Church or the world? - Page 2

And what I'm frightened of
Is that they call it, God's love

i am the strange hero of hunger by me, billy Childish

i am the strange hero of hunger
my girlfriend lives
on the other side of the world
and
has
started
reading
crime and punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky

naturally I have no heros
i am my heros
i am my brothers
and sisters
i feel myself joined by the soul
with all buti
my hart sings with every brave endevor
with the strange wings of impossible butterflys
with every rock that breaths life into the world

i stand shoulder to shoulder with
all denouncers of meaness
i honour spirit and faith
and I uphold the glorious amiture
i am in love with desperate men
with desperate hands
walking in 2nd hand shoes
searching for god
and
hearing god
and hating god
i am a desperate man buckled with fear
i am a desperate man who demands to be listend to
who demands to connect
i am a desperate man who denounces the dullness of
money
and status
i am a desperate man will not bow down to acolayed or
success
i am a desperate man who loves the simplicity of painting
and hates gallarys and white walls and the dealers in art
who loves unreasonableness
and hot headedness
who loves contradiction
hates publishing houses
and
also I am Vincent Van Gogh
Hiroshige
and every living breathing artist
who dares to draw god
on this planet

Maybe it is.....your fear is YOUR problem.

I certainly don't relate to it and I don't think many other people do either. Why don't you let go of your fear? Why not live?

Seeing as it's Poetry Corner here, here's my contribution:

Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat: XLVI:

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

That's Omar Khayyam - one of the religious idiots who were so irrational and unscientific that he developed the geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle, instigated calendar reform from his astronomical observations and proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus.

And he was just a poet.

Segovius still can't hold two seemingly contradictory but rather just nuanced thoughts in his mind at the same time it seems. Smart people can be religious. That's just a dumb aspect of their psyches. I'm familiar with the Rubaiyat.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

I still know that Quatrain by heart. His religious beliefs: idiotic. His other accomplishments: fucking amazing.

And no, Sego, fear is not my problem. It is disturbing that one can see all the suffering plaguing this planet and have the audacity to say that it is somehow god's love and god's plan.

Not really true - I know many smart religious people and many moronic ones. Is obvious. Hell, even the same person can be smart and stupid at the same time.

I was thinking more of the favourite atheist theme that "nothing good can come from religion"


Yes, is up there definitely. Fitzgerald was not the best guy to deal with the material though imo.


What you don't seem to realize is that in his case the two went hand in hand - as they did for all medieval Hispano-Muslim thinkers.

It is because of his religious beliefs - directly and indirectly - that he made his discoveries. Or, put another way, he would not have been able to make them in a contemporary Christian or secular context.


Well, you mention fear a lot and admit to being scared so I was wondering.

I agree with the last sentence, the idea that it is 'God's plan' is moronic and offensive - but it is also offensive (ie an insult to the intelligence) to suggest this is the ONLY view a religious person can take.

Khayyam for example did not believe it on the evidence of his poetry.

As ever, my position is far closer to yours than it is to virtually any religious believer but we differ when you make sweeping generalizations like this.

Let's not deal in hypotheticals. You can't prove that Khayaam couldn't produce his works of art or make his scientific and mathematical discoveries without religion.

I didn't say that. I said he made them because of his religion - Islam - and would not have done so had he been brought up in a Christian context at the time we are discussing.

This IS provable as it happens and I say it not to put Islam over Christianity but rather to show that the atheist view that religion quashes science does not apply across the board.

Would not have done so. Hypotheticals. You can maybe...MAYBE...show some evidence that would prove your former point. But you cannot prove the latter. It's just a fucking hypothetical.

Not at all.

His theories were based on Greek scientific manuscripts and pre-Islamic non-religious material: the sort of thing that the Church destroyed routinely or left to fall into neglect.

That is why the West was in the Dark ages at the time we are talking about.

Khayyam could not have made his discoveries without the Greek material and this material would not exist were it not for the Islamic States in Spain rescuing it and developing massive libraries to preserve it. The same applies to Baghdad and Persia where Khayyam was from.

So he PROBABLY would not have made his advances without the earlier material.

How's that?

PS: Is it time for another poem? Maybe Rumi's outlining of evolutionary theory in verse in the 13th century?

