Now, now, Nadiatims. That is not the full story. For every religious nut in history massacring non-believers, there have been atheist nuts massacring believers.
Civility is a major component of civil society.

I'm waiting for my 6th Edition Vol.1 book to arrive and not having read it before, I wanted to ask just how many religious stories (say, as a percentage) are there?

As a person who was neither brainwashed by religion NOR atheism (i.e. born an atheist, still an atheist), and as a person who lives in a first world non-American yet majority white country, I think I might have more trouble than most if some of the Kanji requires basic knowledge of religious things in order to memorise the kanji.

For example, here is my non-Google/Wikipedia assessment of the below:

raharney wrote:

Can you give me examples of Christian themes in RTK that the average English-speaker wouldn't know?
Solomon? Noah's Ark? Adam and Eve? these are simply part of our heritage, like other allusions such as Zeus, Thor, the assassination of Cesar, King Lear, Galileo, Gulliver's Travels, the Battle of Tours, and so on. Unless education has nose-dived big time in the past decade (which I don't for a minute believe it has) people should know this stuff.
And so, if people are making an issue of something that is common knowledge then I have a suspicion there are other agendas at play.

Solomon: Never heard of him. Actually, I have. In a Japanese RPG called Shadow Hearts 2. And that's about it.
Noah's Ark: Okay, I know this one. Old guy with a massive ship and two of each species of animals. Maybe a pair of dinosaurs too. Related to some sort of equally massive flood.
Adam and Eve: Okay, I know this one too. One of them got tricked by a talking snake into eating an apple and it went downhill (God's wrath I think) from there.
Zeus: This guy isn't from Christianity though. Norse god of gods.
Thor: Neither is this guy. God of thunder.
Assassination of Caesar: I'm not into history but I guess he's a pretty important Roman guy.
King Lear: Never heard of him.
Galileo: A scientist doing science during a time of Catholic rule. Respect.
Gulliver's Travels: Never heard of this.
The Battle of Tours: Never heard of this.

In my defence, the reason I don't know about most of the above is because they are not relevant to me the same way VHS is not relevant. They're just not.

Anyway, since everyone else is doing it, I'll offer an opinion on religion too: I think religion does more harm than good. Therefore, my hope is for religion NOT to be banned by the State, but for it to be naturally made redundant and irrelevant and replaced with science and reason.

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

Roughly 1/2 of 1% are religious stories, maybe less (as of 4th edition) If you don't know what the story is talking about, make up another story. Your other knowledge gaps will also give you trouble. Heisig apparently had a solid classical education and made full use of it in his stories.

1/2 of 1% doesn't sound like much at all.

I'd be happy to learn a little bit of religion (but not too much) for the sake of Kanji.

qwertyytrewq wrote:

As a person who was neither brainwashed by religion NOR atheism (i.e. born an atheist, still an atheist)...

I was also born and raised atheist (ah, the good ol' U of SSR), but your phrasing somehow reminds me of this cartoon

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Zeus: This guy isn't from Christianity though. Norse god of gods.
Thor: Neither is this guy. God of thunder.

You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?...please tell me you are ...

Last edited by vonPeterhof (2011 December 06, 4:04 pm)

ファブリス wrote:

The new edition of RTK will include a Flying Spaghetti Monster primitive. Happiness ensues and the good people of the Earth sleep tightly ever so after! Hooray!

But some of us don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I personally believe in the Great Unicorn.  Why are my beliefs not being validated?!

"pointless point"   - Hey, that's deep. In a zen koan way.

"a one-dimensional stick man"  - Oh, I get it...haha...a real STICKman.
(Pity that lines have points - that metaphor was really working.)

It's always great to discover new words to call other people's ideas stupid. (oh, haha, kinda ironic, eh?): 

       inane:  lacking significance, meaning, or point (ie "pointless" )

       vacuous: marked by lack of ideas or intelligence: stupid, inane (ie "pointless")

So ... it was a pointless, pointless, pointless point.   Brilliant!

Wasn't that what Seinfeld was all about? Nothing?  No wonder that cartoon is funny.  ;p

(Hmm,  it seems my parents named me after a "hammer-wielding bathrobe-wearing thunder maker." ) ;p

Who me? No, not at all. I was just kiddin around. heh. I actually think it's a banal, trite, cliched cartoon. (Actually, I didn't get it at first, but after looking up "atheist" and "fundamentalist", I could easily see how stupid it is. Easily.)

But your response [to the cartoon] was pure gold. Thanks, man. Humour has a way of lifting the spirits, you know? :-)  (btw, you don't need to use profanity to try to relate to us. It's beneath you.)

Last edited by Thora (2011 December 07, 1:07 am)

JimmySeal wrote:

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Zeus: This guy isn't from Christianity though. Norse god of gods.

Greek, actually.

I stand corrected. I confused Zeus with Odin. The fact that I confused them both just shows how different countries share many similarities.

vonPeterhof wrote:

qwertyytrewq wrote:

As a person who was neither brainwashed by religion NOR atheism (i.e. born an atheist, still an atheist)...

I was also born and raised atheist (ah, the good ol' U of SSR), but your phrasing somehow reminds me of this cartoon

If I sounded like I was making fun of atheism, I actually wasn't. When I said that I "wasn't brainwashed by atheism", I was saying that in an ironic way. I have no beef with atheism.

vonPeterhof wrote:

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Zeus: This guy isn't from Christianity though. Norse god of gods.
Thor: Neither is this guy. God of thunder.

You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?...please tell me you are ...

Are you insinuating that my summaries were wrong? Well, like I said, I didn't use Google/Wikipedia, just what little knowledge I have in my brain. I could easily cheat and pretend to be knowledgeable by using Google.

People can say I'm wrong, but I'm at least I'm honest (about my wrongness). Which is more than can be said for the average person these days.

Anyway, I'm happy to announce that I just received my Amazon parcel with the Remembering the Kanji trilogy. I hope to finally kickstart the Kanji aspect of my Japanese learning.

and arguably 1. (even ignoring the fact you can just torrent it)

Thora wrote:

Who me? No, not at all. I was just kiddin around. heh. I actually think it's a banal, trite, cliched cartoon. (Actually, I didn't get it at first, but after looking up "atheist" and "fundamentalist", I could easily see how stupid it is. Easily.)

But your response [to the cartoon] was pure gold. Thanks, man. Humour has a way of lifting the spirits, you know? :-)  (btw, you don't need to use profanity to try to relate to us. It's beneath you.)

Ok.