dangerdan

Here is a rough outline of the structure of the Bible; Now the first thing you may notice is that it starts and ends with the same two steps; nothingness followed by the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is symbolic that the start and end should be the same point, that the story should go 'full circle'. In Revelation 22:13 God says The structure of the Bible goes beyond this though, the story peaks with Christ's redemption on the cross, but look at the steps that preceded and proceeded this pinnacle. Christ revealed - in human flesh and Holy spirit - is symbolic of the Holy Trinity (a phrase not mentioned in the Bible) as represented by the Father (God's redemption), the Son (Jesus in human flesh) and the Holy Spirit (Jesus following his ascension). This mirrored, chiastic, literary structure of the Bible is something I find particularly interesting though I am not religious.

Here is a rough outline of the structure of the Bible; Earth without form - the abyss (Gen. 1:1) Creation (Gen. 1, 2) The fall from God's image (Gen. 3) Death begins, a Redeemer is promised (Gen. 3:15) Call to Abraham - a people chosen (Gen. 12) God's people in slavery; escape to the wilderness (Ex.) Restoration of knowledge about God's plan � His law (Ex.) Christ introduced in the sanctuary system (Lev.) God's people in captivity for unfaithfulness (Ezek., Dan. and others) Christ revealed in human flesh (Gospels) Heaven's greatest gift � redemption through the cross! Christ revealed through the Holy Spirit (Acts) Medieval persecution; church in the wilderness (Rev. 12, 13) Restoration of lost truth � the Reformation (Rev. 12) Christ seen in the heavenly sanctuary � Judgment message (Rev. 14) God's people threatened; forbidden to buy or sell; endurance (Rev. 13; 14:12) Call of the mighty angel; Elijah, Appeal to God's people to come out (Rev. 18) Resurrection of the righteous to immortal life (1 Thess. 4) Restoration; incorruptible bodies; like Christ's glorious body (1 Cor. 15) Earth desolate for 1000 years; Satan in the abyss (Rev. 20) Creation of new heavens and new earth (Rev. 21) Now the first thing you may notice is that it starts and ends with the same two steps; nothingness followed by the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is symbolic that the start and end should be the same point, that the story should go 'full circle'. In Revelation 22:13 God says "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." The structure of the Bible goes beyond this though, the story peaks with Christ's redemption on the cross, but look at the steps that preceded and proceeded this pinnacle. Christ revealed - in human flesh and Holy spirit - is symbolic of the Holy Trinity (a phrase not mentioned in the Bible) as represented by the Father (God's redemption), the Son (Jesus in human flesh) and the Holy Spirit (Jesus following his ascension). This mirrored, chiastic, literary structure of the Bible is something I find particularly interesting though I am not religious.

I really think that there may be something in the conspiracy theories regarding 9/11 and in particular the attack on the Pentagon.The images simply do not show any sign of a plane or damage consistent with a plane hitting the Pentagon. To me it looks like a missile hit the Pentagon, is it not coincidental that the President was completely safe on the other side of the building at the time.You hear stories of people being told not to fly on the day, being told to avoid the WTC, the US Secretary of Defense released documents regarding terrorism with the header featuring a plane flying into the twin towers.I would recommend anyone who wants to know more about this watch a documentary called 'Loose Change' by the end you'll be absolutely convinced it was the American Government behind the whole thing but please, take it with a pinch of salt.

The public should not be able to keep firearms, simple as. I know American's speak of the "right to bear arms" but I think this is absolutely ridiculous, this is how micro arms races begin and people get killed. It is simply undeniable that guns kill people and therefore our streets are safer if nobody is carrying a gun than if everyone is carrying one.The argument for carrying a gun as a form of self defence is also self defeating. You wouldn't need that protection if nobody else had a weapon.

In considering free speech regarding the holocaust you are talking about a very marginal, unique occurrence in history that can still be a touchy subject to many, I would say it is up there with drawing a likeness of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) in terms of its taboo. In general I would advocate freedom of speech to the fullest, except where it could be construed as inciting racial hated. In my opinion it is undeniable that anyone who denies the holocaust is doing so as a direct insult to the Jewish people.

I find the results of this poll quite disturbing. 35% of people don't think homosexuality is acceptable? Is that really the world we live in?I'm not gay but I am convinced that it is not a choice and to discriminate against homosexuals is as unacceptable as discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or age - all of which I think are unacceptable. It is simply not morally justifiable, regardless of whether or not you agree with homosexuality.I think non acceptance of homosexuality fundamental stems from religion. It is probably the only issue on which the American Bible Belt and the Islamic world agree and I just think its unacceptable.

Ok, Ok, where to start. Firstly, to dispel the myth that either communism or FME actually exist. People often cite the USSR as the communist superpower and therefore associate it to with the losses of freedom and other events that occurred there. There is no country in the world (yup, not even you Americans) that have a FME, you will always have Government Intervention of some kind. But the nationalisation of banks, helping struggling car manufacturers and a national wage are all forms of Government intervention. Thus, both are just theories. Communism is significantly harder to achieve and it is for this reason that I believe FME is a better policy. However, the self-regulated financial market has recently imploded and the FM has forsaken us all, or its part of the empirical cyclical nature of GDP known as the business cycle. I believe the laws of supply and demand are a better way of running an economy than a planned economy based around a "X year plan".