Why do you think we are all so bad Fellows?

As you know, I was brought up with a mindset similar to yours.

When I first started meeting people who were not religious when I was a teenager I expected them to be all evil and bad. Wallowing in sin as it were.

It took a long time to realize people are basically good. I had been lied to.

If anything is a sin - to do that to a child is. And that's the core belief.


There it is again.

Would you say that to your daughter? "Daddy loves you despite your horrible x,y,z"

I think it's wrong.


Very true. Or nearly true.

There is very little of meaning. But some people do actually work all their lives to help others, write, create from the heart, live to make a difference unselfishly, make scientific discoveries.

You should jot denigrate these things.


This may well be true (though I would prefer "God IS all") but it is not the point - the point (imo) is: how many people who say this actually SEE it.

Fellows: if you believe we are all sinners then you MUST believe we are all 'that bad'.

We will go to hell for eternity for being sinners. How can you get to 'not that bad' from that? I would say it could not be any worse at all....so yes, it does sound like that I'm afraid.

Besides, if you truly believe in the current US Christian paradigm then you must believe this. Or you'd be some other sort of vague religionist like me


I respect the dropping of the terms and I even accept that we 'fall short of the glory of God' in the sense of Paul's 'missing the mark' but this is not sin imo - certainly not an offence punishable by eternal hellfire.

We must by definition fall short of God. We are human. Why punish that?


Well...I don't have the right to comment on your own personal business but for me, to do such a thing to my daughter would be shocking and something deeply immoral and possibly destructive.

You see the word 'sin' is weighted. It is in no way an equivalence of our daughter's possible failures.

Failures help you grow...they are even good in that respect and to be encouraged...you can never become a top athlete for example without losing.

Sin is different....or the concept of it is. I do not actually think sin exists but if it did then it would not be the sort of thing that is an equivalence of failing in sports being a 'good thing' because it makes you stronger.

No fundie would ever say it's good you had all that sex before marriage as it made you stronger. Because they see sex as a sin. Whereas it is a normal part of life that sick minds have poisoned - and that's just an example at random, there are hundreds.

Evidence?

I have a problem with that. Not one of 'belief' but one of logic and bad theology.

If I was God, and if I could rise again after 3 days and that is all I had to do to 'save humanity' (though they would not really be saved of course as the vast majority would still go to hell) then I would do it too.

EVERYONE WOULD.

In effect is not paying the price at all. How can it be? Jesus lost nothing, he was back alive three days later and people STILL GO TO HELL.

It sounds nice but it is delusional. It is a fiction. And it is an obscenity when foisted on to people who sincerely ARE looking for genuine answers.

Now I need to deal with BR.

FFS stop with this 'evidence' shit.

At least take it on its own terms (like I just did) and disprove it from there.

Don't be lazy. You may think you don't need to actually stoop to answer because your position is so much more whatever but it ain't necessarily so. Earn it.

Assertion: Jesus died for our sins.

Claimant: Fellows

The burden of proof rests with the person making the assertion. It does NOT rest with everyone else to disprove the assertion.

Fellows, support your assertion.

Sego, stop it with the backward bs anti-logic that it is somehow the responsibility of everyone else to disprove people's wacky assertions.

I just disproved it though - however much you want to pay lip-service to it in the final analysis it's down to me to do the dirty work while you sit in an ivory tower trying to be superior while people like me are in the trenches fixing it for you.

Poor show.

Well since we're into poetry...

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

AND a response...

The Soul's Captain by Orson F. Whitney

Art thou in truth?
Then what of him who bought thee with his blood?
Who plunged into devouring seas
And snatched thee from the flood?

Who bore for all our fallen race
What none but him could bear-
The God who died that man might live
And endless glory share?

Of what avail thy vaunted strength
Apart from his vast might?
Pray that his light may pierce the gloom
That thou mayest see aright.

Men are as bubbles on the wave,
As leaves upon the tree,
Thou, captain of thy soul! Forsooth,
Who gave that place to thee?

Free will is thine-free agency,
To wield for right or wrong;
But thou must answer unto him
To whom all souls belong.

