....the functionality can be included in the itunes software....
Yes, of course it CAN be but what does Apple get out of the deal? If the iPod is lost you or your insurance company will likely replace it. Bingo, Apple gets another sale! Besides, just because something can be done does not mean it should be, especially if it is done by the force of law. People here on/. complain all the time about being tracked on the Internet, but if it suits them, such as recovering a lost or stolen item, they seem to have no problem with giving up a little privacy.
Which is probably the biggest problem with DRM encumbered books and other digital goods. Content companies are desperately trying to figure out how to kill used merchandise market. Also, just because a company or individual CAN do something, doesn't mean they should be required to do it. Amazon can if they want to help you get your gadget back, but they should not be forced to.
...Some high-end car manufacturers offer this kind of service....
For cars, which costs thousands of dollars, this is worthwhile. However, for your cheap little hundreds of dollars gadget, it is not. Besides, locating stolen property is a service that must be paid for. How much are you willing to pay for someone to locate or brick your stolen device?
...Electronics companies could make versions that have restricted usage...
Why should electronics companies do this when they have no incentive whatsoever for it? If your precious little gadget is stolen, you can replace it if it was insured and buy another one and thus they have another sale. If the gadget is tied to a service, such as a phone, the thief or the buyer of the stolen phone or other gadget, will subscribe to the service and thus there is another sale. Companies are in the business to sell stuff, not to help you or police departments recover stolen devices. If your device is stolen, suck it up and buy another one, or maybe hopefully it was insured. Now for really expensive items, that cost thousands of dollars, such as automobiles, there might be a legitimate need for such a thing. The cops have enough to do, without bothering with the loss of your cheap little device costing a few hundred dollars or less. Next time, watch your precious toy a little more carefully.
....so that some crucial piece of hardware (like the CPU) gets fried....
Oh yeah, some hacker figures out how to do that and starts frying gadgets left and right; oh what fun! I would never buy a gadget that I know can be fried permanently, unless it was really cheap. The Kindle with its DRM basically allows the the erasing of legitimate data remotely and does not allow legitimate passing on of a book to a friend, such as normal dead tree books allow. A device that allows remote killing of content is never really yours, but always belongs to the company that has the ability to kill content for whatever reason. In the case of the hardware of the device, if it can be bricked remotely, even the hardware is no longer yours, although you may have paid good money for it.
...I feel it is negligence on the manufacturer's part....
What incentive does a manufacturer have to do this? If your precious gadget gets stolen, you or your insurance will likely buy another one and they have another sale. Also, the thief of whoever buys device will likely subscribe to a service attached to the device and the manufacturer or somebody will make more money. A $300 or $400 gadget just isn't worth the time and effort for either the police or a manufacturer. Get some insurance or eat the loss.
many, if not most law enforcement agencies will ask you to fill out a report, file it away and that's pretty much the end of it. Most police departments cannot afford the manpower required to pursue such trivial property crimes. In many places these days there are enough violent crimes to keep most police departments more than busy. If a gadget is really valuable to you, get some insurance.
...No, the requirement for personal police and court attention...
is really only good for something more valuable, such as a car but not a cheap piece of junk that can be replaced for less than what it would cost for all the paperwork to be done. Many police departments are so overworked these days, they do not even bother with property crimes, unless the value stolen gets into the thousands, not a few hundred dollars. It may be cheaper just to get insurance or kiss off the loss. Certainly, manufacturers have no obligation and have no incentive to do police work for their stolen cheap gadgets. Except for cars, most gadgets are just too cheap to warrant so much work.
is largely futile for small ticket property crimes these days. They are far too busy these days with more serious crimes. The best thing is to have a personal property insurance that will replace the item or just eat the loss and be more careful next time.
That is one of the main disadvantages of e-books and other DRM encumbered digital goods. It also eliminates the secondhand market as you said. If publishers could figure out how to prevent you from selling your paperback book, they would also do it in a heartbeat.
...Since there is no evidence for a god, why would I believe in one?...
For me, the entire world, both living and non-living, is evidence for a Creator God. I cannot believe that the entire created order, especially living things, did not have the input of tremendous intelligence and planning and just developed by blind natural processes.
