The is games art debate should never have started in the first place, and shame on Roger Ebert for starting it. They are coherent cultural artifacts, distinguishable from their environment, from each other, and from the experience of playing one. They are created in a cultural context by people. It is inevitable that we make art of games for that reason.
With that out of the way, I'd like to consider the real question, are arts games?
That's more than a little vague, so I'll give a little background. During the whole "games is art" argument, we all realized that none of us could agree what art was, nobody could come up with a meaningful and inclusive definition that anyone but themselves would accept. I began to see the limitations of the definition I had been using, but at the same time I was making aesthetic discoveries that lead me to believe that games might provide such a definition.
This article (pdf) is a very good, very passionate defense of mathematics as an art form, and it has lead me to a potential new criteria for an artform: something that is intentionally created despite having no real usefulness.
Oh, you can make arguments about how art expresses the human condition or acts as a window into a culture, you can wax poetic all you want, and when you're ready to go back to talking about ideas, I'll be waiting in the next paragraph.
Art can serve a useful purpose, and it often does. But if it is made specifically to serve that purpose, it is not art, it is craft. People make art to make art, then other people can figure out what to do with it.
Note here that what I've described could as easily be a game as an art. Games can serve a social function, and people can become very wealthy playing games (but, peculiarly, only if the game involves a ball of some sort.) Nevertheless, people play games primarily to play games.
So here's what I'm really driving at: define a game as an intentional structure of rules governing what things one may do while playing it, created and played and spectated for the experience of the game itself. Art then is a very large subset of games, and a work of art is a recorded play through of one particular game.
Different people like different sorts of games, and so different people like different sorts of art. Some people prefer to play rather than spectate, others prefer to spectate. Some people bring their own rules to a game, rules that other players may not know or understand. David Sirlin calls that being a scrub, I call it taste. Some people play games where all of the rules are vague in that way, some claim there game has no rules at all, yet even then there are rules, they just don't talk about them. Yes, I'm looking at you, fluxus.
These articles may as well be recorded rounds of a peculiar yet familiar game, that of essay writing. It's a rather freeform variation, far more tolerant of unusual plays than the variations taught in schools, but look close enough and I think you could determine the rules of this game. As a whole, once these articles are compiled, edited, and perhaps even published, you will see the result of my playing another game, called "making a book of creative non-fiction," which involves playing the essay game many times over, and inviting others to play this particular variation of the essay game.
I am perhaps getting too circular, so I'll close with this: a game is a set of constraints that exists for the joy of exploring the ramifications of those constraints. The result of that exploration is very often art.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Roger Ebert will never understand art-games
Roger Ebert has finally elaborated on his ill-informed and myopic statement that games cannot be art: http://bit.ly/dqMP32
So what does he add to the conversation?
Well, nothing. He picks apart a TED speech that gives three mediocre examples. He criticizes the speaker for not giving a good definition of art, and then fails to give anything even remotely coherent for a definition, nor anything that would exclude games on principle. He also criticizes (rightly) her examples of what is or is not art, and proceeds to respond with his own, presumably better examples.
So pornography can be art, and sloppily made science-fiction films can be art, but not games?
I also take issue with his assertion that Waiting for Godot and The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock don't mean anything. Of course they do, that's why they are so powerful. They convey something that is beyond explaining, that is why they are important.
I'm maybe being a little harsh. Many of his points are valid: the writing in most games is pretty awful, and the industry is geared more toward making a quick million than making a quality product. But even if he is right on every point, he will never know that, because he refuses to actually play these games.
You cannot make a sweeping generalization from one game to all games, nor can you understand a game from its trailer, especially if you are not familiar with the medium to begin with. In this article, Ebert makes it clear that he does not understand the first thing about games, and that he is completely unwilling to learn.
Twice he employs the notion that a game must have a win condition, or at least a score, in order to be a game. In my view that's a pretty uselessly limiting definition of "game": it even excludes Tag, let alone such things like Passage and Photopia.
If Ebert actually sat down and played Passage, would he say that it was interactive art? Would he have anything worthwhile to say about it at all? I'm not even asking that it be positive; one of the better criticisms of the game I've heard was a friend who said he'd already dealt with the issues it raises, so it was just kind of depressing to no purpose.
