All these posts now link from a PKnatz blog cosmology menu. Next I'll move the posts there and correct the links.
Happy Thanksgiving. 2011 11 24
What am I thankful for? Maybe I'll get to move some of these today.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Judgment
Judgment was a perennial topic at Knatz.com. I'm working at recreating those and others of my censored classics at my bogs.
The word judgment covers a series of logical types, not visible to the untrained or the careless.
The word judgment covers a series of logical types, not visible to the untrained or the careless.
- Divine judgment
That's the kind so many of us heard about as children: and since.
The problem is, though we may be surrounded by divine judgments, there's no reliable way to tell: we have no objectively verifiable examples. - Religious judgment
Careful now: don't confuse this one with the first: make sure it's a god you hear, not some trickster shaman, or priest.
History gives us a slew of examples of religious judgments: women getting their tits cut off for witchcraft, babies thrown into the furnace, men broken, stoned, flayed, crucified ... - Secular judgment
In modern times a state (a nation, a government, a secular coalition) takes over for the priests who had taken over for the gods. Egregious examples abound: Jews in German concentration camps, Japanese ethnics in American concentration camps ... - Individual judgment
If individual judgments weren't so egregious maybe the religious and secular judgments would not have built such a head of steam.
Still: note: Individual judgments come with sentience. But even the mouse to which we attribute no sentience judges whether the cat can get it before it grabs the cheese. Institutional judgments are recent: and degenerating. Go to any bureaucracy, and watch the bureaucrats make judgments: the law says you're entitled to this and that? not unless the bureaucrat behaves.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
pk Online
I had five domains, several blogs, thousands of essays and other text files, thousands of images on line. The fed destroyed all that, all but destroyed me.
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.
pkTheo is less affected than the other blogs. Still, I share the announcement.
I can't afford to repost, so I've been recreating some classic pk modules at blogs.
Here's what I'm going to do now: get all my files into a blog, sorting by blog specialty.
Then, reorder, as logically as I can, so visitors can browse by Knatz.com type categories: Teaching / or Personal /
I'm going to stop explaining all this every time I mount a new post.
Then I'm going to my five destroyed domains back up, restoring the original logic, improving on the original logic.
pkTheo is less affected than the other blogs. Still, I share the announcement.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
People's Bible
People think the Bible is about God, about Creation, about Christ: Jesus, the Messiah.
Well, sure; or at least maybe. But what I see the Bible being most clearly about is people: stories they tell, stories they edit, without even knowing they're doing it: stories they change over the centuries: stories that start off saying we don't know what because we don't have any original MSS, but which wind up censoring, sometimes reversing old messages: about women's status in the early Christian Church, for example. Older scribes indicated high status for women, later redactors reverse the position back to low status: victims of systematic misogyny.
People show off their (revised) Bibles: intend them, take them, as proof (ha,ha) that they, the people, are receptive to God.
I say it shows the opposite: in many, if not all, things.
On editing the Bible to alter messages about women's status in the early Christian religion, see Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, 178 ff, 183 ff. For example, Romans 16.7 tells of a woman powerful in a Pauline church, in Paul's lifetime, named Junia. Some copies of Romans alter the name to Junias, suggesting that she was a he!
(And these Christians think God is going to put them into heaven?!?!?)
Well, sure; or at least maybe. But what I see the Bible being most clearly about is people: stories they tell, stories they edit, without even knowing they're doing it: stories they change over the centuries: stories that start off saying we don't know what because we don't have any original MSS, but which wind up censoring, sometimes reversing old messages: about women's status in the early Christian Church, for example. Older scribes indicated high status for women, later redactors reverse the position back to low status: victims of systematic misogyny.
People show off their (revised) Bibles: intend them, take them, as proof (ha,ha) that they, the people, are receptive to God.
I say it shows the opposite: in many, if not all, things.
On editing the Bible to alter messages about women's status in the early Christian religion, see Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, 178 ff, 183 ff. For example, Romans 16.7 tells of a woman powerful in a Pauline church, in Paul's lifetime, named Junia. Some copies of Romans alter the name to Junias, suggesting that she was a he!
(And these Christians think God is going to put them into heaven?!?!?)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Episodic Gospels
The gospels included in Christians' New Testament give two conflicting accounts of Judas' death. In one he hanged himself from a tree, and another he fell down and his bowels burst. So, the literalists want to know: which is it?
One story has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a pony, another on an ass, and one on both a pony and as ass. Really? At the same time? Why such a stunt?
To fullfil mystic forecasts in the Old Testament some said. Except when we look for a prophecy in the OT book indicated by the NT gospel, it isn't found there; but is found in another OT book with a similar name!
The Bible writers, like humans in all times and places, are making it up as they go along: and showing their carelessness, their illiteracy, their indifference to fact, to truth, as they do so.
Or: How about this explanation?
Every gospel variant is literally true, but they happened in different Jesus manifestations in different cultures in different times or on different planets. Maybe Jesus entered earth's Jerusalem on a pony, but entered some Jerusalem-like city on the second rocky planet of Albermarle epsilon on an ass.
Maybe on earth Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"; but on a Calvary of the fifth satellite of the third rocky planet of Andromeda's theta zone, star XYN~ he said, "Burn every !~%*#@^%ing one of these &*^%$!@#~$ers in hell!"
While we're at it, how's this?
On earth, on Albermarle ... all over Andromeda, Jesus gets crucified, but on the artificial human web around Gingadonk in the Coalsack, Caiaphas screams at Pilate and Pilate screams at Herod, and Jesus stands there bleeding, and the people crucify Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod and give Jesus a generous stipend to keep the money tables out of the temple!
Next time I dip into Bart Ehrman I may upgrade my examples. I "know" them, but as an amateur, not as a Biblical scholar with variants and paths memorized. Meantime, don't bother to correct my references: understand the point!
One story has Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a pony, another on an ass, and one on both a pony and as ass. Really? At the same time? Why such a stunt?
To fullfil mystic forecasts in the Old Testament some said. Except when we look for a prophecy in the OT book indicated by the NT gospel, it isn't found there; but is found in another OT book with a similar name!
The Bible writers, like humans in all times and places, are making it up as they go along: and showing their carelessness, their illiteracy, their indifference to fact, to truth, as they do so.
Or: How about this explanation?
Every gospel variant is literally true, but they happened in different Jesus manifestations in different cultures in different times or on different planets. Maybe Jesus entered earth's Jerusalem on a pony, but entered some Jerusalem-like city on the second rocky planet of Albermarle epsilon on an ass.
Maybe on earth Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"; but on a Calvary of the fifth satellite of the third rocky planet of Andromeda's theta zone, star XYN~ he said, "Burn every !~%*#@^%ing one of these &*^%$!@#~$ers in hell!"
While we're at it, how's this?
On earth, on Albermarle ... all over Andromeda, Jesus gets crucified, but on the artificial human web around Gingadonk in the Coalsack, Caiaphas screams at Pilate and Pilate screams at Herod, and Jesus stands there bleeding, and the people crucify Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod and give Jesus a generous stipend to keep the money tables out of the temple!
Next time I dip into Bart Ehrman I may upgrade my examples. I "know" them, but as an amateur, not as a Biblical scholar with variants and paths memorized. Meantime, don't bother to correct my references: understand the point!
Friday, January 28, 2011
Gnostic
Christians don't discuss theology;
they impose it.
Look up gnosticism. Check Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities. I'll say what I mean as I go. But it's hard, a hornets nest. I've tried for decades to bring this up, and failed thus far. This time I'm going to at least bring it up. Keep returning here till you see it say something.
Ehrman's Jesus Interrupted gives me a handle to probe one chink in the hornets nest: Christians acknowledge testimony from the Bible about Adam, about Noah, about Abraham, about Moses: Christians acknowledge testimony from the New Testament from Jesus, Mark, John ... Paul ... Indeed, the use the churches' imposed selections to interrupt all other testimonies. God speaks, churches transmit only what they like. The Jews interfered with God's messenger in Jesus: Christians interfere with Jesus' disciples since then. No records are kept of the ignored testimonies.
Never mind whether the testimonies I've offered of what God has told me over the past half centry are true: just notice that not one of them has been investigated. No record has been kept (except by me, that I know of) of not keeping any records.
