It's called interest. You see, the amount of money in your account represents the amount that the Bank owes you. If the bank adds $10,000 to your account, that means that the bank owes you more money- but the bank won't miss it until you withdraw it. Money doesn't need to be taken from anywhere else to increase your numbers.
Thanks to patents, it might be- apparently the compound that kills these cells is already patented. Whoever held the patents is now sitting on a potential goldmine- and they didn't even have to invest in it through research and development.
Oh noes! My supermarket is stealing from me! And here I thought that a voluntary exchange of goods and services for money was capitalism! Help, help, I'm being repressed!
I don't know about most people on/. but I don't think consider my employer or the supermarket as stealing from me- I'm entering into a mutually beneficial arangement with both of them. Just because they benefit too doesn't make it stealing. I don't even consider the government as stealing that much from me- certainly some of the government is wasteful and provides me no benefit, but I'd still rather live in America than most of the rest of the world, and paying taxes is just a condition of living here.
Furthermore, just because Bob steals from you, that doesn't give you the right to steal from Frank.
While you are correct that copyright isn't a Natural Right (like life or liberty) free music isn't a Natural Right either. You don't have a 'right' to freely copy music any more than the record companies have a 'right' to stop you from doing so. And stop equating capitalism with theft- that's even more stupid than calling copyright infringement theft.
What I found most interesting about it is that apparently people are out to get her.
"Some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut."
As long as I get to know everything my senators do, see, and watch online. Furthermore, I don't mind being wiretapped as long as I get to listen to wiretaps on congressmen. I will support almost any system that gives me the same privacy from the government as the government officials have from me.
You need to be level 30+, and have good anti-laws cards to fix your law problems. The first time she killed me, the second time I got a red card for killing the boss and lost, the third (or maybe forth) time I finally beat her down.
It's called a Sting Operation, as opposed to entrapment, which your idea is. Basically, if a police officer sends me child porn I didn't ask for, the cop is the criminal. If I ask an undercover cop for child porn, and he sends me child porn and I get busted, I'm the criminal, not the police officer. Undercover police officers are authorized to commit crimes to bring criminals to justice.
Zelda is excellent, Wii Sports and Raving Rabbids are great, but work better if you have friends to play them with. It really is the party games that make the Wii fun- Zelda works well on the GameCube, so there's no need to upgrade if you're playing by yourself.
Two things:
1. Someone investigating pedophiles will pick up a lot of child porn. Certainly police investigating a child porn ring will have to trade and download files to get in. That doesn't make his story less credible.
2. Even if he was a pedophile who chickened out and talked to the police, that means that he was unwilling to go through with his plan- i.e. he's less dangerous than the rest of them. Furthermore, by co-operating with the police he should get a reduced sentence.
What really bugs me is that of the three men they arrested, one of them, David Beavan, was a vigilante trying to stop child abuse who told the police about the plot. This man was also sentanced to 8 years for conspiracy to commit rape. I have no problem with them arresting him for some other charge- what he was doing was questionable, and I'm sure violates laws about entrapment, child porn distribution, etc. I think it's pretty clear, though, that he wasn't going to rape little girls like the others were planning to.
"When Peter came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he [Peter] was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group." (The N.I.V Bible, Galatians: 2:11-12)
So it looks like Paul did mention meeting these people. You're certainly not qualified to talk about what the New Testament says- you'd better stick to what your article says, which has much more correct information that you do. Otherwise your mistakes might mean some idiot calls you a liar on/.- something that will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Certainly if you dismiss everything in the New Testament wrote as entirely fictional, your point that the New Testament is entirely fictional holds. But you do weird leaps of logic where you accept Paul's claims of recieving 'visions' as proof of the non-existence of Jesus, and somehow interpret that as him not having any other contact with Christians, something that he most emphatically denies. (You could say that's all lies too, but why would that be so?) Also, you claim that all Christian works are unrealiable, but you somehow claim that Josephus (which is a Jewish work that still has references to miracles and the supernatural) as reliable? What discredits all the Christian testaments in your mind as completely false? Luke, especially, was written by a well-educated man in the classical historical style, and though he certainly borrowed information form Mark (which you point out was not written in the classical historical style), he also claimed to have talked to many eyewitness of Jesus, as well as following Paul for parts of his missionary journeys. (All this can be verified by simply reading Luke, and though we aren't certain that it was Luke who wrote it, it's reasonable to assume he was). It's not enough to believe that Mark was fake and Luke mis-interpreted it... In order for your theory to hold, Luke has to be a deliberate lie, Paul would have to be aware of Luke's fake story to fake his own compatible stories, and almost every book in the new testament would have been written as a deliberate lie/exageration. Furthermore, all this would have to be done long before the Church was widespread or powerful enough for this elaborate deception to be worth the effort. On top of that, the people who wrote the New Testament (Paul especially) faced huge persecution and death for proclaiming the things they had written- which makes them more likely to be deluded idiots than intelligent liars.
