Yes, I have heart of people visiting the "liquidators"(people who were sent to clean up the mess) from Chernobyl. Some had gotten so much radiation, that they got cooked alive -- their flesh had lost all feeling was just coming off the bone like you see on an overdone turkey. Pretty sick, doctors just prescribed wine and vodka and waited for them to die. All my mom's plants on the balcony turned yellow, I wonder if my children would have to heads...
That video was creepy, but I know Russian and while talking with the crowd and before kneeling down I think I heard the world "golodneyeh" - hungry. In other words, were the children orphans and hungry and by kissing his stomach perhaps the great leader "made the hunger go away?"
I am not saying the video is normal, it sure looked messed up, but it wasn't like he raped the child in a dark alley, so even as disturbed as I am, I could not say that based on that video he is a pedophile...
But do I think the Russian govt. poisoned the guy? - Yes, I do! It is so much like them to do it. I grew up in Soviet Union and have been going back once in a while in the last 15 years, and I have to say that there is not a single fact I can pinpoint to that proves the Russian poisoned the guy, but just by knowing the Russians, how they think and do things, this is something they would do.
The Apostles certainly had first-hand information (saw it with their own eyes). Almost all of them ended up being killed for their belief. There might not be an exact piece of external (non-Christian, as you might claim it was added later) documentation to support that, but the oral tradition is enough I think. No matter how early, the Apostles where prominent enough (known to _all_ the new Christian groups), that the manner of their death would not be something easily forgotten or mis-interpreted, those facts would be passed fairly reliably between generations (not that many until the first writings) that it is just as accurate as one would take the scriptures to be.
Again, this does not prove anything, it will not be a logical "proof" that God exists or anything like that. Rather it is more of a supporting statement or a "pointer" towards the truth. That's the way I see it, but I am very biased as I already believe, so I wanted to see what would be the point of view of someone who doesn't believe
Try St. Irinaeus or Origen. Those are the earliest ones. For example, here is an excerpt from Origen:
"""
The reason why the divine power has given us the Scriptures is not solely to present facts according to the literal interpretation of the narrative. If one looks to the letter of the text, some of the facts have not actually happened and would be irrational and illogical.
"""
The quote is from the Two meanings of the Bible. work.
There are other, if there is a particular passage that interests you, do the research on your own -- Google and Amazon are your "friends".
I never told you what parts are historical facts and which aren't. Don't twist the facts.
I said to look it up and decide for yourself. (Or would you rather have me spoon feed you?)
Regardless if you believe or not, you can decide which interpretation is more authoritative based on some historical research. Obviously, the people who knew best what was symbolic or literal were the people who wrote the texts themselves. They are dead, BUT the next best source is the people who immediately succeeded them, those are dead, then it is probably those who succeeded them and so on. No, you would not have to trace just the succession to the present day, because some of those successors have written text themselves. Have you heard of St. Ignatius, Origen, St. Maximus, St. Irenaeus and others? I bet you haven't, well start from there. I just suspect you will end up finding that it is the Eastern Orthodox Church that most closely stuck to the practices and beliefs of the original Church. But again, don't take my word for it.
Ok, religion was used to kill and persecute throughout the ages. I that was not my argument. My question was about the people who spread Christianity and had a first-hand account of his/miracle/resurrection etc. It is known that most of them were put to death and as it was common in that period, all they had to do is recant and proclaim their belief in Roman gods, and they would have had their lives spared. Now, think about, if they just gathered and "made up" a religion:
"""
Oh, then let's tell everyone that he did this and that, he gets killed then "bam!" raises backup! That would be a great ending! We can tell people this and be rich and famous
"""
Then when it came time to die for it, what personal incentive would they have to keep lying. That would be the time when they should have said, "Alright, we made it up...sorry."
I am not claiming that somehow this undeniably proves God's existence, because it doesn't, for me personally it is just a pointer towards that truth, a support statement more than a proof. And I wanted to hear the opinion of someone who is skeptic or an atheist on that point.
If God *does* exist, then he is a malicious bastard that thrives on the suffering that he caused, and has more in common with K'thulu than the supposed "loving" god everyone seems to claim him to be.
Not really related to what the topic was, but I'll "bite" and respond. This goes to the general question of "Why is there evil in this world?" and "Why are Christians just as bad as everyone else?". There is enough material written about this, if you don't trust the present day theologians because they are somehow tainted and and what not go back to the writings of the early church writers. But here my simplified perspective on it:
1. God did not directly kill anybody, it was people killing people, they used his name to justify the killing, the abuse and oppression and so on, but he didn't do it. It did not have to be God, it could have been mother earth, it could have been democracy (we are still in Iraq, aren't we?), any ideology or belief could have been used God was just there, so it was easy to justify evil using his name. If God does exist and is all-knowing, surely he "knows" the real motives and reasons of whatever happened.
