We have enough uranium to power the world for several thousand years. Basically we stopped reusing it. We run it through and convert a small amount to plutonium. Rather than keep running it and burning off the plutonium we get rid of the "waste" when in reality it isn't even 1% used up. We could pretty well build massive arrays of solid constructed nuclear power plants without any dependence on anybody else. Also we could start burning off our nuclear weapons, splicing them with depleted uranium and using them up too.
Dependence is a worse argument than the laugh-out-loud funny nugget... "it takes power to mine the Uranium and usually that power is coal power!" -- As if producing energy on the flip side doesn't offset it, or that the same argument can't also be applied to solar panels (which by the way we should start producing more).
>>This is like Osama Bin Laden filing a federal lawsuit in Washington D.C. alleging that George W. Bush is interfering with Bin Laden's rights to advance the agenda of fundamentalist Islam and kill innocent Americans.
If 180 Solutions was suing Microsoft for making their jobs so damned easy, that would be a proper analogy.
The advance of fundamentalist Islam has been set into overdrive. And there are suddenly thousands of American within arms reach and thousands dead. You don't sue a gift horse. I would recommend Al Capone suing the Untouchables or some, at least, apt metaphor. Some of us Slashdotters have paid attention to the news in the last four years.
I'll have no person question the truthiness in my views of wikiality. You are instantly subject to vandalism and powerless to stop it. I feel that is true from my gut.
So, if I encrypt my statement "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
Wkh txlfn eurzq ira mxpsv ryhu wkh odcb grj.
Now I can send takedown notices to everybody who uses the number 3. Sesame street... expect my letters of death really soon. Your number can be used to decode my text and ruin my protection.
Check this out too...
wii rzreq gutew mxa lxuty qbiu wph nhid dqo.
Now, I can send takedown notices to everybody who posts pi. I assume that the DMCA covers any partial decoding ability. And, assuming that pi is a normal number (which is almost certainly true), I can send a takedown notice to ANYBODY who posts ANY number. In fact, I should post a take down notice to every page of the internet because frankly if you look at the ascii text as base-256 all these bastards are posting partial copies of my decryption key everywhere. Every little chunk of text is really just a base-256 method of posting a work around to MY protection method!
Actually that's not quite true. Quite often nuclear power produces a number of extremely deadly highly radioactive short half life products which either break down or are burnt up by the fuel cycle. If those were to escape it would be bad (and would pollute the oceans not the crust with different elements than we mined).
Don't get me wrong, I support nuclear power. I think we should get a good nuclear power design with certain requirements on building locations etc, have it pretty strict, but once approved have them able to be built in any location which satisfies those requirements. This would make for a large number of safe, roughly identical plants, with an easier production approval (as the plans are approved not just the location, but rather all locations which fit the plan requirement). Then use those to fully replace all the coal burning power plants and then some. We could implement what France did in the 1970s, and become energy independent while kicking the crap out of the global warming problem.
I don't think any plan that says they are to be floating should be approved, though, we have had nuclear subs for years.
It isn't an absurd notion. If you look at the map of the backbone servers in the united states you'll notice that there is a major hub of one scantily protected building near LA, supplying the entire west coast with access... I've said too much.
What a dunghill! And what's worse, you probably think it has some merit.
Praytell, what is the difference between "God creating men to worship God" and "God creating men who's natural state is to worship God?" -- This seems like a distinction without a difference. Also, if man's natural state were to worship God why are our knees extremely weak when it comes to kneeling. There is a reason for the design of pews, namely human knees are pretty bad to kneel with (this is a byproduct of the knees rather recent evolution/as a general rule the latest things to evolve aren't refined as they could be). Finally, how does God creating men with natural state equate to "people benefit from worshiping God?" -- Apparently it is the natural state of some species caterpillars to be incubators for the larva of some species of wasps... does this suddenly equate to the caterpillars being eaten from the inside as "beneficial"?
