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by frank-who knows the Bible is the Word of God (no login)
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that you have got 2 serious problems in your statements.
1. This is obviously wrong:
"EVIL: placing your interests ahead of others'."
LOL!! You place your interests ahead of others most of the time! Does this make you mostly evil??
2. Humans do not agree on what is good & evil! Often , what is good to one person is evil to another-Think about it!!
AMP has given you the correct answer!
I don't expect your ego and honesty to allow you to agree with me on this....
Posted on Mar 28, 2002, 11:56 AM from IP address 67.192.37.247
the Urantia Book copiled from the Urantia papers. In fact, Jesus says something verily,verily enlightening therein "Nathaniel, never permit yourself for one moment to believe the Scripture records which tell you that the God of love directed your forefathers to go forth in battle to slay all their enemies -- men, women, and children. Such records are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scriptures always have, and always will, reflect the intellectual, moral, and spiritual status of those who create them. Have you not noted that the concepts of Yahweh grow in beauty and glory as the prophets make their records from Samuel to Isaiah? And you should remember that the Scriptures are intended for religious instruction and spiritual guidance. They are not the works of either historians or philosophers.
159:4.6 "The thing most deplorable is not merely this erroneous idea of the absolute perfection of the Scripture record and the infallibility of its teachings, but rather the confusing misinterpretation of these sacred writings by the tradition-enslaved scribes and Pharisees at Jerusalem. And now will they employ both the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures and their misinterpretations thereof in their determined effort to withstand these newer teachings of the gospel of the kingdom. Nathaniel, never forget, the Father does not limit the revelation of truth to any one generation or to any one people. Many earnest seekers after the truth have been, and will continue to be, confused and disheartened by these doctrines of the perfection of the Scriptures."
Posted on Mar 29, 2002, 9:41 AM from IP address 170.28.6.17
Ok, even with your qualifier heres the rejoinder->
by AMP (no login)
1.Good -You said putting others(Interest) ahead ahead of yourself-act you know your the 1 short of being the millionth whatever to win $,prize,whatever - you let some unsuspecting individual ahead of you.(becomes wicked)
2.Evil-you said puting youself(interest) ahead of others- act you collect trash,garbage - your neighbors containers are kept cleaned out. :~) Peace Amp
Hows that?
Posted on Mar 29, 2002, 9:52 AM from IP address 170.28.6.17
...placing someone physically ahead of you is NOT the same as their interests...it's analogous to letting someone walk into a terrorists field of fire to see if it's safe yet.
...and just because the outcome isn't evil doesn't mean the act wasn't...for instance: what if I don't stop at their trash, or what am I doing with it? A toxic waste dump in my back yard probably wouldn't be view as "good" by my neighbors, would it?
Posted on Apr 1, 2002, 6:55 AM from IP address 216.243.195.249
Exhibit A: There are no "good" acts that do not involve putting the interests of others ahead of your own, to one degree or another.
>>I risk my life to save the lives of a number of convicts in danger of death from a fire. They thank me, and go on their way. Later, they kill an innocent family and set fire to their home. Was my selfless act a good one? Or evil?
Exhibit B: There are no "evil" acts that do not involve putting your interest ahead of others, to one degree or another.
>>I love a member of my family who is at risk of imminent death. I save her because she is important to me, without her I would be alone, and therefore unhappy. By saving her, I put my own interests first. Was it good to save her? Or evil?
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 11:40 AM from IP address 205.144.50.1
...first we whittle it down to the bare essentials...
GOOD: placing the interests of others ahead of your own.
EVIL: placing your interests ahead of others'.
///This is too simplistic. "Placing one's interests ahead of others'as it stands, can be contrary to personal survival (which is undoubtedly behavior programed at the genetic level). As such, it cannot be labeled "evil" in a blanket condemnation. Perhaps "placing one's interests above those of others' in a way that is detrimental to the survival or advantageous adaptation of others might be more to the point.///
These only apply within the group defining the acts.
