CNET News.com readers reacted en masse to Charles Cooper's Friday column If video games kill, what about the Bible?. Here are some edited excerpts. What's your opinion? Join in the discussion in our Talkback forum.
X-Rated? PG-13 or R maybe
Posted by: Jim Harper
While I understand your point, I don't think the Bible deserves the "X-rating" that you speak of. I've read much of the Bible and even the racier parts are not graphic enough for any ratings board to grant it an "X-rating" (at least these days).
It's always the same
Posted by: Jani M?kitalo
We've seen this same thing happening before. Every time something new appears in youth culture the older or more conservative people don't --or won't -- accept, we get this....This will eventually blow over too. At the latest, when video gamers are old enough to be entering positions of power.
The Bible is X-rated? Definitely Not.
Posted by: Brian Manchester
While I do agree that blaming video games for violence can be a cop-out, my common sense tells me that when I spend hours and hours consumed in some activity, it will affect the way I think. I experienced this when I was involved with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. After playing for many hours, I sometimes had to remind myself that I was back in reality.
Gratuity is the key
Posted by: Christopher Hall
You're dead on, but remember that even lessons in morality can be misconstrued and misinterpreted. Any form of information transfer has the chance to affect the way one thinks, it's just a matter of how that information is processed. I think Coop hit the nail on the head when he says to blame it on the stupidity of a sociopath in the making. All this needless finger-pointing won't get anyone anywhere.
The blame should fall on the retailer
Posted by: A.B.
Any title that is labeled Mature or for adults 18 or over should be criminal to sell to a minor. The game publisher should not have liability, the retailer should. If the kid doesn't have ID to prove they are of age, you don't sell it. The retailers have to be held responsible either through fines or jail. And if a certain retailer is obviously bucking the rules, then the game publisher should do it's best to keep their titles away from that retailer as punishment.
Liability
Posted by: Steve Grant
I agree the problem is parenting. I wouldn't go so far as to say parents should be made to pay - in criminal or tort liability. The scariest part is how many people think they can dictate the way other people live - because of religion or anything else -- and try to put people in jail who disagree. I wonder if the people doing this realize, after they go after something they disagree with, something else will come that up that "needs" to be regulated, taxed, controlled of otherwise interfered with by the government. It is an endless battle. Unfortunately, coming out, publicly, in support of something that is hyped as "helping chldren", provides a great deal of publicity, which politicians love.
Judges will decide
Posted by: Len Bullard
A culture coarsens or unifies according to many, many forces at work in a given time period, a phenomenon sometimes called the zeitgeist. Today it is games and a decade ago, it was the appearance of increasing amounts of so-called pornographic content in prime time television. The effects of that one have yet to be analyzed but I think anyone can make any case they want to, based purely on a single incident.
Hate, Defensiveness not the answer
Posted by: Guillaume Uys
I believe God has given us the capacity to differentiate between good and evil, between fantasy and reality. Therefore, I do not believe should be any more or any less surprising that the alleged BTK killer was a church -going man, and even in a leadership position at his church. At the core of it, I believe he has the same mental defect that causes any other serial killer, whether allegedly influenced by games or whatever other medium, to disconnect fantasy from reality and making the decision to kill.
Video Games Kill?
Posted by: David Langdon
This is just like the gun control issue. Guns aren't the problem. It's the people that use them. The same with video games....Society wants to put the blame on things instead of the people. It's the people, not the games, that do these things.
The Bible! Give me a break!
Posted by: Kevin Dauster
It's clear from this article the guy has never even read (the Bible.) If more people did read it then maybe this poor kid from Alabama might have had a decent childhood.
I believe the author's point is...
Posted by: James Fee
I believe the author is just trying to make the point that all of this is about context. He uses the reference of the Bible and its contents to prove the point that you can take things out of context and show that it is something it is not. Games are just games. There are very few things in life that cannot be taken out of context and twisted, the Bible included (Crusades anyone!).
Fuzzy Thinking
Posted by: R Hartman
Fuzzy thinking. That's what this article is. Is there really a comparison between the activity of reading classical, best-selling literature (the bible) and the playing of a modern video game, regardless of content?
Your examples prove just the opposite
Posted by: Bob Blanchard
It takes an incredible blindness, Mr. Cooper, to fail to see how our society has indeed been pushed toward lasciviousness and violence by our ever-deteriorating entertainment culture. Sure, Greta Garbo's sultry moves are tame by today's standards, which proves my point. We've continually lowered the bar, and there's no end in sight.
Life
Posted by: Matthew Good
I believe that everything in life affects who you are: music, video games, religion, etc. The real problem is that for many it's easier to just blame someone else...I happen to agree that politicians are just grandstanding. When this all blows over they will find something else to jump on and not even think about this issue again.
