Pay once for unlimited play = no need/benefit to the game developers to have any kind of timesinks. Make the game as quick as it needs to be to reduce any need for a grind, because you don't really mind if people don't come back except for expansions.
Pay by the month = definite benefit to the grind and timesinks. Make the game have as much grind as possible while still being fun enough to keep people subscribed.
Or what will happen is that people who want to sell games for a living will adapt and come to see 80-90% piracy as the norm, and produce games that can be profitable at that rate. This seems to be what's happening with some of the recent developments like the "we'll open source it once we make x number of sales" deal etc. People are trying to find ways to change things.
To say that pc players are killing their own platform is ridiculous; it isn't being killed, it's being forced to evolve. Which is a GOOD thing. Maybe when it becomes clear that spending 40+ MM USD to create a game that only differentiates itself from others in its genre by having bigger booms and shinier shines is ABSURD, we'll wind up with less expensive to produce games, and with less investment required we'll have more people taking risks.
Let the companies that want to spend fortunes develop games for consoles - there will still be PUH-LENTY of people who are interested in developing for the PC. Heck, maybe if some of the big guys clear out it'll actually be easier for small players to get some attention in the PC gaming world.
I'm only responding to you here to tell you that you really should seek some professional help. I was going to just ignore you, but I feel that maybe if enough people you run across tell you to get help, you might eventually do so, and be better for it.
Absolutely. The fact that you were so bothered by my single comment that you were compelled to respond no less than 4 times to it indicates to me that you are very likely to overreact to other things as well. Further, your repeated posts in which you keep on trying to add more and more "evidence" of your victimhood here when it's a more or less anonymous internet disagreement about something makes me think you lack a sense of proportion. It absolutely makes sense to me that if there is any disagreement you're party to that you would cause it to escalate to the point of absurdity, without question.
I'd seek professional help; that kind of dramatic response to minor provocation is something that *will* cause you to get into real trouble someday.
What is it about you that makes people escalate what seem to be incredibly mundane disputes into the scenes you describe, I wonder? It seems absurd to me that someone who manages a cheap motel, a person who likely has disagreements with customers on a daily basis about discounts etc., a person who has been trained to resolve those disputes in a way that does the least harm to the chain's reputation, is going to go from "No, you can't have $4 a night off of this room" to "He was trying to have sex with my employees and was screaming at maids." Your tale doesn't make sense.
All it takes is one maladjusted loser (that would be you) getting it in his head that he needs to ruin people he imagines did him harm, and poof - someone's life is wrecked. That's why this kind of thing is so scary, because it's so easy for sick people (again, that would be you) to ruin the lives of anyone they like very easily.
Some time ago I saw a person who looked to be about 35-40 years old riding around in a Little Rascal motorized scooter.
She had a cigarette between her lips, a bottle of soda in a beverage holder, and a couple of donuts on a tray that was right under the steering yoke. I'd say she probably weighed in at 350, minimum.
I kind of admired her for it... Lots of people *say* "fuck it all" but she was really doing something about it!
I expect them to happen because not everyone's sense of morality is the same.
I also expect them to happen because they've already been happening - there is research being done on rats wherein they are implanted with devices that can then be used to send them signals to make them move around, essentially a remote control rat.
With regards to surveillance and espionage, it absolutely makes sense to me that this would be and will be used in birds if it's possible to do so. The "moral" issues of using an animal for espionage or defense are non-existent for organizations that routinely use the term "collateral damage" to describe civilian casualties or look at "mere" millions of civilian deaths as an "acceptable" outcome of a nuclear or biological strike.
Okay, I see what you are getting at - sorry, I assumed, based on other responses, a somewhat more sinister undertone to your comments.
I'll respond to the key points:
If a religion is one that is based on faith - meaning, one that is based on having no definitive proof of the existence of the divine - then logically any such religion could not exist unchanged if there were absolute proof one way or the other. Unless one were to say "my god defies logic and paradox, and thus it is impossible to disprove its existence" - which seems to be one of the tenants of some religions. So basically knowing everything still wouldn't remove religion, just cause it to adapt somewhat, kind of like religions have adapted as we fill in gaps in knowledge with science.
It turns out that most religions are not based on faith in the complete absence of evidence - the Bible, for example, if one takes it literally (which is actually a rather new idea, since the ancients pretty much took it as a book of parables/fables) and believes it true removes doubt. Abraham *heard* God tell him to kill his son. Moses was handed the 10 commandments. Burning bushes. Miracles galore. According to religions of the book, these are absolute proofs of God's existence. They just don't have any *modern* proof but to them it isn't needed - they're less skeptical in that way.
For other religions - animist ones or ones with incredibly anthropomorphic gods - the question of belief without evidence is not even a part of the religion to begin with: the ancient greeks believed that sometimes people were literally hanging out with gods.
So, the shorter version is no, I don't think that omniscience would remove religion, because I don't think that definitive proof one way or another would be taken as definitive by many in the case of a negative, and that in the case of a positive finding (that there is, in fact, a divine) it wouldn't do away with religion because many religions aren't based on some quirk of logic that it MUST be faith without any evidence.
Heck, some people would become atheist or more agnostic and still ascribe to a religion and still go to religious ceremonies because they like the sense of community, they like the rituals, they like the music, etc. Maybe they'll decide they don't care if god exists or not, they're still gonna worship. People are weird and don't always do things based on what they know to be correct.
I was saying that it was not "obvious" that religion is a "disease" that needs to be "cured" because the majority of the world is religious.
If it were "obvious" - which means, well, that it is incredibly difficult to come to any other conclusion after even the most casual examination of the subject - then we wouldn't have so many religious people.
As to the "disease" and "cure" components, I pointed out in a later post that there are rather a few differences between disease and religion.
Forgive the self reply, but I realized I forgot to add something:
Different things make sense to different people when they are at different points and in different situations in their lives.
An example of this:
A family friend ran into a statistical fluke: she was diagnosed with breast cancer and literally a week later her husband was diagnosed with stomach cancer. When she was in the midst of chemo, her mother died - and anyone who has been on chemo will tell you, that's about as low as you can feel. To her, this was so ridiculously improbable that she *knew* that it had to be God, for whatever reason, testing her.
Now, I will say here that I believe it was just coincidence. I mean, with over 6 billion people on Earth, somebody is going to, random number generator wise, experience a perfect shitstorm. But I will not, not for a second, be the evil, horrible, incredibly douchy bitch who would tell a person who is going through that shitstorm that whatever idea is getting them through that - that it's God's plan, or that it's the devil, or that it's just maths fucking with them - is wrong to believe what they're believing.
She got better, her husband got better, her mom stayed dead. She felt it was perfectly reasonable to rededicate her life to Christ because of her "good fortune" and she's kind of become a bore because she's gone evangelical, but who am I to tell her, "Look, it's just maths. You and your husband are old, and cancer runs in both your families. Your mom was 90 and the stress of knowing both of you were sick was probably too much for her and she kicked the bucket. God wasn't testing you, you just got the shit end of the statistical stick, and by the way, have you considered not believing in God since there's no evidence what-so-ever for 'his' existence"? What possible good would it do?
