Will Obama say "So help me God" ?

[Kulindahr]

I take it you dismiss revelation out of hand then?

What does that have to do with what you're responding to?
Also -- have you been reading this thread????

On the contrary. In 500 years, scientists in general and astrophysicists in particular will be celebrating the enduring value of science, and its ability to discard, reinvent, and thus learn. Looking back at current models, they will not have to reach for literary interpretations and discursive frameworks, and ontological paradigms. Instead they will just say "Boy they sure got that wrong didn't they?" and "Yes, but Hawking was good for his time. My first-year professor showed where he made a few basic errors that would have rendered his theories valid if he had caught them." and then "Oh yes of course!" and then they'll get on with their lives.

Um... other than the "literary interpretations" bit, you're saying the same thing I said, in essence, so why the "on the contrary"???

BTW, I think lines get to exist in two space or three space but not both simultaneously unless there are a few provisos and codicils thrown in regarding what constitutes the meaning of "to intersect". Afraid there's no contradiction there either.

It's not supposed to be a contradiction -- read again.
The point was that when you have someone from 3-space describing something to someone in 2-space, things in 3-space can look contradictory to 2-space dwellers because of the limitations of 2-space -- i.e. apparent but not real contradictions.
This depends on a translation from 3-space to 2-space, a common mathematical process, not on any kind of simultaneity.

edit: and while i'm on a roll, if indignant atheists are debating straw-men of christendom, filled with the worst kind of implausible nonsense, i'd like it to be acknowledged that these straw-men are set up most frequently by some of the most prominent vocal self-proclaimed christians going.

Yeah, some of the "most prominent self-proclaimed Christians" are good matches for some of the straw men. That doesn't justify the use or excuse it, though.

Any number of fire-and-brimstone preachers have attracted vast numbers of credulous people to their congregations. If we must first ask "What does Christianity mean?" before deciding whether we accept it or not, then what the self-professed Christians define it to be is of great consequence. What the "mean Christian" believes, speaking statistically of course, is of great consequence.

People are mentally lazy, in general, so they're attracted tom those who (to borrow New Testament language" tickle their ears", i.e. entertain with shallow stuff rather than get into anything substantial.

Psychologically, what the "mean Christian (interesting concept) believes has an impact, but it doesn't change the truth.

 

[construct]

"Set apart" is a good translation when applied to people; "otherness" is an excellent one for when it's applied to God.
It is, though, much more than ceremonial language; it gets into the ontological, addressing the very being of the entity to which it is applied.

Yes, I misspoke. I have been using 'ceremonial' as a near-synonym for 'empty' lately. That is not what I mean. I was relating it to the Levitical holiness code and the post-Reformation concept of ceremonial law. In as much as holiness is analogous to Kierkegaard's "infinite qualitative distinction," it does take on an ontic (if not ontological) character.

"Writing past each other" -- yeah, in a way, and that arises from different worldviews along with changing covenants.

Discursive fields are not world views. They are closer to Wittgenstein's language games. I'm also not talking about changing covenants. I'm talking about discursive fields.

The continuity between the Old and New Testaments has been described as "seamless" (my memory is saying G. K. Chesterton, but another mental voice isn't so sure). It's a flow, from more "primitive" to more "developed" (evolutionary terms arguably inappropriate), a development of concepts starting with what the culture understood and building a new conceptual framework over the generations.

I am also not talking about development or progressive revelation or anything of that sort. Shifts in discursive fields occur when a discursive field breaks up or moves. That usually occurs fairly suddenly, and the new discursive formation may bear little resemblance to what went before.

You practically paraphrase the opening of a letter from a rather off-beat (but very honest) apologist to a 'heathen' philosopher friend, with your first sentence above!

It's been a long time. Are you talking about Justin? Aristides?

Right!
It stands to reason that concepts from (to use a mathematical illustration) a world of more dimensions than we experience are going to appear to conflict, when in fact they don't -- for example, two lines in 3-space can be nowhere near each other, never intersecting, but when translated to 2-space, there they are with a point in common. So a description by a being from 3-space will explain that these lines share nothing, but a being in 2-space will look and say, "Like frak they don't! They intersect!"

