The good old days
I remember back, waaay back -- had to have been, maybe, January of aught-eight, so we're talking 80, maybe even 90 days ago -- participating in online discussions about the Democratic primaries. This will just sound crazy to you young 'uns, but way back then, you could actually do that online without fisticuffs or weird, out-of-nowhere accusations.
I see some of you looking skeptical, but you kids'll just have to take my word for it. It was another time -- another world. I was there. It might have been a very long time ago, but I remember.
People would ask one another which way they were leaning and then they'd just, you know, talk about it. "I like Bill Richardson," they would say, "but I'm leaning toward John Edwards." Or, "I like John Edwards, but I'm leaning toward Chris Dodd." Or even -- and you kids today will just find this impossible to believe, but I swear it's the truth -- "I can't make up my mind between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I like them both."
And the thing is -- again, I know you won't believe this, but it's true -- the thing is that back then we had conversations like that all the time and I don't remember ever, not even once, hearing any hostility over such expressions of preference or support. If one person liked Candidate A and the other liked Candidate B, this wouldn't be perceived as some kind of attack on Candidate A. If Candidate A gave a good speech you could say, "That was a good speech" without people screaming at you to stop attacking Candidate B.
Some of you kids are looking confused. Let me explain. Back then, back when your parents and your grandparents were several months younger than they are today, we had this idea about primaries as forums in which voters could support rival candidates. The thing that was different, the thing you kids today'll have a hard time understanding, was that even though these candidates were rivals, running against one another, both were still viewed as legitimate.
What? Yes, really. As legitimate. Both the candidates themselves and the fact of their candidacies. It wasn't like today, when the very act of running for office is perceived as an insult to one's rival, when merely being in the race is taken as evidence that one is some kind of fifth-column front for right-wing attacks against ...
Stop shaking your heads. It's true and even though you kids don't like to hear it things were better back then. There were civil debates on the issues that made you proud to be a part of the party ... Stop laughing! It's true, I ...
Oh, just forget it. Kids today.
See, for example, this rabbinic commentary.
Posted by: aunursa | Apr 15, 2008 at 11:18 PM
I don't think the First Commandment commands belief -- the existence of God was self-evident to the writers of the OT, and without it, the Commandment doesn't carry much weight, anyway -- but, rather, worship and obedience. So, you're right.
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 15, 2008 at 11:32 PM
Welcome, Nadine! I think you'll fit right in here. There are a number of us who are in the same or similar proverbial sailing vessel as you are--and a number of other very smart, warm, thoughtful individuals here, of various religious and a-religious persuasions. Mind you, some of the warmth comes from the flame wars (usually scheduled for Thursdays, in anticipation of the glorious return of Fred on Left Behind Fridays)--but Slacktivist is also a bit of a community, despite some of our craziness. Welcome in. :))
focusing not on the issues closest to Christians' hearts but on climate change, AIDS, and global poverty. [...] our priority as Christians should be as those of the Founding Fathers
Wow. Dictionary definition of "civil religion," what?
Posted by: Nenya | Apr 16, 2008 at 06:55 AM
Huh. I suppose the first commandment doesn't command belief in God. The implication is that you should worship him (hard to do if you don't think he exists), but technically I suppose an atheist could "have no other gods before" YHWH, whether or not they believed he'd had anything to do with anyone being delivered out of slavery in Egypt.
Posted by: Nenya | Apr 16, 2008 at 06:58 AM
The first commandment doesn't command belief in God: it takes for granted that the people being addressed know that gods exist.
The first commandment (if you're Jewish) is literally an order to accept the god who is giving these orders as your God: "I am the Lord your God": the divine equivalent of a captain "reading himself in".
The second commandment (Christians tend to run these together) is a further instruction that the god who has just declared urself to be your god is the first and foremost of all gods: "You shall have no other gods before me; You shall not make for yourself an idol". The third (or the second, if you're Catholic) commandment is "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God".
