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A Savant Explains His Abilities
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Feb 19, 2005 07:12 PM
from the mr.-monk-has-nothing-on-tammet dept.
from the mr.-monk-has-nothing-on-tammet dept.
numLocked writes "Of the few hundred autistic savants in the world, none have been able to explain their incredible mental abilities. Until now, that is. It seems that Daniel Tammet, a mathematical savant who holds the record for the most digits of pi recited from memory, is able to explain exactly how he intuits answers to mathematical problems. Tammet is quite articulate and speaks seven languages, including one he invented. The Guardian is running an article about his amazing abilities."
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It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
My little sister is autistic, and I think at least a third of her brain is wired for solving jigsaw puzzles. Try working that into a resume.
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Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Informative)
The ability to organize complex, structured data (which is basically all a jigsaw is) is a key requirement in database administration. Being able to visualize the optimal structure is a talent people will pay a LOT of money for.
As another person has noted, the ability to reassemble a randomly scrambled structure (such as a shredded document) would appeal very much to certain areas of law enforcement, intelligence and homeland security.
Being able to connect bits of image that are associated by some non-obvious connection may well be of interest to people studying image compression. There may be organizations which can yield better compression, which do not require too much meta-data to explain and which do not take significantly longer to uncompress.
If all else fails, she can simply put "massively parallel combinatorial logic" on the resume and apply as a maths lecturer.
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Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Interesting)
You should know then that Aspbergers is quite common in this industry. Maybe you just don't know how to recognize it, but all the stereotypes of geeks being socially inept have Aspbergers at their root. That's not to say that all geeks are high-functioning autistics. But, it is easier to mask in environments where their logical/reasoning/technical skills are valued over skills at socialization. Maybe you just need to look closer at the people around you.
From your description of her as, "busy being a teenage girl" it sounds like she is in the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, because the people in the middle to lower range are barely able to even BE a teenager in a way that society recognizes and avoiding the stigma of geekiness just isn't even a comprehenisble concept to them.
It is easy to say from the other side of the internet, but one of the best things anyone can do for her is to get her as much positive exposure to a wide range of "autistic-excelling" skills so that pattern-matching ability which makes her good at jigsaw puzzles will get the chance to focus on a more (financially) rewarding area. You never know what oddball skill might "click" with her, whatever it is, chances are it won't be what society considers a traditional job so you have to keep open to as broad a range as possible.
FWIW, I am speaking from experience here, one of my closest relatives has asperbergers. Early on he focused on computers and did the rounds as sysadmin/programmer and he was somewhat better than average at it. But what he found is that he is really good at talking about and explaining the processes and logic behind all that stuff - he's got really low communication skills otherwise, zero socialization ability, zero non-verbal communication ability, hardly any empathy, etc. But if you ask him about the way a complex system works he can explain it and he can explain it in a way that regular "non-savant" type people can follow.
He's been able to leverage that ability to "talk about work" into a very high paying career, serving as "resident guru" for companies doing software development. He doesn't do any real work, he just helps the regular developers understand how best to do their work. At first glance, it's not your typcial aspergbers-friendly kind of job because of all the people-interaction. But from his perspective it is a perfect match because it is all technical discourse about stuff he is really focused on with very little non-verbal/emotional content.
It's probably something like talking about jigsaw puzzles with your sister, she could probably talk about them all day and go into the most exruciating detail about them. Just nobody really wants to know about jigsaw puzzles, but knowing how complex hardware and software systems work is a very valuable skill in today's market.
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Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Insightful)
You're trying to draw a dichotomy where nothing exists. It's all chemical (unless you're a dualist).
Whether you're a moron, a pedophile, an asperger, a socially inept geek, or a low functioning autistic, there's a neurological explanation somewhere, whether genetic, environmental or a combination of both.
You seem fixated by these black and white labels; this person has that disease, but that person is ok, they're just inept.
???
The truth is that there's a broad landscape of ability and disability. For purposes of mental health treatment, it helps to draw circles around certain peaks and call them disorders, but in reality it's all shades of gray on a huge multidimensional surface.
It's extremely likely that some subset of the genes that cause autism/aspergers are active in the socially inept. Why do you take such offense at this? Does it make you feel better to tell these people "no, you're just inept, you don't get to claim that it's because of the way your brain is wired."
