Re:Gamers never know what's good for them
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A Gamer's Manifesto
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it wouldn't be an issue if, next time you reloaded, the AI did something different and actually weren't where you thought they were. The problem with a really good AI would be that most engagments would usually turn into a bit of a standoff. First thing AI does on being fired upon is find cover, then call for assistance. The assistance would arrive and stay in cover while covering their partner and then would counter attack en mass depending upon the balance of forces as they saw it. I used to love playing multiplayer teams in Ghost Recon, but certain maps would result in stalemate as it could be very difficult to attack some positions, and equally difficult to attack from them. I remember some wonderfully tense battles where a desperate defence was required, but it would be very difficult to create enough different maps where the balance was right to create such tension, and still have a game which could have a plot and progression.
Perhaps that's the trick. A single player game with good AI would have to be designed like a multiplayer game, but the kind of standard FPS fare of 1 guy vs thousands of bots would be history.
OK Halley V is at 75:35'S 26:34W, Cape Horn is 56:30S 68:52W. That makes the distance 1705 miles. Can microwave work over that kind of distance and curvature?
That may be the case for normal people buying off the peg systems, but I have a cousin who is living on the Brunt ice shelf in antarctica, where the current temperature is -27C, several thousand miles from the next base, for 3 years, and we can have a two way video link using MSN messenger. Somehow I don't think they have a land line.
The only place where Intel is winning big in the performance stakes is in the mobile market with the Pentium M. AMD doesn't really have anything that can challenge it for low power and high performance right now.
Microsoft have been doing this for a while. By the time they released Windows Server 2003 they'd been running Microsoft.com on the platform with IIS 6 for 6 months. Not only do they eat their own dogfood, but they eat their own beta dogfood. To me that says confidence in the platform, which is what their customers want to hear. If they suffered a major hack or a site outage I might agree with you, but this is a server level platform and it must be stable and secure before release, and I'll bet they don't end up with egg on their faces.
I think that if you actually looked into it you'd find that microsoft does really rather extensive FMEA reviews, and furthermore provides quite a useful tool to help structure that process. One thing I can guarantee. Microsoft does more FMEA testing than Linus does. He just releases it to his army of fanatical beta testers and hope they find the problems, but then, he doesn't need to worry about his customers.
Actually several of the articles do mention heat and the answer is this. Total thermal output from the top end dual core opteron is no more than for the top end single core processor (95 watts max). This has been achieved by using more energy efficient (and slightly lower perfomance) transistor designs in certain areas. AMD appears not to be doing any thermal throttling either.
Wrong. It's very rare for a contract clause to be deemed non-binding, and even then usually only in extreme circumstances. Basically a consequence of freedom is a right to give up your legal rights, and that is the single purpose of a contract. If a contract could only restrict you to follow the existing law there would be no need for it.
Yeah, that's the yellowstone supervolcano. Its has errupted roughly every 620,000 years, and the last one was 640,000 years ago, and last time it errupted it poured out roughly 8000 times as much ash as Mount St. Helens did in the 1980 erruption. It is estimated that if it goes again in the near future it would cover most of the US within 1000 miles of yellowstone in a thick layer of ash, killing more that 20 million Americans. It would also cause a global temperature drop of up to 10 degees C causing a new mini ice age for as long as 10 years during which time much of the worlds population would simply starve to death. I suspect we would be lucky to see as few as 1 Billion fatalities worldwide, together with the massive social and political fallout that would bring.
The problem is that no one could know whether attempting to cause a small erruption now would in fact just trigger the real thing, because vulcanology is not an exact science, and we simply don't know enough to do such a thing.
That's been the character of every US drama show for the last 20 years or more. You guys have always made heros of cowboys, maverick soldiers and cops who know without any evidence whatsoever who the guilty man is, and then set out to prove it, and if necessary break the law to do it.
The nice thing about fiction is that practices like that tend to work, where they only produce corruption in real life.
To be a little more contraversial, we Brits tend to stereotype Americans as that kind of cowboy. We see the high levels of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afganistan as a consequence of the attitude that those kind of shows, and American culture in general, tends to promote.
