It may not be as bad as pirating, but what you're doing is sending them a strong financial message: "It's ok to do this shit! I don't mind! I'll give you exactly as much money as I did before, I'll just be slightly more annoyed!"
If a game has enough DRM that I'd have to crack it just to play the way I want, or to protect my system, I'm not going to buy or play that game. I'll buy a different one with either no DRM, or DRM I can live with.
Even if I were too old to rant about it, there's still some practical steps I can take. Between work and school, there's no way I can spend that much time on games, so I choose the ones I actually play carefully.
Put it this way: Why would you play a bad game when you can play a good one? There are so many games to choose from, it's actually getting reasonable to boycott DRM altogether. It's even getting reasonable to only play games which run natively on Linux.
I'm more than happy to buy games. What I'm not happy to do is have certain DRM on my system (actually as harmful as any malware), or vote with my dollars that shit like this is OK.
Worse, they might corrupt the whole idea by supporting USB, but requiring the charger to authenticate itself, and either refusing to charge or deliberately drawing less power when you detect the wrong charger.
I think we (along with most people) would agree with the following-- that while it may be bad to murder a stranger, it is worse to murder a friend, and much worse to murder a parent.
I don't, or at least, it's not a distinction that matters to me. What matters to me is that I have no intention of ever murdering anyone, and when others do, my concern is what to do about them. Since I don't believe in vengeance, "what to do about them" isn't about making sure they "pay for their crimes", it's about making sure they don't kill again, making them productive members of society if it's possible, and hopefully making it enough of a deterrent that others are less likely to murder.
We see such familial crimes as worse in part because the one doing the killing owes so much to the one he murders.
I'm not sure that's the case -- is a child killing a parent worse than a parent killing a child?
It would seem to me that if you extend that idea to the one who you owe the very conception of existence to, the punishment for even minor crimes would be correspondingly magnified.
Your family must be very different than mine. With my family, and friends, and even casual acquaintances, it seems that the closer I get to someone, the more likely I am to be forgiving of little things, in favor of focusing on what actually matters.
the crimes we commit are against one with such high standards, and to whom we owe so much, that no attempts by us can ever exonerate us.
And he knows this. In other words, the person (being?) setting the standards is deliberately setting them so high no one will reach them, and then punishing them for falling short. It's like a parent beating his child because the child can't fly.
David's sin was lack of trust. IIRC earlier in either Samuel or Chronicles, the Israelites were told NOT to construct large armies, but to rely on the Lord. David's intention was to perform a census for the express purpose of judging his military readiness, a clear violation of the implicit command to trust.
Emphasis mine.
So nothing was ever said about counting the armies you have (or how large "large" is), and it's even acknowledged that it's an implicit command. And this still doesn't address the question.
Normal person: "You didn't trust me. I'm disappointed."
Mob boss: "You didn't trust me. If you ever fail me again, I'll kill your family."
Serial killer: "You didn't trust me. My trust issues are going to make me somewhat unstable, so I'm just going to kill a dozen random people."
God: "You didn't trust me. I'm going to kill seventy thousand of your people!"
Loving? Really? I can only imagine what God would've done if Abraham had refused to sacrifice his son.
You can clearly see that he is a God who values covenants, truth, and "holiness" (perhaps best defined as being set apart, isolation from moral corruption) highly enough to put a high price on their violation;
Defining "holiness" in terms of moral corruption buys you nothing. I consider killing seventy thousand people as punishment for a lack of faith to be petty and morally corrupt. By your own definition, then, I would have to judge God as unholy.
That leaves covenants and truth. I think we can boil this down to just truth, because what's the worth of a covenant with a dishonest being? But God didn't tell the whole truth about the Tree of Knowledge. He certainly wasn't honest about his intentions for Abraham's son -- that, or he was fickle, commanding one thing, then another. There's a number of things attributed to God, particularly in Job, which are metaphor at best -- "corners of the Earth", for instance.
Even if I grant covenants, the way he goes about enforcing them is brutal. He promised the land of Canaan to Abraham. Fine. But to keep this covenant, he led the Israelites on a campaign of genocide. You know what? I'd rather he'd broken his promise.
...love enough to pay the penalty himself, in what physically can be described as a rather horrendous way to die,
Aside from the question of whether that was necessary at all -- and I'm sorry, another YouTube link is relevant -- there's still the question of how much suffering this actually is. It seems to me that there are worse forms of torture practiced today, and even if that wasn't the case, Jesus can hardly be paying the price if he has a bad weekend and ends up at the right hand of God.
If he had really "paid the price", he'd be in Hell. (I'm not saying that's what I want...)
Holiness in particular is shown by the very particular laws of the mosaic covenant-- a part of their purpose being to demonstrate the extent to which Israel was not to live like other nations, imaging a God who is in so many ways not like other (man-made) gods.
Actually, this god is very much like other man-made gods, just not like others of that region at that time. But the very particular laws of the mosaic covenant strike me as ranging from utterly pointless (don't mix cloth!) to utterly barbaric (the stuff about rape especially, but also slavery, sex in general, disobedient children, etc.)
If that doesnt quite cut it for you, Im sorry, but it is a discussion that could in and of itself take up the remainder of this post, and I dont know that I have adequate knowledge to essentially write up a systematic theology on the attributes of God-- there are books enough for THAT.
I don't think I'm asking for much. Right now, I'm pretty much where I started with this discussion -- the biblical God, and the laws ascribed to him, seem very much like what I would expect of a stone-age tribe writing stone-age mythology. It's even understandable and forgivable in that context. It doesn't seem understandable or forgivable for the very definition of what is good and right to condemn women to death for not screaming loud enough when raped.
What would be obvious to any reader above the age of 14 as metaphorical language...
In evaluating this claim, first, I have to ignore this for a moment:
...the word 'akal, as I understand, has as part of its meaning a figurative eat.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and concede the point as a legitimate argument -- I did ask "what am I missing" (not entirely rhetorically), and you answered, so thank you.
But I can't seriously expect any random 14-year-old to just know the appropriate Hebrew offhand, nor can I fault the creator of that video for the same.
So here's the problem: How do you know what's intended as metaphor and what's intended as historical fact? Did a whale (alright, "great fish") really eat Jonah, or was it a metaphor? Jesus cursing a fig tree, fact or metaphor? God creating Adam from dust and Eve from Adam's rib, fact or metaphor? Noah's flood, fact or metaphor? Elijah being lifted into the sky in a chariot of fire, fact or metaphor? The resurrection, fact or metaphor?
