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I think at this point we've all realized that yes, a DC universe that accepts Hell Blazer is farcically hostile to Christianity.
Just be thankful that it's Hellblazer instead of MegaTen. :D

Anyway, anybody up for wanting Father Mattias to meet someone from the Greek pantheon? That'll be an interesting talk, I believe, as long as said member isn't one of the smitier ones.
 
Hey, pretty much every religion has some sort of hell or place of torment.

As bad as hell is, you're not actively destroying souls like in Egyptian mythology.

Besides, you want people like the Joker to go to heaven?
No.
 
Since I actually am a Christian ...
I guess it just goes to emphasize one of the old Stuff White People like posts...
White people like Religions that aren't their parent's.
As a hard Dawkinsian Atheist it amuses me too. However with Hellblazer, pretty much every religions gods are utter dicks. Even the Rainbow Serpent was a dick, as was the Aztec god John met.

Pretty much the only gods who weren't dicks, was that god of Travel that Lucifer went to for the first journey, and, nah, I think that's it.

Regarding meeting an angel...Doesn't The First count?
Not an Angel.
I also back Hades, if only because it means she might be there. :( It's like Zoat is trying to suffocate my OTP within the vacuum of the abyss.
 
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Glad there's a realistic debate on religion between two reasonable people going on. Also glad that none of the gods have shown up yet. As amusing as it would be if Eris scolded Paul for still not having a girlfriend on live t.v., it would be unrealistic if, after all the theological debates in history, they chose this moment to reveal themselves.

That said, as amusing as it would be to get an interview with Mr. Miracle, Hera, Odin, Lucifer, and Morpheus, it would be even more amusing if Paul managed to get them an interview with the DC Cain and Able.

Also, does the school Lynne goes to have her home address? Even if Darksied took care of everyone who would care enough to check up on Grayven, wouldn't Volcana want to check up on Lynne? Especially after coming so close to being kidnapped recently? Would it be a good thing or a bad thing it the psychic school sent someone to check up on them while one of the most powerful psychics in the world was broadcasting anti-life?
 
If you ask 'why the firstborn?', I cannot say for sure. The Bible gives no specific reason why they were targeted
I've thought it to be a direct retribution. After all, the previous pharaoh had a standing order to throw all male Hebrew babies into the Nile, and I don't recall that order being rescinded with his successor.
The Bible was originally written in Aramaic.
And ancient Hebrew. And Greek! Don't forget Greek. Lol

This interview is proving surprisingly civil. Remaining objective and mostly accurate in a written discussion, let alone verbal, can be difficult. It's... kinda surreal seeing a religious discussion between two of my spheres of study.
 
Who said I was talking about Christian's :p

My point was more on the point of interpretation. Remember the whisper game. A round peg being turned into a square peg is but a slight change in such a scenario. The Bible was originally written in Aramaic. How many people read it in the original language? How many priests do that? How many people read instead an interpretation? And then interpret that?
Thomas Römer, currently professor in Le Collège de France for Biblical environments, read all the relevant ancient texts in their original language.

I'm not sure his course is translated in English, but if you can understand French, it's available as podcast and very interesting, especially when he notes the translation changes that were made sometimes poorly (for example, after climbing down Mount Sinai, Moise is often portraied irridiating light : this is apparently a mistraduction of "having horns", because it seemed weird to the Greek translator that didn't get that back then, most powerful divinities were associated with bulls, and having horns meant being visibly marked by YHWH as his chosen).

Anyway I don't know if he spoke about your specific point, but it's highly possible.
 
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Speaking of built-in issues with this reality...
I think the major problem stems from scarcity.

If reality made unlimited resources possible, we won't have as much problems. War, poverty, etc is due to insufficient resources and the competition it raises.

If non-Cartesian positioning was possible, space limitations will go out.
Without space limitations, we may have immortality without the issues.

If humans were much more resistant to damage/illness etc, we will have eliminated pain & suffering & death.

If zeroth law wasn't in application, perpetual motion machines are possible.
We won't have to worry about entropy, polluting power sources etc.

So all in all, the issues we face are simply due to reality not supporting this "cheat mode" we could have.
 
More likely the Abrahamic faiths will get a significant boost in membership. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but there aren't exactly that many religions out there that promise as good a deal as heaven is supposed to be.

People who would convert because of the benefits package are exactly the sort of people who wouldn't qualify to pass the Pearly Gates. You only get in if you truly believe and truly accept J.C. as your saviour, anything less and it's straight to infinite torture forever for you.

Even absent all the possibly questionable Hellraiser stuff regarding how angels act and so on (which I can't comment on one way or another given that I haven't read them myself) I'd call Heaven a bunch of bastards for that alone.

Besides, you want people like the Joker to go to heaven?

Yes. Infinite torture forever is unthinkably evil. No one deserves that. No one could possibly deserve that. A being as evil as Sauron multiplied by Cruella deVille to the power of those jackasses who park in handicapped spots illegally wouldn't deserve that.

If the options are "Joker goes to Heaven" and "Joker goes to Hell" then the only possible moral choice is the former. Finite crimes cannot merit infinite punishment and torture is always wrong.

