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Posted by Anthony on November 30, 2007
I don’t suppose you’ve read about the British teacher in the Sudan who allowed a student named Mohammed to name his teddy bear Mohammed. She was in danger of getting flogged but now she will only spend 15 days in jail, guilty on the charge of insulting religion and inciting hatred. As that article explains, there were also people who wanted her killed. Hmmm. I guess I won’t say which object around my house I’ve given a certain name.
Now, meanwhile, there are thousands of atheists looking at this incident and thinking to themselves, “See, religion. It is all bad.” That’s an interesting response since I’m looking at the incident and I’m thinking it is bad, but I have a different conclusion, “See, Islam. Bad.” I could refine it further to exclude westernized Muslims and focus on the Sudanese, but the basic idea is that a reasonable person will only go as far as the evidence will allow. Over the last decade, I have noticed an increasing number of atheists arguing about the evils of religion and usually citing examples from Islam. Does that even begin to make sense? The whole notion of ‘religion’ is ridiculous on its face because of the many absurdities and abuses we find in Islam?
As a case in point, consider this gent posting on my discussion forum. He’s talking about the recent outcry in Turkey about the publication of Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion” which, to be fair, really does insult religion and incite hatred. Watch what happens:
For centuries it was a virtual death sentence to declare oneself as Atheist. The modern world is becoming more enlightened but religious fervour can still wield a powerful fist. Just look at a current news story where Turkey is attempting to prosecute the publisher of Richard Dawkin’s book ‘The God Delusion’ because it may be “an attack on religious values”.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/11/28/dawkins.turkey.ap/index.html
Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Religion is of course an attack on rational values.
Not, ‘Islamic fervor’ but ‘religious fervour’ [sic]. You can easily find atheists continuing this rant of late in regards to the Christian reaction to Pullman’s Golden Compass. It really torques them off that some Christians have called for a boycott for the series. Oh, those evil, evil Christians. Don’t they know that good and decent people are obligated to buy the products perpetuating things they don’t agree with? Such intolerance! Such evil! See, religion bad!
Now, I haven’t heard a Christian call for Pullman to be flogged, or thrown in jail, or beheaded. Have you? It doesn’t matter to many atheists. They only have one brush and it is ten miles wide. For them, it has to be, because it is only by lumping Islam with Christianity as ‘religion’ that they can have their argument.
One of the clearest examples of this argument was in fact found in Dawkins’s Delusion. He talks about religious fanatics flying into the WTC towers on 9-11 and the calls for beheadings and, if I recall correctly, the fatwa on Rushdie. I agree, all bad. But he shows how Christianity is not immune to such abuses by showing… how a school board in Dover brought in a text book that de-emphasized evolution and focused on intelligent design. OOOOOOH the travesty! The agony! The HORROR of RELIGION! Elected officials did their job in a way that some people didn’t agree with! Why not un-elect them, if you don’t agree with them?
Why, that is exactly what happened. Was that enough for our tolerant atheists and Darwinists? Heaven’s no! A lawsuit, please! These damned evil Christians who were properly elected and then voted out- and went out peacefully without threats of jihad- proof positive of the dangers of religion! So, let’s slap a lawsuit on them, too, Freedom from Religion style, that’s the way tolerant unreligious people handle it. Much better.
Naturally, when you start digging into the question, the old standbys begin to emerge. Let’s not forget the Crusades or the Inquisition, for example. Yes, let’s not forget the evils of the past perpetuated while most of Europe’s population was illiterate and couldn’t read the Scriptures for themselves to see if what the leadership was saying was true. But we have evidence in modern times, too. Look at Eric Rudolph. And not just Rudolph… there is also… uh Rudolph… (give us a minute and we’ll think of another example…) oh yea, and those damn Christians trying to pass constitutional amendments and boycotting things they don’t like. Yea, that’s the SAME THING as flying into buildings, blowing oneself up in coffee shops, beheading infidels, and trying to hang, and if not flog, and if not flog, imprison a woman for 15 days when her student names a teddy bear after Mohammed.
The SAME thing.
So this is just a little note out to the atheists out there… I think reasonable Christians would agree that some discussion about things like events hundreds of years ago like the Inquisition is in order, but if you can’t tell the difference between a religion whose adherents flock to be suicide bombers and a religion whose adherents- now able to read their writings for themselves- generally work through the legislative process, you are completely discredited. You can call yourself ‘rational’ all you like, as did Dicoll in the forum thread I posted above, but really rational people know better.
Haven’t you noticed the historical trend where Christians who know their Scriptures well tend not to advocate violence in the name of their God or religion while Muslims who know their Scriptures well do?
Meanwhile, there will be atheists upset that I did not talk to them with ‘gentleness and respect.’ I used ALL CAPS, more evidence that Christianity is vicious and its proponents are unloving, which one can fully expect since religion is bad, bad, BAD. Beheadings, flogging, suicide bombing, ALL CAPS, and of course, my playful tauntings. All in a days work for those wicked religionists, ya know?
