Religion

I want to tell you about my opinion on religion.

I believe in a God, in an allmighty being. How to call this being doesn't matter to me, be it God(s), Allah, Jehovah, Zeus and Hades (and an entire parade of other characters), Mystical power(s) of Nature or whatever name you want to give it...
I call It for convenience God.

But I admit I do not (and can not) know for sure what It is, or even if It's aware of us.

To clarify this I've heard a very good comparison:
So you have the 3 dimensions. you can observe these 3 dimensions, move in them, feel everything that's in those 3 dimensions and manipulate it with the right tools.
Now, if you think logically the next dimension is time (as I said in an earlier post). None of us (beings in these 3 dimensions) have control over Time. We know it's there, we know it goes on, we can name it and imagine grasping it, but we can't control it.
Now imagine a being that HAS control over time. It lives within these 4 dimensions and can  observe it,  move in it and manipulate it. This being is everywhere, knows everything and can observe the limits of our 3 dimensional space.
This being would be God.
This being may also be not only in his kind.
But we don't know all of this because we're like the Flatlanders looking at the 3rd dimension.

Remember Flatland?
The world where everything is two-dimensional.
Where two-dimensional beings reside, live, die, ... are.
We can kinda imagine something like it, because we can represent it by taking a sheet of paper and draw something two-dimensional on it.
But still, these Flatlanders...
We've never seen them and we don't know if we ever change things in that Flatland they live in.

And that may be the same with the 4th dimensional beings... They may have the freedom over Time, but they may have no idea if and how they influence us...

Or they may, we can't know...

But anyway, back to religion.

As I'm raised as a Christian (Greco-Catholic I think, it's hard if you have eastern European roots) I know and accept Christian faith as my own. Yet I do not judge others based on religion or from the point of view of the religion.
As my friends tend to be quite various in their belief: Mostly atheïst, a few Muslim, some Christian and even a Jehova's Witness, all in one group of friends. Yes, we do have differences in opinion and we acknowledge them, but we won't fight each other just to get the others to believe something else.
This is how I would see the perfect community.

But then again. We aren't more than people, we have flaws and that's why the Perfect Community will never exist on a bigger scale.
These imperfection is also why I don't believe in the Church as an institution. Going to church isn't that important for me, actually believing is harder and gives you more...

On a side note: I don't quite believe the "God creating us after his image". I think this is humanity giving God a relatable figure, as we tend to personificate quite a few things...

I see believing or not believing as a matter of opinion. It's completely personal and it shouldn't be used to attack and kill others because they tend to disagree with your belief/opinion. Just accept that other people may tend to disagree with you...

Heh, turns out my opinion on religion is that it's an opinion.

Phew, I think this post deserves the label "long"...
If you tend to disagree with things I said you may use the comments to tell me what you didn't like about it...


-ThOR

P.S.: Let's add something:

tl;dr: I believe and that's an opinion. Face it.

Weekly TWP article dump

Hmm. I don't know if Issue 8 of the Weekly Pickaxe has been released yet, but I'll release my articles already.

Mojang news:
Carl Manneh signed lots of stuff this week: Not only a contract for the new Mojang office, but he hired no less than 2 extra developpers, bringing the total count of Mojang employees on 20.
To anyone waiting for news on the Minecraft Xbox release: the coverart is more or less finished. of the release of it there isn't really a date, only "spring", so we'll have to wait a bit more.


Minecraft Snapshot 12w05b

Weekly Snapshot!
No new additions, mostly tweaks and bugfixes:
- Mob related bugs got fixed.
- Some new mob behaviours got added, for example to the creepers: now they also have the new pathfinding AI.
- Villagers will try to detect village houses and will try to live in them. So when it gets dark villagers go inside to hide and come out again when it's light again.
- Villagers are able to open and close doors. This ability could possibly be extended to many other mobs, but for now it's a villager only feature. There is a small bug with this: they can't register wether a door is open or closed, which may lead to villagers being stuck opening an opened door...
- Ocelots are easier to tame and cats can be told to sit.
- Creepers run away from cats and wild ocelots, so they are useful after all.
- Updated language files (now with 50% less profanities!)
- Lava received sounds: well, bubbling in particular, but this will make it easier for the player to know when there's lava around
- Abandoned mineshafts received an extra generation feature: When they cross ravines they won't have any more floating poles, since it will generate bridges between the two ends.

This snapshot has been reuploaded pretty quickly because there was a fatal bug that made the game crash on startup...
Also there were some gameplay bugs that accidentally were added and got fixed in an other release of the snapshot, resulting in a "B" in the end of the current version. these bugs was the Shift-Clicking while crafting consuming all items and giving only one crafted product in return. with this upload also came the ablility of making the cats sit with an empty hand.

Downloads for the client and the server are available for download as usual.

For the next update some flaws are already being fixed. Jon tweeted that the AI will know if a door is open or not.

-TheOtherRetard

Minecraft news

Anyone having the Minecraft pocket edition?
Well, if you have it expect an update during the next week.

As you noticed, there's a bit of door changes comming up in a next update. Jeb has already posted a reddit thread explaining some difficulties on doors in Minecraft (the right hinged doors in a double door are actually lefthinged and opened when closed. This is why they react weird to redstone). this may be changed in the next update but it will require you to check all doors in your world to check if they are still like they should be.

-ThOR