Philosophically the relationship between free will and preordainment is very complex and hard to grasp, but we do not have to grasp it "completely" (which is impossible anyway), the Word of Allah is enough.
As a Christian, I don't believe in predestination (some claiming to be Christian do -- but I do not believe that the Bible teaches that). Not that that detracts from God's power; he certainly can tell the future and has done so in the past. Just because he can doesn't mean he does in every case. Think of a very strong man -- just because he can pick up heavy things, does he do it just to do it? No. Just because we have some ability doesn't mean we use it everywhere and in every case. In my mind, there is no cognitive dissonance from believing that an omniscient God can *choose* not to foreknow and foreordain everything. He does this when the need arises.
Since we have free will, He allows us to make our own decisions. I believe that we were created with free will, else, how could God have justly punished Adam and Eve and the devil for rebelling? Conversely, why a reward for doing good? After all, we were just doing what our program told us to do. But He did give us free will, and I do not believe He intended for man to rebel as they did. In fact, as it says in Exodus 32:4 or 5 (I think its 32:4, but going from memory here, but I know Muslims do believe in the Torah and thus Exodus, right?) of the straying nation of Israel that "the defect is their own". Anyhow, the short of it is that God created mankind perfect but *we* deviated. According to my understanding of God, it's contrary to His nature to give us free will and then punish us for using it. The Bible teaches that one of His cardinal qualities is justice. All of His works are justice, as scripture says.
How's this for your atypical/. conversation? News for Nerds, Theology, whatever. I guess we are so deep in the thread the trolls are ignoring us. I figured by now we'd have been attacked by all the athiest trolls.
One who created us with every second of our lives and fates we are discovering second by second.
Do Muslims believe that every event in our lives is pre-ordained? I didn't think so, but from that statement it appears you do. Just curious...if you believe that every event is predetermined, then what is the justification for punishing criminals? And do you believe in the concept of free will?
Hopefully you are not tiring of our discussion. I am enjoying it. I hope/. doesn't lock this story down today.
Thanks for the replies. It certainly is interesting hearing your perspective on this.
Muslims do not mourn death but we are requested to weep on the fate of those who died not in the state of Islam. THAT fate is horrible.
I am not so ignorant as to say that all Muslims agree or are just like the few who engage in terrorism, like many here in the US would like to believe. With what you just said, though, how then do you think terrorists can justify killing non-Muslims? To be fair, I wonder how "christians" (note my use of quotes) can justify killing others too.
As a Christian, I believe that we should not get involved in the wars and politics of the day. Jesus didn't when he was here on earth, and that's the example we should follow. He taught love for neighbor. Europe and the US are not and have never been Christian. It's always been a bastardized form of it, mingled with politics and the pursuit of corrupting power. It's unfortunate that people judge a religion and it's text (the bible) based on the mountain of misdeeds performed by those who claim to follow it.
Why do I say that? Because there are Christians who hate injustice and the greed and commercialism that they live in the midst of. I think that sometimes just as Muslims are labeled as terrorists in the west, all claiming to be Christian are lumped together as greedy commercialists. I just want you to know that not all Christians are in support of the what you call imperialism. There are a few of us who stay out of these conflicts, trusting that God will deal with these things in time, and will do so far better than we ever could. We stay out of these things. As Jesus said, we are no part of the world. We have to fight against the corrupting influences around us all of the time.
hmm...I, like you, have no way of verifying what is happening in Darfur firsthand. Both of us rely on secondhand knowledge (making what I believe to be a safe assumption). However, I have to go with the human rights groups, charity aid organizations, UN reports, and then the media on this one. If it were just the media saying this, then I might have to agree with you. But it's more than that. In fact...
To wit, there is nobody saying what your are saying, except those who have some political interest in keep the status quo in Sudan. It seems you are taking their stance. Why is that? Is it because the government in Khartoum is an Islamic one? Is your religion blinding you to what appear to be the facts? I ask that sincerely.
Every Muslim should understand how disaster results when religion and politics get intertwined. That has been the problem with so-called "christianity" for centuries now, and often Muslims have been the target of their hate campaigns. Now Islam is just as bad. It's a classic example of someone long-oppressed becoming just like the oppressor. Sad.
Didn't you get the memo? They have been warning us for years. Internet cleanup day is near. Make sure you unplug your computer. If you don't, everything will be deleted, haven't you heard?
Forward this on to everyone in your address book. This is serious stuff!
You think civil war and ethnic cleansing are mutually exclusive? Come on.
