RFlagg, do you realize nearly 1/3 of the worlds population identifies as Christian? I’m not sure why you think the Republican party is the standard bearer for Christ in the world, but the majority of Christians don’t live in Western democracies. About a quarter billion of them face daily persecution from hostile governments. You are grossly mischaracterizing the faith by conflating it with the worst elements of the American church, which actually in many Christian circles is commonly referred to as the church of Laodicia. Have you ever read Christs letter to the church of Laodicia? Its in Revelation chapter 3.

So you may be shocked to find out that a lot of Christians will agree with you that the American church is backslidden. I also agree with you that too many Christians are too political and have said and done things which are morally repugnant.

I support this president, I also supported the president before him. Christians are commanded in Romans 13 to support and pray for our leaders. It doesn’t mean that we have to agree with them. I certainly didn’t agree with how the church as a whole overlooked quite a bit about Trump because of their desire to win a political victory. That doesn’t mean that any Christian who voted for or supports Trump is anything like what you described, so filled with hate. Many of us hate what is happening to the country, but we don’t hate the people who are doing it.

Your testimony about finding Christ revolves around attending church services and watching TBN and Fox News. Your reason for falling away stemmed from your disillusionment and disgust with the republican party. All of that is really the epitome of cultural Christianity. You may have had an experience, or felt some emotions, but you weren’t changed. There are millions of people sitting in pews all across America who are in the same situation; completely lost and thinking they are okay. This is the unfortunate side-effect of post-Christian culture; everyone has heard of Jesus and no one knows how to be saved or even what that means. They just know that if they add Jesus to their life, they will somehow make it to Heaven. So they just slap a Jesus sticker on everything they’re doing. They are still the same old rotten people, but now Jesus is with them and justifies all of their bad behavior. That’s cultural Christianity. Christianity is spiritual, not cultural.

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God

You need to be born again, RFlagg, and that didn’t happen to you. It can happen to you if you surrender your life to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Attending church services won’t make that happen for you. Attending church doesn’t make you a Christian. Watching Christian programming on TV, conservative news shows, and agreeing with creation science doesn’t make you a Christian. You become a Christian when you repent of your sin and fully surrender your life to Jesus Christ. It is at that moment that He will make you into a new person. It’s so simple a child could understand it but man has overcomplicated it to the point of totally distorting the message of the gospel.

I think this statement illustrates your issue “If being in Heaven means being around the people who say they will go, Trump supporters, then Hell is a billion times better.”

You’re looking to man instead of God. It’s God that you have to contend with, not man. As a person who has rejected Christ, you are under Gods judgment and that is why you need Christ. It’s easy to say I’d rather be in hell, but I can guarantee you that no one in hell currently feels that way. Rather they are in eternal misery because they forfeited their eternal life with God. What did they forfeit it for? Sin, plain and simple. Your issue is sin and not the many reasons you have come up with to reject the Lord.

"The fact that God doesn't care enough to tell his followers that they are following the literal antichrist system, is telling. "

The Lord has detailed everything to do with that in the scriptures. Jesus railed on the Pharisees for exactly the same thing:

Luke 12:54-56

Then He also said to the multitudes, “Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, ‘There will be hot weather’; and there is. Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?

The Lord outlined how the end times will proceed in the scriptures. There isn't much excuse for not understanding the times that we are living in. There will be a one world government run by the Antichrist, and the whole world will worship him.

"I do appreciate the higher degree of kindness you tend to show than certain others, and my family... almost all Trump supporters I personally know..."

Thank you, and I appreciate that you are willing to engage and talk about spiritual matters with me without trying to belittle me. That's not typical and I appreciate your civility friend.

Overall I am saying this to you because I care about you, not because I am judging you. I need Christ as much as you do RFlagg. It’s because of that, that I know how much you need Him that I am writing this to you. God bless.

You're overcomplicating it.

Wordless assent is fine, especially in an already committed relationship.

The issue here is less about consent and more about refusal.

If you're feeding each other and someone wants you to stop, just stop. Ok, if you're literally pouring tea into them at the time, it's not going to be instantaneous, but it's still pretty clear that they're no longer into it. Especially if they say "no" or try to push you away.

This isn't rocket science.

I am open to rational answers, but not hokum. Using mythos to prove mythos is no answer.
I've said I'm not open to suspending rationality or sanity, you say that means I won't listen to you....um.....