Note, to be rewoved:
Christians, orthodox "Christians," confronted by alternate Christianities, older Christianities, alternate, older, epistemologies, such as Gnosticism (of any stamp), go deaf, and don't hear.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Headless Horsemen
In The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe portrayed the US wanting to probe space with men, not monkeys. Congress put the technocrats in control, but assigned them test pilots: for the technocrats to use not as test pilots, courageous adventurers, discoverers, but as lab animals. The astronauts saw that, resented it, resisted it. So the technocrats gave them little tasks to do, so they'd look less like chimps.
There in a nutshell is the history of human theology. We suspect, without the capacity to know for sure, that we're on a space ship hurtling toward destruction (debited resources) with no pilot steering. So we invent a pilot: God. Then we punish those who complain that they can't see this invisible cowboy.
Kings were visible cowboys. But kings raced through the resources even faster than the headless herds of humans had been racing.
Then the US invented the marvelous fiction that the resource-wasters could be controlled by an intelligently self-interested electorate. But then every detail of the mechanism is sham: media, not truth, sets the stage. People see where their bread is buttered – by Big Brother – and behave with the same courage and independence shown by the medieval peasants:
Oh, people will turn on the deceivers: when it's way too little, way too late.
Note: Above I referred to "God" as an "invisible cowboy." You can't understand this pk point properly without already understanding a different, core, pk point: whether or not we see an entity, or believe in an entity, has little to do with whether or not the entity "exists." The Church and Universities' disbelief in Galileo's telescope did not control whether or not Jupiter had moons. The moons were there whether or not we saw them. The moons had been there.
Human maps of the universe must not be palmed as the universe.
But Korzybskian semantics cannot be understood by humans. pk is only sometimes, only partly, an exception. And most people can never be an exception on this point, no matter what you spend to "teach" them.
Our epitaph could read, as Nigel Calder joked, "They talked a lot." It could also read, "They thought they were smart."
There in a nutshell is the history of human theology. We suspect, without the capacity to know for sure, that we're on a space ship hurtling toward destruction (debited resources) with no pilot steering. So we invent a pilot: God. Then we punish those who complain that they can't see this invisible cowboy.
Kings were visible cowboys. But kings raced through the resources even faster than the headless herds of humans had been racing.
Then the US invented the marvelous fiction that the resource-wasters could be controlled by an intelligently self-interested electorate. But then every detail of the mechanism is sham: media, not truth, sets the stage. People see where their bread is buttered – by Big Brother – and behave with the same courage and independence shown by the medieval peasants:
who tolerated any travesty
rather than admit how they'd been deceived.
Oh, people will turn on the deceivers: when it's way too little, way too late.
Note: Above I referred to "God" as an "invisible cowboy." You can't understand this pk point properly without already understanding a different, core, pk point: whether or not we see an entity, or believe in an entity, has little to do with whether or not the entity "exists." The Church and Universities' disbelief in Galileo's telescope did not control whether or not Jupiter had moons. The moons were there whether or not we saw them. The moons had been there.
Human maps of the universe must not be palmed as the universe.
But Korzybskian semantics cannot be understood by humans. pk is only sometimes, only partly, an exception. And most people can never be an exception on this point, no matter what you spend to "teach" them.
Our epitaph could read, as Nigel Calder joked, "They talked a lot." It could also read, "They thought they were smart."
Sunday, January 9, 2011
God Moves in Mysterious Ways
God moves in mysterious ways. You hear it again and again. It's a cliche´. Any twelve year old understands what it means. Still, let me emphasize that the phrase recognizes the possibility of complex as well as simple causality: god is an explanatory principle, and explanations can be simple – cue ball hits eight ball, eight ball drops in corner pocket – or complex - cue ball is mis-hit, cue ball rockets off table, smashes the beer mug, gives Beverly a concussion, gets picked up by a frustrated Bill who throws it at Amos who's distracted the mis-stroking Babs, Amos ducks, the cue balls ricochets from the jukebox, lands on the table, hits the eight ball, the eight ball drops in the corner pocket.
Readers of pk, if there still are any since my arrest and censoring, should know that pk's regular example of complex causality concerns schools prescribing a certain stimulant to hyper-active children: why, the naive might wonder, would they stimulate someone already judged over-stimulated? Because the stimulant it is hoped will stimulate the child's natural repressor. The kid's behavioral governor is stuck, give it a kick and it may kick in: calming the child.
Why bring it up again here? Because I just read a science report arguing that while psychologists say that forgiveness is good for the forgiver, holding a grudge may stimulate improved behavior from the person the grudge is held against. Say the husband, strays, his wife is pissed at him, she stays pissed, he may modify the behavior that pissed her off in the first place. So: there may be a trade-off. Forgiveness may help one thing: the psyche of the trespassed against, that same forgiveness may fail to habilitate the trespasser.
Of course things can be impenetrably complex. Schools and wisdom are mutually alien in pk's book, spouses are not infallible in that same book, scientists too can be simpleminded, but lets leave our model simple and only slightly less simple for simplicity's sake: for communication's sake. God can hit an eight iron straight into the cup; god can choose driver, bounce the golf ball off the oak, have a squirrel carry it to where a sea gull picks it up ... and drops it so it bounces off a turtle, and lands in the hole. God moves in mysterious ways. God moves anyway he wants to.
Now: back to forgiveness: The gospel says that on the cross Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." In that story Jesus seems to be offering ignorance as an excuse. The stupid are innocent no matter what harm they wright. The ignorant are innocent. Only the clever are wicked and deserve punishment. That sounded good to me as a child. In recent decades I've hated the idea. I believe that the pain of a stubbed toe is essential for learning. I reject the junkie's solution to life: feel nothing.
But with the idea that God moves in mysterious ways the possibilities for complexity become infinite. God send Jesus so that we'd recognize that he was good, recognize that he was God, so that we'd stand there like morons while our rulers arrested him, convicted him, scourge him, tortured him to death, for some sort of magic without which an infinitely powerful god is helpless to do what he wants: to forgive us. Why couldn't he just forgive us in the first place and same himself, his son, the pain? the inconvenience? Or did God forgive us the way the woman forgives her husband, the woman who didn't want her husband's behavior to improve. She was so pissed at him that she wanted God to damn her husband: so she forgave her husbands, so her husband would continue as a philanderer, and God would curse him as an unrepentant sinner?
Maybe God wants to forgive man for crucifying Jesus so that man won't learn from his ancient behavior, so modern man will be just as corrupt, just as unjust, just as passive before their misbehaving rulers, just as criminally negligent. Not only did our ancestors stand with their thumb in their ass while Jesus was crucified, but their descendants stood with their thumb in their ass while the Church declared geniuses to be heretics, while the Church threatened Galileo, while the Pope put out a contract on Luther, Christians behaving very much the Jews of the Temple of Jerusalem whenever reformers appear. God forgave man so man would still be so stupid in the twentieth century as to stand with its thumb in its ass while Ivan Illich was defrocked, stripped of his resources: and, in the twenty-first century, while Jesus' disciple pk, while Illich's disciple pk, was stripped, silenced, arrested, tortured, censored ... broken.
Boy, that's some potent forgiveness. God moves in mysterious ways.
Readers of pk, if there still are any since my arrest and censoring, should know that pk's regular example of complex causality concerns schools prescribing a certain stimulant to hyper-active children: why, the naive might wonder, would they stimulate someone already judged over-stimulated? Because the stimulant it is hoped will stimulate the child's natural repressor. The kid's behavioral governor is stuck, give it a kick and it may kick in: calming the child.
Why bring it up again here? Because I just read a science report arguing that while psychologists say that forgiveness is good for the forgiver, holding a grudge may stimulate improved behavior from the person the grudge is held against. Say the husband, strays, his wife is pissed at him, she stays pissed, he may modify the behavior that pissed her off in the first place. So: there may be a trade-off. Forgiveness may help one thing: the psyche of the trespassed against, that same forgiveness may fail to habilitate the trespasser.
Of course things can be impenetrably complex. Schools and wisdom are mutually alien in pk's book, spouses are not infallible in that same book, scientists too can be simpleminded, but lets leave our model simple and only slightly less simple for simplicity's sake: for communication's sake. God can hit an eight iron straight into the cup; god can choose driver, bounce the golf ball off the oak, have a squirrel carry it to where a sea gull picks it up ... and drops it so it bounces off a turtle, and lands in the hole. God moves in mysterious ways. God moves anyway he wants to.
