It means that twice as much data (64 bits of it as oppossed to 32) can be operated on my an instruction and that seeral billion times as much memory can be addressed (2^64 bits as opossed to 2^32) so it depends in which sense you're talking about.
Quicktime has been around for ten years.. how many non-Apple products use it? (Quicktime player for the PC is an Apple product)
A heck of a lot of stuff. Pretty much anything to do with video editting can/does make use of QuickTime as do a great number of digital cameras (stlls and video cameras). And of course, there are several usages of QuickTime. do you mean the application? The toolkit that other apps can access? The wrapper format that can contain dozens of codes?
Because then no-one would buy the 12" PB. Fewer people would buy th 15" probably and the prices would be that bit higher. Of course,t hey'd probably gain a few sales form the higher specs, but would it be enough to make up for blurring the product lines and canabilsing PB sales? Evidently they don't think so. I think the iBook still does everything it needs to and represnts excellent value for money. My iBook 500 is still going very strong and the currnet line would kick its ass, largely because of the faster bus and grpahics card.
Why talk about the 10.0 version? It's widely accepted that everything before 10.1 was still beta quality really and ot's only with 10.2 onward that everything was properly up to speed. You'd be as well to criticise Microsoft for Windows ME.
When/if we ever get a new version of OmniWeb with WebCore, I'm going back to it, largely for the persistent spell check. The fantastic interface, which seemed to have menus/preferences for exactly the things I wanted and the nicest source code view of any browser I've seen are nice bonuses, but that's what it hangs on. When you're stuck with an iBook 500, having a lightweight browser is pretty important too.
Fixing whatever Java problem it is that makes the newsticker on news.bbc.co.uk take 30 seconds to load and grab an extra 100MB of menu would be nice too.
It was charging up from ~60%. After putting the iBook to sleep and looking at batt.bash again a couple of hours later, it was up to 100%. Not because it had charged any more, but because to capacity had dropped off slightly:p I wouldn't mind, since I use it as a desktop anyway (have to fly back and forth between home and uni every term and can't afford 2 computers), but I don't have a functionning power adaptor the moment because my old one frayed at the bit where you plug into the computer, which is of cours,e impossible to repair, so I have to fork out £65 for a new one and beg/borrow/steal from my sister when she's not using her iBook, in order to keep mine charged. Grr.
There is some weirdness as work here. Menubar display says 99% and 'Battery is charged' when I click on it. batt.bash says 99.5% charge and it isn't going up:p
Sodl only for Macs? You can buy it by itself for any computer as far as I"m aware. Just need an adaptor if your graphics card doesn't have an ADC connection.
I'm curious about why you think Windows uses the real estate better. I've noticed no real difference between X and XP in this regard. All depends on how you have your machine configured really.
As for fuzzy characters and sub-pixel antialiasing, I can honestly say that I've never seen nicer text than on my Mac, even with just a 12" iBook screen. And it's been using sub-pixel antialiasing on the text for quite a while. If you don't like the way text is being displayed on a Mac, go into Preferences and General and there should be an option for font smoothing. Make sure it isn't being smoothed for really small point sizes and that the strength of the soothing is appropriate fro the monitor. Different setting work better for CRTs and LCDs (sub-pixel is a no-no on CRTs) and suite different eyes.
I think you're confused. IE 5 for Mac OS 9 was a great browser [...] But IE 5 for Mac OS X is just crap.
Actually, he did say that he was in classic land, which I'm guessing means OS9 since you'd have to be mad to run a browser in classic when there are so many good native ones. Then again, maybe he is nuts and my pedanticism is pointless today.
Re:Helm's Deep recreation on Myth.
on
Myth II Updated
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· Score: 1
Actually, there are Lego mods available for Myth:^)
Um... but how is it that you know that you're right about this? I hope you realize that in this respect, you're out of step with most major religions, including the larger branches of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and even Buddhism, all of which have reached conclusions, which are part of their respective doctrines, about their relationship to other churches. And it's nowhere near as close-minded as your "consider them all to be wrong".