Even in context, it's just not always obvious. This is why there are Creationists, but not all Christians are Creationists.
In relative terms, yes, which becomes rather obvious given Peter and Pauls repeated assertions and implications that ONLY God is righteous when judged on an absolute scale and on their own merits.
So, how do we know when it's meant as absolute and when it's meant as relative? This actually struck me as a contradiction when I first read it, because I didn't see any indication that the mention of Lot was "relative" to anything -- and relative to something worse than a father who'd give up his own daughters to be raped?
I do not intend to do a full exposition on the reasoning behind each and every law, but that specific law was to protect women who would no longer be marriageable in a time when they relied on marriage for protection. A terrible thing has happened, but letting the rapist off of any responsibility to the woman whose prospects he has ruined is not a better scenario.
So, require the rapist to pay child support. Or kill him and take his money for the woman.
Or do whatever you want to the rapist, but deal with the issue of women being treated like property -- why shouldn't a woman be "marriageable" unless she's a virgin? Why not let the community chip in some money to support the victim?
Think about this. What we're saying here is that God found it more acceptable to force women to marry their rapists, thus guaranteeing a lifetime of further rape, than deal with a social problem. And it's not like God was afraid to dictate social norms -- after all, he sold them on the idea of circumcision.
Except we do know things about the prehistoric Earth.
I would take issue with the word "know" if you mean it in a technical sense. Assumptions still form the foundation-- assumptions about geological processes, the constancy of certain laws, etc.
Assumptions are not created equal, especially when they are testable, especially when multiple different lines of evidence repeatedly lead to the same conclusion, even a conclusion nobody wanted to believe.
That is, it's not assuming that radioactive decay is the same now as it always was. What it's assuming is that it's not the case that radioactive decay of multiple substances, cosmological distances and the speed of light, computerized models of the formation of the solar system, the spacing of tree rings, et cetera, et cetera, all lead to the same erroneous conclusion.
I perhaps should not have used the term "no difference", though i DID use the word "practically" quite specifically in the next sentence.
Yes, you did -- I guess I couldn't really let a fundamental difference slide that easily, even if it's somehow "practically" the same for some purposes. It may result in no "practical" difference in some sense on this narrow issue, but it's a fundamental difference of opinion.
More than that, what often happens -- though I'm not sure if you were doing this -- is that by claiming it's a belief system, the next claim is, "So it takes just as much faith to be an atheist as a Christian! You just don't want to believe..." and so on.
By contrast, the attitude that led me to atheism is just the opposite. I try not to have faith in anything, which means I try to work with as few assumptions as I can, and keep those assumptions reasonable. I also try to keep in mind that they are assumptions, and be open to the possibility that I might be wrong -- to the extent that proof applies, as AronRa says, "I'd rather be proven wrong than forever be wrong."
Maybe you weren't going there, but I try to stop things like that in their tracks, especially when it's a verbal conversation. When someone starts with a faulty premise, the sooner I stop it, the less of their baseless argument I Have to listen to. Even if I have to listen to it, it's much easier to find a foundational fallacy than have to deconstruct the whole thing.
That is KJV english, which I find to be quite popular in such objections,
I think it's more because it's popular in general. See, for example, The Onion -- that, and it's what I remember watching The Ten Commandments as a kid.
I have no problem with using "thou shalt not murder", but that's a lot of killing to justify.
"Is it good because God says it, or did God say it because it's good?"
Im not philosopher enough to give a full answer to this. One might wonder, could there possibly have been a universe where cowardice was morally good, and love was an evil-- and were seen as such by all? I dont know. I suppose IMO both of his statements are true, and that it is not a dichotomy at all.
I don't see how they can both be true without being circular. If it's good because God says it -- that is, if the cause of its goodness is that God said so -- then the cause of his saying so can't be that it's good. That he said it because it's good, similarly, seems to necessarily imply that there is some standard other than just that he said it by which it is judged "good".
It's also interesting that you say "and were seen as such by all..." Since when is that a requirement? Certainly, if there is an absolute standard of good and evil, people could be mistaken about it.
But that's essentially the problem I see here -- if goodness is simply an absolute standard set by God, a situation philosophers call "Divine command theory". There are several objections, and I'm working from memory and Wikipedia here, but the most serious seems to be that it is entirely arbitrary, but you can't possibly know yourself, since you don't know the mind of God.
It also works equally well no matter what you apply it to, so long as you accept that thing as the source of all that is good. This is problematic since we can't know the mind of God, and different people have different opinions on who or what God is -- how are we to know which is correct? And how is it fair to judge us for the honest mistake of not knowing what the right religion is?
The biggest problem I have, you already know: Special pleading. You're saying that since God is the author of morality, anything God does is by definition good, even if it runs contrary to any moral standard we apply to pretty much anyone else. There are just too many cases where if it was any human in that position, performing those actions, you would call them a monster, a terrible person, beyond evil.
Glenn Beck claims to be mormon, not Christian...
This isn't really crucial, but that's a No True Scotsman. I'm aware of all the crazy shit Mormons pile on top of Christianity, though I'm not convinced it's really harder to believe than Christianity by itself. But by what definition of "Christian" are you excluding Mormons?
(at the very least in the sense that he doesnt think OT+NT is reliable)
Neither do most Christians, at least where Genesis is concerned, but often many other places are either ignored or explained away as metaphor or allegory. In fact, when you restrict it to those with the most consistent interpretation of the Bible, it seems like what you end up with is Fred Phelps.
for instance, if you were born in Iran, you'd probably be a Muslim.
That is what we call an untestable hypothesis, and Ive heard it enough for it to be obnoxious. Just how do you know this?
It's testable in that the best predictor of a person's religion is the religion of their parents, and the religion of the surrounding environment. I don't know enough about you to know that this applies to you personally, but this is as valid as saying that if you had been born in a slum, you probably wouldn't end up with a million dollars.
Sure, it happens, but without knowing more about you and how these things work, it's reasonable to say you're probably not an exception.
Doesnt this exclude the possibility of any religion whatsoever-- as if it were true the first people would not have had religion at all, so neither would their kids?
Well, like I said, "probably".
It actually seems that, given human psychology, religion often arises naturally and very quickly in the absence of either an existing religion or sufficient understanding of reality. But even without that, you might imagine that a few people would start believing, and then a few more -- that kind of change is slow, though maybe it was quicker before the religions learned to better defend themselves by, for example, threatening unbelievers with Hell.
