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InvisibleGotlib
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Registered: 05/01/11
Posts: 7,643
Loc: Flag
-Beyond Belief-
    #18717537 - 08/17/13 02:38 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

I posted this in the pub already with hope of having it read by many.
The only responses I got were TL-DR.

I put it all down in neat little paragraphs, shouldn't be too hard.
Anyone here willing to read this and give me their opinion?

-Beyond Belief-

Part 1.

The Setup.

I was raised in post catholic implosion, new age fringe religion open bar, French Canada. In a nice little town called Québec. And unconvincingly taught the catholic faith by total idiots with no passion, or intellectual span whatsoever. And they did not lead by example either. So, I have little choice but to express myself in terms of this insignificant - but beautiful, cold and safe - little corner of history. In terms of this moral and cultural tundra that has never known the ravages of war. The perfect place for lazy people, intellectually or otherwise: reasonable cops, lax dope laws, easy beer, manageable if expensive corruption, slow economic pace and rampant individualism.

And very blessed by world standards, with full local employment, and an incredibly rich hinterland, discreetly growing the best weed anywhere. A kingdom of beauty the size of western Europe, assorted with government enforced mediocrity, my kind of place. Government does all the thinking for you. No critical thought required to survive here, I promise you that. Just follow the herd’s seasonal migration and party along with this jovialist self obsessed little tribe. Sadly, to many on this planet, such a beautiful place filled with so many non threatening regular people, is beyond their imagination.

Here, the powers that be have already capitulated to the renewed religious world threat we are experiencing. They call their approach “reasonable accommodation”. As if there was such a thing as an unreasonable accommodation. Are our leaders actually so dumb as not to realize religious people are impervious to reason and rely exclusively on dogma, which is by definition not open to accommodation. Let alone “reasonable accommodation”. Yes they are that stupid. They double the word, in the adolescent hope it may give them something like double protection. Like shampoo for the brain. A tragic, comic strategy devised by pseudo leftist fat cats with a narrow view of their identity, rooted in the atavistic dogmas of nationalism, corporatist lay churches, and linguistic purity. This obsession over those B-side issues have been the mainstay of any brain activity, over here, for more than 50 years. Fortunately, no significant religion inspired violence has occurred yet.

I could write the following in French, which happens to be my mother tongue, but I am too lazy, and nobody here would bother reading this anyway. They are too busy discussing next season’s hockey lineup, dodging the taxman or watching reality shows. Or stuffing their male offspring with three times more Ritalin than anywhere else in North America. Numbskull people beget numbskull offspring. English uses far fewer letters to express the same ideas. Less typing, less effort. My kind of deal. I am no paragon of knowledge and culture either. Do keep in mind I was also educated here. So, try to be fair.

Part 2.

The Question.

I have been wrestling with a few questions many may consider more pressing than next year’s hockey lineup or, weather the sign should read “MacDonald” rather than “MacDonald’s”. Nobody here gives a hoot about any important vital question, so, out of sheer societal boredom, I felt I could take a swing at the dangerous reality of religion on this planet and run with it. I am not in this to disprove the existence of God. Brilliant people from all over the world have taken up this urgent task in the wake of recent historical developments. As their religiouscreationist opponents are currently experiencing wholesale intellectual and moral implosion, and turning more and more towards violence, the last refuge of the distressed, the last refuge of the incompetent. But the harm is done. Billions have been damaged, infected, for millennia.

I only feel I should warn people and help them realize that religion is bogus, super dangerous, and a real threat to humanity’s very survival, that it is based on fear, our prime reptilian emotion. Based on pattern seeking, our primal mammalian vision. If God takes a few knocks along the way, so be it. Let him blame his earthly minions for this. After all, they taught me a crock of shit. Let him blame his imperfect creation. However, I am not an atheist in the regular sense of the word. But the scales have gradually fallen off my eyes, as a consequence of regularly having to deal with vestigial religious clerics in my family life, in my professional life. I would say I am a non deist, post-theist dude. With a catholic spiritual scar.

I could have taken the path of trying to debunk biblical elucubrations and fantasy stories. But this requires much study, and, as I told you before, I am way too lazy and ignorant for that, too. By the sheer volume of bible bashing media out there, this undertaking seems to be a very popular hobby, already brilliantly and, if I may add, humorously occupied by it’s adepts. Sometimes very courageously so, and at great personal risk, especially for those who dare poke a stick at, and stand up to, the Islamic delusion over this other book, the quran. We christians have it relatively easy. I could have tried to tackle religion’s sophistry via naturalistic arguments, but here again, there are geniuses of the first order out there, I mean Nobel prizes, really exceptional people, that are actually and finally changing the world by the now inexorable diffusion of their arguments, through the Internet. They too are very worried.

A few ideas or expressions in the following have been borrowed from some of these folk, but I am also too lazy, either to camouflage them in superfluous verbiage and pass for an idiot, or to mention their source, and pass for a guy who reads a lot. I am somewhere between the two, I guess. The following loosely refers to available argumentation, made by people way more clever than me, peppered with some hopefully ego-free original thought or opinion, all in a spirit of sharing. In a spirit of looking for questions, not for answers. At this point, it is altogether fitting that I thank some people and characters for helping me see things more clearly, notably, Bill Maher, Colin McGinn, Christopher Hutchins, Jeffrey Lebowski, Richard Dawkins, George Carlin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Randall Patrick MacMurphy, Jacob Bronowski, Harry Canyon, James Burke, Keith Haring, Kenneth Clark, Nigel Spivey, Obi wan Kenobi and Hari Seldon, among many others.

Please do not infer that I detest catholicism or fear catholic priests in a special fashion because I was born out here. I detest all religion. I fear all religious clerics. I was born on Earth, and I like to fancy myself as an equal opportunity type of guy. If it seems I take more pokes at christianity, it is solely because I happen to know it better. It does not show a bias on my part, but rather a limitation. Let no religion afflicted mind feel that his or her personal hallucination is specifically targeted. I am somewhat of a generalist.

But if you are a, usually male, consecrated religious cleric, acting on behalf of any type of religious organization, if your “calling” and livelihood is to try to influence other people’s lives with your religious beliefs, then, by all means, feel targeted. I will do my best to avoid cynicism, but it will not be easy. Religion’s ageless absurdity has always been propitious to cynicism and sarcasm, and the butt of many of the best jokes bobbing around since the invention of straight thinking and clay tablets. To the humorist and commentator, religion and it’s clerics’ sinister antics will remain the gift that keeps on giving. Now that there are no more self preservation based incentives to shut up, religious threats of social exclusion or much worse, let’s go bowling. This may not last.

Part 3.

The Madness.