These initial commandments are (in historical context) orders given by a god who desires to be worshipped alone in a polytheistic culture. Nothing in them requires people from Abrahamic religions to deny the existence of other gods: just not to worship them or idolize them.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | Apr 16, 2008 at 07:41 AM
These initial commandments are (in historical context) orders given by a god who desires to be worshipped alone in a polytheistic culture. Nothing in them requires people from Abrahamic religions to deny the existence of other gods: just not to worship them or idolize them.
I noticed that when I first decided to read the Bible through. The Old Testament often seems to come close to acknowledging not only that worship of other gods exists, but acknowledging that those other gods themselves exist... as if the Jews were God's team in a big competition among deities where the winner got to be Ruler of the Universe.
(There's a Skeletor joke in there, but it's too early for me to tease it from my mental morning fog.)
Posted by: MikhailBorg | Apr 16, 2008 at 08:49 AM
Jesurgislac: The first commandment (if you're Jewish) is literally an order to accept the god who is giving these orders as your God: "I am the Lord your God": the divine equivalent of a captain "reading himself in".
It's not an order, it's a declaration. An order would be in the form of "Recognize that I am the Lord your God."
Christians tend to run these together
In fact there are at least three different versions of the Decalogue: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant.
Posted by: | Apr 16, 2008 at 09:29 AM
Re: conversion attempts...well, most Wiccans and Buddhists and Jews are non-proselytizing sorts. (My opinion, as a disgruntled misanthropic neopagan, is that we show a remarkable amount of sense, because most converts are giant pains in the ass.)
If you take the point of view that most (though not all, IMO--there may not be one true way, but there are sure as fuck plenty of wrong ones*) religions have some form of truth to 'em, and are all different ways of connecting to an infinite and unknowable truth, then you might as well look for the one that works best for you. Perhaps that means "seems truest" or "seems like something I can believe without feeling like a moron"; perhaps that means "corresponds best with my philosophical values." Diff'rent strokes and all that.
It's a lot less like physics, where there are discrete and provable answers, and a lot more like liberal arts, where nobody really *knows* what Hamlet's problem was.
Posted by: Izzy | Apr 16, 2008 at 03:09 PM
It's all well and good to say, "no one knows whether Jesus really existed or not, but it's enough to live your life according to his teachings"; however, if Jesus really did exist, and if he had a fundamentalist mindset (as many versions of Christianity claim that he did), then worshipping someone other than him will land you in, quite literally, a world of hurt. Similarly, if you end up embracing Jesus, but in fact some version of Hinduism or even Jainism is true, then all those roast beef sandwiches will come back to haunt you in your next incarnation as a worm.
Thus, you should probably try hard to make the best educated guess you can about the truth or falsehood of your chosen religion (or lack thereof).
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 16, 2008 at 03:36 PM
Ah, Izzy, you're treading perilously close to nasty philosophical grounds there, namely whether there can be true statements about fictional entities. Naively, the answer is yes, but then that appears to allow in the (phenomenally stupid, most people would agree) "proof from perfection" that God exists because a good thing that exists is better than a good thing that doesn't exist, and a perfect thing therefore cannot be fictional, therefore must exist.
@Nadine: Another godless atheist here, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that being a believer without being a faker is easy. You believe whatever it is that you believe, and act on those beliefs to the best of your ability. What other people believe is their problem, though having some awareness of it makes communication easier.
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 16, 2008 at 03:42 PM
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 16, 2008 at 03:48 PM
Forgot to mention: True counterfactuals is not, alone, sufficient to allow in the proof of God I described. Only if both counterfactuals and value statements (e.g., "This is good") are capable of being true does the stupid proof become possible. I happen to accept the notion of true counterfactuals (it is true that Frodo Baggins is a hobbit, even though it is false that Frodo Baggins exists), but reject the notion of true value statements.
More accurately, I believe that value statements say nothing about the entity being valued, but are rather statements about the speaker. "Chocolate is good" is equivalent to "I like chocolate", which is a statement about me, not chocolate. Likewise, "God is perfect" carries absolutely zero information about God, but rather describes the speaker's attitude toward God. Since it contains no information about God, it cannot be used to make deductions about God.
