As far as God's action on Pharoh's heart, it appears that God contradicted himself. However, God does not contradict himself, and so there is something else going on...
That's a pretty massive cop-out, but alright, I'll leave it at that.
I should point out that this is hardly the only contradiction I've found, either in the character of God or in the Bible.
Humans want more than just avoidance from pain. We also want to be free from ignorance and vice and sin (moral evil).
I'm not sure that's true, but suppose it is... How is letting children die in fires and floods helping any of these goals?
There is growth in suffering.
If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, he can find a way to allow that growth without suffering.
If he saved us from all physical evil, how different would he be from the parent who does the child's homework?
Except that in this case, the reason we can't allow parents to do childrens' homework is that the children won't learn. We don't get our goal of an educated human being.
But couldn't God snap his fingers and produce an educated human being anyway? Like downloading knowledge in The Matrix?
I think the main question here is why did Jesus have to die for us to be saved.
Pretty much.
Jesus gave a third answer which was not anticipated: forgiveness. This admits that evil is evil and doesn't water it down, either. It disconnects the sinner from the sin and sets the sinner free. Repentance is the same act but from the sinner's perspective.
I still don't see how a man's death is needed for either of these.
God gives mercy and justice.
I could drag up other quotes to demonstrate why your god doesn't seem either merciful or just...
But, let's consider this. Is it just to punish one man for another man's crimes? More importantly, how many sins should truly demand death? For that, just look at our own justice system -- capital punishment isn't universal, and is only applied to the harshest of circumstances.
Think of this in a human context. I catch you stealing from me, so I kill my son, and tell you "Well, someone's been punished, so you can go now." WTF?
So, at the very least, I don't agree with this statement:
God cannot give both.
It also presents another problem: God is omnipotent and omniscient. Why can't he figure out a way to give both mercy and justice without killing his son?
But I was using duct tape as a very simple example. It could also be defeated by, for example, detaching the scanner and pointing it at a single lava lamp in a corner of the room with no one there. Thus, it sees one "person"...
You get the idea. It would be broken. The more important point is that we shouldn't have to put up with this shit.
I can see some obvious uses here that I hope never happen, like, "Sorry, but you only purchased one ticket to your pay-per-view movie, and three people are watching! Purchase additional tickets or ask some of the viewers to leave."
Of course, even if it gets that bad, I suspect it'd be defeated with something like duct tape. So, while it's kind of evil that someone might want to do this, I'm not all that worried that it would actually work.
Biggest problem with that is, it now becomes possible to sell votes. And this doesn't help:
Maybe instead of voter id's, it should be a random confirmation code thats generated on the spot.
And yet, that confirmation code could still be used for that purpose. About the only way to solve that would be to also generate a fake confirmation code, but then the transparency would be lost, because if the system can fool you into thinking your fake code was counted when it wasn't, couldn't it do the same with your real vote?
my existence depends on the existence of something else. That something else depends on something else in turn. Somewhere at the front of the dependency chain is something that doesn't depend on something else to exist. I'm not claiming this is a time based cause-effect chain.
I could say then that it's not only time, but causality itself, that's a property of the universe as we know it. Within the universe, we observe that everything depends on something else to exist -- but we can't assume our intuition extends beyond it.
Regardless, you're making the same leap as the first-cause argument -- that there must be something that doesn't depend on something else. Why must there? Indeed, the whole argument is founded on the assumption that the universe itself can't just exist:
Lets assume that there is not an Uncaused Being, in other words, EVERYTHING has a present cause. However, outside of EVERYTHING is NOTHING. To say that everything is caused by nothing is nonsensical.
Let's assume that there is an Uncaused... I'll even grant "Uncaused Being". In other words, EVERYTHING has a present cause... except this Uncaused Being. Should we say that the Uncaused Being was caused by nothing? That's nonsensical.
So you still have Carl Sagan's problem: Why not skip a step? Why not say that EVERYTHING is uncaused?
In other words, that the first cause is an 'it' not a 'he'.
Right.
If not personal, then the universe would have to be infinitely old because all conditions for the universe would exist for all eternity.
Wait, what? Why?
I'm not following this part at all, so I apologize if I misrepresent you...
If you're saying that the first cause must be eternal, and that it must therefore always be causing the Universe, I still don't see how intelligence makes a difference. That would seem to be arguing that an intelligent being would create with a definite beginning, and would then stop creating, because the creation is already there -- but that amount of logic can easily be done by inanimate objects (computers).
If you're saying that the first cause must be eternal, and if I'm saying the universe is the first cause, it must also be eternal, that depends how we define "universe". We know that the physical universe as we can see it exploded from the Big Bang, but we know nothing about before the Big Bang. For all we know, an eternal process could've led to that explosion.
But I don't see that a first cause has to be eternal. I don't see that an eternal thing makes any more sense than something which simply popped into existence.
And you still have the FSM problem: Even if I grant that it's intelligent, how do we know it's your god, and not a big ball of pasta?
Yes, but not "easily" -- unfortunately, it's still a legal process, and thus a bitch, even if the judge, jury, and patent office were all technically competent -- which they aren't.
