the loss of god
Posted on: November 14, 2009 - 9:30am
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the loss of god
im concerned that the loss of god in our society is creating a world that will be an terrible place to live. Look at the news everday the worst type of human behavior is is shown , our society is falling apart. now its true our media is the worst at reporting the truth. They are more interested in selling papers , but looking at the issue god has been removed from the basics of the community, and now people have lost the fear of judgement by god . Since they have no one to fear and fear causes guidance , they feel they are free to do whatever they want , killing , divorce , rape , etc. how do athiest maitain a moral system without guidance ? is there a moral code ? does the law become the guidance ? i need some understanding.
pat
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Interesting. I'll answer that. I would die.
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Heheh, would that it were that bad ideas could ever be removed so easily...
To the 2nd part. yes bad ideas remain bad ideas... always. They remain. They are "the truth". The only reason they are still around however is because "Good" ideas keep hanging around for some reason. What do you think happens when all the "Good" ideas wash out, eh?
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We can't have what we think are logical arguments when your position is underpinned by this central position - that god is so vital to you that without him you would die.
Anyway. I'm really sorry to hear you think that. That's very sad. I'm sending you an ASCII hug.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Why?
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
Well some if not all the soldiers survived. I take this as a benefit. Life persisted. Once again the priority of self continuation is obvious as priority itself is merely a reflection of circumstance upon ourselves. The only thing that could ever be said to have benefited would be the one whose life continues for with no life continuation there is nothing.
Well you missed my point. It wasn't whether or not you yourself could use the porkchop, just that the things you value must have a basis otherwise they can run amuck of what you may perceive there objective to be.
You "Hate" false hope. Because you "value" truth.
The point was to offer that fundamentally you are incorrect to offer even this seeming most basic and fundamental statement if you do not have a direction to take them. They themselves are simply not sufficient to place "faith" in. AN ideal cannot save you, it cannot direct you. It stands silently before you offering nothing but itself. It itself cannot be built upon because it does not exist. It's a phantom of a rumor forgotten. Hope that brings life in its fullness cannot be false as it is fullness of life that testifies of its existence through existence itself.
Good hope is always true, help was on the way, it was just that they themselves were the help they looked for. The hope was never actually false, the evidence was the healthy persistence of their lives.
The fact you couldn't see this makes it clear that you do not value truth at all, for if you did, you would have pointed that out to me.
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I agree with you, at the species level...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
People change the rules of the game all the time. You are forgetting I am not just me. I am already part of a group. We all exchanged idea on what we feel is right and wrong all the time. And when someone presents an argument that other agree with guess what happens the rules change. Black people now have equal rights to white people, women are able to vote. Seems to me morality changes with the times as it should as more information is gathered. The thing is we do see interference, however the most successful and stable rules/morals outlast the weaker rules/morals simply by being better systems and the idea spreads throughout the population.
Control is not morality. Morality is why we seek control.
You neglect to see that it is to my personal benefit to help society. As society helps me.
You seem to think people are only interested in immediate interest, or short term gains. That is just a lack of preparation. Society are build by people you can see the long term gains.
Those only interested in short term gains are flawed and will lead to bad decisions. However this is not the nature of all man, if it were society could never be built. Man is not fallen, as there was nothing to fall from. Man is imperfect and so the world we live in. Some people don't see the long term and some do. What you are describing sounds a lot like Psychopathy. If you feel the way you mention above you might want to look it up. You might be one.
Sounds made up...
Agnostic Atheist
No, I am not angry at your imaginary friends or enemies.
If not by their longevity then by what criteria do you judge the "good" from the "bad"?
Still don't see what this has to do with the false hope of Heaven.
Honestly, I'm a pretty smart guy but I'm still not getting anything out of that. Maybe you could state it more directly.
Which relates to the false hope of Heaven how?
No, I didn't point it out to you because I'm having a helluva time trying to figure out what you're trying to say.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
Is it not interesting that humanity should create, by necessity as you wrote, such a construct?
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Will clarify this position and point out that morality is a core element of human nature, an adaptation designed to allow human beings to function in groups and integral to our ability to put ourselves into another person's shoes.