...We'll stop there for the moment and see if anyone can disprove or improve these definitions 8^)
Posted on Jun 10, 2002, 6:38 AM from IP address 216.251.181.253
You have provided a definition of good and evil. My definition is different than yours. How would you suggest we go about determining which of the two of us is correct (or if either of us is correct)?
BK
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 10:14 AM from IP address 67.98.158.2
But ultimately Glenn has made an assertion (he asked if anyone could disprove his definitions). And so I just wondered how he and I could ever come to an agreement. IOW, what is he going to compare my definitions against, to determine whether or not I have disproven (or improved) his definitions?
BK
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 10:25 AM from IP address 67.98.158.2
Good: Including the interests of others in your own.
Evil: Doing anything to turn people against the good of their natures.
To me, placing the interests of others ahead of your own creates a dichotomy in that if so prioritizing interests serves your interest, then the interests of others are always after yours.
However, that dichotomy doesn't really diminish your definitions. In fact, it is really just a nit-pick.
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 10:24 AM from IP address 12.85.15.195
For example, placing others' needs ahead of my own could be highly destructive, if those others are themselves evil.
Similarly, placing my own needs above those of others would, in similar circumstances, be good.
Everyone would have to follow these precepts at all times for them to even have a chance of being valid...and of course, they're counter-intuitive to our natural instinct for self-preservation, without which we'd be an extinct species pretty quickly, in the face of determined attack, for example...
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 11:14 AM from IP address 205.144.50.1
I think that putting the needs of the group that are congruent
by Merlinº (no login)
with your own needs ahead of your own perosonal is enough.
Cause at least in a more primitive setting, if ya put your own needs first and the group cast ya out you were probably a dead man anyway. So your individual needs and the group's needs were pretty tightly coupled.
Once ya start getting into larger groups, things start getting looser and it's easier to cheat and suck up the slack at the expense of the group.
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 11:36 AM from IP address 160.254.20.253
"In other words, if God is found to contain within Himself a composite of properties, this would necessarily imply that there is some purpose which God's composite existence serves. Furthermore, if God is indeed subject to a higher final cause through His composite nature, then in a very real sense His existence as God is dependent on His possession of these properties. Plantinga understands this dependence as pertaining to God in two ways. First, God is dependent upon the property in the sense that if it is indeed true that God possesses some properties necessarily, then it is the case that if one of these properties fails to exist or be possessed by God, He likewise would fail to exist. This dependence "is necessary; it is not due to [God's] will and it is not within his power to abrogate it. That it holds is not up to him or within his control. He is obliged simply to put up with it" 17 . Plantinga sees the central implication of this as being that God is then dependent upon something else for His existence, and dependent in a way outside his control and beyonds His power to alter 18 ."
Which leads me to conclude that the cosmos contains the universe and the possibility of gods that Plantinga argues for so successfully, but a cramped and constrained god who is not free to do his will, but must accept the cosmos on its own terms. I further conclude that God is not necessary to the existence of will, and is incapable of coercing the will. This paints an entirely different rationale for the existence of the Christian God, though. It provides the possibility that other gods can just as logically coexist with him, that he is merely one among equals, at best, and that perhaps he created mankind to have something to play with.
Plantinga has already conceded that math and logic are not within God's power to alter, I think. Math and logic are used to describe the physical universe, and do so with apparent success. They also have relevance to the human mind and its perceptions. What is left for God to do or be?
