My cat freaks out at the vet, but she doesn't even get proper yearly shots. Last time she was at the vet was for a horrible accident she has YEARS ago (like 5ish?) but she is still traumatized.
Ah, but Hitler would have killed Einstein (Jew) and Tesla (Serb). Leaving you a wimpy (physically) psychopathic idiot with really good charisma / leadership skills.
Ahem. DNA signatures are not unique to each living creature. Identical twins.
Also, you acknowledge it takes huge amounts of time for fossils to form, then say "I can do an experiment where I watch fossils fail to form". The problems with this argument should be pretty apparent.
As for sterilization, drop a life form in a tar pit. There, was that so hard?
Finally, I fail to see "evidence of purpose". What does this even mean? Is there some massive star cluster that spells out "Yud Hey Vav Hey" in the sky, as an author's signature?
I feel like average users should be made more aware of autoruns that are present. Perhaps a display at login saying "There are n process scheduled to run at startup. Click for details...". The dialog within could be covered with warning about breaking software, but I've heard enough whining about not being able to remove Norton, and things like that, that I think everyday users could benefit.
Microsoft's behavior with Excel reflects their general behavior. They have taken YEARS to patch bugs like the CSRSS backspace exploit (unprivileged bug causing complete crash of system).
Applications run under administrator accounts are only run with user privileges, unless you "run as administrator" explicitly or allow the escalation via UAC. Basically, they handled the every-is-admin situation by making the default privileges for a program lower than the user account's.
NoScript also stops browser-killer scripts such as Last Resort and endless prompt scripts. It is a pain otherwise to kill Firefox and try to stop the page from loading when you reopen the session.
My guess, is the AC is referring to religious people when he says "people with imaginary friends", the imaginary friend indicating god.
The AC probably jumped to the conclusion that the sheriff was on a crusade based on religious temperament.
All in all, it was pretty easy to follow to me, if not necessarily well founded. Jumping to bad conclusions isn't really an indicator of schizophrenia, I'd think more along the lines of mania / bipolar disorder.
I'm not for tax cuts, as that amounts to hiring people to do nothing.
However, I think the problem with tax cuts we have had thus far is that they rely on the "trickle down" principle. People with wealth will horde it. Working class / lower class people, the ones living paycheck to paycheck, don't have that option and will keep it liquid.
First off, for ad hominem attacks, yes I understand what that means. You have called me an "asshat", an "ass", "idiotic and childish" (in response to my argument, with no counterargument. "taking things to an extreme" is known as reductio ad absurdum, and is a valid technique), an "asshole, piece of shit", a "weasel" (which I reciprocated, to be fair), and "stupid".
As for a bible quote regarding what Jesus said, perhaps you should read my posts before responding to them?
If you believe that what you think is immoral holds true for everyone, you are once again completely deluded.
I never said this. I said there are morals that hold true for SOCIETY. Stop putting words in my damn mouth, and respond to my actual arguments.
You sum up your argument quite nicely in the second half of your post, but I still disagree. Perhaps you are interpreting "monster" differently from me.
You've conceded that Christians view these sexual acts as sin. It follows that you've conceded the rest of the argument - that Christians therefore regard people who perform these acts as people, not monsters - people just like the Christians who view these acts as sin.
This is somewhat fantastical. Did you think when I said "monster" I meant, literally, bogeymen or dragons or something? Because, calling someone a monster does not mean they are not human beings. By your argument (assuming Christian beliefs): a) All people sin. b) People who do xyz (bad things) are sinning. c) Therefore they are people. This argument begs the question, as well as containing an error of logic - just because all people sin does not mean all sinners are people.
What do Christians make of Osama Bin Laden? Do they not think he is monstrous for his actions? And yet, your argument applies to him as well. Or, for that matter, ANYONE EVER. I find it hard to believe that "most Christians" would not call certain select individuals monsters, and this shows your argument to be flawed. Perhaps you should resist writing QED under things besides formal proofs.
I see your point, but the broken window scenario can be effectively equated to useless spending here. Government expenditure comes from our money. When "Uncle Sam" spends money to fill holes, it is just like the storekeeper spending money to fix his window. Now that money cannot be spent elsewhere. Now, if there was nothing else that could be improved, then this makes sense. But that is where infrastructure comes in. We can always improve basic public goods, always. So when we spend money uselessly just to get things going, we are losing high speed rails, better highways, etc.
If it amounted to pure waste spending, we might as well give more tax refunds, because the same goal is reached (creating liquidity and such).
Oh, one more thing. You posit that "there is no such thing as a homosexual". Throughout this discussion you have referred to homosexuals and homosexuality, and then you say they don't exist? This is quite a blow to, for example, 4% of the electorate in 2008 that self-identified as homosexual. This would also come as a surprise to most straight people.
I'm forced to conclude that you are either being intellectually dishonest, and understand and agree with the usage of the term "homosexual" when referring to a person. Either that, or you are down-right disconnected with reality.
Christians not following the old testament is similar to Jews who do not obey kosher. You can say what you want about YOUR practices, reform practices, but in the new testament Jesus says to obey the old testament.
In your 2nd point: I will consider it corrected. However it seems clear to me that saying
There are still plenty of people that believe homosexuality, while perhaps not a choice
is avoiding saying there are many people who think it is a choice. If that is not what you meant to say, why insert the phrase "while perhaps not a choice"?
In your 3rd point, you make a case for complete moral relativity. If a serial killer believes he is moral, then who is to argue against him? There are certain acts that any reasonable person will agree is immoral. If someone has a belief system that says torturing animals for pleasure is not immoral, then you are a sociopath and belong in a padded room. Many of these acts are not described as immoral in the Bible. Therefore, either a) Christians are all sociopaths, or b) you are wrong, and the set of sins does not include all immoral acts. Furthermore, almost all Christians have morals that extend beyond those in the Bible, this is the point you so eloquently ignored.
To your last paragraph: I will concede that many sexual acts are considered sin by Christians (though Jews do not have a concept of sin, it comes close enough for this argument). However, given your case for moral relativity, the term 'immoral' is useless. I do not consider homosexual acts immoral. Are you saying acts that you find immoral? Or acts that some people somewhere find immoral (this would be everything)?
Finally, what have I conceded? Your consistent ad hominem attacks? You haven't made any other points besides quibbling over details, such as when I directed my statement at you rather than these mysterious "some people". You responded to my point about sin vs immorality by claiming there is no standard foundation of morality for our society, that it is purely subjective - this is not how society works. You ignored my analogy relating the "choice" in sexuality to the "choice" in gender - an attempt to show you that there is a difference between "you can change it, therefore it is a choice" and choices that are actually reasonable to hold a person accountable for.
You equated immoral behavior to sin. That is what your argument used - you said Christians believe all people are sinners and yet do not believe all people are monsters. If sin and immoral behavior are not the same, then your point is moot.
Also, I may not always type out "imply that some people may happen to think". When I said "you refuse to say it is a choice" I meant "you refuse to say that some people may happen to think...", and that should be pretty clear. I was referring to your own comments. Let me repeat the quotes for emphasis:
There are still plenty of people that believe homosexuality, while perhaps not a choice, is not innate to one's nature.
I am IN FACT, saying that many people view sexual orientation, in general, as a choice.
Why the change?
Finally, is harshly beating your children without reason/provocation moral? How about spuriously torturing animals? Because these things are not prohibited in the Bible. Stoning a homosexual to death is considered a DUTY in the bible. Are you saying therefore it is not immoral?
There is not a mapping of all immoral acts to sins, and there is not a mapping of all sins to immoral acts. There is some overlap, but neither contains the other.
No one has called sexual orientation a "simple choice, a whim" anywhere in this thread.
I responded to your last comment about this, see my last post, paragraph starting with "My analogy to men". Why bring it up again? If I had mischaracterized your views (read: views about some peoples views) about choice, my apologies, but I certainly didn't do this in the last post.
In the old testament, wearing clothes of blended fabrics is a sin - "Thou dost not put on a mixed cloth, wool and linen together" (Deut 22:11). And Jesus says to "obey every jot and tittle" of the old testament (Matt 5:18). Is wearing clothes of blended fabrics immoral?
Children are born with original sin; even the laziest Christians know this. If they have sin from birth, they must have committed an immoral act. If you say "sin passes from the father due to [...]", clearly sin does not equate to immorality.
My analogy to men, choosing to be male, applies perfectly here. Most people experience little to no sense of choice about their gender. And yet, calling them immoral for being male or female would be considered attacking them for some core feature: you aren't going to hold a man responsible for being male just because they could have a sex change to fix it.
Just because you keep saying I haven't responded to your arguments does not make it true.
There are still plenty of people that believe homosexuality, while perhaps not a choice, is not innate to one's nature.
You refuse to say it is a choice. Then I back you into a corner and you say:
many people view sexual orientation, in general, as a choice.
Earlier, you accuse me of redefining what you say, when in fact I was defining for you the term that I had originally used. You took fundamental to mean innate, and later accuse ME of redefining YOUR terms.
Slashdot Mirror
My cat freaks out at the vet, but she doesn't even get proper yearly shots. Last time she was at the vet was for a horrible accident she has YEARS ago (like 5ish?) but she is still traumatized.
WAT
Ah, but Hitler would have killed Einstein (Jew) and Tesla (Serb). Leaving you a wimpy (physically) psychopathic idiot with really good charisma / leadership skills.
Sorry, I cannot allow you to post that. That number is impossible to write.
Ahem. DNA signatures are not unique to each living creature. Identical twins.
Also, you acknowledge it takes huge amounts of time for fossils to form, then say "I can do an experiment where I watch fossils fail to form". The problems with this argument should be pretty apparent.
As for sterilization, drop a life form in a tar pit. There, was that so hard?
Finally, I fail to see "evidence of purpose". What does this even mean? Is there some massive star cluster that spells out "Yud Hey Vav Hey" in the sky, as an author's signature?
I feel like average users should be made more aware of autoruns that are present. Perhaps a display at login saying "There are n process scheduled to run at startup. Click for details...". The dialog within could be covered with warning about breaking software, but I've heard enough whining about not being able to remove Norton, and things like that, that I think everyday users could benefit.
Microsoft's behavior with Excel reflects their general behavior. They have taken YEARS to patch bugs like the CSRSS backspace exploit (unprivileged bug causing complete crash of system).
Applications run under administrator accounts are only run with user privileges, unless you "run as administrator" explicitly or allow the escalation via UAC. Basically, they handled the every-is-admin situation by making the default privileges for a program lower than the user account's.
NoScript also stops browser-killer scripts such as Last Resort and endless prompt scripts. It is a pain otherwise to kill Firefox and try to stop the page from loading when you reopen the session.
I understand now. +5 informative for you!
It travels over fiber, and "the slightest attempt to intercept the one time keys, coded into lasers at the quantum level, will disrupt the beam".
How do you route it to its destination? Do you need a dedicated fiber line between the source and destination for this service to work?
Otherwise, why can't someone just, y'know, intercept it completely and then generate the same key again?
Now the Australian government can finally protect their communications from the myriad foreign governments trying to spy on their communications!
Oh, wait...
Or, while everyone is nitpicking...
Why not refer to it by "AMD's original designation for this processor architecture, 'x86-64'"?!
Dribble is much harder to hold than a basketball. It drips out of your hands!
My guess, is the AC is referring to religious people when he says "people with imaginary friends", the imaginary friend indicating god.
The AC probably jumped to the conclusion that the sheriff was on a crusade based on religious temperament.
All in all, it was pretty easy to follow to me, if not necessarily well founded. Jumping to bad conclusions isn't really an indicator of schizophrenia, I'd think more along the lines of mania / bipolar disorder.
Please. Also known as ghost sharks makes a little more sense.
I'm not for tax cuts, as that amounts to hiring people to do nothing.
However, I think the problem with tax cuts we have had thus far is that they rely on the "trickle down" principle. People with wealth will horde it. Working class / lower class people, the ones living paycheck to paycheck, don't have that option and will keep it liquid.
You continuously ignore what I say.
First off, for ad hominem attacks, yes I understand what that means. You have called me an "asshat", an "ass", "idiotic and childish" (in response to my argument, with no counterargument. "taking things to an extreme" is known as reductio ad absurdum, and is a valid technique), an "asshole, piece of shit", a "weasel" (which I reciprocated, to be fair), and "stupid".
As for a bible quote regarding what Jesus said, perhaps you should read my posts before responding to them?
If you believe that what you think is immoral holds true for everyone, you are once again completely deluded.
I never said this. I said there are morals that hold true for SOCIETY. Stop putting words in my damn mouth, and respond to my actual arguments.
You sum up your argument quite nicely in the second half of your post, but I still disagree. Perhaps you are interpreting "monster" differently from me.
You've conceded that Christians view these sexual acts as sin. It follows that you've conceded the rest of the argument - that Christians therefore regard people who perform these acts as people, not monsters - people just like the Christians who view these acts as sin.
This is somewhat fantastical. Did you think when I said "monster" I meant, literally, bogeymen or dragons or something? Because, calling someone a monster does not mean they are not human beings. By your argument (assuming Christian beliefs):
a) All people sin.
b) People who do xyz (bad things) are sinning.
c) Therefore they are people.
This argument begs the question, as well as containing an error of logic - just because all people sin does not mean all sinners are people.
What do Christians make of Osama Bin Laden? Do they not think he is monstrous for his actions? And yet, your argument applies to him as well. Or, for that matter, ANYONE EVER. I find it hard to believe that "most Christians" would not call certain select individuals monsters, and this shows your argument to be flawed. Perhaps you should resist writing QED under things besides formal proofs.
I see your point, but the broken window scenario can be effectively equated to useless spending here. Government expenditure comes from our money. When "Uncle Sam" spends money to fill holes, it is just like the storekeeper spending money to fix his window. Now that money cannot be spent elsewhere. Now, if there was nothing else that could be improved, then this makes sense. But that is where infrastructure comes in. We can always improve basic public goods, always. So when we spend money uselessly just to get things going, we are losing high speed rails, better highways, etc.
If it amounted to pure waste spending, we might as well give more tax refunds, because the same goal is reached (creating liquidity and such).
