It's been a quiet month blog wise, I know you all want more but I've been in video game heaven and doing other stuff, and there's no point in blogging unless I have something worth saying really. So get a cup of tea, settle down and get ready for a humanistic rant. I'm actually in the process of setting up another blog based on my atheist/humanistic ideals but haven't got around to the finer details yet, so until then I have to use my trusty old hobbit blog to get things of my chest and rant with my usual vitriol against all things organised religion orientated.
It almost seemed like a Déjà vu instance as I perused my local paper the Newark Advertiser today. As usual I read the 'Credo' column to see what my religious local friends are up to and who should be featured but the person from my last rant, none other than Lesley Marshall from the church of promise (see the earlier 'You're In Control' blog).
So what proverbial and intellectual gems does Lesley have to offer this time around? Well she's been to the cinema to see Tin Tin and she mentions the senses being bombarded by technology on a daily basis, and at this point I am indeed nodding and concurring. Then we move on to meaningful silence and having studied psychotherapy in the past I am aware how much meaningful silence can be important in some circumstances and situations be it counselling or within a relationship.
Then like the last entry Lesley made we move swiftly into God territory with wildly delusional claims of 'God is the Lord of eternity. He is the creator of time. His timing is perfect and he is never late or rushed.' I lean into my cup of coffee and breathe in, the pungent aroma filling my nostrils and I ponder 'Will Lesley wake up and smell the coffee one day?'
These certainly are fantastical claims Lesley makes and I muse if the so called god of eternity is so pre-occupied with time as to look earthwards and see women being gang raped in the Congo, people being slain by a dictator in Syria or children foraging for scraps of food in the ghetto's of Buenos Aires?
Lesley then goes on to ironically mention how much attention god makes to the smallest details by saying 'It's not just the big crises that god wants to be involved in, but he is concerned with all the small details too.' Well evidently not Lesley because just take a casual look at the news on a daily basis, it's not good is it?
She goes on to add 'Already I can hear some of you hyperventilating in thinking how far behind you'd get in your day if you just sat down in silence and did nothing but chat with god.'
Well firstly I'd tell god what an awful mess things are down here and to come and live as a mortal for a day, feel pain and suffering, feel sadness and despair and get a dose of reality. Unfortunately I can't do this because the phone is swinging aimlessly off the hook because god isn't there, he doesn't exist.
I pity people like Lesley, in their comfy little alternate reality bubble, their twee little world of godly goodness, their world of 'it's gods will' when you point out the calamities of today.
She goes on to suggest that we should try and talk to god and see a quality of life beyond our wildest imagination. Grand and deluded claims indeed, you only have to read the bible to see what a celestial dictator/gangster character god really was. I have to hand it to Lesley she is the queen of wild boasts and extremely knowledgeable when it comes to making sweeping assumptions.
There's a great little book called 'Being Good' by Simon Blackburn which is basically about ethics and in it he quotes;
'All in all, then, the bible can be read as giving us carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits and elderly women. It encourages harsh attitudes to ourselves as fallen creatures endlessly polluted by sin, and hatred of ourselves inevitably brings hatred of others.'
That kind of puts it better than I could really and sums things up perfectly, I could add to the statement with passages from the bible but why bore you with that rubbish. As the philosopher Nietzsche puts it;
'Christianity is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage and intellectual libertinage'
These are tough times the world is in, we need level heads and pragmatism to see us through, not some flights of celestial fantasy from such as Lesley Marshall and other christians. The reality is we have to sort our own problems out using common sense and often personal courage and determination. Mankind needs to put faith in itself and not sit around pathetically thinking some higher conscience is running it all. We're the real architects of this planet, we built everything from bridges to hospitals of our own volition and because of our own needs and ultimately we are the architects of our own destiny be it good or bad. If we sat around praying for new hospitals or bridges would they appear?
Religion in my view is very much like a cigarette, if you've never had one then you don't need it. Should you try one and get past the uncertain coughing stage you become addicted, you come to rely on it at all costs and when problems surface you reach for the packet in order to cope just like christians reach for a god as their coping mechanism. Christianity to some is just like a drug, the opium of the masses as Marx once said, thankfully more people these days aren't as reliant on religion.
Personally if religion didn't exist or wasn't created and human kind had no knowledge of it then the world wouldn't need it. Just like if tobacco hadn't been found we wouldn't be smoking. I don't have religion but then I don't need it because I still have the capacity to love my fellow human beings, to smile, to extend my arms and hug someone and to marvel at how beautiful the world can be. I don't need the invisible and pointless crutches that is religion.
