Slashdot Mirror
Wal-Mart Asked to Drop Christian Video Game
doug141 writes "Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.Players can choose to join the Antichrist's team, but of course they can never win on [his] side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics."
But you are mowing down your enemy with a gun. It pushes a message of religious intolerance.
Kind of like the current state of Many religions. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc... all kill for the sake of their god, They just are catching up to what he christians did the past 500 years.
Killing a group of schoolchildren because they would not wear the stupid veil. Yeah, that's a peaceful religion!
All of you except the buddists are sick individuals that use your beliefs as a reason to kill murder and rape.
Wow, that's so divorced from reality.
I have read the article and still can't tell whether the game makers are actually serious or not. I laughed with the it's ok to kill as long as you prey really hard - satire worthy of Stephen Colbert. Either way, I think, the game designers are worthy of our greatest of laughter.
Sounds like a pretty awful game, tasteless and cliched but worst of all unbalanced...the anti-christ team can't even win. But why give them the handy excuse of being censored for its impending failure? I say let them sell it, and let the free kill them.
Plus, all media must be protected...even, and especially, the shitty stuff like this.
That's what happens when you become a stinking hypocrite! Christians history is full of blood, other people's blood. Reminds me of the letter a knight sent to his mother (or was it the king?) telling him that muslims' blood is reaching the horses' knees during the crusades.
Syllable 0.62 is here at last!!!
It's funny to me how religious followers are always offended when someone pokes fun at their beliefs, but then they have no problem being judgemental, insulting and forget they are part of one of the most violent and viscious organizations in history. (see: Crusades, Persecution, Inquisition...) Personally I would have made it so the anti christ could win. When you won every corner would suddenly have a starbucks, HMA's would be worse than Stalin, everyone would be driving a gas guzzling SUV and our president would be satan himself... ... wait a sec... crap...
"It pushes a message of religious intolerance."
;)
Talk about realism in video games! I'm amazed! How did they get it so life-like?
They don't dislike the 'Left Behind' book and game series because it's inaccurate. They dislike it because it's TOO accurate. It shows how religious people really think and act. Okay, so maybe the Pastor at the local church doesn't use a gun to convert people, but the message is the same: Convert to my religion or burn in everlasting flames. And maybe if they left it at a statement, it wouldn't be so bad. But we still have clergy that do completely immoral and unethical things, sometimes not even to further their cause, but for personal gain. And they get away with it.
I used to call myself Christian, but not really name which type (Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, etc). Now, I say I believe sort of like they do, but with a few major differences:
God doesn't care what religion you are, so long as you are a good person.
God doesn't care what name you call him by.
The Bible was written by man, not God. It was then translated by man, not God. Several times. It is a tool to guide you to the correct path, and nothing more. All holy books serve this same purpose, no matter the religion. Church is also such a tool. (I won't get into corruption, that's a long debate.)
Instead of merely tolerating other religions, I embrace them. They are God's methods of helping us be better people.
So far, I'm pretty much alone in my religion. I don't imagine I'll be setting up a church any time soon.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'm guessing a Christian who does not feel it imperative to impose their beliefs and values (for US "regressive" Christians typically the belief that the King James translation of the Bible is the only true words of God, and a selected subset of old testament values combined with some values from an imaginary 50's America) on other people.
Which of course make it hypocritical to campaign for the ban of a video-game portraying different values. Of course the values of the video game seems to be that it is good to impose your values on other people.
A progressive Christian is someone who actually does what the Bible says to do: Love one's neighbor more than one's self Loves God with all of their heart, soul and mind. It's pretty much that simple. Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves.
Is Wal-Mart actively promoting some religious idea or merely delivering a product for which there is demand? It pains me when people forget that freedom OF religion does not mean freedom FROM religion, regardless of the religion or ideas. It's even worse when people decide to use something like supply and demand to promote their dislike for "big businesses" like Wal-Mart and go on a near religious crusade of their own to undermine the very ideals our constitution guarantees
Anything you say will be held against you.
I thought it would be a cold day in their Hell before I did but...
Unfortunately, creating this game is Constitutionally protected free speech, and selling it is completely up to Wal-Mart and other retailers. I think it was done in very poor taste but should be treated no differently than GTA or any other games that are similarly in bad taste.
Clones are people two.
Exactly - a "progressive" christian is "a Chrsitain". As my favorite t-shirt says: "The Christian Right is Neither"
Not all Christians are bible-thumping bigoted idiots bent on blah-blah-blahing their way into every nook and cranny until we're all like them, and then they can find another reason to hate us. The people you're thinking of would hate people no matter what the circumstances.
Many other Christians understand the Bible's metaphorical message, and try to live their lives in gentle kindness and generosity.
You, however, remain ignorant and in only tentative charge of a computer. The only difference between you and the people we're talking about is you dress less neatly.
What's a "progressive Christian"?
Is it like a critical fairy tale believer?
Nah dude, it's totally OK to dis other people's religion.
Yeah yeah, I know--all Christians are pigheaded morons who take the bible literally.
And moreover, their whole religion is a fairy tale.
See because, it's OK for you to hate and belittle their religion, while at the same time damning all the Christian believers for being bigots.
