Seems to me, to take my example above, I would be able to aquire parts to use in my research (such as a large concrete tank, a Freightliner digital float tank probe, a very long digital thermometer, a bimetal thermocoupler, a Basic Stamp, and a couple of voltage regulators and inverters) but if I ever went into PRODUCTION, I'd then have to license these materials that make up my nuclear waste repurposing generator.
"May change the world if it works" inventions of the type that will make money even if you can squeeze out only a penny above patent licensing- because it allows you to find out if something works *before* you pay for patent licensing.
I've got just such a device in mind for repurposing high level nuclear waste- but the threat of patent litigation means somebody else will probably beat me to it; there's at least six patents on only tangentially related technology involved, the whole thing is made up of what are basically expensive off the shelf parts (well, except for the fuel, which is an expensive, highly controled, on the shelf part, but I'm sure I could convince the IAEA and the DEA to let me have a tankfull of Hanford's finest if I donate the new above ground, computer monitored tank to pump it into before it leaks into the Columbia).
The probability of finding a mate that is beautiful, athletic, smart and on top of that would be interested in *you* are so small that winning the lottery three times in a row starts to look like having good odds.
I'd expect them to be linked. Win the lottery three times, and the type of women that get by on beauty rather than brains will be after you hoping to be the tearful wife explaining how she just had to pull the plug...
Either that- or given my own Asperger's behavior, exactly the opposite. I'd expect that the Autistic Genius would more tend to the hermitage (completely automated within the technology of the time to reduce dependance on other human beings, of course) than to civiliation.
Civilization need Extroverted Liars- ie criminals- to work.
Most people opposed to this idea of "outsourcing" would rather have companies (McDonald's, Coke, or their IT counterparts) profit from selling their goods to other countries, but not have them benefit through creation of local jobs or improvements in economy.
Actually, I'm against offshoreing- and I'm against American companies turning traitor against the consumers that made them big and seeking markets elsewhere. Free trade indeed SHOULD be a two way street- and this playing of one country against another due to differences in labor laws ain't it. When we have one world labor standard, fine, but until then, trade should be limited by national borders. Want to trade with the United States? BECOME A STATE!
Any reasonable P2P protocol splits the file up into packets and sends out requests for packet numbers- you aren't going to be pulling from just one source, so upload bandwidth really doesn't matter as much.
Speed of download. Especially if they had a few distributed servers in the mix run by WB, your download would be significantly faster than say, buying Quicktime copies of BattleStar Galactica through iTunes.
I wonder - do the free and voluntary choices of those who exist in those traditional minimal-money cultures have any relevance in your analysis?
Traditional human manhood ceremonies teach the five truths:
1. Life is hard.
2. Your choices are not your own.
3. You are not in control.
4. It's not about you.
5. You, and everyone around you, is going to die.
Does that sound like a society where "free and voluntary choices" are valued?
Are they, in your opinion, acting wrongly in choosing to accept Gates' life-saving charity?
They don't choose to accept charity- their cultures aren't about choice. They use whatever comes their way, according to the rules that fit the gift, no more, no less.
Ought they be required to choose death in order to preserve their culture?
See Truths #3 and #5 above. We do not choose, because we are not in control, and we will die. NOTHING, no charity, can prevent that.
Or rather, denied the choice altogether, and death chosen for them?
From their point of view, there is no choice to begin with- you take what you are given and do the best you can with it. There is no choice, and death always comes in the end.
If anything, it's our culture that has lied to generations of our children in not teaching boys these five truths; and in return they have substituted gang cultures, violent behavior, and epidemic drug abuse. There is no choice.
Do you really hate Bill this much, that u even think he donated all this money just to make more profit?
No and yes. There's no hate involved, just a cold, hard look at American Multinatinal Corporatism and how it works. In addition, it's NOT Bill personally- the entire purpose of foreign aid and charitable works as applied to the third world from America is clearly aimed at destroying traditional minimal-money cultures in favor of a new culture with a rising standard of living that we can sell products to. This is the real reason behind globalization- Bill's just a large cog in a much larger machine on that scale. It's the modern form of what the Americans did to the Native Americans in the 1840s. And it's just as wrong now as it was then.
Or to put it another way, if Gates was really interested in making as much money as possible, he'd take the 30 or 50 billion dollars (or whatever he gave away to his charity) and create new products to sell to the existing 6 billion person market, rather than trying to make a mere extra 100 million people live longer to buy copies of his existing product.
