So I arrive at the store last night to play some MW:DA, and everybody's like "You do know about the $15 entry fee tonight, right?"

No, not really.

"Yeah. The prize is the dropship. And apparently there's lots more cool stuff, too."

Oh, really.

BANK_ACCOUNT == BANK_ACCOUNT - 15;

So, to make a long story short, I pretty much dominate my first game, despite playing Dragon's Fury for some unknown reason, then proceed to get dominated my second and third games, though I was doing ok in my third until I started totally sucking.

But I got fellowship. Which resulted in my picking up some good mechs from each faction. And Rema outright gave me a DF Crimson Hawk and a couple DF Kanazuchis. That rocked. Then this guy is like "I'll give you this super-rare massive Mad Cat Mk II for your Republic Cougar!" Uh, ok. And then the horde of Spirit Cat guys that was another prize went unclaimed, and I'm like "Anybody want this? No? Ok then. *snag*

So then we played another one for kicks. Teams. Freaking Mr. "I am the God of Davion Mechs" sat there, ate my VTOLs, ate my mechs after I missed my 7 damage alpha strike by A FREAKING ONE, and I had to result to mega vehicular ramming action. Which failed. And we lost. Muchly. But it was fun.

And I got a bigger box, too. I love this game.

Dad sent me this. Amusing.

http://home.comcast.net/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html

I've been up for a rediculously long time. I believe I shall sleep first. But not before informing you of several things:

1. I got my copy of FM:Updates today. The Warm Fuzzy Feeling rides again.

2. A Perfect Circle kicks ass. I thank Whir for this.

3. Salsa Doritos also kick ass. In fact, everybody in the afterlife eats a lot of Doritos.

4. I soooo can't type for anything when I'm tired.

Yes. That was one of the lamest blog posts I believe I have ever made. But I'm a DEMENTED rabbit, remember.

Finished Children of the Mind last night. Last book in the series that starts with Ender's Game. Ponderances on the subject.

I've heard a lot of people say that you should stop after Speaker For the Dead, some after Ender's Game itself. I think they're wrong. For me, Xenocide and Children of the Mind were just as crucial to the plot as the first two. Certainly I found them all as engrossing as the last one, which is to say each one lasted from about 11pm to 6am or so the next morning.

The thing about the latter two, though, and especially Children of the Mind, is that Card goes on some really stratospheric philosophy and such. I expect most people miss it. _I_ missed it. I suspect that, were I to read the latter two books back to back while stoned, I would then immediately set up a shrine to Card. Maybe not. His center vs edge nations thing only sort of rings true with me, and is perhaps too overly simplistic. Dunno. In any case, they're a moving set of books, and that's fine. I read novels to be moved, not for philosophy.

So, the question is, besides Regina, did anybody understand what I just said?

Well, this took a bit of time to get to, but here we are. Marechal's very own topic.

Well you see now, it's not that we are opposed to scientific change. That's great stuff. I don't happen to be much of a science person, but one of my friends, who is also Lutheran, is a science geek. Science is good.
UNLESS it crosses the bounds of acceptable, ethical conduct. Stem cell research based on aborted fetuses, for example. Sure, the possible scientific benefits may be potentially great, but the cost in human life is too high. This, of course, requiring one to consider human life's beginning at conception. For those interested, there's lots of science out there on when the fetus can first move or think, etc.

Ignoring stem cells and aborted fetuses and such (I'm for choice, really, as opposed to straightjacketing, but that's really besides the point), we point directly to Evolution, the modern Theory of. We've been over that, been over the age of the earth and such, dinosaurs, etc, etc. There's a very lengthy thread on Tonto about the issue, even.

And I believe the word you want is "moral" as opposed to "ethical." I made the distinction before, I think. Again avoiding abortion, since I don't particularly care to open that particular can of worms.

Taking a step back into the general argument, the Lutheran Church, for example, is not based on "blind faith." I'd be happy to quote from the various articles of doctrine, one of which is that there can be no ... and forgetting the exact wording, but here goes "no disagreement between science and Scriptures" ... or something to that affect.

