User:Old Dickens: Difference between revisions

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==Verse==
==Verse==
'''W'''hat if the stories were true? What if there really were [[Vampires]] and [[Werewolves]] and [[Wizards]] and [[Witches]] who really could turn you into a toad, or make you think they had? Suppose [[Samuel Vimes|Nick]] and [[Sybil Ramkin|Nora]] {{wp|Nick_and_Nora_Charles|Charles}} were the most powerful couple in the country...
'''W'''hat if the stories were true? What if there really were [[Vampires]] and [[Werewolves]] and [[Wizards]] and [[Witches]] who really could turn you into a toad, or make you think they had? Suppose [[Samuel Vimes|Nick]] and [[Sybil Ramkin|Nora]] {{wp|Nick_and_Nora_Charles|Charles}} were the most powerful couple in the country...
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Tales from this remote universe arrive regularly via [[Inspiration Particles|inspiration particles]] intercepting the particularly receptive and talented brain of [[Terry Pratchett|Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE]]. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sort, file and illuminate the elements of these chronicles in this little corner of the vast library of [[L-space]]. Just don't forget your ball of string.
Tales from this remote universe arrive regularly via [[Inspiration Particles|inspiration particles]] intercepting the particularly receptive and talented brain of [[Terry Pratchett|Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE]]. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sort, file and illuminate the elements of these chronicles in this little corner of the vast library of [[L-space]]. Just don't forget your ball of string.


==Bridge==
'''Y'''ann Martel's Agnosticism (from ''The Life of Pi''}:
''I felt a kinship with [my atheist teacher]. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them — and then they leap.''
''I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He bursts out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a way of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.''
Only...there is a difference between "doubt" and "the inability to know", or a complete lack of evidence on which to form an opinion. We cannot, just now, transport ourselves to Andromeda. The opening paragraph is utter nonsense. Faith is what the religious (and others) use instead of evidence. Atheists don’t have it: that’s why they’re atheists.


==Chorus==
==Chorus==

Revision as of 00:18, 11 January 2015

Verse

What if the stories were true? What if there really were Vampires and Werewolves and Wizards and Witches who really could turn you into a toad, or make you think they had? Suppose Nick and Nora Charles were the most powerful couple in the country...

There is a story that the world is a disc borne on the backs of four elephants which stand on the carapace of an enormous turtle. In one corner of the Multiverse (the one farthest from Reality) this, too, is true. This is where the story creates the history and a one-in-a-million chance turns up nine times out of ten and the ocean falls into space around the rim without depleting itself. On the Discworld, "what if?" must be answered, the stories lived, the myth made real.

Tales from this remote universe arrive regularly via inspiration particles intercepting the particularly receptive and talented brain of Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sort, file and illuminate the elements of these chronicles in this little corner of the vast library of L-space. Just don't forget your ball of string.


Chorus

I sometimes sit and laugh giddily at the mere existence of some Pratchett characters (Carrot Ironfoundersson, say) and the reality he creates out of the absurd stereotype. This is often toward the end of the bottle of wine, but still, it suggests how he's different from other writers I have followed. There are now more than a thousand Discworld characters described here, and that's not all.




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Made a sysop for the many good contributions --Sanity 01:34, 19 August 2006 (CEST)