As a Christian, I really don’t see what you’ve said as “anti-christian” (in the right light it could even be said to be “pro-christian”) and I would most likely purchase it if done well.
Though, as you’ve probably already read, it wouldn’t be a good idea…
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So they want me to kill an innocent guy so they don’t have to deal with Christians, and Christmas… and cause a time paradox? Never mind the effects of Christianity.
Why not go further and nip it in the bud? Like Judaism? Or make it so it doesn’t spread?
I’d honestly rather be a zombie. Than be in a zombie apocalypse. I don’t see much of a point of it if there’s other typical fantasy stuff as then it wouldn’t seem like the biggest concern.
Anyway I’d be fine with either 
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That thought did cross my mind. Just knock off Abraham and you have messed over three organized, monotheistic religions. Not counting sects, heresies, etc.
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My final word on this for now: The Assassination of Mary, Mother of Jesus isn’t just an idea I’ve had on a whim. It’s an idea I’ve been developing since 2012 with historical research ongoing since 2014, and the plot is quite solid. Again, rather than rebuff your concerns, all I can say is ‘don’t worry, I’ve got them covered’.
Regardless, this story is now for another day.
Zombies of Scarrh is an idea I’ve had for a while too (about 2 years for this one). Think Lucid’s Hero of Daria in terms of playing - this will very much be a game. You will go through childhood, Young adult life, then adulthood. It will be open, allowing you to go anywhere with time driven events that take place whether you are present or not. This means you can skip the whole story if you’d want, or travel and be part of the action. Be carful though; miss too much and the zombie hoard might leave you with nowhere to go…
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I applaud on your determination to push through the first story in near future so I wish you good fortune on that. As for the Zombie story, I wouldn’t mind trying the demo once it’s out though I’m not much into zombie genre much.
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They both seem to have their own unique story. But I think Zombies of Scarrh would be beatter suited.
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You know, I’m not so sure about the first idea because I’m not sure, thematically, what you’re trying to do with the story. You have a plot, yes, but what is the point of the story? Thing is, if you kill off a revered figure (highly revered in some Christian sects) to keep Christianity from ever becoming a thing, then you’re making a statement whether you intend to or not. I don’t believe you can avoid that, and so it’s best to account for and address it. In this case, you might end up with a soulless story if you don’t pay attention to the implications of your work. Your audience will have some sort of investment or knowledge of Christianity. Play off of those expectations, as they can be powerful. I think it’s the wrong move to ignore them. Otherwise, you make something that will be controversial and nothing more. Something entertaining to some, possibly distasteful to others. It’s better to be controversial and make a point IMO. Harness that controversy.
So, I’d think through carefully about what you’re trying to say and accomplish. Are you critiquing the institution of organized religion? Hell, there’s a way to poke at both Christians and atheists with that kind of plot. After all, the atheists are (in the words of another poster) effectively a murder cult that blames religion for a dark future that may not be wholly religion’s fault (global warming is more the fault of corporate greed and consumerism, although corporations are similar to organized religion in many damning ways). There are many nuances you need to tease out of this story to make it work.
Honestly, I’d write the story as a satirical farce, but that’s just me. It’s your story. I hope I don’t sound pedantic. I just started thinking about how I would personally attempt to make a story like that work.
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Thank you for your words of advice. Do not worry though, I have not just made this idea on a whim, but I have been thinking and refining this story for several years now. None of your concerns fit into what I envision.
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I don’t read anymore since I see this words…I vote for the zombie game
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You said many times about that, that you have the perfect story to keep from hurting people on all sides of the issue but you couldn’t share anything about it. Can you really expect someone to believe something fantastical exists without being able to see it? To just have faith in it regardless?
I kid, I kid. And as to the mention of wiping out Judaism in the first place, read a novel about a year ago that went that route. I loves me some alternate history (my library has no shortage of Turtledove titles, though I wish he would stop with the gigantic series since it makes it hard to keep up), and a novel called Roma Eterna has its divergence point at the Red Sea. It is just mentioned offhand that there used to be a Jewish tribe, but they were slaughtered and scattered trying to flee from the Egyptians, with the few survivors mostly existing as servants and slaves. As a result, no Judaism rising to power, no Christianity, and the Roman Empire keeps on for thousands of years. A bit of a meandering book, but ultimately interesting.
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Isn’t it want atheism always says ?? 
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I don’t know if the story is perfect, but no one has come up with a flaw that warrants a change to it yet.
