"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
-Carl Sagan
"It is not always easy to diagnose. The simplest form of stupidity - the mumbling, nose-picking, stolid incomprehension - can be detected by anyone. But the stupidity which disguises itself as thought, and which talks so glibly and eloquently, indeed never stops talking, in every walk of life is not so easy to identify, because it marches under a formidable name, which few dare attack. It is called Popular Opinion..."
-Robertson Davies
"There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion."
-Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton
"Wanting to be right so badly that you come to actually believe that you are right, is not the same thing as actually being right.
If you can't tell the difference, you're hopelessly lost, and no-one can help you anymore."
-St. Brian the Godless
The National IQ Test
Watching the McCain-Palin campaign in action has made me realize that this isn’t just a contest between Republicans and Democrats, it’s a contest between the belief-based mentality and the thought-based mentality. It is a contest between those who do not habitually question things deeply to determine their veracity, and those who do.
It is a contest between those that think the cherubs are soap, and those who can tell that they’re plastic. (See previous post)
Now I don't know about you, but when I watch politics I pay attention not only to my candidate’s statements but also to those of his or her opponent’s. I look into the statements of the opponent deeply, to make sure that I’m backing the right person. I seriously consider the possibility that the opponent may be telling the truth, so I look their statements up on the web, read a lot of (often conflicting) data about them, and check out independent sources as well as my candidate’s rebuttal. I watch various sources of cable news. I read many different websites. I make every attempt to stay informed about both sides of every issue and even the related issues, and then I decide who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. By then it’s usually pretty obvious. And if the other guy isn’t telling the truth and my candidate is, this is not only a plus for the credibility of my candidate in my mind, but a minus for the other guy.
Now to my mind, there’s no other way to be. How else can one cut through the “spin” and see the substance other than by being a hypercritical skeptic? But to many people it’s a lot easier than that. They go with their “gut” instead. This is another way to say that they vote based on belief and emotion rather than on careful and unbiased thought. And they are legion.
How else to explain the fact that McCain-Palin is even close in the polls to Obama-Biden when by all rights with the vast amounts of easily-detectable distortions and outright lies that they’ve been tossing out there at their opponents they should be national laughing stocks by now? Not to mention the difference in message, and the obvious difference in the intelligence and judgment of the candidates? And the obvious fact, the undeniable reality that Sarah Palin is not anywhere near being ready to be president of this great country, and never will be, and that her selection was a mockery, a slap in the face to thinking Americans everywhere.
Apparently there are an incredible number of people in this country that do not see the value of skepticism and penetrating thought.
Oh, I see that Sarah Palin is finally getting close to being a laughing stock. About time. I was laughing at her the day she was introduced as candidate and have only stopped to vomit occasionally since. How long do some people take to see through such an obvious total and complete lie? Her entire persona is a carefully constructed fabrication. She lives the lie. She is the lie. She’s a puff of smoke in front of a mirror. A piece of eye-candy with an arsenic center. It worries me that people have been taking so long to see through her, though. She’s not a very good lie. She’s on the level of the toddler that says they didn’t eat the cookie with crumbs still on their lips. Transparent as glass and thus all the more appalling that some people can’t see through her at all, and that they can vote.
But good old John McCain is apparently a better lie. Oh, I assure you that he is now indeed a lie, as much as Sarah Palin is. He just has his past honor and glory and “maverickiness” to fall back on to make the lie seem more real.
(Hey, it worked when he was running for senate)
When you consider how much he’s broken from that past recently, how much he’s changed, it’s hard to believe that anybody would fall for it, but they still do. It’s sad, actually. He used to have a modicum of honor, but he traded it all for a chance at the prize. He’s sold his soul as much as Judas ever did, seeking to trade his honor and glory for power and fame. How is this not obvious to all? The man’s an open book, for all that have eyes to see.
Neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin is a very convincing lie, as lies go. Neither one is very hard to see through, if you’re a thinking individual. They’re not hard to judge as people. They’ve made it very easy, in fact. They practically dare us to spot them. They’re laughably obvious. Ms. Palin in particular is a caricature of vicious stupidity coupled with an egomaniacal drive. If people looked on the outside as they really are on the inside she’d look like Quasimodo instead of a pageant winner. The loathsomeness virtually drips off her. Just look at what she inspires among her base. She has the basest base in the country. When she called herself a pitbull with lipstick, I really didn’t think that she meant it literally. As in, she’s one vicious bitch if ever there was one.
Why aren’t more of us laughing? They're both very funny! Why do any of us even consider voting for them, when our only reaction should be amusement at their pathetic, childish attempts to fool us into thinking that they're competent when they're so clearly not?
I have to put this thought out there: If so much of the Republican Party wasn’t so religious, I don’t think they’d be so gullible and willing to just believe in someone without adequately examining them based on a few claims that appeal to them. They’ve been conditioned to have faith and believe in things without proof or evidence, as long as it “feels right.” And it “feels right” when it agrees with their preconceived erroneous worldview that they’ve been conditioned into in the first place. It even seems that some of them have little regard for the truth anymore, as in, they can’t even tell it from the lies, and don’t seem to see the importance of trying to. To them, the truth is whatever they believe it to be.
And of course, McCain’s white. That figures in here heavily as well, I’m sure. More ignorance at work.
This election is an important test. It is an IQ test for the entire nation. And it’s not like the usual IQ test. It’s not scored. It’s “pass or fail.” It’s “are we too ignorant as a country to merit survival as a world leader or even as a country, or are we worthy to be that "Shining City on a Hill" for the rest of the world once again?
If we fail, unfortunately we will deserve the consequences. And I fear that they will be dire.
________________________________
More ancillary stupidity:
-Apparently a McCain volunteer carved a “B” into her own face and tried to say a black Obama supporter did it after he mugged her. She just admitted the hoax after a polygraph. How stupid was she? The "B" was reversed on her face, as in she carved it as it looked in the mirror. Drudge jumped all over it of course, since it showed how hateful we Obama supporters really are… And the right had a field day talking about it, how maybe it meant that people should think again about voting for Obama... The little psycho even got a call from the Queen Psycho herself, Sarah Palin!
Now with the truth out there, it only shows how psychotic McCain supporters can be and how rabid their campaign has become. Nice going there Matt Drudge, on vetting your sources or even caring about the truth. Nice going there McCain campaign for trying to foment hatred when you thought you had a chance. Too bad it backfired like that. Guess that's the risk you take when you try to appeal to American's nutcases.
-Also, Joe the Plumber was formerly Joe the Alaskan. He used to live there. Do you smell a rodent yet?
-And Sarah Palin just bought more clothes Monday. That’s in addition to the 150k that the republicans have already spent on her. She’s an expensive lie, apparently.
In never rains but it pours.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Christianity and Perception
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."
-Aldous Huxley
“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
- George Bernard Shaw
"If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool."
-Shakespeare, “As You Like It”
“Learn to think before you believe, or you’ll soon believe that you don’t have to think.”
-St. Brian the Godless
Christianity and Perception
I’ve told this story before, but not in this venue. I call it my “Soap Cherubs” story.
Oh, stop groaning…
“When I was ten my family used to talk about these two prized Italian carvings of cherubs that they had, hand carved in great detail out of soap. Being Italian themselves, they were rather proud of them.
One day I carefully dabbed some water on my finger and tested a wing. It didn't feel soapy at all. I then noticed mold marks. And a label "Made in Japan" on the bottom. I carefully bent a wing tip, and it flexed nicely. It wasn't soap. It was plastic. And it wasn’t carved. It was injection-molded.
I told my mom, tried to explain the facts as to why they couldn’t be soap, and it was like she couldn't hear me. I was just a kid, and she knew that they were soap, and I was just hitting her with way too much detail. Same with my aunt and my dad. But the cherubs weren't soap, and I know this today for a fact.
