So ask this Catholic girl who went to a Catholic girls' school until she was neither Catholic nor a girl to talk about sin.
For all the sinners in the world who live rather scared by the sacred thunder, will have to say... DON'T PANIC (these words must be engraved on each Bible as well).
Once freedom has exploded in the soul of man, the gods no longer have any power over him.
Wish I would have said that, but it was actually Sartre. And I began thinking about it while watching 'My Summer of Love' last Friday - it is not a girly movie at all! Well, there are slumber parties and making out, but believe me, the girl-girl story is rather twisted. Anyway, the redhaired one day does a Nietzsche and screams: 'God is dead!'.
Quite a serious statement.
Living in the middle of two opposite realities is another tale with many advantages.
All my Danish friends nod and agree on the 'serious statement' above.
All my Mexican friends believe there's a God in one way or another.
And I get completely confused. So for my personal use, reached the conclusion that to sin is actually to hurt people on purpose, and consequences are pure behavioural/emotional reactions that will make life just more complicated. Good intentions, honesty, simple love, and kind deeds are in my mind 'heaven' (though current descriptions sound close to a day spa..). There's no more hell than the one you create around (have you ever been clinically depressed or lost a friend?).
My wise brother will for sure come up with very good arguments for the need of believing and the existence of faith, but religion (any) is just the expression of ethics with politics plus something intangible that I have lost, or just never reached.
So if I leave religion in the freezer (have been doomed around 754 times in the last five years), and begin dealing with freedom, will for sure avoid the vacuum. Or perhaps vacuum is not that bad.
Will think about it in the shower.
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6 comments:
Dont recall who said it, but comedy has been defined thus:
tragedy + time = comedy. That's how I feel about the 3 big (will refrain from saying great) religions: most of the stories in the books are tragic, but reading them this side of time, only makes me laugh. And even more so, when people deposit their moral standards in ancient fantasy novels. But who am I to say...
jesper b
My darling eternal cynic,
Believing that women are the source of all evil and that we owe that to a naked lady eating an apple is left behind really early in the lives of the believers.
The core of all religions is a set of moral rules, and as in any sitcom you chose, the message is transmitted by juicy characters - the more dramatic, the better.
I would say that worst than building a religion upon bad bedtime stories, it is really evil to cut people's freedom by overrated values.
The thing that I am after is what makes people believe. You know? How come individuals that I praise as wonderful, intelligent and mature, have this extra strenghten that comes from faith. As it happens with ghosts, would like to know the matter of it, to decompose the cube and understand. But so far, only questions and no answers.
It was good seeing you yesterday.
A.
Sorry, I know the absurdities of religions, and the lack of necessity to believe in same. It's too easy to say "Well, you should see this as symbolic", and yet I fail to meet religious people who fail to see the symbolic shit in it all. It is way too easy to find crap in this world, and state: It smells like shit, it looks like shit - hell it must be shit. Or rather, it is shit. I know writers who despise people like me, who's agnostics (gnosis=knowledge, agnosis=no knowledge), but I certainly despise people who have no doubt. 100% certainty equals - in my mind - 100% nobrain, nothinking
jesper b
Did you ever stop to wander why 'sacred' and 'scared' are almost spelled the same way.... As if the symantics try to tell you that if you live your life without the one, you live without the other as well...
Dan'
Nietzsche wrote “God’s dead” because he was already dead, that’s why he didn’t had hope. I don't think Nietzsche (also with Zaratustra) is the best rule to think in religion.
In a ethnic way,religion is created by the humanity for itself survive, or tell me just one culture that hasn't belived in something more than this life (The Nirvana's is included, jejeje).
The really tragic point is that religion tranform to power, to politics, to money$$$ as every human activity does.... ecology, love, revolution, ZAPATA, etc. But do not blame the religions, they are just thoughts, a sense of... I don't know how to say in english.... "sentido de pertenencia a un grupo social" If you have never saw Rarámuris way of life, or Haitians people, or one "curandero del sonora" and of course a presbiterian or a priest you will not understand me.
The bad guys are, the mercenaries of religion, blame them because of your deprive of hope.
I know what you're thinking: religion = war and yes it is, but war = less overpopulation so... we're really sure what is bad and what is good?, I don't wan't to defend religion, I'm just sayin' Guys, don't censure the censors, because if we do, we will be as them.
Yearh... without any pretensions I tried to ignite opinions. Agree with you with the 'don't censor the censors' thought, but can see that you somehow defend religion as if talking for yourself. See my darling - what I've learnt lately is that the intangible part of religion will never be explained, no matter how many Nietzches appear in the future years.
'God is dead' was not a personal statement related to a lack of faith, but a trigger to statements that end up being as valid as else. If religions cause war, and war is a method to control overpopulation, then AIDS is the same. Guess that in the last years we've seen other 'religions' around that in som way equilibrate the growing world population. When you take focus from petrol, it is because something else came up (say etanol?), hence the original motif has disappeared.
The 'sentido de pertenencia' is well known as a motivator for following a religion - I read that the Polish people survived so many invasions (when Russia got angry with Germany, they invaded Poland, and when Germany got angry with Russia, they invaded Poland) by religion and language.
What I am after is what makes people, scientist, philosopher, Octavio Paz believe in an afterlife and in something bigger than us above. Do you have any clues?
What
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