Zombies! discussion

I have met many people who claim to be Christian but like Randy said they barely read the bible. I have been reading and studying the Bible for several years now and it is truly Gods word I get my inspiration daily from reading it. Well spoken Randy all people who claim to be Christian should be grounded in the Bible!

+R.S.
Yeah I don't think there's a whole lot of connection between the zombie apocalypse genre that has come about over the past 50 years (almost exactly) and religion. It's an interesting concept, it touches on the mystery and fear of death (after all, who else can remember their first time near a dead body? It's a bit scary or at least strange), and an aspect I particularly like is the survivalism. Modern society and civilization is gone, often the cities are bastions of the dead, and we are thrown back to live more like our ancestors did. That's an aspect I quite like.

+Clint
I've got a Christian character in my series too, and speaking of which I'd like to thank you for trying out the first in my Living Amongst the Dead series. 3 stars is better than just 1 lol The Christianity isn't a particularly big part of the story but is a bit more touched upon in the 4th book (Struggles New and Old) when I introduce 2 Muslim characters. He's not particularly religious, but when the Muslims mention wanting to do their morning prayer Richard goes ahead and takes a few brief seconds to himself to pray and then is all set to go. Then, turning back to the Muslims, you see the incredibly stark contrast. They perform wudu (or ghusl? Can't quite remember which but it's in great detail) which is religious cleaning which takes a while and only THEN after that they start praying and it takes a long time, including directing themselves to Mecca. Very big differences between Christianity and Islam, in a variety of ways, and I reject their suggestion that Allah is the same God as the Christian God.

+Randy
You're free to have your own views, by all means, and indeed quite a bit of the Old Testament has been made obsolete in Christianity thanks to the New Testament, and I'm rather glad of that. The Old Testament has a lot of intense and unpleasant things, like putting gays to death, or those who engage in incest, or bestiality. Lots of reasons given to banish people from town or outright stone them to death, but Christ came and said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and boom, just like that, it because unChristian to stone someone to death. Right on.

As for that video, I'd like to say I'm surprised at it but I'm not. I've read enough of the Quran to know that they are merely being devout Muslims, 'rightfully' hating Jews as their holy book says (not just Judaism but the Jewish people), and promoting war which the Quran does over and over and over and over. Of course I've read a fair bit of the New Testament and it speaks of the Jews as brethren to Christians, and why not? Jesus Christ Himself was a Jew! When the rings of Saturn were discovered, apparently some Christian leaders at the time speculated that it was Christ's foreskin lmao

I look forward to learning of Buddhism, Hinduism, and the beliefs of early Natives. All the same, I'm doubtful I'd find a religion that connects with me more than Christianity. It is, after all, at the foundation of the civilization of my people; the Caucasians of the West. I also believe that ultimately English Common Law, which is also at the foundation of American and Canadian law, has Christian elements in it though I'm still learning more of English Common Law.

I enjoy hearing people's views, especially if they differ from my own. Randy, if you'd like to hear a strong case for Christianity, I think you might find Dr. Jordan Peterson interesting. He's a Canadian like myself, was a professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto, and he's a clinical psychologist with something like 10,000+ hours of practice in it. He's also a Christian, and when he had been asked by Denis Prager whether he was secular or religious, he chose religious. Quite interesting indeed. He's a major reason why my interest in Christianity has taken such a surge, and I've been giving a lot of thought as to why the West has become the greatest civilization in human history. It can't be just the average IQ of White people, because Asians have a higher average IQ. It might be a helpful factor, but I think that our early adoption of Christianity is a major element as to why we have such wondrous technology today. Christianity tells us to seek truth and to not speak lies, and science is the journey to find the truths of the Earth... why must people think that religion and science are opposed to one another? Well, faith vs proof, I suppose that sums up why people think so... I think it's unnecessary.

At least when it comes to zombies they are fictional creations that doesn't exist in the real world. My parents and sister have come after me for years saying that watching zombie movies and reading zombie books are bad for me spiritually because of a connection to the occult. I have told them that the majority of zombies in fiction are created by science gone wrong not by the devil or demons. There's so many different ways to look at the zombie and everyone has their opinion none is wrong and none are right because at the end of the day they are still figments of the authors imagination

Ahem. They are fictional creations? :)

But it does depend on how you define a zombie. For example, is something like 28 Days Later... totally impossible?