The problem you’re having is you are so fixated on the title that you’ve missed everything else. That’s partly intentional and I don’t want to say any more about it.
Note: this isn’t the first time I’ve discussed this book on these forums. I first contemplated starting the story a couple of years back:
The time still isn’t right though 
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The true paradox is why atheists would bother with all this since they don’t believe it happened anyway. 
I’m a sucker for a good time travel story. I trust that you’d write it so as to offend a minimum of people. Remember all the excitement over Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code? Although, he managed to soothe some people with a less descriptive title. You at least have to hear more about it, before you can be offended.
Zombies are good too. 
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This thread is weird enough to get me to stop lurking.
I’m really tired of zombie apocalypse games, but religious discussion is usually interesting.
This game concept seems like it’s missing a whole lot of important information though. I mean… presumably if these people are willing to go on a one way trip into the past to murder someone they’ve thought long and hard about it… but if they had I don’t really see how they could have decided to go through with it while still being capable of actually doing it. Just for starters, even if everything goes as they hope it will they won’t actually be able to appreciate the fruits of their labors. This is essentially a suicide mission. To go on such a mission would require either some serious stupidity or serious desperation. If the former, it seems implausible that they’d even be able get their time machine to work at all nevermind actually navigating through multiple timelines in order to successfully find Mary, if the latter, it seems implausible that the world could be in a state where time travel would be a available.
Aside from all that there are a host of other issues. There’s really no solid proof Jesus even existed.
Even if you somehow got to the right time, how would you even find your target? It’s not like we even have any evidence of what she actually looked like… again, assuming she even actually existed.
If you go back in time for the express purpose of changing the past to change the present then that action changes the present, your entire history is rewritten as well to be one where those events didn’t take place, thus making it so that you never went back to the past to change them, thus making it so that you did, thus making it so that you didn’t… etc… this is a textbook grandfather paradox.
Getting rid of Christianity isn’t going to solve much of anything. If people didn’t have Christianity they’d just follow another religion or create one of their own. Modern Christianity only exists today because a Roman Emperor found it helpful to culturally appropriate it. If all it took to keep people from being religious was to get rid of established religions then we wouldn’t have militant atheists who “know” there is no god and worship scientific data without any real grasp of or respect for the scientific method. Maybe that’s even your whole point in telling this story, but since it’s a suicide mission there’s no way the characters will ever learn how stupid they are so you’ll just have to cut to a third person narration to explain the ending, and even then if they really are that thoughtless how are they able to pull this plan off at all?
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The plot for the first story just doesn’t make sense to me. You can’t get rid of religion, and there were other religions besides Christianity. So if Christianity didn’t arise, then people would just stick to what was already there, and those would spread even more instead. Furthermore, there’s no telling if another religion that was never in existence before would take its place now. Adding to the facts that others have already brought up (people not even sure Jesus is real (so killing Mary wouldn’t do squat), God could take care of it (struck by lightning, using someone other than Mary, whatever, etc.), it just seems like a not so smart idea on the part of the atheists. There’s just too many plot issues or variables that you would have to account for if you even want to remotely be able to pull this game off. I think it’s an ambitious idea, but I’m not really sure it could be pulled off. So I would probably focus on the zombie game. People tend to like zombies (though not me).
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… What.
Atheists blaming Christians of global warming makes as much sense as when pastors preach that allowing homosexual marriage will cause floods and earthquakes. And why only Christianity? While they are at it, why don’t they remove all religions, like Islam, since it’s also quite big and has a lot of influence over people?
I’m still struggling to understand the whole point, really. Atheists don’t believe in God; why would they bother to go back in time, thousands of years, just to off some poor lass (as if murder wasn’t such a big deal…) if they don’t believe in God? They have no reason to start the whole scheme, it’s like planning to steal something that’s intangible.
I’m not personally offended, but I can see why other Atheists might; as it is, we are seen as bitter and angry, frothing from the mouth the moment someone mentions anything about religion, thinking of believers as idiots and being hella condescending to them, and loathe Jesus/God (like… you can’t hate someone you think doesn’t exist, that’s not real; hating them would imply that you do believe in God, thus making you a theist). The game’s premise now will makes us ready to murder a poor teen (because Mary was what, 15 or so when she had Jesus?), so Atheists are going to be the baddies of your story.
Then I would have no game; I would be forced to follow a plot that makes no sense to me to play and see what’s going on. Not very appealing.
Just like others said, it didn’t have to be Mary; it could have been any other lass.
