"On the contrary, I believe that entertainment, especially in gaming, is a very good thing to be studying."
Indeed. I think one things people forget is that GAMES MODEL WORLDS, either abstract or based on portions the real world. Games are SIMULATIONS, so saying we shouldn't study games is like saying we shouldn't investigate the natural world. Games and the real world have a lot in common, one is based on pure digital information, the other more solid 'physical' world.
You assume there is a UNIVERSAL one answer solution, when the circumstances keep changing, these generations kids do not have the same values as the last generation, they learned and experiences different things, etc.
"Blaming advertising for people's fucked up self-image is like blaming video games for making people violent. It's just not the case."
You're statement lacks insight and subtlety: How do you think christianity spreads? The bible. If a meteor hit the planet wiping out all christians and all bibles or traces of bibles and such literature, there would be NO christians. So saying the bible the "artifact" has no effect on people is ridiculous. If people reading karl marx and such people went onto adopt communism it is very obvious that ADVERTISING WORKS! You prey on peoples natural instincts, inclinations and prejudices and habits. People do it all the time in normal social interaction to "get a rise out of others".
Now video games don't make people violent, but they do INFLUENCE people, the amount of influence if there is any at all depends on the individuals characteristics. This is not to say "they are mind control devices" or any such nonsense. Take bioshock example: Someone who is a capitalist or communist might be strong effected by the content of the "ayn rand" dystopia, or maybe it might spur their thinking to think and reflect on values they cherish / dislike.
Have you ever played a game and wanted to throw the controller when you lost? The fact is when lots of our behaviour is AUTONOMOUS. Until we mature and grow. I've taken care of kids and watched them change and grow and certain kids (individuals in a population) definitely have stages where they are very impressionable.
"In much the same way that religious voters will tolerate massive corruption and sexual perversion from politicians who claim deep religious convictions..."
Most religious voters are far and away not religious by their own holy text's standards, it's standard hypocrisy and magical thinking at work.
"True, but isn't this a case of shooting the messenger? ie, the evil thing is not the ad itself but the company who put it there.."
Actually ad's have the "Evil artifact" effect, but they are really more like say environmental pollution, once you put an add up it's like adding smog to the air. While the company is technically responsible for the "smog" it doesn't make the smog itself any less a health hazard.
Now you might think I'm "splitting hairs" or "being anal" (and if I did not qualify my statement you'd have a point) but if we think about it, we are impressionable at certain times depending on our mood and repeated exposure. Hitler was correct in that: "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
We pick culture and attitudes up by osmosis just as much in other areas of our life as we do consciously.
We see this everday, and ads are a ubiquitous force.
"We live in an era of anti-intellectualism. We all assume we know best about any field of expertise that is not ours."
That's the problem actually, every expert thinks he knows WHEN HE DOESN'T! And then governments have to deal with the fall-out, we've had many experts for many years, and we still have enormous difficulties... could it be that the experts are not these GODS you speak of?
"Anyone who says ads are evil has a whacky moral compass, and they're diluting the term."
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about, ads have HUGE influence on culture. This doesn't mean all ads are evil, but I've worked with girls who have serious body image issues due to a lifetime of being bombarded with unreal images of beauty. Saying we have a "wacking moral compass" is ignorant. We a right to criticize ads and ad messages since they are cultural creation / pollution centers just as much as anything else.
"It's just a load of crap to put all the responsibility for education on the institution. The degree to which a student accepts personal responsibility is what mainly determines how far he can go in school and out."
It's not a LOAD of crap, as many/.'ers attested to in modding me up. Many of them OLDER, WISER and more professionally employed then you sir. They've had a lot of time to think on it and came to the same conclusions. This doesn't mean this applies to YOU specifically, but it sure did apply to THEM.
"All those kids need is challenging reading material."
Can we stop with the "one size fits all" mentality? Most schools have no idea how to 'educate'. They don't need "challenging reading material" you have to identify what the child wants to LEARN ABOUT, you have to hook whatever it is your teaching into a child's natural interest or curiousity and then work back from it. You really have to get into kids heads about the adventurous things they want to do, what they like, and what they (even if naively) dream about. I was a product of said school system and even I can see how alarmingly curiousity killing it is. I didn't learn to like learning until I got OUT of the school system completely including university.
