My inner nerd would like to point out that it actually is an English language word. From the same Latin root as fealty and infidelity and was, I believe, first used to describe Muslims in the Middle Ages? Dictionary.com indicates that it came to English, like so many other words, from French. [rquoter] [Origin: 1425–75; late ME < LL infidélis unbelieving, L: unfaithful, treacherous. See in-, feal] ... [Middle English infidele, from Old French, from Latin īnfidēlis, disloyal : in-, not; see in- + fidēlis, faithful (from fidēs, faith; see bheidh- in Indo-European roots).] [/rquoter]
certanly an english word...i have no idea what word it's translated to from Arabic in the Koran, because i don't have the first clue about Arabic. i'd just tell you that's not from the Jesus I know.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I wasn't accusing you of trying to steal anything at all. I was just saying that CL has nothing to do with religion which is the purpose of this thread. Bascically, you can think of CL as something that does linguistics with the aid of computer. Glad to be of assistance.
Just sarcastically playing upon the innate paranoia residing inside the halls of academia. Not serious in the least. I am also not sure if that paranoia is as strong in your area - amongst students, amongst faculty, between students and faculty, etc. That dog has bitten me before so I play with it. But, sure, this is not the place for such things...although derailing threads is often fun.
Actually there isn't much paranoia among the academia with respect to stealing ideas. Most researchers are very open about the details of their research -- that's why we are always rushing to publish our research findings. Furthermore, since it is almost impossible to come up with perfect results, there is almost always room for improvement and therefore new research topics. Some times having only the algorithms is not enough to replicate someone else's system, the data is very very important and can cost a huge amount of money to gather. That's why ideas are shared a lot more freely than data -- most of the time.
Correct! 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (bolding mine) Christians don't have to be afraid of the 's' word. Even though some churches have eliminated the use of the word 'sin' it is still all through the New Testament. (I'm not sure of any reason for Jesus to die except for- you know the 's' word) 'sin' is what Jesus forgives- that makes a friendship with Jesus a priority considering how often we endulge... No Christian desires to sin, that would show disdain for Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
BTW- I have talked to pastors who downplay things like stealing because in certain situations everybody does it... so because it is popular to do it, that justifies it? shows how our conscience can be deadened by habitual violations. When people ask me about such things, I just tell them to explain it to a 5 year old child and they will tell you if it is right or wrong. God's ways are so simple a child can understand.
Two points: As far as I know the concept of intelectual property did not exist in the time of Jesus, or the church would have claimed copyright on the Bible and we'd all have been paying the Pope $.10 for every bible produced in the last 2000 years (the way intelectual property rights work at the moment protection from infringement is essentially eternal), or perhaps some rich Roman would have bought the rights and prevented anybody from ever publishing any copies. Even at the time that the Constitution was written, copyright held a very limited period of protection - IIRC 7 years? There are qualitative differences in taking something and depriving someone else of it and making a copy of something without paying for it. I''m not that that makes it OK, just that it is noticibly different. I think the recording industry has done quite a bit of work to associate the idea of copyright violation with with the words 'stealing' and 'theft'. I'm not sure that they accurately describe what is happining with enough accuracy to apply Biblical prohibitions against theft without serious additional examination. If this is the litmus test, go find a child and ask them if copying a recording is stealing. I don't think the answer will align with your position.
I will take your advice and report back to you. I will explain it this way. 1. A man has bought some songs so that he has permission to sell the song to others for a small amount of money on the internet. I will explain that some people could cheat the man out of his money by copying the song without permission and with out paying. I will then ask if they think it is right for people to cheat the man out of paying. The boy I am going to ask is eight years old and I will report back the results. Thanks for the good points.
Greetings all, and Happy New Year! While I don't have time to chime in on this as deep as I'd like, I would like to offer up an interesting suggestion. If you are having difficulty believing, understanding, or realizing who Jesus Christ was, what He was, or are just plain curious about his existence, I highly recommend the following book: "The Case for Christ" - Lee Strobel http://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Lee-Strobel/dp/0310226058 It's a very enlightening investigative novel about historical evidence of who Jesus was, events of his life and teachings, etc. The author is a former atheist that became a believer in the process of investigating Christ's existence (he set out to prove Jesus was just a man, a good man, but not the Son of God, etc.). It is very compelling.....and a good read. I have a copy as well, if you can't get one, let me know and I'll ship it to you to read and return.
