How to respond to the Y2K wet firecracker.
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End of the World
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· Score: 5
Yes, all you geeks out there, bored to tears and reading SlashDot for kicks -- you can still have some fun tonight.
Top Ten Ways to make Y2K fun:
10. Play REM's "It's the end of the world as we know it" loudly. Repeatedly. Until the VP comes in and begs you to stop playing that damned song.
9. Point out, as UserFriendly did, that Y2K isn't till 2048, so you're going home.
8. If your boss is a Pagan, at the rollover of each hour, drop to your knees and loudly pray to the Lord God for salvation from the "cursed bug". Make your speech flowery with thee's, thou's, and use the word "abomination" at least three times.
7. Annoy your co-workers by reminding them that it's not really the millenium.
6. Wear a black trenchcoat, especially if you are not in the habit of doing so. Glance nervously at your watch and threaten to leave early.
5. At 11:59, scream loudly into the phone: "What do you mean, you have another Y2K jumbo Patch I need to install!?!?!". Then leave.
4. Rent a rider truck. Drive it to work.
3. Make regular comments about the sudden shortage of high-nitrate fertilizer.
2. Get a 20 camera flashes (the kind that come on poles). Set them up outside your window. Set them off at 12:00 PM, while screaming "Get Down!"
1. And the number one way to enjoy Y2K: Quit this stupid job. After all, you're a UNIX geek, you can find a job tomorrow.
Surgeon general's warning: following these suggestions may be hazardous to your future earnings. This was intended as humour, and is not intended to advocate or condone any illegal activities.
Regarding the RIAA, MPIA, etc. as monopolies, you are exactly right. IIRC, there was legislation back in the 30s or 40s legalizing them because they were considered to be necessary.
Sure there are applications where you need Oracle or Informix (FWIW, Informix generally kicks Oracle's butt IMNSHO). However, as you conceed they are few and far between.
Way too many people have a blind, knee-jerk loyalty to a particular RDBMS that leads them to waste a lot of money. Consider, for example, Medic Computer Systems (www.medcmp.com), a company I am intimately familiar with.
One of their products uses Informix -- and requires 10 times the hardware resources it would need if it used Interbase.
But is Oracle worth the price for most applications? In my experience, it is not.
In most applications, the quality of database design and code manipulating the data have more to do with the robustness of the application that the dbms does.
I can see this making since for Inprise (okay, I still think of them as Borland) on a lot of levels.
First, let's face it: InterBase has never been a wildly successful product. From what I can tell (as a Inprise outsider) the only people who bought it were people who were already firmly entrenched in the Borland development environments.
It seems to me that Borland's real cash cow has always been their development tools. Open sourcing Interbase could lead to it being more widely used, which could sell a/lot/ more development tools. Especially in the Linux environment.
Second, this would firmly entrench Borland in the Linux world. I think that the past few years and the (ridiculous) success enjoyed by Visual Basic have made it clear that it is going to very difficult for Borland to compete on Microsoft operating systems.
There hope of radical success (as opposed to the kind of mediocre success they've been enjoying for a while) is to become the premier provider of Linux tools. And I think they know it.
All in all, this could be very cool.
Also, let me comment that, from what I've seen, Interbase is a very cool product that has never gotten the recognition it deserves. The big advantage over MySQL is that it has full transaction support. Sorry guys: but there are some applications where you just need transactions.
Okay all you parents out there -- it's time to consider this whole Santa thing.
We teach our kids, from birth, to believe in a "Jolly Old Elf" who will bring them presents on Christmas morning. Allegedly, this "Elf" only brings presents to good girls and boys, but since I always got something I can attest to the fact that he is not very observant.
Then, when the kid turns 7 or so and figures out that it's all humbug, we enlist them in the conspiracy to fool their younger relatives and subject them to dire threats if they fail to lie to their younger siblings.
Actually, I would be more concerned about y2100. A lot of systems that have been "made y2k compliant" have been so "fixed" using a sliding date-window technique that will not work after about 2070.