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Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Insightful)
But there is some hope to be gained from others' examples. I have a friend with cerebral palsy whose pediatrician said he'd never be able to care for himself but is now a successful business owner and head of household, another friend with learning disabilities who's doing well handling repetitive tech-support calls, and a great aunt who was born cyanotic with multiple disabilities but has lived a rather full and rich life. My boyfriend, whose brain hemorrhage several years ago left him unable to care for himself (let alone hold down a job) has ended up as "a burden on the family", but they - and I - still value him for (to put it crudely) what's left of him. A step mother I expected nothing from turned out to be his greatest caregiver. (And I sure as hell didn't turn out like my family expected.)
My point I suppose is that things don't always turn out as badly as you fear they will, and you have to let every situation sort itself out as best as you can. There's no guarantee that everything will all work out, but then there's no guarantee that it won't. Work with that.
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Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Informative)
"Idiot" [slashdot.org] was once a legitimate medical term:
Likewise, "idiot savant" [wikipedia.org] was the original term for what is now "autistic savant" (although, as someone on the Wikipedia talk page [wikipedia.org] points out, "less than half of all savants are autistic").
In any case, I doubt the grandparent intended to offend. The worst you can say is that he hasn't kept up on his political correctness.
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Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not unusual for people with Aspergers to have trouble recognizing the "correctness" of behaviour, facial expressions, etc. Sure, it's not universal, either, but it's definitely not a rarity.
Do I care? No. But, then, I'm not built to care about things like that. This isn't an "I can't help it", because that implies it's wrong to be anything other than a highly socially-aware, socially-structured individual.
I am Autistic. I don't see it as anything to be pitied, or even delighted in. It's just a word that describes how some aspect of the chemistry in my brain differs from the "norm". It is a description, not a definition.
Idiot Savant is the same thing. It is just a description, no different from "hot", "yellow" or "crispy". Someone might get angry with the words, finding them offensive. That's not my problem. How you choose to understand words is entirely up to you.
True, I could be better understood, if I spoke in a language closer to your own. But if I want to be understood by fellow autists, I go join the autistic channel on an IRC network specially set up for such folk. Here, I expect to be understood by geeks, who know how to dereference the pointers of obscure and arcane language.
Well, they must. When karma was still counted in points on Slashdot, my score was in the thousands. Someone out there must have understood me.
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Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this is a little unspoken crisis in my family. One of us three older non-autistic siblings is going to have to take care of her in a few decades when our parents are no longer around, and although nobody's said anything, it's obvious that nobody wants to be that sibling. This sounds heartless, but if you spent an hour with her you'd understand- she's pleasant enough, but incoherent and unresponsive, so you never really feel like you know her even after you've met her. No one has any idea how employable she'll be when she's an adult (she's in her teens now), or how much of an independent life she'll be able to lead. Right now she's a handful and requires close adult supervision at all times unless a jigsaw puzzle or a DVD player is around- she can't get involved in typical conversations that take place and will try to regain attention by turning off all the lights in the room and laughing at everyone in the darkness. Maybe she'll grow out of it. Right now it's pretty funny at family gatherings- I can tell my brother in law would like to strangle her from the way he groans when the lights go out, but he can't say anything.
She just got a yahoo email account. I should send her an email- she'll be thrilled. Maybe it's possible to have an email conversation with her. I don't even know.
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Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Try it. It isn't all that uncommon for autistics to be articulate with the written word yet be unable to speak or handle face-to-face communication.
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Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can also write much better than I can talk, which supports my mother's Aspberger's theory I guess. I can still speak well, but writing well is much, much easier and requires less mental effort. There are these four arrow keys I use to order thoughts when writing, but when speaking you have to order your thoughts before they come out, and mine are usually in the wrong order. And if I write something stupid, I can (and sometimes do) delete it before anyone sees it. Good thing we don't use typewriters anymore.
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Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Informative)
and we can't see when we misspell things.
I guess what I am trying to say is that there could be worse things: you could be dyslexic too. your sister could be severally downs syndrome and have congestive ht failure at 25.
she is no doubt something special in some wonderful light and i wish you luck in communicating with her. My experience has been puzzling and rather awe inspiring in reference to autistics. Oddly enough, does she have a pet? When I worked with this children's clinic the autistics that had pets that were their own (usually a dog or cat) they seemed better acclimated and better communicators. some also learned sign rather well. Just things to look into (sorry if this is redundant to your situation).
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Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.neurodiversity.com/robotics.html [neurodiversity.com]
http://www.aurora-project.com/ [aurora-project.com]
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Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I should kick your ass, AC.
Although I don't think my sister will be going into porn. In fact I can't imagine a career more laughably unsuited for an autistic person. One of the main problems in people with autism is that they don't find it very motivating to look at other individuals. And even when they do, they can't seem to assess information about that individual's importance, intentions or expressions. [dukemednews.org] That pretty much rules out a career in the porn industry- in front of or behind the camera.
