When I say "fundamentalist" I meant that I hold closely to the fundamental teachings of the Christian faith.
With all due respect, I submit to you that absent God, there is no objective standard for ethics, or morality.
I think that from an intellectual and reasoned perspective it is challenging to hold to an atheistic world view. If you woul like to hear why, please reply or email me.
I think that it is logically and intellectually difficult to hold that position. If you would care to hear why I believe that being an atheist is irrational, please email me.
As a zealous Christian, (dare I admit that I might be categorized as a 'fundie' by the/. crowd?)
I can say that I am not afraid of the human body. I like sex quite a bit, too.
That having been said, I believe that God designed sex to be expressed in the context of an emotionally intimate committed relationship. One reference that discusses sexual satifaction survey results is here
Apparently Christians have higher rates of sexual satisfaction than non-Christians.
With regard to censorship, perhaps Walmart is making decisions based on what their customers want. The marketplace is free, and I don't get up in arms when your favorite pr0n store refuses to carry Jonah - If you want the game, you know where you can find it - Google is your friend.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
BTW - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more, please email me.
I was born in 1968. I almost flunked out of two colleges and worked in food service to scrape through school. I ran up a bunch of debt on my credit cards while in college and in the first few years afterward.
I finally decided to grow up. I began spending less money than I was making. Reducing your standard of living is no fun, but it _is_ possible.
I now have no debt. I own a modest house - with a ton of equity thanks to the current real-estate market and my accelerated payment schedule, I have two cars - both paid for, and I have a decent amount of short and long term savings.
Don't give me that crap about it's because I'm white and I'm college educated.
After all, the family from El Salvador living next door can do it. The husband has two jobs, the wife works, they have three kids, their parents live with them and they rent out the basement of their 1400 square foot house so make ends meet.
This idea that the good life is over for GenXers is just FUD.
Get real. Get responsible. Quit carping about how hard your life is. Ask your grandparents about living through WWII - rationing of food, metal, gasoline - no place to live, no furniture was being made, there were so many men involved in the war effort that the only way that that ware materiel could be manufactured was for the women to find child care and go to work building planes and bombs.
We sit in our air-conditioned cars with CD changers, on our way to our air-condintioned homes with cable, DVDs, PCs and dishwashers and think that life is tough.
We're rich. Life is EASY in the US.
Don't believe me? Try living in India, China, Sudan or any other of dozens of poor nations.
Quit complaining and just do the work necessary to be successful in this economy.
This may be odd to you, but my fortune 500 company would much rather pay for software that comes with a service contract than use free software.
As an example, we don't have a mailing list type technology installed. We began to investigate L-Soft
(Who by the way don't want you to say "listserv" unless you're referring to their brand of mailing list technology - I'm sure that kleenex and xerox felt the same way. But I digress...)
We decided not to implement anything because we couldn't afford to pay for the software licenses. Never mind that we need that technology, and that the ROI for building it is huge....
I proposed that we use free software to solve that problem. The answer was no.
The company position was: a) we want someone to help us if it breaks, b) we want someone to sue if it breaks something really important, and c) if the software is free, how can we recover our costs? Our internal customers will know that we paid nothing, and won't want to reimburse us for the engineering costs.
None of these reasons may make sense to you, but they are a cultural perspective that makes perfect sense to folks who run billion-dollar companies.
There are LOTS of companies that will be glad to pay for support of a free product. Just ask Eric Allman! http://www.sendmail.org/~eric/
Even if this doesn't make sense to us, it does make business sense.
Some (very large) percentage of the business community will purchase MS servers, clients, and want to use the new technology. HP has a services department that sells their knowledge about current technologies to businesses.
In the scheme of things, $50M is not that much money, and it's a smart investment because people will be knocking on HP's door asking for consultants that understand this ".NET stuff"
HP would be foolish not to make a play for this $$, particularly since they are a big reseller of MS products and can easily get the marginal revenues by offering "integration" services with the hardware/software sales.
BTW - I've seen some bashing of the.NET technology space here. I'm not a developer, but I have some very smart friends that are. They tell me that.NET is really cool - it enables small bits of code to do big things. Of course this means that the MS API is handling the majority of those big things, which means that it will be easier than ever to create DOS attacks against the web services and breach security, too. However, MS is cozying up to developers who have business problems to solve, and business frequently is willing to take on security risks because business people rarely understand them. Oh - the customers rarely understand them, too so there's little incentive to pay attention to what our customers can't understand.
Doesn't have to make sense to you, but it is the reality of the business world......
With all due respect, these producers do not offer those products to me as a home consumer, therefore I must conclude that they are not interested in my business.
