And then there's this ship completely composed of Dark Matter sitting right there, when we arrive.
"Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you've done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?" - Zaphod Beeblebrox
Well surely that's because, in a country that invented Coffin-Hotels, there is just plain NO ROOM for any more Xboxes there. I mean - have you seen how big those things are ?
In the sense that he was unpowered, it's free fall.
There's obviously a fine line between gliders and parachutists anyway... The difference between guiding and arresting your descent with your arms, a birdman suit, a backpack wing, a parachute, a hang glider and an enclosed glider is all really just a matter of degree. Each technique uses the aerodynamic properties (such that they are) of their method to the best of their abilities.
I guess the major difference is that gliders can generate enough lift to reverse their descent. In that sense, Mr Baumgartners efforts don't qualify as a glider.
"There is no need for a national military, use local militias"
Are you insane ?
Firstly, can you see anyone in the Land of the Free wanting to give up being the premiere military nation in the world ? That's what you'll get with no national armed forces.
Secondly, in the event of a war (other than a civil war), you're expecting a bunch of states with no common infrastructure to effectively self-organize against an external threat. Without an existing and practiced doctrine of organization, this will not happen. This costs time, money and effort.
You say Idaho, etc have nothing to contribute now - that's what the federal TAXES are for, idiot. They contribute the same way (maybe not the same amount) as every other state. Armed forces cost money. Everything does. Having some sort of figurehead president with no money or infrastructure to support him is worse than useless.
(A side note: The UN doesn't exist to protect the USA. Can you imagine the USA kowtowing to the wishes of the UN, because that would be what would happen without a solid national diplomatic and military front - ie a federal government)
I'm not an advocate of a top-heavy federal government, or any particular form of goverment over another, but there are some fundamental concerns you are glossing over with a wave of your hand, as if all that stuff is simple. This leads me to believe you have no clue.
And how does one man coordinate a national military structure ? Or do all the states contribute a separate military with their own competing systems ? Who pays for this National military ? What if a state doesn't contribute as much as others (or at all)? What happens to that state in the event of a war ? What if you're say Kansas, and you figure that any invader is going to go through everyone else to get to you anyway, so you're just not going to have a military at all? So you spend your cash on something else, like education. What if the other states resent you for this? What if they decide to invade? Oh watch out, thats' a civil war you got there.
Is the President going to sort all this out ?
And that was just an example using the military. There are numerous others.
The federal government does a hell of a lot more for your taxes than you think. Without it, you don't have a country, just a collection of small countries - like Europe in the middle ages.
You forget one fundamental point. Children have different needs than young adults. Putting 50 to 100 eight year olds in a room with one lecturer and the "tools they need to educate themselves" is not going to work.
First you say that you don't need a federal gov't, and then you say that you need a president to take charge of military issues.
wtf?
If your only sovereign is at the local level, you have a lot of countries, not states. If you have competing states and yet have a federal government, then what's the purpose of that government except to regulate interaction between the states and between the country and other countries... and if you have that, then how do the states ensure they have adequate representation at that federal level except through Congress and the Senate?
There are plenty of other holes in your ideas here, but I feel further discussion would be wasted.
China is doing well because like the USA and all the other successful countries, they have enough Capitalism to make the greedy people happy, with enough Socialism to make the lazy people happy.
Actually, socialism isn't for lazy people, it's for the disadvantaged. Lazy people might attempt to take advantage of it, but there will always be those who wish to gain advantage of any system for less work.
They don't call them "the idle rich" for nothing you know:)
And exactly how often do you speak with a real Bank Teller ?
I know in Australia at least, banks are closing branches left and right, replacing entire buildings with a couple of ATMs in some places.
Re:The Heart of the Matter, right here...
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 1
The author of the article is absolutely right; if you want to win the debate you must make it more about reforming copyright laws to make them more reasonable (the mainstream can get down with that), and less about "YOU EVIL CAPITALISTS DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP ANYTHING TO YOURSELVES WITHOUT SHARING WITH US!!!" The average American will NEVER come over to that side.
Seems to me that the growing popularity of P2P networks suggests that the average American likes free music *just fine*.
If you can somehow determine what a shambling zombie walk looks like as a fitness function, then you *can* specify it.
It all depends on what you're selecting for, and how things match up to that.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that their GA discovered some solutions that somersaulted, or crawled or whatever. By manipulating the fitness function to require that the center of mass didn't deviate from a smaller range, they eliminated these solutions from the genetic pool of survivors.
