Fictional evidence, et cetera, so don’t take this as criticism or praise as such—but that sounds like the premise to the more cracked-out sort of military SF novel.
I’d love to see that. A movie that accepts God as real then bites the bullet and realises that he needs a good killing before he can pull any more of his horrific interventions.
I think God’s horrific interventions tend to be trolling. Like, “haha, you think temporal death and suffering are super important and are prepared to get all worked up and offended about it, but actually your intuitions about morality and game theory are wrong and this was an awesome opportunity to tease you about it”. He might not have even actually killed anyone, just convinced people that He did, just to get a rise out of self-righteous moralists. I think He has that kind of personality, for better or worse. Think of a postmodern author who likes to fuck around with his characters. I think the Jews sort of see God that way and the Catholics downplay it because they take everything super-seriously. (I think God might be toying with the Catholics. Playfully, true, but trollingly too.) You can sort of see it with Jesus too; Jesus is the paragon of passive-aggressive trolling after all.
(ETA: Also interesting and telling is the story of Job. It’s actually a very deep and intriguing story, and I’m annoyed that atheistic folk don’t seem to realize that it’s in the Bible because it seems terrible at first blush.)
Lol. No, I think that feeding the troll would be getting all worked up about His supposed indignities; I’m trying to keep people from feeding the troll. And also help people gain the capacity to appreciate the author’s jokes, whether the author is YHWH or extrapolated-wedrifid or whomever. (Not that YHWH and extrapolated-wedrifid are necessarily mutually exclusive.)
I think that, deep down, every male human wants to defeat YHWH in one-on-one combat and then take up His mantle. He’s the Father, after all.
I’m not so sure. At least with respect to the “He’s the Father, after all” part. I’m all for defeating God in one on one combat and taking His power but the frame of taking the mantle of the father is strongly aversive. It puts me in the frame of a rebel within the father’s realm and that just doesn’t seem to be how my psychology is wired. From what I can tell my instincts drive me to expand my own tribe, not to rebel from within a father figure’s. I don’t imagine I’m alone.
Yeah, upon introspection it seems aversive to me too; I think I applied my Freudian-Jungian psychomythology incorrectly there. The fatherly aspects do seem near-entirely unrelated to the “worthy enemy” aspects.
You can sort of see it with Jesus too; Jesus is the paragon of passive-aggressive trolling after all.
I don’t quite buy that. I don’t think Jesus deserves the reputation for passive aggression that the sermons told about him give us. The actual (probably fictional character) of Jesus as portrayed by the descriptions of his behavior are worthy of more respect than that. This is the guy who smashed up a church, ran around with whip and gave rather brutally direct denunciations straight to the face of the orthodoxy. I may never have been able to escape my religious beliefs if religious culture was actually modeled remotely upon that guy.
Really? You and muflax say that but I thought lukeprog leaned the other way, and I always figured that it was more likely that Jesus was for real. I haven’t looked at the literature. It seemed that arguments could easily go either way but that the prior suggested historicity for various reasons, and if you hadn’t done a lot of research then historicity was the safer provisional bet. E.g. it seems like it’d be hard to figure out which historians to trust; I’ve discovered that even highly-recommended books about Christianity can have errors that look conspicuously politically motivated.
This is the guy who smashed up a church, ran around with whip and gave rather brutally direct denunciations straight to the face of the orthodoxy.
Jesus was pretty multidimensional though, a la Paul’s “I have become all things to all men that I might by all means win some”. He definitely wasn’t afraid of fucking shit up, but even so, his killing of the fig tree, alleged self-martyring choice to hang on the cross, &c. strike me as passive aggressive.
(I think I admire passive aggression and trolling more than you do, I wonder why that is.)
Really? You and muflax say that but I thought lukeprog leaned the other way, and I always figured that it was more likely that Jesus was for real.
In that context the position I was assuming was that the details of the stories told about Jesus and the character conveyed were most likely heavily fictionalized. Not so much anything about the possibility of a man behind the myth.
It seemed that arguments could easily go either way
I had been under the impression that it was generally believed Jesus existed as a historical figure but when prompted I was rather surprised that the evidence was scant. I’m not especially attached to a position either way and accordingly have only investigated briefly.
(I think I admire passive aggression and trolling more than you do, I wonder why that is.
I admire passive aggression—when done well. The sort encouraged in churches does not seem to be of this kind. It can be a powerful tool to use against enemies and rivals and in particular anything that can be done to claim the moral highground from the enemy—to make them look like the bad guy—is usually a good idea.
I most certainly don’t admire it as a primary means of conflict resolution in my friends. In terms of what benefits and what I find convenient to tolerate it ranks far below straightforward aggression. Mostly because I’m not very good at dealing with it. I don’t mean I can’t reciprocate effectively and mitigate damage. I just can’t deal with them in a way that makes them useful to me as friends. Passive aggressive friends resolve in my mind to ‘enemies’.
As for why you like trolling more than I do—many would attribute that sort of thing to bad parenting but from what I understand it is actually genetics and peer influence that are the dominant factors. ;)
That’s basically the premise of His Dark Materials, my favorite “children’s” books. They’re a big part of why I eventually ended up at SingInst, and the only reason I read them is because I was contractually obliged to randomly pick a book off a shelf in my middle school library. Fortuna Privata. It’s ironic that nowadays I seem to have taken up the role of supporter of the Authority. Fortuna Ironica?
