Don't run away from the world, if you just listen, and don't try to change anything, but simply observe, the beautifulness all around will get you...
Listen far, listen deep, listen good, connect with the all.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Killing a pigeon... Georgia's unwanted war - the perfect crime
How do you go about killing a pigeon?
Well, first of all you must make sure he is defenseless, not only must he not have any way to defend himself or to attack, he must have no way out, and no friends must be around to help him.
Then you'll have the perfect crime setup. In this case it's not a pigeon, only a state with four million people inside. It's called Georgia, and aside from Sweden and a few other neighbouring states (like Lithuania) no one is around to help. The USA, NATO and all the big players just say: have sense, cease hostilities. But in fact there is only one side to this hostility, and a very stupid group of military commanders on the the other side, stupid enough to reply to the hostility, when they are in a position of incredible frailty. They might have understood that they were falling into a trap, but like a mad dog, angered and the spite, they just go and attack, forgetting that Ossetian "terrorists" have a very big friend around, that the stage has been well mounted, they the only thing left for them is to fall into the trap.
Among the desire of a powerful military demonstration from Russia (Putin certainly, what about Medved, just trapped in it?), and the pride of Georgean officials, a conscious victim sees its end approaching, its Mikheil Saakashvili. He knows he has no chance of a military victory over the giant. And yet, he can't avoid the war. The Russians have been smart to the point of asking for a special UN meeting, all meticulously synchronized with the beggining of the Olympic games in Beijing! Amazing. The perfect crime!
Here is the deafening speech from Mikheil Saakashvil: (source, while it is still there!!)
Will they be just rocks tomorrow? Not even memories, perhaps. (at least not undistorted ones!)
The fact that only Sweeden had a proper reply makes us think what the world would be like if all the nations had proper governments.
Sweden's (Carl Bildt's) reply: "The way in which the situation in South Ossetia has deteriorated is cause for profound concern. It is extremely important that all those involved show restraint and play their part in bringing about a political solution," ... "I am particularly concerned about the impact of the conflict on civilians. Georgia and Russia are dangerously close to war and there is a great risk of this spreading to other parts of the Caucasus."[95] Bildt further stated that the crisis is due to "provocations from the South Ossetian side" and that the Georgian forces are trying to "restore the constitutional order". [96] and that the Russian bombing of Georgia is "very worrying and will demand a forceful reaction from the United Nations and the European Union." [97]" (Wiki)
Forceful? Yeah, right! Fifty years ago, when the traces of war were still implanted in us, we would have a forceful response. We would know what could and could not be tolerated. We would value upholding democracies rather then upholding cheap oil. But all the memories of war seem to have been forgotten. In ten or twenty years we should be heading for a new one, to remind us, once more, that there are things to which we simply cannot close our eyes to.
For another similar look check this bbc article.
UPDATE August 11: Well, the most unlikely figure stepped up to help Georgia. In fact, his statement is almost everything a worthy US presidential statement should be at this time: John McCain (notice that I would generally prefer Obama, but not in this particular instance). You can see the video here. The lonely voice from the west that does more than "strongly condemn" or "call Russia to...". This is the kind of response we need! But I would also add to this speech the need from South Ossetia to be officialy independent from Georgia. South Ossetia had two referendums, in 1992 and 2006, which undeniably expressed their want to separate from Georgia! They should have that right, to self-determination, as soon as possible, and that should be apllied to every region in the world. People, ethnic groups, communities, etc, should belong to larger states because they desire to (like in the EU or the USA), because it is in their best interest to belong, not because they are forced to (like the kurds in Turkey and Iraq, or what is still happening in ex-Juguslavia). Let people be free, without freedom there will be no peace, oppression leads to revolt. Without this addition of the need for the self-determination of South Ossetia, McCain's speech can actually bring more tension. But his guts are severly need in the political scene!
Here is an interesting article from the iht, I just don't agree with the phrase "Saakashvili had acted rashly". I believe it was not his decision to retaliate. He offered a cease fire and a general amnesty, but I believe somewhere in the chain of command the military simply did not obey him. Seeing everything being destroyed around, having immense immediate firepower and simply not responding is something a military man has difficulty in doing. The art of non-reaction is not encoraged in those parts.
Well, first of all you must make sure he is defenseless, not only must he not have any way to defend himself or to attack, he must have no way out, and no friends must be around to help him.
Then you'll have the perfect crime setup. In this case it's not a pigeon, only a state with four million people inside. It's called Georgia, and aside from Sweden and a few other neighbouring states (like Lithuania) no one is around to help. The USA, NATO and all the big players just say: have sense, cease hostilities. But in fact there is only one side to this hostility, and a very stupid group of military commanders on the the other side, stupid enough to reply to the hostility, when they are in a position of incredible frailty. They might have understood that they were falling into a trap, but like a mad dog, angered and the spite, they just go and attack, forgetting that Ossetian "terrorists" have a very big friend around, that the stage has been well mounted, they the only thing left for them is to fall into the trap.
Among the desire of a powerful military demonstration from Russia (Putin certainly, what about Medved, just trapped in it?), and the pride of Georgean officials, a conscious victim sees its end approaching, its Mikheil Saakashvili. He knows he has no chance of a military victory over the giant. And yet, he can't avoid the war. The Russians have been smart to the point of asking for a special UN meeting, all meticulously synchronized with the beggining of the Olympic games in Beijing! Amazing. The perfect crime!
Here is the deafening speech from Mikheil Saakashvil: (source, while it is still there!!)
My dear fellow citizens!It seems as if he is really serious. The beautiful man and his beatiful wife, and all their beautiful plans to raise a free country, well...I would like to address South Ossetia, I want to address all of Georgian society, all of our multi-ethnic Georgian society. I want to address ethnic Georgians and ethnic Ossetians, ethnic Russians and ethnic Jews, living in the conflict zone-all citizens of our country, regardless of their ethnicity.
My dear fellow citizens!
The situation in and around Tskhinvali has just worsened. In recent days, the permanent provocations, violations, murders, and other offenses to which we have become accustomed now have escalated dangerously and threaten the peace.
I myself do not understand why the separatists became so aggressive exactly at this time. First, they attacked several times the Head of the Provisional Administration of South Ossetia, Dimitry Sanakoev, who was one of the former separatist leaders and who opted for peace. Then, they began attacking Georgian police, peacekeeping posts, and mobile patrols. During the last few days, they undertook large scale attacks and are continuing to attack peaceful civilians in villages.
Sniper assaults on civilians in Georgian villages are still underway. Even at this moment, as I speak to you, intensive fire is coming from artillery, tanks, and other weapons-such as mortars and grenade launchers-that have been illegally deployed in the conflict zone.
