Saturday, August 30, 2008

Help, Superman!

Orac presented us with a particularly demented Chick Tract. Well, I don't read much of the series, so I can't really know if it's particularly demented or a representative sample. Anyway, it appears Chick believes in vampires.

I got hit with a bit of fridge logic after reading it, thinking about the bit where the girl knocks back Igor with magic incantations of Jesus's name. Isn't Jesus, really being his daddy as well, supposed to be everywhere and see everything? Then why does anyone need to bother invoking his spirit? Wouldn't vampires have gone extinct from getting knocked away from their victims and die (again?) of thirst? It's the old problem of evil, where Superman is clearly a dick, but this one kind of got glossed over because Chick occultism treats the whole thing like older forms of mysticism that live on like D&D spells. I guess Chick just thinks of his stuff as having a different 'power source' rather than being fundamentally different. Then again, maybe it's a game balance issue.

Suppose the power source thing would account for what looks to me like Red Team/Blue Team morality among fundies: Anything is permissible as long as it benefits their team.

If I had superpowers and the ability to help anyone, anywhere, I wouldn't bother waiting to hear the rescuee call out my name.

4 comments:

Joshua said...

But free will!

God helps those who help themselves!

Etc.

Ranson said...

I didn't realize that Chick rolled Gandalf in with all the other eeevils. Way to miss the allegory, Jack! Then again, he's always been a KJV-only kook, so I guess subtlety has never been a strong point.

But, isn't this tract a contradiction to some of his older ones? The girl is handing out candy and tracts on Halloween! Isn't there an older tract that decries having anything to do with the Devils Night? Is Chick going soft in his senility?

Anonymous said...

I think he's finally jumped the shark... ;)

Tom Foss said...

I don't know, I thought that one was pretty hilarious. Particularly the whole Vampire messiah thing. Although when you combined the prophesied savior who doesn't do what the prophecies say, with the fact that the Vampires largely look like anti-Semitic caricatures, there might be a bit of a nasty subtext in addition to the nasty text.