In the US, its not fashionable to know math or science. It's not fashionable to work hard.
And why is this? What has changed about out culture that these things are no longer valued? The secularists among us might argue that "religion" has affected math and science, but I think this a false argument. Speaking to what I know from personal experience, Christians are opposed to naturalism, but not math or science. My middle child, for example, is pursing advanced studies in MEMS. And, certainly, there used to be something called the Protestant work ethic.
'Being liked' is in. Girls are encouraged to look pretty and boys are encouraged to be force wielding leaders (to later wind up as PHB's?).
So what caused the shift from an emphasis on inward appearance to outward? Why force as a tool of leadership, instead of love?
Look at kids' movies and TV shows. The message is that all you have to do is believe in yourself. Nothing else.
How did this tired chestnut become a meme among supposedly smart people? "God did it" refers to agency, just like "time and chance" refers to agency. The "how" is a completely different matter. As a child, I remember asking my father, "How did you do that, Dad"? If anything, it whetted my curiosity to know more.
Whatever position one holds on the "irreducible complexity" argument, the argument is not "therefore we can learn no more." Rather, the argument is "the agency of time, chance, and unguided selection couldn't be the cause of such-and-such an object."
Creationists and ID people have never needed time to come up with ways to bury their heads in the sand. The people who subscribe to it never go to outside sources again to see if the party line has been refuted so even outright lies are usually good enough.
I'm sorry, but just where and when was "God created the heavens and the earth" refuted?
Look at the recent thing with bacterial evolution, when frozen samples were right there and the creationists in general just decided to ignore that fact.
Again, what fact was ignored? Nobody that I know of argues against "living things change over time."
The government will be involved whether we like it or not. What Caesar pays for, Caesar wants a say in. Once the government is involved in universal health care, expenses will have to be controlled, and this will be just one of many techniques available. Even if you don't want to practice embryo selection you may not have the choice, unless you can bear the cost yourself.
If the Japanese penalize employers if their employees are overweight, you can bet the government will penalize parents whose children might end up costing them more.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
Without any more information, this is merely a potential story... I wouldn't bother sending e-mails to the school. You may want to consider first:
The teacher is an idiot
Thirty-five or so years ago, while I was in high school, our "math lab" had an ASR-33 connected via dial-up to a Honeywell DDP-516 timesharing system in a nearby state. Another student who was at the terminal wanted to make a punch tape copy of his program and he asked me how to create the leader. I told him to press the "here is" button to have the terminal feed the tape. A "teacher" immediately told me, "the proper way is to press 'rubout' and 'repeat' at the same time." I replied that either worked. She then immediately threatened to take me to the head of the math department for insubordination.
She has forevermore been my example of what not to do with students. Sometimes they do know more than you.
Fortunately, I also had some real gems. My eleventh grade math teacher once challenged us by giving us some of her college work for extra credit. I stayed up all night working those ten problems. With circles under my eyes the next day, she took the time to go over my work after class. She looked at problem #3 and told me that I had gotten it wrong. I looked at her paper, saw where she had made a mistake, and showed her. She thought for a second then said, "You're right." Miss Kearns, to this day I still love you!
Weezul wrote; Isn't the iPhone inherently "badly integrated" with itself because it lacks cut & paste?
John Gruber, of daringfireball.net, makes the argument that "it's good that the 1.0 iPhone shipped without them", even though he wishes this functionality were present.
hobo sapiens asked: Just one thing I want to ask you about: you say you do not believe in free will? Really? Yes./. probably isn't the best place for a course in Reformed soteriology; if you're familiar with the five points of Calvinism, the T (total depravity) and U (unconditional election) imply no free will when it comes to salvation.
What then, in God's eyes, is the value of our worship if were pre-programmed already to serve him (or not to?) "Programming", in this sense, is nothing more than the nature of a thing. My golden retriever delights in being with me because it is her nature to do so. I don't discount her affection because of this. We were created to acknowledge God's worth (which is what worship is). When we don't do so it simply demonstrates how broken we are. When we do so, it is a reflection of the new nature that God gives to those who believe.