Posted on Mar 27, 2002, 9:12 PM from IP address 24.116.155.41
by frank who sez God is Omnipotent & True! (no login)
1. God's absolute Omnipotence includes the ability to execute His will completely! In Scripture, He has declared that truth and immutability are among the elements of His free will. One is mistaken to think that He is "dependent upon something else for His existence," as Plantinga put it, according to your post. The elements that Plantinga says are outside of His control are, rather, just elements, such as logic & mathematics, contained in His free will to provide the order amd utility that his free will desires. And although it may appear to the finite human observer that He is absolutely bound by these, Scripture states that at times He excuses Himself from this order when He so desires! His free will is oriented for the benefit of the human race, although we may not always understand this or agree with it! We would be in trouble if His mandated logic and mathematics did not have a high degree of immutability! But He is in no way limited to these beneficial human constraints as certain periods of history indicate. The return of Christ will show His power & glory over logic. mathematics, physical laws, etc.! Do not confuse elements of His decreed will with elements that He is dependent upon.
2. Why is a "hardened?" atheist like you so concerned over the attributes and nature of our Creator??
Posted on Mar 28, 2002, 2:39 AM from IP address 67.192.37.250
"Because the First Father is infinite in his plans and eternal in his purposes, it is inherently impossible for any finite being ever to grasp or comprehend these divine plans and purposes in their fullness. Mortal man can glimpse the Father's purposes only now and then, here and there, as they are revealed in relation to the outworking of the plan of creature ascension on its successive levels of universe progression.""The Universal Father never imposes any form of arbitrary recognition, formal worship, or slavish service upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes. The evolutionary inhabitants of the worlds of time and space must of themselves -- in their own hearts -- recognize, love, and voluntarily worship him. The Creator refuses to coerce or compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his material creatures. The affectionate dedication of the human will to the doing of the Father's will is man's choicest gift to God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes man's only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father. In God, man lives, moves, and has his being; there is nothing which man can give to God except this choosing to abide by the Father's will, and such decisions, effected by the intelligent will creatures of the universes, constitute the reality of that true worship which is so satisfying to the love-dominated nature of the Creator Father.""The Universal Father is not a transient force, a shifting power, or a fluctuating energy. The power and wisdom of the Father are wholly adequate to cope with any and all universe exigencies. As the emergencies of human experience arise, he has foreseen them all, and therefore he does not react to the affairs of the universe in a detached way but rather in accordance with the dictates of eternal wisdom and in consonance with the mandates of infinite judgment. Regardless of appearances, the power of God is not functioning in the universe as a blind force.
3:2.7 Situations do arise in which it appears that emergency rulings have been made, that natural laws have been suspended, that misadaptations have been recognized, and that an effort is being made to rectify the situation; but such is not the case. Such concepts of God have their origin in the limited range of your viewpoint, in the finiteness of your comprehension, and in the circumscribed scope of your survey; such misunderstanding of God is due to the profound ignorance you enjoy regarding the existence of the higher laws of the realm, the magnitude of the Father's character, the infinity of his attributes, and the fact of his free-willness.""The divine omnipotence is perfectly co-ordinated with the other attributes of the personality of God. The power of God is, ordinarily, only limited in its universe spiritual manifestation by three conditions or situations:
1.By the nature of God, especially by his infinite love, by truth, beauty, and goodness.
2.By the will of God, by his mercy ministry and fatherly relationship with the personalities of the universe.
3.By the law of God, by the righteousness and justice of the eternal Paradise Trinity. These are c/ps that help explain what mortals like to veiw as contradictions of the omni... of 'God' Peace Amp
Posted on Mar 28, 2002, 9:20 AM from IP address 170.28.6.17
SYDNEY, Australia, March 26 — The adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks may be the wrong way round. It could have been that new tricks were taught to people by dogs more than 100,000 years ago, prompting humankind to take a leap in development leading to modern culture and society, researchers said Tuesday.
...Perhaps we CAN learn something from "dumb" animals...even something about ourselves.
What would be the moral position of a "domesticated" species if it started developing consciousness?
Posted on Mar 27, 2002, 6:15 AM from IP address 216.243.195.249
To lessen my troubles
I stopped hanging out with vultures
And empty saviours like you
I wish I had a nickel for every miracle
That you easily tricked me into
You can lead a horse to water
But faith is another matter
So don't you surrender
Cause sometimes salvation
In the eye of the storm
Sister do you wanna try to find me?
