The Antichristian Phenomenon

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We’re used to Hollywood portraying Atheists as cynical and bitter personalities who only need the slightest push to see the light as part of their redemption (or alternatively serve as a handy character to kill for being too rational.) Usually we can point out and avoid movies which play on those ridiculous archetypes but sometimes this nonsense comes at you from where you least expect it.

Such was my experience with Dragon Age, which after my recent escapades during its procurement, now gives me another reason to blog in relation to it. You see, this game not only features de-facto atheists as part of your band of “heroes”, not only does it feature them in a profoundly Holywood way but it goes at that extra step to make sure we get the point.

As far as I’ve progressed in the game, I’ve encountered two characters who can be rightly proclaimed as atheists. One of them is the Wild Witch Morrigan which even though is a mage shows a strong disbelief to “The Maker” (A monotheistic deity whose religion is similar to the Christian one) and the other is Shale, a stone Golem which I’ve only had with me for a bit and speaks like an agnostic but already shows strong tendencies towards atheism.

You get the religious views of those two characters mainly by having them in your party at the same time as you have the ultra religious Leliana which then strikes up casual dialogue with either of them on this topic while you’re walking in cities. From those ambient discussions, you quickly realize the beliefs of the two atheists while also getting the classic Holywood trope about atheism. Even though the discussions are quite humorous at times and entertaining in their own right, especially at the parts where Morrigan wonders why she should believe in anything without proof, they quickly turn annoying when instead of showing a person who has a solid basis in their worldview, they paint those characters as insecure and afraid (deep down).

“I’m feel sorry for how isolated and alone you must feel in your life” Leliene says at the end of an exasperating discussion with Morrigan. “Er…I…none of your business.” retorts Morrigan, making obvious to all that she does indeed feel isolated and lonely. I couldn’t help but feel why she couldn’t answer like I would.  “You’re mistaken, I’m far from lonely” or even “I like it that way.” In short, any kind of retort that an atheist who is not insecure in his life would give.

But that’s not the worst of it, far from it in fact, if that was all I wouldn’t really mind it. What really annoys me is not simply that those two are cynical, bitter or whatever but that they’re both downright evil! And this is quite the explicit kind of evil mind you, not the vague moral choices that seen from the right perspective might lead to some interesting ethical questions, but the “who cares for suffering, just give me unlimited power no matter the costs” kind of evil that only exist in the cartoonish villains of Hollywood. Morrigan is by far the worse of course, abundantly disproving when I even think of helping the downtrodden and blatantly approving of only the most vile acts (examples: -5 approval for simply convincing a merchant not to exploit the desperate refugees. +7 approval for opting to allow the evil demon to possess a child.)

Shale on the other hand openly admits in disliking humans, consider itself a far superior being, has no issue with wanton violence and is of course, quite hearless about it. This wouldn’t be an issue in itself but when coupled with it openly promoting rationalism and critical thinking, once more one tends to say “Now hold on a goddamn minute!”

Now let me here point out that I have no problem with there being evil Atheists in games. Not at all. However I’d like some basis on this evil which here simply doesn’t exist. Morrigan seems to be wishing the evil options for the sake of being evil. The excuses for the disapproval the character gives are laughable only only serve to point out the shallowness of her worldview which makes the fact that she ignores the obvious result of doing the good thing as benefiting our own mission even more annoying. For example, during a mission where I had to convince a king to help me, I reached his castle only to find that undead were pouring out of it and attacking a nearby village. It made perfect sense to protect the village during the attack and then once the undead were destroyed or lessened, I would go in the castle. Then the obviously thankful King would be more willing to help me out. However for Morrigan helping the village was a big no-no so I got penalized for doing the sensible thing.

So evil atheists are not a problem but when you have only the (blatant) Atheists as goddamn evil bastards while the theists are all little goody-two-shoes angels who approve of all the good stuff (and of course the game doesn’t give any proper moral choices, only caricaturish black&white options) and only care for helping the poor, then one can’t help but make the appropriate assumptions.

While the game could have put a nice perspective into the oppression of organized religion in the form of the templars, we’re rather told that they’re in fact right for being so oppressive since all those people they oppress are kind obviously powerhungry fucks. So again religion + authority + strict rules  = good while individualism + atheism + freethought = bad.

