Terry Pratchett quote on Religion

[el_bryanto]

"You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors." - Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

Bryant

[cbayer]

1. Who the hell is Terry Pratchett and is he always this obtuse?

Never mind, I looked him up. What's the using the fake american lingo in this quote?

[el_bryanto]

2. It's an old woman talking - Granny Weatherwax

I don't know what is obtuse about the quote - seems pretty correct to me.

Bryant

[cbayer]

4. I guess if you share this character's view of religion, but it seems pretty unique and extreme to me

[el_bryanto]

6. How so?

I read it to mean that Religion should matter - that either you dedicate yourself to your faith or its just a way of being nice and being part of a community.

Bryant

[cbayer]

9. I read it as saying that it didn't matter unless you completely sacrificed yourself to it, which

I would reject.

Religion can have variable degrees of meaning in any individuals life. If it doesn't rule everything, that doesn't mean that it is meaningless.

Saying that it's the equivalent of just being nice is just an attempt to dismiss it completely.

[JoeyT]

31. There's actually a backstory to the quote.

It's a bit out of context here.

The person she's speaking to is an Omnian...kind of a watered down version of Jehova's Witnesses, that became that way because of events from about eight or ten books back (Small Gods) where their psychotic inquisition was pretty much killing everyone until their god actually turned up and put a stop to it.

The guy she's talking to is so conflicted on religion he tries to convert people on reflex because he doesn't believe in his own god anymore, and is propping up his belief because it's just what he's always believed. That quote was her informing him why he really really didn't want to convert her.

His reaction is more or less the same as yours, which was the reaction she intended to elicit. The whole point of the character is that she tests everyone constantly because she thinks it makes whatever they're being pushed on stronger.

[cbayer]

32. Thanks JoeyT!

I've never gotten into these fantasy books, but I sure like it when someone can briefly interpret something like this for me.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. 'Fake American'?

It reads perfectly well in several English accents. I'd suggest Generic West of England Rural - get your husband to explain The Archers to you. Looking the quote up, it seems to come from the Granny Weatherwax character, in which case an Archers-style accent would be pretty obligatory for it.

[cbayer]

5. So the character comes from some fictional place with no national affiliation.

I've never seen the word "folk" used in anything but American dialect, or the term y'see.

This kind of literature has absolutely no appeal to me, so I will back out and let the fantasy writer's take on religion be discussed.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. It's not necessarily the writer's actual take on religion.

It's the view of a character he wrote, not himself.

[cbayer]

8. I don't know anything about this writer except what I just read after a search.

Anyway, it doesn't make much sense to me.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. The character is stating that faith SHOULD be fervent.

It's a riff on the 'neither hot nor cold' 'spit you from my mouth' jesus thing, I think.
Not encouraging human sacrifice like in the dark ages, but a full dedication of life to the faith.

[cbayer]

12. That's pretty much how I read it, I just disagree.

Faith can be very quiet, as it is for most, or very fervent like it is for others.

As long as it doesn't impinge on the rights (or faiths) of others, some one saying what it should be seems completely inconsequential to me.

[AtheistCrusader]

13. Right, that's why I pointed out that it's a character.

A vehicle that the author uses to explore or air an idea. Doesn't necessarily reflect on the author's faith or position on faith.

Sometimes such a character is constructed purely to evoke the reaction you just had to it. It's not necessarily an endorsement. I Haven't read the book, but doubtless that character would match one or more from The Brother's Karamazov. Not Aloysha or Ivan. Smyerdakov perhaps.

[cbayer]

14. As a point of discussion, I can see it's usefulness.

But the member that posted it indicated that he thought it was "correct", so I was basically disagreeing with him.

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Which is good.

Fostering dialogue is one of the great things about literature.

I agree that the level of fervor indicated in that quote is not a required attribute of faith.

I would go further and suggest that it is, or can be, quite hazardous to the individual practicing it, and the people around him or her.

[cbayer]

16. And I would agree with you. Fervor is going to lead to absolutism and absolutism

is going to lead to intolerance and bigotry, imo.

So, what the character is stating, an all or none approach to faith, is a danger.

