Religion in Video Games 523
The Opposable Thumbs blog recently took a look at how religious themes are handled in video games. Most makers of mainstream games are hesitant, given the strong feelings of most consumers on the subject, but other companies are trying desperately to bring religion into the spotlight. Quoting:
"Part of the problem is that the game industry is often touted as being a corrupting influence for the youth of the world. Criticism against the game industry has come from leaders as high up as the current Pope, and many of us who have been exposed to sermons bemoaning the influence that games and movies have on kids. Even when groups like the Christian Game Developers Foundation put out a video encouraging developers to create wholesome titles for kids, the attitude conveyed towards current members of the industry was contemptuous at best. Needless to say, games with heavy religious content are usually fringe projects, independently created and oftentimes sporting dodgy production values, because publishers wisely don't want to risk boycotts from legions of the faithful."
First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:3, Insightful)
a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
How about someone create a game that occurs during the inquisition when the ignorant Christians killed thousands of people who wouldn't convert to their religion?
Religion isn't needed in video games (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, I don't think there is a need for religion in video games. While it will always and has always been referenced, theres just no good reason to put it in.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
But the whole point of these Christian "developers", like Christian "rock/pop musicians" is not to put out a quality product, it's to get the faithful to fork over money. Obviously these kinds of products are not going to be marketed at the mainstream, because the mainstream could give a shit about a bunch of whacked-out Evangelicals and snake-oil dealers.
Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion does exist in video games. They aren't usually the same religions as we have meatside, however. I think that's what people are complaining about. The problem is if you let, say, World of Warcraft priests worship the Christian god, then people will automatically boycott when it doesn't follow a particular sect's beliefs. In fact, they'd have no combat skills at all if they followed the word of the Bible.
Instead, religions are made up, relatively shallow, and may be based on the history that took place in the game. Sounds a lot like real religions, doesn't it?
Ahh see they are being disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
They say they are interested in religion in games. Well, in fact there IS religion in quite a few games. In some cases a religious mythology forms the basis for the game's world, in other cases there are various religious characters who influence things and so on. That's not what they want. They want a game that evangelizes their religion. They want one that shoves it in your face, that tries to show it as The One True Way(tm).
Well, games like that are basically always going to suck. Evangelism isn't fun. What's more, it turns off most people so major developers won't do it. When you have an inherently shitty premise and combine that with a shitty developer you are going to get a total crap fest.
In terms of mainstream games, religion will continue to be a role in them as it always has been. Often it'll be fictional religions, since they are often set in fictional worlds. However you'll continue to see religious characters of one sort or another in games where such a thing is useful to the story. However you aren't going to see games designed around pushing a religion. Those aren't fun, and they won't sell well, so major publishers aren't going to fund them.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:1, Insightful)
How about someone create a game that occurs during the inquisition when the ignorant Christians killed thousands of people who wouldn't convert to their religion?
Or perhaps create a game that occurred in the 20th century and shows how atheists persecuted millions of Christians and Jews in the Soviet Union.
Re: article tag (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
The other way to look at it is that games are trying to be a form of art. If they're not willing to tackle religion, they're just throwing away their legitimacy. Whether you're religious or not, I think you would agree that religion plays a major role in the world today and as such is an interesting topic to explore from a narrative standpoint. It's not even necessary to single out a religion by name, but exploring ideas such as polytheism, religious crusades, or corruption of religious institutions can add something interesting to a game. In fact, I think that an exploration of some philosophy is something that is sadly lacking from so many games today. If someone were to make a game exploring these themes I would be tempted to buy it, even if the gameplay weren't as good as another title in the genre.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Thousands of people killed by Christians during the Middle Ages was a horror. Millions of people killed by atheist Soviets was worse by at least an order of magnitude.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
But the whole point of these Christian "developers", like Christian "rock/pop musicians" is not to put out a quality product, it's to get the faithful to fork over money.