We have been in constant contacts with the leadership of the local Russian peacekeeping forces.
Several hours ago, they told us that they have completely lost control over the actions of the separatists.
I dispatched to Tskhinvali Mr. Temur Iakobashvili-the State Minister for Reintegration and the Special Representative of the President in the negotiating process-in order to conduct direct talks regarding a ceasefire.
The separatists refused to accept him and sent him back from the conflict zone without any results.
We are in constant contact with the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry tells us Russia is trying to stop the separatists from engaging in armed action, but without any success.
I would like to directly address those people who are at this moment shooting peaceful civilians and Georgian police forces.
You have been shooting during the last several days and especially in the last several hours.
I want to declare with full responsibility and confess that several hours ago, in my capacity as Commander in Chief of Georgia, I issued a very painful order directing all Georgian police forces and other units under our control not to return fire, even if they face intensive bombing.
I did this very deliberately.
However, I would like to state that in the hours since, during which time our forces and civilians have fallen victim-there are many casualties and many wounded, many houses have been destroyed and damaged-I did this deliberately in order to have the possibility to stand before you and call for an immediate ceasefire and immediate negotiations.
I continue to support the peace plan for South Ossetia that I introduced three years ago, a plan that has been developed over the course of many years. It includes practicaly unrestricted autonomy and local governance for South Ossetia, special safeguards for the human rights of every ethnic Ossetian, autonomy under international guarantees, an autonomous structure created according to EU standards.
I am proposing that Russia act as a guarantor of South Ossetian autonomy within Georgia. I act with full responsibility, so that Russia, Georgia, and European countries can participate in the peacekeeping process. The local population must feel that they are defended by the international community, by people who deserve their trust.
I want to say, that despite the fact that many people have been killed and robbed, have had their possessions absolutely destroyed, we are offering full amnesty to everyone who has committed such criminal acts punishable under Georgian law, if they immediately cease fire. I am willing to take even such a consequential step. The Georgian government is ready to forgive the crimes committed in recent years in order to secure peace, to continue the peacekeeping process and negotiations.
We offer all of you partnership and friendship, despite your violations against Georgian state and the local population, no matter what acts you committed, acts that are punishable under Georgian and international laws. Because peace is a greater value, more vital than anything else. We are ready for any sort of agreement in the interest of peace.
But I once again would like to address you.
My dear people, my dear fellow citizens!
I love Ossetians as a President and as a ordinary citizen of this country.
I admire and respect Ossetian history and culture.
Every ethnic Ossetian has been an inseparable part of Georgian history for centuries.
We are proud of you and our unity. Georgia is strong for its diversity. Georgia has never been and will never be a mono-ethnic country. Georgia belongs to all of us regardless of our ethnicity.
Let’s take care of our country together. Let’s together avoid the violence. Let’s work together for a better future. Let’s forget everything negative that has happened in the past and let’s together think about our common future.
I would like to address the international community. Nobody should try to present the Georgian government as a supporter of any kind of violence. For so many days, we have been reaching out to our partners-today we have spoken to several world leaders-to help us stop the escalation of violence. We ask that you help us conduct direct negotiations, to guarantee the autonomous status of South Ossetia, and to internationalize the peace process. We also ask for your assistance in holding a more results-oriented dialogue.
We are doing everything to avoid escalation of the violence.
I would like to address the Russian Federation as well.
Georgia is a natural ally of Russia.
Any president of Georgia-and myself above all, since I know well what Russia means for Georgia-will always be committed to good relations with Russia, assuming that Russia respects the territorial integrity of Georgia, the sovereignty of Georgia, and the inviolability of the state borders of Georgia.
In recent years, South Ossetia, for all intents and purposes, is directly administered by the Russian Federation.
There are ministers in the separatist government in Tskhinvali, for instance, who also are officials of the Russian government and who have been sent to South Ossetia on mission.
I request from Russia and the separatists to pull these ministers out; they have nothing to do in South Ossetia; they do not contribute to the historic friendship between Georgians and South Ossetians. To the contrary: They hamper the restoration of our traditional allied relations.
We need true mediators, and we offer the Russian Federation an important role in resolving this conflict.
We can accomplish many things together. But for now, we must return to the situation as it stands today.
Georgia is undertaking an immediate, unilateral cease fire. We do not have the will to respond to violence with yet more violence.
We have been tolerating this for so many years. We have not responded to so many provocations throughout the years, to countless violations. No other state would have shown such restraint. Please, do not test the Georgian state’s patience. Because this is your country, which is willing to defend each of you.
Let’s stop this spiral of violence. I address everyone: Let’s do everything to stop the escalation-today, tomorrow, or the day after-and return to the negotiating table. Let’s use every possible format-direct, multilateral, and other formats-to overcome this absolutely critical situation, to come out of this unacceptable deadlock in which we all find ourselves.
My dear people!
I rely on your wisdom, on your historical experience, that lies in our shared past and in our genes.
This is the Caucasus, where violence harms everyone.
Let’s give peace and dialogue a chance.
I really believe in you!
Will they be just rocks tomorrow? Not even memories, perhaps. (at least not undistorted ones!)
The fact that only Sweeden had a proper reply makes us think what the world would be like if all the nations had proper governments.
Sweden's (Carl Bildt's) reply: "The way in which the situation in South Ossetia has deteriorated is cause for profound concern. It is extremely important that all those involved show restraint and play their part in bringing about a political solution," ... "I am particularly concerned about the impact of the conflict on civilians. Georgia and Russia are dangerously close to war and there is a great risk of this spreading to other parts of the Caucasus."[95] Bildt further stated that the crisis is due to "provocations from the South Ossetian side" and that the Georgian forces are trying to "restore the constitutional order". [96] and that the Russian bombing of Georgia is "very worrying and will demand a forceful reaction from the United Nations and the European Union." [97]" (Wiki)
Forceful? Yeah, right! Fifty years ago, when the traces of war were still implanted in us, we would have a forceful response. We would know what could and could not be tolerated. We would value upholding democracies rather then upholding cheap oil. But all the memories of war seem to have been forgotten. In ten or twenty years we should be heading for a new one, to remind us, once more, that there are things to which we simply cannot close our eyes to.
For another similar look check this bbc article.
