On a personal note, why are you hostile to Christianity?
I don't think I said anything at all hostile to Christianity. I'm not hostile to Christianity, but I strongly disapprove of people who don't follow the scientific method to figure out answers in our existence and then push that belief on others (i.e. someone who takes on faith that the bible says the earth is 6000 years old and then forces that belief onto others, instead of using scientific queries to determine the age of the earth. Or someone who says women can't drive because they believe that the Quran forbids them, even though it is logical that women can and do drive)
I was raised in a Christian church and went 3 times a week for the first 16 years of my life, and I will probably do the same for my children. That is for the purpose of a moral upbringing (the type that comes from a church of love and compassion, not fire and brimstone). I will teach them to be scientific and to use reason, even when it conflicts with that collection of writings called the Bible.
As far as joining a religion for the herd philosophy, I like to be my own man:) I don't think my brain is wired like other people's to be a member of a herd. For example, I never have felt any emotion or attachments for sport teams. I've always wondered why people like and care about their region's sport team so much, even if none of the players are actually from that given region.
By the way, the description Anthology of Religion's Greatest Hits from ~100,000 BC up to about 100 AD is an awesome description for the bible. I've always known that but never could put it as succinctly as that. It drives me crazy when Christians refuse to believe that the story of Noah and the Ark comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
I think you make lots of really good points. I think you didn't explain it very well in your original post. I would argue that, next time, you shouldn't use the word "rape" so much because, well, frankly it makes the argument sound a bit crazy. "Primal impulses", "selfish behavior", or something similar. Go ahead and include rape as an example, but you made it sound like that was the main point.
I still stand by my criticism of your original post for saying "God" instead of "gods" or "religion" or something else. If Zoroastrianism had been the random religion that spread in the Roman Empire, the same thing would be said with "the astral forces of good and evil" instead of "God". If we were in China, well I'm not sure what would be said... maybe "Divine Will", but it would be different. The idea of calling this idea God only makes sense when you're talking about the Abrahamic religions.
As far as believing religion isn't necessary - I said that (or at least I meant), given religion as a system of order to allow society to live with one another, there are alternatives which can do the same (i.e. religion isn't necessary but something is like enforceable contracts).
Finally, let me say I'm glad that I had this conversation with you. I feel like I've gained a bit of knowledge and perspective.
On the topic of marriage... everything you say I agree wholeheartedly 1000%.
Now, I disagree that the scientific process is an equivalent belief system to Christianity. But I'm just gonna skimp over that topic and go to this:
So with all this in mind, despite my own belief in science as opposed to theistic philosophies, I support the rights of parents to teach their children whatever belief systems they choose --- and, if they wish, to shelter their children from belief systems that oppose those beliefs. It all comes down to respecting people's choices and not forcing them into other belief systems against their will.
How do you think this would turn out in 100 years? We live in a democracy. I am imagining an Armageddon scenario where we descend into a second dark age because Evangelicals wanted to rid the world of the scientific process. Now, I don't believe that is the most likely scenario, but in any case it scares me.
So, really, how do you think this would turn out? Remember, it's likely that you're smarter than 90% of the people in this country, let alone this planet.
First of all, I wasn't being a dick, I wasn't trying to berate you; you're being quite sensitive. Anyone making a point in a discussion could be considered "arrogant". And let me repeat what you wrote:
Modern day atheists are the result of 7000 years of evolution where those who were "animals" were weeded out of the population. Without religion, or technology, modern day atheists will descend back to an animal state -- the movie Idiocracy springs to mind.
That is quite cryptic and doesn't really make sense on its own... you did, however, explain the herd concept much better in your last post. Apparently what you meant about "animal state" was that atheists will act on their animal impulses, like violence and raping, but theists won't because of the fear of the alpha (god/gods). I vehemently disagree that that is the case. I don't know where you have evidence for this*, and I don't have evidence for the contrary, other than my own experiences in life, but all atheists that I have ever known and most information that I read about tends to be that atheists are less violent and have a great appreciation for others... i.e. do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.
