If the ways of the bible are showing up in our public education systems and you don't agree with it, teach your kids your alternative beliefs. I think this is one of the biggest problems these days.
There are a couple of problems with teaching the bible in school:
1) It's unconstitutional unless every religion's holy book is taught.
2) Bible teachers tend to lie a lot about their subject matter. Children aren't served by being taught lies.
As for creationism, it has no place in science classes because it isn't science. Period. People say "teach the controversy" but there is no scientific controversy. There's a political and religious controversy but that doesn't matter in a science class.
Parents don't want to spend enough time teaching their kids the differences between right and wrong.
Sounds good. Let's start with abolishing the laws against torturing people who disagree with the current government's views.
Torturing people who don't agree with you is very christian. Inquisition, witch trials, etc. He was talking about taking religion out of government.
My point: It's not possible to entirely divorce laws from religion. What laws we consider acceptable are based on our notion of the "good", and our notion of the "good" is partially informed by religious (or a-religious) beliefs.
Actually, it is. Divorcing laws from morality is probably impossible, but religion and morality have, at best, a passing relationship.
The most recent attempts that come to mind for government rule based on athiesm are the Third Reich and the government of China. Not really the kind of governments I'm keen to live under.
Hitler was christian and his government reflected that.
Why do people think that a person has a right to take a job that they know their religious beliefs won't let them perform? Contraceptives are legal and people have a right to have them, other people's religious beliefs be damned.
No one would tolerate a Buddhist chef at a steak-house who refused to cook meat because of religious vegetarian beliefs. I don't see why people think christian beliefs are any different. Pharamcists who shove their religious beliefs down other people's throats should be fired and those who refuse to return prescriptions should be charged, tried and jailed.
A newborn cannot exhibit sentience any more than a dog can. In fact, dogs can do "tricks" that newborns can't which would easily make you think they are sentient. It's a bullshit test.
How many dogs have fooled you into thinking they were sentient? If the answer is zero then you should stop wasting everyone's time with stupid shit like this. If the answer is greater than zero then you should seek professional help outside this forum.
I've got news for you, until a baby is over about 2, it's not any more sentient than a chimp, which is Ok to kill.
This isn't even remotely true. Humans have cognitive abilities that other animals (even chimps) don't. The difference is significant even when those abilities are not fully developed as is the case with newborns, the mentally retarded and ACs.
Do you have a soul? Do you believe in God? To many people, their ethics are more important than science or cars or money.
It's dishonest of you to imply that scientists and other people who favor stem cell research don't have or use ethics in making their decisions and that the people involved are doing it for "cars and money".
The fact that you refeer to soul and "some such shit" in the same sentance leads me to believe you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong, and that you should be the one who decides where my tax dollars are spent.
Guess he has a lot in common with you then.
All that Bush did was listen to his constituents, who said they don't want their tax dollars being spent on embryos that came from abortions.
All Bush did was listen to his special-interest supporters who do not represent the majority of Americans. Here's a news-flash for you: everyone's taxes are spent on some things that they don't approve of. You are not special and do not have some special right to personally approve everything the government spends tax money on.
If there is a woman, who is pregnant and scared, and 50% of her wants an abortion but 50% of her wants the baby, what will happen if someone tells her- "Your abortion will be put to good use, we can find cures to diseases with your embryo". That might be the extra push that convinces her to get an abortion. Even though there are no gaurentees that there will be any breakthroughs.
It's a sure sign of desperation when you have to make up stupid shit that no one would ever say. I wonder if anyone read that part of your message and nodded along, thinking "that happens all the time now!" Pretty sad to think that someone might have.
There are still so many embryos frozen in university research centers that are grandfathered in, there will be no shortage of embryos for the foreseeable future.
This is false. The current lines are contaminated which is why we need more. Learning this was Frist's supposed reason for changing his view (apparently he's been living in a cave; the rest of us have known this for years).
So if the argument is that you can't kill a human baby because a human baby is not property then it's a total strawman argument to claim that it is ok to kill a zygote on the grounds of what it is capable of. You have to face the argument, is a zygote property? To answer that question I think we have to agree on a few things. I own my own body, you own yours.
This is a false dichotomy. The reason that humans are considered different from other animals is that we are sentient. That is the distinction. So it is completely reasonable that the law considers a human embryo, which is not sentient, to be property while a baby is not. And it's important to note that this is already the position that the law takes. Embryos are considered the property of the people who produced them. Many (if not all) of the embryos that are currently used for this research are ones that were about to be destroyed.