And many religions have claims of resurrections. But, yeah, fictional. :)

Good point in my book I'm writing its caused by man's greed and vanity. In this day and age something like the rage virus is a terrifying possibility!

An interesting thing is, with Christianity, it seems to me that belief in God can be summed up in as simple a way as 'there will be consequences.' The book Crime and Punishment is an interesting view on the matter, if memory serves it's about a fellow who's in a very bad place in life. His sister is to be married off to a guy who doesn't really care about her, it's mostly for money so she's little more than a whore, and I think he's working for a woman in a miserable job. Not only that but his boss may have some role to play in getting his sister and that man (perhaps her son) married. There's various other reasons that his boss is a horrible person, but to summarize this aspect, he thinks about murdering her.

There's no logical reason for him not to, she's of no benefit to anybody and seems to be a drain on many lives that she interacts with. There's no reasonable downside that he can come up with, it seems like murdering her would be a net positive for everybody, and so, he murders her. His secular view logically brings him to that conclusion and indeed in theory he 'gets away with it'. Nobody actually figures out that he was the one who did it, but it none the less plagues him that he had done such a thing. Can't remember how the ending goes, but suffice it to say that with the crime comes the punishment.

If this character had been religious and believed in the Christian God then at least he would have known that even if nobody on the planet figured it out, someone ELSE would have known of it all along. It would have been a warning to his conscience, he would have known from the beginning that it would be wrong to murder that woman no matter how awful she is, no matter how logical her forced death would SEEM. I do think there's an argument to make in terms of the theory that 'all morals stem from religion'. After all, to be purely secular and purely logical, I mean, what if a man wants to have a family? Well, if he has no immediate prospects in the field of dating, there's a logical way to get what he wants. Find a vulnerable woman (and indeed most women are physically vulnerable to most men simply on account of biology), kidnap her, store her somewhere where nobody can find her, keep her alive, rape her, have her birth the children, and repeat.

So he gets what he wants. What if he needs more food? Well, the fastest and most logical way to get that is to steal it from someone else. Well, I suppose there could be a Food Bank available nearby so maybe he goes for that, but what if he needs even more? What if 10 years have passed by, the mother is still alive, and he has a bunch of children to feed besides? They're obviously not registered because they wouldn't have been born at a hospital and if he didn't get them via adoption then how in the Hell would he have gotten a bunch of kids? Not only that, but kids with his own DNA? So he must keep them secret. Thus he can't tell the Food Bank he needs a bunch of baby-related stuff, and thus he must steal either from a person who has what he needs or from a supermarket.

Actually, some religions almost allow for aspects of this. If an Islamic group is fighting a non-Muslim group, then Allah (their non-Christian God) allows for them to not only steal from the enemy what they would like but can even take on sex slaves. Not only that, but they can have as many as they like, and seeing how Muslim Arabs have historically treated their slaves INFINITELY worse than how White Christians treated theirs, I'm inclined to assume that the Quran and Hadiths don't have much in the way of humanitarian standards for slaves. Well, basically none for any non-Muslims. The Quran is drenched in talk of non-believers (infidels, basically), particularly pointing out polytheists (Norse religion, Hinduism, perhaps Wiccan) as being reprehensible and unclean, Jews as being utterly untrustworthy and abhorent, and Christians as well being untrustworthy (because they're allies with the Jews) and that they must not be taken as allies by any believer (Muslim).

