I still dislike "Xtheist", though, for semantic reasons. I prefer "antireligious". I really prefer no label at all, because there's nothing special about us. We're natural thinkers.

Indeed.

The term "naturalist" is also a good way to describe my own stance about the nature of the universe, since I not only do not believe in gods, I also do not believe in magic crystal healing, ghosts and other new age junk that technically doesn't involve gods. It's just that in my native language, "naturalist" is practically never used, and is very close to the (much more frequently used) term for people who practice public nudity. :-P

I tend to use the terms atheist or antitheist when I'm specifically discussing religion.

About agnosticism, it does make perfect sense to me to say religious matters are unknowable. Even if miracles start happening tomorrow, maybe it's some amazingly advanced alien race? Maybe it's the operator of the Matrix? It's just a reasonable trail of thought. I think that saying "I believe that God does not exist" is more of a stance.

It does make perfect sense, and strictly speaking, religious matters are unknowable. It's just that there is an infinite number of unknowables (like the existence of tooth fairies, Voboblax the Happy Balrog, hyperintelligent cows conducting clandestine experiments on farmers, Russell's Teapot, etc.), most of which are so profoundly silly that any sane person implicitly assumes they do not exist, unless evidence implies otherwise.

For me, these *silly unknowables* include Odin, Thor, Ra, Anubis, Zeus, Athena and all the others. Yahweh too.

Although now that we're speaking about labels and the Judean People's Front vs. the People's Front of Judea, I suppose I am more accurately described as an antitheist rather than an atheist. Not only do I not believe in gods, I find that belief in gods is an actively destructive and dangerous force, not unlike a socially sanctioned mass psychosis, and a force which has proven itself to be inimical to free thought and reason. I view it as my intellectual duty to oppose it.

I don't think I'm apathetic any more than any other agnostic should be. I mean, all agnostics say we don't know anything about the existence or non-existence of deities. So why would they care about something they know nothing about? It's only natural not to care.

Because agnosticism also represents a stance on the religious questions. Agnosticism doesn't just mean "not knowing" or "not caring" about religious questions, it means the stance that religious questions are unknowable. Many agnostics (including most agnostic philosophers) defend this stance with just as much zeal as religious thinkers and atheists defend theirs.

[hypothesis]

Crud, that destroys my theory* that you are the same person.

I know what you mean; I had that same hypothesis ;-) as well.

(and I think one of them is going to take this as a compliment.)

*Theory in the colloquial meaning, not scientific.

Muhahaha, my evil Wording Nazi influence is spreading!

The reason I prefer "atheist" to "agnostic" is because deities have no special place in my universe. I also have no data to disprove the existence of invisible Irish Leprechauns, and yet, I don't regard the question of Irish Leprechauns as a deep mystery I cannot know anything about. With no observable evidence for their existence, it is reasonable to assume that they do not exist.

I believe it was Douglas Adams who coined the term "tooth fairy agnostic" -- he considered himself agnostic about God in the same way as most adults are agnostic about the tooth fairy.

As for death, Epicurius said it best: "Why fear death? Where death is, I am not. Where I am, death is not. Why should I fear that which cannot be where I am?"

While I can't answer for all the atheists here, I personally believe that after this life, I will most likely be eaten by worms. My conscious self, an emergent property of the complexity of my brain, will be gone when my brain has ceased functioning.

It is technically possible to be an atheist and believe in the supernatural (such as an immaterial soul) -- as long as supernatural phenomena or entities are not considered divine. However, many atheists (myself included) are also naturalists, meaning we believe that anything that has an observable effect on this universe has a natural cause.

Exactly, the major problem with religions is that there are so many to believe in! From a scientific and philosophical point of view, monotheism has at least one thing going for it: it cuts the amount of gods down to a minimum.

Actually, atheism is one god better at that than monotheism. :-)

Because there is no argument in the first place because there is no conclusive evidence of God not existing or existing, like I said, no amount of discussion on these boards will ever change that.

