User talk:HiddenVale

Hi there, HiddenVale!
Welcome to our Diablo Wiki, and thank you for your contribution on User:HiddenVale! There's a lot to do around here, so I hope you'll stay with us and make many more improvements. I am happy you decided to create an account to make yourself part of the community. Please, take the time and introduce yourself.


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 * -- Tephra (Talk) 21:35, August 28, 2012

Satanic symbol
You know this is the Diablo Wiki, right? Diablo, demons, sorcery, blood and gore, etc.? Symbols only mean what those who use them intend them to mean. The pentagram is a very common symbol used by many religions throughout history, with many different meanings. Since I am not a Satanist, the pentagram does not represent Satan to me, it represents the game of which this wiki is about. ◄► Tephra ◄► 04:20, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

I must caution you at this point as you have asked for a debate from Breywood. While I doubt there are any Satanists here who could be offended, Satanism is still a religion and religious intolerance is a violation of Wikia's Terms of use. I am not going to stop you from having a civil debate regarding symbolism if you want, but I will have to enforce the rules if you decide to take it too far. In my opinion, this wiki is a poor choice of localities within which to debate topics, especially ones involving religion. ◄► Tephra ◄► 17:28, August 30, 2012 (UTC)

Since you asked...
You'll have to make it worth my while. After all, all you made was a comment, and there's no need to turn it into a mountain.

The design team used the inverted pentagram because it can inspire fear from superstitious people, and because it's about fighting demons, so throwing around that sort of imagery adds some atmosphere. Does it have to be more than that? Breywood (talk) 22:40, August 30, 2012 (UTC)

No. As I said to Tephra, the pentagram works for a game like this. It's the closest possible, sensible symbol for Blizzard to use. But I don't understand your mountain reference. (Oh, baahh. It's irrelovent) HiddenVale (talk) 23:11, August 30, 2012 (UTC)

Making a mountain out of a molehill. Really, all you made was a one-line comment which I initally overlooked and it's been a long while since I've had a big discussion on religion. Not that I have a problem with people having a religion or voicing their opinion with/on it, but there used to be people who would join forums on another site that I frequent with the intention of converting its users to their version of Christianity and have them dictate wisdom to us. They were never very successful, although the exercise in deconstructing their apologetics was often fun. Breywood (talk) 12:32, August 31, 2012 (UTC)

Their version of Christianity. LOL I would actually want to see that debate. Wait... ...deconstructing their apologetics???!! Oh my goodness. What a waste of time; (On a forum, that is)

Oh, and by the way, Master Breywood, I'm quite glad that you actually TYPE what your'e saying in ENGLISH, unlike 80% percent every Wikian. HiddenVale (talk) 16:52, August 31, 2012 (UTC)

Fundamentalists are varied on the religion/doctrine, but not attitude. Catholic, Protestant, nondenominational, Muslim, atheist etc... they all vary on the rules for the One True Way but whenever you disagree with them, you're wrong. And when you're wrong, you need to be corrected until they think it's time to "knock the dust from their sandals" and move on. Whenever you're arguing with the Christian ones, I always get the feeling that if they'd been alive 2000 years ago, they'd be pushing the Roman soldiers out of the way to drive in the nails themselves.

The deconstruction process? That's just a part of the fun. Some like redundantly grinding on monsters for random drops, others like pointing out what bothers them about an essay that's written to make them accept the apologist's viewpoint. If it's not your thing, that's okay. :)

I'm not sure there's going to be much of a debate. Really, I'm fine with whatever religion people have as long as it's kept personal. I think people can be fine to say what they think, but when someone is trying to lord authority or attempting to incite violence or abuse and all they have is emotional reasoning and a selected few passages out of a book penned over 2000 years ago, I think it might be time to think about what happened the last time this happened. I seem to recall something about executing some wandering priest claiming to be the Messiah and his gang of unwashed heathens.

P.S. There's no need for titles and honorifics. I accepted the title of admin to help keep the vandals down, not to keep people in fear of a "stealth banhammer." And thanks for the comment on my grammar. I often quip that "Proper grammar is one sure way to identify a bot." ;) Breywood (talk) 21:26, August 31, 2012 (UTC)

(Applause)

Hmm. Driving nails into whom? Jesus?? That I don't get.

And you also said that people would attempt to incite violence and abuse, using emotions... ...and parts of the Bible? That's most certainly not what the Bible's for; why would someone do ''that?? ''I seriously wonder who that would be. HiddenVale (talk) 23:53, August 31, 2012 (UTC)

I'll answer your questions in order.

First: The whole driving nails bit is that for those kinds of people, they resemble more the Pharisees than the savior they claim to be imitating. Mostly because they're more interested in exerting influence over others, and being legalistic which is generally exalting themselves using Scripture because they can't find a better way to validate their viewpoint.

Second: Not quite what I meant, but no harm done. Many Fundamentalists hate gay people to the point of having them jailed, institutionalized or even executed. Really, it's because they're uncomfortable about their sexuality, but instead of just admitting this, they thumb through their Bible, pull out the six places where the Bible condemns homosexuality and use that as their whole basis for discriminating against people with same-sex attraction. This is just one example, but it's one of the more common examples of how a Fundamentalist feels justified using the Bible as a reason to support their like/dislike of something. It's quite a bit different from the usual churchgoer who takes certain passages to heart because they have some special meaning to them. The latter is personal. The former is seeking to make changes based on the fact they don't like something.

