Yes, the forum page I linked to suggested that AGP does not like/is incapable of having two devices on it, i.e. graphics + HDMI audio, whereas PCI-e doesn't have this issue.

Yep, you're seem to be right, they're not in the Catalyst drivers; I've just installed the latest AGP hotfix version of Catalyst & gone through the custom method rather than the express one, it doesn't mention any HD Audio.

The 'Microsoft UAA..' thing seems odd but it fixes the problem nonetheless. I don't want to add more drivers for something I won't be using.

I used the latest Catalyst drivers from Gigabyte's website. I've just found some AMD HDMI drivers as you've suggested but their release notes direct you to the Catalyst driver notes, they are a 'unified' set of drivers so I think it is simply included within Catalyst, therefore I've already got them installed. I don't really want to mess further with it now as it is working well & I have no need for HDMI audio anyway.

Here's the forum where someone found this fix (see end of 1st page):
http://forums.amd.com/game/mes ... 0Definition%20Audio%20Bus

This also appear to be relevant:
http://forums.amd.com/game/mes ... 0Definition%20Audio%20Bus

Hi,

This is just for information for anyone using a Radeon HD 4650 AGP graphics card as I've recently found a fix elsewhere online that made a good improvement to the performance in LFS. There've been other threads about recommending an AGP card, and I had previously given up on this card and assumed it was simply worse than my old Geforce 6800 that it replaced, but now it runs quite well after having finally found a fix.

The problem was lower than expected FPS in-game & when I tested it using the Unofficial LFS Benchmark with Fraps it would only average 0.1 FPS on the low detail config, whereas an older Geforce 6800 would manage 95 FPS. Something was evidently wrong.

Actual in-game performance wasn't as bad as the 0.1 FPS benchmark result suggested, but the card's performance was still below what I expected. I thought this was fundamentally due to the Radeon having less memory bandwidth than the Geforce, but I was wrong. Now the Radeon gets 111 FPS on the same test.

The solution was to disable the 'Microsoft UAA High Definition Audio Bus' driver (under 'System Devices' in Device Manager, Windows XP). Previously my CPU usage had hovered around 20% in task manager on one core when idling, but by disabling the above driver this stopped entirely. This was a problem I previously looked into but hadn't got anywhere with. It's to do with the HDMI audio on the Redeon card, possibly looking for something to do or conflicting with the SoundBlaster Live! card I use instead.

Anyway, maybe someone will benefit from the above. I had virtually given up on the card as being underpowered & was considering getting a whole new system, but now LFS is perfectly playable so I just wanted to let other people know in case anyone was experiencing the same problem.

Hopefully the new LFS update when it arrives won't make my system redundant by it being too slow, but I'll just have to wait & see.

EDIT: Further note that the latest ATi Hotfix drivers [v.10.11] for AGP seem to auto-undo the disabling of the unwanted driver. I've found that I don't have this problem when using the last official Gigabyte Catalyst drivers so I use them, v.8.66 [vga_driver_ati_xp_8.66].

My main system specs for reference:
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ @ 2.42GHz o/c.
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, socket 939.
Gigabyte Radeon HD 4650 AGP 1GB (model: GV-R465D2-1GI).
4GB system RAM.
SB Live! sound card.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Wed, 1 Dec 2010 20:02.

Just a quick though about the limited car setups: it'd be good if the racer stats stored & indicated fastest laps done for both the limited & unlimited setup modes. Perhaps even for fastest laps done in the limited setup mode it could record what the settings used were, for our reference?

I imagine a two tier mentality might appear once limited setups are introduced, but I think it will provide some fun racing.

Anyway, just a though & I hope all is going well with the LFS developers.

Quote from danowat :

Much truth

- Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.
>> Morality is ultimately meaningless without God, it is merely relative to the society you live in. If you do not like someone else's moral choices who are you to judge them, upon what vacuous moral high ground do you pretend to stand?

- Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.
>> Secular humanism is doing what you or society arbitrarily think is right & not doing what is thought wrong, despite there ultimatey being no such thing as 'right' or 'wrong'. What 'is' simply 'is'.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Why would you apply the tooth-paste, and THEN poor the water? It's the other way around..

