It's time for a new morality in the United States. Now, whenever someone says this, oftentimes the rallying cry sparks a revolution that ends up creating something worse than what existed before it. But it is not the case here.
What many do not seem to understand that NEVER is there a higher standard than human beings. Whenever one cites pleasing "God," it is quite often at the expense of quality of human life and human lives qua life, existence itself. Examples, if needed, are Ayatollah Khomeini, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the US gov't/Catholic Church policy towards Africa and AIDS, and finally the Religious Conservative Movement in the United States.
There are two standards of "good" among people, religious and not.
One standard is God, as defined by the square root of -1, a fittingly irrational number. (gV-1)
The other is human beings.
God's status of "good" permits "him" to commit horrendous atrocities (commanding Abraham to kill his son, drowning all but two people, allowing his only son to be murdered by manipulating and self-satisfying religious authorities (how ironic!), allowing Job to be tormented by his brother Satan, having no regard whatsoever for the quality of life for roughly half of the population (female), and commanding horrific punishments for disproportionate crimes) and still be looked upon as "good."
If Genesis were "good", microorganisms that kill large organisms, disastrous storms, and predatory animals would alse have to be "good," and thus the misery by default of the first human beings according to the Bible must also by default be "good."
When human beings attempt to emulate God's Good (gV-1), they cause moral and political anomalies that destroy human existence and diminish the quality of human life.
One might say that that is the whole point, but what then is the purpose does it serve to worship or love something that is completely destructive? Fear? That is equivalent to superstition, and God does not have a secret police anymore (Spanish Inquisition). There is no reasonable case for worshipping or even qualifying God as "good" when he clearly is not.
What I propose is that human beings only do what is best for them. Public policy should never, ever be based upon "pleasing God." Human beings need to learn to care for themselves and others without the notion of "God."
For example, Global Warming. Many RW Christians have begun to believe in it. But why does it matter what Genesis says? Why is it not enough of a reason that WE LIVE HERE?
And why does what two people do in their own beds matter? Why is/are contraception, stem cell research, abortion, women's equality, recreational sexual activity, and homosexuality "bad"? If I could get an objective, non-theological answer to any of these, I'd be very pleased.
Recommended texts: The Science of Good & Evil by Michael Shermer, End of Faith by Sam Harris, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Jesus Camp and Other Topics
I saw Jesus Camp. I really don't know what to say about it, other than things that have already been said. My mother tuned out the political implications of what she called "child abuse." Heidi Ewing and Rachael Grady so masterfully diagnosed the mechanics of the cancer that has stricken America. It is, for me, as though America was a close relative who is dying of some terminal disease, Huntington's. No longer able to control its actions, overcome by madness and failing historical memory, few can help it. Both parties take the outwardly fascist faction of the Republican Krieg Machina to bed, at our Constitution's peril. I implore all Americans capable of rational thought, not to tolerate the intolerant. Hedges, ex-President Carter, Phillips, Dawkins Altemeyer, etc, may spit books out by the hundreds, but try telling a schizophrenic that what he believes is untrue. Evidence and reason have no effect. During the Jesus Camp documentary, the interplaying of individualist fairy-tales ("God has a plan for you, he knew you before you were born," etc) and abortion politics is disturbingly clear, as is their political agenda, summed up in a few sentences: "Rise up righteous government! Bring down corrupt government! They took God from your public schools, but they cannot take God from our hearts!" coupled with the pastor's admission of theo-fascist, antidemocratic sentiment.
I don't want to play the political game of 1920s Russia: People denouncing one another simply to save their lives. Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of We, was betrayed by colleagues and former friends as the Bolsheviks cracked down on the literary world. This again happened late in Stalin's life, when his maddening addiction to power brought paranoia and unimaginable fear. He, with his secret police, began a witch hunt.
Why is it so frighteningly difficult for people to see through this God-talk and self-righteousness? Leo Tolstoy wrote in Resurrection, "Could it be that all of this talk about justice, goodness, law, religion, God, and so on, was nothing but so many words to conceal the grossest self-interest and cruelty?"1. Yes, Count Tolstoy. It not only could be, it is.
Many revolutions in the past, most of them, especially the one most similar to what our Christian Fascists envision, the Iranian Revolution, ended much worse than what they originally opposed. Certainly, as Becky Fischer says, "[She'd] like to see kids laying down their lives for the Gospels," they do not care how red the streets become. No revolutionary ever did. Anyone who believes that their ends justify their means is disturbingly frightening, and anyone who puts the glory of God over the quality of human life, I think, is extremely dangerous.
Stalin, who was a god to the Russian urbanites, starved millions upon millions of rural farmers, and killed even more urbanites in industrial projects. And yet, he was still seen as a god.
This is extremely similar to the Judeo-Christian god, who drowned all but two of his people, ordered Abraham to kill his firstborn, ordered death for any petty crime, left half of his people to the will of the other half, and left his own son to be crucified by his tyrants.
-Stalin left his son to die in a German concentration camp, preferring to keep his captured German general, who was worth more to him than his only son and possible successor.
-Stalin ruled with an iron fist, and the penitentiaries and secret police prisons, not to mention the infamous Gulags, were always filled to the brim.
-A significant portion of the population was exploited for the industrial population. The rural farmers lost their tools and most of their belongings under the NEP, and all of what they produced belonged not to them for any negotiable trade, but to the State, or, "Collective," or, Stalin himself.
-Stalin destroyed icons and religious places and banned such practices, and replaced them with himself as a god. His portrait hung in every home, and statues of himself were erected in every park.
-Stalin viewed himself as the Father of the People.
-Those who followed him were rewarded with cars and vacations, and those who did not were destroyed. Every once in a while he would "answer a prayer" and remove a name from his execution list, which he drew up himself.
-His wife was distant from him. After a public scuffle between them, she died.
-Kirov's popularity in the legislative, pseudo-democratic Delegate, caused Stalin much jealousy. Not only did he order Kirov murdered, but the entire Delegate as well.
Stalin is the Judeo-Christian God according to comparison between his biography and chronicle of his time in power, and the Bible itself.
Is this what we want for America?
Works Cited
Tolstoy, Leo. Resurrection. Penguin Classics. New York, New York. 1966.
History International. Stalin: Man of Steel.
I don't want to play the political game of 1920s Russia: People denouncing one another simply to save their lives. Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of We, was betrayed by colleagues and former friends as the Bolsheviks cracked down on the literary world. This again happened late in Stalin's life, when his maddening addiction to power brought paranoia and unimaginable fear. He, with his secret police, began a witch hunt.
Why is it so frighteningly difficult for people to see through this God-talk and self-righteousness? Leo Tolstoy wrote in Resurrection, "Could it be that all of this talk about justice, goodness, law, religion, God, and so on, was nothing but so many words to conceal the grossest self-interest and cruelty?"1. Yes, Count Tolstoy. It not only could be, it is.
Many revolutions in the past, most of them, especially the one most similar to what our Christian Fascists envision, the Iranian Revolution, ended much worse than what they originally opposed. Certainly, as Becky Fischer says, "[She'd] like to see kids laying down their lives for the Gospels," they do not care how red the streets become. No revolutionary ever did. Anyone who believes that their ends justify their means is disturbingly frightening, and anyone who puts the glory of God over the quality of human life, I think, is extremely dangerous.
Stalin, who was a god to the Russian urbanites, starved millions upon millions of rural farmers, and killed even more urbanites in industrial projects. And yet, he was still seen as a god.
This is extremely similar to the Judeo-Christian god, who drowned all but two of his people, ordered Abraham to kill his firstborn, ordered death for any petty crime, left half of his people to the will of the other half, and left his own son to be crucified by his tyrants.
-Stalin left his son to die in a German concentration camp, preferring to keep his captured German general, who was worth more to him than his only son and possible successor.
-Stalin ruled with an iron fist, and the penitentiaries and secret police prisons, not to mention the infamous Gulags, were always filled to the brim.
-A significant portion of the population was exploited for the industrial population. The rural farmers lost their tools and most of their belongings under the NEP, and all of what they produced belonged not to them for any negotiable trade, but to the State, or, "Collective," or, Stalin himself.
-Stalin destroyed icons and religious places and banned such practices, and replaced them with himself as a god. His portrait hung in every home, and statues of himself were erected in every park.
-Stalin viewed himself as the Father of the People.
-Those who followed him were rewarded with cars and vacations, and those who did not were destroyed. Every once in a while he would "answer a prayer" and remove a name from his execution list, which he drew up himself.
-His wife was distant from him. After a public scuffle between them, she died.
-Kirov's popularity in the legislative, pseudo-democratic Delegate, caused Stalin much jealousy. Not only did he order Kirov murdered, but the entire Delegate as well.
Stalin is the Judeo-Christian God according to comparison between his biography and chronicle of his time in power, and the Bible itself.
Is this what we want for America?
Works Cited
Tolstoy, Leo. Resurrection. Penguin Classics. New York, New York. 1966.
History International. Stalin: Man of Steel.
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