quote:Is it becoming clear why so many people believe that progressive atheism is cancer?
No. Please elaborate.
Ahh, jeez. This was just supposed to be a hit and run. I'm restricting myself to lurking with some nominal posting. So I'm gonna cheat and just say that the fact that it isn't clear to some people is part of the problem.
Presumably you were referring to Mucus and TomD as "progressive atheists" and, by extension, a "cancer." You're OK with leaving such a claim as a "hit and run" with no further comment?
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: I asked - repeatedly - for someone to explain how what the CL was doing with respect to The Golden Compass was coercive, deciding for others, baning, or any of the other things people were talking about.
No one has done anything except insist that it is.
Synesthesia has made it fairly clear that she is referring to informed decisions. Clearly it's up to the individual to ultimately decide whether or not to open up the book, but people who listen to the Catholic League's advice are, for all intensive purposes, delegating that decision to someone else.
And, in that case, the CL is not deciding for those parents. Those parents are deciding for themselves to listen to someone else's take on the subject.
That's exactly what I said. The parents are deciding for themselves but they are not making an informed decision (let's not have a semantic debate on the meaning of informed decision, it should be pretty clear what I mean).
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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quote:Is it becoming clear why so many people believe that progressive atheism is cancer?
No. Please elaborate.
Ahh, jeez. This was just supposed to be a hit and run. I'm restricting myself to lurking with some nominal posting. So I'm gonna cheat and just say that the fact that it isn't clear to some people is part of the problem.
Presumably you were referring to Mucus and TomD as "progressive atheists" and, by extension, a "cancer." You're OK with leaving such a claim as a "hit and run" with no further comment?
posted
They often say you can judge a man by the quality of his critics. I sincerely hope this isn't true.
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"They often say you can judge a man by the quality of his critics."
I admit I haven't heard that one. It sounds like a Richard Dey.
The question is, if your critics are of low quality, does that mean you're of higher or lower quality? It's probably obvious, but you probably need to tell me anyway. It can take me a while.
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quote:Is it becoming clear why so many people believe that progressive atheism is cancer?
Is it becoming clear why you're a painfully damaging walking parody of all the causes you hold dear?
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posted
Getting back to the fairy tale/children's audience thing, aren't fairy tales often about something awful, like incest? I forget what else, but remember back when all the fairy tales were being deconstructed? Snow white was actually found to be about a young girl who is sent into the woods to have her babies.
I'm also more puzzled about the series' depiction of daemons than about angels, and the deal with people being cut off from their daemons becoming like zombies. I guess in a metaphysical sense, having your soul constituted in another being is a "turtles all the way down" situation. It just seems, to me, that Pullman is playing the spiritual, but not religious, card.
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quote:That's exactly what I said. The parents are deciding for themselves but they are not making an informed decision (let's not have a semantic debate on the meaning of informed decision, it should be pretty clear what I mean).
Of course the decision is informed - it's informed by the parent's knowledge of the CL's past recommendations and how well they align with the parent's preferences and by the reasoning presented by the CL.
By your reasoning, there is no way to make an informed decision not to read a book.
quote:The Catholic League is calling for an effective boycott of the books.
And I already thanked Mucus for providing what I asked for from the beginning.
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Yeah, but I meant that even without the information that Mucus provided, the common usage of the word "boycott" would apply to the actions that the Catholic League is engaging in.
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quote:Yeah, but I meant that even without the information that Mucus provided, the common usage of the word "boycott" would apply to the actions that the Catholic League is engaging in.
I don't agree. Telling people not to buy a product because of ill effects of that product is not the typical use of the word "boycott." Had they expanded beyond the books to other titles by the publisher or other movies by New Line, I think it would be a boycott.
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Dag: So then its not a boycott because its only one item in particular? Is a plurality of goods required to rightly call it a boycott? I'm not sure why that would have to be the case.
Is there a term you can think of that describes boycotting one item without passing any judgment on the provider who typically sells the item in question?
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quote:Originally posted by Threads: That's exactly what I said. The parents are deciding for themselves but they are not making an informed decision (let's not have a semantic debate on the meaning of informed decision, it should be pretty clear what I mean).
