The Real Veon

Forgiven, I didn't say that I don't believe in things I can't see. I don't believe in things for which there is no evidence. I believe in the wind not because I can see it, but because I can observe its effects. I don't think that looking around is sufficient evidence to believe in a transcendent being. For me to believe that the whole universe is evidence for a creative force, then I would need to be shown that the universe could not have come about naturally (that is without a creativ

Enternjc, As a skeptic, I am always open to new evidence and would never tell someone to shut up just because I don't like what they say. The reason I don't think that ID is science or even has anything valid to say about biology is because I've seen no compelling evidence. You say that there is some. Could you please elaborate?

Forgiven, As for the monkeys comment, this is a common creationist misconception about evolution. Humans did not evolve from monkeys, apes, or any other primate. We all share a common ancestor. Saying this is a bit like saying "If you evolved from your cousin, then why does your cousin still exist?" The statement really makes no sense. You didn't evolve from your cousin, you both share a common ancestor. The same goes for humans and apes. We didn't evolve from them, they share a common

Tekel59, If evidence through prophecy for the coming of Jesus and his divinity is so compelling, then why are there still Jews? They are their prophecies after all. Shouldn't they be the best and most authoritative people to judge whether or not Jesus fulfilled all those prophecies?

Forgiven, I think that part of the problem is that your conflating two different scientific fields. One is evolution, the other is abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is the study of how life arose, evolution is the study of how life develops. They are related, but neither one requires the other to operate. Evolution says nothing about how life originated, nor does it need to. For modern evolutionary theory to work, all that is required is for life to exist. Now you can rant and rail at a

Forgiven, I have a question about seeing design in nature. One of the arguments you've used is that living things must have been designed because they are more complex than any of the machines we as humans have built, and all those machines were designed. However, hundreds of engineers have worked on our most complex machines (cars, airplanes, computers, etc). So, shouldn't living things, which by your own argument are even more complex, have to have been designed by many gods?

Forgiven, I'd feel like I should clarify on the whole God subject. I'm not saying that there is no God. All I'm saying is that I don't believe in a God because I see no reason to do so and I see no evidence for a God. Those are two different things.

[quote]Evolution for Dummies:Chapter 1[...]"What do I need now?", he thought. I need a brain. So maybe in a million years, Mr. Darwin will get one.[/quote] Forgiven, you should really lay off that straw man, he's in pretty rough shape. But seriously, that isn't how evolution works. No evolutionary biologist says that how evolution works. And if you know of any, please cite a quote so I can go call him an idiot. I asked you why I should believe what you do, and you post

Whoa, Forgiven, what's with the hostility? I'm sorry, but I can't tell you how life began. There are several hypotheses on the subject, but so far there is no Theory of Abiogenesis. And that's because so far we've gathered very little evidence on the subject, so it is not currently possible to determine which (if any) of those hypotheses are correct (and thus gain the title Theory). So, in short, I don't know. But, from your postings, it's clear that you believe God did it. So

Forgiven, Although I'm an atheist, I firmly believe in freedom of religion. You have every right to believe whatever you wish, as do I. It's when we start interacting with other people, when we start saying that our beliefs are the truth and everyone else should agree with us, that these arguments arise. So, the question then isn't, "What do you believe?" but rather, "Why should I believe what you believe?" So I'll ask, why should I believe the Biblical account of genesis? You

Deathbane, Your post is full of logical fallacies. You say that you cannot conceive of a way for new forms to arise or for small changes to compound over time into large changes. This is simply an argument from personal incredulity. Just because you can't think of a way for these things to happen doesn't mean that someone else hasn't. Secondly, the Matrix idea. Just because some respected person believes this doesn't somehow make it true. This is the appeal to authority logical

One thing I've noticed on this thread is the common creationist/IDist tactic in which they try to poke some holes in evolution and get a big debate going where people pile on to tell them why they are wrong. Then they just have to sit back and say, "look at all the controversy; there is no way evolution is accepted as true." Throughout the whole process they never provide any positive evidence for their own idea. My point is that negative evidence for evolution (should such a thing exis

ZJBDragon, While it's true that science doesn't know everything, that doesn't mean that it (and we) doesn't know anything. The real power of science isn't that it can tell us what is true. It's that it can tell us things that aren't true. Things like geocentricism, creationism and the luminiferous ether have all been ruled out by lack of evidence. It's like a paleontologist slowly excavating a fossil. He scrapes and chips away the stone, and all that we are left with is the fossil. By e

Actually the story of Columbus proving the world was round etc. was made up by Washington Irving (same guy who wrote Sleepy Hollow). He felt that the US needed some founding myths (similar to England's King Arthur) and so he made up a bunch of stuff, like Columbus, much of what we think of as he Thanksgiving story, and other things. He presented them all as true and factual and the real stories have been forgotten by the public.

Are you running any mods? I've noticed mine takes longer to load when I've told certain mods to load on startup. But still, it's not as long as yours.

If you're looking for planet names / locations check out: http://starwarsatlas.uw.hu/

That's sounds cool. How about this. You get a group of people on the forums to agree to play a Round Robin style of game. Someone starts a new game, plays for thirty minutes, then saves. They take a picture of their progress then write up a summary of what they did. Then they post the saved game and the next person in the queue plays the game for thirty minutes, stops, saves and it moves on to the next person. The whole thing would be documented by screen shot or write

Bloodhawk. Duh, of course. Thanks

I'm really looking forward to playing with this, but I'm a little confused about how to install the mod. Sorry if I'm being stupid, but this is the first mod I've tried out (for this game) and the readme isn't clear. I've done the first step (where you extract 'Sins Plus' into the mod folder). But then I hit a snag. It says that I should copy 'textures' into the 'Sins Plus' folder into the regular 'Sins of a Solar Empire' folder, not the mod folder, but then, yes into the one in the mod

I think that using this for a map would be great. Even without a mod for ships and tech, it is still fun to explore a galaxy which you are familiar with and to make up a new story as you go. I did this for a star wars map based off of the galaxy maps found here: http://starwarsatlas.uw.hu/ It had about one hundred planets in one system with the star as the galactic core, hyperspace routes as phase lanes, home planets corresponding to certain factions, etc. If

I've played a large game like yours and had my butt kicked by an AI alliance. It was just two factions which had allied, but still it was enough to ruin me. The thing is, the AI will always group together to fight the biggest threat (you, usually). My solution was to reload the same game but lock the teams. Ten players, ten teams, no diplomacy (this also gets rid of the constant mission messages). In this game the AI players fought each other. One was even eliminated on the oth