I.e. the algorithm they used looks something like this:
One thing RMS is right about is that the Linux environment is about a lot more than a kernel. It is about userspace utilities. It is about X. It is about GNOME and KDE. It's about Mozilla and Opera. It's about apache, zeus, and sendmail.
And all of these things will run, mostly without modification, on BSD.
Who cares which kernel is used! That's a small (but very important) part of the whole picture. The important thing is that we are rapidly developing more and more user-space stuff that will run on any modern UNIXy platform -- whether its Linux, FreeBSD, or the Hurd.
Linux's success helps to insure BSD's long term viability. Don't forget it. From some stuff I've seen, I gather that the core *BSD teams are well aware of it.
I think you've got a point there. Someone (I forget who) wrote that the real battle of the twentieth century wasn't communism, but racist nationalism. Sadly, it's not gone yet.
I'm not aware of anyone who has claimed that AIDS only affects homosexuals or the immoral. Can you please site a specific instance of a "right-wing" person who has?
On the other hand, I'm sure many "right wing people" have pointed out that ignoring traditional moral values increase your odds of getting AIDS dramatically. And it does: the only way I know of to catch aids within tradition morality on the part of all parties is blood transfer in a medical context. (There may be a few exceptions to this, but they are very few). Last I looked, that was less than 1% of all AIDS cases.
The question I use to evaluate statements is not "does this conflict with (a vision of) society", but simply "is this true?" You seem to me to be in the redoubtable position of objecting to people telling the unimbellished, scientific truth because it conflicts with your prejudices or offends you. Usually, this is something that "right-wing people" are accused of.
Your characterization of "right-wing people" is false -- not that I'm a right-winger. I just know a lot of right-wingers and think that you should limit your criticisms to true ones. There are certainly plenty of valid criticisms out there.
Which just goes to prove that Christianity doesn't make people want to censor those they disagree with, humanity does.
The point being that people are jerks: and a token faith in Christianity -- in the cases you cite, living in a state/church union church historians call Christendom -- is not going to change that. Realize, too, that Christians are told in the Bible that there will be many false Christians: people who "call Lord Lord!" and yet do not know Christ. The point is that Christian faith does not require that I accept an eccelesiastical structure (although I, as an individual, may choose to). Nor does it require that I check my brain at the door or accept every insane beleif that some Christian has believed over the past 2000 years. All it requires is that I follow Jesus, as he is revealed to me through the Holy Spirit and (yes) through the Bible.
As for Karma: if you are referring to Slashdot Karma, I think you will find that I have it to spare.
If you are referring to the belief common to Eastern belief systems derived from Hinduism, you might find that I know more about it than you. I have read many Hindu scriptures, and at one time believed in Karma and all the rest. I just don't believe in it any more -- instead, I believe in a just God. But that's another story.
Why is this post flame bait and the one it was responding to is not? I am so bloody sick of the anti-Christian bias at Slashdot that it's ridiculous. I was responding to a post that attempted, without support, to claim that Christians taught "hate" and tried to dominate people through "fear". Yet that post is left unscathed because of its anti-Christian bias.
I don't care about the karma: I have karma to spare. But I resent the prejudice. Which just goes to prove that Christianity doesn't make people want to censor those they disagree with: humanity does.
Please be precise: when exactly did I (or any Christian -- what's this Xtian thing? Are you scared to say the name?) tell you what to think?
Answer: I never did. I simply speak truth as I see it. You and your cohorts are the ones who want to force people to think in a given way.
C'mon people! I am still waiting for the post that disagrees with me with any attempt to reference facts instead of vague inuendo! Give me specifics if you want to slander me and my religion!
Look: I only talk about religion on Slashdot in response to direct, usually ill-informed, attacks on it. See, for example, the article I was responding to. Or look at fullly 50% of the stuff Katz spews.
Now: what/precisely/ makes me come off as self-righteous? Please be specific. Frankly, given that I rarely talk about anything that/I/ do, I don't see how you could call me self righteous. Maybe you are just projecting your preconceptions on me?
Re:Silly Religious Parables
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Planet Gattaca
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For starters, I said it was a joke.
