Wake up guys. You need freeze the work geared up towards developers. You need to support these distro's that really make linux child's play.
Naah. Most of us will do whatever we feel like doing, especially if it scratches a personal itch. All improvements we give back into the community will help as they have been doing for the past decade. If a hardware manufacturer doesn't want to release specs then we don't care - we'll just buy from one who does.
They need the support of as many developers as possible, because unless Linux can really break into the home deskop market it will never suceed truely as a competitor to Microsoft other than in server and techy environments.
So what? Linux has always been written for its users, by its users. If someone needs something they write it or document it or help debug it or pay someone else to write it. Many FLOSS developers do not care if what they do competes with Microsoft or not. Now if lots of those users start wanting a child's play install, someone will fill that need. Recently large companies with vested interests in making Linux a good desktop OS have made huge investments in code and funding to improve the state of play. I just have to compare my Gnome 2.6 desktop with something like 1.4 to be amazed. The article is a troll anyway - Fred obviously didn't read the ALSA documentation where it states that the sound card is muted by default:)
Here's another good point! Free software developers could take the source for Office, build on top of it, sell the binaries and Microsoft could all get the modified source from them because, er, can't remember the last bit. It works both ways.
Just to clarify my position, I am not anti-copyright - just anti the indefinite extension of copyright. The only point I was making was that without copyright law, the GPL would not be necessary. Your argument doesn't work anyway since "all of the FSF's work" exists precisely because of the GPL's protection under copyright law. Your hypothesis is more like "what would happen if copyright law was abolished tomorrow." To speculate on a world without copyright law is extremely difficult.A good place to start is imagining there is no such company as Microsoft and no such organisation as the FSF since neither could exist without copyright law. Have fun:)
And you realise of course that without copyright, the GPL would no longer be necessary? Anyone would be free to copy, modify and distribute anyone else's copyrighted work without having to ask permission or getting a license to do so.
When studying any sort of controversial claim about an event that allegedly happened, only the ones that believe it to be true bother looking at the evidece for a long length of time. The skeptics stop bothering once they see enough problems to repudate their skepticism. Therefore your point about how those that are skeptical haven't spent as long on it as you have is technically true, but doesn't lead to the conclusion you are trying to make it lead to.
You're absolutely right and I have no problem with this - except I was actually trying very honestly and very hard to disprove the claims of the NT. For some reason all this stuff really bothered me - did it really stand up to close scrutiny? And the more I looked the more it did, disturbingly so since I am a thorough-going sceptic.
It doesn't mean their claims are less informed. It means their claims don't require nearly as much evidence - once they had what they needed, they stopped.
Fair enough. My original troll post:) comes from the other direction: that people who do believe in the historical reliability of the resurrection are not cutting off their heads or playing mind games or even ignoring the evidence to do so - which does take a bit more work. And it's now kind of hard to seperate the knowledge I've gathered since being converted from the research done beforehand of course.
The resserection has no evidence that is not word-of-mouth. If you believe word of mouth to be acceptable evidence, then you can study further into the issue. If you don't then you're done, and you don't spend years on it.
Well for word of mouth, I prefer to read "eyewitness testimony" but of course there are huge difficulties with that as well (marvellous quote from Memento springs to mind here). I'm surprised no-one's brought up the fact that the eyewitness testimonies of the resurrection appear to hopelessly contradict one another on all sorts of key details:D
At this point I stopped reading, since anyone who uses this haughty tone isn't worth listening to.
Sorry - it's an effort for me to be anything other than quite blunt:) I really do think the argument is pathetic. You certainly couldn't get away with it in History 101 or Archaeology 101. I've spent years studying the evidence, and to compare a late 20th century work of fiction with Luke's enduring work of history is unwise.
I've been a bit disappointed generally with the quality of objections the historicity of the NT on this thread. They're all the same old weak objections trotted out by people who I can see haven't put the effort in to study the subject. And more than anything it's a subject worth studying. If this guy really did rise from the dead (and the evidence shows that he did) then he was who he said he was - and therefore he has a claim on me. But most people are quite happy to cling to a weak objection and continue happily along without checking it out for themselves.
