Re: Theological issues
You fail above to take into account the fallen and marred, even sinful, nature of both humanity, and thus of this world in this present age, which makes your points above concerning overpopulation and war valid and inevitable.Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis
Re: Theological issues
You fail above to take into account the fallen and marred, even sinful, nature of both humanity, and thus of this world in this present age, which makes your points above concerning overpopulation and war valid and inevitable.
Re: Theological issues
Dear Titus,
Do you really mean what I think you're saying?
I'd like to paraphrase and expand what you're saying. I don't want
to put words in your mouth, so if I'm wrong by all means say so.
What I hear you saying is the following:
Genesis 3:17 says: "And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened
to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I
commanded thee, that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy
work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy
life."
You're saying that a manifestation of this punishment is that God
created the earth so that population would grow faster than available
food, so that there would have to be genocidal wars.
Once you go that far, then you have to conclude that war is a duty,
because there's only enough food for so many people, and you want
your religion's people to get as much as possible.
The belief that wars are a duty to God is not exactly a new thing;
it's something that motivated the Catholics from the Crusades to the
Spanish Armada, and it's something that motivates the Islamic
extremists today.
However, this view is not very popular these days in the general
public, and also not among some members of this forum.
So do I have that right?
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Re: Theological issues
Dear Titus,
Do you really mean what I think you're saying?
I'd like to paraphrase and expand what you're saying. I don't want
to put words in your mouth, so if I'm wrong by all means say so.
What I hear you saying is the following:
Genesis 3:17 says: "And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened
to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I
commanded thee, that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy
work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy
life."
You're saying that a manifestation of this punishment is that God
created the earth so that population would grow faster than available
food, so that there would have to be genocidal wars.
Once you go that far, then you have to conclude that war is a duty,
because there's only enough food for so many people, and you want
your religion's people to get as much as possible.
The belief that wars are a duty to God is not exactly a new thing;
it's something that motivated the Catholics from the Crusades to the
Spanish Armada, and it's something that motivates the Islamic
extremists today.
However, this view is not very popular these days in the general
public, and also not among some members of this forum.
So do I have that right?
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
That's funny, J. J. Xenakis. I was under the impression that a lot of people around this forum are waiting with breathless anticipation for America to find itself the target of a (successful) genocidal jihad.
Not to mention:Rick Hirst wrote:
Titus Sabinus Parthicus wrote:
One other point to ponder: given that the United States does not figure hardly at all in End Times Prophecy
Oh really? In my reading, the U.S. is central to the prophecy. From a previous post of mine, reprinted here for your convenience:
From Revelation 18, KJV:
2 And [the angel] cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
If Revelation is to be taken at all literally, the "Babylon" of the above quote refers to an entity whose influence controls and corrupts all other institutions on the earth. To equate "Babylon" with the UN or the EU or anything other than the United States is to wilfully ignore one of the central messages of Revelation.
"It may be that our destiny in this Crisis is to be the foil against which the world struggles to build a new world, to go down in sacrifice for the benefit of mankind." -Brian Rush, May 14, 2003
That's funny, J. J. Xenakis. I was under the impression that a lot of people around this forum are waiting with breathless anticipation for America to find itself the target of a (successful) genocidal jihad.
Not to mention:Rick Hirst wrote:
Titus Sabinus Parthicus wrote:
One other point to ponder: given that the United States does not figure hardly at all in End Times Prophecy
Oh really? In my reading, the U.S. is central to the prophecy. From a previous post of mine, reprinted here for your convenience:
From Revelation 18, KJV:
2 And [the angel] cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
If Revelation is to be taken at all literally, the "Babylon" of the above quote refers to an entity whose influence controls and corrupts all other institutions on the earth. To equate "Babylon" with the UN or the EU or anything other than the United States is to wilfully ignore one of the central messages of Revelation.
"It may be that our destiny in this Crisis is to be the foil against which the world struggles to build a new world, to go down in sacrifice for the benefit of mankind." -Brian Rush, May 14, 2003
A willful misreading and a straw-man attack, as usual. You brought up the role of the US in the End-Times battle against Israel, and I equated the US with Babylon. In other words, the US will be the head of the "coalition of the willing" that attacks Israel. The US and its allies will once again be the instigators of a genocidal jihad, not its target -- only this time it will not be successful.
As for breathless anticipation, I am well aware that it will be my own children who will die for America's insane fantasies of Manifest Destiny. I am hardly looking forward to it; but I also know that there is nothing I can do to stop it. It has been prophesied, and who am I to argue with Scripture?
