It's perhaps ironic that the lust for power and control at the top of China is exactly what stops China from becoming a more powerful player on the international stage.
Yes, and no. There is also the (among experts, at least) widespread opinion that any attempt at a "revolution and democracy" approach would very likely have caused a civil war and claimed millions of victims. Maybe quite a bit of our judgement is due to impatience. The US is what, 230 years old? China is more than ten times that. In chinese terms (and world-view), what does it matter if the process of changing the nation takes a century?
it simply doesn't have the military equipment to fight far from it's shores,
Has it ever occured to you that they simply have no interest in that? The US inherited the history of Europe, a colonial power structure. To us, the ability to propagate military force somewhere (and, if possible, anywhere) is what matters.
Asia's history is very different. To the chinese, pretty much everything that mattered for the past 5000 years has happened in China. Why would you want to go and fight somewhere else? The trivial answer would be that the chinese army is a defensive army, but that's too simplified. What really happens is that China is already so large that there is no point in further conquest. It's one of the few nations on earth that doesn't want or need expansion, so it doesn't want or need an army that can operate far outside its borders.
even if in the worst case they decide to pursue a military route, whilst they'd cause a lot of harm and damage, they'd have absolutely no chance of winning. Even their nuclear stockpile is relatively small, particularly when you take into account modern American ICBM defences.
It all depends on your definition of "winning", right? From what little I know, China is about the only place on the planet that has a reasonably good chance of actually defeating a US invasion force. The US ability to project its force largely rests with the carrier groups, and China has acquired specialized low-flying nukes for that specific target. Let's see the US military after it's lost three carrier groups.
If by "winning" you mean "conquering the USA", then I point to my first part: What tells you they have any desire to do that?
when enough of them want a change in their government and way of life, they'll fight for it.
Exactly. And you know what? They don't want to change either.
Like it or not, the current government has lifted a billion people out of horrible poverty. Some are still poor, some are doing ok, but all of them are a lot better off than their parents or grandparents were. Even the definition of "poor" has changed. The "poor" chinese of today would have been considered well-off less than a hundred years ago.
Is obvious. Stop being religious about nuclear technology.
Yes, it has its dangers. But unless you are totally insane, you have to agree that a modern reactor is a lot better than the decade old ones we're running on right now. The absolute worst case scenario - and it is happening in many first-world countries right now, is that there's a ban on the construction of new reactors, while the permissions to run the old ones are extended again and again, well beyond their lifetimes.
Allow the building of new reactors again. Make it a condition that for each new one built, an old one has to be dismantled. In other words: Give the whole lot a refreshment. That doesn't make things worse, and even if you'd like to see them all shut down you'll have to agree that 10 new and modern ones are a whole lot better than 10 old and leaky ones.
We've had that discussion five years or so ago, hadn't we?
To rehash the two most important arguments of each side:
Pro Full Disclosure: "99% chance that the evil hackers already know about the exploits when a whitehat finds it, plus vendors don't get their lazy bums up unless there's danger in the air and the customers demand it."
Pro "Responsible Disclosure": "Mimimi, that's sooo evil. Plus vendors will certainly fix things ASAP and work with researchers and everything will be better and I'm not being paid to say this."
The only argument that the Full Disclosure side could not kill was that giving vendors a head start would greatly improve things, because it had never been tried in that form. Well, it has now. Show me the statistics that show the improvements. By everything I hear, there's been no change whatsoever, except one: 0-days have become more valuable because the black hats have more lead time before a public disclosure.
Uh... what? I read the Wikipedia article on discordianism,
Forget it, was just a remark. I'm also a pope, at least I have a card saying so. Discordianism is a serious joke religion. A reductio-ad-absurdum of the entire church system.
the Bible tells us to examine the things a supposed prophet does to see whether he is good or bad.
Does it also tell you how to discertain whether he's a prophet or not? I'm serious, there are probably a lot more misguided than actually evil people. The false prophet may be a good man, just that the voice in his head isn't god, it's just his own imagination.
quite apart from whether or not he was a prophet.
But that's the question, isn't it? I never doubted that there are good people in the world (ignoring the definition of "good" for the moment).
You aren't praying if you don't believe you're praying.
Isn't that exactly what I said two replies back?
I don't know that I can answer that question. I must decide what I believe based on what I have experienced; I would expect you to do the same.
Yes, I do. With a healthy dose of scepticism towards first-hand experience because I know that the brain is not an immediate experience of reality. If our science is even slightly correct, much of the brain is dedicated towards filtering and managing the input of the senses.
My point is still: I can not, neither scientifically nor rationally, be absolutely, 100% certain that no god exists. But all evidence and experience says that it is very, very unlikely. Thus, anyone claiming the unlikely is the one who should provide evidence for the bold claim. And there's none coming. None that would not require belief first, as we've seen here again. So you can not believe without believing first, that's what it all boils down to. There's no reason whatsoever to believe in god, unless you already do.