Given that much of the "evidence" consists of "historical scraps" that have provided support for the Christ myth only when they are interpreted through the lens of Christian belief I doubt it would be that difficult to revert to a non-Christian interpretation.
The largest body of evidence is the vast quantity of NT documents that has survived, in far greater numbers than any other historical documents from antiquity. Extra references in other writings are just a bonus, and quite extraordinary given the events took place in a little far-off province of the Roman Empire.
Right. Just like every single piece of verifiable history in a James Michener novel has to be somehow separated from the fictional parts of his story.
I don't know why people think this argument is so compelling. It's pure drivel as anyone who knows even the first thing about history and archaeology will attest. See my reply to DunbartheInept.
The fact that a text mentions historical events does not automatically make it unquestionably authentic in all respects.
Of course it doesn't. Obi Wan^H^H^H^HWilliam Ramsay once thought as you do. He reckoned there was no chance Luke could have been composed in the first century AD just a few years after Jesus' death. And being the eminent archaeologist that he was, he went checking for himself. It took him years. And the more he dug up, the more he found that Luke was telling the truth - in the names he mentions, the titles he gives people and the dates he refers to. Eventually he had to admit:
'Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statement of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."
The more that gets dug up and the more scrolls found, the more respect historians have for Luke and the rest of the NT. Interestingly historians accept the authenticity of the New Testament documents much more often than theologians, since they have fewer axes to grind and more rigorous methods for studying them in the light of history.
Here's an even simpler explanation: Jesus never existed. The whole crucifixion event is a myth.
Neither a complex conspiracy to spirit away the body, nor a convoluted supernatural explanation is required.
Actually a whole lot more explanation is required to defend this:
Every single piece of evidence of Christ's existence has to be re-interpreted in some other way - and consistently.
Every single piece of verifiable history which is mentioned by the NT authors has to be somehow seperated from their eyewitness testimonies of Jesus. See here for how difficult a task this is.
I'll get to your other points as soon as possible - paying clients are waiting...
Your "every scrap of historical and literary evidence" amounts to a few testimonies written after the alleged events were about a century old, that were chosen to be preserved by the Council of Nicea and subsequently were bound together into a book called "Bible".
That is not how the Canon happened. A bunch of church leaders didn't get together and arbitrarily decide what should be included and what shouldn't. It took a couple of centuries, during which time different leaders made lists of the texts they considered authoritative. The earliest list was even made by a heretic... FF Bruce's classic work on the subject is available online for free here.
Anything contradictory would be long gone by now. Nope - there is a large collection of these documents which survive so we can compare for ourselves exactly how it happened.
Historians generally don't go on something that flimsy and call it 'fact'.
A interesting table on the relative ages and number of copies we have on ancient documents. If anything, all ancient historical documents are "flimsy" by your standards *except* the New Testament ones.
In the end of the 1980's, Russia existed. Nuclear submarines existed. The CIA existed. The United States existed. There are documented cases of people defecting from Russia to the United States. Submarines would 'see' using sonar. The Russians often tried nagivating deep trenches in the atlantic with their submarines to evade notice. Therefore The Hunt For Red October must be a true story, right?
I've heard this pathetic argument before and people making it betray their utter ignorance of historical, literary and archaeological rigour needed when studying the ancient near east. Tom Clancy as far as I know is still alive (truly an American icon?:)) It would a simple matter to verify that and then ask him what his purpose was in writing that text, bearing in mind the overwhelming evidence points to a work of fiction (one of my favourites actually) designed to entertain. A statement to that effect even appears in the credits of the film - "work of fiction, similarity coincidental" etc. Now compare that with Luke, a trained Greek doctor and easily the finest historian who ever lived, and his stated purpose:
1 Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2
just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, 3
I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4
so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.
Or a little later on when he puts John the Baptist's ministry clearly into historical context:
1
1 2 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, 2
during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, 3 the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
You can tell the author's purpose and you can verify his description of historical events with external evidence - in pretty much the same way I did with Red October.