What modern educational systems are doing is killing children's natural curiousity be forcing them to learn boring dry material that has no *relationship* to what kind of things they dream about, want to explore, think about or want to accomplish... if anything if I had the money I would open my own private school because I can see how criminal the "adults" of education have no clue about what it was like to be a kid! When you were at the ages of 6, 10, 15... Were you thinking: Man if only I had some "challenging reading material" this would be so much more interesting?? I didn't think so either.
When I was in school I had curiousity about a lot of things and how they worked:
-I wanted to know how cars worked (and how parts of it were made, I wanted ALL the details even if it was some simple small part) -I wanted to know how to put (small) video games together (and I understood at the time after a bit of reading they required math, etc. If someone really smart from the game industry had come along with a 2D shmup / shooter (not to be confused with First person shooter). I would have sat there for days trying to build my own and gobble up everything I could about it after being shown step-by-step from start to finish how to put a small one together. -I had a fascination with math but I think in pictures, gemoetric shapes and words, not symbol scratch like... 1, 2, 3... I thought about creating individualized geometric notation for the number system, so kids could add and substract via shape/color recognition very quickly (visual system) instead of pushing around our standard boring number system around. (1..2...3, etc)
Those are just the really quick and dirty ideas too. The truth of the matter is education really needs to become more individualized to the child's preferred mode of thought and data processing style in many instances.
Right now few people in the educational system understand nor talk about neurodiversity amd really understand what that means.
"I actually found Lair to be pretty decent once I got into it."
After god of war and god of war 2, any game is hard to get into... even when I was playing Zelda Twilight princess, I wsa thinking to myself "too bad the god of war team didn't have a hand in making Zelda TP's combat system" heh.:)
"Yes the game was too linear, yes the game had a few major bugs that allowed for level advancement at stupid speed. But I liked it."
The original DS was alright, the 2nd kinda sucked. I think the real big issue is that it should play more like diablo then baldurs gate. I mean in DS2 they had special moves and everything but it felt unnatural to use them becaue you simply couldn't turn off "auto" attack.
That and Dungeon Sieges cheap attempt at ripping off Diablo's awesome item generation system without the depth and hardwork that was put it Diablo's came off feeling cheap. Most items in DS are throw-away, yet in diablo I'm always finding stuff that could possibly be useful for other characters or in certain situations.
"Bull, look at what EA did with Need for speed, buying unlocks??"
My point was this: EA didn't OMIT features from need for speed, yet they added the "feature" of buying unlocks. i.e. preying on users impatience to buy the unlocked car instead of racing for it. As micro transactions go forward don't think you won't see more of this bullshit.
"Paying for added features is ok so long as those features are not deliberately omitted from the game so you have to buy them."
Bull, look at what EA did with Need for speed, buying unlocks?? What a farce. The only way I'd pay microtransactions is for BRAND NEW CONTENT, i.e. character models, cars, etc. things that I know some artist actually had to work DAYS ON. I don't want them creating a bunch of extra content DURING the development period and then "time releasing" it for extra profits from the hardcore segment. The truth is as it is there are too many games as it is, and one game cuts off another games legs as new games come out.
What the industry needs is to self-finance moddable new game content, with enough money they could pay small groups of artists/modellers/programmers to create small updates in content for different games, but they need to simply "live off the interest" and not charge customers insane amounts, they'd have to find another revenue model (i.e. using adds, having a big website, etc). Single games are expensive enough as it is, and game industry should really be looking at market demographics and the state of the economy in many places. I'm sure piracy rates correspond to lack of income.
"But in the long term, I think competition can be good for the companies involved, too. (Not in all cases, of course, but in some sectors of the economy.) I think semiconductors is a pretty good example. Imagine if for the last 10 years we had only a single vendor of chips (Intel, AMD, IBM, whoever). This single vendor would feel very little competition..."
I don't think competition is such a big deal, look at what 3Dfx did to the video card industry, it practically CREATED A NEW INDUSTRY realizing that there as a huge potential market in people wanting games to look good and run at faster frame rates on their PC's, years of competition between many previous vendors did NOTHING. This wasn't the result of "competition" this was the result of INTELLIGENCE, i.e. looking at unmet needs in the market. Intel nor AMD realized the power of gamers in the 3D market. Look at where Nvidia is today, and all because they didn't write off the gaming market. You have to realize what your customers are frustrated with and are WILLING to pay for.
