The first semester of sophomore year, my History professor, relating specifically to Bolshevism, said that ideologies could be valued by their tenets and/or their historical application. This, I think, could be applied to religion as well.
While a friend of mine, a Christian and equally fiery about her beliefs, does not seem to consider human application of Christianity throughout history, while I emphasize history and application a great deal.
We could say that Christianity, before its legitimization in Rome, was not evil. But the moment it was, and the Catholic Church was set up (encompassing, at the time, nearly all of Christianity, the underground sects it proceeded to persecute), it drove on to gain political power and thus became evil.
The point I wish to make is that Christianity, historically, is merely a convenient disguise for political and personal aims. Even now, throughout the United States, Christianity is primarily a political ideology, whose only purpose is to dismantle democracy. Christianity, thus, is merely a means of gaining and using power and authority.
Yet, my friend believes that Christianity, taken by itself, is not evil. Yet she could not explain to me the goal or purpose of Christianity in concrete terms. Why, exactly, should I be compelled to believe in Jesus? How would this belief give me hope when it is those who profess to buy the Golden Rule and how we shouldn't judge each other, betray those beliefs and have turned human society upside-down for the past 2,000 years?
The problem I have with "faith" is a big one. I define faith as "a belief in something that is held without or even contrary to evidence". This could range from Santa Claus to the Tooth Fairy, to Jesus, all the way up to the idea that Jews are the cause of financial difficulty and must be eliminated, or that the German race is superior to all others. Did anyone ask for evidence for any of these beliefs? The minor, harmless beliefs were immune to the burden of proof. Those that demanded proof for Hitler's plan for the fate of European Jews were silenced, and the large majority of Germans put faith in Hitler's rallies.
Back to Christianity, why should I be compelled to believe that a vengeful god (Old Testament) had a change of heart with the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy, and why should I believe in Jesus when the Golden Rule was really originated by Eastern philosophers 400 years before him?
Why is the Bible something I should believe in? Why should I buy the argument that the authors of the Bible were "inspired by God" when we don't even know who half of them are? Why should I believe the Bible when there is a large collection of significant works that were not included in it, meaning, that the Bible isn't even the whole story? Why is the Bible an authority? Does it sound authoritative, does it seem like it was written by intelligent people? Is God a charismatic figure? Is it simply because within its pages, it demands, sometimes under threat of destruction to the reader, belief and allegiance to its cause? Do its pages include an applicable and humanistic, respectable moral structure between the blood and violence? Is it morally useful to believe that Christianity's founder, Jesus "Christ" actually rose from the dead? Should I believe something that was blatantly capitalized upon as a justification for the most heinous human atrocities?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Catholicism - Back to its Roots
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/07/10/pope.churches.reut/index.html
When I say "roots," I mean 16th century Spain roots, or even just about 1000 CE.
Benedict XVI a theologian? Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were theologians.
Maybe the Hitler Youth Pope is on to something. Something that can maybe get rid of some of the fascists, distract them. Distract them with a Christian internal jihad! It certainly seems like the perfect time tio strart namecalling.
Devout Pope-believing Catholic: "Well Jesus loves us the most because we have a pseudo-dictator!"
New Life Church member: "Yeah, well each of us has a little Hitler in our community! We still get the same Nuremburg Rallies as you do."
This seems like just another one of those episodes, little variations on Dostoevsky's brilliant Grand Inquisitor tale, where a Grand Inquisitor simply tells Jesus that his work is done, and the powerlusting Catholic machine will inherit what he has done for themselves.
Can America turn, as universal religious tolerance is at an all-time low--practically Middle Ages levels--, into a Christian Iraq? Sunnis and Shiites vying for power and dominion over there. so Catholics and evangelicals could be taking up arms over something even sillier. The Vatican and the SBC should take up arms. Of course, the SBC would be decimated, as the Catholic Church as been a political power for almost 1500 years, and America (particularly minorities and women) would be taking it where the sun never shines no matter who won.
It's quite sad. The transition from the 20th century to the 21st has been hailed with the ascension of historically conservative [not American conservatism] megalomaniacs all over the world, and not only are we going backwards instead of forwards, but also the world is very unsafe for thinking people. Hell, we could all be nuked and I'll see you back in the feudal era.
