That is all true, but Western Civilization has its own unique identity.
If the Blankians want to call the planets something else, let them. Here in Western Civilization, we name them after the mythological Greek gods.
You really are opposed to Western Civilization, and that's why you are criticizing it--not for its errors--but for being a civilization at all. That is unfair and I hope you rethink your position before you lapse into outright bigotry.
The whole point is that with Christianity you have only belief to rely on. In other religions they give you phony evidence in purportedly proving their claim. Muslims, for example, talk about how the Koran is a book that itself is a miracle. Well, anyone who honestly looks at it can tell you it's just a book, albeit one revered by many. The Buddhists will try to get you involved with mysticism. The list goes on and on. Only in Christianity do you have nothing to go on but faith.
I already replied in detail to "number 2" and you have chosen to ignore my detailed points illustrating how Christianity is different from other religions.
Atheism's base is to not believe things to be true -- when there are no reason to believe them true.
Technically, no. That is agnosticism. Agnosticism holds that we do not know whether God exists, so the proper attitude is ignorance on the subject.
Atheism holds that we do know that God does not exist. Yet, atheists have no reason for assuming that is the case. Atheists just assume God does not exist.
The existence of a Xian ghod has as much support as an invisible pink unicorn standing behind you right now.
First, it is critical to get the terminology correct. When you refer to "a Xtian ghod" I honestly am a little confused. Christianity is the religion of God. Christians believe there is one God. God is not so much Christian as he is Jesus Christ.
Second, to address the substance of your claim, there are several justifications for God.
There is no question that God exists. You yourself never actually suggest he does not exist.
What you are asking for is a reason to believe that God exists. In the Protestant tradition started by Martin Luther in the 1500s, you do not need a reason to believe God exists or to love God. What you need is faith. Faith is not the same as reason. Through faith alone may you come to know God.
In other traditions of Christianity, recourse is had to reason. Aquinas made several of these arguments. You have gone to the trouble of searching out atheist books like Bertrand Russell's. Have you also looked at Christian writings?
One of the better ways to understand God is to read the Bible. Did you know that archaeology has never contradicted a historical fact mentioned in the Bible? Did you know that the Bible is one of the oldest works of history in the world? Did you know professional historians rely on it?
I challenge you to read a chapter out of the Book of Proverbs. There is nothing very religious there. It is mostly just bits of wisdom.
hear different messages from their god!
You are confusing Christianity with false religion. Christianity rejects mysticism.
The term "mysticism" has a specific meaning. "Mysticism" means accessing the supernatural in ways that you can physically feel. Recently I was listening to a so-called psychic being interviewed by a journalist. The psychic was talking about how he summoned a demon. He said he could feel the demon right behind him. He didn't look at it, but he somehow felt the demon's presence.
Christianity rejects that. If you believe God, you're not supposed to get a nice warm feeling in your gut. You're not necessarily going to have a feeling at all.
Of course, Roman Catholicism does endorse many mystical ideas, such as modern visions and miracles. I dissent from their views.
As said in 1 Corinthians 13:8, the time of prophecies will end. This means that we Christians believe that people do not get messages from God today. Miracles do not happen today. We are on our own.
So you see, Christianity is very different from all the cults out there.
The problem here is that there are no differences in psychology between religions.
Christianity is different than all other religions. We believe that God is a trinity. He is one God with three personalities, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Son was present from the beginning. He was begotten, not made. Jesus was perfect and sinless. He was sacrificed so that imperfect, sinful man could be redeemed.
Sin is wrong. When something wrong is done, someone must pay for it. Whenever there is sin, someone must atone. Even though God requires little of us, we humans have a sinful nature. We break God's law over and over. God laid down his own life for us so that we would not have to pay for our own sins.
The sacrifice of Jesus is God's gift to us. What God would like us to do is to make the world a better place by living by his law.
In no other religion is the deity so selfless as to sacrifice his own life for those
The problem with atheism is that it isn't falsifiable. I was an atheist for years, but then I realized that atheism made no sense.
Atheism hinges on the notion that we can fully know the universe through our senses. This notion is an assumption that is entirely unjustified.
Christians differ on how you can come to know God. Some like Aquinas say you can use reason or faith, some like Luther say you can only use faith. Reason comes to judgments in part based on sense data. Faith comes to judgments in the absence of reason and evidence.