She didn't lie when she told me that they were soap all those times, but it wasn't true, and nothing that I could say could convince her that she was wrong. And yet she and the rest of my family were wrong. They just didn't see details in things like I did, so they were unable to see that the cherubs were not carved soap, even when presented with the evidence.
I learned that they were blind to many, many other things in addition to the "soap" cherubs that were not. One of them was the illogic of their religion.
Open your minds someday, people of faith. You're not seeing the plastic.”
Ahh, an oldie but a goodie…
Incidentally, I am adopted, a fact that has caused me much relief in my day.
I think this little (true) story of mine outlines the differences between the belief-based mindset and the fact-based mindset. The Christian mind versus the Atheist mind, if you will. Many Christians, having been taught to distrust or merely to ignore much of science, do not see the need to train themselves to perceive fine details well. They’ve been taught that the details of this reality are superfluous anyhow, since it’s all about the afterlife. Also that contradicting concepts can exist side-by-side. And that the Bible tells us all we need to know. And the most horrific, that to doubt any of this is not only wrong, but metaphysically evil, something you can go to hell for, thus making one of the bastions of intellect itself, critical thinking, a punishable offense.
But science teaches us to doubt in all things, including and especially yourself, at all times. That doubt in all things is the most intelligent attitude, and that the true skeptics are almost always the ones to find out the real truth eventually.
The two mindsets are diametrical opposites. And they are at war.
Having not studied science, many Christians cannot truly comprehend, cannot “internalize” things like vast spans of time, vast distances, the complexity of nature’s web of life, and our place in it. They are unused to the sheer mind-numbingly complex amount of fine detail that comprises even basic science, and thus for example see “irreduceable complexity” where the scientist sees the normal mechanism of evolution at work over vast eons of time, more than sufficient time to produce the contested results. The eye. The flagellum. Both easily explicable and even “common-sensical.” I can easily visualize the process of the evolution of a vertebrate eye, and I’m no scientist. I can intuit it from what I know about evolution and other examples of such appearances of complex traits. And incidentally, to think that a few light-sensitive cells would be of no discernable advantage to a creature living in a world of otherwise completely blind organisms is very “short-sighted” indeed. Same with the rotory mechanism involved in the euglena’s locomotive apparatus. Given enough time, the most complicated and seemingly improbable results are possible, and life on this planet has had an awful lot of time. A vast span of time. Eons.
An unimaginable length of time to some, unfortunately. If you think the world's only six thousand years old and therefore have trouble even imagining a million years, how can you ever hope to grasp the changes that can occur in four and a half thousand million?
Why can’t these Biblical Christians see how easily understood these “irreducibly complex” things are as the end result of this incredibly long process of nature weeding out that which does not serve the organism and its accentuation of that which does? Because they don’t have the tools to, nor do they ever want to posess them. Such tools themselves are considered sinful. Hence they are blithely unaware of so many of the fine details of this world, because you can only really learn to perceive these fine details by loving science enough for you to learn how to think in an ordered, scientific manner. You certainly can’t learn to see them by reading the Bible. When the Bible was written, nobody could see them.
(Which brings up the question of why, if the Bible was written by God, did He never mention in it anything more advanced than what the people of that day themselves knew...)
It’s actually an even more basic problem than human ignorance. It’s the age-old seemingly instinctual conflict between the belief-based and the reality-based. The people that turn away from the future and embrace the supposed security of the past, and the people that learn from the past and the present so as to create a better future.
As ever, when the "distant past belief-based mindset" meets the "future of our species fact-based mindset," it tries to kill it immediately out of fear of it eventually factually proving its precious beliefs wrong. Failing that, it hates it and calls it names, thus proving itself not only the most primitive modality of human thought, but also as you would expect from that, the most immature.
Names like terrorist, for instance. You betcha.
-Aldous Huxley
“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
- George Bernard Shaw
"If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool."
-Shakespeare, “As You Like It”
“Learn to think before you believe, or you’ll soon believe that you don’t have to think.”
-St. Brian the Godless
Christianity and Perception
I’ve told this story before, but not in this venue. I call it my “Soap Cherubs” story.
Oh, stop groaning…
“When I was ten my family used to talk about these two prized Italian carvings of cherubs that they had, hand carved in great detail out of soap. Being Italian themselves, they were rather proud of them.
One day I carefully dabbed some water on my finger and tested a wing. It didn't feel soapy at all. I then noticed mold marks. And a label "Made in Japan" on the bottom. I carefully bent a wing tip, and it flexed nicely. It wasn't soap. It was plastic. And it wasn’t carved. It was injection-molded.
I told my mom, tried to explain the facts as to why they couldn’t be soap, and it was like she couldn't hear me. I was just a kid, and she knew that they were soap, and I was just hitting her with way too much detail. Same with my aunt and my dad. But the cherubs weren't soap, and I know this today for a fact.
She didn't lie when she told me that they were soap all those times, but it wasn't true, and nothing that I could say could convince her that she was wrong. And yet she and the rest of my family were wrong. They just didn't see details in things like I did, so they were unable to see that the cherubs were not carved soap, even when presented with the evidence.
I learned that they were blind to many, many other things in addition to the "soap" cherubs that were not. One of them was the illogic of their religion.
Open your minds someday, people of faith. You're not seeing the plastic.”
Ahh, an oldie but a goodie…
Incidentally, I am adopted, a fact that has caused me much relief in my day.
I think this little (true) story of mine outlines the differences between the belief-based mindset and the fact-based mindset. The Christian mind versus the Atheist mind, if you will. Many Christians, having been taught to distrust or merely to ignore much of science, do not see the need to train themselves to perceive fine details well. They’ve been taught that the details of this reality are superfluous anyhow, since it’s all about the afterlife. Also that contradicting concepts can exist side-by-side. And that the Bible tells us all we need to know. And the most horrific, that to doubt any of this is not only wrong, but metaphysically evil, something you can go to hell for, thus making one of the bastions of intellect itself, critical thinking, a punishable offense.
But science teaches us to doubt in all things, including and especially yourself, at all times. That doubt in all things is the most intelligent attitude, and that the true skeptics are almost always the ones to find out the real truth eventually.
The two mindsets are diametrical opposites. And they are at war.
Having not studied science, many Christians cannot truly comprehend, cannot “internalize” things like vast spans of time, vast distances, the complexity of nature’s web of life, and our place in it. They are unused to the sheer mind-numbingly complex amount of fine detail that comprises even basic science, and thus for example see “irreduceable complexity” where the scientist sees the normal mechanism of evolution at work over vast eons of time, more than sufficient time to produce the contested results. The eye. The flagellum. Both easily explicable and even “common-sensical.” I can easily visualize the process of the evolution of a vertebrate eye, and I’m no scientist. I can intuit it from what I know about evolution and other examples of such appearances of complex traits. And incidentally, to think that a few light-sensitive cells would be of no discernable advantage to a creature living in a world of otherwise completely blind organisms is very “short-sighted” indeed. Same with the rotory mechanism involved in the euglena’s locomotive apparatus. Given enough time, the most complicated and seemingly improbable results are possible, and life on this planet has had an awful lot of time. A vast span of time. Eons.
An unimaginable length of time to some, unfortunately. If you think the world's only six thousand years old and therefore have trouble even imagining a million years, how can you ever hope to grasp the changes that can occur in four and a half thousand million?
Why can’t these Biblical Christians see how easily understood these “irreducibly complex” things are as the end result of this incredibly long process of nature weeding out that which does not serve the organism and its accentuation of that which does? Because they don’t have the tools to, nor do they ever want to posess them. Such tools themselves are considered sinful. Hence they are blithely unaware of so many of the fine details of this world, because you can only really learn to perceive these fine details by loving science enough for you to learn how to think in an ordered, scientific manner. You certainly can’t learn to see them by reading the Bible. When the Bible was written, nobody could see them.
