"I won it as a door prize at the Star Trek convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical as the average Trekker has no use for a medium-sized belt"
Posted on 11/11/2005 7:52:13 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
From the game:
"With the might of Rome behind it, Christianity spread rapidly thoughout the known world."
Notice the word "might" negates any idea that people converted to Christianity from any inner spiritual ideals. The fact is, the Roman Empire tried to crush Christianity with all its might, and only through spiritual faith did Romans become Christians. Also:
"When the Roman Empire fell, Christianity broke into two branches. Since then it has continued to fragment, with a number of branches quite hostile to others."
I would like to know who it is that is "quite hostile to others". The only place I can think of that could be described as such would be small area of the British controlled north Ireland. Considering all the many people of Christian faith living around the world in peace, this chosen view can be nothing but a twisted lie and Anti-Christian.
Now compare that negativity to how the game describes the documented cold blooded killer Muhammad:
"He and his followers were reviled and attacked by those who did not believe, but they were following the path that God had set for them and emerged triumphant, eventually unifying all Arabia under one rule."
Not a word about how Muhammad is documented to have been a highway robber, hostage taker for ransom, attacked towns and cities and murdered people in cold blood.
Furthermore the technology advance "scientific Method" makes religion obsolete, although I have never seen science disprove God or the human Soul.
And there is a technology advancement called "Liberalism" theat grants the first to discover it a free technology and enables "free speech" and "free religion" when the fact is that the people who have brought us free speech were Christians not Liberals and there is no "Conservatism" technology to be discovered.
And finally one other thing I have noticed is that for the "Internet", they actually have Al Gore with the American flag and after seeing their attitudes I already described you know they're not joking.
By the way, the game is simply more of the same boring stuff as before. Luckily they sent us a free copy because my wife reviews games. They claim it's 3-D, but there are only 3 set angles that you can rotate the view to, which makes Sid Meier not only Anti-Christian, but a liar, a cheat and a fraud.
Most people who buy Civ IV are probably fans of the Civ III and Age of Empires games(and Sim City games perhaps). Most of us know what these games look like and the "3D" perspective is more like a 3D board game not 3D like Doom. I he is not being a cheat and fraud here because quite frankly if you changed the game too much from the original way it played it would not be the same game.
I think you are reading too much into the anti Christian and liberalism idealogy here. The term liberalism (in Europe) is backwards from what it means here. Think more along lines of Libertarian which in itself is not so bad.
Like I said before the only thing I agree with you on is the fact they and everyone else is exceptionally nice to the Muslims. Of course... Sid Meier doesn't want a Fatwa against his head now does he?
Hear, hear! I've been playing Civ for over 10 years, and each version adds to the fun. I just bought Civ 4, but keep going back to Civ 3, because of the new scenarios produced by other players. The latest, Anno Domini, is a 384MB file, with new civs, technologies, units, etc. I'm just fascinated by the work that goes into this.
In fact, I've been working on a scenario based on Atlas Shrugged, off and on for the past year. To really do it right, I'd need at least two weeks in seclusion to finish it. Probably more, to build it for Civ 4.
I'd recommend to Berlin Freeper that he/she build their own scenario/mod to suit his/her purpose. Civ 4 was developed for that purpose, i.e. easier modding.
I highly recommend the website Civfanatics.com, if you haven't been there already.
Um... during the dark ages it was Christian Europe in the dark. muslim Northern Africa and muslim Spain were actually very enlightened and much more advanced.
I am not trying to be a jerk or anti-Christian here but these are just facts and I really would not want to see a fellow conservative make a fool of themselves by making this sort of statement.
"I won it as a door prize at the Star Trek convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical as the average Trekker has no use for a medium-sized belt"
"If you want to play computer games, you'd might as well put up with it, because that's the way the cookie crumbles."
Not necessarily. One of my all- time favorite computer games, 'Freedom Force,' (It's a strategic rpg where you control a team of superhoes) doesn't stoop to being really politically correct, other than the fact that one of the heroes in it is black and another is Latin- American. In fact, one of the major supervillains in the game, Nuclear Winter, is a Russian Communist who wants to hold the city hostage with an atomic bomb(The game takes place in the 60s, when the Red Scare was sweeping America, so it kind of parodies that). There's also a rather funny scene in which one of Nuclear Winter's henchmen tries to shoot the heroes with a freezing gun, but it malfunctions and blows up in the henchman's face, knocking him out, to which Minuteman (The game's ultra- patriotic main hero) replies, "You should have bought American, friend." In fact, at a Christian site that reviews games, the only minor complaints they had with 'Freedom Force' are that one of the female heroes, Eve, is immodestly dressed, and one of the villains is a Greek god.
So, not all games have to be PC.
Uh, what the heck are you talking about. I'm talking philosophy, you are looking for someone to attack. Of couurse free speech came from people founded in Christianity, but does tha mean they were not liberals in the classical sense? Was Thomas Paine a Christian liberal? Yes. Check your facts and check your attitude at the door.