The point is, he doesn't (thanks to the incredible toll human disease takes on the third world from a monetary standpoint) currently have a 6 billion person market. The extra cost of disease is a major drag on third world economies- leaving him only about 2 billion customers in the current market. Accessing the other 4 billion requires a rising standard of living in third world nations- which is why almost all of his charitable giving does not go to first world nations, but to raise the standard of living in the third world- thus slightly increasing the population of the planet, but greatly increasing the number of people on the planet who can afford a $159.99 copy of Windows Vista.
hacking ability (which Gates also was, though who knows how he compares to Woz)
Actually, no. Gates hasn't worked on any hacks personally since Altair Basic, and even then he was a part of a team. Microsoft in general buys way more technology than they ever innovate. Compare that to the elegance of using the off cycle of a 6802 microprocessor instead of a video card just to create a computer with fewer chips, and thus cheaper for consumers....one is of these things is not like the other.
be rich in family (as Gates is)
This too doesn't compare- last I heard the Woz's family exceeded just about any other rich man on the planet other than bin Laden. Gates's immediate family is now what, 4 people?
Note that he doesn't do charity for show, as so many do, he actually gets things done.
This I'm much more cynical about. I agree Bill doesn't do his charity for show- I believe he does it to increase the size of the market he can eventually sell copies of Windows to. Right now, Microsoft is operating is a supersaturated market- his only hope of increasing market share is to increase the population of the earth.
I think I'll beat out anybody in the world for being cynical about American multinationals (not just Microsoft) and their purpose in "Free Trade" of any sort- including charity. The class of people who are willing to own such businesses do NOTHING that doesn't eventually make them money.
I'd be surprised if he didn't- the tax breaks for donating excess income are truly amazing at that level of income. The question would be, what does he give to? And my guess is that most of his donations go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation- because he's such a brownnosing suck up.
More people= more people to pay microsoft licenses. The third world is the edge of the market for Microsoft, they've saturated the United States, the First world, and the Second world. The only way left to expand is to make sure more people survive.
Within the same minute (you must have hit Send two clock ticks before me, as my post came two clock ticks later). Yes, it depends on what you value- if you value money and material possessions and billionaires being able to give away shitloads of money, then Jobs or Gates would be role models, but for people like us, who value engineering and family, The Woz is downright amazing.
By far, when it comes to character, the OTHER Steve from Apple beats those two all hollow. Yes, Jobs and Gates are more materially rich- but The Woz is rich in family and hacking ability, and as far as role models go, I'd much rather be the later.
Paulian worship is relatively new- I can't find a single instance of it among the Church Fathers. So I suspect I'd agree with the major premise in the Amazon synopsis- we have to interpret what St. Paul says in light of the Synoptic Gospels if we want to stay true to Christ, and St. Paul himself and most of his contemporaries would agree with that. The hard part of this is that St. Paul was writing to and about post-christ, gentile churches and congregations, *before* the synoptic gospels were written, before there was any sort of agreement on what Christ said and taught. So he's more influenced by his own Jewish, Greek, and Roman Citizen roots (he's alone among the first generation of Church Fathers in that last), and must be interpreted by the culture he was in.
More I cannot say- but thanks for the addition to my future reading list. Some of my favorite modern Christian writers are Calvinists interested in history and well on the journey to Catholicism- Cardinal John Newman (a 19th century author who made exactly this journey himself) said that "To be versed in history is to become Catholic". Scott Hahn, an ex-Presbyterian who now teaches at Franciscian University in Stubenville, is the one who brought us the new-old perspective on John's writing in the light of the Catholic Mass, and he did so because originally he was trying to design a Biblically Based Presbyterian Sunday Service. Sola Scriptura does have it's uses in this way- sometimes it leads to conversion, sometimes not, but whenever a modern Protestant Christian author digs into HISTORY, like CS Lewis did in his talks with Tolkien, the result is almost always a new perspective on Scripture that fits in with Roman Catholic teaching. I sometimes think this is what Martin Luther originally hoped for- the big good thing that came from Sola Scriptura- too bad MOST people who believe in Sola Scriptura leave it off at the Sola.
I'm a Christian, not a Paulian....and these things have to be taken in CONTEXT. The thing is, Protestantism in general has abandoned the context; Apostolic Tradition.
I understand how someone with no time, no changing mind state, and no memories can be considered of no service (nor of any other use for that matter), but how can a place of experientially everlasting time-based consciousness and attendent memories of current and past and real relentless *excruciating* pain either be a place you'd rather be in or a place you could be consoled by the (delusional) belief that it was done as a service to God?