You're absolutely right. However, there's also no conclusive evidence that Santa Claus doesn't run a secret underground toy and thermonuclear weapon construction facility, manned by elven slave labour, hidden under the icy wastes of the North Pole. There's also no conclusive evidence against roaming gangs of tooth fairies running an underworld black market economy of children's teeth, or that the British Parliament is in fact being mind-controlled by an all-seeing tin of baked beans in orbit around Saturn.

No sane person believes in either of these, not because of evidence that they don't exist, but because of the absence of evidence that they do exist. Why should we believe in Yahweh, the deity of middle-eastern bronze age shepherds, any more than we should believe in Odin, Athena, Quetzalcoatl or Ba'al?

The major reason why I personally believe that the concept of God is beneficial, is that Humans have something to humble themselves to.

Humbling oneself before a fiction is not humility, it is humiliation.

I personally feel humble when reflecting on that when all comes to all, I am nothing more than a carbon-based lifeform living on a pale blue dot in orbit around an insignificant little yellow star, in a nondescript spiral arm of one of billions of galaxies -- a simple descendant of plains hunter-gatherers, pondering his place in an unimaginably vast universe. It seems to me that when my own spot in the universe is so tiny, it is entirely up to me to give my brief stay in existence meaning, and to make it as good as I possibly can.

Without the concept of a being that is higher than you, power would be the alternative "religion" anyone who had power would as such have no consequence to use it for his own will. With the ideas of a God that will punish you for your sins, people who might behave like this won't due to said force.

In that case, religion has failed miserably. The abuses of power conducted by the Catholic Church in medieval times are well-documented, and modern-day powerful believers frequently engage in quite immoral acts. Much more so than the relatively individualist Christianity, Islam is founded on the premise that humans should humble themselves before God -- even the word "Islam" literally translates to "Submission". One look at the Middle East, with Shi'ites and Sunnites horrifically slaughtering and torturing each other, should show that religion does not stop people from immoral behaviour.

But I have explained to you the difference between a scientific theory, and a religious idea, namely the ability to make falsifiable predictions, which makes scientific theories meaningful, but not religious ideas.

I like to say that the important difference between science and religion is that if a practicioner of science finds solid, conclusive evidence that proves the theory of relativity wrong, he'll get the Nobel Prize, whereas if a practicioner of religion find solid, conclusive evidence that a dogma of his religion is wrong, he will be excommunicated.

Science tends to applaud those who finds the errors in the scientific body of knowledge -- Copernicus, Einstein and Gödel are examples. This is why science will eventually work errors out of the system. Religion tends to treat even wild contradictions as immutable, eternal truths, and effectively resist refinements to their dogma for centuries or millennia.

It seems there's some confusion as to what, exactly, a "theory" means in scientific terminology. The day-to-day, informal use of the word "theory" is in fact closer to what scientists term a "hypothesis": An idea that has yet to be conclusively supported. A theory in science, on the other hand, is a logically consistent framework which is formulated to systematically explain observed, related phenomena, and which has been verified experimentally to such an extent that it has come to be widely, or even universally, accepted in the scientific community. Theories are testable and predictive -- it is possible to verify (or disprove) a theory using observations, and it is possible to predict future events using the theory. The theory of gravity, for example, systematically explains observations about planetary movements and falling objects, allows us to predict the movement of planets, and to predict that on a large body (such as a planet), objects will fall towards that body when dropped. As such, the term "theory of evolution" or "Big Bang theory" does not connote that these two frameworks are merely hunches or educated guesses, but that they are widely, nearly universally accepted systems of explanation, supported by firm observable evidence.

(A bit of a personal nit of mine -- this is why I cringe a little bit whenever someone talks about "string theory" -- "string theory" is, in fact, a hypothesis, since it is as of yet unverifiable. It also makes me mutter obscenities under my breath whenever some religious type attacks evolution on grounds that it's "just a theory" -- in scientific terminology, labelling something a "theory" means it's pretty much the best explanation we currently have. Yes, my blood pressure probably is too high.)