I really like the discussion. Father Mattias remains probably my favourite side character, he's very moral and eloquent with a core of steel.
 
Thomas Römer, currently professor in Le Collège de France for Biblical environments, read all the relevant ancient texts in their original language.

I'm not sure his course is translated in English, but if you can understand French, it's available as podcast and very interesting, especially when he notes the translation changes that were made sometimes poorly (for example, after climbing down Mount Sinai, Moise is often portraied irridiating light : this is apparently a mistraduction of "having horns", because it seemed weird to the Greek translator that didn't get that back then, most powerful divinities were associated with bulls, and having horns meant being visibly marked by YHWH as his chosen).

Anyway I don't know if he spoke about your specific point, but it's highly possible.

its times like this i wish i was better at french :(
 
Also, does the school Lynne goes to have her home address?
Lynne is starting school in the new term. The Centre has her home address. Grayven isn't keeping his home address secret.
This interview is proving surprisingly civil. Remaining objective and mostly accurate in a written discussion, let alone verbal, can be difficult. It's... kinda surreal seeing a religious discussion between two of my spheres of study.
It helps that the people taking part like and respect each other. And the audience were heavily selected.
Huh? I thought that you confirmed that some kind of ghost-thing happened when he left Hell to bugger about on a much needed (and possibly permanent) vacation?
Oh, he left Hell, certainly. He just didn't open a bar afterwards.
Whatever he did after that in this story, it apparently doesn't include moving to LA and starting a nightclub.
It's not an obvious follow up.
 
More likely the Abrahamic faiths will get a significant boost in membership. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but there aren't exactly that many religions out there that promise as good a deal as heaven is supposed to be.

The Christian mythological version of heaven is garbage. You spend all hours of the day singing praises to your god, forever more. Even if you like that sort of thing, you probably want a bit of variety. You probably find a number of other things fulfilling and would be sad to think they were forever closed to you. If you called it a punishment for the damned, that would seem just as appropriate.

I'm guessing the Silver City and DCU Paradise are nicer.
 
He survived a splash in the face, not being thrown in the Pacific during a hurricane.
More like he survived getting a bucketload tossed in his face, but right now? he's drinking from the firehose.

Regarding meeting an angel...Doesn't The First count?

Or does "Violently bisecting countless times" not count as meeting?
Lucifer =/= The First. They are 2 separate entities.
As someone else pointed out, the First (as well as the Second and Third) was never an angel.
 
Oh I was wiki walking and found a minor DC character that I think Paul would love to pieces- Elphius Levi the techno-alchemist and computer mystic.

He scienced the ever loving hell out of magic until they were one and the same for him.

You want a possessing entity installed? No problem. Want a possessing entity uninstalled? No problem.

As to how Paul or Grayven could find out about him? Levi self publishes a magazine- Techno-Alchemical Journal.
That's awesome! Wonder if OL we'll ever learn about and meet him at some point possibly if he ever interacts with Blood or reads his magazine assuming that is a thing currently, and he is still not in the middle of his research.

Would be cool as heck to see him interact with the other connections that OL has made and can act as a middle ground teaching both sides things they lack.
 
Is gonna be that yerkass with the green cape and hood right? Man is really easy to hate the modern Spectre.
While he's an asshole, he also reflects well on The Presence. Aztar's a jerk who genuinely wants to repent but hasn't got it right yet, so rather than cast him into eternal punishment for his failures or give him reward for his intent despite the macro-scale suffering he's caused, The Presence is basically giving him unlimited chances to make up for his mistakes and even giving him a cheat sheet on how to do so by binding him to a mortal soul. If Hellblazer shows that God and Angels can be douchebags, Spectre (and Zauriel, and the two from Sandman) show that they can also be good people.

Angels in DC are like mortals - you've got unrepentant assholes, you've got good people, you've got the just plain alien incomprehensible ones, and you've got jerks that genuinely try to be nice and even if they fail consistently that's still got to count for something.

And the nature of hypertime and magic means that which category one of 'em belongs to may vary depending on who's looking (or even have multiple incarnations of a single one, some of whom are in different categories).
 
While he's an asshole, he also reflects well on The Presence. Aztar's a jerk who genuinely wants to repent but hasn't got it right yet, so rather than cast him into eternal punishment for his failures or give him reward for his intent despite the macro-scale suffering he's caused, The Presence is basically giving him unlimited chances to make up for his mistakes and even giving him a cheat sheet on how to do so by binding him to a mortal soul. If Hellblazer shows that God and Angels can be douchebags, Spectre (and Zauriel, and the two from Sandman) show that they can also be good people.
I only really read the Crispus Allen Spectre, but... That wasn't a repentant being. He was lecturing the man who was a much better judge of morality than he was while torturing people to death. Maybe that just wasn't a good depiction, but it really stuck with me and I'd probably depict him in the same sort of way.
 
This conversation has convinced me that the next time DC writers involve supernatural beings from Christianity, they should have people on staff who have extensively studied the relevant literature. That way they can be fleshed out and fallible without being offensive. Maybe have the nastier bits involve the Demiurge in some way.

Preferably, they should also have an Angel hang a lampshade on how the Bible is an unreliable source, and that the Creator is not something that can be truly comprehended by anyone except itself.
 
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