That is where I think faith must begin. I found that when I reached that crunch point that I was scared to let go of the security of rational thought, but at the same time I was deeply frustrated that I couldn't prove the existance of God one way or the other, and I knew that my fear of losing face or of becoming one of those christian weirdo's was stopping me looking for the answer.
I don't understand why you took the leap of faith to begin with, a sense of hopelessness at the thought that what appears to be rational does not appear to be complete, thus you must fall back on the irrational to provide you with a complete understanding of the universe? Why would you really be deeply frustrated that the existence of god cannot be proven one way or the other?
Invisible pink unicorn argument applies to this as well as all other faith based issues in the universe, it's all well and good until you start trying to pass it off as rational, verifiable, objective fact. In fact, explicitly, according to fideism, and to lesser degrees according to each seperate branch of christianity, if christianity was demonstrably true it would remove the entire point of grace through faith, since no faith is required for what one is personally aware of having followed the scientific method to categorical positive conclusion.
That argument alone denies rationality, it's what makes the entire idea of rational debate on christianity impossible, because at some point in time there must be faith in order for there to be christianity.
I live in the UK, and I suspect it is much like Australia where agnosticsicm or even just willful ignorance is the culturally acceptable thing to do. Actually having an opinion on religion makes you some kind of nut, so it's not easy.
I think you can fairly clearly see I do have an opinion on religion, there's not much in relation to it that I haven't already considered, every facet you care to mention, of all major religions, and quite a few that aren't particularily major, I've gone over and examined carefully, continuously discarding that which was regarded as fact as offered by those who followed it. What I don't quite understand is how precisely you can admittedly surrender your reason and adopt faith on an issue such as this, is it out of a desire for completeness? A savage belief that there must be something more than what we currently see because otherwise it'd be too unbearable to contemplate, or am I still missing something?
Cooperation is genetically beneficial, if you really want to take the tack that we are just a fleshy bipedal virus, you could still claim cooperation as a trait of fitness and sympathy and compassion as side effects of cooperation, things that make you a better cooperator.
I'm agnostic, I know the scientific explanations for the universe and our being here, I know the theories on god or a higher power or intelligent design, I think there's perhaps even areas of intersection between what would be considered religious ideas and the science of genesis, what caused the big bang, was the entire evolution of the universe guided from that point toward a particular point by an extremely advanced "snooker shot" from a celestial being taking a hands off approach to population management? Who knows, not me, I can't conclusively say one way or the other, but certain theories, that being, most modern major religions are responsible for grossly distorting scientific fact to suit their own purposes, and thus, are specifically offensive to objective reason, that, my rational mind will not allow me to tolerate.
To ask me to put aside reason is akin to asking me to start down the slippery slope to walking out into the middle of the road to play in traffic because I may find the experience enlightening, or sample arsenic because it has a fruity zest. I realise you probably believe I'm exaggerating to a large degree here, but as soon as you discard objective reason, you have very little else to stop you from doing as such beyond god's commandments, which we've already established aren't terribly important to christendom anyway, not so much a code as a guideline, to put it in pirate lingo. Also, if you discard reason, you've no way at all of establishing between the reasons you claim are crackpot or disingenuous, buddhism, hinduism, islam, and the one you've chosen as your path, christianity.
I don't see how you can reconcile this in your own mind, it appears to me you see misery and search for a pleasant myth to cover it all up and make everything ok, and take the one that appears the easiest to follow and the most culturally convenient for you with regards to your geopolitical station, correct me if I'm wrong, by all means.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, there is no non religious historical account of the resurrection of christ at all, the beliefs and opinions of a pack of religious fanatics are irrelevant with regards to the facts. The truth is, though, there's very little that could do an adequate job of presenting the case for christianity today without some form of clear divine intervention for all to see.
To ask people to believe that they're going to hell unless they accept the questionable actions of a questionable person two thousand years ago is so many steps beyond absurd as to be totally stark raving mad. Especially considering that there are *many* situations where it's simply not possible for the evidence for christianity, even if you really consider it to be worth the medium it's transmitted by, to be presented to the entire audience of those who are supposed to be burdened with the terrible task of accepting his salvation. The unborn, people in cultures where christianity has absolutely zero penetration, those subjects of cultures actively hostile to christian proselytizing, etc etc etc. It's morally offensive to imagine that all of those people are going to hell because they haven't heard the "good news"
That being said, about the only thing that would convince me personally of the resurrection of christ would be something akin to dating of the blood on the spear of destiny, if such could be scientically proven to be his blood, followed by physical evidence of his later living existence, which I doubt is likely to surface any time soon. On that point, I believe we'll simply have to agree to disagree.