"Everybody here hates CEOs and likes to hold them liable for everything. I want to hold the individuals responsible."
Give me a break, the management is most CERTAINLY in on it. The next time you go into wal-mart or blockbuster whenever the clerk asks you a question ask her or him, DID YOUR MANAGER / BOSS TELL YOU TO SAY THAT TO ME? 99% of the time they will answer 'YES'.
Don't believe for a second the CEO is NOT responsible, just look at the inflated CEO pay, CEO's are robbers plain and simple. They are probably the worst kind of fucking parasites capitalism has created in modern society.
"Studios are constitutionally incapable of understanding this dramatic reality "
It's not that studios don't understand, it's that they would go out of business. There's a reason why high brow diverse movies don't sell as well, the population is just not interested. Writers wouldn't have jobs without the studios. And in GAMING the game itself being fun and looking good is the more important elements.
Nobody's going to care about the great story of a shitty game, the job of developers is to combine those elements. When I played bioshock, the story was pretty incohesive, they just couldn't pull it together, I was more intrigued by exploring an underwater city whose population turned into 'zombies' (or splicers), bioshock as a game wasn't bad but it's story needed a hell of a lot more polish.
We find out that ATLAS is FOUNTAINE, and yet we were trying to save 'atlas's family' so were we really trying to save FOUNTAINES FAMILY? or was it something else of his we were trying to save? A lot of loose ends are left unexplained so you never get a real good cohesive idea around what the story is about. The main characters you get: Andrew ryan, the doctor tennanbaum, and a few other characters but the citzens themselves don't seem alive or human at all, just throw-away monsters. And drama and story towards the end of the game just fell off the chart completely, lets face it.
"Even if we take that to be true, how does it lead to higher birthrates? "
Think about it like this: Be fruitful and multiply is one of the commandments of god in the bible and I grew up in a christian family who took the bible very seriously, ALL of them had families, and wanted their kids to have kids.
Instead of using 'reason' faith becomes a placeholder so the whole bit of "god will look after me" bit takes a lot of the edge and sting out of life when see life more as a test of righteousness, spirutual development and enlightment. So no matter what kind of crappy job they hold they get by simply not worry as much as someone who is irreligious or nonreligious. I've seen it first hand, even despite them having a lot of the same problems. But their faith acts like cathartic selfmeditation against their more feral or 'reasonable' elements.
Many Islamicists are breeding faster then Europeans and you get people worrying about the 'islamification' of europe and other places. The truth is if you study history race mixing does not really go down well despite 'reason' and 'enightenment' you get ethnic clusterings according to skin color, etc, etc, prejudice is deeply woven into human nervous system, most people don't consciosuly think about it, it's just a compulsion or feeling of repugnance, more enlightened people can overcome that and ignore it and 'adjust' but many people don't. Sure there are exceptions to the rule but if you look at cultural mores as a whole, culture is critically important factor in the success or lack of success of all major civilizations. While/. nerds like to bitch and complain about religion many of them will not be breeding or be outbred by their religious contemporaries, even if they are only moderately so. The fact that they hold onto traditions, etc, even in a liberal or nonsensical fashion just proves how strong people have a need for some kind of 'guide' to how they live their life they might call it 'faith' or whatever but their is a deep human need for communities that in many instances modern society cannot meet with its obsessive individualistic commercial bent.
I wouldn't say that exactly, planescape torment didn't "Start out with a bang" and it was probably one of the most brilliant games I've played in terms of story ever.
"While there is a inverse correlation between religion and low birth rate, I'm guessing it has to do with religion's opposition to modern contraceptives."
Doubtful, it more has to do with emotional stabilizing factor that religious deception has on human beings minds. While we can agree religion is a harmful force (now) in the world, it had it's usefulness in keeping our ancestors alive in harsher circumstances. I try to take a more historical perspective of it and analyze both the good and the bad, then many of the "knee jerkers" you'll find on/.
"So ultimately you win, whether Heaven exists or not."
