Microsoft Office has features that the open source alternatives don't have (yet). Period.
Like what?
OpenOffice is quite complete. And it is very extensible. You can write plugins in C++, Java, or Basic. Within a year or two there will be a thriving market for plugins, both commercial and open source. The development community is growing by leaps and bounds. Traffic on the API list is going up almost exponentially.
So even if MS Office has some unique features today, it likely won't for long.
Interesting. I use the RPMs on RH 7.3 and haven't seen anything that bad.
What I *do* get sometimes (well, twice now, and I've been using 1.1 since its release) are corrupted displays of form fields or text. But it's never prevented me from doing anything. It's hard to explain, if it happens again I'll have to get a screenshot and file a bug.
yep. Roughly the same thing happened in Guatemala in 1954. Its new democratically elected government was implementing a quite reasonable agrarian reform package that probably would have significantly raised the standard of living in Guatemala.
Instead, the USA saw it as an extension of Communism, a threat, and the CIA replaced the new government with a military dictatorship that caused DECADES of untold suffering and countless deaths and disappearances.
Now, I'm an American, love America for the most part, and even have conservative political leanings. (Most people that bring this stuff up are staunch liberals.) But you just can't ignore this stuff. When we cause suffering around the world of this magnitude, how can we expect other nations to not hate us?
Anyone remember Swinth and Swinth II on the C64? Produced awesome music and cool laser effects.
I have VICE installed on my Linux box, but last time I tried I couldn't find disk images for it.
I still have my stack of Commodore disks and my C64 and 1541 disk drive, but haven't bothered to look for the cable to connect it to my PC and get the disk images on my Linux box. If I did that I could finally dump the 64.... VICE really does work great.
Linux is ready for the desktop TODAY, but the average people aren't going to switch to it out of the blue.
What needs to happen is for computer vendors to start including Linux and a mega-boatload of quality Open Source Software (yes, it DOES exist), along with (optional reading) documentation that will get them interested in the included software. I have a proposal for such a system here.
It's really up to computer vendors, but switching users to Linux is highly advantageous to them, so I think you will see that happenning over the next couple years.
To address this problem, Apache 2 has the perchild MPM [apache.org] which allows a virtual host to have it's own process fork, uid/gid, and thread pool. Unfortunately, the perchild MPM is not presently stable.
Can someone explain how this works? If I'm understanding it correctly... 1) There's still a "main" server, which still runs as nobody (or maybe root now?) and which listens to the port(s) and accepts incomming connections 2) Each virtual host has its own multithreaded process 3) The main server determines the virtualhost of the request and pipes the data to and from the appropriate VH process.
is that about right or am I missing something? It seems like that might have some serious performance and/or memory use implications.
This very much sounds like a killer feature, especially if it works with mod_perl and PHP.
Red Hat's (null) 8.0 beta 3 has 2.0.40. You can probably take the SRPM for it and rebuild it on RH 7.x. I haven't tried it but it should work.
I agree it will get a LOT more use once the Linux and BSD distros start shipping it by default, and once PHP and mod_perl are solidified for it. The Red Hat beta includes both, so they should be about ready.
How you can trust the book... well, no book is perfect (except the Bible:-) ) but The Case for Christ starts with a skeptical viewpoint and interviews people about various logical aspects of Jesus' life, and how they correspond to the reality of the Roman world. It shows how it is indeed very possible that everything recorded in the Gospels could have happened, and it answers quite a few skeptics questions, including "what if the disciples were duped?" The author himself used to be a skeptic, and he went on a search similar to this and became a believer.
And thank you for NOT lowering your standards! If the God of the Bible really is the true one, there will be plenty of evidence to support that. And I believe there is.
Here's an interesting article that talks about hidden codes in the first five books of the Bible that really could have only been put there by God. There's a book called Genesis Codes by Yacov Ramsel that describes this more thoroughly. I haven't read the book yet (I just found it while searching for things last night) but I'm definitely hoping to read it soon.
