Well, you're still defining things as rational and irrational, so you haven't evaded my point entirely. The question remains as to whether the "rational atheists" necessarily live up to their namesake. You can have the abstract notion of rational atheism, but by calling yourself a rational atheist you seem to be making the same sort of pretentious presumption to which I was originally objecting.
Another worry occurs: someone could arrive at the doctrine of atheism rationally, i.e. through well supported empirical arguments, and still be completely irrational when it comes to politics. So yes, if 'rational atheism' is defined by using rational methods to arrive at atheism, then it is, by definition, incompatible with fanaticism regarding atheism. (Putting aside the question as to whether anyone actually lives up to the ideal of rational atheism.) But this doesn't preclude it from being compatible with fanaticism in other regards.
You seemed to be asserting that anyone who is a fanatic in regard to non-religious subject matter cannot be a rational atheist.
Like I said, I didn't invent the terms or their definition. If you want to ask someone why they went for the rational/irrational definition, ask Daniel Guerin (well unfortunately he's dead, but he popularized the dichotomy) or Daniel Dennett. Modernist atheism has also been deemed 'new atheism' which serves to complicate things even more considering the movement is made up of both groups. I'm using these terms because they're deemed the norm in secularist history, I'm not arguing that either is rational or irrational, just that those are what the terms are called. You wouldn't ask me to explain how a realist is a realist or if a constructivist is constructive if we were talking about international relations.
Fair enough. As long as we're admitting that even rational atheism does not preclude political fanaticism. I agree that it's highly doubtful whether atheism itself could be said to be the direct cause of any atrocities. Certainly some communist movements were both atheist and committed anti-religious persecution, but atheism is just the doctrine that deities don't exist, it isn't the doctrine that you should persecute religious people and force them to recant their beliefs, the latter view would belong to communism, not atheism.
However, the New Atheist movement does at least include the idea that one should try to convince religious people that their beliefs are wrong, which is a new commitment. But at most that constitutes an annoyance or an invasion of privacy.
should the last word be "cult"? or am i misreading.
well games probably show organized religion as violent because it is so. people dont jut come up with stuff (ok soemtimes they do) but they use historical data to make plots. and what side of religion is more discussed than crusades? so lets go on a crusade in game (aka Assasins Creed)
Why do people still believe that religion causes violence? Humans cause violence because of our natural tendency to form groups and our greed. Those who are not within the groups are the enemies, and when the enemy has something a group wants, fighting breaks out. It just so happens that religion is often one of those groups that gets formed, but it's at least as often nationality or ethnicity or pretty much anything. Nobody has ever fought a war because the enemies had a different religion; they fought because the enemy, who happened to be defined on that occasion by a different religion, had something they wanted. Even the Crusades, which were divided among religious lines, were really fought because both groups wanted territory. That specific battle might not have happened without religion, but it just would have been replaced with a different one. If anyone remembers the South Park episodes "Go God Go", it works pretty much like that in real life. So can people stop with the religion bashing already? I know it's popular, but it's a terrible argument and I cringe every time I hear people repeat this nonsense without looking further into the matter. Disclosure: I am not a member of any organized religion.
Agreed. Religion as a whole might have provided a few more excuses for war, but it certainly isn't its primary cause. Look at Buddhism. There have been a few Buddhist wars, believe it or not, but they are very few and far between. Plus Buddhist doctrine is about as explicitly anti-violence as one can get. Except perhaps for the Jains, who are so hardcore that they don't go out in the rain because they are afraid of killing microscopic life. As a rule I don't think it's terribly controversial to say that Buddhism as a whole has served more as an agent of peace than war.
Lot of over the top reactions here. What this guy is saying is completely legit, as far as I'm concerned. Religion can make a compelling narrative, and so does conflict, so they're often paired in games, is what he's saying.
yes because every religion is a religion of peace and happiness!
as far as I know some religious people in TES universe are pacifists like Martin Septim and in reality allot of people get killed over religion.
As improving technology has allowed videogames to evolve over the years, their narratives have become more detailed and nuanced as well, according to Greg Perreault, a doctoral student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. That increased sophistication has led to a growing incorporation of religion into various storylines, and that in turn has led religion to be "problematized" in videogames by way of strong narrative connections with violence.
