That was a nice, if insincere, effort. But it fails. The plants created on day 3 were ALL the plants -- trees, grass, flowers, you name it. There is no more creation of plants after day 3. No prototypes. Sorry.
The Hebrew text doesn't support what you are suggesting. The English text doesn't support what you are suggesting. There is not a hint in the book of those days in Genesis 1 being anything other than 24-hour regular days.
As for circular arguments -- I would love it if more evolutionists would admit to using them. Personally, I freely admit it. I use them. Everyone does, because there's no other choice. Evolutionists have assumed things as true that they have never proven.
Tell me, does the sun come up? Does the sun go down?
Unless you make a habit each morning of saying "Ahh, the earth has once again completed a rotation on its axis so that my particular location on its surface now faces the sun!", I suggest you quit attacking the Bible for using the language of appearance. Because you do the same, friend.
It is a fanciful error -- applied very hypocritically, since I think we can safely say that you do the same thing -- to suggest that what is true must meet contemporary standards of precision of expression. I suspect that on occasion you have been known to say "I'm starving." Well, were you telling the truth or not? How about "It's hotter than hell out here!" Oh really? So does the use of hyperbole invalidate your statement if you say this? Of course not!
See my other posting with respect to your questions. BTW, they didn't take a lifetime to answer. Does that make you a liar? It doesn't? My, you are rather capricious in your standards. You seem to have one standard for your own speech, and another for God's (as if you have any right to judge his Word -- which you DON'T).
I'll skip the email for now since finger says professionalnerd.com doesn't exist.
1. How must I be saved? We are saved by grace through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8, John 3:16). Specifically, Christ's death on the cross is the satisfaction of the divine justice required for the sins of his people. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). God accepts Christ's death in our place (Romans 5, the whole chapter). God treats Christ's death as satisfaction of his justice for all who trust in Christ's death to do exactly that for them.
How can God be moral when he calls for ethnic clensing and the murder of infants by ripping them out of the wombs of their pregnant mothers?With respect to 'ethnic cleansing': you seem to assume that the Amorites, the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the rest were highly moral people. They were not. They were wicked, evil people fully deserving death. See Romans 6:23 again. Yes, this extends to children as well: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23): that 'all' includes children. The surprising thing is not that God chooses to execute some people; the surprising thing is that he tolerates the life of anyone since we are all in open rebellion against him! As to the "ripping" of babies out of the wombs of mothers -- please show me where that is commanded by God. I dispute that he ever commands it, but I could certainly be mistaken. It is prophesied by Hosea that Samaria's pregnant women will suffer this, but nowhere does God command anyone to do it.
3. Why would God kill people for petty reasons, such as touching the ark of the covenant or merely NOT praising God (Acts 12:23) and yet he let me survive after committing deliberate blashpemy?
Do you presume to judge God? How nice for you. Any transgression of God's law deserves death. The fact that he does not often act instantly nor miraculously to end the lives of sinners is an act of grace and mercy. As to Acts 12, I'm not sure you understand it correctly. The people were praising Herod as a god (verse 22). It seems to me that the point of verse 23 is that Herod accepted this. Nevertheless, sin is sin, and the wages of it is death (Rom. 6:23 again). As for you: count your blessings. The Lord may not always be so merciful as to excuse your blasphemies, and his mercy surely ends the day you die if you don't repent.
4. Is a bat a bird?
Depends upon how you're classifying them, doesn't it? The Bible isn't intended to be a book on biological taxonomy, and the way *we* classify them is hardly the only way it can be done. If I want a list of all egg-layers, I have to include the platypus. If I want a list of all flying creatures, I have to include the bat. The Bible does not concern itself with modern zoology. It is perfectly legitimate to classify animals based upon how they move, as the Bible seems to do with flying things and creeping things. This is not as precise as *you* might like, but it's hardly erroneous. It is not useful for many modern applications, but so what? It's not inaccurate.