At her lowest point in life, the thing that got her through it was a belief that there was a *reason* for it. Even if I think it's a shitty reason, it's not my place to criticize.
Personally, I find the idea that it's a statistical fluke to be comforting, if only because it'd be even more unlikely that one person would survive one complete clusterfuck only to have to experience another random confluence of badness. But that's me - I'm not her, and it's not my place to fuck with her head by trying to persuade her that what gets her through life is actually bad just because it's not something I think is true?
I disagree that religion is "all" about taking something without thought, but that can be a large component in some cases.
As for the discussions - the "Bob, I think you should believe this..." it's not at all like that. You're still talking about persuasion, and there's none of that. I don't suggest *anything* that they should believe in - I just talk with them and try to understand the reasons beliefs other than ones I hold work for them. You know - getting to know someone.
For example, my best friend on the planet, she used to be* pretty Christian. Our conversation about spiritual issues went kind of like this:
Me: "So what is your guiding principle in life?" She: "Well I guess it comes down to God and Christ - God created us, and His only Son gave His life to protect us from sin." Me: "That's cool - can I ask what you get out of it?" She: "I feel very humbled that God would allow His Son to die in order to spare us - and I guess I feel good knowing that there's a reason for all of *waves hands* this. Why, what do you believe in?" Me: "I guess I don't really 'believe' in anything - it's more like I'm comfortable with the idea that there's a whole bunch of stuff we don't know, and I guess I feel OK with the idea that there might not be a plan or anything, you know?" She: "Oh, wow, how do you feel about that - like, it all being an accident?" And so on.
It's a conversation between people. Why should I tell her I think she's wrong? Why should she tell me I'm wrong? What benefit could either of us get from yelling at a friend that they are WRONG? She's happy with her way of thinking, I'm happy with mine - it's all good because neither of us is being an asshole and trying to tell the other person what's right/wrong.
*About 2 years ago she told me she thinks she doesn't believe in God anymore, or if she does, she doesn't think he's all that relevant to her daily affairs, and if he has a problem with that, it's kind of petty and small minded. My response to that was to ask her if she was OK, because I imagine it's got to be pretty disappointing to come to feel your god is actually just kind of a petulant child. Turns out she felt like shit about it and was happy I asked.
My entry into this part of the thread was me responding to someone who insisted that it was obvious that religion is a disease that must be cured. There is no possible way to take that language as anything other than someone attempting to coerce or otherwise force someone else to do something different. I know that this person was not you, but my arguments here are to be taken in that context.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of letting people have access - by their choice - to any information they want, and letting open discussion of ideas lead them wherever they want to go, and I suspect this is more along the lines of what you're into also.
For what it's worth, the thing that I've noticed is that if people just tell religious folks that they're wrong and bad and part of all that ails the world, those people just entrench themselves even more in their beliefs because they rightly imagine they are under siege. When I've been reasonable with people - for example, NOT telling them they're dumb for believing in a magic sky wizard for which they have no proof, or that the solace they take in that notion is evidence that they are sheep - they tend to be willing to talk about things openly. It's amazing what happens and how people can be open to new ideas when they don't feel like the other person wants to force them to change.
I never once suggested that religion is any kind of panacea for all evils. Simply that it is not completely without merit.
And again, you're missing the point: "Educating" someone when they do not wish to be educated is, in fact, imposing your will on them. The person I was initially responding to insisted it was "obvious" that religion is a "disease" that needed to be "cured" - you cannot possibly expect me to think that someone who uses that kind of language is not intent on imposing their will.
As for religions not allowing exposure to other points of view - some religions do try to keep people from seeing other points, some do not. And some atheists get enraged and angry when people try to talk about other points of view (look at Slashdot whenever religion comes up, for example, and these guys will come flying out of the woodwork and try to shut people down for daring to disagree with them) but not all are that way.
I'm all in favor of people being open to multiple points of view - and those multiple points of view will also include religious viewpoints, lest we become the hypocrites.
I would love to think that - but I dunno that a solution that works for a hive mind with a photon-based "biology" and that evolved in the spinning whorls of near-lightspeed gas at the edge of an event horizon would necessarily work for me. Then again, with such a fundamental difference in origins, it may not even be possible to have a meaningful interaction of any kind.
Though, if we were to find "life like us" - meaning, evolved on a planet as the result of competition with other lifeforms, needs to eat, poop, reproduce, individually self-aware - then probably there would be a need to work out some solutions, and if there are lots of those species, there should be some good ones.
My problem is that, to me, pretending to be an alien, it makes quite a bit of sense to essentially neuter humanity - either smothering it in the cradle or otherwise limiting the species so they couldn't ever be a threat. Then again, it also makes sense to cultivate a partnership because maybe there are things humans will think of that my brain is literally incapable of. And it makes sense to do a whole bunch of other things too.
But I am totally with you - I would want to pick up the alien lingo as I'm a total xenophile.
No, I'm not trying to say that they are always right. In fact, my point was a bit more nuanced than that, since I'm not a moron.
What I said was that when a majority of people DISAGREE on something, then the "right" answer is not obvious. See, the previous post - the one I was replying to? - said that it was "obvious" that religion was a disease that needed a cure. I responded by saying that since a majority of people on Earth would disagree with that, it was by no means "obvious" but instead something that is open to discussion and debate. Something that is "obvious" would have very few people disagreeing with it, since, you know, by definition it's freaking obvious.
As far as your final point, you are basically advocating evangelical atheism. You feel it's better to impose your ideas on people ("educate" them) than to allow them to go on believing whatever it is they want to believe. Congratulations - you're using their exact same tactics, arguments and reasoning. What makes your cause better or more worthy than theirs? If you even for a split second think "It's because mine is true!" then congratulations - you got the religion! It's just yours doesn't have a god or any particular rites.
Personally, I think it's better to not push your beliefs - however correct you feel they might be - onto other people. I also think it's better to have a diversity of ideas than just one accepted right way to do it. Rather than curing religion, I'd really rather just cure the tendency of humans, theists and atheists alike, to be assholes who want other people to be like them.
Judaism has died out? Buddhism has died out? I'm stunned. They're among the oldest religions and, while they don't have as many adherents as Christians and Muslims, they're certainly not dying religions. They don't have, in some ways, a lot of influence over the secular world *because* they are religions that do not seek to impose their beliefs on others, by and large.
You also seem to be under the impression that religious faith must be an all or nothing situation - that either it completely prevents a person from doing something horrible OR it is completely worthless. You also threw in a different condition there - you throw in the notion of religion as moral authority or teacher, and then when it fails to live up to THAT specific claim in some cases, discard it as useless.
Moral authority is not the only possible benefit of religion, and I have never said it is the only possible benefit of religion. It is one possible benefit that I mentioned, but there certainly are other ways in which religion can provide a benefit; inspiration to create something to express their love of and thanks to God would be one other example - some truly staggeringly beautiful things have been created for those reasons.
