If you have experienced God you cen no longer deny Him. Once you have been to the zoo, you can't not believe in Eliphants, no matter who argues their nonexistance.
Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.
What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
I totally would, but I don't have mod points and there's no, "-1 Tiresome would-be martyr with a persecution complex" option.
You misunderstane me. I say "mod me down" because it doesn't matter, my karma is excellent and will remain so, despite the occasional "troll" or "flamebait" moderation.
My "freaks" column is small, my "fans" column is impressive. I have no reason to feel persecuted, or a martyr. If I were worried about karma I'd post anonymously.
If you've been paying attention you know Dumb Restrictions on Media won't and can't work. How many programmers do you have working with you? OK, they're arrayed agains literally hundreds of thousaned of nerds all ready to crack your encryption, and once it's creaked it's cracked. The genie won't get back in the bottle. One against a million, those are impossible odds.
DRM gives "pirates" features that your paying customers don't have. Why should I pay for a crippled product when I can get the real deal for free? If you're going to treat me like a thief, why should I be honest?
Either you know this and are defrauding your employers, or you don't and you're incompetent. Or possibly you're trolling?
DRM is stupid. Anyone who thinks DRM can work is ignorant. Anybody who codes DRM is defrauding their employer.
Why shoulld you feel safe? You aren't safe; in fact, you will die. Yep, you're gonna die. And it's not likely to be a clean death, either. You're going to have a heart attack, or a stroke, or have your body eat itself with cancer, or Al Scheimers will eat your brain, or you will have an accident, or be murdered. Hell there's even a remote (very very very remote) chance that a Muslim terrorist will kill you.
But at any rate, you will die, all your friends will die, all your family will die, everyone you ever met will die.
Torture doesn't work, and indeed can even be counterproductive. In December 2006 I suffered a torn retina. The doctor welded my retina back togethsr with a laser, but the laser wouldn't reach the whole tear, as I have a device in my eye that replaces its lens consisting of a plastic lens on struts that move with the movement of the focusing muscles (yes I'm a cyborg now, you will be assimilated. Resistance is futile).
The struts got in the way of the laser. So he used an older therapy, which involved holding a metal probe supercooled with liquid nitrogen to the white of my eye opposite the torn retina.
If I'd been strapped to a chair at guantanimo when he did that, I'd have confessed to anything.
Torture is good for extracting confessions, but not for revealing the truth.
They rated you funny, and it was, but you should have been rated insightful. I just recounted an episode last summer in the next to latest journal about how I, a hazel eyed gray haired geezer had my civil rights violated by the local police, FBI and DEA.
As I was talking to the FBI gay, er "guy" before he searched me (putting his hands on my balls, why can't they have female cops search men? UGH!), he asked why I seemed so nervous. I went from nervous to incredible, thinking "WTF is this dumbass smoking?"
"WHAT?? Because half a dozen big armed men just accosted me!" I replied. I didn't add "You stupid fucking authoritarian dumbass cocksucker!" as I would have liked to.
Actually I wasn't scared at all, but I was mad as hell. What I was afraid of was that they'd piss me off enough that I'd do something stupid. Like slap one of them upside the head with a hooker.
Dumb fucking cops. Nothing in my life has made me less respectful of police officers. They're called the D.I.R.T. team and the name fits the dirty bastards, all of whom IMO belong in a prison or somewhere worse.
Now I understand why all the rap songs are so disrespectful of the police. I mean, I'm a white old guy, imagine being a black young guy.
Don't listen to Christians. Rather, read the Bible. It says that you are not, in fact, going to hell. The book of Acts says quite plainly that hell is for willfully disopbedient believers.
Relax, you're not going to hell, although dying itself is rarely pleasant.
BTW, Satan exists -- I was married to her for 27 years.
The world changes, but we as people do not. If you took your time machine back 500 years and snatched a baby right before it was eaten by rats, then dropped it off in 1989, you would find that his internet skills, driving skill, and all the skills in the other things that diudn't exist in his former world would be as good as a 27 year old today.
The reality is that the current generation is able to process and handle larger volumes of information at a much higher rate
I took a speed reading course in college. I went in the course reading faster than anyone else in the class left reading. People's reading speed and comprehension are all over the chart at all ages. There are youth with dyslexia and hyperlexic geezers.
Furthermore, I've been using computers since that 27 year old was an infant. What makes you think he'll be better at using them than me?
What is excited is seeing what each new generation can bring to the table in addition to what the existing generations have already done
The true value of youth is also its bad point: inexperience. If you "know" something can't be done, you won't do it. If you know how to do something there's little liklihood you'll invent a better way. Youth's ability to innovate springs from the ignorance of youth.
