WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF . . .

Tags

Afterlife, Santa Claus

—   we and our loved ones did not have to die  ?

—   when we and they do, we somehow survived death in an after-life  ?

—   there were a loving God waiting to welcome us into His Kingdom where we would live with loved ones in eternal joy  ?

The GOOD NEWS, my friends, is that though we have to die, Heaven, reunion with our loved ones and everlasting happiness are not just possible but a promise guaranteed by God Himself.  Let us sing His praises, as the collection plate passes among you.

(That perverse punch-line is too cruel, too cynical.  Religions and their preachers of pie in the sky when you die, are, for the most part, sincere in their belief and in their message. However we must remember that Churches are businesses – no matter how sincere their faith in their propaganda and in the product they sell.)

The BAD NEWS is that the promise of Heaven in an illusion.  Billions of people believe it, as billions of children believe in Santa Claus.  We all had to abandon the childish fantasy about Santa.  But most of us hesitate to jettison the incredible nonsense about life after death.  Not only is there not one shred of evidence for an afterlife – Jesus’ “Resurrection” is, like His other “miracles” just a story, based entirely on faith – but belief in Heaven is, like belief in God’s existence and the Incarnation of His Son, pure wishful thinking.  We want it all to be true so it must be !

As disappointing if not shattering as is the recognition of the blindfaithblindfolly on which religion is based, one can still make the most of life, however short, and its multiple opportunities for happiness, in spite of its slings and arrows and the fact that it ends definitively in death.  Of course, if you prefer the myths, it’s your choice.  But I and countless others have found that liberation from the illusions has given us the comfort and serenity that comes from not kidding ourselves.  I for one could never go back to believing in either Father Christmas or God as our Father who art in Heaven.  Many choose credulity.  I choose lucidity.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

MOSUL UNDER SIEGE : WHITE FLAGS AND PRAYER

Tags

"No Atheists in Fox-Holes", ISIS, Mosul, Prayer, White Flags

Prisoners of ISIS in their own city of Mosul for the last two years, civilian Iraqis now in permanent danger of death from the constant bombing by the Iraqi army, as well as from ISIS’ car-bombs and IEDs, can count only on white flags and prayer as weapons of defence.  There is little chance that the flags will help.  There is none at all that prayer will.

“No atheists in fox-holes” ?  A myth, no doubt.  But it is understandable that desperation can lead some people to grasp for straws, and even straw-gods.  Prayer, especially when practised in the company of others in harm’s way like oneself, can bolster hope and even create the courage to resist.  But of itself it is pointless.  Nobody is listening.  Divine protection is simply not going to happen.

In critical situations, logic and reason have little weight.  And if, by luck, the pray-ers survive, they will probably see in their salvation cause and effect.  Belief, by definition, is irrational.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

WHY WOULD GOD WANT TO CREATE SO MANY PLANETS ?

Tags

Christopher Conselice, Church of the Latter-Day Saints, Hubble Telescope, Mormons

The Hubble telescope has recently revealed that the number of observable (!) galaxies in the Universe is ten times previous estimates, dixit Christopher Conselice, University of Nottingham, U.K., in “Sciences et Avenir”, November 2016.  There are, in fact, 2,000,000,000,000 (two trillion) galaxies and 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, each with at least one planet.  That means that up there we have at least 400,000 BILLION BILLION  PLANETS  !   It is no wonder that non-atheists affirm that all this could not have happened by itself or by some sort of random cosmic physico-chemical quirk or stroke of luck.  Who dunnit ?  Surely only God could do this !  But we have to wonder WHY He would bother.  The believer will repeat “ours not to reason why”, the traditional cop-out.  But whether or not we are the only mere seven billion rational beings in the whole Universe, on the only planet in the Universe with any sort of life (on the face of it, pretty incredible suppositions !), it is just too much to swallow that such a Universe, the unbridled expansion of which, moreover, is madly accelerating, has any purpose or meaning.  “God” is just too much to believe.

