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Apr. 23rd, 2011 12:12 pmSomething I notice about these old Dragon magazines I so love is that the Forum debates are basically like any internet forum, although since the technology is different, the dick-wagging plays out over months and issues rather than pretty instantaneously.
I'm reminded of this by my friend being surprised that when she disses religion, nobody mentions anything, but when she talks about iPhones, she takes an enormous amount of flak. People have killed each other over religion - that ought to be worth more outrage, right? I actually think that's a totally different thing though. When people brutalize and kill each other for religion, typically there's a lot of very secular convenience involved ("those evil Lithuanians won't convert! Which is why we need to go crusading there every year and take all their stuff! What do you mean they've been Christian for five years?"), or very sincere fear and bizarre intentions to actually help the opposite side. Although the self-righteousness is cranked sky high, there's no intellectual cache at all to pogroms and crusades. Cranky discussions of Apple products have a lot more in common with theological debate between proponents of the same faith than they do to religious warfare. Think about it; how many people do you know who, in a different century, would have made fantastic Jesuit theologians?
I'm reminded of this by my friend being surprised that when she disses religion, nobody mentions anything, but when she talks about iPhones, she takes an enormous amount of flak. People have killed each other over religion - that ought to be worth more outrage, right? I actually think that's a totally different thing though. When people brutalize and kill each other for religion, typically there's a lot of very secular convenience involved ("those evil Lithuanians won't convert! Which is why we need to go crusading there every year and take all their stuff! What do you mean they've been Christian for five years?"), or very sincere fear and bizarre intentions to actually help the opposite side. Although the self-righteousness is cranked sky high, there's no intellectual cache at all to pogroms and crusades. Cranky discussions of Apple products have a lot more in common with theological debate between proponents of the same faith than they do to religious warfare. Think about it; how many people do you know who, in a different century, would have made fantastic Jesuit theologians?