Blasphemy @ MindSay 
THOUGHTS and WORDS of the DAMNED
1
For most of my life I found it hard to relate to some of the more “religious” people and also, it seemed, they to me. For them, it was not nearly enough that I thought that their Jesus, if he'd ever really existed, had had some good ideas; nor was it nearly enough that I thought peace and love the two great virtues of life and the two which their Jesus seemed bravely to teach; and not nearly enough that I had tried myself—though I'd failed—to be a nonviolent and loving man; and not nearly enough that I thought their Jesus, as he was portrayed in their “holy” book, a good and courageous man truly and sincerely interested in helping and serving the needy and the poor.
2
No, some of these “religious” people seemed to want me to "believe" or to believe "in" Jesus (a distinction I never quite understood), and neither option was a habit of mind I thought conducive to social harmony and world peace or, without better evidence and more rational argument, compatible with good sense. Though they told me their Jesus was not dead but “living” and even “present” and some, even, that they themselves had a “personal relationship” with Jesus, they obviously used these words—“living,” “alive,” “present,” “personal relationship”—in senses much different from the common, everyday meanings of these words.
3
If I suggested that they perhaps meant "living" and "present" not in a physical but only in a spiritual sense, they demurred. No, they insisted, they meant that their Jesus was both spiritually and physically "alive" and "present." But Jesus, it was clear, did not “live” as these advocates for “belief” now “lived,” for example, nor was Jesus now ever “present” in the same way they themselves were “present.” I could not shake the hand of Jesus as I could shake theirs, nor could I give him a hug as I could hug these Christians who were undeniably “alive,” “living,” and “present.” I did have with them what we could agree was a “personal relationship,” and it was obvious that their “personal relationship” with Jesus was of a much different kind.
4
A few of these people even considered it a part of their “mission,” or so they called it, to persuade me and others to "believe" or to believe "in" this Jesus. But "believing" and “belief” were just not the same type of mental activity for me as it was for these "believers." I had few if any "beliefs" on the big issues of life—where life, earth, and the universe had all come from, for example, or where it was all going, or where and how it would all end, or what we were supposed to do, how we were supposed to live, while we wandered in the mystery and infinity of the universe. Me, I wasn't sure. These big mysteries tended to make me cautious.
5
I was not afraid to live or to die, though of course like everyone else I hoped not to suffer and linger in terrible pain or to become in my infirmity too great a burden on others. No, on the big mysteries of life, on the big questions of existence, there was little if anything I felt I knew for certain. Where others said they had "faith" and "belief" unsupported by evidence or logic, I had only hopes, curiosity, and questions. The very few "beliefs" I did have I considered very tentative indeed, so tentative they were hardly real "beliefs" at all. I held them lightly, warily, and, as I had been taught by all of my best teachers in school, I worked hard to maintain an open mind.
6
If I myself had any “mission” at all, and normally I would say that I did not, I supposed it was no more than to foster in world society this attitude—to open my mind, to be patient, to listen, to study, to think, to be peaceable and kind. I had come to see religious “beliefs” not as aids but as obstacles to justice and peace, just as I had come to see “god” not as an ultimate answer but as a question. Ultimate answers, I thought I'd learned, closed minds; questions opened them.
7
If persuasive evidence should appear, I would surrender an earlier “belief” readily, try to make myself comfortable with my not knowing, try to integrate any new data, any new argument, into my understanding, and then reformulate my opinion of the whole matter. I was a reader, a writer. My habit of mind was patient, deliberate. If any assertion did not make sense to me, then I withheld my assent to the proposition and I asked any questions that seemed likely to aid me in determining its credibility. In this endeavor I was a hard man to hurry, or so I had been told, and I was innately curious, inquisitive, and relatively fearless in study and inquiry.
8
I seemed to be surrounded by institutions, organizations, and individuals exhorting me to buy this, to buy that, to believe this, to believe that, to do this, to do that, to agree to this, to agree to that, and this welter of competing claims, temptations, and appeals only made me even more careful and more skeptical and even slower finally, if ever, to decide. The more their zeal, the more that others attempted to persuade me of the urgency of their pleas and of the urgency of my assent, the more suspicious to me seemed both appeal and appellant.
9
To me "belief" was one possible consequence, though not necessarily so, of my personal experience, my education, learning, knowledge, evidence, and reason. A “belief” was not something I could imagine myself ever embracing as a result of dread or fear inspired by warning or exhortation: “Believe or else!” Perhaps I was just not smart enough to grasp the concept. Some Christians suggested that I repeat after them: “I accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior!” They advised me to express my belief in this way almost as if these words or others like them were magic words, incantations, invocations: “Jesus is God!”
10
Some suggested that I kneel, fold my hands in “prayer,” and invite their Jesus into my heart. Others asked me to recite aloud esoteric, complex creeds, replete with capital letters, in unison with other "believers" in religious assembly: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord.” But repeating someone else’s words made me feel uncomfortable. I felt like a plagiarist, a cheater, inauthentic, in some way less than genuine; and then, too, some of their words sounded foreign to my ears.
11
What was a “lord,” for example? That wasn’t a word I’d ever used before. Was a “lord” an aristocrat, a noble, a slave master, a commander, or what? Plus I had never met this man Jesus. It didn’t seem wise to say that I would accept this mysterious stranger as my “lord.” To what, exactly, was I promising and agreeing? About this there seemed even among the Christians themselves significant differences of opinion, and yet, despite the lack of anything even remotely approaching consensus let alone unanimity, one Christian would declare himself or herself certain and sure of the “true” meaning of the vow and of the "belief"—as would the next Christian, equally certain and sure, though he or she held a contradictory opinion.
12
Strangely, their own differences of opinion did not inspire in these “believers” the same doubts and questions and intellectual humility that diversity of opinion seemed habitually to inspire in me. Who spoke for this Jesus and by whose authority? Jesus himself had never spoken personally to me nor, so far as I could tell, had he spoken personally to these “believers” who exhorted me to “believe.” Yet some of these “believers” insisted nevertheless that they had a "personal" relationship with their "lord" and that they “knew” their interpretations of “belief” and of “gospel” were correct, and many claimed to have not even a single doubt that this was so.
13
Their references to Jesus, however, remained for me not much different from references to Napoleon or to Julius Caesar, and neither the passionate speeches nor the behavior of those inviting me, urging me, or exhorting me to "believe" appeared indicative of any human conduct I myself wanted to emulate. Indeed, when these advocates of “belief” insisted upon the exclusivity of their “belief” and called it the “only” true way, they too often sounded patronizing, condescending, smug, even intolerant; and these attitudes only reminded me of the terrible crimes in the past that other people with a similar “belief” had perpetrated upon victims they considered "heretics," “unbelievers,” “nonbelievers,” and "infidels" and, yes, even upon people, like me, who had merely expressed what I considered quite moderate and eminently reasonable reservations and doubts about the extravagant claims made for this apparently powerless and invisible "lord," “savior,” and “god.”
14
Their word “savior” felt the same. From what, exactly, would this “lord” Jesus supposedly “save” me? Though there were suffering people I wished I could save or protect from harm, from crime, deprivation, and war, at this time I felt healthy, happy, productive, fulfilled, loving, and loved, and in no need of "saving." Could this Jesus "save," I wondered, the famished, the starving, the injured, the sick, the sad, and the dying that I watched on television? Since Jesus did not, it appeared that Jesus could not. So far, the magic words—“belief,” “lord,” “god,” and “savior”—seemed to lack sufficient power to arrest the terrible human suffering in the world.
15
Why had this "lord" and “savior” not exercised his magic power, I wondered, to stop, as I'd read in the newspaper, the grandfather's pet raccoon from eating the nose and lips of his infant granddaughter as she lay helpless in her crib? Having both the knowledge of such horror and the power to stop it, why had this “lord” Jesus not done so? Though my Christian friends tried their best to explain the omission to me, their explanations were quite complex and required my understanding of even more Christian terminology and dogma and, despite my honest efforts to follow their theological arguments, after all was said and done their answers appeared to me little more than empty rationalizations of the behavior of their “all-knowing” and “all-powerful” lord, god, and “savior.” Just like me, it seemed clear, the “believers” really didn’t know the answer to my question.
16
Some of the Christians who spoke to me of their “belief” said they were now "saved" from "sin," and they insisted that from "sin" I also needed "saving," but the word "sin" was yet another word I had difficulty understanding. To my queries, some Christians responded with still other words and concepts I could not understand—a "fall," they said, an "original” sin committed by some other person who lived and died thousands of years before I existed, and a "depravity" which they said was the given condition of all human beings simply by reason of their birth on earth. Alas, I understood nothing of all this and, instead of persuading me, their tales of an ancient, perfect garden and of a talking snake or serpent only increased my skepticism.
17
I needed to "confess" my "sin," my "depravity," to the "lord," the Christians told me, and to ask my "savior" for his "forgiveness," as these Christians said they themselves had done, but so far as I knew I had done no wrong whatsoever to this mysterious man Jesus. He had lived, after all, two thousand years before I was even born, and, despite all of this “sin,” “depravity,” and “confession” the Christians told me about, these Christians all appeared to me to be ordinary human beings pretty much the same as I.
18
The ideological baggage that their "belief" seemed to require of "believers" was more than I cared to lug along with me on my brief journey among the stars. Some of the Christians packed their "holy" books, their bibles, and concordances to accompany them when they traveled both here on earth and on the fathomless, vast ocean of mind. I had only the simple remark of my Aunt Rosalie, "My religion is be kind and my church is whoever I'm with." I preferred traveling light.
19
As I aged and matured, remorse and regret seemed to become increasingly more natural to me. I learned to recognize sooner my failures. I more readily acknowledged my many mistakes, and I tried as best I could to be quick to apologize for my own wrongs and to be equally quick to forgive others for theirs. It was difficult for me to see much value in dragging some mysterious "lord," “god,” and "savior" into this elementary process. Both the Christians and the non-Christian "followers of Christ," those who said they had no religion but rather a "personal relationship" with their "lord" and "savior," seemed to me no happier than I, no more free of sadness and suffering than I. Indeed, many seemed much less so.
