I'm sorry to hear about your friend, khorosho.
I understand that you are feeling incredibly frustrated and angry at humankind's propensity for unmitigated meanness and stupidity.
I can see that you want to change this situation, but that it all seems a bit fruitless - like arguing agaisnt the wind.
Sometimes, you just gotta shout your anger and vent the welling frustration, eh?
But relax. You're around good people here. Nice people (Even when Mordant says mean things, she's often just trying to do you good...). So there's no need to shout.
We can have a nice, relaxed discussion about the craziness of the humaners, and how a lot of this madness seems to stem from religious or ideological roots. Maybe we'll even approach some new ways of thinking for you. Perhaps we'll find 'answers'... Sound good?
Great.
So.. Where to begin? I don't suppose it matters, so i'll just make a few points as they arrive at my head...
- Ignoring the fact that the critiques you have posted are not particuarly great in terms of either originality or effect, why did you choose to use a critique of a certain conception of the christian god as a tool to 'combat' religion as a whole?
I doubt the'Odinists/Ra followers or Holy Monkey worshippers' are particularly fussed whether or not ol' yahweh makes much sense or is imaginary. I doubt many Muslims are that fussed either, though I can see that they are closer related to this conception of divinity.
So how to counter these other religions? Would you say that their god(s) are imaginary too?
- What's so bad about an imaginary god anyway? Have you read Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality? It poses some very interesting thoughts about how we interact with reality and frequently preceive things which seem to blur the 'reality/imagination' line.
Promethea also has a lot to say about how imagination works in our lives. It has lots of pictures and hot goddesses in it too, if that's your thing.
To put it simply, both books point out that imagination plays a much greater role in our lives than a few hundred years of rationalism would have us believe.
I recommend you look into how imagination informs the reality you are currently experiencing. You might 'discover something'.
- One idea to put forward - is it specifically people who have religous beliefs who cause war, pain, suffering and all that, or is it people who cling unnerringly to certain ideas and ideals?
Communism has already been mentioned. Communism is explicitly anit-religious - many religious buildings, organisations and people were destroyed by the communist regimes in Russia and China (and, i assume, in other places where communism has taken off).
However, some of the most ridiculous genocides, wars and human rights abuses have occured in communist societies. Can we blame religion for this?
Personally, I'd say that ideology is one of the major causes of human strife. The human mind seems to enjoy clinging to certain ideas about how life is, or should be, and often goes to great (sometimes awful) lengths to try to make reality accord with these images.
That religions usually entail groups of people getting together and adhering to/forming an ideology makes them a rather easy target, but people have been killed in the names justice, progress, society, rationalism, revolution...
So do you perhaps want to look into how our ideologies (yes, we all have them - yours in 'anti-god') inform our relationships with reality?
- Does the fact that Christianity holds such a powerful grip over your imagination point to some unsolved issues you have with this particular form of religious thought?
So. Whaddya think? |
