[quote="terra"]
william gibson wrote [i]neuromancer[/i].

and snow crash is good stuff. definitely more of a computer geek kind of book though.[/quote]

Ah! I was thinking of Cryptonomicon. Hah, I was pretty off.

And I thought I'd really like Snow Crash too, being a geek and all...but...Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention to it.

[quote="terra"]william gibson wrote [i]neuromancer[/i].

and snow crash is good stuff. definitely more of a computer geek kind of book though.[/quote]

<3

[quote="Jomei"][quote="Kaze no Mirai"][quote="clouds drive monster"][quote="Jomei"]Everyone I know who has read it has liked it. : | Maybe the people who thought it sucked were offended by the religious implications involved.[/quote]


well the religious implications are pretty bogus and are blown out of proportion, in all honesty. i'm not really offended by them, but i'm aggirvated there are people that don't know enough about the real history of christianity to doubt their own beliefs. I hear that when you're reading it, it all makes sense, though. It just doesn't line up with what really happened.



But people are too lazy to go get a history book and find what really happened.[/quote]

Exactly. [/quote]

Yeah, because, as we know, history books all agree with each other and are 100% accurate. [/quote]

I'm sure your skepticism is because you know something hundreds of scholars don't.

[quote="clouds drive monster"][quote="Jomei"][quote="Kaze no Mirai"][quote="clouds drive monster"][quote="Jomei"]Everyone I know who has read it has liked it. : | Maybe the people who thought it sucked were offended by the religious implications involved.[/quote]


well the religious implications are pretty bogus and are blown out of proportion, in all honesty. i'm not really offended by them, but i'm aggirvated there are people that don't know enough about the real history of christianity to doubt their own beliefs. I hear that when you're reading it, it all makes sense, though. It just doesn't line up with what really happened.



But people are too lazy to go get a history book and find what really happened.[/quote]

Exactly. [/quote]

Yeah, because, as we know, history books all agree with each other and are 100% accurate. [/quote]

I'm sure your skepticism is because you know something hundreds of scholars don't.[/quote]

Ha, probably.

Or maybe because the very premise of "knowing" something about history is highly suspect. Many historians would agree that much of our written history is potentially inaccurate because of the fact that history is, most often, written down by those who prevail in conflicts. When comparing new ideas to what is considered accurate history, there is an obvious bias toward what is already assumed to be true. One must, however, question how accurate some of our histories are.

My skepticism comes not from something I know that no one else does; it comes from the fact that there are different versions of history that lead me to believe that the accepted versions of events may not reflect what actually happened. Just because one view of history is widely accepted does not mean that it is true.

The thing is, you're being skeptical about the wrong thing. Be skeptical when they try to explain the reasoning behind the events in history. Don't be skeptical about the event itself when it's recorded plainly by men of that time or just after. We know the event happened, now the "why," that is the question. Fictionalizing history is obviously exactly what it says.
Now regarding the Da Vinci code and it's claim to truth, and having seen the evidence against it, not in the way he explains the "why" (utter fiction), but in the events themselves, I can safely regard it as complete fiction.

You still assume that we actually know the events that have happened; that is the very assumption that my previous post addresses. I don't feel the need to restate my points, so refer back to that post. There are very good reasons to question the accuracy of events that we "know" happened. Details, such as those pertaining to Jesus Christ's alleged divinity, matter.

"Why" doesn't matter if you don't really know the "what."

For the record, The Da Vinci Code doesn't have any claim to truth except in its descriptions of art, architecture, documents, and rituals. Dan Brown says, "While it is my belief that some of the theories discussed by these characters may have merit, each individual reader must explore these characters' viewpoints and come to his or her own interpretations." No one is saying that it is a fact that Jesus's bloodline exists today. That, while we can't disprove it, is admittedly fanciful.

I just finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel, and The Summer of My German Soldier. Had to read em for school

nice sig jomei. I like how everyone treats it as an accurate depiction of what happened, even though it was painted over a century later. And I don't think I assume anything that shouldn't be assumed. We're speaking in an airy way, btw. We could at least get into some concrete truth and start from there, otherwise... I'm going to stop arguing, because it just doesn't make sense to get all philosphical without any foundation to base it off of.

I agree we shouldn't argue about it. We have different ideas about the nature of "concrete truths" regarding ancient history, and there really is no known answer, otherwise historians wouldn't be debating the very same thing we are. So yeah, at the risk of sounding trite, let's agree to disagree on this, because neither of us is an expert anyway.

oh man. this is good.

[url]http://www.spatch.net/frontpage.cgi?entry=072105[/url]

Currently reading The Catcher In The Rye. Next is probably Da Vinci Code, Fahrenheit 451 or 1984.

haha

the da vinci code is trash, don't waste your time.

norwegian wood- haruki murakami

i'm enjoying this one. i'm almost done with murakami's entire library. :O

I haven't read it... but this little story is a gem.

I'm about to start on Ursula K. Leguin's book the Dispossesed.