What I don't understand about pro-life groups is that they're the same people who want the death penalty and don't mind traumatising and demonising women who are already going through very difficult times. Surely a better option would be to put your money where you mouth and to compensate women to carry the baby to term and then put the child up for adoption, except where there would be danger to the womans health. That's the way Christians who care about such things ought to be acting. Love and support, and if neccesary self sacrifice to see the right thing done. If the woman still chooses to have an abortion the Christian should remain to offer what emotional and other support is required. That's not the same as saying abortion is OK, just that we are all sinners and that the woman is seriously in need of spiritual guidance and support. You've still got to be there not judging.
Wikipedia is great isn't it? I too found the fideism page and found it to be largely in line with my beliefs to the extent that I often describe myself as a fideist. It's like the babelfish disproving the existance of God by proving his existance. Proof denies faith.
What I don't quite understand is how precisely you can admittedly surrender your reason and adopt faith on an issue such as this, is it out of a desire for completeness? A savage belief that there must be something more than what we currently see because otherwise it'd be too unbearable to contemplate
Good question. I think that the reason I went looking for God lies in the sense of dissatisfaction with the possibility of this being it. If there is no God then we have no free will, there is no absolute morality, love is just a chemical inbalance and evil people will face no judgement. The universe is a cruel and unfeeling place governed by a random set of laws and chaos theory, where we are no more important than grains of interstellar dust. Finally, there is no life after death and our lives are meaningless, and so are everyone elses. When people die, it's not just them moving on, it's that their personality simply ceases to be and there is nothing left. If there is no God, then what is stopping us from fullfilling our darkest desires, and why should we consider the hopes and fears of anyone else. In my view, atheism can easily lead to sadism, or at least heavy hedonism. When I think of things like that I get a sense of what it must be like to be in the Total Perspective Vortex, and yes I do find that almost unbearable.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn argument is quite compelling except for one thing. Faith in an IPU does not change millions of people lives for the better.
When you look at the happiness or otherwise of those people who live like there is no God and for their own gain and pleasure, celebrities, certain high profile sports stars and the super rich, it is amazing to see how many have a wretched private lives. People like Howard Hughes and Maroline Monroe spring to mind, who live the life many of us dream of, yet are deeply unhappy in all their wealth. On the other hand look at the lives of people who live for God and by the words of the sermon on the mount.
* Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 3)
* Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land. (Verse 4)
* Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Verse 5)
* Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. (Verse 6)
* Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (Verse 7)
* Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. (Verse 8)
* Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Verse 9)
* Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 10)
People like Mother Teresa and countless missionaries and care workers who sacrfice their own wellbeing for others live lives full of joy and satisfaction, despite not having all the things that people desire.
If Jesus' words were not true and there was no God, then why would fullfilling all our earthly desires simply make us miserable, and not having them make us joyous? I think this testifies to the inhuman wisdom and truth of Jesus' words.
Why did I choose to set aside reason in this question? Because I wanted the joy that these people have, and in less that 12 hours after I took my leap of faith I had it in bucket loads, and I still have it today, over a year on.
I'm not arguing against reason per say, and I am a software engineer by trade and a physicist by training so I know and understand about reason in scientific terms.
If you look at Genesis it is important to realise that it is not really saying that the universe was literally created in six days. We can tell this because the structure of the book is that of an jewish form of poetry and certain things are mentioned symbolic numbers of times. What Genesis is saying is that God created the universe and that He created it so we could live in it. That makes it dramatically different to all the contemporary creation myths and so the start of Genesis can be understood as a story designed to debunk those other myths. Personally I am a evolutionary creationist (look it up in wikipedia), so I believe pretty much in your cosmic snooker shot, and so I see God reveals himself through the wonders of science and through spiritual means in parallel.
All I am saying about reason is that it has it's limits and that some things are fundamentally unprovable, like the origin of the universe. That is where I think faith must begin. I found that when I reached that crunch point that I was scared to let go of the security of rational thought, but at the same time I was deeply frustrated that I couldn't prove the existance of God one way or the other, and I knew that my fear of losing face or of becoming one of those christian weirdo's was stopping me looking for the answer.
the one that appears the easiest to follow and the most culturally convenient for you with regards to your geopolitical station
I live in the UK, and I suspect it is much like Australia where agnosticsicm or even just willful ignorance is the culturally acceptable thing to do. Actually having an opinion on religion makes you some kind of nut, so it's not easy.