As far as the Tuskegee investigators, the fact that they were (likely) Christians just shows that they were hypocritical, or that they believed the benefit to humanity was greater than the detriment, or that they may not have believed blacks to be worthy of the same considerations as whites, or any number of other things. In their case, yes, I'll agree - their Christianity was certainly not a very good moral authority. But that doesn't mean that it is, as a whole, without ANY benefit, or that it offered no benefit to them individually; it just didn't provide a good moral compass, which is only one of many possible benefits.
Again, and simply: Just because people have done HORRIBLE things in the name of an idea (or by claiming to be doing it in the name of that idea) does not invalidate the idea. Supposedly the US invaded Iraq in the name of freedom, liberation and to create stability in the region. Of course it turned out to be a monstrous clusterfuck, but does that mean that because SOME people used freedom, liberation and the creation of stability to do something horrid that those ideas are bad and cannot ever lead to anything good? No. It just means that in that case, it was wretched and abused.
I won't even disagree that it's possible that religion is *usually* used badly, horribly, as a tool to control people by cynical interests. But that doesn't mean it can't be good, and it doesn't mean it's never been good, and it doesn't mean that it's not possible for things to get better in the future.
I'm just going to end this by saying this: I responded to someone saying he wanted to "cure" religion as if it were a disease. Please explain to me how "curing" someone of religion if they do not wish it so is ANY different than trying to force a conversion when someone is not a believer. You've said - and I agree! - that coercing people to change their behavior against their will can be a bad thing in some cases, so how is coercing people to not be religious OK?
If at any point you find yourself making the argument "Because being an atheist is RIGHT!" I suggest you take a moment to ask yourself what argument someone in favor of converting you to Islam would make.
Exactly. For some people, OSS is like a crusade, but for many others (most of the people doing the heavy lifting, especially at companies that would be bought) I'm betting it's a paycheck.
For a "mere" $10 billion dollars you could just pay key people a few million each to stop working on products in whatever field and you'd have exactly the same kind of smothering effect on things as you would if you spent $70 billion to buy out the companies.
For anyone who isn't ideologically driven to the extreme or independently wealthy, I'm going to say being offered $1-10 million to work on something else or even just stop working would be _quite_ effective.
You are factually incorrect about religions all being evangelical. Some religions actively discourage converts by intentionally putting trials in their way and requiring a demonstration of dedication before allowing official conversion. So no, religion does not, as a whole, require people coerce others - some religions do, some do not. The fact that you seem to be completely unaware of this fact makes me think you're approaching this far too simplistically.
As to Mengele - he did horrific things to people as part of scientific research. The Tuskegee investigators did horrific things as part of their research. Mengele didn't vivisect human beings and torture them because he was Catholic - he did those things because a) he was a monstrous person, and b) he was conducting research. The Tuskegee investigators did not lie to their victims because they were Christian, but because they were conducting an experiment. Do you think Mengele identified himself first as a scientist or first as a Catholic, when he thought of the things he did to his victims? Do you think the Tuskegee investigators thought of themselves as scientists first or Christians first when lying to their victims and letting them die so they could track the progression of the disease?
With regard to the Soviet system and the purges - they had a system that was built around the dialectic, in which every action needed to be (at least somewhat) justified as being ideologically sound. One huge component of this ideology was atheism, and as a result, any expression of religion was *brutally* suppressed because it was felt to be, as some in this thread have said, a disease/toxin/drug that went against the Communist ideology. Atheism was not the root cause of much of it, but to say it had nothing to do with such brutality is just naive in the extreme.
Without doubt, religious people have done horrible, horrible things. Without doubt, non-religious people have done horrible, horrible things. Sometimes people do those horrible things in the name of religion, sometimes in opposition to religion. Sometimes religious people do horrible things for reasons that have nothing to do with their religion, and sometimes non-religious people do things that have nothing to do with their non-religion.
It's not simple. It's not cut and dried. Trying to argue that there is no benefit what-so-ever to religion is absurd, especially when you above demonstrated that you really don't understand religion at all. At least try and understand more than just some cartoon-simple version before making your argument.
The unfortunate problem there is that people who are uncertain or willing to admit they are uncertain are often seen as weak, while people who claim to be certain of things are more likely to be perceived as strong, good, etc.
I think your analogy to childhood is pretty apt - I know when I was little the world *needed* to be black and white and simple because I hadn't yet developed the neural wiring to think in really abstract ways, nor had I gained experience enough to be able to have examples of things that weren't black and white sufficient to overcome the concrete thinking phase.
The people whom I most admire - in any sector - are the ones who seem to revel in the notion of uncertainty and diversity, and think it's a wonderful thing that different things work for different people.
Does the common cold ever inspire people to do great things? How many great works of art have been created due to the common cold vs. religion?
I don't disagree that religion can be a force for bad things, but I feel it can also be a force for good. Comparing it to an illness - an illness which is almost entirely detrimental to humanity (even in a minor way as most colds are) is just not an apt analogy.
I would say that, if you were going to go with religion as pathology, maybe manic depression would be a better example. Being too depressed is a bad thing, but being a little depressed can actually lead to more realistic assessments of the world around and one's place in it. Being a little manic can be a PHENOMENALLY good thing for people; there are some people who refuse treatment for bi-polar precisely because there is a window between midrange and full-on mania in which they become *staggeringly* productive and they feel it's worth the downsides.
My whole point is that I think it's simplistic and incorrect - ridiculously so - to just compare religion to a disease and think it must be cured and is wholly negative. Things are more complicated than that, and problems arise when people look at those different from themselves in a simplistic (and wrong) manner, failing to realize that things aren't just some kind of binary good/bad/right/wrong situation.
I know it's popular here to decry idiots who believe in magic sky wizards as completely deluded, but the fact remains, belief in a magic sky wizard may not be rational or sensical, but it by no means precludes ANY good ideas coming from that person, and may, in fact, inspire some that otherwise might not have come about.
It would be just as easy for me to point out situations where atheism (professed or real) lead to hideous, monstrous abuses, or where, in the name of science, horrific crimes have been committed. Mengele was a scientist - actually a fairly decent one, albeit morally reprehensible. Should I judge ALL scientists by his actions? The Tuskeege experiment, in which black men were left untreated for a disease and lied to about it in order to have the progression of the disease tracked - abhorrent. The eugenic concept or "scientific" notions of racial purity as espoused by the Nazis. Stalinist Russia and the massive slaughter of peasants.
Science has benefits, just as it has also been used as a tool by those who would wreak havoc. In and of itself, it is not a bad thing. Religion has benefits, just as it has also been used as a tool by those who would wreak havoc. In and of itself, it is not a bad thing. Anyone who would dispute only one of those points is simply being intellectually dishonest.
I agree; ever time you've insisted that there have been NO great works that took less than 5 years to develop, I've wanted to ask you for a citation. Instead it was much easier to just google some works and look up the author's comments about the timeline of the creation of those works and go from there.
As I said, I didn't think you'd have the ability to admit you were incorrect, and now you prove it with a meme that has become the go-to position of the intellectually lazy. Please, if you care to actually post something meaningful, do so. I'm not surprised - disappointed, maybe - that you chose to go with one of the less honorable options to respond to my demonstration that you are completely incorrect about your ridiculous assertions.
