I want to know...

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That is not my point, the point is that people talk about things they don't understand everyday, you probably do it, I probably do it, if it happens it happens. I'n completely fine with your ideas and yours do make sense to me, I think you're just projecting. I know loads of people that don't hide things i'm deffinitly not doing it, I just feel like I can't fit all of my personality into the site, lol, might sound arrogant but that's the way I see it. "Those people" You mean the Heros? What you like them because they're dead? Haha

Considering that divine beings do not have asses I think it might be hard but one of the perks of being divine is not needing to crap anymore.

ni-hil-ism (ni-lizm, ne-)n. 1. Philosophy. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Certainly they are not the same but depression can lead to semi-nihilistic moods, I am not saying that depressed people are necessarily nihilists or that nihilists are depressed but the rejection of conventionality can be caused by small depression. Most people would not question existence like a nihilist would. However, it is not like nihilism as a school of thought really appeals to me anyway so I would probably not bother representing it too well anyway. If I am representing something then I need to make sure that my claims are accurate, if I cannot make sure that they are accurate then I should not make any claim about the thing in question, I can make hypotheses and such but I would have to make sure that these are known by all sides to be hypotheses and not facts. I can of course debate anything I wanted to but you wanted something explained and explanations require facts. If we were debating something and I had some logic that I could add in there then I would do so. I would prefer not to leave this where I would have to be refuted and refrain from making unsupported claims about a system that I am not an expert on and that I have no experience relating to; I have never been to heaven or hell and cannot dare to describe their natures but I could attempt to describe the nature of an economic system or a political system in a manner that would support my claim so long as I practiced logic in doing so.

Righteousness is not something for all, there is nothing preventing everyone from going to heaven but it probably is not likely.

Right, the thing is that unsupported claims are to be avoided, if you assume then you make an ass out of u and me, I know, that is way overused but it gets my point across. Of course it happens but if I am trying to explain something I need to make sure that my explanation is right, if we are debating something then more errors are acceptable. There is a difference between the 2, this thread started because you wanted explanations, it now has more debate characteristics. I was just making a comment based on how you said you only showed the good parts which is what the fictional person jess2782 does as well, I was also just messing around too because of the nature of the comparison. Who can fit all of their personality into that site, it is stupid to even try because by the nature of a personality it is greater than any site, personality is a massive part of who you are as a person and really that can only truly be assessed by meeting somebody. Really though, you have too much junk on your site to begin with, you put down everything that you even consider doing, it is to the point of being pathetic, I mean you even bother writing down that you like "talking about talking", that is way too much, it is not supposed to be some info, not your entire personality. I mean, I only put a fraction of my personality on my page and a small one at that, back when I used to have a xanga it was a much larger reflection of who I was but even then it came nowhere close to being my entirety. Actually liking those people because they are dead is a lot more socially acceptable than what I am talking about, for many of those people that is the most socially acceptable reason to like them. No what I am talking about is that some of those people had power, great power, they can change the world in their image and only very few people would dare oppose them. If you have power then you are less likely to be somebody's pawn.

Well you know you have to try everything at least once. Pfff vampires don't need to crap either and they're pretty damn powerful too (Depending on which source you consult).



You got that out of a dictionary, that doesn't mean you understand it. But you weren't ever representing anything, even an expert can't say they're representing Chrisianity if they aren't Christian themselves. You don't ever have to back out of a debate just because you don't know enough, just make it clear that you really don't know all there is to know about it. "Facts" aren't everything, just what you know is fine, and i'll remember that the source isn't completely viable. Most people haven't ever been to Heaven or Hell but still believe in God, your own view is just as good as any infomation a real Christian can give. A political system is different to Religious one because the Religious system can change without any real reason, that's why opinions are important, they aren't really any "Facts" about the right way to see the Bible, just different peoples opinions.




Then some people were born to go to Hell, again that seems petty and stupid. (That isn't your fault and i'm not attacking your point of view)



Well to me i'm still getting explainations, but maybe you don't see it that way. There are people that can fit their whole personality into a site believe me, they're very boring, other people might not see it that way but they're probably just like them. The whole fact that I have alot of stuff on my site is a joke in itself, in fact some of the "Infomation" on the site is completely BS. It's kind of a joke on people that exagerate things too much, but to tell the truth I try to show as much sides of myself as possible because I want a vareity of friends, and not have them all being alike. The more sides I show the more likely someone I might like will stop by and introduce themselves, if it's pathetic and I am truly representing myself then I will eventually find someone who appreciates the fact it is pathetic and maybe find it funny or something but really as I said I was just being absured in my profile on purpose. Emphisis on the "Had" part they might have controled more people than anybody else, but in the end they were still human, they were being controled by their own lust for power, so they weren't really powerful, I like them because of the fact that they could get there, not many people can do that, but the truth is they were being controled by their own desires.

Vampires are corporeal and are created from living people who had asses in their last life. Ghosts might not have asses and God probably wouldn't even bother having an actual physical ass. I mean, why have an ass if you didn't need one. Besides, why try something new if you could know what it felt like without actually trying it.


Well, explaining means that that my answers offer a representation of the thing in question, therefore because I was trying representing. I was not a representative which is a part of another definition of the word but by trying to portray the religion I was trying to represent what it was and therefore had some responsibility for what I gave, I may not have done well in my task though but I did try. This started off as an explanation, I was not trying to debate I was trying to explain, the two things are very different and arise as a result of different contexts. Debates try to persuade people to a point of view, I was trying to explain one but I knew that you would not really be persuaded. The only debate elements came about when we disagreed on terms and such. Facts are of great importance and all things fall down to the facts, when it comes down to truth facts are everything for they are the indisputable truth. My own view on the Christian God and his nature is inferior by its nature to that of a true follower and scholar of that religion, the more of my views that I instill into what I portray the more polluted my portrayal is. If this was not relating to a specific religion then giving my views as more than hypotheses would be appropriate but I wasn't. A political system is more flexible than a religious system, political systems have risen and fallen in the time that Christianity has lived and entire systems have warped beyond recognition in the time that Christianity still held on rather firmly to some of its truths. Religious systems do not randomly change, it is the political systems that do as such as political parties fight and battle and interpretations of documents change, the United States is radically different now than it was 100 years ago but Christianity and other religions changed less than the political systems in existence. An opinion that is not backed by the evidence is not a valid one, but rather a delusion, it would be better that neither of us wax delusional.


