Built for four players this is a four way hour glass cut in half and attached to a game board. It stands like a stackable chip game, but instead of stackable chips falling into horizontal vertical or diagonal rows grains meaningless sand fall ointo the opposing religious hour glass halves.

Each player plays as one half of the cross shaped hourglasses, but the hour glass halves themselves can be any shape including crosses, cresents, buddahs, or phalluses. Theism pours into athiesm and monotheism pours into polytheism is one possible game.

The rules of the game are 1. the board is turned so the current player's half is at the top draining precious although meaningless grains of sand into the opposing player's half. 2. As the goal is to stay on top the longest, on each turn the player who is on top has to read from his side's rule book until he decides how long he wants to play, or if he wants to play again. 3. The board is turned as soon as the player has decided.

There is no winner but after several games a player's willingness to support particular sets of rules will help determine their ultimate religious outlook. For example, atheism is on top, recieves rules book, first rule is you're going to die.second rule is nobody knows why or what happens etc. Player reads until decides when to turn. It's a strategy game where players support sets of rules to ultimately determine the ultimate rules, sometimes at the cost of losing the game by emptying their hourglass halves first.

*Naturally reading from the rules indicates hesitation to turn and not reading indicates the least hesitation in supporting the rules.

** each hour glass half , or quarter as its a cross shape starts with equal amounts of sand.

***The game is paused by putting the board flat. The game is restarrted and rewound by adjusting sand levelsby rotation.
-- rcarty, Dec 02 2013

This reminds me of family monopoly games: often, each of four players end up controlling one side of the board, and houses and hotels "flow" via removal and addition from one player's side of the board to other sides, whilst tokens perambulate the bounds and various people read from the rules.

I'm not sure how this idea has any connection to religion, or why anyone would stop reading if they wanted to win. Perhaps try flinging the sand instead?
-- sninctown, Dec 03 2013


You don't have to stop reading, but the rule is you have to turn to the rules of the religion, and then from that point on follow the rules or let the religion die. Being an athiest I don't have to follow the rules of the other religions, so I can let atheism die but not before polytheism takes over monotheism, so I can see how long the struggle between theism and polytheism which is actually the corollary of atheism and monotheism conflixt that is an ongoing struggle in the hyperreal.

Basically existential crisis will be a major factor in how the game is played.
-- rcarty, Dec 03 2013


If your aim is to keep the sand in your section, why not just say “Do what you will is the whole of the law” and pass to the next player?
-- pocmloc, Dec 03 2013


The first rule is that I win.

And you're one of the first atheists I've met who are having an apparent existential crisis on which way to spell atheist. It's an -ism. Like the-ism.
-- RayfordSteele, Dec 04 2013


Nice model/perspective frame but I think this misses as a game. No competition pressure or a clear win structure. Life, I consider, is not in reality a game.

Maybe, a less real situation would be to make the goal of getting sand for your deity and rule set. As an atheist the goal is not getting sand. Each player has a go at each others rules/deity chosen at the start. It would be interesting to find you won more movement of sand with another players deity and rule set.
-- wjt, Dec 10 2013


The device is basically a perpetual motion machine if everyone acts unhesitatingly towards the rules. One game would just be players turning the glasses as fast as they can to keep the game static. But perpetual motion and statics of these kind are not possible. The game will end somehow and extreme existential crisis connected with the rule set will largely determine that outcome. The existential crisis connected by identity with atheism, theism, monotheism or polytheism will largely determine the outcome. Anyway the comment I think I'm making is religion is a really stupid power struggle game with bad symbols for dumb kids.
-- rcarty, Dec 10 2013



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