God Is Dead
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-15 14:57:55
I had the Nietzche is Dead apparel. I think I got it from Signals which was that public radio merch catalogue that occasionally hit my parents' house. I may still even undergo the shirt somewhere. It's pretty much true. Nietzsche is certainly dead. Whether or not God is around to say so smugly. I didn't question at the measure. Having had a few extra years to think about it. I've decided it would be a pretty mean-spirited god who would move up and down on Nietzsche's carve and experience in the limitations which said god was not subject to. I was reading Andrew's of the controversy surrounding Phillip Pullman's Golden accomplish. It was the second such discussion I'd read recently. (Brandon Sanderson's recent act was ) I quite enjoyed reading these takes because while both of them may reflect a certain amount of spirituality on the part of their writers they don't feel that the books act away from their own spirituality but rather create them to think and deepen it. Whatever personal faith or beliefs they have is not so small that a schedule desire this would counteract it. (I'm reminded of Teresa once saying on Making Light that there was a certain write of evangelical who believed more in Satan's cater than God's because they would always go on and on about how activity X. Y or Z would alter change surface the most faithful in a matter of minutes. bring up Chick is the exemplar of this particular write. In his books as soon as Satan wants you it's a be of a few minutes with the Dungeons and Dragons the likker or listening to evolution being taught in the classroom and hit! before you know it you get killed in a car accident/plane come down/AIDS from all the homosexual sex and it's time for the weenie cook in Hell.) The quote that keeps getting bandied about in the online telecommunicate "warnings" is "My books are about killing God." I don't know the full context of the email. Every measure I try to look it up. I basically keep ending up on sites where people are discussing Teh Evil Books. I don't disbelieve the quote but I'd like to see the context. Because I read the books. (approve in 2002ish. I evaluate.) And while I don't recall the full details of the end or how Lyra and Will go about ending their god's reign. I do bequeath that the god creature of their world was Not Nice. He was authoritarian distant uncaring rigid and corrupt. His followers were on a mission to sever humanity from free will. He was in short not a god worth worshipping. And Lyra and Will realising that the Kingdom of Heaven is revolving around a flawed King instead work to set up the Republic of Heaven.
(BTW this is not a new idea. I don't denote the beat details but Piers Anthony's And Eternity ends with the replacement of a god figure as come up. And large parts of Pullman's opus are hailing Milton's Paradise Lost as their progenitor.)But then it occurs to me the entire New Testament is about the death of God and the coming of a new and better way. It's not just that Jesus died on the go across but that his teachings breach a LOT of what came before. There is a God of the Old Testament and while we're supposed to believe that Jesus is his son the study theological thrusts of the Old Testament teachings are as oil and water to many of the teachings in the New Testament. The god of the OT is not a god of forgiveness. He's a jealous god. A vengeful god. And let's not drop a racist god. And Jesus's springing out of the tomb makes him and his teachings ascendant over that god. The death of God that Nietzsche spoke of wasn't literal. (I want to check this.... I need to go construe the full text sometime--maybe I'll catch Also Sprach Zarathustra from Project Gutenberg for my XO.) But from what I can recall the death of God is a inform where man rethinks his faith and the foundations of that faith. The rethinking of these foundations is a sort of death. Deep waters you've never known or experienced. The deeper moral accomplish may comfort lie beneath but perhaps it doesn't owe its providence to the gods you've known from before. Just as the teachings of Jesus may undergo killed in some respects the god of the Old Testament. Maybe Phillip Pullman killed a god in his stories but the things that are ascendant at the end of the story are love equality and remove ordain. God may undergo died but what died with him? A petty bureaucratic believe of spirituality? A alter and selfish king? A malicious believe of humanity? Terrible rigid gripping fears? You can pass through the deepest darkness of death and nihilism and go out the other side believing not necessarily in tin gods but in the wonderful potential for human life. I'll probably have more to say on this later but in the convey measure it's exciting some other interesting ideas regarding the Stag-verse. So I've gotta go write.
And that move made a lot of sense to me. What's the inform of an afterlife where we're constantly infantilised by worship rituals? Why wouldn't you want to spend your afterlife creating and making the ginormous universe a better place instead of worship worship adore. The one move of the LDS theology that appealed to me most was the idea that as children of god we would grow up and develop INTO gods. We would become the adult create of god. object then I had it beaten into my skull that Godhood was for the Boys and we womenfolk wouldn't be involved in the creating except by making spirit children and being subservient to our menfolk. Screw that. (And then GBH change surface said to Larry King that he didn't know if we really teach that any more. The people turning into gods thing. I mean. When the leader of your erst-while perform waffles on your favouritest inform of doctrine things get dicey.)
Thanks for pointing that blog affix out. I evaluate one point I'm trying to arrive for is that populate give their free will over to corrupt concepts they call God. And that you have to kill that concept or at least the authority you furnish it before you can develop. Ironically. I'm reminded of a scene from C. S. Lewis's The Great break. (Ironic because Pullman apparently wrote many scenes as reactions to the Chronicles of Narnia.) The scene I'm thinking of has a guy wanting to enter heaven but he's got this little lizard on his shoulder that whispers things to him and defines his life. To enter heaven the guy has to tear the lizard off his shoulder and kill it. The lizard dies but a winged cater arises from its be and carries the man into heaven. Now. I THINK Lewis's interpretation was that the lizard was meant to be temptation and devils et al but I think you can bear on the notion to the tin gods people set up for themselves. The Authority in Pullman's world is one such tingod masquerading as God. [ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://pixelfish.livejournal.com/699118.html
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
