Its just such a shame that I can't get involved at all, as I said to dark,
the nearest roleplay shop, as far as I'm aware is in London, a bit of a
trek... and that there is no one local to play with.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Dakotah Rickard
Sent: 20 June 2012 05:05
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Redistributing RPG Source Books
The difficult thing for roleplayers compared to others is that we, if
we have even a basic imagination, can come up with and play in a world
with a vastly different religion than we believe in. I've seen
devoutly faithful of several religions play happily in a world with
god upon god upon god which interacted daily with their characters.
I've seen atheists play characters who are so faithful it makes one
wonder.
The thing is that people who don't roleplay just can't seem to
understand the ones who do. I was once asked how I could read about or
play games in worlds with such odd religions. My answer was simple. I
imagine, for a while, that the world is that way, and I have a good
time. There are people who really do take it too seriously. There are
people who get so into character that they seem to forget themselves
and become that character. This is just as unhealthy as any other
mental abaration. It just gets noticed more, because normal people
kill each other with guns, not swords and such, so when a nerd or
gamer or whatever spazzes and offs someone with a sword, everyone
spazzes right back.
As for religious conviction in the real world, I don't blame people
for sticking to their arguments. I prefer people to listen, but I find
myself daily admiring the faith of people who believe sometimes
directly in spite of the evidence they are given. It is easy to
believe in something proven. It is hard to believe despite contrary
evidence.
It all is tied together though, because roleplay is the great
equalizer. If people give it a chance, roleplay could end war. Why
fight when you could roleplay your fight instead. I'm sure that there
are plenty of people who would think it's a better system.
But screw the silly impractical stuff. Roleplay is great because it
builds oneself. How better to explore an aspect of your personality
than to put that aspect into a character, fill it out a little, and
see what happens. I'm a lot more patient, because I play a patient
character and find the virtue within myself.
Happy Gaming.
Signed:
Dakotah Rickard
On 6/19/12, Thomas Ward <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Dark,
Yeah, let's not go there. Besides being completely off topic for the
list if we start down the road of debating religion and ethics we will
be here until doom's day discussing it. Like it or not everyone has an
an opinion, right or wrong, and its amazing how drastically different
those opinions can be in scope. Especially, when a lot of the opinions
aren't based on rational observation and good old logic and reasoning.
For example, a year or two back a couple of Jehovah Witnesses knocked
on my door, and I let them in. They started in on their religious song
and dance, and happened to mention they were raising money on some
program to teach school age children about the Biblical Creation and
what a lie Evolution was. Unfortunately, for them they chose the wrong
guy to get into a debate with over Creationism vs Evolution. I'm a
pretty science oriented kind of guy, and I find the religious creation
stories rather dubious anyway. I've read a lot of the Creationism
arguments before, and they are scientifically weak, usually are based
on spurious information that is untrue, and try to defeat Evolution
by stating that creation is an all or nothing process. However, that's
beside the point here.
I asked them if they honestly thought the universe was only 6,000
years old. They told me that the bible says it is only 6,000 years
old, the earth was created in six days, etc. Well, I told them to
point me to the verse or verses that states how old the earth is. They
could not do that, because apparently its based on going throughout
the various genealogies given in Matthew, Luke, Genesis, etc and
coming up with some round about figure when the earth could have been
created, but nowhere does the bible actually say the actual age of the
earth and universe. What makes their argument even weaker if someone
studies the first chapter of Genesis the word translated as day in
English is misleading. In Hebrew the word could mean a day, a week, a
month, an eon depending on how you choose to interpret it.Point being
here that the bible doesn't actually say it was created in six literal
days, but that's just how Jews and Christians chose to interpret it
until science came along and proved that interpretation as impossible.
Since the word for day in Hebrew is so vague it may very well mean
millions and billions of years if a person is of a mind to interpret
it that way. Naturally, they didn't like the fact I could so readily
dismember their argument using the bible itself and we hadn't even
gotten to the scientific arguments.
I asked them about radio carbon dating which places the beginning of
the universe at some 15 billion years ago, and they told me it was
junk science. They told me radio carbon dating is horribly inaccurate
which is only partly true. Radio carbon dating isn't good for pinning
down an exact date but usually can date something to the correct
century give or take a hundred years. That's good enough for what we
are talking about here, and is accurate enough for most archeological
dating of items let alone the beginning of the universe.
Anyway, I then told them that the stars up in the sky are millions of
light years away and when they look at the stars at night the light
they see is already millions of years old. As you and I know the speed
of light is the great constant in the universe, figuring out the
distance of objects using light is easy to do, but they refused to
believe that. Instead they came up with some lame excuse that they had
to be a lot closer than astronomers claim and that the astronomers
simply are wrong.
Bottom line, I gave them three good rational arguments that disproved
their theory, their beliefs, but they chose not to open their minds
and listen to the my side of the debate. Instead they wanted to
continue believing in their opinion right, wrong, or otherwise. This,
I think, is the problem with religion. Some people once they become
convinced of some truth, think they are right, regardless of what
compelling evidence might prove them wrong in the long run. As they
say, "a person convinced against his will is of the same opinion
still." Therefore arguing with such people is fruitless.
Cheers!
On 6/18/12, dark <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Tom.
well those sorts of christians are nuts, and I agree they give
reasonable
christians a bad name the same way extreme muslims give the entirity of
islam a bad name (personally I don't like either group).
When I was in colidge a friend of mine always used to introduce me to
such
people, because, as a philosopher I could always manage to tie them in
knots. One of my favourite tactics was asking if mahatma Gandi had gone
to
hell for not being a christian, and when they admitted that he did
saying
"well okay then, ---- if hell is good enough for the greatest peace
activist
of the 20th century, it's good enough for me!"
In fact I've often thought if indeed those people are right and only
people
with those sorts of views go to heaven, ---- I really wouldn't want to
go
to
heaven! :D.
It can however be extremely unpleasant when they decide to start a witch
hunt. For example, my brother once had an awefull experience where he
went
to what he assumed to be a reasonable church. Outside, was a man
collecting
for the gay awareness charity. In the middle of the service the priest
actually stopped and told the congrigation about "the sinfull thing
going
on
outside the church" where upon after the service lots of people went
across
and gave the fellow at the gay rights stand a severely hard time, ----
and
yet god is love!
Sometimes I think that the worst instinct humans have is to band
together
in
groups and say "everyone in our group is right" whether that's national,
religious, racial, even disability based. But before this becomes a
discourse on ethics I'lls top.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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