(no subject)
Now, this is odd.
A few weeks ago I read A Prayer for Owen Meany and was put off by the story's hints, and the narrator's explicit conviction, that a god exists. And that he busies himself with making miracles, sometimes. I've always liked John Irving, but this book--well, the narrator's not at all sympathetic, and I think there's more to that than his faith.
The odd thing is this: I really liked intimations of divinity in two movies, Frailty and Signs. Both of these are, maybe obliquely, about faith, too. I'm not sure why I like the movies and not the book.
This is the epigraph:
"Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me."
The suggestion of a modern-day virgin birth in Owen Meany was interesting, anyway, because of the outrage it spurred among the Catholic cast. The peculiarities of religious credulity are beyond me, I think. Why accept one virgin birth but no others? Why believe that Christ or Hosea or Amos or anyone heard the voice of god but label putative present-day prophets schizophrenics? Is faith only comfortable at a great remove of time?
Well. Now I'm going to find a copy of Intimations of Immortality, if I can, and read it. And I'd really like to see Frailty again sometime. And I'm not exactly hostile toward religion, or angry about it--genuinely confused, really.
"Hello, Jesus. We're the atheists. We're taking your Second Coming ass down."
A few weeks ago I read A Prayer for Owen Meany and was put off by the story's hints, and the narrator's explicit conviction, that a god exists. And that he busies himself with making miracles, sometimes. I've always liked John Irving, but this book--well, the narrator's not at all sympathetic, and I think there's more to that than his faith.
The odd thing is this: I really liked intimations of divinity in two movies, Frailty and Signs. Both of these are, maybe obliquely, about faith, too. I'm not sure why I like the movies and not the book.
This is the epigraph:
"Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me."
The suggestion of a modern-day virgin birth in Owen Meany was interesting, anyway, because of the outrage it spurred among the Catholic cast. The peculiarities of religious credulity are beyond me, I think. Why accept one virgin birth but no others? Why believe that Christ or Hosea or Amos or anyone heard the voice of god but label putative present-day prophets schizophrenics? Is faith only comfortable at a great remove of time?
Well. Now I'm going to find a copy of Intimations of Immortality, if I can, and read it. And I'd really like to see Frailty again sometime. And I'm not exactly hostile toward religion, or angry about it--genuinely confused, really.
"Hello, Jesus. We're the atheists. We're taking your Second Coming ass down."