I agree. Instead of wasting our energy on some counterproductive "war" between science and religion (a war that exists only in people's heads), we should instead seek to help both become better at what they are about. We should strive to make science accessible and successful at solving the problems it can solve, and at answering the questions it can answer. Similarly, we need to help religion "grow up" into a fully beneficial force for motivating people to treat others and the environment well, and for helping them deal with the difficulties of life in healthy ways. I honestly believe they can help each other achieve these goals.
None of this will happen very easily, though, if both "sides" feel under attack. When we feel threatened, we typically do not respond with the kind of insightful self-reflection that helps us overcome our flaws. I believe both science and religion have spoken to this fact using their respective vocabularies.
The reason I think the elimination of these secrets will be a good thing is that there are a lot of people who earnestly believe that "we" are the "good guys" who don't do things like that. The government maintains its apple pie home-baked goodness image, insisting that it's always the other guys that are the bad-people-du-jour who are out to kill us because they hate our freedom or something like that. When you reveal the kinds of evil the government does to other people, then folks can start to see why (or even if) "they" are actually fighting "us" instead of what the propaganda machine spouts all the time. The more people get to see reality, the more they will no longer be able to hide in their fantasy worlds that help them sleep soundly at night.
But I'm confused. Are you trying to say that you don't know all the crap the U.S. government has done (if this is the case, read a history book; no wacky conspiracy theories necessary), or are you simply trying to say that you don't care, or that you think it is pointless to publicize it regardless of if it's right or wrong? (Honest question. I really don't know exactly what you were trying to get at in your comment.)
The more vague, the better, IMO. It leaves plenty of room for people's uninformed imaginations to run rampant, it's more plausible, and people aren't really going to ask for evidence before they consider him guilty. Murder, though, still requires a certain amount of evidence in people's minds (means, motive, opportunity), so a baseless accusation would not be nearly as effective. It's easy to imagine a guy like Assange as a perv, since he doesn't "look normal" to the average idiot.
The way I see it, governments kill all kinds of people directly and indirectly in secret--and the U.S. has a particularly rich history of this. As such, I want every government's secrets to be plastered everywhere. The number of people that may conceivably die as a result of these leaks is absolutely nothing compared to what has been done in secret for decades.
Of course, I'm a pacifist and an anarchist, so I consider the idea of having to balance secrecy and disclosure so that the state can continue to exist in its preferred form (I believe it's called "national security") kind of moot. YMMV.
I don't think the goal is to make him go away. I think the goal is to publicly discredit him so Ma and Pa Amerkin will never listen to the information he releases that paints the U.S. government in a negative light. Given the stigma attached to sex crimes in the U.S., I think it is the perfect vehicle to try to discredit somebody. You never have to be charged or convicted to be considered guilty of sex crimes here. It is enough to be accused.
How often does Interpol get involved in sex crimes cases? Specifically, I'm wondering if this is common practice, or if it's only common practice when the suspect is as famous/meddling/troublesome-to-xyz-government as Julian Assange.
You're going to blame porn for your addiction?
I would suggest you have an addictive personality. I was exposed to porn back in sixth grade. I've certainly managed to do well, by any reasonable standard of accomplishment. Suppose that's the case and I do have an addictive personality, does that make any difference to the point I was making by explaining all this? The point was that porn can be very harmful to people who are exposed to it early (or at all, for that matter), regardless of the reason.
As such, why shouldn't it be made harder for people to access, such that only those who have significant motivation and means will access it. When I got into it, it was just like it is today: freely available and easy to find. If every porn site required some thing like age-verification or a credit card # to access, it would have been impossible for me to get into in the first place. Thus, addictive personality or not I would not have had this problem. If people were not so selfish, they would agree to these restrictions out of love. Unfortunately people who embrace pornography do not know love because they don't know the One who gives it, making the whole thing a catch-22. I don't expect things to change until this world comes to an end, whenever that is.
Stupid question here, were they not god's commandments, or is this part of the father/son/ghost thing?
Christ is God and vice/versa/etc., so, yes.
How did porn affect your life, honestly?
Every girl/woman I looked at became a piece of potential sex. My relationship with my family suffered tremendously in many ways. I passed up many years of healthy family time as well as time with friends on occasion to seek out more porn. We aren't just talking an hour here or there. I had dialup all that time, so porn was pretty much a 4-8 hour kind of thing. The pattern was generally that I could be free from it for 1-2 days before going back for 2-3 days. That was in high school. And note that I was not some bottom-of-the-social-foodchain outcast/loner type. I was high school valedictorian and senior class president (at a public high school mind you).
