Posted on 07/13/2005 12:49:13 AM PDT by dsc
Ping -- though I know you'll take umbrage at my callous disregard for the Potty books.
"I would even go so far as to say that DEMANDING worship from us is a bit arrogant"
Have you ever considered that such "commandments" from God are meant to bring us into closer union with Him? God does not benefit from worship, we do. If the meaning of our lives are based on eternal union with Him, and if worship is, according to the Church, the greatest act that humans can conduct, then I consider this "commandment" a piece of good advice from someone who loves me and wants me to enjoy heaven with Him.
If you consider worshipping God a burden, I pray that you consider more on why God created us in the first place.
Regards
It's the whole idea of finding other ways to refer to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
They're not.
Note to everyone on this post: For the love of God, please do not compare this potboiler tripe to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was a scholar and a poet. The ding-bat broad who wrote these books is...well, just that -- a ding-bat.
Torture!
I tend to agree with our interrogators on the efficacy of this method. After a few chapters, I'd be singing like a canary.
Alice in Wonderland? Are you Sirius? The very book that started the trend of seeing adults as foolish and incompetent and children seen as worthy of praise for mocking their authority
`Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) `You're nothing but a pack of cards!'
It's also damn funny!
"I think it's sad you believe a children's book is the root of all evil."
How come you can't argue this without resorting to that sort of thing? Nobody has ever called the books "the root of all evil," or implied any such thing.
"And I have been led to believe that by"
You don't believe it. Not for a second.
I think P.J. O'Rourke called that the defining moment for the true spirit of the Republican party: Righteous individualism combined with woeful ignorance.
That only makes it a subtle seduction which can corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy.
We were an experiment, but he clearly has no more interest in us at this point.
"If there are though, they'd be mostly things like..."
And would include books that make the occult look attractive.
"That comes pretty close to the Puritan view, I guess."
You've interpreted my statement to mean, "Everything that's fun is bad," when my meaning was that some things that are fun are bad. Why did you do that?
"I think there is very likely an equal, probably greater danger, that the things that make us feel self righteous are the real traps set for us by Satan. Like condemning Harry Potter books as satanic."
Satan uses everything, including self-righteousness. What is startling about your statement is that you imagine those of us who see the danger are harboring feelings of self-rightousness.
Liberals, of course, take it as an article of faith that everyone who disapproves of anything they approve of is acting out of bad motives, like self-righteousness. It's frightening to see how many conservatives do the same thing.
I guess it's like Robert Bork said in "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," we're all contaminated by leftism to some degree.
"And yet, crime rates keep dropping."
Yes, because we're locking up more criminals for longer sentences. The two things are not related.
Umm, whatever.
"And I have been led to believe that by reading all the posts on this thread condemning a book of pure fiction."
Are Hemmingway's novels "pure fiction?" And yet, how people go on about the truths they contain regarding life and human nature.
Everyone who reads makes judgements about how astutely authors understand the human condition.
The fact is that *nothing* is "just" a work of fiction. All fiction has content that speaks to us as people, or we wouldn't read it.
Modernman shouldn't feel bad. The NYT also finds the correlation between "lower crime/more criminals locked up" confusing.
"The very book that started the trend of seeing adults as foolish and incompetent and children seen as worthy of praise for mocking their authority"
And written by a drug-addicted pedophile.
No evil there! Nope. Just a "story."
Agreed. And there's nothing more tedious and torturous than being trapped inside the world of some author's failed or deficient imagination.
"< /atheist>"
Oh, you poor guy. How sad for you.
"You be a better case for something being bad than "it is!"
You're not anywhere near ready to go there yet.
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