orodr3th

Ascar Pilind: p2p

BlueLancer, I can't agree with you completely on the issue of the Council of Nicaea. As a Christian, I do believe that the Bible is inspired by God. However, I'm not going to argue over that as we would be running around the whole fact/faith circle and probably ending in a flame fest. I'll just give you a couple of things to keep in mind that might change your view on the plausibility of scripture being God-inspired. In 325 AD, although Christianity was the official state religion of the Roman empire as decreed by Constantine, it was still only just coming out its small-underground beginnings. In 325, Church bishops (I can't say this for sure but I do not believe there were Cardinals/full church hierarchy in place at the time of the Council of Nicaea) were hardly in a position to be accruing vast amounts of wealth or political influence. So I wouldn't see much of a case for buying influence to decide canon. When it comes down to it though, it is completely a matter of faith about believing scripture is God-breathed. Hope that made a bit of sense. -Orodr3th

No Darkmage, unless you can show me some evidence that it was re-written over the hundred or so years between the original manuscripts and the first compilation, I see no reason to believe that it was. With thousands (litterally) of copies of various manuscripts that are incredibly close to the Bible as it is today, I find it quite plausible that it is (largely) intact. One thing to remember is the mindset the copiers of manuscripts had then. Many of the early Christian writers were coming out of the Jewish tradition in which rabbis would copy a manuscript not line by line or word by word, but *letter by letter* (really mind blowing to think about the time it would take) and when coming to the point of copying a reference to God, would stop writing and wash their hands before continuing. I just say that to give you an idea of the reverence and care taken in the manuscripts.

Darkmage, saying that the "Universal Bible was written with all the "stuff" in it." wasn't written until around 325 AD isn't quite accurate. While it may only have been *compiled* in 325 and accepted as whole, the *individual* books of the Bible were mostly written prior to 150. As for your claim that there was unity in the Church, this is incorrect. The early Church knew what it believed as a whole, the only major disputes were over Arianism (rejection of the divinity of Christ) and Gnosticism (that believer must have a 'hidden knowledge' to attain salvation) and these were resolved comparatively quickly. Arianism only stood as a major problem for the Church for around a hundred years. After that it was thoroughly rejected and only retained a strong presence among the Germanic peoples.

Yipes...finals come around things just seem to pile up...leave the thread a day and five more pages appear. Anyways, BlueLancer, I was wondering what instances of not paying taxes to the king being called blasphemy (forgive my horrible prose style and excessive use of forms of 'to be'...) you were thinking of. As I recall, the Church prior to the Reformation was at odds with the majority of European monarchs on the issue of political power. Hence the Investiture Controversy between Henry IV and Gregory VII. Anyways, I'll (attempt to) stop rambling. Thanks for keeping this thread largely ad hominem free :D Completely random note: one of Henry's letters to the pope contains the most amazing sentence ever, "Descend, descend and be damned throughout the ages!"

Range, the historicity of the Bible is undeniable. It is not a collection of tales handed down through oral tradition. Manuscripts of most of the gospels and several of the epistles are within a hundred years of the events recorded and the number of manuscripts numbers in the thousands. Compare that to the writings of Plato: only a handful of manuscripts and those from well over a thousand years after his death.

BlueLancer, I have to disagree with you on the point you made regarding the Declaration. If you take out the phrase "by their Creator" as you did, one rightly arrives at the conclusion that: "It doesn't matter "who" or "what" granted the people those unalienable rights. They exist because people agree they should." (Please pardon my inability to figure out how to put the quote in nice blue box format =P) The problem with this is that if rights are what people agree upon and then people later agree that rights should be something different, those rights are no longer unalienable.

Hmm...one finds a forum to be a most excellent tool for procrastination. Without the lack of better things to do, I'll just put in my two cents. There have been some good points, made. I agree with Igor that you can not prove the existence of God through empirical means, however, to assume that merely because man lacks the capability to prove something, it does not exist is most arrogant. The grasp of man's reason can hardly be the standard of existence. If that were, true many phenomena we know today only came into being as we discovered them. I apologize for being slightly rambling and perhaps moderately (or more than moderately) incomprehensible. Aquinas put it rather well when he wrote "the truth of the intelligible things of God is twofold, one to which the inquiry of reason can attain, the other which surpasses the whole range of human reason"

Here, here! Spot on! Bravo! Even since I started playing in early '05 the game has gone downhill, I believe. I loathe the warning signs and pop up messages. Give me one hard lesson and skip the toddler warnings. While it is disappointing to watch RS decline, at least I'm not going to stick around to watch it crash. Tonight was actually my last night in mems (don't have enough time in college to play) so aside from logging on f2p occasionally to chat with friends, my RS days are sort of over. Sad, but I suppose we all must move on. Superb article. =D>

Yep, it is legal since it is not between two of your accounts. (Sorry to be yet another echo :) )

Well, I'm a bit of a Tolkien fan (ok, so maybe a lot of a Tolkien fan) so I got mine that way. Of course, all character names were taken...so I experimented with some Elvish and thus I became Ascar Pilind. (Quenya for Rushing Arrow, which I thought had a nice ring to it)

Hooray for Jagex! Death to the autoers! Let us hope that this is the beginning of something big. As for now it is just a start. I'm at the yews south of Fally on a f2p server right now and there are six autoers there. Not as bad as usual, but still f2p needs a good cleaning. Thanks so much to the editor for the tip on using the ignore list for a notepad. I love it!

Fascinating article. I can't say that I agreed with all of your conclusions about the wilderness, but I agree that Jagex should encourage more emergent game play there. Personally I disagree with honor pkers because I believe that the honor code limits emergent game play too much. I want to be one step up on the next guy in the wildy by any allowable means possible.

Absolutely positively brilliant. I have a fair bit of experience pking in F2P at Edgeville and the 'code' that pures say one has to follow is laughable. Oh you don't like that I eat to the point where I have more than half hp? Ok, in that case I'll just 1 item with rune bax and pot...Just for kicks I made a level 8 with protect from melee. Three days of work at the boneyard and the shouts of 'noob' come from far and wide. No 'pure pker' can touch me so of course they just call me a noob. I have to say that the last line was definitely the best. 'Maybe, just maybe, you're just not good enough' Beautiful.

Bravo! =D> Excellent. I believe that the editor mentioned a purple phat in at least two earlier articles. Perhaps the editor has 99 thieving? Wonderful story, just the thing to give me a break from agility training :)