I've no time for accusations
Or conversations on all the bad, bad things you do.
Just a note from your jailor
Drugs and the relations
To all the people around you
You can lead a horse to water
But faith is another matter, yes it is
So don't you surrender
Cause sometimes salvation
In the eye of the storm
Sister do you even wanna try to find me?
I've kept secret your superstitions
And all its twisted wisdom
That I fell into
You can lead a horse to water
But faith is another matter, yes it is
So don't you surrender
Cause sometimes salvation
In the eye of the storm
Sister do you wanna try to find me?
Sometimes Salvation by The Black Crowes
Posted on Mar 27, 2002, 12:24 AM from IP address 68.1.116.102
http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22273
IF YOU COULD LIFT A CORNER of the veil that shrouds reality, what would you see beneath? Nothing but randomness, say two Australian physicists. According to Reginald Cahill and Christopher Klinger of Flinders University in Adelaide, space and time and all the objects around us are no more than the froth on a deep sea of randomness.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that randomness is a part of the Universe. After all, physicists tell us that empty space is a swirling chaos of virtual particles. And randomness comes into play in quantum theory--when a particle such as an electron is observed, its properties are randomly selected from a set of alternatives predicted by the equations.
But Cahill and Klinger believe that this hints at a much deeper randomness. "Far from being merely associated with quantum measurements, this randomness is at the very heart of reality," says Cahill. If they are right, they have created the most fundamental of all physical theories, and its implications are staggering. "Randomness generates everything," says Cahill. "It even creates the sensation of the 'present', which is so conspicuously absent from today's physics."
Their evidence comes from a surprising quarter--pure mathematics. In 1930, the Austrian-born logician Kurt Gödel stunned the mathematical world with the publication of his incompleteness theorem. It applied to formal systems--sets of assumptions and the statements that can be deduced from those assumptions by the rules of logic. For example, the Greeks developed their geometry using a few axioms, such as the idea that there is only one straight line through any pair of points. It seemed that a clever enough mathematician could prove any theorem true or false by reasoning from axioms.
But Gödel proved that, for most sets of axioms, there are true theorems that cannot be deduced. In other words, most mathematical truths can never be proved.
This bombshell could easily have sent shock waves far beyond mathematics. Physics, after all, is couched in the language of maths, so Gödel's theorem might seem to imply that it is impossible to write down a complete mathematical description of the Universe from which all physical truths can be deduced. Physicists have largely ignored Gödel's result, however. "The main reason was that the result was so abstract it did not appear to connect directly with physics," says Cahill.
But then, in the 1980s, Gregory Chaitin of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, extended Gödel's work, and made a suggestive analogy. He called Gödel's unprovable truths random truths. What does that mean? Mathematicians define a random number as one that is incompressible. In other words, it cannot be generated by an algorithm--a set of instructions or rules such as a computer program--that is shorter than the number. Chaitin defined random truths as ones that cannot be derived from the axioms of a given formal system. A random truth has no explanation, it just is.
Chaitin showed that a vast ocean of such truths surrounds the island of provable theorems. Any one of them might be stumbled on by accident--an equation might be accidentally discovered to have some property that cannot be derived from the axioms--but none of them can be proved. The chilling conclusion, wrote Chaitin in New Scientist, is that randomness is at the very heart of pure mathematics (24 March 1990, p 44).
To prove his theorem, Gödel had concocted a statement that asserted that it was not itself provable. So Gödel's and Chaitin's results apply to any formal system that is powerful enough to make statements about itself.
"This is where physics comes in," says Cahill. "The Universe is rich enough to be self-referencing--for instance, I'm aware of myself." This suggests that most of the everyday truths of physical reality, like most mathematical truths, have no explanation. According to Cahill and Klinger, that must be because reality is based on randomness. They believe randomness is more fundamental than physical objects.