UPDATE August 11: Well, the most unlikely figure stepped up to help Georgia. In fact, his statement is almost everything a worthy US presidential statement should be at this time: John McCain (notice that I would generally prefer Obama, but not in this particular instance). You can see the video here. The lonely voice from the west that does more than "strongly condemn" or "call Russia to...". This is the kind of response we need! But I would also add to this speech the need from South Ossetia to be officialy independent from Georgia. South Ossetia had two referendums, in 1992 and 2006, which undeniably expressed their want to separate from Georgia! They should have that right, to self-determination, as soon as possible, and that should be apllied to every region in the world. People, ethnic groups, communities, etc, should belong to larger states because they desire to (like in the EU or the USA), because it is in their best interest to belong, not because they are forced to (like the kurds in Turkey and Iraq, or what is still happening in ex-Juguslavia). Let people be free, without freedom there will be no peace, oppression leads to revolt. Without this addition of the need for the self-determination of South Ossetia, McCain's speech can actually bring more tension. But his guts are severly need in the political scene!
Here is an interesting article from the iht, I just don't agree with the phrase "Saakashvili had acted rashly". I believe it was not his decision to retaliate. He offered a cease fire and a general amnesty, but I believe somewhere in the chain of command the military simply did not obey him. Seeing everything being destroyed around, having immense immediate firepower and simply not responding is something a military man has difficulty in doing. The art of non-reaction is not encoraged in those parts.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Vision...
.... ahhhhhh!!!...
From the moment we are born to the moment we die: each living string of events that give shape to our consciousness can be full of detail or vague, large and wide in scope or focused in a small part of reality.
As animals, as human beings, as biological minds born of the struggle for physical survival, our mental objects are always narrow minded. There is only so much we can put in a homo sapiens brain. These texts and landscapes, and even the great works of science and art than mankind as achieved in the peak of its effort and inspiration, is only a shallow picture of what is. Today our best pictures of the world (like M theory, history (from the big bang to the 21st century), molecular biology, computation, mathematics, futurology, etc) point to the incongruence and incompleteness of our knowledge.
One thing seems very clear: we are very small animals in a very vast universe. We are very rare and precious, but at the same time we know almost nothing of what surrounds us. We are the first beings in our planet of which we are aware, that have started to look beyond food and mating and rearing and playing, we have started to look at the stars and rivers and rocks and tried to see what they really are. Not only as tools, as instruments to our well being, but in themselves.
What must have seemed clear, a million years ago and today, is that the world is huge and we only know a very small part of it. When we look at the huge universe that surrounds us, with it billions of billions of stars, we can only understand that, through the course of our entire life we will only see a very small part of the whole world that spreads its wings in space, time and scale.
It is as if we will only see a single music, or a single face, and, from that, we must try to imagine what lies beyond, the whole multitude of faces with their histories and problems and wants and fears, the whole multitude of melodies, from Bach to The Doors, passing through Regina, Vangelis, Nirvana, Satie and others.
Likewise, what we can see in our human societies, or even in this planet, with its gigantic history, much richer than we will ever be able to imagine, is just a minute part of what there is, and even less of what there will be. If we have the hope, the desire, to know what the universe is like, what what it is is like, if we want to be able to have the widest pictures in our mind, with the most amount of detail, then we must understand that we are small, that the world is unimaginably bigger than what we can conceive, that there is no end to our growing in vision and understanding.
Man has just begun, and the road seems infinite, at least as far as we can see...
Friday, July 18, 2008
Amit Goswami
Amit Goswami is a physicist who has written a book I would like to read. It has a somewhat delirious title "God Is Not Dead: What Quantum Physics Tells Us About Our Origins and How We Should Live" in any case I think it sheds some clarity on why the mind-body problem cannot be solve through a materilistic approach: free will cannot be conceived in well defined terms, as an object or system of objects. (The phenomenal aspect of consciousness, the feeling, is also beyond what can be described or learned by concepts, it has to be experienced.) Amazon provides a quick preview of the book, which might be interesting. I am going to quote just a portion of what is available at Amazon:
«This reminds me of a Zen story. A man meets a family of four (parents and two grown children), all of whom are enlightened. This is his opportunity to find if enlightenment is hard or easy to attain. So he asks the father, who replies, "Enlightenment is very tough." He asks the mother, who replies, "Enlightenment is very easy." He asks the son who replies "It is neither difficult nor easy." Finally he asks the daughter who says "Enlightenment is easy if you make it easy; it is difficult if you make it difficult."
If you think of consciousness as an epiphenomenon (secondary effect) of the brain, consciousness is a hard question indeed; you are making it hard. Consider that an objective model always seeks an answer to a question in terms of objects. Thus neurophysiologists seek to understand consciousness in terms of other objects: the brain, neurons, etc. The underlying assumption is that consciousness is an object. But consciousness is also a subject - that which does the looking at and thinking about object(s). This subject-aspect of consciousness exposes one weakness of the neurophysiological brain-based model.
The truth is that consciousness is not only a hard question, but also an impossible question for materialists. [...]»
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Religion is unnecessary in view of the mesmerizing beauty of the Cosmos
The words we use are often misleading, religiousness might mean many things. It might mean my desire to love or that I trust that there is a deeper meaning to this life, but usually it means I adhere to a certain set of unproven beliefs.
To have a religion is, in this sense, similar to having a political party, a sports club, whatever. It means basically that we pretend to know something that we in fact only wish you knew. It is called faith.
Now faith is very different from trust. I may trust in you as a friend, but this is different from the claim that I know that you are a friend. There are relatively few things (if any) we can accurately claim to know, although we can trust in the most bizarre things.
Now religious people usually say that you have to believe in certain things in order to give meaning to your life. I think this is a big, horrendous lie. In my opinion all you have to do is to be open. Be open to the universe, be open to what you are. In the last centuries science as developed a view of the world more magnificent than any writer has ever been able to imagine. The quantities of fish, birds and wild life that has been around for millions of years in our planet alone, show us without doubt that we live inside a magnificent story, in which we are only a pale fragment. Our greatest achievement is that we have a center spot. In our spot we can look at the life of elephants and plants and dolphins and spiders and stars and planets. In our spot we can contemplate the incredible joy of creation.
As a species we are not very special in most respects: We do not take especially better care of our infants, we are not especially wise in our relations with our peers or with our environment, we are not the most beautiful, harmonious, delicate or even physically stronger, we are not the ones who live longer, or have a better sense of taste or smell. For all these and many other characteristics there are other species who can surpass us. Our advantage is in the preservation of knowledge, which means that, although we are totally in the dark regarding what the world or what it is there for, what is its purpose, we know how it behaves and we know many if... then sequences, which means, we know that if wee do this, then that will happen.
Through this way of dealing with the world, we have advanced enormously in our technical ability to survive in the farthest reaches of the earth. We have been able even to record the lifestyle of other animals, in pictures and film, and in concepts, we have shared them with others.
