Who was the bible written by though? I mean, there's few today who'd claim to 'understand God', and there's plenty of theologians studying 'His Message'.
A variety of people, throughout the ages. There is a decent summary of the process of canonization here. Basically, when deciding what books were "in" they looked at three things:
Authorship - was it written by who it says it was, and was that person an eye-witness, or close to the events they were describing?
Conformity - did the work contradict those already established to be true?
Acceptance - did the early church (which was closest to the actual events) accept the work as true? Was it reputable in its own time?
No knowledgable and religious Jew of the time would have accepted any other Jew as being literally divine (as opposed to figuratively, in the sense of all Jews being "children of God"). There is no evidence that Jesus proclaimed himself to be the literal son of God, and there's little reason to think he would have -- as no one would have believed him
"The high priest said to Him, 'I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.'
'Yes, it is as you say,' Jesus replied." (Matthew 26:63-64)
"When Jesus saw their faith, he said, 'Friend, your sins are forgiven.'
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, 'Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" (Luke 5:20-21)
Jesus did claim to be be divine, and the Pharisees did know that that was what he was claiming. That was (one reason , at least) why they had him killed.
I'm sick of this "Hell is a separation from god" line that Christians have been using more and more.
Because both are true. Hell is a separation from God. God is the source of all goodness. When you take away all goodness, what are you left with? Suffering, pain, torment. The difference is in the emphasis - Hell isn't God being vindictive - "you didn't believe me, so I'm going to fry your ass" - it's God giving people what they've said they wanted. "You wanted a life without Me. OK, here it is."
Basically that's right, but more to the point I just don't see the pharisees of the Bible as relevant to the discussion. Maybe they were willing to trade their influence on earth for an afterlife in paradise, but I'm really talking about the majority of the worlds non-believes who never had the benefit of direct interaction with Christ.
Well, my original post was a refutation of a hypothetical situation (that even someone fully aware of the consequences of their actions may make a non-optimal choice). If you're moving on to the practicalities of modern skepticism, that's fine, but it's a deviation from what I was talking about in the original posts.
Everyone today can only base their decision to believe or not to believe on ancient apocryphal texts instead of the primary sources available to the pharisees.
They may be ancient, but they're hardly apocryphal, at least if their attribution is correct (and there is little evidence to the contrary). Of the Gospels, all but Luke were eye-witness accounts (for the most part; obviously they weren't there for Jesus' birth, or the creation of the universe, which they also mention), and Luke was written while there were still living eye-witnesses that he talked to. Pretty much all of the New Testament claims to have been written within a generation or so from the actual events.
That aside, modern reformed theology (which I'm the most familiar with) basically states that there is no such thing as a purely intellectual belief. That only people who the Holy Spirit works through are going to believe. That essentially boils down to the fact that Christianity can never really be derived through pure intellectualism - it requires a spiritual experience. Once you're convinced of the basic truths of Christianity, then the whole thing holds together. But you're probably not going to find sufficient evidence to prove those basic truths empirically.
If I'm wrong maybe you could provide an example of someone who did reject salvation with the full certainty that their choice would lead them straight to eternal damnation. You know why I know it never happened? Because no one has ever proven Christianity correct. The major tenet of the religion is that it is based in faith and so it is admittedly not provable.
For the most part, I'd agree with you. This discussion is largely theoretical, about a situation that rarely occurs. However, looking through Jesus' interactions with the pharisees and others, it seems they had sufficient evidence to be reasonably sure that Jesus was divine, or at the very least, acting on behalf of the divine. As scholars of their scriptures, they were aware of the consequences of rejecting God. But for the most part, they still rejected Him. They were more concerned with their power in this world than their fate in the next. Again, that's something that people often demonstrate - a tendency to take instant gratification rather than delaying it for the chance of a greater payoff.
Of course, the difference between you and I in that discussion is that (I assume) you doubt that Jesus' interactions with the pharisees took place, or at least, that they didn't take place in the way recorded in the Bible.
Ahh, so one reminder seven thousand years ago in a document in an obscure language is sufficient notice when the fate of someones eternal soul is on the line? I think an almighty god could try a little bit harder if he really cared about his children.