Use is all I have- I've never had a day or even an hour without pain of some sort in my life. But besides that- it all comes back to The Choice. If I try to Serve the Lord and Fail, it's not my fault that I'm in Hell, I'm there for his purpose, and all things work for the best for those who are called to his purpose, REGARDLESS of what it "feels like" at a given instant. If I don't try- if I say No to The Choice- then it's MY fault I'm there; eternally and forever MY fault.
A hint comes from clinical depression. For depressives, they look at their past, and are unable to see anything other than failure. They can't blame anybody else for this failure- it's THEIR FAULT. That's a little bit like Hell and Purgatory right there- you're faced with all your sins, and can't blame anybody else for them. It's the ultimate maturity. At which point you can say No to God, and Yes to the Sin- at which point you're stuck in that state, forever. There's no point in existing, but you do anyway. It's a hell of a lot worse than physical pain- because there is no way at all to escape from it. Physical pain is easy to escape- even become enjoyable eventually. Mental pain has no such limitation.
Actually, there's been a lot of tradition behind the idea of attitude, grace, and faith being salvation. State of mind is exactly what the Saints have been trying to teach us since the night a certain young virgin said yes to an angel. It got kind of lost, misplaced in translation, with the Reformation- and the Counter Reformation had to be equally concrete if the Roman Catholic Church was going to survive. But since July of 1999, this has been proclaimed to the world as the norm. I'd link you to the Zenit translation of the Pope's homily for July 28, 1999- but Zenit.org doesn't allow deep links into their archives (or for that matter, in their frame-based HTML on their website, even show what URL you're really on when you're browsing the archives). I've heard about it on local Christian stations, debated at the time in theology magazines, and all the rest- but it all links back to a chain of thought that started with St. Mary herself.
And your phrase "merge with God"...I thought that was only used in New Age and other false religions. A Hell where the mind is frozen "forever" outside of time with no "new memories" is no Hell at all.
I personally can't think of a worse consequence for the choice of sin- I'd gladly go to your place hell if God choose to send me there- secure in the knowledge that I was doing it to serve Him. But to be cut off entirely from that service- there is no worse consequence than that.
I'm familiar with the wedge strategy- but it's kind of like the slipery slope argument. Abortion did not go up significantly after Roe V Wade, and any attempt to remove materialism from American Culture by teaching religion is going to run headlong into Health & Wealth Gospel fundamentalists like President Bush (people who believe that THE visible sign of virtue is being healthy and materially wealthy- and people who aren't must be sinning).
My point was directly about the statistics though- claiming that evolution has lost because 39% of the population believes in either ID or YEC, lumping them together, ignores directly people who believe in theistic evolution- on purpose.
What he missed though is that a sufficiently large mass dropped from a great height makes for a *better* WMD than a nuclear bomb- thus merely disarming the nuclear bombs means almost nothing from the point of view of a mining colony with a mass driver.
When I asked the question: "Or is your Hell simply another name for Purgatory and so it's not true that Purgatory always leads to Heaven?" you had to know I was using the terms to refer to two distinct locations and you therefore answered "Purgatory always leads to Heaven which is eternity with God. Hell is eternity *without* God."
Actually- that's the problem- you're refering to LOCATIONS. I'm not. I'm refering to states of mind. Because of that Hell is eterinity *without* God, and therefore distinct from Purgatory which is a short burst of something that feels like hell on your way to heaven. It's all in the attitude.
What happened to having to make the decision either before or at "the moment of death" which determines the destination of either going to the place of Purgatory/Heaven or to the place of eternal Hell? Now a moment can last almost an eternity? I'm a going to get the lame excuse that "the moment of death" exists outside of time and can thus extend almost an eternity past the point of death?
Time doesn't actually exist outside of death- your brain is done forming memories, you can't form new memories, you're done. Your only choice is to merge with God and become a part of the universe again, or not. If you choose not, God will respect that choice- and in so doing, you've *decided* not to come to terms with the loss of your temporal sin. If you choose to, you've *decided* to come to terms with the loss of your temporal sin. It isn't a choice of a physical place, it's the choice of a state of mind- and whichever state of mind you are in at the moment of death, that's the state you will be frozen in forever. I think that this point it may be wise to move this discussion to a journal before we get hit by Slashdot's version of death: archiving.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me, to take my example above, I would be able to aquire parts to use in my research (such as a large concrete tank, a Freightliner digital float tank probe, a very long digital thermometer, a bimetal thermocoupler, a Basic Stamp, and a couple of voltage regulators and inverters) but if I ever went into PRODUCTION, I'd then have to license these materials that make up my nuclear waste repurposing generator.
