EU has been considered canon ever since it began its miserable existence. The Clone Wars is a higher degree of "canon" than the books and stuff, but it is still below movie-level canon.
Leonardo said:
For "atheist explanation", you mean "unbiased by religion and only based on fact", right? I'm just saying because the way you asked sounded akin to asking the opinion of a sect or anything that's organized. Atheists are individuals.
I didn't mean to indicate that atheists are a group. What I meant was "how can this be explained if there is no God."
My own personal hypothesis is that the story he's telling us (remember, this is the account of one man, no other people in that video told us they saw the angels there, this is all based on his testimony) is how his brain tried to cope with what was happening. It was obviously a traumatic experience, psychologically and most importantly physically. The man was being crushed beneath a truck, and was losing conscience due to the intense pain.
I think that is quite likely.
Let's bear in mind that he's not telling us this story 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour after the fact. Months have passed. He's had time to "reconstruct" the event in his mind, and to "interpret" things the way a man of faith would.
I agree. I believe the important thing is that it strengthened his faith, though, regardless of whether or not it was actually a miracle, but the miraculous nature of the event is questionable.
In the few minutes spent trying to write this answer I actually found this rather interesting analysis, I would insist that you read it. If the sardonic remarks about God in it offend you, you can ignore them, I feel the thing in itself is worthy of attention and thought.
http://www.freethunk.net/freethunk-news-bites/bruce-van-natta-grows-intestines-say-what-2949
A lot of good points in that article, but the author obviously misunderstands who the Christian God is. I think there are also some good points on the Christian side in the comments.
Final thoughts: medical science saved Mr Van Natta. Just because he claims it's a miracle, and God helped him, doesn't mean it is. I feel what he claims is very disrespectful to all the doctors and surgeons responsible for him being alive today. Not a word of gratitude is spent towards them in the video and I feel that's a real shame.
Perhaps he may be disrespectful from an atheist standpoint, but from a Christian point of view, this is not the case. That being said, the doctors did play a major part. Without them, the man would have died, and I think he should have credited them (maybe he did in his book).
Ryan McAvoy said:
RicOlie_2 said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rusfefmQDEs
Out of curiosity, what is the atheist explanation for things like this? Or do you just ignore these things and assume that there will be a scientific explanation in the future?
You're asking, what's the explanation for an idiot who had climbed under a heavy and obviously dangerous truck that is held up by a single flimsy jack, who is suffering massive bloodloss, internal injury and going into extreme shock hallucinates two Angels kneeling to his left and to his right in the exact same position as the two Paramedics were kneeling? (Paramedics who were metaphorically "Angels of Mercy").
Why do you assume that he could have known the jack might fail?
That of course doesn't even cover why he imagines God would torture him under a truck causing him agony the like of which he couldn't believe, then putting him into hospital for two months making his families lives a living nightmare. Also running up huge medical bills, depriving his family of his income and distracting the Doctors from helping other people. If God really wanted to help him, he would have stopped the truck falling on him in the first place.
This comes from a misunderstanding of the true nature of God. God allows suffering because he allows free will. It is mostly people who cause the suffering, not him. Suffering, however, is good according to Catholic doctrine because it helps atone for sins and is also good for the character. From what I gather, this man's faith was strengthened by his experience, which would explain why God might have allowed it. After all, it is the soul that really matters, not the body (though the body has value too, of course).
So everything up to the recuperating has an obvious explanation after even a few seconds of rational thought. As to God giving him back a little (But not all of his intestine for some bizarre reason) I offer mostly scepticism. He could have imbelished the Angel story to add weight to his claims, since as I note above it's easily explained away. Remember that this guy has launched a succesful book writing career off the back of this story. The profits of which is probably how he is paying the huge medical bills that God lumbered him with. Also it's how he is providing for his family now that God has taken away his livelihood.
I agree with the first part of that. He could have made embellishments to the story and there is no way of proving that everything happened the way he said it did. However, there are many, many testimonies like this, and they are usually similar to each other.
Who says that God took away his livelihood? Temporarily of course, but might he not be back at his job now that he has recovered?
If you look at these problems the same way Sherlock Homes would...
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
Using that logic, it's pretty easy to realise that since Angels are impossible, there are hundreds of possible explanations.
Except that there is absolutely no way to determine whether Angels are impossible.
A final note: If his prayers worked, how come they didn't for the other hundred thousand people that also died while praying for salvation on that day? It comes down to arrogance I guess (Sorry if this sounds harsh). That he'd believe that out of all the other much more deserving, blameless (He wasn't blameless the incident was his own stupid fault) and deeply good people that had their prayers ignored, he alone was chosen by God as being special among all the peoples of man.
