Most people who do bad things think they already have god on their side anyway Let me see: Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Nicolai Chauchescu, et al - big followers of organized religion?
There are those who do evil in the name of honoring God, but that is not the logical outworking of a faith in Christ. On the other hand, a belief that all truth is relative and there are no absolutes *does* provide fertile ground for doing evil. After all, what you call evil I might call good.
I don't need to be told it's wrong to harm another - I figured it out all on my own. But.... Why is it wrong? With no absolute arbiter of right and wrong, doesn't it merely fall to one man's opinion?
On what do you base your fundamental belief that it's wrong? For that matter, what does wrong mean? How do you know?
Look, I don't think that I'm likely to change your mind here, but I do want to take a minute to say that I'm sorry for the way that people have treated you in the name of Christ.
I agree with you on the issue of religious oppression of scienctific views. What the church did in the middle ages is frankly indefensible. My take on that is that the church felt that it's power structure was being threatened and took actions to protect its turf. It did so wrongly - because it loved the things of the world and will have to answer to God for that. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
In response to your question about "what if I'd never been exposed to religion" I think I'd have to say that as a worldview, rationalism doesn't work. It works well in certain areas - fact-based areas like science. It totally fails in the context of human relationships. Concepts like duty, honor, and self-sacrificial love are frankly completely irrational. The "just the facts" kind of world view has many many inadequacies. It only works in a narrow part of the human experience.
I appreciate that you were raised in the RC church. I have some serious issues with what is taught about Christ and our relationship with Him in that church. I think that the RC church gets it wrong in many areas, and many times many Christians teach wrong things about Christ.
Essentially the teachings of the Christian church follow this line of thinking: 1. A perfect and pure creator made the universe and created people 2. Those people were free to choose whether they would serve God, or choose to serve themselves 3. They chose poorly - deciding that impurity was better than intimate relationship with God. 4. Because of God's purity He could have rightly chosen to destroy mankind at that point. Because of His mercy He did not do that. 5. This impurity required cleansing in order to restore relationship with God. 6. The only way to cleanse the world from this sin was to have a perfectly pure sacrifice pay the price - the wages of sin is death. 7. God - in the form of Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a perfect holy and pure life, died to pay that price, and then rose from the dead - conquering sin and death 8. If we place our faith in the finished work of Christ, we too can have intimate relationship with God.
Do you see that there's nothing in those 8 things that has *anything* to do with your behavior? It's not about making you "do right." It's about intimate, personal relationship with a creator who desires to be your friend.
Do I have questions? You bet I do! The essential questions are answered for me, and it's the tangential ones that tend to be troubling. Here's the deal - the Christian worldview fits my life experience WELL. Because of the overall fit of that view, I can give God the "benefit of the doubt" in areas where it doesn't fit quite right.
Why do we care about "vice" laws? It's because we care about people. If something is dangerous, we generally believe as a culture that laws should exist to teach people not to do dangerous things. Seat belts are measurably beneficial for human safety. That's a reason that laws exist to compel people to wear them. The law is a teacher. I want laws to exist to protect my family and to help society at large "work."
Finally, on the science issue, it's the worldview of the scientist that determines where he will look and for what. His philosophy absolutely prejudices his preconceptions. His results may be untainted and verifiable, but his direction, focus, and line of questions are informed by his philosophy. Science is not pure and unbiased.
The cure for infections is antibiotics. If someone has an infection whether the person likes it or not, whether it makes them feel good, no matter what - it's the cure. The fact that antibiotics have unpleasant side-effects notwithstanding, they ultimately cure the disease.
I appreciate that you fundamentally disagree with my worldview, but frankly I believe that the only cure for the pain that he's feeling is in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Science? Religion? I'm listening to the guy with the lens in a tube rather than the guy with the corpse on a stick
Of course, everyone likes a clever smart remark, but of course you realize that martyrdom is not particularly compelling. The 'corpse on a stick' is the only one with the power to come back from death. The power of Christianity is not in a dead Christ, but in one who willingly paid the necessary penalty for my sin, (and yours) and had the power to overcome death.
FWIW - those of us who are serious followers of Christ are not opponents of good science. Many of us see little good science these days. Much of the good science from antiquity and from today happens to come from people whose worldview is based on an ordered creation from an intelligent designer rather than on matter, time and chance.
There's much more to life and human relationships than sexual expression. Don't get me wrong - I love that aspect of my life, and would not want to become celibate again - but are you really advocating that we provide kids with access to porn as a part of their developmental processes?
The appeal to the violence argument is ridiculous, too. Don't *add* porn, *remove* the violence! If that means that your kids (and you) end up watching less (or no) TV, and skip almost every movie, can you argue that you have been harmed in some way?
What about investing that time in relating to each other, playing board games, having conversations, investing in hobbies where you build or create things, or enjoy things created or performed by others?
Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way. Real relationships are not self-focused, but must have a significant component of other-focus or they don't survive.
Are you really advocating that we train our kids that it's all about *them*!?!?
What if the 60% number was a rewrite of the parts of Vista that are related to consumer editions, like the media center parts?
If so, the scope falls dramatically and the estimate might be on target, but 60% rewrite of anything* is a pretty big effort (* where anything is defined as 'software ready for the retail market')
I sent this to the city manager. I have not yet received a reply.
Sir, I appreciate that you were frustrated that your city website was non-functional, but it appears to me that the people to whom you complained were not responsible, and that the tone of your messages tended to be combative.