But are you really going to say you don't see the pattern? Once you've got a religion... Iran is full of Muslims. There are exceptions. They are a tiny, tiny percentage. Iran isn't significantly genetically different than America -- there is far, far more genetic diversity within races than between races. Therefore, it seems likely that if you, with the same genetic material and basically the same initial conditions, were born in Iran, where you'd be indoctrinated into Islam, that you'd now be telling me about the Prophet, and how the Bible is basically true, but unreliable, and I'd be asking you to justify why the penalty for apostasy is death.
As it happens, I don't believe "perfection" is possible or desirable,
Though I would wonder why at this. People have long wanted a utopia (see communism etc), and the barrier always seems to be precisely that people arent morally perfectable.
That's one barrier. It's more fundamental than that human nature is so bad -- it's raw natural selection at work. In a world which is morally perfect in even one narrowly defined sense, like, say, always telling the truth, the first person who tells a lie is the most powerful man on Earth.
More than that, though, I'm not sure I want "perfection". It might be a visceral thing, more than a logical one, but it seems like every attempt at perfection ends up being flawed in concept. For example, suppose we wanted to create a perfectly athletic society. What do we do with cripples? Kill them, as Sparta might have? Or take it a step further, what if you could genetically engineer people to be perfect in every way, or at least everything we could control with genes? Then you have Gattaca.
Or think about a perfect artist of pretty much any kind. What defines "perfect" art? How can it still be art if it's perfect?
So...
Possibly you are speaking from the standpoint that "Christianity is wrong, therefore I dont want you forcing your conception of morality on me", which is from your stance understandable.
It's less this, and more that with my views on morality and ethics, I don't think perfection according to those views is the point. The point of ethics in particular is to answer the question, "In the situation I am in now, what is the right thing to do?" Sometimes there's no right answer. Sometimes it doesn't matter. Sometimes there is exactly one right answer.
But even if everyone did exactly what they should do, you can still end up with no-win situations, so perfect ethics doesn't lead to a perfect world.
The other difference is that here, at least the laws aren't as totalitarian. I'd rather have politicians who dishonestly slap me from time to time (then claim they didn't) than politicians who rape me openly.
I admit my views on sex ed are considered outmoded. 10-year olds having sex with 8-year olds is a problem, but how to 'solve' that problem is beyond me. Our culture glorifies sexuality so much its inevitable.
The way I was brought up, it wasn't likely to happen. I'm not sure if that's because my parents did a good job, or because I was a geek.
And my example 'you killed another person unjustly' is called murder. Sometimes we, as a society, consider the circumstances of a particular murder so heinous or depraved that we require the life of the murderer in exchange. Right or wrong, that's the law. I'm not at all sure whether I support it or not.
It's true, it's the law... I think we were talking about right or wrong. Personally, I feel that "fairness" isn't really what this is about. I don't think vengeance is ever a good reason. The reasons we lock people up are:
I don't think there's another good reason, or really another good reason to punish people. It's not at all important to me that a murderer gets what they deserve. It's far more important to me that they don't murder again.
Of course self-defense is an interesting problem. Can you subdue your attacker with less than deadly force? But honestly, we are probably arguing over the grey, not the black and white.
Maybe. This one doesn't seem terribly complicated -- for instance, it may be that I could've subdued the attacker with less than deadly force, but it would've put me at considerably greater risk... My personal rule (which I've been fortunate enough not to have to test) is that once you attack me physically, you've given up any right you had to expect me not to hurt or kill you. If I can subdue without killing you, even without hurting you, so much the better, but it's just not a priority at that point.
I'm not sure we're actually arguing about this point, though.
Your points about gay marriage do really speak to the fundamental point. Gays (and I somewhat hate using that term, it's simplistic and terse, but using 'homosexuals' seems stuffy, and well, perhaps an unintentional insult)
Well, if either "gay" or "homosexual" is an insult, you really can't win. I support the rights of a broader group, but I'm not sure there's a better word. For instance, if one of the two getting married is transsexual, is it gay or straight marriage? I don't really know, don't really care what we call it, but I don't see a reason to prevent it.
truly want to be accepted into society, not tolerated or enjoyed as amusement. I understand their desire to be accepted. Until even a simple majority agrees, that isn't going to be written into law....
I'm not sure that's what the gay marriage thing is about, though, or "Don't ask, don't tell." This isn't about people accepting them in any way other than allowing them the same rights as anyone else.
In the case of marriage, one simple solution would be to remove marriage as a legal concept and rephrase everything in terms of civil unions. Short of that, the issue is that a legally-recognized marriage gets tax breaks that a gay one doesn't, at least not in all states. The original reason for these tax breaks is that families were seen to be a positive contribution to society -- and this wasn't just someone's opinion about a moral good, you can actually find studies which show this to be the case.
So while I realize it may be politically difficult to get people to apply the same logic, you can run studies as to whether gay marriage carries the same secular benefits as straight marriage.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'd much rather see many of these decisions resolved in simple terms like that, especially in terms of things we can all verify are true, rather than see issues like this decided on personal feelings as to whether or not you accept a particular group. I can find very little good to say about Fred Phelps, for instance, and I hope I don't make him feel accepted, but he's got the right to have his say, and I have the right to not listen.
I'm hard pressed to find a regime on Earth that isn't corrupt in some significant way.
Good point.
Just as a curiosity, are churches somehow exempt from some significant requirements as non-profits?
My understanding is that they don't have to expose nearly as much of their financial information as other nonprofits, but I'm not really sure. However, some quick research shows some very different exemptions that I'm pretty sure are beyond what nonprofit status grants, or are awarded to religious organizations which are not non-profits.
I think our nation was created as a secular nation, and intentionally so. And I think that's a surprisingly Christian idea.
I'm not sure I agree, but there is a lot of disagreement about what is and isn't a Christian thing. I'm not sure it was quite this visionary:
They understood that while unusual in that day, agnostics and atheists needed to be free to be so also...
While they were neither atheist nor agnostic, there were loud, prominent critics of religion -- Thomas Payne, for example. Even Thomas Jefferson had his own bible.
I think the more important idea is that freedom of religion necessarily requires freedom from religion. Anything short of that, and the government is again telling you what you can and can't believe. Having a list of approved religions isn't much better than having only one allowed religion.