5. Jesus made a fig tree wither. Did it wither immediately or not immediately?The fig tree in Matt. 21 withered immediately. Whether the fig tree in Mark 11 was the same fig tree is up for debate. Even assuming that it was, how do you know that some of the disciples didn't miss it on the first day, and only noticed it the following morning? Or heck, they might have been so astounded that they commented on it again the next day. Is this supposed to be a problem? Sorry, I'm not impressed.
6. How many Gods are there - 1, 3, or 4? One. Isaiah 45:5.
7. Did both thieves crucified beside Jesus curse him, or did one curse him and the other praise him?Really, I'm waiting for these to get tough. These are garden variety comparative religion class "objections." Obviously one of the two thieves had a change of heart after initially heaping abuse on the Lord.
8. How can God be both just and merciful? Now this is an odd question. You seem to falsely think that justice and mercy are somehow incompatible -- that mercy is defined as somehow ignoring justice. Wrong. If God in his mercy delays the day of judgment, that day is nonetheless coming. You ought instead to take advantage of that mercy to repent.
9. How can God be considered just when he punishes many for the acts of one?It's called federal headship. Adam was our representative. On the other hand, God extends salvation to many for the acts of one (Jesus Christ). Are you going to tell God what is just and what is not? How bold of you! How brash!
10. How can God be considered just when he punishes one for the acts of many? See #9. God -- the one who suffers the wrongs of our sins, is free to declare how his justice will be satisfied. "On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?" (Romans 9:20).
11. How can God be considered merciful when he would punish multitudes of people with eternal torture?
That's justice. They deserve it. You seem to have an underappreciation of how beastly wicked it is to disobey God. The more astounding thing is that God saves anyone, because we all deserve hellfire.
12. What happens to the souls of aborted fetuses?They go straight to hell. Salvation comes through faith in Christ and nothing else. God is sovereign, and he is free to save whom he wishes, but there is no indication in the Bible whatsoever that the aborted babies of unbelievers go anywhere than straight to hell. Those babies are sinners just like the rest of us.
This is already quite long, but I have to add a bit more. It's really quite irrelevant whether I am able to satisfy you with my answers. The Bible is God's Word. Period. It is not subject to being "proven" by you or anyone. On the contrary, it is YOU (and me) that must submit to the Bible. The fact that there are things you don't understand has nothing to do with whether the Bible is God's Word. All that demonstrates is that you are fallible, like every other human being. Friend, you need to repent of your rebellion against God. That's your fundamental problem, and it's not going away.
If you want me to email you, you're going to have to give me a working address.
The scientific method cannot establish the Big Bang, because it cannot be replicated in the lab. The scientific method cannot establish that God does not exist, either -- yet that does not stop the evolutionists from confidently asserting it. Go think.
Try harmonizing evolution with the fact that the sun was created after the earth and plants (see Genesis 1). Try harmonizing evolution with the fact that God created man out of dust.
Please explain how evolution can be harmonized with the fact that God says he created the sun AFTER the earth and AFTER plants. They can't both be right.
You are perfectly free to believe what you want to, and so am I.
Actually, this turns out not to be the case. God does not give us the freedom to believe anything we wish. We are morally obligated to believe the truth. Doing anything else is a sin. You are not free to interpret the Bible anyway you wish.
If Genesis 1 is taken as metaphor God is a liar. There is nothing in the text of the Bible anywhere to suggest that it is metaphor. The sequence of events in Genesis 1 cannot be reconciled with evolution. Plants -- the earth, for that matter -- don't pre-date the sun in the evolutionistic scheme. No amount of metaphoric scripture-twisting will change that. It's that simple. You may prefer to accept the assertions of God-hating scientists, but God will hold you accountable for it.
I suppose that means the pope (who has said that evolution does not conflict with faith) is a troll.
No, this means that the pope is either a syncretist or just plain wrong. I suspect the latter; I've never heard him say anything (that I can recall just now) to suggest that he's a syncretist). But what of it? The pope is just a man. When he abandons the Bible, he falls into error just like everyone else.
