These threads always attract attention. Why would you post a question if you didn't want attention and answers from people?
And it's really not nice to say "keep quiet" when you get an answer to a question, in anyone's language. Anyone who posts on this forum runs the risk of getting an answer they don't like. If you'd read a bit more you might have found your answer and wouldn't have posted this thread!
OK, language (and shift-key ignorance) aside, what people hate is drifters constantly posting threads exactly like this one. Every little while, someone posts exactly the same question. Drift doesn't annoy me, stupid threads on the front page do.
Bottom line: noone hates you, noone is out to get you, noone is out to wipe drift from the face of the earth. If you're so worried about it, why keep posting threads like this and attracting attention to yourselves?
I'm sure other people have theories about the reason for this supposed hatred, but that's my two centimes.
*requests lock*
Bottom line: noone hates you, noone is out to get you, noone is out to wipe drift from the face of the earth. If you're so worried about it, why keep posting threads like this and attracting attention to yourselves?
I'm sure other people have theories about the reason for this supposed hatred, but that's my two centimes.
*requests lock*
Generally, "ppl" don't hate drifters. What people hate is posts written in ****ing "txt" speak, as if you don't have a whole keyboard available to you. What people hate is this ridiculous persecution complex a lot of drifters have. What people really hate around here is threads saying "whai u be h8in drft0zz?" Trust me, this is NOT the first "why do ppl hate us so much" thread posted by a drifter. A search of the forum might have told you that. If you'd written in english.
I don't care how you drive. It really doesn't bother me. Most people don't give half a shit if you'd prefer to slide around five corners instead of having a race (which is the focus of LFS, so far anyway).
Of course there are a few racers that really do hate drifting and are very vocal about it, but they're a small minority. Just like there are a few drifters that pop up here and there and say "u only h8 driftin coz u cant do it lol" and pepper the improvement threads with requests for "drift tracks plz", "omfg more smoke plz", "tuning & bodykits plz lol" without even checking to see if they've been suggested yet, then flaming people who have the nerve to suggest a search would have been a good idea.
Get over yourselves! Noone's out to get you, but if you keep posting idiotic, paranoid, whiny crap like this, people are going to get pissed off at you.
That's my opinion, based on observation of this forum over the last 4 or 5 years.
I don't care how you drive. It really doesn't bother me. Most people don't give half a shit if you'd prefer to slide around five corners instead of having a race (which is the focus of LFS, so far anyway).
Of course there are a few racers that really do hate drifting and are very vocal about it, but they're a small minority. Just like there are a few drifters that pop up here and there and say "u only h8 driftin coz u cant do it lol" and pepper the improvement threads with requests for "drift tracks plz", "omfg more smoke plz", "tuning & bodykits plz lol" without even checking to see if they've been suggested yet, then flaming people who have the nerve to suggest a search would have been a good idea.
Get over yourselves! Noone's out to get you, but if you keep posting idiotic, paranoid, whiny crap like this, people are going to get pissed off at you.
That's my opinion, based on observation of this forum over the last 4 or 5 years.
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I checked my atlas - you're right! Who woulda thunk it
There's nothing closeted about my Britney love. I'm out and proud.
13enz, you zombie-bumped this thread to say that? Eesh :zombie:
LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!
Probably time to lock this sucker once and for all.
LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!
Probably time to lock this sucker once and for all.
It's a race, featuring unnaturally small men piloting giant, organic, 1 hp four-legged vehicles. By the looks of it, noone gives a toss outside of Scotland
I'm sort of in the same boat as hisnameiskevin. I guess I got over driving the same cars & tracks all the time, encountering the same behaviour, regardless of the server I was on. Not really a slight on LFS' quality, just a shift in my own focus. Haven't raced online in 12 months and haven't felt the need to - even the great improvements of Patch Y and the FBM weren't enough to get me back in there (certainly the early lack of setups - and setup skill on my own part - contributed there too). Can't even be bothered hotlapping and customising other peoples' sets these days, which I used to spend ages doing. My old favourite GPL, with 540+ tracks and four whole seasons' worth of 1960s F1 cars, hasn't had a look in for many months either. So, a personal shift of focus (loads more PS2 time these days, band's making an album) combined with LFS' stately pace has led me to back off quite a bit. Again, not a complaint, but it'll take something pretty substantial to get me back into racing LFS. Hell, maybe I'm just over simracing altogether 
Um, that was exactly my point.
