Proselytizing by iPhone: Children’s Bible Comics app

May 4, 2010 | Filed under: Reviews | Posted by: Jenny Donati

The Tower of Babel, from Children's Bible

Eager to “get ‘em while they’re young”, a Christian organization is promoting a comic book-style Children’s Bible as an iPhone/iPod Touch app. The free application seems successful.

Five months ago, BCNmultimedia launched the Children’s Bible iPhone application. Rather than covering all the slaughter and sex and violence and bigotry of the entire Bible, it provides only “the greatest stories of the Bible”. It’s written for children ages 3 to 13.

Individual episodes (a single story) are available free, one per month; if you wish to read an entire “album”, you have to purchase it at a cost ranging from $1.99 to $4.99.

“The Genesis” is an album. It contains 10 comics. The Tower of Babel is May’s free comic.

The free application downloaded and installed without difficulty. It requests permission to send “push” requests; each month, it will announce another free comic.

Operation is intuitive right up until it is time to read an actual comic.

Upon reading your first comic, a notice pops up asking if you want instructions. Your answer should be yes! The instructions will walk you through how to read one of the comics.

Tapping the right third of the screen moves forward, the left third moves backward. Tapping the middle brings up the controls. Simple, right? Right! However, there are no indicators on the screen when viewing a comic, so you pretty much have to know what to do.

Other than this, operation is smooth.

The Tower of Babel comic was well drawn, and accurately reflects the story as written in the Bible. Unlike many “modern” Bible stories for kids, this version does not claim that the people were trying to become gods. They wanted only to make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered.

The comic accurately reflects the pettiness of God, who says, “These are all one people and speak one language. This is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other.”

And he does.

This application appears to be an effective way to evangelize. It targets young kids through modern technology, and instills in their fertile imaginations stories of the Bible. It has had over 95,000 downloads to date, and has remained in the Top 50 in the United States since its release.

Secularists should be developing similar applications. While there are secular websites which expose Christianity — like Skeptic’s Annotated Bible and Real Bible Stories — I’m not aware of any iPhone apps which either encourage critical thinking about religion or which promote reason. Religionists appear to be ahead of the curve on this one.

Jenny Donati is webmistress and co-editor of Secular News Daily. Jenny is an outspoken secularist who believes firmly in the separation of church and state. She demands evidence to support arguments, and holds herself to the same standard. She doesn't write about herself in the third person . . . but there's a first time for everything.

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11 Responses to Proselytizing by iPhone: Children’s Bible Comics app

True FreeThinker May 9, 2010 - 9:45 pm

So what?

Atheists are always ramming their religion down our kids throats!

I remember when I was a kid, watching cartoons and movies, reading comics and novels. Lots of it was Atheist anti-religious propaganda. Look at stuff like the Life of Brian and The DaVinci Code. Current issues of Captain America show him fighting against the "evil, scary" Tea Party mob. Let people including children have access to a variety of ideas and let them make up their own mind.

As for "the pettiness of God", maybe you would prefer to live under a one-world totalitarian state were people are slaves to the government. God wants us to be free, not slaves to Atheist dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
http://atheismexposed.tripod.com/atheist_crimes.h…

- Slater May 12, 2010 - 8:14 am
  
  First of all: The atheism=religion argument again? Seriously? Couldn't you at least come up with an original lie for Jesus? This is getting repetitive.
  
  Not believing in something cannot by any definition of the word be a religion. And no, atheism is not a belief in science, evolution or the non-existence of any particular god. It's quite possible to be an atheist and believe the world was created in a microwave oven. Blatantly lying about atheism isn't going to convince any atheists.
  
  Secondly: are you seriously suggesting that the Da Vinci Code and Life Of Brian are kids movies?
  
  Thirdly: Godwin. Hitler was not an atheist, and even if he were, he also had a mustache. Does that mean everyone with mustaches are evil? None of those you mention have done anything in the name of atheism. Some of them just happened to be atheists while doing bad things.
  