In the same way, if the fitness function in your example had defined success as moving the center of mass instead of merely *any* part of the organism, then those walkers who "won" by growing tall would have been eliminated. Problem solved.
Actually, I would have thought that GA is less constrained than nature in its ability to sustain a high population.
The only constraint on the population in a GA system is the capacity of the machine(s) to store and represent the data.
Nature, on the other hand, is limited in area and resources.
I think your real fear is that a Nautrial environment is far less controlled than the virtual one. It's not the population size that is the problem here - it's a change in the fitness function itself. Without a controlled virtual environment, it is always possible that an evolving nano-population will start selecting for something that you weren't aiming for.
Actually, in Australia at least, you can be shown to have committed a break and enter even if all you do is open the door. It doesn't have to be locked. In fact, even if it's ajar, and you push it further open, then that can be considered a "break". If the door is wide open and all you do is walk in, then that can't be a break, but might be a trespass.
Of course, the other element of the break and enter is intent.
Besides which - all this argument by analogy is completely flawed. None of this has any relevance to wireless networks.
You are in charge of your life. It's trite sounding crap, but it's true. You and I want the same thing - a better world for all. But if all you're going to do about it is bitch about being paid pennies, then it's your perspective that's flawed, not mine.
If you are so far above the material concerns of getting paid less, you wouldn't have mentioned it.
Re:Alas, it is already too late.
on
The Big Kerplop
·
· Score: 1
Ever played "Red Rover" or the equivalent ? Where the kids all line up on one side and run across to the other side and the guy in the middle has to tag one. You get tagged, you stay in the middle and try and tag the next wave. Last guy to be tagged is the winner and goes in the middle next round. But what if the little blighters don't admit they were tagged?
Well it's hard to deny you were tagged when you're on the ground eating dirt now isn't it?
If that's what it takes for some kid to learn to play by the rules, that's fine by me. And yes - I'm the kid who did the tripping.
You don't like it ? Quit ! Start your own company and pay other people pennies!
What's that you say ? It's not that easy ? Well that fat guy who yells at you did it. Didn't he? Oh wait? He's just middle management? So he's getting an ulcer watching his projected schedule slip because you're wasting time reading slashdot instead of working.. and getting his arse reamed by upper management.
Get some perspective. It's hard to just up and change your career, but if you feel like you're hemmed in and can't blissfully slide into a new life, at least try and make the best of the one you've got. Complaining about it isn't going to help you : it doesn't even make you feel better, really.
88 hrs of work a week? You've got it lucky my son. when I was a lad, I lived in a cardboard box on the side of the road. We got up 4 hours before we went to bed and licked the road clean.
Seriously, I've worked shift work on 12 hour shifts in a factory, 7 days a week. And rotating 3x8hr shifts as well. They really sucked: One week you're starting at 5:30am the next 1:30pm and the next 9:30pm and leaving at 6 am. I've worked 100+ hours a week at a cube jockey fire-fighting position for 3 months. (I had to schedule time to wash my clothes). The peak duration in that stint was 120 hours in a week.
Now I'm in a cushy 9-5 job where I rarely have to work weekends. The pay is commensurate with that.
I feel pretty lucky though, because I now have the time to concentrate on other parts of my life, other than work. So I look back on those days where I worked in a video store to get through university with fondness. Sure it sucked that my friends would all go out in the evening and I was stuck at work. But in the end, you do what you have to do to get by. I've heard having goals helps:)
I certainly agree that without God, religious texts are not meaningful
Actually - I disagree. As a cultural indicator, religious texts have a great deal of significance to anthropology. With or without their cultural beliefs being "true".
Don't you? I mean, if God existed and would send me to hell unless I was wearing a red shirt, I would wear a lot of red shirts. And if God doesn't exist, why am I wasting my time going to church?
Seems like knowing what the deal is with God - does he exist or not, what does he want me to do - is a fairly important matter.
But ultimately unknowable and unprovable (afaik). And I've never really gone with the bet-hedging argument either. I mean, what a cop out. It's like saying "Hey, He might not exist, but if I'm wrong then I'll go to hell. I'll pretend He exists and then I'll be ok.". Come on. Surely the person who came up with that one (can't remember his name right now) forgot the one thing that fails here: Faith. Hedging this bet doesn't mean you believe, it just means you're doing something to avoid eternal damnation. To me, that's sort of a poor excuse for faith.