Another book I'm currently reading, called Eternity in their Hearts by Don Richardson, gives the account of a bunch of anthropologists trying to disprove God by studying the religions of "primitive" people, expecting to find no real belief in a monotheistic God. Boy were they ever wrong -- not only did they find hundreds or thousands of examples in such belief, but some tribes (who would have not had any contact with Jewish or Christian witness) had legends that were strikingly similar to the Genesis account -- including the Flood!
Of course, far more important than all this is that God really does answer prayers today. Those that seek Him find Him. He comforts, guides, and even heals.
If you have any serious questions about any of this, feel free to drop me an e-mail. micah AT JesusIsLife DOT net
not to get into a pointless argument, but you're not getting it. That phraseology "nation against nation" predicted a whole lot more than "normal" war. It means that pretty much every nation would get involved, which didn't happen until world wars.
Yes, people have always traveled to increase knowledge, but Daniel says that many will in the last days.
The point is that these and quite a few other Bible prophesies are being fulfilled very literally for the first time ever! AT THE SAME TIME!
I obviously can't convince you, but I know without a doubt that the evidence of the existence of the God of the Bible is absolutely overwhelming. I hope you'll see that at some point.
oh, and a couple other points about the whole hell thing...
Although it's not a salvation issue, I think it's fairly important to know the truth on this. If sinners really will be tortured eternally, that should give us extra motivation to tell people about Jesus. If they will just be annihilated, well, they still miss out on the joys of heaven, but the absolute urgency isn't there. The biggest possible tragedy is if the truth is that they suffer eternally but we believe they will be annihilated and therefore we are not as motivated to witness to them!
There is a book out, called Divine Revelation of Hell. In it, a lady claims to have been revealed visions of hell for 40 days. Jesus led her in there and showed her around. I haven't read the whole thing, but what I *have* read is FREEEEEAKY. I guess you can possibly write it off as being a hoax, but I *do* believe God can reveal that kind of thing, and why shouldn't He? If this was indeed a revelation from God and it describes the actual hell, and somehow we could make the world sure of that, people would be running to Jesus faster than you can say "First post!"
> When Jesus returns, I know it will surprise a lot of peoeple, including most Christians.
No doubt...:/ At least if the pre-trib rapture turns out to be the truth. Seems like it is, but I can't say for sure on that one. There is some reasonable evidence for the mid-post-trib position (i.e. after the Mark of the Beast but before the wrath).
> As I just posted in another article, I think it is kinda sad that the internet causes Christians to get in to these nasty flame wars with each other on places like Slashdot.
well I don't think this was a flamewar. I've certainly seen far worse! Agreed, the Bible says that people will know we are Christians by our love for each other. That is SO key. If we can't show some respect for each other on Slashdot, we're screwed!
My favorite place to discuss Christian issues is Crosswalk.com Forums. There's a great bunch of people there and they chat on everything from the silly to the serious. I'm 'yodermk' on that board.
re: evolution
I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain here, but I *do* lean towards the regular 6-day creation account as recorded in Genesis. I think there are a number of reasonable explanations for how that could be possible. One thing I read just this week that really bolstered my faith in the Genesis account is a book called Eternity in their Hearts by Don Richardson. It talks about how "primitive" folk religions actually point toward Christianity in some amazing ways. There are some tribes that have been isolated and never would have had any contact with Jewish or Christian witness, but they have beliefs that parallel the Fall of Man and the Flood in absolutely astonishing detail! (Not everything in their legend matches the Bible perfectly, but it's surprisingly close.)
But like you implied, this kind of stuff is far less important than the basics of the Gospel. Not to mention getting actively involved in the Great Commission. The more I think about it, the more pumped I am about missions. There is simply no other reason for our existance on this earth!
> I also wonder how scripture literalists handle the "vaporware" problem of Christianity; people have been believing since the days when Jesus walked on this earth that their generation was the one that would see Jesus come back in glory.
