AlienMind: Atheist is also a religion. You firmly BELIEVE (albeit without proof) that no omnipotent being exists. I'm agnostic :-)
Starmaker: This is retarded and pissed me off, and seeing as the election is over, I'm gonna bite.
Suppose you meet a girl who says she's dating Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. Not a cosplayer, not a voice actor, not a sex doll, just the actual Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. Well, not
quite as he is in the game (for one, he dumped Aeris -- serves her right, the bitch -- and is now deeply in love with the girl telling this.) They went to the movies the other day, and he bought her drinks afterward. They're getting married next summer. No, you can't meet him, he's shy. Wedding gifts are welcome, though.
Now, a question: are you going to think
(A) "wtf is this bullshit, is she really nuts or pretending?", or
(B) "hmm, I can't tell if this is true or not, it just might be!"
if B, I have no further questions for you, Mr Sephiroth, and good day.
if A, what sort of hypocritical little shit are you to extend a vastly greater benefit of doubt to other fictional characters?
edit: it's been pointed out to me that one character is not, er, fetched far enough. A better sounding board for religious idiocy would be e.g. the Bayformers mythos, for obvious reasons (clear scientific evidence in the past, meddling in events throughout history, deniability in the observable present, sekrit friends helping out small people with small problems, shitty drama and plot holes oh so many plot holes).
So, do you think there's a tangible chance the events in Bayformer movies happened for realz? And do you look down on the people who say they most definitely did
not happen?
I don't know any Baywatchformers, so I have to look into that, but if it's like "the first scene you see is someone manipulating the world with the power of his mind (also: see most games as they are thus unimmersive and thus shitty)", no I don't believe that's true. But the difference here is: I don't know, maybe they are true.
I don't look down on anybody on this planet - Even the most gruesome mass murderers. Everybody is the product of his genes and his upbringing so why hold something you don't like against them. Looking down means it actually irks me right? So no, I don't have time for that shit and to play world ethics police every freaking day. To varying degree I sort people as "can interact" and "can not interact" and a mass murderer would be in the far right of the second category. No time to fanatically speak about how the mass murderer is a mass murderer and that I find that bad. That would be like those feminazis who don't buy core games with unsexy female protagonists yet they all scream they should be made. If you call that looking down, then yes.
To address Cloud... that's all well and good until you learn that we all live in a simulation in which the game master can spawn anything at any point. But to piss you off, he's not spawning Cloud.
I know that one is not to take what people say word for word (one of the biggest pitfalls in my life), because when they say "It is" it's usually "I believe", so no hard feelings there. But when you're actually saying the scientific word "atheist", it's definition is like that, and that is a bit bold, as real scientists _always_ say "It's unlikely.." to soften their conclusions, because they, most of all, can sum up the mind to understand that _everything_ not exactly specified, given time and space, can change. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I hate fantasy and I can't believe I just said that :D But logical at the same time, every man fears (=hates) the unknown. Spock would raise an eyebrow now.
But for the record I don't believe that Garbriel told Mohammed to kill everybody who does not believe it.
I leave you with that logic bomb just like Kirk did with that robot in that episode.
Happy exploding.