A willful misreading and a straw-man attack, as usual. You brought up the role of the US in the End-Times battle against Israel, and I equated the US with Babylon. In other words, the US will be the head of the "coalition of the willing" that attacks Israel. The US and its allies will once again be the instigators of a genocidal jihad, not its target -- only this time it will not be successful.
As for breathless anticipation, I am well aware that it will be my own children who will die for America's insane fantasies of Manifest Destiny. I am hardly looking forward to it; but I also know that there is nothing I can do to stop it. It has been prophesied, and who am I to argue with Scripture?
Re: Theological issues
Dear Titus,
OK, OK, please forgive and ignore my ill-advised reference to other
people in the forum, whose intent was simply to illustrate the
breadth of support for what I believe to be a commonly held belief.
What about the rest of what I wrote. Am I accurately representing
your views?
JohnDo you really mean what I think you're saying?
I'd like to paraphrase and expand what you're saying. I don't
want to put words in your mouth, so if I'm wrong by all means say
so. What I hear you saying is the following:
Genesis 3:17 says: "And to Adam he said: Because thou hast
hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree,
whereof I commanded thee, that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is
the earth in thy work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof
all the days of thy life."
You're saying that a manifestation of this punishment is that God
created the earth so that population would grow faster than
available food, so that there would have to be genocidal wars.
Once you go that far, then you have to conclude that war is a
duty, because there's only enough food for so many people, and you
want your religion's people to get as much as possible.
The belief that wars are a duty to God is not exactly a new
thing; it's something that motivated the Catholics from the
Crusades to the Spanish Armada, and it's something that motivates
the Islamic extremists today.
So do I have that right?
Re: Theological issues
Dear Titus,
OK, OK, please forgive and ignore my ill-advised reference to other
people in the forum, whose intent was simply to illustrate the
breadth of support for what I believe to be a commonly held belief.
What about the rest of what I wrote. Am I accurately representing
your views?
JohnDo you really mean what I think you're saying?
I'd like to paraphrase and expand what you're saying. I don't
want to put words in your mouth, so if I'm wrong by all means say
so. What I hear you saying is the following:
Genesis 3:17 says: "And to Adam he said: Because thou hast
hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree,
whereof I commanded thee, that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is
the earth in thy work: with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof
all the days of thy life."
You're saying that a manifestation of this punishment is that God
created the earth so that population would grow faster than
available food, so that there would have to be genocidal wars.
Once you go that far, then you have to conclude that war is a
duty, because there's only enough food for so many people, and you
want your religion's people to get as much as possible.
The belief that wars are a duty to God is not exactly a new
thing; it's something that motivated the Catholics from the
Crusades to the Spanish Armada, and it's something that motivates
the Islamic extremists today.
So do I have that right?
Re: Some random observations
Dear Rick,
Thanks again for pointing this site out to me. The following are
some general comments.
I checked out some of the articles that the site links to, and most
of them are broken links, but one of them was "Does the Top-Down
Approach or the Bottom-Up Approach Best Model the Human Brain?", by
James Matthews, at
http://www.generation5.org/content/1999/topdown.asp . This is a good
summary of the problems with the top-down approach as you were
previously describing them.
However, I still find it strange that this is presented as an
"either-or," as if only one approach or the other can be used. I
believe that as computers become more powerful, the top-down approach
will be used to initialize the Intelligent Computer (IC), and the
bottom-up approach will be used to expand and refine the rule set.
The interesting thing about the site is its use in collecting "common
sense" facts. I downloaded the sample file, which contains common
sense facts like the following:
> A lawn is a place outside where grass grows
> Ants are social insects
> George washington was the first president of the united states
> Stegosaurus was a plant-eating dinosaur that had armored plates
> along its back
> A foot is a unit of measurement that is equal to twelve inches
> A rock is a stone
> Asteroids are tiny planets that mostly orbit between mars and
> jupiter
> A recipe is a set of instructions for making a type of food
> Swimming, fencing, water polo, ultimate frsibee, soccer, and
> football are all sports.
I have mixed emotions about the usefulness of this set of "common
sense" facts; I suspect that the Oxford English Dictionary, which
contains both definitions and examples, is better. On the other
hand, there's no reason why both can't be used.
Another interesting paper was, "Prospects for in-depth story
understanding by computer," by Erik T. Mueller, at
http://www.media.mit.edu/~mueller/papers/storyund.html .
