u/zknora

Rookstayers, we have a proposal that could make a huge difference to our community: a Depot in Rookgaard.

There is already a proposal on the official Tibia forum, created by Pryce Capone, asking for it. What it needs now is our support.

https://www.tibia.com/forum/?action=thread&threadid=4988257

We are a small community, but we are persistent, dedicated, and used to playing the long game. We have never needed much of an incentive to pursue our goals, no matter how crazy they may seem. A Depot in Rookgaard shouldn't be any different.

There is no reason to be discouraged by how long this might take or by how unlikely it may seem. We don't need guarantees that our goals will be achieved to keep pursuing them. We just need to keep showing up, consistently and patiently, until our demand becomes impossible to ignore.

If you support a Depot in Rookgaard, go to the proposal and leave a comment. Let's make sure the community is heard. And if you believe in this approach, spread the word to your fellow Rook players as well!

https://www.tibia.com/forum/?action=thread&threadid=4988257

Recentemente traduzi alguns posts meus para o inglês e postei no r / atheism, pra ver o tipo de respostas que receberia, considerando que lá tem uma comunidade bem maior e ativa que a nossa. O último em particular foi muito movimentado, tendo até o momento 238 comentários. Coisa que seria meio impensável de acontecer por aqui. No entanto, quanto mais eu lia os comentários, mais parecia que eu estava "falando sozinho".

Digo isto pq, apesar da quantidade enorme de comentários, boa parte deles parecia responder a uma discussão que não era exatamente a que eu tinha proposto. Várias pessoas simplesmente repetiam a distinção entre ateísmo e agnosticismo, falavam sobre a impossibilidade de provar que Deus não existe ou diziam que “ausência de evidência não é evidência de ausência”, embora esses pontos já meio que estivessem contemplados no próprio texto. Fora a galera que parecia estar me tratando como um crédulo defendendo a existência de Deus.

Minha impressão é que a galera leu o título, tentou imaginar sobre o que era e começou a responder com aquilo que já tinha pronto na cabeça sobre ateísmo e religião, sem necessariamente ler o argumento que vinha depois.

Isso me fez considerar que esta comunidade aqui é mais qualificada para esse tipo de discussão justamente por ser menor. Claro que muitas vezes vc vai postar aqui e não ter quase nenhum desenvolvimento. Mas raramente alguém vai interagir pra falar algo completamente fora do que está proposto. E mesmo quando fazem, a discussão está tão contida que dá pra perguntar o porquê a pessoa fez a digressão que fez.

Lá não tem essa. Vc é meio que soterrado por respostas que vão tomando rumos completamente diferentes do que foi proposto, ao ponto em que nem dá pra tentar puxar a pessoa de volta pro assunto. A discussão já se espalhou em várias direções e eu teria que passar o resto do dia explicando qual era o ponto original do post rsrsrs.

Não sei se alguém já frequentou lá. Caso sim, comentem aqui pra trocarmos experiências!

Right now, I’m working on my skills. I’m aiming for 30 Fist, 25 Club, 23 Sword, 23 Axe, 23 Distance, and 35 Shield. It’s still going to take a while. And I kinda already have goals planned for after I reach those goals xD.

That got me thinking that maybe the insane consistency shown by some very old players who are still active comes from always having a goal to work toward.

So, what about you guys? What are your current goals? Do you have an estimate of when you’ll achieve them?

One of the first things a newly minted atheist who gets into debates with religious people will encounter is the accusation of “inverse dogmatism.” The basic idea is that being certain that God doesn’t exist turns into a position that is just as unquestionable as the faith we reject and often criticize.

Naturally, we quickly learn to understand why this is a conceptual mistake. Atheism (at least in its more conciliatory form lol) doesn’t claim that “God definitely doesn’t exist,” but simply refrains from believing due to a lack of good reasons to believe. In other words, we are disbelievers in the face of insufficient evidence, not people claiming absolute certainty.

