let’s face it: bears are scary. and they want our honey.

[ljplicease]

Today Tristan was asking me about Transformers again. This pleases me because this is the list of the things that I am somewhat expert in (no particular order):

• Transformers
• C/C++
• Star Trek
• Perl
• Doctor Who
• Photography
• Thursday Next
• Never Being Confused

Anyway, he was asking me about where the Transformers came from and I told him about Primus and Unicron, the gods of the Transformers. This is sort of how it went:

me: Primus and Unicron are the gods of the Transformers. Primus created the transformers to battle the evil Unicron.
Tristnan: Did Unicron create the Decepticons to fight the Autobots?
me: No, Primus created both the Autobots and the Decepticons
Tristan: Why did he create them just to fight each other?

I really love the questions that Tristan asks. Now, granted we are talking about a mythology that nobody believes in, but you could easily recreate this exact same conversation using a number of “real” religions that I can think of, and this is exactly the sort of abstract thinking that should be applied to the subject.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/telegram_/]

...no but, seriously. why did he he create them just to fight each other?????

[plicease]

When Tristan asked I mumbled something about free will. It was amusingly uncomfortable though, I almost felt like I was actually defending my own religion, even though as I mentioned I don't actually believe it anymore than I believe Zeus is the king of the gods.

religion vs mythology

[lenviol.livejournal.com]

Ok. I agree with you def. about the fact that approaching religion should have perhaps similiarity to approaching mythology. Of course depending on the person, how religious they are, the discussion would differ. However, abstract exsists in both world of mythology (or as someone could say, undocumented history) and in religion (somewhat documented and extremely highly debated history (?) ).

It's cool that Tristan and you are having these conversations. Sounds interesting and goood.

P.S.
expert in never confused :))

later

[hijinks-ensue.livejournal.com]

i love this, especially after studying greek theatre for the past month!

[plicease]

funny coincidence, because just the other day I was refreshing my memory about Oedipus and Antigone via Wikipedia, which I haven't thought about since studying it in high school.