Jesus takes the extreme of telling individuals not to retaliate when insulted. He says nothing about war. In his encounters with professional soldiers, he doesn't make their job an issue. He quotes the Old Testament and speaks highly of the scriptures (verses the traditions cobbled on by the Pharisees) in which a not inconsiderable amount of war and killing is mandated by Yahweh.
It's possible to interpret the sayings of Jesus recorded as the Sermon on the Mount as a promotion of absolute pacifism, but this view doesn't really stand up very well under scrutiny and is probably too simplistic.
Ghandi would probably make a much better example of this "extreme."
Actually, I can't see how ridiculous it is. Tirades like this certainly don't help me along the way, either.
Your argument is what.. that some people who were nominally Christians did bad things, therefore Christianity is untrue? You might have a sliver of a point there if many Christians believed that calling yourself a Christian made you morally above reproach, but they don't, so you don't.
I can't follow your complaint about the "sinner" thing.
And while your opinion about Buddhism is duly noted, I kind of don't care.
Moral standards have to come from some place. If God exists and is moral (as opposed to amoral rather than immoral) an old dilema presents itself. Either what God says is good is arbitrary, or God is obeying some higher standard. If God is obeying a higher standard, he isn't God, is he? The idea of an arbitrary morality doesn't sit well, either. The third alternative (splitting the horns of the dilema) suggested by many Christians is that if God is really God, it's not a big deal to say that the good is God's "character." This doesn't seem at all like a cop-out to me.
Yeah, I didn't read too carefully after he started ranting about God being a sociopath and a spoiled brat. Also, I didn't see any obvious inconsistencies or problems there.. could you give me a hint?
Yes, imagine that. See, the bible wasn't written yesterday in English directly to you. The New Testament was written 2000 years ago in a different language by authors living in a different culture. It occasionally happens that the understanding someone might gain from reading a solitary verse from a modern English translation ceases to make sense when the grammar and syntax, audience, author's corpus of work, culture, and the immediate and extended context are taken into consideration.
I think your analogy (which is supposed to illustrate a forced obedience to an arbitrary, meaningless rule under threat of punishment) doesn't accurately represent Christianity at all. Please bear with me as I try to collapse what should be explained in many pages into a couple of paragraphs. God's ultimate standard for good is himself. He acts in ways that most manifest his goodness. This, it is argued, is necessary, because if God were to act in a way that tended to devalue his goodness, he would be evil (and therefore, not God at all). He requires the same behavior from us, his creation and image-bearers, for the same reason. Whatever behavior we exhibit that tends to make manifest his goodness is good, and whatever behavior we exhibit that tends to devalue it is evil. Our pattern of behavior is evil in this sense.
God is merciful, and provides a way for us to escape our just punishment, which we cannot escape on our own. He imputes the righteousness of Jesus to us, and conversely our guilt to him. The instrumental cause of this imputation of righeousness is our faith.
Our faith is a fitting instrument (and not an arbitrary demand) for a couple of reasons (which may be distinguished, but which really work togther). First, it is a gift. The scales fall off our eyes when it is given to us. Second, faith is a position or attitude which mosts manifests God's mercy to us (recall that God's chief moral concern is the manifestation of his goodness). It has been said that faith is like an open hand, waiting to receive the goodness of God. God could (for the sake of argument) have demanded that our favorite color be green. But there is no evident connection between having a particular favorite color and genuine good. Hopefully the connection between faith and the manifestation of God's mercy is much clearer to you.
So use high school to become badass proficient in algebra and trig.
HS calculus was the reason I became "badass proficient" in algebra and trig. What is your suggestion, here? That HS students use the time they would have spent in a calculus course reviewing algebra and trig? In my experience, the things I learned in previous courses don't really gel until I begin using them in more advanced course work (or now, in my job).
The fact that some "games" are developed for training purposes isn't important. The decision to release them (in whatever form) to the public is not motivated by a desire to train people, but for PR.
This isn't insightful, it's totally obvious. Is there any doubt that the game is anything but a recruiting tool? What other purpose could it possibly have? The DoD spends $x (don't know how much, don't care to find out) because it thinks there's a shortage of good, free first person shooters out there?
After college, I landed in a small town, and the library here is practically non-existent. Once while on a trip to the nearest city with some of the teenagers who attend my church, one spotted a public library (still pretty small compared with the libraries found on most largish university campuses).
Remarked one: What a huge library! How worthless! Why do we even need books? We have TV and the internet.
"All this is going to turn into is a religious flame war."