But as long as he does not give the idea a try, he will never know whether or not games can be art.
For my own purposes, here and elsewhere, I will rely mostly on the following two definitions:
Art: Any work that conveys an idea that cannot be conveyed through ordinary expository writing, or an idea that can be explained simply, but cannot be understood via such an explanation.
Examples:
Passage is art because it conveys the weight of mortality in a way that statements like "everyone dies" cannot.
Everyday Shooter is art because it conveys the aesthetic ideals of its creator, which cannot be meaningfully described.
Game: A specific collection of interrelated rules created for their aesthetically pleasing properties.
Examples:
"Tag" is a game because the rules governing how "it" and "not-it" behave, and the rules for how one becomes "it" or "not-it", interrelate to create an exciting atmosphere.
"Passage" is a game because the rules governing movement, score, and the progressive change in the graphics interrelate to create an often moving image of the role of mortality in life.
Wherever I use an alternate definition I will say so, and give that definition.
So what does he add to the conversation?
Well, nothing. He picks apart a TED speech that gives three mediocre examples. He criticizes the speaker for not giving a good definition of art, and then fails to give anything even remotely coherent for a definition, nor anything that would exclude games on principle. He also criticizes (rightly) her examples of what is or is not art, and proceeds to respond with his own, presumably better examples.
So pornography can be art, and sloppily made science-fiction films can be art, but not games?
I also take issue with his assertion that Waiting for Godot and The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock don't mean anything. Of course they do, that's why they are so powerful. They convey something that is beyond explaining, that is why they are important.
I'm maybe being a little harsh. Many of his points are valid: the writing in most games is pretty awful, and the industry is geared more toward making a quick million than making a quality product. But even if he is right on every point, he will never know that, because he refuses to actually play these games.
You cannot make a sweeping generalization from one game to all games, nor can you understand a game from its trailer, especially if you are not familiar with the medium to begin with. In this article, Ebert makes it clear that he does not understand the first thing about games, and that he is completely unwilling to learn.
Twice he employs the notion that a game must have a win condition, or at least a score, in order to be a game. In my view that's a pretty uselessly limiting definition of "game": it even excludes Tag, let alone such things like Passage and Photopia.
If Ebert actually sat down and played Passage, would he say that it was interactive art? Would he have anything worthwhile to say about it at all? I'm not even asking that it be positive; one of the better criticisms of the game I've heard was a friend who said he'd already dealt with the issues it raises, so it was just kind of depressing to no purpose.
But as long as he does not give the idea a try, he will never know whether or not games can be art.
For my own purposes, here and elsewhere, I will rely mostly on the following two definitions:
Art: Any work that conveys an idea that cannot be conveyed through ordinary expository writing, or an idea that can be explained simply, but cannot be understood via such an explanation.
Examples:
Passage is art because it conveys the weight of mortality in a way that statements like "everyone dies" cannot.
Everyday Shooter is art because it conveys the aesthetic ideals of its creator, which cannot be meaningfully described.
Game: A specific collection of interrelated rules created for their aesthetically pleasing properties.
Examples:
"Tag" is a game because the rules governing how "it" and "not-it" behave, and the rules for how one becomes "it" or "not-it", interrelate to create an exciting atmosphere.
"Passage" is a game because the rules governing movement, score, and the progressive change in the graphics interrelate to create an often moving image of the role of mortality in life.
Wherever I use an alternate definition I will say so, and give that definition.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Why RTS games will always be broken
Ok, I know that's a provocative title. RTS games are an awesome genre, they can be very well balanced, and they can be really exciting to watch. They can be very deep as well. But strategically, they are broken in a fundamental way.
In any strategy game, there are two universal advantages: material and tempo. Material advantage means having more useful things, usually men or resources or buildings. Tempo advantage means you've accomplished more useful things than your opponent. There are many other game-specific advantages, and it's those advantages that give material and tempo advantages their weight, but these two are nearly universal.