"May change the world if it works" inventions of the type that will make money even if you can squeeze out only a penny above patent licensing- because it allows you to find out if something works *before* you pay for patent licensing.
I've got just such a device in mind for repurposing high level nuclear waste- but the threat of patent litigation means somebody else will probably beat me to it; there's at least six patents on only tangentially related technology involved, the whole thing is made up of what are basically expensive off the shelf parts (well, except for the fuel, which is an expensive, highly controled, on the shelf part, but I'm sure I could convince the IAEA and the DEA to let me have a tankfull of Hanford's finest if I donate the new above ground, computer monitored tank to pump it into before it leaks into the Columbia).
500 servers vs 500000 servers- and the former needs to be paid for by the company doing the selling. You do the math.
The probability of finding a mate that is beautiful, athletic, smart and on top of that would be interested in *you* are so small that winning the lottery three times in a row starts to look like having good odds.
I'd expect them to be linked. Win the lottery three times, and the type of women that get by on beauty rather than brains will be after you hoping to be the tearful wife explaining how she just had to pull the plug...
Either that- or given my own Asperger's behavior, exactly the opposite. I'd expect that the Autistic Genius would more tend to the hermitage (completely automated within the technology of the time to reduce dependance on other human beings, of course) than to civiliation.
Civilization need Extroverted Liars- ie criminals- to work.
Most people opposed to this idea of "outsourcing" would rather have companies (McDonald's, Coke, or their IT counterparts) profit from selling their goods to other countries, but not have them benefit through creation of local jobs or improvements in economy.
Actually, I'm against offshoreing- and I'm against American companies turning traitor against the consumers that made them big and seeking markets elsewhere. Free trade indeed SHOULD be a two way street- and this playing of one country against another due to differences in labor laws ain't it. When we have one world labor standard, fine, but until then, trade should be limited by national borders. Want to trade with the United States? BECOME A STATE!
Any reasonable P2P protocol splits the file up into packets and sends out requests for packet numbers- you aren't going to be pulling from just one source, so upload bandwidth really doesn't matter as much.
Speed of download. Especially if they had a few distributed servers in the mix run by WB, your download would be significantly faster than say, buying Quicktime copies of BattleStar Galactica through iTunes.
I wonder - do the free and voluntary choices of those who exist in those traditional minimal-money cultures have any relevance in your analysis?
Traditional human manhood ceremonies teach the five truths:
1. Life is hard.
2. Your choices are not your own.
3. You are not in control.
4. It's not about you.
5. You, and everyone around you, is going to die.
Does that sound like a society where "free and voluntary choices" are valued?
Are they, in your opinion, acting wrongly in choosing to accept Gates' life-saving charity?
They don't choose to accept charity- their cultures aren't about choice. They use whatever comes their way, according to the rules that fit the gift, no more, no less.
Ought they be required to choose death in order to preserve their culture?
See Truths #3 and #5 above. We do not choose, because we are not in control, and we will die. NOTHING, no charity, can prevent that.
Or rather, denied the choice altogether, and death chosen for them?
From their point of view, there is no choice to begin with- you take what you are given and do the best you can with it. There is no choice, and death always comes in the end.
If anything, it's our culture that has lied to generations of our children in not teaching boys these five truths; and in return they have substituted gang cultures, violent behavior, and epidemic drug abuse. There is no choice.
Do you really hate Bill this much, that u even think he donated all this money just to make more profit?
No and yes. There's no hate involved, just a cold, hard look at American Multinatinal Corporatism and how it works. In addition, it's NOT Bill personally- the entire purpose of foreign aid and charitable works as applied to the third world from America is clearly aimed at destroying traditional minimal-money cultures in favor of a new culture with a rising standard of living that we can sell products to. This is the real reason behind globalization- Bill's just a large cog in a much larger machine on that scale. It's the modern form of what the Americans did to the Native Americans in the 1840s. And it's just as wrong now as it was then.
Or to put it another way, if Gates was really interested in making as much money as possible, he'd take the 30 or 50 billion dollars (or whatever he gave away to his charity) and create new products to sell to the existing 6 billion person market, rather than trying to make a mere extra 100 million people live longer to buy copies of his existing product.