A counter argument is that God does not prevent evil acts so is complicit to them.
Correct -- let's start from there.
The alternative for God, though, is to control people away from evil acts.
So, why are there natural disasters?
Even if we accept that God must allow people to commit evil acts out of respect for "free will" -- which God doesn't seem to respect very much (he hardened Pharaoh's heart, right?) -- why would people die from, say, a lightning strike? Must God respect the lightning's free will?
There is no greater case of this than in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Christians believe that God, existence itself, was incarnate as a human with the name of Jesus. 'The Word made flesh'. We reason that the greatest evil ever done was to torture and murder God as man in Jesus.
And yet, this was known about ahead of time, and God deliberately sent his son, knowing he'd be killed.
This, I take issue with -- yes, it could be said that God made the best of a bad situation. But the rewards of the crucifixion -- the fact that Jesus was alive, and that we are forgiven -- it's often argued that the crucifixion was necessary for this, and I don't see how.
And yet, if God could've prevented the crucifixion, without interfering with free will -- for example, by allowing Jesus to ascend before he was lifted onto the cross -- why didn't he?
I'm disappointed. Are you expecting to convince anyone that religion is irrational because SanityInAnarchy hasn't found a particular reason to believe?
The fact that I haven't found a rational reason to believe suggests that there isn't one.
So, actually, I was inviting anyone to provide me with such a reason. Even if I don't accept that it would be a good reason for me to believe, it would demonstrate that such belief is not completely irrational.
is belief always illogical and without reason?
There are certain beliefs I have that are reinforced by experiment. For instance, when people pray, sometimes they get what they want, sometimes they don't. But the sun does rise every morning, so it seems reasonable to believe that it will tomorrow, also.
Even less solid beliefs -- for instance, if you're married, do you believe your spouse loves you? You probably have a lot of evidence for that belief. You could be wrong -- they could leave you tomorrow -- but you doubt that very much. Your love for them is probably at least partly based on the fact that they love you back.
Neither of these is quite faith.
In the presence of a rational proof, belief is unnecessary and irrational.
So, when you said "belief" here, you meant "faith", as in, belief without reason.
And no, in the presence of a rational proof, belief in that proof, or faith in that proof, seems fairly rational. Indeed, you're also expressing some faith in your evaluation of that proof, and in your memory of having evaluating it correctly, as none of us will be conscious of the entirety of the proof, or at least, not for very long.
I avoided the point because it is a loaded question. I expected that since you are already of the opinion that belief in God is irrational, you would certainly not go so far as to accept any explanation on the subject.
Not true.
I don't believe that Star Wars is real, and I think there aren't really good reasons to believe that there ever really were Jedi in a galaxy far, far away.
But even if it's fiction, we can discuss what Obi-Wan's motives were for lying about Luke's father, and if that's in character... We can even discuss things like how the Federation, of Star Trek, would fare against the Galactic Empire, from Star Wars.
So, even if I don't believe God is real, I could still examine whether it's rational for an all-loving being to have to kill someone in order to forgive. Yes, it's a loaded question, but I really haven't heard a good answer to why Jesus had to die for our sins.
I expect you to flay and quarter it, and leave it for dead. Have fun.
Oh, I will.
Its difficult to even know what reasons you have already rejected, and then to march out the ones you haven't seen yet? That's a chore.
You could start with the reasons you believe.
I hope you keep open to the possibility that there is a reason to believe in God that you can accept.
Highly skeptical, but open. I'm also open to the possibility that I'm wrong, and that I'll be proven wrong.
I don't think it's very likely, and I could give you many reasons for that. But I do have to admit -- I could be wrong.
Problem is, the RIAA is precisely who would approve such a thing. It's perfect -- it's hot, it's trendy, it's what all the young people are talking about (or what we think they're talking about), and it's cheap to make.
And, some people might even like something like this -- while the things we like might not appeal to everyone else.
The reason we don't need gatekeepers -- why we really don't want gatekeepers -- is precisely so that we can have good stuff, and tune out the crap like this.
And thus, we, the audience, become the gatekeepers.
Actually, it would appeal to me, as it seems to be about the people behind Facebook, and not Facebook itself. That puts it in the same category as, say, Pirates of Silicon Valley and Antitrust, for what that's worth.
I know what irrational means, but I don't know what you mean when you say religion is irrational. Do you mean illogical, or without reason, or something else?
Both illogical and without reason.
I see no particular reason for believing in a god, so that's without reason. I find it illogical to believe something without good reason, and I find most definitions of a god to be internally inconsistent, and thus illogical in themselves.
Just for the record: The above is not the Christian belief. Christians believe that God is goodness: only good come from him, and all that is good in the world is only from him.
Christians also believe that God created everything in the world, and that furthermore, he is all-knowing and all-powerful. So...
He abhors evil.
If he abhors evil, why does it exist?
You also didn't address my point there: Why did he need to see his son tortured to death in order to forgive? The only rational explanation I can come up with is, he's the same cruel Old-Testament god who demands blood sacrifice.