For me science and technology were created by human intelligence which was given to man by God. Science is not the be-all and end-all of all existence, but as I said before, this world is but a shadow of a greater reality that can right now only be grasped by faith. After we both leave this life through death, we will find out who was right. Either all the promises that God makes in the Bible come true for me, or we both go out of existence. Of course, since you believe in science, you should know that nothing goes out of existence but only changes form.
The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and after that comes judgment. You cannot argue with the first part of that sentence, but you will certainly dispute the second half.
In our world, we generally operate by the principle: "show me, and I will believe", while God says in this word the Bible: " believe and I will show you". That is what God has done for me and Jesus is real and alive in my life. Amidst the turmoil of the world, Jesus Christ has fulfilled his word for me, in that he has given me his peace, which passes all human understanding.
....None of these assertions have any evidence for them....
I guess it all depends on what you except for evidence. There are other extra biblical references to Jesus, such as by Jewish historian Flavius and others. We have more ancient manuscripts for the Bible than any other historical documents of ancient times. Historical evidence is not the same as physical evidence. We have no physical evidence that Nero ever lived, but we do have historical writings about him and all the other Roman emperors. It is the same with Jesus, although most of the details are found in the Bible. It has been found time and time again by archaeological excavations, that the Bible is historically accurate.
(....don't you think the Aztecs and American Indians...) You assume the body of scientific reasonings that God must have used is confined to natural laws and natural methods, what you call the laws of science or physics in order to accomplish his work. We are talking about supernatural things, that is outside the natural realm where God dwells. God is not limited to the laws of physics since he invented them and can modify or suspend them at any time. Therefor your arguments about the aspects of the Chinese are meaningless because they are predicated on the observable natural law.
(....Of course we live putting our trust in others...) So then if you can put your faith in fallible mortal humans, why is it that you cannot put your faith in an infallible, eternal God? What do you have anyway, that was not given to you? Don't answer that you worked for everything a your life, because who gave you the ability and the intelligence to be able to work? The Bible tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the only mechanism that God might use that is universal. Everybody, without exception can BELIEVE, but not everybody is intelligent, physically strong, agile, educated, beautiful, handsome and so forth. Maybe you can tell me of another human ability OTHER than faith, that God could use to determine whether a person is acceptable or rejected. Your acceptance by God is solely and only dependent on belief in him and on his word for Bible. That is why Jesus said we must come to God like little children who tend to believe until they have been lied to a few times. That is why the Bible says that all liars go straight to hell.
(.... But when you come into a discussion saying that meteorites are myths...) I did not say that meteorites are a myth, only that the earth is not likely to destroyed by one, although the Bible does say that the whole universe shall be dissolved by fire. You appear to be of the firm belief that man controls its own destiny and there is nothing outside the reality that presents itself to our senses. I happen to believe that this world is related to the other world in the same way that your shadow is related to you. The world we live in right now is the shadow, bound up in the limits of time, but the real world is eternal, timeless. Jesus by his life and teaching gave us a small glimpse into this. God and his reality control this world and he has told us in advance how it will end and how there will be a new, perfect creation to replace this messed up, fallen old one.
....An other reason for the current limitations...
is that Apple has only made a small portion of Quicktime 64 bit. As they get around to doing the rest, they will not use quicktime 7 which is old carbon based and only 32 bit. That is why Snow Leopard has the old version also still. The new quicktime is all written in cocoa.
... Why exactly do you think that Jesus is special in this regard?....
There are a lot of people who have examined the resurrection claims of Jesus Christ with the aim to refute them once and for all. One of these was Frank Morrison and he wrote a whole book about it which you can read if you are interested. It is available from Amazon or other booksellers at the ISBN: 978-1850786740. One of the strongest reasons why I believe that the resurrection actually took place, that is Jesus became physically alive again after he was dead, is the change in his disciples who proclaimed this message in the hostile Roman empire. Another one of the things in the account of the resurrection is the fact that it was first announced to women. This is entirely contrary to how that society viewed women, because the woman's testimony was worthless in those days. The message these women brought was so incredible, that Peter and John ran to the grave to verify the women's report. They found an empty grave and the Roman guard had disappeared.
All of the founders of the major world religions are still in their graves, but Jesus was not in the grave anymore and he is alive today. All this is a matter of faith because none of us were there. This is true of all of history, because none of us can go back to check it out to see if it really happened that way.