This past Thanksgiving, my mother was excited and took pictures of all of us and our spouses, since we were all there at the same time (we live all over the country). My autistic sister erased them all so she could take pictures of the floor and the ceiling. Can you imagine paying for a porno tape and the camera quickly moves from the bed to the ceiling? I don't know what industry she might work in but it certainly isn't going to be porn.
Although my little sister is quite attractive- that's one thing she's definitely got going for her in life. She looks like me.
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Savantism (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Savantism (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes he'll get obsessed with a particular person -- when its me for instance, he will send me several emails *per minute* until whatever it is about him passes.
Id hate to think of where he would be without the memory though, its clear he doesn't really understand the interactions between people, or emotions. He sent me a picture of himself with some of the budweiser girls (he met them at a promo thing), and he's got this mean scowl on his face in the picture. He was horribly excited about the whole thing and he waited days and days for the photo, but simply doesn't *know* to smile. He can *remember* the thousands of little things that his family has told him over the years, and usually remembers a short phrase that tells him what to do, "My grandfather said when somebody gets real mad the best thing to do is let them cool off for a bit and then go talk to them." And he does that thing.
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What? (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_savant [wikipedia.org]
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
I can imagine the two...
Ali: What you're sayin' is like.. They is smart, 'cos they got brain damage?
Simon: Well, not quite. A savant isn't quite what we usually mean by..
Ali: An' drugs? Theys give ya brain damage?
Simon: Yes, they can..
Ali: So if me was to like, drop a pile of E, I could, like, do maths and stuff?
Simon: Well, I wouldn't..
Ali: RESPECT!!
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So let's see (Score:5, Funny)
So presumably 69 is Jenifer Lopez, and 303 is the goatse guy?
Braining my Damage (Score:5, Funny)
FTA: "Savants have usually had some kind of brain damage. Whether it's an onset of dementia later in life, a blow to the head...
Item 1, check. Item 2, check.
So how come I aren't a genius now?
This is clearly false advertising.
...other people have been able to describe this (Score:5, Interesting)
The program seemed to conclude that we all, to an extent, are synesthetic. Quite a large number of people assosciate colours with days of the week, and we all use words like a "soft/sharp sound", a "bite" to a tase, and so on. Although these words are ones of touch, we use them in other contexts. Cross-referencing the senses in a similar war to more advanced synesthesia.
On slashdot we have (Score:4, Funny)
What is mathematical genius (Score:5, Insightful)
If he solved Fermat's theorem over breakfast, that would be mathematical genius!!
Re:What is mathematical genius (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What is mathematical genius (Score:5, Interesting)
And if we are on the topic of raw computing ability - and we decide that computing ability _is_ interesting - could we *please* have them try computations in a more general number field? Could we *please* have them solve problems that we can't yet solve efficiently by any known algorithm? (And, could someone also study how fast this guy computes factorisations as a funtion of the input size? Fr instance, could we find out how fast his brain's process works - O(n) ? O(log(n))? This question could at least be answered experimentally.
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Crypto (Score:5, Interesting)
Does not Compute! (Score:5, Interesting)
"When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."
I don't understand. There is nothing intrinsic in the number 2 and the number 5 that will tell you what they will equal when they are multiplied.
The way we arrive at the solution is extrinsic, namely in the form of the operator (multiplication in this instance).
But if it's extrinsic, I don't understand what the author of the article means by "instinct" and "shapes" and that sort of thing. As far as I can understand, the only explanation would be the ability to compute those operations at much higher speed, then any "non-savant."
If that's the case, then, theoretically, would there not be a limit associated with the physical properties of the nervous system that would cap out at a certain number of such operations per unit time? So theoretically might we not be able to test such a thing by running him through a long list of operations? That'll let us know if he's really just making those calculations really, really fast, or if he really is viewing the mathematics in such a fundamentally different way (something I find rather unsettling).
Then again, how would we design such a test? I fear that the number of operations we can demand his brain to perform per unit time will be limited by his powers of cognition (i.e. by the time he reads/hears all the stuff he needs to hear, we'll already be beyond that critical operating time interval).
Eh, I think I come off as somewhat difficult to understand. Oh well, I wanted to make sure my question appeared in the main thread of discussion (rather than being posted after most people have moved on).
Re:Does not Compute! (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. I think he has shapes for each of the numbers he's multiplying and he has learnt the shape that they turn into when you multiply them. Because the visual powers of the human mind are quite powerful he's able to do that fast.