And this is still true, regardless of the concept of patron gods: The concept of "gods" is not the result of cities banding together. The cities themselves were already polytheistic. Just because a Catholic person or city has a patron saint does not mean they do not believe in the sainthood of other saints. By the way, the Romans thought that the various gods from other civilizations were equivalent to theirs with different names... the god or goddess of farming in Syria or Egypt might have been called by a different name, but they didn't think of them as a different god. They did, however, think that there may be local gods in different areas. In fact, conquering generals might ask the local god for favor in an upcoming battle in promise of building a temple after winning and giving a sacrifice.
Finally, about the point that religion is a technique to get the individual to willingly submit to the needs of a society, I would argue that governments and contracts can also do the same. Religion isn't a requirement, and hence societies can be atheist and still have such a tool to keep people from harming one another. Remember, the USSR and China were/are officially atheist societies. Another reason why I don't think atheism equates to reverting to primalness.
* Some religious people like to argue that Hitler and Stalin killed hundreds of millions and were atheists. Actually, Hitler's religious views are quite complicated - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views, and in any case both were trying to create new societies and replace existing ones, including removing the existing power structure of the religions in place. The Christian Romans and Mohammed's followers did the exact same thing. So they don't equate to the atheist living down the street, unless they are trying to topple and replace a society.
No joke. It was just a command line OS, which it did fine. There were certainly no blue screens of death. I'd say the worse part was trying to configure AUTOEXEC.BAT for getting just the right amount of memory for certain games. Otherwise, it was fine. Maybe you're associating other problems of the PC's with the computer (like segmented memory, i.e. only available to 640K without crazy EMS/XMS memory managers... that had nothing to do with MS-DOS, that was the Intel 80x86 architecture).
MS-DOS was essentially a bunch of file commands like "DISKCOPY" and its API was interrupts (see http://www.ctyme.com/intr/int.htm). To the end user, the commands like "DIR" and "COPY" were much more user friendly than Unix... granted, they weren't very user friendly in modern terms, but like I said, it was a command line OS.
This is probably a mistake on my part to be expecting a rational discourse, but I'm still interested, so...
Each city had its own god. Athens worshiped Athena. Rome worshiped Jupiter. The concept of "gods" is a result of cities banding together into larger herds with the primary city's god usually designated the top god.
Ancient Rome and Athens were absolutely 100% polytheistic. They worshiped a pantheon of gods. Rome did not just worship Jupiter, Rome had dozens of temples to many gods. Even the Israelites (Jews) did not have a concept of a single omnipotent God until much later in their history... and it is very probable that they still believed in many gods at the dawn of Christianity, despite the fact that they only worshiped their national god and no others. How does "You shall not worship any other god before me, for I am a jealous god" make sense if there is only 1 supreme being?
The concept of "gods" is not the result of cities banding together. The cities themselves were already polytheistic.
Modern day atheists are the result of 7000 years of evolution where those who were "animals" were weeded out of the population. Without religion, or technology, modern day atheists will descend back to an animal state -- the movie Idiocracy springs to mind.
I am an extremely smart person, but I can't comprehend what you're trying to say here. You're implying that atheists are "animals" and are weeded out of the general population. But they're still in the general population.
"Without religion or technology, atheists will descend back to animal state" - why/how? And how would theists not descend back in comparison?
Let's be clear here: there are TWO creation stories in the bible.
The first is the 7 day creation story. The second is the Adam and Eve creation story.
They are separate. I don't have references, but you can see the resemblance to these stories (individually) in other myths from the region in historic times. Maybe some busy Wikipeda-ing could help find the references but I don't have time right now.
However, almost all civilizations which developed religion separately were polytheistic and generally believed in ancestral spirits as well. They by no means believed in a single omnipotent god. The Credo religions (requiring "I believe...") first started with Zoroastrianism, and then much later and possibly separate with Judaism. Even Israelites were polytheistic until after the Babylonian Captivity.