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 16, 2008 at 03:54 PM
To be fair, though, those entities may not seem fictional at all to a person who is searching for a religion. I personally am fairly sure that Grandfather Thunder, Kalkin, Jesus, and Raiden are all fictional, but that's just my (admittedly, somewhat educated) guess.
The "fictional entities" I was referring to are the subject matter of the liberal arts, not deities. Any given deity may or may not exist, but we *know* that the characters in that novel, figures in that painting, etc. are not real people. Sorry for being unclear.
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 16, 2008 at 03:57 PM
Anonymous: In fact there are at least three different versions of the Decalogue: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant.
Minor variations. The commandments are numbered differently, depending whether you are Jewish or Christian, Catholic or Protestant. The accepted translations are slightly different, too, but not by much. The basic text is the same for all, which the website you linked to obscured. The text from Shemot is here; an outline of the Catholic rationale for division is here, and the King James Version is here.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | Apr 16, 2008 at 04:14 PM
Bugmaster and Froborr: True, but depends very much on the religion. If you see God as real, but not necessarily (or even necessarily not) the way that any one religion depicts him/her/it/them, it's very much possible to decide which interpretation of God works best with the way you see the world. Most of the neopagan beliefs I've encountered were based on that--you can "worship" Athena/Thor/Raiden/Jehovah Sabaoth with the understanding that the entity in question is not necessarily a discrete and fixed being but rather the particular form of the Infinite that works for you--and I believe, though could be wrong, that there's something similar in certain forms of Hindu belief.
however, if Jesus really did exist, and if he had a fundamentalist mindset (as many versions of Christianity claim that he did), then worshipping someone other than him will land you in, quite literally, a world of hurt.
Ah-ha. This, though, is what I mean by "there are a lot of *wrong* ways." Believing that no one religion has a monopoly on truth doesn't mean you can't say others are strikingly lacking in it*--in the same way that you can believe that, say, Mac OS X isn't the *only* system out there but still recognize that Windows Vista is a plague on mankind, or believe that lifelong monogamy is only one of many lifestyle options but still think that one-sided, deceptive cheating is a bad thing.
And generally, in my experience, the religions that are most vehement about "OUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" are the ones with the least truth in 'em.
But I am not a philosophy major, nor would I want to be.
Posted by: Izzy | Apr 16, 2008 at 04:56 PM
anonymous at 9:29am is me.
There are also minor differences between the Commandments as stated in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. In particular, Exodus 20:8 instructs Jews to Remember the Sabbath Day, while Deuteronomy 5:12 instructs us to Observe the Sabbath Day. The former emphasizes Creation (20:11), while the latter, the Exodus.
Posted by: aunursa | Apr 16, 2008 at 05:04 PM
Hi Nadine! You've found a good place to be; if I'd found this site a few years earlier, before the pagans got their EEEEVIL claws in me, I might still be a Christian today.
Well, no, probably not. But it might have taken me longer to get disillusioned.
Bugmaster, for shame. I'm not Wiccan (although people tend to assume I am - those who don't assume, for some reason I can't quite figure out, that I'm a conservative straight-laced churchy-girl), but I have to speak up. I'm sure the comment was meant tongue-in-cheek and not said with any malice, but it's still - I can't even say it's an oversimplification, it's actually untrue. The fact that it's a fairly common misconception is no excuse - you're intelligent enough to not get a pass on that! *shakes finger warningly*
And honestly, I'm not sure I see anything wrong with "church-shopping." We don't have any proof one way or the other as to which religion is accurate*, so lacking that we only have our own intelligence, common sense, intuition and logic to guide us... so why not go looking for a church or religion that makes sense to you? (Although, Nadine, I do want to point out that it's ok to have beliefs and not have a religion or a church. There are "pagans" out there, for instance, who are entirely Christian in their beliefs, but simply don't like belonging to an organized church that presumes to do their thinking for them.)