  ->
  
- Slater May 12, 2010 - 8:14 am
  
  Fourthly: If god wants you to be free, what's with all the rules, dogma, churches, etc.? That's not very free. If you think he wants you to be free, you should pretty much ignore everything you think he has told you.
  
  - This is a collection of the worst arguments EVER in favour of religion. I'm not quite sure whether you are a troll, or you honestly believe yourself to be thinking freely. In the latter case I feel truly sorry for you. It's so obvious from your rehashed arguments that you haven't done any thinking yourself. You are merely reiterating what creationists slightly smarter than yourself, but not smart, have been repeating for ages.
  
ryank May 12, 2010 - 1:59 am

well said, True FreeThinker. God wants us to be free. good stuff.

Caroline January 27, 2012 - 3:33 am

I agree with Free Thinker. The belief that we don't need to believe in God- or believing the state should be separated from faith in God, or again atheism- is taught and defended with the same passion and sometimes the same agressivity than 'religious people' defending and promoting their faith.
Call it a religion, a philosophy or a freedom of thought…. In the end, we always teach our children a line of thought or another. If you think of it, we can't teach them to believe in what we don't believe , really.
And let's be honest, the idea that Christian force-feed their children with religion is just as simplistic than " The atheism=religion argument ". So there is nothing new there, either.

Caroline January 27, 2012 - 3:34 am

In fact, teaching children Bible concepts (or other faiths) does not necessarily stop them from believing in what they want eventually (then again, extremism exists everywhere, I agree).

But when I was young, I was not offered a serious alternative to believing in the evolution, and I grew up in in an atheist family in a country where state and religion are separated. Result: I am a Christian believing in Jesus, the Bible and all that it teaches.

And finally: respect. It goes well with the values of freedom. I don't call atheists names nor do I laugh at their ideas. If you want to be an example for the upcoming generations, may I suggest you started with that, too.

Thank You.

- Kieres January 27, 2012 - 7:52 pm
  
  First off, there is no serious alternative to the theory of evolution in the first place. Secondly, you don't believe in it. Not in the way you mean. Or do you consider gravity to be a matter of faith too?
  
  Evolution requires no belief..it is fact. It is proven. It as much fact as it is fact that the earth revolves around the sun.
  
  As for TFT saying "Atheists are always ramming their religion down our kids throats!"
  
  Are you really that stupid?
  
  Oh and by the way, the Da Vinci Code is not anti-religious.
  
  And as for "As for "the pettiness of God", maybe you would prefer to live under a one-world totalitarian state were people are slaves to the government. God wants us to be free"
  
  Oh really? Then pray tell why do so many of our brethren Christians seem bent on making everyone live in a totalitarian state where people are slaves to Christianity? Or have you not been paying attention to what the likes of Rick Santorum has been saying?
  
  - Kieres January 27, 2012 - 7:55 pm
    
    "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
    
    -Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922
    
    - Kieres January 27, 2012 - 7:55 pm
      
      Sorry, the anti-semitism that engulfed Germany and its little empire during WW2 did not conjure itself out of thin air. It is because Christianity had been teaching for the previous 2000 years that every Jew alive was responsible for the death of Jesus and a lot of other racist crap that were being spewed against the Jews by Christians.
      
      In fact you should read Ivanoe by Sir Walter Scott and pay attention to how the characters of Isaac and his daughter Rebecca are treated by some of the Christians in the book.
      
"B" January 29, 2012 - 7:26 am

Kieres,
I know its off subject, but Ivanhoe was my favorite book growing up! I even saw the animated version on nickelodeon when I was like 6….

Kieres January 29, 2012 - 11:56 am

Yeah I saw that too. IMO, the live action mini-series movie version is better.

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Proselytizing by iPhone: Children’s Bible Comics app

11 Responses to Proselytizing by iPhone: Children’s Bible Comics app

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