The meaning of the word "government" is different between different countries. My understanding is that what's called the "government" in the UK is roughly equivalent to the executive branch of the government in the US. In the US, the courts are indeed a branch of the government (the judicial branch); in the UK, the courts are not part of what they call the government. I'm not aware that they have a name for what we in the US call "the government".
I'm becoming increasingly persuaded that not everyone can know God. I wish you'd make your mind up, or at least stop contradicting the bible:
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9 (NIV), emphasis added I'm talking about the idea that unless you've been chosen in advance by God, you're not capable of believing that. If you've been chosen, and then you believe and confess, then you are saved. That's not a contradiction. I need to learn more about this issue, though.
BTW, you do know that the NIV is a dishonest translation of the bible? Get a good scholarly one based on the original Greek instead. Of course I know that; I quoted it because it's the most commonly used modern translation. But don't take the NIV's word for it! I gave you the reference; look it up yourself. Try this and this. If you think the meaning of the original Greek text differs significantly from the NIV in this particular passage, please feel free to suggest a better translation; otherwise there's not much point in complaining about it.
saying "gays are sinners, but we all are" is FAR better than "gays are sinners and must be punished". I completely agree. The idea that Christians should crusade against homosexuality is completely counter to Jesus' teachings. Why should we treat gays worse than we treat people who violate the Ten Commandments? Adultery isn't generally considered acceptable by most people, but nobody rants and raves about how adulterers are going to burn in hell. If you're going to rank sins in order of severity (which I believe is a mistake anyway), surely breaking any of the Ten Commandments should rank up there pretty high, with gay sex somewhere down toward the bottom of the list, a little bit above wearing cotton/polyester blends.
you can't have it both ways: Paul proclaiming no man is without sin, yet accepting his letters as unchallengable divinely inspired doctrine. Are you suggesting that if Paul is not without sin, his writings cannot be divinely inspired? Obviously if that's the case, you can't accept the authority of any part of the Bible, since the whole thing was written by sinful men. Or are you suggesting that some men are completely without sin? I don't buy it.
No, I was referring to the parts of the Bible that aren't stories. The Epistles, for example, which often attempt to correct misunderstandings that people still misunderstand today.
Apparently all freshwater fish have evolved from saltwater fish that were able to survive the Flood, or something, because Noah didn't take fish on the Ark.
As others have pointed out, a restart is required after this update, but it won't restart automatically, it pops up a dialog box and you have to click a button. After you do so it restarts... but then, after the system has started booting but before the login, it automatically reboots again, with no warning or explanation. That's what it did for me. If that's what happened, tell her it's nothing to worry about; the update made something run after the reboot that required a second reboot, but now that it's finished, it won't happen again (until Apple releases another update that does the same thing).
Anyone else know more about this? I'm vaguely curious, but too lazy to actually look at the installer package.
I thought both we and the garden were perfect, why would anyone complain about anything? Apparently we're only perfect when we're not being tempted not to be.
A truly literal interpretation of the Bible can be very dangerous. God said (Genesis 1,29) "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed , which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat". OK, let's see those fundie boys eat some poisonous fruits, please... They weren't poisonous before the Fall ("Cursed is the ground because of you... it will produce thorns and thistles for you"). Of course this is my non-literal interpretation.;-)
By the way, the idea that the universe is 6,000 years old is based on those genealogies, so if the GP is correct about "begat", that date could be a bit skewed.
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. For reference:
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9 (NIV), emphasis added
I'm becoming increasingly persuaded that not everyone can know God. Apparently, God has chosen certain people - "the elect" - to become Christians, and the rest of you are pretty much screwed. So, trying to force our beliefs on you isn't going to accomplish anything. We still need to share the Gospel, because doing so glorifies God (and because we have no way of knowing whether you're a member of the elect or not, and of course because God has commanded us to do it), but it has to stop there.
Of course, one can go to certain parts of Leviticus and say "Hey, here it says homosexuals are an abomination in the eye of the Lord, let me not be friends with that gay guy," and still be using the Bible for inspiration. Anyone who says that is definitely cherry-picking. Consider what kinds of people Jesus wanted to be friends with: prostitutes and corrupt tax collectors.
The Bible is a series of stories that advocate particular moral choices, and seek to make those moral choices attractive. It sounds like there are some pretty large chunks of the Bible you haven't read.
God doesn't conform to anything but God. God's nature is constant and unchanging: He has always been, and always will be. God's Word is a reflection of the nature of God, revealed to us. The mistake many people make is expecting God to conform to their own flawed interpretation of the Bible. If you can interpret it correctly (rarely easy, and not always possible), it fits God perfectly.
It's ok to just be nice. Do good deeds, live a decent life with out looking to a God/Gods for the OK or to give you reason. We believe that to go to heaven, that's just it. Here's why you're wrong:
"Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." - Romans 3:20-23 (NIV)
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." - Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)
You cannot earn your way into Heaven. You have sinned; you deserve death (spiritual death, eternal separation from God, i.e. Hell). Nothing you can do can possibly make up for that. No one will be declared righteous by observing the law. It's pretty clear. The ONLY way to Salvation is to accept the free Gift that has been offered.