2. Let's assume that God should have just "put the smack down" and stopped those bastards when they did anything wrong. If you would accept that, you'll also have to accept the fact that he will "put the smack down" when you lie, cheat, hurt someone's feelings, abuse someone or yourself and do anything that might not be considered "right" as far as he is concerned. In effect you would turn into a monkey in a cage that gets zapped every time you do something "bad." Would that be proof that God is more "loving" and not a "bastard"? Then you'll say "God is controlling bastard and won't let me be free!"
3. If God does let you be free, it means he will let everyone be free and decide what to do. Through the Church's tradition and writing, we know what the "right" way is, but we don't have to listen. This means that some people will use the freedom to hurt and even kill others, it's is inevitable. By striking down the wrong-doer God would stop being " a loving" God, I hope that you see why that it.
Again, none of this is a proof for existence of God or a proof for anything, not even a complete insight into the problem, it was more of a personal perspective.
But.. where do I get an _annotated_ version of the bible?
Well, think about it -- Who would know more about the interpretation of the Bible. I would think it would be the people who wrote it, or at least selected which books to include in it, and which not to include. Those would be the Apostles, and their followers. You would have to do some work here by reading some early Church history. Find out what happened. The only Christians that would have the correct interpretation would probably be the Orthodox Christians. Don't take my word for it, (I am biased because I am one of them), see for yourself... if you really care.
There are plenty of writing of the early Church fathers, who were the direct successors of the Apostles. If anyone knew what a particular verse might mean, it would be them. You don't even have to be a Christian to do this, just be a historian. You cannot have everything spoon fed to you or way for somebody to knock on your door on Saturday morning.
You see, in this country, what most people know of Christianity is a watered down version that they get from early Sunday school because their parents dropped them off there once a month when their were young. That version of Christianity is mostly mixed with Santas, Easter Bunnies and baby jesus from the nativity scenes. If that is the only Christianity they know, of course they will claim that it is stupid by the time they get to college.
But I don't want someone else to read a book selectively for me; the risk of him/her skipping things that are important for me is too great.
If you don't want that, start studying Church history and theology. Ask a question for ex. "What is the Christian Church?", "Where does it come from?", "What do I want to know about it?" and so on. In this day and age, you don't have to wait for somebody to knock on your door there are plenty of resources to educate yourself.
No, as I was pointing out, traditionally (I am talking 2000 years back) the Bible has always been considered to be symbolic. Fast forward to the present day fundamentalists, and just because they have the name "fundamentalists" doesn't mean that their practices, beliefs somehow reflect those of the early/original Christians. The beliefs and practices of the early Christians are recorded in many writings and even in oral tradition, that is how we know. Yes, some Christians will interpret some things "more literal" than others but there is this traditional interpretation that is probably the correct one. The closest followers of the original Christian church are probably the Orthodox Christians (the have them in Greece, Russia and the whole Eastern Europe and Middle East).
Also, it is important to point out, the beliefs of the church can be divided into dogma (absolute truths, that are necessary for one to believe to be a Christian) and customs -- pious local traditions, that are not really part of the core of the belief system. As far as dogmatic truth is concerned, in 2000 years, the church has never claimed that earth is so many years old, the composition of the crust is of such and such elements and that dinosaurs used to roam along side humans (and they would go to movies together and play golf).
People will take long ways to create illusion around them that something they believe in actually exists or have existed. Poor people, still linger to last leftovers of "belief".
I assume that was directed towards the people who believe in a traditional religion. But doesn't that apply to anything that people do?
Look at the String Theorists, they have spent the most productive part of their lives claiming that their results represent reality (if they didn't believe that, they would probably be doing something else). Yet for all these years, there was no experimental evidence that any such strings exist. But there is a whole cult formed around it, there are a countless number of PhD's given in that area. Are they weak and very selective to reality? Some other physicists would claim so...
Or how about the illusion that democracy is the ultimate utopia. I presume you are an American , doesn't it sound like heresy to "knock" democracy? It does to me, because it is so ingrained into my brain that our way of life is the best, and we are prepared to go and spread our utopia to other countries whether they want it or not... Are we being selective to our reality? Probably so -- we see what we want to see.
I believe in God, however, I don't think it has anything to do with Bible or this physical world.