Hopefully in the upcoming weeks I'll be launching my humanist blog and hopefully I can use it as a common sense platform and maybe even start up a local humanist discussion group. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading.
It almost seemed like a Déjà vu instance as I perused my local paper the Newark Advertiser today. As usual I read the 'Credo' column to see what my religious local friends are up to and who should be featured but the person from my last rant, none other than Lesley Marshall from the church of promise (see the earlier 'You're In Control' blog).
So what proverbial and intellectual gems does Lesley have to offer this time around? Well she's been to the cinema to see Tin Tin and she mentions the senses being bombarded by technology on a daily basis, and at this point I am indeed nodding and concurring. Then we move on to meaningful silence and having studied psychotherapy in the past I am aware how much meaningful silence can be important in some circumstances and situations be it counselling or within a relationship.
Then like the last entry Lesley made we move swiftly into God territory with wildly delusional claims of 'God is the Lord of eternity. He is the creator of time. His timing is perfect and he is never late or rushed.' I lean into my cup of coffee and breathe in, the pungent aroma filling my nostrils and I ponder 'Will Lesley wake up and smell the coffee one day?'
These certainly are fantastical claims Lesley makes and I muse if the so called god of eternity is so pre-occupied with time as to look earthwards and see women being gang raped in the Congo, people being slain by a dictator in Syria or children foraging for scraps of food in the ghetto's of Buenos Aires?
Lesley then goes on to ironically mention how much attention god makes to the smallest details by saying 'It's not just the big crises that god wants to be involved in, but he is concerned with all the small details too.' Well evidently not Lesley because just take a casual look at the news on a daily basis, it's not good is it?
She goes on to add 'Already I can hear some of you hyperventilating in thinking how far behind you'd get in your day if you just sat down in silence and did nothing but chat with god.'
Well firstly I'd tell god what an awful mess things are down here and to come and live as a mortal for a day, feel pain and suffering, feel sadness and despair and get a dose of reality. Unfortunately I can't do this because the phone is swinging aimlessly off the hook because god isn't there, he doesn't exist.
I pity people like Lesley, in their comfy little alternate reality bubble, their twee little world of godly goodness, their world of 'it's gods will' when you point out the calamities of today.
She goes on to suggest that we should try and talk to god and see a quality of life beyond our wildest imagination. Grand and deluded claims indeed, you only have to read the bible to see what a celestial dictator/gangster character god really was. I have to hand it to Lesley she is the queen of wild boasts and extremely knowledgeable when it comes to making sweeping assumptions.
There's a great little book called 'Being Good' by Simon Blackburn which is basically about ethics and in it he quotes;
'All in all, then, the bible can be read as giving us carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits and elderly women. It encourages harsh attitudes to ourselves as fallen creatures endlessly polluted by sin, and hatred of ourselves inevitably brings hatred of others.'
That kind of puts it better than I could really and sums things up perfectly, I could add to the statement with passages from the bible but why bore you with that rubbish. As the philosopher Nietzsche puts it;
'Christianity is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage and intellectual libertinage'
These are tough times the world is in, we need level heads and pragmatism to see us through, not some flights of celestial fantasy from such as Lesley Marshall and other christians. The reality is we have to sort our own problems out using common sense and often personal courage and determination. Mankind needs to put faith in itself and not sit around pathetically thinking some higher conscience is running it all. We're the real architects of this planet, we built everything from bridges to hospitals of our own volition and because of our own needs and ultimately we are the architects of our own destiny be it good or bad. If we sat around praying for new hospitals or bridges would they appear?
Religion in my view is very much like a cigarette, if you've never had one then you don't need it. Should you try one and get past the uncertain coughing stage you become addicted, you come to rely on it at all costs and when problems surface you reach for the packet in order to cope just like christians reach for a god as their coping mechanism. Christianity to some is just like a drug, the opium of the masses as Marx once said, thankfully more people these days aren't as reliant on religion.
Personally if religion didn't exist or wasn't created and human kind had no knowledge of it then the world wouldn't need it. Just like if tobacco hadn't been found we wouldn't be smoking. I don't have religion but then I don't need it because I still have the capacity to love my fellow human beings, to smile, to extend my arms and hug someone and to marvel at how beautiful the world can be. I don't need the invisible and pointless crutches that is religion.
Hopefully in the upcoming weeks I'll be launching my humanist blog and hopefully I can use it as a common sense platform and maybe even start up a local humanist discussion group. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading.
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