Isn't that like receiving a gift that someone was forced to give you? I think you mean to say, "isn't that like receiving a gift that you were forced to take?" (i.e., the receiver is forced, not the giver. Nobody forces God). To this I would say that "force" isn't the right metaphor. God no more "forces" people than an author "forces" his characters, or one's eyes "force" one to see when the lights are turned on in a pitch black room, or Lazarus was "forced" to come alive.
Conversely, why did his law to Israel condemn murderers (for example)? Law (whether the Decalogue, the entire 613 commandments, or a secular law) condemns everyone, not just murderers. As Paul states in Romans, the purpose of (the) Law is to condemn (e.g. Rom 3:18-19) and, in fact, increases sin (Rom 5:20a).
Because without free will, don't you remove accountability? Or are you able to somehow reconcile lack of free will and personal accountability? Most people claim that free will is necessary for God to hold man accountable for sin. I don't agree with this position. IMO, we are accountable by divine fiat, i.e. we are accountable because God says that we are. This, of course, results in the "but that's not fair" response, which takes us down the rabbit hole of just what "fair" is and who gets to define it. I claim that God's notion of fairness is not our notion. But that's a whole different long topic.
Ian wrote: I wish you'd show this passage to the evangelicals, doesn't "the weeds first" bit contradict their bizarre 'Rapture' doctrine?
That's a good question. I'd have to answer "not necessarily." I assume you're referring to the end-time view popularized by the awful "Left Behind" series by LaHaye and Jenkins which is technically known as pre-tribulational pre-millennialism. In this view, the "rapture" occurs, where Christians are "caught up" to be with Christ [1], followed by a 7 year period of worldwide tribulation which culminates in the defeat of the Anti-Christ and the physical return of Christ to the earth. Then Christ begins His 1,000 year reign. At the end of the millennium there is a final battle between God and His opponents. Then comes the eternal state.
So, if one holds to this sequence of events [2], then one could argue that the separation of the wheat from the chaff occurs at the end of the millennial reign after the final battle and right before the eternal state.
----- [1] The term "rapture" comes from the Latin translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 [NRSV]: "Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." I'm told that the Latin for "caught up" gives us the English word "rapture". [2] In the interest of full disclosure, I don't. I used to, but I've since moved on to amillennialism with partial preterist leanings.
I didn't say that. Up to 27% of sucralose is absorbed by the body; there are now at least two published articles in the medical literature concerning sucralose as a possible migraine trigger, along with a great deal of anecdotal evidence. I'd like to see a double-blind study done on sucralose with those who claim it causes migraines.
badasscat wrote Your headaches drinking diet soda were likely caused by either caffeine (which restricts blood flow) or the placebo effect. (Nobody ever thinks they're affected by the placebo effect - as if they're somehow smarter than everybody else. But the placebo effect exists, it's well documented and acknowledged by every reputable scientist.)
Consume Splenda, the headaches start. Stop Splenda, the headaches cease. Knowing that correlation is not causation, I tried it again. Same results. It isn't caffeine because that's constant. It isn't something other than Splenda because I only changed one variable. As for the placebo effect, Splenda isn't chemically inert.
Frostalicious wrote I understood that fundamentalist christians believe that you need to accept Christ as your personal saviour in order to be saved. That's what most Christians (fundamentalist or not) would say. However, I'm not sure they know what they mean. "Accept" has at least 7 different shades of meaning in my on-line dictionary and I'm fuzzy on what the concept of "personal saviour" entrails. Is that like a "personal trainer"? It's almost as vacuous as the "ask Jesus into your heart" formulation. The core tenet is "He died for our sins, He rose from the dead." Those two parts pack quite a wallop.
I understood this as to be a test of faith. I suppose it could be, but I've never really viewed it this way. All of us have faith -- the atheist just as much as the theist. We all have "self-evident" truths which require no proof. It's just that some of these self-evident truths are wrong. So the Gospel is more like God calling us to Truth.