But if you believe in God, why wouldn't God want to have anything to do with the physical world?
Why do you think the Bible is out of the equation as far as God is concerned? Have you read it, have you talked to a priest or are you discounting it because it is the "popular" thing to do?.
It is known from historical accounts that many Christians were killed for their beliefs during the early centuries of Christianity (even before the Bible was completed). That was done in public view, in an arena for example. Quite often, all that a Christian would have to do is deny their belief, pay tribute to the Roman gods and their life would be spared, but many didn't do that, and chose to die a horrible death instead. What's your take on it? (I am not being sarcastic, it is just that I am a Christian and I believe, that is why I can see why they did what they did, but I would want to know what someone who is not a Christian would think of it). If the Christians knew that Jesus didn't die/rise from the dead/perform miracles and that everything was made up, why didn't they just admit that if it could save their lives? Granted the terrorists are also willing to blow themselves up for their beliefs, but here I am talking about the so called Apostles, the ones who would have had a first-hand experience of the story of Jesus. If it was bogus, why die for it?
You are right, the original poster was probably trolling. But I think he meant "Christianity" when he mentioned religion. Because going by your definition, anything could be a religion -- an irrational belief in something is a religion.
Stalin, Hitler and Mao -- explicitly prohibited any religious worship and never defined themselves as "Gods", while the later Roman emperors did, as did the Pharaohs and many other kings and rulers.
What was worshiped was not as much a person but an ideology -- fascism, socialism and so on. You can almost substitute "leader" with "ideology" or "party affiliation" in your description.
Perhaps the beliefs of many self-described American atheists in the spread of democracy, justice and freedom around the world at all cost, can also be described as a religion. There are people who have a blind belief in ideologies. Anyone who doesn't agree with them will not be tortured (unless CIA gets their hands on them, because their name might sound Arabic), but the promise or prosperity is there (democracy = the ultimate goal, the utopia), the failure to reach the democracy is the failure of the people as well, not the ideology ("democracy is best for in Iraq, we just didn't have enough troops" for ex).
Most Christians would also regard these people as crazy. The Bible was not meant to be a science textbook, and it was never meant to be read literally. A simple reading of the early church fathers (2nd century or perhaps a little later) would reveal this fact. In other words the Fundamentalists claim that they know better what the Bible means than the people who wrote and selected the books to include in it. Even side-stepping the whole "God exists -- God doesn't exist" issue, and just re-framing this in terms of a Christian perspective, they will still be wrong.
This is ridiculous -- and this coming from an Christian and a scientist. There is nothing in the Bible about evolution, either in support of, or against it. The Bible was never meant to be a history/geology/physics/biology textbook, it is a book about faith and the relationship between God and man. These people are wrong not just from the point of view of an atheist but even as far as the Church history is concerned -- i.e. other Christians regard them as "nutty".
The problem with Fundamentalists is that they interpret the Bible literally. If it is written to forgive 70 times 7, they will probably start counting the number of times they forgive someone and when they reach 490, they'll probably say -- "that's it, the Bible says to stop". Ever since the books of the Bible were written, it was understood (see the writings of early Church fathers -- around II century) that a lot of the stuff was symbolic and typological. In other words the people who wrote the Bible, thousands of years ago, chose which books to include and which to not include, along with their contemporaries who interpreted and wrote about the interpretation of the scriptures, would _never_ agree with a literal interpretation.
Instead of spending $25 million on the museum, these people could feed and cloth a huge number of children from the developing countries, they could donate it towards AIDS research. To me that would be a more convincing witness to a Christian life than building a museum with animatronic dinosaurs...
I live in Southern Ohio, I would go out protesting against this museum along with anyone else who wishes to do so.
I think he meant more of a "applies" to society, than actively "runs" society. Our (American) society as a whole subscribes to certain values and theories, that are mostly outlined in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. The economic policies are also chosen (or allowed by default, i.e. not restricted) with the idea that they will benefit the American society and will in turn also promote and preserve the "American way of life" -- freedom, justice, equality and so on.
At first, after escaping communism and all it's horrors, I was an avid capitalist, I was all for a total self-regulated economy. But then the problem of outsourcing caught my attention (of course it did, I am a software geek!), nothing gets people to change their views than a problem that hits right at home.
Anyway, the completely free and self-regulating economy would favor outsourcing if the companies deemed it necessary. That would probably work great if certain ideal premises BUT only if there would be a free global flow of goods and services. That is NOT the case presently.