But that's really an aside to your point. The existence of God(s) is important in and of itself. But I am not concerned with proving one way or the other whether they exist. And ultimately, I have this feeling that it's not important to them whether I believe or not. It might ultimately be important to me (being stuck in hell forever would be a bit of a bummer- not to mention a big surprise!). Ultimately, I cannot believe in a deity capricious enough to eternally punish people who have led decent lives yet do not believe in him. That kind of pettiness is beneath an omnipotent being IMHO.
> some evidence for a) the existence of a Deity
Some would say that the existence of the universe is evidence for this.
Yeah. But that's the whole first cause fallacy again. It's not actual evidence because you *define* the causation of the universe as "God".
> the death of innocent children in earthquakes
Right, if God is good, why is there evil? Because God gave man the ability to sin, and man did, and thus we live in a fallen world. Another neat dodge. I wouldn't even call the death of innocents "evil" so much as "pointless and sad". You still can't resolve the "perfectly good and omnipotent" being who allows pointless destruction except to say "Gee, well we fucked up so all that pain and suffering is really *our* fault, and God won't change it because.. umm because we're sinners."
(and another aside - interesting that insurance companies list earthquake with other "acts of God")
Were I to find evidence that Christianity was false, I hope that I'd examine that evidence with an open mind. Lots of evidence so far points to it being true.
Cool. I've been wandering the agnostic/atheist path for some time now. I could use a faith-refreshment. Point me in the direction of this evidence please.
> How would one go about designing a way to > test Christianity ?
One could examine its claims and see if they make sense.
- God exists - OK, could be, there's a lot of universe out there - Man is sinful - yup, seems reasonable - God speaks to us through the Bible - hm, checking Biblical historical veracity, etc., OK - Jesus Christ came to earth, died, rose from the dead - whew, farfetched, there's historical evidence for his existence, no video footage though
That sort of thing?
Well ok, so jumping into the deep end rather than sweating the details.
God Exists.
Alright so you've got a "maybe". which is a "not proven". Still. I can't falsify this claim. There is no way I can say "this is a test for Gods, if I run it a thousand times all I have to get is a 'maybe' and I'm ok. As soon as I get a 'no' I can say there aren't any." There is no such test. No way I can make one.
Man is Sinful.
Well this is interesting. Since *sin* is defined in religious terms. Another circular reference. "A is defined in B. The Existence of A implies B" is a fallacy. On the other hand, if you say "Man exhibits these attributes, which we now label sins" then ye
re: fear. Good point. I guess we'd have to go back to the hebrew to have a better extraction of the meaning as it was written. Did they mean to imply "feeling of awe" or did they mean "Oh shit! Here's that God dude again! Run!":-)
re: common grace. Interesting. I *have* heard that there are Christians who are taught that you don't have to be explicitly saved by Christ, as long as you don't sin too much.:) Something about Christ dying for everyones sins on the cross, so you aren't required to know about it to get the benefit of Gods love. But that's another discussion:)
re: concience..
Of course.
That's a very neat argument too. Cuts out the middle man. God gives you your instinctive knowledge of right and wrong - and for a more reasoned version check this handy book:) I like it. Of course it's pretty obvious watching children grow up that conscience is a learned trait, but lets not go there:)
The Bible isn't really just a story. It's a library of stories and letters and so on. Given that many of the books were written centuries apart from each other, there's no expectation on my part that there should be any consistency.
However, I don't want to be sucked into a discussion of the details of the Bible. For 2 reasons. Firstly, I personally don't believe biblical literalism is relevant to faith. I know lots of people feel the need to take every single word of the bible as infallible truth. I don't feel that God (if He exists) would care that much about what was exactly said (especially given the fallibility of human translators). Much more relevant is the underlying message. (Of course that requires you to be able to extract the underlying message, and for the imagination-challenged literalists, this might be too difficult). In that sense I tend to agree with the point of view this person expresses. Secondly - I don't *know* enough of the details of the bible to make my points effectively.
That's a difficult one to figure out. It seems to oppose a lot of what the rest of the Bible has said. I've heard it explained as "God was testing Abraham's" faith; whew, that's a doozy.
