How about Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination? It’s called a “satirical board game of religious warfare”, and sounds like good silly fun. Some people, though, don’t like to see their dogma mocked.
[The game] has no basis in historical reality and doesn’t actually represent any religion. It just appeals to people who hate religion to begin with — the hip subculture of militant popular atheists. These people are fanatics, for the most part, themselves. Their thinking is rigid and hostile and not much different from jihadists who don’t use their minds or study what they are dealing with. They start from their own dogmatic perspective.
Oh. So if you simply think the idea that there is a Great Cosmic Voyeur who wants to control your genitals is absurd, that makes you a fanatic? I can’t be too concerned about the opinions of a deluded true believer who can’t tell a fierce bearded guy with an AK-47 from a tweedy academic with a word processor.
Aw, we don’t hate religion, we kind of consider it about as deep and difficult as, say, Candyland.
Yes, we’re not very different at all from Jihadists. You know how those fundamentalist Muslim terrorists love their board games!
can’t tell a fierce bearded guy with an AK-47 from a tweedy academic with a word processor?
Those are actually two of the playing pieces from the game.
Let’s see…freedom of speech, freedom of religion (and from religion!), freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure: these are all freedoms I support that true fundamentalists usually do not support.
Fundamentalism is violence and oppression, and there is nothing violent or oppressive about what I believe. I am an atheist who believes that most of us would be better off without religion, but I have never advocated eradicating religion either by force or by dictate. None of us have advocated that. Anyone who thinks atheists are the same as fundamentalists is deluding themselves. Wait, this probably isn’t a coincidence.
“the hip subculture of militant popular atheists”
Wow, we’ve become a hip subculture – that sounds cool, the gang to be in….
There’s a whole heap of adjectives being thrown at atheists nowadays – I think more than we call believers. We may be losing out in the name calling contest.
The adjectives that spring to mind are; militant, popular (a new one – as above), fanatical, aggressive, ‘new’, and pious (yes, that was in a UK paper a couple of days ago). Anyone else remember any other good names we’re commonly called nowadays?
You mean, like remote control? Because that would be both creepy and fascinating at the same time.
Their thinking is rigid and hostile and not much different from jihadists who don’t use their minds or study what they are dealing with. They start from their own dogmatic perspective.
Yes, that’s a wonderfully precise description.
Oh wait, the author here isn’t talking about Christian fundamentalists at all, is he?
Excuse me, offended religious person (whoever you are), while I play you a tune on my tiny violin.
I don’t hate religious people! they’re USUALLY nice folks! It’s the creepy paranoid kind that I hate… like the guy that wrote that.
Dammit, Slaughter, I’m a Sixth-Day Candylandist, and I’m offended!
In a game about gods, you can play as Eric Clapton, and a university professor is complaining that it unfairly misrepresents historical reality. *points* HAHAHAHA
I’ve been in many subcultures, but this is the first time I’ve been hip. High five!
“The adjectives that spring to mind are; militant, popular (a new one – as above), fanatical, aggressive, ‘new’, and pious (yes, that was in a UK paper a couple of days ago). Anyone else remember any other good names we’re commonly called nowadays?”
Fundamentalist.
Extremist.
Combative.
Avowed.
Well, according to the image, Buddha has some sort of electric minigun…this is not a tenet of buddhism that I am familiar with.
Well, which are we, a hip subculture, or jihadists? The two don’t really overlap much, you know.
Can’t say the game appeals to me much, fwiw.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Julie, you and I shall pray to St. Plumpy for their forgiveness.
You heathens, say ten Hail Frostines, then report to the nearest church so that you may be fed a tab of The Holy Confection.
Screechy,
Come up with something that starts with L and you will have another name that we have been called.
@Matt Heath, but it is perfectly accurate historically, after all Clapton is a guitar god :)
Uh huh. And of course ordinary Christians don’t start from their own dogmatic perspective. No, they form a hypothesis that God exists, make predictions about what one would observe if this were so — and what one would not observe if this were so — and then they perform the test. If asking God to reveal Himself to you does not generate the predicted results that “something or other will then happen some time in the future”, then consider the existence of God falsified.
Richard Dawkins is right. They don’t know the meaning of the word “dogmatic.” They think it means “passionate.”
(Incidentally, I just love it that I’m supposed to be part of a “hip” anything. I’m so pleased I’m going to turn my Enya cd up to 11!)
Parodying religious insanity is as effective and helpful as remedying an overflowed septic tank. It’s always there and ready to rear it’s ugly stench when conditions are ripe for more misery.
can’t tell a fierce bearded guy with an AK-47 from a fierce bearded guy with a word processor
Doesn’t that look better, oh fierce bearded one?
Did that one guy imply that its hip to be square? Sould I start dancing 80’s style?
I saw this game in action at Dragon*Con, and not only is it nice as far as production values but it actually looks fun. And Ben Radford (yes, that Ben Radford) deserves your support.
Email to the quoted Dr. Carl Raschke can be addressed here: craschke@du.edu
Other than his venomous little rant about us hip (yet fanatical, rigid and hostile) atheists, Dr. Raschke’s publishing history tends to suggest a more moderate outlook. But perhaps I am being fooled by such academically bloated titles as “Thomas Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence” or “On Rereading Romans 1-6, or Overcoming the Hermeneutics of Suspicion” into thinking that he has an educated rather than reactionary view on religion.
lol, I think that I’m gonna get this game…looks like a good laugh.
Yeah, didn’t I just read something in the news about jihadists inventing a board game in Pakistan?
Yeah, because an organisation that excommunicates you for thinking the wrong thing is a virtual fucking paragon of free-thinking inquiry.
And there’s nothing more hostile than rejoicing in (or supporting) a god that sentences entire races to eternal torture. Except maybe for ridiculing such ideas. Yeah, now that’s mean.
Fucking moderate enablers.
Damn you you hip dogmatic militant atheists!!! How dare you not be open to the idea that myths and fairy tails are really the great work of an angry omnipotent sky guy who demands complete surrender and obeisance and then decides your ultimate fate for eternity. How close-minded can you possibly be?
This is a great example of the pot calling the kettle black. Have they looked at their own beliefs recently?
Damn those militant atheists. I mean, really, there’s no need to actually bomb churches, assassinate clergy, or assault believers.
What do you mean that doesn’t happen? Then why would anybody call atheists militant?
This is a great example of the pot calling the kettle black. Have they looked at their own beliefs recently?
Eric @ 30
And where is this god to prevent all those purported attacks by atheists against the forces of unreason?
Mad Grad Student@14
You’ve never heard of Sten Buddhism?
“…the hip subculture of militant popular atheists.”
I, for one, am damned glad to hear that we’re popular now.
*LOLs out loud*
#2:
He’s obviously talking about the hip Jihadists, silly!
after all Clapton is a guitar god
Obviously the game creators missed the hip-boat, because everyone knows that Lemmy* is God**.
* for the terminally unhip, the bassist/singer from Motorhead.
** for the even more terminally un-hip, it’s a movie quote.
Also laughs out loud. Silently, like a ninja.
I can’t be too concerned about the opinions of a deluded true believer who can’t tell a fierce bearded guy with an AK-47 from a tweedy academic with a word processor.
Can’t you be a tweedy academic with an AK-47?
Besides, in you weren’t wearing any tweed in your naked picture. I was very disappointed and now I don’t know what to believe.
Heretic! The One True Way is Bren Buddhism!
I once asked a Buddhist hotdog vendor
to make me one with everything.
#41:
Boooooooo —— Hissssss
Reply to an evangelical Buddhist:
“Nirvana is neither here nor there.”
Sounds like fun, but a little pricey as far as board games go, particularly when things are a bit stretched as it is.
Guess I’ll have to just keep playing Carcassonne for now.
“I once asked a Buddhist hotdog vendor
to make me one with everything. ”
Yes, and then he pocketed your $20 bill. When you asked for change, he said “change must come from within.”
” a tweedy academic with a word processor.”
But don’t forget that hidden cyber pistol. A dragon slayer I say, a real dragon slayer.
“Oh. So if you simply think the idea that there is a Great Cosmic Voyeur who wants to control your genitals is absurd, that makes you a fanatic?”
It’s not that that makes a fanatic. It’s the continuous decrying … on a blog … that makes a fanatic.
#45
I wanted to say that.
As we say on this side of the pond, it takes one to know one.
I’ve always felt that Apologetics was Dungeons and Dragons for the godstruck. You know, a lot of spirited debate which changes absolutely no-ones opinions, about something that does not exist. And honestly who would have expected an away win, Rereading vs Romans 1-6?
I think we need to fight hard against this bullshit meme of ‘new atheism’. There are plenty of people who think that we should just be meek and let the religious walk over our rights. Following Austin Cline’s latest blog post, I think we need to spread ‘Uncle Tom Atheists’ as a meme – for those atheists who think we should bend over for religious privilege – especially those in the media who are always proclaiming their agnosticism (“I’m not like *those* people, I think that the proposition that there exists a man in the sky who answers prayers is roughly as likely as the proposition of that being’s non-existence. This makes me tolerant!” etc.).
Repeat after me: Uncle Tom Atheists, or Atheist Uncle Tom. I think it’s a brilliant little meme, and one we should start using with gay abandon.
Cool, I’m part of a hip subculture now. And I don’t even have to listen to any shitty music.
“Yeah, didn’t I just read something in the news about jihadists inventing a board game in Pakistan?”
Pretty soon, they’ll start putting politely-worded advertisements on buses.
Fight da power!!!
Am I left out of the hip subculture thing? I’m a FLAMING atheist.
Yes, Uncle Tom atheist is good…tolerance (of the intolerant?) and moderation is the pavement extremism walks upon.
Wonder how much they’d get worked up if they saw the old board game Christians and Lions. Only played it a couple times. Bad results for the Christians, fun for the lions.
… the old board game Christians and Lions. … Bad results for the Christians, fun for the lions.
If you play it enough times, do the christ-qaeda’s become endangered? If so, are they put on the CITES list? Do the conservationists have to start a breeding program? Habit protection? Game preserves? What will we feed the lions!?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Oh man, I can’t believe me, a meek 21 year old [very athiest] girl, has been compared to a ‘jihadist’.
HA!
WuzzaH!!!! Muzt HAve it!!!
There are nuggets of pure comedic WIN in this thread, from Sten Buddhism (and its better armed counterpart, Bren Buddhism) to Graculus and his ‘Lemmy is God’, I lolled most of the through. Thank you one and all for once again cheering me up on a grey afternoon in Bristol :)
Repeat after me: Uncle Tom Atheists, or Atheist Uncle Tom
Oh, please don’t. A group of people made up in a majority way of middle/upper-middle class white educated people really can’t use Uncle Tom as a pejorative. We really can’t. Even one of the guys at Fox News knows that.
And yes, I know that atheists are not all middle class educated white people, but a whole lot of them sure are.
“…the hip subculture of militant popular atheists.”
Hip AND popular? Look out!
Way back in the 80s when the fundies were busy hating on roleplaying games, some group complained that D&D was satanic because it had demons. To which one DM replied, “You do realize that the demons are there so that the players can beat the crap out of them, right? But if it’ll make you happy, I’m willing to replace this the demons with a 12-hit-die Moses or a 16-hit-die Jesus for the players to beat up instead.”
Which, I think, underscores that a lot of the appeal of a game has to do with the gameplay: does it allow for interesting strategies, is it unbalanced in such a way that one player can get an overwhelming advantage without having earned it, and so forth. Unfortunately, this is hard to show in an ad. The artwork on the board and pieces is much easier to show, but can no more save a bad game than special effects can save a poorly-written movie.
I’ve skimmed over the rules, and Playing Gods looks like a fairly standard combat game. I didn’t see any obvious red flags saying that it’s going to suck. And a couple of reviews seem to indicate that it’s a good game that happens to have a blasphemous theme to it, rather than a bit of blasphemy slapped on top of a random set of rules.
The biggest arguments I see erupting from this game will be over who gets to play as Cthulhu.
I just wonder what the rules of the game are. If it’s really gonna go full-tilt with the religious satire, the rules should be nonsensical and ineffective.
“…their [atheist’s] thinking is rigid…”
I should certainly hope so. Our logic would not be well served by the limp, collapsed-soufle approach favored by theists.
I second Arnosium @63, and offer Carl Sagan as an example of a rigid thinker.
Holbach @ 32
And where is this god to prevent all those purported attacks by atheists against the forces of unreason?
Clearly our not-God is more powerful than their God, no? No wonder they tremble in fear and cry out in lamentation, for they know deep in their hearts that their Sky-Guy’s preoccupation with genitalia has kept his eye off the ball; while he was busy monitoring all six billion-odd naughty bits the Four Horsemen of the Enlightenment — Reason, Evidence, Logic and Inquiry — burst from the belly of the beast (that’d be Chaos) and, in no more time than it takes to blink God’s all-seeing eye, gobbled up huge tracts of the Unknowable and made them Known.
When Magic Sky Guy looked up, alerted (though too late) by the terrified cries of his chosen ones, there were great glowing diamond walls of Reality surrounding — Lo! On every side! — his Kingdom, and his dominions were shrunken to a tatter, a tendril, a farthing of their former mighty span.
“I am undone!” he thundered, but there was no thunder, only a feeble piping sound, as of a tiny creature of the field in the claws of a fearsome bird of prey.
When The Faithful, his chosen ones, heard not the thunder, as the Prophecy had foretold, but only the weak and pitiful bleating, they were sore afraid, and their lamentations rose anew — but wait! Give throat to their fear as they might, with all the force and power of their hearts and breath, the sounds — even when all cried out together — instead of echoing from the mountainsides in a mighty shout, were but faint tinklings like unto the babble of a summer-baked brooklet threading meekly between the dry stones it had once covered thickly in the full majesty of its spring freshet.
Redoubled the faithful their cries, and again the sounds shrank, and yet again, to a single reed, a thread, a hair, a line so thin it could cast no shadow, while the diamond walls marched forward and the Unknowable within shrank, and shrank, and shrank again, until the walls met and the last terrified scream of the last faithful chosen one whimpered down the scale of senses to less than a mote and was lost in the quiet washing of the wind.
And that is the way the World began.
Hell, I want to control my genitals! Mind of its own and all that.