>As far as I can tell, the more fundamentalist a Christian is, the more Christian they are, by the measures provided in the Bible.
Then you haven't read the Bible.
Fundamentalism is a purely modern invention; it doesn't exist before the 1800s.
The notion that all text is literal accounts of facts is a post-Enlightenment worldview, and is directly contrary to the majority of Christian history, and the beliefs of most Christians worldwide even today.
You are reaffirming my alleged "flaimbait" comment about Dawkins; you and he both start with the assumption that fundamentalism is the "real" Christianity, and everything else is a compromise between fundamentalism and science. It ain't so. Christian interpretation of Genesis as allegory predates Darwin; in fact, it predates the middle ages. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that people started trying to turn all the stories into science, and ignoring their original understood meaning.
The assumption that people who aren't fundamentalists have "chosen the path of least resistance" is very wrong, and betrays a fundamental lack of awareness of the breadth and history of Christian doctrine. The guys on TV are not very much in line with historical Christian practice, it turns out; they do not serve as a good measure for how much something is or isn't "really" Christian.
Now, as it happens, the many people who are fine with science, since they don't see it as conflicting with their religious beliefs, are not dangerous to other people, for the most part, so there's not much point in worrying about them... But if you view them as "the same, only less committed", you will misjudge them badly.
His descriptions of moderates are consistently descriptions of apathetic fundamentalists; they do not represent any of the other views and models found within Christianity. His whole argument for liberals as "enablers" of fundamentalists depends on the assumption that liberals are just fundamentalists with less conviction.
Everything I've read by Dawkins suggests that he has no concept what non-fundamentalist Christians are; he's talking only about apathetic fundamentalists.
He and the fundamentalists need each other, so he treats fundamentalists as the essential definition of Christianity (rather than as a modernist group under two hundred years old, and a definite minority among Christians in general), and they treat people like him as the essential definition of atheism. Both get the bogeyman they need to have people buy their "cure".
I have been involved with ISPs one way or another for something coming close to twenty years now, and so far, we've never needed legislation on this topic. In fact, we've done pretty well without it.
Most of the time, when people describe a proposed "net neutrality" rule, the rule they propose is something to the effect of "you may not discriminate against particular networks just because you feel they use a disproportionate amount of your traffic". So, for instance, I can't tarpit spammers, because that's discriminating against them on the basis of my perception of the value of their traffic. And if you don't think that's going to come up in court, please show in detail how your proposal could not be applied that way, and put your money where your mouth is by agreeing to cover the legal costs of any court battles people have to fight to maintain their filters.
I just don't see the upside here. It's a big buzzwordy crusade for something that sounds great until you actually apply it to real-world circumstances.
So? Most Christians I know get along fine hanging around with non-Christians. Sam Harris is a lot more hostile to Christians than I am to non-Christians. And, after all, doesn't he "condemn everyone else"? Why, yes, he does. Same room, different filter.
It seems clear, except that the "evening and the morning" were apparently there before the sun, moon, or even sky.
It's just poetic; the description adopts a cadence that makes it easier to remember and retell the story while you're still trying to develop a written language.
Compare it with the Genesis 2 account, which changes the order of some of the events, for instance.
The idea that they were 24-hour days is hardly new; neither are the overwhelming arguments for why they couldn't be. It's not "clear"; if it were clear, we wouldn't have something like three thousand years of history of people disputing it.
>To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text >of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary. You can accuse it of being >false, but it's unreasonable to say that it was not meant to be read literally.
You should read more actual scholarship. Genesis has been interpreted as non-literal and allegorical in substantial part for as long as we have written records. Augustine, who certainly wasn't basing his writings on any modern scientific knowledge, wrote at some length about Genesis (the document was on the "literal interpretation of Genesis") and argues that it is ridiculous to imagine that the "days" referred to are 24-hour days, that the "light" referred to is the kind of light we see by, and so on and so forth.
Interpreting these as allegories and metaphors, rather than as documentary accounts of factual events, is the historical tradition. Modern literalism is a modernist reaction to the Enlightenment.
I actually agree with this; I just don't know whether this would require mods to games, or whether the OS would provide improved accuracy to games.
The existence of games with in-game calibration makes me worry that the new calibration would have to be included in new games, not just provided by the OS.
In Super Monkey Ball, if I'm sitting on my bed near my bedroom TV, it's very hard to control some of the games; the remote sensing tends to be off. If I move to a TV I can be further from, most of them work fine... But whackamole's "move the remote around to move the hammer" doesn't work well at all, with the hammer bouncing all over the screen. On the other hand, disc golf works like a charm at that range.
In Rayman, the only control problem I've had is that, in the dancing minigame, I tend to have a hard time telling when the remote will feel it's been "shaken", so my timing's poor. The rails shooter is excellent; the game's accuracy is better than I've gotten with any controller but a light gun before. Way better than a trackball or mouse. (Actually, it's fairly similar to using a drawing tablet.)