I do, actually consider many of the public scandals we've seen in the last 50 years through religious eyes, and I see fundamental ethical failures at the heart of nearly every one. I suspect you and I would agree on the failures, though. Most of them are indeed common-sense ethical failures.
Well, that's just it -- ethics can be secular.
Which liberals are anywhere near as bad as Beck, or even Bill O'Reilley? Nancy Pelosi, Al Franken, Bill Maher come to mind immediately.
Maher seems to be nearly as inflammatory, but nowhere near as willfully ignorant as Beck. The other two, I don't know enough about to comment. I'm certainly not going to defend Pelosi, but I don't remember why...
Just one thing about Scientology. Their training materials are closely guarded. I have some level 180+ TR material that was posted to Usenet a long time ago. Pretty interesting, and posting it online is universally met with takedown orders and suits to deliver all of it and destroy copies.
If I recall, it's also met with the Streisand effect.
since when is the Federal government that much better at this than local governments? If your point is that local boards are easily swayed by wackos, well, yes, but the Federal government is also easily swayed by wackos. At least I think so.
Well, first, taxation without representation and all that -- this was actually an issue in Texas, where not only was it easily swayed by wackos, it was also entirely outside my control, even the tiny voice I might have with a vote.
But the federal government moves slower. It's easy to spend a ton of money financing a political circus in a small town, and win before the rest of the world realizes what you're doing. It has proven to be harder to get quite such radical ideas through the federal government, at least without a much bigger fight.
My point is that it is learned first because they understand intrinsically that lying is useful but wrong. They just KNOW it. I did.
If you say so. This seems like a tricky nature/nurture thing, though. Do you remember enough about your early childhood to be sure you never learned?
And you know, your observation that Christians seem to give God the credit for everything good and blame humans/etc. for everything bad is very simplistic, not just on your part but on theirs also.
In that case, I'd still blame them -- I don't think it's overly simplistic as an observation, and there are always exceptions.
we live in a fallen world, and being fallen means it is not just imperfect, but is steeped in sin. God's purpose in this? Perhaps to train us in humility and suffering.
Why do we need to understand suffering? Why would a fallen world be better, particularly one in which we so rarely see evidence that there is a god at all?
But at least you haven't said that the fallen world is our fault.
I choose to have faith that God intends good for me, but I don't have to receive uninterrupted blessings and largesse from Him.
I don't ask for that, either, though I don't know why that would be impossible.
the second principle of Calvinism, Unconditional Election, does argue that if God wants you, He will have you. This leaves me in the place where I can witness to you, proclaim the Gospel to you, reason with you, and if after even decades you refuse the Gospel, I cannot take it as my failure, and not even yours. If God wanted you, believe me, he would have you. do I know why He chooses some and not others? Not one bit. No idea.
That seems like a problem, if God is supposed to be compassionate and loving.
Calvinism pretty much teaches that if you are truly willing, He will show Himself to you. I know just how circular that sounds.
Specifically, what it leads to is a No True Scotsman. My favorite example here is Matt Dillahunty, and maybe I'll track down that story so I have it in his words... He talks about how difficult it was to lose his faith. How he was on his knees, begging, pleading for a sign -- and he heard silence.
What many people would say is that he wasn't a true Christian, or that he wasn't truly sincere. It's hard to imagine being more sincere than that -- your entire worldview shifting, everything you thought you believed in, your whole life -- he was studying to be a minister! -- everything is falling apart, now more than ever, you'd think he would be open to any answer that came. He desperately wanted to believe -- he wasn't just willing, he was desperate.
Silence.
My own journey was slower and less emotional. I tend to think I am open, and while I no longer find myself hoping some sort of god shows himself to me, it would still be an amazing thing to experience. Yet still, it never happens.
When should a fetus be considered a human being? When it, if permitted to live and thrive, will become a human being. A radical position, I agree, but driven by the problem of deciding at which point in development an embryo or fetus is human.
That is a difficult problem, and I don't know that we've got it right yet. I still think it's a conversation worth having, even if I'm not really sure whether it's right until the mother's life is in danger.
If I understand you, you're saying conception. I think the biggest reason I have a problem with that is just how much of a burden it would be, and how unnecessary a burden if we're wrong. Rape victims come to mind.
Oh well, I fear that we are defining this to justify our positions on abortion...
Maybe. But I think I'm not so different:
There are often no good choices, I know. taking the morally superior position that 'you shouldn't be having sex, see what happens?' is inadequate and just wrong.
At the same time, taking a different morally superior position and saying "Keep your laws off my body!" is just as wrong -- the pictures I've seen from late-term abortions make me think that unless the mother's life was in danger, at a certain point, that is murder.
So I arrive at the same place: There has to be some line, somewhere in the middle, and I have no idea where to draw it, I only know what the edge cases look like.
If the interpretation finds itself at odds with the rest of scripture, I would call it erroneous.
At odds with an interpretation you accept of the rest of scripture, you mean?
Only if you skip the parts about His covenants, which man violated,
The problem is first, this doesn't always seem to be the case, and second, the punishment is nearly always disproportionate to the crime -- what we'd call "cruel and unusual" in our human justice systems. Worse, often God punishes people who were not involved at all.
Take 1 Chronicles 21:9-14. First, why punish David at all? The closest I could find to an explanation was this. Seriously? According to that page, David's being punished because knowing the strength of his armies could lead him to sin? Or maybe God just hates that it was Satan's idea -- assuming that is, indeed, the more accurate translation.
Whatever the excuse given, I can't find God ever telling David he couldn't conduct a census, especially given that Gideon was allowed to count his armies. What "covenant" was being broken here?
Even if it was wrong, David counted some people. He. Counted. People. In what morality is that such a horrible crime as to justify slaughtering 70,000 of God's own chosen people?!
And God didn't even punish David. He punished David's people. Sure, that punishes David indirectly, but that means 70,000 people who did nothing wrong were punished for the crimes of one person. Were these 70k sinful in some other way? Perhaps, but it's pretty clear they're not being punished for that, they're being punished for David.
...and his perfect judgement and his holiness.
That's what I was talking about with the second bit you quoted. But if you simply take the Bible as historical fact, you don't know God is perfectly just and holy. All you really know is that he says he is, and that some people said he was -- and that's the perspective I'm using here.
If you just accept a priori that God is good and just, then this entire discussion is pretty much useless, because you've already made up your mind before you turned a single page of that book.
when you speak of Hitler's injustice, surely you are appealing to some absolute, internal sense of justice which you assume I share?