I hope that was the entertaining response you were looking for.
It does not say how. To my knowledge, there is nothing in the Bible that says God did not create man through evolution.
Genesis says that God created us from the dust of the earth. See Genesis 2 and 3 and the book of Job. This is not evolution.
Besides this, the sequence of events in Genesis cannot be reconciled with evolution, nor can they be reconciled with the idea that a day is something besides 24 hours. Note how plants were created before the sun as a single example. Now, either the Bible is correct about this or the evolutionists are. The two cannot be reconciled.
The problem with so-called "theistic evolutionists" is that they are attempting to bring harmony to radically contradictory views. They are trying to harmonize what God says with the views of men who hate God.
But a day is a relative measure of time. It's probably not even meant to be taken literally, being more of a symbolic amount of time.
See Genesis 1, where we are told that a day amounts to "morning and evening." How is that not to be taken literally? Granted, the term "day" does (in both Hebrew and English) have the ability to refer both to 24 hours and to an indeterminate amount of time -- depending upon context. There is nothing in the context of Genesis 1, in Hebrew or English (yes, I do know Hebrew) that suggests any other interpretation than that of 24 hours.
This would not even be an issue except that some people prefer to judge the Bible by the findings of men who hate God rather than the other way around. The Bible does NOT support evolution. Period. Any attempt to harmonize the two is hopelessly compromised.
I'm a Roman Catholic, but that doesn't mean I can't use my brain.
Then please do so. There is nothing in the text of Genesis 1 to suggest that the days of which it speaks are anything other than literal 24-hour days.
The truthfulness of the Bible does not change with the times. God does not lie, and he knows all the facts.
Genesis says, basically, that God put man on earth, and had him name all the animals. It was written in a way that would sound good to the Jews of that time, and nobody of now.
What Genesis says is that God created man out of the dust of the earth -- no evolution, thanks. Now, either this is true, or it isn't. The truthfulness of something can't and doesn't change. What does change is the willingness of human beings to accept it. Those who deny Genesis 1 do so at their own peril before God.
As a Catholic, you should accept the fact that the Bible is God's Word. So either you accept that Genesis 1 is true, or you are playing games, it seems to me. Evolution is incompatible with the Bible. There is absolutely no point in trying to sugarcoat it.
It must be disconcerting for you to realize that there are plenty of trolls, syncretists, and wrong people out there.
I am not even remotely troubled by the fact that some, few, or many people believe in something as grotesquely wrong as theistic evolution -- with the single exception of being concerned for their souls.
Evolution and Genesis 1 cannot be harmonized. There is no getting around it. One or the other must be jettisoned, or a person must hold in suspension two beliefs that are so manifestly contradictory that I wonder if there is anything that he won't believe.
Sorry, but those are the facts.
Unless you'd like to demonstrate that Genesis 1 "can" be harmonized with evolution?
Religion claims absolute truth, scientists (at least the good scientists) only claim to do the best they can.
Ha Ha! That's a good one! Leno must have really been funny the night you heard that one.
Really now. If what you say is really true, then the ranks of "good" scientists must number in the single digits. Let's be honest, friend. Scientists make absolutist claims about evolution, the big bang, the age of the universe, the non-existence of God, etc. all the time. And I know of only one scientist (Lewontin, but there may be others) who is willing to admit the highly religious nature of this behavior (and if you didn't know, Lewontin -- a Harvard biologist -- is no theist).
Get a grip, boy. Absolutist claims are characteristic of all religions -- including evolutionism.
Okay, I'll call your bluff. Why don't you take ten minutes and ask some questions about the Bible. Let's see if it takes me a "lifetime" to answer them or not.
Oh, by the way: please don't delude yourself as to whether or not you have made a leap of faith or two. I will guarantee you that you have, m'boy.
