong. And if in fact there is a Christian God who is responsible for your very existence, it stands to reason that your ignoring and refusal to acknowledge or honor that God would be a very serious thing indeed.
Your post talked about how you logically approach everything, and you then contrasted it with "the majority" who you imply do not. Maybe I misread that, but thats how it comes across.
If I can try to sum up your position, you chose your religion because some things are currently unexplainable and you need to have an explanation, any explanation, for those things
Not correct. As I mentioned, I have a number of reasons for being christian, I just gave the one that was relevant to this conversation. I also have no problem with things that I dont currently have an explanation-- with saying "yea, I just dont know that". The issue I was highlighting is that the atheist position seems utterly untenable, because aside from the impossibility of evidence, it seems impossible for there to even BE an alternative explanation that does not involve infinite regress.
You don't seem to have any problems with any of the things that science does explain well, so is it safe to assume that your god is one of the gaps?
That would be the "other reasons" i mentioned. The thread, as I understood it, was not on why I in particular am Christian, and Im not willing to have that full conversation on slashdot (unless I were quite sure that there were a sincere desire to hear it from the other person, and not just to ridicule / waste time).
If you hadn't been taught Christianity by your [parents, community, etc], would you have come up with it on your own?
I wasnt, really. Id say I became a christian in my early 20s.