The Top 18 Things I Would Do If I Ever Became an Evil Angel Overlord in His Dark Materials

Greetings.

Jewish date:  28 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Toledhoth).

Today’s holiday:  Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Support the Breast Cancer EARLY Act! - The Petition Site”.

Today’s topic:  The last nine chapters of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman and the trilogy as a whole.

WARNING:  SPOILING WITHOUT SHAME OR REGRET.

Having completed reading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, I have concluded that the author concentrates on depicting Christianity as evil to such an extent that he is careless in other aspects of creating a story.  As such, there are a number of serious problems with no evident solution.  Some of these are difficulties in the way Metatron, a megalomaniacal angel who has taken the reins of power, behaves.  To point these out, I have been inspired to compose this list:

The Top 18 Things I Would Do If I Ever Became an Evil Angel Overlord in His Dark Materials:

1. I will not take 300 years off my age.  It does not impress anyone.
2. I will have an official representative in every world and will not tolerate the sort of illogic and incompetence demonstrated by the Magisterium of Lyra Belacqua’s world.  I will not tolerate my servants creating public relations nightmares through torture and experimentation which no ethical review board would ever approve.  Neither will I tolerate infighting.  I may be evil, but I can do without power-hungry megalomaniacs as servants.
3. I will have a thoroughly modernized spy network present in all worlds so my enemies cannot do anything behind my back.
4. I will keep up-to-date on all prophecies, and I will act on them early and often.  I will not give twerps, such as Lyra Belacqua, a chance to become dangerous.
5. I will take possession of all items which are a potential danger to me, such as the Subtle Knife, and not allow them to remain in mortal hands any longer than absolutely necessary.
6. I will have a well-funded research and development program so I can smite my enemies with superweapons they have never even dreamed of and have no defense against.  This includes finding new ways to kill rebel angels.
7. I will not doom the dead to a miserable existence in the dark being insulted by harpies.  The idea of suckers rotting there is amusing, but if word ever gets back to the living about it, all mortals will realize they have no reason to obey me since they will end up in the same place no matter what they do.  Therefore there will be a real Heaven and a real Hell, and whoever obeys me will go to Heaven and those who disobey me will go to Hell.  And I will make sure everyone knows about this to put the fear of me in them.
8. The waiting area to take the dead to the afterlife will have a staff of friendly angels who will return home living people who reach there by accident.  This makes for good public relations.
9. The boatman who takes the dead to the afterlife will be armed and given standing orders to kill immediately anyone still living demanding to go to Heaven or Hell and take their soul straight to Hell.
10. Given that Lord Asriel’s plan is to wait for me to attack him and that I am immortal and he is not, I will not attack him but rather will wait for him and the rest of the mortal contingent of his forces to die.  A few decades is nothing for a being several thousand years old.
11. I will have the Magisterium of Lyra Belacqua’s world deliver up to me everything they can find of Lord Asriel’s.  That way, if Lord Asriel gives even the slightest hint that he will attack, if possible I will take advantage of Pullman’s misinterpretation of quantum entanglement and blow Lord Asriel and everyone in his fortress straight to Hell without ever having to get anywhere near him.
12. If Lord Asriel gives me even the slightest hint that he will attack and I cannot obtain anything I can use to blow him up through quantum entanglement, I will land the Clouded Mounted on top of his fortress and press it down, literally crushing the opposition.
13. I will not trust Mrs. Coulter under any circumstances.  Her heart is full of deceit and lies, and while she may be exceedingly desirable, there are myriads of women out there who are just as desirable who have no desire to kill me.
14. If for any reason I do go off with Mrs. Coulter, under no circumstances will I go off with her alone.  Rather, I will take a dozen heavily armed and well-trained troops with me so I have a fighting chance of dealing with whatever she has planned.
15. I will not send off a small number of unarmed angels to hide the Authority.  I have the Clouded Mountain, a massive fortress.  If Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry want to kill him, they will have to penetrate the Clouded Mountain, which will be staffed by heavily armed and well-trained angels with standing orders to shoot on sight all mortals who do not have a valid pass.
16. I will strike down and send straight to Hell all beings who make use of any device powered by rebel angels, e.g., an alethiometer or Mary Malone’s device to talk to Dust.
17. I will strike down and send straight to Hell all people who suddenly decide there is no God for absolutely no reason, e.g., Mary Malone.
18. I will strike down and send straight to Hell Father Gomez for his idiotic idea that the mulefa moving about on seedpod wheels is evil, Satanic, and against the will of God.  Nowhere in the Christian Bible is there any such sentiment, and in fact Ezekiel 1, which includes a description of the four-wheeled Divine Chariot, should be proof enough that moving around on wheels has Divine sanction.  I will take credit for the idea of wheeled creatures and bask in the approval of everyone finding them cool.