And you think that your conspiracy theory is the 'Brutally Honest Truth'.
You're right in that there is no way to win a debate on religious issues- all we really have is historical evidence. Historical evidence that points to there being a real Jesus that walked around preaching to people, as documented by numerous, seperate second-hand accounts. The only way of disputing that is by claiming there is a vast religious conspiracy that was so successful that we don't have good evidence for it. Believing in vast, invisible conspiracies is like believing in magical invisible fairies- you attribute amazing powers to them, incredible deeds, and no solid proof they exist.
First, there is a difference between a bad analogy and a lie- or even a mistake and a lie. Equating the two is rude.
Secondly, this is Slashdot. No one here makes eloquent arguments- they merely link to people who do. Certainly you were anything but eloquent, even if your link was.
Thirdly, if you know 10% as much as you think you do, you would realize that most historians believe Jesus was a real individual, and they aren't idiots. This is mostly because we have many second hand accounts (people who met people who claimed to have met Jesus). Luke, for instance, claims to have met hundreds of such people (though he never saw Jesus himself). Paul is also supposed to have known Peter and James, who did know him. Now, we can dismiss it all as entirely fictional (your stance, which requires an interesting conspiracy, fiction misinterpreted as true, and much deliberately false history) or we can assume that these sources had their basis in a (sorcerer/ faith healer/ lunatic/ god/ alien/ preacher) who walked around.
I find your article well researched, like I said- It's got much more of a factual basis than the DaVinci Code, for instance. However, it's asking people to accept a theory that seems much less plausible than most mainstream theories. Yes, it's possible- but I don't buy it.
P.S. Saying Josephus is the only source worth anything, and it's obviously (fake/ accidental addition), therefore no other sources are worth anything, is called a circular argument. We all know Josephus's text isn't considered reliable enough, that doesn't invalidate everything else.
P.S.S. You can believe whatever you want- and find evidence to support your own worldview. I'm just trying to warn you that no one else has to believe you. Furthermore, while you might be intelligent (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) being insulting won't win you any debates. It will just get other fanatics riled up, and the occasional eccentric that likes conversations with fanatics interested.
The only reliable documents we have that are evidence of Jesus's existance are Christian ones. (There are plenty of non-Christian evidence of Christians, which is not the same thing). While there are lots of sources, many of them reference each other.
This is established enough not to be an assumption.
You also rely on three assumptions: 1. That Jesus was important enough to be mentioned in non-Christian history, 2. That Christianity is descended from Hellenistic 'mystery religions', and 3. Early Christians heavily edited documents to fake their own history.
#1. is debateable- Even Christian texts seem to indicate that while thousands attended Jesus's speeches, only a small handful actually followed him around and followed his teachings. Some random guy preaching for a couple of years, being denounced as a heretic, and getting killed was actually fairly common. (This is actually quite embarassing for Christians- That despite long-term reach, his short term influence was minimal)
#2 is likewise debateable- There is a lot of correlation between Christianity and certain mystery religions. This can be explained by a) coincidence (There were a LOT of mystery religions, it's not surprising some of them were similar) b) Christianity borrowing imagery/ideas from other sources (which happend) c)mystery religions borrowing ideas from Christianity (which also happened).
#3 is hard to prove/disprove. It's pretty clear that Christians did edit Josephus (though this could have been accidental, as your article points out). Certainly there was a convergence of doctrine that created the Catholic Church, and many opposing views became labeled as heresies (and thus are harder to find). Of course, most the re-writing of the actual 'books' of the New Testament would have had to come before the New Testament was standardized.
