Bay 12 Games Forum

Yeah sorry bout that.

blades transmit nearly no force back to the wielder, practically doubling the force applied to the target.

Wait, what?

Sorry, but even in DF...

No.
Just, No.

Self bump since the tower's finally finished!

Selfishly removing spoiler tags to view on PSP.

BE preferably.

Keep posting like this, but if possible you could also join the text in a .doc you update.

196 wolves in The Fields of Fortune?

Mjølnir is my avatar, yes.


The theory that I am the son of Thor is Relevant To My Interests.

The problem with Windows 7:

1. Everybody buys Vista. For lots of money.
2. Vista is crap, RAAAEEG!
3. Bettering is promised.
4. Windows 7 released. Problems of Vista solved.
5. Everybody buys Windows 7. For lots of money.
6. Everybody happy, Microsoft has saved the day, and is praised for releasing a functioning OS. And also got two OS's worth of money.

in which Dwarf attempts a civilized discussion about how God, (he which Dwarf will not address with capitalized pronoms) in his opinion, does not exist.
Keep it civil, guys


First, I shall look at the Bible. Some people think it's a mass of fiction, other think it's the Ultimate Truth and everything written in it is true. (Which is disproven by the fact it takes 3 as π)

I think neither of the extremes. Partly, it really is a storytelling book, but more importantly, it contains interpretative stories.

Let us, as example, take the Genesis, in which is written how Adam and Eve got banned from the paradise.
We obviously can't take this literally, but must use interpretation:

By eating the fruit and knowing what is good and what is bad, the human has gained free will and, more importantly?, the ability to make moral decisions.
In doing so, however, they have lost their innocence, the innocence of being an animal. No longer can we do something claiming it is natural, because always, we can decide if we want to do it and also choose a less evil way, which we not always do.

(Example: You eat meat. Were you an animal, you could claim it's simply the way you are. As a human, not so.
Because you know that an animal has lived and died only for the purpose of nourishing people. That can be considered evil, because you could also choose to live on plants. Which again throws up the question if plants are living beings.)

More importantly, however, God curses us from then on. Women must give birth under great pain and we must forever work for our food. It has been mutliple millenia since. This makes me doubt the good-will, kindness and love God has for us, shall he exist. Were any of us there when they picked the fruit, were we born when they made that fatal decision? Is this just?

Furthermore, it makes me doubt the intelligence of God. He emphasizes that they must not, under any circumstances, eat from that tree. Had he built a wall around it, or not even created the tree at all, this disaster wouldn't have happened.
Also, he created the humans. Shouldn't he have known that the human is naturally curious, or that the snake is treacherous and wrong? Is he not omniscient after all?

But all this is requiring the truthness of the Bible. Let us instead look at real-world examples.

Now, let us look at the suffering and evil in the world.
We will dismiss the possibility of murder and similar deaths to the fact that God wishes not to affect what we decide with free will.
But then, there are a lot of accident related deaths. Car crashes, failing bolts, ropes snapping, you name it. These make no differences between Christians and Atheists or people of other religions, do they?
Why does God not prevent such accidents, which nobody is really guilty of?
There was a recent example of a mudslide in Italy - even the church was destroyed.
Is God so cold-hearted and cruel he eradicates an entire village to show us we're not believing enough?
Why does he not send a very much clearer message, like speaking to all villagers?

Speaking to people and their interaction, another interesting subject.
In the Old Testament, God was very active. He spoke to people in person, whilst in the New Testament, God is already much less active, up to today, where there's nothing at all.

In the Old Testament, God is cruel and unforgiving. There is a story in which one wants to count the population of Israel. Because God wants not that his people are counted, he kills 120'000, making the census wrong. He also let the man live, so he may be mocked.
The image of God has since then been skewed to benevolent and loving. It is just that we are not noticing that.