Interesting you picked the word 'Yahweh'. It happens to be the most sacred word in Judeo-Christian belief. It is the name of God.
It is also a word that was not ever to be spoken, so we're not actually sure where the vowels go (Hebrew doesn't have vowels). When reading the Torah, that name is read instead as "Adonai".
God is existence itself. Existence is God.... I invite you to consider God as existence itself.
If that is the definition of God, I have no problem with it, and I certainly believe in it -- that is, I believe things exist.
Of course, I don't agree with your other conclusions -- I see no reason to assume existence is merciful, or could have a "son".
Its certainly an act of human reason to think about the beginning of the universe. My reason cannot accept that the universe brought itself into existence.... Something was there first; something eternal.
You are assuming a large number of things.
First, you are assuming that the universe had a beginning. Yes, we know about the Big Bang, and it's a common misrepresentation of Big Bang theory to say that there was nothing before this. The truth is, even at times very close to the Big Bang, our reason breaks down, just as relativistic speeds and masses sort of defy intuition and dissolve into math. At a certain point, even our math fails.
So, we simply do not know what was before the Big Bang, or if our reason would extend to it.
One theory -- which has since been disproved, but which should give you an idea of how little we know -- is that the space-time of the Universe is shaped like a sphere. At one pole, you have the beginning, and at the other, you have the end -- but to ask what is before the beginning is like asking what is outside the Universe, and to ask what created, or caused it, is a nonsensical question.
It's nonsensical because you understand cause and effect within time, which is a property of the Universe. Outside of time, these rules don't apply -- the Universe, as a four-dimensional structure, may or may not have had to be created, or may itself be an eternal four-dimensional structure -- think again of the sphere.
Another disproven theory is the Big Crunch -- you could imagine a cyclical Universe, wherein the universe will eventually contract to a singularity, and explode again, in an eternal cycle.
Why bring up disproven theories? Mostly to give you something to think about -- the reason we know these theories aren't true is not that they're weird and unintuitive. We know they aren't true because the math doesn't work out, or because they contradict our observations -- for example, the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, so even if there was a Big Crunch before, it's probably not going to happen this time.
My app accesses SQLite locally on single user installations and PostgreSQL over TCP/IP in centrally controlled network environments.
So, with the centrally controlled environment, I don't see a lot of advantage to sending SQL over TCP/IP, vs talking to a server. With the individual installation, it depends very much what the users want -- I imagine some would love the idea of working on it anywhere, and letting you worry about backup. Others would much rather have the data stored locally, under their control.
The physical simulation is multi-threaded, and I don't have any idea how I could do that in a webapp without using Java.
If performance is an issue -- you actually need multiple CPUs -- then I believe there are some new-ish (as in, unimplemented) browser technologies to do that.
Otherwise, cooperative multitasking is certainly possible, in any language.
I really think the web-based app would have been the wrong decision
As I hear more about this, I'm inclined to agree. Still, it's also not a common app.
The problems arise, if you artificially limit your coping abilities. Either by only ever using some. Or by never ever using some. No?:)
Well, no, I wouldn't agree.
For example: One potential way of coping is eating ice cream. But if what you're trying to cope with is an overeating disorder, then I'd say that is never the right way to cope with that.
A more extreme example: We could cope with our stress by killing someone. Is that an acceptable way to cope? No, I'd artificially limit my coping ability, and never use that ability.
Now, is religion as bad as murder? Usually not. But I'd still argue the side effects are not worth whatever comfort it provides, when there are so many other ways of being comforted. I would suggest the most effective way of coping, with or without religion, is reaching out to other real people.
it is becoming very common that even ideas you come up with in your own time are considered to be the property of whatever company you happen to work for.
Sometimes, but not always. Depends very much on your employment contract.
The argument would run, "Well, he wouldn't have come up with the idea of the single part lancet if he hadn't been exposed to the 15 part lancet which we manufacture,
It'd have to be a better argument than that -- he could've bought a 15-part lancet and taken it apart. Unless it's derivative...
A little bit of regulation can prevent centuries long lock-downs of the human mind and spirit.
A little regulation also doesn't kill the free market.
they sell it like crazy to the masses, and the masses, having had their brains softened up through years of toxic food, over-long work days, stupid schooling and plenty of TV, are now too numb to realize they are being manipulated.
No offense, but this is starting to sound pretty stupid. You may have a point that the masses are stupid, but it doesn't immediately invalidate anything they believe.
The only way to win is to stop playing the game.
Actually, that's the only way to lose.
As stacked as the game is, it's still possible for small, independent startups to win.
In other words, it'd break on mine, as I don't explicitly have "mail".
It'd also break on anyone's system who likes to name their mailservers something that isn't "mail" -- at my last admin job, it'd be something like "cobalt" or "chromium".
Or are you saying only www domains resolve to your ISP's redirect? That'd be a bit better, though still fairly broken.
Native code will always be much faster than scripted.
Two issues. First:
I can imagine a few corner cases where this might not be true, but those exist in a vacuum and wouldn't ever happen.
There are plenty of cases where it's not true, and these do happen. As a blatant example, Apple is using LLVM in practice, in a few places. Running that particular code in a VM was faster than running it natively -- I believe it's actually C.