OK, OK. Nice sketch, apart from the global domination line, and I know that GWB's plan, but I think he could do with reading a little wider.
I'm gonna change tack here slightly because it's clear that trying to argue for Jesus with someone who isn't even all that keen on the concept of God is not easy ground.
I'd like to explain my motives for this conversation, and it's not to beat you into submission or to allow me to say "told-you-so" or anything.
When I look around at the world and see crime and pain and suffering, much of it inflicted in cruel and imaginative ways by people on other people, I can't help but feel deep in my soul how wrong that is. That somehow life was never meant to be like that, and if only everyone could recognise within themselves what life was supposed to be about then the world would be a much nicer place. Why do we have compassion for people we've never met, when a truly rational perspective would be that the more people get killed, the more space and resources there are for me and my relatives? The recent tsunami provoked an enourmous outpouring of generosity and compassion for our fellow men, but why should we care if we are just animals driven by a competative erge to spread our own genes?
In a world without meaning, where do our common values and sense of right and wrong come from?
Do you believe we have free will? If we are just biological machines as some biologists would claim, then is free will merely a figment of our imagination?
I say no. When I look out at the universe and wonder about how it all began all those billions of years ago, and then think about how small and insignificant we are, I'm left to wonder how it is that we can choose how we live this short time we spend on this planet. For me I look out and I see the glory and power of an omnipotent God, and then I look close and I see how amazing it is that He created all the universe so that He could give us the freedom to choose to love Him, or to reject Him. How much must God love us and how important each and every one of must be to Him, for Him to go to such lengths to create beings that would love Him the way he loves us. Freely.
THAT is why I expend effort trying to introduce you to your maker. He loves you for all your flaws and He would gain great pleasure from you returning that love. I act out of love for God and try to do what would please Him, because what pleases Him also pleases me. I also act out of love for you too, because even though I have no idea who you are, I'd love for you to feel the joy, wonder and awe that I feel today, but that I didn't feel just over a year ago before I decided to put aside my pride in my own intelectual abilities, and decided to find out where faith led.
Now I know you're going to say I'm a nut, but if there were more nuts like me around the world would be a better place, and that in itself is kinda interesting, if the world makes any sense.
nonsense. There is no absolute proof of anything so we all put faith is stuff every day. Your chair for example. Before you sat on it you had faith that it would take your weight.
hats been proven to have sections redacted (reincarnation anyone?) What are you talking about?
Come back when you've spent time actually trying to prove that the Bible is false, or even substantially different from the very early writings when people reading them would have known some of the key characters in person and could have asked them whether these things were true.
By the way, that's how science works. I state that something is true and you have to prove it is false. Belief in God may require faith but the consistancy of the Bible can be challenged, and has withstood better minds than yours for thousands of years. In the end it comes down to this. Are you so proud and arrogant that you can say for certain that there is nothing about the universe you cannot explain? That is as much a position of faith as mine, and somewhat less sturdy, unless you can create a new universe and prove me wrong.
You're absolutely correct about the resurrection: Christianity lives and dies by the truth of that event, and the only evidence that it occured are the 500 eyewitnesses that would have been known to many of the early Christians, and those who had been in fear for their lives, but were suddenly given unheard of conviction, strength and power.
I can think of a credible explanation, just off the top of my head, he was a fraud and followed by a pack of religious fanatics Those were 10 a penny back then and none of those groups survive today. Killing the leader of a movement is usually a pretty good way to stop those things.
he was a spiritually enlightened mortal followed by a pack of religious fanatics
He never claimed to be such a man. He claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, the son of God, and He was either a nut or telling the truth. He said he would be killed and rise again, but his followers didn't understand. It wasn't what they expected the Messiah to be. They wanted him to be powerful and to free the Jews from Roman oppression, like all the other Messiah wannabes promised. Jesus was different and spent all his time royally pissing of the religious types by telling them that following God is not a box ticking exercise.
the story from back then is now so convoluted as to be meaningless We have far more, and better copies of the early Christian writings that other contemporary histories like Tacitus and Josephus. These books were not mass produced but copied by hand by scribes who faced serious punishment for errors or even death for deliberate changes, and the many copies we have are all in agreement. Furthermore, the dead sea scrolls includes a full copy of Issiah which predates Jesus and is still identical to the copies that are made today, to the extent that someone able to read the Jewish torah today, is able to read the text in those ancient scrolls as well.
