egbert

But isn't one of the commandments "Thou shalt not kill"?  Murder is murder, regardless.

 

I have always believed that murder is wrong.  Personally I am a Buddhist.  I was raised by an atheist father and an agnostic mother.  I went to a Church-funded school and even sang in the church choir.  I also happen to be gay.  From the age of 14, I started to pray twice a day every day for about 2 years for God to make me straight. I asked for His help to not be this way, as it was in the Bible as a sin (Lev 18:22) and so he had to help me because I didn't want to sin.  After two years I gave up and came to the conclusion that either:

 

1.  Being gay is not a sin

2.  God doesn't exist

 

Either way, it caused a problem because if the first case was true, then the Bible was flawed, which ultimately led to case number two.

 

I then began looking at other religions and tried some of their practices (including charging batteries with spiritual energy for alien spacecraft to use to increase happiness on the planet  )  When I was 17, I read about an International Buddhist group called the Soka Gakkai and went to a meeting.  The practice involves chanting a mantra and a piece of the Lotus Sutra in ancient Japanese.  I gave it a go and within 30 days I had got a new job that I wanted, and split up with a partner.  I was devastated about the partner, and was told to chant the mantra with these feelings in mind.  I soon began to realise that the partner I was with was completely wrong for me and that I was indeed in a better position without him.

 

I can't explain how the process works, all I know is that through practical experience that it does work.  Other people have noticed the change in me.  Buddhism is not really a religion.  There is no God, Buddha was just a man who was awakened to the true nature of life.  As for arguments about how the universe was created, the Buddhism doesn't have an opinion.  It simply states that life and death are different aspects of being.  I take this to mean that the universe will eventually die and then come back into manifestation again.  It doesn't matter who or what creates that, it just does.

 

Before I go, I'd like to point out that Barabbas, who the Jews freed when given a choice between said Barabbas and Jesus is Aramaic for Son Of God.  Did the Jews release the right person after all?

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Being gay is not what you 'are'.

It's what you 'do'!

 

God gave us the gift of choosing what we do.

It is entirely your decision whether you are gay or not, it is not god's decision. That's all I have to say.

 

 

Edit: or maybe not.

 

I believe that the cmmandment is 'thou shall not murder', or at least that's what I think when I think about it. Murder is maliciously killing someone with harm in mind. A criminal put to death is not usually malicious, unless he is falsely accused and the court is corrupt.

You do realize that doing this would mean that many many people would die.  It would cause more problems than doing nothing.  For instance, lets say a man who owns a business committs adultery, and you kill him.  Now you have destroyed the livelyhood of all those who work for him.  Do they diserve to suffer this way?  Especially if they knew nothing? 

 

Not only that, but remember the witch trials that occured in America.  It is easy to accuse someone of something like that.  Imagine a pair of people who are really good friends, one a man the other a woman.  Now, if someone is angry at them, they can accuse them of sleeping together and possibly have them killed if enough people believe.  Now the entire community has committed murder.  HMmm. I wonder what the penalty for that is....  Now things are even worse. 

 

The extreme punishment thing just doesn't work.  It is even more silly today than it was back in biblical times.

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Alright, many people would die? Well, MILLIONS of unborn babies die each year from people who commit adultery and then abandon the child, and then the mother takes the easy way out and murders the baby.

 

About the business owner? Let's say he also is a mass murderer. Whould he be spared simply because he's the owner of the company. No, that's not fair that some people with more power get more leniance.

 

And why don't the two friends just marry eachother? Problem solved.

However, punishment should only be executed when there can be no doubt in anyone's mind about who is guilty to prevent these 'witch trial' things. You can't easily punish a thing like that, because there is little proof possible to get.

This sounds strange.... if you ever fix it let me know, I had a computer do this to me once, but it fixed itself after a wewk (that was an old 286, though).Just out of curiosity, how do you format a drive with it not loading? Is there an option in the BIOS?

Yeah, they both were written in the old days where programmers used like... Commodore BASIC or binary.About Java? Java is hard. C++ is not quite so hard. I mean...cout vs. system.out.println?cin vs. who the blazes knows how to get input (I used to know but I forgot)?But this ain't about Java.Anyway, I'm almost positive that C was made in binary.It makes sense1. Binary was the fastest.2. They didn't have much availibly back then.3. C/C++ is much better/faster/powerful than all the stuff that they DID have back then. Like... if you wrote C in BASIC, it'd be as slow and unpowerful as basic...