If you want to get technical about it Miles then the following statement is completely false;"England is not Britain, it is merely a part of it, along with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland."If you check your passport it will say "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". So firstly, Britain is simply England, Wales and Scotland actually. Northern Ireland is indeed part of the UK but nor Britain.And I'm sure the people from the Republic of Ireland (or Eire, or Southern Ireland) would be outraged to hear you ignore their sovereignty in such a way, ESPECIALLY in a topic you specifically start to dispel the myths!!!Secondly, anyone that thinks we use the Euro has been living under a rock all of their life and clearly never seen any news or information about exchange rates...ever. The £ is one of the absolute standard currencies along with the USD and Euro in monitoring the ForEx (foreign exchange market).You perpetuated one myth and spoke of one I've never heard of!

I'm English so who cares what I think. But Maxfelgar they are discussing the possibility of Hilary Clinton running and becoming president and she is, of course, a democrat not a republican. George Bush has tarnished the reputation of the republicans so I doubt they will get in next. I think your all a bit cynical about business leaders being policymakers.But yeah, definitely possible that America could break another social landmark and elect their first female president. Can you imagine the reaction of an Islamic republic to a female president though?

I don't think it happened. The moon has more like 1/10th of the gravity of the earth and has relatively little atmosphere, plus no wind. The flag clearly appears to be blowing in a wind.I bet regardless China say they find proof it was faked. And in my view it probably was!

media inducing things. peston. and freedom of press. fundamental to democracy It is undeniable that the media can induce a problem simply by printing it enough. I do not think this is more true than of a recession. If people hear everyday that we are in a recession what is their natural reaction? Of course it is to spend less money, thus further inducing the problem. I'll take a casing point from my own country, the UK. The BBC business editor, Robert Peston, writes a blog and in one such blog he predicted the imminent closure of one Britain's banks - Northern Rock. The following day there were hundreds of people queuing outside hundreds of metres out of branches to withdraw all their money and close there accounts. Some commentators say that Peston caused the panic and frenzy that made Northern Rocks already troubling cash flow situation even more pressing and eventually the government had to guarantee everyone's money. On the other hand, the freedom of the press is an absolutely fundamental part of a democracy. Without freedom of press it is almost impossible for meaningful public discourse to occur and for there to be any form of recall against a government. Democracy's ability to leave the dissenting voice without having to silence the critics is one of its most appealing qualities.

Firstly, I think it is fundamentally problematic to talk about "drug legalisation" on the whole. In our increasingly technological age of never-ending drugs made in laboratories means that you can not simply advocate drug legalisation. Each drug must be considered individually. I'm from the UK where tobacco and alcohol are both legal. On the whole other drugs are legal, other than say prescription drugs, caffeine etc. I judge alcohol and tobacco both to be acceptable as legal drugs and by the standard I would passionately argue that marijuana should be legal. A simple comparison of alcohol and marijuana proves a damning indictment of alcohol. Alcohol is cited as being the cause of a lot of violence in city centres at weekends (could argue other drugs, but its unlikely to marijuana). From my experience, people who smoke marijuana, as oppose to drink alcohol, are more peaceful, less aggressive and quieter. I think there is a similar argument here with magic mushrooms. I think that by the standard of alcohol, marijuana and magic mushrooms should be legal. Now obviously there are implementation problems but I won't go into those. I don't really think there are cases for the legalisation of any other drugs, the closest would probably be ecstacy (or MDMA) though I think more research would needed into the long term health risk of regular use. I do not think there is any case for the legalisation of highly addictive drugs like cocaine or heroin, or for seriously mind altering drugs like LSD or ketamine.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." - Ghandi The famous pacifist essentialises the point for me. I do not think applying the death penalty is ever morally justifiable as a form of social justice. I think life in prison should be used, and meant, in cases that some would argue deserves the death penalty. Ultimately however I feel that prison is used all too frequently when other methods could be used that would be more successful in rehabilitating and preventing repeat offenders. But that's just my two cents...

Can you explain what the poem is supposed to be about? Without meaning to cause offence, you just seem to be stringing "intelligent" sounding words together in an acrostic poem. And do not get me wrong it is not that I don't understand the words you have used, just the manner you string them together in. I just get a general dark feeling...

It breaks the torrent down into hundreds and hundreds of different pieces all of which you can download from any other user in any order. I think this is how it differs to standard P2P technology.I discovered torrents a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. They beat most P2P technology as well because you can see all the files that the torrent contains before you download it, and you can check/uncheck individuals to download or not.