If we define a woman's body to include anything that grows within it, regardless of how that growth is initiated, then it is clear that until a fetus is removed from her body it is her property.
But that isn't how a woman's body is defined. This is a non sequitur.
I would think that gossip, in and of itself, would be speech. The means by which you acquire the information that you are spreading might violate the person's privacy (or it might not).
ifwm's ignorance about Christianity is surprising given that we've just seen the conviction of Christian terrorist Eric Rudolph.
Perhaps he should follow the advice of the Bible as given in Matthew 7:3: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
The Constitution doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them and proscribes limits to government actions accordingly. The Founding Fathers knew that they couldn't explicitly list every right that people have so they provided the Ninth Amendment, which states:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
It isn't practical to eliminate all distractions. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't even try to eliminate any distractions.
What I wonder is, how much of the findings is causation and how much is just correlation? Does cell phone use cause poor driving or is it just that poor drivers are more likely to be willing to talk on their cell phone and risk the distraction?
So me, as a computer scientist who has studied the pros and cons of Christianity as much as I can, and have come to the conclusion that God is real, is deluded?
I'm not sure what being a computer scientist has to do with it. I'm a computer scientist who has studied the pros and cons of Christianity as much as I can and I came to the conclusion that there is no evidence of any god and that the Christian image of god is false. And as far as I can remember, computer science never came into it.
Have you ever actually read and studied the gospels?
Yes. And found them unconvincing. Have you studied the Koran? If you haven't, how do you justify ruling out Islam? Have you studied the vedas? If not, how do you rule out Hinduism? In my experience, most of the Christians who challenge people to read the bible have never read other holy texts.
I believe his complaint about the gospels having been written in Greek rather than Aramaic is misguided, in that (I believe) Greek was the common language of scholarly writing at that time, much as Latin was for several centuries in Europe.
I think his point with this is that it's evidence that they weren't written by the actual disciples, because the disciples weren't scholars and wouldn't have written in Greek.
Finally, many of his points, if logically followed, do not really bear on the simple question of whether Jesus lived, in the sense of there having been a real person on whom the gospels were based. Rather, they bear on the question of whether Jesus existed as pictured by modern Christians.
I think it's safe to say that, at that period in time, there were one or more people named Jesus. It was, as I understand it, a common name. It's also safe to say that during that period there were many Jewish messiahs (here's a link to an article that discusses them). Was there one named Jesus? Maybe. It's certainly not unlikely. But if we can't be sure of even the mundane details of the life described in the gospels (the conditions of his birth, the timing, what he taught, etc) I don't see how we can treat the Bible as anything other than a myth, like the Iliad (you're right; it's a better example than the Odyssey -- easier to spell, too). I know you don't have the answers; neither do I. We're both just trying to look at it from the studies we've read. I don't know if anyone really has the answers.
Rather, they bear on the question of whether Jesus existed as pictured by modern Christians.
In my opinion, this is an interesting and important question. I think that modern Christians do not accept their religion as it is. I think they've modernized it and will continue to do so as science uncovers an increasing number of contradictions with traditional church teachings. Personally I find that this makes me even more sceptical about its validity.
They are 'authentic' in the sense that they are genuinely the writings of ancient Christians, not necessarily 'authentic' in the sense of being true.
But isn't that the point? I mean, we have authentic copies of Homer's Odyssey but that doesn't mean that we think the characters contained within are real.
The article you referred to is interesting. He makes some good points, and some that I think are false. Overall, it seems to me like he has an axe to grind: the tone of the article seems quite biased.
I think he definitely has an opinion on the subject and makes no attempt to hide it. It's difficult to find completely neutral articles from either side. I do think he makes good points about the many discrepencies and apparent errors in the stories. What points did you feel were false?
I did a bit of googling on Gauvin (skimming mostly). It doesn't look like he has any academic credentials. There is an interesting biography of him at the University of Manitoba Library. It doesn't look to me like he is a good example of how to apply unbiased rational thought to an issue.
I think on this subject you'll have trouble finding people who aren't biased to some extent. As for rational, he seems pretty rational to me.