I'm appealing to whatever sense of justice you have. Most people base theirs on a simple moral intuition, or on some basic principles.
I left out one or two logical steps because I thought they were self-evident-- "If the bible is not true, then God is not a capable judge of any and all who sin; if he is not a capable judge, then justice is not done by his actions...."
And that exposes the fallacy I wouldn't have made: "if he is not a capable judge, then justice is not done by his actions..." That's a non-sequitur. If he's not a capable judge, he might do just things anyway by accident. All that follows is that "he is just" is no longer a justification for declaring his actions to be just.
No, my premise is that you cannot simply define God as just by fiat
I can get there from the premise that he is the creator,
Not just from that, you can't...
..."just" appeals to an absolute created by him.
Aside from the point that there are standards of justice independent of any deity which we generally share, I don't think this helps you. He could well have created a standard and then chose to be unjust by his own standard. After all, he's the one who wrote "Thou shalt not kill," and he has by far the highest body count of any character in the Bible.
I'd also like you to show me this, because I don't see it in Genesis.
There's an old dilemma, I think it was Euthyphro who originally asked, "Is it good because God says it, or did God say it because it's good?"
Heres my general stance towards militant videos like that...
Can we get past the whole militant thing, first?
...shows a lack of 9th grade reading comprehension-- ie, "the bible teaches that snakes eat dust"
Genesis 3:14. What am I missing?
Claim 1: The bible condones rape because Lot's two daughters were raped. Issue: The bible does not commend or condone Lot's actions...
2 Peter 2:17 -- Lot was a "righteous man." Never mind that this is in conflict with what you pointed out from your "none is righteous" quote. Or was Peter wrong?
An easy claim to make from the vantage point of a particular time and place with only the most rough idea of the details of history. If you are saying that you think you could orchestrate all of history...
I'm saying that, put me in Lot's place, there's no way I would offer my daughters to be raped. Ever.
Or, put me in the place of watching King David take his census -- either I wouldn't care, or I'd give David a big scary threat to stop him from doing it, or I'd punish him, not his people. Or, ask me to write up a set of laws -- I guarantee it wouldn't be punishing the rape victims for not screaming loudly enough. Or the Garden of Eden, well, Ricky Gervais says it best. "Either the snake or the tree, one or the other, but both is just an accident waiting to happen!"
That is, give me omnipotence, and even without omniscience, I can come up with a better solution. God is supposed to be omniscient, too -- so how is it that I, with my limited knowledge, can come up with saner solutions than a being with all knowledge?
Jesus fulfilled that by living perfectly in compliance with it...
Including working on the Sabbath, punishable by death under the old laws?
in what context were the old laws ever alright?
When they are of a moral, rather than legalistic, nature.
So, when the law says that a rape victim should, under some circumstances, be forced to marry her attacker, what is the rape victim guilty of? If it's in the city, and she doesn't cry out loudly enough (maybe because he's threatened he'll cut her throat if she screams), in what way has she done anything wrong?
Even if you disregard the punishments, they fail utterly as a moral guide.
That simply appears to be a video of an athiest ridiculing christianity because he has found some videos of people claiming christ acting in a way he doesnt like.
Nope. You clearly didn't finish it. The reason for the video is that he's sick of Christians strawmanning him. It's entirely relevant to the point I was making -- that I probably was a bit overly defensive because I'm used to being so thoroughly strawmanned.
Now I find it was more appropriate than I thought, because you still seem to be telling me what atheism is, and getting it wrong.
Still, I'm guessing the video was intended for people who get it even more wrong -- "Bob" in that tract is exactly how I've heard so many people describe atheists. I'm not saying there are no Bobs, but most atheists are as different from Bob as you are from the "Christian Bale" form of Christianity I linked you to.
The difference is, they're actually serious.
And yet when a young earth creationist-- or an old earth one, actually-- postulates that the laws of nature might have changed through time or not be entirely constant, and that-wouldnt-be-accounted-for-in-carbon-dating-would-it, hes absurd, and of course the laws have remained constant, and of course theres no chance that our (and everyone's) theories inherently make assumptions.
Except we do know things about the prehistoric Earth. So far as I know, there's only been one claim -- recent enough I'm not sure whether to take it seriously or not -- that we know anything at all about the Universe before the Big Bang. The fact that one bit of speculation makes assumptions doesn't make it useless as speculation.
I dont accuse you personally of this, but you must know these conversations happen, and its totally one sided-- the materialist is allowed all sorts of liberties in his theories ("im not a quantum physicist, I dont know"), but the theist is allowed none ("im not a theologian" is met with "If you dont know, you cant be right").
I'm not a kernel developer -- at least not anymore (though I wouldn't claim to have really ever been one) -- but I can treat my OS kernel as a black box, and I can still know all sorts of things about it. So, for instance, I don't know how my bootloader works, or how it loads my kernel, or how my kernel finds its initial RAM filesystem -- how the bootloader loads it, and how the kernel finds it. But I know that it does all these things, because I have configured my bootloader, and I've even written scripts to run on that initial environment (before the kernel knows what a hard disk is).
And I am studying some physics, largely because of this interest.
Now, I would allow "I am not a theologian" if you can offer sufficient reason to believe the theologians know what they're talking about. The things science tells me, I believe because I know how the scientific process works, and I know just how competitive it is, and how resistant it can be to new ideas. So, for instance, when so many people didn't want to believe Darwin's theory, and so many people continue to desperately want it to be wrong, and what's happened are small refinements.
I think you would be rather ashamed to see just how far the pendulum swings in that direction.
Quite possibly. It still seems unlikely I'll find a Fred Phelps or a Glenn Beck, unless we count, say, David Icke.
Instead of the universe popping out of nothing for no reason, we have the universe popping out of nothing because a god commanded it
Because it is at least consistent. Materialist tend to insist that there is nothing arbitrary or speculative whatsoever about THEIR beliefs. I recognize that appealing to the Bible is in some ways arbitrary...
Pretty much entirely arbitrary. More so than you might suppose -- for instance, if you were born in Iran, you'd probably be a Muslim.
However, you're making the same mistake you did in your other comment, where you're talking about "beliefs", as if Steven Hawkings believes that there are other universes and that they have different laws. I see no reason physicists can't speculate, so long as they differentiate between their speculations and their beliefs.
The crucial difference is that I don't claim to know (or even believe) where the Universe came from, and how, or even if that question is coherent. You do.
...I can start with the Bible and derive a number of things I see in the world...
