Yeah, but they aren't necessarily stealing publicly available media files. Now that digital cameras and video recorders are so common, I suspect that a lot of people have homemade media files on their computers. Going through those is absolutely an invasion of privacy.
From a legal point of view, it would likely come down to the reasonable expectation of privacy. Would a reasonable person not expect the tech guy he gives his computer to to look through his files? I sure would.
Since God's frame of reference is timeless, how can God create anything? creation means changing the state of God's spacetime.
Creation in God's frame of reference is something like a constant outflowing of Life into creation. Creation as a singular act in time is a concept that only has meaning from that created time-based reference frame. That shows not only the limitations to thinking about time, but is also indicative that the deeper understanding of creation is that of a constant inflowing of Life, rather than that of some collection of singular events in time. Asking what happened before the creation of time is somewhat like asking what's just to the East of Euclidean Space. However, cause-and-effect, though we tend to only think about in the context of time, does not have that limitation. So while it is not a meaningful question to ask what happened "temporally before" the creation of time, I think it is meaningful to ask what its causes were, and therefore what "causally preceded" it.
Right -- I think the fallacies of logic that creep in when people think about it are similar to the ones that come up in the context of Special Relativity: You have to deal with one frame of reference at a time. When you try to combine two frames of reference as if they were one, you obliterate the validity of the assumptions of the problem. The same applies if its two observers in different inertial frames of reference in space-time. Or one observer in an inertial frame of reference in space-time and another observer in a non-inertial, non-space-time frame of reference. (Only no one has figured out the math for the latter scenario.)
The concept of creation requires the existence of a spacetime continuum. When God created the universe, if there was a spacetime continuum God was into, then God was finite at the moment of creation.
No, space-time is part of the natural universe. Every concept of creation I've ever heard includes the creation of space-time as part of the creation of the universe. That creation can only be thought of as a time-based event in the frame of reference of the universe itself, not in God's frame of reference, which is timeless.
Apparently.;-) That God can see further than us, and thereby can lead us, does not make free will meaningless. Free will enables us to freely make God's Good a part of us. To take it on freely is the only way we can become truly living things that are good. Or we can reject it and make evil a part of us. Once the choice is truly final, there's the judgment... but the judgment was already made over the course of our lives by us, we are whatever we have chosen to become. That God sees this all lying head of us and can therefore guide us hardly makes it pointless -- it makes it possible to succeed.
Lofty claims without evidence. Superman flies faster than the speed of light and reverses time, doesn't that mean he violates free will too? It's one thing to pontificate on nonsense, it's another to actually believe it.
And it's one thing to claim something is nonsense and another to demonstrate it. I suppose if superman could go back in time, then like God, he would only violate the free will of those with whom he shared his knowledge of the future. But those who argue that God's "foreknowledge" violates free will must conclude that the proof of free will constitutes the proof of the impossibility of a time machine. But one doesn't necessarily follow the other.
I wouldn't call that "getting it primarily from Paul". I would call that using Paul to justify the claim. There's a lot to recommend the Calvinist position Biblically, a lot to disrecommend Calvinism ethically and a lot to disrecommend the Bible in general. One could argue that Superman could have sex if he wore a kryptonite condom. But, you still have a larger problem of unjustified beliefs. Reframing the problem with regard to causality still doesn't let you chose what you you won't choose (though, perhaps multiple universes allows for this). This entire thing does seem a lot like arguing about Superman's condoms. Sure, they could work, but you're still just assuming Superman.
Sure, for one who has no reason to believe in God, it's just an academic exorcise. But it would be quite wrong to assume that all who belive in God do so without compelling reason -- which is obviously a separate topic altogether. As for the Calvinist position, while you can certainly find isolated things in the Bible to support it, at also contradicts one of the most primary tenets of the Bible and of theism itself, as also expressed by Plato and other extra-biblical thinkers -- that is, that "God is Good."
That the knowledge of your action prior to your action is the effect of your future action rather than the cause.
This God's knowledge is cast as "prior knowledge", then it looks like an effect before a cause. But God is timeless and his knowledge is "transcendent knowledge" or "timeless knowledge," making it instead a question of the interaction between time and timelessness.