The entirety of Christianity hinges on one thing; the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a historical event and can be investigated that way. Jesus Christ is a real person who lived 2000 years ago in Israel. This isn't mythos and there is good evidence to believe it happened.

How do you know there's no FSM? I've seen exponentially more evidence of his existence than Yahweh's. I've eaten pasta. I absolutely believe in it more than Yahweh, but that's not a high bar.
Edit: How do you know there's no Allah? Odin? Zeus? Mythra? Mot? Cthulhu?

We both know that the fsm is a joke religion invented to mock Christianity.

The scripture tells us that men have worshiped other gods for thousands of years, but that what they worship are demons. So I believe those beings exist, but they aren't what they claim to be. One of Satans primary tools to deceive mankind is false religion. He provides supernatural confirmation of these religions. There is a desire in mans heart to worship God, and it gets corrupted so that man is willing to worship just about anything. In western culture, men idolize money, materialism, carnal lusts, even themselves. Our idols are less obvious but they are still idols.

One more time, my questions were 1.why is God's word so easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate? (Edit: especially given that properly interpreting it is allegedly the only way to escape eternal torture, seems like a set up.)

Any truth is easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate. This isn't a phenomenon unique to the scriptures; this is the reality of living in a fallen world. Corrupt men distort truth for their own gain. Look at the political situation in our country; how is what politicians do different from what prosperity preachers do? It really isn't.

The fact is that the gospel is very simple to understand; even a child could understand it, and they do. Gods word is very clear about our need for salvation and how to obtain it. It's man who overcomplicates it, distorts it for gain, or deliberately conceals the truth. Trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and believe He was raised from the dead. You don't need to be a theologian to understand that.

2.why is disbelief apparently worse than murder, rape, and slavery and so not covered by Jesus's sin erasing sacrifice and the only sin that's totally unforgivable.

How did you come to the conclusion that Jesus didn't die for unbelief? We all have unbelief that needs forgiveness which we receive by repentance. His atonement is not automatically transferred to everyone; the condition of receiving forgiveness is to believe. If you don't believe you won't receive forgiveness because you failed to meet the condition, not because unbelief is worse than murder necessarily. Dying without forgiveness for your sin is the problem, not that it can't be forgiven, but it can't be forgiven without repentance. It's kind of like this:

Let's say you had cancer and the only cure was in Los Angeles. You had no way to get there but God sent you a car to get you to Los Angeles and get the cure. When it arrived you didn't believe it would take you there so you didn't get in. A short time later you died of cancer.

So what was the reason you died? It was your unbelief that stopped you receiving the cure, but it was your cancer that killed you. In the same way it is your unbelief that keeps you from coming to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, so you will die in your sin.

I am interested in and open to an actual answer to either or both if you have one. It won't make me believe, but it might help me understand those who do a little better.

I'm happy to answer your questions newtboy..I just didn't want it to turn into another internet argument. I appreciate your candor

You guys are really overcomplicating this.

It's Florida, for fuck sake. All they have to do is shoot the guy and then say they felt threatened by him.

You can demonstrate the effect of carbon dioxide on climate as easily as dropping a ball from your hand? People know that balls will drop because the see it for themselves, not because a former physicist and his dog say so.

In actual fact, the earth has not warmed in nearly 20 years, and the climate models do not help to explain this. They are useless for explaining or predicting changes on the scale of decades, and it's crazy to expect them to somehow predict changes much further in the future.

Warmism, from the start, has been based on obfuscation, concealment of data, dodgy statistics, and overcomplicated computer models that add very little to insight into the real physical phenomena.

Remember the hockey stick? That went the way of Carl Sagan's nuclear winter, which ought to provide a cautionary tale for Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Your child's future will have many problems, one of them being depletion of the fossil fuel supplies that we have come to rely upon for sustenance. Climate will change, as it always has, and some of that change will be caused by CO2.
Climate science could be helpful; it's a pity that it has been distorted into a completely political exercise, and a shame for science generally, which stands to lose a great deal of public trust.

Actually I'm about as English as they come but crucially I spent my advanced academic career studying Philosophy and rhetoric (lamentably only to Hons. due to laziness) and consequently have an ingrained habit of arguing around a problem rather than relying on established parameters (not always entirely helpful when discussing more day to day matters as I'm sure you've by now gathered but it is essential to working with advanced epistemological problems and so serves me well none the less). I'm also prone to poor punctuation and odd patterns of grammar when I'm not going back over everything I write with a fine tooth comb which has likely not helped. (A consequence of learning to describe tangent after tangent when trying to thoroughly encapsulate some conceptual problems with language alone)

That said, while I may have gone around the houses so to speak I think my conclusion is entirely compatible with what I now understand your own to be.

