Whatcha Readin'

[Terrance]

I will never understand why intellectuals in the West have such disdain
for the beautiful religious texts. It's one thing to critique religion
and/or its texts as a Freudian or Marxist might or as works of
literature and quite another to claim that religious texts are crocks of
idiocy. In the West, public education gradually introduces systems of
thought that secularize one's views. In some cultural contexts,
secularization never occurs. In such places one can understand
intellectual disdain (i.e., a Marxist intellectual living in Iran) for
religion and religious texts. But here in the West, a haughty contempt
for religious texts is unwarranted. It's interesting that Western
intellectuals, while they often exhibit contempt for all religions,
tolerate and even celebrate the religious texts of the great world
religions excepting Christianity. I attribute this to a kind of paranoid
puritanical immaturity in the Western intellectual. As educated and as
secularized as he/she may be, it seems that the Western intellectual
often maintains a puritan fear of his/her murdered christian god. I note
this not because I think this is the case with MalignD, but because I
think it is an an idea evident in Pynchon's texts and ironically (as is
so often, some say always, the case) in Pynchon criticism. 





Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> Me, I think it's among the most interesting books
> therein.  It's simply eminently open to appropriation
> by idiotic crockery, is all ...
> 
> --- Malignd <malignd at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > The Book of Revelation has always seemed to me,
> > despite heavy competition, the biggest crock of
> > idiocy in the entire Bible.