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

DesertFox 17 years ago

I think you are more agnostic than athiest. Athiest believe that there is no such thing as god at all, that it isn't possible, while agnostics are willing to accept the possibility, but make no certain claims or beliefs.

Beautiful lighting engine - mine sucks compared to yours.

happytrash 17 years ago

Few replies to the typical religious response, it's been said a hundred times and still accomplishes the exact magnitude as the religions do with their words, but with just a little more positivity.

Quote:

I really cant understand what the big deal/social taboo is about Atheism.

Really? Look harder! :)

Quote:

What makes one religion more probable than another?

Religions aren't really much about probability, so you're not gonna find much if that's where you're looking.

Quote:

Especially since they are generally based on supernatural occurrances and beings, so we cannot use past "natural" experiences as a yard stick.

If we used "natural" occurrences, it wouldn't be RELIGION. It would be History, something entirely different; that's similar to saying: why don't we study physics instead of math? Sometimes they may seem like they're all pursuing the same goal, but if you really look into them in detail, you'll find that they both can accomplish amazing things, just entirely different… that's all.

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. This is no wild discovery or breakthrough, it's something many have though, but lacks a bit of consideration, that's all.

I am not religious myself, though I am faithful. Cheers,

Adventus 17 years ago

Quote:

Athiest believe that there is no such thing as god at all, that it isn't possible,

Not always. I think Atheism has a much broader definition than that, for instance you could consider a newborn baby atheist since it is entirely ignorant of the question in the first place.

Still, i guess your right about the rant seeming more agnostic… i just didnt voice all of my views. For instance, I do not beleive there is such thing as a "god" as defined by religions (AKA human like…. very unimaginative if you ask me), but i am not willing to concede the possibility that supernatural forces dont exist.

happytrash 17 years ago

Quote:

Not always. I think Atheism has a much broader definition than that, for instance you could consider a newborn baby atheist since it is entirely ignorant of the question in the first place.

The religious viewpoint of a newborn baby. :|

Adventus 17 years ago

Quote:

This is no wild discovery or breakthrough, it's something many have though, but lacks a bit of consideration, that's all.

Well aware, and i do respect others for there religious beliefs. Hell, alot of my friends are christans. All i ask is for others to respect mine, as opposed to generating this social taboo.

Quote:

It sounds like your trying to argue for religion from a purely theoretical basis. Its like saying "because god dunnit" every time you try and explain something in physics. By the way your mathematics & Physics argument has at least one flaw…. tell me one "amazing" thing mathematics has done where it wasnt being applied to something physical?

Quote:

Terms you might want to read up on. Have fun

Yep, i dont really care what you call it….

happytrash 17 years ago

Quote:

Already lost. No, I wasn't arguing for anything. Theoretical? It's like you didn't even read what I wrote.

Look more into physics, you'll see how it differs from mathematics (which could also be subdivided). The only "flaw" would be the places where they intersect, which also happens with History and Religion (which I didn't deny oddly enough; I believe you may have assumed that my analogy did so). Either way, if you erase from your mind that I'm trying to argue for anything, and simply read the words I wrote, you'll see that it's not so theoretical. If you take away the red from purple, you get blue, which (thank you) is not red. There's no theory in that, and it's basically what I said using colors instead of practices.

Other than that, maybe you should be caring about researching before you rant, as Ace02's resources are pretty helpful when the terms are being communicated wrong to an audience.

Adventus 17 years ago

Wow, condecending…. I understand what your saying, i just dont like it. Your dividing these concepts up into defined non interdependant packets, and i dont beleive that this idea is applicable to life when your trying to describe it in such an overarching way.

Quote:

Look more into physics,

Im studying physics at ANU. I've already done a whole lot of "looking into".

Quote:

If we used "natural" occurrences, it wouldn't be RELIGION.

I said natural experiences (and by natural i mean "not induced"), anyway ever heard of Druidism?

Quote:

Other than that, maybe you should be caring about researching before you rant, as Ace02's resources are pretty helpful when the terms are being communicated wrong to an audience.

…. this is a blog…. I merely stated my views, you can call it what you want. I am not here to argue their definition.

happytrash 17 years ago

Quote:

Wow, condecending…

Oh yeah, if you're looking for attitude, you're looking for me! >D (this was alluding to the fact that many people seem to interpret my responses as a condescending or touchy, and they rarely are either… if you were ever to catch me in a bad mood, you'd probably want to take a picture to capture the moment =D)

Quote:

…. this is a blog…. I merely stated my views, you can call it what you want. I am not here to argue their definition.

Nobody is :) but we're here to read your viewpoint, and want to make sure we have it right (by the way, the blog was actually good. i haven't experienced much of a taboo with atheism, which is why the discussion interested me in the first place. it seems that a majority of teenagers these days seem to claim atheism near to them… but then again, to many, teenagers are pretty taboo ;) )

I'm not much opposed to you, as your statement about more frequent and extreme acts of faith holds some value (mind, it's hard to define extreme on the level of religious acts of faith :P some have gone soooo far…) I personally don't share the feeling of taboo that you mentioned is so prominent, though with such strong beliefs at hand, I can sort of understand how they exist. It would be like putting the owner of a dog butcher at the same table as a pet store owner… there's bound to be some negative vibes swimming around.

Hmm… the way I look at the latter part though, is that it's hard to use the fact that religion has few actual facts and evidence to back it up, thus rendering it less probable and easy to follow. (you didn't state it to this degree, I just stretched it because this is how many people seem to understand it). When you're agnostic, you need facts and evidence that your senses can read, and anything that doesn't fall into that category either is not true, or has yet to be proven. See, religion seems to be more about hope, faith, and belief, and if something is claimed to be true, it is founded by those three elements, nothing more (unless also some facts). Because agnostics understand through sight, smell, sound, and touch – and religions understand through belief, faith, and hope… I see them as being entirely different "studies", let's say. The man who can see looks at the moon with a telescope, and the man who can't goes there and feels his way around. If they both claim something different… there's trouble, because the blind man felt what he claims, and the seeing man saw what he claims. This coincides with your statement: "what makes one religion more probable than another", which I agree is silly, because there's no way to measure this probability. It's like trying to measure time with a yard stick – good luck.

Hope that clears it up a bit more :), it almost appears I'm actually in more agreement with you than disagreement. Coo'

ChevyRay

Adventus 17 years ago

To reiterate:

Quote:

What i was trying to convey is that if you take your viewpoint about religion as i interpret it (divide these things up into little non inter-related chunks) you move into a purely theoretical viewpoint where any argument can counter another (unlike maths where there are rules) and you've assumed the chunk exists in the first place…. therefore a totally useless observation.

happytrash 17 years ago

Quote:

What i was trying to convey is that if you take your viewpoint as i interpret it (divide these things up into little non inter-related chunks) you move into a purely theoretical viewpoint where any argument can counter another (unlike maths) and you've assumed the chunk exists in the first place…. therefore a totally useless observation.

I don't understand where it's becoming theoretical. Perhaps my previous post clears up a bit of what I was trying to communicate, because I had a pretty clear goal in mind when I thought it up, so unless I communicated it wrong, there should be no useless observations. And if there were, just ignore 'em, because it was obviously just a mistake on my part.