The sign is simple and straightforward. It can't be understood "both" ways. It can be understood the way it is obviously intended. The "other" way is nothing more than rather trivial poppycock. Also, any benefit which could possible be gained by worshiping a deity could be achieved with or without that deity actually existing. However, 'worship god it's good for you to do' is completely different from 'you were created by God to worship God' or 'worshiping God is your God-given natural state'.
Also, you are painting Muslims with an overly broad brush (probably to include them in your pluralistic leanings). The "Men were created to worship God" mantra fits perfectly into Islamic theology. In the Koran 51:56, Allah says (you must recall that Muslims believe the Koran to be dictated by God himself (via an angel)) "I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me." -- Not to spoil your dim circumlocutions, but the fact is, according to Islam, God is as clear as that sign: You were created to worship Allah.
Finally, yes. The idea of God creating people to worship God provides a clearly silly view of God. However, this is not in contradistinction to the rest of theology. Gods are three in one, one in three, fly into the sky, ready to punish the wicked, knocking up their own mothers, creating themselves, sacrificing themselves to themselves, enjoying the smell of burnt goat, having other gods pop out of their heads, giving prophets flying horses, parting seas which are completely out of the way, kicking people out of special gardens (populated by talking snakes) to protect magic fruit, causelessly existing as an extremely complex thing to explain the existence and provide the cause of the less complex thing, punishing everybody for the sins of their fathers and keeping people away from the sins of cotton-polyester blend. Honestly, creating people to worship is a completely reasonable thing compared to the silly bits of nonsense which permeate religion.
The interpretation of that sign is fine, simple and straightforward. To add undue complexity to the idea and use that to conclude something different is, I believe, blasphemy against reason.
(To prevent misunderstandings, I think you're a complete idiot) You can't just add syrup to dung and call it pancakes (because one would only add syrup to pancakes ofcourse, so it must be true!).
I read on Slashdot briefly while my brother was in the room that AACS was patched, he seemed slightly depressed. I just chuckled and said that it would be hacked again within the week. Which I understood to be extremely pessimistic. It amazes me that the hacks come after the patches.
Heh. They were there and pretty well accepted at the time. However, JP actually seems way off in a number of regards even back then. For example, Velociraptor are turkey sized, covered with feathers, and wings and could easily have been capable of flight. Rather than a fierce predator T. Rex was most likely a lumbering scavenger, with an opportunistic attack here and there; easily they could have been covered with down and been quite ugly.
We would have a more accurate opinion of dinosaurs if we managed to completely dispel the lizard myth. They are no more lizards than mammals are lizards.
After we do that, we also need to redefine genus Avis. How we still classify birds as non-dinosaurs escapes me (though I also think it's pathetic that Humans aren't classified as apes). It seems that you have a pretty clear line. Fish -> Amphibian -> Reptile -> -> Dinosaur -> Bird. Just as we are Fish -> Amphibian -> Reptile -> Mammal-like-reptile -> Mammal. I guess it's all a sort of trouble with the taxon system. We tend to view certain animals as a species rather than the continuation of a gene pool that may or may not have branched off to other gene pools.
I once installed windows ME on a system. I setup the hardware, ran the install while fiddling with stuff. I boot it up to find a virus already on it. I was like WTF... then I remembered I hooked the ethernet from the modem straight into the machine for two seconds. I released the IP, noted it was external, unplugged it and hooked up the right wire. That was long enough.
Apparently you can do that on Windows Me in 1.45 seconds.
The Egyptian government does that a lot. They have a fairly practical approach. When you can't get at the information without messing the stuff up, you don't get the information. Develop something to see through walls without damaging anything and they'll let you do it. Try to figure it out by tearing into stuff or using large vibrations and they won't.
This chip would make the project a reality. I understand that at present it is completely infeasible. If it were, I would have a bunch of cool robotic helicopters flying around my house. I just said that with this little power receiver chip it would be completely feasible. If nothing captures the RC power then nothing uses that power.
>>For you to even ask such a question shows ignorance and shallow thinking.
