Dane

Do I just walk in to a bank or something with $50 cash and say, "Here's some money, give me a gift card" or do I have to go through an overcomplicated registration procedure? Do I have to give my name, address, and parent's consent or something? Will by purchases be tracked? Can I even get a gift card at under 18?

I mean, between his placing the tree of knowledge in the middle of the Garden, making its fruits look appealing, AND withholding the ability to determine right from wrong from Adam and Eve (hence they would not know it was wrong to disobey God), are we just some kind of sick joke to God? He damned billions to Hell over it! And it was His fault!

Exactly why does there have to be a war after Armageddon? Are the angels and demons hoping to kill one another? If so, God could instantly vaporize all demons seeing as how he is supposedly all-powerful.

It's not for homework, but I'd really like to get an explanation of this problem:

Prove sin(x-20)+cos(x+70) = 0

Can one of you guys go through this step by step?

You can view an advertisement for a kickstarter/ indiegogo campaign about a new type of solar power on YouTube, called "Solar freakin' roadways". It concerns the replacement of all asphalt in America with hexagonal units that have about a 13.4 sq ft area each that have a solar cell covered in tempered glass with raised bumps. It's garnered quite a bit of attention and is becoming viral. People are excited about how they will create jobs, reduce oil dependence and protect the environment.

They're promising all sorts of ridiculous things like LED lights to make every street look like Tron, a water treatment system to process rainwater, pressure sensors to detect wildlife on roads, induction systems to charge electric cars while they're moving, and heating coils to keep the panels free of snow.

While this sounds cool and neat, all these features would place each unit at around $500 at least. So I've done some math, and assuming that each 13.4 sq ft panel only has about 9.3 sq ft of PV cells, and that the panels operate at 18.5% efficiency as advertised, and that the cost per megawatt in USD is about $114, a $500 unit would take TWENTY SIX YEARS to pay for itself. This is assuming that daytime is 12 hrs long and the sun is directly overhead during the day. This is also assuming that the cells do not use induction, heating, LED lights, or the central wireless network they're supposed to always be connected to, EVER.

Continued on additional details...

If humans in Eden were never intended to die, that means they would have spent an eternity in Eden. And if God forced people he created with curiosity to live in a confined space for eternity, how could he possibly expect Adam and Eve to not eat a fruit that was sitting right in the middle of the garden? It would have happened eventually.

I bought the Vanquisher 2.0 goggles around a week ago and they're amazing, except the mirrored coating on the outside seems to be scuffed. The mark looks like a fingerprint, but I can scrub with anything I want and it'll never come off. There is less light resistance/tint in that area when looking through goggles.

The spot is right over the right eyeball and it's REALLY bugging me. It blurs my vision significantly, and only in one eye. I can no longer read when wearing them, or see who my coach is yelling at from the pool. Is there a household cleaner/chemical I can use to remedy this? Will the store I bought the goggles from let me exchange them?

I've got a MBP early 2011, and I'm having some major issues. It's definitely been showing its age since I bought it, and in some pretty major ways.

I'm almost dead certain that the Mavericks OS caused my partition map to fail. Nothing a reformatting of the HD couldn't solve, but Apple essentially uploaded a fatal error for my model of computer. Noticed abysmal processing speed until HD failure

Battery life down to 40 minutes... is this normal for a MBP of a little more than 3 years?

And today it just flat out died. I had a youtube video open, and "minecraft" on pause on a different screen. Watching the youtube, and the fan stopped and the screen went black. Suspected overheating because the fan was going pretty loud, but I have a ceiling fan going in this room and there's no way it should have overheated with two barely graphics intensive programs. Set it under the ceiling fan (fastest speed) and after 10 minutes still completely dead. Not able to start it up. No way this was lack of battery power, all signs indicate the computer is still at 100% battery. Any ideas what this might be?

It drives me absolutely nuts when Christians refer to Thomas Aquinas's First Mover principle. When asked, "If the universe was bound by the cause-and-effect rule, why wasn't God? He must have needed a creator also, if the universe's need for a creator was such glaring evidence that you felt the need to use it as proof of an omnipotent God," they feel the need to respond with, "God's eternal. He doesn't have a beginning or an end because it's against his nature. He doesn't need one."

Some cop out.

So my question is, could the universe have also been eternal, like your God? If he doesn't need a beginning, why does the universe?

You can't be omnibenevolent and know what it feels like to get a rush from stealing or killing.

Now that I think about it a bunch of God's qualities are self-contradictory

Omnipotence: God can't make a puzzle he can't solve. Because he can solve any puzzle. Therefore it'd be impossible for him to make a puzzle he can't solve.

Omniscience: Same thing as omnipotence.

Omnibenevolence: Someone can't be unable to do evil. "Evil" is relative to the person perceiving the scenario. Any decision always has positive and negative effects but someone who is unable to do evil can't cause negative effects to someone.

God can't make a question he can't solve. He's omnipotent. Therefore he can solve anything. Therefore it'd be impossible for him to come up with a question he can't solve.

If you're going to answer, "Because it's God's Word," think about what you're saying. The only two things that say the Bible is the infallible word of God are the Bible, and people who quote the Bible. What say ye?

God cannot make a question so hard that He cannot solve it. Because He's omnipotent. He can solve any question. So therefore he can't make a question that's impossible for him to solve.

How can he be the master of all evil, if he assists God in containing and punishing the wicked at heart? It'd be like saying the warden in a penitentiary is the master of all criminals...

There's a general consensus among the religious community (or at least amongst the followers of Abrahamic religions) that God is all of 3 things:

Omniscient (all knowing)

Omnipotent (all powerful)

Omnibenevolent (Unable to do evil) or entirely righteous, I've had people tell me off for mixing them up.

So, doesn't it seem like omnipotence and omnibenevolence would come into conflict with reality? An omnipotent AND omnibenevolent God would never allow evil to exist, because it'd be against his nature. So... why does evil still exist?

Another problem is omniscience and omnibenevolence. One who is omniscient must surely know what it's like to WANT to murder someone, (or put so eloquently by DarkMatter2525 on Youtube, "know what it's like to snort coke off a hooker's t*t") but that'd also go against the nature of someone who is omnibenevolent OR entirely righteous.

And finally, omnibenevolence would of course come into conflict with the ability to send people to Hell. Sending anyone to Hell is eternal torture, making it an infinitely horrible thing to do.

When someone tells a Christian something like, "How did the human population start with 2 people? There wouldn't be enough genetic diversity to keep the species (or any species) going for more than a generation or two,"

Why do they reply that "God gave them genetic diversity" or some equally ridiculous, all purpose, generic line about how God magically solved the obvious and blatant logical fallacy?

Please don't say "because it's God's Word". I've heard it. And the reason you believe it's God's Word is because it says so in the Bible. So what makes the Bible credible enough to be considered absolute truth? It seems to me like it's simply a book, written by imperfect men.

And if you're Christian, would YOU?

If God said to not worship idols or false images, why do people worship a cross and draw pictures of Jesus?