I ask, how can I battle those who "give me a bad name?"
(You're not going to like this.) Simple: stop calling yourself a chrisitan. I maintain that the word "Christian" and the bible and all imagery associated with the lot have all been unrecoverably hijacked by evil morons. You support them indirectly by claiming to be what they are. It's their religion now, like it or not. To fight them, start a new religion. Make up a new word. The actual religion is irrelvent, it's the form of the religion that matters. Recreate your religion in the image of what you beleieve christianity should be, call it something else, and proceed as before. That is my recommendation, to do otherwise is to support evil.
I told you that you wouldn't like it.
Education simply consists of teaching those who want to know about the beliefs of the church, and accepting as members those who want to join. This may also consist of missionary work, where people are told about Christ. There are no gunpoint conversions here; this is entirely voluntary.
It is *supposed* to be entirely voluntary. Reality so often differs from theory...
Out of curiosity, what about Christianity do you find "stupid?"
How about subjegating oneself to a hypothetical being of power in hopes that it'll reward you for mindless devotion?
Yeah yeah. Define "God", define "Faith", define "Prayer". These are tricky terms that it's hard to discuss without being clear on their meaning. The above is about the worst interpretation of each, but I was going for maximum impact.
If you are thinking of things like the creation myth, or the laws of Leviticus, remember that not all Christians believe that the bible is always literal. Remember that the Old Testament was, for about a thousand years, the oral tradition of a wandering desert tribe. Obviously, things get a little distorted. Myths of other cultures are worked in, battles are distorted, and tradition becomes divine law.
The bible is clearly wisdom of ages, good moral principles, and anecdotes designed to teach valuable lessons on how to live as a member of society. But then there's a lot of crap in there that some people seem to think is important. Then there's a creation story, which by itself would be unremarkable. And there's a bit of geneology, and a few old laws someone stuck in, and some historical tales.
The first parts are generally good. Some of the other parts are interesting. But the fact that it's all tied up in this domineering religion makes it all essentally useless.
Finally, I can accept that my beliefs may not be correct. I can accept that they are one of many. I can't really justify them, except to repeat what Martin Gardner said about his (non-Christian) beliefs: credo quia consolans; I believe because it consoles me. I believe because I want to. If I die and there is no God at the end of the tunnel, fine. I have lived a good life, I don't have any regrets, I've helped others and tried to help them live a good life.
An excellent perspective. Here's my contrasting take: I don't believe because I doubt that such belief is valid, and do not want to live a lie. If I die and there is a god, fine. I've lived a good life, have no regrets, and will be as welcome as any.
It makes no sense to me to devote my life to something that doesn't exist or has no meaning. I can stand without the moral and emotional crutch that many others seem to so enjoy, and would sooner die than give up that independance. If you're a good person it doesn't matter whether you claim to be of this religion or that, you simply are and you will recieve whatever rewards or punshments you would get anyway.
While Gardner and I don't agree on the technicalities of belief in God, I think he makes a good point: my belief, like his, is a leap of faith. I want God to exist. I don't want to die and have no part of me go on. If that's "idiotic," so be it. I daresay I would rather be an idiot.
Also, offering up the idea that all Christians are evil, is equivalent to me saying that all black people are good at basketball. Not only is it completely subjective (like your Christians are evil statement), it is also a grossly overgeneralized stereotype. This, my friend, is what most people call ignorance or even idiotic. You damage your own reputation with this display of your closed minded viewpoint.
I happen to like overgeneralized stereotypes. I am being deliberately, calculatedly and self-consciously bigoted against christians. I believe that careful irrationality can be beneficial, and thus practice it here and there. I would be the first to allow that I am incorrect and being way too general, but I see no other way. I take a brain-dead style of hard line and in doing so attempt to counteract the braindead hard line people who are (or claim to be) christians take. Some believe that the good guys can work things out rationally with the bad guys, I believe in fighting fire with fire. You can't combat irrational zealotry with reason, and I'm specifically not trying.