Something similar to that, but not quite what we call hallucination today. But broadly, yes.
Another possibility is that a God actually did speak to them.
Yes, but it doesn't pass the Occham's Razor test. There are many other, equally unlikely, possibilities. That guy named Van Daeniken would probably say that the voices were broadcast down from alien ships in LEO, monitoring and guiding human evolution.
Given the evidence that we have about people hearing voices, some kind of mechanism inside the brain simply appears to be the most likely option and anyone voting for a different possibility should provide evidence.
1) I believe there are modern prophets and apostles.
Of course. Yours truly happens to be an apostle of discordianism, though he has long forgotten his full title.
The real question, of course, is why I should think these people have a direct connection to an entity that I don't even believe in. That's already two layers of disbelief to challenge. And, once more, in order to accept person A as a (genuine) prophet of god-entity X, I would need to believe in the existence of X first, otherwise the title "prophet" is entirely meaningless, like being king of a country that doesn't exist.
2) Even in the Bible, prophets were often considered insane by those they tried to teach. The fact that X million people think Joe is insane does not by itself mean Joe could not actually be a prophet;) Even Jesus was rejected by his own people in Nazareth.
True. Just because someone appears to be insane does not necessarily mean that he actually is insane, especially given the medical and psychological knowledge of the time.
And I would agree that we still know precious little about the workings of the brain, though some of the theories are persuasive and beautiful (and, I want to add, evolution has produced stuff so incredible, entire pantheons are dim and boring compared to the real world).
But still, someone claiming to speak with god today better provide some damn good evidence, or I'll call him insane and/or a con-man. Because both of these are very, very much more common than anyone who even warrants closer inspection on the god-talk claim.
Praying to ask God if he exists does not already require that you believe in God - it merely requires that you be willing to believe he exists should he answer.
a) how is what you call "praying" different from what I call "talking to the wall" ? b) how would I know any answer is from what you call "god" when there are so many more mundane well-documented sources of inner voices, visual images, etc?
I'm serious. I honestly believe that most of the so-called prophets would qualify as slightly schizophrenic by todays standards. That you hear a voice does not mean that there is a voice in the outside world, the power of our brains to delude itself is fascinating.
Why should it be any different now? If God would send prophets thousands of years ago, it only makes sense that he would continue to do so now, when there are so many new issues to deal with.
The answer to your question is answered in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (somewhat ok summary on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)). If you read it carefully, it'll open your eyes to what the real difference between the new and the old testament is.
Also, why there haven't been any not-considered-insane prophets for about 2000 years, and very likely none in the future.
Also, why people actually used to get replies to their prayers. Real, as far as they were concerned, answers, not a "feeling as if".
Are you going to throw the phone number away, and continue insisting Steve is imaginary?
Well, hand me gods phone number and I'll call him up right away, even if it's long-distance.
But, jokes aside, if I am very suspicious of your Steve, a phone call may not convince me. After all, the only thing it tells me is that there's someone with a phone number who is named Steve. That's not very unlikely, I'd believe you without calling. What I would need convincing of is that the Steve of your stories exists.
Counterexample: If I tell you that your god is bollocks and the real gods are named Odin, Thor, etc. - would you believe me just because I give you a phone number where someone picks up and says he's Thor, and you'd better be quick because he's got some giants to kill? No, you wouldn't, I assume. You want evidence that Thor is a god, not that someone named Thor owns a telephone.
The only difference here is the method of communication.
Not quite. Your "method" also presupposed an omnipresent being, otherwise what you call "praying" is nothing but talking with the walls. Whereas the telephone is a method that I know works, and that I can prove works to those who doubt (e.g. aborigines).
But proving that there's someone listening when I pray is identical to proving that an omnipresent being exists. In other words, there is no point in praying to find out if an omnipresent being exists if the precondition to praying actually being a form of communication is that such an omnipresent being exists. Circular logic, again.
I don't mind if you have faith. As long as you keep your faith to yourself and don't bother anyone else with it, you can believe in Jesus, or Jupiter, or the Flying Spagetti Monster. But I'll happily rip apart any attempt at logical proof of something that can not be logically proven because the first step in any such chain of logic always has to be a leap of faith, aka abandon all reason aka the question-mark step.:-)
the original iphone only had a real browser while packing less features than cheaper cell phones
Speaking only for me (and the other 2 mio. or so original iPhone owners) - it may have had less features, but it had the right set of features at the right places. Example: I needed to make a call conference a short time into owning one. Oh, look, there's a button for that right on the call screen. A year later I found out that the Nokia business phone I had for several years can also do conferences - it's just hidden somewhere in the basement of the 7th sub-menu, and the lights were out as well as the stairs...