I have read the books. If the topic comes up in conversation and I explain to people why I will not be buying them for my son and they, based on my explanation, chose not to buy them either, would you consider that an informed decision?
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quote:Dag: So then its not a boycott because its only one item in particular? Is a plurality of goods required to rightly call it a boycott? I'm not sure why that would have to be the case.
Mainly the difference is in the intended result. Typically a boycott is aimed at changing the behavior of the target. In this case, that's not really the intent. The books exist. They are not going to be edited or yanked off shelves. No matter what the producers did to the movies, the CL's objection would remain. There is no point in time when the CL will recommend that people no longer avoid the movies or books.
In the CL language I linked, the main intent is to educate people about the perceived negative effects of the books. The harm being targeted is to the purchaser.
The reason multiple products are important is not because they are per se required for a boycott, but because they punish the target beyond the product actually at issue.
For example, assume the anti-pornography group targets lists books they find to be pornographic and urge people not to buy those books. If the participants still shop in stores that sell the books, the stores are not likely to stop carrying the books. If, however, the group gets people to avoid Borders until it stops carrying Playboy, they are intending to change Borders' behavior, not just the readers.
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posted
I thought of another example. Assume that a company has been using animal-based gelatin in a product that many people think is vegan. A vegan group tells people not to buy the product because, if they do, they will be eating non-vegan food. That's not a boycott in the classic sense. The people who will no longer buy the food would not have bought the food in the first place had they known it was not vegan. They are not really trying to change the producer's behavior except insofar as the producer might want to meet consumer demand. This could be done by producing an alternative product that is vegan or by modifying the existing product. The producer is losing nothing except the sales of people who do not want his product anyway.
If, however, the group tells people not to buy anything from that producer until the producer stops using gelatin, they are trying to change the producer's behavior.
The number of products involved in the action provides clues as to the intent of the group, but it is the intent that determines whether a boycott really exists.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:the main intent is to educate people about the perceived negative effects of the books.
That's the part I'm still hung up about. I don't understand what negative effects these books and especially the movie are supposed to have.
I can get behind "We don't like them." or "They are an attack on our religion." but I just don't see what the threat is.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Could you please not dirty up the conversation I'm having by siding with me?
If it helps you any, jokes aside, while I have an opinion on some individual elements of this case, on the whole I'm rather conflicted about the marketing of fiction that goes out of the way to market atheism.
With all the available material from actual history and actual science to promote atheism, why muddy up the waters by introducing fiction? For a kid that is already being introduced to fantastic factual things such as atomic structure and a big huge wall in China a kid already has to take a lot of things on faith (until they're old enough to learn the evidence behind these things).
Add religion (fiction) which is being taught as truth, why muddy up the waters by marketing something that is true such as atheism as fiction?
I mean, one could make the argument that kids need to read fantastic things, so they might as have atheistic fiction ... but I'm not sure I buy that argument.
So I'm not so sure there are "sides" at least for me so much as there are specific elements of interest/controversy.
MrSquicky: I already explained this. The Catholic League literally believes that Roman Catholicism IS the evil force in Pullman's books.
Obviously people get upset and snippy when their God dies after his balloon is pricked. Its only natural Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I think your last post kind of cleared up your POV a bit. So it your contention that while currently the action being promoted is not a boycott, it would only be a boycott if additionally:
a) The Catholic League urged staying away from movies/libraries that distributed the movies/books until these places stopped distribution
or
b) The Catholic League urged avoidance of Pullman's other books until he becomes a Christian
or
c) The Catholic League urged avoidance of New Line (or whatever movie producer) until it refused to make new His Dark Materials movies
In reality, HDM doesn't promote atheism either. There are angels, an afterlife, a powerful, moralistic creator... none of which are admitted by any atheistic way of thinking I'm aware of.
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posted
Just as you can judge a man by the quality of his critics, or judge a society by its prisons (Dostoyevsky), you can judge a religion by it's heretics. I'm surprised Dana (dkw) is the only one to bring up the Gnostic underpinnings of the trilogy. If the major Christian faiths knew the Gnostic heresy of an evil creator god to be true, then they would be similar in deceit and evil authoritarianism to the church in the trilogy.