Mormon church founder Joseph Smith - and 2012 U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney - claim, among many, many other flabbergasting incredibilities, that we came from planet Kolob, and that Paradise is in Colorado. Scientologists and Hollywood stars John Travolta and Tom Cruise say we need an e-meter to detect and neutralize the aliens hidden inside our body, in order to get to the next level. Hello? The Muslim Mahmud Ahmadinejad, current president of Iran, expects the Mahdi to fly across the Tehran sky riding a white stallion any time now to mark the end of the world. He has even had a huge avenue cobbled across town, demolishing thousands of humble dwellings, to facilitate his imminent landing. No shit. He also says there are no homosexuals, or serial killers in Iran. He and his bosses, the mullahs, also advocate the mutilation of children’s genitalia.

Judaism is also inching close to the end, a harbinger of this longed for catastrophe being the Jews’ return to Israel. They too mutilate their children’s genitalia. They risk worldwide conflagration bickering over tiny, tiny bits of desert land over which they claim a heavenly title. They even haggle over ruins or parts of ancient buildings. They have walled themselves out, as Berlin was walled in. The book of Revelations prophesies christianity founder Jesus Christ will come down to some desert dump called Megiddo, bring the world to an end, and save the people who believe in him. All others will be cast off to, well, you know where. The three major messianic idolatries of our time have transformed Jerusalem and the middle-east into an open sky mental institution, ripe for a nuclear accident. A place where pain and suffering have become a way of life. Their mutual hatred has become the bane of mankind’s existence, and is beyond any sane person’s pale. All three have the Atomic Bomb. I could go on and on…

When Revelations was written, only God had the capacity to end the world. But now, Man does too. Because, unfortunately, before we found out how to be rational or peaceful, we figured out nuclear weapons and how to pollute on a catastrophic scale. The irony of religion is that because of it’s power to divert so many people towards destructive courses - way more than organized crime or any other illegal human association or traffic - the world actually could come to an end. The hour is getting very late to indulge in having key decisions made by anti rational religionists. By those who would steer the wide ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a dead fish wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper.

Part 4.

The Mad

Faith, as it has been imposed on us means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about, and those who preach that type of faith, enable it and elevate it, are intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous, because it allows human beings who do not have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it’s wonderful when someone says “I’m willing Lord, I’ll do whatever you want me to do”. Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by suggestion from religious functionaries with their own corruptions, limitations, and agendas. We pray to no avail, and we do not learn.

Religious clerics are sophists. I cringe when I hear them equate what is basically overbearing, non-stop, self promoting, nonsensical psychobabble, served half baked from bronze age fantasy, with real teaching. They scare me and deeply disturb key pedagogic values, such as simplicity of verse, tone and wit, perseverant and formative work and study, intellectual honesty, humble logic and affable, patient, fair discourse and argument, all based on fact or recent, valid data. Their writings are not much better.

Religious clerics are hypocrites. The universal deftness with which they accept honours, adulation, and handle donation and flattery has never ceased to amaze me and shows much exposure to it. Their usually dismissive and pedantic response to thoughtful conscientious objection makes me want to puke. Their compassionless reaction to perceived error is swift, prompt to judgment, slow on forgiveness. In this century, true teachers do not need a robe or a podium, and shun shallow servile praise. Real teachers do not generate belief or smug certainty, but share knowledge and spread humorous doubt. They do not convolute logic into pointless self exculpatory, circular, casuistic arcana.

Religious clerics are ingrates. Intellectual ingrates to the immense personal liberation modern scientific thought and technology has brought them. They fear the final defanging of biblical dogma brought about by free speech, literacy and critical thinking. It strips them bare to what they really are: no better than you ,or even me. Medical science, water treatment and public hygiene has more than doubled human lifespan, thus giving each of us the chance to use this time for our own betterment, and that of the human condition. Science has clothed them, fed them, educated them too. Hard earned freedoms, ironically mostly wrested from them at terrible cost, over centuries of struggle, are now potentially everyone’s.

Religious clerics are Dinosaurs. Their only gratitude towards these entirely undeserved privileges are to hijack social and family life, shirk real work, feign personal poverty, hog the good life, enjoin their “flock” to keep on enclosing their thoughts and actions into a moral straightjacket that prevailed - and was useful then I guess - in a time when knowledge was old, when life was steeped in ignorance, fear, sickness, dogma, pointless turf wars and standalone arbitrary. When age old superstition was the only explanation for natural, or societal phenomena and catastrophes, when the pulpit was the only source of information and knowledge on this semi-civilized, illiterate, pre-technical planet that our entire world used to be. That sadly, our world still is, in it’s vast tracts of religion addled humanity. As knowledge of ourselves and the universe experiences a genuine renewal, expands and derives it’s view of reality more and more from objective observation, patient data collecting and critical thinking rather than the cheap old shortcuts of heavenly revelation, the religious explanation of the universe and of our true nature recedes into a smaller and smaller pocket of ignorance.

Religious clerics are in it for themselves. In spite of all these blessings, those globe trotting, junketeering sharp dressers with fancy head gear and collars, projectors, cameras and megaphones have chosen otherwise. They have turned themselves into high powered, nuclear grade industrial scale sophists with the hypocrisy, material means and lethal weapons to match. Into dangerous political, moral and intellectual tyrants threatening our young with their fallacious view of the world and other more sinister, absconded abject mores. At every level of society. In every culture. In all of organized religion.

By religious cleric, I mean a consecrated officer, usually male, of any organized religion. Robed, turban, miter, yarmulke sporting folk. Not those who so ineptly call themselves followers, those are the ones who pay for their pastor’s ride. Nor those who have enlisted themselves in the various armies of their religion to try to do some good, or on the spur of some stubborn delusion, those are are their servants. Not folks such as monks, nuns, tertiary orders, not even Hamas’ or Hezbollah’s machine gun toting ninjas.

Part 5.

The Game

I can believe Paris is in France, I can believe in democracy, I can believe in God. The first two are based on provable facts amenable to discussion, though the second entails a bit of an opinion, some traction on reality. The last is based on no fact at worst, on wishful thinking at best. At any rate, on no intelligible discussion. When I am fast asleep, do I still believe Paris is in France? Does not matter. Paris is in France. Do I still believe in democracy? You will have to awake me, to know to what extent, if at all. Do I still believe in God? Does not matter, weather I am fast asleep or wide awake, it cannot be proven.

The first two are contingent to reality, or at least my opinion of it. The third is not. The third is equivalent to intellectual sleepwalking. Non contingent belief is dangerous. To act on it is disastrous. Religion, like Hollywood, is one of the great secular non contingent belief manufactures. Hollywood too is profit based, but it does not possess the minds of those with a finger on the trigger of Armageddon.