You're not alone in finding this bit hard to swallow and somewhat outragous, but the bit you missed is that everyone deserves to go to hell, regardless of how good they appear to be. You, me, vicars, the Pope, presidents and drug dealers. No one can be made righteous by their own efforts and we all need Gods rescue plan, because all He really want is for us to love Him, and our sin simply stops us doing that.
Are you trolling here, perhaps? It seems absurd to say this directly after pointing out how Jesus preached that following god was not a box ticking exercise. That's exactly what it is according to the definition you provide, scare some poor bastard with the thought of eternal damnation into accepting original sin and a saviour to boot. For someone who didn't take their beliefs particularily seriously, it could almost be a Monty Python sketch.
Christian: Brother there is terrible news! Your forebears have sinned against our all loving god and the sin has been vengefully carried down throughout the generations of mankind unto you, and you are doomed to eternal suffering in a lake of fire!
Human: Oh, Bugger! That's rather scary.
Christian: Yes! It is, isn't it? BUT! I bring good news, our lord Jesus Christ, the son of god, died for your sins two thousand years ago and provided the sacrificial lamb for the aforementioned all loving god, all you need do is accept his sacrifice and you shall be elevated to the kingdom of heaven on your passing and spared the eternal torment of hell.
Human: Oh well, that's very nice then, I'll take that.
Christian: Brilliant, pleasure doing business with you, now, mind you, you really have to *believe* everything I just told you, you can't just pretend, but keep that up and we'll all be fine! Have a nice life and hopefully I'll see you on the other side!
Human: Fantastic! Any other conditions?
Christian: Hmmm? Oh, no, Just belief and acceptance of our lord's sacrifice will do fine, try being a nice chap if you can but it doesn't really matter, the faith part is what does the trick.
Human: Great! Won't interfere with my plans for global domination at all then, I'm off to massacre some infidels.
You're putting faith in thousands of scientists you never met for the operation of your computer etc. If you went around dou
Christianity is based upon the accepted historical fact that there was a guy called Jesus who lived in Israel about 2000 years ago. It's accepted by Jews, muslims etc that he was executed, but yet, a few days later his followers, who previously had been to scared to go outside, were standing in the temple proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead, and they were prepared to die for their belief.
Not disputing it.
Now I don't know about you, but I've met too many people walking around who've been dead for 36 hours or so after being flogged, crucifed and stabbed with a spear. Now we can't say that this is all completely proven in a scientific sense, but what we can say is that the evidence for Jesus rising from the dead is good enough to stand in most courts of law.
That's a pretty big jump from the above, a pack of self proclaimed religious fanatics bearing witness to supernatural events that just happen to concur with their original but insubstantiated beliefs means just about nothing to me, if you don't have the resurrection, you don't have anything, and that's what I disagree with. There's no rational evidence for the resurrection beyond the eyewitness accounts of aforementioned religious fanatics two thousand years removed from the present day, that's a hell of a line of chinese whispers to go through in order to establish a fact.
I'm not a lawyer, you may be right about the court of law thing, but there's no archeological or forensic evidence to support the resurrection, and the eye witness accounts are highly suspect to anyone who could honestly consider themselves rational.
Jesus fulfilled over 200 prophecies from the old Jewish Bible, including many that predicted his death on the cross hundreds of years before it happened.
Which you'd also have to denote some kind of objective significance to in order to make it mean anything at all, there's no reason to do so, ergo, it does not.
This kind of thing doesn't just happen every day, and there are no really credible alternative explainations, so your left with acknowledging that Jesus was who he said he was, that is, the son of God.
I can think of a credible explanation, just off the top of my head, he was a fraud and followed by a pack of religious fanatics, here's another one, he was a spiritually enlightened mortal followed by a pack of religious fanatics, here's another one, the story from back then is now so convoluted as to be meaningless.
There are a great many alternate explanations that make a lot more sense according to occam's razor than that he was the son of the god of the jews and was risen from the dead by divine intervention.
Of course, what you do with that knowledge is a different thing. You can ignore it and hope that God didn't really mean the things He said; that the God who created the universe 15 billion years ago was lying to us, or you can believe the words of the only man ever for whom there is no body. He said that we can become right with the God of the universe by simply accepting that Jesus was the scapegoat for all our sins, and by responding in love. No matter what you've done or who you are, Jesus paid the price of justice that God demanded and bought your life with his suffering.
Why is this important? Because it means that righteousness is a gift and not something we cannot earn and boast about. Jesus reserved almost all of his critisism for the religious people of his day who wore their adherence to the rules as a badge, to the extent that the rules were more important than what they pointed to. They looked down on "sinners" like prostitutes and tax collectors, but those were the people Jesus spent time with. Today it might be drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and other undesirables.
