Zixar

Analogies just seem to confuse the hell out of some folks, and I don't know why. But here's another one anyway. I love animals, and for the most part I'm a firm believer in never killing what you don't intend to eat. Yet, if I discover a nest of copperheads in my back yard, I'm going to kill every last one of them. Sure, they may be "innocent living creatures", but if one of my grandchildren happened to step on one accidentally, they could die. I love my grandkids more than I respect the right of a copperhead to live wherever it wants to. It's tragic that they chose my yard, but that's just reality. Copperheads, Amalekites...the principle's the same.

I couldn't find a single sentence in that reply that wasn't sadly-deluded bull****.

I believe that in reality it's saying, "I can see flaws in this doctrine, so if it is based on a supposedly perfect being, then that being is not really perfect as the doctrine isn't." You know, the word of god is the will of god, and all that. Add to that the fact that there is no solid evidence of the existance of any of the dieties in question, and it makes a fairly compelling case for atheism or agnosticism. You don't seem to notice that your quote is nothing but a rephrasing of my accusatory one. It's still the same arrogant presumption that your experience alone allows you to define the parameters of "perfect" for a higher being. You're also being disingenuous with the word "proof." There are lots of things we accept as fact without "proof" simply because there exists evidence that supports that acceptance. The fact that you don't happen to believe that evidence does not mean it does not exist. And for Pete's sake, learn how to spell "deities". Try www.dictionary.com --it's not difficult to use. The fallacy in your argument is because doctors would not be supreme beings, because if a doctor actually was omniscent, they could save the person from cancer without any surgery. They could simply want the person to be cured and they would be cured. Plus, there's no proof that Christianity ever saved anyone from anything. I don't think you have a good grasp on what "fallacy" really is. You're simply restating your earlier erroneous argument outside of the parameters of the analogy. The analogy between the doctor and God is that you, as a non-doctor, couldn't do ANYTHING to save a person's life from either gangrene or cancer, whereas a doctor presumably has both superior knowledge and superior ability to you. The fact that the doctor is neither omniscient nor omnibenevolent is not germane. And again you toss out a flip statement about "no proof". There's more proof that Christianity has saved people that there is of God's existence. There are posters on this board who will testify that Christianity saved them from a self-destructive lifestyle, regardless of whether it was TWI or not. Not at all, because if there was a supreme being that wanted us to be it's "children" then it would have given us the capability to recognize it and then choose to love it or not to love it. The fact is that I've personally not found any reason to believe that such a being exists, so that would mean that if omniscent gods do exist they are purposely being decietful and hiding themselves from my limited understanding. More hubris. You are again defining the capacities of everything solely on your own preconceptions. That's egocentrism. The second sentence is a non sequitur, too, because your conclusion does not follow absolutely from your line of reasoning. If your god made the rules, then he could make exceptions, particularly at the beginning when his supposed foresight should have been used to look for places where the rules would not be right. And if He didn't make the rules? And if He did, who says the rules DON'T cover those situations you declare "not right"? The inventor of chess also didn't have the foresight to see every game of chess that would ever be played, as well as the ability to make sure that every person who played the game that he wanted to win would win based on the way he set up the rules. An omniscent being could do that. That is a gross misunderstanding of game theory in general, chess in specific, and God, unsurprisingly. In chess, everyone who wants to win and plays exactly by the rules may still not play optimally by them. Some wrong moves can be corrected; some cost you the game. It isn't the rules' fault, after all. Free will is a wonderful, and sometimes tragic, thing. Most protestant sects of Christianity do think that their god is to blame for all of that, and that their god will send most people to hell. Even you seem to believe that many if not most people will go to hell for not believing in an invisible diety that you can't prove exists. I never said nor implied that "many if not most people will go to hell", and your erroneous inference that I did is more your projecting your prejudice against religion as a whole onto my words than a rational rebuttal.