It depends on what you look at. There are theories of divine determinism and then there are people who reject that. The puritans and such believed that some people were born to go to hell, that they were damned to sin in their lives and suffer for such sins. Of course others disagree and say that sin is a choice and always have been in which case the idea that some were born to go to Hell is wrong because nobody was born to do anything they just made choices.


An opinion is not an explanation, explanations are based upon fact. Opinions do not define what exists the facts do and as such opinions cannot truly be explanations. Only individuals with very few aspects to their minds could actually fit their entire personality on a site, they would be a rarity though and pretty odd. Ahh, now I see a reason, it was just not readily apparent. I really do not bother with that kind of stuff partially because I do not really want to be bothered by all sorts of random people, heck, even with my bare bones profile I still get people like "horny hanna" and stuff like that, I just ignore those people. All people are human and yes they were power, they will no more "controlled" than I am right now for I am possessed of a lust for internet entertainment, yet it is still my choices that guide me there. All people are possessed by their desires and their desires are part of themselves, so therefore because they are controlled by themselves and they have power they are powerful. The only people that aren't controlled by their own desires are slaves and even then we could still make some arguments that they are controlled by their desire to limit their pain or to live. No person is not controlled by desire except for the braindead who are hardly people anyway.

That's not true depending on what source you consult though, for example the series of books Whitley Strieber's vampire series was centred around a race of creatures that were considered vampires but were never human, they were born vampires so the point is that it depends on who you talk to, anyway I was messing around from the start I never thought I could actually stick it up his arse, it was just an expresion of my contempt for him i've been saying things like that years like "One day i'll kill God and then i'll be God". You should try reading over some of what you write, this is a joke (lol, not literally), I mean, we're debating about the fact that you can't stick a pine cone up God's arse, that's pretty silly to me.



I didn't say that but you were still explaining things to me with your opinions as i've already said earlier on in the post. Prove it. We're odd though aren't we? I mean by deffinition we are different from the majority of people, anyway I like odd people. Well how many things are readily apparent? I mean people think i'm arrogant just because I have trouble talking to them, and sometimes stupid for pretty much the same reason, the truth is very little is ever what it seems. Haha but then why go on there? I mean it's just like one profile I came across asked "Some people make out like they hate the world but why come on here if they do? I hate those people" or something like that. Yeah but those people are just looking for more people to add most likely, I never get people like that because I don't add them, I have rules for who can add me like they have to be interested in at least some of the things I am or be interesting to talk to in some other way, if they ask me I always go to their profile and read about them to see if they're interesting, so now I only have people that I like talking to and if I haven't it's because they missed my message or something. These people made it more important than it should have been though, I mean it blinded them to other things, like with Hitler, he didn't think about the people wich was a big mistake which led to his down fall so his own lust for power ruined him. I don't think so, there's almost always an exception.

What I said is true based upon the legends and dictionary definition of vampires.

vam-pire (vampir)n. 1. A reanimated corpse that is believed to rise from the grave at night to suck the blood of sleeping people.

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Authors can say whatever about said creatures but what they say is as valid as what a hobo off of the street says so therefore the interpretation of such words must fall back upon what they meant historically and what they meant in a dictionary. Your author is not a credible source on vampires, not saying that I am the best but dictionaries can be considered trustworthy enough to use. Yeah, I know that this was not that serious of a conversation but still, that does not mean that we still cannot debate the pinecone thing. It wouldn't be the craziest thing I have done.

Of course it was warped by my point of view, I never said that it was perfectly accurate but still I tried. I only tried because nobody else seemed to be trying, if someone who was better suited for the job started posting I would have backed off bowing down to their superior ability for this.
truth (trooth)n.pl. truths (troothz, trooths). 1. Conformity to fact or actuality. 2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Perhaps we do not have absolute knowledge but that does not preclude the existence of truth only that we may not be able to fully know everything. However, we do have data and information. Certainly one can claim all sorts of crazy things like I have claimed in the past that China has no people in it, however, there is an absolute truth for the number of people living in China. I never have claimed that we could know everything about existence we could be living in the Matrix, or all of the things that I face could be figments of my own imagination, I have argued with somebody else in the past that they did not exist and that was a very interesting conversation.

In a conversation about the beliefs in a group it is best to find the mean or median tendencies of that population and then base your information given upon a confidence interval(forget the term) that includes a large percent of believers, maybe even doing different groupings for the different faiths, you are right given a population the size of christianity there is likely to be people that deviate from the mean to a point where they are similar to what I necessarily believe, however, the number of people is so small that it is hardly worth mentioning as it does not shed light onto the greater population of Christianity very well.

What I said is not "just as good" because it may not reflect the widely held belief very well and what I think is not what the thread was founded on, it was founded on the beliefs of a group. A true follower is one that truly believes in the texts, there are many groups of people that could be considered as such and really it could comprise anyone who has read the texts and believes that they are true, someone who truly follows those beliefs. Of course it can broken up into sects and if those sects claim to be part of a greater group they have to hold the same tenets to be true as the greater group. Christians are defined as followers of the Christ of the Bible.

Considering that religions tend to be based on their respective religious texts it is not as easy as politics as any conclusion that people come to must be based upon a rigid text that can only be interpreted not changed. New religions can form as you say but they tend to be weak, temporary, and inconsequential in the scheme of things and usually they are defined as cults anyway. Settled religions do not change very much at all, they may have some revolutions but even those are tame compared to the changes that politics undergoes. A religion changes less than a political system.

Well, if there was no such thing as popular music then it would be a false opinion, you have given an opinion on nothing and a delusion. If you had the opinion that you were a giant space monster that would also be a delusion as once again that has no factual basis. However, going back to your example, if popular music was very boring to you then your dislike of popular music as being boring would be true at least when it comes to you but if you secretly liked the music yet still held the opinion you would be under a delusion because you actually aren't bored by it but believe it is boring for you. However, you could come to the conclusion that x race is inferior, that would most likely be a delusion as such opinion is not backed by anything.
I never claimed that any person was born to go to hell, I even claimed the opposite that every person that currently exists could theoretically go to heaven and that it was based upon their choices. I did claim it was unlikely that they could all go but still the choice exists and the freedom to do whatever with life exists.