I didn't want to describe my original counter-point by simply working with the idea that weight is lower on the moon relative to the earth (though I did not try to refute this either) because that would not illustrate why a 2-300kg man in a space suit still takes some shifting (relatively speaking) even if there were no gravity at all. (Would have been faster to just crunch some numbers but that's not what I specialise in)

Sure you could move anything with any force in 0G (which I do understand is technically relative as every object in the universe with mass exerts gravitational forces proportionately (and inversely proportional to the distance between)) but the resulting velocity is directly proportional to mass vs force applied. Weight here then, can be seen as another competing force in the equation rather than the whole thing which it can be convenient to treat it as for a simple calculation (which is what I think you are doing).

To put that another way I was applying a different/deeper linguistic/descriptive paradigm to the same objective facts because that's what we philosophers do. Single paradigm approaches to any subject have a dangerous habit of making one believe one possess such a thing as truly objective facts rather than interpretations only (which are all that truly exist).


In other terms weight alone isn't the whole story (as I assume you well know). Overcoming inertia due to mass scales up all by itself, then gravity comes along and complicates matters. This is why rocket scientists measure potential thrust in DeltaV rather than Watts, Joules etc. right? The mass of the object dictates how much velocity a given input/output of energy would equal.

Gravity and thus the force in newtons it induces (weight) in these terms is an additional force which depending upon the direction in which it is acting multiplies the required DeltaV to achieve the same effect. Moreover when concerning a force of inconstant nature (such as pushing up/jumping or a brief burn of an engine) brings duration into play also. (the foundations of why rocket science gets its fearsome reputation for complexity in its calculations)


Man on the moon lies on the ground and pushes off to try and stand back up.
This push must impart enough DeltaV to his body to produce a sufficient velocity and duration to travel the 2 meters or so needed to get upright so he can then balance the downward gravitational force with his legs&back and successfully convert the chemical/kinetic energy from his arms into potential energy as weight (the energy he uses to stand up is the same energy that would drag him down again right?).

One could practically speaking reduce this to a simple calculation of weight and thrust if all one wanted was a number. Weight would be the only number we need here as it incorporates the mass in it's own calculation (weight = mass x gravity)

But where's the fun in that? My way let's one go round all the houses see how the other bits of the paradigm that support this basic isolated equation function and inter-relate.

Plus (and probably more accurately) I've been playing loads of Kerbal Space Programme lately and have ended up conditioning myself to think in terms of rocketry and thus massively overcomplicated everything here for basically my own amusement/fascination.


Basically few things are more verbose and self indulgent than a bored Philosopher, sorry .


Re: Your challenge. (And I'm just guessing here) something to do with your leg muscles not being able to deliver the energy fast/efficiently enough? (as your feet would leave the ground faster/at a lower level of force?). This is the only thing I can think of as it's easier to push away from things underwater and it certainly looks difficult to push away hard from things when people are floating in 0g.

So lower resistance from gravity = less force to push against the floor with?

Warm? Even in the Ballpark? (Regardless I'm really pleased to discover you weren't the nut I originally thought you to be! (though I imagine you now have some idea what a nut I am))


If I got any of that wrong I'd be happy for you to explain to me why and where (assuming you can keep up with my slightly mad approach to syntax in the 1st place). I'm an armchair physicist (not that I haven't studied it in my time but I'm far from PHD) I'm always happy to learn and improve.

I really like the idea of simplifying democracy. The American system is pretty wonky and overcomplicated. That said, I am hesitant to rely on an election system that does not have a paper ballot trail. Computer results can be too easily compromised and I don't like voting machines.