I wouldn't say people with faith 'win', the truth of the matter is, the people that worry and struggle to care abou the REAL WORLD, are probably the most precious human beings on this planet. Many people with faith believe that the entire world is going to be destroyed by god at some point in the future, do you really want millions of people believing in something that is false and thereby contributing directly and indirectly crimes against all humanity? Sorry but religion as it now stands is humanities largest barrier to improving our condition in this dangerous universe. We need level headed compassionate and strong people to lead and endure the harshness of life and improve life for all for now and future generations, a fundamentalist who believes the rapture is imminent or who supports wars of aggression to initiate armageddon are a threat to humanity. Sorry, but it's true.
"Maybe this explains why religion persists in the face of logic, it was here before science."
Religion persists because the universe is not a nice place and people are scared to death of dying. It's a form of catharsis to deal with the horrible lots many people in life get (disability, disease, etc), especially before the modern age where we understood *the causes* of disease, disability, etc.
Also religion is not just about myths, to Spengler for instance, religion has superior elements because it's a culture creation center, it binds people cultures and nations together. It is CULTURE, and without it societies fall apart if they don't have some deep rooted culture. The return to as oswald put it: their primitive instincts. We could even make a pretty good case that declining birthrates of whites for example is directly related to their lack of religiousity and return to individualistic primitive instincts.
Oswald spengler is good to read to really grasp how humanity (as a whole) operates.
"How about instead of "freeing up" research based on money that is stolen, we just stop the steal-and-pay mentality of government research grants, and let the market economy support what it needs and deny what it doesn't need?"
Because the market knows the price of everything, but the VALUE of nothing. The market is not some panacea. NASA and other space agencies would never have existed becauase the "market perspective" would never get involved in projects who's risk is high and whose return on investment scopes are beyond small minded petty capitalist human lifetimes.
Slashdot Mirror
"On the contrary, I believe that entertainment, especially in gaming, is a very good thing to be studying."
Indeed. I think one things people forget is that GAMES MODEL WORLDS, either abstract or based on portions the real world. Games are SIMULATIONS, so saying we shouldn't study games is like saying we shouldn't investigate the natural world. Games and the real world have a lot in common, one is based on pure digital information, the other more solid 'physical' world.
"While it is annoying, it has to be said that copy protection only got so nasty because of the virtually unrestricted internet sharing of games."
This is such a crock of shit, the game sold over a million copies. And it has never stopped pirates!
You assume there is a UNIVERSAL one answer solution, when the circumstances keep changing, these generations kids do not have the same values as the last generation, they learned and experiences different things, etc.
"Blaming advertising for people's fucked up self-image is like blaming video games for making people violent. It's just not the case."
You're statement lacks insight and subtlety: How do you think christianity spreads? The bible. If a meteor hit the planet wiping out all christians and all bibles or traces of bibles and such literature, there would be NO christians. So saying the bible the "artifact" has no effect on people is ridiculous. If people reading karl marx and such people went onto adopt communism it is very obvious that ADVERTISING WORKS! You prey on peoples natural instincts, inclinations and prejudices and habits. People do it all the time in normal social interaction to "get a rise out of others".
Now video games don't make people violent, but they do INFLUENCE people, the amount of influence if there is any at all depends on the individuals characteristics. This is not to say "they are mind control devices" or any such nonsense. Take bioshock example: Someone who is a capitalist or communist might be strong effected by the content of the "ayn rand" dystopia, or maybe it might spur their thinking to think and reflect on values they cherish / dislike.
Have you ever played a game and wanted to throw the controller when you lost? The fact is when lots of our behaviour is AUTONOMOUS. Until we mature and grow. I've taken care of kids and watched them change and grow and certain kids (individuals in a population) definitely have stages where they are very impressionable.
The only answer to piracy is to make games so good that they sell well... also known as "the stardock way".
I respect stardock for a reason because they are probably one of the only rational game developers/publishers.
"In much the same way that religious voters will tolerate massive corruption and sexual perversion from politicians who claim deep religious convictions..."
Most religious voters are far and away not religious by their own holy text's standards, it's standard hypocrisy and magical thinking at work.
"True, but isn't this a case of shooting the messenger? ie, the evil thing is not the ad itself but the company who put it there.."