Note:  My apologies to Jack Butler and Peter Anspach.  Some material here on Mrs. Coulter sounds a lot like material on the latter’s evil overlord list.

Image of theologically incompetent atheist author Philip Pullman via Wikipedia

Philip Pullman keeps the theological train wreck plowing a path of destruction until the very end.  Metatron walks into an obvious trap, lured by Mrs. Coulter, and she and Lord Asriel have a Darth Vader moment and redeem their sorry selves by fighting him and dragging him down into the Abyss.  Lyra Belacqua/Silvertongue and Will Parry accidentally kill the Authority by opening his crystal capsule in and attempt to save his life; he literally falls apart and is blown away.  What happens to Metatron and the Authority, of course, does not even vaguely resemble anything that could possibly happen to the God of Christianity.  Mary Malone “plays the Serpent” by sending Lyra and Will off on their own to look for their missing dæmons; the adventure turns into a picnic/date.  They definitely end up falling in love, kissing, and cuddling, with implications of sexual intercourse.  (I cannot make this up.  I would not dare make up anyone doing it that young.)  This apparently has the beneficial effects helping healing the worlds, but as the Fall goes, it is lame and untenable.  There is no disobedience of any direct order from the Deity not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, nor does Mary ever suggest violation of a such a direct order.  Nor is making love mentioned in the original story as prohibited.  The botched equation of angels = consciousness = Dust/dark matter = original sin is never resolved.  The utter stupidity of Mary Malone and Father Gomez has already been mentioned in my list.  The reward of the dead remains to go happily(!) on to oblivion.  The Magisterium never rises above the vaguest resemblance of actual Christianity.  And very importantly, the ultimate source of prophecy is never revealed.  In short, religion in His Dark Materials is a poor reflection of religion in real life.  Final theological grade for the trilogy:  F, with a strong recommendation that Philip Pullman be banned from theology until he recants and stops making up paranoid fantasies.

I would also like to note that His Dark Materials is supposed to be the atheistic answer to The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.  It is not.  The Chronicles of Narnia is a set of seven books in which the characters and situations are used to discuss and present Christian ideas.  There is no atheism-bashing in Narnia.  His Dark Materials, on the other hand, is full of religion-bashing.  Furthermore, The Chronicles of Narnia is actually set in a Christian world, e.g., Aslan is Jesus and Tash is Satan.  His Dark Materials, however, is not truly set in an atheist world; it is set in a world run according to militant atheist conceptions of Christianity, only rigged so that divine beings can be killed.  By focusing on the alleged perversity of a transparently fraudulent Christianity, Pullman utterly fails to show us what beauty there may be to atheism or show us that Christianity is wrong.  While The Chronicles of Narnia can be easily read as “just a story”, ignoring the Christianity, His Dark Materials is so filled with hate that reading it purely as entertainment is difficult, to the point where I was glad that at the end young lovers Will and Lyra would be separated forever.  The great atheist story may yet be out there, but His Dark Materials is not it.

Also:  More commentary on His Dark Materials is available at “His Dark Materials - Television Tropes & Idioms” and “The Golden Compass:  Agenda Unmasked”.

Next up:  I made a decision to write a review of the Matrix Trilogy after His Dark Materials, so I am in for some serious self-torment very soon.  There are a few items associated with His Dark Materials which I may review (almost certainly negatively) at a later date, though I have to get my hands on copies first.

Peace.

Aaron

Don’t hire Lord Asriel or Metatron to run your war

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).

