Adams Venture covers religious themes relating to Christianity... I have not played it so i cannot personally vouch as to how good the games are, or if they are preachy etc. All 3 episodes can be picked up in the Bundle Stars "Fire and Ice" package on sale atm.
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I'd like to see a Bible (Old Testament) RTS, perhaps on the 0 AD engine. Most "bible games" suck, but I think one like this could work. A bit like a cross between Age of Mythology and Warcraft III. RPG-ish hero characters (the Biblical leaders), with some toned down "god powers".
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It would certainly be cool to have Moses opening waters or Solomon cutting newborns in half.
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Painkiller is a game that has a religious topic, goes into the catholic concept of hell and the devil and God and angels and all that, and no one seems to complain about that. Even when I don't follow any religion at all, I like to learn what they're about, and Painkiller does just that. It doesn't force it on you and it doesn't bother (unless you are a very devoted catholic, but then again, if you are, you wouldn't be playing Painkiller!). I don't mind a little religion in a game as long as it's casual and not forced.
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Remember Dante's Inferno? There will always be religious idiots who'll launch a hate campaign towards any media that contains religious ideas or messages which they dont agree with. Personally I want all kinds of religion to fade to obscurity and be forgotten, least of all encounter them in the games that I play.
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I think there will always be idiots that protest everything. There are quite a majority of idiots, so it's about guaranteed that there will be a few that dislike whatever you do. I don't think that should dissuade one from taking on a project that one feels has something to add to the discussion or experience of religion (or any topic).
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Ancient religions are a bit different from modern day ones, and the majority of games don't deal with religion.
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Well first of all Ancient Religion are not followed by anyone nowadays. Secondly they were mostly composed from a variety of deities which were pretty much human. I mean yeah, every one had their superpowers but after all they had their human problems and defects (Jelousy, Hate, Anger and so on)
For example Haefestus wife, Athenea, cheated on him several times (With both gods and men) and Zeus was pretty much of a latin-lover. For example Hercules, among many others, is fruit of an extra-matrimonial adventure of Zeus.
Roman, Mayan and so on are pretty much the same in that sense. However the more advanced monotheist religions often present their deity as a flawless, powerfull being. So well I would see some problems that could arise if you killed the Hebrew's Yahvé, the Chirstians' God or the Muslims' Allah.
And there are many other ways of dealing with religion than killing its gods.
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Judaism existed at the time when Roman/Greek polytheism existed. They are both ancient. So yes, Ancient Religions are still followed by people today. Hinduism is a religion that still exists today and involves multiple deities, some of which are human-like. So no, ancient religions are not the only religions that contained multiple deities. Monotheism is neither more nor less advanced than polytheism.
So far all I've got is that ancient religions are different than modern religions because they're older... which seems pretty self-evident, so I'm still not sure why you bothered 'correcting' me.
"And there are many other ways of dealing with religion than killing its gods."
-Implying that killing its gods IS a way of dealing with the religion, which was my point.
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You completely missed my point. But well.
Hinduism dates from a couple of thousand years BC if I'm not mistaken. And monotheism, philosophically is more advanced than politheism because instead of creating a god for everything they don't understand a supreme deity, a supreme ruler being him perfection, the origin or whatever you want to name it. It's the natural evolution of ideas.
Anyways, I can really spot the differences amongst them. And while hinduism is still a reminiscence of those religions the majority of them do not exist anymore.
I don't really understand your last sentence.
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Where is your evidence that it is the "natural evolution of ideas"? I don't see how that follows at all. That's a claim, you need to back it up with arguments or proof. Why does it make any more sense to say that there is 1 god than 10000000 gods? Having more doesn't necessarily make it worse. In fact, with multiple gods you can at least get away with a lot of the logical problems that monotheism has... so in a practical sense I'd probably say that polytheism is a better choice(<-claim). For Instance: it gets around that oh-so-troublesome 'problem of evil' by saying that not all of the gods are good, and they war with each other, and from that comes man's suffering (<-argument).
I responded to you almost sentence-by-sentence, if I missed your point I apologize, but you'll have to make your point clearer.
Oh and let's forget my last sentence. It doesn't really matter
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I thought I made my point clear enough.
With the statement that I claimed I meant (and that's what I was thought too, can't really come with any proof as well, there's none) that instead of getting a divinity from up the sleeve for every given problem people would picture god as a model for perfection as the first being setting place for everything else to happen (Have a look at Plato's theory of Ideas or Saint Thomas Aquinas Quinque viae) That's it.
