Posts by quintoncoert

I do believe that you have a valid point for right and moral. But then again God does not help either in those situations. I am tempted to say that most slave traders and owners believed in God.

The same went for your history argument. For example. When the duke of wellington did his military campaign in spain a lot of women could take being raped for granted. In my own native country, South Africa, Shaka, the king of the zulu, did his own campaign at the exact same time. It was some sort of ...unite all nguni people under the zulu banner... campaign. In that war if a zulu warrior had raped a single woman of either side he would have been killed along with his entire battalion( or impi as they were called). And no I am not a zulu so I am not seeing only the good of my own people. And also it is true that today a woman would have as much chance of being raped when she is in Zululand as anywhere else in the world.

But as to how society is good. Like I said. It is mostly subsets of society whom are evil. Revolutions like the one in France as well as the American war of independence should offer some small piece of evidence to that.

However. Here is what you are missing. Humans are a group of social animals. And although social animals fight for dominance amongst themselves, …

However, at that point in time, the individual in question has no reason not to be immoral (more specifically, not to pursue their own desires at the expense of others) other than their own conscience or public disapproval, neither of which seems to be very strong most of the time. Remember, this individual does not believe in God at this point.

I believe that you are actually proving my point of morality. What you are implying is that conscience is not enough to keep a person good; he needs the presents of a God to do it for him.

I also believe that you are underestimating society and overestimating public aproval. No I am not contradicting myself. Society at large tends to be good. Of course you will always get the bad individuals but they tend to be in the minority. It is true that public approval will prevent some evil but if a truly bad person wants to do bad he will go clandestine.

Begging God. What can I say. If a child asks a parrent for a car( or even if he demands ) it is a valid action in the sense that there actually does exists parrents.

However asking God to savegaurd you on a journey while you have no evidence, only the thing called faith, that he actually exists is another matter entirely. Like I said. Children know that parrents exists because they have evidence of it every day. Religious …

>It's not the fear of God that keeps us >moral/humane, it's love for God. There is a >difference.

Really? Then why was the number one method of persuading people to believe in God the threat of burning in hell for so many centuries? Even to this day you get people saying more or less that even if all other atheist arguments are valid then at the least you should believe in God in order to save yourself from hell?

>And if someone's praying thinking they can >control what's going to happen, either >directly or indirectly as you stated, they've >strayed away from faith and into magic. We >cannot command God.

Firstly not commanding God. More like begging. And secondly the control God/magic effect. If that is true then why do so many religious people pray to God to affect the outcome of some event. For example praying for a safe arrival in the event of a long journey?

I am using VC++ express edit 2005 but I can also switch to C# 2005 express.

I would like to know if there is a cmd similar to the shell function which is found in visual basic.

The VB shell cmd basically allows one to execute a dot exe file from your VB code. The program(i.e. dot exe file) then runs in a command line interface and can do what it was programmed to do.

I would like to know if C# and C++ 2005 express has a similar command with which one can run a program. I would really like a command which returns a value to the program which invokes it. For example. If the dot exe has output, that it can put the output in variables and return the variables to the calling program

You guys have just placed me in a very difficult position. Since I am an atheist I have to agree with Josh but Christina and Aia do have somewhat of a point.

Life is not pointless. I believe that each and every human on this planet has some point even if not a purpose in the religious sense of the word. Consider the man who invented flint so long ago. Even if we no longer use flint it provided a base from which we could advance economically and also scientifically. The actions or lack of actions we perform today will have an effect hundreds of years from today. If we for example decide that it is fine to blow up the earth then we effect live millions of years into the future by destroying it on earth. It is hard to say that we do not matter in the big sceme of things since our combined actions play such a big role for humanity as a whole.

But. That is no reason to bring a God into it. People have faith because of one of two reasons. Morality and fear.

Fear. Deep down humans know that they do not control that much of live. Even worse. Although powerfull as a species we are still at the mercy of nature. Since humans know that they can not control these things it gives them great comfort to pray to God, imaginary or real regardless, because this is their way …

I did a two year course on networking ( cisco online networking acadamy program ) but I dont exactly understand the term computer science so i shal stay away from that.

Here is a rough overview of computer networks. The network is divided into seven abstract layers. Here follows an overview of the lower layers.

1. These are all your wires and media. Infrared and radio signals are also dealt with here. The basic wire of modern networks is unshielded twisted pair wire.

2. This is media access control. Basically your wire or signal is a media and you need to access it. The network card does this function. Different protocols operate on this layer. For example Token ring and the most popular ethernet. Here you will also find switches which is basicaly a multiport device which accepts wires from a number of computers and the computers communicate with each other over the wires and the switch.

3. This is what networking is actually all about. Here you find protocols and devices which is responsible for making sure that a message send from a computer in USA make its way correctly to its destination in say Europe or Japan. They are called routers. Here you will learn a number of protocols as well as ip addressing. basically every computer on a network has an ip address akin to a human home address.

from here onward you deal with software. the lower three layers are hardware …

The difference is that scientists are perfectly capable of admitting when they do not know. Which is the only base from which religion can attack it.

A scientist will say that he knows that biological organisms are build from proteins which is specified by DNA and that the DNA changes over time( evolution ) but he cannot with total certainty says how the DNA originally came into existence.

