I know it's a mouthful, but here is a recently revised critique of Christian
morality. Some of these essays take years for me to get right!




Daniel





Moral Commands


"Fear invented the Gods," the proverb says, and when even my cheeriest
freethinking friend confesses her doubt about hell, I believe. Pascal's
wager was hardly a stroke of originality: "believe or hell" convinces many.
However, I believe religions' staying power is in the beauty of their
sentiments. Hell, God, the Devil, the prophets, what chance had they if they
carried no snares of metaphors, rhymes and rhythms? The barefooted doomsayer
on the streets of New York is little more than John the revelator, except
John had the imagery. Beauty seduces astray. For we have all met the liar
who spoke such honey that we believed him--even though we knew the truth!
What seduction sings from the Testament?

The whole repertoire of Jesus sayings, borrowed from his contemporary
rabbis, echo in our literature by the force of its eloquence. "Love your
neighbor as yourself," we are told. Why? Well no need to bother with whys:
it sounds good. "If only we would follow this command, the world would be
heaven," a pastor once said in my presence. I reflected. Something was
amiss. I sniffed and pawed the roots of this tree, never satisfied with
fruits alone, and came to realize: no! I do not love my neighbor as myself.
I do not love my family as myself. I do not even love my lover as myself.
Why? As simple as the sun: they aren't myself. I love my brother with
brotherly love, my other brother with brotherly love, but even then, I love
them differently. To love all men, all my neighbors, equally is promiscuous
enough. To love them as myself-absurd! We are commanded to hate our neighbor
when the commandment speaks of prefabricated, artificual, and unspontaneous
love. What if all career advisors admonished "to love the job you have"? -
as if love in the fulness of love were as usable and commandable as the
broom and dustpan!

"Love your neighbor as yourself," but love requires intimacy. Love requires
a breaking of defenses, a knowledge of secrets, an appreciation of subetley,
a respect of his reality, and admiration of actual goodness. Would I love
any Joe with the same fervor I reserve for my child? Then corrupt is my
love! The way I love myself is unique. I care for my needs, I pride my
deeds, I search and research my depths, and focus deep into myself. To
invest this energy and intimacy into any other person--supposing he even
wanted it, which he shouldn't--would waste my time and dull my blades. No, I
love every man as a self unto himself. I love my mother as mother, my
brother as brother, my friend as friend, each according to his kind, and
each to the degree I choose, free from command and order.

Not that Deuteronomy, the source of Jesus' command, really meant Samaritans
and Gentiles are neighbors, as Jesus is said to imply. They meant fellow
Jews. But if the statement is supposed to have any philosophical worth,
beyond a Hallmark how-do-you-do sentiment, then we must ask "What is meant
by "love"? What is meant by "myself"? What is meant by "in the same manner"?
Try as I may, I see no real program here. Because none is provided. Why
should love be commanded? Why should I be threatened to love? My heart is my
own. (As a side-note, I have heard preachers say, as if they were surprised,
that Jesus intended us to first love ourselves. This appears to be a sort of
revelation to some of them, an overgenerosity of Jesus).

Often hailed as a stroke of brilliance, a sentiment known by all great men,
from Confucius to Hillel, is the so-called Golden Rule: Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you. C. S. Lewis, in his Mere Christianity,
claims that the entire "natural law" presupposes this sentiment. But again,
we have all dress and no depth: Jesus gives no argument, no system, no
proof. Yet this sentiment hardly proves itself, nor is "wisdom proven by her
children" but by arguments and reasons. Why should I do unto others as I
would they did to me? Are they me? I expect treatment as Daniel, you as
Mike, Jill as Jill: Do unto others as deserved!

Consider a simple reading: every teenage boy should think twice before
applying this to his date: maybe the kisses you would have unto you are
unwelcome to her. So the Christian counters: "Do unto others as you would if
you were them"; but now it is "do unto others as they wish you to do"--both
compromising in practice, and removed from the original precept anyway. This
assumes that they know what they want and should get it. The criminal wants
a break from the law, but does not deserve it. He probably does not need it
either. Jail may be the best thing for him. The fact is, we do not always
know what we want. Perhaps you need slaps, insults, criticism, sooner than
kisses and forgiveness.

For to do-as-you-would-be-done-by overlooks the question "And what should I
desire from others?" So much for the simple eloquence of this command.

