Everybody wants an apocalypse
by M. Stewart
An Associated Press story got my attention this morning: “The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.” If you want to see the details, click here.
If such a terrible thing happens, we can assume it will be at the hands of religious nuts. After all, everybody wants an apocalypse.
That’s the problem with religion: Because Jehovah, Allah, etc. are fictional characters, they can’t actually do anything in the real world, so humans have to pick up the slack and do the dirty work for them. They act as agents of God by spreading death and disease throughout the land. Then someone writes it up, claiming that God’s hand has moved on the Earth. Worse yet, everybody believes it.
The harmless parts of religion—going to church, singing songs, praying, helping the poor and the sick in times of need—don’t pose much of a threat to civilization. It’s when people imagine that God is responsible for human history that things go bad.
I forgive the ancients for their innocent beliefs. After all, they lived in a completely pre-scientific world where everything was magic. No one knew why anything happened, so it made sense to assume that an invisible hand was at work behind the scenes. Aside from a profound aversion to reality, there is no excuse for it now.
People like fiction far more than fact. Good stories have protagonists and antagonists locked in conflict. Tension slowly rises to a climax, at which point the conflict is resolved—usually by violence—and order is restored. Those of us who study fictional narratives call this the “standard plot curve,” but we understand that it’s an artificial construct employed by storytellers. We don’t confuse it with reality.
When you make no distinction between fiction and reality, which is the case with most religious people, you can cause a lot of trouble. If you believe an imaginary being is telling you to kill those who believe in another imaginary being, then mass murder makes a lot of sense. If most people in the world believe an invisible man is running the universe, then what does it matter if some people don’t?
I assume this bipartisan commission that has predicted an imminent nuclear or biological terrorist attack has our best interests in mind. And yes, President Obama needs to do whatever he can to avoid such a catastrophe. But as long as there are people in the world who believe they are duty-bound to carry out God’s mission of vengeance and destruction, we’re going to have to live with this kind of madness.
If, on the other hand, the majority of humans ever get to a point where they understand the difference between fiction and reality, only then will we be safe from our gods. To that end, we all need to take the study of literature more seriously.
An Associated Press story got my attention this morning: “The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.” If you want to see the details, click here.
If such a terrible thing happens, we can assume it will be at the hands of religious nuts. After all, everybody wants an apocalypse.
That’s the problem with religion: Because Jehovah, Allah, etc. are fictional characters, they can’t actually do anything in the real world, so humans have to pick up the slack and do the dirty work for them. They act as agents of God by spreading death and disease throughout the land. Then someone writes it up, claiming that God’s hand has moved on the Earth. Worse yet, everybody believes it.
The harmless parts of religion—going to church, singing songs, praying, helping the poor and the sick in times of need—don’t pose much of a threat to civilization. It’s when people imagine that God is responsible for human history that things go bad.
I forgive the ancients for their innocent beliefs. After all, they lived in a completely pre-scientific world where everything was magic. No one knew why anything happened, so it made sense to assume that an invisible hand was at work behind the scenes. Aside from a profound aversion to reality, there is no excuse for it now.
People like fiction far more than fact. Good stories have protagonists and antagonists locked in conflict. Tension slowly rises to a climax, at which point the conflict is resolved—usually by violence—and order is restored. Those of us who study fictional narratives call this the “standard plot curve,” but we understand that it’s an artificial construct employed by storytellers. We don’t confuse it with reality.
When you make no distinction between fiction and reality, which is the case with most religious people, you can cause a lot of trouble. If you believe an imaginary being is telling you to kill those who believe in another imaginary being, then mass murder makes a lot of sense. If most people in the world believe an invisible man is running the universe, then what does it matter if some people don’t?
I assume this bipartisan commission that has predicted an imminent nuclear or biological terrorist attack has our best interests in mind. And yes, President Obama needs to do whatever he can to avoid such a catastrophe. But as long as there are people in the world who believe they are duty-bound to carry out God’s mission of vengeance and destruction, we’re going to have to live with this kind of madness.
If, on the other hand, the majority of humans ever get to a point where they understand the difference between fiction and reality, only then will we be safe from our gods. To that end, we all need to take the study of literature more seriously.
posted by M. | 8:59 AM
12 Comments:
*Actually, wars are seldom fought due to the real or supposed will of a deity. They are usually started with greed in mind-a U.S. corporation sees that it can make money from a war, for instance. Or, territory is the real issue (Israel in the Arab lands). And don't forget retribution. That's what keeps running the longest wars when money and power have long since ceased to matter. The insanity of a nation's leader and his ability to fire up the masses is also a huge factor.
*Religion is always brought in later. We didn't fear godlessness in Southeast Asia; we were in a battle of colonialism with a godless country and quite a few corporations saw a way to make money. The Republican party planted the idea amongst its religious faction that and invasion of Iraq was an invasion of Babylon and a furtherence of God's and the book of Revelation's will for our Jewish cohorts. We all know that the war was about greed through and through. Even W. wasn't silly enough to think he was Armageddon it.
*America is probably the best example of the warmongerer who claims divine right as an excuse for fighting. But, not to worry. Soon we may export our unabashed bloodthirsty excuses to other nations. If they pay attention, they can invade places like Somalia while claiming to be there to feed people.
*I'm all for becoming better readers in order to understand major religious texts. If we did, we'd see that few advocate the types of battles most nations create. If we adhered to one of the major religions, we'd stop manufacturing reasons to fight and we might even become true peacemakers in areas of the world that are begging for the intervention of industrialized nations to stop rapes and genocide (many African nations come to mind) instead of fiancially backing the perpetrators of these atrocities.
