Europe has locked down it's train stations a bit, especially London, and in the UK, largely, you won't find a bin in a train station. In Glasgow Central you have to throw your rubbish on the floor, and someone sweeps it up.
That happened long before 9/11 -- it was officially a response to Irish republican terrorism, although many of us suspect it was to save the cost of emptying the bins (bomb resistant bins were already available at the time the bins were withdrawn).
Therein lies a reason for a difference between the European and US responses, of course. Europe has lived with terrorism for centuries, from Guy Fawkes to Basque separatists so we're a bit more stoic about it. That doesn't stop politicians trying to deprive the public of more freedoms, but it makes it harder for them.
Not entirely, because as I stated there are a lot of people who do use the word "Christian" in that sense ("good" moral behaviour, where the speaker is the arbiter of what is "good"), so the OP might well have been doing so. It's a genuine ambiguity. Most of the arguments over religion on/. (and elsewhere) seem to come down to vague definitions and hasty generalisation.
Atheism itself constitutes the rejection of an irrational belief in a specific thing without evidence.
No, atheism constitutes the rejection of belief in a specific thing. Period. Whether the rejected belief is irrational, whether the rejection is irrational, and what evidence is available are all irrelevant to whether a person is atheist.
If your basis for rejecting that thing is itself irrational or without evidence, you have a rotten foundation for your atheism.
But you are still an atheist.
Your definitions of agnostic and atheist, however are controversial and far from tenable. The default position of a skeptic is the null hypothesis. "Show me some evidence for your claim, or take a hike." All skeptics must start as an atheist, and only move to agnosticism in the face of incontrovertible evidence that some kind of supernatural intelligence exists.
I don't think that "null hypothesis" means what you think it means, so I can't be sure what you're saying there. Does the skeptic disbelieve everything before they have incontovertible evidence, or do they reserve that for belief in deities?
Trouble is, as well as being an engineer I'm also a linguist, and I'm aware that meaning is something agreed on, not something inherent in the word itself. And here in the UK at least, a lot of people use "Christian" to mean "Conforming to my moral system".
I never said anthing about variety in "kinds of atheism" or "kinds of Christianity". I merely argue that as a group atheists are more diverse than Christians.
Well, I would say that an agnostic (in the strong sense) believes that it is impossible to know whether any god exists or not. They may put any probabiliy on it they like (as long as they're Bayesians -- if they're frequentists they run into problems assigning probabilities to something that either is or is not already the case). Consider, for example, religious agnostics, who certainly don't put things at 50/50.
Er -- since you seem to be able to tell agnostics from atheists based on their definition of agnosticism, which does that make me? (Trick question, of course: the correct answer is "ornery old cuss who'll question absolutely anything)".
You might think that the distinctions beween Catholicism and Lutheranism are petty.
No I don't. But I think that they're less than the differences between atheists. Atheists have nothing in common but disbelief in God. Catholics and Lutherans are also united in belief in the existence of the historical person of Jesus, whereas atheists have no such (and have no need of any such) auxilliary unifying belief. Beware of the conjunction fallacy!
My main point was to Dr.Syshalt's claim that "Communism is just another kind of religion". If that were true then anything could be "just another kind of religion", even atheism, so athiesm could be a motivation for lots of things. Of course you don't think that's true. Neither do I. That's rather the point I was trying to make. Dr.Syshalt was redefining "religion" to mean "anything I don't approve of".
maybe the problem is that religious games (I don't know even one counter example) focus to much on conveying the religion and to little on stuff like A STORY, or GAMEPLAY... they're like most educational games, they just AREN'T FUN TO PLAY.
I think there are good reasons for that. Dorothy L Sayers, the Whodunnit writer (and Christian theologian) wrote a book called "The Mind of the Maker" in which she compares the writing of fiction to the Judeo-Christian creation narrative, and points out that in that narrative God gives the characters free will but that their actions have consequences. I think it's the writing of fiction -- the storyline -- that is the big issue in whether games should have a "religious" element. Sayers complains that a lot of authors are not willing to let go of their characters in this way. Rather than create a well-rounded character and think how they would respond in a particular circumstance, rather they force the response that serves the religious, moral, ideological or political point that they want to make, with stilted and implausable results. Her Lord Peter Wimsey stories might seem dated now, but nobody faults them for being too religious. Similarly Graham Greene, who dealt far more with religious themes, and, I would suggest, Piers Paul Reed and Jon McGregor. Any good writer of fiction will put their understanding of people and the world into their fiction, but not as the story, rather as the way things hang together. That's unlikely to be perceived by the gamer as "religious" though (at least if it's done right). Is there a bias to good characters winning because the author believes in a benevolent deity with supreme power over the universe, or because the author wanted to write an optimistic game? There should be no way to know. The world is as it is. Some might interpret it religiously, some might not -- just like the real world.