I guess it's OK to be a bigot, as long as you're not Christian.
Latewire
Progressive Christian is a believer in one God - three persons (as defined in Nicene Creed) who does NOT engage in bibliolatry (i.e. a belief that every single word of the Bible must be taken literally, and for whom Bible is the final authority and not God. Jesus didn't write any books but revealed divine truth to his selected followers only. Hence, continuous Apostolic succession is so important in the Church, and not many churches can lay a claim to that. As a matter of fact the idea that you can "start" a church is absurd, just as the idea that someone in England, decides to "start" a kingdom and proclaim themselves a king of England).
A progressive Christian reads the Bible and understands it for what it is, a collection of parables and rarely historical accounts of actual events, the purpose of which is to always illustrate a point that God is actively involved in his creation, encouraging trust in him (which means believing his word i.e. believing that he has done or will do what he has promised).
A progressive Christian is living in the present, and applies the word of God to his situation and does not try to bend the world to fit the Bible and live in the past, avoiding relativism, a great peril of modern world on the way.
Perhaps that clears it somewhat.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I'd actually like to see this thing in action. Who cares what the slant or "message" may be? It's up to intelligent people to decide for themselves what they like, think or believe. And we'll never evolve as a people, a species or a culture if we constantly go about trying to stop people from seeing and thinking things.
It was only yesterday when I had a moment of reflection on my own changes in perceptions of things. I was born in 1968 and was very young when I first saw Star Wars. During that same area in time, I saw a black bell on a daycare building and thought to myself, "That bell looks like Darth Vader!" I now think that Darth Vader looks like a bell. The difference in perception is pretty clear to me but it also goes to show how minds change, develop and evolve over time and with life's experience.
So yes. Let it be. Let kids play games where they are evangelical Christians or characters from greek or other ancient mythology and legend. You cannot really condemn one game without condemning them all.
Here's one take on the game I'd like to hear: Who is that nut always trying to get violent video games banned? Yeah, that guy. What's his take on the game? "Convert or Die!" sounds pretty gruesome to me...
It's always the same with religious folks (not just christians): we atheists always have to "respect" your beliefs, and if we dare say something about them, you get your pants in a knot and start getting very stiff-necked and angry. On the other, when we express the feeling the story of Jesus and the story of Peter Pan are about as credible, we get flamed.
All I said in that short sentence was (1) express my conviction that religious people believe in fairies, and (2) express my feeling that "christian" and "progressive" are words that inheritently don't go together. Perhaps I'll admit there was a bit of sarcasm in it too, but I sure wasn't antagonistic or insulting, yet look at your reaction: are you insecure in your beliefs or something?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
only in the Jewish bit. If you read both the old and new testaments it seems like God is a schizophrenic.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Here's the problem with that, as I see it:
All of the violent games on the shelves are generally considered bad for kids/people to play because they promote dangerous and criminal behaviour. But, even thouse who are rabid fans of the games - and I would think even the people who go out and reenact the behavior in the real world - will still admit that it's bad and illegal behavior.
THIS type of game seems to promote a type of behavior that might be considered above the law. Someone with overwhelming religious convictions is going to disregard any societal taboos (and laws) if they conflict with those convictions. Taken to the extreme, they might strap a vest of explosives to their chest and walk into a crowded mall, or grade school, or market in downtown Baghdad. Boom.
I know of lots of games where "Arabian" countries are the bad guys. You can kill them then and its OK? Most RTS games use obvious characteristics of that easily assignable to regions of the world, either race based or religious but why no offense there?
the game does give the players an out, they don't have to kill anyone and actually lose score if they do so how does the game teach that its okay to kill non-believers? It doesn't, but that doesn't make a good story and we can sit in our coffee shops with our macbooks sipping lattes while mocking Christians and other people of faith can we?
Giving children games where people are getting killed, regardless if its religious based, historical, or fiction, isn't the brightest idea. Yet if we are going to hold one group, or in this case one small segment of a larger group, to certain standards why don't we hold everyone to them? Is it only okay because we believe we can browbeat certain groups or another?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
by and large they aren't produced by people purporting to represent a peaceful religion.
In other words, you have groups like Focus on the Family and the like going after every semi-violent video game for destroying culture and humanity, but when the game is about a Christian gunning down non-believers, well, gunning down non-Christians apparently is one of the few things in life that doesn't make baby Jesus cry.
That is what was so important about getting a progressive Christian group on board the protest. Otherwise, it's just that wacko leftist radicalist group "Campaign to Defend the Constitution" attacking upstanding Christians for creating and distributing (presumably for a fair personal profit nonetheless, correct me if I'm wrong) a game that is essentially all about killing or converting anyone not like you in religious belief.
I do wonder what dog the Campaign to Defend the Constitution has in this fight. If you go to their web site http://www.defconamerica.org/our-issues/Campaign to Defend the Constitution, it looks as if most of their issues deal with the separation of church and state. Now, I'm actually a pretty staunch separation of church and state libertarian, but that's exactly why their involvement rubs me the wrong way--the government did not produce, is not selling or otherwise promoting this game. If the game sucks, or enough people find its themes objectionable, then such games will be (once again) relegated to small fundie independent programmers that pretty much everyone ignores or makes fun of because the games suck and the themes are laughable, but it's just strange to find a group with a mission purportedly involving the separation of church and state jump into a campaign against a private software developer to get a business to pull a game from their shelves.
