Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I corresponded years back with a woman on an SF forum who was a fundamentalist who didn't believe in evolution. I wasn't quite sure how she came to read SF and participate in the forum with that worldview, but there she was. She had never read Darwin because her parents thought it shouldn't be read. All I could say was "Your parents did you a disservice. You should read Darwin. You may not agree with him, but you can't meaningfully argue against someone when you don't know what they actually said!"
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Dennis
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Ha! Yes ... exactly that. It bothers me that they will question my beliefs, but they have never read any of the materials that comprise the basis for my beliefs.
I, on the other hand, have read their Bible, as well as the Book of Mormon, the Koran (or Quran ... however they are spelling it these days), and several other religious texts. Read them ... studied them ... and THEN decided to reject them.
It drives some of the people here positively nuts that I know Biblical text as well as or better than they do.
And ... as to the real topic at hand, I realize that the patronage system did tend to co-opt artistic integrity, and everyone's greed for the almighty dollor (or Euro ... or name your poison) does much the same thing today. But ... hell, it's just not supposed to happen to the authors that I want to believe are gods among men.
On a side note ... as I was purchasing 35 books from Amazon today ... all by Terry Pratchett (and the bank had a cow ... they thought my card had been stolen .... I mean who buys everything an author wrote all in the space of fifteen minutes???), I read something about him being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers.
See ... now in my private universe, he gets to live forever and have perfect mental acuity for at least that long.