Posted by: Kristy | Apr 16, 2008 at 05:51 PM
Oh, and ditto to everything Izzy just said. Yes, the Hindus do have some quite sophisticated theories along those lines.
Oh! Nadine. Someone mentioned this earlier, but I'm repeating it cuz I can. A great place to start reading up on Fred's thoughts is here: http://exharpazo.blogspot.com/2007/01/index-to-slactivists-left-behind.html
I'd actually recommend scrolling down to the bottom, to the posts that don't specifically deconstruct the texts - there's some good all-purpose theology in there - and then go up to hit the page-by-page critiques themselves.
Posted by: | Apr 16, 2008 at 05:57 PM
I suck and I should feel bad. Anonymous at 5:57 was me.
Posted by: Kristy | Apr 16, 2008 at 05:58 PM
Kristy: Although, Nadine, I do want to point out that it's ok to have beliefs and not have a religion or a church. There are "pagans" out there, for instance, who are entirely Christian in their beliefs, but simply don't like belonging to an organized church that presumes to do their thinking for them.
I believe Nadine started with "I want to be Christian." The Christian life is not meant to be a solitary one, at least not all the time: even the solitary-monastic types, like the Trappists, attend services as a community.
"Where two or three are gathered together" and all that. The church isn't supposed to "do your thinking for you;" it's supposed to help you live according to your thinking. So a "church shopper" needs to consider not only what a faith or denomination says it believes, but how those beliefs are implemented in a specific, flesh-and-blood, bricks-and-mortar community.
Not that I want to re-start the whole "faith and works" thing. Just saying.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Apr 16, 2008 at 06:21 PM
@ Amaryllis: yes, yes, yes, I understand that and I'm not arguing it. I was just pointing that out because in this country, we too often assume, first, that "religious" = "Christian," and second, that "Christian" = "churchgoer." We also tend, as a rule, to take an all-or-nothing approach to religion - you see this in Christians who claim, for instance, that if you believe in one God and Jesus His only begotten Son, etc., you must therefore also believe in X. I respectfully submit that that's not true. I'm not telling Nadine not to be a Christian, I think it is - or can be - a perfectly valid path to enlightenment, if you'll pardon the phrase. I just see a lot of people who become disillusioned with aspects of the faith and discard the good with the bad, and I just meant to give a reminder that it really is ok to pick and choose what you believe in, and if the churches around you tell you "That's not 'real' Christianity" - which is a distinct possibility - well, that's ok too, and you don't have to listen to them. And wow that was a run-on sentence. I swear it makes sense, you just may need to read it more than once. Ok, it's time for me to go home.
Posted by: Kristy | Apr 16, 2008 at 06:50 PM
@Kristy:
Sorry, I didn't mean to seriously insult Wiccans with my tongue-in-cheek comment; in fact, I personally like Wicca more than I like most other modern religions. I think their core tenet -- "and if harm none, do what ye will" -- is much better than the core tenets of most other religions, which tend to focus more on "thou shalt not".
However, I think the basics of my comment are true. Obviously, Wiccans don't throw fireballs (nor do they claim to be able to throw fireballs); but, as far as I know, their Rule of Three does promise a threefold return on your actions, and in this life, not the next. Wiccans also claim to be able to cast spells (though, to be fair, they draw from the Divine spell list as opposed to the Arcane one, to borrow some terms from D&D). So, if you were a Wiccan, and you decided to curse someone, you'd best be prepared for some massive, threefold evil coming your way in the immediate future.
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 16, 2008 at 07:45 PM
Ah, Izzy, you're treading perilously close to nasty philosophical grounds there, namely whether there can be true statements about fictional entities.
Why wouldn't there be "true statements about fictional entities"? We can say that "Sherlock Holmes was a British male; that Jane Eyre was a young* woman", and so on. If someone wrote a story in which Sherlock Holmes was a dingo, it wouldn't be accepted as canon by anyone. I don't get the objection....
* for certain values of "young".
