Posted by permenant at spider-mtc-th011.proxy.aol.com on September 16, 2001 at 23:45:04:
In Reply to: Coming up for air posted by Repost for Kevin on September 16, 2001 at 22:47:43:
While I express my respect for all of your work Kevin, I totally disagree with your "This is what happens when people take their religion far too seriously" line. My church supported an interfaith peace service with our local muslim community tonight. It's a Catholic church and as you may know the Catholic Church does promote interfaith dialogue. We also (this can be looked up in the Cathechism) do not promote the idea that other faiths do not contain any truth in them. We do believe that God has revealed Himself in many ways throughout history.
Now if that statement said "this is what happens when people manipulate their religion to fit their selfish desires", that I can buy, that I understand. But I do see what happens when people take their religion "far too seriously" (whatever that is) on an almost daily basis. I see charity and benevolence, love and understanding, and I see this world as a better place. The examples I can cite are more than I can type here.
Now descrimination and superiority aren't taught by any of the major faith groups. If any of this seems apparent, it's carried by those who misinterpret and/or manipulate their faith for their desires. Hitler claimed some Christian affiliation (even the swastika was a version of teh cross), the KKK claims to be "God-fearing", and some fucking yahoos who bombed our country on tuesday claim to be devout followers of the Islamic tradition. This is simply false. My only beef with Dogma and some of the extras on the(amazingly assembled) DVD (and this is only a little off topic) was you often speaking for God. Albeit most of it was a joke (and I laugh so fucking hard when I see Salma Hayek say "Whaaat Deeeees?", but when I saw the almost-addition of the Nag Hammadi reference on the DVD, I saw nothing but Time Magazine scholarship. This isn't a knock on you (you probably stopped reading by now anyways), but so many people assume that if it's in a magazine, it's true and never do the homework. This is greatly shown in the media's coverage of the Jesus Seminar some years back.
Anyways, I'm sorry for the rant because I am a huge fan. I've been ever since I saw Randal checking out Caitlin as she was heading for the bathroom. I'm 20 now, but for as long as you've made movies, I've loved 'em. They really did get me through some shit.
(And for everyone else whose reading this and is sick of it: "Hi, I'm Tom, upstate NY represent").
Thanks,
Tom