The incident may have been partly his fault, though it seems like an accident to me. Remember, if God and heaven are real, then it is the soul that matters. If people pray for salvation, they get that when they go to heaven. I'm guessing you just used the wrong word, but I'm not sure what you meant. As I wrote, God allows suffering for purification. God doesn't usually help people because they are deserving. He also doesn't answer prayers that aren't beneficial to a person's salvation.
This is the kind of story that only confirms by belief in the non-existence of God.
I don't think it is evidence against God's existence. I think it is evidence, albeit weak, for the existence of God.
I guess the website messed up then. They got the explosion right, but not the launch of the earlier shuttle.
February 1:
A.D. 772: Adrian I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
A.D. 1587: Queen Elizabeth I of England signs Mary Stuart's death warrant.
A.D. 2005: Canada becomes the fourth country to legalize homosexual marriage.
I guess that would have been an easier solution than my multitude-of-possibilities response. :P
I've got Micro Shogi up and my move is S-3iv+L
darth_ender said:
Hint: You should be able to force a mate beginning at turn 10.
Yeah, I invented it. I've been kind of quiet about my name, but since no one else reads this thread, I doubt too many will figure it out.
I was hesitant about writing that since I knew it could give your name away, but also thought that not too many people read this thread. Apologies if you didn't want me giving that away. I suggest you simply remove the link, which would prevent people from seeing your name. They would have to really want to know if they searched for it via Google, and I doubt anyone who would be looking at this thread would do so.
In any case, Micro shogi should have actually come with Kyoto shogi, as I think they're bundled together for Zillions.
Ah, yes, of course.
And there is a file for Ito Shogi as well, though I am actually working with modified rules, so you may want to make a cheapo set that can easily be modified in order to help me design a better Ito Shogi game. Are you willing to help me playtest that game? It may take a few tries to get it right.
I would certainly be willing to playtest it with you. With Zillions, since you can alter which piece is on which square, it shouldn't be too hard to change certain moves, but if you decide to change the board size, I'll have to rely on diagrams.
My solution is as follows (to better illustrate the different options, I will bold, italicize, and underline definite moves, bold the first option and italicize the second. I will add bolding or underlining to variations after that, alternating between them) :
Turn 10: Same moves for both of us.
Turn 11a: I would have dropped my knight on 2iii, putting you in check.
Turn 11b: Here, it breaks into a couple possible variations. If you moved your king to 4i or 4ii, I would drop a lance on 4iii (turn 12a). You would have moved to either 5i or 5ii (turn 12b) and I would have then moved my rook to 3ii (and it would of course become a pawn). If you were on 5i, this would have put you in check and you would have had to move to 5ii (turn 13b). If you were already on 5ii, you could have moved either your pawn or your knight and then I would have dropped my token on 5iii, ending the game at turn 14a.
Turn 11b: If you had moved your king to 2i, the game would have played out slightly differently. I would have taken your pawn/rook with my knight (turn 12a). It would become a gold general and put your king in check. You could either take it, or move to 3i.
Turn 12b: For now I will assume you took it. I would have dropped my lance on 1iii (turn 13a), putting you in check once again. This would force you back onto 2i (turn 13b). I would have taken your tokin with my rook, making it a pawn. At this point, there are several things you could have done.
Turn 14b: If you took the pawn with your king, I would have dropped a rook on 3iii (turn 15a), putting you in check. Again, there are multiple possibilities here.
Turn 15b: I will assume you would have moved your king back to 2i. I would have dropped my tokin on 3i and checkmated you.
Turn 12b: If you instead moved your king to 2i, I would have dropped a rook on 2i, forcing your king onto 4ii. Then I would have dropped my tokin on 5iii: checkmate.
Turn 14b: If you moved your king to 4i or 4ii, I would have dropped a lance somewhere...I won't cover this though, because there are just too many possible moves you could have made.
Turn 15b: If you had moved your king to 4i or 4ii, I would have taken your silver general on 3iv with my rook, placing you in check with my bishop (turn 16a). You could have moved to a few different places, and I would have either moved my pawn forward to become a rook or dropped a lance in the same column as your king, forcing you into another column. You could have dropped pieces in between, but I will ignore that possibility because I cannot cover everything. Eventually I would have trapped you with a combination of my rook, lance, and tokin or silver general, but exactly how would take too long to cover.