Posted by: Jeff | Apr 16, 2008 at 07:59 PM
@Bugmaster: ok, fair enough. Yes, the basics are correct; Rule of Three, etc., etc. It's just that, much like the way a difference of degree can become a difference of kind if taken far enough, an oversimplification can be taken far enough that it becomes a falsehood.
I think the main things I was bristling at were: 1) the implication that Wicca's not concerned with an afterlife - it's not the main focus of their attention, to be sure, and there's no real concept of "divine retribution," but Wicca and the broader pagan culture has some definite interest in what happens after you die (some of which was actually very helpful to me not long back when my grandmother died.) Again, I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but the previous post seemed to give a general impression that Wicca is all about "yay power NOW" and not concerned with bigger/higher things. And 2) there's a tendency among the general populace to hear pagans in general and Wiccans in particular talking about "magic" (or "magick," if you're cooler than me) and "spells" and assume that we're all suckers who've been duped into thinking that we can (for instance) cast fireballs - and that therefore they may mock us for this. Very annoying. Almost as annoying as the tiny minority who go the other direction and assume we can teach them to cast fireballs, and get offended when told "Uh... no." I know now that you know enough about Wicca to know that that isn't the case, but... eh, it's a pet peeve I guess.
Oh, and of course 3) it's been an awful day at work, and I think I was looking for an excuse to take offense. Sorry about that. Happily, by appealing to my not-so-inner geek, you have defused the bad mood.
On a tangent, I can't decide if I love or hate the Rule of Three. I mean, on the one hand, it's an elegant way of convincing people not to be shitty to each other, but on the other hand... eh, I dunno. I mean, I
stealborrow a lot of my beliefs from Hinduism, so I'm totally willing to buy the concept of karma (which is also a good deal more complex than how it's usually represented), but threefold? It just seems a little excessive, don't you think? Unbalanced, even. Plus... I don't know, I just... ok, I don't put curses on people (or throw fireballs at them), but I don't not do it because I think the universe is going to spank me, I refrain because it's a jerkass thing to do! I mean, does there always have to be punishment involved? Can't we have a religion that says "Don't do mean things because it's just not cool"?Posted by: Kristy | Apr 16, 2008 at 08:26 PM
Jeff, if Conan Doyle wrote a story in which Sherlock Holmes was a dingo, you can bet some fans would find a way to make it canon. Moreover, some of them would write fanfic that explained why he was a dingo in that particular story. And the statement you would be making would be, "Sherlock Holmes was a British male, except in that story where he was a dingo, and if someone wrote a story in which he was a Martian, it wouldn't be accepted as canon by anyone."
But seriously, a statement about a fictional entity such as "Sherlock Holmes is not a dingo" really means, "If there was a 'Sherlock Holmes' who was a dingo, he would not be the true Sherlock Holmes." Similarly, "If the perfect being you are imagining does not exist, then it is not a truly perfect being." This still doesn't imply that there is a truly perfect being, because there might be no such thing as a truly perfect being.
Why does my browser's spell checker recognise "Sherlock" but not "Holmes"?
Posted by: Selcaby | Apr 16, 2008 at 08:27 PM
@Jeff: ah, but there you're wrong. See, Sherlock Holmes isn't a British male, because Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist! Sherlock Holmes isn't anything save words on a page and ideas in heads. So the statement "Sherlock Holmes is a British male" is a false statement.
However, it is also a useful statement. Whereas claiming that you can't make true statements about fictional entities may indeed be true, but for the purpose of communication, it is also useless.
Posted by: Kristy | Apr 16, 2008 at 08:30 PM
Ceci n'est pas un pipe.
Posted by: Technocracygirl | Apr 16, 2008 at 08:51 PM
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 16, 2008 at 08:58 PM
*eyes wide* Can... can I has a Protection From Normal Missile? Oh plz? It'd come in ever so much more handy than fireballs.
And yeah, well, ok, the rede does say that, but you know what I meant!
As for the rule of three affecting me if it's true even if I don't like it... a) yeah, well, honestly, I don't think energy works that way; it would be a very imprecise way to run the universe. Granted, that's only my own reasoning, but then, mine is the only reasoning I have to use, and b) I'm actually not 100% convinced that that's accurate... but that's getting into goofy esoteric magical theory and I don't want to get into it here.
