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jim 00:33 Movie over time for sleeeeeep.
tinypliny 00:16 Aarrrgh. Home remedies without basis
tinypliny 00:16 because it doesn't
tinypliny 00:15 Unless they mean it increases the white cells - which makes no sense
tinypliny 00:15 I mean mucus is like white cells and infection jumbled together - the immune reaction to an ongoing infection - how does milk increase this?
tinypliny 00:14 I don't see how milk is a mucus-inducing food
tinypliny 23:44 That local sneaky bloke must have such a workload if he or she is real - which I suspect they are not.
tinypliny 23:43 for just about everything.
tinypliny 23:43 I was looking for best pizza places and I was SO annoyed looked at that generic paragraph with "Our local sneaky blah blah"
tinypliny 23:42 that website is SUCH a colossal letdown!

Jim's Journal from 07/2008

07/05/08 13:01 - 73ºF - ID#44868Category: religionTake it on Faith

I was just on IM with someone, and they were asking me why I didn't believe in God or Christianity. This was my bare minimum list of things that I would have to take on faith to be a Christian. For future reference, am I missing anything?

- That God exists.
- That God is still involved in the universe he created.
- That God cares about us.
- That God cares what religion you are in.
- That God is the Christian God, not the Jewish, Islam, Baha'i, Mormonism, etc.
- That all other religions are in grave error. (despite those faiths having equally compelling claims and theology to lay claim to this honor)
- That God interacted directly with humanity in the past, and chose the Jews as his people above all others.
- That God guided the oral history of the Jews.
- That God wrote the Bible, indirectly.
- That God edited the Bible into its present form, indirectly.
- That God prevents textual errors from being introduced during copying, indirectly.
- That God would not allow the Bible to mislead us, but would allow other religious texts to mislead us.
- That sins are against God, instead of against other humans.
- That we have original sin that needs to be redeemed.
- That virgin births can occur.
- That Jesus was born to Mary as the Son of God.
- That Jesus is in fact, God.
- That Jesus could redeem sins through his death and resurrection.
- That Jesus' death is the only way to cause that to happen.
- That Jesus rose from the dead.
- That the story of Jesus was accurately told orally for a hundred years.
- That the hundreds of contradictory written fragments and letters from the time after that don't matter, because:
- The editing process to sort everything out was also guided by God, again, indirectly.
- That the Gospels were then transmitted down with no textual errors in copying or translation thereafter, thanks to God, indirectly.
- That the parts of the Bible and the Gospels that don't make sense don't contradict any of the above.
- That if you choose wrong, despite this inconsistent and inexplicable chain, you are damned to hell.

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drew writes at 03:50:21 07/06/08 - Comment #36783

I dunno. Virgin birth is in most creeds, and, while I believe it could have happened, it is not an "essential" to me.

Another thing to remember, the latin word "credo" that "creed" comes from, which is often translated "I believe" can also be translated, "I give my heart to."

It's not just an intellectual assent. It's a new way of living.

janelle writes at 03:29:14 07/06/08 - Comment #36782

Jim, sometime if interested, and it would be quite a project, read the creeds and statements of faiths for the Christian faith. It will represent what one "needs" to believe from a variety of Christian view points. "Needs" in quotations because I couldn't think of a better way to phrase that comment, but "needs" doesn't sound right.

metalpeter writes at 12:42:25 07/06/08 - Comment #36772

First of all you can believe in God with out being a Christian you could even believe that there are multiple gods if that is what your faith tells you. Now to be a Christian you only need to believe the 1st thing you wrote that god exists. Everything under that doesn't matter really. The reason I say that is that there are so many different kinds of Christainty and some beliefs are the same and some are different and that isn't even getting into some of the cults out there. There is a difference between faith and Religion and that is important. You can believe and you don't half to go to some building where (no offense to (e:drew) you sound like you are a pretty good leader of your church) a Priest or Preacher tells you what they think is correct based on how they read the Bible. You in fact could believe that god hates us and likes when we all kill each other in his name or that Christ did die and all the stories where just made up or maybe they happened and facts where added that didn't happen or happen that way so that the church could control people, and still believe in god. The belief in god and the belief in the church or religion are not the same thing. I'm not telling you that you should believe in god, I'm saying that you shouldn't let the problems you have with churches and religion kill your faith.

james writes at 10:30:23 07/05/08 - Comment #36757

I honestly doubt millions of adherents of any religion put this much thought into their religion.

drew writes at 04:52:06 07/05/08 - Comment #36752

It's a list of what some Christians believe. Many, even. But I don't believe everything on this list. I would have to count up, but I think maybe not half of it.