Hardly. I'm not the one defending myths on a technology forum.
>>Does a teacher test students for his own benefit? Does he not test them for the benefit of the student?
Well, typically the teacher tests the students to check how much progress they have made and to give them a grade in the class. However, we are talking about an all-knowing God. Testing students when you already know the results would be silly and stupid.
And killing you hardly allows for enrichment. Moreover, killing everybody seems pretty well a bad idea all around. Sure, God killed your kid to "test" you, but what was he doing with the kid? Just killing folks willy-nilly to make a point?
>>Your underlying premise is that either God is a myth or that at best, is uninvolved in his creation.
It is hardly a premise. The God of the Bible is fiction, this isn't a premise but rather a conclusion to thousand prudent arguments.
>>Most people, you being one, criticize the Bible, having never read it, let alone carefully studied it with an open mind. If you had, you would read passages like:
I have read the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon. This is nothing more than a nonsense assumption on your part. I daresay I wouldn't be as atheistic as I am today had I not read such books. I wish more Christians would read the Bible, as well as perhaps the Age of Reason. The Age of Reason being ofcourse the second most effective book at deconverting Christians to atheism.
>>Exodus 34:6-7 And the LORD passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah! Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty , visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons, and on the sons of sons, to the third and to the fourth generation.
I am astounded you even find this passage remotely comforting. Forgiving transgressions and sin, but not clearing the guilty, rather visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generations? You honestly think that punishing the great great grandkids of sinners is the sign of a merciful god, our legal system today is leaps and bounds more fair than your all-loving God's rigged-up system?
Did you dig through all of the Bible and this turd is the best you can come up with? Apparently the God of the old testament stopped ordering the genocide of millions and the raping of the divvied up virgins long enough include a point where Moses is groveling to get another set of tablets to look exactly like the last set he broke... even though the new set says crazy things like don't go whoring after other gods and don't seeth a kid in its mother's milk or make molten gods. You think a quote of somebody sucking up makes up for all the parts that say have slaves, murder these people, treat these women like crap, guilty until proven innocent, kill anybody working on the sabbath, kill anybody who dishonors their parents, kill anybody who commits adultery, kill anybody who is gay, kill anybody worships other gods. Demanding the slaughter of animals to pay some kind of blood-sin price for menstruation and other such sins.
>>God hates evil, but loves people. The absence of good is evil, just as the absence of light is darkness.
Yes, God hates the act of gang-raping a five year old... but loves the people who do it so much that he won't stop such vile actions. Or rather is this evil only existing in the world because God isn't omnipresent. God can't be everywhere at once. I mean, he was busy sorting his pog collection when the Boxer Day Tsunami starting washing infants out to sea... that's why bad things happen.
Theodicies are bad enough, you don't need to mix and match them. In any event, you end up with a God with the power and intention to prevent the greatest evils sitting around as Jews are matched into gas chambers, and girls are raped by their fathers. The only thing which slightly redeems the reputation of the Christian God is non-existence.
A small LLC probably would be in the same place as the inventors.
There is no such law of physics which makes this impossible. Reportedly Tesla has a method for doing it. And if you really wanted you could do this via induction either using short range or a hell of a lot of power.
There is nothing about the laws of physics which require a wire to transmit power, anybody viewing lightning has pretty good evidence of this.
I've given two good examples of this same sort of thing existing, how or if they did it is an interesting question but I doubt the laws of physics give a rat's ass about your opinion.
When we get to play with it, we will be convinced. Until then I'll remain rather agnostic about it. Though the ability is rather endless. I mean, it would be a revolution in computer technology as well as little things like solar power collection, UAV tech and other fun gadgets. I could see putting a broadcast box on your house aiming up and having a fleet of little RC helicopters flying around and doing security sweeps. If it pans out, it will change the world.