I suspect It made the front page specifically for that reason. What's slashdot if we can't snipe religious people on one hand for believing in things without/contrary to the evidence and then on the other for looking for evidence?
The chemical plant I work for makes the "active ingredient" in gak (guar gum). If you want to make the real stuff, I've heard you can find guar gum at some health food stores. It works better when the appropriate reactions have been done on it (to increase the number of sites for the borax crosslinker to bind to), but I imagine the right ratio of guar (a little goes a long way), water, borax, and maybe a little caustic to give a slightly basic pH (once again, to increase the effectiveness of the crosslink) would yield something closer to the real thing.
(Very) brief lesson in fluid dynamics.. Newtonian fluids obey this "law:"
Shear stress = - viscosity * shear rate.
Imagine you have two panes of glass. You lay one out horizontally and pour a layer of liquid on to it (we'll pretend it stays on and doesn't run off onto the floor). Then you place the second pane of glass on top. You apply a constant, horizontal force to the top pane of glass, and it begins to move at a certain velocity.
shear stress = the force * the area of the glass shear rate = the velocity / the distance between the two panes (not really, but close enough for our example)
Fluids with viscosities that don't depend on the shear rate are called Newtonian. Water is largely a Newtonian fluid. It's viscosity depends very strongly on temperature, but not much on shear rate. Doubling the shrear stress (the force) would result in a doubling of the shear rate.
Ketchup is a good example of a non-newtonian shear-thinning fluid. If you put ketchup between your glass panes, you'd find that smaller and smaller amounts of additional shear stress are necessary to increase the shear rate by equal amounts. This is easy to understand, b/c our everday experience with ketchup tells us that it can take a big shock to get it moving, but once it goes, it goes quickly. (The viscosity is high at low shear rates, like when it isn't moving, and so a lot of shear stress is required. Once it starts, the shear rate goes up, the viscosity decreases, and less shear stress is needed).
The fluid in these vests is the opposite of ketchup. It is shear-thickening. At the shear rates the armor is subjected to in ordinary movement, its viscosity presumably remains low, allowing the soldier to move. But when someone tries to stab through it (a fast, high shear movement) it thickens (its viscosity increases) and the blade/bullet/whatever is stopped.
I don't know how the stuff is sewn, but it could be sewn slowly without a problem. Remember, it's shear rate that makes it thicken up.
"Do you really think that there is some mitigating factor other than greed that has gas prices up over $2 a gallon in some places?"
Yes, I really do, and I think you are naive for suggesting otherwise.
Contrary to what may be suggested by the moniker "Big Oil," there are several oil companies. They compete with one another.
The oil business is a difficult one to compete in. Ever wonder why Exxon bought out Mobil (to form what was for several years the largest company in the world?), BP bought out Amoco, etc? Economies of scale. It's nearly impossible to run a petroleum company and make any money unless you are HUGE. Profit margins are very tight. It's a mature business. You can't come up with a special widget, form a 1 man company, and be successful selling it to a niche market overlooked by big companies. Gasoline is gasoline is gasoline.
Oil majors are broken up into an upstream business, a refining business, and a petrochemicals business. One of the reasons this is done is to smooth out gains and losses associated with fluctuating oil prices which oil companies themselves don't control nearly as much as OPEC. When oil prices are high (supply is artificially low b/c of OPEC control), the upstream and refining businesses make money. However, petrochemicals suffers because the feedstocks to petrochemical processes are refined petroleum. When prices are low, the upstream and refining businesses suffer, but petrochemicals does well.
It just so happens that you and I are direct consumers of a big chunk of refined petroleum, namely gasoline. We are not direct consumers of petrochemical feedstocks (you don't go to Wal-Mart and buy a cylinder of ethylene or benzene). So unless you have been involved in the business, you know only half the story.
It's a dumb thing to complain about, in any event. The price of gasoline over the past 20 years or so has actually risen less than inflation.
Except for quantization losses, sure. There are people in the world who only listen to records on analog systems because they insist that CDs are too lossy.
I think strength in this case refers to how much stress or strain can be put on the part before it deforms. This is not related to what happens when it does deform, which has to do with how brittle the part is.
I am not a capital P capital M Post-Modernist. I agree with your criticism of post-modernism insofar as it accurately describes it.
The scientific method is a pretty successful way of figuring things out about the natural world using what we observe.
There is also no question of whether we could, if we wanted, invent a morality based on the observations we make about how people are made happy. This is really a side issue, but I question whether people are "unequivocally" happier when free. I think this is an oversimplification, and I suspect your belief that this is so stems more from assumption or "common sense" than actual data.
