Makes it sound filthy...

WOW
the Prestige did even worse than Fight Club
and they didn't even label the magic in it as witchcraft or nothing!

[QUOTE=Giggan;928701]I don't mean to knock these religious groups, but are they only capable of seeing the negative?
[/Quote]
Yes, particularly when it comes to Fight Club and probably Chuck's work, in general. It's not so much that they [i]only[/i] see the negative, but it's [i]how[/i] they see the negative. The answer is... satanic.

Organized religion is built on defining the negative as Evil and suppressing it. And it's built on training individuals to dis-own the negative within themselves (repression) and to foist the self's negative qualities onto [i]The Other[/i]--represented variously as the The Unsaved, Sinners, Worldly People, Infidels or generally as the Devil, the big projection of the Shadow Self for Everyone, (but especilally, the unused portion of the "saved..")

So the negative qualities in Chuck's work are never interpreted by an orthodox religious mind as an avenue into cleansing satire, and really dark humor is seldom if ever appreciated. The religious--with exceptions, of course--are notoriously literal-minded, and in addition to this, as if it weren't bad enough, not only love to but positively [b]need[/b] to see their own values reflected in [b]everything[/b], especially in art and politics. They get quite disturbed otherwise. Centuries of book burnings, witch burnings, inquisitions, and censorship, form a testimony of the mute. Art and science have both been sacrificed innumerable times at the altars of religion. In place of all the books we didn't get, we've gotten tons and tons of fiction that tells politically convenient lies. [b]The good always prosper. The wicked always get punished in the end.[/b] In the most repressive of times, [b]good[/b] has even been defined for us, in all sorts of subtle ways, as god-fearing, obediant, unquestioning faith in the customs of ones own tribe. [b]Good[/b] is so crusted up with [b]tribal prejudice[/b] that most people can't separate the two. The [b]Rebel as Hero[/b] has a long and honorable tradition, but that story has just as often been co-opted and neutered, as well. Or it gets perverted into the "rebel without a cause."

The modern (or is it post-modern) literature of disillusionment is still nothing for the kids.

In all fairness, the young, impressionable minds this ratings group is most concerned with can often take things just as lliterally as fundumentalist parents. Kids will take things too far, imitate things they shouldn't, and internalize wrong and disturbing messages. There have been dozens of real-life [i]fight clubs[/i] started in high schools and junior high schools, all inspired by Chuck's work. In some cases, kids have even pulled other kids into completely non-consensual fighting, surrounded and attacked them, while a third child captured it on film for the web.

If I had a ten or twelve year old, especially if the kid were somewhat rambunctious and aggressive, anyway, I can tell you that [i]Fight Club[/i] would be off the menu of his possible viewing choices, at least until teen years. And even then, I'd make sure we talked about it after. And he'd never get my approval for the gruesome tripe that's taken over in so many video games, ala Grand Theft Auto. And that stance, for my part, would come from developmental psychology and from what I think are pretty reasonable moral beliefs about what I want my child exposed to and at what age, the sort of impressions I think are appropriate for repeated stimulous against a young and impressionable brain, but not at all from a religious stance. Religion has historically caused more violence than it's solved. The track record is superstition, intolerance, bigotry, and human life sacrificed for the sake of very flawed and partial ideologies; therefore, I am a secular humanist.

[QUOTE]
Oh yeah, and 'punk dress' is listed as...objectionable.[/QUOTE]

So is 'adult in underwear' and anything at all to do with sex, including innuendo. This reviewer would cross himself and leave the room if he caught you watching 'Friends.'

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker;928714]WOW
the Prestige did even worse than Fight Club
and they didn't even label the magic in it as witchcraft or nothing![/QUOTE]
That's astonishing, and possibly blows my theories all to hell, unless a different person rated the Prestige for that site and (somehow) has far more ridgid standards even than the first guy. A certain callous disregard for human life is showcased in the Prestige, but much less graphically. And there is zero dark religious parody in it. wow.