The point is, he doesn't (thanks to the incredible toll human disease takes on the third world from a monetary standpoint) currently have a 6 billion person market. The extra cost of disease is a major drag on third world economies- leaving him only about 2 billion customers in the current market. Accessing the other 4 billion requires a rising standard of living in third world nations- which is why almost all of his charitable giving does not go to first world nations, but to raise the standard of living in the third world- thus slightly increasing the population of the planet, but greatly increasing the number of people on the planet who can afford a $159.99 copy of Windows Vista.
Neither- just pity the poor engineer whose career hath led to this point.....
hacking ability (which Gates also was, though who knows how he compares to Woz)
Actually, no. Gates hasn't worked on any hacks personally since Altair Basic, and even then he was a part of a team. Microsoft in general buys way more technology than they ever innovate. Compare that to the elegance of using the off cycle of a 6802 microprocessor instead of a video card just to create a computer with fewer chips, and thus cheaper for consumers....one is of these things is not like the other.
be rich in family (as Gates is)
This too doesn't compare- last I heard the Woz's family exceeded just about any other rich man on the planet other than bin Laden. Gates's immediate family is now what, 4 people?
Note that he doesn't do charity for show, as so many do, he actually gets things done.
This I'm much more cynical about. I agree Bill doesn't do his charity for show- I believe he does it to increase the size of the market he can eventually sell copies of Windows to. Right now, Microsoft is operating is a supersaturated market- his only hope of increasing market share is to increase the population of the earth.
I think I'll beat out anybody in the world for being cynical about American multinationals (not just Microsoft) and their purpose in "Free Trade" of any sort- including charity. The class of people who are willing to own such businesses do NOTHING that doesn't eventually make them money.
I'd be surprised if he didn't- the tax breaks for donating excess income are truly amazing at that level of income. The question would be, what does he give to? And my guess is that most of his donations go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation- because he's such a brownnosing suck up.
More people= more people to pay microsoft licenses. The third world is the edge of the market for Microsoft, they've saturated the United States, the First world, and the Second world. The only way left to expand is to make sure more people survive.
Within the same minute (you must have hit Send two clock ticks before me, as my post came two clock ticks later). Yes, it depends on what you value- if you value money and material possessions and billionaires being able to give away shitloads of money, then Jobs or Gates would be role models, but for people like us, who value engineering and family, The Woz is downright amazing.
By far, when it comes to character, the OTHER Steve from Apple beats those two all hollow. Yes, Jobs and Gates are more materially rich- but The Woz is rich in family and hacking ability, and as far as role models go, I'd much rather be the later.
Paulian worship is relatively new- I can't find a single instance of it among the Church Fathers. So I suspect I'd agree with the major premise in the Amazon synopsis- we have to interpret what St. Paul says in light of the Synoptic Gospels if we want to stay true to Christ, and St. Paul himself and most of his contemporaries would agree with that. The hard part of this is that St. Paul was writing to and about post-christ, gentile churches and congregations, *before* the synoptic gospels were written, before there was any sort of agreement on what Christ said and taught. So he's more influenced by his own Jewish, Greek, and Roman Citizen roots (he's alone among the first generation of Church Fathers in that last), and must be interpreted by the culture he was in.
More I cannot say- but thanks for the addition to my future reading list. Some of my favorite modern Christian writers are Calvinists interested in history and well on the journey to Catholicism- Cardinal John Newman (a 19th century author who made exactly this journey himself) said that "To be versed in history is to become Catholic". Scott Hahn, an ex-Presbyterian who now teaches at Franciscian University in Stubenville, is the one who brought us the new-old perspective on John's writing in the light of the Catholic Mass, and he did so because originally he was trying to design a Biblically Based Presbyterian Sunday Service. Sola Scriptura does have it's uses in this way- sometimes it leads to conversion, sometimes not, but whenever a modern Protestant Christian author digs into HISTORY, like CS Lewis did in his talks with Tolkien, the result is almost always a new perspective on Scripture that fits in with Roman Catholic teaching. I sometimes think this is what Martin Luther originally hoped for- the big good thing that came from Sola Scriptura- too bad MOST people who believe in Sola Scriptura leave it off at the Sola.
I'm a Christian, not a Paulian....and these things have to be taken in CONTEXT. The thing is, Protestantism in general has abandoned the context; Apostolic Tradition.
