Can the FBI turn on the web cams of linux users?

[josipva]

Why is there so much talk about christian mythology in this topic ?

[MartinN]

Why is there so much talk about christian mythology in this topic ?

Because people love their sin.

By the way, how exactly do you know Jesus Christ is a myth or that any of what is in the Bible isn't real? Just because you can gather agreement with others, doesn't make it untrue.

[josipva]

How exactly do you know Muhammed, Allah, Thor, Zeus, Manitou or whatever is a myth and Yahweh is not ?

[MartinN]

How exactly do you know Muhammed, Allah, Thor, Zeus, Manitou or whatever is a myth and Yahweh is not ?

If you're asking if I was there to witness it, no I wasn't - and neither were the nearly 3 billion Christians today in person to witness the resurrected Christ. You get absolute, unmistakable knowledge of Christ when you surrender to Him.

The question most people have is - why should I surrender to Christ? My life is just fine without him - then they turn back and dive right into their sin... pride.... greed... lust.... anger....gluttony.... envy.... laziness.... These map into specific realities when they take form... popular among geeks would be enjoyment of pornography.... for instance, tagged along by masturbation. Some are married and cheat on their spouses.... Others are obese...

When you sin long enough, it becomes normal, and then we become resigned and desensitized to it to the point of being angry and defensive (skeptical, intellectual, whoring for agreement/admiration, etc,, is part of this too), just like you and a whole lot of others here are who would much rather enjoy their sin until death, and go straight to hell than turn away from it and enjoy eternal life with God, by accepting Christ's payment for sin, His atonement for all of humanity, by faith and repentance.

So if it looks like your life is "just fine" without surrendering to God (i.e. radical transformation of your identity/behavior)... that's something to ponder on (or not).

THAT is how you will find out whether Christ is a myth or not. And of course, you can try and overcome sin by surrendering to Muhammed, Allah (a moon god, nothing to do with God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), "Thor" (heheheheheh!), Zeus, Manitou (good one, didn't think of the native indians ).... or you can just create your own version of god... like the homosexuals did when they created the Queen James Bible . Heck, if I don't like the rules - I'm just gonna rewrite them!

[josipva]

If you're asking if I was there to witness it, no I wasn't

No, I'm not asking if you were a witness. I'm drawing a parallel with other religions. Just like you think your god is this and that, other people in other cultures think the same. Do you really think you would be christian if you were born in muslim family or maybe a hindu one ? Pretty much all religions stem from lack of knowledge and fear of unknown by our ancestors. There is absolutely no reason in taking old books written by cavemen seriously. When any religion brings visible, measurable, tangible and proven facts about their god, then and only then will there be any reason to acknowledge "divine truth". As it stands now, its just a story, like those from Hans Christian Andersen's books.

Anyway, if you want more parallels, look at correlation between educated people and religious percentages among them, or maybe compare strongly religious countries and their economic/scientific contributions with more atheistic/agnostic countries like most of advanced countries in europe. USA is pretty much only country in the world that is both largely populated with religious people and in good economic/scientific state (although that is also going downhill).

Being a scientist in any natural science like physics, chemistry, biology or being an engineer requires a way of thinking which strongly opposes religious mind.

[MartinN]

Being a scientist in any natural science like physics, chemistry, biology or being an engineer requires a way of thinking which strongly opposes religious mind.

Really? My experience has been exactly the opposite of yours - some of the most brilliant people I have met with Ph.D's in computer science or biology or chemistry profess faith in Jesus Christ. They also do not have an active sin life like yours.

Who is right - you or me?

[josipva]

They also do not have an active sin life like yours.

Hahaha, now thats, a good one. Can I ask how did you draw that conclusion? Other than being non believer, how do I have a sinful life ? Anyway, good job on ignoring my previous statements and catching on the easiest one that can be "defended" with "hearsay".

Some interesting reading for you..

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein (just from the top of my head)? I guess they were just sinners and they wanted to avoid responsibility.

P.S. I know there was a study which showed super low amount of top scientists are religious (something like 7-8%), however I cant find it now and I'm going to bed (living in Europe). Feel free to make a logical and reasonable argument and I'l try to respond when I can.

