Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Monday, July 02, 2007
WARCRAFT AND RELIGION (p.s. I'M BACK)
First, I apologize to anyone who has spent the last months waiting for another post. Recently I have been feeling something--not quite writers' block, the feeling that you have nothing to write about, but rather a feeling that what I was thinking at the time wasn't worth writing about. After all, I don't lead a very interesting life. I work, I take classes, I play games, I spend time with friends, I expand my mind by reading. I haven't felt a deep need for something more, and most of all the prior activity seemed to be something to divert myself from middle-class ennui, which is probably the only thing that really sucks about being a white, middle-class male.
I came home from UMass Amherst and gotten a job at UPS to pay for night-school classes at closer-to-home UMass Lowell. I will not elaborate on this much (maybe in a future post). I will say, that since I'm only working part-time, with shifts lasting only four or five hours, I have what might be considered too much free time. This I have spent on two things.
One, I started playing World of Warcraft again, after leaving my account dormant for months. Only a few months after installing Burning Crusade and restarting again, my level 60 priest, Omni, joined another guild and reached level 70. My original goal of having a top-level character of every class has now expanded slightly, since all of them now much reach 70 rather than 60, but at least now I won't have to crate a shaman on another server just because of the restriction of PvP servers to characters of one side.
Two, I read many more things that caused my dislike for organized religion to solidify. I have continued to read the Truth For Youth comics and had another half an article written (will finish it soon and post it next) but also started to read blogs such as Atheist in a Minivan, Daylight Atheism, and the NoGodBlog on American Atheists' website. I picked up Sam Harris' The End of Faith in paperback, and found it fascinating. I also hope to read Dawkins' The God Delusion and Hitchens' God is Not Great. Also, there is the simultaneous hilarity and horror of the many quotes, written by actual fundamentalists on the internet, collected daily, on the website Fundies Say The Darndest Things. It keeps my attention, as much with the sheer depths to which religious people can sink, as with the witty comments and rebuttals written by its regulars. Finally, I am seriously considering joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation, since news stories I have been reading about politicians and their f**th seem to threaten my laissez-faire view of religion.
Somehow, these two things came together recently. Being level 70, Omni tends to spend a lot of time wandering around Shattrath City, the only major city in the expansion-only realm of the Outlands. One day, while standing near the center of the city, I encountered a number of Draenei sitting, facing another Draenei, who was standing, about to make a speech. Apparently Grand Anchorite Almonen was about to deliver some kind of sermon. Perhaps out of some role-playing spirit within me, and because of the fact that I was playing a priest, Omni sat down and listened. For about five minutes, I listened in on how the light within us all leads us to do good things, and how those who embrace this are blessed, and whose who turn are condemned to wander blindly. As the sermon ended, each of the anchorites listening rose in turn and intoned, "May it be so." And in the same role-playing spirit that led me to sit down, I likewise rose, spoke, /clapped at the speaker, mounted up and left.
Someone reading might seem to think that I'm on my way to becoming a theist. I don't know who, but I'm sure some fundie must think that I have some innate desire to worship god that is manifesting in this way. Not at all. My belief in a powerful omnipresent controlling force in a game is in no way related to belief in an omnipresent controlling force in real life.
Primarily, my belief in the light does have some supporting evidence. It can be proven that not only does it exist, not only that it grants powers, but that these powers are measurable. It is clearly delineated in my spell book: Greater Heal, rank 7, costs 710 mana, and heals from 2414 to 2803 hit points to its target. It measures, in a sense, how much belief and focus will yield how much result. There is nothing even remotely comparable in organized religion. There is no measure of how many prayers, how many candles lit, how many days fasting, will result in the miracles the faithful are purported to be able to do. Most likely this is because there is no correlation, and because prayer has no real effect, as scientific studies have borne out.
But the larger point, the one most of you probably grasped, is that it's just a friggin' game. The rules of the world are intelligently designed, by programmers in Blizzard's development department in Irvine, California. And unlike the rules laid out in holy books, they are available from multiple credible sources, clear and unambiguous, measurable, and independently verifiable.
