This game’s a must for the Yuletide stocking!

AN IDEAL Yuletide board game for atheists and their families has just been released – and promises a welcome diversion from all that mindless religiosity that has come to blight an otherwise enjoyable annual pagan midwinter festival.

Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination bills itself as:

The world’s first satirical board game of religious warfare.

The game replaces ancient mythical gods and goddesses with characters from the major religions of the modern world.

Three-inch plastic figurines include a psychotic Jesus bludgeoning people with a cross, Moses bashing away with the Ten Commandments, a manic Buddha with a machine gun, and a turbaned killer with a bomb and a dagger who may, or may not be Mohammed.

They all have one objective:

To force the people of the world to worship you.

According to this report, the game was unveiled at DragonCom, the annual pop culture, fantasy and science fiction convention in Atlanta, where it caught on with “religious folks with a sense of humour” as well as skeptics, says its creator, Ben Radford, 38, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Says Radford:

Much of the world’s violence is rooted in religion.

So his answer was to:

Pierce the pretensions of extremist religious zealotry with humour.

Radford adds:

I didn’t want to leave out a Muslim figure just because it might be offensive. The game is satire. But I went out of my way to be innocuous. The figure is not named. It could be any Muslim leader.

The figurines move across a global game board drawing cards that promise wrath with natural disasters or woo converts with kindness or cleverness. Coloured chips represent each god’s sects or followers.

A typical steely grey wrath card would “Bring down the Darkness: Kill two sects,” while a sunny yellow conversion card recalls Elijah’s showdown with a priest of Baal in the Bible (1 Kings 18:38).

Another god’s follower challenges you to prove you exist; you fry him with lightning in front of a crowd. Gain one sect.

But just like sexy magazines on a family news stand, the most potentially offensive cards come in a separate wrapper.

Under the image of the wrathful Jesus, one card says:

Over-emphasis on guilt drives millions to depression and suicide. Kill three Christian sects.

Another declares:

Endless ‘War on Terror’ provides terrorist job stability. Gain three Muslim sects.

Radford argues that Playing Gods is a statement of peace:

It’s not anti-religion. It’s anti-zealot, anti-people who kill for their beliefs, whatever those are. But the way to win the game is by a combination of killing and conversion.

Radford adds:

I have to be honest with you: Killing is very popular. When people become Gods, they like laying down the locusts and the other Old Testament plagues.

Carl Raschke, professor of religious studies at University of Denver appears not be a fan:

The game’s perspective has no basis in historical reality and doesn’t actually represent any religion. It just appeals to people who hate religion to begin with — 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. They start from their own dogmatic perspective.

The $39.99 game is available online and in independent game stores but, Radford acknowledges, “the big chain stores aren’t going to touch a game like this.”