Today’s holidays:  Saint Day of Frances Xavier Cabrini (Roman Catholicism), Feast of Osiris (Thelema).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Save BioGems: Take Action: Save Yellowstone's Beloved Wolves” and “Earthjustice: Take Action: Taking the Wrong Path on Protecting Right Whales”.

Image of incompetent warlord Lord Asriel (depicted by Daniel Craig) via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  Chapters 26-29 of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman.  I was wrong about the quantum entanglement bomb being an irrelevant incident.  Pullman may be incompetent when it comes to theology and physics, but he at least has talent in writing fiction.  Dead shaman John Parry instructs Will to amputate the hair from Lyra’s head from where Mrs. Coulter snipped away a lock and stuff that hair  into another world.  He does so, and the explosion reportedly damages the entire structure of worlds, though we have yet to see the full effects of this yet.  Will also cuts a hole into another world to let ghosts commit suicide, which they gleefully do.  (Apparently the concept of an afterlife which doesn’t suck to the point of self-delusion or suicidal behavior has escaped Pullman.  “It’s a wonderful thing to go into oblivion” is not a good message to put in a children’s book either.)

Meanwhile, Mary Malone has an out-of-body experience, Magisterium assassin Father Gomez is still on the loose and an implied threat to Mary, and Metatron attacks Lord Asriel’s fortress.  Keep in mind that Pullman has the Authority reportedly senile and Metatron being an insane megalomanic holding the real reigns of power.  As I have noted already, attacking Lord Asriel is a bad idea.  Since Lord Asriel plans on letting his enemies come to him and attack him (with no plan B ever mentioned), all the Authority and Metatron have to do is stay away from Lord Asriel’s fortress and let the mortal contingent of the rebellion die of old age.  If Lord Asriel does get tired of waiting and goes to the Authority and Metatron, then the rebels will be out in the open without an imposing fortress for them to hide inside of.  Instead, Metatron takes the Authority’s mobile headquarters, the Clouded Mountain, AKA the Chariot (an Ezekiel reference) to Lord Asriel’s fortress and attacks.  The fighting so far has not had much of impact on either side.  However, the dæmons of Lyra, Will, and their Gallivespian friends have shown up at Lord Asriel’s fortress, and where I left off reading, Lyra, Will, and the Gallivespians were trying to get through the carnage in an effort to reunite with their dæmons.

Also:  Come to think of it, Pullman has gone out of his way to make Metatron doubly incompetent at fighting a war.  Barring just staying away from Lord Asriel, Metatron could easily land the Clouded Mountain on top of Lord Asriel’s fortress and press it down, literally crushing the rebellion out of existence.  This avoids those messy, time-consuming battles which Pullman seems intent on dragging us through and sends a message to everyone who hears about it that rebelling against the Authority and Metatron is a fatally bad idea.

Topic 2:  “Sudden jihad, or inordinate stress at Fort Hood?”:  Daniel Pipes notes that the Fort Hood incident is not the only one in which a Muslim attacked non-Muslims in the West.  A long list of examples going back to 1990 is included, including explanations given at the time which sound more like excuses than actual reasons.  Noted is a popular aversion to blame any violence on Islam, regardless of what the violent offender actually practiced or claimed.

Topic 3:  Just to end on something a bit upbeat:  “The anti-swine flu holy water dispenser”.  Someone invented an automatic dispenser of holy water which, like automatic paper towel and soap dispensers, knows when someone’s hands are in the right place to receive holy water.  This eliminates the need for contact between a font and the worshipper, thus eliminating a route of contagious disease transmission.  This is a good example of something sensible religious people, whatever religion they follow, need to do:  take into account how our universe actually works in religious practice.  Remember:  there is (probably) no religion in which sharing harmful germs is a virtue.

Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

2012, a senseless plot thread, and a lame Gospel film

Greetings.

Jewish date:  25 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).

Today’s holidays:  Birth of Baha’u’llah (Bahá’í Faith), Saint Day of Josaphat (Roman Catholicism).

Note:  One month until Ḥanukkah.  Time to start reading up on the relevant laws.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Restore Coastal Louisiana - The Petition Site”, “End Gender Discrimination in Health Insurance Coverage - The Petition Site”, and “Big Insurance Kills”.

