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Excersus LXXX: It's Complicated, See, But Totally Makes Sense.
Oh man - the Met's HD broadcast of Gotterdammerung is going down tomorrow morning, and I am stoked. I missed San Francisco's Ring production (except Walkure) when it was RIGHT IN MY BACKYARD, so this will in some small way be my penance. As to the comic, it doesn't take a particularly gifted raconteur to make the convolusions of Christian theology look absurd - you pretty much just state the beliefs and let the Ridiculous happen. The two degrees of removal from an unspeakable crime that couldn't have happened any other way, the fact that this sacrifice ended up in dominion of the universe, and the humility with which it was undertaken in a demand for permanent and constant self-abasement... it is the very lack of sense which keeps it breathing. You can talk to silence an opponent in a debate society - you can't do that with somebody raving at you that his ketchup plans to betray him - there's nowhere to even start. Likewise many arguments with theists - if you honestly believe that justice really works like the blood atonement system rambled out in Christian theology, there's just nowhere to start. "But your ketchup isn't conscious", a pretty fundamental point, will make as little headway as "But you can't send a proxy to the electric chair for something your ancestor did."
- Count Dolby von Luckner
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