I’d love to see that. A movie that accepts God as real then bites the bullet and realises that he needs a good killing before he can pull any more of his horrific interventions.
I think God’s horrific interventions tend to be trolling. Like, “haha, you think temporal death and suffering are super important and are prepared to get all worked up and offended about it, but actually your intuitions about morality and game theory are wrong and this was an awesome opportunity to tease you about it”. He might not have even actually killed anyone, just convinced people that He did, just to get a rise out of self-righteous moralists. I think He has that kind of personality, for better or worse. Think of a postmodern author who likes to fuck around with his characters. I think the Jews sort of see God that way and the Catholics downplay it because they take everything super-seriously. (I think God might be toying with the Catholics. Playfully, true, but trollingly too.) You can sort of see it with Jesus too; Jesus is the paragon of passive-aggressive trolling after all.
(ETA: Also interesting and telling is the story of Job. It’s actually a very deep and intriguing story, and I’m annoyed that atheistic folk don’t seem to realize that it’s in the Bible because it seems terrible at first blush.)
So your moral impulse to bring Him to our attention should be equated with an impulse to feed the Troll? I like that perspective.
Everyone, downvote and ignore Yahweh! He is just ordering people to genocide each other for attention!
Lol. No, I think that feeding the troll would be getting all worked up about His supposed indignities; I’m trying to keep people from feeding the troll. And also help people gain the capacity to appreciate the author’s jokes, whether the author is YHWH or extrapolated-wedrifid or whomever. (Not that YHWH and extrapolated-wedrifid are necessarily mutually exclusive.)
Why thank you. Or screw you. I can’t decide. ;)
I think that, deep down, every male human wants to defeat YHWH in one-on-one combat and then take up His mantle. He’s the Father, after all.
I’m not so sure. At least with respect to the “He’s the Father, after all” part. I’m all for defeating God in one on one combat and taking His power but the frame of taking the mantle of the father is strongly aversive. It puts me in the frame of a rebel within the father’s realm and that just doesn’t seem to be how my psychology is wired. From what I can tell my instincts drive me to expand my own tribe, not to rebel from within a father figure’s. I don’t imagine I’m alone.
Yeah, upon introspection it seems aversive to me too; I think I applied my Freudian-Jungian psychomythology incorrectly there. The fatherly aspects do seem near-entirely unrelated to the “worthy enemy” aspects.
I don’t quite buy that. I don’t think Jesus deserves the reputation for passive aggression that the sermons told about him give us. The actual (probably fictional character) of Jesus as portrayed by the descriptions of his behavior are worthy of more respect than that. This is the guy who smashed up a church, ran around with whip and gave rather brutally direct denunciations straight to the face of the orthodoxy. I may never have been able to escape my religious beliefs if religious culture was actually modeled remotely upon that guy.
Oh yeah, I was primed by muflax’ recent tweet:
Really? You and muflax say that but I thought lukeprog leaned the other way, and I always figured that it was more likely that Jesus was for real. I haven’t looked at the literature. It seemed that arguments could easily go either way but that the prior suggested historicity for various reasons, and if you hadn’t done a lot of research then historicity was the safer provisional bet. E.g. it seems like it’d be hard to figure out which historians to trust; I’ve discovered that even highly-recommended books about Christianity can have errors that look conspicuously politically motivated.
Jesus was pretty multidimensional though, a la Paul’s “I have become all things to all men that I might by all means win some”. He definitely wasn’t afraid of fucking shit up, but even so, his killing of the fig tree, alleged self-martyring choice to hang on the cross, &c. strike me as passive aggressive.
(I think I admire passive aggression and trolling more than you do, I wonder why that is.)
In that context the position I was assuming was that the details of the stories told about Jesus and the character conveyed were most likely heavily fictionalized. Not so much anything about the possibility of a man behind the myth.
I had been under the impression that it was generally believed Jesus existed as a historical figure but when prompted I was rather surprised that the evidence was scant. I’m not especially attached to a position either way and accordingly have only investigated briefly.
I admire passive aggression—when done well. The sort encouraged in churches does not seem to be of this kind. It can be a powerful tool to use against enemies and rivals and in particular anything that can be done to claim the moral highground from the enemy—to make them look like the bad guy—is usually a good idea.
I most certainly don’t admire it as a primary means of conflict resolution in my friends. In terms of what benefits and what I find convenient to tolerate it ranks far below straightforward aggression. Mostly because I’m not very good at dealing with it. I don’t mean I can’t reciprocate effectively and mitigate damage. I just can’t deal with them in a way that makes them useful to me as friends. Passive aggressive friends resolve in my mind to ‘enemies’.
As for why you like trolling more than I do—many would attribute that sort of thing to bad parenting but from what I understand it is actually genetics and peer influence that are the dominant factors. ;)
That’s basically the premise of His Dark Materials, my favorite “children’s” books. They’re a big part of why I eventually ended up at SingInst, and the only reason I read them is because I was contractually obliged to randomly pick a book off a shelf in my middle school library. Fortuna Privata. It’s ironic that nowadays I seem to have taken up the role of supporter of the Authority. Fortuna Ironica?
It’s been done. (Obligatory TV Tropes warning.)
The Salvation War is probably the most military of these, and it’s reasonably well-written for an internet thing.