US Election and Supreme Court

[deccan]

I've just finished reading A Strange Valley by Darrell Bain which is set in a near future USA which is dangerously veering to become a religious right theocracy after the presidency of a certain Bush Jr.

Then someone discovers a strange valley inhabited by atheistic, skeptical, rational humans who turn out to have been mutated by unusual prions and the president does everything in his power to stop the prions from spreading including setting off a dirty nuke. Quite a fun read.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

deccan said:
I've just finished reading A Strange Valley by Darrell Bain which is set in a near future USA which is dangerously veering to become a religious right theocracy after the presidency of a certain Bush Jr.

Then someone discovers a strange valley inhabited by atheistic, skeptical, rational humans who turn out to have been mutated by unusual prions and the president does everything in his power to stop the prions from spreading including setting off a dirty nuke. Quite a fun read.

That's another one of those 'if only this happened, everybody would live in peace' stories. Wether it by an invention, a philisophical discovery, a religious ideal or atheism, I don't see the point. The auther sets up the situation that makes something the villian, and then sets up the situation that fixes it. Basically, it's a circular arguement; the auther sets up a philosophy using fiction and then justifies it using fiction.

[deccan]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
That's another one of those 'if only this happened, everybody would live in peace' stories. Wether it by an invention, a philisophical discovery, a religious ideal or atheism, I don't see the point.

Of course, the books fail miserably if one tries to take it as a form of argument. This is certainly a case of "preaching to the choir". Even the anti-theism tirades in the books are simplistic and underwhelming.

But then again, if theists can have and enjoy the smug in-your-face, I-told-you-so satisfaction of the "Left Behind" series and other Christian fantasy stories of angels that get physically stronger through human prayer battling in the streets (and yes, I've read a few of those too), there's no reason why atheists can't have their own equivalent fantasy stories. It's no more or less than an equal and opposite reaction.

The books even base the valley in the middle of the Bible belt and calls it an island of reason and sanity in a sea of insanity. And there's a ridiculous amount of homosexual and group sex in the books. All this is obviously designed to cause the maximum amount of offense to religious sensibilities.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Obviously, people on both sides can have those books. I just won't read them as soon as I realise that's what it's about.