Hmmmmm, interesting. I have never heard anyone talk about the trinity except they go back to it is just too deep for us to fathom, we cannot possibly understand it, et al. To me, this is why a lot of people see through most Christiandom. It is because when you go to most churches, there is about 10% truth being preached and 90% fallacy. And people cannot explain what they believe nor do they really understand what they supposedly believe. When you read the Bible and you read the Acts of the Apostles, and how the church went into the world and all the amazing things that they did back there and you compare it to today, there is no comparison with most churches today. Most Christian churches today fall into two categories: 1.) Dead, dry, stale, boring, ...a sleep study. or 2.) a place to go for a good show and entertainment. And most of them do not have a lick of impact on people's spirituality. Oh, people may go away from church and be more successful in the natural, make more money, make their spouse happier, etc. etc. etc. but it is all natural blessings that they are taking away from church. They could get those exact same things going to a Tony Robbins seminar and a marriage counsellor if they would apply what they were taught at those events. And the vast majority of people that go to church are losing more and more understanding of even what doctrine is and the importance of it as they become engrossed in "how to be a success". Hence, the doctrine and understanding of Jesus and what Jesus taught has faded. For instance, in the doctrine of the trinity, we are taught that God is the Father, Jesus is the Son,.....but what relationship is the Holy Ghost? If the Holy Ghost be a person, and there is a Father and a Son, then shouldn't the Holy Ghost be another Son or a brother, or an uncle, or a cousin, or is it possibly the Mother, or sister, or etc.? In the book of Matthew it says that Mary was found to be with child of the Holy Ghost, not God the Father. In Luke it says that the angel spoke to her and told her that the Holy Ghost would come upon her and the power of the Highest overshadow her and she would have a baby that was called the Son of God. Does Jesus the Son have two Fathers, God the Father and the Holy Spirit the Father? No, it's like a dog chasing it's tail listening to a trinity believer answer that question. They will say we can't understand it because all 3 are one. Like it's one person with 3 different personalities that can morph into 3 separate beings when he needs to. Doesn't make sense. If we are made in God's image according to what God said in Genesis and we are fathers and sons, am I the same person as my father or is my son the same person as I? No. If we are in God's image then we have to look at the person of God the way we look at our own person. My son is a different person. Jesus is a different person from His Father. He is one with his Father in spirit, motive, intent, etc. But he is not the same person as His father just as we are not the same person as our Fathers. It's common sense. That doesn't mean that Jesus is not Lord. He is Lord and we are told to worship Him (Jesus) as such. Most Christians believe and do not understand and they misuse the concept of "faith" to further their belief system and that's why so many Christians believe so many different things about Jesus. It's because they choose to apply "faith" to what they would like to believe instead of having reasonable scriptural proof of what they believe. If you are going to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and you are going to believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God, then you have to use the Bible to learn and understand the right things about Jesus. And your beliefs about Jesus should line up with what the Bible says. You can't arbitrarily use a few verses to try to prove something and then not be able to reconcile the rest of the Bible to a few verses. Once you step away from that, and you say that there are "mistakes" in the Bible or you refuse to acknowledge that other scriptures conflict with your belief system, and then you try to make something else out of them, then you are opening Pandora's box to a whole world of ideas. Anybody and everybody can then decide to believe whatever they want to about Christianity and the Gospel message and still call themselves Christians. And that is exactly what has happened today. Christianity is the alphabet soup of religion with denomination after denomination and sect after sect and group after group and megachurch after megachurch all believing whatever they want to about Jesus and claiming they are all going to heaven and it really doesn't matter what you believe. It has gotten so bad that even Billy Graham has acknowledged that as long as you believe in God, you will go to Heaven, thereby making available a resurrection to those that do not even believe on the Lord Jesus Christ when he spoke on television with Robert Shuler. It used to be that it didn't matter what you believed about Jesus, that you would go to Heaven in the afterlife. Now, it is down to as long as you believe in God and try to be a good person, that you will got to Heaven, even if you have never known Jesus. What's next? Obviously, the next step is you don't have to believe in God, all you have to do is be good. Then after that, you won't even have to be good, but everybody is going to heaven. And on and on.
1. i've never heard billy graham say that. do you have a link. honestly, i'm a bit skeptical of that claim. 2. you're confusing religion with Christ, in my view. your criticisms of the church, particulalry in the US and Europe, is dead on. 3. the 10%/90% thing...honestly, when was the last time you stepped into a church to heard what was being preached, anyway? 4. you're taking the father/son thing too literally. the trinity is our best way of explaning a God that's really too big to get our heads completely around. in the Bible, Moses says he wants to see God. God says, "the best you can do is see where I was...where I have been."