1) Android quickly catching up with Apple in terms of usefulness and it's working across a large set of diverse devices. ChromeOS will only make Apple's problem worse
Where? You must be talking about a different "Android" than the one I know as a smartphone OS. I've yet to see a smartphone, Android or not, that comes even close to the iconic value of the iPhone, and the App trap is still there. One of the main success points of the iPhone is the App Store, and anyone who doesn't recognize that has already lost all hopes to ever compete with it.
2) If the expected price of $1000 is to be believed, it'll be a real turn off for anyone looking for a low cost MID. You can buy two (or three) netbooks for that price.
People who want a notebook already have one. Apple has made it clear several times that they don't intend to compete in that area.
3) Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
Maybe that is, you know, just guessing here, because it's not an ebook reader device?
No, the article is right on the mark, and your comment demonstrates very elegantly why: Yes, there were tablets, pen-computers, whatever, long before the current hype around the concept. But it's all been niche stuff, or in short: Nobody much cared.
The whole point is to ask the question: Why do people care when Apple announces a tablet? It's not the tablet itself that makes them care, because otherwise we would've seen that same hype for prior tablets from other companies.
Really? So where's the update? About half of the stuff that's in the new testament is vastly outdated. It very obviously does not account for a global world (unimaginable in ca. 100 AD when most of the new testament was actually written down) and it does not account for technology at all and the myriad of ethical challenges that brings. It doesn't account for vastly different cultures and societies - for examples, how do the rules about adultery apply to people in a society where polyamory is the norm?
It's dated. Simple as that. A lot of the stuff is pretty much universal because like it or not, we humans don't change that much in just a few thousand years. But any parts where society, culture, technology or other parts of the outside world matter is bad advise today (take the words on anything related to work, for example - fitting for an agricultural society in palestine, but totally bonkers if you try to apply it to an urban office environment).
(For the record, my church in particular believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. The fact that so many versions of the Bible exist - many of which contradict each other - merely serves to prove that the Bible is not translated correctly.)
Then I have to pass this to some scholar, because I don't speak ancient hebrew and while I do know ancient greek, I'm far from fluent and it would take me way more time to read the original greek bible this way then this online discussion is worth to me.
The scriptures are actually pretty clear:
No, they aren't. This is the circular reasoning I was talking about. So I don't believe in any gods. The answer is to ask a god? Asking someone requires the presupposition that this someone exists.
And all the other "tests" are not tests in any scientific or rational sense of the word. They are non-repeatable, they do not offer consistent answers, and are very open to interpretation. And you know that, because you belong to a church with a different doctrine than other churches of the same faith - but all of them claim to derive their (different) doctrines from the same scripture.
The scriptures are clear if and only if the answer is already in your head as a presupposition. In fact, it works very much the same way that tarot cards or other divination methods do. It can be very useful to draw the unconscious into the conscious mind, or help you express what you "dimly know" in a meaningful way. But the answers still come from inside, not from outside. The tarot or pendulum or bible are just tools.
Used in that way, I don't mind them. Whatever works for you. It's the "forcing one holy book on everyone else" part. The reproduction part of the Meme.
The Catholic Church never did follow the New Testament very well.
We agree on that.:-)
And yes, I agree that the teachings in the new one are in large parts more modern/modified/changed versions of those in the old, and many times the two versions exclude each other, so you have to pick one.
But, of course, you don't really need the whole god and Jesus crap for that, except if you prefer your people non-thinking. Ethical guidelines aren't any less valuable if they are uttered by a mortal man. In fact, I personally much prefer those, because it leaves you the room to say "that may have been true 2000 years ago, but the world has changed" or "yes, but the past 200 generations have shown that a modification here or there would improve it".
Of course, changes can be both good and bad. But then again, the people who wrote all those "holy books" were also just humans.
Since you can't prove non-existence of God, you're left with finding logical errors or self-consistency problems in my church's doctrine. Find some which cannot be explained in any way other than inconsistency, and I'll be convinced.
I won't hold my breath.
Not necessary, because that part has been done to death a million times. There are numerous parts of the bible which directly contradict other parts of the same book. And I'm not speaking about new-replaces-old stuff. If I remember correctly, even numbers like the age of certain people was given differently in different places.
Would that suffice? Then I'll invest the two minutes with Google to find the actual quotes.
But, of course, the first part is the important one. If you can not disprove something, how are you ever going to know that it isn't totally made-up bullshit? How? Of course, the answer is, as always, "faith". Which, of course, is a non-answer, because it employs circular reasoning. But then again, faith and reason have always been enemies, no matter how much you try to avoid that basic truth.
You're merely arguing that people misinterpret its teachings to suit their own existing desires; I've argued that myself. Yes, religion can make a convenient tool for people who wish to oppress others, but so can environmentalism, atheism, or anything else.
