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Game with God
Andrew writes "GamerDad has an article up about how religion is handled in computer gaming, titled 'Game With God'. The article features quotes from Sid Meier, Jane Jensen, Will Wright, Peter Molyneaux, Phil Steinmeyer, and Richard Garriott. Here's a snippet: 'While religion and spirituality add a lot to a game world, they often aren't used effectively. 'I don't think there are any games that treat religion at anything more than a superficial level,'; says Firaxis founder and Civilization creator Sid Meier. PopTop Software's Phil Steinmeyer agrees, noting that 'Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured.'"
In Japan, religion is often portrayed quite heavily in games. Japan in general has a more liberal relationship with religion than the western world, and works of fiction aren't really lynched for not showing the church in a good light.
If you want some GOOD examples of religion in games, try Xenogears, Grandia, or Tales of Symphonia. All quite good games that deal with religion quite heavily. In the case of Xenogears, it was almost not released in North America, as the church would consider it to be almost blasphemous.
For a North American game dealing slightly more than average with religion... try Eternal Darkness. The game features a bit of the inquisition, and the main characters are using magick based a lot upon the pagan practices and rituals. I would guess that the church would be none too happy about this one either.
Another game which really delves into religion is Final Fantasy Tactics. In fact, it could be argued that the main point of the whole game is a critique on Christianity.
As for myself, though, I learned everything I needed to know about religion from Dungeon Keeper.
Windmills do not work that way!
There's plenty of imagination of what the God-role might be in a computer game. I'm not a big fan of Andrew Greeley, but he did stake out this turf in The God Game a decade ago. Or, for a high metafictional take on a real-life role-playing game with a godlike director, there's John Fowles's The Magus. And I suppose the best Death-of-God Game would have to be Lucky Wander Boy by D. B. Weiss.
Of course the gaming community is downright disdainful of Christianity. Most gammers are [relativly] intellegent and can see through the hokum [sic]. Christianity itself is historically anti-imagination and anti-intellectual.
No. Christianity is historically anti-atheism--a distinctly different thing.
A good number of ancient, medieval, and modern scholoarly advancements and creative achievements were done by devout Christians, often with the blessing and sanctions of their churches.
Off the top of my head, both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis--very creative persons by anyone's measure--were extremely devout christians. (C.S. Lewis is actually as lauded for his nonfiction books on religion as he was for Narnia.)
Your misunderstanding is understandable, however, thanks to the semi-humanist screed that says Galileo was tried for heresey for daring to say that the sun was the center of the universe. The truth says otherwise, of course, but "Galielo was tried for heresy because he continually provoked the Pope despite ample allowances, and had a rather comfortable life after his trial" doesn't work very well as a rallying cry to toss religion out on its ear.
(Note: I'm aware I linked to a religious site. If you prefer Wikipedia, it also delves into the heresy, but with a bit more of an anti-religious slant.)
It says quite clearly that Eve ate the fruit in order to become wise (i.e. gain knowledge). Now you can "interpret" this story to mean whatever the hell you want, but the FACTS of the story cleary say that Eve ate the fruit to become wise (pursuit of knowledge) and was punished for it.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
I wish you people would ready our own god damned book:
Nope, 'twas disobedience.
Disobedience from a couple of innocent beings who were never taught about good and evil?
Disobedience that warranted damning them and billions of their children to eternal torment?
What a cool god you have!
Some data on the faulty logic of "original sin"
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I don't want to turn this into a debate, but I believe in critically analyzing the text we're reading. When reading the bible (like any other text), it is often useful to consider the entire context.
If you don't, then it is often possible to contrive any naïve and convenient conclusion, and then claim that's what the good book teaches when it doesn't.
Re your syllogism, it is a fallacy of the most rudimentary kind:
Eve eats fruit from tree of life to gain wisdom
God punishes her
Therefore Eve was punished for gaining wisdom?
Is that the only conclusion? Must it be? What kind of wisdom does the original Hebrew word talk about? What about other possibilities supporting facts? It is unfair to make any conclusion without considering these questions.
In reality, what most Christians are taught is this (now you may consider this "interpretation"): *God punished Eve for disobedience to his explicit command*. That's it. There are also issues of pride and rebellion, and supposition that one might be equal to God, but I won't get into those. I've made my point. Case closed.
First the Hebrew word tam does not mean sinless. Tam might better be equated with "well-rounded" or "fulfilling one's duties" or "in the right place" (which would include proper reaction to sin), but it does not mean "perfection". The actual word for moral perfection in Hebrew is tamiym (cf. Gen. 17:1, 2 Sam. 22:31). ("Tamiym" is used to describe Noah in Gen. 6:9, but it refers to him as "perfect" in his "generations" [towledah], the word used of physical family descent. One suggests that, in the context of Gen. 6:4, this refers not to Noah's moral behavior, but to the fact that his line was untainted by interaction with the "sons of God" who came unto the daughters of men.)