I was trying to avoid using my opinions to some extent and if I knew that something was not supported then I would claim that it was a hypothesis. Some of the ideas that I stated were similar to things that I have heard or seen from other Christians, however, most Christians deal with the nature of salvation possibly because that is what people think of most. I suppose that my statement was not necessarily absolutely true but if I assume that my experiences with people are an SRS and take note that I have met many people with different personalities, some more boring than others, and yet have never met a person so boring that they would be able to put their entire personality on a single webpage I can assume from my experiences that even though people who could do so do exist they are not a majority and most likely very rare, I of course do not have absolute truth as I have never taken a census of the population but I have something that can function as a model for being true until there is enough evidence to the contrary to disprove it, of course it can be noticed that there is significant room for bias in my methods. Of course we are different, each person has traits that would cast them into a minority all by themselves, it can be said that the smallest of all minorities is the individual. Unless of course there is a person in existence who has traits that match that of a population average relatively well then they can be considered odd comparatively.

Many things are not readily apparent, most require some prodding and study in order to know. Of course, the apparentness of somethings is based on the ability to interpret information, the mathematical relationship described by pythagorean theorem may not be readily apparent to most minds but possibly to a very skilled mind it could be readily apparent. Yeah, arrogance can often be a result of insecurity, whenever I am insecure I tend to get arrogant. I would allow people to be my friend if I thought that they had an interesting profile, if they try to add me I usually look at their profile but they usually aren't interesting to me.

Why is it more important than it should be to those people? Power is everything and their failure tends to stem from their lack of power, Hitler bit off more than he could chew, it had nothing to do with ignoring the people only with the fact that he lacked the power required to dominate the world and create his Third Reich. Hitler's followers for the most part loved Hitler, there were a few people who tried to kill him but they were never successful. To be honest this lust for power could be blamed for his death but so could overconfidence which was the real killer and if he did not lust for that power then he would have fallen anyway so what does it matter? The lust for power made him great and glorious, two traits which would have never described him had he never had such a lust.

If there are exceptions then think of some, what I claimed is really part of the basis of modern economics with differences only arising from my phrasing of it. All people have wants or desires, they always act to fulfill those desires, and every action they take truly falls under fulfilling those desires whether it is altruism, murder, whoring or abstinance. Only the brain dead who cannot think enough to even have desires are immune to this. If every rule has an exception then that includes the rule that every rule has an exception.

What I said is true based upon the legends and dictionary definition of vampires.

vam-pire (vampir)n. 1. A reanimated corpse that is believed to rise from the grave at night to suck the blood of sleeping people.

---------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Authors can say whatever about said creatures but what they say is as valid as what a hobo off of the street says so therefore the interpretation of such words must fall back upon what they meant historically and what they meant in a dictionary. Your author is not a credible source on vampires, not saying that I am the best but dictionaries can be considered trustworthy enough to use. Yeah, I know that this was not that serious of a conversation but still, that does not mean that we still cannot debate the pinecone thing. It wouldn't be the craziest thing I have done.[/quote]

But even then the origin of the name is EXTREMELY obscure comming from a huge variety of countries all having a different variation on the idea, for example one of the first "Vampires" was Missus Bathory who bathed in the blood of virgins, but she was completely human and real, the first true vampire however was Dracular which was created from a variety of sources and lived only in a book so you can't really say that there is any true source, just like for the word "Zombies" which used to be used for people that were actually alive. Well it's at least true in their own fictional world and as I said the first true vampire was from a fictional world.





But as i've said a different point of view is just as good, why? Because I like to have a new perspective on things.



Of course there is a truth but it is useless because nobody can really prove it, only show lots of evidence to support it, but even then you have to think about the source of the evidence, and on and on and on, sure a reason for needing all that proof isn't likely but it's still important.



Also the most popular belief is likely to be vastly different from the correct way of interpreting it so what do you base it on? The original source or the majority? I'm not interesting in sheding light on the majority, i'm interested in the minority.



Yours is good for that very reason, i've always had a hard time getting to the point of things, but your opinion is likely held by at least some Christians so it is important because it would help me understand them. S***w the Christian majority.



But the amount of different sects of "Christians" is stupid and some of them are complete jokes anyway, look at Scientology (Not Christian but still a religion) it already has celebrities in it but the founder has already said that it's all c**p, and it's recognised as a religion too, it depednds on how much room for interpritation there is though obviously. Well of course but it still seems alot more unstable to me because someone can change it so easily just by telling most people something different.



But I might not be lying to myself, I might know that I like it and only tell other people the wrong thing to make them like me. But there are lots of people who have gone by what they see as evidence and come to the conclusion that x race is inferior, for example, at my school there is one girl who thinks that all/most Chinese are inferior because of how they treat their children (Selling the girls to other families) so from what she knows they are inferior, she isn't really delusional, just misguided. (And bloody annoying)



Ok but that would be just as wrong because some people just have certian things about them that don't go with the Bible (For example a complusion to kill or steal et cetera) I mean, I realise that at one point even though it's extemely unlikely all people on earth would have a chance at Heaven, but not every type of person, which kind of means some people would be born to go to Hell, for example, if someone was born in a time period that had poor medication, and someone was born with a condition that mean't they would be likely to kill or something technically they would have been born to go to Hell.





"SRS"? Hmmm you'd have to define "Minority" and "Majority" though. How so? I mean "Majority" is all about a group of people that have things in commom as opposed to "Minority" which are a group of people different from the larger group for some reason. I mean the Majority is made up of people that have traits that fit the population average relativly well.



Not from what I know, i've always known it to be because a person focuses on themselves too much and develops a big ego, so instead of being insecure they're pretty much the opposite. One person I met over the internet seems almost exactly like me in terms of interests, view on life, all kinds of things, and she was the one that found me.



