While I seem to spend a great deal of time linking to other blogs (thereby saving myself the time of coming up with my own opinions), this one is truly worth celebrating.
50 Books: BOOKS: Irony's Revenge
Turns out the children involved in the proposed ban of Fahrenheit 451 from a school in Texas (where else?) are actively fighting it.
Not to rant, but we need to fight this ignorance. On every front. Unfortunately, we must then allow that stuff we can't stand also has a place in society.
It's a hard argument. I mean, any argument that allows Ann Coulter to continue spewing bile from every orifice just can't be right, can it?
*sigh*
Sometimes, I hate having a moral compass.
8 comments:
If you live in Texas you've got to expect at some point to be affected by God's Authority. Heck, If you live anywhere.
Have you ever read our (Canadian) charter of rights and freedoms? Right up there at the top is the supremacy of God. How do you argue with that?
Remember Sven? I think he tried to have that line changed and look what God did to him!
If your moral compass doesn't point to God you will always be lost.
Contrary to opinion, you do not need to believe in God to have a moral compass. Thinking that the belief in an almighty force that governs your actions somehow gives you the sole right to determine what is right and wrong is exactly the kind of thinking that is fucking up the world right now.
I do not believe in God. I know what is right, I know what is wrong. Disagreeing with someone on points of logic or reasoning is right. Telling someone they don't have a choice but to follow your belief system is wrong.
Boy, this entire line of conversation is so relevant to my novel. Seriously, scary relevance.
e.ann.
I don't know about burning books, but I do know there are multiple references to turning away from anything that speaks against God. There may be some passage that advocates destroying anything that goes against god. If you've read the bible you've seen that God can get pretty viscious. But thinking for yourself is not a biblical value. My question was how do you argue against that?
I was fooling around up there, sort of playing devil's advocate by pretending to believe in god. I do that every once in a while, (you didn't think it was funny?) fantasize about believing on the Lord and how easy it would be.
But yes, I can't give you the exact passages, my wife sold my bible, along with hundreds of other used books, when we moved, but I'm going to stay in a hotel this weekend so maybe I'll do a little light research, there are scripture to deny thinking for yourself, and for turning away, maybe even violently from anything that speaks against god.
Just last night I was watching this documentary on evangelical christians and the green movement, there was this one guy with a PhD from some Christian University, he was a pretty big player in American politics, and his line was : If God wanted to stop global warming He would. The earth is warming because God wants it to and it will cool if he wants it to. God is all powerful. Strip mining and oil drilling is nothing compared to what God can do. That's paraphrased, but very accurate. Here's a link to the documentary. http://www.kcts.org/seriesdetail.asp?N1=BMOA Shocking stuff.
OK, let's all breathe. Calm down. This is a blog comment post, not Thunderdome.
Can't we all just get along?
That said, Ann Coulter is the devil.
I don't know that we can get along. I think you and I could get along. Not in the sense that we play well with others, but that we play well without others, at least each other. But the big WE... I don't know that we can.
I'm quite calm right now. Just so you know I'm not screaching. e.ann. I don't think God comes neat. Here's a very local example. You say Jesus hung with tax collectors and whores, but that's not at all accurate and seriously misses Jesus' point. That point being the power of the Word, the Word being God and his Goodness. Tax collectors and whores who heard the Word and accepted it were no longer unclean. Anything that belongs to God is good. So in Jesus' presence they were no longer tax collectors and whores they'd been cured of that as the leper, blind and dead were cured of their disease. Get it? The eyes of the blind were no longer blinding, and the whore no longer a whoring, the tax collector no longer tax collecting. Blind was still bad, like tax collecting and whoring were bad, but the word could change things. It's a pretty big difference. If you didn't accept the word or change, Jesus wouldn't have you. Jesus would tolerate whatever you were before you accepted the word and acted according to the word.
That's the way it is with religious people. And I did do a little Gideon's Bible reading this weekend. Acts 19:19 seems to promote book burning as an expression of God's Word. So for what it's worth Book burners have God on their side.
Hi trophycase. I just left this comment over on your blog, so I'll join the discussion here too.
I hate to argue with you, but you have missed the point of the theological exegesis of that particular verse.
Pick a translation, any translation...they were not burning ordinary books they were burning books about the art of magic, sorcery, evil arts...pick a translation that you like, they each use a synonymous word.
These men were being taught to be followers of Jesus' word and hence they had to give up their evil ungodly practices.
And the cost of that obedience, prorated at todays exchange rates...it was an $8,000 bonfire!
Oh, and one other point. You said, "Anything that belongs to God is good." Again, I hate to argue, but satan belongs to God...he's one of God's creations...and LOL...I don't see anything good about him!
Bonnie, I hate to argue as well. But I love to question. And when Corey said we need to fight this ignorance in his original post I asked how do we argue with that ignorance. After I asked that I fooled around a bit, but a valid question was posed.
I took Corey's use of ignorance to be synonymous with "faith in God". That was the question: How do you argue with God? or at least people who believe God is on their side?
The little joke about the moral compass was just plain fun to write, but there was also some criticism in there. A compass points to something outside itself, so a moral compass would do the same. The idea that a morality exist, that we can point to a morality, fell apart well over a hundred years ago. You can still argue the existence of a Fixed Authority outside ourselves, but you'll need faith.
Faith and logic aren't exclusive. Logic works just fine within the parameters of faith.
And I love questions. I take them very seriously so when e.ann, who's since left this discussion, asked about the biblical word on burning books and thinking for yourself, I took the question seriously. It's a good question, but one I don't think she really wanted answered.
Holding on to the idea that Jesus was somehow a liberal is only possible if you don't read the Bible. I've read the Bible. I read somewhere, I think Bloom, that Shakespeare created us, and I don't doubt he's been very influencial, but the Bible is our foundation. Our history is in that book, so when Corey says that "God Think" is fucking up the world today, he's right, but today's world was yesterday's world and that kind of "Think" has been around for a long time.
And it's still here today. And when you step outside the parameters of someone's faith, they'll leave the discussion, unless they have the power to shut you up or cast you out, burn you or the book you wrote. "So the word of the Lord was growing and prevailing" The evidence is the burning of books. I don't want to burn books. I am godless. But I can read. And right there in Acts 19:19 God is down with burning books. Inside the parameters of the book banning Texan's faith he's doing right.
Oh, and bonnie I've got some passages about the good of God and belonging to God in my response to you over on my site.
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