If you want your story to work, then you'll have to replace "God" with "the gods". There rarely was a single "alpha" omnipotent God. The idea of only a single God is actually very new historically.
And exactly why do you emphasize rape so much? Do you think that atheists and Buddhists rape others constantly?
I was kind of thinking the same, but with a different conclusion. This is a great way to teach kids to disrespect the law. Punishments are much more frightening before you've experienced them. All this will do is trivialize getting in trouble with the law, and show kids it's not the end of the world. As someone who's spent his share of time in prison, I know it made me much more willing to bear that burden again if the cause was right.
You know I was thinking the same in a different way: it teaches kids not to respect the law if they think that the law is trivial and based on emotion rather than logic. Maybe it's not exactly analogous, but I know that once I found out pot wasn't dangerous at all after being taught it was mad crazy dangerous, I couldn't trust anything schools said about drugs. It turns out there ARE lots of dangerous things about some drugs, but people won't listen to the source if the source is not trustworthy.
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
A few thoughts: Culture clashes from a melting pot of immigration, anti-socialism sentiment leads to poverty for bottom of society (and hence violence), a culture of accepting violence but not sex/drugs (think in terms of censorship - television, supreme court rulings, can't sell sex toys in Alabama, not enough escapism for some people, etc.).
Probably more... you could write a PhD thesis on this question.
You have inappropriately read something into the OP's post that they didn't intend. Approximately 1/3 of the world is rich. That does not mean that everyone in those places are millionaires (i.e. relatively rich to those around them). Just because you were relatively poor doesn't make the OP wrong, and it certainly doesn't make him a liar (if he were wrong, he'd be wrong but not a liar).
The fact that you couldn't afford food and still survived pretty much proves my point: you never died from starvation because you live in a "rich" society. That's quite rare in the history of humanity.
Yes, I read the article. It's about a government employee criticizing someone's religious beliefs (ridiculing them, specifically), while in their official capacity as a schoolteacher. And this is a compulsory setting, no less; not something where the recipient could just easily leave and dissociate themselves from said government employee.
What if instead of ridiculing the student's religion, the teacher had called them a racial slur? Would that be a violation of the student's rights?
I sympathize with what you're saying... but I don't think your assessments are correct. I don't believe the teacher was ridiculing the student's religion, according to the transcript. Here's what he said:
“Aristotle argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course that’s nonsense,” Corbett said according to a transcript of his lecture. “I mean, that’s what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic.”
He continued: “The other possibility is, it’s always been there. Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic.”
“All I’m saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it,” the transcript says.
Corbett told his students that “real” scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. “Contrast that with creationists,” he told his students. “They never try to disprove creationism. They’re all running around trying to prove it. That’s deduction. It’s not science. Scientifically, it’s nonsense.”
I myself am a Christian. The Pope agrees that the biblical Creation stories (both the 7 day Creation story and the Adam and Eve Creation story... yes, they are separate) are not meant to be taken literally, in a scientific sense. In a classroom environment, I believe it is completely acceptable to explain the difference between science and what isn't science. If we can't explain that in a classroom, then we are fucked... because the Christian right has taken away our freedom to discuss science, based on their supposed "freedom" to prevent a classroom from discussing science. I would compare it to saying that the religious right has the "freedom of religion" to impose their brand of marriage (which has only been around for 50-75 years in its present form) on the rest of the country. (BTW, I'm a gay Christian and am planning on having children with my long time partner in the next two years... these court cases I do take seriously because they are similar in some aspects)
Also, you replied again and said that this is a religious slur. I am going to take you seriously (i.e. presume you're not trolling). There is a big difference between religious slurs ("Christians are so stupid and if you believe God created the earth then you're stupid") rather than explain it scientifically ("That's deduction, not science... scientifically it's nonsense"). Yes, it is close... and one thing that the judge mentions in the article is that they didn't establish a precedent on whether or not his statements were necessarily OK or not - they ruled that one shouldn't presume that he knew that it was unlawful:
“At some point a teacher’s comments on religion might cross the line and rise to the level of unconstitutional hostility,” Fisher wrote.