The folks from CentOS were being polite and helpful, based on my read of the messages. I believe that you owe them an apology. they had absolutely NOTHING to do with the problems you experienced, and tried to assist you anyway. For you to respond with "I am sorry that we had to go through the process and accusations to get the problem resolved" They did nothing wrong. You accused them, and frankly it was uncharitable on your part.
Please extend an official apology to those folks at www.centos.org. They deserve it.
Please also note that I am not affiliated with CentOS in any way (except that I use their Linux distribution quite happliy.) I read about this spat on a technology-focused website known as slashdot http://www.slashdot.org/
I don't pretend to have all of the anwers, but if you (or any other reader) has sincere questions about the Christian faith, I'd be honored to search for answers with you.
Christianity is the only world view that fully works, as far as I'm concerned.
For what it's worth, even as a devoted Christian there are things about Christianity that perplex me, but I have two comments about that: 1) There are far larger and far more questions related to *every* other world view I have examined, and
2) The big questions have been answered for me, and the ones that remain are less important. I can give God the benefit of the doubt in areas of lesser importance where I don't fully understand.
But there are some components of "the law" (broad term covering the old testament) which were civil or ceremonial in nature, others were moral, and some were universally appropriate to all cultures.
If one then happens to ask, "On what basis do you then continue to say that these laws are still valid morally?" -- beyond the "all agree" level of things like murder, and in the category of things like homosexuality and adultery -- the answer is that when a superior writes a contract, even if you are not a party to it, the contract will still give you an idea what values the superior holds to. We no longer enforce the penalties, but we still know what actions displease God.
"Well, then, why aren't Christians out sacrificing animals and eating kosher?"
The reason is simple for this one: All of the ceremonial laws has been superseded by Christ.
----- End from that page It's not a "pick and choose as we like" kind of thing, although many people believe that it is.
I've been working for Fortune ranked companies for more than a dozen years. I've been in the IT business FAR longer than that. I do understand IT. Most IT people don't get it.
Of course there are more expenses than the actual disks. There's power, SAN hardware, SAN management software, server licenses, server hardware, server virtualization software, server virtualization management tools, network tuning tools to get to my data LAN gear, including routers, server licenses, CALs, and LOTS of people to manage all of that stuff.
Of course the numbers are far higher than the numbers I listed. You have to factor in the growth of email storage, which increases annually, etc. Let's say that my numbers are CRAZY wrong - that they are off by a factor of 10. That's $1250/user/year for storage. Pretty cheap. If the average employee is making $50K/yr, that's $25/hr (not including benefits, but let's make this easy) The labor equivalence is 50 hours. In other words if that $50K/yr person spends 50 hours organizing, filing, archiving, printing, and deleting those "unnecessary" emails, that has burned the $1250 that I estimated for storage.
Let's assume that I'm off by a factor of 30, and the actual cost of storage is $3750, meaning 150 hours for that $50K person for break-even.
You might argue that 150 hours is excessive. I can say that spending time waiting for archiving to complete, or searching archives takes a LOOONG time. wouldn't you rather have me doing productive work than waiting for a process to finish, or wasting my time looking for something that your arbitrary policy forced me to delete?
I submit to you that aggressive deletion means that some work will be redone. Some work will be lost forever, and some opportunities to make the company more revenue will be lost forever, too. Some time is spent looking for that lost data, and that is lost time, too. 150 hours go by pretty quickly.
By the way, even if you limit users to 50MB or 200MB or some other number, you still have the CALs, the LAN gear, the servers, and all the rest. You merely have less DISK, and potentially less servers, but the costs don't completely disappear. All I'm saying is that the marginal cost of data is not significant enough to justify forcing ME to adapt to an IT system. That's ridiculous. Build the blasted thing to adapt to me. IT people don't get it.
Finally, the problem (as I see it) is that there's a BIG bottom-line number associated with the SAN gear and maintenance that hits a single person's budget. That person is measured in terms of how well they manage or cut that budget. If they force costs to other departments, they look good and are rewarded. They frankly don't care whether this is harmful to other departments or the organization as a whole. This is how IT (and every other) business works. Make a problem "somebody else's problem" and you will be rewarded. I don't know of any organization that looks at costs across the whole organization, predominantly because this is extremely hard to measure.
Still so sure that I don't understand IT, or that my opinion is that far off base?
I agree that quality *anything* is more expensive than cheap. Sometimes cheap is the best thing, even if it's not the *Right Thing TM*
In terms of quality, so you dropped $1500 on a 300GB drive? OK with me. That's $5/Gb. Pretty cheap. If I want to keep 5 GB of mail, (or anything else) that's only $25 bucks. If you say it needs to be RAID 5 - that's $125 per user for storage. Still pretty cheap. Hardware support/maintenance at 25% is $375/year, and I figure that you can keep almost 50 users on that RAID set (assuming 80% capacity, each user a disk hog like me.)
My point is this. It would be a whole lot more expensive to pay me my rate of pay to delete the messages (multiplied by the total number of users) than it would be to upgrade the storage subsystem.
The problem is that the actual cost of me "cleaning up" my mail and shared disk is not measurable, and there's this nice, clean bill that you get for hardware capex and maintenance which *is* measurable, and someone will complain because *their* budget gets hit with that charge.
Disk costs a lot? So what?
(I'm not trolling - I'm expressing genuine feelings on this issue, but *dons flameproof suit* anyway)
My time is too $%$#@ valuable to waste going through and deleting old messages from my mailbox. Google Desktop allows me to find what I need, and email is my work and activity database.