Well, he managed to get that seven thousand year old document in an obscure language translated into almost every modern language and become the most reproduced document of all time.
And you're extension to the analogy doesn't make sense either since god doesn't pick up all the none believers after they die give them a stern talking to and drop them off at heaven, does he? Well, maybe he does but that isn't Christianity.
All the ones that are willing to get in when He comes by, He does. Those that say they don't need God and are perfectly fine on their own refuse to get in the car. It's not that they weren't offered the lift, it's that they rejected it.
I wasn't implying atheists were arrogant; I was implying that people who continue to do something they know is futile just to salvage their own pride and self-image are arrogant. Say, for example, like taking that twentieth shot when all your friends are cheering you on, even though you know all the facts about alcohol poisoning.
The only time my description would necessarily fit an atheist was if the atheist knew Christianity was correct, but kept up their atheism all the same, which were the parameters the grandparent put forward. The grandparent was assuming that all people are inherently rational, and that given all the information, will always choose the optimal decision. My argument is that pride plays a larger part in decision making for many people than does rationality. Even if Christianity was definitively proved to be true, there would be some percentage of people who would still deny it, just so they didn't have to admit they were wrong. Not all atheists, mind, but I'm sure there'd be some.
Say you have a car a car with bad brakes. Someone in your family needs to borrow a car so you see them reaching for the keys of the faulty car. Do you stop them from taking those keys and inform them that they need to take another car until that one is fixed, or do you let them go ahead and say to yourself "well they made the choice to take a car with no brakes, it must be what they want."
It seems God's choice was to tell them the brakes were broken, and let them make their own decision:
"...you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
They chose to drive the car anyway. When the car crashed, God went out himself to pick them up and get them safely home.
Sorry, that doesn't work. No reasonable and informed person would ever choose hell.
I think you underestimate people's capacity to be stubborn and wrong-headed. People will knowingly do stupid things just so they won't have to back down, or admit they were wrong. It's exactly the same sort of arrogance C. S. Lewis was talking about.
Yeah - because the son came back to him. The idea of hell in the Bible is a separation from God. If God is the font of all good things, then separation from God logically entails a place with nothing but bad things. The prodigal son walked away from his father, and entered "hell". When he came back to his father, he came back into "heaven".
The idea is that we get after death exactly what we wanted during life. If we wanted to be with God here, then we'll go and be with Him afterwards. If we don't want anything to do with God here, then after death, you'll be in a place that has nothing to do with God. Hell isn't so much a punishment as a consequence.
My personal experience leads to the opposite conclusion. We may be wired to follow the logic we understand or are taught. If we are taught how to think rationally and scientifically, then belief in God is vulnerable to rational analysis.
Wouldn't that contradict your personal experience, as you were brought up and educated in religion? Or could it possibly be that our beliefs are not predetermined either by our genetics or our education, but are a product of an individual mind capable of making an independent decision?
I'd love to work somewhere where those kind of standards were applied. I'd get a CS degree (mine is in Physics), but those programmers I've worked with who have CS degrees don't seem much more engineer-like in their application than those without. Too much hacking, not enough engineering. Perhaps civil engineers would be the same if every bridge had "this bridge comes with no warranty, either express or implied" written into the contract.
It's not going to happen, because there's no market for it. Writing formally correct software is possible; industries like aeronautics require it for their essential systems. But it takes much, much longer to do it that way than your standard development process. I'm not qualified predict the time increase (and thus, cost increase) that sort of development process would involve, but I would not be surprised if it was at least an order of magnitude for reasonably complex application software. Nobody is willing to pay for that sort of development, and thus, tertiary education institutes do not teach their students about it. They're not going to spend time giving their average student an unmarketable ability.
Firstly, PvP in WoW is pretty much dead. There is no real point to it, apart from grinding rep in Battlegrounds. Nobody cares enough to look at their opponents builds. Now, with the addition of Arena teams, it might be different. If they take off, and there are some really skilled teams there, then that information might be useful. But knowing your opponents build and equipment is only going to be useful if you both teams are a) reasonable skilled and b) equally matched. Also, it's not hard to figure out most builds after fighting someone a couple of times, so it's not like the information couldn't be found anyway by hardcore players (who are the only ones who will really be able to benefit from it).
