Weise Worte

Ich spiele mechanisch weiter und denke an Isabelle und das, was sie gesagt hat, und dann an die Beschreibung der vorchristlichen Religionen, die ich gestern abend gelesen habe. Die Götter waren damals heiter in Griechenland, sie wandelten von Wolke zu Wolke, sie waren leicht schurkisch und immer treulos und wandelbar wie die Menschen, zu denen sie gehörten. Sie waren Verkörperungen und Übertreibungen des Lebens in seiner Fülle und Grausamkeit und Unbedenklichkeit und Schönheit. Isabelle hat recht: Der bleiche Mann über mir mit dem Bart und den blutigen Gliedern ist es nicht. Zweitausend Jahre, denke ich, zweitausend Jahre, und immer ist das Leben mit Lichtern, Brunstschreien, Tod und Verzückung um die Steinbauten gewirbelt, in denen die Abbilder des blassen Sterbenden aufgerichtet waren, düster, blutig, von Millionen von Bodendieks umgeben – und bleifarben ist der Schatten der Kirchen über den Ländern gewachsen und hat die Lebensfreude erdrosselt, er hat aus Eros, dem heiteren, eine heimliche, schmutzige, sündhafte Bettgeschichte gemacht und nichts vergeben, trotz aller Predigten über Liebe und Vergebung – denn wirklich vergeben heißt, den anderen zu bestätigen, wie er ist, nicht aber Buße zu verlangen und Gefolgschaft und Unterwerfung, bevor das Ego te absolvo ausgesprochen wird.

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Once again, I play mechanically and think about Isabelle and the descriptions of pre-Christian religions I read last night. Back then, the Gods in Greece used to be cheerful; they'd wander from people to people; they were slightly more villainous and treacherous and flighty, like the people to whom they belonged. They were embodiments and excesses of life in all its fullness and cruelty and harmlessness and beauty. Isabelle was right: the pale man above me with his beard and bloody limbs is none of this. 'Two thousand years! Two thousand years,' I think to myself, and life—swirled with lights, mad screams, death, and ecstasy—has always bumped against the stone buildings on which somber, bloody, and surrounded by thousand of Bodendieks, have stood the images of the dying man. And the leaden shadow of the church spread across countries and smothered their vitality; it transformed Eros, the cheerful god, into a secret, dirty, sinful bedroom story, and forgave nothing, despite all the sermons about love and forgiveness; for true forgiveness is to accept another as he is—not to demand his repentance and obedience and submission before pronouncing 'Ego te absolvo.'

Erich Maria REMARQUE

Der Schwarze Obelisk

Times Are A-Changin'

It really does get better, according to The Economist!

Still... nothing beats atheists and agnostics...

'Monk Business'

Vanity Fair takes an exhaustive look at Greece's financial woes and how a handful of monks on Mount Athos helped to create it and/or benefited from it.

On a related note, I have a short-term solution for Greece: have your church bail you out. Technically, the church and state are one and the same. One hand washes the other, I say.

Loon Watch

Sooooooo... does this make her a lez? Judging by her male counterparts' rhetoric against gays and their subsequently-discovered love for the cock, I'd say she's as lesbian as poetry readings!

She does say 'I want some young women; you come stand with me' and then goes on to ask for a few women by name. I'd say she's a bitter lesbian at best....

(via BuzzFeed)

Bring in the Straitjacket

Sharron Angle has outdone her loony self!

Not only does she say that Democrats will 'make government our God,' but also goes on to suggest that the First Amendment does NOT guarantee the separation of church and state, but rather protects the church from the state.

However 'in touch' she may be with mainstream America, people like Sharron Angle are dangerous to a secular democracy, which ours is, try as anybody might to convince us otherwise. Secularism ensures freedom of religion for large and small religious groups equally. Religious freedom is already strained today from many large Christian groups claiming more or less a stance similar to Angle's with regard to the First Amendment. Harming the Republic's secularism will only lead to theocracy and restrictions of freedom brought on by a majority's view of morality. If people like her get elected, it wouldn't be strange, in one generation, to see the United States transformed—if not de jure then de facto—into a theocracy of thugs that present-day Iran would envy.

The Onion: Holding a Mirror up to Nature

How far are we from this, really?

Maybe a couple years? A decade?

It's a Sick, Sick, Sick, Sick World Out There

Ever wondered how a preacher gets his or her start?

Look no further. But keep a bucket nearby, just in case your stomach can't handle it.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Move Over Moses

Article and video below by Christopher Hitchens, found on The Daily Dish.

I especially like this one: 'Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us.'

Child Molestation in the Catholic Church

We don't need to do any soul-searching or any philosophical analyses to realize why this was (and perhaps is and always will be) a rampant phenomenon in the Catholic church. It is a church that demands celibacy of its priests, thus isolating them from the get-go in an unnatural world where they have to suppress their natural feelings and impulses. At the same time, it is indicative of the empty promises it makes and its failure to deliver on those promises.