The mail system should eat whatever I decide to store in it. IT doesn't have to like it, but when I waste a day/month cleaning out my inbox so save DASD rather than making my company better at our mission, and making money for our stockholders, it's a BIG waste for the organization.
IT is not the center of the universe. IT is there to facilitate people making the company money! DASD is cheap, my time is expensive. Opportunity cost is far more expensive.
In fact, my wife *did* call 911 about the siezure, which handles the emergency care for the phyical need of the one child, but does *nothing* to assist in the emotional care for my wife - who needed my support.
In addition, if we follow the logical outcome of the scenario you present, while she is riding in the ambulance with the EMS personnel, who is caring for the needs of the *rest* of my kids?
I'm glad that you have the confidence of your convictions. Unfortunately perhaps you don't have sufficient life experience to justify your perceptions.
In my case, I have four kids. When I am away from home, I need to be reachable ALL the time in case I am needed at home. For example, I can recall being at the office when my wife called distraught that my 9 month old son had just experienced a siezure, and needed urgent medical attention. I also can recall a time when my 2 year old fell off a swing and needed stitches. Being a parent is a 24x7x365 job for 18 or more years.
Should my wife and I refuse to ever have dates during that time period? I think not. I can wear my cell phone, set to vibrate, and ignore calls not from home. Should the institutions I visit demand that they control whether I can be summoned to participate? I think not.
You are entitled to have an enjoyable experience in the theater, uninterrupted by thoughtless and rude people. I will not dispute that, but frankly my cell phone buzzing quietly is no more of, and perhaps less of an interruption than the people who cough, sneeze, or need to leave due to a full bladder.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to carry my cell phone and to quietly excuse myself in case of emergency.
I was able to do this over a period of a couple of weeks with a similar number of CDs. This was not rocket science. I simply kept a stack of media to be ripped near the Mac, then configured iTunes to auto lookup, rip to mp3, then eject CDs when done. If i walked by the laptop and there was a CD sticking out, I'd replace with another and keep going with whatever I was doing.
Didn't take *that* long, I spent no cahs, and I was not a slave to the PC, either.
I want to chime in here and say that I find persecution of people offensive, and when it's motivated on the basis of ancestry or melanin, it's ignorant.
I point out my religious views to show that I'm not identifying with or defending this idea because I have the same lineage as the parent (I don't.)
I work with Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Mormons, Jews, agnostics, and probably more of which I am unaware. There's lots of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity in my work. Your religious views are irrelevant to your IT work, unless your religion requires that you physicaly attack your coworkers. I've never had that problem, except with a lunatic at a previous job, but that was a psychological issue rather than a religious one.
I work for a company that is recognized for lots of opportunities for women, and in fact there is a high percentage of women here, I see many many more men in IT than women. Is this because of sexism? I tend to think not, but it's not politically correct to suggest that.
Glad to hear that your 13 hour car ride was a safe one!
To me it seems that America is more religious than ever (well more religious than any point in the last 60 years for certain). Wow. Really? I have entirely the opposite opinion.
There are a couple of items on which I think we're ultimately going to disagree, but I think that there are a couple on which we can probably negotiate agreement:
Maybe as the U.S. becomes more and more Christian (just guessing that most babies are born to Christians and most immigrants are Christians) Ok. Here's a point that I'd like to clarify. There's a distinction in my mind between people who are culturally Christians and those of us who are totally sold-out followers of Christ.
Many self-identify as Christians because: they were not of some other belief, so as Americans they must be "Christian," people whose parents and grandparents were Christian, they are Christian because they go to church on Sunday - or twice a year, or are Roman Catholic because their parents were Roman Catholic, etc
The VAST VAST majority of those people are not likely to be Christians because most of them don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
From your point of view, this may be a distinction without a difference, but to me (and those like me) this is a HUGE distinction. The early church was easily distinguished from the surrounding culture because of their love for each other and because of their commitment to their worldview. In fact, in the book of Acts, it says that the believers held all things together. Do you see that in the "church" in America today?
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not an advocate of any sort of communism, but their desire to seek things in heaven rather than things on earth was so strong that they would willingly sacrifice their earthly posessions for the good of others. Would you say that the average "Christian" you know lives their life that way? Jesus called on us to love the unlovable, defend the defenseless, feed the hungry, care for the poor, live lives of geniune self-sacrifice. Do you see that in this predominately "Christian" culture? I certainly don't.
What I see is a group that gives a great deal of money to charity - but their gifts almost entirely come from abundance. According to recent stats, while we give $240B to charity, Starbucks - a luxury coffee chain, has a market cap of $24B, and gross sales of $6.37B. If we gave out of anything but abundance, wouldn't giving be greater than 2% of GDP? We have ~$1.7T in consumer debt and pay ~$50B in finance charges for the crap that we seem to think we cannot live without. If the culture was completely saturated with people who followed Christ seriously I submit to you that these numbers would be at least reversed.
So, why is this relevent? Because this says to me that most people in this country are not Christians. What I am seeing is that most of the people I know - even those who would self-identify as Christians live their lives with a world view which is not the same as mine. Most people I know live their lives as if there's no God, or as if there's no such thing as absolute truth.
And another thing. Are you familiar with the expression "not that there's anything wrong with that." popularized on Seinfeld? The reason that this gained such popularity was because of the strong cultural aversion we now have about declaring one worldview superior to another. We have become a culture where it's not acceptable to express radical worldviews, because we fear offending anyone. This newspeak is detrimental to the freedom of all people.