Well not all of them but some of them. Yeah, sorry sometimes I confuse myself.
"Power is everything" that might be true for them but I hope you don't mean for everyone. Yeah, I think overconfidence is what I meant, alot of people get overconfident with their lust for power and the fact that it killed him was what I was trying to get at, lots of people have a lust for power but don't get there, it's all about intelligence, charisma, wisdom, things like that, some of those will get you there, others will keep you there, but a lust for power will only drive you to get there and keep it, maybe even better yourself, but the other things I mentioned are alot more important, there are lots of people that had that lust and failed and some people that didn't and got further Genghis Kahn didn't want power from what I know, he just wanted something for his people, basically he was just really patriotic, same goes for lots of other people. What about art though? He might have been a great artist, actually, now that I think about it, wasn't the power just a means to an end for him? I remember that he actually believed that Jews et cetera were evil, so he didn't really have a lust for power for powers sake.



One of my best friends for example, she used to be in love with one of my other friends but they broke up (According to her) and even before then she didn't have a high view of it, i'm not sure if she cares about anything anymore, she deffinitly doesn't have anything to live for. She doesn't even have a desire to die, but she's told me she's killing herself slowly with a combination of alchohol and smokes. But yeah these people exists, they just don't live very long. I said that "there's almost always an exception" not that there always is, but you're right.

Vampire was just from Slavic myth. Certainly the actual named vampires were fiction based but most people do have the idea of dead people when it comes to vampires. I can say that there are true sources because of the fact that people have in the past actually believed in Vampires, certainly Vampire is a result of translation but still most people claim they have certain aspects and being undead is one of those commonly believed aspects. Of course in that fiction world the author is correct in his usage but the author's usage is not widely applicable when we are speaking of vampires. Zombies were real living people but they were believed to come back from the dead due to the nature of the Voodoo rituals that created them, certainly the historical and current uses of zombie very somewhat still when somebody says zombie the word does have actual meaning to it and it refers to either an undead creation or the result of a voodoo ritual.

It is not as good because it addresses a different issue, the question is not what the poster Awesomelyglorious thinks, it is what Christians think which generally means you want to know the beliefs of the Christian groups. Therefore in the context of that my opinion is less valid than the Christian opinion and is irrelevent to this conversation.


Not useless, it is true that we cannot find out everything about the nature of existence but we can still find out things that for all practical uses may be treated as true and we find the happenings under exact conditions as well, not only that be we can of course find logical truths. Pretty much we can only find truth in closed and relatively controlled systems but not in the overall open and uncontrolled system due to the number of variables and things that we cannot account for.

The most popular belief may or may not be vastly different. The fact is that we would have to determine it based off of theological beliefs because those that fall outside this theology can be considered to be based upon non-Christian ideas as Christianity is based upon following God and Jesus and their beliefs are in that text. You cannot really shed light on a minority without classifying the groups within that minority. Let us just say that on a chart of some form the majority opinion falls around one point, well that means that minority opinions are anything on the chart that do not fall into that small circle yet still fall within the larger group. It would be better to have classifications for any clusters of opinions so that they could be defined or knowing that makes up the larger group and then what makes up the categories in that group to know what beliefs would be called minorities. It really is more beneficial to know the most prominant thoughts within the group anyway, the clusters that is, because these clusters usually have the strongest beliefs and most solid out of the group where as non-cluster beliefs can often be full of incomplete thoughts and illogicality. It is only useful to know the non-cluster beliefs after the cluster ones have been mastered because of the diversity and flaws often found within non-clusters and how their beliefs draw off of those of other beliefs.

The christian majority is the part that it is best to understand before you go into other factions and such. The reason being that their thought tends to be dominant towards understanding the entire system and because minority groups tend to shed least light on to the nature of the religion. Sure, there may be christians that believe as I do but the amount is not large enough to really add to your understanding of Christianity, it is like how learning economics starting off from the Marxist perspective is not really going to give you much on the entirety of economic thought, all you receive are biases and flaws that have been attacked by larger and more complete branches. Clusters tend to have more complete ideas that have been developed based off of the book, my ideas on the issue could be as good as some random dude off of the street and do not shed much light outside of my own beliefs.

What you are largely talking about are the cults and things like that. Talking about those groups would be like me referring to high schools and communes when I am talking about politics. The large groups are the important ones with developed thoughts and endurance to last, the others tend to fall apart and are minority groups anyway and as such do not reflect the nature of religions very well in terms of stability and change.

Well, pretty much your actual conclusion is the only part that can really be judged. If you lie then that is not really your opinion and cannot be judged like one. Well, you are right to some extent, however, for the most part racists purposefully ignore data just to maintain their claims and they only select certain aspects. If a person misguides themselves through the selection of data to support a claim then that is a delusion, most people are racist to satisfy an internal need. Of course there are those who truly are misguided however, I don't think that girl has really seen a Chinese person sell a girl into slavery or has bothered learning about the nature of such things. She probably just heard it and just decided to claim that such behavior is a mark of inferiority and deluded herself. Selling children into slavery has nothing to do with inferiority or superiority anyway.

Well to some extent if they had that compulsion then they would probably be judged on how they dealt with this. We all have desires that go contrary to the Bible but how we resist such lures is part of our salvation. That would not be just wrong though, that is just a statement of probability, and based upon probability and every circumstance that you have thought of from personal belief to genetic predisposition could be seen as probability and therefore there is a chance that all of those things would go together so nicely that everyone is good. It is not a very likely thing to happen but genetics and conditions based upon genetics are only the results of probability and personal choice can be seen as probability for all practical purposes.

Simple Random Sample, it is a statistical term. The majority may not be the same as the population average, there could be some oddities in the distribution such as skew in which case the median and the mean would be totally different. A majority of people would be centered around a median most likely but not necessarily a mean, however, one could probably assess oddity as deviation from the mean more than the median though as the mean is the average and odd is seen as not being average.

I might have overstated the times that such would occur but I was just trying to emphasize that such was an explanation. However, many of the arrogant people I have known were pretty pathetic though, they were the people that we made fun of when we were not around them.
Well, power is just about everything in the context of a social system as power is the ability to get what you want. I might have overstated it but beings without power tend to be in danger of those that do as powerful beings often decide the fate of the less powerful. Genghis Khan certainly sought power, why else conquer all of those lands? He may have wanted it for a specific goal but in order to achieve this goal he needed power. Hitler was rejected from art school which was part of his problem, he wanted to be an artist but failed and the furthest he ever got in terms of art was just illustrating post cards, if it weren't for politics he would never have accomplished anything as all he was before he got power was sort of a failure. Certainly Hitler also wanted power, I was not the one who claimed that he had a lust for such, you did, but he most certainly sought power, one does not seek the overthrowal of a government and conquest of the world for funsies. You are right that he may have sought power for a goal but that is what power is for is to accomplish things. It could be as simple as luxury or it could be fame or even trying to change the world, whatever the reason power is the means of getting the desired effect.

