Time Immortal

It seems that reviewers of EA’s new “sim”-type game, Spore (by Will Wright, the man behind the various other “sim” games), can’t help but review the game without invoking intelligent design. GetReligion has noticed the phenomenon as well.

Personally, I’m not sure that intelligent design is the best phrase to use to describe the role the player fulfils in the game, certainly not according to the meaning we have come to associate with the phrase thanks to the efforts and errors of the likes of Michael Behe et. al.

Personally, I’m not inclined to think of the game as something wedded to ID, or that somehow gives that movement credence…but of course, I haven’t played the game just yet. I think I’ll have to add that to my list of priorities.

What’s interesting, though, is how quickly the notion of God creeps into the analysis of the game made by many different commentators. That’s unusual to see, given that the game was intended to be a “playable” form of evolution. Perhaps, just perhaps, the game does that and goes one further, communicating in some unconscious way that all this grand creation, at every point of its evolution, could not have transpired without being sustained and ordained by a creator God.

Which sounds rather like the conjecture at the core of Evolutionary Creationism, doesn’t it?

I will have to pick up Spore and give it a play-through. Perhaps Denyse O’Leary, when she has finished talking down to me, will consider doing the same.