From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Jun 12 2003 - 14:49:01 MDT
On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 01:21:37PM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> Now its questionable that "banning" has any serious effect
> in this day and age (of downloading off the net, ordering
> DVDs from overseas, etc.) but the fact that they attempted
> to do it and the reasons provided are quite bizarre
> having to do with "issues of existence and creation related
> to the three divine religions".
[spoiler warning]
Well, from a theological point of view the movie *is* troublesome, in
fact more troublesome than the first. After all, Neo is shown as a
saviour that both has human passions (not so bad; Islam acknowledges
that Mohammed liked cats and was buried beneath the bed of his favorite
wife where he died) and is fundamentaly deluded (*very* bad). After all,
if saviours can be unwitting agents for the archons keeping us
imprisoned (the gnostic position taken by the Matrix movies), then what
about Jesus or Mohammed? Gnosticism is something that tends to worry
traditionalists.
Of course, the reasons are likely also a dislike for violent american
movies, distaste for the erotic scenes, the strong women, the message of
rebellion against authority and so on.
> Looks like papers by Nick Bostrom, books by Damien Broderick,
> and perhaps even papers by Anders and myself might be next
> on the hit list.
Are they widely read? Are they likely to affect somebody? Those are
issues censors tend to think about. Bring these works up and the censors
would likely find them disagreeable, but otherwise they would
concentrate on more pressing menaces like MTV. Fortunately there are
cultural developments that might break through anyway:
http://www.reason.com/0306/cr.cf.look.shtml
IMHO rock videos are currently more important for liberating the Arab
world than transhumanist treatises. Their day will come later.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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