Yeah. That's the way I read it too. God was testing Abraham to see how much he really feared God. (I say feared, not loved, because that is the word used in the King James..) So if God knows everything, then he knows what Abraham would do, right ? Oh but I forgot about Free Will - but if God gives us the will to do as we please, and he doesn't control us, how can he know what will happen ? So forgetting the fact that God doesn't really know everything, God really won't take Isaac from Abraham, because God knows (even though Abraham doesn't) the he's not going to let Abraham go through with it.. Lucky Isaac. Still - you have to wonder why Abraham wants to follow a God who will demand the sacrifice of his son ? Because he's *afraid* of course. That's what the test was about. Are you afraid of me enough to sacrifice you son ? And lets not get into the fact that they're still sacrificing poor little lambs at this stage. Good thing Jesus came along to be a lamb for all of us or we'd probably still have to chuck a sheep on the bar-b-q for God every sabbath.
Some folks believe that the Bible teaches that there is "common grace" - that is, although the world is fallen, God still provides some good things - the arts and sciences, varying amounts of blessings on various people, etc.
That's nice of them to say that. There are plenty of others who believe that you're condemned to eternal damnation unless you've been brought the Good Word. Ignorance is no escape. Even with a common grace - my point is "How do they know to do what is right?" If God hands out morality, and morality is based around knowing what is right, then how do you know what is right unless God tells you ? So if they've never heard of Him, how come they're not all doing evil ?
> "the Crusades"
Just a though on the Crusades - at the time various peoples were sweeping up from north Africa and across eastern Europe, burning and pillaging, as it were. So while the Crusades were probably wrong, it's kind of understandable that folks in Western Europe were getting a little squirrely.:-)
Oh absolutely. I didn't say that the Crusades weren't understandable... But remember that a lot of the second Crusades were about going back and getting some of that gold for the Church. It's all about power. Where was the Grace of God then?
On the treatment of women in the Bible - here's an odd one. The Bible says that the first people to see Jesus after he rose from the dead were women. The Bible reports that quite matter of factly, even though at the time women were not allowed to testify in court. This kind of speaks towards the truth of the Bible - if someone were making it up, they could do better than that:-)
Oh I don't know. If women couldn't testify then that makes it very useful to someone who was making it up. They could never be called on it.:)
Seriously, there are so many different and contradictory things in the bible. The fact that it's internally inconsistent doesn't mean that it's true. Don't mistake someone elses incompetence at story telling for veracity.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
And then there's this ship completely composed of Dark Matter sitting right there, when we arrive.
"Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you've done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?"
- Zaphod Beeblebrox
I guess this also answers the question of which side of the Force is the stronger.
Well surely that's because, in a country that invented Coffin-Hotels, there is just plain NO ROOM for any more Xboxes there.
I mean - have you seen how big those things are ?
And *I* think it's amazing that people come across things they don't understand and say "Gee, must be God!"
In the sense that he was unpowered, it's free fall.
There's obviously a fine line between gliders and parachutists anyway... The difference between guiding and arresting your descent with your arms, a birdman suit, a backpack wing, a parachute, a hang glider and an enclosed glider is all really just a matter of degree. Each technique uses the aerodynamic properties (such that they are) of their method to the best of their abilities.
I guess the major difference is that gliders can generate enough lift to reverse their descent. In that sense, Mr Baumgartners efforts don't qualify as a glider.
"There is no need for a national military, use local militias"
Are you insane ?
Firstly, can you see anyone in the Land of the Free wanting to give up being the premiere military nation in the world ? That's what you'll get with no national armed forces.
Secondly, in the event of a war (other than a civil war), you're expecting a bunch of states with no common infrastructure to effectively self-organize against an external threat. Without an existing and practiced doctrine of organization, this will not happen. This costs time, money and effort.
You say Idaho, etc have nothing to contribute now - that's what the federal TAXES are for, idiot. They contribute the same way (maybe not the same amount) as every other state. Armed forces cost money. Everything does. Having some sort of figurehead president with no money or infrastructure to support him is worse than useless.
(A side note: The UN doesn't exist to protect the USA. Can you imagine the USA kowtowing to the wishes of the UN, because that would be what would happen without a solid national diplomatic and military front - ie a federal government)
I'm not an advocate of a top-heavy federal government, or any particular form of goverment over another, but there are some fundamental concerns you are glossing over with a wave of your hand, as if all that stuff is simple.
This leads me to believe you have no clue.
And how does one man coordinate a national military structure ? Or do all the states contribute a separate military with their own competing systems ?
Who pays for this National military ?