[deanjo]

P.S. I know there was a study which showed super low amount of top scientists are religious (something like 7-8%), however I cant find it now and I'm going to bed (living in Europe). Feel free to make a logical and reasonable argument and I'l try to respond when I can.

And yet nearly every scientist will tell you that a lack of evidence is not proof of non existence. At one time, it was nearly taken as scientific fact that the sun revolved around the earth and the earth is flat. Every bit of science starts out as a theory, often without a shred of tangible proof with the hopes that someday they may be proven right within our limited understanding of how things work.

[dee.]

The NSA has no juristiction in my country so I doubt that.

It will not prevent the NSA from spying on you though.

But on airports you're already subjected to a total comb through and sometimes even anal probes so whats new there? I'm a frequent flyer so I could almost say that I get probed every tuesday, luckily not anally

Hey, if you like anal probing, that's fine with me. I don't judge.

So what you're saying that your love letter to person x is so important and confidential that when your loved one dies in a terrorist bombing which was initiated by an e-mail conversation with the local sleeper cell, one that could be prevented simply by monitoring that traffic, you say oh well. At least nobody ever siphoned my love letter automatically for keywords. Tough luck, you can always find a new lover right? No biggie.

Oh yeah and get this, tomorrow you could open the door and go outside and a meteorite might hit you on the head and kill you on the spot. It could happen!

Are you going to live the rest of your life inside an underground bunker to protect yourself from meteorites?

Oh, and don't ever go into traffic. The chances of dying in a car accident are orders of magnitude higher than the chances of dying by terrorists. By your logic, we should ban all cars!

For that matter, the monitoring of all communication isn't going to prevent terrorism. It is going to destroy privacy though, and you might want to read up on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

And yes, let's talk about love letters. There are people who live in countries where they would literally get tortured and killed if their neighbours found out who they send their love letters to. Where they have no protection of law. You may not care about your privacy (or claim not to), but to some people it's absolutely a necessity. Some people need privacy just to stay safe. And it has nothing to do with being a criminal or a bad person.

The traffic screening can REALLY save a Boeing 747 worth of peoples lives.

No, it can't and will not. Terrorists can use encryption like anyone else. All that NSA spying is not going to prevent the real terrorist strikes. You know, the ones where innocent human beings get slaughtered by unmanned aircrafts, with no trial, no justice, no chance to complain to anyone - just 24/7 living in fear, knowing that any time, they can blast you from the sky with missiles, even if you haven't done anything wrong, and there's nothing you can do... how's that for terrorism? The people in Yemen, Pakistan etc. are really living in terror, they're terrified of the USA drone strikes.

Want to compare numbers? The amount of innocent people that get slaughtered by USA's remote control war toys is many times higher than the amount of people who have died in any "terrorist strikes."

The whole idea that you can protect people by taking their basic human rights away is absurd in the first place. That's just not how the world works and it will never be. Sadly there are always misguided fools who think it might...

[dee.]

If you're asking if I was there to witness it, no I wasn't - and neither were the nearly 3 billion Christians today in person to witness the resurrected Christ. You get absolute, unmistakable knowledge of Christ when you surrender to Him.

I used to convince myself that the things I imagined were true, too. Then I started thinking critically about my own thoughts and beliefs.

Nowdays, I just find the actual facts and science to be infinitely more fascinating. Someone wrote a story 2000 years ago, and yeah, it's a nice story but then, so is Lord of the Rings and I'm not going around preaching people to accept Gandalf to their hearts...

Is there a being or entity in existence we could understand as a "god"? Maybe, who knows, but as long as that being doesn't directly influence us in a way that we can objectively observe and quantify, it doesn't really matter all that much to begin with. The universe is huge, sometimes it just blows my mind how amazingly vast the universe is - we're just an insignificant footnote in the grand scale of the universe. I think it is just really arrogant to assume that some people, just 2000 years ago, living in mudhuts on this insignificant flyspeck of a planet, somehow just stumbled on all the answers about our universe... it's just absurd if you really think about it.