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Are you an atheist? I am, and so should you.; (be one that is)
Topic Started: Jul 15 2009, 07:59 PM (4,787 Views)
John D'Oh
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MAMIL
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I don't like to brag...
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 09:29 AM
Axtremus
Jul 17 2009, 10:43 PM
... God created man in his own image...
I think you have it backwards.
You lifted those words out of context. I stated that as a blurb in the Judeo-Christian self-referential system, which is neither my believe nor my opinion. :P
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
John D'Oh
Jul 18 2009, 11:20 AM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I don't like to brag...
Well, I'll give you 'simple'. :lol2:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 11:56 AM
John D'Oh
Jul 18 2009, 11:20 AM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I don't like to brag...
Well, I'll give you 'simple'. :lol2:
Oh, my bad - I mis-read the word 'omnipotent'.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 09:29 AM
Axtremus
Jul 17 2009, 10:43 PM
... God created man in his own image...
I think you have it backwards.
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I was thinking of the jealous sociopath from the Hebrew bible. Isn't that your god too?
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Moonbat
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Quote:
 

Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?


If you take our intuitive grasp of other minds then imagine a mind as uber powered as you can then you end up with something that very much resembles the monotheist conception of God. The anthropomorphic nature of the mainstream religions is hugely overpowering if one is used to thinking of the world in a completely unhuman way. The words used are words about minds, words about us. "Love" or "command" or "rest" or "desire" "jealous" etc. etc.

The bits of your description that i understand fit this idea:

I can understand eternal in terms of something/someone who is always around no matter how far forwards or backwards you go in time (fits the uberman idea)

I can understand omniscience and omnipotent in terms of someone knowing everything and being able to do anything. (fits the uberman idea)

I grasp what you have in mind by superessential (having looked it up) because it's intuitive (though ultimately flawed) to imagine minds to be independent of physical stuff. (fits the uberman idea)

However i get stuck with immutability and atemporality because they immediately mean a completely frozen God. An entirely static picture. So any words that are associated with our own necessarily time-dependent experiences like love or intention or communication are ruled out, for the same reason I see no way that the terms omniscience and omnipotenence can mean anything because those words only make sense in the context of minds and minds only make sense in the context of time-dependent change.

I also don't know what is meant by "infinite" because it needs a context e.g. if you say that space is infinite what it means is that if you blast off with a spaceship in a specific direction you can keep travelling forever without ever coming back on yourself. So when you say God is infinite what are you actually saying? (Omnipotent and omniscient and eternal already specify some aspects of God which are infinite so perhaps it's just a restatement of that?)

Finally i have issues with "simple" - it has connotations of easy to comprehend or few variables but that doesn't fit the above descriptions nor the kinds of things i'm used to monotheists saying. To take the idea a bit further the most common approach to simplicity is to talk about how much information you would need to completely specify the behaviour of something, but when it comes to god we are often told that understanding is beyond us which would imply that even an infinite amount of information would not be sufficient and hence God would be more than infinitely complex.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
The uberman is derived from something that far predated it (and as far as Christian theology goes far transcends it). Since you have made that your frame of reference, I suppose that memetically you have to default to it for comprehension.

As for the things you are not getting, that is because you are thinking in terms of materiality. You cannot use frozen apart from some reference to physical activity. You cannot use "static picture" apart from an actual picture in your mind's eye that is not moving. You have a priori decided that mind is materially based, and so is time-dependent and therefore subject to change. The idea of infinite needing a context is contradictory since infinitude means without bounds and therefore cannot have a "context" which is a boundary for consideration. Simple means it has no parts. You are only thinking in terms of parts -- hence your reflexive use of "few variables", or information to specify, etc.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 01:12 PM
I was thinking of the jealous sociopath from the Hebrew bible.
The same one that behaved like a toddler over food?
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Moonbat
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Quote:
 

As for the things you are not getting, that is because you are thinking in terms of materiality.


Well superessential has nothing to do with "materiality" (incidently I think what you haven in mind by "materiality" is confused and not at all representative of what i think -but perhaps that should be left for another day) and yet I understand what was intended by it.

Quote:
 

You cannot use frozen apart from some reference to physical activity. You cannot use "static picture" apart from an actual picture in your mind's eye that is not moving.