I'm afraid I'm not very good at communication today. If I have personally expoerienced a thing, there is no way to convince you that thing doesn't exist.
And Zeus did indeed exist. He was the nerd caveman who was curious about the fire the lightning bolt started, and brought back a flaming spear from the forest the jock cavemen ran from. Then he killed one of the jocks with his flaming spear.
The analogy fits perfectly; I've experienced God, so there's no way I'll be argued out of belief by someone who has not experienced God, any more than you could be argued into believing Red doesn't exist by a man blind from birth.
Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes?
As I said, there is no point in arguing God's existance with me. Argue with an agnostic instead. I'm only illustrating my personal experience. George can argue that xebras don't exist all day, but since you've been to a zoo there's no way he'll convince you.
Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date.
I would agree with you. The kid either has to be taught about God, or experience him directly.
I'll accept that if Christians stop telling me I'm going to hell for, apparently, being what god wants me to be.
According to the New Testament, ignorance is a "get out of hell free" card (it's somewhere in "Acts of the Apostles"). Disbelief in God won't send you to hell, but rather belief coupled with wanton disobediance will. You won't hear me saying you're going to hell.
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind. Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
[Now] Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind Dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind.
-Kansas
It's apparent to me that 1. thought is a chemical reaction, and nothing more 2. every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Knowing these two gacts I fail to see how anyone could believe that we do, in fact, have free will. I think free will exists, but it's only as an illusion. There has to be something that makes you try to avoid the tigers, or you won't procreate.
I can show you the color red all day long and since you're blind, there's no way you'll see it.
And my kids knew when they were little as well as they know now that Santa Clause does, indeed, exist, and who he really is.
I am Santa Clause. But I am Santa Clause to the only two children in the world who matter.
As to forcing morality, although a lot of so-called "religious" people do that you'll find that the religions themselves do not. For instance, the Baptists will tell you drinking is a sin, despite the fact that Jesus not only drank but turned water to wine, and in fact all the apostles were shitfaced drunk on Jesus' last full day as a human.
A lot of the evangelists will go on and on about homosexuality, even though it's not even mentioned in the New Testament, and the old testament has more to say about the evil of pork than homosexuality.
It's not up to me to prevent you from sinning, and nothing in the Bible says it is up to me. My only responsibility is for my own actions, not yours. You can argue that zebras don't exist if you wish, but I've been to a zoo and know better.
I think what it was modded "insightful" for wasn't the link but for pointing out that experience has shown me that my generation wasn't really any different from my dad's, or from yours.
The relevance ind insight in th link was its pointing out that expertise usually comes from experience (young whores are lousy in bed). The price of the whore bears no relevance at all, except for the fact that the inexperienced young whore could have made a lot more money off of me had she not charged so much or been in such a hurry.
The standard price is twenty bucks. If you want extra (e.g. bondage, s&m, role playing, etc) you'll pay more. These girls are fantascinating drinking buddies, you wouldn't believe some of the sick shit some of their clients do! Most of my hooker friends I don't even have sex with, they're far more fun drinking.
Correction: If they say they're a man, they're a twelve year old boy.
Twelve year old boys do this because they know teh intarwebs has predators that like to do bad things to twelve year old boys (unlike meatspace where everyone is civilized) and that the child molesters won't bother them if they think they're a big hairy man.
The world is different, yes. My world was as different from my dad's world as mine is from my daughter's (I'm 55, my youngest turns 21 this year), and my world is vastly different from my grandmothers; she was an infant when the wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, but PEOPLE are pretty much the same. In fact, according to my dad, his aunts were flappers in the '20. I never knew women got tattooed before now, but apparently tattooing was as big a fad among young people in the 20s as it is now.
Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better.
Making the world better has nothing to do with science. Often understanding the world does make it better (medicine) but often it makes it worse. The hydrogen bomb, global warming, pollution, and most other ils of the modern world not faced by our forebearers are caused by knowlege and use of principles unknown to our anscestors.
Sometimes science makes the world better and sometimes makes it worse; but whether for good or evil, science seeks only to understand the universe. It does not seek to "make the world a better place".
If you want to make the world a better place all you have to do is follow Jesus' mandate to "stop being such a God damned greedy, selfish asshole dickweed fucktard". Science isn't likely to keep your best friend from fucking your wife, or keep your corporations from shipping your jobs off to India and China, or keep the bank from forclosing your mortgage.
As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, the elephant's pink, didn't you get the memo?
If you have experienced God you cen no longer deny Him. Once you have been to the zoo, you can't not believe in Eliphants, no matter who argues their nonexistance.
"It's a joke, son."
I totally would, but I don't have mod points and there's no, "-1 Tiresome would-be martyr with a persecution complex" option.
