Lurker > darkmaian23

@ShotOJameson
The whole "if you don't humble yourself, prepare to be humbled" thing sounded like the usual appeal to the threat of hell for nonbelievers, albeit less explicit than usual.

No. We don't live in a world that looks anything like what you'd expect if gods were real.

1. The development of life on earth can be explained using natural processes and doesn't seem to require any kind of intervention to occur. It certainly doesn't appear that humans are favored over other kinds of animals like religions would have us expect.

2. Miracles are non-existent. I did some research a few years ago, and the fantastic tales of miracles that were told at my church came up as either frauds or heavy distortions. People who are full of cancer don't just go in to their next scan and discover the tumors are all gone; missing limbs don't grow back. The only thing prayers to gods can seemingly "fix" is things medicine and surgery can fix, or are known to get better on their own. Correcting for other factors, it doesn't even seem like believers in one religion live any longer or are any healthier than believers of other religions. Many believers are defensive about discussing miracles---and rightly so, because most of them look like the good luck that everyone has once in a while.

3. Virtually every deity conceived of by man has some interest in human affairs and has things they wish for us to know about or do. How do gods communicate this knowledge to people? Through gut feelings, dreams, ancient texts with multiple interpretations, and through the words of people with special knowledge who call themselves prophets (and are often proven liars or con men). Can't gods do better than that?

4. While we don't yet know everything about the physical laws of the universe, no concrete observational or experimental evidence has ever been uncovered that suggest there is anything supernatural at all. There doesn't seem to be any room for gods, devils, or spirits in the way the universe works. And the lack of evidence of any of them taking any action is hardly surprising in light of that.

ShotOJameson posted...

I believe in the word of god, that which binds us under him. Fact is in this life if you don't humble yourself, prepare to be humbled.

It's not a fact at all. We have no evidence that suggests an afterlife even exists, let alone a means of saying which one of our human ideas about the afterlife, if any, is correct. A study of near death experiences was undertaken, with one of the things they looked for was people actually being able to look down on their body during a near death experience. The results were negative. Moreover, if you take the time to read accounts of near death experiences, the "wisdom" people share often turns out to be wrong or is completely contradictory. People also tend to experience an afterlife like the one from their culture and religion. Is Jesus being accommodating when he dresses up like the Buddha?

Things I hate about Windows 10:
- Windows update is now evil.
- It seems like Windows is always doing something the background without asking.
- Even at the lowest setting, telemetry is gathering WAY too much data.
- Updates continually fuck with your ability to stop data harvesting via telemetry.
- Stuff seems to move around every big update. Pick a consistent design and stick to it, damn it.

I played around with Windows XP in a virtual machine recently and I was surprised at how easy to use it was. Windows was honestly pretty good straight through 7, but after that it was downhill. The weird mobile stuff added to 8 dragged it down, and I hate 10 for the above mentioned reasons. I miss the days when Windows was consistent, stable, recognized the computer was yours (not the other way around!) and didn't gather data from you like you owed it money.

untrustful posted...

flussence posted...

these people don't sound even remotely human

This. Also, both questions were essentially side-stepped in favor of some mindless drivel that makes Microsoft look good. Do big investors really put up with this kind of evasion?

thisisboris2 posted...

i'm doing C and i am having lots of trouble with linked lists and stacks

Is it just linked lists and stacks, or are you having trouble writing quality C programs beyond a certain size? It's easy to make mistakes: off by one, bad pointer arithmetic, memory leaks. I love the simplicity of C but it ranks as my least favorite to write code in because it is so fiddly.

On topic, it's cool you're learning C++ TC. A lot of CS curriculum shy away from C++ in favor of Java, despite the continued popularity of the language and the huge legacy code bases that most major companies have. I always enjoyed coding in C++, but I could never shake the feeling that I didn't really know the language completely; writing C++ always made me secretly feel like a second-rate coder.

Go has a lot of awkward quirks, but so far I like it better than both C and C++ for small, fairly simple projects.

solosnake posted...

I got 3/4 of the way through FC before giving up. I really like it but the combat was lacking and seemed like fluff

I'd have to install the game to check, but I believe the turbo button they added for TC was put in the first two games too. You might want to try again.

I've heard that some people are having trouble finding a Switch in stores. Maybe that's a factor?

Have you played all three Trails in the Sky games? The Third may or may not let you down because it is a dungeon crawler, but at least there is a turbo button to help with the grind. Also, the first two Cold Steel games are out on PS3 and I'm not aware of any significant difference between the PS3 and PC versions. I feel you on the Crossbell games though. They must come as soon as possible.