Do unto others as they deserve. The whole law lies on this command. Deserts
are not all punishment. Every man deserves respect and polite treatment as a
man. Do unto others as you deserve to do. Perhaps the criminal deserves
justice, but not from me the bystander. I am not the judge nor the police. I
do not deserve to have to punish. In the same manner, I deserve to give
gifts and be kind because I am a lover, not because they deserved love. I
may give gifts greater than your deserts, because I deserve to do this. Do
unto others as deserved. Treat others right - simpler, less hall-marky, but
better.

"Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with
all your strength." Yet my heart, mind, and body are meant for so much more
than love. To exhaust them all on loving would waste them. Why not a little
ambition? Why not a little hate? Why not a little curiosity, creativity,
courage?--my heart wants so much more than love.

More to the point: who can love any one thing with all their being? Our
being was not made for such a cyclops view. We need diversity. I love this,
I love that. And this Jehovah, this Jesus: I have not met you. I do not know
you. I cannot love you the way I love myself. You are unknowable. I see no
body, I see no face. I do not kiss shadows. I do not romance ambiguity. To
love you with my whole person requires such an intimate choice, such an
ideosyncracy of taste and temperament, such a personal way decision that I
choose and yet that my heart chooses despite of me, that for you to command
my complete love is sick audacity, psychology absurdity, and blasphemy to
the ways of the heart-disproves your divinity.

Characters in a book--Yahweh and Jesus--cannot be loved like this wife in my
arms. They cannot be loved like this friend at my table. They cannot be
loved like the mother and father who raised me. Nor should they. To call any
love greater than God-love "idolatry" is a curse on love. It fails in making
me love God more, it succeeds in making me love mother less. It infects all
great loves and all great passions with guilt. "How much I love my guitar"
says the Christian musician, and then repents of his love that night! Or
Augustine's guilt over admiring Cicero--for what? This "beautiful sentiment"
offends innocence.

The Bible present hundreds of commandments which believers heartily ignore,
because they command no eloquence. Paul's morality hardly impresses the
nonpartisan reader, because he lacked the bumper-sticker beauty that Jesus
is made to quip. But aside from eloquence, why should we do this command,
that command? The Bible gives no arguments. The beauty of the words
hypnotize, and when our friend's eyes glow with fire, we desire hypnotism
and deceit. Yet, like a soap bubble that reflects on its surface a dancing
rainbow, these sayings burst into nothing when they are pressed too hard.

For the responsible thinker to choose and practice his morality, he must not
memorize eloquence, but hammer out his beliefs with the sober and joyful
hammer of reason. He must choose what principles best apply to his poise in
life, and he must choose them not because they sound good, but because they
are good for him, they make sense, they do not promise beatitude, but are
beautiful by logic, and not rhetoric. The lazy man wants seduction. The
reasonable man, however, will sweat to thwart the succubus. His loves and
beauties are earned, his morality shines like eternal art. He does not
repeat beautiful sentiments, but dares his own word. This is true morality,
and not vain rule-saying. So let us be.



Well what of the rest, the statements we balk and repeat forever, that would
be best dismissed, not because they are from a false religion, but because
they ruin life.

When confronted with the barbarians justice of "eye for eye and tooth for
tooth," Jesus famously offers his alternative: pluck out your won eye, tear
out your own tooth. He meant we should snip our testicles, to be "eunichs
for the kingdom" but he realizes this moral command will only be "accepted
by those who are able to receive it."

I find nothing he says deep, but always shocking and pleasing for its shock.

The Christians coined a set of virtues, three in number - God loves a
thrice. The Christians achieved this by turning Paul's three word list of
abiding goods written in the letter to the Corinthains into "cardinal
virtues," the way Plato sums up the cardinal virtues of Courage, Temperance,
Wisdom, and Justice. Alongside these noble virtues, we are given "Faith,
Love, and Hope," the supposed divine counterpart. Fitting "virtues" for a
wife perhaps, but not virile enough for a man.

I heard it claimed by C.S. Lewis that "reason" discovered the four cardinal
virtues, but only God could reveal the three Christian virtues. He lies
through his teeth. As if faith, love, and hope had not been virtues and
vices the world over! Had he no access to world literature? Maybe
Christianity was the only religion foolish enough to cloister these three
alone in the monotanous monestary.