Humans didn't create morality but humans more capable of working together killed the mastadon, survived the drought, protected their young from the sabre tooth cats and formed an alliance with that group over the valley to drive off the toughs.
Humans who shared, were shared with in turn and serious arseholes were excluded from firesides and eaten by bears.
I think you would find there's a case that humans are becoming more moral, that in urban society goodness is more important than ever. I'm not going to claim the crime figures support this but we live in larger and larger groups and over time
those who manage this challenging situation best will survive. Conversely, again and again with human kindness it's possible to see how evolution has made morality work best in small groups and worst in larger. Big towns occupy only 200 years of our
2-plus million year old history.
Small towns are much more homogenous than cities. For instance, I life in a city of 4.5 million and I do not know anyone who lives in my street. But my brother and I have a farmhouse in the country 200 km from the city and if I go to the pub there it's
guaranteed that I will either know everyone there when I walk in or I will have met them within about an hour. It's so predictable we laugh about it.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Even wolves have rules of conduct within their packs. Any social species will necessarily develop that sort of thing because the alternatives are to stop being a social species or to become extinct.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
Very true. When cubs are born, the entire wolfpack produces a hormone that makes them want to care for the youngsters. It's a tightly knit community. The reason is simple, because that was a beneficial attribute to have in the past because the packs that were less willing to work together would have died out.
Is our friend here going to claim that the wolves have their own version of religion and the 10 Commandments?
the argument from ignorance
so thiest how does god have intelligence since intelligence is an acquired trait
I never thought of that.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
check the thread i just created
its the easiest way to disprove god's existence
for me
What?........
You mean, eventually or right away?
It's really really hard to understand this guy, isn't it? I feel like my brain is going to implode every time I try to decipher one of his posts.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt but I am tempted to wonder whether or not he actually wants to be understood.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
Oh cool, I was responded to.
Not to me. To keep things simple, I understand that in order for life to exist, evolve, and propogate beyond simple abiogenesis, there must be mechanisms inherent to defend self and propogate. Human society has these mechanisms, or human society would not exist.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
care to justify that assertion with anything?
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he is talking about all the incest,rape,slavery,murder
if you want scriptures let us know
I'm not sure you can justify that there is a point to concentrating on anything at all. Niech's "useless passion" clause applies firmly to you does it not?
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If you came across a society of people who worship false gods, would you kill their men, adult women, male children and infants (dash them upon the rocks) while keeping the female children for yourself as sex slaves? That was standard protocol for dealing with foreign peoples who aren't jewish in the old testament. If you make moral claims based off of how the old testament is a basis for morality, you might run into some problems with the slavery and genocide and the mass murder of infants. If you deny that we should follow the old testaments rules, then even you reject its obviously amoral commandments.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Try none. There are NO non-religious societies. This is the perfect evidence for you to preview as a REALLY bad idea like that has failed to leave even the smallest imprint in this reality. If it ever existed actually, the only evidence of its passing is its utter and complete absence.
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That's actually wrong. There are a few.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
No, that was the rules for if it happened at all. Just because there is a rule for something in Judaism doesn't mean it ever happened.
What has happened with those verses is that Christians broke the bible up into verses, and that's left the impression that Verse XYZ:ABC is one chunk of information and then Verse XYZ:DEF is another, and they have no relationship at all.
If you look at the verses that follow, what follows is not "... and he lived happy ever after." It's "You're going to hate her, she's going to have your child, he's going to rebel, you're going to have to give him his inheritance, and if he's the first born, he gets a double portion." But that's after "She has to shave her hair (and women's hair was considered to be a token of beauty in that region, and still is today), she has to let her nails grow (not an attractive thought), she gets to mourn her parents for an entire month, and she does all this in the midst of your household. THEN you get to marry her, after all that, assuming your hormones haven't calmed down and you've had a chance to think better of it. AND, if you later decide you don't like her, you don't even get to sell her as a slave."
The Torah took what was (and in many areas still IS) common practice in warfare and does everything possible to convince this guy he's going to make a mistake.
(And for anyone who thinks this is just my opinion, that's what one of the greatest Torah commentators of all time concluded, so it's not even my opinion.)
