@MarkTrapp Indeed. The web development class I was in over the summer taught us Prototype instead of jQuery as the teacher thought it would be better for people who were learning it.
I was answering a question the other day and my eight year old daughter read the questions and said to me, "That's stupid. Why don't they just go look it up in the Bible?"
Fair point. I personally come here to see what types of questions there are, in order to challenge my assumptions, and for...
Often when answering questions contributers throw out a lot of Christian lingo that are foreign and unhelpful to those unfamilar or new to Christianity or the church. Without explanation, this type of language makes the site less accessible and serves to narrow the potential audience.
An articl...
One of our jobs as moderators is to keep the site clean. This includes deleting posts that do not belong for one reason or another. This usually involves leaving a comment about why the post was deleted, then deleting it. Deletions are not necessarily permanent as an OP may edit them and ask to h...
@BeatMe First of all, there are lots of other books (including heretical Gnostic gospels and the Qur'an) that describe him that way. Secondly, that isn't the claim I made at all and those aren't the kind of cross references I was suggesting, your objection is to a statement that I didn't make. I said other sources corroborate the story that there was a guy named Jesus who CLAIMED to be divine.
could you then make it more clear that those books corroborate the historical jesus, but do not describe the same supernatural things the bible does?
it's important that these other stories of the historical jesus do not validate his supernatural nature
and then your answer does not answer his question, as no other book validates his claims
@caleb, you also mentioned the historic evidence of his resurrection, but an empty tomb is no evidence and I did not found any book that supports this theory besides the bible, so yes, you made a statement ;)
@BeatMe You mean "it would be important if they didn't". When you start putting all the pieces together however, they do.
You might start by reading Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell as a place to start chasing down extra-Biblical references and for one man's way of putting some of those together to show how the Bible itself cannot be dismissed as just a piece of fiction.
@dancek You might have a point there. It might be worth a meta-post about whether we encourage straw-man questions. This isn't the first. I don't think I'll step in with the big stick just yet but I think there might be some merit to your VTC. I'm inclined to think we're always going to have to field some straw-men, but perhaps we can find a way to both answer them and discourage them. (downvote and answer rather than close? I don't know actually just thinking out loud here)
@BeatMe Just so you know I don't put much stock in the pudits in the 1-star ratings section of reviews on amazon. You should read it yourself. I actually agree it has some holes, a few logical fallacies and a few irrelevant bits. I've actually had the privilege of arguing some of those in person with the author himself. However I recommended it as a PLACE TO START where you can find some of the extra-biblical references listed and ONE MANS argument for how some of the evidence is related.
@Caleb I agree it's an edge case. That's pretty much exactly why I vtc'd. I know it's very hard for you moderators to make the decision to close when it's not all that clear. But it's easy for me to vtc and then we can see if others agree.
@dancek Yes, that's exactly what the doctor ordered!
@BeatMe I'm going to work on it, but it's going to take some time to defend.
@BeatMe If you hold every mistake made by somebody defending Christianity against Christianity you're never going to get anywhere, but one thing that book tries to do is give an overview of some of the different angles apologetics can take. You have to step back from the picture a little bit and see that while a lot of people make mistakes in their reasoning and even run with faulty arguments or bogus evidence, that is the fault of the reasoners not the thing being reasoned.
The Case for Christ is also an interesting read along those lines. Again it isn't perfect/infallible but it does still make a point.
@BeatMe There is actually, but it doesn't kick in for up to 24 hours ... it runs checks and cleaned up bad patterns like that on a schedule, not when they happen.
@BeatMe Yes, I think if votes get reversed due to suspicious patterns / auto filtering, they still show up as cast votes for the voter but the rep is reversed and its' cleared from the rest of the site. I'm not sure on that though, it might be worth looking on the main meta site for how that works.
@waxeagle It's not just you. I've noted several times that efforts to reduce "christianese" often just end up taking a bunch of other English jargon and overloading the terms with new meanings and leaving both insiders AND outsiders confused.
@waxeagle Unfortunately no, they specifically said it won't be RW yet. The auth is so that they can give out some of the private bits of people's profiles.