20
Some of these “believers,” in fact, who explained that they had "confessed" their "sins" to the "lord" and claimed they had been "forgiven" and "saved" by their “lord” and “god” and been "reborn" seemed still tormented by their failures to please and to satisfy their "savior" and "lord," and some spent hours in what they called "prayer," a mental activity which resembled ordinary thanking and wishing and hoping, or so I guessed from their descriptions of "prayer." Some Christians did, it seemed, invest their "praying" with more intensity than in a child's everyday wishing upon a star, but they were unable to point to any better results.
21
At the urging of some Christians (and also some of the non-Christian followers of Jesus) I read the Bible. Some of these missionaries had traveled to other continents to distribute copies of this “holy” book to “unbelievers” and to people who followed the teachings of other “gods” and sages. Later, after I had read the Jewish scriptures, to which Christians applied the ethnocentric and pejorative label “old,” and also the Christian scriptures, the “new,” I was skeptical of this practice, since the “god” or “lord” of the “old” text was not merely hostile but homicidal toward peoples other than those this “lord” considered “his” own “chosen” favorite people to whom he had, strangely, "promised" lands upon which others already lived.
22
Disseminating this book and calling it “holy” would hardly seem a friendly, neighborly gesture, I thought, to the many descendants of the unfortunate ethnic peoples this “lord” and “god” had tortured and murdered by the tens of thousands in the stories collected in this “holy” book. Indeed, to promulgate such a literature seemed certain to offend; yet the believers “in” Jesus seemed oblivious to the possibility of such an offense, just as they had been oblivious, it seemed, to the arrogance and condescension inherent in calling the “holy” book of Judaism an “old” testament and their own better, improved supplement to it a “new” testament. Or perhaps, as I could not help but suspect, some did understand these insults, slights, and offenses and just simply didn’t care.
23
In the book about Jesus, I was eager to read what this man himself had written about his being a “god” but, as it turned out, Jesus himself never wrote anything, I learned, and the stories of his life and teachings were recorded by only four followers who actually knew him personally in life. Nor, according to these four biographers of their “lord,” had Jesus ever just flat come out and said, “I am god.” When, puzzled, I mentioned this omission to some of the “believers” who had urged me to read these stories of his life and teachings, they offered elaborate interpretations and explanations of other passages in the text, other remarks their “lord” was reported to have said, that in my Christian friends’ opinion were “almost” the “same” thing as his actually saying in exactly so many words that he was “god.”
24
But I must confess that these interpretations were to me somewhat disappointing given the indubitable certitude with which my friends had made the claims of divinity for their “lord” and “savior.” According to at least one of his contemporary biographers, Jesus did say, “I am the way.” To my reading and understanding, it seemed that Jesus meant by this that "the way" to fulfillment and happiness is through human conduct like the example of Jesus himself, through nonviolence, honesty, generosity, kindness, selflessness, and love, advice with which I had always heartily concurred. Thus Jesus "returned" in the flesh every time someone responded to violence with nonviolence, to revenge with forgiveness, to lies with honesty, to ego with humility, to anger and hatred with love, I suggested to my Christian acquaintances.
25
But they were impatient with this opinion and, like the doubting Thomas in the story they had asked me to read, they insisted upon the eventual material and physical reappearance of their invisible “lord.” This would certainly be a miracle, I conceded, and if it were ever really to happen, which, to be entirely honest, I felt obliged to confess I doubted, well, then the sooner the better, I added. Still, it did not seem wise for either the “believers” or the doubters to hold their breaths until this miracle transpired, as it had been already quite some time since the death of this “god,” since the miraculous resurrection reported by his biographers, and since his equally mysterious passing, ascension, and disappearance, a 2000-year absence.
26
Though some of my Christian friends thought the inevitability of his promised “second coming” should inspire fear in unbelievers, agnostics, and skeptics, it did not inspire fear in me. Why, I wondered, would anyone fear perfect justice? Little did I understand. My reluctance to “believe” that such an event would occur, I learned from the “believers,” evidently insured that after death I would be tortured and tormented forever in a place called Hell or, some Christians suggested, at the very least I would be condemned to an eternal lonely posthumous consciousness ever devoid of the presence of the one true "god."
27
I tried to explain to them that I felt I was already in the presence of “god” here on earth at the present time, among my family and friends, loving and loved, engaged in the noble endeavor to foster peace and harmony, thrilled by the countless horrors and delights of nature and the universe; but, despite my protests, Christian acquaintances labeled such statements of mine "delusions" and pitied me, or they dismissed them outright as bald-faced lies.
28
My reluctance to accede to declarations of the divinity of Jesus, first, because I had never met the man and, second, because I did not really understand what the word "god" really meant, seemed enough for some Christians to conclude that unless before death I changed my mind I was “damned.” Many well-intentioned “believers” cited the multiple choice test—Jesus is either a “god,” a lunatic, or a liar—proposed by C.S. Lewis, but it seemed to me that Lewis, another man I did not know, offered too few options. To my academic mind it appeared that Jesus, in his own historical time, had been unaware of his global particularity. He’d had no knowledge, it appeared, of the world philosophers and sages of other cultures and peoples who had lived before him nor of kind, wise contemporaries who lived in other parts of the world.
29
Jesus knew, it seemed obvious from the synoptic “gospels,” only the traditions and histories of his own religion, region, and culture. To me it seemed strange that an omniscient "god" would not know of Buddha or Purna or Mahavira or Lao Tsu or Confucius or Socrates or Plato. But neither did I object to the suggestions of his advocates that Jesus was a child of a "god," the son of a "god," or even an "only" son of "the only" god. Indeed, I liked the idea that all life contained within it a spark of “god,” the reality of “god.” I liked the idea that all who lived were children of “god.” If the “believers” demanded that Jesus were the “only” child of god, well, I didn’t mind, I told them, since if any human deserved to be called a “god” their Jesus probably did. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he is reported to have said, “for they shall be called children of god.”
30
If the incredible stories about Jesus were true even in part, it seemed he had been a brave, nonviolent, and—though not so forgiving as I would have wished—a forgiving man. As for what a “god” really is, though, and how “god” might be defined, I remained still uncertain and, when my Christian friends began by attributing, first, omniscience and, then, omnipotence to “god” and therefore also to Jesus, we had come full circle, alas, and we were right back where we had started. If their “god” knew of the baby and of the raccoon and had possessed the power to save the baby from the horror, why had their “god” not done so?
31
If, as Christians claimed, their “god” saw all the horrors of human suffering in the world and heard all the prayers of its blameless victims, many of them innocent of any serious wrongdoing, and could return to make things right and indeed planned one day to return to make things right, then their “god” seemed incredibly stoic to have done nothing for 2000 years. I thought of the man who was arrested for roasting his toddler daughter in his kitchen oven because she wet her pants. He confessed. "Please, Daddy, let me out," he said his daughter pled with him. "Please. let me out, please, Daddy." Her father did not let her out. Nor did “god” nor did Jesus. Among the "believers," I gave up trying to stifle my sarcasm. Just keep pleading, little girl, I said, just keep praying. Your "daddy" hears you.
32
It was equally unclear in the stories of Jesus what “god” expected of his "believers." In one speech he emphasized "belief" or "faith"; in another he emphasized deeds, practice; in another, charity; in another nonviolence; in another, tolerance; and so on. His essential nature remained also in dispute. To the Jews, Jesus was a rabbi, a prophet, a teacher. To the Christians, Jesus was a “god,” a child of “god,” the son of a “god,” or, with a capital letter, God. To the Moslems, Jesus was a prophet of “god,” a messenger of “god.” To the agnostics, Jesus was in most though not all respects a wise man, a good man, a good teacher. Should people engage in war over these semantic distinctions, I wondered, or even in contentious disputes?
33
Should one faction predict torture in Hell for the members of other, dissenting factions? None of the four groups totally disavowed his teachings about how to live in this world—nonviolence, honesty, compassion, mercy, kindness, love. What, I wondered, was the quarrel really about? Should people fight over who agrees with Jesus most? Over who praises him most? “He’s a teacher!” “No, he’s a prophet!” “No, he’s a god!” “No, he’s God!” It saddened me and amused me to see disciples of Jesus waving the flag of "the christ," just as the ancient Jews had waved the flag of "the lord," and denigrating other systems of "belief," other "gods," other peoples, and pronouncing them inferior to their own, and then the Moslems, likewise, marching to protest what they considered Christian idolatry. “One god, not three!”
34
In them all I seemed to observe the same kind of pride, the same kind of arrogance, the same condescension, the same contempt. Were the world to end today, five billion people, according to the most popular Christian and Moslem “beliefs,” would be and should be condemned to Hell for their lack of the “right” beliefs, and billions and billions more sad souls already dead likewise condemned to Hell, though most were uneducated, poor, confused earthlings just struggling to survive and to raise their children and grandchildren as best they knew how. Now on the day of judgment, according to dogmas of the “believers,” these beings would be tortured in Hell and suffer excruciating pain for all eternity—and for what?
35
For having the wrong thoughts, the wrong doubts, the "wrong" belief, "believers" told me; and those with the "right" belief, the "right" thoughts, would be happy forever in "heaven" knowing of the eternal torment of the billions in Hell. Or, if those in heaven did not know of this terrible suffering of others, would, could, such ignorance constitute the promised bliss? To be ignorant of billions tortured in Hell? This was the vision of the "divine" Jesus? This was the reality of a "god"? This was “perfect” justice? Alas, I could not make sense of such a religion. Nor could I do as my Christian friends advised and simply surrender the effort to make sense of it all, abandon logic and reason, and just embrace the absurdity of their "organized" religion and "believe."
36
No, I thought not and, like many other people who think, if I were to find myself in such a heaven I hoped I would demand of "god" my release from this prison of bliss so that I might descend into Hell in order to try in some way to alleviate the suffering of those so unjustly tortured and punished for their mental crimes, for their thought crimes, for their all-too-human delusion, confusion, and doubt. This was why the "lord" Jesus, according to Christians, had come to earth in the first place, and it was why Buddhists saw Jesus in this incarnation as a "bodhisattva" who accepted his own suffering in order to free and to save all beings.