And for selling votes, too. But it needn't be; an ID doesn't have to be tied to a particular vote, just to whether or not the person identified by the ID has voted or not.
Flint isn't encouraging piracy as the moral choice - he's telling companies that DRM hurts sales more than it helps. His not saying everyone deserves their product for free, he's saying using DRM is going to negatively impact their bottom line.
Odd. A document released recently by a Muslim group in Britain said schools shouldn't force Muslims to draw pictures of humans:
"In Islam the creation of three dimensional figurative imagery of humans is generally regarded
as unacceptable because of the risk of idolatress practices and some pupils and parents may
raise objections to this. The school should avoid encouraging Muslim pupils from producing
three dimensional imagery of humans and focus on other forms of art, calligraphy, textile art,
ceramic glass, metal/woodwork, landscape drawing, paintings, architectural representations,
geometric figures, photography and mosaic art."
I suppose it's not really surprising that Muslim architecture is going to uncover these sorts of complex patterns. As I recall, the Quran prohibits art depicting humans (or possibly anything created by Allah, I can't recall exactly), and as a result, Islamic art tends to the more abstract. Without the devotion to realism that characterised Western art through much of history, it makes sense that they'd develop the more abstract art to a greater complexity.
When you have one question on one ballot for the whole voting population, then internet voting is feasible. When your ballot is much more complex, much longer, and requires strictly validating voters according to location and eligibility, it becomes much more problematic.
Actually, none of those are really problematic. The Estonians had a national ID card, which was used to verify the voters. If you have a national ID card, it's trivial to attach address information (to validate location) and age (to validate eligibility - any other criteria in this category). Even having different questions at each locale is not terribly difficult.
I think the real reason it wouldn't work in the US is two-fold. Firstly, it involves using a national ID system, which is always vociferously opposed in the US. Secondly, Estonia has a much smaller population than the US, and has a much smaller area. They don't have to deal with the problems of scale as much.
And this is all on the assumption that the Estonian election actually works - it hasn't happened yet after all. I hope they have sufficient safeguards to ensure that voting from a compromised computer is still secure. Good luck with that.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? This article is talking about hacking a server, not your personal box, and servers generally don't run javascript anyway. Good luck trying to install NoScript as an apache module.
This is one mistake in one paper on adult stem cells. It's important for those working in that field, but it hardly invalidates the whole notion of adult stem cell therapies. And in terms of therapies, adult stem cells are better than embryonic, as they don't suffer from rejection. Embryonic stem cell research is pretty much just that - purely research. They're easier to perform research with, as I understand it, but any discoveries made have to be translated back into adult stem cells for therapeutic uses. The whole point of stem cell therapeutics is that you use the persons own cells to repair the injury. And given that harvesting stem cells kills the embryo, the only way you could benefit from an embryonic stem cell therapy would be if you were one of a pair of twins, and they harvested the cells from your twin and left you alive.
Actually, embryonic stem cells will never be useful in therepeutics; they would still suffer from the problem of rejection (you could never use your own embryonic stem cells in a therapy, as the only method of collection we have involves the destruction of the embryo). The only area they are claimed to be useful in is pure research, where they are easier to work with. Any discoveries made with embryonic stem cells, however, would have to be translated to adult stem cells when it came to therapy, as I understand things.
The whole "stem cell debate" thing makes me embarrassed to tell people that I'm American.
See, people like you trolling a debate they know nothing about would make me ashamed to be an American (if I was one). Here's a hint: this story is talking about adult stem cells, which has no significance at all in regard to the current political/moral question of embryonic stem cells. They're two totally different things, obtained through totally different processes.