A common saying is that you have to "believe" that God exists to be a Christian. That is a mistranslation of John 3:16. The proper translation is that you have to "love" God to be a Christian. If you love God, you have faith in God.
God bless Europe, especially in light of what just happened in Spain.
I'll try not to remember that the next time you call us up to save your ass from the Nazis, the Communists, the terrorists, or whoever else you let take over your continent this time.
So Google and Yahoo want to suck all the data out of my database, eliminate the middle man (me and my crazy web page interface to my data), and serve the world my data, denying me the ability to interact with my own customer base?
The first question is whether the child is a boy. If not, you probably won't have great trouble. Just keep taking the girl to new social groups until she fits in somewhere.
If it is a boy, you should be aware of the theory of the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan that boys need a "chum" or "chums" (other boys about his age who are his friends) in their early adolescence years, or they are doomed to a lifetime of not socializing well.
It is critical during those years that the child is not separated from his chums.
So long as you do that, everything else in socialization will fall into place.
That goes for gifted and non-gifted boys alike.
I'm not a psychologist, but I play one on Slashdot.
a multi-million dollar rover sinking into the martian soil, it simply is impossible. To create quicksand one needs water. Even though the Spirit and Opportunity rovers found evidence of water on Mars, it was a long time ago, not today, that Mars was wet. So that simply is not feasible
More to the point, any water on Mars today is frozen solid. Hence, quicksand there cannot be.
Plagiarism is not a scientific term. Plagiarism is a literary term. You can't prove plagiarism scientifically. You can only prove it in the sense that other people agree with you.
The HP study is a purportedly scientific study of memes. That is where they erred.
Memes are unscientific. They have no validity in social science.
Don't cite some asshat scientific journal that talks about memes to me. The key to science is whether it can be falsified. (Note the username.)
As Karl Popper would say, there is nothing about the notion of a meme that can be falsified. Hence, it is not a scientific notion.
It's easy to see why computer scientists can be taken in by them. You see the world as if it were a computer. In fact, it is more complicated.
Go ahead, though, and play around. Waste your time with memes.
You people are living in a false world. This will never happen.
There are no air cars. We do not all have flying jet packs. We do not take pills for our meals. Humans are not grown in vats. The Matrix is just a movie. Artificial intelligence is oxymoronic and impossible.
Nor will there ever be a space elevator.
This is not a science fiction movie, although it could pass for a convention. This is real life. Quit wasting your time!
Well the thread is wrapping up and again the discussion was pretty boring. We can do better, people. We can do better.
A couple of big points that were unspoken AFAICT:
Yahoo competing again in the search engine market is good. Yahoo has the financial resources to play ball with Google and MSN. With three real competitors, none of them can get away with mediocrity anymore. (Yahoo now owns Inktomi, Teoma, Ask Jeeves and lots of other name brands.)
Yahoo will be building back its index over the next couple of months. They will also continue to tweak their algorithm. To help Yahoo get back on its feet, we should run lots of searches through Yahoo for a while. The search examples will give Yahoo the data it needs to improve.
No one mentioned that lots of people login at Yahoo, and nobody logs in at Google. Presumably, Yahoo could use their already-existing cookies to target search results more effectively. OTOH, this could result in privacy invasions. Google does have its own infamous cookie, but it does not necessarily carry personal ID information on it.
Somebody said Google screwed up by not issuing their IPO already. Good point.
Somebody else said Google (via Blogger) is adopting Atom while Yahoo is sticking with RSS. I wonder what MSN will go with.
Lots of small search engines, like Scrub the Web still exist. Their indices tend to be small. It must take several tens of millions of dollars in capital to get in the search engine game in a major way.
Why hasn't anyone tried a different search engine business plan? Instead of trying to trick users into coming to your site and clicking on ads, how about charging a subscription fee to search ad-free? It would be like Northern Light, except it would index the whole web.
Why don't we have semantic searching yet? I want to search web pages with "location:belgium" or "year:1999."
The search engines are missing out on a big market: blogs. The blog search engines like Bloogz have an interesting niche to develop all by themselves.
Perhaps Google's Page Rank feature is overrated. Why not index words immediately before and after those that are linked, not just the link words? Wouldn't that increase search result relevancy?
I'm looking forward to better results on all of the engines.
I pretty much agree with the substance, but not the tenor of that remark. I'm seeing a lot of old stuff in Yahoo searches, even today, after the switchover.
Remember, though, that Yahoo has been addicted to Google's heroin for a long time. Yahoo's index is neglected and old. Give Yahoo a couple of months to build back their index. Then we'll see how good their search engine really is.