I only started doing it your way after most of my life doing it the way in the pic, or now I put it under the tap both before & after, mix it up a little, but really my mindset is to do it that way still. So sometimes I still lose my toothpaste, FFFFFFFUUUUUUU.....

Quick suggestion as I also had lag problems with my Netgear DG834 router around Chrismas; I fixed it by disabling part of the firewall, not the whole thing, just the state-packet-inspection (SPI) bit. This is done by going to the WAN setup page & putting a tick into the 'Disable Port Scan and DOS Protection'. I only do this when playing LFS, I put it back on otherwise.

I half suspect the router slows down the packets when it is busy inspecting them, it just can't do it quick enough. This doesn't really explain why one PC is bad & the other isn't, but actually my situation was the same for some unknown reason, althout the one PC that was good evenatully started to lag also for some unknown reason but it is behind second router.

EDIT: I also tried a different PCI network card in the lagged PC first, but it didnt improve things.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist!

I won't go into the extra-Biblical sources supporting the existence of Jesus as it will just start a debate I don't intend to get into as I'm no historian, instead see the link below if interested. I'll take it on faith from other sources for the time being that this is the case but hope to study it more in the future. I believe that the claims that Jesus never existed are generally not given much credence.

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexisthub.html

The Isaiah 7:14 thing; its the meaning of the word that is of importance, Immanual means 'God with us' whereas Jesus means 'saviour/deliverer', Christianity in a nutshell; God on earth to save us. The Christian position is that YHWH is a fancy name for God who is Jesus, but yes it was somewhat besides the point.

Bye.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:06.

That's because Jesus isn't a Latin or Greek name, its a translation so of course the early text have it differently. Google 'Jesus Hebrew name' for answers. Look also for YHWH (the tetragrammaton) and Yahew to Jesus. These are not some hidden 'secrets' of Christianity, my NIV Study Bible even points them out in its preface, they are not a problem.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:44.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

All the gospels were written down centuries after the presumably historical events in the bible. In fact, Jesus NOT being a prominent figure in Roman documents of that era does hint that the bible might actually be a tad exagerated.

A quick Google:

http://www.google.co.uk/search ... mp;ct=title&resnum=11

Check out 'Claim 3' on the link I posted at 00:53 today.

The documents about Jesus are more plentiful & of closer temporal proximity to the actual events, more so than many other figures from history that we all have zero problem with taking to be real. These two factors give greater historical accuracy & credibility for Jesus' existence than you can reasonably shake a stick at. Note further that Jesus was crucified at least in his early thirties & born around 4-6 BC, hence you can knock off over 25 years from those dates in a sense.

Quote from Hockquan :

...mouse trap...

Behe's mousetrap (he's not Christian anyway, I think). The 'prescribed task' of the biological spring you said - you've already got design factor there maybe? I've seen explanations against Behe's mousetrap, but they tend to do things like replacing the wooden base with a floor which isn't really getting rid of a part, or to say IC can be explained away as a process of 'add a part & make it essential'. Anyway, I agree the non-biological analogies are a bit too simplistic. The complex biological things really are interesting to look at, rather than me failing to do them justice & continuing to waffle, I'll give you a link to fairly good one I referred to earlier:

http://www.answersingenesis.or ... earfully-wonderfully-made

There're also interesting videos about other IC things like the human ear, bird flight & the human eye, which are all pretty neat. On that website's video-on-demand section there are many other videos about creationist stuff if anyone is at all interested as well as answers to many of the points that I've not answered, or done poorly. Sorry to be cheap and link stuff again, but I might just leave it at that, the thread has been interesting.

I think I've given some points of interest & value, as others have too. I've faith that if anyone is willing or interested in checking out further the perspective I've given will do so themselves, its not all down to me anyway.

Thanks & all the best.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:50.

not watched it yet, nor have i read the following website yet but it looks detailed enough to begin with, but I'll try to check out both eventually.

http://www.alwaysbeready.com/i ... com_content&task=view

Quote from RacerAsh3 :

Havent got/had time to totally read this. But if 'god is here to protect everyone?', why the heck is there 3rd world countrys? I ask you that...