Now: back to forgiveness: The gospel says that on the cross Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." In that story Jesus seems to be offering ignorance as an excuse. The stupid are innocent no matter what harm they wright. The ignorant are innocent. Only the clever are wicked and deserve punishment. That sounded good to me as a child. In recent decades I've hated the idea. I believe that the pain of a stubbed toe is essential for learning. I reject the junkie's solution to life: feel nothing.
But with the idea that God moves in mysterious ways the possibilities for complexity become infinite. God send Jesus so that we'd recognize that he was good, recognize that he was God, so that we'd stand there like morons while our rulers arrested him, convicted him, scourge him, tortured him to death, for some sort of magic without which an infinitely powerful god is helpless to do what he wants: to forgive us. Why couldn't he just forgive us in the first place and same himself, his son, the pain? the inconvenience? Or did God forgive us the way the woman forgives her husband, the woman who didn't want her husband's behavior to improve. She was so pissed at him that she wanted God to damn her husband: so she forgave her husbands, so her husband would continue as a philanderer, and God would curse him as an unrepentant sinner?
Maybe God wants to forgive man for crucifying Jesus so that man won't learn from his ancient behavior, so modern man will be just as corrupt, just as unjust, just as passive before their misbehaving rulers, just as criminally negligent. Not only did our ancestors stand with their thumb in their ass while Jesus was crucified, but their descendants stood with their thumb in their ass while the Church declared geniuses to be heretics, while the Church threatened Galileo, while the Pope put out a contract on Luther, Christians behaving very much the Jews of the Temple of Jerusalem whenever reformers appear. God forgave man so man would still be so stupid in the twentieth century as to stand with its thumb in its ass while Ivan Illich was defrocked, stripped of his resources: and, in the twenty-first century, while Jesus' disciple pk, while Illich's disciple pk, was stripped, silenced, arrested, tortured, censored ... broken.
Boy, that's some potent forgiveness. God moves in mysterious ways.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Ehrman's Bible
I have to quote an Ehrman passage I just read:
The Death of Jesus in Mark and Luke
... Since the nineteenth century, scholars have recognized that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, around 65-70 CE. Both Matthew and Luke, writing fifteen or twenty years later, used Mark as one of their sources for much of their own accounts. That is why almost all of Mark's stories can be found in Matthew or Luke, and it is also why they tell the stories. Sometimes just two agree and the third doesn't, because occasionally only one of the later Gospels changed Mark. This means that if we have the same story in Mark and Luke, say, and there are differences, these differences exist precisely because Luke has actually modified the words of his source, sometimes deleting words and phrases, sometimes adding material, even entire episodes, and sometimes altering the way a sentence is worded. It is probably safe to assume that if Luke modified what Mark had to say, it was because he wanted to say it differently. Sometimes these differences are just minor changes in wording, but sometimes they affect in highly significant ways the way the entire story is told. This appears to be true for the portrayal of Jesus going to his death.
Jesus' Death in Mark
In Mark's version of the story (Mark 15:16-39), Jesus is condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, mocked and beaten by the Roman soldiers, and taken off to be crucified. Simon of Cyrene carries his cross, Jesus says nothing the entire time. The soldiers crucify Jesus, and he still says nothing. Both of the robbers being crucified with him mock him. Those passing by mock him. The Jewish leaders mock him. Those passing by mock him. Jesus is silent until the very end, when he utters the wretched cry, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," which Mark translates from the Aramaic for his readers as, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Someone gives Jesus a sponge with sour wine to drink. He breathes his last and dies. Immediately two things happen: the curtain in the Temple is ripped in half, and the centurion looking on acknowledges, "Truly this man was the Son of God."
This is a powerful and moving scene, filled with emotion and pathos. Jesus is silent the entire time, as if in shock, until his cry at the end, echoing Psalm 22. I take his question to God to be a genuine one. He genuinely wants to know why God has left him like this. A very popular interpretation of the passage is that since Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1, he is actually thinking of the ending of the Psalm, where God intervenes and vindicates the suffering psalmist. I think this is reading way too much into the passage and robs the "cry of dereliction," as it is called, of all its power. The point is that Jesus has been rejected by everyone: betrayed by one of his own, denied three times by his closest follower, abandoned by all his disciples, rejected by the priests, the passersby, and even by the two others being crucified with him. At the end he even feels forsaken by God himself. Jesus is absolutely in the depths of despair and heart-wrenching anguish, and that's how he dies. Mark is trying to say something by this portrayal. He doesn't want his readers to take solace in the fact that God was really there providing Jesus with physical comfort. He dies in agony, unsure of the reason he must die.
But the reader knows the reason. Right after jesus dies the curtain rips in half and the centurion makes his confession. The curtain ripping in half shows that with the death of Jesus, God is made available to his people directly and not through the Jewish priests' sacrifices in the Temple. Jesus' death has brought an atonement (see Mark 10:45). And someone realizes it right off the bat: not Jesus' closest followers or the Jewish onlookers but the pagan soldier who has just crucified him. Jesus' death brings salvation, and it is gentiles who are going to recognize it. This is not a disinterested account of what "really" happened wen Jesus died. It is theology put in the form of a narrative.
My King James' printed Jesus' sayings in red. Knatz.com highlighted special pk quotes in blue. Other sacred quotes, Gregory Bateson quotes, Illich; Prigogine, I left in the default setting: plain black on white. But now, at least for this post, I think I'll highlight Ehrman quotes in purple: the color of royalty.
I transcribed the above passage manually, proofed it the best I could, posted it, and then I emailed the author to ask permission to quote his current book at length!
Backwards perhaps, but then that's me.
Ehrman responded within hours: he doesn't own the rights. Ah! So let his publisher come after me. I take it that I have the author's permission: and that matters to me one hundred times more than any technical legal "owner"!
Meantime my son offered me the e-text, so I wouldn't have to copy. Anything I add can but copied and pasted. But actually I may pause there (here) anyway. What I repeat above in purple was the point of my getting started.
Jesus Interrupted, by Bart D. Ehrman, NYC 2010
... Since the nineteenth century, scholars have recognized that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, around 65-70 CE. Both Matthew and Luke, writing fifteen or twenty years later, used Mark as one of their sources for much of their own accounts. That is why almost all of Mark's stories can be found in Matthew or Luke, and it is also why they tell the stories. Sometimes just two agree and the third doesn't, because occasionally only one of the later Gospels changed Mark. This means that if we have the same story in Mark and Luke, say, and there are differences, these differences exist precisely because Luke has actually modified the words of his source, sometimes deleting words and phrases, sometimes adding material, even entire episodes, and sometimes altering the way a sentence is worded. It is probably safe to assume that if Luke modified what Mark had to say, it was because he wanted to say it differently. Sometimes these differences are just minor changes in wording, but sometimes they affect in highly significant ways the way the entire story is told. This appears to be true for the portrayal of Jesus going to his death.
Jesus' Death in Mark
In Mark's version of the story (Mark 15:16-39), Jesus is condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, mocked and beaten by the Roman soldiers, and taken off to be crucified. Simon of Cyrene carries his cross, Jesus says nothing the entire time. The soldiers crucify Jesus, and he still says nothing. Both of the robbers being crucified with him mock him. Those passing by mock him. The Jewish leaders mock him. Those passing by mock him. Jesus is silent until the very end, when he utters the wretched cry, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," which Mark translates from the Aramaic for his readers as, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Someone gives Jesus a sponge with sour wine to drink. He breathes his last and dies. Immediately two things happen: the curtain in the Temple is ripped in half, and the centurion looking on acknowledges, "Truly this man was the Son of God."
This is a powerful and moving scene, filled with emotion and pathos. Jesus is silent the entire time, as if in shock, until his cry at the end, echoing Psalm 22. I take his question to God to be a genuine one. He genuinely wants to know why God has left him like this. A very popular interpretation of the passage is that since Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1, he is actually thinking of the ending of the Psalm, where God intervenes and vindicates the suffering psalmist. I think this is reading way too much into the passage and robs the "cry of dereliction," as it is called, of all its power. The point is that Jesus has been rejected by everyone: betrayed by one of his own, denied three times by his closest follower, abandoned by all his disciples, rejected by the priests, the passersby, and even by the two others being crucified with him. At the end he even feels forsaken by God himself. Jesus is absolutely in the depths of despair and heart-wrenching anguish, and that's how he dies. Mark is trying to say something by this portrayal. He doesn't want his readers to take solace in the fact that God was really there providing Jesus with physical comfort. He dies in agony, unsure of the reason he must die.