The usefulness of a theory is its predictive power and its simplicity. It's not enough that you can derive things you already know. Can you derive them more simply, but just as reliably? Then it's a neat shortcut. Does your theory predict something you don't know, but can verify? That's the tricky part.
Materialism would seem indicate that moral perfection is possible, which creates a rather large problem for it IMO.
How does it indicate anything about morality, and how would that be a problem? Are you sure you're not starting from Christianity telling you all humans are sinners, therefore moral imperfection is impossible, therefore materialism cannot be true?
As it happens, I don't believe "perfection" is possible or desirable, and I don't believe there is an absolute standard of morality -- but the standard I have chosen is objective and manageable, and has the nice side effect of not condemning rape victims.
The two are the same.
...oh dear.
If you are without the belief that there is a theos, that is practically the same as the belief that there is no theos.
There is a world of difference between a positive assertion and a simple lack of belief. Let me put it this way:
Do you believe I'm wearing a black shirt?
Do you believe I'm not wearing a black shirt?
If you said "yes" to either of the above questions, that's a belief -- you're saying you believe something which, particularly in this case, you don't have sufficient evidence to know. And why couldn't you say "no" to both questions? The only thing you can't do is say "yes" to both questions and be consistent.
That doesn't mean all things you don't believe are of equal certainty. For example:
Do you believe I have a million dollars?
Do you believe I don't have a million dollars?
Well, especially if you knew me, you'd be a bit more skeptical. But could you say you absolutely know for certain I don't? Have you searched every bank in the world, under my mattress, everywhere it could possibly be to be sure I don't have the money?
Now, it may be that people who positively assert that there are no gods end up with similar ideas and opinions to those who don't assert any positive belief whatsoever about the existence of gods -- but then, it could also be argued that secular ethical systems are very similar to liberal Christian ethical systems. That doesn't change the fact that the underlying philosophies are very different.
To put it another way, saying that atheism is a "belief system" is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby. (That isn't mine, but I don't remember who said it.)
you are losing sight of the fact that in modern english, athiesm is an ism (to quote wikipedia [wiktionary.org], "a principle, belief or movement").
Note the 'or'. It's a principle, and a very simple one, with no dogmas and very little to unify those who profess it. The only thing I mean when I say I'm an atheist is that I lack a belief in God.
I dont know what the fuss is about,
This is about basic understanding, even definitions, which you seem to be getting repeatedly and profoundly wrong.
...discomfort at the idea that everyone has a belief system of their own, even if they would prefer to think of their own as mere rejection of all others...
I never said that. In fact, I said pretty much just the opposite, early in this thread:
No one word is sufficient to define me. I'm also a software developer, son, brother, gamer, geek, martial artist, and forever a student -- and these are not sufficient to define me, either.
That encompasses a lot of opinions, beliefs, preferences, and other things that make up a personality. I'll extend that list: I am generally a naturalist, in that I believe that there is nothing supernatural -- that things we might consider to be supernatural (ghosts, aliens, gods), if they existed, would only be following natural laws we don't yet understand.
I also care about what's true -- I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. To that end, I currently don't see sufficient evidence to believe in any gods, but that's entirely a result of the evidence. If presented with sufficient evidence, I will change my mind. So atheism isn't even a core principle for me, it's entirely secondary.
Point is, atheism itself doesn't imply any of that. There are atheists who believe all kinds of crazy things. There are even atheists who pray -- a significant subset of Jews and Buddhists are atheists.
The point isn't that I believe nothing, or that atheists believe nothing. The point is that atheism, by itself, is not a belief system and does not say what you think it says.
Just guessing (!!!) that you talking about an enterprise situation
Nope. I'm talking about taking my mother, sitting her down in front of Try Ruby, and watching her figure it out pretty much on her own. I'm not saying she was a good programmer by the end of it, but it wasn't hard to follow.
No, she wasn't a programmer.
Tryruby.org is for people with knowledge of another language not for teaching basic programming principles.
If you say so. I've seen people who don't know anything about programming follow that tutorial well enough.
they would then have to completely relearn everything to move to other mainstream languages and not also understand the stuff that makes ruby a good language.
Maybe. But some of that stuff is pretty accessible. Try going back to setters and getters in Java after using attr_accessor.
It just seems wrong, since at 8 children that are using condoms are at least in a situation where someone is violating the law.
That "someone" being, say, a 10-year-old friend?
More importantly, while I see your point, I also think it makes sense to teach children before they will need to know. They're going to be sexually mature in a few years, and it'll likely be before you notice.
I do like the approach my parents took. They didn't give me "the talk", they gave me a book to read. It wasn't required, it was just if I was curious. This was also the approach they took to my questions -- they answered exactly what I wanted to know, and truthfully -- not a word about the stork, and I was never told "When you're older..."
Ah, but the 'damned good reason' varies from 'you killed another person unjustly' to 'you drew a picture of Mohammed'. Universal values? Not in that example.
I don't think either of those are sufficient -- and drawing from the universal value of life, there are plenty of situations where the answer is obvious. Someone's trying to kill you, unprovoked? Kill them in self-defense. It's easy to make that rational: If someone has to die, better it be the person who started the fight.
By contrast, why do we have to kill someone for either of the reasons you listed?
Unfortunately, if we want people to be free to live as they want, some want to live in ways we don't.
This is the fundamental difference between what I'm describing and what seems to be common conservative philosophy:
Some will want to live in ways I don't. So long as it doesn't affect me, I don't feel I have a right to make them stop. I may not like what they're doing, but that's not up to me.
In the West, we have an additional value that speech should generally be free -- that being offended is really my responsibility. You could deliver the same insult to two people, and one would be offended, and one wouldn't -- and this is actually something you can choose, not to be offended.
So, I agree with this:
Freedom is nothing if it is cast only in our image.
The point is for us to have as much freedom as we possibly can, while not giving anyone the freedom to harm another.
In light of that:
But the issue of gay marriage is entirely different. If it were a simple as gay couples wanting to be together and publically acknowledged, that is already done. But they seem to want to change the definition of marriage in a way I don't support.
Why does it matter? It's their marriage. How does it harm you?
It changes the definition of family as well.
No, it doesn't. There are families which are married, and marriages which will never produce families.
I don't see how preventing gay marriage is going to prevent gay families, and I certainly don't see how any of this is going to affect straight families.
Having said that, though, if gay marriage becomes the law of the land wherever I am, well, I'll be fine, and accept it, and move on.