I say nearly because they don't apply in impartial or shared-material games like Sprouts or Dots and Boxes. When in doubt, I will refer to Star Craft as a well known and fairly quintessential RTS.
One prominent characteristic of the RTS is that material and tempo are nearly equivalent. Building material requires resources (like minerals) and time. Getting resources takes material (a resource-farmer and usually a resource-dump like a command center) and time. Since starting material is usually farmers and a resource-dump, resources are nearly identical to time.
To speed resource gathering, you can build more farmers, or you can build another resource-dump. Both take resources and time. A material advantage in this form directly translates to a tempo advantage.
If I destroy 1 more of your fighting units than you do of mine, I have gained more than a 1 unit advantage: I am now ahead by the amount of time it takes to build that unit as well.
A tempo advantage can be converted into a material advantage by building more units or unit producing buildings, and a material advantage can be turned into a tempo advantage by destroying your units.
This can be mitigated by offering advantages that are not fungible. The most obvious one is a unit-type advantage, where one unit-type wins-out against a different unit-type. Requiring or allowing a number of non-fungible sub-goals towards victory is a simple first-approximation for adding depth to a game.
In any strategy game, there are two universal advantages: material and tempo. Material advantage means having more useful things, usually men or resources or buildings. Tempo advantage means you've accomplished more useful things than your opponent. There are many other game-specific advantages, and it's those advantages that give material and tempo advantages their weight, but these two are nearly universal.
I say nearly because they don't apply in impartial or shared-material games like Sprouts or Dots and Boxes. When in doubt, I will refer to Star Craft as a well known and fairly quintessential RTS.
One prominent characteristic of the RTS is that material and tempo are nearly equivalent. Building material requires resources (like minerals) and time. Getting resources takes material (a resource-farmer and usually a resource-dump like a command center) and time. Since starting material is usually farmers and a resource-dump, resources are nearly identical to time.
To speed resource gathering, you can build more farmers, or you can build another resource-dump. Both take resources and time. A material advantage in this form directly translates to a tempo advantage.
If I destroy 1 more of your fighting units than you do of mine, I have gained more than a 1 unit advantage: I am now ahead by the amount of time it takes to build that unit as well.
A tempo advantage can be converted into a material advantage by building more units or unit producing buildings, and a material advantage can be turned into a tempo advantage by destroying your units.
This can be mitigated by offering advantages that are not fungible. The most obvious one is a unit-type advantage, where one unit-type wins-out against a different unit-type. Requiring or allowing a number of non-fungible sub-goals towards victory is a simple first-approximation for adding depth to a game.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Love
Here's another tangent away from games, from a discussion I had with a couple of friends. The science isn't spot-on, but it's close enough for what I want to do.
Love acts on the same part of your brain as heroin, so you're going to see a lot of the same issues of craving and painful loss. Even more, an addiction is never cured, just managed. The same goes for love. You can resist it, but you can't overcome it.
I like to treat love as almost an object, but one that is also an emotion. It usually isn't connected to anything external to it, though without some support it's going to get messy. But the feelings of "like" and "love" are independent emotions. Having the first makes the second much more manageable, but you don't need one in order to have the other.
The human brain didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus. It's the result of millions of years of tweaks and patches, with new elements usually added on top of the old ones, and very few things getting thrown out. You can actually break down the brain and say where in evolutionary history every part was added on, and what function it originally served.
Rationality is an artifact of the cerebrum, the top layer and the youngest layer. It can influence and regulate the actions of the other parts of your brain, but only to a very limited degree.
Almost everything you do or feel is a reflex.
When you see a fertile woman, you don't think about her at all. Your limbic system just releases dopamine in response to the stimulus, which you perceive as desire.
If that desire is fulfilled, your brain releases endorphin, which is the heroin-like substance, and more dopamine.
When you consummate, you also release vasopressin and oxytocin, which is basically the molecular embodiment of monogamy. In some animals this is a make-or-break chemical, if they have it they will never leave their partner's side, and if they don't, they have no connection whatsoever.
When you desire something, anything, dopamine is the primary agent responsible. There are varying degrees of desire, and love is on the stronger end of the spectrum. You can view it as a desire for the approval of another person. The thing is, the release of dopamine is not regulated by the cerebrum at all. Desire doesn't just transcend rationality, it short-circuits it.
