Why the DOOM hate christians?

Phml said:

It's the violence, plain and simple.

You're more of a loonie than anyone who believes in magical people in the sky if you think your average 40-50 years old at the time of Doom release cared enough about the game to even know it consisted of fighting demons or had satanic imagery.

Guns and blood, shown in more immersive and realistic graphics than ever at the time, were the issue.

Then games became about shooting Russians and Brown Terrorism, which is perfectly acceptable and educative to our youth, Jesus bless.

Maybe Doom 4 should have you rescuing holy men of different religions and salvaging holy artifacts to fight the demons with.

But I'm sure someone will get pissed when a copy of the Bible is equally as effective as one of the Kuran.

Atari jaguar doom tv commercial is hilarious, you should watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgklh0kDHiI

As I have said before, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is another term for Mormon.

Everyone has different views on what things they can or will accept in sources of "entertainment". Some folks don't like seeing satanic symbols or demonic imagery, perhaps because it makes them feel uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean they are against others enjoying entertainment with those concepts.

Those who do find it unacceptable for demonic imagery or gore and violence to be portrayed at all may simply not be viewing from the right context. A person's age, maturity, and personal opinions all factor into whether or not something is appropriate for them.

I personally am glad to not have gotten into Doom until I was older, because I needed the maturity. But I don't mind that others play it when they are young, as long as they are ready and mature enough to handle it.

Jaxxoon R said:

But I'm sure someone will get pissed when a copy of the Bible is equally as effective as one of the Kuran.

Let alone the whole concept of Doomguy getting some super Islamic Jihad endowment/indoctrination and then killing demons with it...

NEXT "WHAT IF" THREAD SPOILER: What if Doomguy was a muslim?

Hey look, it's Sandy Peterson

36appl0912 said:

YOU KILL THE DEMONS!

And by killing them, you become them. Like eating someone's heart to gain his courage, which is practised somewhere in the world. Just like Nietzsche said, "those who fight monsters, be afraid of becoming monsters". It's a long ball, but someone saw through it. Fighting too much Hell might plant a hellish seed in young mind. And then it's just too late. It's better be safe than sorry.

Not mentioning the theory that Doomguy actually dies at conclusion of the episode "Knee-Deep in Dead" and becomes demonic entity. The implication of such scenerio might be too dangerous from spiritual point of view.

Well, it could just be the people worried about all that satanic/demonic imagery, you know, actually in a form for people to see. Hear me out on this.
Up to 1993, not many people had access to the internet. So a search for demonic pictures etc. was pretty tough. And I don't think there were many picture books on the subject matter anyways. Then all of a sudden DOOM comes along. With all its images of demons, pentagrams, hell and all the other good stuff, I bet most Christians who saw it were afraid. Not actual fear exactly, but of what it showed, and they were scared that people might actually want to find out what symbols in the game mean, such as the Baphomet, and they were worried that people might find shit like that cool.
So, to sum up, I think Christians don't hate DOOM because it has demons in it, they hate it because it showed demons to a lot of people, as in, they didn't have control of it.

Krazov said:

And by killing them, you become them.

And by letting them spread on Earth, you become them. :wacko:

Here's another thought that just occurred to me - I mean, technically speaking, much of our conception of Hell, Satan, Demons, etc., is all, strictly speaking, non-canon, if I may bizarrely tie this thread back to the Star Wars thread over in EE. We owe our perceptions of those things to largely works such as "Paradise Lost," and "Dante's Inferno," which, honestly speaking, are basically Biblical fanfiction. I mean, yeah, demons and Hell and whatnot are vaguely referenced here and there in the Bible, but nothing is really fleshed out, and our modern conception of those things comes from the aforementioned writers much more so than actual Christian teachings.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, it's kinda funny to me the idea that Christians would get hung up on the whole Satanic element when, strictly speaking, the whole concept is very far removed from being a central tenant of the religion.

FreddBoy said:

Up to 1993, not many people had access to the internet. So a search for demonic pictures etc. was pretty tough. And I don't think there were many picture books on the subject matter anyways. Then all of a sudden DOOM comes along. With all its images of demons, pentagrams, hell and all the other good stuff, I bet most Christians who saw it were afraid

This may be true to an extent, but don't forget that you could already find such imagery in much more mainstream media such as heavy metal music, where demonic and "anti-christian" imagery was already used -by well-known bands such as Metallica, Iron Maiden and Slayer, just to cite a few, and they were not even Doom/Death metal proper.