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
I am sure they would say so.
Really? How so? Please elaborate.
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So if you think there there is no point to concentrating on anything at all, you are not disagreeing with me.
So you don't think much about Jesus?
Just what is that response supposed to mean??
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
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No I do not believe "you" can justify concentrating on anything as you have no basis. I on the other hand can in fact justify the act of concentrating. Our end, the fact that we do ,I argue , is the primary thing to concentrate on as it overrides all other things.
For you to argue that you believe concentrating on the end is unhealthy I say you are left without justification to argue your point.
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I love it when they try and pick a sentence in the bible, out of context and make it justification for sin. Which is amazing they can identify sin but ignore the reason they can identify it.
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And your list of them includes?
well you got me there. I don't think this particular thread would necessarily be the place to discuss the inerrancy of scripture.
But just to let you know, your wrong.
Perhaps you know of one in here, we could take that one up there.
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You
I would die very quickly through suicide most probably.
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To assume that God is merely this action figure floating around in this universe in some wierd way rejects the fundamental that reality (including intelligence itself) is God. It's His absence that brings death which is only the initiation, from the perspective of the finite, of lifes actuality of being nothing without Him.
Not sure what you're calling intelligence either. Pretty vague, but I think I got your point. We observe this within the "created" realm, well my personal auto programming interpreted my life experience to form me. I can see that I had to acquire data as all living things must do at some level (other than instinct) which seems to be an auto pilot of sorts. What I can't observe is the creation of the auto program which was the foundation of all other experience. I have had that for as long as I can remember, in fact my earliest memories depend on the existence of this data management system for me to access them. So "intelligence" seems to me to be observably able to exist separate from acquisition.
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Their ability to exist in absentia of sentience places them firmly in the same category as the auto program that I used to form myself. Their instinct shows the intelligence can exist without apparent acquisition.
Also they breed much faster than people on an individual basis, any basic "tribal like" format they exist in is cruel and creates its own high attrition rate balanced by big litters to replace the troopys. Their entire existence is balanced to allow them to persist separate from intelligence aquisition, moral codex's, ect.
Still the nurturing "instinct" of the wolves looks alot like love when the instinct is active. One truth HAs to exist to allow life to exist even if it is a pre recorded message... the message is the same, its means of access is different.
Animals can do, we can do otherwise also.
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Theism is why we can't have nice things.
These are believed to be historical events by modern Jews and Christians. This isn't just an abstract rule set. According to the believers in the Old Testament, ancient Israelites actually followed the rules and actually dashed the infants upon the rocks.
This is not from the Old Testament. Give me the chapter and verse, or you are making this up. This isn't moral lessons against slavery because of the bad consequences. This is a command by YHWH to kill all of the adults, infants and non-virgin girls and to keep the virgins for yourself. That isn't followed by a warning about how sexual slavery will actually harm you as the slave taker. You made that part up. Do you really believe that what you wrote about is actually in the Old Testament or are you adding a layer of modern morality over the story in an attempt to lessen the horror of mass killings and the sexual enslavement of children?
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
What are you and FurryCatHerder talking about? I don't think that anyone here has taken a single verse and misrepresented it. We have mentioned the clear and frequent commands to kill and enslave. I picked the most extreme example of a direct command by god to mass murder infants and sexually enslave foreigners, but that isn't taken out of context. There is no context that justifies that or makes it a basis of morality. No one is trying to use the old testament as a justification for sin either (what with sin not existing). We are just pointing out that it is in no way a basis of morality.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Is it not? I wonder what justification you can offer for your position?
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Deuteronomy 21, starting at verse 10 and continuing through verse 21.
:10 -- talks about going into war and bring back a female as a captive.
:11 -- says she's a hottie.
:12 -- says she has to shave her head and grow her nails out.
:13 -- says she has to sit in the "midst of your house" for a month, mourning the death of her mother and father.
If that doesn't turn you off, then you get to marry her.
:14 -- if you change you mind, you have to let her go, you can't make her work for you, and you can't even sell her as a slave (which you could have if you hadn't put her through all that).