If the comics are any guide, we can expect that the side-effects of this treatment would be lunacy and mania. People are going to go insane. In real life, too, steroid use can cause aggressive behavior.
Remember when the US government tried to replicate the supersoldier formula during their diabolical plan to force Captain America to retire? Would-be replacement John Walker did become super strong, but he also became super evil. That was a dark day in the history of Captain America.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Blankians want to call the planets something else, let them. Here in Western Civilization, we name them after the mythological Greek gods.
You really are opposed to Western Civilization, and that's why you are criticizing it--not for its errors--but for being a civilization at all. That is unfair and I hope you rethink your position before you lapse into outright bigotry.
Damn it! I almost forgot. That man is a hero. I can't believe we haven't put him on the quarter yet.
I'm done. No more replies from me in this thread.
If you don't like Western Civilization, please feel free to pack your bags and join another.
Islam and the numbers 9 and 11. Hmmm. Quite an association.
I thought I addressed that, but maybe I didn't. Here is more on that.
This conversation is over.
It's too bad you have decided to terminate the discussion, hoping to replace it with verbal abuse.
Technically, no. That is agnosticism. Agnosticism holds that we do not know whether God exists, so the proper attitude is ignorance on the subject.
Atheism holds that we do know that God does not exist. Yet, atheists have no reason for assuming that is the case. Atheists just assume God does not exist.
The existence of a Xian ghod has as much support as an invisible pink unicorn standing behind you right now.
First, it is critical to get the terminology correct. When you refer to "a Xtian ghod" I honestly am a little confused. Christianity is the religion of God. Christians believe there is one God. God is not so much Christian as he is Jesus Christ.
Second, to address the substance of your claim, there are several justifications for God.
There is no question that God exists. You yourself never actually suggest he does not exist.
What you are asking for is a reason to believe that God exists. In the Protestant tradition started by Martin Luther in the 1500s, you do not need a reason to believe God exists or to love God. What you need is faith. Faith is not the same as reason. Through faith alone may you come to know God.
In other traditions of Christianity, recourse is had to reason. Aquinas made several of these arguments. You have gone to the trouble of searching out atheist books like Bertrand Russell's. Have you also looked at Christian writings?
One of the better ways to understand God is to read the Bible. Did you know that archaeology has never contradicted a historical fact mentioned in the Bible? Did you know that the Bible is one of the oldest works of history in the world? Did you know professional historians rely on it?
I challenge you to read a chapter out of the Book of Proverbs. There is nothing very religious there. It is mostly just bits of wisdom.
hear different messages from their god!
You are confusing Christianity with false religion. Christianity rejects mysticism.
The term "mysticism" has a specific meaning. "Mysticism" means accessing the supernatural in ways that you can physically feel. Recently I was listening to a so-called psychic being interviewed by a journalist. The psychic was talking about how he summoned a demon. He said he could feel the demon right behind him. He didn't look at it, but he somehow felt the demon's presence.
Christianity rejects that. If you believe God, you're not supposed to get a nice warm feeling in your gut. You're not necessarily going to have a feeling at all.
Of course, Roman Catholicism does endorse many mystical ideas, such as modern visions and miracles. I dissent from their views.
As said in 1 Corinthians 13:8, the time of prophecies will end. This means that we Christians believe that people do not get messages from God today. Miracles do not happen today. We are on our own.
So you see, Christianity is very different from all the cults out there.
The problem here is that there are no differences in psychology between religions.
Christianity is different than all other religions. We believe that God is a trinity. He is one God with three personalities, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Son was present from the beginning. He was begotten, not made. Jesus was perfect and sinless. He was sacrificed so that imperfect, sinful man could be redeemed.
Sin is wrong. When something wrong is done, someone must pay for it. Whenever there is sin, someone must atone. Even though God requires little of us, we humans have a sinful nature. We break God's law over and over. God laid down his own life for us so that we would not have to pay for our own sins.
The sacrifice of Jesus is God's gift to us. What God would like us to do is to make the world a better place by living by his law.
In no other religion is the deity so selfless as to sacrifice his own life for those
Atheism hinges on the notion that we can fully know the universe through our senses. This notion is an assumption that is entirely unjustified.
Christians differ on how you can come to know God. Some like Aquinas say you can use reason or faith, some like Luther say you can only use faith. Reason comes to judgments in part based on sense data. Faith comes to judgments in the absence of reason and evidence.