I remember as a boy in the 80s/early 90s, you could walk in any record store and there would always be that so typically 80s big poster baskets, where you could see posters full-size and flip through them like a big book. The most "satanic" and "demonic" would always be those by Metallica, Slayer etc., showing demonic necromancers, devils, pentagrams etc., for example:



Ofc, today this looks more like a goofy carnival/haunted hause/halloween display, but hey, 1982 ;-)

Plus, if you had the "luck" of being educated in Greece, there would ALWAYS be some over-zealous Theology teacher who would lecture us on the "dangers" of such satanic imagery, hidden satanic backwards messages in songs etc. while the most meticolous of them would also produce pamphlets and samples...so there definitively was a perceivd "danger" of Satanism already. Doom just capitalized on it. Think about it: a game with a Heavy Metal soundtrack (mostly...) based on a Heavy Metal Hellish Slayer/Metallica/Iron Maiden theme!

The criticism in Doom is mostly tied to the violence in the game, not necessarily the victims of the violence. It doesn't really matter that the things youre killing are "the bad guys" when the implied message of the game in the broadest sense is essentially that any problem can be solved with a gun.

While killing evil demon monster alien terrorists is significantly better than killing innocent people, women, and young children, people who have been concerned with Doom are more frightened by the glorification of killing, and the apparent satisfaction drawn from it even by little children, who naturally are too naive to recognize the sincerity of taking someone or somethings life.

I think there has been scientific research that I feel I can relate to that killing things in a simulation such as Doom is much more therapeutic for pent up anger than it is likely to ignite a killing rampage. Much like how jacking off to porn often reduces one's interest in pursuing a real-life relationship. This doesn't apply to all people. But I can see how someone from an outside perspective may see Doom as training simulator for mass killing. Anyone who has played the game for more than ten minutes can see that the scenarios are rather silly and wouldn't be a very feasible guide to killing anything at all, given the unrealistic circumstances in the game.

EDIT: nevermind Phml said it first.

dew said:

Then games became about shooting Russians and Brown Terrorism, which is perfectly acceptable and educative to our youth, Jesus bless.

Well the 40-50 year olds of today were the college kids who were playing Doom, so they know what it's like to be nagged by oldtimers about being too exposed to violence. The world has evolved.

The whole western Christian-fundie thing seems to be much stronger in the US than in other parts of the western world. At least that's how it seems to an outsider anyway. Many aspects of Christian fundamentalism that seem to be big enough in the US to be seriously newsworthy and have a large number of followers seem to be far less of an issue in the UK (for example) where the antics of these American fundies usually come across as bizarre, silly, incomprehensible, dangerous or a combination of those - and usually with a healthy dose of WTF.

I'm not saying that we don't have people like that in the UK but they are a far less important, much more easily ignored group and, for the most part, people expressing views like they do would often be laughed at and dismissed.

The only thing that worries me is that, as with many aspects of American culture, we do tend to absorb stuff from the US (good and bad) and I've seen people in the UK increasingly debating these previously utterly dismissable points of view as if they held some importance.

40oz said:

While killing evil demon monster alien terrorists is significantly better than killing innocent people, women, and young children, people who have been concerned with Doom are more frightened by the glorification of killing, and the apparent satisfaction drawn from it even by little children, who naturally are too naive to recognize the sincerity of taking someone or somethings life.

That sounds hypocritical at best, especially in a country who's been quite literally at the front line or of every major war in the 20th century, and even (undeniably) "started" the 21st millenium with two brand-new wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, without counting how many other conflicts and "colored revolutions" it might actually be behind...)

Without wanting to sound political, I have some difficulty understanding how on the one hand you can consider some killing bad (which also happens to be entirely virtual/imaginary...) while accepting very real mass killings that are going on even as we speak, for "just" causes such as "democracy" and "freedom".

After all, that same kid that is forbidden from playing Doom today (or in the 90s?) might very well grow up to be a blackwater operative in Iraq....or an overzealous cop shooting some poor bastard in the head during a "routine arrest" because "the suspect looked like he was reaching for a gun", but none seems to be too concerned with that.

Well said Maes.