But honestly, having worked with/on church councils, while you see a lot of the politics you see in, well, all social organizations, churches are actually filled with good people who are trying to make a difference in society. Perhaps your game could actually encompass some of that, instead of just focusing on monetary issues.
So lets see. You're giving me a choice between a game in which people run a workshop to help the unemployed with their interview skills, or a game in which I have BIG FUCKING GUN and BLOW THINGS UP? I think I know which is going to be easier to market. There's a reason most actors want to play the villain: it's more fun! Most gamers are probably decent people who wouldn't dream of transferring a most of the stuff in the games into real life. Gaming can be a great release for the destructive side of our nature. We don't need to escape into fantasy to release the good side of our narure. It's better if we release that in the real world.
Remember that the Left Behind series is only representative of the beliefs of a subset of Christians. A lot of Christians would have seen the books and game as being grossly misrepresenting Jesus and might well respond negatively on those grounds.
I'd think an RPG built around finding and exploiting human weaknesses to turn people, groups, and cities to the devil could make for a good game.
Of course, it's probably not the religious message these folks are aiming for:)
Goodness, no! What would be religious about "Marketing: The Video Game"?
Murder is pretty bad, but I want it in my games because that's part of the real world.
In my games I want to be able to teleport into an area, levitate and conjure up a fireball that lays waste to all enemies in the area -- what has the real world got to do with it?
Why do you zealous idiots keep clinging to that completely delusional assertion?
The post to which you responded didn't go off on a rant completely unrelated to their parent posting and didn't make a whole raft of ad hominem attacks on the parent with no evidence to justify them whatsoever. Read what the posting actually said and consider what it really implied (which was quite modest, as far as I can see -- that religion doesn't have a monopoly on evil). Then consider which of you looks more like a zealous idiot.
I don't really see how religion is needed in video games. Plenty of games have used religious influences heavily. Fantasy games often use elements of Norse, Egyptian, Greek/Roman, and Christianity/Judaism in their games and that hasn't been a problem. People don't like being fed propaganda from any religious group so games based on any particular religion usually will fail
I think that's the real point. Atheist game players don't seem to object to summoning Shiva to smite their foes when playing Final Fantasy as an intolerable intrusion of religion even though Shiva is a deity revered by billions, but similarly the (Christian) religious right don't seem to see that as suitable inclusion of religion. It seems that what they're asking for isn't the representation of religion but more specifically the representaton of their religion as they see it.
Read the end of the article you yourself cite. "In situations where the subject's status is previously determined by specific behaviors, the fallacy does not apply." The posting to which you were responding claimed that "by definition those who practice such things are not Christians". If "Christian" is defined by not killing people for not converting then it's not the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. I have to say that I think that's an unusual definition of "Christian", which I am more used to seeing defined in terms of relationship rather than behaviour. I think that might be a more useful challenge.
On a point of accuracy, "unmarried partners", not "same-sex" partners". But your basic point, as far as I can see, is that if one religious group makes a questionable moral call then all religious people have questionable morality? On that argument, all elderly doctors are mass murderers and all Americans are terrorist bombers. Thank goodness some atheists (and some agnostics, and some religious people) have a better grasp of reason than you!
Well, to be fair. Stalin was a nutjub. He'd have killed all those people even if he were Christian. His atheism had nothing to do with it.
The Christians killed people _in the of religion_.
Big difference there.
No difference. It was only the nutjob Christians who killed people in the name of religion (what I assume you meant to say). Or, rather, just as it wasn't Stalin who did most of the actual killing, those who blindly follow the nutjob. The problem isn't "religious", "atheist", "communist" or whatever, the problem is "persuasive nutjob". Something that's completely irrelevant to the debate on the relative merits of metaphysical positions.
So what you mean is that "religion" means anything that is a motivation for bad things and that "atheism" means whatever is a motivation for good things, and that questions of science, metaphysics and the existence of deities are irrelevant to the debate?
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and in the case of Guy Fawkes, we're less stoical and more celebratory.
Well ... we celebrate his being burned at the stake. I'm not sure that's all that celebratory.
American funded Irish republican terrorists murdered two innocent children on that day.
If we'd done our foreign policy then the way we and the US do now, we'd have responded by sending the troops into Mexico to force regime change...
