Religious beliefs and video games

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Chocolate
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Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Chocolate »

Lately I've been feeling like I'm dying, which I now know is other people being jerks. I've had a lot of miracles happening and stuff, but it's short lived. Anyways, I don't have to much to do, I can't be religious all day o.O so I want to play video games. I absolutely refuse to be a Mormon, video games need to be acceptable. I was watching Joel Osteen and playing Colesseum, and I felt really good until I was given the ageless era's "demon" as a unit. Was this symbolic? Have I just been mistreated so long that I expect this to be someone inserting this unit for me just to be a jerk? Are video games really off limits if I want God to love me? When I was much younger there was a family that lived a couple of houses down the road that didn't allow their kids to play video games or watch movies where people died, even Star Wars. Which sounds Mormon to me and I absolutely refuse to be that way, I have my Star Wars ticket already.. I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas, again, it's pretty serious how bad it my reality is, my uncle, not my bloodline uncle, but the man my aunt married, had a back explode, best thing I can say to it, he needed spinal transplants and stuff, now I can feel these same jerks putting what feels like grenades in my back, I pray about it, it goes away, so I'm like, if it's really a no then it's really a no, but jeez. I have been healed of std's and know that Christianity is the truth, I just don't want to be doing something really wrong when I'm really having grenades placed in my back by jerks.
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Dugi
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Dugi »

Man, do you read fantasy stories? Lord of the Rings, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Riftwar, etc? All campaigns in this game are pretty much fantasy stories, multiplayer matches are fantasy-themed wars. There's no symbolic there, demons are like a more badass version of orcs, bad guys who are always evil, want to harm people for the pleasure of it and anyone can kill them without remorse. It would be often hard to explain why the humans are bad guys, why so many of them united and seek to do whatever the evil plan is. Seek no meaning or morals behind the story, it's just about the thrilling awaiting to see what will happen next, how will it end and in games to give a meaning to the battles you are fighting through.

In fantasy stories, demons, angels, gods, spirits or any other mythical creatures are just an addition to add differences to characters, give specifics to enemies or surprisingly alter the course of the story. Inspiration by mythology, no matter if Greek, Celtic, Christian or Germanic, makes the supernatural creatures familiar, known to most readers and easy to remember. Mythologies plagiarise each other a lot, so continuing with that trend just makes it more cool.

From what you've told, it appears to me that you are surrounded by jerks and that is your problem. Don't blame any god for hating you. I play video games every day, listen to heavy metal, visit churches only to view the decoration art, never confessed a sin, stare solemnly into emptiness when others pray... and I have good relationships with most people I know, little jerks are around me and I am happy with my life. Either you are a person that attracts spite and contempt or you are just unlucky to be surrounded by actual jerks. The way to tell a person who hates you from a jerk is that a jerk isn't unpleasant to other people, a person who hates you is unpleasant only to you. Find where you are and behave accordingly, if they are jerks, try to stay away from them and play more video games instead of socialising, if they just hate you, try to be different even if it would be hypocrisy. And definitely don't become a Mormon.
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Elvish_Hunter
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Chocolate wrote:I felt really good until I was given the ageless era's "demon" as a unit. Was this symbolic? Have I just been mistreated so long that I expect this to be someone inserting this unit for me just to be a jerk? Are video games really off limits if I want God to love me?
Given the recent events I somewhat expected a topic about religion. But I expected it to be about the Khalifas, not about Demons... :shock:
Dugi wrote:There's no symbolic there, demons are like a more badass version of orcs, bad guys who are always evil, want to harm people for the pleasure of it and anyone can kill them without remorse.
Wait a second. So that epic campaign that I was making about peaceful Demons that love to broil in lava, and are suddenly attacked by crazy Paladins is null and void? :augh: :augh:
Just kidding. This is to say that units and add-ons are what we decide them to be. There's nothing that forbids you to create a campaign and use Demons as good and Loyalists (or anyone else) as bad.
And if we don't focus on Demons, there are plenty of other things to watch out: do you know that once, a user said that Undeads were forbidden by his religion, and proposed them to be replaced with Rockmen? Even the Mages may be considered forbidden by some users, because they do, well, magic.
So, I'm sure that you won't go to hell just because you got a demon in a game :)
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DarrenG
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by DarrenG »