That's admirable, but it's not really enough. If there's a vote on the issue of gay marriage, for instance, you do have a say.
...what happens politically is His will. I make my views known, I vote, and I accept the authorities He permits. What else am I to do, challenge God's authority to make the world as He sees fit?
What would you do with a corrupt regime, then?
If everything in the world that happens, truly happens according to God's will, I'm not really sure how you can say that anyone is sinful. For them to be able to sin, to do something God doesn't want, they would have to be able to do something contrary to God's will.
So wouldn't it follow that a government can be evil and sinful, and it could be your duty to do what you can against it?
Think of tax exemption for churches the same way you might for other non-profit organizations. Or the same way you do the sales tax exemptions for newspapers and books. To deny churches non-profit status would be discriminatory.
That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is that if they want to be non-profits, they should follow the same rules as any other non-profits -- they should not be exempt simply because they are churches.
Part of the reason this bothers me is that it puts the government in the position of saying not only that religion is good, but which religions count as religions.
I'm one of those who question the current and historical concept of the 'wall of separation'.
I think I can make a pretty good case that this was designed deliberately as a secular nation, and it was done so by people who mostly identified as Christian. As for where it is today, I claim that it's generally a good idea, and that we're not there yet.
America doesn't have to be a legally Christian nation. But it ought to be a good one.
I agree.
And I think the most powerful arguments about right and wrong, good and evil, and what we should and should not do as a nation, are entirely secular arguments -- and they are what we spend most of our time with, even when we're talking about ethical and moral issues. Think of pretty much any public scandal in the past fifty years or so, and we don't usually evaluate those evils based on religion, at least not directly.
I'm putting Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity in the same bag as Rush Libmaugh. Less inflammatory speech would be a good thing. But don't get me started about militant Liberals
This, I'd actually like to hear -- or at least which liberals are anywhere near as bad as Beck, or even Bill O'Reilley.
Actually, you haven't read their materials because they fight vigorously to suppress publication of them freely.
Except that so much of their material is public anyway, despite their efforts. There's just a lot of that I haven't read.
We do have to fix the textbook thing. eBooks can do this, since publishing them should cost, what, nil?
I'm currently a student (again), and I tend to buy physical books. I actually prefer reading things on my laptop when I can, but it's hard enough to find un-DRM'd ebooks at all, let alone the particular book I need for this class -- and they don't advertise being DRM-free, so I'd have to buy one and find out.
That's really my only reservation, though. Other than that, you'd hope they'd be much cheaper, though I suspect that won't be the case.
I favor local school control, and hopefully this solves some of that problem. I think we can trace the decline of public education in America to the erosion of local control.
Well, I wonder. Local control is actually exactly what the ID movement has been after, especially since they lost the Dover trial. Anywhere you have ten or so people on a school board, that's few enough people (and little enough local participation, few enough people voting for them) that it seems like it's easy to get a majority of any ideology on there.
I actually like homeschooling and private schools as options. They can be abused, certainly, but that gives the local control we want -- if the public schools aren't providing the education needed, we can find some other way.
But since we're spending government money on public schools, and using the government to force kids to go to school, it is a government issue -- so I think we do need a certain amount of central control. The issue here wasn't central control, it was central control in such a weak point of failure, where a few locally-elected idiots in Texas get to decide what books the rest of the country uses.
Actually, I'm recalling that the children I know learned to lie well before they had ANY reason to question Santa Claus. They lied the very first time they got caught doing something they knew they shouldn't have. No prompting required.
My point about being taught is that they can find that if they say something that isn't true, they might get away with it. I suspect that's learned.
I could be very wrong about this, though.
But to go on just a little bit further, you seem to equate sin and evil. That's simplistic and not quite right.
A "Sin" is, roughly, a "bad thing", right? In particular, it's an ethically bad thing, right? "Evil" might be the wrong word...
But we could now dive down the rabbit hole of exploring how good could exist without evil, and how children NEED to do bad things to learn the consequences and alternatives.
I'm not sure if I actually disagree...
I find that mainstream Christian teachings, and most Christians I talk to, like to give God the credit for everything good, and blame either humans or Satan for everything bad -- and lately, it's especially humans. I think this is why I have the sig I do.
So without going into the problem of evil, it's not that I want to claim that there is no part of human nature which is evil -- after all, my original point was that I see religion as a cause of so much evil, and I see religion as a human invention. No, what bothers me here is this:
Good parents teach good. Not so good parents fail to teach, or teach evil or sin.
This time, it's not God, but the parents, but the problem is the same -- certainly, children can learn (or be born with) some good on their own, just as you would say they learn (or are born with) some sort of sinful nature.
Interestingly, I found this quote on a Christian website, but it says exactly what I wanted to. Though it doesn't match my experience, especially as an adult, that is what I see.
Another bad example. I see people with these magnetic bracelets on claiming they are curing their arthritis or whatever.
And that's probably an example of what I would call "religious thinking", but more to the point, we don't often see people using those magnetic bracelets when it's a life-threatening illness. (Especially revealing is when the miracle healers make sure they get flown to the best of the best hospitals to be healed by doctors when it's their own life on the line.)
And to be fair, we don't often see that with religion, either -- most people will take their child to a real doctor and pray for them, rather than insist that it's all up to God.
More to the point, do you discredit Christianity entirely because of the extraordinarily bizarre instances?
Not at all. In fact, I can see how if it were true, I might expect people to still get it wrong. After all, those magnetic bracelets are a perversion of science.
On the other hand, if it's true, then I've gotten it wrong in the most profound way. And if the mainstream message is true, I'm going to burn forever for that. And if there really is a god, he knows exactly what kind of evidence it would take to convince me, and he's capable of showing it to me. So the fact that I don't believe, let alone that there are people who get it wrong, is evidence against a certain kind of Christianity, where there's a loving god who allows people to get it wrong (through no fault of their own) and then condemns them for it.
But I'm guessing that doesn't match up with your interpretation.
A simple example of how I try to interpret God's direction in my life.......I didn't need specific direction from God.
Your story here seems to be that of your own deliberation, without any actual input from God. It seems to me that you'd save a lot of energy by saying, "I'm doing what I know to be right," rather than "I'm doing what I think God wants me to do." The result would be the same.
We certainly disagree on when a fetus or embryo should be considered human, and so protected, but you understand the question, and that's what I want. Your decision is yours.
Fair enough, but I would like to know when you think it should be considered human, and why.
