Atheist bigwig Sam Harris: “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.”
This has never occurred to Sam Harris
In an interview a few years back with The Sun magazine, atheist bigwig Sam Harris had this to say about the comparable (de)merits of religion and rape:
If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.
You can read the whole interview starting here.
And some people wonder why so many atheists have broken with Harris and the rest of the Old School New Atheist Boys Club to start Atheism Plus.
EDITED TO ADD: Hadn’t noticed that the interview was from 2006, so maybe this is old news to a lot of atheists. Still horrible.
Like this:
Posted on November 18, 2012, in are these guys 12 years old?, atheism minus, misogyny, narcissism, rape and tagged atheism, misogyny, rape, sam harris. Bookmark the permalink. 340 Comments.
er, well. My anecdata agrees with Katelisa’s. The persecution of atheism that I see is consistently either tied to other facets of identity (atheist women, atheists of color, etc), or it pales in comparison to pretty much any other kind of marginalization.
I’ve seen more prejudice against my identity as a polyamorous person, or male s-type, than as an atheist.
But then, part of the reason that I specify that this is my personal observation is because I live in a coastal city. I’ve only lived in the midwest for a sum total of 4 years, and it was in a college town.
I imagine that bible-belt atheists have somewhat more direct experiences of real persecution.
@skeptifem - I’m sorry, language confusion here. In my head persecution has always meant being persecuted and threatened with violence either _by the government_ or with governmental support. I freely admit to being an L2 speaker though, and I might not get all the correlations of a word.
I might also have drawn faulty conclusions because discriminating against atheists in a secular state seems so weird and odd to me, coming from a secularised country.
I will educate myself further, and apologise profusely for causing hurt or insult.
I came out as an atheist while living in Georgia back in 2008. While I did live in a relative oasis (East Cobb, Marietta) of somewhat rational thought (it was a largely Jewish area), they still didn’t like atheists.
Before I even came out, I walked to the local library to pick up “The God Delusion” out of curiosity (I’d been hearing a ton about it). While walking home, in full view of the public, a pick-up truck pulled over and a very southern guy got out with his shotgun and told me to give him the book so he could burn it. Luckily, a cop came over and made the guy leave, but even the cop was short with me and told me that I shouldn’t be waling with filth like that (referring to the book) in view of the public.
When I first noted my atheism on my Facebook, I was trying for two jobs. The interviews for both of them were short. The first person said “how can I trust someone who has no faith in God?” and the second person said “we don’t want commies working here”. Oh and no, I didn’t tell them. They had looked up my Facebook profile, which at the time was open to the public. I’ve since changed that.
(Also, I know that’s illegal as hell, but even my atheist lawyer knew it’d be next-to-impossible to prosecute, at least in Georgia.)
Not long after that, after coming back from an atheist meet-up, I was attacked and chased by three guys who wanted to show me what would happen to me in Hell (I guess they knew about the meet-up and were waiting for someone). I managed to escape relatively unharmed.
Of course, this isn’t as bad as being jailed or even killed. It isn’t government-sponsored persecution. But it still sucks.
I should note that even though a majority of US-Americans will now vote for an atheist as president (according to Gallup), it’s still the smallest percentage of people in the US (more will vote for a Muslim). We’re still less trusted than rapists. Atheism is still used as a charge against political candidates.
I live in Boca Raton, FL now (otherwise known as “Jewy Jewsville” [by the Jews who live here] or “Heaven’s Waiting Room” [by most of the people who live here]). It is a kind of relief that has to be experienced to understand to live around people who know I’m an atheist and don’t care. That is so. Fucking. Awesome.
It’s even better, as I work at a Hebrew school, and not only does my boss know, but she thinks it’s cool. She knows I have a soft-spot for Judaism (the cultural/ethnic aspect, as I’m half-Jewish [on my Dad's side]), and she knows that I respect the fact that it’s a Jewish school. And she loves to talk to me about it.
But I have friends who went through some horrible shit when they came out as atheists. Being beaten, disowned, humiliated in front of their whole town… it’s no surprise that many atheists are anti-theists, to be entirely honest.
In the US, we have what Bill Hicks liked to call “serious pockets of humanity”. There are many places, especially in the Bible Belt, where atheist aren’t just unwelcomed, but are outcasts and social pariahs. I really didn’t go through anything compared to what many atheists in the US have gone through…
Oh hell, THAT conversation.