From these assumptions (backed, of course, with evidence), it is then argued that it makes more sense for Christianity to stem from a mis-interpretation of a similar mystery religion's fiction than it does for Christianity to have stemmed from an actual person- easy enough to do when you've already dismissed all Christian sources that don't support your point as fiction.
I liked the article and found it well-researched. If Christ is entirely fictional, like he claims, that's how it could have happened. I want you to realize, though, that just because an argument is well-researched and well thought out doesn't mean it's correct. Many people disagree with one or more of his assumptions, and even if they agreed with them all, that doesn't mean they agree with his conclusion.
Your agression in defending this idea is entertaining- you clearly don't want anyone disbelieving your 'one, true way' of interpreting Christian history. But the article you linked to (and the research that your responses encouraged me to do) taught me a lot of interesting things. Thanks for being annoying enough to make me learn something.
I hope you realize that you are defending a minority opinion. I didn't even realize there were intelligent people out there who believed this before today. Keep in mind that it is the job of the extremist to prove his point, not scream at the mainstream people to disprove it. (i.e. it is the creationist's job to show evidence for creationism, not the evolutionist's job to disprove it).
This theory has a few problems with it. First:
If Jesus wasn't a real person, why didn't people say so? You'd think that evidence that Jesus didn't exist at all would have been noteworthy back in the day. You're implying that people today are smart enough to figure out that Jesus was just a story, but back then even the critics of Christianity thought they were dealing with the idiot followers of an actual (dead) person.
Second:
Why would people believe an allegory was true in the first place?
It's much simpler to believe that Jesus was some heretic whose deeds were greatly exagerrated than to believe that he didn't exist at all.
I will cede the point the Ceasar has a greater diversity of sources supporting his existence than Jesus does. Of course, Ceasar was also worshipped as a god, but I don't think your belief in Ceasar means that you think he is one. My point was simply that Jesus and Ceasar are both people we have no direct proof of existing, but we have a huge number of sources supporting their existence. It's much simpler to believe in some actual figure than to believe that Jesus was a myth people misinterpreted as true.
From your link itself:
"Note: Much of this article puts forward original ideas and is based on readings of the English translations of primary source material. The primary source materials for the article are those that are included in the body of the article. Additional resources which may not have previously been linked or referenced above are noted below."
Even the author admits it's his own theory, which he backs up with his own study and research (because he can't find other people who support this idea). It's hard to imagine that the Gospel of Mark was intended as religious fiction (think an ancient 'Left Behind' series) and was then believed en mass by people unaware that it was written as fiction. Certain points of the article have a lot of support- for instance most reasearchers do believe Mark was the first gospel, and Luke and Matthew drew a lot of information from it. He's also correct in that Mark is not written in a formal historical style the way Luke is, but that doesn't mean it's not meant to be a factual account.
Proving the non-existance of Christ would be nice- but that's like proving the non-existance of Julius Ceaser. There's too much evidence that some guy named Jesus walked around preaching to people and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him. Just like there's too much evidence that Julius Ceaser existed and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him (or at least kill for him).
In that case we still go with the 'no harm, no foul' theory. No one is harmed by the auction ending- the seller still shot himself in the foot by raising the price beyond what others would pay. The buyers aren't hurt by this.
Not that anyone reads those pesky things... but your concerns are mentioned.
It's not that it's energy negative- we still come out ahead- it's that it's not energy positive enough. There's a lot of other things we could be doing with that corn instead of turning it into ethanol. We are paying tax money through subsidies for something that's not going to be a long term solution. It's a waste of money and resources that could be spent elsewhere.
I do think Unions are mostly money-grabbing idiots at this point in history- a good friend of mine had his company picketed because the workers there were part of a small electrical worker's union instead of the big electrical worker's union. They weren't trying to protect the interests of the workers- they were trying to protect the interests of their pockets.
On the other hand, an ISP that doesn't show web pages of strikers is as bad as AT&T not letting you call people opposed to its monopoly. That's far worse behavior than even Unions exhibit. I'm all for the power of people to organize- and if they destroy their own jobs because they're idiots, I'm not going to sympathize.
