On “Being or Nothingness” by “Joe K”
I left the following comment today on this thread— most of the comments are in English but the main article is in Portuguese, so use an online translator if you want to read it.
Hello all.
Today I also received a copy of the book. I believe it is is a clever form of “Christian viral marketing” aimed at intellectuals who have previously written admiringly of the works of Escher, Hofstadter, Adams, and such, as I have done at various times on my blog and other web sites.
As one who was raised as a Christian and then left the faith, the allegorical nature of the work is quite clear, even from the enigmatic “Will tell you more when I return!” (clearly a reference to the Second Coming of Jesus) inscribed on the envelope where a return address should appear, to the book’s closing warning, “You wouldn’t want to trade the eternal loop of your life for an infinite loop in the world of ideas, would you?” (clearly a reference to choosing faith and eternal life over rationality and empiricism.)
Overall, I’m impressed with the author’s willingness to try a new approach to reaching intellectual non-believers by the attempt at creating a faith-based logic-breaking koan. But the message is still the same: if you want eternal life then check your brains at the door.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I got this today too, with the handwritten comment on the envelope. Sent from Sweden. I’m still trying to work it out. I do have “I am a strange loop”, and I know Doug Hofstadter slightly from Indiana. But I am not a likely target for Christian anything! There’s precious little out there on the web about this. Its really quite beautifully done. There’s one word cut out during discussion of the Meaning of Life (42, yeah, its full of borrowings). I am very curious and a little thrilled by the whole thing. Nicely done, whatever the purpose.