But, although the recordings of all this research has allowed for the construction of a vast amount of knowledge, the fact is, we prefer the myth. Most of us prefer to think that we have a different story, origin, role and destination. we prefer to think of ourselves as the rulers of the earth. In our mythology human life is more sacred than the life of any other animal. In fact, many of us, would think that it would be correct to say that human life is the only sacred life on earth. In practice this means that if, to save a human life, you had to destroy the entire planet, than it would be morally correct to do so. We would find more correct, according to our mythology, to kill billions of billions of living beings to save a single human life.
This is how self centered our species is.
Now, many generations have come and researched the reality of our world. They have made hypothesis and tested them, they were ready to sacrifice their prejudices, and the world they found was a world very different from this myth. In this world men are not at the center, they have much more to learn, a world, an immense world rises before them, with histories, a degree of complexity, a beginning and end which defies even the most prodigious imagination. The world described by science is undoubtedly wonderful beyond our imagination.
We took up religion to make sense of our life. We thought that, if we were to consider ourselves just another kind of ape, our life would be meaningless. But it is precisely the opposite that happens. It is only when we see our species and ourselves as part of this gargantuan story that we begging to realize how tremendously beautiful each of our moments here on this earth really is. The wonderfulness of this world is much more intense, much more real, speaks much more to the senses, to our hearts, to our souls, then the ancient sacred texts were able to convey. Compared with the magnificence of the Earth and the Cosmos, they look very pale, almost like rubish, although a shinning rubbish, shinning because, in spite of their blindness, they are part of the history of the Cosmos.
To have a religion is, in this sense, similar to having a political party, a sports club, whatever. It means basically that we pretend to know something that we in fact only wish you knew. It is called faith.
Now faith is very different from trust. I may trust in you as a friend, but this is different from the claim that I know that you are a friend. There are relatively few things (if any) we can accurately claim to know, although we can trust in the most bizarre things.
Now religious people usually say that you have to believe in certain things in order to give meaning to your life. I think this is a big, horrendous lie. In my opinion all you have to do is to be open. Be open to the universe, be open to what you are. In the last centuries science as developed a view of the world more magnificent than any writer has ever been able to imagine. The quantities of fish, birds and wild life that has been around for millions of years in our planet alone, show us without doubt that we live inside a magnificent story, in which we are only a pale fragment. Our greatest achievement is that we have a center spot. In our spot we can look at the life of elephants and plants and dolphins and spiders and stars and planets. In our spot we can contemplate the incredible joy of creation.
As a species we are not very special in most respects: We do not take especially better care of our infants, we are not especially wise in our relations with our peers or with our environment, we are not the most beautiful, harmonious, delicate or even physically stronger, we are not the ones who live longer, or have a better sense of taste or smell. For all these and many other characteristics there are other species who can surpass us. Our advantage is in the preservation of knowledge, which means that, although we are totally in the dark regarding what the world or what it is there for, what is its purpose, we know how it behaves and we know many if... then sequences, which means, we know that if wee do this, then that will happen.
Through this way of dealing with the world, we have advanced enormously in our technical ability to survive in the farthest reaches of the earth. We have been able even to record the lifestyle of other animals, in pictures and film, and in concepts, we have shared them with others.
But, although the recordings of all this research has allowed for the construction of a vast amount of knowledge, the fact is, we prefer the myth. Most of us prefer to think that we have a different story, origin, role and destination. we prefer to think of ourselves as the rulers of the earth. In our mythology human life is more sacred than the life of any other animal. In fact, many of us, would think that it would be correct to say that human life is the only sacred life on earth. In practice this means that if, to save a human life, you had to destroy the entire planet, than it would be morally correct to do so. We would find more correct, according to our mythology, to kill billions of billions of living beings to save a single human life.
This is how self centered our species is.
Now, many generations have come and researched the reality of our world. They have made hypothesis and tested them, they were ready to sacrifice their prejudices, and the world they found was a world very different from this myth. In this world men are not at the center, they have much more to learn, a world, an immense world rises before them, with histories, a degree of complexity, a beginning and end which defies even the most prodigious imagination. The world described by science is undoubtedly wonderful beyond our imagination.
We took up religion to make sense of our life. We thought that, if we were to consider ourselves just another kind of ape, our life would be meaningless. But it is precisely the opposite that happens. It is only when we see our species and ourselves as part of this gargantuan story that we begging to realize how tremendously beautiful each of our moments here on this earth really is. The wonderfulness of this world is much more intense, much more real, speaks much more to the senses, to our hearts, to our souls, then the ancient sacred texts were able to convey. Compared with the magnificence of the Earth and the Cosmos, they look very pale, almost like rubish, although a shinning rubbish, shinning because, in spite of their blindness, they are part of the history of the Cosmos.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Spirituality versus Religion as a social phenomenon
I find myself very interested in questions such as: waht is the "meaning" and value of life and Existence. Is the beauty I see in the Cosmos only my personal whim, or has it some sort of reality, are numbers and concepts real, is free will just an illusion, is there life after death? These and many other questions occupy much of my time, even when I was a child they filled my heart and mind. I still feel mesmerized by them, and I pursue them. Sometimes I have trusted in people to provide ready-made answers to these questions. Organized religions propose more or less attractive answers to different kinds of people. On my own, the only thing I could say is that I do not know the answer to these questions. I would like to know, and, in a certain, inner, unexplainable sense, I do not doubt that there is something sacred and divine from the pebble of sand to a cluster of galaxies, passing by crabs and men and ants. I don't see anything specially divine regarding men and women. We are beautiful, and our story upon this earth is quite magical and full of grandeur. But so are the story of fish and dolphins and birds and rocks and volcanoes and stars. Everything in this universe seems so magical. For me this is not a reason to feel unimportant, by the contrary, being in such a great company, makes me feel that I am part of something that is worth to know and to be part of. My only fear is that I may not be up to it. Am I as beautiful as the stars and fish I see around me? A part of me real doubts that.
Although I have participated and firmly believed in several religions before, I have, for several years now, no respect for their dogmas. I appreciate their willingness to search for a spiritual life, for love, for "God", I appreciate the mystery, the connectedness to the "Holy Ghost", or "Jove" or Buddha, or the inner self or whatever. I appreciate the search for Heaven or Nirvana or Paradise or mere Happiness. But I truly dislike the dogmas. For when a person thinks that he or she knows what he or she does not know, she is blinded in two different ways: the first, she is in fact ignorant; the second she is ignorant of her own ignorance. This second aspect is for me more dangerous than the first for it stops the search. And that is the root reason that I abandoned all forms of organized religion in my life. Today the only thing I know is that I know nothing regarding the fundamental nature of reality or its purpose (if any).
