Err... Actually, Christian interpretation of scripture as metaphorical in nature goes back at least to the third century. See the writings of Origen (http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-04/TOC.htm).
It's evangelical because all of the core team are evangelicals. The solution? Submit stories that go in the direction you want to go. This site has literally been up for less than a week: there's plenty of room to make it what you want it to be.
At this stage of the game, I think we (being the editors) will post most anything reasonable.
This is a false definition of Faith, and is not compatible with the Biblical use of the word. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly common false definition.
From what I got (and keep getting is that), following the teachings of Jesus Christ (or whomever is the spokesperson for the religion) will enhance your life. In this mix is the notion that worshiping a higher entity that created all the universe is needed. To me, this feels extremely "tacked on". I get great pleasure in helping others and being just-all-round nice to people. I really fail to see how belief in a higher being will make it any better
I think, here, you have nailed the problem with the "Social Gospel" and the "Self Realization Gospel" all at once. A third false gospel could be the "Gospel of sin management", which is a particularly virulent form.
Look: being a Christian is not about getting better for your own sake (although we should all strive to be good). It is about joining the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not quite like the "army of God" you mention. Simply, it is an already achieved reality of all things that place themselves under God's controlled. And it is growing. I believe that it will eventually grow to subsume almost all creation -- at which time Jesus will return.
And it is worth joining because it is good and right -- and no other reason.
That's a legitimate question. In fact, it's one I struggle with, daily. I'm very serious about this: I probably average 5 hours a week just thinking about that.
At some level of my thought, I can sense a solution. For example, let me take an assumption that you make and pick on it. You say:
If the Creation and original sin (and therefore the need of mankind to be saved) are metaphorical, doesn't that pave the way to portrary all of Christianity as metaphorical? If so, what is its worth?
Here, you assume that "metaphorical" and 'false' are equivalent. It is perfectly permissible, at least to me, to find great truth in something that is metaphorical. Did you ever see that Star Trek TNG (entitled 'Darmok') episode where they ran into a race that spoke in metaphor? If not, it is highly recommended reading.
There are other ways to communicate truth than the propositional. Now, I would hesitate to say that all of Genesis is metaphorical: but if it is, I don't think we've lost much. How relevant are the precise details of how God created the universe to our day to day life? Answer is they're not. The story, which presents a metaphor for the fall of man from God's perfect creation, is still a valid source of truth.
An awful lot of philosophy and religion has been created using unabashed fiction (from Plato to Boethius to the Bhagvad Gita to Camus) and the thought has not lost any validity in the process. Why, with the Bible, and only with the Bible, do we assume that if it's propositional assertions are not accepted, we must reject the whole?
Of course, this raises other problems. How do we decide what is metaphor and what is not? For example, I am quite convinced that the Resurrection of Christ was not a metaphor. But upon what basis can I determine that it was not, and hold that Genesis is?
Can I have my cake and eat it to?
For the record: I'm not prepared to write Genesis off as metaphorical at this time. I give that issue a big "I don't know" and leave it there.
Hmm... Maybe he would've better said "Churches should be the organizations that hold communities together". Church, when done "right", can be a very powerful thing. Problem is that not many churches really take their job seriously anymore.
Dare I hope that we are in the start of the end of this "religion opposed to science" idiocy triggered by the monkey trials? In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was a horrible conflation of some loud-mouthed, obnoxious pseudo-scientists (e.g. Huxley) and some loud-mouthed, obnoxious religionists (e.g. Dwight L. Moody, Bob Jones). They setup a bogus opposition between religion and science, that is not really based in fact.
The net effect is that a whole lot of straw men have set up and both sides have a great time knocking them down. For more (from an unabashedly religious perspective) see http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss112/baloney.htm.
Look guys: being religious (including, specifically, Christian) does not mean checking your brain at the door. And it never has. It means (broadly speaking) acceptance of a setup of principles, a world view, and a decision to devote your life to it. In Christianity, this is expressed by (to oversimplify) the Ten Commandments, Christ as the risen savior, and (of course) the decision to act on this information -- we call that decision faith.