37
Jesus reformed the cruel, narrow, legalistic church of Judaism of his time and he was labeled a heretic for doing so. Though I could not believe in the power of “prayer,” I did “pray” in my own way that contemporary Jewish, Christian, and Moslem heretics and reformers might do the same for their churches and for the “believers” of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that were the most narrow, legalistic, and cruel in my own time. So long as beings still suffered on earth or in Hell, I told my “believing” friends and acquaintances, I would decline my ticket to any happy heaven, though they smirked at the naiveté of my imagining there to be any chance such an invitation from their "god" and "savior" might be proffered.
38
Nor, after days of reflection and contemplation, could I believe that the "holy" books I had been asked to read were the "word of god" or the "absolute" truth. In my reading of them I had been alternately entertained, instructed, horrified, and bored. In the stories and songs collected therein I had discovered—from "god," from "prophets" of "god," and from the "son" of "god"—counsel I considered very good, good, okay, not bad, bad, very bad, and appalling. The "bible" and the "gospel," I concluded in my typically slow, deliberate, academic way, were not the history of “god” but only the incomplete and partial history of humankind's eternally evolving understanding of what the concept of "god" means and of the meaning of "god."
39
Could written language perhaps limit understanding? Was there a reason, perhaps, that Jesus himself never wrote anything down? The myth of Eden, Adam, Eve, Satan, and the talking snake and the myth of Noah, the Ark, the animals, and the Flood seemed to me not history but allegory and poetry. Such myths, read symbolically, could be understood as insights into the human condition. If I read these myths and songs in this way and discovered allegorical and poetic insight and truth in them, was I saying that I “believed” them or that I did not “believe” them? It depended, I found out, on whom I asked. I used my mind when I read, just as all readers did, and I used my reason to decide what was credible and true and what was incredible and false, just as all readers did. I knew no other way to read and to think.
40
I did believe that the myths, legends, stories, poems, songs, histories, and chronicles that made up the bible and gospel were written and collected by well-intentioned men acting honestly and sincerely. In places, I appreciated their efforts and insights and, in other places, I deplored their ignorance, arrogance, intolerance, cruelty, and bias and I pitied them. The “bibles” of Jews, Christians, and Moslems were human documents, I decided. It appeared quite clear to me from my reading that “gods”—and I was still unsure of what "gods" were—did not write books, though “gods” did, it seem, speak to some men, if I chose to believe the men who said so, and “gods” apparently had also requested of such men that they write down the words of these “gods.”
41
But though I myself had experienced "god," no "god" had ever spoken words to me. As for the words of "god" that other men recorded, I chose to “believe” some parts of the “divine” and “holy” text and to disbelieve some other parts. All readers did exactly the same. How did we decide? We all decided in the same way—by using our minds. Did I think that Jesus offered good advice about life? Yes, with the one exception of condemnation and Hell. Did I think the "lord" that condemned, in the Jewish scriptures, a man to death by stoning for gathering wood on the Sabbath was the true "god"? Certainly not. Did I think the "lord" that "promised" a land to a "chosen" people was the true "god"? No, certainly not. Such obvious ethnocentric bias appeared to my academic mind far beneath any "god" that I could imagine.
42
The collection of books others called the "bible" did seem to me a sincere effort to try to understand what the word "god" means. But for many like me the meaning of "god" had grown, evolved, and expanded so that we could recognize the ethnocentrism and bias of ancient efforts to compose portraits of “god.” The jealous, envious, vain, angry, homicidal, genocidal "lord" of the Hebrew scriptures seemed clearly the human projection of "his" "believers," nearly all of them men, and obviously not an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. No thinking person like me could believe the agent of such unjust, vindictive acts was a true “god.”
43
When Jesus said, "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves," I considered this good advice. When the "lord" said to the parents of a drunken son, "Stone him to death," I considered this advice criminal and unworthy of a good man, let alone a "god." I could not believe "in" a "god" who punished by torture and death thousands of people for no other reason than their thought crimes. I certainly would not "worship" such a "god." Almost no one in the United States believed human beings should be tortured or destroyed for what they thought. Yet some people "worshiped" a "god" who, according to “holy” books, had done so over and over again. It made no logical sense, of course, but that was what happened to the human mind, it seemed, when so-called "truths" of “god” were poured into it from birth and infancy onward.
44
My students and I had been studying these questions for six weeks and our discussions were fresh in my mind. I used my mind and reason and common sense when I read all the "holy" books, the Torah, the Gospel, the Epistles, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Diamond Sutra, the Book of Mormon, the Odyssey, the Iliad, and so on. I tested what I read against my personal experience. I considered what others said, what others wrote, what others thought. I read, I thought, I compared, I learned.
45
Stone a man to death for disobeying his parents in order to show other people what is right? Hmm, no, I thought not. God and "his people"? Hmm, well, and who then were all those other people not "his"? Obstacles in the way of "his people," the story went, so “god” destroyed them. Hmm, well, no, I thought not. When I expressed such opinions, Christian friends accused me of being angry with “god.” But this was not so. I was not angry at “god” nor even annoyed with “god.” I found the chroniclers and interpreters of “god” amusing, especially when they reiterated the doctrines and dogmas of their indoctrination. Those who claimed that the whole "bible" was true and the word of "god," it seemed obvious, were just repeating something a parent or minister had told them. No “god” had told them this, no “god” had spoken to them.
46
Their "righteousness" and certitude had little, really, to do with “god.” The "believers" were just as empty-handed as I and, though they cited text from the "holy" books they'd read and judged me and called me names and shouted and swore and prayed and sang in their assemblies of like-minded "believers," their pride and their sanctimonious declarations of their "faith" and "belief" did not move me. I'd read the same books they had read, I'd thought just as hard as they, and I'd come to a different conclusion.
47
God, it seemed to me, revealed “god” in many ways. Books were one facet of “god,” nature another, good people another, kind people another, death another, art another, blogging another. The facets of “god” seemed infinite. What Christians called the “old” testimony seemed to me at times hilarious, a comedy of shallow human stupidity and cruelty, much of it falsely attributed to “god.” Yet hilarity and absurdity and laughter were also facets of “god.” The sunshine glinting through my window as I wrote—still another facet of “god.”
For most of my life I found it hard to relate to some of the more “religious” people and also, it seemed, they to me. For them, it was not nearly enough that I thought that their Jesus, if he'd ever really existed, had had some good ideas; nor was it nearly enough that I thought peace and love the two great virtues of life and the two which their Jesus seemed bravely to teach; and not nearly enough that I had tried myself—though I'd failed—to be a nonviolent and loving man; and not nearly enough that I thought their Jesus, as he was portrayed in their “holy” book, a good and courageous man truly and sincerely interested in helping and serving the needy and the poor.
2
No, some of these “religious” people seemed to want me to "believe" or to believe "in" Jesus (a distinction I never quite understood), and neither option was a habit of mind I thought conducive to social harmony and world peace or, without better evidence and more rational argument, compatible with good sense. Though they told me their Jesus was not dead but “living” and even “present” and some, even, that they themselves had a “personal relationship” with Jesus, they obviously used these words—“living,” “alive,” “present,” “personal relationship”—in senses much different from the common, everyday meanings of these words.
3
If I suggested that they perhaps meant "living" and "present" not in a physical but only in a spiritual sense, they demurred. No, they insisted, they meant that their Jesus was both spiritually and physically "alive" and "present." But Jesus, it was clear, did not “live” as these advocates for “belief” now “lived,” for example, nor was Jesus now ever “present” in the same way they themselves were “present.” I could not shake the hand of Jesus as I could shake theirs, nor could I give him a hug as I could hug these Christians who were undeniably “alive,” “living,” and “present.” I did have with them what we could agree was a “personal relationship,” and it was obvious that their “personal relationship” with Jesus was of a much different kind.
4
A few of these people even considered it a part of their “mission,” or so they called it, to persuade me and others to "believe" or to believe "in" this Jesus. But "believing" and “belief” were just not the same type of mental activity for me as it was for these "believers." I had few if any "beliefs" on the big issues of life—where life, earth, and the universe had all come from, for example, or where it was all going, or where and how it would all end, or what we were supposed to do, how we were supposed to live, while we wandered in the mystery and infinity of the universe. Me, I wasn't sure. These big mysteries tended to make me cautious.
5
I was not afraid to live or to die, though of course like everyone else I hoped not to suffer and linger in terrible pain or to become in my infirmity too great a burden on others. No, on the big mysteries of life, on the big questions of existence, there was little if anything I felt I knew for certain. Where others said they had "faith" and "belief" unsupported by evidence or logic, I had only hopes, curiosity, and questions. The very few "beliefs" I did have I considered very tentative indeed, so tentative they were hardly real "beliefs" at all. I held them lightly, warily, and, as I had been taught by all of my best teachers in school, I worked hard to maintain an open mind.
6
If I myself had any “mission” at all, and normally I would say that I did not, I supposed it was no more than to foster in world society this attitude—to open my mind, to be patient, to listen, to study, to think, to be peaceable and kind. I had come to see religious “beliefs” not as aids but as obstacles to justice and peace, just as I had come to see “god” not as an ultimate answer but as a question. Ultimate answers, I thought I'd learned, closed minds; questions opened them.
7
If persuasive evidence should appear, I would surrender an earlier “belief” readily, try to make myself comfortable with my not knowing, try to integrate any new data, any new argument, into my understanding, and then reformulate my opinion of the whole matter. I was a reader, a writer. My habit of mind was patient, deliberate. If any assertion did not make sense to me, then I withheld my assent to the proposition and I asked any questions that seemed likely to aid me in determining its credibility. In this endeavor I was a hard man to hurry, or so I had been told, and I was innately curious, inquisitive, and relatively fearless in study and inquiry.
8
I seemed to be surrounded by institutions, organizations, and individuals exhorting me to buy this, to buy that, to believe this, to believe that, to do this, to do that, to agree to this, to agree to that, and this welter of competing claims, temptations, and appeals only made me even more careful and more skeptical and even slower finally, if ever, to decide. The more their zeal, the more that others attempted to persuade me of the urgency of their pleas and of the urgency of my assent, the more suspicious to me seemed both appeal and appellant.
9
To me "belief" was one possible consequence, though not necessarily so, of my personal experience, my education, learning, knowledge, evidence, and reason. A “belief” was not something I could imagine myself ever embracing as a result of dread or fear inspired by warning or exhortation: “Believe or else!” Perhaps I was just not smart enough to grasp the concept. Some Christians suggested that I repeat after them: “I accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior!” They advised me to express my belief in this way almost as if these words or others like them were magic words, incantations, invocations: “Jesus is God!”