(Which brings up the question of why, if the Bible was written by God, did He never mention in it anything more advanced than what the people of that day themselves knew...)
It’s actually an even more basic problem than human ignorance. It’s the age-old seemingly instinctual conflict between the belief-based and the reality-based. The people that turn away from the future and embrace the supposed security of the past, and the people that learn from the past and the present so as to create a better future.
As ever, when the "distant past belief-based mindset" meets the "future of our species fact-based mindset," it tries to kill it immediately out of fear of it eventually factually proving its precious beliefs wrong. Failing that, it hates it and calls it names, thus proving itself not only the most primitive modality of human thought, but also as you would expect from that, the most immature.
Names like terrorist, for instance. You betcha.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Liberal Dictator
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
- Kenneth Galbraith
"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved."
-Aristotle
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality."
-George Washington
"Somebody came along and said 'liberal' means 'soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we're gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn't have to go to work if they don't want to.' And instead of saying, 'Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave it to Beaver trip back to the '50s,' we cowered in the corner and said, 'Please don't hurt me.'"
-The West Wing (Television show)
“The Liberal Dictator”
Many conservative Christians label liberals as effete, snobbish, un-American immoral godless heathens ever in search of their own gratification, living by selfish “Darwinian” mores and dying alone with no solace of God or the afterlife to buoy them in their last hours.
According to them, we liberals are craven and pathetic indeed. Oh, and we’re all going to hell, of course.
Since religion has become inextricably intertwined with the conservative Republican Party we have to take that into account as well. Now they claim to have the moral high ground simply because they’re convinced that they’re the side that God is on.
Well, so was Hitler. “Gott Mit Uns.”
I’ve heard many Christian conservatives insist that Hitler wasn’t a Christian, that in spite of all the times that he claimed to be one and in spite of how he co-opted the religion and its symbolism for his Nazis, he was not a Christian, and even if he thought that he was, he wasn’t a “real” Christian, since no “real” Christian would act that way, would act in so “un-Christlike” a manner.
That seems a bit silly to me, since it reduces the number of real Christians in the world to like twenty-seven. But what the heck, I’ll play along.
Christians will also mention that Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot were all atheists. Which seems to support their point that being religious is not necessary to being a dictator.
And they’re right. Being religious is not a prerequisite to being an evil dictator. I will grant the point to them at long last. I finally agree. It can definitely help you to be a more efficient evil dictator, but it’s not a prerequisite.
Being a conservative is, though.
Hitler may have been a Christian, but even if he wasn’t, and instead was the “athiest” atheist ever to walk the planet, he most certainly was a conservative. There’s no denying that.
What of Stalin, Pot, Lenin, and all the rest of the known dictators past and present, religious and atheist?
All conservatives. It’s the common denominator.
In fact, the very definition of the word liberal runs contrary to the necessary tactics and philosophy of the dictator. It’s actually impossible for a dictator to be a liberal. There is no such thing as a liberal dictator. Not now. Not ever. Every single one in all of history has been a conservative. Authoritarianism is immiscible with liberalism. Like oil and water. They cannot coexist in the same individual.
Conservatives persist in maintaining that their way is the better path, that their way is the optimal, that their way is the only smart way to run a country. They continue denigrating liberals, and have made even the word “liberal” itself into a slur. A word that means “open-minded” and “forward-thinking” is now a slur. They foment anger and hatred and they just love the politics of division. They keep secrets from the people and approve of torturing our enemies. They attempt to repress the freedom of the press by making them out to be biased when they’re not. They refuse to testify when subpoenaed, claiming higher authority. And they have gutted our constitution and have given themselves as much power as they could get away with giving themselves, which turned out to be a lot. Not to mention the big one, starting an un-necessary war for a distraction. (oh crap, I mentioned it)
We were told that if we forget the past we’re doomed to repeat it, but the conservatives ask us to do just that.
Well, not me.
Instead, I’ll keep asking this question whenever a conservative tells me how worthless being a liberal is:
“Which one out of all the evil dictators, tyrants, and despots in the entire history of the world, past and present, was a liberal?”
I like the sound of silence that follows.
- Kenneth Galbraith
"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved."
-Aristotle
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality."
-George Washington
"Somebody came along and said 'liberal' means 'soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we're gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn't have to go to work if they don't want to.' And instead of saying, 'Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave it to Beaver trip back to the '50s,' we cowered in the corner and said, 'Please don't hurt me.'"
-The West Wing (Television show)
“The Liberal Dictator”
Many conservative Christians label liberals as effete, snobbish, un-American immoral godless heathens ever in search of their own gratification, living by selfish “Darwinian” mores and dying alone with no solace of God or the afterlife to buoy them in their last hours.
According to them, we liberals are craven and pathetic indeed. Oh, and we’re all going to hell, of course.
Since religion has become inextricably intertwined with the conservative Republican Party we have to take that into account as well. Now they claim to have the moral high ground simply because they’re convinced that they’re the side that God is on.
Well, so was Hitler. “Gott Mit Uns.”
I’ve heard many Christian conservatives insist that Hitler wasn’t a Christian, that in spite of all the times that he claimed to be one and in spite of how he co-opted the religion and its symbolism for his Nazis, he was not a Christian, and even if he thought that he was, he wasn’t a “real” Christian, since no “real” Christian would act that way, would act in so “un-Christlike” a manner.
That seems a bit silly to me, since it reduces the number of real Christians in the world to like twenty-seven. But what the heck, I’ll play along.
Christians will also mention that Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot were all atheists. Which seems to support their point that being religious is not necessary to being a dictator.
And they’re right. Being religious is not a prerequisite to being an evil dictator. I will grant the point to them at long last. I finally agree. It can definitely help you to be a more efficient evil dictator, but it’s not a prerequisite.
Being a conservative is, though.
Hitler may have been a Christian, but even if he wasn’t, and instead was the “athiest” atheist ever to walk the planet, he most certainly was a conservative. There’s no denying that.
What of Stalin, Pot, Lenin, and all the rest of the known dictators past and present, religious and atheist?
All conservatives. It’s the common denominator.
In fact, the very definition of the word liberal runs contrary to the necessary tactics and philosophy of the dictator. It’s actually impossible for a dictator to be a liberal. There is no such thing as a liberal dictator. Not now. Not ever. Every single one in all of history has been a conservative. Authoritarianism is immiscible with liberalism. Like oil and water. They cannot coexist in the same individual.
Conservatives persist in maintaining that their way is the better path, that their way is the optimal, that their way is the only smart way to run a country. They continue denigrating liberals, and have made even the word “liberal” itself into a slur. A word that means “open-minded” and “forward-thinking” is now a slur. They foment anger and hatred and they just love the politics of division. They keep secrets from the people and approve of torturing our enemies. They attempt to repress the freedom of the press by making them out to be biased when they’re not. They refuse to testify when subpoenaed, claiming higher authority. And they have gutted our constitution and have given themselves as much power as they could get away with giving themselves, which turned out to be a lot. Not to mention the big one, starting an un-necessary war for a distraction. (oh crap, I mentioned it)
We were told that if we forget the past we’re doomed to repeat it, but the conservatives ask us to do just that.
Well, not me.
Instead, I’ll keep asking this question whenever a conservative tells me how worthless being a liberal is:
“Which one out of all the evil dictators, tyrants, and despots in the entire history of the world, past and present, was a liberal?”
I like the sound of silence that follows.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Nature of Pride
"I love the evil man who knows that he is evil more than the righteous man that knows he is righteous. Of the evil people that consider themselves righteous, however, the following is said: "They do not even turn away at the threshold of the underworld." For they imagine that they are being led to hell in order to redeem the souls there.
-Tales of the Chassidim
"The biggest egomaniacs always see themselves as being modest, along with every other good thing. It's inconceivable to them that they're really shallow and self-centered. That's precisely why they are."
-St. Brian the Godless
The Nature of Pride
One of the things you won’t have any trouble finding Christians to agree with you on is the notion that excessive Pride is a bad thing. In the Christian religion Pride is in fact considered to be one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” along with Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, and Envy.
As well it should be.
And yet do most people, including most Christians, truly understand the nature of Pride, and why it was considered such a Deadly Sin? I would say from my observations of people in general and Christians in particular that they do not.
Here’s what the Bible has to say about it:
“The LORD despises pride; be assured that the proud will be punished.
Pride goes before destruction and haughtiness before a fall. It is better to live humbly with the poor than to share plunder with the proud.”
Proverbs 16:5, 18-19
-Here we can see that to be humble we must relate to the poor and downtrodden and not with the successful and wealthy. Humility and grace are acts of lowering oneself to the level of the least among us, not raising ourselves to the level of the most powerful and wealthy. That way lies pure egotism.
"Anyone who wants to be the first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else."
Mark 9:35
-This hardly seems to refer to Joel Osteen and the Gospel of Prosperity, does it?
Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else: "Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. The proud Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: `I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don't sin, I don't commit adultery, I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.'
But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, `O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.' I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored."
Luke 18:9-14
-This would seem to indicate that the Pride that the Bible describes consists of the type of thoughts and behaviors that serve to put ourselves above others, any others, even the very least among us. Even, and perhaps especially, those that we think are utterly wrong.
Incidentally it should be noted that in this passage Jesus chose to represent the Proud man as a Pharisee. The Pharisees were known to be strictly adherent to the scriptures and laws. They were the "Biblical Literalists" of their day.
Am I a victim of Pride? Most certainly. How do I know that? Because I have looked within myself for it, and have found it. Do I strive to eliminate it? Absolutely, with all my heart and mind. Why? Because I see what it does to others, and I also see that the others involved are always blind to it, and I don’t wish to fall into that trap. Pride is the most deceptive of all sins, or if you prefer, of all negative behavior patterns. It is the proverbial thief in the night. It is stealthy and almost invisible. Oh, it’s easy enough to see in others, but due to our human nature almost impossible to see within ourselves.
Now, as someone that battles with Pride, as we all should, I can also see that many Christians not only do not do battle with it, but actually mistake it for righteousness. They know that Pride is a sin of course, but they mis-define Pride in their minds as merely being too stubborn to believe in God as they do, and not as a general inflation of one’s ego that can happen to anyone, and which can in fact actually be due to one’s belief in God or in anything else for that matter. The problem here is that excessive Pride can form around any worldview that sets one’s self above any other groups. If I am told by my parents and my peer group that I am a member of the Chosen Ones, the Holy People that follow Jesus Christ and that this makes me a good person, and I come to believe that utterly, such “knowledge” on my part will inevitably inflate my ego and lead to excessive Pride on my part. It is not that dissimilar to being told for your whole life that you’re smarter than everybody else. Eventually you’ll come to believe it, even if it’s not true. And because it feeds the ego and because that feels so good, so "right," it’s pretty hard to resist if you don’t know the danger.
So I have to ask a question:
Is the man that knows that he is righteous, truly righteous?
If Pride is a sin, then by definition, he is not.
What of the man that maintains in his mind the attitude that he is not righteous, believes that he is just another sinner as we all are regardless of what we believe, and yet is not even concerned with that but instead simply loves people, all people, and strives to help them to the best of his abilities, regardless of whether he approves of what they believe about God?
If both men happen to be Christians, then which kind of a Christian deserves the name Christian more? And if the first one happens to be a Christian and the second man an atheist, who is in reality closer to God?
-Tales of the Chassidim
"The biggest egomaniacs always see themselves as being modest, along with every other good thing. It's inconceivable to them that they're really shallow and self-centered. That's precisely why they are."
-St. Brian the Godless
The Nature of Pride
One of the things you won’t have any trouble finding Christians to agree with you on is the notion that excessive Pride is a bad thing. In the Christian religion Pride is in fact considered to be one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” along with Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, and Envy.
As well it should be.
And yet do most people, including most Christians, truly understand the nature of Pride, and why it was considered such a Deadly Sin? I would say from my observations of people in general and Christians in particular that they do not.
Here’s what the Bible has to say about it:
“The LORD despises pride; be assured that the proud will be punished.
Pride goes before destruction and haughtiness before a fall. It is better to live humbly with the poor than to share plunder with the proud.”
Proverbs 16:5, 18-19
-Here we can see that to be humble we must relate to the poor and downtrodden and not with the successful and wealthy. Humility and grace are acts of lowering oneself to the level of the least among us, not raising ourselves to the level of the most powerful and wealthy. That way lies pure egotism.
"Anyone who wants to be the first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else."
Mark 9:35
-This hardly seems to refer to Joel Osteen and the Gospel of Prosperity, does it?
Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else: "Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. The proud Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: `I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don't sin, I don't commit adultery, I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.'
But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, `O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.' I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored."
Luke 18:9-14
-This would seem to indicate that the Pride that the Bible describes consists of the type of thoughts and behaviors that serve to put ourselves above others, any others, even the very least among us. Even, and perhaps especially, those that we think are utterly wrong.
Incidentally it should be noted that in this passage Jesus chose to represent the Proud man as a Pharisee. The Pharisees were known to be strictly adherent to the scriptures and laws. They were the "Biblical Literalists" of their day.
Am I a victim of Pride? Most certainly. How do I know that? Because I have looked within myself for it, and have found it. Do I strive to eliminate it? Absolutely, with all my heart and mind. Why? Because I see what it does to others, and I also see that the others involved are always blind to it, and I don’t wish to fall into that trap. Pride is the most deceptive of all sins, or if you prefer, of all negative behavior patterns. It is the proverbial thief in the night. It is stealthy and almost invisible. Oh, it’s easy enough to see in others, but due to our human nature almost impossible to see within ourselves.
Now, as someone that battles with Pride, as we all should, I can also see that many Christians not only do not do battle with it, but actually mistake it for righteousness. They know that Pride is a sin of course, but they mis-define Pride in their minds as merely being too stubborn to believe in God as they do, and not as a general inflation of one’s ego that can happen to anyone, and which can in fact actually be due to one’s belief in God or in anything else for that matter. The problem here is that excessive Pride can form around any worldview that sets one’s self above any other groups. If I am told by my parents and my peer group that I am a member of the Chosen Ones, the Holy People that follow Jesus Christ and that this makes me a good person, and I come to believe that utterly, such “knowledge” on my part will inevitably inflate my ego and lead to excessive Pride on my part. It is not that dissimilar to being told for your whole life that you’re smarter than everybody else. Eventually you’ll come to believe it, even if it’s not true. And because it feeds the ego and because that feels so good, so "right," it’s pretty hard to resist if you don’t know the danger.
So I have to ask a question:
Is the man that knows that he is righteous, truly righteous?
If Pride is a sin, then by definition, he is not.
What of the man that maintains in his mind the attitude that he is not righteous, believes that he is just another sinner as we all are regardless of what we believe, and yet is not even concerned with that but instead simply loves people, all people, and strives to help them to the best of his abilities, regardless of whether he approves of what they believe about God?
If both men happen to be Christians, then which kind of a Christian deserves the name Christian more? And if the first one happens to be a Christian and the second man an atheist, who is in reality closer to God?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Belief and Faith
"When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the
absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to
overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly
surprised at the weakness of his intellect"
-Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
"The religious man has no trouble believing the ridiculous and only wonders why he's so much better at it than everybody else is. This he takes as a sign from God."
-St. Brian the Godless
What is a belief?
