Bay 12 Games Forum

One problem is that almost every religion holds that we are born in some sort of default 'original' sin and must spend our entire lives trying to make up for something we never did and is impossible to make up for, and that is apparently inherent in us. I have a real issue with that. The whole claiming we have a inborn debt to something? That just seems ludicrous.

Not really. In fact, I think the concept of original sin is limited to Christianity. At least it's the only one I can think of.

EDIT:

Climate change.  You'd be hard-pressed to find people on this forum who don't believe in at least some anthropogenic climate change.  Exactly how much, and what the effects will be, is still debate-worthy...but science boards frown OH SO VERY HEAVILY on anyone who dares to question, and can try to ruin peoples' careers over it.  Okay they don't burn people at the stake, but neither does religion anymore.  Me, I lean on the side of "oh shit this is serious", just for the record, I'm no denier.  But I gotta point out the similarities between that and what religion is accused of.  Not that different.

Even though the scientific consensus is VERY aggressive against new concepts, you've picked a terrible example. It took decades for the science behind Anthropogenic Climate Change to prove itself adequately and once it did it became accepted because no solid criticisms were left. There have been a few efforts by people who could actually be called "Climate Skeptics" to show alternative reasons for recent warming, but while they may have added some new information they couldn't explain the situation differently. Most of the efforts against AGW stem from an utterly non-scientific movement that can only be described as "Denialism" and this movement isn't excluded for being different, it's denied because it attempts to add nothing, attacks the character of people to reduce their legitimacy, and engages in outright distortion of facts to push itself into the public sphere.

Neither do you seem to understand the difference between holding a stance because of evidence and the holding a stance because of tradition. It is a virtue in the realm of science because eliminating bad information is the basis of the scientific method (and "good" information is only that which has so far survived criticisms). In religion there is nothing to make one claim more or less true than another, except in cases where scriptural literalism reigns, and even then those claims are only "true" within the circle that believes in scriptural literalism and the scripture isn't ambiguous or contradicted by other scripture. Using faith one cannot say any particular belief is more or less valid - whereas reality has the annoying habit of occurring whether you believe in it or not. Reality is also something that can be checked rigorously.

I'd like a source on that last point, because that sounds to me like a fringe belief and not a mainstream one.

And if you are getting things like that confused like you seem to be in the rest of your post, well, :')

My understanding of India's situation comes from:

http://newhumanist.org.uk/2500/the-god-confusion

The nuke thing is, afaik, a fringe belief and my point was more about general acceptance of supernatural explanations/guidance than the prevalence of a particular wacky belief.

Quote from: umiman on March 24, 2011, 12:45:23 pm

I played on legendary difficulty man. The AI intelligence increases with difficulty. It's pretty dumb on normal. Hard is interesting. Very hard is pretty hard.

Is this true? I would get this game right now if it is and the difficulty isn't based on cheating AI.

It may be based on both, as the AI certainly does cheat or get handicap bonuses to some extent.

The problem with redefining socialism to what the dictionary states is that we already have a perfectly good word that has the same meaning. Communism.

Communism is closer to what Criptfiend said. It's a form of semi-anarchy where the workers directly control the means of production.

The dictionary definition of Socialism is either uselessly broad, or a statement that all governments follow a Socialist ideology to some degree. All governments in history have distributed resources to some degree, although not usually to the general public's benefit until recently.

I'm quite surprised they only found one email that looked bad.  They hacked out several years worth of emails from this group, and they only found one which could be taken out of context effectively.

Actually, there were several they took out of context effectively. All debunked of course, but behind closed doors they continue to spread the misinformation as if it were true.

They never seem to realize just how old the science behind Global Warming is. Over more than 50 years the phenomena has been investigated by climate scientists from around the world and we can't escape the fact that the only cause of current warming trends can and should be attributed to the greenhouse gases humankind are releasing into the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide. They would have us chasing ghosts despite solid physical evidence because their ideology demands that we not touch the sacred rights of energy companies.

Why does my state get all the crazies.
Why.

Because that's where the voices are strongest.

Quote from: Cheese on March 03, 2011, 01:17:07 pm

I like the sound of the shouts. Hopefully Skryim will be as epic as the trailers

I will consider the game a complete failure if people can't think of a word less hackneyed than "epic" in order to describe it.

Hopefully Skyrim will be as Iliadic as the trailers.