Spathi against anything FTW!  Long live the glorious Spathi Empire!  Long Live Emperor Fwiffo!

::removes tongue from cheek::

Come on, guys.  Why do you think he's such a superior janitor?  And, if he's such a good janitor, why hasn't he been promoted yet?

Obviously, his boss is an anti-Androsyth racist of some kind.

My name's Lance and I sound like Darth Vader.

This name was a logical extension of myself.

My sport of choice is the computer game.

To be fair, it's entirely probable that these reviewers were predisposed in the extreme to giving SC3 a good rating because they liked the series and wanted it to sell well.

And they could have been high from playing SC2.

Less politics, moar SC comics!

Soo... we'll call it Version 0.1.0.  If that's my fault, Valaggar, just e-mail me, and I will re-do it.
Can you tell us which one it was, or what it started with?

Note: The bomb that the Shofixti used on their sun was not a modified glory device.  It was a Precursor bomb used just like a glory device.  See Yehat dialogue for details.

I'm back for a bit.  Didya miss me?  No?  Oh.  I see.

But why would god make those animals? What is the purpose? Why would he make skin bacteria (Leprosy )as a scourge on mankind before they had antibiotics? Then instruct moses in the book of Leviticus to sacrifice animals in order to cure men from leprosy? Why didn't god tell him how to culture penicilin instead?

And if all animals ate plants and were instructed by god not to kill (until man's sin) why is the complete animal kingdom made up of prey / preadtor relationships? Did sharks really feed off seaweed? Did lions eat flowers as a dietary staple?

This world wasn't intended to be easy.  If it were, then we wouldn't learn jack squat from living here.  It would be a joke.  Like if I went to grade school and attended the 2nd grade, I wouldn't learn anything.  Why not?  They don't teach stuff that I don't know yet.  Just stuff I've already learned.  In order for me to learn, school has to challenge me.  So does the world.

As for the animals, I'm not sure what they were like at that time, only that they're different now.  Maybe sharks DID eat seaweed, and they've been retooled to keep fish populations in check.  Your guess is as good as mine.  It's not important, anyway.

Again, why? Why would god need to show satan... anything? If god loved Job why would he allow such horrible things? Would you allow sombody to abuse your Dog to prove a point of loyalty? Or does god not love Job, his faithful servant, as much as I care for my pets?

There are so many WHY questions in the bible it becomes almost absurd..

Why did it take an omnipotent being six days, (or any amount of time at all) to create the heavens and earth?

Hey, he made the earth, didn't he?  That's more power than I've got.  I don't think God is omnipotent as in "*snap,* it's done."  I think he's omnipotent in that God can do anything he sets his mind to do.  THAT is real power.

Why did god need to destroy life with a world wide flood which achieved absolutely nothing? Are there not just as many wicked people today as in Noah's day? And wouldn't god know ahead of time that he would have to eventually kill everyone and then allow the earth to repopulate? Why not just do it right the first time?

I wouldn't say it achieved nothing.  A lot of people who would have raised their children in stupidity and wickedness were wiped out, and there was once more a decent amount of good people.  I don't think good people have ever really been the majority, but if the people as a whole are too evil, God will destroy them.  I think that's what the Bible is trying to say, anyways.

Why would god, capable of designing DNA and every creature on earth, ever need to have animals sacrificed to him? The book of leviticus is completetly about the lord's instructions on how to prepare animal sacrifices from many different species of animals for various sins and ailments.. I know that Leviticus is old testament and that Jesus is supposed to eliminate all need for animal sacrifice, but why would god ever need it for atonement of sin in the first place?

God doesn't need the animals.  We need to sacrifice.

Perhaps we are looking at ancient mythic text, written by many fallible human authors who all contributed thier own spin on god rather than god's absolute word to us?

Yup.  I think that's a pretty good assessment.  I also think that they really did talk to God, and that there's a lot we can learn from
A) The mistakes of our anscestors and
B) The advice of God.

Even if you don't believe this particular God is true, it's good advice.

1)Why does God care whether people believe in him or not?

2)Why didn't God make it so that the bible was unambiguous?

3)Why does God punish the descendants of people he disagrees with?

4)Why did God make people so terribly flawed?

5)Why don't demons possess people anymore like they did in the Bible?

