Not really a waste if it’s the entertainment you enjoy the most. I’m not sure what you envision as gaming, but there are all types. Some are violence and conflict, but some are stories, some are just cooperative, some are puzzles.

Do you view tv, reading, radio, podcasts as all waste of time? Do you think all entertainment is a waste of time? If so you’re at least ideologically consistent, but I disagree and think humans need entertainment in their lives, for stress release etc. Different people will enjoy different entertainment, and with the caveat of it not harming other people, I don’t think it should be subject to gatekeeping.

Sure. I do have some benefits that help, like a WFH schedule, but even on the work in office days I can do games that don’t require a ton of time, like a few Monster Hunter hunts (3-12 mins a hunt) or a few Warframe missions, but thats usually because I don’t cook those days, don’t exercise,and I have no kids and don’t really do other entertainment except reading, podcasts and some of those I do while gaming. When I read I often don’t game same day.

I used to game more, but had less sleep, so I do less in work from office days. WFH days I get much more time (2-2.5 hours not spent driving/getting ready), plus I can sometimes play less intense games while working, on short breaks, during lunch, etc. I do usually exercise and cook those days, but even then there’s time. I don’t go out often except for the exercise though.

Now with flavor!

Futurama got me out of a cult by making fun of the moving goal posts of the missing link. I always liked science before that, but probably because the religion was so against it I kinda avoided discussing evolution, and a lot of the rest of at least basic science could be rationalized or twisted to kinda agree.

I personally at the time had no issues with the age of the Earth(was told the 7 days were metaphorical and the incorrect orders wasn’t really discussed), didn’t have any issues believing in dinosaurs (there was iirc some argument that God used them to prepare the earth and intentionally had em die out) and other stuff, plus they tried to use stuff like how much Earth is in a “perfect” distance from the sun.

All that aside, human evolution can’t work even with some of the creation myth being metaphors, because said cult also used the Adam and Eve story to justify why God permits evil. If that is just a metaphor, then the problem of evil became too pronounced.

If you want to know the argument I was sorta ok with at the time, it was basically this: Satan convincing humans to disobey God basically put the challenge that humanity didn’t need God and can rule themselves. While several thousand years of allowing atrocities seems long, in the age of the Earth (and theoretically, God) it isn’t much time at all, and the belief God would resurrect all those deserving meant to me at the time that at max 100 years of suffering would be eventually forgotten as we lived eternally after the resurrection (another belief of the cult).

For me, evolution being more accurate broke me out of that logic error, and Futurama was the delivery method that got through the standard mental defenses.