And the problem of evil is easily solvable if we accept the existance of free will as some religious texts as The Bible do. As for example on Luke 15:3-7
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God was not a "model for perfection". The idea of perfection was applied to the idea of God. No man ever saw God and said "that is perfection". Someone said "If there is only one God, we should apply this pre-existing concept of perfection to it". And why is the model of perfection a better alternative than the polytheistic approach? Even if I were to grant that we can use God as a model of perfection, what more does that do for us than attributing different parts of existence to different gods? How is it philosophically better? Plato's theory of ideal forms (if that is what you are referring to) is flawed, and even Plato himself later criticized it. I haven't read Aquinas' Quinque Viae, so I can't comment on that, but I will say I don't particularly enjoy Aquinas in general because he always seems to pick his conclusion ahead of time, then make up arguments to support it, instead of the other way around, of trying to see what conclusion his thoughts and observations lead him to).
The problem of evil is not so easily solvable as that... What is free will? I contend that there is no such thing as 'free will' as most people think of it, because we are all made up of atoms interacting with other atoms in a deterministic fashion. As such, with infinite knowledge (such as that supposedly possessed by God), you would be able to perfectly predict the course of the universe, like an extremely complex game of billiards. If you say that people have souls, and this allows them their free will, you will also certainly say that souls are immaterial and unobservable. Then how are they US? How do they either control or be controlled by us? They would have to interact in the physical world in some way, as that would be a transmission of information from one source to another. But how does something non-physical interact with the physical? By very definition it cannot. So I cannot see how, from the point of view of an omniscient being, we can have anything resembling free will (of course, WE cannot know everything, so from our own point of view, we act freely).
But EVEN GRANTING that we have free will... Could God not simply have granted us free will, but also the desire to never do evil? I mean, we cannot sprout wings, but we do not say that this is an impingement upon our free will. What if the ability to do evil were similarly impossible, some additional organ was added to the human design that prevented it from doing evil. Would we not then still consider ourselves free? And if not, then why do we consider ourselves free when we cannot sprout wings at a whim?
-Sorry, I know this one was a bit long, but I enjoy discussing free will. Also, I realize we're SUPER off-topic, but I like debating philosophy so I DONT CARE :-)
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I'll try to answer later on. I have not really the time right now. :)
Let's get to it.
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Basically Aquinas based it's Theory of the demostration of God by the use of the Aristhotelic Unmoved mover theory (So that God is the cause and start of everything) And well I don't really know if he jumped into conclusions before time, I think that a worse example of that could be Descartes (Who brilliantly questioned everything with the Cartesian Doubt and then did a triple pirouette to justify the existance of God and avoid Solipsism)
And well I said it to be philosophycally better because first gods were meant to give an explanation for anything people didn't understand, such as storms, seasons, whatever. So each deity has its own range of action. Then I consider evolution somehow to get from that idea to the one where God actually is the one cause of existance (As the Watchmaker analogy) or the existance of one only thing which we are all part of as Monism states.
Atoms on the other hand, don't act derterministically. They are ruled by the laws of the Universe, right. But we are not just atosm. Moreover as Sartre said there's the possibility of choosing, what is more there's the need of choosing one cannot live without making decisions. So are we missinng something? Is some pupeteer controlling us? Or some Cartesian Evil Genious? Well that certainly scapes our knowledge. My inmediate reality says to me that I must make choices that I need to make them, thus I could consider myself as free.
Moreover there's no such thing as bad things or bad people. They are people who don't abide by some stablished rules (I know I'm contradicting myself here a bit as that would negate the existence of God and that by using the Absurdism, but I want to develop this point) so there's no such thing as bad things happening to people, but more like things happening, and people being hit by those things.
I don't really know if I'm in the point anymore, I've kind of struggled to find the words to express myself, I mean I consider my English to be good enough for most things but it kind of falls short when I need to discuss this sort of things, so sorry if any of my points are not clear enough.
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The Unmoved Mover theory is... a poor one. If you want to talk about something that happened BEFORE the universe... you simply can't. Time did not exist before the universe, it is a part of the universe. This is a whole different philosophical issue that I'm not terribly well versed in, so I'm going to skirt it a bit and just talk about why we would even postulate an unmoved mover. But Aristotle was just looking for a "first cause" for the universe, and with no other alternatives available to him, he concluded that it must be an 'unmoved mover' with no prior cause. But that does NOTHING to improve our position. Why can the universe itself not have caused itself? Why can the universe itself not have existed forever? When people try to solve the problem of the first cause, they point to a perfect being (God) and say, "well, God did it". All that does is add another step. Because then, what caused God? "God caused himself" or "God has always existed" are the usual answers, and I've already pointed out that we can just replace "God" with "the universe". Both are equally hard to imagine, both make an equal amount of sense, and Occam's Razor states that the argument with the fewest postulates is the better one. So instead of God->Universe->Us, we can just say Universe->Us. And yes, Descartes was also full of crap, there we can agree.
Oh man, I hate the watchmaker analogy so much. It only works because we have PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of watches and know that watchmakers make them. We don't have prior knowledge of universes and that universe makers make them, and that's a pretty crushing flaw with the analogy. And if you really want to push the idea that it's philosophically better to have 1 God than many Gods, because you can explain everything with just the 1 God, and many Gods are not necessary... see my above paragraph and allow me to rephrase your question: Is it not better philosophically to have 0 Gods than 1 God, because we can explain everything equally well with 0 Gods, so 1 God is not necessary to our understanding?
OK, Atoms ABSOLUTELY act deterministically. Think of it this way: Imagine you have a time machine. You go back to that one time you had to choose between picking a banana and an orange for lunch. You remember picking the Orange. You go back in your time machine, and interfere with NOTHING (somehow), and watch yourself. You pick the Orange again. Obviously. You go back in time to 5 minutes before you make the choice and watch the scene again. Again you choose the Orange. Why would anyone expect anything else to happen? If it happened that way once, and if all conditions are held constant it will happen that way again. This is because things happen deterministically. If you went back in time and saw yourself choose the orange twice, and then choose the banana the third time, you'd assume something had gone wrong, you wouldn't say "oh, I guess in this past that was exactly identicalin every physical way to the time I chose the Orange, something was different". Because that doesn't make sense. We rely on the deterministic nature of atoms in Physics every day. The only argument you could make would be concerning Quantum Mechanics, which does not appear to follow a deterministic process. But honestly, if anyone tells you they understand Quantum Mechanics, they're lying. It's such a NEW field that we barely know how to even think about it, much less understand it outside of a few poor metaphors.
As for the possibility of choosing, I really don't know what you mean by that. I absolutely do believe we are nothing more than atoms strung into chemical sequences strung into people. You can't deny that atoms are at least PART of what we are... so if there is more to what we are it would have to interact with those atoms, to really be considered a part of us. After all, you don't consider an apple a part of a watermelon, because what happens to the apple does not (necessarily) affect the apple in any way. But back to my point: if atoms are a part of us, and you claim that there is more to us (another part), we should be observe to see SOME kind of interaction between the two. Even if it was something like "atoms in humans vibrate slightly more rapidly than atoms in rocks". Something like that should be observable. Something observable that differentiates us from the rest of the universe, if there is more to us. So far, after decades of observation, no difference has been detected between an atom, or group of atoms, found in a human, and one found in a rock.
"My inmediate reality says to me that I must make choices that I need to make them, thus I could consider myself as free."
One last point about this quote... It is not necessary, for freedom, that the person believes themselves to be free. It is also not necessary, for imprisonment, that the person believes themselves to be imprisoned. I'll use the matrix as an example. The humans in the matrix were clearly not free. They could not leave their pods, yet they believed themselves to be free. They believed they could make their own choices, and believed they did in fact make their own choices. But this was not the case, they were being fooled. So, like I said, the concept of 'freedom' does not require that you either believe yourself to be free, or that you believe yourself to not be imprisoned.
Good and Bad are concepts invented by mankind, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I get what you're saying, but we can't use that to abdicate the responsibility of a Deity to treat his creations well. A Deity that causes OR ALLOWS suffering, starvation, death, terror, rape, genocide, biological warfare, nuclear warfare, etc.. etc.. should not be worshiped. If anything, such a Deity should be feared or hated. Why allow this to happen? There is no reason AT ALL that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being would. Therefore, either there is no Deity at all, or it is weak, or it is stupid, or it is evil. I mean, we were all over Hitler's shit when he committed genocide, but if he was created by a divine being, or even if his actions were simply not stopped by a divine being, then that divine being is responsible for, or for some reason unable to prevent, the consequences.
My posts... they keep getting longer D:
You're expressing yourself well, I think I understood most of your points, or at least what you were driving at. Let me know if I need to tone down the flowery language to make what I'm saying easier to understand (it just sorta comes out that way when I type about philosophy).
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Heading to bed, will have a look at it tomorrow calmly.
I must admit too that Phylosohphy is not my strong point. So if you want to point out any logical mistakes or absurd propositions I might have fall into feel free to do it.
Cheers!
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One thing I want to ask here and that I've already adressed to another poster. I mean don't you think that there's already too much propaganda in games? Pro-American propaganda for example.
What would make Religious propaganda different to the rest? I mean it's not like is very different to the We must kill Muslims, they are bad things we are used to in modern shooters (Or communist, or nazis, or whatever)
Should that one also be avioided? If so, how?
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Well the main problem I see with that is that the basic tenets of the major religions, in so far as they can be faithfully portrayed within the medium of interactive entertainment, are ill-suited to serve as the basis for traditional game mechanics. Most games require a way to measure progress of some sort and provide some kind of feedback, a sense of achievement, rewards for achieving goals, etc. They are also often (but not always) power fantasies, vehicles for escapism, venues for competition, and ultimately meant to provide entertainment of some sort. I don't mean to say that this is a bad thing, it's just the way it is. Games should ultimately be fun after all. Arguably, all of this can be at odds with what many core beliefs and practices in religions are about. Sure, bits and pieces from the cultural fabric of various religions both real and fictitious can readily be found in many games, but as such they only serve as window dressing, the dramatic backdrop for narrative or setting, as plot devices or minor story elements for the sake of enhanced "realism" or "immersion", or at best a canvas for the core gameplay of a game that has little do with the actual spirit of the religion in question. (As a particularly awful example of how this can go wrong, take this ill-fated and sadly misguided dogmatically fascist trash by the Christian fundamentalist right. The basic premise as well as the actual gameplay in regards to your objectives and the means by which you are to achieve them are, to my mind, as un-Christian as they get.)
Having said that, games often are much more than mere "entertainment", and I would welcome a developer who manages to do justice to religious themes or issues in a way that makes them a focus of the game not only in setting but also core mechanics without bastardizing or perverting the tenets or beliefs of the respective religion (because why not?). Needless to say, we're far from there, and to say it would be a challenge would be an understatement of the highest order. But it's still a young medium we're dealing with here, you know, so God knows (sorry) where we'll be in ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred years time?
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That's so wrong in many ways. The most obvious is that Religion can't be Scí-Fí, there's no Science component to it. It's purely Phylosophical.
I'm not going to ever enter in a further debate.
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I believe you mean the category under which science fiction falls: speculative fiction.
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As atheist I say HELL NO! There is enough of that everywhere else.
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I wonder, what kind of harm could do a sensitible (I want to remark the word sensible) and coherent game about religion?
I mean I've always thought that is not good to dig in your heels and refuse to try and experiment, learn or even understand other things.
And if it's for the, I'd say fear, of being it propaganda. Well isn't there already a lot of that on videogames? I mean how many of the shooters out there simply portray how good the Americans are/were/will be and how dreadful their enemy is? (Exchange enemy by muslims, commies or whatever)
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"And if it's for the, I'd say fear, of being it propaganda. Well isn't there already a lot of that on videogames? I mean how many of the shooters out there simply portray how good the Americans are/were/will be and how dreadful their enemy is? (Exchange enemy by muslims, commies or whatever)"
Wait.
So you acknowledge that there is a lot of propaganda present in videogames, and your argument is that we need more of it?
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Yeah, Religion (either real ones or fantasy ones) is already there in many games. From my point of view a Religious or Mystical enviroment can be a great tool for character development, to create a better sense of inmerssion too.
And about a game solely based on Religion. Well I do not really see how that can be a problem. I mean it's a delicate matter to adress. Speciall the most popular ones. But well, if it presents itself well and the developers can come up with a good plot and a decent gameplay I do not see why not that could be done.
Having said that there's one thing that really pisses me off, games (or well, any media) that kinds of present themselves as historically accurate (or at least give that impression) and they aren't such as the AC saga or Dan Brown novels for example.
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I can't say I've read many Dan Brown novels (thankfully,) but I'm not sure Brown or Ubisoft is trying to present their stories as historically accurate.
Then again, the Bible tries to present as historically accurate the idea that Egypt had Jews as slaves during or near the time of Moses, so I can relate to the way such inaccurate presentations piss you off.
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It's not that they claim they are. But they give that impression. I don't know. It was more me wandering off topic that something actually related to Ceil's question. And yeah, you are doing good by staying far away from them.
And as much as I would love to discuss the last point, I'm not really aware of what the current situation of people (specially Jews) was those days. And I wouldn't like to start a discussion without really knowing about the matter.
In other order of things, the Bible is not 100% historically acurate and I highly doubt it's been claimed (at least lately and by any non-fundamentalist branch) to be so. But I might be wrong there though.
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You would make a great Fireman if you happened to have lived in Bradbury's novel.
I mean what's exactly the point to do that? I would understand depising certain fundamentalist branches of some religions. But what harm can a sensible approach to it do? I see none.
Anyways I'm leaving this here.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.
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Religions are not autonomous beings unto themselves, they are people. Basically you want to kill the majority of the world's population.
Also, if you subscribe to any type of nationalism, you probably would have to kill yourself too. Many would define religion as something like, "A set of beliefs, traditions, and rituals by which a group of people understand and interact with the world." In such a case, the belief in a national "myth", its heroes, values, and the performance of rituals like paying taxes, voting, observing national holidays, and generally taking part in the culture would place you squarely in the context of a religion.
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Without religion a great number of people wouldn't know what to do with themselves. Imagine you're a little kid and all you've wanted your entire life is a pony. Your parents promise you can have that pony if you're good for a week. A few days later your parents tell you no matter how good you are you aren't getting a pony. Why would you bother being good for the rest of the week?
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So are you saying that the only reason you act morally is in exchange for something good after you die?
That's not exactly something to brag about.
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I think he means that after all, Christian moral can't really do any harm. I mean if you were to take the 10 Commandments (and strip them of the Worship God part) you will get the following.
Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Not bear false witness
Thou shalt not covet Which from my point of view, are a fairly nice rulebook for morals. But well even if I do agree that abiding by them in a selfish manner looking for rewards is not really the best thing. At least it's something.
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Did I even say that I'm religious anywhere in that?
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You implied that religion is the only reason people are moral, and that without the reward most religions promise, there's no reason to behave.
If I've misinterpreted, please correct me.
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You have. I said that for a lot of people I belive that it true, I didn't say all.
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Well, in that case I apologize. I offer up as an excuse my naive optimism in human nature, the sincere hope that people can be good to each other for no other reason than that it is good to do good for others, sans eternal reward.
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Even though I am religious myself I would not like to see more. It just gives ignorant people more chances to show their hate and misguided feelings towards it. I really cant stand seeing people speak of religion with so much anger and bad feelings when they had a bad experience that usually is the result of someone using their religion in an ignorant way to make others feel inferior. Everyone has a right to have their faith, but some people don't understand it and use it in ways that just make them and others look like idiots. the same ignorance is passed to non religious people and they assume all religious people must be the same and all have the same beliefs and feelings when that just isn't the case.
I like to think of myself as more of an open minded Christian. I believe such things as Science is the Hand of God at work, like they say he works in mysterious ways.
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I do agree with you here. I certainly feel that Religion is generally misconcepted and the popular trend now seems to be to try to convert everyone to this Internet atheism which most of the time (And I'm not talking about atheist who actually know what they are talking about, which there are many) is pretty much repeating things parrot fashion.
There a image here who pretty much sums up what I try to say (Forget the typos and that)
And yeah, everyone should be respected as long as they are not harming anyone else.
Cheers.
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Thus you have to run away about anything which remotely resembles to Religion?
Well sir, then I must say you are pretty much of an ignorant person. Religion, whether you like it or not, has played (and still plays) a very important role throughout all human history and it's a basic pillar to understand other civilizations and cultures.
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Game companies tend not to make games with religious messages, or that address issues of transcendence and reality.
Would you like to have more games that gave you the opportunity to explore your religion, other religions, or to perhaps even have transcendent spiritual experiences?
Discuss.
Edit
Unwritten looks like a good example of the exploration of myth (not here used in a derogatory way), culture, and story-telling.
That might be a good example of how religion can be addressed in games, and make for a thought-provoking experience, though of course it is yet to be released.
Also I now would like to create a game of some sort that makes use of religious themes and questions. This thread has really inspired me.
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