You're repeating an argument I already replied to. Yes, tools can be abused. But is it abuse if a gun is used for killing? That's what it was designed for. And if you claim that religion is not a tool designed to control people's behaviour, then pray, tell what it is for.
Christianity as taught by the New Testament
But christianity isn't taught by the new testament alone. It's taught by both books, and quite frankly, most of history it followed the old one much more closely than the new one.
Any Christian who claims otherwise is deliberately ignoring the teachings of Him whom they claim to follow.
Yes, but. The "but" being that the new testament doesn't contain a changelog. It never says clearly and unambigiously just which parts of the old it replaces with what new parts. There is a lot of wiggle room open for interpretation, and I claim quote intentionally so. The teachings of Jesus were being abused as a political tool before his body had rotted away.
One could argue that that's no different than science. It's only with the itchy parts that you claim Relativity supersedes Newtonian physics; it's only where Relativity gets itchy that you claim Quantum Mechanics supersedes Relativity.
You know nothing of science, do you? Relativity completely replaces newtonian physics, and no scientist I know or ever read claims otherwise. However, since relativistic effects are so tiny at speeds less than, say, 90% c, newtonian physics is an excellent approximation and since the math is a lot simpler, is being used for many cases because the differences between the approximation and the "real deal" are almost always less than the measurement errors anyways.
And quantum mechanics doesn't supersede relativity because they are two different theories about two different things. A theory merging both is being looked for, but they stand in parallel, not in a hierarchy.
I'm not saying those things are wrong. I'm merely saying that no one book, no one theory, can tell the whole story.
Well, one side is falsifiable, the other one isn't. So please don't compare religion to science unless you also tell me which evidence would convince you that your religion has been disproven.
Christianity provides a perfectly logical, non-LEGO interpretation of the Old Testament. If you choose to ignore that interpretation, that's your choice, but judge my beliefs by my interpretation, not your illogical one.
Which one? The one that says "though shalt not kill"? Or the one that says "well, unless they're heathens. Or criminals. Or it's in self-defense"? Oh wait, that's part of the commandments, which have been superseded by the new testament. Or not? Where can I find authoritative answers which parts are superseded, and how? Because that "changelog" is what you'll need to provide to convince me that christianity is not a LEGO religion.
I apparently missed this in several readings of the scriptures - where does the New Testament ever say "witches, homosexuals, etc" should be put to death?
Read everything I wrote. The old testament is a part of the teachings of christianity. You can't claim otherwise, or the creationists (whose entire "thing" is based entirely on the old testament) will kill you.:-)
Note the change in emphasis from controlling your actions to controlling your thoughts.
Yes, frightening evolution. But besides the point. The "fulfillment" part is open to interpretation. And as I already said: Whenever it suits them, christians quote the old testament just fine. It's only with the itchy parts that they claim the new one has superseded it. Christianity is a LEGO religion, everyone gets to choose his favourite parts.
Please show me where the New Testament encourages followers to kill unbelievers. I won't hold my breath.
That's the part I spoke about - you pick and choose which parts of your holy book suit your argument. I would not bet that there's such a line in the new testament, but the old is full of them. And yes, it is part of christianity. All the more benign quotes from it are commonly used. Pick and choose. Next crusade, the killing parts will be in favour again. Until then, pretend that they don't exist.
I see. You're claiming that Christianity's teachings against violence are merely a front for a secret plot to suppress violent urges so much that they explode unwillingly.... yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I don't claim it's an intentional plot. That's why I said islam is more explicit about it. However, the new testament is filled to the brim with stuff that you can (or have to) "put in context". And that context, of course, is the readers choice. I'm certain popes throughout the ages had no problems explaining how exactly all the crusades, pogroms, witch-burnings and inquisitions were perfectly in line with both the old and the new testament.
Religions start by accident. There's never a world-domination plot at the beginning. But it evolves over time as people begin to (ab)use it. However, that's not the fault of the people alone. Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But guns are tools designed for the explicit purpose of killing. And religion is a tool designed for the explicit purpose of controlling other people.
Yes, religion can be and has been used as a tool for violence and oppression; so have environmentalism, atheism, and so on. Tools are neither good nor bad. Blame the people wielding the tool, not the tool itself.
Except that when you kill someone with a hammer, that's a different thing than killing someone with a gun. It has to do with the purpose of the tool and the difference between use and abuse.
The iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. It went on sale on June 29, 2007.
And on the day it was announced, Steve apologized for this unusual early disclosure and explained why they did it. Of course you remember, don't you? After all, you could remember the date (I couldn't).
Slashdot Mirror
seperate reply for the non-military part:
It's perhaps ironic that the lust for power and control at the top of China is exactly what stops China from becoming a more powerful player on the international stage.
