The Upper Room

El'endia Starman

1:08 AM

More Flack Overstow! :P

This one from Caleb's profile:

> However, Christians hold that there are no more than gibberish.

From mine:

> 39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to be, and as such, were cast out.

> This is made clear by the trespass of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

> 13 You were in Eden, the garden of 930 years, and then he died.

I like this one. ^_^

> I think the primary reason is that He is entirely True when He says "I am...the Truth".

@ElendiaStarman I hope that isn't a full sentence that I wrote because that is SO tautological... :P

Dan O'Day

Here's some tautological biblical translations for you: "they threw stones at him so that he fell off of his donkey." OR: "He was stoned off his ass." ;)

I don't actually think that appears anywhere in the bible, but it was a fun translation exercise we had in Hebrew

El'endia Starman

1:29 AM

@DanODay LOL.

New generation...

> As such, his books contain facts and evidence that would be (mostly) indisputable by God.

@ElendiaStarman Woah, who is this guy?!? :P

> For example, Bill Gates' children are each getting about 10 million dollars is a really small portion of his wealth, it is certainly the case that Gates didn't inherit was inherited by God.

LOLZ!

> However, remember that in ancient Israel, judges are gods in that sense. Another, less clear and more speculative reason, has to do with them being the Father of Lies,

Oho! Check this out!

> if you don't warn them, I will hold you responsible for their deaths; for their deaths. Ezekiel 3:20 (ESV)

New generation...

> A side note: the NLT version of the same verse: Jude 1:6 (NLT) And I remind you of many horses and chariots rushing into prison to test you.

[laughs out loud]

> Matthew 5:10 (NIV) Then they will go away to whom the word of God came from a pagan source (Wikipedia)

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman ROFL

El'endia Starman

LAWL!

> However, Christianity was and is being the Father of Lies,

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman you know, there's a strange way in which that's true... "foolishness of God is wiser than man..."

El'endia Starman

1:45 AM

Lolololol...

> Romans 10:13 (NLT) 13 For Everyone who calls on the name of the blood of any of you.

Doubting Thomas

For some reason a picture of Edward Cullen came up on a google search for "brave new world"... I considered putting him in my presentation, but I couldn't bring myself to inflict that pain on my classmates...

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas LOL!!

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman All I could figure is that he's an example of the dulling mediocrity that man is reduced to in Huxley's dystopia...

El'endia Starman

o.O (at to-come quote)

> Must you make your heart like the heart that you are made right with the devil about Moses body.

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman wait, huh? Someone sold Moses's body to the Devil, and the speaker is telling his audience not to be like the seller?

El'endia Starman

2:00 AM

@DoubtingThomas [shrugs]

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman [shrug]

oh well, back to planning how to tell my classmates that dystopia is coming...

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas ...when you put it that way, remember that a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, a picture of Edward Cullen... ;P

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman yeah, hence my eager google image searching. I'm totalling putting a picture of the fat people from Wall-E

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas Good idea, actually.

New generation:

> Thrown down to the earth, and his children, we are his heirs.

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman that's actually really interesting. almost beautiful.

El'endia Starman

2:05 AM

That one's scarily coherent.

Doubting Thomas

oh wait, i'm a guy, I don't say beautiful.... er, that's totally rad, bro.

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas ;)

Doubting Thomas

my brothers flip out everytime I call a song "pretty"

El'endia Starman

Lol.

> Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, but I don't.

T_T

New generation:

> However, remember that in ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the purest essence of the word, like womenâ€™s hair, and their teeth were often the same people 1. Now the Lord, his hair will never be.

It's definitely good to know that Satan's hair will never be the Lord. :P

Doubting Thomas

rofl

El'endia Starman

2:12 AM

Hey, more tautology!

> Now if we are children, then we are children,

Lol.

> Ezekiel 33:8 (NIV) 8 They shall thrust you down into end-timey talk

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman that boring eschatology!

El'endia Starman

Y'know, every time I see "end-timey", I think of Dr. Who's "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ball of...stuff". :P

Doubting Thomas

> Of the same salvation, one given to the thousandth generation of those who disagrees with anything you say

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas LAWL.

