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americanre
Keeping The Eternal Entertained - Subscribe
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This post is going to be something of a ramble, as I'm composing it as I go. I've had this jumble of thought working in the background of my mind for a while now, and I thought that since almost no one reads this site anyway, no one will care if I use it to work out my thoughts. To get to my point, I am troubled by how mankind makes God in its own image. No, I wrote what I meant, to wit: â€" Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann As explained in Wikipedia (and a view to which I subscribe): "God is dead" is not meant literally, as in "God is now physically dead"; rather, it is Nietzsche's way of saying that the idea of God is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code ... What that all means - as I understand it - is that Nietsche believes we humans have deposed God from the position of Ultimate Authority. Our behavior seems to support that contention. The opposite position is held by those who believe that God is directly in charge of them ( a thought that terrifies me!), and most others remain somewhere in the middle. I know that many people believe that this is so, at any rate, but an impartial observer would have to be asking the question: just where does the God they claim to follow come from? What sort of Being is He? Is He a life-giving, generous and peaceful Diety, expecting us to learn to live together in harmony, or are we all created merely to keep Him amused through our destruction of each other? One would have to decide upon the latter, based on the way we rush to slaughter each other in the name of Our God, whoever He may be, throughout our history. We've gone from a fatally direct connection with The Divine through the practice of human sacrifice for religious purposes to making death and destruction a thing of play and war a way of life. To illustrate "death as play", just yesterday two Colorado teens killed the younger sister of one of them with martial moves inspired by playing the violence game Mortal Kombat. The seven-year-old victim apparently had told them {boyfriend and girlfriend, perhaps?} to stop wrestling, and they turned on her, inflicting major injury sufficient to cause death. When asked why they did it, the male said, "I don't know - I was drunk" - as if that lame remark justifies anything. If these teens had any real religious training of a loving God that wants peaceful life for us (as asserted when it suits those who claim to be in touch with God), could they possibly conceive of performing such acts? I say no. But they could if they understood that the Almighty desires us to kill one another! It wouldn't take much to bring this about, as our recent history demonstrates. Christian absolutists are always saying that God's word means exactly what it says, and then they write volumes "explaining" why The Word supports their bloodthirsty methods used to attempt to satisfy their greed. Even The Word can be twisted by the so-called experts to suit the times. It's like religious people have to kill off the idea that we had once evolved above the world of kill or be killed because they can't see or imagine anything else. If no better world CAN exist, then no better world WILL exist. I'm tired of this! I happen to believe that a better world is possible, but how does one inspire that belief in others? I have no answer, and I'm up against a well-entrenched power elite which manipulates the majority of us through the use of media images and religious convolution, but I'm very concerned that we are going to go through an extended period of incredible violence. Millions will be killed, if not billions. And if by some chance humanity manages to survive the Ultimate Blood Ritual, then maybe then there is a chance of seeing that better world come about. Maybe we as a race will finally tire of death and destruction and want something better for our Posterity. Otherwise, who would keep The Eternal entertained? |