Yes, and no. There is also the (among experts, at least) widespread opinion that any attempt at a "revolution and democracy" approach would very likely have caused a civil war and claimed millions of victims. Maybe quite a bit of our judgement is due to impatience. The US is what, 230 years old? China is more than ten times that. In chinese terms (and world-view), what does it matter if the process of changing the nation takes a century?
it simply doesn't have the military equipment to fight far from it's shores,
Has it ever occured to you that they simply have no interest in that? The US inherited the history of Europe, a colonial power structure. To us, the ability to propagate military force somewhere (and, if possible, anywhere) is what matters.
Asia's history is very different. To the chinese, pretty much everything that mattered for the past 5000 years has happened in China. Why would you want to go and fight somewhere else? The trivial answer would be that the chinese army is a defensive army, but that's too simplified. What really happens is that China is already so large that there is no point in further conquest. It's one of the few nations on earth that doesn't want or need expansion, so it doesn't want or need an army that can operate far outside its borders.
even if in the worst case they decide to pursue a military route, whilst they'd cause a lot of harm and damage, they'd have absolutely no chance of winning. Even their nuclear stockpile is relatively small, particularly when you take into account modern American ICBM defences.
It all depends on your definition of "winning", right? From what little I know, China is about the only place on the planet that has a reasonably good chance of actually defeating a US invasion force. The US ability to project its force largely rests with the carrier groups, and China has acquired specialized low-flying nukes for that specific target. Let's see the US military after it's lost three carrier groups.
If by "winning" you mean "conquering the USA", then I point to my first part: What tells you they have any desire to do that?
when enough of them want a change in their government and way of life, they'll fight for it.
Exactly. And you know what? They don't want to change either.
Like it or not, the current government has lifted a billion people out of horrible poverty. Some are still poor, some are doing ok, but all of them are a lot better off than their parents or grandparents were. Even the definition of "poor" has changed. The "poor" chinese of today would have been considered well-off less than a hundred years ago.
And idealism aside, hunger trumps liberty.
Is obvious. Stop being religious about nuclear technology.
Yes, it has its dangers. But unless you are totally insane, you have to agree that a modern reactor is a lot better than the decade old ones we're running on right now. The absolute worst case scenario - and it is happening in many first-world countries right now, is that there's a ban on the construction of new reactors, while the permissions to run the old ones are extended again and again, well beyond their lifetimes.
Allow the building of new reactors again. Make it a condition that for each new one built, an old one has to be dismantled. In other words: Give the whole lot a refreshment. That doesn't make things worse, and even if you'd like to see them all shut down you'll have to agree that 10 new and modern ones are a whole lot better than 10 old and leaky ones.
Businesses exist to make money. Features make money, bugs cost money.
Which wouldn't be a problem, because avoiding and fixing bugs would then avoid loss of money.
The problem is that features make the vendor money, while bugs cost the customer money.
Outside the software world, warranty and liability regulations solved that problem.
We've had that discussion five years or so ago, hadn't we?
To rehash the two most important arguments of each side:
Pro Full Disclosure: "99% chance that the evil hackers already know about the exploits when a whitehat finds it, plus vendors don't get their lazy bums up unless there's danger in the air and the customers demand it."
Pro "Responsible Disclosure": "Mimimi, that's sooo evil. Plus vendors will certainly fix things ASAP and work with researchers and everything will be better and I'm not being paid to say this."
The only argument that the Full Disclosure side could not kill was that giving vendors a head start would greatly improve things, because it had never been tried in that form. Well, it has now. Show me the statistics that show the improvements. By everything I hear, there's been no change whatsoever, except one: 0-days have become more valuable because the black hats have more lead time before a public disclosure.
Uh... what? I read the Wikipedia article on discordianism,
Forget it, was just a remark. I'm also a pope, at least I have a card saying so. Discordianism is a serious joke religion. A reductio-ad-absurdum of the entire church system.
the Bible tells us to examine the things a supposed prophet does to see whether he is good or bad.
Does it also tell you how to discertain whether he's a prophet or not? I'm serious, there are probably a lot more misguided than actually evil people. The false prophet may be a good man, just that the voice in his head isn't god, it's just his own imagination.
quite apart from whether or not he was a prophet.
But that's the question, isn't it? I never doubted that there are good people in the world (ignoring the definition of "good" for the moment).
You aren't praying if you don't believe you're praying.
Isn't that exactly what I said two replies back?
I don't know that I can answer that question. I must decide what I believe based on what I have experienced; I would expect you to do the same.
Yes, I do. With a healthy dose of scepticism towards first-hand experience because I know that the brain is not an immediate experience of reality. If our science is even slightly correct, much of the brain is dedicated towards filtering and managing the input of the senses.