I fully understand this. Early OT stories are clearly from a henotheistic culture. One which is polytheistic though they have their personal God. "Your Lord who delivered you out of Egypt." -- as opposed to all the other ones who didn't. Elohim which literally translates to "the gods" booted Adam and Eve out of Eden not as a punishment but to protect his other magic fruit tree (tree of life), which if they ate it would make them immortal and like "us".
Thomas Paine made a great point concerning why there be two testaments? Shouldn't an all knowing God have got it right the first time? In any event, I disagree with you heavily when you say that Christianity is a weapon to control the masses. It has been said, of the gods, that the wise men found them equally false, the stupid equally true, and the politicians equally useful. However, I don't think it is a weapon that some bad men use for evil deeds, rather it seems fairly true that it's a willing participant in evil deeds and one need only cite the Bible verse they want to rouse a willing bloodthirsty army and ignore the verse which says to do the exact opposite action.
I think Christianity had a very typical genesis as one of the many dying and rising savior cults which existed in the first and second century with a major amount of creative force around the mid-second century, about the time Israel was abolished by the Romans, as well as when Constantine helped it gain a major foothold of the Roman empire (in exchange for Christians helping Constantine gain a major foothold in the Roman empire). I think that original thought and testing religion must be extinguished not to subjugate others but to allow a false religion to survive even the most shallow of reviews via common sense.
Secondly, I disagree with your explanation that Christianity moved to make God all-knowing and all-powerful from the origin of the Gospel (you clearly gave this impression). I daresay the original followers of the Gospels could easily have been Arians viewing Jesus as a separate entity from God, wholly created by God, as a sort of super-angel like figure. And this is certainly borne out in the Gospels. Does not Jesus on the cross say "Myself, Myself, Why have I forsaken myself?"
Much of this thinking was later established. Some God qualities have been even invented in the last hundred years or so, such as outside spacetime. There was nothing wrong with God living in the sky until we looked around and figured out what was up there. Trinitarianism and most of the omnimax powers so ascribe to the modern Judeo-Christian god are fairly extra-Biblical. Even today the theology is evolving, granting souls to people at the moment the sperm meets the egg and perhaps the moment the zygote splits and into two making identical twins and one of them vanishing when two zygotes merge into a chimera and then this merged soul going straight to heaven when this merging leads to a birth defect which rejects in the fourth month.
There certainly isn't any logic behind the idea, and I understand that applying the Omnimax God of today to the situations of the Bible will produce a Bible-sized errata. That isn't a detractor, it makes the endeavor amusing to no end. Hey look in this passage of Revelations the stars fall to the surface of Earth. HAHAHAHAH, they think stars are like snowflakes stuck in the sky!
None of this really matters to my original comment. Noting that there was a flood in the region does not provide anything more than a suggestion as to how the setting for the story of Noah's Ark may have come around. This is no more impressive than noting that crows can eat cheese while in a tree for the setting of the Fox and the Crow.
Any more than asking asking about strange questions concerning Superman. Could he fly around space holding a large yellow star? Do his sperm have superpowers? Why did that last film suck so hard that I felt like I had time stolen from me?
I think they are not true in the same sense as the stories of Hercules are not true, insofar as they are false. You can certainly take lessons from Aesops fables, and I dare say far more prudent lessons than don't get all corrupted or God will drown you. There are no elements which represent actual events. There's no need to split hairs about things being metaphorically true, or spiritually true, they didn't happen; we call that false. Take anything you want from whatever stories you want. I find a number of things in fiction to be extremely moving, but simply striking an emotional chord doesn't make something true.
Though viewing this story, I don't see how anybody can view God as anything more than an abusive protagonist who beats humanity to death just to sober up in the morning and beg forgiveness for hitting you.
Slashdot Mirror
We have enough uranium to power the world for several thousand years. Basically we stopped reusing it. We run it through and convert a small amount to plutonium. Rather than keep running it and burning off the plutonium we get rid of the "waste" when in reality it isn't even 1% used up. We could pretty well build massive arrays of solid constructed nuclear power plants without any dependence on anybody else. Also we could start burning off our nuclear weapons, splicing them with depleted uranium and using them up too.