P.S.   Even if He did want to give a planet to every dead Mormon, as members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints believe (a belief as silly as their silly rules about underwear), the figures are somewhat disproportionate.  Founded 200 years ago, the Mor(m)on Church numbers some 15 million members living today.  Membership hit one million 75 years ago.  So even if we imagine that since the Church’s beginning as many as another 15 million have died and each been given a planet, that leaves an awful lot of planets which Mormons will never need.  What in God’s name are they FOR ?

RIDENDA     RELIGIO

THE SHROUD AND THE FIFTH GOSPEL

Tags

"Angels and Demons", "The Fifth Gospel", Dan Brown, Diatessaron, Edessa, Ian Caldwell, Pope John Paul 2, The Shroud of Turin, Vatican

I thought that I had said enough about the Shroud of Turin (“Wowed by the Shroud ?”, October 26, 2016), until I read “The Fifth Gospel” (Ian Caldwell, Simon and Schuster, N.Y., 2015).  The alleged burial cloth of Jesus is, in fact, the novel’s central character.  The other is the Diatessaron, the attempt by a 2nd century Syriac disciple of Justin Martyr, Tatian, to combine all four Gospels into a harmony, used for some time in liturgical readings until it was replaced by direct readings from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

This eminently readable though erudite novel is set in the Vatican in the final years of the pontificate of Pope John Paul 2.  The protagonists are two brothers, both priests, one a celibate Roman Catholic and the other, Greek Catholic and married, who is a seminary professor, estranged from his wife but living with their five-year-old son within the Vatican.  The plot centers on an exhibition of the Shroud of Turin, the curator of which is found killed by gunshot just before the exhibition is scheduled to take place.  It is a gripping story, set in the same locale as Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”, but much better researched and written, and more credible than that other bestseller.

The author recalls the shock of the recent studies which revealed through carbon-dating that the Shroud was cloth of the 13th century and therefore clearly a fake.  Since then, specialists have objected that the carbon-dating was erroneous, and claim to have found evidence of the Shroud’s prior existence.  This is the . . . thread picked up by the novel’s author who traces the Shroud back a thousand years to Edessa !  Readers will be fascinated to discover the scriptural exegesis of the four Gospels and of the Diatesseron, establishing the fact that though the Shroud may be authentically ancient, it is nonetheless a fraud (though I personally suggested in my previous post that though an authentically ancient, blood-stained cloth, it  was perhaps created, innocently, to promote piety and devotion).

The author could have chosen to end his novel with a conclusion less disappointing for devotees of the Church’s most famous relic, considered to be nothing less than proof not only of Christ’s crucifixion but of His Resurrection.  It is, after all, only a novel, but it is one helluva good read.  Atheists and non-atheists both, will be challenged by the book’s historical and exegetical hypotheses, and will not regret discovering the hidden world of the Vatican in a captivating story they will thoroughly enjoy.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

THE FIRST VICTIM OF RELIGION IS THE TRUTH

The original statement was about war, not religion, but I find it equally . . . true of religious belief.  The difference, of course, is that when it was said during World War 1, it referred to the fraud practised on both sides in reporting the numbers of casualties and victories of the Allies, as well as violations of the rules of war and crimes against humanity practised by the enemy.

Religion may not have originally been promoted fraudulently,  but because it became rapidly obvious that because people wanted to believe, they could be made to believe almost anything.  Today most of those we call ministers of religion themselves believe much, if not most, of what they teach and preach, because that is what other sincere representatives of religion taught them.  But what is being taught is largely fable, not the truth.  The biggest lie is that we and the world were created by God.  “He” is, in fact, the invention of ignorant primitive people to explain the world around them.  The second is that our spirit, our “soul”, survives death in an “afterlife”.  The third is that “God” has given His revelation about how we should live, to certain people appointed to be His representatives and spokesmen, with authority to speak and act in His name.  These lies are still believed today.  But more and more people are rejecting them, discovering the truth and finding the freedom that comes with thinking for themselves.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

LIVING DANGEROUSLY

Tags

American Muslims, Bannon, Barbara Streisand, Daech Terrorism in France, Mexicans in the U.S., Perigee Full Moon, Rednecks, Trump's America, Visas for New Zealand