Anselm of Canterbury argued that the very definition of God entails that he exists. “God is the most powerful, perfect conceivable being”. Now suppose this most powerful, or most perfect being, did not exist. Then he would lack the attribute of existence. But the attribute of existence is one of the perfections, or one of the things that makes a being powerful or perfect. Existence is better than non existence. But since he is, by definition the most perfect being, he must have the attribute of existence. Therefore God exists. Looks bulletproof.

Well, there’s something very wrong with this. The bit that strikes me as sophistic is the one that says “god is the most perfect conceivable being, and existence is one of it’s perfections”. Try to magine “the most perfect tasty meal conceivable”. Does that mean anything? What are it’s perfections? It can only be based on experience. “This is the most tasty meal I ever had” makes more sense. It’s like the most perfect football game conceivable, makes no sense. The best football game I’ve ever seen makes sense. Most perfect being, in what respect? Most perfect colours? Most perfect odour? Most perfect hair? It’s meaningless. I can’t even say “the most perfect, conceivable letter F” or “the most perfect, conceivable rock” without making no sense at all. At most, I can think of the most perfect conceivable triangle.

By the way, all triangles are the most perfect conceivable. Even one drawn, perchance, by a stranger to the concept of triangle. If a triangle is not perfect, it does not exist. You cannot imagine an imperfect triangle. This cannot be said of any other shape or thing. An imperfect square becomes a lozenge, a rectangle, a trapeze or some other four sided polygon. You can only truly appreciate the perfection of a non triangle through it’s mathematical equation. A triangle’s perfection can be visually contemplated every day. In some sense, it is the ultimate icon of perfection. Should I deduce that God is a triangle? Or that he is somehow triangular? Pyramids anyone? Star of David anyone? Trinity, anyone? Take your pick. Makes no sense to me. Maybe what I just blurted out about triangles is a only partially true, or a matter of opinion. Or is a complete sham. Go figure.

So much pointless casuistic through which a few more minutes of effective thought may blow more truck sized holes. Many philosophical arguments have that flaw. Just because you cannot readily refute it in logic, it does not mean you should take it seriously, or form your core beliefs on the basis of it. It’s all a great shell game. And religious clerics are damn good at this game. They take pleasure, and derive personal ascendency, in dumbfounding the more influenceable, less informed among us. The only valid answer to the question “what if you are wrong” is “what if you are wrong”. Religious discourse is but a house of logical mirrors and usually pretty easy to debunk, provided a healthy sense of humour, and some formal education. Religious literature is chloroform in print. Lucky you there is no commandment: “Thou shalt not draw perfect triangles”. Religion is sophistic and sterile. In patterns, events or mere coincidence, it prefers to see purpose. Self fulfilling purpose. The rational mind, by contrast, undertakes the real intellectual work of establishing true causality, based on rationally deduced, not revealed, new knowledge. Whereas the true calling of intelligence is to look for the right questions, all religion offers is answers, wrong, sophistic answers. Let us leave symbols to the symbol minded people. Get it?

Part 6.

The Good.

I can imagine what an orphanage in Calcutta can be like, or what it must be like to be born in a Lagos slum, or to be a woman in Iran. On this Earth, there is so much misery, so much charity to be done, there are so many occasions to exculpate oneself from this easy, totally undeserved, occidental life we lead. No one can ever afford to simply alleviate the suffering of the wretchedly poor and oppressed in the proselytizing, missionary fashion that characterizes religion. It is indecent to let religion manage this kind of vicarious, compassionless charity.

Merely to globe trot, collect millions and millions of dollars from western guilt ridden fat cats, receive awards and medals from scholars, bankers and dictators, for doing so. Even Nobel peace prizes. Then to go back down there, and distribute a small part of this loot according to faith based criteria. And later on, with the remaining proceeds, establish a world class network of monasteries - not hospitals, not schools, not workshops - that are essentially country clubs for passing religious clerics, manned by awaiting, perpetually avowed, servants. Many of those prayer mills - so much for humility - bear the founder’s own name, and are located on prime real estate. All the while, the same orphanage in Calcutta is as filthy as ever, and has never been so crowded. Eventually, this course of action qualifies the founder for lightning fast accession to the rank of minor deity in the christian pantheon. This recently refurbished, motley christian employee of the month pantheon, that smacks of outright polytheism. Finally, they beget worship in the very same drive through prayer mills they set up. They build temples to themselves. That is sick.

Compassion, on the other hand, demands that the indigent also be supported in their own efforts to extricate themselves from their predicament. It requires us more fortunate people to share with them the tools of their betterment. Schools, hospitals, micro lending and total equality for women, for a start. This is often currently accomplished by secular organizations, based on lay common sense, all over the world. By agnostics, atheists, post-theists, deists, poets, gay people, scientists, doctors, lay believers, free thinkers from all religious backgrounds, idealists of all shapes and colours. Even those neurotic quasi churches of profit: corporations. Even a few tycoons. But not by religious clerics, and their organizations. No sir.

With them, there will always be biblical strings attached, especially regarding the usual, squalid suspects, obsession with sexuality, money and personal eschatology. Charity is irrational, and leads to self indulgent religious exculpation, compounding a false sense of do-goodism. It perpetuates poverty and ignorance. It misallocates resources. It is unprinted indulgence. It gives too much homework before it finally delivers the goods. Charity is irrational and arbitrary, whereas compassion is based on observation, innate moral judgment and nurtured empathy. Charity, as it’s etymology suggests, is from the heart. Compassion, as it’s etymology also suggests, means eating from the same loaf, implies sharing. Giving is useless, sharing is useful. Giving bloats you up to a Santa figure, needlessly belittles the recipient. Whereas sharing makes you less grotesque, more humble, whittles you back to your humanity. Charity is a dove, compassion is a cargo plane.

Part 7.

The Bad.

I was born guilty and spiritually defective. And so were you. Six thousand years ago, a squabble involving a young couple, an apple tree and a talking snake, turned sour. Those two started thinking and acting on their own, at the instigation of the snake. In consequence, these lovebirds got kicked out of their gilded flying cage, by an angry God. Yes folks, since then, and to this day, the demon of their guilt and regret inhabits each of us at birth. And all our lives will be spent trying to placate this factory built-in guilt. With the benevolent help of, you guessed it, religion’s agents. And if you do not succeed, you will be in for eternal torment, and suffering at the hand (and pitchfork) of that major deity in christianity’s crypto polytheistic pantheon: namely Lucifer. Souls that made it to heaven will be able to watch you suffer too. To remind them of their luck, I guess. And God does all this because... he loves you very much. However, if it so happens that you have led a life of evil deeds, all you would have to do is to sincerely regret your actions, before your earthly demise. Conveniently, God has given his agents the psychologically abusive power to remit your sins. Forgive my sarcastic tone, but it is very hard to avoid cynicism in this case. In fact, sarcasm is all that such lowly manipulation of guilt, and blame, deserves. This is but one of the many reasons why religion is very bad for mental health, and creates so much needless distress in the most vulnerable minds among us. Ah, juicy fruit.