For me thus, the problem does not simply simply lie in the fact that some Atheists are portrayed as powerhungry bastards, it lies in the fact that all atheists are such while all the theists are, quite explicitly, good. Would it hurt to have some of the theist heroes be intolerant of, say elves and dwarves (maybe some are, I haven’t seen all of them yet). Would it hurt to have some of them disproving of alternate sexualities? And on the same track, it wouldn’t hurt if some of the atheists weren’t total bastards all the time. It really pokes me in the wrong way where either I have to make total dickish choices with my character (eat babies!) or to lose the only two characters I like since they will disapprove of me so much.

Unfortunately this is a perfect example of the Hollywood-type worldview, on games which enter the same mainstream as movies. When the budgets and risks get into the same range, only the same safe bets in displayed morals and ideas can be played and thus culture might just as well go down the same shallow drain. I’m afraid that as long as profits are on the line, morality will always remain black and white and cuddle the theists who wish to claim the moral high ground. After all, in aggregate, they have the most money don’t they?

Quick note: Scott Pruett has started answering the initial refutations to his 10 questions and in his latest post he has started including answers from the ACP. Unfortunately I’m on vacation at the moment and can’t answer but feel free to take a shot at it.

Very shortly: This time he is tackling the answers to the ‘Order’ question. Unfortunately his answers can be simply surmised as him falling back onto his ‘Creation’ question. He turned the question from “How can the universe be finely tuned to human life” to “Why have a universe that can sustain any kind of life rather than no life” this is aking to saying “Why is there a universe”.

And my answer to that question is the same as before.

(h/t FaithlessGod)

Through the Austro-Athenian Empire I’ve noticed LifeWay presenting 10 questions to Atheists and I thought this is a good reason to activate the ACP once more. Hopefully, the rest of the co-writers around here will add their part as always.

So LifeWay presents these questions which fortunately avoid becoming strawmen as I expected and display an actual willingness to hear the other side of the story. Wether anything good will come of it or wether the answers provided will be quote-mined for a nefarious cause is yet to be seen, but from me, you’ll get the Epicurean perspective.

I am only going to quote the actual question part of each point to save space. LifeWay has written a bit of introduction to each question so I’d advise you check out what the reasoning behind it is.

Edit from Anath: Added my responses, more to come as they are added in the forum thread.  Each person’s response will be marked with their name, so readers can choose to read only responses from a particular author if they like. (more…)

Yep, it’s that time of the year again where I approve all the journals waiting for many long months and present you with some that I found interesting.

• LeaTelamon continues her Dissection of Death Metal. More innards!
• Doomface has a rant about Giftmas and how the whole thing becomes so annoying to those poor and uncreative of us.
• Self-MadeWolf takes us on a tour of the genres in Gothic music. Interesting to see what exactly the fine distinctions are. They all sound similar to me :-/
• KhaosWolf666 brings us a very nice view on Islam from an Iran-born activist.
• And finally VampyreAngel discovers some interesting nuggets of info on Wikipedia on a bored day.

So that’s all for now. If you want to be included in the next version of the Journal Roundup, simply write an interesting Last.fm journal and submit it to the ACP group. Once I go through and approve them, I will select those which have more than 2 minutes of thought put into them for the next roundup.

I’m thinking of making this feature a more regular thing, like a carnival for the last.fm people. Of course this depends on having a decent amount of journals posted to choose from. What do you think?

This is far beyond nasty, this is fucking insane

My pastor’s reaction surprised me. Instead of showing the Christian love that he had preached, he began to blame me for a multitude of problems that would occur as a result of my sudden decision. My wife’s reaction was even more surprising. She took me aside to tell me that she was praying for me. She then said these words, “I am praying two things for you: that you will either get right with God or that He will take you out!“

Do you know what is worse than leaving the faith and your own wife praying for your death? Leaving the faith and your wife joining your pastor to accuse you of child sexual abuse so that they can remove you from the family as quickly as possible.

Disgusting

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• Some of us had it easy
• Others watch bad pastors too

It’s been a slow time over at the ACP. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much of an activity going on around here. Perhaps I should get my cat ‘o nine tails ready to provide some…incentive.

Fortunately, in this slow period, someone decided to send us an email to explain why we go wrong. This is a historical moment as we haven’t actually received any such thing until now. I think it deserves a post of its own.

Our contact is Jonathon who by now has sent two different emails. He seems to be open to communication so in the spirit of openess, I will post the discussion here so that they rest of you might join in. I will provide the email as it was sent with my replies (which I’ve already sent back) in between. Feel free to comment on any part you wish. (more…)

Picture was taken from a Christian tourist shop in Toledo. I saw it and the title immediately came to my mind. You can’t get more emo than that.