My point is still: I can not, neither scientifically nor rationally, be absolutely, 100% certain that no god exists. But all evidence and experience says that it is very, very unlikely. Thus, anyone claiming the unlikely is the one who should provide evidence for the bold claim. And there's none coming. None that would not require belief first, as we've seen here again. So you can not believe without believing first, that's what it all boils down to. There's no reason whatsoever to believe in god, unless you already do.
by calling it a hallucination
Something similar to that, but not quite what we call hallucination today. But broadly, yes.
Another possibility is that a God actually did speak to them.
Yes, but it doesn't pass the Occham's Razor test. There are many other, equally unlikely, possibilities. That guy named Van Daeniken would probably say that the voices were broadcast down from alien ships in LEO, monitoring and guiding human evolution.
Given the evidence that we have about people hearing voices, some kind of mechanism inside the brain simply appears to be the most likely option and anyone voting for a different possibility should provide evidence.
1) I believe there are modern prophets and apostles.
Of course. Yours truly happens to be an apostle of discordianism, though he has long forgotten his full title.
The real question, of course, is why I should think these people have a direct connection to an entity that I don't even believe in. That's already two layers of disbelief to challenge. And, once more, in order to accept person A as a (genuine) prophet of god-entity X, I would need to believe in the existence of X first, otherwise the title "prophet" is entirely meaningless, like being king of a country that doesn't exist.
2) Even in the Bible, prophets were often considered insane by those they tried to teach. The fact that X million people think Joe is insane does not by itself mean Joe could not actually be a prophet ;) Even Jesus was rejected by his own people in Nazareth.
True. Just because someone appears to be insane does not necessarily mean that he actually is insane, especially given the medical and psychological knowledge of the time.
And I would agree that we still know precious little about the workings of the brain, though some of the theories are persuasive and beautiful (and, I want to add, evolution has produced stuff so incredible, entire pantheons are dim and boring compared to the real world).
But still, someone claiming to speak with god today better provide some damn good evidence, or I'll call him insane and/or a con-man. Because both of these are very, very much more common than anyone who even warrants closer inspection on the god-talk claim.
Praying to ask God if he exists does not already require that you believe in God - it merely requires that you be willing to believe he exists should he answer.
a) how is what you call "praying" different from what I call "talking to the wall" ?
b) how would I know any answer is from what you call "god" when there are so many more mundane well-documented sources of inner voices, visual images, etc?
I'm serious. I honestly believe that most of the so-called prophets would qualify as slightly schizophrenic by todays standards. That you hear a voice does not mean that there is a voice in the outside world, the power of our brains to delude itself is fascinating.
Why should it be any different now? If God would send prophets thousands of years ago, it only makes sense that he would continue to do so now, when there are so many new issues to deal with.
The answer to your question is answered in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" (somewhat ok summary on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)). If you read it carefully, it'll open your eyes to what the real difference between the new and the old testament is.
Also, why there haven't been any not-considered-insane prophets for about 2000 years, and very likely none in the future.
Also, why people actually used to get replies to their prayers. Real, as far as they were concerned, answers, not a "feeling as if".
Are you going to throw the phone number away, and continue insisting Steve is imaginary?
Well, hand me gods phone number and I'll call him up right away, even if it's long-distance.
But, jokes aside, if I am very suspicious of your Steve, a phone call may not convince me. After all, the only thing it tells me is that there's someone with a phone number who is named Steve. That's not very unlikely, I'd believe you without calling. What I would need convincing of is that the Steve of your stories exists.
Counterexample: If I tell you that your god is bollocks and the real gods are named Odin, Thor, etc. - would you believe me just because I give you a phone number where someone picks up and says he's Thor, and you'd better be quick because he's got some giants to kill? No, you wouldn't, I assume. You want evidence that Thor is a god, not that someone named Thor owns a telephone.
The only difference here is the method of communication.
Not quite. Your "method" also presupposed an omnipresent being, otherwise what you call "praying" is nothing but talking with the walls. Whereas the telephone is a method that I know works, and that I can prove works to those who doubt (e.g. aborigines).
But proving that there's someone listening when I pray is identical to proving that an omnipresent being exists. In other words, there is no point in praying to find out if an omnipresent being exists if the precondition to praying actually being a form of communication is that such an omnipresent being exists. Circular logic, again.
I don't mind if you have faith. As long as you keep your faith to yourself and don't bother anyone else with it, you can believe in Jesus, or Jupiter, or the Flying Spagetti Monster. But I'll happily rip apart any attempt at logical proof of something that can not be logically proven because the first step in any such chain of logic always has to be a leap of faith, aka abandon all reason aka the question-mark step. :-)
the original iphone only had a real browser while packing less features than cheaper cell phones
Speaking only for me (and the other 2 mio. or so original iPhone owners) - it may have had less features, but it had the right set of features at the right places. Example: I needed to make a call conference a short time into owning one. Oh, look, there's a button for that right on the call screen. A year later I found out that the Nokia business phone I had for several years can also do conferences - it's just hidden somewhere in the basement of the 7th sub-menu, and the lights were out as well as the stairs...