For libel or slander to occur, it is necessary that what is said/published be untrue. More than that is necessary, however. If we make our lies about another public, *that* is libelous/slanderous. If they are privately shared with another person, that's a different matter. Though still not a moral thing to do, I don't think they could drag you into court for it.
As I understand it, libel and slander only occur when lies about another are made public. So -- though I think it's abominable that the police would lie to try to wring a confession out of a suspect, I don't think that they could be sued unless they went to the media and started broadcasting their lies.
But then again, I'm not a lawyer, so I could be wrong.
...or slander, or defamation when the content of said attacks on another's character is untrue.
You don't have a right to lie about others in such a way as to damage their reputation. The First Amendment guarantees your right to say what you wish within the confines of telling the truth.
It's astonishing that there would even be one moment of debate about this.
As to anonymous free speech -- even when it is true speech -- judging from the example of the founders (viz., The Federalist), I don't see how anyone can deny that anonymity is not something that the government can legitimately strip from us. Some nuts might say "If you're not doing anything wrong what do you have to worry about?" This is a red herring that does not address my right to be secure and retain privacy in my personal affairs.
I have no problem whatever with libel being prosecuted in the courts. But I don't think the jurisdictional issues have been entirely resolved -- even if there is good reason to treat this particular case as having occurred in Virginia. The larger problem is that people have committed/will perform acts on the Internet which are illegal in some places but not in others. What laws will cover these cases? Am I responsible for criticisms of the Chinese government (something that's illegal in China) if my postings manage to get through their Net blockade? Who's laws appertain? It appears to me, at first blush, that the only sensible course is to apply the laws of the jurisdiction in which the person actually lives (unless there's a contractual agreement on the part of the parties involved that moves that jurisdiction elsewhere). Otherwise, I become subject to laws that I don't necessarily even know exist.
My concern was principally that the original poster did not seem to understand that online crime must be punished, as he was whining about "archaic autocracy." The critical issue is one of jurisdiction and enforcement.
According to the NYTimes article, this was not about pornography:
Bochan alleged that in some of their messages, the defendants accused him of being a pedophile, according to the court papers.
This is clearly a question of possible defamation (if he is not a pedophile), and because it was done in a published form it could be libel.
I'll relent on the question of libel/slander being an actual crime; I think you're right that it's only a tort. I disagree that the Constitution provides protection for deliberate attempts to damage the reputation of others through spreading untrue information about them. However, it is neither a tort nor a crime to spread the truth about another person, no matter how unpleasant that truth is. This is something the Constitution does protect. The critical issue has to do with the truthfulness of the attacks upon another person's character.
This is not a blow against free speech. The Bill of Rights doesn't guarantee your right to libel someone else, nor to slander them. If you do this, it is a crime. The crime must be adjudicated somewhere. The question is: where?
The problem here is that this question is not so easily answered. Can someone in another country be held to account for an online action that is legal in his own country but a crime somewhere else? These jurisdictional issues need to be addressed. It does no good whatsoever to say that laws shouldn't apply (for whatever odd reason) to things we do on the Internet; the simple fact is that people do bad things online just as they do in the "real world" and they need to be punished for them. This problem is not going away, and blabbering about an alleged "autocracy" won't change things.
Because, on a Linux system, the security model depends heavily on the concept of a Root superuser account, once a process or user gets root access the whole system is basically defenseless against it.
Yes, and how can a process/user obtain root? One of two ways: becoming root (by password) or by exploiting a bug. The first method is a "weakness" (if you want to call it that) of any OS -- if you can authenticate yourself with greater privilege, you have greater privileges. Big deal. The second is a matter of a code flaw -- not a design flaw.
By contrast, under Windows I am root all the time. There's no security bugs to seek out, because the present user has full rights to the system. Even under NT, Office requires write access to the System32 directory.
So who has the design flaw? No process can just upgrade its privileges under *nix. Privileges must first be granted. If they are obtained any other way, it is a bug.
But take Joe/Jo average Linux system and I *bet* you'll find 90% of login time is as root.