@Caleb gotcha..that was the most disappointing thing to me. I got my new phone, grabbed a couple of the SE apps for it and realized that I could only read...:(
the web access was all right, but it'd be nice to have an app..
considering that the mod pool is fairly small (what around 150ish)...and not all of them have phones...plus having to write something that works on all 3 major OSs...
without a real API because I doubt mod features are exposed..
I would love to see an actual native iPhone app for Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, etc. I've actually developed a number of iPhone apps myself, and would certainly be interested and willing in doing the bulk of the legwork, but it would be necessary for the SO team to expose a real AP...
Are there any news about an official iPhone app or a Mobile optimized website for SO?
I love SO and I'd like to check my question status and to manage my personal informations. Is there someone working on it? I get it's pretty hard to do, but, seriously, this is a programming website and no one ...
The StackExchange Api V1.0 is read only and that's the main reason why no one is programming an app for it.*
Quoting Jeff here:
Version 1 is read only. Coming up with
a solid API is hard enough without
adding writing and authentication to
the mix. For the initial release, it’s
a read...
@studiohack yeah, next API release will have auth, but still no write. I've tried a couple of the android SE apps...droidstack is pretty cool as it supposedly supports chat, although I couldn't get authed
@ElendiaStarman battery is nearly dead...grr..really thinking hard about picking up a second battery...or the extended life one...then again I'm not going to spend all day playing angry birds all that often
@ElendiaStarman do you have a wii? There was a game called Boom Blox that Steven Spielberg helped design for the Wii...angry birds reminds me of that game (in fact its quite frankly a rather spectacular knock off if its not the same company making it)
It sometimes is very hard to remember not to hate right-wing Christians. Christians I don't mind; right wingers I can cope with; it's the combination that troubles me.
@waxeagle How prominent are they? That's something I find it hard to get hold of from this side of the Atlantic. Are they fringe loonies, or do they have an audience?
@TRiG honestly its hard to get a good read on that stateside..let me try and figure out who they actually are...I ran into this earlier this week though: onemillionmoms.com
@Caleb seems to be some kind of memory issue with the built in browser on my phone that won't let me log in. I may head of over to android.SE see if there is a solid way to change the default browser...
@TRiG from their site and based on some other circumstances (the fact that I've heard of them for one), I'd say they are one of the more prominent groups on the Christian far Right
@TRiG it is. There are much better things they could be spending their time no (hey like maybe producing the kind of TV they want to watch instead of knocking someoen elses')
I actually (as I mention in my profile) make a point of reading liberal Christian blogs (slacktivist, mainly, and also Former Conservative these days), because it's very easy. given the other media I read (especially Box Turtle Bulletin), to forget that decent Christians exist at all.
So is Bryan Fischer, like Jerry Falwell, a "Chaucerian fraud"? Or does he actually believe that the Nazi party favoured gay people and that the US First Ammendment specifically protects Christianity?
:This article is about the U.S. sociopolitical commentator. For other people with a similar name, see Brian Fisher (disambiguation).
Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association (AFA), hosting the talk radio program Focal Point on American Family Radio and posting on the AFA-run blog Rightly Concerned.
He is a supporter of conservative causes, such as the right to life and opposition to national health care, and has been active in city and state politics. Fischer's divisive comments were cited by Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in explaining t...
*note: please do not mistake this question as necessarily my personal option.
Where this question comes from may not be obvious to some depending on where you live, so let me explain. Here in the Southern part of the United States of America, my parents' church (evangelical, Assemblies of God) w...
The Israel of the OT is fairly clearly a people group and later a country. It's the Israel of the NT comparable? Is there any reason to believe that the NT mentions of Israel are or are not the modern state of Israel?
Often when answering questions contributers throw out a lot of Christian lingo that are foreign and unhelpful to those unfamilar or new to Christianity or the church. Without explanation, this type of language makes the site less accessible and serves to narrow the potential audience.
An articl...
The StackExchange Api V1.0 is read only and that's the main reason why no one is programming an app for it.*
Quoting Jeff here:
Version 1 is read only. Coming up with
a solid API is hard enough without
adding writing and authentication to
the mix. For the initial release, it’s
a read...
The Upper Room
The Upper Room