You misunderstane me. I say "mod me down" because it doesn't matter, my karma is excellent and will remain so, despite the occasional "troll" or "flamebait" moderation.
My "freaks" column is small, my "fans" column is impressive. I have no reason to feel persecuted, or a martyr. If I were worried about karma I'd post anonymously.
If you've been paying attention you know Dumb Restrictions on Media won't and can't work. How many programmers do you have working with you? OK, they're arrayed agains literally hundreds of thousaned of nerds all ready to crack your encryption, and once it's creaked it's cracked. The genie won't get back in the bottle. One against a million, those are impossible odds.
DRM gives "pirates" features that your paying customers don't have. Why should I pay for a crippled product when I can get the real deal for free? If you're going to treat me like a thief, why should I be honest?
Either you know this and are defrauding your employers, or you don't and you're incompetent. Or possibly you're trolling?
DRM is stupid. Anyone who thinks DRM can work is ignorant. Anybody who codes DRM is defrauding their employer.
-mcgrew
I am surprised anyone still feels safe.
Why shoulld you feel safe? You aren't safe; in fact, you will die. Yep, you're gonna die. And it's not likely to be a clean death, either. You're going to have a heart attack, or a stroke, or have your body eat itself with cancer, or Al Scheimers will eat your brain, or you will have an accident, or be murdered. Hell there's even a remote (very very very remote) chance that a Muslim terrorist will kill you.
But at any rate, you will die, all your friends will die, all your family will die, everyone you ever met will die.
You are far from safe.
Torture doesn't work, and indeed can even be counterproductive. In December 2006 I suffered a torn retina. The doctor welded my retina back togethsr with a laser, but the laser wouldn't reach the whole tear, as I have a device in my eye that replaces its lens consisting of a plastic lens on struts that move with the movement of the focusing muscles (yes I'm a cyborg now, you will be assimilated. Resistance is futile).
The struts got in the way of the laser. So he used an older therapy, which involved holding a metal probe supercooled with liquid nitrogen to the white of my eye opposite the torn retina.
If I'd been strapped to a chair at guantanimo when he did that, I'd have confessed to anything.
Torture is good for extracting confessions, but not for revealing the truth.
They rated you funny, and it was, but you should have been rated insightful. I just recounted an episode last summer in the next to latest journal about how I, a hazel eyed gray haired geezer had my civil rights violated by the local police, FBI and DEA.
As I was talking to the FBI gay, er "guy" before he searched me (putting his hands on my balls, why can't they have female cops search men? UGH!), he asked why I seemed so nervous. I went from nervous to incredible, thinking "WTF is this dumbass smoking?"
"WHAT?? Because half a dozen big armed men just accosted me!" I replied. I didn't add "You stupid fucking authoritarian dumbass cocksucker!" as I would have liked to.
Actually I wasn't scared at all, but I was mad as hell. What I was afraid of was that they'd piss me off enough that I'd do something stupid. Like slap one of them upside the head with a hooker.
Dumb fucking cops. Nothing in my life has made me less respectful of police officers. They're called the D.I.R.T. team and the name fits the dirty bastards, all of whom IMO belong in a prison or somewhere worse.
Now I understand why all the rap songs are so disrespectful of the police. I mean, I'm a white old guy, imagine being a black young guy.
Slashdotter: "I smell a woman. RUN!!!!!"
I, for one, fear.... I for... Sorry, I'm afraid I can't finish the joke.
Drat, sigged again! Oh well...
Don't listen to Christians. Rather, read the Bible. It says that you are not, in fact, going to hell. The book of Acts says quite plainly that hell is for willfully disopbedient believers.
Relax, you're not going to hell, although dying itself is rarely pleasant.
BTW, Satan exists -- I was married to her for 27 years.
The world changes, but we as people do not. If you took your time machine back 500 years and snatched a baby right before it was eaten by rats, then dropped it off in 1989, you would find that his internet skills, driving skill, and all the skills in the other things that diudn't exist in his former world would be as good as a 27 year old today.
The reality is that the current generation is able to process and handle larger volumes of information at a much higher rate
I took a speed reading course in college. I went in the course reading faster than anyone else in the class left reading. People's reading speed and comprehension are all over the chart at all ages. There are youth with dyslexia and hyperlexic geezers.
Furthermore, I've been using computers since that 27 year old was an infant. What makes you think he'll be better at using them than me?
What is excited is seeing what each new generation can bring to the table in addition to what the existing generations have already done
The true value of youth is also its bad point: inexperience. If you "know" something can't be done, you won't do it. If you know how to do something there's little liklihood you'll invent a better way. Youth's ability to innovate springs from the ignorance of youth.