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9 (NIV)
"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" - John 14:6 (NIV)
nice revisionism, but it seems to contradict some list I heard of that had a load of commands in it, That list was only given because people are stupid, and "just love everybody" wasn't specific enough.
plus the entire freaking history of christianity. unless I've misunderstood you and the reason you claim people are happier worshipping the bible's god is that historically if you didn't you'd be persecuted and/or tortured and/or killed. No, that's not what he meant - that stuff sucks. You're supposed to worship God because of love, not because of fear. Yes, we're sinners, but we're also God's creation, and He loves us anyway, even though our sin precludes an intimate relationship.
What's a "kind", you might ask? No one knows.... Plus, standard biological nomenclature isn't based on evolutionary criteria, so it isn't clear to me that equating a "kind" with a phylum or order is meaningful in this context. I agree that the meaning of the word "kind" is rather vague, and I think this is a particularly important point when discussing Noah's Ark. It has been argued that what the Bible describes in Genesis 6 is completely impossible, because there are millions of difference species of animals and there wouldn't have been room for them... but the word "species" and our current scientific understanding of it didn't exist when the Bible was written.
"Take with you seven* of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth." - Genesis 7:2-3 (NIV)
* an NIV footnote suggests this might actually mean seven pairs Creationists believe that all animals living today evolved (yes, I used that word) from those Noah brought on the Ark 4,000 years ago. If you consider that wolves and poodles both evolved from a common ancestor (though largely, in the case of dogs, through artificial rather than natural selection, i.e. deliberate breeding) then the number of animals that would have had to be present on the Ark is significantly less than the variety of animals we see today.
As an old Mac user, I do want all my removable media to eject via software... but I want the eject button on the drive to tell the OS to unmount and eject the disc. Somehow Windows manages to get this right; Linux and Mac OS X do not.
Sure, that would be a problem. I wasn't suggesting that students should be spoon-fed something to type in more than once or twice before the real lessons begin. Anybody who thinks that IS the lesson should be kept away from children.
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The meaning of the word "government" is different between different countries. My understanding is that what's called the "government" in the UK is roughly equivalent to the executive branch of the government in the US. In the US, the courts are indeed a branch of the government (the judicial branch); in the UK, the courts are not part of what they call the government. I'm not aware that they have a name for what we in the US call "the government".
Here's AIG's answer.
FYI, it's called a pepper mill.
No, I was referring to the parts of the Bible that aren't stories. The Epistles, for example, which often attempt to correct misunderstandings that people still misunderstand today.
Apparently all freshwater fish have evolved from saltwater fish that were able to survive the Flood, or something, because Noah didn't take fish on the Ark.
I think I know what she's talking about.
As others have pointed out, a restart is required after this update, but it won't restart automatically, it pops up a dialog box and you have to click a button. After you do so it restarts... but then, after the system has started booting but before the login, it automatically reboots again, with no warning or explanation. That's what it did for me. If that's what happened, tell her it's nothing to worry about; the update made something run after the reboot that required a second reboot, but now that it's finished, it won't happen again (until Apple releases another update that does the same thing).
Anyone else know more about this? I'm vaguely curious, but too lazy to actually look at the installer package.
Read Matthew 23 for a pretty good idea of what Jesus thought of these people.
By the way, the idea that the universe is 6,000 years old is based on those genealogies, so if the GP is correct about "begat", that date could be a bit skewed.
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9 (NIV), emphasis added
I'm becoming increasingly persuaded that not everyone can know God. Apparently, God has chosen certain people - "the elect" - to become Christians, and the rest of you are pretty much screwed. So, trying to force our beliefs on you isn't going to accomplish anything. We still need to share the Gospel, because doing so glorifies God (and because we have no way of knowing whether you're a member of the elect or not, and of course because God has commanded us to do it), but it has to stop there.
See John 6:44 and 6:65, for starters.
God doesn't conform to anything but God. God's nature is constant and unchanging: He has always been, and always will be. God's Word is a reflection of the nature of God, revealed to us. The mistake many people make is expecting God to conform to their own flawed interpretation of the Bible. If you can interpret it correctly (rarely easy, and not always possible), it fits God perfectly.
A theology student recently told me about a question that a professor asked a class:
What is God like?
Various students tried to suggest answers to this question, but the professor's response was something like this:
God isn't like anything. Nothing else can compare to God. Don't try to put God in a box. Don't try to limit God. God is bigger than that.
"Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." - Romans 3:20-23 (NIV)
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." - Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)
You cannot earn your way into Heaven. You have sinned; you deserve death (spiritual death, eternal separation from God, i.e. Hell). Nothing you can do can possibly make up for that. No one will be declared righteous by observing the law. It's pretty clear. The ONLY way to Salvation is to accept the free Gift that has been offered.
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9 (NIV)
"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" - John 14:6 (NIV)
Hope this helps!
* an NIV footnote suggests this might actually mean seven pairs Creationists believe that all animals living today evolved (yes, I used that word) from those Noah brought on the Ark 4,000 years ago. If you consider that wolves and poodles both evolved from a common ancestor (though largely, in the case of dogs, through artificial rather than natural selection, i.e. deliberate breeding) then the number of animals that would have had to be present on the Ark is significantly less than the variety of animals we see today.
As an old Mac user, I do want all my removable media to eject via software... but I want the eject button on the drive to tell the OS to unmount and eject the disc. Somehow Windows manages to get this right; Linux and Mac OS X do not.
Sure, that would be a problem. I wasn't suggesting that students should be spoon-fed something to type in more than once or twice before the real lessons begin. Anybody who thinks that IS the lesson should be kept away from children.