The Christian God isn't here to protect everyone, if a parent tried to protect their child from every possible hurt they could encounter, the child would not have free will nor the potential for any experience of any worth. The Biblical explanation is that mankind is 'fallen' & has rejected obedience to him & really taking it from there you can see mankind's greed & self-interest expressed on a global scale. Not only was mankind stuffed through the curse inherited from Adam (note; we can't claim we'd never do exactly the same thing as him), the physical world is stuffed too.

The rich young man story is not an equation that means the rich cannot enter heaven & poor people automatically get tickets. It is explaining that people who have much stuff/wealth usually have little personal need for God as they have substituted material things into the God-gap in their spiritual lives, they lack humility. The poor person does not have this void filled with pointless stuff so has a better chance of noticing this vacancy, he is already humble. It clearly say that the rich man's situation is not doomed; with God he can overcome it (become humble). However, this does not mean that '3rd world' people can find God by their own means & is why Christians try to tell those that will listen; they care about people not hearing the truth they hold.
**********************
Points to consider if Christianity were a conspiracy:

The disciples were initially a mix of cowardly, disbelieving, fallible men, why have Jesus appear to such people? If this were a man-made conspiracy with an aim to fulfil the what the Jews or anyone else wanted, it'd be much better to have people of high-standing, e.g. priests, be the ones to encounter him. These were men that denied even knowing Jesus when asked repeatedly & didn't really understand who Jesus was, yet something caused them all to risk everything after his death to the point where they were virtually all persecuted & killed in horrible ways. Something from first-hand experience changed these people markedly.

Further, why state that hundreds of people, thousands witnessed his miracles & death & reappearance after his crucifixion? If there were not people around to confirm these things it'd be much easier to arrange a conspiracy. Clearly they were all willing to risk their lives in confirming these things, remember the witnesses had already seen Jesus crucified for his claims, many people that were about to be asking them for their first-hand accounts. If the man-made conspiracy was to be believed, why even include potential for such things to refute it? If the stories were untrue, all people of the time had to do was ask these witnesses & if denied the whole thing would fizzle out.

Why were women recorded to be the first people to meet Jesus after his resurrection? As has been stated, women were not of great standing, particularly in a legal sense; perhaps Jesus was setting something straight by doing this? This wouldn't even be a point worth mentioning unless there was significance to it, any man-made religion of the time would not seek to highlight this if it sought credibility.

There is no doubt that Jesus did not fit the profile of what many Jews expected of their christ figure, why would a man-made conspiracy that intended to fulfil the Jewish expectations do this? They wanted a powerful leader that would literally crush their oppressors & set up a great nation. They refuse to see that this is exactly what Jesus did, just not in a military way that they wanted & are still waiting for.

Discrepancies; not getting into the OT polytheistic stuff (+woman stuff) you mentioned Becky as its a point for my further study. Otherwise, the NT accounts given by the apostles are often misused to claim they cannot be true because they differ in slight details. If the Bible were a conspiracy the accounts would be fiddled to match up better. The odd difference you can attribute to the different people witnessing the events & then giving independent accounts as they recalled them. The events were many & detailed, who could not be forgiven for getting minor things a little mixed up yet the important points of their testimonies match up more than well enough?

No doubt this will seem like backwards reasoning to some folk. The "delusion reinforcement" thingy; I perceive this sort of thing in evolutionists who set out to deny creative design of irreducibly complex biological things, their arguments appear poor to me & lacking in evidence. The pivotal point is more of belief, delusion just waffles around it nastily as if to say that the apparent 'illusion' of another person is wrong merely if it differs to theirs. In English, why is the word 'disillusioned' taken to be a negative state of mind for a person to be? Do we all need an illusion, if so why?
**********************
The illusion that mankind could independently figure out God, something inherently beyond the material realm, without any pointers of revelation is definitely endless fun/toil. Christianity might see an overdependance on mere human intellect as an abuse of it because it denies the requirement for faith other than 100% proud faith in our own intellect. If we do this we become humans merely pretending to be God & know everything, this was Adam's very mistake by taking the fruit of 'knowledge', was it not?