Stop putting words into my mouth. I never said it was a good/bad investment. You asked where the money was going to come from. I told you. You were saying that Obama was making promises without outlining where the funding was coming from. I pointed out that his other policies would free up existing money, and that he could probably fund some of these projects without any additional strain on the tax-holder. There was no comment in there as to whether this particular project was a good idea or not - although personally, I think it's probably better than the majority of projects that get public funding. Like Alaska's bridge-to-nowhere, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
A variety of people, throughout the ages. There is a decent summary of the process of canonization here. Basically, when deciding what books were "in" they looked at three things:
No knowledgable and religious Jew of the time would have accepted any other Jew as being literally divine (as opposed to figuratively, in the sense of all Jews being "children of God"). There is no evidence that Jesus proclaimed himself to be the literal son of God, and there's little reason to think he would have -- as no one would have believed him
"The high priest said to Him, 'I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.'
'Yes, it is as you say,' Jesus replied." (Matthew 26:63-64)
"When Jesus saw their faith, he said, 'Friend, your sins are forgiven.'
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, 'Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" (Luke 5:20-21)
Jesus did claim to be be divine, and the Pharisees did know that that was what he was claiming. That was (one reason , at least) why they had him killed.
I'm sick of this "Hell is a separation from god" line that Christians have been using more and more.
Because both are true. Hell is a separation from God. God is the source of all goodness. When you take away all goodness, what are you left with? Suffering, pain, torment. The difference is in the emphasis - Hell isn't God being vindictive - "you didn't believe me, so I'm going to fry your ass" - it's God giving people what they've said they wanted. "You wanted a life without Me. OK, here it is."
Basically that's right, but more to the point I just don't see the pharisees of the Bible as relevant to the discussion. Maybe they were willing to trade their influence on earth for an afterlife in paradise, but I'm really talking about the majority of the worlds non-believes who never had the benefit of direct interaction with Christ.
Well, my original post was a refutation of a hypothetical situation (that even someone fully aware of the consequences of their actions may make a non-optimal choice). If you're moving on to the practicalities of modern skepticism, that's fine, but it's a deviation from what I was talking about in the original posts.
Everyone today can only base their decision to believe or not to believe on ancient apocryphal texts instead of the primary sources available to the pharisees.
They may be ancient, but they're hardly apocryphal, at least if their attribution is correct (and there is little evidence to the contrary). Of the Gospels, all but Luke were eye-witness accounts (for the most part; obviously they weren't there for Jesus' birth, or the creation of the universe, which they also mention), and Luke was written while there were still living eye-witnesses that he talked to. Pretty much all of the New Testament claims to have been written within a generation or so from the actual events.
That aside, modern reformed theology (which I'm the most familiar with) basically states that there is no such thing as a purely intellectual belief. That only people who the Holy Spirit works through are going to believe. That essentially boils down to the fact that Christianity can never really be derived through pure intellectualism - it requires a spiritual experience. Once you're convinced of the basic truths of Christianity, then the whole thing holds together. But you're probably not going to find sufficient evidence to prove those basic truths empirically.
If I'm wrong maybe you could provide an example of someone who did reject salvation with the full certainty that their choice would lead them straight to eternal damnation. You know why I know it never happened? Because no one has ever proven Christianity correct. The major tenet of the religion is that it is based in faith and so it is admittedly not provable.
For the most part, I'd agree with you. This discussion is largely theoretical, about a situation that rarely occurs. However, looking through Jesus' interactions with the pharisees and others, it seems they had sufficient evidence to be reasonably sure that Jesus was divine, or at the very least, acting on behalf of the divine. As scholars of their scriptures, they were aware of the consequences of rejecting God. But for the most part, they still rejected Him. They were more concerned with their power in this world than their fate in the next. Again, that's something that people often demonstrate - a tendency to take instant gratification rather than delaying it for the chance of a greater payoff.
Of course, the difference between you and I in that discussion is that (I assume) you doubt that Jesus' interactions with the pharisees took place, or at least, that they didn't take place in the way recorded in the Bible.
Ahh, so one reminder seven thousand years ago in a document in an obscure language is sufficient notice when the fate of someones eternal soul is on the line? I think an almighty god could try a little bit harder if he really cared about his children.
Well, he managed to get that seven thousand year old document in an obscure language translated into almost every modern language and become the most reproduced document of all time.
And you're extension to the analogy doesn't make sense either since god doesn't pick up all the none believers after they die give them a stern talking to and drop them off at heaven, does he? Well, maybe he does but that isn't Christianity.