If I think that I have a belief, I’m not sure. But if I believe that I have a thought, it implies certainty.
Belief is a tricky subject. The words “belief” and “faith” both imply thinking something is true without evidence. Most of their definitions seem to entail this. And yet, most believers see it quite differently, as beliefs somehow trumping mere thoughts, as in being preferable and somehow superior to them.
If I think that there may be a God, or even if I think that there is a God, I am still open to discussion. If new data comes in, I can change my mind easily enough.
But if I believe that there is a God and have faith in it, there can be no more discussion. My mind is closed to new data that may disprove my belief. Forever.
In the Christian mind, belief and faith are seen as very good things indeed. They are held up as the optimal mindset. In my mind however, they’re anathema to human growth, both personally and as a society.
As little children we are asked by our parents to believe in many things. In a Christian home, belief in God is a central tenet. You have to believe, or you’re bad, evil, and wrong. You have to love God with all your heart and mind, even if you can’t see Him or really talk to Him, and even if the things that He does make no sense. Even if there’s not one shred of hard evidence for His existence. Even if people that call themselves believers and faithful seem to do a lot of bad things in the world. Against all logic and reason, you must not question. You have to believe, or you’re bad, bad, bad.
There are benefits to belief and faith in God. They make understanding an incredibly and possibly infinitely complex reality, utterly simple. GodDidIt. Period. Next subject.
Having belief and faith makes thinking about one’s own death much easier. If you’re good, you’ll live on forever in heaven, playing cosmic badminton on clouds and watching people you didn’t like in life fry in hell on the widescreen. Such bliss! Of course, if you’re not good you burn forever in hell, because after all, God loved you and you spurned him, and he’s a jealous, wrathful, shallow God who cares about such things a lot. But of course you’re good. You know this because you believe in God, so you’re good by definition. So no need to worry about the place downstairs. You’ve got Pascal’s Wager covered.
So what end product does this produce in a person?
It produces a person that is absolutely sure of their own rectitude at all times. They know that they’re right about their God and about reality, and thus that all other faiths and non-faiths are miserably wrong, and even evil. They do not question themselves, since to do so is considered evil. If you have the audacity to question them about their faith, they automatically "know" you to be evil and perhaps even satanic, so it will only reinforce their own position. They see this life as a game, a conflict between good and evil, presumably represented as God and Satan. If you point to any crack in that logic, you’re the stupid one in their eyes. And on the side of Satan as well. Nice way to dismiss it.
The end result of this is a self-serving egomaniac, not a spiritual person. Pride kills real spirituality like Raid kills roaches.
The senselessness of all this, the affront to logic that it represents to any person not involved in the religion, is astonishing. And yet, the faithful “know” that God is real, and all the rest, to the exclusion of all evidence offered. “God works in mysterious ways.” How many times did I hear that litany as a child? Too many to count. If you rephrase it to more reflect the reality of the situation, the more accurate version reads “God works in illogical and seemingly evil ways completely contradictory to how we insist on seeing Him in spite of all that.”
If we sometimes marvel at pederast priests, or at serial killers that are leaders of their congregation, or at the hypocrisy of an abortion clinic bombing, we need to remember that we’re not dealing with people that think about things at all; they merely believe and as such are enormously handicapped in this life. They are blind to reality, having willingly rejected it. They are easily led, by anybody that knows the right keywords. They have been taught never to question themselves, so how could they know that they’ve let themselves become deviant? They can’t even see the reality that we’re judging them against, so how can they know when they’ve deviated from it into a self-congratulatory psychosis? They cannot.
So in that light, I have a question for all True Believers, those with Absolute, Unshakeable Faith.
Can you think, or do you just believe that you can? And how would you know if it was only the latter?
absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to
overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly
surprised at the weakness of his intellect"
-Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion
"The religious man has no trouble believing the ridiculous and only wonders why he's so much better at it than everybody else is. This he takes as a sign from God."
-St. Brian the Godless
What is a belief?
If I think that I have a belief, I’m not sure. But if I believe that I have a thought, it implies certainty.
Belief is a tricky subject. The words “belief” and “faith” both imply thinking something is true without evidence. Most of their definitions seem to entail this. And yet, most believers see it quite differently, as beliefs somehow trumping mere thoughts, as in being preferable and somehow superior to them.
If I think that there may be a God, or even if I think that there is a God, I am still open to discussion. If new data comes in, I can change my mind easily enough.
But if I believe that there is a God and have faith in it, there can be no more discussion. My mind is closed to new data that may disprove my belief. Forever.
In the Christian mind, belief and faith are seen as very good things indeed. They are held up as the optimal mindset. In my mind however, they’re anathema to human growth, both personally and as a society.
As little children we are asked by our parents to believe in many things. In a Christian home, belief in God is a central tenet. You have to believe, or you’re bad, evil, and wrong. You have to love God with all your heart and mind, even if you can’t see Him or really talk to Him, and even if the things that He does make no sense. Even if there’s not one shred of hard evidence for His existence. Even if people that call themselves believers and faithful seem to do a lot of bad things in the world. Against all logic and reason, you must not question. You have to believe, or you’re bad, bad, bad.
There are benefits to belief and faith in God. They make understanding an incredibly and possibly infinitely complex reality, utterly simple. GodDidIt. Period. Next subject.
Having belief and faith makes thinking about one’s own death much easier. If you’re good, you’ll live on forever in heaven, playing cosmic badminton on clouds and watching people you didn’t like in life fry in hell on the widescreen. Such bliss! Of course, if you’re not good you burn forever in hell, because after all, God loved you and you spurned him, and he’s a jealous, wrathful, shallow God who cares about such things a lot. But of course you’re good. You know this because you believe in God, so you’re good by definition. So no need to worry about the place downstairs. You’ve got Pascal’s Wager covered.
So what end product does this produce in a person?
It produces a person that is absolutely sure of their own rectitude at all times. They know that they’re right about their God and about reality, and thus that all other faiths and non-faiths are miserably wrong, and even evil. They do not question themselves, since to do so is considered evil. If you have the audacity to question them about their faith, they automatically "know" you to be evil and perhaps even satanic, so it will only reinforce their own position. They see this life as a game, a conflict between good and evil, presumably represented as God and Satan. If you point to any crack in that logic, you’re the stupid one in their eyes. And on the side of Satan as well. Nice way to dismiss it.
The end result of this is a self-serving egomaniac, not a spiritual person. Pride kills real spirituality like Raid kills roaches.
The senselessness of all this, the affront to logic that it represents to any person not involved in the religion, is astonishing. And yet, the faithful “know” that God is real, and all the rest, to the exclusion of all evidence offered. “God works in mysterious ways.” How many times did I hear that litany as a child? Too many to count. If you rephrase it to more reflect the reality of the situation, the more accurate version reads “God works in illogical and seemingly evil ways completely contradictory to how we insist on seeing Him in spite of all that.”
If we sometimes marvel at pederast priests, or at serial killers that are leaders of their congregation, or at the hypocrisy of an abortion clinic bombing, we need to remember that we’re not dealing with people that think about things at all; they merely believe and as such are enormously handicapped in this life. They are blind to reality, having willingly rejected it. They are easily led, by anybody that knows the right keywords. They have been taught never to question themselves, so how could they know that they’ve let themselves become deviant? They can’t even see the reality that we’re judging them against, so how can they know when they’ve deviated from it into a self-congratulatory psychosis? They cannot.
So in that light, I have a question for all True Believers, those with Absolute, Unshakeable Faith.
Can you think, or do you just believe that you can? And how would you know if it was only the latter?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Where Do We Get Our Morality?
Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right.
-H. L. Mencken
Fear of God is a barrier to real morality, not a path to it.