In other words, rather then being the "snake oil" dealers you claim they are, they are just simply like every single business on the planet. They identify a market, then they look for a way to make money serving that market. There is clear demand for Christian Rock, and the customers obviously buy the music because they enjoy its message, just as one might buy a regular album (or especially a concept album) because one enjoys its message.
The only problem with video games is they are expensive to produce and to buy. A series of Christian games might work, but it is a gamble. Books and songs require relatively less staff than a video game. Of course, a game with an underlying religious message could very much stand a chance at success, but an expressly "Christian Game" might not.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:0, Insightful)
Or perhaps create a game that occurred in the 20th century and shows how atheists persecuted millions of Christians and Jews in the Soviet Union.
Atheism is a religion.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
but exploring ideas such as polytheism, religious crusades, or corruption of religious institutions can add something interesting to a game.
You mean like what Tales of Symphonia did? If you haven't played the game I strongly recommend that you do as it basically covers corruption in religion, the morality of war, etc. All while being quite possibly the best RPG for the GameCube (not that there was much competition). (look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Symphonia#Story [wikipedia.org] if you want an overview of the plot).
Let's be honest. (Score:1, Insightful)
Are we talking about any religion, or just Christianity in video games?
Christians will stop at nothing to ram their silly messages down our throats anyway they can. If we are talking Christian Propaganda being rammed down the throats of our kids in video games, then I am flatly against that.
If Christians want to write their own video games for themselves, more power to them. I think the mainstream does wisely to avoid stuffing Christian rhetoric in their productions. It will turn off many non-Christians and non-religious people. Why do it?
If you want your kids exposed to Christian Mythology, take them to church. Write your own video games, and clearly mark them as containing Christian Propaganda. And leave the rest of us alone.
Re:Modern Warfare: The Return of Christ (Score:1, Insightful)
So, you mean Blackwater: The Game isn't vaporware?
Thou shalt not kill... already done (Score:3, Insightful)
"I wanted to create a game that had both an entertaining adventure but also hold true to the commandment of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.'"
Done: I am unaware of any game in which you actually kill people. Plenty of games in which your fictional character kills other fictional characters, but they're videogames, not real life.
It's odd to me that religious types sometimes seem to put more emphasis on morality in fiction than they do in real life. It's not real. Why is this a thing to them? No one has ever demonstrated that violence in videogames or movies actually leads to desensitization for real-life violence, so that's not a valid reason. There's plenty of real-world violence going on, that should be higher priority.
Virtual violence is repugnant to them is what I think it comes down to. That's fine, they should not play games with violence. I think this guy is basically doing the right thing, he's making his own game to fit his tastes, which is great. There aren't enough games like that. I still have to object to the mindset he seems to have: that virtual, in-game violence is somehow morally wrong.
And most in-game violence to me seems pretty justified. Most involve shooting bad guys or bad aliens. GTA allows you to kill innocent bystanders, sure, but so far that's always been a player using free will to do so. The main story does involve murder, but nine times out of ten it's justified. Not great morality there, but pretty good considering it's not real.
Some games actually suceed in making you feel guilty. Fallout 3 had oodles of opportunities to do evil, and plenty of times I ended up feeling pretty guilty.
Having played some of those wisdom tree games, I very much doubt people who are out to make games as a vehicle to promote their own morality have NEARLY the skill it would take to make a game in which a player felt guilty for committing virtual sins, but that is a possibility.
"It was important to do so, and it is not easy. You can defend yourself by stunning Enforcers, or thugs for a very brief time. The goal is the mission, and to avoid direct contact with the enemy as much as possible."
That sounds like a watered down version of mirror's edge, a FPS/FPA* which combines parkour with bad guys with guns. You can stun an enemy to take his gun, then use it on other bad guys for a few shots, but the game really encourages you at most parts to flee and stun rather than get into a shootout. Not for morality reasons though, it's just easier that way.
*I don't want to get into a semantic argument over marketing terms here, you know what I'm talking about.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ahh see they are being disingenuous (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
A video game based on the Bible would be more violent than GTA and have to be rated M++ for all the sex.