:15 -- if you wind up with two wives, you could love one and hate the other, and your firstborn could be from the one you hate.
:16 -- that firstborn, of the wife you hate, is entitled to a double portion of inheritance.
:17 -- you have no choice -- you really have to give the firstborn of the wife you hate twice as much as the child of the wife you love if the hated wife has a son first.
:18 -- if you have a rebellious son (note -- this comes right after the bit about "child of the wife you hate" getting twice as much ...) who doesn't listen to Mom and Dad
:19 take him before the elders of the city.
:20 tell the elders that this son is rebellious.
:21 the rebellious child is stoned.
This story doesn't have all that happy of an ending.
Still think captive women really were just sex-slaves? Especially since women control access to the marital bed in Judaism. As in, a man not only cannot have sex with a woman who is in a state of ritual impurity, but he can't touch her, and he can't make her become ritually pure. She can =choose= to remain ritually impure. On top of that, husbands are legally obligated to provide for wives and children and a husband who refuses can be whipped by a Jewish court (Don't think Jews whipped people who broke the law? It's over on 25:1. )
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
Oh, come on. Are you seriously telling us that you are convinced that you could not find any joy or meaning in your existence without having faith in God? Would not even that child you are shown cradling in your arms be an incentive to carry on? Could you really not love, laugh, cry, learn, and wonder without believing in God?
Honestly, I find it difficult to believe.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
But I've heard this from christians before - to wit my big brother david who said with no press of tongue to cheek, that during a process of purely rational thought (snigger), he established the most likely thing was that there was a god, and that god was in fact the version god he grew up with - a prebyterian god. After revealing this he said that if he had been unable to establish these facts he would have been forced to kill himself. Laughable.
I'm sure non of us mind Tr1n's relationship with his god. The issue we'd have relates to the judgmental nature of this faith, the claims godlessness is immoral, and the insistence god is provably real.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Prove to us that the bible is a basis for morality. Sure, there are moral teachings in it but there are far more accessible lessons on morality available elsewhere.
The bible's constant threats and the incessant violence of the OT and the NT hardly make this book a great moral wonder.
The bible is the book of a cult based on a series of hideous murders and the overarching threat of a future of vast suffering. The walls all around it are soaked in blood.
The end of the world according to your precious book will be a gigantic, endless holocaust that god will be forced into because he is supposedly perfectly just.
Apparently the concept of forgiveness hasn't sunk in with him yet. When I hold this concept up in my mind I can't believe we're even talking about it.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Nope. Not 'grow her nails' out. To 'pare her nails' means to trim her nails. She would get a hair cut and the ancient middle eastern version of a manicure. This was an attempt to increase her beauty, not decrease it.
"When thou goest forth to war ... And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her ... Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and ... thou shalt go in unto her ... And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go."
If you see a pretty woman among the captives and would like her for a wife, then just bring her home and "go in unto her." Later, if you decide you don't like her, you can "let her go".
So, as long as she didn't get pregnant, you were in the clear. If you impregnate her, you do have to give a fair inheritance to a male child. If you bang her and then get bored of her you can kick her out even if she is pregnant with your children. If you read Numbers Chapter 31, you will see mention of the soldiers keeping only the women alive for entertainment. Then follow the rules of Deuteronomy and you can screw them for a while and then kick them out when you get bored with them. The only rules are no re-selling them into slavery and you have to honor you children even if they are the children of this hated slave girl. A marriage that you can cancel on a whim and turn the mother out to the wilderness, isn't really a marriage.
So let's get this straight: you show up at this woman's city, you kill all of the men, you kill all of the married women, you kill all of the infants, you keep the young virgin girls alive for sexual entertainment, you pretty her up, you give her a month to get over the death of everyone she ever knew and the cruel fact that she will be your new fuck-toy, you fuck her until you get bored, you kick her out of your household to die in the wilderness, but you still have to honor your male children by her and you can't sell her into even more slavery. Is this something that you advocate? Is this a basis of morality that we should all be following? Surely you don't recommend that we follow this kind of a plan today. Surely this is viewed as senseless genocide and enslavement by barbarians and not anything remotely resembling morality. If I went to a Mexican town (they are foreigners to me) and did all of this and killed everyone (including infants) and kidnapped some Mexican girl and gave her a month to get over it and fucked her until I lost interest and kicked her out of my house and gave a large portion of my estate to her kid when I died, you would be fine with that? That is a moral and right thing to do? Do you see where we went off track into senseless evil barbarism? The fact that people try and defend this as being moral lessons blows my mind. I honestly can't imagine anything more evil than the mass murder of children mixed with rape, and yet people in the 21st century are attempting to defend it.