Love acts on the same part of your brain as heroin, so you're going to see a lot of the same issues of craving and painful loss. Even more, an addiction is never cured, just managed. The same goes for love. You can resist it, but you can't overcome it.
I like to treat love as almost an object, but one that is also an emotion. It usually isn't connected to anything external to it, though without some support it's going to get messy. But the feelings of "like" and "love" are independent emotions. Having the first makes the second much more manageable, but you don't need one in order to have the other.
The human brain didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus. It's the result of millions of years of tweaks and patches, with new elements usually added on top of the old ones, and very few things getting thrown out. You can actually break down the brain and say where in evolutionary history every part was added on, and what function it originally served.
Rationality is an artifact of the cerebrum, the top layer and the youngest layer. It can influence and regulate the actions of the other parts of your brain, but only to a very limited degree.
Almost everything you do or feel is a reflex.
When you see a fertile woman, you don't think about her at all. Your limbic system just releases dopamine in response to the stimulus, which you perceive as desire.
If that desire is fulfilled, your brain releases endorphin, which is the heroin-like substance, and more dopamine.
When you consummate, you also release vasopressin and oxytocin, which is basically the molecular embodiment of monogamy. In some animals this is a make-or-break chemical, if they have it they will never leave their partner's side, and if they don't, they have no connection whatsoever.
When you desire something, anything, dopamine is the primary agent responsible. There are varying degrees of desire, and love is on the stronger end of the spectrum. You can view it as a desire for the approval of another person. The thing is, the release of dopamine is not regulated by the cerebrum at all. Desire doesn't just transcend rationality, it short-circuits it.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Arcade Culture
I don't really like linking to this site: the author is mean, and usually wrong. Nevertheless, his article about arcade culture is very much worth reading.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Who Cares if you Play?
Milton Babbitt's 1958 article "Who Cares if you Listen" is still an interesting perspective fifty-two years later. It has some important implications in the aesthetics of games as well, since games by their very nature invite a certain amount of specialization.
In games with a low or moderate execution barrier, pretty much every game except StarCraft, exhibition runs into the problem of low-level players crying "But I can do that!" Unless you have a certain amount of knowledge of the game, it's very difficult to see why the expert consistently beats the novice who can do all the moves. Gaining the knowledge to appreciate the design decisions that went into a well balanced game can take hundreds of hours.
Sometimes relying on flash is a perfectly valid option. Street Fighter 4 has decent, if not great, design and balance, but a large part of what made it successful was its flash, of which it has oodles. There's nothing wrong with that, but it draws attention to the visual spectacle and away from the abstract design.
So if you want to explore the aesthetic possibilities of game design, if you want to present your world-view in the form of rules and mechanics, you will be singing to a very small audience. The kind of person who can appreciate games-as-art must be familiar with the kinds of decisions that go into game design, and the kinds of emergent behaviors that arise in high level play. In short, a specialist.
We're more like Babbitt than we might want to think. Much as the common symphony goer despises the aesthetic decisions that go into an atonal work, the common scrub despises many balancing and design decisions, and is ignorant of many more. The division here is less extreme, but it is rare for a game to appeal to both specialists and scrubs.
Note well: by "scrub" I mean no insult. It simply means anyone who does not know what it is like to play a game at a high level. That's most of the world's population, and a lot of them are really swell folks.
Everyday Shooter is a very good bridge. It is first and foremost a fun game, if difficult. Of flash it has plenty, with its bright colors and unlockable filters, and also the energetic sound-track. These surface elements do not even conceal a beautifully designed game, they are an integral part of it. Many of the parts of the game are drawn from common tropes: the two stick controls, chain systems, continue scores, and even the way that music and sound interact. In every case the trope is polished to its most elegant, and this is complimented even by the graphics, which are drawn at runtime and adapt to play. Across levels, there is enough variation to maintain interest while also maintaining coherence throughout the whole. This ideal is also reflected in the graphics and music.