[QUOTE=vigorous puppy;928735]
This reviewer would cross himself and leave the room if he caught you watching 'Friends.'[/QUOTE]
Take that back. He'd get out his little score book and record even the most subtle references to body parts or adulterous relationships with a sadistic glee.

one of the marks against it was someone saying "You fool!"
twice!

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker;928750]one of the marks against it was someone saying "You fool!"
twice![/QUOTE]
Wow. You probably know this better than I do, Nate. But isn't there a verse in the New Testament where the great rabbi and Nazarene, (Yeshua bin something or other, wasn't it, who later became Spanish somehow, instead of an Arab Jew) is laying out this list of tiny sins with severe consequences. And, [i]not verbatim, mind you[/i], but it's something like: "And if a starving man steals a loaf of bread, cut off his arm, and if he calls another man a fool, cut out his tongue...!" and so on. Something that, if read in context, makes it clear that the Great Rabbi (yes, I mean that sincerely) is mocking the harsh judicial-religious tyranny of a politically powerful group, like the Pharisees? Isn't there something like that, ripped completely and atrociously out of context, (and often), that makes some fundumentalists cringe at one man calling another a fool?

I know what story you're talking about there but i got no idea the reference off hand

here's the verse they use to condemn it

Matt. 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment [krisis: accusation, trial]: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca [senseless, empty headed: a term of reproach among Jews at the time of Christ], shall be in danger of the council [sunedrion: adjudication]: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool [moros: impious, godless], shall be in danger of hell fire.

I guess they don't realize that it's not the exact phrase that's the big no-no, it's the spirit behind you exclaming anything like that

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker;928759
here's the verse they use to condemn it

Matt. 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment [krisis: accusation, trial]: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca [senseless, empty headed: a term of reproach among Jews at the time of Christ], shall be in danger of the council [sunedrion: adjudication]: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool [moros: impious, godless], shall be in danger of hell fire.

I guess they don't realize that it's not the exact phrase that's the big no-no, it's the spirit behind you exclaming anything like that[/QUOTE]

Wow, thanks, that's excellent. The word 'fool' is commonly thrown around in a loose, light way since modern times, much closer in meaning to 'Raca' [senseless, empty-headed] than calling someone godless or impious.

So, it seems to say: Be angry against your brother for no good reason, and you may find yourself accused of something. [Like you only hate him now because you diddled his wife]. Call your brother senseless and empty-headed and the (tribal) council (very local government, clan, extended family) may call you onto the carpet for it, judge the worth of the accuser. But accuse your brother of being souless, impious, godless, a heathen, [b]not one of us[/b], and you risk the greatest wrath of all--the judgment of Eternity.

And that... is completely humane.

i think they miss the inflection "that it's not good to cast your own personal judgements onto your brother or you go to Hell" part

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker;928770]i think they miss the inflection "that it's not good to cast your own personal judgements onto your brother or you go to Hell" part[/QUOTE]

I think you're right about that. It's another variation on 'judge not, lest ye be judged' and 'love your neighbor as yourself'. It makes deep sense, respecting the bonds of kinship. It also gets right into that Jungian psychology I alluded to earlier: not disowning the shadow part of yourself only to see your own self-incrimination projected onto someone else, thereby making your brother an adversary.

It makes sense ethically and psychologically, even if a person is not a supernaturalist. That is, you could not believe in HELL, as a literal place, where a loving father might send you for all Eternity. You could have a Buddhist type notion of any number of heavens and hells, temporary even though they feel eternal, that we mostly create and inhabit while alive. Even as gods and goddesses are human creations, clusters of psychic energy, invested with human belief, and therefore contingent beings, eternal only relative to us, but not lasting forever (how long did Zeus live before becoming just a story? a great number of human lifetimes, sure, but not forever) likewise with the contingent, created nature of heavens and hells. Gods and goddesses created by human belief and deep psychological needs, heavens and hells created by our karma (actions).