I agree that there isn’t a neat and easy division. Like you mentioned, it’s a scientist’s duty to categorize all the mysteries around him. Even if I disagree with the approach when it comes to spirituality, the need for scientists to methodize everything is a part of their nature. Thinking about it more, I prefer a separation in principle if only to emphasize the need for both ideals, even if both intermingle during our daily experiences and studies. There’s been studies on the religious part of the brain that involves religious people undergoing brain scans while they meditate or pray. One of the tests was to stimulate that area in non-religious people to see if they have supernatural experiences or feelings as well. While that result was unsuccessful, neuroscience has progressed at a rapid pace that it's beginning to threaten the concept of free will. To clarify my original statement, I think the pitfall of scientifically uncovering the gaps between personally-led spiritual experiences and the influence of compliance of rituals and institutions is that it would lead to its own formula for spiritual guidance. After researchers tease out a result, their next inclination is to find the most optimal solution. Perhaps it can lead to external and control based solutions such as a pill or a well placed shock to the head followed after a regimen of intense self-reflection... Maybe I’m being too rigid. After all, with our fairly comprehensive knowledge in human physiology and nutrition, there still isn’t a magic weight loss diet that everyone can easily follow. And sometimes the more successful diets are the ones taken with a partner or support groups. In the end, I still can’t shake this awfully cold feeling when it comes to researchers attempting to formalize the deeper aspects of spirituality during their process of uncovering the mysteries of our mind and actions.
I’ve brought these different analogies from different subjects to relate to you different insights from another perspective. It’s my failure for not accurately describing what I mean, so I’ll cut them down in future replies. You know more about computer science than I do. What got me started on this is where you claimed the possibility to model brain activities using computers. I might’ve misunderstood you if you meant it as using computers to map certain areas of the brain. Instead, I took it as the possibility for computers to model human level emotions by simulating it. Einstein had a series of debates with Neils Bohr over indeterminism in quantum theory. His problem was that actions on the quantum scale amounted to nothing more than chance and probability. This was opposed to what happens on a normal scale. Einstein could’ve viewed the universe as God (there are conflicting accounts and it’s not important an issue), but he definitely saw it as an intricate machine with its own reliable gears and parts. Quantum theory ripped that idea apart, and for the rest of his life Einstein didn’t reconcile his views with the theory despite the field’s growing discoveries and acceptance. It’s my understanding that once proofs are proven and fact checked that they retain this almost law-like status where it’s considered true. This is different than theories and equations because proofs follow a framework of mathematical logic. At one point in time, an illogical law could’ve been the most beneficial and even rational. Take our disposition for leaders. In times of war, we want a decisive leader who might have to break or bend laws (like suspending habeus corpus) to fulfill a need. In times of peace, that same leader would be in a terrible position. Laws are applied in a similar fashion. People want to have their cake and eat it, but they respond much differently with the politicians they put in power. Rational people can still regret their actions as long as they can be surprised…. If a person has a strong dream to do something that requires going against rational thinking (such as dropping out of school), then is it right to impose that rational course upon him? There’s several clichés and platitudes about leading life more with the heart than the head, or a life lived with choice and freedom is a life lived without regret. Even the most rationally led life is not predictable, but the worst form of regret is for a person to confine himself to one aspect of the mind without hearing out the rest of what a person wants. Besides, the stupid stuff makes the best stories to tell and share with your friends. So an entirely rational and logical person can tell himself when he’s wasting time and when he’s not by relaxing. He can also tell himself when he’s allowed to make a fool of himself, but not to the extent where it would override his rationality. Interesting… I agree. The religiously devout should question their faith from time to time. They should question their interpretations and meaning. Monotheists could consider Ares as a scientific force of nature who in no way compares to the magnitude of their own God. A person who worshiped Greek/Roman mythology could also come to the same conclusion, or she could accept the scientific discovery as something else. The proof is tricky. In my family, my mother is Buddhist, one sibling is Christian, and two are atheistic. I think we’re all fairly close, but even then it’d be hard to solidly prove each others pov. We just have experiences and feelings to discuss. Heck, I’d be skeptical if people could be convinced on a few speeches. Believing in a higher power doesn’t mean you have to believe a creationist theory. God could very well have created existence with the frameworks of science. I guess it’s a different perspective. When I wonder about God’s existence, actions, or presence, I look around and what registers is God. It’s good and bad because it’s everything. I don’t think it’s instinct to actively forgive people who have wronged you. Getting even or eliminating the problem sounds more likely. But if there is some purpose or direction in humanity, I think it has to deal with testing the awareness and the capacity of our minds rather than expanding the collective pool of knowledge, technology, and