I assume you're talking about Matthew 24:34 -- "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."
well the NIV's footnote for 'generation' says 'or race'. I'm not sure whether or not that's accurate.
But it can be argued that the 'this generation' does not refer to the one Jesus was speaking TO. There's some evidence that He was talking about the generation that saw some of the previously mentioned things happen -- like the generation that sees "nation will rise up against nation" (which is probably predicting World War 2).
But yeah, I've kind of wondered the same thing. These are possible answers though.:-)
> So when an avalanche buries a village in the alps, thats Satan's doing or Man's or whose? and god is powerless to fix this problem because...why?
We don't know who's "doing" it was. Nature is there and that stuff happens. Again, death MUST happen so we don't live in an imperfect world forever. That's just an example of why you need to be right with God. You don't know when you're almost finished here on earth!
> And eating from the tree corrupted the world....why?
Because they specifically chose to disobey God.
> Where did Satan's evil come from, who created Satan?
It's hard to fathom how Satan got the idea he could overthrow God. But God *has* given all his created beings choice, including Satan. Of course, Satan *did* get quite a bit of power in the deal. The Bible calls him "the god of this age". So maybe it was worth it to him... guess he didn't know about hell when he made that choice!
Search for the book "Eternity in their hearts" by Don Richardson. It has several examples from anthropology. Edward Tylor and other anthropologists were just sure that "primitive" cultures would have no consistant monotheistic belief. But when they tested it with field research... boy were they ever wrong! The book does tell some specific stories about how scientists and "intellectuals" ignored clear evidence.
> Evolution is a probablistic algorithm. It performs better than pure chance.
Why would it, though, without some kind of Guide? It's proven that mutations are pretty much always DESTRUCTIVE, not beneficial. No, I don't have a great deal of biology knowledge, so my debate on this stops here. There are far more reasons to believe in God.
> Sigh. If i don't accept the bible why should i accept an argument based on the bible.
I just said to look at what the Bible says the world will be like just before the "Last Days", or "The Day of the Lord". It's a perfect fit for what we're seeing in the world today.
This kind of argument is not the same kind of circular argument that says you should believe the Bible because it claims it is what God said. Of course you can't make that case. I'm telling you to compare what the Bible says to the reality of the world. Remember that it was written 2000+ years ago.
> This says it all. It's faith, not evidence or fact, that supports one's belief in God. IMO, faith does not justify belief, but you're free to believe whatever you want.
Faith *must* be reasonable, and I believe I have a solid case that it is. If it's not reasonable, it's just flat out ridiculous. Yes, it does require a little faith, "the size of a mustard seed" according to Jesus. In Hebrews it says "without faith we cannot please God".
wait... doesn't Mormonism teach that Jesus and Satan were brothers and that we will all become gods? That seems to pretty clearly contradict the Bible to me.
Not that all Mormons believe that (they probably don't), and I'm not saying that a Mormon can't be a saved Christian (there are almost certainly some that are). But from what I've heard of the official teachings of the Mormon church, I can't possibly call it Christian.
Trinity: sure it's an interpretation, but a VERY safe one. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are definitely from God. John 3:16 of course states that Jesus is a unique "son" of God -- not created, like all other beings were. He is literally irreplaceable to God. They are all 3 parts of God with different missions. The Bible clearly speaks of all 3.
whoa. Please read this article, which is the most comprehensive Bible study I've seen on whether sinners will actually suffer forever. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of evidence that they will.
That IS an excellent book, and it really just scratches the surface! It tells of why faith that Jesus is who He said He is is reasonable. It doesn't even scratch the surface of other things, like God's work in the world today (there's plenty of it), reason to believe in the Old Testament (there's plenty of archeological confirmation and mathematical codes to prove that the OT is true and from God, respectively), and the fact that the world today is PRECISELY how the Bible predicted it would be in the "end times".
Perhaps you should just look to the fact that you exist for evidence.