Jurists usually have their hardest time attempting to define, and circumscribe guilt, especially if it is by association. In fact, the capacity to assign blame rationally is the hallmark of a good jurist, of civilization itself. Wholesale vicarious blame, or guilt, is an obscenity that has directly led to the Holocaust, and countless other massacres, like the willful starvation, by Joseph Stalin and his church, of millions of Ukrainians, during the Holomodor. If the Allies had followed biblical injunction in this matter, they would have had the right to martyrize the German people wholesale, as a consequence of their association with this world class criminal, Hugo Boss tailored, quasi-jesuit religious order, the SS, their clergy, their demigod prophet Hitler. Their addition to the bible, Mein Kampf. Or surely the right to go on martyrizing the Japanese people for having a had an actual live God as emperor. Thank you general Marshall, thank you general MacArthur. This would be vengeance. Another petty feeling often exemplified by God’s actions. Sin does exist, but not in the distorted fashion religion posits. And if sin exists, so does retribution.

Sin has it’s wage, but it is not arbitrary vengeance, or death, or even hell. It is humane, level headed, peer determined retribution, here on Earth, based on evidence, evolving tradition and jurisprudence, not on mood swings, mental disposition or self-righteous indignation, as is so often the case when religious clerics are involved in the administration of justice. Religion’s tribunals (sanhedrins, majlis, inquisitions) simply have the worst track record, when it comes to dispensing justice, or protecting any writ of habeas corpus, followed closely by the great show trials, brought to you by last century’s communists and nazis, who were just as clever at trampling such self evident rights. Do not get your morals from religion, it should be the other way around. Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Part 8.

The Ugly

To be an atheist is even more fallacious than being a believer. And just as dangerous. Atheists live in opposition to something that is not really there. They are “not even wrong” so to speak. They reinvent, divert religion to their own ends. They have this in common with Fascists. They are just more extreme. They dispense with clergy outright and establish a nastier, more modern version of it, the nomenklatura. Fascism co-opts organized religion, and it’s ordained clergy gladly collaborates. The communists co-opt, and ordain, each other. And, amigo, do they both excommunicate! Contemplate Guernica. With a ferocity that can only be compared to the religious kind. Their excesses have dwarfed even those of religionists, at their worst. Move over inquisition, fatwahs, pogroms and witch burnings, here come steel helmets and machine guns, death trains and killing fields, Kolyma, Auschwitz and Srebrenitza. Mass graves and crematoria.

Sadly, scientific thought has not been able to preclude this horror. It has helped bring about, when misused with religion and it’s natural ally fascism, or it’s extreme offshoot atheism, the worst calamities in human history, through raw darwinism applied with erroneous economics, and criminal mishandling of medicine, ethnology and anthropology. Even chemistry has been no slouch, adding gunpowder, dynamite, cordite, chlorinated gas and napalm to the mayhem. To say nothing about nuclear physics, or microbiology. This nefarious mix has sent entire swaths of humanity down the maw of slavery, eugenics, carpet bombing, collective rape, ethnic cleansing, gassing, deportation, nuclear burn and fallout, and now forced migration and economic exclusion.

Communism, and fascism mimic religion through an obscene, but spectacular, cult of personality. Religion makes you a sheep, communism and fascism make you a cog. But they all transform man into a full time worshipper and petitioner, rendered mindless by terror. Sometimes, God is not a heavenly father, but is replaced by a flesh and blood earthly uncle. Uncle Joe, uncle Mao, uncle Adolf, uncle Benito, uncle Ho, uncle Kim, and the list goes on and on. Marx and Engels couldn’t have foreseen that mess but, in essence, they created a new, earthbound, religion. By contrast, the catholic Adolf Hitler, and orthodox seminarist Joseph Stalin and many, many other dictators knew exactly what they were doing. All this resulted in monstrosities that will have taken more than a century, and tens of millions of shattered lives, to liquidate. Some uber-grotesque examples persist. North Korea is now a dark, cold, starved, hostage filled, necrocratic open sky monastery. The legal head of state is actually the current dictator’s dead father. The current dictator is his representative on Earth. It’s all religion! And they call me crazy…

Nowadays, our society’s thoughtless practical atheism is a luxury for which we may still pay dearly. In our modern technical lives, replete with spare time and leisure, we now have elevated “new age” devotions to ideas and heroes, loosely derived from transient societal happenstance, such as ecologism, carbon correctness, stardom, professional sports and cult of the body, of the planet, of the self. All in order to fill in the void created by western religion’s dismal failure. Atheism is dangerous in it’s own way. It feeds on banality. It has no tradition. It pastiches it up as it goes along. It is convenient to the powers that be, just as religion is. Even more so than regular religion, since the powers that be can usurp the very role of God.

Other such religion sanctioned monstrosities were pretty much liquidated in the last century, or are hopefully on their way out: slavery, racism, and sexism notably. Again, at terrible human cost. Some are yet to be liquidated: corporate rule, inordinate wealth and heroic materialism, bloated unaccountable government, organized crime, abject poverty, kleptocracy and theocracy. The last, and most dangerous, will be religion, because it’s clerics’ moral and intellectual sophistry and sinister ways underpin, and lend comfort, to all of these evils.

There go Freud, Einstein, Solszhenitsyn and Brecht. Here come Lysenko, Heydrich, Goebbels and Beria. Nonetheless, in spite of all this bloody nonsense, experimental science and critical, rational thinking and exchange still offer the only viable path to the future, and has fortunately triumphed in the minds of people of good will.

Have you ever seen a civilization based on the great tradition of reason, skepticism, science, culture, and irreligion, a society based on the teachings of Lucretius, Epicurus, Galileo, Spinoza, Payne, Franklin, Jefferson, Einstein, Russell, ever create or revert whole societies back to famine, sectarianism, cruelty, war and persecution? No, not one historical case. Only religion, and its deadly metastases, communism and fascism, can provoke this level of waste, terror and destruction. This is happening right now, before our own eyes, all over the world. And to think we, here in the west, could somehow be immune to this eventuality, is criminally naive.

Part 9.

The Beautiful.