When I got out of high school I hoped I would grow out of it. I didn't. Going through college was hard because porn took up valuable study time--very stressful knowing you need to be writing that paper but for some reason you can't stop looking for pictures of Russian lesbian nymphos or whatever. After that I met the most amazing woman on earth and had to keep it from her until I knew that I no longer could/should. It hurt her very much and caused all kinds of fears/doubts. Around that time God simply came to me one day and said that He was setting me free and I have been ever since (as for why He didn't do this sooner I have many good guesses, but I don't know for sure). The relationship has healed but there are still fears/doubts that keep popping up. She can't understand it. She feels like there must be something wrong with her, when the problem was with me. But I guess that's not harmful either, eh?
The other thing I wonder every time I hear about porn addicts, is it the porn itself or is it seeing something taboo? Many of the people I have talked to that have had porn addictions come from hard lining religious or social backgrounds that very much vilify it, and just like drugs kids get into it as an act of rebellion, and because they do not understand the truth about what they are seeing and experiencing they do not know how to handle or control it.
My parents weren't the hard-line type of religious folks. They certainly wanted their children to follow Christ but they took a very good approach. They taught us about Him and encouraged us to "believe in Him" when we were young enough to not know what to do. As we got older they would teach us about things and encourage us to do what was right, but they didn't restrict us from everything that might cause trouble. With sex, we talked about it openly and honestly. As I got more into porn it was harder to talk honestly about sex because I didn't want them to know what I struggled with. Deep down I knew they would love me and help me through it, but I found it very embarrassing.
For me it was not rebellion. What little of a rebellious side I had was played out by being a l337 h4x0r wannabe and installing Netbus and BackOrifice on the computers at school. After a lot of self-analysis and such, I think the driving force behind it was something to do with exploration and limitless options. In other words, there's always a girl you haven't seen and its a thrill to find a really hot one.
...if you had been shown pictures of naked women when you were starting to get to that age and explained about love and sexual intimacy, would viewing porn later had the same impact on you? Also if you had been in a social environment where you could have discussed it, and talked openly about how you were feeling and that you felt you might have a problem, do you think it would have had less of an impact on your life?
If I had been shown naked pictures of women I would have pretended that it didn't phase me and then I would have sought them out on my own just as I did. All t
Please think critically. I got sucked into the Internet porn trap when I was about 12. By the time I realized that it was not something that I wanted to be involved with in any way (when I realized it was wrong) I found that it was too late and I was addicted. I got addicted before I realized that I should stop. Ten years later I was finally set free from it.
Maybe we should just give kids cigarettes or drugs. After all, they're certainly able to handle it, right? The only thing you might try to argue against this analogy is that cigs/drugs are bad for you and porn is not. I am not going to argue that point. If you wanted to know the truth you would find it without me having to tell you. All I will say is that it was the worst ten years of my life. It marred and eventually stole the vast majority of the joy of my adolescence.
Maybe if we followed Christ's 2nd greatest commandment (Love your neighbor as yourself), we would be willing to say something like, "Even if I see no problem with porn, I would be willing to give up my easy access to porn out of love for my neighbor who suffers because it." But you know nothing of love because you do not know the One who gives it.
Your ethic is that nobody can "push" their ethic onto anybody else. You then proceed to tell somebody to follow your ethic by not trying to get you to follow their ethic.
In other words, you are pushing your own ethic on somebody else by expecting them not to push theirs on you.
Think about it.
Your ethic is that nobody can "push" their ethic onto anybody else. You then proceed to tell somebody to follow your ethic by not trying to get you to follow their ethic.
In other words, you are pushing your own ethic on somebody else by expecting them not to push theirs on you.
It is trivial for somebody to sniff your wireless card's MAC and spoof it. However, it requires enough knowledge to operate a sniffer and a MAC spoofer, thus eliminating 99% of the population. And even at that, they have to catch you while you are using the computer in order to find out your MAC, which potentially requires a time investment. After that, they might have to flood the ARP tables (does this even work over wireless?) if your computer is still on while they are trying to spoof your MAC. I guess trivial is a relative term... Why I am even posting this? Somebody please mod me down...