Simple: Target Market (Score:2, Insightful)
Gamers--the people who really fuel the gaming industry (as opposed to the casual gamer) are a very unique market segment. They are, for the most part, people who actually *think*. A religious game targeted at this group would make no sense, as many of the responses to this story have demonstrated. Not only would I say the majority of the "gamer" market is probably atheist, but even the ones who do believe in something are much more likely to be independent in their thinking and what they believe, and not likely to take their religion from a third party source such as a video game.
Now, certainly some religious mythology could be used to make some good games. And this is the sad part, I find. Game manufacturers are too afraid of offending the right-wing religious nutjobs who are out there monitoring everything. Even though these people in no way represent their market, they end up controlling so much and can even have a negative impact on sales. (Of course, as with GTA, it can also have the opposite effect.) I would like to see a Jesus vs .Mohammed-style deathmatch game. Of course then the Muslims would totally freak out for allowing their precious messenger to appear in a game.
I could also easily see a MMORPG set in the middle ages with a heavy religious theme, which would be great--so long as it's accurate. Using religion to control your subjects just as it was used in real life.
It's also too bad that it would be illegal to insert religion into "America's Army," because those people would be the perfect audience to receive it!
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
But I'm sure it makes you feel better that atheists did it because they didn't want to "spread their religion". Even though I'm rather quite sure the USSR persecuted Christians in order to, you know, spread atheism.
"Spread atheism," my ass. They encouraged fucking pilgrimages to observe the corpsicle of Lenin! Know what they didn't encourage? Skepticism, rationality, or reason! The three cornerstones of atheism.
They created a goddamn religion around themselves and the state, complete with holy relics and faith-based "science." That's not atheism, so stop repeating that drivel. I'm guessing you're American, since American schools are so damn terrified to teach anything related to politics, that it churns out countless poor saps who don't understand that the label a politician slaps on himself usually has nothing to do with what he is.
For example: The "Union" of "Soviet" "Socialist" "Republics" was actually an Empire(1) of Anti-soviet(2) State-capitalist(3) Dictatorships.(4)
(1) - The satellite countries were generally added by military conquest, not some polite handshake, so it was Empire, not Union.
(2) - The Bolsheviks first borrowed the anti-Bolshevik slogan "All power to the soviets!" for themselves to confuse people like you, then when they had seized power, they disbanded the soviets (which were independent democratically run worker's councils) and told everyone that they were no longer a necessary component for the workers to control the means of production, because the will of the workers was now somehow metaphysically embodied in the premier. (Another religious theme!)
(3) - A socialist economy, where the workers actually controlled the means of production, was never anything more than a vague promise to be fulfilled, maybe, someday in the USSR. A rationed "command economy" was put in place as a "temporary" measure only for wartime. It never ended, because it gave the party too much power to skim and control. The whole system operated like one huge corrupt mega-corporation, except that the middle managers had guns and the cubicles were prisons.
(4) - The last is self explanatory. With only one candidate to vote for you don't even have the choice of the lesser of two evils, and you can't honestly call it a Republic.
Re:SimChurch (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably the most brilliant "Sim" game I've heard of since SimCity! I would buy this in a second, it is really a brilliant idea! And it would be GREAT education for kids!
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides which, this should have rang alarm bells:
Quite frankly, I don't care if they're persecuting others to spread religion, spread ideology, or to sell chocolates. I don't care what they call themselves. The whole damn problem is the persecution. The reason, by comparison, is unimportant and interchangeable - that's the whole friggin' idea behind Skub vs anti-Skub.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Women, gays, and blacks, to name the first three that pop into my head. That's >50% of the world's population right there. They may not be into killing and burning anymore, but they have definitely persecuted them.
No, they did it to spread communism. But the sister post here explains things better than I can. But let me leave you with one more thought. There's not a shred of evidence to support the superstitious belief that there's a god or almighty power or to support the various religions. We have no way to say whether Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, or various others have it right. So why do people kill each other over these things? In light of this, the skeptical viewpoint is the only sensible one, and if we so far haven't been able to deal with that truth without killing people, then we need to figure out how. Trying to make everyone believe in the same superstition doesn't seem like a very workable solution here and religion has never been very good at tolerance. It's right there in the holy book that they're not supposed to be tolerant.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
"Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby."
