Once I rejected Catholicism, I drifted around but couldn't stick to much of anything but Eastern philosophy. Eventually, Tom Paine talked me into deism. If anything, I'm a deist—someone who, as my dictionary puts it, believes that "God created the world and its natural laws, but takes no further part in its functioning [as evidenced by the flies crawling on starving babies' eyes in Ethiopia]." I added the latter bit in case you were wondering.
That said, I invite you to consider this. ...
So there was this program on one of the God channels recently, about the Rood and Christ's crucifixion thereon, and one of the talking heads with a turned-around collar was saying how God harbored so much love and compassion for mankind that he allowed his only son to become a man in order that his only son could then be offered up to him as the blood sacrifice necessary to appease his otherwise eternally and fatally implacable anger toward mankind.
He didn't say that exactly, but that's exactly what he was saying; and the thing that curdled my blood (besides the Manson-like arrangement of his facial features) was that he obviously saw nothing illogical or unconscionable or reprehensible or grotesquely pagan—or even mildly disappointing—in the "rationale" he was spouting.
I mean, it's so perfectly reasonable. ...
GOD: I am mad at all of mankind for something just two of them did. I will therefore allow malicious, sadistic men to beat the bejesus out of my only begotten son, and then cruelly and slowly murder him in order to make me feel better. See? See how much I love mankind after all?
I'm sorry, but if that makes sense, so do thousand-dollar Hannah Montana tickets.
Seriously. Are you seriously going to tell me that the only way God could feel mollified, could stop feeling so goddamned hateful toward human beings, was through the grisly slaughter of his own son? That's insupportable. Couldn't God, being God, have just simmered down? More to the point, couldn't God, being God, have just not hated the imperfect beings he himself created in the first place?
Forgive me, please, but I like to give God credit for having more, um, humanity than that. Speaking of which ...
Sometimes I think there's just no hope for humankind; that this is still the Planet of the Apes. Bonobo chimps seem more rational to me than we. Ditto for whales, elephants, dolphins, dogs, and assorted farm animals.
And sometimes the malevolence that seems to underlie the general insanity of human existence makes me literally shudder.
Don't throw any Bibles at me for this one. I've already read both Testaments. I've also read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, and wish more people would do the same.
For further reading:
Inquisitive minds want to know ...
Phew! So grateful I didn't make altar boy after all ...
And for your penance, ten years in the laundry, missy ...
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holy minoly! At last, an intelligent interpretation of an unintelligent interpretation of "and God so loved the world that he gave his only...." - how we have managed to be appeased by that very premise for so many years is beyond comprehension. However, the basic fundamentals of most organized religions demands the basic ability to suspend rational thought in favor of an overwhelming desire or need to belong to a whole group of people who are also inclined to accept a wholely unbelievable set of "god given" facts - simply because we are told they are the "word of god". A nation of sheep? Yes, I do believe. Deism makes a lot more sense to me..but then, that requires some actual thought, and the ability to take responsibility for our own actions. Thomas Paine, it seems to me, was brilliant.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for your thought-filled comment. Here's how H.L. Mencken summed it all up:'
ReplyDelete1. The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.
2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride.
(Fixed typo in deleted comment.)
And here's what philosopher Simon Blackburn says:
ReplyDelete"Suppose you found yourself at a school or university in a dormitory. Things are not too good. The roof leaks, there are rats about, the food is almost inedible, some students in fact starve to death. There is a closed door, behind which is the management, but the management never comes out. You get to speculate what the management must be like. Can you infer from the dormitory as you find it that the management, first, knows exactly what conditions are like, second, cares intensely for your welfare, and third, possesses unlimited resources for fixing things? The inference is crazy. You would be almost certain to infer that either the management doesn't know, doesn't care, or cannot do anything about it. Nor does it make things any better if occasionally you come across a student who declaims that he has become privy to the mind of the management, and is assured that the management indeed knows, cares, and has resources and ability to do what it wants. The over-whelming inference is not that the management is like that but that the student is deluded. Perhaps his very deprivations have deluded him."
I haven't cared a bit for religion since that time in fifth grade when Mrs. Hurford announced that all of us non-Catholics were going to hell. And I always found it interesting that the ex-nuns overpopulated the ladies in habit at Shrine of the Little Flower. Oh, and let me add how proud I was of Father (insert whatever name here cuz I can't remember) for leaving the church to marry a divorced mother of four.
ReplyDeleteYes I remember all that stated by CARLA. Religion baffles me. I believe in God and I guess now I have a word for what I am, thanks DAD. I love your blogs and reading this one helped me immensely. Maybe I should read that book.
ReplyDeleteEarl - if you could see me, I'm standing up applauding. Too bad that the folks who claim to be the keepers of the "truth" about Christ are the ones who truly miss the point.
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