It's kinda like using your computer's graphics card to do matrix multiplication. If you feed the info in the right format you can get the answer out faster than using the main processor, because the graphics processor actually has more computing power; but it's not as general purpose.
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Think of this then: (Score:5, Interesting)
When you use the framebuffer memory to do ordinary calculations, seemingly random crap will appear on the screen when the program is run, and the answer will technically appear as an image as well.
If we think of our brains as highly sophisticated computers, it makes sense that somewhere inside exists the "circuitry" to do complex calulations like a computer in the blink of an eye, however, we somehow can't accesse these mechanisms, as hypothesized somewhere in the article. Perhaps (I'm just taking a random stab here) something happened to these people where some of the "wiring" of their brains got messed up so that they can actually use different parts of their brain. These "images" might not have anything "intrinsic", but might just be the effect of something else, like the example above.
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Sounds like he has synesthesia (Score:5, Informative)
The upside is that this can make it easier to remember things- it means you've got more things about the thing to connect to other things- his description of how he remembered pi as a story is a *classic* description of the mnemonic technique for remembering things- you basically turn what you want to remember into a series of pictures that you string into a whacky story. It works really, really well; people easily get upwards of 90% recall using it. And he has a built in picture or sensation to help him with this; which is the hardest bit of the technique.
The brain of a savant (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it possible that knowing how to drive a car, wire a plug, tell right from left, and other banal things that we do require a ton of processing power? Since he cannot do these things, all that processing power goes to processing numbers and memorising words.
It we would be cool if on a math test we cold forget our ability to drive cars and concentrate on processing numbers.
It's not intelligence in any conventional sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say that this isn't any sort of "intelligence" in any conventional sense; it's simply that his damaged brain has given him the ability to access "hidden" subroutines of the neural wiring we all have.
For instance, it's no secret that the human brain can do maths in real-time with frightening speed. Just walking involves real-time feats of calculus that would choke a calculator. The problem is that it's all subconscious. Well, in Tammet's case, that "subroutine"-- which is supposed to be wholly subconscious-- now has a window into his conscious mind, expressed through pictures.
This is fascinating, but arguably it's no form of intelligence. At least, not in any conventional sense of "intelligence".
Mind you, I fully understand what it's like to be able to do something without mentally "lifting a finger". It's the way I've always been with language. I first spoke at age one, and I've been able to write and speak at an "adult" level since early childhood. My grammatical skills are quite high, but if you asked me to diagram a sentence, I'd choke. I usually can't describe why I know that a certain sentence structure is "right" or "wrong", since I can't consciously describe many of the rules of language.
I suppose this fellow is much the same way with the pictures in his head. He's described to us how he (as in the conscious entity known as Tammet) does sums: He just sits back and his brain feeds him the answer without any conscious sort of calculation. However, he hasn't described to us how his brain does the work, which is the really interesting question.
Lame Article summary (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shanks
I am a teacher and have had nearly a dozen autistic students (none of whom were savants). There is a huge increase in Silicon Valley, and it is a fascinating, frustrating, and a lot of work for most of the support staff.
For anyone interested, I'd also recommend the book "Thinking in Pictures" by Temple Grandin (an autistic woman who has redesigned livestock handling machinery). She is quite eloquent and probably the most famous autistic person (she has also been interviewed by Terry Gross, which I suppose is online).
Finnish (Score:5, Informative)
Tammet is creating his own language, strongly influenced by the vowel and image-rich languages of northern Europe. (He already speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic and Esperanto.) The vocabulary of his language - "Mänti", meaning a type of tree - reflects the relationships between different things. The word "ema", for instance, translates as "mother", and "ela" is what a mother creates: "life". "Päike" is "sun", and "päive" is what the sun creates: "day". Tammet hopes to launch Mänti in academic circles later this year, his own personal exploration of the power of words and their inter-relationship.
Disregarding the misspellings, all those words are straight from a Finnish or Estonian dictionary. "Mänty" is a pine tree, "päivä" is day, "pälke" means glimmer or glint. "Emä" and "elä" are the root words of mother and life, respectively. And "tammi" (tammet) is oak.
Finnish is a weird but logical language with a lot of nuances and forms that are not present in other languages. I'm not sure what Tammet is trying to do, but he's apparently just exploring the relationships between words in Finnish. Anything else would either not make sense, or be simple plagiarism. Too bad the reporter got stuck on the words and made such a big issue of it.