You have free will so you have to choose to accept Christ. I happen to be in the Reformed camp (i.e. a Calvinist), so I don't hold to the notion that man has free will.
Your last sentence suggests it may actually be God who chooses. And so it is. "For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.... So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses." [Romans 9:15,16,18]. Of course, these are some of the most hotly contested passages in all of Scripture.
Frostalicious remarked So basically you believe in the literal truth of the Bible... I don't think you know me well enough to really know what I believe. For the record, however, I hold that parts of the Bible are literal, parts are metaphor, parts are allegory. I might even allow that parts are fiction, i.e. a story used to communicate some truth about God and/or man.
So are missionaries behaving improperly? Depends on their behavior. But to the question I think you're asking, all Christians are commanded to share the Gospel (literally "good news"), just as we are commanded to leave the results up to God.
Is one supposed to spontaneously discover Christ unprompted? Well, this assumes that the only way someone can discover Christ is through human agency. It's certainly one way, but God is quite capable of speaking for Himself. I have friends who work in the Middle East. God is doing things there that they couldn't possibly do via direct revelation of His Son.
jkorz wrote: This is talking about the catholic church. The catholic church is NOT mainstream Christian thought.
First, you meant to say "the Roman Catholic church". "catholic" means universal; all Christians are members of the "universal church". Second, what do you hold to be "mainstream" Christian thought? As a Protestant who has read the Catechism of the RCC, I would say that I agree with probably 70% of it. And both groups agree on what St. Paul wrote: "For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve...."
Frostalicious wrote: I think the main problem is that if you are a fundamentalist, then that neccesitates that you either try to force those beliefs onto others, or kill all nonbelievers.
There's a germ of truth in this, but it isn't the whole story. It is true that the only thing one can do with an enemy is to kill them or convert them. That's why there is a heaven and a hell. But there are two missing parts to your statement. First, Christianity is first and foremost about right belief, one of the central tenets being that Jesus physically rose from the dead. Not only must this be freely believed, I don't know of any way to force someone into believing this. I suppose that someone can be forced to say it, but one must really mean it. Therefore, in Christianity, a forced conversion is no conversion at all (and, yes, I'm aware that this hasn't always been followed. Not all Christians are right.) Second, your statement assumes that we get to be the judge. The parable of the "wheat and the tares" (e.g. Mt 13:24-30) shows that this isn't the case. In particular, God commands us to "Let both of them [believers and nonbelievers] grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
So can someone show me how this number is arrived at?
Sure. Long version. The short version is that you total up all of the ages of the people in the Biblical genealogies from Adam to a known date; assume that there are few gaps in the genealogies and, voila, you have the earth created sometime in 4004BC. There are also some calculations which equate the 6 days of creation to 1,000 years, but I'm not that familiar with them, especially how they manage to find the starting point.
why there are bumfights between bible thumpers and scientists three times a day over these things has always mystified me
First, if this can be proven, it will be a case of science agreeing with the Bible. I believe the passage is Rom 4:17, "God... calls into existence the things that do not exist." Oh, good, Wikipedia has an article on this.
Second, the "bumfights" generally consist of only two arguments:
Argument the first: Theist: God did it... Scientist: "God has nothing to do with it (or wasn't necessary, or...)". Argument the second: Theist: The Bible says x is y. Scientist: x is z. (e.g. The earth is 6,000 / 4.5 billion years old).
Parents buying computers for their kids for college/hs are going to care about one thing: Price
Some things are more important than money. I love my children and that's why my two sons, who are both in college, have 15" PowerBooks and my 14 yr. old daughter has my old 17" PowerBook.
Well, I loves me too, that's why I have the shiny new 17" MacBook Pro.
Slashdot Mirror
In the US, its not fashionable to know math or science. It's not fashionable to work hard.
And why is this? What has changed about out culture that these things are no longer valued? The secularists among us might argue that "religion" has affected math and science, but I think this a false argument. Speaking to what I know from personal experience, Christians are opposed to naturalism, but not math or science. My middle child, for example, is pursing advanced studies in MEMS. And, certainly, there used to be something called the Protestant work ethic.