The argument itself is exceedingly silly. It is simply less silly than other arguments. It still results in an entirely deterministic universe where choices are known prior to them being made. It still results in a situation where you can between A and B, but you will choose B. Though, granting God even more superpowers "transcendence of time" and the like you might as well give him the power to eat his cake and have it too. The same situation would thusly exist, the creation or non-creation of a person would present a deterministic set of choices that individual would make. It is still like having a random number generator, but knowing the seed number. It's not really random.
But that's the way that space-time is. There's no evidence to suggest that the future is undefined, that the future is any less tangible than the past. It's certainly not that way we understand the laws of physics, only in the way that we experience it due to our ignorance of the future. But it simply does not necessarily follow that if the future is tangible that the causes which lead to that future are deterministic. It's only our natural inclination to think that way from experience, because deterministically caused events (including those triggered by pseudo-random number generators) are the only ones we happen to have the power of predicting. But that does not make it the law of All Possible Knowledge.
Though, the idea of freewill is extra-biblical anyhow, and disproving it would only lend credence to Calvinism. The original argument is flawed in that it ascribes the claim of free will to the Bible, rather than Augustine.
Augustine got it primarily from Paul, although he obviously elaborated a bit. (e.g. Gal 5:13 "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; but, serve one another in love.") Before that, these same issues were discussed by Plato and Aristotle and most other philosophers. But I'd argue that the matter of freedom is a central theme throughout both testaments of the Bible, specifically God's actions to restore freedom to the human race as it repeatedly made itself a slave to sin.
"Now he could complain that he was not free to go to MIT"
And he would be right. You took his freedom of choice away from him in order to ensure the outcome you favoured. Your son became who he was because of *your* choice, not his own.
But that's not true, my choice was only one component of it; he became who he was because of his own choices within the context that I provided him. All I did was to provided him with the context where I knew that his own pursuit of happiness would not be ultimately derailed. That is the same role that Divine Providence plays. Clearly no one has the power to change certain things about their circumstances, such as the genetics, and how they were raised, and their past. But if there was no Divine Providence, and all those circumstances of life were assigned randomly, rather than intentionally, how would that make anyone any more free?
National polls asking if abortion should be legal in "all or most cases" constantly demonstrate majority approval. Google: abortion "all or most cases" percent
The first poll in that search says the majority oppose abortion that's solely to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
I find it highly doubtful that that majority has any interest in starting a shooting war to "express their will" that yes abortion should be legal in "all or most cases". Unless perhaps you were suggesting that the minority should start a "war for the people" seeking to criminalize abortion in "all or most cases".
Whether it's a majority or minority, and how strongly they feel about it is nearly impossible to tell unless you hold a binding national referendum. A sampling of people willing to discuss the matter with ABC isn't very informative. Regardless, it's usually minorities who fight wars, and the war would be over the natural inalienable right to self-government.
The very job of the Supreme Court is smack down the elected legislature when they pass laws contrary to the constitution, and to IGNORE the "popular will of the people" when that will is contrary to the constitution.
That is because the Constitution IS the will of the people, legitimized by the people by ratification, and therefore above any law that the Congress can make. By design it's hard to change and requires the consensus of the people to do so. The problem is when the Supreme Court replaces that highest law with their own whims and desires, which makes a mockery of the whole process and of the concept of self-government.
The Equal Protection clause was added to the constitution by the majority, but many then balked as actually living by it when faced with the fact that it also applied to marriage law, when faced with the fact that it prohibited "popular will of the people" anti-interracial-marriage legislation.
The Equal Protection clause is a great example, it was, and could only have been, passed at sword-point, necessitated by the fact that the Supreme Court had hijacked the Constitution to declare that when the Constitution talks about people, it cannot be construed to include blacks -- just as they would later make the same claim concerning the unborn, which remains in force. Democracy or not, a just government must, first and foremost, be a government of laws, with the Constitution being the chief law. The reality of the three post-civil-war amendments is that they were the spoils of war more than an act of democracy, but that's the hand that was forced by the Court.
