"God is a word and the argument ends there."
Here is a large and rambling e-mail I once sent. It is tangentially related to this post here about the Catholic Church. As you know, occasionally I imbibe a few drinks and e-mail drunken screeds to people kind enough to read them and still be my friend. This is one from last summer and it has a bit of some spicy language in it, but we're all adults here. Anyway, it's where I was at the time. A sort of religious snapshot. So without further ado:
"Hey Timmer,
I really wanted to talk about a book I read called The End of Faith by Sam Harris where he argues that we should not be tolerant of religion. Religious tolerance is retarded! There is no real (as in reality) basis to do so. We don't tolerate other beliefs with no real world basis.
Flat Earther's? Laughable! We don't give the time of day to people who don't believe in gravity. An Earth centered model of the universe was dumped into the ashcan of history with the findings Galileo.
The gist of Harris' argument is thus: People act on their beliefs. Beliefs should be formed by experiment. What is the consistent outcome of repeated actions? What happens EVERY time? What is observed? We should act on and be responsible for the predictable outcomes of our actions.
Anyway, beliefs are what a person acts on. Right? So Harris goes on to list FOUR (4!) full pages of quotes from the Koran saying shit like kill-everyone-who-won't-convert to Islam sort of stuff. That is the text that millions of people are following. (The bible doesn't fare much better in this regard.) These texts are forming the beliefs of millions of people.
He also argues that the Inquisition is actually the logical outcome of Christianity if you follow the bible to the letter. Moderate Christians are the problem. They are wishy-washy on things they're not comfortable with. If they would take a serious look at what they believed and followed what the bible says they would see that they're being hypocritical and stop propping up this destructive belief system. How many Christians have read the bible from cover to cover? Tortue people who won't accept Jesus as their saviour! They'll thank us when they're in heaven. It's for their own good. That's what the bible says! Quotes like Jesus saying shit along the lines of "I came to bring a sword to fuck everybody up" should have christians murdering non-believers in the streets.
He had this quote that I just loved (minus the swears). Something along the lines of "Imagine that in 2000 years people were claiming to defend with their lives that a certain movie was made by God or God coded a certain computer program like Windows 95. It would be laughable to us if it weren't the cause of a shitload of humankind's woes today ...a fuckin' tragedy."
Like I mentioned, I wanted to talk about this book I read but I'm still wrapping my head around the concepts presented to me. I won't be able to do this without throwing out poorly constructed paragraphs with little connecting them. I've had a bit too much to drink to be coherent. That and the fact that I'm listening to (Smog)'s brilliant "A River Ain't Too Much To Love" makes piecing together sentences that make sense that much harder.
Oh man, you should rent The God Who Wasn't There. It's kinda amateurish and can be misleading at times but it is well worth your time.
Or read something by Earl Doherty ( specifically The Jesus Puzzle or Challenging the Verdict which was a response to this best selling christian book The Case for Christ) if you're interested in the origins of Christianity and the extremely shaky ground it's been built on. Check this out:
Jesus was claimed to have existed from approx. 3 A.D. to 35 A.D. right? The first Christian writings from the bible come from St. Paul (let's be generous and say 30 years later). He never mentions anything about the actual life stories of Jesus apart from his crucifixion and resurrection - None of the stories of Jesus' life.
And when it would benefit St. Paul to mention Jesus' teachings from his life-story to win an argument he is having about church doctrine, he never does!
Doherty proves that his crucifixion and resurrection took place in a mythical realm similar to the one where we put the heroics of Hercules. We don't believe the exploits of Hercules to have existed in this world, right? Why would we believe the same about Jesus?
The first gospel to appear is Mark which is written anywhere from A.D. 70 to 110. At least forty years after Jesus was supposed to have lived. Matthew and Luke can be shown to have been based on Mark. They're called the "synoptic" gospels 'cause they're so much the same. John is just waaaay out there from the other three. Forget him. Follow me here I'm getting to the payoff. There were other saviour gods that were being preached. Applonious of Tyana, Dionysis, Mithras, Baal and many more...all these gods who had eerily similar lives who were worshiped BEFORE Christ was supposed to have walked the Earth. Born to a virgin on Christmas, crucified, hung on a tree or cross...the similarities are striking.