I think this is inspite of government, not because of it. When the government gets involved in religious affairs freedom of religion fades I could not agree with you more. The absolute last thing that I want to see here is for the government, be it city, county, state, or federal endorsement of religion. That would *not* be a goal for me. I think
Time does not permit a full discussion of this topic - at least not today..... (Got a bunch of family on the way and we're hosting Thanksgiving dinner.)
However, first I'd tend to disagree with the idea that the establishment clause suggests that federally owned land should not be used for sectarian purposes. The establishment clause was about defending the rights of Americans from the oppression of the state church. The idea that the government should be non-sectarian in allocation of federal resources is definitely supported by case law and is the standard in our country today. Nothing in the vast vast majority of cases the ACLU takes up has to do with the federal government mandating that the creation of a state religion.
With respect to the ACLU and their "non-assault" on Christians, let me say that I agree completely with the ideals you espouse above - that the TACLU (theoretical ACLU) would defend and protect the rights of all Americans against the abuses of the state. In practice, while the ACLU does not in fact go after Christians per se, the net effect of their behavior is that public expression of Christian values and behaviors are less and less acceptable.
If an organization does not attack me, but facilitates the public perception that the expression of my beliefs in the public square is unacceptable, that if I happen to be standing on government owned land when I do it I'm breaking the law and should be estopped by the courts, isn't the fact that they sued the city, county or state and not me directly a bit of a "distinction without a difference?"
It's not my media that feeds my "disinformation." It's the net effect of case after case where the ACLU takes a stand against things that I value.
Overall, religious liberty issues are thorny. As an example, my church recently purchased some land on which we intend to build a worship center. Some of the people in that community object to the size of the building we intend to build on a small portion of the 225 acres that we own. Since the area is zoned as "agricultural reserve" and there is no land specifically designated by the county zoning laws as space to religious institutions, it's a little unclear whether the county should allow us to build. If the county had zoned certain areas within the AG Reserve as property for "private institutional facilities," (newspeak for church/synagogue/mosque/temple/other meeting houses) there would be little question. However, if the county did that, might they be repressing religious expression here by limiting the rights of the people to worship? Perhaps. It's sometimes not cut and dried, although I agree that in general people should buy their own land if they want to control how the land is used.
I think that you and I agree on more than we disagree on, but I cannot stand the actions of the ACLU. What they are doing is in practice reducing the rights of people with ALL religious views to express those views publicly. The ACLU is not my defender or friend. Your assertion that it's not an issue unless federal dollard are involved does not seem to be the case. I hear again and again of cases against school systems WRT religious liberty and schools are almost entirely funded locally. I hear about city and counties being taken to court on 10 commandments issues. Those are not federal issues.
For what it's worth, I never said that anyone was persecuting me for my faith. The three women in prison today in Indonesia (found guilty of promoting Christianity during a Sunday school class for children whose parents were present during the class) sentenced to three years prison time, the village that was razed recently by armed Muslim militants, the woman who was disfigured from the terrorist bomber's church explosion, the man who was tortured and burned for being a Christian, those people experience persecution for their faith. (They and more like them suffer each day.) I'm saying that the culture in the US is less tolerant of Christian views, and that the ACLU is part of the problem.
but at least there's the potential for better understanding at the end of the road.
If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is... you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.
The potential risk from being wrong in this wager far exceeds the cost of having believed.
Look, I certainly don't claim to have all of the answers, and feel strongly that I can't simply "check my brain at the door" of my faith. If there is a God, and He wants to interact with me, then I should be able to do just that.
What I *do* know is this: I have examined many world views which attempted to answer the questions a) where did we come from? b) what went wrong? and c) how can we fix it?
Based on my study and life experience, the explanation that best fits the available facts is the one provided by the Christian world view. There are many many areas where I do have clear and legitimate answers to life's questions through my relationship with God. In the areas where I don't have clear anwers, I'm willing to "give God the benefit of the doubt." My expectation is that the areas that are unclear to me now will be known to me after death.
I am sorry that other believers were ignorant and arrogant toward you. I apologize on their behalf.
I respect your point of view, although I consider it insufficient, it's still within the pale of orthodoxy. As Augustine said "in essentials unity in doubtful things liberty and in all things charity"
I think that it's likely that we agree on the essentials, I grant you liberty in this area that is not essential, and I apologize for a lack of love on the part of others. It is my hope that I have not been uncharitable in our exchange thus far. If I have, please let me know so that I can offer apologies and seek forgiveness on my behalf.
It is possible that my views are incorrect, but I have given this matter a great deal of study, thought and prayer to have arrived at this point of view. This position is one from which I may be swayed, but it will take more than what has yet been offered to overcome my objections to your point of view.
I think that big bang cosmology and biochemical abiogenesis are pie in the sky philosophy. They can not be tested or falsified. How can you propose that they are areas of scientific endeavor? You cannot employ the scientific method to study them.
In fact, based on what we know of biochemical interactions, the possibility of biochemical abiogenesis is so pathetically unlikely as to be statistically insignificant. It's so close to impossible that it might as well be impossible. It's so unlikely that the right materials, order and conditions would be present that statistically speaking it would take more time than has elapsed in the proposed age of the universe for it to occur. The fragility of such initial life forms is so great that the strong likelihood is that none would survive anyway.
The only reason to seriously pursue this area of study is if your world view demands that there be nothing "super" natural to kick start the life process.
I seriously doubt that either of us will convince the other, however.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people who do bad things think they already have god on their side anyway
Let me see: Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Nicolai Chauchescu, et al - big followers of organized religion?
There are those who do evil in the name of honoring God, but that is not the logical outworking of a faith in Christ. On the other hand, a belief that all truth is relative and there are no absolutes *does* provide fertile ground for doing evil. After all, what you call evil I might call good.