In my experience religion may provide a strong connection to the invisible realm of values and purpose. Like Mozart's music and almost every form of art, and everything, it is like a portal to an invisible dimension, that unfortunately, cannot be explicitly communicated or even felt. It belongs to a realm of some kind of supra-consciousness, not itself an object of consciousness but allowing for consciousness and knowledge to exist. Guiding our directions, inspiring our words, but nevertheless staying out of the field of consciousness. Therefore I can say this strange paradox: that I have no doubt that there is life after death, and yet, I have no idea if there is life after death. Which means I do not know anything about any life after death (just like the staunchest skeptic) and yet I have absolutely no doubt regarding life after death (like the deepest believer). I live my experience of God, and yet, I have no knowledge of it. I cannot share it, except with people that live it too. I cannot even understand it, and yet, it under-stands me.
Because of this I have to facets to the world. Just like my nose might seem to be on the far right or on the far left of my face, so my position on religion seems to be one of complete despise and of complete entrancement. For instance I like to listen to religious rituals and see the dances and feel the spirit, I feel at one with devotees who surrender their heart to whatever deity and priest, and yet, on the other side of my face, I see the illusion and falsity of it all, of seeing "God" as something external, identified with this or that. Just like a lover who thinks he or she is in Love with anything else but Love itself.
To sum up, I think religious ideologies and doctrines are a great fountain both of ignorance and fear, and also of joy, wisdom and illumination. In themselves they are certainly only falsities. For the mind (at least the minds we know of) does not seem capable to understand even the simplest things like the beauty of Beethoven. How can it express "God"? But because they motivate and give credit to the search of the Divine, they can actually be an incentive to a personal journey towards everything. Obviously, the person who uses religion well, will have, sooner or later, to overcame it.
In my experience the overcoming of religion comes in three different steps:
1) Obedience - the passive side - to listen, to be ready, to be open, to be receptive. Judaism centers on this aspect.
2) Love - the active side - to nurture, to give, to be creative. Christianism centers on this aspect.
3) Dissolution - the ecstasy - when there are not two but one, the encounter. Some forms of Buddhism center on this aspect.
These three things are connected, they revolve around each other, and no one religion masters them all. In any case, all of this seems to be just a way to tune in with the Cosmos, with Existence. However, this "tunning in" is only the first step. It is like a writer or a painter who gets is moment of inspiration, it is the right moment to start writing a book, but he has to start it. By starting it he will make visible that inspiration to himself and to others.
The inspiration is there already, but it is not explicit, it is like a seed, it must be developed so we can know what it is. Science, art, philosophy, are ways in which this elusive "in tuneness" gets itself known. It expresses itself through us to our own eyes. We have created it, somehow it should be already in us, but it had to be combined with other elements from the world to achieve its shape, to be known in the heart and mind.
But so far we have been unable to find a complete expression of this transcendent beauty. Perhaps the all universe, as a whole, is its expression. As we strive to find even better accounts of that beauty we will evolve. But if we hold on to what we have achieved we will simply grow old. The hideous face of organized religion is precisely this adherence to past principles. It gives it a very ugly face, as if it wanted men to love expressible ideas instead of the inexpressible Life that inspired them. Thomas Paine and Bertrand Russell, among many others, have clearly exposed some of the ugly traits of religion as an organized belief system. Here is such an account by the philosopher and mystic Bertrand Russell:
"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
The word religion is used nowadays in a very loose sense. Some people, under the influence of extreme Protestantism, employ the word to denote any serious personal convictions as to morals or the nature of the universe. This use of the word is quite unhistorical. Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. Churches may owe their origin to teachers with strong individual convictions, but these teachers have seldom had much influence upon the churches that they have founded, whereas churches have had enormous influence upon the communities in which they flourished. To take the case that is of most interest to members of Western civilization: the teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians. The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the church, and if we are to judge of Christianity as a social force we must not go to the Gospels for our material. Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects. Some of the Franciscans, it is true, attempted to teach the doctrine of apostolic poverty, but the Pope condemned them, and their doctrine was declared heretical. Or, again, consider such a text as "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and ask yourself what influence such a text has had upon the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan.
What is true of Christianity is equally true of Buddhism. The Buddha was amiable and enlightened; on his deathbed he laughed at his disciples for supposing that he was immortal. But the Buddhist priesthood -- as it exists, for example, in Tibet -- has been obscurantist, tyrannous, and cruel in the highest degree.
There is nothing accidental about this difference between a church and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress. The church opposed Galileo and Darwin; in our own day it opposes Freud. In the days of its greatest power it went further in its opposition to the intellectual life. Pope Gregory the Great wrote to a certain bishop a letter beginning: "A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends." The bishop was compelled by pontifical authority to desist from this wicked labor, and Latinity did not recover until the Renaissance. It is not only intellectually but also morally that religion is pernicious. I mean by this that it teaches ethical codes which are not conducive to human happiness. When, a few years ago, a plebiscite was taken in Germany as to whether the deposed royal houses should still be allowed to enjoy their private property, the churches in Germany officially stated that it would be contrary to the teaching of Christianity to deprive them of it. The churches, as everyone knows, opposed the abolition of slavery as long as they dared, and with a few well-advertised exceptions they oppose at the present day every movement toward economic justice. The Pope has officially condemned Socialism.
Christianity and Sex
The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex -- an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman Empire was decaying. We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make. Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code. Monks have always regarded Woman primarily as the temptress; they have thought of her mainly as the inspirer of impure lusts. The teaching of the church has been, and still is, that virginity is best, but that for those who find this impossible marriage is permissible. "It is better to marry than to burn," as St. Paul puts it. By making marriage indissoluble, and by stamping out all knowledge of the ars amandi, the church did what it could to secure that the only form of sex which it permitted should involve very little pleasure and a great deal of pain. The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged.
The conception of Sin which is bound up with Christian ethics is one that does an extraordinary amount of harm, since it affords people an outlet for their sadism which they believe to be legitimate, and even noble. Take, for example, the question of the prevention of syphilis. It is known that, by precautions taken in advance, the danger of contracting this disease can be made negligible. Christians, however, object to the dissemination of knowledge of this fact, since they hold it good that sinners should be punished. They hold this so good that they are even willing that punishment should extend to the wives and children of sinners. There are in the world at the present moment many thousands of children suffering from congenital syphilis who would never have been born but for the desire of Christians to see sinners punished. I cannot understand how doctrines leading us to this fiendish cruelty can be considered to have any good effects upon morals.