Yeah, Christianity should not ever be portrayed historically in a game based on history. Fact is that many Christians have been wrong in the past, starting with Peter who denied Christ 3 times. We will continue to make mistakes, thus being human. All have sinned, and all will continue to sin. Denying our history only paints us in the light of those hiding their own, such as Islam.
Actually scientific method makes monasteries (not temples etc) obsolete. Also, that Al Gore thing is a joke.
You will never get anyone with no sense of perspective to understand the concept of "a joke"
"The various cleansings done in the name of Christianity against other Christian sects are well documented."( Mnehrling)
mnehrling,
In other words, warlords creating havoc and mayhem and shamelessly hiding under the name of Christianity.
"considering the 'church' in much of Europe banned reading to only scripture by priests, then part of the 'darkness' was promoted by the church"
That is flatly untrue.
The Church did not bad reading.
At all.
The Northern Barbarians of Europe, who descended on Rome (and who include the Celtic and Germanic and Slavic peoples) couldn't read at all. And literacy was not all that widespread among the Italians either, for that matter.
The CHURCH didn't command illiteracy. The people WERE illiterate. And it was the monasteries, especially in Ireland, that preserved what little bit of reading materials there were through those ages.
Also, Europe was in political chaos thanks to barbarians, most of them frank pagans, exploding on the scene. You can't blame the CHURCH for the loss of civilization inflicted by PAGANS, can you? (Or can you? I suppose you can if you want to persist in the erroneous belief that the Church suppressed literacy.)
Find the papal bull suppressing literacy.
Find the orders. Everything from the early ages of the Church is all documented. Cite the source that says the Church banned reading.
You can't.
Because it does not exist and never did.
This is an illusion, and it's wrong.
Exactly, something I pointed out in all my posts..
Yes, the mods are the best part of Civ. All the Civ3 mods make it still more fun than Civ4, but soon enough there will be lots of new Civ4 mods.
And yep, you can make a mod any which way and slant it to a conservative or liberal understanding of history.
And this, to me, is the reason for a seperation of CHURCH and state. To protect the Church from the corrupting influences of political power. Note, however, that I do not consider a seperation of church and state to be the same thing as a seperation of faith and state. There should be no "official" state church. The founders never conceived that this principle would be interpeted so as to prohihit American citizens from bringing their faith to their public and political activities.
Sort of reminds me of the least PC superhero cartoon ever -- Superfriends. Who can forget Appache man or Samarai.
Well, you're a little off. St. Constantine legalized Christianity, supported the Church (by among other things calling Nicaea to straighten out the row the Alexandrian presbyter Arius had provoked with his teaching that Christ in not God), and built his capital of New Rome (soon renamed Constantinople) without pagan temples, and with churches, but he hardly proclaimed Christianity as the religion of the Empire.
The Senate, still pagan, voted him divine honors upon his death (though he had been baptized shortly before by an Arian priest). (Amusing quiz question: which Roman god 1. was real, 2. is venerated as a saint by Christians east and west? A: Constantine the Great.)
It was a much later Emperor Theodosius, who eventually made Christianity the Imperial state religion and actually outlawed paganism.
Lighten up, Francis.
Scientific Method makes *Monasteries* obsolete, not religion. Cathedrals and temples still work fine, only the science boosting elements of the monastery no longer function. (The monasteries still produce culture and missionaries.) Religion still continues to spread.
When I play Civ, I'm concerned about the gameplay, not
the flavor text in the Civilopedia which 95% of the people playing the game will never even read. (Frankly, I suspect that the Civilopedia was written by whatever employee whose coding wasn't quite up to snuff but wasn't bad enough to fire outright.)
Your historical understanding is sorely lacking. The lapse in literacy took place only in regions of Europe which came under domination by Germanic barbarians. The attitude of the Germanic nobility was that literacy was 'ignoble', unworthy of warriors, and they thus deliberately remained uneducated (Charlemagne's court being a notable exception), and discouraged education in general.
Areas where Roman culture prevailed--the Empire in the East, and the area around Ravenna and Venice--never had a decline in literacy. I remind you that the Church was united until the 11th century, and that Ravenna and Venice were always in the Patriarchate of Rome. (Nor was classical learning lost: Anna Comnena's Alexiad, written in the 11th century, is full of classical allusions as well as references to Scripture.)
The protestants' and freethinkers' legend of the Church restricting literacy to the clergy is very hard to square with the history of mission of SS. Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia: Greek monks, operating with the blessing of the Pope of Rome, went to great effort to give a written language to the Slavs. Hardly necessary if only the clergy (who could be expected to learn Greek) were allowed to read.
What, in fact, happened, was that in the de-Romanized lands in the Patriarchate of Rome, only the clergy and monastics preserved literacy during the Dark Ages.
Thanks David. I know you have your differences with the Latin Church, but I admire you for posting that.
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