When my website was blocked from my school, I just accessed it via FTP, but you'd have to know the password.

When I was like... eight or nine, my brother showed me how to do basic things... images, links, colors, etc.Then, when I was like 11, I started to learn Javascript and DHTML and all that.

Couldn't people lie about whether they use linux and sign up and mess it up... or does it do a check... and if it does, couldn't everybody get opera and try and fool it?Sounds interesting.... I want to know, in contrast, how many windows and mac user there are worldwide too, does anybody know of a website where this could happen?

Linux is very, very confusing. If something breaks, you have to really know it well to fix it. However, Linux is better than windows in these ways:1. Much less buggy.2. Easier to install some things.3. There are HOARDS of FREE GAMES and FREE OTHER SOFTWARE for it... openoffice (pretty much like microsoft office only free) if a good example. Windows is a HUGE memory hogger, and linux probably works faster and more efficiently.BUTAs I said, it's more confusing and it isn't for everyone. plus, lot's of common software (especially computer games) aren't compatible with linux and you have to use a windows emulator, and that spells disaster.

Even without the bible it's obvious homosexuality it
1. Immoral
2. Gross
3. Evil

The bible makes it crystal clear. Anyway, I think when Jesus came he did away with some of the old customs and rules... like people can eat unclean food (pigs, oysters) now, and maybe shaving a beard is included in that too?

christians who really are homosexual can't do anything about it ofcourse, but they can't have sex i think...

I don't really understand what that meant butthey certainly can do something about it: stop.

I haven't really seen anything like that, but I do remember this one song that I heard once that has all these wonderful descriptions of this car dates '64... and that's old now...

what language do you prefer in creating/developing games?

 

i'm just starting to programm and i'm using c++ 

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Hey me too!

 

Except I'm not really starting.. I've used other programming languages but haven't really done anything with them.

 

Good luck learning c++... I'm having a bit of trouble, but no matter.

Lev 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with [another] man's wife, [even he] that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. I certainly agree with this. Adultery is1. Immoral2. Evil (ok that's kind of the same...)l3. Not in anyone's best interest.Lets say the guy goes with the girl and gets her pregnant... then he abandons her, leaving her to fend for herself to raise the child. BUT, it doesn't stop there. Some people won't bother trying to raise the child nd so they MURDER it instead via abortion. This is obviously not in anybody's best interest.It's so much better if both are punished severely, even put to death. Then:1. We can prevent it from happening again.2. People will think twice before doing it... and not do it.3. There will be less murders via abortion.About the seriousness? I think my religious beliefs are serious and not just some joke. It's good to have fun and be happy and have fellowship, though.

There's Well of Souls... I forget the url though.

nmsite/
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Just a few text-based games that came to mind.
Careful in nightmist, though. Everyone there is a backstabbing fiend... you have to eb to survive.

I don't think it's something somebody can really teach you. Sure you can learn to use the programs, but you kind of have to figure out for yourself what looks good and what doesn't.

Here's my code:

#!/usr/bin/perl#print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";print "Howdy, world!";

I saved it in my cgi-bin with 777 permissions and It goes;

Internal Server ErrorThe server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@supper.astahost.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.


Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.33 Server at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Port 80

I'm probably doing something really dumb... tell me what it is?

hmm, the 1st one says 'thou shalt not have other gods before me..or make graven images'...moral and in everyones best interest?  Tell that to those persecuted for believing differently through the years, as it is this passage (among others) that was used for justification.

 

Or, 'thou shalt not take the lords name in vain'.  Frankly, this is at most annoying to people.  Not #2 material for a list of 10 things you shouldn't do in life.  At least its better than #1.

 

Then there is #3, 'Keep the Sabbath.....'  Also, not really dealing with morality.  Though perhaps everyone's best interest, since we all need a break.  It seems a bit of a strange way of saying that though (though, honestly, it does say other things as well, but the following comment applies to those as well).  Why not say 'take a break once a week, to be with others and enjoy community'  Much more to the point.  In fact, a lot of this stuff could be much more to the point, and a lot less 'Rawr! GOD! RAWR!. 

 

As for the others, they are pretty generic.  I don't think you need a diety to know that its not nice, polite, or moral to kill another person.  I have never believed, but that always struck me as sort of obvious.  Same for, the 'don't steal' and 'don't lie' and 'don't commit adultery' type of things.

Why should you believe that holy book/religion over any other?  Because you were raised with it? Fine, but that only counts till you are say...18, at which point you should learn to think for yourself.  If you have other, more compelling reasons, that would be nice (not saying you don't, just that I can't tell from your post and it strikes me as unlikely.  I could be wrong). 

