Bay 12 Games Forum

I guess? Probably point more to stuff like the satanism scare a bit back in the US, or whatever case of yellow journalism catching on a subject you care to pick... what you mentioned probably falls under the latter fairly closely. Particularly the former if you're talking about primarily manufactured issues, though. Folks don't like to talk about it too much, but the sort of collective hate being discussed is not even remotely a new phenomenon, heh, sometimes for stuff significantly more literally fabricated than what most internet shitstorms kick up over. Net's just made it a bit easier to kick up, and maybe somewhat less biased towards being a primarily conservative thing.

Eh, you don't have any actual need to worry about the overshadowing bit, at the absolute least in christian majority countries. You can run into a lot of criticism and expressed dubiousness online and a few places in meatspace, but in practice people still give churches so much latitude they're fucking the US tax system, managing to be one of the largest fraud markets in the world, and actively interfering with politics and research both medical and scientific. We ain't to the point things are going to be overshadowed yet, not even close. Nearest it's coming to it is people are starting to avoid the reverse a bit more than they used to, and there's still a hell of a long way to go before treatment is even equitable in most places in the world, never mind actively against it.

Rest of it, though... there's not argument to be had vis a vis the AA -- it's actively detrimental, and has been since its inception. In being one of the first formal societies to start overshadowing other organizations and efforts that wasn't rooted in significantly counterproductive methods centered around religion, it's done a fairly significant amount of damage to actually helpful efforts to combat alcoholism, just by dint of making them less noticeable. To say nothing of what they've done by propagating their practices. Their methods are important, but only in the sense of being a warning and example for repudiation.

Religion (not Christianity or "the" church, mind -- the first European hospital type institutions were greek, and predate meaningful christian spread) was indeed tied to initial forays in medicine, but that's the most you can say about it and there's a number of areas now where they're actively attempting to impede it. Their laurels don't mean shit when they're getting people killed or consciously interfering with medical research and treatment that could save the lives or futures of millions.

Church being what led credence that people should be less of a shit to each other is complete bullshit, though. If there's any lie the devil's sold well it's that it takes a book and a priest to be a good person. It gave an excuse sometimes, but ethics and basic human decency isn't even remotely reliant on it, for all a good chunk of Christian historians and whatnot liked to massively warp their depictions of other societies as a means to make their beliefs and countries look better.

The problem ain't guilt, or past action, really. It's current action, current behavior, and the nature of an organization built around what religions (or at least our major ones) are. It ain't the crusades, it's the churches today that are abusing the concept of charity for tax benefits, the organizations that have been working counter to efforts to bring the AIDS epidemic under control, the ones promoting horribly unhealthy (psychological in particular) practices because the scripture of the religion and traditions of the church demand it, and so on. Some do good, even a fair amount of it, but that by no means indicates the rest of it should be given more consideration than we do anything else, or that the negative aspects of the efforts that are having a positive effect should be ignored. Secular organizations that act like churches tend to usually get shat on pretty hard. A non-religious non-profit in the US would stand major risk of losing funding and federal support (hell, pretty sure criminal charges, too) if they tried writing off recruiting efforts as physical charity, and churches do that all the ruddy time.

... for all that's all pretty negative, I'm definitely very supportive of positive religion-based efforts that are doing actual good, and it's not a necessary fact that something done by a religious organization is going to go to pot. But I've been in and around churches all my life, long associated with folks fairly active in at-least stateside church stuff, and familiar enough with what's called charity efforts et al to definitely say any religious organization claiming to do good probably needs even more scrutiny than secular ones, and they've got built in problems to boot. We really need to stop giving them so much bloody slack, especially the ones trying to pull shit using their status as a religious organization as leverage.

Here's one. I wish the Catholic Church and organized religion in general would stop being viewed solely through a negative light. Whenever it's brought up in debates, it always seems to be in the light of that of an unwanted step-child, which irks me. There is a reason that organized religion exists, and it's not because it's an evil hate monster.