What if a state doesn't contribute as much as others (or at all)?
What happens to that state in the event of a war ? What if you're say Kansas, and you figure that any invader is going to go through everyone else to get to you anyway, so you're just not going to have a military at all? So you spend your cash on something else, like education. What if the other states resent you for this? What if they decide to invade? Oh watch out, thats' a civil war you got there.
Is the President going to sort all this out ?
And that was just an example using the military. There are numerous others.
The federal government does a hell of a lot more for your taxes than you think. Without it, you don't have a country, just a collection of small countries - like Europe in the middle ages.
You forget one fundamental point.
Children have different needs than young adults.
Putting 50 to 100 eight year olds in a room with one lecturer and the "tools they need to educate themselves" is not going to work.
First you say that you don't need a federal gov't, and then you say that you need a president to take charge of military issues.
wtf?
If your only sovereign is at the local level, you have a lot of countries, not states. If you have competing states and yet have a federal government, then what's the purpose of that government except to regulate interaction between the states and between the country and other countries... and if you have that, then how do the states ensure they have adequate representation at that federal level except through Congress and the Senate?
There are plenty of other holes in your ideas here, but I feel further discussion would be wasted.
China is doing well because like the USA and all the other successful countries, they have enough Capitalism to make the greedy people happy, with enough Socialism to make the lazy people happy.
:)
Actually, socialism isn't for lazy people, it's for the disadvantaged. Lazy people might attempt to take advantage of it, but there will always be those who wish to gain advantage of any system for less work.
They don't call them "the idle rich" for nothing you know
And exactly how often do you speak with a real Bank Teller ?
I know in Australia at least, banks are closing branches left and right, replacing entire buildings with a couple of ATMs in some places.
Seems to me that the growing popularity of P2P networks suggests that the average American likes free music *just fine*.
If you can somehow determine what a shambling zombie walk looks like as a fitness function, then you *can* specify it.
It all depends on what you're selecting for, and how things match up to that.
If you'd read the article, you'd realize that their GA discovered some solutions that somersaulted, or crawled or whatever. By manipulating the fitness function to require that the center of mass didn't deviate from a smaller range, they eliminated these solutions from the genetic pool of survivors.
In the same way, if the fitness function in your example had defined success as moving the center of mass instead of merely *any* part of the organism, then those walkers who "won" by growing tall would have been eliminated.
Problem solved.
Actually, I would have thought that GA is less constrained than nature in its ability to sustain a high population.
The only constraint on the population in a GA system is the capacity of the machine(s) to store and represent the data.
Nature, on the other hand, is limited in area and resources.
I think your real fear is that a Nautrial environment is far less controlled than the virtual one. It's not the population size that is the problem here - it's a change in the fitness function itself. Without a controlled virtual environment, it is always possible that an evolving nano-population will start selecting for something that you weren't aiming for.
Actually, in Australia at least, you can be shown to have committed a break and enter even if all you do is open the door. It doesn't have to be locked. In fact, even if it's ajar, and you push it further open, then that can be considered a "break". If the door is wide open and all you do is walk in, then that can't be a break, but might be a trespass.
Of course, the other element of the break and enter is intent.
Besides which - all this argument by analogy is completely flawed. None of this has any relevance to wireless networks.
Again, you miss the point.
You are in charge of your life. It's trite sounding crap, but it's true. You and I want the same thing - a better world for all. But if all you're going to do about it is bitch about being paid pennies, then it's your perspective that's flawed, not mine.
If you are so far above the material concerns of getting paid less, you wouldn't have mentioned it.
Ever played "Red Rover" or the equivalent ? Where the kids all line up on one side and run across to the other side and the guy in the middle has to tag one. You get tagged, you stay in the middle and try and tag the next wave. Last guy to be tagged is the winner and goes in the middle next round.
But what if the little blighters don't admit they were tagged?
Well it's hard to deny you were tagged when you're on the ground eating dirt now isn't it?
If that's what it takes for some kid to learn to play by the rules, that's fine by me. And yes - I'm the kid who did the tripping.
You don't like it ?
Quit !
Start your own company and pay other people pennies!
What's that you say ? It's not that easy ? Well that fat guy who yells at you did it. Didn't he? Oh wait? He's just middle management? So he's getting an ulcer watching his projected schedule slip because you're wasting time reading slashdot instead of working.. and getting his arse reamed by upper management.
Get some perspective.
