Tag: heresies & pharisees

On that Stack of Essays I Got Through a Few Weeks Ago…

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Out of a small stack of essays, I gleaned the following interesting insight that I’d never thought of myself: It’s possible to argue that the main difference in the conception of the uncontrollable in Greek Mythology and Bible stories is that, for the Greeks, human problems were often a result of the gods and their machinations, while for the ancient Hebrews, humans were just as often responsible for getting themselves into a heap of trouble, out of which God would sometimes bail them, if they were good. That’s it. Hours of grading, and precisely one idea I’ve never seen before. …

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Linkery, Linkery…

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I have a huge list of links marked “to post” which, to be honest, I find kind of daunting. I used to post links a lot more, but lately my blog is mostly devoted to housing my ongoing project, Blogging Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, along  with occasional posts on SF or Korea-related issues. But I have had a few tabs open on my browser for over a week, which seem worth posting to me, and having been delayed for my critique group’s meeting by an annoying fridge-related disaster (though less delayed than another member), I am now sitting in a …

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On “Mythology” versus “Truth”: Bulfinch on the Bible and Pagan “Myths”

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Most semesters I have a last-minute class. It’s characteristic in Korea for things to be done at the last minute, including scrambling to find someone to teach a new or otherwise “specialized” course. Of course, teaching a new course takes a lot of preparation… but in every case where I’ve taught a new class, I’ve had it dropped in my lap (with my tacit acceptance, yes) at the last minute. What this adds up to is me being on a constant crash course every semester; one semester, it was the intersections of politics, business, and culture. Another semester, it was …

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Religious Upbringing and The Basis for Ethics

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A friend of mine once commented that my experience of religion, from the way I talked about it, reminded her of the way some people talk about a bad trip on LSD… the kind of story where someone ends by explaining, “And that’s why I’ll never touch the stuff again.” Well, that’s not completely true. I do read about religion sometimes; look at the last book I reviewed here, for example! I sometimes read about the history of Christianity, or of scriptures, because quite frankly, that was the governing tradition of the West the way capitalism is our governing paradigm today. …

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The Gospel of Corax by Paul Park

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Before I begin to discuss this book, two disclosures: 1. I was a student of Paul Park’s at Clarion West 2006. Which I don’t believe skews my reaction, and is probably less significant than my second disclosure, which is that 2. I was force-fed Catholic dogma and doctrine from an early age, and extricating myself from the clutches of the Church was a hard battle for me. With the background I suggest in point number 2, you might wonder why I was interested in reading a book like Park’s, and I’ll be honest: if I hadn’t met Paul and been …

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Unacceptable, Amazon

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UPDATE (LATER THAT DAY): Amazon claims it was a “glitch.” Dubiousness abounds. See the comments section of this post for more. ORIGINAL POST: Twitter is aflame today, where it’s still Easter Day over in North America. For my part, I ran across the news on Tobias Buckell’s feed. Right, Amazon, do you want to know why everyone is offended by what’s been done? It’s because intelligent people — which are presumably a big part of your customer base, seeing as you’re selling books — can’t stand to be protected for their own good.1. They abhor it, they find it arrogant …

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Sh*tbag Attacks Constitution (Again)

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So, Kenneth Starr is once again doing his bit to hold a rifle to the groin of American democracy. Yeah, the same guy who wasted millions trying to find out whether President Clinton did the same sorts of things we all know Republican Presidents have done in the past, because the real scandal he was investigating turned out to be politically useless… Well, now he’s now out to delete all those same-sex marriages that happened in California before vast numbers of inmates members of the Church of Mormon decided it didn’t believe in separation of Church and State, and that …

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K-Raelians plus The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas M. Disch, and The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson

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This entry is part 4 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

As part of my continuing adventures in figuring out what I want to say in my paper on SF cinema in Korea, this post discusses Raelianism in Korea whilst working through a review of two books on SF and their effects on the world. I’ve just finished reading Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare At Goats, kindly recommended to me by my friend and recent WOTF prizewinner, the lovely and talented Ian McHugh. It goes so well with The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas M. Disch — which I finished reading …

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Seven Deadlier Sins

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Mark broke the 11th Commandment, and mentioned the Vatican’s new list of seven deadly sins, which apparently are the following: Drug abuse Morally debatable experimentation Environmental pollution Causing poverty Social inequality and injustice Genetic manipulation Accumulating excessive wealth Some of those are cute, by the way. One could very easily argue that Social Inequality is at the center of Catholic hierarchy, for example the sex-apartheid of the clergy and the, ahem, easily arguable sexism of their employment opportunities.  (I mean, forget glass ceilings. This one’s painted by Michaelangelo!) Injustice? Church history’s full of that. I mean, massacres at the behest …

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Define “Muslim” (UPDATED)

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UPDATE: See the comments section, particularly Liadnan’s comment and my reply to it. Maybe the news report was even less competent than I thought! Richard Dawkins has been taken to task at times for his assertion that raising a child in one or another religious tradition is a form of child abuse, as it constitutes an abuse of the trust given one with a child. My friend Marvin and I have been discussing the intricacies of this issue over at his LJ (in the comments, but do read the post!) but I ran across an article online that demonstrates how …

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