At the core of conventional physics is the idea that there are "objects"--things that are real, even if they don't interact with other things. Before writing down equations to describe how electrons, magnetic fields, space and so on work, physicists start by assuming that such things exist. It would be far more satisfying to do away with this layer of assumption.
This was recognised in the 17th century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz believed that reality was built from things he called monads, which owed their existence solely to their relations with each other. This picture languished in the backwaters of science because it was hugely difficult to turn into a recipe for calculating things, unlike Newton's mechanics.
But Cahill and Klinger have found a way to do it. Like Leibniz's monads, their "pseudo-objects" have no intrinsic existence--they are defined only by how strongly they connect with each other, and ultimately they disappear from the model. They are mere scaffolding.
The recipe is simple: take some pseudo-objects, add a little randomness and let the whole mix evolve inside a computer. With pseudo-objects numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on, you can define some numbers to represent the strength of the connection between each pair of pseudo-objects: B12 is the strength of the connection between 1 and 2; B13 the connection between 1 and 3; and so on. They form a two-dimensional grid of numbers--a matrix.
The physicists start by filling their matrix with numbers that are very close to zero. Then they run it repeatedly through a matrix equation which adds random noise and a second, non-linear term involving the inverse of the original matrix. The randomness means that most truths or predictions of this model have no cause--the physical version of Chaitin's mathematical result. This matrix equation is largely the child of educated guesswork, but there are good precedents for that. In 1932, for example, Paul Dirac guessed at a matrix equation for how electrons behave, and ended up predicting the existence of antimatter.
When the matrix goes through the wringer again and again, most of the elements remain close to zero, but some numbers suddenly become large. "Structures start forming," says Cahill. This is no coincidence, as they chose the second term in the equation because they knew it would lead to something like this. After all, there is structure in the Universe that has to be explained.
The structures can be seen by marking dots on a piece of paper to represent the pseudo-objects 1, 2, 3, and so on. It doesn't matter how they are arranged. If B23 is large, draw a line between 2 and 3; if B19 is large, draw one between 1 and 9. What results are "trees" of strong connections, and a lot of much weaker links. And as you keep running the equation, smaller trees start to connect to others. The network grows.
The trees branch randomly, but Cahill and Klinger have found that they have a remarkable property. If you take one pseudo-object and count its nearest neighbours in the tree, second nearest neighbours, and so on, the numbers go up in proportion to the square of the number of steps away (click on thumbnail graphic below). This is exactly what you would get for points arranged uniformly throughout three-dimensional space. So something like our space assembles itself out of complete randomness. "It's downright creepy," says Cahill. Cahill and Klinger call the trees "gebits", because they act like bits of geometry.
[Thumbnail graphic text;
Tree roots: pseudo-objects link up into random trees, which link into ever larger structures. The hierarchy of neighbours is just like that of points in 3D space]
They haven't proved that this tangle of connections is like 3D space in every respect, but as they look closer at their model, other similarities with our Universe appear. The connections between pseudo-objects decay, but they are created faster than they decay. Eventually, the number of gebits increases exponentially. So space, in Cahill and Klinger's model, expands and accelerates--just as it does in our Universe, according to observations of the recession of distant supernovae. In other words, Cahill and Klinger think their model might explain the mysterious cosmic repulsion that is speeding up the Universe's expansion.
And this expanding space isn't empty. Topological defects turn up in the forest of connections--pairs of gebits that are far apart by most routes, but have other shorter links. They are like snags in the fabric of space. Cahill and Klinger believe that these defects are the stuff we are made of, as described by the wave functions of quantum theory, because they have a special property shared by quantum entities: nonlocality. In quantum theory, the properties of two particles can be correlated, or "entangled", even when they are so far apart that no signal can pass between them. "This ghostly long-range connectivity is apparently outside of space," says Cahill. But in Cahill and Klinger's model of reality, there are some connections that act like wormholes to connect far-flung topological defects.