Actually ad's have the "Evil artifact" effect, but they are really more like say environmental pollution, once you put an add up it's like adding smog to the air. While the company is technically responsible for the "smog" it doesn't make the smog itself any less a health hazard.
Now you might think I'm "splitting hairs" or "being anal" (and if I did not qualify my statement you'd have a point) but if we think about it, we are impressionable at certain times depending on our mood and repeated exposure. Hitler was correct in that: "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
We pick culture and attitudes up by osmosis just as much in other areas of our life as we do consciously.
We see this everday, and ads are a ubiquitous force.
"We live in an era of anti-intellectualism. We all assume we know best about any field of expertise that is not ours."
That's the problem actually, every expert thinks he knows WHEN HE DOESN'T! And then governments have to deal with the fall-out, we've had many experts for many years, and we still have enormous difficulties... could it be that the experts are not these GODS you speak of?
Check out the website below:
http://www.boysadrift.com/home.php
"Anyone who says ads are evil has a whacky moral compass, and they're diluting the term."
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about, ads have HUGE influence on culture. This doesn't mean all ads are evil, but I've worked with girls who have serious body image issues due to a lifetime of being bombarded with unreal images of beauty. Saying we have a "wacking moral compass" is ignorant. We a right to criticize ads and ad messages since they are cultural creation / pollution centers just as much as anything else.
"It's just a load of crap to put all the responsibility for education on the institution. The degree to which a student accepts personal responsibility is what mainly determines how far he can go in school and out."
/.'ers attested to in modding me up. Many of them OLDER, WISER and more professionally employed then you sir. They've had a lot of time to think on it and came to the same conclusions. This doesn't mean this applies to YOU specifically, but it sure did apply to THEM.
It's not a LOAD of crap, as many
"All those kids need is challenging reading material."
... Were you thinking: Man if only I had some "challenging reading material" this would be so much more interesting?? I didn't think so either.
... 1, 2, 3... I thought about creating individualized geometric notation for the number system, so kids could add and substract via shape/color recognition very quickly (visual system) instead of pushing around our standard boring number system around. (1..2...3, etc)
Can we stop with the "one size fits all" mentality? Most schools have no idea how to 'educate'. They don't need "challenging reading material" you have to identify what the child wants to LEARN ABOUT, you have to hook whatever it is your teaching into a child's natural interest or curiousity and then work back from it. You really have to get into kids heads about the adventurous things they want to do, what they like, and what they (even if naively) dream about. I was a product of said school system and even I can see how alarmingly curiousity killing it is. I didn't learn to like learning until I got OUT of the school system completely including university.
What modern educational systems are doing is killing children's natural curiousity be forcing them to learn boring dry material that has no *relationship* to what kind of things they dream about, want to explore, think about or want to accomplish... if anything if I had the money I would open my own private school because I can see how criminal the "adults" of education have no clue about what it was like to be a kid! When you were at the ages of 6, 10, 15
When I was in school I had curiousity about a lot of things and how they worked:
-I wanted to know how cars worked (and how parts of it were made, I wanted ALL the details even if it was some simple small part)
-I wanted to know how to put (small) video games together (and I understood at the time after a bit of reading they required math, etc. If someone really smart from the game industry had come along with a 2D shmup / shooter (not to be confused with First person shooter). I would have sat there for days trying to build my own and gobble up everything I could about it after being shown step-by-step from start to finish how to put a small one together.
-I had a fascination with math but I think in pictures, gemoetric shapes and words, not symbol scratch like
Those are just the really quick and dirty ideas too. The truth of the matter is education really needs to become more individualized to the child's preferred mode of thought and data processing style in many instances.
Right now few people in the educational system understand nor talk about neurodiversity amd really understand what that means.
"I actually found Lair to be pretty decent once I got into it."
:)
After god of war and god of war 2, any game is hard to get into... even when I was playing Zelda Twilight princess, I wsa thinking to myself "too bad the god of war team didn't have a hand in making Zelda TP's combat system" heh.
"Yes the game was too linear, yes the game had a few major bugs that allowed for level advancement at stupid speed. But I liked it."