Posted by: Kristy | Apr 16, 2008 at 09:31 PM
Kristy: fair enough. I just wanted to point out that for most of us, it's easier to be a Christian with the support of other reasonably like-minded Christians. And I'd run a mile from any church that made a habit of screaming "That's not real Christian!" about anything not included in the Nicene Creed.
Re work: this morning I got landed with a task I really don't want to do - not my field, not my project, not my interest. Then in the afternoon, another task I'd expected to be equally awful resolved itself into something trivial. You win some, you lose some, today it balanced out. Hope you've cheered up by now as well.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Apr 16, 2008 at 09:39 PM
Selcaby: "Sherlock Holmes was a British male, except in that story where he was a dingo, and if someone wrote a story in which he was a Martian, it wouldn't be accepted as canon by anyone."
I'm almost completely positive that someone actually has written a story about a Martian analoge to Sherlock Holmes who lives on "The Street of those who Make Bread" or something like that.
By the way, do you mean 'canon' in the now common sense of a fictional universe's canon, or the original meaning that originated around Sherlock Holmes fans and which only later mutated into the common meaning? Because going by the original meaning, a Sherlock Holmes story is only canonical if writter by Dr. John Watson, the master's Boswell.
Posted by: Spalanzani | Apr 16, 2008 at 09:50 PM
And the Wiccan Rede does place the responsibility for "don't do mean things," squarely on the shoulders of the individual. You really need to think through the implications and possible consequences of your actions before you can say that they "harm none."
Posted by: Amaryllis | Apr 16, 2008 at 09:55 PM
Ah, Izzy, you're treading perilously close to nasty philosophical grounds there, namely whether there can be true statements about fictional entities.
Philosophy class was a while back, and I probably could have paid more attention, but I believe there's a concept called "subsistance" that covers fictional characters. "Pegasus is a winged horse" is the example, IIRC, of a true statement within that context.
Posted by: Dash | Apr 16, 2008 at 10:27 PM
Nenya: flame wars (usually scheduled for Thursdays, in anticipation of the glorious return of Fred on Left Behind Fridays)
Wow. Kinda PMD, when you think about it.
Posted by: Salamanda | Apr 16, 2008 at 11:50 PM
Because going by the original meaning, a Sherlock Holmes story is only canonical if writter by Dr. John Watson, the master's Boswell.
Ah but how do you know whether it was written by the real Watson, or by a mere human who was later construed as having been channelling Watson at the time but was in fact making it up?
Sherlock Holmes isn't anything save words on a page and ideas in heads. So the statement "Sherlock Holmes is a British male" is a false statement.
A few years ago we could have had a discussion about whether Hermione loved Harry or Ron. It might have become quite ... stimulating. And anyone who entered the discussion and said that "Hermione loves Harry" and "Hermione loves Ron" were both false statements would probably have meant that Hermione actually loved someone else, such as Viktor Krum.
Hermione exists as a concept in my head, and my idea of her loves my idea of Ron. So "Hermione loves Ron" is a true statement (abbreviated for convenience) about my idea of Hermione. If somebody else had a mental image of a Hermione who loved Harry instead, then "Hermione loves Harry" would be a true statement for them - and then we could argue about which interpretation of Hermione was closer to canon. But if I wrote a fanfic that agreed with canon in all respects except for a passing reference to Hermione being in love with Harry, my beta readers would be correct to point this out as a mistake.
Posted by: Selcaby | Apr 17, 2008 at 05:49 AM
Because going by the original meaning, a Sherlock Holmes story is only canonical if written by Dr. John Watson, the master's Boswell.
Watch me descend into pedantry, and speaking Watsonianly.
Holmes himself wrote "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane," and no one is credited for "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone." However, these are both still part of canon, although really, really badly written parts of canon.