Dependence is a worse argument than the laugh-out-loud funny nugget... "it takes power to mine the Uranium and usually that power is coal power!" -- As if producing energy on the flip side doesn't offset it, or that the same argument can't also be applied to solar panels (which by the way we should start producing more).
As I didn't get any modding at all for that cleverness... I tend to agree.
>>This is like Osama Bin Laden filing a federal lawsuit in Washington D.C. alleging that George W. Bush is interfering with Bin Laden's rights to advance the agenda of fundamentalist Islam and kill innocent Americans.
If 180 Solutions was suing Microsoft for making their jobs so damned easy, that would be a proper analogy.
The advance of fundamentalist Islam has been set into overdrive. And there are suddenly thousands of American within arms reach and thousands dead. You don't sue a gift horse. I would recommend Al Capone suing the Untouchables or some, at least, apt metaphor. Some of us Slashdotters have paid attention to the news in the last four years.
Yeah, I would prefer that resources be allocated to only investigate Spock's mother's planet... which we have good data to suggest that it exists.
I'll have no person question the truthiness in my views of wikiality. You are instantly subject to vandalism and powerless to stop it. I feel that is true from my gut.
In theory, the Wikipedia version will constantly have "Bigfoot" added over and over again whereas the other one will not.
Hm.
So, if I encrypt my statement "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
Wkh txlfn eurzq ira mxpsv ryhu wkh odcb grj.
Now I can send takedown notices to everybody who uses the number 3. Sesame street... expect my letters of death really soon. Your number can be used to decode my text and ruin my protection.
Check this out too...
wii rzreq gutew mxa lxuty qbiu wph nhid dqo.
Now, I can send takedown notices to everybody who posts pi. I assume that the DMCA covers any partial decoding ability. And, assuming that pi is a normal number (which is almost certainly true), I can send a takedown notice to ANYBODY who posts ANY number. In fact, I should post a take down notice to every page of the internet because frankly if you look at the ascii text as base-256 all these bastards are posting partial copies of my decryption key everywhere. Every little chunk of text is really just a base-256 method of posting a work around to MY protection method!
The internet is a bunch of linked together computers some of them give you pretty pictures.
Actually that's not quite true. Quite often nuclear power produces a number of extremely deadly highly radioactive short half life products which either break down or are burnt up by the fuel cycle. If those were to escape it would be bad (and would pollute the oceans not the crust with different elements than we mined).
Don't get me wrong, I support nuclear power. I think we should get a good nuclear power design with certain requirements on building locations etc, have it pretty strict, but once approved have them able to be built in any location which satisfies those requirements. This would make for a large number of safe, roughly identical plants, with an easier production approval (as the plans are approved not just the location, but rather all locations which fit the plan requirement). Then use those to fully replace all the coal burning power plants and then some. We could implement what France did in the 1970s, and become energy independent while kicking the crap out of the global warming problem.
I don't think any plan that says they are to be floating should be approved, though, we have had nuclear subs for years.
It isn't an absurd notion. If you look at the map of the backbone servers in the united states you'll notice that there is a major hub of one scantily protected building near LA, supplying the entire west coast with access... I've said too much.
Pah. If you go back far enough, you're related to to a palm tree. Though, more related than we are related to bacteria.
>>From The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins (an intelligent and able writer, when he's not flaming the fundies):
He's pretty intelligent and able even while flaming the fundies.
What a dunghill! And what's worse, you probably think it has some merit.
Praytell, what is the difference between "God creating men to worship God" and "God creating men who's natural state is to worship God?" -- This seems like a distinction without a difference. Also, if man's natural state were to worship God why are our knees extremely weak when it comes to kneeling. There is a reason for the design of pews, namely human knees are pretty bad to kneel with (this is a byproduct of the knees rather recent evolution/as a general rule the latest things to evolve aren't refined as they could be). Finally, how does God creating men with natural state equate to "people benefit from worshiping God?" -- Apparently it is the natural state of some species caterpillars to be incubators for the larva of some species of wasps... does this suddenly equate to the caterpillars being eaten from the inside as "beneficial"?
