Nationwide rag USA Today reviews Playing Gods, the role-playing game created by Skeptical Inquirer managing editor Ben Radford.  The article is mostly accurate (although the reporter refers to Atlanta-based Dragon*Con, where Playing Gods debuted last fall, as “DragonCom”). 

Playing Gods is, in case you didn’t know, a tongue-in-cheek take on religion and the violence it can breed.

What infuriates me is the unchallenged statement by Univ. of Denver professor of religious studies Carl Raschke:  “[Playing Gods] just appeals to…the hip subculture of militant popular atheists.  These people are fanatics, for the most part, themselves.  Their thinking is rigid and hostile and not much different from jihadists who don’t use their minds or study what they are dealing with.”  Yes, you read him right.  Raschke is equating atheists who role-play to sadistic terrorists who cut people’s heads off and post the video online.  (I’m also puzzled by the word “popular” wedged in between “militant” and “atheists”.  For that matter, I’m puzzled by the word “militant”.  How many atheists do you know who horde guns, start fistfights, take to the streets, or generally act “militant”?)  Please tell me he’s been misquoted.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under atheism, commentary, humor, news, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.