I'm not going to get into a debate about evolution here, but do you really think that beings as complex as humans could really evolve by pure chance? (I won't get into a debate on evolution vs. creationism because God could have used evolution to create. Even if He did that, what counts is that you see the hand of God in it.)
Seriously. We have extremely complex organs, especially our brains. But beyond that, we have emotions and feelings and consciences. How could all that come about by pure unguided chance?
but Ok, there's more evidence.
Did you know that a core belief in monotheism (God) is very prevelant among "primitive" peoples? I'm currently reading an absolutely amazing book called Eternity In Their Hearts, which documents many examples of that. There are many cases where God revealed to the people that they would soon meet someone who has His written word, and those people received the Gospel message joyfully (even after spending centuries fending off other religions).
Want more? Jesus Christ did many healings in Bible times to prove that He was Who He said He was. Guess what -- He still does the same thing today! This site has quite a bit of useful information on that topic. And I know it's true. I have heard of many supernatural, instantaneous healings from friends and church people, and have even witnessed a college friend being healed from Attention Deficit Disorder. It really happens. The name of Jesus is powerful!
Or perhaps the fact that the Bible presented a perfect picture of what the world looks like today is good evidence. 2 Timothy 3 sums up men's attitudes these days very well. Jesus talked in Matthew 24 about earthquakes, famines, etc, but "the end is still to come". There have been significantly more earthquakes and famines in the last century or two than previously. Note in verse 24:7 "Nation will rise up against nation." The Hebrew phrase "x against x" means a TOTAL conflict, where every "x" in the set was involved. Jesus basically predicted World War 2 here. Then there's the fact that Israel is a nation again, with their own "king", which was prophesied repeatedly in the Old Testament. Do you have any idea how unlikely that seemed, even in the early 1940s? Then the prophet Daniel said that "many will go here and there to increase knowledge" in the last days. Airplanes anyone? Travel is far, FAR more common now than it ever was before. And all this is happening at the SAME TIME! And there's quite a bit more, this is just a brief sample from my memory. Oh what the heck, here's a link to a pretty good list of them.
Here's an article that gives some interesting evidence that the Torah (first five books of the Bible, which contain the creation story and the Law of Moses) could ONLY have been given by God. Hint: there are codes embedded in the Torah that predict future events.
This is just a few examples of why faith in God, and specifically in the Bible, is entirely reasonable!
I'll try to explain the concept of evil from its Biblical perspective. You probably won't believe this (yet) but try to bear with me and see if it makes sense.
God first created all His angels, including Lucifer, the "guardian cherub," who had a very high position right at the throne of God. He, in his free will, decided to try to overtake God. THAT is how evil started. He, and a third of the angels who rebelled with him, were thrown out of heaven and became demons.
Lucifer (now Satan) convinced Adam and Even to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Now that they knew of evil, God decided that they could NOT be allowed to eat of the Tree of Life. If they ate of BOTH trees, it would guarantee that man would live forever in a fallen world. The horror! That's why He banished them from the Garden of Eden. That's what caused bad things to start happening in the world (see Genesis 3.
So, he DID put things in the world that would allow death, yes. That includes giving men (now prideful as Lucifer was) the ability to kill people, and it allows natural disasters to kill people as well. It is a shame that some people die at young ages, but that just happens. The world has fallen. Again, the alternative to allowing people to die would be allowing them to live forever in an imperfect world! That would NOT be fun!
I hope that answers your question. It may not cause you to believe in God, but just know that bad things in the world don't prove that a good God doesn't exist!
Slashdot Mirror
No, but they will because
Microsoft Office has features that the open source alternatives don't have (yet). Period.
Like what?
OpenOffice is quite complete. And it is very extensible. You can write plugins in C++, Java, or Basic. Within a year or two there will be a thriving market for plugins, both commercial and open source. The development community is growing by leaps and bounds. Traffic on the API list is going up almost exponentially.
So even if MS Office has some unique features today, it likely won't for long.