As research in this area continues, I really only expect it to get better, just as compilers have gotten better. The main difference is that "interpreted" languages can have runtime optimizations that "compiled" languages can't -- but there's absolutely no reason a "scripted" language couldn't be compiled, that's an implementation issue.
The other issue is that even if scripting languages are slower, the vast majority of applications are fast enough in a bytecode-interpreted language, let alone a JIT-ed language, for it to be worth it -- especially when you consider other advantages, like portability, garbage collection, etc.
Put another way: Would you rather your app be slightly sluggish, or would you rather it leak memory, crash under weird circumstances, be vulnerable to buffer overruns, etc?
It needs to be able to access PostgreSQL and SQLite databases
Are these local?
If not, you could implement this on the server side pretty easily.
as well as visualize the results of a simulation of a specific industrial machine.
What do you use for that? Is it something more powerful than an html5 canvas?
If I tried to make it a web based app, I would probably be over 100k lines of code instead of the 15,000 I'm at now.
Javascript and Ruby vs C++? I'd imagine it would be less code.
Not to mention, I'd still need something to handle my database access and provide results through JSON and the database access would be platform dependent.
Well, if you're handling the database on the server, you get to pretty much pick the platform. If you do it on the client, you could pretty much just use Google Gears.
As for providing the JSON -- first, no reason it has to be JSON, instead of something else. Second, that's actually pretty trivial -- on the order of 2-5 lines of code.
Seriously, look up make_resourceful for Rails.
With Qt, I literally have 1 codebase with almost no platform specific code and it works seamlessly in Windows and Linux. Haven't tried it on a Mac, but I bet it would work just fine.
That's pretty much what I have with web apps -- except I also have easier distribution (just open the webpage).
No, hypothesis is the step right before scientific verification -- or scientific disproof.
Most religions can't be hypotheses. Example: Most are carefully crafted to be non-falsifiable -- a good thing, or they'd probably have been falsified by now -- thus, they are really un-testable.
There is no mal here. It is a simple matter of doing the best we can with limited data.
It becomes mal when, like today, it's both entirely imaginary, and often contrary to things we do know.
I bet that many people live thier life based on newtonian mechanics, with no idea at all that there is some chance, no matter how small, that this computer I am typing on migh tunnel though the desk, or even that an electrostatic force, not a vague normal force, is keeping the computer on the desk. Does it matter? Not really.
In this case, it doesn't really matter because the Netwonian model is a very close approximation of the way things actually work.
A religious model really isn't.
We still live life.
Yes. So do blind people -- that doesn't mean I want to be blind.
In particular, religion plays a part in making people susceptible to magical thinking. Scientology could never use people the way it does if there hadn't been a backdrop of "respectable" religion. Or, less extreme, televangelists...
I'm not saying people would never be stupid without religion. However, there's a certain amount of turning your brain off that you have to do to believe.
Ask Buddha to come into your life and you will be blown away by His love. The experience is not superstition.
Fixed it for you.
Explain to me why your experience is different than, say, romantic love (true love is pretty potent), or any number of other experiences people manage to have without religion.
And just for fun...
Jesus told us to love like he loved us, then he let himself be crucified for our sake.
In other words, Yahweh is an evil fuck who would sooner see his only son tortured to death than simply forgive. I know people who are more forgiving -- and I know people who've died for saner causes.
Believing it, and living it is much different and more challenging than 'superstition'.
And how much have you investigated other superstitions?
Try Buddhism. The root of that is simply being awake and aware, in a very profound way, to the world around you. The root of Christianity is suffering, torture, and blood sacrifice -- the root of Buddhism is eliminating suffering through awareness.
Or try Hinduism -- the realization that the entire Universe is the dream of Bramhan has profound significance in its own right.
Or try Canntheism, the worship of cannabis. Compare being high to your religious experience. Is it possible that Jeuss' love is simply a chemical in your head?
If you're going to claim that your religion is the one religion that isn't a superstition -- or that religion is the one kind of irrational belief that isn't superstition -- you're going to have to show me that you have some understanding of the differences.
It states that religion offers a benefit of superstition (the words are interchangeable a bit)
In other words, superstition offers a benefit of superstition? I don't follow...
This cohesion is a specific effect of religion and not of superstition,
I don't agree. It's also an effect of rock concerts, football games, DragonCon...
Maybe I'm being more anal than I should, but it seems to me that their wording does suggest that religion is related to superstition, but not actually the same thing.
I've learned not to assume sarcasm when it isn't truly obvious -- there are far too many stupid and crazy things people could say. Example: "The earth is six thousand years old. Light from faraway stars got here through wormholes..."
And there are people who truly believe VB is a good language.
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As far as God's action on Pharoh's heart, it appears that God contradicted himself. However, God does not contradict himself, and so there is something else going on...
That's a pretty massive cop-out, but alright, I'll leave it at that.
I should point out that this is hardly the only contradiction I've found, either in the character of God or in the Bible.
Humans want more than just avoidance from pain. We also want to be free from ignorance and vice and sin (moral evil).