Indeed. That's the sort of thing that I was referring to in my last paragraph. The home repair people from AOL will probably migrate to web forums, but almost certainly not all to the same one. It is possible that Google Groups (which is apparently more than just a Usenet interface) could act as a replacement, given how well-known Google is and the fact that it's web-based and therefore wouldn't be blocked by AOL.
I think with AOL the issues were the quantity of newcomers and the rate at which they appeared. Prior to AOL people joined Usenet at a relatively slow rate compared to the size of the existing body of posters. This meant that newbies who didn't know netiquette were heavily outnumbered so they were more likely to conform to the existing standards. When AOL began providing Usenet access this changed. The sheer number of AOL members was so great that the they didn't feel any pressure to conform to the existing standards. This may have been a neutral or even positive development if they had brought a new standard but instead it was just chaos.
What happens if other ISPs decide that maintaining a news server for a handful of Geeks is no longer worth the trouble?
If that happens then the people who really care about Usenet will use providers like Giganews while those who don't care will stop using it. I think certain groups (particularly technical groups) might welcome this; other, more social groups might not.
One advantage that Usenet provided in the days before the web was that it was a central location for discussing things. (Note that I don't mean architecturally; the actual servers are distributed). These days, for a lot of subjects there is no central location to discuss things, which just leads to a bunch of separate, smaller groups that can't provide the same breadth of experience and perspective.
In the days before widespread internet usage, a significant percentage of the participants in Usenet were college students. Every September would see an influx of newbies who didn't have a clue about Usenet conventions and would disrupt things until they were educated. When AOL gained Usenet access people referred to it as "the September that never ended", referring to the fact that there was now a constant influx of clueless newbies.
From a scholarly point of view, of course, their existence is not evidence for the truth of Christian doctrine as a whole, but they are certainly good enough evidence of the existence of the teacher we know as Jesus.
The idea that these documents provide proof of the existence of a teacher we know as Jesus is definitely in dispute. There's not much point in maintaining parallel threads discussing the same thing so I'll direct you to my other message which has a link to an article that discusses the controversy.
Actually, that's not true. There are at least half a dozen other ancient 'gospels' besides the ones that made it into the Bible. You're free of course to doubt their religious content and their accuracy, but from a historical perspective all of these documents need to be evaluated the same way a historian would evaluate any other set of ancient religious documents.
Naturally all of the gospels must be evaluated the same way as other ancient documents and indeed this is done. Not having done research personally, the first question that pops into my mind is: if these other gospels are considered authentic, why aren't they in the bible? I don't know if you have any information on that; I know my catholic religious classes didn't even mention them.
There's a good article by Marshall J. Gauvin that describes some of the reasons why many scholars doubt the existence of a Jesus that at all resembled what the gospels say.
Your pose as a Mac Zealot / Open Source detractor is a promising combination. The Mac is a good platform with a lot of supporters here so you'll have a steady supply of people who are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say outrageous things. On the flipside, attacking open source with stupid arguments as you've been doing is a fantastic way to almost guarantee a response, no matter how trollish the post appears.
Your "How is a conversation supposed to be useful?" line is pretty good; it's so amazingly stupid that the first reaction is to respond indignantly that many if not most conversations are intended to be useful, etc, blahblahblah. Your big problem is repetition. The rest of your troll is just more of the same drivel you've been posting all along. Trying to act like some outsider who doesn't understand any of this stuff, trying to claim that your superior understanding of the English language is intefering with your reading comprehension, etc. It's decent material but you need a wider repertoire to sustain a really long thread.
So look, it's been fun and all but I'm pretty bored. Maybe I'll check out one of your other posts later on when you've had some room to improve. Trolling's always seemed like a colossal waste of time to me but I enjoy bickering with trolls from time to time so maybe I shouldn't criticize. I'll let you get the last post in this thread, probably with some sort of "I don't understand what you mean." stuff. Try and show some originality though. Maybe you can provoke a response.
Um, no. The name is what everybody else calls it. And that's "Open Office."
Wrong. If a person's name is Tom and everyone calls him "Jim", that doesn't make his name "Jim". It's the same with software or anything else.
Consequently, it's correct only to talk about having rights, not having freedom. And to have the right to do something is to be in a circumstance where no law of God or man prohibits it.
Wrong. Not that you believe this anyway. Your name argument claims that whatever "everyone else" does is correct, therefore since "everyone else" talks about having freedoms, you believe it is correct to do so.
