However, it did help me remember how much the book really pokes fun at religion. To name a couple examples: Newt watching the insects fight is reminiscent of God watching people without interference or obvious solution , and the Bokononist tradition of touching feet to gain happiness shows how illogical some aspects of religion can be.
Reading this novel made me realize that for the duration of this course, I need to read the assigned material with an unbiased perspective on the subject matter. I’m a pretty religious person, and while reading Cat’s Cradle, I kept trying to find truth within Bokononism only because it was introduced as a religion. It made me somehow want to believe in the ideals it presented, or to at least try to understand why the characters in the book put so much faith in this made up religion of sorts. I also always tend to think that progress in science is typically best for the world as a whole, which is parallel to what Dr. Asa Breed mentioned at some point in the novel. I’ve tried to find the page number for like five minutes, but the character mentioned something along the lines of how scientists don’t create products with evil intentions. This is when Jonah was questioning whether ice-nine actually exists. This proves to be true in the novel because Feliz created ice-nine in order to help the army. I guess this can also be seen as an evil intention, depending on your thoughts about the morality behind war. What I’m basically saying is that I should have really taken the “foma” concept seriously, and accepted that the book was going to be a never-ending series of connected lies. It would have made Friday’s discussion a lot simpler.
This has been a brain dump.
I totally agree about having to leave biases aside when reading texts for this class. It is very easy for me to think that progress in science is a positive thing as well. I ignore the negative outcomes of science and I ignore the value that comes from the untruths of certain religions. I myself am not very religious but still believe in many values of different religions. Yet, I seem to place more value on scientific truths than religious truths. Although taking foma seriously is a good method of living, I think being confused and struggling to understand the book is also a valuable part of Cat's Cradle.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I entirely agree with the idea of the book as a whole mocking religion. While there are certainly points exposing some of the lies that religions can/might be founded on, it seemed to me that much of the book put forth the potential usefulness of following a religion, even if that religion was based on lies. Maybe I misread, but it seemed to me that the citizens of San Lorenzo benefited at least a little from Bokononism. At the very minimum, the religion provided a distraction from their unfortunate situation. As for the idea of whether or not science creates products with evil-intentions, it seemed to me that Vonnegut was trying to express that things created by science are inherently neutral or amoral. It is through their application by humans that evil is introduced. Through human selfishness or carelessness scientific advancements such as ice-nine, though perhaps not inherently immoral becomes immorally used.
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