The dispute here is (I think) whether we *should* invent concepts of good and evil using some procedure like the one you've outlined. I think both you and the parent smoothed that over far too quickly, and that is what I was poking fun at. This is less obvious and less easy to argue, and really reflects a set of assumptions about reality that many (possibly most) people (being, among other things, religious in some form or fashion) would reject out of the gate.
To summarize:
Post-modernists are idiots. They are wrong, but I am right. Because I am right, post-modernists should get out of the way and let me do what I want. Because I am right. Science is the best.
P.S. Women are "scientifically" inferior to men in many ways. Why do you suppose that we have to have separate sports leagues to allow women to compete? This isn't about science, it's about you foisting your views about egalitarianism between the genders off on some other culture.
Unfortunately you have to know a little history that wasn't explained to "get" this story. After NullSoft (who produce Winamp) was bought out by AOL, a Winamp programmer wrote Waste and posted it to their site (evidentally on May 28, 2003). AOL got mad and made them take it down and posted this notice. Now, VIA (from the sounds of it) has taken what is obviously source code from Waste and turned it into a new program. The parent is speculating that the reason VIA has now taken down this new source is that the original work is not actually and legally GPL'd.
Amazon, along with a lot of other retailers, made a date up. I've seen June 1, June 2, and June 15. Most places I've seen that are taking pre-orders have a disclaimer saying that they don't know for sure when it is coming out. Amazon (last time I checked) didn't for some reason, but I doubt that means they are any more certain.
Why not lay personal responsibility on the individual?.... I have plenty of insurance on all my vehicles and myself...
Just about answered your own question, right there. Some fraction of people who can't be bothered to do things like wear helmets end up with brain damage and require expensive medical care until they die. Who's paying for that? I'll tell you who: The people still able to work and pay taxes and insurance premiums. So while (for the sake of argument) it is your life, it is not just your business, unless you are also advocating some new policy where you are euthanized when you become a burden on society b/c of your choice.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus takes this extreme
Jesus takes the extreme of telling individuals not to retaliate when insulted. He says nothing about war. In his encounters with professional soldiers, he doesn't make their job an issue. He quotes the Old Testament and speaks highly of the scriptures (verses the traditions cobbled on by the Pharisees) in which a not inconsiderable amount of war and killing is mandated by Yahweh.
It's possible to interpret the sayings of Jesus recorded as the Sermon on the Mount as a promotion of absolute pacifism, but this view doesn't really stand up very well under scrutiny and is probably too simplistic.
Ghandi would probably make a much better example of this "extreme."
Actually, I can't see how ridiculous it is. Tirades like this certainly don't help me along the way, either. Your argument is what.. that some people who were nominally Christians did bad things, therefore Christianity is untrue? You might have a sliver of a point there if many Christians believed that calling yourself a Christian made you morally above reproach, but they don't, so you don't. I can't follow your complaint about the "sinner" thing. And while your opinion about Buddhism is duly noted, I kind of don't care.
Moral standards have to come from some place. If God exists and is moral (as opposed to amoral rather than immoral) an old dilema presents itself. Either what God says is good is arbitrary, or God is obeying some higher standard. If God is obeying a higher standard, he isn't God, is he? The idea of an arbitrary morality doesn't sit well, either. The third alternative (splitting the horns of the dilema) suggested by many Christians is that if God is really God, it's not a big deal to say that the good is God's "character." This doesn't seem at all like a cop-out to me.
Yeah, I didn't read too carefully after he started ranting about God being a sociopath and a spoiled brat. Also, I didn't see any obvious inconsistencies or problems there.. could you give me a hint?
Yes, imagine that. See, the bible wasn't written yesterday in English directly to you. The New Testament was written 2000 years ago in a different language by authors living in a different culture. It occasionally happens that the understanding someone might gain from reading a solitary verse from a modern English translation ceases to make sense when the grammar and syntax, audience, author's corpus of work, culture, and the immediate and extended context are taken into consideration.
It's still the same. At least morally.
It's not.
I think your analogy (which is supposed to illustrate a forced obedience to an arbitrary, meaningless rule under threat of punishment) doesn't accurately represent Christianity at all. Please bear with me as I try to collapse what should be explained in many pages into a couple of paragraphs. God's ultimate standard for good is himself. He acts in ways that most manifest his goodness. This, it is argued, is necessary, because if God were to act in a way that tended to devalue his goodness, he would be evil (and therefore, not God at all). He requires the same behavior from us, his creation and image-bearers, for the same reason. Whatever behavior we exhibit that tends to make manifest his goodness is good, and whatever behavior we exhibit that tends to devalue it is evil. Our pattern of behavior is evil in this sense.
