Adam and Eve were deliberately put in the Garden to sin. What I find more astounding about the whole paradisiacal ordeal is Adam's unmanly display of cowardliness once he's confronted by the hypothetical God and defends himself by claiming: "It was the woman you gave me who made me do it." Eve, in effect, is the one who induces her partner to sin. How unnatural, since if anything, culturally, are men who are the aggressors, and no other way around it. At least, that's the way I see it. And I may be wrong, but though as it may be, I don't see Eve as a complete slut. (I am well aware of the Madonna/Whore Complex). And I'm sure the Sacred Scriptures want to depict her as the one who doomed humanity. Not a whole lot of gender equality can be expected from a doctrine that at the height of its hierarchy, like in the Matrix, a trilogy that begins with The Father, it follows with The Son and, as if things weren't already confusing enough, borders in madness with a final Holy Spirit. Are we to expect then that this Hollow Spirit is a methaporic analogy of the female anatomy?
Eve's role as the perpetrator, her descending from of Adam's ribs, the harshness of the punishment she is to suffer as a consequence of her actions reflect the mysogynistic nature of this most revered text. The Bible stems from the barbaric Bronze Era, and no special treatment towards women may not be all that alarming, after all. The Catholic Church has as its highest representative on earth the Pope, and no woman has ever been considered a prospect for such job. Down the food chain, you find the local priest, whom devoted faithful confess to, and even this most insignificant position has ever been held by a woman in the entire history of this faith. Nonetheless, The Bible chronicles the lives of quite a few outstanding women figures, among which, my favorite, Dalilah, the one who brought about Hercules' downfall. Mary, Jesus' mother, appears as the most significant woman in the New Testament. And just in case you didn't know all of the intricate details, I'll quickly run you through them: Mary receives the news from an angel that she's expecting a child. At least, that's what she tells her furious husband Joseph who doesn't swallow it until, in a dream, he's told of his wife's truthfulness. According to the Old Testament, in case you didn't know, adultery is a crime punishable by death. And so, you see, call me heretic as it may be the case, but it seems to me that she was fooling around.
In principle, Christianity (Jesus was, by the way, born and raised Jewish and he may not have intended to depart from it in the way Christians have, in fact I think he'd be quite appalled as to what has been done by his followers) sprang off from Judaism. Its historical turning point did not occur with Jesus' cruxifiction. It began with the emperor Constantine who introduced christianity as the main religion of the empire after the Christians helped him solidify power of the throne. This emperor, like many crazy others that preceded and followed, was a horrible tyrant who killed his brother, wanted to marry his sister and decided to build churches in the name of his new-found faith when his mother prompted him to do so. If I'm not mistaken, he killed her too. With the introduction of Christianity as the main religion of the empire, what was left of the Roman deities fused with the new theological kid on the block and formed what we come to know as Catholicism. Christian Rome went without a bath for centuries to come, and not that many Europeans today have managed to escape such legacy. Before Christianity, The Roman Empire lived up to its pagan ancestry, it was truly a lust fest, with their idolatry of fertile gods, frugal goddesses, that celebrated life fully. We have inherited both the lustful appetite of Rome before Christianity and the bad stomach that came after it. In the mind and body struggle, we're spiritually bulimic: we enjoy having our cake but are consumed by guilt and remorse after it.
For all I care, humanity had been doomed way before eating from the forbidden fruit. Of course, it is only a metaphor, and a fair one. The Bible is just one more adapted version of many other sacred texts dating back two milleniums before Christ; many passages have been altered, entire chapters taken out... good stuff, like Salomon's Song were extracted. For all its translations and theological interpretations, a book as ancient as the Bible, it surely preserved some of its infamous essence.
Let us now turn back to the Book of Genesis. There is the forbidden fruit, of which Adam and Eve are, under no circumstances, to eat from. That is what made it so good, isn't it? I mean, didn't God know from the get go, in his all omnipotence, that that would be such the case. If He didn't, He couldn't have been the Almighty.
That which is forbidden seems to be so overwhelmingly appealing.
In life, we find that "forbidden fruit" all around. What can we say, then? It would have been far more interesting if Adam tried and failed to convince his female partner to eat from the forbidden tree. And maybe have her ratting him out to God. Maybe have Adam cook the devilish snake, and feed it unknowingly to Eve, just for entertainment purposes. I could have twisted the fable in so many unexpected ways. Except I'm not into fairies. I'm not into drama either, except, of course, for when Cain kills his brother. I can sympathize with that. Killing your competition, now that is a noble cause. How God comes after things have taken place, and applies the required punishment, is a little like when in the movies the cops always show up when everything has already happened. A devoted Christian at work dared ask me: "What are you going to do when you stand in front of God in Judgment Day?"