This particular aspect of your religion I find downright offensive, nothing matters that you do on the planet, you could be a child molesting serial killer with a penchant for buggery, and as long as you ac
Noone goes out of their way to ridicule the religious on principle, that would be a hallmark of insecurity, the only mention it gets in passing is a general reference to mental instability as a hallmark of the religious, but certainly irrational proselytizing (if that's not a tautology) to anyone I know is tantamount to asking for a "fuck you", sure.
I don't mind, as I consider what they're being ostracised for personally to be an offense against rational objective thought, it's more complex than they're disowned for thinking different, that's almost irrelevant.
Anyway, I didn't even want to really get into the discussion in terms of right and wrong true and false, I don't believe there's any value in organised religion at all and nothing but a rational argument, which can't exist by the nature of religion, can dissuade me from that belief.
I was just curious with regards to social stigma in America, the "it's cool to be christian" attitude strikes me as so absurdly foreign I was actually having a bit of trouble coming to grips with it, but based on the repsonses I've received so far I'm led to believe that this is indeed the case.
I could just be hugely sheltered, but definitely in my immediate circle of friends and associates, noone talks about religion at all unless it's to poke fun at the religious people, people are either weak or strong atheist, or more often agnostic as far as I'm aware. Generally if someone actually admitted they were religious in any of the circles I'm aware of it'd be asking for a bit of a ribbing at the least, and the more devout they were the more ostracised they'd be until they were just dismissed out of hand as thoroughly crazy.
I'm curious, just from reading here for a really long time now and seeing the continuous christian comments and such, am I to conclude that in America, being christian is actually "cool"? Here in Australia it's a step back or forward from a slap in the face depending on your individual situation I suppose, but of almost everyone I know it's several steps *past* a slap in the face to be called a "christian". It really has that foaming at the mouth whacky fundamentalist with crazed eyes stigma over here.
* The IDF has a bunch of clever people working for them. (probably true)
By all reports available it's a highly efficient organisation, tested time and again at getting the job it's been assigned to do done, that being ensuring the military superiority of Israel in it's immediate geographical area.
Note that this implies nothing with regards to using their criteria as an accurate judge of character, the ideal subject for a modern abbatoir is a fat and docile cow, that doesn't mean an intelligent human is somehow less 'worthy' in general, than said fat and docile cow. I'll let you draw your own conclusions with regards to the ideal specimen for the military.
Most other assumptions on the subject, based on the above, are likely false. for the D&D players, I wouldn't take it to heart, I'd be more of the opinion that it's like someone in the rank sewer field of politics approaching you and saying you're not cut out for their line of work, how could you possibly find that insulting?
With regards to refilling the helium, this would only need to be done when the inner supply had sublimated through whatever the envelope consisted of, is that correct? I imagine it's impossible to get that down to 100% effectiveness, but does anyone have any idea on figures re how long you could keep a helium suspended solar array up there before it needed to be refilled again? How much more effective would solar energy actually be up there?
In the interim I've studied two ways which could get the energy to the surface easily enough, maser beam or laser beam seem to be the obvious choices, although of course it would be hazardous for anything to pass between the power broadcast point and the receiver, if that single problem was taken care of you'd be mostly ok.
That's also a very good idea, far better than fossil fuel of course, and you don't have the problem of getting the energy down to the ground from 20km directly upward.
However, I believe it's been done before. And it's somewhat offtopic to the discussion at hand, wouldn't you agree?:)
GPS and engines on said floatation device configured to hold it in a geosynchronous orbit? As far as I'm aware, weather conditions are primarily restricted to the troposphere and the air in the stratosphere is so thin that it would exert only one third of the force on the device as the same windspeed would at sea level?
Biggest problem I can think of off the top of my head is how to get the power down to the ground and into the power grid for circulation...
How about the top of the stratosphere, supported by a helium floatation device? easier to reach than orbit, closer to the surface, below the mesosphere where the microasteroids typically burn up... still above the ozone layer where the majority of UV light is absorbed?
it costs more to purchase a condom in india than a woman willing to use it with you.
I spent a month in India, I didn't bother to even look for that side of things, but some girl on the street kissed me on the cheek and ran away for no apparent reason, so they can't be all *that* stuck up I guess.
I only found out about the condom vs prostitute cost after leaving India, not that I would have taken advantage of said fact having had known it prior to this, however if you're the type of person who's idea of fun is getting drunk and fucking women with loose morals (and I'm not being down on you here, that's fine with me) then I assume the above information would mean you would be reasonably satisfied.
I never said it was beneath me, I just said it was an exercise in common sense, utterly obvious to any but the most hopeless moron (i'm talking about you here, jim) as to how one would go about dismantling any of your remaining flimsy and oft repeated yet previously handled illogical conclusions, and i'm not really up for repeating myself except to point out that yes indeed, you *are* a fuckwit.
as for your entire little preamble about how we know it's a copout to opt out of a pointless argument on the internet, well hey, that just *PROVES* that I'm desperately trying to avoid your herculean wit, because everyone knows how thoroughly useful the vast majority of online debate is, and how it never sinks into the restating of previously addressed and disproven trivia regurgitated by the mentally handcapped.
just about every single thing you just said was inaccurate, and the vast majority of said mass of error was not just inaccurate but *directly* opposed to fact, I'm not going to waste my time with a rebuttal, it's an exercise in common sense.