It's not the most glamorous stance to take. I don't really enjoy it myself. This is a tactical experiment in a peculiar kind of warfar. Whether my approach holds merit can only be determined by results, which are (admittedly) hard to quantify. I certainly never got any noticable results using rational tactics.
[shrugs] So far my results haven't been any worse. We'll see.
I am anti-christian. I have talked to many a christian and most are not bad people, many even hold reasonable theological views (views that I, as an agnostic, have essentially no problem concurring with).
But I am still against all christians, because thay are participating in a passive-aggressive way in a horrible, evil regime. Either take a stand and battle those who give you a bad name, or stop complaining at people such as myself when I am flambeing christians as a whole.
(To relate this to the thread at hand: I believe that christians can only hold the beliefs they do if they are lying, evil, or idiots. Following Hanlon's Razor and Occam's Razor eliminates in turn "evil" and "lying" leaving only "idiotic" as the explanation. This is why christians are presumed to be stupid, or at least that is my reasoning.)
I don't have a problem with differing beliefs in general, just with the beliefs that state "Only my belief is correct/valid" or "You must believe what I believe".
And yes, reconciling a belief that anyone can believe what they want to believe with a belief that no one should be allowed to force his beliefs on anyone else (even if it is part of his belief system that he be allowed to do so) is a problem.
You'll never see Grand Theft Auto in my house though... hehe
Oh get off it. Did you complain when Carmagedon came out? That game has many more problems than GTA.
I am going to assert here that games that exist purely for violence aren't popular (anyone with an example is free to back me up). Games are always popular for one and only one reason: They are fun to play.
A game like GTA is fun to play because it is relatively free-form. You are not constrained in what you do. This lets you explore your possabilities and see what the consequences of your actions are. You can play GTA in a reasonably (given the nature of who you are playing as) nonviolent way. Turning your children loose on such a game will be very educational for you and for them. They'll get a fun game where they can do what they like, where they can do immoral things and see ohw it feels, and you get to watch them do it.
And perhaps I'm going out on a limb here, but just maybe if you let a 10 year old blow away pedestrians with a semiautomatic weapon in a video game then, having tried it out, he'll be less likely to want to try it out later in life.
I don;t think MS will bundle windows and its office suit. Office makes more money for MS than Windows does, in the long run. They'd either have to charge a huge price for the combined product or lose that revenue stream.
On the other hand, they could go subscription. Pay $600 for an OS with an Office suit, and (mandatory) $100 a year for perpetual upgrades. That I can see.
The obvious answer is to obey the RIAA, because the law must be followed (and strictly followed) for its own sake, regardless of why it exists or what harm it is doing. At least this seems to be the perspective of lawyers and judges.
The trouble with cars is there is a serious safety problem. I don't know how well hobbiest cars would flourish among average consumers who may be highly concerned with safety features and/or want someone to sue if it breaks and kills them.
Hmm... this really IS starting to sound like open source.
I almost did that in my original post, because if you go back and apply the logic I'm using for cars to music then you wind up with everyone listening to one song, which is probably bad. The difference at that point, in contrast to cars, is that music is pretty cheap. To break the one-song culture a random individual could produce a song and release it with the expectation that it would be copied and s/he would recieve no money, just so that the monomusical nature of the world would change. Doing that with cars would be much more difficult/expensive.
You are missing the point - the point is if everybody will be copying cars for free, who'll spen lots of $$ for producing them?
No one, and it wouldn't matter. After the first car was made we'd all have car copies and be able to drive. Want a car that's actually different? Well then pay HUGE sums of money to have it custom produced for you; normal people get by with cheaper copies.
It's never going to be easy to just remove 200+ packages, so no, you can't just return to a pristine distro.
