religion and lit.

Sunday, May 06, 2012
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RELIGION & LITERATURE
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If god is in everything we know and see,
where is the devil?
*
Religion is a business like any other
and far more profitable than most.
That's why for every writer we have,
we have a hundred priests.
*
When a religion of love legitimizes
intolerance, hatred, and ultimately war and massacre,
it becomes an instrument of the devil.
*
The greatest argument against religion
is other religions.
*
Contemporary Armenian literature
may be summed up in two sentences:
(one) it says many things except that which must be said, and
(two) it takes money more seriously than ideas.
*
If the kingdom of god is within us,
is the empire of the devil around us?
#
Monday, May 07, 2012
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LIES
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All belief systems are big lies
because they pretend to provide answers to questions
that are unanswerable.
*
When is a question unanswerable?
When the answers are contradictions
that cannot be resolved.
*
Once when I quoted Erasmus of Rotterdam
in one of my commentaries
I was told I was being “vicious.”
*
To how many of my fellow Armenians I could say
what Tolstoy once said to a fellow passenger on a train:
“As long as there are people like you
we will have wars and massacres.”
*
What is patriotism if not the propaganda of individuals
who pretend to be our “betters”
but who are in fact our worst.
#
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
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WE ARE WHAT OUR ENEMIES MADE US
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When Einstein said he did not believe in the god of the Jews
he was told to go back where he came from.
*
Most Christians are Christian because
they were brainwashed as children.
The same could be said
of Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists.
*
I was born and raised as a Catholic
and my greatest enemies were neither Jews nor Muslims
but Protestants, in the same way that a Sunni’s greatest enemies
are Shias and vice versa.
*
Popes, imams, and rabbis are not just liars
but enemies of mankind.
*
The astonishing ease with which idiots assume to know better
or to be better on the grounds that
their god is the only true god.
*
When Socrates said “of the gods we know nothing,”
he relied on his reason.
When Hegel, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Shaw, Russell, Sartre,
and many other celebrated thinkers rejected the Bible
as the word of god, they did so only after they saw the light
and were born again as human beings.
*
Gandhi: “I am not superstitious. I am a super-atheist.”
#
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
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MORE ON
RELIGION & LITERATURE
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After reading my recent comments on religion and literature,
a gentle reader informs me:
“Hegel and Einstein were theists.”
So was Voltaire who said:
“Since it was a religious war there were no survivors.”
*
I doubt if God recognizes Himself
in men who speak in His name.
The Devil, maybe.
God? Hell no!
*
Among “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”
(TIME, April 30, 2012) there are two Turks
but not a single Armenian.
If there is one and I missed him,
I am prepared to be verbally lynched by our superpatriots
who are never wrong.
*
To be wrong – nothing new in that.
We all make mistakes.
But to be catastrophically wrong
with the certainty that you are absolutely right:
that’s difficult to admit
and impossible to come to terms with.
*
The greater the gap between what we think of ourselves
and what others think of us,
the greater the number of brainwashed dupes.
*
Palestinians have three mighty allies:
fanaticism, money from oil, and universal anti-Semitism.
Who cares about Armenians?
Not even Armenians.
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