10
Some suggested that I kneel, fold my hands in “prayer,” and invite their Jesus into my heart. Others asked me to recite aloud esoteric, complex creeds, replete with capital letters, in unison with other "believers" in religious assembly: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord.” But repeating someone else’s words made me feel uncomfortable. I felt like a plagiarist, a cheater, inauthentic, in some way less than genuine; and then, too, some of their words sounded foreign to my ears.
11
What was a “lord,” for example? That wasn’t a word I’d ever used before. Was a “lord” an aristocrat, a noble, a slave master, a commander, or what? Plus I had never met this man Jesus. It didn’t seem wise to say that I would accept this mysterious stranger as my “lord.” To what, exactly, was I promising and agreeing? About this there seemed even among the Christians themselves significant differences of opinion, and yet, despite the lack of anything even remotely approaching consensus let alone unanimity, one Christian would declare himself or herself certain and sure of the “true” meaning of the vow and of the "belief"—as would the next Christian, equally certain and sure, though he or she held a contradictory opinion.
12
Strangely, their own differences of opinion did not inspire in these “believers” the same doubts and questions and intellectual humility that diversity of opinion seemed habitually to inspire in me. Who spoke for this Jesus and by whose authority? Jesus himself had never spoken personally to me nor, so far as I could tell, had he spoken personally to these “believers” who exhorted me to “believe.” Yet some of these “believers” insisted nevertheless that they had a "personal" relationship with their "lord" and that they “knew” their interpretations of “belief” and of “gospel” were correct, and many claimed to have not even a single doubt that this was so.
13
Their references to Jesus, however, remained for me not much different from references to Napoleon or to Julius Caesar, and neither the passionate speeches nor the behavior of those inviting me, urging me, or exhorting me to "believe" appeared indicative of any human conduct I myself wanted to emulate. Indeed, when these advocates of “belief” insisted upon the exclusivity of their “belief” and called it the “only” true way, they too often sounded patronizing, condescending, smug, even intolerant; and these attitudes only reminded me of the terrible crimes in the past that other people with a similar “belief” had perpetrated upon victims they considered "heretics," “unbelievers,” “nonbelievers,” and "infidels" and, yes, even upon people, like me, who had merely expressed what I considered quite moderate and eminently reasonable reservations and doubts about the extravagant claims made for this apparently powerless and invisible "lord," “savior,” and “god.”
14
Their word “savior” felt the same. From what, exactly, would this “lord” Jesus supposedly “save” me? Though there were suffering people I wished I could save or protect from harm, from crime, deprivation, and war, at this time I felt healthy, happy, productive, fulfilled, loving, and loved, and in no need of "saving." Could this Jesus "save," I wondered, the famished, the starving, the injured, the sick, the sad, and the dying that I watched on television? Since Jesus did not, it appeared that Jesus could not. So far, the magic words—“belief,” “lord,” “god,” and “savior”—seemed to lack sufficient power to arrest the terrible human suffering in the world.
15
Why had this "lord" and “savior” not exercised his magic power, I wondered, to stop, as I'd read in the newspaper, the grandfather's pet raccoon from eating the nose and lips of his infant granddaughter as she lay helpless in her crib? Having both the knowledge of such horror and the power to stop it, why had this “lord” Jesus not done so? Though my Christian friends tried their best to explain the omission to me, their explanations were quite complex and required my understanding of even more Christian terminology and dogma and, despite my honest efforts to follow their theological arguments, after all was said and done their answers appeared to me little more than empty rationalizations of the behavior of their “all-knowing” and “all-powerful” lord, god, and “savior.” Just like me, it seemed clear, the “believers” really didn’t know the answer to my question.
16
Some of the Christians who spoke to me of their “belief” said they were now "saved" from "sin," and they insisted that from "sin" I also needed "saving," but the word "sin" was yet another word I had difficulty understanding. To my queries, some Christians responded with still other words and concepts I could not understand—a "fall," they said, an "original” sin committed by some other person who lived and died thousands of years before I existed, and a "depravity" which they said was the given condition of all human beings simply by reason of their birth on earth. Alas, I understood nothing of all this and, instead of persuading me, their tales of an ancient, perfect garden and of a talking snake or serpent only increased my skepticism.
17
I needed to "confess" my "sin," my "depravity," to the "lord," the Christians told me, and to ask my "savior" for his "forgiveness," as these Christians said they themselves had done, but so far as I knew I had done no wrong whatsoever to this mysterious man Jesus. He had lived, after all, two thousand years before I was even born, and, despite all of this “sin,” “depravity,” and “confession” the Christians told me about, these Christians all appeared to me to be ordinary human beings pretty much the same as I.
18
The ideological baggage that their "belief" seemed to require of "believers" was more than I cared to lug along with me on my brief journey among the stars. Some of the Christians packed their "holy" books, their bibles, and concordances to accompany them when they traveled both here on earth and on the fathomless, vast ocean of mind. I had only the simple remark of my Aunt Rosalie, "My religion is be kind and my church is whoever I'm with." I preferred traveling light.
19
As I aged and matured, remorse and regret seemed to become increasingly more natural to me. I learned to recognize sooner my failures. I more readily acknowledged my many mistakes, and I tried as best I could to be quick to apologize for my own wrongs and to be equally quick to forgive others for theirs. It was difficult for me to see much value in dragging some mysterious "lord," “god,” and "savior" into this elementary process. Both the Christians and the non-Christian "followers of Christ," those who said they had no religion but rather a "personal relationship" with their "lord" and "savior," seemed to me no happier than I, no more free of sadness and suffering than I. Indeed, many seemed much less so.
20
Some of these “believers,” in fact, who explained that they had "confessed" their "sins" to the "lord" and claimed they had been "forgiven" and "saved" by their “lord” and “god” and been "reborn" seemed still tormented by their failures to please and to satisfy their "savior" and "lord," and some spent hours in what they called "prayer," a mental activity which resembled ordinary thanking and wishing and hoping, or so I guessed from their descriptions of "prayer." Some Christians did, it seemed, invest their "praying" with more intensity than in a child's everyday wishing upon a star, but they were unable to point to any better results.
21
At the urging of some Christians (and also some of the non-Christian followers of Jesus) I read the Bible. Some of these missionaries had traveled to other continents to distribute copies of this “holy” book to “unbelievers” and to people who followed the teachings of other “gods” and sages. Later, after I had read the Jewish scriptures, to which Christians applied the ethnocentric and pejorative label “old,” and also the Christian scriptures, the “new,” I was skeptical of this practice, since the “god” or “lord” of the “old” text was not merely hostile but homicidal toward peoples other than those this “lord” considered “his” own “chosen” favorite people to whom he had, strangely, "promised" lands upon which others already lived.
22
Disseminating this book and calling it “holy” would hardly seem a friendly, neighborly gesture, I thought, to the many descendants of the unfortunate ethnic peoples this “lord” and “god” had tortured and murdered by the tens of thousands in the stories collected in this “holy” book. Indeed, to promulgate such a literature seemed certain to offend; yet the believers “in” Jesus seemed oblivious to the possibility of such an offense, just as they had been oblivious, it seemed, to the arrogance and condescension inherent in calling the “holy” book of Judaism an “old” testament and their own better, improved supplement to it a “new” testament. Or perhaps, as I could not help but suspect, some did understand these insults, slights, and offenses and just simply didn’t care.
23
In the book about Jesus, I was eager to read what this man himself had written about his being a “god” but, as it turned out, Jesus himself never wrote anything, I learned, and the stories of his life and teachings were recorded by only four followers who actually knew him personally in life. Nor, according to these four biographers of their “lord,” had Jesus ever just flat come out and said, “I am god.” When, puzzled, I mentioned this omission to some of the “believers” who had urged me to read these stories of his life and teachings, they offered elaborate interpretations and explanations of other passages in the text, other remarks their “lord” was reported to have said, that in my Christian friends’ opinion were “almost” the “same” thing as his actually saying in exactly so many words that he was “god.”
24
But I must confess that these interpretations were to me somewhat disappointing given the indubitable certitude with which my friends had made the claims of divinity for their “lord” and “savior.” According to at least one of his contemporary biographers, Jesus did say, “I am the way.” To my reading and understanding, it seemed that Jesus meant by this that "the way" to fulfillment and happiness is through human conduct like the example of Jesus himself, through nonviolence, honesty, generosity, kindness, selflessness, and love, advice with which I had always heartily concurred. Thus Jesus "returned" in the flesh every time someone responded to violence with nonviolence, to revenge with forgiveness, to lies with honesty, to ego with humility, to anger and hatred with love, I suggested to my Christian acquaintances.
25
But they were impatient with this opinion and, like the doubting Thomas in the story they had asked me to read, they insisted upon the eventual material and physical reappearance of their invisible “lord.” This would certainly be a miracle, I conceded, and if it were ever really to happen, which, to be entirely honest, I felt obliged to confess I doubted, well, then the sooner the better, I added. Still, it did not seem wise for either the “believers” or the doubters to hold their breaths until this miracle transpired, as it had been already quite some time since the death of this “god,” since the miraculous resurrection reported by his biographers, and since his equally mysterious passing, ascension, and disappearance, a 2000-year absence.
26
Though some of my Christian friends thought the inevitability of his promised “second coming” should inspire fear in unbelievers, agnostics, and skeptics, it did not inspire fear in me. Why, I wondered, would anyone fear perfect justice? Little did I understand. My reluctance to “believe” that such an event would occur, I learned from the “believers,” evidently insured that after death I would be tortured and tormented forever in a place called Hell or, some Christians suggested, at the very least I would be condemned to an eternal lonely posthumous consciousness ever devoid of the presence of the one true "god."
27
I tried to explain to them that I felt I was already in the presence of “god” here on earth at the present time, among my family and friends, loving and loved, engaged in the noble endeavor to foster peace and harmony, thrilled by the countless horrors and delights of nature and the universe; but, despite my protests, Christian acquaintances labeled such statements of mine "delusions" and pitied me, or they dismissed them outright as bald-faced lies.