[trotsky]

17. MLK was pretty fervent in his faith, wasn't he?

Mother Teresa too?

Did you mean to say that fervor CAN lead to absolutism? In other words, would you like to modify your absolutist statement?

[cleanhippie]

23. For not knowing anything about him, you sure have a lot to say.

[trotsky]

10. More of the same.

You've never seen or heard something, so you summarily dismiss it. And it's not enough to just dismiss it, you have to do so with malice toward the author.

Reminds me of how fundamentalists deal with viewpoints they don't like.

[Heddi]

20. Imagine if someone had responded in that way

to something a real life religious person had said...they'd be jumped on, called nasty, castigated for being closed minded, etc. They would get a full-on finger-wagging from the Ministry Of Good Posts and Great Points.

They would be told not to paint with a broad brush, to criticize the message not the messenger, asked what their problem was with discussing X or Y....

Somehow Richard Dawkins would be brought into it...someone would get a quarter every time they used the term "apatheist" then defined the meaning (kind of like how Rachel Ray uses EVOO as shorthand for Extra Virgin Olive Oil, but then completely negates the point of using an abbreviated name because every time she says "EVOO" she follows with "that means Extra Virgin Olive Oil...". well why not just say Extra Virgin Olive Oil and save yourself a few syllables... oy.)

and the circle of life continues, same old hypocrisies, same old blind spots, same old arguments...

[trotsky]

22. Exactly.

And when someone leaves themselves wide open to charges of jaw-dropping hypocrisy. and has such blatant double standards, I'm going to point it out.

[AtheistCrusader]

24. What the flying hell is 'Extra' virgin olive oil? It's either first-press virgin olives or it is not

[Heddi]

25. no. It's extra virgin

Do not doubt the intelligence of RR. She is a god.

[trotsky]

27. Holy crap!

I thought those were jokes - "foodnetworkhumor".

They aren't.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/pineapple-wedges-recipe/index.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/late-night-bacon-recipe/index.html

Thank goodness Food Network allows comments - they are AWESOME.

"Rachel, do you have a recipe for ice cubes you could post? Maybe dumb it down a bit for the home cook?"

[Heddi]

28. She also breaks down for us idjits

how to make lemon sorbet

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/216080-food-network-recipe-reviews

yeah.

[AtheistCrusader]

29. I blame the website. Clearly that's a recipe for "Late Night Bacon Vapor"

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. No, it's an official designation

What is Extra Virgin Olive Oil?

Extra virgin is the highest quality and most expensive olive oil classification. It should have no defects and a flavor of fresh olives.

In chemical terms extra virgin olive oil is described as having a free acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.8 grams per 100 grams and a peroxide value of less than 20 milliequivalent O2. It must be produced entirely by mechanical means without the use of any solvents, and under temperatures that will not degrade the oil (less than 86°F, 30°C).

In order for an oil to qualify as “extra virgin” the oil must also pass both an official chemical test in a laboratory and a sensory evaluation by a trained tasting panel recognized by the International Olive Council. The olive oil must be found to be free from defects while exhibiting some fruitiness.
...
Virgin olive oil has a free acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 2 grams per 100 grams and the other technical characteristics for the virgin olive oil category in the IOC standard.

http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/extra-virgin-olive-oil

[AtheistCrusader]

30. I did not know this.

I wonder if one or the other has better dietary/health effects.

[Humanist_Activist]

33. Wow, you really have no shame, do you?

You will commit character assassinations against anyone, based on pure ignorance.

[cbayer]

34. Lol! Character assassination? Hardly.

I didn't have any idea who he was and had to look him up. I find this kind of writing really obtuse and was confused by his use of dialect.

This hardly rises to the level of character assassination.

[Humanist_Activist]

35. But you seem more than willing to comment based on pure ignorance...

and think that that comment is, somehow, a valuable contribution to this thread. Why?

[cbayer]

36. I can comment on anything I want. Do you consider all your posts valuable contribution?

Like the one where you accused me of character assassination and attacked me personally, for example?