The sign is simple and straightforward. It can't be understood "both" ways. It can be understood the way it is obviously intended. The "other" way is nothing more than rather trivial poppycock. Also, any benefit which could possible be gained by worshiping a deity could be achieved with or without that deity actually existing. However, 'worship god it's good for you to do' is completely different from 'you were created by God to worship God' or 'worshiping God is your God-given natural state'.
Also, you are painting Muslims with an overly broad brush (probably to include them in your pluralistic leanings). The "Men were created to worship God" mantra fits perfectly into Islamic theology. In the Koran 51:56, Allah says (you must recall that Muslims believe the Koran to be dictated by God himself (via an angel)) "I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me." -- Not to spoil your dim circumlocutions, but the fact is, according to Islam, God is as clear as that sign: You were created to worship Allah.
Finally, yes. The idea of God creating people to worship God provides a clearly silly view of God. However, this is not in contradistinction to the rest of theology. Gods are three in one, one in three, fly into the sky, ready to punish the wicked, knocking up their own mothers, creating themselves, sacrificing themselves to themselves, enjoying the smell of burnt goat, having other gods pop out of their heads, giving prophets flying horses, parting seas which are completely out of the way, kicking people out of special gardens (populated by talking snakes) to protect magic fruit, causelessly existing as an extremely complex thing to explain the existence and provide the cause of the less complex thing, punishing everybody for the sins of their fathers and keeping people away from the sins of cotton-polyester blend. Honestly, creating people to worship is a completely reasonable thing compared to the silly bits of nonsense which permeate religion.
The interpretation of that sign is fine, simple and straightforward. To add undue complexity to the idea and use that to conclude something different is, I believe, blasphemy against reason.
(To prevent misunderstandings, I think you're a complete idiot)
You can't just add syrup to dung and call it pancakes (because one would only add syrup to pancakes ofcourse, so it must be true!).
I read on Slashdot briefly while my brother was in the room that AACS was patched, he seemed slightly depressed. I just chuckled and said that it would be hacked again within the week. Which I understood to be extremely pessimistic. It amazes me that the hacks come after the patches.
Heh. They were there and pretty well accepted at the time. However, JP actually seems way off in a number of regards even back then. For example, Velociraptor are turkey sized, covered with feathers, and wings and could easily have been capable of flight. Rather than a fierce predator T. Rex was most likely a lumbering scavenger, with an opportunistic attack here and there; easily they could have been covered with down and been quite ugly.
We would have a more accurate opinion of dinosaurs if we managed to completely dispel the lizard myth. They are no more lizards than mammals are lizards.
After we do that, we also need to redefine genus Avis. How we still classify birds as non-dinosaurs escapes me (though I also think it's pathetic that Humans aren't classified as apes). It seems that you have a pretty clear line. Fish -> Amphibian -> Reptile -> -> Dinosaur -> Bird. Just as we are Fish -> Amphibian -> Reptile -> Mammal-like-reptile -> Mammal. I guess it's all a sort of trouble with the taxon system. We tend to view certain animals as a species rather than the continuation of a gene pool that may or may not have branched off to other gene pools.
I once installed windows ME on a system. I setup the hardware, ran the install while fiddling with stuff. I boot it up to find a virus already on it. I was like WTF... then I remembered I hooked the ethernet from the modem straight into the machine for two seconds. I released the IP, noted it was external, unplugged it and hooked up the right wire. That was long enough.
Apparently you can do that on Windows Me in 1.45 seconds.
The Egyptian government does that a lot. They have a fairly practical approach. When you can't get at the information without messing the stuff up, you don't get the information. Develop something to see through walls without damaging anything and they'll let you do it. Try to figure it out by tearing into stuff or using large vibrations and they won't.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Powercast/4660-12760_7-668 4005.html
This chip would make the project a reality. I understand that at present it is completely infeasible. If it were, I would have a bunch of cool robotic helicopters flying around my house. I just said that with this little power receiver chip it would be completely feasible. If nothing captures the RC power then nothing uses that power.