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash: Hitler was at the very least a deist. Stalin was an equal-opportunity persecutor. Mussolini was a good Italian, and a catholic.
Christians are not a persecuted minority. Get over it. You have no idea what actual persecution is like.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:1, Insightful)
The same could be said about the legal system in the United States. Murder is clearly illegal, yet capital punishment is encouraged for violation of various laws. Additionally, leaders in our government and military have given orders to kill people, especially during wars, in some very cruel and inhumane ways. Shall we talk about atrocities committed in places such as Vietnam and Iraq? What about legalizing abortion and assisted suicide? Isn't the United States government (and many other governments around the world) contradicting itself in numerous ways?
The purpose of the laws in the Old Testament were to benefit society and to benefit the people. However, in practice, they have been applied, misinterpreted, mutilated, and altered to promote greed, evil, and tyranny. Those who use the Old Testament laws to justify the Inquisition, for example, certainly aren't interested in using wisdom and justice to apply the law. They're interested in promoting evil and tyranny. Christ didn't come to change the law, but to do away with the abuses. There is not a single place where Christ says that the Old Testament was wrong. Instead, Christ took objection with how the law was applied.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:2, Insightful)
You can point out many instances throughout history where religion has been abused to justify atrocities. You're absolutely right that many evils have been committed in the name of religious principles or deities. However, it is generally not the religion or the philosophy that causes those atrocities, but rather the abuse of the religion or philosophy.
Whether atheism is a religion or a philosophy isn't relevant here. Atheism has been the official policy of some of the worst tyrannical states of the 20th century. The abuses in the Soviet Union, for example, have been documented throughout the rest of this thread, so there's no need for me to repeat them. Atheism is a philosophy, and the belief or disbelief in said philosophy is a personal matter. However, it too has been abused to justify persecution.
The problem isn't the religions or philosophies, because the modern forms of any of those denounce using the sword as a tool to convert unbelievers. The problem is when free will (a fundamental principle of Christianity, for example) is abridged, regardless of the philosophy or religion. Unfortunately, many seem unwilling to distinguish between a religion and those who seek to abuse a religion to persecute others.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a hobby if you go around talking about how great it is [richarddawkins.net] to not collect stamps, and join not collecting stamp clubs [atheists.org], and read Not Collecting Stamps Monthly. [infidels.org] I get where that sentiment is coming from, I really do, and have to say I agree with it, but I don't think that it is always the case anymore.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:1, Insightful)
That's because most of the bible is an account of human history and humanity, as we know, is full of violence and sex.
Human history however, can be separate from promoting good values which other parts of the bible has.
Re:SimChurch (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you don't want to call it Church Tycoon?
I propose L. Ron Hubbard: The Video Game.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
> Skepticism, rationality, or reason! The three cornerstones of atheism.
The cornerstone of atheism is what the word means --- to believe in no god. Mao and Stalin may not have been the sort of atheists you like, but they were certainly keen on spreading their brand of atheism.
You are committing the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman [wikipedia.org]
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:4, Insightful)
What you speak of is less the trappings of religion and more the trappings of assholes who want to feel better than you. I think every group is guilty of a few of these folks.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't forget the song of solomon expansion pack. Geared towards females to teach them that oral sex is god's work.
Song of Solomon 2:3
... blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Song of Solomon 4:16
Come
It also throws in unicorns [bible-topics.com] because girls love those.
maybe the problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?p=3878 [cinemassacre.com]
http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/?p=4069 [cinemassacre.com]
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Atheists don't "not collect stamps", they believe collecting stamps isn't a hobby and can't ever be a hobby.
(p.s. I'm not religious; neither theist nor atheist).