Obviously I've angered a master of the cut and-paste.
Tsk tsk - name calling is a bad sign. I thought we were having a scholarly debate here. I'm not angry. I think I've been very careful to state my case rationally and without any ad hominem attacks. If I sound sarcastic sometimes, well, I need more help in that area... I'm taking time and effort because obviously from my point of view, I want to tell others the truth. If I have done so, then I've done my job:)
So let's put it this way: You say Christ died for a day and a half and then was resurrected. Fine. He did it once, He can do it again. Have him come back and let someone we trust (James Randi, perhaps?:-) verifiably kill him, let his body rot for 36 hours, and then have him come back to life. Then I'll believe. Otherwise, it's all hearsay.
No you wouldn't. Jesus himself once told a very pointed story to the Pharisees, the punchline of which said "if you don't believe the written record, then not even someone rising from the dead would convince you." Very few Pharisees became believers even though they were right there, heard him predict his death and resurrection, saw him die and then heard his disciples less than two months later proclaim he was alive. None of them could dispute the fact - all they could do was desperately try and stop the followers from telling others. Jesus has come once, provided bullet-proof evidence that he was who he said he was (still waiting for any rebuttals to any of my points by the way) and completed what he set out to do. The problem with your method of verification is that it would discard most of recorded history. I find this fairly often: no-one bats an eyelid about what we know about the various Roman Emperors or Alexander the Great but suddenly apply a different historical and archaeological standard to the New Testament. And even then, it still stands up.
You're right. That's why every scrap of historical and literary evidence from that time we have is that that a strange man who claimed he was God in human form was executed and then rose from the dead. Since this is an occurrence unique in human history, he provided overwhelming historical evidence that the events actually occurred. What I was saying is that the sceptics need to come up with some better explanations of what happened and so far I haven't heard any.
If I'm being honest with myself I don't have a choice because no other explanation fits the facts at our disposal. It's really quite a simple - albeit long - process of elimination to conclude what I have concluded.
The worse of all believers tricks to prove their theory is to have just "two competing explanations" and dismerit the one of the opponent, and then ours must be the truth
It is, which is why I was very careful not to do this.
Take another of the (infinite) other possibilities: Jesus didn't die. Evidence: death by crucifixion takes many time (even days), Jesus was only about three hours. Compare it to "death and resurrection". Which theory is more simple?
I'm not really sure what you're comparing. Here be dragons though - and not for the believer. You're agreeing that Jesus took roughly three hours to die which means that you're giving credence to the eyewitness accounts of that death. So when the gospel writers record that the Roman soldiers - experts at this kind of thing - saw that Jesus was already dead and didn't bother to break his legs, then you have a problem: it is true or not? Or are just the bits that are unusual not true?
Sorry, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Of course they do which I'll get to. It's funny though that you sound like some Christians I know when you say that:)
You are putting words in my post that weren't there. I never said that Jesus wasn't a historical person. What I said was "myth" was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are lots of more mundane reasons for being unable to produce Jesus's body, such as the followers stealing it and hiding it where the authorities couldn't find it.
Sorry about that - unintended. OK, so we're agreed Jesus was a historical figure who was executed for blasphemy during a Passover sometime in the early first century AD. We differ on whether he rose from the dead or not. The problem is your "more mundane explanations" are much harder to defend given the evidence we have - especially the "followers stole the body" theory.
The Jewish leaders already catered for the disciples trying this trick. They weren't stupid. They had been listening to him for nearly three years saying he would rise from the dead. So they asked the Romans to guard the tomb.
The disciples had just seen their leader and mentor die a horrible death in public. Are we to believe they sneaked out of their hiding place where they had scuttled in the aftermath, sneaked past or disabled the Roman guards, and removed the body somewhere, then waited six weeks, then suddenly appear in the middle of the Feast of Weeks proclaiming him to be alive? Not only that but for the rest of their natural lives, they live a lie, chased around the middle east, tortured, imprisoned and often eventually martyred, proclaiming something they knew to be a lie? Not even one of them cracked? Please. Instead, they suddenly appeared at a festival which has attracted righteous Jews from all over the area and preach that it was all part of God's plan that Jesus should die and rise again. Not only that but they claimed boldly and comprehensively how he is the Messiah who was promised in the writings they all know so well.