What this boils down to is that you are saying that 1) people are not really being massacred in Darfur, or 2) that they are and it's all OK because it's civil war.
Which is it? Honestly? Am I missing a third option? Please, educate me.
ethnic cleansing and genocide are roughly the same thing. If a systematic programme of rape, systematic killing of children and babies, and regular attacks on noncombatant civilians is taking place, it's the same thing. That is what is reported as happening by all kinds of human rights groups, and not just the western media.
As to the involvement of the Sudanese government...ok, let's visit stupidland where you apparently live. The janjaweed are just in Darfur because they have nothing better to do. Khartoum has nothing to do with it. Nope, not a thing. A government that stands by and watches when its citizens are slaughtered is just as culpable as one who is actively supporting it. Silence is tacit approval.
I am sure the truth is probably somewhere in between what is actually being reported by the media and your perspective, which apparently is that all is peachy in Sudan and the world just wants a pretext to invade Sudan. I am sure other nations have ulterior motives in wanting to get involved in Sudan. But in the end, if a government is *that* negligent, or worse yet, that evil, then they have to be accountable.
You are probably a muslim. I am not. But what say you about the fact that these are Muslims killing Muslims? Doesn't the Koran condemn that sort of thing? And if you say it doesn't, you have been brainwashed by some militant cleric and are ready to blow something/someone up. And if so, what makes you different than a "christian" who condones the killing of more Muslims in the middle east? Killing in the name of religion is the same thing no matter what your religion.
In Stupid-land, you probably make lots of sense. Heck, you might even be their leader. Here, you sound uninformed at best. Are you as ignorant of history as you are current events?
In one of your other posts you agreed with someone else that the US is an imperialist force. By that logic, if this were some conspiracy the US would have moved in two years ago. The Sudanese government would be hiding in a cave with the Taliban planning their next move. That, or some CIA guys would have installed a US puppet government there. Neither has happened, so your conspiracy theory is just a bunch of twaddle.
This is a blatant assault on human rights. Governments lie. Refugee camps and mass graves don't.
Good comments. I probably wouldn't have replied to that comment. Anyone who complains about the Darfur "media circus" is obviously a racist and/or a troll. In this case, the media is doing what it should -- exposing a government's utter and deliberate failure to do what governments should exist to do, namely, to protect it's constituents. Seriously, how can anyone justifiably complain about that being reported on? Am I missing something?
we could urge our representatives to make that happen
Why should governments *have* to be urged to do something about this?
The thing that I find interesting is that governments in developed lands are normally unaware (or so we are told) of genocide until after the fact (ww2, croatia, Rwanda, allegedly Iraq). After the fact, mass graves turn up and all of the politicians say "Oh, if only we knew!" Well, this situation has fortunately received media attention but nobody is really doing anything but talking about it. This has been going on for what, three years now?. Look, if massive deposits of oil were discovered in Darfur, you can bet that the US and everyone else would be over there to "liberate the people". It's sad since there is no monetary incentive, nobody wants to stand up to help these people. It really exposes all of the "If only we'd known" talk for what it is: empty rhetoric.
It was Curly, actually. In one Three Stooges short, Curly was covered in oil (from an oil well he just discovered, you pervs), and Moe said something like "Whatcha doin, knucklehead?" To which Curly says "You know what they say! The oily boid gets the woim! nyuk nyuk nyuk"
The Hot cha cha cha was Jimmy Durante, and I just added that in for kicks.
The funny part is that this post will get modded informative. If there are any other jokes that need in-depth explanations, I'd be happy to serve.
.NET is very nice. I am still new to it. A guy I work with is pretty experienced with it. He wrote an application that relied upon.NET 2, which I had. Well, what I had wasn't the right version, but after I upgraded it worked. Sorry, I don't have more info than that. May have just been a fluke, but he told me that happens sometimes. I'll take his word until I know better.
That said,.NET is a very cool concept and even better now that we have MONO, so we even lose Vendor lock-in. I'd be curious to see just how well MONO emulates.NET, firsthand. I hear it's good.
yawn...nothing you do online is private. The real problem here is that people *think* they cannot be seen.
TFA made an interesting point, though...searches are as close to reading our thoughts as is possible. That is pretty scary. I'll bet there's all kinds of predictive software that could use that search data to profile us, even anticipate our next move. That's pretty scary.
A lot of my data-driven apps are intended for a single user on a single machine
Sorry, I guess any app could be data driven. I know lots of desktop apps use a DB in the background. I meant apps where many users connect to a remote database. Desktop apps connecting to a remote DB should be web apps. That's all.
If you want to get into web apps, then start with the database. In my mind, the perfect candidate for a web application is one where data is key (no pun intended), the whole point is to display data and maybe let the user update some data. Yes, you can and sometimes should get very fancy (like ajax), but at the root of it all is the data.
An Oracle guy once said "The database IS the web application" and I totally agree. If you know how to design and normalize a database properly, present data in a way that's understandable, and write efficient queries, then you are halfway to writing good web applications.
Why am I saying this? You're probably already there. I don't think you'd have to invest as much time as you think you would. Learn CSS and get a good ajax library like prototype. You probably know html and if you can write desktop apps (presumably C#) then you can write javascript. Probably the trickiest part for a desktop app guy is wrapping your head around the fact that you are gluing several platforms together. On one server page (.php file for example) you can have SQL, php code, javascript, and html/css. All of that on one page gets confusing to a guy used to looking at.cs and.c files all day.
Then again this is coming from a guy who mostly writes at work, so I have another team maintaining my Oracle server and my web server. I'll bet that part sucks, actually.
Coming from someone who was raised as a desktop developer, then became a web developer for 7 years, and is now starting to get back into desktop development....NET is very cool. But I sure hate the fact that I am so friggin tied, at least in theory, to which POINT RELEASE of.NET the user has installed.
For most stuff (most stuff I do), the web is the way to go, because I do a lot of data-driven apps. No versioning crap (other than browser, and if you stick with standards you are OK 99% of the time), and no lame install programs. No java version stupidness (man, do I hate Java).
Both have their niche, and I think people have been saying that the desktop app is dying for way too long. Having an AJAX spreadhseet is lame lame lame. Having a desktop data-driven app is lame lame lame. I think you'll be writing desktop apps for a long time to come;)
Thank you. What is it with people who cannot understand balance?
Protecting children is not the same thing as telling them that babies come from storks. Just because you don't want your children watching sexually explicit material doesn't mean you are afraid of educating them.
Just because you don't want your children running around in Halo2 shooting at people doesn't mean you are sheltering them. Teaching them that "the world is a scary place" is not the same thing as allowing them to become desensitized to violence by means of FPS games and the like.
To all the people who have no children or any experience with children but who post on this discussion: You are ridiculous. Do you all realize you sound like idiots? You are this discussion's equivalent of the skript kiddies and Microsoft shills in a Linux discussion. Maybe you don't know how incredibly dumb you sound, so hopefully that analogy helps you. Go away and let the grown ups have an intelligent discussion.
Ditto. Your statement was just as judgemental as any fundie could ever be. Sorry, but you sound like a college student who all of the sudden has advice/criticism on parenting for real parents. Get serious.
Life is far to complex to be able to break it down into black and white.
True, but some things are constants. There are absolutes. It's absurd to argue otherwise. If there are constants in science, maths, etc, then why not elsewhere?
I'm just thankful that i didn't have parents like you.
Why? He's unhypocritical. The same rule applies to him as well as his children. That's consistency and fairness, and there's a way to be a parent, that's it.
Your post reminds me of the box of raisinettes I ate last night. The box touted the antioxidant benefits of raisins. Sure, raisins are good for you, but in this case they were covered in milk chocolate. Who eats raisinettes for the health benefits? If I had been eating merely for health purposes, I'd have eaten a handful of grapes.
Sure, video games teach you to make decisions, think about how current decisions affect your future, help you to deal with a measure of unpredictability, etc.
When I was a kid, my family was one of the poorer families in my neighborhood. The first video game system I had was a NES, and by the time I got that everyone else was playing Sega Genesis. I liked games, but most of my experience with them was at friends houses and consisted of watching/helping friends play RPGs (one summer we mapped out all caves and castles etc in Phantasy Star on graph paper). Mainly, instead of games, I worked on small engines, played with legos, played with electronics, built stuff from wood scraps I purloined from construction sites, and stuff like that. When I was about 8 or 9, I could tear down a briggs & stratton engine to the crankcase and rebuild it. I'd say all of those activities did a much better job of teaching me about consequences, decision making, and so on. Also, these had the added benefit of getting me outdoors, teaching me practical skills, and how things work on a mechanical level. Interestingly, I attribute much of this to my success as a programmer, since I find that many things in the virtual world of programming have real world parallels. No, I am not an engineer, but I generally have a very good idea of how things work and why they work, and many times I can parlay this to programming. I'd say in many ways that is more valuable than any course I took in college. Conversely, I think this is why many programmers are often somewhat skilled with things like engineering, working on cars, music, and things like that.
Video games have benefit, but let's face it: nobody plays video games for the benefit just as nobody eats Raisinettes as though they were a health food. Raisinettes taste good and videa games are fun. Both can and should be enjoyed in moderation.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Christian, I don't believe in predestination (some claiming to be Christian do -- but I do not believe that the Bible teaches that). Not that that detracts from God's power; he certainly can tell the future and has done so in the past. Just because he can doesn't mean he does in every case. Think of a very strong man -- just because he can pick up heavy things, does he do it just to do it? No. Just because we have some ability doesn't mean we use it everywhere and in every case. In my mind, there is no cognitive dissonance from believing that an omniscient God can *choose* not to foreknow and foreordain everything. He does this when the need arises.
Since we have free will, He allows us to make our own decisions. I believe that we were created with free will, else, how could God have justly punished Adam and Eve and the devil for rebelling? Conversely, why a reward for doing good? After all, we were just doing what our program told us to do. But He did give us free will, and I do not believe He intended for man to rebel as they did. In fact, as it says in Exodus 32:4 or 5 (I think its 32:4, but going from memory here, but I know Muslims do believe in the Torah and thus Exodus, right?) of the straying nation of Israel that "the defect is their own". Anyhow, the short of it is that God created mankind perfect but *we* deviated. According to my understanding of God, it's contrary to His nature to give us free will and then punish us for using it. The Bible teaches that one of His cardinal qualities is justice. All of His works are justice, as scripture says.
How's this for your atypical
Do Muslims believe that every event in our lives is pre-ordained? I didn't think so, but from that statement it appears you do. Just curious...if you believe that every event is predetermined, then what is the justification for punishing criminals? And do you believe in the concept of free will?
Hopefully you are not tiring of our discussion. I am enjoying it. I hope
I am not so ignorant as to say that all Muslims agree or are just like the few who engage in terrorism, like many here in the US would like to believe. With what you just said, though, how then do you think terrorists can justify killing non-Muslims? To be fair, I wonder how "christians" (note my use of quotes) can justify killing others too.
As a Christian, I believe that we should not get involved in the wars and politics of the day. Jesus didn't when he was here on earth, and that's the example we should follow. He taught love for neighbor. Europe and the US are not and have never been Christian. It's always been a bastardized form of it, mingled with politics and the pursuit of corrupting power. It's unfortunate that people judge a religion and it's text (the bible) based on the mountain of misdeeds performed by those who claim to follow it.
Why do I say that? Because there are Christians who hate injustice and the greed and commercialism that they live in the midst of. I think that sometimes just as Muslims are labeled as terrorists in the west, all claiming to be Christian are lumped together as greedy commercialists. I just want you to know that not all Christians are in support of the what you call imperialism. There are a few of us who stay out of these conflicts, trusting that God will deal with these things in time, and will do so far better than we ever could. We stay out of these things. As Jesus said, we are no part of the world. We have to fight against the corrupting influences around us all of the time.
Interesting idea, and I see your point. Do you see that happening? Is there some movement to do so that you are aware of?
hmm...I, like you, have no way of verifying what is happening in Darfur firsthand. Both of us rely on secondhand knowledge (making what I believe to be a safe assumption). However, I have to go with the human rights groups, charity aid organizations, UN reports, and then the media on this one. If it were just the media saying this, then I might have to agree with you. But it's more than that. In fact...
To wit, there is nobody saying what your are saying, except those who have some political interest in keep the status quo in Sudan. It seems you are taking their stance. Why is that? Is it because the government in Khartoum is an Islamic one? Is your religion blinding you to what appear to be the facts? I ask that sincerely.
Every Muslim should understand how disaster results when religion and politics get intertwined. That has been the problem with so-called "christianity" for centuries now, and often Muslims have been the target of their hate campaigns. Now Islam is just as bad. It's a classic example of someone long-oppressed becoming just like the oppressor. Sad.
Didn't you get the memo? They have been warning us for years. Internet cleanup day is near. Make sure you unplug your computer. If you don't, everything will be deleted, haven't you heard?
Forward this on to everyone in your address book. This is serious stuff!
You think civil war and ethnic cleansing are mutually exclusive? Come on.
