Religious views of Magic the Gathering--PLEASE HELP!

A strategy - the parents are concerned that the game trivializes the occult; i.e. suggests that spells are harmless. Asserting that it's just a game, or that magic/spells etc don't actually exist isn't going to convince them because the Bible tells them that magic actually is real.What I would do is highlight the aspects of the game that you can take out of context (hey, there's no way they're going to understand the context anyway) to "show" that the game is actually against the occult:1) Mana burn. Reckless use of magic power can hurt you.
2) The color balance. White always defeats black; the divine is always more powerful and can protect against the evil.
3) The "spell" cards have no instructions or occult directions on them that can be followed. ("tap one mountain"? What does that even mean in real life?)Ultimately, your program is secular and doesn't recognize the existence or effecacy of the occult. Your co-worker has every right to opt not to participate in a game of Magic: The Spending, but it's inappropriate for her religious considerations to dictate what other parents' children will be allowed to play. If it's really a big deal, have the parents campaign for the dismissal of that worker.

Bah I'll own you all with my black-red-blue control/permission deck.But then I stopped playing when 8th Edition came out and all the cards looked like Yu-Gi-Oh.

I don't mean to bust anybody's balls about it - I've played it for years now, but I'm not very good, and I usually got my ass beat by people who had blown 200 dollars on rares to put in their deck. I mean I had heard of people who were so good at deckbuilding they could stomp with nothing but commons, but I never saw it in person.But I don't play to win, really. My deck is constructed so that I have a good time losing.

Magic: The Gathering offers several starter decks, but these quickly become underpowered compared to the decks people are putting together on their own. You wind up needing about 1000 cards from "booster packs" (sold like baseball cards in little packs of 15 - 12 commons, 2 uncommons, and one rare) in order to construct a couple 60-card decks.Starting from scratch it can be an expensive game to get into. Sometimes you can buy people's card collections on eBay, or local game stores will have bins of opened cards you can pick through ("commons piles") for like a nickel a card.Traditionally it's a 1-on-1 game but variants exist that allow for 2-on-2, or a kind of round-robin "star magic" for odd-numbered groups.If you can find the sort of store where you live that carries things like Magic, Dungeons and Dragons and other RPG's, and things like Cheapass Games and James Ernest games, the clerk there will be able to point you to games that might be more suitable for family play, or more rewarding for such a disparity in age. Magic is definately a game that rewards rules lawyering, and players almost have to develop an impressive, detailed mental encyclopedia of card-rule interactions. (Here's what I'm talking about - the rules of the game are so complicated that they can only include an approximation of the rules in the retail cards. The actual rules are a 400k download here.)Your nephew may already be playing something like Yu-Gi-Oh, which is sort of like Magic with way simpler rules. It's pretty popular among the kids their age.

Also, they're not occult. They're never been used in occult practices; they have no traditional ties to occultism.It was a party game invented in 1890 by two businessmen, and later sold to Parker Bros. It's about as occult as a game of Scrabble.

The sight of two untapped islands will forever haunt your nightmares after a game with me.

What occult imagery? How can you have a fantasy adventure without magic?

What's the process for getting entagled with demons? I've been trying everything but to no avail. Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, listening to rock music - nothing seems to work.

Woot! Atheism for the win! What the hell is taking so long, then?

What evidence, specifically?Yes, that's right. I'm asking you how many specific, attributed first-person accounts you can provide to substantiate the existence of the supernatural, or whatever.

What is? Name the witnesses.If you don't know the witnesses, then how do you know the evidence is there? If all you have is "I know a guy who knows a guy who saw it", what evidence do you really have?

I asked you because I tried, and what I got were:1) People who saw funny things while under the influence of drugs, so we can throw those right out;
2) People who saw funny things while in bed, sleeping, so we can throw those right out because they're just dreams;
3) People who saw funny things during bad lighting, fog, or other poor vision conditionsThe only reports I've ever seen of anyone who saw something funny during circumstances where we could reasonably conclude they saw what they saw were reports of a highly suspect nature; in other words, "I know a guy who knows a guy who saw something."That's all there is. That's all you have. Why would a reasonable person consider any of that evidence? Especially when, under any kind of controlled situation or test, absolutely none of those reports withstand any kind of scrutiny?There's no evidence for the supernatural, Faith. You keep saying that there's all this witness evidence, but there isn't. There plainly isn't. Anyone who thinks there is is an idiot, it's just that simple. There's just some drunk people, some sleepy people, some people with sun in their eyes, and some people who like to tell stories that can't be checked up on.

I did.

You first. You are, after all, the one that brought up this supposed "evidence" in the first place, remember?

Translation: "I claimed it, but I don't intend to ever support it."Faith, most of the stuff you think is "common knowledge" is just made-up. Either you made it up or someone else did and told it to you. Presumably some day you'll grow up and realize this. So, in fact, you don't have any evidence, which has been my point all along.