Did Jesus really say he was the Messiah? That is a debate that biblical scholars are still having today.
Yeah - he was executed for it.
Most of that came from John, which is by far the most "out there" of the Gospels w.r.t. earthly vs. supernatural events.
Not really. John only records seven miracles of Jesus - the least of all the gospels - because, and I paraphrase, "Jesus did all sorts of other things which would take all the books in the world to write down. I've carefully selected these ones in my account to show you who he was so that you might believe in him."
The whole point of Occam's Razor is that you don't accept the extraordinary (read supernatural) explanations (e.g. resurrection, reincarnation, alien abduction) if there are more mundane explanations that explain the facts.
That's a subtle and disingenuous misreading of the principle. Occam's razor says "of two competing theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred." (from here)
So our two competing explanations are (if I have yours right - if not please correct me):
Mine: Jesus rose from the dead because he was who he claimed to be - God become man. He then appeared to his frightened followers who were transformed by the sight and experience of their risen Messiah into fearless preachers of the new faith.
Yours: Jesus died and sometime over the weekend the followers stole the body from a heavily guarded tomb and hid it somewhere else. Then they popped up and started claiming he was alive. All of them stuck to this same story for decades with no inconsistencies or cracking - all but one meeting horrible deaths because of this claim. ALong the way, thousands of others who they convinced also met horrible deaths.
Oooh, very insightful. To quote Mr Miller of the Christian think tank, the Judeo-Christian faith is surprisingly ruthless in its insistence on proof (broadly considered), evidence, truth, examination, 'cordial skepticism'...and correspondingly disdainful of those who believe nonsense. Go here for a good list of examples.
As for the resurrection of Jesus, the burden of proof is not on those who believe it happened - it's on the sceptic.
Jesus existed around 30AD as attested to by Jewish historians, Roman historians and the thousands of ancient copies of the New Testament documents that survive - most of them far older than other ancient documents that most people seem to take for granted (like Caesar's Gallic Wars)
Archaeologists continue to show that the reliability of these documents when talking about historical events is unparalleled. 100-odd years ago there were all sorts of problems with the bible that have now been confirmed by modern archaeology - writers make reference to ancient towns that have now been discovered, Luke calls the Ephesian leaders by a strange name which has now been cross-referenced, and so on.
In short, to say Jesus didn't exist as a real historical figure who was executed during the Passover ceremony for blasphemy is exactly the kind of unscientific nonsense and blind faith that most often levelled against Christians.
Yeah yeah - but did he rise from the dead? I once tried really hard to find that he didn't - because then he wouldn't be who he said he was and he would have no claims upon me. But I couldn't:
His tomb never became a shrine - a very natural thing to happen if he was still in it.
No-one could produce the body. The Romans couldn't, the Jewish leaders couldn't, despite the fact that they could have at any time when the disciples suddenly turned up six weeks later and preached that he was alive. What was the problem? His tomb was walking distance from where these once frightened men were now claiming him to be alive. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. Not to mention:
His followers were transformed - from frightened idiots to fearless evangelists. Nearly all of them were eventually executed for their beliefs. The church today - for all it's faults - still exists in the world based on their teaching.
Occam's razor leads to a scary conclusion. For me it did anyway - Jesus was who he said he was.
This is the same strategy used by sister organization the Recording Industry Association of America, lawyers argued.'"
I first read this as "used by sinister organization the Recording Industry Association of America," and wondered why the lawyers were being so forthright...