Virtually everyone supports the Right to Free Speech, yet nearly all of them get pissed off when that same Right to Free Speech ends up prohibiting them from having *their* favorite law against whatever they find really offensive.
Well, it's legitimate to get pissed off when the right is used to promote obscenity rather than to promote debate. I have never gotten pissed off at opinions being allowed to be expressed, only at them being silenced. Debate ultimately favors the truth. But more to the point, what the founding fathers expressed as the mechanism of their republic was a means for the law to be formed and executed by the REASON of the People while being resistant to change from pressures from the PASSION of the People. Thus the people are given the power to change everything in the law from the Constitution down, only it requires some consensus and time to do it. But when the Supreme Court places a new law above all other law, in the guise of an "interpretation" of the Constitution, (especially, as they are wont to do, in a contentious area of debate such as slavery or abortion, where a Constitutional Amendment would not be possible) the people are powerless to change it through any means other than violence.
Of course we try, and so presidential elections have become elections to s
That's a flawed analogy. God knows precisely what I've done, and what I will do with respect to any stimuli, as he is, apparently, temporally omniscience. Thus, God *knows* precisely what I will ever do. To him, it's simply a tapestry laid bare. And since God is the one which dictates the starting conditions, he, in effect, rigs the game to accomplish whatever outcomes occur. Therefore, it may *appear* that I have free will, but in reality I don't.
But "rigging" the starting conditions doesn't affect free will either. Even with free will, a person's knowledge and experience affects what they choose to do. So as parents, we of course "rig the starting conditions" for our children, giving them discipline and education, though unlike God we only know statistically the effect it will have on them. But if God gave me knowledge of the future and I saw that if I sent my kid to MIT, he would invent a wind-powered trike that decapitated scores of people, and after his jail sentence he OD on heroine, whereas if I sent him to auto-mechanic school he would find joy in his work, and do it with great integrity, and raise a loving family, I would obviously choose the latter. Now he could complain that he was not free to go to MIT, and he would be right, but he was free to make the most out of the conditions that were given him, and that's exactly what he did. He freely chose his good life of love of integrity, I just provided the conditions to make it possible for him to do so. But if I had another son, and I know that whatever opportunities I gave him, he would use them for taking advantage of others, the best I could do for him would be to find the conditions which would minimize the damage he was determined to do himself and others.
Because a pantheist god is one with nature, and nature is finite.
(Glancing at the wikipedia article, there is also the term "classical pantheism" which would appear not to have that constraint, but only perhaps imply that God is manifest in everything of nature.)
Which, of course, nullifies any concept of free will. For example, take the story of Eden. If what you say is true, God tempted Eve with the apple, but he did so knowing full well what her decision would be, because, hey, he transcends time. IOW, knowing the outcome already, he manipulated her into sinning (why he would do that is another question entirely).
And this principle applies universally. The bible claims that humanity was given free will, that we would come to God of our own chosing. But God, being transcendant of time, knows every choice and every action I will ever perform, and can manipulate me as he sees fit. Therefore, I can't possibly have free will, as all my choices, from God's perspective, are entirely predetermined.
If you gave me a true list of everything you did yesterday, does my knowledge of your actions nullify the free will you had in doing them? Of course not. What if I invented a time machine and traveled back to the beginning of yesterday? Does my time machine nullify your free will? It would only nullify your free will if I shared that information with you (which is why God doesn't typically share that information with us). The idea that foreknowledge implies determinism is based solely on the experience of our temporal life, since for OUR knowledge, that correlation DOES usually exist. But it is a fallacy to extrapolate that correlation to one transcendent of time.
To put it another way, distinguishing between God's past knowledge and God's future knowledge is an artificial distinction. The challenge in thinking about God is in the constraints we put on our thinking that arise from our close association with time and space.
In any case, it doesn't use gas, elecricity, biodiesel, or any other fuel. IMHO, this is pretty cool, if he gets his safety aspects together, and works on gear drive, it could be a neat little invention that he might be able to sell. It seems like something that Leonardo would have drawn plans for. Anybody else think so?