A thought; we find ourselves in a physical universe that operates in a very organised fashion to a multitude of laws, but we don't know why. If there are apparent laws of nature that we can observe & do not just make them up, could there also be laws that apply to spiritual things? If so how might we find out about them, or do we just make those ones up? If anyone has read or seen & understood 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' by C.S. Lewis (much Christian allegory if anyone didn't already know), you'll see how this works in Christianity.
**********************
Here are four points with purpose to amuse, or rather to muse over (hehehe):

1. People's behaviour when a child or close person dies. Why do non-religious people (typically?) often describe it being 'in vain' or that they must work out some 'good' from it? When viewing people on the telly saying this sort of thing, think about why they say this, where does this notion of purpose to life come from? In such circumstances are we seeing some nugget of truth or do we attribute it to evolution?

2. Is there a unfulfilled God-shaped spiritual gap in us; do we have a tendency to fill our lives with 'stuff'? I'd admit to wanting to deny this. Do an abstinence experiment; stop some/all interests/activities in your life, e.g. hobbies, doing/watching sport, browsing favourite websites etc., or something that matters (nothing health-related please). Evaluate what happens & see if you can control the desire to fill the void with either that same stuff or other different things. See how long you last before you succumb to reasoning your way out of this due to it being 'silly' or otherwise.

3. The apparent unjustifiably fervent & enthusiastic way that we 'follow' or support things, e.g. a football/racing team or person, or religion for that matter. Is there also a tendency for us to want to turn other people to our way of thinking, that our 'idol' is the best? Try catching yourself doing this. Is it something programmed into us?

Last edited by mr_spoon, Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:33.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

It's bizarre to think of dinosaurs running around at the same time as events portrayed in the bible, but it does put a cool visual spin on things. Actually, if this is legitimate thinking in religious circles I can't understand why christian groups haven't used the dinosaur thing as a recruitment aid for children- everyone knows that kids love dinosaurs, right? It would make bible school a whole lot more fun and it would also make a great movie! The potential is huge!!

I don't think Christianity has that much influence over Hollywood, but there is heaps of material out there on literal creation & dinosaur stuff for kids. Whether a church or Christian subscribes to creationism is another battle.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

I just want you to answer me one question. What makes you think that your religion is the truth rather than any of all the other religions?

See, that's the point where religion can't hold up: there are hundreds if not thousands of different religions and every single one claims to be the only true one (well, except buddhism), and if you follow another, you're doomed. How do you chose the right one, as each cancels out tha validity of the others?

Good questions & I'd agree that only one can possibly be correct. Studying them all would be tiresome if not impossible, so should I just give up & use this as an excuse if there was a god? I don't expect to gain knowledge of all of them & I don't claim to have or will try to, but it is reasonable to check out a few main ones if you must. I'll only try to give reasonable argument(s) for my belief in Christianity, as requested. And sorry again, this didn't turn out to be a brief answer...

A particular reason to think Christianity is worth checking out is that it is alone amongst the main religions in having a central figure that claims to actually be God, all the rest are supposedly at pains to state that they are just people.

It revolves around a 'Christ' person. Was this a real person in history? The vast majority of people accept this person as historical fact through accounts given by historians, emperors etc. from around the time & locality. These included many opponents & neutrals, not just some crazy followers.

People then want to say he was a great teacher or prophet, this is a position another major religion mistakenly makes of him. It might well be the maximum (in Fernando Alonso voice please ) that most people are willing to accept, but can it even be an option? He said & did things that deny this choice; he claimed to be God (the same sort of people from earlier back this point up). It was not a misunderstanding either; it was the whole reason the Jews got Pilate to crucify him.

Anyone that claims to be God can only be: God, a liar, or a lunatic. A great moral teacher or prophet does not work. He doesn't fit into a lunatic profile; the psychologically sound moral things that he said, lunatics with nothing to back up their claims history keeps them as insignificant blips. He fulfilled many (over 300 I just Google'd) ancient prophesies of the Jewish writings. For anyone to do a few might be doable, but so many? These weren't just little things that were within the control of an ordinary man. Liar's don't come back to life after death as he himself said would happen.

Everything, Christianity itself rests on this final point. Its late, this was the last bit I wrote of this reply, but if anyone got through this post & really wanted I could attempt to delve into this, but a decent book or a good website may do it more justice. Maybe there's a battle in my head wanting me to avoid writing this bit seeing as its the most important bit, but meh.