BTW, I'm not including paradoxes in this; those are another matter, though also to be expected. Indeed, in some contexts, the word Paul uses for "mystery" demands/includes the concept of paradox.

Again, this is not really what I'm talking about. Discursive fields may be contemporary with each other or they may replace one another. They may also compete with one another, or at least the players on different discursive fields may compete with one another. For example, the shift that created space for mitigating factors based on mental health in criminal law that occurred in the mid-nineteenth century can be analyzed as a shift in power-relations or as a shift in discursive fields. It was really both, and they were interrelated.

On the concept of power-relations, see Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy.

On the concept of discursive fields, see Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge.

On the impact of the mental health profession on criminal law, see Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother . . . : A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century.

 

[Kulindahr]

Yes, I misspoke. I have been using 'ceremonial' as a near-synonym for 'empty' lately. That is not what I mean. I was relating it to the Levitical holiness code and the post-Reformation concept of ceremonial law. In as much as holiness is analogous to Kierkegaard's "infinite qualitative distinction," it does take on an ontic (if not ontological) character.

I'd forgotten that term from K.
It brings back how a very few of us loved and delighted in philosophy class, but the vast majority were, like "Huh?"

Discursive fields are not world views. They are closer to Wittgenstein's language games. I'm also not talking about changing covenants. I'm talking about discursive fields.

I am also not talking about development or progressive revelation or anything of that sort. Shifts in discursive fields occur when a discursive field breaks up or moves. That usually occurs fairly suddenly, and the new discursive formation may bear little resemblance to what went before.

I should have said, then, "also" -- I wasn't disputing, but adding to, your thought.

It's been a long time. Are you talking about Justin? Aristides?

Justin, I think. It has been a long time, and I gave away my patristics collection, just as I recently had to give away my Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and (complete) Luther's Works; my book space keeps shrinking (though for the latter two, when the church library down the street is open, I can walk over and use 'my' books).

Again, this is not really what I'm talking about. Discursive fields may be contemporary with each other or they may replace one another. They may also compete with one another, or at least the players on different discursive fields may compete with one another. For example, the shift that created space for mitigating factors based on mental health in criminal law that occurred in the mid-nineteenth century can be analyzed as a shift in power-relations or as a shift in discursive fields. It was really both, and they were interrelated.

On the concept of power-relations, see Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy.

On the concept of discursive fields, see Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge.

On the impact of the mental health profession on criminal law, see Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother . . . : A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century.

I'm gonna have to review the discursive field thing. The fields I deal with these days are more bare land wanting restoration or landscaping (OMG, I'm not supposed to use that term -- I'm not a licensed landscaper! (many of whom are idiots).

 

[hotatlboi]

In terms of a search for truth, you're doing things entirely backwards: instead of looking for what's out there, you're setting up a pre-established definition and comparing things to that.

No I'm not, again I'm only comparing two things. The Bible and the knowledge/morality we have today. I'm not defining anything as the ideal standard by which any potential message from God should be judged, and I have no idea how you got that faulty premise from what I said.

I judge the Bible as inferior in many ways to knowingly manmade texts of today.

That presents a contradiction to me which causes me to reject the divinity of the Bible, since obviously nothing of man could be greater than that from God.

 

[hotatlboi]

Humanistic morality hasn't even come close to what's in the Bible!

Oh yes it has times 10. This is why view the Bible more and more negatively, because of folks like you who think it is some kind of perfect moral standard. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me give you several examples of how inferior Biblical morality is.

1. Today we put rapists in jail, in the Bible they got to marry their victims.

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. Deuteronomy 22:28

2. Today virtually every civilized country rejects slavery as immoral. The Bible not only permitted slavery, it permitted the abuse of slaves. This is God's perfect law, given to his people.

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. Exodus 21: 20-21

3. Today, if children have rebellious tendencies we have family counseling services to offer them. In the Bible, they just killed them.

Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. Exodus 21:17

The document reads like a manmade bronze age legal code. We have a more evolved sense of ethics today, so we reject these things. The document most assuredly does not represent a superior moral standard than what man has developed today and most assuredly did not come from a God of any sort.

What Bible are you reading? You sound like a Marcionite, an early heretic whose reading comprehension was very low.
The God of the Old Testament and New are the same. The only new thing Jesus taught was to love not just your neighbor as yourself, but more than yourself. That's why He said, "A new commandment I give you" when He introduced that: it was the only new thing He had to say.
All the rest is found in the Torah and the Prophets.

The teachings of Jesus were very different from the off the wall, ego driven, genocidal maniac of the OT. "Times were different" does not even begin to reconcile the two. There is a fundamental disconnect between how God is characterized and what he teaches. If you view the Bible as a collection of manmade texts of different time periods, this isn't a problem. But if you are attempting to present it as a cohesive message coming from a single source it's a huge problem.

 

[bankside]

Jesus as spin doctor?

"Oh, and about that old testament... we're really talking about an early draft...you know, before we focus-grouped it and took a look at some polling...it reads really well with patriarchs over 50, but we'd really like to see it do well in some other demographics..you know...based on some feedback we've received, there's been a lot of...I won't say rewriting, but let's just say we've put a bit of a different emphasis on it, and we think you'll agree that it meets your needs of today."

 

[accorn]

Back to the original topic: Will Obama say "so help me God?"

I would argue that he will have to say it or something similar to that form. One major factor, he has to start campaigning for 2012...

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm not defining anything as the ideal standard by which any potential message from God should be judged, and I have no idea how you got that faulty premise from what I said.

Right here, where you did it again:

I judge the Bible as inferior in many ways to knowingly manmade texts of today.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh yes it has times 10. This is why view the Bible more and more negatively, because of folks like you who think it is some kind of perfect moral standard. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me give you several examples of how inferior Biblical morality is.

1. Today we put rapists in jail, in the Bible they got to marry their victims.

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. Deuteronomy 22:28

2. Today virtually every civilized country rejects slavery as immoral. The Bible not only permitted slavery, it permitted the abuse of slaves. This is God's perfect law, given to his people.

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. Exodus 21: 20-21

3. Today, if children have rebellious tendencies we have family counseling services to offer them. In the Bible, they just killed them.

Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death. Exodus 21:17

The document reads like a manmade bronze age legal code. We have a more evolved sense of ethics today, so we reject these things. The document most assuredly does not represent a superior moral standard than what man has developed today and most assuredly did not come from a God of any sort.

That just proves you don't know how to read, just to pull sentences out of a hat.
If you were in my college remedial reading class, you'd get a D for this assignment, because you haven't grasped the text in its entirety.

Why is it that people are so good at picking out things to please themselves, but don't actually read the whole thing and take it together?

The teachings of Jesus were very different from the off the wall, ego driven, genocidal maniac of the OT. "Times were different" does not even begin to reconcile the two. There is a fundamental disconnect between how God is characterized and what he teaches. If you view the Bible as a collection of manmade texts of different time periods, this isn't a problem. But if you are attempting to present it as a cohesive message coming from a single source it's a huge problem.

I guess you haven't actually studied the Bible at all.

Nothing Jesus taught except the "new commandment" isn't from the Old Testament -- nothing. "Be born again"? It's in Jeremiah, in different terms. "Repent"? All through the prophets. Sometimes He quotes, often He paraphrases, frequently He alludes, almost always He takes things and restates them from a different perspective.

 

[construct]

That just proves you don't know how to read, just to pull sentences out of a hat.
If you were in my college remedial reading class, you'd get a D for this assignment, because you haven't grasped the text in its entirety.

Why is it that people are so good at picking out things to please themselves, but don't actually read the whole thing and take it together?

And you would get an F in my course on argumentation because you have not even presented an alternative interpretation. As far as I can tell, hotatlboi has understood the texts correctly.

I guess you haven't actually studied the Bible at all.