“But without any cases illuminating the dimly perceived line of demarcation between permissible and impermissible discussion of religion in a college level history class, we cannot conclude that a reasonable teacher standing in Corbett’s shoes would have been on notice that his actions might be unconstitutional.”
Johny, probably the son of somebody in the hate group AFA, was upset because the teacher didn't agree with his mommy and daddy so tax payers had to throw a bunch of money away in courts to make Johny feel good? Are spoiled evangelical kids so important we have to pay for their tantrums?
Yes, apparently the kid was so spoiled that his classmates called him "princess".
I’m Dr. Corbett. One thing readers should understand is that when my school-provided attorney made the decision to ask a judge rather than a judge decide the case, the law required that all the “facts” be considered in the light most favorable to the plaintiff (Chad). That meant that we could not challenge the validity of the recordings, which were heavily edited. It meant that we could not point out how each and every comment clearly related to the curriculum. I might add, Chad’s recording were in violation of California law. This case was never about religion. It was about a whiny little boy who admitted he didn’t do his homework and who’s helicopter parents intervened so often in school and on the water polo team that other students called him “princess.” Neither Chad, his parents nor his lawyers, the so called “Advocates for Faith and Freedom,” ever made an attempt to even talk to me or attempt to resolve the issues prior to filing a lawsuit. It is my opinion that the “Advocates” were far more interested in having a case they could use for fundraising than they were in dealing with the issues. They are a textbook example of exactly what I commented on in class, that some people use the faith of others to line their pockets with gold or to gain political power. I believe such use of religion is vastly more offensive than calling Biblical creation “superstitious, religious nonsense,” which is obviously true.”
And while liberals everywhere celebrate this victory against creationism, they will entirely miss the implication of this case: The government just said an entire class of its employees can violate people's First Amendment rights with impunity.
How exactly can a class of its employees violate people's First Amendment rights? Did you read the article?
I'll try to guess what you are thinking: that the government said its employees can prevent citizens from practicing their religion. Nope. That the government employees can favor atheism over Christianity? Nope.
The First Amendment is basically the separation of Church and State, and in no way are the people's rights violated by the ruling.
1. What fulfilled prophecies? What exactly is a prophecy, and what makes it fulfilled? 2. 1600 year period? From my understanding, the Old Testament as we now have it was written after the Babylonian captivity, i.e. around 530 BC, but maybe as soon as 330 BC. The New Testament was written in the years from approximately 50 AD to 150 AD. 3. "No other book... that is harmonious with itself". What do you mean by this?
In all seriousness, I'm really wanting to hear from you, I'm not being sarcastic.
Why don't you think back and tell me something, who did you learn more from, the teachers who imposed something upon you, or teachers who guided you in your thinking?
Antagonistic teachers who made ridiculous comments and pissed me off actually made me critically think.
Seriously now, I've tried nearly every language I can put my hands on. I still use C when the going gets tough. One of the reasons is that C is not likely to change.
I think the mistake you made is that you said C, and not C++. C is a "bare bones" language which maps very closely to what a CPU's instructions do. Higher level languages tend towards how humans describe logic. C++ is basically a superset of C, which adds lots of powerful constructs (i.e. objects, templates, etc.), but still maintains the idea that it is a language which maps closely to what a real processor does.
I believe that how C++ adds all of these powerful constructs is not the best way to make a "high level" i.e. "closer to human level" language but still maintain the "power" that C has (very close to how a CPU works). One example would be D, but I'm not going to say that that's the perfect language either. What I will say is that, the language of C++ is not the best language to do what C++ is supposed to do.
Slashdot Mirror
On a personal note, why are you hostile to Christianity?