The Copernicus - Kepler - Galileo - Newton - Einstein mechanization of the universe has, in fact, helped religion. The awe they inspire has comforted religionists in their concept of God’s grand design, comforted scientists in the illusion of their own cleverness. It is a trap. Even the Big Bang theory has only resulted in pushing the creator further down an infinite regression of creation. This top-down view of the universe cannot be valid, because it is based on an unprovable, apical originator. Copernicus was a monk. Kepler was an alchemist. Galileo was deeply religious. Newton was an incurable astrologist. Even the great Einstein mixed God and dice.

For a long time, it was inconceivable that big, complex things should come from small, simple things. Have you ever seen a blacksmith come out of a horseshoe, or a clockmaker come out of a clock? Or a duck out of it’s quack? Same went for life. Same went for man. Surely he too was created by a bigger, wiser, more cogent being. Well, Darwin changed all that. Simple natural selection, and random mutation, can and do result in the existence of such complex things as geraniums, and humans.

The truth is that the universe is a from the ground up affair, from random to order, to self awareness, to civilization, from the infinitesimal personal quantic froth of our firing swarm of neurones to the great human adventure of building ever more complex associations, to the graceful, incommensurable spirals of the Cosmos. Evolving through purely random selection, immense numbers, fathomless time with laws, and a fractal self similarity, we have only begun to grasp, and appreciate. It is of paramount importance that we understand that we are much more than just a part of the landscape, that we are the landscape itself. We hold stewardship of this planet, not some heavenly bogeyman, or it’s self appointed kooks.

I’d rather think of me as the self aware incarnation of a fourteen billion year old uninterrupted chain of events, to know for a fact that the matter that constitutes me has been cooked inside stars that had to die for me to be. To feel a phylogenic kinship with nature’s other organisms, to understand that the smallest event, in the smallest worm’s life that passed it’s genes along down to us, counts. All this somehow ennobles the whole adventure of evolution towards the human phenomenon, ennobles it to the happenstance of my positive action in my life. Elevates it all to my personal awe and rapture at the beauty and breadth of life, of the Cosmos, of human creativity. And all this absolutely free of moral, or material charge. But not of responsibility.

To see myself simply as a congenitally sick soul petitioning for mercy, gawking around a six thousand year old, bronze age fable afflicted rock, where all source of morals or solace is outside my direct experience and predicated on some religious cleric’s whimsical intercession, and admonition, a place where even my dreams and thoughts are suspect. This is the preposterous alternative. Pick your vision. No contest. Religion is D.O.A.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is one of the rare christian cleric philosopher-scientists who tried to make any sense of it at all. But, to the end, he remained a prisoner of his religion. His fidelity to his beliefs and his superiors was exemplar. His respect for the scientific methodology was peerless. Very sad to see such sincerity come to naught. Such obedience betrayed. To me, he is emblematic of the ongoing intellectual drama of humanity shedding religion.

Part 10.

The Father.

I bet we would have figured out the commandments that matter (6 through 10) and a few more concerning the helpless, the animals and the environment without God. I am convinced man does not need an outside agency to validate his capacity to tell right from wrong, to show his capacity for compassion. Especially if this outside agency is impervious to ontological proof, or takes the shape of a talking burning bush, sitting atop an unknown mountain. The first three commandments are immoral and only betray a jealous God. I can plainly see that christians completely disregard the second. But Muslims will kill over it.

A jealous God? Heck, even I know some people who are over jealousy. I know that I am. So why should God exhibit such petty feelings? The fourth is a no brainer. Weekends are fine. God has eternity to rest. The fifth commandment is morally untenable, and contingent to circumstance. Common sense demands it should be at the expense of parents, not children. St-Francis, one of crypto polytheist christianity’s semi deities got it right: just look at the birds, in their nests. The seventh is nice but pretty  useless, considering all the fucking around that goes on, on this God’s green Earth.

God just can’t take what we know to be wrong, and make it right. A commandment such as “thou shalt kill every firstborn” or “thou shalt exterminate the Amorites” could not have been made good by God, however powerful he may be. Zapping Sodom and Gomorrah was plain wrong. I dare anyone to state one good useful deed a non-believer couldn’t conceive of, or do, that only a believer could. I dare you to think of a crime or some other horror a believer hasn’t committed in the name of his faith. Religion has always been, and is more than ever, an immoral killing machine. Killer of body, killer of thought, killer of freedom.

As far as free will itself is concerned, how can anyone accept that it was granted by God. Free will cannot, by definition, be granted. It’s an oxymoron. Fact is that we have “no choice” but to exercise our free will. Come to think of it, free will and liberty have little to do with each other. Liberty is an evolving concept, like democracy and such. Free will is the business end of action, broadened by liberty, exercised in real time. Liberty is collective in essence, and highly contingent to the powers that be, and socio economic conditions. Personal free will and collective liberty help constitute the idea of freedom. On the other end, depending on the religious occasion, they tell me God has a plan for me, and that he knows more about it than even I do. They call it predestination. Seems we are predestined to possess free will. Well, now is when the bat misses the ball, if you think in outdated, logically stunted, religious terms.

In fact, predestination and free will slosh against each other in order to adapt to reality, to preserve all equilibria required for survival. Cockroaches would regard us as mere passers by on their planet, as they are much better adapted than we are, and have survived for four hundred million years. The price paid for this success as a species is almost total individual predestination, linked almost entirely to external circumstance, and hardwired instinct. No discernible free will. Whereas in more complex animals, swarm intelligence, and then visible individual will - all still enslaved to hardwired instinct and circumstance - is definitely present, and is also a clear function of the tetrapod vertebrates’ march towards cephalization.

Predestination recedes as evolution progresses. In humans, some threshold has been breached. For the first time, free will has an edge on reality, at the individual’s level. The soma becomes it’s avatar. Predestination does subsist in the big, outside our mind things, like the Earth’s cooling sphere, or the Sun’s inevitable death, or like our own death. And for sure, it still touches us, big time. It can also be measured, by statistical science. Free will cannot directly be reduced to statistics, but it sure can be inferred by way of psychological and ethological science, and procure us valid insight into it’s true nature. In man’s mind, free will and predestination interact a bit like space and time must slosh against each other, in order to keep the speed of light constant.

The whole thing is a relativistic, finely tuned, from the ground up, affair. The invariable is survival. And it’s balance can only be compared to the sharp edge of a knife. At the human level, a single individual’s free will can very plausibly result in mass destruction and death. If not the end of our species. Tinkering with this precise sloshing motion by imposing too much predestination, or worse, less free will on man’s psychological gyroscope, is very dangerous, and irresponsible if done on an irrational basis. Religion does both in spades, it is in fact a major part of their agents’ job description. Governments too, tinker with this balance, on a daily basis. But governments are perfectible, and can be toppled from the outside. Whereas religion can only be toppled from the inside.