What this boils down to is that you are saying that 1) people are not really being massacred in Darfur, or 2) that they are and it's all OK because it's civil war.
Which is it? Honestly? Am I missing a third option? Please, educate me.
...but it's all in my head!
FIX IT NOW!!~!!!! THIRD NOTICE!~!
This line is just to make slashdot's lameness filter accept all the caps I just typed. Please ignore it.
ethnic cleansing and genocide are roughly the same thing. If a systematic programme of rape, systematic killing of children and babies, and regular attacks on noncombatant civilians is taking place, it's the same thing. That is what is reported as happening by all kinds of human rights groups, and not just the western media.
As to the involvement of the Sudanese government...ok, let's visit stupidland where you apparently live. The janjaweed are just in Darfur because they have nothing better to do. Khartoum has nothing to do with it. Nope, not a thing. A government that stands by and watches when its citizens are slaughtered is just as culpable as one who is actively supporting it. Silence is tacit approval.
I am sure the truth is probably somewhere in between what is actually being reported by the media and your perspective, which apparently is that all is peachy in Sudan and the world just wants a pretext to invade Sudan. I am sure other nations have ulterior motives in wanting to get involved in Sudan. But in the end, if a government is *that* negligent, or worse yet, that evil, then they have to be accountable.
You are probably a muslim. I am not. But what say you about the fact that these are Muslims killing Muslims? Doesn't the Koran condemn that sort of thing? And if you say it doesn't, you have been brainwashed by some militant cleric and are ready to blow something/someone up. And if so, what makes you different than a "christian" who condones the killing of more Muslims in the middle east? Killing in the name of religion is the same thing no matter what your religion.
In Stupid-land, you probably make lots of sense. Heck, you might even be their leader. Here, you sound uninformed at best. Are you as ignorant of history as you are current events?
In one of your other posts you agreed with someone else that the US is an imperialist force. By that logic, if this were some conspiracy the US would have moved in two years ago. The Sudanese government would be hiding in a cave with the Taliban planning their next move. That, or some CIA guys would have installed a US puppet government there. Neither has happened, so your conspiracy theory is just a bunch of twaddle.
This is a blatant assault on human rights. Governments lie. Refugee camps and mass graves don't.
Go back under your bridge, troll.
The thing that I find interesting is that governments in developed lands are normally unaware (or so we are told) of genocide until after the fact (ww2, croatia, Rwanda, allegedly Iraq). After the fact, mass graves turn up and all of the politicians say "Oh, if only we knew!" Well, this situation has fortunately received media attention but nobody is really doing anything but talking about it. This has been going on for what, three years now?. Look, if massive deposits of oil were discovered in Darfur, you can bet that the US and everyone else would be over there to "liberate the people". It's sad since there is no monetary incentive, nobody wants to stand up to help these people. It really exposes all of the "If only we'd known" talk for what it is: empty rhetoric.
And so on.
thanks for the backup. Some people...sheesh
It was Curly, actually. In one Three Stooges short, Curly was covered in oil (from an oil well he just discovered, you pervs), and Moe said something like "Whatcha doin, knucklehead?" To which Curly says "You know what they say! The oily boid gets the woim! nyuk nyuk nyuk"
The Hot cha cha cha was Jimmy Durante, and I just added that in for kicks.
The funny part is that this post will get modded informative. If there are any other jokes that need in-depth explanations, I'd be happy to serve.
Ah, the Oily Boid gets the Woim!
Hot cha cha cha cha
.NET is very nice. I am still new to it. A guy I work with is pretty experienced with it. He wrote an application that relied upon .NET 2, which I had. Well, what I had wasn't the right version, but after I upgraded it worked. Sorry, I don't have more info than that. May have just been a fluke, but he told me that happens sometimes. I'll take his word until I know better.
.NET is a very cool concept and even better now that we have MONO, so we even lose Vendor lock-in. I'd be curious to see just how well MONO emulates .NET, firsthand. I hear it's good.
That said,
right, almost forgot. Thanks for including that!
now that you mention it, I just have to...
obligatory Simpson's quote:
"I know you can read my thoughts, boy! meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow..."
yawn...nothing you do online is private. The real problem here is that people *think* they cannot be seen.
TFA made an interesting point, though...searches are as close to reading our thoughts as is possible. That is pretty scary. I'll bet there's all kinds of predictive software that could use that search data to profile us, even anticipate our next move. That's pretty scary.