Interesting. I use the RPMs on RH 7.3 and haven't seen anything that bad.
What I *do* get sometimes (well, twice now, and I've been using 1.1 since its release) are corrupted displays of form fields or text. But it's never prevented me from doing anything. It's hard to explain, if it happens again I'll have to get a screenshot and file a bug.
yep. Roughly the same thing happened in Guatemala in 1954. Its new democratically elected government was implementing a quite reasonable agrarian reform package that probably would have significantly raised the standard of living in Guatemala.
Instead, the USA saw it as an extension of Communism, a threat, and the CIA replaced the new government with a military dictatorship that caused DECADES of untold suffering and countless deaths and disappearances.
Now, I'm an American, love America for the most part, and even have conservative political leanings. (Most people that bring this stuff up are staunch liberals.) But you just can't ignore this stuff. When we cause suffering around the world of this magnitude, how can we expect other nations to not hate us?
Anyone remember Swinth and Swinth II on the C64? Produced awesome music and cool laser effects.
I have VICE installed on my Linux box, but last time I tried I couldn't find disk images for it.
I still have my stack of Commodore disks and my C64 and 1541 disk drive, but haven't bothered to look for the cable to connect it to my PC and get the disk images on my Linux box. If I did that I could finally dump the 64.... VICE really does work great.
Very good points.
Linux is ready for the desktop TODAY, but the average people aren't going to switch to it out of the blue.
What needs to happen is for computer vendors to start including Linux and a mega-boatload of quality Open Source Software (yes, it DOES exist), along with (optional reading) documentation that will get them interested in the included software. I have a proposal for such a system here.
It's really up to computer vendors, but switching users to Linux is highly advantageous to them, so I think you will see that happenning over the next couple years.
To address this problem, Apache 2 has the perchild MPM [apache.org] which allows a virtual host to have it's own process fork, uid/gid, and thread pool. Unfortunately, the perchild MPM is not presently stable.
Can someone explain how this works? If I'm understanding it correctly... 1) There's still a "main" server, which still runs as nobody (or maybe root now?) and which listens to the port(s) and accepts incomming connections 2) Each virtual host has its own multithreaded process 3) The main server determines the virtualhost of the request and pipes the data to and from the appropriate VH process.
is that about right or am I missing something? It seems like that might have some serious performance and/or memory use implications.
This very much sounds like a killer feature, especially if it works with mod_perl and PHP.
Red Hat's (null) 8.0 beta 3 has 2.0.40. You can probably take the SRPM for it and rebuild it on RH 7.x. I haven't tried it but it should work.
I agree it will get a LOT more use once the Linux and BSD distros start shipping it by default, and once PHP and mod_perl are solidified for it. The Red Hat beta includes both, so they should be about ready.
Hi,
:-) ) but The Case for Christ starts with a skeptical viewpoint and interviews people about various logical aspects of Jesus' life, and how they correspond to the reality of the Roman world. It shows how it is indeed very possible that everything recorded in the Gospels could have happened, and it answers quite a few skeptics questions, including "what if the disciples were duped?" The author himself used to be a skeptic, and he went on a search similar to this and became a believer.
How you can trust the book... well, no book is perfect (except the Bible
And thank you for NOT lowering your standards! If the God of the Bible really is the true one, there will be plenty of evidence to support that. And I believe there is.
Here's an interesting article that talks about hidden codes in the first five books of the Bible that really could have only been put there by God. There's a book called Genesis Codes by Yacov Ramsel that describes this more thoroughly. I haven't read the book yet (I just found it while searching for things last night) but I'm definitely hoping to read it soon.
Another book I'm currently reading, called Eternity in their Hearts by Don Richardson, gives the account of a bunch of anthropologists trying to disprove God by studying the religions of "primitive" people, expecting to find no real belief in a monotheistic God. Boy were they ever wrong -- not only did they find hundreds or thousands of examples in such belief, but some tribes (who would have not had any contact with Jewish or Christian witness) had legends that were strikingly similar to the Genesis account -- including the Flood!