All the ones that are willing to get in when He comes by, He does. Those that say they don't need God and are perfectly fine on their own refuse to get in the car. It's not that they weren't offered the lift, it's that they rejected it.
I wasn't implying atheists were arrogant; I was implying that people who continue to do something they know is futile just to salvage their own pride and self-image are arrogant. Say, for example, like taking that twentieth shot when all your friends are cheering you on, even though you know all the facts about alcohol poisoning.
The only time my description would necessarily fit an atheist was if the atheist knew Christianity was correct, but kept up their atheism all the same, which were the parameters the grandparent put forward. The grandparent was assuming that all people are inherently rational, and that given all the information, will always choose the optimal decision. My argument is that pride plays a larger part in decision making for many people than does rationality. Even if Christianity was definitively proved to be true, there would be some percentage of people who would still deny it, just so they didn't have to admit they were wrong. Not all atheists, mind, but I'm sure there'd be some.
Say you have a car a car with bad brakes. Someone in your family needs to borrow a car so you see them reaching for the keys of the faulty car. Do you stop them from taking those keys and inform them that they need to take another car until that one is fixed, or do you let them go ahead and say to yourself "well they made the choice to take a car with no brakes, it must be what they want."
It seems God's choice was to tell them the brakes were broken, and let them make their own decision:
"...you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
They chose to drive the car anyway. When the car crashed, God went out himself to pick them up and get them safely home.
Just to extend the car analogy a bit.
Sorry, that doesn't work. No reasonable and informed person would ever choose hell.
I think you underestimate people's capacity to be stubborn and wrong-headed. People will knowingly do stupid things just so they won't have to back down, or admit they were wrong. It's exactly the same sort of arrogance C. S. Lewis was talking about.
Yeah - because the son came back to him. The idea of hell in the Bible is a separation from God. If God is the font of all good things, then separation from God logically entails a place with nothing but bad things. The prodigal son walked away from his father, and entered "hell". When he came back to his father, he came back into "heaven".
The idea is that we get after death exactly what we wanted during life. If we wanted to be with God here, then we'll go and be with Him afterwards. If we don't want anything to do with God here, then after death, you'll be in a place that has nothing to do with God. Hell isn't so much a punishment as a consequence.
My personal experience leads to the opposite conclusion. We may be wired to follow the logic we understand or are taught. If we are taught how to think rationally and scientifically, then belief in God is vulnerable to rational analysis.
Wouldn't that contradict your personal experience, as you were brought up and educated in religion? Or could it possibly be that our beliefs are not predetermined either by our genetics or our education, but are a product of an individual mind capable of making an independent decision?
I'd love to work somewhere where those kind of standards were applied. I'd get a CS degree (mine is in Physics), but those programmers I've worked with who have CS degrees don't seem much more engineer-like in their application than those without. Too much hacking, not enough engineering. Perhaps civil engineers would be the same if every bridge had "this bridge comes with no warranty, either express or implied" written into the contract.
It's not going to happen, because there's no market for it. Writing formally correct software is possible; industries like aeronautics require it for their essential systems. But it takes much, much longer to do it that way than your standard development process. I'm not qualified predict the time increase (and thus, cost increase) that sort of development process would involve, but I would not be surprised if it was at least an order of magnitude for reasonably complex application software. Nobody is willing to pay for that sort of development, and thus, tertiary education institutes do not teach their students about it. They're not going to spend time giving their average student an unmarketable ability.
Firstly, PvP in WoW is pretty much dead. There is no real point to it, apart from grinding rep in Battlegrounds. Nobody cares enough to look at their opponents builds. Now, with the addition of Arena teams, it might be different. If they take off, and there are some really skilled teams there, then that information might be useful. But knowing your opponents build and equipment is only going to be useful if you both teams are a) reasonable skilled and b) equally matched. Also, it's not hard to figure out most builds after fighting someone a couple of times, so it's not like the information couldn't be found anyway by hardcore players (who are the only ones who will really be able to benefit from it).
And for selling votes, too. But it needn't be; an ID doesn't have to be tied to a particular vote, just to whether or not the person identified by the ID has voted or not.