>>For you to even ask such a question shows ignorance and shallow thinking.
Hardly. I'm not the one defending myths on a technology forum.
>>Does a teacher test students for his own benefit? Does he not test them for the benefit of the student?
Well, typically the teacher tests the students to check how much progress they have made and to give them a grade in the class. However, we are talking about an all-knowing God. Testing students when you already know the results would be silly and stupid.
And killing you hardly allows for enrichment. Moreover, killing everybody seems pretty well a bad idea all around. Sure, God killed your kid to "test" you, but what was he doing with the kid? Just killing folks willy-nilly to make a point?
>>Your underlying premise is that either God is a myth or that at best, is uninvolved in his creation.
It is hardly a premise. The God of the Bible is fiction, this isn't a premise but rather a conclusion to thousand prudent arguments.
>>Most people, you being one, criticize the Bible, having never read it, let alone carefully studied it with an open mind. If you had, you would read passages like:
I have read the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon. This is nothing more than a nonsense assumption on your part. I daresay I wouldn't be as atheistic as I am today had I not read such books. I wish more Christians would read the Bible, as well as perhaps the Age of Reason. The Age of Reason being ofcourse the second most effective book at deconverting Christians to atheism.
>>Exodus 34:6-7 And the LORD passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah! Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty , visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons, and on the sons of sons, to the third and to the fourth generation.
I am astounded you even find this passage remotely comforting. Forgiving transgressions and sin, but not clearing the guilty, rather visiting the iniquity of fathers on the sons to the third and fourth generations? You honestly think that punishing the great great grandkids of sinners is the sign of a merciful god, our legal system today is leaps and bounds more fair than your all-loving God's rigged-up system?
Did you dig through all of the Bible and this turd is the best you can come up with? Apparently the God of the old testament stopped ordering the genocide of millions and the raping of the divvied up virgins long enough include a point where Moses is groveling to get another set of tablets to look exactly like the last set he broke... even though the new set says crazy things like don't go whoring after other gods and don't seeth a kid in its mother's milk or make molten gods. You think a quote of somebody sucking up makes up for all the parts that say have slaves, murder these people, treat these women like crap, guilty until proven innocent, kill anybody working on the sabbath, kill anybody who dishonors their parents, kill anybody who commits adultery, kill anybody who is gay, kill anybody worships other gods. Demanding the slaughter of animals to pay some kind of blood-sin price for menstruation and other such sins.
>>God hates evil, but loves people. The absence of good is evil, just as the absence of light is darkness.
Yes, God hates the act of gang-raping a five year old... but loves the people who do it so much that he won't stop such vile actions. Or rather is this evil only existing in the world because God isn't omnipresent. God can't be everywhere at once. I mean, he was busy sorting his pog collection when the Boxer Day Tsunami starting washing infants out to sea... that's why bad things happen.
Theodicies are bad enough, you don't need to mix and match them. In any event, you end up with a God with the power and intention to prevent the greatest evils sitting around as Jews are matched into gas chambers, and girls are raped by their fathers. The only thing which slightly redeems the reputation of the Christian God is non-existence.
A small LLC probably would be in the same place as the inventors.
There is no such law of physics which makes this impossible. Reportedly Tesla has a method for doing it. And if you really wanted you could do this via induction either using short range or a hell of a lot of power.
There is nothing about the laws of physics which require a wire to transmit power, anybody viewing lightning has pretty good evidence of this.
I've given two good examples of this same sort of thing existing, how or if they did it is an interesting question but I doubt the laws of physics give a rat's ass about your opinion.