I don't think I said anything at all hostile to Christianity. I'm not hostile to Christianity, but I strongly disapprove of people who don't follow the scientific method to figure out answers in our existence and then push that belief on others (i.e. someone who takes on faith that the bible says the earth is 6000 years old and then forces that belief onto others, instead of using scientific queries to determine the age of the earth. Or someone who says women can't drive because they believe that the Quran forbids them, even though it is logical that women can and do drive)
I was raised in a Christian church and went 3 times a week for the first 16 years of my life, and I will probably do the same for my children. That is for the purpose of a moral upbringing (the type that comes from a church of love and compassion, not fire and brimstone). I will teach them to be scientific and to use reason, even when it conflicts with that collection of writings called the Bible.
As far as joining a religion for the herd philosophy, I like to be my own man :) I don't think my brain is wired like other people's to be a member of a herd. For example, I never have felt any emotion or attachments for sport teams. I've always wondered why people like and care about their region's sport team so much, even if none of the players are actually from that given region.
By the way, the description Anthology of Religion's Greatest Hits from ~100,000 BC up to about 100 AD is an awesome description for the bible. I've always known that but never could put it as succinctly as that. It drives me crazy when Christians refuse to believe that the story of Noah and the Ark comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
LOL! Awesome 2nd link... :)
I mean, Israel is second only to the russians and chinese for technology theft, but...good grief.
Uh, third?
I think you make lots of really good points. I think you didn't explain it very well in your original post. I would argue that, next time, you shouldn't use the word "rape" so much because, well, frankly it makes the argument sound a bit crazy. "Primal impulses", "selfish behavior", or something similar. Go ahead and include rape as an example, but you made it sound like that was the main point.
I still stand by my criticism of your original post for saying "God" instead of "gods" or "religion" or something else. If Zoroastrianism had been the random religion that spread in the Roman Empire, the same thing would be said with "the astral forces of good and evil" instead of "God". If we were in China, well I'm not sure what would be said... maybe "Divine Will", but it would be different. The idea of calling this idea God only makes sense when you're talking about the Abrahamic religions.
As far as believing religion isn't necessary - I said that (or at least I meant), given religion as a system of order to allow society to live with one another, there are alternatives which can do the same (i.e. religion isn't necessary but something is like enforceable contracts).
Finally, let me say I'm glad that I had this conversation with you. I feel like I've gained a bit of knowledge and perspective.
On the topic of marriage... everything you say I agree wholeheartedly 1000%.
Now, I disagree that the scientific process is an equivalent belief system to Christianity. But I'm just gonna skimp over that topic and go to this:
So with all this in mind, despite my own belief in science as opposed to theistic philosophies, I support the rights of parents to teach their children whatever belief systems they choose --- and, if they wish, to shelter their children from belief systems that oppose those beliefs. It all comes down to respecting people's choices and not forcing them into other belief systems against their will.
How do you think this would turn out in 100 years? We live in a democracy. I am imagining an Armageddon scenario where we descend into a second dark age because Evangelicals wanted to rid the world of the scientific process. Now, I don't believe that is the most likely scenario, but in any case it scares me.
So, really, how do you think this would turn out? Remember, it's likely that you're smarter than 90% of the people in this country, let alone this planet.
First of all, I wasn't being a dick, I wasn't trying to berate you; you're being quite sensitive. Anyone making a point in a discussion could be considered "arrogant". And let me repeat what you wrote:
Modern day atheists are the result of 7000 years of evolution where those who were "animals" were weeded out of the population. Without religion, or technology, modern day atheists will descend back to an animal state -- the movie Idiocracy springs to mind.
That is quite cryptic and doesn't really make sense on its own... you did, however, explain the herd concept much better in your last post. Apparently what you meant about "animal state" was that atheists will act on their animal impulses, like violence and raping, but theists won't because of the fear of the alpha (god/gods). I vehemently disagree that that is the case. I don't know where you have evidence for this*, and I don't have evidence for the contrary, other than my own experiences in life, but all atheists that I have ever known and most information that I read about tends to be that atheists are less violent and have a great appreciation for others... i.e. do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.