Well, she must have a desire in there somewhere, perhaps not self-preservation but in order to act one must want something. She has a desire to drink and smoke at the very least, probably out of a desire to avoid pain. She still fits the model because she does have some desires, just not the ones that most people think of when they think of desire, just like one can argue that a slave serves his own desires, he desires to avoid pain and possibly gain freedom and acts accordingly. Your friend desires to perhaps dull the pain but the only thing is that she does not have a high self-preservation desire.

Hmmm well I once knew a website that had a long history of "Vampires" and I remember that places like Hungary and England were mentioned, in fact the myth spread from place to place, it can also be shown that people throughout history (From a variety of countries) did things that would be considered vampiric like drinking blood (There is a disease which can be sated by drinking blood) the idea didn't just come from Slavic myth, it came from all over the place, if you look into ideas about vampires you'll get all kinds of old myths, like they would turn into bats, sunlight would hurt them, they would need the dirt of their native soil to sustain them, crosses would hurt them and so on..



Well you couldn't really help much because you aren't Christian and I want to know what they think, failing that I want to know what you think on the issue because I want to know why these people believe what they do, and so far nobody else like you that is Christian has posted.



If I looked I could find a situation where a "controlled system" had failed to produce the truth.



You're putting your own opinion on me again, this isn't about knowing everyone so that I can point point and laugh or so I can fuel a make believe fantasy that i'll take over the world, i'm just curious as to what people think about these things, I want to know how they answered the question when they put it to themselves (if at all).



I'm not really trying to understand Christianity and from what I know the majority doesn't shed much light on the religion at all, it's the opposite, usually it's only a small amount of people that can answer any real questions, such as "If god is all powerful, could he create a rock so heavy that even he himself could not lift it?" most people would be unable to answer except for "Well he's God how can I know anything about him?", that's what bugs me, I don't want some average answer, I want to know what people who really think, think about this kind of thing.



No, i'm not, Scientology is recognised as a real Religion. Scientology doesn't seem to be falling apart, neither does that Raelian Religion thing, in fact last I heard they were gaining followers.

Well, pretty much your actual conclusion is the only part that can really be judged. If you lie then that is not really your opinion and cannot be judged like one. Well, you are right to some extent, however, for the most part racists purposefully ignore data just to maintain their claims and they only select certain aspects. If a person misguides themselves through the selection of data to support a claim then that is a delusion, most people are racist to satisfy an internal need. Of course there are those who truly are misguided however, I don't think that girl has really seen a Chinese person sell a girl into slavery or has bothered learning about the nature of such things. She probably just heard it and just decided to claim that such behavior is a mark of inferiority and deluded herself. Selling children into slavery has nothing to do with inferiority or superiority anyway.[/quote]

But if I lied who is going to judge? Not everyone is a human lie detector, I know that I can lie to my mother about the most absured things and she'll believe me. Except that you said they all ignore the data and are stupid
(Well, more or less). She wasn't "selecting data", from what she knew Chinese people were arrogant parents that sold their children into slavery (Another reason for the hatred is too many of them), it's like with the Iraq war, they hear something and just believe it without bothering to go into detail and find out the truth. Our class even had a big discussion about it the debate being me and the teacher against the rest of the class (We don't have a very big class) but the views that were put forward were that Chinese people faked not knowing english, that they sold them into slavery (Even though it was only a last resort and even then only because they were really poor and couldn't feed their children), that there were too many of them, that there were too many of their Restaruants (I can never have too much fried rice ^_^) and that they were all impolite (As if enough "true" aussies weren't impolite ) anyway, point is they weren't exactly objective.

Well to some extent if they had that compulsion then they would probably be judged on how they dealt with this. We all have desires that go contrary to the Bible but how we resist such lures is part of our salvation. That would not be just wrong though, that is just a statement of probability, and based upon probability and every circumstance that you have thought of from personal belief to genetic predisposition could be seen as probability and therefore there is a chance that all of those things would go together so nicely that everyone is good. It is not a very likely thing to happen but genetics and conditions based upon genetics are only the results of probability and personal choice can be seen as probability for all practical purposes.[/quote]

Not all complusions can be ignored, for example, I heard about a problem in some women that would cause them to need "Release" like it was painful, often several times a day just to keep them sane. I know and I agree but realisticaly it couldn't because that would call for too many conditions at once and it deffinitly wouldn't last.



lol, I am so crap with math and math terms and s**t.



Now that I think about it, I might know what you mean, but the example i'm thinking of is the only one I know of and his arrogance seems more like a shroud, rather than too much confidence.





That's not true, there are millions of ways to get what you want, and what you want isn't always something hard to get, I know that all I want is a job I like, a good home, maybe even a Girlfriend, I don't need anything more than that. The idea of Democracy is that the ones with "Less" power are the ones in control, which may not really be true but we still do have some say. He sought power for his country because as I said he was patriotic and possibly for his family because he may have wanted to have something to hand down. But if hadn't been it would have been different, anyway you don't need to go to art school to be a good artist, art should come from your own mind, not from your hand.



Well, she must have a desire in there somewhere, perhaps not self-preservation but in order to act one must want something. She has a desire to drink and smoke at the very least, probably out of a desire to avoid pain. She still fits the model because she does have some desires, just not the ones that most people think of when they think of desire, just like one can argue that a slave serves his own desires, he desires to avoid pain and possibly gain freedom and acts accordingly. Your friend desires to perhaps dull the pain but the only thing is that she does not have a high self-preservation desire.[/quote]

I don't know, she seems to think that she deserves any pain she gets. Anyway the point is some people let their desires control them more than is socialy acceptable, that is the kind of person I was talking about in relation to power.