Here's my answers.  Let's see if you like them.

1) He's offering us advice that will make us happier.  He also wants us to accept it of our own, free will, but you have to admit, it's sad to see anger, treachery, hatred, and other such things.  Disobedience to God's commandments creates unahppiness.  Obedience generates happiness.

2) I think it's because that's impossible.  Humans will misconstrue things according to what they want to believe.  What the world needs and has always needed is CONTINUING revelation from God.  Wouldn't that clear things up a bit?

3) I think more often it's natural laws that punish those descendance, though God takes the credit because he warned us about it in the first place.  Also, they're people who disagree with God, not the other way around.  If we are to believe anything in the Bible, or the Qur'an or whatever you fancy, God was here first.

4) People are so terribly flawed, in my personal belief, because they're inexperienced.  I don't believe God can give anyone experience.  That's why God has to tell us what to do.  He's got much more wisdom and experience than us, and God also understands the natural laws upon which things like happiness are based.  We don't.

5) It isn't as effective, in most situations, as it used to be.  People used to be much more superstitious.  I think such possession does happen occasionally, mind you, but it's terribly uncommon.  Always has been, though a look at four thousand years or so of purely spiritual history (like in the Bible) will make you think it's more common than it is.

I have a counter-question for you:  Why can't you answer these questions?  Have you looked for answers on your own?

And as an observation, it is totally correct. I'm not sure how "the chinese did some bad things" is supposed to prove the inherit superiority of christianity though. I mean, sure, if you could follow up with ".. while christians did not.", you'd be on firmer ground. But you're not.

The Christians did not and do not.  Catholics did, at one point,  but that was the time that Christianity was really losing its roots.  Then the Reformation happened, and was fairly successful, in my estimation.  Not totally, but it was better than nothing.  Besides, look at where the original argument was placed, and what it was meant to answer.  It was not intended or crafted to say "Christians are better than everyone else."  It was intended to refute the argument that the Chinese are somehow more civilized than Christians.  Sheesh.

Out of curiosity, how can you be sure of this?

Because it's exactly what happened to the Christian nations.  And because the Chinese lost their dominance due to ISOLATIONISM.  If they had been evangelical, then they wouldn't have been isolationists.  At all.

What you're doing here is looking at a lot of successful countries, and deciding that one factor they have in common is what made them superior to everyone else. If you're interested in the subject of why the christian countries of europe were so successful in defeating their neighbours and exporting their influence and beliefs, I'd recommend taking a look at this. The factors that enabled europeans to conquer and convert the rest of the world were present long before christianity made it's appearance, and very probably any aggressive religion would have served them equally well.

Maybe any other aggressive religion would have served them equally well.  You act as though this refutes me somehow.  My point is that Christianity seems to have served very well.  If you're going to refute me, tell me that Christianity did not serve them well, and back it up with examples.  Then you can disagree with me intelligently.

Er.. what? The Russian tsardom was working horrifyingly badly at any rate. They had a weak tsar, and internal strife. It's not like if a modern day US suddenly and without warning dismantled religion and democracy.

Yes, you're right.  It was a gradual descent from Christian Russia to Communist Russia, and not a quick drop down an elevator shaft.  But Russia did fairly well for itself for a couple hundred years at least as a Christian nation, did it not?

No, in order for your point to hold true, there has to be some sort of evidence that it was the christianity that gave them these advantages. Otherwise you're just playing with statistics. For example, if I have 10 cubes that are made out of different  hard materials (steel, iron, diamond and so forth) and paint them all grey, I could similarly claim that all grey cubes are hard, and that the grey colour must thus make them hard.

  Yeah, but if the diamond one beat all the other ones up, I'd have to rethink THAT hypothesis.  :-)

In an analog fashion, I could even claim that almost every successful culture on earth has had a lot of contact with white europeans, and that this thus proves that no country can be succesful without the help of white europeans. Thus white europeans must be superior to any other race. Go white power!

And why are the white people so successful?  I think their religion plays a large part in it.  I don't really care if you disagree.  If you want evidence that religion can do that sort of thing, look at Islam.  Before Muhammed, no one really cared about the Arabs.  After Muhammed, they had estabished an empire and conquered Spain.  Coincidence?  You can think so.  I don't care.