This paper starts with the following paragraphs from a newspaper:
> A 61-year old furniture salesman was pushed down the shaft of a
> freight elevator yesterday in his downtown Brooklyn store by two
> robbers while a third attempted to crush him with the elevator car
> because they were dissatisfied with the $1,200 they had forced him
> to give them.
> The buffer springs at the bottom of the shaft prevented the car
> from crushing the salesman, John J. Hug, after he was pushed from
> the first floor to the basement. The car stopped about 12 inches
> above him as he flattened himself at the bottom of the pit.
and proceeds to despair of ever teaching a computer natural language
processing, because no computer could ever understand the above
story.
But that's like saying you'll never be able to teach arithmetic to a
third grader because he would never be able to solve differential
equations.
A computer could indeed learn natural language processing by starting
with "See Spot! See Spot run!", and moving forward with first grade,
second grade, third grade, etc., level texts. Even if the IC never
got past the 8th grade reading level, it would be sufficiently
intelligent by ordinary human standards. This is the "bottom-up"
approach that you described, but with a "top-down" head start.
James Matthews, author of the first article above, says, "Now, I
believe that natural language processing will be one of the last (if
not THE last) field of Artificial Intelligence to fully mature." That
may be true, but only because there are so few other candidates.
Still, that's why the Singularity will occur in 2030 rather than in
2005.
The Mueller paper contains another interesting tidbit. The IC will
have two brains, an A-brain and a B-brain. The A-brain does all the
work of trying to reason and figure out what to do next, and the
B-brain does nothing but watch the A-brain and keep it out of
trouble.
Here are some of the B-brain rules:
> If A seems disordered and confused, B inhibits that activity.
> If A keeps repeating itself, B makes A stop and do something
> else.
> If A does something that B considers good, then B makes A
> remember it.
One other issue that occurs to me is that the IC is going to have
function corresponding to human sleep. The purpose of IC sleep is to
give the processor an opportunity to rearrange its rules so that the
most important ones are most easily accessible. Perhaps the B-brain
does this.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Re: Some random observations
Dear Rick,
Thanks again for pointing this site out to me. The following are
some general comments.
I checked out some of the articles that the site links to, and most
of them are broken links, but one of them was "Does the Top-Down
Approach or the Bottom-Up Approach Best Model the Human Brain?", by
James Matthews, at
http://www.generation5.org/content/1999/topdown.asp . This is a good
summary of the problems with the top-down approach as you were
previously describing them.
However, I still find it strange that this is presented as an
"either-or," as if only one approach or the other can be used. I
believe that as computers become more powerful, the top-down approach
will be used to initialize the Intelligent Computer (IC), and the
bottom-up approach will be used to expand and refine the rule set.
The interesting thing about the site is its use in collecting "common
sense" facts. I downloaded the sample file, which contains common
sense facts like the following:
> A lawn is a place outside where grass grows
> Ants are social insects
> George washington was the first president of the united states
> Stegosaurus was a plant-eating dinosaur that had armored plates
> along its back
> A foot is a unit of measurement that is equal to twelve inches
> A rock is a stone
> Asteroids are tiny planets that mostly orbit between mars and
> jupiter
> A recipe is a set of instructions for making a type of food
> Swimming, fencing, water polo, ultimate frsibee, soccer, and
> football are all sports.
I have mixed emotions about the usefulness of this set of "common
sense" facts; I suspect that the Oxford English Dictionary, which
contains both definitions and examples, is better. On the other
hand, there's no reason why both can't be used.
Another interesting paper was, "Prospects for in-depth story
understanding by computer," by Erik T. Mueller, at
http://www.media.mit.edu/~mueller/papers/storyund.html .
This paper starts with the following paragraphs from a newspaper:
> A 61-year old furniture salesman was pushed down the shaft of a
> freight elevator yesterday in his downtown Brooklyn store by two
> robbers while a third attempted to crush him with the elevator car
> because they were dissatisfied with the $1,200 they had forced him
> to give them.
> The buffer springs at the bottom of the shaft prevented the car
> from crushing the salesman, John J. Hug, after he was pushed from
> the first floor to the basement. The car stopped about 12 inches
> above him as he flattened himself at the bottom of the pit.
and proceeds to despair of ever teaching a computer natural language
processing, because no computer could ever understand the above
story.
But that's like saying you'll never be able to teach arithmetic to a
third grader because he would never be able to solve differential
equations.
A computer could indeed learn natural language processing by starting
with "See Spot! See Spot run!", and moving forward with first grade,
second grade, third grade, etc., level texts. Even if the IC never
got past the 8th grade reading level, it would be sufficiently
intelligent by ordinary human standards. This is the "bottom-up"
approach that you described, but with a "top-down" head start.