Oh yeah?
apt-get remove xlibs [snip] 43 packages upgraded, 10 newly installed, 1375 to remove and 764 not upgraded. [snip]
I suspect (based on previous experience with similar operations) if I said "yes" here, they wold all be removed... easily.
Not that I would, but apt-get remove kdelibs4 is only 143 packages (this one I've done before, without problems, and then later re-added) and I wanted at least 200 without typing in a bunch of names.
Actually, I was thinking about it and realized that while not dedicated to the Jargon file perhaps Everything2 would be the easiest place to do this. So I went noding and quickly found that it had already been done. So we're ahead of the game.
So perhaps the Jargon file should be grabbed and turned into a Wiki before it is hopelessly corrupted. Then ESR and anyone else can add whetever self-serving entries they like,
Of course, you'd need someone to babysit such a project, and that someone certainly wont be me.
So maybe I should start a fanatical movement to persecute football for giving people god complexes.
But I was not even refering to the professional leagues, every level of football is aggressive and mean. Hell, I played some pretty nasty games of football in a field near my house. Doing so hasn't turned me into a rampaging killer, but then neither has playing violent video games (which was my point) Why blame one and not the other? Rationally, football should be at least as suspect as video games.
I find it much more likely that Football will make players aggresive than video games. In one you dress up in armor and run at people with the intent to stop them. You can't say that a tackle isn't aggressive.
The other involes you staring intently at a screen and jabbing your fingers up and down. Maybe it's intense, but more like a roller coaster then armed combat... which is what football is designed to immitate.
Down with football! This devils-game is forcing our children to kill!
If I wrote some code that was GPL and it looked like copyrighted code would I be in violation even though I technically never saw the other code?
It's called clean-room reverse engineering, and the answer is "No," you would not be in violation.
Unless the owner of the proprietary cide could convince a court that you had copied it, in which case you may as well have. Truth? Justice? These are defined as things that can be proven in court, and the decisions based on court proofs.
And as long as people continue to have this attitude, Linux will be nothing more than a niche system used by 5% of the total desktop PC market.
..and so what? I am a fanatic and I want everyone to use Linux. But I want them to WANT to use Linux; if 5% of the people want to, then I am pleased. If others do not use Linux it is their loss. People will convert as they realize Linux is better, not as Linux becomes the same as that which they would be leaving.
I'm not saying 'don't make it easy'. People always assume that, which is annoying.
It's too bad that using your mind apparently doesn't help you to address people in a more charitable manner.
I was attempting some light humor. Sorry.
The Catholic Encyclopedia describes God as "the one Supreme and Infinite Personal Being, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, to whom man owes obedience and worship."
That does not begin to define god. Is god a physical manifestation? Is god a thinking entity? Is god a metaphor for something? Is god a force of collective human conscience? Is god an ideal people strive to match? Is god an understanding of something? I know people who will all variously answer yes and no to these questions. I know one minister who defines god in a way that is good and consistent but is totally adjacent to what I had taken to be the generally-accepted notion of the definition of god. (And get this: he asserts that his definition is not only correct, but held by most people. People are weird when it comes to god.) I don't have the skill or energy to reproduce his definition here, interesting though it might be to do so.
(Incidently, the biggest initial problem I've seen when discussing god is that of anthropomorphicization. Is god a person? This question is deceptive, but correctly precieved the answer to it is vital to communication on this topic. Personally, I'd say no. If you say yes, then I likely don't accept the existence of what you call god and further discussion is hampered. I don't expect you to answer this question... as I said, its meaning is deceptive. I also don't really want to go through the extreme trouble of communicting to you the subtleties of the question; I find that hard enough to do (not to mention time-consuming enough) IRL. and I cannot be certain you are answering the question I am asking unless I have explained it in that kind of detail.)
This seems to be the main point you're making.
It was the thrust of my initial post, yes.
The fact, though, is that no one is led away from God by the cross. The cross is where Jesus sacrificed His life for us; veneration of the cross is directed to Christ, not to the cross itself.