I'm glad that you are objective enough to decide that noone else is. Especially since you are fairly clearly taking sides on the issue.

Fairly clearly.   That's a good one, I'll have to remember that.

Can you provide any sort of references to this mesoamerican dark age? It soudns quite interesting, though I've never heard of it. I'm also confused about the "successful culture" part. Originally, you seemed to be making the point that chrisianity has made our culture as successful as it is. Now you're making the point that other religion may serve equally well.  This seems illogical.

I don't think it is.  Just because A is good, does that mean B-Z are bad?  I don't think it does.  It's true that I don't think any religion is AS good as Christianity, though I can't prove that to any degree of satisfaction, but I also think that many other religions are good. 

As for the mesoamerican dark age, it seems to be fairly well-accepted.  It was not at all hard to find the following:
Wikipedia: Toltecs
You can see that some civilizations, like the Toltecs and Mayans, died out before the Spanish ever arrived
"Dark Ages" pdf
Aztec myth/record of history
Dark Ages Cold Period

I think "I firmly believe" are the key words here. Unless that you can present some sort of reference that states that the ONLY reason the roman empire fell was their moral decay, that really only is your opinion. A tale about how the soldiers were having homosexual intercourse instead of fighting the enemy at the gates would be acceptable.

Are opinions not allowed?  I was under the delusion that they were.  That was one of them.

So explain to me what choice his followers, supposedly following his commandment gave the rest of the world when they conquered them and forced them to convert?

I don't think God ever commanded anyone to forcibly convert anyone else.  That was a gross misconstruction based on a real commandment, but, you know what?  "Based on a real story" is not a real story.

I notice you'tre not actually answering the question. But tell me, how did you determine, through your own research, which books that were real and which were false? Have you actually read all the books from that time period, and used some method to find out which are really the word of god, and which are just the opinions of some writer. And if you've really done this, and drawn the conclusion that exactly the right books were chosen, why haven't you published  a paper on this? It is an enormous amount of research to undertake after all, surely the rest of the world could benefit from it.

Oh, be nice.  I just happen to be of the opinion that many of the books that DID make it are real.  If you must know, I prayed about it.  Go ahead.  Try it.  It's good stuff.

To finish this off, I'd like to state that I'm only critical to Lance's opinions here, and not to the christian faith as a whole. I believe that christianity, as any religion can be a unifying force, and bring forth much good. Of course, in the wrong hands it can equally well bring forth darkness.

Good.  I can skip that lesson.   

I simply don't agree with the premise that christianity in specific is responsible for our culture being as stable as it is. If nothing else, the dark ages, with their strong religious presence and total lack of any progress are a clear indication of this.

I move that there was a LOT of progress in the dark ages.  But you're not going to listen to that.  I also move that our civilization REALLY took off right about the time of the Reformation, beginning with Martin Luther.  This was some time after the so-called "Dark Ages."



There's also a lot of talk about atheists in this thread recently.  I believe it was Terry Pratchett who said that there is no believer so firm as the atheist, for he believes in gods so strongly that he feels the need to deny them.  He's always good for a laugh, but I don't think he's stupid.

I, on the other hand, don't believe in atheists.  I think that everybody deifies something, it's just not always something supernatural.

I'd like to see you work as an actor for a while and not have soem strong opinions about the Jews. 

The 'rubbery' feeling on your teeth is actually the acid in Coke eating away at the coating that your teeth usually have (and a little bit at the teeth themselves).  Coke is pretty strong stuff, as any good high school Chemistry teacher will tell you.

perhaps the sa-matra wasn't meant to be a battle platform? perhaps it was meant to be a planetary engineering tool? say one that was meant to break up planets and assemble them into a dyson sphere or something?

I can just see it now.

ALIEN RACE: "Attention alien vessel.  What is your purpose and intention here?"

PRECURSORS: "Oh, this? Ummm.... it's a planetary engineering tool.  That's right."

ALIENS: "Ah, we were worried there for a minute.  Go about your business."

It's possible.  But the weapons idea was more simple, and I think it's more likely.

Hang on, the tugboat was a modular one, and the first modules you had were of earth design! (at least i assume so from the presence of the PDL). and as for the later modules i'm not sure they were of precursor origin.