Much (but not necessarily all) of atheism is based on arrogant, egocentric finger-pointing. "Well, I wouldn't have done it that way, so GOD wouldn't have done it that way. Therefore, there is no god." This assumes that the atheist would have access to all the knowledge that a supernatural deity would have and still reach a different conclusion. It is similar to rejecting doctors based on the Hippocratic Oath ("First, do no harm...") because they occasionally saw off a limb or pump poison into a patient's blood. The fact that amputation can save a person's life from gangrene, or that chemotherapy can save a person's life from cancer would be irrelevant. "Hmph! The Oath says 'do no harm', and these 'doctors' are running around hacking people up! I would find a way to cure them without doing that, so all doctors are chronic committers of assault with intent to do bodily harm!" Now, in reality, most people understand why amputation and chemo are necessary, so it's only the crackpots who would not believe in doctors. Yet, since it's impossible by definition to understand everything that a supernatural Supreme Being can, rejecting a god based solely on one's nature-limited reasoning is just as big a foolishness. This has a corollary in the old "why do bad things happen to good people" argument, too, since the answer is based in the same concept. I usually sum it up with the following sentence: It's not that God can't help, it's that He won't cheat. In a game of chess, the object is to eliminate the opponent's king. There's nothing physically stopping you from grabbing the opposing player's king and chucking it into the fireplace, is there? It's the rules that stop you, not a lack of ability or desire. Not even the inventor of chess gets to break his own rules. Now, we don't know if God made all the rules, or if He's simply following some higher rules that we can't fully comprehend, but even a cursory analysis of the records in the Bible bears out that God is definitely operating within certain boundaries the He does not cross on a whim. So, hurricanes in Florida? Famines in Africa? Earthquakes in Turkey? Yes, an omnipotent God could pick them all up and toss them into the fireplace... But would you ever play with Him again if He did? :)-->

Leni Riefenstahl made pretty convincing movies too, as did Sergey Eisenstein. Of course, the net result of those flicks were the rise of the Nazis and Soviet Communists, but what's a little skewed propaganda among friends, eh? It's not like nothing ever happened to those countries, right? [ /sarcasm]

Refiner: No, I do not believe so. I believe that every man, regardless of origin or belief, will stand before the throne of God one day and be judged according to his actions, save the born-again Christians. Those whose lives tip the balance will be spared, and only those who are found wanting will be sent to the Pit.

A friend of mine has a dog that has been his loyal companion for ten years. He treats that dog better than most people treat their kids. Two years ago, his wife gave birth to their first child, a lovely daughter. I asked him, "Don't you think it's dangerous to have a baby around a pit bull?" He said, "Yes, but the first time he even growls at her, I'm going to put a bullet through his head." The moral of the story? One treates one's servants differently than one treats one's children.

Pirate: Spider-Man 2. King Arthur is going to suck. Although, women scored the first Spidey flick very high because of the romance with MJ, so it may not be worth wasting the "payback" on. Opens day after tomorrow, although we're going to the midnight show Tuesday. ;)-->

dmiller: Sell. You never know when the market will dry up.

Tom: I don't know, although Vince Vaughn was in both. I do know I laughed more at DB than I did at OS.

Galen: When cats start "going" in non-standard places, it's usually a psychological condition rather than a physical one. Don't know if the parallel holds with humans, but it's possible.

If political movies aren't your bag, you might try a comedy. Sure, it's a sports movie about an underdog team, so you know exactly how everything's going to go before the lights go down. Yet, Dodgeball still manages to pack more jokes into this tired formula than most. Ben Stiller steals the show as an idiotic over-macho gym owner trying to take over Vince Vaughn's gym. They need money, and of course, the only way to get it is win a Dodgeball championship. (The car wash idea is funny, though...) If you go into it expecting a slapstick juvenile testicular-injury-joke movie, you won't be disappointed, but if you pay a little more attention, you'll see that it's actually a well-crafted parody of every sports movie. It's the little touches, like the TV coverage is on the fictitious ESPN 8 - "The Ocho". The little commercial they do for "The Ocho" could have been a throwaway joke, but watch it closely. Three stars out of four, and no, you haven't seen all the funny bits in the preview already.

George is right. The round-front toilets are a curse unto mankind. Ladies: For those of you who get annoyed that men sometimes "miss" the toilet, you have to understand how men are built. Now, you know perfectly well that as you urinate, the pressure gradually drops until you stop. It's the same with us, except that our bladders are larger than yours and the pressure is higher. Since you pee straight down, the pressure doesn't matter to you. Since we pee "out" more or less, the stream is going to jet out for a distance proportional to the pressure at any given instant. That's why we have to stand back a bit from the toilet and can't stand completely over the bowl to catch drips--we'd whiz all over the tank if we did. So, when we're close to finishing we have to lean in a bit as the stream gets shorter. Sometimes the pressure can stop abruptly through flexing of the urinary sphincter, and oops, some can hit the floor anyway. It's not intentional, it's just bio-physics.