Where did you pull that from? Islam claims to be the one true religion, Judaism says there is only one God and the Jews are his chosen people and Christianity says that the only way to God is through Jesus. It's been that way fro the last couple of millenia. As for close-mindedness, you're being close-minded by refusing to admit the possibility that only one religion might be right. You're saying that the view that all religions are right (which doesn't work because they contradict each other) is the only valid view. If God says that there's only one way to get to him, I'm going to believe him, rather than trying to be 'open-minded' and looking for ways that don't exist and would in fact lead me away from him. If you're in a burning building and you see a sign saying 'Fire exit this way' would you say "That's awfully close-minded. There must be one in the opposite direction," then turn round and walk away? If so, you'd end up more than a little singed.
The absolutism you describe is *morally* indefensible.
How so? You're saying as an absolute fact that absolutism is wrong? Think about that for a moment.
One simple reason is, you might be wrong in what you think - as you said, "People can lie about what he says, or misunderstand" - and this might lead you to take wrong actions.
What you're saying is that I might have made a mistake, therefore I must be completely wrong and my stance is indefensible. That's completely illogical. Please do tel me why there is absolutely no possibility that I am right.
In fact, it's exactly the sort of absolutism you're demonstrating that has led to wars and atrocities in the name of religion.
I'm taking an absolute, unchangable position that no matter what the circumstance, we should love God and love each other, our enemies included. We should return love in place of hate. We should seek to serve each other. This applies to everyone at every time, regardless of the situation they are in. And this has, according to you, been the cause of wars and atrocities. I'm curious about how you're going to explain that because I'm a little confused as to how a moral system focused on love could lead to war.
The key phrase in your erroneous statement is 'in the name of religion'. Many things have been done in the name of religion which are in fact in direct opposition to its teaching. Perhaps you'd like to go and tell all Muslims that they're terrorists because of 9/11. Or all Hindus that they're going to join murderous mobs because of the riots in India, or all Buddhists that they're happy to sit back and watch people suffer horrible deaths because of what happened in Cambodia, or all Jews that they want to beat Palestinians into a bloody pulp because Ariel Sharon is a prat or all atheists that they consider a million deaths to be a statistic because Stalin was a tyrant. I could get up and go on a killing spree in your name, but that doesn't mean you ordered it, condone it, or even have knowledge of it. Just because people do things in God's name, doesn't mean he is happy about it. In fact, I'd say he's pretty angry about a lot of the stuff people have done in his name. Wars are started by proud and greedy people who use religion as an excuse to try and get other people on their side.
If you act as an unthinking "soldier of God", only following orders - which may be from a faulty source, i.e. not directly and personally from God herself - then you're almost bound to be wrong.
Again with the fallacy. You assume that because there is a chance I might be wrong, then I almost certainly must be. I have spent years studying the Bible. There's not a day that goes past without me thinking about God and his word. I am not unthinking. I follow the Bible because I believe it to be true after critical thought and inspection.
For this reason, the major religions tend to take positions in their doctrines - e.g. the Catholic Catechism - in which the role of your own conscience is described as being crucial. It specifically tells you to not necessarily listen to authority - to listen also to your conscience. But it also talks about how your conscience is not just "whatever you think" - if anything, thinking "I know I'm right and everyone else is wrong" is a warning sign that you are being misled. It talks about these exact issues, and certainly doesn't espouse the kind of simplistic, "I know what is right" absolutism that you do.
They also state is a simple truth that the Bible is right, which is what I have been saying is my absolute all along. The bible explicitly states that the only way to God is through Jesus, therefore if the Bible is right, then that statement is correct and I am correct ins saying it. The "I know I'm right and everyone else is wrong" occurs with moral relativism where everyone makes up their own rules of morality for themselves, picking and choosing whatever is convenient.
Of course, you're probably not Catholic - but unless you belong to a fundamentalist religion, with rules taken unchanged from a couple of hundred years ago - when morals were different! - then your religion probably has similar exhortations, and you're simply demonstrating that you have not, in fact, studied your own religion in sufficient depth to be making the kind of pronouncements you're making.
If something is moral, then it is is always moral. God is unchanging, therefore there is no reason for morality to change. I don;'t care what society decides is moral and whether or not that changes because there is no reason to trust society when it comes to deciding on morality. The only one to trust is God as he is the source of morality. I believe in the same unchanging God that is described in the Bible, so no, my morals are no different from what they were 2000 years ago. I believe the Bible can be trusted as the Word of God, which makes me a fundamentalist and proud of it. And I'm certainly better informed about Christianity than you appear to be.
Going up to God and saying "But I thought I was supposed to do such and such" isn't going to do you any good either, if you're wrong.