Tammet's not the first one to ponder on the Finnish language. It's well known that J.R.R Tolkien got hooked on Finnish at an early age and re-used some ideas [www.sci.fi] in his works.
--Bud
(Temporarily) turning people into savants (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general.
Snyder's work began with a curiosity about autism. Though there is little consensus about what causes this baffling -- and increasingly common -- disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic people share certain qualities: they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally dissociated. They manifest what autism's great ''discoverer,'' Leo Kanner, called ''an anxiously obsessive desire for the preservation of sameness.'' And they tend to interpret information in a hyperliteral way, using ''a kind of language which does not seem intended to serve interpersonal communication.''
In a 1999 paper called ''Is Integer Arithmetic Fundamental to Mental Processing? The Mind's Secret Arithmetic,'' Snyder and D. John Mitchell considered the example of an autistic infant, whose mind ''is not concept driven. . . . In our view such a mind can tap into lower level details not readily available to introspection by normal individuals.'' These children, they wrote, seem ''to be aware of information in some raw or interim state prior to it being formed into the 'ultimate picture.''' Most astonishing, they went on, ''the mental machinery for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic calculations could be within us all.''
And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he says, ''to enhance the brain by shutting off certain parts of it.''
a really interesting field (Score:5, Interesting)
When you get down to it, though, we do most of our "thinking" in sounds or visuals. Everything else is translation. For instance, LANGUAGE is incredibly complex, but we can do it with ease since our brain has such an amazing "processing chip" for sorting sounds. Reading is simply converting things to sounds (or visuals - when you "remember" a quote you will normally either remember it by sound or by a visual memory of the words.)
Even math is, at it's root, visual for all of us. Take 2 + 2 = 4. There is cold memorization of the result, but if you were learning math for the first time, you would break it down to:
|| + || = ||||
ie. a visual representation, or counting fingers etc. The reason many people have so much trouble with math is they end up doing too much cold memorization - the brain remembers associatively, so this doesn't work well (but it explains why mneumonic devices DO work well). Unfortunately, that's how they teach it.
I tend to believe that we have an amazing ability to remember sound and sight (makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint) but we're NOT hard drives and "cold memorization" just doesn't work. By knocking out some part of the brain, the brain is forced to take in math through the visual/sound process, inventing a network of logic that handles all the work in the subconscious.
huh-- I speak 8 languages (Score:5, Funny)
Daniel Tammet's web site (Score:5, Informative)
Daniel Tammet's web site is here [optimnem.co.uk] and looks quite nicely done.
Re:3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Pfh, languages (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly the sort of thing where I'd imagine that synthetic languages would trip up. Personally, I'd say that evolution, interaction with various dialects and corruption is invaluable to the usefulness of a language. How does Esperanto deal with this?
(n.b. not attempting to flame: I'm genuinely interested)
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Funny)
I may not read much, but I read my Bible, and all I need to know is I don't care what you liberal city boy types think about the Word of God: what's wrong is wrong, what's a sin is a sin, and you degenerate sickos better watch yer asses when you see my pickup comin' cos I'm gonna take a 2-by-4 bash in the head of the next GOLLDAMN PREVERT I see wearing a cotton/polyester T-shirt.
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Funny)
The gay guys I know lie with thier men like men.
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Insightful)
Now go look that up in a few other translations. It is quite a bit different.
I've never understood how people can believe that the Bible is true, yet at the same time not find it important enough to read in the original languages.
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Interesting)
Well there's your problem. You need to get the KJV and a good set of translation notes. The NIV and other "modern" bibles are the word of Bob the fallablle translator, not the word of God. I'll never understand why you people waste your time on those things. It's like trying to understand Shakespeare by reading only the Cliff's Notes.
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.
That's both more accurate to Paul's original text and more beautiful to read. If Paul had intended to say "homosexual", he would have used the well-known word "paiderasste." Instead, he uses, "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai," neither of which have ever had clear homosexual connotation. Do a Google search [google.com] on the Greek words if you want to learn more. It's fascinating.
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Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Funny)
Lesbians have the lowest infection rate for these things... it seems to me that it's not homosexuality that's harmful... it seems it's more a matter of going anywhere near a penis.
Same for those idiot churches that say AIDS is a punishment for homosexuality... if that's the case it seems lesbians are God's chosen people.
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Re:Did anyone else read this bit and double take? (Score:5, Insightful)
A gay, churchgoing autistic savant in fact. That's a tough call for someone trying not to stand out.
As a gay, formerly-churchgoing, neurotic genius (i.e. a bit like like him but not as "out there"), I'm jealous that he has a boyfriend.
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