(no subject)

[vicarz]

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20030708/ap_on_re_mi_ea/sudan_plane_crash

"KHARTOUM, Sudan - A Sudanese airliner crashed just outside a Red Sea coast airport minutes after takeoff Tuesday, killing 116 people, officials said. The only survivor was a 2-year-old boy. "

Um, does anyone else think there is a cool movie lurking in this awful event? Combine this with the dead conjoined twins...and you've got a weird version of dead zone, right?

Comments

"Movie"

[tony-laetrile.livejournal.com]

A malevolent and enigmatic divine force is, at the core of things, arbitrary and capricious. As creator of all existence, it decides for reasons indecipherable that two of its creations should remain partially fused and suffer.

A world believes that it does not need to suffer the caprice of aforementioned divine force. Given no direct evidence of its existence, this world takes on a paradigm of empiricism, logic, and empowerment, and seeks to make the world a better place for itself.

Human society endeavours to better itself, such that it can survive without divine guidance. It learns arts and crafts, sciences and practices. Its members learn to fly despite their earthbound bodies, and attempts to end the suffering of the two fused ones via surgery inconceivable a mere thousand years ago.

The deity grows furious, arbitrary and temperamental as ever, and decides to exert the only thing it can relate: force. Killing the fused twins, it also strikes down those adult members of a society which dare to deny the divine force and fly through the air.

The capricious deity spares a lone child, such that the faithful can say, "He was so lucky to have survived." The child, forever traumatized, will turn to the worship of the deity, thus leaving the otherworldy being pleased with the reassertion of its dominance.

Movie?

Hell.

You just described major world religions.

Re: "Movie"

[vicar.livejournal.com]

True, though I am biased in the form of expecting divinity to be good - a place where religion has failed me. If I am capable of growth and try to be kinder to others, then why wouldn't an omnipotent being?

Re: "Movie"

[tony-laetrile.livejournal.com]

If you're omnipotent, why would you need to grow? Why would totality need to care about 'other' when there is no 'other' in totality?

Weakness and imperfection make the human struggle for growth. Suffering and pain foment the human capacity for compassion. The one area where Nietzsche and Buddha seem to agree.

Still, in the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition, this seems to follow. Jehovah was a capricious, wrathful God, incapable of forgiveness; why should he, after all, it's his sandbox and he can do what he pleases with it. It's only after Christ suffers and is sacrificed that we see the whole God Is Love (TM) paradigm. Suffering breeds compassion. Or, to use more mundane terms, people get more mellow once they have kids, because they finally understand.

Which is all pointless academia to a Zen Atheist Discordian with a side of fries like me, but hey, it's a really beautiful sentiment and a poetic story, and sometimes the sound of the story is worth buying into it, even if you don't believe in the words.