It also doesn't mean (in most cases) that you are signing up for some militant crusade -- whatever Pat Robertson or the Pope would have you believe. You still have the one natural right God gave you: self-determination as a free moral agent. FWIW, I regard most "cults" (e.g. the Heavens Gate bit) as more a psychological experiment than a religious one.
Also, let me comment that anyone who thinks religion, esp. Christianity, is for the simple minded should read Karl Barth or George Fox sometime (to pick a couple of examples among many).
Also, if you're interested, check out Geeks for Christ. We're still in a fledgeling state, but one of the purposes of the site is precisely to be open to intelligent discussion of Christianity.
I have telecommuted twice. Both times, as a programmer. Once was a complete failure, and once was a complete success.
The time that succeeded, I was able to get a lot more work done than I would have at work. I was able to fix gobs of bugs, and was able to develop near perfect concentration. And, when I was concentrating too hard, I'd take my two year old to the park. In this case, a happy employee was also a productive employee, and I cranked code at an astonishing rate.
The time that failed, nothing got done. I couldn't make any progress on the project. My wife was continually bugging me, and couldn't seem to understand that I needed to work, Damn It (Janet)!
I think the big difference was this: the time that worked, I had clear goals and objectives. I had a clear path ahead of me from management, and I was not given a lot of conflicting assignments. The other time, all of the above problems were present. The company didn't know what they wanted me to do, they didn't have a clear assignment for me, and I was continually being dragged to other projects unrelated to the one I thought was supposed to be mine. In fairness, all these problems existed in the office. But in the office, I had eight hours a day that I/had/ to work. At home, it was too easy to just slack off.
I guess the bottom line is this: if management is already screwed up, working at home will make it worse. If it is already working, working at home will make things even better. It's like anything else: telecommuting is a powerful tool, which can be used for good or evil. And it tends to amplify whatever it finds.
Incidentally: on the selection of a home office, may I suggest the smallest room practical? There are fewer distractions that way.
What's the advantage of NetBSD over OpenBSD? The advantage of OpenBSD (of course) would seem to be security. Why would I choose NetBSD instead, since OpenBSD is based on it?
Assuming you're using a source patch... you have to distribute your source anyway. At which point you're most of the way towards what the GPL requires anyway.
I guess you could do a binary patch -- but I think you'd have a pretty hard time claiming that/nothing/ in the resulting binary was from the original code.
The bottom line is that they don't. However, the nature of the education tends to preclude this. Imagine: if you have enough money to pay someone to logon to an online program and write a 200 word essay/every day/ -- what do you need a degree for? Since it's so interactive, just knowing the material is not enough. You have to follow with the conversation.
I'm currently working on my BA in Religious Studies (fully accredited) online. This is through a bricks & mortar univ. who have decided to establish an online program. (www.cnuonline.cnu.edu)
Anyway, one thing I have found is that online education, at least the way CNU does it, totally shifts the responsibility of education from the teacher to the student. That is, it is not their responsibility to teach me, it is my responsibility to learn. If I don't understand, I need to go to the professor -- because he will not, can not, come to me.
In essence, it is a process of discovery whereby I explore original writings in various subjects, and then discuss them (via a webboard thingy) with my classmates, then the professor grades based on how well I seem to have gotten it.
I'm sure it works different for non-phil & religious studies classes -- but for these subjects, that's how they do it. All in all, it seems to work pretty well, at least if you're motivated. It forces students to learnd & think about the actual material, instead of this "what's going to be on the test" idiocy. OTOH, it's quite a bit more time consuming than a traditional class, at least for me.
To me, this sounds like a great idea. Guys, like it or not, there are people who can't afford to go to college and are unwilling to mortgage the rest of their lives for a mediocre education. If this can be made to work, it will be a tremendous opportunity for people who know how to learn on their own. Can anyone say: geeks?
The "slashdot position" is that a little bit of censorship is like being a little bit pregnant. Yet the "slashdoterotti" are delighted to have censorship for spammers. Why? Spammers annoy them, porn doesn't.
The bottom line is that everyone wants to censor -- it's just a question of when. Animal farm, anyone?