"I'm gonna whip it out" I told him. Shocked as he seemed, I further articulated: "In fact, I'm going to shake it and say, 'You gave me this, and expect me not to use it?" Of course, it was all for humorous purposes and even this most devoted creature, reading into my body language and tonality, couldn't help but to laugh as I graphically rehearsed the potential scenario.
I bought The God Delusion book, and I was bored to tears, thinking to myself, How can a scientist spend his time trying to convince people of the silliness of religious belief? There ought to be better things to devote such great mind to."
Existentialism poses a valid argument. What if, if only for a moment, we could conceive the notion that this life of ours is all that there really is? What if such was the case? If we only had this life to make meaningful, this and nothing else? Well, better yet: Why bother with another life if we can hardly do with this one? I do believe that the most interesting people are going to hell, if such hypothetical place were to, well, pardon the redundancy, to take place.
Is there such a thing as a God? Well, undoubtedly, we will never know. One of the things I do not agree with the author of The God Delusion is that agnostics are spineless creatures. That we stand for nothing, really. The argument Mr. Dawkins (who you may remember from his far superior classic, The Selfish Gene) makes is, agnostics don't want to take a stance. No, I don't think that's the case. Wholeheartedly, I think agnostics are simply not into making shit up. They simply don't say what is and what isn't. Although I am 100 percent with him in that the Bible is nothing more than gibberish, and, quite honestly, it doesn't even make for a good fable. If there is a "God", with capital G, it has no desire to concern himself with lower beings, like humans, and certainly can't and won't, I mean it seriously now, take personally our actions. It would be the equivalent of us worrying about roaches' mean-spirited nature. Look, some crazy shit has been perpetuated throughout history in the name of this hypothetical God: the Inquisition, the Christian Crusades, to mention just a few. We've fought wars and presently still launch unto much unnecessary drama over theocratic territory. Religion, if you must know, was devised to exert control over the unruly masses. And some good has come from it. That hard-core Christian co-worker is a recovered addict with a criminal past, and nowadays he is one of the most benevolent creatures of creation. I may point out to him that his addictive personality had to swing from one extreme (drugs, crime, etc) to the religious junkie he is nowadays, but I do so in a humble light: "Hey, man, now you're high on Jesus." That is a high anyone can substain. And the man has done missionary work even in South America through his church.
If there were such a thing as a God, in the biblical nonsensical terms, I think that He would be atheist or, at the very least, agnostic. Look at nonreligious nations, like Japan, where crime is close to nonexistent, at least in comparison to God-fearing nations like ours. Prayers have no scientific value, as many useless studies have found. Yet meditation, sprang out of well-thought out ideologies like Buddhism, do have a superb impact on our well-being.
A philosophy that dwells in personal misery, that thrives in penance and guilt, can't be of no good precedence except in the wicked imagination of a feeble mind. One ought to be intellectually blind not to see that.
It is, in other words, considered "cheap labor." Imagine, for the time being, that I am your boss. And I demand of you great service. A week passes by, a month, then a year, and then you come asking me how will I repay your services. And I say to you: "I'll pay you for all of your devoted actions in your next life, when you die, you shall receive the fruits of your labor." What would you say to me? I know: "Go fuck yourself! I want to get paid now!" Then why, I ask, would you subject yourself to such a silly doctrine, if not out of fear. Yes, the mechanism of fear… it's far more complex than you think. Sadly, many people go through life without ever questioning their core beliefs. And then they wonder why is it that life is so "unfair" to them, why is it that they can't "find" happiness. Let me let you in on a little secret: happiness isn't something you stumble upon. It is something you first and most importantly conceive and then you work hard day in and out for. And more likely than not, there is no cozy reception awaiting you in the end. It's just not that way.
In reading Juan Rulfo's exemplary tale, Pedro Paramo, you'll find two corpses engaged in a lively conversation about the afterlife. A woman laments how a priest had told her that she would not see Heaven because of her sinful life. And, in retrospect, she naively complains, "Although I don't think that priest did me a favor in telling me so because if I put up with so much in life is, well, because I thought that in the end I was going to be taken to another place. And to think that I could've done so much more worse, and all of the opportunity now has passed me by."