I started off by saying that regulation is stupid because the problem is intent and not the object. You just start harping on this point last post and prove exactly what I was initially trying to say, as well as taking a stack of stuff out of context and manipulating it to suit your purpose, and indeed fulfilling my earlier prediction about your continuous ad hominem sledging, you're obviously COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of engaging in an actual debate, so I'm just going to have some fun with you, because I see no other reason to continue this thread.
You are a fuckwit, that felt good, thankyou, and goodnight.
I did indeed read your entire post, even without devolving to ad hominem attacks, which you have not managed to duplicate in this reply, I thought it was pretty apparent exactly what areas of your post I was addressing with each individual analogy I provided, but seeing as you appeared to miss the point, I'll go over it again.
Your initial point was that the specific purpose for a gun was to kill people, I pointed out that that was not the case, and even if I had made an item for which the specific purpose genuinely *was* to kill people, it would make no difference, you said a police officer on hearing about my ingenious killing device would probably be none to happy about it, I say quote me law, act and paragraph, where it says such a device is illegal.
You cannot do this.
You also said that justification for banning a gun was lethality, the very fact that it *can* be used in order to inflict lethal damage in a very short amount of time, I provided analogies where I substituted a gun for my thumb, the ridge of my hand, I could have provided many more analogies, I assumed however that those that were provided would be sufficient, do you doubt that you can in fact kill someone entirely barehanded in less than a second? Do you doubt that even a moron could do so with something as uncomplex as a screwdriver in the same period of time? Even your supposedly harmless cigarette lighter when used as a solid tool to manipulate critical areas of the human anatomy *could* indeed kill someone in less than a second. That's all I was trying to point out there, the fact remains.
You then said that buckets were not designed to kill or seriously injure humans, and thus bucket control was not necessary, I made the analogy of the 4 inch piece of steel with the specific design to kill humans and the fact that such a device is not regulated, You said telling a cop that you had a knife specifically to kill people would most likely get you in trouble, but that was not what I stated, I was quite clear, and I'll reiterate it a third time, the device itself is not regulated.
Your last argument that was unaddressed was the lethality of firearms from a distance, indeed, you cannot kill someone with a bucket from 50 feet away, but you cannot kill someone with a gun from 10 km away, which you *could* do with a mobile phone, a garbage bag, some gasoline, and a lighter, once again, items that are not regulated.
I think, as a final observation, and I should've really realised this from the parent post, that you're not interested in hearing about all the ways in which you are in fact wrong, your continuous ad hominem sledging just continues to back this up, if you reply to this at all, I predict that this pattern will continue, and hey, that's ok, because you're just proving my point that way.
So should my thumb be a regulated weapon because I could jam it through your temple and kill you with it in less than.2 of a second? Should the knife hand of my palm be a regulated weapon because I can strike you upward at the back of the neck at a 45 degree angle with intense force and kill you with it in less than.2 of a second?
Should a garbage bag, a mobile phone, gasoline, and a lighter, all be regulated because of the massive amount of destruction that could possibly be wrought using just these four items at any point on the globe from any distance away in less than.2 of a second?
As for specific design, what if I made a 4 inch long piece of metal with the specific usage to jam it into people's temples, would you think it sensible to regulate such a device? would you think it even *possible* to regulate such a device? do you think it's sensible to imagine that every gun ever made was created with the intent to kill another human being?
It's not the item, it's the intent behind the item. Switzerland gets along just fine with their firearms laws...
If atheism is NOT a religion, then it's practice is not constitutionally protected and can be either required or prohibited by law without violating the first fragment, denoted by the first comma of the first ammendment. (sic)
Because to do more than that would violate just about every other piece of your vaunted first amendment...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, *or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.*
If I recall correctly the correct term is Helenism.
Re:If it is done on sufficient scale
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So to really do it 100% you need to hack the registry of serial numbers for money, that way you have unique serial numbers for your counterfeiting cash cow, and it's absolutely undetectable.:D
Because a theoretical QE link would have absolutely 0 latency regardless of distance travelled, for example now iirc it takes 8 minutes for light to travel to mars and thus that is the communication latency for commands to the rover, with a theoretical QE link such a thing would be just as good as a radio link 2 meters away. Same thing for earth based communications on the other side of the world, latency from the US to australia is i think aminimum of about 150-200ms, a theoretical QE link would be 0 ms..