1) Android quickly catching up with Apple in terms of usefulness and it's working across a large set of diverse devices. ChromeOS will only make Apple's problem worse
Where? You must be talking about a different "Android" than the one I know as a smartphone OS. I've yet to see a smartphone, Android or not, that comes even close to the iconic value of the iPhone, and the App trap is still there. One of the main success points of the iPhone is the App Store, and anyone who doesn't recognize that has already lost all hopes to ever compete with it.
2) If the expected price of $1000 is to be believed, it'll be a real turn off for anyone looking for a low cost MID. You can buy two (or three) netbooks for that price.
People who want a notebook already have one. Apple has made it clear several times that they don't intend to compete in that area.
3) Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
Maybe that is, you know, just guessing here, because it's not an ebook reader device?
No, the article is right on the mark, and your comment demonstrates very elegantly why: Yes, there were tablets, pen-computers, whatever, long before the current hype around the concept. But it's all been niche stuff, or in short: Nobody much cared.
The whole point is to ask the question: Why do people care when Apple announces a tablet? It's not the tablet itself that makes them care, because otherwise we would've seen that same hype for prior tablets from other companies.
Really? So where's the update? About half of the stuff that's in the new testament is vastly outdated. It very obviously does not account for a global world (unimaginable in ca. 100 AD when most of the new testament was actually written down) and it does not account for technology at all and the myriad of ethical challenges that brings. It doesn't account for vastly different cultures and societies - for examples, how do the rules about adultery apply to people in a society where polyamory is the norm?
It's dated. Simple as that. A lot of the stuff is pretty much universal because like it or not, we humans don't change that much in just a few thousand years. But any parts where society, culture, technology or other parts of the outside world matter is bad advise today (take the words on anything related to work, for example - fitting for an agricultural society in palestine, but totally bonkers if you try to apply it to an urban office environment).
(For the record, my church in particular believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. The fact that so many versions of the Bible exist - many of which contradict each other - merely serves to prove that the Bible is not translated correctly.)
Then I have to pass this to some scholar, because I don't speak ancient hebrew and while I do know ancient greek, I'm far from fluent and it would take me way more time to read the original greek bible this way then this online discussion is worth to me.
The scriptures are actually pretty clear:
No, they aren't. This is the circular reasoning I was talking about. So I don't believe in any gods. The answer is to ask a god? Asking someone requires the presupposition that this someone exists.
And all the other "tests" are not tests in any scientific or rational sense of the word. They are non-repeatable, they do not offer consistent answers, and are very open to interpretation. And you know that, because you belong to a church with a different doctrine than other churches of the same faith - but all of them claim to derive their (different) doctrines from the same scripture.
The scriptures are clear if and only if the answer is already in your head as a presupposition. In fact, it works very much the same way that tarot cards or other divination methods do. It can be very useful to draw the unconscious into the conscious mind, or help you express what you "dimly know" in a meaningful way. But the answers still come from inside, not from outside. The tarot or pendulum or bible are just tools.
Used in that way, I don't mind them. Whatever works for you. It's the "forcing one holy book on everyone else" part. The reproduction part of the Meme.
The Catholic Church never did follow the New Testament very well.
We agree on that. :-)
And yes, I agree that the teachings in the new one are in large parts more modern/modified/changed versions of those in the old, and many times the two versions exclude each other, so you have to pick one.
But, of course, you don't really need the whole god and Jesus crap for that, except if you prefer your people non-thinking. Ethical guidelines aren't any less valuable if they are uttered by a mortal man. In fact, I personally much prefer those, because it leaves you the room to say "that may have been true 2000 years ago, but the world has changed" or "yes, but the past 200 generations have shown that a modification here or there would improve it".
Of course, changes can be both good and bad. But then again, the people who wrote all those "holy books" were also just humans.
Since you can't prove non-existence of God, you're left with finding logical errors or self-consistency problems in my church's doctrine. Find some which cannot be explained in any way other than inconsistency, and I'll be convinced.
I won't hold my breath.
Not necessary, because that part has been done to death a million times. There are numerous parts of the bible which directly contradict other parts of the same book. And I'm not speaking about new-replaces-old stuff. If I remember correctly, even numbers like the age of certain people was given differently in different places.
Would that suffice? Then I'll invest the two minutes with Google to find the actual quotes.
But, of course, the first part is the important one. If you can not disprove something, how are you ever going to know that it isn't totally made-up bullshit? How? Of course, the answer is, as always, "faith". Which, of course, is a non-answer, because it employs circular reasoning. But then again, faith and reason have always been enemies, no matter how much you try to avoid that basic truth.
Ok, I know, everyone and his dog is inventing his own "virtual currency" and all that.
But... "microsoft points"? Did that win the Bad Taste Awards or why was it chosen? It's got the sex appeal of Steve Ballmer.