For seconders, God is, semantically speaking, a symbol with a real referrent, the meaning of which most people in most times have agreed on.
Your attempt to disprove my little parable by inserting an absurdity in the place of its main character is what's silly.
Re:Flaws of logic and irony...
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Planet Gattaca
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err... Although I agree with you on most, "The unexamined life is not worth living" goes back to Socrates.
Of course, he was a religionist -- in fact, his understanding of religion was so distinctively Christian that many have posited some kind of special revelation to account for it. Read the Plato's Apology sometime. So the Irony still stands:)
Let's see. First, you state, possibly correctly, that Science is primarily concerned with how, and religion with why. Bravo! You have grapsed something that most people never quite manage to get: science and religion are not competitors, they are different disciplines. There is only a problem when science attempts to claim that it has made religion irrelevant.
Sadly, you then go on to say
I personally thing that this is why most religions are based upon fear. Fear brings people to religion, and religion keeps people playing on that fear.
I fear nothing. I'm serious: I have no fear of anything that life can bring to me? Why? Because I know that no matter what I have the beneficience of a loving God. Why do I follow God? Not out of fear! I follow God because I love God. I crave, in my innermost parts, justice. I crave peace. I crave a world that is not a mockery, continually doing things that are obviously wrong. I crave freedom -- freedom from repression, freedom from the repression even of my flesh. And God stands for all that. So is my relation with God based in fear? Hardly. Don't talk about what you don't know about.
Sorry if this sounds hostile, but I honestly cannot imagine a reason that a person would choose to blind themselves to learning, and gain all of their knowledge of the universe from an authority who claims to be infallible (Be it the Bible, the Pope, the Prophet, the Bhan-Wagen with his fourty gold Rols Royces) that is constantly proven by logic and reasoning to be thoroughly flawed. (Read: Flat Earth, Earth rides on the back of an elephant, Earth is the center of the universe, the world is only 6000 years old even though the chinese have contiguous records that date back furthur....)
Ever read the Bible? If you had, you would know that it does not state:
The earth is 6000 years old.
The earth is flat.
It is the story of people's experience of God over 6000 years. And most Christians have found it to be so reliable that they consider it to be authoritative. Some even thing it's infallible. The point is that the things you are objecting to are not the Bible, but human interprations therof. The beautiful thing is that you are allowed and encouraged to read it for yourself and form your own opinions. Hardly sounds like a lock-step tyranny to me.
Unfortunatly, in order to create this atmosphere of fear, religin invariably needs to make a them. This leads to hate among these groups. Christianity in it's sorted history has lead to the absolute, intollerable hatred of women for causing the original sin, blacks because they have no soul - so we are free to enslave them and hurt them as much as we wish, Gays - because they do not fit into the christian world view, Atheists - because they represent a threat to the power structure, and the list goes on. (and on, and on, and on....ad infenetium)
I want you to give me a specific example of documented hatred of any of these. C'mon, put up or shutup. To say that someone is wrong is not to "hate" them. FWIW, there are documented examples, but I seriously doubt that you can list even one off the top of your head. Further, each of these alleged crimes were in direct contradiction to scripture. For example:
Women - Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. (colossians 3:19)
Also, I would challenge you to find the "them" at my church, or at many churches. Granted, genuinely gracious behaviour is rare in the church as in the secular world: but did you really think that it wouldn't be rare in a fallen world?
Finally, let me challenge you to something: I want you to name the top 3 murderers of all time and their religious leanings. You seem to assert that religion is the source of the greatest evil, well here are my counterexamples:
Stalin: killed more than hitler ever dreamed of. Killed jews, killed Christians, killed anyone who didn't cooperate with him. Atheist.
Mao: The cultural revolution basically meant killing a few million people. Atheist.