Common to Mankind
Posted by: Marc Leblanc
I believe violent behavior is a propensity mankind shares. It's not something that is unique to one group of video gamers or to a religious group either....Since there is violence in humanity, it is found in the Bible, but this book is trying to unite mankind and lift all men under the umbrella of and toward a loving God. Violent video games do not serve this purpose in any way shape or form.
How do parents fit into this debate?
Posted by: Dwight Stickler
Parents; if you don't want your children acting out the things that they see in violent video games or other forms of violent expressions--don't spend the money providing your children access to it. Was that so hard to figure out?
The Bible, the New York Times, CNN and Fox News reporting on violent and evil conduct--which most children and young people, and an increasing number of citizens, ignore anyway, or dramatic portrayals of crime from Shakespeare to Judging Amy or Law & Order, are hardly likely to lead anyone to commit crimes or suicide, but, in my professional experience, including representing a lot of abused and suicidal children, delinquents, and a few murderers and sex offenders, etc., the correlation between getting deeply--yes, too deeply, which for some is just once--involved in electronic entertainment from the Satanic "music" of Marilyn Manson, some so-called "adult" cable or dish tv, or some of the graphically violent video games, and suicidal, or sexually or otherwise aggressively violent, behavior, some at very shockingly young ages. Where do you think 8, 9 and 11 year old kids learn to act out rape, sodomy, oral sex, and torture against younger kids. Some of their language, far beyond their years, is one dead giveaway to where too many of them are learning these and other violent behaviors.
Given some evidence, including statements by serial rapist and murderer Ted Bundy and others who knew they were about to die and had no further motive to lie, I believe that there is also a significant causal link between a lot of pornography and such offenses or many of them.
If we really believed that repetitive lyrics and graphic images had no effect upon behavior, a lot of high-priced advertising talent would be out of work.
Video images can be far more potent than print media. I read a violent western story in the Saturday Evening Post as a child, about sixth grade, with no particular effect. Years later, I happened to walk into a room just in time to see a key scene, in which the character played by Jimmy Stewart, who I happened to hve met several times in real life living in his home town, is held and shot through the hand by the bad guy. Stewart did a pretty good job playing the scene "without appearing to be acting" as was his professional credo. Although I quickly recognized the story, which I hadn't thought about in a quarter century, and knew the outcome, the graphic image of this brutal violence shocked and haunted me.
Of course, in my practice and other privileged and confidential relationships, I also became aware that some kids learned vicious sexual and other abuse the hrd way from family members, some of whom were pillars of the local social, religious, economic, and political scene (both parties), but the language appears to be somewhat different in osme of those cases, according to Child Protective Service and other people I dealt with in relation to some of these people, and some of their molesters were adults when the first so-called "adult" video games came along.
I have serious questions about the people who make, sell, and buy some of the so-called "adult" computer content offered even in the mainstream computer magazines, much less the stuff we encountered in certain child custody cases, and about the safety of their children. Personally, I don't need that to get interested in sex.
A lawyer's advertisements in Texas have to be reviewed and cleared by the State Bar, for a fee. Why this kind of thing should not be regulated at least as strictly as legal advrtising has always been a mystery to me except that there seems to be a lot of money in it that seems to drive some alleged First Amendment concerns.
Does anybody who has ever read it, even to try to refute it, actually and in good faith believe that there is anything in the Boble, which deals with practically every crime in the modern Penal Code except harmful computer access, which is just a new form of older crimes it does touch upon,that is likely to incite someone to steal a car for a thrill, commit incest or other rape, or murder? Of course, the Bible an hte Koran, and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, have been cited as an excuse for any number of atrocities.but the proximate causal link that one finds in violent video games and pornography simply doesns not really exist there.
Ask any good teacher, child psychologist or psychiatrist, Child Protective Services case worker, or juvenile officer how many people they know who were influenced to commit crimes or antisocial acts after consuming violent video games or videos, and how many they have encountered who have done so after having been exposed to the Bible.
Hey-No Spell Checker available here! I have a vision problem and need one to catch typos.
Transaction 7
PETER S. CHAMBERLAIN
1309 Hunt Street
Commerce, Texas 75428-2916
peterschamberlain@earthlink.net
(903)886-2323
CELL: (903)366-6926 9UNLISTED DO NOT PUBLISH)
- It seems the connection is being made.
- by March 24, 2005 10:23 AM PST
- Good timing on this "editorial."
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(5 Comments)http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/24/MNG7UBU2GT1.DTL&feed=rss.news
"In the sixth grade, Weise met Downwind's son, Sky Grant, and the two became close friends, often playing video games together. Grant recalled that Weise hated his mother and had a tendency to skip ahead to violent parts in movies they rented."
The truth will come out.