Enjay said:

The whole western Christian-fundie thing seems to be much stronger in the US than in other parts of the western world. At least that's how it seems to an outsider anyway. Many aspects of Christian fundamentalism that seem to be big enough in the US to be seriously newsworthy and have a large number of followers seem to be far less of an issue in the UK (for example) where the antics of these American fundies usually come across as bizarre, silly, incomprehensible, dangerous or a combination of those - and usually with a healthy dose of WTF.

I'm not saying that we don't have people like that in the UK but they are a far less important, much more easily ignored group and, for the most part, people expressing views like they do would often be laughed at and dismissed.

The only thing that worries me is that, as with many aspects of American culture, we do tend to absorb stuff from the US (good and bad) and I've seen people in the UK increasingly debating these previously utterly dismissable points of view as if they held some importance.

America is a mix between different religions (especially denominations in Christianity). I've lived in New York City (Staten Island) for the first half of my life and there were a lot of religious people, mostly Roman Catholics like myself and plenty of Jews. I've never come across any radical fundamentalists in person, nor have I ever really seen them, in exception to the few crazy schizophrenic homeless people claiming they speak to God on a walkie-talkie in Manhattan. I currently live in New Jersey and still I haven't seen many fundies. The real Bible Belt fundies tend to live in the southwest region of the United States.

I agree about some of the bad influences of American culture. You can thank our shitty media for portraying Americans as fat, lazy, jersey-shore party animals, and loons.

doomguy93 said:

I agree about some of the bad influences of American culture. You can thank our shitty media for portraying Americans as fat, lazy, jersey-shore party animals, and loons.

At least we don't try to emulate that kind of shit.

ducon said:

And by letting them spread on Earth, you become them. :wacko:

The game is rigged!

Enjay said:

At least we don't try to emulate that kind of shit.


:/

My God... don't tell me that the Jersey Shore plague has infected the UK. Repent your sins for the end is near :(

Yeah, cheap train wreck TV at its best, er, worst, er, whatever. A show featuring vile people doing vile things and generally showing the world what disgusting, shallow, animalistic oxygen thieves they are, all in search of that modern holy grail - celebrity status. I assume that it's much the same as what Jersey Shore is.

The saddest part, for me, is not so much that these creatures are put on camera but more that enough people must tune in and watch it, and then come back for more, for it to have reached seven series.

I don't really get people a lot of the time.

Enjay said:

...for it to have reached seven series.

And spreaded around the world. In Poland we have "Warsaw Shore" (not that there's any shore in Warsaw).

There is nothing like that in Czech Republic, maybe it is because we got no shores? Also parties are too social.. pffff.

Maes said:

After all, that same kid that is forbidden from playing Doom today (or in the 90s?) might very well grow up to be a blackwater operative in Iraq....or an overzealous cop shooting some poor bastard in the head during a "routine arrest" because "the suspect looked like he was reaching for a gun", but none seems to be too concerned with that.

So... is it bad that I play Doom and I'm 12?

Enjay said:

The whole western Christian-fundie thing seems to be much stronger in the US than in other parts of the western world. At least that's how it seems to an outsider anyway. Many aspects of Christian fundamentalism that seem to be big enough in the US to be seriously newsworthy and have a large number of followers seem to be far less of an issue in the UK (for example) where the antics of these American fundies usually come across as bizarre, silly, incomprehensible, dangerous or a combination of those - and usually with a healthy dose of WTF.

You say that, but I had a Religious Education teacher who was a vicar; I remember he used at least one of his classes to warn us about the dangers of ouija boards, how you should never use one because it opens a doorway that evil spirits can get through. My memory is a bit hazy but I think he even told us about how he had performed exorcisms to get rid of these "spirits".

This was in a state-funded secondary school. I was young enough at the time that I just took it at face value and didn't really question it at the time. Now I'm amazed that someone was being given free reign to teach us his own subjective superstitious bullshit as though it was fact.

A year or so later he left the school, and a lot of rumours spread around that it was because he had an affair with one of his female students.

Doom, Wolfenstein, and related FPSs were banned in my house for several years (restrictions loosened up with games like Jedi Knight and me simply getting older), and so far as I was told, it never had anything to do with the demonic imagery. My parents simply didn't (and still don't) care for the violence.

Side note: it's really refreshing to see Mormonism brought up and not spark a debate on whether or not we're Christians (waves to fellow LDS Doom fans).