28
My reluctance to accede to declarations of the divinity of Jesus, first, because I had never met the man and, second, because I did not really understand what the word "god" really meant, seemed enough for some Christians to conclude that unless before death I changed my mind I was “damned.” Many well-intentioned “believers” cited the multiple choice test—Jesus is either a “god,” a lunatic, or a liar—proposed by C.S. Lewis, but it seemed to me that Lewis, another man I did not know, offered too few options. To my academic mind it appeared that Jesus, in his own historical time, had been unaware of his global particularity. He’d had no knowledge, it appeared, of the world philosophers and sages of other cultures and peoples who had lived before him nor of kind, wise contemporaries who lived in other parts of the world.
29
Jesus knew, it seemed obvious from the synoptic “gospels,” only the traditions and histories of his own religion, region, and culture. To me it seemed strange that an omniscient "god" would not know of Buddha or Purna or Mahavira or Lao Tsu or Confucius or Socrates or Plato. But neither did I object to the suggestions of his advocates that Jesus was a child of a "god," the son of a "god," or even an "only" son of "the only" god. Indeed, I liked the idea that all life contained within it a spark of “god,” the reality of “god.” I liked the idea that all who lived were children of “god.” If the “believers” demanded that Jesus were the “only” child of god, well, I didn’t mind, I told them, since if any human deserved to be called a “god” their Jesus probably did. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he is reported to have said, “for they shall be called children of god.”
30
If the incredible stories about Jesus were true even in part, it seemed he had been a brave, nonviolent, and—though not so forgiving as I would have wished—a forgiving man. As for what a “god” really is, though, and how “god” might be defined, I remained still uncertain and, when my Christian friends began by attributing, first, omniscience and, then, omnipotence to “god” and therefore also to Jesus, we had come full circle, alas, and we were right back where we had started. If their “god” knew of the baby and of the raccoon and had possessed the power to save the baby from the horror, why had their “god” not done so?
31
If, as Christians claimed, their “god” saw all the horrors of human suffering in the world and heard all the prayers of its blameless victims, many of them innocent of any serious wrongdoing, and could return to make things right and indeed planned one day to return to make things right, then their “god” seemed incredibly stoic to have done nothing for 2000 years. I thought of the man who was arrested for roasting his toddler daughter in his kitchen oven because she wet her pants. He confessed. "Please, Daddy, let me out," he said his daughter pled with him. "Please. let me out, please, Daddy." Her father did not let her out. Nor did “god” nor did Jesus. Among the "believers," I gave up trying to stifle my sarcasm. Just keep pleading, little girl, I said, just keep praying. Your "daddy" hears you.
32
It was equally unclear in the stories of Jesus what “god” expected of his "believers." In one speech he emphasized "belief" or "faith"; in another he emphasized deeds, practice; in another, charity; in another nonviolence; in another, tolerance; and so on. His essential nature remained also in dispute. To the Jews, Jesus was a rabbi, a prophet, a teacher. To the Christians, Jesus was a “god,” a child of “god,” the son of a “god,” or, with a capital letter, God. To the Moslems, Jesus was a prophet of “god,” a messenger of “god.” To the agnostics, Jesus was in most though not all respects a wise man, a good man, a good teacher. Should people engage in war over these semantic distinctions, I wondered, or even in contentious disputes?
33
Should one faction predict torture in Hell for the members of other, dissenting factions? None of the four groups totally disavowed his teachings about how to live in this world—nonviolence, honesty, compassion, mercy, kindness, love. What, I wondered, was the quarrel really about? Should people fight over who agrees with Jesus most? Over who praises him most? “He’s a teacher!” “No, he’s a prophet!” “No, he’s a god!” “No, he’s God!” It saddened me and amused me to see disciples of Jesus waving the flag of "the christ," just as the ancient Jews had waved the flag of "the lord," and denigrating other systems of "belief," other "gods," other peoples, and pronouncing them inferior to their own, and then the Moslems, likewise, marching to protest what they considered Christian idolatry. “One god, not three!”
34
In them all I seemed to observe the same kind of pride, the same kind of arrogance, the same condescension, the same contempt. Were the world to end today, five billion people, according to the most popular Christian and Moslem “beliefs,” would be and should be condemned to Hell for their lack of the “right” beliefs, and billions and billions more sad souls already dead likewise condemned to Hell, though most were uneducated, poor, confused earthlings just struggling to survive and to raise their children and grandchildren as best they knew how. Now on the day of judgment, according to dogmas of the “believers,” these beings would be tortured in Hell and suffer excruciating pain for all eternity—and for what?
35
For having the wrong thoughts, the wrong doubts, the "wrong" belief, "believers" told me; and those with the "right" belief, the "right" thoughts, would be happy forever in "heaven" knowing of the eternal torment of the billions in Hell. Or, if those in heaven did not know of this terrible suffering of others, would, could, such ignorance constitute the promised bliss? To be ignorant of billions tortured in Hell? This was the vision of the "divine" Jesus? This was the reality of a "god"? This was “perfect” justice? Alas, I could not make sense of such a religion. Nor could I do as my Christian friends advised and simply surrender the effort to make sense of it all, abandon logic and reason, and just embrace the absurdity of their "organized" religion and "believe."
36
No, I thought not and, like many other people who think, if I were to find myself in such a heaven I hoped I would demand of "god" my release from this prison of bliss so that I might descend into Hell in order to try in some way to alleviate the suffering of those so unjustly tortured and punished for their mental crimes, for their thought crimes, for their all-too-human delusion, confusion, and doubt. This was why the "lord" Jesus, according to Christians, had come to earth in the first place, and it was why Buddhists saw Jesus in this incarnation as a "bodhisattva" who accepted his own suffering in order to free and to save all beings.
37
Jesus reformed the cruel, narrow, legalistic church of Judaism of his time and he was labeled a heretic for doing so. Though I could not believe in the power of “prayer,” I did “pray” in my own way that contemporary Jewish, Christian, and Moslem heretics and reformers might do the same for their churches and for the “believers” of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that were the most narrow, legalistic, and cruel in my own time. So long as beings still suffered on earth or in Hell, I told my “believing” friends and acquaintances, I would decline my ticket to any happy heaven, though they smirked at the naiveté of my imagining there to be any chance such an invitation from their "god" and "savior" might be proffered.
38
Nor, after days of reflection and contemplation, could I believe that the "holy" books I had been asked to read were the "word of god" or the "absolute" truth. In my reading of them I had been alternately entertained, instructed, horrified, and bored. In the stories and songs collected therein I had discovered—from "god," from "prophets" of "god," and from the "son" of "god"—counsel I considered very good, good, okay, not bad, bad, very bad, and appalling. The "bible" and the "gospel," I concluded in my typically slow, deliberate, academic way, were not the history of “god” but only the incomplete and partial history of humankind's eternally evolving understanding of what the concept of "god" means and of the meaning of "god."
39
Could written language perhaps limit understanding? Was there a reason, perhaps, that Jesus himself never wrote anything down? The myth of Eden, Adam, Eve, Satan, and the talking snake and the myth of Noah, the Ark, the animals, and the Flood seemed to me not history but allegory and poetry. Such myths, read symbolically, could be understood as insights into the human condition. If I read these myths and songs in this way and discovered allegorical and poetic insight and truth in them, was I saying that I “believed” them or that I did not “believe” them? It depended, I found out, on whom I asked. I used my mind when I read, just as all readers did, and I used my reason to decide what was credible and true and what was incredible and false, just as all readers did. I knew no other way to read and to think.
40
I did believe that the myths, legends, stories, poems, songs, histories, and chronicles that made up the bible and gospel were written and collected by well-intentioned men acting honestly and sincerely. In places, I appreciated their efforts and insights and, in other places, I deplored their ignorance, arrogance, intolerance, cruelty, and bias and I pitied them. The “bibles” of Jews, Christians, and Moslems were human documents, I decided. It appeared quite clear to me from my reading that “gods”—and I was still unsure of what "gods" were—did not write books, though “gods” did, it seem, speak to some men, if I chose to believe the men who said so, and “gods” apparently had also requested of such men that they write down the words of these “gods.”
41
But though I myself had experienced "god," no "god" had ever spoken words to me. As for the words of "god" that other men recorded, I chose to “believe” some parts of the “divine” and “holy” text and to disbelieve some other parts. All readers did exactly the same. How did we decide? We all decided in the same way—by using our minds. Did I think that Jesus offered good advice about life? Yes, with the one exception of condemnation and Hell. Did I think the "lord" that condemned, in the Jewish scriptures, a man to death by stoning for gathering wood on the Sabbath was the true "god"? Certainly not. Did I think the "lord" that "promised" a land to a "chosen" people was the true "god"? No, certainly not. Such obvious ethnocentric bias appeared to my academic mind far beneath any "god" that I could imagine.
42
The collection of books others called the "bible" did seem to me a sincere effort to try to understand what the word "god" means. But for many like me the meaning of "god" had grown, evolved, and expanded so that we could recognize the ethnocentrism and bias of ancient efforts to compose portraits of “god.” The jealous, envious, vain, angry, homicidal, genocidal "lord" of the Hebrew scriptures seemed clearly the human projection of "his" "believers," nearly all of them men, and obviously not an all-knowing, all-powerful deity. No thinking person like me could believe the agent of such unjust, vindictive acts was a true “god.”
43
When Jesus said, "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves," I considered this good advice. When the "lord" said to the parents of a drunken son, "Stone him to death," I considered this advice criminal and unworthy of a good man, let alone a "god." I could not believe "in" a "god" who punished by torture and death thousands of people for no other reason than their thought crimes. I certainly would not "worship" such a "god." Almost no one in the United States believed human beings should be tortured or destroyed for what they thought. Yet some people "worshiped" a "god" who, according to “holy” books, had done so over and over again. It made no logical sense, of course, but that was what happened to the human mind, it seemed, when so-called "truths" of “god” were poured into it from birth and infancy onward.
44
My students and I had been studying these questions for six weeks and our discussions were fresh in my mind. I used my mind and reason and common sense when I read all the "holy" books, the Torah, the Gospel, the Epistles, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Diamond Sutra, the Book of Mormon, the Odyssey, the Iliad, and so on. I tested what I read against my personal experience. I considered what others said, what others wrote, what others thought. I read, I thought, I compared, I learned.
45
Stone a man to death for disobeying his parents in order to show other people what is right? Hmm, no, I thought not. God and "his people"? Hmm, well, and who then were all those other people not "his"? Obstacles in the way of "his people," the story went, so “god” destroyed them. Hmm, well, no, I thought not. When I expressed such opinions, Christian friends accused me of being angry with “god.” But this was not so. I was not angry at “god” nor even annoyed with “god.” I found the chroniclers and interpreters of “god” amusing, especially when they reiterated the doctrines and dogmas of their indoctrination. Those who claimed that the whole "bible" was true and the word of "god," it seemed obvious, were just repeating something a parent or minister had told them. No “god” had told them this, no “god” had spoken to them.
46
Their "righteousness" and certitude had little, really, to do with “god.” The "believers" were just as empty-handed as I and, though they cited text from the "holy" books they'd read and judged me and called me names and shouted and swore and prayed and sang in their assemblies of like-minded "believers," their pride and their sanctimonious declarations of their "faith" and "belief" did not move me. I'd read the same books they had read, I'd thought just as hard as they, and I'd come to a different conclusion.
47
God, it seemed to me, revealed “god” in many ways. Books were one facet of “god,” nature another, good people another, kind people another, death another, art another, blogging another. The facets of “god” seemed infinite. What Christians called the “old” testimony seemed to me at times hilarious, a comedy of shallow human stupidity and cruelty, much of it falsely attributed to “god.” Yet hilarity and absurdity and laughter were also facets of “god.” The sunshine glinting through my window as I wrote—still another facet of “god.”
Wherever I May Rome
Is it just me, or is the singer from The Darkness the mortal reincarnation of Freddy Mercury? I mean, the guy was...well, to put it lightly, he was a fruit cake, and he litterally paid for it with his life, but still...he was SO COOL!
So Jour Shitte is occuring rather mroe frequently than I feel like putting up with recently, and I've kind of run of out of places to turn. I can't talk to my mother (I never could) and Dad can't understand. I'm sure he would listen if I asked him to, but he's always so goblaam happy, and has always been able to force himself to be so. I mean, who else could I turn to? Hannah? No. She tries, but she's never around, and is probably sick of all my emotional bullshit by now anyway. Alisa? All Alisa cares about is her stupid comic. Unks isn't any help; he's always bitching about his problems (of a rather menial nature) or else he's busy, or else he wants to check his email and then go off by himself.
Sammie? I guess I could talk to Sammie, but she wouldn't get it. She couldn't get it. I have no hope for any genuine emotional connection with her, which makes me wonder why I got myself into this mess in the first place...oh, right, because Amanda told me to...and told me to, and told me to...and again, she told me to.
So I get to bitch into this screen, constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure that my mom doesn't come in and then scream at me for my lack of tact and self-censorship. Her condescending insensitivities have become so grevious that I just don't care to talk to her anymore...about anything...
Enter Mettalica,
Megadeth,
Linkin Park,
Yngwie Malmsteen,
Dream Theatre,
Fallout Boy,
Dragon Force,
Celtic Frost.
Days like th -
Oh, and Hammerfall.
Days like this are the only reason I keep c..CRAP like that around. (I'm going to be censoring myself a little more. I hope to ween myself back to 2005 spekum by mission time). Not to suggest everything on that list is CRAP, but all of it functions fairly effectively to soothe my bitter, angry, cynical streak.
I need to do something about that streak, too. I'm using language and intonations that I swore I would never say to Hannah, and the fact that I have makes me sick. There are some things that just aren't Hannah-appropriate. I know that she's a big girl, and that she takes much worse from her daily life than from me...but...after everything she's done for me, it just seems disrespectful...blasphemous, almost. It's almost like setting out to offer a prayer of gratitude, and instead spitting off curse after curse against the being that died for my sins. That's an extreme compariosn, it's true, but it's the best I can do. After all, religious implications aside, my creator is the only one that I revere to an extent that makes the analogy applicable. He's the only one that means quite that much to me.
And yet, for as much as I care about these people, I put their council so far aside, I loose track of some of it completely. Hannah would be horrified if she knew some of the things that go on in my life, and I get a good sense that omniscience betrays me. I tell Taylor that my conscience doesn't bother me anymore, but it's a lie. I'm still in my scriptures and on my knees every night (hence the recurring guilt), and my oppologies must worthless by now. I can't even say that I'm going to try and do better tomorrow, because I know that I won't. Like Huckleberry Finn, I don't see much point in lieing to God.
Still, I don't want God to have to settle for, "You were right when you told me that Wickedness never was Happiness, and I'm not reaping any satisfaction from my sins" either. I don't think God gives a wooden nickle for my misery. In fact, i'm quite sure He'd rather I just lived good and had a happy life.
Still, though, this has got to be better than getting a deluded counterfeit of happiness from sin.
I'm not Alisa, and I'm not my sisters. I'm not going to turn my back on God just because he isn't making my life especially convenient or easy. I'm going to own up to my own actions, no matter how unpleasant that prospect may seem. Sure, I may not have the best attitude, but I'm no quitter.
I'm not pulling any stunts that might damage my standing in the church or my personal worthiness, but this hole I'm digging begrudgingly for myself is getting a little dark, and it smells like shit. No number of hours with my nose in The Bible is going to drag my saggyass out of depression, but calling on some divine grace might not be a bad idea to at least point me back in the right direction, and I trust Bishop, probably more than I do my parents. A few priesthood blessings, and a little less time around Taylor may do me some good. This may be a good time to think about a Patriarchal Blessing, too. I wonder, although it would be highly irregular, if I could still get it from Brother Roberts.
Point being, if I have to be depressed, I'm not going to let it become an excuse. There are no excuses, not this close to mission time. I don't care if I have to wait until Kingdom Come; I'm going to fulfill what's expected of me. I may be a wicked and a slothful servant, but I sure as hell aint no failure, not completely anyway.
Chapter 24: Brewing Controversy, Part Two
**Warning: The following passage could be deemed blasphemous by many. If you have heart problems, back problems, are pregnant, or are incapable of rational thought and can’t even understand that when an exact replication of our world gets destroyed in movies like Deep Impact, the real world doesn't get destroyed, then don’t ride.**
As promised, below is a book excerpt related to my post on Tuesday. It was written prior to the Holy Blood, Holy Grail controversy, so perhaps it needs a little update, but I believe the content still works.
I am only including the parts that are relevant to our recent conversation, so some story will get lost. Also, passages from a book never really work on their own, and this is no exception. There is a history between the characters that you don't know, as well as actions that have occured before this scene that you aren't privy to. The characters turn out to be very different from how they portray themselves in this scene, the intoxication of one of the characters plays a major role in an upcoming plot point, and, most importantly, the dialogue serves as foreshadowing for a big revelation toward the end of the book.
With that out of the way, here is the scene:
Even though his stomach was full, Andrew Wilson was staring at Mary Engel hungrily as he held the restaurant door open for her.
“And so you did or didn’t like it?” he asked.
“Oh no, it was good,” Mary responded. “I very much enjoyed it. I just don’t think The Da Vinci Code is the book of the century. The different elements that Dan Brown makes up are fascinating, but the writing didn’t particularly blow me away.”
“What exactly did he make up?” Andrew asked as he slowed down to let Mary walk in front of him. He watched her ass bounce up and down gingerly. He licked his lips.
“He made up everything,” Mary said, craning her neck to see if Andrew was behind her. “The Knights Templar hiding the existence of their secret society through Leonardo Da Vinci’s artwork. Mary Magdalene being married to Jesus. Her presence in the Last Supper painting. The Holy Grail’s hidden location underneath the Louvre. The church burning women at the stake to take away the power of femininity. These were all elements of a story that he invented.”
Mary tripped over her own feet. Andrew rushed behind her and placed his hand against her back. “Whoopsie daisy,” she said, trying to shrug off her embarrassment.
“So none of that was real?”
“No. I mean, maybe. But no one knows for sure. Dan Brown thought he was just creating some interesting narrative, but maybe he’s right. Maybe everything he says is true. We can never tell for sure. Maybe God came to him and told him the truth and asked him to write it down in a book. Maybe God told him it will be the greatest story ever told.”
“Are you taking a shot at the Bible?”
Mary opened her mouth to laugh but only a slight gurgle escaped. She swallowed hard and then said, “No, of course not. I’m just being facetious. But what I love are the books that dispute what Dan Brown writes in his story. Books like Breaking the Da Vinci Code and The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code. Have you seen these?”
“I think so.”
“I love them.”
“Why?” Andrew asked, missing the sarcasm in Mary’s voice.
“Because they are disputing fiction. They are telling the ‘truth’ about lies. Dan Brown has admitted that the book is made up. He says he was just telling a story. And yet these people are publishing books disputing what that story says. Of course it isn’t true. He made it up!”
Andrew quickened his pace and was now walking alongside Mary. “Lower your voice,” he told her. “You’re practically shouting.”
“How did they ever get this crap published?” she yelled, ignoring his comment. “Can you imagine going to a publisher and saying, ‘I have a book that proves everything in The Da Vinci Code is a lie.’ The publisher would laugh you out of the building. He’d say, ‘Um…yes…that’s wonderful. But we already know it’s a lie. He admits it. It’s fiction.’”
“Well I think the point of those books is to explain to the gullible world what is true and what isn’t. I mean, Dan Brown may admit that it’s fiction, but that doesn’t mean some stupid people aren’t going to believe it. You know what I’m saying?” Mary shook her head in agreement. “You just said the writing is nothing extraordinary. So then why is the book so popular? It’s because of what it says about religion. People believe it and controversy brews.”
“You make a good point there.”
“I know I do.”
Mary’s forehead wrinkled as if deep in concentration. When the wrinkles smoothed themselves out, she said, “But that’s really ironic, because they are that gullible world you just mentioned.”
Andrew stared inquisitively at her, asking her to elaborate without opening his mouth. She obliged.
“Think about that hymn that goes, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.’ Are you familiar with it?”
“Of course.”
“Whoever sings it is confessing that they believe what the Bible says because the Bible tells them to believe it. How naïve is that? Christians are worried that people will believe the things The Da Vinci Code says just because The Da Vinci Code says them, but one of their most famous hymns says to believe the things the Bible says just because the Bible says them.”
“Well, they have other reasons to believe what the Bible says.”