So you say. I have seen evidence otherwise. As I said before, maybe it's not supposed to be directed at the cross itself, but generally it is.
I can see already taht we are miscommunicating. I am not hearing what you are meaning, only what you are saying. I get the feeling we're meaning much the same things, but using incompatible definitions. I used to think most everybody was stupid, but now I think that I just don't know what people think. Language can be extrememly frustrating.
Here's a page that has a pretty good look at some of the Biblical evidence for the Trinity:
I'll read it, but I'm pretty sure I've heard it all before. This is a definition-of-god problem.
What we are not supposed to have is false gods. As long as we don't consider a statue or something like that to be a god, then it's not a false god. ...like I was saying. Define "God." I'm sure what you say wont be what I say. Also, you don't have to deify an idol to have it lead you away from your god, your true path.
By the way, according to what you said, we shouldn't keep Bibles around, since you think they are a temptation to idolatry.
Nobody ever said temptation was wrong; it's just having it succeed that's a problem. The bible holds valuable moral princplies and mysteries in story-form and, while it could be done away with, it would be inconvenient to replace. A necessary risk, therefore.
People do worship Jesus, but no one worships the cross.
You and I are defining worship and god differently. By my definition what people do with cross' is worship them. Deifying an object is not by my definition a prerequisite to worship.
So many of the worlds problems arise form people talking at cross-definitions.
They don't consider the posters to be gods; nor, presumably, do they consider the famous people on the posters gods either (supernatural in nature, etc.). They know that famous people are just human beings, like them, only a lot richer, cooler, better looking, more talented, or whatever.
My dictionary defines worship several ways, but I refer you to "show religious devotion to, as of a deity" and "To perform acts of homage or adoration;"
Teenagers certainly show a certain fanatical, mindless (in a word, religious) devotion to their pop starts of the moment. Not always, but it happens.
But it hardly matters, since that bit was intended as some light humor.
Reverence for the cross is actually reverence for Christ. No one believes the cross is a god. But without Christ's sacrifice on the cross, none of us could be saved.
So they are not worshiping the cross-idol but the christ-idol? Since when is Jesus god? And don't give me that trinity crap, it's totally baseless.
People perhaps are SUPPOSED to revere but not worship the cross, their bible, jesus, saints, etc.. But this is not generally what happens. People wind up worshiping the things themselves as if they had inherent value.
This is the problem with having idols to begin with, which is why jews/christians are not supposed to have them. Stupid people, or people not paying attention all the time, can slip into the habit of worshiping the pointer and not the thing it points to.
If a soldier on a distant battlefield says, "I love you" to a picture of his wife, it doesn't mean he loves the photograph. It is his wife whom he loves, and the photo represents his wife.
In theory, yes. But his wife is immediate and tangible... it's hard to confure a photo of her with her. Religious concepts are not so easy.
You've got to make a distinction between the ideal and the reality. The ideal, the specification, may say one thing, but people quite often don't follow the spec. In reality people worship jesus and cross' in place of their god.
Adolescents often have posters of various famous people on their bedroom walls, but they don't worship them.
You sure about that?
Catholic don't worship saints, but consider them "heroes" of the faith, examples of ordinary people who lived extraordinary, holy lives. They offer examples that we can emulate in our own lives, just as you may try to emulate someone you know who is saintly. To say that Catholics worship saints just shows that you've been influenced by anti-Catholic propaganda.
Suuure. And catholics don't worship a cross-shaped idol, either. Look, it may not officially be worship, but at some point you have to objectively define what does and does not constitute worship. People's obsession with the cross often borders on or actually is (depending on the person) worship.
There are so many features of the NT core (even the original 1992 3.1 version) that have yet to be implemented in most *nix variants(like Linux or BSD)
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I ask, how can I battle those who "give me a bad name?"
(You're not going to like this.) Simple: stop calling yourself a chrisitan. I maintain that the word "Christian" and the bible and all imagery associated with the lot have all been unrecoverably hijacked by evil morons. You support them indirectly by claiming to be what they are. It's their religion now, like it or not. To fight them, start a new religion. Make up a new word. The actual religion is irrelvent, it's the form of the religion that matters. Recreate your religion in the image of what you beleieve christianity should be, call it something else, and proceed as before. That is my recommendation, to do otherwise is to support evil.
I told you that you wouldn't like it.
Education simply consists of teaching those who want to know about the beliefs of the church, and accepting as members those who want to join. This may also consist of missionary work, where people are told about Christ. There are no gunpoint conversions here; this is entirely voluntary.
It is *supposed* to be entirely voluntary. Reality so often differs from theory...
Out of curiosity, what about Christianity do you find "stupid?"
How about subjegating oneself to a hypothetical being of power in hopes that it'll reward you for mindless devotion?
Yeah yeah. Define "God", define "Faith", define "Prayer". These are tricky terms that it's hard to discuss without being clear on their meaning. The above is about the worst interpretation of each, but I was going for maximum impact.
If you are thinking of things like the creation myth, or the laws of Leviticus, remember that not all Christians believe that the bible is always literal. Remember that the Old Testament was, for about a thousand years, the oral tradition of a wandering desert tribe. Obviously, things get a little distorted. Myths of other cultures are worked in, battles are distorted, and tradition becomes divine law.
The bible is clearly wisdom of ages, good moral principles, and anecdotes designed to teach valuable lessons on how to live as a member of society. But then there's a lot of crap in there that some people seem to think is important. Then there's a creation story, which by itself would be unremarkable. And there's a bit of geneology, and a few old laws someone stuck in, and some historical tales.
The first parts are generally good. Some of the other parts are interesting. But the fact that it's all tied up in this domineering religion makes it all essentally useless.
Finally, I can accept that my beliefs may not be correct. I can accept that they are one of many. I can't really justify them, except to repeat what Martin Gardner said about his (non-Christian) beliefs: credo quia consolans; I believe because it consoles me. I believe because I want to. If I die and there is no God at the end of the tunnel, fine. I have lived a good life, I don't have any regrets, I've helped others and tried to help them live a good life.
An excellent perspective. Here's my contrasting take: I don't believe because I doubt that such belief is valid, and do not want to live a lie. If I die and there is a god, fine. I've lived a good life, have no regrets, and will be as welcome as any.
It makes no sense to me to devote my life to something that doesn't exist or has no meaning. I can stand without the moral and emotional crutch that many others seem to so enjoy, and would sooner die than give up that independance. If you're a good person it doesn't matter whether you claim to be of this religion or that, you simply are and you will recieve whatever rewards or punshments you would get anyway.
While Gardner and I don't agree on the technicalities of belief in God, I think he makes a good point: my belief, like his, is a leap of faith. I want God to exist. I don't want to die and have no part of me go on. If that's "idiotic," so be it. I daresay I would rather be an idiot.
That
Also, offering up the idea that all Christians are evil, is equivalent to me saying that all black people are good at basketball. Not only is it completely subjective (like your Christians are evil statement), it is also a grossly overgeneralized stereotype. This, my friend, is what most people call ignorance or even idiotic. You damage your own reputation with this display of your closed minded viewpoint.
I happen to like overgeneralized stereotypes. I am being deliberately, calculatedly and self-consciously bigoted against christians. I believe that careful irrationality can be beneficial, and thus practice it here and there. I would be the first to allow that I am incorrect and being way too general, but I see no other way. I take a brain-dead style of hard line and in doing so attempt to counteract the braindead hard line people who are (or claim to be) christians take. Some believe that the good guys can work things out rationally with the bad guys, I believe in fighting fire with fire. You can't combat irrational zealotry with reason, and I'm specifically not trying.