That said, it’s important to acknowledge something that may be uncomfortable for many people. In practice, a great many atheists feel as though this is a completely settled question. Myself included xD. But this certainty that God doesn’t exist doesn’t come from some dogmatic impulse. It comes from an accumulation over time. Time passes, and theistic arguments remain the same. Religions keep circling around the same talking points and making the same logical mistakes. Meanwhile, God neither shows up nor explains himself. It’s the old joke that God knows exactly what he could do to make me stop being an atheist. If he doesn’t do it, I guess he doesn’t want to.

Anyway, given the fact that faith still requires the same logical leap it required thousands of years ago, that feeling of certainty doesn’t come from arrogance. It comes from the stagnation on the other side. The God hypothesis doesn’t mature or develop. It doesn’t offer new answers, or better ones.

So, I still maintain that the whole question is open to revision. At least in theory. But if there’s nothing to revise, it’s only natural that we become more “comfortable” with disbelief (for lack of a better word). And I understand that, from a religious person’s perspective, this will probably just sound like atheists think they already know everything. But when the debate has been completely exhausted, there’s not much I can do other than lament that they choose to make such a superficial judgment.

Existe uma diferença entre demonstrar que uma determinada afirmação religiosa é falsa (ou contraditória) e demonstrar que uma religião inteira é falsa. E acho que dá pra ilustrar isso com um exemplo meio idiota. A lore de O Senhor dos Anéis é bastante coerente dentro do universo que ela constrói. Tem regras e toda uma cosmologia que se encaixa direitinho. Nem por isso a gente sai por aí acreditando que hobbits são reais. Ou seja, ser coerente por dentro não significa necessariamente corresponder à realidade.

E isso tem tudo a ver com religião. Religião é, em última instância, uma tentativa humana de investigar e interpretar aquilo que se supõe ser uma realidade sobrenatural. E justamente por não existirem nesse domínio os mesmos mecanismos de verificação empírica que temos nas ciências naturais, o conhecimento religioso acaba sendo construído de maneira muito mais interpretativa.

Em outras palavras, se eu demonstrar que determinada afirmação teológica é contraditória, eu demonstrei que aquela afirmação é problemática. Se demonstrar que uma determinada interpretação de um texto sagrado é incompatível com outra, demonstrei que aquela interpretação possui um problema. Agora o salto entre "essa proposição é falsa" pra "a religião inteira é falsa" exige argumentos adicionais.

Digo isso pq religiões não são sistemas fechados de proposições objetivamente verificáveis, como uma teoria científica. Não é incomum à teologia tentar lidar constantemente com aquilo que é considerado uma contradição lógica, sem que isso signifique que a religião simplesmente deixe de existir ou que seus adeptos passem a considerar toda a tradição inválida.

Não é um acaso existirem milhares de denominações e interpretações diferentes dentro de uma mesma religião. Ainda que elas partam dos mesmos textos ditos sagrados. Se a simples existência de uma contradição lógica em um texto fosse suficiente para invalidar objetivamente uma religião inteira, seria difícil explicar essa diversidade toda. Na prática, as pessoas interpretam, reinterpretam, contextualizam, relativizam determinadas passagens, atribuem diferentes níveis de autoridade aos textos e chegam a conclusões completamente diferentes partindo das mesmas fontes.

Acho que meu ponto é que coerência lógica e verdade não são a mesma coisa. Uma proposição pode ser perfeitamente coerente e ainda assim ser falsa da mesma forma que uma incoerência lógica não nos permite simplesmente concluir qualquer coisa sobre a realidade sem antes estabelecer exatamente onde está a incoerência e o que ela realmente refuta.

Esse é um incômodo antigo que tenho na construção de argumentos ateus e acho válido que nosso "campo" (se é que dá pra chamar assim) não transforme argumentos suficientes pra demonstrar que determinada crença é problemática em um argumento que pretende demonstrar mais do que ele realmente consegue estabelecer.