WRT Disney - they used to be a "safe" film company, but I'm not willing to let my kids watch their products anymore.
They consistently push the envelope with disrespectful attitudes, what I consider bad behavior on the part of parents and kids, polytheism, and more and more physically alluring female leads.
A good story doesn't need violence and explicit sex in order to be gripping. Unfortunately, there's a dearth of good storytellers in Hollywood.
The problem is that the producers of this content are not interested in the marginal revenue that could be generated by producing edited versions of their creations. Sadly, this leaves a gap in what people want to view as compared with the products that are offered by the studios. As a result, people turn to a company that is offering what consumers want. I have no issue with cleanflicks in this case.
Re:It's a problem if Ashcroft's anywhere near it..
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Politicizing Science
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· Score: 2
Badly distorted research? I don't know anything of the researcher you mentioned, but the second link that I posted is a list of *dozens* of documented applications of adult stem cells.
As far as making the moral argument, I belive that is what is happening with this debate. What frustrates me is that the conventional wisdom within the "community" at slashdot appears to be that "those religious types oppose science" and "who are they to define morality?"
Their statements about the moral/ethical value of embryonic stem cell research require a statement of a moral standard. That statement being that the pursuit of knowledge/potential benefit to humanity is of greater moral value than the cost to humanity in general or the cost to the embryo in particular.
Science is not unbiased and separated from morality, much as the crowd here would tend to assert.
I would argue that we should not invest in embryonic stem cell research because of the cost to humanity as a result of the destruction of those human beings. You may disagree, and that is your right. Distorting science is irrational and foolish - no matter which side of the debate you are on.
Thanks for your thoughtful and respectful reply.
Regards, Anomaly
Re:It's a problem if Ashcroft's anywhere near it..
on
Politicizing Science
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· Score: 2
Based on actual science, adult stem cells show results, and as great potential as the embryonic cells that this debate is stuck on.
Let's not distort science to show that "embryonic cells are the only hope," either.
Why not make additional investments in the areas of research that are already bearing fruit, rather than get enmired in a debate about whether using those cells is efficient & effective, or if it is killing people.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
BTW - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
Ok, I think I see your point of view, but I still struggle to identify with it.
I don't understand your worldview in two areas. Will you please help me better understand it?
1. Order as a property? As defined by what? Couldn't it merely *appear* to be order - in the same way that something which on the surface seems chaotic may actually be complex and ordered? How can you say that order is a property of the universe?
2. A naturalistic worldview leaves little place for morality, right? I mean, if there's no transcendant meaning - then why does the whole of humanity (or at least the extreme majority) clamor for love, duty, honor, courage? Why are we as animals different in that respect from the others? Does this question make sense? After all, if there's no objective standard to measure right and wrong, why shouldn't I just kill people who disagree with me or get in my way?
I concur that we're not all the same, but *if* there's an objective judge of morality, wouldn't it be wise to understand what the judge's perspective on morality is?
I promise that I'll not engage in a long religious discussion here, but there seems to be a cognitive dissonance in your reasoning - What *is* order if there's no absolute truth?
How can you say that structure exists outside an objective standard?
If we take at face value your assertion that we're a lot "of...complexity arising out of a bunch of...unordered bits" how can we who have arisen from randomness have any hope that the logic, reason, and thought processes we have exist with any semblance of order at all?
Are we not then randomly "reasoning" our way through the randomness of the universe? If that's the case, how can we have any faith in the conclusions we draw from that kind of reasoning?
I prefer to believe that there is a measure of order that is objective.
Anomaly PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you want to know more about this, please email me.
This is really frightening. The poll workers couldn't attach a power cord to the PC? That is a really basic interface, and we then trus them to operate the mechanical systems that drive the legacy election process?
I suppose that one possible issue is that there might not have been outlets near the voting booths...
Vaguely reliable?
I beg to differ. The Bible is better documented than any other work of antiquity. How much better? The closest runner-up is the Iliad. There are about 650 copies in existance of it today. The oldest of those copies dates from around 200AD. It was originally written sometime around 800BC, so there's a gap of about 1000 years between the Iliad's authorship and the oldest copy we have today.
In sharp contrast, there are about 5,000 manuscripts of the new testament surviving today. Interestingly, though the New Testament part of the Bible was written between 30 and 100AD (roughly) we have manuscripts that date back to about 200AD!
There's an order of magnitude more copies of the New testament than the closest competitor, and the gap between the time it was written and the oldest manuscript is extremely short (in terms of works of antiquity.)
...translations have changed it again...