This game is one that demonstrates perfectly an overarching aesthetic ideal that binds together a varied group of individual elements. This arch does not extend only in one dimension, level-to-level, but also across all aspects of the game. The graphics, music, and rules all conform to a model of whimsical elegance. In every case there is no more than what is needed to give pleasure.
But how much of this would a scrub notice? Not much, and why should he? The game is fun, and that is all that really needs to matter. The layers of conceptual elegance are superfluous in the face of a fun game, except to the specialist who demands them.
When game design is aimed at other game designers, the aesthetic conversation becomes unencumbered, and more complex ideas can be expressed. Will the context-sensitive controls in Perpetual Dawn, the art-game I'm designing, make it more fun than using four separate buttons would? Probably not. But it expresses an idea in the appropriate context, in the only context where that idea can be considered and judged.
The audience is small, but that's ok. Art does not need universal appeal to be valuable. For those who dislike it, we have a responsibility not to foist it upon them, (as modernist music often is) but we do not have a responsibility to please them. At this level, art becomes an expressive communication of ideas, and if someone understands and appreciates those ideas, then the work has succeeded in its modest goals.
The interactivity of games gives us an opportunity to turn that statement into a dialog. Though I might not hear much of the questions and counters provided by the players, the work should be able to speak for me, enough so that the player who invests the effort and understanding necessary to have that dialog can make an informed decision based on my ideas.
The purpose of such a dialog is not primarily to persuade. Persuasion is rather a poor art, for its success or failure depends more on psychology and charisma than on the validity of the argument. Instead, the idea is to offer a statement that demands neither acceptance nor rejection, but instead invites consideration. It's possible to change a person without changing their mind.
The highest goal for me is to create a work of art that can stand in society as my surrogate. When I am unavailable for comment, my particular views and values can be expressed in my place. Essentially, a work that encompasses the whole of myself. But such a work would demand such an expressive language that only a specialist could fully understand it.
It's only immortality if people think I'm worth keeping around.
In games with a low or moderate execution barrier, pretty much every game except StarCraft, exhibition runs into the problem of low-level players crying "But I can do that!" Unless you have a certain amount of knowledge of the game, it's very difficult to see why the expert consistently beats the novice who can do all the moves. Gaining the knowledge to appreciate the design decisions that went into a well balanced game can take hundreds of hours.
Sometimes relying on flash is a perfectly valid option. Street Fighter 4 has decent, if not great, design and balance, but a large part of what made it successful was its flash, of which it has oodles. There's nothing wrong with that, but it draws attention to the visual spectacle and away from the abstract design.
So if you want to explore the aesthetic possibilities of game design, if you want to present your world-view in the form of rules and mechanics, you will be singing to a very small audience. The kind of person who can appreciate games-as-art must be familiar with the kinds of decisions that go into game design, and the kinds of emergent behaviors that arise in high level play. In short, a specialist.
We're more like Babbitt than we might want to think. Much as the common symphony goer despises the aesthetic decisions that go into an atonal work, the common scrub despises many balancing and design decisions, and is ignorant of many more. The division here is less extreme, but it is rare for a game to appeal to both specialists and scrubs.
Note well: by "scrub" I mean no insult. It simply means anyone who does not know what it is like to play a game at a high level. That's most of the world's population, and a lot of them are really swell folks.
Everyday Shooter is a very good bridge. It is first and foremost a fun game, if difficult. Of flash it has plenty, with its bright colors and unlockable filters, and also the energetic sound-track. These surface elements do not even conceal a beautifully designed game, they are an integral part of it. Many of the parts of the game are drawn from common tropes: the two stick controls, chain systems, continue scores, and even the way that music and sound interact. In every case the trope is polished to its most elegant, and this is complimented even by the graphics, which are drawn at runtime and adapt to play. Across levels, there is enough variation to maintain interest while also maintaining coherence throughout the whole. This ideal is also reflected in the graphics and music.
This game is one that demonstrates perfectly an overarching aesthetic ideal that binds together a varied group of individual elements. This arch does not extend only in one dimension, level-to-level, but also across all aspects of the game. The graphics, music, and rules all conform to a model of whimsical elegance. In every case there is no more than what is needed to give pleasure.
