As beautiful as the vines are, they wreck your house, especially once it gets to your roof.

That wasn't what I meant, but reading my post I see how you got that. More accurate would be that the anti-feminists say "shut up about this feminist junk" and the feminists say "you're just an MRA."

Wait. . . are you serious?

This. Compare:

Japanese, I thought they were ;p

I can't agree with that. There's MORE, but I don't know that it's actually more interesting. The lore said and implied about the Jedi in ANH was far more interesting than the few token lines and lightsaber waving we saw in TPM. Similarly, the politics. . . were completely nonsensical and, frankly, boring. I don't…

It's not just sci-fi/fantasy which deals with world building. Any fictional work does, and it's an integral part of most storytelling. Rome and Juliet doesn't make sense if it isn't framed with the implied history and atmosphere of Verona, just as The Beach Boys' songs would fall flat without the California surfer…

Watch his segment, starting at about 2:40. I'm not saying unprofessional at all, just a little odd.

He was odd even during filming. It's just deepened as he's gotten older, it seems.

Or we can just be dicks. That's cool too.

Aaaaand cue a "I'm kind of sick of hearing about this" followed by a "you must be an MRA."

Well, besides the murder part :p

I think that it really depends on the book. Some worlds work very, very well with the maps and charts and everything else, especially if logistics become important. A Song of Ice and Fire comes to mind, where you can get lost without a point of reference. Other stories, however, really don't need it.

I would hope that's the case here, but in some circles it really isn't possible. Which is a shame.

Well, *you* are talking about religion as whole. What I'm doing in challenging your premise that "gamer culture," as you put it, is analogous to religion as a whole, i.e. "the culture which surround serious gamers" <=> "all of religion." I don't think that premise is useful, that it is an apt comparison, and I don't…

Actually, "popularity," as you put it, has a huge bearing here. We could talk about Korean Shamanistic religion, the divisions between the main belief systems, and how deals primarily with addressing specific needs by appeasing the appropriate spirits. Given the place it has in Korean society we might even have a few…

Well, yes. I defined it differently because I DO believe that it bears a different definition. As you say, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of exceptions to an Abrahamic view of religion, but within the context of this talk and this community, I don't know that we need to give weight to every single one of them.…

Good catch on Ebert's quote. I was wondering if Robertson knew about *that* one.

As theJakeman pointed out, that's not necessarily the case, even among Abrahamic religions—there are plenty of believers who accept the religious teachings as metaphorical and not literal.

Well, they are different, fundamentally. While religion, like most things, lies on a spectrum and does not mean the same thing to everyone, I think an easy definition for this discussion would be a set of teachings, morals, beliefs, and practices perpetuated with the intent of achieving spiritual awareness and…