Home // February 25th-29th 2008 > Bishop warns against graphic video games
Bishop Porteous' argument is partially flawed, and only seems to serve to perpetuate the myths surrounding video games and social violence. His assertion that there is a "...direct cause and effect between exposure to violence and attitudes toward risky behaviour." does not fully characterize Ms. Brady's research (which seems on the surface to be a bit flawed itself...no control group, for instance). For example, the research report on the UCSF website notes that, "The study did not show, however, that the type of video game played had any effect on attitudes toward violence or the dangers of sex without a condom." This statement flies in the face of Bishop Porteous' assertion. Granted, she then goes on to say that, "Among those participants with a greater history of lifetime violence exposure, play of GTA III led to a greater tendency to infer hostile intent in social situations." However, this indicates a CORRELATIVE relationship, NOT a causal relationship. It is important to keep these two ideas separate, as one (causal) indicates that it is video games' fault, where the other (correlative) indicates that there may be some unidentified cause of behavior. Assigning cause in this instance not only falsely assigns blame, but risks "sticking our heads in the sand" and keeping us from finding the true cause of the issue. IMHO, Bishop Porteous' position is irresponsible and damages both his and his organization's reputation.
Posted By: Jeff
Yeah, it’s not like one could demand warrants to search homes for potential hate speech from religious groups that promote violence and criminal behavior, huh? http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-oxnard15feb15,1,1414535.story Nah. Why would we demand to search homes for religious speech that might cause violent and/or criminal behavior? We should only be linking video games, TV, movies, and books. Violent crime couldn’t be due to years of abuse by religiously extremist Parents against children, huh? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_J._Murray No, no. Only the Crusades were violent and they were justifiable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Rudolph Nope, religion isn’t to blame for raising kids into adults who hate. http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/07/god_told_me_to_kill_gays.php Shame on you gamers! Shame on you! The Catholic Church is ALWAYS right! It’s never done anything wrong! Ever! Video games are the devil’s work! (Ugh, I gotta go puke. Shoulda known better than to try to imitate such ignorant buffoons. Always makes my stomach churn.) Nightwng2000
Posted By: Nightwng2000
It would be best to remove graphic literature from children as well. The bible tells of many murders, incest, rape, genocide, torture and yet they are handed out to young children. Because there is no effective way to prevent children from getting their hands on this deeply disturbing book, I guess we just need to ban it from everyone. After all, apparently it is impossible for parents to own such a text if it puts children at risk of being exposed to such horrific concepts. ***************************** A lot of people may think that this argument is facetious or designed to be a dig at religions in general, Catholicism specifically. It isn't. It's an example of a rampant double standard. We do not have ratings in this country for books, but if we did, the Bible would be rated 18+ because it contains the very things people are terrified kids are going to experience in games. And if the "moral majority" refused to create an 18+ rating for books, the bible would then be banned? I do not believe the bible should be banned of course, but I find it hypocritical to call for the continued censorship of one form of media when the key doctrine of your religion is not so dissimilar content wise.
Posted By: Asmo
I can only assume that Bishop Porteous is familiar neither with video games or with the research on their effects. If he was, he might be aware that even the most sexually explicit mainstream video game is far less explicit (and realistic) than most prime time movies, and that research into the negative effects of video games is plagued by bias and poor methodology and at best shows a correlational rather than a causal link between video games and violence. The fact that Australia allows R18 movies but bans games that exceed MA15 content is quite frankly ludicrous.
Posted By: Stephan Hamat-Rains
Craig Anderson's research, the source for the good Bishop's understanding of video game violence, is fundamentally flawed. The sample sizes are too small, the test for aggression too weak, and the conclusion is nowhere near as accurate as claimed. His work was rejected by the federal court of America, and has also been rejected by most researchers in this field. Instead of choosing two studies to determine your whole argument, why not look at the WHOLE spectrum of work in this field. You'll find that not one study of violence and media has conclusive proof that media violence causes real world violence. In fact, if you look at the real world statistics for violence, you'll see that it is dropping in most developed nations, especially amongst the young. Here's the stats for Australia: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2006/fig052.png But believe what you want to, Bishop. I just hope that when it is time to be judged, God can forgive you for spreading half-truths.
Posted By: Funky J
What an interesting way to get people interested in reading! Book trailers are like movie trailers, but for books! You can find them all over the internet now, but here is a site that's featuring them on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/booktrailers
Posted By: Neeraj
And who might be the people doing this "research"? for all I know it's an anti-video gaming league, and why does it conflict with other research that states that there is a *correlational* (those things should be asterisks around the word correlational, symbolizing, as I'm sure you all know, an italicized word) link rather than a *causal* link, meaning that it is quite a bit more likely that violent people are attracted to violent media rather than violent media making people violent. Assuming that everyone who plays violent video games is violent is like assuming that everyone who drinks scotch is an alcoholic. A better explanation would be here http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/365275.html another explanation is here: http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/007883.html (note the graph that indicates that violence in youth is going down rather then up another would be myself, unless I go about killing people or committing violent acts in my sleep then I, an adolescent who plays quite a few violent videogames, am not a violent person because these videogames are a release mechanism. Better to be shooting pixels on a screen than people on the street (not that I would go on a shooting rampage - as soon as I stop playing games, I do stuff, like camp for weeks at a time. As a matter of fact, most of this week has been with out video game and I'm not feeling particularly violent at the moment so there you have a view of a teenager- I hope for feedback
Posted By: APROUDGAMER
This is mostly towards you, Asmo. I agree that the Bible contains accounts of, as you have stated, "murders, incest, rape, genocide, torture". But my question to you is this: Does the Bible condone these practices? Does the Bible promote these acts of injustice or does it strongly reject them? The majority of the violent video games(Grand Theft Auto, Assasin's Creed to name a few) are attempting to assert violence as a way of life; as an acceptable way to live. The Bible tells us of these stories of violence , not to promote them but to reject them. It is neccessary for us to know about these things because they happen. We need to understand these things so that we may too, reject them. Godbless.
Posted By: Andrew
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