There seems to be much disagreement as to whether it's possible or not, I still really don't know for certain but more people seem to be learning in the not direction than the for direction, how does one actually entangle a pair of entities, say for example two photons? Perhaps that will clarify the issue somewhat
Actually, it doesn't. However far apart those pennies are when you set up the communications, the "remote half" had to travel at most the speed of light to get there. So, you do not get any increase in the total communication speed.
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But once you've moved the remote half to the remote location, isn't the change instantaneous? so with your example
Penny A is 2m from Penny B, you entangle B and A and then send Penny B away a distance of 8 light years (however long this takes is only relevant once, 8 years or whatever, but just once, say for example a mars mission, you set it up on earth, send the object to Mars, and then you have a faster than light link to mars *after* it's been estabished by the standard travel of actually getting the entangled particle to the remote location)
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I don't understand why you took the leap of faith to begin with, a sense of hopelessness at the thought that what appears to be rational does not appear to be complete, thus you must fall back on the irrational to provide you with a complete understanding of the universe? Why would you really be deeply frustrated that the existence of god cannot be proven one way or the other?
Invisible pink unicorn argument applies to this as well as all other faith based issues in the universe, it's all well and good until you start trying to pass it off as rational, verifiable, objective fact. In fact, explicitly, according to fideism, and to lesser degrees according to each seperate branch of christianity, if christianity was demonstrably true it would remove the entire point of grace through faith, since no faith is required for what one is personally aware of having followed the scientific method to categorical positive conclusion.
That argument alone denies rationality, it's what makes the entire idea of rational debate on christianity impossible, because at some point in time there must be faith in order for there to be christianity.
I live in the UK, and I suspect it is much like Australia where agnosticsicm or even just willful ignorance is the culturally acceptable thing to do. Actually having an opinion on religion makes you some kind of nut, so it's not easy.
I think you can fairly clearly see I do have an opinion on religion, there's not much in relation to it that I haven't already considered, every facet you care to mention, of all major religions, and quite a few that aren't particularily major, I've gone over and examined carefully, continuously discarding that which was regarded as fact as offered by those who followed it. What I don't quite understand is how precisely you can admittedly surrender your reason and adopt faith on an issue such as this, is it out of a desire for completeness? A savage belief that there must be something more than what we currently see because otherwise it'd be too unbearable to contemplate, or am I still missing something?
I'm agnostic, I know the scientific explanations for the universe and our being here, I know the theories on god or a higher power or intelligent design, I think there's perhaps even areas of intersection between what would be considered religious ideas and the science of genesis, what caused the big bang, was the entire evolution of the universe guided from that point toward a particular point by an extremely advanced "snooker shot" from a celestial being taking a hands off approach to population management? Who knows, not me, I can't conclusively say one way or the other, but certain theories, that being, most modern major religions are responsible for grossly distorting scientific fact to suit their own purposes, and thus, are specifically offensive to objective reason, that, my rational mind will not allow me to tolerate.
To ask me to put aside reason is akin to asking me to start down the slippery slope to walking out into the middle of the road to play in traffic because I may find the experience enlightening, or sample arsenic because it has a fruity zest. I realise you probably believe I'm exaggerating to a large degree here, but as soon as you discard objective reason, you have very little else to stop you from doing as such beyond god's commandments, which we've already established aren't terribly important to christendom anyway, not so much a code as a guideline, to put it in pirate lingo. Also, if you discard reason, you've no way at all of establishing between the reasons you claim are crackpot or disingenuous, buddhism, hinduism, islam, and the one you've chosen as your path, christianity.
I don't see how you can reconcile this in your own mind, it appears to me you see misery and search for a pleasant myth to cover it all up and make everything ok, and take the one that appears the easiest to follow and the most culturally convenient for you with regards to your geopolitical station, correct me if I'm wrong, by all means.
To ask people to believe that they're going to hell unless they accept the questionable actions of a questionable person two thousand years ago is so many steps beyond absurd as to be totally stark raving mad. Especially considering that there are *many* situations where it's simply not possible for the evidence for christianity, even if you really consider it to be worth the medium it's transmitted by, to be presented to the entire audience of those who are supposed to be burdened with the terrible task of accepting his salvation. The unborn, people in cultures where christianity has absolutely zero penetration, those subjects of cultures actively hostile to christian proselytizing, etc etc etc. It's morally offensive to imagine that all of those people are going to hell because they haven't heard the "good news"
That being said, about the only thing that would convince me personally of the resurrection of christ would be something akin to dating of the blood on the spear of destiny, if such could be scientically proven to be his blood, followed by physical evidence of his later living existence, which I doubt is likely to surface any time soon. On that point, I believe we'll simply have to agree to disagree.