Flint isn't encouraging piracy as the moral choice - he's telling companies that DRM hurts sales more than it helps. His not saying everyone deserves their product for free, he's saying using DRM is going to negatively impact their bottom line.
Odd. A document released recently by a Muslim group in Britain said schools shouldn't force Muslims to draw pictures of humans:
"In Islam the creation of three dimensional figurative imagery of humans is generally regarded as unacceptable because of the risk of idolatress practices and some pupils and parents may raise objections to this. The school should avoid encouraging Muslim pupils from producing three dimensional imagery of humans and focus on other forms of art, calligraphy, textile art, ceramic glass, metal/woodwork, landscape drawing, paintings, architectural representations, geometric figures, photography and mosaic art."
Muslim Council of Britain
I suppose it's not really surprising that Muslim architecture is going to uncover these sorts of complex patterns. As I recall, the Quran prohibits art depicting humans (or possibly anything created by Allah, I can't recall exactly), and as a result, Islamic art tends to the more abstract. Without the devotion to realism that characterised Western art through much of history, it makes sense that they'd develop the more abstract art to a greater complexity.
Unfortunately, juries are often not informed of their rights to nullification. The presiding judge rarely tells them it's an option.
When you have one question on one ballot for the whole voting population, then internet voting is feasible. When your ballot is much more complex, much longer, and requires strictly validating voters according to location and eligibility, it becomes much more problematic.
Actually, none of those are really problematic. The Estonians had a national ID card, which was used to verify the voters. If you have a national ID card, it's trivial to attach address information (to validate location) and age (to validate eligibility - any other criteria in this category). Even having different questions at each locale is not terribly difficult.
I think the real reason it wouldn't work in the US is two-fold. Firstly, it involves using a national ID system, which is always vociferously opposed in the US. Secondly, Estonia has a much smaller population than the US, and has a much smaller area. They don't have to deal with the problems of scale as much.
And this is all on the assumption that the Estonian election actually works - it hasn't happened yet after all. I hope they have sufficient safeguards to ensure that voting from a compromised computer is still secure. Good luck with that.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? This article is talking about hacking a server, not your personal box, and servers generally don't run javascript anyway. Good luck trying to install NoScript as an apache module.
This is one mistake in one paper on adult stem cells. It's important for those working in that field, but it hardly invalidates the whole notion of adult stem cell therapies. And in terms of therapies, adult stem cells are better than embryonic, as they don't suffer from rejection. Embryonic stem cell research is pretty much just that - purely research. They're easier to perform research with, as I understand it, but any discoveries made have to be translated back into adult stem cells for therapeutic uses. The whole point of stem cell therapeutics is that you use the persons own cells to repair the injury. And given that harvesting stem cells kills the embryo, the only way you could benefit from an embryonic stem cell therapy would be if you were one of a pair of twins, and they harvested the cells from your twin and left you alive.
Actually, embryonic stem cells will never be useful in therepeutics; they would still suffer from the problem of rejection (you could never use your own embryonic stem cells in a therapy, as the only method of collection we have involves the destruction of the embryo). The only area they are claimed to be useful in is pure research, where they are easier to work with. Any discoveries made with embryonic stem cells, however, would have to be translated to adult stem cells when it came to therapy, as I understand things.
The whole "stem cell debate" thing makes me embarrassed to tell people that I'm American.
See, people like you trolling a debate they know nothing about would make me ashamed to be an American (if I was one). Here's a hint: this story is talking about adult stem cells, which has no significance at all in regard to the current political/moral question of embryonic stem cells. They're two totally different things, obtained through totally different processes.
Sorry, it was actually the OP who asked about the money. I didn't realize you weren't him till I went and checked.
So that's an excuse to make a bad investment?
Stop putting words into my mouth. I never said it was a good/bad investment. You asked where the money was going to come from. I told you. You were saying that Obama was making promises without outlining where the funding was coming from. I pointed out that his other policies would free up existing money, and that he could probably fund some of these projects without any additional strain on the tax-holder. There was no comment in there as to whether this particular project was a good idea or not - although personally, I think it's probably better than the majority of projects that get public funding. Like Alaska's bridge-to-nowhere, for example.