The Sword and Laser discussion

This is a really interesting essay about religion and belief.

http://makeblank.com/lost-and-found/a...

In my youth I was a sceptic but I still had a problem leaving behind some aspects of belief. I think one of the things that helped me along the path of being a non-believer was reading an embarrassing large amount of fiction. After a while I began to see the various meta-memes used in the story telling art and began to see the biblical story as just a story. This transition was also helped by reading Asimov's Guide to the Bible: The Old and New Testaments which put the story in historical perspective.

Intriguing. It reminds me of Gene Wolfe's short essay 'A Fantasist Reads the Bible and Its Critics' (from Shadows of the New Sun.) Wolfe is a Christian, but he's looking at what it means that the Bible is a collection of narratives written by humans (quote: "...the authors of the books that make up the Bible were not (as I believe and a multitude of details show) stenographers taking God's dictation, but human beings inspired by Him. And it was as human beings they wrote, conveying the message of inspiration to their fellow.").

Specifically, he looks at what a writer of fantasy would see in these narratives, how they're built, and what they say that other critics would miss, in a way similar to how William Prince finds himself comparing his writing with the Easter sermon and its narrative. And Wolfe goes on to suggest that looking at the Bible's narratives from this viewpoint might be a very fruitful method, both for believer and non-believer.

Here's another quote:

"Fantasy provides the best modern paradigm for the writing of the books that constitue the Bible, not because Moses was a fictional character - he was not - but because the writers of fantasy must deal in the same way with the same types of material. Moses was real, and Frodo is fictional. But the scribe who described (what a suggestive word!) the death of Moses was writing about his idea of Moses, just as Tolkein dealt with his of Frodo. This should not make us think less of Moses, although it may lead us to think rather more of Frodo.

Thus the fantasist who comes to the Bible for the first time finds himself among friends..."

Wolfe makes a bunch of fascinating observations in a very short space, about authorship, symbolism, and a number of (especially to the convinced Christian) unexpected elements of the Bible.

(Prince's essay also reminded me that one of the big factors in shaking my own faith as a youth was the shock wrought by a science fiction writer, Harlan Ellison, with his Deathbird Stories and its bleak, 'humans create their own deities' theme.)

Jlawrence wrote: "Intriguing. It reminds me of Gene Wolfe's short essay 'A Fantasist Reads the Bible and Its Critics' (from Shadows of the New Sun.) Wolfe is a Christian, but he's looking at what it m..."

There's an old meme in fandom to give religious books sci-fi names reflecting their content. The Bible is an omnibus of the The War God of Israel and The Thing with Three Souls. Other examples include The Prophet of Dune, and The Adventure of Joseph Smith and the Golden Plates of Nephi.

As an atheist who only reads scriptures for their literary value, I must say the Bible is over-rated. Yes, there's lots of good poetry in there, and some of the individual stories are wonderful, but overall it lacks cohesion. And God's change of character in the second half is really unmotivated -- he spends hundreds of pages as the ultimte bad-ass, then suddenly he becomes a hippie for no reason. The Book of Mormon is a much better read -- it repurposes some of the best poetry from the Bible and tells a great adventure story. But even that is nothing compared to Hindu scripture, which is just plain epic. Anyone who likes Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time really needs to give the Mahabharata a try.

Sean wrote: "As an atheist who only reads scriptures for their literary value, I must say the Bible is over-rated. Yes, there's lots of good poetry in there, and some of the individual stories are wonderful, but overall it lacks cohesion."

As an anthology compiled from *many* authors, its literary quality does vary greatly. I've probably only read about a third of it in my life, and found portions of it very difficult. But the lack of cohesion is interesting to think about. One of Wolfe's assertions that made me want to read portions of the Bible again: "the convinced Christian meets with few tests of his faith more severe than the Bible." I think that's overstating, but Wolfe does bring up a number of intriguing examples, such as:

"He [the Christian reader:] arrives as a convinced monotheist, only to find 'his' Bible filled with gods who are not God...'God rises in the divine assembly; he judges in the midst of the gods.' King Solomon, or so the Christian has heard, was the wisest of men. What is he to think when he reads, 'The king defiled the high places east of Jerusalem, south of the Mount of Misconduct, which Solomon, King of Israel, had built in honour of Astarte, the Sidonian horror, or Chemosh, the Moabite horror, and of Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites.'?"

Sean wrote: "And God's change of character in the second half is really unmotivated -- he spends hundreds of pages as the ultimte bad-ass, then suddenly he becomes a hippie for no reason..."

Well, the epic psychedelic panorama of destruction in the Apocalypse makes up for that a bit.

Sean wrote: "Anyone who likes Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time really needs to give the Mahabharata a try.
..."

I started a long excerpt of that from the Norton Anthology of World Literature last year and found it rough-going, but I do want to try again.

When I was a kid I read my way through the stories in the Apocrypha in a big old Bible at my parents' place, and there are some great tales in there.