When I was seven years old, singing "Onward
Christian Soldiers, marching as to war" dressed in choir robes,
goose stepping with the other choristers, single file, toward the
stalls, an alter boy lead the procession with the “cross of Jesus”
held high. A dead man on a pole. I couldn't help but think that
nothing could be much more ridiculous than that. The image of a man
nailed to crossed boards leading us into “war” with anyone who
didn't believe the same silliness that we were being force fed and trying so desperately
to believe.
This is supposed to be about love and acceptance? It's anything but that. Judgement-filled, exclusionary, demanding, demeaning, narrow, perverted. "Original sin?" oh please. The church invented the concept of sin as a way to extort money from the masses. There's nothing that money can't buy.
I thought: “What if God
is actually the devil, a great deceiver? Always pointing the finger
of blame in the other direction?” How can people swallow this
stuff, why do they give it any credence at all?
It's early childhood indoctrination. Although it may not have worked so well on some, it does for most. We eat the foods of the culture we're born into, wear the clothes, and worship the gods. We generally don't question any of it very much. We think we're right, and we're ready to go to war to prove it. Lets fight some more over the name of god.
If I had been born in Japan, I would be Shinto. You would too.
"Religion is a jumble of primitive folklore that humankind drags through the ages like a cosmic security blanket. Religion is passionate and irrational and messy. But philosophy is the flower of human intellect. It is reasonable and civilized. Religion inspires war and atrocity; at worst, philosophy incites mild arguments over coffee and dessert".
So when someone offered the fact that the alter and cross were undamaged in the Notre Dame fire as proof of God, I couldn't help thinking “step back from the trees, out of the forest, and look around”
Try a nice glass of water for a change and leave the red wine & bloody Kool Aid on the table.
You wish a mild intervention would put the poster on a path to the deprogramming she needs. But if her world is full of others drinkers of the Kool Aid that they've been raised on, don't expect too much.
It's next to impossible to get a cigarette smoker who lives in a house full of fellow smokers, to quit. Especially when the others are constantly sliding another cigarette across the coffee table to her when she pauses to simply catch her breath.
This is supposed to be about love and acceptance? It's anything but that. Judgement-filled, exclusionary, demanding, demeaning, narrow, perverted. "Original sin?" oh please. The church invented the concept of sin as a way to extort money from the masses. There's nothing that money can't buy.
It's early childhood indoctrination. Although it may not have worked so well on some, it does for most. We eat the foods of the culture we're born into, wear the clothes, and worship the gods. We generally don't question any of it very much. We think we're right, and we're ready to go to war to prove it. Lets fight some more over the name of god.
If I had been born in Japan, I would be Shinto. You would too.
So when someone offered the fact that the alter and cross were undamaged in the Notre Dame fire as proof of God, I couldn't help thinking “step back from the trees, out of the forest, and look around”
Try a nice glass of water for a change and leave the red wine & bloody Kool Aid on the table.
You wish a mild intervention would put the poster on a path to the deprogramming she needs. But if her world is full of others drinkers of the Kool Aid that they've been raised on, don't expect too much.
It's next to impossible to get a cigarette smoker who lives in a house full of fellow smokers, to quit. Especially when the others are constantly sliding another cigarette across the coffee table to her when she pauses to simply catch her breath.