Finally, is anyone getting sick of the "hidden agenda" attack? I know I am.
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
I couldn't agree more. It is time for some anti-christian (and all people who use belief to puss thier infriority into superiority) backlash. I think it is time to hear "to the lions" ringing in the ears of those arrogant enough to have faith in anything. Look, I am all for the masses believing in the prince of peace and turn the other cheek, but unfortunately, christians are the reason america has taken a turn for the violent. If you believe in an afterlife - you scare the fuck out of me. You don't have the same commitment to THIS life that I do.
But I do know about Christian theology. It's my understanding that Jews accept Jesus as a teacher, but *not* as God. Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet, but not as God. Of course, I disagree with them. I believe that Jesus was a real, live person walking on earth about 2,000 years ago, and that he was also God of the universe.
Slashdot is not known for editorial accuracy. I doubt that Muslims are the non-Christian "star" of the books. Pragmatically speaking, it seems to me that if all Christians are missing, then the 1.2 billion Muslims will be relatively more prevalent. The blurb reads "muslim-sounding" names - showing how ignorant we Americans are. Since we're the population minority in the world, almost everyone has a "foreign-sounding" name.
According to one line of Christian theology, all Christians are removed from earth by God during what is called the rapture. After this, there are *no* Christians until some people rediscover what the Bible teaches. During this season of time, people can become Christians, and the idea is that these new believers have a compelling reason to challenge others to become Christians, because at the end of that short period of time, everyone who chooses to reject Christ will be separated from all that is good, gentle, loving and peaceful for all of eternity.
Here's the deal. Either Jesus Christ is God, or He's not. If someone teaches that He is not God, according to Christian teaching, and because of the law of non-contradiction, Jesus cannot simultaneously be God and "not God" in the same time and relationship. Since Judaism, Islam, and Christianity teach different things about Jesus, man's relationship to God and how it may be possible to reconcile to God, logically either all three beliefs are wrong, or one is right and the others cannot be right.
Christian tolerance teaches me to tolerate people's rights to choose whatever religious belief they want, even if they are wrong. Christian love teaches me to tell people who God is, and how to reconcile relationship with Him, because I want everyone to have the kind of relationship with God that I have.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Most people who play these type of games, like GTA, Doom, SOCOM, etc., know that it's just a game. They don't believe what is happening on the screen.
These people playing this game, reading the 'Left Behind' books, & watching the crappy movies, truly believe in the Rapture and what they are doing on screen is "right". That's what makes this a little more scary.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
"It's OK to be a bigot if you don't walk around all day claiming NOT to be one (like Christians)"
Just like it's ok to walk around killing people as long as you don't claim to be a pacifict. (sarcasm)
Moral relativism at it's most bankrupt.
No, the bible doesn't say to hate homosexuals. It may say that it's not right to commit homosexual acts, but ffs, everyone does wrong, and the bible doesn't say to hate everyone because they do wrong. God hates the sin, not the sinner (similar to "don't kill the messenger" I guess).
which is totally what she said
Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves.
Ok, but how does this square with Leviticus:
If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads
Are you suggesting that you should love homosexuals even while you put them to death? 'cause that's a subtlety that may not be so reassuring to the homosexuals at the receiving end of your loving.
Seriously, how you can be both progressive and follow the Christian bible is a mystery to me. I know there are in fact a lot of progressive christians, even gay christians, but it doesn't make any sense to me. The book itself contains many hateful passages like the one above. And it's a religion, which means it's not supposed to be subject to rational thought - you take it on faith, unquestioning. If you are both progressive and christian does that not mean that you've decided to disregard the offensive passages? And once you do that, is there any faith left in what you do? If you can rationalize away the killing gays bit, why not the thou shalt not kill bit? Faith is an all or nothing business I thought...
yp.
Luckily for you Jesus is the only judge and priest, and he would forgive you if you asked nicely. If you are arrogant enough to not want his forgiveness of course, you will be dead spiritually.
I just love when people take the bible completely out of context.
which is totally what she said
... we atheists always have to "respect" your beliefsAll I said in that short sentence was (1) express my conviction that religious people believe in fairies I need to have this framed.
Oh, PS: I'm agnostic.
I'm so glad that you have assumed the responsibility to speak for all atheists. It's too bad there are ignorant people on both sides, some of whom may read your post and assume we're all idiots.
Not all of us atheists are hateful adolescent anti-Christian reactionaries. You insult us more than you do them when you spout off ignorance and hate. You think you're going to change someone's mind by mischaracterizing their beliefs and calling them all bigots? What are you? 13?