In quick response to Becky's point about the woman from man's rib, I read a nice thing the other day about this; a man's rib is close to his heart & protects it. Also, it is not from his head so she can control the man, nor from his feet so that he can walk all over her, it is from his side, a companion. Digressing further; ribs I believe are the only bone that can regrow after having been entirely removed, there is some special lining in there, just a curiosity maybe? Further, man's body was created from dust, that's hardly a step up in things for us blokes & I don't have any real objections with that.

The word 'homosexual' entry in 1957 thing, if its even true (many different bible translations exist & I'm no expert), I'm not entirely convinced it is of as great importance as the people that like to raise the point want to make it. Having briefly looked at it though, the prior words might be 'strange flesh'. The Bible certainly has to be updated to try to ensure it is making the correct points as per the oldest text sources, these being written in a dead language hence aren't subject to changes like living languages, isn't that handy? I probably wouldn't be readily able to understand an important English document from even a few hundred years ago because language 'evolves' for lack of a better word. The context of things & referencing against other moral teachings & understandings in the Bible are what would be used to keep the message accurate.

Also the Christmas date thing; no half-wit Christian would say that Christmas or Easter is actually his birthday date, its just a date chosen due to dates in history always being difficult to define precisely but there are reasonable guestimates. It also served to usurp old pagan periods of worshipping midwinter feasting or something & the earth for fertility & stuff in spring. The early church had influence enough to do this, this does not necessitate there being evil motivations if their aim is to turn people away from what they believe to be wrong & unhealthy.

Beyond what I've written above I'd not claim to be able to answer every question about the Bible, particularly weird OT doctrinal stuff, but to ignore the entire thing due to not liking or feeling comfortable with the difficult bits doesn't seem that good a reason to me, who would accept an entirely agreeable God anyway? Christianity is somewhat the most difficult religion, it does not allow anyone (any longer anyway) to earn their salvation through works. This actually goes against human nature; we want to do things for ourselves, to work it all out by behaving in a certain way or following a strict set of rules, or figuring it out without any help, or to just to be 'good' enough (whatever we may define that to be, although Christianity teaches that we all have been given a set of morals built-in). To have to struggle with accepting a free gift I know I don't deserve for one second is a freaking nightmare.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

That's the beauty of science: it tries to explain our world, but if it fails to do so in one point, it isn't shaken to it's foundations or even cast aside, but simply that one aspect is legitimately worked on, because, unlike religion, science doesn't claim to deliver undisputable truths, but merely the best explanations we have up to date.

Secular science has long since thrown out even the possibility of there being a God. Miracles etc. are not allowed for, but if there was a God would that be a wise thing to do? Science can do much good, and the Bible encourages us to use the world & study it, but as with all things, from a Christian standpoint at least, it can be misused and/or just wrong. Also, science does not even attempt to answer the 'why' questions, only the 'how' ones. Science changes all the time so to use it to form our world-view isn't very wise, nasty things can result from doing this too strongly.

I hope nothing I'm saying oversteps the mark in terms of the forum rules: I am staying away from saying anything nasty about other religions or people, I am simply giving a few salient points about one religion & not trying to force anything on anyone, I hope it reads that way. I hope the above was relatively clear & not wafflicious, nor merely a “wall of text”!

Last edited by mr_spoon, Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:07.

Quote from SamH :

Okay, the bible pitches the creation of heaven and earth at being about 4000 years ago. Bones don't become fossils until they've been in the ground significantly longer than the bible says anything's been around.

6000 years or so I think actually, but anyhoo! :P Have a look for rapid fossilisation or petrification, who says fossils cannot form rapidly. There is no great need for long lengths of time to fossilize anything. Catasrophic floodwaters carrying masses of minerals & sediment takes care of that. Fossils also show that the animals were 'caught' rapidly; animals caught whilst giving birth, whilst in the middle of eating other fish, whilst standing fighting. Soft tissue is fossilised, jellyfish, fields of them all flattened at once. 'Living fossils' of things that scientists once claimed was of a once badly evolved fish, are found to still be living, did they just forget to evolve? There are zero transitional creatures; see Lucy, Ida etc, they are not what the scientists try to claim, the 'missing links' are still painfully missing. Why are tissues of T-rez found in fosills, it could last a few thousand years or so, but not millions?