When we get to play with it, we will be convinced. Until then I'll remain rather agnostic about it. Though the ability is rather endless. I mean, it would be a revolution in computer technology as well as little things like solar power collection, UAV tech and other fun gadgets. I could see putting a broadcast box on your house aiming up and having a fleet of little RC helicopters flying around and doing security sweeps. If it pans out, it will change the world.
I fully understand this. Early OT stories are clearly from a henotheistic culture. One which is polytheistic though they have their personal God. "Your Lord who delivered you out of Egypt." -- as opposed to all the other ones who didn't. Elohim which literally translates to "the gods" booted Adam and Eve out of Eden not as a punishment but to protect his other magic fruit tree (tree of life), which if they ate it would make them immortal and like "us".
Thomas Paine made a great point concerning why there be two testaments? Shouldn't an all knowing God have got it right the first time? In any event, I disagree with you heavily when you say that Christianity is a weapon to control the masses. It has been said, of the gods, that the wise men found them equally false, the stupid equally true, and the politicians equally useful. However, I don't think it is a weapon that some bad men use for evil deeds, rather it seems fairly true that it's a willing participant in evil deeds and one need only cite the Bible verse they want to rouse a willing bloodthirsty army and ignore the verse which says to do the exact opposite action.
I think Christianity had a very typical genesis as one of the many dying and rising savior cults which existed in the first and second century with a major amount of creative force around the mid-second century, about the time Israel was abolished by the Romans, as well as when Constantine helped it gain a major foothold of the Roman empire (in exchange for Christians helping Constantine gain a major foothold in the Roman empire). I think that original thought and testing religion must be extinguished not to subjugate others but to allow a false religion to survive even the most shallow of reviews via common sense.
Secondly, I disagree with your explanation that Christianity moved to make God all-knowing and all-powerful from the origin of the Gospel (you clearly gave this impression). I daresay the original followers of the Gospels could easily have been Arians viewing Jesus as a separate entity from God, wholly created by God, as a sort of super-angel like figure. And this is certainly borne out in the Gospels. Does not Jesus on the cross say "Myself, Myself, Why have I forsaken myself?"
Much of this thinking was later established. Some God qualities have been even invented in the last hundred years or so, such as outside spacetime. There was nothing wrong with God living in the sky until we looked around and figured out what was up there. Trinitarianism and most of the omnimax powers so ascribe to the modern Judeo-Christian god are fairly extra-Biblical. Even today the theology is evolving, granting souls to people at the moment the sperm meets the egg and perhaps the moment the zygote splits and into two making identical twins and one of them vanishing when two zygotes merge into a chimera and then this merged soul going straight to heaven when this merging leads to a birth defect which rejects in the fourth month.
There certainly isn't any logic behind the idea, and I understand that applying the Omnimax God of today to the situations of the Bible will produce a Bible-sized errata. That isn't a detractor, it makes the endeavor amusing to no end. Hey look in this passage of Revelations the stars fall to the surface of Earth. HAHAHAHAH, they think stars are like snowflakes stuck in the sky!
None of this really matters to my original comment. Noting that there was a flood in the region does not provide anything more than a suggestion as to how the setting for the story of Noah's Ark may have come around. This is no more impressive than noting that crows can eat cheese while in a tree for the setting of the Fox and the Crow.
Any more than asking asking about strange questions concerning Superman. Could he fly around space holding a large yellow star? Do his sperm have superpowers? Why did that last film suck so hard that I felt like I had time stolen from me?
doh, nt
I think they are not true in the same sense as the stories of Hercules are not true, insofar as they are false. You can certainly take lessons from Aesops fables, and I dare say far more prudent lessons than don't get all corrupted or God will drown you. There are no elements which represent actual events. There's no need to split hairs about things being metaphorically true, or spiritually true, they didn't happen; we call that false. Take anything you want from whatever stories you want. I find a number of things in fiction to be extremely moving, but simply striking an emotional chord doesn't make something true.
Though viewing this story, I don't see how anybody can view God as anything more than an abusive protagonist who beats humanity to death just to sober up in the morning and beg forgiveness for hitting you.