Fortunately though, he's given us some fairly explicit instructions as to what to do in the Bible. running around, not deciding on anything because there's a chance it might be long will lead you nowhere and look like a pretty weak excuse some day.
The very existence of the human race for the past 5,000 odd years that we have history for contradicts this.
Uh, how do you get that? I fail to see the link between the human race existing and the human race having got morality right. We continue to exist, despite being immoral, because God is loving and is waiting until everyone has had a chance to ask for forgiveness before he comes back and judges us.
You have personally judged entire religions to be wrong - but how do you know that your God is not more tolerant and loving than you are?
I've said that God is more loving than I am. He is, rightly, totally intolerant of sin. If you're created to glorify him, then run off, ignore him, ignore the sacrifice he makes, curse his name, go against his commands, why shouldn't he treat you as a sinner? And I'm not the one who has judged entire religions to be wrong - God has and I think he's in a pretty good position to decide. You yourself are an atheist, are you not, therefore you've judged every religion to be wrong. Why are you making me out not a bad guy for this, when you've done exactly the same thing. If you are instead an agnostic, ignore that last sentence.
So how then do you know what the absolutes are? How do you know you're not misunderstanding?
Because there is strong historical evidence for the authenticity of the Gospels, which means I have good reason to believe Jesus, which means I have good reason to believe the rest of the Bible. Am I 100% certain? No. But if I had to be before doing anything, I would never get out of bed in the morning.
Where do you personally get these absolutes from? From your church? If so, that's an example of the "popularity" I'm talking about. Your church wouldn't exist if it wasn't popular.
The morality presented by the church is generally quite unpopular, but my current church, St. Ebbe's, thrives anyway because it preaches the word of God. As I have said before, I get my absolutes from the Bible. The teaching at Ebbe's is very good because it comes straight from the Bible and I can easily verify whether or not their teaching can be trusted by looking at the Bible. I go to this church specifically because they are very Bible-centred.
That's not a good enough excuse for not thinking deeply about your faith. I suggest you study your own religion in more depth, and with more humility.
That's an incredibly presumptuous and arrogant thing for you to say. There is always more for me to learn and greater humility to be attained, as can be said of any Christian. However, I have considerably better knowledge and understanding of Christianity than you do. I suggest you examine your system of moral relatives in light of what both you and I have said and see how well it stands up to scrutiny. See how much accountability it has.
I'm saying the moral relativism has no value. If you change what is right and what is wrong, depending on how you feel, then the words lose all meaning. Something which is 'right' for you can be 'wrong' for someone else. You cannot definitevely say "This action is wrong." You cannot condemn the actions of Hitler when he ordered genocide because to him it was the 'right' thing to do. And yet people here on slashdot would say that it was wrong.
Yes, the general public idea of what is moral and what is not, has changed over the centuries. That doesn't make people right. It doesn't mean that the changes are valid ones. Do you think it would be right for everyone to decide toorrow that genoicde was okay? Or rape? Or murder? Because under moral relativism, if a majority deicded it was okay, that would be fine. You wouldn't be able to tell them they're wrong, even if you tihnk they are. morality collapses without absolutes.
I believe very fimrly in absolutes. Men are very subjective, very flawed beings, so I would never consider taking my morality from a mere man. If God exists, morality as defned by him, is the only morality that has any validity (before you argue against this, I'm taking the hypothetical situation, which I consider to be true, that God exists. Going up to him on judgement day and saying "I'm sorry, but you've got this whole morality business wrong," isn't going to do you any good). The Bible records what God has told us about morality. Having come to the conclusion that the Bible is trustworthy, I therefore take my morality from there, using every book and every passage in context. Your question about which ones to agree with is a false dilema. They are all compatible.
As for the matter of religions agreeing with each other, I really dont care what other religions say because I consider them all to be wrong. Jesus said "The only way to the father is through me." If it's not christianity, it's not true and has no more validity as a moral system than secular values which are all made up as well.
So, in conclusion, no I couldn't almost say that there is no morality other than popuar morality. In fact popular morality doesn't even deserve to be called a moral system since it lacks any consistency between people or time. It has no source. There is n way to tell whether something that somebody claims to be right is actually right because by relativism, anybody is right in themselves. It's a whole big contradictory mess.