It's not the most glamorous stance to take. I don't really enjoy it myself. This is a tactical experiment in a peculiar kind of warfar. Whether my approach holds merit can only be determined by results, which are (admittedly) hard to quantify. I certainly never got any noticable results using rational tactics.
[shrugs] So far my results haven't been any worse. We'll see.
I am anti-christian. I have talked to many a christian and most are not bad people, many even hold reasonable theological views (views that I, as an agnostic, have essentially no problem concurring with).
But I am still against all christians, because thay are participating in a passive-aggressive way in a horrible, evil regime. Either take a stand and battle those who give you a bad name, or stop complaining at people such as myself when I am flambeing christians as a whole.
(To relate this to the thread at hand: I believe that christians can only hold the beliefs they do if they are lying, evil, or idiots. Following Hanlon's Razor and Occam's Razor eliminates in turn "evil" and "lying" leaving only "idiotic" as the explanation. This is why christians are presumed to be stupid, or at least that is my reasoning.)
I don't have a problem with differing beliefs in general, just with the beliefs that state "Only my belief is correct/valid" or "You must believe what I believe".
And yes, reconciling a belief that anyone can believe what they want to believe with a belief that no one should be allowed to force his beliefs on anyone else (even if it is part of his belief system that he be allowed to do so) is a problem.
You'll never see Grand Theft Auto in my house though... hehe
Oh get off it. Did you complain when Carmagedon came out? That game has many more problems than GTA.
I am going to assert here that games that exist purely for violence aren't popular (anyone with an example is free to back me up). Games are always popular for one and only one reason: They are fun to play.
A game like GTA is fun to play because it is relatively free-form. You are not constrained in what you do. This lets you explore your possabilities and see what the consequences of your actions are. You can play GTA in a reasonably (given the nature of who you are playing as) nonviolent way. Turning your children loose on such a game will be very educational for you and for them. They'll get a fun game where they can do what they like, where they can do immoral things and see ohw it feels, and you get to watch them do it.
And perhaps I'm going out on a limb here, but just maybe if you let a 10 year old blow away pedestrians with a semiautomatic weapon in a video game then, having tried it out, he'll be less likely to want to try it out later in life.
Ah, but mplayer can render .movs.
And as far as being bloated and junk and refusing to install it, I said the same thing about WMP7. Quicktime isn't any worse than that.
I don;t think MS will bundle windows and its office suit. Office makes more money for MS than Windows does, in the long run. They'd either have to charge a huge price for the combined product or lose that revenue stream.
On the other hand, they could go subscription. Pay $600 for an OS with an Office suit, and (mandatory) $100 a year for perpetual upgrades. That I can see.
The obvious answer is to obey the RIAA, because the law must be followed (and strictly followed) for its own sake, regardless of why it exists or what harm it is doing. At least this seems to be the perspective of lawyers and judges.
The trouble with cars is there is a serious safety problem. I don't know how well hobbiest cars would flourish among average consumers who may be highly concerned with safety features and/or want someone to sue if it breaks and kills them.
Hmm... this really IS starting to sound like open source.
I almost did that in my original post, because if you go back and apply the logic I'm using for cars to music then you wind up with everyone listening to one song, which is probably bad. The difference at that point, in contrast to cars, is that music is pretty cheap. To break the one-song culture a random individual could produce a song and release it with the expectation that it would be copied and s/he would recieve no money, just so that the monomusical nature of the world would change. Doing that with cars would be much more difficult/expensive.
You are missing the point - the point is if everybody will be copying cars for free, who'll spen lots of $$ for producing them?
No one, and it wouldn't matter. After the first car was made we'd all have car copies and be able to drive. Want a car that's actually different? Well then pay HUGE sums of money to have it custom produced for you; normal people get by with cheaper copies.
I never liked "GNU/Linux"... it's sounds kinda hokey... but "GNU/Unix" has a nice ring to it...
How about GNUnix?
No? Yeah, no.
It's never going to be easy to just remove 200+ packages, so no, you can't just return to a pristine distro.
Oh yeah?
apt-get remove xlibs
[snip]
43 packages upgraded, 10 newly installed, 1375 to remove and 764 not upgraded.
[snip]
I suspect (based on previous experience with similar operations) if I said "yes" here, they wold all be removed... easily.
Not that I would, but apt-get remove kdelibs4 is only 143 packages (this one I've done before, without problems, and then later re-added) and I wanted at least 200 without typing in a bunch of names.
Actually, I was thinking about it and realized that while not dedicated to the Jargon file perhaps Everything2 would be the easiest place to do this. So I went noding and quickly found that it had already been done. So we're ahead of the game.
That's about the same as execution. Isn't death (of character) a little extreme for racketeering?
So perhaps the Jargon file should be grabbed and turned into a Wiki before it is hopelessly corrupted. Then ESR and anyone else can add whetever self-serving entries they like,
Of course, you'd need someone to babysit such a project, and that someone certainly wont be me.
FLAC is compressed, losslessly. AIFF and PCM don't even attempt to reduce the sizes.
Not to mention that FLAC is Free, and thus inherently superior.
So maybe I should start a fanatical movement to persecute football for giving people god complexes.
But I was not even refering to the professional leagues, every level of football is aggressive and mean. Hell, I played some pretty nasty games of football in a field near my house. Doing so hasn't turned me into a rampaging killer, but then neither has playing violent video games (which was my point) Why blame one and not the other? Rationally, football should be at least as suspect as video games.
I find it much more likely that Football will make players aggresive than video games. In one you dress up in armor and run at people with the intent to stop them. You can't say that a tackle isn't aggressive.
The other involes you staring intently at a screen and jabbing your fingers up and down. Maybe it's intense, but more like a roller coaster then armed combat... which is what football is designed to immitate.
Down with football! This devils-game is forcing our children to kill!
If I wrote some code that was GPL and it looked like copyrighted code would I be in violation even though I technically never saw the other code?
It's called clean-room reverse engineering, and the answer is "No," you would not be in violation.
Unless the owner of the proprietary cide could convince a court that you had copied it, in which case you may as well have. Truth? Justice? These are defined as things that can be proven in court, and the decisions based on court proofs.
I'm not saying 'don't make it easy'. People always assume that, which is annoying.
It's too bad that using your mind apparently doesn't help you to address people in a more charitable manner.
I was attempting some light humor. Sorry.
The Catholic Encyclopedia describes God as "the one Supreme and Infinite Personal Being, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, to whom man owes obedience and worship."
That does not begin to define god. Is god a physical manifestation? Is god a thinking entity? Is god a metaphor for something? Is god a force of collective human conscience? Is god an ideal people strive to match? Is god an understanding of something? I know people who will all variously answer yes and no to these questions. I know one minister who defines god in a way that is good and consistent but is totally adjacent to what I had taken to be the generally-accepted notion of the definition of god. (And get this: he asserts that his definition is not only correct, but held by most people. People are weird when it comes to god.) I don't have the skill or energy to reproduce his definition here, interesting though it might be to do so.
(Incidently, the biggest initial problem I've seen when discussing god is that of anthropomorphicization. Is god a person? This question is deceptive, but correctly precieved the answer to it is vital to communication on this topic. Personally, I'd say no. If you say yes, then I likely don't accept the existence of what you call god and further discussion is hampered. I don't expect you to answer this question... as I said, its meaning is deceptive. I also don't really want to go through the extreme trouble of communicting to you the subtleties of the question; I find that hard enough to do (not to mention time-consuming enough) IRL. and I cannot be certain you are answering the question I am asking unless I have explained it in that kind of detail.)
This seems to be the main point you're making.
It was the thrust of my initial post, yes.
The fact, though, is that no one is led away from God by the cross. The cross is where Jesus sacrificed His life for us; veneration of the cross is directed to Christ, not to the cross itself.