“Listen, the fact remains that we don’t really know what’s true. Say I showed up at the Vatican tomorrow claiming to be a pregnant virgin. How could they dispute my claim?”
“Well, you have two kids for one thing.”
“Okay, so bad example. But you know what I mean.”
Andrew turned toward his car but Mary kept walking the other way. He ran over to her and placed his hand on her back. He led her through the parking lot to his car. She kept talking, not noticing the shift in her direction.
She said, “A woman could claim immaculate conception, she could claim she is carrying the baby Jesus, and the Vatican would demand DNA samples and all that, which they should, but they would demand proof. They would say, ‘Where is the proof?’ But where is their proof? They have no proof that what they believe is true. Maybe Dan Brown has written the real Bible, and everything they’ve been praying to is wrong.”
Andrew moved his hand down from her back to her butt. He pinched it playfully. Mary blushed and slapped his hand away.
“Who do you think you are?”
“Just someone who finds you irresistible.”
She blushed deeper. In truth, Mary had liked the pinch. She liked Andrew’s boldness, especially since he had seemed so shy earlier. But more than anything else, she liked the fact that he was showering her with attention and compliments. She would never admit this, but she had made many attempts to get Todd to start noticing her again. Her most recent effort involved buying low-cut jeans that hung off her hips. She also bought a sexy red thong to wear underneath the jeans so the string of the underwear would rise up over the denim, an event that proved embarrassing since she had her two kids with her. Todd has yet to comment on them.
“So I guess you aren’t big on religion?” Andrew asked.
Mary didn’t answer.
“Mary?”
“Huh? What?”
“So I guess you don’t like religion then?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that. I think religion is a wonderful thing. It brings people together. It gives them something to believe in. Something to look forward to. It can be great.”
“But.”
“Well, let’s just say I only go to church to appease my husband.”
They finally reached Andrew’s car and he opened the door for Mary. She crouched down and stepped into the passenger seat. She didn’t mean it to be, but Andrew saw it as an act of seduction. She arched her back sexily as she crouched down. Andrew moaned to himself as her smooth, perfect neck passed by his line of sight, and he took a large whiff and sighed as her scent filled his lungs.
“You know,” she said. “I appreciate you listening to me. Todd never lets me ramble.”
“I don’t know why. I find you fascinating.” Mary swooned but Andrew didn’t see it. He was walking to the driver’s side of his car. He flung open the car door and sat down. “So, you ready to go?” he asked as he turned his key and brought the car to life.
The scene then gets into some action that is irrelevant to the issue at hand, so I will fast forward to the next part:
Andrew Wilson stared intently at Mary Engel, who was talking adamantly in the car seat next to him. Nothing could make him take his eyes off her, except the blaring horn of a car. His attention turned to the streetlight ahead of him, which was green. He started moving forward. He looked back at Mary, who looked at him and blushed.
“Did you hear me?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, I heard you. Keep going. I’m listening,” Andrew assured her.
“But are you considering what I am saying?” Mary asked. “There are more books refuting the freakin’ Da Vinci Code than the Bible. Think about how crazy that is. No one is living their lives based on the writings of Dan Brown. Is it really that threatening?”
“I’m sure the church feels threatened. You said it claims the church burned women at the stake.”
“But who do you think the people disputing the book are? They are people who live their lives by the Bible. They are so hypocritical. How can they have any idea what the Bible says is true? They are disputing The Da Vinci Code based on what is written in the Bible. So they are in essence disputing the writings of one book that may be fiction by citing writings from another book that may be fiction.”
“Well, many people don’t believe the Bible is fiction.”
“But that’s my whole point. It’s just what they believe. There is no proof to confirm that what is written in the Bible is true. And yet people who believe what the Bible says claim there is no proof to confirm that what is written in The Da Vinci Code is true.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you mean, ‘yeah?’ Don’t you see the insanity in that? What if there is nothing to prove the legitimacy of the Bible because it isn’t legitimate? What if the stories were simply invented by a bunch of good storytellers? What if the authors of the Bible were the original Dan Brown? What if they just created a great story, and then people started believing it to be true?
“Then what?”
“It would be the same thing. It’s just that the authors of the Bible aren’t around to admit the stories were simply fiction. Dan Brown is.”
“Okay, but –”
“Maybe in 2,000 years people will look at The Da Vinci Code as their Bible, and there will be people like us having a conversation about whether it is real or whether some guy just made it up to tell an entertaining story.”
“Okay, but the fact is millions of people live their lives by the Bible. They don’t want some other book coming around telling them everything they believe is wrong.”
“No, I know. You’re right.”
“So what’s your point?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t have one. I’m just kind of thinking in my head, wondering how we come to believe what is real and what isn’t.”
“Is this conversation real?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s a mirror of something that happened in some parallel dimension.”
“Huh? That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t know.”
They go on, but about something that will only have meaning to people who have read what proceeds it. Since none of you have actually read the book, that means it won't have meaning to you.
So what are your thoughts on their conversation? Which of the two characters do you find yourself agreeing with most?
Per the end of Tuesday's post, is this conversation really controversial? Will it stir heated debates between people who agree with it and people who are adamently against its message? Does it exist solely to be controversial, or is it just a silly little stretch of dialogue that isn't good enough to affect emotion?
We don't know Dan Brown's true intention, but I can tell you mine. I love books with deep foreshadowing. I love symbalism and meaning. The only problem with using foreshadowing in mainstream literature (as opposed to the great American novel that will be dissected for years to come in English class) is that the scene that does the foreshadowing can be boring for the reader until he or she reaches the scene it was supposed to foreshadow. The dialogue in the above passage, and the movements the characters make, are serious foreshadowing for a very important moment, but I didn't want the foreshadowing to be boring for the reader before he or she got to that important moment and realized the bigger meaning. Hopefully people will find this discussion on The Da Vinci Code and the Bible interesting, and hopefully they will also get the symbalism when it comes. I tried to make the best of both worlds.
And hopefully soon you'll be able to read the entire book and tell me whether I succeeded or not.
As promised, below is a book excerpt related to my post on Tuesday. It was written prior to the Holy Blood, Holy Grail controversy, so perhaps it needs a little update, but I believe the content still works.
I am only including the parts that are relevant to our recent conversation, so some story will get lost. Also, passages from a book never really work on their own, and this is no exception. There is a history between the characters that you don't know, as well as actions that have occured before this scene that you aren't privy to. The characters turn out to be very different from how they portray themselves in this scene, the intoxication of one of the characters plays a major role in an upcoming plot point, and, most importantly, the dialogue serves as foreshadowing for a big revelation toward the end of the book.
With that out of the way, here is the scene:
Even though his stomach was full, Andrew Wilson was staring at Mary Engel hungrily as he held the restaurant door open for her.
“And so you did or didn’t like it?” he asked.
“Oh no, it was good,” Mary responded. “I very much enjoyed it. I just don’t think The Da Vinci Code is the book of the century. The different elements that Dan Brown makes up are fascinating, but the writing didn’t particularly blow me away.”
“What exactly did he make up?” Andrew asked as he slowed down to let Mary walk in front of him. He watched her ass bounce up and down gingerly. He licked his lips.
“He made up everything,” Mary said, craning her neck to see if Andrew was behind her. “The Knights Templar hiding the existence of their secret society through Leonardo Da Vinci’s artwork. Mary Magdalene being married to Jesus. Her presence in the Last Supper painting. The Holy Grail’s hidden location underneath the Louvre. The church burning women at the stake to take away the power of femininity. These were all elements of a story that he invented.”
Mary tripped over her own feet. Andrew rushed behind her and placed his hand against her back. “Whoopsie daisy,” she said, trying to shrug off her embarrassment.
“So none of that was real?”
“No. I mean, maybe. But no one knows for sure. Dan Brown thought he was just creating some interesting narrative, but maybe he’s right. Maybe everything he says is true. We can never tell for sure. Maybe God came to him and told him the truth and asked him to write it down in a book. Maybe God told him it will be the greatest story ever told.”
“Are you taking a shot at the Bible?”
Mary opened her mouth to laugh but only a slight gurgle escaped. She swallowed hard and then said, “No, of course not. I’m just being facetious. But what I love are the books that dispute what Dan Brown writes in his story. Books like Breaking the Da Vinci Code and The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code. Have you seen these?”
“I think so.”
“I love them.”
“Why?” Andrew asked, missing the sarcasm in Mary’s voice.
“Because they are disputing fiction. They are telling the ‘truth’ about lies. Dan Brown has admitted that the book is made up. He says he was just telling a story. And yet these people are publishing books disputing what that story says. Of course it isn’t true. He made it up!”
Andrew quickened his pace and was now walking alongside Mary. “Lower your voice,” he told her. “You’re practically shouting.”
“How did they ever get this crap published?” she yelled, ignoring his comment. “Can you imagine going to a publisher and saying, ‘I have a book that proves everything in The Da Vinci Code is a lie.’ The publisher would laugh you out of the building. He’d say, ‘Um…yes…that’s wonderful. But we already know it’s a lie. He admits it. It’s fiction.’”
“Well I think the point of those books is to explain to the gullible world what is true and what isn’t. I mean, Dan Brown may admit that it’s fiction, but that doesn’t mean some stupid people aren’t going to believe it. You know what I’m saying?” Mary shook her head in agreement. “You just said the writing is nothing extraordinary. So then why is the book so popular? It’s because of what it says about religion. People believe it and controversy brews.”
“You make a good point there.”
“I know I do.”
Mary’s forehead wrinkled as if deep in concentration. When the wrinkles smoothed themselves out, she said, “But that’s really ironic, because they are that gullible world you just mentioned.”
Andrew stared inquisitively at her, asking her to elaborate without opening his mouth. She obliged.
“Think about that hymn that goes, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.’ Are you familiar with it?”
“Of course.”
“Whoever sings it is confessing that they believe what the Bible says because the Bible tells them to believe it. How naïve is that? Christians are worried that people will believe the things The Da Vinci Code says just because The Da Vinci Code says them, but one of their most famous hymns says to believe the things the Bible says just because the Bible says them.”
“Well, they have other reasons to believe what the Bible says.”
“Listen, the fact remains that we don’t really know what’s true. Say I showed up at the Vatican tomorrow claiming to be a pregnant virgin. How could they dispute my claim?”