Thousands of Americans applying for visas permitting them to live in New Zealand apparently prefer the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis to living in Trump’s America.  Barbara Streisand is wondering whether she should move to Australia or Canada.  French people are conscious of the fact that over the last fifteen years the number of mosques and other Muslim prayer-centers has more than doubled (1000 to 2500, of which 140 are Salafist !).  From January 2015 to July 2016, France has had more than a thousand victims of Daech terrorism (238 dead, nearly 900 wounded).  American Muslims are wondering whether they will be among the three million Trump is promising to expel.  Rednecks are putting up signs in their front yards warning Mexicans that they will be shot at sight if they trespass their property at night.  Darkness is covering the world we live in (in spite of tonight’s Perigee Full Moon).  Fear is immediately evident on both sides of the Atlantic when a law-abiding Muslim boards a bus, a train or the metro.  Our gut-reaction is to wonder what he has in that bag he is carrying.  It is indeed a Mad, Mad, Mad world.

We know that prayer is pointless, that military victory over Daech is not the panacea, that dialogue with radical Islam is virtually impossible.  Our only hope is the courageous determination to use our solidarity to protect our lives, our freedom and our way of life, to refuse submission, capitulation and the paralysis that fear engenders, and to continue to search for ways to convince religious fanatics that no God could want them to destroy fellow human beings whom they blindly label as infidels.

Trump and the threats he presents, and above all the people who support him – especially his just-appointed chief advisor Bannon – together constitute a further challenge we could have done without.

Our values, our resilience and our intelligence will be sorely tested in the years ahead of us.  We will learn to live dangerously – in a double jeopardy – until we overcome, as overcome we shall.

                                           RIDENDA      RELIGIO

” WASTED “

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"Ab esse ad posse", "Carpe diem", Alcohol, Believers on the Brink, Drugs, Poverello

It is part of a “queer”, if not an “awesome”, contemporary linguistic phenomenon :  the word “wasted” no longer means only what it used to mean.  It’s the new code for “drunk” from alcohol, or otherwise physically and mentally incapacitated by consumption of other mind-changing chemical substances, in a word, “stoned”.

The word “wasted” is worth a wallow, if  I may accentuate the alliteration to which I am addicted.  I’ve said before on this Blog how much I regret having wasted fully half of my life as a believer and as a professional promoter of Catholicism.  I have dared to tell my Franciscan former confreres how much I pity them for having continued to waste their lives following Jesus and his poor Poverello.  Some say I am now wasting my time (they do not mention talent) attacking such credulity and attempting here to enlighten and encourage Believers on the Brink to adopt atheism.

About to turn eighty, I am still surprised and delighted that at age seventy-four I went on the wagon and am still on it.  I have no illusions about the real possibility of my going back, if not to the flesh-pots, to the Single Malts that had become part of my daily routine.  Was I ever “wasted” ?   Of course I was !  Luckily my addiction never resulted in physical harm to others, but it did nothing to improve my own health.  And it must have been a considerable cause of concern for my loved ones.  I hope that all that is behind me, now that I have decided not to kill myself slowly or even quickly through the abuse of alcohol, nor to waste the time I have left by being “wasted”.

I am particularly conscious of the blindness of young people already in the grip of the “demon” drink, or of equally diabolical drugs.  As with religious blindness, they have to find their own way out of the slavery to which they have submitted.  “Ab esse ad posse”; “From what exists we can identify what is possible”.  But if a run-of-the-mill bloke like me could find freedom from both these ways of wasting one’s life, others can.  I wish all of them “Bon Courage”.  Dare to decide.  “Carpe diem”.  I will not have been wasting my time writing this, if you do not regret wasting yours reading it.  The steps I am proposing are not easy to take, but when you do, you’ll never be sorry you did, either as a non-addict or as a non-believer.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

BLIND FAITH , BLIND FOLLY

Tags

Adolph Hitler, Donald Trump, World War Two

Since the democratic election, two days ago, of Donald Trump as President-Elect of the United States, commentators both professional and amateur (like me), have been comparing it with the democratic election, over eighty years ago, of Adolph Hitler as Chancellor of the German Republic.  But it is only this Blog which can use its own title to describe in four words what these two elections have in common.