It is not only in regard to sexual behaviour but also in regard to knowledge on sex subjects that the attitude of Christians is dangerous to human welfare. Every person who has taken the trouble to study the question in an unbiased spirit knows that the artificial ignorance on sex subjects which orthodox Christians attempt to enforce upon the young is extremely dangerous to mental and physical health, and causes in those who pick up their knowledge by the way of "improper" talk, as most children do, an attitude that sex is in itself indecent and ridiculous. I do not think there can be any defense for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable. I should not put barriers in the way of the acquisition of knowledge by anybody at any age. But in the particular case of sex knowledge there are much weightier arguments in its favor than in the case of most other knowledge. A person is much less likely to act wisely when he is ignorant than when he is instructed, and it is ridiculous to give young people a sense of sin because they have a natural curiosity about an important matter.
Every boy is interested in trains. Suppose we told him that an interest in trains is wicked; suppose we kept his eyes bandaged whenever he was in a train or on a railway station; suppose we never allowed the word "train" to be mentioned in his presence and preserved an impenetrable mystery as to the means by which he is transported from one place to another. The result would not be that he would cease to be interested in trains; on the contrary, he would become more interested than ever but would have a morbid sense of sin, because this interest had been represented to him as improper. Every boy of active intelligence could by this means be rendered in a greater or less degree neurasthenic. This is precisely what is done in the matter of sex; but, as sex is more interesting than trains, the results are worse. Almost every adult in a Christian community is more or less diseased nervously as a result of the taboo on sex knowledge when he or she was young. And the sense of sin which is thus artificially implanted is one of the causes of cruelty, timidity, and stupidity in later life. There is no rational ground of any sort or kind in keeping a child ignorant of anything that he may wish to know, whether on sex or on any other matter. And we shall never get a sane population until this fact is recognized in early education, which is impossible so long as the churches are able to control educational politics.
Leaving these comparatively detailed objections on one side, it is clear that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity demand a great deal of ethical perversion before they can be accepted. The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
To this day conventional Christians think an adulterer more wicked than a politician who takes bribes, although the latter probably does a thousand times as much harm. The medieval conception of virtue, as one sees in their pictures, was of something wishy-washy, feeble, and sentimental. The most virtuous man was the man who retired from the world; the only men of action who were regarded as saints were those who wasted the lives and substance of their subjects in fighting the Turks, like St. Louis. The church would never regard a man as a saint because he reformed the finances, or the criminal law, or the judiciary. Such mere contributions to human welfare would be regarded as of no importance. I do not believe there is a single saint in the whole calendar whose saintship is due to work of public utility.
The church's conception of righteousness is socially undesirable in various ways -- first and foremost in its depriciation of intelligence and science. This defect is inherited from the Gospels. Christ tells us to become as little children, but little children cannot understand the differential calculus, or the principles of currency, or the modern methods of combating disease. To acquire such knowledge is no part of our duty, according to the church. The church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to a pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma. Take, for example, two men, one of whom has stamped out yellow fever throughout some large region in the tropics but has in the course of his labors had occasional relations with women to whom he was not married; while the other has been lazy and shiftless, begetting a child a year until his wife died of exhaustion and taking so little care of his children that half of them died from preventable causes, but never indulging in illicit sexual intercourse. Every good Christian must maintain that the second of these men is more virtuous than the first. Such an attitude is, of course, superstitious and totally contrary to reason. Yet something of this absurdity is inevitable so long as avoidance of sin is thought more important than positive merit, and so long as the importance of knowledge as a help to a useful life is not recognized.
Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion."
The complete text is here.
Although I have participated and firmly believed in several religions before, I have, for several years now, no respect for their dogmas. I appreciate their willingness to search for a spiritual life, for love, for "God", I appreciate the mystery, the connectedness to the "Holy Ghost", or "Jove" or Buddha, or the inner self or whatever. I appreciate the search for Heaven or Nirvana or Paradise or mere Happiness. But I truly dislike the dogmas. For when a person thinks that he or she knows what he or she does not know, she is blinded in two different ways: the first, she is in fact ignorant; the second she is ignorant of her own ignorance. This second aspect is for me more dangerous than the first for it stops the search. And that is the root reason that I abandoned all forms of organized religion in my life. Today the only thing I know is that I know nothing regarding the fundamental nature of reality or its purpose (if any).
In my experience religion may provide a strong connection to the invisible realm of values and purpose. Like Mozart's music and almost every form of art, and everything, it is like a portal to an invisible dimension, that unfortunately, cannot be explicitly communicated or even felt. It belongs to a realm of some kind of supra-consciousness, not itself an object of consciousness but allowing for consciousness and knowledge to exist. Guiding our directions, inspiring our words, but nevertheless staying out of the field of consciousness. Therefore I can say this strange paradox: that I have no doubt that there is life after death, and yet, I have no idea if there is life after death. Which means I do not know anything about any life after death (just like the staunchest skeptic) and yet I have absolutely no doubt regarding life after death (like the deepest believer). I live my experience of God, and yet, I have no knowledge of it. I cannot share it, except with people that live it too. I cannot even understand it, and yet, it under-stands me.
Because of this I have to facets to the world. Just like my nose might seem to be on the far right or on the far left of my face, so my position on religion seems to be one of complete despise and of complete entrancement. For instance I like to listen to religious rituals and see the dances and feel the spirit, I feel at one with devotees who surrender their heart to whatever deity and priest, and yet, on the other side of my face, I see the illusion and falsity of it all, of seeing "God" as something external, identified with this or that. Just like a lover who thinks he or she is in Love with anything else but Love itself.
To sum up, I think religious ideologies and doctrines are a great fountain both of ignorance and fear, and also of joy, wisdom and illumination. In themselves they are certainly only falsities. For the mind (at least the minds we know of) does not seem capable to understand even the simplest things like the beauty of Beethoven. How can it express "God"? But because they motivate and give credit to the search of the Divine, they can actually be an incentive to a personal journey towards everything. Obviously, the person who uses religion well, will have, sooner or later, to overcame it.
In my experience the overcoming of religion comes in three different steps:
1) Obedience - the passive side - to listen, to be ready, to be open, to be receptive. Judaism centers on this aspect.
2) Love - the active side - to nurture, to give, to be creative. Christianism centers on this aspect.
3) Dissolution - the ecstasy - when there are not two but one, the encounter. Some forms of Buddhism center on this aspect.
These three things are connected, they revolve around each other, and no one religion masters them all. In any case, all of this seems to be just a way to tune in with the Cosmos, with Existence. However, this "tunning in" is only the first step. It is like a writer or a painter who gets is moment of inspiration, it is the right moment to start writing a book, but he has to start it. By starting it he will make visible that inspiration to himself and to others.