Life is lived more by faith than we realize. Every time you get on an airplane or into an automobile you have a certain amount of faith in the technology and people behind it. Every time you open a package of food, such as a cereal or a loaf of bread, you have to believe, because you do not know for sure, that it is not tainted or poisoned. Every time you go to a restaurant, you have to trust that the food is reasonably disease-free, such as salmonella for example. Sometimes, fortunately seldom, food has been tainted or contaminated and people have become sick. Sometimes planes and cars do crash.
Life is based on trust and faith and Jesus Christ is asking nothing more of you than to also have faith in him. He promises eternal life to anyone who does so. He said because I live, you shall live also. I have so trusted him and believe him, that indeed, I believe I will live again with him.
.....Having more people beleive a particular thing has no influence on how true or untrue it is,,,,
That means of course that you believe that there is no afterlife is also something you merely believe that you do not know. You believe only what your senses tell you, but it has been shown that your senses can be fooled and are highly subjective. Do you really only believe what your senses tell you?
(...You can't worship science...)
You worship anything that you value very highly and it does not have to be a particular object or even an object at all. Any philosophy or world view that seeks to explain life or that which will bring a measure of fulfillment to a person can be worshiped.
There are four questions that every THINKING person should ask at one time or another in their life. Science cannot answer any of these but they are most important, more important than any other.
1) Where did I come from? Answers from Bible: You are a special creation by the almighty God, made in His image. 2) Who am I really: A: You are a living, eternal spirit being, temporally inhabiting a mortal body. 3) What, if any is the purpose of my existence? A: You are made for an eternal purpose. You are here on Earth to learn how to believe, love and trust, especially in the face of trials and adversity. 4) What will happen to me after I die? A: It depends on choices you make every day. Nothing goes out of existence, only changes form. So will you. Your mortal body will return to the elements of which it is made. Your eternal self will be with God, if you are living in His presence now. Otherwise you will be in "outer darkness", whatever Jesus meant by that.
Of course, those who do not believe in God will answer these questions differently, maybe something like this: 1. All living things evolved from the primordial ooze over vast amounts of time. Finally, humans came into this world also. 2. A human being is nothing but a bag of protoplasm, being composed of the elements of the earth. 3. There is no purpose to mine or anybody else's existence except to survive and reproduce. 4. There is nothing after death except possibly extinction. The human consciousness lives and dies with the body which is dissolved into its constituent components.
(...It's like me trying to convince you that Jesus has now completely decomposed and doesn't exist at all...)
There have been many who have tried to refute the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but have subsequently been convinced that it really happened. Of all the religious leaders and teachers that have come and gone in human history, only Jesus even makes a claim of resurrection. Jesus body never decomposed, but it was transformed and resurrected to a new life form which we know very little about, other than from the Biblical accounts. It was the resurrection that transformed a band of scared timid disciples into the kind of people that had a message of hope that transformed the Roman Empire and subsequently the world.
Except that in our system, the herd makes the laws and elects the officials for governing that herd. Treating children as part of the herd in public school and to a lesser extent even in private schools is at the root of the problem. Before modern times, before public schools were invented, all children were home schooled, that is trained for life mostly but not exclusively by their parents. These have a vested interest, at least those that love their children, in seeing that they get the best education possible and a good start in life. A hireling such as a teacher mostly views it as job, a job and nothing more. Only a small minority of bright adults become teachers, because our society does not value teachers either socially or financially. A doctor, or lawyer, or even a plumber or truck driver is rewarded better financially than a teacher. Even an average/.er pounding out code all day makes more than most teachers.
....when the parent or the tutor is a gifted teacher....
Do you really think that throughout all the ages past, the parents, blacksmiths, carpenters and other adults were all gifted teachers? Don't you think that children should be taught by their parents whatever they think is correct and not what you feel is the right curriculum? Do you really think that the state is superior to good parenting?
(...how to grow poppies and practice the heroin trade...) If the modern affluent West didn't have all these laws against possessing this or that, then the money source for the drug trade would diminish or be tightly regulated. After all, we do pretty good at regulating and taxing alcohol and tobacco, so why could we not do the same for other substances? Is is hypocritical and nonsensical to regulate some things and declare others flatly illegal. Anytime you declare something illegal, you automatically make it scarce and thus dramatically raise its price, giving criminals a lucrative source of income. We found this out during prohibition, but have evidently not learned or already forgotten that lesson.