God misunderstands love. To call Christianity a religion of love blasphemes
love. God gets love wrong because he is too powerful to get love right. Love
comes from a sense of equality, a sense of identity. All religions are
primarily concerned with power, fear of death, and ascetic dominance.
Religion Is Fear. But fear itself is a complex idea of Truth, Power,
Bravery. True love has nothing to do with religion, and cannot be codified.
To command love, even to define love, is not love, is a means of controlling
and dominating love by mind. Love morally opposes religion. Love belongs to
the animal, to the mammal, to the marriage, to the family, to the lower
nature of man. "Low" means fundamental. Our species survives by love. This
beauty we share with all mammals; this beauty becomes divine only in man.

I find no greater audacity in the Bible than to pretend we deserve hell
unless we love "God." A "God" painted as tyrant. God is the great curse on
man. There is no honest theologian-they've painted themselves into a corner.

The greatest clue to Christianity is the story of the Emperor's New Clothes.
Just as the theives abused the moral tone to bamboozle the king, so do the
priestly pretenders who wrote the scriptures abuse the moral tone to pretend
that their Christ too isn't naked. Listen to those who speak with a moral
twinge in their throat. The moral tone is lisped best by the guilty.

Guiltiness is a mental ilness. It lacks knowledge of actual responsibility.
Thus many forms of mental illness, such as bipolar and depression, have
symptoms of "excessive feelings of guilt," which have nothing to do with the
virtue of the man. Guilt is a bad habit, or bad chemistry.

"It is better to suffer evil than to do good" said Luther. Earnestly? Is
there a sicker mentality than this? I would say it is better even to do evil
to others than to suffer evil. The self is a palace. "Better to suffer evil
than to do good"? Such wicked words. He does the most evil to others with
ideas like this.

"Give and forgive," is the Christian creed, which renders others into mere
needers of gifts and forgiveness. Surely man deseres better things than
these? What of trade and honor? To forgive the genuinely remorseful is
human: we need no "Godly" example nor extraneous command to practice our own
humanity. To forgive the persistent criminal is itself a crime. Justice will
not have us wasting our energies "forgiving" what persists. It is like
pardoning a rapist who thanks you the privilidge to rape again. Thus, the
Christian morality has nothing to offer to the human except what we already
knew: be wisely kind.

The best use of an injury is to revenge it. But be wise and not brutal.

No Christian understands the rightness of revenge. I was reading Tolkien's
opening chapters to his collection of notes later entitle "Silmarillion,"
and was shocked at how poorly Tolkien understands his Malkor. Malkor, who
could also be labelled as "minor variations on a theme of Satan," is the
most powerful emanation of God's thoughts, but wishes to gain more, becomes
instead utterly evil, jealous, destructive, solitary, a lover of the void,
meddler, destroyer of all created things, liar, breeder of maggots, goblins,
and braggart. I was surprised that such a reknowned author could pen such
sophomoric work. Than I understood: Christians lack moral subtlety. They eat
from the hands of the Jews, who were deliciously evil-but they misunderstand
it all and can never equal the Jewish genius for the moral stab.

Tolkein stupidly makes service of others a virtue, makes independence and
solitude vices, makes pride equal to envy, originiality equal to
destructiveness. Silly old codger. But representative. Christians have no
nuances for moral subtlety. In this, even Emerson is representative of a
reaction against Christianity-an optimism unlike any that ever saw earth's
sun (the true original); but it took a Nietzsche to write circles around all
that is Christian, to mortalize Christ.

The sayings of Jesus hypnotize because they are so obviously wrong. The
entire Sermon on the Mount is as wrongheaded as a sermon can be.

"The teacher of the law said that if you say to your brother, 'Racca,' you
will be in danger, but I say if you even feel anger towards him, you are in
danger of hell, and if you say 'you fool,' of hellfire."

Trying to outdo the teachers of the law, he instates a program for self
thought-policing (because God sees what is done in secret). Absurdity. As if
our brother should not be called a fool when acting the fool. As if anger
towards all sorts of people, brothers, and enemies alike, is not only
acceptable, but good. As if Jesus ever missed an oppurtunity to call his
brother rabbis fools, vipers, tombs!

The trick of religion is to discover what is easy to do and call that a sin.
Thus everybody is evil except those with the discipline of religion. A cheap
elitism: "worship no image," "Believe that there is no self," "confess your
sins and try to win God's favor"-all puny challenges.

