[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #62

Saxon Brenton saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
Sun Nov 14 16:35:10 PST 2004


phippsmartin at hotmail.com (Martin Phipps) wrote 
> [...]
>>      Ha! Finished! 
> 
> Good read... but there's one thing I don't understand: if there really
> are demons walking around in Looniverse Y and Jesus Christ sometimes
> shows up to fight them then what does it mean to be an atheist in
> Looniverse Y?  Does it mean someone who _specifically_ doesn't believe
> that God exists?  Or is it somebody who thinks that all this talk of
> demons walking the Earth is a hoax?  Or would atheists in Looniverse Y
> admit that God would exist but that he would be no different than any
> of the other powerful beings walking around and NOT the creator of
> Looniverse Y as he claims?  I was rather expecting a discussion in the
> epilogue along the lines of TJ saying "Wow if Jesus exists and demons
> then I guess God exists" and Martin might rub his nose in it a bit. 
> So, like I said, I'm thinking "atheist" means something other than
> simply not believing in God in this Looniverse.

   The Epilogue was originally going to touch on three things: the 
reason why Martin hadn't felt comfortable discussing his culpability
in ripping off TJ's bits (as seen); the fact that TJ still doens't 
believe in any religion, even though he knows there are numerous gods
who turn up from time to time, and in this case has been rescued by
one; and finally TJ giving some advice to Martin on not being so 
worked up about the type of attrocities committed by both his sect and
the others in their camps (both of the latter being left out for space 
reasons - I just had a gut reaction that thinsg would simply become 
too long, and in any case the second was hinted at in #61 when it was 
mentioned in passing that gods are always turning up to kibitz).

   I can't possibly make generalisations about what *every* believer 
and non-believer in Looniverse Y thinks, but in TJ's case he simply
notes that there are a lot of dieties wandering about, and that they
can't *all* really be the creators of the universe. And being something
of a cynic he doesn't trust any of them not to be making blanket claims 
to bring in worshippers. (Although what he failes to appreciate is that
in comic book universes - and not just parody ones like the various
Looniverses - you can have multiple mutually contradictory things be
literally true, for a given value of 'true'.)

   Hurm. I suppose I might try and do an Epilogue 2 to address these
issues.

---
Saxon Brenton    Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au



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