Just because I understand why parents feel the need to raise their kids in their faith, it doesn't mean I agree with it.
Agreed 100% :up: With the following caveat: kids should be taught about religion and gain knowledge of the various religions of the world, just as they get taught about different countries, languages and cultures. Their schools should not be teaching that they should be part of religion (a) or religion (b).
To paraphrase a famous atheist, it's just as inappropriate to label kids Marxist, capitalist or socialist as it is to label them Christian, Muslim or Jewish. A child isn't able to properly formulate an opinion on politics or economics or other complex social issues such as sex (hence the legal voting & sexual consent ages), so why not leave religious beliefs (in some people's eyes a lot more important than mere earthly, physical things) until people are old enough to make an informed decision?
Of course, it's easy enough to answer that question by correlating religion with such things as community, tradition and ethnic identity (and by pointing out the obvious - remove religious teaching from childhood and watch religious numbers plummet as people grow up not requiring any sort of faith). But when it comes down to it, you can still have all those positive social attributes and not be of the same faith as your parents, or be of any faith at all. Understandably though, if your parents are devout and wholeheartedly believe you'll go to hell if you're not "saved" like they are, they'll no doubt want to raise you according to their their faith. In other parts of the world & with some religions, renouncing your parents' faith is as good as placing a death sentence on your own head ...
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Semi-correct.
Albert was more of a pantheist - one who believe in the interconnectedness of all living things and the universe in which they live. He was closer to Yoda than the Pope. Funny how people like to claim him (and others) as Christian as if he's some kind of trophy, some proof that religious people can be geniuses too, as if saying "hey, he's one of us, we're not all wackos!". Noone on my side of the fence much cares about someone's personal beliefs, as long as their work has merit. Richard Dawkins himself could be a fervent Catholic for all I care, he still would have done more to further the understanding of genetics and evolutionary biology than anyone I've heard of. Stephen Hawking could be a bloody $cientarian, he'd still be the most ridiculously intelligent mammal on the planet
It does matter. 50 million people would still be dead and that would still be wrong.
What also matters (a great deal for me as it keep coming up and being presented in the same, ignorant way) is this gross mischaracterisation of nonreligious people, as if we feel we have carte blanche to behave without morals or scruple because we don't have to answer to a heavenly judge after we die. If there is no god then everything we do matters even more - because we have ourselves, our communities, our loved ones, our species to answer to - right here, right now, no chance to repent and have everything forgiven before eternity. No second chances at all. One life is all we know, so for crying out loud live like it! Live like you're banking on eternal paradise and who knows what you'll miss! This ridiculous assertion that atheism leads to lawless, immoral behaviour simply because there's no religious imperative to behave otherwise is flat wrong, utterly bigoted and frankly it pisses me right off that people still malign nonreligious people in this way.
I don't characterise all religious people as fundamentalist halfwits out to misquote, misrepresent, lie to & convert everyone with threats of hell or blow themselves up on a bus to make a point or start a suicide cult - nonreligious people expect nothing less than the same courtesy.
On that topic, what conclusions can be drawn when you hypothetically compare two moral, lawful, well-behaved people: an atheist and a strong believer? Who can rightfully claim to be more moral - to have a more pure source for their goodness? The atheist who derives his morals from within - and from lessons learned as he grew up - or the believer who takes his morals from the bible and only behaves because he's scared of hell? The atheist who helps others and gives to charity simply because he believes it's the right thing to do - or the believer who does so, not from love of his fellow man, but because he thinks he'll be rewarded after death? Bear in mind I'm not characterising all believers like that, just taking an extreme view in order to illustrate the point.