The other Christian variation on morality is that morality belongs to the
devil, for "salvation is by faith and not by works." They call God's grace a
"gift." But they don't seem to understand what "gift" means, and cannot
conceive a gift without strings attached. A gift is something you give for
free, not in order to own or gain worship from somebody. If you expect
gratitude, then you are blackmailing them with the gift to extort praise.
See how the Christians gift and charitize in order to prosthletize, to pick
through the gutters and up heaven's tally. Christians fill the body, but
kill men's souls. And this in Christian humility that they are doing "God's
work."

Witness the militant humility of C.S. Lewis. He does not merely say, "I am
humble, and happier for it"-to say such a thing and hold to it would indeed
be difficult. Rather he knocks down anything that has a spine, or so he
thinks, and by hating the proud and powerful believes himself humble. Like
all Christians and Jews, he spits poison. Christians are hypocrites because
Jesus denounced hypocrites.

Jesus is obsessed with denouning hypocrites. Buddha is less interested in
this. Buddha, it seems, doesn't have much to say about his enemies, and thus
the disciples of Buddha do not imitate his enemies. The Christians, ever
wanting Jesus to feel as passionately about him as he did his fellow Jews,
have internalized the enemy, have become confessed and constant hypocrites
of their own religion. Hypocrisy is rare in Buddhism. In Christianity it is
the norm.

"To thine own self be true," the Bible fails to say-completely and utterly,
much to its shrewdness. Instead, its highest wisdom it considers "fearing
the Lord." Yahweh was a thunder-god-he darkens the sky-his name means
etymologically "the fallen." He was not a sun God to say with Apollo: "know
thyself," or to say with Appollo's messiah: "The unexamined life is not
worth living." He crushes the truth with the words, "Lean not on your
understanding but trust in God."

"We condemn it in order to persist it," would be too honest for a Christian
to say, being a creature who must censor his own thinking lest it go in
dangerous directions. Everything the Christians hate the most spring up
around them in order for them to hate. Hypocrisy becomes normal around and
among Christians, when for the rest of us it seems like a great waste of
energy. Why be hypocritical? Its not as if I have care what you think of me.
And of course given Jesus hyperbolic over the top, too crazy to be believed
commands are ever actually followed.

"Give up everything you have," seems a fitting command for the Christians
because it seems difficult. It wasn't difficult for Diogenes, who, instead,
found it the only desirable way to live. The writers place Jesus before a
temple, where he sees a woman give up her last penny to the temple tithe,
and he praises her for giving up everything she had, whereas the rich only
gave a part of their money. The penny can do little good for the temple or
God's work, but will only do her good, by gaining favor in God's eyes.
Practically speaking, her penny is worthless to the poor and starving. They
need the help of the small part of the rich, who pour their effort and
wisdom into making money, and giving it to those they choose. A rich man
gives up 1% of his earnings, and hospitols are made in his name. He has done
more and given more, but even he is not impressive, is merely a tool.
Besideswhich, this parable contradict the other one where it is said that is
easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than to give up his
money, whereas the woman herself could easily get heaven and drop the small
penny. Those who have more, love more what they have, desire more to have. A
rich philanthropist is a small but notable achievement of self-overcoming.
As for myself, it seems the poorer I get, the quicker I give everything I
have away. It was always easy for me to be generous when I had so little,
and because it was little, cared nothing for it. But I deserve every heaven
imagined for reasons much greater than the easy thing called generosity. Not
that Jesus was generous with explanations.

Jesus claims that the rich boy whom he turned away, since the boy would not
sell all he owns, could not have done it anyway, since that was impossible
without the will of God. Queer rationalization, considering that he was God,
or knew God, and could easily have threaded the needle. Yet Buddha, richer
than the rich boy, seemed to rejoice in giving up his pleasure palace, his
wine and parties, even his wife and child, not because with God all things
are possible, but because Siddartha was a man and sought truth above love.
Nor did this renouncement save him, but only figuring things out for himself
could save him.