Joe667 said:

So... is it bad that I play Doom and I'm 12?

Yes, yes it is. Soon you will grow to develop extremely violent impulses that will cause the deaths of many students at your high school. Then you will escape the massacre and continue killing in the streets until you are shot dead by the police. Then your soul will travel to hell where you will continue killing demons for all of eternity.

Or you're just smarter than the average 12 year old for not quoting PewDiePie and making 1337 CoD videos. +1 for that.

fraggle said:

You say that, but I had a Religious Education teacher who was a vicar; I remember he used at least one of his classes to warn us about the dangers of ouija boards, how you should never use one because it opens a doorway that evil spirits can get through. My memory is a bit hazy but I think he even told us about how he had performed exorcisms to get rid of these "spirits".

This was in a state-funded secondary school. I was young enough at the time that I just took it at face value and didn't really question it at the time. Now I'm amazed that someone was being given free reign to teach us his own subjective superstitious bullshit as though it was fact.

A year or so later he left the school, and a lot of rumours spread around that it was because he had an affair with one of his female students.

I wasn't aware they'd let a religious person teach religious education....what would he know and or say when it comes to teaching about other religions other than his own? But it's pretty bad that he would try to teach it as fact.

My understanding of religious education was to be taught various different beliefs and what they do and are about...then we leave the class and make up our own minds on it. My R.E teacher didn't follow any religions, we know because we asked her the one time. And when I spoke to other people they said theirs weren't either...so I got it into my head that R.E teachers aren't religious themselves. But of course, people can lie.

But either way, religion shouldn't be taught as fact in schools, that's what places of worship and specific T.V channels are for.

Oh well, to not stray too far off topic, I played Doom today, I still haven't killed anybody, or any demons either so I think I'm clean.

Janus3003 said:

Doom, Wolfenstein, and related FPSs were banned in my house for several years (restrictions loosened up with games like Jedi Knight and me simply getting older), and so far as I was told, it never had anything to do with the demonic imagery. My parents simply didn't (and still don't) care for the violence.

Side note: it's really refreshing to see Mormonism brought up and not spark a debate on whether or not we're Christians (waves to fellow LDS Doom fans).

*waves* Sup! LDS here as well. I love violent video games and always have.

Yeah, I had a friend in high school whose family is not religious but he was not allowed to play violent video games. You don't have to be religious to not want children to be exposed to violence. In fact, i got my copy of Doom 2 from an atheist friend who was passing it off to me because his mom didn't want him playing it. You've got to remember that in the 90's video games were widely seen as kids toys and were not mainstream yet.

If you use a little perspective you might understand why there was backlash. If a kids toy came out where you used a toy shotgun to splatter a zombies guts over the living room floor, I think you would have seen the same reaction.

I don't let my kids see my violent video games and probably won't let them own any until they are off on their own and my religion does not directly effect that decision. My kids have already inherited enough of my Polynesian propensity for using violence as a tool for fixing problems as it is.

Xegethra said:

I wasn't aware they'd let a religious person teach religious education....what would he know and or say when it comes to teaching about other religions other than his own?

In my experience as a kid taught by a religious person, they didn't need to know anything about other religions because they didn't teach them. My religious education teacher was not a vicar but he was definitely religious and his lessons were basically bible classes and he was, almost universally, thought of as a blistering cock-end (not merely because of his very biassed RE classes). Of course, that wasn't recently and in my more recent experience, RE is quite a different thing in Scotland these days than it was when I went to school.

I don't have a problem with someone who is religious teaching about other religions though - provided they do so from an informed and even-handed perspective. I'm not sure what the alternative would be. Have a teacher for every conceivable religion? That's just impractical. Don't teach religions that you don't have a representative from? Not ideal.

You can be an expert in something without sharing the beliefs. You can even be an expert in something while believing something contradictory. Presenting it in an even handed manner, to as high a standard as possible is really what's important.

As an aside, people who say things like "I don't want to know about [religion X] because I am [religion Y]" are wilfully ignorant IMO. Why not find out about it if only so that you can qualify your objections to it? Or are you so unsure in your beliefs that you worry that finding out about alternatives may turn you from your current path? (When I say "you" I mean "you" as in "one", "a person", not any particular person.) In reality though, in my experience, most of the people who make that objection don't really care, they just want to try and get out of a class.