So you say. I have seen evidence otherwise. As I said before, maybe it's not supposed to be directed at the cross itself, but generally it is.
I can see already taht we are miscommunicating. I am not hearing what you are meaning, only what you are saying. I get the feeling we're meaning much the same things, but using incompatible definitions. I used to think most everybody was stupid, but now I think that I just don't know what people think. Language can be extrememly frustrating.
I had assumed you were a Christian...
...like I was saying. Define "God." I'm sure what you say wont be what I say. Also, you don't have to deify an idol to have it lead you away from your god, your true path.
Don't be obscene. I actually use my mind.
Here's a page that has a pretty good look at some of the Biblical evidence for the Trinity:
I'll read it, but I'm pretty sure I've heard it all before. This is a definition-of-god problem.
What we are not supposed to have is false gods. As long as we don't consider a statue or something like that to be a god, then it's not a false god.
By the way, according to what you said, we shouldn't keep Bibles around, since you think they are a temptation to idolatry.
Nobody ever said temptation was wrong; it's just having it succeed that's a problem. The bible holds valuable moral princplies and mysteries in story-form and, while it could be done away with, it would be inconvenient to replace. A necessary risk, therefore.
People do worship Jesus, but no one worships the cross.
You and I are defining worship and god differently. By my definition what people do with cross' is worship them. Deifying an object is not by my definition a prerequisite to worship.
So many of the worlds problems arise form people talking at cross-definitions.
They don't consider the posters to be gods; nor, presumably, do they consider the famous people on the posters gods either (supernatural in nature, etc.). They know that famous people are just human beings, like them, only a lot richer, cooler, better looking, more talented, or whatever.
My dictionary defines worship several ways, but I refer you to "show religious devotion to, as of a deity" and "To perform acts of homage or adoration;"
Teenagers certainly show a certain fanatical, mindless (in a word, religious) devotion to their pop starts of the moment. Not always, but it happens.
But it hardly matters, since that bit was intended as some light humor.
Reverence for the cross is actually reverence for Christ. No one believes the cross is a god. But without Christ's sacrifice on the cross, none of us could be saved.
So they are not worshiping the cross-idol but the christ-idol? Since when is Jesus god? And don't give me that trinity crap, it's totally baseless.
People perhaps are SUPPOSED to revere but not worship the cross, their bible, jesus, saints, etc.. But this is not generally what happens. People wind up worshiping the things themselves as if they had inherent value.
This is the problem with having idols to begin with, which is why jews/christians are not supposed to have them. Stupid people, or people not paying attention all the time, can slip into the habit of worshiping the pointer and not the thing it points to.
If a soldier on a distant battlefield says, "I love you" to a picture of his wife, it doesn't mean he loves the photograph. It is his wife whom he loves, and the photo represents his wife.
In theory, yes. But his wife is immediate and tangible... it's hard to confure a photo of her with her. Religious concepts are not so easy.
You've got to make a distinction between the ideal and the reality. The ideal, the specification, may say one thing, but people quite often don't follow the spec. In reality people worship jesus and cross' in place of their god.
It's not only sad, it's also funny.
Adolescents often have posters of various famous people on their bedroom walls, but they don't worship them.
You sure about that?
Catholic don't worship saints, but consider them "heroes" of the faith, examples of ordinary people who lived extraordinary, holy lives. They offer examples that we can emulate in our own lives, just as you may try to emulate someone you know who is saintly. To say that Catholics worship saints just shows that you've been influenced by anti-Catholic propaganda.
Suuure. And catholics don't worship a cross-shaped idol, either. Look, it may not officially be worship, but at some point you have to objectively define what does and does not constitute worship. People's obsession with the cross often borders on or actually is (depending on the person) worship.
There are so many features of the NT core (even the original 1992 3.1 version) that have yet to be implemented in most *nix variants(like Linux or BSD)
Such as? Linkage? I am genuinely curious.