A sick little medievalism, after the weird words of Augustine, calls
abstinence a virtue. The virtue of abstinence? An etymological oxymoron.
What is manly and virtuous is to impregnate. The vir in virtue is from the
penis, from the violent, brave, hell-daring penis which impregnates the womb
(hell means womb of course). A virtuous prude? And then another corruption
is put into the language. A woman who keeps her hymen is called "pure." Pure
of what? Decency? Life? Generation? Mothers are pure-maids never. What turns
Cinderalla into a woman is the sex of her prince. She is the soot-rat until
the prince fancies her. An empty womb is void, is impure, is only saved by
potential. An untouched womb is sterile, is a desert, is gross. As if these
"brides of Christ" were of any use. "She who desires, but acts not, breeds
pestilence," such a wise saying could only come from a maniac.

"What does a man gain if he achieves the whole world but forfeits his own
soul," Jesus says to those in no danger of gaining the world. Not that they
don't want it, for the rabblerouser promises they will inherit the world,
like a spoiled rich child who did nothing to deserve what falls in his lap.
Such talk rouses the poor in spirit, but leaves them evern poorer in spirit.

So Christ's ethic is unthinkably bad and completely unlivable. Nor did it do
him much good. How about Paul?

Paul gives us no interesting commands. I can recall not a one. He does not
speak with authority. He communicates, rather, an attitude. Jesus speaks of
actions, but Paul speaks of beliefs. But these beliefs in themselves are not
really beliefs-that is, things that are experienced and therefore known-but
merely formulas to be memorized and spoken. The Kerygma is a belief with no
moral program to it. Jesus died for our sins, therefore we are a group.
People who believe what Paul said about Christ could do many things, could
be many things, since they are not commanded anything interesting. But they
must have the basic attitudes he preaches, must already have these attitudes
before reading him, or nothing he says will resonate, for there can be no
magnetization where there is no common metal. In Paul's language, God has
predestined some people for heaven despite any of their actions or merits.
In actuality, God has chosen only those predisposed to have a taste for
Paul's style of rhetoric.

Can a person be a Christian if he thinks the entire Testament is poorly
written, Paul's rhetoric unnatural and lacking flow, and Jesus' histrionics
beyond hyperbole? Can one believe the Bible to be true, but ugly? Certainly
I have heard of Christians who read the Bible and find it boring (they blame
themselves, but behind their eyes they really blame the Bible). Indeed, this
sort of person might find even Homer and Milton boring, as many people
inevitably do, but at least there they can claim a difference of taste and
interest, without the opprobrium of blasphemy.

And if we do find at least certain passages, letters, or books of the Bible
to be poorly written, do we have to blame human error for lack of skill, or
dare we say that God is a poor writer? How much does the Bible corrupt
intellectual conscience on top of good taste?

Yet love lies, will praise to high heaven and earn low hell to claim beauty
for the beloved one. We believe the beloved, yet we can only love what we
have known. Those who love the unknown-as millions of people have loved
those gods gone bankrupt and turned inwards-really love a poem, a persona, a
figure they are able to project their heart unto. For as the astrology buffs
find their fortune confirmed in detail, week by week, by reading themselves
into vague predictions of the astrological charts, so too must God and Gods
be kept sufficiently ambiguous so that one size fits all. God, like a whore,
must be everything to everybody. This is the entire meaning behind the
phrase that God is unknowable.

Thus, the command to "Love God," is not a difficult one, as long as we take
the implicit definition not that "God is love" but simply that "God is
loveliness," "God is center and source of everything you love, is in his
person everything lovely." Insofar as we can play this metaphor out, we are
called children, lambs, innocent, poor; insofar as we cannot, we are called
goats, heathen, atheist, hell-bound. It all comes down to language, what
metaphors work best for us.

I prefer Spinoza who says straight out (well, as straight as his
definition-knotted book can attempt) that God is what everyman loves,that no
man can hate God. The Christian perverts this view by saying, "insofar as
you love what does not resemble my God, it is an idol, and you will be
tortured in flames forever because of it."

Theology must fight theology, words words, ridicule ridicule. As Jefferson
said: Mockery is the only response to the abracadabra called "trinity."



The gospels tell a story:

Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps he would
find anything on it; and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves,
for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, "May no one ever eat
fruit from you again!" And his disciples were listening.

He kicks over the table of the moneychanges in the temple

When evening came, they leave the city. As they were passing by in the
morning, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. Being reminded,
Peter said to him "Rabbi, look, the fig tree which you cursed has withered."
And Jesus answered saying to them,

"Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be
taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but
believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.
Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that
you have received them, and they will be granted you. Whenever you stand
praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father
who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do
not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your
transgressions."