We could be the current end-point in a very long process of evolution, as things like fossil records seem to indicate. We could disallow a merely 6,000 yr old earth, and the logical possibility of a creative, designing intelligence coming about in any other way except by long evolution, making a literal Creator God impossible, and yet we could still preserve the core ethical teachings of Christainity, which really aren't any different from the core ethical teachings of Buddhism. And the astonishing thing is that this is so even though Buddhism is atheistic. Same ethics from a completely different system of metaphysics. Real Buddhism is an atheistic system of moral philosophy and psychological growth and balancing--and neither a mystical religion, nor an idolatry built around little statues, as the vulgar think it.

The Bible is such a piece of literature where for every command by an authority figure you'll find (whether it be God, Jesus, a rabbi, prophet, etc), you're going to get 10 in complete contrast. The idea is we're not supposed to understand everything, and that's the first step to understanding anything. (Cool, that sounds like it would be something out of Chuck's work).

[QUOTE=Giggan;929080] The idea is we're not supposed to understand everything[/QUOTE]
And you came to this conclusion how?

The entire point of the Bible is to eliminate debates about how much or with what objects you can beat your wives, slaves and donkeys, and under what circumstances. Before the Bible men would argue for hours about how, why and with what to beat their wives, slaves and donkeys, and it usually ended up with one of the debaters slain with an ox-goad (which, coincidentally, is totally the proper tool to kill someone who disagrees with you, except on Sunday.)

Oh, and if the CapAlert guy says anything, you should give it as much weight as anything said by anyone who spends his days in a rubber room wearing a Napolean hat and a straightjacket. The CapAlert website that guy runs? That's his FULL-TIME JOB. And he has kids to feed. He would go out and get a normal job, but Jesus told him that watching movies all day and keeping an eye out for partial nudity and swear words was the right thing to do.

[QUOTE=Spike;929361]Oh, and if the CapAlert guy says anything, you should give it as much weight as anything said by anyone who spends his days in a rubber room wearing a Napolean hat and a straightjacket. The CapAlert website that guy runs? That's his FULL-TIME JOB. And he has kids to feed. He would go out and get a normal job, but Jesus told him that watching movies all day and keeping an eye out for partial nudity and swear words was the right thing to do.[/QUOTE]

actually I'd look at the guy as a freakin genius to be able to get people to pay him to do that all day long

If you believe as I believe, that the Bible is a holy document, the existence of the contradictions is not a 'mistake'. We can't get everyone to believe one thing, but peace within a people is attainable. There are those who agree to disagree, but never those who live peaceably by being forced to accept another's viewpoint as gospel (no pun intended). Relates to Socrates philosophy in a way, accept that you know nothing.

Spike, unfortunately I'm not familiar with the "cap alert guy"...

[QUOTE=Giggan;929080]The Bible is such a piece of literature where for every command by an authority figure you'll find (whether it be God, Jesus, a rabbi, prophet, etc), you're going to get 10 in complete contrast. The idea is we're not supposed to understand everything, and that's the first step to understanding anything. (Cool, that sounds like it would be something out of Chuck's work)...

If you believe as I believe, that the Bible is a holy document, the existence of the contradictions is not a 'mistake'. We can't get everyone to believe one thing, but peace within a people is attainable. There are those who agree to disagree, but never those who live peaceably by being forced to accept another's viewpoint as gospel (no pun intended). Relates to Socrates philosophy in a way, accept that you know nothing.
[/QUOTE]
So, the Bible is a Holy document (therefore, infallible) but it's full of [i]deliberate contradictions[/i] for the sole purpose of confounding the intellect of man? It's [i]that[/i] important to The Grand Architect of the Entire Universe to stamp into us--His own creation, made in His own image--that we know nothing? And that makes more sense to you than the scriptures being a mythopoetic patchwork of tribal history and prejudice?

I think there are better ways to be confused.

