Recent posts by Phoenix00017 on Kongregate

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

I agree with P_F_B – that post made little sense to me. Why believe parts of the Bible and not the rest of it? What criteria is there for believing those parts of the Bible? What inherent qualities of the world necessitate a higher power, and why is it absurd to say we came from nothing, but that God did come from nothing (or always existed)?

Also, the poster needs to check their numbers – only 33% of the world’s population is Christian. Certainly not a majority.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Minimum age to use Google?

Funny, I don’t remember accepting any ToS when I went to Google.com. There was never any statement of the terms of the contract, unless I specifically sought them out. Can I really be compelled to a contract that I never saw, accepted, or even knew existed?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Minimum age to use Google?

But doesn’t there have to be some sort of actual signature to validate a contract? Short of a public-key signature, can you really consider an online contract to be valid? Can’t you simply deny that you signed it all (assuming of course you haven’t admitted to one of the “this contract is valid if you do this” conditions)?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

Awesome post, unproductive. I’d love to see any legitimate responses to that.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Minimum age to use Google?

I thought they charged her with much more serious things, but the jury dropped the felonies and only got her on the misdemeanors.

I don’t think it means we have to press charges, but I think it could set legal precedent so that if someone is charged, violating the ToS can be added to the list.

Topic: Serious Discussion / I really need some help...

SaintAjora’s answer is probably a great one. Outside of that, use Google and Wikipedia to get you started and go to the sources from there. It’s your research project – we’re not going to do the legwork for you. Also, these types of titles are useless – please use more informative titles in the future. Seeing as this doesn’t really have any sort of serious discussion, I’m going to lock it.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Minimum age to use Google?

All-caps and pointless titles are not becoming to the serious discussion forum. I’ve changed your title.

On the topic, as ion said, it would be impossible to enforce. But it’s still an interesting, and fairly disturbing, precedent. Will this prevent schools from teaching kids how to use Google safely and effectively?

The law is a little strange too. Do you have a link to it (outside of AotS)? It seems silly to give websites the ability to arbitrarily create punishable laws (“By reading this sentence, you agree that you are not human.”), so I’m sure it has some restrictions on it. Perhaps it will force Google to open up their ToS a bit though.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

A quick question – what makes Occam’s Razor correct? Is it based on empirical evidence? What makes it true?

Topic: Kongregate / Warning: Posting Pornographic Referral Links

I don’t think it’ll be necessary – as long as the comments are flagged, I’m going through them and making sure they are all silenced/warned/banned appropriately. Thanks for the offer though. :)

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

SaintAjora, I consider myself to be a very patient person, and even I’m impressed with your persistence on this topic against people who refuse to listen to, or even acknowledge, your arguments. While I worry that this is futile, I respect your patience and dedication. I really wonder how this discussion would go face-to-face. I’m still pondering making a youtube video to see what kind of reactions I could get.

Topic: Kongregate / Warning: Posting Pornographic Referral Links

Try reading it again. I wrote www.sexywhoever.com, because the links are all of the form www.sexy[insertgirlnamehere].com. :-P

Topic: Kongregate / Warning: Posting Pornographic Referral Links

Nezzadar – I appreciate your enthusiasm. Perma-bans have been handed out for accounts that appear to have been created solely for the purpose of spamming these links. However, some of the people are level 20+ users who have never been banned before. I hardly think a perma-ban on a first time offense is justified. I’d much rather give them a small punishment, a strict warning, and trust that they can use good judgment in the future, and still keep our active users on the site.

RMcD – It’s a link that gives you more porn the more people you refer (though the amount of porn is laughably small anyway – it’s a huge scam), so yes, it violates both.

Harebrain – the easiest way is to flag them as inappropriate. I’m going through and deleting them based on how many flags they get, so that’s the most helpful thing you can do.

Topic: Kongregate / Warning: Posting Pornographic Referral Links

I was hoping common sense would prevail, but apparently we need to be a bit more clear. This is a formal warning to everyone who has fallen prey to the urge to post links to www.sexywhoever.com. We’ve had two significant breakouts of these types of postings in the past couple of weeks that have completely flooded our game comments with these links.

Such links are clear violations of two of our strongest policies at Kongregate: no referral links, and no pornographic links.

Anyone posting these types of comments will receive at least a 24-hour silence, and likely a 24-hour or 7-day ban if you spam the comments on lots of games. This is degrading the quality of the site. If you want porn, go elsewhere for it. To be frank, there are far easier ways to get it than going through these types of referral scams. Whatever you choose to do, keep it off of Kongregate.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to post here and I’ll be around to answer them. This is not a permanent sticky and will be removed after we feel that the message has been properly spread around.