Here again, the facts may not be in support of your assertion. While it is true that language is an imprecise mechanism for expressing ideas, and that translation can be extremely difficult, the consistent series of copies that shows that the information in the books has been preserved. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls was a big deal because it provided copies of manuscripts that were almost 1000 years older (closer to the date of authorship) than any perviously held copies. What they showed was that the message was consistent, even through the passage of time.
What makes the Bible a more reliable source than any of their religions?
Great question. You're right. If I assert the authority and reliability of the Bible solely on the basis of itself, it's a pointless assertion. I would use three tests to evaluate the validity and significance of any piece of literature. First - is it internally consistent? Second, is the content consistent with other reliable works of history that are not associated with that philosophy? Thirdly, is the information contained therein relevant to my life?
The Bible passes all of these tests. It provides a meaningful and consistent explanation and guide that helps me to better understand people and relationships. Archaeology has consistently over the course of time demonstrated that the events recorded (in great detail in the Bible) are consistent with the digs throughout that part of the world. While I would not say that other historical works or archaeology "prove" the validity of the Bible, the certainly lend a great deal of credibility to the message contained within.
Please pardon me for going on so long. There is much more that could be said, but I think I'll leave you with this thought: There's more to the Bible than "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."
I challenge you to investigate the claims of Christ. His is the only philosophy that will stand the test of extremely close scrutiny. Use your mind, come at it as a skeptic and see what happens.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
Anomaly Yikes! I almost forgot! If you'd like to exchange some ideas about whether evolution is the best explanation of the evidence that has been collected, I'd be happy to correspond with you.
That was the biggest disappointment of the pilot! Why did they feel the need to add that to the show? Simply as an excuse to reduce Jolene from an actor to a collection of body parts?
It added nothing to the storyline - it wasn't even plausible - what about the contaminants in their hair, nails, ears, etc?
What a waste. I was hoping for better than that, but I guess that even in that century the exploitation of women for their physique is still a ratings booster.
Great storytelling need not rely on profanity, graphic violence and scantily clad women. I guess the producers were opting for mediocre storytelling.....
The storyteller gets the privilege of including those details that he considers relevant.
When the Russians are making the TV show they can highlight the accomplishments of their heroes and leave out the work camps and people who dissapeared during that era because they knew too much....
More moderate approach? I guess that's because not all fundamentalists are raving lunatics. I think you'd find that I'm pretty conservative (from a religious perspective) but it is possible to be a thinker and a committed Christian.
As far as the violence is concerned, I'm not sure that violence and depravity are trivilalized, but they are not the main feature of the storyline.
The Bible does contain explicit descriptions of violence. From descriptions of killing hundreds of men and removing their foreskins to a bear ripping teenagers to pieces there is quite graphic information.
I'm not saying that exposure to that data poses no risk of harm - in fact, I'd be inclined to limit my kids' exposure to some parts of the content until they are ready to understand it. I'm not saying that I would disallow their reading of it, but I might encourage them to invest more mental energy in parts that they understand rather than parts that would tend to be confusing.
For example, would a three year old be mentally equipped to understand the comparison of your lover's hair to "a flock of goats descending on Mt Gilead?" Some three years olds might get it, but most probably would not. Don't even get me started on the issue of pomegranates and "climbing the tree" in Song of Solomon.
I've not seen GTA, but I think that I can still comment on the issue of context.
Yes, the behavior there does exist within a context. Does GTA3 show the consequences of "power ups" with prostitutes? (VD, loss of innocence, feelings of betrayal on the part of the character's spouse [and the attendant loss of intimacy in that relationship] used and discarded women)
Does it show the effects to the families from the loss of their loved ones?
Does the violence exist for any moral purpose? Is the end goal merely to advance the interests of the character representing the player?
My point is this - there's context, and an overriding moral purpose in the story of the Bible - 1. That a perfect God created mankind for the purpose of having relationship. 2. That mankind chose to defy God and reject Him - and in the process becoming separated from the perfect God. 3. That God loved His creation so much that he made a way to restore relationship with man. He sent His son to live a perfect life - something that man had become unable to do. That's the consistent message of the Bible. Restoring broken relationships. God's forgiveness of your imperfection (and mine)
The question is whether reason alone is sufficient to allow a person to make moral judgements about the value of information. My point is that reason is insufficient to provide a moral basis.
The quote that I was responding to was speaking about assigning value to information. How can anyone, on the basis of mere reason, assign value to information?
The very act of being rational requires these judgements. Are you speaking of moral judgements - good/bad, right/wrong, or of true/false? Boolean is different from moral.
You know what you know for fact, by direct sense of it. Do you? I would suggest to you that most of us know very little from direct observation, and most things we accept on the basis of a trusted authority
You know the rules of logic. You infer from that whether what you're hearing is bunk or not.