The fact that most of the abuse was carried out on boys is no surprise and it should not be attributed to homosexuality, for it is the direct result of the church's promise to 'cure the gay' through whatever means it proposes, one of which is dedicating one's life entirely to the church. These individuals may have initially been confused and conflicted themselves about their sexuality and hoped to find answers and solace in the church that 'supported' and welcomed them with open arms, only to later find themselves still conflicted and confused and, what's worse, even abusive, after a few years in the clergy.

This heinous scandal also highlights the hypocrisy that has always existed in organized religion. All its representatives preach to us about punishment in hell and redemption in heaven, yet they fail to fear the same hell for actions as depraved as child abuse. These are not isolated lapses in judgment or self-control; these are repeated actions of recidivistic, deluded sexual maniacs.

Nature, NOT Nurture

Yet another scientist comes out as saying that our moral compass is innate and that it originated early in our inchoate social structures.

(Forgot where I found this article. Maybe The Daily Dish...)

Fotoreportazh

Njëri gozhdës, tjetri patkoit...

(Burimi i pamjes)

Hug the Gay Away (Or Beat the Parents)

Either works according to a formerly gay loon.

Rachel Maddow reports:

Bigotry (and Humor) at Yale University

Notice the list of hell-bound individuals: not just the staple sodomite and homosexual, but a more extensive list including, in all,

Fornicators, Homosexuals

Liars, Thieves, Masturbators

Obama Voters, Buddhists,

Dirty Dancers, Hindus,

Gangster Rappers, Muslims,

Drunkards, Feminists,

Immodest Women,

Democrats, Liberals,

Evolutionists, Atheists,

Potheads, Sodomites

Image Source

Here's the attention whore:

Man Created God In His Own Image

Scientific research confirms what I've always believed and what Freud said decades ago about who created whom in the man-god relationship.

In this study, it was discovered that people's own opinions coincide more closely with what they think god would think than with what they think other people believe. Furthermore, the same areas of the brain are activated when they ponder their own opinions or god's opinions, which is not the case when they ponder other people's opinions.

(Found via The Daily Dish)

Giving Religion Its Due Merit... Sort of...

I'm probably adding to their publicity by doing this, but I can't help but put in my two cents.

Immersion Digital, LLC has released an electronic bible, which, it boasts, contains thousands of digital videos, images, and sounds, to accompany the text of the bible. Its advertisement of the bible is in the video below.

This project and its product remind me of the only admirable thing about religion: its adaptability. This electronic bible is nothing but a 21st-century version of the architecture, decoration, and music that religion has produced for centuries. It is a 21st-century version of Gothic cathedrals of gargantuan proportions (compared to huts of the time, of course), with their imposing columns, impressive stained-glass windows, and the intricate masses complete with the light, smoke, and odor of incense and candles. It is a 21st-century version of a belittling mosque with a lead-covered dome glowing in the sun, and a minaret piercing the heavens and calling 'the little people' to prayer. It is a continuation of the theatrical nature of religion, which has given it an edge over people's better reason, who, in awe of the novelty and grandness of religious institutions, and further desensitized and tamed by the images, sounds, and odors of religious rites, have foolishly followed it over the centuries, ever forgetful of the fact that such projects were conceived, built, and presented exclusively by people of this world.

Lord Byron on God

I found an article from The New Yorker in The Daily Dish, mentioning Lord Byron's letters, which are up for auction. In one of them, he apparently tries to convince a reverend friend of his that religion is ridiculous.

As to your immortality, if people are to live, why die? And our carcases, which are to rise again, are they worth raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs that I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, or I shall be sadly behind in the squeeze into Paradise.

Those Silly Fundamentalists...

... Christians, this time.

They're praying for liberals in Congress and in the Obama administration. Even Republicans like Olympia Snowe are not safe. Audio below.

Skica e ditës

Burimi

Religion in France

A recent poll conducted by the Institut Français d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) and released as a .pdf document shows that Catholicism is an aging and decaying breed in France. More than a quarter of the population identify as 'non-religious', while those who identify as 'Catholic' have declined since the end of the Second World War.

The graph below shows not only a decrease in people who identify as 'Catholic,' but also a decrease in church-going Catholics that is disproportionately greater than the overall decline.

The study also found that a majority of Catholics in France tend to vote for the UMP, the center-right party currently in power.

Jews and Catholics Go at It

That's it, guys! Go ahead... be a thorn in each other's eyes....

Jews are opposing a recent document issued by leaders of Catholicism in the United States on the grounds that the document attempts to proselytize to Jews and convince them to accept Christ as their savior.

This is why I hate all religions: they all claim to be the right one or the real one, the only one who has the power to save you and your soul. Oh, and they promise an afterlife, too, but only if you live this one to a fraction of its full extent.