*To the author-be open to a spiritual experience.
How will I know when I have a "spiritual experience"?
M,
You talk about how you don't understand how people this day and age can believe in their religions with the science and evidence that we have available. Well let’s look at it this way, as a person with a degree in science I know that most of science is theory. There is much more uncertainty in the science world as compared to fact. Honestly if you research what a scientific law or fact is it basically describes these facts or laws are what is expected to happen until proven wrong. It does not say that these facts are true without 100% accuracy. Science is a funny idea, just like statistics you can twist them to say and prove almost anything you want. A lot of people believe that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin mother, who had been visited by an angel comfort and explain the situation, and the husband went a long with it. Pretty farfetched story huh? But you know what I believe it. How is this wild story any different than the idea of the big bang theory, think about it? Everything in the universe, universal garbage if you will just happen to swirl together in one large mass, that just happen to hit a certain temperature, have all the right conditions, and then it implodes to create carbon. And then there you have carbon, what we call organic matter (not life, but organic matter) which turned into archaic matter, then into single celled organisms, and to make a long story short we then derived from this carbon. I guess it’s just how you look at it, both farfetched, but I guess I am pleased with the fact that my faith allows me to believe in a higher being much greater than me!
M - when you see 77 virgins you infedale
End of overlook--
I tend not to get my science from people of faith for precisely the reasons you mention. It really is pretty crazy to believe that once upon a time an angel came down from heaven and impregnated a Hebrew woman, and the offspring was the son of god. The story is kind of cool, I'll give you that, but true? No. Because you need or want to believe it doesn't make it so.
Scientific theory is based on the rational analysis of physical evidence. It's not just made up stories and fantasies. Science isn't mythology. Once again, claiming that it is doesn't make it so.
If scientific theory is based on the rational analysis of physical evidence, how do you explain evolutionary theory or the big bang theory? In both aren't the materials used to develop the theories either non-existant or nearly impossible to evaluate?
Not at all. Both theories--even though they really don't have much to do with one another--are based upon a great deal of factual evidence and observation. As for natural selection--Darwin's theory of evolution--it continues to be the dominant model after 150 years. As much as they have tried (which is what scientists do), evolutionary biologist have not been able to dislodge Darwin's basic principles. As for big bang theory, it is based on decades of astronomical data gathering. No credible theory can be based on nothing. Scientific theories are based upon the logical interpretation of data. Other theories can take over older theories because new information comes to light or because someone understands the data in a better, more useful way.
M -
It's probably a waste of time trying to convince someone like The_end_of_overlook or brontosaurus feathers. However, the Big Bang theory is based on the red shift that shows all the universe is continually expanding and heavenly bodies are moving away from one another. The red shift is a wave property that is called the Doppler effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Man9ulEYSgk. The red shift of the stars is measurable. There is nothing comparable for the virgin birth. The virgin birth is based entirely on faith. It may have happened, but the only thing to back it up are the stories that were passed down through the centuries.
Eloquent M. but you disregard that both theories began as explanations for observations. They were then explained by a somewhat remarkable bunch of coincidences (sound like a description of the Bible?). Once the story was entrenched the data changed but the overarching explanation did't.
Understanding the data in more useful ways is what relgious scientists out to prove Bible stories to be true do. It all comes down to faith. You believe in a what's transmitted in a book. Either what claims to be handed down or in what scientists tell you.
Matt
The Associated Press story is right on target. However, my sources told me years ago that the attack would be nuclear.
Also, I might add that he said that two of the nukes were already here. In the USA.
He didn't say where, and I didn't ask.
Let me add two more items while I'm at it. somewhere in mid 1998 or 1999 I received a trans-Atlantic packet from a woman who ask me if I might be able to help her find her children that were here in the USA as she has given them up for adoption. I sent a packet back to her and ask her some detail about the children and why it was so urgent that she find them now. She replied the next evening by telling me by them being in the USA that they were in danger. So, knowing what happened on 9/11 I come to the belief that this attack was to be much larger than it was and if so that would mean that their are still some sleeper cells here. By the way I did take some action on this as it was some-what believable, so I printed the message out and gave it to a neighbor of mine who was head of security at the shipping port nuke plant.
Lastly, I'm sure that you heard that Barack Obama's computer network had been compromised, what you probably don't know is that I figured that out some time before they knew it and called the campaign headquarters and told them. When they didn't seem to care or take any action on the issue, I called the DNC and as them if they could get a message to the Obama's IT Techs. That request fell on deaf ears also, so a few days later I logged on to CNN and went to Jack Cafferty's Blog and posted the fact there, and it got side-lined, (each time I checked it said "Waiting for moderation") so I just threw my hand up an said O'well let-em get hacked.
All this just make a person feel warm and fuzzy and very secure all over doesn't it?
Sparky Miller
Religion has a way of trying to keep people honest. It's like locking your house,it only works on the honest crooks. Reading stories on Mythology and other religions don't you think its funny that they all have their own version of the same stories? Sorry, but I have a hard time believing in religion when you have so many dishonest churches, preachers, and church goers out in the world. It's all to gather money, your money to build something better and greater than the next church. If there was a God then it wouldn't matter what your religion was as long as you were doing the right thing. Please don't get me started on the whole forgiveness thing either and how God wants us to forgive, because if that were the case then capital punishment wouldn't be there. How contradictory life is, an eye for an eye yet forgive as well. The meek shall inherit the Earth my ass, if that were the case then so many innocent wouldn't be sacrificed. I know with every religion you have to have a sacrificial lamb, well then why not the rapists and murders instead of the people who have lived life honestly.
SunnyD-
I like your style!
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