Perhaps -- but this is testimony not to a design flaw in the OS, but to foolishness on the part of the user who wrongly thinks he needs to be root in order to do anything.
On the other hand, with Win9X the problem is systemic: you are simply assumed to be root, and therefore have absolute control over the system all the time. This is stupid. It is asinine, and there's no way you can convince any rational person that the Unix security model is inferior to Windows 9x.
A "properly locked down" NT box still requires write access to the System32 directory if a user is going to use Office 97.
This is not secure. This is stupid. This is mind-bogglingly stupid. I will grant that NT security is more finely-grained than Unix's, but M$ defeats it itself in some instances.
Actually, the first thing I do after installing Red Hat is uninstall linuxconf (followed by uninstalling GNOME). I do my configuring from the command line for the most part. It's not hard to admin an RH6 box from the command line. Far from it. I could probably get away without uninstalling linuxconf, but I don't want it messing with my config files.
The default bash for Red Hat is still 1.14. Bash 2.x has been out for at least a year. Only in 6.0 has Red Hat added it to the distribution, and then only as an option, and it's called 'bash2' (so that both versions can be installed).
What does this say about your theory that Red Hat cares nothing for stability?
It says that you don't know what you are babbling about, that you are raving without knowing what you're talking about. Red Hat typically does not release kernel upgrades -- except for security reasons. Does that sound like they care nothing about stability?
A four-month code freeze does not guarantee that bugs won't exist. Debian was bitten by the latest remote crash bug in the kernel just like everyone else. Debian had a bug in their ipopd daemon (just fixed) that allowed remote users to get a shell. What good was the code freeze?
I'm not saying a code freeze is a bad idea at all. But you sound like nothing but someone with a chip on his shoulder. You don't make any sense.
If Micros~1 ever gets control of Red Hat, my then-current install of Red Hat will be my LAST install of Red Hat. I guarantee it. I will never willingly again give one red cent to Bill Gates. He has raped my box and me more than enough.
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The Hebrew text doesn't support what you are suggesting. The English text doesn't support what you are suggesting. There is not a hint in the book of those days in Genesis 1 being anything other than 24-hour regular days.
As for circular arguments -- I would love it if more evolutionists would admit to using them. Personally, I freely admit it. I use them. Everyone does, because there's no other choice. Evolutionists have assumed things as true that they have never proven.
Unless you make a habit each morning of saying "Ahh, the earth has once again completed a rotation on its axis so that my particular location on its surface now faces the sun!", I suggest you quit attacking the Bible for using the language of appearance. Because you do the same, friend.
It is a fanciful error -- applied very hypocritically, since I think we can safely say that you do the same thing -- to suggest that what is true must meet contemporary standards of precision of expression. I suspect that on occasion you have been known to say "I'm starving." Well, were you telling the truth or not? How about "It's hotter than hell out here!" Oh really? So does the use of hyperbole invalidate your statement if you say this? Of course not!
See my other posting with respect to your questions. BTW, they didn't take a lifetime to answer. Does that make you a liar? It doesn't? My, you are rather capricious in your standards. You seem to have one standard for your own speech, and another for God's (as if you have any right to judge his Word -- which you DON'T).
1. How must I be saved? We are saved by grace through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8, John 3:16). Specifically, Christ's death on the cross is the satisfaction of the divine justice required for the sins of his people. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). God accepts Christ's death in our place (Romans 5, the whole chapter). God treats Christ's death as satisfaction of his justice for all who trust in Christ's death to do exactly that for them.
How can God be moral when he calls for ethnic clensing and the murder of infants by ripping them out of the wombs of their pregnant mothers?With respect to 'ethnic cleansing': you seem to assume that the Amorites, the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the rest were highly moral people. They were not. They were wicked, evil people fully deserving death. See Romans 6:23 again. Yes, this extends to children as well: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23): that 'all' includes children. The surprising thing is not that God chooses to execute some people; the surprising thing is that he tolerates the life of anyone since we are all in open rebellion against him! As to the "ripping" of babies out of the wombs of mothers -- please show me where that is commanded by God. I dispute that he ever commands it, but I could certainly be mistaken. It is prophesied by Hosea that Samaria's pregnant women will suffer this, but nowhere does God command anyone to do it.