Chocolate wrote:Are video games really off limits if I want God to love me?
As a Christian you may find it helpful to re-read Romans 14, particularly 14:14 and 14:22. Shalom.
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Xara
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Xara »

Dugi wrote:There's no symbolic there, demons are like a more badass version of orcs, bad guys who are always evil, want to harm people for the pleasure of it and anyone can kill them without remorse. It would be often hard to explain why the humans are bad guys, why so many of them united and seek to do whatever the evil plan is. Seek no meaning or morals behind the story, it's just about the thrilling awaiting to see what will happen next, how will it end and in games to give a meaning to the battles you are fighting through.
Such settings often make poor stories. Stories that can help people relieve the boredom a bit, but no literature.
It pronounces Sha'ha, not Zara.

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johndh
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by johndh »

This is the kind of thing I used to struggle with a lot back when I was a Christian, worrying about the pentagrams in Diablo and such. As it seems to me, this is the kind of nit-picking legalism that the new testament tries to abolish -- things like arguing over the details of what exactly constitutes work on the Sabbath instead of focusing on what actually matters. The point is to take a step back and look at a bigger picture. What's far more important are what you're doing with your life, how you help or harm others, and the effects you have on the world you live in. Nobody in ten years is going to care about which games you played and whether they had demons, sorcery, or profanity in them, but they'd surely care if you helped build them a house or handed out supplies during a disaster recovery.

Does playing Wesnoth make you want to do evil? If it doesn't, then don't worry about it. This kind of thinking is a distraction and an unnecessary stressor in my opinion.
It's spelled "definitely", not "definately". "Defiantly" is a different word entirely.
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axefighterr
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by axefighterr »

From my Roman Catholic viewpoint it is nothing wrong with playing fantasy games. Even from the name it is implied that the stories in them are fictional, not real. In my opinion creating own universes with their mythology and stuff is a part of being a human, author, creative beeing. God created people in his own image and likeness, so if He made the whole universe, people are allowed to create their fantasy stories. And a quick reminder: J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, one of the most influential fantasy books in modern culture was a very conservative Christian, so I see no problem with playing Battle for Wesnoth which was heavily influenced by Tolkien's work.
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Xara
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Xara »

I sometimes think that playing such games is already quite evil. To seek thrills and entertainments through battling and killing, to scorn the value of those virtual lives, the psychology is pretty evil in itself. Whether one is playing the commander of a "good" army or a demonic one makes no decisive difference imo.

My father is an amateur believer of Buddhism, the doctrine of which says that one shall never eat meat since it inevitably comes from killing and therefore massive suffering is created during the process. But my father was not strong-minded enough to strictly obey the rule. So he decided that he would never eat the meat from the animals of which he witnessed the death. And if you ask him "shall we kill the animal for dinner?" the answer would invariably be a No, but if you just serve the beef/chicken then he would just eat it with no problem. A kinda weird way of behaving, and I never felt the cohesiveness.

To play computer games but to stop at the names of units feels alike to me. With or without the specific units, players get similar psychological experience, and that is what really matters I guess. To use "Demon" in place of "Orc" is merely the same kind of sin as to use 4-letter-words to express one's angry from my understanding.
It pronounces Sha'ha, not Zara.

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Chocolate
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Chocolate »