But the reader knows the reason. Right after jesus dies the curtain rips in half and the centurion makes his confession. The curtain ripping in half shows that with the death of Jesus, God is made available to his people directly and not through the Jewish priests' sacrifices in the Temple. Jesus' death has brought an atonement (see Mark 10:45). And someone realizes it right off the bat: not Jesus' closest followers or the Jewish onlookers but the pagan soldier who has just crucified him. Jesus' death brings salvation, and it is gentiles who are going to recognize it. This is not a disinterested account of what "really" happened wen Jesus died. It is theology put in the form of a narrative.
theology put in the form of a narrative
Historical scholars have long thought that Mark is not only explaining the significance of Jesus' death in this account but also quite possibly writing with a particular audience in mind, an audience of later followers of Jesus who also have experienced persecution and suffering at the hands of authorities who are opposed to God.authorities who are opposed to God
Like Jesus his followers may not know why they are experiencing such pain and misery. But Mark tells these Christians they can rest assured: even though they may not see why they are suffering, God knows, and God is working behind the scenes to make suffering redemptive.God is working behind the scenes
to make suffering redemptive
God's purposes are worked precisely through suffering, not by avoiding it, even when those purposes are not obvious at the moment.to make suffering redemptive
God's purposes are worked precisely
through suffering, not by avoiding it.
Mark's version of the death of Jesus thus provides a model for understanding the persecution of the Christians.through suffering, not by avoiding it.
provides a model for understanding
My King James' printed Jesus' sayings in red. Knatz.com highlighted special pk quotes in blue. Other sacred quotes, Gregory Bateson quotes, Illich; Prigogine, I left in the default setting: plain black on white. But now, at least for this post, I think I'll highlight Ehrman quotes in purple: the color of royalty.
I transcribed the above passage manually, proofed it the best I could, posted it, and then I emailed the author to ask permission to quote his current book at length!
Backwards perhaps, but then that's me.
Ehrman responded within hours: he doesn't own the rights. Ah! So let his publisher come after me. I take it that I have the author's permission: and that matters to me one hundred times more than any technical legal "owner"!
Meantime my son offered me the e-text, so I wouldn't have to copy. Anything I add can but copied and pasted. But actually I may pause there (here) anyway. What I repeat above in purple was the point of my getting started.
authorities who are opposed to God
God's purposes are worked precisely
through suffering.
Let it suffice: for now.
through suffering.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Judaism, Christianity, Chrixity
Chrixian is to Christian
as Christian is to Jew:
mutually orthogonal.
The Jews are credited with founding monotheism. They honor a creation god. They'd gotten the religion with its stories going pretty well by two and a half thousand years ago. The Jews built a grand temple in Jerusalem to house this god. The Temple of Jerusalem claimed to speak for God. It's still there, it still does.
Around two thousand years ago Judaism split (I bet not for the first, or last, time). The splinter sect said that God had sent his son, Jesus, as a Messiah, to the Temple, had cleansed the Temple of degenerate practices, got arrested, scourged, crucified for his trouble. In other words, the new group was saying that the old group had lost heaven's mandate, had betrayed its charter. These Christians built new temples called churches. One church in particular became ascendant in Western Europe: the Roman Catholic Church: it's the one with the Pope.
But of course that church too splintered. Luther wanted Christians to read the Bible for themselves. (The Church knew perfectly well what trouble that could lead to.) The Pope put out a contract on Luther. But the splinters flourished, and splintered, and flourished some more. Note: the Church claims to speak for God, says that salvation is due Christians, but only through the church. Meantime splinters say salvation is due Christians ... (But ignore core Christian concepts such as Original Sin and Atonement.) (or, try to monopolize them without understand them!)
Meantime, other critics come along. Ivan Illich says that the Whore of Babylon has taken control of the Bride of Christ. The Church is in the hands of ... professionals, experts, specialists, who drink wine, have housekeepers, drive Cadillacs ... and don't understand a thing about Christ.
pk joined Illich. Now I coin the term Chrixity.
The Jews claim God; but betray God.
The Christians reclaim God; but still betray God: in the same old ways. Jesus is still on the cross, after two thousand years of torture. (The Jews (using the Romans the way Henry II used his barons) only crucified Jesus for one day!)
I draft, post, redraft. Sometimes I see something in the first draft missing from the second draft. I'm tempted to keep both drafts. "Ms." was proposed to replace Miss and Mrs.; but it didn't: it added a third category: Miss, Mrs. or Ms.! Flaubert revised Mme. Bovary so many times he introduced new mistkaes while he erased old.
Anyone who doesn't like the chaos of my drafts, introduced infelicity compromising tightened prose, should damn well send me a budget to work with: instead of arresting me, censoring me, squashing me after crippling me (after banishing me).
First there's the Jews: monotheists. Orthogonal to the Jews, the Christians steal their shtick, say they speak for God, mis-transcribe and reedit something they call the Bible, claiming their work is God's own.
pk repeats the same shtick: the Church betrays God, Christians are people, and people torture the bearers of God's messages. I give this vision, this metaphor, a name: Chrixity.
But I don't want to splinter. I wish I could unite. But people would have to be able to understand what's said to them first. Understanding is prerequisite to listening: and versa visa.
I said the Jews are credited with inventing monotheism: we don't know enough of events to know what the truth is. Our records are recent, human: incomplete at best, mucked with at worst. The Jews wanted to steal the land of the people they called Canaanites; maybe they stole their one god from some other people too. I don't say they did; we don't know that they didn't. What I do know is that all of us babbling away, writing our noise down, loading it onto the electromagnetic spectrum, are kleptocrats: thieves.
Me too.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Hide & Seek
Alan Watts' The Book presented existence as a game of Hide and Seek. He credited the metaphor to the Hindus. I love it. I believe it. That is, I half-believe it. I'm not sure I entirely believe anything: not even my own theory of Macroinformation, not even Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, not even Pythagoras' theorem. Watts developed the idea through an alien theology: give us a fresh palatte, a little independence from our brainwashing. Fine, but I wed it right back to standard western monotheism: orthodox Christianity under the Scholastics maintained that God was Real, that God was the only thing that was real: all else was illusion, mistake, error. Thus: there is God, and only God. Nothing but God. And God is spending eternity playing with himself: playing hide and seek with himself, trying to fool himself, and almost, sometimes, succeeding.
Back to Hindu symbology again. All is Vishnu. Vishnu is Shiva. Shiva is Vishnu thinking he's Shiva. Vishnu is Shiva thinking he's Kali.
God is Jehovah begetting Jesus, thinking he's a holy spirit.
OK, get it? Think it through yourself: for five or six decades. It's really good. It gets better and better. Though I was still only twenty-four or so when I made what may be my best joke with it: I told my army friend that when the world ended, when we were all incandescing radioactively, every cell of our bodies sundered and flying off in dimensions we've never heard of at velocities we can't calculate, I'm going to summon a last word, and say to the Void, "I am not amused!"
How's this for Hide & Seek? I'm going to lump metaphors!
Deep Cover & Mission Impossible
The movie Deep Cover (1992) shows Laurence Fishburne as a cop pretending to be a drug dealer. As the plot thickens we're not sure he's not a drug dealer deluding himself he's a cop. I love it. In Hide and Seek cosmology nothing is clear, except for the monotheistic axioms, and they're not really clear either. God and Satan change roles. Is Jesus a savior or a charlatan? Seems realistic, truthful to me: do you really think the cops are there to protect you? the soldiers? Or are they there to bully you, to make you pay taxes, go to school, not let on that you doubt any of the orthodoxies, while claiming to be free, independent, not a slave: certainly not a robot: absolutely not a contagion.
I gotta take a break, be back when I can. meantime: I love the Mission Impossible deep cover line "As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions": and the utter Big Brother detail, "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." Belief as atheism. Nazis with no Hitler to blame!