No it's not. There is a large difference between a license and a contract. A license just gives you permission to do something you wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to do - like distribute someone else's copyrighted work (the GPL) or say, go fishing in a private dam (a fishing license). If you ignore or transgress the terms of the license, you have no contractual obligations between you and the licensor which must be fulfilled - you will just be asked to stop what you are doing. If you don't then other laws apply which you are breaking by not having a license - copyright laws in the case of the GPL or trespassing in the case of fishing.
If you violate the terms of the GPL, it no longer applies to you
It's still a legally enforcable contract.
It is a legally enforceable license - big difference. It's legally enforceable because it's backed up by copyright law - which normally forbids anyone but the copyright holder to modify, distribute or make derivative works from someone else's copyrighted work. But there are no contractual obligations in the GPL, no agreements which both parties sign and agree to beforehand about monies or services rendered for goods or services delivered. You don't sign a contract with New Line Cinema in order to view LoTR on DVD - you receive a license to do so along with your box - a fairly restricted license that forbids most uses of the work other than home viewing. GPLed software is the same thing - you are granted a license (should you choose to distribute the software) to copy, modify, distribute and make derivative works as long as you adhere to its terms. No contract anywhere in sight.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably none.
Microsoft did try to hire Alan Cox though.
Wake up guys. You need freeze the work geared up towards developers. You need to support these distro's that really make linux child's play.
:)
Naah. Most of us will do whatever we feel like doing, especially if it scratches a personal itch. All improvements we give back into the community will help as they have been doing for the past decade. If a hardware manufacturer doesn't want to release specs then we don't care - we'll just buy from one who does.
They need the support of as many developers as possible, because unless Linux can really break into the home deskop market it will never suceed truely as a competitor to Microsoft other than in server and techy environments.
So what? Linux has always been written for its users, by its users. If someone needs something they write it or document it or help debug it or pay someone else to write it. Many FLOSS developers do not care if what they do competes with Microsoft or not.
Now if lots of those users start wanting a child's play install, someone will fill that need. Recently large companies with vested interests in making Linux a good desktop OS have made huge investments in code and funding to improve the state of play. I just have to compare my Gnome 2.6 desktop with something like 1.4 to be amazed.
The article is a troll anyway - Fred obviously didn't read the ALSA documentation where it states that the sound card is muted by default
If x is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Here's another good point! Free software developers could take the source for Office, build on top of it, sell the binaries and Microsoft could all get the modified source from them because, er, can't remember the last bit. It works both ways.
:)
Just to clarify my position, I am not anti-copyright - just anti the indefinite extension of copyright. The only point I was making was that without copyright law, the GPL would not be necessary. Your argument doesn't work anyway since "all of the FSF's work" exists precisely because of the GPL's protection under copyright law. Your hypothesis is more like "what would happen if copyright law was abolished tomorrow." To speculate on a world without copyright law is extremely difficult.A good place to start is imagining there is no such company as Microsoft and no such organisation as the FSF since neither could exist without copyright law. Have fun
And you realise of course that without copyright, the GPL would no longer be necessary? Anyone would be free to copy, modify and distribute anyone else's copyrighted work without having to ask permission or getting a license to do so.
That's OK though - most of the staff will turn up again the next day.
When studying any sort of controversial claim about an event that allegedly happened, only the ones that believe it to be true bother looking at the evidece for a long length of time. The skeptics stop bothering once they see enough problems to repudate their skepticism. Therefore your point about how those that are skeptical haven't spent as long on it as you have is technically true, but doesn't lead to the conclusion you are trying to make it lead to.
:) comes from the other direction: that people who do believe in the historical reliability of the resurrection are not cutting off their heads or playing mind games or even ignoring the evidence to do so - which does take a bit more work.
:D
You're absolutely right and I have no problem with this - except I was actually trying very honestly and very hard to disprove the claims of the NT. For some reason all this stuff really bothered me - did it really stand up to close scrutiny? And the more I looked the more it did, disturbingly so since I am a thorough-going sceptic.
It doesn't mean their claims are less informed. It means their claims don't require nearly as much evidence - once they had what they needed, they stopped.
Fair enough. My original troll post
And it's now kind of hard to seperate the knowledge I've gathered since being converted from the research done beforehand of course.
