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Archive for April, 2007
Yggr would be amused.
Posted April 9, 2007 By John C WrightSkeptical about skepticism
Posted April 6, 2007 By John C WrightRobert Sawyer ponders the failure of the Brights to win over the American public.
I notice he does not even mention ACLU lawsuits to remove the Pledge of Allegiance from the schools and the Ten Commandment from the Courthouse. It was the historical ignorance of that sort of thing that mad me, back when I was an atheist, disenchanted with so many of my fellow atheists.
The idea Sawyer raises about Atheist trying to emphasize their moral nature is a good one. I do not think I was in a minority among atheists for being a believer in seven out of the Ten Commandments, and eleven out of the twelve points of the Boy Scout law. There are perfectly obvious rational this-world reasons to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and clean. I also think there is something despicable self-centered in a character who does not revere SOMETHING: let it be honor, or reason, or the flag, or the sacrament of marriage, or Apple Pie, or the Free Market, or the Code of the Jedi. To have something greater in your heart than selfish impulses, you need to have ideas in your head that revere something more important than yourself.
But Mr. Sawyer may be outlining a plan for a losing battle. I notice he cannot restrain himself from taking a gratuitous swipe at George Bush as an “anti-science fundamentalist”. This is (of course) an arrogant thing to say. And in his next sentence Mr. Sawyer cautions the atheists not to come across as arrogant. Hoo haw.
He also falls into the same trap himself as sentence after that, when he applauds the idea that atheists are unlike religion, in that they favor science, reason, and secularism. I assume he does not notice that science is a unique product of Christendom: neither the ancient Greek nor the modern East made progress in science, because they did not have the concept of one rational Creator arranging nature according to a rational system. Was Newton not a scientist? He makes a similar arrogant mistake about reason. Was Aquinas not a paragon of logic?
The problem the atheists have in trying to portray their world view as the reasonable alternative to religion, is that religion, in the long run, is more reasonable. It is reasonable to be good in a world where an invisible sky-father sees and punishes bad acts: even a child can grasp this notion. It is reasonable to be hopeful in a world where this world is not the end of the story, hopeful even in a foxhole where the logical atheist, like the Roman stoic, might decide suicide was the only honorable course left. It is reasonable to suppose that the mind of man can deduce a priori synthetic conclusions about the outside world based on the innate human categories of thought, if and only if the same creator who made man and the mind of man made the world and the logic of the world, and the common creator created them according to the same rules of logic. An atheist can tell me that my sense-perceptions agree with each other, that is, that they are coherent, but he cannot tell me whether they are accurate, that is, whether the phenomena reflect the noumena. Theology can answer that question, and answer it with a rigorous a logic from its first principles.
The question is, what is the minimum set of self-evident axioms or first principles an atheist must admit in order to have a reasonable reason to be a moral and reasonable person? If he has to make a more farfetched assumption, or a more complex assumption, than the deist who posits a benevolent omnipotence exists, the principle of parsimony would favor the second assumption.
Personally, I think an argument can be made that the laws of morality are self-evident in principle (even if complex in application) from the moment one makes the inquiry into whether morality exists or not. The mere act of making the inquiry presupposes at least one moral rule: honesty. If morality does not exist, one need not answer the question honestly. On the other hand, if one set about to answer the question with the honesty of a philosopher, then one already knows that honesty is a rule, whether one knows why one knows or not.
In any case, Christians are as reasonable as anyone else, and more reasonable than some. If God indeed does not exist, we are unreasonable and gullible to pretend He exists; but if He does exist, it is unreasonable and arrogant not to admit it.
Despite Mr. Sawyer’s sage advise, I think atheism cannot present itself as anything other than a proud and arrogant doctrine. To be an atheist means that you look at all the tales of wonders and marvels of this religion and every other, every honest witness who says he saw a ghost, the strange tales of men on operating tables who say they saw a tunnel of light leading to the land of the dead; you have to look at the Myth of Er and the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle, the Platonic Idea of the Good, the wisdom of Lao Tzu and the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha, and, yes, even the warlike good sense of the Havalmal of Odin, and say: all my fathers were mistaken; everyone but me is a fool. Belief in God is like belief in The Great Pumpkin. George Washington was foolish for saying religion was necessary for a great republic. The Romans were foolish for saying nothing was better than facing fearful odds defending the ashes of our fathers and the temples of our gods. Socrates was foolish to die, because the afterlife his philosophy deduced exists is a myth. Moses, Christ, and Mohammed were the Three Impostors.
(if you click through the link, you will see what is perhaps the oldest atheist jeremiad in history, allegedly from 1200’s, but perhaps from the early 1900’s. Teh first sentence sets the tone “However important it may be for all men to know the Truth, very few, nevertheless, are acquainted with it, because the majority are incapable of searching it themselves, or perhaps, do not wish the trouble. ” i.e. The writer is inviting the reader into the delicious secret that everyone on Earth is stupid, but for you, dear reader, and me.)
The atheist argument stands or falls on its own merit. But the atheist argument cannot be made humbly, or while showing any piety toward the beliefs of one’s ancestors, even—and here is where the arrogance comes in—even when passing judgment on the beliefs of figures in history obviously more intelligent and thoughtful than you or me.
No, Virginia, I am not making an ad Vericumdiam argument here. I am not saying that since respected men of authority believed thus-and-so, we also should believe. All our respected ancestors, for example, believed in slavery. Logic is no respecter of persons: we must go where the argument leads.
I am making a much more humble claim here. Mr. Sawyer thinks atheists would be better off if they presented themselves in a less arrogant fashion. I am saying, right or wrong, for good or ill, logic says that the atheist has to reject all theism as foolishness, no matter how respected the theist is in other fields. And maintaining that you are smarter than people smarter than you is the very soul of arrogance. Atheists should be arrogant and should be proud of their arrogance: they have no logical reason to do otherwise.
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And I they wonder why I am a skeptic
Posted April 5, 2007 By John C WrightHere is a comment from a man who descibed himself as a an ex-scientist. He describes the funding process for peer reviewed research:
I am an “ex” scientist. I have over 100 publications in the field of materials science and physics. Many of these publications are in peer reviewed journals such as The Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Materials Research Society Journal and Journal of Applied Physics. I have sat on committees that review papers for these journals. I have worked at the following national laboratories: NIST, Oak Ridge (site X) and Brookhaven National Laboratory. I have spent 10 years living off of federally funded research. I have written winning proposals for government funding in the 10’s of millions of dollars. In short, I am very well aware of the process of getting and keeping funding and getting papers published in peer reviewed publications.