Before I comment on this passage, let us face the reality that
prayer is not a form of meditation, will not give you peace as meditation
gives you peace, is not, in fact, a discipline. One does not become a better
prayor.

The difficulty of these verses is that they are not only wrong,
but they are a program for hypocrisy. Nobody has ever moved a mountain.
Nobody has ever by mere prayer killed an out of season fruit plant. But it
is not that he teaches us to pray for comfort or solace. He instructs you to
pray, and also not doubt in your heart, but believe that you have already
received it.

Insofar as you do this, not only will you inevitably be
disappointed-ask him who has tried!-but you might kill yourself-ask the son
of him who almost did! For if you believe and do not doubt that you have
received it, you will most certainly act on that belief, and this is
dangerous. Do not quit your psychiatric meds. Do not quit your kemotherapy.
Never apply these verses where there can be real life consequences. Prayer
must involve no risk, or, as a pious say: "Do not test God."

Or if you do, rationalize your disappointment that "You secretly
doubted," and that "God had a better plan." In other words, don't actually
believe what Christ said, but pretend to yourself that you believe.

Baptism: "Be dunked in water to be cleaned," we are told. But as
we all know, water does not clean without soap. You need the soap of
skepticism if the water of truth is going to work. As for the phrase "be
baptized in fire," I don't recommend it. Fire is not a good way to clean a
human being, whatever the inquisitional Catholics tell you.

The world ended in 200 AD, as was recorded in the book of
Revealing. It ended again in the black plagues that killed off most of
Christian Europe, ignoring Muslim countries, for the Christians were
baptized in "water and fire," but the Muslims in water and soap. So filthy
were these Christians, the fleas preferred them to rats.

Jesus tells his disciples to eat his body, represented by bread
and wine. He himself characteristically eats his own flesh and blood, along
with his disciples, along with Judas. The Catholics taught that the bread
becomes the literal body of Jesus, wheras the Lutherans taught that the
bread becomes the literal body of Jesus.

As for poisoned host, choking on host, allergies to host-well
that doesn't matter. Even though we could test the bread to see if anything
changes-and it doesn't-you might ask what good it does to chew on Jesus?
Nothing. The followers do not impress us as good examples of human beings.
Eating the flesh of Jesus and being bathed in the amniotic fluid of God's
nether parts does not change a human being.

Augustine was recommended to be baptized at the last moment, so
that he would be clean from sin. If it can clean you from sin, it cannot
keep you clean. You will continue to sin all your life; or at least the
Christians keep begging for forgiveness each day on their knees.

Christianity's contribution to the world religions is its high
esteem for self-sacrifice, imagining even God as a self-sacrificer.
Christianity claims that it is noble to be victimized, in this world. In the
next, however, God will eternally victimize all his enemies. In this world,
it is good to suffer, to die, to be spit upon, to be hated, because in the
next all those bad things will happen eternally to the nonchristians.
Precisely this is the good news.

The Rig Veda has the Gods sacrifice the primordial Man to the
Man himself-in the exact verbal formulatoin the German Aryans have Odin
sacrifice himself to Odin. This, if anything, is the central meaning of
sacrifice.

Kierkegaard makes a big stink about Abraham sacrificing his son
Isaac based on God's decry. To Kierkegaard, this is an epic event because
Abraham did not doubt, but obeyed God no matter what, would obey God
whatever he asked. Abrahams entire goal in life was to have many
grandchildren-hardly impressive to us-but even deeper to him was to be
faithful to whatever God said. Of course, Kierky gets it wrong. He thinks
doubt is undivine, and that Abraham was a hero because he never doubted. The
entire passage in Genesis, however, is framed to assuage God of His doubt,
and it does not end with Abraham saying, "Now I see that I have great faith
in you" but in Yahweh himself saying to himself, "now I see that Abraham is
a loyal servant, willing to murder his own son per my request." It is credit
to Yahweh that he refuses to believe until he sees with his own eyes, even
if this comes at great cost to those who love him. He is akin to a husband
who hires a man to test and tempt his own wife-in fact, the prophets frame
this as exactly his sort of shinagans Yahweh is up to with his people,
resulting in all the bounds of hilarity you would expect from such a
gesture. I wish more Christians realized how funny the prophets were.