I'm not sure that's true, but suppose it is... How is letting children die in fires and floods helping any of these goals?
There is growth in suffering.
If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, he can find a way to allow that growth without suffering.
If he saved us from all physical evil, how different would he be from the parent who does the child's homework?
Except that in this case, the reason we can't allow parents to do childrens' homework is that the children won't learn. We don't get our goal of an educated human being.
But couldn't God snap his fingers and produce an educated human being anyway? Like downloading knowledge in The Matrix?
I think the main question here is why did Jesus have to die for us to be saved.
Pretty much.
Jesus gave a third answer which was not anticipated: forgiveness. This admits that evil is evil and doesn't water it down, either. It disconnects the sinner from the sin and sets the sinner free. Repentance is the same act but from the sinner's perspective.
I still don't see how a man's death is needed for either of these.
God gives mercy and justice.
I could drag up other quotes to demonstrate why your god doesn't seem either merciful or just...
But, let's consider this. Is it just to punish one man for another man's crimes? More importantly, how many sins should truly demand death? For that, just look at our own justice system -- capital punishment isn't universal, and is only applied to the harshest of circumstances.
Think of this in a human context. I catch you stealing from me, so I kill my son, and tell you "Well, someone's been punished, so you can go now." WTF?
So, at the very least, I don't agree with this statement:
God cannot give both.
It also presents another problem: God is omnipotent and omniscient. Why can't he figure out a way to give both mercy and justice without killing his son?
That law exists now...
But I was using duct tape as a very simple example. It could also be defeated by, for example, detaching the scanner and pointing it at a single lava lamp in a corner of the room with no one there. Thus, it sees one "person"...
You get the idea. It would be broken. The more important point is that we shouldn't have to put up with this shit.
I can see some obvious uses here that I hope never happen, like, "Sorry, but you only purchased one ticket to your pay-per-view movie, and three people are watching! Purchase additional tickets or ask some of the viewers to leave."
Of course, even if it gets that bad, I suspect it'd be defeated with something like duct tape. So, while it's kind of evil that someone might want to do this, I'm not all that worried that it would actually work.
Biggest problem with that is, it now becomes possible to sell votes. And this doesn't help:
Maybe instead of voter id's, it should be a random confirmation code thats generated on the spot.
And yet, that confirmation code could still be used for that purpose. About the only way to solve that would be to also generate a fake confirmation code, but then the transparency would be lost, because if the system can fool you into thinking your fake code was counted when it wasn't, couldn't it do the same with your real vote?
If I were in that situation, I'd go to a soup kitchen, or a homeless shelter. And not all of them are religious.
my existence depends on the existence of something else. That something else depends on something else in turn. Somewhere at the front of the dependency chain is something that doesn't depend on something else to exist. I'm not claiming this is a time based cause-effect chain.
I could say then that it's not only time, but causality itself, that's a property of the universe as we know it. Within the universe, we observe that everything depends on something else to exist -- but we can't assume our intuition extends beyond it.
Regardless, you're making the same leap as the first-cause argument -- that there must be something that doesn't depend on something else. Why must there? Indeed, the whole argument is founded on the assumption that the universe itself can't just exist:
Lets assume that there is not an Uncaused Being, in other words, EVERYTHING has a present cause. However, outside of EVERYTHING is NOTHING. To say that everything is caused by nothing is nonsensical.
Let's assume that there is an Uncaused... I'll even grant "Uncaused Being". In other words, EVERYTHING has a present cause... except this Uncaused Being. Should we say that the Uncaused Being was caused by nothing? That's nonsensical.
So you still have Carl Sagan's problem: Why not skip a step? Why not say that EVERYTHING is uncaused?
In other words, that the first cause is an 'it' not a 'he'.
Right.
If not personal, then the universe would have to be infinitely old because all conditions for the universe would exist for all eternity.
Wait, what? Why?
I'm not following this part at all, so I apologize if I misrepresent you...
If you're saying that the first cause must be eternal, and that it must therefore always be causing the Universe, I still don't see how intelligence makes a difference. That would seem to be arguing that an intelligent being would create with a definite beginning, and would then stop creating, because the creation is already there -- but that amount of logic can easily be done by inanimate objects (computers).
If you're saying that the first cause must be eternal, and if I'm saying the universe is the first cause, it must also be eternal, that depends how we define "universe". We know that the physical universe as we can see it exploded from the Big Bang, but we know nothing about before the Big Bang. For all we know, an eternal process could've led to that explosion.
But I don't see that a first cause has to be eternal. I don't see that an eternal thing makes any more sense than something which simply popped into existence.
And you still have the FSM problem: Even if I grant that it's intelligent, how do we know it's your god, and not a big ball of pasta?
Yes, but not "easily" -- unfortunately, it's still a legal process, and thus a bitch, even if the judge, jury, and patent office were all technically competent -- which they aren't.
A counter argument is that God does not prevent evil acts so is complicit to them.
Correct -- let's start from there.
The alternative for God, though, is to control people away from evil acts.
So, why are there natural disasters?
