Jesus Take The Wheel
I reread F13.net’s interview with McQuaid last night, mainly because I wanted to read again Brad’s hilariously schizophrenic rationalisation for why he thinks that it’s okey-dokey to have witchcraft, wizardry, polytheistic gods, occult symbolism and genocidal violence (”Kill 100 sentient fluffies”) in games, while demons and angels are problematic. Does he seriously think that there Christian parents who believe that demons are real and who don’t object to all the other ungodly stuff?
Anyway, I must have missed the follow-up question the first time I read the interview. Several employees alleged that Brad McQuaid distributed religious propaganda at the workplace and that there was a religious factor in promotions. Brad McQuaid sounds quite sincere in his strong denial:
F13.net: That cuts directly to the core of something I’ve heard from at least a couple employees who are upset. Someone is alleging – and I’m sure I’ll get a straight no comment, but please just deal with the question… Did you distribute religious materials and offer promotions based on people who took you up on it?
Brad McQuaid: Absolutely not. No and no. Nor would I ever.f13.net: Ok.
Brad McQuaid: I believe very much in spreading the gospel of Christianity through ones actions. I don’t think you’re going to force or debate anyone into believing something. It’s got to be based on your actions and morals. On top of that in a work environment – and on top of that, in a management position – it is completely unacceptable to do anything like that and I wouldn’t dream of it.
During the heyday of the official Sigil forums, Brad occasionally participated in forum debates of religious nature. While it became clear that he held some form of religious belief, his postings were very moderate, open-minded, balanced and thoughtful. I don’t recall any bible thumping, overt dogmatism or even the kind of incessant Jesus babble you’d expect from someone who’d promote employees based on religion. In fact, I enjoyed reading some of his postings on these subjects and I’m a baby-eating hardcore atheist.
While you can’t analyze someone’s personality based on a bunch of forum postings, I pretty much dismissed these allegations immediately, mainly because I concluded from his postings that he was precisely the kind of Christian who would not try impose his religiosity on others.
Then I remembered a private message I received in late 2005 on the official Sigil forums. There was a huge Evolution vs Intelligent Design debate going on and I argued quite ardently against the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that is ID. A Sigil employee, who was an Associate Game Designer at that time, wrote me this PM:
I just wanted to let you know that you did a great job out there destroying the ID arguments. It is not prudent for me to get involved in such discussions as a developer as tempting as it might be, but the subject itself hits home. [...] Hearing people attack (especially through strawmen) something I hold so dearly (the scientific process) makes my blood boil, and it does somewhat annoy me that I can’t do anything about it on our boards. Luckily you said and did everything right.
Here are some of my favorite arguements against ID claims that work well for lay people. Feel free to use them as you like, I might send you more as I think of them.
1. New York City is irreducably complex. Take away any of the vital mechanisms that are needed to run the city; water system, sewage system, police, traffic lights, roads, electricity, etc. and the city ceases to function. Therefore, by ID logic, New York City must have been specially created.
2. If your parents hadn’t mated with eachother, or either of their parents, or any of their parents parents, or so on for thousands and thousands of generations then you would not exist. Since the probablility of all those people mating with all those other people is so high, you don’t exist.
3. ID disproves itself (and for this reason makes for horrible philosophy). The claim that something as complex as life can only come from something intelligent (and therefore at least equally complex) is an infinite regression. A creator will always have to have a creator. If the IDer claims that at some point complexity could have arisen from something less complex, or always existed (however ill-defined complexity is) then they just countered the basic tenet of ID, and their very own claim.
Just to let you know, I didn’t send this PM. I would likely get in trouble if this PM, its contents, my personal feelings, or the fact that I even sent you one regarding this subject were made public. So please, keep this between us.
And keep up the good fight, those that want to control others through ignorance will attack science at every turn, as it provides a mechanism for escape from ignorance (and therefore control).
I reproduced the whole message for context (except for some bits in the first paragraph containing personal background information). The relevant part is the paragraph before the last.
Note the exact wording. He wasn’t worried because it wasn’t prudent or against company policy to engage in such debates publicly (which he didn’t do), he was worried that he’d likely get into trouble if the content of the message or his personal feelings on the subject were made public.
While this certainly doesn’t constitute evidence for the accusation that Brad McQuaid tried to shove Jeebus down his employees throats, it does raise the question what kind of work enviroment existed at Sigil – and what caused it. A work enviroment in which employees were scared to openly admit that they prefer a naturalistic world view to a religious one?
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into this.