Not just because it's an evil hate monster If you're denying that's not a pretty significant part of it, though, you've seriously missed some parts of the history and nature of religious organizations. None of them got big and none have stayed that way without leveraging quite a bit of antipathy, towards other religions at the absolute least. Plenty of other stuff, too, but being an evil hate monster (to indulge in your hyperbole, heh, since it's not quite that extreme, usually) is absolutely one of the reasons they exist.

Depends a lot on what circles you're running in, though. Folks that pay much attention to the practical/secular state of organized religions generally aren't exactly going to be impressed, these days. Even much of the good they do is tainted by inefficiencies or distortions that wouldn't be there if not for the support said practices feed back into the organizations or preconceptions that come with them (If you're looking for a particularly nasty example of the latter, look at the stateside Alcoholics Anonymous -- there's more going on there than just the religion aspect, but a lot of its worst practices are cored in it.). Add on all the ways many of said organized religions have been taking advantage of their status over the years and trying to shit on a lot of the secular stuff that's helping people to one extent or another (education in general, certain health issues, various civil issue, etc., etc.), and it gets increasingly difficult to give them more credit than a sort of, "Well, they're trying... I guess." And very easy to be rather more negative.

If you're around folks that give religious organizations fairly uncritical acceptance vis a vis their charity work (much of it of a "spiritual" nature, which is to say it's actually proselytizing and trying to exploit people down on their luck for conversions or running normal intraorganizational stuff and claiming it for tax purposes, rather than charity worth the title) et al, you'll see a lot more support, particularly when they're involved themselves in their local religious scene. They are often enough significant parts of a community, for better or worse.

But yeah, organized religion catches a lot of flak. Lot of flak to catch.

So, it could be said that the Internet hate machine got its start as the Muslim hate machine, though with different tactics (fewer firebombings).

... it could be said, it would just be freakishly, massively wrong, to the point of probably needing to be considered as an intentional and blatant lie intended to be supporting some issue that had little to nothing to do with the mentioned internet hate machine. Net's shit has pretty much fuck all to do with the stuff surrounding rushdie, and even less specifically to do with muslims. Could make the argument about religion in general, but you'd still be on hella' sketchy grounds. Largely different demographics, significantly different motivations, massively different degrees of actual offline power. The centuries of hatred religions have been peddling may be a related phenomenon, but that's the closest it gets.

Stateside history education is perhaps not the most stellar among the developed countries, tiru. Depending on the subject and school/region of the country, it can actually start leaning in the direction of what's charitably called "shit".

It passed by the time I woke up, fortunately. Just indigestion of one sort or another, heh.

I bring more stuff, too, ehehe. Not too many this time, though. Spent a fair amount of playtime passing turns to see if something went weird with dungeon exploration, wizard tower expansions, and market prices, rather than ranging more widely to see if anything breaks.
That stuff aside, how do you increase your mana reserves, anyway? Right now I've figured out you can reach tower 3 if you take channeling and build a crystal vault, but even building the second vault the third level opens up for you only gets you about half way to the mana cost on the forth level, and as near as I can tell anyone that doesn't take channeling is out of luck to get even that far, and woe betide the poor soul that doesn't build the vault. No way to deconstruct those expansions, heh.

Eh, fairly major organizational figures have come out in the U.S. saying stuff like encryption is a threat to national security. So cybersecurity is indeed that, but there's government officials that are openly opposed to it, stateside. Probably just odd wording and intending to mean discussing threats related to the subject, but it's more possible than it should be it's actually talking about discussing cybersecurity as a threat in and of itself.

Yes, it reveals a staggeringly empty understanding of how computers and the net works, but that doesn't much discourage some folks.

Think... what, tiniest scorpions are the smallest thing you can get outside battle? That'd be the target. Your entire religion hanging off the words of a bug smaller than your hand.