3. Why would God kill people for petty reasons, such as touching the ark of the covenant or merely NOT praising God (Acts 12:23) and yet he let me survive after committing deliberate blashpemy?
Do you presume to judge God? How nice for you. Any transgression of God's law deserves death. The fact that he does not often act instantly nor miraculously to end the lives of sinners is an act of grace and mercy. As to Acts 12, I'm not sure you understand it correctly. The people were praising Herod as a god (verse 22). It seems to me that the point of verse 23 is that Herod accepted this. Nevertheless, sin is sin, and the wages of it is death (Rom. 6:23 again). As for you: count your blessings. The Lord may not always be so merciful as to excuse your blasphemies, and his mercy surely ends the day you die if you don't repent.
4. Is a bat a bird?
Depends upon how you're classifying them, doesn't it? The Bible isn't intended to be a book on biological taxonomy, and the way *we* classify them is hardly the only way it can be done. If I want a list of all egg-layers, I have to include the platypus. If I want a list of all flying creatures, I have to include the bat. The Bible does not concern itself with modern zoology. It is perfectly legitimate to classify animals based upon how they move, as the Bible seems to do with flying things and creeping things. This is not as precise as *you* might like, but it's hardly erroneous. It is not useful for many modern applications, but so what? It's not inaccurate.
5. Jesus made a fig tree wither. Did it wither immediately or not immediately?The fig tree in Matt. 21 withered immediately. Whether the fig tree in Mark 11 was the same fig tree is up for debate. Even assuming that it was, how do you know that some of the disciples didn't miss it on the first day, and only noticed it the following morning? Or heck, they might have been so astounded that they commented on it again the next day. Is this supposed to be a problem? Sorry, I'm not impressed.
6. How many Gods are there - 1, 3, or 4? One. Isaiah 45:5.
7. Did both thieves crucified beside Jesus curse him, or did one curse him and the other praise him?Really, I'm waiting for these to get tough. These are garden variety comparative religion class "objections." Obviously one of the two thieves had a change of heart after initially heaping abuse on the Lord.
8. How can God be both just and merciful? Now this is an odd question. You seem to falsely think that justice and mercy are somehow incompatible -- that mercy is defined as somehow ignoring justice. Wrong. If God in his mercy delays the day of judgment, that day is nonetheless coming. You ought instead to take advantage of that mercy to repent.
9. How can God be considered just when he punishes many for the acts of one?It's called federal headship. Adam was our representative. On the other hand, God extends salvation to many for the acts of one (Jesus Christ). Are you going to tell God what is just and what is not? How bold of you! How brash!
10. How can God be considered just when he punishes one for the acts of many? See #9. God -- the one who suffers the wrongs of our sins, is free to declare how his justice will be satisfied. "On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?" (Romans 9:20).
11. How can God be considered merciful when he would punish multitudes of people with eternal torture?
That's justice. They deserve it. You seem to have an underappreciation of how beastly wicked it is to disobey God. The more astounding thing is that God saves anyone, because we all deserve hellfire.
12. What happens to the souls of aborted fetuses?They go straight to hell. Salvation comes through faith in Christ and nothing else. God is sovereign, and he is free to save whom he wishes, but there is no indication in the Bible whatsoever that the aborted babies of unbelievers go anywhere than straight to hell. Those babies are sinners just like the rest of us.
This is already quite long, but I have to add a bit more. It's really quite irrelevant whether I am able to satisfy you with my answers. The Bible is God's Word. Period. It is not subject to being "proven" by you or anyone. On the contrary, it is YOU (and me) that must submit to the Bible. The fact that there are things you don't understand has nothing to do with whether the Bible is God's Word. All that demonstrates is that you are fallible, like every other human being. Friend, you need to repent of your rebellion against God. That's your fundamental problem, and it's not going away.
