|
don't blame all religion for the meanderings of fundamentalists who take books too literally. anyone with reason can deduce that the bible and all religious texts were written by men with divine influence but at the same time the 'mirror' of man was not cleanly polished so some dirt (ego) got reflected back.
i would be pretty wrong though to say something like 'all religions are factually wrong' this is just ignorant. what do you have to rely on then? science? according to materialist science you're a robot living in a random world. you might as well kill yourself buddy, what's the point?
look into eastern philosophy, taoism, mystical hinduism, pantheism. the west brought in this separation between man and god which is wrong and was only there to control the masses. look at what Jesus (and all of eastern philosophy) was trying to say, we are all children of god. but the thing is once you grow up and figure out who you truly are, you realize that you ARE god.
| quote: | The game of god got embarrassing. The idea if God as the potter, as the architect of the universe, is good. It makes you feel that life is, after all, important. There is someone who cares. It has meaning, it has sense, and you are valuable in the eyes of the father. But after a while, it gets embarrassing, and you realize that everything you do is being watched by God. He knows your tiniest innermost feelings and thoughts, and you say after a while, 'Quit bugging me! I don't want you around.' So you become an athiest, just to get rid of him. Then you feel terrible after that, because you got rid of God, but that means you got rid of yourself. You're nothing but a machine. And your idea that you're a machine is just a machine, too. So if you're a smart kid, you commit suicide. Camus said there is only one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide.
But the people who coined the fully automatic theory of the
universe were playing a very funny game, for what they wanted to say
was this: all you people who believe in religion--old ladies and
wishful thinkers-- you've got a big daddy up there, and you want
comfort, but life is rough. Life is tough, as success goes to the most
hard- headed people. That was a very convenient theory when the
European and American worlds were colonizing the natives everywhere
else. They said 'We're the end product of evolution, and we're tough.
I'm a big strong guy because I face facts, and life is just a bunch of
junk, and I'm going to impose my will on it and turn it into something
else. I'm real hard.' That's a way of flattering yourself....But
however, you see, this whole idea that the universe is nothing at all
but unintelligent force playing around and not even enjoying it is a
putdown theory of the world. People who had an advantage to make, a
game to play by putting it down, and making out that because they put
the world down they were a superior kind of people. So that just won't
do. We've had it. Because if you seriously go along with this idea of
the world, you're what is technically called alienated. You feel
hostile to the world. You feel that the world is a trap. It is a
mechanism, it is electronic and neurological mechanisms into which you
somehow got caught. And you, poor thing, have to put up with being put
into a body that's falling apart, that gets cancer, that gets the
great Siberian itch, and is just terrible. And these
mechanics--doctors--are trying to help you out, but they really can't
succeed in the end, and you're just going to fall apart, and it's a
grim business, and it's just too bad. So if you think that's the way
things are, you might as well commit suicide right now... So you see,
all I'm trying to say is that the basic common sense about the nature
of the world that is influencing most people in the United States
today is simply a myth. If you want to say that the idea of God the
father with his white beard on the golden throne is a myth, in a bad
sense of the word 'myth,' so is this other one. It is just as phony
and has just as little to support it as being the true state of
affairs. Why? Let's get this clear. If there is any such thing at all
as intelligence and love and beauty, well you've found it in other
people. In other words, it exists in us as human beings. And as I
said, if it is there, in us, it is symptomatic of the scheme of
things. We are as symptomatic of the scheme of things as the apples
are symptomatic of the apple tree or the rose of the rose bush. The
Earth is not a big rock infested with living organisms any more than
your skeleton is bones infested with cells. The Earth is geological,
yes, but this geological entity grows people, and our existence on the
Earth is a symptom of this other system, and its balances, as much as
the solar system in turn is a symptom of our galaxy, and our galaxy in
its turn is a symptom of a whole company of other galaxies. Goodness
only knows what that's in.
But the problem is, you see, we haven't been taught to feel that way.
The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have
not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of
it, only in it, only confronting it--aliens. And we are, I think,
quite urgently in need of coming to feel that we ARE the eternal
universe, each one of us. Otherwise we're going to go out of our
heads. We're going to commit suicide, collectively, courtesy of
H-bombs. And, all right, supposing we do, well that will be that, then
there will be life making experiments on other galaxies. Maybe they'll
find a better game.
|
Alan Watts from Nature of Consciousness
http://deoxy.org/w_nature.htm
___________________
this is it.
|
