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RicOlie_2

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Join date
6-Jun-2013
Last activity
26-Aug-2025
Posts
5,624

Post History

Post
#735770
Topic
How about a game of Japanese Chess, i.e. Shogi? Now playing Shogi4
Time

How are the pieces supposed to line up with the edge of the board? It looks as if they don't go right up against the edge, and since I've had to play with the spacing between the armies (and will have to do so more) in order to make them fit into the board, I'm concerned that we're going to end up with different set-ups at the end of all this....

Post
#735763
Topic
Random Thoughts
Time

A lot of people pronounce it as a word now, rather than "L-O-L" (leastwise in my generation), and I found it odd that people seem to have chosen "lawl" as the way to say it. I read it as a word because it's evolved beyond the meaning of "Laugh Out Loud" and doesn't have periods. I tend to lean away from pronouncing whatever-the-word-is-for-those-things-that-aren't-acronyms-but-are-similar-because-they-only-use-the-first-letter-of-each-word as words.

Post
#735612
Topic
How about a game of Japanese Chess, i.e. Shogi? Now playing Shogi4
Time

There seems to be a bit of a problem with the file. When it opens after downloading, a window pops up telling me that "Excel found unreadable content in [the workbook]" and asks me if I want to recover it. When I click yes, it says it was successful, and tells me this:

Popup Window said:

Replaced Part: /xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml part with XML error.  Load error. Line 2, column 59825.

It then gives me a blank spreadsheet.

Could you try reuploading it, perhaps?

Post
#735507
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

You answered my questions well in your second post. It seems that fairmormon has already addressed the letter here:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director

To which the author of the letter responded here:

http://cesletter.com/debunking-fairmormon/

Fairmormon again responded here:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director/Debunking_FairMormon

I do not find some of fairmormon's responses satisfactory (e.g. its explanations for the KJV errors in the Book of Mormon), but I spent the better part of my afternoon going through fairmormon.org and cesletter.com, and have found that much of Jeremy Runnells' methodology seems flawed (some of it I would not have noticed without you pointing it out). I think that I would have found him less convincing if I had been more knowledgeable about Mormonism to start with.

As time goes on, I'm seeing patterns on both sides of the debate between Christians and critics. Christians often have a tendency to dismiss good arguments from the other side rather than responding to them, while critics tend to exaggerate, and find parallels where there are none (e.g., the place names in the Book of Mormon compared to real or Biblical names, or in a more obscure example, comparing Jesus of Nazareth with Jesus ben Ananias (I think that's the name) in Josephus, and drawing out the parallels with sneaky wording. Reading the passage in Josephus about him makes if fairly clear that they're different stories).

Post
#735502
Topic
Ask the member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints AKA Interrogate the Mormon
Time

Thank you for taking the time to give such a lengthy response. I appreciate the effort, and you've answered quite a few things satisfactorily. Assuming fairmormon.org is reliable, the author of the PDF seems to have been quite dishonest.

darth_ender said:

Probably.  What issues are you getting hung up on again?

You've directly answered some of them and I found the answers to others through links you posted in your second post, so I'm happy for now.

Maybe I used this link before, but here are Martin Harris's five churches following his departure from the Church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Harris_(Latter_Day_Saints)#Strangite.2C_Whitmerite.2C_Gladdenite.2C_Williamite.2C_Shaker

Note that four of the five are Mormon split offs; only the Shakers were not.  That intrigues me, as the Doctrine and Covenants specifically addresses Shaker doctrine as false.

I know wish I had checked out the Wikipedia article earlier, as I probably would have saved you a lot of time. It appears that the author of our PDF used Wikipedia as his sole source for his info on Martin Harris, down to using quotations from Wikipedia's citations in the same order as presented on Wikipedia. That seems like a bad method to follow.

Post
#735473
Topic
Ask the non-member of all churches AKA Interrogate the atheist
Time

DuracellEnergizer said:

I have no problem with theistic evolution or, as I prefer to call it, evolutionary creationism. The idea that God designed the universe to allow life to come into existence through natural evolution isn't only valid in my eyes, but beautiful as well.

Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is a whole 'nother kettle of fish altogether. While it superficially resembles theistic evolution/evolutionary creationism, it posits that certain biological features COULD NOT have come into existence through natural evolution and COULD ONLY have been designed by an intelligent entity. That is just pure "god-of-the-gaps" pseudoscience without any basis in fact.

 My mistake. I've always assumed they were the same thing.

Post
#735422
Topic
Ask the non-member of all churches AKA Interrogate the atheist
Time

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

RicOlie_2 said:

How much historical credit do you give the (canonical) gospels? Do you think Jesus was crucified and buried, but didn't rise from the dead, or do you not think he was crucified at all, or do you think he didn't exist or was only based on someone historical (historical in this case meaning real)? Do you think he was a healer of some sort, or just a preacher, or none of the above?

I am not even sure he existed.  There is essentially no physical evidence, and no contemporary written record of such.  He could just be a mythical figure.  It is hard to believe that someone so influential and considered so dangerous (at the time) wouldn't have something written about him during his life.

 Do you have any views on the Testimonium Flavianum? Do you consider it good evidence for Jesus' existence?