Sorry, I guess any app could be data driven. I know lots of desktop apps use a DB in the background. I meant apps where many users connect to a remote database. Desktop apps connecting to a remote DB should be web apps. That's all.
If you want to get into web apps, then start with the database. In my mind, the perfect candidate for a web application is one where data is key (no pun intended), the whole point is to display data and maybe let the user update some data. Yes, you can and sometimes should get very fancy (like ajax), but at the root of it all is the data.
An Oracle guy once said "The database IS the web application" and I totally agree. If you know how to design and normalize a database properly, present data in a way that's understandable, and write efficient queries, then you are halfway to writing good web applications.
Why am I saying this? You're probably already there. I don't think you'd have to invest as much time as you think you would. Learn CSS and get a good ajax library like prototype. You probably know html and if you can write desktop apps (presumably C#) then you can write javascript. Probably the trickiest part for a desktop app guy is wrapping your head around the fact that you are gluing several platforms together. On one server page (.php file for example) you can have SQL, php code, javascript, and html/css. All of that on one page gets confusing to a guy used to looking at
Then again this is coming from a guy who mostly writes at work, so I have another team maintaining my Oracle server and my web server. I'll bet that part sucks, actually.
Coming from someone who was raised as a desktop developer, then became a web developer for 7 years, and is now starting to get back into desktop development... .NET is very cool. But I sure hate the fact that I am so friggin tied, at least in theory, to which POINT RELEASE of .NET the user has installed.
;)
For most stuff (most stuff I do), the web is the way to go, because I do a lot of data-driven apps. No versioning crap (other than browser, and if you stick with standards you are OK 99% of the time), and no lame install programs. No java version stupidness (man, do I hate Java).
Both have their niche, and I think people have been saying that the desktop app is dying for way too long. Having an AJAX spreadhseet is lame lame lame. Having a desktop data-driven app is lame lame lame. I think you'll be writing desktop apps for a long time to come
not sure if your link to edmunds after your name is intentional, but I am totally cracking over here! Well played!
Can anyone say "unenforceable law?"
Another waste of taxpayer money.
Thank you. What is it with people who cannot understand balance?
Protecting children is not the same thing as telling them that babies come from storks. Just because you don't want your children watching sexually explicit material doesn't mean you are afraid of educating them.
Just because you don't want your children running around in Halo2 shooting at people doesn't mean you are sheltering them. Teaching them that "the world is a scary place" is not the same thing as allowing them to become desensitized to violence by means of FPS games and the like.
To all the people who have no children or any experience with children but who post on this discussion: You are ridiculous. Do you all realize you sound like idiots? You are this discussion's equivalent of the skript kiddies and Microsoft shills in a Linux discussion. Maybe you don't know how incredibly dumb you sound, so hopefully that analogy helps you. Go away and let the grown ups have an intelligent discussion.
Your post reminds me of the box of raisinettes I ate last night. The box touted the antioxidant benefits of raisins. Sure, raisins are good for you, but in this case they were covered in milk chocolate. Who eats raisinettes for the health benefits? If I had been eating merely for health purposes, I'd have eaten a handful of grapes.
Sure, video games teach you to make decisions, think about how current decisions affect your future, help you to deal with a measure of unpredictability, etc.
When I was a kid, my family was one of the poorer families in my neighborhood. The first video game system I had was a NES, and by the time I got that everyone else was playing Sega Genesis. I liked games, but most of my experience with them was at friends houses and consisted of watching/helping friends play RPGs (one summer we mapped out all caves and castles etc in Phantasy Star on graph paper). Mainly, instead of games, I worked on small engines, played with legos, played with electronics, built stuff from wood scraps I purloined from construction sites, and stuff like that. When I was about 8 or 9, I could tear down a briggs & stratton engine to the crankcase and rebuild it. I'd say all of those activities did a much better job of teaching me about consequences, decision making, and so on. Also, these had the added benefit of getting me outdoors, teaching me practical skills, and how things work on a mechanical level. Interestingly, I attribute much of this to my success as a programmer, since I find that many things in the virtual world of programming have real world parallels. No, I am not an engineer, but I generally have a very good idea of how things work and why they work, and many times I can parlay this to programming. I'd say in many ways that is more valuable than any course I took in college. Conversely, I think this is why many programmers are often somewhat skilled with things like engineering, working on cars, music, and things like that.
Video games have benefit, but let's face it: nobody plays video games for the benefit just as nobody eats Raisinettes as though they were a health food. Raisinettes taste good and videa games are fun. Both can and should be enjoyed in moderation.