It really doesn't matter what religion any powerful leader belongs to--Islam or Christianity--they will still wish to destroy, to conquer. The redeeming fact about Islam is that they don't care: They will just behead the prisoner and he/she won't feel much. Maybe they'll blow him/her to a few pieces. The Christian, on the other hand, wants control of the prisoner, much like what Alex goes through in A Clockwork Orange. He will live as a slave for the American fascist cause. They act in much the same fashion as the Inner Party in Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Sure moderates plead that they don't do these things, but they mostly just avert their eyes when their zealous counterpart pushes the button.
When I say "roots," I mean 16th century Spain roots, or even just about 1000 CE.
Benedict XVI a theologian? Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were theologians.
Maybe the Hitler Youth Pope is on to something. Something that can maybe get rid of some of the fascists, distract them. Distract them with a Christian internal jihad! It certainly seems like the perfect time tio strart namecalling.
Devout Pope-believing Catholic: "Well Jesus loves us the most because we have a pseudo-dictator!"
New Life Church member: "Yeah, well each of us has a little Hitler in our community! We still get the same Nuremburg Rallies as you do."
This seems like just another one of those episodes, little variations on Dostoevsky's brilliant Grand Inquisitor tale, where a Grand Inquisitor simply tells Jesus that his work is done, and the powerlusting Catholic machine will inherit what he has done for themselves.
Can America turn, as universal religious tolerance is at an all-time low--practically Middle Ages levels--, into a Christian Iraq? Sunnis and Shiites vying for power and dominion over there. so Catholics and evangelicals could be taking up arms over something even sillier. The Vatican and the SBC should take up arms. Of course, the SBC would be decimated, as the Catholic Church as been a political power for almost 1500 years, and America (particularly minorities and women) would be taking it where the sun never shines no matter who won.
It's quite sad. The transition from the 20th century to the 21st has been hailed with the ascension of historically conservative [not American conservatism] megalomaniacs all over the world, and not only are we going backwards instead of forwards, but also the world is very unsafe for thinking people. Hell, we could all be nuked and I'll see you back in the feudal era.
It really doesn't matter what religion any powerful leader belongs to--Islam or Christianity--they will still wish to destroy, to conquer. The redeeming fact about Islam is that they don't care: They will just behead the prisoner and he/she won't feel much. Maybe they'll blow him/her to a few pieces. The Christian, on the other hand, wants control of the prisoner, much like what Alex goes through in A Clockwork Orange. He will live as a slave for the American fascist cause. They act in much the same fashion as the Inner Party in Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Sure moderates plead that they don't do these things, but they mostly just avert their eyes when their zealous counterpart pushes the button.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
"Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right"
"Clinton did it!" So does that mean Scooter Libby and the Republican mafia-esque loyalists should be let go? Lying about a sex scandal and lying under oath about national security matters are two entirely different circumstances. Libby WAS convicted, but Clinton wasn't. "Clinton did it" is the main argument used by Republicans in the Scooter Libby case. Yet, if they will care to remember back in the 2000 campaign, their idol, George W Bush, specifically said that he would not be another Clinton. The main reason why he won was because he was supposed to bring integrity back to the Oval Office. And he did not. This is something Republican officials fear most: The realization that their "Man of Integrity" has a backbone made of glass. Just examine his conduct towards large companies, specifically oil companies. "Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right" was back when you were kids. You're in your 50s and beyond. Besides the fact that Republicans are supposed to be "tough on crime": except when it's one of the Family. "OMG Clinton received a blowjob from an intern! We need to get him out!" is now: "Uh-oh! One of our loyalists committed a crime! Who do we pay to get him out?" It's all very funny to me. So much for "God" and "morality" and "virtues" and "values." I think I'll quote Tolstoy again now:
"Could it be that all the talk about justice, goodness, law, religion, God, and so on, was nothing but so many words to conceal the grossest self-interest and cruelty?" Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, p. 387
So the question is, has there been enough of this self-righteous, arrogant hypocrisy to get the religious fascists to go away yet?
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I dont think we should celebrate July 4th anymore. We don't know what it means anymore. Today, for all most of us care, we could be under the theocratic rule of a King of England, and wouldnt be able to tell the difference. Some of us forget when 9/11 happened.
The terms "freedom" and "liberty" have lost their true meaning in Tsar Bush II's xenophobic rants. Most of us take our freedom for granted and really don't (or can't) understand the consequences of his terms in office in relation to what we supposedly have/had (a democracy).