I understand how someone with no time, no changing mind state, and no memories can be considered of no service (nor of any other use for that matter), but how can a place of experientially everlasting time-based consciousness and attendent memories of current and past and real relentless *excruciating* pain either be a place you'd rather be in or a place you could be consoled by the (delusional) belief that it was done as a service to God?
Use is all I have- I've never had a day or even an hour without pain of some sort in my life. But besides that- it all comes back to The Choice. If I try to Serve the Lord and Fail, it's not my fault that I'm in Hell, I'm there for his purpose, and all things work for the best for those who are called to his purpose, REGARDLESS of what it "feels like" at a given instant. If I don't try- if I say No to The Choice- then it's MY fault I'm there; eternally and forever MY fault.
A hint comes from clinical depression. For depressives, they look at their past, and are unable to see anything other than failure. They can't blame anybody else for this failure- it's THEIR FAULT. That's a little bit like Hell and Purgatory right there- you're faced with all your sins, and can't blame anybody else for them. It's the ultimate maturity. At which point you can say No to God, and Yes to the Sin- at which point you're stuck in that state, forever. There's no point in existing, but you do anyway. It's a hell of a lot worse than physical pain- because there is no way at all to escape from it. Physical pain is easy to escape- even become enjoyable eventually. Mental pain has no such limitation.
Actually, there's been a lot of tradition behind the idea of attitude, grace, and faith being salvation. State of mind is exactly what the Saints have been trying to teach us since the night a certain young virgin said yes to an angel. It got kind of lost, misplaced in translation, with the Reformation- and the Counter Reformation had to be equally concrete if the Roman Catholic Church was going to survive. But since July of 1999, this has been proclaimed to the world as the norm. I'd link you to the Zenit translation of the Pope's homily for July 28, 1999- but Zenit.org doesn't allow deep links into their archives (or for that matter, in their frame-based HTML on their website, even show what URL you're really on when you're browsing the archives). I've heard about it on local Christian stations, debated at the time in theology magazines, and all the rest- but it all links back to a chain of thought that started with St. Mary herself.
And your phrase "merge with God"...I thought that was only used in New Age and other false religions. A Hell where the mind is frozen "forever" outside of time with no "new memories" is no Hell at all.
I personally can't think of a worse consequence for the choice of sin- I'd gladly go to your place hell if God choose to send me there- secure in the knowledge that I was doing it to serve Him. But to be cut off entirely from that service- there is no worse consequence than that.
I'm familiar with the wedge strategy- but it's kind of like the slipery slope argument. Abortion did not go up significantly after Roe V Wade, and any attempt to remove materialism from American Culture by teaching religion is going to run headlong into Health & Wealth Gospel fundamentalists like President Bush (people who believe that THE visible sign of virtue is being healthy and materially wealthy- and people who aren't must be sinning).
My point was directly about the statistics though- claiming that evolution has lost because 39% of the population believes in either ID or YEC, lumping them together, ignores directly people who believe in theistic evolution- on purpose.
What he missed though is that a sufficiently large mass dropped from a great height makes for a *better* WMD than a nuclear bomb- thus merely disarming the nuclear bombs means almost nothing from the point of view of a mining colony with a mass driver.
When I asked the question: "Or is your Hell simply another name for Purgatory and so it's not true that Purgatory always leads to Heaven?" you had to know I was using the terms to refer to two distinct locations and you therefore answered "Purgatory always leads to Heaven which is eternity with God. Hell is eternity *without* God."
Actually- that's the problem- you're refering to LOCATIONS. I'm not. I'm refering to states of mind. Because of that Hell is eterinity *without* God, and therefore distinct from Purgatory which is a short burst of something that feels like hell on your way to heaven. It's all in the attitude.
What happened to having to make the decision either before or at "the moment of death" which determines the destination of either going to the place of Purgatory/Heaven or to the place of eternal Hell? Now a moment can last almost an eternity? I'm a going to get the lame excuse that "the moment of death" exists outside of time and can thus extend almost an eternity past the point of death?
Time doesn't actually exist outside of death- your brain is done forming memories, you can't form new memories, you're done. Your only choice is to merge with God and become a part of the universe again, or not. If you choose not, God will respect that choice- and in so doing, you've *decided* not to come to terms with the loss of your temporal sin. If you choose to, you've *decided* to come to terms with the loss of your temporal sin. It isn't a choice of a physical place, it's the choice of a state of mind- and whichever state of mind you are in at the moment of death, that's the state you will be frozen in forever. I think that this point it may be wise to move this discussion to a journal before we get hit by Slashdot's version of death: archiving.