Here is what I mean: If a company decides to outsource, fires 100 American coders, goes to India and hires 100 Indian coders, equally skilled on average but willing to work for 1/5 of the salary. If the salary is $50k for the American coders then the company is saving $40k*100=$4M dollars -- a good thing. But there are 100 coders without work, 100 families that cannot sustain their previous needs and wants, might have need to relocate, 100+ children on average that need to find a new school and so on. NOW, in an ideal free economy (which is assumed but not true), the 100 American coders will be able to offer their services for 1/6 of the original price to compete with the Indian coders, IF they could also buy food for 1/5 of the American prices (i.e. the same food Indian coders would be buying), buy insurance, transportation and other goods for 1/5 of the original price. That is not possible living in U.S. So would the American coders be able to move to India, in theory "yes" but not in practice. Their children and families are here, they want to live in America because they are American citizens. The "free economy" policy is forcing them to either starve (I am exaggerating, of course), or relocate to some other country. I would say the "policy" is no longer helping sustain the American way of life. It is not benefiting it's citizens only it's corporation CEO's and Indian citizens. Therefore I would be in favor of a somewhat regulated economy -- not a full blown socialism but a balance. It is always hard to find a balance , because any extreme is always more easy and tempting to fall into.
I agree. My fear is that the economic play-field would change before the U.S. values and work-force would be able to adjust. In other words outsourcing can become very popular (it already has) BUT the U.S. programmers that used to make $70k/year cannot easily be expected to learn another skill in such a short period of time as to continue their lifestyle of $70k/year or more. In other words, today's global economy is too volatile compared to our ability to adjust. Today is the programmers, tomorrow it could be the accountants (I personally know a major consumer products company that is hiring accountants from Eastern Europe -- yes, H1B visas and travel, initial accommodation, and the language barrier is still cheaper if they can pay them $20k/less per year and get the same or more productivity. And these are not code monkeys like us, they are freakin' accountants!)
That is why it is important to educate well-rounded kids that would be able to adapt. That is the keyword: _adapt_ It is not easy to do, because a human being can only learn so much and the parents and teachers are already overworked and overstressed (at least I am...). Too much sports and fun is great but they'll pay later. They also have to know what a quicksort is or how a boson is different than a fermion and that kind of stuff. A country can have only so many managers and lawyers before it becomes ridiculous.
By the time I graduated high school there and came to US for college I was ready to go into the Junior level science and math courses. I graduated Summa Cum Laude easily, from an average 4 year university, without that much effort (I wouldn't say I didn't sleep nights sweating, some quarters I would just coast by...).
While kids in US where taking "typing" classes in High School we were taught about spanning trees, while the U.S. kids spent their time finding what sport club they wanted to join, we learned discrete math. Children in U.S. are babied and spoiled when it comes to science, parents never studied it much and never see a need to push their children to study it. (I am talking about the average here, of course there are schools like Harvard, Caltech, Yale and so on that does have exceptional students).
But at the same time, I would have to say that playing sports and socializing has its benefits because it builds valuable interpersonal skills which will help when it comes time to work as part of a team. That is something that was never emphasized in my early education. The key is balance, teach both, perhaps U.S. education will come around some day, I hope so, because this is a great country and I love it for it freedom and values, and I don't want to see it fall behind -- I want my children to get a good science education.
Yes, it could never get up to 100% the stability of a fully integrated system but it could get close by forcing the hardware companies to follow strict interface guidelines. And MS does have a big enough weight behind it to force the hardware makers to accept their standards. Then consumers would soon learn to buy only the hardware "blessed" by Microsoft.
Actually I wish Linux would have the same thing, at least the hardware makers would clearly label which products work or don't work with Linux just to make it easier to shop. I don't care if such and such a device doesn't work with Linux, I just want that clearly shown so I don't have to return it after wasting a whole day trying to install it.
By the way, Sun's Solaris is also working great with hardware it was tested on, but as soon as you try to install it on a generic PC, there will be countless problems with not finding such and such a driver.
Re:Windows' FS / the alternate universe story
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Vista's Limited Symlinks
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Is OS X like the dozens of other *nix systems? Well, "Yes" and "No". It has all the core features but has enough of its own. It combines the stability, networking and security of Unix + the Apple GUI. Last time I checked, it is doing pretty well even among the other dozen or so "similar" operating systems. The point was that Microsoft could have been the Microsoft (support lots of software and hardware) and the Apple (have a stable, no-nonsense core operating system) -- it could have had the best of both worlds, in my hypothetical parallel universe.
I agree. Re-inventing the wheel could be good if it is the right wheel, at the right time for the right vehicle, otherwise it doesn't make sense.