Of course, far more important than all this is that God really does answer prayers today. Those that seek Him find Him. He comforts, guides, and even heals.
If you have any serious questions about any of this, feel free to drop me an e-mail. micah AT JesusIsLife DOT net
not to get into a pointless argument, but you're not getting it. That phraseology "nation against nation" predicted a whole lot more than "normal" war. It means that pretty much every nation would get involved, which didn't happen until world wars.
Yes, people have always traveled to increase knowledge, but Daniel says that many will in the last days.
The point is that these and quite a few other Bible prophesies are being fulfilled very literally for the first time ever! AT THE SAME TIME!
I obviously can't convince you, but I know without a doubt that the evidence of the existence of the God of the Bible is absolutely overwhelming. I hope you'll see that at some point.
oh, and a couple other points about the whole hell thing...
Although it's not a salvation issue, I think it's fairly important to know the truth on this. If sinners really will be tortured eternally, that should give us extra motivation to tell people about Jesus. If they will just be annihilated, well, they still miss out on the joys of heaven, but the absolute urgency isn't there. The biggest possible tragedy is if the truth is that they suffer eternally but we believe they will be annihilated and therefore we are not as motivated to witness to them!
There is a book out, called Divine Revelation of Hell. In it, a lady claims to have been revealed visions of hell for 40 days. Jesus led her in there and showed her around. I haven't read the whole thing, but what I *have* read is FREEEEEAKY. I guess you can possibly write it off as being a hoax, but I *do* believe God can reveal that kind of thing, and why shouldn't He? If this was indeed a revelation from God and it describes the actual hell, and somehow we could make the world sure of that, people would be running to Jesus faster than you can say "First post!"
> When Jesus returns, I know it will surprise a lot of peoeple, including most Christians.
:/ At least if the pre-trib rapture turns out to be the truth. Seems like it is, but I can't say for sure on that one. There is some reasonable evidence for the mid-post-trib position (i.e. after the Mark of the Beast but before the wrath).
No doubt...
> As I just posted in another article, I think it is kinda sad that the internet causes Christians to get in to these nasty flame wars with each other on places like Slashdot.
well I don't think this was a flamewar. I've certainly seen far worse! Agreed, the Bible says that people will know we are Christians by our love for each other. That is SO key. If we can't show some respect for each other on Slashdot, we're screwed!
My favorite place to discuss Christian issues is Crosswalk.com Forums. There's a great bunch of people there and they chat on everything from the silly to the serious. I'm 'yodermk' on that board.
re: evolution
I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain here, but I *do* lean towards the regular 6-day creation account as recorded in Genesis. I think there are a number of reasonable explanations for how that could be possible. One thing I read just this week that really bolstered my faith in the Genesis account is a book called Eternity in their Hearts by Don Richardson. It talks about how "primitive" folk religions actually point toward Christianity in some amazing ways. There are some tribes that have been isolated and never would have had any contact with Jewish or Christian witness, but they have beliefs that parallel the Fall of Man and the Flood in absolutely astonishing detail! (Not everything in their legend matches the Bible perfectly, but it's surprisingly close.)
But like you implied, this kind of stuff is far less important than the basics of the Gospel. Not to mention getting actively involved in the Great Commission. The more I think about it, the more pumped I am about missions. There is simply no other reason for our existance on this earth!
> You can't take vague, generic statements from 2000 years ago, claim that they correspond to specific events today
:-)
Unless, of course, they really DO.
If you take all the prophesies together, they really aren't all that vague.
> I also wonder how scripture literalists handle the "vaporware" problem of Christianity; people have been believing since the days when Jesus walked on this earth that their generation was the one that would see Jesus come back in glory.
:-)
I assume you're talking about Matthew 24:34 -- "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."
well the NIV's footnote for 'generation' says 'or race'. I'm not sure whether or not that's accurate.
