Will Wright: "Militant atheists" against Spore

Posted Aug 12th 2008 8:30AM by John Callaham
Filed under: Simulation, Spore

What exactly are "militant atheists?" Are they people who want to make sure everyone knows that their opinion there is no God or any other kind of divine being? We don't really have an opinion on this topic either way but these folks do apparently have an opinion on how religion is handled in the long awaited EA Maxis game Spore.

In a chat with Eurogamer, Spore creator Will Wright stated that during development of the game they were afraid that certain religion groups would have issues with the game's handling of the subject, but he stated, " . . . what we had was a good, sizeable group of players that we might call militant atheists, and the rest of the players seemed very tolerant, including all of the religious players."Oddly enough Spore's basic premise is that alien spores seed planets so we don't really know what issues these "militant atheists" have for the game.

Gallery: Spore

Tags: ea, ea-maxis, electronic-arts, spore, will-wright

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I am a militant atheist, in the way that Richard Dawkins describes militant atheism. Basically, in looking at the world I've concluded that it's far less likely that a god exists than that he or she does exist.

Also, I'm of the opinion that religion causes much more trouble in society than it's worth. Religious types are often very outspoken in their opinions, and actively seek to impose their views on others, meddling with the political process and stifling societal and scientific progress. Being a "militant atheist" just means that I actively resist religion's attempts to infect minds with their parasitic ideologies. Instead militant atheism promotes education, personal responsibility and empowerment.

So with all of that said, I couldn't be more excited for Spore. Besides just being an incredibly fresh and inspired game, I think it also has the potential to be a great learning tool. It touches on a lot of really important scientific concepts, like the anthropic principal, natural selection, the fragility of the environment, and the emergence of religion as a natural phenomenon. I'd be interested to hear what criticisms Mr. Wright was referring to.Posted at 12:08PM on Aug 16th 2008 by Jed

So far, only ONE article on this subject has gotten it right.

You see, the real problem is NOT the inclusion of religion in Spore; that makes perfect sense since religion has been around for as long as humanity has.

No, the real problem is that religion in Spore grants the player MAGICAL POWERS.
This is something religion in the real world DOESN'T DO, and for a game that claims to be a universe simulator, Spore really ought not to include @#$%ing MAGIC.

That was the REAL objection atheists had on the Spore.com webboard, and I find it marginally distressing that Will Wright got that wrong, especially since he even responded to us on the board.Posted at 11:27AM on Sep 3rd 2008 by RocketGirl