Yellow Diamond

Welcome aboard, D4! Let me be the first to greet you. If you haven't already, take a look around and find a few topics in which to start posting. That will allow you to get acquainted with everyone as well as move you out of the Blank Flanks group.

Wonderfully stated. I happen to be in this camp, being a Christian myself. Human nature is distorted by the fall (i.e., original sin), but it is made whole in the person of Jesus Christ, who was not an apparition but took on true flesh (Rom 1:3-4; cf. Phil 2:7-8, NRSV), and therefore secures in the his resurrection the hope that we may be made whole through him. This is, without a doubt, one of the most difficult mysteries to understand, and it confounds even the most dedicated of Christians. And that is when we need to ground ourselves in St. Paul's words on hope (Rom 8:24), and that if we forfeit that hope we lose what is essential to Christian witness. Now, this is not to say that this is an excuse for naiveté; certainly not, because then you're putting on blinders and hoping things will work themselves out in the end. There exists evil in the world, and that evil must be identified and confronted. But it is a fool's errand to assume that evil can be vanquished apart from a component which belongs to the triumph of the resurrection. Christians are often the first to forget this, and we have to relearn what has already been taught. Unfortunately, this process is painful. I don't mean to sound as though I am excluding non-Christians from the discussion of the good and evil of humanity. I believe to a great degree that a non-Christian can identify what is just and unjust, as per natural law. As Blue alluded to---whether intentionally or unintentionally---there are secular parables for witness, to borrow from Karl Barth. But to state that the human being is intrinsically evil or intrinsically good is a selective argument, from my point of view. It is always a mixed bag, in a manner of speaking, which cannot, at least for the Christian, be separated from the economy of salvation. In short, I believe myself an optimist who recognizes, as best I can, the cause for discord and pessimism in the human person.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Sonic 3&Knuckles. I play Team Fortress 2 a lot, so I would place that on my favorite games list with the provision that it is a online FPS.

Welcome to the forum, PinkieDaShy! It would be a load of fun to hook up for some TF2.

Can you create a rock so large that even you cannot lift it?

Don't sell AJ short: you would be surprised by the calculations involved in bucking apples.

I take issue (not personally, but philosophically) with the reference to the Allegory of the Cave as a postmodern tale. Recall the whole of the allegory: there are men inside who are chained, believing the shadows cast on the walls are the whole of reality. The postmodern tale tends to stop at this point in order to illustrate our inability to assess the truth of reality objectively. But that is not where Plato stops! One of the imprisoned men is gradually led out of the cave, until he at last sees the sun and understands the wholeness of the world. Venturing back into the cave, this enlightened prisoner is killed by the others who refuse to accept a world outside of the one which that they inhabit. Plato is indicating a higher understanding, a higher truth with respect to the functions of the world. And knowing Platonic philosophy and its concept of the forms, there is little reason to believe it is a deconstructionist tale about how our perception, being fallible, is ultimate untrustworthy across the board. The Allegory of the Cave is a criticism of ignorance and reactionary elements toward higher truth which, in a not so subtle foreshadowing, eventually leads to the trial and execution of Socrates for “corrupting” the youth of Athens. We can argue about what enlightening truth the sun represents—the existence of God? The power of human reason? The truth of the natural world?—but it is not another false premise within the Platonic framework. A postmodernist would be inclined to reject it as foundational, for there appears no objective foundation for the centrality of this “truth.” The truth sets the fettered man free; a postmodernist, always critical of absolute constructs, would paradoxically declare himself free by denying the wholeness of truth.

Welcome aboard, Saga! Personally, I think it's nice to have a few animation flubs every once and a while. After all, as you said, we wouldn't have Derpy as a result.

About 8 to 9 hours. I go to bed very late, more often than not, since my graduate classes are only two times a week and are in the evening. So I go to bed late and wake up late in the day. It's a bad habit that I should break.