And guess what the Catholic church's explanation of this fact is (take note they don't refute their existence).....Satan went back in time and created these gods to test the faith of Christians. How weak is that?
It was written (if I remember correctly) by Justin Martyr, an early father of the church around 150 A.D. or so. And guess what - that's the explanation that still stands today!!!! The Catholic Faith is based on the premise that the Devil went back in time and planted stories about saviours that lived lives shockingly similar to Jesus' just to test the faith of the followers of Jesus. Wow!
I like Tom Harpur's take on the whole Christ thing in his book The Pagan Christ:Recovering the Lost Light. The story of Christ is one that we all go through. "The Jesus story can become a profoundly spiritual allegory of the soul, he says."
Whatever. Now I'm listening to a bootleg of the Books live in Toronto. As you know, Alan Watts was a bad mother fucker. The Books took a lecture of his and spliced it into one of their songs when they played the ElMo. It took me an hour to transcribe this shit. It's pretty striking stuff and has even more impact when floating over the Books music. I'll leave you with it.
"And now you go to kindergarten. That's a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade. And then c'mon, first grade leads to second grade and so on and then you get out of grade school. You go to high school and its' revving up, the thing is coming. Then you gotta go to college. By Jove, and then you get to graduate school and when you're through with graduate school you go out to join the world.
Then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance and they've got their quota to make and you're going to make that and all the time the thing is coming. It's coming. It's coming. That great thing, the success you're working for. And then when you wake up one day about 40 years old you say, "My God, I've arrived. I'm there." and you don't feel very different from what you've always felt.
And there's a slight let-down because you feel there's a hoax. And there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything.
But we miss the point the whole way along.
It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played."
p.s. Harris summed up the bible and koran as this (and pissed off a lot of people by doing so): "God wrote a book." Makes things a little ridiculous when put like that, eh?
p.p.s. Watts was relating an old Buddhist story: Someone was asking the Buddha "where did we come from? How did we get here?" And Buddha's answer was "if you were bit by a poisonous snake that slithered away, would you waste all your time trying to catch the snake to find out what kind it was? Or would you attempt to treat yourself of your wound?"
Here is a large and rambling e-mail I once sent. It is tangentially related to this post here about the Catholic Church. As you know, occasionally I imbibe a few drinks and e-mail drunken screeds to people kind enough to read them and still be my friend. This is one from last summer and it has a bit of some spicy language in it, but we're all adults here. Anyway, it's where I was at the time. A sort of religious snapshot. So without further ado:
"Hey Timmer,
I really wanted to talk about a book I read called The End of Faith by Sam Harris where he argues that we should not be tolerant of religion. Religious tolerance is retarded! There is no real (as in reality) basis to do so. We don't tolerate other beliefs with no real world basis.
Flat Earther's? Laughable! We don't give the time of day to people who don't believe in gravity. An Earth centered model of the universe was dumped into the ashcan of history with the findings Galileo.
The gist of Harris' argument is thus: People act on their beliefs. Beliefs should be formed by experiment. What is the consistent outcome of repeated actions? What happens EVERY time? What is observed? We should act on and be responsible for the predictable outcomes of our actions.
Anyway, beliefs are what a person acts on. Right? So Harris goes on to list FOUR (4!) full pages of quotes from the Koran saying shit like kill-everyone-who-won't-convert to Islam sort of stuff. That is the text that millions of people are following. (The bible doesn't fare much better in this regard.) These texts are forming the beliefs of millions of people.