My guess is that I really struck a chord; I think you know, in your heart of hearts, that what I've said is true. I'm sorry that you're married to a talentless hack who's spent 10 years of his life crafting shit, but you should take comfort in the idea that the vast majority of humanity is in the exact same boat. Most of us are even still secretly hoping that we're the exception to the rule, so you shouldn't feel bad about your grandiose assessment of your husband's ability, either. I will say that it's kind of sad that your attempts at linking yourself to greatness need to come through your husband rather than through your own efforts, but then, much of humanity also suffers from low self-esteem and can't imagine themselves being great, either.
Do the majority of people who are religious wind up dying in a period of 5-10 years from that belief if they aren't given medical treatments?
Does their religion - again, for the majority - cause them substantial personal distress?
Does it impair their ability to hold a job because they are frequently incapacitated by the "symptoms" of their religion?
Do the majority of people who are religious experience absolutely no benefit and ONLY detriment from their religious beliefs?
If you're at all intellectually honest, you'll have to admit that there's a rather substantial difference between HIV/AIDS and religion. Don't be disingenuous.
What I find chilling in these replies is that people seem to feel completely fine using terms like "cure a disease" to describe dealing with religious individuals. Heretics used to be considered a disease, atheists were sub-human and in need of conversion or extermination. Congratulations on taking the absolute worst characteristics of the people you seem to be opposed to and making them your own.
Unless someone is actively harming another person through their beliefs - which, by the way, is EXACTLY what you guys are advocating doing (harming others by removing their ability to choose) - they should be allowed to believe whatever the hell they want to believe. Kind of icky when you think about it.
I believe that an individual should *want* to become less ignorant. But I also believe that if an individual wishes to remain ignorant, it is abhorrent to force them to remove their ignorance.
"Curing" someone who believes in a god or gods of their ignorance stems from the exact same drive as "curing" someone who believed in the WRONG god or gods and forcing them to believe in the RIGHT ones - forced conversion.
Even if humanity (or our distant, distant descendants), as a species, were to attain omniscience in some way, there may be members of the species who do not wish to know everything. I'd like to think that an omniscient creature would, in knowing everything, also know compassion, and also know that forcing another individual to do something they do not wish to do, "for their own good" is many times monstrous.
You casually say that you "politely" disagree with the need to cure ignorance - would your "polite" disagreement still stand if I felt that the way to remove ignorance were to force people to acknowledge the "truth" of Allah, Jehova, God, Jesus, or any other spiritual figure? Please don't say, "But my way of removing ignorance is RIGHT!" because whether it is or not (and as I said, I'm not remotely theistic) until you can absolutely prove it to be RIGHT, you're just acting on an inkling of a feeling of what's right and true, just like the people in the past who've tortured heretics into converting or burnt them at the stake when conversion was impossible.
That's actually not what I was saying - though I agree what I said could be read that way.
I don't think that people with faith would otherwise be rapists (and besides, many people of faith are rapists etc.)
What I do think is that SOME people who latch onto their faith and become fervent followers do that rather than more extreme things in their quest to find meaning in their life - it gives them at least some kind of code that they can follow that keeps them from thrashing about.
For example, an acquaintance of mine recently converted to Islam. We've talked about his reasons for it, and he said, essentially, that he always doubted his "worth" as a person, and always doubted his "goodness" because he felt like he never really had any kind of system to exist within that would let him know that he was behaving well. Within Islam and the strict adherence to various rules, he now feels he has a system where he can measure his actions against it and know whether or not he's right and good. In his case, this has meant an end to drinking & drug use, he's stopped cheating on his wife, and so far seems to be happier. Is he now a "good" person? Was he before a "bad" person? I always thought he was reasonably decent, though he made some poor choices, and I still feel the same way. He, however, now feels that he is on the path to being a "good" person, whereas before he feared he was simply slipping into being worse.
It isn't how I would approach the same problem were I to have a crisis of confidence in myself, but it is *an* approach, and one that does seem to work for many people.
I also don't disagree that religion has been and can be used (and often is) as a way to control people, but I don't think that's the ONLY use for it. Let's not speak in absolutes - leave that to the fundamentalists of whatever stripe. Religion is not ONLY one thing or another - it's many different things to many different people.
Frankly, I find very little difference between the extreme atheists - "Religion is a disease and a dangerous delusion and should be cured!" - and the extreme theists - "Atheism is a sign of moral decay and degeneracy and they should be converted!" Both sides are ridiculously sure of themselves, both sides are actively intent on imposing their beliefs on other people, and both sides are really fucking annoying because rather than accept that there's a complicated world out there that's brimming with nuance, and that different people are different, and that people can see the exact same thing and disagree as to its meaning without either of them being evil, they'd rather live in some simpleton's idea of the universe in which things can only be one way.
Easy - especially since you set the bar so amazingly low with Alan Dean Foster in an earlier post.
On a Pale Horse (and other "Incarnations of Immortality" books) by Piers Anthony. Individually none of the books took more than a year or 2 to go from inception to execution. Some of his other series can also be considered GREAT, depending on who you talk to - Xanth, Adept and the like. As for Sci-Fi, there's the Tyrant books.
I'm not 100% sure on the timelines, but I believe Snow Crash (this one might be iffy), Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon each took less than 5 years. Not Fantasy, but there you go.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson, and the world in that story seems to have been developed from about 1980 to 1984 - he wrote some short stories that were part, to some extent, of that universe (Burning Chrome, Johnny Mnemonic) 2 years or so before Neuromancer was published).
JK Rowling claims that Harry Potter took 5 years to go from first bolt-out-of-the-blue idea to publication of the first idea, but also claims she wrote large chunks of the next 6 books in that time.
Zelazny's Amber series - and here it's hard to say 100% what the timeline is because the first story was serialized throughout 1967 before being published as a single book in 1970 - is another fantasy work, but may not count as "great" on it's own. I think only the first 2 (or 3) books were published in the 5 year window.
Again, the "greatness" of these works is going to depend, YMMV, and all that. Genre-wise, I personally don't like fantasy very much EXACTLY because of the authors you've mentioned previously and the tendency of many authors to try and emulate their styles.
You can keep on calling me ignorant and keep on insisting that my ignorance is staggering if you like, but I just gave you a bunch of examples of works that many people would consider GREAT that were less than 5 years in the making, from multiple genres. I assume you'll either go 2 ways with this: 1) You'll insist that those books aren't GREAT (despite that being a meaningless term) or 2) you'll insist that they aren't really fantasy and that you were REALLY SPECIFIC about it being fantasy.
There's a third option - you actually being able to admit that you were wrong - but given the rabid nature of your defense and your penchant for screeching that I'm ignorant despite you obviously doing no research into this yourself, makes it a reasonably safe bet this option won't be exercised.
Though I'd be happy to be proven wrong - either about your ability to cede a point gracefully, or about your husband's work not being shit.
Slashdot Mirror
Different business model.
