WHAT. THE. FUCK?!?!
Dec. 16th, 2004 02:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaJohn C. Wright, the author of the astonishingly good transhumanist sci-fi trilogy The Golden Age (go to Amazon.com for info), had a "religious experience" and is now a mealy-mouthed Christian?
You've got to be kidding me.
OK...in all fairness, the man does do a pretty good job of explaining his rationale--if such it can be called--in terms very close to those eschewed by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience and, as such, one cannot really criticize a person for acting on his own subjective, internal experiences. But nonetheless, I find this more than a little dismaying that someone could have some kind of non-recurring, out-of-the-blue "mystical experience" and completely switch his point of view. Yeah, this has happened a million times in the past to many, many different people--including some of my favorite intellectuals (such as William James and Joseph Campbell)--but I will not gloss over the fact that I find these kinds of experiences and their resultant "life changes" to be more than a little hokey. Even laughable in most cases. It somewhat disgusts me when otherwise intelligent and discriminating individuals overthrow their entire minds based on such subjective experiences. I'm looking at you, Terrence McKenna.
Were I to walk out my front door tomorrow and find God Himself--or a reasonable facsimile thereof--standing on my porch, surrounded by haloes of glowing multiwinged angels and scintillating saints, proclaiming that in his wisdom he has deigned to come to earth to personally intervene in my life, my first and ONLY response would be: "One, prove it right now; and two, prove it again a week from now. None of this once-in-a-lifetime bullshit for me, fella."
You've got to be kidding me.
OK...in all fairness, the man does do a pretty good job of explaining his rationale--if such it can be called--in terms very close to those eschewed by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience and, as such, one cannot really criticize a person for acting on his own subjective, internal experiences. But nonetheless, I find this more than a little dismaying that someone could have some kind of non-recurring, out-of-the-blue "mystical experience" and completely switch his point of view. Yeah, this has happened a million times in the past to many, many different people--including some of my favorite intellectuals (such as William James and Joseph Campbell)--but I will not gloss over the fact that I find these kinds of experiences and their resultant "life changes" to be more than a little hokey. Even laughable in most cases. It somewhat disgusts me when otherwise intelligent and discriminating individuals overthrow their entire minds based on such subjective experiences. I'm looking at you, Terrence McKenna.
Were I to walk out my front door tomorrow and find God Himself--or a reasonable facsimile thereof--standing on my porch, surrounded by haloes of glowing multiwinged angels and scintillating saints, proclaiming that in his wisdom he has deigned to come to earth to personally intervene in my life, my first and ONLY response would be: "One, prove it right now; and two, prove it again a week from now. None of this once-in-a-lifetime bullshit for me, fella."
