I don't have a problem with you saying it, because it's easy to dismiss as hyperbole. However, it is inaccurate, but the term itself is very loose. I have more trouble with you adding the word "all". The problem with the word Christian is that it doesn't have a rigid definition and is used in many different contexts.
I already answered the question of what is required for salvation. You just didn't like it. The problem I feel we're having is that you aren't asking good questions, and don't want to admit it enough to accept the answers I've given which state what I believe.
You seem to be having trouble with the concept of absolute perfection, and wish to use certain sins as examples of something more abominable than others. Then you want ask if someone is a "follower" when they are not following where the leader leads.
The shortest, best, most accurate answer I can give is this: I'm not concerned with what people call themselves, so bandying the term Christian about will get you no where. I'm concerned with salvation, which I define as follows: The acceptance of perfect atonement, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Now, to cast your questions in that light:
Which is a tangent to the original question, but leads to the question of "So what is the requirement for being "saved"?" The acceptance that you have sinned, that God is perfect, and acceptance that He will forgive your sins.
Suppose there's some guy who likes raping and killing little girls. Is he "saved"? If not, then how do you justify that with your statement that even horrible people leading horrible lives can be "saved"?
I don't know if he is, based just on that question, but it is possible that he can be, following the above guideline
If so, then what is the final difference between someone leading a holy and pious life dedicated to aiding others and a guy who like to rape little girls and flay them alive?
There is no difference. Neither is absolutely perfect, thus neither deserves heaven. Both may accept atonement, or face judgement.
Do they both get the same Heaven and the same amount of time (eternity) in it? My understanding is time is fairly meaningless at that point.
Would it be "moral" to support a god who grants eternal joy to a guy who rapes children?
If so, what exactly does "moral" mean?
Again, this is what I was trying to say in the post that started this. The concept is very simple: You must be absolutely perfect. It's people that try to make complicated. If you are not absolutely perfect, you face judgement, and there is only one punishment for nonperfection. There are no degrees with absolutes. No one sin is worse than another, any sin is a permanent taint. The only solution is atonement. Where people make it complicated is where they don't want to admit the little things they do are equally horrible in the face of absolute perfection as the sins others commit. People find the concept of perfect atonement "unfair" because it pardons the wicked. The problem is that it works the other way; No one at all deserves pardon.
Except "Christian" doesn't mean anything, in and of itself. "Christian" is a convenient label. It really seems what you are asking me is, "Can you be saved and still do *some horrible thing*". The answer to that is yes. You can be saved, and still be a horrible person and live a horrible life.
I'm confused, are you actually confusing a label with a deep personal belief in theology? Is what you are asking me, really, can someone be both sincere and sincerely wrong?
Maybe you should spit your point out instead of trying to set up a semantic trap based on some word game you are trying to play.
The analogy is faulty, it's more like they put an extra mirror in your car that sometimes could get bumped and not show you your blind spot, then wanted to go back and say that the mirror is broken and they didn't need to replace it unless you got side swiped because of the mirror. They then offered a replacement for $10. What they then argued in court is they only needed to refund the money of the people who paid for the replacement, not the people who had a broken mirror and didn't even know it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a question asked in a slashdot comment, when phrased as impossibly difficult, that someone didn't post the correct solution to within minutes.
That doesn't make sense. If something is simple, there is no confusion. Confusion only comes from complexity.
Confusion comes with confliction with previously held beliefs, as does the rest of your post. People have trouble with the concept that something that important can be that simple. People also get confused with their notions that it's not "fair", which, when you think about it, it isn't. It's tipped profoundly in our favor.
As to all your other points, I refer back to mine: "Good" is defined as absolute perfection in every possible way. Not even going into whether you believe that beating salvation into someone would actually work (Hint: No.), there's the whole matter of trying to live a perfect life.
Let's walk through the process of how you'd determine that. What is a perfect life? How does one determine it? There's your conscience, but sometimes that's just not clear enough. Like any other measurement, there has to be a standard. Conveniently, we have a few. Like the metre, we have both an official standard, Jesus, and numerous imitations that at least give a fairly accurate measurement, despite their flaws.
So we'll go to the Book, and find the passage where Jesus says it's okay to beat people into salvation. We don't find that, however we do find this, in Matthew 5, "21 You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[b]will be subject to judgment." Continuing to the bottom of the chapter, "44But I tell you: Love your enemies[i] and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Now you are going to tell me Christians screw that up all the time. And you'd be right. That doesn't mean there's a problem with the faith, just the people who practice it.
You can't slice out portions of a belief in order to compare it to another belief.