Yes. There is even a "you can kick them out when you get bored with our sex slave" clause in the rules. She could become a wife. It is possible for an Israelite to make one of these women a real wife. It is also possible for them to kick her out fend for herself. Getting bored with a sex toy and kicking her out to die on her own isn't really having a wife.
No one was asking these girls for permission. This is a matter of genocide and rape. No one was asking if these people wanted their infants killed and their women kidnapped. It just happened. That's the way that these barbarians rolled, to use modern terminology.
It is a trivial matter to purify her. The ancient Jews were strict about purification, but you don't need someone's permission to purify them. Sprinkling the blood of an offering on them usually did the trick. Sometimes you only had to make the offering and sometimes you had to get the offering's blood to touch the woman. Either way, her feelings on the matter don't have to be consulted. Modern Jews ignore all of this in order to not offend our modern sensibilities, but ancient Jews could be counted on to actually perform blood sacrifices in order to make people ritualistically pure. But once the sacrifice has been performed and the blood of the sacrifice has touched the woman, you can get your rape on. The rules outlined in Leviticus would need to be followed and male children produced would be recognized as Israelites entitled to an inheritance (double inheritance for firstborns). Those caveats don't stop this from being sexual slavery though. Kidnapping women to coerce them into sex would be recognized as obviously illegal and immoral these days. These ancient barbarians didn't see things that way, and that's why we don't follow their "rape-pillage-enslave" morality. But, to answer your question: Yes, this is sexual slavery. What is wrong with you that you don't recognize this as sexual slavery?
Read Numbers 31. It details the Israelite soldiers engaging in an insane killing spree, getting punished for not murdering all the male children and non-virgin women, and then getting to keep the virgin females for themselves once the genocide was complete. I'll give you a hint here: those virgin girls handed out to triumphant soldiers weren't wives entitled to rights and control over giving out sex. Those were female children used for rape. I can't imagine someone seriously arguing against that. Am I right on this people? Am I very confused on this matter, or does Numbers 31 clearly detail YHWH demanding genocide and rewarding the murderers with sex slave virgin girls?
The women kicked out of the household don't get anything in this. His son is entitled to a portion of his estate and a double portion if the son is firstborn. No male could be denied his inheritance. The woman doesn't get shit. She isn't a wife first off. The man can kick her out at any time for any reason. If he lives with her for the rest of his life, she is a wife. If he gets bored of his sex toy and kick her out, she is a nobody. She isn't entitled to anything. There is merely a 'no more slavery' rule regarding her. The only mercy they would show her is limiting the number of slave masters that she could have. Once the first one kicks her out of his home to die in the wilderness, she is done being a slave. I suppose that this is supposed to be some gesture of mercy to her. But after all of the killing and rape, this is way too little, way too late.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Just thought you might find it interesting that I am chronically depressed and have a long history of suicidal tendencies. Ever since I deconverted I've been much more positive and less inclined to off myself. Maybe it has something to do with the thought that this is the only life I've got and I shouldn't take it for granted.
Just throwin' that out there.
I don't even mind his claims. After all, he's not doing me any personal harm. I just find it entertaining to argue with theists.
I also find it a little entertaining that he didn't respond to my comments about not being able to figure out what he was talking about.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
I know too much to know that the temporariness of life leaves it completely without meaning without God. There is no shiny thing here and now that can dull deaths sting. You can acquire and consume but to what end. Pleasures I've had but they pass. The void remains un aided, without recourse, unresolvable, empty and iminent.
Death is not a natural part of life, it is its absence.
and... I'm so pathetic that I myself would not even have had children if it were not for God. He gave my daughter to me.
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