I understand. Keith Olbermann understands. Edward Murrow understood (Murrow was the journalist who revealed Joseph McCarthy as a Communist). Al Gore understands. Tricky Dick II understands (The first Tricky Dick was Nixon, the second is Cheney; he's not stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing and is deliberately doing it). Christian fascist leaders must understand. The average American does not understand. And that is why American democracy will fail unless we (those of us who know) do something.
We should not only relearn our political history, but each and every one of us should have a copy of the US Constitution in our homes and actually read it and understand it. Until then, there can be no holiday for what we as a nation do not remember or consider relevent.
"Could it be that all the talk about justice, goodness, law, religion, God, and so on, was nothing but so many words to conceal the grossest self-interest and cruelty?" Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, p. 387
So the question is, has there been enough of this self-righteous, arrogant hypocrisy to get the religious fascists to go away yet?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I dont think we should celebrate July 4th anymore. We don't know what it means anymore. Today, for all most of us care, we could be under the theocratic rule of a King of England, and wouldnt be able to tell the difference. Some of us forget when 9/11 happened.
The terms "freedom" and "liberty" have lost their true meaning in Tsar Bush II's xenophobic rants. Most of us take our freedom for granted and really don't (or can't) understand the consequences of his terms in office in relation to what we supposedly have/had (a democracy).
I understand. Keith Olbermann understands. Edward Murrow understood (Murrow was the journalist who revealed Joseph McCarthy as a Communist). Al Gore understands. Tricky Dick II understands (The first Tricky Dick was Nixon, the second is Cheney; he's not stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing and is deliberately doing it). Christian fascist leaders must understand. The average American does not understand. And that is why American democracy will fail unless we (those of us who know) do something.
We should not only relearn our political history, but each and every one of us should have a copy of the US Constitution in our homes and actually read it and understand it. Until then, there can be no holiday for what we as a nation do not remember or consider relevent.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
The Al Gore Book
The Al Gore book, The Assault on Reason, is basically a companion to American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. Al Gore says a lot of things I've known for at least a year, but also is brave enough to point out that surveillance technology is not only advanced, but also widely available, and as I enjoy pointing out, Orwell's nightmare is actually possible so long as people aren't paying attention (And when are they ever?)! Gore argues that this might not be like those times in the Cold War when we later regretted using illegal surveillance.
The serious thing is that our complacency in dealing with George W Bush can and probably will set a precedent: "He didn't get caught or punished, so I won't either," not because we might not not care, but because the six megaconglomerates are firing our survival neurons every few miliseconds when we are glued to the Huxleyan glass teat. America will always be distracted, which is why democracy no longer exists in America.
There is no "well-informed citizenry," as issues themselves are secondary, or even thirdly, to money and airtime. More money = more ads = more repetition = more people remember = more votes. Gore calls this, cited from another person, "Manufactured consent." Sort of like buying something.
If you hear Pepsi (or Coke, if you prefer) commercials enough times, even if you've never had soda before, you will buy it simply because you remembered it and nothing challenged it in your mind. This is what politics and elections have become.
The degredation of ideas through simple repetition. Do you know how many times I hear the same ridiculous arguments for evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity and/or Creationism/UiD? It doesn't matter how absurd a concept is. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The more an argument is repeated, drilled, the more impervious it is to reason. Has the person who has bothered me about Jesus ever read anything by Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins? Probably not. Who made the silly connection between a shady charlatan (Jesus) and evolution? His educators. Many, many, of the minions are not intelligent enough even to grasp why 2 + 2 = 4, let alone devise arguments for their collective cause.I wrote a lengthy paper on the Russian Revolution and I read that the Bolsheviks were the same way - only able to repeat Lenin's rhetoric, completely unable to think for themselves.
So where is this "democracy?" Doesn't "democracy" require active participation in the political process? Now, instead of the political leaders being shaped by the people, the leaders are shaping the people. No, politicians themselves are not involved at all. That's work they don't have to do. Television does that job for them. The political leaders would really be the six international megaconglomerates - Vivendi Universal, Disney, NewsCorp, AOL-TimeWarner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann AG, each endorsing a political agenda for its own aims. They choose, through their discretion, what content they air, specific to what they want the public to think. The TV is the most effective tool for this aim by far.
Mr Gore states that the problem lies in that TV communication only goes in one direction, and all responses to the programming are effectively politically irrelevant because the transmitters cannot receive as the receivers cannot transmit, meaning that any reaction or response is futile.