The original DS was alright, the 2nd kinda sucked. I think the real big issue is that it should play more like diablo then baldurs gate. I mean in DS2 they had special moves and everything but it felt unnatural to use them becaue you simply couldn't turn off "auto" attack.
That and Dungeon Sieges cheap attempt at ripping off Diablo's awesome item generation system without the depth and hardwork that was put it Diablo's came off feeling cheap. Most items in DS are throw-away, yet in diablo I'm always finding stuff that could possibly be useful for other characters or in certain situations.
"Bull, look at what EA did with Need for speed, buying unlocks??"
My point was this: EA didn't OMIT features from need for speed, yet they added the "feature" of buying unlocks. i.e. preying on users impatience to buy the unlocked car instead of racing for it. As micro transactions go forward don't think you won't see more of this bullshit.
"It's not "IT" that's your problem... its the executives and management."
In capitalist America, profit gives way to mediocrity!
"Paying for added features is ok so long as those features are not deliberately omitted from the game so you have to buy them."
Bull, look at what EA did with Need for speed, buying unlocks?? What a farce. The only way I'd pay microtransactions is for BRAND NEW CONTENT, i.e. character models, cars, etc. things that I know some artist actually had to work DAYS ON. I don't want them creating a bunch of extra content DURING the development period and then "time releasing" it for extra profits from the hardcore segment. The truth is as it is there are too many games as it is, and one game cuts off another games legs as new games come out.
What the industry needs is to self-finance moddable new game content, with enough money they could pay small groups of artists/modellers/programmers to create small updates in content for different games, but they need to simply "live off the interest" and not charge customers insane amounts, they'd have to find another revenue model (i.e. using adds, having a big website, etc). Single games are expensive enough as it is, and game industry should really be looking at market demographics and the state of the economy in many places. I'm sure piracy rates correspond to lack of income.
"But in the long term, I think competition can be good for the companies involved, too. (Not in all cases, of course, but in some sectors of the economy.) I think semiconductors is a pretty good example. Imagine if for the last 10 years we had only a single vendor of chips (Intel, AMD, IBM, whoever). This single vendor would feel very little competition..."
I don't think competition is such a big deal, look at what 3Dfx did to the video card industry, it practically CREATED A NEW INDUSTRY realizing that there as a huge potential market in people wanting games to look good and run at faster frame rates on their PC's, years of competition between many previous vendors did NOTHING. This wasn't the result of "competition" this was the result of INTELLIGENCE, i.e. looking at unmet needs in the market. Intel nor AMD realized the power of gamers in the 3D market. Look at where Nvidia is today, and all because they didn't write off the gaming market. You have to realize what your customers are frustrated with and are WILLING to pay for.
"Everybody here hates CEOs and likes to hold them liable for everything. I want to hold the individuals responsible."
Give me a break, the management is most CERTAINLY in on it. The next time you go into wal-mart or blockbuster whenever the clerk asks you a question ask her or him, DID YOUR MANAGER / BOSS TELL YOU TO SAY THAT TO ME? 99% of the time they will answer 'YES'.
Don't believe for a second the CEO is NOT responsible, just look at the inflated CEO pay, CEO's are robbers plain and simple. They are probably the worst kind of fucking parasites capitalism has created in modern society.
"Studios are constitutionally incapable of understanding this dramatic reality "
It's not that studios don't understand, it's that they would go out of business. There's a reason why high brow diverse movies don't sell as well, the population is just not interested. Writers wouldn't have jobs without the studios. And in GAMING the game itself being fun and looking good is the more important elements.
Nobody's going to care about the great story of a shitty game, the job of developers is to combine those elements. When I played bioshock, the story was pretty incohesive, they just couldn't pull it together, I was more intrigued by exploring an underwater city whose population turned into 'zombies' (or splicers), bioshock as a game wasn't bad but it's story needed a hell of a lot more polish.
We find out that ATLAS is FOUNTAINE, and yet we were trying to save 'atlas's family' so were we really trying to save FOUNTAINES FAMILY? or was it something else of his we were trying to save? A lot of loose ends are left unexplained so you never get a real good cohesive idea around what the story is about. The main characters you get: Andrew ryan, the doctor tennanbaum, and a few other characters but the citzens themselves don't seem alive or human at all, just throw-away monsters. And drama and story towards the end of the game just fell off the chart completely, lets face it.
