The Australian Christian Lobby is using the Oslo massacre to call for a ban on violent videogames in its home country, stating that the behavior of murderous idiot Anders Behring Breivik was evidence that games are evil, due to some logic.
"The studied indifference of this killer to the suffering he was inflicting, his obvious dehumanizing of his victims and the evil methodical nature of the killings have all the marks of games scenarios," said Lobby MD Jim Wallace. "How can we allow the profits of the games industry and selfishness of games libertarians to place our increasingly dysfunctional society at further risk? Even if this prohibition were to save only one tragedy like this each twenty years it would be worth it."
Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor, however, is backing games and still pushing for a widespread R18+ rating in his country, stating that we can't blame games for the actions of "a madman." Breivik did praise Modern Warfare 2 as a training tool, although it clearly didn't damage an already diseased mind.
Of course, given the possible religious motivation behind Breivik's attacks, it's hardly surprising that some Christians (no, not all of them) want to pin the blame on something else. After all, I can think of a certain book in which several protagonists inflict suffering indifferently while dehumanizing their victims.
Breivik trained on Modern Warfare game [Sydney Herald via The Escapist]
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Contest:
2:15 PM on 07.29.2011 | 
BAN THIS FILTH!
If this were a valid point they were tryng to make, then by the same token, I should be able to ban them from operating because they represent the Christian faith, and therefore contributed to this man's warped sense of justice, right and wrong. Then, we go after churches.
But we wouldn't do that, because intelligent people look at the individual, not the scapegoat placed out there to distract people from what the problem really is.
Intolerance is what provided the main fuel for the fire. By kneejerking into another fit of intolerant behavior, you've made yourselves no better, even though you pulled no triggers.
That'd be swell.
SCIENCE!
specifically cod 4 to black ops counter strike and.. world of Warcraft?
A majority of so called agnostics and atheists in Europe are cultural conservative Christians without even knowing it. So what is the difference between cultural Christians and religious Christians?
If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian (p. 1307).
But yeah, the right wing fundamentalist christian part is being overlooked in this case.
But you know, blame COD.
"Ironically throughout history religion,is responsible for far more deaths than anything or anyone else combined."
This is a false and empty statement.
The collective motives for war, conquest and genocide are varied and complex, and cannot be summed up by a simple and unsupported catchphrase.
On the hand of the Christian group who wants to ban games because of this, they need to calm the hell down. They should realize that video games do not a homicidal crazy man make. Going straight to a knee jerk reaction makes you look like you're trying to accomplish an agenda in light of a tragedy. Go do what Christians should do, assist the families in any way you can, not blame everyone for the actions of a guy who is clearly off his rocker.
I may be wrong, since I haven't read it, but I think that's the part in the "Manifesto" where Breivik admits to being a Christian in name only.
Kinda throws a wrench in the whole "religiously motivated" argument.
What would Jesus do in this case? Probably try to make it to the top of the leaderboard.
Yeah, really. What WERE you talking about? It isn't about god. It isn't about Jesus. It's about people killing in the name of religion being wrong. Then, to make matters worse, the people who share the same religion seem content to bury their head in the sand about it and point the finger at another boogeyman instead of seeing that a radical sect of their faith is teaching the same level of intolerance they decry in other religions.
Has nothing to do with Jesus, just the kind of people that use his name as a shield when they don't have the strength of soul to take a good look at themselves and the hypocracy that some of their flock spit without sense of consequence.
Intolerance and hate breed nothing but itself, and ignorance is the incubator.
It's the let's blame something else while never holding ourselves accountable for anything game. Somebody needs a History lesson.
"I wonder how many lives would have been spared over the years if we banned the bible..."
Probably less than those "saved" if we banned the works of the enlightment movement: you know Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin, Kierkegaard... the guys that inspired Mussolini, Stalin and yes, dear, dear Adolf.
Heck, let's start banning everything!
If they were I'd join them.
Someone isn't a student of history. More people have been killed in purges in countries with institutionalized atheism, like Stalinist Russia and Maoist China than have been killed in any other war or state. Think hundreds of millions, if memory serves. It puts to shame any number of what 'religion' does. Also, you might want to actually specify what religion you're talking about. They each teach radically different things and to simply lump them all together is an inductive fallacy.
What do they have to do with anything? Religion has costs people their lives. More so than video games. If something causing a person to kill means it should be banned then it would make more sense to start with the bible than with video games. I'm just using that idiot's logic. I'd rather nothing gets banned. People should be free to think and believe what they want.
"How many people have been murdered because of religion again?"
How many have been murdered by [insert-motive-here] instead?
Saying this is just part of the scapegoating.
your tears are delicious
@El Conrado
Yeah, that's true. By his definition, everyone raised in a western culture could be considered a Christian, if I remember correctly.
"What do they have to do with anything? Religion has costs people their lives."
Nothing, absolutelly nothing! Just like saying "religion kills people" means absolutely nothing.
MORE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED FOR THE RELIGION THEY FOLLOWED THAN BY PEOPLE FOLLOWING A RELIGION!
Read some history. Genocide has had many motives.
El Conrado, I'm going to go on a limb and say that nobody here is actually advocating for banning the Bible, be they religious or not. They're pointing out that banning video games, when the man hid behind so-called Christianity, does nothing to stop the problem.
Banning violent video games doesn't make any sense. There are thousands of people who play them without incident, and instead people want to get rid of them due to a single madman?
He was talking about christianity in terms of a cultural identy.
He even wrote that he thinks praying to god is a sign of weakness (or something like that).