I'm fascinated by heretics and apocrypha. I need to read more about them systematically.
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quote:So it your contention that while currently the action being promoted is not a boycott, it would only be a boycott if additionally: <three snipped alternatives>
Remove the word "only" and I agree. I can't think of one now, but I'm sure there are alternative scenarios out there that would indicate the necessary intent.
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quote:MrSquicky: I already explained this. The Catholic League literally believes that Roman Catholicism IS the evil force in Pullman's books.
I'm still sort of struggling with what exactly bothers me about this, but I think it's coalescing around the idea that the books and especially the movie constitute some sort of threat.
It's not like it actually describes the Catholic Church or that it is likely that people's opinions of the Catholic Church is going to be changed by it.
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posted
Having read the series, I'd have to think most children reading them would mentally equate the force of evil in the novels with the Catholic Church (or Christianity in general). Whether or not that would alter their opinion of the Catholic Church is an open question, but I suspect it is at least possible.
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quote:I'd have to think most children reading them would mentally equate the force of evil in the novels with the Catholic Church (or Christianity in general).
I think most children wouldn't equate it with anything. Upon being questioned, they might manage to connect the thing in the sky with God, if they were familiar with the story of Satan being thrown out of Heaven, which if they are probably means they're already pretty darned religious.
These are kids. It's a story. I read this book aged about 12, 13 maybe. I didn't equate it with anything.
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posted
I think Christian parents would be wary of HDM for the same reason that they endorse the Narnia series. One series is written by a very skilled Christian author who tries to sell the kids on Christian messages and teachings. The other is written by a very skilled gnostic (anti-Christian, fill in your own discription here) author who tries to sell the kids on anti-religious, anti-authority, death-is-the-ultimate-end lessons.
This doesn't mean that the kids will actually pick up on these lessons at first or at all, but I think parents should at least have a heads up as to what Pullman is trying to say.
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posted
Stories shape our worldview, whether we recognize it or not at the time. So whether the kid reading the book consciously picks up on the agenda or not I can totally understand parents not wanting to give their kids books with a compelling story and a worldview they disagree with.
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posted
Scott R: I think we will have to agree to firmly disagree as would a fair number of prominent atheists.
IIRC, Isaac Asimov initially became an atheist after comparing Greek history and Greek mythology with Christianity, which started his belief that the Bible is essentially mythological in the same sense.
For Douglas Adams, the tipping over factor into agnosticism was also history (with science providing the tipping point into atheism):
quote: So, I was already familiar with and (I’m afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn’t apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of ‘truth’. (I now think this is baloney, but to continue...) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretative and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn’t stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic.
For Hitchens, much of beliefs are fuelled by his experiences with recent history during his travels as a journalist.
For Dawkins, he has often said that he wonders about the political implications of his views. e.g. if he were put on the stand at a Scopes-like trial, he would be forced to say that evolutionary science does in fact intellectually strongly lead to atheism Thus, if you note the mission charter of his foundation, the primary initiative is to spread education on science and rationalism, not atheism. The operating assumption is that the first two lead to the latter.
You may disagree with their interpretation of cause and effect, however, you do have to accept that for many atheists there is a strong drive to increase (rather than decrease) education in history and science in order to promote atheism.
MrSquicky: Perhaps what bothers you is that I'm only half joking when I say that.
There is a long history of religious dissension (in western religion at least) to fictional depictions of religious figures, even when the satire is as obviously fictional as Monty Python's Life of Brian or Jesus Christ Superstar.
The protests in the former example actually provides many examples when some are physically unable to separate a fictional representation with the "real."
If I had to hypothese *why* this is the case, I would be on much shakier ground. One of my guesses is that western religions have unconsciously developed internal mechanisms to prevent schism by trying to ensure one single "true" representation of their religious figures, fictional or otherwise. When these work "normally", they slow down the grow of new "non-fictional" schisms such as Mormonism and the Taiping. However, when they misfire, they present as hostility towards fictional representations.