Hitler: Killed what... 10 million Jews? Also killed any Christians who stood up to him, subverted the German state church. Some like to claim he was a Christian: may I suggest that they read Mein Kampf or any of his other writings before they do? Best guess is that he was just a religious opportunist, however much of the Aryan mythos and even the Swastika seems to have come from the Indian Subcontinent. Some would say he was an Atheist, some would say a Pagan. I say it doesn't matter: his quotes show amply that he wasn't a Christian. See http://www.answers.org/Apologetics/Hitquote.html
I will challenge you to name one Christian who has killed people on that scale, with that kind of malice, for purely religious reasons. C'mon, put up or shut up. Note that I'm not saying that all Atheists are little Hitlers (they're not: most of them are decent people). I'm saying that religion is not the prime cause of hatred in the world.
So, all this rambling leads me to my conclusion: Intead of searching for a why, and returning with the baggage of fear, loathing, and an infalible answer (who has few or no foundations other then 'God said so'), why not try to gain a world view that just says 'we only have learned so much, and even that is suspect', because at least that can have solid foundations - even if it cannot yet give you all the answers - it can at least provide you with a likely scenerio.
And all my rambling over a period of years leads me to this: I will follow Christ. Why? Because I love Christ. And because those who genuinely follow Christ have done more to alleviate human suffering than anyone in the history of the world. One genuine Christ follower (e.g. Albert Schweizer) has done more than all the secular humanists ever whelped.
Your post was not just offensive, but showed a clear lack of study and was generally just plain wrong.
Ahh... But any world view needs a first cause. And in the case of religion, the first cause can be of infinite simplicity.
I believe that God is of a single principle, unified in will and purpose. That he has no consituent parts. Further, I believe that he exists independent of time.
This is not an easy concept, and I can't really explain it in the same way that I understand it. Basically, I believe that God is so simple and so unified of principle that, for anything to exist, God must exist to create it. Who can create time but a being that exists outside it?
I realize that this is not a scientific explanation: but then again, it's not intended to be.
Finding the formula for life would dwarf almost any previous scientific achievement that comes to mind, not to mention knocking conventional religion and theology on their antiquated behinds. What is a theologian supposed to tell some kid who can read the recipe for human life? If we can make it, doesn't that raise certain ultimate questions?
Normally, I try to respond to Katz's rants with reasoned, considered replies, but I think this one is so obviously silly that I will respond with a joke.
Without further ado, here it is:
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that humans had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God so.
The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you; We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't You just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man.
After the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest."
To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great!"
"But," God added, "we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."
The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt.".
I think my point is made: science can never explain the primal causes, can never account for the ultimate origin of anything. To try to claim otherwise is the worst kind of hubris. And I do wish that you would try to be at least a little more balanced in your coverage.
A number of people have noted that apparently, somehow, our ancestors got along without being treated for mental illness, so why can't we? I think this is a valid question, and I think there are several places where the answer can be found.
First, we live in a much more tightly packed society than we did 100 years ago. IIRC, 100 years ago, the worlds population was only 1 billion and the US population was only around 100 million. Today, we are looking at 6 billion and around 275 million respectively. When you have someone this tightly packed, anti-social behaviours become much more dangerous. Instead of the Lizzie Borden murders which shocked a nation with 2 dead people, you have the Columbine massacre with half a dozen dead. Why? More targets, closer together. Furthermore, when you don't have enough elbow room, the frustrations caused tend to aggravate any latent mental disorders. Even worse, high population density tends to allow people with mental illnesses to "hide from society". Since nobody really knows everybody anymore, it is far too easy for people to slip through the cracks.
However, I do think that there is another possible problem that is often overlooked: the crap we eat. It is well established that many foods have psychotropic effects that are not well understood: just ask any woman about chocolate around "that time of month". Repeat after me: sugar does have a noticeable effect on the behaviour of small children. I know; I have one. Give him candy and he will be insane for the rest of the day. And we've only had sugar in massive quantities since the start of the twentieth century -- about the time everyone seems to have started to slip their cams. I'm not going to get into what I think some of the psychotropic effects might be (I'm not a P-Sychiatrist); I'll just note that many foods definitely have them.