Your posts make me think of people who insist that dinosaur bones and other fossils are implanted into a merely six thousand year old creation--complete with the 'false' evidence that shows up in carbon dating tests--just to test the faithful. They don't come right out and say it, but this stance also implies that those who are finally swayed more by science, reason, empiricism, skepticism will be doomed to hell for it, for the crime of using the intellect that the Creator (if there is one) bestowed upon us.

What kind of sadist imbues a creature with reason and then punishes the use?

And if faith is superior to reason, (and/or must be used in balanced conjunction with reason), then by what standard of judgment shall we determine which system of blind faith to follow? Surely, a Muslim born in Istanbul has no good reason to agree with a Southern Baptist. And just as surely, a person born in Tennessee, and steeped from birth in the Southern Baptist traditon, has no good chance of becoming a devout Muslim--even if Islam turns out to be the perfect expression of Truth. If the imperative is an unquestioning faith, aren't we most likely to stay determined and ultimately sent to Heaven or Hell by the accidental geography of our birth?

How could that outcome appeal to reason [i]or[/i] to faith?

If we decide that the devoutly religious will be saved by faith alone, rather than by the specific content of what they believe, then the suicide bomber--possessing the [i]absolute conviction[/i] of a waiting paradise for the self-martyred--is a morally superior being to a peaceful secularist who's given more to doubt and think about things than to believe in them. That's a conclusion I personally find just as morally repugnant as it is logically necessary.

The philosophy of Socrates hinges on skepticism and systematic questioning--a deconstruction of false assumptions as the beginning of wisdom. It does not advance a positive assertion that we can [i]know nothing[/i], it just relentlessly challenges what we do know. The Socratic Method advances no positive doctrine of any kind, rather, it's just a dialectic method. It seems to me that system is poles apart from a dogmatic work full of contradictions that one is supposed to accept whole and entire on blind faith, and maybe pray that some form of understanding gradually emerges and weaves its way into the mind--but of course, stay contented, even if it doesn't. These things are opposites. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have been variously co-opted into Christianity since the Middle Ages, making for a Hellenized Judiasm that's probably a far cry from what the earliest Christians believed and practiced. That doesn't mean these greatest pagan philosophers actually belong in any essential way to your faith.

Sometime, try out Bertrand Russell's book called [i]Why I am Not a Christian.[/i] Russell makes a good case for looking at Socrates as a [i]better model[/i] than Jesus for the status of moral sage. If the argument holds, then one could look to Socrates as far more than just an adjunct professor, someone with a few philosophical knick-knacks for buttressing the Judeo-Christian tradition. Though of course, Socrates would never expect [i]worship[/i] or the sacrifice of your own thinking to received opinion (even when received from him!)

For that matter, Russell himself makes a good model for us. A firm devotee of reason, while still passonate and full of love in his personal life, he was also a peaceful activist, concerned with affairs in the world and not merely with ivory tower philosophy. Bertie Russell went to jail for demonstrating against the nuclear arms race when he was a gray-headed old man. That's not going to the Cross or drinking the Hemlock, but it's something.

[Quote]
Spike, unfortunately I'm not familiar with the "cap alert guy"...[/QUOTE]

He's referring to the person who started the website that you linked as a starting point for this very thread.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPAlert[/url]

My thoughts:

1. This guy has to be for real. Reasoning is as follows...
A. He hasn't updated his site's layout since about 1998. Some of his graphics are done in MSPaint. He likes blinking animated GIFs. When a paranoid fanatic writes something, they pay little attention to design -- the flyer telling you how the voices in your head are really the government's evil middle managers that want to capture and enslave you for free labor in their Martian diamond mines will always be printed on neon green paper in 8 point type with random words capitalized for no reason.
B. His choice of mustache, haircut and glasses make him look like either a computer programmer circa 1987, a child molestor, or both. This is the MySpace era, go into your bathroom and take a current picture of yourself in the mirror instead of using your work ID photo from Jesus Camp. God commands religious people to have shitty taste in hair and clothing. Because only people in the Bible get to look like residents of Eugene, Oregon.