If you want me to email you, you're going to have to give me a working address.
The scientific method cannot establish the Big Bang, because it cannot be replicated in the lab. The scientific method cannot establish that God does not exist, either -- yet that does not stop the evolutionists from confidently asserting it. Go think.
You are perfectly free to believe what you want to, and so am I.
Actually, this turns out not to be the case. God does not give us the freedom to believe anything we wish. We are morally obligated to believe the truth. Doing anything else is a sin. You are not free to interpret the Bible anyway you wish.
No, this means that the pope is either a syncretist or just plain wrong. I suspect the latter; I've never heard him say anything (that I can recall just now) to suggest that he's a syncretist). But what of it? The pope is just a man. When he abandons the Bible, he falls into error just like everyone else.
I hope that was the entertaining response you were looking for.
Genesis says that God created us from the dust of the earth. See Genesis 2 and 3 and the book of Job. This is not evolution.
Besides this, the sequence of events in Genesis cannot be reconciled with evolution, nor can they be reconciled with the idea that a day is something besides 24 hours. Note how plants were created before the sun as a single example. Now, either the Bible is correct about this or the evolutionists are. The two cannot be reconciled.
The problem with so-called "theistic evolutionists" is that they are attempting to bring harmony to radically contradictory views. They are trying to harmonize what God says with the views of men who hate God.
But a day is a relative measure of time. It's probably not even meant to be taken literally, being more of a symbolic amount of time.
See Genesis 1, where we are told that a day amounts to "morning and evening." How is that not to be taken literally? Granted, the term "day" does (in both Hebrew and English) have the ability to refer both to 24 hours and to an indeterminate amount of time -- depending upon context. There is nothing in the context of Genesis 1, in Hebrew or English (yes, I do know Hebrew) that suggests any other interpretation than that of 24 hours.
This would not even be an issue except that some people prefer to judge the Bible by the findings of men who hate God rather than the other way around. The Bible does NOT support evolution. Period. Any attempt to harmonize the two is hopelessly compromised.
Then please do so. There is nothing in the text of Genesis 1 to suggest that the days of which it speaks are anything other than literal 24-hour days.
The truthfulness of the Bible does not change with the times. God does not lie, and he knows all the facts.
Genesis says, basically, that God put man on earth, and had him name all the animals. It was written in a way that would sound good to the Jews of that time, and nobody of now.
What Genesis says is that God created man out of the dust of the earth -- no evolution, thanks. Now, either this is true, or it isn't. The truthfulness of something can't and doesn't change. What does change is the willingness of human beings to accept it. Those who deny Genesis 1 do so at their own peril before God.
As a Catholic, you should accept the fact that the Bible is God's Word. So either you accept that Genesis 1 is true, or you are playing games, it seems to me. Evolution is incompatible with the Bible. There is absolutely no point in trying to sugarcoat it.
I am not even remotely troubled by the fact that some, few, or many people believe in something as grotesquely wrong as theistic evolution -- with the single exception of being concerned for their souls.
Evolution and Genesis 1 cannot be harmonized. There is no getting around it. One or the other must be jettisoned, or a person must hold in suspension two beliefs that are so manifestly contradictory that I wonder if there is anything that he won't believe.
Sorry, but those are the facts.
Unless you'd like to demonstrate that Genesis 1 "can" be harmonized with evolution?
I won't hold my breath waiting.
A troll, a syncretist, and/or just plain wrong. The two are absolutely incompatible. Period.
Ha Ha! That's a good one! Leno must have really been funny the night you heard that one.
Really now. If what you say is really true, then the ranks of "good" scientists must number in the single digits. Let's be honest, friend. Scientists make absolutist claims about evolution, the big bang, the age of the universe, the non-existence of God, etc. all the time. And I know of only one scientist (Lewontin, but there may be others) who is willing to admit the highly religious nature of this behavior (and if you didn't know, Lewontin -- a Harvard biologist -- is no theist).
