Wheee! Look at this slick new game. Doesn’t it look fun to play?
It’s even educational!
“Intelligent Design vs Evolution” is unique in that the playing pieces are small rubber brains and each team plays for “brain” cards. Each player uses his or her brains to get more brains, and the team with the most brains wins. It has been designed to make people think … and that’s exactly what it does.
Errm, until you look more closely at who puts it out: Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. You know, the insane guys with the banana. And then you read the testimonial:
“Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are doing much more than revealing the bankruptcy of molecules-to-man evolution. They have a greater purpose: proclaiming biblical authority and reaching the lost with the precious gospel message. Enjoy this wonderful family game as you also become better equipped to defend our precious Christian faith.” — Ken Ham, President, Answers in Genesis.
I don’t think this is one of those games designed to reward you for getting the right answer—it’s one you should be proud to lose.
(via Friendly Atheist)
as i’ve said before, this is quite the gag gift
Right, I’ll rush right out and buy a copy to go with that nasty Left Behind kill people with Muslim sounding names games…
Off topic, but I was just reading the introduction to “The God Delusion” and I was wondering if anyone else got as nitpicky as I did when I read the “no Taliban to blow up ancient statues”… I realize that Dawkins is talking in the present tense (what would happen if religion disappeared now), but if there was no religion or god(s) then those statues wouldn’t even exist in the first place. If there was no Hinduism, the Buddha would not have been able to reject Hinduism as a spiritual path and forge what became the religion/philosophy that gave us those statues in the first place.
This has probably already been said, but Ray Comfort sounds like a porn star name.
Each player uses his or her brains to get more brains, and the team with the most brains wins.
What? No fig leaves? No ribs (or women)? No fruit of the tree–not even a banana? Come on. You don’t need brains to get into heaven! That is evident by the *ahem* biblical illustrations on the box and on the gameboard, which hardly looks complex, BTW. (Geez, Candyland is more complicated.)
“BRAINS!” Yep, perfect game for brain-eating zombies.
It’s just not fair! How can parodists be expected to keep up with the rate at which these guys parody themselves?
Haha, That video’s great.
‘Behold the atheist’s nightmare’
Yes, I go to sleep every night and dream I’m being chased by a banana.
Don’t these people ever wonder why they are so much more succesful in getting children to buy their BS than they are with adults? Put another way, if you were a boxer, but could only defeat 12-year-olds, wouldn’t it dawn on you that you were doing something wrong?
Christianity has a built-in answer for that, MarkP. Young children are innocent and therefore receptive to the Word of God – adults have sin-hardened hearts, and must become as little children before they can enter into Heaven.
…
…
The game probably has that typical 180-degree-inverted goddy bullshit reasoning:
Death is Life.
Lies are Truth.
Uneducated is Brilliant.
Deluded is Infinitely Aware.
And 2,000-year-old “ancient wisdom” trumps a worldful of scientists.
…
…
I so want this game, but I refuse to provide them with any profits or sales numbers. How long before it hits resale on ebay?
I notice that the game comes with dice and cards.
So there’s a potential flaw in the game, in that it might be possible to win through random chance. Maybe you’re encouraged to play “intelligently”: Rummage through the cards, put the one you want on top, and then manually arrange the dice to show the number of spaces you want to move.
Now I understand why the former East-Germany government did not allow bananas. See an East-German after the reunification with her first banana:
http://www.titanic-magazin.de/postcard/images/377670833.jpg
This is just so wrong on so many levels. I hope to God (can I say that here?) that I get the opportunity to sink my teeth in Kirk Cameron (metaphorically speaking). I’d type more along the same lines, but the Vicodin’s kicking in. If only these clowns could be similarly confounded, indefinitely.
You know, somewhere out there right now there’s a kid in an evangelical church who’s smart and creative, who would make a terrific scientist, but, thanks to Comfort and Cameron, they’ll never realize their potential. It’s tragic.
“If only these clowns could be similarly confounded, indefinitely.”
What, they aren’t already?
Kirk’s sister Candace married a hockey player and took a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. Now of course the obvious answer is that she was scarred for life by Bob Saget’s warped imagination, but maybe she knew something about her brother that we didn’t, and the Funderground in Hollywood was coming for her?
/do not adjust your set
Cue music
1: Hi, I’m Bill Dembski.
2: And I’m Mike Behe.
1&2: And we both love Intelligent Design vs. Evolution!
1: It’s a game the whole family can play.
2: And it’s educational!
1: And don’t forget, Mike, that it’s also true to life.
2: You’re right, Bill. You play Intelligent Design vs. Evolution by using tiny plastic brains.
1: Yes, indeed, they are scale models of the gray matter of Discovery Institute scholars.
2: But in color!
1: Hey, Mike, I think they did your brain life-size!
2: I think you may be right, Bill. And they had to enlarge yours to make it the same size as mine!
1: Ha, ha! That’s a good one, Mike.
1&2: Play Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, endorsed by our giant brains!
Off-stage voice: Brains!
And cut
Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron must be the Billy Dembski and Denyse O’Leary of board games.
I was right, it seems, about the porn. So think happy bananas, Christian Burnham! Happy bananas, happy boardgames, happy, happy.
j, with respect to my wish that Cameron and company be confounded, wrote: “What, they aren’t already?”
Well, yeah, they’re already confounded in the sense of being delusional—or at least more delusional than I, I think. What I want is for them to be disabled, in the sense that they are no longer effective at pushing anti-science crap on innocent kids.
In the larger image on their site, some of the octagons have people’s faces in them. I’ll use my spooky occult auguring powers and predict that there are quotes associated with each. The first face heading up and left is Darwin and the second is Einstein. Wonder if they have the “God does not play dice” quote for him, or would that sort of self-aware humor be too much to ask from them? (And who wants to bet the quote for Darwin is that out-of-context eye one?)
Also, I guess this is as good a place as any to finally post a link to this mildly amusing, patent-pending board game I found a while ago where one of the square you can land on is labeled “Boss Is Atheist”.
When a player lands on this (or other “Category 1” squares, which include “Adultry”, “Hospital”, “Foreclosure”, “Diagnosed with a critical disease”, and “Auto Accident”), they are to draw a “prayer card” that instructs one of the other players to give them “an oral effective prayer for the real life situation in which pertains to the real life situation depicted on the game space of the player who landed on the space”. That other player has 15 seconds to do this or he loses a turn.
You can keep your crypto-zombie-fetish games from ex-Hollywood types… this is the board game the Flanders household would play on a lazy Sunday after church.
“… this is the board game the Flanders household would play…”
Well, checkily-mately, neighborino! My “Let there by light” card trumps your “cosmic background radiation” card.
And my creationmobile with a plastic Jesus on the dashboard, and fuzzy dice, takes Einstein’s “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe” and sends him to Jail, directly to Jail, without passing Go.
I’ve made it to the Omega Point, so King me. I mean, King-of-Kings me.
Okay, spin the spinner. Whoohoooo! I get a “pi.” As you know, that means I get exactly 3 moves in a row.
Someone should make a Catholic version of Clue where the object is to find out who killed Jesus, only the answer is always the same every game: at Calvary, with a cross, by you!
Freakin’ sweet! I’ve always wanted a Christian Zombie game.
I wonder what Herr Führer would think of this?
jpf,
I just laughed so hard that snot came out of my nose.
Kristine: “BRAINS!” Yep, perfect game for brain-eating zombies.
No, Cheapass Games already made the zombie game.
Typical Creationists, can’t even come up with something vaguely original.
Suppose this is the best place to promote a more intelligent game.
Huh? What happened to Original Sin?
Is that really how they spelled it?
This reminds me of a pen-and-paper RPG game that came out a few years ago as a challenger to D&D. It’s called Spiritual Warfare: The RPG, where you can:
“Learn how to preach the gospel effectively and memorize scripture all while destroying demonic forces.”
But I’ve ranted about this before.
Wow, imagine the strip version of that game.
Intelligent Design vs. Evolution isn’t just a board game: Ray Comfort also has a book by that title (subtitle: Letters to an atheist). WorldNetDaily (as bad a source of news as you could find) is hawking it with a companion DVD.
I’ll wait for the computer version of the game, because I’m sure that version will come with the appropriate Creationist sound effects–you know, the artificial-fart noises.
Since we are using a Einstein quote here, I’ll adapt a Neils Bohr quote. I wish that these insane fundies would stop telling God what to do with his dice!
This game would be no fun at all. Wouldn’t every answer be “god did it”?
plyd t. Lts f fn!! spclly ftr hrng bnch f thsts whn nd cmpln bt smpl gm.
Y hv t dmt, t s qt “Crtv.”
Hy. Stck t yr pr grp jrnls wth yr thmb n yr mths. Th rst f mrc wll njy gd ld-fshn mrcn ngnty.
[Hmmm…you guys must be kicking the Good Christian Man’s ass, because now he’s started changing his username, and I hadn’t even banned him yet!]
“good old-fashion American ingenuity.”
You mean fleecing the rubes?
I think our fearless moderator really MUST acquire a copy of this game, and review it here. True, these fundies would be $30 richer, but as this blog is read by thousands, it could be justified. I’d even chip in.
–Mark (“Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200”)
Of course, if you’re bored, there’s always the game Atheist Roulette: the players stand around in a circle and blaspheme. Whoever gets struck by lightning first loses.
I love how the ID people always say that ID doesn’t have a problem with evolution, just undirected evolution. But the YEC’s want to call themselves IDers too, which they technically are, but then they go and title things, “Intelligent Design vs Evolution.”
Mr. Cameron is now the posterboy for why young stardom can be a curse. If had he a sensible head, or at least a sensible accountant, he probably could have retired after his fame was over … but now he gets to rot his brain further shilling for this crap.
Bronze Dog: I’ve never played Diplomacy. Anywhere I can read the rules?
I want to buy this game so badly but GRRRR, I can’t stomach the idea of giving these guys money and adding to the “success” of the game. I checked for used copies.. none. Sad thing, people against these sorts of things often end up having to buy them in order to give them an honest critique and so in the end I wonder just how much profit they make of their opponents. Painful.. I know I’m going to end up buying this stupid game.
I just had to join everyone posting about this today, and then I found out about some more games, so be sure to scroll down for the breaking news.
You might be able to finagle a desk-copy if you are reviewing the game. Teachers often can get a free copy of books by writing to the publisher and requesting a copy to preview for use in the classroom.
If phrases such as “biblical authority”, “gospel message” and “right answer” seem like an oxymoron, then I would encourage you to look into biblical evidence more if you haven’t already.