Bend to the dust that “head unbowed,”
Small part of life’s great whole,
And see in him and him alone,
The captain of thy soul.

It has nothing to do with being in an ivory tower or displaying a poor show. Nobody in any other fucking arena of life gets to make wild assed assertions without giving some inkling of support (or at least HAVING some if asked). Not at your job. Not with your significant other. Not in science. Nowhere. Except for religion because ooooh it's so personal and sacred and fucking nonsense.

If you make a claim, back that shit up. Fellows claimed Jesus died for our sins. Well, it's up to him to BACK THAT SHIT UP!

Imo we are all God Fellows.



I may not but some people do. For an example a British artist was crucified in exactly the same manner.

Link


That last line btw is interesting - neither you nor I know how the body's painkillers will ameliorate the effect. But it is probably a bad experience.

My point is that PAIN is suffered and has been suffered by billions of humans. Equivalent pain. It is not about pain.

Jesus sacrifice was about death and was an intentional reference to the Abraham and Isaac story - with of course the small difference that Isaac would not have been coming back and so that was a REAL sacrifice.


Glossing over the fact that I do not believe this because it is irrational (though not for the reasons BR would sate) it is BAD THEOLOGY even from within the Christian perspective.

How can God allow sin? Or are you doing a BR-stylee sidestep and saying he doesn't but merely allows the choice?

LIke if I put a glass of water and a glass of colourless, odourless poison in front of you so you can't know which is which and then lock you in a room with no food and water.

When you die from choosing the posion It is 'none of my fault....I am so sad but you had to have free will'.

If my earlier comment about obscenity was a bit strong here it might not be strong enough.


Neither of those are obscenities imo. I was referring to the propagation of the false belief in the Vicarious Atonement.


It's not that easy though is it? It's not even true.

They are not free to do so.....tribes in the Amazon were never free to do so, the continent of Africa is now riddle with problems because Christianity believed they were not free to follow their indigenous beliefs.

The entire Muslim world is not 'free to believe what they like' right now and have had to pass laws stopping the US propagandists from forcing them to change beliefs.


Ok..I retract that one but it is very very bad theology.

I think one of my favourite poems - more so even than Khayyam - is "The Kasidah" of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi

It's written as an Arabic panegyric and in many ways it echoes my own views on religion and even BR might agree with some stanzas. It is religious but anti-religious and imo explains the meaning of life in a way similar to Khayyam.

Here's some verses:

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;
Enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink,
But is the dance less full of fun?

How shall the Shown pretend to ken
Aught of the Showman or the Show?
Why meanly bargain to believe,
Which only means thou ne'er canst know?

There is no Good, there is no Bad;
These be the whims of mortal will:
What works me weal that calI I "good,"
What harms and hurts I hold as "ill:'

They change with place, they shift with race;
And, in the veriest span of Time,
Each Vice has won a Virtue's crown;
All good was banned as Sin or Crime:

All Faith is false, all Faith is true:
Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes
His little bit the whole to own.

There is no Heaven, there is no Hell;
These be the dreams of baby brains;
Tools of the wily Fetisheer,
To 'fright the fools his cunning blinds.

Pluck the old woman from thy breast:
Be stout in woe, be stark in weal;
Do good for Good is good to do:
Spurn bribe of Heav’en and threat of Hell.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

All other Life is living Death,
a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,
a tinkling of the camel-bell.

I believe we are all spirit children of God and therefore have the potential to be like God. This is possible only through our acceptance and application of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in our lives, which redeems us from both spiritual and physical death.

And yet time after time after time after time, we see that these same 'accepters of atonement' are the actual embodiment of evil.

You see Fellows that's where I have a problem.... I believe in God, I'm not an atheist God help us and I can even see beauty and sophistication in aspects of the Christian schemata when viewed in a certain light.

But to say we are all sinners....well....I can't buy into that. Why be so self-denying? So undermining? Humanity is a glorious thing....


Appears to be. Wrongly imo.

I do not accept it is or was the cornerstone of Christ's teaching.


That's exactly my point. The obscenity is in offering FALSE or NO solutions to real problems.


Ok! Thanks!!


Actually I'm not...no-one is 'entitled' to anything. We are all equals and there is no-ine to bestow such rights that is above us.