People always harp about their rights. Whatever rights we may have were wrested from unenlightened authority at great cost, not granted by some heavenly source of virtue. And rights could be withdrawn, just like that. Look down a gun barrel. Look at history. However, nowadays, only one earthly power is in a position to accomplish this. Yes, religion. Anyone who needs God, or one of his surrogates, to tell him what is right or wrong is at best, a moral slave, at worst a dangerous animal that better be kept in a cage. It is someone who is “free will deaf” so to speak. Religion robs us of free will. It paradoxically chains it to liberties not based on reality, but to liberties derived from non contingent belief. It is morally alienating, and dangerous.

Those people, who took the liberty of crashing fully tanked passenger airplanes into skyscrapers on morning rush hour, believed hard as rock in an afterlife, and praised God five times a day. Their prayers lamented the godlessness of their enemy. Even though their enemy shows the highest percentage of churchgoers on the planet - nothing to be thrilled about, if you ask me. Make no mistake, the inevitable retaliation, by that little christian fundamentalist oil clique that had taken over the White House then, was also religious in nature, raining death, hunger, fear and civil war on the Iraqi people. Early twenty first century warfare and terrorism will be remembered as essentially religion induced. As twentieth century warfare was essentially based on racism.

Part 11.

The Son.

I freely admit that my life in the absence of Jesus of Nazareth would have been much, much poorer. Personally, I am rationally convinced of Jesus’s historical existence, and his real impact on people of good will. I will always conceive of the greatest affection for him. This is because of the tradition he incarnates and his story of goodness, courage and compassion, and also the valid, albeit scarce, archaeological and philological evidence supporting it. His life and teachings will always provide me with a sturdy moral compass. Jesus alone, my brother once told me.

It is not because of the dogma that, in his name, has been foisted upon us later on by archbishops, popes, mullahs, rabbis and emperors. Any dogma, in any religion is purely man made, and not only insults intelligence, but is callously impudent and coldly indifferent to natural morality, and logic. Much of religious dogma has to do with sexuality, money and eschatology. Why is that? Simply because those are three of the most useful handles by which religion can subjugate mankind. In other words, to get a hold of your nuts.

Tradition, on the other hand, is unintended and is the result of concatenation over a very long period of time, it is collective wisdom, it is a kind of jurisprudence. It may be flawed, but it is perfectible and has proven to be so. It is rooted in life itself. It is on the point of becoming global, on the threshold of a genuine renewal. I understand it’s present infancy is still swaddled in inane brand worship, idiotic electronic chit-chat and gaming, blind consumerism and mindless sightseeing, not to mention the greatest peep show ever. But this may hopefully evolve.

Jesus is the only one whose stature and alterity could embrace all of hebraic tradition, all of his contemporaries personal longings and give our inherent insignificance a modicum of gravitas. At crucifixion, there was no more religion between Jesus and God. Just the freudian relationship between a son and a father. However, just before his last breath, Jesus doubted. He was abandoned. He did show up at a rough and critical historical juncture. At the height of this violent, trade-way supported militarist empire, Rome. He got whacked by people who, on every billboard in the mediterranean world, advertized, and then ruthlessly enforced, that there is only one God, the emperor of Rome. That diseased old pederastic maniacal murderer, Tiberius. Such is the absurdity.

Any exceptionality he may have possessed came from himself, not from some top down arrangement with a big God sitting up there. And above all not from such nonsense as the virgin birth, his royal (come on!) lineage, or even his miracles. Could he have been so much more than the sum of his discrete antecedents, and mortal constituents, that he may have overcome their ultimate commonality, which is decay and death? Could he have been the recipient of such exceptionality? Could he have rolled the stone open, so to speak, and walked out? Maybe. But I just do not know. Anyone who says he does know is deluded or probably commits false witness for the sake of some personal agenda.

In my opinion, Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha are more victims than facilitators or instigators. Better understood, and felt for, in the modern view that reality is a from the ground up affair. Putative victims to all those who later on would, and still commit heinous, terrible crimes in their name. Sad, mute, suffering emblems for all those who, in the daily banality of their evil and immediate interests, derive some personal ascendency over others from this ugly idolatrous brand of messianic belief. The statement “we have no king but Jesus” is exactly two words too long. I suspect Jesus himself would have hated this statement.

Part 12.

The Ghost.

Have you ever felt that, in some circumstances, one plus one somehow equals more than two? It may not be immediately apparent between Lego blocks, or truffles but, if you consider gerbils, if you have two of the right kind, given a little time, you may end up with more than what you bargained for at the pet shop. It is built into life itself. If you consider humans, you do not even have to wait. The feeling is almost immediate. Between us two, regardless of gender, we somehow constitute more than just two. By oneself, rowing too wide a boat is quite a proposition, but between us two and a little discussion, it is a breeze, even with no sail. Even if the vessel is rudderless.

Fact is, the whole always equates to a bit more than it’s original constituents. And that bit is intangible, often in the form of a new found potentiality, of new information. One equals one plus rowing in circles, one plus one equals two plus rowing in a straight line. The same is also true for inanimate objects, especially machines. If you dismantle a camera to it’s component parts, and lay those loose parts down on a table, you will obtain a nice display of it’s innards, but you will not be able to take pictures anymore. Unless you reassemble it, and make it whole again, if you possess the information to do so. The mere fact that should only one part, say the lens, be missing, greatly reduces, almost obliterates the camera’s purpose, which is the capacity to record pictures. This suggests a quantic, all or nothing, quality. It is either here, or it is not. No lens, no picture, even though you have assembled all the other pieces. And between here and not here, there is no readily discernible intermediate state or position. The same goes for living machines. We are barely half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. That’s why the notion of missing link is so elusive, and so misunderstood and abused by creationists and religionists.

This phenomenon amplifies itself as the complexity of the subject involved increases. It is called alterity, otherness. The whole is somehow always a bit more than it’s parts. And the more complex the whole, the more different the resulting sum is from it’s separate parts. In the living, and especially in Man, alterity is maximal and is readily experienced, on a daily basis. There is no way I can know even your name if you do not “reveal” it to me. Maybe I can wrest it from you under duress, but I could not dissect you in separate parts to obtain it. But I can pick your wallet, and obtain your identity. Alterity can, partially, “congeal” back into actuality under the guise of information. A little like the Einsteinian view that, under extreme conditions, energy is convertible to matter and vice versa.

