Godless highlights
New Carnival of the Godless up today.
Christians need Satan?: This is not true for all varieties of Christianity, but it goes well with my "Superheroes require supervillains" thought. However you try to get around it, there really is only one possibility if we accept the existence of a completely good god: An equally powerful, but completely evil entity (or group of entities). The idea of humanity's fall "creating evil" posits that humans have the power to create evil, and so humans as a group are the equally powerful entities. Why equal? Because we observe a neutral "creation," not one with more good than bad and not one with more bad than good.
Political Discrimination is nothing new. What kind of a message does all the "Christian Nation" and "Man of Faith" garbage send to the "differently (un)faithed"? Click to find out.
Problems with Hell: Remember a while back I said that the Dalai Lama didn't think altruism could evolve, because then it wouldn't be true altruism as it would serve an evolutionary purpose? What about hell as a motivator for altruism? Seems a heckuva lot worse to me. Be altruistic or you'll go to hell! Yup, that's true altruism. No ulterior motives there. [/sarcasm]
Morality without Sin: meaning without the concept of sin. Hmmm... the Euthyphro might work equally well with "piety" replaced with "sin" and "what the gods love" replaced with "what the gods hate." Probably a few other replacements would be required as well. So, is an act sinful because God dislikes it, or does God dislike it because it is sinful, hmmm? `/^
The Golden Compass: The hysterical Christian reactions to this movie have convinced me to both see it AND read the books. Congratulations on helping with the marketing guys! You can't BUY publicity like THIS! Why all the fuss? Oh, because Pullman is an atheist who despises the Narnia books. Yup. Can't have the children exposed to THAT. Why, they might decide they prefer polar bears to lions! The truly, truly sad part is that the people screaming the loudest have neither read the books nor seen the movie. This gives them all the credibility of a worm explaining what it's like inside a cloud.
Queue:
humor,
links,
philosophy,
ranting
5 comments:
I'm currently halfway through The Golden Compass. So far it's just a kid's adventure/fantasy. It's okay, but not great. I've read on some forums that the really anti-religious stuff comes in the other two books.
Yeah, I've read mixed reviews. Some said that it was great, some that it was okay, and some that it was horrible. Only one way to find out what Ill think of it, though. ^/^
On the "necessity of Satan":
I remember reading an exchange between Jung and some interviewer, in which Jung (in a very tongue-in-cheek manner) posited that a possible solution to the problem of evil is to divide the godhead, not into a trinity, but into a "quaternity," with Satan (or whatever name we give it) as the fourth quarter.
This, of course, would change the notion of a benevolent god to: . . .
"God is mostly good."
:)
Ó
The only person I've talked to who has read the books said they were well written and he liked them but they do in fact promote atheism.
I like the idea of the quaternity, actually. But, then, I have a rather odd sense of humor.
The reviews that actually mentioned the religion stance said that Pullman's books used a Gnostic version of God and then destroyed Him/It. As far as I remember, anyway. However, I have just acquired the first book, so I shall find out soon, hopefully before the movie comes out.
Post a Comment