I watched a PBS show the other day where Bill Gates was taking questions from college students. One of the questions was "Who do you look up to for advice?" and he said "Nobody!" and that basically he is rich and smart enough that he _always_ just came with future directions for his company (MS) completely on his own. He talked how sometimes it failed (remember WebTV included in Windows 98?), and I thought to myself how that mentality of "we don't look at others, we are the smartest, biggest and we'll re-invent everything" has probably hurt MS just as much as it helped. Not many operating system concepts have come out of Microsoft as being better than what was already out there. There was always a better kernel, a better file system, a better network stack, a better security model, a better system API and so on.
(By "better" I mean better implemented practically, sure NT has a great security model but practically it is not the best, and "theoretically" Windows XP would support POSIX...but in reality it doesn't)
That's the story of Microsoft. Everything half-ass works. POSIX is working but is also not working. Symlinks work but don't work. Security works but not quite. I think if they had done what Apple did and just used a well tested free Unix-like kernel or a complete VMS implementation with a good network stack and security they could have been further ahead today...
Re:Windows' FS / the alternate universe story
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Vista's Limited Symlinks
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· Score: 2, Informative
There is not obsession with UNIX there is obsession with "common sense", security, stability, reliability. UNIXes at the moment fit that list most of the time. Tomorrow it could be Plan9 or QNX or some other exotic thing, I don't care. I am not a more Linux fanboy than I am a Windows fanboy or a Honda or Wal-Mart fanboy I just use what makes sense at the time (yap, sorry no brand loyalty at all here).
I mean, they could always port GNU userland over to the NT kernel, but dont MS already do that (or something similar) in their UNIX resource thing, which you can download.
You are referring to POSIX I presume. Well, have you seen any native Unix code running on Windows lately? I didn't! Windows POSIX compliance is a joke, it was more of a marketing ploy to tell their client ("we even run Unix!") but in reality it is very broken. That is why you have Cygwin...
Subjectively it works great for me, I copy large media files and visibly it works no slower than a corresponding NTFS or FAT partition did. However I did not benchmark it exactly so it could be slower. Shoot the author an email and ask him, nobody knows the internals of the driver (and the possible speed penalties) better than them.
The only thing I would be worried is corruption not speed. I have never had problems, but I would not put a financial database on it either, just because it is somewhat new and "experimental"...
Try this and a ext3 file system. I have all my Documents and the whole user directory on an ext3 and it works great. I can also access it from Linux if I want...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I have heart of people visiting the "liquidators"(people who were sent to clean up the mess) from Chernobyl. Some had gotten so much radiation, that they got cooked alive -- their flesh had lost all feeling was just coming off the bone like you see on an overdone turkey. Pretty sick, doctors just prescribed wine and vodka and waited for them to die. All my mom's plants on the balcony turned yellow, I wonder if my children would have to heads...
I am not saying the video is normal, it sure looked messed up, but it wasn't like he raped the child in a dark alley, so even as disturbed as I am, I could not say that based on that video he is a pedophile...
But do I think the Russian govt. poisoned the guy? - Yes, I do! It is so much like them to do it. I grew up in Soviet Union and have been going back once in a while in the last 15 years, and I have to say that there is not a single fact I can pinpoint to that proves the Russian poisoned the guy, but just by knowing the Russians, how they think and do things, this is something they would do.
Again, this does not prove anything, it will not be a logical "proof" that God exists or anything like that. Rather it is more of a supporting statement or a "pointer" towards the truth. That's the way I see it, but I am very biased as I already believe, so I wanted to see what would be the point of view of someone who doesn't believe
"""
The reason why the divine power has given us the Scriptures is not solely to present facts according to the literal interpretation of the narrative. If one looks to the letter of the text, some of the facts have not actually happened and would be irrational and illogical.
"""
The quote is from the Two meanings of the Bible. work.
There are other, if there is a particular passage that interests you, do the research on your own -- Google and Amazon are your "friends".
If all that science requires is just (any) evidence then God certainly exists because there is plenty of evidence: us, the universe, etc.
How is the evidence of a Big Bang caused by we_don't_know_who_or_what better than the evidence that the Big Bang was caused by God?
I said to look it up and decide for yourself. (Or would you rather have me spoon feed you?)
