Calculus, also belief, was Re: [UA] Crosswords and Blue Teets

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

> >   It seems like at least half the people who've rung in on the belief
> >issue are Catholic or ex-Catholic.  Does this imply something about the
> >player base of UA?  Does it indicate that people raised Catholic are
> >more likely to bring it up in conversation?  (And no, I'm not.  Just
> >wondering.)
> 
> Well, maybe the fact that it was co-written by a Catholic means it hits
> Catholic hot buttons.  Or maybe Catholics and ex-Catholics are socialized
> to speak up about their religion (or ex-religion) for some reason.

My experience with Catholics (including 2nd-generation fallen Catholics
like myself -- we're all still Catholics, it gets into your DNA) is that
they're all drawn to ritual, mysticism, and occult mumbo-jumbo. Probably
_particularly_ ex-Catholics, in fact... we're nostalgic for the high
ritual of a church we no longer feel comfortable participating in
directly, so we get our occult fix somewhere else.

It has been my experience that Catholics are much more drawn to
mystical/theological/cosmological themes in gaming and literature than
Protestants, Jews, etc. Hindus are, perhaps, the one group I've
encountered who take this to a greater extreme.

-Matt Norwood

PS - Re: my beliefs. When asked, I usually go off about how I think that
the use of the word "belief" for something any less definite than "I
believe that my keys are in my pocket" is an abuse of language, and that
it takes a folk-psychology concept and stretches it beyond recognition.
If pressed, I describe myself as agnostic in the original Huxleyan sense
(http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/sn-huxley.html) of skepticism with
regard to the capacity for human understanding of the universe/God.

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