But how do you see the "good filter list" you hope for working? You say it is technically possible, but not possible "in a commercial context," and I don't understand what you mean. It seems to me that, unless all Internet access (that is, both viewing and publishing) is subject to approval by some sort of panel, then it would *only* be possible in a commercial context. Filtered ISPs (like Mayberry USA are flourishing, because they provide a more palatable picture of the world, and their subscribers consider this added value. I'm happy with that; if I had children who were using the Internet, I might employ such a service.
What I mean by "not in a commmercial context" is this: when you are running a company, you cater to the desires of your customers. What ends up happening is that those who feel strongest about something win.
So, for example, there have been many cases of gay activist web pages being censored. This is because a minority of the customers who purchase filtering software want them censored -- they regard any mention of homosexuality as obscene. The vast majority, while they do not approve of homosexuality (despite "gay rights" rhetoric, most Americans don't) don't really care about that page one way or the other. Those who find any mention of homosexuality obscene rule because they will scream louder about the page not being filtered than the majority who don't care either way. And the few people who want to see gay activist web pages don't use this kind of software anyway.
The bottom line is that the companies best interests' are served by a "filter first, ask questions later" policy.
What is exceptionally pernicious about all this is that it is done in secret. The bottom line is that youcan't copyright a database. And the database of "dirty sites" is the filter company's main asset. So, the filter companies encrypt their database and try to hide it from the world.
It's a vicious circle. The best way out of which I am aware is for operators of pornographic sites to tag their sites as such. Voluntarily. Failing that (its not going tohappen because these people are for the most part pretty sleazy) the best thing would be a public list of filtered sites, reviewed by humans.
Of course, that's never happened because, as I mentioned above, the people who buy filtering software generally don't care about the sites that get erroneously censored! So, they would rather pay $20 or whatever for netnanny than spend their time to protect free speech. And the free speech people are so busy trying to protect the dubious "rights" of pornographers that they can't be bothered to try deal with the real abuses out there (www.whitehouse.com being a wonderful example).
If I ever have any time, maybe I'll start a page for developing something like this. But, not today. I have bigger fish to fry.
According to the article, 75% of parents want some kind of filter.
Bottom line guys -- I've said this before and I'll say it again. If effort is not made to make it easier for parents to filter genuinely offensive content, then the current bunch of censorware will go into wide use. Like it or not, the average person does not endorse the radical (and legally unprecedented) ideas of free speech that many on Slashdot advocate.
If the average consumer is not provided with some way to filter out hard core porn without filtering other (usually marginal) sites, they will say "screw the consequences" and filter them all.
And the stubborn refusal of the technical communities to attempt to provide a good filter list will be to blame. It is perfectly possible to develop a filter list that will filter the really egregious cases without filtering political speech and the like. Its just not possible to do it in a commercial context.
Remember: the Supreme Court can and will remove protected rights when public interest is strong enough. Just look at gun control.
My apologies -- apparently, Inprise have announce the license. Namely, the MPL. This was mentioned in an article I had not seen. However, it still seems odd that they have not yet released the source code.
For the record, the current release is not open source -- despite the fact the linked page has Open Source plastered all over this. In fact, when you download you get binaries only. Remember: Inprise still have not announced what license "Open Source" Interbase is going to be released under.
Watch carefully -- it's libel to be free beer only. (Not that I'm complaining. It still beats the heck out of MySQL for what I do, and I'm not an Open Source zealot) I just wish they would not call it open source until it is open source.
Did I just miss the source code on the web site? Anybody from Inprise care to comment?
Consider this: there is currently nothing in IP law to prevent the patenting of medical techniques. For example, let us suppose that a Dr. in Switzerland invents a new kind of open heart surgery: he could take out a patent on it and charge $500,000 per use. If you can't afford it, you die. What do you do?
This is a huge, and explosive ethical question. Currently, medical agencies are able to justify denying certain costly treatments because the cost of the treatment generally stems from the actual cost of doing the treatment. That is, a liver transplant costs $1 million because it takes that much effort to transplant a liver.
The only case where this is not the case is in pharmaceuticals. And there, it is primarily the amortized cost of tremendous amounts of R&D that drives the prices up. (This is really an aside, but recently South Africa told several US drug companies to bug off regarding certain AIDS medications and started making them without a license. Bottom line: half their population has AIDS, and they can't afford the drugs. The drug companies tried to sue, but then got smart and relented when they saw which way the wind blew. The pharmaceutical situation will endure in the US only as long as the few people obviously dying from lack of drugs are from marginalized segments of the society.)
The case we are heading to is the one where a heart surgeon will be operating on a patient who cannot afford to license a certain technique, and he will have to choose between disregarding patent law or risking his patient's life. This could also eaily come up in the genome issue.
The problem is that our society does not have a clear ethic describing the value of human life. This is evident all over the place: the abortion debate, the assisted suicide debate, even the "violent video games" debate. What is the value of man, and how great a crime is it kill one? What value is life compared to freedom? What about economic freedom? Is buying a drug company executive a sports car really worth a single life?
My point is not some kind of Marxism. My point is that we need to be asking these questions.
On what basis can we construct an ethical system for our society? What is the underlying principal? Who defines right?
Why do otherwise knowledgeable people persists in using clock speed as a way of rating CPU speed?
Repeat after me: Mhz only has any validity as a benchmark within an architecture. And even that validity is limited. A 400Mhz PII is NOT 33% faster than a 300Mhz PII. It's maybe 10%. To talk about Ghz Alphas as though they are at all similar to Ghz Intels is crazy.
You want to share CPU benchmarks on something like this, talk about SPECint and SPECfp. Not Mhz.
For the record, I was an extremely vocal atheist in high school. And Followed that up with heavy involvement in eastern religions. And followed that up with Jesus. that's where I stayed. Go figure.
Can you show me/one/ documented case of someone being fired from a non-religious institution for claiming that they don't believe in God? Also, you claim that tax dollars are spent on churches. Where? When?
This post is even worse biggoted slander than the one I responded to. This is even worse biggoted slander
if they were attempting to keep you from (for example) posting a politically contentious website, I would agree with you. Or if they tried to forbid satire -- I was actually involved in a case where a student satirized the university home page while I was working there. And I defended him.
But there's a big difference between that and pirating MP3's.
Slashdot Mirror
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At this stage of the game, I think we (being the editors) will post most anything reasonable.
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Look: being a Christian is not about getting better for your own sake (although we should all strive to be good). It is about joining the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not quite like the "army of God" you mention. Simply, it is an already achieved reality of all things that place themselves under God's controlled. And it is growing. I believe that it will eventually grow to subsume almost all creation -- at which time Jesus will return.
And it is worth joining because it is good and right -- and no other reason.
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At some level of my thought, I can sense a solution. For example, let me take an assumption that you make and pick on it. You say:
Here, you assume that "metaphorical" and 'false' are equivalent. It is perfectly permissible, at least to me, to find great truth in something that is metaphorical. Did you ever see that Star Trek TNG (entitled 'Darmok') episode where they ran into a race that spoke in metaphor? If not, it is highly recommended reading.There are other ways to communicate truth than the propositional. Now, I would hesitate to say that all of Genesis is metaphorical: but if it is, I don't think we've lost much. How relevant are the precise details of how God created the universe to our day to day life? Answer is they're not. The story, which presents a metaphor for the fall of man from God's perfect creation, is still a valid source of truth.
An awful lot of philosophy and religion has been created using unabashed fiction (from Plato to Boethius to the Bhagvad Gita to Camus) and the thought has not lost any validity in the process. Why, with the Bible, and only with the Bible, do we assume that if it's propositional assertions are not accepted, we must reject the whole?
Of course, this raises other problems. How do we decide what is metaphor and what is not? For example, I am quite convinced that the Resurrection of Christ was not a metaphor. But upon what basis can I determine that it was not, and hold that Genesis is?
Can I have my cake and eat it to?
For the record: I'm not prepared to write Genesis off as metaphorical at this time. I give that issue a big "I don't know" and leave it there.
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The net effect is that a whole lot of straw men have set up and both sides have a great time knocking them down. For more (from an unabashedly religious perspective) see http://www.cornerstonemag .com/features/iss112/baloney.htm.