Europe has locked down it's train stations a bit, especially London, and in the UK, largely, you won't find a bin in a train station. In Glasgow Central you have to throw your rubbish on the floor, and someone sweeps it up.
That happened long before 9/11 -- it was officially a response to Irish republican terrorism, although many of us suspect it was to save the cost of emptying the bins (bomb resistant bins were already available at the time the bins were withdrawn).
Therein lies a reason for a difference between the European and US responses, of course. Europe has lived with terrorism for centuries, from Guy Fawkes to Basque separatists so we're a bit more stoic about it. That doesn't stop politicians trying to deprive the public of more freedoms, but it makes it harder for them.
Ah, the Humpty Dumpty defence.
Not entirely, because as I stated there are a lot of people who do use the word "Christian" in that sense ("good" moral behaviour, where the speaker is the arbiter of what is "good"), so the OP might well have been doing so. It's a genuine ambiguity. Most of the arguments over religion on /. (and elsewhere) seem to come down to vague definitions and hasty generalisation.
Atheism itself constitutes the rejection of an irrational belief in a specific thing without evidence.
No, atheism constitutes the rejection of belief in a specific thing. Period. Whether the rejected belief is irrational, whether the rejection is irrational, and what evidence is available are all irrelevant to whether a person is atheist.
If your basis for rejecting that thing is itself irrational or without evidence, you have a rotten foundation for your atheism.
But you are still an atheist.
Your definitions of agnostic and atheist, however are controversial and far from tenable. The default position of a skeptic is the null hypothesis. "Show me some evidence for your claim, or take a hike." All skeptics must start as an atheist, and only move to agnosticism in the face of incontrovertible evidence that some kind of supernatural intelligence exists.
I don't think that "null hypothesis" means what you think it means, so I can't be sure what you're saying there. Does the skeptic disbelieve everything before they have incontovertible evidence, or do they reserve that for belief in deities?
Trouble is, as well as being an engineer I'm also a linguist, and I'm aware that meaning is something agreed on, not something inherent in the word itself. And here in the UK at least, a lot of people use "Christian" to mean "Conforming to my moral system".
scepticism, with wine, needs a measured dose.
Next year could you remind me of that *before* Christmas dinner?
I never said anthing about variety in "kinds of atheism" or "kinds of Christianity". I merely argue that as a group atheists are more diverse than Christians.
Well, I would say that an agnostic (in the strong sense) believes that it is impossible to know whether any god exists or not. They may put any probabiliy on it they like (as long as they're Bayesians -- if they're frequentists they run into problems assigning probabilities to something that either is or is not already the case). Consider, for example, religious agnostics, who certainly don't put things at 50/50.
Er -- since you seem to be able to tell agnostics from atheists based on their definition of agnosticism, which does that make me? (Trick question, of course: the correct answer is "ornery old cuss who'll question absolutely anything)".
You might think that the distinctions beween Catholicism and Lutheranism are petty.
No I don't. But I think that they're less than the differences between atheists. Atheists have nothing in common but disbelief in God. Catholics and Lutherans are also united in belief in the existence of the historical person of Jesus, whereas atheists have no such (and have no need of any such) auxilliary unifying belief. Beware of the conjunction fallacy!
My main point was to Dr.Syshalt's claim that "Communism is just another kind of religion". If that were true then anything could be "just another kind of religion", even atheism, so athiesm could be a motivation for lots of things. Of course you don't think that's true. Neither do I. That's rather the point I was trying to make. Dr.Syshalt was redefining "religion" to mean "anything I don't approve of".
maybe the problem is that religious games (I don't know even one counter example) focus to much on conveying the religion and to little on stuff like A STORY, or GAMEPLAY... they're like most educational games, they just AREN'T FUN TO PLAY.
I think there are good reasons for that. Dorothy L Sayers, the Whodunnit writer (and Christian theologian) wrote a book called "The Mind of the Maker" in which she compares the writing of fiction to the Judeo-Christian creation narrative, and points out that in that narrative God gives the characters free will but that their actions have consequences. I think it's the writing of fiction -- the storyline -- that is the big issue in whether games should have a "religious" element. Sayers complains that a lot of authors are not willing to let go of their characters in this way. Rather than create a well-rounded character and think how they would respond in a particular circumstance, rather they force the response that serves the religious, moral, ideological or political point that they want to make, with stilted and implausable results. Her Lord Peter Wimsey stories might seem dated now, but nobody faults them for being too religious. Similarly Graham Greene, who dealt far more with religious themes, and, I would suggest, Piers Paul Reed and Jon McGregor. Any good writer of fiction will put their understanding of people and the world into their fiction, but not as the story, rather as the way things hang together. That's unlikely to be perceived by the gamer as "religious" though (at least if it's done right). Is there a bias to good characters winning because the author believes in a benevolent deity with supreme power over the universe, or because the author wanted to write an optimistic game? There should be no way to know. The world is as it is. Some might interpret it religiously, some might not -- just like the real world.
