The Book of Genocide

[james_morrow]

I wanted to share an audacious Washington Post piece from Richard Dawkins, in which he makes an interesting point concerning the Reverend Pat Robertson’s recent attribution of Haiti’s pain to an alleged ancestral Satanism. Dawkins avers that, throughout this eschatological donnybrook, it is actually Robertson who has behaved as the legitimate

Comments

[anonymous]

People like Robertson make me so furious I can't form intelligent sentences with which to properly lash out at them. Some of the comments under Dawkins's article were also so ignorant they made my head hurt.

*sigh*

I'm going to go curl up in a ball and weep for a while.

[j_brisby]

Greetings, Mr. Morrow, this comment isn't actually related to your post, but I'm writing it out of desperation. You see, I've been wracking my memory trying to recall a little piece of information. Or more precisely, where I first encountered a little piece of information. I hope you can help.

It concerns an alchemical symbol; a diamond with a hook descending from it. Supposedly, it's a symbol for filtration. I thought it might make an interesting element in a tattoo design I'm working on. But now I'm trying to remember where I first encountered this symbol, and its meaning, and I'm coming up blank...except for a vague impression that it might have been in one of your books.

Does this ring any kind of a bell with you?

[james_morrow]

I haven't brought alchemy on stage very much in my fiction. Could you be thinking of Theodore Roszak's "The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein"? Lots of alchemy in that novel.

[j_brisby]

I found it! It was in Diane Ackerman's 'An Alchemy Of Mind'. Finally I can rest...

robertson

[anonymous]

Some consider Robertson a blatant idiot on par with a hydrophoby dog (as they used to say of rabid sorts), but I think he is a canny showman. An interesting sidebar concerning regional disasters turns up in, of all places, Laurie Garrett's excellent "Betrayal of Trust", which is about public health and politics. In a lengthy note she describes a trip to Kinshaasa in the '90s during the time Clinton had cut off Mobutu and Robertson showed up in a show of support for "this staunch friend of the United States." It was an altogether despicable and puzzling display until she found out about Robertson's diamond mines in Zaire and Angola, operations threatened by Clinton's policies.

Diamond mines. The Lord giveth and Robertson casheth in.

Mark Tiedemann

On the book of genocide you don't mention

[anonymous]

This fairly long comment of mine is a little late in the day but I think it warranted. Mr Morrow to be frank I find your criticism of Genesis as a book of genocide (echoing Dawkins) to be over the top, way over the top. I am no fan of institutional religion, I am no atheist neither btw, but the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a crude "morality" tale if ever there was one, is one very small part of Genesis and likewise a crude so-called morality tale not unique to the ancient Jewish book, whose sources and influences were not confined to ancient Jewry since they did not live in a cultural bubble, but a heritage and mutual influences of other religions and peoples from the ancient Middle and Near East and Meditteranean. Much of this past 'melting pot' is of course lost to us, the ancient past of humanity is both murky and confused to us. The Jewish religion itself constantly evolved, was never a single set belief system (and is not today) and this was typical of many of the ancient faiths in the region which influenced Jewry and which

Re: On the book of genocide you don't mention

[james_morrow]

Dear Anonymous

Re: On the book of genocide you don't mention

[anonymous]

Mr Morrow thanks for your reply

[anonymous]

I continue