You seem to have arrived at the conclusion that precisely one event has transpired in my life, and because I have experienced only that one event I am unqualified to hold my opinion. What led you to that conclusion?
I never said that only one event occurred in your life. It is stupid and/or dishonest of you to claim that I did. What I said is that, based on your message, you formed your opinion about open source on a single incident. Given that this is what you said, it's a reasonable conclusion. I certainly could have given you the benefit of the doubt despite what you actually said, but given that your short history here consists primarily of you saying a bunch of stupid things in a blindly arrogant tone, I decided not to.
Are you suggesting that I lied when I said I didn't know what "Mac troll" meant?
If you had better reading comprehension you'd know that I was doing more than suggesting it. I was stating it outright.
To call someone a "troll" would be like calling him an ape or a buffoon, I suppose. But I don't know what that has to do with the Macintosh.
You're trying to claim that you are so unfamiliar with online forums that you don't know what at troll is. I do not believe you. Given the dishonest nature of several of your other comments I have no reason to believe that you are not lying here.
>You presented your opinion as though it were fact and that anyone who disagreed was an idiot.
Again, we're going to remove the nonsense from this sentence and see if we can divine its meaning. Let's see...strike that...strike that...carry the two...got it. Your sentence, reduced to its essence, reads like this:
You said what you thought.
You're not very good at this reading comprehension thing (or "divining the meaning" as you call it) so I'll help you out a bit. It says that you presented your opinion as though it were fact. That is not the same thing as saying what you think. I find it impossible to believe that you are so amazingly ignorant that you can't understand this. Dishonesty is again the more likely explanation.
The question, chum, is whether "online forums" are ready for me, isn't it?;-)
I wouldn't worry. You're a source of amusement, at least for the moment. Boredom is beginning to slip in, but it's not like stopping will be a problem. This conversation has already gone way past the point of usefulness. I doubt you've convinced anyone of your dubious points. As for my owns points, I'm not really concerned about getting agreement from anyone. I suspect the only person who disagrees is you, anyway.
As for the forum, it turns out that the slashdot moderation system works reasonably well for this. If you continue posting in your current manner you will be modded down over time. The lower your karma goes the less often you'll be able to post in a day. Eventually your posts start off at 0 or lower which means that most people won't even see them. The system is reasonably self-correcting.
Correct. If the Web address is "openoffice.org," the name of the company is "Open Office." If the company that makes Open Office wants to deliberately confuse people by choosing a name that baffles, that's their choice. But it doesn't make it a name. It's still just a Web address.
If "OpenOffice.org" is what the project calls its software, that's the name. Period. No one is confused by this except you. And to say it's not a name just because it's also the same as the web address is just stupid.
No, I'm saying that freedom and "open source" software are not related.
And you're wrong. I'm certain that you know this, but just in case you don't, this site might help you. You're just trying to minimize the importance of having the freedom to modify and distribute software.
Boiling it down, this sentence reads, "You think your opinion is valid." Yes, that's correct. I do.
No. You're trying to ignore my point. Your one supposed experience with one piece of open source software does not provide a basis to judge the open source methodology. You're entitled to your opinion but the rest of us certainly have the option to tell you it's stupid.
I don't know what that expression means.
Of course you do. I can't imagine that anyone would believe such an obvious and transparent lie.
No, I used one example to illustrate a larger point. This seems to have confused a significant number of people, to my never-ending surprise. I just sort of assumed that people were capable of reading and understanding written English. Silly me.
No, you provided one data point and tried to say that it indicated a trend. This is obviously not valid reasoning. We understand your post perfectly.
The point of my comment was to share my opinion. I didn't realize when I did it that there are people out there who believe that an opinion can be wrong.
You presented your opinion as though it were fact and that anyone who disagreed was an idiot. If you're surprised by the response you got then maybe you're not ready for online forums.
So if you ever run into an asshole Mac user, you'll dump that product too. You're going to run out of thing to use in short order.
I agree with everything you've said except this. If you look at this poster's history you'll see that he's a Mac troll. He's closed what mind he has to the point where his entire sense of self revolves around that platform. He would never abandon it.
Slashdot Mirror
If the ways of the bible are showing up in our public education systems and you don't agree with it, teach your kids your alternative beliefs. I think this is one of the biggest problems these days.
There are a couple of problems with teaching the bible in school:
1) It's unconstitutional unless every religion's holy book is taught.
