@TheTrueMagusX1, The rest of this is pretty far off the original topic, but you deserve some response. You have a layman's interpretation of the terms "law" and "theory", not a scientist's, though its an irrelevant point for your rebuttal anyway since I never mentioned either. To help edify you, a law can generally be stated briefly as an equation or equivalent sentence that describes a consistent behavior (at least within certain boundaries). A theory is a model that explains the observed behavior, usually by reducing complex systems to simpler ones. That is the key difference: law=description, theory=explanation. While I would not say that I "believe in" theories (just because of the baggage that word carries), I readily "accept" many theories because the preponderance of evidence is in their favor. This gives me the freedom to discard or revise them if new evidence doesn't fit the picture, something belief generally refuses to accommodate. The self-correcting nature of the scientific method is a strength, not a weakness. Science admits that nothing is 100% definitive.
@TheTrueMagusX1, You have said that my arguments are flawed, but have not spelled out those flaws. Instead you just seem to be "talking down" to me. I'd much rather have a civil discourse about ideas than deal with personal attacks, please. You ask if science has answered every question? No, it has not. It likely never will. That does nothing to shake my position because perfection and completeness are an impossible standard. Science cannot meet it, but neither can religion or anything else. Sure, religious faith can give you the belief that you know everything that's worth knowing, but that is just a comforting state of mind. Science is a method that has a proven track record of being able to answer at least some questions I don't think religion has a proven track record of ever explaining anything. Are there any examples where science thought it had a really good naturalistic explanation for something, and then something made it come back and say, "We were wrong. Turns out pixies did it." If you want me to side with faith for divining truth, then you'll have to demonstrate that it has a track record of success first. I'll stand by my definition of art When it tries to answer questions, it's not art anymore; it's advertising. Art can present answers, but it cannot come up with them on its own. We should evaluate answers on evidence, not on how artfully they are presented. The role for art to play is to advance the dialogue by asking the challenging questions.
@TheTrueMagusX1 We have a system for finding out what is what. It's called science. It works much better when religion and faith are taken out of the picture and we can just focus on facts. The primary distinction between art and science: science answers questions, art can only ask them. Religion's purpose is not to explore truth or to understand the universe. It is, like art, a cultural institution. Its purpose is to act as a social glue, binding members of a community to each other in mutual cooperation. Unfortunately, in being good at this, it also suppresses diversity and increases animosity between different communities. It is a fair question as to whether any institution can serve religion's positive purpose without including those same destructive side effects, and I agree that question deserves to be explored both in art and in science. Historically though, religion does not invite art to explore; it endorses only art that endorses it, preferring propaganda to piercing inquiry.
It's a matter of demographics as much as anything. Video games are a modern art form and still have young audience relative to the general population. Secularism and atheism are relatively modern phenomena in society, and at least in the Western world, each subsequent generation is correspondingly less religious than their parents. Theology is a dying art since it primarily focuses on the supernatural aspects of religion that are being progressively discarded. It should focus less on outdated concepts like gods or faith as a belief system and more on how we're going to replace religion with something free of superstition, dogma, and authoritarianism that can still fill a similar role in the community. Would the words "faith" or "religion" still apply to such an institution? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Games, like any art, can play a part in that discussion.
I buy games new. I'd rather the money go to the developers than to a retailer. Although, most of it ends up in the hands of the publisher, so the devs lose out either way, but at least on a new game they get something. Digital distribution will eventually render the distinction obsolete when it eliminates the second hand market entirely. Don't think that won't be a huge motivating factor in future console designs.
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