If you mean DiCaprio, absolutely. Da Vinci, OTOH, would probably have given his right arm to have invented the internal combustion engine. In any case, he was smart enough to realize that traction with the ground would be far more efficient, WITHOUT being necessarily noisier -- claims to the contrary notwithstanding. I can only imagine how people DENIED entrance to MIT must be feeling right now.
God is intrinsic and inherent in everything a theist understands about reality.
Um, I was talking about actual reality. "Reality is that which does not go away when you stop believing."
Me too.
The Theistic "reality" is identical in structure whether you believe in the Abrahamic God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Greek Gods, or Santa Claus. These cannot all be true simultaneously without more superfluous and extraneous contortions of the concept of reality. Are all individual Theistic realities absolute reality or only yours?
There is only one absolute reality. No human understanding can mirror it exactly, but some understandings are truer reflections than others. While there are obviously vast differences in understandings, I would generalize that those whose concept of reality is based upon an infinite, transcendental God (which would include the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and the majority of so-called polytheists, such as Hindus and ancient believers in the Greek and Egyptian gods) is necessarily a better reflection of reality than that of those whose with no conception of the source of nature other than nature itself (such as atheists, pantheists, and any so-called theists whose conception of God is finite rather than infinite).
The premise of most monotheist religions is that God is singular, perfect, and omnipotent. However, the Torah/Bible/Quaran also ascribes to him qualities such as loving his creations and wanting them to live a just life. These views are contradictory. First, the premise that God is separate from his creations implies that God is finite.
On the contrary, God being infinite and creation being finite necessarily separates Him from His creation. God being infinite is part of the essential definition of God. Being infinite also makes Him necessarily singular.
Second, something which is perfect must logically be immutable. Any change in the state of a perfect thing would render it imperfect, or imply that the original state was not perfect to begin with.
Yes, as is confirmed many times in the Bible (and probably Koran and Vedas). God is unchanging.
Thus, God cannot love anything, or want anything for his creations. He cannot think, feel, reason, or want, because all of these things imply mutability. Indeed, perfection and omnipotence are incompatible, because action implies change!
I'm not sure how he made this leap, but probably from temporal thinking. God's consciousness is infinite and transcends time, while we progress linearly through time. God's actions in the finite world, like the creation itself which comes from Him, are finite manifestations of the infinite. God's love and God's actions don't imply change in Him, only a change in us relative to Him.
There is none. However, there is overwhelming evidence that God is both superfluous and extraneous to everything that we understand about reality. There is also good evidence that all religious canon is simple made up out of thin air. (People seem to forget that this latter item can be studied scientifically.)
God is superfluous and extraneous to everything that an atheist understands about reality. God is intrinsic and inherent in everything a theist understands about reality. Both have overwhelming evidence. One of them is very wrong in their understanding.
Frankly some points are just so far out that they deserve to be discredited through any means possible even moderation. The point you originally made seems to have caused the community to react in that way. You have about as much ground to stand on as a holocaust denier or a person who still thinks there are WMDs. Should they add a "-1 Stupid Fucking Argument" sure, but until then I'm happy to see you're hate for our principles hidden as deeply as possible. I really hope that something could change a mind like yours, but If it hasn't been changed already you are either a shill or living in a Bush reality distortion field.
WOW!!! This is the first time I've seen any honesty expressed from the left on this issue! The left-wing ideology has an inherent hatred of open discourse and exchange of ideas -- perhaps because subconsciously they know that their ideas cannot stand up to the scrutiny of reason. The people who would silence opposing views by "modding" online are the same ones who would silence them by violence in person. I've endured plenty of both kinds of attacks over the years, and I still find it disgusting every time, and the antithesis of the Good that the human race is capable of being.
When Judges usurp political power from the elected branches, they usurp it from the people. Good. The people are too stupid and too inclined to take away each other's rights to have completely unfettered access to the laws. That was the main point of republicanism (vs. pure democracy), and The Federalist Papers make that clear in talking about "The Tyranny of the Majority".