Topic: Kongregate / Sexy Emily not Emily Greer sorry

I’ve locked this topic and created a new temporary sticky about it. Please see that one for details.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

I agree with Ajora – you can’t just use the “mysterious, omnipotent ways” thing and wave your hand against any sort of logical argument. It’s rather clear that the salinity of the water of the world would unify – whether it be for salt water or fresh water, one set of fish (if not all) would not survive. Which in turn would require extremely rapid evolution of fish in the other direction, something that is scientifically infeasible and makes religion rather uncomfortable anyway.

Beyond the fish argument, the other two major arguments I know against the flood are the amount of water (as has been mentioned previously), and the much more damning argument regarding ecosystems (which simply notes that there is no way that the predators of the earth could survive off of the breeding of the herbivores without killing, well, all of them off). The entire thing collapses as soon as you start applying science and logic to it.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

Holy crap…3000 posts…sorry, where were we again? :)

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

Wow, ringing endorsement there, BigD. :/

I’m about to give up on this thread. Not a single person who supports gay marriage has addressed any of my points (which are also expressed by many of the other posters here). I can only assume it’s because they can’t – it’s impossible to logically, ethically, legally, and politically argue in favor of banning gay marriage.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

Im not saying that there is any law that backs up it should be changed to another word, its just my opinion.

So let’s get the record straight then, so I know what we’re debating about. Do you support banning gay marriage?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

tbp – There is no reason for gay marriages at a church to be any less valid than a straight marriage. To force them to call it something different is blatant, illegal discrimination. There is zero basis for this, and you can’t put it into law. All personal moral debates aside, there is no legal basis for this law.

You can talk about Roman law and birth vs. choice all you want, but all of it irrelevant. Freedom of religion and civil equality demand equal treatment of gay and straight marriage.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Merry Freaking Christmas

Not to mention not a single one of those sources was written down prior to 50 years after Christ. That’s a long, long period of silence for the coming and death of the savior of the world. Also, to address your question about Jesus being known around the world (though please correct me if I’m misunderstanding this passage):

16But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?”[h] 17Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. 18But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Romans 10:16-18)

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

Whether or not the world was flooded killing all animals and man save for one small group is more than just a minor detail in the Bible. This would be a much more crowded thread if we were pointing out every minor error. Rather, I think it is far more useful and productive to attempt to analyze the big things.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

Bigdman – there is an “Edit Post” button so that you can change typos. Reproduction is not relevant here, for reasons that Jabor stated, among others.

Topic: Serious Discussion / God, the Bible, and religion - a Kong search for truth

P_F_B – there was apparently a miscommunication. I’m sorry if you feel frustrated, but I think Ajora was asking for events that in any way support Christianity, not just are true events in the Bible. I can understand that attempting to deal with all of these demands, especially as a young and new Christian, can be overwhelming. I’d recommend taking a deep breath, and perhaps an evening off. I have to do that sometimes with other threads in this forum (good lord, my blood gets boiling at some of the homosexual hate spewed in some of these threads).

Topic: Serious Discussion / Proposition 8 in California, 2008

Arguing over the differences between Catholics and Protestants is rather irrelevant. I’m not going to get into a debate over forgiveness in the Bible here. The point is that the founders made it blatantly clear that this is not a Christian nation and that there is a fundamental freedom of religion within our country. There is no question about that, and there is nothing open to interpretation. The first amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It does not say:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of Christian variants; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Thus, the religion of the founders is irrelevant. Some were Christian, some weren’t. They all acknowledged the necessity of freedom of religion, and that’s the important point. Plus, as I said earlier, none of this can make any definitive statement about their opinion of gays, nor would their personal opinion of homosexuality matter since it did not make it into the Constitution.

The bible clearly states that homosexuality is wrong.

No, actually, it doesn’t. Not in the New Testament. Leviticus is not acceptable, for the examples mentioned previously (if you’ve ever eaten shellfish, you’ve violated Leviticus – attempting to use Leviticus only shows a lack of understanding of the Bible). I’ll refer you here for a discussion of why even the New Testament does not state that it is a sin.

Again though, what the Bible says about homosexuality is completely irrelevant. There is no non-religious justification for banning gay marriage, and thus attempting to do so is a blatant violation of the first amendment – a fact you continue to dodge and ignore.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Merry Freaking Christmas

Argh – we’ve completely sidetrack…sorry! :( I have no problem moving over to one of the religion threads if you want to get back to Christmas here.

In any case, I fail to see how that’s relevant, PFB. The Bible states the Jesus’ acts were known around the world, and yet there is no account of these acts anywhere. How is that possible?