And this is still true, regardless of the concept of patron gods: The concept of "gods" is not the result of cities banding together. The cities themselves were already polytheistic. Just because a Catholic person or city has a patron saint does not mean they do not believe in the sainthood of other saints. By the way, the Romans thought that the various gods from other civilizations were equivalent to theirs with different names... the god or goddess of farming in Syria or Egypt might have been called by a different name, but they didn't think of them as a different god. They did, however, think that there may be local gods in different areas. In fact, conquering generals might ask the local god for favor in an upcoming battle in promise of building a temple after winning and giving a sacrifice.
Finally, about the point that religion is a technique to get the individual to willingly submit to the needs of a society, I would argue that governments and contracts can also do the same. Religion isn't a requirement, and hence societies can be atheist and still have such a tool to keep people from harming one another. Remember, the USSR and China were/are officially atheist societies. Another reason why I don't think atheism equates to reverting to primalness.
* Some religious people like to argue that Hitler and Stalin killed hundreds of millions and were atheists. Actually, Hitler's religious views are quite complicated - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views, and in any case both were trying to create new societies and replace existing ones, including removing the existing power structure of the religions in place. The Christian Romans and Mohammed's followers did the exact same thing. So they don't equate to the atheist living down the street, unless they are trying to topple and replace a society.
No joke. It was just a command line OS, which it did fine. There were certainly no blue screens of death. I'd say the worse part was trying to configure AUTOEXEC.BAT for getting just the right amount of memory for certain games. Otherwise, it was fine. Maybe you're associating other problems of the PC's with the computer (like segmented memory, i.e. only available to 640K without crazy EMS/XMS memory managers... that had nothing to do with MS-DOS, that was the Intel 80x86 architecture).
MS-DOS was essentially a bunch of file commands like "DISKCOPY" and its API was interrupts (see http://www.ctyme.com/intr/int.htm). To the end user, the commands like "DIR" and "COPY" were much more user friendly than Unix... granted, they weren't very user friendly in modern terms, but like I said, it was a command line OS.
Why hate on MS-DOS? It was fine for its time.
This is probably a mistake on my part to be expecting a rational discourse, but I'm still interested, so...
Each city had its own god. Athens worshiped Athena. Rome worshiped Jupiter. The concept of "gods" is a result of cities banding together into larger herds with the primary city's god usually designated the top god.
Ancient Rome and Athens were absolutely 100% polytheistic. They worshiped a pantheon of gods. Rome did not just worship Jupiter, Rome had dozens of temples to many gods. Even the Israelites (Jews) did not have a concept of a single omnipotent God until much later in their history... and it is very probable that they still believed in many gods at the dawn of Christianity, despite the fact that they only worshiped their national god and no others. How does "You shall not worship any other god before me, for I am a jealous god" make sense if there is only 1 supreme being?
The concept of "gods" is not the result of cities banding together. The cities themselves were already polytheistic.
Modern day atheists are the result of 7000 years of evolution where those who were "animals" were weeded out of the population. Without religion, or technology, modern day atheists will descend back to an animal state -- the movie Idiocracy springs to mind.
I am an extremely smart person, but I can't comprehend what you're trying to say here. You're implying that atheists are "animals" and are weeded out of the general population. But they're still in the general population.
"Without religion or technology, atheists will descend back to animal state" - why/how? And how would theists not descend back in comparison?
LOL!
Let's be clear here: there are TWO creation stories in the bible.
The first is the 7 day creation story.
The second is the Adam and Eve creation story.
They are separate. I don't have references, but you can see the resemblance to these stories (individually) in other myths from the region in historic times. Maybe some busy Wikipeda-ing could help find the references but I don't have time right now.
Cool story, bro.
However, almost all civilizations which developed religion separately were polytheistic and generally believed in ancestral spirits as well. They by no means believed in a single omnipotent god. The Credo religions (requiring "I believe...") first started with Zoroastrianism, and then much later and possibly separate with Judaism. Even Israelites were polytheistic until after the Babylonian Captivity.
If you want your story to work, then you'll have to replace "God" with "the gods". There rarely was a single "alpha" omnipotent God. The idea of only a single God is actually very new historically.