But it can be argued that the 'this generation' does not refer to the one Jesus was speaking TO. There's some evidence that He was talking about the generation that saw some of the previously mentioned things happen -- like the generation that sees "nation will rise up against nation" (which is probably predicting World War 2).
But yeah, I've kind of wondered the same thing. These are possible answers though.
> So when an avalanche buries a village in the alps, thats Satan's doing or Man's or whose? and god is powerless to fix this problem because...why?
We don't know who's "doing" it was. Nature is there and that stuff happens. Again, death MUST happen so we don't live in an imperfect world forever. That's just an example of why you need to be right with God. You don't know when you're almost finished here on earth!
> And eating from the tree corrupted the world....why?
Because they specifically chose to disobey God.
> Where did Satan's evil come from, who created Satan?
It's hard to fathom how Satan got the idea he could overthrow God. But God *has* given all his created beings choice, including Satan. Of course, Satan *did* get quite a bit of power in the deal. The Bible calls him "the god of this age". So maybe it was worth it to him... guess he didn't know about hell when he made that choice!
Search for the book "Eternity in their hearts" by Don Richardson. It has several examples from anthropology. Edward Tylor and other anthropologists were just sure that "primitive" cultures would have no consistant monotheistic belief. But when they tested it with field research... boy were they ever wrong! The book does tell some specific stories about how scientists and "intellectuals" ignored clear evidence.
yeah, praise God! Keep that testimony coming! Anyone else?
> Evolution is a probablistic algorithm. It performs better than pure chance.
Why would it, though, without some kind of Guide? It's proven that mutations are pretty much always DESTRUCTIVE, not beneficial. No, I don't have a great deal of biology knowledge, so my debate on this stops here. There are far more reasons to believe in God.
> Sigh. If i don't accept the bible why should i accept an argument based on the bible.
I just said to look at what the Bible says the world will be like just before the "Last Days", or "The Day of the Lord". It's a perfect fit for what we're seeing in the world today.
This kind of argument is not the same kind of circular argument that says you should believe the Bible because it claims it is what God said. Of course you can't make that case. I'm telling you to compare what the Bible says to the reality of the world. Remember that it was written 2000+ years ago.
> This says it all. It's faith, not evidence or fact, that supports one's belief in God. IMO, faith does not justify belief, but you're free to believe whatever you want.
Faith *must* be reasonable, and I believe I have a solid case that it is. If it's not reasonable, it's just flat out ridiculous. Yes, it does require a little faith, "the size of a mustard seed" according to Jesus. In Hebrews it says "without faith we cannot please God".
wait... doesn't Mormonism teach that Jesus and Satan were brothers and that we will all become gods? That seems to pretty clearly contradict the Bible to me.
Not that all Mormons believe that (they probably don't), and I'm not saying that a Mormon can't be a saved Christian (there are almost certainly some that are). But from what I've heard of the official teachings of the Mormon church, I can't possibly call it Christian.
Trinity: sure it's an interpretation, but a VERY safe one. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are definitely from God. John 3:16 of course states that Jesus is a unique "son" of God -- not created, like all other beings were. He is literally irreplaceable to God. They are all 3 parts of God with different missions. The Bible clearly speaks of all 3.
whoa. Please read this article, which is the most comprehensive Bible study I've seen on whether sinners will actually suffer forever. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of evidence that they will.
That IS an excellent book, and it really just scratches the surface! It tells of why faith that Jesus is who He said He is is reasonable. It doesn't even scratch the surface of other things, like God's work in the world today (there's plenty of it), reason to believe in the Old Testament (there's plenty of archeological confirmation and mathematical codes to prove that the OT is true and from God, respectively), and the fact that the world today is PRECISELY how the Bible predicted it would be in the "end times".
Scientists will eventually admit they were wrong
The good, real scientists will, sure.
But the scientists deeply rooted in atheists beliefs are every bit as religious as the most devout Pentecostal.