Just to let everyone who is taking my comment so seriously knows, what I wrote was an attempt at humor, which dictionary.com defines as: "That which is intended to induce laughter or amusement." No offense intended.:)
"I work with celebrities--but I don't like it. No, sirree. I don't like working with celebrities... Like Nicholas Cage. I don't like working with Nick. He's kind of clingy and he keeps asking for my autograph. Did I mention I work with celebrities?"
I would say that simply because a person is not given the option of converting doesn't necessarily mean that they will automatically be saved. I don't think they are ruled out, but I think God weighs the person's heart. He knows if that person, when confronted with the gospel, would accept or reject it. That's my theory anyway, but I can't say I completely know the mind of God. All I know is that He is just and merciful. Thus, if somebody can be saved, they will be saved. If they reject God, they won't be saved. Anybody who truly seeks God with an open heart will find Him; He will reveal Himself. If a person puts restrictions on Him and says, "I won't believe in a god who _________," then they set themselves and their own understanding as god, rather than allowing for the possibility that God is not something that can be understood completeley by the human mind.
It is interesting how much of science has been influenced and motivated by people's philosophical and religious beliefs. Kepler, who basically nailed down the laws of planetary motion in the 16th century, formulated his theory because he was intent on proving a heliocentric universe to support his neo-Platonic views. Was this pseudoscience because he was working toward a specific goal, even though he turned out to be right (more or less)?
"Pseudoscience" is a word used by people who don't want to actually think about the claims another group is making. Instead of saying, "Gee, these people actually have a point, even if they have a pre-determined goal they are trying to prove." It would be like saying, "Because Kepler was trying to support his philosophical leanings, we have to throw out everything we have learned about planetary motion thanks to him." Ridiculous...
You know, I would consider it far worse if a person who believes that you will go to hell if you don't believe _doesn't_ approach you about converting. It would be like standing by and watching people jump off a cliff without saying anything. That would be inexcusable. Next time somebody tries to convert you, thank them kindly at the very least.
Slashdot Mirror
As an american, I don't believe for one second that it's not targeted at us, too. Mr. Hypponen has my support, as well.
I agree. Instead of wasting our energy on some counterproductive "war" between science and religion (a war that exists only in people's heads), we should instead seek to help both become better at what they are about. We should strive to make science accessible and successful at solving the problems it can solve, and at answering the questions it can answer. Similarly, we need to help religion "grow up" into a fully beneficial force for motivating people to treat others and the environment well, and for helping them deal with the difficulties of life in healthy ways. I honestly believe they can help each other achieve these goals.
None of this will happen very easily, though, if both "sides" feel under attack. When we feel threatened, we typically do not respond with the kind of insightful self-reflection that helps us overcome our flaws. I believe both science and religion have spoken to this fact using their respective vocabularies.
The reason I think the elimination of these secrets will be a good thing is that there are a lot of people who earnestly believe that "we" are the "good guys" who don't do things like that. The government maintains its apple pie home-baked goodness image, insisting that it's always the other guys that are the bad-people-du-jour who are out to kill us because they hate our freedom or something like that. When you reveal the kinds of evil the government does to other people, then folks can start to see why (or even if) "they" are actually fighting "us" instead of what the propaganda machine spouts all the time. The more people get to see reality, the more they will no longer be able to hide in their fantasy worlds that help them sleep soundly at night. But I'm confused. Are you trying to say that you don't know all the crap the U.S. government has done (if this is the case, read a history book; no wacky conspiracy theories necessary), or are you simply trying to say that you don't care, or that you think it is pointless to publicize it regardless of if it's right or wrong? (Honest question. I really don't know exactly what you were trying to get at in your comment.)
The more vague, the better, IMO. It leaves plenty of room for people's uninformed imaginations to run rampant, it's more plausible, and people aren't really going to ask for evidence before they consider him guilty. Murder, though, still requires a certain amount of evidence in people's minds (means, motive, opportunity), so a baseless accusation would not be nearly as effective. It's easy to imagine a guy like Assange as a perv, since he doesn't "look normal" to the average idiot.
The way I see it, governments kill all kinds of people directly and indirectly in secret--and the U.S. has a particularly rich history of this. As such, I want every government's secrets to be plastered everywhere. The number of people that may conceivably die as a result of these leaks is absolutely nothing compared to what has been done in secret for decades. Of course, I'm a pacifist and an anarchist, so I consider the idea of having to balance secrecy and disclosure so that the state can continue to exist in its preferred form (I believe it's called "national security") kind of moot. YMMV.