Even the mysterious phenomenon of quantum measurement can be seen in the model. In observing a quantum system any detector ought to become entangled with the system in a joint quantum state. We would see weird quantum superpositions like Schrödinger's alive-and-dead cat. But we don't.
How does the quantum state "collapse" to a simple classical one? In Cahill and Klinger's model, the nonlocal entanglements disappear after many iterations of the matrix equation. That is, ordinary 3D space reasserts itself after some time, and the ghostly connection between measuring device and system is severed.
This model could also explain our individual experience of a present moment. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, all of space-time is laid out like a four-dimensional map, with no special "present" picked out for us to feel. "Einstein thought an explanation of the present was beyond theoretical physics," says Cahill. But in the gebit picture, the future is not predetermined. You never know what it will bring, because it is dependent on randomness. "The present is therefore real and distinct from an imagined future and a recorded past," says Cahill.
Sand castles
But why can't we detect this random dance of the pseudo-objects? "Somehow, in the process of generating reality, the pseudo-objects must become hidden from view," says Cahill. To simulate this, the two physicists exploited a phenomenon called self-organised criticality.
Self-organised criticality occurs in a wide range of systems such as growing sand piles. Quite spontaneously, these systems reach a critical state. If you drop sand grains one by one onto a sand pile, for instance, they build up and up into a cone until avalanches start to happen. The slope of the side of the cone settles down to a critical value, at which it undergoes small avalanches and big avalanches and all avalanches at all scales in between. This behaviour is independent of the size and shape of the sand grains, and in general it is impossible to deduce anything about the building blocks of a self-organised critical system from its behaviour. In other words, the scale and timing of avalanches doesn't depend on the size or shape of the sand grains.
"This is exactly what we need," says Cahill. "If our system self-organises to a state of criticality, we can construct reality from pseudo-objects and simultaneously hide them from view." The dimensionality of space doesn't depend on the properties of the pseudo-objects and their connections. All we can measure is what emerges, and even though gebits are continually being created and destroyed, what emerges is smooth 3D space. Creating reality in this way is like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, throwing away the bootstraps and still managing to stay suspended in mid-air.
This overcomes a problem with the conventional picture of reality. Even if we discover the laws of physics, we are still left with the question: where do they come from? And where do the laws that explain where they come from come from? Unless there is a level of laws that explain themselves, or turn out to be the only mathematically consistent set--as Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin believes--we are left with an infinite regression. "But it ceases to be a problem if self-organised criticality hides the lowest layer of reality," says Cahill. "The start-up pseudo-objects can be viewed as nothing more than a bundle of weakly linked pseudo-objects, and so on ad infinitum. But no experiment will be able to probe this structure, so we have covered our tracks completely."
Other physicists are impressed by Cahill and Klinger's claims. "I have never heard of anyone working on such a fundamental level as this," says Roy Frieden of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "I agree with the basic premise that 'everything' is ultimately random, but am still sceptical of the details." He would like to see more emerge from the model before committing himself. "It would be much more convincing if Cahill and Klinger could show something physical--that is, some physical law--emerging from this," says Frieden. "For example, if this is to be a model of space, I would expect something like Einstein's field equation for local space curvatures emerging. Now that would be something."
"It sounds rather far-out," says John Baez of the University of California at Riverside. "I would be amazed--though pleased--if they could actually do what you say they claim to."
"I've seen several physics papers like this that try to get space-time or even the laws of physics to emerge from random structures at a lower level," says Chaitin. "They're interesting efforts, and show how deeply ingrained the statistical point of view is in physics, but they are difficult, path-breaking and highly tentative efforts far removed from the mainstream of contemporary physics."
What next? Cahill and Klinger hope to find that everything--matter and the laws of physics--emerges spontaneously from the interlinking of gebits. Then we would know for sure that reality is based on randomness. It's a remarkable ambition, but they have already come a long way. They have created a picture of reality without objects and shown that it can emerge solely out of the connections of pseudo-objects. They have shown that space can arise out of randomness. And, what's more, a kind of space that allows both ordinary geometry and the non-locality of quantum phenomena--two aspects of reality which, until now, have appeared incompatible.