Back to Hindu symbology again. All is Vishnu. Vishnu is Shiva. Shiva is Vishnu thinking he's Shiva. Vishnu is Shiva thinking he's Kali.
God is Jehovah begetting Jesus, thinking he's a holy spirit.
OK, get it? Think it through yourself: for five or six decades. It's really good. It gets better and better. Though I was still only twenty-four or so when I made what may be my best joke with it: I told my army friend that when the world ended, when we were all incandescing radioactively, every cell of our bodies sundered and flying off in dimensions we've never heard of at velocities we can't calculate, I'm going to summon a last word, and say to the Void, "I am not amused!"
How's this for Hide & Seek? I'm going to lump metaphors!
Deep Cover & Mission Impossible
The movie Deep Cover (1992) shows Laurence Fishburne as a cop pretending to be a drug dealer. As the plot thickens we're not sure he's not a drug dealer deluding himself he's a cop. I love it. In Hide and Seek cosmology nothing is clear, except for the monotheistic axioms, and they're not really clear either. God and Satan change roles. Is Jesus a savior or a charlatan? Seems realistic, truthful to me: do you really think the cops are there to protect you? the soldiers? Or are they there to bully you, to make you pay taxes, go to school, not let on that you doubt any of the orthodoxies, while claiming to be free, independent, not a slave: certainly not a robot: absolutely not a contagion.
I gotta take a break, be back when I can. meantime: I love the Mission Impossible deep cover line "As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions": and the utter Big Brother detail, "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." Belief as atheism. Nazis with no Hitler to blame!
Mark's Mary
The Only Game in Town!
I "studied" the Bible as a child, in college, since, but it's only in the last few years that I've learned anything really significant from those seven decades of study. The society and its institutions can sabotage intelligence all they want, but sometimes something slips through. With John and Jesus murdered, a word may survive. Galileo, Darwin, Freud got attacked, ignorance, stupidity is triumphant, but somehow some intelligence, some wisdom may get through. Jesus may somehow save some of us even while the powers continue to crucify his successors, other saviors, continue to pervert talent, generosity, godliness ... genius. I showed an avid interest in the Bible. I demonstrated an eagerness to perpetuate the fundamentalism I was force fed. But the school, the church, my family, the whole culture steered me away from theology: no, we wanted doctors, lawyers, Ponzi schemers. Well, I'm a theologian anyway, just outside all the churches, outside the Republicans, and Democrats. And Communists! Outside. Near starving. That's me. But somehow an intelligent, honest Bible reader emerged from all those piled millennia of dishonesty: Bart Ehrman. He's was a child fundamentalist who actually insisted on learning some of the lessons of close textural and historical readings of the Bible nurtured in the isolation of the seminary/terrariums. (The Church may have been smarter than the Protestants say when it opposed confidence in the ability of yesterday's illiterate to properly read scripture. The Church wanted a lid on, Protestants blew the lid off, but without understanding much.)
The terrariums teach it, but the graduating pastors refuse to pass it on. The seminaries teach liberal readings, acknowledge problems, but the graduates immediatly return to their initial prejudices, and perpetuate them in the churches that hire them. The churches side-rail the intelligent, the honest; the morons control the misinformation.
Check out Ehrman's books. Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities were the first two I read. Now I'm enjoying Jesus, Interrupted too. Get your facts from him: I just want to go straight to one (set of) fact(s), known for a good while now, but not much publicized: despite Ehrman penning best sellers. Cambell got side-railed, I got side-railed; Ehrman gets lionized; but it still doesn't matter. Bishop Wilberforce will beat Darwin and Huxley over the long haul.
Ehrman is the Christian scholar who's actually reached a couple of readers with the news that the Gospel According to St. Mark is the oldest of the Bible's gospels, that it post-dates Jesus's estimated death by two-thirds of a century, that the oldest copies of it are a couple of centuries younger than that, and that the oldest Mark ends short of the Mark passed to us by churches. The oldest Mark ends its story with the opening of the tomb: then the angel tells Mary Magdalene that Jesus is risen. The angel tells Mary to go and tell the others, the disciples. But Mary is frightened, Mary goes home, Mary Magdalene tells no one! That's the "original" ending of the original Mark: that is, the oldest Mark we can deduce, can find.
If God was trying to save mankind by sacrificing himself in the person of Jesus, it sounds to me like he failed. God gave us Jesus, gave us a chance: we rejected Jesus: murdered him, then rejected the salvation. Christians are bade to bear witness. We don't. Or we do: bear witness to bullshit, to lies. To vanity. If it's vain, we'll repeat it, embellish it, embroider it. If it's tough, if its honest, if it's intelligent, if it's compatible with hard truth, we'll ignore it, sabotage it, rewrite it: till it's flattering, fits in our vanity miror.
My piece here, God's Lure, tells how it makes me sick to think that God is using me as a lure only to expose the rapacity of my fellows. I tell my girlfriends, my wife, my son, my more girlfriends ... what I promised God to try to tell people: they get it only enough to reject it, the proudly tell me that they're following Roosevelt instead, or Bush, or Rothbard, or Mises.
My girl friend sees that the Church is a liar. But she still wants to go to Church!
Gamblers have a joke that applies to Christians. The degenerate gambler is playing at a roulette table. His friend says, "Don't you know that table is crooked?" "Yes, I do," says the degenerate gambler. "Then why are you still playing at it?" "Because it's the only game in town!"
Try this as a thought experiment: in our lab we shall for the immediate purpose take Christian symbols literally: there is a God, there is a Christ, there was a Jesus, there will be a Judgment ... Peter was a leading disciple, Peter denied Jesus, a legitimate Church made Peter its first pope ...
Now let's imagine Peter at Judgment. Let's imagine God weighing bits of evidence in a balance scales: in the Saved pan he puts Peter's eminence as a disciple, in the Damned pan he puts Peter's denial of Jesus. ... All my life I've heard jokes in which Peter is the keeper of the pearly gates: but does that make it so? Shouldn't we wait till after Judgment to see who's in heaven, what use God is making of them? If Jesus himself spent three days in hell, how long should Peter go to hell for? Should we imagine that he's out yet? ever? Maybe Peter will tend some future pearly gate.
But of course my thought experiment is just a joke, totally out of taste: because it doesn't line up with the fundamental stance of any religion: that stance which pretends to believe in a god who rubber stamps the human culture: a Big Brother bully of bullies: the bully bullies you? God will bully them! for you! a god who takes the Canaanites land and gives it to the Jews, who judges the Philistines and makes them slaves of the Jews ... who gives licence for genocide so Christians can live on Iroquois turf.
Still: try the thought experiment one step further. God judges Mary Magdalene: into the Saved pan can go lots of apocryphal traditions: she was a whore who reformed, she was Jesus' friend, she was the chief financial patron to Jesus, his ministry, and his disciples ... But: into the Damned pan God can put ... her betrayal at the end! The angel told her to tell the disciples; she didn't, she was afraid, she went home. (Or was "Mark" a misogynist maligner? like Paul?)
Imagine the President phoning the nuclear silo, saying, OK, launch. But the silo team don't launch, they cower in their barracks. The day before, the silo team was shown airbrushed in Life; today what will the media make of them?
It doesn't matter. Humans will never allow God to run Judgment. Man has already judged. We judge that your land is ours, your labor is ours, your ideas are ours, we can pay whichever royalties we feel like and not bother with those we don't volunteer. No: God is our bully on our leash. We have nothing to fear from God. Justice is political license for the church-goers.
I "studied" the Bible as a child, in college, since, but it's only in the last few years that I've learned anything really significant from those seven decades of study. The society and its institutions can sabotage intelligence all they want, but sometimes something slips through. With John and Jesus murdered, a word may survive. Galileo, Darwin, Freud got attacked, ignorance, stupidity is triumphant, but somehow some intelligence, some wisdom may get through. Jesus may somehow save some of us even while the powers continue to crucify his successors, other saviors, continue to pervert talent, generosity, godliness ... genius. I showed an avid interest in the Bible. I demonstrated an eagerness to perpetuate the fundamentalism I was force fed. But the school, the church, my family, the whole culture steered me away from theology: no, we wanted doctors, lawyers, Ponzi schemers. Well, I'm a theologian anyway, just outside all the churches, outside the Republicans, and Democrats. And Communists! Outside. Near starving. That's me. But somehow an intelligent, honest Bible reader emerged from all those piled millennia of dishonesty: Bart Ehrman. He's was a child fundamentalist who actually insisted on learning some of the lessons of close textural and historical readings of the Bible nurtured in the isolation of the seminary/terrariums. (The Church may have been smarter than the Protestants say when it opposed confidence in the ability of yesterday's illiterate to properly read scripture. The Church wanted a lid on, Protestants blew the lid off, but without understanding much.)