One more, though. I have a dislike for Richard Dawkins because he spends most of his time pointing his finger at extremist behavior with religious adherents and (more or less) says "See? See that? If there were no religion, this wouldn't happen, so the sooner we get rid of religion the better off we'll be!"

Keep in mind that Fundamentalism is an attitude, not a religion in itself. It's just that in the West, it's the dominant religion, so it's the one that gets the most attention. There are plenty of recent examples of all kinds: The Middle East, Northern Ireland, The Westboro Baptist Church, Richard Dawkins and the Buddhists in Burma tend to discriminate terribly against the Muslim minority in the country being just a few examples.

Third: In a nutshell, Fundamentalists are interested in exerting influence over others or have some need to make themselves feel better by finding/making someone inferior to them, or turning criticism into persecution to validate their attitude (you hate them because of the Christ within them, the Bible says so!). Because the Bible is perfect, whatever can be used to support a viewpoint is not only correct, it's a divine right. They're not really dominant, either, but they're quite vocal and very capable of causing a lot of damage because of their severe worldview. There's no real statistics, but I'd peg the fundie element at about 10% normally and at about 20% in the southern United States and I'm not even going to try to figure out what it would be for both sides in the Middle East, but I'd expect much higher, although not complete (it's generally an enforced law over there, so you can't really tell who's the real fundie and who's just going through the motions because they're going to get punished if they don't).

I'll state again that I don't have a problem with religion as long as it's personal, but I've had a fair bit of experience with the Fundamentalist element. Breywood (talk) 13:20, September 1, 2012 (UTC)

Well, what we two are doing is fine; I would consider this personal, not like we're being that "open", which is fine. As long as no one else intrudes into this... ..which of course wouldn't happen....

You said that correctly: Fundamentalism, and in fact most isms, are philisophical views; not, and less broad than, a religion. And I noticed you mentioned the Bible being a "Divine Right". That's similar to an Appeal to Authority, a thingy in the science of Logic, which I have studied, as my school was a Private School. In other words, being a Christian makes all corners of Logic have sense; otherwise there would be inevitable disagreements. Unitarians would have that easy, though. They ignore all that. For finding "truth" they will look through Scripture, of the Koran, or the Works of Confucius, or maybe the Book of Mormon (cough cough), or whatever. They have the everything-is-ONE (uni-), or-every-belief-is-true mindset. Their term for God is simply "Ultimate Reality", and that's all. I don't know anything further about them, except for the person who started the movement (in the USA), James Freemen, and I'd rather not, even though I could easily know; blah-blah-blah.

You know what... ...that was a silly rabbit hole I went down, figuratively. Forgive me. Unless your'e interested, or experienced somehow in that also. Oh, now what sect, major or minor, of belief was Richard Dawkins a part of again? I have forgotten. HiddenVale (talk) 22:37, September 1, 2012 (UTC)

Richard Dawkins is a zoologist who has written some books and made a few films which not only criticized religion, but seemed to be spending a lot of time trying to prove that religion is dangerous and we'd be better off if we just did away with it. He's supposed to be an agnostic, but his published materials are popular with antitheists. His attitude may be part of the fact he's often challenged to debates with Creationists who can't bring themselves to believe that the earth may be a bit older than 6000 years and are still trying to use information which had been disproven fifty years ago. Breywood (talk) 11:50, September 2, 2012 (UTC)

◄► Tephra ◄► 14:09, September 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * You are starting to slip over the line Breywood, insinuating ignorance toward those within a certain belief group is entering the realm of religious intolerance. This discussion will not be allowed to continue if it starts breaching Wikia's terms of use policy.

Breywood (talk) 23:00, September 2, 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't worry. That will be taken care of immediately.


 * Oh dear. If only I had known there was closed circuit videocam on this Talk-Page.
 * Master Tephra, if youv'e warned him about shutting the trap for my "protection" - that would'nt be necessary.
 * Breywood and I were having quite the discussion; I was enjoying it almost. But, if you insist...
 * HiddenVale (talk) 22:47, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

◄► Tephra ◄► 01:02, September 4, 2012 (UTC)
 * Your "protection" is not my concern. Wikia's Terms of use is. You can discuss all you want, but only so long as you follow the guidelines set by Wikia.

Well, a pleasure speaking with you Master Breywood! We WILL meet again, eh? (If that happens here, well, that could be a problem.) It was an honor! HiddenVale (talk) 22:47, September 3, 2012 (UTC)







Your recent post in the Diablo talk page.
Just to reiterate what others have said, I don't think there's a problem with you making a blog post or a forum post about that particular question, although the forums are pretty terrible. I did the same thing with the Black Soulstone because it was confusing me due to two of the three soulstones being shattered in Diablo II and I didn't want to clutter up the article or its talk page. Breywood (talk) 21:04, June 13, 2013 (UTC)

Wait... you're talking about Merloch, Diablo, and the Balrog I displayed? HiddenVale 21:10, June 13, 2013 (UTC)

I am, but I guess I'm not on topic. Really though, speculation isn't usually a problem as a blog entry. Breywood (talk) 00:01, June 14, 2013 (UTC)