Even if we accept that God must allow people to commit evil acts out of respect for "free will" -- which God doesn't seem to respect very much (he hardened Pharaoh's heart, right?) -- why would people die from, say, a lightning strike? Must God respect the lightning's free will?
There is no greater case of this than in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Christians believe that God, existence itself, was incarnate as a human with the name of Jesus. 'The Word made flesh'. We reason that the greatest evil ever done was to torture and murder God as man in Jesus.
And yet, this was known about ahead of time, and God deliberately sent his son, knowing he'd be killed.
This, I take issue with -- yes, it could be said that God made the best of a bad situation. But the rewards of the crucifixion -- the fact that Jesus was alive, and that we are forgiven -- it's often argued that the crucifixion was necessary for this, and I don't see how.
And yet, if God could've prevented the crucifixion, without interfering with free will -- for example, by allowing Jesus to ascend before he was lifted onto the cross -- why didn't he?
I'm disappointed. Are you expecting to convince anyone that religion is irrational because SanityInAnarchy hasn't found a particular reason to believe?
The fact that I haven't found a rational reason to believe suggests that there isn't one.
So, actually, I was inviting anyone to provide me with such a reason. Even if I don't accept that it would be a good reason for me to believe, it would demonstrate that such belief is not completely irrational.
is belief always illogical and without reason?
There are certain beliefs I have that are reinforced by experiment. For instance, when people pray, sometimes they get what they want, sometimes they don't. But the sun does rise every morning, so it seems reasonable to believe that it will tomorrow, also.
Even less solid beliefs -- for instance, if you're married, do you believe your spouse loves you? You probably have a lot of evidence for that belief. You could be wrong -- they could leave you tomorrow -- but you doubt that very much. Your love for them is probably at least partly based on the fact that they love you back.
Neither of these is quite faith.
In the presence of a rational proof, belief is unnecessary and irrational.
So, when you said "belief" here, you meant "faith", as in, belief without reason.
And no, in the presence of a rational proof, belief in that proof, or faith in that proof, seems fairly rational. Indeed, you're also expressing some faith in your evaluation of that proof, and in your memory of having evaluating it correctly, as none of us will be conscious of the entirety of the proof, or at least, not for very long.
I avoided the point because it is a loaded question. I expected that since you are already of the opinion that belief in God is irrational, you would certainly not go so far as to accept any explanation on the subject.
Not true.
I don't believe that Star Wars is real, and I think there aren't really good reasons to believe that there ever really were Jedi in a galaxy far, far away.
But even if it's fiction, we can discuss what Obi-Wan's motives were for lying about Luke's father, and if that's in character... We can even discuss things like how the Federation, of Star Trek, would fare against the Galactic Empire, from Star Wars.
So, even if I don't believe God is real, I could still examine whether it's rational for an all-loving being to have to kill someone in order to forgive. Yes, it's a loaded question, but I really haven't heard a good answer to why Jesus had to die for our sins.
I expect you to flay and quarter it, and leave it for dead. Have fun.
Oh, I will.
Its difficult to even know what reasons you have already rejected, and then to march out the ones you haven't seen yet? That's a chore.
You could start with the reasons you believe.
I hope you keep open to the possibility that there is a reason to believe in God that you can accept.
Highly skeptical, but open. I'm also open to the possibility that I'm wrong, and that I'll be proven wrong.
I don't think it's very likely, and I could give you many reasons for that. But I do have to admit -- I could be wrong.
Problem is, the RIAA is precisely who would approve such a thing. It's perfect -- it's hot, it's trendy, it's what all the young people are talking about (or what we think they're talking about), and it's cheap to make.
And, some people might even like something like this -- while the things we like might not appeal to everyone else.
The reason we don't need gatekeepers -- why we really don't want gatekeepers -- is precisely so that we can have good stuff, and tune out the crap like this.
And thus, we, the audience, become the gatekeepers.
Actually, it would appeal to me, as it seems to be about the people behind Facebook, and not Facebook itself. That puts it in the same category as, say, Pirates of Silicon Valley and Antitrust, for what that's worth.
I know what irrational means, but I don't know what you mean when you say religion is irrational. Do you mean illogical, or without reason, or something else?
Both illogical and without reason.
I see no particular reason for believing in a god, so that's without reason. I find it illogical to believe something without good reason, and I find most definitions of a god to be internally inconsistent, and thus illogical in themselves.
Just for the record: The above is not the Christian belief. Christians believe that God is goodness: only good come from him, and all that is good in the world is only from him.
Christians also believe that God created everything in the world, and that furthermore, he is all-knowing and all-powerful. So...
He abhors evil.
If he abhors evil, why does it exist?
You also didn't address my point there: Why did he need to see his son tortured to death in order to forgive? The only rational explanation I can come up with is, he's the same cruel Old-Testament god who demands blood sacrifice.
Interesting you picked the word 'Yahweh'. It happens to be the most sacred word in Judeo-Christian belief. It is the name of God.
It is also a word that was not ever to be spoken, so we're not actually sure where the vowels go (Hebrew doesn't have vowels). When reading the Torah, that name is read instead as "Adonai".