The terrariums teach it, but the graduating pastors refuse to pass it on. The seminaries teach liberal readings, acknowledge problems, but the graduates immediatly return to their initial prejudices, and perpetuate them in the churches that hire them. The churches side-rail the intelligent, the honest; the morons control the misinformation.
Check out Ehrman's books. Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities were the first two I read. Now I'm enjoying Jesus, Interrupted too. Get your facts from him: I just want to go straight to one (set of) fact(s), known for a good while now, but not much publicized: despite Ehrman penning best sellers. Cambell got side-railed, I got side-railed; Ehrman gets lionized; but it still doesn't matter. Bishop Wilberforce will beat Darwin and Huxley over the long haul.
Ehrman is the Christian scholar who's actually reached a couple of readers with the news that the Gospel According to St. Mark is the oldest of the Bible's gospels, that it post-dates Jesus's estimated death by two-thirds of a century, that the oldest copies of it are a couple of centuries younger than that, and that the oldest Mark ends short of the Mark passed to us by churches. The oldest Mark ends its story with the opening of the tomb: then the angel tells Mary Magdalene that Jesus is risen. The angel tells Mary to go and tell the others, the disciples. But Mary is frightened, Mary goes home, Mary Magdalene tells no one! That's the "original" ending of the original Mark: that is, the oldest Mark we can deduce, can find.
If God was trying to save mankind by sacrificing himself in the person of Jesus, it sounds to me like he failed. God gave us Jesus, gave us a chance: we rejected Jesus: murdered him, then rejected the salvation. Christians are bade to bear witness. We don't. Or we do: bear witness to bullshit, to lies. To vanity. If it's vain, we'll repeat it, embellish it, embroider it. If it's tough, if its honest, if it's intelligent, if it's compatible with hard truth, we'll ignore it, sabotage it, rewrite it: till it's flattering, fits in our vanity miror.
My piece here, God's Lure, tells how it makes me sick to think that God is using me as a lure only to expose the rapacity of my fellows. I tell my girlfriends, my wife, my son, my more girlfriends ... what I promised God to try to tell people: they get it only enough to reject it, the proudly tell me that they're following Roosevelt instead, or Bush, or Rothbard, or Mises.
My girl friend sees that the Church is a liar. But she still wants to go to Church!
Gamblers have a joke that applies to Christians. The degenerate gambler is playing at a roulette table. His friend says, "Don't you know that table is crooked?" "Yes, I do," says the degenerate gambler. "Then why are you still playing at it?" "Because it's the only game in town!"
Try this as a thought experiment: in our lab we shall for the immediate purpose take Christian symbols literally: there is a God, there is a Christ, there was a Jesus, there will be a Judgment ... Peter was a leading disciple, Peter denied Jesus, a legitimate Church made Peter its first pope ...
Now let's imagine Peter at Judgment. Let's imagine God weighing bits of evidence in a balance scales: in the Saved pan he puts Peter's eminence as a disciple, in the Damned pan he puts Peter's denial of Jesus. ... All my life I've heard jokes in which Peter is the keeper of the pearly gates: but does that make it so? Shouldn't we wait till after Judgment to see who's in heaven, what use God is making of them? If Jesus himself spent three days in hell, how long should Peter go to hell for? Should we imagine that he's out yet? ever? Maybe Peter will tend some future pearly gate.
But of course my thought experiment is just a joke, totally out of taste: because it doesn't line up with the fundamental stance of any religion: that stance which pretends to believe in a god who rubber stamps the human culture: a Big Brother bully of bullies: the bully bullies you? God will bully them! for you! a god who takes the Canaanites land and gives it to the Jews, who judges the Philistines and makes them slaves of the Jews ... who gives licence for genocide so Christians can live on Iroquois turf.
Still: try the thought experiment one step further. God judges Mary Magdalene: into the Saved pan can go lots of apocryphal traditions: she was a whore who reformed, she was Jesus' friend, she was the chief financial patron to Jesus, his ministry, and his disciples ... But: into the Damned pan God can put ... her betrayal at the end! The angel told her to tell the disciples; she didn't, she was afraid, she went home. (Or was "Mark" a misogynist maligner? like Paul?)
Imagine the President phoning the nuclear silo, saying, OK, launch. But the silo team don't launch, they cower in their barracks. The day before, the silo team was shown airbrushed in Life; today what will the media make of them?
It doesn't matter. Humans will never allow God to run Judgment. Man has already judged. We judge that your land is ours, your labor is ours, your ideas are ours, we can pay whichever royalties we feel like and not bother with those we don't volunteer. No: God is our bully on our leash. We have nothing to fear from God. Justice is political license for the church-goers.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Moral Torture
Getting crucified, what a bummer. Christianity's iconography has glutted itself for millennia on divine agony at human hands.
Some people volunteer to be martyred in one way or another: soldiers, saints, wives, husbands, parents, children ... citizens ... gods. I know, I'm one. But I bet history is full of kamikazes who are sorry once their plane is actually impacting the World Trade Center. (One saint wanted to be crucified upside down — was that Peter? Did he know that upside down meant he'd suffer less? he who wanted to suffer more? Even if he suffered much less than Jesus, still might not he have been sorry by the time he'd been on the cross for an hour or two?)
But: think of this: Jesus' crucifixion as reported in the gospels was over by sundown: first they tortured him, then they just dispatched him: so the Jews wouldn't be thought guilty of cruelty on the Sabbath. However intense the suffering, it lasted less than a day. Since the Persians instituted the torture some were known to suffer on crosses for up to three days before finally dying.
Still: I write this today to suggest that talk of Jesus' suffering on the cross, whether for one day or for three days, is misleading. Can Jesus' physical suffering on the cross exceed his moral suffering simply by being alive among kleptocrats? Among Original Sinners?
But even that suffering, at least in my imagination of Jesus' suffering, pales compared to a meta-moral suffering: the suffering endured by Jesus since the crucifixion to see that his suffering was wasted! How many did his sacrifice save? One? Ten? A hundred?
Christians think they can feign atonement and slip into paradise; fine, let Christians believe whatever they want, the morons. But what does God believe? What will God do at Judgment? if he can ever free himself of the supervision of the priests!
Will Jehovah fare any better under the ministrations of Jehovah Witness preachers than God does under the interferences of the Catholic prelates? I say we should all shut up and sit down and wait to see: abstaining from interfering. Let God be the judge without our supervision.
Hey, you know what? Maybe sitting down and shutting up might save us!
This is it! In a wave now: everyone, sit down, and shut up!
Some people volunteer to be martyred in one way or another: soldiers, saints, wives, husbands, parents, children ... citizens ... gods. I know, I'm one. But I bet history is full of kamikazes who are sorry once their plane is actually impacting the World Trade Center. (One saint wanted to be crucified upside down — was that Peter? Did he know that upside down meant he'd suffer less? he who wanted to suffer more? Even if he suffered much less than Jesus, still might not he have been sorry by the time he'd been on the cross for an hour or two?)
But: think of this: Jesus' crucifixion as reported in the gospels was over by sundown: first they tortured him, then they just dispatched him: so the Jews wouldn't be thought guilty of cruelty on the Sabbath. However intense the suffering, it lasted less than a day. Since the Persians instituted the torture some were known to suffer on crosses for up to three days before finally dying.
Still: I write this today to suggest that talk of Jesus' suffering on the cross, whether for one day or for three days, is misleading. Can Jesus' physical suffering on the cross exceed his moral suffering simply by being alive among kleptocrats? Among Original Sinners?
But even that suffering, at least in my imagination of Jesus' suffering, pales compared to a meta-moral suffering: the suffering endured by Jesus since the crucifixion to see that his suffering was wasted! How many did his sacrifice save? One? Ten? A hundred?