Pay once for unlimited play = no need/benefit to the game developers to have any kind of timesinks. Make the game as quick as it needs to be to reduce any need for a grind, because you don't really mind if people don't come back except for expansions.
Pay by the month = definite benefit to the grind and timesinks. Make the game have as much grind as possible while still being fun enough to keep people subscribed.
Or what will happen is that people who want to sell games for a living will adapt and come to see 80-90% piracy as the norm, and produce games that can be profitable at that rate. This seems to be what's happening with some of the recent developments like the "we'll open source it once we make x number of sales" deal etc. People are trying to find ways to change things.
To say that pc players are killing their own platform is ridiculous; it isn't being killed, it's being forced to evolve. Which is a GOOD thing. Maybe when it becomes clear that spending 40+ MM USD to create a game that only differentiates itself from others in its genre by having bigger booms and shinier shines is ABSURD, we'll wind up with less expensive to produce games, and with less investment required we'll have more people taking risks.
Let the companies that want to spend fortunes develop games for consoles - there will still be PUH-LENTY of people who are interested in developing for the PC. Heck, maybe if some of the big guys clear out it'll actually be easier for small players to get some attention in the PC gaming world.
I'm only responding to you here to tell you that you really should seek some professional help. I was going to just ignore you, but I feel that maybe if enough people you run across tell you to get help, you might eventually do so, and be better for it.
Good luck.
Absolutely. The fact that you were so bothered by my single comment that you were compelled to respond no less than 4 times to it indicates to me that you are very likely to overreact to other things as well. Further, your repeated posts in which you keep on trying to add more and more "evidence" of your victimhood here when it's a more or less anonymous internet disagreement about something makes me think you lack a sense of proportion. It absolutely makes sense to me that if there is any disagreement you're party to that you would cause it to escalate to the point of absurdity, without question.
I'd seek professional help; that kind of dramatic response to minor provocation is something that *will* cause you to get into real trouble someday.
What is it about you that makes people escalate what seem to be incredibly mundane disputes into the scenes you describe, I wonder? It seems absurd to me that someone who manages a cheap motel, a person who likely has disagreements with customers on a daily basis about discounts etc., a person who has been trained to resolve those disputes in a way that does the least harm to the chain's reputation, is going to go from "No, you can't have $4 a night off of this room" to "He was trying to have sex with my employees and was screaming at maids." Your tale doesn't make sense.
All it takes is one maladjusted loser (that would be you) getting it in his head that he needs to ruin people he imagines did him harm, and poof - someone's life is wrecked. That's why this kind of thing is so scary, because it's so easy for sick people (again, that would be you) to ruin the lives of anyone they like very easily.
Revenge is a dish best not served at all.
Some time ago I saw a person who looked to be about 35-40 years old riding around in a Little Rascal motorized scooter.
She had a cigarette between her lips, a bottle of soda in a beverage holder, and a couple of donuts on a tray that was right under the steering yoke. I'd say she probably weighed in at 350, minimum.
I kind of admired her for it... Lots of people *say* "fuck it all" but she was really doing something about it!
I expect them to happen because not everyone's sense of morality is the same.
I also expect them to happen because they've already been happening - there is research being done on rats wherein they are implanted with devices that can then be used to send them signals to make them move around, essentially a remote control rat.
With regards to surveillance and espionage, it absolutely makes sense to me that this would be and will be used in birds if it's possible to do so. The "moral" issues of using an animal for espionage or defense are non-existent for organizations that routinely use the term "collateral damage" to describe civilian casualties or look at "mere" millions of civilian deaths as an "acceptable" outcome of a nuclear or biological strike.
Okay, I see what you are getting at - sorry, I assumed, based on other responses, a somewhat more sinister undertone to your comments.
I'll respond to the key points:
If a religion is one that is based on faith - meaning, one that is based on having no definitive proof of the existence of the divine - then logically any such religion could not exist unchanged if there were absolute proof one way or the other. Unless one were to say "my god defies logic and paradox, and thus it is impossible to disprove its existence" - which seems to be one of the tenants of some religions. So basically knowing everything still wouldn't remove religion, just cause it to adapt somewhat, kind of like religions have adapted as we fill in gaps in knowledge with science.
It turns out that most religions are not based on faith in the complete absence of evidence - the Bible, for example, if one takes it literally (which is actually a rather new idea, since the ancients pretty much took it as a book of parables/fables) and believes it true removes doubt. Abraham *heard* God tell him to kill his son. Moses was handed the 10 commandments. Burning bushes. Miracles galore. According to religions of the book, these are absolute proofs of God's existence. They just don't have any *modern* proof but to them it isn't needed - they're less skeptical in that way.
For other religions - animist ones or ones with incredibly anthropomorphic gods - the question of belief without evidence is not even a part of the religion to begin with: the ancient greeks believed that sometimes people were literally hanging out with gods.
So, the shorter version is no, I don't think that omniscience would remove religion, because I don't think that definitive proof one way or another would be taken as definitive by many in the case of a negative, and that in the case of a positive finding (that there is, in fact, a divine) it wouldn't do away with religion because many religions aren't based on some quirk of logic that it MUST be faith without any evidence.
Heck, some people would become atheist or more agnostic and still ascribe to a religion and still go to religious ceremonies because they like the sense of community, they like the rituals, they like the music, etc. Maybe they'll decide they don't care if god exists or not, they're still gonna worship. People are weird and don't always do things based on what they know to be correct.
That was not my counter.
I was saying that it was not "obvious" that religion is a "disease" that needs to be "cured" because the majority of the world is religious.
If it were "obvious" - which means, well, that it is incredibly difficult to come to any other conclusion after even the most casual examination of the subject - then we wouldn't have so many religious people.
As to the "disease" and "cure" components, I pointed out in a later post that there are rather a few differences between disease and religion.
Forgive the self reply, but I realized I forgot to add something:
Different things make sense to different people when they are at different points and in different situations in their lives.
An example of this:
A family friend ran into a statistical fluke: she was diagnosed with breast cancer and literally a week later her husband was diagnosed with stomach cancer. When she was in the midst of chemo, her mother died - and anyone who has been on chemo will tell you, that's about as low as you can feel. To her, this was so ridiculously improbable that she *knew* that it had to be God, for whatever reason, testing her.
Now, I will say here that I believe it was just coincidence. I mean, with over 6 billion people on Earth, somebody is going to, random number generator wise, experience a perfect shitstorm. But I will not, not for a second, be the evil, horrible, incredibly douchy bitch who would tell a person who is going through that shitstorm that whatever idea is getting them through that - that it's God's plan, or that it's the devil, or that it's just maths fucking with them - is wrong to believe what they're believing.
She got better, her husband got better, her mom stayed dead. She felt it was perfectly reasonable to rededicate her life to Christ because of her "good fortune" and she's kind of become a bore because she's gone evangelical, but who am I to tell her, "Look, it's just maths. You and your husband are old, and cancer runs in both your families. Your mom was 90 and the stress of knowing both of you were sick was probably too much for her and she kicked the bucket. God wasn't testing you, you just got the shit end of the statistical stick, and by the way, have you considered not believing in God since there's no evidence what-so-ever for 'his' existence"? What possible good would it do?