Hopefully, I will be back to writing something at least once a month from now on.
First, I apologize to anyone who has spent the last months waiting for another post. Recently I have been feeling something--not quite writers' block, the feeling that you have nothing to write about, but rather a feeling that what I was thinking at the time wasn't worth writing about. After all, I don't lead a very interesting life. I work, I take classes, I play games, I spend time with friends, I expand my mind by reading. I haven't felt a deep need for something more, and most of all the prior activity seemed to be something to divert myself from middle-class ennui, which is probably the only thing that really sucks about being a white, middle-class male.
I came home from UMass Amherst and gotten a job at UPS to pay for night-school classes at closer-to-home UMass Lowell. I will not elaborate on this much (maybe in a future post). I will say, that since I'm only working part-time, with shifts lasting only four or five hours, I have what might be considered too much free time. This I have spent on two things.
One, I started playing World of Warcraft again, after leaving my account dormant for months. Only a few months after installing Burning Crusade and restarting again, my level 60 priest, Omni, joined another guild and reached level 70. My original goal of having a top-level character of every class has now expanded slightly, since all of them now much reach 70 rather than 60, but at least now I won't have to crate a shaman on another server just because of the restriction of PvP servers to characters of one side.
Two, I read many more things that caused my dislike for organized religion to solidify. I have continued to read the Truth For Youth comics and had another half an article written (will finish it soon and post it next) but also started to read blogs such as Atheist in a Minivan, Daylight Atheism, and the NoGodBlog on American Atheists' website. I picked up Sam Harris' The End of Faith in paperback, and found it fascinating. I also hope to read Dawkins' The God Delusion and Hitchens' God is Not Great. Also, there is the simultaneous hilarity and horror of the many quotes, written by actual fundamentalists on the internet, collected daily, on the website Fundies Say The Darndest Things. It keeps my attention, as much with the sheer depths to which religious people can sink, as with the witty comments and rebuttals written by its regulars. Finally, I am seriously considering joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation, since news stories I have been reading about politicians and their f**th seem to threaten my laissez-faire view of religion.
Somehow, these two things came together recently. Being level 70, Omni tends to spend a lot of time wandering around Shattrath City, the only major city in the expansion-only realm of the Outlands. One day, while standing near the center of the city, I encountered a number of Draenei sitting, facing another Draenei, who was standing, about to make a speech. Apparently Grand Anchorite Almonen was about to deliver some kind of sermon. Perhaps out of some role-playing spirit within me, and because of the fact that I was playing a priest, Omni sat down and listened. For about five minutes, I listened in on how the light within us all leads us to do good things, and how those who embrace this are blessed, and whose who turn are condemned to wander blindly. As the sermon ended, each of the anchorites listening rose in turn and intoned, "May it be so." And in the same role-playing spirit that led me to sit down, I likewise rose, spoke, /clapped at the speaker, mounted up and left.
Someone reading might seem to think that I'm on my way to becoming a theist. I don't know who, but I'm sure some fundie must think that I have some innate desire to worship god that is manifesting in this way. Not at all. My belief in a powerful omnipresent controlling force in a game is in no way related to belief in an omnipresent controlling force in real life.
Primarily, my belief in the light does have some supporting evidence. It can be proven that not only does it exist, not only that it grants powers, but that these powers are measurable. It is clearly delineated in my spell book: Greater Heal, rank 7, costs 710 mana, and heals from 2414 to 2803 hit points to its target. It measures, in a sense, how much belief and focus will yield how much result. There is nothing even remotely comparable in organized religion. There is no measure of how many prayers, how many candles lit, how many days fasting, will result in the miracles the faithful are purported to be able to do. Most likely this is because there is no correlation, and because prayer has no real effect, as scientific studies have borne out.
But the larger point, the one most of you probably grasped, is that it's just a friggin' game. The rules of the world are intelligently designed, by programmers in Blizzard's development department in Irvine, California. And unlike the rules laid out in holy books, they are available from multiple credible sources, clear and unambiguous, measurable, and independently verifiable.
Hopefully, I will be back to writing something at least once a month from now on.
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