I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. I was specifically referring to the first, third, fourth and fifth images linked to by eldavojohn, not to the other two individual images he linked to, and especially not to the Danish cartoons.
When we 'insult' Muhammad, they instantly start insulting Jesus in a sort of "see how you like it" rationale.
Where did you get this idea? You aren't going to find many Muslims deliberately insulting Jesus, since the Prophet Isa (aka Jesus) is an important figure in Islam.
Well, almost. The first, third, fourth, and fifth images linked to by the GP are certainly examples of such Islamic art just as you say. But how comfortable Muslims were with depicting living creatures (let alone Mohammed) has varied a lot across different places and times -- it's the reason Islamic cultures tend to favor abstract/geometric decorations. You can't say that images were never forbidden before, only just that the ban was never universal.
While a lot of Protestant (and sadly, Catholic) churches tend not to delve very deeply into theology these days, the Resurrection of the Dead isn't some peculiarly Catholic idea; it's a fundamental belief of Christianity. The New Testament is quite explicit about it, and it's explicitly called out in both the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, both of which are accepted as authoritative by most Protestant denominations I can think of. Beyond that, I don't know that Catholics are really any more specific about Heaven than Protestants, although perhaps Catholics are more likely to emphasize and draw on the nuptual imagery present in Scripture.
If individual speculations on the topic interest you, Peter Kreeft wrote a rather good essay entitled Is There Sex in Heaven? on this same question; while he is Catholic, I don't think there's anything offensive to Protestant sensibilities in it. As he put it:
I think there will probably be millions of more adequate ways to express love than the clumsy ecstasy of fitting two bodies together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Even the most satisfying earthly intercourse between spouses cannot perfectly express all their love. If the possibility of intercourse in Heaven is not actualized, it is only for the same reason earthly lovers do not eat candy during intercourse: there is something much better to do.
Actually, the Church teaches that there will be a bodily resurrection, so in that case you would be getting a (much improved) "meat-suit" again. Having a body is an important part of being human, anyway -- a human soul is disembodied by death, but it's not a comfortable or natural way for a human being to be.
Also bear in mind that in Catholic theology views marriage and sex as foreshadowing Heaven (which is why there's no marriage in Heaven; it would be superfluous). It's one of the reasons that the Song of Solomon is part of the Biblical canon. Heaven won't have sex as we experience it now, but something better which is not available to us in our current state.
Just because the Church does something or because someone in the Bible does something doesn't automatically mean it's right. Often the Bible is recording people learning lessons the hard way.
At the time of the Inquisition, torture and execution as tools used by rulers was pretty much accepted, and yet even while the Inquisition also did those things, some in the Church leadership were uncomfortable with them: the Inquisition was very restricted in its use of both, much more than contemporary secular courts were. Obviously that doesn't make it right, but my point is that even then you can see the beginnings of the realization that doing such things might be inconsistent with the Catholic understanding of the human person, which eventually led to declarations like Dignitatis Humanae (which addressed and advocated religious freedom), and the teaching on torture in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2297-2298):
Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.
In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.
As far as God permitting suffering, that's a separate issue I don't have a complete answer for. I don't think we're in a position to judge God, but asking why isn't a stupid question (and I think everyone who has faith must agonize over it at times).
The Catholic position is that human dignity and the value of human life are unconditional. Even if someone was conceived "wrongly", that still doesn't change. That's what unconditional means. This is the reason that the Church objects to the destruction of "surplus" IVF embryos, even while she opposes IVF.
A soul is the form (i.e. formal cause -- see Aquinas) of a particular body. "Cloned souls" or "getting a part of a soul" are simply not meaningful ideas. A clone has its own soul by definition because it has its own body, and living cells which are no longer part of a body do not carry a "piece" of the soul with them, since the soul is fundamentally related to the body as a whole.
The Pope's position is based on three principles which are acknowledged as part of Catholic teaching:
1. Human beings exist as such from fertilization onward
2. No innocent human being should be killed
3. Human reproduction is properly confined to sex
In part, in this particular case, he is arguing that they should be respected in order to prevent the "commoditization" of human life.
The strength of the effect depends on how accustomed you are to using the tool in question. Pencils are probably a good choice for college students in a lecture, probably less so for others.
If you drive a car on a regular basis, you've likely also experienced the phenomenon while driving: your proprioception extends to the body of the car, so that you can feel the texture of the road and (once you're used to the car's shape) develop a "sense" of how much space you have around the car. The car-as-prosthesis thing is also part of the reason that, if you're in an auto accident, you're much more likely to say "he hit me" than "his car hit my car".
The idea is to stop injecting new fossil carbon into the carbon cycle; the carbon in biofuels comes from the atmosphere rather than underground deposits. Of course, ethanol is not the only biofuel hydrocarbon, just the most fashionable one at the moment.
I think you just illustrated my point. While I've enough Lisp background to recognize progn, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that of Python programmers generally: it's not part of the standard library, or (so far as I'm aware) an idiomatic practice there.