Morality requires absolutes to have any value. If God exists, he provides absolutes wich can be trusted. People can lie about what he says, or misunderstand, but that doesn't change the fact that the absolutes exist and determine the only valid and useful definition of what is moral and what isnt. They are the vales by which we will all one day be judged. I deserve to be judged and found wanting, but thankfully Jesus died on the cross and rose again, so I can be forgiven and have nothing to fear come that. That offer is open to everyone.
I very much got the impression form your post that when you said "Believing porn is evil and immoral is a fringe belief now." you meant that while it might have been wrong in the past it is right now to view porn. Even if this isn't applicable to you, it's applicable to other people here on slashdot. Under moral relativism, right and wrong, good and evil, lose all real meaning.
Morality by popularity is ridicuous. Something is either right ro it is wrong. That doesn't change. By your logic, if a majority believe that rape is right, then suddenly it is. Or if we have two sets of people with different value systems and one invades the other, suddenly the whole idea of morality changes.
Relative morality which changes based on circumstance is a joke. It means that nothing is ever truely right and nothing is ever truly wrong. If a majority of people believe that another group deserves to die, then it's perfectly moral. Suddenly, genocide is okay. Yet the people who adhere to a relative morality will no doubt say that the Holocaus was absolutely evil. There are a lot of people who are quite hypocritical about this, saying that taking an absolute morality system such as in the Bible is stupid, yet stating as a fact that God is evil, porn is good, abortion is right, etc.
And then there's the whole evangelical isue. Apparently there's something evil about a Christian sharing his views with somone and wanting them to change theirs, yet it's it's perfectly justified for an atheists to espouse their views, call Christianity stupid and atempt to convert them to atheism. Double standards.
But having pointed this out, I'll no doubt be modded down by the very people I've just described. Frauds never like to be revelaed.
Christianity certianly doesnt - Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine:^) Jesus liked to party. Pity some people have misrepresnted him on that account. what he is against, however, is getting drunk because you lose control then which is A Bad Thing. The overwhelming majority of my Christian friends (myslef included) would drink in moderation and enjoy it.
God didn't change his mind. The Ot covers the time before Jesus came. He hadn't died on the cross yet to pay for sins, therefore salvation came by following the Law. The OT shows just how impossible it is to follow the Law completely, bringing in the necessity of sacrifices to pay the price instead. A lot of the OT laws are about this, or about emphasising that the jews have been chosen to be set apart as God's people to show others what Gods Law is.
With Jesus' death and resurrection in the OT, people are no longer bound by the Law and the Jews are no longer set aside as the keepers of God's Law. Everyone needs, can ask for and receive forgiveness. That is what achieves salvation, not following the Law. The Law should be followed because it is good, however we won't follow it perfectly, therefore it is asking for forgiveness that saves, rather than following the Law.
Actually Jesus was setting out a rigid hierarchy of right in wrong. So rigid that t is impossible for us to achieve - these are God's standards and without being perfect, we can't hope to achieve them. the point is that we can't trust in ourselves for salvation - we have to trust in God, ask forgiveness from him. As a loving God, he offers forgiveness to everyone. Mother Teressa needs it as much as Hitler did and God would be just as willing to forgive Hitler as her. Or me. Or you.
You're expecting a 500MHz G3 laptop to perform as well as an XP 2000+ desktop? Think about that for a moment.
Besides, you only need to open an app once, then you can just leave it running. Memory management is quite nice under OS X, as is multitasking, so there's no real harm in having a few extra apps open. Unless you're really, really low on RAM. In which case, it's even more unreasonable to complain about the iBook being less responsive. It should have 384MB bare minimum, preferably 640MB.
As for the things iTunes does, you can turn off the volume checking (which it only does the first time you import a file anyway). There isn't anything else it should start doing when you drop something in. Maybe you should be more specific, if you're having a genuine problem.
That's ridiculous. Just because some people who say they are religious harm science doesn't mean that religion dictates that scientific progresses must be impeded. There have been plenty of great Christian scientists and as you yourself pointed out, many great Muslim mathematicians. In fact by pointing that out, weren't you kinda contradicting yourself?
Actually the message of Christianity is that God created us to have a relationship with him and despite us messing up, wants that relationship to continue. Of course, since we've messed up, a price had to be paid. Fortunately, Jesus dying on the cross was that price paid. Well, for anyone willing to accept it that is. Everyone needs to ask for forgiveness. There is no 'something else'. The 'tactics' of Christianity are love and grace, not fear and hate. Yes, a consequence of not asking for forgiveness for sins is going to Hell, but the message is that we can ask for forgiveness. It's a message of hope. Good news. That's why they call the first four books the Gospels.
