[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[Chris R. Miller]

John Reimer wrote:
> Hello Simen,
> 
>> John Reimer Wrote:
>>
>>> This God has not only set the standard that defines evil but has also
>>> promised to judge all evil finally.  And he also defined how one is
>>> saved from this evil.   Does Epicurus decide for himself what he sees
>>> as evil in the process of "disproving" God?  What does Epicurus
>>> perceive "evil" to mean?
>>>
>>> The strange thing is that people continue to complain about evil but
>>> refuse to turn away from it in their own lives, or to adopt the plan
>>> that frees them from that bondage to it.
>>>
>> Ah, but which religion is correct, then? Muslims will claim christians
>> are infidels, christians will say the same of hindus, etc, and none of
>> them have any more proof than the next.
>>
>> Speaking of hindus, my parents shared a nice story after their visit
>> in India. They were invited off the street to a wedding, and asked if
>> it was a hindu wedding, as they were christians. The host answered,
>> "The gods are the same for everyone", and let them in.
> 
> Do you wish to argue on behalf of Islam and Hinduism?  The topic of 
> discussion was not Christianity verses these religions.  It was a 
> discussion about theism and atheism.  It seems you prefer to move the 
> topic off its original focus for some reason.  Is this meant to concede 
> the God exists, and now we should discuss the most likely form in which 
> he exists? :)

What's to say that - if He exists - we could even comprehend the form of 
His existence, be it physical in our sense of spiritual in the "higher" 
religious sense.  There are differing dogmas in the manifestations of 
the existence of the Supreme Being.  Classical Christians adhering to 
the Nicaean Creed would tell you that God is in everything and yet 
nowhere.  Mormons will tell you to hie to Kolob.

Along those lines, CS Lewis made some excellent inferencing about the 
omnipresence of God when he made the analogy that God is like a writer. 
  The characters in the story (us) are not in any specific point in 
time, because to God (the writer) they are in every point in time, held 
in memory at each point.  From this we can at least infer that God would 
be capable of existing in a kind of extended physical state such that 
time would not have effect upon Him - otherwise time would pass for God 
just as it does for us, which would negate the ability of God to be 
omniscient.

To try and force Lewis' analogy closer to being on-topic, when you write 
a program, you write code for a specific and finite point in the 
execution of the program.  However, in your comprehension and 
understanding of that application the state in which the application is 
in is in both the beginning and the end.  You know where it came from, 
where it "is," and where it's going.  Similarly, Lewis hypothesizes that 
we must all be like applications to God, and that He perceives us in an 
entirely different way than we do the world.

Either way, we can bicker about religion all day long, and never get 
anywhere because religion is a completely subjective topic.  It's 
different because it's at its core it's a belief, therefore there is no 
intrinsically right or wrong answer.  There's only the answer of the 
individual, which looses its "correctness" the moment it leaves scope of 
the individual.  Personally I think it's good for people to believe in a 
God, since the whole "Gospel" concept has a tendency to make people more 
interested in civility and in making themselves better, whether it be 
motivated by a love of Jesus, a fear of Allah, or from fear of Karmic 
retribution, or whatever else you may peradventure to believe.

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