You're merely arguing that people misinterpret its teachings to suit their own existing desires; I've argued that myself. Yes, religion can make a convenient tool for people who wish to oppress others, but so can environmentalism, atheism, or anything else.
You're repeating an argument I already replied to. Yes, tools can be abused. But is it abuse if a gun is used for killing? That's what it was designed for. And if you claim that religion is not a tool designed to control people's behaviour, then pray, tell what it is for.
Christianity as taught by the New Testament
But christianity isn't taught by the new testament alone. It's taught by both books, and quite frankly, most of history it followed the old one much more closely than the new one.
Any Christian who claims otherwise is deliberately ignoring the teachings of Him whom they claim to follow.
Yes, but. The "but" being that the new testament doesn't contain a changelog. It never says clearly and unambigiously just which parts of the old it replaces with what new parts. There is a lot of wiggle room open for interpretation, and I claim quote intentionally so. The teachings of Jesus were being abused as a political tool before his body had rotted away.
One could argue that that's no different than science. It's only with the itchy parts that you claim Relativity supersedes Newtonian physics; it's only where Relativity gets itchy that you claim Quantum Mechanics supersedes Relativity.
You know nothing of science, do you? Relativity completely replaces newtonian physics, and no scientist I know or ever read claims otherwise. However, since relativistic effects are so tiny at speeds less than, say, 90% c, newtonian physics is an excellent approximation and since the math is a lot simpler, is being used for many cases because the differences between the approximation and the "real deal" are almost always less than the measurement errors anyways.
And quantum mechanics doesn't supersede relativity because they are two different theories about two different things. A theory merging both is being looked for, but they stand in parallel, not in a hierarchy.
I'm not saying those things are wrong. I'm merely saying that no one book, no one theory, can tell the whole story.
Well, one side is falsifiable, the other one isn't. So please don't compare religion to science unless you also tell me which evidence would convince you that your religion has been disproven.
Christianity provides a perfectly logical, non-LEGO interpretation of the Old Testament. If you choose to ignore that interpretation, that's your choice, but judge my beliefs by my interpretation, not your illogical one.
Which one? The one that says "though shalt not kill"? Or the one that says "well, unless they're heathens. Or criminals. Or it's in self-defense"? Oh wait, that's part of the commandments, which have been superseded by the new testament. Or not? Where can I find authoritative answers which parts are superseded, and how? Because that "changelog" is what you'll need to provide to convince me that christianity is not a LEGO religion.
I apparently missed this in several readings of the scriptures - where does the New Testament ever say "witches, homosexuals, etc" should be put to death?
Read everything I wrote. The old testament is a part of the teachings of christianity. You can't claim otherwise, or the creationists (whose entire "thing" is based entirely on the old testament) will kill you. :-)
Note the change in emphasis from controlling your actions to controlling your thoughts.
Yes, frightening evolution. But besides the point. The "fulfillment" part is open to interpretation. And as I already said: Whenever it suits them, christians quote the old testament just fine. It's only with the itchy parts that they claim the new one has superseded it. Christianity is a LEGO religion, everyone gets to choose his favourite parts.
Please show me where the New Testament encourages followers to kill unbelievers. I won't hold my breath.
That's the part I spoke about - you pick and choose which parts of your holy book suit your argument. I would not bet that there's such a line in the new testament, but the old is full of them. And yes, it is part of christianity. All the more benign quotes from it are commonly used. Pick and choose. Next crusade, the killing parts will be in favour again. Until then, pretend that they don't exist.
I see. You're claiming that Christianity's teachings against violence are merely a front for a secret plot to suppress violent urges so much that they explode unwillingly.... yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I don't claim it's an intentional plot. That's why I said islam is more explicit about it. However, the new testament is filled to the brim with stuff that you can (or have to) "put in context". And that context, of course, is the readers choice. I'm certain popes throughout the ages had no problems explaining how exactly all the crusades, pogroms, witch-burnings and inquisitions were perfectly in line with both the old and the new testament.
Religions start by accident. There's never a world-domination plot at the beginning. But it evolves over time as people begin to (ab)use it. However, that's not the fault of the people alone. Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But guns are tools designed for the explicit purpose of killing. And religion is a tool designed for the explicit purpose of controlling other people.
Yes, religion can be and has been used as a tool for violence and oppression; so have environmentalism, atheism, and so on. Tools are neither good nor bad. Blame the people wielding the tool, not the tool itself.
Except that when you kill someone with a hammer, that's a different thing than killing someone with a gun. It has to do with the purpose of the tool and the difference between use and abuse.
The iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. It went on sale on June 29, 2007.
And on the day it was announced, Steve apologized for this unusual early disclosure and explained why they did it. Of course you remember, don't you? After all, you could remember the date (I couldn't).