Replacing Religions

[Shogun Gunner]

one small step...

enough like minded people....

I for one am glad that Firaxis is bold enough to take on all the aspects of humanity -- good and bad. It's a model of history.

I'm pretty sure God would not approve of putting fake religions in this game. It could lead to cults.

[Boris Godunov]

If there is a god, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't give a rat's ass about anything in a computer game.

[Verenti]

Shatnerology is NOT a cult!!!

Fair enough Boris, But my post still stands as it was: A half baked OT Rant attacking Religion.

[Shogun Gunner]

Yes, of course, but don't tell me how to mod MY game.

I don't like the fact that money is in the game. It is the root of all evil after all.

And lots of ecological affronts are made in this game...that pisses me off.

[Boris Godunov]

I do find the defense of slaving that he posited pretty disturbing. After all, if one abhored slavery and captured a rival civ's slaves, wouldn't you...free them?

I use slaves--because it's a game, it helps me to win, and it's not real. For the same reason, I wage war, starve cities of rival ethnicities, massacre defenseless settlers, sneak attack other civs, nuke cities, etc.

If suppose if you're going to start calling one aspect of the game immoral, you either better start being consistent and apply such moral standards to everything in the game, or else look like a raging hypocrite with twisted priorities.

EDIT: Oh, I missed his "defense" of waging war by saying he never committed genocide. That's all nice, but when you conquer a city, notice how the population declines, sometimes by 100,000s of people. Is that a very nice thing to do?

[Verenti]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
If suppose if you're going to start calling one aspect of the game immoral, you either better start being consistent and apply such moral standards to everything in the game, or else look like a raging hypocrite with twisted priorities.

That's EXACTLY what I was saying!

Honestly you guys need a English-Verenti Dictionary.

[Shogun Gunner]

That's a nice summation. Agreed.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Locutus

But nothing remotely compares to football, that includes American sports.

Amen to that.

[Martinus]

I think this thread is a pretty succesful troll.

[Beta]

Originally posted by Martinus
I think this thread is a pretty succesful troll.

Quite the contrary...

To start with, Nathan is getting some feedback on pssible alternative religions.

And secondly, for those who have kept the debate intelligent, it is a wonderfully engaging discussion regarding the interaction of religion, gaming and civ4, and the beliefs and moral values that each and everyone of us brings to this forum.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Verenti
If I complained every time an American called Socialism evil I would have nothing to do but complain

But socialism IS evil.

[Kinjiru]

Re: Re: Replacing Religions

Originally posted by molly bloom

Which version of the Bible is it where Jesus says:

'Yea verily, I say unto you- my words are backed with nuclear weapons!'


because I can't find it in the King James Authorized Version.

Wrong testament silly, you are referring to the old school version of Himself....

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I do find the defense of slaving that he posited pretty disturbing. After all, if one abhored slavery and captured a rival civ's slaves, wouldn't you...free them?
...
If suppose if you're going to start calling one aspect of the game immoral, you either better start being consistent and apply such moral standards to everything in the game, or else look like a raging hypocrite with twisted priorities.

Since when were human emotional reactions required to be consistent? What I've been talking about in this thread are my emotional reactions to the game, trying to explain why I react to different things the way I do on an emotional level.

Take a look at slavery in Civ 3. Do I beat slaves? No. Do I break up their families? No. Do I make them work longer hours or under worse conditios than other workers? No. Do I exercise more control over their lives than I do over other workers' lives? No. Everything that makes slavery evil in the real world is abstracted out of the Civ 3 concept of slavery to a point where the onlly way a player can view slavery in Civ as evil is to think about the things that make it evil in the real world but that aren't included in Civ. So all I have to do to avoid being bothered by using slaves in Civ is not go out of my way to think about real-world slavery in connection with the use of slaves in the game.

In contrast, the fact that razing or starving a city is an act of destruction is harder for me to ignore. That doesn't mean I refuse to starve cities, or even that I refuse to raze them on the rare occasions when I see a significant advantage to razing instead of capturing. But engaging in such behavior tends to shake my immersion in the game a bit.

As for warfare, that's such an integral part of the game that I've mostly stopped giving any thought to whether wars I want to fight are moral or immoral, justified or unjustified. I simply take the view that in the Civ universe, pretty much any war is justified. Because of that, about the only times I ever have misgivings about starting a war are if I would be turning on a recent ally in the absence of a provocation or if capturing territory would change it from productive to essentially worthless. (The latter isn't much of an issue in C3C since Communism can make the entire civ productive.)

I don't know how logical these emotional reactions are or aren't. But because they are emotional reactions, there is no law that says they have to be particularly logical.

[GeoModder]

And for some reason you fail to "abstract" religion while you're perfectly capable of doing so for other features in the game.

[Verenti]

Originally posted by LordShiva


But socialism IS evil.

I think Mr. (Oscar) Wilde put it best (in The Soul of Man under Socialism):

"If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism."

And Mr. Nbarclay (Or would you rather N Barclay?) it does seem a touch unreasonable to conclude yourself as a man of reason and faith on page 2 and then now to defend yourself as an emotional being, which is not bound by reasonable thought on page 4. Truely, We are all often thrown to the whims of emotionalism, but unless we act reasonably in a manner which is fair and just to the public on which we expose ourselves to(Please. Everyone keep every part of your beings out of the gutter.) which doesn't share our views then the chances of strong reaction is great and the chance productive co-existance is severely slimmed.