I don't need to be told it's wrong to harm another - I figured it out all on my own.
But.... Why is it wrong? With no absolute arbiter of right and wrong, doesn't it merely fall to one man's opinion?
On what do you base your fundamental belief that it's wrong? For that matter, what does wrong mean? How do you know?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Look, I don't think that I'm likely to change your mind here, but I do want to take a minute to say that I'm sorry for the way that people have treated you in the name of Christ.
I agree with you on the issue of religious oppression of scienctific views. What the church did in the middle ages is frankly indefensible. My take on that is that the church felt that it's power structure was being threatened and took actions to protect its turf. It did so wrongly - because it loved the things of the world and will have to answer to God for that. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
In response to your question about "what if I'd never been exposed to religion" I think I'd have to say that as a worldview, rationalism doesn't work. It works well in certain areas - fact-based areas like science. It totally fails in the context of human relationships. Concepts like duty, honor, and self-sacrificial love are frankly completely irrational. The "just the facts" kind of world view has many many inadequacies. It only works in a narrow part of the human experience.
I appreciate that you were raised in the RC church. I have some serious issues with what is taught about Christ and our relationship with Him in that church. I think that the RC church gets it wrong in many areas, and many times many Christians teach wrong things about Christ.
Essentially the teachings of the Christian church follow this line of thinking:
1. A perfect and pure creator made the universe and created people
2. Those people were free to choose whether they would serve God, or choose to serve themselves
3. They chose poorly - deciding that impurity was better than intimate relationship with God.
4. Because of God's purity He could have rightly chosen to destroy mankind at that point. Because of His mercy He did not do that.
5. This impurity required cleansing in order to restore relationship with God.
6. The only way to cleanse the world from this sin was to have a perfectly pure sacrifice pay the price - the wages of sin is death.
7. God - in the form of Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a perfect holy and pure life, died to pay that price, and then rose from the dead - conquering sin and death
8. If we place our faith in the finished work of Christ, we too can have intimate relationship with God.
Do you see that there's nothing in those 8 things that has *anything* to do with your behavior? It's not about making you "do right." It's about intimate, personal relationship with a creator who desires to be your friend.
Do I have questions? You bet I do! The essential questions are answered for me, and it's the tangential ones that tend to be troubling. Here's the deal - the Christian worldview fits my life experience WELL. Because of the overall fit of that view, I can give God the "benefit of the doubt" in areas where it doesn't fit quite right.
Why do we care about "vice" laws? It's because we care about people. If something is dangerous, we generally believe as a culture that laws should exist to teach people not to do dangerous things. Seat belts are measurably beneficial for human safety. That's a reason that laws exist to compel people to wear them. The law is a teacher. I want laws to exist to protect my family and to help society at large "work."
Finally, on the science issue, it's the worldview of the scientist that determines where he will look and for what. His philosophy absolutely prejudices his preconceptions. His results may be untainted and verifiable, but his direction, focus, and line of questions are informed by his philosophy. Science is not pure and unbiased.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
The cure for infections is antibiotics. If someone has an infection whether the person likes it or not, whether it makes them feel good, no matter what - it's the cure. The fact that antibiotics have unpleasant side-effects notwithstanding, they ultimately cure the disease.
I appreciate that you fundamentally disagree with my worldview, but frankly I believe that the only cure for the pain that he's feeling is in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
It's loving to speak the truth compassionately.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Science? Religion? I'm listening to the guy with the lens in a tube rather than the guy with the corpse on a stick
Of course, everyone likes a clever smart remark, but of course you realize that martyrdom is not particularly compelling. The 'corpse on a stick' is the only one with the power to come back from death. The power of Christianity is not in a dead Christ, but in one who willingly paid the necessary penalty for my sin, (and yours) and had the power to overcome death.
FWIW - those of us who are serious followers of Christ are not opponents of good science. Many of us see little good science these days. Much of the good science from antiquity and from today happens to come from people whose worldview is based on an ordered creation from an intelligent designer rather than on matter, time and chance.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
http://www.provenmen.org/
There's much more to life and human relationships than sexual expression. Don't get me wrong - I love that aspect of my life, and would not want to become celibate again - but are you really advocating that we provide kids with access to porn as a part of their developmental processes?
The appeal to the violence argument is ridiculous, too. Don't *add* porn, *remove* the violence! If that means that your kids (and you) end up watching less (or no) TV, and skip almost every movie, can you argue that you have been harmed in some way?
What about investing that time in relating to each other, playing board games, having conversations, investing in hobbies where you build or create things, or enjoy things created or performed by others?
Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way. Real relationships are not self-focused, but must have a significant component of other-focus or they don't survive.
Are you really advocating that we train our kids that it's all about *them*!?!?
Please tell me you're trolling!
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I copied the mayor. :)
What if the 60% number was a rewrite of the parts of Vista that are related to consumer editions, like the media center parts?
If so, the scope falls dramatically and the estimate might be on target, but 60% rewrite of anything* is a pretty big effort (* where anything is defined as 'software ready for the retail market')
I sent this to the city manager. I have not yet received a reply.
Sir,
I appreciate that you were frustrated that your city website was
non-functional, but it appears to me that the people to whom you
complained were not responsible, and that the tone of your messages tended
to be combative.
The folks from CentOS were being polite and helpful, based on my read of
the messages. I believe that you owe them an apology. they had
absolutely NOTHING to do with the problems you experienced, and tried to
assist you anyway. For you to respond with "I am sorry that we had to go
through the process and accusations to get the problem resolved" They did
nothing wrong. You accused them, and frankly it was uncharitable on your
part.