I'd also personally rather write:
canvas.when_clicked do |x, y|
add_point(x, y)
canvas.request_update
end
(I've been writing a lot of lambdas-for-callbacks-and-constraints code lately)
Although now that you've persuaded me to try it, it does seem like the best Python approach. Maybe I will like Python more if I bring more Lisp practice to it generally rather than trying to do things "the Python way"; my distaste for Python could be a case of "good language, crappy conventions".
A proc is just a reified block. However, I'm with you on the method thing. Aside from lambda issues, I do think Python does first-class functions (whether methods or anything else) more consistently, which I like about it.
Multi-expression lambdas are a pretty big thing for me, though; I miss them a lot in Python and I think the workarounds for their absence usually result in extreme code uglification.
The Ruby versus Python thing has puzzled me for a while: most people who prefer Python over Ruby seem to find Ruby unreadable, whereas most people who prefer Ruby over Python can read Python okay but don't enjoy programming in it. Both camps seem to disagree about significant whitespace, but it doesn't really seem to be the fundamental issue.
Part of it may be Ruby's heavy reliance on higher-order functions. For a programmer with established habits it can be a problem in terms of the way you're accustomed to thinking about code. Imagine if Perl had special syntax for passing anonymous subs as arguments, and idiomatic Perl code used them for everything all the way down to most looping constructs...
Part of the problem is that I stated my point in an ambiguous way: evidently you read it more along the lines of "not all IDers are Christian" rather than "not all Christians are IDers"; I had intended the latter.
(I'm speaking loosely, of course: I'm sure there are some non-Christian IDers somewhere with their own ideas about the identity of the designer [Pastafarians not withstanding], but the core ID people are all coming from a Christian background as far as I know.)
Yes, that's right. Although re-reading I think I was a little unfair to somersault, who I think recognized the distinction but just didn't do a good job of being clear about it.
Yeah, I see what you're getting at. Re-reading, I shouldn't have jumped on somersault like that, since it looks like he was trying to dispel the stereotype.
An attack on ID is not an attack on Christianity, however. I'm not insane, but I am a Christian who is rather pissed off with the Discovery Institute crowd at this point. They have their own ideas about what a "science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" means, but we already sorted this stuff out theologically in the late medieval period, in a way that was considerably friendlier to honest science. The ID folks are relying on the average modern's ignorance to try and and replace that with their own "solution" that relies on dodgy science, at the expense of orthodox theology.
When did he say anything about Christians? ID, in terms of the specific positions put forth by the Discovery Institute, is not synonymous with Christianity.
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I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. I was specifically referring to the first, third, fourth and fifth images linked to by eldavojohn, not to the other two individual images he linked to, and especially not to the Danish cartoons.
Where did you get this idea? You aren't going to find many Muslims deliberately insulting Jesus, since the Prophet Isa (aka Jesus) is an important figure in Islam.
Let's not dignify murderers by calling them martyrs.
Well, almost. The first, third, fourth, and fifth images linked to by the GP are certainly examples of such Islamic art just as you say. But how comfortable Muslims were with depicting living creatures (let alone Mohammed) has varied a lot across different places and times -- it's the reason Islamic cultures tend to favor abstract/geometric decorations. You can't say that images were never forbidden before, only just that the ban was never universal.
It's worth noting that a number of those pictures were made by Muslim artists, too.
While a lot of Protestant (and sadly, Catholic) churches tend not to delve very deeply into theology these days, the Resurrection of the Dead isn't some peculiarly Catholic idea; it's a fundamental belief of Christianity. The New Testament is quite explicit about it, and it's explicitly called out in both the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, both of which are accepted as authoritative by most Protestant denominations I can think of. Beyond that, I don't know that Catholics are really any more specific about Heaven than Protestants, although perhaps Catholics are more likely to emphasize and draw on the nuptual imagery present in Scripture.
If individual speculations on the topic interest you, Peter Kreeft wrote a rather good essay entitled Is There Sex in Heaven? on this same question; while he is Catholic, I don't think there's anything offensive to Protestant sensibilities in it. As he put it:
Actually, the Church teaches that there will be a bodily resurrection, so in that case you would be getting a (much improved) "meat-suit" again. Having a body is an important part of being human, anyway -- a human soul is disembodied by death, but it's not a comfortable or natural way for a human being to be.
Also bear in mind that in Catholic theology views marriage and sex as foreshadowing Heaven (which is why there's no marriage in Heaven; it would be superfluous). It's one of the reasons that the Song of Solomon is part of the Biblical canon. Heaven won't have sex as we experience it now, but something better which is not available to us in our current state.
Just because the Church does something or because someone in the Bible does something doesn't automatically mean it's right. Often the Bible is recording people learning lessons the hard way.
At the time of the Inquisition, torture and execution as tools used by rulers was pretty much accepted, and yet even while the Inquisition also did those things, some in the Church leadership were uncomfortable with them: the Inquisition was very restricted in its use of both, much more than contemporary secular courts were. Obviously that doesn't make it right, but my point is that even then you can see the beginnings of the realization that doing such things might be inconsistent with the Catholic understanding of the human person, which eventually led to declarations like Dignitatis Humanae (which addressed and advocated religious freedom), and the teaching on torture in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2297-2298):
As far as God permitting suffering, that's a separate issue I don't have a complete answer for. I don't think we're in a position to judge God, but asking why isn't a stupid question (and I think everyone who has faith must agonize over it at times).