And Jesus very definitely made those claims. The Gospels were written by people who either knew him or got their information directly from other eye-witnesses. These people then went on to die for what they had written. I don't think they would have died for something that was a lie. As for the question of him existing, well to claim he didn't would be to deny historical fact.
Incidentally, Just because we should fear God does not mean that fear is used as a weapon by him. An analogy would be the army. If you were to face the US Army in battle, you should be afraid of it. That doesn't mean that the army is a terrorist organisation.
There's a world of difference between some people claiming to be Christian (or Muslim, etc.) being terrorists and Chrstianity (or Islam, etc.) endorsing terrrists. Terrorists abuse religion and use it to try and further their own ends, much as politicians have done and will doubtlessly continue to do. that isn't the fault of the religion, it's the fault of the people abusing it.
And I hadly think that 'love your neighbour,' 'love your enemy,' 'turn the other cheek,' 'and these three remain, faith, hope, love and the greatest of these is love,' etc. are endorsements or terror tactics.
Well, for a start, you've got a few of your facts wrong. The iPod can play more than just MP3s. It can play WAV and I think AIFF files. The battery life is officially 10 hours, but in practice turns out to be more (12-14 hour range typically) and recharges faster than the Nomad's. The only two feature advantages the Nomad has are USB2, which doesn't matter since Firewire has a better sustained rate anyway, and the ability to record stuff, which I really couldn't care less about.
If you read the rest of the comments you'll find a lot of comments about size, weight (yes, that extra bit does make a lot of difference), interface, integration with iTunes, calendar and contact integration, etc. Though they don't mention the iPod's kiler feature - a game of breakout!
For a PC owner, there is an argument for the Nomad. Any Mac owner though is far better off with an iPod.
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It means that twice as much data (64 bits of it as oppossed to 32) can be operated on my an instruction and that seeral billion times as much memory can be addressed (2^64 bits as opossed to 2^32) so it depends in which sense you're talking about.
Because then no-one would buy the 12" PB. Fewer people would buy th 15" probably and the prices would be that bit higher. Of course,t hey'd probably gain a few sales form the higher specs, but would it be enough to make up for blurring the product lines and canabilsing PB sales? Evidently they don't think so. I think the iBook still does everything it needs to and represnts excellent value for money. My iBook 500 is still going very strong and the currnet line would kick its ass, largely because of the faster bus and grpahics card.
Why talk about the 10.0 version? It's widely accepted that everything before 10.1 was still beta quality really and ot's only with 10.2 onward that everything was properly up to speed. You'd be as well to criticise Microsoft for Windows ME.
When/if we ever get a new version of OmniWeb with WebCore, I'm going back to it, largely for the persistent spell check. The fantastic interface, which seemed to have menus/preferences for exactly the things I wanted and the nicest source code view of any browser I've seen are nice bonuses, but that's what it hangs on. When you're stuck with an iBook 500, having a lightweight browser is pretty important too. Fixing whatever Java problem it is that makes the newsticker on news.bbc.co.uk take 30 seconds to load and grab an extra 100MB of menu would be nice too.
It was charging up from ~60%. After putting the iBook to sleep and looking at batt.bash again a couple of hours later, it was up to 100%. Not because it had charged any more, but because to capacity had dropped off slightly :p I wouldn't mind, since I use it as a desktop anyway (have to fly back and forth between home and uni every term and can't afford 2 computers), but I don't have a functionning power adaptor the moment because my old one frayed at the bit where you plug into the computer, which is of cours,e impossible to repair, so I have to fork out £65 for a new one and beg/borrow/steal from my sister when she's not using her iBook, in order to keep mine charged. Grr.