God is existence itself. Existence is God.... I invite you to consider God as existence itself.
If that is the definition of God, I have no problem with it, and I certainly believe in it -- that is, I believe things exist.
Of course, I don't agree with your other conclusions -- I see no reason to assume existence is merciful, or could have a "son".
Its certainly an act of human reason to think about the beginning of the universe. My reason cannot accept that the universe brought itself into existence.... Something was there first; something eternal.
You are assuming a large number of things.
First, you are assuming that the universe had a beginning. Yes, we know about the Big Bang, and it's a common misrepresentation of Big Bang theory to say that there was nothing before this. The truth is, even at times very close to the Big Bang, our reason breaks down, just as relativistic speeds and masses sort of defy intuition and dissolve into math. At a certain point, even our math fails.
So, we simply do not know what was before the Big Bang, or if our reason would extend to it.
One theory -- which has since been disproved, but which should give you an idea of how little we know -- is that the space-time of the Universe is shaped like a sphere. At one pole, you have the beginning, and at the other, you have the end -- but to ask what is before the beginning is like asking what is outside the Universe, and to ask what created, or caused it, is a nonsensical question.
It's nonsensical because you understand cause and effect within time, which is a property of the Universe. Outside of time, these rules don't apply -- the Universe, as a four-dimensional structure, may or may not have had to be created, or may itself be an eternal four-dimensional structure -- think again of the sphere.
Another disproven theory is the Big Crunch -- you could imagine a cyclical Universe, wherein the universe will eventually contract to a singularity, and explode again, in an eternal cycle.
Why bring up disproven theories? Mostly to give you something to think about -- the reason we know these theories aren't true is not that they're weird and unintuitive. We know they aren't true because the math doesn't work out, or because they contradict our observations -- for example, the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, so even if there was a Big Crunch before, it's probably not going to happen this time.
In light of strangeness li
My app accesses SQLite locally on single user installations and PostgreSQL over TCP/IP in centrally controlled network environments.
So, with the centrally controlled environment, I don't see a lot of advantage to sending SQL over TCP/IP, vs talking to a server. With the individual installation, it depends very much what the users want -- I imagine some would love the idea of working on it anywhere, and letting you worry about backup. Others would much rather have the data stored locally, under their control.
The physical simulation is multi-threaded, and I don't have any idea how I could do that in a webapp without using Java.
If performance is an issue -- you actually need multiple CPUs -- then I believe there are some new-ish (as in, unimplemented) browser technologies to do that.
Otherwise, cooperative multitasking is certainly possible, in any language.
I really think the web-based app would have been the wrong decision
As I hear more about this, I'm inclined to agree. Still, it's also not a common app.
I claim that religion is irrational belief. Do you claim it's not?
If so, we can talk about that.
If not -- if we agree that it's irrational belief -- then I'm curious why one kind of irrational belief is superstition, and another isn't.
The problems arise, if you artificially limit your coping abilities. Either by only ever using some. Or by never ever using some. :)
No?
Well, no, I wouldn't agree.
For example: One potential way of coping is eating ice cream. But if what you're trying to cope with is an overeating disorder, then I'd say that is never the right way to cope with that.
A more extreme example: We could cope with our stress by killing someone. Is that an acceptable way to cope? No, I'd artificially limit my coping ability, and never use that ability.
Now, is religion as bad as murder? Usually not. But I'd still argue the side effects are not worth whatever comfort it provides, when there are so many other ways of being comforted. I would suggest the most effective way of coping, with or without religion, is reaching out to other real people.
it is becoming very common that even ideas you come up with in your own time are considered to be the property of whatever company you happen to work for.
Sometimes, but not always. Depends very much on your employment contract.
The argument would run, "Well, he wouldn't have come up with the idea of the single part lancet if he hadn't been exposed to the 15 part lancet which we manufacture,
It'd have to be a better argument than that -- he could've bought a 15-part lancet and taken it apart. Unless it's derivative...
A little bit of regulation can prevent centuries long lock-downs of the human mind and spirit.
A little regulation also doesn't kill the free market.
they sell it like crazy to the masses, and the masses, having had their brains softened up through years of toxic food, over-long work days, stupid schooling and plenty of TV, are now too numb to realize they are being manipulated.
No offense, but this is starting to sound pretty stupid. You may have a point that the masses are stupid, but it doesn't immediately invalidate anything they believe.
The only way to win is to stop playing the game.
Actually, that's the only way to lose.
As stacked as the game is, it's still possible for small, independent startups to win.
In other words, it'd break on mine, as I don't explicitly have "mail".
It'd also break on anyone's system who likes to name their mailservers something that isn't "mail" -- at my last admin job, it'd be something like "cobalt" or "chromium".
Or are you saying only www domains resolve to your ISP's redirect? That'd be a bit better, though still fairly broken.
Native code will always be much faster than scripted.
Two issues. First:
I can imagine a few corner cases where this might not be true, but those exist in a vacuum and wouldn't ever happen.
There are plenty of cases where it's not true, and these do happen. As a blatant example, Apple is using LLVM in practice, in a few places. Running that particular code in a VM was faster than running it natively -- I believe it's actually C.
