some awesome for the internet.

grg thinks the internet needs more awesome. i have found some.

awesome site: freerice

freerice: waste time at work, get smarter, feed children. awesome!

The Validity of the Bible

This was going to be awesome. But due to the sheer amount of content, i’m going to stick with excerpts and links.

part 1

 for ed.

 […]

If we put all these factors together—the Bible was written over fifteen hundred years by forty different authors at different places, under various circumstances, and addressing a multitude of issues—how amazing that with such diversity, the Bible proclaims a unified message! That unity is organized around one theme: God’s redemption of man and all of creation. The writers address numerous controversial subjects yet contradictions never appear. The Bible is an incredible document.

 (that is 40 authors, in 3 languages, on 3 continents, over a span of 1,500 years, no contradictions, one message. )

  […]

 Archaeology does not directly prove the Bible’s inspiration, but it does prove its historical reliability. Middle Eastern archaeological investigations have proven the Bible to be true and unerringly accurate in its historical descriptions. Nelson Glueck, a renowned Jewish archaeologist, states, “No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.

 […]

At this time, the number of archaeological discoveries that relate to the Bible number in the hundreds of thousands. (1996)

 […]

^^ reference

 Jesus fulfilled over 60 prophecy’s in his lifetime, including where he was born and his work at the cross and how he would die etc.

 The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from 200 B.C. to A.D. 68, included a copy of every Old Testament book except for one. Comparison with the texts of a thousand years later shows little or no variation and change between them.

^^ reference

notes on accuracy and some notes on prophecy about Israel here.

 

part 2 will be a list of stuff i can find that proves the bible is not accurate or contradictory  (or trys to at least 😉

 

 

tagzar – cool idea. maby.

tagzar: basically a search engine filtered by meta tags. so you select a tag, or tag group before you search. the problem is that there is not too many tagged sites. would of been a great idea to tie it into del.icio.us. a little unintuitive to start with, but i can defiantly see it being helpful… somewhat. with del, you search for a tag, then check all the listings there, i guess this is just approaching the problem from the other end. this could be one to keep an eye on tho.. maby 😉

the problem of evil.

was having a discussion about the problem of evil last night at blueprint. but i couldnt remember parts. i guess i really need to write stuff down to remember/learn.

 the problem of evil: if God is all powerful and all good and loving, why then is there evil in the world ?

there is a whole bunch of formulations of this argument, but this is the basis of it. ^^

the 4 step response i was trying to remember: (starting from a post-modern position)

“Would you like to see a law prohibiting a person from choosing a morally questionable action? (eg: abortion)”

no.  of course not, for who are they to tell me what is moral or how to act? it is my free choice to make. infact,  even if i agree with the law, it should still by my decision to make.

“so being able to make your own moral choices is a good thing?”

yes

“Would it be fair to say that it’s part of moral freedom to be able to choose either good or evil?”

yes

“Can raw power make it possible to have genuine moral freedom, but no possibility of doing evil?”

no

for moral freedom requires the ability to choose evil. all the power in the universe cannot make a morally free being with only one choice. thus God being all powerful and all loving, must allow the possibility of evil, via moral freedom from freewill.

(read most of this here , in fact it probably edsplains it better than i could ever do.)

—

oh wow, also just found a cool defense.

Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense:

1. 1. Free will is of moral value. That is, a world with free will is better than one without it.
   2. It is a contradiction to say that God brings it about that humans freely will only the good { vs J.S. Findlay who claims that this is possilbe}
   3. God must bring about the best possible world in his capacity.
   4. Therefore, God must create a world with free will.[We believe the word “must” is objectionable here, but the point still stands. Instead read “God is correct to create…” ]
   5. But then God is not responsible for evil (choices), since it is not in his power to bring it about that men freely choose only the good. [note: this assumes that God cannot, and need not, do the logically contradictory. If logic does not apply to God, then there is nothing wrong with asserting the apparent contradiction that God is good and He permits evil to exist. Where there is no logic, there are not any contradictions . . . and anything could be the case!]

the lesser of two evils.

you know when you hear some cool idea or have some medium thought or something, but leave it a couple of days or weeks before writing it down and when you do it comes out weak and un-inspired? yer. this is one of those times.

was totally awesome last week or so. but you know how things are. anyway.

ill record it, so maby some other time or some other person will progress the thought some. (dont let that sound like it was mine btw, im sure i read this somewhere)

say you have a situation when you can do either one of two bad things. the typical lesser of two evils position you would think. what we need to do is apply the half full glass trick. to see this as which would be the greater of two goods. im not saying that these alternatives may have any good in themselves, but relatively, there is a greater good. ie; the lesser evil.

the cool part is that this way it becomes morally right to choose the greater good..

eg: you must either protect human life and lie or hand over the innocent life to be killed. So it is not the lesser of two evils but the greater of two goods, and in this instance morally obligatory.

for a nice example think of rahab and the spies(joshua2:9).

ahh, found where i was reading about this too.

songza

Was reading about songza here, was quite impressed.

from that tho, via some crazy linking i came accross: http://www.musopen.com/ – very cool, public domain classical music store.

two quotes from that site:

There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works and from which he could carry away whatever he needed… – Beethoven

Without music, life would be a mistake.

awesome Christmas presents

having a discussion about sending things overseas. if you send a bag of pineapple lumps to someone, chances are they will milt. especially if you send them to jamica. what if you capatilised on this idea. for example you got an awesome shaped container and filled it with melt’able things. what an awesome gift!! you could even do it locally. although you might need to pre-melt the contence. say, leaving it on the windowsill all day in something weird shaped (or not, as your preference may be). that would certianally take care of the container not being full once its melted problem. how great would a huge pineapple lump be? yum!

Dispensation; of what faith sir?

English is so awesome. Was having part of this conversation recently, on the back of this from qwantz. This crazy word is viewed differently based on your religious beliefs!! so cool.

• Dispensation is the act of distributing goods or services, especially those that are regulated, as in the practice of pharmacists.

• In the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, a dispensation is the act of an authority making an exception to laws, standards, or customs.

• In Buddhism, the Buddha’s dispensation is his teaching.

• In Protestant Christian theology, a dispensation is a distinctive arrangement or period in which the purpose of God is worked out. Dispensationalism though is a specific Christian theological view that teaches specific periods of time called dispensations form the framework through which God relates to mankind.

• In Mormonism, a dispensation is a period of time where one or more men designated as holding the priesthood are responsible for “dispensing the gospel” to people on the earth.

• In the Bahá’í Faith, a dispensation is a period of progressive revelation relating to the major religions of humanity.

(from wiki)

Christianity begins in the new testament.

Gruk lets pursue this here and see where we end up. make a statement and lets discuss it and see were we get. lets make this free’er than the sandbocks ed_rant thread, so divergence is allowed 🙂