As someone who used to work for a consortium of Physicians, let me say that you should not discount the money effect on the equation. Designer drugs like ZoLoft, Luvox, and Prozac are some of the most heavily advertised drugs out there. Literally, insanely beautiful women come to Doctor's offices, fix lunch on-site for the Doctor and their whole staff, then hand the Doctor a bunch of samples. If you don't believe me, the next time you are in a Doctor's office look around and count the amount of junk that the Doctor has from various drug manufacturers. And this junk is rarely for anti-biotics: it's for Zoloft, Luvox, Prozac, occasionally you'll see some for Claritin or something along those lines. But usually, it's the psych drugs. And these medicine's are IMHO radically overprescribed: in fact, most doctor's do nothing to accurately diagnose mental conditions before trying Zoloft and friends. This is a Bad Thing.
Finally, I am really, really concerned that the Pols are trying to turn mental illnesses into such a big issue in this campaign (take a look at Tipper Gore sometime). They simply are not a national policy problem. I don't buy the whole "awareness" gig: usually, "awareness" campaigns boil down to "creating an issue" in my book. Even the awareness that is advocated seems to me to be a way for teachers and parents to assuage their guilt that they have been so negligent in their jobs that kids have to be drugged to sit in class.
I see this whole mess as evidence of a fundamental problem in the American legal system: there is no significant penalty imposed for spurious lawsuits.
In other words, I'm sure the RIAA is thinking something like:
Why not sue? This is just a little company, they can't afford competent lawyers. And if by some wild chance, they do get a competent judge who can overlook the flashy lawyers we hire, what's the downside? At the very least, we've managed to imply to the public that things like napster are illegal!
So, I think that there should be a requirement for those filing a suit to put up a bond equal to the total of their (the plaintiff's) legal expenses. In the case of a contingency cases, the lawyers should have to put a bond equal to their expected fee -- i.e. generally 1/3 of the total verdict. This would be to cover the defendants legal expenses in the event the case was lost.
It would also have the nice side effect of keeping requested judgements in contingency fee cases down to a reasonable amount: which would tend to reduce the half million dollars given to every fool who falls off a ladder.
Of course, when you have a government run by lawyers, such a thing will never be passed.
I have to agree with you on that. I futzed around with blackdown for weeks -- finally got it working, and it was slow, buggy, and unreliable. I downloaded the IBM JDK in desperation, and it worked right, out of the box, was fast and reliable. In fact, it is subjectively faster on my $700 Linux box than Sun's JDK is on a fairly beefy Ultra 60.
There was a post recently talking about how there was an opportunity for IBM to take over the Linux standards process. I think this would be wonderful: they seem to have a much better base in java than Sun does, and are much less antagonistic to OS's they don't make.
Slashdot Mirror
Top Ten Ways to make Y2K fun:
10. Play REM's "It's the end of the world as we know it" loudly. Repeatedly. Until the VP comes in and begs you to stop playing that damned song.
9. Point out, as UserFriendly did, that Y2K isn't till 2048, so you're going home.
8. If your boss is a Pagan, at the rollover of each hour, drop to your knees and loudly pray to the Lord God for salvation from the "cursed bug". Make your speech flowery with thee's, thou's, and use the word "abomination" at least three times.
7. Annoy your co-workers by reminding them that it's not really the millenium.
6. Wear a black trenchcoat, especially if you are not in the habit of doing so. Glance nervously at your watch and threaten to leave early.
5. At 11:59, scream loudly into the phone: "What do you mean, you have another Y2K jumbo Patch I need to install!?!?!". Then leave.
4. Rent a rider truck. Drive it to work.
3. Make regular comments about the sudden shortage of high-nitrate fertilizer.
2. Get a 20 camera flashes (the kind that come on poles). Set them up outside your window. Set them off at 12:00 PM, while screaming "Get Down!"
1. And the number one way to enjoy Y2K: Quit this stupid job. After all, you're a UNIX geek, you can find a job tomorrow.
Surgeon general's warning: following these suggestions may be hazardous to your future earnings. This was intended as humour, and is not intended to advocate or condone any illegal activities.
Regarding the RIAA, MPIA, etc. as monopolies, you are exactly right. IIRC, there was legislation back in the 30s or 40s legalizing them because they were considered to be necessary.
Sure there are applications where you need Oracle or Informix (FWIW, Informix generally kicks Oracle's butt IMNSHO). However, as you conceed they are few and far between.
Way too many people have a blind, knee-jerk loyalty to a particular RDBMS that leads them to waste a lot of money. Consider, for example, Medic Computer Systems (www.medcmp.com), a company I am intimately familiar with.
One of their products uses Informix -- and requires 10 times the hardware resources it would need if it used Interbase.
If the lawsuit wasn't both valid and necessary, why did they pursue it in the first place???
In most applications, the quality of database design and code manipulating the data have more to do with the robustness of the application that the dbms does.
First, let's face it: InterBase has never been a wildly successful product. From what I can tell (as a Inprise outsider) the only people who bought it were people who were already firmly entrenched in the Borland development environments.
It seems to me that Borland's real cash cow has always been their development tools. Open sourcing Interbase could lead to it being more widely used, which could sell a /lot/ more development tools. Especially in the Linux environment.
Second, this would firmly entrench Borland in the Linux world. I think that the past few years and the (ridiculous) success enjoyed by Visual Basic have made it clear that it is going to very difficult for Borland to compete on Microsoft operating systems.
There hope of radical success (as opposed to the kind of mediocre success they've been enjoying for a while) is to become the premier provider of Linux tools. And I think they know it.
All in all, this could be very cool.
Also, let me comment that, from what I've seen, Interbase is a very cool product that has never gotten the recognition it deserves. The big advantage over MySQL is that it has full transaction support. Sorry guys: but there are some applications where you just need transactions.
We teach our kids, from birth, to believe in a "Jolly Old Elf" who will bring them presents on Christmas morning. Allegedly, this "Elf" only brings presents to good girls and boys, but since I always got something I can attest to the fact that he is not very observant.
Then, when the kid turns 7 or so and figures out that it's all humbug, we enlist them in the conspiracy to fool their younger relatives and subject them to dire threats if they fail to lie to their younger siblings.
Am I the only one who sees how absurd this is?
I.e. the algorithm they used looks something like this:
Really, really short sited.And all of these things will run, mostly without modification, on BSD.
Who cares which kernel is used! That's a small (but very important) part of the whole picture. The important thing is that we are rapidly developing more and more user-space stuff that will run on any modern UNIXy platform -- whether its Linux, FreeBSD, or the Hurd.
Linux's success helps to insure BSD's long term viability. Don't forget it. From some stuff I've seen, I gather that the core *BSD teams are well aware of it.
I think you've got a point there. Someone (I forget who) wrote that the real battle of the twentieth century wasn't communism, but racist nationalism. Sadly, it's not gone yet.
Jon Katz. Hands down. After all, he's given us /so/ much interesting stuff to talk about.
I liked Secret Wars.
On the other hand, I'm sure many "right wing people" have pointed out that ignoring traditional moral values increase your odds of getting AIDS dramatically. And it does: the only way I know of to catch aids within tradition morality on the part of all parties is blood transfer in a medical context. (There may be a few exceptions to this, but they are very few). Last I looked, that was less than 1% of all AIDS cases.
The question I use to evaluate statements is not "does this conflict with (a vision of) society", but simply "is this true?" You seem to me to be in the redoubtable position of objecting to people telling the unimbellished, scientific truth because it conflicts with your prejudices or offends you. Usually, this is something that "right-wing people" are accused of.
Your characterization of "right-wing people" is false -- not that I'm a right-winger. I just know a lot of right-wingers and think that you should limit your criticisms to true ones. There are certainly plenty of valid criticisms out there.
As for Karma: if you are referring to Slashdot Karma, I think you will find that I have it to spare.
If you are referring to the belief common to Eastern belief systems derived from Hinduism, you might find that I know more about it than you. I have read many Hindu scriptures, and at one time believed in Karma and all the rest. I just don't believe in it any more -- instead, I believe in a just God. But that's another story.
I don't care about the karma: I have karma to spare. But I resent the prejudice. Which just goes to prove that Christianity doesn't make people want to censor those they disagree with: humanity does.
Answer: I never did. I simply speak truth as I see it. You and your cohorts are the ones who want to force people to think in a given way.
C'mon people! I am still waiting for the post that disagrees with me with any attempt to reference facts instead of vague inuendo! Give me specifics if you want to slander me and my religion!
Now: what /precisely/ makes me come off as self-righteous? Please be specific. Frankly, given that I rarely talk about anything that /I/ do, I don't see how you could call me self righteous. Maybe you are just projecting your preconceptions on me?
For seconders, God is, semantically speaking, a symbol with a real referrent, the meaning of which most people in most times have agreed on.
Your attempt to disprove my little parable by inserting an absurdity in the place of its main character is what's silly.
Of course, he was a religionist -- in fact, his understanding of religion was so distinctively Christian that many have posited some kind of special revelation to account for it. Read the Plato's Apology sometime. So the Irony still stands :)
Let's see. First, you state, possibly correctly, that Science is primarily concerned with how, and religion with why. Bravo! You have grapsed something that most people never quite manage to get: science and religion are not competitors, they are different disciplines. There is only a problem when science attempts to claim that it has made religion irrelevant.
Sadly, you then go on to say
I fear nothing. I'm serious: I have no fear of anything that life can bring to me? Why? Because I know that no matter what I have the beneficience of a loving God. Why do I follow God? Not out of fear! I follow God because I love God. I crave, in my innermost parts, justice. I crave peace. I crave a world that is not a mockery, continually doing things that are obviously wrong. I crave freedom -- freedom from repression, freedom from the repression even of my flesh. And God stands for all that. So is my relation with God based in fear? Hardly. Don't talk about what you don't know about. Ever read the Bible? If you had, you would know that it does not state:- The earth is 6000 years old.
- The earth is flat.
It is the story of people's experience of God over 6000 years. And most Christians have found it to be so reliable that they consider it to be authoritative. Some even thing it's infallible. The point is that the things you are objecting to are not the Bible, but human interprations therof. The beautiful thing is that you are allowed and encouraged to read it for yourself and form your own opinions. Hardly sounds like a lock-step tyranny to me. I want you to give me a specific example of documented hatred of any of these. C'mon, put up or shutup. To say that someone is wrong is not to "hate" them. FWIW, there are documented examples, but I seriously doubt that you can list even one off the top of your head. Further, each of these alleged crimes were in direct contradiction to scripture. For example:- Women - Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. (colossians 3:19)
Also, I would challenge you to find the "them" at my church, or at many churches. Granted, genuinely gracious behaviour is rare in the church as in the secular world: but did you really think that it wouldn't be rare in a fallen world?Finally, let me challenge you to something: I want you to name the top 3 murderers of all time and their religious leanings. You seem to assert that religion is the source of the greatest evil, well here are my counterexamples:
- Stalin: killed more than hitler ever dreamed of. Killed jews, killed Christians, killed anyone who didn't cooperate with him. Atheist.
- Mao: The cultural revolution basically meant killing a few million people. Atheist.
- Hitler: Killed what... 10 million Jews? Also killed any Christians who stood up to him, subverted the German state church. Some like to claim he was a Christian: may I suggest that they read Mein Kampf or any of his other writings before they do? Best guess is that he was just a religious opportunist, however much of the Aryan mythos and even the Swastika seems to have come from the Indian Subcontinent. Some would say he was an Atheist, some would say a Pagan. I say it doesn't matter: his quotes show amply that he wasn't a Christian. See http://www.answers.org/Apologetics
/Hitquote.html
I will challenge you to name one Christian who has killed people on that scale, with that kind of malice, for purely religious reasons. C'mon, put up or shut up. Note that I'm not saying that all Atheists are little Hitlers (they're not: most of them are decent people). I'm saying that religion is not the prime cause of hatred in the world. And all my rambling over a period of years leads me to this: I will follow Christ. Why? Because I love Christ. And because those who genuinely follow Christ have done more to alleviate human suffering than anyone in the history of the world. One genuine Christ follower (e.g. Albert Schweizer) has done more than all the secular humanists ever whelped.Your post was not just offensive, but showed a clear lack of study and was generally just plain wrong.