The thing is, Jesus was assumed to be born from Joseph’s line since he is descendant of David (because way back God said that the Messiah would be a son of his). So Mary was chosen because she was supposed to marry him (besides her pure and selfless nature), not because she was… well, her. If you off Mary, then they would pick another wife for Joseph, another kind-hearted virgin, and instead of The Virgin Mary, maybe we would have The Virgin Elizabeth.
And if you somehow managed to effectivily eliminate/undermine Christinity, another religion would arise. Faith is an innate part of the human mature; if they don’t find an institution to be a part of, they will still revere something. May it be because humans are prone to religious feelings or they fear death/nothingness and find comfort in creeds, it’s complicated, but you can’t just remove faith from man (be it in religion, science, philosophy, etc.).
Maybe you think your story is perfect and foolproof, but as you can see, it’s not the same for some people.
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It’s the one most popularly spread, it affects the area where they live the most? Affecting Jesus will at least partially affect Islam.
They’re trying to stop the spread of the belief. It’d be their of a belief of a non-godly Jesus starting it, so they Sara Conner him to stop Christianity’s spread. Heck where I live the schools teach on the premise that at least a Jesus lived.
I’m sure many would reevaluate their value of life if they could undo the murder if it didn’t fix everything (you know, if this isn’t going to cause a paradox that destroys everything), are dealing with someone they don’t personally know, have an extremely low chance of getting punished (especially if we can return after), the person already being dead in their time etc…
From their pov it wouldn’t happen though. Because nobody was chosen to them.
It wouldn’t be specifically about religion. Christians just have that anti science stereotype.
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I don’t think I’ve heard of Christians being against things like recycling or electric cars or anti-global warming things.
I think pollution really started to get out of control with the invention of technology and the industrial revolution and with cars and stuff. People could do thinks like make electric cars or recycle nuclear waste, but with capitalism and those things not being profitable, I think that’s more of a problem.
I think medical type tech like stem cell research, abortion, IVF and gene modification might be more iffy for Christians along with evolution. But, then again, there’s overpopulation and the ethics of keeping a brain dead person alive artificially only for their body to rot away and being so old your body starts shutting down and your memory goes and you have to rely on others to change your diapers. But, then again, without a science block, maybe the awkward prolonged suffering phase could be skipped and people could live long healthy lives.
But, I don’t see a strong connection between Christians and global warming.
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I’d be thinking more around middle ages-to early modern(?) where the stereotype is probably the strongest (especially since it was considered bad to try to justify God with science at one point) associated, since we’re thinking along the lines of technological progress instead specific blocks.
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Well, there was the inquisition, the biggest branch of it was christian, with other smaller inquisitions coming from the protestants, but the ones who really put fear into people were the inquisitors of the church, the christian one, which coincides with the time where we had less scientifical discoveries. So it makes sense, if you think the reason why the atheists from the WIP wanted to do it. Global Warming is destroying the earth, they want to diminish the christian influence, which would in “theory” end the inquisition, which would end the “dark age”, allowing humans to keep discovering.
As the author has already said that while those atheists don’t believe in god, duh, they believe that Jesus was a real person, so that’s why they are going back, they hope to push back christianity, taking out a historical figure.
Isn’t every game like this though? I mean, if you don’t like the story overall, you don’t play it.
I think Far Cry 4 had something like this, where the game could end in the very beggining if you agreed to some proposal maybe? If you agreed to it, game over, if you don’t, then play the game.
It could be fate. Just like the MC of any game we play is always the center of everything that happens. You are always drawing challenges, or villains, or powerful companions, every game has it. And really, no one would play a game where you are just a peasant that does nothing the whole day but taking care of cows, and does that every single day, without getting rich, just being the same person through as his life, without becoming someone important, but a peasant who meets a great warrior for whatever reason, or who has his family killed and then seeks revenge, happens to find a powerful mage, warrior, archer or anyone powerful enough to teach him to kill the evil guys would draw attention. This is a game like any other game. Thinks will happen to us, and with us, because we are playing the MC, we are the center of everything in the story.
Yeah, the thing is that the atheists from the game see the connection, in their minds it makes sense because of the things that @andymwhy has explained.
I think that maybe people are overthinking this story.
Removing christianity would give place for another religion, yes it would, but in any other game, if you take down the biggest villain, the same could happen, another guy, a big aspiring villain could seek the spot that is now vacant. And I don’t think christianity is the villain, just to make sure no one gets the wrong idea here, the atheists in the game do.
The main thing is thinking like the atheists in the game do, not the ones in real life.
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