James Matthews, author of the first article above, says, "Now, I
believe that natural language processing will be one of the last (if
not THE last) field of Artificial Intelligence to fully mature." That
may be true, but only because there are so few other candidates.
Still, that's why the Singularity will occur in 2030 rather than in
2005.
The Mueller paper contains another interesting tidbit. The IC will
have two brains, an A-brain and a B-brain. The A-brain does all the
work of trying to reason and figure out what to do next, and the
B-brain does nothing but watch the A-brain and keep it out of
trouble.
Here are some of the B-brain rules:
> If A seems disordered and confused, B inhibits that activity.
> If A keeps repeating itself, B makes A stop and do something
> else.
> If A does something that B considers good, then B makes A
> remember it.
One other issue that occurs to me is that the IC is going to have
function corresponding to human sleep. The purpose of IC sleep is to
give the processor an opportunity to rearrange its rules so that the
most important ones are most easily accessible. Perhaps the B-brain
does this.
Sincerely,
John
John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Re: Some random observations
The reason for the "either-or" attitude is that the two directions are currently so far apart, efforts on the one approach don't translate very well to the other. Thus, researchers have to make a decision on where to spend their efforts; since the "bottom-up" approach provides incremental improvements to existing capabilities, it is far easier to, well, monetize.
On the other hand, here is an article from my favorite tech insider about a "top-down" technology that is now market-ready due to Moore's Law. The article talks about MeaningMaster, a hand-crafted "semantic web" database very similar to what you have envisioned. It contains about 70,000 word meanings, and it is now possible to implement as a "deep" search engine only because of the exponential growth of computing power. So who knows? Maybe the "bottom-up" approaches have captured all the headlines, but a "top-down" approach is hiding just below the surface. (Somehow I can't help but think of SkyNet when I type that... :? )
Re: Some random observations
The reason for the "either-or" attitude is that the two directions are currently so far apart, efforts on the one approach don't translate very well to the other. Thus, researchers have to make a decision on where to spend their efforts; since the "bottom-up" approach provides incremental improvements to existing capabilities, it is far easier to, well, monetize.
On the other hand, here is an article from my favorite tech insider about a "top-down" technology that is now market-ready due to Moore's Law. The article talks about MeaningMaster, a hand-crafted "semantic web" database very similar to what you have envisioned. It contains about 70,000 word meanings, and it is now possible to implement as a "deep" search engine only because of the exponential growth of computing power. So who knows? Maybe the "bottom-up" approaches have captured all the headlines, but a "top-down" approach is hiding just below the surface. (Somehow I can't help but think of SkyNet when I type that... :? )
John J.
To blame the mess the world is in on God can be dealt with in the following manner:
To start with, God said, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds if the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Gen. 1:28.) This can be plainly seen as God granting humanity possessory title to the Earth.
Unfortunately, in Genesis 3, you will find the sequence of events whereby humanity signed over said title to Satan, by heeding his so-called advice instead of God's Will. This is corroborated in Matt. 4: 8 - 10; "Again the devil took Him to a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, saying, 'All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.' Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the LORD your God, and serve Him only.'" Now, if Satan had not had clear possessory title to the Earth, Jesus would have rebuked him for offering what wasn't his to offer. Also, Satan is referred to repeatedly in the New Testament as the (false) god of this world.
Given that Satan has said title, for the duration of this age, and both his nature and humanity's, about the only way you can still blame God is for giving us free will - which He had to do if we were to truly love and fellowship with Him, because compulsory love isn't love at all. Thus, He had to take the chance that we would listen instead to His enemy (and ours, as well!). And we did, with truly lamentable results. Christ's death and resurrection is the provision which God made to pry out of Satan's grasp the souls of any who accept Christ as LORD and Savior (without violating His own Law in the process), and also to set in motion the means whereby He will eventually make all things right and new again.
It could also be interpreted as God granting stewardship of the earth to humanity, rather than ownership.
Um -- Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. I don't see any direct evidence that Satan took over "ownership" at that point. Perhaps you could elaborate.Unfortunately, in Genesis 3, you will find the sequence of events whereby humanity signed over said title to Satan, by heeding his so-called advice instead of God's Will.
Satan could have been lying. Imagine that. :shock:This is corroborated in Matt. 4: 8 - 10; "Again the devil took Him to a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, saying, 'All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.' Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the LORD your God, and serve Him only.'" Now, if Satan had not had clear possessory title to the Earth, Jesus would have rebuked him for offering what wasn't his to offer.
