Never Disturb The Sleeping Devil
Offline What we now call The Classical Age ended with the murder of the philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in the year 415. On her way home, she was dragged out of her carriage, stripped naked, and flayed alive with broken shards and pieces of tiles and pottery, before being dragged through the streets and finally burned like so much garbage on a pyre. This obscene act was carried out by a raging mob of ignorant dogs, who next promptly proceeded to burn down the Library of Alexander, thereby forever destroying irreplacable works of philosophy and the other arts of learning. The age of Christendom had arrived.
For fifteen-hundred years and more, this scourge upon humankind was triumphant. The evil reached far and wide. Men, women and children were tortured and murdered. Priceless works of art and knowledge was destroyed. Entire populations were enslaved, stripped of their history and culture, and forced to take part in bizarre rituals of symbolic incest, cannibalism and pedophilia. Men were taught to be timid weaklings. Women were taught to hate their own bodies. All human beings were thought of as sinful creatures deserving of punishment for every stolen moment of earthly joy and vital desires that life has to offer. This cult of hatred nearly succeeded in destroying us all.
To what end? Throughout the history of our strange species, many have sought power and dominion, but only the most wicked and cruel have demanded that we should deny our own nature and regard ourselves as something which doesn't belong on this earth. Warriors and conquerors have come and gone but never has this world seen anything like the organised morbidity of Christians. It is almost like this poison of the mind unlocks the absolutely worst in humanity, as if there is a sleeping devil waiting to take corporeal form in every "flock" of self-denying lunatics who claim to be doing the work of God.
But we have got bigger problems now. During this fifteen-hundred year reign of evil, humankind forgot about their place in Creation. It became customary to view us as different from the other animals, separated from the cycle of life which governs everything on this earth, and consequently we don't need to respect and revere the dignity and integrity of every living creature in this world, much less our own. Thus we have reached a time and an age of metaphysical nihilism. We have poisoned the waters, darkened the sky, burned down the forests and desecrated the face of the earth with an almost unimaginable ugliness that we in our ignorance call by the name of progress.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
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That was rather grandiose Marquis!
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I'm of the strictest opinion Mary Magdalene should have just fucking killed her husband/messiah, sold out all 12 apostles to the presiding Roman Legion, and done the entire Western Hemisphere a HUGE favor for the foreseeable future.
Too late now, though. Xtianity presided over the destruction the greatest civilization to have ever been found in the known world. I don't think that's 100% a coincidence, but it's hard say after 16 centuries.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Accurate and poignant. Once you strip away all the bullshit it dresses itself up in, christianity's true nature is vile and poisonous, foul beyond anything humans have ever created before
I Am My God
The absence of evidence IS evidence of absence
Oh... it's actually a good bit worse than that.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
at it's core religion is a hate crime. And it's filthy madness is enshrined in our constitution.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
It wasn't an unfortunate one-time event that was later apologised either.
John of Nikiu, Bishop of Alexandria, wrote about the incident 200 years later:
And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles...A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate...and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her...they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her...through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire."The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
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i have no problem with your interpretation of christianity, marquis, but i do take issue with your interpretation of pagan antiquity. the idea of a human age of innocence that was corrupted by the rise of organized religion is in my opinion utter mythology.
historically speaking, i think it's obvious that the fundamental "flaw" in our nature that causes us to barrel towards our own mass suicide like so many lemmings is hardwired. religion only reflects what is already there, it's not some alien chaotic force that seduces its way into our hearts.
i don't know how our nature ended up like this. maybe the trunk of our evolutionary tree is a little more twisted than we think. maybe a few too many daughters got knocked up by a few too many fathers a la lot. whatever happened, hypatia wasn't killed because she was a last hold-out of human sanity and reason against. hypatia was an anomaly, and nature abhors anomalies.
the only real difference between the pagan alexandrian and the christian alexandrian was time and circumstances. the ancient peoples were always getting pissed off and burning down their own buildings every couple of centuries on one pretext or another, just like the modern peoples. fact of the matter, the only difference between the pagan alexandrian and the modern american biblethumper is numbers and caliber of weaponry. teach pericles, or plato for that matter, to use tactical nuclear missiles, give him enough time to think things over, and five'll get you ten he'll fuck us all over just like george w. bush. give me the same opportunity and there's at least a 75% chance i'll do the same. you too.
oh, and let me be quite clear that i do not equate this with some universal idea of "original sin" or "total depravity," like most christians do. there's nothing objectively wrong with our nature. we do exactly what we are programmed to do: reproduce and kill, not necessarily in that order. in fact, speaking for the sake of the preservation of as much life on earth as possible, we work all too well. our fundamental schizophrenia, however, is that we cannot make ourselves into what we would like to be. i also deny that we have progressed towards our own ideals to any degree throughout history. the ONLY thing different is time and circumstances. period.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Australia's constitution (If I had to guess) is most likely based on English Commonwealth law, which IIRC... was heavily entwined in the Anglican Church.
So... YEAH, pretty much
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
OK, now we are getting somewhere...
But first, let's do away with what common sense will suggest was the reason for the murder of Hypatia: She was an unmarried, allegedly beautiful woman, who lived an independent, aristocratic life, teaching at the Academy (herself being the daughter of a famous philosopher of the time, Theon, the last known mathematician of the Library, also alleged to have been the inventor of the astrolabe). She had many suitors but turned them all down. In all probability, Peter the Magistrate desired her, but couldn't have her. So she had to die. Not an uncommon consequence of female "witchcraft" like that throughout the history of Christianity.
Next, the "flaw". Which in my opinion is a common occurrence in all species of non-gregarious animals (mammals, and particularly predators) that are living in overcrowded environments, necessitating a fight over as well territorial space as resources. It isn't any more complicated than that. Overpopulation is what has made us so vicious - and this has been a common problem since neolithic times. The methodology of mutual detruction stratagems and devices is merely a reflection of human ingeniousness. You mentioned lemmings, and it is a good example of a mass-shift in "species behavioural mode" - because they are normally a thrifty (and quite shy) rodent which does what rodents does, and stays in hiding, but every now and then there are "lemming-years" (I have seen many of those in Norway) where they are forced into a sort of mass exodus because their living spaces become overcrowded, and the next thing you know you'll see the fucking critters everywhere. (This usually in turn boosts the populations of birds of prey and foxes.)
Now we turn to religion, where I like to separate metaphysics from politics. Personally, I have no problems with whatever people believe like that, and I shall readily admit that I myself harbour metaphysical ideas which are not really parsimonious, but those are private "leaps of faith" that concern certain physical properties of time, space and a local tendency towards "negative entropy" which, among other things, leads towards "life" (complex systems that self replicate). If anyone wants to believe in a Creator that is fine by me. But the problems begin when they want this to be political and dogmatic. I do believe that there was a significant change like that as we moved from Pagan to Christian times; and that the Christian propensity for blind submission towards an imaginary source of infallible authority is to blame for the parallel and very negative vector of sociological "progress" that may be seen as a long-term experiment in enforced gregariousness of the highly aggressive and violent animals that we humans are.
And now? We are rapidly approaching a major breaking point. Already, there are many countries whose economies cannot support their populations (Bangladesh immideately comes to mind). There's no telling what will happen when the "poorer" populations reach a critical mass, but it seems fair to assume that they will move towards the "richer" countries and areas, driven by desperation. Then what? There are no fences high enough to stop a deluge of "lemmings" like that, when they become desperate enough, so the question will have to be how far we "rich" people are willing to go in order to fence off the "poor" people.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com