I'm sorry to inform you that the newtonian THEORY of gravity was refuted by reproducible evidence in 1859:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
1859 is also the year of publishing of "On the origin of species". A pretty spectacular display of how religious bigots can't move past a 19th century mindset.
Not as significant compared to the USA, of course, but take my advice: never bet against Italy in the "who's the laughing stock of the western world" game.
I am surprised that you would liken human beings to dogs. Dogs are not conscious beings. They cannot contemplate their own existence or the nature of reality. Of course a little child has free will. You are still conflating free will with the ability to know right from wrong. They are not the same thing. Locked-in syndrome is relatively ridiculous in this discussion, but again, yes, such a person has free will. Just because his body is not functioning properly does not take away the ability for him to control his thoughts, to choose what to think, and to have desires. Locked-in syndrome is a medical problem. Do you not understand the difference? A little child may not yet understand that pushing someone into the mud is wrong, or he may not understand why it's wrong, but he still has free will to choose whether to do it.
The fact that it is a medical problem is irrelevant since you were talking about actions, and your definition of free will is again lacking: you talk about desires, thought control, existence contemplation, conciousness, but a dog can have desires, a little child doesn't "choose" what to think, a newborn doesn't "contemplate" his own existence or the nature of reality, a chimp has the upper hand on 3 years old toddlers, elephants and other species pass the mirror test. A dog doesn't understand that biting you is wrong, but he still may choose to bite you or not, just like a little child before he is thought that it is wrong, just like adam and eve before they gained the knowledge of good and evil. Pretty good analogy here.
You're still conflating free will with morality. Assuming an absolute standard for morality, certain actions are wrong whether or not an actor knows they are wrong. If you want to argue that one shouldn't be held accountable for accidentally committing a wrong, that's a different matter. Or if you want to argue whether an absolute moral standard exists, that's also another argument.
But, even assuming an absolute standard for morality, and even assuming that in such standard some actions may be wrong no matter the knowledge available to the actor, you would need to prove that this particular action (eating from a tree) despite the particular lack of knowledge (the difference between good and evil), the deception (by either god or satan) and this particular intention (becoming wiser) was absolutely wrong, and you have not done so. Read the story: eating from the tree made them open their eyes, made them wiser, made them understand the difference between good and evil. We wouldn't have this knowledge if they didn't eat from it, don't you think that knowing the difference between good and evil is extremely important, something worth having? How can it be absolutely morally wrong then? The only way out of this mess is the heynous divine command theory: you just obey, follow orders, and you better not know right from wrong, but that's a very peculiar definition of "morality".
You're simply not being logical here. In the story of the Fall, Adam and Eve did die. They did not die immediately after their sin. That does not make the fact of their death any less true. On the other hand, your example is actually a lie. Don't you understand the difference?
In your own words it is not a lie if the father surprises the poor child in the act of masturbating himself and then sticks a fork in his eyes! (which is still more charitable than condemning him to lifelong suffering and eventual death). This is a very accurate analogy to what is written in genesis: Adam and Even didn't die because they ate from the tree, as they were misled to believe: they were punished with suffering and death AFTER they ate. You can't really rewrite what is clearly written in genesis.
If you want to argue that God wasn't nice by not letting them go unpunished for their first infraction, that's fine. But ultimately that is arguing that God is not forgiving--and that's not true. God is
This is a total waste of time because you are totally blinded by faith...
You aren't helping your position by being illogical. It would be better to question the nature of sin, the nature of God, and why sin must be atoned for.
It would be even better to first question the existence of sin and the existence of God, because questioning the nature of something that's not there doesn't sound particolarly practical to me. Sadly you are unwilling to question it, because no matter the evidence you would interpret it as supporting the existence of God.
Friend, your reasoning is simply faulty. You're conflating free will with the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. Free will is the ability to choose one's actions.
A dog chooses his actions: does he have free will? Hardly. A little child chooses his actions: does he have free will? Not yet, in fact we don't prosecute little kids. A man with locked-in syndrome can't choose any of his actions: does he still have free will? Yes.
A better definition should takes into account the ability to make moral choices (think Kant). And that puts us firmly in the "knowledge of good and evil" territory.
God instructed them not to eat from the tree; he did not prevent them from doing so, rather he allowed them to. He allowed them to act contrary to his instructions, therefore they had free will before they ate from the tree.
no, because THEY DID NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL YET. How could they know that disobeying god was evil? They would learn that AFTER eating from the tree, that's the entire point of the tree. (Actually they learned the opposite, that their creator was a malicious lying bully and that they shouldn't unquestionably defer to authority). You can teach your dog to bring in the paper: if for some reason he doesn't do it just one time does that mean that he has free will? No!
Do you not understand the metaphor? In the story, Adam and Eve had yet to sin, nor had they even witnessed sin, therefore they did not know what evil was.
EXACTLY! How can you sin if you don't know what evil is? Can a dog sin?
By eating from the tree, they disobeyed God, and having committed sin, became aware of it, and the difference between right and wrong.
But if i don't know the diffrence between right and wrong how can i commit sin? I may accidentally kill a man, and that would not be a sin if i didn't intend on doing wrong. You can't really sin if you are unaware of sin.
God did not lie to them. He told them that they would surely die, and die they did--he did not say that they would instantly die. God did not oppose them.
Seriously? if you tell your child not to masturbate or he will become blind you are NOT opposing him masturbating? That sounds reasonable to you? Why didn't he told Adam "do not eat or i will make you suffer"?
God wanted them to remain guiltless and live, and he gave them instructions which, if obeyed, would have protected them from dying.
He wanted them to remain stupid animals in his zoo. He lied to them: if i tell you that eating this apple will make you die what would you reasonably think, that the apple is poisoned or that i will kill you for eating it? His instructions were not preventing them from dying, they were preventing them from gaining the knowledge of good and evil! why couldn't he forgive them, since it was the first time ever they disobeyed him? after that point they would know the difference between good and evil, but God didn't want them to gain that knowledge, and that's the reason they were punished. Hell, they didn't even know what a sin was, and you admit it yourself! They didn't even do that by themselves, they were encouraged by a talking snake they were never told not to trust. Lifelong suffering and death for you and all your descendents is (to put it mildly) a
Ecklund's "Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think", the output of research sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, criticised for picturing scientists as more spiritual than they actually are, despite the questionable metodology still reports a combined 72% of non theistic scientists in the USA, which is one of the most religious countries in the western world.
Leuba (1916), Leuba (1934), Graffin (1991), Larson & Witham (1997), Larson & Witham (1998) are even more favorable to my claim.
I still think it's silly to keep saying, "invisible guy." That makes it sound like God is just some random guy walking down the street who isn't visible. Of course, if you want to ridicule those who believe in God, you'll imply that. But that's not what the Bible claims about God.
Whatever. I equally want to point out that to me an "invisible guy" walking down the street is no more ridiculous than any eternal, personal, caring, omniscent, omnipotent, self-sacrifying entity you could derive from any old book (and is at least internally consistent: if you are omniscent and omnipotent you don't self-sacrify yourself, that would be just crazy).
Free will is exactly what God gave people, and that verse proves it.
Dude, it couldn't be written in a more obvious way: it wasn't the tree of sin, or the tree of disobedience, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What's the point of such a tree if you already distinguish between good and evil? You need to eat from it to gain free will, and in fact as soon as they did they didn't die, as told by God, but "their eyes were opened", as predicted by the snake. So honestly who gave us such wisdom? God opposed and lied to them, but Satan helped, 'cause he's actually a nice guy. If you really want to base your life on fairy tales at least read them properly.
Many, if not most, of the great minds of history were religious.
For some 15 centuries in Europe apostasy was punished with social exclusion, prison or death. No wonder they all were "religious". Notice how since we got this "freedom of religion" the ratio of religious scientist literally plummeted.
He's the almighty creator of the universe. He exists outside of space and time.
Care to provide evidence for this factual statement? No? So anything goes, even an "invisible guy".
He gave you free will to do what you want and believe what you want.
No, according to your supposed sacred book (gen 2:17) he was against that idea. Satan gave us free will, that's who you should thank if you believe that "metaphor" (or whatever your "strong faith" calls it).