[Humanist_Activist]

37. I notice a pattern of behavior, of vindictive, rude, and frankly non-productive posts...

from you, this being simply the latest, particularly of anyone or any position you label as "anti-theist" which is a label I proudly bear for myself. You are a perfect example of whatever religion you choose to affiliate with.

[cbayer]

38. More personal attacks - nice.

Are you a perfect example of Humanists? I think not. Of Anti-theists? More likely.

I will openly state that I don't like anti-theists. I don't like anti-atheists either.

What religion do you imagine I choose to affiliate with?

[Humanist_Activist]

39. Not sure, I think you might be some type of deist...

you seem to change them with every clarification people ask for. As far as personal attacks, don't pretend to hold the high ground there.

[cbayer]

40. No, I'm pretty consistent actually. Perhaps you just see what you want to see.

While I may fail at times, I do try to avoid personal attacks on other members. As far as public figures go, though, I don't feel any such obligation, particularly when they have done or said something I find really objectionable.

[Humanist_Activist]

41. Is that why, in your first post in this thread, you asked, rudely, who Terry Pratchet...

is, and in addition, insinuated he was making fun of Americans in that quote?

What the fuck did he do that was objectionable?

[cbayer]

43. What I did, HA, was ask who the hell he was, whether he was always this obtuse

and wondered about the dialect he was quoting.

So what? I got my answers (fantasy writer, yes and an explanation that this could be a british dialect).

Is he a member here?

[Humanist_Activist]

44. The quote in question, to be honest, isn't that obtuse, and he is an excellent...

British humorist and author. I would recommend his Discworld books to anyone, and also Good Omens to the less religious, both are excellent parodies and self reflections on not only contemporary culture, but there respective genres as well.

[cbayer]

45. I see from below that you are a fan and very familiar with him.

This is not a genre that has ever appealed to me. I couldn't even get through Tolkein during my adolescence, so his coming across as obtuse may have much to do with me.

Anyway, in some of the discussions in this thread, I came to understand a little more about what he was trying to say in this passage. Granted my first response was a reaction to it just seeming really random, but I learned something in the exchanges.

[LostOne4Ever]

18. I am a bigger fan of Douglas Adams myself

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occured and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]The Restaurant at the End of the Universe[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

[Heddi]

21. I like how Flannery O'Connor took on religion in "Wise Blood"

Being raised in the south, and related and near-related to so many people who were/are part of that very hellfire and brimstone street preacher garbage, I found myself realizing that I knew people that were dang near like every character in Wise Blood. Of course their personalities are exaggerated...I don't know any preachers who blinded themselves with Lye, for example, but the sentimentality, the mentality, the thought processes...I know them. I'm deeply familiar with them. The attitudes have softened during my time, but they're there...mostly on dirt roads and tar-paper shacks without running water and dirt floors (there are still many of them there, even in a metropolis like Charleston and it's neighboring counties).

“Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not.”

“There are all kinds of truth ... but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth.”

“I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there is no truth... No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”

“That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything,"

“I don't have to run from anything because I don't believe in anything.”

“I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stay's that way. Ask me about that church and I'll tell you it's the church that the blood of Jesus don't foul with redemption...Jesus was a liar.”


The last one was modified to be my sig-line for many, many years during the early days of DU1 and DU1.5, ect:
The Church of Christ without Christ: Where the blind don't see, the lame don't walk, and the dead stay that way

[Humanist_Activist]

42. I like his book "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch"

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

“Crowley had always known that he would be around when the world ended, because he was immortal and wouldn’t have any alternative. But he hoped it was a long way off. Because he rather liked people. It was major failing in a demon. Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millennium, when he’d felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there’s nothing we can do to them that they don’t do to themselves and they do things we’ve never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They’ve got what we lack. They’ve got imagination. And electricity, of course. One of them had written it, hadn’t he…”Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” Crowley got a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition. He had been in Spain then, mainly hanging around cantinas in the nicer parts, and hadn’t even known about it until the commendation arrived. He’d gone to have a look, and come back and got drunk for a week.”

ON EDIT: Neil Gaimen was co-author, and both are funny in the novel.

Also another quote, love the book!

"Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them."

-- The eight Bikers of the Apocalypse