Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Pterry talks about religion

You just gotta love this guy. :-)

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing :) My roommate has been trying to get me to read Terry Pratchett since forever, and I have his "Pyramids" next to my bed right now, but haven't started it yet. I have to after seeing him speak though.

December 23, 2009 at 4:20 PM
Anonymous said...

Thanks for this video :)

Terry Pratchett is such a lovely man and an enjoyable writer as well.

Still, hearing him, with a glass of wine in his hand, including himself in the company of Einstein and Spinoza...ouch!

Hopefully it was just an offhand comment. Otherwise, a slice or two of humble pie is in order.

joseph

December 24, 2009 at 5:13 AM
Leisha Camden said...

Margo, yes, you so need to read this guy. He's sometimes dismissed as just being a comedic writer but there is so much more to his work. It's really profound comedy :-) and he is so smart. You have to read some of his books ... and I'd love to hear what you think. :-)

Joseph: I don't think he compared himself to those guys beyond just saying that like them he has thought it through and landed on the side of reason. But humble pie isn't something you can get him to eat, I don't think. :-) He can be pretty full of himself, but why shouldn't he be? AFAIK, of all the fiction that is sold in the UK every year, his work alone makes up 1% of that. Just this one guy. I think I'd have kind of a big head too if that was me. ;-)

I disagree with one thing he says though - that Jesus said such wonderful things, that he said all the right things. Um, really? Jesus also said that he came bringing not peace but a sword, and that we should all hate our parents or we wouldn't be worthy. Fuck that shit. IMO it's a problem that the nicey-nice things Jesus supposedly said about being friends and turning the other cheek and all that are focused upon to the extent that the nasty mean things he said are often overlooked. I don't Jesus is like what a lot of his followers think he is.

Of course, he never existed, so it's kind of a moot point ... but the Jesus most Christians seem to see when they read the bible isn't necessarily the Jesus who's really there. Is what I'm saying. :-)

December 27, 2009 at 3:27 PM
Unknown said...

Old post, but I have a couple of nits to pick with Pterry...

[disclaimer: the sound quality is so poor I stopped watching halfway through]

First, Carl Sagan was a wonderful communicator, but he cherrypicked his data to fit his convictions. For instance, he devoted a significant portion of the first episode of Cosmos to the Library of Alexandria and to its deplorable destruction by the Eeevel Kristshuns, which is a myth. The contents of the library were destroyed by pre-Christian Roman emperors (Caesar and Aurelian) long before Theodosius ordered the destruction of the temple in the late fourth century, at which point the library no longer existed.

Second, while neither Einstein nor Spinoza were observant Jews, they were not atheists either. Einstein's statements on the matter varied from one side of the fence (“I'm not an atheist”, “[I] am convinced that He does not throw dice”) to the other (“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness”).

January 20, 2010 at 3:51 PM

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