Topic 1:  “2012: The End Of The World?”  I am not the only out there analyzing bad religious ideas.  This chart gives a nice summation of the purported disaster on December 21, 2012, both what the believers and skeptics claim.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  Chapters 24-25 of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman.  Pullman leaves Lyra and Will in the land of the dead and tells us about the further adventures of Mrs. Coulter instead.  Mrs. Coulter has decided to play Lord Asriel and the Magisterium off each other and be in favor with whoever wins in the end.  Having stolen an intention craft from Lord Asriel, she proceeds to the Consistorial Court in Geneva, where she is promptly taken into custody.  (She ran off with Lyra at the end of The Subtle Knife, not liking the idea of her daughter being killed.  The Magisterium is therefore collectively unhappy with her.)  This episode quickly goes downhill, with Mrs. Coulter suggesting to the President of the Consistorial Court that the Authority has gone senile and that it may be merciful for Will to use the subtle knife to euthanize him.  (Obvious bad idea.)  This plot thread goes further downhill with the President via proxy stealing some of Lyra’s hair from a locket Mrs. Coulter wears around her neck.  Through use of a process which demonstrates that Pullman fundamentally misunderstands the nature of quantum entanglement, the President hopes to use Lyra’s hair to make Lyra explode.  This gives Mrs. Coulter an opportunity to play the hero and the Magisterium an opportunity to look evil.  Needless to say, Mrs. Coulter is successful in stopping this evil scheme, as there are still 13 chapters to go, and she ends up in Lord Asriel’s hands again at the end.  Theology grade for these chapters:  F.  Physics rating for these chapters:  F.  Plot rating for these chapters:  F, as the scheme is unbelievable and could easily be removed without affecting the rest of the story.  Probability that Pullman will redeem himself before the end of the trilogy:  trivially small.

Topic 3:  Seeing that I have started working on the New Testament in the original Greek, I decided it was appropriate to start watching this pile of Gospel-based films I have accumulated.  As such, last night I watched Godspell, which puts the action in New York City during the 1970s.  On the bright side, the cast does a lot of creative dramatization of the parables and teachings of Jesus, interspersed with songs.  On the down side, there is no serious attempt at understanding anything Jesus had to say or making any of the action actually make sense in 1970s New York.  For almost all of the film, Jesus and his disciples wander around the city, without encountering anyone else, doing their dramatization and singing.  There is a Last Supper at the end, with Jesus making the proper Jewish blessings over maṣṣah and wine(!), but that ends with a whimper with the crucifixion being the arrival of police cars—but no police—and Jesus and the disciples putting themselves up against a chain-link fence.  The film ends with the disciples carrying off the body of Jesus, without any explanation why he is dead (or unresponsive) or a resurrection.  That’s it.  Next to no plot.  Things are further confused by having John the Baptist and Judas Iscariot being the same person and having no motive whatsoever for betraying Jesus.  In short, this film is so lame that it makes Jesus Christ Superstar look good by comparison.

Peace.

Aaron

V is for “vacancies”

Greetings.

Jewish date:  24 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).

Today’s holiday:  Saint Day of Martin of Tours (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “ColorOfChange.org:  Murdoch: Make a choice”.

Topic 1:  “CBC Promotes False Barrier Analogy”.  The PR jihad against Israel goes on, and this article talks about why it makes no sense to compare Israel’s anti-terrorism barrier to the Berlin Wall.  Also in jihad-related sloppy thinking, the Dry Bones cartoon “Face It” deals with the reluctance of many to acknowledge that the Fort Hood shootings were an Islamic terrorist attack, despite the evidence that it is.

Topic 2:  Given some criticism I received on my review of the pilot episode of the new V last week, I think I need to clarify my position on the series.  The plot and characters are not necessarily bad.  For all we know, the writers may have even avoided two major blunders of the original V:  the Vs eat humans, in which case their operation is much more complex than they really need it to be to accomplish this, and there is a human-V mating which produces live offspring, which in real life is almost certainly impossible.  The real problem is that there are huge gaps in the story, the “vacancies” of this post’s title.  While we have some idea what some of the main characters are thinking, we have practically no idea why most of the people in this series believe and act the way they do.  Much of the time, it is not even clear what the Vs are doing other than secretly plotting against humanity.  Without much of a background, it is very hard to appreciate the show as a whole.  If the new V survives past the four episodes planned to be shown this year, I hope they will make an episode dedicated not to moving the plot along but telling us what humans in general are thinking and what the Vs are doing on Earth which makes humans love or hate them; this could be done plausibly in the form of a documentary hosted by reporter character Chad Decker, who already has reported on the Vs.