Please extend an official apology to those folks at www.centos.org. They
deserve it.
Please also note that I am not affiliated with CentOS in any way (except
that I use their Linux distribution quite happliy.) I read about this
spat on a technology-focused website known as slashdot
http://www.slashdot.org/
Respectfully,
I don't pretend to have all of the anwers, but if you (or any other reader) has sincere questions about the Christian faith, I'd be honored to search for answers with you.
Christianity is the only world view that fully works, as far as I'm concerned.
For what it's worth, even as a devoted Christian there are things about Christianity that perplex me, but I have two comments about that:
1) There are far larger and far more questions related to *every* other world view I have examined, and
2) The big questions have been answered for me, and the ones that remain are less important. I can give God the benefit of the doubt in areas of lesser importance where I don't fully understand.
Regards,
Anomaly
But there are some components of "the law" (broad term covering the old testament) which were civil or ceremonial in nature, others were moral, and some were universally appropriate to all cultures.
A good discussion of this can be found here:
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/lawrole.html
----- Begin from that page
If one then happens to ask, "On what basis do you then continue to say that these laws are still valid morally?" -- beyond the "all agree" level of things like murder, and in the category of things like homosexuality and adultery -- the answer is that when a superior writes a contract, even if you are not a party to it, the contract will still give you an idea what values the superior holds to. We no longer enforce the penalties, but we still know what actions displease God.
"Well, then, why aren't Christians out sacrificing animals and eating kosher?"
The reason is simple for this one: All of the ceremonial laws has been superseded by Christ.
----- End from that page
It's not a "pick and choose as we like" kind of thing, although many people believe that it is.
Regards,
Anomaly
I've been working for Fortune ranked companies for more than a dozen years. I've been in the IT business FAR longer than that. I do understand IT. Most IT people don't get it.
Of course there are more expenses than the actual disks. There's power, SAN hardware, SAN management software, server licenses, server hardware, server virtualization software, server virtualization management tools, network tuning tools to get to my data LAN gear, including routers, server licenses, CALs, and LOTS of people to manage all of that stuff.
Of course the numbers are far higher than the numbers I listed. You have to factor in the growth of email storage, which increases annually, etc. Let's say that my numbers are CRAZY wrong - that they are off by a factor of 10. That's $1250/user/year for storage. Pretty cheap. If the average employee is making $50K/yr, that's $25/hr (not including benefits, but let's make this easy) The labor equivalence is 50 hours. In other words if that $50K/yr person spends 50 hours organizing, filing, archiving, printing, and deleting those "unnecessary" emails, that has burned the $1250 that I estimated for storage.
Let's assume that I'm off by a factor of 30, and the actual cost of storage is $3750, meaning 150 hours for that $50K person for break-even.
You might argue that 150 hours is excessive. I can say that spending time waiting for archiving to complete, or searching archives takes a LOOONG time. wouldn't you rather have me doing productive work than waiting for a process to finish, or wasting my time looking for something that your arbitrary policy forced me to delete?
I submit to you that aggressive deletion means that some work will be redone. Some work will be lost forever, and some opportunities to make the company more revenue will be lost forever, too. Some time is spent looking for that lost data, and that is lost time, too. 150 hours go by pretty quickly.
By the way, even if you limit users to 50MB or 200MB or some other number, you still have the CALs, the LAN gear, the servers, and all the rest. You merely have less DISK, and potentially less servers, but the costs don't completely disappear. All I'm saying is that the marginal cost of data is not significant enough to justify forcing ME to adapt to an IT system. That's ridiculous. Build the blasted thing to adapt to me. IT people don't get it.
Finally, the problem (as I see it) is that there's a BIG bottom-line number associated with the SAN gear and maintenance that hits a single person's budget. That person is measured in terms of how well they manage or cut that budget. If they force costs to other departments, they look good and are rewarded. They frankly don't care whether this is harmful to other departments or the organization as a whole. This is how IT (and every other) business works. Make a problem "somebody else's problem" and you will be rewarded. I don't know of any organization that looks at costs across the whole organization, predominantly because this is extremely hard to measure.
Still so sure that I don't understand IT, or that my opinion is that far off base?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I agree that quality *anything* is more expensive than cheap. Sometimes cheap is the best thing, even if it's not the *Right Thing TM*
In terms of quality, so you dropped $1500 on a 300GB drive? OK with me. That's $5/Gb. Pretty cheap. If I want to keep 5 GB of mail, (or anything else) that's only $25 bucks. If you say it needs to be RAID 5 - that's $125 per user for storage. Still pretty cheap. Hardware support/maintenance at 25% is $375/year, and I figure that you can keep almost 50 users on that RAID set (assuming 80% capacity, each user a disk hog like me.)
My point is this. It would be a whole lot more expensive to pay me my rate of pay to delete the messages (multiplied by the total number of users) than it would be to upgrade the storage subsystem.
The problem is that the actual cost of me "cleaning up" my mail and shared disk is not measurable, and there's this nice, clean bill that you get for hardware capex and maintenance which *is* measurable, and someone will complain because *their* budget gets hit with that charge.
Disk costs a lot? So what?
(I'm not trolling - I'm expressing genuine feelings on this issue, but *dons flameproof suit* anyway)
My time is too $%$#@ valuable to waste going through and deleting old messages from my mailbox. Google Desktop allows me to find what I need, and email is my work and activity database.
