Today was a library day.
Thankfully, I got most of the books I wanted. Although The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong was not there (I wanted to read it partly because of
miriammoules' recommendation: thanks!), I did get the following: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Kingston by Starlight by Christopher John Farley, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.
I started reading The Handmaid's Tale and Kingston by Starlight a few moments ago and, so far, they are very good. I am thinking I will like my introduction to Atwood, and the language in Kingston is just so rich, and the prose is just so flowy. The prose is actually something I'd want to write! I adore flowy prose, so I'm sure I'll love Kingston for that reason.
And, of course, I have heard wonderful things about Atwood.
The other two nonfiction books I checked out... well, let's just say I am probably one of the last people on the planet to read them, just judging by my trawling through
50bookchallenge because I am bored out of my skull and procrastinating on my novel.
Speaking of which.
35K, you are mine. Tomorrow.
Friends: please kick me if I don't get it by tomorrow? *grins*
Okay. Now I'm off to read for a bit!
Oh, and because I'm bored and I want to know a bit more about you all, I'm snatching something from
technophile's journal, just because I loved the question:
What sort of God do you/would you believe in? Don't just say "Christian God" or "Muslim God" or whatever. Be specific. Even if you're an atheist, disregard that for a moment. Just, what god would you want to believe in (or think would actually exist IRL)?
Thankfully, I got most of the books I wanted. Although The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong was not there (I wanted to read it partly because of
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
I started reading The Handmaid's Tale and Kingston by Starlight a few moments ago and, so far, they are very good. I am thinking I will like my introduction to Atwood, and the language in Kingston is just so rich, and the prose is just so flowy. The prose is actually something I'd want to write! I adore flowy prose, so I'm sure I'll love Kingston for that reason.
And, of course, I have heard wonderful things about Atwood.
The other two nonfiction books I checked out... well, let's just say I am probably one of the last people on the planet to read them, just judging by my trawling through
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
Speaking of which.
35K, you are mine. Tomorrow.
Friends: please kick me if I don't get it by tomorrow? *grins*
Okay. Now I'm off to read for a bit!
Oh, and because I'm bored and I want to know a bit more about you all, I'm snatching something from
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
What sort of God do you/would you believe in? Don't just say "Christian God" or "Muslim God" or whatever. Be specific. Even if you're an atheist, disregard that for a moment. Just, what god would you want to believe in (or think would actually exist IRL)?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-14 03:58 am (UTC)From:And it would be merely 'superhuman': any being who is omnipresent knows everything you're up to and any being who is omnipotent can change your actions to suit themselves, so it's impossible to do anything that isn't what that being wants you to do, and any being who is omniscient knows what's good for you and any being who is omnibenevolent wants only what's good for you, so there's no point in trying to do anything but what that being wants you to do. (Or, more accurately, what the self-appointed voices of that being say that that being wants you to do.) So in the interest of preserving my own belief in free will, the gods I'd want to believe in would not be omnianything.
They'd still be plenty powerful and plenty knowledgeable--why call them gods, otherwise? And I'd want them to be generally benevolent, of course, but if they weren't, I just wouldn't serve them. (If Left Behind were to come true, I'd know within the first couple days after the Rapture that it had indeed been the Rapture and I would consequently cease to be an atheist, and I would thereafter dedicate myself to the antithesis of serving God. Because the moral response to finding oneself living under tyranny is not to serve the tyrant, even if that's the only response that permits one to survive. For the same reason, I wouldn't sign up with Carpathia.) And there's no reason they couldn't be in more than one place at once, or at least able to travel a great deal faster than we can.
Beyond those basic parameters, we start to get into what distinguishes one pantheon from another or one god from another. Which is fun stuff to talk about (and I'm playing with the idea for what would have been my NaNo if I had sufficient access to research materials, not to mention sufficient motivation), but not really relevant to your question.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-14 07:18 pm (UTC)From:As for your question: A deistic God. Some kind of cosmic force which caused the universe to come into existence, but didn't interfere after that. It's the most plausible of all the deities I can think of.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-14 08:18 pm (UTC)From:Okay, first, excellent question. And really...well, obviously, a "Hindu god". But no, really. A god that I can look to to help me through the hard times, but someone/thing that I can respect and pray to during good times as well. Someone/thing I can trust. I don't care if it's a him or a her; I don't care if it's human or animal. As long as he/she/it stands for something I *want* to believe in, as long as he/she/it can give me reasons for having faith, like being tolerant of all Gods, all religons, all beliefs. I'm logical; I believe in a god that stands for logical, moral beliefs. And those beliefs would be flexible, adaptable for secular issues and modern times. Ever changing, but always with the same foundation, the same basics.
...and that was really long and probably didn't answer the question. Oh well.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-14 10:21 pm (UTC)From:Well I don't believe in a god, and so I wouldn't believe in a god, you know? But if God did exist, I would prefer him/her/it to be less human in nature. Not the God in the Bible where he actually kind of talks and has his rules and stuff and decides who gets into heaven. If you define God as more of like, "the thing that holds the world together," I could almost maybe believe in it.