What is inconsistent about the following:
1) It is wrong to murder. 2) Heaven is better than life on Earth. 3) The purpose of staying on Earth is to give others a chance to find the way to heaven.
While I'm sure if you tried hard enough you can manage to make that say it's better to kill a Christian than it is to kill an non-Christian, the simple fact of the matter is a Christians is supposed to believe that the whole reason for being here on Earth is to reach out to non-Christians. Killing them doesn't serve that purpose very well.
I'd argue with your meaningless "statistically" blah blah, as well. What metrics are you using to define "good" things and "bad" things in that instance anyway? Christianity is very coherent, and straight forward. I think that's what gets people so confused about it. It's really very simple and there are no catches.
Christian Dogma, boiled down: ALL people are "bad" "Good" is defined as absolute perfection in every possible way. No person can be "good" ALL people can be forgiven for being "bad" Forgiveness comes by accepting that forgiveness was given by the death and resurrection of Christ.
The rest just muddies the water as people struggled to define what "perfect in every possible way" means.
Yes and no. In most cultures, slaves worked off their slavery, as in indentured servitude. In the Jewish culture, slaves had to be released every few years in a celebration called the "Year of Jubilee". Most cultures treated run away slaves the same as they'd treat those who fled debt, which isn't strange since debt is how most people ended up slaves.
Sometimes, slavery isn't that bad, especially when the alternative is ritualistic mutilation and sacrificing of vanquished enemies, which was the popular thing to do at the time. Slavery was more of a caste system, and used largely to define who the profits of your labor benefited. It wasn't entirely voluntary (although it often was); you couldn't just leave any more than you can walk out on any other form of debt.
which I seriously doubt was ever the case anyway) This part I don't understand. Are you saying you don't believe the Jews were in Egypt? Secular history books and archeology can prove that one.
Because when a society began to do well they needed to be protected militarily so they weren't conquered?
A good system is one that runs without interference. As a general rule, God follows his own rules. "Miracles" (Laws governing physical universe being directly broken) in the Bible are relatively few and far between, especially compared to the sacred texts of other religions.
God taught his people to be self sufficient and conquered those who would have very willingly conquered them. Preemptive first strike is a sound defensive strategy if preservation is your goal.
One of the largest problems I see in agnostics and atheists today is the failure to grasp the simple truth that life is not a particularly desirable state. It some how fails to penetrate their skulls that when you believe in heaven, the Earth doesn't look that great in comparison. I often hear things along the lines of, "Why would a merciful God let a baby die?" In actuality, the question ought to be, "If God is merciful why doesn't he kill the rest of us." Life sucks, the Earth sucks, and people suck. Dying and going to heaven is not a punishment.
Where you will, no doubt, jump to next is along the lines of the efficacy of suicide. The answer to that, of course, is no less faith than anything else. Living is actually a sacrifice you continually perform to give others a chance to find true life, albeit life after death.
If you don't believe it, that's fine, but it's not inconsistent.
Don't compare advanced hardening of servers with default installations by "end users" (a worthless term that encompasses way too many different thigns to be useful).
MANY major distributions are relatively comparable to WinXP as far as ease of installation. There's probably an equal number of "What the hell is that, I'll just click OK" moments in both installs.
The big problem I have with Mandriva isn't the ease of installation, it's the difficulty of uninstallation. URPMI, especially through the SoftwareManager interface, makes getting new free software a breeze. When you decide you don't like something, though, all those dependencies are still hanging around. I haven't figured a great way to tell what of those lib packages I no longer need because I uninstalled NextBigThing0.1.rpm.
Nonsense, the graphics are perfect for a STRATEGY GAME. You can tell the difference, at a glance, between the peices and which player they belong to. What else do you need, graphic wise?
The emphasis on 3D graphics is more of a warning to me that the gameplay will probably have problems.
No, it's actually the opposite (which does help demonstrate that copying isn't theft, even if it's infringement).
See, in a pyramid scheme, the Guy A starts with nothing. A^2 gives him X. A^3 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(X). A^4 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(f(X)) and A gives A^3 f(X). A^5 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(f(f(X))) and A gives A^3 f(f(X)) and A gives A^4 f(X).
Where f(X) is > X. As long as it keeps growing, Guy A will be able to meet his obligations. Once growth slows down (Social Security), the system fails.
BitTorrent is the exact opposite.
Guy A starts with X. Guy A gives A^2 X. Guy A gives A^3 f1(X) and A^2 gives A^3 f2(X). Guy A gives A^4 f1(X) and A^2 gives A^4 f2(X) and A^3 gives A^4 f3(x).
Where fn(X) X and sum f1..n(x) = X.
Pyramid schemes just shift content around, BitTorrent rapidly progates new copies of content.
I think I spent way too much time writing this out.
The overall user experience for legit content doesn't suck at all, if the seed and tracker is hosted professionally. Picture something like "MovieFlix" with a dedicated Bittorrent Client. At worst, for an old movie or something, they serve the entire movie directly to you. At best, for a new release, they only have to serve part of it to you, and the swarm of other people who want to see it works to their advantage.
It's a GOOD system, and it gets better and better the better the host is and the more constant the demand for the content is.
This isn't to let you block "Debbie Does Backdoor Prison Slut Vixxxens 7", it's to let the people broadcasting the SuperBowl enforce their "right" to prevent you from rewinding to rewatch a play, or CBS to enforce their "right" for you to watch CSI only once and then find it in syndicate or buy the DVD if you want to watch the episode again. It's HBO enforcing their "right" to prevent you from taping "Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy" off HBO, or Comcast preventing you from recording something off pay per view.
This has nothing to do with your rights. This has everything with broadcasters trying to sell the same content more than once, and preventing you from keeping what they've broadcast.
I could see this in the form of an XM like device, with PPV radio on demand, but I'm not sure the concept of tivo for radio will really pay off. It's not worth the effort. That's what music on CDs is for. As far as programs go, most people are perfectly happy turning the radio on and playing whatever happens to be on at the time.
I could tivo my radio now with the capture card in my computer and dump mp3 files of shows I like but never happen to catch such as Car Talk, to disk and play that in my car right now. The odds of me actually doing it are very, very small.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have a problem with you saying it, because it's easy to dismiss as hyperbole. However, it is inaccurate, but the term itself is very loose. I have more trouble with you adding the word "all". The problem with the word Christian is that it doesn't have a rigid definition and is used in many different contexts.
I already answered the question of what is required for salvation. You just didn't like it. The problem I feel we're having is that you aren't asking good questions, and don't want to admit it enough to accept the answers I've given which state what I believe.
You seem to be having trouble with the concept of absolute perfection, and wish to use certain sins as examples of something more abominable than others. Then you want ask if someone is a "follower" when they are not following where the leader leads.
The shortest, best, most accurate answer I can give is this: I'm not concerned with what people call themselves, so bandying the term Christian about will get you no where. I'm concerned with salvation, which I define as follows: The acceptance of perfect atonement, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Now, to cast your questions in that light:
Which is a tangent to the original question, but leads to the question of "So what is the requirement for being "saved"?"
The acceptance that you have sinned, that God is perfect, and acceptance that He will forgive your sins.
Suppose there's some guy who likes raping and killing little girls. Is he "saved"?
If not, then how do you justify that with your statement that even horrible people leading horrible lives can be "saved"?
I don't know if he is, based just on that question, but it is possible that he can be, following the above guideline
If so, then what is the final difference between someone leading a holy and pious life dedicated to aiding others and a guy who like to rape little girls and flay them alive?
There is no difference. Neither is absolutely perfect, thus neither deserves heaven. Both may accept atonement, or face judgement.
Do they both get the same Heaven and the same amount of time (eternity) in it?
My understanding is time is fairly meaningless at that point.
Would it be "moral" to support a god who grants eternal joy to a guy who rapes children?
If so, what exactly does "moral" mean?
Again, this is what I was trying to say in the post that started this. The concept is very simple: You must be absolutely perfect. It's people that try to make complicated. If you are not absolutely perfect, you face judgement, and there is only one punishment for nonperfection. There are no degrees with absolutes. No one sin is worse than another, any sin is a permanent taint. The only solution is atonement. Where people make it complicated is where they don't want to admit the little things they do are equally horrible in the face of absolute perfection as the sins others commit. People find the concept of perfect atonement "unfair" because it pardons the wicked. The problem is that it works the other way; No one at all deserves pardon.
Except "Christian" doesn't mean anything, in and of itself. "Christian" is a convenient label. It really seems what you are asking me is, "Can you be saved and still do *some horrible thing*". The answer to that is yes. You can be saved, and still be a horrible person and live a horrible life.
I'm confused, are you actually confusing a label with a deep personal belief in theology? Is what you are asking me, really, can someone be both sincere and sincerely wrong?
Maybe you should spit your point out instead of trying to set up a semantic trap based on some word game you are trying to play.
Yeah, and Spielberg "produced" over 100 movies in under thiry years by caring deeply about the artistic integrity of each one.
