It made you decide you were NOT a Christian? That's interesting. I had sort of thought that the author probably intended to bring people ~to~ Christianity, even if the Fundies don't like it.
Not that I think in retrospect that I would take the book seriously now...
I think I might have to include that in my email to my friend, if I ever finish it. "Don't worry, I hear that book can't really be taken seriously by anyone with an adult reading level. Kind of like the Bible." No, no, I won't say that. I know that many people find the Bible quite interesting as allegory and for historical reasons. It's just the whole "this is the inviolable word of God!" thing that I don't get. Seriously, when we KNOW that the Bible has been translated with varying discrepancies numerous times - sometimes because the actual word or concept was just too offensive to society at the time, so they substituted something slightly off - when we KNOW that people who translate it from ancient Hebrew now come out with some quite different connotations... I just can't see how anyone can say it is somehow correct in every syllable. And what sort of hubris makes anyone think they could know God's mind? If you posit the kind of God who knows when a sparrow falls, who's plans are ineffable, etc, etc, how can you then also claim to know what that sort of a being wants? I can't believe my tiny, human brain could even conceive of the smallest part of such an understanding. (If I were to posit such a being, which I don't claim to do. ;) I'm happy with waiting to see what I find out after I die, and trying to be good and kind to others and my planet while I'm here, not because someone tells me I should but because it makes me feel better about myself.)
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Date: 2011-05-21 01:30 am (UTC)Not that I think in retrospect that I would take the book seriously now...
I think I might have to include that in my email to my friend, if I ever finish it. "Don't worry, I hear that book can't really be taken seriously by anyone with an adult reading level.
Kind of like the Bible." No, no, I won't say that. I know that many people find the Bible quite interesting as allegory and for historical reasons. It's just the whole "this is the inviolable word of God!" thing that I don't get. Seriously, when we KNOW that the Bible has been translated with varying discrepancies numerous times - sometimes because the actual word or concept was just too offensive to society at the time, so they substituted something slightly off - when we KNOW that people who translate it from ancient Hebrew now come out with some quite different connotations... I just can't see how anyone can say it is somehow correct in every syllable. And what sort of hubris makes anyone think they could know God's mind? If you posit the kind of God who knows when a sparrow falls, who's plans are ineffable, etc, etc, how can you then also claim to know what that sort of a being wants? I can't believe my tiny, human brain could even conceive of the smallest part of such an understanding. (If I were to posit such a being, which I don't claim to do. ;) I'm happy with waiting to see what I find out after I die, and trying to be good and kind to others and my planet while I'm here, not because someone tells me I should but because it makes me feel better about myself.)