"In Italy, this is permitted in certain circumstances"
IANAL, but as an italian this is what i know:
up to the seventies there was a law (number 587) on "honour killing", where you could kill your wife if they were having an affair and you would get a much reduced sentence because you were defending the honour of your family.
for the same reason you could somewhat get away with killing your wife if she just was behaving in an unappropriate way, or your sister if she was dating an undesirable man or if she lost her virginity before the wedding.
but it was even worse than that: when divorce was socially unacceptable (and legally forbidden) this law was used by some also to just get rid of their wife (as depicted in the movie "divorzio all'italiana").
this law was more popular in southern italy and in rural areas, but it was not the only one:
you could also beat your wife to "educate" her (ius corrigendi).
a raped woman could be forced to marry their raper (as depicted in the movie "sedotta e abbandonata)"
contraception was strictly forbidden.
and so on.
but NOW the italian law, while still lacking, is not as bad as some decades ago. if you commit a crime of passion you get a sentence for manslaughter or something like that.
The problems that led to the necessity for a label for software that's free-as-in-speech-but-not-GPL started almost a decade before that. well, i have to wonder if there really is such a widespread need, given that in the least 20 years nobody came up with another marketable name after what you may consider the "hijacking" of the "free" word. and no, "open source" doesn't qualify.
the "definition" given by the free software foundation and rms has basically always been the same since the early nineties, they explicitly tell that bsd/mit is free software, they don't actively discourage using or contributing to existing bsd/mit projects, they accept it for xorg and some other stuff in their gnu project, they cared to change bsd to make it (l)gpl-compatible, they even backed its use for theora, vorbis and tremor.
yes, there is strong disagreement on the necessity, strength and scope of copyleft among the bsd folks, but that has nothing to do with the open source definition, which is nearly identical to the free software definition: perens and raymond were and still are strong copyleft backer, and the gpl is strongly identified with the open source definition too.
I'm sure you're familiar with the preamble to the GPL: sure (so what?) but are you familiar with the ideas of the free software foundation?
This draws a pretty strong distinction between Free Software and software that just happens to be freely redistributable. yes, and bsd software is more than freely redistributable: you can also run it, study it and improve it. that's why it is free software according to the free software foundation:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
"If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, the modified BSD license is a reasonable choice."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry to inform you that the newtonian THEORY of gravity was refuted by reproducible evidence in 1859: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... 1859 is also the year of publishing of "On the origin of species". A pretty spectacular display of how religious bigots can't move past a 19th century mindset.
Not as significant compared to the USA, of course, but take my advice: never bet against Italy in the "who's the laughing stock of the western world" game.
Not really, last saturday half the government resigned.
I am surprised that you would liken human beings to dogs. Dogs are not conscious beings. They cannot contemplate their own existence or the nature of reality. Of course a little child has free will. You are still conflating free will with the ability to know right from wrong. They are not the same thing. Locked-in syndrome is relatively ridiculous in this discussion, but again, yes, such a person has free will. Just because his body is not functioning properly does not take away the ability for him to control his thoughts, to choose what to think, and to have desires. Locked-in syndrome is a medical problem. Do you not understand the difference? A little child may not yet understand that pushing someone into the mud is wrong, or he may not understand why it's wrong, but he still has free will to choose whether to do it.
The fact that it is a medical problem is irrelevant since you were talking about actions, and your definition of free will is again lacking: you talk about desires, thought control, existence contemplation, conciousness, but a dog can have desires, a little child doesn't "choose" what to think, a newborn doesn't "contemplate" his own existence or the nature of reality, a chimp has the upper hand on 3 years old toddlers, elephants and other species pass the mirror test. A dog doesn't understand that biting you is wrong, but he still may choose to bite you or not, just like a little child before he is thought that it is wrong, just like adam and eve before they gained the knowledge of good and evil. Pretty good analogy here.
You're still conflating free will with morality. Assuming an absolute standard for morality, certain actions are wrong whether or not an actor knows they are wrong. If you want to argue that one shouldn't be held accountable for accidentally committing a wrong, that's a different matter. Or if you want to argue whether an absolute moral standard exists, that's also another argument.
But, even assuming an absolute standard for morality, and even assuming that in such standard some actions may be wrong no matter the knowledge available to the actor, you would need to prove that this particular action (eating from a tree) despite the particular lack of knowledge (the difference between good and evil), the deception (by either god or satan) and this particular intention (becoming wiser) was absolutely wrong, and you have not done so. Read the story: eating from the tree made them open their eyes, made them wiser, made them understand the difference between good and evil. We wouldn't have this knowledge if they didn't eat from it, don't you think that knowing the difference between good and evil is extremely important, something worth having? How can it be absolutely morally wrong then? The only way out of this mess is the heynous divine command theory: you just obey, follow orders, and you better not know right from wrong, but that's a very peculiar definition of "morality".
You're simply not being logical here. In the story of the Fall, Adam and Eve did die. They did not die immediately after their sin. That does not make the fact of their death any less true. On the other hand, your example is actually a lie. Don't you understand the difference?
In your own words it is not a lie if the father surprises the poor child in the act of masturbating himself and then sticks a fork in his eyes! (which is still more charitable than condemning him to lifelong suffering and eventual death). This is a very accurate analogy to what is written in genesis: Adam and Even didn't die because they ate from the tree, as they were misled to believe: they were punished with suffering and death AFTER they ate. You can't really rewrite what is clearly written in genesis.
If you want to argue that God wasn't nice by not letting them go unpunished for their first infraction, that's fine. But ultimately that is arguing that God is not forgiving--and that's not true. God is
You aren't helping your position by being illogical. It would be better to question the nature of sin, the nature of God, and why sin must be atoned for.
It would be even better to first question the existence of sin and the existence of God, because questioning the nature of something that's not there doesn't sound particolarly practical to me. Sadly you are unwilling to question it, because no matter the evidence you would interpret it as supporting the existence of God.
Friend, your reasoning is simply faulty. You're conflating free will with the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. Free will is the ability to choose one's actions.
A dog chooses his actions: does he have free will? Hardly. A little child chooses his actions: does he have free will? Not yet, in fact we don't prosecute little kids. A man with locked-in syndrome can't choose any of his actions: does he still have free will? Yes. A better definition should takes into account the ability to make moral choices (think Kant). And that puts us firmly in the "knowledge of good and evil" territory.
God instructed them not to eat from the tree; he did not prevent them from doing so, rather he allowed them to. He allowed them to act contrary to his instructions, therefore they had free will before they ate from the tree.
no, because THEY DID NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL YET. How could they know that disobeying god was evil? They would learn that AFTER eating from the tree, that's the entire point of the tree. (Actually they learned the opposite, that their creator was a malicious lying bully and that they shouldn't unquestionably defer to authority). You can teach your dog to bring in the paper: if for some reason he doesn't do it just one time does that mean that he has free will? No!
Do you not understand the metaphor? In the story, Adam and Eve had yet to sin, nor had they even witnessed sin, therefore they did not know what evil was.
EXACTLY! How can you sin if you don't know what evil is? Can a dog sin?
By eating from the tree, they disobeyed God, and having committed sin, became aware of it, and the difference between right and wrong.
But if i don't know the diffrence between right and wrong how can i commit sin? I may accidentally kill a man, and that would not be a sin if i didn't intend on doing wrong. You can't really sin if you are unaware of sin.
God did not lie to them. He told them that they would surely die, and die they did--he did not say that they would instantly die. God did not oppose them.
Seriously? if you tell your child not to masturbate or he will become blind you are NOT opposing him masturbating? That sounds reasonable to you? Why didn't he told Adam "do not eat or i will make you suffer"?
God wanted them to remain guiltless and live, and he gave them instructions which, if obeyed, would have protected them from dying.
He wanted them to remain stupid animals in his zoo. He lied to them: if i tell you that eating this apple will make you die what would you reasonably think, that the apple is poisoned or that i will kill you for eating it? His instructions were not preventing them from dying, they were preventing them from gaining the knowledge of good and evil! why couldn't he forgive them, since it was the first time ever they disobeyed him? after that point they would know the difference between good and evil, but God didn't want them to gain that knowledge, and that's the reason they were punished. Hell, they didn't even know what a sin was, and you admit it yourself! They didn't even do that by themselves, they were encouraged by a talking snake they were never told not to trust. Lifelong suffering and death for you and all your descendents is (to put it mildly) a
Where did you obtain your data?
