There’s a huge problem here in people’s propensity to have blind faith in things that are absolutely incompatible, a tendency that is overdeveloped in America; one that lays people open to delusions and to the total misinterpretation of science, reason and religion.
The strangest thing—though, in one way or another, this kind of thing ha…
There’s a huge problem here in people’s propensity to have blind faith in things that are absolutely incompatible, a tendency that is overdeveloped in America; one that lays people open to delusions and to the total misinterpretation of science, reason and religion.
The strangest thing—though, in one way or another, this kind of thing has happened time and again in history—is how self-professed Christians have been taken in by this demonic pseudo-Father figure. If they were able to attend to Christ’s message and abandon the adoration of Mammon for just one moment, daylight would get in and dispel their delusion.
Any genuine religion—as opposed to worshipping shattered splinters of a confused idea of God—would have the same effect.
Which could be the reason church membership is dropping. People are rejecting what the modern church has become. When we moved to the South we dropped our church membership, we found most southern churches to be more like country clubs and Yankees not wanted.
I believe that many Christians have no idea that Christ’s messages of love, and that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” are what is important. Too many believe that faith in the name is all you need. This leads to an easy explanation for what has happened, Jesus has been supplanted. Faith is all they have.
They take shelter in the institution and the community it creates. It follows the history of the Catholic Church from 400 AD as a "political" organization protecting the faithful and offering up themselves as both controller of mores and mediator with God....as most people have difficulty handling the demands personal responibility implicit in a more direct relationship.
Gregory Bateson called that 'the double bind'. Indeed, I need to think this through but perhaps that is exactly what is going on at a societal level. Nice play Stuart.
Reid, you're touching something there. "Blinds" is the right word too.
To be a little kinder and more understanding, people have every reason to feel lost in a world in which change, social, economic and technological, is unprecedented and forever accelerating. One would have to be stupid and insensitive never to feel alienated. Alienated by the take-over of our lives by alien forces that have no longer any connection with our human bodies, our minds or our shared household.
As far as I’m concerned, this compels humans to stop messing around and ask ourselves the most basic questions: What, who are we? What do we think we are doing here? What do we really need? What do we really want? Especially the first question. The others flow from it.
Socrates is said to have spent a whole morning looking at a market stall selling bric-a-brac. When one of his students picked up the courage to ask him what was so special about it, he replied: “Isn’t it wonderful? All these things I don’t need!”
There’s a huge problem here in people’s propensity to have blind faith in things that are absolutely incompatible, a tendency that is overdeveloped in America; one that lays people open to delusions and to the total misinterpretation of science, reason and religion.
The strangest thing—though, in one way or another, this kind of thing has happened time and again in history—is how self-professed Christians have been taken in by this demonic pseudo-Father figure. If they were able to attend to Christ’s message and abandon the adoration of Mammon for just one moment, daylight would get in and dispel their delusion.
Any genuine religion—as opposed to worshipping shattered splinters of a confused idea of God—would have the same effect.
Which could be the reason church membership is dropping. People are rejecting what the modern church has become. When we moved to the South we dropped our church membership, we found most southern churches to be more like country clubs and Yankees not wanted.
I believe that many Christians have no idea that Christ’s messages of love, and that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” are what is important. Too many believe that faith in the name is all you need. This leads to an easy explanation for what has happened, Jesus has been supplanted. Faith is all they have.
Alas, is that faith? Sounds like a cheap talisman, a counterfeit token. An alibi for irresponsibility.
"The Kingdom" is not a somewhere else, promised at another time.
"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
Weird how such a radical, immensely demanding religion can have been reduced to a means of imposing social conformism.
They take shelter in the institution and the community it creates. It follows the history of the Catholic Church from 400 AD as a "political" organization protecting the faithful and offering up themselves as both controller of mores and mediator with God....as most people have difficulty handling the demands personal responibility implicit in a more direct relationship.
Mutually contradictary instructions/obligations are also recognized as triggers of episodes of schizophrenia!
Gregory Bateson called that 'the double bind'. Indeed, I need to think this through but perhaps that is exactly what is going on at a societal level. Nice play Stuart.
I think the abortion issue blinds many of them.
Reid, you're touching something there. "Blinds" is the right word too.
To be a little kinder and more understanding, people have every reason to feel lost in a world in which change, social, economic and technological, is unprecedented and forever accelerating. One would have to be stupid and insensitive never to feel alienated. Alienated by the take-over of our lives by alien forces that have no longer any connection with our human bodies, our minds or our shared household.
As far as I’m concerned, this compels humans to stop messing around and ask ourselves the most basic questions: What, who are we? What do we think we are doing here? What do we really need? What do we really want? Especially the first question. The others flow from it.
Socrates is said to have spent a whole morning looking at a market stall selling bric-a-brac. When one of his students picked up the courage to ask him what was so special about it, he replied: “Isn’t it wonderful? All these things I don’t need!”