Of course they're not supposed to have unfettered access to the laws. That's why politicians can do pretty much as they please in between elections. But their power to govern is derived upon the consent of the people. There is no other legitimate source of power. When judges change the law, especially the when they change the constitution, they do so without the consent of the people, and therefore illegitimately.
That same constitution... Yes, the constitution as written. Marbury v. Madison was decided in 1803, only 17 years later, and really needs to be considered just as central a foundation to our system of government as any section of the constitution. Before that case, we had The Sedition Act, which was a blatant violation of the first amendment, but there was nothing that could be done about it.
The principles in Marbury represent the only reasonable reading of the Constitution in light of the legal framework out if which it was written. But if you're saying that that one man's opinion (as expressed in Marbury) should be just as foundational as the Constitution, with no vote or ratification, and therefore it should have more weight than even a unanimous resolution of Congress signed by the president, that is beyond absurd. Judges have the power to set aside one law when that law is incompatible with a higher law, such as the Constitution. They DO NOT have have the legitimate power to set aside laws according to their own tastes, beliefs, convictions, feelings, or anything else.
Judges are supposed to be activist, too.
If by "activist" you mean deciding cases according to the written law, then yes. Otherwise no. If judges are being activists, then the People are supposed to be insurrectionists and revolutionaries.
"Bush won in 2004 because the majority of the people who voted thought he would be a better president than Kerry." Interesting that you presume to know the intentions of 122 million people in choosing to vote for one person or another. "Better" in what respect? As I said, it's the American public's fault for embracing unimportant issues and ignoring the important ones, and it's the parties' faults for purposely feeding the unimportant issues to the public. They did it in 2004 and they're still doing it. As for your "majority", 62 million isn't exactly representative when it only amounts to 1 in 5 people.
I think by-and-large the public selects candidates based on the most important issues, particularly the character of the nominee. Unfortunately, one of the president's greatest powers has become the power to select Supreme Court nominees, making his judicial philosophy one of most important issues for many people, as the vote constitutes virtually the only influence short of taking to arms that the people have over any issues that the Supreme Court has usurped. I don't know if that constitutes a legitimate "issue" or just the result of the farce of a Supreme-Court-ruled nation.
And yes, 1 in 5 people, IS exactly representative. What else would you think "representative" means?
Hypothetically... if they were aliens from Andromeda, they could be going back to get reinforcements to extract revenge for their fallen ship. If their ships have similar capabilities to what you've described, they'll have a round trip of 56 years, but in that time 4 million years will have passed here. We'd better start the preparations!
Yeah, it hardly seems fair. They'll still be all mad, and we'll be like, "Dude, that was like 4 million years ago. Get over it!"
The modding of the parent post as "Flamebait" is exactly the reason why Slashdot shouldn't have a moderating system. It's because left-wing political dongs use it to their advantage to mod down any right-wing opposition. I challenge anyone on Slashdot to point out what, in that post, constitutes "flamebaiting".
This site is disgraceful for the way people abuse its peer-moderation system. If anything, it mirrors the attitude of the nation in that if somebody disagrees with you, they should be squelched and discredited. There's a reason why there is no "-1, Disagree" rating.
Thanks for saying so, and I agree. It's an incredibly disturbing trend that is increasingly evident on the left that's spreading from universities to other parts of life. Like the "fairness doctrine" which Pelosi is trying to resurrect to get right-wing pundits off the radio by legislation.
How is Fox not being a stooge??? As you say, it's the biggest story of they day and they don't show it. My guess is that they're not presenting it because they know that the vast majority of people will disapprove of the decision to commute Libby, so if they don't cover it, all the pin-heads who watch fox won't then disapprove of the president. There ya go, things become much clearer when you realize that Fox is one of the propaganda wings of the republican party.
It was the most significant story of yesterday, though not something that takes much time to tell. Today, the Democratic response to the commutation is the #2 story on foxnews.com, with the Brittish terror probe #1.
"I found the definition of Facism interesting...Sounds like the Bush administration to me."