-St. Brian the Godless
I’ve heard so often from Christians “We get our morality from God.” In fact, it’s common to hear them say that atheists have no real morality since they (we) do not believe in God. They say that we atheists do not have consequences so we have no reason to be moral. That we believe in evolution, survival of the fittest, which they interpret as “nature red in tooth and claw” and so they assume that our atheist morality is based on survival and killing off the competition. They believe that they get their morals straight from God, and that we get ours from the animals. This allows them to see atheists in a bad light, as inferior to their clearly superior and God-Inspired system of morality. Which, of course, is how they wish to see us. Seeing atheists as posessing real morality is antithetical to their deeply-held belief that they are morally superior to us for their belief in God. And they need that belief. It’s what keeps their egos inflated properly.
Atheists argue that morality evolved as a necessary trait when we “went social” in a big way. When we started to live in tribes and communities and cities. We always displayed “moral” behavior toward our children and families as do many lesser creatures, but now it has evolved to also extend to complete strangers due to the necessity of living in close quarters to said strangers.
Perhaps. I mean, we certainly developed empathy as a survival factor, caring about others, being able to imagine being the other person, imagining looking through their eyes at their problems and situation. It’s an extension of caring for ourselves and our children. And if you’re truly empathetic, morality follows, unless you are unable for some reason to empathize with all others. For instance, if something blocks you, such as a belief that says that others are clearly inferior to you, are evil, or are otherwise lacking in goodness and rectitude.
Someone, a Christian, recently asked me “So where do you get your morality from?” and without hesitation I replied “From my empathy and my imagination. I look around me and see the problems that confront us and separate us and I feel the loss, the sadness, of all of us not being able to get along, and then I imagine a perfect world somewhere in the future where such problems do not exist anymore. Then I work backwards from there to here again and can thus see what is serving us now and what is not. For that perfect world to occur, we have to learn to love all others, accept all others, and empathize with all others without reservations. Period. It’s obviously the answer. So, there’s my morality.”
My morality is thus based in my empathy and my imaginative ability to see what we need to do and how we need to act, in order for the world to ever be at peace. I may have evolved my ability to empathize and my imagination, but my morality wasn’t so much selected for directly as it was a necessary result of those two things being a part of me already. My morality exists because I can empathize with all others and can imagine a perfect future where we all do, and cannot see any other way to get to that future but to start working toward it now. And I can see that it’s the only correct path. So could Jesus. Not so much many of His present-day followers, unfortunately. Since they believe that their morality comes from God, an outside source, they often cannot see any need to develop it within their own hearts. For them, the fear of hell is their morality. And fear-based morality is not morality at all. It’s obedience under duress. Not a fertile source for the love necessary to really be moral. But an excellent source for the egotism necessary to look down on all others and find them lacking. And that’s no way to Love Thy Neighbor, in my opinion.
-H. L. Mencken
Fear of God is a barrier to real morality, not a path to it.
-St. Brian the Godless
I’ve heard so often from Christians “We get our morality from God.” In fact, it’s common to hear them say that atheists have no real morality since they (we) do not believe in God. They say that we atheists do not have consequences so we have no reason to be moral. That we believe in evolution, survival of the fittest, which they interpret as “nature red in tooth and claw” and so they assume that our atheist morality is based on survival and killing off the competition. They believe that they get their morals straight from God, and that we get ours from the animals. This allows them to see atheists in a bad light, as inferior to their clearly superior and God-Inspired system of morality. Which, of course, is how they wish to see us. Seeing atheists as posessing real morality is antithetical to their deeply-held belief that they are morally superior to us for their belief in God. And they need that belief. It’s what keeps their egos inflated properly.
Atheists argue that morality evolved as a necessary trait when we “went social” in a big way. When we started to live in tribes and communities and cities. We always displayed “moral” behavior toward our children and families as do many lesser creatures, but now it has evolved to also extend to complete strangers due to the necessity of living in close quarters to said strangers.
Perhaps. I mean, we certainly developed empathy as a survival factor, caring about others, being able to imagine being the other person, imagining looking through their eyes at their problems and situation. It’s an extension of caring for ourselves and our children. And if you’re truly empathetic, morality follows, unless you are unable for some reason to empathize with all others. For instance, if something blocks you, such as a belief that says that others are clearly inferior to you, are evil, or are otherwise lacking in goodness and rectitude.
Someone, a Christian, recently asked me “So where do you get your morality from?” and without hesitation I replied “From my empathy and my imagination. I look around me and see the problems that confront us and separate us and I feel the loss, the sadness, of all of us not being able to get along, and then I imagine a perfect world somewhere in the future where such problems do not exist anymore. Then I work backwards from there to here again and can thus see what is serving us now and what is not. For that perfect world to occur, we have to learn to love all others, accept all others, and empathize with all others without reservations. Period. It’s obviously the answer. So, there’s my morality.”
My morality is thus based in my empathy and my imaginative ability to see what we need to do and how we need to act, in order for the world to ever be at peace. I may have evolved my ability to empathize and my imagination, but my morality wasn’t so much selected for directly as it was a necessary result of those two things being a part of me already. My morality exists because I can empathize with all others and can imagine a perfect future where we all do, and cannot see any other way to get to that future but to start working toward it now. And I can see that it’s the only correct path. So could Jesus. Not so much many of His present-day followers, unfortunately. Since they believe that their morality comes from God, an outside source, they often cannot see any need to develop it within their own hearts. For them, the fear of hell is their morality. And fear-based morality is not morality at all. It’s obedience under duress. Not a fertile source for the love necessary to really be moral. But an excellent source for the egotism necessary to look down on all others and find them lacking. And that’s no way to Love Thy Neighbor, in my opinion.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
THE GOD OF LOVE
Gentle Jesus meek and mild
How come your old man's so wild?
Killing people left and right
Showing off his godly might
Destroying mankind in a flood
Cursing us with boils and blood
Froggies rain down from the sky
All of the firstborn must die
You're so nice and kind and good
Always doing what you should
You never even talk of hate
So why is daddy so irate?
With him it's threats and death and fear
He never even sheds a tear
One small misstep, one tiny sin
And then he doesn't let you in
He sends you down to meet his friend
And there you'll meet your fiery end
(It burns your flesh both night and day
Until the last stars fade away)
He loves us not, or so it seems
Unless he loves to hear our screams
He made us to be what we are
And punishes us when we get that far
You are his son, or so they say
And yet you're both like night and day
I wouldn't want to get you mad
But are you sure that he's your dad?
-St. Brian the Godless
We’ve all heard the phrase “God is Love” but what does that mean, really? If the God of the Christians is love, exemplifies love, then I think we have a problem. Because we will have to redefine “love” as something that in no way prevents God from punishing many of us eternally with searing agony for merely doubting His divine existence. We have to redefine love as something that allows for the loving Creator torturing His creations. How can torture ever be love? Especially when you consider that the torture will never end, so it’s not as if it’s to teach you a lesson. After you learn the lesson, you’re still stuck in hell forever.
Christians love to talk about how Jesus is God incarnate. By God we must assume that they mean Yaweh. (Or Jehova if you follow the error of early German translators) If that’s so, then why is Jesus nothing like His Father from the Old Testament? Compare Leviticus to any of the Gospels in content and tone. The latter sound loving, at least the parts with Christ’s message delineated in them. The former couldn’t be more evil if it were written by Old Scratch himself. Your son gets drunk and loud sometimes? Take him to the town and have the men of the town stone him to death. Problem solved. Your slave needed a beating? If he gets up in a day or two, no harm, no foul. If you kill him, then you’ve sinned. So don’t kill him, just beat the living crap out of him. Avoid vital organs as you pummel. There’s even a quote about throwing the babies of your enemies to the ground, onto rocks. Dashing babies to death is somehow love?
