Believers in deities seem regularly to believe that the god is responsible for gifts received, gifts denied, rewards and punishments, good fortune or ill. Believers seem to believe that prosperity is proof of favor with a god.
Such beliefs seem to be universal, yet such beliefs are not supported by the Testaments of the Jews, and they seem flat out contradicted by the Testaments of the Christians.
Examples to follow, and more exposition. Meantime, think for yourself: Adam, Noah, Abraham ... Esau, Sampson ... Job: and John the Baptist, Jesus himself, St. Peter, etc. And think since the Gospels: Martin Luther ...
Think also of the real "saints," the truth tellers, the intellectual independents: Abelard, Galileo ... Think of me, pk, and my teacher, Ivan Illich. No: if god loves you, expect man to hate you. Expect to be the eaten, not the eater.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The Name of God
The Jehovah's Witness who rings your door bell makes a fuss over the god of their sect having a name: Jehovah. The Jews, from whom this god is derived, have been making a fuss for millennia over the name of their tribal deity: Yahweh. And of course Jehovah is an illiterate corruption of Yahweh: so, actually, they're talking about the "same" god. (Nothing is ever the same, pk, except to the blind.) (Note: translate derived as "borrowed" but translate borrowed as stolen!)
Now to this religious, me, pk, when I was a tyke, the name of my god was important: so said my indoctrination. God name was Jehovah (though we were also told that it was a mis-transliteration: from Yahweh). I soon saw that the Bible also used a few titles. Washington could be called "George," or "George Washington," or "Mr. Washington"; he could also be called "General Washington," then "Mr. President." So God, who was called Yahweh by the Jews, and was called Jehovah by the Christians, was also called "Lord" by the Jews (Elohim) and by the Christians (Lord, from the English, not the Semitic). (Note: Elohim in Hebrew is a plural! Think of the Bible's "let us ..." (Some monotheism!))
(Meantime the Arabs call their Semitic god Allah!)
Now the tyke pk believed (as he was indoctrinated) that God (or Jehovah, or Yahweh, or Lord, or Lord God ...) (or Allah) cared about these trivia: that God was a magical, old, male magician (whose name) was not Lilith, and certainly not Beatrice) who "made" the world with magical incantations. Eventually God manifested himself to me, after a suitable period of development, alternate training, and reflection, and communicated to me (not in words, and not by graphics either) that all that was primitive ignorant supposition, harmless if you think of thinking, particularly ill-informed thinking, as metaphor: as modeling. Thus I came not to reject the idea of god, neither to quarrel about diction in a theological semantics controlled by the intolerant and unimaginative) but to translate the terms into equivalents of theory: an idea never fully tested, always refin-able.
Think of this: To a magician, "abracadabra" may turn the water into wine. It must be spelled right. The sorcerer doing the translation must have fasted the proper number of days, have deprived himself of the company of women for the proper portion of his lifetime ... But: the mathematician calls the ratio of radius of a circle to its circumference, by the formula pi r squared, "pi." What if he called it "Sam"? or "Barbara"? Wouldn't the value, wouldn't the ratio, still be the same?
God introduced himself to me in terms of my developing, always imperfect, never fully mature sense of reason. "God" is a principle more than a principal.
More coming, but the alert reader should be able to develop the implications whether or not I drop dead before returning.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Nix Meta-Messages
Communication between the essence of existence (god as it were) and an individual human being is possible. Communication between that individual and his society (on that particular matter) is not. Jesus was crucified when he tried to pass such messages.
Even without a "Bible" I know this: from my own as well as others' experience.
Jesus' disciples meet the same fate: especially at churches claiming to represent Jesus. But it's the same with secular subjects: Galileo, for example. Ivan Illich. Yours truly.
Even without a "Bible" I know this: from my own as well as others' experience.
Jesus' disciples meet the same fate: especially at churches claiming to represent Jesus. But it's the same with secular subjects: Galileo, for example. Ivan Illich. Yours truly.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Magic vs. Order
pk note: the state as a god of magic pretending to be a god of reason, order, honesty, truth
M. Kaku distinguished between "the" "god" of "magic" and the god of "order." So do I. I urge you to do likewise.
Ivan Illich illustrated similarities between "religion" and "politics." (So do I. And I urge you to do likewise.) Illich added that "school" is the new "universal" religion, that "experts" are "secular" "priests": doctors, lawyers, teachers ... (So do I. And I urge you to do likewise.)
That all old old pk stuff: old by the time I put it online in 1995. Here's the wrinkle that brought me here today: religions work confusions between order and magic to their own benefit (and to the detriment of the public's already-limited ability to reason): today people don't believe in the Church but they do believer in "US," in "America" ... in education, in "freedom," in a "free" marketplace" ... (And so do I: if only we had any such!)
The US-etc. uses compulsory schools, compulsory taxation, its monopoly on punishment, its tag-team-"monopoly" on resources ... to set itself up an an "Authority" (false authority, of course). Specifically: secular authority parades as representing order, reason ... truth; actually it represents, it manifests ... magic: false magic, of course.
Order is corrupted: all we are left is lies: with extinction right around the bend.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Kingdom of Man
The Church is run by men. It's preposterous to claim any connection with God, let alone a privileged connection or an exclusive connection — without that connection being backed by the god in question.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Grace
God used Jesus to expose the Temple as outside God's grace.
God used Ivan Illich to expose the Church as outside God's grace.
The above is "theology": a step or two removed: theology by association.
It doesn't matter how high in a church the priests elevate themselves: so long as Jesus is still nailed on the cross (like a carcass in the ghouls' and vampires' meat locker, and all around him hang the innumerable leasts of these his brethren).
God is still using pk to expose the human world's dominant kleptocracy as wholly of a kind with the Temple and the Church: outside God's grace.
In God's kingdom good will be rewarded. Meantime, we're in the kingdom of man: and evil reigns: not unchallenged, but unsuccessfully challenged.
God used Ivan Illich to expose the Church as outside God's grace.
The above is "theology": a step or two removed: theology by association.
It doesn't matter how high in a church the priests elevate themselves: so long as Jesus is still nailed on the cross (like a carcass in the ghouls' and vampires' meat locker, and all around him hang the innumerable leasts of these his brethren).
God is still using pk to expose the human world's dominant kleptocracy as wholly of a kind with the Temple and the Church: outside God's grace.
In God's kingdom good will be rewarded. Meantime, we're in the kingdom of man: and evil reigns: not unchallenged, but unsuccessfully challenged.
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