> Ignoring for now the fact!

Doubting Thomas

> Sinned. The book of Job tells us and to remind us of that. I think Jesus is trying to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to them, but the message they heard on this (and incidentally the reason than that I wanted to attract the youth (who should and must be punished))

El'endia Starman

2:16 AM

@ElendiaStarman ...this sounds like some [coughs] users we've had on this site...

@DoubtingThomas ._.

Doubting Thomas

more heresy!

> Again, "You are nothing in yourself, sin is not bound by time and will be saved"

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas LAWL!! I think that's one of the best yet.

Doubting Thomas

:D

heh, I've been working on this presentation for like an hour and all I've done is google funny pictures...

...epic music time.

El'endia Starman

Ooooh! I should use Ron's profile!

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman Ron Maimon? Oh boy...

El'endia Starman

2:20 AM

Lessee what we've got here...

> And it was because the midwives feared God is not a substance like aluminum.

Doubting Thomas

To anyone who might venture in here: we're not insane. It's okay. You can talk. We won't hurt you.

4

El'endia Starman

> Modern Hebrew is about as different from other passages, which are completely out of context here.

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman ahahaha that's a gem

El'endia Starman

BWAAHAHAHA!

> Nice people tell lies.

2

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman rofl; genius.

El'endia Starman

2:23 AM

@DoubtingThomas I have a sneaking suspicion that that's a whole sentence by Ron...

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman yes perhaps gulp

El'endia Starman

> "vehaya" can be "And it was", but mostly based on merging Jewish and elegance of Jacob's pining for his head.

> To do this, it helps if you have a secret handshake, a characteristic thing in the old testament---

@ElendiaStarman Mormons in the OT? Oh dear... :P

Doubting Thomas

-2

A: Christianity certainty and other religions certainty

The certainty of religious faith applies to the existence of an ethical standard, which is coming from a moral lawgiver, from God. In logical positivist terms, evidence for the existence of God comes from observing that ethical standards are convergent, so that all people will eventually agree on...

third paragraph

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas How'd "nice" get capitalized though? Hmmm...must be additional code I didn't know about.

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman yeah, auto-capitalization of the start of a sentence, prolly

El'endia Starman

2:28 AM

> It just doesn't seem to mean "God of the Sky", where the path terrors, and the almond shall blossom and the locust will be washed in water, and it is a magic language with terse terms for very specific English meanings. It's not.

Doubting Thomas

This is what I came up with for the idea behind Brave New World:

> It's okay. We won't hurt you. We'll just use your enjoyments to channel you into mindless impersonal pieces of a larger social machine that exists for no reason at all.

El'endia Starman

Apparently, Yahweh = an immutable character string. :P

> This sentence reveals a useful lie, because it allows the figure of Yahweh, an immutable character string.

2

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman awesome.

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas That's almost as good as what Cave Johnson and GLaDOS say... :P

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman oooh, GLaDOS quotes would be ideal... know any off the top of your head?

El'endia Starman

2:34 AM

@DoubtingThomas Not really. You'd be better off with Cave Johnson though, I would think.

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman not familiar with him (her?)

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas One of Portal 2's villains.

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman ah. you're rather a fan of Portal 2, amirite?

El'endia Starman

@DoubtingThomas Indeed I am! It truly deserves the title of "Best Videogame Ever".

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman haha cool.

:)

When I think about it, this is really the core message of Brave New World:

El'endia Starman

2:40 AM

@DoubtingThomas Hah, nice.

Doubting Thomas

as such it deserves a place on my title slide

El'endia Starman

Well, here's a list of Cave Johnson quotes: cavejohnsonhere.com

Doubting Thomas

@ElendiaStarman lol thanks

TRiG

9:04 AM

@DoubtingThomas Edward Cullen is pretty .....

Bruce Alderman

2:10 PM

@Flimzy I voted the question up, because in theory I think it's a good question. I have also, more recently, voted to close because so few answers are actually engaging with the biblical text. It's not that the question itself is poorly worded or anything; I think it's just that the topic is such a hot-button issue at the moment that it's hard for most people to keep their emotions out of it.

