Skip to main content

The Danger in Taking the Silly Seriously

By Carl S ~

Disney's animated version of “Alice in Wonderland” includes the tale of “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” As a child, I memorized the beginning verses, “The sun was shining on the sea/ Shining with all his might./ He did his very best to make/ the billows smooth and bright./ And this was very odd because/ It was the middle of the night.” On the movie screen was the beach and sky landscape, divided in half with the daylight sun beaming brightly on one half, and on the other half, the same beach and sky now dark, with a moon and stars lighting them.

It's a silly beginning to a tale, but it's no less ridiculous than “Let there be light,” as if night and day are separately divided from one another as depicted in the tale/movie. Light and darkness are not absolutes; they are the different degrees between presence or absence of light emissions. Night or day are not like a sheet of black paper placed on a sheet of white paper. And yet, good and evil are likened to the forces of light/virtue/truth, versus the forces of darkness/evil/lies. It is a doctrine of the battle between these two absolutes, which will not end until the world itself ends, at which time the forces of light will absolutely triumph. This doctrine, which can be traced back to the Persian prophet Zarathustra, who lived in the 6th century B.C., persists in this 21st century!

This doctrine of absolutes is a weapon picked up and wielded by Christianity and Islam ever since, and is responsible for untold injustice, persecutions, and deaths throughout the ages. We continually witness the results from those who regard themselves as the Enforcers of Light, such as the Christian Right and ISIS, and the damage they are doing right in front of us, to human rights, society, and conscience.

We don't live in a comic book Universe of absolutes.The “absolute” difference between light and darkness is a lie; there are variations, degrees, nuances and intermingling within night and day, not counting the constant shadows, without which we could not define shapes. Those who will seek to destroy the nuances with their absolute erasure of “darkness“ are anti-realistic about Nature itself, not just human nature.

It's high time this silliness comes to a stop, except in fantasy tales and other entertainments, where it is harmless. We don't live in a comic book Universe of absolutes.

Because of some disturbing and profound feeling I can't quite articulate, I would appreciate input from you, the readers. I watched the movie “The Book Thief” yesterday, which takes place in Germany during Hitler's reign. I sensed a connection between the dogma of absolute good and evil alongside the realities taking place at the time. What brought out a special feeling of unease, though, was the public square bonfire built of a huge pile of banned books. The mayor's speech, denouncing those writings, made a national virtue out of destroying them. I was reminded that totalitarianism means total control over everything, and eradication of everything that is otherwise beyond its control. And that, for over a thousand years, this is what Christianity practiced and would practice again, given the power.

During the movie, I thought of: Leviticus 11:13-19. There it states that a bat is a bird. That same book says that gold and silver rust, that dragons exist, predicts the world will end “soon” (back then), and that a creator of light dwelt in darkness before he created light! These are just as silly as “odd because it was the middle of the night,” and yet believers are taught to take them seriously or suffer now and forever if they don't. I must ask myself if believing without rational evidence for belief results in giving power to others in order to execute the believers’ prejudices, without them taking responsibility. What are your thoughts on this? The word “Dangerous!” keeps flashing before me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two