Saturday, July 31, 2010

Interview with the Christian

Ann Rice didn't invent the vampire, but our infatuation with them and our vision of them has a lot to do with characteristics she gave them. I enjoyed Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, but soon lost interest as she seemed to be trying to force these supernatural creatures into her supernatural Christian beliefs, which to me are far harder to swallow and far less fun.

What a surprise to read that she's declared that she's dropping out.
"Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”
I can understand that quite well. Of course she's not quitting her mythological beliefs or her belief in the supernatural:
" My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me."
Crucial?

The definition of an addiction has more, I think, to do with how bad you feel without the junk than how good a fix makes you feel, but in truth, I cannot tell the difference between the addiction to a belief and the addiction to a substance except that you don't have to pay for the former: at least not in dollars. One believes because it feels good, but one needs to believe because in fact the "pessimistic view" removes all importance to us, our deeds, our passions, our loves and hates; the importance of existence itself. If reason and fact assures us that we will die, our species will die, our planet, or sun, our galaxy and all that is in the Universe will disappear in time, as though we had never, for a brief instant, been here, it's crucial to give up reason and deny the facts.

Still, I do understand. I wouldn't want to be associated with what has been the motivation for murder, torture, oppression, conquest and the suppression of science either and I have to give her credit for insisting that the addiction to magical beings doesn't have to result in those hideous things. Belief addiction may be something we're subject to by nature, but it's possible, if rare, to seperate it from the creature that sucks the blood of mankind.

2 comments:

Susannah said...

"It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group."

Yeah, me too. Ann, we may as well drop off the planet if this group (i.e., humanity) is who we're trying to avoid...

"I wouldn't want to be associated with what has been the motivation for murder, torture, oppression, conquest and the suppression of science"
Yeah, I know. Human Beings can be such pills sometimes...

God loves us, still. Amazing. And there's no magic to it, CF; miraculous is a more fitting descriptor, I believe.

Hope you're doing well. Lifting you up in prayer, still.

Capt. Fogg said...

Why would you attempt to conflate the misdeeds of Christians with the irrationality and lack of compassion of humans in general. The religion owes its existence to the political needs of the late Roman empire, condoning slavery, spousal abuse and other evils while being an opponent of Democracy for 2000 years.

If the point is that Christianity does little at best to modify our animal nature, it's a condemnation nearly as severe as my point that it actually foments and aids evil.

Magic, miracle; all these things that can exist only in legend and the minds of the ignorant, willful or otherwise. If the shoe fits. . .