Oh, one more thing. You posit that "there is no such thing as a homosexual". Throughout this discussion you have referred to homosexuals and homosexuality, and then you say they don't exist? This is quite a blow to, for example, 4% of the electorate in 2008 that self-identified as homosexual. This would also come as a surprise to most straight people.
I'm forced to conclude that you are either being intellectually dishonest, and understand and agree with the usage of the term "homosexual" when referring to a person. Either that, or you are down-right disconnected with reality.
Please address http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1140993&cid=27028003
Christians not following the old testament is similar to Jews who do not obey kosher. You can say what you want about YOUR practices, reform practices, but in the new testament Jesus says to obey the old testament.
In your 2nd point: I will consider it corrected. However it seems clear to me that saying
There are still plenty of people that believe homosexuality, while perhaps not a choice
is avoiding saying there are many people who think it is a choice. If that is not what you meant to say, why insert the phrase "while perhaps not a choice"?
In your 3rd point, you make a case for complete moral relativity. If a serial killer believes he is moral, then who is to argue against him?
There are certain acts that any reasonable person will agree is immoral. If someone has a belief system that says torturing animals for pleasure is not immoral, then you are a sociopath and belong in a padded room. Many of these acts are not described as immoral in the Bible. Therefore, either a) Christians are all sociopaths, or b) you are wrong, and the set of sins does not include all immoral acts. Furthermore, almost all
Christians have morals that extend beyond those in the Bible, this is the point you so eloquently ignored.
To your last paragraph: I will concede that many sexual acts are considered sin by Christians (though Jews do not have a concept of sin, it comes close enough for this argument). However, given your case for moral relativity, the term 'immoral' is useless. I do not consider homosexual acts immoral. Are you saying acts that you find immoral? Or acts that some people somewhere find immoral (this would be everything)?
Finally, what have I conceded? Your consistent ad hominem attacks? You haven't made any other points besides quibbling over details, such as when I directed my statement at you rather than these mysterious "some people". You responded to my point about sin vs immorality by claiming there is no standard foundation of morality for our society, that it is purely subjective - this is not how society works. You ignored my analogy relating the "choice" in sexuality to the "choice" in gender - an attempt to show you that there is a difference between "you can change it, therefore it is a choice" and choices that are actually reasonable to hold a person accountable for.
Apparently it signals the snipers as to your loca
This is the broken window fallacy.
You should only spend stimulus on real public goods.
You equated immoral behavior to sin. That is what your argument used - you said Christians believe all people are sinners and yet do not believe all people are monsters. If sin and immoral behavior are not the same, then your point is moot.
Also, I may not always type out "imply that some people may happen to think". When I said "you refuse to say it is a choice" I meant "you refuse to say that some people may happen to think ...", and that should be pretty clear. I was referring to your own comments. Let me repeat the quotes for emphasis:
There are still plenty of people that believe homosexuality, while perhaps not a choice, is not innate to one's nature.
I am IN FACT, saying that many people view sexual orientation, in general, as a choice.
Why the change?
Finally, is harshly beating your children without reason/provocation moral? How about spuriously torturing animals? Because these things are not prohibited in the Bible.
Stoning a homosexual to death is considered a DUTY in the bible. Are you saying therefore it is not immoral?
There is not a mapping of all immoral acts to sins, and there is not a mapping of all sins to immoral acts. There is some overlap, but neither contains the other.
No one has called sexual orientation a "simple choice, a whim" anywhere in this thread.
I responded to your last comment about this, see my last post, paragraph starting with "My analogy to men". Why bring it up again? If I had mischaracterized your views (read: views about some peoples views) about choice, my apologies, but I certainly didn't do this in the last post.
In the old testament, wearing clothes of blended fabrics is a sin - "Thou dost not put on a mixed cloth, wool and linen together" (Deut 22:11). And Jesus says to "obey every jot and tittle" of the old testament (Matt 5:18). Is wearing clothes of blended fabrics immoral?
Children are born with original sin; even the laziest Christians know this. If they have sin from birth, they must have committed an immoral act. If you say "sin passes from the father due to [...]", clearly sin does not equate to immorality.
My analogy to men, choosing to be male, applies perfectly here. Most people experience little to no sense of choice about their gender. And yet, calling them immoral for being male or female would be considered attacking them for some core feature: you aren't going to hold a man responsible for being male just because they could have a sex change to fix it.
Just because you keep saying I haven't responded to your arguments does not make it true.
There are still plenty of people that believe homosexuality, while perhaps not a choice, is not innate to one's nature.
You refuse to say it is a choice. Then I back you into a corner and you say:
many people view sexual orientation, in general, as a choice.
Earlier, you accuse me of redefining what you say, when in fact I was defining for you the term that I had originally used. You took fundamental to mean innate, and later accuse ME of redefining YOUR terms.
Who is being a weasel now?