'Being liked' is in. Girls are encouraged to look pretty and boys are encouraged to be force wielding leaders (to later wind up as PHB's?).
So what caused the shift from an emphasis on inward appearance to outward? Why force as a tool of leadership, instead of love?
Look at kids' movies and TV shows. The message is that all you have to do is believe in yourself. Nothing else.
Hmmm... +5 Insigtful if I had mod points.
How did this tired chestnut become a meme among supposedly smart people? "God did it" refers to agency, just like "time and chance" refers to agency. The "how" is a completely different matter. As a child, I remember asking my father, "How did you do that, Dad"? If anything, it whetted my curiosity to know more.
Whatever position one holds on the "irreducible complexity" argument, the argument is not "therefore we can learn no more." Rather, the argument is "the agency of time, chance, and unguided selection couldn't be the cause of such-and-such an object."
Creationists and ID people have never needed time to come up with ways to bury their heads in the sand. The people who subscribe to it never go to outside sources again to see if the party line has been refuted so even outright lies are usually good enough.
I'm sorry, but just where and when was "God created the heavens and the earth" refuted?
Look at the recent thing with bacterial evolution, when frozen samples were right there and the creationists in general just decided to ignore that fact.
Again, what fact was ignored? Nobody that I know of argues against "living things change over time."
Read C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet for one take on "the perpetuation of life."
The government will be involved whether we like it or not. What Caesar pays for, Caesar wants a say in. Once the government is involved in universal health care, expenses will have to be controlled, and this will be just one of many techniques available. Even if you don't want to practice embryo selection you may not have the choice, unless you can bear the cost yourself.
If the Japanese penalize employers if their employees are overweight, you can bet the government will penalize parents whose children might end up costing them more.
The difference is that they're now policing thought.
Now? Hate crimes legislation was a precursor to this.
So how would we be able to tell if our universe was a simulation?
Another way is if the author(s) of the simulation "step(s) inside" the simulation.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
Thirty-five or so years ago, while I was in high school, our "math lab" had an ASR-33 connected via dial-up to a Honeywell DDP-516 timesharing system in a nearby state. Another student who was at the terminal wanted to make a punch tape copy of his program and he asked me how to create the leader. I told him to press the "here is" button to have the terminal feed the tape. A "teacher" immediately told me, "the proper way is to press 'rubout' and 'repeat' at the same time." I replied that either worked. She then immediately threatened to take me to the head of the math department for insubordination.
She has forevermore been my example of what not to do with students. Sometimes they do know more than you.
Fortunately, I also had some real gems. My eleventh grade math teacher once challenged us by giving us some of her college work for extra credit. I stayed up all night working those ten problems. With circles under my eyes the next day, she took the time to go over my work after class. She looked at problem #3 and told me that I had gotten it wrong. I looked at her paper, saw where she had made a mistake, and showed her. She thought for a second then said, "You're right." Miss Kearns, to this day I still love you!
It's what they do, it's what they said they'll do, and nobody ought to be surprised that they'll do it.
Are you kidding? Since when do parents (or politicians) really carry through with their threats? Meaning what you say is a rapidly dying practice.
Weezul wrote; Isn't the iPhone inherently "badly integrated" with itself because it lacks cut & paste?
John Gruber, of daringfireball.net, makes the argument that "it's good that the 1.0 iPhone shipped without them", even though he wishes this functionality were present.
hobo sapiens asked: Just one thing I want to ask you about: you say you do not believe in free will? Really? /. probably isn't the best place for a course in Reformed soteriology; if you're familiar with the five points of Calvinism, the T (total depravity) and U (unconditional election) imply no free will when it comes to salvation.
Yes.
What then, in God's eyes, is the value of our worship if were pre-programmed already to serve him (or not to?)
"Programming", in this sense, is nothing more than the nature of a thing. My golden retriever delights in being with me because it is her nature to do so. I don't discount her affection because of this. We were created to acknowledge God's worth (which is what worship is). When we don't do so it simply demonstrates how broken we are. When we do so, it is a reflection of the new nature that God gives to those who believe.
