Religious Warfare Stocking Stuffer

[Freedom_from_Chains]

Religious warfare is now on store shelves in time for holiday shopping. Nothing like a video game depicting religious warfare against an existing, modern US city to bring out the true Christmas spirit. Ho ho ho.


Religious groups and individuals from both the left and right have protested the sale of "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" and a growing coalition has called for a consumer boycott of the game, but those are moral objections and, rightly so, have

The problem with religious warfare is that it's not really very tidy. Not that warfare in the absence of religion is tidy. Far from it.

The admixture of religion, politics, and warfare tends to bring out the worst in human nature. Goya's series of sketches entitled "Disasters Of War" arose in such a context. The Spanish insurgency that arose in reaction to to Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Penninsula gave rise to the word "guerilla", but that word has picked up secular connotations which belie the word's origin : Catholic priests played an important role in the insurgency and, as Goya's sketches illustrated, were not immune from French reprisals.

OK, now :

As some of you might know, Talk To Action was threatened with legal action by the Left Behind Games Company for illustrating posts on the Talk To Action site concerning the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game with screenshots that had been widely distributed by that company to promote the game. So, for this occasion, I have chosen to illustrate this piece of writing not with screenshots from the "Left Behind : Eternal Forces" game.

(con't) http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/12/9/111431/036