God is merciful, and provides a way for us to escape our just punishment, which we cannot escape on our own. He imputes the righteousness of Jesus to us, and conversely our guilt to him. The instrumental cause of this imputation of righeousness is our faith.
Our faith is a fitting instrument (and not an arbitrary demand) for a couple of reasons (which may be distinguished, but which really work togther). First, it is a gift. The scales fall off our eyes when it is given to us. Second, faith is a position or attitude which mosts manifests God's mercy to us (recall that God's chief moral concern is the manifestation of his goodness). It has been said that faith is like an open hand, waiting to receive the goodness of God. God could (for the sake of argument) have demanded that our favorite color be green. But there is no evident connection between having a particular favorite color and genuine good. Hopefully the connection between faith and the manifestation of God's mercy is much clearer to you.
I'm not sure that automatically assuming nuclear weapons work isn't benign is especially prudent, either.
So use high school to become badass proficient in algebra and trig.
HS calculus was the reason I became "badass proficient" in algebra and trig. What is your suggestion, here? That HS students use the time they would have spent in a calculus course reviewing algebra and trig? In my experience, the things I learned in previous courses don't really gel until I begin using them in more advanced course work (or now, in my job).
The fact that some "games" are developed for training purposes isn't important. The decision to release them (in whatever form) to the public is not motivated by a desire to train people, but for PR.
This isn't insightful, it's totally obvious. Is there any doubt that the game is anything but a recruiting tool? What other purpose could it possibly have? The DoD spends $x (don't know how much, don't care to find out) because it thinks there's a shortage of good, free first person shooters out there?
"All that aside, should God be the only infinite being, it rather bodes ill for the old 'Heaven' concept."
Why do you think so?
After college, I landed in a small town, and the library here is practically non-existent. Once while on a trip to the nearest city with some of the teenagers who attend my church, one spotted a public library (still pretty small compared with the libraries found on most largish university campuses).
Remarked one: What a huge library! How worthless! Why do we even need books? We have TV and the internet.
"All this is going to turn into is a religious flame war."
I suspect It made the front page specifically for that reason. What's slashdot if we can't snipe religious people on one hand for believing in things without/contrary to the evidence and then on the other for looking for evidence?
"How would one assume the refineries and raw petrochem companies view a new fuel that all but excludes them?"
I'm sure they wouldn't like it, but what does this have to do with $2/gallon gasoline?
"Sounds like greed to me."
Me, too. But OPEC and oil companies are different organizations run by different people.
The chemical plant I work for makes the "active ingredient" in gak (guar gum). If you want to make the real stuff, I've heard you can find guar gum at some health food stores. It works better when the appropriate reactions have been done on it (to increase the number of sites for the borax crosslinker to bind to), but I imagine the right ratio of guar (a little goes a long way), water, borax, and maybe a little caustic to give a slightly basic pH (once again, to increase the effectiveness of the crosslink) would yield something closer to the real thing.
Actually, no, it doesn't.
(Very) brief lesson in fluid dynamics.. Newtonian fluids obey this "law:"
Shear stress = - viscosity * shear rate.
Imagine you have two panes of glass. You lay one out horizontally and pour a layer of liquid on to it (we'll pretend it stays on and doesn't run off onto the floor). Then you place the second pane of glass on top. You apply a constant, horizontal force to the top pane of glass, and it begins to move at a certain velocity.
shear stress = the force * the area of the glass
shear rate = the velocity / the distance between the two panes (not really, but close enough for our example)
Fluids with viscosities that don't depend on the shear rate are called Newtonian. Water is largely a Newtonian fluid. It's viscosity depends very strongly on temperature, but not much on shear rate. Doubling the shrear stress (the force) would result in a doubling of the shear rate.
Ketchup is a good example of a non-newtonian shear-thinning fluid. If you put ketchup between your glass panes, you'd find that smaller and smaller amounts of additional shear stress are necessary to increase the shear rate by equal amounts. This is easy to understand, b/c our everday experience with ketchup tells us that it can take a big shock to get it moving, but once it goes, it goes quickly. (The viscosity is high at low shear rates, like when it isn't moving, and so a lot of shear stress is required. Once it starts, the shear rate goes up, the viscosity decreases, and less shear stress is needed).
The fluid in these vests is the opposite of ketchup. It is shear-thickening. At the shear rates the armor is subjected to in ordinary movement, its viscosity presumably remains low, allowing the soldier to move. But when someone tries to stab through it (a fast, high shear movement) it thickens (its viscosity increases) and the blade/bullet/whatever is stopped.
