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LETTERS_FROM_EARTH
"Letters from the Earth" by Mark Twaine
More daemonic voices, eh? This time
letters straight from Lucifer's pen.
Except that Twain appears to be using
the devil to opposite effect than
Lewis: Twain is saying what he really
thinks, with the mask of Lucifer to
keep himself covered.
The backstory on the delayed
publication is funny. Written in 1910,
edited for publication in the 30s,
supressed one more time, then finally
published in 1960, when God was
practically dead already. MORTALGOD
I think the general problem with
Twain's "Letters" is that it's largely
a very graphic presentation of an
obvious point, namely that Christianity
is fundamentally pretty ridiculous, and
in particular trying to take the bible
literally is a totally insane
notion. This shouldn't come as
news: they wouldn't talk about "faith"
all the time if the proposition
actually made any sense.
His attacks get a little repetitious:
o free will vs an omnipotent creator,
o existence of evil vs. omnibenevolent god
o ignorance of scale of the world shown by the Noah story
o the character God has inconsistent moral character
Some of them are maybe even
a little off base, e.g. the
traditional notion of "free
will" seems kind of funny when
you look at it closely under The individual is a magic
any circumstances, whether or box, ideas come out of it
not you write God into the without regard to input? Nah.
story.
But if the output depends on
And the idea that God the input, than can you hold
might choose to the node responsible for it's
splinter itself into output?
tiny god-like
fragments (rather than Then everything really is
just stick to simpler "society's fault". But if
pre-determined you adopt that line, the
automatons) at least AUTO incentive structure that holds
makes an interesting society together is shot.
premise.
This is not the kind
Ala William Gibson's of input you want
"Count Zero" going into those nodes.
"Responsibility" is
problematic whether
the individual in
question is godlike
or not...
SELF
The dull, sanitized
Christian heaven
doesn't strike me as
all that peculiar...
It just grows out of
the position the
Church has taken as
desire-cop. The
church prevents you
from giving into sin
and going against
the Good. As defined by the Church.
So, in heaven we attain that
state of perfection in which
we no longer want to do wrong.
That this state is synonymous
with being dead has a certain
logic to it.
The end of desire.
Think about the strategy of
Chistianity for a minute:
If you were going to design
an ideology that's supposed
to capture the minds of your
fellow anthropoids, would you
think that being anti-sex is
a winning combination?
Okay, in a world with venereal disease
and the absence of birth control, there
are some obvious technical problems
with unrestricted sex... but why, for
example, the distaste for masturbation?
Or even "mutual masturbation", for that
matter? If the goal is to get people
to be safe, then it would make sense to
steer them into a direction with some RELIGION
safe outlet...
Instead, they declare physical pleasure
evil, and use that as a pretext to
seize control of our bodies, then
establish a monopoly in sanctifying
when you're allowed to play with them
(state of marriage, purposes of
reproduction).
And that actually *worked*. That's
been one of the world's great ruling
ideologies for centuries?
Capitalizing on the energy resulting
from sexual repression...
RELIGION
===
Twain's estimate of the relative
sexual capacity of men and women
is interesting. Most likely he
needed to get off the booze and
get around a bit more. On the
other hand, it could be that
Olivia Clemens was a woman of
remarkable depths.
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