Or, as author Christopher Hitchens has put it more succinctly: "You have to come up with a moral statement made, or a moral action performed by a believer or a person of faith, that could not have been uttered [or performed] by an unbeliever."
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:up:
Absolutely. Just remember: buying whatever your teacher tells you without thinking about it isn't education. It isn't learning. Learning is asking the questions that occur to you and getting answers - and when the answers don't satisfy your personal standards of evidence, you look elsewhere. Obviously you think about this a lot, which is great. So, next time your RE teacher says something that trips your "ask a question" instinct, go with that instinct. Ask her whatever you need answered and don't accept "because it just does" or "yada yada ... mysterious ways" as an answer.
Also, you could read this letter entitled "Good And Bad Reasons For Believing", which Richard Dawkins wrote to his daughter when she was ten and was obviously starting to ask questions of her own. I know it's written for a kid but I like it
As for the original question: Noone can be absolutely sure if god exists (or not). I'm personally not convinced, but I'm not out to convince people to share my lack of belief. It's up to others to figure out what makes them believe or not believe something. I'm not absolutely sure god doesn't exist (I can't be), but I do live as if that were the case. I don't pray or worship anything. I don't count on any kind of afterlife & I live for what I can do now, in this life. I'm honest and non-violent because I think it's the right thing to do, not because I've been commanded to and not because I've been threatened with hell or bribed with heaven.
A point that's troubled me from childhood (one which was raised by my mates and I in the occasional mandatory RE seminar at school): if god exists (and wants everyone to worship him, as most books and priests will tell you) he could do a lot more to end the often deadly confusion about which particular books and sets of priests actually have it right. You'd think he'd tell everyone the same thing if he really cared about humanity and wanted us all to love each other and join together to love him and join him in heaven. If god exists in the way people describe, it's certainly not for a lack of power or ability that he doesn't settle the confusion. Which suggests he's letting everyone argue and fight and die over their differences and has been doing so for thousands of years.
Imagine a parent telling each of his children "I love you the most, now go and tell everyone" and revealing to each child slightly different secrets - and telling each child that they alone will inherit the enormous family fortune. Imagine the sibling rivalry and confusion - even violence - that would cause. Hell, my brothers and I used to fight like animals but we all knew our parents didn't play favourites - if they did, I'm not sure we'd all still be alive. And there's no fortune anyway
It might seem a bit simplistic to paint it that way but, really, if the fate of billions upon billions of immortal souls is at stake, wouldn't the creator & ultimate custodian of those souls feel a little more inclined to step in, settle the various arguments once and for all and threaten to clip a few ears if the trouble continues? What kind of father would be happy to see the majority of his children end up in awful torment forever - or at least, never return home?
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Once you get used to hearing your own voice outside your own head, as others hear it, it becomes a little less wierd. Once you listen to a few recordings of yourself, you can learn what your voice does when you sing. You can then use what you've learned to control how you use your voice a lot better and change whatever aspects you don't like and focus on those you do like. I think most people's recorded voices surprise them at first (I still think I sound much stranger when I talk than when I sing) but you simply have to listen to yourself a lot. Get over the initial shock of how different the sound is to what you expected, take an objective look at your sound and it eventually becomes like listening to yourself play any other instrument.
It's like hotlapping or racing for 20 laps, completely focussed on what you're doing inside the car, then taking a break and watching an external view of yourself drive in order to analyse & critique your style & technique and look for ways to improve. You can see from that external, disconnected view things you probably didn't notice from the cockpit and you can then be objective about where you can improve or alter things.
It's like hotlapping or racing for 20 laps, completely focussed on what you're doing inside the car, then taking a break and watching an external view of yourself drive in order to analyse & critique your style & technique and look for ways to improve. You can see from that external, disconnected view things you probably didn't notice from the cockpit and you can then be objective about where you can improve or alter things.
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What exactly does that mean? That anything not 100% explainable by physics right at this moment must, by definition, have a "supernatural" explanation? Ridiculous. If that's how scientific enquiry worked, we'd still be sitting around in caves, naked, under the assumption that angry gods made the scary thunder and lightning and wondering what we could do to cheer them up. Just because there isn't a natural explanation for something right now, it doesn't mean there never will be or that god did it.