Posted by Anthony on
I was cruising the net today and found that I had been described as a loon on this site here: http://starwoman.streetprophets.com/story/2007/11/1/154133/383 The domain is streetprophets.com but the image says it is a Daily Kos community. If someone wants to explain to me the relationship I’d be open to it but I’m not going to go looking.
So, anyway, the article cites a blog entry I wrote some time ago when all this broke here: http://sntjohnny.com/front/archives/103
After saying “Tied for honorable mention among Nutter Harry Potter Homophobes are these winners, who have some real problems discerning reality from fantasy and are sure they know more than the author about her characters:” this writer then goes on to quote me, though actually ascribed to me something I did not say, first. At least the writer was good enough to put the link back so honest people could see the truth. Then the blogger says,
Someone needs to explain copyright laws and reality to these guys. Harry is FICTIONAL. He belongs to J.K. Rowling. She was nice enough to allow fans to publish fan fic about her characters—but, legally, she could have cracked down on them as copyright infringement, even if they weren’t profiting from it. Despite Johnny’s claim to the contrary, it has NOT passed into the public domain, and won’t until her copyright runs out. Dear God, how STUPID are these people? They think that, because they bought a book and read it, they now own the character.
Speaking of STUPID, we might wonder how well the blogger fits into the same category, but I think illiterate might be more appropriate. It is one of the more amazing things on the Internet when people who seem to be able to read and write still can’t grasp what they are reading. It was clear from what I did say that I wasn’t at all speaking about legal technicalities but rather, well, metaphysics.
Once the text is put out in final form, a ‘closed canon’ if you will, how much latitude does the original author have in modifying what the text means? I posed it as an interesting question and I don’t at all think that it breaks down along political and religious lines the way ‘IrishWitch’ says. I wondered, for example, if Rowling now said that Harry Potter was a space alien from the moon- though there was no indication of anything like that in the text- if that really means that we as readers should take that as new fact about Harry Potter. IrishWitch says, “In other words, if she says Dumbledore is a space alien or a robot, SHE IS RIGHT. She and only she has the right to make that determination because he is her character.” (emphasis her’s).
Now, I don’t know that I agree with that, but why should it be a ‘religious issue’? Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 29, 2007
The Pullman “His Dark Materials” series and the Harry Potter series has raised concerns for Christians. However, a distinction needs to be made. HDM is clearly evangelical in nature while Harry Potter just as clearly does not have such an agenda, notwithstanding Rowling’s attempt to insert one after the fact. Still, everyone understands that Story is a powerful medium and it doesn’t necessarily depend on whether or not there is an agenda explicitly afoot. Just the atmosphere of the Story-world communicates.
The fact that there are stories out there that don’t perfectly reflect the Christian world view is just a simple fact of life. Attempting to avoid them or boycott them is not the solution. The solution is to train ourselves and our children to be able to recognize when we are getting differing philosophies fed to us and then be able to evaluate the merits of them. However, there is another solution, too: enter the fray… create stories that communicate Christian principles and the Christian world view.
Everyone thinks immediately to CS Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” and Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” although under analysis we see that the same distinction I offered above in relation to HDM and Harry Potter holds true here, as well. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 27, 2007
This is probably my last post on the “His Dark Materials” series and to tell you the truth I’m about ready to be done. There are innumerable issues raised by the HDM series and quite a bit that I wanted to respond to. This blog contains many of those responses and there probably could be even more said. It is my hope that my information serves as a starting point for Christians to learn more about these issues. These issues will always be with us and hiding from them is not the solution.
It has been noted that one of the issues with the Golden Compass is that it is not nearly as overtly anti-Christian as the later books. These themes have been purged even more in the movie so that the unwary movie goer and reader might not ever see what is coming in the later books. Granted, but there is one thing in the Golden Compass that has the potential to catch someone off guard.
In the last few chapters of TGC, chapter 21 in particular, there is a long, extended quote from Genesis 3. This follows a long discussion about the nature of ‘Dust’ and the Church’s grave concern about it. Lord Asriel, Lyra’s father is trying to explain matters and finally compels Lyra to open up the Bible to Genesis and read. In the main, the text is familiar. … “ye shall not surely die yada yada yada” and then it gets interesting…
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and your daemons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of one’s deamon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband…
And on like that for awhile. When I read this material myself, I sort of sat back and wondered how the man thinks he can get away with blatant mistranslation such as this. Before my very eyes, I saw thousands of young Christians and even some older ones who ought to know better thinking about this telling of Genesis and comparing it with what they remembered. Has something been concealed in the translation? they may wonder. What else is being withheld? another might say.
Initially, the staggering display of intellectual deceit here took my breath away and then I realized what he was about and where he was going. It was here that I really understood that the Golden Compass, when talking about the Church, and Christianity, and the multiverse, and such, this material was taking place in one of these other rival universes and knew that the bridge to our own universe was on its way.
This isn’t intellectual deceit, you see, because this is merely how the Genesis account evolved in this particular universe. We need not dwell on the intellectual blindness that keeps Pullman from realizing that his whole multiverse system of thought means that there is really a universe where there was an Adam and Eve and a young earth. With innumerable universes to work with expressing all possible outcomes, the improbable will happen eventually: in some universe, the Christians are right. At any rate, this post is not about all that.