It's just a thing about me, my families kind of famous for one reason or another. There's six of us, number four is a world famous nurse, with a large youtube channel following instructing nursing, and a $3000+ a month nursing book selling for like ten a book, number five is a world famous professional ice skater, him and his wife, they've skated in tournaments all over the world and live like ten minutes from DC, they just came out with a childrens book that my mom says is very good. Number three's a little gruesome but he had the government take down a large hispanic gang after fifty+ of them beat him up and kicked his teeth in and horrible stuff like that, number two's a fairly popular Floridian, he owns a barbershop now and knows the majority of Florida, I myself and pretty famous for baseball, people still drive by me saying yo yo yo play ball!!! I hit a 495 foot home run when I was fourteen, was a good pitcher, and smashed some kids cup, not on purpose I'm not mean, but I hit the ball and he didn't catch it in time and his cup smashed, which is really unheard of, I believe God wants me to get back into baseball, my life hasn't been as bad as Josh Hamilton but the story would be liked I believe as I read his book and enjoyed it. Number six is doing great with an MBA.
Anyway like I said a lot happens, like stars talking to me, and to get into it, I did a lot of research and my understanding is that star angels are old martial arts masters, much like you would see in hidden dragon crouching tiger.
I believe that stuff like that's possible, if you look on youtube you can find people using chi energy to move or knock over stuff, I even watched a video of a martial arts master healing cancer in seconds, which could have been faked but for what purpose? o.O It also doesn't explain the other guys moving things that are encased in air tight containers.
My dad served in the US ARMY for 20 years, retired as a Major, then became a priest, and is pretty popular for his strictly conservative viewpoints.
My mom homeschooled us a long time and we were in the newspaper a few times for that too.
It just really bothered me, like, should I freak out? I'm listening a Christian preacher, all this bad stuffs happening, and out of like 200+ units, I get a demon!?!?! o.O
Lol.
Maybe I'm paranoid but from my research, and being around other military kids, I've learned that nazi's, can really affect your health, like give people cancer, and possibly back problems like the one I'm asking God to make powerless and place in prison forever. And when I go walking sometimes, mostly in Florida, where there were no nazi symbols before, there would be spray painted nazi symbols, like right on the sidewalk.
I love stuff like the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter(I used to stay up all night reading those books in the bathroom), Star Wars(I've already got my ticket for the 18th of Dec.), Dragon Ball Z.
As for the Romans, I fell asleep while in the ten minutes of the verses about circumcision and wonder if it was to be cruel and unusual for me to read that as my personal coming back to Christianity(even after all these miracles happening like my stds being slowly cured, stars flying off, moments of reality where I felt like I did when I was a kid and then returned to how my life is now) was because, I had a thought like last week, night time, that I should do what I like to do with Bibles, and open to a random verse, so I went and grabbed a Bible, and said out loud, "I need this to be love," and opened to a random page and looked at a random verse, the verse I looked at was, "He is good, his love endures forever." After that I opened to another one, my page marker fell out so I don't know the exact words, but before I opened to a random verse again I said "and these terrorists that are hurting me," and the verse I opened to was saying that God is furious and will handle them, and then I said "God all day long these guys are like we're giving you cancer, it's annoying, I walked everywhere like a soldier saying fight me(I did that..)," and I was told to open to a random verse again and this one was, "Look you scoffers, wonder and perish, for I am going to do something in you days that you would never believe even if someone told you."
For it to be love when I needed it to be love, how God felt about me being attacked when I needed to know, and what he thinks about them harassing me when I needed to know what to think about it, is undeniable that God is Jesus Christ.
Anyways my plan is to start working, continue exercising, be able to pay for the trip to a baseball tryout, become a pro while still studying the Bible, make a youtube channel, do the random verse thing and preach about it, heal some sick people of diseases that only God can heal, get three college degrees, become an astronaut and explore the universe.
They say there are billions of other galaxies in the universe, if that's even a logical number cause I'm like, do we just run into a wall in space? I don't think so.
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max_torch
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by max_torch »

You either believe in destiny or you don't. In the former case then everything means something. You opening the bible and seeing those verses was a message, the fact that a demon came out in colosseum was no accident; it meant something. If you draw a certain set of cards from a tarot deck then that has a meaning. In latter then everything was just a product of chance.. the verses you saw only happened to coincide with what you feel, the demon coming out in colosseum was totally random, there are no hidden signs or messages to look out for.
Or one may be deluding oneself into cherrypicking, only believing that something was meant to be only if it was something good but feeling completely randomly unlucky when things go wrong.
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Dugi
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Dugi »

I agree with Max. You see signs wherever they aren't. If they were indeed signs, you'd have to be chosen by divine (because almost no one else sees them). Why would any of them choose you? To help his favourite baseball team win the championship? If so, he would be picking his favourites, and in that case he would not be omnibenevolent. It's just paranoia.