Trauma Center shows that the potential is there for flawless controls; I'm still getting the hang of it, but I can reliably cut people open in the right spots without missing.
Intolerance is biological too. You throw feces at the monkeys that look different so your kids get the best access to the fruit tree.
He's doing the same thing all the religious people are doing, and for the same reason. And, like them, he's blaming everything on a particular disagreement rather than on the underlying instinct.
Target claims to be expecting them weekly, WalMart said a couple times a week.
Nintendo has made it pretty clear that they are serious about producing boxes for people, so I'm pretty optimistic that you will be able to find one soon.
I have heard of no store with more than ten PS3s; most of the ones around here got two or three.
The Target I waited at had 39; the nearest other one had 60. Every WalMart in the area had 20 or more. Every EB and GameStop had however many they did preorders for. Best Buy was runninga round 60 a store. One local Target had 210.
Every last one I have heard of was sold out by about 11AM on Sunday.
Sam Harris is as much a demagogue as the people he opposes. Dissenters are no safer in his idealized world than they were in Calvin's Geneva. I see no improvement here.
And I can't get one, because apparently, Nintendo isn't shipping enough. The local market is getting about 10x-15x the number of PS3s they had. So, instead of being sewn up by the day before, they're just all sold out now.
I actually like the game the way it is, for the most part; I don't necessarily want world-altering events, because if I miss them, I never get to see them. I'd rather have events that are just there for everyone to do, despite the suspension of disbelief issues. (Those stupid kids in redridge are obviously throwing that necklace back in the lake the moment you hand it in.)
One thing that might help would be to involve them in the decision-making process. A lot of the "best practices" I've seen handed down were monumentally stupid ivory-tower junk.
So, although the PS3 launch is two days earlier on paper, statistically, the first million Wii customers who just walked into a store and saw a box will be playing games much earlier than the first million preorders for the PS3?
I sorta want a Wii. I'm not even thinking in terms of preorders; I figure if I happen to be near a game store, I'll walk in and see what they have.
Slashdot Mirror
>As far as I can tell, the more fundamentalist a Christian is, the more Christian they are, by the measures provided in the Bible.
Then you haven't read the Bible.
Fundamentalism is a purely modern invention; it doesn't exist before the 1800s.
The notion that all text is literal accounts of facts is a post-Enlightenment worldview, and is directly contrary to the majority of Christian history, and the beliefs of most Christians worldwide even today.
You are reaffirming my alleged "flaimbait" comment about Dawkins; you and he both start with the assumption that fundamentalism is the "real" Christianity, and everything else is a compromise between fundamentalism and science. It ain't so. Christian interpretation of Genesis as allegory predates Darwin; in fact, it predates the middle ages. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that people started trying to turn all the stories into science, and ignoring their original understood meaning.
The assumption that people who aren't fundamentalists have "chosen the path of least resistance" is very wrong, and betrays a fundamental lack of awareness of the breadth and history of Christian doctrine. The guys on TV are not very much in line with historical Christian practice, it turns out; they do not serve as a good measure for how much something is or isn't "really" Christian.
Now, as it happens, the many people who are fine with science, since they don't see it as conflicting with their religious beliefs, are not dangerous to other people, for the most part, so there's not much point in worrying about them... But if you view them as "the same, only less committed", you will misjudge them badly.
His descriptions of moderates are consistently descriptions of apathetic fundamentalists; they do not represent any of the other views and models found within Christianity. His whole argument for liberals as "enablers" of fundamentalists depends on the assumption that liberals are just fundamentalists with less conviction.
Everything I've read by Dawkins suggests that he has no concept what non-fundamentalist Christians are; he's talking only about apathetic fundamentalists.
He and the fundamentalists need each other, so he treats fundamentalists as the essential definition of Christianity (rather than as a modernist group under two hundred years old, and a definite minority among Christians in general), and they treat people like him as the essential definition of atheism. Both get the bogeyman they need to have people buy their "cure".
I have been involved with ISPs one way or another for something coming close to twenty years now, and so far, we've never needed legislation on this topic. In fact, we've done pretty well without it.
Most of the time, when people describe a proposed "net neutrality" rule, the rule they propose is something to the effect of "you may not discriminate against particular networks just because you feel they use a disproportionate amount of your traffic". So, for instance, I can't tarpit spammers, because that's discriminating against them on the basis of my perception of the value of their traffic. And if you don't think that's going to come up in court, please show in detail how your proposal could not be applied that way, and put your money where your mouth is by agreeing to cover the legal costs of any court battles people have to fight to maintain their filters.
I just don't see the upside here. It's a big buzzwordy crusade for something that sounds great until you actually apply it to real-world circumstances.
So? Most Christians I know get along fine hanging around with non-Christians. Sam Harris is a lot more hostile to Christians than I am to non-Christians. And, after all, doesn't he "condemn everyone else"? Why, yes, he does. Same room, different filter.
It seems clear, except that the "evening and the morning" were apparently there before the sun, moon, or even sky.
It's just poetic; the description adopts a cadence that makes it easier to remember and retell the story while you're still trying to develop a written language.