If you say something is atemporal/immutable then surely what you are saying is that it's not changing with respect to time, which is all i'm referring to when i talk about God being frozen/static. If God does not change with respect to time that necessarily excludes any time-dependent action. For instance God cannot part the Red Sea because to part the Red Sea would be to change with respect to time (t=0 God not parting the red sea, t=55 God parting the red sea, God no longer atemporal/immutable).

Quote:
 

You have a priori decided that mind is materially based, and so is time-dependent and therefore subject to change.


Hold on, I have aposterori decided that there is overwhelming evidence that minds are actually brains but i wasn't assuming that here at all (which is why i didn't object to "superessential"). The reason i say that experiences (and hence minds) are time dependent is just inspection. When you say the word "mind" i think of what i am (and to what i've inferred also applies to other people around me because of the way they act). My thoughts and experiences seem to me to be rolling changing things that are themselves instigated by some or other change so if you want to talk about an atemporal/immutable mind... well what does that mean? Surely a frozen mind is no mind at all?

Quote:
 

The idea of infinite needing a context is contradictory since infinitude means without bounds and therefore cannot have a "context" which is a boundary for consideration.


The context tells you what it is that is "without bounds", without it the statement lacks meaning. If you say something has an infinite mass then it means that no matter how hard you push that object it will never accelerate, if you say something has an infinite extent it means you will find it at all points in an infinite space (see my previous post for a definition of "infinite space") if you say something is infinite knowingly or infinitely powerfull you are saying there is no true statement about the universe that is not known to them and there is no alteration to the universe that they cannot make.

So when you say God is just "infinite" without context what are you referring too? Every logically possible quality/quantity?

Quote:
 

Simple means it has no parts. You are only thinking in terms of parts -- hence your reflexive use of "few variables", or information to specify, etc.


When you have something complicated (i.e. you can't grasp how it behaves) then you often try and think of it as a set of chunks and you try and find chunks that are simple (i.e. you can grasp how they behave) such that you can grasp how the complicated thing behaves in terms of the simple chunks. (these don't have to be physical blocks, they could be understanding a person in terms of various motivations or understanding the vibration of a diatomic molecule in terms of more than one kind of force acting between the atoms, etc.)

We are free to consider anything in terms of however many or few chunks we like and we are free to break up chunks into further chunks. If you claim that God is simple (a single chunk, no need to try and simplify further) then you are saying he's easy to understand. If you mean that it's impossible to do this process in the case of God that's the same as saying he's infinitely complex - which is atleast consistent with the retort given by theists that atheists are trying to understand God and this is a total waste of time and cannot ever be done.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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jon-nyc
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John D'Oh
Jul 18 2009, 11:20 AM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I don't like to brag...
:lol:
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Renauda
Jul 18 2009, 01:50 PM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 01:12 PM
I was thinking of the jealous sociopath from the Hebrew bible.
The same one that behaved like a toddler over food?
Ask me again in 2 years.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Jeff
Senior Carp
We are taking a Crashtest thread seriously?

Did I miss something, or did people just want to discuss this issue anyway?
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 01:12 PM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 09:29 AM
Axtremus
Jul 17 2009, 10:43 PM
... God created man in his own image...
I think you have it backwards.
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I was thinking of the jealous sociopath from the Hebrew bible. Isn't that your god too?
No Jon, why on earth would you think that? We've previously discussed this before so I am sort of surprised -- though not really since you are often conversationally opportunistic -- that you would continue that train of thought.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Jeff
Jul 18 2009, 06:06 PM
We are taking a Crashtest thread seriously?

Did I miss something, or did people just want to discuss this issue anyway?
Any opportunity for iconoclasm is good enough for me. Jump in. The water's fine.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Moonbat
Jul 18 2009, 03:55 PM
Quote:
 

As for the things you are not getting, that is because you are thinking in terms of materiality.


Well superessential has nothing to do with "materiality" (incidently I think what you haven in mind by "materiality" is confused and not at all representative of what i think -but perhaps that should be left for another day) and yet I understand what was intended by it.
Uhhh... you listed superessentiality as one of those things that you at least intuitively got (presumably because all of those are issues in which you were not thinking materialistically but rather through your Nietzschean uberman model), so the fact that superessentiality has nothing to do with materiality seems obvious at this point.

Please tell me precisely what I have in mind by "materiality" and why it is confused. There is little point proceeding beyond that if you are holding possibly false understandings to what I think, let alone hold them as confused.