Actually, all of this exponentially growing information is floating around and, fascinatingly, after thousands of years of partiality, is finally rushing fast towards an autonomous singularity before our own eyes, in real time. Some call it data, some call it news, karma, zeitgeist, mojo, culture, noosphere, the internet, etc. We are definitely in for a big leap in the overall alterity resulting from our exponentially expanding relationships, datasets and encyclopedic knowledge resulting from the scientific revolution. A sort of Teilhardian tension is building up. Watch out, a new autonomous conscience may emerge from all this. Soon. If this happens, I bet religion infected people will try to “dogm it up”, then hijack it, make us worship it, and kill for it.

I ask the question again, is there an individual that can be so complex, with so many constituents and antecedents, with so many relationships between them, that the whole is so much more than the apparent sum of it’s separate parts? That it even possesses attributes that none of it’s constituents, or antecedents may display? What is the absolute commonality between these constituents, a thing they all share? They all eventually die or degrade, or at least die to their present “purpose” to take on another. As a corollary, could there be someone that is so much more than his “dying”, transient parts, that he somehow has shed this ultimate commonality of its constituents and antecedents? That he, as a whole, has achieved immortality? That he somehow actuates eternity? That, by some magic, I would somehow personally profit from this state of affairs? Jesus is a good suspect for sure. Or maybe so is anyone else, by human essence. Makes for a great “religion-fiction” story, if you permit the oxymoron. But, as I said before, I just do not know! Maybe this candidate is in the future? Now, that is one trippy scenario. Maybe Hollywood would be interested.

All this to say that what we call spirit or soul or ghost may just be a byproduct of the local activity of an exceedingly complex object, namely the brain and it’s human recipient. This “soul” actuates what happens between the constituents of the brain. This “between” is itself intangible, ghostly, by definition. A binary water-ion based, electro chemical ghost of sorts, self similar at all scales and fractal in nature, like the clouds in the sky. No mystery there. It is the brain’s huge alterity actuating itself through action, itself buttressed by thought, using soma, experience and free will as it’s edge on reality. Subjected to the liberties it wrests from social, economic reality. We exhibit a full blown case of the sublime and fascinating interaction between the software, hardware and wetware that constitutes us, our machines, our universe. Between nature and preter nature. The supernatural is pure invention. Mindless pattern seeking. Like looking for objects among the shapes of cloud. Like seeing purpose in happenstance or interpreting leaves of tea. Like actually seeing ghosts. The supernatural is for people who are afraid. Afraid of the dark.

I suspect Heisenberg’s quantum laws - which are scientifically proven to operate at the subatomic level - somehow have a measurable causal effect on macroscopic daily reality, through the extreme ethereal quality our vastly complex neurone activity propitiates, and then actuates in our fickle personality, and actions. I surmise some clever psychologist-historian-mathematician may, one day, find a quantitative way to evaluate alterity, by way of structure comparison and fractal self similarity. To validly compare, say, a swarm of bees to the neurone structure of a bee’s brain, a human brain to society, a society to a civilization, an epoch to it’s eon, an animal to it’s taxon, a tree to it’s forest, in a quantitative rational fashion. A kind of genealogy or calculus of the meme. I also suspect they will deduce the emergence of self awareness is purely accidental, as is life’s very emergence on this planet. However, the accidental does not preclude the inevitable, provided the accident’s alterity has reached a critical level. Then the quantic leap into preter nature occurs. I also suspect that the history of the universe, indeed our own biological or cultural history is a series of such leaps, and that, for the first time, we, the current result of this fantastic and grandiose story, are at the rudder. So many big bangs. Such is the fireworks of reality. Move over six day creation. We are the Big bang.

Christians unwittingly and cluelessly stumbled on the alterity problem with their trinitary view of God. There is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. They insist these three are distinct persons who mutually give meaning to each other. They also insist that they are but One. They’ll burn you - happily nowadays a figure of speech - over this one. They call it a mystery. I call it crypto-polytheism. To me, it would be the only case I know of where one plus one plus one equals not even three but less. Now, that is heavenly triangular schizophrenia. It is a psychologically grotesque chimaera. The paucity of their version of reality is pathetic.

Earth calling! Between us three, not only can we row in a straight line like when we were only two, but now we can also discuss more sensibly about a destination, and steer the ship accordingly. For better, for worse. At least, it is our freedom. It also implies that one of us has been assigned, or elected, to the rudder. And we can’t afford to throw anyone overboard, because walking on water is impossible. This implies some listening, some empathy, some compassion. And some fishing. Religion kills people, maims your psyche, throws you overboard, then lets you sink. Hopefully, a great fish will save you and spit you back on the beach. Religion infected people cannot be trusted to steer the ship. They are intent on sinking the ship. There is a ghost in their intellectual machinery. Their devil is in the details they refuse to acknowledge or discuss honestly, rationally.

Part 13.

A Way.

This is why rational, post-theist people must end their timidity, come out of the closet, and assert themselves as people who have accepted the fact that there is no objective evidence that one’s individuality survives one’s own brain box. And that we are better off living our lives on that premise. That we are better off living in the faint hope that any personal trace we may be lucky enough to leave on this planet, is positive for the future of our species. Be it through our art and writings, our humble perseverance, our works, our compassion, or by the love and values we manage to pass on to our children. Love and values are not bestowed, they are passed on, they are shared.

If you belonged to any secular organization or political party that was tied to so much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, pedophilia, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is, you would resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife to the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy (and their money) from billions of their meeker, more impressionable ilk. Knowledge and heartfelt compassion are a way in, religion and rigged charity are a way out. We are all victims of the world order religion is already imposing on mankind.

The present secular, semi democratic free trade driven, rational but somewhat neurotic world order altermondialists so fear and loathe is by far the lesser evil and can, as opposed to a religion based view, be perfected, improved, or at least debated. I sincerely understand their concern, but what utterly poisons this brave new world order is religion. Not free trade, not emigration, not urbanization, not even global warming or the odious, benighted policemen and oligarchic, kleptocratic, theocratic fat cats, that still run this planet. But this is a business for the young. I am getting too old for this kind of shit.

Any modern urban MacJob with decent public transit, basic healthcare, and a few good friends and colleagues, any clean one room flat with indoor plumbing, shared with an eventual special partner - regardless of gender - plus a wifi bar across the street, is infinitely better than the material, moral and social squalor religion induces everywhere it infects communal life. A single ballot trumps all the admonitions issued by all of religion’s agents. A single valid scientific truth trumps all religious authority or dogma. Our world can be improved upon. Religion cannot, it will not change.

Part 14.

A Future.

A future we must, each of us, progressively let go from our grasp, as our personal end looms ever closer. And those who hedge their bets and say they are only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the little solace and comfort that religion brings them actually came and still comes at a terrible price for millions of men, women and children from all over the world. Think for yourself! There is no prophecy other than the self fulfilling type. The future is open and is in no way forced to include you, me... or them. Religious people ache and yearn for the end to come. Religion amounts to a collective death wish and will lead to ruin and desolation.