You're not alone in finding this bit hard to swallow and somewhat outragous, but the bit you missed is that everyone deserves to go to hell, regardless of how good they appear to be. You, me, vicars, the Pope, presidents and drug dealers. No one can be made righteous by their own efforts and we all need Gods rescue plan, because all He really want is for us to love Him, and our sin simply stops us doing that.
Are you trolling here, perhaps? It seems absurd to say this directly after pointing out how Jesus preached that following god was not a box ticking exercise. That's exactly what it is according to the definition you provide, scare some poor bastard with the thought of eternal damnation into accepting original sin and a saviour to boot. For someone who didn't take their beliefs particularily seriously, it could almost be a Monty Python sketch.
Christian: Brother there is terrible news! Your forebears have sinned against our all loving god and the sin has been vengefully carried down throughout the generations of mankind unto you, and you are doomed to eternal suffering in a lake of fire!
Human: Oh, Bugger! That's rather scary.
Christian: Yes! It is, isn't it? BUT! I bring good news, our lord Jesus Christ, the son of god, died for your sins two thousand years ago and provided the sacrificial lamb for the aforementioned all loving god, all you need do is accept his sacrifice and you shall be elevated to the kingdom of heaven on your passing and spared the eternal torment of hell.
Human: Oh well, that's very nice then, I'll take that.
Christian: Brilliant, pleasure doing business with you, now, mind you, you really have to *believe* everything I just told you, you can't just pretend, but keep that up and we'll all be fine! Have a nice life and hopefully I'll see you on the other side!
Human: Fantastic! Any other conditions?
Christian: Hmmm? Oh, no, Just belief and acceptance of our lord's sacrifice will do fine, try being a nice chap if you can but it doesn't really matter, the faith part is what does the trick.
Human: Great! Won't interfere with my plans for global domination at all then, I'm off to massacre some infidels.
You're putting faith in thousands of scientists you never met for the operation of your computer etc. If you went around dou
Not disputing it.
Now I don't know about you, but I've met too many people walking around who've been dead for 36 hours or so after being flogged, crucifed and stabbed with a spear. Now we can't say that this is all completely proven in a scientific sense, but what we can say is that the evidence for Jesus rising from the dead is good enough to stand in most courts of law.
That's a pretty big jump from the above, a pack of self proclaimed religious fanatics bearing witness to supernatural events that just happen to concur with their original but insubstantiated beliefs means just about nothing to me, if you don't have the resurrection, you don't have anything, and that's what I disagree with. There's no rational evidence for the resurrection beyond the eyewitness accounts of aforementioned religious fanatics two thousand years removed from the present day, that's a hell of a line of chinese whispers to go through in order to establish a fact.
I'm not a lawyer, you may be right about the court of law thing, but there's no archeological or forensic evidence to support the resurrection, and the eye witness accounts are highly suspect to anyone who could honestly consider themselves rational.
Jesus fulfilled over 200 prophecies from the old Jewish Bible, including many that predicted his death on the cross hundreds of years before it happened.
Which you'd also have to denote some kind of objective significance to in order to make it mean anything at all, there's no reason to do so, ergo, it does not.
This kind of thing doesn't just happen every day, and there are no really credible alternative explainations, so your left with acknowledging that Jesus was who he said he was, that is, the son of God.
I can think of a credible explanation, just off the top of my head, he was a fraud and followed by a pack of religious fanatics, here's another one, he was a spiritually enlightened mortal followed by a pack of religious fanatics, here's another one, the story from back then is now so convoluted as to be meaningless.
There are a great many alternate explanations that make a lot more sense according to occam's razor than that he was the son of the god of the jews and was risen from the dead by divine intervention.
Of course, what you do with that knowledge is a different thing. You can ignore it and hope that God didn't really mean the things He said; that the God who created the universe 15 billion years ago was lying to us, or you can believe the words of the only man ever for whom there is no body. He said that we can become right with the God of the universe by simply accepting that Jesus was the scapegoat for all our sins, and by responding in love. No matter what you've done or who you are, Jesus paid the price of justice that God demanded and bought your life with his suffering.
Why is this important? Because it means that righteousness is a gift and not something we cannot earn and boast about. Jesus reserved almost all of his critisism for the religious people of his day who wore their adherence to the rules as a badge, to the extent that the rules were more important than what they pointed to. They looked down on "sinners" like prostitutes and tax collectors, but those were the people Jesus spent time with. Today it might be drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes and other undesirables.
This particular aspect of your religion I find downright offensive, nothing matters that you do on the planet, you could be a child molesting serial killer with a penchant for buggery, and as long as you ac
Noone goes out of their way to ridicule the religious on principle, that would be a hallmark of insecurity, the only mention it gets in passing is a general reference to mental instability as a hallmark of the religious, but certainly irrational proselytizing (if that's not a tautology) to anyone I know is tantamount to asking for a "fuck you", sure.