So that whole 'kidnap a woman to raise a family' is technically allowed in Islam provided the woman isn't a Muslim, because the Quran tells Muslims not to kill themselves (suicide) or one another (murder). But it SPECIFIES believers (Muslims) so it's not a 'thou shalt not kill' as seen in Christianity and I guess also technically Judaism since we share the Old Testament. No, it's 'thou shalt not kill fellow Muslims' which is very different. Killing Christians or Jews or polytheists or atheists or Buddhists or what have you? In an Islamic culture, if you first demand they convert to Islam but they refuse, it would seem that's technically OK at least as far as Allah is concerned. Whether Sharia Law has something that protects non-Muslims, I don't know, but I know it doesn't do much in the way of protecting women or wives. Under Sharia Law, a Muslim husband can legally rape his wife (whom must be Muslim too since a Muslim cannot marry a non-Muslim under Sharia Law) because a Muslim wife cannot deny her husband sex. She simply cannot. She can't LEGALLY deny her husband sex. I also don't know if, like in Christian marriage, a Muslim bride must say 'I do' before she becomes his wife. If not, well, a Muslim girl can be married to a Muslim boy or man without her permission or acceptance. At least in Christianity, even in times of arranged marriages, she must say 'I do' before she becomes his wife so there is SOME degree of consent even if it's with the knowledge that if she doesn't, she'll be beaten. Thankfully times have changed and Christianity has improved with time.

That's another fundamental difference between Christianity (and Judaism for that matter) and Islam. The Jews believe someone will come to finish the story. Christians believe that person was Jesus Christ (who was born a Jew). Meanwhile, Muslims are told in their holy book that it's the unalterable word of Allah (THEIR God) and that the Quran cannot be changed. The standard Islamic procedure if anyone suggests reformation of Islam is to kill them, and indeed sadly modern Muslim or former-Muslim reformists are regularly threatened. There's even a case, to my understanding, of a list of names being left attached to a recently-murdered corpse that had many names of prominent reformists of Islam. This was just a few years ago to my understanding.

I've heard it said that religions all have the same foundation, or are of the same God. The Quran even mentions Jesus Christ (whom they call just a man), Mother Mary (whom they call deluded), and Moses. Whatever the case, I reject the notion. Now Judaism and Christianity have very clear connections, and it's obvious why, why suggesting that Islam and Christianity and Judaism are the same or have the same God? That's preposterous. Personally, my views on Islam are simple. Prophet Muhammad was a war-mongering, pedophilic, sexist wife-beater which are all historical facts in the Quran and Hadiths. As for my beliefs on the matter I believe Muhammad was a false-profit, that his book the Quran is nonsense that should have been abandoned centuries ago so that there would be less suffering and evil in the world, that Allah is not the true God, and if Islam is to be compatible with the Christian West then it needs heavy reformation that makes it more like Christianity. Ideally, any Muslim who goes to the West would convert to Christianity. That would be better for everyone involved.

I've even met someone from Iran very recently, moved to the West 4 years ago or so. He's not only a Christian, but a Christian Conservative who rejects Justin Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada, and a national embarrassment) and respects President Trump. He has a fascination with Christian culture (as he puts it) which is basically referring to White culture or the West (USA/Canada/UK/France/Germany/Sweden, etc.) which is the greatest civilization in the history of mankind. I do not believe it became the greatest just because we're White, though I don't think that fact particularly hurts. After all, it's ok to be White. No, I believe a fundamental reason why the West has become what it is, and a fundamental reason why we had (and still have) such great advancements in science (which is the pursuit of truth, which is a Christian pursuit) is because of our Christian foundation.

It may not be the only factor, but it definitely seems to me to be A factor in why the West rocks so hard. The pretty good average IQ of Whites is another aspect, but if THAT were the only factor or indeed even a major factor, then why was Asia so far behind us in the 18th and much of the 19th centuries? They had to Westernize (become more like Whites/Westerners) in order to reach our level technologically even though Asians have a higher average IQ than Whites. This is also reflected in the fact that Asian Americans make more money on average than White Americans and also cause less crime than White Americans, and the unfortunate fact of Blacks having lower average IQ than Whites and Asians is reflected not only in the miserable state that the continent of Africa is in but also in the state of Black Americans.