As for the rest, it is a lot of semantical baggage that you are carrying that I am not about to try to offload. E.g., that you still miss the point about simple as without parts, and refer to it as chunks (which imply parts to those chunks), and reference it to complexity in terms of complicated to comprehend, is not something I am inclined to deal with.

Edit to add: BTW Moonbat, I really don't want to be dismissive, and I apologize if it comes across that way. I am not sure how to proceed since the language you are using is analogous by not the same, and the implications are too divergent. Sorry.
Edited by ivorythumper, Jul 18 2009, 07:07 PM.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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jon-nyc
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ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 06:39 PM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 01:12 PM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 09:29 AM
Axtremus
Jul 17 2009, 10:43 PM
... God created man in his own image...
I think you have it backwards.
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I was thinking of the jealous sociopath from the Hebrew bible. Isn't that your god too?
No Jon, why on earth would you think that? We've previously discussed this before so I am sort of surprised -- though not really since you are often conversationally opportunistic -- that you would continue that train of thought.
So the god of the hebrew bible is not your god? Is that official policy of the church?
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 07:05 PM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 06:39 PM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 01:12 PM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 09:46 AM
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 09:29 AM
Axtremus
Jul 17 2009, 10:43 PM
... God created man in his own image...
I think you have it backwards.
Tell me again how the idea that God is eternal, atemporal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, superessential, immutable, and simple argues that God is created in our image?
I was thinking of the jealous sociopath from the Hebrew bible. Isn't that your god too?
No Jon, why on earth would you think that? We've previously discussed this before so I am sort of surprised -- though not really since you are often conversationally opportunistic -- that you would continue that train of thought.
So the god of the hebrew bible is not your god? Is that official policy of the church?
It is a question of clarity of revelation -- human interpretation -- not a change in the divine nature. I am sure that when little NYC first crayolas a picture of you and says its "Daddy" you will appreciate that it is not really as clear of an image as the digital camera takes, even while purporting to be of the same subject.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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NAK
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Crashtest :downarrow:

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This forum :downarrow:

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jon-nyc
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So are you denying that the god of the hebrew bible is your god? Or are you denying that the god therein described is a jealous sociopath?
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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jon-nyc
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If the latter, could you please provide your working definition of 'jealous' and 'sociopath'?
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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John D'Oh
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ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 07:11 PM
It is a question of clarity of revelation -- human interpretation -- not a change in the divine nature. I am sure that when little NYC first crayolas a picture of you and says its "Daddy" you will appreciate that it is not really as clear of an image as the digital camera takes, even while purporting to be of the same subject.
This very reasonable (to me) interpretation somewhat flies in the face of the claim that The Bible is the Word of God. A claim, incidentally, I've always found a little daft, even when I was a believer. That there book is the word of man, doing his best to understand the incomprehensible.

The real question is whether mankind today is using a digital camera or still scrabbling away with the old crayons. I strongly suspect the latter.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
John D'Oh
Jul 18 2009, 07:17 PM
ivorythumper
Jul 18 2009, 07:11 PM
It is a question of clarity of revelation -- human interpretation -- not a change in the divine nature. I am sure that when little NYC first crayolas a picture of you and says its "Daddy" you will appreciate that it is not really as clear of an image as the digital camera takes, even while purporting to be of the same subject.
This very reasonable (to me) interpretation somewhat flies in the face of the claim that The Bible is the Word of God. A claim, incidentally, I've always found a little daft, even when I was a believer. That there book is the word of man, doing his best to understand the incomprehensible.

The real question is whether mankind today is using a digital camera or still scrabbling away with the old crayons. I strongly suspect the latter.
Well for the apostolic Churches the bible is not the Word of God -- Jesus is. The whole thread the other day with Ehrman making bank on his stuff about biblical (in)errancy is a product of post enlightenment view of scripture to begin with. It is basically a circus side show from the Catholic and Orthodox perspectives.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
jon-nyc
Jul 18 2009, 07:14 PM
So are you denying that the god of the hebrew bible is your god? Or are you denying that the god therein described is a jealous sociopath?
There is no "God of the Hebrew bible". You are missing the point regardless of how God therein is described.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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CrashTest
Pisa-Carp
Jon, the hebrew god of the bible is not his god, he's not your god either - IT now you are talking some sense. (There is no god of the hebrew bible)

I like your way of thinking, just move over a few more degrees and you will be a smart man! ;)
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Roman guards were trained to defend and hold a 6 square foot area. Outside that space, another guard stood, defending and guarding *another* 6 square foot area. When Jesus Christ was crucified (an historical FACT, by the way) he was placed in a tomb with a several ton stone rolled over the door, sealing it shut. Do you know how many men it would take to roll that stone in place?