He also argues that the Inquisition is actually the logical outcome of Christianity if you follow the bible to the letter. Moderate Christians are the problem. They are wishy-washy on things they're not comfortable with. If they would take a serious look at what they believed and followed what the bible says they would see that they're being hypocritical and stop propping up this destructive belief system. How many Christians have read the bible from cover to cover? Tortue people who won't accept Jesus as their saviour! They'll thank us when they're in heaven. It's for their own good. That's what the bible says! Quotes like Jesus saying shit along the lines of "I came to bring a sword to fuck everybody up" should have christians murdering non-believers in the streets.
He had this quote that I just loved (minus the swears). Something along the lines of "Imagine that in 2000 years people were claiming to defend with their lives that a certain movie was made by God or God coded a certain computer program like Windows 95. It would be laughable to us if it weren't the cause of a shitload of humankind's woes today ...a fuckin' tragedy."
Like I mentioned, I wanted to talk about this book I read but I'm still wrapping my head around the concepts presented to me. I won't be able to do this without throwing out poorly constructed paragraphs with little connecting them. I've had a bit too much to drink to be coherent. That and the fact that I'm listening to (Smog)'s brilliant "A River Ain't Too Much To Love" makes piecing together sentences that make sense that much harder.
Oh man, you should rent The God Who Wasn't There. It's kinda amateurish and can be misleading at times but it is well worth your time.
Or read something by Earl Doherty ( specifically The Jesus Puzzle or Challenging the Verdict which was a response to this best selling christian book The Case for Christ) if you're interested in the origins of Christianity and the extremely shaky ground it's been built on. Check this out:
Jesus was claimed to have existed from approx. 3 A.D. to 35 A.D. right? The first Christian writings from the bible come from St. Paul (let's be generous and say 30 years later). He never mentions anything about the actual life stories of Jesus apart from his crucifixion and resurrection - None of the stories of Jesus' life.
And when it would benefit St. Paul to mention Jesus' teachings from his life-story to win an argument he is having about church doctrine, he never does!
Doherty proves that his crucifixion and resurrection took place in a mythical realm similar to the one where we put the heroics of Hercules. We don't believe the exploits of Hercules to have existed in this world, right? Why would we believe the same about Jesus?
The first gospel to appear is Mark which is written anywhere from A.D. 70 to 110. At least forty years after Jesus was supposed to have lived. Matthew and Luke can be shown to have been based on Mark. They're called the "synoptic" gospels 'cause they're so much the same. John is just waaaay out there from the other three. Forget him. Follow me here I'm getting to the payoff. There were other saviour gods that were being preached. Applonious of Tyana, Dionysis, Mithras, Baal and many more...all these gods who had eerily similar lives who were worshiped BEFORE Christ was supposed to have walked the Earth. Born to a virgin on Christmas, crucified, hung on a tree or cross...the similarities are striking.
And guess what the Catholic church's explanation of this fact is (take note they don't refute their existence).....Satan went back in time and created these gods to test the faith of Christians. How weak is that?
It was written (if I remember correctly) by Justin Martyr, an early father of the church around 150 A.D. or so. And guess what - that's the explanation that still stands today!!!! The Catholic Faith is based on the premise that the Devil went back in time and planted stories about saviours that lived lives shockingly similar to Jesus' just to test the faith of the followers of Jesus. Wow!
I like Tom Harpur's take on the whole Christ thing in his book The Pagan Christ:Recovering the Lost Light. The story of Christ is one that we all go through. "The Jesus story can become a profoundly spiritual allegory of the soul, he says."
Whatever. Now I'm listening to a bootleg of the Books live in Toronto. As you know, Alan Watts was a bad mother fucker. The Books took a lecture of his and spliced it into one of their songs when they played the ElMo. It took me an hour to transcribe this shit. It's pretty striking stuff and has even more impact when floating over the Books music. I'll leave you with it.
"And now you go to kindergarten. That's a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade. And then c'mon, first grade leads to second grade and so on and then you get out of grade school. You go to high school and its' revving up, the thing is coming. Then you gotta go to college. By Jove, and then you get to graduate school and when you're through with graduate school you go out to join the world.