There is some weirdness as work here. Menubar display says 99% and 'Battery is charged' when I click on it. batt.bash says 99.5% charge and it isn't going up :p
Sodl only for Macs? You can buy it by itself for any computer as far as I"m aware. Just need an adaptor if your graphics card doesn't have an ADC connection. I'm curious about why you think Windows uses the real estate better. I've noticed no real difference between X and XP in this regard. All depends on how you have your machine configured really. As for fuzzy characters and sub-pixel antialiasing, I can honestly say that I've never seen nicer text than on my Mac, even with just a 12" iBook screen. And it's been using sub-pixel antialiasing on the text for quite a while. If you don't like the way text is being displayed on a Mac, go into Preferences and General and there should be an option for font smoothing. Make sure it isn't being smoothed for really small point sizes and that the strength of the soothing is appropriate fro the monitor. Different setting work better for CRTs and LCDs (sub-pixel is a no-no on CRTs) and suite different eyes.
With LCDs, the size = the viewable area. It's CRTs where you have to drop an inch or two.
Actually, he did say that he was in classic land, which I'm guessing means OS9 since you'd have to be mad to run a browser in classic when there are so many good native ones. Then again, maybe he is nuts and my pedanticism is pointless today.
Actually, there are Lego mods available for Myth :^)
Where did you pull that from? Islam claims to be the one true religion, Judaism says there is only one God and the Jews are his chosen people and Christianity says that the only way to God is through Jesus. It's been that way fro the last couple of millenia. As for close-mindedness, you're being close-minded by refusing to admit the possibility that only one religion might be right. You're saying that the view that all religions are right (which doesn't work because they contradict each other) is the only valid view. If God says that there's only one way to get to him, I'm going to believe him, rather than trying to be 'open-minded' and looking for ways that don't exist and would in fact lead me away from him. If you're in a burning building and you see a sign saying 'Fire exit this way' would you say "That's awfully close-minded. There must be one in the opposite direction," then turn round and walk away? If so, you'd end up more than a little singed.
How so? You're saying as an absolute fact that absolutism is wrong? Think about that for a moment.
What you're saying is that I might have made a mistake, therefore I must be completely wrong and my stance is indefensible. That's completely illogical. Please do tel me why there is absolutely no possibility that I am right.
I'm taking an absolute, unchangable position that no matter what the circumstance, we should love God and love each other, our enemies included. We should return love in place of hate. We should seek to serve each other. This applies to everyone at every time, regardless of the situation they are in. And this has, according to you, been the cause of wars and atrocities. I'm curious about how you're going to explain that because I'm a little confused as to how a moral system focused on love could lead to war.
The key phrase in your erroneous statement is 'in the name of religion'. Many things have been done in the name of religion which are in fact in direct opposition to its teaching. Perhaps you'd like to go and tell all Muslims that they're terrorists because of 9/11. Or all Hindus that they're going to join murderous mobs because of the riots in India, or all Buddhists that they're happy to sit back and watch people suffer horrible deaths because of what happened in Cambodia, or all Jews that they want to beat Palestinians into a bloody pulp because Ariel Sharon is a prat or all atheists that they consider a million deaths to be a statistic because Stalin was a tyrant. I could get up and go on a killing spree in your name, but that doesn't mean you ordered it, condone it, or even have knowledge of it. Just because people do things in God's name, doesn't mean he is happy about it. In fact, I'd say he's pretty angry about a lot of the stuff people have done in his name. Wars are started by proud and greedy people who use religion as an excuse to try and get other people on their side.
Again with the fallacy. You assume that because there is a chance I might be wrong, then I almost certainly must be. I have spent years studying the Bible. There's not a day that goes past without me thinking about God and his word. I am not unthinking. I follow the Bible because I believe it to be true after critical thought and inspection.
They also state is a simple truth that the Bible is right, which is what I have been saying is my absolute all along. The bible explicitly states that the only way to God is through Jesus, therefore if the Bible is right, then that statement is correct and I am correct ins saying it. The "I know I'm right and everyone else is wrong" occurs with moral relativism where everyone makes up their own rules of morality for themselves, picking and choosing whatever is convenient.
If something is moral, then it is is always moral. God is unchanging, therefore there is no reason for morality to change. I don;'t care what society decides is moral and whether or not that changes because there is no reason to trust society when it comes to deciding on morality. The only one to trust is God as he is the source of morality. I believe in the same unchanging God that is described in the Bible, so no, my morals are no different from what they were 2000 years ago. I believe the Bible can be trusted as the Word of God, which makes me a fundamentalist and proud of it. And I'm certainly better informed about Christianity than you appear to be.
Fortunately though, he's given us some fairly explicit instructions as to what to do in the Bible. running around, not deciding on anything because there's a chance it might be long will lead you nowhere and look like a pretty weak excuse some day.