Thankyou drive through.
I would love to see a game based on the bible. It would be the most violent, debased game in history!
Those of you who've read the bible with any sort of objectivity know what I'm talking about. How many places in the OT does god command the jews to wipe out entire peoples, including women and children? There are even passages where he is angered because the jews decide to spare a few individuals or animals. So in any true bible game, genocide has to play a key role. And of course god doesn't leave all the fun to his chosen people; he certainly gets his hands dirty as well. Some of the more famous instance of god's handiwork include leveling Sodom and Gomorra, killing all the first born in Egypt when the pharaoh refuses to free the jews (interesting note: according to the text, god intentionally "hardened the pharaoh's heart" to Moses' pleas; god forced the pharaoh to refuse so that he could demonstrate his power via the plagues), and wiping out almost every living thing on the planet in a big flood cause he didn't like the way the humans he created were turning out.
Or, how about a Sims-type game? You could try to follow god's laws as they're laid out (mostly in Leviticus, IIRC) without getting stoned to death. Choose to pick up some sticks on the Sabbath? Sorry: you get stoned. Are you a woman who gets raped in the city? Sorry: you get stoned. In a city you should have been able to scream loud enough that someone would have heard. Is your Sim character a child who makes fun of a bald guy? Sorry: god sends some bears out of the woods to maul you. On the plus side, though, you can have slaves and multiple wives, sell your daughters, and have sex with your servants. (Yes, these are all actual biblical laws/stories.)
And the NT isn't much better. You've got the whole crucifixion thing, which is plenty violent (and intentional; not like the omniscient being didn't know it was going to happen). And then there's the problem that Jesus' core message is about as horrible a moral as you can find: "Worship me or you'll be tortured for all eternity, regardless of how good a person you are." And considering god's actions throughout the bible, could any truly moral person worship him in good conscience?
So yeah, I'd like to see a game based on the bible. I want to see the religious right squirm when a game based on the actual stories of their holy book makes Doom 3 look like Big Bird on Ice.
p.s. If you doubt the accuracy of anything I've said, I encourage you wholeheartedly to read the bible yourself. You'll see that the points above are but a tiny sampling of the atrocities the bible has to offer. I just discovered that some enterprising folks have even distilled a lot of the horrors (as well as the ridiculous "science" and many contradictions) of the bible for you: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
If it doesn't exist, then the believer and the non-believer net out the same, with cessation of existence. And if the believer lived a happier life in the meanwhile, who's to say he/she was wrong? Conversely, what if the afterlife does exist? Then the outcome for the two could be very different. (Pascal's wager).
"But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we just make god madder and madder." - Homer Simpson
The sequal to B&W should address the questions you had. The followers can declare holy wars, their morals are influenced by your actions (you like to rain fire onto their huts to gain belief? They'll be more warlike), etc.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
For instance, while that verse does say that Eve saw that the fruit would make her wise, the issue goes deeper than that. Look at the previous few verses:Reading the preceding verses, you see that the serpent tempted Eve, not with knowledge, but with Godliness. The serpant told Eve that
1) God had lied to her
2) She could be like God
and Eve chose to believe him instead of God and ate it, gaining this very specific kind of ethical knowledge. Now the knowledge is important because it is what made Adam and Eve like God, but saying that the passage is big parable against the pursuit of knowledge is a little short-cited. If you go on to read the rest of the chapter (and the rest of the Bible) the big problem is not that Adam and Eve had gained knowledge, but that they had disobeyed God and striven to become like Him. This is proven throughout Scripture: whenever someone disobeys God or attempts to deify themselves, a divine bitch slap is always close behind.
On the other hand, wisdom and knowledge (in the general sense) are praised multiple times throughout Scripture -- only when the wisdom/knowledge is gained in defiance of God is the person punished. God blesses Solomon with both wisdom, and from wisdom comes wealth and fame: The entire book of Proverbs is one big love letter to wisdom and knolwedge....especially the first nine chapters.
-Troy
The Medieval iteration of this game used religion fantastically. If your populace was too zealous, and you had an unreligious leader as a governer of their province, they would be less loyal. If you had a really zealous governer, and most people in the province were of another religion, you'd better set up missionaries. The more zeal a province had, the more troops a Jihaad or Crusade would gather during its stay in said province. Glossed over and caricatured? I think not.