Anyway, I didn't even want to really get into the discussion in terms of right and wrong true and false, I don't believe there's any value in organised religion at all and nothing but a rational argument, which can't exist by the nature of religion, can dissuade me from that belief.
I was just curious with regards to social stigma in America, the "it's cool to be christian" attitude strikes me as so absurdly foreign I was actually having a bit of trouble coming to grips with it, but based on the repsonses I've received so far I'm led to believe that this is indeed the case.
I could just be hugely sheltered, but definitely in my immediate circle of friends and associates, noone talks about religion at all unless it's to poke fun at the religious people, people are either weak or strong atheist, or more often agnostic as far as I'm aware. Generally if someone actually admitted they were religious in any of the circles I'm aware of it'd be asking for a bit of a ribbing at the least, and the more devout they were the more ostracised they'd be until they were just dismissed out of hand as thoroughly crazy.
I'm curious, just from reading here for a really long time now and seeing the continuous christian comments and such, am I to conclude that in America, being christian is actually "cool"? Here in Australia it's a step back or forward from a slap in the face depending on your individual situation I suppose, but of almost everyone I know it's several steps *past* a slap in the face to be called a "christian". It really has that foaming at the mouth whacky fundamentalist with crazed eyes stigma over here.
* The IDF has a bunch of clever people working for them. (probably true)
By all reports available it's a highly efficient organisation, tested time and again at getting the job it's been assigned to do done, that being ensuring the military superiority of Israel in it's immediate geographical area.
Note that this implies nothing with regards to using their criteria as an accurate judge of character, the ideal subject for a modern abbatoir is a fat and docile cow, that doesn't mean an intelligent human is somehow less 'worthy' in general, than said fat and docile cow. I'll let you draw your own conclusions with regards to the ideal specimen for the military.
Most other assumptions on the subject, based on the above, are likely false. for the D&D players, I wouldn't take it to heart, I'd be more of the opinion that it's like someone in the rank sewer field of politics approaching you and saying you're not cut out for their line of work, how could you possibly find that insulting?
To each their own. :)
In the interim I've studied two ways which could get the energy to the surface easily enough, maser beam or laser beam seem to be the obvious choices, although of course it would be hazardous for anything to pass between the power broadcast point and the receiver, if that single problem was taken care of you'd be mostly ok.
However, I believe it's been done before. And it's somewhat offtopic to the discussion at hand, wouldn't you agree? :)
Biggest problem I can think of off the top of my head is how to get the power down to the ground and into the power grid for circulation...
How about the top of the stratosphere, supported by a helium floatation device? easier to reach than orbit, closer to the surface, below the mesosphere where the microasteroids typically burn up... still above the ozone layer where the majority of UV light is absorbed?
The above poster is talking about switzerland, probably, I don't think that guns at home rule applies to sweden.
Switzerland doesn't have much of a welfare state at all compared to the rest of Europe, their tax laws are quite soft.
Interesting and relevant statistic;
it costs more to purchase a condom in india than a woman willing to use it with you.
I spent a month in India, I didn't bother to even look for that side of things, but some girl on the street kissed me on the cheek and ran away for no apparent reason, so they can't be all *that* stuck up I guess.
I only found out about the condom vs prostitute cost after leaving India, not that I would have taken advantage of said fact having had known it prior to this, however if you're the type of person who's idea of fun is getting drunk and fucking women with loose morals (and I'm not being down on you here, that's fine with me) then I assume the above information would mean you would be reasonably satisfied.
I never said it was beneath me, I just said it was an exercise in common sense, utterly obvious to any but the most hopeless moron (i'm talking about you here, jim) as to how one would go about dismantling any of your remaining flimsy and oft repeated yet previously handled illogical conclusions, and i'm not really up for repeating myself except to point out that yes indeed, you *are* a fuckwit.
;)
as for your entire little preamble about how we know it's a copout to opt out of a pointless argument on the internet, well hey, that just *PROVES* that I'm desperately trying to avoid your herculean wit, because everyone knows how thoroughly useful the vast majority of online debate is, and how it never sinks into the restating of previously addressed and disproven trivia regurgitated by the mentally handcapped.
I guess I got "served"
You're still a fuckwit, QED. (yawn)
just about every single thing you just said was inaccurate, and the vast majority of said mass of error was not just inaccurate but *directly* opposed to fact, I'm not going to waste my time with a rebuttal, it's an exercise in common sense.
You are still a fuckwit, that is still fun.
I started off by saying that regulation is stupid because the problem is intent and not the object. You just start harping on this point last post and prove exactly what I was initially trying to say, as well as taking a stack of stuff out of context and manipulating it to suit your purpose, and indeed fulfilling my earlier prediction about your continuous ad hominem sledging, you're obviously COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of engaging in an actual debate, so I'm just going to have some fun with you, because I see no other reason to continue this thread.