The states pay for roads, education, and police. If you were paying for a road maintenance company, private schools, and a small mercenary force, it would still be expensive to work.
If you want to avoid taxations on savings, go for an IRA. That way you only have to pay taxes once on the money.
But if the exec quits/is fired, they don't get to keep the stuff... so it's not as unfair as you make it out to be. It does let the exec dodge some taxes, though.
Suppose that I'm selling a valuble widget that I want to sell for $6. However, the highest bid so far is $4. Suppose I bid $5 on my own auction. Then there are two possibilities:
1. No one bids more money. I end up paying Ebay to sell it to myself.
2. Someone bids the $6 I want and I sell it to them. Clearly they are still willing to pay $6 for it so I don't think I've 'harmed' them.
Basically, if I bid up my own auction I increase Ebay's profits, harm no one else, and potentially hurt myself. Why on earth should EBay stop this? They have no motivation to do so- no one is being harmed except the people who do this (and then only sometimes).
Looking at Wikipeida we find that out of the 14 freest places to live, 'Republic' is part of the title on 4 of them. Looking at the 8 worst places to live, 'Republic', 'Democratic', and 'People's' are part of the title of 6 of them, and they appear a total of 10 times in the name of 8 countries. So it seems that my point has some factual backing, and there's a strong correlation between having 'Republic', 'Democratic', and 'People's' in a countries name and it being none of the above.
Democratic Republic of the Congo- Welcome to the land of warlords, genocide, and more genocide.
Central African Republic- Less than half the genocide of its neighbor in the congo.
Dominican and Czech Republics, and Macedonia- actual democracies.
So two of your five examples help prove my point- and when you start stacking adjectives together- like 'People's Democratic Republic of Korea' you know you've got one of the worst places to live on Earth.
Also, why on earth would you get an 'official government email' from someone in these countries? That's less likely than you being a Viagra dealer and have Viagra mentioned correctly in your email. That's also why different people will have different spam filters for their mail- if I worked with the Republic of Ireland or was a professor of Greek history I would probably see the word 'Republic' in legitimate email.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called interest. You see, the amount of money in your account represents the amount that the Bank owes you. If the bank adds $10,000 to your account, that means that the bank owes you more money- but the bank won't miss it until you withdraw it. Money doesn't need to be taken from anywhere else to increase your numbers.
Thanks to patents, it might be- apparently the compound that kills these cells is already patented. Whoever held the patents is now sitting on a potential goldmine- and they didn't even have to invest in it through research and development.
Oh noes! My supermarket is stealing from me! And here I thought that a voluntary exchange of goods and services for money was capitalism! Help, help, I'm being repressed!
/. but I don't think consider my employer or the supermarket as stealing from me- I'm entering into a mutually beneficial arangement with both of them. Just because they benefit too doesn't make it stealing. I don't even consider the government as stealing that much from me- certainly some of the government is wasteful and provides me no benefit, but I'd still rather live in America than most of the rest of the world, and paying taxes is just a condition of living here.
I don't know about most people on
Furthermore, just because Bob steals from you, that doesn't give you the right to steal from Frank.
While you are correct that copyright isn't a Natural Right (like life or liberty) free music isn't a Natural Right either. You don't have a 'right' to freely copy music any more than the record companies have a 'right' to stop you from doing so. And stop equating capitalism with theft- that's even more stupid than calling copyright infringement theft.
What I found most interesting about it is that apparently people are out to get her.
"Some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut."
The Squirrels were merry, not Married. Think Robin Hood and his 'Merry Men'.
As long as I get to know everything my senators do, see, and watch online. Furthermore, I don't mind being wiretapped as long as I get to listen to wiretaps on congressmen. I will support almost any system that gives me the same privacy from the government as the government officials have from me.
You need to be level 30+, and have good anti-laws cards to fix your law problems. The first time she killed me, the second time I got a red card for killing the boss and lost, the third (or maybe forth) time I finally beat her down.
It's called a Sting Operation, as opposed to entrapment, which your idea is. Basically, if a police officer sends me child porn I didn't ask for, the cop is the criminal. If I ask an undercover cop for child porn, and he sends me child porn and I get busted, I'm the criminal, not the police officer. Undercover police officers are authorized to commit crimes to bring criminals to justice.