I have seen papers (perfectly good, well researched) papers rejected for publication for the following reasons:
1. The paper went against prevailing theory on a topic.
2. The paper was submitted by a company that was a competitor for government funding.
3. The paper was submitted by a government agency that was a competitor of the reviewer’s agency.
4. The author of the paper was disliked by one of the reviewers.This is how the funding process works:
1. You determine what the latest ‘hot’ topic is (global warming, ceramic superconductivity, stealth technology).
2. You write your proposal to fund the work you’ve been doing for years in your area but you slant it towards the hot topic.
3. You almost “prove” that the above hot topic is effected in a way that is positive toward your research.
4. You write a follow-on proposal where you state that the really big break-through will occur in the next funding cycle.
5. Oh, and you try to partner with entities that always get government funding.It works like this: You study frogs in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Nobody wants to fund the study of frogs. Why would they? So in the early 80’s you write your proposal to study the effect of the hole in the ozone layer on the frogs. The mid 80’s your try to figure out how to write a proposal on frogs and missile defense but give up. In the 90’s you write proposals on how frog pee can help certain forms of cancer. You partner with NIH on this because they are getting lots of funding, being the ‘hot’ agency. You both know that the results are useless from the get go but you do it anyway. In the late 90’s you write proposals on how frogs from South Dakota can be used to detect nerve gas as part of the Global War on Terrorism. You routinely reject papers to the Journal of Herpetology that claim that five lined skinks can detect nerve gas by their tails falling off. In the 2000’s you are awarded grants to study the decline of frog populations in the Black Hills due to global warming, despite the fact the frogs were there through the last dozen ice ages and that they’ve survived eight periods since the last ice age where the temperature was much warmer than now. You know that the frog population is declining because the government is leasing the land to cattle ranchers and the cows are crapping in the water but you don’t really care because you’re now just a few years away from retirement and you don’t want to work at Burger King.
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The Problem of Not Opening the Dictionary
Posted April 5, 2007 By John C WrightAn anonymous reader writes in with some questions, which I will manfully attempt to answer. If I seem short, it is because of time is short, not that a fuller answer is not possible.
I cannot reproduce here the whole body of his comments, especially since he is quoting my comments to which he responds: I will merely try to answer his interrogatories in order.
- How is the desire (appetite?) for freedom different in quality from the desire (appetite) for food or physical sustenance?
One is noble and the other is base. One we share with animals, the other is particular to human beings. I am using the word desire in this sentence as a parallel to the Plato’s “thymos”, that spirited part of the soul which communicates between the reason and the mere appetites.
- How would you respond to the notion that we all *do* live merely to seek “pleasure,” whereby pleasure is defined as that which we believe and/or perceive to be desirable?
If the definition of pleasure is broadened to encompass all human action, the definition is a purely formal one: pleasure is defined as that which the aims at the removal of a felt uneasiness. Anything that is the final cause of action is called pleasure, no matter what it is.
This economists’ definition must be carefully distinguished from the use of the word in common speech. An economist would say we go to the dentist for pleasure, or pay our taxes, or forgive those who trespass against us. In common speech we distinguish between those things done for an immediate pleasure, and those unpleasant things done for sake of an ultimate or final pleasure, and also between those things done for the sake of the good because it is good, whether it pleases or not. A man who throws himself on a featherbed when no one is looking, and a man who throws himself on a hand grenade to save his mates, according to this economists definition, are not acting from different motives. Normal people would draw a clear distinction between featherbedding and self-sacrifice.
In general, you can define a word any way you wish, so long as you supply another word to refer to whatever distinction your definition is covering up.
I note again this question is based on a mere confusion of definitions: calling altruism pleasure-seeking because the word pleasure is so broadly defined as to be meaningless.
- Would anyone take an action which he sincerely believed would result in permanent displeasure, or even reduction in potential pleasure?
If you define pleasure as the economist does (see above) the question has no meaning. If you are using pleasure in the ordinary sense of the word, the answer is yes, all the time. A brave woman I know was in a difficult and dangerous labor, and told the doctor that if the choice came down to saving the baby or saving her self, to save the baby. I know parents who make sacrifices for children and soldiers who make sacrifices for their flag.
- Would the Christian cosmology be persuasive if it was suggested that one *should* engage in actions for the benefit of others which would ultimately damn one’s soul to hell?
The problem with the question is that Christians hold the source of all good: God is Love. So, your question comes out like a nonsense question if you try to use Christian assumptions to answer it: if Love were Hate, would it still be Beloved?
For any lesser god or created being, the answer I think is easier. The worshippers of Odin believed that, come Ragnarok, the brave Einheinjahr would face the monsters and giants in a fatal struggle, and they, and the beautiful gods, and all the world, were doomed to certain destruction. Those were noble men, concerned with the right, not with what pleased them. Certainly some religions propose that one should do what is good and right, whether it is rewarded in this life or the next or not.
I can only speak for myself: when you love someone, you love him, whether you are damned to hell for it or not.
- (speaking of the selflessness of soldiers) Don’t they do this because not being part of the group would be bad for them as individuals?
In a formal sense only: if we lived in a universe, or were such creatures, that there was no advantage to acting as a group, there would be no soldiers, and soldiering would neither be selfish nor selfless because it would not exist at all.
But we live in a universe where there are advantages to acting as a group, and, in some cases, this is the only way to survive. So while can while argue that in a formal sense it is better for each Marine individually to act as one of a group, in the normal sense of the words as we use them in ordinary speech, the Marines live and die for the Corps.
Even if it did not benefit him as an individual, a soldier stands in the breach for the honor of the regiment. Asking about his individual survival is like asking about his paycheck: yes, soldiers get paid, and yes they like to get paid, but no, it is not reasonable to say that they shed their blood and slog through mud for the sake of the paycheck. That is not their purpose.
Here we see the product of poor attention to definitions. The first question asked if pleasure was the source of all action. This question then poses that even the sacrifices of soldiers are made for pleasure’s sake, and the question is misleading. I would almost call it a lie, because we are using a word in the opposite of its normal meaning.
- What is the reason for introducing this degree of moral dualism into what otherwise seems to be a holistic system that benefits *both* the heroes in it *as well as* their superiors and inferiors?
Because, without morals, the ranks would break. Each man would look to his own life, and throw his shield away, and flee.
Someone has to stand in the breach. The benefits are obviously not distributed equally: the common good they serve continues after their sacrifice.
- Isn’t the purpose of hierarchy to protect and preserve both the system and the best aspects of the individuals in it?
In peacetime, perhaps; in wartime, no.
- Do you consider Achilleus unheroic since he was more concerned with his personal honor than with the lives of his comrades?
If anything, Achilles is too heroic. Heroism is a good and necessary thing in life; it is not the highest good nor the only necessary thing.
Here again seems to be definitional confusion: we may be speaking about two different types of heroism.
- (speaking of massive international corporations, hegemonic superpowers, remorseless police states ) Don’t those things help to create strength by providing resistance for the strong to overcome?
Creating a precondition which leads to an event is not the same as causing or willing the event. In any case, there are other sources of strength aside from resistance to oppression, and there are other virtues aside from strength.
The torture rack might produce unexpected fortitude in its victims, but this is not the cause for which the rack is employed.
- Is a hegemonic superpower (ultimately doomed to destruction) really “stronger” than a hero who has immortalized his own name by resisting it?
You are talking about a different kind of strength from me. Naturally I meant my comment to be read in the context in which it was placed.
And yet again, this is using the word “strength” to refer to something opposite of what I meant when I used the word.
- What about those whose strength is exercised to overcome themselves?
Strength:
1. the quality or state of being strong; bodily or muscular power; vigor.
2. mental power, force, or vigor.
3. moral power, firmness, or courage.
4. power by reason of influence, authority, resources, numbers, etc.
5. number, as of personnel or ships in a force or body: a regiment with a strength of 3000.
6. effective force, potency, or cogency, as of inducements or arguments: the strength of his plea.
7. power of resisting force, strain, wear, etc.
8. vigor of action, language, feeling, etc.
Of these definitions, only # 3 seems to indicate a moral quality, what we might call fortitude, which is a virtue. The other are not virtuous in and of themselves.
In any case, my comments are meant to be read in the context they were written: when Nietzsche speaks of a “Will to Power” he is hardly talking about self-abnegation by submission to a greater good, or taming the passions and appetites to the framework of right reason.
- (quoting me) “In any case, if Christianity were a slave cult, we would support
slavery, not abolish it.” That statement doesn’t make sense. If I refer
to a political group as a “subversive sect,” does that mean that when it
gets into power it will “support subversion instead of abolish it?”
Again, I mean my comments to be read in context. Mr. Nephilim, echoing Nietzsche, says Christians abolished slavery because we are slavish, i.e. not highborn and great enough to enslave the weak. The argument here was that Christianity abolished slavery BECAUSE it was a slave cult, defined as a group that enslaves itself to God.
My argument was that if being enslaved were regarded as a prime or the prime benefit of this way of life, this way of life would support rather than oppose it. If nothing else, getting into the habit of bowing and scraping to earthlytyrants would habituate the believer into a humble posture. Instead we have a religion that uniquely refuses to pay divine honors to earthly kings.
- If an actual Christian historian of such a stature as Toynbee can recognize that Christianity had its origins as a cult popularized through the slave-conditions of the Empire, why is
it a problem for a practicing Christian to recognize this?
It is possible that I misunderstood Mr. Nephilim’s original comment. If he meant that Christians abolished slavery in the 1800’s because Christianity spread through the Empire among slaves in the 200’s and 300’s, the chain of cause and effect is tenuous. Justin Martyr was a philosopher; Constantine was an Imperator; Saul of Tarsus was a citizen of Rome, and an elder. The salvation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt was referenced more often during the Abolitionist movement.
In any case, I thought he meant that Christianity was a slavish and humble religion, and therefore we freed the slaves because this is a slavish thing to do, rather than a noble one. That was the position I was arguing against. I don’t see that this comment has anything to do, one way to the other, with the question at hand.
- “It is the Christians, not the pagans, who uplift and adore womanhood: we have icons both to a Holy Virgin and Holy Mother (for us, one and the same).” Do you seriously expect any ancient historian or scholar reading this blog to take that sort of remark seriously? Even in her form as Theotokos, the Virgin Mary is not the Great Goddess Diana of Ephesus.
I cannot make any heads or tails of this comment. I cannot fathom what it is you think I said, or what you are objecting to. I am denying that the Christians invented the venerations of virgins and respect for motherhood. The Madonna is clearly a mother-figure. I am not saying Our Lady is worshipped as a goddess, but clearly she is paid divine respect and veneration.
- Please explain the profuse and universally recognized tendency of such Church fathers to revile harlots, wanton women, shameless women, and to go on endlessly about how the woman is morally weaker than the man, corrupted by her tendency to desire pleasure, and tainted by the sin of Eve? Not that I am suggesting patriarchist pagan philosophers or Jews are any better.
I have lost the thread of your argument here. Certainly Church fathers reviled harlotry, wantonness, and shamelessness. This was due to a respect for purity, which, indeed is based on a respect for women as created in the image of God. Whores are fit for better things than to be whores. It is the sin, not the sinner, being condemned: I have it on good authority that the harlots and publicans will be placed in heaven before me.
As you say, the moral weakness of women was an idea current in the Roman culture, and reflected in ancient writings of East and West. Confucius says a similar thing of women. At their worst, the Christians are no worse than pagans. It is merely that they are better when they are at there best: Christians elevate some women to sainthood; and this because they were saintly, not because they were women. Our God is no respecter of persons, what you would call an equal opportunity employer.
- I just find it curious that you consider it important to champion Christianity in particular when challenged by a modern Thrasymachus. Wouldn’t it be easier and more effective to simply reinforce traditional arguments that self-vs.-society and self-vs.-other dualism are doomed to result in cowardly and self-destructive behavior?
I was trying to defend both, since both had been questioned. I thought the self-destructiveness of self-centered behavior so obvious as to need nothing more than a passing mention. If you have a better stratagem for argument, by all means, employ it. I am sure Mr. Nephilim will be interested in your considered opinions.
- (Referring to my reference to a dictionary) Couldn’t you at least have consulted a dictionary of philosophy and then explained why, based on philosophical tradition, Nietzsche’s reasoning was flawed, instead of suggesting we should reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator of vulgarian dictionary references?
Obviously I am not taking Nietzsche as an authority on anything. The existential definition of “Ressentiment” is merely a case of defining a word to have a meaning it does not have, used in this case to accuse Church of professing ideas the opposite of what she professes. We Christians profess lovingkindness (so the argument goes) only because of murky psychological rationalizations covering our own weakness and shame. This is an argument not just goofy, but also cheap. It is ad Hominem: typical of Nietzsche’s blissful freedom from logic. In addition to being beyond good and evil, he is beyond valid and invalid.
In my opinion, the proper response when someone is misusing a word and misrepresenting an idea, is to use the word in its normal meaning and state the idea as it is honestly understood.
Your contempt for the dictionary is not one I share. Since most philosophical conversations are rooted in mere definitional confusion, it would be a huge waste of time not to refer to the dictionary when a word has more than one meaning.
Indeed, the number of merely definitional confusions in which you indulge here makes your pose a remarkable one.
- Are you really that much of a populist?
I don’t know. Let me look:
Populism
1. the political philosophy of the People’s party.
2. (lowercase ) any of various, often antiestablishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.
3. (lowercase ) grass-roots democracy; working-class activism; egalitarianism.
4. (lowercase ) representation or extolling of the common person, the working class, the underdog, etc.: populism in the arts.
Since I am a tradition-loving defender of Orthodoxy, and an intellectual, the second definition does not quite fit me. On the other hand, all Christian men scorn the world and the vanities of this world, so we can be called anti-establishment, only if one is willing to stretch the definition. Certainly I extol the common man: they are the salt of the Earth.
But the common man does not usually look in the dictionary to confirm what words mean. Intellectuals tend not to look in the dictionary, and so their words tend to degenerate into jargon and rubbish. I myself cannot imagine setting out a formal system without putting one’s definitions and common notions at the front. All legal documents set out their definitions fair and square at the front. My assumption is that a person who does not set out his definitions is either not a rigorous thinker or is attempting a slight of hand.
At this point, my interlocutor is blunt enough to add,
- ” Not that I am a Nietzschen at all, by the way; I just don’t like to see opportunities for real philosophical debate destroyed by what appears to be sophistry.”
Here he is calling the act of defining one’s terms, the thing that is central to any rigorous logic, as sophistry.
- Do you expect to ultiamtely be the equal of your God? If not, it doesn’t matter how much he “exalts” you, He is still a tyrant.
I thought I answered this quite clearly in the main text. One God becomes All-in-All questions of equality become secondary, even meaningless. The Virgin Mary was elevated from being a humble Jewish girl to being the Queen of the Angels: I doubt she regards her own son as a tyrant over her. Love does not see the world with eyes like this.
You are merely using the word “tyrant” to mean “unequal”. In my marriage my wife and I are not “equal”, but I would hardly call myself a tyrant over her. When Romeo adores Juliet, she is not a tyrant over him, even though he might be willing to do anything and everything she asks.
I adore God and seek to become godly for much the same reason I respect Logic and seek to become Logic, or love Truth and seek to become truthful. I do not even understand what it would mean to become the “equal” of truth or logic or goodness. It sounds like talking about being bigger than the Number Line. If the angels were to come and bow to me, I would tell them sharply “See thou do it not, for we are servants of one master, even God.”
I am a poet, not a magician. I seek to praise the stars in songs, to make their beauty greater. not to tear them from their places to adorn my crown of tin.
- (Quoting me “Do you think proud Lucifer or any of these chthonic deities will
actually aid you? ” Since when is the Light-Bearer a “chthonic” deity?)
The Christian tradition places the Adversary in the underground regions since time beyond memory. The word used to express the name of this imp is the same as an obscure Roman deity. In any case, looking in the dictionary:
Chthonic: Of or relating to the underworld.
This is an apt description of the Lord of Hell.
Obviously, I mean my comments to be read in the context they were written. Mr. Nephilim and I were not talking about Eosphoros, the Greek deity in charge of the Morningstar.
My anonymous questioner closes his letter with a sputtering and rambling screed against Christianity, peppered with insults, and not half as good as the kind of things I used to write back when I was an atheist. Somewhere in that mass, there may be a real question lurking, which I will attempt to answer. He wants to know on what grounds I ask Mr. Nephilim to be obedient to his heavenly father?
Good question. Let me explain. There is some confusion whether Mr. Nephilim, whom we are discussing, is a Gnostic or a Satanist, or a little bit of both. Satanism is a derivative concept: unless the Satanist professes Satan to be the author of creation, the Satanist acknowledges God to be the master of this created world. He merely is in rebellion against Him. The question is what he hopes to gain by this. Mr. Nephilims express goal is to become a god and supersede the current godhead.
The logic of this is a little unclear to me. If Archimago sweeps Jehovah off His throne, won’t proud Satan just take the throne for his own? Won’t other mages be in competition for the empty throne, magicians as powerful and cunning as each other?
So the question still becomes, if you, O practitioner of the Dark Arts, seek to become as God and have the power of God, why not practice the virtues of God?
If He is not your father, on what grounds do you think you are in line to inherit His throne? If He is your father, why are your not His good and faithful son?
You will inherit the Kingdom with us, if you come with us. What? Does the prize only have value in your eyes if you steal it? Would you refuse to marry a woman who loves you only unless you rape her?
Now, I would never ask any such questions to an atheist or an agnostic, since they do not believe God and Satan exist. But here is a man who does think they exist, even if he thinks God is Iadalboath.
I have yet to meet the Gnostic whose plan to usurp the secret mastery of the universe is by being as meek and mild and Jesus Christ, mute before his accusers, and willing to perish in disgrace so that others might live. These ambitious magicians seem to think the proud shall be exulted and the meek be humbled: we Christians believe the opposite.
In any case, the magician who seeks to be enthroned as a god should pause to consider that no river rises above its fountainhead. Whatever the sources of power are from which the mage hopes to derive his magical power, he cannot be greater than: not even cloud-gathering Zeus could fight Ate, necessity, or the cold-hearted Fates. All Zeus managed to do was to end the Golden Age over which kind Saturn reigned. Neither can Odin fight the Nornir: he is still fated to perish in the jaws of Fenrir.
I don’t understand the ambition to be a god like this. Myself, if I was condemned to be a god, I would pick Prometheus, who, for all this pain, delivered good to mankind, even though no temple honors him, and no sacrifice smokes for him.
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The Ground Floor of the Skyscraper
Posted April 5, 2007 By John C WrightAn anonymous reader writes with a long series of questions, which I hope to answer perhaps at another time. Meanwhile, he raises one point I think worthy of consideration. In reference to the opposition of Christianity to slavery, which is a tradition stretching all the way back to Roman times, he says this:
As a historical note, it seems important to recognize that although it was Christians who abolished racial slavery, it was also Christians who perpetuated it, and all of its dogmas. Suggesting that a creed is merited by the actions of its best members is as irrational as suggesting that it is demerited by the actions of its worst. It should be possible to evaluate Christianity as a religion without reference tothe deeds of its practitioners since they vary so widely in effect.
My reply: First, let us remind ourselves of the historical facts of the case; second, let us remember a creed is judged (among other things) on how it differs from other creeds, not on how it resembles them.
Christianity abolished slavery in Europe in the Middle Ages without regard to race, since even from the earliest days it was held to be unlawful for one Christian to own another: if a slave converted, it was required that he be manumitted. “Racial slavery” was practiced in the West in the Sixteenth Century, with Spanish plantations in the New World: the pope at that time issued a bull excommunicating any man who owned a slave. The bull was ignored by the worldly princes and wealthy landowners of the time. The actions and motives of William Wilberforce and the Abolitionist Movement of the British Empire do not need to be repeated by me in this place, since a popular movie has brought some of this history to the public attention. It is beyond dispute that these Abolitionists were Christians acting for a specifically Christian motive. The slave trade was ended, first in England, and then, through the blockades of the British Royal Navy, world wide.
The cultural confidence needed to enforce this standard against alien peoples is sadly lacking today, and so, in the Sudan and elsewhere, the slave trade is making its appearance. The confidence springs from Christianity. As the West detaches itself from Christian roots, it is finds the advances of Christendom slipping away and it wonders why.
I think it is also hard to dispute the fact that slavery was a worldwide institution, existing in all lands, all eras, all nations, and that the worldwide abolition of the slave trade was the single greatest moral triumph of human history.
Now then: certainly there were men who read (or misread) the Bible to support slavery. They needed excuses and so they invented them.
But a Hindu does not need an excuse; nor does a Mohammedan; nor does a follower of Buddha or Confucius or Lao Tzu; nor does any worshipper of any pagan pantheon. This is because these systems of belief and ways of life, noble as they are in other ways, condone and do not condemn slavery. The Jewish tradition on which Christianity is built does not condemn slavery. It was only when the Jewish idea that man was created in the image of God was combined with the Hellenic idea of isonomia, or equality before the law, that an idea specific to the Christian Roman Empire, where Jewish and Hellenic ideas had been combined, that this idea emerged.
So here is the error in reasoning: when judging the merit of a creed, one may indeed look at the actions of its best members, and the actions of its worst, and see whether the crimes of the worst are unique to the creed and caused by it, and see whether the virtues of the best are unique to the creed and caused by it. Because whatelse is a creed but a system of ideas promoting certain actions?
The mass-murders of the Nazis and the mass-expropriations of the Communists are unique evils of their regimes, because these actions were called for by their creeds. The Patriotism of the Nazis was not any more Patriotic than that of the allied nations, nor were they more brave or more inventive, nor did they show any other particular merit unique to National Socialism. A charity of the Communists toward the poor is significantly less than the analogous charity of the Capitalist countries: the workingman is much poorer under these regimes.
The Christians who owned slaves were no worse than the Mohammedans, Hindus, Pagans, and Chinese who own slaves. (Indeed, since the rights of the slave owner were restricted by laws, we can even say that to be a slave under a Christian was better than to be a helot under Sparta.) So much for the worse: they were like the rest of the world and followed the way of the world.
As for the worst, when Christians sin, they sin like all other mortals do, and for the same reasons, and using the same excuses. We are mortal men like all other mortal men. Even the outrages that seem to be specific to Christianity, the Albigensian Crusade or Spanish Inquisitions, turn out, upon examination, to be equal or better than the analogous Mohammedan Jihads or Pagan butcheries. An “Auto De Fe” committed in the name of Jesus is a crime against man and God, no question, but it is still better than the “Blood Eagle” of the Norse committed in the name of Odin, or the persecutions of Diocletian committed in the name of Rome. Accused heretics could recant and live, because Christianity, even in its darkest hour, was still a universalist religion. A victim of the Norse Vikings being hung on a tree and tortured to death as a sacrifice to Odin could not recant or join or become Norse, because this pagan religion is reserved only to those northern kings who have the blood of Odin in their veins.
As for the best, the Christians are the ones, the only ones, who promoted a moral code that condemns slavery. In this world of moral relativism, it is important to note that being anti-slavery is a culturally determined artifact. In other words, a Christian can say in all seriousness that slavery is objectively wrong because it is against God’s will; but anyone else who says slavery is wrong can only say slavery is subjectively wrong, and this is an opinion he hold merely because he is a member of Christendom and has absorbed the values and standards of Christendom. An economist might point out that slavery is innately inefficient; but even an economist would not call it “wrong” in situations where its inefficiency was counterbalanced by some corresponding economic advantage; economists do not make judgments of right and wrong. The idea that human life has an innate dignity is a Judeo-Christian idea.
In short, we see Christians acting badly for the same reasons all men act badly; but we also see Christians acting virtuously with virtues no other creed proposes.
So my anonymous reader tells me it is”irrational” to judge a creed by seeing it at its best and worst. The abolition of slavery looms like a skyscraper on the skyline of history, as the only truly and unambiguous advance in the morals and manners of mankind since the dawn of time.
In effect, my reader is telling me the skyscraper cannot be taller than the two-story house, because the ground floor of both the house and the skyscraper are on the same level.
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A note of Thanks and a respectful Disagreement
Posted April 4, 2007 By John C WrightA reader and I have been having an interesting if somewhat elliptical discussion about CS Lewis in the comments box of another entry on my live journal.
He asks me if I am uncomfortable quoting from C.S. Lewis, and he seems to think Lewis is prejudiced (prejudiced about what, I am not sure) and intolerant (again, intolerant about what, I am not sure). Of course I wrote a ringing endorsement of Mr. Lewis, whose work I have always admired, both his fiction and nonfiction.
Having solicited my opinion, the kindly reader seems to want to pursue the matter, but he writes in an indirect fashion, so I am not sure what his point is. This is the same fellow who, in another thread, delights in dismissing my credibility on matters where we happen not to see eye-to-eye (which is too bad, because I thought he made some telling points on that other thread, but I am not going to answer mockery, only argument). I am posting my reply here, due to space limitations.
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John,
I am a great fan of your Golden Age books. I ran across this from Wikipedia, I was going to try and correct that old post that was such a silly review of your work. (looks like someone else took care of it).I recently read the Narnia books for the first time. I like the first one or two but as I got to the ending books I grew more and more uncomfortable with the viewpoint. For example, it seems like the “Calormene” are a vieled reference to colored men or muslims. First, do you see the same problems. Second, aren’t you a little uncomfortable quoting from this series? The prejudice seems pretty apparent by the end.
This quoting of the “good” sounding parts while ignoring the bad seems dangerous to me. Like ignoring Deuteronomy.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam. 15:2-3).
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I admit I am a little puzzled by the question. The Narnia books are written by someone who loved medieval literature: CS Lewis was a scholar of the classics. The epics of Roland and Orlando Furioso, the surrounding tales of Charlemagne and so on, all had the paynim as enemies. Lewis did not live in the hyper-sensitive politically correct atmosphere of the modern age: it was thought acceptable then (and it is acceptable to me, now) to portray people living near the equator as darker skinned.
The reference is not veiled at all: the Calormene are Mohammedans. CS Lewis had a lifelong dislike of the Arabian Night’s Tales, and so he introduced the wonders of Araby into his fiction setting as bad guys.
I notice that Lewis treats the Calormene with considerable more gravity and respect than, for example, Pullman treats the Church. In Pullman, the Church are villains of the purest quill, without any redeeming characteristics. In Lewis, there are virtuous Calormene, including one who is welcomed into the Country of Aslan after the Last Battle, for he is said to have loved Aslan without knowing who he was: there is meant to be a parallel to similar theological conclusions in Christianity, the appearance of Trajan in the Heaven of Mars in Dante, etc.
To answer your question, I am not uncomfortable quoting from this series at all. The prejudice, to be blunt, exists in your imagination.
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First, he doesn’t just describe them as “darker skinned”. (I found these quotes on the web so they are not primary sources)
“what you would chiefly have noticed if you had been there was the smells, which came from unwashed people, unwashed dogs, scent, garlic, onions, and the piles of refuse which lay everywhere.”I don’t know about you but reading this to my 6 and 8 year old kids makes me more than a little uncomfortable.
“As the defeated Calormenes went back to their commander, the Dwarfs began jeering at them. “Had enough, Darkies?” they yelled. “Don’t you like it? Why doesn’t your great Tarkaan go and fight himself instead of sending you to be killed? Poor Darkies!”
second, I don’t know why you bring Phillip Pullman into this. As if his viewpoint somehow validates Lewis’s.
Yes, I remember 1 or 2 “good” Colormene. The one in the last battle is deemed good because he was only ignorant of Aslan and converted to the faith. The other one I remember is the girl in the 2nd story who helps the orphaned boy. She seemed to be good because she acted more like a boy than a girl.
I’m not a person who is constantly debating morals in public forums or religious arguments. Just a fairly normal guy. Reading past the first story in the series they became progressively more and more intolerant. I was reading these to my kids. I think the stories are thinly vieled propaganda like arguments aimed at kids.
I’m actually a little surprised reading this blog/forum. After reading your “Golden Age” books I would never have expected the attitudes you express here. I reread them recently, I do hope you write more like them; they are excelent.
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Again, sir, your reply puzzles me. I assume there is some assumption you are making, some connection between two thought in your head that are to me not associated with each other. It is not that I am disagreeing with you: I just cannot follow you.
So far you have not even expressed to me clearly what it is you find objectionable in Lewis. Everything you say sounds like you are stretching or reaching to invent some excuse to dislike him (such as that silly Calormene = Colored Men. Oh, come on. Lewis derived its name from the Latin calor, meaning “heat”. They are the people of the hot country).
Mr. Lewis always struck me as a fair minded man, not prejudiced at all, and intolerant only of those things all honest men should not tolerate.
If you dislike Christians because they are Christian, I understand that: it is the default assumption of the age in which we live. If you dislike Lewis because he writes a children’s book in which the Good Guys are English Schoolchildren and the Bad Guys are Saracens, that seems like an arbitrary reason to dislike an otherwise fine book, but, to each his own.
Why do you say Mr. Lewis does not describe the Calormene as darker skinned? The Calormene in C.S. Lewis are clearly darker skinned. He makes more than one reference to it. From the descriptions, I assume he means they are Levantines. Indeed, I thought that was just what you were objecting to?
To answer (I think) my statement that he describes the Calormenes as darker skinned, you quote were he says there was piles of smelly refuse somewhere—I assume this is part of a description of one of their overcrowded cities. It is a common trope in literature to show that a king is a despot by showing his city being overcrowded and unsanitary. I do not see by what leap of logic you move find describing a city of the bad guys as wretched as being somehow in appropriate for 6 and 8 year olds. I am not saying you are wrong: on that point I have no opinion. I merely saying I cannot follow your reasoning.
The dwarves mock their defeated enemies by calling them “Darkies” (which seems to confirm that they were dark skinned). CS Lewis is British, not American, and it was (as far as I know) not the custom in Britain to refer to Negroes as “Darkies”. In other words, what might look like a racist epithet to you is merely scorn to him: and in any case it never applied to Levantines in America or elsewhere. If the same scene were written with the dwarves making fun of the beards of the Calormene, instead of their hue, it would be the same.
Maybe your point is that dwarves should not jeer at people. Perhaps so. I note that the dwarves in Narnia are not necessarily the nicest people in that world: at least one worked for the White Witch, and several of them become hardened skeptics by the end of LAST BATTLE, and could not taste the feast spread before them.
The reason why I mentioned Pullman is by way of contrast. The way you worded your note sounds as if you do not know what prejudice is and is not. I wanted to clarify.
Mr. Pullman is an example of a man who is prejudiced, so prejudiced that the mars his otherwise fine craftsmanship: not a single churchman is anything but a child-killing villain of absolutely flat and pointless cardboard. A dramatic villain would have posed a real threat; instead Pullman has God fall out of His coffin and die, a creature too weak to be worthy of anything but contempt.