The argument has been made that the most interesting people are to be found in Hell. There should be variations, degrees of Hell, if you ask me. For one thing is evil as Hitler or Stalin, or Osama Bin Laden for that matter. And a very different breed of evil is, say, nonreligious types the likes of Galileo,Voltaire or, why not?, Mr. Dawkins himself.
Heaven might have something going for, and that, I think, is its under population. Now there's something I'm all arms-and-fists up about.
Eve's role as the perpetrator, her descending from of Adam's ribs, the harshness of the punishment she is to suffer as a consequence of her actions reflect the mysogynistic nature of this most revered text. The Bible stems from the barbaric Bronze Era, and no special treatment towards women may not be all that alarming, after all. The Catholic Church has as its highest representative on earth the Pope, and no woman has ever been considered a prospect for such job. Down the food chain, you find the local priest, whom devoted faithful confess to, and even this most insignificant position has ever been held by a woman in the entire history of this faith. Nonetheless, The Bible chronicles the lives of quite a few outstanding women figures, among which, my favorite, Dalilah, the one who brought about Hercules' downfall. Mary, Jesus' mother, appears as the most significant woman in the New Testament. And just in case you didn't know all of the intricate details, I'll quickly run you through them: Mary receives the news from an angel that she's expecting a child. At least, that's what she tells her furious husband Joseph who doesn't swallow it until, in a dream, he's told of his wife's truthfulness. According to the Old Testament, in case you didn't know, adultery is a crime punishable by death. And so, you see, call me heretic as it may be the case, but it seems to me that she was fooling around.
In principle, Christianity (Jesus was, by the way, born and raised Jewish and he may not have intended to depart from it in the way Christians have, in fact I think he'd be quite appalled as to what has been done by his followers) sprang off from Judaism. Its historical turning point did not occur with Jesus' cruxifiction. It began with the emperor Constantine who introduced christianity as the main religion of the empire after the Christians helped him solidify power of the throne. This emperor, like many crazy others that preceded and followed, was a horrible tyrant who killed his brother, wanted to marry his sister and decided to build churches in the name of his new-found faith when his mother prompted him to do so. If I'm not mistaken, he killed her too. With the introduction of Christianity as the main religion of the empire, what was left of the Roman deities fused with the new theological kid on the block and formed what we come to know as Catholicism. Christian Rome went without a bath for centuries to come, and not that many Europeans today have managed to escape such legacy. Before Christianity, The Roman Empire lived up to its pagan ancestry, it was truly a lust fest, with their idolatry of fertile gods, frugal goddesses, that celebrated life fully. We have inherited both the lustful appetite of Rome before Christianity and the bad stomach that came after it. In the mind and body struggle, we're spiritually bulimic: we enjoy having our cake but are consumed by guilt and remorse after it.
For all I care, humanity had been doomed way before eating from the forbidden fruit. Of course, it is only a metaphor, and a fair one. The Bible is just one more adapted version of many other sacred texts dating back two milleniums before Christ; many passages have been altered, entire chapters taken out... good stuff, like Salomon's Song were extracted. For all its translations and theological interpretations, a book as ancient as the Bible, it surely preserved some of its infamous essence.
Let us now turn back to the Book of Genesis. There is the forbidden fruit, of which Adam and Eve are, under no circumstances, to eat from. That is what made it so good, isn't it? I mean, didn't God know from the get go, in his all omnipotence, that that would be such the case. If He didn't, He couldn't have been the Almighty.
That which is forbidden seems to be so overwhelmingly appealing.
In life, we find that "forbidden fruit" all around. What can we say, then? It would have been far more interesting if Adam tried and failed to convince his female partner to eat from the forbidden tree. And maybe have her ratting him out to God. Maybe have Adam cook the devilish snake, and feed it unknowingly to Eve, just for entertainment purposes. I could have twisted the fable in so many unexpected ways. Except I'm not into fairies. I'm not into drama either, except, of course, for when Cain kills his brother. I can sympathize with that. Killing your competition, now that is a noble cause. How God comes after things have taken place, and applies the required punishment, is a little like when in the movies the cops always show up when everything has already happened. A devoted Christian at work dared ask me: "What are you going to do when you stand in front of God in Judgment Day?"
"I'm gonna whip it out" I told him. Shocked as he seemed, I further articulated: "In fact, I'm going to shake it and say, 'You gave me this, and expect me not to use it?" Of course, it was all for humorous purposes and even this most devoted creature, reading into my body language and tonality, couldn't help but to laugh as I graphically rehearsed the potential scenario.