Perhaps what is most impressive, though, is that Cahill and Klinger are the first to create a picture of reality that takes into account the fundamental limitations of logic discovered by Gödel and Chaitin. In the words of Cahill: "It is the logic of the limitations of logic that is ultimately responsible for generating this new physics, which appears to be predicting something very much like our reality."
From New Scientist magazine, 26 February 2000.
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 7:40 PM from IP address 24.116.155.41
LOL! Grumpy, thanks for helping me to start my day with a big belly laugh!!
by frank-who knows the Bible is the Word of God (no login)
This sort of fantasy, disguised as 'science' doesn't threaten us theists-it just confirms to us that pseudoscience is increasingly masquerading as science!!
Posted on Mar 27, 2002, 4:00 AM from IP address 67.192.37.251
that you engage in "supposition" in lieu of "facts!" It is a well known "fact" that messages that make no sense are "hard to understand!" I strongly suspect that this long cut & paste gibberish is difficult for you to understand too! C'mon-'fess up!!
Posted on Mar 28, 2002, 4:47 AM from IP address 67.192.37.250
and buy lots and lots of timber, nails, roofing materials, concrete, and many other building supplies, then wait for my 2 million dollar house to randomly come together.
Then I'll go to the auto supply shop and get tires, engine parts, etc....and get a new BMW....
I CAN'T wait.....
Holland
Posted on Mar 28, 2002, 12:16 AM from IP address 62.131.34.114
Grumpy, rather than wading through this, why don't you paraphrase the case for those who don't share your level of interest and abilities, but who are still curious about such notions?
Question: If randomness is allowed to progress within the influences of energies, mass, and inertia, wouldn't it evolve a sort of order? Couldn't the amount of order we realize be a measure of progress from absolute randomness (all forces with no results) to absolute order (no forces with absolute results?)
By the way, I stumbled on "anarchist community," but still, isn't the best system the one that facilitates all the various expressions we use to achieve social cultures? None of those are ever absolutely expressed, yet we treat them as if they are. Doesn't that keep us off balance?
Posted on Jan 30, 2003, 9:26 AM from IP address 12.85.15.93
by frank-who knows the Bible is the Word of God (no login)
With some degree of "banning" capability, I hope that this board will not become like the old MSNBC board where non-Christians were allowed to initiate and insult Christians with no concern over banning, and where most any Christian insult resulted in banning even tho it was in response to an ititial insult clearly shown by the thread!! And I would hope that it doesn't result in new ways to put-down & insult others in a subtle manner that allows the perpetrator to claim "innocence!" I would also hope that an initial insult is recognized as the major cause of many more resulting insults! This will also raise the level of anonymity, tecnology, the use of proxy servers, etc....
Banning fairly is a difficult thing, as MSNBC demonstrated...
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 6:00 AM from IP address 67.192.37.26
...but why do you expect respect when you're not willing to give it. Just because someone doesn't agree with you, it doesn't mean they are insulting you. That you claim to speak for "God" does not, I repeat NOT, mean that you have the right to claim insult from anyone who disagrees with that, either.
Yes, I'm one of those whom you could legitimately cry "insult" on, but are you going to claim that you've never given me cause?
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 6:34 AM from IP address 216.243.195.249
LOL! Let it be known that, in consideration of Ken's objective here, I
by frank who says that prophecy proves the Bible (no login)
have insulted no one as yet, but the you all couldn't wait to again initiate your insults!! I wonder if Ken is going to ban those non-christians like you who have no effective anti-Christian apologetic ability to fall back on, and can only resort to injitiating insults as you have done here???
