Intelligent design and popular culture: Spore game site dupes atheists

The Wall Street Journal appears to have noticed Spore, the "design your own universe" game which subtly mocks the Darwinian fairy tale - if we go by Robert Costa's story, "Creation Simulation" (September 19, 2008):

Apparently, a horde of professional and amateur atheists noticed it also:

One site, AntiSpore.com, appeared to be set up to counter what one poster, a self-described concerned Christian parent, called the game's "propaganda aimed directly at our children to teach them evolution instead of creationism." But after thousands of postings on AntiSpore, mostly by angst-filled atheist gamers bewildered and angry that someone could actually question evolution, the anonymous creator of the site announced last week that AntiSpore was in fact a hoax.

[ ... ]

But while many proponents of evolutionary theory, and fans of Spore, were spoiling for a fight, their opponents have never really showed up to do battle -- there were no Spore-inspired creationist rallies, no talk-show specials, no railing sermons. The Spore debate has not devolved into a modern-day Scopes Monkey Trial. What happened?

The story essentially insults traditional Christians by assuming that they should have been as stupid as the atheists whose creatn story is Darwinism - to which any magical result can be credited. So the big question is, why aren't the Christians so stupid? Why didn't they generally fall for gimmicks, like they are supposed to do in the script - and did not in fact do in the Scopes Monkey Trial either?

Well how about this?: Darwinism is stupid, and encourages stupidity. Intelligent design is intelligent and encourages intelligence.

Anyway, the article then deteriorates into uninformative observations by Templeton Foundation bureaucrat Charles Harper.

Now, in the first place, the answer to whether Spore is a game about intelligent design is - of course - yes.

All games above the level of Bingo! are by definition about intelligent design. The gamer is the designer and his score helps determine how intelligent he is.

Of course, if you want to believe that the universe is more like Bingo!, get yourself a card, and please don't let me detain you.

See also: "Darwinism and popular culture: The Spore game subtly mocks the Darwinian fairy tale"

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: