64Digits

Im an Atheist.... + Good "Tribal" pic

Posted by Adventus on April 10, 2007, 11:35 p.m.

Rant: the passage below is purely my opinion, feel free to disagree in the comments….

Yep you heard right, im one of those godless people bent on destroying the human race.

All jokes aside, I really cant understand what the big deal/social taboo is about Atheism. From my experience, Its very rare you come across someone who will openly call themselves an atheist, even in fairly unreligious countries like Australia. Its not like I wish harm upon anybody, or harbour hatred of other religious beliefs…. actually all i really hold true is the thought that, even if there is some form of supernatural force, what's the chances we know exactly who they are? Still i do not condemn the ideals, virtues and holy relics upheld by specific religions, i just treat them from a scholarly perspective…. to me, they are artifacts designed to teach from what was learnt in the past, not words from the gods themselves.

One effect the declining numbers of "church going" people in western countries have caused, is that the extreme faithfuls now have greater power over their particular sect. This has lead to greater animosity between paricular religions, and increased extreme acts of faith.

I remember in high school a teacher once telling me you've got to really smart and sure of yourself to be an atheist…. I replied "Probably less sure of yourself than to explicitly follow a single religion". What makes one religion more probable than another? Especially since they are generally based on supernatural occurrances and beings, so we cannot use past "natural" experiences as a yard stick.

Life:

Just got off uni (which is really cool, by the way) for 2 weeks break, but i've still got 2 assignments which sucks, especially since one is a group assignment AKA one person (me) ends up doing all the work. Just discovered that my Aunty converted to Mormon-ism which finally tipped me over the edge and made me write the rant.

GameMaker:

Done a little work on Tribal, mainly makes sprites and backgrounds so i can develope a consistent artistic style. Just discovered why i never made high res games in the past…. animation. Making the textures is fairly easy but animating it is a real bitch…. so ive developed a simple skeleton based system (single object though) for the humans.

Also made it so you can change the lighting quality on the fly…. which is having a wierd build up of video memory usage which i cant quite pin down (maybe another bug to add to the tally). Implemented a super secret smoothing techniques and a blur to the lighting so scaled surfaces dont look as bad. The super secret part refers to drawing them at 0.5,0.5 pixels instead of 0,0 because if you have linear interpolation on it will do a hardware accelerated 2x2 box blur…. neat.

Also moved back to GM6…. I know yoyo blogs are banned but i gotta say GM7 is really shitting me.

Heres a few good quality picture of tribal with new, more consistent sprites and showing what difference changing the light quality has:

Cheers,

Comments

Polystyrene Man 17 years, 7 months ago

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I think you are more agnostic than athiest.

That's what I was thinking, too.

Cesque 17 years, 7 months ago

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The religious viewpoint of a newborn baby. :|

"No, everyone is born Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest "cover" of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims."

- Top #1 on Fundies Say The Darndest Things list.

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That's what I was thinking, too.

And me! And me!

OL 17 years, 7 months ago

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Takes a bit deeper searching and acceptance to realize where this stuff comes from… but realize that there are a lot of believers in this world, which do outnumber, and within those masses are a lot of smart people, and I'm sure they all have a good reason for believing what they believe.

They may do, but there is one thing you have to take into account is that just because a lot of people follow something doesn't make it any more true.

Humans tend to follow each other. Like sheep. Once someone starts something that appeals to our human nature it is very quickly spread and people start to catch on, it's a psychological effect.

Thats why religion is so widespread, as it plays to the very human nature to want to believe that we are not all alone, that there is somebody taking care of us.

People want to make sense of things, religion gives the masses a very easy and appealing way of doing that. It spreads further and further because of the almost brainwashing techniques of its followers, giving young and impressionable children no chance to think for themselves before being forced into believing something.

It takes a strong person, a free thinker to branch off and not simply follow everybody else mindlessly. That's why we're outnumbered in this world.

Cesque 17 years, 7 months ago

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Humans tend to follow each other. Like sheep.

I wonder whether this sheep comparison has any plausible ethological basis…

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Thats why religion is so widespread, as it plays to the very human nature to want to believe that we are not all alone, that there is somebody taking care of us.

Let me use Dawkins' words for "God": the big alpha male in the sky.

OL 17 years, 7 months ago

Dawkins rules

happytrash 17 years, 7 months ago

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They may do, but there is one thing you have to take into account is that just because a lot of people follow something doesn't make it any more true.

Then I'm on the right track :P t'wasn't quite what I was inferring ;)

But I do agree, humans are sheep. I don't think it takes much of a strong person to stray off, I just think it takes the right mindset. Some people are born with an indifferent mindset, but others just follow like sheep because they don't know any better. If you show them differently, many people find it quite easy to take a wild road; so I don't think it's necessarily those of us who "branch off" are much stronger, just lucky =D

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Thats why religion is so widespread, as it plays to the very human nature to want to believe that we are not all alone, that there is somebody taking care of us.

That could be right, for a good part; there's nothing too wrong about that conclusion, though. Also, I know some free-thinkers who are devout Christians as well. It takes a pretty strong mind to be able to believe in something that, by no clear or sensible evidence, even exists :P (either that, or a crazy one…)

DFortun81 17 years, 7 months ago

Yeah, I agree with DF. You seem more Agnostic than Athiest. Welcome to the club. :]

DFortun81 17 years, 7 months ago

Nice argument, OpticalLiam.

omicron1 17 years, 7 months ago

Here's a question for you: Is believing something that defies the established laws of physics - believing without proof - religion?

->happytrash: It is not an example of wisdom to disbelieve something just because other people follow it. There is one truth in this world; the wise will try to find that truth.

While Dawkins claims to dislike religion because "it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding how the world works," in reality, both atheism and agnosticism suffer from that fault. Agnosticism should be obvious - proponents believe that they cannot find the truth, and therefore, call themselves agnostics. Atheism, too, bases its ideas on what people can see and know - but I have yet to see an atheist who can explain the existence of matter when the law of conservation of energy states that this should not be so. The best they have come up with so far is that our knowledge is insufficient to determine the answer - yet they still believe. I'd like to know what Dawkins believes, considering that every alternative seems to be something he dislikes. Finally, what Dawkins mentioned does not apply to religion - I believe that religion is the ONLY thing that actually explains how the world works. It's the people who think that God can't be the answer who are guilty of this, simply because they discard a valid possibility for no apparent reason.

I've never seen or read anything to make me believe that a vacuum can suddenly contain matter. If you believe this, I suggest you seriously reconsider.

There is one truth in the world - if God is God, follow Him. If there is no God, go about your daily life. But if you do not know and do not try to know, you are not wise, for no matter what the real truth is, you did not believe it.

OL 17 years, 7 months ago

Quote: happytrash

I don't think it takes much of a strong person to stray off, I just think it takes the right mindset … so I don't think it's necessarily those of us who "branch off" are much stronger, just lucky =D

I didn't mean strong in that way, maybe it was the wrong word, but it takes someone who doesn't just take the easy route and follow everybody else. Oh that and your environment, I mean I don't consider my self a strong minded person but I've never felt the need to believe in any religion. That's because I live in England and nobody cares about religion here. That was soo middle ages.

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Here's a question for you: Is believing something that defies the established laws of physics - believing without proof - religion?

No, not always, for example believing in ghosts. Though you can call it what the hell you want if it makes you happy. What was the point of that question? Unless it was meant to be rhetorical…

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Agnosticism should be obvious - proponents believe that they cannot find the truth, and therefore, call themselves agnostics.

Whoa, they believe they cannot find truth? What if their truth isn't what you think it is? Just because they're on the fence doesn't mean they wont try contribute to furthering human understanding.

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Atheism, too, bases its ideas on what people can see and know - but I have yet to see an atheist who can explain the existence of matter when the law of conservation of energy states that this should not be so.

Um, are you sure? Where did you get that from? I'm by no means a physics expert but I've never heared that. I've heared that the conservation of energy states that energy can never be created or destroyed, only change states.

Where does matter come in? If it does, I think that matter can be described as a form of energy. Relativity baby! As Wikipedia says: "In relativity theory, mass and energy are two forms of the same thing, and neither one appears without the other."

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I believe that religion is the ONLY thing that actually explains how the world works. It's the people who think that God can't be the answer who are guilty of this, simply because they discard a valid possibility for no apparent reason.

NO APPARENT REASON? It just goes to show that science will never get through to religious fundies. They simply cannot understand. The reason God is discarded as a possibility is that there is not a single scrap of plausible evidence on the planet that he even exists.

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I've never seen or read anything to make me believe that a vacuum can suddenly contain matter. If you believe this, I suggest you seriously reconsider.

If you believe that it was the work of some supernatural being, I suggest you seriously reconsider. The rest of us will continue refining our theories until we can explain it fully. Which will probably be never.

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Me no speak Engrish.