Holding off to see...
frank
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 8:45 AM from IP address 67.192.37.44
While your demarcation is a bit arbitrary, I applaud your decision.
by Lizzie Poppet (no login)
It is a bit arbitrary to draw a line after which an insult can be considered a "first strike" but before which one's own initiation of insult is not to be considered relevant. Nevertheless, I applaud your decision not to be the first to offer insult on this new board, and assure you that I will follow the same policy.
Sara
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 9:07 AM from IP address 66.169.228.237
Re: LOL! Let it be known that, in consideration of Ken's objective here, I
by Artisan™ (no login)
The right to be treated well doesn't seem to have any takers here. And Frank, if these people are already flaming you, you must be doing something right! (Luke 6:26)
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 3:52 PM from IP address 24.247.207.92
The only type of poster I would want to ban is ...
by Ken Chanaud (no login)
that person who recently posted a link to a webpage with about 100 pop-up windows. That website could have been very harmful to some people.
I could also ban all annonymous proxy servers from here.
Banning fairly is difficult. I am starting a new job next week, so I won't even have much time to check the board. I think it would be best, and easiest for me if I just let everyone post here.
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 10:21 AM from IP address 216.244.2.181
Also...have a shortcut for underline italic or bold face??? I find that bold face differentiates an inserted comment in a post and easily identifies it as such from the original text.
d.
Posted on Mar 25, 2002, 9:31 AM from IP address 67.32.15.6
We don't have to deal with .... for lack of a better name .... trolls (I apologize to any trolls for that insult), I'll be happy to move to some other site.
Posted on Mar 25, 2002, 12:30 PM from IP address 198.108.82.157
Religion is a splendid and horrible thing. It brings out the best and the worst in us. Don't get me wrong, I can respect people of any religion. Religion often leads people to great acts of love and kindness. But it also leads some people to acts of hatred. I have heard religion described as a mirror. What one obtains from a religion reflects the current state of that person's "soul". Now let's get this sucker rolling!
Posted on Mar 24, 2002, 10:44 PM from IP address 68.1.116.102
There are some very hate filled people in the world. If there was no such thing as religion, those people might just find some other excuse to hate (like maybe political ideas).
Posted on Mar 24, 2002, 11:30 PM from IP address 67.224.7.74
...the nice thing about "God" is that there are no objective definitions, therefor it can be whatever you WANT it to be...which always seems to support whatever you ALREADY believe!
Coincedence? You be the judge >8^)
Posted on Mar 25, 2002, 8:57 AM from IP address 216.243.195.249
But religion is often a crutch for those who hate. I think the hate comes first, but religion 'justifies', strengthens, and increases the hatred. I think even a quick glance at Islamic fundamentalists, conservative Christians, or Christian Identity shows that quite clearly.
Posted on Mar 25, 2002, 12:33 PM from IP address 198.108.82.157
I think the same can be said for the Bible or Koran
by Jimbo (no login)
People see in there what they're looking for. So like you said for religion, it is a mirror. I have often thought of this as I have read the posts on R&E, and in my own reading of the Bible. People have a way of magnifying the importance of the things that reflect their POV, and rationalizing the things that don't reflect it. I have to admit I have not read the Koran, but I can say of the Bible, there is truly something there for everybody!
Posted on Mar 25, 2002, 4:57 AM from IP address 24.88.18.147
The fundamental problem with religion is that humanity is involved. ANYTHING we participate in can be corrupted by our mere participation in it. I defy anyone to point out a system which has not been perverted and abused by its interaction with mankind.
Government? Um...no....
Science? Er....wrong....
Education? Don't make me laugh.
Philosophy??? Go read the Republic.
fwiw
uglyman
Posted on Apr 1, 2002, 12:40 PM from IP address 207.32.133.5
If everyone decides to move here, the old board could still be used as a backup. The old board sometimes shows up when people do a search for religion, so I could just leave it there, but with a link at top directing people to this board.
Posted on Mar 26, 2002, 1:15 AM from IP address 209.179.138.182
