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Monday, August 28, 2006
Out of the Mouths of Babes
Belle is reshelving a bunch of books and Zoë (age 5) is helping. Zoë’s eye is caught by the striking Breughel image on the cover of George Steiner’s After Babel. (I don’t have it in front of me, but - if memory serves - it is this one.) Zoë wants to know the story, so Belle tells her the story of the Tower of Babel. Zoë [thinks]: “I used to believe in God, but now that I know he’s crazy, I don’t believe in him any more.”
Comments
Hmmm . . . ‘zis picture a metaphor for the demise of Theory?
At the age of 18 months or so my son Max kept removing from the shelf a book by a former colleague of mine named Heather James. The book, which I quite admire, is called Shakespeare’s Troy. A friend had to explain out to me that Max was intrigued by the image of the Trojan horse on the cover and decided to flip through the book looking for more pictures.
Does this mean that I shouldn’t believe in Noam Chomsky any more either?
The crazy God is the only one worth believing in.
(Now I’m picturing Jesus in the Temple throwing around tables and yelling, “You wanna get nuts?! Let’s get nuts!")
The idea of a crazy God does have a certain appeal.
C. S. Lewis famously argued that Jesus was “Lord, Liar or Lunatic”. Are we allowed to pick more than one of these?
Alternative take on the gospels: Jesus slowly descends into paranoid schizophrenia, and starts to suspect his friends of being informants for the Romans (in additions to the hallucinations, violent outbursts, delusions of being the Messiah etc). Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you: Judas really is an undercover informant. Realising that Jesus is about to do something suicidal, Judas decides it’s time to call in the cops…
On an obliquely related note: I highly recommend the new film of Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly”
"The crazy God is the only one worth believing in.”
Well put, Adam. Credo quia absurdum and all that.
At the very end of this clip we have a child’s assent to an adult’s observation about god:
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And it starts with astronomy, so it resonates with Adam’s post.
“I used to believe in God, but now that I know he’s crazy, I don’t believe in him any more.”
Not so far from Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov, is it; simply insert a conditional and a few more modifiers thusly:
“I used to believe in God, but I realized if He exists, He must be crazy, sinister, sadistic and chaotic, so I don’t believe in Him any more.”
et voila! Ivan, if not Voltaire himself.
Adam’s middle paragraph about Jesus and Judas could almost be a back-cover blurb for Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation.
What a great video clip.
Well, this used to be a very tough question for me to answer up untill a couple of months ago. I am a 33 year old female of 2 young boys. I was raised in the assembly of god religion but really haven’t attended church since I was 16. I had questions about all sorts of things when I was a child, such as the existance of dinosaurs for example. I was made to feel I shouldn’t question anything but to literally believe “gods word” as the truth and to have faith in him. Lots of things never made sense to me at a very young age. I have always loved science but wasn’t allowed to study the theory of evolution in school with the other kids. I always knew that things never made sense according the bible. I grew up learning that our earth was no more than 4,000 years old give or take. But, I sometimes would hear about fossils of neanderthals or discoveries of dinosaur bones being millions of years old on PBS for example. Recently, I started watching the science channel. SCIENCE IS NOW MY FAITH. I can’t get enough of it---- it’s so amazing to learn how things work. I am not saying there isn’t a god. All I am saying is that if there is a god out there that would allow all the pain there is in this would that I do not want any part of him. There may be a creator or maybe not, I just don’t know. My brain now allows me to think “outside the box” being exposed to the knowlege available to me now. I love to learn. There is so just too much evidence out there to say our earth is only 4,000 years old. You should watch the science channel (almost any show will do! :o) How can christians claim what they do? I sometimes get angry at religion in general. If there is a god… how can one faith claim they are the one to believe vs. the other? I am angry that after all these years that I was not allowed to question my parents beliefs.... it just did not happen the way the bible says it did - I know it deep within me. I am sure some things are correct to some point in the bible (based on the historical facts) but it has been made to believe to christians more than what really happened. I would say alot of it are fables or story tales. I know now that I can say that science is my religion. It is based on the facts, what is observed, what can be proven by experiments, and by trial and error.... science is life as we see and observe… Not faith. What is faith you ask? It a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Science is based on proof, on knowing the facts and wanting to learn the truth. Churches do discredit science but science is just seeking the truth. Science has never wanted to disprove god.... but to find answers. Most religions claim how you must believe in what they believe giving no credit to facts. I don’t know how our universe was created, but I do know that if there was a just god he would not allow his children to go to be tormented in hell if he was just and loving as claimed him to be in the bible. Listen to your instints.... you know the truth deep within. It is still a struggle for me everyday because of my background. I don’t know if I could ever admit to my parents how I really feel but maybe one day I will be able to. I wish you well..... Do what you love as long as it hurts no one including yourself.
Sincerely,
Lindy