2) Bible teachers tend to lie a lot about their subject matter. Children aren't served by being taught lies.
As for creationism, it has no place in science classes because it isn't science. Period. People say "teach the controversy" but there is no scientific controversy. There's a political and religious controversy but that doesn't matter in a science class.
Parents don't want to spend enough time teaching their kids the differences between right and wrong.
On this, we definitely agree.
Sounds good. Let's start with abolishing the laws against torturing people who disagree with the current government's views.
Torturing people who don't agree with you is very christian. Inquisition, witch trials, etc. He was talking about taking religion out of government.
My point: It's not possible to entirely divorce laws from religion. What laws we consider acceptable are based on our notion of the "good", and our notion of the "good" is partially informed by religious (or a-religious) beliefs.
Actually, it is. Divorcing laws from morality is probably impossible, but religion and morality have, at best, a passing relationship.
The most recent attempts that come to mind for government rule based on athiesm are the Third Reich and the government of China. Not really the kind of governments I'm keen to live under.
Hitler was christian and his government reflected that.
Why do people think that a person has a right to take a job that they know their religious beliefs won't let them perform? Contraceptives are legal and people have a right to have them, other people's religious beliefs be damned.
No one would tolerate a Buddhist chef at a steak-house who refused to cook meat because of religious vegetarian beliefs. I don't see why people think christian beliefs are any different. Pharamcists who shove their religious beliefs down other people's throats should be fired and those who refuse to return prescriptions should be charged, tried and jailed.
Clearly you know nothing about children. Discussing things with you is a waste of my time. Come back when you've grown up a little.
A newborn cannot exhibit sentience any more than a dog can. In fact, dogs can do "tricks" that newborns can't which would easily make you think they are sentient. It's a bullshit test.
How many dogs have fooled you into thinking they were sentient? If the answer is zero then you should stop wasting everyone's time with stupid shit like this. If the answer is greater than zero then you should seek professional help outside this forum.
I've got news for you, until a baby is over about 2, it's not any more sentient than a chimp, which is Ok to kill.
This isn't even remotely true. Humans have cognitive abilities that other animals (even chimps) don't. The difference is significant even when those abilities are not fully developed as is the case with newborns, the mentally retarded and ACs.
There is absolutely no proof, whatsoever, that embryonic stem cells have any potential to reverse or prevent Alzheimer's.
That's why it's called embryonic stem cell research.
Try to use your intellect, not your hatred.
Try taking your own advice.
Do you have a soul? Do you believe in God? To many people, their ethics are more important than science or cars or money.
It's dishonest of you to imply that scientists and other people who favor stem cell research don't have or use ethics in making their decisions and that the people involved are doing it for "cars and money".
The fact that you refeer to soul and "some such shit" in the same sentance leads me to believe you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong, and that you should be the one who decides where my tax dollars are spent.
Guess he has a lot in common with you then.
All that Bush did was listen to his constituents, who said they don't want their tax dollars being spent on embryos that came from abortions.
All Bush did was listen to his special-interest supporters who do not represent the majority of Americans. Here's a news-flash for you: everyone's taxes are spent on some things that they don't approve of. You are not special and do not have some special right to personally approve everything the government spends tax money on.
If there is a woman, who is pregnant and scared, and 50% of her wants an abortion but 50% of her wants the baby, what will happen if someone tells her- "Your abortion will be put to good use, we can find cures to diseases with your embryo". That might be the extra push that convinces her to get an abortion. Even though there are no gaurentees that there will be any breakthroughs.
It's a sure sign of desperation when you have to make up stupid shit that no one would ever say. I wonder if anyone read that part of your message and nodded along, thinking "that happens all the time now!" Pretty sad to think that someone might have.
There are still so many embryos frozen in university research centers that are grandfathered in, there will be no shortage of embryos for the foreseeable future.
This is false. The current lines are contaminated which is why we need more. Learning this was Frist's supposed reason for changing his view (apparently he's been living in a cave; the rest of us have known this for years).
So if the argument is that you can't kill a human baby because a human baby is not property then it's a total strawman argument to claim that it is ok to kill a zygote on the grounds of what it is capable of. You have to face the argument, is a zygote property? To answer that question I think we have to agree on a few things. I own my own body, you own yours.
This is a false dichotomy. The reason that humans are considered different from other animals is that we are sentient. That is the distinction. So it is completely reasonable that the law considers a human embryo, which is not sentient, to be property while a baby is not. And it's important to note that this is already the position that the law takes. Embryos are considered the property of the people who produced them. Many (if not all) of the embryos that are currently used for this research are ones that were about to be destroyed.
If we define a woman's body to include anything that grows within it, regardless of how that growth is initiated, then it is clear that until a fetus is removed from her body it is her property.
But that isn't how a woman's body is defined. This is a non sequitur.
I would think that gossip, in and of itself, would be speech. The means by which you acquire the information that you are spreading might violate the person's privacy (or it might not).
ifwm's ignorance about Christianity is surprising given that we've just seen the conviction of Christian terrorist Eric Rudolph.
Perhaps he should follow the advice of the Bible as given in Matthew 7:3: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
The Constitution doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them and proscribes limits to government actions accordingly. The Founding Fathers knew that they couldn't explicitly list every right that people have so they provided the Ninth Amendment, which states:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
More info here.
It isn't practical to eliminate all distractions. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't even try to eliminate any distractions.
What I wonder is, how much of the findings is causation and how much is just correlation? Does cell phone use cause poor driving or is it just that poor drivers are more likely to be willing to talk on their cell phone and risk the distraction?
So me, as a computer scientist who has studied the pros and cons of Christianity as much as I can, and have come to the conclusion that God is real, is deluded?
I'm not sure what being a computer scientist has to do with it. I'm a computer scientist who has studied the pros and cons of Christianity as much as I can and I came to the conclusion that there is no evidence of any god and that the Christian image of god is false. And as far as I can remember, computer science never came into it.
Have you ever actually read and studied the gospels?
Yes. And found them unconvincing. Have you studied the Koran? If you haven't, how do you justify ruling out Islam? Have you studied the vedas? If not, how do you rule out Hinduism? In my experience, most of the Christians who challenge people to read the bible have never read other holy texts.
I believe his complaint about the gospels having been written in Greek rather than Aramaic is misguided, in that (I believe) Greek was the common language of scholarly writing at that time, much as Latin was for several centuries in Europe.
I think his point with this is that it's evidence that they weren't written by the actual disciples, because the disciples weren't scholars and wouldn't have written in Greek.
Finally, many of his points, if logically followed, do not really bear on the simple question of whether Jesus lived, in the sense of there having been a real person on whom the gospels were based. Rather, they bear on the question of whether Jesus existed as pictured by modern Christians.
I think it's safe to say that, at that period in time, there were one or more people named Jesus. It was, as I understand it, a common name. It's also safe to say that during that period there were many Jewish messiahs (here's a link to an article that discusses them). Was there one named Jesus? Maybe. It's certainly not unlikely. But if we can't be sure of even the mundane details of the life described in the gospels (the conditions of his birth, the timing, what he taught, etc) I don't see how we can treat the Bible as anything other than a myth, like the Iliad (you're right; it's a better example than the Odyssey -- easier to spell, too). I know you don't have the answers; neither do I. We're both just trying to look at it from the studies we've read. I don't know if anyone really has the answers.
Rather, they bear on the question of whether Jesus existed as pictured by modern Christians.
In my opinion, this is an interesting and important question. I think that modern Christians do not accept their religion as it is. I think they've modernized it and will continue to do so as science uncovers an increasing number of contradictions with traditional church teachings. Personally I find that this makes me even more sceptical about its validity.
Such is life.
Indeed.
They are 'authentic' in the sense that they are genuinely the writings of ancient Christians, not necessarily 'authentic' in the sense of being true.
But isn't that the point? I mean, we have authentic copies of Homer's Odyssey but that doesn't mean that we think the characters contained within are real.
The article you referred to is interesting. He makes some good points, and some that I think are false. Overall, it seems to me like he has an axe to grind: the tone of the article seems quite biased.
I think he definitely has an opinion on the subject and makes no attempt to hide it. It's difficult to find completely neutral articles from either side. I do think he makes good points about the many discrepencies and apparent errors in the stories. What points did you feel were false?
I did a bit of googling on Gauvin (skimming mostly). It doesn't look like he has any academic credentials. There is an interesting biography of him at the University of Manitoba Library. It doesn't look to me like he is a good example of how to apply unbiased rational thought to an issue.
I think on this subject you'll have trouble finding people who aren't biased to some extent. As for rational, he seems pretty rational to me.
Indeed. That's the sort of thing that I was referring to in my last paragraph. The home repair people from AOL will probably migrate to web forums, but almost certainly not all to the same one. It is possible that Google Groups (which is apparently more than just a Usenet interface) could act as a replacement, given how well-known Google is and the fact that it's web-based and therefore wouldn't be blocked by AOL.
But without new blood Usenet ages and dies.
I think with AOL the issues were the quantity of newcomers and the rate at which they appeared. Prior to AOL people joined Usenet at a relatively slow rate compared to the size of the existing body of posters. This meant that newbies who didn't know netiquette were heavily outnumbered so they were more likely to conform to the existing standards. When AOL began providing Usenet access this changed. The sheer number of AOL members was so great that the they didn't feel any pressure to conform to the existing standards. This may have been a neutral or even positive development if they had brought a new standard but instead it was just chaos.
What happens if other ISPs decide that maintaining a news server for a handful of Geeks is no longer worth the trouble?
If that happens then the people who really care about Usenet will use providers like Giganews while those who don't care will stop using it. I think certain groups (particularly technical groups) might welcome this; other, more social groups might not.
One advantage that Usenet provided in the days before the web was that it was a central location for discussing things. (Note that I don't mean architecturally; the actual servers are distributed). These days, for a lot of subjects there is no central location to discuss things, which just leads to a bunch of separate, smaller groups that can't provide the same breadth of experience and perspective.
In the days before widespread internet usage, a significant percentage of the participants in Usenet were college students. Every September would see an influx of newbies who didn't have a clue about Usenet conventions and would disrupt things until they were educated. When AOL gained Usenet access people referred to it as "the September that never ended", referring to the fact that there was now a constant influx of clueless newbies.
From a scholarly point of view, of course, their existence is not evidence for the truth of Christian doctrine as a whole, but they are certainly good enough evidence of the existence of the teacher we know as Jesus.
The idea that these documents provide proof of the existence of a teacher we know as Jesus is definitely in dispute. There's not much point in maintaining parallel threads discussing the same thing so I'll direct you to my other message which has a link to an article that discusses the controversy.
Actually, that's not true. There are at least half a dozen other ancient 'gospels' besides the ones that made it into the Bible. You're free of course to doubt their religious content and their accuracy, but from a historical perspective all of these documents need to be evaluated the same way a historian would evaluate any other set of ancient religious documents.
Naturally all of the gospels must be evaluated the same way as other ancient documents and indeed this is done. Not having done research personally, the first question that pops into my mind is: if these other gospels are considered authentic, why aren't they in the bible? I don't know if you have any information on that; I know my catholic religious classes didn't even mention them.
There's a good article by Marshall J. Gauvin that describes some of the reasons why many scholars doubt the existence of a Jesus that at all resembled what the gospels say.
You have potential.
Your pose as a Mac Zealot / Open Source detractor is a promising combination. The Mac is a good platform with a lot of supporters here so you'll have a steady supply of people who are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say outrageous things. On the flipside, attacking open source with stupid arguments as you've been doing is a fantastic way to almost guarantee a response, no matter how trollish the post appears.
Your "How is a conversation supposed to be useful?" line is pretty good; it's so amazingly stupid that the first reaction is to respond indignantly that many if not most conversations are intended to be useful, etc, blahblahblah. Your big problem is repetition. The rest of your troll is just more of the same drivel you've been posting all along. Trying to act like some outsider who doesn't understand any of this stuff, trying to claim that your superior understanding of the English language is intefering with your reading comprehension, etc. It's decent material but you need a wider repertoire to sustain a really long thread.
So look, it's been fun and all but I'm pretty bored. Maybe I'll check out one of your other posts later on when you've had some room to improve. Trolling's always seemed like a colossal waste of time to me but I enjoy bickering with trolls from time to time so maybe I shouldn't criticize. I'll let you get the last post in this thread, probably with some sort of "I don't understand what you mean." stuff. Try and show some originality though. Maybe you can provoke a response.
Um, no. The name is what everybody else calls it. And that's "Open Office."
...strike that ...strike that ...carry the two ...got it. Your sentence, reduced to its essence, reads like this:
;-)
Wrong. If a person's name is Tom and everyone calls him "Jim", that doesn't make his name "Jim". It's the same with software or anything else.
Consequently, it's correct only to talk about having rights, not having freedom. And to have the right to do something is to be in a circumstance where no law of God or man prohibits it.
Wrong. Not that you believe this anyway. Your name argument claims that whatever "everyone else" does is correct, therefore since "everyone else" talks about having freedoms, you believe it is correct to do so.
You seem to have arrived at the conclusion that precisely one event has transpired in my life, and because I have experienced only that one event I am unqualified to hold my opinion. What led you to that conclusion?
I never said that only one event occurred in your life. It is stupid and/or dishonest of you to claim that I did. What I said is that, based on your message, you formed your opinion about open source on a single incident. Given that this is what you said, it's a reasonable conclusion. I certainly could have given you the benefit of the doubt despite what you actually said, but given that your short history here consists primarily of you saying a bunch of stupid things in a blindly arrogant tone, I decided not to.
Are you suggesting that I lied when I said I didn't know what "Mac troll" meant?
If you had better reading comprehension you'd know that I was doing more than suggesting it. I was stating it outright.
To call someone a "troll" would be like calling him an ape or a buffoon, I suppose. But I don't know what that has to do with the Macintosh.
You're trying to claim that you are so unfamiliar with online forums that you don't know what at troll is. I do not believe you. Given the dishonest nature of several of your other comments I have no reason to believe that you are not lying here.
>You presented your opinion as though it were fact and that anyone who disagreed was an idiot.
Again, we're going to remove the nonsense from this sentence and see if we can divine its meaning. Let's see
You said what you thought.
You're not very good at this reading comprehension thing (or "divining the meaning" as you call it) so I'll help you out a bit. It says that you presented your opinion as though it were fact. That is not the same thing as saying what you think. I find it impossible to believe that you are so amazingly ignorant that you can't understand this. Dishonesty is again the more likely explanation.
The question, chum, is whether "online forums" are ready for me, isn't it?
I wouldn't worry. You're a source of amusement, at least for the moment. Boredom is beginning to slip in, but it's not like stopping will be a problem. This conversation has already gone way past the point of usefulness. I doubt you've convinced anyone of your dubious points. As for my owns points, I'm not really concerned about getting agreement from anyone. I suspect the only person who disagrees is you, anyway.
As for the forum, it turns out that the slashdot moderation system works reasonably well for this. If you continue posting in your current manner you will be modded down over time. The lower your karma goes the less often you'll be able to post in a day. Eventually your posts start off at 0 or lower which means that most people won't even see them. The system is reasonably self-correcting.
Correct. If the Web address is "openoffice.org," the name of the company is "Open Office." If the company that makes Open Office wants to deliberately confuse people by choosing a name that baffles, that's their choice. But it doesn't make it a name. It's still just a Web address.
If "OpenOffice.org" is what the project calls its software, that's the name. Period. No one is confused by this except you. And to say it's not a name just because it's also the same as the web address is just stupid.
No, I'm saying that freedom and "open source" software are not related.
And you're wrong. I'm certain that you know this, but just in case you don't, this site might help you. You're just trying to minimize the importance of having the freedom to modify and distribute software.
Boiling it down, this sentence reads, "You think your opinion is valid." Yes, that's correct. I do.
No. You're trying to ignore my point. Your one supposed experience with one piece of open source software does not provide a basis to judge the open source methodology. You're entitled to your opinion but the rest of us certainly have the option to tell you it's stupid.
I don't know what that expression means.
Of course you do. I can't imagine that anyone would believe such an obvious and transparent lie.
No, I used one example to illustrate a larger point. This seems to have confused a significant number of people, to my never-ending surprise. I just sort of assumed that people were capable of reading and understanding written English. Silly me.
No, you provided one data point and tried to say that it indicated a trend. This is obviously not valid reasoning. We understand your post perfectly.
The point of my comment was to share my opinion. I didn't realize when I did it that there are people out there who believe that an opinion can be wrong.
You presented your opinion as though it were fact and that anyone who disagreed was an idiot. If you're surprised by the response you got then maybe you're not ready for online forums.
So if you ever run into an asshole Mac user, you'll dump that product too. You're going to run out of thing to use in short order.
I agree with everything you've said except this. If you look at this poster's history you'll see that he's a Mac troll. He's closed what mind he has to the point where his entire sense of self revolves around that platform. He would never abandon it.