F
or a little while, AntiSpore.com had some
folks in the gaming community convinced
that fundamentalist Christians were
whipping up outrage over Spore’s depiction of
evolution. Although it was fi nally revealed as a
hoax (perhaps even viral marketing), it sounded
a familiar note in contemporary culture.
Some people of faith might indeed pause
over Spore, wondering if it’s little more than the
game version of a Richard Dawkins screed. It’s
not, but evolution and religion are two subjects
that are always handled with more heat than
light, possibly even in this very column. Believers
have had evolutionary fundamentalism shoved
down our throats for quite some time now, so
we’ve gotten a bit weary of the subject.
I’ve sat at a table at which one person basi-
cally argued that all life just kinda happened,
while another insisted that the Earth is only
6,000 years old. As a conservative Catholic
whose approach to reason is guided by St.
Thomas Aquinas, both extremes drive me batty.
I teach Church history and theology to teenag-
ers, and they’re so conditioned by the extremes
of the debate that they’re surprised to learn that
elements of evolutionary theory are compatible
with our faith. The author of the Big Bang theory
and the father of genetics were both Catholic
priests. Faith and science are not at odds: They
both seek truth.
For his part, Will Wright punts on the ques-
tion of the origin of life on Earth, depicting a
panspermia/exogenesis model. That is, life did
not spontaneously arise on Earth, but came from
space. Thus, he doesn’t need to speculate on the
ultimate origins of life. Because we have no idea
whatsoever how life began, and since it provides
a tidy motif for the game (life comes from space
and is constantly struggling to return), this was a
wise choice.
On the other hand, some evolutionists
are claiming that Spore is nothing more than
creationist boosterism. They have a point. Your
critter isn’t going to sprout claws on its own. It
needs to be designed, and the need for design
presumes the need for a designer, and an intel-
ligent one, at that.GAME THEORYAn Intelligently
Designed Game
THOMAS MCDONALDThomas L. McDonald has been covering games
for 17 years. He is an editor at large for Games
magazine.10 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|DEC 08 |www.maximumpc.com
QUICKSTART^
THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALLCHARGED UP!In the battle of wills
between Intel and Nvidia,
it was Nvidia that budged.
The company reversed
course and said it would
offer SLI support on
motherboards that use
Intel’s upcoming X
chipset, without making its
nForce 200 chip part of the
bargain.
Previously, Nvidia said
SLI support would be pos-
sible only if board vendorspurchased and integrated
the company’s nForce
200 chip—a proposition
vendors found objection-able due to the costs and
thermal issues, according
to news agency DigiTimes.
Motherboard vendors that
Maximum PC spoke to all
said they were looking
at SLI on X58, but none
had committed to it. With
the Pentium 4 and Core 2,
Nvidia offered SLI support
through its own nForce
chipsets, but the company
said it has no plans to offer
an SLI chipset for the firstiteration of Core i7.
The change doesn’t
mean everyone will get SLI.
Nvidia said it’s only offer-ing SLI to vendors whose
boards are certified to run
SLI before the drivers en-
able multi-card use.
Nvidia didn’t say why it
changed course, but it isn’t
hard to guess: The compa-
ny didn’t want ATI to be the
only multi-card solution at
the Core i7 dance. –G UTHE COMPANY DIDN’T WANT
ATI TO BE THE ONLY
MULTI-CARD SOLUTION AT
THE CORE i7 DANCE.Nvidia Blinks on SLI
Company changes stance on SLI with Intel chipsets
SLI will return to Intel
chipsets for vendors who
have their boards certifi ed
by Nvidia.HP’s 24-Hour Notebook Battery
According to HP, its new
EliteBook 6930p can run for a
full day on a charged battery.
The company says that a 12-cell
battery, 80GB SSD, and Illumi-
Lite LED display (all add-ons)
make the feat possible. –K S