Nuh-uh, the Republicans aren't fascists, the Democrats are; and that wikipidia definition was written by a liberal fascist. Now just watch, I'll get a "flame-bait" while you get an "insightfull."
Slashdot Mirror
From a legal point of view, it would likely come down to the reasonable expectation of privacy. Would a reasonable person not expect the tech guy he gives his computer to to look through his files? I sure would.
Creation in God's frame of reference is something like a constant outflowing of Life into creation. Creation as a singular act in time is a concept that only has meaning from that created time-based reference frame. That shows not only the limitations to thinking about time, but is also indicative that the deeper understanding of creation is that of a constant inflowing of Life, rather than that of some collection of singular events in time. Asking what happened before the creation of time is somewhat like asking what's just to the East of Euclidean Space. However, cause-and-effect, though we tend to only think about in the context of time, does not have that limitation. So while it is not a meaningful question to ask what happened "temporally before" the creation of time, I think it is meaningful to ask what its causes were, and therefore what "causally preceded" it.
Right -- I think the fallacies of logic that creep in when people think about it are similar to the ones that come up in the context of Special Relativity: You have to deal with one frame of reference at a time. When you try to combine two frames of reference as if they were one, you obliterate the validity of the assumptions of the problem. The same applies if its two observers in different inertial frames of reference in space-time. Or one observer in an inertial frame of reference in space-time and another observer in a non-inertial, non-space-time frame of reference. (Only no one has figured out the math for the latter scenario.)
No, space-time is part of the natural universe. Every concept of creation I've ever heard includes the creation of space-time as part of the creation of the universe. That creation can only be thought of as a time-based event in the frame of reference of the universe itself, not in God's frame of reference, which is timeless.
Apparently.
And it's one thing to claim something is nonsense and another to demonstrate it. I suppose if superman could go back in time, then like God, he would only violate the free will of those with whom he shared his knowledge of the future. But those who argue that God's "foreknowledge" violates free will must conclude that the proof of free will constitutes the proof of the impossibility of a time machine. But one doesn't necessarily follow the other.
Sure, for one who has no reason to believe in God, it's just an academic exorcise. But it would be quite wrong to assume that all who belive in God do so without compelling reason -- which is obviously a separate topic altogether. As for the Calvinist position, while you can certainly find isolated things in the Bible to support it, at also contradicts one of the most primary tenets of the Bible and of theism itself, as also expressed by Plato and other extra-biblical thinkers -- that is, that "God is Good."
This God's knowledge is cast as "prior knowledge", then it looks like an effect before a cause. But God is timeless and his knowledge is "transcendent knowledge" or "timeless knowledge," making it instead a question of the interaction between time and timelessness.
But that's the way that space-time is. There's no evidence to suggest that the future is undefined, that the future is any less tangible than the past. It's certainly not that way we understand the laws of physics, only in the way that we experience it due to our ignorance of the future. But it simply does not necessarily follow that if the future is tangible that the causes which lead to that future are deterministic. It's only our natural inclination to think that way from experience, because deterministically caused events (including those triggered by pseudo-random number generators) are the only ones we happen to have the power of predicting. But that does not make it the law of All Possible Knowledge.
Augustine got it primarily from Paul, although he obviously elaborated a bit. (e.g. Gal 5:13 "You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; but, serve one another in love.") Before that, these same issues were discussed by Plato and Aristotle and most other philosophers. But I'd argue that the matter of freedom is a central theme throughout both testaments of the Bible, specifically God's actions to restore freedom to the human race as it repeatedly made itself a slave to sin.
But that's not true, my choice was only one component of it; he became who he was because of his own choices within the context that I provided him. All I did was to provided him with the context where I knew that his own pursuit of happiness would not be ultimately derailed. That is the same role that Divine Providence plays. Clearly no one has the power to change certain things about their circumstances, such as the genetics, and how they were raised, and their past. But if there was no Divine Providence, and all those circumstances of life were assigned randomly, rather than intentionally, how would that make anyone any more free?
The first poll in that search says the majority oppose abortion that's solely to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
Whether it's a majority or minority, and how strongly they feel about it is nearly impossible to tell unless you hold a binding national referendum. A sampling of people willing to discuss the matter with ABC isn't very informative. Regardless, it's usually minorities who fight wars, and the war would be over the natural inalienable right to self-government.
That is because the Constitution IS the will of the people, legitimized by the people by ratification, and therefore above any law that the Congress can make. By design it's hard to change and requires the consensus of the people to do so. The problem is when the Supreme Court replaces that highest law with their own whims and desires, which makes a mockery of the whole process and of the concept of self-government.
The Equal Protection clause is a great example, it was, and could only have been, passed at sword-point, necessitated by the fact that the Supreme Court had hijacked the Constitution to declare that when the Constitution talks about people, it cannot be construed to include blacks -- just as they would later make the same claim concerning the unborn, which remains in force. Democracy or not, a just government must, first and foremost, be a government of laws, with the Constitution being the chief law. The reality of the three post-civil-war amendments is that they were the spoils of war more than an act of democracy, but that's the hand that was forced by the Court.
Well, it's legitimate to get pissed off when the right is used to promote obscenity rather than to promote debate. I have never gotten pissed off at opinions being allowed to be expressed, only at them being silenced. Debate ultimately favors the truth. But more to the point, what the founding fathers expressed as the mechanism of their republic was a means for the law to be formed and executed by the REASON of the People while being resistant to change from pressures from the PASSION of the People. Thus the people are given the power to change everything in the law from the Constitution down, only it requires some consensus and time to do it. But when the Supreme Court places a new law above all other law, in the guise of an "interpretation" of the Constitution, (especially, as they are wont to do, in a contentious area of debate such as slavery or abortion, where a Constitutional Amendment would not be possible) the people are powerless to change it through any means other than violence.
Of course we try, and so presidential elections have become elections to s
But "rigging" the starting conditions doesn't affect free will either. Even with free will, a person's knowledge and experience affects what they choose to do. So as parents, we of course "rig the starting conditions" for our children, giving them discipline and education, though unlike God we only know statistically the effect it will have on them. But if God gave me knowledge of the future and I saw that if I sent my kid to MIT, he would invent a wind-powered trike that decapitated scores of people, and after his jail sentence he OD on heroine, whereas if I sent him to auto-mechanic school he would find joy in his work, and do it with great integrity, and raise a loving family, I would obviously choose the latter. Now he could complain that he was not free to go to MIT, and he would be right, but he was free to make the most out of the conditions that were given him, and that's exactly what he did. He freely chose his good life of love of integrity, I just provided the conditions to make it possible for him to do so. But if I had another son, and I know that whatever opportunities I gave him, he would use them for taking advantage of others, the best I could do for him would be to find the conditions which would minimize the damage he was determined to do himself and others.
Because a pantheist god is one with nature, and nature is finite.
(Glancing at the wikipedia article, there is also the term "classical pantheism" which would appear not to have that constraint, but only perhaps imply that God is manifest in everything of nature.)
If you gave me a true list of everything you did yesterday, does my knowledge of your actions nullify the free will you had in doing them? Of course not. What if I invented a time machine and traveled back to the beginning of yesterday? Does my time machine nullify your free will? It would only nullify your free will if I shared that information with you (which is why God doesn't typically share that information with us). The idea that foreknowledge implies determinism is based solely on the experience of our temporal life, since for OUR knowledge, that correlation DOES usually exist. But it is a fallacy to extrapolate that correlation to one transcendent of time.
To put it another way, distinguishing between God's past knowledge and God's future knowledge is an artificial distinction. The challenge in thinking about God is in the constraints we put on our thinking that arise from our close association with time and space.
If you mean DiCaprio, absolutely. Da Vinci, OTOH, would probably have given his right arm to have invented the internal combustion engine. In any case, he was smart enough to realize that traction with the ground would be far more efficient, WITHOUT being necessarily noisier -- claims to the contrary notwithstanding. I can only imagine how people DENIED entrance to MIT must be feeling right now.
Me too.