wealth. To see God in another person (and it’s hard a lot of times) helps me try to improve myself in ways other than material gain. That’s why I think science and religion aren’t mutually exclusive. Science affects things in a material capacity. Religion can open relationships in the mind that are highly abstract and deeply personal. Both can be seen as products of humanity’s universal curiosity. Most people around the world practice a religion too, but skeptics don’t take too seriously in what “most people” do. Many still practice religion when God has seemingly turned on them or when God does not interfere. Kind of odd, don’t you think? The maternal instinct is strong in mammals, but there are several other animal classes that survive without parents. When you make a cross section upon one aspect of evolution, it does become hindsight. We have five fingers instead of four because that’s how it turned out and it not for any specific reason. It's hindsight that it works great for mammals because we’re here. Just as it’s hindsight how reptiles lay eggs only to abandon them afterwards allow their species to survive. There are adults who reject their parents and parents who outlive their children. There are adults who kick out their parents or send them to a home never to visit them. Other adults actively wait for their parents to croak for that inheritance. If those parents were banking on some final reward because the momentary rewards during child rearing weren’t enough, then they’re going to be disappointed. Reproduction is another instinct. I don’t believe that it follows the hedonism model because the sacrifices during child rearing for a long term rational pleasure reward doesn’t fit the image of a selfish, pain avoiding individual bent on his own personal survival. Pursuing the meanings of life or free will does not always lead to rational conclusions. Sometimes forming rational conclusions is our reaction for maintaining a hold on reality. For many, there’s a form of pleasure or understanding to be gained from pursuing the meanings of life. Of course, there are people who forcefully impose their preconceptions and conclusions upon others, and it’s wrong, but the pursuit itself isn’t self-destructive. If you’re serious and I’m causing you a kind of tangible pain, then what’s your eventual reward? If science can crack the philosophical nature of free will, then maybe you’re correct. The world is much more interesting in the meanwhile.
1. Look it up. It's easy to find. 2. I'm not confusing religion with Christ. I know Christ. Although I agree, most people are confusing religion for Christ. 3. I should probably spend more time in church. Only get in about 10 hours a week. But I do a lot of reading and praying outside of church too, usually about 20 chapters in my Bible daily, not to mention time spent praying. Hope that counts for something. I'm sure I could do better there too though. I have been in plenty of churches in my lifetime though and I am very aware of what goes on in the vast majority of them today. 4. We are created in God's image, aren't we? Father/son, it's really pretty simple. And agreed, nobody can put God in a box and define him, especially people that think they can explain the trinity. You can't really explain something that is false, except to fake it. Jesus prayed to God the Father in John chapter 17. He said, "Father I pray that they (meaning His disciples) be one, even as you and I are one." Using the definition of the trinity, how in the world were those disciples supposed to become the same person like Jesus and God the Father? It just doesn't work. The relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son is much easier to understand. Rev 3:14
Help me understand what you think of the trinity...i'm not following. You won't find me a fan of most churches...but there are good churches out there. What role do you serve with a church, currently? You mentioned you spent quite a bit of time there. I can't find the interview with Graham you mentioned...but I did find this one from June 2005, not too long ago, where he made the following comments: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/16/lkl.01.html GRAHAM: First of all, you have to meet God with light! I do not believe that any man, that any man can solve the problems of life without Jesus Christ. There are tremendous marital problems, there are physical problems, there are financial problems, there are problems of sin and habit that cannot be solved outside the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. KING: But what about those faiths -- the Mormons and the others that you mentioned -- believe in Christ. They believe they will meet Christ. What about those like the Jews, the Muslims, who don't believe they ... GRAHAM: That's in God's hands. I can't be the judge. KING: You don't judge them? GRAHAM: No. KING: How do you feel... (CROSSTALK) GRAHAM: ... going to hell and all that. KING: How do you feel when you see a lot of these strong Christian leaders go on television and say, you are condemned, you will live in hell if you do not accept Jesus Christ, and they are forceful and judgmental? GRAHAM: Well, they have a right to say that, and they are true to a certain extent, but I don't -- that's not my calling. My calling is to preach the love of God and the forgiveness of God and the fact that he does forgive us. That's what the cross is all about, what the resurrection is all about, that's the gospel. And you can get off on all kinds of different side trends, and in my earlier ministry, I did the same, but as I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving. And the Jerry Falwells and people like that, I love them, I thank God for their ministry, he has a great university and two or three of my grandchildren have gone there, they have had a tremendous change in their lives for being there, and some of the other people are the same way, but at the other end of the extreme. GRAHAM: But Jesus made this astounding claim. Jesus said: I am the truth. Jesus said, I am the truth! I am the embodiment of all truth. And if you're going to get to heaven, you've got to believe that.