I got Harris’s reasoning in that conversation, but he’s still wrong, and he’s still an asshole for saying it and not immediately realizing what he’s said and apologizing/retracting it.
@Katelisa: It’s probably hard for us Swedes to fathom how different the US is in some respects, despite being pretty similar in others. I’ve come to understand that it CAN be pretty shitty for atheists over there…
What really baffles me though is when you bump into Swedish atheists who have borrowed their attitude from their American peers, strutting around like they’re oh-so-radical for not believing in God. Check out page 5 here: http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Ath-Chap-under-7000.pdf and get some feel for how “radical” it is being an atheist in this country. (Various researchers have found that anything between 54 and 85 percents of the Swedes don’t believe in God.)
I guess I’m pissed off by Swedish atheists with this attitude precisely because in reality, I’m the one, with my belief, who constantly have to explain myself to people. (Obviously all atheists aren’t like that, all my colleagues are atheists for example and only one of them pretend to be radical because of it… but they’re an annoying subset of the atheist population.)
*raises hand as NOT Christian-best description is probably animistic humanist, but if you’re not the right flavor of SOUTHERN BAPTIST here in rural Texas, you’re screwed-in rural Texas*
I am more out as a queer than I am in regard to my beliefs concerning religion.
Also for NON US-ians:
http://www.alternet.org/story/151241/10_scariest_states_to_be_an_atheist
Google what happens when students at PUBLIC schools speak out against Christian prayers (regularly offered up here at my university over the years): here’s one example
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/louisiana-taliban-harass-atheist-high-school-student.html
There are Christian coaching organizations (my campus has a “name of football team here” for Christ student organization): http://fca.org/
Very scary: military evangelism
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/122207Leopold.shtml
http://www.alternet.org/story/152120/why_is_the_military_spending_millions_on_christian_contractors_bent_on_evangelizing_us_soldiers
There a military athetist activist blogging on Freethoughtblogs.com:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/rockbeyondbelief
His blog is well worth reading.
Now the well off white male atheists in professional positions in urban areas: yeah, i’m not buying they’re that oppressed.
But if you’re not in that group, and you’re in some parts of this country, including the military and public education, then yeah, you can be actively harassed and threatened.
And persecution-which doesn’t just have to come from a government (though school officials are representatives of state government) but which can come from within institutions. I tend to use terms like “oppression” and “marginalization” more than persecution…not sure why.
And as others have said, factor in those who are not among the most default/privileged groups in the US, and the situation can become even more dangerous.
@Ithiliana: That is… just absurd. Geez.
This military evangelism seems particularly odd to me. When I was a kid I had friends in the local baptist church and spent a lot of time there, and pretty much all of them were pacifists. I think this wasn’t just this church, but baptists and similar congregations overall in Sweden, that tend to be pacifists.
Back then, there was mandatory military service for all men in Sweden, but if you were a pacifist you were allowed serve as a chef, nurse, fireman or a few other positions that didn’t include using weapons. You had to do more time though, if you refused to use weapons. Pretty much ALL the men in that church had done weapon-free service.
And they were all terribly offended too, when the US president would invoke his alleged divine support for waging war. It seemed like blasphemy to them.
I don’t want to idealise these people, since most of them were anti-abortion and anti gays. Still, in some ways they were MILES away from their American counterparts…
ithiliana, you’re giving me flashbacks now. I went through basic training at Ft. Leonardwood, MO back in 2002. A local Baptist church ran a once a month program while I was there, kind of an outreach ministry to soldiers in training. They’d pick us up, take us to the fellowship hall, butter us up for a few hours with lightly supervised leisure time and a home-cooked meal, then herd us into the fellowship hall for a sermon about how U.S. soldiers did God’s Work, but that God would still turn his back on us if we turned our backs on Christ (I also seem to remember some kind of story about a soldier who died without faith and left his poor daddy heartbroken). Then, for extra measure, they broke us down into small groups for some one-on-one prayer, scripture, and guilt tripping with church elders, before they brought us back into the chapel for a good ol’ fashioned altar call.
