Fantasy and Religion

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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I recently had a lengthy conversation with an 82 year old gentleman that is Catholic. He informed me that in his lifetime he “could count the number of times I went to church on one hand.” He gave me the finger! :astonished: :laughing: I called him a senile old bastard–what a guy!

In any case, he claimed he probably didn’t believe in god, that he certainly didn’t know much about god, and that he simply accepted his religion because of his parents. He also told me that he knew almost nothing of the bible except for whatever is occassionally thrown out by Hollywood or other media.

I was not shocked since Catholic members are probably amidst the most ignorant of their own beliefs (but I digress). I began to tell him of some of the famous biblical stories left untold by Hollywood and he was amazed at the wonderful stories. He told me that he’d never heard of Jonah and the big fish (whale), of Joshua and the walls of Jericho, or of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego not burning in the fire pit and coming out without a trace of harm/burned smell/etc. His joy in the stories was like a child’s. He was left a bit in awe of the ‘miracles’ that were in the bible.

Later, as I was reflecting on our conversation, it occurred to me that I had never really focused on the biblical stories as miraculous. I had been exposed to the stories since I was young and I think that I always assumed that god was all powerful; therefore, I expected god to do these things as if it was another day in the office. In fact, I wasn’t really very impressed by the miracles at all. However, when I read fantasy novels (like Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth series”; Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”; and Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time”) I was as gleeful as my old friend.

It could be that if one reads the miracle stories of any religion as if for the first time, then one could get the impression that the stories are from some fantasy novel. In fact, I have often found interesting parallels between stories found in the bible and stories found in fantasy novels. Many of these fantasy novels used a religion’s doctrine to influence and/or formulate their stories.

It strikes me that many atheists and agnostics are impressed by fantasy novels but are less than impressed with the biblical stories. What really irks me is that fantasy novels are often dismissed as fodder (crap) or worse as blasphemous by many religious groups.

Having established that biblical stories and fantasy novels both have amazing stories that could leave men and women astonished, why is it that some groups do not allow their members to read “witchcraft?”

How can people accept blindly that someone parted the red sea and made a wall of fire to block the Egyptians’ path; accept the instantaneous healings; the walking on water; that there is a supreme being; that the supreme being manifests itself in three distinct forms; that these three forms are all separate but one; that there is a hero (god) and villian (satan) and that they vast armies of demons and angels; that snakes and mules can talk; et al.

Why is it okay to believe in this and it is evil for that annoying Harry Potter to have magical powers?

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  Just as a brief tribute to history, the Bible was written before most fantasy novels as far as I know, so the fact that they share similarities shouldn't be that surprising, especially then the novels in question are written by Christians (such as Tolkien).
  Anyways, as to why Harry Potter is evil (for those who think so) and why Moses isn't, why not? I haven't read Harry Potter, but Moses is performing miracles for God, and Harry is doing magic tricks for some other purpose. Do you really mean to suggest that a religion that has miracles as part of its tradition is [i]obligated[/i] to treat every account of the supernatural as acceptable and good, even ficticious ones? I don't happen to think there's anything wrong with stories about magic, but I wouldn't give a Christian familiy a hard time if they wanted to avoid that stuff as part of more pious lifestyle.  I guess I'm not sure what connection your making. 
   Also, don't you think your low-balling a bit, ragging on the particular part of the Christian community that considers Harry Potter blasphemous? Are there any supporters of that viewpoint here, or were you just looking to bash on some folks that aren't around to defend themselves?
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Religious stories could be as false as the fantasy novels of today; moreover, the bible could be viewed as amid the first fantasy novels. I think it is funny that one of the most recent religions that has millions of followers has very fantastic (by today’s standards) beginnings: Mormonism. This is, in essence, a whole new religion based on christianity. In fact, to a degree, it is to christianity, what christianity was to judaism. The Mormons believe that Jesus appeared in the Americas before he began his missionary work in ancient Israel.

I am not suggesting that a religion that has miracles be obligated to treat supernatural accounts as anything… I don’t think anyone should be obligated to do anything against her/his beliefs (as long as they aren’t widly anti-social such as murder, etc.)

Low balling? That was not my intention. However, I did want to make a point about how if people can accept the fantastic in their own personal lifes why should they reject (in an intolerant way) the fantastic beliefs of others? Be it Buddhism, Hinduism, Goodkinds, or anything? Also, the connection I am making is that the fantasy novels of today are much like the fantasy novels of yesteryear (the bible).

I am not looking to bash on anyone. I don’t bash. I brought this up for discussion and to learn if anyone here at ILP knew why Harry Potter was a threat to some (not all) religious groups. Furthermore, if Harry Potter was suddenly doing magic tricks for a god would that make him any less evil in the eyes of some?

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t4m

Mine is not the usual understanding but what I’ve learned from private research. Actually Christianity and Magick are complimentary but trying to explain something like that would get both sides of the debate mad at me.

The goal of Christianity is to allow a person to experience their own nothingness, their complete captivation by corrupt egotism. Once this is experienced for what it is, re-birth becomes possible.

Magick, or the laws of resonance, have become primarily adopted for the use of strengthening and expressing this corrupt egotism. This corrupt egotism if nourished properly can become too strong to free oneself of when we begin to smell the coffee… When understood in this way, Christianity warns against it since it stands in the way of the essential experience of our essential corrupt illusion of egotism.

Now, of course, the depth of this idea has degenerated down with many to arguments about Harry Potter which seems foolish to me.

Fantasy has no force or deeper meaning since it appeals to imagination which by definition is without force. Certain parables and fables are written in ways that are reflections of deeper objective truths and are passed along so that they can be received unconsciously bypassing our tendency towards classification which would change these truths into imagination.

So theoretically, there is a great difference between parables, fables, and fantasy.

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Fantasy has some force and deeper meaning behind its stories. It could easily be argued that its impact is far LESS than many parables and biblical books; however, it does have influence. There are actually people who adhere to the philosophies inside these fantasy novels.

I recently reread Terry Goodkind’s “Faith of the Fallen.” The book has done more to help me come to terms with topics like Communism, Socialism, Liberty, Selfishness, and Sacrifice than the bible has (and I have been a jubilant student of the bible). Let us not forget that a well told fantasy can include parables and fables and in many ways can deal with today’s issues more effectively. There are obsessed ‘Trekkies’ or Star Wars fans that adhere to the Vulcan ways and we can laugh but who are we to judge?

I agree that there is a difference between parables, fables, and fantasy but I am not sure that it is a great difference.

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I’ve had a similiar line of thought before, reading other ancient religious holy books like the illiad and the odyssey the writing style is VERY similiar. I think what the bible really is, is a collection of myths, allegory and history sometimes muddled together. How accurately could history be captured at the time? All they had was memory and early writings.

The ages of the first men in genesis, is a good example it’s been found that the decimal place was off from the translation of early sumerian to hebrew. Look at the ages with the decimal place moved over one place… suddenly the ages are MUCH more like the ages of actual men and not the ages of mythical men, that for whatever reason (and bad interpretation from many christian/muslim/judaistic sects) they lived over 400 years.

I’ve covered this topic many times before, the writing style and how it’s written I believe point more to an allegorical tale of how the jews came to be in that land… you have the first five books which cover everything from the beginning to their entry into the “holy land” then joshua covers the battles in the holy land. and then you have books covering various stories throughout the land. Then you have the prophetic books, clearly written by someone trying to get the people of the time to repent (and not forecasting jesus’ birth like is believed) these prophets often talked about god in a completely different tense than the stories… god was less “interactive”.

I really believe that the bible as any book, you get what you want to out of it. If you want a grand epic tale of the saviour of mankind, that’s what you’ll get.

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Hi Nick,

Everyone’s angry with me lately anyway so I’ll bring it up. I was raised Catholic, went to Sunday school, did the sacraments thing and in my opinion you are right. With all of the ritualism in Catholicism, it is a lot like “Magick” (the distinction with the “k”). I mean one thing that comes to mind is the strategic choice of Christian holidays on dates formerly pagan holidays, example Halloween. The practice of sacrifice and drinking blood. I think a lot of neo-pagans were probably Christian, or really probably Catholic to start with.

When I got into “witchcraft” in high school it was just a revolt against a religion I was raised with that I had failed to connect to, that and teen angst I’m sure. My parents were still Catholic, only my father ever attended church. He told me after I had mentioned some ritual I had done that he felt that God was fine with whatever I was doing as long as I was a good person and basically following the ten commandments, which are really universal in my eyes and fit perfectly with the Wiccan adage “And ye harm none, do as ye will”. He never condemned me for it, although I realize he was being very liberal.

An interesting related story, one that happened very recently after I had dismissed the whole practice for a long time. (some things you never forget, like riding a bike) I had just moved into a new apartment with my now ex-boyfriend. Long story short, 2 weeks after moving in the lunatic neighbor downstairs got a bug in her head and started screaming one night about him and I. I’m white, he is mixed black and white. She apparently didn’t like this, as many people on both sides don’t. So she spent 5 hours one night screaming thru the floor “you white cracker bitch up in here f-ing that black dread locked mother-fucker” she went on the following morning, after a short sleep break I assume, to say that she was going to come upstairs and give me a “good old fashion black ass wuppin’”. At this point I called the police and my landlord. The police did nothing and had the audacity to dismiss my claims with “are you sure she didn’t just have her TV on loudly all night” Chicago cops- fucking joke right!? And my landlord said he’d talk with them, but they had been long time tenants (8 years as she indicated in her rant, telling me to get the F out).

So I cleaned the whole apartment- top to bottom closets and all and did a complete house blessing/ banishment ritual complete with placing a small mirror upside down under my bed to reflect back her negativity. The next month the apartment was vacant. Coincidence? Ok and just to clarify, my landlord checked in with me the following week after the incident and said that she had apologized and admitted she was extremely drunk that night- everything would be fine.

So I believe in Magick, accept Catholisism and agree with Nick on this one. I think the only disparity occurs when Christians don’t understand the true intentions of neo-pagans and vice versa.

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Hi thirst4metal ,

I think it is quite easy really :slight_smile:

People read stories that entertain and intuitively understand them. I have given an example with my “In the Name of the Lord” story. People understand intuitively that the stories are not literally true and start looking for the deeper meaning. It is the influence of the groups we live in that disturbs this natural ability. Either we are told that biblical stories are to be taken literally and warned about fantasy being the work of the devil, or our ultra-rational peers throw both fantasy and biblical stories out “because they’re garbage” or we fail to develop an interest for such tales. Of course there are people like Uccisore who are in variance to these groups, but they show that the influence is there.

It seems to me on the one hand that conservative religious people are worried about fantasy and the like gaining a similar status to the Bible, or vice-versa. There are others who merely want entertainment and don’t want the stories to have deeper meaning. And there are those who are made insecure by stories with a message and they rigorously stick to logic, reason etc… The fact is that mankind is a race of storytellers and stories contained the first philosophies and religious ideas. They still do and we we still tell stories with the same purpose - some people think it is “beating about the bush” but it is really being gentle with truth, or putting it into a vessel so that it can be better accepted.

Magic however, is really a secular form of grace, taken from Christian liturgy in latin, calling upon the Holy Spirit. The magical words are also taken from liturgy, like “hocus-pocus” coming from “hoc est corpus” in a ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their ‘trick’ of Transubstantiation. It is as Uccisore says, much of what has been written recently comes from the older sources.

Shalom
Bob

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Hi All

I guess I wasn’t clear as to what I meant by “force”. My bad. Force, from the esoteric Christian perspective is basically the ability to psychologically climb uphill. It is what allows us to overcome the natural earthly attractions in order to glimpse our potential by maintaining a conscious attention to the reality of the moment rather than being swept away in our dreams.

Climbing a mountain just for the sake of doing it requires a certain degree of force or willpower. It comes from you, your presence and the ability to maintain it. However you are conducting force when skiing down the mountain. It is not coming from you, non the less, it is being carried by you as you find out when you smash into the tree.

The force of certain parables and fables serves the purpose of climbing uphill and against our habitual nature. The force of imagination is like skiing downhill. It feels good but in reality this force is just moving through us.

I’ve read this form of imagination best defined as “a function that takes the place of a necessary function”. In this case, from the esoteric Christian perspective, the goal is the development of the inner man which can only take place consciously beginning with the realization of our nothingness. This force of attention, to be present to the moment, cannot come through imagination which at best can only inspire a different train of thought… It requires the efforts similar to psychologically climbing uphill rather than just relishing the joys of skiing downhill and conducting force in accordance with nature’s laws.

Vortical writes:

A Christian would understand a neo-pagan. The trouble is that what you are referring to is Christendom which has a great difficulty with the pagan influence.

Man is dual natured. The lower side is animal and follows the natural earthly cycles of dust to dust. The higher side is spiritual and has the capacity to fall under the influence of conscious evolution. To do so, however, requires reconciling this duality.

The pagan influence is concerned with the earth. There is nothing bad about this. The whole philosophy of Gaia is built around it and IMO it is a good thing. Unfortunately, it often just degenerates into rebellion and “showing off” at the expense of the earth which is not such a good thing. The idea of man’s nothingness would go over here like a lead balloon with these expressions of paganism.

Christendom has created in many the idea that there is something “wrong” with our connection to nature which is a big mistake IMO. Christianity asserts that it is necessary to “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”. Both must be respected in order that they be reconciled so that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. The earth is a nice place to visit but you don’t want to be stuck there and restricted to it. It may be a necessary life for an animal but not for “man”.

The battle as I see it is between egotistical Paganism and egotistical Christendom. How much reality it reflects is something else again.

Psst. vortical; between you and me, having people angry at you doesn’t really suggest anything by definition “bad”. In Christianity it is stated that the world would hate you but how is a person to take this?

One of the most hated of all the inventions of mankind is the alarm clock. This poor creature once a day rings out for attention and gets cursed out and abused in every conceivable fashion. Yet it is condemned to continue in its necessary but universally despised task of sounding this dreadful ring.

Sometimes the truth of the worth of something is directly related to from what and how much it is despised.

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Hi Bob,

If you aren’t a teacher you should be. You have an amazing ability to simplify. I read your thread “In the Name of the Lord” and was left a bit saddened at the reality of how religion is abused by its practitioners. The things we try to get away with under the mask of the ‘greater good’ can be just as disheartening.

CAN ANYONE FIND A PARTICULAR RELIGIOUS/MYTHOLOGICAL STORY (any, including Greek stories) THAT ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE IN THE BIBLE?

I would very much like to learn about those stories.

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That is a good point about moving uphill in the religious fables and parables and downhill in the fantasy. In my opinion, I consider both movements as needed and useful for developing mind. It is because Bible or whatever essential script teach soul or conscious(subconscious) for this matter, to stand more or less upright and fantasy, on the other hand, teach to bend and be flexible. According to my beloved taocism it is very good quality needed for better undersdanding of the world prosperety.
Religion has quantum-corpuscul quality in it. -First it gives power for human mind to make a leap in the cognitive thinking, f.e. Jesus Christ had a very paradoxical mind compare to his contemporaries (he tried to teach those monkeys to thik as he is :laughing: ) and then religion is trying to conserve whatever achievment it gets in this leap from further development of the mind as it is tried to do Inquivisition. It is s-o-o-o good to have some stability on the frontier of the mind. However our nature cannot stand this (even very positive) stagnation and here it is - fairy tales, revolutionary theories and so on.
I don’t think (and history shows us) that we can go all the time only forward without periods of some rest or stagnation for this matter. or stability - name of this process is not that important. Although inquiring mind of philosopher (mine too) wants only forwarding.

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You ask how…perhaps because their minds are so closed?

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But… nobody accepts it blindly almost everybody in the right mind questions it and this is, I gather, the point of religion - to shape inquiring, positive and working mind through doubt. That simple and genuinely efficient trick of the aincient priests, who then were progressive thinkers then as we are now. :unamused:

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if only, that were the truth.

Most people accept what’s given to them without one ounce of questioning, and thus we end up with wacky interpretations of the bible, quran and book of mormon. like the following one:

first the NIV version of the quote.

then the KJV of the quote.

Now looking at both of those quotes think of what your immediate thought to their meaning and it should be OBVIOUS…

(before you scroll down think about the interpretation.)

it’s plainly obvious the author is saying that man has 70 years and if strength allow, you will have 80 years. This is perhaps one of the most obvious biblical passages that can be quoted.

but to some christians, the interpretation is really out there, and is used by young earth creationists to show that the “threescore * ten = six thousand years” (which in itself is BAD math, threescore ten is … where’s the fourscore(80) come in? It’s conveniently forgotten in this interpretation.

another question might be “aren’t they basing that on the fact that a day is a thousand years to god in the same chapter?”

Yes, they are and the math for that is flawed as well.

there are roughly 25,565 days in 70 years. now we take that number times 1000 and get 25,567,500 years… so using this bogus interpretation with correct math the time of man is actually 25 million years.

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Bob wrote:

“Magic however, is really a secular form of grace, taken from Christian liturgy in latin, calling upon the Holy Spirit. The magical words are also taken from liturgy, like “hocus-pocus” coming from “hoc est corpus” in a ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their ‘trick’ of Transubstantiation. It is as Uccisore says, much of what has been written recently comes from the older sources.”

Don’t think “hocus-pocus” has anything to do with what I was referring to, unless you’re responding to the earlier Harry Potter comments… At any rate, as far as illusions are concerned- there were plenty of “miracles” performed in the Bible.

Nick wrote:

“Unfortunately, it often just degenerates into rebellion and “showing off” at the expense of the earth which is not such a good thing.”

This is very unfortunate and after I had gotten into it- I had a falling out with most of the people I knew in high school who were also interested. They fit well into ugly stereotypes, as I’m sure I as well to people who didn’t know me because of their preconceptions.

And:

“The pagan influence is concerned with the earth. There is nothing bad about this. The whole philosophy of Gaia is built around it and IMO it is a good thing… Christendom has created in many the idea that there is something “wrong” with our connection to nature which is a big mistake IMO.”

Much of what I learned that fed into my neo-pagan period was a friendship that had developed with me and a Native American mother and daughter who ran a Native art kiosk at the mall where I worked when I was 16. They brought hand made items from various reservations and sold them, sending a portion of the money back to the artists who made them. The mother (at least 80 years) had been introduced to Christianity at some point in her early adulthood and found that she could believe in the Christian God as being one and the same as the Great Spirit. Her daughter was raised with both the traditional Native beliefs and Christianity. They taught me meditation and trance enducing techniques and the cleansing and blessing rituals which I still practice occasionally. They also both attended church every Sunday. They are among the most spiritual people I have ever known in that they seemed to emanate positive energy, light, love and honesty.

I’ve always believed that every culture interprets the spiritual realm differently, meaning that no matter what religion you follow, you are still worshipping or experiencing the same spiritual force. I think it’s beautiful that my friends were able to integrate Christianity with their ingrained cultural beliefs. I suppose this is what occurred with me as well when I moved away from Catholicism, towards various neo-pagan beliefs and over time found commonalities between the two.

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Hi Vortical

I agree with you that magick can be much more legit than given credit for. Magick isn’t limited to Buffy fantasy. Basically, as I understand it, it is the ability to consciously retain energy, the knowledge of the laws of resonance, and “will” to direct energy in order to manipulate them.

I’d just like to stress here the difference between the energy of the “Spirit” and the energies of magick. The spirit is of a higher quality. Magick deals with the energies of the earth which are mechanical and psychical. Confusion between these qualities of energy has caused a great deal of problems one of which is described quite well in the “Journal of Father Sylvan”. The lower can and should allow one to become open to to the higher:

Considering our normal selves as unconscious creatures of REACTION, magick is conscious "ACTION. Knowledge of these laws of resonance were popularized by Pythagoras as the Law of Octaves or of "vibrations but naturally the in depth knowledge was more hidden. Maybe if there are others with your interest, it may be worth starting a more serious thread somewhere on “Magick”

As an aside, I was reading an article on this recently and was struck in the picture of the vibrating string, how much is being debated on this in the context of physics as “string theory”. It just helps when it is seen cosmologically as "gradations.

I appreciated your account of your relationship with the Native American family. It has also been my experience. Unfortunately our non-sensical definitions of “good and bad” based on the lower have made these experiences much more rare then they should be.

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Hi MB,

I agree completely, the Psalm is quite clear in what it is saying. I find the request to “teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom” is particularly necessary.

I’d say the lack of reaction speaks for itself - it is “wacky” to make such claims, but you will always find someone who will play with numbers.

Shalom
Bob

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The key (and only) difference is that the bible is marketed as something other than what it is. If the bible were universally accepted as the work of literature that it is, and not some hocus pocus book of divine gobeldeegook, it would be less likely to be labeled ‘crap’ by the rational minded.

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What’s up Doc? (Bugs Bunny Tribute):

Dr. Satanical… While the cynic in me has always thought the bible was just another fantasy novel with lofty aspirations, it is difficult to claim that the only difference is in the marketing strategy.

How do you respond to the thousands of people that were willing to die and sacrifice themselves for the “stories” in the bible? Would the apostle Paul, be willing to turn his back on his Jewish beliefs for a mere story? Paul was a pharisee and the pharisees were amid Jesus’ biggest critics… It stands to reason that Paul wouldn’t take a leading role in spreading a lie or that he wouldn’t want to be persecuted for a simple story.

We know there were people who died in calling themselves christians… among those were some (all?) of the apostles of christ and the almost 120 other disciples who witnessed the ministry of jesus. Would you die for your Republican or Democratic party? Would anyone die for Star Wars or for Star Trek?

People tend to die for things they truly believe and accept… I would die for my country, my family, my friends, my freedom. I most certainly would not die for the Simpsons, or the Lakers, or the Packers… the point: we die for only the most important things (with good and sound reason).

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The same way I would explain people drinking poisoned kool-aide expecting to catch the next UFO out of town.
Stupidity.