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Being a Christian myself, I don't think that everyone is this crazy, but there are some out there who really believe this. I saw something similar to this years ago in a religious tract. The problem with this kind of propaganda is that if they don't know any different, they will believe this when they see it.
I used to go to church regularly and I never heard my pastor preach about how D&D was evil. So you can see why I'm asking about where these people get there information.
Silence may be "Golden," but ducktape is Silver.
Can now be reached at my old e-mail and IM account
Sadly, I remember the last time there was a big push through the Christian Fringe against Dungeons and Dragons, in the early nineties. It was a few, uneducated (about D&D) people who were going on crusade against anything that even remotely resembled having satanic influences. Sadly, D&D was one of the targeted activities.
I had the pleasure (not) of debating the virtues of D&D with my Religion Teacher (I was in Catholic School for 3 years). I pointed out that my math grades were up, my english grades were up, and it was keeping my friends and I from joining a gang. We still went to Church every Sunday and we were not trying to summon demons or cast real spells.
His response was "D&D is of the devil!".
It is the same group that goes after rock music and comic books. It's one of the downsides to free speech; there are a lot of idiots out there and they have the right to say what they want. Fortunately, we don't have to listen.
To understand the thought process, think drugs. D&D, Harry Potter, Final Fantasy are all starter drugs. They make magic look cool and make you wish you could really cast spells. While it is true that only pretty stupid people really believe this, the people who rant against these things usually believe that everyone is too stupid to think for themselves.
And before you say that noone is that stupid, think about all the cults that people join because they believe that their leader is an alien or the messiah, or whatever. If we all kill ourselves while the ufo is passing by, then we'll all get taken to the alien homeworld. It may sound idiotic, but there are people who believe it.
Humans as individuals are pretty darn intelligent. Put them in a group and suddenly they're sheep.
Sadly, 'Ruin is right and the examples he gave all point to the inevitable truth of my above statement. Not all groups are sheep but enough of them are that we end up with that sort of stuff on the news.
When Lanos, Go Dorito and I were in High School together a local boy murdered three kids in his neighborhood. When it came out that they were D&D players and that he even referred to the kids as his "Kenders", it ignited mass concern over role-playing.
Keep in mind this is also the community that is home to Regent University, the 700 Club and Pat Robertson. Good old Pat made it his personal crusade to "save" all us kids playing D&D and even brought one of our old friends (err... make that "associate") onto the 700 Club. He interviewed him all about the evils of D&D and the "powers" he gained as a DM. Yes, that's right... this occult game literally gave him powers where he could control the minds of the players. According to the "Dramatic Reenactment" they produced (which, frankly, was freakin' hilarious) the players would kneel down in the living room floor, bowing and chanting to their DM during the game.
While we're at it, let's not forget that D&D is not the only demonic influence on our children. There's also He-Man, Voltron and the Transformers to worry about!
I'm an optimistic cynic. I realize people are capable of spectacular and incredible feats; unfortunately, some of those feats can be pretty stupid.
So I'm not surprised that there are idiots out there, but sometimes I can really figure out how there arguments work. I know they use the drug analogy but when compared to reality, it just fails to justify the conclusion. The people who do end up believing magic is real or their cult leader is an alien tend to have preexisting problems before they get involved in such activities. Launching a crusade against RPGs, comics and rock doesn't do anything to address those problems.
Silence may be "Golden," but ducktape is Silver.
Can now be reached at my old e-mail and IM account
I like how Chris Rock put it... after the Columbine tragedy everyone was blaming Marilyn Manson and rock music. Chris' response to this was "Yeah? So whose disk was in Hitler's CD player?" lol
And "When I was a kid we had this thing we called 'crazy'. When someone did something stupid, we didn't blame music, we just said they were crazy! And crazy people are just going to do crazy things!"
You Gotta be kidding me, I thought that crap died with the 80s and 90s... I am a Southern Baptist myself and what is funny is that one of my gaming groups I was in The group was predominantly christian... One of them even moved up to Canada got married and got even more involved with religeous work
Role play is what people make of it, if you are mentally imbalanced you will let it rule your life. I've seen it, i've been there, but it is not the Game's fault it was my own bar none
No one ever takes responsability fir their actions there is always an excuse [Role Play, Video Games, Heavy Metal Music, Viagra, whatever...] This is nothing new (Unfortunately) and it will never change because some people just have closed minds
I hate it when people use Video Games, Books, Movies, etc as a reason to say their child or whatever caused them to commit a violent crime. The VT shooter as an example, once they found out he used to play Counterstrike they jumped all over the fact that he played the game and supposedly used it as a tool to plan his attack. The kid was mentally unstable to begin with. He had to be a ticking time bomb. I bet some group of students probably picked on him to the point where his rage began to boil over and he had enough. His only answer was to get rid of the problem.
Geez I play violent games all the time, I watch violent movies, I read comic books bla bla bla. I'm not out there shooting and killing people and robbing banks and punching old ladies in the face and stealing candy from little kids and blaming it on Grand Theft Auto! People just don't want to be accountable for their actions any more. Now wheres my chainsaw rifle, I need to go to Walmart...
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And according to religious group's tablet of "materials of satanic/demonic influence" such as games, books, music and illustrations(?), I must be Satan incarnated. If not his father, so to say. :/
Does it mean I'm a horrible person because I don't feel very evil at all?
One more thing to point out in relation to this guy not knowing what he is talking about. He lists occult books to include the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, both of whose works were heavily influenced by christianity.
I saw, I realized he had no basis for his claims and was just a glory hound, I laughed, I moved on.