But honestly, having worked with/on church councils, while you see a lot of the politics you see in, well, all social organizations, churches are actually filled with good people who are trying to make a difference in society. Perhaps your game could actually encompass some of that, instead of just focusing on monetary issues.
So lets see. You're giving me a choice between a game in which people run a workshop to help the unemployed with their interview skills, or a game in which I have BIG FUCKING GUN and BLOW THINGS UP? I think I know which is going to be easier to market. There's a reason most actors want to play the villain: it's more fun! Most gamers are probably decent people who wouldn't dream of transferring a most of the stuff in the games into real life. Gaming can be a great release for the destructive side of our nature. We don't need to escape into fantasy to release the good side of our narure. It's better if we release that in the real world.
But if she turns out not to have been a virgin you have to cast a saving roll against contracting a sexually transmitted disease.
Remember that the Left Behind series is only representative of the beliefs of a subset of Christians. A lot of Christians would have seen the books and game as being grossly misrepresenting Jesus and might well respond negatively on those grounds.
I'd think an RPG built around finding and exploiting human weaknesses to turn people, groups, and cities to the devil could make for a good game. Of course, it's probably not the religious message these folks are aiming for :)
Goodness, no! What would be religious about "Marketing: The Video Game"?
Yes -- really hard to defeat because he's defended by Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett who keep respawning!
I so want this game!
Murder is pretty bad, but I want it in my games because that's part of the real world.
In my games I want to be able to teleport into an area, levitate and conjure up a fireball that lays waste to all enemies in the area -- what has the real world got to do with it?
Why do you zealous idiots keep clinging to that completely delusional assertion?
The post to which you responded didn't go off on a rant completely unrelated to their parent posting and didn't make a whole raft of ad hominem attacks on the parent with no evidence to justify them whatsoever. Read what the posting actually said and consider what it really implied (which was quite modest, as far as I can see -- that religion doesn't have a monopoly on evil). Then consider which of you looks more like a zealous idiot.
I don't really see how religion is needed in video games. Plenty of games have used religious influences heavily. Fantasy games often use elements of Norse, Egyptian, Greek/Roman, and Christianity/Judaism in their games and that hasn't been a problem. People don't like being fed propaganda from any religious group so games based on any particular religion usually will fail
I think that's the real point. Atheist game players don't seem to object to summoning Shiva to smite their foes when playing Final Fantasy as an intolerable intrusion of religion even though Shiva is a deity revered by billions, but similarly the (Christian) religious right don't seem to see that as suitable inclusion of religion. It seems that what they're asking for isn't the representation of religion but more specifically the representaton of their religion as they see it.
Read the end of the article you yourself cite. "In situations where the subject's status is previously determined by specific behaviors, the fallacy does not apply." The posting to which you were responding claimed that "by definition those who practice such things are not Christians". If "Christian" is defined by not killing people for not converting then it's not the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. I have to say that I think that's an unusual definition of "Christian", which I am more used to seeing defined in terms of relationship rather than behaviour. I think that might be a more useful challenge.
On a point of accuracy, "unmarried partners", not "same-sex" partners". But your basic point, as far as I can see, is that if one religious group makes a questionable moral call then all religious people have questionable morality? On that argument, all elderly doctors are mass murderers and all Americans are terrorist bombers. Thank goodness some atheists (and some agnostics, and some religious people) have a better grasp of reason than you!
Yes, slaughter for economic, political, racial or ideological reasons is so much better than slaughter for religious reasons, isn't it?
Well, to be fair. Stalin was a nutjub. He'd have killed all those people even if he were Christian. His atheism had nothing to do with it.
The Christians killed people _in the of religion_.
Big difference there.
No difference. It was only the nutjob Christians who killed people in the name of religion (what I assume you meant to say). Or, rather, just as it wasn't Stalin who did most of the actual killing, those who blindly follow the nutjob. The problem isn't "religious", "atheist", "communist" or whatever, the problem is "persuasive nutjob". Something that's completely irrelevant to the debate on the relative merits of metaphysical positions.
So what you mean is that "religion" means anything that is a motivation for bad things and that "atheism" means whatever is a motivation for good things, and that questions of science, metaphysics and the existence of deities are irrelevant to the debate?