But how much of this would a scrub notice? Not much, and why should he? The game is fun, and that is all that really needs to matter. The layers of conceptual elegance are superfluous in the face of a fun game, except to the specialist who demands them.
When game design is aimed at other game designers, the aesthetic conversation becomes unencumbered, and more complex ideas can be expressed. Will the context-sensitive controls in Perpetual Dawn, the art-game I'm designing, make it more fun than using four separate buttons would? Probably not. But it expresses an idea in the appropriate context, in the only context where that idea can be considered and judged.
The audience is small, but that's ok. Art does not need universal appeal to be valuable. For those who dislike it, we have a responsibility not to foist it upon them, (as modernist music often is) but we do not have a responsibility to please them. At this level, art becomes an expressive communication of ideas, and if someone understands and appreciates those ideas, then the work has succeeded in its modest goals.
The interactivity of games gives us an opportunity to turn that statement into a dialog. Though I might not hear much of the questions and counters provided by the players, the work should be able to speak for me, enough so that the player who invests the effort and understanding necessary to have that dialog can make an informed decision based on my ideas.
The purpose of such a dialog is not primarily to persuade. Persuasion is rather a poor art, for its success or failure depends more on psychology and charisma than on the validity of the argument. Instead, the idea is to offer a statement that demands neither acceptance nor rejection, but instead invites consideration. It's possible to change a person without changing their mind.
The highest goal for me is to create a work of art that can stand in society as my surrogate. When I am unavailable for comment, my particular views and values can be expressed in my place. Essentially, a work that encompasses the whole of myself. But such a work would demand such an expressive language that only a specialist could fully understand it.
It's only immortality if people think I'm worth keeping around.
Monday, January 25, 2010
A Memorable Fancy
The connection with games here is a stretch, but I have to put this somewhere.
If you're the TL;DR type, the point is down quite a ways. I've tried to make it stand out.
I just read yet another article explaining why the principles of science do not allow for religion. This one was particularly well thought out, and I had to really give its points some credence.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gv/outside_the_laboratory/
So here's my own take on it: First, I would argue that dismissing prophets et al as making everything up as they go along belies a deep misunderstanding of the religious temperament. This misunderstanding is so pervasive, sometimes I think maybe what I'm doing isn't religion at all, because it has no connection to what anti-theists are talking about.
This is treading into the land of personal experience, but I don't want to prove that these things are real, I want to show you why it doesn't matter if they are real or not.
Insert here the standard disclaimer about atrocities committed in the name of religion. Your point is invalid. People commit atrocities, and they'll think up a reason without our help. This isn't about geopolitics, this is about the practical value of ritual.
There are a few things I do, games among them, that share a common thread of discipline and focus. Among the most profound of these is playing music, and that is the one I will use for my example, because that is the one that is most commonly connected with religious matters. You can substitute "play Smash Bros." or "meditate" or "Juggle" or really anything discipline-oriented in the place of "play music".
God that's a lot of preamble. The point starts here:
*** THE POINT ***
When I play music, my mind moves into a state that it does not move into under baseline circumstances. The way that I perceive the world changes dramatically, and these changes can sometimes carry over beyond the initial activity. I can't get this every time: I have to go into the activity with a certain respect and readiness.
This state is, as I understand it, essentially what is usually described as "flow" or "the zone". It's a very pleasant place to be, so much so that it re-frames the way I look at other aspects of my life. It is also a place that is fundamentally different from baseline consciousness to the degree that, as far as I know, only a ritual can prompt it.
This is all very well and good, and we're still in the realm of science. This phenomenon is decently documented, as I understand, and fairly well understood. That's fine.
This happens to be my life we're talking about, and so these events exist in conjunction with another sort of event that is similar, yet possibly unrelated. Actually, it may be a cluster of superficially similar phenomena. The uniting feature of these is a very pleasurable sense, with connotations of safety, love, and understanding. It's hard to describe, but it falls fairly well in line with what is commonly called a spiritual experience.
This is also very firmly grounded in the world of science, and understood to a degree that's good enough for me. It has something to do with seratonin, too much of it in the wrong (or right) places. That's fine, and that's testable.
