(Warning: The following journal of random bloviating is apt to include explicit language from time to time. They're just fuckin words. Don't be priggish for the benefit of your contemporaries. Get over it. Your pre-teen, if you have one or more, is currently discovering them on their own without your knowledge and taking every opportunity to wear them out like the soles of their thumbs on their cell phone.)
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Epistle to the Etherians - Eth. 46:201 or 9-
Religion (or the other thing which should not be discussed at social gatherings)
A quote attributed to Voltaire goes, “Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.” Logical thinking leads one to believe this is most likely true. Religion, by its very nature, usually portrays its god or gods as narcissistic simpletons with an unending, pathetic need for praise, supplication and petitions as opposed to a Supreme Being who is the architect, engineer, and creator of all base elements and matter in the universe. A Supreme Being, who by design, is the mastermind (if such a thing as a physical 'mind' even comes into play) that is ultimately responsible for all that has resulted from the infinite combination, mixture and evolution of those elements and matter throughout time infinitum. Whew … your brain explodes just thinking it through, as well it should.
To attempt to comprehend the magnitude of this being at our state of evolution is pure folly. To claim to know the desires of this being with certainty would be sacrilege according to our definition of the word. I can only speculate, since everything is Its creation, Its pleasure is derived when we emulate it and create as opposed to destroy. As The Parent of all things, like a parent, Its satisfaction probably comes from how well we, Its creations, use the tool box of physical and mental abilities we have been dealt.
There seems to be only one consistent message that our species has been given by each religion's "certified" messenger from its god - it is one of empathy and compassion; "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". The idea dates at least to the early Confucian times (551–479 BCE), according to Rushworth Kidder, who identifies the concept appearing prominently in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and "the rest of the world's major religions". Why can't we leave it at that? It covers everything.
Of course, the messengers' closest friend probably said, "We should write this down!" And in the case of Jesus, Mark supposedly did so sixty-five to seventy five years after Jesus left. The Papyrus Store must have been out of inkberry. But he was said to have a good memory. The other three gospels were written after that, enhancing and adding to the first (damn plagiarists, Mark was heard to grouse).
The Bibles were originally written on scrolls in Aramaic probably. They've been translated to Hebrew, then Greek, then Latin, then German and English. Nothing could go amiss there, after all the monks displayed their dedication to accuracy by maintaining perfect circles on their heads.
The stories in these works were no doubt enhanced and edited with each printing. All this done without the benefit of computers or white-out! Constantine, who was a Roman Emperor and a Johnny come lately convert, made the definitive edit on which all modern versions are based. Evidently, there were about fifty other gospels, here and there, that ended up on the cutting room floor including ones by Mary, Thomas and Judas of all people. Sage scholars of conservative ilk determined they were not important and the book was getting too long.
But have faith. It was all supervised and guided by the hand of god according to the world religious leaders. That is the same god responsible for creating, overseeing and translating similar manuscripts in the probably billions of inhabited planets in the more than 500 billion galaxies (we're talking galaxies, with billions of stars and god knows what else in each) that we can see with our primitive technology (being the James Webb Telescope). Not to mention the infinite number of galaxies we can't see. Hell, I can feel god guiding my hand now as I write this! Am I using too many adverbs? I'll leave it to god to decide.
Face it, after years of unending war, conflict and savagery (Crusades, Inquisitions, Witch Burnings, Beheadings, Jihads, the Troubles to name a few) in the name of and under the banner of each religious leader's version of the god du jour, we have not allowed ourselves to reflect and admit/face that these heinous acts to do honor to some feeble image of our self, who endlessly clamors and craves adoration and sacrifice is in reality, an unending sham solely for the purpose of accumulating wealth and power by subjugating the masses. If we are made in god's image and likeness and these are the religious teachings we follow, it must be a pretty sorry excuse for a god. Alas, we are a vain fucking species that allows ourselves to be subjects to scoundrels consumed with unending greed and power.
'So Joe', you may ask, 'are you a damned atheist?' Not at all. As I stated earlier, I believe there is a Supreme Being, maybe one without gender, maybe asexual, maybe even amorphous for all we know. Maybe It can be whatever the fuck It chooses, whenever the fuck it chooses. If It created creation, I'm pretty damn sure it could engineer a system where It's beings'/creatures' (us for one) essence/spirit evolves or regresses based on its use of the tools given in the time it is allotted in each form of life.
In other words, heaven isn't the gated community manned by a stern octogenarian, which is the scenario that of course would be put forth by a religious leader who had deceptively been hoarding wealth all his life. As a person who has managed gated communities, I would consider such a place the opposite of heaven.
Instead, I feel after we pass the expiration date on our current bodies our spirit moves forward (or backward if we are an asshole) to another vessel maybe in another time, galaxy or dimension for all we know. Einstein nailed when he said time is relative. Time is infinite if you think hard on it (go ahead, we have time). If you're going to have a Supreme Being, you should be thinking big, really, really big. Most all the gods imagined through history have been deficient, inferior, and an image of ourselves (screw the rest of creation, they're cretins!). It seems the less experience we have, the more steadfastly we believe we know everything there is to know. Onward Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindi, et al soldiers! Retard yourselves! The vessel of a Dung Beetle on the planet Seweragetrap in the galaxy of 3-6-9 awaits, sometime in the long ago.
Amen!