I don't think the measures you suggest are feasible (I realise you presented them in such a way) but you say that people reporting is "all we can do" about terrorist activity and child porn.If what we're doing at the moment is "all we can do" then I think its a sad state of affairs. Governments are able to censor any websites they want (The Great "Firewall" of China) so why can they not put more of a stop to child porn or online terrorist materials, instructions videos etc.I think the internet will, unfortunately, get a lot more regulated over the coming years.

It's so much better than youtube. You can queue music, save playlists its all in a real neat interface. A must have for any music fan in my opinion.

In his speech in Cairo recently President Obama said that the US would no longer tolerate illegal Israeli settlements in legitimate Palestinian land. I think the Israeli/American love affair is well and truly over and I think, one way or another, Obama will resolve the situation in the long term.You wonder to what extent the UN thought the creation of Israel would "solve everything" and to what extent they knew it was only going to create a new problem where previously there wasn't one.

Yeah Eugenics is a fairly disturbing field. The Nazi experimented with stuff like this as well as human vivisection which is sickening. Vivisection is a surgery carried out without anaesthesia while the subject it still alive.I do not think that government's should forcibly sterilize anyone, however, as the previous poster said there is definitely a problem. I do not really advocate the use of a "One Child Policy" as it is a direct breach of civil liberties in my opinion.Lets just remember that the American government did this a VERY long time ago when the issue wasn't fully understood.

The ?3, 125 is what I, as a British student at a British Uni (not strictly true, but...I won't) but I pay that little because my LEA (Local Education Authority, in my case Solihull) HEAVILY subsidise the rest for me. International students pay between 10-20k per year based on what I've heard but I'm not entirely sure.Now to open this debate a little wider and talk about the general inaccessiblity of University education. Universities remain heavily dominated by students from high income families and despite this there is talk in the media to INCREASE tuition fees. To me this seems absolutely ridiculous and counter-productive to achieving the economic aims of our government.University is generally funded by a student loan but I am not sure if international students can apply for them! They are split into two parts the tuition fees I already mentioned and the other part is the 'maintenance' loan which is essentially to live off.

The increasingly global phenomena of the internet is anarchic, without frontier and unpoliced. The US government shut down a company Pricewert who, they claim, hosted "child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing-related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other web-based scams" for other customers. Fair play to the government, right? But that isn't the full story - Pricewert is a registered company in Belize but most of it's employees are thought to be in Eastern Europe. Full story available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8084726.stm I don't want to become too bogged down in this particular example because it is just that, an example. The wider point is that the people BEHIND hosting all this illegal content will probably never be brought to justice because of the numerous problems regarding proof of identity on the internet as well as the issue of anonymity. The fact that the internet is so user and content driven is, in my opinion, both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. This may sound like an oversimplified dichotomy but; a 'good' user will come up with innovative content or infrastructures, whereas a 'bad' user will host illegal content or come up with one of these web scams. Ultimately, I think that the users will always stay one step ahead of "the internet police" ( a term I coin jokingly). How, in your opinion, will the regulation of the internet take shape in years to come? And how effectively can we ever hope to 'police' the internet.

Haha, the Wii remote was revolutionary, 100% undoubtedly. You can not deny that the wii mote was ultimately the inspiration for the plethora of interactive gaming peripherals that was on show at this years E3. It included an interactive glove design for computing gaming to replace the keyboard, where touching the thumb to specific parts of the hand is the equivilient of pressing a certain button on the keyboard. Obviously there is the 360s full upper body motion controller. I also saw an adaptor that allows you to use a wii mote and nunchuk to play computer games, looked pretty sweet to be honest.

Yeah definitely "your mom" is the most meaningless, base insult in the school playground, its up their with the neo-classic "gay". I'm a teenager (only until December ) but I do think they get a bit of a raw deal, especially in the media (this may be more true of my native UK but I'd be interested to hear!). People forget that these are not just problems with THIS generation of teenagers. Teenage pregnancy is nothing new, its just in the media more. Knife crime is falling, but the media give it more coverage.I think the media are very much to blame for this negative stereotype of society that unfortunately some to play up to, perhaps because they do not know how else to act.

I'm in the formative stages of building a website. I'm looking to make a 728 x 90 leaderboard banner to go across the top. I want the banner to have a "decorative" border around the edges.Firstly I can't decide whether to only put them across the two 90pixel 'widths', in opposing corners or all the way around.The second, more pressing issue, is how to do this? Make my own border? Or sample one from the web? what program would you recommend for doing this in? recommendations other than photoshop would greatly be appreciated!

No need for apologies yordan! You just gave this topic an epistemological slant! Epistemology is the study of knowledge and truth and in particular how we can say for sure that anything is true. There are essentially two types of knowledge according to epistemology a priori and a posteriori. A posteriori is knowledge that is known by experience. Example our knowledge and assertion that the sun will rise tomorrow is rooted in the empirical evidence that it has done on every day that has preceeded it. A priori is knowledge that is known independently of experience and is therefore said to be more 'reliable'. The key issue here is that any concept of Jesus or belief in him is only based on empiricism that says he exists and would therefore be a posteriori knowledge. It is the extent to which you trust this type of knowledge that determines faith. (I just about have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow...)