seebs

CARM is a crappy site anyway, they bear false witness frequently enough that you can't trust 'em.

I agree that some key theological sources are essentially impossible to get free online. I am not so sure about the snide remarks about college, which strike me as unedifying.

Thief of Time

I find I agree with Bible John (In a more general sense). The internet is a good way to acquire basic knowledge, but its success in finding specifics and details that you'd need for any sort of serious research is sporadic at best.

Wayne Delia

No argument here; that's a big reason why he got clobbered in the debate with Pervy.

WMD

Wayne Delia

You're still wandering way off the path. I suggested Google not for an immediate answer to in-depth Bible questions, but rather as a means for determining the pop culture information (the "Trading Spouses" episodes) you claimed you had never heard of. Since you're so far off script, I'll flush the rest of your wild goose chase.

As usual, you'd be as wrong as a turtle fucking a rock. I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Clarkson College of Technology, magna cum laude, with a double major in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Vocal Music Performance (cross-registered at Crane School of Music at State University of New York at Potsdam) in 1979. While at Crane, I performed under Sarah Caldwell, Robert Shaw, and Aaron Copland. I stayed at Clarkson and was awarded my graduate MBA degree in Management of Information Systems one year later, while singing with the Crane Chorus in the opening, closing, and medal award ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. As I've mentioned, I've been the Delta Iota chapter advisor for Phi Kappa Sigma social fraternity at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY since 1998, and during the school year, I'm on campus at least once a week. In fact, it's been so long since I last stepped on the Marist campus... let's see (checks watch), it's been five hours since I left the campus after tonight's business meeting.

Meanwhile, gagster and I have been having an honest discussion about whether your reading skills are surpassed by my son, who is in seventh grade in junior high school, since you missed the point of my post regarding your bigotry against handicapped people.

What's happened here is obvious. You're again mimicking Gastrich's style of snide remarks against anyone who does not completely agree with you, but you're way overmatched. You've degraded into mindless and arbitrary Bible quote-mining, random proselytizing, and flat-out evasion. Here's a pretty good example:

When can I expect my five bucks?

WMD

Wayne Delia

Actually, that's pretty much my position: I recommended Google for him to find out the basic information on the "Trading Spouses" reality TV show episodes featuring the Christian fundamentalist meltdown which he indicated he had never heard of. Nothing to do a doctoral dissertation on, necessarily, just some basic info to bring him up to speed on why his recent posts resembled the rants in those episodes.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Let's see here... None of the three verses you quote-mined have anything to do with the first question at all, which asked you to identify a specific insult against Gastrich. And it appears you tried to answer the question "Why do you feel it necessary to quote the Bible?" by simply and irrelevantly quoting the Bible.

Have you ever wondered why it is you're so wound up as tight as a mainspring lately? This style of canned response might have something to do with it. We're familiar with the Bible, so a simple chapter:verse reference will do fine. What you need to do is explain how what you quote-mined is relevant to the question you were asked.

WMD

Wayne Delia

There's always trouble with the way Paul tried to express himself in that verse. It's self-contradictory. The problem is that invisible things can't be seen, but Paul asserts that they have been clearly seen. The atheist parody of that argument involves a hypothetical deity construct, the "Invisible Pink Unicorn." We know by logic that She is invisible, because we can't see Her. But we also know by faith that She is pink. Therefore, She exists. It is admittedly a joke, not taken seriously by atheists or theists, but the line of reasoning is the same used by Paul in Romans 1:20. Christians take Paul's argument seriously, since God gets excused from the "invisible qualities clearly seen" problem with sleight-of-hand and a special pleading logical fallacy.

Here, Paul is not referring to atheists, but rather apparently to wicked theists. Atheists generally withhold belief in gods of any kind, so for Paul to claim about atheists "they knew God" would either be a lie or a really fundamental mistake. Take my word for it - I'm not a theist, and have no plans to convert to theism, even if you took up my prayer challenge in a previous post. What makes you think that verse applies to me? I understand your feelings are hurt about defaulting on the debate and then getting slaughtered here in the Peanut Gallery thread, but your hurt feelings don't exactly translate to "wickedness" on the part of anybody else.

I noticed you were already taken to task in reference to the final clause of Matthew 5:22, in which Jesus says that anyone who says "You fool" is subject to the fires of hell. Why would Paul be exempt from that instruction? (For that matter, why is Jesus Himself exempt?) That's a very common Biblical contradiction, and the typical apologist resolution involves the special pleading fallacy of exempting the rule-maker from obeying the rules, while the rule-maker condemns anyone else who does not obey the rules to hell. It's the classic "Do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy.

WMD

Wayne Delia

I guess you fancy-pants college-educated boys have never heard of the Gutenberg Project, at http://www.gutenberg.org, have you? It's an online library of e-books, about 17,000 volumes, all of which have expired copyrights in the United States. They actually have replaced the information verbatim online, for each of those books, which are still available for purchase in bound print. 17,000 volumes is not much, but all I need is one counter-example to refute your claim that no book would ever be replaced by an online replica. If what you meant by "replace" was "Now that the e-book is online, we must go out and destroy all extant print versions of the book," that'd be stupid. (That's not what you meant, was it?)

Are you sure you understood the challenge correctly? You were asked to prove that there are fewer online references than there are references in actual print. You provided two examples of books which may not be online. You've got a long way to go. I've shown that the Gutenberg Project has 17,000 volumes online, so as it stands right now, the score is 17,000 to 2, and you're on the short end. A better way would be for you to provide a reference of a reliable estimate, as accurate as possible, as to how much literature is available on the Web vs. how much is available in print. Mentioning only two examples falls way short of the mark. This might be a clue about why you got severely trounced in the recent debate.

WMD

Wayne Delia

I'm not sure if this comment was made already, but did you actually take a look at Google's business partners in this project? It's not the number of libraries, but rather the number of volumes that determines the scope of the project. The related page lists five major libraries as partners. The second one, at the University of Michigan, asserts that even at the rate of digitizing five thousand volumes per year, it would take more than a millennium to digitize the entire library (unassisted by Google's resources). The math is simple: that's more than five million volumes. What would be the point of including all inventory from libraries containing volumes already found at the University of Michigan? It would result in complete (or nearly complete) duplication. That's why the number of libraries isn't the deciding factor, but rather the number of volumes.

WMD

Illandur

To save space from now on, you can just post book, chapter and verse. If you'd like, you can also give us the version from which you would prefer us to read. It would give you more room to actually answer what we are asking of you.

I see you, like many others, have a preference for the KJV. I've always leaned more towards those that include the Apocrypha.