Uh, how do you get that? I fail to see the link between the human race existing and the human race having got morality right. We continue to exist, despite being immoral, because God is loving and is waiting until everyone has had a chance to ask for forgiveness before he comes back and judges us.
I've said that God is more loving than I am. He is, rightly, totally intolerant of sin. If you're created to glorify him, then run off, ignore him, ignore the sacrifice he makes, curse his name, go against his commands, why shouldn't he treat you as a sinner? And I'm not the one who has judged entire religions to be wrong - God has and I think he's in a pretty good position to decide. You yourself are an atheist, are you not, therefore you've judged every religion to be wrong. Why are you making me out not a bad guy for this, when you've done exactly the same thing. If you are instead an agnostic, ignore that last sentence.
Because there is strong historical evidence for the authenticity of the Gospels, which means I have good reason to believe Jesus, which means I have good reason to believe the rest of the Bible. Am I 100% certain? No. But if I had to be before doing anything, I would never get out of bed in the morning.
The morality presented by the church is generally quite unpopular, but my current church, St. Ebbe's, thrives anyway because it preaches the word of God. As I have said before, I get my absolutes from the Bible. The teaching at Ebbe's is very good because it comes straight from the Bible and I can easily verify whether or not their teaching can be trusted by looking at the Bible. I go to this church specifically because they are very Bible-centred.
That's an incredibly presumptuous and arrogant thing for you to say. There is always more for me to learn and greater humility to be attained, as can be said of any Christian. However, I have considerably better knowledge and understanding of Christianity than you do. I suggest you examine your system of moral relatives in light of what both you and I have said and see how well it stands up to scrutiny. See how much accountability it has.
Yes, the general public idea of what is moral and what is not, has changed over the centuries. That doesn't make people right. It doesn't mean that the changes are valid ones. Do you think it would be right for everyone to decide toorrow that genoicde was okay? Or rape? Or murder? Because under moral relativism, if a majority deicded it was okay, that would be fine. You wouldn't be able to tell them they're wrong, even if you tihnk they are. morality collapses without absolutes.
I believe very fimrly in absolutes. Men are very subjective, very flawed beings, so I would never consider taking my morality from a mere man. If God exists, morality as defned by him, is the only morality that has any validity (before you argue against this, I'm taking the hypothetical situation, which I consider to be true, that God exists. Going up to him on judgement day and saying "I'm sorry, but you've got this whole morality business wrong," isn't going to do you any good). The Bible records what God has told us about morality. Having come to the conclusion that the Bible is trustworthy, I therefore take my morality from there, using every book and every passage in context. Your question about which ones to agree with is a false dilema. They are all compatible.
As for the matter of religions agreeing with each other, I really dont care what other religions say because I consider them all to be wrong. Jesus said "The only way to the father is through me." If it's not christianity, it's not true and has no more validity as a moral system than secular values which are all made up as well.
So, in conclusion, no I couldn't almost say that there is no morality other than popuar morality. In fact popular morality doesn't even deserve to be called a moral system since it lacks any consistency between people or time. It has no source. There is n way to tell whether something that somebody claims to be right is actually right because by relativism, anybody is right in themselves. It's a whole big contradictory mess.
Morality requires absolutes to have any value. If God exists, he provides absolutes wich can be trusted. People can lie about what he says, or misunderstand, but that doesn't change the fact that the absolutes exist and determine the only valid and useful definition of what is moral and what isnt. They are the vales by which we will all one day be judged. I deserve to be judged and found wanting, but thankfully Jesus died on the cross and rose again, so I can be forgiven and have nothing to fear come that. That offer is open to everyone.
I very much got the impression form your post that when you said "Believing porn is evil and immoral is a fringe belief now." you meant that while it might have been wrong in the past it is right now to view porn. Even if this isn't applicable to you, it's applicable to other people here on slashdot. Under moral relativism, right and wrong, good and evil, lose all real meaning.
Relative morality which changes based on circumstance is a joke. It means that nothing is ever truely right and nothing is ever truly wrong. If a majority of people believe that another group deserves to die, then it's perfectly moral. Suddenly, genocide is okay. Yet the people who adhere to a relative morality will no doubt say that the Holocaus was absolutely evil. There are a lot of people who are quite hypocritical about this, saying that taking an absolute morality system such as in the Bible is stupid, yet stating as a fact that God is evil, porn is good, abortion is right, etc.