No scientist will ever claim to have all the answers or the absolute truth (unlike most priests I've encountered). True scientific enquiry is never finished because each new answer just brings with it more questions! To assume that the absence of an immediate explanation automatically implies the presence of gods, ghosts or goblins is wishful thinking, a lack of imagination or just plain lazy.
For the last time (please make sure you read and comprehend it): I don't deny the existence of free will. I never have. What I deny is that a supernatural source is needed for it to exist in the first place. What I deny is the weight of an argument that stems from a presupposed existence of, basically, gods.
Your stories and analogies provide nothing in the way of compelling evidence, just more hypotheticals with zero content. "Imagine a puppet show ... imagine a god called Physics" - come on. How about posting something other than religious parables?
What's so damned insufficient about having the abilities of an evolved, aware, intelligent human being who can use his brain to choose exactly what he does every minute of every day? Why is the fact that we can change our minds and override our animal instincts and believe anything we choose to any reason to believe we didn't develop it naturally? The fact that you think our will "must" come from somewhere external (because you can't or won't accept the possibility of a natural explanation) doesn't make it so. It's pure wishful thinking, which is presumably based on pre-existing beliefs regarding the truth of a certain book (after all, if we're just animals who developed free will all by ourselves, it kind of makes gods and their stories irrelevant, doesn't it? A scary thought for some people). Well, it may be convincing to people who read books like that but it's not rational - and neither am I if I continue with this argument, which seems destined to go around in circles.
Short version: I believe we have free will. I am willing to believe our free will (and our ability to recognise and talk about it) is a part of being a human - as much as language, art, music, philosophy, romance, scientific enquiry and all those other endeavours which are uniquely ours. I accept I may never know the true source of it. I do not believe our free will (or any other facet of the human condition) was given to us by gods (or whatever thinly-veiled names people use for them, like "Intelligent Designers" or "the supernatural"). Not because I hate the idea, but because there's no reason to believe any of those causes exist in the first place.
Your stories and analogies provide nothing in the way of compelling evidence, just more hypotheticals with zero content. "Imagine a puppet show ... imagine a god called Physics" - come on. How about posting something other than religious parables?
What's so damned insufficient about having the abilities of an evolved, aware, intelligent human being who can use his brain to choose exactly what he does every minute of every day? Why is the fact that we can change our minds and override our animal instincts and believe anything we choose to any reason to believe we didn't develop it naturally? The fact that you think our will "must" come from somewhere external (because you can't or won't accept the possibility of a natural explanation) doesn't make it so. It's pure wishful thinking, which is presumably based on pre-existing beliefs regarding the truth of a certain book (after all, if we're just animals who developed free will all by ourselves, it kind of makes gods and their stories irrelevant, doesn't it? A scary thought for some people). Well, it may be convincing to people who read books like that but it's not rational - and neither am I if I continue with this argument, which seems destined to go around in circles.
Short version: I believe we have free will. I am willing to believe our free will (and our ability to recognise and talk about it) is a part of being a human - as much as language, art, music, philosophy, romance, scientific enquiry and all those other endeavours which are uniquely ours. I accept I may never know the true source of it. I do not believe our free will (or any other facet of the human condition) was given to us by gods (or whatever thinly-veiled names people use for them, like "Intelligent Designers" or "the supernatural"). Not because I hate the idea, but because there's no reason to believe any of those causes exist in the first place.