The latest episode, “There Is No Normal Anymore”, does not introduce any new theological ideas.  It does, however, deal with the moral issue of trust.  FBI agent Erica Evans and Father Jack Landry, who were present in the last episode at a resistance meeting which was infiltrated and attacked by the Vs, are naturally unsure whom they can trust.  There is evidence that Vs have been on Earth for decades, disguised as humans, and knowing who is really human and who is a V without more physical examination than most people would casually submit to is impossible.  This leads to questions of when to hide information or lie.  What they ultimately decide they must keep doing, despite the unanswered trust and deception questions, is to get to the bottom of what the Vs are really up to.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 3:  Chapters 20-23 of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman.  Chapter 20 deals with Mary Malone, still in the world of the melufa, turning her crude optical device to see Dust into a more proper spyglass and ascending to the tops of the wheel seedpod trees to see why they are slowly dying.  Apparently currents of Dust in the sky have changed and are no longer raining much Dust down on the wheel seedpod tree flowers to fertilize them.  Don’t ask me to explain the physics of this; it makes no sense to me.


Meanwhile, Lyra, Will, and two elf-like beings known as Gallivespians, following Lyra’s death, reach the shore of a river, where they meet the boatman who takes people to the land of the dead proper.  They all go, but in the process, they have to leave their dæmons behind.  This is a huge blunder on Pullman’s part.  The dæmon is supposed to be the soul, and if that is not what goes to the land of the dead, what does?  Furthermore, Lyra and company really do not act differently when they go on to the land of the dead; they just feel horrible.  In any case, the land of the dead itself is as dark and dreary as the waiting area, only it is fenced in and guarded by harpies, who do little more than be insulting.  (Notice the ancient Greek religion theme going on here.)  With the help of Will’s knife, Lyra and company get past the front gate, only to find more of the dark bleakness, inhabited by the physically insubstantial dead, who do little more than sit around quietly and get insulted by the harpies, who know all the bad things everyone has done in life.  Despite promises that the Authority will reward and punish the dead, there is only punishment by the harpies in this domain.  It is so bad that Lyra and Will plot to let the dead out into another world—and even though the result will be oblivion for the escapees, most of the dead prefer it to remaining in the land of the dead.  None of this sounds particularly like the Christian afterlife, so chalk up another demerit to Pullman.


Peace.

Aaron

Lyra Silvertongue is going to Hell

Greetings.

Jewish date:  23 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).

Today’s holidays:  Saint Day of Leo the Great (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy causes of the day:  “IBR Message Center | UANI:  Send a United Message:  Sign the petition and urge these companies to stop doing business with the Iranian regime by sending them a message today” and “Take Action | UANI:  Message to the Los Angeles MTA on Light Rail Contract”.

Topic 1:  Chapters 14-19 of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman.  The theology and story get more and more bizarre.  It is revealed that Lord Asriel does not plan on invading Heaven; he is amassing a great army and supplies and waiting for Heaven to attack him at his fortress.  This plan has the fatal flaw that if the Authority never attacks, Lord Asriel can never win.  Presumably the Authority is not a moron—he has been smart enough to be able to retain power for thousands of years—so Lord Asriel had better have a plan B in just in case his plan A would result in him dying of old age before the Authority attacks.


Meanwhile, Mary Malone, ex-nun and physicist, has found herself in another world populated by wheeled creatures known as the mulefa (singular:  zanif, and please, do not ask me why, because I have no clue).  The thing about the mulefa having wheels is plausible because the wheels are not actually parts of their bodies but rather rather seedpods of a tree they have a symbiotic relationship with; use of seedpods as wheels, mounted on the mulefa’s horny axles, is aided by an oil exuded by the seedpods.  Where Pullman gets flaky about the mulefa is that seedpod oil enables the mulefa to see Dust.  The mulefa even have a metaphorical story about a snake introducing the mulefa to the use of seedpods as wheels, which considering that seedpods are fruit should be ringing a few bells about now.  Why oil, which does not have unusual properties with regard to interacting with anything, should be useful for seeing Dust, is not explained, though considering the physics (and theology) of this trilogy is half-baked from the start, I should not be surprised at all.  Mary manages to use seedpod oil to make an optical device that lets her see Dust herself.