This particular aspect of your religion I find downright offensive, nothing matters that you do on the planet, you could be a child molesting serial killer with a penchant for buggery, and as long as you accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, you'll be in the eternal grace of god.
Alternately, you can refuse this and be cast into a fiery pit of damnation for all eternity, regardless of how virtuous you have behaved in your life. I don't see how christians can seriously consider this to be "the good news". If it really was true, and for all the reasons above, I find that on the highly unlikely side of unlikely, it'd be a cruel sick cosmic joke.
You're not alone in finding this bit hard to swallow and somewhat outragous, but the bit you missed is that everyone deserves to go to hell, regardless of how good they appear to be. You, me, vicars, the Pope, presidents and drug dealers. No one can be made righteous by their own efforts and we all need Gods rescue plan, because all He really want is for us to love Him, and our sin simply stops us doing that.
It's not a licence to do what you want and then turn to Jesus later, because God is not a petty traffic cop. He knows what is in your heart and mind and there's no way to trick him. The good news is that, as St Paul puts it, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us".
Faithfulness is truthfulness in other translations. Longsuffering is patience and meekness means putting other peoples interests before your own.
Lastly, I didn't say faith was a virtue, but faithfulness is. Besides, you put faith in things every day. Right now your putting faith in the chair you're sitting on to hold your weight, and in the screen your looking at to reproduce accurately what I wrote. You're putting faith in thousands of scientists you never met for the operation of your computer etc. If you went around doubting everything you saw you'd not get very far.
Christianity is based upon the accepted historical fact that there was a guy called Jesus who lived in Israel about 2000 years ago. It's accepted by Jews, muslims etc that he was executed, but yet, a few days later his followers, who previously had been to scared to go outside, were standing in the temple proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead, and they were prepared to die for their belief. Now I don't know about you, but I've met too many people walking around who've been dead for 36 hours or so after being flogged, crucifed and stabbed with a spear. Now we can't say that this is all completely proven in a scientific sense, but what we can say is that the evidence for Jesus rising from the dead is good enough to stand in most courts of law.
Jesus fulfilled over 200 prophecies from the old Jewish Bible, including many that predicted his death on the cross hundreds of years before it happened.
This kind of thing doesn't just happen every day, and there are no really credible alternative explainations, so your left with acknowledging that Jesus was who he said he was, that is, the son of God.
Of course, what you do with that knowledge is a different thing. You can ignore it and hope that God didn't really mean the things He said; that the God who created the universe 15 billion years ago was lying to us, or you can believe the words of the only man ever for whom there is no body. He said that we can become right with the God of the universe by simply accepting that Jesus was the scapegoat for all our sins, and by responding in love. No matter what you've done or who you are, Jesus paid the price of justice that God demanded and bought your life with his suffering.
Why is this important? Because it means that righteousness is a gift and not something we cannot earn and boast about. Jesus reserved almost all of his critisism for the religious people of his day who wore their adherence to the rules as a badge, to the extent that the rules were more important than what they pointed to. They looked down on "sinners" like prostitutes and tax collectors, but those were the people Jesus spent time with. Today it might be drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and other undesirables.
Anyway, call me crazy if you like, but I say that trusting in Jesus makes life better. Someone who is close to Jesus will be full of love, joy (gladness of heart), peace, longsuffering (patience, having an even temper), gentleness (excellence in character, showing kindness), goodness (being good toward others), faithfulness, meekness (which is having no self interest) and temperance (self-control).
Clearly anyone who has those kind of personality traits is someone best avoided!