This is where the third uniting phenomenon comes into play: It makes my life enjoyable to treat these phenomena as related, and caused by non-phyisical entities who love me very much. This is also testable. No, not the existence of an unseen entity who loves me very much, but the generally improved mood and more optimistic worldview that accompanies these beliefs.
Nihilism and materialism depress me to a painful degree. When I have my worst bouts of depression, I'm not sure if it's causing the nihilism or if a flash of nihilism is causing the depression. Whatever.
I know that this is not the case for many, many people. Some form of nihilism or materialism satisfies a great number of people, many of whom are probably wonderful (I haven't met many). That does not change the basic fact that I am happier in state A, and unhappier in state B. So I try to induce state B as much as possible, with the fairly certain belief that I am not actually hurting anyone by doing so. This is also testable.
Is someone who is happier as a materialist somehow a better person? That is not testable.
If you're the TL;DR type, the point is down quite a ways. I've tried to make it stand out.
I just read yet another article explaining why the principles of science do not allow for religion. This one was particularly well thought out, and I had to really give its points some credence.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gv/outside_the_laboratory/
So here's my own take on it: First, I would argue that dismissing prophets et al as making everything up as they go along belies a deep misunderstanding of the religious temperament. This misunderstanding is so pervasive, sometimes I think maybe what I'm doing isn't religion at all, because it has no connection to what anti-theists are talking about.
This is treading into the land of personal experience, but I don't want to prove that these things are real, I want to show you why it doesn't matter if they are real or not.
Insert here the standard disclaimer about atrocities committed in the name of religion. Your point is invalid. People commit atrocities, and they'll think up a reason without our help. This isn't about geopolitics, this is about the practical value of ritual.
There are a few things I do, games among them, that share a common thread of discipline and focus. Among the most profound of these is playing music, and that is the one I will use for my example, because that is the one that is most commonly connected with religious matters. You can substitute "play Smash Bros." or "meditate" or "Juggle" or really anything discipline-oriented in the place of "play music".
God that's a lot of preamble. The point starts here:
*** THE POINT ***
When I play music, my mind moves into a state that it does not move into under baseline circumstances. The way that I perceive the world changes dramatically, and these changes can sometimes carry over beyond the initial activity. I can't get this every time: I have to go into the activity with a certain respect and readiness.
This state is, as I understand it, essentially what is usually described as "flow" or "the zone". It's a very pleasant place to be, so much so that it re-frames the way I look at other aspects of my life. It is also a place that is fundamentally different from baseline consciousness to the degree that, as far as I know, only a ritual can prompt it.
This is all very well and good, and we're still in the realm of science. This phenomenon is decently documented, as I understand, and fairly well understood. That's fine.
This happens to be my life we're talking about, and so these events exist in conjunction with another sort of event that is similar, yet possibly unrelated. Actually, it may be a cluster of superficially similar phenomena. The uniting feature of these is a very pleasurable sense, with connotations of safety, love, and understanding. It's hard to describe, but it falls fairly well in line with what is commonly called a spiritual experience.
This is also very firmly grounded in the world of science, and understood to a degree that's good enough for me. It has something to do with seratonin, too much of it in the wrong (or right) places. That's fine, and that's testable.
This is where the third uniting phenomenon comes into play: It makes my life enjoyable to treat these phenomena as related, and caused by non-phyisical entities who love me very much. This is also testable. No, not the existence of an unseen entity who loves me very much, but the generally improved mood and more optimistic worldview that accompanies these beliefs.
Nihilism and materialism depress me to a painful degree. When I have my worst bouts of depression, I'm not sure if it's causing the nihilism or if a flash of nihilism is causing the depression. Whatever.
I know that this is not the case for many, many people. Some form of nihilism or materialism satisfies a great number of people, many of whom are probably wonderful (I haven't met many). That does not change the basic fact that I am happier in state A, and unhappier in state B. So I try to induce state B as much as possible, with the fairly certain belief that I am not actually hurting anyone by doing so. This is also testable.
Is someone who is happier as a materialist somehow a better person? That is not testable.
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