If its bunk, you know its not true. If it may not be bunk, you can provisionally say its true. If you know its true, then you know its true.
True or false has no bearing on right/wrong.
The.sig was commenting on the superiority of reason because it is "above" judging obscenity, blasphemy, etc, but at the same time asserting that a moral value could be attached to information. That seems illogical to me.
Well, I'm sure that I've been referred to as a religious fanatic before, so perhaps I'm qualified to comment here.
If the Bible was made into a video game, it would be a really interesting one. All of the stuff that makes up life is there - love, honor, sacrifice, as well as betrayal, dishonesty, violence....and it would make sense to have all of those things portrayed - in context.
It's interesting to me that the Bible even shows the warts of the heroes. It would be a more compelling epic tale about David's mighty deeds if he hadn't stolen the wife of one of his subjects, and had that man killed.
It then goes on to dscribe how the character flaw that led him to that choice ultimately led to the collapse of his family. One son raped his sister, another tried to take over the kingdom illegitimately from his father - these were the natural consequenses of the choices that King David made. The poor choices led to a breakdown in his life, and eventually in his family.
Ultimately the Bible shows that all but one of the people described there are, well...people who have flaws.
WRT censorship, I personally am not fond of book banning or censorship (in the form of the government decreeing that some ideas cannot be expressed.)
However, it seems foolhardy to me to suggest that exposure to things has no impact on us at all. The more violence and sensuality we choose to take in, the less sensitive we can become to it.
Do you *want* to have a low sensitivity to violence and sexual intimacy?
I think that each of us must choose how much of that we want to absorb, and make those choices for our children. As a parent, it's my job to make those decisions for my kids, and as they grow to teach them how to make good decisions.
The choices that you and I make today add up over the course of a lifetime to eventually cause us to become the natural consequence of those choices.
I encourage everyone to be thoughtful about the choices that you make. They determine what kind of character you will have, and what your life is made of.
With all due respect, I could most likely be described as a hard-core Christian, and I agree that we do tend to say "but the Bible says...." because the Bible is a reliable reference.
Have you ever examined the evidence that supports the assertions made about the Bible? If so, I'd be pleasantly surprised. What tests would you use to determine the authenticity or reliability of a work of antiquity? I can list mine....but I doubt that you want to discuss this issue.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I have to say that we share common ground on at least one issue - Frontline has a much better s/n ratio than does Donahue
To the rational mind there can be no offense, no obscenity, no blasphemy- only information of greater or lesser value
Just curious...what standard does the rational mind use to make judgements about the relative value of information? Can that standard be objectively defended using reason alone?
Back in the day (before it was known as PwC) I worked for PW. Because they were a part of a accounting company, they were constrained by the accounting rules. This meant that even though we computer types were not accountants, we still needed to comply with the investment rules and the continuing education rules. We watched Andersen form AC, then morph that to Accenture, and wondered what was stopping PW from doing the same thing.
I've seen some postings about idiots, wasted money, and pet technologies being implemented by these firms. I worked with some of the smartest people I've ever met while I was at PW. I also watched some big dopes try to make things work.
Some folks did squander client's money. Other clients demanded that we build something that pleased the CIO of their company, even if they were told that it would never solve the problem that they wanted it to solve.
I did participate in some great projects - projects that helped companies and government agencies solve some really big problems.
PW's strength (from my perspective) was that they could bring smart people to the table who could figure out how to solve problems while not being held back by company politics or excessive meetings.
Now, as a member of a large corporation, I see that there are many projects that we are simply unable to tackle because we don't have enough team players, or enough aggressive and smart players to move the ball. That's when we call the big folks like IBM and Accenture.....
I guess my pension $$ are now a part of IBM's program.:)
I work for a large company with a large number of internally developed applications.
I am shocked at how frequently our developers don't have a good understanding of their architecture, or sometimes even the problem that they are trying to solve. As a result, when they go do do "testing" they are frequently performing tests that are not valid.
For example, they might create a new build and test that build only on their development workstation before full deployment of the application.
Naturally the development box has different resources from that of a standard production machine. Many developers don't seem to understand this.
Another example - frequently boundary conditions, or interfaces to other applications are not fully tested.
Using bad methodology, all of the time that you spend testing is wasted.
Management tends to feel that testing time is wasted because their experience is that the time that they have invested in the past has been fruitless.
Please develop: valid test cases, valid test plans, then
execute them, find gaps, then
use the gaps to learn how not to make the same mistakes in the future!
Phooey.