I don't think the goal is to make him go away. I think the goal is to publicly discredit him so Ma and Pa Amerkin will never listen to the information he releases that paints the U.S. government in a negative light. Given the stigma attached to sex crimes in the U.S., I think it is the perfect vehicle to try to discredit somebody. You never have to be charged or convicted to be considered guilty of sex crimes here. It is enough to be accused.
How often does Interpol get involved in sex crimes cases? Specifically, I'm wondering if this is common practice, or if it's only common practice when the suspect is as famous/meddling/troublesome-to-xyz-government as Julian Assange.
Exactly! Mod parent up insightful.
CowboyNeal 2010, anyone?
Have you checked out your car lately?
because they can't figure out it they should be pointing it to /dev/psaux or /dev/input/mice. Not to mention all the confusion over ps2/imps2.
(Sigh. That's the best joke I could wriggle out of this one without referring to robotic snake overlords. Ssssorry.)
Beary carefully.
Rule #1: Never pass up a pun (or should I say, "Rule number pun?").
*ducks*
As such, why shouldn't it be made harder for people to access, such that only those who have significant motivation and means will access it. When I got into it, it was just like it is today: freely available and easy to find. If every porn site required some thing like age-verification or a credit card # to access, it would have been impossible for me to get into in the first place. Thus, addictive personality or not I would not have had this problem. If people were not so selfish, they would agree to these restrictions out of love. Unfortunately people who embrace pornography do not know love because they don't know the One who gives it, making the whole thing a catch-22. I don't expect things to change until this world comes to an end, whenever that is.
Stupid question here, were they not god's commandments, or is this part of the father/son/ghost thing?
Christ is God and vice/versa/etc., so, yes.
How did porn affect your life, honestly?
Every girl/woman I looked at became a piece of potential sex. My relationship with my family suffered tremendously in many ways. I passed up many years of healthy family time as well as time with friends on occasion to seek out more porn. We aren't just talking an hour here or there. I had dialup all that time, so porn was pretty much a 4-8 hour kind of thing. The pattern was generally that I could be free from it for 1-2 days before going back for 2-3 days. That was in high school. And note that I was not some bottom-of-the-social-foodchain outcast/loner type. I was high school valedictorian and senior class president (at a public high school mind you).
When I got out of high school I hoped I would grow out of it. I didn't. Going through college was hard because porn took up valuable study time--very stressful knowing you need to be writing that paper but for some reason you can't stop looking for pictures of Russian lesbian nymphos or whatever. After that I met the most amazing woman on earth and had to keep it from her until I knew that I no longer could/should. It hurt her very much and caused all kinds of fears/doubts. Around that time God simply came to me one day and said that He was setting me free and I have been ever since (as for why He didn't do this sooner I have many good guesses, but I don't know for sure). The relationship has healed but there are still fears/doubts that keep popping up. She can't understand it. She feels like there must be something wrong with her, when the problem was with me. But I guess that's not harmful either, eh?
The other thing I wonder every time I hear about porn addicts, is it the porn itself or is it seeing something taboo? Many of the people I have talked to that have had porn addictions come from hard lining religious or social backgrounds that very much vilify it, and just like drugs kids get into it as an act of rebellion, and because they do not understand the truth about what they are seeing and experiencing they do not know how to handle or control it.
My parents weren't the hard-line type of religious folks. They certainly wanted their children to follow Christ but they took a very good approach. They taught us about Him and encouraged us to "believe in Him" when we were young enough to not know what to do. As we got older they would teach us about things and encourage us to do what was right, but they didn't restrict us from everything that might cause trouble. With sex, we talked about it openly and honestly. As I got more into porn it was harder to talk honestly about sex because I didn't want them to know what I struggled with. Deep down I knew they would love me and help me through it, but I found it very embarrassing.
For me it was not rebellion. What little of a rebellious side I had was played out by being a l337 h4x0r wannabe and installing Netbus and BackOrifice on the computers at school. After a lot of self-analysis and such, I think the driving force behind it was something to do with exploration and limitless options. In other words, there's always a girl you haven't seen and its a thrill to find a really hot one.