At her lowest point in life, the thing that got her through it was a belief that there was a *reason* for it. Even if I think it's a shitty reason, it's not my place to criticize.
Personally, I find the idea that it's a statistical fluke to be comforting, if only because it'd be even more unlikely that one person would survive one complete clusterfuck only to have to experience another random confluence of badness. But that's me - I'm not her, and it's not my place to fuck with her head by trying to persuade her that what gets her through life is actually bad just because it's not something I think is true?
I disagree that religion is "all" about taking something without thought, but that can be a large component in some cases.
As for the discussions - the "Bob, I think you should believe this..." it's not at all like that. You're still talking about persuasion, and there's none of that. I don't suggest *anything* that they should believe in - I just talk with them and try to understand the reasons beliefs other than ones I hold work for them. You know - getting to know someone.
For example, my best friend on the planet, she used to be* pretty Christian. Our conversation about spiritual issues went kind of like this:
Me: "So what is your guiding principle in life?"
She: "Well I guess it comes down to God and Christ - God created us, and His only Son gave His life to protect us from sin."
Me: "That's cool - can I ask what you get out of it?"
She: "I feel very humbled that God would allow His Son to die in order to spare us - and I guess I feel good knowing that there's a reason for all of *waves hands* this. Why, what do you believe in?"
Me: "I guess I don't really 'believe' in anything - it's more like I'm comfortable with the idea that there's a whole bunch of stuff we don't know, and I guess I feel OK with the idea that there might not be a plan or anything, you know?"
She: "Oh, wow, how do you feel about that - like, it all being an accident?"
And so on.
It's a conversation between people. Why should I tell her I think she's wrong? Why should she tell me I'm wrong? What benefit could either of us get from yelling at a friend that they are WRONG? She's happy with her way of thinking, I'm happy with mine - it's all good because neither of us is being an asshole and trying to tell the other person what's right/wrong.
*About 2 years ago she told me she thinks she doesn't believe in God anymore, or if she does, she doesn't think he's all that relevant to her daily affairs, and if he has a problem with that, it's kind of petty and small minded. My response to that was to ask her if she was OK, because I imagine it's got to be pretty disappointing to come to feel your god is actually just kind of a petulant child. Turns out she felt like shit about it and was happy I asked.
My entry into this part of the thread was me responding to someone who insisted that it was obvious that religion is a disease that must be cured. There is no possible way to take that language as anything other than someone attempting to coerce or otherwise force someone else to do something different. I know that this person was not you, but my arguments here are to be taken in that context.
Personally, I'm a huge fan of letting people have access - by their choice - to any information they want, and letting open discussion of ideas lead them wherever they want to go, and I suspect this is more along the lines of what you're into also.
For what it's worth, the thing that I've noticed is that if people just tell religious folks that they're wrong and bad and part of all that ails the world, those people just entrench themselves even more in their beliefs because they rightly imagine they are under siege. When I've been reasonable with people - for example, NOT telling them they're dumb for believing in a magic sky wizard for which they have no proof, or that the solace they take in that notion is evidence that they are sheep - they tend to be willing to talk about things openly. It's amazing what happens and how people can be open to new ideas when they don't feel like the other person wants to force them to change.
I never once suggested that religion is any kind of panacea for all evils. Simply that it is not completely without merit.
And again, you're missing the point: "Educating" someone when they do not wish to be educated is, in fact, imposing your will on them. The person I was initially responding to insisted it was "obvious" that religion is a "disease" that needed to be "cured" - you cannot possibly expect me to think that someone who uses that kind of language is not intent on imposing their will.
As for religions not allowing exposure to other points of view - some religions do try to keep people from seeing other points, some do not. And some atheists get enraged and angry when people try to talk about other points of view (look at Slashdot whenever religion comes up, for example, and these guys will come flying out of the woodwork and try to shut people down for daring to disagree with them) but not all are that way.
I'm all in favor of people being open to multiple points of view - and those multiple points of view will also include religious viewpoints, lest we become the hypocrites.
I would love to think that - but I dunno that a solution that works for a hive mind with a photon-based "biology" and that evolved in the spinning whorls of near-lightspeed gas at the edge of an event horizon would necessarily work for me. Then again, with such a fundamental difference in origins, it may not even be possible to have a meaningful interaction of any kind.
Though, if we were to find "life like us" - meaning, evolved on a planet as the result of competition with other lifeforms, needs to eat, poop, reproduce, individually self-aware - then probably there would be a need to work out some solutions, and if there are lots of those species, there should be some good ones.
My problem is that, to me, pretending to be an alien, it makes quite a bit of sense to essentially neuter humanity - either smothering it in the cradle or otherwise limiting the species so they couldn't ever be a threat. Then again, it also makes sense to cultivate a partnership because maybe there are things humans will think of that my brain is literally incapable of. And it makes sense to do a whole bunch of other things too.
But I am totally with you - I would want to pick up the alien lingo as I'm a total xenophile.
No, I'm not trying to say that they are always right. In fact, my point was a bit more nuanced than that, since I'm not a moron.
What I said was that when a majority of people DISAGREE on something, then the "right" answer is not obvious. See, the previous post - the one I was replying to? - said that it was "obvious" that religion was a disease that needed a cure. I responded by saying that since a majority of people on Earth would disagree with that, it was by no means "obvious" but instead something that is open to discussion and debate. Something that is "obvious" would have very few people disagreeing with it, since, you know, by definition it's freaking obvious.
As far as your final point, you are basically advocating evangelical atheism. You feel it's better to impose your ideas on people ("educate" them) than to allow them to go on believing whatever it is they want to believe. Congratulations - you're using their exact same tactics, arguments and reasoning. What makes your cause better or more worthy than theirs? If you even for a split second think "It's because mine is true!" then congratulations - you got the religion! It's just yours doesn't have a god or any particular rites.
Personally, I think it's better to not push your beliefs - however correct you feel they might be - onto other people. I also think it's better to have a diversity of ideas than just one accepted right way to do it. Rather than curing religion, I'd really rather just cure the tendency of humans, theists and atheists alike, to be assholes who want other people to be like them.
Judaism has died out? Buddhism has died out? I'm stunned. They're among the oldest religions and, while they don't have as many adherents as Christians and Muslims, they're certainly not dying religions. They don't have, in some ways, a lot of influence over the secular world *because* they are religions that do not seek to impose their beliefs on others, by and large.
You also seem to be under the impression that religious faith must be an all or nothing situation - that either it completely prevents a person from doing something horrible OR it is completely worthless. You also threw in a different condition there - you throw in the notion of religion as moral authority or teacher, and then when it fails to live up to THAT specific claim in some cases, discard it as useless.
Moral authority is not the only possible benefit of religion, and I have never said it is the only possible benefit of religion. It is one possible benefit that I mentioned, but there certainly are other ways in which religion can provide a benefit; inspiration to create something to express their love of and thanks to God would be one other example - some truly staggeringly beautiful things have been created for those reasons.
