I have never understood that.
After all this is the definition of superstition:
1: a : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation
b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition
2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
So how is that definition any different than religion? Or to the definition provided above for myth?
What baffles ME is how tenaciously the Xtians cling to the fable rather than the moral.
ReplyDelete"Jesus walked on the water!"
"But what did he teach?"
"It doesn't matter - he walked on the water!"
Over and over and over the Bible says "don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal - don't be greedy - help people..."
But somehow the lesson the Xtians take is: HATE the homos, BEAT the slaves, KILL the enemy! Torture is good if done in the name of GOD!
sheesh...
++100
DeleteNot all christians. Not the Catholics I met and grew up with. They were all about Jesus is love and the Bible is poetic and most of it is a parable anyway. I knew Catholics in other countries were different but my country's catholics were mostly quite decent people.
DeleteBut then what happened : gay marriage, and suddenly there were Catholic mobs on the streets protesting it. While there is war in Syria ! While Christians are being persecuted in the Arab world ! But those two horrific things, the Vatican can let them happen without staging any protest - but gay marriage in my own country, and my own catholic Mum is driven by her hierarchy into almost hysterics about children being hurt by gay marriage, while she totally ignores what the effect of the war in Syria or of the persecution of her fellow believers in the Arab world has on children ! Unbelievable.
Religion is a superstition and it does make ordinary people, even clever and human ones, more stupid and more callous than no religion.
Unfortunately, it's not! I was raised a Southern Baptist but learned as I grew older that the Bible is a book of parables and that you had to use your "spiritual imagination" to understand the lessons to be learned so as not to repeat them.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a lot of people missed the parable part.
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 1st Corinthians 13:11
ReplyDeleteGROW UP, you fundamentalists -- it's in the bible! (along with a lot of other things you ignore, so why am I surprised you ignore it, too?)
Freud was right - religion is a neuroses writ large.
DeleteHas anyone here read "Zealot" by Reza Aslan? He got a lot of grief on the talk shows about it. After reading it, I started to see why. He delves into the history of the times (fascinating, and largely unknown to Xtians, I'm sure) but what really came across was the fact that Jesus and his followers were essentially a "cult", with a typical cult following - those who were looking for a way out of the oppressiveness of Roman rule (and Roman/Jewish rule, for that matter). The New Testament books were of course written several years later, and there seems to be a whole lot of myth-making in the writing.
ReplyDeleteAnd very selective editing - see the Gnostic Gospels.
DeleteI somewhat agree with that, Anon 7:35.
DeleteI tend to view reality as closer to that presented in Ceasar's Messiah.
I don't know about the details, and there's little proof, but logically, it makes sense. I mean, seriously, thinking about it-
You have a very sophisticated Roman Republic- we're talking the sophistication of the era of people who discovered that the world was round, the foundation of math, high logic and philosophy that still shapes our world today. (Even this blog uses a great deal of Cicero's "Qui Bono" philosophy that helped shape law.)
We have a recession of the Roman Empire, with weak and corrupt upper leadership, a military that is stressed, and extremely limited if not overspent funds.
We have a mostly illiterate, highly religious peasant population, and no instant communication, with communication being mostly limited to word-of-mouth- it would seem perfectly normal not to hear of a legendary tale for forty years or more- until after the "prophecies" verified them.
If looked at from the point of view of a general, taking a chance to hijack a fervent militant religious movement and redirect it's energy towards peace and submission is a very urgent goal. And, this comes from a time period of "Give them what they want- distract them" was not exactly far from the minds of those in power. In fact, this is the same era of Nero (the mad emperor) and Caligula- the emperors that the character of Ceasar in the movie Gladiator was based off of.
Not only are your troops stretched thin and a limited resource, I suspect that the people of that era would react the same way to a door to door search as we would today- so violent suppression would be like poking a bee's hive.
Logically, it all makes sense- give the terrorists what but in a way to meet your needs- in the form of a "Messiah"- who didn't preach war and overthrow of the tyrant, but "peace, love, strive to serve, and pay your taxes."
I don't think he realized what he had created- indeed, it was Emperor Augustus, nearly 300 years later, that took a small cult that now faithfully served the empire- because it was directed by the empire- and threw it into mainstream and widespread circulation.
I mean, we have a modern example with Joseph Smith and Mormonism/The Book of Mormon.