There is only one absolute reality. No human understanding can mirror it exactly, but some understandings are truer reflections than others. While there are obviously vast differences in understandings, I would generalize that those whose concept of reality is based upon an infinite, transcendental God (which would include the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and the majority of so-called polytheists, such as Hindus and ancient believers in the Greek and Egyptian gods) is necessarily a better reflection of reality than that of those whose with no conception of the source of nature other than nature itself (such as atheists, pantheists, and any so-called theists whose conception of God is finite rather than infinite).
Some guy has a web page that says the real value of PI is exactly 3... why don't you splash that up on the front page? ;-)
On the contrary, God being infinite and creation being finite necessarily separates Him from His creation. God being infinite is part of the essential definition of God. Being infinite also makes Him necessarily singular.
Yes, as is confirmed many times in the Bible (and probably Koran and Vedas). God is unchanging.
I'm not sure how he made this leap, but probably from temporal thinking. God's consciousness is infinite and transcends time, while we progress linearly through time. God's actions in the finite world, like the creation itself which comes from Him, are finite manifestations of the infinite. God's love and God's actions don't imply change in Him, only a change in us relative to Him.
God is superfluous and extraneous to everything that an atheist understands about reality. God is intrinsic and inherent in everything a theist understands about reality. Both have overwhelming evidence. One of them is very wrong in their understanding.
WOW!!! This is the first time I've seen any honesty expressed from the left on this issue! The left-wing ideology has an inherent hatred of open discourse and exchange of ideas -- perhaps because subconsciously they know that their ideas cannot stand up to the scrutiny of reason. The people who would silence opposing views by "modding" online are the same ones who would silence them by violence in person. I've endured plenty of both kinds of attacks over the years, and I still find it disgusting every time, and the antithesis of the Good that the human race is capable of being.
Of course they're not supposed to have unfettered access to the laws. That's why politicians can do pretty much as they please in between elections. But their power to govern is derived upon the consent of the people. There is no other legitimate source of power. When judges change the law, especially the when they change the constitution, they do so without the consent of the people, and therefore illegitimately.
The principles in Marbury represent the only reasonable reading of the Constitution in light of the legal framework out if which it was written. But if you're saying that that one man's opinion (as expressed in Marbury) should be just as foundational as the Constitution, with no vote or ratification, and therefore it should have more weight than even a unanimous resolution of Congress signed by the president, that is beyond absurd. Judges have the power to set aside one law when that law is incompatible with a higher law, such as the Constitution. They DO NOT have have the legitimate power to set aside laws according to their own tastes, beliefs, convictions, feelings, or anything else.
If by "activist" you mean deciding cases according to the written law, then yes. Otherwise no. If judges are being activists, then the People are supposed to be insurrectionists and revolutionaries.
I think by-and-large the public selects candidates based on the most important issues, particularly the character of the nominee. Unfortunately, one of the president's greatest powers has become the power to select Supreme Court nominees, making his judicial philosophy one of most important issues for many people, as the vote constitutes virtually the only influence short of taking to arms that the people have over any issues that the Supreme Court has usurped. I don't know if that constitutes a legitimate "issue" or just the result of the farce of a Supreme-Court-ruled nation.
And yes, 1 in 5 people, IS exactly representative. What else would you think "representative" means?
Yeah, it hardly seems fair. They'll still be all mad, and we'll be like, "Dude, that was like 4 million years ago. Get over it!"
Thanks for saying so, and I agree. It's an incredibly disturbing trend that is increasingly evident on the left that's spreading from universities to other parts of life. Like the "fairness doctrine" which Pelosi is trying to resurrect to get right-wing pundits off the radio by legislation.
It was the most significant story of yesterday, though not something that takes much time to tell. Today, the Democratic response to the commutation is the #2 story on foxnews.com, with the Brittish terror probe #1.
"I found the definition of Facism interesting...Sounds like the Bush administration to me."
Nuh-uh, the Republicans aren't fascists, the Democrats are; and that wikipidia definition was written by a liberal fascist. Now just watch, I'll get a "flame-bait" while you get an "insightfull."
Sure it could. He could have Congress's approval rating.