I wouldn't quite call it selling out yet, but it's how the Hollywood game is played.
Direct. We want him to direct it, not necessarily to produce it. Producers make money, and are only very rarely involved in the artistic "vision".
For the exact reason it got posted here. The Exec. Producer's entire job is to raise money and hype. Often, they do that with their name alone.
I'm guessing a lot. Have you ever seen a preschooler after their second pack?
The analogy is faulty, it's more like they put an extra mirror in your car that sometimes could get bumped and not show you your blind spot, then wanted to go back and say that the mirror is broken and they didn't need to replace it unless you got side swiped because of the mirror. They then offered a replacement for $10. What they then argued in court is they only needed to refund the money of the people who paid for the replacement, not the people who had a broken mirror and didn't even know it.
What was your question?
I'm not sure I've ever seen a question asked in a slashdot comment, when phrased as impossibly difficult, that someone didn't post the correct solution to within minutes.
Is it "good" to torture someone who doesn't believe what you believe so that he might start believing what you believe?
No. It's not "good". You know the answer by even asking the question.
That doesn't make sense. If something is simple, there is no confusion. Confusion only comes from complexity.
Confusion comes with confliction with previously held beliefs, as does the rest of your post. People have trouble with the concept that something that important can be that simple. People also get confused with their notions that it's not "fair", which, when you think about it, it isn't. It's tipped profoundly in our favor.
As to all your other points, I refer back to mine: "Good" is defined as absolute perfection in every possible way. Not even going into whether you believe that beating salvation into someone would actually work (Hint: No.), there's the whole matter of trying to live a perfect life.
Let's walk through the process of how you'd determine that. What is a perfect life? How does one determine it? There's your conscience, but sometimes that's just not clear enough. Like any other measurement, there has to be a standard. Conveniently, we have a few. Like the metre, we have both an official standard, Jesus, and numerous imitations that at least give a fairly accurate measurement, despite their flaws.
So we'll go to the Book, and find the passage where Jesus says it's okay to beat people into salvation. We don't find that, however we do find this, in Matthew 5, "21 You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[b]will be subject to judgment." Continuing to the bottom of the chapter, "44But I tell you: Love your enemies[i] and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Now you are going to tell me Christians screw that up all the time. And you'd be right. That doesn't mean there's a problem with the faith, just the people who practice it.
You can't slice out portions of a belief in order to compare it to another belief.
What is inconsistent about the following:
1) It is wrong to murder.
2) Heaven is better than life on Earth.
3) The purpose of staying on Earth is to give others a chance to find the way to heaven.
While I'm sure if you tried hard enough you can manage to make that say it's better to kill a Christian than it is to kill an non-Christian, the simple fact of the matter is a Christians is supposed to believe that the whole reason for being here on Earth is to reach out to non-Christians. Killing them doesn't serve that purpose very well.
I'd argue with your meaningless "statistically" blah blah, as well. What metrics are you using to define "good" things and "bad" things in that instance anyway? Christianity is very coherent, and straight forward. I think that's what gets people so confused about it. It's really very simple and there are no catches.
Christian Dogma, boiled down:
ALL people are "bad"
"Good" is defined as absolute perfection in every possible way.
No person can be "good"
ALL people can be forgiven for being "bad"
Forgiveness comes by accepting that forgiveness was given by the death and resurrection of Christ.
The rest just muddies the water as people struggled to define what "perfect in every possible way" means.
Yes and no. In most cultures, slaves worked off their slavery, as in indentured servitude. In the Jewish culture, slaves had to be released every few years in a celebration called the "Year of Jubilee". Most cultures treated run away slaves the same as they'd treat those who fled debt, which isn't strange since debt is how most people ended up slaves.
Sometimes, slavery isn't that bad, especially when the alternative is ritualistic mutilation and sacrificing of vanquished enemies, which was the popular thing to do at the time. Slavery was more of a caste system, and used largely to define who the profits of your labor benefited. It wasn't entirely voluntary (although it often was); you couldn't just leave any more than you can walk out on any other form of debt.
which I seriously doubt was ever the case anyway)
This part I don't understand. Are you saying you don't believe the Jews were in Egypt? Secular history books and archeology can prove that one.
Because it would have been suicide?
Because when a society began to do well they needed to be protected militarily so they weren't conquered?
A good system is one that runs without interference. As a general rule, God follows his own rules. "Miracles" (Laws governing physical universe being directly broken) in the Bible are relatively few and far between, especially compared to the sacred texts of other religions.