Well, I know that non-vampiric people drank blood, like bloodthirsty rulers would drink blood. The orginal dracula, Vlad the impaler would some times drink blood. Vlad was a sort of messed up dude because he liked to well drink blood, impale people and torture them. However, there is no disease cured by drinking blood, that is a myth, blood has no special medicinal properties, the disease that you are talking about though is a rare one known as porphyria however, there is no proof that there was a relationship because porphyria is rare and because people who make the connection typically look at modern interpretations of the vampire as opposed to historical ones. There is even a theory that people thought of vampires due to rabies because sometimes the froth that they have can be blood colored. You are right though, vampires have been found in many cultures, maybe not the ones based off of the term 'vampir' but even the romans had their bloodsucker myths. However, because they had different names for their bloodsuckers we cannot arbitrarily put them under the roof of vampire no more than we can claim that the vampire bats are also vampires.

Yeah, I know, it sucks. Oh well, at least I wasn't the curious one.

Controlled systems do not fail unless there is a lack of knowledge about what is going on which leads to uncontrolled aspects. They do produce truth because all of the variables are accounted for and therefore only the variables that are being manipulated are tested. Controlled systems are what drives scientific progress, which although it uses approximations these approximations could not exist without some amount of proof for things, proof that the manipulations roughly correspond to the pattern. As time goes on these become better and better. However, initial proof comes from controlled systems and we build upon this information accordingly. Einstein's theory of relativity was based off of a controlled experiment, he took that information and he processed it into a complex theory that was correct, if something is not true then another conclusion based upon the use of the previous would be less true and more noticeably less true.

My own opinion? This has to do with how it is most useful to gather information on a topic. Random people do not really shed much light onto a thought system. You can easily make up whatever answer you want if all you desire is a random answer, you can proclaim it is because God likes cheese if you so desired for your random answer. There is undoubtedly a Christian that would say that so it isn't invalid. The fact is that directed information gathering tends to be the best as it leads to more fulfilling conclusions than random people who may or may not have thought about the topic too much.

If you are not trying to understand the Christian viewpoint then why target Christians? There is a difference between your aims and your methods and the difference is not good for information gathering. If that is really one of your questions then go to this site, it deals with the omnipotence paradox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox
The real issue is that most people dismiss these paradoxes and such because they are difficult to answer. Your question is like "what if an irresistable for meets an immovable object?", most people won't bother with an answer because there is too much up to interpretation and too little reason to care about such. To most people these are not the major questions but rather just side questions. I do remember trying to solve the omnipotence paradox at one time, I ended up using this argument:
1. The being can create a stone which it cannot at that moment lift.
2. However, being omnipotent, the being can always later reduce the weight of the stone to a weight where it can lift it. Therefore the being is still legitimately omnipotent.

which is found on wiki, last time I tried doing it was years ago, and I stopped caring about such inconsequential things quite a while ago as well.

Scientology may or may not be considered a religion based upon who you ask. Most sources will say that the number of scientologists out there is relatively small though and many people outright make fun of scientology anyway. Considering that these groups all added together make up a small percent of all believers it really is not accurate to view such groups when addressing religion. One looks at the tendencies of the major groups when one assesses the nature of something, my major claim wasn't that government was unstable based on the tendencies of African governments or even some South American governments using cults to describe the overall nature of religion would be about the same, one can use those findings to describe those particular groups though.

I am talking about in terms of delusion. I lie too, and I have said some pretty crazy things but that does not mean I am delusional does it? No. An opinion can only be judged based on its truth, if it is a lie then it is NOT your opinion and cannot be accurately judged like your opinion. People may still do as such but they are not judging your opinion they are judging your statement as if it were your opinion.

She most certainly did not have the full set of data and it would be obvious if all you know about a people is that they sell their children into slavery. Now you come to another part of this, her idea was not logically based so it would have a much greater tendency towards delusion, if not be a delusion based upon the fact that such information was altering her thinking processes. Objectivity is important for coming to proper conclusions, at the very least basing ideas off of actual solid data is nice. After all, the brain has a tendency to alter observations if given time and emotion.

Well in the early days women got married at a young age anyway. Just messing around about that part but still as I stated earlier belief is a large part of this. The woman needs to try to obey God, really though, I do not know the nature of the condition or if some form of self-satisfaction would be doable. Right we both agree that for such occurances it would be unrealistic but not impossible, it is just very very very unlikely.

Don't worry about it, part of the problem arises because I tend to be a logical-mathematical thinker who knows a lot of math and as such I tend to use the mathematical terms I know when they are applicable. Really I would be surprised if you knew all of the math I know, after all, I learned the term SRS from an AP statistics class not from algebra 1 or 2.

Right well, really there are even some theories of narcissism that they are not really overconfident so much as they have a maladaptation in order to cope. Some think that narcisists actually have a weakness in confidence which is why they need a narcisistic supply and cannot function well with defeat and such. However, that does not mean that everybody or even most people would agree with that though.

Power is pretty much defined as the ability to get what you want. "By power is meant that opportunity existing within a social [relationship] which permits one to carry out one's own will even against resistance and regardless of the basis on which this opportunity rests." The wordy complex definition I have quoted is from a sociologist. If you want a job you have to convince the boss that you are worth hiring, you might have charisma to influence him to hire you, you might have a skill that he really needs, you might have friends in high places, you might have all of those or you might just have more than your competition but getting that job requires some level of power. You are carrying out your will based upon the existing opportunities. A good home requires money, money is a form of power, or you could get a house through friends or whatever, still it falls under a form of power, you could even build a house with your expert power, getting a girlfriend is also an exercise of power, power gives one the ability to get one's prey whether that power is derived from the favor of the girl's friends, money that is enough to pay for nice dates, or even force if you are psychotic like that. The idea of democracy is nothing involving people with "less power" having control it is about having a more equal distribution of power. By having the vote individuals have power, they have the power to support a certain person to lead them or to possibly remove that same person. Really almost everything has to do with the exercise of power, creatures without power are creatures that do not act, and usually those creatures are dead in some form or fashion. Perhaps you disagree with what I say to be power but if you look at this list below you will realize that a lot of things fall under the concept of power.
Types and sources of power

Power may be held through:

* Delegated authority (for example in the democratic process)
* Social class
* Personal or group charisma
* Ascribed power (acting on perceived or assumed abilities, whether these bear testing or not)
* Expertise (Ability, Skills) (the power of medicine to bring about health; another famous example would be "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king")
* Persuasion (direct, indirect, or subliminal)
* Knowledge (granted or withheld, shared or kept secret)
* Money (financial influence, control of labour, control through ownership, etc)
* Force (violence, military might, coercion).
* Moral suasion (possibly including religion)
* Application of non-violence
* Operation of group dynamics (such as the science of public relations)
* Social influence of tradition (compare ascribed power)
* In relationships; domination/submissiveness