The corporations take whatever candidate they endorse and throw him/her on the network for repetition. America, glued to that Huxleyan box for an average of four hours a day, is rendered by the confiscation of his free will, due to the manipulation of neurochemicals by stimuli in rapid sucession, becomes, effectively , a complacent zombie.
I was just watching a movie a few hours ago on TV that was awful. The thing is that I hated it, but I could not get myself to walk away. I think there's a Weird Al Yankovic song that goes something like, "Like a train wreck / I did not want to stare / But I could not look away" (It's titled "Jerry Springer," I remember now). This is how television robs people of their free will. "Why can't you just turn it off?" Because it compells one to look. And to keep watching.
Televangelism works the same way as Hitler's Nuremburg Rallies. Wealthy con artists, demagogues, and charlatans can buy their own television networks and rally people in their favor using a simple box with silicon chips and a screen, using the same methods I explained previously: Repetition, repetition, repetition. On a massive scale.
Our democracy is no more insofar as people have lost the ability to participate. Yes, we can vote, but how and why are we voting? We have been told by the TV and those that control it who to vote for. Sometimes, against our crippled, though breathing, better judgement, we march on to vote for the person who will hold our hand and leap into the abyss.
The serious thing is that our complacency in dealing with George W Bush can and probably will set a precedent: "He didn't get caught or punished, so I won't either," not because we might not not care, but because the six megaconglomerates are firing our survival neurons every few miliseconds when we are glued to the Huxleyan glass teat. America will always be distracted, which is why democracy no longer exists in America.
There is no "well-informed citizenry," as issues themselves are secondary, or even thirdly, to money and airtime. More money = more ads = more repetition = more people remember = more votes. Gore calls this, cited from another person, "Manufactured consent." Sort of like buying something.
If you hear Pepsi (or Coke, if you prefer) commercials enough times, even if you've never had soda before, you will buy it simply because you remembered it and nothing challenged it in your mind. This is what politics and elections have become.
The degredation of ideas through simple repetition. Do you know how many times I hear the same ridiculous arguments for evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity and/or Creationism/UiD? It doesn't matter how absurd a concept is. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The more an argument is repeated, drilled, the more impervious it is to reason. Has the person who has bothered me about Jesus ever read anything by Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins? Probably not. Who made the silly connection between a shady charlatan (Jesus) and evolution? His educators. Many, many, of the minions are not intelligent enough even to grasp why 2 + 2 = 4, let alone devise arguments for their collective cause.I wrote a lengthy paper on the Russian Revolution and I read that the Bolsheviks were the same way - only able to repeat Lenin's rhetoric, completely unable to think for themselves.
So where is this "democracy?" Doesn't "democracy" require active participation in the political process? Now, instead of the political leaders being shaped by the people, the leaders are shaping the people. No, politicians themselves are not involved at all. That's work they don't have to do. Television does that job for them. The political leaders would really be the six international megaconglomerates - Vivendi Universal, Disney, NewsCorp, AOL-TimeWarner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann AG, each endorsing a political agenda for its own aims. They choose, through their discretion, what content they air, specific to what they want the public to think. The TV is the most effective tool for this aim by far.
Mr Gore states that the problem lies in that TV communication only goes in one direction, and all responses to the programming are effectively politically irrelevant because the transmitters cannot receive as the receivers cannot transmit, meaning that any reaction or response is futile.
The corporations take whatever candidate they endorse and throw him/her on the network for repetition. America, glued to that Huxleyan box for an average of four hours a day, is rendered by the confiscation of his free will, due to the manipulation of neurochemicals by stimuli in rapid sucession, becomes, effectively , a complacent zombie.
I was just watching a movie a few hours ago on TV that was awful. The thing is that I hated it, but I could not get myself to walk away. I think there's a Weird Al Yankovic song that goes something like, "Like a train wreck / I did not want to stare / But I could not look away" (It's titled "Jerry Springer," I remember now). This is how television robs people of their free will. "Why can't you just turn it off?" Because it compells one to look. And to keep watching.
Televangelism works the same way as Hitler's Nuremburg Rallies. Wealthy con artists, demagogues, and charlatans can buy their own television networks and rally people in their favor using a simple box with silicon chips and a screen, using the same methods I explained previously: Repetition, repetition, repetition. On a massive scale.
Our democracy is no more insofar as people have lost the ability to participate. Yes, we can vote, but how and why are we voting? We have been told by the TV and those that control it who to vote for. Sometimes, against our crippled, though breathing, better judgement, we march on to vote for the person who will hold our hand and leap into the abyss.
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