“Well, you have two kids for one thing.”
“Okay, so bad example. But you know what I mean.”
Andrew turned toward his car but Mary kept walking the other way. He ran over to her and placed his hand on her back. He led her through the parking lot to his car. She kept talking, not noticing the shift in her direction.
She said, “A woman could claim immaculate conception, she could claim she is carrying the baby Jesus, and the Vatican would demand DNA samples and all that, which they should, but they would demand proof. They would say, ‘Where is the proof?’ But where is their proof? They have no proof that what they believe is true. Maybe Dan Brown has written the real Bible, and everything they’ve been praying to is wrong.”
Andrew moved his hand down from her back to her butt. He pinched it playfully. Mary blushed and slapped his hand away.
“Who do you think you are?”
“Just someone who finds you irresistible.”
She blushed deeper. In truth, Mary had liked the pinch. She liked Andrew’s boldness, especially since he had seemed so shy earlier. But more than anything else, she liked the fact that he was showering her with attention and compliments. She would never admit this, but she had made many attempts to get Todd to start noticing her again. Her most recent effort involved buying low-cut jeans that hung off her hips. She also bought a sexy red thong to wear underneath the jeans so the string of the underwear would rise up over the denim, an event that proved embarrassing since she had her two kids with her. Todd has yet to comment on them.
“So I guess you aren’t big on religion?” Andrew asked.
Mary didn’t answer.
“Mary?”
“Huh? What?”
“So I guess you don’t like religion then?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that. I think religion is a wonderful thing. It brings people together. It gives them something to believe in. Something to look forward to. It can be great.”
“But.”
“Well, let’s just say I only go to church to appease my husband.”
They finally reached Andrew’s car and he opened the door for Mary. She crouched down and stepped into the passenger seat. She didn’t mean it to be, but Andrew saw it as an act of seduction. She arched her back sexily as she crouched down. Andrew moaned to himself as her smooth, perfect neck passed by his line of sight, and he took a large whiff and sighed as her scent filled his lungs.
“You know,” she said. “I appreciate you listening to me. Todd never lets me ramble.”
“I don’t know why. I find you fascinating.” Mary swooned but Andrew didn’t see it. He was walking to the driver’s side of his car. He flung open the car door and sat down. “So, you ready to go?” he asked as he turned his key and brought the car to life.
The scene then gets into some action that is irrelevant to the issue at hand, so I will fast forward to the next part:
Andrew Wilson stared intently at Mary Engel, who was talking adamantly in the car seat next to him. Nothing could make him take his eyes off her, except the blaring horn of a car. His attention turned to the streetlight ahead of him, which was green. He started moving forward. He looked back at Mary, who looked at him and blushed.
“Did you hear me?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, I heard you. Keep going. I’m listening,” Andrew assured her.
“But are you considering what I am saying?” Mary asked. “There are more books refuting the freakin’ Da Vinci Code than the Bible. Think about how crazy that is. No one is living their lives based on the writings of Dan Brown. Is it really that threatening?”
“I’m sure the church feels threatened. You said it claims the church burned women at the stake.”
“But who do you think the people disputing the book are? They are people who live their lives by the Bible. They are so hypocritical. How can they have any idea what the Bible says is true? They are disputing The Da Vinci Code based on what is written in the Bible. So they are in essence disputing the writings of one book that may be fiction by citing writings from another book that may be fiction.”
“Well, many people don’t believe the Bible is fiction.”
“But that’s my whole point. It’s just what they believe. There is no proof to confirm that what is written in the Bible is true. And yet people who believe what the Bible says claim there is no proof to confirm that what is written in The Da Vinci Code is true.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you mean, ‘yeah?’ Don’t you see the insanity in that? What if there is nothing to prove the legitimacy of the Bible because it isn’t legitimate? What if the stories were simply invented by a bunch of good storytellers? What if the authors of the Bible were the original Dan Brown? What if they just created a great story, and then people started believing it to be true?
“Then what?”
“It would be the same thing. It’s just that the authors of the Bible aren’t around to admit the stories were simply fiction. Dan Brown is.”
“Okay, but –”
“Maybe in 2,000 years people will look at The Da Vinci Code as their Bible, and there will be people like us having a conversation about whether it is real or whether some guy just made it up to tell an entertaining story.”
“Okay, but the fact is millions of people live their lives by the Bible. They don’t want some other book coming around telling them everything they believe is wrong.”
“No, I know. You’re right.”
“So what’s your point?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t have one. I’m just kind of thinking in my head, wondering how we come to believe what is real and what isn’t.”
“Is this conversation real?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s a mirror of something that happened in some parallel dimension.”
“Huh? That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t know.”
They go on, but about something that will only have meaning to people who have read what proceeds it. Since none of you have actually read the book, that means it won't have meaning to you.
So what are your thoughts on their conversation? Which of the two characters do you find yourself agreeing with most?
Per the end of Tuesday's post, is this conversation really controversial? Will it stir heated debates between people who agree with it and people who are adamently against its message? Does it exist solely to be controversial, or is it just a silly little stretch of dialogue that isn't good enough to affect emotion?
We don't know Dan Brown's true intention, but I can tell you mine. I love books with deep foreshadowing. I love symbalism and meaning. The only problem with using foreshadowing in mainstream literature (as opposed to the great American novel that will be dissected for years to come in English class) is that the scene that does the foreshadowing can be boring for the reader until he or she reaches the scene it was supposed to foreshadow. The dialogue in the above passage, and the movements the characters make, are serious foreshadowing for a very important moment, but I didn't want the foreshadowing to be boring for the reader before he or she got to that important moment and realized the bigger meaning. Hopefully people will find this discussion on The Da Vinci Code and the Bible interesting, and hopefully they will also get the symbalism when it comes. I tried to make the best of both worlds.
And hopefully soon you'll be able to read the entire book and tell me whether I succeeded or not.
THE ICE KING
He moves amongst the cheering crowd
Towards a hilltop
With a crown of pain on his head
He stands tall and proud
In the spring sun
As he drags his tank
They lay him down on the ground
Legs together
Arms to the sides
He has to obey his father
And do as he commands
To redeem man
They inject his wrists
To make him go to sleep
In a painless fashion
Because he loves his father
He must follow his orders
And die for now
Here lies the eternal king
Who froze to save the mortal man
It's written by his tank
Forgive me father, he says
I give my soul to infinity
And my body to cryonics
http://www.people.tribe.net/39b2c/e2.8e27-410b-89e0-e87903c57637
Musical Blasphemy
There are many things in the world that just piss me off. And now I have found something brand new. Horrid uses of great songs for commercials.
There have been many examples of this but the 2 most horrid are as follows:
Papa Johns Pizza - Anal raping a wonderful Go-go's song to fill its own insatiable hunger for suck. Thats right Papa Johns you got the meat, right in your ass.
Kraft Cheese - Yes, it is "crumbelievable" that someone actually thought this was a good idea. Not saying that EMF were a group of musical geniuses but damnit, they deserve a little dignity. How many hit records have you made huh?!
Pizza Hut - Yes I know this is 3 but you know what they say, "There are 10 people in the world that understand binary, those that do and those that don't." There are a few things that bother me about their most recent product idea, first of the crust-poppers-cheese-filled-what-the-fuck-ever are absolutely disgusting. Stuffed Crust is bad enough but at least I have the option of not eating the crust, with these loathsome pieces of swill you have no choice, either either eat them, pick them off one at a time and throw them to the pigs. In the case of the latter you then have to eat the pizza with no crust to hold it by. This normally wouldnt a problem with Pizza Hut wasnt the greasiest fucking pizza chain in the world.
But thats just the pizza, the commercial is even worse. Not only does it look like a 10 year old making a crappy Valentine's collage made it, they took a great song and just hacked it all to hell. The wonderful Nancy Sinatra's song about not taking shit from people was a wonderful song. Yes, I can say this, I am a heterosexual male but damnit I can have a guilty pleasure. The wonderful people at Pizza Hut advertising has decided to take that song, change all the words, mess with the beat, have someone with a horrid singing voice( I think it was Ashlee Simpson ) sing it.
I just really dont understand why people have to do this. I am all for doing remixes of songs, I am all for doing covers of songs. Hell, I even like Weird Al, but come on people, we cannot let this stand. I demand a Boycott on all products that in their advertising use horrible covers of songs.
Thats all I have for now, more stuff that pisses me off to follow.
There have been many examples of this but the 2 most horrid are as follows:
Papa Johns Pizza - Anal raping a wonderful Go-go's song to fill its own insatiable hunger for suck. Thats right Papa Johns you got the meat, right in your ass.
Kraft Cheese - Yes, it is "crumbelievable" that someone actually thought this was a good idea. Not saying that EMF were a group of musical geniuses but damnit, they deserve a little dignity. How many hit records have you made huh?!
Pizza Hut - Yes I know this is 3 but you know what they say, "There are 10 people in the world that understand binary, those that do and those that don't." There are a few things that bother me about their most recent product idea, first of the crust-poppers-cheese-filled-what-the-fuck-ever are absolutely disgusting. Stuffed Crust is bad enough but at least I have the option of not eating the crust, with these loathsome pieces of swill you have no choice, either either eat them, pick them off one at a time and throw them to the pigs. In the case of the latter you then have to eat the pizza with no crust to hold it by. This normally wouldnt a problem with Pizza Hut wasnt the greasiest fucking pizza chain in the world.
But thats just the pizza, the commercial is even worse. Not only does it look like a 10 year old making a crappy Valentine's collage made it, they took a great song and just hacked it all to hell. The wonderful Nancy Sinatra's song about not taking shit from people was a wonderful song. Yes, I can say this, I am a heterosexual male but damnit I can have a guilty pleasure. The wonderful people at Pizza Hut advertising has decided to take that song, change all the words, mess with the beat, have someone with a horrid singing voice( I think it was Ashlee Simpson ) sing it.
I just really dont understand why people have to do this. I am all for doing remixes of songs, I am all for doing covers of songs. Hell, I even like Weird Al, but come on people, we cannot let this stand. I demand a Boycott on all products that in their advertising use horrible covers of songs.
Thats all I have for now, more stuff that pisses me off to follow.
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Re: So don't you bring me down today. - lol at I just listened to a song called "love love love"...
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