When they find evidence that seems to oppose the existence of God, they trumpet it, even before it's proven.
When they find evidence that seems to support God, they'll either quietly ignore it or try to downplay it -- even after it IS proven!
Can't have it both ways, guys.
Perhaps you should just look to the fact that you exist for evidence.
I'm not going to get into a debate about evolution here, but do you really think that beings as complex as humans could really evolve by pure chance? (I won't get into a debate on evolution vs. creationism because God could have used evolution to create. Even if He did that, what counts is that you see the hand of God in it.)
Seriously. We have extremely complex organs, especially our brains. But beyond that, we have emotions and feelings and consciences. How could all that come about by pure unguided chance?
but Ok, there's more evidence.
Did you know that a core belief in monotheism (God) is very prevelant among "primitive" peoples? I'm currently reading an absolutely amazing book called Eternity In Their Hearts, which documents many examples of that. There are many cases where God revealed to the people that they would soon meet someone who has His written word, and those people received the Gospel message joyfully (even after spending centuries fending off other religions).
Want more? Jesus Christ did many healings in Bible times to prove that He was Who He said He was. Guess what -- He still does the same thing today! This site has quite a bit of useful information on that topic. And I know it's true. I have heard of many supernatural, instantaneous healings from friends and church people, and have even witnessed a college friend being healed from Attention Deficit Disorder. It really happens. The name of Jesus is powerful!
Or perhaps the fact that the Bible presented a perfect picture of what the world looks like today is good evidence. 2 Timothy 3 sums up men's attitudes these days very well. Jesus talked in Matthew 24 about earthquakes, famines, etc, but "the end is still to come". There have been significantly more earthquakes and famines in the last century or two than previously. Note in verse 24:7 "Nation will rise up against nation." The Hebrew phrase "x against x" means a TOTAL conflict, where every "x" in the set was involved. Jesus basically predicted World War 2 here. Then there's the fact that Israel is a nation again, with their own "king", which was prophesied repeatedly in the Old Testament. Do you have any idea how unlikely that seemed, even in the early 1940s? Then the prophet Daniel said that "many will go here and there to increase knowledge" in the last days. Airplanes anyone? Travel is far, FAR more common now than it ever was before. And all this is happening at the SAME TIME! And there's quite a bit more, this is just a brief sample from my memory. Oh what the heck, here's a link to a pretty good list of them.
Here's an article that gives some interesting evidence that the Torah (first five books of the Bible, which contain the creation story and the Law of Moses) could ONLY have been given by God. Hint: there are codes embedded in the Torah that predict future events.
This is just a few examples of why faith in God, and specifically in the Bible, is entirely reasonable!
uh, no.
I'll try to explain the concept of evil from its Biblical perspective. You probably won't believe this (yet) but try to bear with me and see if it makes sense.
God first created all His angels, including Lucifer, the "guardian cherub," who had a very high position right at the throne of God. He, in his free will, decided to try to overtake God. THAT is how evil started. He, and a third of the angels who rebelled with him, were thrown out of heaven and became demons.
Lucifer (now Satan) convinced Adam and Even to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Now that they knew of evil, God decided that they could NOT be allowed to eat of the Tree of Life. If they ate of BOTH trees, it would guarantee that man would live forever in a fallen world. The horror! That's why He banished them from the Garden of Eden. That's what caused bad things to start happening in the world (see Genesis 3.
So, he DID put things in the world that would allow death, yes. That includes giving men (now prideful as Lucifer was) the ability to kill people, and it allows natural disasters to kill people as well. It is a shame that some people die at young ages, but that just happens. The world has fallen. Again, the alternative to allowing people to die would be allowing them to live forever in an imperfect world! That would NOT be fun!
I hope that answers your question. It may not cause you to believe in God, but just know that bad things in the world don't prove that a good God doesn't exist!
Personally I doubt that any honest, good-hearted person will end up in "Hell" regardless of their beliefs.
From which Scripture do you get THAT belief?