The Golden Compass

[CrashBomb]

The analogy is valid:

You are standing on the sidelines at a locals football game where anyone is invited to play. They are starting the game, and a player walks by you and asks are you playing or not? You either are or you aren't. It's really that simple because in a few more seconds the reality of either choice will be concreted: you will be playing or you will not be playing in the next part of the game. No time for some deep discussion or talk of wages or checking the weather, you are in or out. That simple.

Once again you are side stepping the initial argument by equating "yes or no" with "right or wrong." These are two completely separate and mutually exclusive arguments. "Yes or no" is a very simple binary statement that, as you state, can obviously only have one answer or the other, that was not what you originally offered. We're talking about the right and wrong of playing on the football team, not whether or not you're playing football.

 

[CrashBomb]

Usually, things are to general to drop into that catagory in one shot.

Exactly. That is what I'm talking about. Your point earlier was there can only be "right" and "wrong" and nothing in between. You have just explained in your own words why this is a illogical viewpoint.

 

[CrashBomb]

Science will spend so much time, effort, words, numbers, diagrams explaining, and then explaining the explanation, that it wastes it's life away before it ever gets to simply ENJOY a rainbow.

Going back to an earlier statement that's more along the lines of the original point this post was making:

Does your knowledge of the inner workings of your bike leave you any less amazed at its capabilities when you whack the throttle open? Does understanding the physical and mathematical relationship between torque and horsepower mean you enjoy riding less? Does a knowledge of the explosive properties and potential energy of atomized and compressed fuel air mixture mean you're less impressed by a sweet sounding exhaust note? Does examining the way the crankshaft converts linear force into usable torque mean you're less likely to throw your leg over your bike and go for a ride? Or do you prefer just saying "the magic gasoline pixies in the tank flutter their wings and push the bike forward?"

More along the lines of the original post:

Is your enjoyment of your favorite movie (regardless of its potential Christian or anti-Christian leanings) tempered by knowing who the director of photography was or having a critical understanding of the way he or she used certain camera angles to make statements about the action on the screen?

These are not rhetorical questions. I'm actually asking, and I believe they are key to understanding the original point of contention about the movie in question. It seems to me that anyone who feels that science takes the "wonder" out of rainbows by explaining the way water droplets refract light and produce visible spectra depending on the viewer's observational position would probably not be a member of a web community that largely seeks to understand and teach the inner workings of his favorite motorcycle.

 

[WWJD]

yeah, you're right

 

[CrashBomb]

yeah, you're right

Then I may have to revise my original position.

If you're willing to contend that examination and study can enhance your enjoyment of a subject or a question of faith, if you can believe that looking at the other side of the equation may actually help you to better understand the entire equation itself, and if you can approach the subject logically and with an open mind unclouded by preconceptions; then this film may be something that would interest you.

If you agree that examining other faiths, or variations on your own belief system, can leave you with a better understanding of whatever religious position you choose to participate in, and if you feel secure enough in your own faith that you can discuss it logically and civilly with other people who may not share your viewpoint, then you ARE the target audience for this film. You may actually come away from it with a deeper understanding of, and appreciation for, your own system of beliefs.

If you are so deeply embroiled in religious dogma and fundamentalist rhetoric that you are unable to sit in a theater and watch a work of fiction without presuppositions and without judging the artist's personal choices in lieu of the artist's work, then, as I have stated several times, you should probably stay away.

If you are of the opinion that you can't stand in the Accademia Gallery in Florence and be awestruck by the majesty of Michelangelo's David without being offended or somehow transformed into a homosexual just because the statue depicts a naked man, then works of fiction like this are just not for you. There are many fundamentalist films and works of literature that are probably more to your liking. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell would be more than happy to help you find them.

 

[Revlis]

Still waiting for you to point out those churches that practice all that murder and such

Wait no longer...

Church of God

Church of Christ

Catholic Church Million and millions

so, specifically, you are saying that if I visited these 3 churches, and tell them I want to dedicate my life to their beliefs, they would ask me to go out and kill people, right?[/quote]
YES! But only You... And Only IN Your Miata.

 

[bacharles]

This just kills me. All I will say is that each individual is responsible for his/her own salvation. All one can do is pray for people like that. It's just like the group or author from somewhere in Europe who wanted to release their movie that portrays Jesus and the Apostles as homosexuals.

 

[Revlis]

I love the Mormons though. Anything written on golden tablets only legible to one dude in the woods with a head full of mushrooms MUST be gospel...

It's even better if you realize that Joseph Smith's wife was planning on leaving him because of his repeated infidelities when he conveniently stumbled across his "golden tablets" that contained all the tenets of the Mormon faith.

"Good news, honey! Not only does God want me to sleep around behind your back, he practically REQUIRES it. Also, He insists that I marry these twelve other women. But it doesn't have to stop there, because I can still marry people after I'm dead! Isn't our god cool?"