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it wouldn't be an issue if, next time you reloaded, the AI did something different and actually weren't where you thought they were. The problem with a really good AI would be that most engagments would usually turn into a bit of a standoff. First thing AI does on being fired upon is find cover, then call for assistance. The assistance would arrive and stay in cover while covering their partner and then would counter attack en mass depending upon the balance of forces as they saw it. I used to love playing multiplayer teams in Ghost Recon, but certain maps would result in stalemate as it could be very difficult to attack some positions, and equally difficult to attack from them. I remember some wonderfully tense battles where a desperate defence was required, but it would be very difficult to create enough different maps where the balance was right to create such tension, and still have a game which could have a plot and progression.
Perhaps that's the trick. A single player game with good AI would have to be designed like a multiplayer game, but the kind of standard FPS fare of 1 guy vs thousands of bots would be history.
OK Halley V is at 75:35'S 26:34W, Cape Horn is 56:30S 68:52W. That makes the distance 1705 miles. Can microwave work over that kind of distance and curvature?
That may be the case for normal people buying off the peg systems, but I have a cousin who is living on the Brunt ice shelf in antarctica, where the current temperature is -27C, several thousand miles from the next base, for 3 years, and we can have a two way video link using MSN messenger. Somehow I don't think they have a land line.
Not only do they use DLC on razor blades but they are sueing each other over the right to do it.
no, there is only circumstantial evidence that developing tech for producing gemstone quality diamonds is hazardous to you health.
You've probably already got diamond on your razor blades and on the surface of your hard disk, or rather DLC, but it's much the same stuff.
Did anyone else read "SSN" and think the students had managed to steal a nuclear submarine, or was it just me?
The only place where Intel is winning big in the performance stakes is in the mobile market with the Pentium M. AMD doesn't really have anything that can challenge it for low power and high performance right now.
Microsoft have been doing this for a while. By the time they released Windows Server 2003 they'd been running Microsoft.com on the platform with IIS 6 for 6 months. Not only do they eat their own dogfood, but they eat their own beta dogfood. To me that says confidence in the platform, which is what their customers want to hear. If they suffered a major hack or a site outage I might agree with you, but this is a server level platform and it must be stable and secure before release, and I'll bet they don't end up with egg on their faces.
I think that if you actually looked into it you'd find that microsoft does really rather extensive FMEA reviews, and furthermore provides quite a useful tool to help structure that process. One thing I can guarantee. Microsoft does more FMEA testing than Linus does. He just releases it to his army of fanatical beta testers and hope they find the problems, but then, he doesn't need to worry about his customers.
"Think of a number"
Actually several of the articles do mention heat and the answer is this. Total thermal output from the top end dual core opteron is no more than for the top end single core processor (95 watts max). This has been achieved by using more energy efficient (and slightly lower perfomance) transistor designs in certain areas. AMD appears not to be doing any thermal throttling either.
I disagree, and to prove the point, its "adequate".
See. My self esteem is propped up and while you may be hurt you've learnt something too.
Wrong. It's very rare for a contract clause to be deemed non-binding, and even then usually only in extreme circumstances. Basically a consequence of freedom is a right to give up your legal rights, and that is the single purpose of a contract. If a contract could only restrict you to follow the existing law there would be no need for it.
Good Omens by directed by Terry Gilliam! Now THAT I would pay to see.
Yeah, that's the yellowstone supervolcano. Its has errupted roughly every 620,000 years, and the last one was 640,000 years ago, and last time it errupted it poured out roughly 8000 times as much ash as Mount St. Helens did in the 1980 erruption. It is estimated that if it goes again in the near future it would cover most of the US within 1000 miles of yellowstone in a thick layer of ash, killing more that 20 million Americans. It would also cause a global temperature drop of up to 10 degees C causing a new mini ice age for as long as 10 years during which time much of the worlds population would simply starve to death. I suspect we would be lucky to see as few as 1 Billion fatalities worldwide, together with the massive social and political fallout that would bring.
The problem is that no one could know whether attempting to cause a small erruption now would in fact just trigger the real thing, because vulcanology is not an exact science, and we simply don't know enough to do such a thing.
That's been the character of every US drama show for the last 20 years or more. You guys have always made heros of cowboys, maverick soldiers and cops who know without any evidence whatsoever who the guilty man is, and then set out to prove it, and if necessary break the law to do it.
The nice thing about fiction is that practices like that tend to work, where they only produce corruption in real life.