Christians think they can feign atonement and slip into paradise; fine, let Christians believe whatever they want, the morons. But what does God believe? What will God do at Judgment? if he can ever free himself of the supervision of the priests!
Will Jehovah fare any better under the ministrations of Jehovah Witness preachers than God does under the interferences of the Catholic prelates? I say we should all shut up and sit down and wait to see: abstaining from interfering. Let God be the judge without our supervision.
Hey, you know what? Maybe sitting down and shutting up might save us!
This is it! In a wave now: everyone, sit down, and shut up!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Theism
Restoring Knatz.com / Teaching / Society / Social Epistemology / gods /
Quoth Pema Chaudron, Buddhist Nun:
The difference between theism and non-theism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us ... From this point of view, theism is an addiction. We're all addicted to hope... Non-theism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves ... In a non-theistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning.
I love Christian theology, but I despise any theology, any cosmology, having a monopoly. We're supersaturated with Christian theology: any other set of ideas can be a relief. Here's a neat related statement:
There is no greater joy than knowing there is no help coming. The decision is ours to make alone.
The author is Conn Iggulden: from his Genghis Khan series. I suspect it's better to try on different thoughts than to always insist on one no matter how right we believe it to be.
Quoth Pema Chaudron, Buddhist Nun:
I love Christian theology, but I despise any theology, any cosmology, having a monopoly. We're supersaturated with Christian theology: any other set of ideas can be a relief. Here's a neat related statement:
Lords of the Bow
The author is Conn Iggulden: from his Genghis Khan series. I suspect it's better to try on different thoughts than to always insist on one no matter how right we believe it to be.
Who's Christian?
Who's Christian, who's saved, will be judged by God at Judgment.
Meantime, in this world of thieves and liars, any of us can believe whatever delusion permits.
Meantime, in this world of thieves and liars, any of us can believe whatever delusion permits.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Atheism
The real question shouldn't be whether or not God exists. (God is too undefined a concept for the question to be meaningful anyway.) The better question is: Does truth matter? Does reality play a role in human destiny? Or can we just lie and defraud and get away with it forever?
The real question shouldn't be whether Jesus existed as a real person in history; a better question is whether or not civilization has ever bent its rules to sabotage a reformer. The following question must then also be asked: did civilization break its own laws to sabotage a reformer once? or are cheating and torture standard features of human super-groups?
Churches hawk salvation while joining society (followers leading and leaders following) in undermining the intelligence that might otherwise help us to survive. It isn't just the Temple that Jesus was prevented from being understood at; he would have been crucified had he gone to the university, or if he had performed his cures in the parking lot of the hospital: while inside the doctors were trying to get $30,000 per hour for procedures that kill as often as they help.
The real question shouldn't be whether Jesus existed as a real person in history; a better question is whether or not civilization has ever bent its rules to sabotage a reformer. The following question must then also be asked: did civilization break its own laws to sabotage a reformer once? or are cheating and torture standard features of human super-groups?
Churches hawk salvation while joining society (followers leading and leaders following) in undermining the intelligence that might otherwise help us to survive. It isn't just the Temple that Jesus was prevented from being understood at; he would have been crucified had he gone to the university, or if he had performed his cures in the parking lot of the hospital: while inside the doctors were trying to get $30,000 per hour for procedures that kill as often as they help.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Meta-Theology
I love to imagine that god, as awareness, existed before man emerged with his own version of sentience. I like to push that back and imagine god as aware of the commencement of this universe. How far can we push it? Was god aware when the cosmos began: if the cosmos can be thought of as having begun. But god's forte doesn't arrive till Judgment. I love to imagine a point in the future where someone, something, some god, will actually think, observe, be aware, and most important: be right!
But, you know, maybe it doesn't really matter. Awareness or non-awareness, god or no god, what actually exists will still actually exist or have actually existed, what's true will be true. If we're a horse's ass it won't matter to the truth what our lawyer says, what fuss the priest makes, what bullshit the media propagate ...
But, you know, maybe it doesn't really matter. Awareness or non-awareness, god or no god, what actually exists will still actually exist or have actually existed, what's true will be true. If we're a horse's ass it won't matter to the truth what our lawyer says, what fuss the priest makes, what bullshit the media propagate ...
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Puppet in the Sky
Is our world a simple consistent system where rules apply? Or is it a product of magical chaoses? where rules don't exist? or they can be bent? where cheating wins?
We don't know. We can't know. We don't know enough to know. We don't know enough to find out. But my bets have long been on the former: though they started out trained to the latter. Don't observe experience, and theorize what the rules must be by some collaboration of rational processes; pray, practice magic, try to cheat.
We "know" our environment by "modeling" it. We build symbolic structures, and, insofar as we are intelligent, interested in survival, compare those models with experience, revising the symbolic structure as necessary. That's a semiotic statement of alternative one above: we live in a simple consistent system: rational processes can try to figure it out. Maybe the system is complex enough that our models won't be quite perfect the first few tries, but edition N of the model should have a good chance of being less flawed than edition M was. That's what man would believe if man were scientific: rational.
But modern man is simply edition O of man C, D, E, the failed magician. Once we wanted to control things, we tried magic. Our magic failed. So we tried specialist magicians. Their magic failed. So we imagined the perfect magician being immaterial, a spirit, and living in the sky: the meta-magician. Our magic is no good, but God's magic is perfect.
Along comes pk. I was born into a magical culture. My emotions developed around love for God, reverence for God, celebration of God, love for God, being the highest good, the highest goal; but slowly, gradually, imperfectly, I came to value reason, science, and to see that my magical society pretended to, but did it magically: as though science were a question of pronouncing Abracadabra right: or the magic wouldn't work. So what I did, what I've tried, is to blend both: believe in science, but keep the old magical vocabulary. Thus pk's semiotic universe uses ancient human vocabulary and grammar to symbolize modern human science and reason. In other words, just as Einstein substituted a rational creator for the magical creator of his Jewish ancestors, so do I, meaning natural law by "god." I define my terms, I practice at consistency: how can I help it if no one understands? when their not understanding is willful: attempts at the old magical control? Reasonable people must be sabotaged: so the priests for irrational magic can run things unopposed. Sabotage didn't work for Einstein, so he got deified. Sabotage has worked just fine for pk: pk being far more revolutionary than Einstein. Einstein merely wanted to transform Newtonian gravity; pk wants to do away with society in which the magicians have free reign to cheat: by running the churches, the state, the schools, the universities ...
Once upon a time the priests tied to make it rain. Too often it didn't rain no matter how they danced or cut themselves, no matter how many virgins they disemboweled, chanting in no matter which language. Then the priests saw the lightning hit the mistletoe way up in the oak tree. Then it rained> Ah! So it's the mistletoe that is beloved of the big magician in the sky. Now: how do we, who cannot control the rain, control the big magician in the sky? and therefore control the rain?
Through precise rituals in Hebrew! Through precise rituals in Greek! Through precise rituals in Latin! (or Sanskrit!) (How about IndoEuropean?) (It's still no good: IndoEuropean is a current (set of) language(s), not at all an ancient language.) (We don't know any truly ancient languages! the evidence is rubbed clean.)
Anyway, here we have a bunch of failed magicians, now called rabbis (translate as "priests"), convincing themselves that they have lured their creation god into the box where they keep their contract with this magician in the sky, which they call their Covenant, and the box the Covenant's "ark": the Ark of the Covenant. The Jews tell themselves, and anyone who's listening, borrowing, imitating, that the box is for the God's comfort, and protection: the people feed and care for their god. But anyone not quite buying everything they say not quite literally can suppose that they might just have lured the god into the box to hold him captive and make him behave: that is, to make the sun rise and the rain rain for the Jews: and make their enemies tremble and fall in the dust.
(French Christians followed this behavior almost exactly when they erected their Chartres Cathedral: only in the European case it was the female spirt Mary the French were trying to lure and capture: mitigating the furious judgment of her male counterpart Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
And in the US, on Morningside Heights, across the street from Riverside Cathedral, in the 1960s was erected a limestone pile called by locals the God Box. It's Church of England (Roman Catholic with the Pope (and his wops) washed out), diluted to Anglican (the British washed out): sort of generic American Protestant (Christian with the religion washed out). It's not altogether clear what American Christians want: sort of Forgiveness: while they keep the money.)