UPDATE: Alternatives now available

If you can think of a better caption, let me know and I’ll create it

Image via Wikipedia

If you see the Christian religion, you will notice that in the fundamentals, there is a distinct call for repressing one’s pleasure. This is found from the very first calls for modesty, to the banning of masturbation and sinification (is that a word?) of sex. All of this of course if double as strong when related to women.

I’ve always wondered how can this Joylessness meme which exists in most Abrahamic religions keep replicating in most of their mutations, and occasionally getting so strong so as to deny all forms of pleasure. Especially compared to the pagan religions which not only lacked this meme but on the contrary celebrated all pleasures in life and even had gods specifically assigned to them.

Indeed, the Abrahamic religions went into great lengths to demonify all aspects of Paganism (especially those related to the pleasure gods) so as to convince people that such actions were to be avoided. This was certainly so that their own converts would not be sways by the very powerful pleasure meme. Of course, since the pagans themselves could not be convinced to give this up, other methods of…persuasion were implemented.

Shutting down human urges, especially the sexual ones seems like a recipe for disaster. It builds up aggression, breeds depression and generally is the source of a lot of bad things. Nevertheless, it survives.

I think there must be some kind of sister-meme which not only uses this pent-up pressure to feed and promote the religion but also gives a significant advantage in order to overcome the disadvantage such a behaviour creates to the spreading of the meme. Indeed, the easiest to figure out is one of the ways in which this is expressed in the extremely repressed religion of Islam, where the rules and bans are so much more severe, especially related to sexuality.

Aggression

There is a very strong activism part in Islam (especially the fundamentalist one) which is very difficult for Christians or Atheists to match. Indeed, the ease with which Muslims gather and go on the offensive at the smallest excuse is quite surprising for westerners. The answer of course lies in their own repression. A fundamentalist Muslim not only is controlled by a wealth of inane rules which make their life difficult but is also forbidden from using most of the things that would allow them to relax. Not only that, but because of the allowance for polygamy, it means that there are less women for each male (Most of them of course being taken by the richest and most powerful members of the society). Thus you have a large male populace which has a lot of pent-up aggression and no way to take it out.

Is it surprising that they jump to activism and violence at the drop of a hat? Not only that, but this is quite a powerful competitive meme because it keeps the religion pushing on everyone else and constantly being on the forefront or action.

But another question remains. How do the Christians get rid of the this aggression? It is obvious that the Joylessness meme still exists as exemplified by their constant attempts to stop anything of joy. In the western societies there is no biggest opponent to Sex, drugs and rock&roll than the fundamentalist Christians. Of course these are not the only things that they have in their target. Violent video games (which, incidentally are great for letting out steam), Alcohol (even when you don’t drink it), porn (masturbation facilitator) etc.

Until now, I didn’t have a clear answer to this. I know that fundamentalist Christians are of course much more easy to leap to activism but they are nowhere near the levels the Muslims achieve on a regular basis. Of course, the christian religion is much less repressed than Islam but still, all this pressure has to go out somewhere. They don’t drink, they don’t fuck, they don’t dance…or do they?

And another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Whereas normal people would go to a club and dance or headbang, these Christians, who I’m certain are frowning quite a lot at such excursions, think nothing of standing up in their church and doing the “Crazy Monkey”. I’m certain that when they return home, they must find that this was an exhilarating experience and they will choose to interpret their tiredness and strange feeling of peace as the touch of God, never realising that their own bodies need this kind of experience once in a while and those feelings is their own reward.

This practice in turn, not only allows the Christians to nullify the joylessness meme (to a degree) but it also uses that builtup emotion to feed their own god delusions.

In case you haven’t noticed, the voting for the Golden Crocoduck award is now running.

I can’t say much that the video does not say by itself. Basically you can cast your vote for the person who you believe is the biggest Liar for Jesus, where you can define “biggest” as the most ballsy, ridiculous, funny or whatever.

Potholer has created a handy list of nominees as well.

Unfortunately the format of the poll is kinda unwieldy as you’re supposed to leave your vote as a comment in the video (the one embedded) and the votes will be tallied. There’s much better ways to conduct a poll than this.

I’ve made a little poll for this as it might be a little more useful than the comments of a youtube vid and plus you can have a bit more organization. Unfortunately I can’t tell all the nominees from the vids (some don’t have names, some are not clear) and I can’t be bollocksed to link to every individual vid now (almost 4 am here). Perhaps tomorrow. Feel free to suggest any names I forgot and I will add them.

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Oh, and since we’re on the subject of votes, I thought I’d mention that the Blogger’s choice awards are ending in a few weeks and Non-Christians are nowhere near the top of the Best Religion Blog. So hurry up and cast your vote.