John: ABout pcAnywhere, that's easy. Log on to dynu, and it will tell you your server's current IP. Use that for pcA, and you're set. It usually doesn't change very often in most cases. I've been working with networks for 15 years, doing everything from server administration to pulling Ethernet cable through the walls of office buildings. I just don't have the business sense to go out on my own. Maybe we should team up. ;)-->

John: Protected, yes. Anonymous, only if you never use them. People get spyware through their browsers and viruses through their email. It doesn't matter if you are behind a firewall or not, since you ASK for email and web pages. Someone will send a cute screensaver through the email and BAM--virus. Someone will click on a "FREE gift" link and get hit with spyware. Citigroup's ads are rather sensationalized and humorous, ("Firewall? Like that could stop ME...") but the truth is that hackers simply cannot get to a port on your computer unless they can see it. Shields Up tells you all your ports are Stealthed? Relax. No one's going to bust in and steal anything. UNLESS... You just happen to DL a program that contains malicious code. That cute stock market ticker might contain a keylogger that sends everything you type back to the hacker's server. This includes passwords, credit card numbers, letters to your mistress (just kidding, Hope) everything. How does the program get it through the firewall? Simple. It just sends the data out in a normal HTTP web page request. Since firewalls have to pass that stuff through, out it goes. That's why you should NEVER, EVER install ANY program you see on the Web until you've checked it out. If you Google up, say, "Kazaa", you'd find out that it contains spyware. Anything that's ad-supported has a high risk of having embedded spyware. So if you never ASK for strange programs, you run less risk of having a bad one sneak in. Don't click on ANY popup window, regardless of how unbelievably FREE the offer is, since malicious ActiveX controls or scripts can do things like change your homepage to sex-with-underage-donkeys.com. If you don't trust the site, DO NOT VISIT THE SITE. NEVER OPEN EMAIL FROM ANYONE YOU DO NOT KNOW. NEVER, EVER RUN A PROGRAM OR SCREENSAVER THAT COMES IN AN EMAIL, EVEN IF YOU KNOW THE PERSON. That cute little Flash animation that has been forwarded a hundred times might just open a back door into your computer. Other than what YOU do by letting email in or clicking on the wrong web site or downloading the wrong program, a firewall is as secure as you're going to get.

Wow. Those are very nice, too. If I ever make a film, I may ask you to score it! :)-->

suz: You have no idea what I would do, and I do not appreciate the insinuation. I've heard the "every American should see this film" mantra chanted often before. Remember a movie called "Silent Scream"? While all the footage of aborted fetuses was "factual" it wasn't exactly an unbiased look at what happens to an aborted baby. No, I'm not in favor of abortion, but I'm even less in favor of sensationalist propaganda that distorts the truth.

His demonstrated lack of integrity in the past, coupled with his personal admission that the film is heavily biased.

John, the folks who host websites usually have T1, fractional T3, or full T3 lines. The problem is that websites need the opposite of users, more upload speed than download speed. Business DSL flavors like SDSL can provide this for small sites. SDSL is synchronous, having the same UL as DL speed. The test doesn't really show how fast my setup is, because it can only use one of the two modems, so naturally it's going to be around 3.0Mbps because that's the normal speed of the cable modem. When the request can be split into several smaller requests, like all the different pictures on a web page, both run full blast. For home sites, you need some networking knowhow to set up your own web server, but it's not that hard, nor does it require a super PC. That network diagram above? Each time you see it, it's being provided by my Linux server. That's possible even with a Dynamic IP address because of a service called Dynamic DNS, which I get for free (anyone can) from a source called dynu.com. A small client runs on the server (although the Xincom router can be setup to do it without the client now) and checks every few seconds if the IP of the cable modem has changed and reports the new value to the dynu.com server. Whenever anyone asks for zixar.dynu.com, it goes straight to my server, regardless of how the IP may change.

With respect, Daryl, I'm sure "The Myth Of The Six Million" sounded just as plausible to those who were looking for a reason to be anti-Semitic, too. Moore won't get my money.

Mine is 2839.2 kbps.

For those who haven't read Martindale's "eternal fix" teaching, here's the link. The Eternal Vagina Fix One sick puppy...

dmiller: If you think about it, every single place you look, you're looking back in time because light takes time to travel to your eye. You never see the Moon as it is, but as it was one and a half seconds ago. The Sun could explode, but we wouldn't know it for eight minutes and twenty seconds. 950 years ago, people observed a brilliant new star suddenly appearing in the contellation of Taurus. It's referred to as the Supernova of 1054, and we can still see its remnant today as M1, the Crab Nebula. However, the Crab Nebula is 6,300 light years away, meaning the star actually exploded way back in 5245 BC. (so much for the 4004 BC Creation theory...) In physics, it's called the observer's time-cone. The cone is narrow at our eye, but most in focus. The farther we look back, the wider the cone gets, so the more we can see, but the more out of date it becomes. It's like being strapped to the caboose of a train. That's why it's difficult to truly understand what happened back then, even though we have the Bible as a record. We have an Israel today, but it's hardly the same as the Israel of two thousand years ago.

John: If you have BellSouth DSL, you can get 3Mb service for only $5 more a month now.

Here's a diagram of how it all looks at the moment.