The events of the past week have got me thinking again about an idea that I’ve been kicking around for a while. (No, I don’t plan to incorporate any of these ideas into EOS, but they’re interesting ideas for a larger, civilization-style game — as opposed to the more military-focused game that is EOS. Perhaps some future game will incorporate some of these ideas.) The idea is about the placing religion into a strategy game. Religion affects societies on multiple levels. Conversion is primarily an individual decision based on personal reasons, but a large number of believers can affecting the whole civilization in major ways - perhaps affecting society’s lawfulness, curtailing liberties, affecting scientific advancement, affect population growth, the spread of disease, challenge the powers of the government, and give rise to inter-religious tensions. I should probably back up a bit and provide a few real-world examples of ways that religions can affect these things.

Lawfulness: it seems logical that belief in karma or a god handing out punishments and rewards would increase the lawfulness of a society - particularly in societies where there is not a strong legal structure. (In places where people acknowledge established authorities and criminals are almost always punished by the established legal system, religion’s effect might be weak. This would explain the lawfulness of northern european nations such as the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden - which have low crime rates and high levels of atheism.) Of course, adherence to religious doctrine can cause conflicts with lawfulness if a religion’s opinion of “the right thing to do” does not correspond with a nation’s opinion of “the right thing to do”. There are plenty of cases where people have defied their governments for religious reasons saying things like “God’s laws are higher than man’s laws”. This belief can be good for society in cases where the government is wrong, and harmful if one’s religious beliefs are harmful. On the flip-side is the way that some religions strengthen government’s control of the people. For example, the idea of the “divine right of kings” (that God put leaders in power, so you should obey them) helps add religious backing to the government’s decisions and weakens dissent. The ancient Egyptians, Romans, and World War 2 Japanese claimed that their leaders were gods - again, this strengthens the government’s control of the people.

Population Growth: religions can promote or suppress population growth. This has effects on nation’s long-term survival. A phrase I heard once said something along the lines of: “in the long term, the most powerful weapon is birthrate”. Birthrates (which affect population growth exponentially) not only affect the number of soldiers that can be placed on the battlefield, but it also affects elections and large numbers can even influence dictators. Mormonism says that a believer’s rewards in heaven are directly linked to the number of children a believer has. Catholicism takes a different route in creating religious injunctions against contraception and abortion. Both result in larger numbers of Mormons and Catholics. Ultimately (if believers take these teaching seriously), this results in skewing a nation’s religious beliefs in that direction, give those religions more power, and increase the manpower of those nations. On the other hand, Shakers (who believe in celebacy) ultimately remove themselves from political power by dwindling numbers and (if they made-up a significant portion of a nation’s populace) would cripple a nation’s military power. One example of how birthrate differentials can manifest themselves into political realities is the recently news report that Ariel Sharon made the decision to withdraw from some Palestinian territories because Palestinians have higher birthrates than Jews. While the Jews still maintain numerical superiority, that won’t be true in as little as 20 years:

Sharon … had come to a profoundly important political conclusion: that Israel could not remain a democratic and Jewish state and still occupy the West Bank territory it had captured in the Six-Day War in 1967. The task of controlling more than a million Palestinians in the West Bank had become too onerous. Annexing the West Bank to Israel proper, given the high birth rate of the Palestinians and much lower rate of the Israelis, would eventually mean that Jews would become a minority population in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. (Link)

Since Israel is a democracy, it means that Palestinians would ultimately take control of the Israeli elections and Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. Some people said that it would be racist for Arial Sharon to make this kind of decision on that basis. I think it’s only logical for him to think this way.

Similar birthrate differences helped lead to the Lebanese civil war.

Science: religions are generally not explicitly anti-science. But, on many occasions, they can conflict with technology and science for a variety of reasons: science conflicts with their interpretations of ‘revealed truth’ (Christian, Muslim, Hindu Creationists; the Mormon belief that Native Americans are decended from a group of ancient Jews; there’s a high-level Saudi Cleric who claims that the sun revolves around the earth - because the Koran says so; and there is even an occasional Catholic who promotes geocentrism for religious reasons), they might downplay the importance of scientific research in favor of religious study (in Saudi Arabia curriculum control by Islamists has resulted in an inordinate emphasis on rote memorization of religious texts and insufficient development of marketable, practical skills), they might limit the spread of technology because it conflicts with the ways religious believers “should” live and extreme religious views can make believers suspicious of all foreign technologies (phones, television, radio, and cars were all once deemed “unislamic”; the Amish distance themselves from technologies), it might also have religious ideas about the role of women that prevents them from contributing to scientific research (Taliban-controlled Afghanistan both prevented the education of women, and religious zealots protested King Faisal (Saudi Arabia) when he introduced education for girls in the 1960s). Theoretically, a religion might take the position that nonreligious education and scientific research pales in comparison to the work believers should be doing - getting converts, purifying themselves for the afterlife, or some other task that the religion deems to be important. In the real world, of course, it would be incorrect to say that religion is monolithic on these issues. Amish is an offshoot of Christianity afterall - and it’s hard to define Christianity as a single movement when you have to include branches as diverse as the Amish (avoid technology, large families), Christian Scientists (avoid medicine), Fred Phelps (anti-gay hatemonger), Episcopalians (which allows gay and lesbian priests), Francis of Assisi (preached proverty), and properity theology (God rewards people with wealth). Instead, it makes more sense to talk about branches and movements within religions (Wahhabis being a branch of intolerant anti-intellectuals within Islam).