Zelda is excellent, Wii Sports and Raving Rabbids are great, but work better if you have friends to play them with. It really is the party games that make the Wii fun- Zelda works well on the GameCube, so there's no need to upgrade if you're playing by yourself.
Two things:
1. Someone investigating pedophiles will pick up a lot of child porn. Certainly police investigating a child porn ring will have to trade and download files to get in. That doesn't make his story less credible.
2. Even if he was a pedophile who chickened out and talked to the police, that means that he was unwilling to go through with his plan- i.e. he's less dangerous than the rest of them. Furthermore, by co-operating with the police he should get a reduced sentence.
What really bugs me is that of the three men they arrested, one of them, David Beavan, was a vigilante trying to stop child abuse who told the police about the plot. This man was also sentanced to 8 years for conspiracy to commit rape. I have no problem with them arresting him for some other charge- what he was doing was questionable, and I'm sure violates laws about entrapment, child porn distribution, etc. I think it's pretty clear, though, that he wasn't going to rape little girls like the others were planning to.
"When Peter came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he [Peter] was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group." (The N.I.V Bible, Galatians: 2:11-12)
/.- something that will haunt you for the rest of your life.
So it looks like Paul did mention meeting these people. You're certainly not qualified to talk about what the New Testament says- you'd better stick to what your article says, which has much more correct information that you do. Otherwise your mistakes might mean some idiot calls you a liar on
Certainly if you dismiss everything in the New Testament wrote as entirely fictional, your point that the New Testament is entirely fictional holds. But you do weird leaps of logic where you accept Paul's claims of recieving 'visions' as proof of the non-existence of Jesus, and somehow interpret that as him not having any other contact with Christians, something that he most emphatically denies. (You could say that's all lies too, but why would that be so?) Also, you claim that all Christian works are unrealiable, but you somehow claim that Josephus (which is a Jewish work that still has references to miracles and the supernatural) as reliable? What discredits all the Christian testaments in your mind as completely false? Luke, especially, was written by a well-educated man in the classical historical style, and though he certainly borrowed information form Mark (which you point out was not written in the classical historical style), he also claimed to have talked to many eyewitness of Jesus, as well as following Paul for parts of his missionary journeys. (All this can be verified by simply reading Luke, and though we aren't certain that it was Luke who wrote it, it's reasonable to assume he was). It's not enough to believe that Mark was fake and Luke mis-interpreted it... In order for your theory to hold, Luke has to be a deliberate lie, Paul would have to be aware of Luke's fake story to fake his own compatible stories, and almost every book in the new testament would have been written as a deliberate lie/exageration. Furthermore, all this would have to be done long before the Church was widespread or powerful enough for this elaborate deception to be worth the effort. On top of that, the people who wrote the New Testament (Paul especially) faced huge persecution and death for proclaiming the things they had written- which makes them more likely to be deluded idiots than intelligent liars.
And you think that your conspiracy theory is the 'Brutally Honest Truth'.
You're right in that there is no way to win a debate on religious issues- all we really have is historical evidence. Historical evidence that points to there being a real Jesus that walked around preaching to people, as documented by numerous, seperate second-hand accounts. The only way of disputing that is by claiming there is a vast religious conspiracy that was so successful that we don't have good evidence for it. Believing in vast, invisible conspiracies is like believing in magical invisible fairies- you attribute amazing powers to them, incredible deeds, and no solid proof they exist.
First, there is a difference between a bad analogy and a lie- or even a mistake and a lie. Equating the two is rude.
Secondly, this is Slashdot. No one here makes eloquent arguments- they merely link to people who do. Certainly you were anything but eloquent, even if your link was.
Thirdly, if you know 10% as much as you think you do, you would realize that most historians believe Jesus was a real individual, and they aren't idiots. This is mostly because we have many second hand accounts (people who met people who claimed to have met Jesus). Luke, for instance, claims to have met hundreds of such people (though he never saw Jesus himself). Paul is also supposed to have known Peter and James, who did know him. Now, we can dismiss it all as entirely fictional (your stance, which requires an interesting conspiracy, fiction misinterpreted as true, and much deliberately false history) or we can assume that these sources had their basis in a (sorcerer/ faith healer/ lunatic/ god/ alien/ preacher) who walked around.
I find your article well researched, like I said- It's got much more of a factual basis than the DaVinci Code, for instance. However, it's asking people to accept a theory that seems much less plausible than most mainstream theories. Yes, it's possible- but I don't buy it.
P.S. Saying Josephus is the only source worth anything, and it's obviously (fake/ accidental addition), therefore no other sources are worth anything, is called a circular argument. We all know Josephus's text isn't considered reliable enough, that doesn't invalidate everything else.
P.S.S. You can believe whatever you want- and find evidence to support your own worldview. I'm just trying to warn you that no one else has to believe you. Furthermore, while you might be intelligent (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) being insulting won't win you any debates. It will just get other fanatics riled up, and the occasional eccentric that likes conversations with fanatics interested.
Communists are just too poor to buy it legally, and the government encourages piracy rather than help capitalist businessmen.
The only reliable documents we have that are evidence of Jesus's existance are Christian ones. (There are plenty of non-Christian evidence of Christians, which is not the same thing). While there are lots of sources, many of them reference each other.
This is established enough not to be an assumption.
You also rely on three assumptions: 1. That Jesus was important enough to be mentioned in non-Christian history, 2. That Christianity is descended from Hellenistic 'mystery religions', and 3. Early Christians heavily edited documents to fake their own history.
#1. is debateable- Even Christian texts seem to indicate that while thousands attended Jesus's speeches, only a small handful actually followed him around and followed his teachings. Some random guy preaching for a couple of years, being denounced as a heretic, and getting killed was actually fairly common. (This is actually quite embarassing for Christians- That despite long-term reach, his short term influence was minimal)
#2 is likewise debateable- There is a lot of correlation between Christianity and certain mystery religions. This can be explained by a) coincidence (There were a LOT of mystery religions, it's not surprising some of them were similar) b) Christianity borrowing imagery/ideas from other sources (which happend) c)mystery religions borrowing ideas from Christianity (which also happened).
#3 is hard to prove/disprove. It's pretty clear that Christians did edit Josephus (though this could have been accidental, as your article points out). Certainly there was a convergence of doctrine that created the Catholic Church, and many opposing views became labeled as heresies (and thus are harder to find). Of course, most the re-writing of the actual 'books' of the New Testament would have had to come before the New Testament was standardized.
From these assumptions (backed, of course, with evidence), it is then argued that it makes more sense for Christianity to stem from a mis-interpretation of a similar mystery religion's fiction than it does for Christianity to have stemmed from an actual person- easy enough to do when you've already dismissed all Christian sources that don't support your point as fiction.
I liked the article and found it well-researched. If Christ is entirely fictional, like he claims, that's how it could have happened. I want you to realize, though, that just because an argument is well-researched and well thought out doesn't mean it's correct. Many people disagree with one or more of his assumptions, and even if they agreed with them all, that doesn't mean they agree with his conclusion.
Your agression in defending this idea is entertaining- you clearly don't want anyone disbelieving your 'one, true way' of interpreting Christian history. But the article you linked to (and the research that your responses encouraged me to do) taught me a lot of interesting things. Thanks for being annoying enough to make me learn something.
I hope you realize that you are defending a minority opinion. I didn't even realize there were intelligent people out there who believed this before today. Keep in mind that it is the job of the extremist to prove his point, not scream at the mainstream people to disprove it. (i.e. it is the creationist's job to show evidence for creationism, not the evolutionist's job to disprove it).
This theory has a few problems with it. First:
If Jesus wasn't a real person, why didn't people say so? You'd think that evidence that Jesus didn't exist at all would have been noteworthy back in the day. You're implying that people today are smart enough to figure out that Jesus was just a story, but back then even the critics of Christianity thought they were dealing with the idiot followers of an actual (dead) person.
Second:
Why would people believe an allegory was true in the first place?
It's much simpler to believe that Jesus was some heretic whose deeds were greatly exagerrated than to believe that he didn't exist at all.
I will cede the point the Ceasar has a greater diversity of sources supporting his existence than Jesus does. Of course, Ceasar was also worshipped as a god, but I don't think your belief in Ceasar means that you think he is one. My point was simply that Jesus and Ceasar are both people we have no direct proof of existing, but we have a huge number of sources supporting their existence. It's much simpler to believe in some actual figure than to believe that Jesus was a myth people misinterpreted as true.