JK Galbraith summarises the types of power as being "Condign" (based on force), "Compensatory" (through the use of various resources) or "Conditioned" (the result of persuasion), and their sources as "Personality" (individuals), "Property" (their material resources) and "Organizational". (Galbraith, An Anatomy of Power)

Well, one thing is it is hard to determine everything about a person without actually meeting or knowing them I just assumed pain because many people turn to alcohol and other drugs to numb pain, anyway, she must desire something or she would have stopped eating, drinking or even moving. All people let their desires control them, some people just have a greater desire for social acceptance in comparison to their other desires or they may have desires that are more in line with what is socially acceptable. Still, people may have conflicting desires but to some extent they never act against desire they only align themselves with an opposing desire. Desires can be conformist, religious, rebellious, hedonist, pain-avoiding, dominance-seeking, responsibility dodging, etc, the thing is that we do what we want/need to do even if that want/need is a result of coersive forces. Economists refer to utility maximization which is pretty much the same concept to what I am describing, fulfilling desires and maximizing utility are one and the same because we try to maximize our utility by meeting our desires.

If you have any deep spiritual questions I suggest that you look in the thread "REPENT-Talk directly to God". There is a link there to a site that will answer all of your questions.

"Non-vampiric people" Wtf? What the hell is that? And the Blood Countess would bathe in it. You said that it is a myth but you admit that there is only "No proof" so it might be true. Yeah well the point is that when people say "Vampire" they are most likely refering to that guy in the Dracular book not the old myths.



Are you saying there is something wrong with being curious?! :O



Yeah but not ALWAYS which is the point.



Well it doesn't matter how much they've thought about it so much as what they're like personality wise.



I already knew about things like that but how someone with all the infomation answers it isn't as important though I do look into it, what was really about was how people on HERE answered it, how interesting people that didn't have all the answers would react, ok so that kind of like saying, that I just wanted to see a Christian who thought they had all the answers say "Uh, I don't really know" but whatever.



Well on Wikipedia it mentions that some consider Christianity Nihilistic because it tells you to forget about the present and focus on the afterlife, basically that makes morality moot because it isn't about doing things for other people anymore, it's about saving your own arse, and how moral is that? Anyway someone else perception of what is Religion isn't important.

But if I lied who is going to judge? Not everyone is a human lie detector, I know that I can lie to my mother about the most absured things and she'll believe me. Except that you said they all ignore the data and are stupid
(Well, more or less). She wasn't "selecting data", from what she knew Chinese people were arrogant parents that sold their children into slavery (Another reason for the hatred is too many of them), it's like with the Iraq war, they hear something and just believe it without bothering to go into detail and find out the truth. Our class even had a big discussion about it the debate being me and the teacher against the rest of the class (We don't have a very big class) but the views that were put forward were that Chinese people faked not knowing english, that they sold them into slavery (Even though it was only a last resort and even then only because they were really poor and couldn't feed their children), that there were too many of them, that there were too many of their Restaruants (I can never have too much fried rice ^_^) and that they were all impolite (As if enough "true" aussies weren't impolite ) anyway, point is they weren't exactly objective.





Pff tell that to her, fact is that she has racist views but is not delusional, just stupid.



Meh



Well i'm pretty sure you were only talking about one type of power all along weren't you? The kind involving lots of other people, and maybe a cool desk? Some respect? Nice title? You know what i'm talking about. Yeah I once read this great book about a country where everyone was blind it was cut off from the rest of the world, one day a man came who wasn't blind, he could see, well long story short they thought he was completely mad/primative because he talked about things they'd never heard of or had only heard of through really old stories, so eventually he tried to rebel and he lost soon after going into self imposed exile. Also if you are "All powerful" you have all the power in the world you control everything, how boring would that be? Do you really think that would be fun? Because I don't think so, for example there's a story about a powerful God called Jergal, he could do anything he wanted and nobody could do anything about it, he was pretty much all powerful, but eventually it got boring because there really wasn't anything to do, there was no change, so eventually three heros came to challenge him Bhaal, Bane and Myrkuhl but when they challenged him he just offered them the throne because he was so bored with it and said that he would help the new God in his role, so eventually it was all settled and he got a new role as helping Gods with their new positions. Point is, when you've got all the power in the world what do you do with it? You've got all you could ever want but where do you go from there?



"would have stopped eating, drinking or even moving"
Well then you just admited that i'm right then didn't you? I mean you said that if somone loses all desire for anything they would stop doing anything making what i've said that not everyone as desires true, I mean they might stop doing anything but they're alive. I mean if she had stopped doing any of that would she then be considered someone without any desires?

Ok, technically vampires aren't people anyway. The idea of vampires existing is relatively stupid, an honest believer in such would tend to be pretty gullible and/or stupid. Vampires according to everything we know about biology would be physically impossible so what you would have to do is create an entire mythology behind all of that. Let's just say that according to Occam's razor we can assume the non-existence of Vampires.

No, I am saying that it sucks to be you.

Not always what? You took my massive paragraph and just said "not ALWAYS". We learn things from controlled systems, any knowledge gained is proof of something because knowing requires proof.

Certainly it does, matter to some extent how much they thought about it. Besides, if all you are concerned about is personality then read about personality and use some approximations. You are not looking for scientific data by your own word and because of that accuracy is hardly necessary.

Why would it matter anyway? Christians do not claim that they know all, they just claim that they have faith in God and Jesus and the words in the Bible. I mean seriously, all people have things that they don't know everything about but still think are good ideas. A person who believes in democracy will not know its entire history. A person who likes Communism may not know all about the economics involved in said theory. Just posting something to hear "uh, I dont' really know" is relatively stupid unless you are trying to prove something in which case we have already had too many attacks on religion recently and your points would be ineffective at persuading people anyway.

