Flying Kimchi Monster

[prog]

Went to hear Richard Dawkins read from his new book The God Delusion at the, uh, church that Church Street (I assume) is named after at Harvard Square. With dougo and the dictator555.

Ha ha ha... I just now discovered that the introduction that the introducey person introduced him with was taken word-for-word from his Wikipedia page.

Anyway, it was OK. The first half was fiddle-dee-dee about what a total bastard the pre-Christian biblical God is, and I do declare I've heard that all before, and so have you. He gets marks for not trotting out everyone's favorite story of God summoning bears to eat naughty children, but that's the vein he was in.

There were some nice bon mots in there but for the most I rolled my eyes at everyone else's laughter and applause at his Old Testament exposé. Haven't any of you ever read a weblog ever? And some of it, frankly, was like a lame comedy routine, at one point basically going So this Trinity thing, is that three gods or one? Make up your minds! [LAUGHTER] Blat.

Then, uh... I dunno. It didn't really leave much of an impression on me. I might end up reading the book anyway for guilty-pleasure reasons, and/or the hope that it surely must contain some new insights I haven't already been exposed to.

tahnan will be disappointed to know that he again invoked the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

A guy during the Q&A session asked if he could give him a hug, but the introducey lady wouldn't let him.

Then we ate Bibim Bap at Seoul Food on Mass Ave and the nice lady said WHY AREN'T YOU EATING IT RIGHT and picked up my spoon and mixed up my bibim bap for me because I hadn't bothered. I told her it was because I was lazy. When I finished eating it she said GOOD JOB!

Comments

[cnoocy]

I actually think who his wife is and how he met her is pretty cool. But that has very little to do with his book.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

I remember someone posting about the children-eating bears somewhere before and another person claimed that, taken in context, the people heckling the man should have been in some school or other at the time and that they were about to kill him (he sounded O.T.-knowledgeable), but whether or not he was correct, I'd agree about the pre-Christian God being prone to violence and etc.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

taken in context, the people heckling the man should have been in some school or other at the time and that they were about to kill him

Here's the entire text of the incident (2 Kings 2:23-25) from the New English Bible:

He went up from there to Bethel and, as he was on his way, some young boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, 'Get along with you, bald head, get along.' He turned round and looked at them and he cursed them in the name of the Lord; and two she-bears came out of a wood and mauled forty-two of them. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and thence back to Samaria.

If we want to place it in context, be aware that "young boys" in ancient Israel would probably be a term for boys below the age of twelve, and that the beliefs of ancient Jews were not so very different from the beliefs of modern Islamic fundamentalists. Lots of people who believe in god are perfectly happy with lethal violence in the name of the lord, and always have been.

In fairness, the concept of a merciful and loving god also has its roots in the Old Testament, but it really only came to fruition in the 1st century BCE, which saw a marked trend in both liberalization and mysticism in Jewish philosophy, possibly as responses to the effects of the Roman occupation.

However, Dawkins cheapens his argument by quoting the Old Testament, because at least some Christians know that Jesus said, "You should love god, and you should love your neighbour even as you love yourself. This is the Law and the Prophets" "The Law and the Prophets" are essentially the Old Testament--the documents and traditions that Jews referred back to for guidance and judgment.

So some Christians could easily dismiss that whole aspect of Dawkins' argument with a single paragraph, although the grossly ignorant majority, and still more the hypocritical, ignorant, dishonest bastards like the person who fed you the line about the she-bears, could certainly do with a little verbal abuse now and then.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

Nobody was talking to me about the passage. One person quoted it and another person responded to the first quote. A Jewish website claims, "The offenders were not children, but were called so ("ne'arim") because they lacked ("meno'arin") all religion (Soṭah 46b)" although I don't want to seem like I'm defending the passage, as I'm not not religious.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Fair enough--I was quoting from a Christian version because I'd assumed it was a Christian defending it. In my experience Jews don't generally have a problem with god being violent and arbitrary, particularly to gentiles, and Christian interpretations of the OT often deviate from Jewish interpretations by a wide margin in their attempts to make god look remotely sane.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised this passage hasn't come up on the Colbert Report.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

"Flying Kimchi Monster?" Oh! Schism!

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, he's like a stand-up comedian going on tour. It seems funny and spontaneous the first time but if you see it again he's basically reciting the same few stories/jokes. He has to, because most people DON'T read blogs/listen to interviews. It seems a bit stale and a bit silly but only because we know his schtick already.

Where are the other evangelical atheists, that's what I want to know!

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Daniel Dennett, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Maher, George Carlin. Those are the closest I can think of to evangelical atheists. What I'm still waiting for is an elected official who is simply willing to admit he's an atheist.