There is no way I can omit mentioning what happens to Lyra and Will, the heroes of the story.  They decide to take a trip to the land of the dead.  So far they have only reached the waiting area where the living who accidentally reach that world must wait to die, but what Pullman comes up with so far makes even the bureaucratic afterlife of Beetle Juice seem like sheer ecstasy.  The land of the dead is a dark, dreary place.  The dead must cross a river to the afterlife.  (Shades of Charon and the river Styx).  The living who make it to the land of the dead must wait until they die.  They are neither allowed to return to the world they came from nor provided for, so the waiting area is a squalid refugee camp where the living can remain for decades.  It is also revealed that everyone has a death, a being which follows him/her around and eventually takes him/her across the river to the afterlife.  (Shades of Hermes or the Grim Reaper, only personalized.)  Deaths usually remain out of one’s sight, but in the waiting area some people are on good terms with their deaths and see them constantly.  At the end of chapter 19, Lyra convinces her death to take her and her companions over the river while still alive.  You will have to wait till I read further to find out what happens next, though given Pullman’s attitudes, the afterlife being anything other than hellish would be shocking.  However, this particular journey has a rather mythological feel to it.  I might argue for connections with the journeys of Heracles (Hercules) and Orpheus into the realm of Hades, though considering Pullman’s hatred of Christianity, Lyra may be reflecting Jesus.  Lyra is supposed to be the new Ḥawwah (Eve); this may reflect a title given to Jesus in the New Testament:  “the new Adam”.  Like Jesus, Lyra is supposed to be a figure of salvation, the subject of prophecy, and someone dangerous to the establishment.  Just as Jesus was the product of adultery (Mary was married to Joseph, not the Holy Spirit), so too Lyra is the product of adultery.  And now, just as Jesus died and purportedly rose from the dead, Lyra has gone to the land of the dead and probably will return.  We will see how far the parallels play out.


Topic 2:  “The British Dare to Determine Who is a Jew”.  This article by Rav Shmuely Boteach complains about a recent court ruling in the UK which tries to dictate to a Jewish day school who is a Jew.  Do note that religions frequently have membership criteria, and among them one will never find the opinion of a government.  Considering the source of authority for religious membership criteria are not subject to government regulation, e.g., they are dictated by a deity beyond the reach of human jurisdiction, no government can reasonably expect a government ruling on religious membership criteria to ever be followed.  This is nothing less than a violation of freedom of religion.  The claim that Jewish membership criteria are racist is particularly ill-founded.  One is Jewish if one’s mother was Jewish at the time of one’s birth or if one converts.  Racial background is irrelevant to these criteria, as humans of any race may convert, and the maternal line descendants of said people are considered Jewish in perpetuity.


Topic 3:  “Start Worrying (1994)”:  This Dry Bones cartoon is prescient to the recent Fort Hood attack by a Muslim in the name of Islam in the United States.  


Peace.

Aaron

Reincarnation, pets, and a transsexual Jesus

Greetings.

Jewish date:  22 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).

Today’s holidays:  Dedication of St. John Lateran (Roman Catholicism), Saint Day of Saint Nectarios (Greek Orthodox Christianity).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Support Innovative Humanitarian Assistance in Ethiopia - The Petition Site” and “End Overfishing -- A Chance to Save 10 Species - The Petition Site”.

Note:  For a change, today I will not discuss His Dark Materials.  There is a lot more religiously going on than militant atheists writing material which shows they do not know what they are talking about.

Topic 1:  “Head Check”.  This Dry Bones cartoon does a pretty good job discussing what happened in last week’s Fort Hood incident.