On wikipedia it says that Nietzche considers Christianity nihilistic and I suppose his followers might consider the same. However, Christianity does not match up with the definitions of nihilism so that claim is at best a bit misguided. Anyway, morality is always for what one considers to be their best interest, many economists would argue that true altruism doesn't really exist anyway, that it is all rational self-interest and in such a view there is no morality to begin with. However, given the sacrifices and faith that Christians have to have and the fact that many of them do this out of a belief in God rather than brownie points I tend to think that they really do believe. There may be incentive to believe but when it comes down to it if you do good only for brownie points you go to Hell. Well, I consider Scientology a cult so therefore if we are having a discussion that deals with these terms then it does matter.

The views are a delusion and the person is stupid. The reasons why she has this delusion are hers but still.

Right, well I can hardly respond if I don't know the nature of the disease very well. Everyone has desires, I hardly know about the disease so I cannot really respond to that claim, however, most people do have control over themselves and therefore responsibility for their desires.

I am above the level of arithmetic and am well into advanced calculus so that isn't close to my level. This fall I am starting in a Calculus 3 class and I expect to do well because my previous teacher has given me a lot of exposure to Calculus concepts above Calculus 2.

How was I only talking about one form of power all along? The nice desk and title can be a result of the use of other forms of power. A mafia don has great power but has it illegal and may or may not have a desk. Yeah, the book you are talking has that occur because the man was disrupting the status quo more than anything. The only reason why a man with sight would be king is if they needed to use that ability, otherwise that trait just seems like madness and useless. If I controlled everything then why would I have to worry about boredom? I could control my level of pleasure could I not? Therefore I would just be pleased rather than bored, not only that but having all power is impossible anyway, at least for a human. I know the story about Bhaal, Bane, and Myrkhul, I may not have read the exact Forgotten Realms book but I have played FR CRPGs and know of the story from those. Bane becomes the god of strife, tyranny and fear or something like that, Bhaal becomes god of death and Myrkuhl becomes god of undeath or something like that. Really though, one does have to consider the fact that the reason why Bhaal, Bane and Myrkuhl got their power was because they sought power and that this power allowed them to shape the world how they wanted and to kept them from worrying too much about dying. Certainly they died during the Time of Troubles but I know that Bane at the very least came back from the dead using his power and considering all of the other tragedies at the time I think that it was just a dangerous time for anyone anyway. Face it, power allows one to get what he wants and to avoid unintentional destruction at the hands of the powerful. It is better to be the combatant than the pawn.

People typically don't do that unless they are braindead. Your friend has not stopped eating, drinking and moving. Besides, even that can be motivated by desire anyway, at the very least the desire to not be apart of life. I probably should have included thinking as well.

No i'm sure there is someone out there that isn't motivated at all, that doesn't have any desire for anything and only eats because it is imprinted on their mind that they do, maybe they can't think clearly or something, point is that they don't want anything.

I never said that you did. Otherwise I would be calling you stupid.

No, I am being testy because it is fun. I do have better things to do than talk to you it is just this is an interesting conversation on some level, besides I could argue that you have little else better to do. I am not boring, you are just a twit and nowhere near as special as you tend to think you are anyway, of course, I don't want this to escalate into some form of insult competition at least not on the forum. Actually it doesn't, I don't like computer programming too much. However, I think that Bill Gates's reputation as a nerd is overstated considering that there was once a source on here I think that addressed Bill Gates as a risk taker.

No, I am angry because you did not address anything or make any points. It has nothing to do with the information waste and everything to do with the sorry comeback. It is like if I responded to all of your comments by saying "yo mama".

There are a few billion people. One can approximate that they think in all sorts of ways and have all sorts of beliefs. You would be better off buying a book on the psychology of religion or of Christianity or something like that. It would give you much more information and more useful information. You would learn something.

Everything has reason, at least everything that governs this world. The underlying reasons are important, if they weren't then you would hardly bother asking that question about the underlying reasons. My curiosity was because what you wanted as your desired result is radically different from what you seemed to want for the past question. You wanted a specific type of answer which is a possible reflection of an ideology rather than mere curiosity.

Considering that part of the argument is about words the words must be taken somewhat literally. They must be defined otherwise we will be sparring on quicksand. Besides, taking things literally has nothing to do with being backstabbed, that is a non sequitur. It is illogical people that lead themselves to be backstabbed anyway. Logic realizes that people are not trustworthy, emotions lead us to trust them anyway.

Delusional means having a false belief or opinion. So by definition she must be delusional.

Then the claim you are making is that people don't choose their actions. People do choose their actions as they always have a large amount of options to choose from. Even if I am drunk beyond all belief or angry as hell, I am still responsible for how I act. I even have control over living or dying. If one has a brain that does something then they must have choices.

[quote
Well I was. You took things too literally again. I didn't mean control EVERYTHING I mean't control everything humanly possible, why would you think I mean't otherwise? [/quote] Because controlling everything humanly possible is not much control if you think about it. Certainly not enough control to make things boring. Besides, one can control one's own boredom through a focus on entertainment, there is enough different experiences to last one quite a few lifetimes. You spoke of an all powerful god that was bored, men are never all powerful and never even have close to the level of power you were describing, the analogy therefore does not work because the similarities between the 2 situations are too bare. Does that work? I took it as all-powerful because that is what your example literally meant and because the power of this god is much greater than what even the greatest man could ever have or possibly even dream of having.

They eat, they drink, they have desire. Desire for food is still a desire. Thought even unclear thought still tends to be enough for one to desire something. People who have no desires are braindead.

So you gave out useless infomation then, big surpise there. (In case you did n't notice that was sarcasm)



No, you are boring, you seem to have very few interests therefore you are boring. No you wouldn't want that at all would you? You'd rather sit behind a mighty computer wall and call me twit and assume things completely oblivious to how arrogant you are. So what if he's a risk taker? He could still be amazingly boring, just like you.



Which is exactly what I said you were angry about, I said that I wasted your comment, you said that I didn't make any points. The comeback was intentional because of your sorry "points" which were hardly points at all, you hardly ever address any of the issues, you just ignore them. That would probably make more sense than some of the stuff you've said on here and probably have more value.



And if they don't eat or drink? What if they don't desire it, they just drink it? Not to stay alive, not because their stomach hurts, not for any reason. What if they're force fed it? Key word "Tends". That was only a statement, not proof, if you want to say something use evidence instead of "I'm right, you're wrong" which is childish, and you think i'm a twit.