...if you had been shown pictures of naked women when you were starting to get to that age and explained about love and sexual intimacy, would viewing porn later had the same impact on you? Also if you had been in a social environment where you could have discussed it, and talked openly about how you were feeling and that you felt you might have a problem, do you think it would have had less of an impact on your life?
If I had been shown naked pictures of women I would have pretended that it didn't phase me and then I would have sought them out on my own just as I did. All t
Please think critically. I got sucked into the Internet porn trap when I was about 12. By the time I realized that it was not something that I wanted to be involved with in any way (when I realized it was wrong) I found that it was too late and I was addicted. I got addicted before I realized that I should stop. Ten years later I was finally set free from it.
Maybe we should just give kids cigarettes or drugs. After all, they're certainly able to handle it, right? The only thing you might try to argue against this analogy is that cigs/drugs are bad for you and porn is not. I am not going to argue that point. If you wanted to know the truth you would find it without me having to tell you. All I will say is that it was the worst ten years of my life. It marred and eventually stole the vast majority of the joy of my adolescence.
Maybe if we followed Christ's 2nd greatest commandment (Love your neighbor as yourself), we would be willing to say something like, "Even if I see no problem with porn, I would be willing to give up my easy access to porn out of love for my neighbor who suffers because it." But you know nothing of love because you do not know the One who gives it.
Your ethic is that nobody can "push" their ethic onto anybody else. You then proceed to tell somebody to follow your ethic by not trying to get you to follow their ethic. In other words, you are pushing your own ethic on somebody else by expecting them not to push theirs on you. Think about it.
Your ethic is that nobody can "push" their ethic onto anybody else. You then proceed to tell somebody to follow your ethic by not trying to get you to follow their ethic.
In other words, you are pushing your own ethic on somebody else by expecting them not to push theirs on you.
Think about it.
Speaking of hate... (see parent post)
It is trivial for somebody to sniff your wireless card's MAC and spoof it. However, it requires enough knowledge to operate a sniffer and a MAC spoofer, thus eliminating 99% of the population. And even at that, they have to catch you while you are using the computer in order to find out your MAC, which potentially requires a time investment. After that, they might have to flood the ARP tables (does this even work over wireless?) if your computer is still on while they are trying to spoof your MAC. I guess trivial is a relative term... Why I am even posting this? Somebody please mod me down...
Just to let everyone who is taking my comment so seriously knows, what I wrote was an attempt at humor, which dictionary.com defines as: "That which is intended to induce laughter or amusement." No offense intended. :)
Yeah, yeah... listen to you...
"I work with celebrities--but I don't like it. No, sirree. I don't like working with celebrities... Like Nicholas Cage. I don't like working with Nick. He's kind of clingy and he keeps asking for my autograph. Did I mention I work with celebrities?"
This is not off-topic at all. Re-mod, please.
I would say that simply because a person is not given the option of converting doesn't necessarily mean that they will automatically be saved. I don't think they are ruled out, but I think God weighs the person's heart. He knows if that person, when confronted with the gospel, would accept or reject it. That's my theory anyway, but I can't say I completely know the mind of God. All I know is that He is just and merciful. Thus, if somebody can be saved, they will be saved. If they reject God, they won't be saved. Anybody who truly seeks God with an open heart will find Him; He will reveal Himself. If a person puts restrictions on Him and says, "I won't believe in a god who _________," then they set themselves and their own understanding as god, rather than allowing for the possibility that God is not something that can be understood completeley by the human mind.
It is interesting how much of science has been influenced and motivated by people's philosophical and religious beliefs. Kepler, who basically nailed down the laws of planetary motion in the 16th century, formulated his theory because he was intent on proving a heliocentric universe to support his neo-Platonic views. Was this pseudoscience because he was working toward a specific goal, even though he turned out to be right (more or less)? "Pseudoscience" is a word used by people who don't want to actually think about the claims another group is making. Instead of saying, "Gee, these people actually have a point, even if they have a pre-determined goal they are trying to prove." It would be like saying, "Because Kepler was trying to support his philosophical leanings, we have to throw out everything we have learned about planetary motion thanks to him." Ridiculous...
You know, I would consider it far worse if a person who believes that you will go to hell if you don't believe _doesn't_ approach you about converting. It would be like standing by and watching people jump off a cliff without saying anything. That would be inexcusable. Next time somebody tries to convert you, thank them kindly at the very least.