Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Religion Works Now?

Lite blogging today, but I had to pass this on. Via a whole bunch of people, starting with Atrios, we see that Orson Scott Card (I've ranted about him before) opened his pie-hole again. This time, it's to criticize people who claim Jedi as a religion. The best line is this:
Of course, all this quibbling would be moot if, in fact, the Jedi religion actually worked—if people could tap into the Force and do the miracles that the Jedi routinely perform.
Dangerous thinking, Orson. The point of faith is not, last I checked, that it demonstrate concrete payoff. After all, how many of us have had our prayers answered in the literal fashion we meant them to be? Of course, maybe Orson actually has turned water in to wine. But he's a mormon, so he wouldn't be able to drink it anyway...

Oh well. I'll leave OSC alone to rant about gays and anti-war activists.

3 comments:

Mike said...

Funny, according to Lucas, much of the Jedi religion is, in fact, thinly disguised Buddhism and Taoism. So is OSC slamming Buddhists and Taosists?

Probably, but speaking in the code of the "Jedi Religion" is probably safer.

I guess this is a case of "my mythology is better than your mythology, Nyanya!"

Note to self: Do not buy Orson Scott Card novels

john said...

Sadly, some of OSC's stuff isn't bad. The Homecoming series is really decent, and Ender's Game is excellent. But you can pretty much stop there. However, more than anything else you can safely lump him in the category of "people driven crazy by 9/11."

Alas.

Anonymous said...

There's also a religion out there based on the matrix trilogy called matrixism.

http://www.geocities.com/matrixism2069