If you recall the manual's story, the factory built the ship 'as is.'  The ion cannon in front would appear to be standard issue.

what war machines do we know of other than the sa-matra?

The Mark II was supposed to be a battle cruiser, though it doesn't say so in the game.

[not]

And you should listen to yourself... you frighten me, mate.

People are always afraid of what they don't understand...

It's a very interesting accusation, from a one that is trying to defend Christianty.

It's not an accusation, it is an observation.  Have you ever heard of Mao Tse-tung?  Guy wrote the book on "How to SCREW Your Country's Economy and Set Their Technology Back by About a Thousand Years."  Are you familiar with the Qin Dynasty?  They got into power around the turn of the second century A.D.  About 190 I think.  They burned not only Confucian and Daoist books but also the Confucians and Daoists.  Mao got some of his worst ideas from these guys, calling themselves the "legalists."  It took China about a thousand years to partially recover from this attack.  They achieved quite a bit of dominance around 16c, but lost it due to their own reclusiveness, which the evangelical attitude of Christianity would have diffused, had they been Christian.

Am I trying to prove that Christianity is true?  Heck no.  I'm proving that it is very successful and that it makes cultures and nations who adhere to it successful.  Give me some counter-examples if you don't like my proof.  What are some nations that got successful without Christianity or at least Judaism at their heart?  Japan?  Japan was bunch of fragmented, feudal, warring clans until they were contacted by the Christian world.  Then, they copied Germany and the UK, and later got boosted by the U.S. after WWII.  Much of their success they owe to Christian nations.  Korea?  Korea was pretty successful at staying right where it was, but again, it became a major player more by contact with Christian nations than anything else.  The Aztecs?  They couldn't stand up to Spain.  Sub-Saharan Africa?  You mean the guys who sold their brethren as slaves to the Westerners?  Yeah, they did well up through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  How about some nations that stuck with Christianity, and now are doing poorly?  Russia?  Russia was doing fine until guys like Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin tanked the economy and chased off the Christians.  Ummm... Latin America?  Latin America didn't really convert because they believed in any sort of Christianity, they converted because they didn't want the Spanish to kill them.  And they're really starting to pick up, too.

Remember, in order for my point to be valid, it doesn't have to hold true with every single culture on earth.  It has to hold true with a lot of them.  There has to be a significant relationship, that's all.  Look at the list of first-world countries.  Which ones are Christian?  Which ones aren't?

I'm also trying to say that the Bible is way more consistent than what people think.  But no one's listening or talking intelligently to me about that because they haven't actually looked at it objectively.  That's okay.

And you are as arrogant to belive that they worshipped the same god you do, and it is only thanks to this that they build a succesful civilization.
You think that your religion is a pre-requisite for a suucesful society, while it could easily be argued that their succeses weren't of their own making, but stolen from others... scary.

I never said that.  I know for a fact that it helps (U.S. history alone proves it), but I never claimed that it is necessary to be Christian in order to have a successful society.  I believe the Aztecs, Toltecs, and Mayans worshipped the same God I do not because of their success, but for dozens of other reasons that I really can't share without a long, boring lecture on Mesoamerican history.  Suffice it to say that I believe they did worship the same God, and when they apostacized from the commandments, they fell into a Dark Age.  Hmm... where have we seen this before?  Europe, maybe?

Moral decay?
As in burning heretics and witches? Prohibitng people from finding out how the world works by death threats? Holy wars? Violating the most private aspects of people's lifes?
That kind of moral decay?

Yup.  That kind.  It would have gotten a lot worse, too, had Christianity not had a "back to it's roots" revival.  Have you ever heard of names like Luther, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Calvin or Erasmus?  You owe them for the society you live in.  Big time.  Show a little gratitude.

Which history books are you reading?
The Greeks were conquered by the Romans and the Romans fell after they were divided by Christianity.
Coincidence? Surely by your line of thinking Christianity is to blame, not  stagnation, both technological and economic, that  made the empire unable to sustain itself, and territories too big the maintain by their scattered legions.

The Romans were not divided by Christianity.  They would have had to really believe in Christianity for this to be the case.  They were divided by Constantine.  The point I was making is the one you have completely passed over.  The moral decay of these people was precisely WHY they stagnanted economically and technologically.  When people are placated by fornication and decadence, they tend to place less emphasis on important things like working and defending their realms against gobs of invading Goths and Vandals.  Yes, the stagnation killed the Empire.  But what caused the stagnation?  I firmly believe that it was heavy moral decay, combined with apathy and complacency.