It's hard to just up and change your career, but if you feel like you're hemmed in and can't blissfully slide into a new life, at least try and make the best of the one you've got.
Complaining about it isn't going to help you : it doesn't even make you feel better, really.
Real life is ok, but the down time is a bitch.
88 hrs of work a week?
:)
You've got it lucky my son.
when I was a lad, I lived in a cardboard box on the side of the road. We got up 4 hours before we went to bed and licked the road clean.
Seriously, I've worked shift work on 12 hour shifts in a factory, 7 days a week. And rotating 3x8hr shifts as well. They really sucked: One week you're starting at 5:30am the next 1:30pm and the next 9:30pm and leaving at 6 am.
I've worked 100+ hours a week at a cube jockey fire-fighting position for 3 months. (I had to schedule time to wash my clothes). The peak duration in that stint was 120 hours in a week.
Now I'm in a cushy 9-5 job where I rarely have to work weekends. The pay is commensurate with that.
I feel pretty lucky though, because I now have the time to concentrate on other parts of my life, other than work.
So I look back on those days where I worked in a video store to get through university with fondness. Sure it sucked that my friends would all go out in the evening and I was stuck at work. But in the end, you do what you have to do to get by. I've heard having goals helps
I certainly agree that without God, religious texts are not meaningful
Actually - I disagree. As a cultural indicator, religious texts have a great deal of significance to anthropology. With or without their cultural beliefs being "true".
Seems like knowing what the deal is with God - does he exist or not, what does he want me to do - is a fairly important matter.
But ultimately unknowable and unprovable (afaik). And I've never really gone with the bet-hedging argument either. I mean, what a cop out. It's like saying "Hey, He might not exist, but if I'm wrong then I'll go to hell. I'll pretend He exists and then I'll be ok.". Come on. Surely the person who came up with that one (can't remember his name right now) forgot the one thing that fails here: Faith. Hedging this bet doesn't mean you believe, it just means you're doing something to avoid eternal damnation. To me, that's sort of a poor excuse for faith.
But that's really an aside to your point. The existence of God(s) is important in and of itself. But I am not concerned with proving one way or the other whether they exist. And ultimately, I have this feeling that it's not important to them whether I believe or not. It might ultimately be important to me (being stuck in hell forever would be a bit of a bummer- not to mention a big surprise!).
Ultimately, I cannot believe in a deity capricious enough to eternally punish people who have led decent lives yet do not believe in him. That kind of pettiness is beneath an omnipotent being IMHO.
> some evidence for a) the existence of a Deity
Some would say that the existence of the universe is evidence for this.
Yeah. But that's the whole first cause fallacy again. It's not actual evidence because you *define* the causation of the universe as "God".
> the death of innocent children in earthquakes
Right, if God is good, why is there evil? Because God gave man the ability to sin, and man did, and thus we live in a fallen world.
Another neat dodge. I wouldn't even call the death of innocents "evil" so much as "pointless and sad". You still can't resolve the "perfectly good and omnipotent" being who allows pointless destruction except to say "Gee, well we fucked up so all that pain and suffering is really *our* fault, and God won't change it because.. umm because we're sinners."
(and another aside - interesting that insurance companies list earthquake with other "acts of God")
Were I to find evidence that Christianity was false, I hope that I'd examine that evidence with an open mind. Lots of evidence so far points to it being true.
Cool. I've been wandering the agnostic/atheist path for some time now. I could use a faith-refreshment. Point me in the direction of this evidence please.
> How would one go about designing a way to
> test Christianity ?
One could examine its claims and see if they make sense.
- God exists - OK, could be, there's a lot of universe out there
- Man is sinful - yup, seems reasonable
- God speaks to us through the Bible - hm, checking Biblical historical veracity, etc., OK
- Jesus Christ came to earth, died, rose from the dead - whew, farfetched, there's historical evidence for his existence, no video footage though
That sort of thing?
Well ok, so jumping into the deep end rather than sweating the details.
God Exists.
Alright so you've got a "maybe". which is a "not proven". Still. I can't falsify this claim. There is no way I can say "this is a test for Gods, if I run it a thousand times all I have to get is a 'maybe' and I'm ok. As soon as I get a 'no' I can say there aren't any." There is no such test. No way I can make one.
Man is Sinful.