To be a little more contraversial, we Brits tend to stereotype Americans as that kind of cowboy. We see the high levels of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afganistan as a consequence of the attitude that those kind of shows, and American culture in general, tends to promote.
Google gulp soft drinks beta programme!
What I don't understand about pro-life groups is that they're the same people who want the death penalty and don't mind traumatising and demonising women who are already going through very difficult times. Surely a better option would be to put your money where you mouth and to compensate women to carry the baby to term and then put the child up for adoption, except where there would be danger to the womans health. That's the way Christians who care about such things ought to be acting. Love and support, and if neccesary self sacrifice to see the right thing done. If the woman still chooses to have an abortion the Christian should remain to offer what emotional and other support is required. That's not the same as saying abortion is OK, just that we are all sinners and that the woman is seriously in need of spiritual guidance and support. You've still got to be there not judging.
Wikipedia is great isn't it? I too found the fideism page and found it to be largely in line with my beliefs to the extent that I often describe myself as a fideist. It's like the babelfish disproving the existance of God by proving his existance. Proof denies faith.
What I don't quite understand is how precisely you can admittedly surrender your reason and adopt faith on an issue such as this, is it out of a desire for completeness? A savage belief that there must be something more than what we currently see because otherwise it'd be too unbearable to contemplate
Good question. I think that the reason I went looking for God lies in the sense of dissatisfaction with the possibility of this being it. If there is no God then we have no free will, there is no absolute morality, love is just a chemical inbalance and evil people will face no judgement. The universe is a cruel and unfeeling place governed by a random set of laws and chaos theory, where we are no more important than grains of interstellar dust. Finally, there is no life after death and our lives are meaningless, and so are everyone elses. When people die, it's not just them moving on, it's that their personality simply ceases to be and there is nothing left. If there is no God, then what is stopping us from fullfilling our darkest desires, and why should we consider the hopes and fears of anyone else. In my view, atheism can easily lead to sadism, or at least heavy hedonism. When I think of things like that I get a sense of what it must be like to be in the Total Perspective Vortex, and yes I do find that almost unbearable.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn argument is quite compelling except for one thing. Faith in an IPU does not change millions of people lives for the better.
When you look at the happiness or otherwise of those people who live like there is no God and for their own gain and pleasure, celebrities, certain high profile sports stars and the super rich, it is amazing to see how many have a wretched private lives. People like Howard Hughes and Maroline Monroe spring to mind, who live the life many of us dream of, yet are deeply unhappy in all their wealth. On the other hand look at the lives of people who live for God and by the words of the sermon on the mount.
* Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 3)
* Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land. (Verse 4)
* Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Verse 5)
* Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. (Verse 6)
* Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (Verse 7)
* Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. (Verse 8)
* Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Verse 9)
* Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Verse 10)
People like Mother Teresa and countless missionaries and care workers who sacrfice their own wellbeing for others live lives full of joy and satisfaction, despite not having all the things that people desire.
If Jesus' words were not true and there was no God, then why would fullfilling all our earthly desires simply make us miserable, and not having them make us joyous? I think this testifies to the inhuman wisdom and truth of Jesus' words.
Why did I choose to set aside reason in this question? Because I wanted the joy that these people have, and in less that 12 hours after I took my leap of faith I had it in bucket loads, and I still have it today, over a year on.
I'm not arguing against reason per say, and I am a software engineer by trade and a physicist by training so I know and understand about reason in scientific terms.
If you look at Genesis it is important to realise that it is not really saying that the universe was literally created in six days. We can tell this because the structure of the book is that of an jewish form of poetry and certain things are mentioned symbolic numbers of times. What Genesis is saying is that God created the universe and that He created it so we could live in it. That makes it dramatically different to all the contemporary creation myths and so the start of Genesis can be understood as a story designed to debunk those other myths. Personally I am a evolutionary creationist (look it up in wikipedia), so I believe pretty much in your cosmic snooker shot, and so I see God reveals himself through the wonders of science and through spiritual means in parallel.