I read this paragraph over and over trying to get an idea behind this lunacy. It seems to me he is trying to say that as technology and quality increase, the amount of religious overtones in video games increase. With that increase in religion, vilification of said religion increases. I may have only played two of the games on his list (FF13/ME2), but I fail to see his point.
I mean, I wasn't looking for religious persecution in either title, I was looking for a compelling story and good gameplay, which I found both (screw you haters, I liked FF13!). But I kind of found the opposite of what he found, in the case of FF13, the characters were vilified and not the religion. While one could say this is problematizing religion, it's really not. While yes, religion was a problem that the main characters had to overcome, it wasn't religion that was the enemy, you were.
Sazh struggled with the fact that Vanille was from Gran Pulse, and even blamed her for his son becoming a l'Cie, not laying the blame on his religion. He was able to forgive her (a trait people often attribute to religion).
In this case you could say that religion was praised and not vilified, contrary to Perreault is wanting us to believe. But hey, pointing out something like this only hurts his entire article, right?
Now I admit, I've only played through Mass Effect 2 one time, and I spent roughly the same amount of time that he did on it, but I kind of fail to see how religion is a problem for characters in that game. Religion is used by Samara to show her resolve in upholding Asari law. This shows her religion in a positive light. Her faith does not a pose a problem for any of the characters.
Thane Krios could be another example of religion within ME2, but once again, also positive, or at least as positive as you can get with an assassin. He prayed for success and subsequently forgiveness afterwards. This upholds religion alongside of honor. His faith does not prove to be a roadblock for any of the characters.
You could attempt to lump the heretic Geth as a religion and claim that they are a problem for the characters, but that's just silly.
I can't really speak for the other games, other than citing what I know about them. The Castlevania series is normally about vampire hunters, I'm not sure if the one referenced here is any different, but I'll assume it's about a Belmont. I think religion is on the winning side. From what little I know about Oblivion (I can't stand Elder Scrolls games, haven't since ES2), but I think relgion is displayed as both positive and negative. As for Assassin's Creed, I think history ruined this for everyone, not Ubisoft. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crusades]
Like any journalist on a slow news day, he's looking for a story where there isn't one. Religion isn't being incorporated into games due to increased sophistication and better narratives, it's being added due to writers running out of ideas. They use religion because everyone can relate to it in some way. Whether you're a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Athiest, etc, you know a little about religion. Once people run out of good stories for religion, they'll move onto politics. Once politics are done, they'll move back to Pacman. It's all one big cycle.
Now if he really wanted to show religion as a problem to the main characters, why didn't he pick up Xenosaga (1, 2, and 3) or Final Fantasy Tactics?
Bzzt, wrong. Sorry. You've got an error there. Religion isn't the greatest catalyst for violence in human history.
HUMANS are the greatest catalyst for violence in human history.
In evolutionary terms, violence = survival. We're the top of the food chain because we learned how to kill anything and everything on the planet, including ourselves. Religion is just an excuse - just like race, territory, resources, laws, and patterns on flags. Oh, and cause it's fun.
Which is why we have violent video games - because killing is fun. Evolution made it so.
soren7550 said:
TheFPSisDead said:
Who is the violent religious sect in Mass Effect 2???
The closest I can think of is Samara. "Find peace in the embrace of the Goddess *bust head open like a melon*"
What a self evident statement; humans commit human violence. Thank you for the enlightment. Also, what silly deductive reasoning. 'I didn't kill her officer! It was Joe! He made the gun I used down at the gun factory so he's responsible!' We can zoom out to look at the larger picture over and over and over until the issue becomes so abstact that it's non-sensical but that doesn't do anything to address the initial issue. The issue of billions of people beleving that they KNOW the will and desires of a divine lord that must be followed or suffer eternal agony combined with a believe that one of those desires is the murder of apostates and infidels is a very dangerous belief that leads to a lot of violence globally and historically. Is all of this rooted in our Darwinian evolutionary past and our selfish genes' struggle for survival? Sure. Does that change anything? No.
That's about all I can think of. Oh, and "Dead Gods still dream" (something like that).
Yeah, I was wondering that myself. I got the impression that the article author was talking about religious groups being enemies, and I can't think of any... except maybe the Geth Heretics? Sort of?
Ermm... You do realize that all subjective consciousness in undetectable, right? Prove to me that you're conscious and not merely a complex bundle of matter and energy that behaves in certain ways.