They don't have that option; preserving the continuity of Catholic teaching is part of the Pope's job description.
The Catholic position is that human dignity and the value of human life are unconditional. Even if someone was conceived "wrongly", that still doesn't change. That's what unconditional means. This is the reason that the Church objects to the destruction of "surplus" IVF embryos, even while she opposes IVF.
A soul is the form (i.e. formal cause -- see Aquinas) of a particular body. "Cloned souls" or "getting a part of a soul" are simply not meaningful ideas. A clone has its own soul by definition because it has its own body, and living cells which are no longer part of a body do not carry a "piece" of the soul with them, since the soul is fundamentally related to the body as a whole.
The Pope's position is based on three principles which are acknowledged as part of Catholic teaching:
1. Human beings exist as such from fertilization onward
2. No innocent human being should be killed
3. Human reproduction is properly confined to sex
In part, in this particular case, he is arguing that they should be respected in order to prevent the "commoditization" of human life.
Why?
The strength of the effect depends on how accustomed you are to using the tool in question. Pencils are probably a good choice for college students in a lecture, probably less so for others.
If you drive a car on a regular basis, you've likely also experienced the phenomenon while driving: your proprioception extends to the body of the car, so that you can feel the texture of the road and (once you're used to the car's shape) develop a "sense" of how much space you have around the car. The car-as-prosthesis thing is also part of the reason that, if you're in an auto accident, you're much more likely to say "he hit me" than "his car hit my car".
The idea is to stop injecting new fossil carbon into the carbon cycle; the carbon in biofuels comes from the atmosphere rather than underground deposits. Of course, ethanol is not the only biofuel hydrocarbon, just the most fashionable one at the moment.
I think you just illustrated my point. While I've enough Lisp background to recognize progn, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that of Python programmers generally: it's not part of the standard library, or (so far as I'm aware) an idiomatic practice there.
I'd also personally rather write:
canvas.when_clicked do |x, y|
add_point(x, y)
canvas.request_update
end
versus:
canvas.when_clicked(lambda x, y: progn(
add_point(x, y),
canvas.request_update()))
(I've been writing a lot of lambdas-for-callbacks-and-constraints code lately)
Although now that you've persuaded me to try it, it does seem like the best Python approach. Maybe I will like Python more if I bring more Lisp practice to it generally rather than trying to do things "the Python way"; my distaste for Python could be a case of "good language, crappy conventions".
A proc is just a reified block. However, I'm with you on the method thing. Aside from lambda issues, I do think Python does first-class functions (whether methods or anything else) more consistently, which I like about it.
Multi-expression lambdas are a pretty big thing for me, though; I miss them a lot in Python and I think the workarounds for their absence usually result in extreme code uglification.
That's not special syntactical sugar, though. GP's thing (prototypes with sub arguments) was what I had in mind.
Ahh, you're right. I'd forgotten about Perl prototypes.
That doesn't count because the syntax is a special case just for those functions. :)
... yes ... back to the Ruby hacking...
But
The Ruby versus Python thing has puzzled me for a while: most people who prefer Python over Ruby seem to find Ruby unreadable, whereas most people who prefer Ruby over Python can read Python okay but don't enjoy programming in it. Both camps seem to disagree about significant whitespace, but it doesn't really seem to be the fundamental issue.
Part of it may be Ruby's heavy reliance on higher-order functions. For a programmer with established habits it can be a problem in terms of the way you're accustomed to thinking about code. Imagine if Perl had special syntax for passing anonymous subs as arguments, and idiomatic Perl code used them for everything all the way down to most looping constructs...
Do you think that's the issue, or something else?
Part of the problem is that I stated my point in an ambiguous way: evidently you read it more along the lines of "not all IDers are Christian" rather than "not all Christians are IDers"; I had intended the latter.
(I'm speaking loosely, of course: I'm sure there are some non-Christian IDers somewhere with their own ideas about the identity of the designer [Pastafarians not withstanding], but the core ID people are all coming from a Christian background as far as I know.)
Yes, that's right. Although re-reading I think I was a little unfair to somersault, who I think recognized the distinction but just didn't do a good job of being clear about it.
Yeah, I see what you're getting at. Re-reading, I shouldn't have jumped on somersault like that, since it looks like he was trying to dispel the stereotype.
An attack on ID is not an attack on Christianity, however. I'm not insane, but I am a Christian who is rather pissed off with the Discovery Institute crowd at this point. They have their own ideas about what a "science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" means, but we already sorted this stuff out theologically in the late medieval period, in a way that was considerably friendlier to honest science. The ID folks are relying on the average modern's ignorance to try and and replace that with their own "solution" that relies on dodgy science, at the expense of orthodox theology.
When did he say anything about Christians? ID, in terms of the specific positions put forth by the Discovery Institute, is not synonymous with Christianity.