The leadership at our basic training company strongly encouraged us to go to this thing. It wasn’t mandatory; if you decided not to attend, you could stay behind at the barracks and help the people who were on extra duty (aka, being punished) move wall lockers and buff linoleum. You can guess what most people chose.
At the time I was still a strong Christian, so I regarded it as “Look at these nice people who want to save our souls. And they’re feeding us cake!” Now that I’m a decade out I think that was so freaking far out of line I can’t believe it was allowed to happen. Most of the people in my unit were kids, and everyone was homesick, stressed, and sleep-deprived. I wish I could think of a stronger word than “manipulative” to describe putting the hard Christ sell on people in that condition. I’ve read the whole Bible, and I can’t think that’s something Jesus would have approved.
… and I just googled this thing. It wasn’t just my chain of command who was all about it. They got an award from the Pentagon, too. Link is here (scroll to page 8).
Luckily, it looks like they did shut down this program in 2009.
I think I might have been in BCT during one of the most effed-up periods in U.S. military history.
Oh, look at me thinking I could embed links! Forgot to close it.
Sorry, guys!
second *fellowship hall* should have been *sanctuary.* Need to stop typing while I’m in a pissy mood. Look at all these mistakes.
Jesus! That some pretty sick manipulation there. Isn’t the US supposed toi have a seperation of church and state?
I’m sure there’s similar BS going on in canuckistan. I’m all for people having the religous support they want when in the military, but like that!
Never a big fan of McCaffrey, and the whole “rape makes you gay” thing turned me off it for life.
Wasn’t huge into Pullman either. I enjoyed Clockwork okay, but was really conflicted about His Dark Materials. (Not for any deep existential reason; I just read ‘the Golden Compass’ before, really really enjoyed it, and had to wait for the rest of the series to come out, only to be turned off by leaving the world of the first book that I was so into. Having another main character felt like it was barging in on the dynamic between Lyra and Pan. What can I say, I was twelve.)
As far as favorite woman writers… hrm. Patricia Wrede! Fractured fairy tales, a lot of her work has a big nineties feel, but still love reading her work. Gail Carson Levine… enh, she has a couple great ones, but the rest of her work is really meh to me. Read ‘Ella Enchanted’ and ‘A Tale of Two Castles,’ MAYBE ‘The Two Princesses of Bamarre,’ and ignore the rest, in my opinion.
Damn, now I’m realizing how many works I love that are by women, but I didn’t really care for the rest of their stuff, or they only wrote like one or two books. :\ (That or they were nonfiction/inspirational/psych stuff, which doesn’t seem relevant to this discussion.)
Why on earth would I need to know anything about other atheists, especially this fool? Organised atheism?! Hilarious!
Yes, it is, but a lot of people really do say that “separation of church and state” does not appear as a clause in the Constitution.
The Air Force Academy in Boulder, Colorado is a high-value target (to borrow some slang) and many churches are deeply involved in life on campus there. (Those cadets who opted out of religious services were marched back to their barracks in what I recall were termed “Heretic Flights,” although I’m probably misremembering the name.)
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin has said problematic things about the mission of the U.S. Military in the Middle East and Asia (basically, the GI is called upon by God to kill Muslims).
And Petraeus, who was recently removed from office because he
killed all kinds of civiliansmilitarized the CIAconcealed all of this from the public put his penis in the vagina of a woman he wasn’t married to, was heavily involved in promoting “spiritual fitness” among the soldiers.Eh, crap. Forgot a sentence.
“Yes, it is, but a lot of people really do say that “separation of church and state” does not appear as a clause in the Constitution. It’s covered in the First Amendment, no matter how much they claim otherwise.“
@ithiliana:
HOLY CRAP I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There wasn’t much I liked about the last two HP books, to be entirely honest. I remember wondering if JKR had a ghost writer for the first five books and wrote the last two herself, or if that was reversed (I’m no longer a conspiracy theorist, so I no longer think like this).
But I’ll stop here before going into my rants…
On the thing about vegan evangelists:
1. I was once actually accosted by a vegan at the meat section of my local Kroger (in Georgia). She called me all sorts of nasty names, like murderer, and cannibal, and so on (I wasn’t even buying any meat at the time… just pricing it). It actually provided the fodder for a couple of okay jokes for my first and last attempt at stand-up comedy (which surprisingly went well, but that’s only because I was fortunate enough to go to an open-mic night with other wannabe-Bill Hicks’/George Carlins’, so the audience for most part found the cynical, misanthropic, humans-are-all-stupid-morons, Nice Guy(TM), anti-religion shit funny).