The resserection has no evidence that is not word-of-mouth. If you believe word of mouth to be acceptable evidence, then you can study further into the issue. If you don't then you're done, and you don't spend years on it.
Well for word of mouth, I prefer to read "eyewitness testimony" but of course there are huge difficulties with that as well (marvellous quote from Memento springs to mind here). I'm surprised no-one's brought up the fact that the eyewitness testimonies of the resurrection appear to hopelessly contradict one another on all sorts of key details
At this point I stopped reading, since anyone who uses this haughty tone isn't worth listening to.
:) I really do think the argument is pathetic. You certainly couldn't get away with it in History 101 or Archaeology 101. I've spent years studying the evidence, and to compare a late 20th century work of fiction with Luke's enduring work of history is unwise.
Sorry - it's an effort for me to be anything other than quite blunt
I've been a bit disappointed generally with the quality of objections the historicity of the NT on this thread. They're all the same old weak objections trotted out by people who I can see haven't put the effort in to study the subject. And more than anything it's a subject worth studying. If this guy really did rise from the dead (and the evidence shows that he did) then he was who he said he was - and therefore he has a claim on me.
But most people are quite happy to cling to a weak objection and continue happily along without checking it out for themselves.
Given that much of the "evidence" consists of "historical scraps" that have provided support for the Christ myth only when they are interpreted through the lens of Christian belief I doubt it would be that difficult to revert to a non-Christian interpretation.
The largest body of evidence is the vast quantity of NT documents that has survived, in far greater numbers than any other historical documents from antiquity. Extra references in other writings are just a bonus, and quite extraordinary given the events took place in a little far-off province of the Roman Empire.
Right. Just like every single piece of verifiable history in a James Michener novel has to be somehow separated from the fictional parts of his story.
I don't know why people think this argument is so compelling. It's pure drivel as anyone who knows even the first thing about history and archaeology will attest. See my reply to DunbartheInept.
The fact that a text mentions historical events does not automatically make it unquestionably authentic in all respects.
Of course it doesn't. Obi Wan^H^H^H^HWilliam Ramsay once thought as you do. He reckoned there was no chance Luke could have been composed in the first century AD just a few years after Jesus' death. And being the eminent archaeologist that he was, he went checking for himself. It took him years. And the more he dug up, the more he found that Luke was telling the truth - in the names he mentions, the titles he gives people and the dates he refers to. Eventually he had to admit:
'Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statement of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."
The more that gets dug up and the more scrolls found, the more respect historians have for Luke and the rest of the NT. Interestingly historians accept the authenticity of the New Testament documents much more often than theologians, since they have fewer axes to grind and more rigorous methods for studying them in the light of history.
Neither a complex conspiracy to spirit away the body, nor a convoluted supernatural explanation is required.
Actually a whole lot more explanation is required to defend this:
for how difficult a task this is.
I'll get to your other points as soon as possible - paying clients are waiting...
Your "every scrap of historical and literary evidence" amounts to a few testimonies written after the alleged events were about a century old, that were chosen to be preserved by the Council of Nicea and subsequently were bound together into a book called "Bible".
:)) It would a simple matter to verify that and then ask him what his purpose was in writing that text, bearing in mind the overwhelming evidence points to a work of fiction (one of my favourites actually) designed to entertain. A statement to that effect even appears in the credits of the film - "work of fiction, similarity coincidental" etc.
That is not how the Canon happened. A bunch of church leaders didn't get together and arbitrarily decide what should be included and what shouldn't. It took a couple of centuries, during which time different leaders made lists of the texts they considered authoritative. The earliest list was even made by a heretic...
FF Bruce's classic work on the subject is available online for free here.
Anything contradictory would be long gone by now.
Nope - there is a large collection of these documents which survive so we can compare for ourselves exactly how it happened.
Historians generally don't go on something that flimsy and call it 'fact'.
A interesting table on the relative ages and number of copies we have on ancient documents. If anything, all ancient historical documents are "flimsy" by your standards *except* the New Testament ones.