Only if people are trying to imitate public school at home. Sitting a child down for many hours at a time and telling them they must "learn" is deadly to their soul and mind as well as detrimental to the body. Home schooling involves letting the children explore their world at an early stage instead of setting them down in front of the TV set or even handing them a set of workbooks and shuffling them off to some corner by themselves. Children are naturally inquisitive, but many times they are put off with "I don't know" or "I don't have time" or some other excuse. What a a parent or other close adult should do is take the time to show the child the answer to that question right then and there, a teachable moment. Unfortunately these teachable moments don't always come at a convenient time for us adults.
Children do ask some unanswerable questions sometimes, but in the age of the Internet and Google, a parent can always say: "well it is true that I don't know, but let us find out together." They could then walk over to their computer and both sit down together and try to find an answer. The key is to do it together, not to send the kid off to the computer or some books by themselves. Once the kids get older, say high school age or even middle school, they should be taught to find out answers for themselves without handholding by their parents or teachers.
Actually, the public school system started long before that, when the industrial age began. Before that, children were educated at home, largely doing what their parents or someone in the village did for a living. That system worked for many centuries and many cultures. A way must be found to translate that system to the modern world. Cooping up children for seven or more hours each day is at the root of public school failure. Children were not meant for this and still aren't. All children want to learn and do so mostly by imitating their parents. Of course if their parents are gone all day, who are they going to learn from? Homeschool although not perfect is probably still the best alternative for many people.
....Create some publicly funded charter schools for gifted...
The only way you ever going to get better learners is by not cooping up 30 or more young people in a classroom and then having them learn by lockstep methods, one size fits all. Homeschooling is the way the human race has been educating themselves for centuries. Then came industrialization and with it the one size fits all public school. Children are individuals and as such is thrive best in an environment of individual attention. The lock-step public school method of education will not be fixed by having better public schools, but by getting rid of them entirely and going back to the model that worked for many centuries. This could be accomplished by small home school in groups (three or four families) in people's homes. A state paid teacher or overseer would coordinate and help several of such groups to meet specified goals in their children's education. Funding for this would come from the same sources as now, but it would give much better value for each dollar spent. For one thing, there would be no expensive school buildings to maintain, as well as no busing of students from miles around to a "factory" style mind numbing prison called school.
...Unschoolers tend think that most kids could do well...
As they have for generations before someone invented the mind numbing public school system about 100 or so years ago. Most kids learned whatever skills they need later on in life from their parents or someone else in the immediate neighborhood. Many kids do poorly because they come from broken homes. Kids need to love and care of both parents, which is something that anybody contemplating divorce should keep in mind.
Re:Most people simply don't think about security
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...if Microsoft set up a Linux distro style repository...
Except that they would also have to include some methods of payment and figure out a way, such as with commissions, to pay their expenses at least. Apple has had all that worked out for quite a long time already. To translate the Ubuntu system to the large-scale that will be required for windows is quite expensive.
Re:Most people simply don't think about security
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....That would be a shame....
If you wanted to install and run an unapproved program, you would of course still be able to do that, but you would get a warning that the software you all are about to install could make your computer sick or steal your personal information. As part of that warning you would get a dialog box that would say yes or no to install any software you wished. Then, for power users and/.ers you'd just go ahead and install whatever.
.... it was concluded that the Bible is not a science book, but a religious text.....
Duh, of course the Bible is a religious text, but it is much more than that. Science can tell us only of this world, and even so our understanding of it is only very small. Why is humanity so arrogant and thinks that science is the only way to discover what is real and true and what isn't? (...The only way to make that happen...) It is according to the laws of nature as we understand them. The problem is that we think we understand them, but could it be that there is a side to nature that is beyond science? For example, we know that gravity holds us to the earth, but even so nobody really knows what gravity is or what causes it. So all you can really say, is according to our limited understanding, what the Bible says does not make sense. You cannot state it in absolute terms such that it never happened.
The Bible also states that God came up with the laws of nature, in fact everything there is. He is the great lawgiver, both the physical and moral law. As such he would be able to modify or suspend the laws of nature as we know them, in order to accomplish his purposes.
Slashdot Mirror
....the functionality can be included in the itunes software....