Isn't that like receiving a gift that someone was forced to give you?
I think you mean to say, "isn't that like receiving a gift that you were forced to take?" (i.e., the receiver is forced, not the giver. Nobody forces God). To this I would say that "force" isn't the right metaphor. God no more "forces" people than an author "forces" his characters, or one's eyes "force" one to see when the lights are turned on in a pitch black room, or Lazarus was "forced" to come alive.
Conversely, why did his law to Israel condemn murderers (for example)?
Law (whether the Decalogue, the entire 613 commandments, or a secular law) condemns everyone, not just murderers. As Paul states in Romans, the purpose of (the) Law is to condemn (e.g. Rom 3:18-19) and, in fact, increases sin (Rom 5:20a).
Because without free will, don't you remove accountability? Or are you able to somehow reconcile lack of free will and personal accountability?
Most people claim that free will is necessary for God to hold man accountable for sin. I don't agree with this position. IMO, we are accountable by divine fiat, i.e. we are accountable because God says that we are. This, of course, results in the "but that's not fair" response, which takes us down the rabbit hole of just what "fair" is and who gets to define it. I claim that God's notion of fairness is not our notion. But that's a whole different long topic.
Ian wrote: I wish you'd show this passage to the evangelicals, doesn't "the weeds first" bit contradict their bizarre 'Rapture' doctrine?
That's a good question. I'd have to answer "not necessarily." I assume you're referring to the end-time view popularized by the awful "Left Behind" series by LaHaye and Jenkins which is technically known as pre-tribulational pre-millennialism. In this view, the "rapture" occurs, where Christians are "caught up" to be with Christ [1], followed by a 7 year period of worldwide tribulation which culminates in the defeat of the Anti-Christ and the physical return of Christ to the earth. Then Christ begins His 1,000 year reign. At the end of the millennium there is a final battle between God and His opponents. Then comes the eternal state.
So, if one holds to this sequence of events [2], then one could argue that the separation of the wheat from the chaff occurs at the end of the millennial reign after the final battle and right before the eternal state.
-----
[1] The term "rapture" comes from the Latin translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 [NRSV]: "Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." I'm told that the Latin for "caught up" gives us the English word "rapture".
[2] In the interest of full disclosure, I don't. I used to, but I've since moved on to amillennialism with partial preterist leanings.
I didn't say that. Up to 27% of sucralose is absorbed by the body; there are now at least two published articles in the medical literature concerning sucralose as a possible migraine trigger, along with a great deal of anecdotal evidence. I'd like to see a double-blind study done on sucralose with those who claim it causes migraines.
badasscat wrote Your headaches drinking diet soda were likely caused by either caffeine (which restricts blood flow) or the placebo effect. (Nobody ever thinks they're affected by the placebo effect - as if they're somehow smarter than everybody else. But the placebo effect exists, it's well documented and acknowledged by every reputable scientist.)
Consume Splenda, the headaches start. Stop Splenda, the headaches cease. Knowing that correlation is not causation, I tried it again. Same results. It isn't caffeine because that's constant. It isn't something other than Splenda because I only changed one variable. As for the placebo effect, Splenda isn't chemically inert.
Sucralose, the sweetener in Splenda, gives me migraines while Aspartame does not.
Frostalicious wrote I understood that fundamentalist christians believe that you need to accept Christ as your personal saviour in order to be saved.
... So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses." [Romans 9:15,16,18]. Of course, these are some of the most hotly contested passages in all of Scripture.
That's what most Christians (fundamentalist or not) would say. However, I'm not sure they know what they mean. "Accept" has at least 7 different shades of meaning in my on-line dictionary and I'm fuzzy on what the concept of "personal saviour" entrails. Is that like a "personal trainer"? It's almost as vacuous as the "ask Jesus into your heart" formulation. The core tenet is "He died for our sins, He rose from the dead." Those two parts pack quite a wallop.
I understood this as to be a test of faith.