In the end of the 1980's, Russia existed. Nuclear submarines existed. The CIA existed. The United States existed. There are documented cases of people defecting from Russia to the United States. Submarines would 'see' using sonar. The Russians often tried nagivating deep trenches in the atlantic with their submarines to evade notice.
Therefore The Hunt For Red October must be a true story, right?
I've heard this pathetic argument before and people making it betray their utter ignorance of historical, literary and archaeological rigour needed when studying the ancient near east.
Tom Clancy as far as I know is still alive (truly an American icon?
Now compare that with Luke, a trained Greek doctor and easily the finest historian who ever lived, and his stated purpose:
1 Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us,
2
just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,
3
I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus,
4
so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.
Or a little later on when he puts John the Baptist's ministry clearly into historical context:
1
1 2 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
2
during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, 3 the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
You can tell the author's purpose and you can verify his description of historical events with external evidence - in pretty much the same way I did with Red October.
Obviously I've angered a master of the cut and-paste.
:)
:-) verifiably kill him, let his body rot for 36 hours, and then have him come back to life. Then I'll believe. Otherwise, it's all hearsay.
Tsk tsk - name calling is a bad sign. I thought we were having a scholarly debate here. I'm not angry. I think I've been very careful to state my case rationally and without any ad hominem attacks. If I sound sarcastic sometimes, well, I need more help in that area...
I'm taking time and effort because obviously from my point of view, I want to tell others the truth. If I have done so, then I've done my job
So let's put it this way: You say Christ died for a day and a half and then was resurrected. Fine. He did it once, He can do it again. Have him come back and let someone we trust (James Randi, perhaps?
No you wouldn't. Jesus himself once told a very pointed story to the Pharisees, the punchline of which said "if you don't believe the written record, then not even someone rising from the dead would convince you." Very few Pharisees became believers even though they were right there, heard him predict his death and resurrection, saw him die and then heard his disciples less than two months later proclaim he was alive. None of them could dispute the fact - all they could do was desperately try and stop the followers from telling others. Jesus has come once, provided bullet-proof evidence that he was who he said he was (still waiting for any rebuttals to any of my points by the way) and completed what he set out to do.
The problem with your method of verification is that it would discard most of recorded history. I find this fairly often: no-one bats an eyelid about what we know about the various Roman Emperors or Alexander the Great but suddenly apply a different historical and archaeological standard to the New Testament. And even then, it still stands up.
You're right. That's why every scrap of historical and literary evidence from that time we have is that that a strange man who claimed he was God in human form was executed and then rose from the dead. Since this is an occurrence unique in human history, he provided overwhelming historical evidence that the events actually occurred.
What I was saying is that the sceptics need to come up with some better explanations of what happened and so far I haven't heard any.
If I'm being honest with myself I don't have a choice because no other explanation fits the facts at our disposal. It's really quite a simple - albeit long - process of elimination to conclude what I have concluded.
The worse of all believers tricks to prove their theory is to have just "two competing explanations" and dismerit the one of the opponent, and then ours must be the truth
It is, which is why I was very careful not to do this.
Take another of the (infinite) other possibilities: Jesus didn't die. Evidence: death by crucifixion takes many time (even days), Jesus was only about three hours. Compare it to "death and resurrection". Which theory is more simple?
I'm not really sure what you're comparing. Here be dragons though - and not for the believer. You're agreeing that Jesus took roughly three hours to die which means that you're giving credence to the eyewitness accounts of that death. So when the gospel writers record that the Roman soldiers - experts at this kind of thing - saw that Jesus was already dead and didn't bother to break his legs, then you have a problem: it is true or not? Or are just the bits that are unusual not true?
Of course they do which I'll get to. It's funny though that you sound like some Christians I know when you say that
You are putting words in my post that weren't there. I never said that Jesus wasn't a historical person. What I said was "myth" was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are lots of more mundane reasons for being unable to produce Jesus's body, such as the followers stealing it and hiding it where the authorities couldn't find it.