Yes, of course it CAN be but what does Apple get out of the deal? If the iPod is lost you or your insurance company will likely replace it. Bingo, Apple gets another sale! Besides, just because something can be done does not mean it should be, especially if it is done by the force of law. People here on /. complain all the time about being tracked on the Internet, but if it suits them, such as recovering a lost or stolen item, they seem to have no problem with giving up a little privacy.
... sell or share an individual book on it....
Which is probably the biggest problem with DRM encumbered books and other digital goods. Content companies are desperately trying to figure out how to kill used merchandise market. Also, just because a company or individual CAN do something, doesn't mean they should be required to do it. Amazon can if they want to help you get your gadget back, but they should not be forced to.
...Some high-end car manufacturers offer this kind of service....
For cars, which costs thousands of dollars, this is worthwhile. However, for your cheap little hundreds of dollars gadget, it is not. Besides, locating stolen property is a service that must be paid for. How much are you willing to pay for someone to locate or brick your stolen device?
...Electronics companies could make versions that have restricted usage...
Why should electronics companies do this when they have no incentive whatsoever for it? If your precious little gadget is stolen, you can replace it if it was insured and buy another one and thus they have another sale. If the gadget is tied to a service, such as a phone, the thief or the buyer of the stolen phone or other gadget, will subscribe to the service and thus there is another sale. Companies are in the business to sell stuff, not to help you or police departments recover stolen devices. If your device is stolen, suck it up and buy another one, or maybe hopefully it was insured. Now for really expensive items, that cost thousands of dollars, such as automobiles, there might be a legitimate need for such a thing. The cops have enough to do, without bothering with the loss of your cheap little device costing a few hundred dollars or less. Next time, watch your precious toy a little more carefully.
....so that some crucial piece of hardware (like the CPU) gets fried....
Oh yeah, some hacker figures out how to do that and starts frying gadgets left and right; oh what fun! I would never buy a gadget that I know can be fried permanently, unless it was really cheap. The Kindle with its DRM basically allows the the erasing of legitimate data remotely and does not allow legitimate passing on of a book to a friend, such as normal dead tree books allow. A device that allows remote killing of content is never really yours, but always belongs to the company that has the ability to kill content for whatever reason. In the case of the hardware of the device, if it can be bricked remotely, even the hardware is no longer yours, although you may have paid good money for it.
...I feel it is negligence on the manufacturer's part....
What incentive does a manufacturer have to do this? If your precious gadget gets stolen, you or your insurance will likely buy another one and they have another sale. Also, the thief of whoever buys device will likely subscribe to a service attached to the device and the manufacturer or somebody will make more money. A $300 or $400 gadget just isn't worth the time and effort for either the police or a manufacturer. Get some insurance or eat the loss.
...if it's a $300.00 device....
many, if not most law enforcement agencies will ask you to fill out a report, file it away and that's pretty much the end of it. Most police departments cannot afford the manpower required to pursue such trivial property crimes. In many places these days there are enough violent crimes to keep most police departments more than busy. If a gadget is really valuable to you, get some insurance.
...No, the requirement for personal police and court attention...
is really only good for something more valuable, such as a car but not a cheap piece of junk that can be replaced for less than what it would cost for all the paperwork to be done. Many police departments are so overworked these days, they do not even bother with property crimes, unless the value stolen gets into the thousands, not a few hundred dollars. It may be cheaper just to get insurance or kiss off the loss. Certainly, manufacturers have no obligation and have no incentive to do police work for their stolen cheap gadgets. Except for cars, most gadgets are just too cheap to warrant so much work.
....although going to the police....
is largely futile for small ticket property crimes these days. They are far too busy these days with more serious crimes. The best thing is to have a personal property insurance that will replace the item or just eat the loss and be more careful next time.
....Not so with ebooks....
That is one of the main disadvantages of e-books and other DRM encumbered digital goods. It also eliminates the secondhand market as you said. If publishers could figure out how to prevent you from selling your paperback book, they would also do it in a heartbeat.
the device was really stolen an no sold used
...Since there is no evidence for a god, why would I believe in one?...
For me, the entire world, both living and non-living, is evidence for a Creator God. I cannot believe that the entire created order, especially living things, did not have the input of tremendous intelligence and planning and just developed by blind natural processes.