Disease and Health: some religious movements avoid medicine (like the Christian Scientists, who avoid conventional medicine in favor of prayer and belief that whatever happens is God’s will), and there are other cases where the religious mess up medical interventions. In Nigeria polio vaccinations came to a halt after some Muslim clerics claimed that polio vaccinations would sterilize people who took it - part of an evil Western plot to sterilize Muslims and drive them to extinction:

The controversy began in July 2003, after some Islamic religious leaders charged that vaccines supplied by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had been deliberately contaminated with sterilization chemicals as part of the US war on terrorism. In response, four state governments in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria halted a vital immunization campaign until their safety concerns were met. (Link)

Challenging the Government: China started to get nervous a few years ago when a bunch of Falun Gong members protested the government. The group claims 70-100 million followers. The Chinese government says they have around 2 million followers. The 70-100 million number is most certainly an overestimate, but even if we take the 2 million number, it’s a phenomenal growth rate considering that the group started in 1992. Of course, a large component of “challenging the established government” depends on the position that the religion take relative to the government. Muslims end up establishing Islamic Law (Sharia) and the hardline Muslims (like Osama Bin Ladin) promote the dissolution of modern Muslim nations and the creation of a single Islamic state under a caliphate (essentially a priest-king) who rules over all. The long-term goal of some Islamists is the creation of a one-world Islamic government, where everyone is ruled by Islamic law. Even leaving these hardline opinions aside, the idea of separation of religion from state are foreign in Islam - although there is a surprising amount of support for separating the two among Muslims. Obviously, these religiously-inspired ideas are at odds with government (i.e. game-player) control.

As far as religions and their growth rates are concerned, it seems like religions are in a “survival of the fittest” kind of situation. Most religions haven’t really expanded their territory in centuries. What seems to have happened is that the modern major religions have displaced the weaker religions (like the Druids, Roman mythology, Zoroastrianism). Now that the major religions have to “deconvert” believers in another major (i.e. strong) religion to gain converts, the religions haven’t really moved much. Perhaps that’s part of the story behind the Falun Gong growth rate - China doesn’t have a strong religion already there to help people resist conversion. This brings up an interesting interaction about the spread of religion in a strategy game - it works fastest among believers of “weaker” religions. (Weaker and stronger, in this context meaning the ability of a religion to retain and gain converts.)

Inter-religious/Intra-religious tensions: There is always the problem of inter/intra-religious tensions. The Catholics and Protestants fought against each other. The Sunnis and Shi’ites fight against each other. There were Crusades and Jihads. On an even lower level, there’s a conflict between the Northern (Islamic, Arab) Sudanese against the Southern (Christian/Animist, Black) Sudanese. There’s the ongoing conflicts between north (Muslim) and south (Christian) Nigeria. Even when they aren’t directly religious conflicts, the religion opens divides in the way people see things and the way they believe things “should be”. Gaps between perceptions and the way things “ought to be” ends up being a major cause of conflict whether we’re talking about Nigeria or the US’ Republicans and Democrats. For example, prohibition can become a hot issue when you have a large Muslim majority who decide that it would help the nation be more Islamic if they enforced prohibition on the entire population. This goal might be accomplished democratically (in this case, tyrany of the majority), or by burning bars to the ground (as in Nigeria). There’s also the issue of religious freedom. Some nations make it illegal to preach or convert anyone to any religion other than Islam (Saudi Arabia). These hardline nations also make it illegal to criticise Islam (e.g. Salman Rushdie). As far as a strategy game is concerned, it can mean conflicts within a nation’s own territory, it can mean border conflicts between nations (as with Pakistani terrorists crossing the border to kill people in India). All of this adds up to forcing nations to concentrate on their internal strife, dealing with international terrorists stirring up trouble between nations, and adds the possibility of nations capitalizing on inter-religious tensions and support these religiously motivated rebel groups against a common foe (e.g. the US support of mujahidin against the USSR’ invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s).

Leaders: There’s also the question of what to do with leaders - whether they are leaders of some newly-arising religion or cult, they are a high-level cleric of an existing religion (like Al-Sadr), or simply a non-religious rebel leader. Do you attempt to capture them, leading to protests and calls for his/her release? Kill them and hope that they don’t become a martyr figure? Do you even know where they are located, or are they moving around using a shadowy network of followers? Do they promote violence or non-violence?

All this leads to some gameplay opportunities. Do you try to suppress some religions? What if they are anti-government? Even if you attempt to suppress them, does it work (or, do they ultimately gain power as was the case with Christianity and Rome?) Do they try to secede from your nation and establish a separate nation more in-line with their religious beliefs? Does the religion form zealots who defiantly resist your control (e.g. Masada)? And what happens when a rumor spreads among the believers? (Using the real-world as inspiration, I already mentioned the rumor of an evil sterilization plot against Muslims in Nigeria, there’s a rumor in Libya that Western doctors were intentionally infecting children with AIDS, the 1857 Indian rebellion against the British was helped along by the rumor that pig’s fat was used in guns used by Muslim and Hindu soldiers (under British control) - something that, based on religious beliefs, was very offensive.) Rumors provide opportunities for changes for or against player control.

There have been some games that attempted to include religion in the gameplay. Civilization 4 allows civilizations to establish religions. (Which, really, is pretty artificial since civilizations/leaders of civilizations have rarely been behind the establishment of religion — Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha where not established leaders. Although the Romans and Egyptians did make a conscious decision to do so.) As I understand it, in Civ4 (which I haven’t played further than the demo) religion is used to influence people in other civilizations - perhaps to gain control of territory by having believers volunarily join your nation, or start riots against their own nation when your nations are at war. In that sense Civ4 hasn’t gone very in depth on the religion factor.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.