From your link itself:
"Note: Much of this article puts forward original ideas and is based on readings of the English translations of primary source material. The primary source materials for the article are those that are included in the body of the article. Additional resources which may not have previously been linked or referenced above are noted below."
Even the author admits it's his own theory, which he backs up with his own study and research (because he can't find other people who support this idea). It's hard to imagine that the Gospel of Mark was intended as religious fiction (think an ancient 'Left Behind' series) and was then believed en mass by people unaware that it was written as fiction. Certain points of the article have a lot of support- for instance most reasearchers do believe Mark was the first gospel, and Luke and Matthew drew a lot of information from it. He's also correct in that Mark is not written in a formal historical style the way Luke is, but that doesn't mean it's not meant to be a factual account.
Proving the non-existance of Christ would be nice- but that's like proving the non-existance of Julius Ceaser. There's too much evidence that some guy named Jesus walked around preaching to people and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him. Just like there's too much evidence that Julius Ceaser existed and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him (or at least kill for him).
In that case we still go with the 'no harm, no foul' theory. No one is harmed by the auction ending- the seller still shot himself in the foot by raising the price beyond what others would pay. The buyers aren't hurt by this.
Not that anyone reads those pesky things... but your concerns are mentioned.
It's not that it's energy negative- we still come out ahead- it's that it's not energy positive enough. There's a lot of other things we could be doing with that corn instead of turning it into ethanol. We are paying tax money through subsidies for something that's not going to be a long term solution. It's a waste of money and resources that could be spent elsewhere.
I do think Unions are mostly money-grabbing idiots at this point in history- a good friend of mine had his company picketed because the workers there were part of a small electrical worker's union instead of the big electrical worker's union. They weren't trying to protect the interests of the workers- they were trying to protect the interests of their pockets.
On the other hand, an ISP that doesn't show web pages of strikers is as bad as AT&T not letting you call people opposed to its monopoly. That's far worse behavior than even Unions exhibit. I'm all for the power of people to organize- and if they destroy their own jobs because they're idiots, I'm not going to sympathize.
The states pay for roads, education, and police. If you were paying for a road maintenance company, private schools, and a small mercenary force, it would still be expensive to work.
If you want to avoid taxations on savings, go for an IRA. That way you only have to pay taxes once on the money.
But if the exec quits/is fired, they don't get to keep the stuff... so it's not as unfair as you make it out to be. It does let the exec dodge some taxes, though.
Suppose that I'm selling a valuble widget that I want to sell for $6. However, the highest bid so far is $4. Suppose I bid $5 on my own auction. Then there are two possibilities:
1. No one bids more money. I end up paying Ebay to sell it to myself.
2. Someone bids the $6 I want and I sell it to them. Clearly they are still willing to pay $6 for it so I don't think I've 'harmed' them.
Basically, if I bid up my own auction I increase Ebay's profits, harm no one else, and potentially hurt myself. Why on earth should EBay stop this? They have no motivation to do so- no one is being harmed except the people who do this (and then only sometimes).
Looking at Wikipeida we find that out of the 14 freest places to live, 'Republic' is part of the title on 4 of them. Looking at the 8 worst places to live, 'Republic', 'Democratic', and 'People's' are part of the title of 6 of them, and they appear a total of 10 times in the name of 8 countries. So it seems that my point has some factual backing, and there's a strong correlation between having 'Republic', 'Democratic', and 'People's' in a countries name and it being none of the above.
Democratic Republic of the Congo- Welcome to the land of warlords, genocide, and more genocide.
Central African Republic- Less than half the genocide of its neighbor in the congo.
Dominican and Czech Republics, and Macedonia- actual democracies.
So two of your five examples help prove my point- and when you start stacking adjectives together- like 'People's Democratic Republic of Korea' you know you've got one of the worst places to live on Earth.
Also, why on earth would you get an 'official government email' from someone in these countries? That's less likely than you being a Viagra dealer and have Viagra mentioned correctly in your email. That's also why different people will have different spam filters for their mail- if I worked with the Republic of Ireland or was a professor of Greek history I would probably see the word 'Republic' in legitimate email.