Before you flip completely out, I’m not really calling for a ban on the bible. However, if the people advocating for violent video game bans would follow their argument logically, they should. They won’t, of course, because they’re all hypocrites.
Utah’s Brigham Young University recently conducted a study on 490 students about the psychological affects of reading violent passages in the bible. The study found a correlation between exposure to scriptural violence that is condoned by God and increased aggression.
What makes this study interesting to me is the similarity of it to studies on video game violence and how they affect children. The same correlation has been found on quite a few studies on video game violence. The affects of violence on people are exactly the same between reading violent scriptures in the bible and playing violent video games.
What’s different between the studies on video game violence and violence in the bible is that nobody will ask the politicians to ban the bible from underage kids based on this new study. All kinds of Christian moralists and family values advocates have, however, been advocating for various levels of video game bans for years based on similar studies on video game violence.
This study is the perfect way to show the stupidity and downright dishonesty of the video game violence “debate” in this and other countries. One wonders how the Christian moralists and other blowhards will react to this study and the inevitable comparison between it and the studies on video game violence.
-TPP