Latewire
I personally think the game is bullshit, but 'muslim sounding names'??? There are hundreds of thousands of Christians with 'muslim sounding names'. They live in places like Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Basra, Bagdad, Detroit, New York,.... Those of you old enough may remember Danny Thomas or his daughter Marlo. Danny (stage name) was born Amos Alphonsus Muzyad Yakhoob. Certainly a 'muslim sounding name' (except maybe the 'Alphonsus'). I'd class the 'Thomas' family - whatever they call themselves - as good, honorable Christians who have contributed to the good of the world. Including St. Jude's Hospital, one of the most famous institutions helping anyone who need it. BTW, I'm Jewish. Let's not confuse Christianity with jingostic, not-my-color/ethnic/ bigotry. I have actually met a couple of people (who claim to be christians) in my life (55+) that actually seem to live up to the ideals of the various versions. Not many, but some.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
You're taking the verse out of context. Leviticus is a book of rules established for the nation of Israel because they were too stupid for the Ten Commandments to be sufficient. They were harsh, but if you look at Israel's history anything less than that and they would get crazy deep into every last sin imaginable.
These rules were only applicable to the ancient nation of Israel.
This is not to say that other parts of the Bible do not condemn homosexuality, but it is to say that Christians who cite the Bible as a source for their hatred of homosexuals are twisting the work for their own ends. Homosexuality may be wrong, but hating homosexuals isn't right.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
...but apparantly Muslims conquering the Holy Land before the Crusades, and slaughtering all who would not convert to Islam.... well that's just ducky.
Anyone forcing others to convert at swordpoint is acting out of evil. Anyone who does so in the name of Christ, is also taking the Lord's name in vain. When the Muslims slaughtered those in the Holy land, that was evil. When the Christians retaliated, and killed supposedly in the name of God, that was also evil.
But do NOT act like Christians had the monopoly on killing. The Crusades were an overREACTION to the slaughter that the Muslims had perpetrated. To pretend that the Muslims were just sitting around chatting about Allah, and the Christians came in for no reason and killed them all is beyond absurd. That pretense is evil.
I'm not defending the barbarous acts committed by many Crusaders. I'm sure many of them are roasting on their respective spits in Hell right now. However, when you PRETEND that those from whom they tried to take the Holy Land BACK were innocent victims of evil Christianity, you are guilty of slander on a massive scale.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
All of you except the buddists are sick individuals that use your beliefs as a reason to kill murder and rape.
While I agree partially with your sentiment, what about all the peaceful religious people? They don't get seen much, because the news chooses not to cover people sitting at home with their children hoping and praying that the rioters don't kill anybody. You're talking about the violent 1% (or 5%), and there are violent atheists as well.
I do, however, notice more and more how efficient religious power is as a tool to control people. I think that a massive reeducation about spirituality, Jesus, and the Bible are in order. Why I don't mention the Muslims is that a)I'm not a Muslim, so I'm not in a powerful position to reeducate, and b)dude, there are millions of Muslims in this country who, as a persecuted class, are more conscious, compassionate, and aware than your correlated Judeo-Christian.
Also, the Buddhist religion is also born out of a violent, sexist, oppressive time in history, and therefore contains much falsity. The reason why Christianity and Islam seem so primitive by comparison is because they are under scrutiny. Explain to me how the Buddhist governments (China, anyone?) are any better. Again, it occurs to me how religion is a freaking tool, not the problem, and the solution is education.
The government is constantly a detriment to people's freedom, spiritual growth, and personal creativity. Look at our (at least my) government's relationship with John Lennon (regardless of whether or not they killed him, which I wouldn't put past them). Look at their relationship to Osho. Look at their relationship with the Branch Davidians (Remember the Alamo, forget Waco--a true patriot!). And if you want to pretend that they killed the Branch Davidians because they were stockpiling weapons, I'll send you a videotape with the telephone conversations of Koresh begging the ATF to stop shooting at them and to please let the women and children out.
No such luck.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
God doesn't care what religion you are, so long as you are a good person.
How do you know that?
Here is my approach on that.
Let us take as a given that God exists for the purposes of this conversation.
If God is like the GP suggests, a being of benevolence who wants everyone to get along, help each other, and generally "be excellent to each other" than I am all for it. I will try to live my life by these principles, in theory (a really amusing phrase to interject in here) God would welcome me into heaven as one of the "good ones".
No if God is as some believe, a jealous and vengeful being who most desires that we forcibly convert or kill others solely on the basis that they call him by a different name or worship him in a different way, well screw that. I want no part of it. If that is God than I do reject him and will damn well live my life the way I described earlier. It is his own fault, if he wanted mindless zombies to worship him then he should not have made me more emotionally mature than himself.
Here is a fun thought experiment, imagine there is a school for Gods, and one of the projects is to create a planet populated with people you create. You must create them with free will and intelligence but approach different groups of them early on (each time taking a different form) and tell them about yourself and create a religion, but each religion must be very similar and compatible. Then set them loose and see if they can co-exist and figure out that they are all worshiping the same God. If that were the case this God flunked, we all mangled our religions to be incompatible.
Or perhaps the religions started out vastly different, and were even intentionally intolerant. Maybe the assignment is to create a people who are (in the long run) intelligent and mature enough to figure out what is truly important to society as a whole and to even "reject" the original religions (or at least the intolerant aspects of them) in favor of peacefully coexisting. Hopefully God has some more time before it is "pencils down" and we are graded, because we are not quite ready.
Finkployd
If any of your units kills another unit, they lose spirit points. Only through prayer and inspirational music (who defines inspirational anyway, but I digress...) and good sermons can you increase the spirit points
Uhm. So, yeah, killing someone loses you "spirit points," but darn it, if they were evil then it was probably necessary, and it'll be fine as long as you pray hard afterwards, and go to good sermons (which, evidently, don't delve too deeply into the "You shall not murder" commandment? Well, anyway.)
It sounds truly horrifying. You can maybe say that it isn't horrifying to quite the degree the summaries are saying, but it's a grotesquely twisted view of morality, of Christianity, of the goodness (or lack thereof) of the human soul, and so on. I'd much prefer more conventional games of this type, where we deliberately invoke the "this is just fiction" card and openly acknowledge that this isn't how one should behave in reality. In any case, I strongly disagree with your claim that the article is "misleading," since the ways in which the game "discourages killing" seem like splitting hairs to me -- it "discourages" it in a way that still requires you to kill unbelievers. But you should feel bad and pray about it afterwards. I don't see a substantial moral difference here...
As far as the Crusades, Inquisition, etc., if you actually look at what transpired there, it had very little to do with true Christianity.
Sounds a lot like this video game...
I am the man with no sig!
Sure, and by the same token you better not cuss your mom or dad, because the penalty is
Say "goddammit" when you whack your thumb with a hammer and you get
A little extra-marital fooling around
People use the Bible as if it was a pile of magic bricks out which they select pieces to construct any kind of structure they want. It's not. It's an anthology of anything that over the years scribes throught important enough to preserve (and update). The anthology includes myth, poetry, legend, philosophy and law. Quite a bit of the law only makes sense if you're wandering around the desert with yoru livestock; puzzling over the problem this presents is probably why Judaism has developed such tradition of creative scholarship.
The Bible is not consistent with itself, because given the way it ws compiled, it became a diary of multiple cycles of religious birth and rebirth. Religion works like this: some chap like Moses or Abraham has one or more mystical experiences. The people around him try to make sense of that. My devotional practice they have varying degrees of success at reproducing it. Over time these practices become ritual and law, but as the original vision become hazier, the rituals become empty and the law barren. Then the next prophet turns up, to be misunderstood and stoned, then understood and venerated, then misunderstood and venerated.
That's why Saint Paul says "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." The Greek word translated as "sin" is "hamartia", which means missing the point.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I look at it this way, if those Christian readers who take offense at the game were not offended by the books then they are just hypocritical.
Good point -- I'm a Christian reader and I'm offended also by the books. For pretty much the same reason people are offended by the game -- they present a twisted, militaristic, legalistic view of Christianity that completely leaves out one of the two "greatest commandments," that is, to love your neighbor.
Well, "offended" is maybe the wrong word -- I'm more worried than offended, because the books are so popular. I could laugh them off more easily if they didn't seem to accurately represent the views of a sizable minority of Christians in the US.
Christians are set as the opposing force, after all its a book from Christians about a story in Bible.
Allow me to nitpick here: I've read the Bible, and I never saw that story. The closest it came is a lot of apocalyptic, highly symbolic imagery, especially around Revelation. The writers of these books, and some other Christians, have chosen to interpret that imagery as an explicit, highly literal timeline of events during the apocalypse. They are free to argue for this interpretation (though I strongly disagree), but it is drastically oversimplifying to say this view is "in the Bible," since no one noticed it was in the Bible until at least the 1800s or so. That is, this peculiar literal spin on unclear prophetic imagery is something that no one even thought of until very recently in history.
So, you can try to argue that this interpretation is the correct one, but the blanket assertion that these people are just "telling a story that's in the Bible" is inaccurate.
I am the man with no sig!
Here's a good theological question:
If there is a God, and he has been around since the beginning of creation, why do you think you are allowed to define was he does and does not care about?
This isn't a troll, this is actually a serious (and much-debated) critique to your argument. Thomas Aquinas definitively believed that the Christian God was immutable - that is, he definitely was either for or against slavery, definitely for or against homosexuality, definitely for or against coveting your neighbor's wife.
So if two people stood up, and one said, "I believe God does care that you call him by the correct name" and one said, "I believe God does not care that you call him by the correct name", then only one of these people was right.
Now here's the interestint thing: if you reject Aquinas's notion - that is, you think both people are right, that we can manifest our own God for our own purposes - then you must reject the existence of God, because at that point there can be no such thing as an eternal God because our own God dies with us.
So in order to believe in God, you must believe that God has always existed AND that he is immutable. So then the question merely becomes "who has the right idea about God?" And while that question is of course unanswerable, it is very easy for me to say that your idea of God and the Christian idea of God are incompatible.
And only one of you is right.
I disagree. It's not fair for anyone to be pressured by censors. But maybe that's because I don't believe in revenge.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I don't know about anyone else, but as an atheist I'd rather be killed than to be forcibly converted, so I can't see how this is better: christians == good, everyone else == bad.