Regardless if you believe or not, you can decide which interpretation is more authoritative based on some historical research. Obviously, the people who knew best what was symbolic or literal were the people who wrote the texts themselves. They are dead, BUT the next best source is the people who immediately succeeded them, those are dead, then it is probably those who succeeded them and so on. No, you would not have to trace just the succession to the present day, because some of those successors have written text themselves. Have you heard of St. Ignatius, Origen, St. Maximus, St. Irenaeus and others? I bet you haven't, well start from there. I just suspect you will end up finding that it is the Eastern Orthodox Church that most closely stuck to the practices and beliefs of the original Church. But again, don't take my word for it.
"""
Oh, then let's tell everyone that he did this and that, he gets killed then "bam!" raises backup! That would be a great ending! We can tell people this and be rich and famous
"""
Then when it came time to die for it, what personal incentive would they have to keep lying. That would be the time when they should have said, "Alright, we made it up...sorry."
I am not claiming that somehow this undeniably proves God's existence, because it doesn't, for me personally it is just a pointer towards that truth, a support statement more than a proof. And I wanted to hear the opinion of someone who is skeptic or an atheist on that point.
If God *does* exist, then he is a malicious bastard that thrives on the suffering that he caused, and has more in common with K'thulu than the supposed "loving" god everyone seems to claim him to be.
Not really related to what the topic was, but I'll "bite" and respond. This goes to the general question of "Why is there evil in this world?" and "Why are Christians just as bad as everyone else?". There is enough material written about this, if you don't trust the present day theologians because they are somehow tainted and and what not go back to the writings of the early church writers. But here my simplified perspective on it:
1. God did not directly kill anybody, it was people killing people, they used his name to justify the killing, the abuse and oppression and so on, but he didn't do it. It did not have to be God, it could have been mother earth, it could have been democracy (we are still in Iraq, aren't we?), any ideology or belief could have been used God was just there, so it was easy to justify evil using his name. If God does exist and is all-knowing, surely he "knows" the real motives and reasons of whatever happened.
2. Let's assume that God should have just "put the smack down" and stopped those bastards when they did anything wrong. If you would accept that, you'll also have to accept the fact that he will "put the smack down" when you lie, cheat, hurt someone's feelings, abuse someone or yourself and do anything that might not be considered "right" as far as he is concerned. In effect you would turn into a monkey in a cage that gets zapped every time you do something "bad." Would that be proof that God is more "loving" and not a "bastard"? Then you'll say "God is controlling bastard and won't let me be free!"
3. If God does let you be free, it means he will let everyone be free and decide what to do. Through the Church's tradition and writing, we know what the "right" way is, but we don't have to listen. This means that some people will use the freedom to hurt and even kill others, it's is inevitable. By striking down the wrong-doer God would stop being " a loving" God, I hope that you see why that it.
Again, none of this is a proof for existence of God or a proof for anything, not even a complete insight into the problem, it was more of a personal perspective.
Well, think about it -- Who would know more about the interpretation of the Bible. I would think it would be the people who wrote it, or at least selected which books to include in it, and which not to include. Those would be the Apostles, and their followers. You would have to do some work here by reading some early Church history. Find out what happened. The only Christians that would have the correct interpretation would probably be the Orthodox Christians. Don't take my word for it, (I am biased because I am one of them), see for yourself ... if you really care.
There are plenty of writing of the early Church fathers, who were the direct successors of the Apostles. If anyone knew what a particular verse might mean, it would be them. You don't even have to be a Christian to do this, just be a historian. You cannot have everything spoon fed to you or way for somebody to knock on your door on Saturday morning.
You see, in this country, what most people know of Christianity is a watered down version that they get from early Sunday school because their parents dropped them off there once a month when their were young. That version of Christianity is mostly mixed with Santas, Easter Bunnies and baby jesus from the nativity scenes. If that is the only Christianity they know, of course they will claim that it is stupid by the time they get to college.
But I don't want someone else to read a book selectively for me; the risk of him/her skipping things that are important for me is too great.
If you don't want that, start studying Church history and theology. Ask a question for ex. "What is the Christian Church?", "Where does it come from?", "What do I want to know about it?" and so on. In this day and age, you don't have to wait for somebody to knock on your door there are plenty of resources to educate yourself.
Also, it is important to point out, the beliefs of the church can be divided into dogma (absolute truths, that are necessary for one to believe to be a Christian) and customs -- pious local traditions, that are not really part of the core of the belief system. As far as dogmatic truth is concerned, in 2000 years, the church has never claimed that earth is so many years old, the composition of the crust is of such and such elements and that dinosaurs used to roam along side humans (and they would go to movies together and play golf).
I assume that was directed towards the people who believe in a traditional religion. But doesn't that apply to anything that people do?
