Posted on 06/17/2007 3:12:35 PM PDT by Urbane_Guerilla
In this war we are in, the one to conserve the best of what mankind has learned, the deepest question is one whose answer may go against us, and whose implications may be the millstone around our neck.
The question is not new. It is old. It is the question about the powerful influence of religious belief on the affairs of mankind.
Every sentient human mind necessarily considers God. Most humans, from whatever time or place, have come to a belief about God. It may be inculcated from birth, or taken after considerable open-minded thought.
In the war we are in, the way people think about the question affects the way the war is fought.
This is my opinion. Allah not only does not exist, but "he" is also a fabrication whose objective correlative was a narcissist and sociopath. The man who invented his own story about the single God, was really talking about himself, and how he, in his own mind, should be worshiped and adored.
Regardless of what the worshipers of Mohammed proclaim, they in fact do what he wanted them to do, which was and is, to worship Mohammed in a way not distinguishable, for example, from the Roman emperors who were deemed gods. Caligula is a good example, and in his own evil way a brilliant commentator, thru his artistic reality performances, on the question of humans who need to be treated as gods.
Monotheism was a means to reject superstition and idiocy. It was a philosophical advance in the life of men, not because it could explain the logic of One God, but because it rejected the patent stupidity of believing in many gods. The simple-minded devotion to individual gods who ruled over every individual aspect of human life, was a drain on the productivity of the human mind. The belief in One God, had the philosophical advantage of coming close to the absurd reality of human existence, which is that we do not have a clue why we are here, or why we exist, other than to create children and nurture them. The belief in One God removed the mental clutter, and more sharply focused the human mind on what it is all about. Monotheism was a scientific advancement, as wrong or as right as it may be.
Before Jesus, was monotheism. Jesus has been another type of advance in human thinking, the realization that while we are all here, we should make the best of it, all for each other. Jesus could not have said what he did, without monotheism. Polytheism degraded the discussion about existence into superstitious squabbles. Monotheism pared the thinking to the starkness we have been thinking about for a couple thousand years.
The worshipers of Mohammed have taken the concept of monotheism and proven what is a sad fact about human existence, that shallow, maybe desperate, human beings, can assiduously grasp nonsense as their most fundamental organizing principal.
Wow! Well said.
Maybe I'm just getting pretty tired or something but I've read this post twice and I still don't understand what's being said.
For one thing, I couldn't find a question. The above quotes phrase -- the closest I could find to a question --isn't, it's a statement. (FWIW: the Muslims consider Christians polytheic, i.e. Father-Son-Holy-Ghost, Mariology (sp?), prayers to various saints, etc.)
And the phrase "Before Jesus, was monotheism. Is that a typo (of which I know all about from personal experience) or a statement? If the latter what does it mean?
Let me give you the short form of the guy's thesis:
Mohamed was a perverted psychopath not a god. Yet throughout history perverts and psychopaths have been able to sway a lot of people.
Here below is an idea(s)where one might begin to try and understand the Bible.
The first Commandment given unto Humans was to procreate.
Later it was made evident that Humans are now partaking of the fruit of the KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil.
For me it is all quite simple.
I’ve done a lot of reading, studying, praying, and wondering, and much more over the last several decades about the why and why nots of things.
If there were no bad stuff, then we’d not ever know how to appreciate the good stuff.
Rant over.
I think it is about whether God is intercessory. Of course, it might be about whether God created evil or just knew that we would do that eventually if not sooner.
The meaning of existence is an underlying philosophical question whose objective answer no doubt lies in the more fundamental premises that cause existence, as we perceive it, to be manifested.
The worthy consideration of Monotheism is an attempt by the ancients and moderns alike, driven by intuitive sensibilities, to explain the character of the most fundamental order—from which other orders originate.
I am however surprised, that someone who claims to think critically, could place so much authority in things that were written by unknown people, for various reasons (many with an eye toward political control), thousands of years ago.
In the media today, when some minority communicates one-sided and biased information to the public with the purpose of advancing their own agendas, values, and interests: we dub it propoganda. When the ancients do the very same thing, because of the almost mystical authority that the passage of time endows, we blindly believe one-sided information that was once propaganda, dubbing it instead ‘tradition’ and ‘religion’.
Excellent clarity.
Thanks. Good post.
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