2. Most people who are this critical of the mass media would just advise against you seeing movies at all. If even the most banal, G-rated movie like Big Bird in China has something that's objectionable, or something that might plant seeds that'll cause you to sin against God, why even see it?

3. And, what's with this guy, anyway? He's deliberately seeing movies he *knows* will offend him, like American Psycho, or the South Park movie or Mean Girls (Hebrews 8:4 - "And thou shalt STEP THE FUCK BACK from anything starring Lindsay Lohan." Look it up!) And sitting through every last second of these movies chronicalling the many objectionable things in them. That's like sitting in the middle of downtown Chernobyl and writing down a big whiny rant about how you're getting radiation poisoning.

4. Mass media has arguably become more violent and more sexually suggestive as of late. Fortunately there's still many a secluded cabin in Montana without radio, TV or internet access.

[QUOTE=Spike;929757] (Hebrews 8:4 - "And thou shalt STEP THE FUCK BACK from anything starring Lindsay Lohan." Look it up!) [/QUOTE]
I think I just laughed loud enough to wake somebody up. And we're on different floors and opposite ends of a 2-story house. Good job.

Fun fact: in some translations of the Bible, the wording of Hebrews 8:4 can be understood to mean that Jesus never actually existed and was a fictional allegorical character like Hercules or Harry Potter. Knowing the Bible, this is probably because the committee that wrote and edited it didn't have desktop publishing softwear. And they were the kind of dirty old men that make up video poker focus groups, which as I understand, are brutal and possibly useless because the dirty old men want to get back on the casino floor and spend the $250 worth of quarters you've just given them.

Oh...yeah, I started the thread, but I didn't know the name of the dude I linked to. It didn;t have anything in it I took seriously, just threw it out there for laughs.

Dude, I'm not saying there is one philosophical or religious viewpoint that is 100% correct. I'm just not for even attempting to get everyone to believe in one certain way of life. You can argue all you want about the Bible, all the crazy things that may or may not be true, but religion is a matter of one's own personal viewpoint. I myself have had experiences that made me believe that the Bible is holy text. The fact that parts of it don't make blatant sense only further interests me, because I accept that no one man can understand it all. What you believe about the Bible, or carbon dating is your business, and I would never try to force that upon you. I personally know next to nothing about carbon dating (I've heard it can give whacky readouts) but since I have no evidence of anything, I'm not going to comment on it.

I myself am a libertarian, which is more than just a political affiliation, its also a philosophical viewpoint that assumes no one way of life is better than another. All those who chose to exist one way should not be bullied by whoever happens to be in charge, so long as their way of life does not infringe upon another person's safety. What I believe is right shall only affect my life, not anyone else's, just as what you believe is solely important to you. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you posted the message and expressed your viewpoint, but I have a belief in a higher power that no minor evidence could easily change. That is what faith is, a natural bias that we must admit exists. I don't 'follow' any mindset blindly, because I believe sacred documents are open to interpretation. Just as is true in life, there is so much confusion that you must search for the recurring patterns of sanity in a work to find the answer. For everything to be spelled out in a work would make people into blind followers. Most people are anyway, without logic, and pick from the Bible what they want to see. I don't do that.

And about Socrates, his vision was not that we can't see the truth, but that we don't see the truth. The Bible can make sense, I just have yet to see someone get it right without flawed ideology. Me, I personally don't read it that much.

There are thousands of religions, and perhaps everyone else in the world has found a great way of being. Just because my view doesn't coincide with theirs doesn't mean we must reach a decision as to who is right and wrong. The superior side would win out by allowing others to peaceably join them in their way of life. Force is only temporary captivity.

This is like the classic conversation Vincent and Jules have in the diner at the end of Pulp Fiction. Whether or not it was a miracle that the bullets didn't hit them is irrelevent. "But what is important, is that I felt the touch of God, God got involved..." It's not about what it is, it's about what it does.