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 :)

Great article. =D> I started playing rs a bit over two years ago. (Heard about it from a friend a couple years before that and forgot haha). Even just two years ago when I had started, it had the feel of a smaller game. I played on the Philadelphia server and it wasn't uncommon to run into people you met before. There were rarely more than 1,000 people on the server at peak times and most of all people were nice. Ok, so enough rambling about what it used to be like. It does seem as though runescape has been slowly degrading. Still, as a mid-level player the prospect of going back to members and wearing black dhide and a quest cape keeps me playing. But even that won't keep me for long if things progress at the current rate.

Great points. Excellent article. The dumbing down of the game is quite annoying. My pet peeve is the emote page. Why change to images from text? If you can't read, get your priorities straight. Learn to read and then come back and play rs.

Ah, my first day of Runescape. I can't believe it has been three years since I started. I got off tutorial island and decided I would go exploring. I walked north to Varrok and the from Varrok to Fally. It was such a looong way. The map seemed so huge. Over the next couple days I started mining. I found a sapphire and was like :shock: this has got to be worth a fortune. My belief was confirmed when a golem killed me and I kept the sapphire instead of my copper ore \ Then when I was a 'much higher level' (maybe 9 or so) this guy paid me 1000gp for 100 raw beef and I couldn't believe how anyone could have that much money. I used it to buy an air staff...good times good times.

Saradomin definitely. Hated the sea-foam green kinda barf colored Guthix armor ever since I started. On a slightly more analytical note :P , I can't stand his doctrine of balance. Sounds too much like there are no absolute truths...and that is just stupid lol. 'There is no such thing as an absolute truth.' 'Is that statement always true?' And I would choose good over evil so Saradomin.

Personally I find luring dishonorable and cowardly. Yes I have been lured. Guy said he needed a pic of people whip fighting and he would skull. Yes I should have been smarter than to accept the four mystic tops in the wildy :wall: I didn't realize the low shop value of the whip, but I got over it. I earned more cash and bought another whip and I won't make the mistake again. All that to say that while luring is detestable and unsporting Jagex hasn't stated it to be specifically against the rules so until they do...watch out for lurers and THINK before you step into the wildy. Edit: One more thought. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Nice article. I try to keep mine fairly balanced. Aside from Hunter (haven't been a member since it came out) all of mine are at least 40. Highest right now is hp at 72. Hopefully I will move more towards balanced...although I do like Saradomin better than Guthix :-k

Bit tricky for me since I haven't been a member since hunter came out...Anyway 85 combat and 1266 total makes me something like a 15.