I'm not saying this game should be banned or taken off the shelves though. If we can have Doom like games, we can have this kind of crap, too. I'm with those that say it will starve on the shelves because nobody will want to play this sanctimonious crap. I also don't believe it represents mainstream christianity.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
The whole system is designed to discourage combat, but it realizes that in any conflict, sometimes you don't have much of a choice. If someone comes at you with a gun, you either die or your fight back to protect yourself.
THIS. IS. NOT. CHRISTIAN.
In this game, the existance of God and Heaven (and by contrast, Satan and Hell) is an established fact. If the good guys die, they go to Heaven. If the bad guys die, they go to Hell. Right? And furthermore, the game makes it explicitly clear (even though no mortal can have this knowledge) of exactly who is Good and Evil. It's all very simple.
Now, if you're (I'm using the omniscent "you" here) a good Christian, you don't WANT people to go to Hell, correct? You want to save everyone you can.
Furthermore, if the game labels you as "Good," then your in-game salvation is assured.
So then, given these conditions which the game has (farsically) set up... why would you EVER kill someone? Even in self-defense?
If you kill them, they go to Hell, and you potentially go to Hell.
If you convert them first, they go to Heaven and you go to Heaven.
If you die non-violently, you go to Heaven and - just maybe - seeing your lamb-like sacrifice inspires them to rethink their faith. This opens the POTENTIAL of them going to Heaven where none really existed before.
And finally, even if all the Christians die... that's what's going to happen anyway. Christ returns, all the evil-doers are thrown down, etc etc. The ending is pre-ordained. There is no other course. Evil cannot win.
There is logically NO REASON to risk your mortal soul in the game. If you think through the possibilites, non-violence is the only logical conclusion one can reach - just as Jesus taught.
(and, needless to say, in real life where you CANNOT know whether the person in front of you is Good or Evil, there is even LESS justification for killing them)
Yet the game allows for violence... it allows "Christians" to kill the "Evil" and get away with it scot free. It removes the moral burden of hanging onto your beliefs EVEN if it means your death. (like, you know, Jesus was willing to do.)
It pays lip service to the idea of converting people to "Good" while not really making the player behave in a "Good" way in all but the most superficial ways. And like so many others, when the chips are down, you're allowed to compromise your morals and commit "Evil" anyway... and the game lets you get away with it with just a little prayer.
And I can think of little that could be more anti-Christian than this sort of amoral evil nonsense parading around AS Christian.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
it also says not to beat your slaves too hard...
die444die
You are absolutely free to pray anywhere and anyway you like - on your own time. (In theory. If you're Muslim, well, sorry.)
You are free to put up decorations commemorating any deities, heroes, mythological beats, prophets, or demigods you choose - on your own property.
Requiring that people do their jobs in a professional manner (e.g., teachers and military officers should not be spending their work time trying to convert others to their beliefs), and requiring that governments neither promote nor restrict religion, is not "anti-Christian", it's pro-professionalism and pro-liberty.
(Oh, and let's be honest and admit that Xmas is a pagan celebration wrapped in a thin Xian veneer, ok?)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Throughout history, people have been using various religious faiths to justify whatever they want to do, because they can leverage the people's support for the faith to gain support for their own cause. In the case of Christianity, people have used the guise of converting people to Christianity as a justification for slavery and execution of enemies. They can justify making the people slaves because they can claim this is necessary to convert them to Christianity and save them. They can justify the execution of people by saying they are eliminating sin from the world. It doesn't matter if they have no basis in true Christianity. The practice is done by fake members of all faiths, not just fake Christians. This game probably disturbs real Christians because it makes them look bad. However, the game sounds like it is historically accurate. Accurate, not as a portrayal of true Christianity, but as a portrayal of the abuse of Christianity by early propagandists.
I'm sure you'll love them to death, just like Leviticus 20:13 says to.
> Oh, PS: I'm agnostic.
See, that's the problem, right.
The believers think that there is a voice-in-the-sky without any evidence (rather, with circular evidence -- believe and you will know, and since you do not believe you will not know).
The atheists insist that there is no voice-in-the-sky (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that) without sufficient proof.
Sometimes, both sides are a tad nutty. The only difference is that the latter tends to have more rational folks (rather than, say, $FOO_BOOK says this).
As an agnost, my whole take is that we do not have enough evidence to say one way or the other, so why bother. We have a brain, to think and analyse, so why not just use it for that, rather than just spend your life pondering over some entity, fictional or otherwise?
Kind of short sighted of him wasn't it? To only say it to a small group of people living in a specific area. So is he the God of everyone or just the God of those chosen few? Who then is the God of the others? There was not life only in the Middle East 2000 years ago you know...
And where then did these other religions come from? Many of which are demonstrably older than the "Yahweh" and "Asherah" based religions that became Judaism. Why do you not follow one of those religions? Was it entirely because you follow the religion of your parents? how fortunate you lucked out and were born into the correct one.
Frankly, if God's current plan is to send Jesus to a patch of desert and convince some followers that he died for their sins, it was not very well thought out was it? If God's single main rule is that the biggest asshole on earth can get into the kingdom of heaven simply by believing that Jesus died for his sins, and that the most noble, honorable, peaceful, and (dare I say) most Jesus-like people would be condemned to eternal hell fire if they happen to not believe that, then God is a emotionally-retarded asshole and this world he created is better off without him, no? Especially if his followers are willing to kill otherwise innocent people for not worshiping him the exact same way their parents taught them to.
