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Nov 22

VALIS by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Drunk Monkey in category: Books, Bullshit

Just finished up this book over the last couple of weeks.  Ya need something to do while on the crapper.  Anyone into Sci-Fi should know Dick (uhhh…that doesn’t sound right) from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Pretty interesting read on the search for God and salvation.  To me, it seemed Dick borrowed a lot from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land mantra of “Thou art God.”  You grok that?  To get that conclusion, you to go through a lot of psychotic babble.  This was written as a semi-autobiographical account of Dick’s psychotic break down due to heavy drug use or schizophrenia.  Or both.

One of his conclusions is that God has been reincarnated numerous times.  God went by the names of Apollo, Zoroaster, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad.  And from a religious outsider like me, that makes a lot of sense.  All religions serve a basic purpose of trying to explain the world around us.  give us a reason for why things are the way they are.  I see regional differences, but a connected conclusion.  This could be due to divine intervention, coincidence, or even a shared evolutionary history.

Or it could all be bullshit.  It’s crazy people and and prophet’s who have the ear of God.  Dick finally admits that he may be all wrong and this is just a continuation of a psychotic delusion.  What ever it is, he warns us to stay away from a deity’s followers.  Those people are crazy for sure.

1 comment

1 Comment so far

  1. kopper November 24th, 2008 11:45 am

    I have a friend named Valis. I always wondered where he got the name.

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