I suppose it could be, but I've never really viewed it this way. All of us have faith -- the atheist just as much as the theist. We all have "self-evident" truths which require no proof. It's just that some of these self-evident truths are wrong. So the Gospel is more like God calling us to Truth.
You have free will so you have to choose to accept Christ.
I happen to be in the Reformed camp (i.e. a Calvinist), so I don't hold to the notion that man has free will.
Your last sentence suggests it may actually be God who chooses.
And so it is. "For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.
Am I misunderstanding?
Not at all.
Frostalicious wrote Of course when you misquoted me ...
You're right, I did. I missed the word "can". My apologies and thanks for pointing it out.
Frostalicious remarked So basically you believe in the literal truth of the Bible...
I don't think you know me well enough to really know what I believe. For the record, however, I hold that parts of the Bible are literal, parts are metaphor, parts are allegory. I might even allow that parts are fiction, i.e. a story used to communicate some truth about God and/or man.
So are missionaries behaving improperly?
Depends on their behavior. But to the question I think you're asking, all Christians are commanded to share the Gospel (literally "good news"), just as we are commanded to leave the results up to God.
Is one supposed to spontaneously discover Christ unprompted?
Well, this assumes that the only way someone can discover Christ is through human agency. It's certainly one way, but God is quite capable of speaking for Himself. I have friends who work in the Middle East. God is doing things there that they couldn't possibly do via direct revelation of His Son.
jkorz wrote: This is talking about the catholic church. The catholic church is NOT mainstream Christian thought.
..."
First, you meant to say "the Roman Catholic church". "catholic" means universal; all Christians are members of the "universal church". Second, what do you hold to be "mainstream" Christian thought? As a Protestant who has read the Catechism of the RCC, I would say that I agree with probably 70% of it. And both groups agree on what St. Paul wrote: "For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Frostalicious wrote: I think the main problem is that if you are a fundamentalist, then that neccesitates that you either try to force those beliefs onto others, or kill all nonbelievers.
There's a germ of truth in this, but it isn't the whole story. It is true that the only thing one can do with an enemy is to kill them or convert them. That's why there is a heaven and a hell. But there are two missing parts to your statement. First, Christianity is first and foremost about right belief, one of the central tenets being that Jesus physically rose from the dead. Not only must this be freely believed, I don't know of any way to force someone into believing this. I suppose that someone can be forced to say it, but one must really mean it. Therefore, in Christianity, a forced conversion is no conversion at all (and, yes, I'm aware that this hasn't always been followed. Not all Christians are right.) Second, your statement assumes that we get to be the judge. The parable of the "wheat and the tares" (e.g. Mt 13:24-30) shows that this isn't the case. In particular, God commands us to "Let both of them [believers and nonbelievers] grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
Surprise #2: The AppleTV doesn't require a "Widescreen TV" or an HDTV
So can someone show me how this number is arrived at?
Sure. Long version. The short version is that you total up all of the ages of the people in the Biblical genealogies from Adam to a known date; assume that there are few gaps in the genealogies and, voila, you have the earth created sometime in 4004BC. There are also some calculations which equate the 6 days of creation to 1,000 years, but I'm not that familiar with them, especially how they manage to find the starting point.
why there are bumfights between bible thumpers and scientists three times a day over these things has always mystified me
... calls into existence the things that do not exist." Oh, good, Wikipedia has an article on this.
...)".
First, if this can be proven, it will be a case of science agreeing with the Bible. I believe the passage is Rom 4:17, "God
Second, the "bumfights" generally consist of only two arguments:
Argument the first: Theist: God did it... Scientist: "God has nothing to do with it (or wasn't necessary, or
Argument the second: Theist: The Bible says x is y. Scientist: x is z. (e.g. The earth is 6,000 / 4.5 billion years old).
Parents buying computers for their kids for college/hs are going to care about one thing: Price
Some things are more important than money. I love my children and that's why my two sons, who are both in college, have 15" PowerBooks and my 14 yr. old daughter has my old 17" PowerBook.
Well, I loves me too, that's why I have the shiny new 17" MacBook Pro.