The Antichristian Phenomenon

So, I finished the book while on my way home. I have very mixed feelings about the book itself. One thing that greatly annoyed moe was the fact that the book is supposed to be the first installment of a trilogy but there is no mentioning of such a thing anywhere. It becomes obvious on the very last page. Now I have a very sour taste in my mouth where I’m not sure if I want to go on or not. Like another reviewer said somewhere, the book could in fact probably be much better if that epic story that is intended for three books might be compressed into a very large one instead. Fantasy books of over 1000 pages are not that uncommon, after all.

From this point onward, the review will contain spoilers. If you are not interested in those, I advice to stop reading.

One thing I found hugely disappointing was the escape from Sanctuary. While the world of Sanctuary was quite well-crafted and in great detail too, the book became incredibly watered down past this point. The main characters reach the town of Memphis and suddenly the book changes style – but for the worse. While I had revelled in the misery of Thomas Cale while he was living in Sanctuary, his life took a rather uninteresting turn once he got out of there and by luck managed to become a part of the upper class of Memphis. Memphis seems to be quite inspired by a European renaissance town and got nothing in common with its American counterpart. Now, there are interesting parts here, but most of them just seem to be completely forgotten. Hoffman is incredibly poor with forshadowing; sometimes he highlights certain events and objects as if they bare any importance to the plot to just be forgotten, and sometimes he doesn’t forshadow at all and then it just comes tumbling down on top of the reader that this was actually important – except we never got to know why it was. A perfect example of this is the event that lead to Cale’s escape. By chance he got to see how one of the Redeemers in Sanctuary was dissecting girls alive, and this randomly lead Cale to kill the Redeemer and escape with the girl who was still alive. Afterwards we are told how Cale’s “protector” at Sanctuary, Redeemer Bosco, steps into the room and picks up an object from one of the girl’s intestines, musing whether this is what the Redeemer Cale murdered might have been after. However, we never get to hear anything of this ever again. Here there is also another issue with Hoffman’s inability to properly use the omniscient narrative – instead of properly developing an internal plot at Sanctuary that tells the reader that “this is really important”, he simply just seems to ignore Sanctuary all together most of the time. When he does use the omniscient narrative properly he has shown great ability to create compelling subplots; why did Bosco murder the High Redeemer? However, the plot is then dropped, there seems to be no why than Bosco’s possible sense of megalomania. While I do not mind to let the reader figure out some things on its own, it is one thing to drop clues and another to not drop any clues at all and then expect the reader to figure things out anyway. I have had enough of stories like RahXephon for quite some time, thank you.

Additionally, to continue from the old post, the feeling of haphazardness gets worse. Hoffman seems to mix and mash fantasy and reality as he seems fit, however, the result is often bad. Very bad. Why do you use name the main protagonist Thomas Cale, but one of his acquaintances IdrisPukke? I kid you not, no spacing there. I don’t even know how I am supposed to pronounce it, so I just read it as if it would be Norwegian with spacing. All this simply gives a sense of lack of imagination. When Hoffman doesn’t know what to do or name something, he just picks something from the real world and puts it into his novel. A perfect example is how Jesus is actually featured, but this time he is known for being in the belly of a whale. It has no relevance whatsoever, and it adds no depth since this Jesus is not the same as the Hanged Redeemer, despite their historical similarities. There is also a serious lack of geography. All this fuzzyness just adds more confusion when I instead would just like clarity. I want to know WHY the Redeemers are at with with the Antagonists, and I would like to have another perspectives of the Antagonists that is not related to the Redeemers. I would also like to know why Thomas Cale is important to Bosco beyond the “I had a vision and I think you are the reborn version of the Antichrist”. Which, of course, could have been dropped much earlier. While it is a powerful way to end a novel, again, there is no indication of this. While there is a description of Cale either appearing as a callous, cold murderer or attempting to learn the social norms of the Materazzi (the name of the people who live in Memphis), the readers get no indication of this. Just because a person says something about another character it does not make it true. And this leads to my third and final gripe with “The Left Hand of God”, that of poor character development. There is some, but barely. If the author wants to say that this person is this or that, show it! Show how Cale is so cold and callous. Instead, we in fact get the opposite – that he can be kind and caring and attempts to be despite his cruel upbringing. That Cale killed a man in a duel is not proof, especially when we are told that he is in fact scared for his life during the first part of the duel. Personally, that is now how I expect someone who is cold and callous to act like. That Cale after the duel ended cut off the opponent’s head in a fit of rage does again not show that he is cold and callous, but rather emphasizes his frustration over being an outcast despite that he clearly got certain abilities that should make him recognized, which the duel in fact was about to begin with. It was a schism between him and one of his oppressors in Materazzi who made sure to take a social advantage of their different social classes. And then there are characters who are given some development to just disappear. Like the assassin who was spying on Cale for several weeks to fall in love with him. I don’t know why, but Hoffman got a thing for love at first sight. Anyway, the assassin got murdered, so the time spent on describing her and her way of life was completely thrown away. And scrap that thing about character development being my last issue, my last issue are gender roles. Women are constantly described as sex objects, and useless too. Arbell Swan-Neck is a disgusting example. Supposedly, her nickname Swan-Neck is meant to symbolize her beauty, but I don’t know about you, but a woman with a swan-neck just gives me images of a woman with an unnaturally tall neck. That is not beautiful. Women are also constantly described as delicate, and while Arbell Swan-Neck is certainly of noble status is thus treated as such, it would be nice if she just didn’t you know, act it out. Everytime. She is the damsel in mistress personified. Awful. I thought we had passed that stage in fantasy where women cannot be protrayed in other ways, and when they do, they get killed… by men. That says a lot about the gender roles in “The Left Hand of God”.

To summarize, it got some very interesting ideas but they are never developed. There is some decent writing down there, but it’s usually tossed away. I have very mixed feelings after finishing it. While I think the underlying story is interesting and I want to see where this is all going, I am not sure the sloppy writing can in fact justify to buy the final installments to find out, especially if the writing does not improve, and there is no indication that it will. It can be noticed that Hoffman is a screenwriter, the novel is very “filmic”, but not in a good sense. If “The Left hand of God” had been a 2 hour long film where Hoffman was forced to compress the story to fit this time format, I think it might be great. But this isn’t “The Left Hand of God”. We get a 500 pages long book where most of the content is bland; uninspired and uninteresting. Pure filler, to be frank. And like any person who is not out of their mind, I do not like fillers. I read another comment somewhere that actually describes my feelings of the book pretty well. I don’t want to read it, I just want to read the summary.

I bought a new book at the bookstore today with the rather in-your-face-name, “The Left Hand of God”. The cover doesn’t really say a lot. It’s a man wearing a black coat and holding a silver sword. Nothing else of his body is seen but his hands. The back cover doesn’t say much either; all we get to know is that Thomas Cale is here to change the world – for better or worse. I thus wasn’t sure what to expect when I bought it, but its mysterious air is rather attracting when you just have to get a book and can’t decide on what you actually want to buy.

I started to read it while on the airplane and the first pages were interesting enough for me to stick around, which is rare nowadays. As the title of the book implies, it’s about religion. Not Christianity however, as we might be lead to believe, but rather a fictuous version of it. The religion of the book is unnamed, but we get a rather thorough description of it. The book starts out with introducing its main character, Thomas Cale, who is a 15-year-or so teenager living at the military training camp/monastery called Sanctuary. Despite its name, Sanctuary is not a sanctuary. It is run by overzealous monks referred to as Redeemers, and they accept abandoned boys to be trained as soldiers that are to be sent into a war against the Antagonists in The East. The boys are referred to as Acolytes, and the monks use any methods they deem necessary in order to keep their Acolytes in check. Torture of all kinds are common, that together with brainwashing is meant to ensure that the boys will stay in check. If they don’t or simply have a mental breakdown, they seem to be taken away from Sanctuary to never return again. Where they are taken is never mentioned this early on, but the book emphasizes that it’s a place of no return – death.