Before that stone was rolled in place, the Roman guards had to personally observe the body was inside the tomb. Jesus had told everyone he would rise from that tomb in 3 days. The Romans had major motivation to see that that tomb stayed shut. The Jewish leaders had major motivation to see that that tomb stayed shut.

If a Roman guard should fall asleep at his post, the punishment was swift, and brutal. He was beaten nearly to death, then set afire in his own clothing, and burned alive. The tomb had a Roman Seal affixed to it. If that seal was broken - as it would be if the stone was rolled away to open the tomb, *all* the guards would be beaten, then set on fire in their clothes. A Roman guard unit was a 4- to 16-man security force. Each man was trained to protect six feet of ground. The 16 men in a square of 4 on each side were supposed to be able to protect 36 yards against an entire battalion and hold it.

Normally what they did was this: 4 men were placed immediately in front of what they were to protect. The other 12 were asleep in a semi-circle in front of them with their heads pointing in. To steal what these guards were protecting, thieves would first have to walk over those who were asleep. Every four hours, another unit of 4 was awakened, and those who had been awake went to sleep. They would rotate this way around the clock. A Roman guard unit was one of the greatest offensive and defensive fighting machines ever conceived.

What doesn't get mentioned when discussing the 3 days the tomb was guarded is the Sanhedrin Temple guards. The Jewish leaders wanted Christianity to die. They knew that if anything happened that would allow the rumor to spread that Jesus had risen from the tomb as he had told them he would do, they'd never be able to stop it from spreading. They took the task of seeing that the tomb stayed shut extremely serious. The Temple police consisted of a group of 10 Levites who were placed on duty at different places at the Temple. The total number of men on duty was 270. This represented 27 units of 10 each. The military discipline of the Temple guard was every bit as tough as that of the Roman guards.

The typical image of events is that after Jesus was crucified, a couple of his followers took his body and prepared it for burial, placed it in a tomb, and rolled a stone in front of it, and a Roman soldier was placed outside the entrance to guard it. That's not quite the way it happened. There were between 20 and 30 highly trained guards positioned around that tomb - one full Roman guard unit of no less than 16 men, and one full Temple Police unit of ten men. The two men that buried Jesus placed a stone over the opening, but it was a small one that two men could easily handle. The Romans rolled a massive stone over that one, after inspecting the tomb to be sure the body they were guarding was still inside. This massive stone was to make sure no one could possibly open the tomb. A Roman Seal was placed on the stone warning people not to mess with the stone. Everyone knew what it meant if they broke that seal.

The military guard outside that tomb was nothing short of a small crowd. Between 20 and 30 highly trained men, dedicated to the single purpose of making sure that tomb stayed shut, yet on the third day that stone wasn't just rolled over a little - it was literally moved away from the tomb. They meant business. No one was getting in or out, much less moving a stone that took all of them to put in place.

Thousands of people had become followers of Jesus. Both the Romans, and the Sanhedrin, had every reason to lie like dogs to keep anyone from finding out that tomb had been opened. Yet the fact that it had been opened and the body inside was missing was so obvious to the people that they had no choice but to admit it.

You can use all the fancy words, all the high and mighty arguments you want to make, you can argue science until you're blue in the face - the fact remains that Jesus Christ lived, died on the cross, and rose again 3 days later, all unassailable facts. In spite of all the scientific "proof" that this couldn't possibly happen, it happened. Either Jesus Christ was a raging lunatic, or he was exactly who he said he was. You can study string theory, quantum physics, or whatever other scientific field or scientific theory you want to study, that's all well and good, and science is a good thing. But it proves nothing - it all hinges on that stone rolling away and the man who said he was God rising again.

If it is a myth, then it doesn't matter. If it's not a myth, then what HE says trumps all your high flying mind games.

And the evidence is clear - even the Roman guards and the Temple Police had no choice but to admit it.

Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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