D&D Still Satanic? "So my mom threw away all my D&D books..."

[Raven Crowking]

Sorry, I always assume you have me on ignore, so I can say what I please about you.

Nah.

We often disagree, but you are capable of listening to other points of view, you (sometimes ) have interesting things to say, and you don't pretend that you said Not-X as soon as it is clear that X requires modification/may be wrong.

There are very, very few people I have on Ignore. And, given half a reason, I don't keep them there. I don't like shutting off different points of view, as long as I believe there is at least some constructive value to be had!

(I admit, though, that once or twice I have put someone on Ignore for the length of time I was involved in a particular thread, just to keep myself from getting banned! Then, afterward, I took the person off. It can do wonders for your blood pressure.)

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

One of my (many) failings is that I don't always succeed.

RC

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

It's the "Human Problem"
Politics or religion, we Humans always take an idea, ethos, belief, whatever, and form an organization, a group around it...and that's when it, the organization, goes to Hell

It's inevitable, the more power/money is involved, faster and worse it gets, Psychosis and paranoid mania drives leaders to suicide, wars, genocides, burning books...etc etc
Anything that is "Not what THEY themselves can tolerate they must destroy, as it upsets the limited scope of what they can tolerate before their petty little world gets shaken"

Left, Right, Christianity, Islam, Paganism, whatever, doesn't matter, one guy can take it and make it work beautifully, and another can turn it into a horror because he will not open his horizons, cannot bend the knee to another, cannot give and take, cannot laugh at himself.
That, is real life. Judge 'em by their deeds, not what cloak they profess to wear. "By their fruits ye shall know them"


Now, as a DM I often use some pretty horrific storylines and characters, because Sherlock Holmes doesn't fight Aunty May who steals some flowers fromMary Jane's garden...Jesus didn't wrestle with Uncle Albert the grouchy relative...

heroes need to confront vlliains. they need a "worthy adversary", and sometimes, just such an evil, heinous SOB, that dropping a napalm strike via a Meteor Swarm up his kazoo, is a Justifiably Fun Act!

Having said all that, I have more experience of spiritual evil than most unfortunately
D&D is a freakin' GAME, it is often a complex morality tale we tell each other. This is a GOOD THING (tm).
True "Evil" is utterly corrosive, it's about absolute nihilism, hatred and destruction of everything, that exists, egotistical, monomaniacal, sociopathic mass murder by suggestion, anything decent: kindess, honour, love are anathema and hurtful to it
Nitwits who go on about it haven't got a damn clue, and should STFU because if they DO ever encounter it, they'll never be the same, self-righteous twerp ever again, I can assure you.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Nitwits who go on about it haven't got a damn clue, and should STFU because if they DO ever encounter it, they'll never be the same, self-righteous twerp ever again, I can assure you.

This. It is exactly the same problem that causes, for example, principals and teachers to sometimes completely lose all common sense when dealing with a six year old drawing a picture of a gun, under a "zero tolerance" policy.

 

[Diamond Cross]

It's quite simple. He hadn't really locked in his beliefs. Now that he's found himself there will be no way to change his mind and he'll simply dismiss anything out of hand.

And telling me otherwise only reinforces that. Because in telling me I'm wrong, regardless of the exact words used and the manner they're used in, it's still a dismissal of something a person doesn't want to believe.

Because that how people are. If there's something they don't want to believe, they all act the same way, and will dismiss anything that doesn't fit their world view in any way they can.

You may see it as a broad brush, but sometimes a broad brush is true.

And the other thing about people too is they never see nor understand what they do to other people. Especially when they believe they're right. It's very very very important for people to believe they're right, sometimes overpoweringly so.

 

[Orius]

Since RPGs didn't exist when I was under my parents roof I never had to deal with the situation. I had to deal with my mom going wacky when she found my really bad fanfic Trek stories I had written when I was about 13. Yes I admit I put myself in the story.

She was protecting you from the evils of Mary Sue!

I hope that didn't come of as too insensitive given the background, but I couldn't resist. Sorry. You seem to be aware of the whole self-insert bad fanfic thing.

I will say this if a parent really believes that playing DnD is a danger to their child's immortal soul then you can't really blame them for saying no you can't play this game. To them no matter how unreasonable we may feel about it it is the same as letting their child play in traffic. As a parent you have a duty to protect your child from dangers. That is what they are doing.

See, that's the real problem here. They're convinced that anything that's said to be even remotely Satanic will damn their kids eternally if it's experienced for even 5 minutes. It's a natural protective instinct that's gone into extreme overdrive, and nothing Stackpole or anything anyone else will convince them otherwise. Particularly if they've been convinced by some preacher, because they implicity trust him in everything. If he says D&D is from the devil, it's an eternal truth.

 

[Fifth Element]

It's quite simple. He hadn't really locked in his beliefs. Now that he's found himself there will be no way to change his mind and he'll simply dismiss anything out of hand.

So, how do you determine whether someone has "locked in" their beliefs then? You say he can change his beliefs because they weren't "locked in"; but before then, they were his beliefs. How do you know that now he's found himself, whereas before he hadn't? How do you know that his current state of belief isn't also some transient stage before final-belief-locking-in, which might differ from the present beliefs?

And telling me otherwise only reinforces that. Because in telling me I'm wrong, regardless of the exact words used and the manner they're used in, it's still a dismissal of something a person doesn't want to believe.

What if I were to tell you I think you're wrong due to very specific reasons, rather than just a general blanket dismissal?

 

[Diamond Cross]

Those specific reasons are still just another way to not believe what you don't want to believe. As I said, regardless of the exact words used, it's still a dismissal. Whenever a person doesn't want to believe they will use anything at their disposal to support their decisions and beliefs. This is something that everybody does.

 

[Fifth Element]

Those specific reasons are still just another way to not believe what you don't want to believe.

So you're saying everyone makes up their minds first, and then decides on the reasons? You can't make a decision based on the reasons, it's always the other way around?

You don't care to comment on my question of how you know when someone has "locked in" their beliefs, and when they're still open to being changed even if they appear to be locked in?

 

[nedjer]

I don't care anything about logic. Logic only turns people into arrogant pricks who think they're better than anybody else and treat anybody they want like crap because they think they're better than anybody else.

Dude, your knickers are getting in a twist here. You asked me where the scientific evidence was, now you say you're not interested in evidence. Please reinstate your usually outstanding sense of humour and wit

 

[Diamond Cross]

So you're saying everyone makes up their minds first, and then decides on the reasons? You can't make a decision based on the reasons, it's always the other way around?

You don't care to comment on my question of how you know when someone has "locked in" their beliefs, and when they're still open to being changed even if they appear to be locked in?

Actually, most people do make up their minds first. But that's not what I was saying. It's when people have made up their minds that they can never change it under any circumstances. The order doesn't matter.

And I don't know when, I just leave it up to the person to show me. I will know under certain circumstances. Those circumstances include things like when I've shown them evidence to show them they're wrong and they keep on repeating the same thing again and again and again.

Because, if you're shown to be wrong you're supposed to change your mind and agree with the evidence, but that's not what happens.

And sometimes, people won't consider the evidence, no matter what, because they don't want to believe. Such as people who refuse to believe in evolution. There is a lot of evidence to show that evolution is true, and that it does have practical applications. (Such as in medicine in dealing with the adaptive abilities of bacteria to become more resistant to medicine and anti-bacterial agents).

When people don't want to believe anything, they will do whatever they can to support their decision and beliefs, and dismiss anything that doesn't fit. It doesn't matter what their station in life is, everybody does this.