Well this is interesting. Since *sin* is defined in religious terms. Another circular reference. "A is defined in B. The Existence of A implies B" is a fallacy. On the other hand, if you say "Man exhibits these attributes, which we now label sins" then ye
re: fear. :-)
:) Something about Christ dying for everyones sins on the cross, so you aren't required to know about it to get the benefit of Gods love. :)
:) :)
Good point. I guess we'd have to go back to the hebrew to have a better extraction of the meaning as it was written. Did they mean to imply "feeling of awe" or did they mean "Oh shit! Here's that God dude again! Run!"
re: common grace. Interesting. I *have* heard that there are Christians who are taught that you don't have to be explicitly saved by Christ, as long as you don't sin too much.
But that's another discussion
re: concience..
Of course.
That's a very neat argument too. Cuts out the middle man. God gives you your instinctive knowledge of right and wrong - and for a more reasoned version check this handy book
I like it. Of course it's pretty obvious watching children grow up that conscience is a learned trait, but lets not go there
re: Consistency
The Bible isn't really just a story. It's a library of stories and letters and so on. Given that many of the books were written centuries apart from each other, there's no expectation on my part that there should be any consistency.
However, I don't want to be sucked into a discussion of the details of the Bible. For 2 reasons. Firstly, I personally don't believe biblical literalism is relevant to faith. I know lots of people feel the need to take every single word of the bible as infallible truth. I don't feel that God (if He exists) would care that much about what was exactly said (especially given the fallibility of human translators). Much more relevant is the underlying message. (Of course that requires you to be able to extract the underlying message, and for the imagination-challenged literalists, this might be too difficult). In that sense I tend to agree with the point of view this person expresses.
Secondly - I don't *know* enough of the details of the bible to make my points effectively.
Leslie Kelly.
Poor guy. He's got *two* girls names.
Makes that poor schmuck Sue sound lucky.
> ones son, Isaac
:-)
:-)
:)
;-)
That's a difficult one to figure out. It seems to oppose a lot of what the rest of the Bible has said. I've heard it explained as "God was testing Abraham's" faith; whew, that's a doozy.
Yeah. That's the way I read it too. God was testing Abraham to see how much he really feared God. (I say feared, not loved, because that is the word used in the King James..)
So if God knows everything, then he knows what Abraham would do, right ? Oh but I forgot about Free Will - but if God gives us the will to do as we please, and he doesn't control us, how can he know what will happen ?
So forgetting the fact that God doesn't really know everything, God really won't take Isaac from Abraham, because God knows (even though Abraham doesn't) the he's not going to let Abraham go through with it.. Lucky Isaac.
Still - you have to wonder why Abraham wants to follow a God who will demand the sacrifice of his son ? Because he's *afraid* of course. That's what the test was about. Are you afraid of me enough to sacrifice you son ?
And lets not get into the fact that they're still sacrificing poor little lambs at this stage. Good thing Jesus came along to be a lamb for all of us or we'd probably still have to chuck a sheep on the bar-b-q for God every sabbath.
Some folks believe that the Bible teaches that there is "common grace" - that is, although the world is fallen, God still provides some good things - the arts and sciences, varying amounts of blessings on various people, etc.
That's nice of them to say that. There are plenty of others who believe that you're condemned to eternal damnation unless you've been brought the Good Word. Ignorance is no escape.
Even with a common grace - my point is "How do they know to do what is right?" If God hands out morality, and morality is based around knowing what is right, then how do you know what is right unless God tells you ? So if they've never heard of Him, how come they're not all doing evil ?
> "the Crusades"
Just a though on the Crusades - at the time various peoples were sweeping up from north Africa and across eastern Europe, burning and pillaging, as it were. So while the Crusades were probably wrong, it's kind of understandable that folks in Western Europe were getting a little squirrely.
Oh absolutely. I didn't say that the Crusades weren't understandable... But remember that a lot of the second Crusades were about going back and getting some of that gold for the Church. It's all about power. Where was the Grace of God then?
On the treatment of women in the Bible - here's an odd one. The Bible says that the first people to see Jesus after he rose from the dead were women. The Bible reports that quite matter of factly, even though at the time women were not allowed to testify in court. This kind of speaks towards the truth of the Bible - if someone were making it up, they could do better than that
Oh I don't know. If women couldn't testify then that makes it very useful to someone who was making it up. They could never be called on it.
Seriously, there are so many different and contradictory things in the bible. The fact that it's internally inconsistent doesn't mean that it's true. Don't mistake someone elses incompetence at story telling for veracity.