Look guys: being religious (including, specifically, Christian) does not mean checking your brain at the door. And it never has. It means (broadly speaking) acceptance of a setup of principles, a world view, and a decision to devote your life to it. In Christianity, this is expressed by (to oversimplify) the Ten Commandments, Christ as the risen savior, and (of course) the decision to act on this information -- we call that decision faith.
It also doesn't mean (in most cases) that you are signing up for some militant crusade -- whatever Pat Robertson or the Pope would have you believe. You still have the one natural right God gave you: self-determination as a free moral agent. FWIW, I regard most "cults" (e.g. the Heavens Gate bit) as more a psychological experiment than a religious one.
Also, let me comment that anyone who thinks religion, esp. Christianity, is for the simple minded should read Karl Barth or George Fox sometime (to pick a couple of examples among many).
Also, if you're interested, check out Geeks for Christ. We're still in a fledgeling state, but one of the purposes of the site is precisely to be open to intelligent discussion of Christianity.
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The time that succeeded, I was able to get a lot more work done than I would have at work. I was able to fix gobs of bugs, and was able to develop near perfect concentration. And, when I was concentrating too hard, I'd take my two year old to the park. In this case, a happy employee was also a productive employee, and I cranked code at an astonishing rate.
The time that failed, nothing got done. I couldn't make any progress on the project. My wife was continually bugging me, and couldn't seem to understand that I needed to work, Damn It (Janet)!
I think the big difference was this: the time that worked, I had clear goals and objectives. I had a clear path ahead of me from management, and I was not given a lot of conflicting assignments. The other time, all of the above problems were present. The company didn't know what they wanted me to do, they didn't have a clear assignment for me, and I was continually being dragged to other projects unrelated to the one I thought was supposed to be mine. In fairness, all these problems existed in the office. But in the office, I had eight hours a day that I /had/ to work. At home, it was too easy to just slack off.
I guess the bottom line is this: if management is already screwed up, working at home will make it worse. If it is already working, working at home will make things even better. It's like anything else: telecommuting is a powerful tool, which can be used for good or evil. And it tends to amplify whatever it finds.
Incidentally: on the selection of a home office, may I suggest the smallest room practical? There are fewer distractions that way.
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I guess you could do a binary patch -- but I think you'd have a pretty hard time claiming that /nothing/ in the resulting binary was from the original code.
In other words, this is pretty much a mute point.
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Anyway, one thing I have found is that online education, at least the way CNU does it, totally shifts the responsibility of education from the teacher to the student. That is, it is not their responsibility to teach me, it is my responsibility to learn. If I don't understand, I need to go to the professor -- because he will not, can not, come to me.
In essence, it is a process of discovery whereby I explore original writings in various subjects, and then discuss them (via a webboard thingy) with my classmates, then the professor grades based on how well I seem to have gotten it.
I'm sure it works different for non-phil & religious studies classes -- but for these subjects, that's how they do it. All in all, it seems to work pretty well, at least if you're motivated. It forces students to learnd & think about the actual material, instead of this "what's going to be on the test" idiocy. OTOH, it's quite a bit more time consuming than a traditional class, at least for me.
To me, this sounds like a great idea. Guys, like it or not, there are people who can't afford to go to college and are unwilling to mortgage the rest of their lives for a mediocre education. If this can be made to work, it will be a tremendous opportunity for people who know how to learn on their own. Can anyone say: geeks?
--
The bottom line is that everyone wants to censor -- it's just a question of when. Animal farm, anyone?
--
So, for example, there have been many cases of gay activist web pages being censored. This is because a minority of the customers who purchase filtering software want them censored -- they regard any mention of homosexuality as obscene. The vast majority, while they do not approve of homosexuality (despite "gay rights" rhetoric, most Americans don't) don't really care about that page one way or the other. Those who find any mention of homosexuality obscene rule because they will scream louder about the page not being filtered than the majority who don't care either way. And the few people who want to see gay activist web pages don't use this kind of software anyway.
The bottom line is that the companies best interests' are served by a "filter first, ask questions later" policy.