There are plenty of problems with the idea of God and creationism, but scientific inquiry hasn't disproved these ideas outright. It has effectively disproved the doctrine that the world was created in seven days etc. But someone could still say that God created the big bang, etc. They can't be disproved in the strongest sense, but their story is so arbitrary and needlessly anthropocentric that there's no reason to accept it.
It's pretty clear that consciousness exists in the brain. Studies of people with brain injuries and how people recollect consciousness with varying measured brain activity have confirmed this. It is a well established science of studying if someone is brain dead or if they have "locked in syndrome", mainly advising on whether life support should be removed. That is consciousness right there, that brain activity.
If you grant that other people are in fact conscious and not philosophical zombies (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/), then it makes more sense to say consciousness has its seat in the brain than any sort of dualist explanation. But that's precisely my point, you've already presumed that people have subjective awareness, which is by its very nature unobservable. We can observe the behavior of a person's brain, but there's nothing in the action of neurons that necessarily suggests someone has conscious awareness. You could describe physical reality completely without any reference to consciousness. I'm not advocating any sort of substance dualism, i.e. saying that consciousness is immaterial. I'm just saying that we can't observe it.
Treblaine said:
"But someone could still say that God created the big bang"
snip
Just because science hasn't answered a question doesn't mean ANYTHING is possible or plausible.
Yeah I completely agree that it's implausible and arbitrary and there's no real reason to accept it. Pascal's wager doesn't work because there are multiple, mutually exclusive religions that promise you salvation/damnation, so there's a lot to lose by believing in the wrong one.
Believe me, I'm not a theist or a creationist. I was just making the point that scientific inquiry hasn't disproved every version of creationism because scientific inquiry is limited to the empirical. That, in and of itself is an argument against creationism: it goes beyond what we can verify, i.e., it's baseless metaphysical speculation. I'm just nitpicking.
Well, I think, therefore I am. I don't see why I have to look into it more than that. There is no need to pin down neurone-X for feeling-y. Especially as it would go too far off topic.
The worst offender is a little known series started in the 11th Century called The Crusades [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_crusades].
The development time made Valve look speedy though. They took nearly 100 years to produce the sequels.
Religion spurring [http://www.evilbible.com/Evil%20Bible%20Quotes.htm] wars, general [http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm] violence and other [http://www.evilbible.com/Murder.htm] horrible things? How [http://www.evilbible.com/Slavery.htm]could video game developers possibly think that?! [http://www.evilbible.com/Ritual_Human_Sacrifice.htm]
He has a point about videogame plot though I find a lot of less extreme (sometimes) parallels in real life religions anyway and I find it incredibly satisfying killing god. Reason for that is I find any god-like entity an affront to free will. I still hate hearing bible readings with some qoutes pretty much saying worship me or when you die suffer eternally in a fiery hell, the other I hate is at weddings where the priest says God fills you with love to love one another (I don't need someone 'allowing' me and deciding for me who to love, I can decide for myself). Anyway must stop bashing religion but if religious leaders do get worked up about this then I just think don't you have some real world problems to sort out?
Still religion makes a good plot device for conflict hence why it is used so frequently for plot. Though I wonder why he didn't mention darksiders where a few angels actually caused the end times because they wanted to restart the eternal war and demons merely took advantage of it.
I'm more insulted by his selection of games here. What about GoW, where you kill the entire greek pantheon? DMC4, with its brainwashed zealots? Bayonetta, where you fight god at the end? I seem to recall Breath of Fire 3 had a war which was ordained by god to kill all the dragons. And of course, FFX, with its evil Yevonite religion that is also the primary government who've been hiding the truth from everyone for 1000 years.
But instead, this guy picks Mass Effect and a game SET DURING THE CRUSADES? Of course there's going to be religious conflict in AC, that's the entire setting. I dunno where he gets it from ME though. FF13 didn't have much to do with religion either, yeah there were powerful godlike beings, but nobody really worshipped them.
Funny how everyone is saying that religion is responsible for most of the violence in the World (This is true), but weren't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot (to name a few) all atheists? Weren't they all responsible for millions of deaths? It's not just that they were atheists, but they all followed the doctrine of communism, which has significant elements of atheism in it.