>> ^cito:

yea this is horrible, "canned" new pop is really an embarrassment on the music industry.
Companies like ARK music factory <- wikipedia them
and others hire people that can halfassed sing then as with ARK they have more computer techs than musicians running them through ableton/flstudio and compression to make them halfassed acceptable then they buy songs at 100 dollars a pop, hell ARK Even advertises on craigslist for songwriters they pay 100 dollars per song or "poem" to give the "artist" which is the wrong term for it something to sing.
pop music today is pure canned crap pretty much. Companies like ARK music factory is just an overcomplicated 419 Nigerian scam... don't believe me go read up on them , they are ran by a nigerian who used to run 419 scams.
And he is now turned his scamming on the music industry


If people injoy the end result its not necacerly an issue so long as people reolize that the people to be credited with the making of the music are the enganears and producers not the person "singing".

for example say I wrote a computer program that just randomely produces music that happens to be satisfying or makes it so that annyone pushing buttons randomely or with very littel skill can prodcue satisfying music . i dont see why that would be a bad thing or why it should not be listend to or enjoyed.


I think if anything ark music factory just show how the money making aspect is tied more into exsternal factors and not nececcerly tied into the music directly.

I got the impresoin that ark music factory were prity up front with the fact that they simply produce music for people that want to pay for it regardless of there tallent. I dont get the impressoin that they are telling people that they will make it big and ritch from the music as if its an investment maby they do ?


The biggest issue with modern music is Radio , tv , film and advertising forcing me to listen to music that I don't want to listen to and worse than that they play things repeatedly over and over. its as if i was to flash a light of a specifc colour in your face all the time its just plane anoying.

yea this is horrible, "canned" new pop is really an embarrassment on the music industry.

Companies like ARK music factory <- wikipedia them
and others hire people that can halfassed sing then as with ARK they have more computer techs than musicians running them through ableton/flstudio and compression to make them halfassed acceptable then they buy songs at 100 dollars a pop, hell ARK Even advertises on craigslist for songwriters they pay 100 dollars per song or "poem" to give the "artist" which is the wrong term for it something to sing.

pop music today is pure canned crap pretty much. Companies like ARK music factory is just an overcomplicated 419 Nigerian scam... don't believe me go read up on them , they are ran by a nigerian who used to run 419 scams.

And he is now turned his scamming on the music industry

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Clinton was nothing a serviceable – but barnacle-covered – rudder. He didn’t screw up what was already going well. [...] Bush1 was the guy that raised the taxes.

It looks like you just said Clinton's presidency was a success because Bush raised taxes and Clinton reaped the benefits. But obviously there are no benefits to raising taxes, so that couldn't have been what you meant.

I agree about simplifying the tax code. The system is overcomplicated and it leads to tax fraud and/or loopholes. It would be a boon to revenues in itself if millionaires actually paid the 35% rate they're supposed to.

I think it's fine the way it is. Let's not overcomplicate an already tricky and occasionally error-prone part of the sift process.

As eric said, sometimes you lose some, sometimes you win some. It's like sift karma.

>> ^ForgedReality:

Macs and Desktops using Windows are both PCs. MacOS is oversimplified (meaning it restricts user control far too much), but its UI is overcomplicated (meaning things that should be accomplished easier are made more complicated).


Say what? I generally use 4 different OSes daily, and have lots of experience with many of them (Daily: Mac OS X, Windows XP/Vista, BackTrack, and CentOS. Experience: Too many to name all, but basically all the BSDs, most of the Linuxes, Minix, AIX, basically every Mac and Windows OS version, you name it - just no OS/2.)

Mac OS pre-10 didn't give you enough control (unless you knew the tricks), but in Mac OS X, you have WAY more control than Windows. Too much if you ask me. But the Mac has ALWAYS had a very simple UI, that was the beauty of it. You could do just as much with less effort. A true productivity OS.


Things are a lot easier on Windows such as being able to click a drop down, and then move thru it via the arrow keys, which is very nice for Photoshop users in particular (arrowing through typefaces, layer blend modes, etc). So many things are made quicker via the keyboard, which Apple refuses to allow in its OS. Everything must be done with the mouse. Why? Okay, Windows has Windows+D, and MacOS has F11, but that's the extent of it pretty much. I can't tab through window elements on a Mac, I can't easily get to a console on a mac (Windows+R->cmd<enter>), I can't select a shortcut and then alt+enter it to get to its properties window on a Mac, etc.


I'll bet it's all down to experience. I've always complained to my Windows friends that I can't navigate Windows with the keyboard like I can on the Mac. I'm lightning fast navigating through Mac OS with the keyboard, but I can't do jack on Windows. Chalk it up to knowledge is my guess. As for Photoshop, I would guess that's Adobe's fault.

BTW, one click on a Mac to get console access, or >console in the login. CMD-I will get you to the properties window for any file. Any others you need help with?


And games? Fuggeddaboudit.