If I can do it sooner rather than later, I'll offer you what I believe the Gospel to be privately, that you might read or not at your convenience. If others want it more public to be involved in the conversation, I will probably take them up on it. But not on Slashdot.
Fair enough -- my email address is there.
And there is no rush. While I do keep asking for opinions, I'm actually finding the most interesting discussion has been right here in this space, finding out what we agree on, and finding exactly where we disagree. I feel like I've learned a few things, and I sincerely thank you for that, and for your patience with me.
Slashdot may kill this discussion soon enough anyhow (at a certain point, it's archived and new comments can't be posted.)
So why is it not fair for me to say (regarding the inquisition) thats not Christianity, its opression?
If you can justify it, sure. But by what definition of "Christianity" do you justify saying that the inquisition either was not propagated by Christians, or was not a Christian thing to do?
By contrast, it's trivial to justify an atrocity directly from a religious text.
Not without making rather serious errors of judgement and interpretation.
I'm not sure what you mean by "errors of judgment" in this case, but "errors of interpretation" -- by what metric do you judge which is and is not a correct interpretation?
If we start with the proposition, "The Bible is truth from God",
The Bible is self-contradictory, so that proposition fails immediately. Suppose that wasn't the case...
it is easy to reach conclusion A, that God is the only truly capable judge, and that he is within His "right" to judge wicked people.
That depends what you mean by "truth". If you mean that the Bible is historically true, that the events it described actually did happen, then God is a monster of incalculable evil.
The only way around this is to accept a further "truth", that when the Bible says God was doing something just, it was, because the Bible is true. If the Bible were consistent, and if you did accept it as absolute truth, I really have no argument. There's really nothing I can say to Fred Phelps, for instance.
But you're actually proving my point. You haven't presented an argument for how you know God is just. You've only asserted that he is, and therefore, anything he commands is just. And I hate to Godwin this, but Hitler did believe he was doing God's work, and he's a perfect example -- either he was right, in which case everything he did is justified, or he was wrong, in which case he was a monster. How do you know he was wrong?
Regarding the "truth" of the Bible, this is especially circular. Even if you know it's from God, how do you know it's the truth? Because God is just, right? But how do you know he's just? You just admitted it's because the Bible says so.
The mistake you are making is that, in arguing against my position, you start with the premise "well, the main thing you believe in (Biblical truth) is wrong; therefore God is not just; therefore he has no right to judge people; therefore doing so proves that the Bible is false; therefore God is not just...
Let's not strawman, shall we? I mean, "therefore God is not just" is a pretty blatant non-sequitur. I'm capable of logical fallacy, but I don't think I could make one that obvious if I tried.
No, my premise is that you cannot simply define God as just by fiat. We discover the character of a person by their actions, and I see no reason for a deity to be judged any other way. And like it or not, you do judge your god -- only in your case, you judge him to be just because the Bible says so.
It seems that if we are to judge him fairly, it must be from an unbiased stance. We have to judge him by the same standards we judge anybody else.
And if any human did what God has supposedly done, they would be seen as a monster.
An all-knowing and all-powerful god has it even worse -- pick just about any of the things in that video, and you and I, humans, could come up with less painful ways to accomplish the same goals.
You may be correct, but I havent seen any statistics on that. Seemed a rather bold statement regardless.
Not particularly. I'm not judging baptists at all. However, it does seem that all of the loudest and most irritating creationists are baptists.
Lets not take things out of context or misquote them, please. The full quote ends with "until all is accomplished", the context being his fulfillment of the law through his life
So what you're saying is that he has come to abolish the Law, but only once he's done whatever he has to do to "fulfill" that law. Right?
Actually, I won't argue this point, because it doesn't matter -- in what context were the old laws ever alright? And when Jesus comes to abolish them, why does he speak out in favor of slavery?
we certainly get hit with a number of unbelievably fallacious arguments, strawmen, unfounded assertions, etc. Some fairness in that regard would be appreciated.
Fair enough -- I'm definitely more used to Christians who sound like this.
Depending on how you define absurd, you must believe absurd things whether you are athiest or Christian.
Well, "argument from incredulity" is a fallacy, and I don't mean to say that this was an entirely rational process. What that realization led to was the fact that I was rationalizing quite a lot in order to hold onto beliefs I was emotionally attached to. Basically, the absurdity lead me to let go of my last emotional ties to those beliefs, and then I was finally able to critically examine them.
But I don't think it's the case that we always must believe absurd things. For instance:
IIRC Stephen Hawking recently stated that there was no need for God, that the universe simply "popped in" from nowhere...
I'm hoping you're not assuming that as a dichotomy.
And I don't know if Stephen Hawking actually claimed that. I doubt it very much. I entertain it as a possibility, but I don't believe that any more than I believe there was a God to set it in motion. I simply don't know.
No one does.
So until I know, I withhold belief.
...the inherent contradiction of the laws of thermodynamics inherent in its alternative (perpetual crunch-bang-expansion cycle)...
That still isn't the only alternative.
But the laws of thermodynamics are only observations, and as I understand them, they're also based on probabilities. I'm not seriously questioning them, but I'm also not sure why we'd expect them to hold up in the conditions of the Big Bang, given all other physical laws break down at that point, too.
And since we don't know that the Big Bang is actually the result of a crunch, or that it isn't, how could we possibly know anything about what previous universes were like?
I also don't see what a god solves about the creation of the universe. Instead of the universe popping out of nothing for no reason, we have the universe popping out of nothing because a god commanded it -- in Genesis, literally speaking it into existence as some kind of magic spell. But then, where did God come from, and what does the existence of an intelligent creator explain that we can test?
Nowhere does it say it's a "belief system", first of all. It's the simple negation of theism, which is the belief that there is a God. The negation of that is again the lack of that belief.
And listen to yourself. "Without God." Yes, that's what it means. I'm not really sure how you get from there to "a belief system around the idea that there is no theos," as opposed to, say, "the state of being without the idea that there is a theos."
The main reason i was thinking of is that there are multiple ways to do the same thing.
And why is this bad?
For/while loops can use *.each, num.times
Same problem exists between for and while. Every language is going to have some sort of choices built in.
I don't know if I have an intelligent response, other than to suggest you go to tryruby.org and type 'help'. It actually makes the idea of a "block" feel natural, and they're covered before any actual loops happen.
That's pretty stupid. If you can learn GOTO, you can learn jump. But until you need it for assembly, why would you want to?
Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid. - Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
