Something it wasn't meant to be.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. If your model isn't working out for you, try another.

I'm interested in the nuances of your story. You're so candid about being caught and reforming. Would you have kept on pirating if you knew you wouldn't have been caught? For what reasons? For what reasons have you now stopped pirating? Was stopping simply about realizing it could hurt you? Was there no part of your reform that realized your actions hurt others?

You sound like the people you criticize. You're so entrenched in your own beliefs that you're not willing to rationally consider any other position. You appear even to have acted out what you criticize of others: You've rationalized that everyone else has rationalized their own belief without study of your own.

Your ideas of rationalization seem a little skewed, as if others contorted reality in the extreme in order to make sense of things. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, many intelligent people have tackled these problems and the resolutions are always relatively simple and even elegant. There's no bending up in a pretzel to answer these supposed problems. Take your four corners example. The first two results should put that to rest: bible "four corners". To me, "four corners of the earth" is just one of those popular sayings that many people might use even today in reference to a certain geographic area. It likely results from viewing geography on a map, usually on a square/rectangular piece of paper which really does have four corners. This is certainly a case where I would give it the benefit of the doubt. If the writers had any intention of implying a flat earth, they would have said so much more explicitly and without doubt.

Well this is why I'm providing you with google links and not directly to Christian resources. By providing a search, you see that some of the top results are answers to these common questions: They've already been satisfactorily dealt with. It's like the claim of a faked moon landing. It's been dealt with already. Searches also provide you with the counter view, usually on the first page of the results, so you can research the view and the counter-view.

You make a very observant, literal statement. If Christians keep on saying "we take the bible literally," according to English language semantics, it must mean we do not think about the words on the page. The truth is, however, that when one says they take the bible literally they are many assumptions implied there as well. By and large, people are giving you the benefit of the doubt in understanding that, when the bible says "the Lord is my rock and my fortress," in no way does the Christian think that God is literally a stone or a building. What is meant by taking the bible literally is that Christians take the bible for what it says unless it is obvious that it shouldn't be taken literally, and you can identify which it is by the context. How? By studying the language used, the constructs used, the presentation style, the paragraph housing the sentence, the chapter, the book, etc.

God made us in His image. We have the brain between our ears to think about these things. And we'd be doing a dishonour to Him in not trying to understand how a truth-telling God was actually telling the truth in some of the things we don't have any experience with.

The bible doesn't contradict any of these things. Again, try simple googling for the answers. Remember to review both sides of the issue. Many are rabidly anti-Christian and, by nature, pro-materialism: They will not know, will not have the expertise, and will not have the patience to investigate and present how the bible actually records the truth. Ironically, such people tend to take the bible as dogmatically literal compared to those who believe the bible. Those with a vested interest, however, will certainly provide the in-depth research and understanding to answer those questions.

You are so far out in left field. Where are you getting these ideas? I'm not sure I've ever even seen atheists make such statements.

Flat earth, Jesus not believing in a literal Genesis account, Christian church existing long before the bible was "made" (I'll assume you meant compiled), 150 year old creationism belief? All of these have been dealt with many times over.

• does the bible teach a flat earth?
• did jesus believe genesis?
• how was the bible written
• scientists who believed creation

Come again? I'm not particularly sure what you're referring to.

Yes, I know of many supposed flaws and, no, I do not ignore them. I research them and answer whoever I've been discussing it with. One of the great periods of life in which my confidence in the bible was solidified was answering a multitude of people who presented supposed flaws, errors or contradictions in the bible. The great thing, in this day and age, is that finding somebody who has already studied and resolved the supposed flaw is just a google away.

Well, I think you know that's false because, only up until the last few hundred years, people took the scriptures at their word. If Genesis said a 6 day creation, and genealogies indicated a 6,000 year age, they believed that. See Creation Scientists for a list of just some present and past.

The bible doesn't mention a lot of things. It does mention the necessary things, though, that allow us to figure out everything else using the brain that God gave us.

The article was an example of one person going from a belief in evolution to a belief in biblical creation. That path presented many problems with evolution, that were resolved from a creation perspective, which ultimately led Safarti to reject evolution.

That is only one article of thousands on Creation.com. I recommend checking back with them daily for a few weeks to get a handle on what they're covering over the long term. Many articles cover many topics, some more in-depth than others.

The bible was written to be understood by the average person. Read it for what it says, and the implications of what is said, not what you want to bring in to it, and you'll see its integrity which necessitates, from beginning to end, that it is the truth. Either the entire bible is the truth or it's just another man made book.

Because the evidence fits much better when viewed from what the Bible records as history. I don't know how much evolution you've studied but if you've studied any, study the alternatives, as well. I wouldn't consider myself well informed, as a Christian, if I hadn't been reading up on alternatives.

For further reading on what I meant about evidence fitting the bible better: http://creation.com/an-awesome-mind-creation-magazine-jonathan-sarfati-interview

Yes. Here's one example of many but perhaps the most crucial: Jesus quoted Genesis as literal history. If Genesis is not literal history, than Jesus is ignorant or lying: Either of which denies his deity. That is important because the bible is one, single story about the fall and redemption of mankind. There was a plan from the beginning for Jesus. Jesus had to be a perfect sacrifice. There is none perfect but God. The entire bible and its message relies on its truthfulness.

This is a much more thorough look at it: http://creation.com/should-genesis-be-taken-literally

Seriously? You need to think it through a little more. This is not a rational position.

The main flaw of your argument is scale. You bet we can screw with nature and it will repair itself - to a certain critical mass of damage. Certainly, the scale of our activity dwarfs anything past even 100 years ago. Remember, in 1800 there were only 1B people on earth. All of that time just to get to 1B? Within 200 years we're at 2B. What people are talking about now is the concern of the scale. A system only has so much tolerance.

What you're seeing is a weeding or culling of the existing population based on members who already had resistance. If they didn't have resistance to begin with, you wouldn't have the initial problem you're dealing with. Evolution, meaning the theory of evolution which posits evolving you from amino acids, requires creation of new information.

It's the same case with this story. Study any case deep enough and you'll always find natural selection acting on existing information.

Er, I was replying mainly to the OP's point about caps. It is the caps that prevent what you're talking about.

Something I and many others would like to do but *shock* all avenues of attempting to access competition to the majors results in finding out no one is particularly better than another, no matter what metric you use.

Cable TV is getting very hard to justify these days when, day after day, you keep noticing "500 channels and nothing's on." I would love to have an alternative but there's no competition.

That's what I've been waiting for. This means a server could allocate a fraction of the total bandwidth needed otherwise but still be the primary seeder and everyone still wins downloading the torrent.

I've long had this beef especially with video game providers that want you to download via bittorrent but they don't provide a fast enough seed. It sounds like this would solve a lot of problems.

I mean, what makes you say "that's all I need to know to make sure I don't use it"? What's wrong with them?