And exactly why do you emphasize rape so much? Do you think that atheists and Buddhists rape others constantly?
What is a second genesis, and how would you observe that one has or hasn't happened?
I was kind of thinking the same, but with a different conclusion. This is a great way to teach kids to disrespect the law. Punishments are much more frightening before you've experienced them. All this will do is trivialize getting in trouble with the law, and show kids it's not the end of the world. As someone who's spent his share of time in prison, I know it made me much more willing to bear that burden again if the cause was right.
You know I was thinking the same in a different way: it teaches kids not to respect the law if they think that the law is trivial and based on emotion rather than logic. Maybe it's not exactly analogous, but I know that once I found out pot wasn't dangerous at all after being taught it was mad crazy dangerous, I couldn't trust anything schools said about drugs. It turns out there ARE lots of dangerous things about some drugs, but people won't listen to the source if the source is not trustworthy.
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
A few thoughts: Culture clashes from a melting pot of immigration, anti-socialism sentiment leads to poverty for bottom of society (and hence violence), a culture of accepting violence but not sex/drugs (think in terms of censorship - television, supreme court rulings, can't sell sex toys in Alabama, not enough escapism for some people, etc.).
Probably more... you could write a PhD thesis on this question.
You have inappropriately read something into the OP's post that they didn't intend. Approximately 1/3 of the world is rich. That does not mean that everyone in those places are millionaires (i.e. relatively rich to those around them). Just because you were relatively poor doesn't make the OP wrong, and it certainly doesn't make him a liar (if he were wrong, he'd be wrong but not a liar).
The fact that you couldn't afford food and still survived pretty much proves my point: you never died from starvation because you live in a "rich" society. That's quite rare in the history of humanity.
Yes, I read the article. It's about a government employee criticizing someone's religious beliefs (ridiculing them, specifically), while in their official capacity as a schoolteacher. And this is a compulsory setting, no less; not something where the recipient could just easily leave and dissociate themselves from said government employee.
What if instead of ridiculing the student's religion, the teacher had called them a racial slur? Would that be a violation of the student's rights?
I sympathize with what you're saying... but I don't think your assessments are correct. I don't believe the teacher was ridiculing the student's religion, according to the transcript. Here's what he said:
“Aristotle argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course that’s nonsense,” Corbett said according to a transcript of his lecture. “I mean, that’s what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic.”
He continued: “The other possibility is, it’s always been there. Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic.”
“All I’m saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it,” the transcript says.
Corbett told his students that “real” scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. “Contrast that with creationists,” he told his students. “They never try to disprove creationism. They’re all running around trying to prove it. That’s deduction. It’s not science. Scientifically, it’s nonsense.”
I myself am a Christian. The Pope agrees that the biblical Creation stories (both the 7 day Creation story and the Adam and Eve Creation story... yes, they are separate) are not meant to be taken literally, in a scientific sense. In a classroom environment, I believe it is completely acceptable to explain the difference between science and what isn't science. If we can't explain that in a classroom, then we are fucked... because the Christian right has taken away our freedom to discuss science, based on their supposed "freedom" to prevent a classroom from discussing science. I would compare it to saying that the religious right has the "freedom of religion" to impose their brand of marriage (which has only been around for 50-75 years in its present form) on the rest of the country. (BTW, I'm a gay Christian and am planning on having children with my long time partner in the next two years... these court cases I do take seriously because they are similar in some aspects)
Also, you replied again and said that this is a religious slur. I am going to take you seriously (i.e. presume you're not trolling). There is a big difference between religious slurs ("Christians are so stupid and if you believe God created the earth then you're stupid") rather than explain it scientifically ("That's deduction, not science... scientifically it's nonsense"). Yes, it is close... and one thing that the judge mentions in the article is that they didn't establish a precedent on whether or not his statements were necessarily OK or not - they ruled that one shouldn't presume that he knew that it was unlawful:
“At some point a teacher’s comments on religion might cross the line and rise to the level of unconstitutional hostility,” Fisher wrote.