That misses my point entirely, I think. If we define "faith" as a belief in something that cannot necessarily be proven, then "blind faith" would be the extreme of that, where the one with the faith never actually questions that faith, never ponders WHY that faith exists, even in the face of the most withering criticisms. Back In the Day, a lot of these sorts of people got to be saints. More of the same randomly slaughtered a city full of Muslims and Jews during the Crusades. More of the same got rather explosive careers as suicide bombers and the like. As it's the last we're living with, I consider the last very dangerous. Thus you'll see me advocating a healthy dose of skepticism about everything. Up to and including church doctrine, which correct me if I'm wrong is how Luther got started in the first place, and up to and including $HOLY_BOOK. Blind faith isn't necessarily a property of a religion by itself, though faith is, but certainly a lot of the, oh, unwashed masses are prone to it. There's always been a certain intellectual elite to all religions. I happen to think they're wrong, but I admire what they do. I also happen to think that science is less prone to this, because it encourages skepticism. You can compare the difference to something like a cherryfunk debate on AOKH. He dominates for a reason, Marechal.

And yeah, leaving science to go free without constraints is ... tempting the unknown--for the lack of a better way to explain this. And yeah, hell, you're a movie type person... I'm sure you've seen plenty of movies demonstrating where man and science go ... too far. Eh?

Indeed, I even pointed out a few in my last post. Where I draw the line is attempting to impose a religious moral code, and remember what I said about inability to change, here, because, and this is key, societal ethics change over time, and one ought to keep up with that. We've had this discussion, too, about why we're not all Edwardian gentlemen.

As to the Inquisition, I keep bringing it up because it's one of the most brutal, most ugly episodes that I can think of about religion. It's what jumps to mind first thing. I could've used other things, since various stripes of Protestantism have their own little demons - witch hunts, oppression of the Jews (and Catholics, and each other, for that matter). I've mentioned Islam's little follies. I brought up Aztec religion once. If I could think of something particularly awful that the Buddhists or the Taoists or whoever did, I'd bring them up, too.

And ultimately, I bring up the Inquisition time and time again because it is the antithesis of everything I believe in. I know that under that regime, I would be destined for a period of torture and pain ending in my becoming a rabbit BBQ. You might say that I've a particular interest in the effects of the coupling of religion and state. More often than not, the effects aren't particularly nice, as typified by things like the Inquisition. You could even say that that particular study has made me a tad afraid of religion, and given me a desire to keep it as powerless as I possibly can. Which is nothing against the individuals, mind you.

I think this is a bit too large for the comments pane, so...

Quoth Regina:

That was really informative. Thanks. :)

Question: do you view bad things that come from religion as the natural progression of religion and its logical conclusion? Or are they abuses of a system that could work?

Yer welcome.

That's a sort of complex question, and I may or may not be able to answer it well, but I'll try.

Start with this thread here. There's some exceedingly long pontificating there that might be of some use.

To attempt to answer it directly... it depends on the "bad thing" in question. Blind faith, frex, can be a "logical conclusion" of religion. It isn't for all people, but for a lot of them it is. Yet it's possible to have blind, unreasoning faith in, say, friends, political leaders, etc. So it's not just religion, though religion's got it.

Same idea with the importance of priests and the rise of the Inquistion. I view the priesthood as a logical conclusion of pretty much all religions. The Inquisition, not so much - clearly it didn't arise in a lot of places and/or religions. One could also draw a comparison between it and the Stalinist purges for one, which is clearly an irreligious thing.

Fundamentalism is more a societal movement than a religious one, really, insamuch as conservatism and/or stagnation almost always set in in any society after a certain point, religions included.

Not sure if that answers the question entirely, though, so we'll try another way, if I can articulate it correctly.

IMHO, religion is flawed not so much because of the bad things associated with it[1] than because it by and large doesn't have the capacity for reasoned change at a fundamental level. There's a bunch of reasons for that, but that's the heart of it. OTOH, science as a system has gone through any number of changes, abandoning theories and the like as it becomes necessary. In the end, I think that will mean that science will end up being able to satisfactorally explain everything or most things, while religion will forever be stuck with some manifestation or another of the Will of God or what have you. That as an explanation for the world rings totally false to me. I'm not even sure I can comprehend it on anything other than a basic level. Nevertheless, an awful lot of people are perfectly happy with that as an explanation for things. On the other other hand, a lot of people are perfectly content with space aliens and Atlantis as an explanation for things, too. *shrug*

Still not sure if that did it, but it was a try.

[1] - You can, if you want, associate a lot of bad stuff with science and/or athiesm or whatever, too. The great dictators of the 20th century, for one. Nazi gas chambers for another. The atomic bomb, for yet another. Are those necessarily the logical conclusions of science? No more than the Inquistion or the Crusades were necessarily the logical conclusions of religion, I'd say. Either one is prone to certain things, but not necessarily.

And lo, here we are again. Responses to comments and the like. Regina's fault, Marechal's fault. Yes.

Giantly long post ahead, Cap'n!

To quote myself from July 5th:

Religion, on anything more than a purely personal level, is our enemy. I say this as an athiest, of course, and with a nod to the discussion on the nature of monotheisms and organized religion in the Tonto thread. To continue with that, religion is our enemy because faith and reason, faith and science can after a certain point no longer co-exist. As it is reason and science that are the keys to any sort of progress socially, materially, or otherwise, blind religious faith must be cast aside and replaced with a capacity to be skeptical and question our surroundings until we are left with an answer that is satisfactory. A life-encompassing scientific method, if you will.
Now, followers of moral monotheism will and have said to me that the end result of athiesm is an abandonment of morality, and that athiests will lose all thought of "good behavior" using, say, Communist China or Russia as an example. To that, I say that morality can be replaced with ethics - and there is a subtle distinction, in that morality is what our religion tells us is right, while ethics is what we tell ourselves is right. Athiests can be ethical beings, and as I am one such person, I ought to know.

To quote Marechal:
I would also contest your generalization that progress only comes from science and reason.

I said what I said on the subject primarily because it was the scientific revolution that began in the late Middle Ages that has led us to the world we live in today. That revolution has led us to what I think every one of us would deem a "better" world, especially in first world nations. We have, for the most part, conquered disease. Everyone but the very poor lives a materially better life than his ancestor of even 150 years ago (perhaps even 100 years ago or even 50 years ago). On the flip side of that, it is my observation that, in Europe and the Middle East, said progress was largely inhibited by both Christianity and Islam, never mind that most of the early scientists were religious men - obviously Islam has fallen far from being the height of learning and culture, and as for Christianity, let us note the Inquisition, of both types but especially the Spanish one. In today's world, it is largely "fundamentalist" Islam/Christianity that is opposed to whatever the latest new research topic is.

On a tangent, we note that religion HAS been successfully coopted in a lot of Asian countries, and I'm specifically thinking here of the Meiji reshaping of Shinto as a Japanese national religion. For whatever reason, religion never really stood in the way of science there. Differences in theology, perhaps, or a simple realization that if they didn't catch up to the West technologically, they were screwed. Whatever.

People gathered around a pipe organ on Sunday mornings singing hymns is not an "evil" thing.

It's not the social gathering part that freaks me out. It's the bit where a few thousand years ago somebody said "this is how the world works" and for the most part you aren't supposed to question any of that, or, and this is important, what the priests say. Yes, I know Papal infalliability went out the window some time ago, but it seems to me that a lot of that hasn't gone away just yet.

Regina's turn.

The first thought that pops into my head upon reading this is that, actually, Christianity makes the most sense of anything I've ever heard. Note: I did not say most rational, but makes most sense, on more levels than the logical one. It's as Pascal said: "The heart has its own reasons, about which reason knows nothing whatsoever." Y'know how it is, when you read a book, and it not only makes logical sense, but emotional sense? (For me, that would be Lord of the Flies. First book I ever read that did that and it blew me away.) See, Christianity is like that for me. Only multiplied.

Two things. Firstly, the thing to understand about where I'm coming from is that I am by and large not an emotional person. I can be, in various ways, but I also attempt and I think do maintain a certain rational detachment from things. That ought to be fairly apparent in my little championing of science and reason here, and my musings on superstition and the like elsewhere on this blog. So I can see where you're coming from, but I don't really operate that way myself. OTOH, on a tangent, I can be moved by books/movies/whatever, but only in an emotional release sort of way. To make sense of something, I then rely on logic.

Secondly, you'll remember as how I once said that I think Christ had some good things to say. And most religions I can think of off top of my head have some good things to say, or they obviously wouldn't catch on with anybody. The only exception I can think of is Aztec religion, which is a scary, scary thing from what I know of it. But anyway. My whole point is that I absolutely cannot stand the moral codes many religions enforce, because not only where most of them written a Long Time Ago, you can't change them at all for the times, 'cause, uh, they're the mandated Word of God. That's also aside from whatever the priestly hierarchy tacks on to that to put themselves in charge.

Faith vs. science: If faith is belief in that which is not proven, and science is the study of that which is provable, then wouldn't faith *have* to continue existing until we knew everything that was provable? And even then, wouldn't faith still have to exist, seeing as how we can't know everything?

That's the paradox, really. I'm sitting here preaching about eliminating faith in religion, and advocating faith in the thing that's supposed to replace faith, only it hasn't yet. Where I think science is superior, though, is that when a theory or something is proven wrong, it can be changed or abandoned relatively painlessly. This same process usually leads to centuries of warfare for a religion. See also: Protestant Reformation, The. The other thing I think science has going for it is that scientific knowledge is expanding all the time. We might know everything yet, but it's not for lack of trying.

And to re-iterate: There's a difference between religious faith and blind religious faith - there are some religious scholars who are amazingly smart, frex. One of the things that I have found so great about Christianity is that you can question it and it still makes sense. The more I read the Bible, the more questions I come up with, and the more answers I eventually get. It's an amazing process.

*ponders this for a time* Yes, there are differences. And I hope it should be obvious that I view the real enemy as blind religious faith, and indeed blind faith in anything. OTOH, it also seems to me that religions are much more predisposed to blind faith than science is. The scientific method is a wonderful instrument in that regard. And certainly Christianity (and other religions) can and have been questioned, and that's being done moreso now than ever before. OTOH, there are certain limits. It's pretty hard, in my mind to question something like the Ten Commandments. It has also been sort of hard historically to question whoever the head of the church was. *shrug*

That makes a bit of sense, I hope.

So yeah, I'm interested in what you think about that. As I am interested in what you just said. :)

And this post ought to make it clear that I'm interested in what you (and everyone else) has to say. Especially, for the obvious reasons, here. I always read the comments. I might not always reply, but I always read and appreciate the comments.

Well, hrm. Boring, really. Cole came back, so we hung out. That was fun. Hopefully we'll do that LAN session tonight and play a lot of CFS3.

Epic 31 appears to be a smash hit both here and over at RBCiv, where I even made the Quote of the Moment. This is good. Very happy about this.

Kings of the French is more or less done, now, but more on that later.

The Redoran Mod is...proceeding. Somewhat slowly, since interior decoration takes a while. Quite a while, no less. But we're now mostly done with interiors now, and it's on to quest and dialogue scripting. Aeeyah.

Well, Epic 31 is up now over in the Civ section. Lots of fun, even if I did pretty much play it in three six-ten hour sittings.

And then I stayed up all night reading because I could. That was fun. Least I did some work on the Redoran Mod first, so Samson'll be happy.

You'll also note that I've said nothing about having a job, here.

Not that anybody but Whir is around to be reading this anyway, but oh well.

New page stuff - linked to a bunch of Civ 3 Epics that've been around for a while but not linked. Did that in preperation for Epic 31, which I shall go play in a few minutes.

Saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen today with Mom. Spent the first half of the movie thinking "This movie is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too cheesily bad." Then about halfway through, I shrugged, realized that it was a fairly enjoyable cheesily bad movie for all of that, and sat back and enjoyed it. Not the height of great cinema, but worth watching on video if you need something.

OTOH, all the previews for everything looked like crap. ENOUGH with fucking Seabiscuit already. I don't CARE. Actually, the only movies I think I care about for the rest of the year are that Tom Cruise in Japan thing...Last Samurai or something, just because, well, it's Japan and it's Meiji period, and Meiji Japan is cool; Bad Boys II, because the first one ruled, and, well, Will Smith likewise rules; Matrix Revolutions for the obious reasons, and Return of the King for just as obvious reasons. And I swear when the DVDs all come out, I'm going to sit down and binge on LOTR DVD watching for like a day straight. It'll rock.

In other news... Kings of the French is almost done. I've got what may well be the last reign. Hopefully. It's about time. On to newer, more Holy Roman things.

And something else I was thinking about in the theater. People, for the most part, are simple beings. The world is a very complex thing, and we like explanations for all of that, but scientific explanations are generally pretty complicated, and they're not all that exciting. And we like excitement, too. So we revel in, well, mysticism, be it religion or funky New Age astrology in the newspaper. Whatever. Somehow we relate better to the stars controlling our lives or government conspiricies than free will or terrorism. It's easy. It's exciting. We like both.