Anomaly PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
Slashdot Mirror
When I say "fundamentalist" I meant that I hold closely to the fundamental teachings of the Christian faith.
With all due respect, I submit to you that absent God, there is no objective standard for ethics, or morality.
I think that from an intellectual and reasoned perspective it is challenging to hold to an atheistic world view. If you woul like to hear why, please reply or email me.
Regards,
Anomaly
I think that it is logically and intellectually difficult to hold that position. If you would care to hear why I believe that being an atheist is irrational, please email me.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
As a zealous Christian, (dare I admit that I might be categorized as a 'fundie' by the /. crowd?)
I can say that I am not afraid of the human body. I like sex quite a bit, too.
That having been said, I believe that God designed sex to be expressed in the context of an emotionally intimate committed relationship. One reference that discusses sexual satifaction survey results is here
Apparently Christians have higher rates of sexual satisfaction than non-Christians.
With regard to censorship, perhaps Walmart is making decisions based on what their customers want. The marketplace is free, and I don't get up in arms when your favorite pr0n store refuses to carry Jonah - If you want the game, you know where you can find it - Google is your friend.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
BTW - God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
If you would like to know more, please email me.
I was born in 1968. I almost flunked out of two colleges and worked in food service to scrape through school. I ran up a bunch of debt on my credit cards while in college and in the first few years afterward.
I finally decided to grow up. I began spending less money than I was making. Reducing your standard of living is no fun, but it _is_ possible.
I now have no debt. I own a modest house - with a ton of equity thanks to the current real-estate market and my accelerated payment schedule, I have two cars - both paid for, and I have a decent amount of short and long term savings.
Don't give me that crap about it's because I'm white and I'm college educated.
After all, the family from El Salvador living next door can do it. The husband has two jobs, the wife works, they have three kids, their parents live with them and they rent out the basement of their 1400 square foot house so make ends meet.
This idea that the good life is over for GenXers is just FUD.
Get real. Get responsible. Quit carping about how hard your life is. Ask your grandparents about living through WWII - rationing of food, metal, gasoline - no place to live, no furniture was being made, there were so many men involved in the war effort that the only way that that ware materiel could be manufactured was for the women to find child care and go to work building planes and bombs.
We sit in our air-conditioned cars with CD changers, on our way to our air-condintioned homes with cable, DVDs, PCs and dishwashers and think that life is tough.
We're rich. Life is EASY in the US.
Don't believe me? Try living in India, China, Sudan or any other of dozens of poor nations.
Quit complaining and just do the work necessary to be successful in this economy.
This may be odd to you, but my fortune 500 company would much rather pay for software that comes with a service contract than use free software.
As an example, we don't have a mailing list type technology installed. We began to investigate L-Soft
(Who by the way don't want you to say "listserv" unless you're referring to their brand of mailing list technology - I'm sure that kleenex and xerox felt the same way. But I digress...)
We decided not to implement anything because we couldn't afford to pay for the software licenses. Never mind that we need that technology, and that the ROI for building it is huge....
I proposed that we use free software to solve that problem. The answer was no.
The company position was:
a) we want someone to help us if it breaks,
b) we want someone to sue if it breaks something really important, and
c) if the software is free, how can we recover our costs? Our internal customers will know that we paid nothing, and won't want to reimburse us for the engineering costs.
None of these reasons may make sense to you, but they are a cultural perspective that makes perfect sense to folks who run billion-dollar companies.
There are LOTS of companies that will be glad to pay for support of a free product. Just ask Eric Allman! http://www.sendmail.org/~eric/
Even if this doesn't make sense to us, it does make business sense.
.NET technology space here. I'm not a developer, but I have some very smart friends that are. They tell me that .NET is really cool - it enables small bits of code to do big things. Of course this means that the MS API is handling the majority of those big things, which means that it will be easier than ever to create DOS attacks against the web services and breach security, too. However, MS is cozying up to developers who have business problems to solve, and business frequently is willing to take on security risks because business people rarely understand them. Oh - the customers rarely understand them, too so there's little incentive to pay attention to what our customers can't understand.
Some (very large) percentage of the business community will purchase MS servers, clients, and want to use the new technology. HP has a services department that sells their knowledge about current technologies to businesses.
In the scheme of things, $50M is not that much money, and it's a smart investment because people will be knocking on HP's door asking for consultants that understand this ".NET stuff"
HP would be foolish not to make a play for this $$, particularly since they are a big reseller of MS products and can easily get the marginal revenues by offering "integration" services with the hardware/software sales.
BTW - I've seen some bashing of the
Doesn't have to make sense to you, but it is the reality of the business world......