The psilocybin mushroom hypothesis is also very astute. Psychedelic experience is astonishingly similar to many reported religious conversion experiences. Gordon Wasson postulated that the substance "Soma," so revered in the Hindu Rig Veda, was actually an Amanita mushroom. The Zoroastrian faith may have even carried these traditions all the way into the early Judeo-Islamic belief system, and Wasson went on to speculate in Soma: Divine Mushroom Of Immortality, that hallucinogenic fungus may have been the substance that Abraham's people called "manna" during their exile in the desert. A lot of pre-Christian traditions revered psychotropic ethnogens as either "gifts from god" or the physical manifestations of actual gods. Wasson's Flesh Of The Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens deals almost specifically with the various forms of this tradition across human history.

Well I know I consider the Psychedelics sacred and a religious experience.

I'd like to know where you read/heard about this reverence for the psychedelics? Might be something I'd like to read more about though in all seriousness.

<div class="iF-Passage"><div class="QUOTEHEAD">Quote:[/Quote]<div class="QUOTE clearfix"><span class="quoteBegin"> </span>
Not only does God want me to sleep around behind your back, he practically REQUIRES it. Also, He insists that I marry these twelve other women.[/quote]

And I knew I liked Mormons for a reason, "Honey, Pack yer' crap we're moving to Utah!" Would be a pretty good fit I think. I've never heard anything about Mormons murdering and butchering by the millions though, I suppose on a smaller scale or Smallpox Blankets perhaps?

WWJD, you know I am after your goat, however if you would like cited examples I can pull up some history sites and give you a couple of hundred examples. Just because the murderer believes they are in the right, does not make them innocent.

 

[CrashBomb]

This just kills me. All I will say is that each individual is responsible for his/her own salvation. All one can do is pray for people like that. It's just like the group or author from somewhere in Europe who wanted to release their movie that portrays Jesus and the Apostles as homosexuals.

This was an urban legend. It started in 1984 when a petition started circulating among Christians calling for the boycott of a "gay Jesus film." It has usually been claimed to be an adaptation of a play on the legitimate stage, or an eastern European novel. It's been attributed to everyone from Satanists and liberals to lesbians and undercover Communist sympathizers.

It does not exist in any of these forms and never has. This is an example of the way a petition can long outlast the original issue, (or the fact that there never was an issue to begin with). As a serious student of film who takes it upon himself to examine nearly every single frame of material I am able to get my hands on, I can safely report that no such film has ever been made or even proposed. The odds are that I would have heard about it. Research on the subject leads to nothing more than the protest movement itself and not anything in the film community.

 

[CrashBomb]

Well I know I consider the Psychedelics sacred and a religious experience.

I'd like to know where you read/heard about this reverence for the psychedelics? Might be something I'd like to read more about though in all seriousness.

Gordon Wasson deeply examined the relationship between psychedelic substances and religion in the two works I've already listed.

Also look for Grace and Madness. Curanderismo - Mestizo Ayahuasca, by Allan Shoemaker

Other authors that have dealt with it over the years: Terrence McKenna, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and Carl Sagan. Erowid should have links to enough related reading to keep you busy for the rest of your natural life.

 

[Revlis]

Thanks Bro, I should have thought Erowid right away.

 

[CrashBomb]

Thanks Bro, I should have thought Erowid right away.

Erowid is MY god.

Kidding.

No I'm not.

But yes, I am.

Not really though.

But yes.

 

[WWJD]

crashbomb, I was politely and unoffensively bowing out of this discussion. I lack the education about proper rules of "intellectual arguments" to keep up with you.

Rev, you know I love ya man, there's just not much left to goad in me anymore.

You know I don't bother with the inquisitions or crusades seeing as that is not any part of MY religion - here - now - today - in THIS present time - durring MY life. I'm also white but was not a part of slavery, I have some German in me but had nothing to do with the holocust.... let's see... what else what else.... um.....I got some French in me but I don't hate Americans

yes, I am a Chritian, but MOSTLY a live human that will always make UNCHRISTIAN -like mistakes, as a MAN, not as part of my religious practice or faith.... as a MAN making human mistakes. but that does not mean I am a killer like those in the past making MAN CAUSED errors. Never anywhere in MY relgion did I see anything about killing other people - except for "Thou Shalt Not Kill"... which makes a great deal of sense to me even if I wasn't religious.

... and now, I'm slowly reaching, once again, for my book:

"The History of Comparative Percentages of atrocities committed by those of non religious nature"
Book 4

[licking thumb, flipping pages] let's see.... where were we? Chapter 42?

I don't really have much more to add here, guys, since you know I refuse to do the "quote each sentence and pick at it with 5 more paragraphs of writing.... " as I stated way earlier these things turn into, and has already happened here. NO HUMAN should spend so much time reading... living and practicing it is a better way to be.

 

[Mr Bogus]

So I watched a show (and boy was it stupid) but it has a guy that can raise the dead.. I thought that was exclusive territory ?

Pushing daises I think was the show