2010-02-14 Archive, Reading, The Nine Lives of Chloe King, The God Delusion (1)

Reading —

Okay, I like it. I have now read the complete three (of nine?) volume series, "The Nine Lives of Chloe King," about four times, and I liked everything about it except there was a bit too much f-ing language in the third volume. The TV movie would have earned an "R" rating if this were the era of the movie "Gone With the Wind." The book could have done without (most of) it. (And yes, there has been a Disney TV movie in the works for several years now.)

This series was written "by" Celia Thomson, a pseudonym for Liz Braswell. Since then, She has written (12 of) Disney's "Pirates of the Carribean" series, "RX" and other books. At the rate she is writing, she may eventually top Meg Cabot for volumes in print.

But the question is, how can she continue the series, "The NINE lives of Chloe King," when the major plot threads appear to be resolved? I'm not sure, but if she writes it, I will buy it.

In lighter faire, I am about halfway through reading Richard Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion." Some of what he has to say makes sense, (Whether or not God exists should be a scientifically valid question) but from a rational point of view, some of what he says is laugh-out-loud unreasonable.

The first time an Evolutionist said to me, "Here we are, therefore Evolution is true," I laughed aloud and told him that some Creationists say the same thing, "Here we are, therefore God created us." It doesn't prove anything. And yet here is Richard Dawkins, trying to tell me that the Anthropic Principle, (because we ARE here, therefore Nature somehow conspired to make it so) shows that God is not necessary to an explanation of how we got here. He complains that Christians keep trying to use the gaps of scientific knowledge as evidence for God, yet he sticks the title Anthropic Principle over the gaps of scientific knowledge like a band-aid, and tries to use it to prove there is no God.

That's almost as funny as him beginning chapter two with: "The God of the Old Testament is ... a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." (Kudos for the vocabulary, by the way.) And then, later on the same page, he says, "I am not attacking the particular qualities of Yawheh, or Jesus, or Allah, or any other specific god..." Say what? That wasn't an attack? That wasn't meant to incite anger in anyone who holds God to be sacred and holy?

I always thought that calling people names was the last resort of an intellectually bankrupt argument. Oh, right, he doesn't consider God to be a person. Fortunately, he gets better and (somewhat) more rational, later.

Read on.
Logan