Nothing Jesus taught except the "new commandment" isn't from the Old Testament -- nothing. "Be born again"? It's in Jeremiah, in different terms. "Repent"? All through the prophets. Sometimes He quotes, often He paraphrases, frequently He alludes, almost always He takes things and restates them from a different perspective.

It is clear from his participation on this thread that he has indeed studied the Bible--perhaps not as thoroughly as you or I, but he has studied it adequately enough to form an independent and responsible opinion that carries a little weight.

And by the way, if you judge the Bible to be the record of God's revelation of himself to man and man's response whether in faith or disbelief, that is your judgment over the Bible (just as my or his rejection of the Bible as revelatory is our judgments over the Bible).

 

[hotatlboi]

That just proves you don't know how to read, just to pull sentences out of a hat.
If you were in my college remedial reading class, you'd get a D for this assignment, because you haven't grasped the text in its entirety.

Why is it that people are so good at picking out things to please themselves, but don't actually read the whole thing and take it together?

Yep, here it is again. I see this every time. It's gotten so knee jerk that I've come to expect it. EVERY TIME I see someone present something objectionable from the Bible, I hear a Christian scream OUT OF CONTEXT!!!!

I'm convinced that you guys don't even know what this phrase really means any more. As construct said, if you judge my interpretation wrong, then show me the contextual framework that enables you to make a different one. If I read the entire chapter surrounding those verses (or heck the entire Law), I don't see them as substantially different. So no, I don't consider my interpretation to be out of context.

I guess you haven't actually studied the Bible at all.

I've studied it quite extensively for over 20 years. The problem you have is that you are not even willing to acknowledge any alternative interpretation. To you, if someone doesn't see it your way that must mean they are either uninformed or stupid. Now I've said at least half a dozen times that I respect your opinion even if I disagree because you have arrived at it through independent investigation. It's a shame that you can't extend me the same courtesy.

Nothing Jesus taught except the "new commandment" isn't from the Old Testament -- nothing. "Be born again"? It's in Jeremiah, in different terms. "Repent"? All through the prophets. Sometimes He quotes, often He paraphrases, frequently He alludes, almost always He takes things and restates them from a different perspective.

Jesus acknowledged the divinity of the OT yes. What I'm saying though is that his teachings and the messages that he emphasized were very different from many of the themes in the OT. It's almost as if he were trying to focus on love and marginalize the ugliness of the OT. But he still explicitly supported things like slavery ("slaves obey your earthly masters in all things"), so I don't consider his morality to be that much superior anyway.

 

[Kulindahr]

And you would get an F in my course on argumentation because you have not even presented an alternative interpretation. As far as I can tell, hotatlboi has understood the texts correctly.

It is clear from his participation on this thread that he has indeed studied the Bible--perhaps not as thoroughly as you or I, but he has studied it adequately enough to form an independent and responsible opinion that carries a little weight.

It's evident that he's studied it in a "memorize the cookbook" fashion, which is what fundamentalists do. He's never picked up on the fact that it isn't a long list of ingredients, but is rather a presentation of the whole process, as it were, of putting together a banquet, starting from getting manure to grow the mushrooms in right up to how to keep the mutton hot and moist during the meal.

It isn't a laundry list, it's a series of progressive lessons. That's clear even in the Old Testament documents, because there's a definite moral progression from Deuteronomy to/through the Prophets. But instead of getting the message, he camps on the low end and insists that's the meaning of the whole.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm convinced that you guys don't even know what this phrase really means any more. As construct said, if you judge my interpretation wrong, then show me the contextual framework that enables you to make a different one. If I read the entire chapter surrounding those verses (or heck the entire Law), I don't see them as substantially different. So no, I don't consider my interpretation to be out of context.

There's your problem right there -- you didn't look at the whole thing.
The Old Testament starts with lists of dos and donts. By the time it gets to the end, the theme is different, and it's becoming quite evident that dos and donts aren't the real thing, that those were just a beginning-level course to provide ground to stand on, that they are remnants of a cultural context God spoke within so that He could actually communicate without making people robots, reprogramming them at will as has been proposed.

