Why I Started a New Religion

I'm not your typical messiah. I've got short hair, a low pain threshold, not enough friends to even pretend that I have disciples and I'm not a carpenter - DIY in general being a weak point.

No, I design political board games for a living. (You might know about War on Terror, which has the unlikely honour of being the only board game in history to be classified an offensive weapon). And when people find this out, they always - always - have an incredible idea that I simply must use for my next game. "You should do a game about Wikileaks", "You should do a game about phone hacking", "You should do a game about Scottish devolution" (yeah, that's not a game; that's narcolepsy-in-a-box).

Curiously though, for such supposedly spiritually-bankrupt times, a large number of these helpful suggestions are religious in nature, my favourite so far being: "You should do a game about how it's fine to draw pictures of Jesus, but not Muhammad". (While 'Prophictionary' would be an easy pitch, I think the novelty would wear off after, ooh, a couple of rounds).

There's definitely room for a satirical religious game, but how to avoid the usual tired clichés? We all know what detractors claim: that religion is the driving force behind history's most egregious episodes, accused of starting wars, craving power, harming children and preying on the weak. Kind of like an abstract form of Tony Blair.

But I wanted to do a religious game that showed religion in itself could be benevolent, it's just the application and interpretation that's problematic. Yet this gets stale quickly. The usual dividing lines in this argument run similar to those of gun control in the US: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". Therefore, religion doesn't kill people, people with religion kill people. Drunk drivers don't kill people, drunk drivers who hit people and kill people, kill people... It's a facile argument that gets meaningless very quickly. The thing is, if religion really is so intoxicatingly corruptible, then it doesn't matter how great it is on paper, it's never going to have a happy ending.


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/andrew-sheerin/the-hen-commandments-beyond-belief_b_6212030.html?utm_hp_ref=uk