Did World War 1 or 2 (Which both killed far, far more than all religious wars combined) have anything to do with religion?
Ah well, don't mind me. I've probably stirred up a shitstorm anyway.
I think the distinction is that people have killed in the name of Christianity. No one has killed in the name of atheism.
Like, there are atheists who have killed, but it wasn't because of their atheism. It was usually an extreme devotion to something else, like say communism.
Also, why are you singling out Bibles used by the Anglican Church?
But please continue.
Treblaine said:
I have not read the Torah either. Nor the Qu'ran, nor Sruti of Hinduism, nor Svetambara of Jainism. Nor the Homeric Hyms of greek mythology, nor Dianetics of Scientology. All claim to have universal significance but none have a shred of evidence to convince me to read them. I read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and decided that was a waste of my time, so why bother with all those?
You claim that they claim universal significance, but if you haven't read them, how could you possibly even know that they claim universal significance in the first place? Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey actually don't. They weren't even claimed to be true by Homer or his contemporaries (in fact, my wife was telling me the other day about a competing version of the events in the Iliad written by a contemporary of Homer's where the Greeks lost).
Furthermore, any evidence they would offer to you as to their ultimate veracity would be discovered by reading them. Saying, "I haven't read them because they haven't given me any evidence to convince me," is like saying, "Well, I haven't really payed any attention during this trial and I slept through all the court proceedings, but that guy's totally guilty. Oh, it's a woman? Whatever, totally guilty."
I live in England. Anglicanism is the religion of the Church of England and the religion of our monarch. Logically I should follow this religion just like the member of an indigenous tribe is more open to the myths that the chief says than those passed on by visiting missionaries. That's just to address geographic priority.
You say I have zero claim to credibility, but why have you not read these other holy scriptures from around the world? You haven't got much claim.
I know enough about each of those religions that, just like the Christian Bible, all of those holy scriptures claim to be the universal truth. They are not a particular religion for a particular geographic region that excludes wherever you are from, they talk about YOU, in fact ALL of us. They pertain to your fate and place in the universe.
So, why have you not read the holy scriptures of Islam and followed the teachings? Arguably they are the most up-to-date version of Abrahamic religions incorporating Old Testament, New Testament AND the teachings of Prophet Muhammed. SO why have you not read the Qu'ran and why are you not then a practician Muslim? You weren't raised with one or the other, why did you choose the Christian bible?
Yes, Homeric Hymns are pushing it, but can you so easily dismiss the Book of Mormon? Or Hindu and Jainist scripture?
"Furthermore, any evidence they would offer to you as to their ultimate veracity would be discovered by reading them."
The same thing is said about all the other holy scriptures of different religions, so why haven't you read them? Anyway, people I trust have checked already. There is not a shred of evidence in any of those holy scriptures, it's all to be taken entirely on faith. It's pure circular logic. "the box is red because this sentence is true"
I just want to know why you believe the Christian Bible over all the other religions and their texts? Why should ANYONE follow the scriptures of Christianity over Hinduism, Islam, Jainism or even Scientology or any of the other religions?
Haha, I like how you just assume I haven't read any other religious texts despite knowing very little about me other than that I'm willing to read religious texts.
I believe Christianity over other religions because it's the most believable, both in its tenants and its creation. Believing in Christianity, for me, is like believing Columbus sailed across the Pacific or Genghis Khan invaded central Asia. The Bible is not merely a religious text, but a book of history, written by many different sources. Looking into the archeological and historical evidence for the resurrection, the least preposterous explanation is that Jesus died and was resurrected three days later.
When we look at other religious texts and their creation, what do we see?
Islam/Mormonism: One guy, alone, in a cave, writing philosophy.
Hinduism: Creation-myth focused religion with central tenants that claim the existence of creatures on Earth (e.g., rakshasa) that no one has ever found.
Jainism: One guy teaching a philosophy with a creation-myth focus with central tenants that have been disproven (the universe has always existed, Jainism has always been a religion, etc.).
Scientology: One science fiction writer who had previously publicly stated that he could make up a ridiculous religion and people would still follow it. Beyond that, you officially can't read Dianetics until you've given them thousands of dollars and advanced through their ranks which screams scam (Wikileaks put up the whole thing a while back, though). Also, I'm a psychologist, which basically makes me Satan in Scientology cosmology.
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