And here is my only reason for still having Windows machines AT ALL. If it weren't for the games, I wouldn't touch the OS with a 10 meter cattle prod.


Ubuntu is a far superior OS to both Windows and MacOS. This is fact, not opinion.
Even though MacOS is based on Unix, just like Ubuntu (Linux was derived from Unix), somehow Ubuntu does it much better.
The only reason I run Windows is because I can actually run my games on it. The SECOND Linux gets better support and can run games as well as XP, or at least approachably well, Ubuntu will become my main OS.


Any time someone tells you that something is a fact and not an opinion... well, I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. I have used Ubuntu quite a bit, especially for my Netbooks. One I moved to Mac OS X, one runs various OSes installed to SD cards, such as BackTrack, and one went to Windows to support a crappy piece of hardware I have that is ONLY supported in Windows (don't get me started on hardware support). Ubuntu is okay for a consumer OS, but not great. Linux suffers from the 'too many cooks' issue, and Ubuntu does a pretty good job at mitigating that, but it's no Mac OS, where everything "just works".

I'm not saying working to get something obscure in is a bad thing either. I'm saying that with enough patience, time and effort, you can get anything in. We hold the publishing threshold to be indicative of quality and I'm arguing that it's not.

It used to be that videos were queued for 2 days or 3 days or whatever it was and if they didn't make it in that time, they were done for. In all honesty, I hated that system, because it required too much extra effort most of the time. You had to watch your submissions like a fucking ebay auction and save, promote, etc. That system suffered from one of the same problems as the current one except that it required a lot of intervention. That problem is that we have potentially infinite queue time. Before you had to keep saving, now it's automatic with the PQ.

I'm arguing that there's no difference between something sitting "unsifted" in PQ now and something "sifted" with 3 votes in a system with no queue. As it is, when you hit 15 votes we decide your contribution is of sufficient quality to give you a star point. It doesn't matter if it took 1 hour to get to 15 or 2 years... if 15 people on the internet were willing to click the up arrow, then it must be good. I'm arguing that we've got an overcomplicated system that contradicts itself by saying "You've got 2 days to make the cut!" and then if you don't, "Ok, ok. Take as long as you want."

Throwing out the queue will have zero effect on content compared to today. The videos that are languishing in PQ with 4 votes now will be languishing in a dark corner of the site with 4 votes without a queue. The only time sifted/unsifted currently matters is for rewarding stars, and I think that stars based on votes might actually be a better measure of contribution value than the current system.

As for the "lowest common denominator", that will never change. LCD doesn't mean lowest quality; it means broadest appeal. The top sifts will always be the LCD.

>> ^ElJardinero:
Why do some pc users crap all over macs and then get super excited when microsoft copies features that have existed on macs for quite some time?


Macs and Desktops using Windows are both PCs. MacOS is oversimplified (meaning it restricts user control far too much), but its UI is overcomplicated (meaning things that should be accomplished easier are made more complicated). Things are a lot easier on Windows such as being able to click a drop down, and then move thru it via the arrow keys, which is very nice for Photoshop users in particular (arrowing through typefaces, layer blend modes, etc). So many things are made quicker via the keyboard, which Apple refuses to allow in its OS. Everything must be done with the mouse. Why? Okay, Windows has Windows+D, and MacOS has F11, but that's the extent of it pretty much. I can't tab through window elements on a Mac, I can't easily get to a console on a mac (Windows+R->cmd<enter>), I can't select a shortcut and then alt+enter it to get to its properties window on a Mac, etc. And games? Fuggeddaboudit.

Ubuntu is a far superior OS to both Windows and MacOS. This is fact, not opinion.

Even though MacOS is based on Unix, just like Ubuntu (Linux was derived from Unix), somehow Ubuntu does it much better.

The only reason I run Windows is because I can actually run my games on it. The SECOND Linux gets better support and can run games as well as XP, or at least approachably well, Ubuntu will become my main OS.

Saying that religion simply gives you the truth is simplistic way of following religious thought

Or maybe saying "there is more to it than that" is just overcomplicating things to make it look better or to be easier to compartmentalize. Either you think the bible is a bunch of myths and stories, like I do, or you think there is something really, really special about them, that somehow, whoever wrote them, was guided by an invisible man in the sky.

There is a certain limit to how long you can say "I'm a Christian/Muslim/etc" and completely transform the definition of it until you are nothing but an atheist who enjoys a good story.