Nowadays, getting stoned doesn’t mean what it used to…
Modern Christians (of the hypochrist stripe) seem to have no problem reconciling the two extremes in one identity. God is love, but God is also torture. God made us all to love him, but if we don’t, or if we simply can’t find enough evidence for His existence in the creation that He made in order to believe in Him, then our Loving Father has no problem consigning us to the cosmic incinerator, for the rest of time. Sure. No problem with that. It all makes sense. Providing of course that your logical mind has been neutered.
Y’ever burn your fingers? It HURTS. Now imagine that all over your body, all the time, forever. Foever. Forever. Somehow, that is love. God loves us, except when he decides not to anymore. He made us to be what we all are, and then punishes us when we aren’t what he wants us to be? Can’t He get it right?
It’s all well and good to say that the ways of God are mysterious, but logic is like mathematics. It’s implacable, even in the case of the Deity. If the Deity behaves contrary to logic as regards to the question of love, then the Deity is proven not to love, at least as we understand the word “love” itself. There’s no mystery about it. Love never involves torture. The two concepts are incompatible with each other.
The words of Jesus Christ indicate to me a philosophy of loving all others unconditionally. As a skeptic I might try to make a case that even Jesus Himself never existed as an historical figure (we have virtually no hard evidence that he ever really walked the earth) but I cannot deny the beauty of the words attributed to Him. And as a logical person I also cannot deny the ugliness of rest of the Bible. So where’s the disconnect? Why does this disparity exist? And it’s not only between Yaweh and Jesus, it’s also between the words of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament.
The simple explanation is the one that Christians cannot allow themselves to hear. That the transcendental beauty of Jesus’ philosophy was recognized by the early church founders and was seen as the perfect bait for a trap set to ensnare the minds of the simple people. Starting with Constantine or even before, these people were the early precursors to Niccolo Macchaivelli. The Old Testament already existed of course, and by writing a new one with Jesus as the star but with plenty of control mechanisms implanted into the surrounding texts, and connecting it to the old, they gave it gravitas. They made it credible. They needed a carrot, and found Jesus. They needed a stick, and there it was in Leviticus and the rest of the Old Testament.
It’s brilliant, really. And it still works like a charm. No better control mechanism exists. Macchaivelli would be proud. Or come to think of it, perhaps old Niccolo learned his dirty tricks from the masters who practiced and perfected them centuries before. The founders of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
How come your old man's so wild?
Killing people left and right
Showing off his godly might
Destroying mankind in a flood
Cursing us with boils and blood
Froggies rain down from the sky
All of the firstborn must die
You're so nice and kind and good
Always doing what you should
You never even talk of hate
So why is daddy so irate?
With him it's threats and death and fear
He never even sheds a tear
One small misstep, one tiny sin
And then he doesn't let you in
He sends you down to meet his friend
And there you'll meet your fiery end
(It burns your flesh both night and day
Until the last stars fade away)
He loves us not, or so it seems
Unless he loves to hear our screams
He made us to be what we are
And punishes us when we get that far
You are his son, or so they say
And yet you're both like night and day
I wouldn't want to get you mad
But are you sure that he's your dad?
-St. Brian the Godless
We’ve all heard the phrase “God is Love” but what does that mean, really? If the God of the Christians is love, exemplifies love, then I think we have a problem. Because we will have to redefine “love” as something that in no way prevents God from punishing many of us eternally with searing agony for merely doubting His divine existence. We have to redefine love as something that allows for the loving Creator torturing His creations. How can torture ever be love? Especially when you consider that the torture will never end, so it’s not as if it’s to teach you a lesson. After you learn the lesson, you’re still stuck in hell forever.
Christians love to talk about how Jesus is God incarnate. By God we must assume that they mean Yaweh. (Or Jehova if you follow the error of early German translators) If that’s so, then why is Jesus nothing like His Father from the Old Testament? Compare Leviticus to any of the Gospels in content and tone. The latter sound loving, at least the parts with Christ’s message delineated in them. The former couldn’t be more evil if it were written by Old Scratch himself. Your son gets drunk and loud sometimes? Take him to the town and have the men of the town stone him to death. Problem solved. Your slave needed a beating? If he gets up in a day or two, no harm, no foul. If you kill him, then you’ve sinned. So don’t kill him, just beat the living crap out of him. Avoid vital organs as you pummel. There’s even a quote about throwing the babies of your enemies to the ground, onto rocks. Dashing babies to death is somehow love?
Nowadays, getting stoned doesn’t mean what it used to…
Modern Christians (of the hypochrist stripe) seem to have no problem reconciling the two extremes in one identity. God is love, but God is also torture. God made us all to love him, but if we don’t, or if we simply can’t find enough evidence for His existence in the creation that He made in order to believe in Him, then our Loving Father has no problem consigning us to the cosmic incinerator, for the rest of time. Sure. No problem with that. It all makes sense. Providing of course that your logical mind has been neutered.
Y’ever burn your fingers? It HURTS. Now imagine that all over your body, all the time, forever. Foever. Forever. Somehow, that is love. God loves us, except when he decides not to anymore. He made us to be what we all are, and then punishes us when we aren’t what he wants us to be? Can’t He get it right?
It’s all well and good to say that the ways of God are mysterious, but logic is like mathematics. It’s implacable, even in the case of the Deity. If the Deity behaves contrary to logic as regards to the question of love, then the Deity is proven not to love, at least as we understand the word “love” itself. There’s no mystery about it. Love never involves torture. The two concepts are incompatible with each other.
The words of Jesus Christ indicate to me a philosophy of loving all others unconditionally. As a skeptic I might try to make a case that even Jesus Himself never existed as an historical figure (we have virtually no hard evidence that he ever really walked the earth) but I cannot deny the beauty of the words attributed to Him. And as a logical person I also cannot deny the ugliness of rest of the Bible. So where’s the disconnect? Why does this disparity exist? And it’s not only between Yaweh and Jesus, it’s also between the words of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament.
The simple explanation is the one that Christians cannot allow themselves to hear. That the transcendental beauty of Jesus’ philosophy was recognized by the early church founders and was seen as the perfect bait for a trap set to ensnare the minds of the simple people. Starting with Constantine or even before, these people were the early precursors to Niccolo Macchaivelli. The Old Testament already existed of course, and by writing a new one with Jesus as the star but with plenty of control mechanisms implanted into the surrounding texts, and connecting it to the old, they gave it gravitas. They made it credible. They needed a carrot, and found Jesus. They needed a stick, and there it was in Leviticus and the rest of the Old Testament.
It’s brilliant, really. And it still works like a charm. No better control mechanism exists. Macchaivelli would be proud. Or come to think of it, perhaps old Niccolo learned his dirty tricks from the masters who practiced and perfected them centuries before. The founders of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Does Christianity Dumb You Down?
"Jesus loves me, yes I know
Cause the Bible tells me so
That is all I need to hear
And so I know I'll never fear
Nothing else is in my head
Except a book by guys long dead
Science isn't telling me
What I can and cannot see
I never, ever take a look
Since I only own one book
Jesus is my only thought
When others ask me what I've bought
I’d rather pluck out both my eyes
So that I can't see the lies
That Science tells us are the truth
I think that Science is uncouth!
Telling me that things fall down
And how a cricket makes a sound
And how planets spin around the sun
And how the gears in watches run
I do not need to hear the facts
I only need religious tracts
And prayers to our Great Lord above
Who blinded me with Bible Love
It feels so good to be so dense
To live behind an iron fence
To shelter fragile minds from truth
(Indoctrinate them in their youth)
Feed them tales of God above
And all of His undying Love
And how he put things in this place
Plain as the nose there on your face
That seem to say that He's not real
That's just the lying Science deal!
He put them here to fool us guys
When we try to use our eyes
We know better, yes we do
Science is at best, untrue
At worst a strange Satanic plot
To show what is real, and what is not
Why should we care what is real?