There is something I could tell you about signs. Once at high school, I had an unexplainable urge to think about my grandfather. After some time, I begun to doubt my opinion that it's just a random stream of memories. Eventually, it left and later, I learned that... nothing happened to him. Nothing at all. He is still alive and in relatively good health. About three years ago, a friend of mine got afflicted by an unexplained, sudden infection that progressed rapidly and he died very fast. A couple of days later, I was waiting for a lecture we used to attend together and have a chat before, while waiting for the teacher to come (he was usually late). Suddenly, the lift (elevator) doors opened and I expected him to come, but nobody was inside. It just stayed open for a while and then it closed (it was automatic). Shortly after, I read the announcement that he had died. I remembered the weird behaviour of the doors. He had not come because he was no more. It was quite... symbolic. As time passed, I have seen the door open with no reason again and again, at different times, even long after the lectures ended. It is a mere malfunction, nothing else.

Reading about your youtube research, I am quite certain that you're falling to hoaxes. There are tons of people who claim they can do all kinds of stuff, levitate by meditation, lift objects without moving their body, pulling tumours out of people without making a single hole in their skin, not eating at all... it looks interesting, they shoot videos about them, people watch it, earn money (you can make a contract with youtube that they would pay you some money for each view of video as a part of the revenue from advertisement, if you get really a lot of views, you can earn for a living)... However, there is a lot of evidence about them that they can't do what they claim they can. They could never show it in public, rarely on the camera, if it was on shot by a camera it was often of poor quality, videos are even rarer and almost exclusively of extremely low quality. If they are asians, they claim it's chi, if they are whites or blacks, they claim that it's a power given to them by a god, if they are of unclear racial background, they claim it's voodoo. They and their watches absolutely don't care that voodoo, Christianity and chinese beliefs are mutually exclusive and that a devout Christian would never use voodoo or chi, a voodoo shaman or a pagan from China would be granted no powers by the god of Christians.

There was a woman who spread claims about herself that she does not eat and that she lives on some imagined cosmic energy. She earned for living by giving lectures to people how to live like her. She was challenged to prove it and she endured three days without eating. Then she gave up and went to by some food. She still earns for a living by giving lectures. A few of her followers died of malnutrition. She told that they were feeding on the cosmic energy wrongly. She is not the only one, there are more and all are known for either refusing challenges to prove it or were caught snatching food or that they eat 'just some cookies to make their coffee more enjoyable'.
Any oncologist knows a lot of stories how their patients left because they googled around for cancer cures and later returned in horrible stages of cancer that were beyond any currently known cure. Actually, Steve Jobs died exactly like this. The stories are always the same, a patient gets diagnosed and is suggested some cure plan. He wants to learn more and googles around to learn that cancer can be cured by shamans, healing herbs brought from China, shark cartilage, raw food, GMO-free food, prayer from skilled faith healer, homeopathy, pretty much whatever that is not endorsed by science. They fall for it, pay huge amounts of money for the 'remedy', then think they are cancer free and after a couple of years, the cancer gets so bad that it becomes obvious that the cancer still exists and is stronger than ever. The seller of the false cure gets out of it because bad advice is not a crime, if they try to go public, they are declared shills of corrupt science that tries to earn more money of chemotherapy and that they never visited them or claim that they were poisoned and not killed, whatever that makes them sound more credible. Why? Because it earns money. Just pick something at random that has some myths tied to it, claim that it cures cancer, make a website around it, write some testimonials how awesome it is, signing it with various names and the website alone will seem like an answer to all questions. A Chinese healer, Hu Wanlin, went to prison for manslaughter and read a bit about traditional chinese medicine. When he was released, he started using what he had read. Thanks to a set of shills and advertising, he became very rich, until his body count exceeded a hundred (because his cures contained sodium sulphate, which is poisonous) and Chinese officials had to stop him somehow. They arrested him from practising medicine without a license, and got locked up again, for 15 years. During his trial, people protested and wanted him to be released so that he could cure them.
Many people claim they are oracles or seers, foresee something that doesn't happen, then they remove it from their websites. Or they add retrospectively prophecies about events that happen. Or they foresee vague things that happen almost certainly, like mining accidents in Asia, or 'a large terrorist attack'. Horoscopes seem to accurately describe people, but they find that it did describe their life accurately even if they are of a different birthsign or the horoscope is outdated - it's simply because they are so vague that they are always true no matter what happens. If someone could predict the future, he would have won all lotteries, which didn't happen. Many predictions about the end of the world were made for dates before today (the most memorable is 21. 12. 2012) the world is still okay and there is no apparent threat. There are talks about some Age of Aquarius, an era of unrest, coming upon us, but the world is more peaceful than ever, despite the existence of ISIS and their likes. It's just the existence of internet that makes distant armed conflicts look close and threatening.
Don't believe the stories, there is no magic (if you aren't taking drugs). There is even a challenge, offering that anyone who can do actual magic will be paid a million dollars. Nobody yet proved anything.