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I can't actually remember the sound illusion as I'm used to the sound of my recorded voice now (been gigging since '94, made two EPs and loads of other recordings with other bands & just started an album). A good reliable vocal mic for recording or live performance is the good ol' Shure SM58. It's not a dedicated, top-shelf studio mic like a Neumann or Rode but it's a tough, reliable & accurate vocal mic that's been around for about a billion years. You might've seen them a million times in videos and at gigs and not noticed. The reason all mics look tend to look the same is because they most probably are:
I'm not sure how an SM58 would be in the US, but if you can get one second-hand from ebay it should be fine. They're great value and extremely hard to kill - trust me, I've tried
I'm not sure how an SM58 would be in the US, but if you can get one second-hand from ebay it should be fine. They're great value and extremely hard to kill - trust me, I've tried
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OP: don't take it personally, Ian just hates you and everyone like you and everything you do and everything you stand for. And the chick you took to the prom. And your dog. But it's no biggie. He's harmless really
Here's a hint though: try and post some content next time. Use the Beginner section for just saying "hi, I'm from [somewhere]". Browse this OT section and you'll see people like do like to talk a lot of shit, but they talk shit about something...
Here's a hint though: try and post some content next time. Use the Beginner section for just saying "hi, I'm from [somewhere]". Browse this OT section and you'll see people like do like to talk a lot of shit, but they talk shit about something...
What a well-thought out & relevant post.
Sinbad had a point - this is just a repost of the existing debate. So far it's been a re-run of the points covered in the original over at Improvement Suggestions, and you've already started shouting at people
Sinbad had a point - this is just a repost of the existing debate. So far it's been a re-run of the points covered in the original over at Improvement Suggestions, and you've already started shouting at people
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Interesting..."Quiet Earth" is the name of a cafe in my neighbourhood that does insanely good pizza 
Not sure they named themselves after a post-apocalyptic movie though.
Not sure they named themselves after a post-apocalyptic movie though.Hell, I'd shoot my own dog if it ate my hemp crop
There's a lot to be said for bottle fermentation old chum. Local brewing gods Coopers bottle-ferment all their ales & stout and it produces the most heavenly beer. Of course, it's equally heavenly pulled into a pint glass at the bar. They actually recommend you age their Coopers Vintage like a fine wine for at least 12 months before drinking it. Works like a charm - flavours improve brilliantly and most importantly the alcohol percentage goes up a coupla percent :up:
Since noone has ever verifiably viewed such a thing, the point is moot.
The argument about free will has been around probably as long self-awareness. That *sigh* isn't the point either. When you finally decide to explain, backup or expand upon your assertion that free will (or anything else viewed as uniquely human) has or needs a supernatural source - instead of simply asserting that it does, I'll come back to this thread and continue the discussion.
Only the point. You give me a list of things that would conceivably fall into the supernaturally-inspired, like a zombie grandmother, non-burning burning bushes that have delusions of grandeur and, for crying out loud, the fanciful loaves and fishes story and expect that'll sway me. How exactly do these hypothetical, fictional situations give any weight to your argument that free will and humanity require the supernatural? They're completely bloody irrelevant!
That's only oxymoronical if you start off by assuming free will can't be explained scientifically or naturally. I don't assume free will can be explained scientifically, or even that it can be explained at all. What I have confidence in is this: IF free will is a uniquely human phenomenon, the only way we will ever explain it is through natural scientific examination, which is all humans can comprehend. I'm not someone with any expertise in neuroscience, psychology or anthropology or any field that could begin to properly investigate free will as a human phenomenon (though I've mentioned my untrained thoughts on free will in previous posts) but I know when & where my knowledge begins & ends and I make no claims to know what I can't possibly know. You, on the other hand, make the crucial (and common, among the religious) mistake of starting off with a cluster of emotional, faith-based, unproven (unprovable) assumptions and working backwards from them.
You still have provided nothing with which to back up your baseless assumptions that free will is supernaturally bestowed or that supernatural intervention is necessary for humanity to function. You can continue to list as many hypothetical what-ifs as you like but they won't even begin to constitute an argument, let alone evidence for your position. Once again, you sidestep the point and derail the argument with irrelevancies.
Last time: tell me WHY (on what basis, how, etc) you think humanity needs the supernatural & WHY free will in particular requires supernatural intervention - or just stop posting. If all you're going to do is say "it just has to" or list hypothetical ghost-story situations (as if they have any bearing on this topic) then there's nothing left for us to discuss.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG