• Join The Fed
• Advertise with The Fed

• About Us
• Contact

In This Issue

• Editorial Staff, Cartoonist Apologize for Comic
• Spec Buggers Queer Coverage
• Contraceptive Addiction: The Next Big Thing
• Letters to the Feditrix
• BOSS Leader on Racism
• Fed Editor on Racism
• Howard Dean Broke my Heart
• More on Columbia Security Department
• Lasers Make Atlanta Almost Cool
• Barnard Student Government Shows Resolution
• Jesus: Zombie Demigod Beloved By All
• Fundamentally Funny Bible Games
• Fed Fun Guide to Columbia Campus

Angry cynicism is the only mechanism I have for reconciling my apathetic, hedonistic lifestyle of today with a childhood fraught with Roman Catholic guilt. Thus, recently, I've turned to the Bible not as a source of spiritual truth or a means to salvation, but as a supply of hilarity in light of what I will probably discover after years of therapy to be a devastating loss of childhood faith.

The Old Testament, for example, is filled to the brim with arbitrary cruelty and meaningless rules to such an extent that when I read it I imagine God sitting on his heavenly throne and chuckling to himself as he thinks up new dictates for his people to follow.

God: Cut off part of your penis.
Abraham: But...
God: Do it!. And while you're at it, take care of all your sons and slaves as well.
Abraham: All right, fine, anything you say.
God: Oh, man, I can't believe you fell for that one!

The Old Testament may be pretty kooky but what about the New Testament? In this case the people who interpret it are generally more amusing than the text itself. Roman Catholics have essentially sworn off the entire Bible anyway and are thus often caught engaging in rational and intelligent thought, and so I have trouble finding them nearly as amusing as their Christian fundamentalist counterparts. As a result I often find myself drawn to their websites like a dog to antifreeze.

This was how I came upon a 3D video game entitled "One Nation Under God." The tagline for this fine offering from Inspired Idea reads "Learn How America Was Founded As A Christian Nation!" A free demo of the game is available at http://www.inspiredidea.com. In it, you play the character of Uncle Sam and explore our nation's past to learn the Christian truth about America's forefathers. The webpage includes promotional information for the game including the somewhat eerie explanation "An interactive 3D learning environment (your kids will think it's just a cool 3D game)." Right. Having downloaded and played "Under God," I can only surmise that the full version includes a kit with which you can lobotomize your children before exposing them to this tripe. "Gee, dad, answering questions about George Washington's personal faith is way more exciting than running down crackwhores with a school bus in Grand Theft Auto 3!"

The game's admitted purpose of being a vehicle for the indoctrination of little Billy aside, I found the demo somewhat creepy. You are limited to just the first level in the demo, "The Great Hall," though this provided more than enough bible-thumping fun for me. The purpose of this particular level is to teach the player about George Washington's personal faith through a frustrating kind of Pavlonian feedback system. You answer questions, true or false, to open doors and obtain keys located in the various rooms of the Great Hall. Answer a question wrong and a sudden explosion takes away 25% of your life, which is disturbing, considering that the promotional materials for the game promised nonviolence. The punitive explosions, presumably delivered from God himself to mock your stupidity, coupled with the odd inhabitants of the Great Hall, including a gigantic possessed boot that stomps about the room in an attempt to squish you under its poltergeisty sole, will more than likely terrorize any child Christian enough to play this game. In one room, large balls of energy (which I imagine represent God's wrath at having been made to look so silly in this game) pour forth in a continuous stream over a bottomless pit. Other rooms force you to jump from platform to platform to avoid falling into what I can only guess must be a one-way chute to hell, a task made difficult only by the frustratingly terrible game controls.

The questions in the Great Hall range from factual and probably provable to utterly ridiculous. Questions of the latter sort are easier to answer, because they are usually variations on "George Washington was a good Christian. True or False?" One question asked, "George Washington was nothing more than a Deist. True or False?" Another questioned Martha Washington's faith in God's desire for the US to win the War for Independence. Some questions are downright irritating: "The Indians recognized Washington was favored by heaven since their bullets could not kill him." I knew what the game wanted me to answer, but was so disgusted by the sweeping generalization and overall ridiculousness of the statement that I answered false anyway. I was promptly rewarded with a terrible explosion and an accompanying loss in life. Just to keep you on your toes (and perhaps because they were running out of material), most questions were reiterated in the negative at later junctures, i.e. "The Indians made up stories as to why they could not defeat Washington. True or False?"

The great thing about fundamentalists is that there's a lot of them out there and they produce a pretty steady supply of such frightening material. Inspired Idea alone publishes multiple titles including one entitled Godspeed 3D - A Wild Ride To Bible Literacy that somehow manages to combine roller coaster simulation and bible trivia. As if they weren't already related enough. I sincerely do look forward to the day when I can present my own children with the words of Christ, and thanks to the hard work of Christian fundamentalists, laugh at them together.