Don't kill anyone if you don't have to. We're here to make a deal.

Mal ,'Serenity'


All Ogle, No Cash -- It's Not Just Annoying, It's Un-American

Discussion of episodes currently airing in Un-American locations (anything that's aired in Australia is fair game), as well as anything else the Un-Americans feel like talking about or we feel like asking them. Please use the show discussion threads for any current-season discussion.

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Jim - Sep 18, 2002 3:07:48 am PDT #36 of 9843
Ficht nicht mit Der Raketemensch!

Blimey! This is nice, isn't it. Mmmm.

Perfect tagline, Angus, even if the end of the Last Battle is a disturbing eschatological copout.


Fiona - Sep 18, 2002 3:09:24 am PDT #37 of 9843

Made it! Weeeheeee!

Hello Fellow Unamericans. We're going to be needing this thread again starting next Sunday. Darn it.


Theodosia - Sep 18, 2002 5:02:09 am PDT #38 of 9843
'we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon"

Starting Friday, if you're following Firefly -- which I haven't heard anything about it being syndicated to UnAmerican locales. Of course it may suck like a sucking thing, so in which case you'd be spared.


Megan E. - Sep 18, 2002 5:10:36 am PDT #39 of 9843

For that matter, go any team that plays Man Utd, ever.

aren't they on a bit of a losing streak?


evil jimi - Sep 18, 2002 5:13:48 am PDT #40 of 9843
Lurching from one disaster to the next.

aren't they on a bit of a losing streak?

Karmicly (sic?) they most certainly are.


Megan E. - Sep 18, 2002 5:24:15 am PDT #41 of 9843

I guess Beckham shouldn't have grown out his World Cup hair.


Angus G - Sep 18, 2002 7:02:31 am PDT #42 of 9843
Roguish Laird

Perfect tagline, Angus, even if the end of the Last Battle is a disturbing eschatological copout.

I know, Jim! All that Platonic crap, I normally hate it, but somehow here it seems appropriate.

(I always wanted to ask C.S. Lewis, though, if the adventures in the "old" Narnia were but a pale shadow of the world to come, does that also apply to Aslan's death and resurrection? How can a world without pain and death be more real than this one? I seem to remember that striking me as a theological problem even when I was eight-ish.)


billytea - Sep 18, 2002 8:01:38 am PDT #43 of 9843
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.

(I always wanted to ask C.S. Lewis, though, if the adventures in the "old" Narnia were but a pale shadow of the world to come, does that also apply to Aslan's death and resurrection? How can a world without pain and death be more real than this one? I seem to remember that striking me as a theological problem even when I was eight-ish.)

I think Anselm's the best bet for that one (the Ontological argument, of course, is very Platonic in nature). I'm thinking particularly of his reply to Gaunilo, who claimed that if his argument established the existence of God, then it would also do the same for perfect islands and such like. Anselm's answer was more or less that any other such perfection was contingent - perfect for what? In which case, that which is most real is that which is most perfect simply by virtue of itself, this then being moral perfection (it being the only form of perfection that does not require explication in other terms).

In which case, if you're starting from this viewpoint that Platonic reality is tied to moral perfection (and I think Lewis was, Anselm being in the Christian tradition after all), then you get to the interestingly Eastern position that pain and suffering is an illusion, to some degree or another.


Sue - Sep 18, 2002 8:06:03 am PDT #44 of 9843
hip deep in pie

(Fleeing from the Anselm discussion....)


Angus G - Sep 18, 2002 8:11:09 am PDT #45 of 9843
Roguish Laird

That's all very well, billytea, but...

Nothing, really. I've just always wanted to start a post with "That's all very well." Although I would just say that the entire emotional drift of the Narnia series, up to but not including The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle (the final two books Lewis wrote, IIRC), is basically pagan despite the allegedly "Christian" allegorical bits, and to have that horrid Christian Platonism tacked on at the end just feels like a betrayal to me.