The mail system should eat whatever I decide to store in it. IT doesn't have to like it, but when I waste a day/month cleaning out my inbox so save DASD rather than making my company better at our mission, and making money for our stockholders, it's a BIG waste for the organization.
IT is not the center of the universe. IT is there to facilitate people making the company money! DASD is cheap, my time is expensive. Opportunity cost is far more expensive.
In fact, my wife *did* call 911 about the siezure, which handles the emergency care for the phyical need of the one child, but does *nothing* to assist in the emotional care for my wife - who needed my support.
In addition, if we follow the logical outcome of the scenario you present, while she is riding in the ambulance with the EMS personnel, who is caring for the needs of the *rest* of my kids?
I'm glad that you have the confidence of your convictions. Unfortunately perhaps you don't have sufficient life experience to justify your perceptions.
In my case, I have four kids. When I am away from home, I need to be reachable ALL the time in case I am needed at home. For example, I can recall being at the office when my wife called distraught that my 9 month old son had just experienced a siezure, and needed urgent medical attention. I also can recall a time when my 2 year old fell off a swing and needed stitches. Being a parent is a 24x7x365 job for 18 or more years.
Should my wife and I refuse to ever have dates during that time period? I think not. I can wear my cell phone, set to vibrate, and ignore calls not from home. Should the institutions I visit demand that they control whether I can be summoned to participate? I think not.
You are entitled to have an enjoyable experience in the theater, uninterrupted by thoughtless and rude people. I will not dispute that, but frankly my cell phone buzzing quietly is no more of, and perhaps less of an interruption than the people who cough, sneeze, or need to leave due to a full bladder.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to carry my cell phone and to quietly excuse myself in case of emergency.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I was able to do this over a period of a couple of weeks with a similar number of CDs. This was not rocket science. I simply kept a stack of media to be ripped near the Mac, then configured iTunes to auto lookup, rip to mp3, then eject CDs when done. If i walked by the laptop and there was a CD sticking out, I'd replace with another and keep going with whatever I was doing.
Didn't take *that* long, I spent no cahs, and I was not a slave to the PC, either.
YMMV.
Anomaly
I want to chime in here and say that I find persecution of people offensive, and when it's motivated on the basis of ancestry or melanin, it's ignorant.
I point out my religious views to show that I'm not identifying with or defending this idea because I have the same lineage as the parent (I don't.)
I work with Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Mormons, Jews, agnostics, and probably more of which I am unaware. There's lots of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity in my work. Your religious views are irrelevant to your IT work, unless your religion requires that you physicaly attack your coworkers. I've never had that problem, except with a lunatic at a previous job, but that was a psychological issue rather than a religious one.
I work for a company that is recognized for lots of opportunities for women, and in fact there is a high percentage of women here, I see many many more men in IT than women. Is this because of sexism? I tend to think not, but it's not politically correct to suggest that.
I'm originally from Charleston, thank you very much. I was just there over the weekend as a matter of fact.
Glad to hear that your 13 hour car ride was a safe one!
To me it seems that America is more religious than ever (well more religious than any point in the last 60 years for certain).
Wow. Really? I have entirely the opposite opinion.
There are a couple of items on which I think we're ultimately going to disagree, but I think that there are a couple on which we can probably negotiate agreement:
Maybe as the U.S. becomes more and more Christian (just guessing that most babies are born to Christians and most immigrants are Christians)
Ok. Here's a point that I'd like to clarify. There's a distinction in my mind between people who are culturally Christians and those of us who are totally sold-out followers of Christ.
Many self-identify as Christians because:
they were not of some other belief, so as Americans they must be "Christian,"
people whose parents and grandparents were Christian,
they are Christian because they go to church on Sunday - or twice a year, or
are Roman Catholic because their parents were Roman Catholic, etc
The VAST VAST majority of those people are not likely to be Christians because most of them don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
From your point of view, this may be a distinction without a difference, but to me (and those like me) this is a HUGE distinction. The early church was easily distinguished from the surrounding culture because of their love for each other and because of their commitment to their worldview. In fact, in the book of Acts, it says that the believers held all things together. Do you see that in the "church" in America today?
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not an advocate of any sort of communism, but their desire to seek things in heaven rather than things on earth was so strong that they would willingly sacrifice their earthly posessions for the good of others. Would you say that the average "Christian" you know lives their life that way? Jesus called on us to love the unlovable, defend the defenseless, feed the hungry, care for the poor, live lives of geniune self-sacrifice. Do you see that in this predominately "Christian" culture? I certainly don't.
What I see is a group that gives a great deal of money to charity - but their gifts almost entirely come from abundance. According to recent stats, while we give $240B to charity, Starbucks - a luxury coffee chain, has a market cap of $24B, and gross sales of $6.37B. If we gave out of anything but abundance, wouldn't giving be greater than 2% of GDP? We have ~$1.7T in consumer debt and pay ~$50B in finance charges for the crap that we seem to think we cannot live without. If the culture was completely saturated with people who followed Christ seriously I submit to you that these numbers would be at least reversed.
So, why is this relevent? Because this says to me that most people in this country are not Christians. What I am seeing is that most of the people I know - even those who would self-identify as Christians live their lives with a world view which is not the same as mine. Most people I know live their lives as if there's no God, or as if there's no such thing as absolute truth.
And another thing. Are you familiar with the expression "not that there's anything wrong with that." popularized on Seinfeld? The reason that this gained such popularity was because of the strong cultural aversion we now have about declaring one worldview superior to another. We have become a culture where it's not acceptable to express radical worldviews, because we fear offending anyone. This newspeak is detrimental to the freedom of all people.