I bought The God Delusion book, and I was bored to tears, thinking to myself, How can a scientist spend his time trying to convince people of the silliness of religious belief? There ought to be better things to devote such great mind to."
Existentialism poses a valid argument. What if, if only for a moment, we could conceive the notion that this life of ours is all that there really is? What if such was the case? If we only had this life to make meaningful, this and nothing else? Well, better yet: Why bother with another life if we can hardly do with this one? I do believe that the most interesting people are going to hell, if such hypothetical place were to, well, pardon the redundancy, to take place.
Is there such a thing as a God? Well, undoubtedly, we will never know. One of the things I do not agree with the author of The God Delusion is that agnostics are spineless creatures. That we stand for nothing, really. The argument Mr. Dawkins (who you may remember from his far superior classic, The Selfish Gene) makes is, agnostics don't want to take a stance. No, I don't think that's the case. Wholeheartedly, I think agnostics are simply not into making shit up. They simply don't say what is and what isn't. Although I am 100 percent with him in that the Bible is nothing more than gibberish, and, quite honestly, it doesn't even make for a good fable. If there is a "God", with capital G, it has no desire to concern himself with lower beings, like humans, and certainly can't and won't, I mean it seriously now, take personally our actions. It would be the equivalent of us worrying about roaches' mean-spirited nature. Look, some crazy shit has been perpetuated throughout history in the name of this hypothetical God: the Inquisition, the Christian Crusades, to mention just a few. We've fought wars and presently still launch unto much unnecessary drama over theocratic territory. Religion, if you must know, was devised to exert control over the unruly masses. And some good has come from it. That hard-core Christian co-worker is a recovered addict with a criminal past, and nowadays he is one of the most benevolent creatures of creation. I may point out to him that his addictive personality had to swing from one extreme (drugs, crime, etc) to the religious junkie he is nowadays, but I do so in a humble light: "Hey, man, now you're high on Jesus." That is a high anyone can substain. And the man has done missionary work even in South America through his church.
If there were such a thing as a God, in the biblical nonsensical terms, I think that He would be atheist or, at the very least, agnostic. Look at nonreligious nations, like Japan, where crime is close to nonexistent, at least in comparison to God-fearing nations like ours. Prayers have no scientific value, as many useless studies have found. Yet meditation, sprang out of well-thought out ideologies like Buddhism, do have a superb impact on our well-being.
A philosophy that dwells in personal misery, that thrives in penance and guilt, can't be of no good precedence except in the wicked imagination of a feeble mind. One ought to be intellectually blind not to see that.
It is, in other words, considered "cheap labor." Imagine, for the time being, that I am your boss. And I demand of you great service. A week passes by, a month, then a year, and then you come asking me how will I repay your services. And I say to you: "I'll pay you for all of your devoted actions in your next life, when you die, you shall receive the fruits of your labor." What would you say to me? I know: "Go fuck yourself! I want to get paid now!" Then why, I ask, would you subject yourself to such a silly doctrine, if not out of fear. Yes, the mechanism of fear… it's far more complex than you think. Sadly, many people go through life without ever questioning their core beliefs. And then they wonder why is it that life is so "unfair" to them, why is it that they can't "find" happiness. Let me let you in on a little secret: happiness isn't something you stumble upon. It is something you first and most importantly conceive and then you work hard day in and out for. And more likely than not, there is no cozy reception awaiting you in the end. It's just not that way.
In reading Juan Rulfo's exemplary tale, Pedro Paramo, you'll find two corpses engaged in a lively conversation about the afterlife. A woman laments how a priest had told her that she would not see Heaven because of her sinful life. And, in retrospect, she naively complains, "Although I don't think that priest did me a favor in telling me so because if I put up with so much in life is, well, because I thought that in the end I was going to be taken to another place. And to think that I could've done so much more worse, and all of the opportunity now has passed me by."
The argument has been made that the most interesting people are to be found in Hell. There should be variations, degrees of Hell, if you ask me. For one thing is evil as Hitler or Stalin, or Osama Bin Laden for that matter. And a very different breed of evil is, say, nonreligious types the likes of Galileo,Voltaire or, why not?, Mr. Dawkins himself.
Heaven might have something going for, and that, I think, is its under population. Now there's something I'm all arms-and-fists up about.
No comments:
Post a Comment