For me science and technology were created by human intelligence which was given to man by God. Science is not the be-all and end-all of all existence, but as I said before, this world is but a shadow of a greater reality that can right now only be grasped by faith. After we both leave this life through death, we will find out who was right. Either all the promises that God makes in the Bible come true for me, or we both go out of existence. Of course, since you believe in science, you should know that nothing goes out of existence but only changes form.
The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and after that comes judgment. You cannot argue with the first part of that sentence, but you will certainly dispute the second half.
In our world, we generally operate by the principle: "show me, and I will believe", while God says in this word the Bible: " believe and I will show you". That is what God has done for me and Jesus is real and alive in my life. Amidst the turmoil of the world, Jesus Christ has fulfilled his word for me, in that he has given me his peace, which passes all human understanding.
....None of these assertions have any evidence for them....
I guess it all depends on what you except for evidence. There are other extra biblical references to Jesus, such as by Jewish historian Flavius and others. We have more ancient manuscripts for the Bible than any other historical documents of ancient times. Historical evidence is not the same as physical evidence. We have no physical evidence that Nero ever lived, but we do have historical writings about him and all the other Roman emperors. It is the same with Jesus, although most of the details are found in the Bible. It has been found time and time again by archaeological excavations, that the Bible is historically accurate.
(....don't you think the Aztecs and American Indians...)
You assume the body of scientific reasonings that God must have used is confined to natural laws and natural methods, what you call the laws of science or physics in order to accomplish his work. We are talking about supernatural things, that is outside the natural realm where God dwells. God is not limited to the laws of physics since he invented them and can modify or suspend them at any time. Therefor your arguments about the aspects of the Chinese are meaningless because they are predicated on the observable natural law.
(....Of course we live putting our trust in others...)
So then if you can put your faith in fallible mortal humans, why is it that you cannot put your faith in an infallible, eternal God? What do you have anyway, that was not given to you? Don't answer that you worked for everything a your life, because who gave you the ability and the intelligence to be able to work? The Bible tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the only mechanism that God might use that is universal. Everybody, without exception can BELIEVE, but not everybody is intelligent, physically strong, agile, educated, beautiful, handsome and so forth. Maybe you can tell me of another human ability OTHER than faith, that God could use to determine whether a person is acceptable or rejected. Your acceptance by God is solely and only dependent on belief in him and on his word for Bible. That is why Jesus said we must come to God like little children who tend to believe until they have been lied to a few times. That is why the Bible says that all liars go straight to hell.
(.... But when you come into a discussion saying that meteorites are myths...)
I did not say that meteorites are a myth, only that the earth is not likely to destroyed by one, although the Bible does say that the whole universe shall be dissolved by fire. You appear to be of the firm belief that man controls its own destiny and there is nothing outside the reality that presents itself to our senses. I happen to believe that this world is related to the other world in the same way that your shadow is related to you. The world we live in right now is the shadow, bound up in the limits of time, but the real world is eternal, timeless. Jesus by his life and teaching gave us a small glimpse into this. God and his reality control this world and he has told us in advance how it will end and how there will be a new, perfect creation to replace this messed up, fallen old one.
....An other reason for the current limitations...
is that Apple has only made a small portion of Quicktime 64 bit. As they get around to doing the rest, they will not use quicktime 7 which is old carbon based and only 32 bit. That is why Snow Leopard has the old version also still. The new quicktime is all written in cocoa.
... Why exactly do you think that Jesus is special in this regard? ....
There are a lot of people who have examined the resurrection claims of Jesus Christ with the aim to refute them once and for all. One of these was Frank Morrison and he wrote a whole book about it which you can read if you are interested. It is available from Amazon or other booksellers at the ISBN: 978-1850786740. One of the strongest reasons why I believe that the resurrection actually took place, that is Jesus became physically alive again after he was dead, is the change in his disciples who proclaimed this message in the hostile Roman empire. Another one of the things in the account of the resurrection is the fact that it was first announced to women. This is entirely contrary to how that society viewed women, because the woman's testimony was worthless in those days. The message these women brought was so incredible, that Peter and John ran to the grave to verify the women's report. They found an empty grave and the Roman guard had disappeared.
All of the founders of the major world religions are still in their graves, but Jesus was not in the grave anymore and he is alive today. All this is a matter of faith because none of us were there. This is true of all of history, because none of us can go back to check it out to see if it really happened that way.