All I am saying about reason is that it has it's limits and that some things are fundamentally unprovable, like the origin of the universe. That is where I think faith must begin. I found that when I reached that crunch point that I was scared to let go of the security of rational thought, but at the same time I was deeply frustrated that I couldn't prove the existance of God one way or the other, and I knew that my fear of losing face or of becoming one of those christian weirdo's was stopping me looking for the answer.
the one that appears the easiest to follow and the most culturally convenient for you with regards to your geopolitical station
I live in the UK, and I suspect it is much like Australia where agnosticsicm or even just willful ignorance is the culturally acceptable thing to do. Actually having an opinion on religion makes you some kind of nut, so it's not easy.
OK, OK. Nice sketch, apart from the global domination line, and I know that GWB's plan, but I think he could do with reading a little wider.
I'm gonna change tack here slightly because it's clear that trying to argue for Jesus with someone who isn't even all that keen on the concept of God is not easy ground.
I'd like to explain my motives for this conversation, and it's not to beat you into submission or to allow me to say "told-you-so" or anything.
When I look around at the world and see crime and pain and suffering, much of it inflicted in cruel and imaginative ways by people on other people, I can't help but feel deep in my soul how wrong that is. That somehow life was never meant to be like that, and if only everyone could recognise within themselves what life was supposed to be about then the world would be a much nicer place. Why do we have compassion for people we've never met, when a truly rational perspective would be that the more people get killed, the more space and resources there are for me and my relatives? The recent tsunami provoked an enourmous outpouring of generosity and compassion for our fellow men, but why should we care if we are just animals driven by a competative erge to spread our own genes?
In a world without meaning, where do our common values and sense of right and wrong come from?
Do you believe we have free will? If we are just biological machines as some biologists would claim, then is free will merely a figment of our imagination?
I say no. When I look out at the universe and wonder about how it all began all those billions of years ago, and then think about how small and insignificant we are, I'm left to wonder how it is that we can choose how we live this short time we spend on this planet. For me I look out and I see the glory and power of an omnipotent God, and then I look close and I see how amazing it is that He created all the universe so that He could give us the freedom to choose to love Him, or to reject Him. How much must God love us and how important each and every one of must be to Him, for Him to go to such lengths to create beings that would love Him the way he loves us. Freely.
THAT is why I expend effort trying to introduce you to your maker. He loves you for all your flaws and He would gain great pleasure from you returning that love. I act out of love for God and try to do what would please Him, because what pleases Him also pleases me. I also act out of love for you too, because even though I have no idea who you are, I'd love for you to feel the joy, wonder and awe that I feel today, but that I didn't feel just over a year ago before I decided to put aside my pride in my own intelectual abilities, and decided to find out where faith led.
Now I know you're going to say I'm a nut, but if there were more nuts like me around the world would be a better place, and that in itself is kinda interesting, if the world makes any sense.
nonsense. There is no absolute proof of anything so we all put faith is stuff every day. Your chair for example. Before you sat on it you had faith that it would take your weight.
hats been proven to have sections redacted (reincarnation anyone?) What are you talking about?
Come back when you've spent time actually trying to prove that the Bible is false, or even substantially different from the very early writings when people reading them would have known some of the key characters in person and could have asked them whether these things were true.
By the way, that's how science works. I state that something is true and you have to prove it is false. Belief in God may require faith but the consistancy of the Bible can be challenged, and has withstood better minds than yours for thousands of years. In the end it comes down to this. Are you so proud and arrogant that you can say for certain that there is nothing about the universe you cannot explain? That is as much a position of faith as mine, and somewhat less sturdy, unless you can create a new universe and prove me wrong.
You're absolutely correct about the resurrection: Christianity lives and dies by the truth of that event, and the only evidence that it occured are the 500 eyewitnesses that would have been known to many of the early Christians, and those who had been in fear for their lives, but were suddenly given unheard of conviction, strength and power.