A common saying is that you have to "believe" that God exists to be a Christian. That is a mistranslation of John 3:16. The proper translation is that you have to "love" God to be a Christian. If you love God, you have faith in God.
God bless Europe, especially in light of what just happened in Spain.
I'll try not to remember that the next time you call us up to save your ass from the Nazis, the Communists, the terrorists, or whoever else you let take over your continent this time.
It is just another sign of our society's moral decay.
It is time that those of us who care about morality speak out both loudly and often. We must speak truth to power.
This kind of experiment should be banned.
I just don't think that is going to fly.
If it is a boy, you should be aware of the theory of the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan that boys need a "chum" or "chums" (other boys about his age who are his friends) in their early adolescence years, or they are doomed to a lifetime of not socializing well.
It is critical during those years that the child is not separated from his chums.
So long as you do that, everything else in socialization will fall into place.
That goes for gifted and non-gifted boys alike.
I'm not a psychologist, but I play one on Slashdot.
More to the point, any water on Mars today is frozen solid. Hence, quicksand there cannot be.
The HP study is a purportedly scientific study of memes. That is where they erred.
Memes are unscientific. They have no validity in social science.
Don't cite some asshat scientific journal that talks about memes to me. The key to science is whether it can be falsified. (Note the username.)
As Karl Popper would say, there is nothing about the notion of a meme that can be falsified. Hence, it is not a scientific notion.
It's easy to see why computer scientists can be taken in by them. You see the world as if it were a computer. In fact, it is more complicated.
Go ahead, though, and play around. Waste your time with memes.
A plague on all the meme foolishness.
7. Profit!!!
There are no air cars. We do not all have flying jet packs. We do not take pills for our meals. Humans are not grown in vats. The Matrix is just a movie. Artificial intelligence is oxymoronic and impossible.
Nor will there ever be a space elevator.
This is not a science fiction movie, although it could pass for a convention. This is real life. Quit wasting your time!
Google ranks keywords in the HTML title very, very highly. Perhaps too highly.
"Hello, Vandelay Industries."
A couple of big points that were unspoken AFAICT:
- Yahoo competing again in the search engine market is good. Yahoo has the financial resources to play ball with Google and MSN. With three real competitors, none of them can get away with mediocrity anymore. (Yahoo now owns Inktomi, Teoma, Ask Jeeves and lots of other name brands.)
- Yahoo will be building back its index over the next couple of months. They will also continue to tweak their algorithm. To help Yahoo get back on its feet, we should run lots of searches through Yahoo for a while. The search examples will give Yahoo the data it needs to improve.
- No one mentioned that lots of people login at Yahoo, and nobody logs in at Google. Presumably, Yahoo could use their already-existing cookies to target search results more effectively. OTOH, this could result in privacy invasions. Google does have its own infamous cookie, but it does not necessarily carry personal ID information on it.
- Somebody said Google screwed up by not issuing their IPO already. Good point.
- Somebody else said Google (via Blogger) is adopting Atom while Yahoo is sticking with RSS. I wonder what MSN will go with.
- Lots of small search engines, like Scrub the Web still exist. Their indices tend to be small. It must take several tens of millions of dollars in capital to get in the search engine game in a major way.
- Why hasn't anyone tried a different search engine business plan? Instead of trying to trick users into coming to your site and clicking on ads, how about charging a subscription fee to search ad-free? It would be like Northern Light, except it would index the whole web.
- Why don't we have semantic searching yet? I want to search web pages with "location:belgium" or "year:1999."
- The search engines are missing out on a big market: blogs. The blog search engines like Bloogz have an interesting niche to develop all by themselves.
- Perhaps Google's Page Rank feature is overrated. Why not index words immediately before and after those that are linked, not just the link words? Wouldn't that increase search result relevancy?
I'm looking forward to better results on all of the engines.Remember, though, that Yahoo has been addicted to Google's heroin for a long time. Yahoo's index is neglected and old. Give Yahoo a couple of months to build back their index. Then we'll see how good their search engine really is.
Solar, solar, solar, solar. Switch to solar now.
Remember when the US government tried to replicate the supersoldier formula during their diabolical plan to force Captain America to retire? Would-be replacement John Walker did become super strong, but he also became super evil. That was a dark day in the history of Captain America.
Look out, science. You may be creating a monster.
Sucker on you. I made that shit up.