Life is lived more by faith than we realize. Every time you get on an airplane or into an automobile you have a certain amount of faith in the technology and people behind it. Every time you open a package of food, such as a cereal or a loaf of bread, you have to believe, because you do not know for sure, that it is not tainted or poisoned. Every time you go to a restaurant, you have to trust that the food is reasonably disease-free, such as salmonella for example. Sometimes, fortunately seldom, food has been tainted or contaminated and people have become sick. Sometimes planes and cars do crash.
Life is based on trust and faith and Jesus Christ is asking nothing more of you than to also have faith in him. He promises eternal life to anyone who does so. He said because I live, you shall live also. I have so trusted him and believe him, that indeed, I believe I will live again with him.
.....Having more people beleive a particular thing has no influence on how true or untrue it is,,,,
That means of course that you believe that there is no afterlife is also something you merely believe that you do not know. You believe only what your senses tell you, but it has been shown that your senses can be fooled and are highly subjective. Do you really only believe what your senses tell you?
(...You can't worship science...)
You worship anything that you value very highly and it does not have to be a particular object or even an object at all. Any philosophy or world view that seeks to explain life or that which will bring a measure of fulfillment to a person can be worshiped.
There are four questions that every THINKING person should ask at one time or another in their life. Science cannot answer any of these but they are most important, more important than any other.
1) Where did I come from?
Answers from Bible: You are a special creation by the almighty God, made in His image.
2) Who am I really:
A: You are a living, eternal spirit being, temporally inhabiting a mortal body.
3) What, if any is the purpose of my existence?
A: You are made for an eternal purpose. You are here on Earth to learn how to believe, love and trust, especially in the face of trials and adversity.
4) What will happen to me after I die?
A: It depends on choices you make every day. Nothing goes out of existence, only changes form. So will you. Your mortal body will return to the elements of which it is made. Your eternal self will be with God, if you are living in His presence now. Otherwise you will be in "outer darkness", whatever Jesus meant by that.
Of course, those who do not believe in God will answer these questions differently, maybe something like this:
1. All living things evolved from the primordial ooze over vast amounts of time. Finally, humans came into this world also.
2. A human being is nothing but a bag of protoplasm, being composed of the elements of the earth.
3. There is no purpose to mine or anybody else's existence except to survive and reproduce.
4. There is nothing after death except possibly extinction. The human consciousness lives and dies with the body which is dissolved into its constituent components.
(...It's like me trying to convince you that Jesus has now completely decomposed and doesn't exist at all...)
There have been many who have tried to refute the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but have subsequently been convinced that it really happened. Of all the religious leaders and teachers that have come and gone in human history, only Jesus even makes a claim of resurrection. Jesus body never decomposed, but it was transformed and resurrected to a new life form which we know very little about, other than from the Biblical accounts. It was the resurrection that transformed a band of scared timid disciples into the kind of people that had a message of hope that transformed the Roman Empire and subsequently the world.
...to rescue them from the herd...
Except that in our system, the herd makes the laws and elects the officials for governing that herd. Treating children as part of the herd in public school and to a lesser extent even in private schools is at the root of the problem. Before modern times, before public schools were invented, all children were home schooled, that is trained for life mostly but not exclusively by their parents. These have a vested interest, at least those that love their children, in seeing that they get the best education possible and a good start in life. A hireling such as a teacher mostly views it as job, a job and nothing more. Only a small minority of bright adults become teachers, because our society does not value teachers either socially or financially. A doctor, or lawyer, or even a plumber or truck driver is rewarded better financially than a teacher. Even an average /.er pounding out code all day makes more than most teachers.
....when the parent or the tutor is a gifted teacher ....
Do you really think that throughout all the ages past, the parents, blacksmiths, carpenters and other adults were all gifted teachers? Don't you think that children should be taught by their parents whatever they think is correct and not what you feel is the right curriculum? Do you really think that the state is superior to good parenting?
(...how to grow poppies and practice the heroin trade...)
If the modern affluent West didn't have all these laws against possessing this or that, then the money source for the drug trade would diminish or be tightly regulated. After all, we do pretty good at regulating and taxing alcohol and tobacco, so why could we not do the same for other substances? Is is hypocritical and nonsensical to regulate some things and declare others flatly illegal. Anytime you declare something illegal, you automatically make it scarce and thus dramatically raise its price, giving criminals a lucrative source of income. We found this out during prohibition, but have evidently not learned or already forgotten that lesson.