And there you have it (mostly). If you ended up taking the options that led to the situation in the last two paragraphs, things would have taken a while longer, but I still might have been able to checkmate you. It's also possible that you might have made a comeback, and eventually won the game. However, that would have involved you making the choices up to and past turn 14b or 15b. If you hadn't made it up to then and moved your king to 4i or 4ii, I'm pretty sure I would have won. I think you had a chance though.
Tyrphanax said:
It's okay, I win all the rivalry games. That's the good part about being born and raised in one city and going to university in the other.
Also Ric Olie is less funny now.
That's because there's some impostor (TV's Frink) who is pretending to be Ric Olie who was pretending to be Frink.
...You did mean that Ric Olie, right?
Thank you for your answer. One small note though: there was nothing said about the paramedics being in the same position as the angels. The video was made later, and they just happened to make the angels like that.
I have some answers for some things you brought up, but it's three in the morning here and I'm not about to try explaining things when I'm half asleep.
darth_ender said:
Anyhoo, I gotta get to bed. Hopefully I'll read your solution tomorrow :)
Hopefully I'll have a solution tomorrow... :P
I'd like to play Micro shogi next.
Sure, I'll have to see if that's on the BCM Games software or if I need to download a Zillions file.
And I am interested in trying out another variant I haven't even suggested yet. It's a recently invented game, but one that could be interesting. It hasn't gained much following yet. But Micro shogi should come first, as it's style of play really helps when trying out the other.
Gee whiz, ender, you're allowed to take credit for it, you know! ;) You didn't tell me you had designed your own games. It looks fun. I imagine it's quite a bit different than playing on a square board, but I'd definitely be interested in trying it.
I think there are too many possible variations for me to be able to tell you how I would checkmate you from here, but I can probably come up with something beginning from turn eight, according to Zillions.
I tried to figure out how I could have checkmated you, and I got close, but I'm too tired to figure out a way that would have been any faster than what I ended up doing. I'll try again tomorrow. :P
SidVichyssoise said:
There are aspects of the 1997 Special Edition (but not subsequent DVD/Blu-Ray alterations) that don't bother me at all, so a definitive Star Wars for me would have some but not all of these. Two exceptions would be Greedo not shooting at Han and keeping Sebastian Shaw as the ghost of Anakin. Does anybody else out there fall into this camp?
I agree, and what you are describing sounds to me like Adywan's edit.
darth_ender said:
Ah crap. As if I hadn't made enough mistakes this game, I moved your king earlier to 5iv. Now looking back, I see you had him on 4iv.
That sucks (for you), but I can't say I'm terribly sorry. ;)
Well, I'll confess to you now that you could have already forced a mate. I thought I'd escaped, but with an error like I just made (thinking my G on 3iv was safe), there's no hope now. At the very least, I would have dropped my last piece as a lance instead of a tokin. That would have prevented this unequal exchange. In any case, instead of duking it out for several more turns, I'd rather declare you the victor and challenge you to find out how you could have forced a mate in the last few moves.
Fair enough. I wouldn't mind playing it out, just to see if you could come back, but if you think it would only drag the game on longer, so be it. I do see a couple ways to checkmate you, which you could delay, if not prevent, but I'm still figuring out how I could have checkmated you in the last few turns.
Meanwhile, congratulations on beating me! You played very well, and I'm happy to see you win. I know I'd made several poor moves, but you took advantage of them and made several good ones, so you should be very proud :)
Thank you! I didn't expect I would until a few turns ago, but I underestimated my chances of winning. When I saw your relatively long post I was sure you had forced a checkmate somehow, but I see that wasn't so. :)
Kx3iv
Rx3iv+P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rusfefmQDEs
Out of curiosity, what is the atheist explanation for things like this? Or do you just ignore these things and assume that there will be a scientific explanation in the future?
R*3iii, check
Lx3i+T
K-4iv
Rx3iv+P
P-5iv+R
This isn't usually a problem, but sometimes I don't get notifications for threads I'm subscribed to. The only such thread I know for sure is this one:
Sometimes I get notifications, sometimes I don't. I haven't noticed any definite patterns, but it seems to happen when I am already in the Off Topic forum, so it isn't a real problem. I just thought I should mention it though, in case it is some kind of glitch with that thread.
http://www.historyorb.com/events/january/29
Skip down to 1984. That's where I got confused. At first glance, it looked like the same thing, but I guess that was a test model or something. I should have guessed since there wasn't a mention of the shuttle being destroyed.
TV's Frink said:
That's what this is.
LOL
DominicCobb said:
Maybe we should have Ric Olie 2 conduct a vote as to which is the real thread?
I vote that the thread in which I posted should be the real thread... Oh, wait, now I've posted in two threads.
:(