Letters to the Editor
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Gospel according to Judas
The essence of the message of The Gospel of Judas is contained in Nikos Kazantzakis novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. Kazantzakis told the truth as he saw it, and paid the price. For years, garbage was dumped on his grave. The Martin Scorsese movie, based on his book, is fathful to Kazantzakis' story, and the best film we have yet about the Big Fella (Jesus)
Skoots
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Jesus and the Romans
Geez, why did Jesus need Judas to do anything? Why wasn't Jesus just bold enough to walk right up to the Romans himself and say, "hey, I hear you've been looking for me, and since my dad is god and I'm gonna come back to life after you kill me, I've no reason to fear you so do whatever you're gonna do, here I am. Naw, Jesus had to go and get someone else blamed because he was too cowardly to just turn himself in. Worse, he had to get an entire bunch of people blamed for his execution, even though they had nothing to do with it. Really, it's all nonsense and the tragedy is that people have been killing each other by the millions over this and similar nonsense for eons. Maybe some day homo sapiens will collectively grow up and put aside the foolish things like belief in gods and really try to live within our means and stop wontonly destroying the environment for our excessively selfish purposes. And maybe some day elephants will grow butterfly wings and fly to the moon.
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velcro lady
Lessee now,
'There are no words to describe God."
'A leap into a mystery that can't be explained"
'Was there a great big person up there who made the universe out of dirt? Probably not.'
I would say the lady has more in common with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris than the Reverend Jerry Falwell. It is then what you want it to mean. It is not a historical text. It is a grab-bag of wishes. It is not verifiable independently. To the extent that it seeks to explain the universe, which about 100% of the 82% of the 91% in the US who believe in 'God', believe, it intrudes into a realm in which it is doomed to failure. The only reason most believe is the reward. Everybody wants to either go on with this life somewhere else, meet up with old friends or loved ones, or looks forward to getting out of this place because anything would beat it. Take away the carrot and the stick and you have absolutamente nada which is something the early proselytizers of this 'pernicious little cult' knew. The Council of Nicea did a lot more than include or exclude some texts. It decided Jesus was divine which until then was not at all decided. Had not Rome existed, this religion would be just another of many discarded along the winding road of the ever curious and impressionable hairless ape. This lady is dancing merrily around all this totally inane 2000 year-old nonsense trying to glean a few kernels of hope from what really is, a monstrous lie. Monstrous in its falsity and in the false hope that wastes time and lives. That is the only test of anything: is it true? Spirituality is nothing but a mental gimmick to ward off the awful aloneness of existence, the horrible knowledge that this is it, and what the hell is it. People want to believe there has to be more, as they want to believe in order and purpose. The only order is the law of physics. The only purpose is....aint none really except family, friends, the search for truth, and maybe some long-overdue impeachment proceedings and some orange jumpsuits thereafter.
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Hey Jonathan
Hope you're still following this insanely long thread so we can continue here. (Did somebody just holler "Get a room!"?).
I very much appreciate the enlightenment. I'm not sure I'm even a theist in any strict sense. Still, I do have a history of indoctrination by Christians (even though it was a crazy-quilt group of Christians) as well as the western Judeao-Christian mindset, so I honestly don't give as much thought as I ought to the evolution of atheism (and it is important - I realize that when I am given pause as in this thread). It's also very true, as you point out, that being an atheist, regardless of type, can bring a lot of crap down on your head if you don't step carefully. Lord, do I ever know it. As you can imagine, there are several branches of my family tree composed of the most mindless sorts of "Christians" that it makes my head spin like Linda Blair's. I have to remind myself of William Bradford Huie's definition of a "good" person (from his great novel "The Klansman") that it is a person who is more good than bad, on balance. This of course does not preclude such a "good" person doing one terrible thing in his life that can have repercussions of tsunami proportions. So far, with my tribe, so good. I think they are mostly all talk. I surely do hope so, because some of the talk can get pretty ugly sometimes.
All that having been said, they are, at least, whether they know it or not, pretty good stewards of the planet.
And as you point out, this nation is both vociferously Christian and simultaneously a huge mass of idiots when it comes to that Sword of Damocles hanging over our collective heads - the one we put up there with our loutish and consumptive ways. News of the honeybees' sudden decimation scared holy hell out of me. I agree with you that is probably our "canary in the coal mine" and it may be too far back to the mine's entrance already. If that's the case (and somehow I have to believe it's not, but only fools would keep moving further from it) the least we can do is exercise those "heroic measures" so often dismissed in medical circles. There is a time for heroism and this is it.
I'm no socialist either - at least not in the Marxian sense - but I am what Erich Fromm dubbed communitarian socialist and before him the Twelve Southerners called, simply, agrarian; Wendell Berry would call me an agrarian socialist. I have nothing against the basics of capitalism, but capitalism run amok is most definitely "a destructive force" and when a nation is in thrall (as we have been, even those of us who intensely dislike their politics) to a certain group whose primary motivation is to "unfetter" capitalism utterly, we are most assuredly in "deep do do" and we are also not living any Christian ideal (something "They" have appropriated for their own sick purposes) nor any other sort of ideal. One doesn't have to be an atheist to see that Christianity has not served us well as wielded by the current, very cynical administration, and that, above all other things, I think we need to tackle first.
This is getting both very long and pretty off-topic, but then again, when is the survival of the planet really off-topic?
A pleasure talking to you as well. Thank you!