Actually, no sound in space can work quite well too. I personally thought it a very nice touch that all space scenes in Firefly and Serenity had only music (and occasionally the sound heard by the characters inside their spacesuits). Also, the "helmetless EVA" scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey was, in my opinion, all the more atmospheric and frightening precisely because it happened in dead silence.

You're assuming that the headlights of the Skiff just shine a light, like headlights on a car do. However .. this is the Arilou we're talking about. While regular light beams wouldn't be visible in space, the Arilou seem to have a habit of at least "bending" the laws of physics (inertialess drives, teleportation, somehow getting a bit of TrueSpace into QuasiSpace), so whatever contraption that Humans have classified as "headlights" on a Skiff are quite likely to A) actually be something else entirely, and B) do things that shouldn't be possible.

And the Arilou, of course, would never tell us any details about their technology.

Thou shalt not spell the awful name whose initials are G.J..

...

Greg Johnson developed Starflight. That game was a major inspiration for Star Control II; it pretty much defined the genre of games that Star Control II would later occupy. He wrote the dialog for several of the alien species in Star Control II, and designed some (by some accounts, most) of the spaceships in the game. Greg and Paul have great mutual respect; Greg has called Paul "one of the greatest game designers ever", while Paul has referred to Greg as a "game design god". However, since you don't like his voice acting of one alien species in Star Control, his name must not be uttered?

What colour is the sky in your world, Valaggar?

Hey Smaug,

Furthermore, the comedic elements of the StarControl universe are very clearly directed. They're centered around some races and circumstances, while others are very serious.

Yes -- the Chmmr, for instance, are very serious. As are both kinds of Ur-Quan.

But the Utwig? They broke the Ultron because they *dropped it on the ground*. Their dialogue, even without the voice acting, pokes fun at the exaggerated "woe is me", Goth / emo-style self-conscious "depression" stereotype. They used to have Masks of Natural Bodily Excretions hung at every lavatory, and based their courting rituals on wearing Veils of Flirtatious Prancing, and Lewd Monocles. I'd say that humour is quite integrated to the treatment of the Utwig race, even without the voice acting.

Two words: George Lucas. [...] a thing should be judged on its own merits, not the deification of those who created it.

I completely agree, but Valaggar was basing his argument on "initial design", and I reckon PR3 and FF know more about the Star Control initial design than either of us does. That doesn't make them gods.

I think Star Control 3 is to the Star Control franchise what the prequels were to Star Wars.

I would point out that the game, StarControl 2 was designed, built, shipped, and purchased by many well before any alleged jokes based on voice acting. The voice acting version should not fundamentally alter the ideas created by the non-voice acted version.

Star Control 2 for the PC was originally shipped in 1992. The 3DO version, which introduced the voice acting, was (if memory serves) shipped in 1993, not very long after the 3DO was released to the public. I don't think the voice acting version alters the ideas created by the non-voice-acted version, at least as far as the Utwig are concerned -- I first played the game without voices, and came to view the Utwig as a not-entirely-serious race anyway (see above). The anticipation of hearing what an "ecstatic Utwig" sounds like, only to find that they whine even when happy, was an entertaining added joke when I played the game with voices.

The Utwig were initially designed as a race of serious, ceremonious people, not emo. Indeed, they only share some tangential characteristics with emo people.

And yet, the game's creators (who, I assume, know more about how their creation was "initially designed" than people hanging around on some Web forum) decided to have this "serious, ceremonious" race speak in a whiny, annoying voice. They even went so far as to base one of the jokes in the game on that.

Plus, what's up with their depression caused by the destruction of the Ultron if they're casually depressed?! Fake depression?!!!

But that's the whole joke. Their voice is not whiny because they're depressed, that's just how they sound. They sound like that when they're ecstatically happy as well. You only realize that their annoying tone is not a depressed tone when you fix the Ultron, and thus get to hear what a happy Utwig sounds like.

That a human might interpret their tone as being depressed doesn't *make* them depressed any more than a Yehat's accent makes him Scottish.