Off-topic: Speaking of Life of Brian, I recently watched the Stephen Chow parody of The Journey to the West. I definitely recommend it to those with at least a moderate exposure to Chinese/Chinese history. Great fun and touching at the same time.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by johnsonweed: It makes one wonder if the Catholic Church has a problem with Milton's Paradise Lost as well.
1) Note please that the Catholic Church has not issued any statement on this movie. The Catholic League is an association of Catholics, they don't have the authority to speak on behalf of the church.
2) Considering the thoroughly Protestant nature of "Paradise Lost", I'm sure the Catholic church has many problems with it.
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posted
Do we need to get out a scale and weigh all historians and scientists who believe in God against all the historians and scientists who DON'T believe in God?
A comparative analysis of Greek vs. Christian mythos may not lead one to atheism, even if they are so astoundingly similar as to reduce all claims of opposing origins to histrionics. Such a study may easily lead one to believe in, say, Judaism, or Zoroastrianism, or some other religion formulated and not connected with the former two.
Ooo...unless you somehow can convince yourself that Christianity and Grecian Pantheism are the only two religious options out there...
For that matter, most Christians have no problem with multiple Flood stories found throughout world mythologies. They figure that the story told in the Bible is the right one, and the other ones around the world are echoes of it.
Your world-view, Mucus, in this regard, seems to assign the very simplest, most fundamentalist leanings to all the religious. I don't know how such a viewpoint can continue to be held, especially on a site like Hatrack, where there are a great many of us who engage the scientific community on a regular basis.
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quote:Do we need to get out a scale and weigh all historians and scientists who believe in God against all the historians and scientists who DON'T believe in God?
I think the trend would be more interesting to see than the totals. We had this conversation before, but right now scientists are much less likely to be religious than the public at large. I haven't seen any data on historians.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: For Dawkins, he has often said that he wonders about the political implications of his views. e.g. if he were put on the stand at a Scopes-like trial, he would be forced to say that evolutionary science does in fact intellectually strongly lead to atheism
I don't understand how this is true unless one is narrowly defining religion.
quote:
Thus, if you note the mission charter of his foundation, the primary initiative is to spread education on science and rationalism, not atheism. The operating assumption is that the first two lead to the latter.
You may disagree with their interpretation of cause and effect, however, you do have to accept that for many atheists there is a strong drive to increase (rather than decrease) education in history and science in order to promote atheism.
It will be interesting to see how their efforts to educate compare to say those of the Jesuits.
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quote:IIRC, Isaac Asimov initially became an atheist after comparing Greek history and Greek mythology with Christianity, which started his belief that the Bible is essentially mythological in the same sense.
IIRC, it was Tolkien who came to pretty much the opposite conclusion after doing his own comparison of ancient mythologies with Christianity.
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I am inclined to interpret the similarities between various mythologies as a positive indicator of the liklihood of an underlying truth.
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While we may disagree on whether science and history lead to atheism, I think we can agree that they do [generally] lead to less literal interpretations of religious holy books.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Your world-view, Mucus, in this regard, seems to assign the very simplest, most fundamentalist leanings to all the religious. I don't know how such a viewpoint can continue to be held, especially on a site like Hatrack, where there are a great many of us who engage the scientific community on a regular basis.
First, I do not think you intentionally meant it that way. However, I do not appreciate what I read as condescension. I could similarly condescend and ask you how you can hold such a backward worldview when confronted with science on a regular basis. I would prefer it if we did not make this personal.
As I said "You may disagree with their interpretation of cause and effect," all your points are already covered by that. I have no desire to respond and reiterate such a endless argument. My only point in bringing up the issue is that many atheists would prefer history and science as methods rather than fiction since they do in fact see them as precursors to atheism. That is all.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I don't understand how this is true unless one is narrowly defining religion.
Oh sorry, you're missing context. His thoughts about the Scopes trial are in the context of his definition of religion in the God Delusion. Briefly, that is defining a religion as a scientific hypothesis including a creator God. You can read the book for further understanding, it is a bit lengthy to reproduce here. However, you're right, he treats religions such as Buddhism and Taoism which lack a Creator more as philosophies for life rather than religions.
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