Without the Prophets, you can;t make any assertions at all about the morals of the Old Testament, because you're ignoring the flowering and focusing on the dirt, waiting for the real thing to sprout.

I've studied it quite extensively for over 20 years. The problem you have is that you are not even willing to acknowledge any alternative interpretation. To you, if someone doesn't see it your way that must mean they are either uninformed or stupid. Now I've said at least half a dozen times that I respect your opinion even if I disagree because you have arrived at it through independent investigation. It's a shame that you can't extend me the same courtesy.

Jesus acknowledged the divinity of the OT yes. What I'm saying though is that his teachings and the messages that he emphasized were very different from many of the themes in the OT. It's almost as if he were trying to focus on love and marginalize the ugliness of the OT.

Then you've studied it like a lawyer, where everything is on an equal footing, nothing greater or lesser, and you can picl out of it whatever you want to use at the time. You've been following the fundamentalist method of interpretation.

Otherwise, you'd have found that the central theme of the Old Testament is love and faithfulness, not dos and donts. Jesus doesn't have to "marginalize the ugliness of the Old Testament"; His teaching was the flowering of that period of teaching.

The Prophets explain that the Law is about justice and mercy, not about itself, that it's meant to give a picture of ever-growing liberty, love, and faithfulness, not only of God toward His people, but of people toward each other. All Jesus did in His teaching was explain that further, as the Prophets had been doing for centuries.

The teaching of Jesus is the teaching of the Old Testament, fulfilled.

 

[hotatlboi]

It isn't a laundry list, it's a series of progressive lessons. That's clear even in the Old Testament documents, because there's a definite moral progression from Deuteronomy to/through the Prophets. But instead of getting the message, he camps on the low end and insists that's the meaning of the whole.

LOL, even that interpretation does nothing to solve the consistency issues. If the Torah is morally deficient to the rest of the Bible, that means God has improved his sense of ethics over time. If God is eternal and the being he is portrayed to be, this notion is silly. But it is EXACTLY what we would expect from man. Man has improved his sense of ethics over time. So again it makes complete sense to me if you view the Bible as a collection of manmade texts.

Plus, even in the NT, the Law was still held up as a righteous moral example.

Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. Galatians 3:21

In other words, "the Law is still the best example of righteousness that we have. If following a law could save you, then the law of the OT would certainly be your best choice." Bullshit I say.

 

[hotatlboi]

The Prophets explain that the Law is about justice and mercy

Oh believe me I get that. That kind of thing is stated everywhere in the Bible. I just don't find it very just or merciful lol. You can be killed for any number of trivial offenses. Women are valued less than men, slavery and slave abuse is permitted, etc.

 

[hotatlboi]

Then you've studied it like a lawyer, where everything is on an equal footing, nothing greater or lesser, and you can picl out of it whatever you want to use at the time. You've been following the fundamentalist method of interpretation.

What GOD SAID to me should not be greater or lesser depending on when he said it. And don't give me that pathetic "he had to speak in their terms" bullshit. Just because ancient peoples permitted abuse of slaves to the degree talked about means that God's law had to allow that too or it wouldn't be understood? Ridiculous.

 

[Kulindahr]

LOL, even that interpretation does nothing to solve the consistency issues. If the Torah is morally deficient to the rest of the Bible, that means God has improved his sense of ethics over time. If God is eternal and the being he is portrayed to be, this notion is silly. But it is EXACTLY what we would expect from man. Man has improved his sense of ethics over time. So again it makes complete sense to me if you view the Bible as a collection of manmade texts.

Plus, even in the NT, the Law was still held up as a righteous moral example.

Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. Galatians 3:21

In other words, "the Law is still the best example of righteousness that we have. If following a law could save you, then the law of the OT would certainly be your best choice." Bullshit I say.

You know, you really ought to read all of a post -- I dealt with your accusation there; it doesn't hold up.
I know, you want a God who violates personal integrity by doing magic. But a being who would do that would be a devil, not a god, and definitely not God.

