No, Hellmouth! He's not looking at it too hard! He's actually on to something!

You see; SI is a comment on religion as a whole. God is actually a madman, who pulls people into his world only to torture them with the madness that plauges him. Subsequently to add insult to injury, he tricks them into believing that the plague in which he forced upon them is a gift! Furthermore, those who know the truth and deny this insane megalomaniac for the false deity he is are labelled as heretics. If that wasn't enough, instead of simply destroying these heretics that know the truth, God forces even more suffering upon them by allowing them to live so that they may be hunted down and killed by those ensared in his web of lies, using them as puppets for his own amusemant. God's logical side though is a mass-murderer, so even when his people finally get a moment of reprieve from the mad world they live in, they are butchered, only for more poor souls to be herded into the world again, so the cycle can begin anew.

/end sarcasm.

Op, paranoid Obsessive compulsiveness is a terrible thing. You should really re-direct it to whether or not a door is locked. That's what I did. Hmm...is my car door locked? I'll have to get that sword and go check...

I'm really not seeing any bashing of atheists going on, and I'm definitely not seeing how there are any attacks on hitchens and Dawkins. Actually, Why'd you bring those two into this? We don't need to feed the fires by bringing a scientist and a journalist into every discussion on Atheism, unless of course your citing them for an argument.

I've already got the door thing down. As for why I brought Hitchens and Dawkins into this, because I don't think people even thought of Atheist people to even bash them, before these two and a few others came along. And as such, they might be the public face of vocal Atheism.

I take it you don't read much prior to present day.

You don't have to bash a certain adherent of a system to bash a system, you don't need to know who the "public face of vocal Atheism" is to bash Atheism, because in terms of a system of thought those guys are irrelevant - it was around before them and it will continue after them. That said, nobody's actually bashing atheism.

When gods are a constant and visible part of a world, only an idiot would refuse to believe in them. No offense, but don't try to start a religion fight when there's nothing to fight about. :shrug:

Yeah, people do this a lot in the literary world. Video Games, meet literary criticism. Now, is there any further proof needed of Video Games as an artform, aside from this and the eleventy-billion other things?

Yes, Mr. Ghost is looking into it too hard, it's almost as though he wants to see Atheists insulted by TES, seemingly forgetting that TES is a series written by multiple people of varying beliefs and practices, and therefore anything deliberately inflammatory by one writer would not only bring the ire of his or her coworkers but also his or her boss. So, I'm guessing a closet desire to have his own group insulted in order to justify angst. I see this all the time.


yeah, I'm writing an essay about how people mistakenly believe that in a work of fiction every character is a stand-in for anyone "like them," and how most people who accuse this are closet racists themselves a lot of the time because they assume "black character=all black people."

Who knows, maybe someone on the bethesda payroll for writers dislikes atheists, but for the reasons outlined above, no atheist-bashing is likely to occur.

This thread seems like it's pretty well pointless now. Aside from which, it has the potential to veer into religious discussion (I'm not sure how atheism and nihilism as they relate to religious life philosophies figure into the forum rules against such) and has a very high potential flammability.

I checked this topic out when it was first posted and was prepared to allow it provided real life religion was not brought up excessively - there is always going to be some comparisons between the TES world and RL and we are prepared to allow that. However, it seems you can't play nicely so on this occasion I am taking away your toys.