We still have the Christian deal
Believe in God, at any cost
And look to others like we're lost
Hope for God to make it clear
When the Rapture cometh near
With nonbelievers left behind
You'll all be sorry that you whined
Of how we're descended from some beast
(I don't believe it in the least)
“No Thanks” I say to Science stuff
I think that I have had enough
Of facts and reason, Truth and Hope
I'd much prefer to be a dope."
-St. Brian the Godless
Does Christianity Dumb People Down?
Christianity needs it's believers to believe in it utterly and without reservations, but it cannot be proven in any way, being at its core completely unreal and fictional, so it necessarily must destroy a person's ability to reality-test. It accomplishes this by presenting side-by-side options to the believer which are contrary and negate each other, insisting that the person believe both, on pain of hell and damnation of course. So, God is Love, but if you doubt it He'll burn your ass in hell forever. This type of thing, over and over, will eventually erode the person's ability to even see what is real and what is not. Which is the point. The indoctrinated Christian insists on seeing the world as an expression of their belief system. They cannot merely examine the world and draw conclusions. They must make it conform to their beliefs. So when reality differs from their beliefs, they have to find a way to explain it to themselves somehow. They have to find a loophole. Thus we have the apologists, trying with all their might to make the unreal seem as real as the real.
For two millennia the religion has survived and flourished by convincing people that it's real. So it's pretty good at it by now. It has developed an "apology" for everything a rational person might advance as an argument. Christians often can spout chapter and verse of the bible in response to an argument. They've been told that the Bible is the Word of God, so while they personally won't tell you that they know everything, they will of course say that God knows everything, and since He wrote the Bible and they've memorized it, they can feel that, in effect, they do know everything, at least everything they need to know.
This is of course, PRIDE.
And it's funny. I've heard that it was a sin or something.
Cause the Bible tells me so
That is all I need to hear
And so I know I'll never fear
Nothing else is in my head
Except a book by guys long dead
Science isn't telling me
What I can and cannot see
I never, ever take a look
Since I only own one book
Jesus is my only thought
When others ask me what I've bought
I’d rather pluck out both my eyes
So that I can't see the lies
That Science tells us are the truth
I think that Science is uncouth!
Telling me that things fall down
And how a cricket makes a sound
And how planets spin around the sun
And how the gears in watches run
I do not need to hear the facts
I only need religious tracts
And prayers to our Great Lord above
Who blinded me with Bible Love
It feels so good to be so dense
To live behind an iron fence
To shelter fragile minds from truth
(Indoctrinate them in their youth)
Feed them tales of God above
And all of His undying Love
And how he put things in this place
Plain as the nose there on your face
That seem to say that He's not real
That's just the lying Science deal!
He put them here to fool us guys
When we try to use our eyes
We know better, yes we do
Science is at best, untrue
At worst a strange Satanic plot
To show what is real, and what is not
Why should we care what is real?
We still have the Christian deal
Believe in God, at any cost
And look to others like we're lost
Hope for God to make it clear
When the Rapture cometh near
With nonbelievers left behind
You'll all be sorry that you whined
Of how we're descended from some beast
(I don't believe it in the least)
“No Thanks” I say to Science stuff
I think that I have had enough
Of facts and reason, Truth and Hope
I'd much prefer to be a dope."
-St. Brian the Godless
Does Christianity Dumb People Down?
Christianity needs it's believers to believe in it utterly and without reservations, but it cannot be proven in any way, being at its core completely unreal and fictional, so it necessarily must destroy a person's ability to reality-test. It accomplishes this by presenting side-by-side options to the believer which are contrary and negate each other, insisting that the person believe both, on pain of hell and damnation of course. So, God is Love, but if you doubt it He'll burn your ass in hell forever. This type of thing, over and over, will eventually erode the person's ability to even see what is real and what is not. Which is the point. The indoctrinated Christian insists on seeing the world as an expression of their belief system. They cannot merely examine the world and draw conclusions. They must make it conform to their beliefs. So when reality differs from their beliefs, they have to find a way to explain it to themselves somehow. They have to find a loophole. Thus we have the apologists, trying with all their might to make the unreal seem as real as the real.
For two millennia the religion has survived and flourished by convincing people that it's real. So it's pretty good at it by now. It has developed an "apology" for everything a rational person might advance as an argument. Christians often can spout chapter and verse of the bible in response to an argument. They've been told that the Bible is the Word of God, so while they personally won't tell you that they know everything, they will of course say that God knows everything, and since He wrote the Bible and they've memorized it, they can feel that, in effect, they do know everything, at least everything they need to know.
This is of course, PRIDE.
And it's funny. I've heard that it was a sin or something.
Opening Post on Religion from St. Brian
"Religion is most like a computer virus for brains. It comes complete with instructions for development and propagation of the virus, and code that prevents the person from deleting it or noticing that it doesn't conform to reality. It is orchestrated, organized, and officially sanctioned psychosis, made easily digestible and palatable to the masses." -St. Brian the Godless
This is a place for discussion regarding the effects of religion in general and Christianity in particular on society. All are welcome.
In particular we will discuss its deleterious effects on intelligence in general and how religious adherents often behave in a manner diametrically opposed to their stated moral principles. We will discuss the idea of programming and how the only difference between organized religion and a cult is the number of adherents.
We will also delve into biblical parables and stories and discuss how tenuous they are in the face of logic and reason in this modern age.
Whether Jesus ever even really existed as an historical figure will also come up from time to time.
Cultural hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage will of course be frequent topics.
Also a topic of discussion will be the increasingly rare variety of Christian that actually does adhere to the words and actions of Jesus Christ as extolled in the gospels. I wanted to make particular mention of this sort of person since they're not a part of the problem society faces, they're a part of the solution. So my DISCLAIMER on this site is that I have nothing against "real" Christians, and bear then no ill will whatsoever. In fact I welcome them as friends.
Spirituality in general will also come up, more in contrast to religion than as a part of it, since in my opinion religion is the opposite of real spirituality.
++++++++++++++++++UPDATED!!!++++++++++++++++++++
Writing a blog is an evolving process for me in more ways than one. For instance, I'm trying to soften the tone of this place. On reflection my initial post here was a bit too hostile and narrow-minded sounding. I'd rather focus on discussion rather than casting stones when I'm far from sinless myself. (I hope all the Christian readers appreciate my usage of that last line there)
Thanks for visiting. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment.
-St. Brian
This is a place for discussion regarding the effects of religion in general and Christianity in particular on society. All are welcome.
In particular we will discuss its deleterious effects on intelligence in general and how religious adherents often behave in a manner diametrically opposed to their stated moral principles. We will discuss the idea of programming and how the only difference between organized religion and a cult is the number of adherents.
We will also delve into biblical parables and stories and discuss how tenuous they are in the face of logic and reason in this modern age.
Whether Jesus ever even really existed as an historical figure will also come up from time to time.
Cultural hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage will of course be frequent topics.
Also a topic of discussion will be the increasingly rare variety of Christian that actually does adhere to the words and actions of Jesus Christ as extolled in the gospels. I wanted to make particular mention of this sort of person since they're not a part of the problem society faces, they're a part of the solution. So my DISCLAIMER on this site is that I have nothing against "real" Christians, and bear then no ill will whatsoever. In fact I welcome them as friends.
Spirituality in general will also come up, more in contrast to religion than as a part of it, since in my opinion religion is the opposite of real spirituality.
++++++++++++++++++UPDATED!!!++++++++++++++++++++
Writing a blog is an evolving process for me in more ways than one. For instance, I'm trying to soften the tone of this place. On reflection my initial post here was a bit too hostile and narrow-minded sounding. I'd rather focus on discussion rather than casting stones when I'm far from sinless myself. (I hope all the Christian readers appreciate my usage of that last line there)
Thanks for visiting. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment.
-St. Brian
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