dogmas

Thursday, September 9, 2010
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THEM AND US
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“Plan to burn Qur'an is offensive,” reads the headline of a commentary in the Op-Ed page of my morning paper.
Maybe so, but what about another headline that says, “They [Muslims] burn the Qur'an every day with their actions.”
And sure enough, in the fourth paragraph of this commentary, our pundit writes: “There are Muslims who pervert their religion, literally called the path of peace, into a call to armed suppression of women and acts of terrorism.”
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God may be great indeed, but He seems powerless against those who terrorize and kill in His name.
Are Christians better than Muslims?
No comment!
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Toynbee: “It is always easier, both intellectually and morally, to debit one's ills to the account of some outside agency than to ascribe the responsibility to oneself.”
In other words, to play the blame-game and to paint ourselves all white and the opposition all black.
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I thought I knew better when I knew nothing.
It takes knowledge and understanding to see the depths of evil that resides in our hearts. This may explain the popularity of ignorance.
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Friday, September 10, 2010
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CONSOLATION
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Toynbee: “Death limits life's liabilities. This boon that death confers is supremely valuable, and ought to be immensely consoling.”
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There is no evidence to suggest that life will make sense after death. If to die means to enter the realm of nothingness, then nothingness is the only perfection we will ever know.
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A little learning is the source of all prejudice, conspiracy theories, and xenophobia.
Here is Toynbee's masterful explanation of this phenomenon:
“The danger lay in the opening which a rudimentary universal education gave for propaganda, and in the skill and unscrupousness with which this opportunity had been seized by salesmen for advertising their wares and by news agencies, pressure groups, political parties, and the public relations departments of firms and governments for selling their policies.”
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The importance of education is constantly stressed to unsuspecting children. What is ignored is the fact that no matter how many degrees you acquire, the chances are you will end up working for an assh*le.”
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Saturday, September 11, 2010
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BOOKS
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There are two kinds of writers: those whose ideas shape the future (not always for the better), and those whose ideas are buried and forgotten with them. To the first category belong Rousseau, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Marx; to the second category, our writers.
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There are no new ideas. Everything we say has been said before. When told the Bible was written by the Holy Spirit, Shaw replied: “All books are written by the Holy Spirit.”
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I for one don't believe in the holiness of holy books -- regardless of denomination – when I think of all the wars and massacres perpetrated in their name, not to mention the intolerance, the persecution of heretics, and the countless abuses... More often than not, it seems to me, a holy book is used as a license to kill.
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Holy books might as well be synonymous with holy wars.
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Sometimes serial killers plead not guilty by reason of insanity – they say it was God or Satan who ordered them to do what they did. Now then, if you count the victims of serial killers and the victims of religious leaders, you may conclude that the latter are far more dangerous.
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To those who say we no longer live in the Middle Ages, I ask: Who ordered 9/11? Where does an imam get his authority?
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I see a direct link between the overpopulation, poverty, and drug wars in Mexico and the Pope's dogmatic interdiction of birth control devices.
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All religions have dogmas, and all dogmas legitimize intolerance, and ultimately the murder of innocent victims.
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