As far as the Tuskegee investigators, the fact that they were (likely) Christians just shows that they were hypocritical, or that they believed the benefit to humanity was greater than the detriment, or that they may not have believed blacks to be worthy of the same considerations as whites, or any number of other things. In their case, yes, I'll agree - their Christianity was certainly not a very good moral authority. But that doesn't mean that it is, as a whole, without ANY benefit, or that it offered no benefit to them individually; it just didn't provide a good moral compass, which is only one of many possible benefits.
Again, and simply: Just because people have done HORRIBLE things in the name of an idea (or by claiming to be doing it in the name of that idea) does not invalidate the idea. Supposedly the US invaded Iraq in the name of freedom, liberation and to create stability in the region. Of course it turned out to be a monstrous clusterfuck, but does that mean that because SOME people used freedom, liberation and the creation of stability to do something horrid that those ideas are bad and cannot ever lead to anything good? No. It just means that in that case, it was wretched and abused.
I won't even disagree that it's possible that religion is *usually* used badly, horribly, as a tool to control people by cynical interests. But that doesn't mean it can't be good, and it doesn't mean it's never been good, and it doesn't mean that it's not possible for things to get better in the future.
I'm just going to end this by saying this: I responded to someone saying he wanted to "cure" religion as if it were a disease. Please explain to me how "curing" someone of religion if they do not wish it so is ANY different than trying to force a conversion when someone is not a believer. You've said - and I agree! - that coercing people to change their behavior against their will can be a bad thing in some cases, so how is coercing people to not be religious OK?
If at any point you find yourself making the argument "Because being an atheist is RIGHT!" I suggest you take a moment to ask yourself what argument someone in favor of converting you to Islam would make.
Exactly. For some people, OSS is like a crusade, but for many others (most of the people doing the heavy lifting, especially at companies that would be bought) I'm betting it's a paycheck.
For a "mere" $10 billion dollars you could just pay key people a few million each to stop working on products in whatever field and you'd have exactly the same kind of smothering effect on things as you would if you spent $70 billion to buy out the companies.
For anyone who isn't ideologically driven to the extreme or independently wealthy, I'm going to say being offered $1-10 million to work on something else or even just stop working would be _quite_ effective.
You are factually incorrect about religions all being evangelical. Some religions actively discourage converts by intentionally putting trials in their way and requiring a demonstration of dedication before allowing official conversion. So no, religion does not, as a whole, require people coerce others - some religions do, some do not. The fact that you seem to be completely unaware of this fact makes me think you're approaching this far too simplistically.
As to Mengele - he did horrific things to people as part of scientific research. The Tuskegee investigators did horrific things as part of their research. Mengele didn't vivisect human beings and torture them because he was Catholic - he did those things because a) he was a monstrous person, and b) he was conducting research. The Tuskegee investigators did not lie to their victims because they were Christian, but because they were conducting an experiment. Do you think Mengele identified himself first as a scientist or first as a Catholic, when he thought of the things he did to his victims? Do you think the Tuskegee investigators thought of themselves as scientists first or Christians first when lying to their victims and letting them die so they could track the progression of the disease?
With regard to the Soviet system and the purges - they had a system that was built around the dialectic, in which every action needed to be (at least somewhat) justified as being ideologically sound. One huge component of this ideology was atheism, and as a result, any expression of religion was *brutally* suppressed because it was felt to be, as some in this thread have said, a disease/toxin/drug that went against the Communist ideology. Atheism was not the root cause of much of it, but to say it had nothing to do with such brutality is just naive in the extreme.
Without doubt, religious people have done horrible, horrible things. Without doubt, non-religious people have done horrible, horrible things. Sometimes people do those horrible things in the name of religion, sometimes in opposition to religion. Sometimes religious people do horrible things for reasons that have nothing to do with their religion, and sometimes non-religious people do things that have nothing to do with their non-religion.
It's not simple. It's not cut and dried. Trying to argue that there is no benefit what-so-ever to religion is absurd, especially when you above demonstrated that you really don't understand religion at all. At least try and understand more than just some cartoon-simple version before making your argument.
The unfortunate problem there is that people who are uncertain or willing to admit they are uncertain are often seen as weak, while people who claim to be certain of things are more likely to be perceived as strong, good, etc.
I think your analogy to childhood is pretty apt - I know when I was little the world *needed* to be black and white and simple because I hadn't yet developed the neural wiring to think in really abstract ways, nor had I gained experience enough to be able to have examples of things that weren't black and white sufficient to overcome the concrete thinking phase.
The people whom I most admire - in any sector - are the ones who seem to revel in the notion of uncertainty and diversity, and think it's a wonderful thing that different things work for different people.
Does the common cold ever inspire people to do great things? How many great works of art have been created due to the common cold vs. religion?
I don't disagree that religion can be a force for bad things, but I feel it can also be a force for good. Comparing it to an illness - an illness which is almost entirely detrimental to humanity (even in a minor way as most colds are) is just not an apt analogy.
I would say that, if you were going to go with religion as pathology, maybe manic depression would be a better example. Being too depressed is a bad thing, but being a little depressed can actually lead to more realistic assessments of the world around and one's place in it. Being a little manic can be a PHENOMENALLY good thing for people; there are some people who refuse treatment for bi-polar precisely because there is a window between midrange and full-on mania in which they become *staggeringly* productive and they feel it's worth the downsides.
My whole point is that I think it's simplistic and incorrect - ridiculously so - to just compare religion to a disease and think it must be cured and is wholly negative. Things are more complicated than that, and problems arise when people look at those different from themselves in a simplistic (and wrong) manner, failing to realize that things aren't just some kind of binary good/bad/right/wrong situation.
I know it's popular here to decry idiots who believe in magic sky wizards as completely deluded, but the fact remains, belief in a magic sky wizard may not be rational or sensical, but it by no means precludes ANY good ideas coming from that person, and may, in fact, inspire some that otherwise might not have come about.
It would be just as easy for me to point out situations where atheism (professed or real) lead to hideous, monstrous abuses, or where, in the name of science, horrific crimes have been committed. Mengele was a scientist - actually a fairly decent one, albeit morally reprehensible. Should I judge ALL scientists by his actions? The Tuskeege experiment, in which black men were left untreated for a disease and lied to about it in order to have the progression of the disease tracked - abhorrent. The eugenic concept or "scientific" notions of racial purity as espoused by the Nazis. Stalinist Russia and the massive slaughter of peasants.
Science has benefits, just as it has also been used as a tool by those who would wreak havoc. In and of itself, it is not a bad thing. Religion has benefits, just as it has also been used as a tool by those who would wreak havoc. In and of itself, it is not a bad thing. Anyone who would dispute only one of those points is simply being intellectually dishonest.
I agree; ever time you've insisted that there have been NO great works that took less than 5 years to develop, I've wanted to ask you for a citation. Instead it was much easier to just google some works and look up the author's comments about the timeline of the creation of those works and go from there.