Then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance and they've got their quota to make and you're going to make that and all the time the thing is coming. It's coming. It's coming. That great thing, the success you're working for. And then when you wake up one day about 40 years old you say, "My God, I've arrived. I'm there." and you don't feel very different from what you've always felt.
And there's a slight let-down because you feel there's a hoax. And there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything.
But we miss the point the whole way along.
It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played."
p.s. Harris summed up the bible and koran as this (and pissed off a lot of people by doing so): "God wrote a book." Makes things a little ridiculous when put like that, eh?
p.p.s. Watts was relating an old Buddhist story: Someone was asking the Buddha "where did we come from? How did we get here?" And Buddha's answer was "if you were bit by a poisonous snake that slithered away, would you waste all your time trying to catch the snake to find out what kind it was? Or would you attempt to treat yourself of your wound?"
posted by Ludger Sylbaris at 11:29 AM
4 Comments:
Did Tim send you a response to this one??
Excellent closing from the Buddha. Full of great ideas, that dude.
ps. even drunken, a very interesting post. There are a couple of logical errors on your part, but I'll excuse them, given your inebriation.
Yeah, Tim replied to me. Here it is:
Joe,
I'm going to try to spin a response off but I'm not sure where it will go ... so bear with any strange tangents.
Religion is a fucked up entity. People base their whole lives around the teachings of a dead guy whose existence is questionable at best. The folks believe, they have faith. They have the strength to believe but lack the strength to question. Would that not be a SIN. I believe so. If any of these vehement believers would look into the history books and read about the rise of christianity they would figure out that it served a purely political purpose. When Constantine introduced christianity as the official religion of rome he did so because he had to. The tide was shifting -- the pagan religions were wanning. Constantine had the political forsight to make the shift -- why. (I would have used a question mark but it keeps coming up like this é -- go figure) I will ask no questions and apparently use no contractions. He needed to maintain power. That eerie simmilarity between other dieties was formulated. How do you get a boatload of pagans to follow christianity. You tell them they already are. You make christinan myths and holidays similar to pagan one and -- bang you have got converts. Replace their deities with saints that are in charge of the same thing and people start to worship the saints. Are not saints really just minor deities of the christian (catholic) faith. It is all sort of mind boggling that (like you said) all this stock is put in the words of men who died thousands of years ago. The texts, when they were written, would not have been for purely theological reasons .. the reasons would have been political, social, even economic. It was a time when the word of god would have struck fear right. And here we sit on the acme of the American empire in the midst of a holy war. Fuck mohammed and fuck jesus ... you both cause nothing but pain and violence (I just made a whole bunch of old religious zelot grannies role over on their rosarys and korans and begin to weep). The fact is that the state has never cared about the citizens that inhabit the lands. Politics is about power, global power and if a little book can keep people from caring about the real shit going down than good (as far as the state, any state is concerned).
The tides shift, ideas ebb and wain, thoughts come and go. Now here we sit, comfortable and safe in north america, my greatest concern -- I hope I can score a goal at the bear on Sunday. That is the ideal situation for a government -- no questions, just a happy apathetic citizenry. And it all started with the word of god. It is all about control of the real power. Economy, state, religon they are all the some paradigms of power to be manipulated by the few for the benefit of the few. Stick that in your pipe and worship it.
Ièm jettin (see I accidently used a contraction) Shaner is on his way and we are headed across the ditch. Ohh, and I believfe congrats are in order -- I hear you and Laura are engaged and buying a home. Fuck, that is right on -- the real things in life are joy and love and it looks like you are doing well on both front. Remember the has to be a limit to knowledge .. if you learn too much you end up crazy on the street rambling truths to people who donèt care enough to believe you.
Out
Td Walker
Fuck, Tim's a good writer, I wonder if he does anything with his stuff!(?) Does Tim have a blog,too??
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