As research in this area continues, I really only expect it to get better, just as compilers have gotten better. The main difference is that "interpreted" languages can have runtime optimizations that "compiled" languages can't -- but there's absolutely no reason a "scripted" language couldn't be compiled, that's an implementation issue.
The other issue is that even if scripting languages are slower, the vast majority of applications are fast enough in a bytecode-interpreted language, let alone a JIT-ed language, for it to be worth it -- especially when you consider other advantages, like portability, garbage collection, etc.
Put another way: Would you rather your app be slightly sluggish, or would you rather it leak memory, crash under weird circumstances, be vulnerable to buffer overruns, etc?
It needs to be able to access PostgreSQL and SQLite databases
Are these local?
If not, you could implement this on the server side pretty easily.
as well as visualize the results of a simulation of a specific industrial machine.
What do you use for that? Is it something more powerful than an html5 canvas?
If I tried to make it a web based app, I would probably be over 100k lines of code instead of the 15,000 I'm at now.
Javascript and Ruby vs C++? I'd imagine it would be less code.
Not to mention, I'd still need something to handle my database access and provide results through JSON and the database access would be platform dependent.
Well, if you're handling the database on the server, you get to pretty much pick the platform. If you do it on the client, you could pretty much just use Google Gears.
As for providing the JSON -- first, no reason it has to be JSON, instead of something else. Second, that's actually pretty trivial -- on the order of 2-5 lines of code.
Seriously, look up make_resourceful for Rails.
With Qt, I literally have 1 codebase with almost no platform specific code and it works seamlessly in Windows and Linux. Haven't tried it on a Mac, but I bet it would work just fine.
That's pretty much what I have with web apps -- except I also have easier distribution (just open the webpage).
No, hypothesis is the step right before scientific verification -- or scientific disproof.
Most religions can't be hypotheses. Example: Most are carefully crafted to be non-falsifiable -- a good thing, or they'd probably have been falsified by now -- thus, they are really un-testable.
If you start using other applications, you'll lose formattings.
Can you give me an example? ODF seems to work well enough in KWord (it's the current default format), among others.
There is no mal here. It is a simple matter of doing the best we can with limited data.
It becomes mal when, like today, it's both entirely imaginary, and often contrary to things we do know.
I bet that many people live thier life based on newtonian mechanics, with no idea at all that there is some chance, no matter how small, that this computer I am typing on migh tunnel though the desk, or even that an electrostatic force, not a vague normal force, is keeping the computer on the desk. Does it matter? Not really.
In this case, it doesn't really matter because the Netwonian model is a very close approximation of the way things actually work.
A religious model really isn't.
We still live life.
Yes. So do blind people -- that doesn't mean I want to be blind.
In particular, religion plays a part in making people susceptible to magical thinking. Scientology could never use people the way it does if there hadn't been a backdrop of "respectable" religion. Or, less extreme, televangelists...
I'm not saying people would never be stupid without religion. However, there's a certain amount of turning your brain off that you have to do to believe.
It basically helps people cope with bad lives, horrible things, wars, poverty, and the everyday frustration.
In other words, it helps people avoid growing up and finding real coping skills. Blaming it on a higher power is simply avoiding the issue.
Ask Buddha to come into your life and you will be blown away by His love. The experience is not superstition.
Fixed it for you.
Explain to me why your experience is different than, say, romantic love (true love is pretty potent), or any number of other experiences people manage to have without religion.
And just for fun...
Jesus told us to love like he loved us, then he let himself be crucified for our sake.
In other words, Yahweh is an evil fuck who would sooner see his only son tortured to death than simply forgive. I know people who are more forgiving -- and I know people who've died for saner causes.
Believing it, and living it is much different and more challenging than 'superstition'.
And how much have you investigated other superstitions?
Try Buddhism. The root of that is simply being awake and aware, in a very profound way, to the world around you. The root of Christianity is suffering, torture, and blood sacrifice -- the root of Buddhism is eliminating suffering through awareness.
Or try Hinduism -- the realization that the entire Universe is the dream of Bramhan has profound significance in its own right.
Or try Canntheism, the worship of cannabis. Compare being high to your religious experience. Is it possible that Jeuss' love is simply a chemical in your head?
If you're going to claim that your religion is the one religion that isn't a superstition -- or that religion is the one kind of irrational belief that isn't superstition -- you're going to have to show me that you have some understanding of the differences.
It states that religion offers a benefit of superstition (the words are interchangeable a bit)
In other words, superstition offers a benefit of superstition? I don't follow...
This cohesion is a specific effect of religion and not of superstition,
I don't agree. It's also an effect of rock concerts, football games, DragonCon...
Maybe I'm being more anal than I should, but it seems to me that their wording does suggest that religion is related to superstition, but not actually the same thing.
Unfortunately not.
I've learned not to assume sarcasm when it isn't truly obvious -- there are far too many stupid and crazy things people could say. Example: "The earth is six thousand years old. Light from faraway stars got here through wormholes..."
And there are people who truly believe VB is a good language.