Sorry about that - unintended. OK, so we're agreed Jesus was a historical figure who was executed for blasphemy during a Passover sometime in the early first century AD. We differ on whether he rose from the dead or not.
The problem is your "more mundane explanations" are much harder to defend given the evidence we have - especially the "followers stole the body" theory.
Instead, they suddenly appeared at a festival which has attracted righteous Jews from all over the area and preach that it was all part of God's plan that Jesus should die and rise again. Not only that but they claimed boldly and comprehensively how he is the Messiah who was promised in the writings they all know so well.
Did Jesus really say he was the Messiah? That is a debate that biblical scholars are still having today.
Yeah - he was executed for it.
Most of that came from John, which is by far the most "out there" of the Gospels w.r.t. earthly vs. supernatural events.
Not really. John only records seven miracles of Jesus - the least of all the gospels - because, and I paraphrase, "Jesus did all sorts of other things which would take all the books in the world to write down. I've carefully selected these ones in my account to show you who he was so that you might believe in him."
The whole point of Occam's Razor is that you don't accept the extraordinary (read supernatural) explanations (e.g. resurrection, reincarnation, alien abduction) if there are more mundane explanations that explain the facts.
That's a subtle and disingenuous misreading of the principle. Occam's razor says "of two competing theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred."
(from here)
So our two competing explanations are (if I have yours right - if not please correct me):
As for the resurrection of Jesus, the burden of proof is not on those who believe it happened - it's on the sceptic.
In short, to say Jesus didn't exist as a real historical figure who was executed during the Passover ceremony for blasphemy is exactly the kind of unscientific nonsense and blind faith that most often levelled against Christians.
Yeah yeah - but did he rise from the dead? I once tried really hard to find that he didn't - because then he wouldn't be who he said he was and he would have no claims upon me. But I couldn't:
Occam's razor leads to a scary conclusion. For me it did anyway - Jesus was who he said he was.
If something is based of faith alone then all kind of views on that thing can be expressed.
Indeed. Christianity though, is based on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Agreed. There are also some of us who will never buy Adobe products ever again because of what the company did to Dmitri Sklyarov.
This is the same strategy used by sister organization the Recording Industry Association of America, lawyers argued.'"
I first read this as "used by sinister organization the Recording Industry Association of America," and wondered why the lawyers were being so forthright...
Yeah, yeah.
Can we have yer liver then?
? It is still a contract.
No it's not. There is a large difference between a license and a contract. A license just gives you permission to do something you wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to do - like distribute someone else's copyrighted work (the GPL) or say, go fishing in a private dam (a fishing license). If you ignore or transgress the terms of the license, you have no contractual obligations between you and the licensor which must be fulfilled - you will just be asked to stop what you are doing. If you don't then other laws apply which you are breaking by not having a license - copyright laws in the case of the GPL or trespassing in the case of fishing.
If you violate the terms of the GPL, it no longer applies to you
It's still a legally enforcable contract.
It is a legally enforceable license - big difference. It's legally enforceable because it's backed up by copyright law - which normally forbids anyone but the copyright holder to modify, distribute or make derivative works from someone else's copyrighted work. But there are no contractual obligations in the GPL, no agreements which both parties sign and agree to beforehand about monies or services rendered for goods or services delivered. You don't sign a contract with New Line Cinema in order to view LoTR on DVD - you receive a license to do so along with your box - a fairly restricted license that forbids most uses of the work other than home viewing. GPLed software is the same thing - you are granted a license (should you choose to distribute the software) to copy, modify, distribute and make derivative works as long as you adhere to its terms. No contract anywhere in sight.
the workers own the means of production,or more generally the excercise of significant economic control by the "people"
No - it was Wolverhampton Wanderers, who beat Leicester 3-1.
The last time I remember the stats being revealed, something like 80% of Slashdot visitors never read the comments.
I think you mean 80% of Slashdot readers never read the articles. Actually that figure is a bit low.
M-x viper-mode is better :) Heretics from the other camp can go here.