I think this is inspite of government, not because of it. When the government gets involved in religious affairs freedom of religion fades
I could not agree with you more. The absolute last thing that I want to see here is for the government, be it city, county, state, or federal endorsement of religion. That would *not* be a goal for me. I think
Time does not permit a full discussion of this topic - at least not today..... (Got a bunch of family on the way and we're hosting Thanksgiving dinner.)
However, first I'd tend to disagree with the idea that the establishment clause suggests that federally owned land should not be used for sectarian purposes. The establishment clause was about defending the rights of Americans from the oppression of the state church. The idea that the government should be non-sectarian in allocation of federal resources is definitely supported by case law and is the standard in our country today. Nothing in the vast vast majority of cases the ACLU takes up has to do with the federal government mandating that the creation of a state religion.
With respect to the ACLU and their "non-assault" on Christians, let me say that I agree completely with the ideals you espouse above - that the TACLU (theoretical ACLU) would defend and protect the rights of all Americans against the abuses of the state. In practice, while the ACLU does not in fact go after Christians per se, the net effect of their behavior is that public expression of Christian values and behaviors are less and less acceptable.
If an organization does not attack me, but facilitates the public perception that the expression of my beliefs in the public square is unacceptable, that if I happen to be standing on government owned land when I do it I'm breaking the law and should be estopped by the courts, isn't the fact that they sued the city, county or state and not me directly a bit of a "distinction without a difference?"
It's not my media that feeds my "disinformation." It's the net effect of case after case where the ACLU takes a stand against things that I value.
Overall, religious liberty issues are thorny. As an example, my church recently purchased some land on which we intend to build a worship center. Some of the people in that community object to the size of the building we intend to build on a small portion of the 225 acres that we own. Since the area is zoned as "agricultural reserve" and there is no land specifically designated by the county zoning laws as space to religious institutions, it's a little unclear whether the county should allow us to build. If the county had zoned certain areas within the AG Reserve as property for "private institutional facilities," (newspeak for church/synagogue/mosque/temple/other meeting houses) there would be little question. However, if the county did that, might they be repressing religious expression here by limiting the rights of the people to worship? Perhaps. It's sometimes not cut and dried, although I agree that in general people should buy their own land if they want to control how the land is used.
I think that you and I agree on more than we disagree on, but I cannot stand the actions of the ACLU. What they are doing is in practice reducing the rights of people with ALL religious views to express those views publicly. The ACLU is not my defender or friend. Your assertion that it's not an issue unless federal dollard are involved does not seem to be the case. I hear again and again of cases against school systems WRT religious liberty and schools are almost entirely funded locally. I hear about city and counties being taken to court on 10 commandments issues. Those are not federal issues.
For what it's worth, I never said that anyone was persecuting me for my faith. The three women in prison today in Indonesia (found guilty of promoting Christianity during a Sunday school class for children whose parents were present during the class) sentenced to three years prison time, the village that was razed recently by armed Muslim militants, the woman who was disfigured from the terrorist bomber's church explosion, the man who was tortured and burned for being a Christian, those people experience persecution for their faith. (They and more like them suffer each day.) I'm saying that the culture in the US is less tolerant of Christian views, and that the ACLU is part of the problem.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
but at least there's the potential for better understanding at the end of the road. ... you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.
If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is
The potential risk from being wrong in this wager far exceeds the cost of having believed.
Look, I certainly don't claim to have all of the answers, and feel strongly that I can't simply "check my brain at the door" of my faith. If there is a God, and He wants to interact with me, then I should be able to do just that.
What I *do* know is this: I have examined many world views which attempted to answer the questions
a) where did we come from?
b) what went wrong? and
c) how can we fix it?
Based on my study and life experience, the explanation that best fits the available facts is the one provided by the Christian world view. There are many many areas where I do have clear and legitimate answers to life's questions through my relationship with God. In the areas where I don't have clear anwers, I'm willing to "give God the benefit of the doubt." My expectation is that the areas that are unclear to me now will be known to me after death.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I am sorry that other believers were ignorant and arrogant toward you. I apologize on their behalf.
I respect your point of view, although I consider it insufficient, it's still within the pale of orthodoxy. As Augustine said "in essentials unity in doubtful things liberty and in all things charity"
I think that it's likely that we agree on the essentials, I grant you liberty in this area that is not essential, and I apologize for a lack of love on the part of others. It is my hope that I have not been uncharitable in our exchange thus far. If I have, please let me know so that I can offer apologies and seek forgiveness on my behalf.
It is possible that my views are incorrect, but I have given this matter a great deal of study, thought and prayer to have arrived at this point of view. This position is one from which I may be swayed, but it will take more than what has yet been offered to overcome my objections to your point of view.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I think that big bang cosmology and biochemical abiogenesis are pie in the sky philosophy. They can not be tested or falsified. How can you propose that they are areas of scientific endeavor? You cannot employ the scientific method to study them.
In fact, based on what we know of biochemical interactions, the possibility of biochemical abiogenesis is so pathetically unlikely as to be statistically insignificant. It's so close to impossible that it might as well be impossible. It's so unlikely that the right materials, order and conditions would be present that statistically speaking it would take more time than has elapsed in the proposed age of the universe for it to occur. The fragility of such initial life forms is so great that the strong likelihood is that none would survive anyway.
The only reason to seriously pursue this area of study is if your world view demands that there be nothing "super" natural to kick start the life process.
I seriously doubt that either of us will convince the other, however.
Respectfully,
Anomaly