And to anyone who tells me they know, they just know what happens when I die, I promise you, you do not. How can I be so sure? Because, I do not know. And you do not possess mental powers that I do not. No metaphysics there. Metaphysics lies elsewhere, in the wonderful randomness and interchangeability between elementary matter and energy quanta, in particles coming in and out of existence, in the depths of time and space’s yet hidden energies and dimensions, in the fascinating chasm between MRI scans and the actual thoughts and ideas and jokes going on in our brains. In the great collective simultaneity modern civilization and science will soon afford us all, in the beauty and bounty of art, life and nature.

The only appropriate attitude for mankind to have about the big questions and the big things is not through the easy, cheap sophism infested shortcuts suggested by religious clerics of all faiths, or the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but through doubt. Doubt is the great engine of effective thinking. Doubt is humble. And that’s what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a endless litany of getting shit dead wrong. When everybody thinks the same way, the thinking stops. Certainty is pride. Plain fact is religion is dangerous and must go away for mankind to live.

If the world does come to an end, in Megiddo or wherever, or if it limps into the future decimated by the effects of a religion inspired nuclear holocaust, let us remember what the real problem was. That we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. Do not let yourself be lied to. Genuine good can and does come from you, every day, at every moment. It does not come from some big God holding the virtue spigot from up there. Especially not from his big churches or his armies of clerics and minions. This is beginning to sound like a sermon. That’s it, Dude, grow up. Fuck it, let’s go bowling. Or enter a world of pain and be their slave, for the rest of your short ass life.

Fin.


Edited by Gotlib (08/17/13 03:12 AM)


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Invisiblekr0nik0
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib] * 1
    #18717642 - 08/17/13 03:40 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

posting so I remember to read it tomorrow. Thanks for re-posting it. :thumbup:


--------------------

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,
mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”



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OfflineConstantine
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: kr0nik0] * 1
    #18717800 - 08/17/13 04:58 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

kr0nik0 said:
posting so I remember to read it tomorrow.




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InvisibleGotlib
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Constantine]
    #18718826 - 08/17/13 01:07 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

So, has anyone read it ?


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OfflineMemories
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib] * 1
    #18718841 - 08/17/13 01:14 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Why would I read such a long thing when the grammar makes it hard to follow from the beginning?


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InvisibleGotlib
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Memories]
    #18718867 - 08/17/13 01:22 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

I don't know. To exercise the brain. To learn something.

I'm not implying that i'm teaching you something. These words and concepts existed long before I did.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib] * 1
    #18719044 - 08/17/13 02:05 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Butt-Head said:
So, has anyone read it ?




It's unlikely many will.  You'll need to give us a compelling reason.  There is nothing new under the sun and so most of use appreciate something short and to the point.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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InvisibleGotlib
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Icelander]
    #18719913 - 08/17/13 06:06 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

If you guys won't read it, have it read to you.

Install this and copy/paste the text and press play.

Not as labor intensive as reading the whole thing.

http://www.naturalreaders.com/


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InvisibleRepertoire89
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib]
    #18720119 - 08/17/13 07:10 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

TLDR


Quote:

Butt-Head said:
I don't know. To exercise the brain. To learn something.




I doubt that


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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Repertoire89]
    #18720258 - 08/17/13 07:51 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Religion amounts to a collective death wish and will lead to ruin and desolation




This is your assumption which lacks any scientific hypothesis concerning the future of America. In our modern world today what studies support the idea that Religion in America will ultimately destroy America? Really, you just blurted out some obscene opinion.

Quote:

Think for yourself! There is no prophecy other than the self fulfilling type.




This statement seems contradictory. If a person decides to worship God then he is fulfilled in that he has chosen his own preference of lifestyle.


--------------------
TRUMP 2020


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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib]
    #18720274 - 08/17/13 07:54 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

perhaps release it for discussion in 12 or 24 smaller bite sized threads? :shrug2:


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dripping with fantasy


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: quinn]
    #18720300 - 08/17/13 08:02 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Use toothpicks and some imported cheese...


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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #18720343 - 08/17/13 08:20 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

:yesnod: tho keep the toothpicks away from lunar... he cant be trusted :nonono:


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dripping with fantasy


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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: XUL]
    #18720459 - 08/17/13 08:51 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

XUL said:
Quote:

Religion amounts to a collective death wish and will lead to ruin and desolation




This is your assumption which lacks any scientific hypothesis concerning the future of America. In our modern world today what studies support the idea that Religion in America will ultimately destroy America? Really, you just blurted out some obscene opinion.

Quote:

Think for yourself! There is no prophecy other than the self fulfilling type.




This statement seems contradictory. If a person decides to worship God then he is fulfilled in that he has chosen his own preference of lifestyle.




1.I'm not talking of the US, only. I don't need official sanctioned study, it is obvious.
If you believe or wish in life after death and live your life trying to "win" the after life. Than yes, you're wishing for death or something better than life after death.

2.It's is not about choice or preference. It is about truth and not fooling yourself, seeing all this for what it really is. Sure you can choose to believe in god but that doesn't make it true. I can hand you a banana and tell you it is a telephone but it is still a banana.


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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib]
    #18721726 - 08/18/13 04:52 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

2. Sure you can choose to believe in god but that doesn't make it true. I can hand you a banana and tell you it is a telephone but it is still a banana.




Like the banana, what makes your claim so special that it should be confirmed as true? Just because you say so?

My question is really trivial anyway, for we could just talk circles around each other all day.

The reality of it is that people will worship Gods, do things that you deem wrong, and at the end of the day you will still have to live with it. That will never change. Sorry man.



:hugitout:


--------------------
TRUMP 2020


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InvisibleGotlib
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: XUL]
    #18721739 - 08/18/13 05:06 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Exactly. The only valid answer to the question “what if you are wrong” is “what if you are wrong”.

It is just not helpful at all for the betterment of the human condition.

The saddest part is that you're probably right. It will never change.


Edited by Gotlib (08/18/13 05:10 AM)


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InvisibleRepertoire89
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Re: -Beyond Belief- [Re: Gotlib]
    #18723122 - 08/18/13 02:37 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Butt-Head said:
Exactly. The only valid answer to the question “what if you are wrong” is “what if you are wrong”.

It is just not helpful at all for the betterment of the human condition.

The saddest part is that you're probably right. It will never change.




Debating belief does help, religious fundamentalists have enslaved humanity for thousands of years (particularly the Abrahamic religions) and instilling doubts in them makes it less likely for them to follow through with their insane agendas.

That and the opportunity it presents for people to learn and condition their perception


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