All of us, even young people for whom World War Two is almost ancient history, have seen photographs and videos of those scenes in Germany of enormous crowds saluting their new Chancellor.  All of us have seen on television Trump on the stump, surrounded by enormous crowds cheering their candidate, and now Trump, after his election, being cheered by his jubilant supporters.  But we have also seen, in the big cities of the U.S., equally enormous and vociferous crowds of his opponents expressing their disappointment, their anger, their shattered hopes and even their fear.  There were no such crowds of Germans opposed to Hitler.  Perhaps the good news is that there are as many people who voted against Trump as for him, more in fact in absolute figures, though a unique, antiquated and anachronistic Electoral College system (created to compensate for the fact that slaves could not vote !), gave the unexpected and undeserved victory to Trump.

Readers of this Blog will not be surprised to see me attributing Trump’s election to the same blindness that made Hitler’s possible.  With luck, the comparison may stop there.  Hitler brought death, destruction and despair not only to Germany but to the whole world.  Hopefully we will find ways to prevent a lesser but similar outcome of the election of the new American President.  Apart from a small number of fanatics, the German people had no choice but to recognize, in a few short years, their blind faith and blind folly.  It is too late to correct the vision of Trump’s supporters.  We can only hope that the President himself realizes, before devastating damage is done, that he has been a blind leader of the blind.  Unfortunately we cannot count on Jesus to open his eyes . . .

RIDENDA      RELIGIO

” TRUMPERY “

The Webster’s American Dictionary definition, which will delight disappointed Democrats, deserves detailing on this day deemed disastrous :

“1.  Something showy but worthless. 2.  Nonsense; rubbish.”

Some will say that a name was never so clearly predestined !  But this is just Day One of the New World Order, the “novus ordo seclorum” on both the Great Seal of the United States and the one-dollar greenback.  He’s not even been sworn into office yet, so let’s give him a chance.  In the interim I hope that Mr Trump, President Elect, takes the time to reflect on his awesome (yes, “awesome”) responsibilities to unite the disUnited States, and to promote peace and prosperity, the rule of law, justice, liberty, equality and, as far as possible, fraternity throughout the world.

Some people surprise us when they are given responsibility.  You’ve seen it happen to immature young adults when they become parents.  We’ve all seen it happen in spheres as diverse and as distinct from each other as the local Town Hall and the Vatican.  It can happen also in the White House.  We will be vigilant as of January 20, 2017, but we must give the President the chance to grow into the office and to measure up to the promises he made in his speech last night.  “Carpe diem !”, Mister President.

EXPIRY DATES

Tags

Atomic Wastes, Expiry Dates, Great Barrier Reef, Hell, Plastic, Pollution of Oceans, Reincarnation, Soul

Everybody knows that today is the expiry date for the Trump-Clinton campaigns.  We’ve been expecting this for many painful months now.  But expiry-dates on food-products catch us unawares sometimes.  Even if some manufacturers announce a date earlier than the absolute limit so as to make sure we take no risks, such dates are never very far down the line : for certain canned goods, a couple of years at most; for most products it’s a matter of days.

The packaging of foodstuffs is a whole other kettle of fish or can of worms.  Plastic is practically immortal.  Every piece of plastic ever produced still exists today, and will for a very long time.  Unless we depollute our oceans, become garbage-dumps if not open sewers for non-decomposable plastic and other polluants in the near future, pretty soon there will be no fish to put in the kettle, and tourism of the Great Barrier Reef will have become a sunset industry.

Atomic wastes are worse.  Their half-life varies from 24,000 years for plutonium to 4 billion years for uranium 238.

But what about you and me, OUR expiry date ?  At 79, I’m getting uncomfortably close to my allotted four score (and ten ?).  And when I croak, as I will in the near future, my corpse will quickly become a disgusting, malodorous danger to public health, unless it had been cremated or buried ASAP.  Of course, if you believe in the nonsense of reincarnation, or the worse nonsense of the eternal life of the “soul” and the resurrection of the body, you have nothing to worry about (then again your faith tells you that Hell is another, unpleasant, possibility . . .).  Unfortunately these illusions have a very long half-life.  They will probably disappear definitively only when the human race does.

RIDENDA      RELIGIO