Look at the String Theorists, they have spent the most productive part of their lives claiming that their results represent reality (if they didn't believe that, they would probably be doing something else). Yet for all these years, there was no experimental evidence that any such strings exist. But there is a whole cult formed around it, there are a countless number of PhD's given in that area. Are they weak and very selective to reality? Some other physicists would claim so...
Or how about the illusion that democracy is the ultimate utopia. I presume you are an American , doesn't it sound like heresy to "knock" democracy? It does to me, because it is so ingrained into my brain that our way of life is the best, and we are prepared to go and spread our utopia to other countries whether they want it or not... Are we being selective to our reality? Probably so -- we see what we want to see.
I believe in God, however, I don't think it has anything to do with Bible or this physical world.
But if you believe in God, why wouldn't God want to have anything to do with the physical world?
Why do you think the Bible is out of the equation as far as God is concerned? Have you read it, have you talked to a priest or are you discounting it because it is the "popular" thing to do?.
It is known from historical accounts that many Christians were killed for their beliefs during the early centuries of Christianity (even before the Bible was completed). That was done in public view, in an arena for example. Quite often, all that a Christian would have to do is deny their belief, pay tribute to the Roman gods and their life would be spared, but many didn't do that, and chose to die a horrible death instead. What's your take on it? (I am not being sarcastic, it is just that I am a Christian and I believe, that is why I can see why they did what they did, but I would want to know what someone who is not a Christian would think of it). If the Christians knew that Jesus didn't die/rise from the dead/perform miracles and that everything was made up, why didn't they just admit that if it could save their lives? Granted the terrorists are also willing to blow themselves up for their beliefs, but here I am talking about the so called Apostles, the ones who would have had a first-hand experience of the story of Jesus. If it was bogus, why die for it?
Stalin, Hitler and Mao -- explicitly prohibited any religious worship and never defined themselves as "Gods", while the later Roman emperors did, as did the Pharaohs and many other kings and rulers.
What was worshiped was not as much a person but an ideology -- fascism, socialism and so on. You can almost substitute "leader" with "ideology" or "party affiliation" in your description.
Perhaps the beliefs of many self-described American atheists in the spread of democracy, justice and freedom around the world at all cost, can also be described as a religion. There are people who have a blind belief in ideologies. Anyone who doesn't agree with them will not be tortured (unless CIA gets their hands on them, because their name might sound Arabic), but the promise or prosperity is there (democracy = the ultimate goal, the utopia), the failure to reach the democracy is the failure of the people as well, not the ideology ("democracy is best for in Iraq, we just didn't have enough troops" for ex).
The problem with Fundamentalists is that they interpret the Bible literally. If it is written to forgive 70 times 7, they will probably start counting the number of times they forgive someone and when they reach 490, they'll probably say -- "that's it, the Bible says to stop". Ever since the books of the Bible were written, it was understood (see the writings of early Church fathers -- around II century) that a lot of the stuff was symbolic and typological. In other words the people who wrote the Bible, thousands of years ago, chose which books to include and which to not include, along with their contemporaries who interpreted and wrote about the interpretation of the scriptures, would _never_ agree with a literal interpretation.
Instead of spending $25 million on the museum, these people could feed and cloth a huge number of children from the developing countries, they could donate it towards AIDS research. To me that would be a more convincing witness to a Christian life than building a museum with animatronic dinosaurs...
I live in Southern Ohio, I would go out protesting against this museum along with anyone else who wishes to do so.
At first, after escaping communism and all it's horrors, I was an avid capitalist, I was all for a total self-regulated economy. But then the problem of outsourcing caught my attention (of course it did, I am a software geek!), nothing gets people to change their views than a problem that hits right at home.
Anyway, the completely free and self-regulating economy would favor outsourcing if the companies deemed it necessary. That would probably work great if certain ideal premises BUT only if there would be a free global flow of goods and services. That is NOT the case presently.
Here is what I mean: If a company decides to outsource, fires 100 American coders, goes to India and hires 100 Indian coders, equally skilled on average but willing to work for 1/5 of the salary. If the salary is $50k for the American coders then the company is saving $40k*100=$4M dollars -- a good thing. But there are 100 coders without work, 100 families that cannot sustain their previous needs and wants, might have need to relocate, 100+ children on average that need to find a new school and so on. NOW, in an ideal free economy (which is assumed but not true), the 100 American coders will be able to offer their services for 1/6 of the original price to compete with the Indian coders, IF they could also buy food for 1/5 of the American prices (i.e. the same food Indian coders would be buying), buy insurance, transportation and other goods for 1/5 of the original price. That is not possible living in U.S. So would the American coders be able to move to India, in theory "yes" but not in practice. Their children and families are here, they want to live in America because they are American citizens. The "free economy" policy is forcing them to either starve (I am exaggerating, of course), or relocate to some other country. I would say the "policy" is no longer helping sustain the American way of life. It is not benefiting it's citizens only it's corporation CEO's and Indian citizens. Therefore I would be in favor of a somewhat regulated economy -- not a full blown socialism but a balance. It is always hard to find a balance , because any extreme is always more easy and tempting to fall into.