Since religion can not argue with the existance of evolution or DNA anymore it has changed its stance. Many of my friends ( all religious and trying to save my soul ) now suggests that perhaps God has created and now controls evolution via DNA. It is a pity that life originated so long before the first human since science is now in the spot where it can never say for sure how DNA first come about.

But dark matter is a different story since scientists have chance to find out what it is.

@JoshSCH:
Regarding your contention of Christians becoming atheists, please provide some evidence of this. I'd like evidence of actual Christians doing so, not merely those whose religion or faith was based on their church, or their minister, or their families and friends. Those aren't Christians; they're part of a subset I've heard called 'Churchians'. (Faith in and relationship with the local church, rather than with the Lord Jesus Christ.) The scriptures plainly state that not everyone claiming to be a Christian is one.

I too am a christen turned atheist. In addition I would like to say to Christina that christianity and the church seems to redraw their boundaries every time that there is some scientific discovery. The most notable discovery was the discovery of DNA and the theory of evolution. I predict that a couple of decades from today when scientists has a good explanation of dark matter the religious lines will be altered again.

I am currently working on a project which requires me to instantiate objects of a class. The class is in a dll which is accessed via its header file. I suspect that the dll does not work with visual c++ express edition which I am using. I would like some second opinions on this before I go back to the original programmer of the dll. Here are my reasons for believing it is incompattible.

The dll was originally written and compiled in VC++ 6.0. I then could not instantiate. When I emailed a copy of the program in which I tried to instantiate to the creator of the dll, he could compile and run it in VC++ 6.0. Afterwards he recompiled the dll in VC++ dot net 2003 and I could instantiate. However I then got warnings which basically stated that C++ allows but could not support certain methods or actions and so forth. This was fine since I could write programs which did not use graphical user interfaces. I then designed the GUI in Visual Basic and I execute the C++ programs by using the shell command which allows visual basic to execute the C++ programs in some command line interface.

However. When I want to design GUI programs in VC++ 2005 express edition I get all sorts of errors and warnings down the lines of ... this should not be declared as such... or ...not allowed except to declare... All of these errors are thrown by …

can anyone tell me the difference between visual c++ express edition and visual c++ .net? It would apear that they are the same. Both seems to use the dot net framework. Are there any significant differences? And also how do they differ from other types of c++ such as ansi c++ and visual C++ 6.0?

also how compattible are they? If you write a program in one type of c++ can it be used on most others without having to rewrite large sections of code?

And finally which one is best for developing games.

I am writting a program which receives args on the command line. Before they can be used however they must be converted to ints. I am using vc++ express edition and I have tried the _strtoi64 function but I cannot get the parameters to this function right. It is specifically the second parameter of this function which gives problems. Is asks for a ** char to show what should stop the function scanning for numbers to convert to int. The problem is that, being new to c++, I have no idea what to pass as a second parameter. I have just secured some sort of grip on pointer but this double pointer like syntax is a bit much just now. In addition the first parameter is just a number in char form. Why cant the function just read the first parameter to its end and then return the converted int when it encounters the end? Can someone please show me to use this function correctly or perhaps tell me of another one which is easier to use?

To any reader but also Ancient Dragon.

The name of the header file is CATCenterNetClient.h. The include command is going to be #include "CATCenterNetClient.h". The question is where do I type in this command. Do I type it in the file which contains function main or do I type it in the window which opens when I double click on the control which must instantiate the CATCenterNetClient object. And where specifically in this file. I mean. Should it go to at the top before the opening braces or in the click event section of the command button where I type in the to be executed code.

I am using VC++ express 2005 and I have a dll and two header files. The one header file inherrits from the other and the dll contains the source code.

Can someone please tell me where do I write the include commands for these header files? I can create and use forms in test apps and the same goes for the dll and header files, i.e. I can use them in small test programs. but when I try to instantiate the headers in command buttons of projects which uses forms I fail.

Where do I write the include commands for such projects? Do I write the include command in the file which has the main function or do I write it in the code window which opens when I double click on the command button. Or do I write it somewhere else entirely.

I am new to c++ and I am using visual c++ express edition. I am spending quite a lot of my time doing excercises and am using the command line to compile them.

I have now reach the stage where I am seperating the header files and the .cpp files of a class before creating a second .cpp file which includes function main. But the normal command line compiling (i.e. cl /EHsc program.cpp) does not work when interfaces (h) and implementations (.cpp) are seperate.

Does anyone know how to compile a header, .cpp and program using the command line of visual c++ express?

I have received a library in dll format with a .h header file. When I instantiate an object from one of the classes I get an access violation error. It is a run time error; the program compiled bug free. The program even runs. It is just at the exact instant that the command to instantiate (or point if I should use a pointer ) executes, then the access violation occurs.

I am using MS Visual C++ express edition. Windows help says that this error occurs when an ATL Composite control attempts to create a licenced control. This usually only happens on computers without visual C++ installed on them. Could this be because the origional programmer used Visual C++ proffesional edition and now I am using express edition? Or is it something else entirely.

Can someone please tell me what to do with a library object file in visual c++ express? Another programmer developed a set of classes with header files but there are no .cpp files. There is a .dll and a .def along with a library object file. The developer told me that I just need the header file and the dll although I suspect that the others might be needed too. Can you please tell me what to do with these files (apart from the header files. they go into the headers folder) so that I can inherrit and instantiate from the files (of course by using the headers). It is just that I do not know which files implement the functionality that the headers are an interface for (new to C++) and most importantly where to place them.