What is exceptionally pernicious about all this is that it is done in secret. The bottom line is that youcan't copyright a database. And the database of "dirty sites" is the filter company's main asset. So, the filter companies encrypt their database and try to hide it from the world.
It's a vicious circle. The best way out of which I am aware is for operators of pornographic sites to tag their sites as such. Voluntarily. Failing that (its not going tohappen because these people are for the most part pretty sleazy) the best thing would be a public list of filtered sites, reviewed by humans.
Of course, that's never happened because, as I mentioned above, the people who buy filtering software generally don't care about the sites that get erroneously censored! So, they would rather pay $20 or whatever for netnanny than spend their time to protect free speech. And the free speech people are so busy trying to protect the dubious "rights" of pornographers that they can't be bothered to try deal with the real abuses out there (www.whitehouse.com being a wonderful example).
If I ever have any time, maybe I'll start a page for developing something like this. But, not today. I have bigger fish to fry.
--
Bottom line guys -- I've said this before and I'll say it again. If effort is not made to make it easier for parents to filter genuinely offensive content, then the current bunch of censorware will go into wide use. Like it or not, the average person does not endorse the radical (and legally unprecedented) ideas of free speech that many on Slashdot advocate.
If the average consumer is not provided with some way to filter out hard core porn without filtering other (usually marginal) sites, they will say "screw the consequences" and filter them all.
And the stubborn refusal of the technical communities to attempt to provide a good filter list will be to blame. It is perfectly possible to develop a filter list that will filter the really egregious cases without filtering political speech and the like. Its just not possible to do it in a commercial context.
Remember: the Supreme Court can and will remove protected rights when public interest is strong enough. Just look at gun control.
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Watch carefully -- it's libel to be free beer only. (Not that I'm complaining. It still beats the heck out of MySQL for what I do, and I'm not an Open Source zealot) I just wish they would not call it open source until it is open source.
Did I just miss the source code on the web site? Anybody from Inprise care to comment?
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This is a huge, and explosive ethical question. Currently, medical agencies are able to justify denying certain costly treatments because the cost of the treatment generally stems from the actual cost of doing the treatment. That is, a liver transplant costs $1 million because it takes that much effort to transplant a liver.
The only case where this is not the case is in pharmaceuticals. And there, it is primarily the amortized cost of tremendous amounts of R&D that drives the prices up. (This is really an aside, but recently South Africa told several US drug companies to bug off regarding certain AIDS medications and started making them without a license. Bottom line: half their population has AIDS, and they can't afford the drugs. The drug companies tried to sue, but then got smart and relented when they saw which way the wind blew. The pharmaceutical situation will endure in the US only as long as the few people obviously dying from lack of drugs are from marginalized segments of the society.)
The case we are heading to is the one where a heart surgeon will be operating on a patient who cannot afford to license a certain technique, and he will have to choose between disregarding patent law or risking his patient's life. This could also eaily come up in the genome issue.
The problem is that our society does not have a clear ethic describing the value of human life. This is evident all over the place: the abortion debate, the assisted suicide debate, even the "violent video games" debate. What is the value of man, and how great a crime is it kill one? What value is life compared to freedom? What about economic freedom? Is buying a drug company executive a sports car really worth a single life?
My point is not some kind of Marxism. My point is that we need to be asking these questions.
On what basis can we construct an ethical system for our society? What is the underlying principal? Who defines right?
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Now require... That's another question.
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Repeat after me: Mhz only has any validity as a benchmark within an architecture. And even that validity is limited. A 400Mhz PII is NOT 33% faster than a 300Mhz PII. It's maybe 10%. To talk about Ghz Alphas as though they are at all similar to Ghz Intels is crazy.
You want to share CPU benchmarks on something like this, talk about SPECint and SPECfp. Not Mhz.
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Can you show me /one/ documented case of someone being fired from a non-religious institution for claiming that they don't believe in God? Also, you claim that tax dollars are spent on churches. Where? When?
This post is even worse biggoted slander than the one I responded to. This is even worse biggoted slander
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Reality check. I don't see how to interpret this statement as anything but pure bigotry.
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But there's a big difference between that and pirating MP3's.
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