I then got into many discussions about it, trying to be genuine, and trying to generate discussion between intelligent people, believers and non-believers. Each camp brought interesting points.

But then, it turned out to be a bigger issue than I had expected… the forum post now has 26000 views and thousands of replies, and considering this is just a web site about Final Fantasy XI, that surprised me… so I thought that perhaps I was actually helping some people to think, I felt proud about having generated such interest in such a taboo (most of the posters were from the USA).

But… I now realize that throughout the conversations I had since then, I ended up being like the character you describe. I’d like to call it “being religious about something” for a lack of a better word. And that’s a big waste of time. I should never be ashamed of stating my position on religion, but at the same time, I cannot realistically hope to convince the believers into understanding my view. I should work on helping the non-believers, and even then as you say, they’re not paying me for it.

Writing a book would make sense. Being paid for it would make sense. But getting into huge debates with religious people who load their speech with straw man arguments and other logical fallacies shouldn’t become something I do in the hope of changing people’s mind. It’s not worth it, and I think I went overboard quite a few times… I’m not much better than a Jehovah Witness in that aspect and I shall reconsider my views…

That being said… how would you apply your philosophy to someone like Socrates, who would spend huge amounts of time discussing and arguing over a table, as a hobby (basically)? Was he wasting his time? Was he just a fool? Didn’t we gain from it after all?

That is, if I had the time, honestly, instead of arguing about stupid things, you could be spending that time playing FFVII in Japanese, or SRS, or watching Kimutaku pretend to be a blind samurai.

This falls into the Nike category 🙂

… jk

or am I