Remember about that thread "What if God himself showed up"?

See there's this visual novel. It's French. It's still not available in English it seems. I read it in Spanish. It is very good. It is very very good. Remember when I complained about modern novelists, moviemakers and comicbook writers being incapable of sticking to Canon when writing God as a character? This guy did it. He managed it. He really presented an interesting, lively, extremely awesome, in the classic sense, God. I recommend it to everyone, especially fellow atheists: the author's work with the concept is absolutely amazing. This guy leaves Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman in the dust.

But is god Omnipotent, Omniscient, and All Loving?

That seems really clever.

Graphic Novel, not Visual Novel, looks like

Sorry. Yeah, Graphic Novel.

He's certainly omniscient. He can count the molecules in a room at any given instant, draw the Boson of Higgs by hand, speak to you about parts of your childhood that were crucial to who you are now but that you have forgotten... and then there's the way he speaks. There's "pretending to be wise", and then there's this.

We don't see him using any omnipotence, though. He's a very quiet little "man." Doesn't speak unless he's asked to. "Define yourself" "I elude all definitions, including my own". He's very paradoxical at that, and it's made quite clear that his existence doesn't make sense. His meeting the transhuman AI near the end was very, very interesting.

As for the All Loving... well, he's a kind dude... but it's really hard to tell...

So then, though potentially sticking with absolute canon, he does not solve the problem of evil.

Carry on.

But that's exactly it, the story doesn't solve anything. It doesn't even set out to do it. Instead it focuses on how people react to God. It should have felt like nonsensical fauxlosophy, but it was pulled off in such a way it felt really sincere and emotional. But overall you get a really strong "Being God Sucks" vibe. It really looks like he doesn't know what to do with himself, and neither do those around him.

He could have come off as cold and distant, but instead he came off as a really tortured kind of Kuudere or Emotionless Girl Zen Survivor. At one point he reveals a female face and then goes right back to his Grandpa God image.

edited 6th Jan '11 7:13:18 AM by RawPower

Right, but remember the "What if God himself showed up" thread? Wasn't that, you know, about arguments about God and whatnot? This sort of thing is nice and all-good literature, etc-but it's not exactly relevant to the original thread. It's like a distraction-a self straw-man? Because, yeah-being THAT God sucks. But that God isn't the God that people are arguing about to begin with.

Yeah, kinda. It was jarring not to see anyone confront him about the Old Testament and the Gospel. It seems heavily implied he is more of a removed theist/ completely Deist god. Acknowledges that he created the universe, and that he is his own cause, and all that "ultimate reality" stuff, but not "perfect" (if self-sufficient, why create the world?) but doesn't go into specifics of any religion being right. Doesn't seem to care about being worshipped.

Yeah, definitely not the God in the Bible, that demanding bloodthirsty vengeful person.

But definitely a possibility among the possible "Gods". This one seems to be the "God" philosophers like to argue about, rather than the one normal people like to believe in. Therefore, worth considering. And, from a literary standoff, quite an accomplishment.

Finally, I can justify forcing myself to learn french.

I haven't found online scans anywhere, though. Looks like there's no choice but to buy it or read it in a library/bookstore.