Didn't god command them (and every single living thing) to reproduce?
Not that god never gave orders that were impossible to accomplish... like for example - how in the world were Adam and Eve supposed to know that it's wrong to eat the fruit, before they had knowledge of good and evil.  And what exactly is it with Christian's obsession with sex?
What is so 'innocent' about virginity? I never could understand this.

God gave Adam and Eve a CHOICE.  He's all about choices.  The choice was to either reproduce, or not partake of the fruit.  A very simple, yet elegant choice.  It's amazing, when you think about it.  Even if you think it came from the mind of some ancient hebrew storyteller.  A&E, BTW, were not supposed to know it was wrong to eat the fruit, but that God had told them not to.  There's a difference, in this case.

Then he's not really omnipotent, is he?

I believe that omnipotence is defined as "being able to do anything that you want to do."  In this sense, God is omnipotent.  He can do anything He wills to do.  He can't lie or cheat or steal or make imperfect things, not in the same way I am incapable of flight (that is, lacking the ability), but rather in the same way that I am incapable of participating in a State Lottery (that is, it goes against my nature so much that I will never do it).  I also believe that it is God's obedience to higher laws that GRANTS Him such power.  If you want an example of that, please try to imagine an engineer who ignores or defies the theory of gravity.  He isn't nearly as powerful as the engineer who accepts gravity.

Besides, thw hole Eden setup was far from perfect:

Let's see I'll put these 2 humans here and this tree over there.
I'll tell the humans it's wrong to eat from the tree, even tough they don't know what right or wrong is.
Oh and just for fun I'll put this serpent with a silver tongue, and a somewhat original sense of humour right next to the tree.
Gee... I wonder what will happen.

What, you don't think God knew what would happen?  He's smarter than you give credit.  And the situation perfectly accomplished what it was supposed to.  I don't see why you're whining.

So why bother with the garden and everthing, and create everything as it is?
Keep in mind your "god can't create anything imperfect" argument just fell.

How did it fall?  God can't create things that are imperfect, but He DID create things that could EVOLVE into an imperfect state.  Where's the hole?

So I guess it's an equal miracle that we know of the religions of Egyptians and Babylonians as well. Bah! We know of the beliefs of ancient barbaric tribes, and they had no paper or the ability to write everything down, that must be a miracle!

Actually, we know very little of the beliefs of those groups at that time.  Very precious little.  The Hebrew record is by far the most complete.  Also, the Hebrews were not comparable to the Egyptians.  They were much more comparable to, say, the Hittites, or the Moabites, or the Canaanites.


quote]
Oh please by all means do, I wonder what you can come up with about this.
Had it ever occured to you that you think they are the "real" ones only because these people decided that they are, and this belief was forced on countless people (including you)  from the cradle?[/quote]
Has the thought crossed your mind that I might be capable of independant research?  Just asking.

Never said that.
But I also never claimed that the Greek and Roman writings are the source of Absolute Morality™.
[edit]That is why I find the Bible so horrible. To put such atrocieties in a book is one thing, I really have nothing against that, but to have the guts to claim these atrocieties are a source of morality... there are no words for such hypocrisy.[/edit]

The Book of Genesis is narrative.  Narrative means that it's just trying to tell us what happened.  As far as they know, that's what happened.  It's not saying "Do this!" or "This is a good idea!"  In fact, books like Judges were written to show Israel how far they had fallen, and to call them back to repentance.

Heck, even the precursor TUGBOATS had weapons out the wazoo!

Why Xena?  Why not one of the Roman gods we haven't already used?  I mean, it's not like we're going to run out of 'em or anything...

[exactly]

Heh.  That got everybody all riled up.  You should see yourselves.

The main point being "Judas dies" and the details being either "Judas is killed by an act of God" or "Judas kills himself"? Funny idea of "details" you have. Some "witness' testimony", where one fails to notice spontaneous gutting and the other fails to notice him hanging on a tree. Not the kind of "details" you'd expect to be left out in anything based on reality.