Posted by: | Apr 17, 2008 at 08:46 AM
Kristy: Heh, yes. Though, to be fair, we have a lot of pagans (and a lot of Internet pagans, particularly, breeding ground of fucktardery that the Interblag is) who are, ah, Confusing the Issue: I've seen more than a few poorly-spelled claims of being able to cure cancer through doing something or other with auras or having fought literal demons or similar. And the "we must be tolerant until our brains fall out" crowd does not help, mind.
Then again, Christianity has demonbusters.com (do NOT go there with your speakers on), LB, and Pope Palpatine (who recently called for the Church to spawn more overl--I mean, recruit more exorcists), so I think the Crazy distributes itself pretty equally among religions.
As far as my beliefs go...well, if the fundie God did exist, I'd hope I wouldn't worship him, for the same reason that I hope that, should Lovecraft's stories turn out to be true, I'd fall more on the Dr. Armitage side than the Wilbur Wheatley one.
Posted by: Izzy | Apr 17, 2008 at 11:48 AM
"Holmes himself wrote "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane," and no one is credited for "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone." However, these are both still part of canon, although really, really badly written parts of canon."
Actually, I've seen numerous pieces by Holmes fans saying that those stories can't be considered part of the canon for exactly those reasons.
Posted by: Spalanzani | Apr 17, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Hahah thanks for that comment, it made my day.
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 17, 2008 at 12:39 PM
@Jeff, et al.: The issue with permitting both statements about fictional entities and value statements to be true is Fwoogaboo.
Fwoogaboo is the god of the Fwibblelandians, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being of absolute perfection. If, then, we take the statement "Fwoogaboo is perfect" to be true, it logically follows that there can be no way in which Fwoogaboo could be better. A good thing which exists is better than a good thing which does not exist; therefore a Fwoogaboo that exists is better than one that doesn't. Thus, since a nonexistant Fwoogaboo would be able to improve by existing, Fwoogaboo can't be nonexistant and must therefore exist.
A similar argument holds for Grathtor, the ultimate evil worshipped by the mad Hoolendites. An evil that exists is worse than one that doesn't, therefore Grathtor exists.
Problem is, an omnipotent Fwoogaboo is better than one that isn't omnipotent. Likewise, an omnipotent Grathtor is worse than one that isn't omnipotent. Therefore Fwoogaboo and Grathtor both exist, are both omnipotent, and both want to stop one another from doing good or evil, respectively. Fwoogaboo is omnipotent, therefore he can stop Grathtor. But Grathtor is omnipotent, and therefore can't be stopped.
Contradiction!
The only way out of this paradox is for it to be impossible for statements of the type "X is perfect", where X is a fictional being, to be true. There are a couple of ways around this. The traditional approach in logic has been to declare any statement of the form "X is Y", where X is fictional, to be necessarily false. The basic argument is that statements of the form "X is Y" are really saying "X exists and possesses property Y", and if X doesn't exist, the statement is false.
Another possibility, and the one implicit in most literary discussions, is that truth is relative. "Fwoogaboo is perfect" is true in Fwibblelandia, but not here. A universe is a realm within which truth stays the same; "Hermione loves Ron" is true within the universe of the Harry Potter books but not within *our* universe. I like this approach, but it runs into problems when you start thinking about the relationship between author and work. Was "Hermione loves Ron" true before the seventh book was written? Was it true before the first book was written? Was it true before Rowling decided Hermione would love Ron? Does "before" and "after" even mean anything when you're dealing with multiple universes? Did Rowling create the Harry Potter universe or is she simply describing it? If the former, by what mechanism do her ideas travel from this universe to a universe where Rowling doesn't even exist, and somehow make that universe behave in certain ways? If the latter, how does information about that universe reach Rowling's mind?
A third possibility is to allow statements about fictional entities to be true, but disallow statements about *value* to be true. It simply isn't true that Fwoogaboo is perfect because *no* statement about something being perfect, or good, or evil, or bad, or right, or wrong, or what-have-you can be true. Fwoogaboo is not perfect; the Fwibblelandian ideal of perfection is Fwoogaboo.