Still doesn't give Satan ownership.Also, Satan is referred to repeatedly in the New Testament as the (false) god of this world.
You could just as easily say that humanity is failing in the stewardship of the earth that God gave in the first place. Which I actually believe is true to a pretty fair extent. btw.
And Jesus, knowing (being) the Truth, would have immediately called him on that lie. Imagine that. :wink:Satan could have been lying. Imagine that. :shock:
We've been here before
UTOPIAN ENDS
?The Militants Seek to Destroy the West so They Can Impose a Global Islamic State?
False.
Islamic militants' main objective is not conquest, but to beat
back what they perceive as an aggressive West that is supposedly trying to
complete the project begun during the Crusades and colonial periods of denigrating, dividing, and humiliating Islam.
The militants' secondary goal is the establishment
of the caliphate, or single Islamic state, in the lands roughly corresponding
to the furthest extent of the Islamic empire of the late first and early second
centuries. Today, this state would encompass the Middle East, the Maghreb (North
Africa bordering the Mediterranean), Andalusia in southern Spain, Central Asia,
parts of the Balkans, and possibly some Islamic territories in the Far East.
Precisely how this utopian caliphate would function is vague. The militants
believe that if all Muslims act according to a literal interpretation of the
Islamic holy texts, an almost mystical transformation to a just and perfect
society will follow.
PROGRESSIVE MEANS
Think Again: Al Qaeda?The Militants Reject Modern Ideas in Favor of Traditional Muslim Theology?
No. Although Islamic hard-liners long to return to an idealized seventh-century
existence, they have little compunction about embracing the tools that modernity
provides. Their purported medievalism has not deterred militants from effectively
using the Internet and videocassettes to mobilize the faithful.
At the ideological level, prominent thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Maududi have borrowed heavily from the organizational tactics of secular leftist
and anarchist revolutionaries. Their concept of the vanguard is influenced
by Leninist theory. Qutb's most important work, Ma'alim fi'l-tariq (Milestones),
reads in part like an Islamicized Communist Manifesto.A commonly used Arabic
word in the names of militant groups is Hizb (as in Lebanon's Hizb Allah, or
Hezbollah), which means ?party??another modern concept.
In fact, the militants often couch their grievances in Third-Worldist terms familiar to any contemporary antiglobalization activist. One recent document purporting to come from bin Laden berates the United States for failing to ratify the Kyoto agreement on climate change. Egyptian militant leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has decried multinational companies as a major evil. Mohammed Atta,
one of the September 11 hijackers, once told a friend how angered he was by
a world economic system that meant Egyptian farmers grew cash crops such as
strawberries for the West while the country's own people could barely afford
bread. In all these cases, the militants are framing modern political concerns,
including social justice, within a mythic and religious narrative. They do
not reject modernization per se, but they resent their failure to benefit from
that modernization.
Also, within the context of Islamic observance, these new Sunni militants
are not considered traditionalists, but radical reformers, because they reject
the authority of the established clergy and demand the right to interpret doctrine
themselves, despite a general lack of academic credentials on the part of leading figures such as bin Laden or Zawahiri.
By Mr. Jason Burke in the May/June number of Foreign Policy :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:
United States as the 'Babylon' of Revelations?
There is one problem I have found in a rereading of Revelations Chapter 18 with the idea of the United States being the 'Babylon' referred to in said chapter. The chapter repeats over and over again that large numbers of people around the world will be plunged into tearful mourning when 'Babylon' is suddenly and swiftly destroyed without trace. Based in part on what I have seen these past 35 years, and in part on what Left-wingers have made abundantly clear to me over the same time period, I cannot think of a LESS likely worldwide response to news of America's utter destruction. Rather, the worldwide response I would expect to such an event would be joyous jubilation and celebrating. (Except amongst some of the few American survivors, that is.)
Re: United States as the 'Babylon' of Revelations?
The destruction of said city in said chapter is a symbolic destruction of the curse God imposed upon Mankind in Genesis. The curse is work:Babylon is merely the symbolic representation of Mankind seeking to overcome this curse while still under the curse. Of course the more recent utopian schemes of Communism and Fascism are clearly attempts to destroy the curse God imposed. But in a very real sense Babylon of said chapter is actually Captialism meeting it's demise as a utopian scheme. The odd paradox at work is that any leftist of recent stripe would be cheering this destruction, but still unable to comprehend why God would do so.
- Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Utopian schemes are not wrong in and of themselves. They can go wrong in many ways, too. But the first and foremost cause of their demise is ignoring, or just outright denying that Mankind will always remain under the curse until God Himself destroys it (and as Paul wrote, "the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both").
Re: United States as the 'Babylon' of Revelations?
As the chapter says, the people who will mourn for the fall of Babylon will be those who have profited from her corrupt (and corrupting) economic influence. For example, how do you think China would react to the sudden loss of the US as a trading partner?
Who are these mysterious Left-Wingers whose motivations and desires you purport to understand so well? What an interesting crowd you run with.
I perceive that the hated Left-Winger is the person you see in the mirror every morning, and you are driven by your self-loathing to post here in a sort of virtual self-flagellation. See, isn't it fun to pretend to know other people's thoughts? Hey, if Gore Vidal and Fawn Brodie can do it, so can I!
Re: United States as the 'Babylon' of Revelations?
Oh, of course, it's symbolic. How terribly convenient.
This is the main problem I have with Darby's intellectual descendants: despite the designation of "Biblical literalism", milleniarist exegeses typical lack any sort of rigor or consistency. The result is a complete lack of falsifiability; that is, there is absolutely no way to determine if a particular statement is wrong. Now, I am certainly willing to accept that it may be difficult (if not impossible) to obtain Truth; but any philosophy which claims to provide any sort of enlightenment should at least be capable of identifying Error.
Yet we often see that End-Time prophets resort to the same device as tabloid psychics; that is, when any of the few specific predictions they make fail to materialize, they simply pretend the predictions were never made, and hope that nobody calls them on their inconsistencies. Fortunately, we have easily accessible archives. Here is a short list of some failed (or soon-to-be-failed) End-Time predictions.
You may respond that your belief is a matter of faith, and so it is; but of course, this the typical mushy Blue Zone cultural relativism you seem so fond of attacking. But perhaps I am being disingenuous, and using the same sort of straw-man response I find so tedious in your posts.
So, here is your chance to convince me of the error of my ways, and of the superiority of your way of thinking. Give me a single, falsifiable, actionable statement of your faith, and I will act on it. That is, describe a specific action that would be the Right action to take if your belief is correct, and the Wrong action to take if your belief is incorrect, and I will take that action and report here on the results.
The same offer extends to Titus or anybody else that's interested.
There's one catch: you have to be willing to accept the same challenge from me. So, are you ready to "put up or shut up"?
Re: United States as the 'Babylon' of Revelations?
That doesn't mean that "Babylon" it isn't a real place at all. Terribly convenient? On the contrary, you completely missed the more important point of my post.Oh, of course, it's symbolic. How terribly convenient.
My lips are sealed.There's one catch: you have to be willing to accept the same challenge from me. So, are you ready to "put up or shut up"?
Re: United States as the 'Babylon' of Revelations?
I'm not sure which point you're referring to. That mankind is fallen? That every utopian scheme is bound to fail? I probably agree with both of those statements, but the point of my post is that you haven't even given me any way to determine whether I do agree with you. Those statements aren't actionable; they provide no indication as to how to translate those beliefs into action. Therefore, they are essentially irrelevant. If I were to suddenly stop (or start) believing as you do, how would I change my life? What would I do differently than today? I ask in all sincerity.That doesn't mean that "Babylon" it isn't a real place at all. Terribly convenient? On the contrary, you completely missed the more important point of my post.Oh, of course, it's symbolic. How terribly convenient.
Here's a biblical example (Acts 2, KJV): on the day of Pentecost, as the "men of every nation" heard the miracles and the preaching of Peter, they felt the need for change ("they were pricked in their heart") and asked Peter, "what shall we do?" For this, Peter had an immediate, actionable response: "be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ." Then he specifically indicates how their lives will change: "ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Sure enough, those who accepted did change their lives dramatically: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." (Hey, sounds pretty communist utopian to me!)
I ask you for the same actionable statement, and you refuse to respond. I could mock you for that apparent cowardice, but actually I just feel sorry for you, because it appears that you have not yet learned how to integrate your faith into your daily life. That's unfortunate, and I hope that some day you learn how to act on your faith. "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." (James 2:17-18.)
More on the bottom-up approach: DNA computer could fight cancer. Microscopic, highly specialized devices that use DNA as a computing mechanism can be injected into the body to deliver precisely targeted drug doses. This is yet another advance gained by mimicking existing biological processes. Nature is a highly effective laboratory, with processes optimized over billions of years.
Oh, and Small Is Beautiful.