 

There are many holy books, and many prophets, and many religions. Most of them say similar things. 

 

The point is, you shouldn't start with saying something is true and then looking for something to disprove it (especially when most religions make claims that simply are outside the realm of proof/disproof).  You should demand that a religion prove itself not only better than the others, but in some definitive way.

 

To simplify:  A lot of whats in religions probably strikes you as BS, and vice versa. I think its long past time to create a BS test and make em all pass.

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Firstly, about the no other gods before me.

Let's say some fake priest comes and had an altar, and everybody worshipped it, and he said that his 'god' said "give my priest a million dollars", and the people would do it because of their religious belief. Not good.

 

And, anybody persecuted using this as justification was not done so rightly. The commandment did not say, "torture anyone who disobeys this".

 

And thou shalt not take the lord's name in vain? If you do, he becomes nothing more than a joke, and you begin to ignore Him and laugh at him. This is not good.

 

Remember the sabbath? Yes, it is in everyone's best interest. And people should have a 'holy day' to keep them on track. The morality of this is to keep people from working all day and makign themselves tired and unhealthy.

1Cr 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

See here.

 

Rawr god RAWR?

 

Psa 111:10 The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do [his commandments]: his praise endureth for ever.

You think we don't really need to be told the other commandments? Apparently, some people do. There are peopel committing adultery left and right. You'll see tons of murder in Palestine.

 

Yes I shouldn't be looking for something to disprove it, I just wanted to fill up my post.

 

About the other religions? I have no problem with Islam or Judaism or Buddhism.

Islam is fine. It makes sense to me except that I don't believe in the violent conversion of people to Islam when they conquer everything. Jesus seems like a more godly guy than Mohammed to me. I have not read the Quran so I shouldn't judge it really.

Buddha seems like a guy who's smart enough. He goes along and comes with this interesting theory about how you should behave. I disagree with it at some points, but I think it's pretty moral.

 

BUT, I liek christianity better than them all because, like I said, everything is says is:

 

Moral,

Good for Everyone overall,

Sensible,

 

I can't find anything to disagree with.

So, I don't find many other religions to be all BS, I just think they are incorrect on some points.

 

I'm not--shall we say--- the best at defending my religious beliefs, so forgive me is there are any flaws.

I vote for perl. For me, perl was easier to learn than php for some odd reason.HEre are my reasons for likeing perl.1. Knowing perl is a lot more impressive ;-).2. Perl has a camel.3. It makes sense to me.

Hey thanks! I never knew this. Very useful!Time to get some people to link to my page ;-).

I hate web browsers. You have to make it compatible with all of them and that's a pain. Imho IE is easier for writing, but it has more bugs. I think everybody should just have to use the same source to make it easier for everybody. And who cares about one stinky bug in firefox. Firefox is obviously coded much better and has less bugs. It's not even really a bug!!!

Ok, I'll change my background. My left menu actually has an 'ice' pattern if you look at it.

http://forums.xisto.com/ Great Story of the Penguin/Fish Wars.Ok...1. Would you come back to this website to check for more updates in the plot and new features?2. How did you like the choice of colors and layout.3. How do you think I could improve it.4. Was the plot entertaining?Keep in mind that it is intended for 12-16 year olds.

I believe that god created the world, that he sent his son to save us, and that he'll come again. (everything the bible says).Why?Because nothing has ever been done that convinces me that it is not true. The values that are held by this seem to be the best and the most beneficial for everyone. The Ten Commandments are a good example, I think they are moral and are in everyone's best interests. Everything seems to makes sense, too. Many other religions (like ancient native american) seem to have a story of 'the great flood'. This fits in with noah's ark, which all our ancestors sprouted from, so naturally all people would remember and record this. I believe it is historically accurate as well. Everything fits in.This is why I believe what I do.

It depends on what type it would be. If it was first-person, I would definitely play and love it. It you saw yourself walking around, but the camera stays with your and you can view from different angles, i'd give it a try. If it was like, a view from above, I'd play it if the gameplay was very good.I might suggest starting over every two months or so... that way no-one can get SOOOO far ahead that nobody else even stands a chance of becoming the best.

Yes, I've seen screenshots. I plan on buying this as soon at the price goes down. (to only $35). The screenshots are AMAZING! I tell you. I play a game called runescape, and It's kind of fun except it gets really old and there isn't enough to provide a constant source of amazement and fun.