The inspiration is there already, but it is not explicit, it is like a seed, it must be developed so we can know what it is. Science, art, philosophy, are ways in which this elusive "in tuneness" gets itself known. It expresses itself through us to our own eyes. We have created it, somehow it should be already in us, but it had to be combined with other elements from the world to achieve its shape, to be known in the heart and mind.
But so far we have been unable to find a complete expression of this transcendent beauty. Perhaps the all universe, as a whole, is its expression. As we strive to find even better accounts of that beauty we will evolve. But if we hold on to what we have achieved we will simply grow old. The hideous face of organized religion is precisely this adherence to past principles. It gives it a very ugly face, as if it wanted men to love expressible ideas instead of the inexpressible Life that inspired them. Thomas Paine and Bertrand Russell, among many others, have clearly exposed some of the ugly traits of religion as an organized belief system. Here is such an account by the philosopher and mystic Bertrand Russell:
Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?
by Bertrand Russell
by Bertrand Russell
"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
The word religion is used nowadays in a very loose sense. Some people, under the influence of extreme Protestantism, employ the word to denote any serious personal convictions as to morals or the nature of the universe. This use of the word is quite unhistorical. Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. Churches may owe their origin to teachers with strong individual convictions, but these teachers have seldom had much influence upon the churches that they have founded, whereas churches have had enormous influence upon the communities in which they flourished. To take the case that is of most interest to members of Western civilization: the teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians. The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the church, and if we are to judge of Christianity as a social force we must not go to the Gospels for our material. Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects. Some of the Franciscans, it is true, attempted to teach the doctrine of apostolic poverty, but the Pope condemned them, and their doctrine was declared heretical. Or, again, consider such a text as "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and ask yourself what influence such a text has had upon the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan.
What is true of Christianity is equally true of Buddhism. The Buddha was amiable and enlightened; on his deathbed he laughed at his disciples for supposing that he was immortal. But the Buddhist priesthood -- as it exists, for example, in Tibet -- has been obscurantist, tyrannous, and cruel in the highest degree.
There is nothing accidental about this difference between a church and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any other privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress. The church opposed Galileo and Darwin; in our own day it opposes Freud. In the days of its greatest power it went further in its opposition to the intellectual life. Pope Gregory the Great wrote to a certain bishop a letter beginning: "A report has reached us which we cannot mention without a blush, that thou expoundest grammar to certain friends." The bishop was compelled by pontifical authority to desist from this wicked labor, and Latinity did not recover until the Renaissance. It is not only intellectually but also morally that religion is pernicious. I mean by this that it teaches ethical codes which are not conducive to human happiness. When, a few years ago, a plebiscite was taken in Germany as to whether the deposed royal houses should still be allowed to enjoy their private property, the churches in Germany officially stated that it would be contrary to the teaching of Christianity to deprive them of it. The churches, as everyone knows, opposed the abolition of slavery as long as they dared, and with a few well-advertised exceptions they oppose at the present day every movement toward economic justice. The Pope has officially condemned Socialism.
Christianity and Sex
The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex -- an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman Empire was decaying. We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make. Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code. Monks have always regarded Woman primarily as the temptress; they have thought of her mainly as the inspirer of impure lusts. The teaching of the church has been, and still is, that virginity is best, but that for those who find this impossible marriage is permissible. "It is better to marry than to burn," as St. Paul puts it. By making marriage indissoluble, and by stamping out all knowledge of the ars amandi, the church did what it could to secure that the only form of sex which it permitted should involve very little pleasure and a great deal of pain. The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged.
The conception of Sin which is bound up with Christian ethics is one that does an extraordinary amount of harm, since it affords people an outlet for their sadism which they believe to be legitimate, and even noble. Take, for example, the question of the prevention of syphilis. It is known that, by precautions taken in advance, the danger of contracting this disease can be made negligible. Christians, however, object to the dissemination of knowledge of this fact, since they hold it good that sinners should be punished. They hold this so good that they are even willing that punishment should extend to the wives and children of sinners. There are in the world at the present moment many thousands of children suffering from congenital syphilis who would never have been born but for the desire of Christians to see sinners punished. I cannot understand how doctrines leading us to this fiendish cruelty can be considered to have any good effects upon morals.
It is not only in regard to sexual behaviour but also in regard to knowledge on sex subjects that the attitude of Christians is dangerous to human welfare. Every person who has taken the trouble to study the question in an unbiased spirit knows that the artificial ignorance on sex subjects which orthodox Christians attempt to enforce upon the young is extremely dangerous to mental and physical health, and causes in those who pick up their knowledge by the way of "improper" talk, as most children do, an attitude that sex is in itself indecent and ridiculous. I do not think there can be any defense for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable. I should not put barriers in the way of the acquisition of knowledge by anybody at any age. But in the particular case of sex knowledge there are much weightier arguments in its favor than in the case of most other knowledge. A person is much less likely to act wisely when he is ignorant than when he is instructed, and it is ridiculous to give young people a sense of sin because they have a natural curiosity about an important matter.
Every boy is interested in trains. Suppose we told him that an interest in trains is wicked; suppose we kept his eyes bandaged whenever he was in a train or on a railway station; suppose we never allowed the word "train" to be mentioned in his presence and preserved an impenetrable mystery as to the means by which he is transported from one place to another. The result would not be that he would cease to be interested in trains; on the contrary, he would become more interested than ever but would have a morbid sense of sin, because this interest had been represented to him as improper. Every boy of active intelligence could by this means be rendered in a greater or less degree neurasthenic. This is precisely what is done in the matter of sex; but, as sex is more interesting than trains, the results are worse. Almost every adult in a Christian community is more or less diseased nervously as a result of the taboo on sex knowledge when he or she was young. And the sense of sin which is thus artificially implanted is one of the causes of cruelty, timidity, and stupidity in later life. There is no rational ground of any sort or kind in keeping a child ignorant of anything that he may wish to know, whether on sex or on any other matter. And we shall never get a sane population until this fact is recognized in early education, which is impossible so long as the churches are able to control educational politics.
Leaving these comparatively detailed objections on one side, it is clear that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity demand a great deal of ethical perversion before they can be accepted. The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
[...]