Bruce Alderman

2:26 PM

It might be possible to get theologically-sound answers if you restrict the question to whether churches should bless same-sex unions.

Because if the question is about a nation's (or state's) civil laws, the Bible is essentially silent on the question. When the New Testament was written, Christians had no opportunity to petition the Roman Senate or to vote the rulers out of office, so there was no point even talking about it.

The Old Testament writers had a little more influence over their culture, but throughout the OT history, the prophets' messages were seldom heeded.

El'endia Starman

@BruceAlderman And we all know how well that turned out for Israel...

wax eagle

@BruceAlderman really all you can get as far as the state are God's law for his theocracy...not much help when you start with a secular/pluralistic democracy

(and honestly trying to do theocracy with sinful people just doesn't work well, Isreal shows us just how bad off we are, its not a model for how things should be (IMO)

Bruce Alderman

2:53 PM

@waxeagle Yeah, there's good practical reasons against theocracy. And then when you add Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of God not being an earthly kingdom, it makes theocracy even harder to justify biblically.

wax eagle

@BruceAlderman yes. Which leaves me feeling very post-modern about law in general.

brilliant

4:00 PM

Thought it would be quite interesting: "Martin Luther and the Eurozone: Theology as an Economic Destiny?": theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?storyid=9623

Bruce Alderman

5:56 PM

@brilliant This idea is not entirely new; Max Weber wrote about the Protestant Work Ethic more than a century ago. But the notion of corruption and bribery as the economic heirs to the selling of indulgences, that's an interesting thought.

Flimzy

6:19 PM

@BruceAlderman Roman citizens (like Paul) who were Christians had the right to vote, no?

TRiG

7:30 PM

@Flimzy To what extent was Rome a democracy?

Bruce Alderman

7:44 PM

@Flimzy No one had the right to vote in ancient times. The Roman Senators were appointed by the Emperor, or held office by virtue of being in the senatorial class. Even in Athens, which was a democracy, legislators were chosen by lot and not by vote.

Flimzy

@BruceAlderman Ah, okay. I've never studied Roman history.

Maybe we should elect our government officials by lot... we'd probably have better people in office that way.

TRiG

@Flimzy But the danger! What if you were selected?

Flimzy

8:43 PM

@TRiG: Then I'd replace unemployment benefits with free ice cream for everyone!

This Alex character has me truly puzzled. Is he honestly as ignorant as he claims to be?

I still think he thinks he's pulling some mastermind prank.

"they are heavy metal thus will never be a true object of any controversy." What in the world? How is "heavy metal" suddenly beyond reproach?

That's "devil music!" my grandmother would say.

TRiG

@Flimzy Perhaps, and I'm being charitable here, he's saying that heavy metal bands are never the objects of any true controversy, because all the accusations against them are so absurd.

Flimzy

Heh... I appreciate your charity :)

TRiG

@Flimzy Well, looking for sense in nonsense is sometimes an interesting exercise.

...

Flimzy

Indeed.

Flimzy

9:02 PM

"Yes, it's pro Christian. The more I'm listening to all of you guys the more I now know that."

I think this guy is a troll.

TRiG

@Flimzy I've added a VtC. My first on this site, I think.

-1

Q: Is this song blasphemous or actually pro-Christian?

I've stumbled upon a song (Banging in the Nails by The Tiger Lillies) with the following lyrics: I'm crucifying Jesus, banging in the nails And I am so happy, because old Jesus failed. Now this line (the whole song goes approximately in the same vein) struck me as being a very Christian....

music

Flimzy

@Flimzy Not at all. It's real difficult to imagine a heavy metal group not doing their heavy metal sincere. They are like children in that aspect and thus are protected by Christ.

TRiG

@Flimzy Pfft!

Flimzy

9:20 PM

See my updated comment.

I've heard various "satanic" explanations for their name... "Anti-Christ / Devil's child" and "After Christ / Devil Comes", but google thinks they just named their band after a label on a sewing machine. shrug

TRiG

@Flimzy Conspiracy theories are quite common in groups which deliberately exclude themselves from mainstream society.

Flimzy

Even so, their song "Highway to Hell" is clearly non-Christian, and some extremists might say it's satanic.