“But without any cases illuminating the dimly perceived line of demarcation between permissible and impermissible discussion of religion in a college level history class, we cannot conclude that a reasonable teacher standing in Corbett’s shoes would have been on notice that his actions might be unconstitutional.”
Johny, probably the son of somebody in the hate group AFA, was upset because the teacher didn't agree with his mommy and daddy so tax payers had to throw a bunch of money away in courts to make Johny feel good? Are spoiled evangelical kids so important we have to pay for their tantrums?
Yes, apparently the kid was so spoiled that his classmates called him "princess".
Here is a quote about the case from the defendant himself back in February ( http://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/james-corbett-case-update-12-feb-%E2%80%9811/ )
I’m Dr. Corbett. One thing readers should understand is that when my school-provided attorney made the decision to ask a judge rather than a judge decide the case, the law required that all the “facts” be considered in the light most favorable to the plaintiff (Chad). That meant that we could not challenge the validity of the recordings, which were heavily edited. It meant that we could not point out how each and every comment clearly related to the curriculum. I might add, Chad’s recording were in violation of California law.
This case was never about religion. It was about a whiny little boy who admitted he didn’t do his homework and who’s helicopter parents intervened so often in school and on the water polo team that other students called him “princess.” Neither Chad, his parents nor his lawyers, the so called “Advocates for Faith and Freedom,” ever made an attempt to even talk to me or attempt to resolve the issues prior to filing a lawsuit. It is my opinion that the “Advocates” were far more interested in having a case they could use for fundraising than they were in dealing with the issues. They are a textbook example of exactly what I commented on in class, that some people use the faith of others to line their pockets with gold or to gain political power. I believe such use of religion is vastly more offensive than calling Biblical creation “superstitious, religious nonsense,” which is obviously true.”
LOL! I deny the Theory of Gravity, as it's just a theory.
And while liberals everywhere celebrate this victory against creationism, they will entirely miss the implication of this case: The government just said an entire class of its employees can violate people's First Amendment rights with impunity.
How exactly can a class of its employees violate people's First Amendment rights? Did you read the article?
I'll try to guess what you are thinking: that the government said its employees can prevent citizens from practicing their religion. Nope. That the government employees can favor atheism over Christianity? Nope.
The First Amendment is basically the separation of Church and State, and in no way are the people's rights violated by the ruling.
I do want to hear it. Can you explain?
1. What fulfilled prophecies? What exactly is a prophecy, and what makes it fulfilled?
2. 1600 year period? From my understanding, the Old Testament as we now have it was written after the Babylonian captivity, i.e. around 530 BC, but maybe as soon as 330 BC. The New Testament was written in the years from approximately 50 AD to 150 AD.
3. "No other book... that is harmonious with itself". What do you mean by this?
In all seriousness, I'm really wanting to hear from you, I'm not being sarcastic.
RTFA.
There's a reason there is an established method of punctuation and grammar. Your comment doesn't make any sense.
Why don't you think back and tell me something, who did you learn more from, the teachers who imposed something upon you, or teachers who guided you in your thinking?
Antagonistic teachers who made ridiculous comments and pissed me off actually made me critically think.
Seriously now, I've tried nearly every language I can put my hands on. I still use C when the going gets tough. One of the reasons is that C is not likely to change.
I think the mistake you made is that you said C, and not C++. C is a "bare bones" language which maps very closely to what a CPU's instructions do. Higher level languages tend towards how humans describe logic. C++ is basically a superset of C, which adds lots of powerful constructs (i.e. objects, templates, etc.), but still maintains the idea that it is a language which maps closely to what a real processor does.
I believe that how C++ adds all of these powerful constructs is not the best way to make a "high level" i.e. "closer to human level" language but still maintain the "power" that C has (very close to how a CPU works). One example would be D, but I'm not going to say that that's the perfect language either. What I will say is that, the language of C++ is not the best language to do what C++ is supposed to do.