Regards,
Anomaly
With all due respect, these producers do not offer those products to me as a home consumer, therefore I must conclude that they are not interested in my business.
WRT Disney - they used to be a "safe" film company, but I'm not willing to let my kids watch their products anymore.
They consistently push the envelope with disrespectful attitudes, what I consider bad behavior on the part of parents and kids, polytheism, and more and more physically alluring female leads.
A good story doesn't need violence and explicit sex in order to be gripping. Unfortunately, there's a dearth of good storytellers in Hollywood.
The problem is that the producers of this content are not interested in the marginal revenue that could be generated by producing edited versions of their creations. Sadly, this leaves a gap in what people want to view as compared with the products that are offered by the studios. As a result, people turn to a company that is offering what consumers want. I have no issue with cleanflicks in this case.
Badly distorted research? I don't know anything of the researcher you mentioned, but the second link that I posted is a list of *dozens* of documented applications of adult stem cells.
As far as making the moral argument, I belive that is what is happening with this debate. What frustrates me is that the conventional wisdom within the "community" at slashdot appears to be that "those religious types oppose science" and "who are they to define morality?"
Their statements about the moral/ethical value of embryonic stem cell research require a statement of a moral standard. That statement being that the pursuit of knowledge/potential benefit to humanity is of greater moral value than the cost to humanity in general or the cost to the embryo in particular.
Science is not unbiased and separated from morality, much as the crowd here would tend to assert.
I would argue that we should not invest in embryonic stem cell research because of the cost to humanity as a result of the destruction of those human beings. You may disagree, and that is your right. Distorting science is irrational and foolish - no matter which side of the debate you are on.
Thanks for your thoughtful and respectful reply.
Regards,
Anomaly
Based on actual science, adult stem cells show results, and as great potential as the embryonic cells that this debate is stuck on.
Let's focus our attention on the cells that are show practical application.
Let's not distort science to show that "embryonic cells are the only hope," either.
Why not make additional investments in the areas of research that are already bearing fruit, rather than get enmired in a debate about whether using those cells is efficient & effective, or if it is killing people.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
BTW - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com
Ok, I think I see your point of view, but I still struggle to identify with it.
I don't understand your worldview in two areas. Will you please help me better understand it?
1. Order as a property? As defined by what? Couldn't it merely *appear* to be order - in the same way that something which on the surface seems chaotic may actually be complex and ordered? How can you say that order is a property of the universe?
2. A naturalistic worldview leaves little place for morality, right? I mean, if there's no transcendant meaning - then why does the whole of humanity (or at least the extreme majority) clamor for love, duty, honor, courage? Why are we as animals different in that respect from the others? Does this question make sense? After all, if there's no objective standard to measure right and wrong, why shouldn't I just kill people who disagree with me or get in my way?
I concur that we're not all the same, but *if* there's an objective judge of morality, wouldn't it be wise to understand what the judge's perspective on morality is?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I promise that I'll not engage in a long religious discussion here, but there seems to be a cognitive dissonance in your reasoning -
What *is* order if there's no absolute truth?
How can you say that structure exists outside an objective standard?
BTW - I hold no hope for omniscience, either.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
If we take at face value your assertion that we're a lot "of...complexity arising out of a bunch of...unordered bits" how can we who have arisen from randomness have any hope that the logic, reason, and thought processes we have exist with any semblance of order at all?
Are we not then randomly "reasoning" our way through the randomness of the universe? If that's the case, how can we have any faith in the conclusions we draw from that kind of reasoning?
I prefer to believe that there is a measure of order that is objective.
Anomaly
PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you want to know more about this, please email me.
This is really frightening. The poll workers couldn't attach a power cord to the PC? That is a really basic interface, and we then trus them to operate the mechanical systems that drive the legacy election process?
I suppose that one possible issue is that there might not have been outlets near the voting booths...
Vaguely reliable?
...translations have changed it again...
I beg to differ. The Bible is better documented than any other work of antiquity.
How much better? The closest runner-up is the Iliad.
There are about 650 copies in existance of it today. The oldest of those copies dates from around 200AD. It was originally written sometime around 800BC, so there's a gap of about 1000 years between the Iliad's authorship and the oldest copy we have today.
In sharp contrast, there are about 5,000 manuscripts of the new testament surviving today. Interestingly, though the New Testament part of the Bible was written between 30 and 100AD (roughly) we have manuscripts that date back to about 200AD!
There's an order of magnitude more copies of the New testament than the closest competitor, and the gap between the time it was written and the oldest manuscript is extremely short (in terms of works of antiquity.)
Here again, the facts may not be in support of your assertion. While it is true that language is an imprecise mechanism for expressing ideas, and that translation can be extremely difficult, the consistent series of copies that shows that the information in the books has been preserved.