If you get a demon out of 200 units, the probability is 0.5%. Nothing too unlikely. The probability that you look at your watch and the time is 11:11:11 is much lower and it happened several times. If you want to be certain, don't check the first, start it a thousand times, write down how many times you have seen every unit and if there are still many demons, check the code if there isn't something that makes the demons more likely. The pick of units isn't random, it's just a mathematical chain of numbers that looks sufficiently random.

What you need to do is to get rid of that paranoia that clouds your judgement. Then you'll be able to become a baseball player or astronaut or whatever. Just don't become a faith healer, they are scammers. If you are really getting signs all the time and other people don't, must you are The Chosen One (for whatever), try to ask your god to give you a clear reply instead of unclear signs; if you hear a voice from above telling you what do it, then these are really signs, if nothing happens, then you are being a paranoiac. Why would an omnipotent and perfectly good being be intentionally unclear and deceiving to you? If he wanted something from you, he would surely tell it openly, because you would understand what you're to do and, actually, do it instead of wondering what is it.
Chocolate
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Chocolate »

And hello Elvish_Hunter thanks for creating this game, I've had a lot of fun on it. Must've been exciting working with a team and writing these stories.
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Midnight_Carnival
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Midnight_Carnival »

:lol:

I too have conflict of interest when it comes to games and my beliefs but I different to yours.
I am what most would call Pagan, I'm somewhere between pantheist and animist - lately I'm coming to realise my calling and take responsibilities more seriously and I'm well on the path to becoming a witch - this is perhaps ways misleading since many people don't understand what I mean by that term and get confused because I'm male... anyway, I get really annoyed at times at how magic(k) and spirits are misrepresented in games and popular culture but if I open my mouth about it, I'm either told that I'm a "satanist" - I assure you, worshiping a red man who lives in the ground features nowhere in my beliefs! - or that everything I believe is BS, that only what can be scientifically verified is true and that I'm deluded :whistle:

Anyway, I'm not unfamiliar with monotheism and can sympathies with your predicament.
So I'd suggest you ask yourself the following:

Do you worship a loving and forgiving God?
Considering the many and varied evils quite openly displayed in everyday life, do you think that playing a game which features a make-believe "demon" for entertainment is really that bad?
Do you put games before God and your spiritual life/religious duties, do they have the power to pull you from God?
Do you really think that people who make these games are evil and trying to sneak "devil worship" into your daily routine?

If you're comfortable with the answers you give to those questions and you feel you can still play games without "selling your soul" then I suggest you do what I do and say "ha-ha, is that really supposed to be a demon? Dumbasses wouldn't know one from Mario!" or try to finish the stage without using the "demon".

Take your beliefs and convictions seriously, do not take the games seriously. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
Chocolate
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Chocolate »

Hello Wesnoth Forums,

I got really into it, Gregorian chanting and everything. It's come to my attention that every single one of the religions at it's very least amount of evil, have to wear glasses. I don't mean to offend anyone but it's just a thing that pulled me away from being involved in these religions. Speaking of blasphemous things, the church my parents used to go to, the priest there has a mental retardation that he wasn't born with, and the high priest that made my dad a priest (he retired from it) is dying of cancer, I mean wow, I guess God doesn't want to be eaten..

I do believe in God and Gods people, but I'll never want to be involved in an organized religion again, I need my eyes and health to be functioning.

Have a good night,
Chocolate
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Re: Religious beliefs and video games

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Religion made its way into the Wesnoth forums? Time to find a new forum...
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