"Even if we take that to be true, how does it lead to higher birthrates? "
/. nerds like to bitch and complain about religion many of them will not be breeding or be outbred by their religious contemporaries, even if they are only moderately so. The fact that they hold onto traditions, etc, even in a liberal or nonsensical fashion just proves how strong people have a need for some kind of 'guide' to how they live their life they might call it 'faith' or whatever but their is a deep human need for communities that in many instances modern society cannot meet with its obsessive individualistic commercial bent.
Think about it like this: Be fruitful and multiply is one of the commandments of god in the bible and I grew up in a christian family who took the bible very seriously, ALL of them had families, and wanted their kids to have kids.
Instead of using 'reason' faith becomes a placeholder so the whole bit of "god will look after me" bit takes a lot of the edge and sting out of life when see life more as a test of righteousness, spirutual development and enlightment. So no matter what kind of crappy job they hold they get by simply not worry as much as someone who is irreligious or nonreligious. I've seen it first hand, even despite them having a lot of the same problems. But their faith acts like cathartic selfmeditation against their more feral or 'reasonable' elements.
Many Islamicists are breeding faster then Europeans and you get people worrying about the 'islamification' of europe and other places. The truth is if you study history race mixing does not really go down well despite 'reason' and 'enightenment' you get ethnic clusterings according to skin color, etc, etc, prejudice is deeply woven into human nervous system, most people don't consciosuly think about it, it's just a compulsion or feeling of repugnance, more enlightened people can overcome that and ignore it and 'adjust' but many people don't. Sure there are exceptions to the rule but if you look at cultural mores as a whole, culture is critically important factor in the success or lack of success of all major civilizations. While
I wouldn't say that exactly, planescape torment didn't "Start out with a bang" and it was probably one of the most brilliant games I've played in terms of story ever.
"While there is a inverse correlation between religion and low birth rate, I'm guessing it has to do with religion's opposition to modern contraceptives."
/.
Doubtful, it more has to do with emotional stabilizing factor that religious deception has on human beings minds. While we can agree religion is a harmful force (now) in the world, it had it's usefulness in keeping our ancestors alive in harsher circumstances. I try to take a more historical perspective of it and analyze both the good and the bad, then many of the "knee jerkers" you'll find on
"So ultimately you win, whether Heaven exists or not."
I wouldn't say people with faith 'win', the truth of the matter is, the people that worry and struggle to care abou the REAL WORLD, are probably the most precious human beings on this planet. Many people with faith believe that the entire world is going to be destroyed by god at some point in the future, do you really want millions of people believing in something that is false and thereby contributing directly and indirectly crimes against all humanity? Sorry but religion as it now stands is humanities largest barrier to improving our condition in this dangerous universe. We need level headed compassionate and strong people to lead and endure the harshness of life and improve life for all for now and future generations, a fundamentalist who believes the rapture is imminent or who supports wars of aggression to initiate armageddon are a threat to humanity. Sorry, but it's true.
"Maybe this explains why religion persists in the face of logic, it was here before science."
Religion persists because the universe is not a nice place and people are scared to death of dying. It's a form of catharsis to deal with the horrible lots many people in life get (disability, disease, etc), especially before the modern age where we understood *the causes* of disease, disability, etc.
Also religion is not just about myths, to Spengler for instance, religion has superior elements because it's a culture creation center, it binds people cultures and nations together. It is CULTURE, and without it societies fall apart if they don't have some deep rooted culture. The return to as oswald put it: their primitive instincts. We could even make a pretty good case that declining birthrates of whites for example is directly related to their lack of religiousity and return to individualistic primitive instincts.
Oswald spengler is good to read to really grasp how humanity (as a whole) operates.
"How about instead of "freeing up" research based on money that is stolen, we just stop the steal-and-pay mentality of government research grants, and let the market economy support what it needs and deny what it doesn't need?"
Because the market knows the price of everything, but the VALUE of nothing. The market is not some panacea. NASA and other space agencies would never have existed becauase the "market perspective" would never get involved in projects who's risk is high and whose return on investment scopes are beyond small minded petty capitalist human lifetimes.