The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls was a big deal because it provided copies of manuscripts that were almost 1000 years older (closer to the date of authorship) than any perviously held copies. What they showed was that the message was consistent, even through the passage of time.
What makes the Bible a more reliable source than any of their religions?
Great question. You're right. If I assert the authority and reliability of the Bible solely on the basis of itself, it's a pointless assertion.
I would use three tests to evaluate the validity and significance of any piece of literature. First - is it internally consistent? Second, is the content consistent with other reliable works of history that are not associated with that philosophy? Thirdly, is the information contained therein relevant to my life?
The Bible passes all of these tests. It provides a meaningful and consistent explanation and guide that helps me to better understand people and relationships.
Archaeology has consistently over the course of time demonstrated that the events recorded (in great detail in the Bible) are consistent with the digs throughout that part of the world. While I would not say that other historical works or archaeology "prove" the validity of the Bible, the certainly lend a great deal of credibility to the message contained within.
Please pardon me for going on so long. There is much more that could be said, but I think I'll leave you with this thought: There's more to the Bible than "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."
I challenge you to investigate the claims of Christ. His is the only philosophy that will stand the test of extremely close scrutiny. Use your mind, come at it as a skeptic and see what happens.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
Anomaly
Yikes! I almost forgot! If you'd like to exchange some ideas about whether evolution is the best explanation of the evidence that has been collected, I'd be happy to correspond with you.
That was the biggest disappointment of the pilot! Why did they feel the need to add that to the show? Simply as an excuse to reduce Jolene from an actor to a collection of body parts?
It added nothing to the storyline - it wasn't even plausible - what about the contaminants in their hair, nails, ears, etc?
What a waste. I was hoping for better than that, but I guess that even in that century the exploitation of women for their physique is still a ratings booster.
Great storytelling need not rely on profanity, graphic violence and scantily clad women. I guess the producers were opting for mediocre storytelling.....
The storyteller gets the privilege of including those details that he considers relevant.
When the Russians are making the TV show they can highlight the accomplishments of their heroes and leave out the work camps and people who dissapeared during that era because they knew too much....
More moderate approach? I guess that's because not all fundamentalists are raving lunatics. I think you'd find that I'm pretty conservative (from a religious perspective) but it is possible to be a thinker and a committed Christian.
As far as the violence is concerned, I'm not sure that violence and depravity are trivilalized, but they are not the main feature of the storyline.
The Bible does contain explicit descriptions of violence. From descriptions of killing hundreds of men and removing their foreskins to a bear ripping teenagers to pieces there is quite graphic information.
I'm not saying that exposure to that data poses no risk of harm - in fact, I'd be inclined to limit my kids' exposure to some parts of the content until they are ready to understand it. I'm not saying that I would disallow their reading of it, but I might encourage them to invest more mental energy in parts that they understand rather than parts that would tend to be confusing.
For example, would a three year old be mentally equipped to understand the comparison of your lover's hair to "a flock of goats descending on Mt Gilead?" Some three years olds might get it, but most probably would not. Don't even get me started on the issue of pomegranates and "climbing the tree" in Song of Solomon.
I've not seen GTA, but I think that I can still comment on the issue of context.
Yes, the behavior there does exist within a context. Does GTA3 show the consequences of "power ups" with prostitutes? (VD, loss of innocence, feelings of betrayal on the part of the character's spouse [and the attendant loss of intimacy in that relationship] used and discarded women)
Does it show the effects to the families from the loss of their loved ones?
Does the violence exist for any moral purpose? Is the end goal merely to advance the interests of the character representing the player?
My point is this - there's context, and an overriding moral purpose in the story of the Bible -
1. That a perfect God created mankind for the purpose of having relationship.
2. That mankind chose to defy God and reject Him - and in the process becoming separated from the perfect God.
3. That God loved His creation so much that he made a way to restore relationship with man. He sent His son to live a perfect life - something that man had become unable to do.
That's the consistent message of the Bible. Restoring broken relationships. God's forgiveness of your imperfection (and mine)
What's the GTA3 story about?
The question is whether reason alone is sufficient to allow a person to make moral judgements about the value of information. My point is that reason is insufficient to provide a moral basis.
.sig was commenting on the superiority of reason because it is "above" judging obscenity, blasphemy, etc, but at the same time asserting that a moral value could be attached to information. That seems illogical to me.
The quote that I was responding to was speaking about assigning value to information. How can anyone, on the basis of mere reason, assign value to information?
The very act of being rational requires these judgements.
Are you speaking of moral judgements - good/bad, right/wrong, or of true/false? Boolean is different from moral.
You know what you know for fact, by direct sense of it.
Do you? I would suggest to you that most of us know very little from direct observation, and most things we accept on the basis of a trusted authority
You know the rules of logic. You infer from that whether what you're hearing is bunk or not.
If its bunk, you know its not true. If it may not be bunk, you can provisionally say its true. If you know its true, then you know its true.
True or false has no bearing on right/wrong.
The
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Well, I'm sure that I've been referred to as a religious fanatic before, so perhaps I'm qualified to comment here.
If the Bible was made into a video game, it would be a really interesting one. All of the stuff that makes up life is there - love, honor, sacrifice, as well as betrayal, dishonesty, violence....and it would make sense to have all of those things portrayed - in context.
It's interesting to me that the Bible even shows the warts of the heroes. It would be a more compelling epic tale about David's mighty deeds if he hadn't stolen the wife of one of his subjects, and had that man killed.
It then goes on to dscribe how the character flaw that led him to that choice ultimately led to the collapse of his family. One son raped his sister, another tried to take over the kingdom illegitimately from his father - these were the natural consequenses of the choices that King David made. The poor choices led to a breakdown in his life, and eventually in his family.
Ultimately the Bible shows that all but one of the people described there are, well...people who have flaws.
WRT censorship, I personally am not fond of book banning or censorship (in the form of the government decreeing that some ideas cannot be expressed.)
However, it seems foolhardy to me to suggest that exposure to things has no impact on us at all. The more violence and sensuality we choose to take in, the less sensitive we can become to it.
Do you *want* to have a low sensitivity to violence and sexual intimacy?
I think that each of us must choose how much of that we want to absorb, and make those choices for our children. As a parent, it's my job to make those decisions for my kids, and as they grow to teach them how to make good decisions.
The choices that you and I make today add up over the course of a lifetime to eventually cause us to become the natural consequence of those choices.
I encourage everyone to be thoughtful about the choices that you make. They determine what kind of character you will have, and what your life is made of.
With all due respect, I could most likely be described as a hard-core Christian, and I agree that we do tend to say "but the Bible says...." because the Bible is a reliable reference.
Have you ever examined the evidence that supports the assertions made about the Bible? If so, I'd be pleasantly surprised. What tests would you use to determine the authenticity or reliability of a work of antiquity? I can list mine....but I doubt that you want to discuss this issue.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I have to say that we share common ground on at least one issue - Frontline has a much better s/n ratio than does Donahue
To the rational mind there can be no offense, no obscenity, no blasphemy- only information of greater or lesser value
Just curious...what standard does the rational mind use to make judgements about the relative value of information? Can that standard be objectively defended using reason alone?
Back in the day (before it was known as PwC) I worked for PW. Because they were a part of a accounting company, they were constrained by the accounting rules. This meant that even though we computer types were not accountants, we still needed to comply with the investment rules and the continuing education rules. We watched Andersen form AC, then morph that to Accenture, and wondered what was stopping PW from doing the same thing.
:)
I've seen some postings about idiots, wasted money, and pet technologies being implemented by these firms. I worked with some of the smartest people I've ever met while I was at PW. I also watched some big dopes try to make things work.
Some folks did squander client's money. Other clients demanded that we build something that pleased the CIO of their company, even if they were told that it would never solve the problem that they wanted it to solve.
I did participate in some great projects - projects that helped companies and government agencies solve some really big problems.
PW's strength (from my perspective) was that they could bring smart people to the table who could figure out how to solve problems while not being held back by company politics or excessive meetings.
Now, as a member of a large corporation, I see that there are many projects that we are simply unable to tackle because we don't have enough team players, or enough aggressive and smart players to move the ball. That's when we call the big folks like IBM and Accenture.....
I guess my pension $$ are now a part of IBM's program.
I work for a large company with a large number of internally developed applications.
I am shocked at how frequently our developers don't have a good understanding of their architecture, or sometimes even the problem that they are trying to solve. As a result, when they go do do "testing" they are frequently performing tests that are not valid.
For example, they might create a new build and test that build only on their development workstation before full deployment of the application.
Naturally the development box has different resources from that of a standard production machine. Many developers don't seem to understand this.
Another example - frequently boundary conditions, or interfaces to other applications are not fully tested.
Using bad methodology, all of the time that you spend testing is wasted.
Management tends to feel that testing time is wasted because their experience is that the time that they have invested in the past has been fruitless.
Please develop:
valid test cases,
valid test plans, then
execute them,
find gaps, then
use the gaps to learn how not to make the same mistakes in the future!
Phooey.
Anomaly
PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com