Compare it with the Genesis 2 account, which changes the order of some of the events, for instance.
The idea that they were 24-hour days is hardly new; neither are the overwhelming arguments for why they couldn't be. It's not "clear"; if it were clear, we wouldn't have something like three thousand years of history of people disputing it.
Indeed. Ironically, the killer seems to be tribalism; dividing the world into "us" and "them". Religious and irreligious people alike do that...
You say:
>To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text
>of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary. You can accuse it of being
>false, but it's unreasonable to say that it was not meant to be read literally.
You should read more actual scholarship. Genesis has been interpreted as non-literal and allegorical in substantial part for as long as we have written records. Augustine, who certainly wasn't basing his writings on any modern scientific knowledge, wrote at some length about Genesis (the document was on the "literal interpretation of Genesis") and argues that it is ridiculous to imagine that the "days" referred to are 24-hour days, that the "light" referred to is the kind of light we see by, and so on and so forth.
Interpreting these as allegories and metaphors, rather than as documentary accounts of factual events, is the historical tradition. Modern literalism is a modernist reaction to the Enlightenment.
I actually agree with this; I just don't know whether this would require mods to games, or whether the OS would provide improved accuracy to games.
The existence of games with in-game calibration makes me worry that the new calibration would have to be included in new games, not just provided by the OS.
I've had some games suck and others be very good.
In Super Monkey Ball, if I'm sitting on my bed near my bedroom TV, it's very hard to control some of the games; the remote sensing tends to be off. If I move to a TV I can be further from, most of them work fine... But whackamole's "move the remote around to move the hammer" doesn't work well at all, with the hammer bouncing all over the screen. On the other hand, disc golf works like a charm at that range.
In Rayman, the only control problem I've had is that, in the dancing minigame, I tend to have a hard time telling when the remote will feel it's been "shaken", so my timing's poor. The rails shooter is excellent; the game's accuracy is better than I've gotten with any controller but a light gun before. Way better than a trackball or mouse. (Actually, it's fairly similar to using a drawing tablet.)
Trauma Center shows that the potential is there for flawless controls; I'm still getting the hang of it, but I can reliably cut people open in the right spots without missing.
Intolerance is biological too. You throw feces at the monkeys that look different so your kids get the best access to the fruit tree.
He's doing the same thing all the religious people are doing, and for the same reason. And, like them, he's blaming everything on a particular disagreement rather than on the underlying instinct.
The irony is lost on him, of course.
Target claims to be expecting them weekly, WalMart said a couple times a week.
Nintendo has made it pretty clear that they are serious about producing boxes for people, so I'm pretty optimistic that you will be able to find one soon.
Twice as many?
I have heard of no store with more than ten PS3s; most of the ones around here got two or three.
The Target I waited at had 39; the nearest other one had 60. Every WalMart in the area had 20 or more. Every EB and GameStop had however many they did preorders for. Best Buy was runninga round 60 a store. One local Target had 210.
Every last one I have heard of was sold out by about 11AM on Sunday.
Sam Harris is as much a demagogue as the people he opposes. Dissenters are no safer in his idealized world than they were in Calvin's Geneva. I see no improvement here.
I just checked; every 24-hour wal*mart I called has 20 units, and a line of at least 20 people waiting for them. There's tents in front of Best Buy.
Controllers? Component cables? Already sold out.
And I can't get one, because apparently, Nintendo isn't shipping enough. The local market is getting about 10x-15x the number of PS3s they had. So, instead of being sewn up by the day before, they're just all sold out now.
Argh!
I was all like "it's not capcom. But wait, it can't be Namco."
DOH!
You are of course correct.
No, not the crappy 3D ones where you're constantly fighting the camera.
Original old-school Gauntlet. You can get copies of it in one of the Capcom greatest hits collections for Gamecube or PS2, I believe.
I can't really think of anything else comparable.
So, which is more likely:
* Buying a PS3 this weekend for MSRP
* Being struck by a meteorite this weekend
I never thought I'd have to think hard to answer that question.
I actually like the game the way it is, for the most part; I don't necessarily want world-altering events, because if I miss them, I never get to see them. I'd rather have events that are just there for everyone to do, despite the suspension of disbelief issues. (Those stupid kids in redridge are obviously throwing that necklace back in the lake the moment you hand it in.)
Until they start sounding funny, generally, but I always make backups of real data.
Just because they're all on a forum for a cheat program doesn't mean they're all cheaters. ...
Wow, I can ALMOST say it without grinning.
There isn't.
One thing that might help would be to involve them in the decision-making process. A lot of the "best practices" I've seen handed down were monumentally stupid ivory-tower junk.
So, although the PS3 launch is two days earlier on paper, statistically, the first million Wii customers who just walked into a store and saw a box will be playing games much earlier than the first million preorders for the PS3?
I sorta want a Wii. I'm not even thinking in terms of preorders; I figure if I happen to be near a game store, I'll walk in and see what they have.