Topic 2:  “Buddhist robber's 'mum reincarnated as a cat' denied visiting rights in jail!”:  I cannot make this case up.  A Buddhist robbed a bank and was put in jail.  He has been denied visits from his cat, which he believes is the reincarnation of his mother, because he has not been able to convince the court that the cat really is the reincarnation of his mother.  I am not an expert on Buddhism, but I believe the correct Buddhist response is that because he did something wrong (robbing a bank), karma is smacking him in the face.  The non-Buddhist response is to wonder how to prove a cat is a reincarnation of a human without the cat engaging in overtly human-like behavior, such as writing.

Topic 3:  “Gone to the dogs: LA church starts pet service”:  Nothing particularly fallacious here.  Just an unusual attempt at evangelism.

Topic 4:  “Transsexual Jesus sparks protests”:  The transsexual Jesus is part of the play “Jesus, Queen of Heaven”.  On one hand, Christians have a long history of adapting the image of Jesus to local cultures.  Think about it:  what are the chances that Jesus looked European and not Jewish?  The standard image of Jesus in the West is not historically accurate.  Said image is actually a statement that Jesus is relevant to Europeans.  A transsexual Jesus may just be a statement that Jesus is relevant to homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals.  On the other hand, this play does not reflect the message of Jesus as laid down in the Gospels and cannot be historically accurate.  Furthermore, the title “Queen of Heaven” actually applies to Jesus’s mother Mary and (worse) various pagan goddesses.  These inaccuracies, naturally and expectedly, have made some rather unhappy.

Peace.

Aaron

I did not do preemptive penance for this post

Greetings.

Jewish date:  21 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Ḥayye-Sarah).

Today’s holidays:  Thirty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Synaxis of the Archangels (Greek Orthodox Christianity).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Establish Presidential War Powers Commission - The Petition Site” and “MoveOn.org Political Action: No Reward for Blocking Health Care”.

Today’s topic:  Chapters 3-13 of The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) by Philip Pullman.  The theology of this imaginary multiverse keeps getting further and further away from Christianity.  Standard Christian theology depicts God as consisting of three persons:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  This is not something obscure or esoteric; this is something well-known.  So far there has not been no hint of a Trinity, Jesus, the Crucifixion, or the Gospels.  The only distinctively Christian idea which gets any real play is original sin, and that Pullman completely botches.  Positive aspects of Christianity, such as salvation, grace, and forgiveness, are conveniently ignored, as these might paint the Magisterium/Church in a positive light.

What Pullman comes up with for a theology is very un-Christian.  As noted previously, the Authority is not a true god, but rather an angel pretending to be a god.  The Authority has retired from personal involvement in the worlds, and he has retired to a “crystal chamber” to concentrate on philosophy and left the administration to the angel Metatron, who is seeking to crack down on misbehavior in every world.  Metatron is transparently based on the angel of Jewish and Christian tradition Miṭṭaṭron, sometimes identified as “the lesser YHWH”, as having formerly been Ḥanokh (Enoch), and has being YHWH’s right-hand man (so to speak).  This two-tiered hierarchy of the Authority and Metatron strikes me as perhaps a bit Gnostic, but this may be reading into the text something which was never there.

As far as behavior is concerned, Pullman also invented the perversely illogical doctrine of preemptive absolution, which is that one can do penance in advance for sins one has not yet committed.  The dramatic reason for this is so Pullman can have the Church rationalize trying to kill Lyra.  This doctrine may be a warped version of indulgence.  But while an indulgence is meant to be a gift from the Church, preemptive absolution for a sin never negates the fact that a sin is being done deliberately.  This perverts the notion of penance.  Penance is supposed to be about feeling bad about doing something wrong and trying to get beyond repeating it.  Doing penance with the intention of doing the sin in the future is a contradiction.  I am not aware of the Roman Catholic Church ever practicing or condoning such hypocrisy.

Also:  According to Pullman, angels can be killed.  And they can be gay.  This sounds nothing like angels in Judaism or Christianity.  There is also an afterlife, but it seems to be a dreary, boring place, neither the Christian Heaven nor Hell.

Peace.

Aaron

P.S.:  Somehow I am expecting that when the Authority finally appears on-screen that he will form a Trinity with two hand puppets, but even this is may be expecting too much from Pullman.