Inevitable Bible Fight?
Bible Fight made me laugh a lot for ten minutes tonight. Of course, I played as that militant, genocidal old coot Moses (Deuteronomy 20:13,14), getting so involved that I shouted “Yes! Fuck you Noah!” at the end of a match.
A religious housemate of mine took it well, but is not impressed, stating merely that it will upset a lot of people. I’m lucky I suppose, comparing that reaction to ones I’ve seen from people of other faiths…
My housemate is Baha’i, which is not bad at all. It’s the closest to open source religion I’ve ever encountered, with two of their main rules being “Don’t ever push your faith on others” and “If following one of the rules makes you unhappy, don’t bother with that one. Religion shouldn’t be about suffering”. Their meetings are intensely social, often revolving around food, games and chatter. It’s as non-cult, open and informal as I’ve ever seen a religion (”Why would we have a problem with atheists?” and “Of course we don’t ostracise people who stop being Baha’i” being another couple of memorable quotes).
However, the soft spots and bugbears are still present. Panning out to other faiths, I hate that satire and parody can’t go near religion without it being counted as a green light for whining and demonisation. How can people be so unaware that their values are likely to be profane from some other cultural standpoints?
If I were a biblical character and/or deity, I’d be well up for being mocked in a Bible Fight kind of way.
(Via Greg Costikyan)
May 24th, 2007 at 2:58
Baha’i … what’s the fucking point? After a glance at the Baha’i website the whole thing couldn’t pass for just another “as a seeker i come to ask you to give my life a purpose oh extraneous one” movement played out with pull-offs where hammer-ons used to ring. :P Pardon my repulsively northbound-nostrilled narcissistic shittyheadedness but why is your roommate even bothering? Don’t you ever just want to slap the shit out of people and just go, “DROP THIS DUMBASS SHIT ALREADY YOU MORONS!”
May 24th, 2007 at 16:45
Ah… never thought to look them up on the web. Just tried it and nearly fell asleep. The horses mouth, so to speak, is a lot less weeniefied than that website.
I know how you feel. There’s an inner cringe I get whenever anyone mentions god to me, which sometimes makes me want to shout that the one in the bible is a mass murdering, fascist, bipolar cosmic fuck, but I just tend to leave people to it if they’re not hurting anyone. That’s an important “if”.
Every religion that has anything to do with the bible tends to be pretty selective about which bits they take on board. So is my atheism in looking at the bad bits.