Millions of years is unquestionably what is reported in the media & everything people are taught at school/university etc., that does not have to make it true. I have always been taught to not necessarily believe everything I read in the papers/magazines, this is wise enough. Being brought up in this world I cannot help but be influenced by the millions of years idea, but when I actually looked into things that try to give any alternative explanation to them, they are far more reasonable to me & there are many flaws with the popular view.

Quote from SamH :

Rather than 4000 years covered by the bible, science evidences that the universe has been around about 13.7 billion years. That's a lot longer, by the way. Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. The ice age ended approximately 10,000 years ago. Mount Ararat is NOT EVEN REMOTELY the highest point on earth and would NOT have been the first bit of earth to resurface after the waters receded. It would take more than 40 days and 40 nights of rain to cover the earth with water, besides which there is not enough water on the earth to do it.

Science cannot evidence the world to be that old, it is only guessing & wrongly in my opinion. To extrapolate such vast timescales from shaky dating methods that conflict with each other is not what I call wise, they make assumtions of uniformitarianism etc. Myths of dragon exist all around the world well before the first fossils were ever discovered. Records of people describing things that sound like what we now call dinosaurs & pictograms or whatever of plainly dinosaur-like creatures exist alongside normal things we recognise today. The Bible includes a description of a creature that had a tail "like a cedar", even Bible commentaries (that try to appease the millions of years evolutionist thinking) usually try to say this is an elephant or rhino, but their tails could never be described as such. Dinosaurs were probably hunted to extinction or they could not cope with the post-flood earth.

The ice age probably was a consequence of the climatic changes after the flood. The flood lasted for a year or so, not 40 days. I have read that there is plenty water to cover the earth to 2 miles or so & prior to the flood there is some liklihood that the world was not as mountainous prior to this but I can't remember the reason behind this off the top of my head. Also Mt. Ararat I think would be a pre-flood name that was then given to the post-flood world, as are all such names like the Euphrates as people mistakenly think that it is the same one as described in the Bible. Descendants of Noah just renamed things as per things they knew from before.

Billions of years universe; the timescale on 14bn years for the universe is not even enough time for the background radiation in the universe to have become uniform as it is, this is a known problem of astronomy already called the 'horizon problem'.

Quote from SamH :

The bible's a nice idea. Well, the new testament anyway. God, in the old testament, was quite something of an arrogant twat that always wanted worshipping. Signs of insecurity and narcissism in ones god aren't good.

If God behaved in the way that we as humans wanted him to, then that'd suck. Well no actually it'd be a bunch of roses, I could do as I please & ignore him. If the relationship between God & mankind is meant to be like that of a husband and wife then it is understandable for him to be somewhat miffed if we went around ignoring him & paying more attention to other things.

Quote from SamH :

If you want to really get to the bottom of whether you can believe in god and the bible stories, just apply a bit of rational thought. If you value reason above blind faith, the bible is not for you.

My mind is relatively okay I think, I hope some of the above stuff above can be seen to be reasonable if people can set aside the assumption that the earth MUST be as old as the media & textbooks have taught us all. All things concerning matters outwith out sphere of experience are necessarily based on faith. The only difference is whether the facts people look into give more reason to believe in one answer or another. We work from the same facts but interpret them differently.

Sorry for the long time to reply or if people have given up on the thread etc., but I find this topic quite interesting. Sorry to not have covered some of the points from Becky but I can't say I have particular answers for them.

Ed: Another point I believe in is irreducible complexity in the design of creatures. To say they evolved seems fanciful & is lacking in evidence. I've seen stuff about human reproduction & I then understood how it is often described as a miracle. If any one of many factors was not in place, there would be ZERO reproduction therefore no evolution possible whatsoever. Many others but that is a pretty convincing one.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:36.

Can you gimme a lead on where science has disproven the Genesis story at all, that's the side i've been looking into a lot already but haven't seen whatever you're referring to? I have been googling plenty over the last few months, for & against.

I take the Moses flood to be true & the evidence for that being all the fossils. I take the fact that the Bible claims about ten times that animals to be created 'after their kind' to explain variation within species, but not the creation of new things like evolution claims happens, only the former is witnessed in reality (Ed: including the fossil record).

