I can’t really recommend not making the game… it’s not my call, and at any rate the game itself would probably qualify as free speech. I think I’m more or less lamenting the fact that a lot of people’s exposure to this kind of important history is coming through a video game and not through classes. I had to look up most of the Battles that are referenced in the game, because I had barely heard of them.

Ultimately, though, the existence of the game itself seems problematic to me. War games as entertainment I certainly have no problem with, in real life (paintball, for example) or in video games. A game like Halo, though, makes more sense to me. It’s completely made up fiction, and the violence is handled differently (in Halo, if you kill another person, their body just falls limp… in fact, you never see a body b/c the bodies are surrounded by body armor). In CoD, death is graphically violent, which in and of itself is disturbing. The real problem, though, is that we can talk to people from our grandparent’s and great-grandparent’s generation and get first hand accounts of the war itself, because it happened to real people. Real people died in WWII, a whole hell of a lot of them. So, I don’t know, it seems weird to make interactive entertainment based on such events (movies, I’d posit, are different, since their function, if done well, is to tell a story).

I bet the verse that he kept seeing around for those two weeks was John 3:16. That was quite the fad verse just a couple of years back. There was that guy at all the sporting events with the giant sign, a couple WWE wrestlers were sporting “John 3:16,” and it seemed to become much like the WWJD bracelets, the “Purpose Driven Life” books, and the “Left Behind” series were at their prime. Don’t get me wrong, these can be great things, I just think some Christians treat their faith like a marketing campaign and that bothers me. It almost seems phony to me.

I believe God can and does speak to us through His living Word. And I also believe that with God’s grace we can overcome some pretty addictive behaviors. What is ironic is that though Lissa left her Catholic faith when she was 27, that was about the age that God was calling me back to my Catholic faith.

Ryan, I can see how Welch’s past destructive behavior would be more appealing than after his conversion — I mean look at the ten o’clock news! We don’t want to hear all the happy stuff. The more juicy the gossip the better, the more gritty the story the more taken in by it we become, and the more destructive it is to another human being, as long as it isn’t us, the more we are okay with it. It is sad that this is what we have become.

I just pray that Welch continues his journey with our Lord. We all remember what happened to Ma$e…

Anyway, you should do your best

Conversely, do not atheists argue that there is no God without offering a proof for this?

Traditionally, the existence of a Creator has been seen as proven by virtue of His creation;
it is through the rise of secular thought that this idea was rejected (which may be reasonable,
but leaves behind the problem of explaining creation, reason, genius and wisdom, or sum-total of the universe, with its myriad of intelligent designs WITHOUT the help of an intelligent mind. This is part of the project of modern biology, and people like Dawkins - but in my judgement, they have not been very successful at all…

Look at Charles’ argument here:
From a scientific perspective, homosexuality is biologically futile. The biological purpose of sex is reproduction. Homosexual relations cannot fulfill that purpose. It is an aberration of the natural order. Yes, it does occur in nature, and obviously occurs in humans, but the fact that something happens naturally doesn’t make it normal. Does that make science discriminatory against homosexuals?

And compare:
From the viewpoint of Islam, homosexuality is religiously forbidden. The divine purpose of sex is reproduction. Homosexual relations cannot fulfill that purpose. It is an aberration of the divine order. Yes, it does occur in nature, and obviously occurs in humans, but the fact that something happens naturally doesn’t make it normal. Does that make islam discriminatory against homosexuals?

Heh, they did have a REASON. The question if whether you consider their reason to be LEGITIMATE. But, aside from that, the argument is sound