As a mechanic, it would be absolutely amusing, especially if waste types had these predictable effects. Carbon release feeds plants terraforming it into a jungle that overruns your factories, while radiation destroys crops, fracking causes sinkholes or mountains randomly determined, and so forth.

By your logic, coexistance of tribe, monarchy, republic and democracy doesn't mean that society progress throught those forms of government from more primitive, to more advanced.
Except your source explilcitly states that Which means you wrong in comparing atheism to other belief systems aka religions in the first place.

Then what is secularism and agnosticism? It seems to make more sense to not conflate (seriously, why is there always conflation of distinct terms!?). "I don't know"/"I don't care" is agnosticism. "I don't see evidence, therefore I do not believe" is secularism. "I think you're full of it" is atheism. Or in other terms, agnosticism is acceptance of not knowing, secularism is suggesting that it's a safer bet to assume non-existence (occam's razor), while atheism is claim of certainty.

Conflation benefits warriors on both sides of the politics: if you can't keep stable definitions for the words, you can't make any progress or discussion on any topic, which means you can't necessarily loose ground (even if it also means you can't gain ground).

Sources:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-do-secular-atheist-agnostic-mean

EDIT: Instead of playing this silly game of words: why not just look at this from a more pragmatic view? What exactly happened throughout history? Was there not a linear progression? Did not older religions leave room for multiple progressively secular interpretations (hint: Christians are always accused of "goalpost moving")? We can say all we want that things should be different, or could've been different, but that's pale in comparison to what actually happened.

Exactly - they didn't. The suggestion that more recent systems and ideologies are inherently "more advanced" is false. You can chart the development of a specific ideology in a given time and place, but there is no hierarchy of innate superiority or legitimacy. There is not some ultimate goal to strive for in this context.

In the abstract, there is nothing that enforces a progression of ideas like 1 > 2 > 3, it can easily form like 3 > 1 > 2, or 420 > 69 > 313. Indeed, for this argument the ideas having a "correct" order is essentially quite arbitrary, that order being based on a one possible interpretation of a limited set of information.

Just what do you think "primitive" and "advanced" mean in this context? If you meant simple/complex, you would have said that, so lets make this unambiguous.

Then why you haven't said anything about it earlier? In all Civs forms of government have their hierarchy, but for some reason you went for religion instead.

Oh really? So how can you come up with 3 without knowing what 1 is?

Because it applies to religion and what kohlrak is saying about it just as much it applies to governmental systems or science. Or are you saying that religion is not a kind of ideology, or cannot contain ideological positions? I doubt that.

My choice of the labels "123" as was also arbitrary, for this purpose you can understand them as shorthand for "uncomplicated", "complicated" and "very complicated" ideas.

And, though it is beside the point, I will also answer your question: if you show me three things, I can examine them and discover they are separate, then it is possible for me to infer that one and two also exist because they are contained within three.

So, you basically agree with me?

But if I will not show you three things? If I show you only one thing, can you deduce other two of things? Because that's what you claim. You claim that you can invent automobile without inventing a wheel. That you can invent atheism without inventing idea of a god.

On what exactly...? Not sure which thing you mean.

Religion is also presented hierarchically in civ, if that's what you mean. If so, I don't quite agree with your assessment of what I said.

That was a colloquial "you", not singular. It doesn't matter though; if you, LootHunter do not show me three actual objects, then I could spot three specks of dirt, or notice I have multiple fingers. It's an abstracted situation, not a 100% literal example.

You still haven't answered, how you can invent automobile without inventing a wheel. And why you were objecting only how Civ present religion and not how Civ present forms of govenment.

I wasn't objecting to just one or the other, both of them are presented in the games from a similarly wrongheaded position. I was simply provided a religious example to talk about.

I suppose if I say it could be screw driven (or spheres, legs, or whatever else) instead of wheeled, you'll complain? Again i'll stress that it was not a literal example.

Then what this example was about? Obviously, if you have a number of ideas, you can choose of them as you see fit. But the whole point of Civ tech tree is that if you don't have any ideas, you have to learn/invent simple ones and only after that you will be able to grasp more complex and inticate ideas. Do you agree with that or not?

As someone with a background in climate science - no, that's not controversial on a scientific level. At all. We've ruled out all possible alternatives anyone has managed to come up with, so far, and - more importantly - have several lines of evidence WHY it is humans that are responsible. That evidence is solid and strong, by now - and isn't even new. It's been debated and a line of enquiry all the way back to the early 19th century. Arrhenius for example.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence is the isotope count of the CO2 that is added to the atmosphere. We can basically fingerprint fossil fuel based CO2 and natural occuring ones by their differing isotope count. The CO2 that rapidly increases in the atmosphere fits the isotope count of fossil fuels. There's no other source of CO2 emissions that we have been able to locate that matches that isotope profile. The only reason fossil fuels burn to the amount that they do are down to human activities. All that is measurable, traceable, quantifiable and fairly easy to repeatidly test - if you have the knowledge / tools to do so.

No, I don't!

The point of the tech tree, at the most basic level is to provide an engaging gameplay feature. That much is obvious. But within the context of the game it's more than just that.

Viewed in context, as part of the games, it is placed within a framework of understanding historical matters (as I said earlier, while the games do not act as though they are accurate simulation, they do intend to be reasonable abstractions) and that framework treats real historical events (concerning developments of society, religion and science) as a linear, predetermined chain of inevitable events. And with very particular ideas of what is most worthy. As a method of understanding history this is unhelpful at best; at worst it can be used as a weapon against any criticism of the status quo or to justify terrible actions.

Now, I expect you'll try to claim that it's just a videogame and doesn't matter, but as kohlrak has kindly demonstrated for us, such conceptions of history are genuinely held out in the real world. The creations of humans are not formed in a vacuum, and so the attitudes and preconceptions of the creators are present within the work and may be perpetuated by it.

So you disagree that some ideas to be invented need other ideas, ok.
But according to you, they are! You just now said that ideas you have are not determined by existing ideas.

Lol no it's not solid and strong. We've found that the climate naturally changes (duh) and just yesterday news broke most of the math 'proving' we're the source of global warming is false because of errors. Millions of years ago oxygen was poison to the planet, this is no different. Things change.

Besides, when Yellowstone pops and radioactive ash is raining upon our heads we'll be praying to go back to the fart/muffler excuse of not understanding much about our climate. And it's a — not a -.