Huh?

What the verse you quoted is saying is that the Law failed; it was insufficient, it couldn't do the job.

Rather than hold up the Law "as a righteous moral example", even Jesus shows that it is pointing beyond itself, that it is insufficient, with the "You have heard... but I tell you" formula. He's saying that adherence to the law can't bring life, in fact that there's no such thing as a law that could bring life -- which means it can't bring righteousness.

 

[Kulindahr]

What GOD SAID to me should not be greater or lesser depending on when he said it. And don't give me that pathetic "he had to speak in their terms" bullshit. Just because ancient peoples permitted abuse of slaves to the degree talked about means that God's law had to allow that too or it wouldn't be understood? Ridiculous.

You toss around "ridiculous", when I've demonstrated that it isn't. Again, the being you want isn't God, but a devil.
And with any teacher, there are lessons where "good enough for now" is set down, whether or not the student is told that there will be a new version later.
Besides which, what the Law actually teaches (it's Torah, instruction, not "law", as regulation) is mercy. Compared to what the culture around them was doing, God was booting everything in a more merciful direction. That's a theme throughout the Bible, one even Paul participates in... in material for which he is castigated as a misogynist, when in reality he was, for his day, a women's-libber.

 

[hotatlboi]

You know, you really ought to read all of a post -- I dealt with your accusation there; it doesn't hold up.
I know, you want a God who violates personal integrity by doing magic. But a being who would do that would be a devil, not a god, and definitely not God.

This has nothing to do with what I "want" God to be. It has to do with what qualities we can reasonably expect a being such as that depicted in the Bible to possess. And I find the God of the Bible far too morally deficient to ever be an example of righteousness.

Huh?

What the verse you quoted is saying is that the Law failed; it was insufficient, it couldn't do the job.

No, that's what the surrounding passage is talking about. The specific verse I quoted has the specific meaning I referenced in addition.

That passage is about recognizing the law's limitations, the fact that it cannot impart salvation, etc. But at the same time it asserts the righteousness of the Law, it reaffirms the Law as God's standard. As his perfect standard, if any Law could impart salvation, His law would be it. That is what it is saying. Of course it cannot, since no law can. But Paul in Galatians (even after Jesus) it still holds up the Law as the best legal standard of righteousness available.

What I'm telling you is that I reject this because I find the law to be far from a righteous standard. I find man's laws of today to be far superior. Therefore the Law of the Bible imo can not have come from any God. It came from man, who had a more primitive sense of ethics in the bronze age when it was written. If you look at other legal codes of the bronze age, you will find that in many cases they are remarkably similar. This is not surprising if you view the Bible as a manmade creation. But again it is if you say it came from God. Apparently God's morality can be no greater than man's at any given time, which is of course totally nonsensical.

 

[hotatlboi]

You toss around "ridiculous", when I've demonstrated that it isn't. Again, the being you want isn't God, but a devil

Huh?

You're making less and less sense the more this goes on.

I don't want a devil. I just want a God (if he is portrayed to me as the creator of the universe and the epitome of anything good) to have some kind of capability to express that which makes him worthy of worship. God's communication to man in the Bible (if that's what it is) is no greater than anything man could have produced in the period where it was written. In fact it is far inferior in places (some of which I have pointed out).

The fact remains that all of your arguments ("times are different", "he had to say that to make man understand", "there was a moral progression from the law to the prophets to the NT") do absolutely nothing to advance the view of the Bible as coming from God. It still makes far more sense to view the Bible as a manmade work of different periods looking at it that way. If you do that, all of those problems go away. Of course times were different, culture and civilization was different in the bronze age than it was during the Roman Empire. Of course there was a moral progression. Man has achieved greater stages of societal development through the ages. etc

To still today view the Bible as divine, you have to use all those sorts of devices to explain away God's lack of knowledge, his lack of morality, and his lack of consistency that you see in the Bible. It just doesn't work, it's utterly unconvincing, and the only people who will accept it are those who have convinced themselves it is true so they will always come up with some way to explain it.