We've already received reports from rookstayers who have encountered Echo Raids on Rookgaard (via TestServer). It's still unclear exactly how much of a threat the Echo influenced creatures or an Echo Warden might pose in Rookgaard, but the possibility of taking on this challenge sounds very exciting to me.

If anyone has any new information about this system and can share it with the rest of the community, I'd be very grateful!

The question in the title sounds like one of those classic internet-atheist provocations. After all, it's not uncommon to see atheists using this line of argument. What's interesting is that it also shows up in arguments used by theists.

The reasoning is pretty simple. If we assume that anyone who claims to have had a supernatural experience is either crazy or lying, then the nonexistence of the supernatural would imply that billions of people, not only today, but throughout human history, have been either crazy or liars. But what do we make of a believer who is otherwise completely reasonable?

The person who works, studies, raises children, develops scientific theories, makes complex decisions, and functions well in virtually every aspect of life. Is it plausible to say that someone like this is insane simply because they believe they witnessed a miracle or felt the presence of God? That doesn't seem right to me. And if the only alternative is that they're lying, then the obvious question is: why?

Financial gain? Status? Attention? In some cases, sure. But in all cases? I wouldn't consider that a reasonable assumption. The overwhelming majority of religious people don't appear to be inventing spiritual experiences in order to gain some advantage, even a subjective one. On the contrary, they seem genuinely convinced that what they experienced was real.

So does that mean it's more reasonable to believe in God? Are we all converts now???

Obviously not lol.

The most likely explanation is that the original premise is fundamentally flawed. Those aren't the only two options.

There's a third possibility that is both simpler and far more consistent with what we know about human behavior: people can be sincerely mistaken.

And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. Human beings misinterpret reality all the time. We see patterns where none exist, intentions behind random events, incorrect causes for real occurrences, and very often we confuse our interpretations with the facts themselves.

Now think about it. Religion didn't emerge in a vacuum. It's a cultural inheritance passed down from generation to generation. From childhood, we learn which explanations make sense within our community and which phenomena should be understood as manifestations of the supernatural. I'll go even further: we learn which stories are supposed to be taken seriously and which aren't.

Angels? Sure.

Aliens? Are you crazy?!

I wrote all of this to say that there is nothing extraordinary about people immersed in a religious environment using a set of metaphysical concepts to make sense of strange events or unexplained experiences.

On the contrary, what's unusual is when they break out of that cycle.

So a person may very well have gone through something powerful and meaningful while simultaneously drawing an unfounded conclusion from it. And I don't think it's possible to understand the religious phenomenon without understanding this basic distinction between experience and interpretation.

Interpretive leaps don't require insanity or dishonesty. They only require someone genuinely committed to finding a narrative that makes sense to them.

In fact, one could argue that this tendency is tied to an evolutionary mechanism: our species evolved to find patterns. From an evolutionary perspective, it's safer to assume there's something hiding in the bushes than to ignore a potential threat. As a result, we developed a strong tendency to detect patterns, intentions, and agents even when the evidence is insufficient.

This mechanism is useful for survival, but it comes with a side effect: false positives.

In that sense, I would argue that the "God of the gaps" is a natural tendency to generate false positives within a culture saturated with supernatural concepts. This provides a far more plausible explanation for why so many people interpret unusual experiences as evidence of a spiritual reality.

I’ve been wondering lately whether the members of our Rookgaard community, not only here but as a whole, have been following any Rookgaard-related content recently. Things like videos, streams, guides, podcasts, lore discussions, old stories, or even casual gameplay.

The reason I’m asking is precisely because of the lack of content I see in our niche. I understand it probably isn’t easy to keep producing new things about such limited content, but I still can’t help feeling that Rookgaard deserves more consistent content being created around it.

What kind of Rookgaard content would you follow or like to see more of about the island? I’m curious to know what the community feels is still missing or not explored enough when it comes to Rookgaard content (if there even is something xD).