We don't know. We can't know. We don't know enough to know. We don't know enough to find out. But my bets have long been on the former: though they started out trained to the latter. Don't observe experience, and theorize what the rules must be by some collaboration of rational processes; pray, practice magic, try to cheat.
We "know" our environment by "modeling" it. We build symbolic structures, and, insofar as we are intelligent, interested in survival, compare those models with experience, revising the symbolic structure as necessary. That's a semiotic statement of alternative one above: we live in a simple consistent system: rational processes can try to figure it out. Maybe the system is complex enough that our models won't be quite perfect the first few tries, but edition N of the model should have a good chance of being less flawed than edition M was. That's what man would believe if man were scientific: rational.
But modern man is simply edition O of man C, D, E, the failed magician. Once we wanted to control things, we tried magic. Our magic failed. So we tried specialist magicians. Their magic failed. So we imagined the perfect magician being immaterial, a spirit, and living in the sky: the meta-magician. Our magic is no good, but God's magic is perfect.
Along comes pk. I was born into a magical culture. My emotions developed around love for God, reverence for God, celebration of God, love for God, being the highest good, the highest goal; but slowly, gradually, imperfectly, I came to value reason, science, and to see that my magical society pretended to, but did it magically: as though science were a question of pronouncing Abracadabra right: or the magic wouldn't work. So what I did, what I've tried, is to blend both: believe in science, but keep the old magical vocabulary. Thus pk's semiotic universe uses ancient human vocabulary and grammar to symbolize modern human science and reason. In other words, just as Einstein substituted a rational creator for the magical creator of his Jewish ancestors, so do I, meaning natural law by "god." I define my terms, I practice at consistency: how can I help it if no one understands? when their not understanding is willful: attempts at the old magical control? Reasonable people must be sabotaged: so the priests for irrational magic can run things unopposed. Sabotage didn't work for Einstein, so he got deified. Sabotage has worked just fine for pk: pk being far more revolutionary than Einstein. Einstein merely wanted to transform Newtonian gravity; pk wants to do away with society in which the magicians have free reign to cheat: by running the churches, the state, the schools, the universities ...
Once upon a time the priests tied to make it rain. Too often it didn't rain no matter how they danced or cut themselves, no matter how many virgins they disemboweled, chanting in no matter which language. Then the priests saw the lightning hit the mistletoe way up in the oak tree. Then it rained> Ah! So it's the mistletoe that is beloved of the big magician in the sky. Now: how do we, who cannot control the rain, control the big magician in the sky? and therefore control the rain?
Through precise rituals in Hebrew! Through precise rituals in Greek! Through precise rituals in Latin! (or Sanskrit!) (How about IndoEuropean?) (It's still no good: IndoEuropean is a current (set of) language(s), not at all an ancient language.) (We don't know any truly ancient languages! the evidence is rubbed clean.)
Anyway, here we have a bunch of failed magicians, now called rabbis (translate as "priests"), convincing themselves that they have lured their creation god into the box where they keep their contract with this magician in the sky, which they call their Covenant, and the box the Covenant's "ark": the Ark of the Covenant. The Jews tell themselves, and anyone who's listening, borrowing, imitating, that the box is for the God's comfort, and protection: the people feed and care for their god. But anyone not quite buying everything they say not quite literally can suppose that they might just have lured the god into the box to hold him captive and make him behave: that is, to make the sun rise and the rain rain for the Jews: and make their enemies tremble and fall in the dust.
(French Christians followed this behavior almost exactly when they erected their Chartres Cathedral: only in the European case it was the female spirt Mary the French were trying to lure and capture: mitigating the furious judgment of her male counterpart Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
And in the US, on Morningside Heights, across the street from Riverside Cathedral, in the 1960s was erected a limestone pile called by locals the God Box. It's Church of England (Roman Catholic with the Pope (and his wops) washed out), diluted to Anglican (the British washed out): sort of generic American Protestant (Christian with the religion washed out). It's not altogether clear what American Christians want: sort of Forgiveness: while they keep the money.)
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Theology
One hundred percent of pk theology is human theology. Some may be divinely inspired, some may be naturally inspired, some may be human inspired, but it's still human theology, thought by me, counter-thought by me (and maybe others). As far as I can tell the same is true of all the theology I've ever heard or heard of; though some claim otherwise. For example, the Jews say they get their idea that they, the Jews, are God's Chosen People from God. That is, the Jews make this claim based on their oral and written tradition. But does that really pass muster as being from God? Aren't' alternate explanations possible? Couldn't they, or anyone, be deluding themselves?
I don't say it's not true: I say we haven't heard it from God. It's not beyond challenge.
Never mind, I've made points like this all my life, to no avail. Let me skip straight to what's galling me today:
Last night I watched Alien 3, squirming and retching. Ripley and her perennial alien visit a prison planet run by fundamentalist Christian convicts, men who claim to be soldiers of Christ. Of course we have only their claim. Christ remains unheard from, at least on that subject, at least in the two hour confines of that bit of meretricious tripe. Same with all Christianity, isn't it? When do we get to hear the Christian accepted as Christian by God? by Christ? by Jesus?
Will it be at the same time we get to hear that the Jews are God's Chosen People from God?
Similarly, I hear the government claim to be of the people, for the people; but I don't hear it from the people. Oh, I hear it from the schooled, from the brain washed. I'd like to hear it from a couple of hundred million plus individuals, any one of which could pass my Turing Test!
Theology: human sentience speculating on a-human sentience (as well as cause-and-effect): pre-human sentience, pre-universe sentience, pre-cosmos sentience (are these nonsense categories?) ... meta-sentience ...
I don't say it's not true: I say we haven't heard it from God. It's not beyond challenge.
Never mind, I've made points like this all my life, to no avail. Let me skip straight to what's galling me today:
Last night I watched Alien 3, squirming and retching. Ripley and her perennial alien visit a prison planet run by fundamentalist Christian convicts, men who claim to be soldiers of Christ. Of course we have only their claim. Christ remains unheard from, at least on that subject, at least in the two hour confines of that bit of meretricious tripe. Same with all Christianity, isn't it? When do we get to hear the Christian accepted as Christian by God? by Christ? by Jesus?
Will it be at the same time we get to hear that the Jews are God's Chosen People from God?
Similarly, I hear the government claim to be of the people, for the people; but I don't hear it from the people. Oh, I hear it from the schooled, from the brain washed. I'd like to hear it from a couple of hundred million plus individuals, any one of which could pass my Turing Test!
Theology: human sentience speculating on a-human sentience (as well as cause-and-effect): pre-human sentience, pre-universe sentience, pre-cosmos sentience (are these nonsense categories?) ... meta-sentience ...
Judge Not
Judge not, lest ye be judged, says the Bible. But we judge all the time!
So do I, and I don't apologize for it; but I don't practice it while pretending that I don't believe in it.
I've meant to say the following at Knatz.com for many years now. I'll just slap it here, then gather more around the seed pebble later:
The French have pretended to be Christian on more than one occasion throughout more than one millennium. Christians: aren't they known for believing, or at least pretending to believe, that God is the judge? that Christians believe that God should be the judge? not the French? not humans? Then how come the French buried the Marquis de Sade in lime?
The French buried the Marquis de Sade in lime so that de Sade couldn't resurrect! The French didn't want to allow God a chance to judge him: the French had already judged him, so God couldn't be allowed to judge him. (No body, no resurrection; no resurrection, no judgment: according to older superstitions.)
So do I, and I don't apologize for it; but I don't practice it while pretending that I don't believe in it.
I've meant to say the following at Knatz.com for many years now. I'll just slap it here, then gather more around the seed pebble later:
The French have pretended to be Christian on more than one occasion throughout more than one millennium. Christians: aren't they known for believing, or at least pretending to believe, that God is the judge? that Christians believe that God should be the judge? not the French? not humans? Then how come the French buried the Marquis de Sade in lime?
The French buried the Marquis de Sade in lime so that de Sade couldn't resurrect! The French didn't want to allow God a chance to judge him: the French had already judged him, so God couldn't be allowed to judge him. (No body, no resurrection; no resurrection, no judgment: according to older superstitions.)
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