Though I believe IQ is not the only factor at play in terms of Black Americans making less money on average and causing more crime on average than White or Asian Americans. The Democrats tell Blacks that the game is rigged, that the chips are stacked against them, that the White man is keeping them down and that they'll never have an equal shot even though the racist policies of 'affirmative action' are outright working against White AND Asian Americans in favour of other minorities as well as in favour of females, whom are a majority in the face of men. Perhaps it's because men die sooner, over 90% of workplace fatalities are male, and the vast majority of people capable of joining a modern high-quality Western Military are male. However, standards have lowered to help more women get in, even though lowering the standards is ultimately lowering the quality of the Military itself which means more people (both men and women) will die in war.

Truth and science are being tossed to the wayside these days because of leftism. Randy, whatever your views on religion are, it sounds like you at least respect science. This includes biology, and specifically the biological fact that women are on average much weaker than men. Something like 50% the upper body strength and 60% the lower body strength. Do you think Militaries of the West should be weakened by lower standards in order to make it easier for more women to get in? Personally, for those rare outlier women who can indeed do anything a man can do, or at least anything a relatively small/weak man can do whom can BARELY pass high Military standards, I say 'fuck yeah, let them serve'. If a woman can pass the standards placed and met by men, then she has every right to fight for her country.

For the women who can't reach the standards, which is PROBABLY most women who try to get into the Military, our tax money should not be wasted on them to give them the training, the uniform, the firearms, ammunition, and so on and so forth. They can train on their OWN time and try to join again, but due to biology many women may never be able to join, and that's just the fact of the matter. Many men can't join too because of various reasons. Health issues, physical disability, mental disability, the US Military won't even accept anyone with an IQ below 83 and that's roughly 10% of the population in the West to my understanding.

If anything I've written here is incorrect, feel free to point it out. Wouldn't want to spread misinformation.

As there are various versions of zombies, I have my ways of looking at them.

There are times I draw a parallel between survivors in zombie stories and social dynamics in modern society. When dealing with the mindless feeder zombie (i.e. Romero or Kirkman/Moore/Adlard), something changes a crowd into a vicious machine that drives them to a certain pattern, and those who don't conform are devoured until there's nothing left. The "infected crowd" can seem to others like mindless drones, and "being infected" could feel like losing our identity. The threat of the crowd can drive the "survivor" mad as they destroy everything he/she holds dear, leaving him/her questioning what's morally right or wrong until he/she has nothing left to survive for … or wanting to destroy the crowd that threatens his/her way of life.

Other times, I see the flipside perspective of the zombie, a fallen soul who simply cannot function like others yet must still try to find their place in the world amongst "normal" people. Marion's zombies seem this way, as in Warm Bodies they lose much of themselves upon death, then they lose a little more each day as time goes on until they become feral monsters. Those who haven't reached this stage have the ability to "come back", as if redeeming a mistake (whether it was their doing or not).

Then there's the junkie type. They have full cognition yet are driven solely by an intense desire to find a moment's satisfaction, often destroying everyone around them in the process. The brain-eaters have often been like this, such as O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead. I'm not sure Roberson & Allred's iZombie is quite this extreme, as I only watched the show, but from that I did see how their new lifestyle threatened to overtake the world in a way that willfully executes the threat of the previous mindless example.

I myself have likened being a fully cognitive zombie to being autistic (like myself), setting the zombie apart from both the living and the dead. The disconnect results in having to form one's own identity on his/her own terms, taking ideas everywhere to fulfill personal interests with no real example (role model) to follow. Relating to people would be difficult because the living won't understand what he/she endures, and the dead won't understand anything beyond their own base instincts anyway. Even if he/she dedicates his/her existence to helping the living, they will always worry about him/her, never fully appreciating his/her sacrifices.

The fact that there are different options can confuse morality, but it's really up to each of us to decide which side is right or wrong. I like to think zombie fiction is a fun way of exploring these options, even if the medium's grosser than the average audience might prefer. Sometimes we have to face the gore to find the truth … kind of like life, huh?

I think the thing that terrifies me most is the posibility of regular people turning dangerou: lynch mobs, riots, the French Terror, like that. Maybe it's a fear we all have: the thought of people you know, your neighbors, even your own family turning on you, unreasoning and uncaring... How can you be safe if a large portion of the population is trying to kill you, everywhere around you... Makes it a terrific instrument of fear for a movie or a book.