Really, why go to all the trouble to giving people free will and intelligence if we are to be punished for using it?
I'm not an atheist, I believe in God, but I refuse to believe in a God with the mentality of a 4 year old. This universe is too well constructed and complicated for a rank amateur to have designed it.
Finkployd
...as Stalin was a closet Orthodox for much of, if not his entire, life.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Number of abortion providers murdered in the last 15 years: < 25 (http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_viol.htm)
i d=5772&t=Archive)
Number of people killed by Muslim suicide bombers on Tuesday: > 60 (http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/?page=details&
I'm not going to defend anyone who kills an abortion doctor, or imply that each one wasn't a terrible tragedy. The truth of the matter, however, is that the scale of the two problems just doesn't compare at all.
Also, for what it's worth, I do believe the bible with all of my being, and I have in fact read it. Actually, I've not only read it, I've studied it enough to understand the source of the apparent contradictions, and why they aren't really contradictions. In fact, under real scrutiny the Bible holds up better than just about any other work of comparable size out there.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
The problem with the bible, or any religious scripture, is that people can read it and find passages that back up their preconceptions. People who hate gays can find passages that make them think thats okay. People who want to show Christianity to be hypocritical can find passages that conflict with one another. Well-intentioned people can completely disagree over which passages are important. This is why we have so many different variants of the Christian faith -- Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, etc. etc.
In my reading of the bible, there is one passage where Jesus sums up the entire religion. Everything else is basically background information.
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" 27He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'[c]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[d]" 28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
The passage continues to define "your neighbor" as anyone you might happen to meet. So, no...you aren't supposed to hate gays.
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
Nice way to completely misunderstand his point.
Like me, he trusts in what he knows. That is a kind of faith just as believing in a god is faith.
When I say I believe in what I see, I'm expressing the faith I have in that my eyes see things the way they are, and that what my eyes see is the truth. You can't prove without a doubt that it is, since no human being on this earth has complete and utter knowledge of all and everything. We just have to trust in reason and logic, and THAT is our faith.
I really hate how bible-pushers can tell me to believe in God just because a book says he exists. Yes, of course that's faith, and sure, it might inspire hope in some people. But I can't see the point in believing in these fairytale stories 'just because'. It makes no sense to me, not when there's so much else in this world that has reason and logic on it's side.
I believe water is wet, because I can actually touch it. I believe fire is hot, because I actually burn myself if I get too close. I don't believe in God because there is no further proof to his existence than "the bible says so". And that's just not enough for me...
So christians, believe in whatever you want. I can't, and won't, stop you. But please, PLEASE, stop with your bullshit "because I say so" rhetoric and backwards logic. If you don't bother me, I won't other you.
Blog -
I beg to differ. They sure sound like the Christians from the Spanish Inquisition.
Seriously, cause I must have missed the serious fucking leap you made in "logic" there. Rules for living in a society two millenia ago, replete with instructions on how to store your freshly slaughtered and salted meats, on selling your daughter /is/ contextual today?
Look this game does not represent Christianity, or the qualities of its followers. So much hatred for Christianity on Slashdot. Gleeful and spiteful hatred up and down this article's postings.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Leaving a hundred different versions of "your word" laying around, each with hundreds or thousands of "mistranslations" in them, and then expecting people to somehow pick out the "truth" from all that is just retarded. If God exists, he REALLY needs to get a better PR person. Aside from the very basics like the 10 commandments, I really don't know how anyone can pick anything out to believe in. Even those people who've spent years trying to figure out what all the mistranslations are are still just going with their own new interpretation. It just happens, coincidentally of course, to jive with today's Christian values a lot better. Imagine that.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Christians who take a message of peace and love out of it may be good people, but they're just cherry-picking passages and ignoring the ones they don't agree with. If you're going to do that, why do you need some archaic forgery to shape your morals in the first place?
;-) have explained in great detail why an intelligent person would follow a moral system even without an enforcer like God. But many religious people apparently either can't understand the reasoning, or they choose to disbelieve it for reasons that I haven't yet read. All I've ever seen is the unsupported assertion that, without God, you have no moral system. If they have reasons to ignore the obvious evidence otherwise, they don't seem to be telling the rest of us. I'd conclude that they probably don't have such reasons, and are making the "no God == no morality" claim due to an inability to understand the reasons that it's wrong.
;-)
I know that's a rhetorical question, but it does have a straightforward answer.
Many people need an authority that imposes a moral system because they aren't sufficiently intelligent to have a moral system otherwise.
You can see this all the time in a standard argument for why you need a God: If you don't have God enforcing the rules, you don't have any rules, and you can commit any crimes you like. They intend this as a claim that atheists and agnostics are all immoral, of course. But if you think about it a bit, you realize that it's actually a self-condemnation. The argument really means "I don't understand how anyone could have a moral system without fear of a powerful God that enforces it."
Now, various atheists and agnostics (and libertarians and behavioral biologists
Such people do need a powerful authority figure, or they probably will go out and start committing crimes against the rest of us. Come to think of it, looking at the history of religious groups give one strong grounds to expect this. Even that "Thou shalt not kill" commandment, as clear as it might be, hasn't prevented a lot of religious wars, not to mention government executions. People who accept the Bible but commit such acts clearly don't yet have a strong-enough authority figure to make them follow God's commandments.
(Lessee, will this get moderated "funny" or "flamebait"?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
But -- and pardon my French, here, I usually try to keep it relatively clean on Slashdot -- it's these fuckhead zealots that get all the attention, thus smearing their shitstink on the rest of us (especially those who happen to share their skin color/place of birth). I don't like being assumed to be a right wing evangelical nutjob just because I live in the US, and it pains me every time I hear someone of Arabic (or anything even remotely mistakable for Arabic!) descent referred to as a terrorist.
I suspect the hatred you're seeing on Slashdot is more a hatred of self righteous dogma and fanaticism (and we all know that whenever one has dogma, one ends up with fanatics - wanna rag on M$, anyone?) than a hatred of moderate Christians. Most Christians are quite reasonable people; however, one can't help but notice that the Christian doctrine offers a lot of ways to justify acting like a turd (like most religious doctrines). So I certainly am not willing to exonerate the religion wholesale in this matter - according to the Bible, it is okay (some might even say it's one's duty) to kill nonbelievers if they won't convert, so contrary to your statement, this game does represent Christianity in a very accurate way. You are correct that it may not represent the qualities of its followers, and you've thus stumbled upon the contradiction inherent in being a moderate in any religion with a "frozen" holy book: if you disagree with some of the messages in the Bible, then you're just picking and choosing anyways, so what's the point of leaving the stuff you disagree with in the text at all? If there is so much interpretation required to understand God's true message, why not just edit the damn thing and be done with it? Yeah, yeah, not allowed to change the book, blah blah. Whatever. The point is that it's retarded, and when you leave crap like that in a holy book, assholes are going to read it and take it to heart, thus elevating their disgusting inclinations to hate and kill to the status of "holy."
And that's why we end up with games like this. Even if most individual Christians bear no responsibility, it is Christianity's fault...
You can't have faith in something that you've seen, or that is absolute. Faith implies that what it is you believe can't be proven. You can say, "I have faith that planes can fly.", and this means nothing because we already know that they can fly. Having faith is believing that God exists or that Jesus is God's son or that the Chargers will win the Superbowl. You can't prove it, but you're not likely to be swayed that it isn't true.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
While this may be true for some, why is it that automatically an atheist's good works are entirely for altruistic purposes? Can athiests suddenly not be swayed with incentive (for whatever reason) like anyone else? Are all theist's intentions just for getting that prime real estate in the afterlife?
:)
Atheists are people just as anyone else and can be bribed (though not in entirely the same ways as a theist) as well. They are no more or less suceptable than your other average joe churchgoer.
Besides, if that person was a good theist, he'd realize doing good works for the sake of only getting to heaven is pretty self-defeating: from what I understand, this is the end result and not supposed to be the motivation for doing do (which is the good work itself.)
>Our supposition that Christianity is not pure fantasy is just as irrational as your supposition that it is fantasy.
Christians say this kind of bollocks all the time. it's like you guys are freaking brainwashed. just read what you said and actually THINK about it. if you find there is any part of you that thinks something about it is slightly odd, then I suggest you read some books on logic and philosophy. if you're completely content that you're right then please just try to focus on any parts of the bible that say don't fuck up other peoples' lives.
>Besides, the key to salvation is... blah, blah, blah
look, you can shove your "salvation" up your arse. I do not NEED salvation. just because I'm not perfect doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me. nobody's perfect.
the one thing I am sure of though is that I'm a far better person than that evil, spiteful, vengeful bastard in the bible. and I'm better than the disgusting drones that harm people in "His" name.
It isn't taken literally?
Perhaps you should sit in on a Kansas School Board meeting sometime.
Or listen in to several of the vocal extremist evangelist nutjobs like Dobson or Robertson. They've got very little interest in the compassion of Christ, most of what they focus on can be found back in Leviticus.
However, I hear Christians say all the time that the Bible is "the word of God", and last time I checked, the Bible is comprised of both the Old and New Testaments. But I've never seen a Bible with a "God's word order of precedence" page, enabling one to tell with certainty which parts of God's word are or aren't to be taken literally.
By your interpretation, a Christian need not take the Ten Commandments literally, as they are in the OT.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Why aren't these wackos shouted down by the other Christians? I know several Christians who are embarassed by the right wing, but they don't say anything. They'll speak up and talk back to non-religious because they don't want to be pigeonholed with the kooks, but they won't shout the kooks down. They let the kooks dominate the discussion because they don't want dissention within the church, but they get defensive when we assume that they agree with their more militant brethren. You need to stand up and protest when a "Christian" isn't acting in a Christian way, not close ranks and yell "bigot" when we point out that you're tolerating him. If you don't share the values of the people you're hanging out with, stop hanging out with them.