...Homeschooling can be of as poor quality...
Only if people are trying to imitate public school at home. Sitting a child down for many hours at a time and telling them they must "learn" is deadly to their soul and mind as well as detrimental to the body. Home schooling involves letting the children explore their world at an early stage instead of setting them down in front of the TV set or even handing them a set of workbooks and shuffling them off to some corner by themselves. Children are naturally inquisitive, but many times they are put off with "I don't know" or "I don't have time" or some other excuse. What a a parent or other close adult should do is take the time to show the child the answer to that question right then and there, a teachable moment. Unfortunately these teachable moments don't always come at a convenient time for us adults.
Children do ask some unanswerable questions sometimes, but in the age of the Internet and Google, a parent can always say: "well it is true that I don't know, but let us find out together." They could then walk over to their computer and both sit down together and try to find an answer. The key is to do it together, not to send the kid off to the computer or some books by themselves. Once the kids get older, say high school age or even middle school, they should be taught to find out answers for themselves without handholding by their parents or teachers.
....During the cold war....
Actually, the public school system started long before that, when the industrial age began. Before that, children were educated at home, largely doing what their parents or someone in the village did for a living. That system worked for many centuries and many cultures. A way must be found to translate that system to the modern world. Cooping up children for seven or more hours each day is at the root of public school failure. Children were not meant for this and still aren't. All children want to learn and do so mostly by imitating their parents. Of course if their parents are gone all day, who are they going to learn from? Homeschool although not perfect is probably still the best alternative for many people.
....Create some publicly funded charter schools for gifted ...
The only way you ever going to get better learners is by not cooping up 30 or more young people in a classroom and then having them learn by lockstep methods, one size fits all. Homeschooling is the way the human race has been educating themselves for centuries. Then came industrialization and with it the one size fits all public school. Children are individuals and as such is thrive best in an environment of individual attention. The lock-step public school method of education will not be fixed by having better public schools, but by getting rid of them entirely and going back to the model that worked for many centuries. This could be accomplished by small home school in groups (three or four families) in people's homes. A state paid teacher or overseer would coordinate and help several of such groups to meet specified goals in their children's education. Funding for this would come from the same sources as now, but it would give much better value for each dollar spent. For one thing, there would be no expensive school buildings to maintain, as well as no busing of students from miles around to a "factory" style mind numbing prison called school.
...Unschoolers tend think that most kids could do well ...
As they have for generations before someone invented the mind numbing public school system about 100 or so years ago. Most kids learned whatever skills they need later on in life from their parents or someone else in the immediate neighborhood. Many kids do poorly because they come from broken homes. Kids need to love and care of both parents, which is something that anybody contemplating divorce should keep in mind.
...if Microsoft set up a Linux distro style repository...
Except that they would also have to include some methods of payment and figure out a way, such as with commissions, to pay their expenses at least. Apple has had all that worked out for quite a long time already. To translate the Ubuntu system to the large-scale that will be required for windows is quite expensive.
....That would be a shame....
If you wanted to install and run an unapproved program, you would of course still be able to do that, but you would get a warning that the software you all are about to install could make your computer sick or steal your personal information. As part of that warning you would get a dialog box that would say yes or no to install any software you wished. Then, for power users and /.ers you'd just go ahead and install whatever.
.... it was concluded that the Bible is not a science book, but a religious text.....
Duh, of course the Bible is a religious text, but it is much more than that. Science can tell us only of this world, and even so our understanding of it is only very small. Why is humanity so arrogant and thinks that science is the only way to discover what is real and true and what isn't?
(...The only way to make that happen...)
It is according to the laws of nature as we understand them. The problem is that we think we understand them, but could it be that there is a side to nature that is beyond science? For example, we know that gravity holds us to the earth, but even so nobody really knows what gravity is or what causes it. So all you can really say, is according to our limited understanding, what the Bible says does not make sense. You cannot state it in absolute terms such that it never happened.
The Bible also states that God came up with the laws of nature, in fact everything there is. He is the great lawgiver, both the physical and moral law. As such he would be able to modify or suspend the laws of nature as we know them, in order to accomplish his purposes.