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:2, Insightful)
I think his outcry would be more correctly aimed at people who buy a conformist product packaged in rebellious mannerisms. This isn't limited to Christian rock, of course, but it's one example of the oblivious nature of the general population to the subtlety of things. "I want the excitement of being loud and free, but the self-righteousness of conforming to God."
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, unfortunately Christians think "you're a fucking nutbag, get away from me, and no I wont vote for you" is persecution.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Worst case - converting to Christianity from Islam - can get you killed in many countries.
To be fair, converting to anything from Islam can get you killed in those countries - it isn't really Christian-specific. Can you name someplace where Christians are hard-core persecuted significantly more than atheists or Jews?
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because most of the bible is an account of human history and humanity
Most of the Bible is fairy tales loosely based on vague occurrences, from some parts of human history, in some parts of the world, transcribed so many times it has about the same amount of truth in it as a Monthy Python movie. I wouldn't dare calling it an account of human history, humanity is way, way more than just the few Christian tidbits recorded in Bible.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
If there were people killing each other over stamps and forcing others to be collectors, then I promise you there would be not collecting stamp organizations
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with these arguments is that 1930s Germany and Russia were just as religious as a devoutly Catholic state. Hitler took Christian Christmas carols and substituted God's name and Jesus's name with his own, in an attempt to make people worship him. Stalin did something very similar. The common pattern is that blind devotion to another being is dangerous. If you blindly worship your political leader, you're willing to slaughter people for him. If you blindly worship a deity (emphasis on the blindness here - Martin Luther was religious, but he saw the Church as a bunch of frauds), you're willing to slaughter people because his church tells you to.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people have Christians persecuted since, say, 1800?
Where to begin?
Dark skinned people can be used as work animals because they're "Hammites" - cursed by God for the sins of Ham after the flood.
Plenty of US states' constitutions barred non-believers from public office.
Some people are still trying to enforce [latimes.com] them.
Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.
Some states won't allow single people to adopt kids - solely because that's the only legal way to bar gays from adopting.
Then there's the whole gay marriage thing...
And that's what I can come up with in two minutes while sleep deprived.
But I'm sure it makes you feel better that atheists did it because they didn't want to "spread their religion".
Killing people to spread Communism isn't the same thing as killing to spread atheism, atheism alone doesn't tell you to kill anyone (nor does it endorse any other moral stance). Christianity is based on a book that bluntly says to stone certain people to death, that repeatedly discusses the proper way to practice slavery, that says God approves of some kids of genocide (yes, in order to spread His religion) - you have to add something else (like a specific interpretation) to avoid endorsing the bad stuff.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:3, Insightful)
The Christians persecute others to spread their religion. Atheists persecute others for other reasons.
Atheists persecuted nobody, ever, in history.
However, Atheists can also be Nazis, Communists, Drug Lords or whatever else causes them to persecute someone. Surprise! So can christians, muslims, hindus, etc.
You're confusing one attribute of a many with his cause for action. You could just as well have said "blonde people persecute others" or "homosexuals persecute others" or "people with white shirts persecute others", because you will certainly examples of that. Except, of course, that anyone with half a brain will realize that the shirt colour, hair colour or sexual orientation had very little to do with the persecution, and it was (in I'd dare to guess at least 95% of the cases) the religious or politicial ideology that was the actual cause.
But, I do think it's high time to persecute these religious fanatics and put them in their place, once and for all. Attacks on people's minds should be viewed just as much a crime as attacks on people's bodies.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:2, Insightful)
A good/serious religious game is impossible (Score:2, Insightful)
My sons and I have been batting around game ideas for many years now, and we've considered the subject of a religious-themed game many times. We're pretty much agreed that it would not be possible to make a game that is both good from a gameplay perspective and at the same time good from a faith or doctrinal perspective.
Now, it would be possible to make a good/UNserious religious game. The Chronicles of Riddick is an excellent example of an invented religion that works wonderfully well to drive the story, define characters, and provide motivation.
