alt Hacker NewsWell, I was 9 at the time and it was probably the first "science" book that I had read and got excited about.
And no - never been impressed by any of the major religions - although (possibly influenced by Philip Pullman) I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other...
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"...nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..." - Douglas Adams
>I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other...
As far as I know, what we know as established historical fact is that:
- there indeed was a bloke
- he splintered from being a follower of another more famous bloke at the time who was executed by the romans for becoming too popular with the masses
- he preached the world was about to end (as in, in their listener's lifetime)
- he also pissed off the romans enough to be executed.
Everything else is left to guess!
>>>I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other
There wasn't any such bloke. I mean there was such bloke, but his qualities were completely opposite(Jesus was a violent man) to what he actually was and by various redactions and fusion of stories of initially opposing factions that were fighting over the actual seat of Jesus.
Jesus was a leader of militants(his power was spread not with peaceful words, but with sword and quite violent words - just like modern terrorists do - one of such passage has been slipped through redaction and left in the Bible) of a very violent sect(which itself was lead by John the Baptist), that were terrorizing everyone else(not in open, but when blended among other people, exactly like cult of assassins in Assassin's Creed games) and his capture was a shock and possibly betrayal and apparently those militants for some reasons(Roman military might - obviously) were unable to mount a rescue mission and because of that all the magic stories and Fairy tales, that we know as Bible were invented. You can see development of same myths to failures of modern religious fanatics - the same "magical" explanations why they have failed over and over again.
PS I do not hate Christianity, but I like cold hard Truth more than sweetest and softest Lies.
It's not Philip Pullman, it's living in a Christian society. The Enlightenment growing out of the Reformation meant that all the foundational atheist thinkers had deeply sentimental views of Christianity, which is how you get the Jefferson Bible (yes, a deist), and that Pullman quote and many more like it. "Well if you strip away all the things I don't like, this philosophy is very compelling" is only a conclusion you could come to when you already are predisposed to like the philosophy.