So far I think the Bible provides a reasonable explanation for where we come from. I'm not saying everything makes simple sense, e.g. the forbidden fruit thing seems weird, but if God is involved some things in the 'game plan' have to be allowed for.

The stuff about looking into the authenticity & inerrancy of the Bible is a tough one but I've yet to delve into that, although if a God was possible there is the idea that he must keep an accurate 'book'.

My angle would be that I don't believe evolution to be true, but then why is there such impetus towards it? Britian anyway makes out that any God-believing people are unreasonable nutters. I believe mankind is largely happier to explain God out of the picture by any means possible, even if by clinging to unreasonable ideas. I don't believe evolution nor long-age earth, therefore God is a better & more reasonable explanation for the world around me. If there is a God it is reasonable to expect that he would want to communicate his existence to us by some means. Therefore, of all the main religions around, the oldest ones would appear the most viable or ones that explain things in a reasonable fashion from the 'beginning'. All new or modern religions can be disregarded. Science cannot 'find' God nor 'the point of it all', what happens to all the people before the 'truth' gets found?

I cannot satisfy myself with the notion that 'the truth is unknowable' as it is self-refuting by claiming to be a truth in itself, so truth could be said to be knowable.

The quote from Epicurus (it's be nice to just wish away the existence evil saying it is a human construct, eh?), here's my thoughts on it for fun;

1. Not omnipotent if willing but unable to stop evil - this could only be a God that cannot do anything about evil, not a God worth believing in. Meh, I'm willing to stop evil, but I'm not able to, evidently I'm not God.

2. Malevolent if able but not willing to stop evil - taking evil to be something separate from a 'good' God, only a God that that absolutely denied our own free-will would prevent us from doing evil. Only a God that provided no opportunity of escape from evil upon judgement would be malevolent.

3. Able & willing to prevent evil; clearly we don't live in a world where God has denied us free-will nor has he denied us the chance to be able to avoid the penalty for evil, or rather we should look for a religion that provides such an escape. In answer to the statement, a religion that tells us where evil comes from would be handy.

4. Unable & unwilling to prevent evil; we should stop looking to things that cannot or will not have any bearing on dealing with evil, clearly they are not God, hence these things should be called 'false gods'.

The God described in 3 appears the only one possible, it seems more like a proof for (Ed: the correct sort of) God than against.

The denial of the existence of God is the natural human stance to take, hey I'd rather believe it was okay for me to do anything I wanted do & that there were no consequences, but sadly I believe this is wishful thinking.

Anyway, I voted 'yes' in the end.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Tue, 9 Jun 2009 22:32.

XB-70 Valkyrie:
http://www.murdoconline.net/2008/xb-70_rear.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi ... ut_061122-F-1234P-015.jpg

& i like FSW aircraft:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/ ... images/x-29-EC87-0182.jpg
http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9268/su47cv6.jpg
(the black one)

Quote from MR_B :

Check out the vertical wing things to the sides of the cockpit! Ooh, I noticed something!

I'd like to see McLaren run with some sort of message on their cars in anger or maybe Max Mosely's face on the nose or wing & just hoping that it gets embedded in the sidepod of a Ferrari... terminally for the Ferrari of course.

Cheeky ball of fire creeps up on BMW driver, let's see how they like tailgaters.

I got a set of HD 595's a few months ago & I think they're great. Compared to my old closed back sanyo's they're a bazillion times better. considering the product leap, that's to be expected I suppose though. mine are the 50ohm ones, i think i got them from Amazon as they were the cheapest place (£100 relative bargain). my only other set i was considering was the Grado SR125/80 (depending on price differences). i'm very happy with my Sennheisers, make me enjoy my music much much more. comfy too and came with a neat little mount/clamp thingy to hang them up on when not in use. after having got a decent set of shelf speakers (QAcoustic 1020s), these headphones provide even more detail & i now hear things i hadn't heard before in my music. kinda strange when i notice if an album is well produced or not now.

PS: i'm currently into progressive rock & metal, which is pretty varied style-wise, as the name suggests.

Last edited by mr_spoon, Sun, 3 Jun 2007 22:02. Reason : typo + more.

Quote from FOGlegsy :

another three wheeler i found http://www.diseno-art.com/encyclopedia/archive/sub_g1.html

Is there a paddle to go with that canoe/kayak?