I'm afraid I'm not very good at communication today. If I have personally expoerienced a thing, there is no way to convince you that thing doesn't exist.
And Zeus did indeed exist. He was the nerd caveman who was curious about the fire the lightning bolt started, and brought back a flaming spear from the forest the jock cavemen ran from. Then he killed one of the jocks with his flaming spear.
Thor invented the hammer. He was a nerd, too.
The analogy fits perfectly; I've experienced God, so there's no way I'll be argued out of belief by someone who has not experienced God, any more than you could be argued into believing Red doesn't exist by a man blind from birth.
Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes?
As I said, there is no point in arguing God's existance with me. Argue with an agnostic instead. I'm only illustrating my personal experience. George can argue that xebras don't exist all day, but since you've been to a zoo there's no way he'll convince you.
Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date.
I would agree with you. The kid either has to be taught about God, or experience him directly.
Atheism is not a religion
If it weren't, athiests wouldn't be so fanatical.
I'll accept that if Christians stop telling me I'm going to hell for, apparently, being what god wants me to be.
According to the New Testament, ignorance is a "get out of hell free" card (it's somewhere in "Acts of the Apostles"). Disbelief in God won't send you to hell, but rather belief coupled with wanton disobediance will. You won't hear me saying you're going to hell.
It's apparent to me that
1. thought is a chemical reaction, and nothing more
2. every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Knowing these two gacts I fail to see how anyone could believe that we do, in fact, have free will. I think free will exists, but it's only as an illusion. There has to be something that makes you try to avoid the tigers, or you won't procreate.
I can show you the color red all day long and since you're blind, there's no way you'll see it.
And my kids knew when they were little as well as they know now that Santa Clause does, indeed, exist, and who he really is.
I am Santa Clause. But I am Santa Clause to the only two children in the world who matter.
As to forcing morality, although a lot of so-called "religious" people do that you'll find that the religions themselves do not. For instance, the Baptists will tell you drinking is a sin, despite the fact that Jesus not only drank but turned water to wine, and in fact all the apostles were shitfaced drunk on Jesus' last full day as a human.
A lot of the evangelists will go on and on about homosexuality, even though it's not even mentioned in the New Testament, and the old testament has more to say about the evil of pork than homosexuality.
It's not up to me to prevent you from sinning, and nothing in the Bible says it is up to me. My only responsibility is for my own actions, not yours. You can argue that zebras don't exist if you wish, but I've been to a zoo and know better.
See what you get for trusting the mods? ;)
I think what it was modded "insightful" for wasn't the link but for pointing out that experience has shown me that my generation wasn't really any different from my dad's, or from yours.
The relevance ind insight in th link was its pointing out that expertise usually comes from experience (young whores are lousy in bed). The price of the whore bears no relevance at all, except for the fact that the inexperienced young whore could have made a lot more money off of me had she not charged so much or been in such a hurry.
The standard price is twenty bucks. If you want extra (e.g. bondage, s&m, role playing, etc) you'll pay more. These girls are fantascinating drinking buddies, you wouldn't believe some of the sick shit some of their clients do! Most of my hooker friends I don't even have sex with, they're far more fun drinking.
Correction: If they say they're a man, they're a twelve year old boy.
Twelve year old boys do this because they know teh intarwebs has predators that like to do bad things to twelve year old boys (unlike meatspace where everyone is civilized) and that the child molesters won't bother them if they think they're a big hairy man.
The world is different, yes. My world was as different from my dad's world as mine is from my daughter's (I'm 55, my youngest turns 21 this year), and my world is vastly different from my grandmothers; she was an infant when the wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, but PEOPLE are pretty much the same. In fact, according to my dad, his aunts were flappers in the '20. I never knew women got tattooed before now, but apparently tattooing was as big a fad among young people in the 20s as it is now.
Yeah, I knew that guy, Jesus Caballo. He was a real cutup. Too bad he died in that farm accident, he was a really funny guy. May he rest in peace.
And peace on you, too.
Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better.
Making the world better has nothing to do with science. Often understanding the world does make it better (medicine) but often it makes it worse. The hydrogen bomb, global warming, pollution, and most other ils of the modern world not faced by our forebearers are caused by knowlege and use of principles unknown to our anscestors.
Sometimes science makes the world better and sometimes makes it worse; but whether for good or evil, science seeks only to understand the universe. It does not seek to "make the world a better place".
If you want to make the world a better place all you have to do is follow Jesus' mandate to "stop being such a God damned greedy, selfish asshole dickweed fucktard". Science isn't likely to keep your best friend from fucking your wife, or keep your corporations from shipping your jobs off to India and China, or keep the bank from forclosing your mortgage.
As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.