I believe that God is of a single principle, unified in will and purpose. That he has no consituent parts. Further, I believe that he exists independent of time.
This is not an easy concept, and I can't really explain it in the same way that I understand it. Basically, I believe that God is so simple and so unified of principle that, for anything to exist, God must exist to create it. Who can create time but a being that exists outside it?
I realize that this is not a scientific explanation: but then again, it's not intended to be.
Without further ado, here it is:
I think my point is made: science can never explain the primal causes, can never account for the ultimate origin of anything. To try to claim otherwise is the worst kind of hubris. And I do wish that you would try to be at least a little more balanced in your coverage.First, we live in a much more tightly packed society than we did 100 years ago. IIRC, 100 years ago, the worlds population was only 1 billion and the US population was only around 100 million. Today, we are looking at 6 billion and around 275 million respectively. When you have someone this tightly packed, anti-social behaviours become much more dangerous. Instead of the Lizzie Borden murders which shocked a nation with 2 dead people, you have the Columbine massacre with half a dozen dead. Why? More targets, closer together. Furthermore, when you don't have enough elbow room, the frustrations caused tend to aggravate any latent mental disorders. Even worse, high population density tends to allow people with mental illnesses to "hide from society". Since nobody really knows everybody anymore, it is far too easy for people to slip through the cracks.
However, I do think that there is another possible problem that is often overlooked: the crap we eat. It is well established that many foods have psychotropic effects that are not well understood: just ask any woman about chocolate around "that time of month". Repeat after me: sugar does have a noticeable effect on the behaviour of small children. I know; I have one. Give him candy and he will be insane for the rest of the day. And we've only had sugar in massive quantities since the start of the twentieth century -- about the time everyone seems to have started to slip their cams. I'm not going to get into what I think some of the psychotropic effects might be (I'm not a P-Sychiatrist); I'll just note that many foods definitely have them.
As someone who used to work for a consortium of Physicians, let me say that you should not discount the money effect on the equation. Designer drugs like ZoLoft, Luvox, and Prozac are some of the most heavily advertised drugs out there. Literally, insanely beautiful women come to Doctor's offices, fix lunch on-site for the Doctor and their whole staff, then hand the Doctor a bunch of samples. If you don't believe me, the next time you are in a Doctor's office look around and count the amount of junk that the Doctor has from various drug manufacturers. And this junk is rarely for anti-biotics: it's for Zoloft, Luvox, Prozac, occasionally you'll see some for Claritin or something along those lines. But usually, it's the psych drugs. And these medicine's are IMHO radically overprescribed: in fact, most doctor's do nothing to accurately diagnose mental conditions before trying Zoloft and friends. This is a Bad Thing.
Finally, I am really, really concerned that the Pols are trying to turn mental illnesses into such a big issue in this campaign (take a look at Tipper Gore sometime). They simply are not a national policy problem. I don't buy the whole "awareness" gig: usually, "awareness" campaigns boil down to "creating an issue" in my book. Even the awareness that is advocated seems to me to be a way for teachers and parents to assuage their guilt that they have been so negligent in their jobs that kids have to be drugged to sit in class.
In other words, I'm sure the RIAA is thinking something like:
So, I think that there should be a requirement for those filing a suit to put up a bond equal to the total of their (the plaintiff's) legal expenses. In the case of a contingency cases, the lawyers should have to put a bond equal to their expected fee -- i.e. generally 1/3 of the total verdict. This would be to cover the defendants legal expenses in the event the case was lost.It would also have the nice side effect of keeping requested judgements in contingency fee cases down to a reasonable amount: which would tend to reduce the half million dollars given to every fool who falls off a ladder.
Of course, when you have a government run by lawyers, such a thing will never be passed.
There was a post recently talking about how there was an opportunity for IBM to take over the Linux standards process. I think this would be wonderful: they seem to have a much better base in java than Sun does, and are much less antagonistic to OS's they don't make.