This post is for those who stumble on this passage and suddenly wonder if their translation of Genesis 3 is horribly flawed and Pullman is subtly revealing an alternate translation that has been brutally suppressed by that evil, nasty, Christian Church. I have no idea if this passage is going to be read in the movie, so maybe this post will only be for those that read the book.
Conclusion: No. The Hebrew text does not support this translation and Pullman doesn’t need it to because he can have the ‘Genesis’ in another universe say whatever he darn well pleases, and this passage is just that.
The truly astute reader will suddenly remember the pointed claim by Mary Malone that “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.” Was she speaking of the ‘Christian Religion’ of an alternate universe, or our own? When she reduced the oppressiveness of Christianity to be symbolized by the fact that Catholics expect their nuns to be celibate, was that an alternate universe, or our own? Correct answer: Our own.
If Mary (the ‘temptress’ of the series) was speaking of a Christianity in a parallel universe we might chalk it up to Pullman’s poetic license. But since he puts his most explicit assertions about Christianity in the mouth of a woman who comes from our own universe, we’ll have to admit it for what it is- a strawman that bears very little resemblance to actual Christianity.
Posted by Anthony on November 23, 2007
I was pretty thrilled to learn that a review of my book was going to be published on Worldnet as I bet any one can understand. Here is the article for those starting on my site and not coming from WND: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58834
Also, many thanks to Don Hank who took an interest in my book and my ministry a couple of months ago and has been a great encouragement to me. He is the author of the review.
My book, Fidelis is available both in hard covers and soft covers…
Soft Cover: $14.95 Hard Cover $24.95
You can purchase them from me at my website at www.birthpangs.com but both books are available on Amazon.com, too. Links to the Amazon pages are at Birthpangs.
Posted by Anthony on November 21, 2007
I am receiving hundreds of visitors a day but not as many are leaving comments. Could it be that I am not saying anything interesting? BAH, I don’t believe that! But it could be because I required people to be registered before they could comment. Previously, I received all sorts of comment spam which is what prompted this measure in the first place. Well, I’m still getting comment spam so I figure I may as well see what happens when I let people post with ease…
So, comment at will!
Posted by Anthony on November 20, 2007
This morning my wife woke me and I was having a terrible dream. In the dream, I lost most of my family… wife, children, siblings… Now, usually I am able to ‘control’ my dreams or otherwise inform myself in the dream that it is in fact only a dream. It was odd that this dream would be different. When I woke up I was on my way to the funerals, grieving. Not cool.
The only thing I can think is that my blog last night on the problem of suffering and the solution of the incarnation primed me to have such things on my mind. I don’t know. I’ve written about such things before without such effects.
Perhaps the dream came that I might have it on my mind as something experienced… for I woke up and continued to grieve for a few minutes while I recovered from the dream. And perhaps it came that I might write about it. I don’t know.
Some other random thoughts…
As I emerged from my shower I had thoughts of NBC’s Journeyman on my mind. In last night’s episode, the main character, Dan Vassar, saves a girl and has her murderer caught even though he is told that is not his mission. He fells compelled by justice to try to save her anyway. When he returns back to his own time, things have changed. For one thing, the murderer has now been released from prison and is hunting Dan and his family…
On last night’s Heroes, a very interesting distinction was made between God and gods. The character with time traveling abilities, Hiro, has returned to his own time to discover that his father was dead. Naturally not content with that news, he goes through time to his father’s pre-moment to death but his father convinces him that Hiro needs to let him be killed. His father says something like… “Just because we have the power of gods does not mean that we can play God.”
This is a distinction that hasn’t really been dwelled on in the series that I am aware of. One of the running themes of my blog has been to show how modern atheism has become much more comfortable with the ideas of ‘miracles’ provided that you give them a naturalistic explanation (I know, I know, that’s like a contradiction in terms). I have used NBC’s Heroes as an example.
So now the question is posed… in Heroes there are people with the power to fly, travel through time, read minds, etc, any number of things that we would have attributed to supernatural cause in most scenarios. These are the powers of the ‘gods.’ Will Heroes tell us how one distinguishes between the gods and God? If the writers of Heroes have read their Pullman and Dawkins, they could just say that God is the first effect of evolution, and the most advanced. What is the difference?
If you’re going to explain everything in naturalistic terms, how on earth could you possibly recognize a supernatural event even if it happened before your very eyes?
Perhaps Journeyman gives one idea: omniscience and wisdom. Dan Vassar saves a girl and catches the bad guy, but he should have let her die and the man get away. In doing so, he would have preserved the safety of his own family. Who can make such a calculation? We all die eventually… if the Author chooses to allow some to die at this moment and not this one in order that some other good might be achieved that would not have otherwise does that mean he is indifferent to the death?
If God delays his return in order to achieve some good, even if we ourselves cannot perceive it, does that change the fact that he did at one time arrive?
Just some thoughts on Tuesday morning.