That is why it is important to educate well-rounded kids that would be able to adapt. That is the keyword: _adapt_ It is not easy to do, because a human being can only learn so much and the parents and teachers are already overworked and overstressed (at least I am...). Too much sports and fun is great but they'll pay later. They also have to know what a quicksort is or how a boson is different than a fermion and that kind of stuff. A country can have only so many managers and lawyers before it becomes ridiculous.
By the time I graduated high school there and came to US for college I was ready to go into the Junior level science and math courses. I graduated Summa Cum Laude easily, from an average 4 year university, without that much effort (I wouldn't say I didn't sleep nights sweating, some quarters I would just coast by...).
While kids in US where taking "typing" classes in High School we were taught about spanning trees, while the U.S. kids spent their time finding what sport club they wanted to join, we learned discrete math. Children in U.S. are babied and spoiled when it comes to science, parents never studied it much and never see a need to push their children to study it. (I am talking about the average here, of course there are schools like Harvard, Caltech, Yale and so on that does have exceptional students).
But at the same time, I would have to say that playing sports and socializing has its benefits because it builds valuable interpersonal skills which will help when it comes time to work as part of a team. That is something that was never emphasized in my early education. The key is balance, teach both, perhaps U.S. education will come around some day, I hope so, because this is a great country and I love it for it freedom and values, and I don't want to see it fall behind -- I want my children to get a good science education.
Actually I wish Linux would have the same thing, at least the hardware makers would clearly label which products work or don't work with Linux just to make it easier to shop. I don't care if such and such a device doesn't work with Linux, I just want that clearly shown so I don't have to return it after wasting a whole day trying to install it.
By the way, Sun's Solaris is also working great with hardware it was tested on, but as soon as you try to install it on a generic PC, there will be countless problems with not finding such and such a driver.
Is OS X like the dozens of other *nix systems? Well, "Yes" and "No". It has all the core features but has enough of its own. It combines the stability, networking and security of Unix + the Apple GUI. Last time I checked, it is doing pretty well even among the other dozen or so "similar" operating systems. The point was that Microsoft could have been the Microsoft (support lots of software and hardware) and the Apple (have a stable, no-nonsense core operating system) -- it could have had the best of both worlds, in my hypothetical parallel universe.
I watched a PBS show the other day where Bill Gates was taking questions from college students. One of the questions was "Who do you look up to for advice?" and he said "Nobody!" and that basically he is rich and smart enough that he _always_ just came with future directions for his company (MS) completely on his own. He talked how sometimes it failed (remember WebTV included in Windows 98?), and I thought to myself how that mentality of "we don't look at others, we are the smartest, biggest and we'll re-invent everything" has probably hurt MS just as much as it helped. Not many operating system concepts have come out of Microsoft as being better than what was already out there. There was always a better kernel, a better file system, a better network stack, a better security model, a better system API and so on. (By "better" I mean better implemented practically, sure NT has a great security model but practically it is not the best, and "theoretically" Windows XP would support POSIX...but in reality it doesn't)
That's the story of Microsoft. Everything half-ass works. POSIX is working but is also not working. Symlinks work but don't work. Security works but not quite. I think if they had done what Apple did and just used a well tested free Unix-like kernel or a complete VMS implementation with a good network stack and security they could have been further ahead today...
I mean, they could always port GNU userland over to the NT kernel, but dont MS already do that (or something similar) in their UNIX resource thing, which you can download.
You are referring to POSIX I presume. Well, have you seen any native Unix code running on Windows lately? I didn't! Windows POSIX compliance is a joke, it was more of a marketing ploy to tell their client ("we even run Unix!") but in reality it is very broken. That is why you have Cygwin...
There are ways around but most applications out there are still installing themselves in C:\Program Files and windows goes into C:\Windows and so on.
The only thing I would be worried is corruption not speed. I have never had problems, but I would not put a financial database on it either, just because it is somewhat new and "experimental"...
Try this and a ext3 file system. I have all my Documents and the whole user directory on an ext3 and it works great. I can also access it from Linux if I want...