You are a fuckwit, that felt good, thankyou, and goodnight.
I did indeed read your entire post, even without devolving to ad hominem attacks, which you have not managed to duplicate in this reply, I thought it was pretty apparent exactly what areas of your post I was addressing with each individual analogy I provided, but seeing as you appeared to miss the point, I'll go over it again.
Your initial point was that the specific purpose for a gun was to kill people, I pointed out that that was not the case, and even if I had made an item for which the specific purpose genuinely *was* to kill people, it would make no difference, you said a police officer on hearing about my ingenious killing device would probably be none to happy about it, I say quote me law, act and paragraph, where it says such a device is illegal.
You cannot do this.
You also said that justification for banning a gun was lethality, the very fact that it *can* be used in order to inflict lethal damage in a very short amount of time, I provided analogies where I substituted a gun for my thumb, the ridge of my hand, I could have provided many more analogies, I assumed however that those that were provided would be sufficient, do you doubt that you can in fact kill someone entirely barehanded in less than a second? Do you doubt that even a moron could do so with something as uncomplex as a screwdriver in the same period of time? Even your supposedly harmless cigarette lighter when used as a solid tool to manipulate critical areas of the human anatomy *could* indeed kill someone in less than a second. That's all I was trying to point out there, the fact remains.
You then said that buckets were not designed to kill or seriously injure humans, and thus bucket control was not necessary, I made the analogy of the 4 inch piece of steel with the specific design to kill humans and the fact that such a device is not regulated, You said telling a cop that you had a knife specifically to kill people would most likely get you in trouble, but that was not what I stated, I was quite clear, and I'll reiterate it a third time, the device itself is not regulated.
Your last argument that was unaddressed was the lethality of firearms from a distance, indeed, you cannot kill someone with a bucket from 50 feet away, but you cannot kill someone with a gun from 10 km away, which you *could* do with a mobile phone, a garbage bag, some gasoline, and a lighter, once again, items that are not regulated.
I think, as a final observation, and I should've really realised this from the parent post, that you're not interested in hearing about all the ways in which you are in fact wrong, your continuous ad hominem sledging just continues to back this up, if you reply to this at all, I predict that this pattern will continue, and hey, that's ok, because you're just proving my point that way.
So should my thumb be a regulated weapon because I could jam it through your temple and kill you with it in less than .2 of a second? Should the knife hand of my palm be a regulated weapon because I can strike you upward at the back of the neck at a 45 degree angle with intense force and kill you with it in less than .2 of a second?
.2 of a second?
Should a garbage bag, a mobile phone, gasoline, and a lighter, all be regulated because of the massive amount of destruction that could possibly be wrought using just these four items at any point on the globe from any distance away in less than
As for specific design, what if I made a 4 inch long piece of metal with the specific usage to jam it into people's temples, would you think it sensible to regulate such a device? would you think it even *possible* to regulate such a device? do you think it's sensible to imagine that every gun ever made was created with the intent to kill another human being?
It's not the item, it's the intent behind the item. Switzerland gets along just fine with their firearms laws...
You should underwrite the below as;
If atheism is NOT a religion, then it's practice is not constitutionally protected and can be either required or prohibited by law without violating the first fragment, denoted by the first comma of the first ammendment. (sic)
Because to do more than that would violate just about every other piece of your vaunted first amendment...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, *or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.*
If I recall correctly the correct term is Helenism.
So to really do it 100% you need to hack the registry of serial numbers for money, that way you have unique serial numbers for your counterfeiting cash cow, and it's absolutely undetectable. :D
Because a theoretical QE link would have absolutely 0 latency regardless of distance travelled, for example now iirc it takes 8 minutes for light to travel to mars and thus that is the communication latency for commands to the rover, with a theoretical QE link such a thing would be just as good as a radio link 2 meters away. Same thing for earth based communications on the other side of the world, latency from the US to australia is i think aminimum of about 150-200ms, a theoretical QE link would be 0 ms..
There seems to be much disagreement as to whether it's possible or not, I still really don't know for certain but more people seem to be learning in the not direction than the for direction, how does one actually entangle a pair of entities, say for example two photons? Perhaps that will clarify the issue somewhat
Actually, it doesn't. However far apart those pennies are when you set up the communications, the "remote half" had to travel at most the speed of light to get there. So, you do not get any increase in the total communication speed.
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But once you've moved the remote half to the remote location, isn't the change instantaneous? so with your example
Penny A is 2m from Penny B, you entangle B and A and then send Penny B away a distance of 8 light years (however long this takes is only relevant once, 8 years or whatever, but just once, say for example a mars mission, you set it up on earth, send the object to Mars, and then you have a faster than light link to mars *after* it's been estabished by the standard travel of actually getting the entangled particle to the remote location)
Would that work?