I can think of a credible explanation, just off the top of my head, he was a fraud and followed by a pack of religious fanatics Those were 10 a penny back then and none of those groups survive today. Killing the leader of a movement is usually a pretty good way to stop those things.
he was a spiritually enlightened mortal followed by a pack of religious fanatics
He never claimed to be such a man. He claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, the son of God, and He was either a nut or telling the truth. He said he would be killed and rise again, but his followers didn't understand. It wasn't what they expected the Messiah to be. They wanted him to be powerful and to free the Jews from Roman oppression, like all the other Messiah wannabes promised. Jesus was different and spent all his time royally pissing of the religious types by telling them that following God is not a box ticking exercise.
the story from back then is now so convoluted as to be meaningless We have far more, and better copies of the early Christian writings that other contemporary histories like Tacitus and Josephus. These books were not mass produced but copied by hand by scribes who faced serious punishment for errors or even death for deliberate changes, and the many copies we have are all in agreement. Furthermore, the dead sea scrolls includes a full copy of Issiah which predates Jesus and is still identical to the copies that are made today, to the extent that someone able to read the Jewish torah today, is able to read the text in those ancient scrolls as well.
This particular aspect of your religion I find downright offensive, nothing matters that you do on the planet, you could be a child molesting serial killer with a penchant for buggery, and as long as you accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, you'll be in the eternal grace of god.
Alternately, you can refuse this and be cast into a fiery pit of damnation for all eternity, regardless of how virtuous you have behaved in your life. I don't see how christians can seriously consider this to be "the good news". If it really was true, and for all the reasons above, I find that on the highly unlikely side of unlikely, it'd be a cruel sick cosmic joke.
You're not alone in finding this bit hard to swallow and somewhat outragous, but the bit you missed is that everyone deserves to go to hell, regardless of how good they appear to be. You, me, vicars, the Pope, presidents and drug dealers. No one can be made righteous by their own efforts and we all need Gods rescue plan, because all He really want is for us to love Him, and our sin simply stops us doing that.
It's not a licence to do what you want and then turn to Jesus later, because God is not a petty traffic cop. He knows what is in your heart and mind and there's no way to trick him. The good news is that, as St Paul puts it, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us".
Faithfulness is truthfulness in other translations. Longsuffering is patience and meekness means putting other peoples interests before your own.
Lastly, I didn't say faith was a virtue, but faithfulness is. Besides, you put faith in things every day. Right now your putting faith in the chair you're sitting on to hold your weight, and in the screen your looking at to reproduce accurately what I wrote. You're putting faith in thousands of scientists you never met for the operation of your computer etc. If you went around doubting everything you saw you'd not get very far.
Why is that?
Christianity is based upon the accepted historical fact that there was a guy called Jesus who lived in Israel about 2000 years ago. It's accepted by Jews, muslims etc that he was executed, but yet, a few days later his followers, who previously had been to scared to go outside, were standing in the temple proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead, and they were prepared to die for their belief. Now I don't know about you, but I've met too many people walking around who've been dead for 36 hours or so after being flogged, crucifed and stabbed with a spear. Now we can't say that this is all completely proven in a scientific sense, but what we can say is that the evidence for Jesus rising from the dead is good enough to stand in most courts of law.
Jesus fulfilled over 200 prophecies from the old Jewish Bible, including many that predicted his death on the cross hundreds of years before it happened.
This kind of thing doesn't just happen every day, and there are no really credible alternative explainations, so your left with acknowledging that Jesus was who he said he was, that is, the son of God.
Of course, what you do with that knowledge is a different thing. You can ignore it and hope that God didn't really mean the things He said; that the God who created the universe 15 billion years ago was lying to us, or you can believe the words of the only man ever for whom there is no body. He said that we can become right with the God of the universe by simply accepting that Jesus was the scapegoat for all our sins, and by responding in love. No matter what you've done or who you are, Jesus paid the price of justice that God demanded and bought your life with his suffering.
Why is this important? Because it means that righteousness is a gift and not something we cannot earn and boast about. Jesus reserved almost all of his critisism for the religious people of his day who wore their adherence to the rules as a badge, to the extent that the rules were more important than what they pointed to. They looked down on "sinners" like prostitutes and tax collectors, but those were the people Jesus spent time with. Today it might be drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and other undesirables.
Anyway, call me crazy if you like, but I say that trusting in Jesus makes life better. Someone who is close to Jesus will be full of love, joy (gladness of heart), peace, longsuffering (patience, having an even temper), gentleness (excellence in character, showing kindness), goodness (being good toward others), faithfulness, meekness (which is having no self interest) and temperance (self-control).
Clearly anyone who has those kind of personality traits is someone best avoided!