As I said, I didn't think you'd have the ability to admit you were incorrect, and now you prove it with a meme that has become the go-to position of the intellectually lazy. Please, if you care to actually post something meaningful, do so. I'm not surprised - disappointed, maybe - that you chose to go with one of the less honorable options to respond to my demonstration that you are completely incorrect about your ridiculous assertions.
My guess is that I really struck a chord; I think you know, in your heart of hearts, that what I've said is true. I'm sorry that you're married to a talentless hack who's spent 10 years of his life crafting shit, but you should take comfort in the idea that the vast majority of humanity is in the exact same boat. Most of us are even still secretly hoping that we're the exception to the rule, so you shouldn't feel bad about your grandiose assessment of your husband's ability, either. I will say that it's kind of sad that your attempts at linking yourself to greatness need to come through your husband rather than through your own efforts, but then, much of humanity also suffers from low self-esteem and can't imagine themselves being great, either.
Good luck.
Do the majority of people who are religious wind up dying in a period of 5-10 years from that belief if they aren't given medical treatments?
Does their religion - again, for the majority - cause them substantial personal distress?
Does it impair their ability to hold a job because they are frequently incapacitated by the "symptoms" of their religion?
Do the majority of people who are religious experience absolutely no benefit and ONLY detriment from their religious beliefs?
If you're at all intellectually honest, you'll have to admit that there's a rather substantial difference between HIV/AIDS and religion. Don't be disingenuous.
What I find chilling in these replies is that people seem to feel completely fine using terms like "cure a disease" to describe dealing with religious individuals. Heretics used to be considered a disease, atheists were sub-human and in need of conversion or extermination. Congratulations on taking the absolute worst characteristics of the people you seem to be opposed to and making them your own.
Unless someone is actively harming another person through their beliefs - which, by the way, is EXACTLY what you guys are advocating doing (harming others by removing their ability to choose) - they should be allowed to believe whatever the hell they want to believe. Kind of icky when you think about it.
I believe that an individual should *want* to become less ignorant. But I also believe that if an individual wishes to remain ignorant, it is abhorrent to force them to remove their ignorance.
"Curing" someone who believes in a god or gods of their ignorance stems from the exact same drive as "curing" someone who believed in the WRONG god or gods and forcing them to believe in the RIGHT ones - forced conversion.
Even if humanity (or our distant, distant descendants), as a species, were to attain omniscience in some way, there may be members of the species who do not wish to know everything. I'd like to think that an omniscient creature would, in knowing everything, also know compassion, and also know that forcing another individual to do something they do not wish to do, "for their own good" is many times monstrous.
You casually say that you "politely" disagree with the need to cure ignorance - would your "polite" disagreement still stand if I felt that the way to remove ignorance were to force people to acknowledge the "truth" of Allah, Jehova, God, Jesus, or any other spiritual figure? Please don't say, "But my way of removing ignorance is RIGHT!" because whether it is or not (and as I said, I'm not remotely theistic) until you can absolutely prove it to be RIGHT, you're just acting on an inkling of a feeling of what's right and true, just like the people in the past who've tortured heretics into converting or burnt them at the stake when conversion was impossible.
That's actually not what I was saying - though I agree what I said could be read that way.
I don't think that people with faith would otherwise be rapists (and besides, many people of faith are rapists etc.)
What I do think is that SOME people who latch onto their faith and become fervent followers do that rather than more extreme things in their quest to find meaning in their life - it gives them at least some kind of code that they can follow that keeps them from thrashing about.
For example, an acquaintance of mine recently converted to Islam. We've talked about his reasons for it, and he said, essentially, that he always doubted his "worth" as a person, and always doubted his "goodness" because he felt like he never really had any kind of system to exist within that would let him know that he was behaving well. Within Islam and the strict adherence to various rules, he now feels he has a system where he can measure his actions against it and know whether or not he's right and good. In his case, this has meant an end to drinking & drug use, he's stopped cheating on his wife, and so far seems to be happier. Is he now a "good" person? Was he before a "bad" person? I always thought he was reasonably decent, though he made some poor choices, and I still feel the same way. He, however, now feels that he is on the path to being a "good" person, whereas before he feared he was simply slipping into being worse.
It isn't how I would approach the same problem were I to have a crisis of confidence in myself, but it is *an* approach, and one that does seem to work for many people.
I also don't disagree that religion has been and can be used (and often is) as a way to control people, but I don't think that's the ONLY use for it. Let's not speak in absolutes - leave that to the fundamentalists of whatever stripe. Religion is not ONLY one thing or another - it's many different things to many different people.
Frankly, I find very little difference between the extreme atheists - "Religion is a disease and a dangerous delusion and should be cured!" - and the extreme theists - "Atheism is a sign of moral decay and degeneracy and they should be converted!" Both sides are ridiculously sure of themselves, both sides are actively intent on imposing their beliefs on other people, and both sides are really fucking annoying because rather than accept that there's a complicated world out there that's brimming with nuance, and that different people are different, and that people can see the exact same thing and disagree as to its meaning without either of them being evil, they'd rather live in some simpleton's idea of the universe in which things can only be one way.
Easy - especially since you set the bar so amazingly low with Alan Dean Foster in an earlier post.
On a Pale Horse (and other "Incarnations of Immortality" books) by Piers Anthony. Individually none of the books took more than a year or 2 to go from inception to execution. Some of his other series can also be considered GREAT, depending on who you talk to - Xanth, Adept and the like. As for Sci-Fi, there's the Tyrant books.
I'm not 100% sure on the timelines, but I believe Snow Crash (this one might be iffy), Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon each took less than 5 years. Not Fantasy, but there you go.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson, and the world in that story seems to have been developed from about 1980 to 1984 - he wrote some short stories that were part, to some extent, of that universe (Burning Chrome, Johnny Mnemonic) 2 years or so before Neuromancer was published).
JK Rowling claims that Harry Potter took 5 years to go from first bolt-out-of-the-blue idea to publication of the first idea, but also claims she wrote large chunks of the next 6 books in that time.
Zelazny's Amber series - and here it's hard to say 100% what the timeline is because the first story was serialized throughout 1967 before being published as a single book in 1970 - is another fantasy work, but may not count as "great" on it's own. I think only the first 2 (or 3) books were published in the 5 year window.
Again, the "greatness" of these works is going to depend, YMMV, and all that. Genre-wise, I personally don't like fantasy very much EXACTLY because of the authors you've mentioned previously and the tendency of many authors to try and emulate their styles.
You can keep on calling me ignorant and keep on insisting that my ignorance is staggering if you like, but I just gave you a bunch of examples of works that many people would consider GREAT that were less than 5 years in the making, from multiple genres. I assume you'll either go 2 ways with this: 1) You'll insist that those books aren't GREAT (despite that being a meaningless term) or 2) you'll insist that they aren't really fantasy and that you were REALLY SPECIFIC about it being fantasy.
There's a third option - you actually being able to admit that you were wrong - but given the rabid nature of your defense and your penchant for screeching that I'm ignorant despite you obviously doing no research into this yourself, makes it a reasonably safe bet this option won't be exercised.
Though I'd be happy to be proven wrong - either about your ability to cede a point gracefully, or about your husband's work not being shit.