The timeline of the book seems to become more typical of modern fantasy: not quite science fiction placed in the future, but not quite medieval placed in an alternate universe either. My impression is that it’s in fact post-apocalyptic. According to the book, the religion worshipping the Hanged Redeemer (it is called the Hanged Redeemer because the main symbol of faith depicts a main who is being hanged as the perfect example of a man who is being redeemed from sin through pain. It is interesting to note that the Hanged Redeemer changed facial expression over the course of time from being agonized to euophoric – very similar to how Jesus has changed his facial expression) has existed for at least a million years, implying that while it is not Christianity itself, it is a spin-off variant of it. It seems to in particular take inspiration from Catholicism, as there are supposedly more saints than there are days during a year (The Hanged Redemeer’s mother is for example the only woman to be considedered holy – all others are the embodiedment of sin because of their female sexuality of course, and how women’s bodies might tempt men sexually). Another point supporting the idea that the universe in “The Left Hand of God” is post-apocalyptic is that towns like Memphis among other American ones are mentioned, suggesting that the East is most likely Europe and the land in which Sanctuary is situated is a post-apocalyptic variant of USA. This seems a bit odd as the author of “The Left Hand of God”, Paul Hoffman, is British. British English also colors the novel itself; while it is not “too” British, words such as “bloody”, “lardy” among others give the novel a British tone. Hopefully the reason why Hoffman decided to play out “The Left Hand of God” in a future post-apocalyptic USA will be explained, eventually.

The book itself is not the most amazing piece of literature I have read; but it not the worst either. It is certainly passable as easy entertainment, but of course the most striking feature is its anti-religious stance. The Redeemers are often compared to the Inquisition; while the Redemeers themselves often live in wealth, eat good food and live well, their existence stands in stark constrast to the Acolytes who live very miserable lives similar to that of a prison. The book’s target audience lingers somewhere between young and adult fantasy, and can certainly please both age groups. I initially thought it would be more in the veins of Neil Gaiman and/or Robert Jordan, and it is more similar to the latter than the former in terms of style. The backside text seems to actually imply more descriptive violence than what it actually contains, hence also making it passable for a younger audience, even though I think more descriptive violence would be able to give the book a far rawer and brutal undertone which would be more fitting of what the book seems to aim thus far. Something akin to The Sword of Truth might be more appropriate.

The problem with the book however seems to be that it is very haphazard. Sometimes you simply don’t know where it’s trying to take you. The most notable examples are the changes in point of view. The book is written from an omniscient third person perspective, and when it changes point of view it feels very forced and unnatural. Instead I think Hoffman could’ve used other literary tools to explain the same thing without having to change point of view.

I will update with more posts as I continue to read the book to see if I change in opinion or if there’s new information regarding the Redeemers.

As some of my may be aware, there is a Hollywood movie based on the events of Anneliese Michel, a German girl, who supposedly suffered from demon possession and underwent the treatment of exorcism from the Catholic church in the 70s. After several sessions, Anneliese was ultimately found dead in her bed due to dehydration and malnutrition. A legal case was charged against the parents and the priest who agreed to exorcise her, and the court found them guilty of neglect which lead to Anneliese’s death.

Several decades later, Hollywood decides to make a movie out of this historical event. The result is so-so. The main part of the film is reflecting the trial against the priest, who helped to take care of Emily Rose, the American recast of Anneliese Michel. He is defended by Erin, a skilled attorney, and a so-called “agnostic”. This alone starts to ring a bell into my head. Why is it that all women you see in these kinds of movies are always people who are no longer believers or are depicted as to not be sure what to believe? I am sure this might possibly reflect the statistics that most of the churchgoers in USA are women, but regardless, it would be nice to see an unfaithful man who would turn back to his faith, for once.

During the first part of the movie, very little happens at first. The events unfold like a typical court case, and most of the arguments brought up against the priest rely on “scientific” opinions about Emily’s condition: she was possibly suffering from epilepsy that later developed into schizoid epilepsy, which, according to the movie itself, is a term one of the “scientists” made up. As I am no expert in this field, I will not argue whether this is a possibility or not, but one thing I DO know, is that the screenwriters have a terrible knowledge of anthropology in particular. This becomes particularly evident when Erin lets an “anthropologist” testify about demon possession in various cultures, which somehow developed into some New Age mumbo jumbo about some people being more susceptible to possession than others, and this could have a possible biological reason. If the screenwriters would have bothered to actually look up what social and cultural anthropologists do, is that we DO NOT make up theories why some people would become possessed by demons. If anything, WHAT we do is that we make third-person accounts of such events and try to put these events into a cultural/social perspective. So yes, I got a huge axe to dig with that part in particular, and most of the movie and its ability to appear realistic were ruined to me, at that point.