Get a grip, boy. Absolutist claims are characteristic of all religions -- including evolutionism.
Oh, by the way: please don't delude yourself as to whether or not you have made a leap of faith or two. I will guarantee you that you have, m'boy.
I'm waiting...
As I understand it, libel and slander only occur when lies about another are made public. So -- though I think it's abominable that the police would lie to try to wring a confession out of a suspect, I don't think that they could be sued unless they went to the media and started broadcasting their lies.
But then again, I'm not a lawyer, so I could be wrong.
You don't have a right to lie about others in such a way as to damage their reputation. The First Amendment guarantees your right to say what you wish within the confines of telling the truth.
It's astonishing that there would even be one moment of debate about this.
As to anonymous free speech -- even when it is true speech -- judging from the example of the founders (viz., The Federalist), I don't see how anyone can deny that anonymity is not something that the government can legitimately strip from us. Some nuts might say "If you're not doing anything wrong what do you have to worry about?" This is a red herring that does not address my right to be secure and retain privacy in my personal affairs.
According to the NYTimes article, this was not about pornography:
Bochan alleged that in some of their messages, the defendants accused him of being a pedophile, according to the court papers.
This is clearly a question of possible defamation (if he is not a pedophile), and because it was done in a published form it could be libel.
I'll relent on the question of libel/slander being an actual crime; I think you're right that it's only a tort. I disagree that the Constitution provides protection for deliberate attempts to damage the reputation of others through spreading untrue information about them. However, it is neither a tort nor a crime to spread the truth about another person, no matter how unpleasant that truth is. This is something the Constitution does protect. The critical issue has to do with the truthfulness of the attacks upon another person's character.
The problem here is that this question is not so easily answered. Can someone in another country be held to account for an online action that is legal in his own country but a crime somewhere else? These jurisdictional issues need to be addressed. It does no good whatsoever to say that laws shouldn't apply (for whatever odd reason) to things we do on the Internet; the simple fact is that people do bad things online just as they do in the "real world" and they need to be punished for them. This problem is not going away, and blabbering about an alleged "autocracy" won't change things.
Yes, and how can a process/user obtain root? One of two ways: becoming root (by password) or by exploiting a bug. The first method is a "weakness" (if you want to call it that) of any OS -- if you can authenticate yourself with greater privilege, you have greater privileges. Big deal. The second is a matter of a code flaw -- not a design flaw.
By contrast, under Windows I am root all the time. There's no security bugs to seek out, because the present user has full rights to the system. Even under NT, Office requires write access to the System32 directory.
So who has the design flaw? No process can just upgrade its privileges under *nix. Privileges must first be granted. If they are obtained any other way, it is a bug.
Perhaps -- but this is testimony not to a design flaw in the OS, but to foolishness on the part of the user who wrongly thinks he needs to be root in order to do anything.
On the other hand, with Win9X the problem is systemic: you are simply assumed to be root, and therefore have absolute control over the system all the time. This is stupid. It is asinine, and there's no way you can convince any rational person that the Unix security model is inferior to Windows 9x.
This is not secure. This is stupid. This is mind-bogglingly stupid. I will grant that NT security is more finely-grained than Unix's, but M$ defeats it itself in some instances.
What does this say about your theory that Red Hat cares nothing for stability?
It says that you don't know what you are babbling about, that you are raving without knowing what you're talking about. Red Hat typically does not release kernel upgrades -- except for security reasons. Does that sound like they care nothing about stability?
A four-month code freeze does not guarantee that bugs won't exist. Debian was bitten by the latest remote crash bug in the kernel just like everyone else. Debian had a bug in their ipopd daemon (just fixed) that allowed remote users to get a shell. What good was the code freeze?
I'm not saying a code freeze is a bad idea at all. But you sound like nothing but someone with a chip on his shoulder. You don't make any sense.