The Necronomicon facts or Fiction?

And it seems your missing my point.

The book is fake.... so what?

Yeah been a big fan of RINF for a long time now, some good stuff there

Originally posted by Cug
And it seems your missing my point.

The book is fake.... so what?

I didn't know it was possible to be a postmodernist and a wizard at the same time. But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Tortuously raising 'hidden narratives' from great novels and comic books is all too akin to invoking the powers assumed to lie hidden, implicit in the words of grimoires. Both presuppose a belief in something powerful, but unseen.

Cug, you are an absolute goldmine of provocative ideas.

I didn't know it was possible to be a postmodernist and a wizard at the same time.

I don't know what precisely it is about that statement that I like so much, but I love it!

Originally posted by Cug
And it seems your missing my point.

The book is fake.... so what?

Yes thats quite clear

But see your the one suggesting it could be thought of as real in a few hundred years time.THATS THE POINT and what I disagree with.

By your thinking Superman could be thought of as having been a real person (or based on a real person) like Jesus or King Arthur hundreds of years from now. You were suggesting only a few hundered is what determines if something is thought of as real/plausible or a pure work of fiction.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
By your thinking Superman could be thought of as having been a real person (or based on a real person) like Jesus or King Arthur hundreds of years from now. You were suggesting that only a few hundred years is what determines if something is thought of as real/plausible or a pure work of fiction.

Well, it does, doesn't it? We don't know that Jesus or King Arthur ever really existed; many people assume they did, but that's only because textual sources aver it. The sources could be false, but after many centuries it's impossible to prove that conclusively, so those who wish to believe are free to do so. In the final analysis, such people's beliefs and resulting behaviour are not at all affected by whether or not Jesus and King Arthur existed; they depend only on whether the texts are thought credible or not.

And that has nothing to do with reality. Just how credible is any text, anyway? Reams of disinformation, fantasy and downright lies are published every day. Even sources that strive to be factual are full of distortions that reflect the ignorance and prejudice of their authors. Who's to say what's true and what's not, what's real and what's fake, when all you have is a text to judge by?

Consider your chosen examples, Jesus and King Arthur. One of them is widely believed to have been a real person. The other is generally regarded as a ficitious character. In both cases, though, we only know about them from textual sources; there is nothing to say that Jesus existed and King Arthur did not, apart from the relative credibility of those sources. And the general perception of credibility changes over time, based not on historical or archaeological evidence (as you might think) but on what the public wants to believe at any given moment in time.

It is precisely this process that makes it possible for people to deny the Holocaust and the moon landings in 2006; back in 1945 and 1969 respectively, there was no doubt that they had taken place, because the dust could still be seen settling. No textually-derived credence was required to make people believe.

(Which, by the way, is why, postmodernists, wizards and suchlike wishful thinkers all notwithstanding, the truth is always the truth: singular, unequivocal and distinct in kind from the infinitude of lies.)