Another point which I strongly disliked is that the movie at first seems to attempt to present how the eyewitness testimonies described the event, which ultimately would make the movie neutral on whether demon possession is a possibility or not, but then suddenly changed position and started to support the idea that demon possession is in fact possible, and that demons exist in this world. It’s not like I can buy that, but the setting for such a storyline was completely wrong. I’d understood if it was something like The Exorcist, The Omen or any other fictional setting that doesn’t try to be scientific (an exception would be the X-Files, but I never liked the few episodes they had that explored Scully’s Catholic faith, anyway) but it’s more about telling a compelling story. Now, the problem is that the compelling story in the Exorcism of Emily Rose is supposed to lie in the court case at hand. As such, the movie utterly and horribly failed. Instead of giving different and varied personal accounts of the event and developing the interpersonal relationships between the characters, which would ultimately had made the movie more into a drama that, in my opinion, would’ve been a perfect choice for this kind of setting, it tries to scare by giving the viewer a sense that demons might exist. Besides creating a tingling sensation, that’s all what it did for me. If I wanted to see something actually scary, The Exorcism of Emily Rose would certainly not be on that list.

Neither did I agree with the final verdict of the jury, since the evidence to support his case was mostly based on eyewitness testimonies and emotional retelling of events, as well as some holes poking in the logic of the “science proponents”. (Spoiler: The priest was found guilty but the verdict was changed into his favor, making it far less severe than it initially was.)

With that said, I do not completely dismiss the movie. It’s worth seeing once but some of the aspects are incredibly hard to overlook (particularly, if you study anthropology…) to make it really enjoyable, especially as an unbeliever. It does raise some interesting questions about ethics and philosophy, such as whether it was more humane to let Emily die by her own choice than strapping her to a machine or put her into a psychiatric ward, where she, no doubt, would not have been much better off. However, these things do not make up for the major flaws that ruined the movie to me. If this movie had been a drama, if it had been interested to explore these questions in more detail, if it had been interested to portray an objective stance on the matter, then yes, I think it might have been an outstanding movie.

However, as it is, it did not and thus it is mediocre but works a Saturday night entertainment when you’re bored. I should also mention one more thing which really put the nail into the coffin though, and that was the post scriptum they added when the case was closed. Instead of saying that the events presented in the movie are fiction and that the real person behind Emily was Anneliese Michel, they wrote EMILY, which made it sound like the whole thing happened in USA. Furthermore, the final note added that Erin’s case was based upon information provided by someone who knew Emily from that time. I don’t exactly remember the details. As you can see, however, the implications remain clear: Emily existed for real and so did Erin and this case. Despite that this is all fiction and a retelling of events.

This movie is so incredibly unprofessional I’m surprised it passed the screenwriting status. If I were Anneliese’s parents, I would be terribly offended by the fact that the filmmakers somehow claim that the events Anneliese went through was based on a girl in USA. I mean, give her the proper credit. The girl suffered terribly, after all. If you are going to write a movie about her life, then at least make sure that it doesn’t omit the fact that it was HER and not somebody else.

I never liked Bill Maher; A comedian who laughs about his own jokes is nothing more than irritating. Nevertheless, I found myself watching Religulous over the holidays season to kill some spare time. After having watched it, I still didn’t like Bill Maher, even though he argued for “our” side, that is to say, the nonreligious one. Religulous is categorized as a comedy/documentary film, but instead of keeping the documentary and comedy parts separated, he blends them together in a nasty mix which dissolved the aspects of both. To me, this was neither comedy nor a documentary.

If it was a documentary, it was as much as documentary as like categorized spawns from the beast that is Michael Moore – a one-way road into a dark abbyss. The only different between Maher and Moore in the making of documentaries is that Moore at least tries to approach the subject in a serious manner. Religulous is also proud to call itself religious satire or parody, forgetting the fact that repeating dogma in a redneck accent does not make a good satire or parody. Maher preceeds his actual “documentary” by saying he will approach the matters at hand with an agnostic attitude, even though he titles his work with a portmanteau derived from the words “religion” and “ridiculous”.