As an aside, there are very few accurate portrayals of the peacefulness of religion in fiction. Religious people are almost always shown as fighting, torturing, and basically steam-rolling people into believing. But no true believer would ever do such a thing, of course. The power of religion is in having the capital-T Truth, and Truth never has to be forced, it just is. Real preachers and teachers use moral suasion, not war.
However, there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of political extremists who are only too happy to cloak themselves in the language and symbolism of religion to take advantage of people. Nazism, for example, often appropriated religion [wikipedia.org] to serve its political ends. No doubt this is what Islamic extremists are doing today.
But... (Score:1, Insightful)
Plenty of video games already have magic and make-believe.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a second. Christian rock is bad because it doesn't have the macarena ?
Check again ... bad ?
Boy, I'd heard tastes differ, but I had no idea.
Given that as little as a century ago a (very) large majority of music was purely religious, I'd take that "tools the 'other side' has used for centuries with a hefty helping of salt).
Most of those "brilliant" themes you refer to being used in songs, imho, sound suspiciously familiar to someone with a decent knowledge of, heh, 16th century music. Very familiar indeed. One regularly recognizes long parts of those symphonies. Using strategic silences for suspense and dramatic effect has been done in operas since before the first letter was written in the bible.
The fact that those themes are repeated is logical in a way, since that old music is still how music is taught even today. Which, honestly, is a good thing. You can't teach someone more than 2 notes or patterns longer than 5 seconds with any recent song.
The "successful music" you refer to is merely the "big mac" version of last centuries' game feast. Yes they take very little time and effort to "enjoy to the fullest" (most take me less than a second to do that), but they're lacking in every single department. They're not satisfying, you cannot listen to them for even the paltry 2 minutes they last, most are rightfully identified as "noise", they're bad for the ear (and for the stomach if played at the "advised" volume), they lack depth, it is a rarity to have any kind of message in there, and ... They're "big macs". There's loads of music out there that you can listen to for 2 days continuously and still not be revolted by.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:4, Insightful)
A society who has no death penalty or sense of objective morality historically leads to less & less morality and more violence.
Yeah, because the US with its death penalty and religious freaks has less criminals per capita and less violence than Europe.
I agree that killing people for not converting to Christianity is wrong. But, by definition, those who practice such things are not Christians.
No, you're just pretending that all the Christians you don't like aren't Christians. Christianity was spread by killing those who wouldn't convert, it's well documented that's how it happened here in Norway (around 1000 AD) and the Church was fully supporting it. Most famous are of course the Crusades that were blessed by the Pope himself, but there are many more. They only stopped most the killing because the competition was dead, the roman mythology, the greek mythology, the norse mythology, the keltic mythology, all dead. And if you think the missionary efforts during colonization weren't backed up with a lot of lethal force, you are dreaming. The african tribal religions, the Mayan religion, the Aztec religion, the native American religions were all crushed by conquest and forcibly raising the population in the Christian tradition. You're just reaching for the moral high ground but you stand on a pile of skeletons.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that killing people for not converting to Christianity is wrong. But, by definition, those who practice such things are not Christians.
If you limit the definition of Christian to those who only follow all the rules of Christianity, no one is a Christian. How many so-called Christians do you know who eat shellfish?
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is something I believe old veterans have been doing to movies, songs, and sagas of war since man first stuck a pointy bit of flint on a stick and called it a spear.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion (Score:1, Insightful)
> How many people have Christians persecuted since, say, 1800?
Well, there's the psychological persecution of all gay people about how there's supposedly something wrong with them, that is about 10% of world population so, 600 or so million people.
Then there's the whole issue of all the children sexually abused and molested by christian clergy, which goes up to several millions.
So quite a few, in fact.
Re:First, make a good video game (Score:3, Insightful)
"Man I fucking hate that phrase. "
Me too. I was an open atheist through my 26 years in the USAF, found plenty of agreement, and when I pointed out to the questioning theists that I was volunteering to serve to protect _our_ freedom they promptly chilled out.
Atheists don't have imaginary playmates to delude us into doing what we prefer to do anyway (affirmation is the purpose of religion) yet we manage to function quite well.