And then there's the whole evangelical isue. Apparently there's something evil about a Christian sharing his views with somone and wanting them to change theirs, yet it's it's perfectly justified for an atheists to espouse their views, call Christianity stupid and atempt to convert them to atheism. Double standards.
But having pointed this out, I'll no doubt be modded down by the very people I've just described. Frauds never like to be revelaed.
Christianity certianly doesnt - Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine :^) Jesus liked to party. Pity some people have misrepresnted him on that account. what he is against, however, is getting drunk because you lose control then which is A Bad Thing. The overwhelming majority of my Christian friends (myslef included) would drink in moderation and enjoy it.
With Jesus' death and resurrection in the OT, people are no longer bound by the Law and the Jews are no longer set aside as the keepers of God's Law. Everyone needs, can ask for and receive forgiveness. That is what achieves salvation, not following the Law. The Law should be followed because it is good, however we won't follow it perfectly, therefore it is asking for forgiveness that saves, rather than following the Law.
Actually Jesus was setting out a rigid hierarchy of right in wrong. So rigid that t is impossible for us to achieve - these are God's standards and without being perfect, we can't hope to achieve them. the point is that we can't trust in ourselves for salvation - we have to trust in God, ask forgiveness from him. As a loving God, he offers forgiveness to everyone. Mother Teressa needs it as much as Hitler did and God would be just as willing to forgive Hitler as her. Or me. Or you.
:^) Much as I adore my iBook, I know it's going to get toasted performance-wise by any gigahertz level desktop at 95% of tasks.
You're expecting a 500MHz G3 laptop to perform as well as an XP 2000+ desktop? Think about that for a moment. Besides, you only need to open an app once, then you can just leave it running. Memory management is quite nice under OS X, as is multitasking, so there's no real harm in having a few extra apps open. Unless you're really, really low on RAM. In which case, it's even more unreasonable to complain about the iBook being less responsive. It should have 384MB bare minimum, preferably 640MB. As for the things iTunes does, you can turn off the volume checking (which it only does the first time you import a file anyway). There isn't anything else it should start doing when you drop something in. Maybe you should be more specific, if you're having a genuine problem.
You mean like how during the dark ages, it was Irish Christian monks who preserved much of the scientific learning?
That's ridiculous. Just because some people who say they are religious harm science doesn't mean that religion dictates that scientific progresses must be impeded. There have been plenty of great Christian scientists and as you yourself pointed out, many great Muslim mathematicians. In fact by pointing that out, weren't you kinda contradicting yourself?
And Jesus very definitely made those claims. The Gospels were written by people who either knew him or got their information directly from other eye-witnesses. These people then went on to die for what they had written. I don't think they would have died for something that was a lie. As for the question of him existing, well to claim he didn't would be to deny historical fact.
Incidentally, Just because we should fear God does not mean that fear is used as a weapon by him. An analogy would be the army. If you were to face the US Army in battle, you should be afraid of it. That doesn't mean that the army is a terrorist organisation.
There's a world of difference between some people claiming to be Christian (or Muslim, etc.) being terrorists and Chrstianity (or Islam, etc.) endorsing terrrists. Terrorists abuse religion and use it to try and further their own ends, much as politicians have done and will doubtlessly continue to do. that isn't the fault of the religion, it's the fault of the people abusing it. And I hadly think that 'love your neighbour,' 'love your enemy,' 'turn the other cheek,' 'and these three remain, faith, hope, love and the greatest of these is love,' etc. are endorsements or terror tactics.
Well, for a start, you've got a few of your facts wrong. The iPod can play more than just MP3s. It can play WAV and I think AIFF files. The battery life is officially 10 hours, but in practice turns out to be more (12-14 hour range typically) and recharges faster than the Nomad's. The only two feature advantages the Nomad has are USB2, which doesn't matter since Firewire has a better sustained rate anyway, and the ability to record stuff, which I really couldn't care less about. If you read the rest of the comments you'll find a lot of comments about size, weight (yes, that extra bit does make a lot of difference), interface, integration with iTunes, calendar and contact integration, etc. Though they don't mention the iPod's kiler feature - a game of breakout! For a PC owner, there is an argument for the Nomad. Any Mac owner though is far better off with an iPod.