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 17, 2008 at 01:28 PM
@Izzy: Yesterday, one of my coworkers had the best excuse for being late to a meeting OF ALL TIME: coming back from lunch, he got stuck behind the Pope.
I know *exactly* what happens to me if I end up in a Lovecraftian setting. I'm fat and slow-moving, skeptical, intensely curious, and can't see text without trying to read it or a puzzle without trying to solve it. I am so very, very doomed.
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 17, 2008 at 01:35 PM
I confess, I don't really see the any of the fascinating problems with logic as applied to fictional characters that others on this thread are discussing.
When you say, "Hermione has three heads", that's just a shorthand for saying, "The fictional character of Hermione is often described as having three heads; this description has been confirmed by the author, and is canonical". On the other hand, when you're saying, "My chair is made of wood", what you're really saying, "I have a chair that exists in the real world, and is made of wood; you can look at it if you want".
Just because the English language allows you to easily confuse these two completely different kinds of statements, doesn't mean that you should do it.
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 17, 2008 at 02:42 PM
Hmm, this ancient obsidian tablet looks like it has writing on it. Yeah, it's actually Sumerian cuneiform ! It says... gimme a sec... "Hastur Hastur Has... !!!!!!#@$#%* NO CARRIER
Posted by: Bugmaster | Apr 17, 2008 at 02:46 PM
Forrborr, another solution to that problem that I encountered in my first semantics & pragmatics class was to say that statements about fictional entities don't have truth values.
Posted by: Jake | Apr 17, 2008 at 03:25 PM
Jake: Problem is, some statements about fictional characters are clearly false. "Frodo was a female elf." On the other hand, if that's false, "Frodo wasn't a female elf" is true, meaning that there *are* true statements about fictional characters, which is a good reason to reject the traditional Boolean solution.
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 17, 2008 at 04:21 PM
Forrborr, I don't see why that's a problem. I mean statements about fictional characters will have truth values within their fictional universe, so within LOTR, "Frodo was a female elf" is false and "Frodo wasn't a female elf" is true, but I don't see what the problem is with saying that here in the real universe neither of those statements has a truth value.
I mean, obviously we use and understand shorthand. So if I say, "Frodo slew Gandalf," you aren't puzzled at my non-statement, but rather understand that I mean either, "within the LOTR universe, Frodo slew Gandalf," or, "Tolkein portrayed his character Frodo slaying Gandalf," and can respond accordingly, but that's sort of a different thing altogether.
Posted by: Jake | Apr 17, 2008 at 04:32 PM
Jake: You're reiterating the position that truth varies between universes. This is a legitimate position, but it implies a degree of "reality" to fictional universes that has some sticky consequences when one tries to understand their relation to our own universe, as I briefly outlined above. Most importantly, how is it possible for us to know things about another universe, when no information can possibly pass from there to here?
Posted by: Froborr | Apr 18, 2008 at 08:39 AM
Most importantly, how is it possible for us to know things about another universe, when no information can possibly pass from there to here?
Clearly information can pass from fictional universes to ours. There's several hundred dollars worth of information available from Tolkein's estate about his universe and its major variants. I'd hate to try to calculate the byte-count of the information available to us about Gene Roddenberry's Trek multiverse cluster.
Perhaps that's part of the definition of a fictional universe - one in which information about it can pass to what we call the real universe. I'm not sure that it's only one-way, either; Gandalf could easily have said to Frodo, "There is a world where people destroyed cities with weapons of pitchblende and water. You are not the only one to face the questions of such responsibility."
Posted by: MikhailBorg | Apr 18, 2008 at 08:49 AM
@Izzy: Yesterday, one of my coworkers had the best excuse for being late to a meeting OF ALL TIME: coming back from lunch, he got stuck behind the Pope.
From today's Baltimore Sun: [The Pope] looked pleased, waving as he passed back across the infield and down into the dugout.
Somehow, that strikes me as a completely surreal image.
At least it was the home team dugout.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Apr 18, 2008 at 11:57 AM