The notion of ‘God’ as being considered in theodicy implies three attributes:...We noticed immediately that Kyon calling Haruhi God is a bit off. And if we taboo the word ‘God’, replacing it with the only technical definition that I can think of, we see that he’s completely on crack. Haruhi is only omnipotent, and none of those other things. That just leaves us with the connotations. Hearing Kyon blithely call Haruhi ‘God’ gives us the not-entirely-inaccurate idea that after his three years with the SOS Brigade, he’s developed a weird religious mania centering on his Brigade Chief.
No, the point of the theodicy is that while there are sets of attributes claimed by many people to hold of the entity they call god or the gods, these sets seem to be mutually contradictory.
The usual responses to this identified contradiction is to give up one of the premises—for example, omnipotence (identifying a rival evil god, Manichaeism; or making up something called ‘free will’ and claiming that omnipotence doesn’t cover decisions made through ‘free will’). In Haruhi’s case, the most obvious resolution is to deny omniscience: that’s the premise of the series, that Haruhi has no idea of her role or powers. (Benevolence is easier to defend.)
Hence, the reviewer is implicitly condemning the response of a great many theologians and philosophers! Since I trust them more than the reviewer on the theodicy...
Most of the rest of the review is petty, probably wrong (I remember the novels having pretty absurd metaphors...), butt-hurt from Eliezer not writing Kyon and Mikuru exactly as the reviewer thinks they should be written, ascribes stupidity to the characters (so, they’re not allowed to infer that Haruhi getting religion would lead to some possibly apocalyptically disastrous events because the novels usually show them reacting to events?!)
For the people in the room who have managed to live their lives blissfully ignorant of the basic tenets of Scientology, can we have a more obvious example of what might go wrong?
Did we read the same light novels? The author is positively proud of throwing in all sorts of superficial random references like to The Fall of Hyperion without explaining them, and you’re complaining when Eliezer does it?
Besides, is Scientology even that bad of an example? I mean, as far as I can remember it has aliens and stuff. Haruhi’s already summoned aliens once and the world didn’t end. I’d be far more concerned, say, if Haruhi wished some flanderized variant of Catholicism into existence based on a cursory reading of Wikipedia, complete with Dante’s classification of how all the sinners and usurers and fornicators get sorted into neat boxes in the afterlife.
No, I’m sure it’d be fine as long as you had deus ex machina Yuki Nagato along to eliminate any minor problems like ‘oh my god Mikuru nearly just killed us all with death ray eye beams!’ (And speaking of bad writing, Yuki is awful.)
Actually, I’m just going to stop reviewing the review there. It’s not worth going through identifying the factual errors, and all the value judgments are just a clear example of de gustibus non est disputandum.
Doesn’t seem to understand the theodicy.
No, the point of the theodicy is that while there are sets of attributes claimed by many people to hold of the entity they call god or the gods, these sets seem to be mutually contradictory.
The usual responses to this identified contradiction is to give up one of the premises—for example, omnipotence (identifying a rival evil god, Manichaeism; or making up something called ‘free will’ and claiming that omnipotence doesn’t cover decisions made through ‘free will’). In Haruhi’s case, the most obvious resolution is to deny omniscience: that’s the premise of the series, that Haruhi has no idea of her role or powers. (Benevolence is easier to defend.)
Hence, the reviewer is implicitly condemning the response of a great many theologians and philosophers! Since I trust them more than the reviewer on the theodicy...
Most of the rest of the review is petty, probably wrong (I remember the novels having pretty absurd metaphors...), butt-hurt from Eliezer not writing Kyon and Mikuru exactly as the reviewer thinks they should be written, ascribes stupidity to the characters (so, they’re not allowed to infer that Haruhi getting religion would lead to some possibly apocalyptically disastrous events because the novels usually show them reacting to events?!)
Did we read the same light novels? The author is positively proud of throwing in all sorts of superficial random references like to The Fall of Hyperion without explaining them, and you’re complaining when Eliezer does it?
No, I’m sure it’d be fine as long as you had deus ex machina Yuki Nagato along to eliminate any minor problems like ‘oh my god Mikuru nearly just killed us all with death ray eye beams!’ (And speaking of bad writing, Yuki is awful.)
Actually, I’m just going to stop reviewing the review there. It’s not worth going through identifying the factual errors, and all the value judgments are just a clear example of de gustibus non est disputandum.