A prejudiced person is unable to comprehend that there may be some good in an enemy group. An unprejudiced person admits there is some good in an enemy group, as Lewis does with the good Calormene whom he brings on stage.
Certainly I said nothing that even implied Mr. Pullman’s viewpoint validated Mr. Lewis: if anything I said the opposite.
As I mentioned before, Narnia follows the style of medieval epics. One of King Arthur’s knights, for example, is Sir Palomedes, a Saracen. One of the enemy knights slain by Roland in ORLANDO FURIOSO converts on his deathbed in a moving scene. The idea that some of the enemy were honorable men, even if their kings were tyrants, is a common theme of the epic genre, not evidence of some sort of moral wrongness, or whatever it is you are trying to say.
If I am reading you correctly (it is hard to tell) your reaction is a sneer. You seem to imply that the “good” (note scare quotes) Calormene don’t count as actually good for some reason. But then, oddly enough, one of the Calormene you dismiss as unimportant is the main female character from HORSE AND HIS BOY.
In other words, the one book where there Calormene are on stage for any length of time, the one Calormene in the spotlight is shown as being resourceful, brave, a good horsewoman, a good storyteller, etc. You case that C.S. Lewis is some sort of evil man because he is Not Nice to Arabs (or whatever it is you are trying to say) has to explain away this glaring exception. Your conclusion does not appear to be supported by any evidence known to me.
The Calormene who converts, keep in mind, is a character in a world where Aslan is real, and Tash is a devil. In that world it is not a matter of opinion: Tash is an evil spirit. If I were writing a Cthulhu story where Cthulhu was an extraterrestrial devil, it would not be some sort of intolerance or race-prejudice for me to have a good character show his goodness by rejecting Cthulhu and all the evils of The Old Ones. It would not be a sign of race-prejudice (or whatever) against prehuman cultic worship of extraterrestrial monsters.
“I’m not a person who is constantly debating morals in public forums or religious arguments. Just a fairly normal guy. Reading past the first story in the series they became progressively more and more intolerant. I was reading these to my kids. I think the stories are thinly vieled propaganda like arguments aimed at kids.”
Well, I am a fairly normal guy myself (except, of course, for my many abnormalities); I am just not sure what you mean by “intolerant”. C.S. Lewis was intolerant of what? Of witches and evil giants?
In the story, the author shows more intolerance for the wicked people of Terebinthia than he does for the Calormene, some of whom are shown to be good. I can find more than one jibe making fun of modern experimental schools; I can find not one jibe making fun of Red, Yellow, or Black men as being inferior races.
Are you objecting to that fact that Lewis was a Christian, and wrote from a Christian viewpoint? Keep in mind that when he wrote, he correctly assumed his audience would be overwhelmingly Christian, and that to teach children the morals and themes of the society in which they lived was regarded as a meritorious act, not a sinister one. I would not mind reading my children A HORSE AND HIS BOY, which teaches that, even among enemies, there is still to be found some good. That sounds like the opposite of intolerance to me.
Finally, you imply that my interest in moral questions should make me more willing to condemn C.S.Lewis, not less. It is my interest in morality that allows me to distinguish between real evil, and what amounts to merely an arbitrary distaste for surface features.
Forgive me, but you indeed being arbitrary. You see intolerance in Lewis because you set out to see it: you are hypersensitive to what are harmless tropes of children’s-book literature. If you see racism in Lewis, you will see it in Tolkien, in Lewis Carroll, in L. Frank Baum, and in Dr. Suess. You will see it everywhere. A friend of mine the other day told me FLASH GORDON was racist. A critic told me that THE GOLDEN AGE expressed a race prejudice against the Chinese, a people I admire and like (more than I like some occidental nations, believe you me). I would have felt wounded by this accusation, but it is a meaningless accusation these days.
Meaningless these days, because the accusation merely confuses a certain particular way of talking, a certain set of code-words, for racial tolerance. These code-words are used only by a clique of people, and their only point is to exclude people not in the clique, so that the in-group can mock and hate the out-group for being unworthy: in this case, the unworthiness is called racism. Neither Lewis nor I speak in this newspeak; we use the Queen’s English: so members of the clique call us racists. What this big charade does is hide real racism, which actually exists and is a real problem. The more the Boy Cries Wolf, the less we listen to the alarm (since so very many alarms are false alarms) and the more chances there are of a real wolf performing some real evil.
I do not know (because I do not know you) if you are a member of the clique or not, but I do know that bringing these reckless and poorly-thought-out accusations of racism against as fine a man of letters as C.S. Lewis adds to this effect.
It is merely your misfortune that a large number of lunatics make the same accusations you make in much the same language you use. How am I to know you are not one of them? You would have to distinguish yourself from the crowd by some particular clarity of logic or force of evidence. Until then, it just sounds like you are leveling a slander.
Since I have also been slandered in like way, you will understand if I am less curious than other men might be to hear it again and again. I must see proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not mere innuendo, before I am convinced.
You picked rather weak quotes to support your case. The first has nothing to do with racism at all. As for the second, it is funny in a children’s story when dwarves mock the Bad Guys. Kids love that sort of thing; just ask Team Rocket. If your kids hear what is being said, they will most likely come away thinking that true kings (like Leonidas) will fight in the forefront of battle, whereas tyrants will hang back and send their men to die in their stead: that true leaders are brave, not that black men are bad. That is the meaning of the dwarf mockery in the line you quoted.
I am sorry if my opinions surprise you, because I am not setting out to offend, and I know my opinions are in the minority. I am a liberal (small l) conservative with a healthy skepticism for environmentalism, feminism, Marxism, and a raft of other modern ideas. Most such ideas I regard as mere fads: they will be gone in one hundred years. I believe in logic and not in emotion. I believe in Aristotle and Epictetus. I am amazed anyone agrees with me at all.
Nonetheless, I am pleased as punch that you enjoyed my humble books. I thank you sincerely for your kind words: this is because your opinion is generous, not necessarily because my books are good. I am writing another space opera like THE GOLDEN AGE even now.
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Movie Corner
Posted April 3, 2007 By John C WrightA father with small children does not get a chance to see many talkies, except for movies involving tap-dancing penguins with the family, or, when the wife wants to use the computer to compose her novel, and wants hubby out of the house, movies involving buff mostly-naked Spartans doing their ancient Greek slo-mo wire-fu slaughter on half-human Persians by the thousands and spraying creeks of cartoon blood across the screen.
But thank the greedy golden gods of the Free Market for Netflicks! Hurrah for Adam Smith and confusion to the Marxists!
Let us see what John Wright, professional Opinionated Opinionator, opines about the films he has seen once the munchkins are safely abed.
TAKE THE LEAD. This is a film, based loosely on real events, about a man who one day walks into a crowded run-down school in a New York ghetto, and merely asked the principal if he can teach ballroom dancing to the ghetto schoolchildren. The principal, who is short handed, puts him in charge of the detention hall. I am normally unmoved by the “mentoring troubled teens” genre of film, but I fell head-over-heels in love with this one.
The main character, Pierre Dulaine (played with humor, verve and grace, by the absurdly handsome Antonio Banderas) is unfailingly polite: he stands up when a lady enters the room. He holds the door for ladies. Slouching teens mock him, and he continues to smile and continues to be courteous. He says “please” and “thank you” while the little barbarians around him talk in grunts and “yo’s”.
And this is the hero. In every other movie I’ve seen in the last twenty years, the polite guy was always Snidely Whiplash, an unctuous and supercilious fellow. Not here.
Here he is the herald of civility and civilization. When the cool hep teens all mock and sneer at him for his old-fashioned ways, when irate teachers and impatient parents wonder if he is wasting precious time and resources teaching a useless skill, he tells them how this formality allows lusty young men and nubile young women to interact, even to putting their arms around each other, while keeping the dignity of the young lady intact. Without such a lesson, when will youth learn to approach the opposite sex without either swaggering or fawning, without being an exhibitionist or an exploiter? This movie gives one of the best and clearest defenses of the fine things in life I have seen on the silver screen.
My only complaint is that the troubled teens in the detention hall needed more screen time to develop their characters. This is a minor complaint in an otherwise brilliant movie.
Dulaine is simply quietly heroic. Where the people around him are living lives of quiet desperation, he is quietly refusing to bend or break under the pressure. Contrast this in your imagination with Cassius Clay, or any other self-aggrandizing sports hero.
And the editing, especially of the dance scenes, was something to see. The fact that Antonio Banderas is very easy on the eyes is reason enough for any ladyfolk to go catch this film.
LADY IN THE WATER. I heard nothing but bad press about this film, and I was surprised when I finally caught it, because I think it is M. Night Shaymalan’s best. It has an eerie fantastical flavor to it, and a mystery to the solved, which mystery depends on the solution of people discovering a hidden truth about themselves. The characters are quirky and memorable, and the acting jobs both by the leads and the character actors are superb.
We normally tend to think of things either falling into the mainstream, which follows the conventions of the mainstream, or into fantasy, which follows the conventions of fantasy. But there are a number of mainstream films with a fantasy element that do not fit into either category. Most TWILIGHT ZONE episodes are in this twilight area, and so are films like HERE COMES MR. JORDAN, or IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, or television shows like I DREAM OF JEANNIE. Such stories take place in the twilight of elfland, where a glimpse, but no more, can be seen of the Otherworld, the realm of magic, but unlike a Tolkien epic or a Conan film, it never steps fully into the light, never creates a fully-realized magical world. LADY IN THE WATER falls into this twilight.
The fantasy elements are present, but the story is really story-telling, and how life is rendering meaningful by the tales we tell about it, how we find our places in life. It is a story about courage and sacrifice and how a simple honest man rises to the occasion. There is a man who is inspired by the sea-muse to write a book that will have a world-changing consequence: he realizes he must give his life to do so, but he writes it nonetheless. Stories can change the world: look at UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
I am really puzzled how anyone could dislike this film. I suppose they were expecting something else because of the name of the director.
There are minor flaws to the film: the winsome naiad, played by the winsome Bryce Howard, for some reason, is called a “narf”, perhaps the stupidest name in all of the realms of fantasy for a sea-elf. She is allegedly a character from a Chinese bedtime story, but neither her name nor the names of her enemies sound Chinese. Good grief, at least Shyalaman could have called the creature a “ningyo” which is a Japanese name for a sea-nymph.
One criticism I heard directed against this film was how a minor character, a book critic, is treated. Supercilious critics scoffed and said that this was the director’s wish-fulfillment against critics. They are entirely missing the point. When something supernatural or something epic happens to us in real life, we have no means of dealing with it except what we have learned through stories. Myths are the soul of the civilization. When a war starts, for example, whatever the governing myth is in the society dictates how men will react to this epic circumstances: if Viet Nam is the governing myth of the society, we will react to all wars according to what that myth says, and we will call the war a quagmire. If David and Goliath is the governing myth in society, then we will root for the little guy. So the movie had to deal with the question of what happens to a man who over-intellectualizes his myth. What do you do when you do not have a myth ready to deal with things of mythic magnitude in life? The character, to make this point, had to be someone who knew stories backward and forward, but who was not himself a creative person: a critic, in other words. Someone who sucks the magic out of myth-making for a living. Of course he has to come to a bad end: the point of the story is that we need stories to live, we need the inspiration as a lantern in the dark. A man who throws that lamp away, according to the logic of the story theme, has to stumble.
So, don’t listen to the critics about this one. This movie is for the fairytale lover in all of us.
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PAYDAY!!!!!
Posted April 3, 2007 By John C WrightMy wife just got a nice fat advance check for her novel CHILDREN OF PROSPERO. She is now a professional novelist, and we are a two-income family.
I am sure the amount was so high because of her powerful and ruthless literaray agent, who is one of the movers and shakers of the Science Fiction world.
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Larger than 200 miles in diameter
Posted April 2, 2007 By John C WrightAll known bodies in the solar system with a diameter of over 200 miles.
This includes trans-Neptunian objects with cool names like Ixion. Note the size of Titan in relation to Mercury.
You might be wondering, since Eris is bigger than Pluto, how come it is not Planet Ten? The answer: Planet Ten is where the red lectroids come from: Pluto, or Yoggoth on the Rim (as she is known among the Servants of the Great One), is infested with the living Fungi of Mi-Go, and maybe even Shuma-Gorath and Dagon; and besides, the three-eyed Wormface aliens have a military base there, the brain-eaters of Pluto, and many other species. Inhabited by these august entities, how dare we not call it a planet?
Anyone who says otherwise is a Pluto-hater.
(Now, if we can all agree to call Pluto a Dwarf Planet, that is fine with me, provided we rename it Khazad Dum.)
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