To this day conventional Christians think an adulterer more wicked than a politician who takes bribes, although the latter probably does a thousand times as much harm. The medieval conception of virtue, as one sees in their pictures, was of something wishy-washy, feeble, and sentimental. The most virtuous man was the man who retired from the world; the only men of action who were regarded as saints were those who wasted the lives and substance of their subjects in fighting the Turks, like St. Louis. The church would never regard a man as a saint because he reformed the finances, or the criminal law, or the judiciary. Such mere contributions to human welfare would be regarded as of no importance. I do not believe there is a single saint in the whole calendar whose saintship is due to work of public utility.
[...]
Sources of Intolerance
The intolerance that spread over the world with the advent of Christianity is one of the most curious features, due, I think, to the Jewish belief in righteousness and in the exclusive reality of the Jewish God. Why the Jews should have had these peculiarities I do not know. They seem to have developed during the captivity as a reaction against the attempt to absorb the Jews into alien populations. However that may be, the Jews, and more especially the prophets, invented emphasis upon personal righteousness and the idea that it is wicked to tolerate any religion except one. These two ideas have had an extraordinarily disastrous effect upon Occidental history. The church made much of the persecution of Christians by the Roman State before the time of Constantine. This persecution, however, was slight and intermittent and wholly political. At all times, from the age of Constantine to the end of the seventeenth century, Christians were far more fiercely persecuted by other Christians than they ever were by the Roman emperors. Before the rise of Christianity this persecuting attitude was unknown to the ancient world except among the Jews. If you read, for example, Herodotus, you find a bland and tolerant account of the habits of the foreign nations he visited. Sometimes, it is true, a peculiarly barbarous custom may shock him, but in general he is hospitable to foreign gods and foreign customs. He is not anxious to prove that people who call Zeus by some other name will suffer eternal punishment and ought to be put to death in order that their punishment may begin as soon as possible. This attitude has been reserved for Christians. It is true that the modern Christian is less robust, but that is not thanks to Christianity; it is thanks to the generations of freethinkers, who from the Renaissance to the present day, have made Christians ashamed of many of their traditional beliefs. It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians. Nobody nowadays believes that the world was created in 4004 BC; but not so very long ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime. My great-great-grandfather, after observing the depth of the lava on the slopes of Etna, came to the conclusion that the world must be older than the orthodox supposed and published this opinion in a book. For this offense he was cut by the county and ostracized from society. Had he been a man in humbler circumstances, his punishment would doubtless have been more severe. It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.[...]
The church's conception of righteousness is socially undesirable in various ways -- first and foremost in its depriciation of intelligence and science. This defect is inherited from the Gospels. Christ tells us to become as little children, but little children cannot understand the differential calculus, or the principles of currency, or the modern methods of combating disease. To acquire such knowledge is no part of our duty, according to the church. The church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to a pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma. Take, for example, two men, one of whom has stamped out yellow fever throughout some large region in the tropics but has in the course of his labors had occasional relations with women to whom he was not married; while the other has been lazy and shiftless, begetting a child a year until his wife died of exhaustion and taking so little care of his children that half of them died from preventable causes, but never indulging in illicit sexual intercourse. Every good Christian must maintain that the second of these men is more virtuous than the first. Such an attitude is, of course, superstitious and totally contrary to reason. Yet something of this absurdity is inevitable so long as avoidance of sin is thought more important than positive merit, and so long as the importance of knowledge as a help to a useful life is not recognized.
[...]
Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion."
The complete text is here.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Tim Burton's: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories
I found this short book lying around on the internet. Having seen "Corpse Bride" for the oomph time I wanted something more from Tim Burton. And I got it!! ^_^ It's a sad tale about the dangers and pitfalls of having a heart:
I wrote a letter to Wayne (who put the book online), but the mail got returned (the site is from 2002, well...) I'll just put my message to Wayne here, as way to say "thanks". Maybe he'll see it, who knows (lol) ^_^
«Dear Wayne, first of all let me tell you how grateful I am for your effort in putting this book on line. I would most probably never read it wasn't for this (I live in Portugal and it is rather complicated to get an english book around here - I don't have much money too ^_^).
In any case I do feel grateful, I saw "Corpse Bride" and "The Night Before Christmas" several times and Tim Burton is certainly one of my favorite directors. The book gave me a different perspective on him.
to tell you the truth, I'm not very interested about the heart, my heart is so fluffy (more like a sparse cloud in the sun) that all these pins would just come and go, they would not stick. But I see people suffering
and we all get attached, through desire, and we get so much intensity out of these passions... and then this prison of desire also gets us suffering: when its fruits are no longer ripe, or we no longer care, and the other side of the Ocean seems so much better now. And there we go again, surfing in the ways of Desire, suffering for ecstatic beauty once again. There's a price to be paid.
I'm all this too of course. But perhaps because I know it so well, it doesn't make me suffer, neither in myself nor in seeing others passing through it. It all seems so voluntary and richly experienced. It seems more like a gift, to have a heart, even if it's bleeding it's a trampoline.
In any case I think it is important that, in our society so full with glee and high society dreams, there should be a word for the sufferers that we all are, only in this case will we be able to sit closer to one another and deal with care with the pins sticking in. Otherwise we won't even see them! ^_^ ...»
I wrote a letter to Wayne (who put the book online), but the mail got returned (the site is from 2002, well...) I'll just put my message to Wayne here, as way to say "thanks". Maybe he'll see it, who knows (lol) ^_^
«Dear Wayne, first of all let me tell you how grateful I am for your effort in putting this book on line. I would most probably never read it wasn't for this (I live in Portugal and it is rather complicated to get an english book around here - I don't have much money too ^_^).
In any case I do feel grateful, I saw "Corpse Bride" and "The Night Before Christmas" several times and Tim Burton is certainly one of my favorite directors. The book gave me a different perspective on him.
to tell you the truth, I'm not very interested about the heart, my heart is so fluffy (more like a sparse cloud in the sun) that all these pins would just come and go, they would not stick. But I see people suffering
"For if someone gets
too close
the pins stick farther in."
too close
the pins stick farther in."
and we all get attached, through desire, and we get so much intensity out of these passions... and then this prison of desire also gets us suffering: when its fruits are no longer ripe, or we no longer care, and the other side of the Ocean seems so much better now. And there we go again, surfing in the ways of Desire, suffering for ecstatic beauty once again. There's a price to be paid.
I'm all this too of course. But perhaps because I know it so well, it doesn't make me suffer, neither in myself nor in seeing others passing through it. It all seems so voluntary and richly experienced. It seems more like a gift, to have a heart, even if it's bleeding it's a trampoline.
In any case I think it is important that, in our society so full with glee and high society dreams, there should be a word for the sufferers that we all are, only in this case will we be able to sit closer to one another and deal with care with the pins sticking in. Otherwise we won't even see them! ^_^ ...»
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