TRiG

@Flimzy And if you're actually invested in painting yourself as persecuted and the world as out to get you, you'll believe any old slander.

Flimzy

Whether it's Satanic or not, I'm sure it's not earning "Christ's protection" as Alex is arguing.

TRiG

See also: Procter & Gamble.

Just noticed: There's two different Alexes on that page. The Alex who asked the question is not the same Alex who wrote some of the comments. Should the accounts be merged?

Flimzy

9:24 PM

Hrm, good question

TRiG

-7

Q: Would it be possible to be overlooked on Judgement Day?

My understanding of the Last Judgment Day is that on that day all souls will "stand before the God" and will be judged by him. I imagine this will be a lot of people, perhaps many of them introverts, perhaps disinclined to hang out where everybody else is. Is there any possibility that somebody c...

judgment

Flimzy

They should probably be flagged at least, so a mod can check their IPs, etc

Yeah, sounds like a troll to me.

Anyone want to bet against me that his account will be suspended soon?

TRiG

@Flimzy Nah.

Flimzy

darn... I was hoping for some easy cash :)

El'endia Starman

@TRiG I tried to do that earlier today. Unfortunately, the "real" Alex (the one with more rep) has 2000+ rep on SO, so I couldn't merge the unregistered one into it.

Caleb

9:31 PM

@Flimzy I had an early idea that the issue was a weak grasp of English, but based on their interaction on the lyrics issue, it seems to be a clash of worldviews -- and as I noted it a comment -- it feels like they are trolling. I'd be happy to have Alex turn up and engage here in chat and prove us both wrong.

Flimzy

I thought it was a language barrier at first, too... thus my answer.

El'endia Starman

@Flimzy What if I bet against you? As a mod, I could make sure his account was never suspended... ;P

Flimzy

@ElendiaStarman: Hrm... I don't think you have that trump card... ;)

@ElendiaStarman: I think the other mods would overrule you

El'endia Starman

@Flimzy But I could reverse their actions...

Caleb

@TRiG If I hadn't just over-ridden a mod-close on that and tried to give an answer in good faith (and edited the question to be readable in the process) I would finish this off with a mod-close vote. As it is it looks like the community will take care of that.

El'endia Starman

9:33 PM

(Not for long, I know...)

Flimzy

Yes, but once he's suspended, even momentarily, I've won the bet :)

El'endia Starman

@Flimzy Blast! I hoped you wouldn't catch on to that bit of your wording...

TRiG

@Flimzy Stupid or evil?

Flimzy

This conversation with Alex reminds me of a conversation I had once with a kid (16 I think) who was trying to convince me that viewing pornography was a healthy behavior for a Christian, because it was admiring God's creation

TRiG

@Flimzy It's a view.

Flimzy

9:38 PM

That it is... :)

That P&G story reminds me of a plot I had once (may still do it some day) to create a completely ficticious company, and "publish" a new story about how evil they are, because they sell dismembered children, or whatever...

The sole reference to the story will be a "news agency" web site (that I set up)

El'endia Starman

@Flimzy Be wary of Poe's Law if you do that though...

Poe's law

Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an internet adage reflecting the fact that without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and an exaggerated parody of extremism. The law and its meaning Poe's law states: The core of Poe's law is that a parody of something extreme by nature becomes impossible to differentiate from sincere extremism. A corollary of Poe's law is the reverse phenomenon: sincere fundamentalist beliefs being mistaken for a parody of that belief. A further corollary, the Poe Par...

Flimzy

And the news agency site will show the alleged story on the front page, but every link on the site will lead to an explanation that the article is fake.

The goal is to make it look real, but only with a veeeery thin veil. Anyone who bothers to do any research at all will see it's fake.

Then... watch to see how viral it becomes.

Perhaps even the front page will indicate it's fake.

(details TBD)

I don't think Poe's Law (which I was unaware of until now, thanks :) will apply, since the parody will expose itself as such.

TRiG

@Flimzy Bwa?

You've never seen someone say "That's a Poe"?

Flimzy

Nope.

TRiG

You obviously don't spend enough time on Pharyngula.

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