To make an honest living, you have to work for it. Bill Gates' son asked him for money. Bill Gates told him to get a job. He's absolutely correct.
When did this happen? I ask because Bill Gates's son was born in 1999 and it would be odd for Bill to insist that. I put it to you that most of the things you know about public figures, eg Bill Gates, are made up. When hearing things about public figures it is always best to scrutinize the statement and to apply the bullshit meter. Like, you know that broken-down car story told about Bill Gates that Donald Trump claimed was actually true of himself? That story is total bullshit, of both Gates and Trump. Hooray for Gates that he never tried to claim it was true.
Jejef, this is not a popularity contest. It is disheartening that the folks who agree with me are called lemmings. You might want to read the thread where I openly belittled Sailor Abbey's religious beliefs. I dare say when she says she agrees with me, it has nothing to do with liking me (although I am sure I could get her if I wanted to*). I think you'll find that apart from Jen, not a lot of folks here made any claim to like me at all. And Jen and I have disagreed a number of times. So there.
You seem to take a lot as well from my comparison to the sentence "There is a Wizard in Earthsea." I won't bother to repeat why I used that analogy, but it seems like in repeating it over and over you are hoping to shout down other efforts to show why you cannot always break down a sentence syntactically (which is something you tried to do). I showed also that the sentence could literally mean that any person could be replaced, and also that it might mean that for ALL people there was one an only ONE person, though the sentence doesn't say what for. In this regard I suggested the someone could be Jesus, but it could be Mohammed or Thor as well. Take your pick. Since the sentence has no obvious literal meaning, it must be taken to mean something metaphorically. Which, as it happens, everyone but you believes, and coincidentally we all had the same idea of what it meant, despite living in different countries and being different ages and such. We must all be lemmings, is that right?
Literally, the sentence is not precise in its meaning, not in the way that "there is a dollar for the donut" might be. Another simple analogy would be "There is someTHING for everyone." You will allow that this sentence is generally used in advertising, to claim that a place has interest to all? You don't think when a theme park says "there is something for everyone" they're making any claim of specific things in mind for specific people, or even a catch-all claim to refer to the fact that the park has lots of things, like hot dogs and such, and everyone who comes is free to buy one? I mean, you will allow that THAT sentence is just a hopeful claim to make the park sound nice, right? Not actually pinning itself down to any literal meaning, just something nice to say? I am not claiming that it is identical in message or use, but I hope you can see that it is similar to the phrase we're discussing in the sense that it shouldn't be analysed word for word. I only changed the subject in that case, and only a little, and you have to agree that the sentence is not meant to be literal. Its meaning is in its use.
You make a big deal about how "fish in the sea" is a metaphor. I agree. I didn't claim that you didn't understand this. I question only how you can make the claim that when some sentences are meant to be literal and others are metaphors, you personally get to decide which is which. I'm surprised you didn't follow this.
You went on for a while there about philosophy being better than poetry, the argument from authority, to show that therefore Aristophanes is scientifically right and Wilfred Owen is wrong. I notice you didn't mention that at all in the last few pages. Can we agree that that statement is nonsense, in the light of my comparison oif Berkely's Empiricism and Aristohanes's four-armed people? It seems after all that you have dropped the stance in favour of random cracks about Michael Jackson, South Park references, and recent claims that if anyone who disagrees with you, you're smarter and correct, and it's just all personal. I would like to advise you that the recent strategy is not better than the former one.
You argue as though you have the backing of science, saying that the world was designed so that fpr every person there is a person designed to be there for them, though the sentences does not say in what regard they would be there. Literally in fact, the sentence says nothing of romance, yet even you apply it in that way. Can you actually not in this sense at least see that you are weighing in the pop culture use of the expresion even as you try to change its common meaning? Do you still make the claim that you are looking at the sentence from behind the veil of ignorance, as though you had never heard it before, and discerning its meaning only from its component words?
Since you use science, please remember that a negative cannot be proven. "Prove to me that there is NOT someone for everyone" is about as empty a rhetorical stance as "Prove to me that there is no God." A positive statement can be preoven false, and I dare say Barend's stillborn baby analogy handled that. There was no one for that baby. Case closed. But back to the general point, you can't make a claim (such as "THere is a God") and then say that you are right because no one has proven you wrong. You are the claimant; the onus of proof is on you. If you hold that there literally is someone for everyone, then please list all of the people in the world and show who is designed to be for whom, to show that the saying has some factual basis. Until you can do so, I and the rest of the world will continue to take it to be a proverb.
And no, I don't believe in God.
PS: Slade, you are 100% right on. I was more lucid and mentally alert at 19 than I will ever be. That was an inane crack, and I thank you for calling me on it.
* I don't know who I am trying to piss off more there, Abbey or Jejef. Let's see what happens.
Oh yeah, one more thing: Hey Jen! Long time no rant! PM me sometime!
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).