Ecklund's "Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think", the output of research sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, criticised for picturing scientists as more spiritual than they actually are, despite the questionable metodology still reports a combined 72% of non theistic scientists in the USA, which is one of the most religious countries in the western world. Leuba (1916), Leuba (1934), Graffin (1991), Larson & Witham (1997), Larson & Witham (1998) are even more favorable to my claim.
I still think it's silly to keep saying, "invisible guy." That makes it sound like God is just some random guy walking down the street who isn't visible. Of course, if you want to ridicule those who believe in God, you'll imply that. But that's not what the Bible claims about God.
Whatever. I equally want to point out that to me an "invisible guy" walking down the street is no more ridiculous than any eternal, personal, caring, omniscent, omnipotent, self-sacrifying entity you could derive from any old book (and is at least internally consistent: if you are omniscent and omnipotent you don't self-sacrify yourself, that would be just crazy).
Free will is exactly what God gave people, and that verse proves it.
Dude, it couldn't be written in a more obvious way: it wasn't the tree of sin, or the tree of disobedience, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What's the point of such a tree if you already distinguish between good and evil? You need to eat from it to gain free will, and in fact as soon as they did they didn't die, as told by God, but "their eyes were opened", as predicted by the snake. So honestly who gave us such wisdom? God opposed and lied to them, but Satan helped, 'cause he's actually a nice guy. If you really want to base your life on fairy tales at least read them properly.
Many, if not most, of the great minds of history were religious.
For some 15 centuries in Europe apostasy was punished with social exclusion, prison or death. No wonder they all were "religious". Notice how since we got this "freedom of religion" the ratio of religious scientist literally plummeted.
He's the almighty creator of the universe. He exists outside of space and time.
Care to provide evidence for this factual statement? No? So anything goes, even an "invisible guy".
He gave you free will to do what you want and believe what you want.
No, according to your supposed sacred book (gen 2:17) he was against that idea. Satan gave us free will, that's who you should thank if you believe that "metaphor" (or whatever your "strong faith" calls it).
"In Italy, this is permitted in certain circumstances"
IANAL, but as an italian this is what i know:
up to the seventies there was a law (number 587) on "honour killing", where you could kill your wife if they were having an affair and you would get a much reduced sentence because you were defending the honour of your family.
for the same reason you could somewhat get away with killing your wife if she just was behaving in an unappropriate way, or your sister if she was dating an undesirable man or if she lost her virginity before the wedding.
but it was even worse than that: when divorce was socially unacceptable (and legally forbidden) this law was used by some also to just get rid of their wife (as depicted in the movie "divorzio all'italiana").
this law was more popular in southern italy and in rural areas, but it was not the only one:
you could also beat your wife to "educate" her (ius corrigendi).
a raped woman could be forced to marry their raper (as depicted in the movie "sedotta e abbandonata)"
contraception was strictly forbidden.
and so on.
but NOW the italian law, while still lacking, is not as bad as some decades ago. if you commit a crime of passion you get a sentence for manslaughter or something like that.
i was going to link to kinsella too...
somebody please mod this one up.
i still think you got it pretty much wrong.
the "definition" given by the free software foundation and rms has basically always been the same since the early nineties, they explicitly tell that bsd/mit is free software, they don't actively discourage using or contributing to existing bsd/mit projects, they accept it for xorg and some other stuff in their gnu project, they cared to change bsd to make it (l)gpl-compatible, they even backed its use for theora, vorbis and tremor.
yes, there is strong disagreement on the necessity, strength and scope of copyleft among the bsd folks, but that has nothing to do with the open source definition, which is nearly identical to the free software definition: perens and raymond were and still are strong copyleft backer, and the gpl is strongly identified with the open source definition too.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
"If you want a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, the modified BSD license is a reasonable choice."
it is merely not a copyleft license.
"Then RMS said that "free software" was software that couldn't be made non-free."
no. bsd software is free software. even the old 4 clauses license is free software.
"So we have GPLed "free software" and MIT/BSD/CC/... "open source" software."
no, check your facts, mit and bsd are free software licenses.