ververdan0226

Sorry for shortening things in the title. And hello again!
 
That aside, do you really think that the idea of spirituality is directly tied to religion? For instance, do you believe that it is possible to be a very spiritual atheist? Do you personally find that a discernible difference between the two can be decided like I do? Do the two have distinctly different meanings for you as an individual?
 
For me, spirituality is connecting with yourself through any means possible. I feel being spiritual is not admitting that there is a god (I'm an atheist), or that there's even a mystical force linking the human race and our souls, but the realization that it's whatever I want it to be. I don't wanna say that Inner Peace is some divine mist from the ether, but I do think being spiritual means doing whatever you can to make yourself feel like such a divine presence exists. I believe that if you think God is the only thing that you think will give you happiness or inner peace, good on ya, but I don't. 
 
Organized religion teaches us that our happiness must go through the medium of God or some altruistic figure. Maybe my definition of spirituality is different, but I find happiness not by using him as the medium, but my own self. In my opinion, spirituality is being pure and trying to be a good person through whatever means possible. It is connecting with yourself, not any gods that I quite frankly do not choose to believe in. That's my definition, not necessarily yours. Your thoughts, possible in regards to anything I just said?
 
Please do not attack or criticize anybody in this thread, including myself, and try to limit the @ replies so we don't get into any disputes. Just let people voice their opinions like human beings and do not judge and/or attack them. Remember, every judgment you make of anything is a subconscious bolstering of the ego. I just did it many times, for it is inevitable, it is human nature, but I did it in a manner I feel is respectful. Let's hope you can too, and let's hopefully have some good discussion.  :)

Good write up man!
 
I agree with your point that nudity for nudity's sake, such as is the case with much pornographic material out there, is quite crass, however, such other things as "artistica" make a case for why people shouldn't flip out over nudity. My father is very liberal, my mother also but to what appears to be a lesser extent (she's a tough read in regards to politics,) and that has benefitted me greatly growing up. Case in point, at 11 years old, my father had no problem showing me The Shining. Now, he wasn't about to start letting me chain-smoke, or watch pornography, or see a torture porn type movie. But he realized the artistic integrity of the work and realized that I should be treated as a human being and see something which was rather riveting and had a great impact on me despite its decidedly mature components.
 
And I believe I'm for the better because of it. The people I knew growing up who fetishized violence and porn were the ones who were denied access to such things on a decidedly limited level such as I was. I knew this one guy, and every time I went over to his house he'd be hoopin and hollerin about the fact that he found a T game with limited quantities of blood coming from the corpses of fallen enemies when repeatedly shot. And ya know what,  he's now a chain-smoker with a predilection towards driving drunk.
 
Now I'm not going to say that he's a bad person or that any discernible correlation can be brought up between these disparate things, but you have to wonder, would it really be better to let our children see this stuff so that they can become desensitized and not covet it so much? I'm not saying we should turn Friday family game night into watch young Jenny get railed in the ass night, but I am saying that we likely shouldn't be so far up our own goddamn asses in regards to this stuff.
 
As I mentioned in my PM  with Red12b, I've been reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, which has at the very least incited the brain juices and gotten me think about life and nurture and the nature of our interactions with people. I'm not gonna spew an agenda against organized religion (though I think it is very much the antithesis of many of  humans horrible actions and represents the subconscious ego inflation of the collective human species), for it gives hope to many people and it would be wrong to do so, but when people get so up their own asses about things and their beliefs and pass it off to God, I find it just utterly depressing, such as is the case with the violence and sex manifested in today's media. 
 
So what am I saying, I don't even fucking know.... I'm rambling. My point? I can't say after writing all that. Interpret it for what you will, I forget where I was getting too...

tired of Wheaties

First time commenting in a good long while.  :)
 
1. Final Fantasy XIII 
2. Final Fantasy XIV (One may only hope it releases in 2010, for it will be my only day one purchase.)
3. 3D Dot Game Heroes
4. Modnation Racers
5. Alpha Protocol 
6. Red Dead: Redemption
 
Though I can't say I'll actually be buying any of those on day one of their respective release dates. Part of my new policy of not reading reviews or previews and buying games months after the fact.

Go run a site as extensive as this for a year and then come back to us.

Beats me. I don't watch actual TV any more,let alone G4. As far as I know though, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 6:30 is their schedule, but don't quote me on that. I think Sessler was saying on Twitter that they had some cool stuff this week on upcoming fall games like L4D2.

That game Eight Days looked interesting...

Anything shot in black and white that shows a 50-year old man in his yard with wife and dog and advertises some sort of medicinal drug that has thirty five side effects.

Is the making-of going to be on the God of War Collection??