And this thought, interestingly enough, I came up with while watching previews for, um, Tomb Raider, I think. And some funky Catholic supernatural mystery thing. *shrug* The mind is a funny thing.

I finally finished writing forum posts and emails. And I only wrote like three, which should tell you something.

At any rate, most of my assorted wordage has been on the subject of religious theory, which is always quite amusing to me as the athiest I am. This may be of interest if you like such discussion. My bit begins in reply to _real's massive July 4th post.

I've got a certain tangent from that discussion, which is why Islamic fundamentalism is our enemy, among other things. I won't post it there, for it's fairly inflamatory, but I'll post it here. You the reader may be offended by it.

Religion, on anything more than a purely personal level, is our enemy. I say this as an athiest, of course, and with a nod to the discussion on the nature of monotheisms and organized religion in the Tonto thread. To continue with that, religion is our enemy because faith and reason, faith and science can after a certain point no longer co-exist. As it is reason and science that are the keys to any sort of progress socially, materially, or otherwise, blind religious faith must be cast aside and replaced with a capacity to be skeptical and question our surroundings until we are left with an answer that is satisfactory. A life-encompassing scientific method, if you will.

Now, followers of moral monotheism will and have said to me that the end result of athiesm is an abandonment of morality, and that athiests will lose all thought of "good behavior" using, say, Communist China or Russia as an example. To that, I say that morality can be replaced with ethics - and there is a subtle distinction, in that morality is what our religion tells us is right, while ethics is what we tell ourselves is right. Athiests can be ethical beings, and as I am one such person, I ought to know.

And I'll end with that. Have I managed to piss everyone off? ;)

These are always kinda pointless and fun. Pegged me reasonably well, even.

Your Brain Usage Profile

Auditory : 43%
Visual : 56%
Left : 43%
Right : 56%

Erik, you possess an interesting balance of hemispheric and sensory characteristics, with a slight right-brain dominance and a slight preference for visual processing.

Since neither of these is completely centered, you lack the indecision and second-guessing associated with other patterns. You have a distinct preference for creativity and intuition with seemingly sufficient verbal skills to be able to translate in any meaningful way to yourself and others.

You tend to see things in "wholes" without surrendering the ability to attend to details. You can give them sufficient notice to be able to utitlize and incorporate them as part of an overall pattern.

In the same way, while you are active and process information simultaneously, you demonstrate a capacity for sequencing as well as reflection which allows for some "inner dialogue."

All in all, you are likely to be quite content with yourself and your style although at times it will not necessarily be appreciated by others. You have sufficient confidence to not second-guess yourself, but rather to use your critical faculties in a way that enhances, rather than limits, your creativity.

You can learn in either mode although far more efficiently within the visual mode. It is likely that in listening to conversations or lecture materials you simultaneously translate into pictures which enhance and elaborate on the meaning.

It is most likely that you will gravitate towards those endeavors which are predominantly visual but include some logic or structuring. You may either work particularly hard at cultivating your auditory skills or risk "missing out" on being able to efficiently process what you learn. Your own intuitive skills will at times interfere with your capacity to listen to others, which is something else you may need to take into account.

So Laura and I saw The Hulk tonight, and it was, uh. Um. Something. It had good parts, and the story went ok right up until the end, except for the parts that, well, didn't go ok. It looked damn cool. And it felt like every second of the two and a half hours I sat watching it.

Also finished Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. It's one of those books that you like without really liking, I suppose. I mean, for starters, the premise is totally whacked - 99% of Europe's population dies off in the Black Plague, nobody else feels a thing. Sorry, thanks for playing. Also, he uses this funky reincarnation thing as a plot device that sort of exists, but is sort of pointless at the end of the day. And then there's the ObFeminist ranting and the Marxist revolution in China and how everyone in the world becomes a big happy communal society. Very much a political-views-of-the-author book. And yet for all that it's a good book, with some interesting stories in it, and I like his world-building. Ah well.

Oh, and I started a solo f/m/t character for Baldur's Gate, with the intention of doing a full clear on BG, TOTSC, BG2, and TOB. Yes, I am insane.