I don't know how the stuff is sewn, but it could be sewn slowly without a problem. Remember, it's shear rate that makes it thicken up.
"Do you really think that there is some mitigating factor other than greed that has gas prices up over $2 a gallon in some places?"
Yes, I really do, and I think you are naive for suggesting otherwise.
Contrary to what may be suggested by the moniker "Big Oil," there are several oil companies. They compete with one another.
The oil business is a difficult one to compete in. Ever wonder why Exxon bought out Mobil (to form what was for several years the largest company in the world?), BP bought out Amoco, etc? Economies of scale. It's nearly impossible to run a petroleum company and make any money unless you are HUGE. Profit margins are very tight. It's a mature business. You can't come up with a special widget, form a 1 man company, and be successful selling it to a niche market overlooked by big companies. Gasoline is gasoline is gasoline.
Oil majors are broken up into an upstream business, a refining business, and a petrochemicals business. One of the reasons this is done is to smooth out gains and losses associated with fluctuating oil prices which oil companies themselves don't control nearly as much as OPEC. When oil prices are high (supply is artificially low b/c of OPEC control), the upstream and refining businesses make money. However, petrochemicals suffers because the feedstocks to petrochemical processes are refined petroleum. When prices are low, the upstream and refining businesses suffer, but petrochemicals does well.
It just so happens that you and I are direct consumers of a big chunk of refined petroleum, namely gasoline. We are not direct consumers of petrochemical feedstocks (you don't go to Wal-Mart and buy a cylinder of ethylene or benzene). So unless you have been involved in the business, you know only half the story.
It's a dumb thing to complain about, in any event. The price of gasoline over the past 20 years or so has actually risen less than inflation.
Except for quantization losses, sure. There are people in the world who only listen to records on analog systems because they insist that CDs are too lossy.
I think strength in this case refers to how much stress or strain can be put on the part before it deforms. This is not related to what happens when it does deform, which has to do with how brittle the part is.
I am not a capital P capital M Post-Modernist. I agree with your criticism of post-modernism insofar as it accurately describes it.
The scientific method is a pretty successful way of figuring things out about the natural world using what we observe.
There is also no question of whether we could, if we wanted, invent a morality based on the observations we make about how people are made happy. This is really a side issue, but I question whether people are "unequivocally" happier when free. I think this is an oversimplification, and I suspect your belief that this is so stems more from assumption or "common sense" than actual data.
The dispute here is (I think) whether we *should* invent concepts of good and evil using some procedure like the one you've outlined. I think both you and the parent smoothed that over far too quickly, and that is what I was poking fun at. This is less obvious and less easy to argue, and really reflects a set of assumptions about reality that many (possibly most) people (being, among other things, religious in some form or fashion) would reject out of the gate.
To summarize: Post-modernists are idiots. They are wrong, but I am right. Because I am right, post-modernists should get out of the way and let me do what I want. Because I am right. Science is the best. P.S. Women are "scientifically" inferior to men in many ways. Why do you suppose that we have to have separate sports leagues to allow women to compete? This isn't about science, it's about you foisting your views about egalitarianism between the genders off on some other culture.
Because there's more to it than just entertainment preference. Check out a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death .
Unfortunately you have to know a little history that wasn't explained to "get" this story. After NullSoft (who produce Winamp) was bought out by AOL, a Winamp programmer wrote Waste and posted it to their site (evidentally on May 28, 2003). AOL got mad and made them take it down and posted this notice. Now, VIA (from the sounds of it) has taken what is obviously source code from Waste and turned it into a new program. The parent is speculating that the reason VIA has now taken down this new source is that the original work is not actually and legally GPL'd.
Amazon, along with a lot of other retailers, made a date up. I've seen June 1, June 2, and June 15. Most places I've seen that are taking pre-orders have a disclaimer saying that they don't know for sure when it is coming out. Amazon (last time I checked) didn't for some reason, but I doubt that means they are any more certain.
Why not lay personal responsibility on the individual?.... I have plenty of insurance on all my vehicles and myself...
Just about answered your own question, right there. Some fraction of people who can't be bothered to do things like wear helmets end up with brain damage and require expensive medical care until they die. Who's paying for that? I'll tell you who: The people still able to work and pay taxes and insurance premiums. So while (for the sake of argument) it is your life, it is not just your business, unless you are also advocating some new policy where you are euthanized when you become a burden on society b/c of your choice.