As I said, always good fun when people try to reconcile conflicting stories in the Bible.

No, the main point is "Judas kills himself."  The details are how he died.  This is also exactly what I would expect from two people who are compiling the testimonies of multiple people years after the fact.  Now, if they had both been present, I would expect the contradicting details to be smaller, but they weren't present.  Neither of those authors, unless I am mistaken, saw what happened with their own eyes.

Now, this is the sort of contradiction that I would not expect of a fiction writer.  I know, I write fiction.  Fiction writers would loudly point out the differences between their world and ours, and explain lots of things that their audience wouldn't understand.  There's a lot of explanations missing from the Bible.

I think at the very least, both Chinese and Native Americans would like to have a few words with you about that

The Chinese were responsible for history's worst book-burning and have slaughtered their own intellectual class at least twice in the past two thousand years.  And the Native Americans (those few groups who were not barbarians) had their own chats with God.  Granted, they since misinterpreted the whole "broken heart and contrite spirit" thing to mean human sacrifice, and that's when their civilization went into decline.

By the way I really don't like it when people claim that any religion is a source of morality.
Most of the time your religion is a reflection of you own individual moral rules, not the other way around. Just look at the Christians that argue with one another, wheter it is ok to use a condom, to have an abortion, euthanasia.... for someone that claims they have a source of morality (often "absolute" morality, they claim) they are pretty confused.

Religion may not be a source of morality for some people, but a strong religion like Christianity or Judaisim is essential to preventing moral decay.  You talked about the Romans, the Greeks, etc.  All right, what happened to those groups?  They became decadent, they decided that chastity wasn't important anymore, and they fell.  Coincidence?  I can't make you think like I do, but I don't believe in coincidences anymore.

Arne: Thank you, that was rather what I was getting at.

So please answer my question, if Adam and Eve were the only ones that ate the fruit, then howcome everyone is guilty of original sin?
If they had lots of children while living in the garden, howcome everyone was banished?

They didn't have any children in the garden.  They couldn't, until they partook of the fruit.  Before that they were innocent, knowing no good, no evil, and, like children, not knowing how to reproduce.  Pretty boring life.  When they did partake of the fruit (after some undetermined period of time in the garden), they started having kids.  These kids were subject to the same laws that Adam and Eve were after the fall, not the laws that governed them in the garden.  They were born mortal, but knew good from evil and could decide between the two.

God can't make anything imperfect.  But in order to progress, we needed to know what evil was, what pain was, what sorrow and remorse were.  That way we could also find goodness, pleasure, happiness and joy.  Think of a rich man who doesn't want to have his kids grow up all spoiled, so he kicks them out of his house at a young age, and arranges for them to live much more poorly.  When they grow up, if they're worthy, he'll gladly let them back in, and, having known what it's like to be poor, they'll appreciate it.  Of course, a just God can't kick his kids out for no reason, so they had to disobey him.  What's even worse, is that a good and just God can't entice anyone to do wrong, because then he'd be inconsistent, and that would REALLY confuse us.  So, the sequence in Genesis happened.

Miracle?
As a religous text that people found important, the Bible was constantly re-written, thanks to this there were hundreds of copies of it. It would be surprising if something didn't survive.
If you take into accout the amount of other fictional writings, letters and government documents that survived, which were written thousands of years ago, there is nothing surprising that something that wasn't even fully assembled until the 4'th century also survived.

I mean it's amazing that so many of the books that now form the Bible survived until the 4th century.  They were only important to a very small group of people that nobody really liked (the Jews) until the Christians came around.  Then there were two of these groups that nobody really liked.  I'm also surprised at how accurately those 4th century bishops discerned between false books and real ones, but that's another topic that I don't feel like getting into right now.

Well, in comparison to todays moral standards the Bible is one of the most horrible things written by man. Especially the old testament, (which was the only part of the Bible that was around the times when Greeks and Romans showed up, and they are much younger then Eqyptians, Babylonians, Hyppites (wrong spelling, but I'll be damned if I find how they were called properply in English)).

Yeah, 'cause the Greeks and Romans wrote about flowers and butterflies and rainbows and sunshine.  And it's Hittites and properly. 
You're just talking about the narrative anyway.  Did you even read any of the prophecy bits?  Or any of the law of Moses?