2. I’m studying Anthropology, and one of my interests is the roots/origins of fanaticism. I’m pretty much convinced that it’s a sort of “complicated”/evolved expression of tribalism. I’m pretty sure that when, for example, one group of chimps attacks another, what we’re seeing is a sort of primitive expression of fanaticism, in this case “patriotism”/tribal loyalty.
If right, this would mean that fanaticism is kind of unavoidable within social species (like humans). Every group of any kind will have it’s fanatics. They’re most pronounced within religion and politics, and obviously Patriotism is a form of fanaticism, but I guarantee, if you look hard enough, you’ll find them amongst vegans, meat-eaters, Led Zeppelin fans (we’re called Zepheads… and yes, I’m a fanatic Zephead
), and everywhere else, too.
I would say that vegan evangelicals are possibly quite rare, but I guarantee that you’ll find one if you look hard enough.
Oh, if we’re suggesting women authors, I’d like to quickly plug Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle), and second Lois McMaster Bujold.
Crap, a whole McCaffrey conversation while I’m in bed!
I loved the Pern stories that were around when I was a teen - Dragonflight through to The White Dragon, plus the Harper stories. I enjoyed a few that I read later - the ones about the settling of Pern and the ending of Thread - and some of the Ship series. Some of the post-Thread ones were pretty skeevy, though at least in the one about F’lessan and the green rider (can’t recall her name, just that McCaffrey gave her a MULLET - gah) she does more or less acknowledge that yes, flight is rape for the humans involved. The story of hers that really put me off was called A Meeting of Minds, I think; it was one of the ones that gave rise to the Rowan series (which I didn’t like at all). There’s a bit near the end of this story where the heroine - Damia? Rowan’s daughter, anyway - suddenly realises that her Most Important Role In Life is pumping out babies and that a REAL relationship with a REAL man starts with physical submission. So much gagworthiness in so few sentences.
I also think McCaffrey couldn’t write a convincing villain worth a damn. They’re so bloody one-dimensional, too often just malevolent for no obvious reason at all.
@ Nathan
That’s an interesting concept. It would be cool if we could find out which types of groups (religious, nationalist, hobbyist, food…ist) had the highest proportion of fanatics.
And for female authors, I was in love with Tamora Pierce’s work as I grew up. Those books were amazing.
*goes back to lurking*
Martha Wells, P.C. Hodgell, Janet Kagan
I loved Ursula Le Guin for the first three Earthsea books, but didn’t care for her other work, and loathed the fourth Earthsea effort. These days I like Kerry Greenwood (the Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman detective series) and Dorothy Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey). Mostly I’ve read non-fiction, though, as an adult, and it’s not a matter of authors but of subject.
@Nathan, I think so too. Every group will have its fanatics. It’s just that you tend to notice the fanatics of the opposite side more than those of your own side (for obvious reasons - it’s the opposite side that’s gonna attack you).
Regarding the militant vegans…
Sadly, yes. I actually have run into one of them. (Online, but it was a former close friend of a friend of mine. That friend now has officially given me “I told you so” rights.) I seem to recall the term ‘bloodmouths’ being used. But that person was… odd. (They also believed that to have agriculture at all was oppression of animals. I disagree.)
I am very glad that I didn’t really put much investment in this person’s opinions. I’m recovering from an eating disorder, of the starvation variety, and back when I tried to be more strictly vegetarian, I would use it to hurt myself. I am unable to keep myself healthy without animal products, and it’s a red flag if I haven’t eaten any meat in months.
One day, I hope to be healthily vegetarian, but right now, I can’t be. (And I realize that the more militant vege folk tend to make an exception for people like me, but I don’t really buy it. Why should my life be worth more than those of the animals I consume?)
That was basically my response at about the same age. Liked the first book and then in the second, Lyra feels like she does nothing. What’s with that?
RE: Katz
Oh thank god, I wasn’t the only one. I haven’t really read the later books since, (apparently we had VERY strong feelings when we were twelve) so obviously my memories are very fuzzy. I was in the books for Lyra, Pan, the armored bears, and all that stuff, and then in the second book, this other main character dominates, and I was just like >:[
It was actually pretty much the exact same reason I really adore the first of Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series, but never read (reread? I can’t even remember!) the other two.
OMIGOD I FELT THE SAME WAY ABOUT THE ENCHANTED FOREST SERIES TOO!
The first one was so funny and clever, and the second one was pretty funny and pretty clever, and by the third one it’s all serious and the cool people are being boring and I just don’t care anymore…
To her credit, she wrote the fourth one first and obviously had a totally different idea about the series at that point.
@pillowinhell - To be fair, that was the only time I was coerced into church during my two years in the Army. The rest of the time whether or not I attended was my choice, no negative consequences attached (I think that the main reason we were threatened with hard labor on that one occasion was that the drill sergeants wanted to be rid of us for a day). There were occasions, though, where a (Christian) chaplain would be present and he’d lead everyone in prayer. That couldn’t have been fun for any of the atheist or non-Christian troops.
@Falconer - Every time I hear somebody pull out the old “America was founded as a Christian nation” I want to kick something. Read the Constitution, people, including the amendments - you might learn something!
@ithiliana - thanks for those links re: military proselytizing. I read them after I was done with my initial word vomit. Looks like I need to write some Congressmen and send some money to the MRFF.
Ithiliana: Bujold. L’Engle (there was some eye-opening stuff). Blume (her juveniles, and her adults). Lyn MacDonald (WW1 Historian). Elizabeth Bear (whom I was resistant to read, because I HATE reading my friends’ stuff and not liking it).
Each of them, in their way, treat all the personages in the books as PEOPLE. “Are You there God?, It’s me, Margaret” is AWESOME.
Bujold plays with power in relationships in her books (I still need to read Ethan of Athos), is really good; even the painful scenes (the dinner party), manage to be explorations of how people want to behave, combined with what comes of not thinking of other people as ends, instead of means…
MacDonald brings an age long dead (the age of just before/during The Great War) back to life, and catches/reveals the sentiments of men (and some women, but she writes of battle, in an age when women didn’t really fight) who are; for so many, no people anymore, but rather icons in any number of narratives about War, Class, Culture, Miltarism, The Death of Innocence, etc, and wraps in up in the brutal contexts of the War…
Blume, insight to how growing up female worked, and how growing up hurts, and doesn’t. A charming simplicity (which takes both craft and art). She was my first, “banned book”…
L’Engle… Takes one of the most mocked lines in literature (Bulwyr-Littons, “It was a dark and stormy night) and makes it stand in for the struggles and trials of people who have been worn down by careless fate. Love is gone, a pale shadow in the background; with its threads in the lives of Megan, and Calvin and Charles Wallace; all sketched out; before you have all the players in the scene, as Charles Wallace makes the liverwurst and cream cheese sandwiches.
It’s spare, and dense and 50 years after she wrote it, it’s still fresh; even the political messages manage to transition to the present. Almost 35 years after I first read it I find more in it.
Fitzy: Oy…. I’m sorry. The stripe of evangelicals who become chaplains always bother me. Ours, in Iraq was a gung-ho motherfucker. He’d been an MP before he became a preacher, and he was one of the most offensive “religious” people I’ve ever met in my life.
The Baptist who tried to get me to “pray with him” while I was in hospital was also pretty bad, but I was in a better position to be rude to him, and he didn’t come back.
I spent Church Call at basic with the Episcopalians, because they were low-key, had a very small turn out (so I could spend four, or five, hours without seeing anyone I lived with), and there was much more chance to mingle with recruits from other companies; which included the female companies.
It was some very pleasant down-time.
nat: very similar in temperament and personality to the really evangelical, holier-than-thou vegans.
Yes. Rarely, and the one I lived with got over that aspect of things: partly because she had a partner who needed to eat meat (serious dietary issues). The one who was abusing her cat because she was a vegan… well she didn’t win any points with my boss; the vegetarian veterinarian.
So I can attest to their existence. In 35 years in Calif (LA, The Central Coast, Humboldt and The Bay Area) I met three. The most offensive was the woman who accosted me in the grocery. I was 16, so I probably looked about 13. I was trying to select a pot-roast for supper. She comes up and starts ranting about how wrong it is to eat animals, etc. She goes on, as I’m trying to be polite, and then she whips out what she thought was the untoppable closer (recall I looked a lot younger than I was), “Could you look at a poor innocent cow and kill it?”.
I picked up 3 lbs of chuck and said, “Yes”. With any luck she never tried that shit again; the look of shock, and then horror, on her face was incredible. She seemed to have discovered she was talking to Damien. She went white, and fled.
It’s just an internet thing really, isn’t it? No. It’s a real thing. I’ve seen restaurants with a six course menu that had bacon in every dish.
Urgh
That’s worse than the fancy London restaurant I saw in ’89 that offered roast beef and CHIPS. I mean, chips? With roast beef? What happened to roast potatoes? What happened to Yorkshire pudding? ::drool::
Only now I’ve got the Spam sketch in my head again, thinking about bacon with everything.
Ugh, the bacon thing! I can only go for bacon if it’s a tiny lean bit crumbled on a cobb salad or a baked potato. An entire piece that’s basically a fried strip of fat? Why do people consider this a good idea?
And why is it a breakfast food? What makes people go “I’ve just woken up, I feel like filling my stomach with grease?”
Hey! Quit raggin’ on my bacon!
:p
I’m only kidding.
I see bacon as a sort of “once-in-a-blue-moon” thing. I think the last strip of bacon I had was… 6 months ago? I like it… in extreme moderation.
Y’all should avoid Think Geek, BTW… they have a whole store of bacon stuff:
Bacon Mayonnaise, Bacon Mints, Bacon Gum, Bacon pops… it’s ridiculous.
Bacon MINTS?
Ewwwwwwwwww
I’ll have bacon for breakfast in two situation: if I’m on holiday and it’s on offer at the hotel/b&b (which has happened maybe two or three times) or across the veil, where it’s become a kind of tradition, not least since Miss Katie Cat has become a devotee of it over there.
Well I’m guessing that across the veil there aren’t any calories.
Bacon mints are disgusting, yes I’ve tried them. Two tastes that should NEVER be combined.
Katz - correct! Which is just as well. I’d be in real trouble if there were, lol.
I only like the meaty bit on bacon*. What the Brits call streaky bacon I don’t care for at all, and that seems to be the kind Americans like. IDGI - I find the texture of the fatty part horrifying, and used to always pull that part off and discard it as a child, but I guess tastes vary and all. Still, it’s a weird and interesting cultural phenomenon, the bacon obsession.
*The obvious exception being fattier bacon used as a seasoning that we were discussing earlier. Seriously, if you’ve never had the Chinese green bean dish with tiny pieces of bacon as a seasoning and you like both green beans and pig-flavored things, check it out.
I like Marion Zimmer Bradley. I think the first of her books was Mists of Avalon, but really its her Darkover stuff I love. Particularly the Renunciates. I grew up wishing I knew so many kick ass women.
Bacon MINTS? That sounds like it should be on Andrew Zimmerman’s weird and scary food program along with the snake venom ice cream.
Snake venom ice cream?
Me: Snake venom ice cream????
Colleague: Wonder what that’d taste like?
Me: Better than bacon mints.
@pecunium: I think I read A Wind in the Door too young. I especially didn’t take to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, largely because it didn’t have Meg in it (I also don’t like any of the Narnia books that don’t have Lucy in them except I abhor The Last Battle).
My grandparents on both sides had farms. When you get up at the crack and plan to spend most of the day with the horses hitched to the plow or the rake, or to crowd into the stripping room with the tobacco, you tend to need a lot of calories. Then eating eggs, bacon, biscuits and coffee for breakfast becomes a habit. I understand that the staple breakfast of factory workers in some parts of France in the 19th century was a hunk of bread and plenty of butter, such that when butter became scarce, someone developed margarine but it didn’t have the same fueling power.
Falconer - The Last Battle was the only Narmia book I hated as a kid; I loved all the others. What about it got you?
First thing in the morning I usually don’t want to eat at all, but if for some reason I’m particularly hungry (had an early dinner the night before, etc) then it’s starches all the way. My favorite breakfast food is congee (protein toppings are cool, but I wouldn’t want them to be the bulk of my meal).
So speaking of bacon, my husband has heartburn. What should I make for dinner?
It’s funny, we were talking about The Last Battle over supper last week. It’s a very flawed book, in ways that are hard to work out. The biggest problem is that it’s an odd splice of non-catholic theology, to a longer catholic allegory. The other problem is that it breaks both of them.
Falconer: I find “A Wind in the Door” to be the least of them. I was probably at the perfect age to read “A Swiftly Tilting Planet”, and being interested in The Twins was able to make the bridge.
@ katz
Something starchy and bland, I’d suggest. Anything fatty or spicy will probably just make it worse.
Anyone here read Colleen McCullough? I love her series on the Roman empire.
Does Denny’s still have the maple bacon sundae? One of my friends ordered that once while I stared at the menu in disbelief.
Well, I guess that sometimes ice cream can come with peanuts as a topping, and those are salty too, so…
Nope, still disgusting.
Does anyone actually like The Last Battle?
I mean, I loved the Narnia books as a kid, but even then I loathed The Last Battle, because it basically says, “Hey, you know that allegory we’ve been working through this whole series, but which, as a kid, you could reasonably tune out and just enjoy a pretty entertaining story about magic and talking animals and stuff? Well, it’s time to BEAT YOU OVER THE FUCKING HEAD WITH IT. JESUS JESUS JESUS. ASLAN IS JESUS. Did you know that Aslan is Jesus? Because he’s Jesus! JESUS JESUS JESUS.
Also, if you like being pretty and stuff, you’re a whore and Jesus is very sad about it, but you’re totally going to hell and will never see your family again! Also also, all the characters you cared about are dead! But it’s okay, because JESUS JESUS JESUS.”
No, nobody liked it.
I didn’t really like the Narnia books at all once I started paying attention to more en than the magic and talking animals in them. I may have been a christian at the time, but just because it was an extended allegory about my religion didn’t mean I was going to overlook the flaws of the series.
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” was the strongest book. Everything after was like a trip downhill.
So… bacon. Is this a good time to mention that I have two buckets full of čvarci in my fridge made by my boyfriend’s mom and they’re awesome in the morning?
And I should probably not talk about all the awesome bacony stuff we have here, and if I ever move, which I wish to, that’s probably one of the rare few things I’ll miss about this area.
Bacon. And kefir. Nomnomnom.
I really disliked The Last Battle firstly for killing everyone off, and second for Aslan turning into JC at the end. It wasn’t even the Christian reference, it was simply that I liked animals one hella lot better than humans, and Aslan not being a lion any more sucked. First time I encountered The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was when it was read to us in grade three. I remember the first mentions of Aslan being the King, and thinking (like the Pevensies did) of a human king. Then when he turned out to be a lion - wow! And Lewis had to go and bork it at the end of the stories.
I think my favourites in the series were The Horse and his Boy and The Magician’s Nephew. A big part of that was how Pauline Baynes’s illustrations had developed; they were much finer by the later books. I absolutely loved the Charn sequence and the room of images; it prompted a whole fantasy world of my own in my teens.
Charn rocked, but The Magician’s Nephew suffered from one of the problems with The Last Battle that often gets overshadowed by all the issues with theology.
Putting bookends on an entire world is just a bad idea from a literary standpoint. Much of the excitement of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (for me) was the feeling that doors to Narnia could be anywhere and that these adventures could happen to anyone (especially any child). The more open-ended the series, the better this works, but that last two books start putting it into a box and rigidly defining who’s been to Narnia and why.
That’s interesting. I’ve never thought about the series from a literary point of view - more just the stories in themselves with an overlay of “gah, nothing like heavy-handed allegory”. Perhaps the message was more important to Lewis than the series as a story? Just guessing there, I haven’t read terribly much about him or the series’ creation.
No, they actually weren’t originally intended as allegories at all, the way I heard it (and books 2-5 have rather little allegorical content in any case). The allegory obviously takes a steep upward turn in the last two books, but there’s a general degradation of quality by that point.
And that’s a common thread you’ll notice through all the series that have been mentioned here-His Dark Materials, Dragonriders of Pern, The Enchanted Forest-as they progress, the flaws become more pronounced (His Dark Materials becomes more of an author tract, Pern becomes rapier, etc) and they often lose the tone and intangible feel that made them so appealing in the first place.