God taught his people to be self sufficient and conquered those who would have very willingly conquered them. Preemptive first strike is a sound defensive strategy if preservation is your goal.
One of the largest problems I see in agnostics and atheists today is the failure to grasp the simple truth that life is not a particularly desirable state. It some how fails to penetrate their skulls that when you believe in heaven, the Earth doesn't look that great in comparison. I often hear things along the lines of, "Why would a merciful God let a baby die?" In actuality, the question ought to be, "If God is merciful why doesn't he kill the rest of us." Life sucks, the Earth sucks, and people suck. Dying and going to heaven is not a punishment.
Where you will, no doubt, jump to next is along the lines of the efficacy of suicide. The answer to that, of course, is no less faith than anything else. Living is actually a sacrifice you continually perform to give others a chance to find true life, albeit life after death.
If you don't believe it, that's fine, but it's not inconsistent.
Extension for Open in IE
Opera, I understand, has similiar functionality available.
Thanks, but the first person who buys one of those and then can't use it for a week a month isn't going to be very happy at all.
How completely is completely?
Don't compare advanced hardening of servers with default installations by "end users" (a worthless term that encompasses way too many different thigns to be useful).
MANY major distributions are relatively comparable to WinXP as far as ease of installation. There's probably an equal number of "What the hell is that, I'll just click OK" moments in both installs.
The big problem I have with Mandriva isn't the ease of installation, it's the difficulty of uninstallation. URPMI, especially through the SoftwareManager interface, makes getting new free software a breeze. When you decide you don't like something, though, all those dependencies are still hanging around. I haven't figured a great way to tell what of those lib packages I no longer need because I uninstalled NextBigThing0.1.rpm.
Nonsense, the graphics are perfect for a STRATEGY GAME. You can tell the difference, at a glance, between the peices and which player they belong to. What else do you need, graphic wise?
The emphasis on 3D graphics is more of a warning to me that the gameplay will probably have problems.
No, it's actually the opposite (which does help demonstrate that copying isn't theft, even if it's infringement).
See, in a pyramid scheme, the Guy A starts with nothing.
A^2 gives him X.
A^3 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(X).
A^4 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(f(X)) and A gives A^3 f(X).
A^5 gives him X and and A gives A^2 f(f(f(X))) and A gives A^3 f(f(X)) and A gives A^4 f(X).
Where f(X) is > X.
As long as it keeps growing, Guy A will be able to meet his obligations. Once growth slows down (Social Security), the system fails.
BitTorrent is the exact opposite.
Guy A starts with X.
Guy A gives A^2 X.
Guy A gives A^3 f1(X) and A^2 gives A^3 f2(X).
Guy A gives A^4 f1(X) and A^2 gives A^4 f2(X) and A^3 gives A^4 f3(x).
Where fn(X) X and sum f1..n(x) = X.
Pyramid schemes just shift content around, BitTorrent rapidly progates new copies of content.
I think I spent way too much time writing this out.
The overall user experience for legit content doesn't suck at all, if the seed and tracker is hosted professionally. Picture something like "MovieFlix" with a dedicated Bittorrent Client. At worst, for an old movie or something, they serve the entire movie directly to you. At best, for a new release, they only have to serve part of it to you, and the swarm of other people who want to see it works to their advantage.
It's a GOOD system, and it gets better and better the better the host is and the more constant the demand for the content is.
Because God forbid the President be allow to send individual parts of the bill back to congress and tell them to grow the hell up.
This isn't to let you block "Debbie Does Backdoor Prison Slut Vixxxens 7", it's to let the people broadcasting the SuperBowl enforce their "right" to prevent you from rewinding to rewatch a play, or CBS to enforce their "right" for you to watch CSI only once and then find it in syndicate or buy the DVD if you want to watch the episode again. It's HBO enforcing their "right" to prevent you from taping "Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy" off HBO, or Comcast preventing you from recording something off pay per view.
This has nothing to do with your rights. This has everything with broadcasters trying to sell the same content more than once, and preventing you from keeping what they've broadcast.
Is the theater playing "Gigli"? If so, that would be very, very wrong.
I could see this in the form of an XM like device, with PPV radio on demand, but I'm not sure the concept of tivo for radio will really pay off. It's not worth the effort. That's what music on CDs is for. As far as programs go, most people are perfectly happy turning the radio on and playing whatever happens to be on at the time.
I could tivo my radio now with the capture card in my computer and dump mp3 files of shows I like but never happen to catch such as Car Talk, to disk and play that in my car right now. The odds of me actually doing it are very, very small.