To be a Christian, one must give allegiance to Jesus, and reject sin. There are other things that you may or may not do/believe along with that, but my list is a lot shorter than yours :)

jim writes at 04:05:12 07/05/08 - Comment #36751

I briefly took the post down, worried that it sounded aggressive, but it is just a list of what Christians believe, so it can't be that controversial.

Ah well, back up it goes!

mrmike writes at 03:47:46 07/05/08 - Comment #36749

Feel Similarly. good post, lots of spiritual food for thought

jim writes at 02:02:16 07/05/08 - Comment #36744

Oh yeah, Tinypliny, the Bible is great - lots of good stuff in there. I've read the whole thing :) But it doesn't deserve a special place above everything else.

Creating this list, I start to have a bit more understanding of how, if you start from the bottom of the list - the "you're going to hell" to part, it becomes easier to accept the chain above it. Or even if you start at Jesus, working up and down from there isn't quite the leap as starting at the top.

tinypliny writes at 01:45:19 07/05/08 - Comment #36740

Haha.. Take this list and multiply it by 1000. Add 1 or 2 to that total everyday. That's my religion in a "nutshell". It's so extravagant that it's pretty obvious it's a bag of stories. I think the best would be concentrate on the good that came out of it all. The Bhagvad Gita, though beautiful in itself, was apparently and quite impractically recited by Krishna (an avatar of God Vishnu) sitting on, most certainly, a very uncomfortable chariot driver seat to a clueless Arjuna (a prominent prince) just before a major battle was about to begin. Come on! You expect people to believe that you can sit in the frontlines of a major battle and recite a 700 verse book while your cavalry and the enemy cavalry waits for you to finish chanting? :)

Holy books like the Gita and Bible may be grounded in crazy and almost unbelievable stories about the divine, but they are purely human literature. In following the good policies and advice in them, I don't think we are believing or practicing a religion, but just learning to be better humans through the collective human experience. I think "religion" is an evolutionary construct. Somewhere along the stream of evolution we developed the attribute of sharing our thoughts and helping out people who are not even related to us. But the problem arises when we are annoyed if not everyone is interested in receiving these nuggets of wisdom. People who act on this annoyance are the religion fanatics. They will eventually fall off the evolutionary wagon because their selected trait has ceased to be the moderate beneficial influence that it started out as.

jenks writes at 01:09:50 07/05/08 - Comment #36735

bahaha, nice.
I'm with you.

Words: 383 -- Buffalo, NY

07/05/08 15:23 - 73ºF - ID#44870NCAA Garden Gnomes?!

permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44870.html

Words: 8 -- Buffalo, NY

07/07/08 11:47 - 80ºF - ID#44893Category: cultureCute USB Owls

From Japan of course:

permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44893.html

Words: 28 -- Buffalo, NY

07/08/08 10:40 - 81ºF - ID#44903Category: foundCat Vet Dummy

Vet dummy:

Lots more medical dummies:

Lists of random cool things:

permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44903.html

Words: 32 -- Buffalo, NY

07/08/08 13:14 - 84ºF - ID#44904Don't Watch This

Seriously, it's really gross.

Man my feedreader is full of weird stuff lately.

permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44904.html

Words: 25 -- Buffalo, NY

07/10/08 20:01 - 73ºF - ID#44922Category: linksLightning

Wish I could embed the video here, but you've got to see this: someone getting struck by lightening (they didn't get seriously hurt)

Flickr:

permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44922.html

Words: 36 -- Buffalo, NY

07/10/08 20:43 - 73ºF - ID#44923Category: technologyiPhone 2.0

Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL iPhone!

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permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44923.html

Words: 19 -- Buffalo, NY

07/11/08 13:51 - 75ºF - ID#44929Category: internetsFail Whale 2.0

MobileMe fail cloud:

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Twitter Fail Whale (original)

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permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44929.html

Words: 16 -- Buffalo, NY

07/11/08 21:59 - 71ºF - ID#44935Category: photoshopLOLIRANIANS

So, a few days ago Iran got busted for distributing altered photos that made it look like they were launching more missiles then they actually had. (See below before and after and the original story

)

Well, today's launches went MUCH better:

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Image source:

Yay!

permalink: http://estrip.org/articles/jim/44935.html

Words: 68 -- Buffalo, NY

07/12/08 13:08- ID#44979 pmobl

iPhone 3g

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Words: 7 -- Buffalo, NY

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