Plague Journal, Criticizing Religion
Yesterday featured an email exchange with a friend which ended in agreement “to disagree.” The recipient of my email resisted my criticism of Evangelical’s support of President Donald J. Trump.
Another mutual friend, copied on our exchange, commented that the crux of the dissension appeared to be my opponents will to defend the concept of religion in general. I read his assessment of our exchange and decided that his assessment likely was accurate.
How much evil, and by evil I mean to countenance, to tacitly approve cruelty, has been loosed upon communities, whole nations, and indeed upon continents because of a reluctance to criticize religion as a concept, — as if criticism might sully some inherent purity of the notion. You have no doubt guessed that I have in mind the dark days of WWII Europe, the bombed out and burned cities, the camps, the slaughter of a generation of young men on both sides. All because the 
good Lutherans in Germany, and the good-folk-of-faith in every other nation who knew about the ascendancy of the National Socialist German Workers Party chose not to stain themselves with politics, chose not rise up to repudiate, to shout ‘no’, to the violent and bloody future which that Party and it’s leader promised along with Deutschland Über Alles (Germany first).
We Americans are making the same mistake, all over again. Many of us upstanding, “people of faith” are throwing in with this man and his intellectually bankrupt party, because at least he has made good his promise to suppress abortion according to our theological principle… Are we insane?!
Because you may not have the time or inclination to ever read The Antichrist* written by Friedrich Nietzsche, here are a few paragraphs that impressed me. After all life is short and the list of books to be read is long.
Also, some photographs taken yesterday while walking along the Fox River.
A virtue must be our invention;
it must spring out of our personal need and defense.
In every other case it is a source of danger.
That which does not belong to our life menaces it.
Goodness grounded upon impersonality or
a notion of impersonal validity –
— these are all chimeras. No. 11
The “pure spirit” is a piece of pure stupidity:
take away the nervous system and the senses,
the so-called “mortal shell,”
the rest is miscalculation….
That is all! No. 15
It is of very little consequence
whether a thing be true or not,
as long as it is believed to be true.
Truth and Faith:
here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas,
almost two diametrically opposite worlds —
the road to one and the road to the other
lie miles apart.
… when a man gets pleasure out of the notion
that he has been saved from sin,
it is not necessary for him to be actually sinful,
but merely to feel sinful.
When faith is exalted above everything else,
it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge,
and patient inquiry have been discredited:
The road to truth becomes
the forbidden road. No. 23
Jesus stood against the whole hierarchy of society
— not against corruption,
but against caste, privilege, order, formalism.
It was unbelief in “superior man,”
a nay flung at everything
that priests and theologians stood for.
This man was a political criminal.
He died for his own sins.
— there is not the slightest ground for believing,
no matter how often it is asserted,
that he died for the sins of others. No. 27
* If you’d like a pdf of The Antichrist, CLICK HERE.
One thought on “Plague Journal, Criticizing Religion”
Hi kids !
After read Tobin Fraleys’ comment, written last year, as a comment to the above mentioned ‘Related’ post ‘Why Not Atheism’?, I believe an opportunity has arisen for my take (?) on these matters:
To be courteously brief, I will refresh that which I have previously stated, that my gaze turned East decades ago; After a few years of what would become a decades long intense relationship with the ancient Chinese martial art practice T’ai Chi Ch’aun, I, as many taiji players before me, found myself diligently in the study of ‘The Way’. After a profound loss in my life, I found that the parables offered by Lao Tzu and seeking peace within the inner teachings of Chaung Tzu required to much ‘thinking’ on my part and could not diminish the deliberation of ‘hallow point’ or ‘wadcutter’ constant in my mind. I was quite fortunate at that time to be spending most of my days at an exquisite European Patisserie named, ‘Ambrosia’ near me. Besides a world class pastry chef (now departed) Richard, and his most gracious wife , Debbie, who ran the front of the house, I felt ‘safe’ there, as if I left my demons at the door. I just sat there daily, enjoying my modest repast, reading. If I were to say I believed in ‘kamma’ (Theravadan), I would add that I believe that we experience most of ours in this life, much less having to worry about a next one. It was there that a met a gentleman, somewhat older than I, who also spent many relaxed days there reading as well. I, by then, had begun to research meditation as a refuge and noticing such he introduced himself as a decades long meditator and practicing Buddhist. A retired Corporate officer of a Fortune 500 company (his living room was about as big as my house and had two staircases at either end) we soon became good friends, as I followed his reading recommendations and joined a meditation group he was a member of.
The teachings of the ‘Buddha’ follow the study of meditation, as the ‘Way” followed taiji. I soon discovered the Buddha was the only historic spiritual figure who said; “DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT” and fervently appealed to his followers not to deify him. He was simply a man, Gautama Siddhartha who, surviving many years of searching and physical deprivation, sitting under a bodhi tree in Deer Park, by then, barely alive, achieved Buddhahood (a ‘Buddha’ – ‘one who is enlightened’ in the ancient Pali Language).
His followers and disciples constantly asked him of the ‘afterlife’ (this was after all, Hindu India, steeped in traditions of reincarnation and rebirth) To which he responded; “I never said I would speak of this and, what difference does it make? If you lead a good life, IF there is an afterlife it will probably be just as good, if not better. If you lead a bad life now, it would probably be just as bad, if not worse”. They would then be dismissed to pursue more profitable deeds than asking silly questions.
At the Theravadan Temple that I studied at, I often found myself in such conversation with the Sri Lankan monks that were in residence there. (Never with the Abbot and my good friend, the venerable Bante Sila – I new better !)
The aforementioned monks and I would most often conclude that we didn’t have a clue. I hope this has been helpful.
Blessings