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<blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9505291" data-attributes="member: 7035894">For me, there is no problem of evil because evil, like good, is a subjective interpretation of events, not a thing in itself. Choices, not forces. And the universe isn't actually disinterested in humanity, even though I might use that expression, because it's a bunch of stuff happening, not an entity with a subjective interpretation of events. So for me, cosmic horror comes not from inherent good or evil but from lack of understanding. That an unthinkably vast universe might (probably does?) contain entities to whom we are no more significant than a dust mite is unsettling. Or that our ability to interpret reality is so narrowly confined by the teeny tiny range of our sense perceptions and our brains that we walk about totally oblivious to most of what is out there (which is demonstrably true)...So the horror that really gets me falls into that range of the inexplicable, not because it is supernatural but because we can't wrap our brains around it. This is also why a good psychopath horror film gets me - I don't understand how people can think like that, but there is no doubt that they can. Michael Meyers is a far scarier character to me when he is a human psychopath than when he is The Shape, a supernatural embodiment of evil. At that point, the film just becomes slasher porn.This is why, for example, the recent attempts by Ridley Scott to explain the xenomorphs in the Alien films irritated me. They are far, far less horrifying once given an understandable, rather prosaic origin and frame of reference.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Clint_L, post: 9505291, member: 7035894"] For me, there is no problem of evil because evil, like good, is a subjective interpretation of events, not a thing in itself. Choices, not forces. And the universe isn't actually disinterested in humanity, even though I might use that expression, because it's a bunch of stuff happening, not an entity with a subjective interpretation of events. So for me, cosmic horror comes not from inherent good or evil but from lack of understanding. That an unthinkably vast universe might (probably does?) contain entities to whom we are no more significant than a dust mite is unsettling. Or that our ability to interpret reality is so narrowly confined by the teeny tiny range of our sense perceptions and our brains that we walk about totally oblivious to most of what is out there (which is demonstrably true)... So the horror that really gets me falls into that range of the inexplicable, not because it is supernatural but because we can't wrap our brains around it. This is also why a good psychopath horror film gets me - I don't understand how people can think like that, but there is no doubt that they can. Michael Meyers is a far scarier character to me when he is a human psychopath than when he is The Shape, a supernatural embodiment of evil. At that point, the film just becomes slasher porn. This is why, for example, the recent attempts by Ridley Scott to explain the xenomorphs in the [I]Alien[/I] films irritated me. They are far, far less horrifying once given an understandable, rather prosaic origin and frame of reference. [/QUOTE]

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