Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Broad and Narrow Way of Life

The broad path is what many travel on today. The term broad means wide, spacious, tolerant, open and unrestrained. It offers a wide spectrum of paths within itself. It is enticing, diverse and has many deceptive things to offer. This path is not strict, but very lenient, instead. You can do anything you want to do and live however you want on this path and in vain say Lord, Lord. On this path people are lead to believe that they are on the right path to God when they are not. The devil doesn’t care who he uses to mislead people. People are tricked into thinking they can live the life of sin and still go to heaven. They assume that Jesus Christ is their Lord and personal Savior while they continue to live a Hollywood lifestyle of sin.

On this path there are many philosophies, myths, traditions and doctrines of devils. They don’t eat the whole roll of the Word of God, instead they dip and dab. They take out what they want to believe to suit their lifestyle. If you encounter a religion whose viewpoints, or mindsets are contrary to the doctrines of the Bible, then that religion is false. They dispute the Bible having departed from the faith. They deny the deity of Christ and the works of the cross. They say Jesus is not the son of God. They distort the infallibility of the Bible, final judgment, and eternal life in heaven. They are in denial of everlasting punishment. They say there is no such thing as sin. They say there is no Supreme Being. They say there is no devil. They say the devil is something conjured up in the mind. They say hell is a figment of one’s imagination. They even say heaven is an illusion. Instead of saying, I am a god: they say I am God. Some say there is no God.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Virtual communities

The term virtual community is qualified to the book of the same title by Howard Rheingold, published in 1993. The book discussed a range of computer-mediated communication and social groups. The technologies included Usenet, MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon) and their derivatives MUSHes and MOOs, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), chat rooms and electronic mailing lists; the World Wide Web as we know it today was not yet used by many people. Rheingold pointed out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to such a group.

Virtual communities are considered a vital aspect of the Web 2.0 concept, which depends upon social interaction and exchange between users online. This emphasizes the reciprocity element of the unwritten social contract between community members. Web 2.0 is essentially characterized by virtual communities such as Flickr, Facebook, and Del.icio.us (see below).

Different virtual communities have different levels of interaction and participation among their members. This ranges from adding comments or tags to a blog or message board post to competing against other people in online video games such as MMORPGs. Not unlike traditional social groups or clubs, virtual communities often divide themselves into cliques or even separate to form new communities. Author Amy Jo Kim points out a potential difference between traditional online communities (message boards, chat rooms, etc), and more people-centric, bottom-up social tools (blogs, instant messenging buddy lists), and suggests the latter are gaining in popularity.