In all his interviews except the one with his sister and mother, Maher shows no respect to his interviewees. He does not have the decency to let the person finish and jumps in mid-sentence with some or other bad remark that was probably intended as funny, laughing to himself as he does so. This is not only annoying for the interviewee but also for the viewer of the film. If Maher didn’t manage to intercept with some half-wit’s pun on the spot, the editors of the film have made sure that the interviewee is ridiculed in other ways. Maybe it is funny and I simply don’t get it, but one has to agree that before the interviewee is able to answer a question Maher jumps on top of him or her. The only thing Maher does reasonably well is ask questions that are difficult to answer for those who intellectually rely on no more than faith. Maher does this particularly well on interviewing the U.S. senator Mark Pryor. Personally I thought this was the best of his interviews, but maybe that was because this senator ridiculed himself enough for Maher not having to intercede on his behalf.

As you might have guessed, there are little to no real arguments that Maher puts forward in his film. This is why I think anyone who is engaged in opposing faith or religious doctrine, either as a secularist, an outspoken atheist, a bright, or otherwise, has no need to watch this film. Many people of this actively nontheist calibre have already heard of all the blatantly unrealistic claims, have already researched religious dogma, and have already heard all the arguments for and against that this film puts forward. In one of the first interviews with some truckers in a roadside ministry Maher did not seem to detect one of the truckers used the famous Pascal’s Wager argument. Instead of replying “Well what if you’re wrong?” he could have listed several reasons why such an argument doesn’t have any intellectual merit. Any one of “us” who have debated theists time and time again would have been able to come up with much better ways to counter the theistic arguments, without having to resort to simple ridicule which doesn’t take require too much effort to begin with.

There were a few scenes in the film that I did enjoy. One was the interview with the (former) director of the Vatican Observatory, who had the complete opposite views regarding the age of the earth, the universe and evolution as the former interviewee, the nutcase young earth creationist Ken Ham from the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. Another funny interview was with father Reginald Foster, the Pope’s principal Latinist. He seemed a very jolly fellow and agreed with Maher on almost everything Maher said was wrong with religion in general and some dogma in particular. Neither Maher or I had expected this and it made for a fun diversion from all the fundamentalist crackpots.

In conclusion I just want to recap my recommendation: if you’ve debated religionists before, if you’ve studied the doctrines, if you’ve studied theological arguments, there is no reason for you to go see this film because you will not hear anything new. It would not have been a waste of time if it was funny, but frankly I didn’t think it was. I’d say you’d best save it for a moment of desperation in which you feel the need to fill your time with hopeless ad-hoc and reductio ad absurdum.

This past weekend, Cleric and I decided to relax and watch a couple movies… something fun, maybe kind of bad, with lots of explosions.  We’re both Sci-fi buffs, as was his friend D., who was over, so we decided to whip out the Starship Troopers Trilogy.  The first one was great; the second was a botched attempt at making the series into horror, and the third… a catastrophe—acting, lips, and special effects aside.

When religion and cinema mix, it must be a tasteful blend, or one risks alienating part of the intended audience.  It is clear that there was a distinct purpose for mixing religion into SSTIII, but it was done so distastefully that I felt the need to get up several times to get more popsicles.  Not that I was particularly hungry, or too warm, I just couldn’t stand what I was seeing… and I sat through Expelled.  What went wrong?  Lets start from the top. **Severe Spoilers ahead.  Not like you’d actually want to watch anyway, but if you do for some bizarre reason, watch before reading.** (more…)

Let me first preface this critique by saying that prior to this I had a lot of respect for Ben Stein. I have read his commentary on the economy and I quite enjoyed it. I always took him for a realistic perspective and didn’t think he would fall victim to this kind of a work. I am dismayed at having seen him take this direction. At first I saw what Stein’s point was, but as I learned more and more about this documentary and how he treated the scientific community, all I have to say is it’s underhanded. He apparently tries to create this huge controversy in the scientific community and he sensationalized the topic a little too much in this documentary, to the point where I’m wondering how much he’s getting paid to back this up. My one fear for those who see this is that they will not look at it from an intellectual perspective, and rather look at the sensational points that Stein pointed out to give a rather “damning” image of science and the scientific community… (more…)

I’ve decided we need some reviews here and there on this site, this is my first one for “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris: (more…)

The internet movie Zeitgeist has garnered both positive and negative attention for what

it portrays; that being a broad conspiracy of sorts between religion, wars spurred by acts such as 9/11, and those who stand to profit from both. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, but that is one of the very activities I’ve heard others accuse this film of; oversimplifying and overstating complicated issues and facts in order to construct a lie.

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