Incidentally, many ancients were willing to sacrifice their
first born to their Gods. The concept that "man can gain the most by
sacrificing the most" seems to be a widespread concept, and led many people
to sacrifice all their children, their wealth, or even literally castrate
themselves or finally commit suicide. These men, it must be admitted, had
greater faith than Abraham, especially if we follow the Christian
interpretation that "Abraham knew that God could resurrect Isaac on the
spot."

The saints continue the gross traditions. The older I get, the more I read
Augustine's Confessions as the ejaculations of an adolescent. He has all the
sensuality of an adolescent. It seems his sexuality never grew up. Thus he
damns sexuality as the way to spread original sin, sin as venereal disease,
and Jesus as necessarily born of a virgin, and Jesus himself a virgin his
whole life, and for the rest of eternity, despite having a bride. Pathetic.

I have heard some recent rhetoric from the protestants that from
their religion, they have family values, though Jesus clearly didn't, and
that we should honor sex because it is beautiful and sacred, but must be
celebrated in a sacred manner, though Paul clearly didn't see a sacred
potential in sex. This shows the success of the humanists, who fought for
sexual freedom, the innocent celebration of sexuality. Even the Christians
come to sound like us. Christianity thinks it has adapted, but in fact, it
is only a mirror of humanist ideals, with a crown of thorns painted on top.

"Judge not" said the most judmental man in the Bible. And the
Christians learned well. If we want to learn about the nature of the Greek
Eulusian Mysteries, or other ancient or modern religions, we must never
take a Christian's word on it. Early commentators of the Eulusian mysteries
from Christian sources have their mysteries full of porn and horror-none of
which was there. The Christians demonize all their competitors. The Roman
"Vomitarium" was a doorway that "vomited" the people into the street. But if
you ask a medieval Christian, they will claim such places were made for
people to puke room for more gluttany. These Christian demonize and damn in
every direction except the one that matters: themselves. Where do they get
it? From Jesus the damner.

Augustine the hateful imputes hate to an infant, an innocent
babe looking upon his twin. Augustine himself was jealous for the breasts he
saw, and wished to pit the babes against each other so he could enjoy both
breasts himself.

Sure Christianity is full of insincere kindness, plastic love,
shallow affection-I am yet to find a Christian lover-yet why? Because a
Christian isn't allowed to hate, therefore love is impossible. A Christian
isn't allowed to doubt, to fear, to sneer, to experiment, to lust, to
lie-love is impossible without these. When the Jews wished to control sex,
with partial castration, the Christians preferred to "circumcise the heart."
Castrate the soul and love becomes impossible.

Dante paints over hell the words "I too was created by eternal
love." Therefore, the Christians understand hell as a geography of love,
hell as defining love as that which damns most of human kind. Interesting
take. I wonder what goes on in the minds of these "believers"? Augustine
said that unbaptized and unborn babies, if they die, go to hell. This was
necessary, because if he said they go to heaven, then he would have to admit
that we are born in a state of grace. As all dogma goes, if he said
unbaptized babies go to heaven, we would have churches aborting and killing
babies for their eternal salvation. Dogma always leads to evil. And indeed,
we saw this with the conquistedors who baptized the Americans before
slaughtering them.

But Dante was disengenous when he described the unbaptized
children being stung, eternally stung, by wasps, so that for a trillion
trillion years, their tears and blood mingled on the ground. That, itself
would be a fair picture of what Christians mean by God's love, and their own
love. I approve: beautifully painted! But why were the infants given adult's
bodies? Here he deceives us. He would be truer to God if he had the babies
remain eternally in fetal form, eternally as infant children, still stung by
the wasps, still bleeding and wailing for all eternity. His pen slipped. May
God forgive him.

The Christians are to date the most charitable race on earth.
The Christians popularized the charity, in contrast to the Jewish usury.
Yes, indeed, Christians can be very generous in exchange for your soul. They
even want to put their hands on your sex.

Is a nun supposed to be celibate.but also perpetually barren?

And if Augustine is right about sex being the necessary evil to
propagate the species, perhaps nuns should impregnate themselves through
sperm donations? We should ban sex altogether, now that we know how to
procreate without it! We lack only a means of extracting semen from the man
with no pleasure at all. Science will find a way, God willing.

When Celsus criticized the Christians for doing nothing to help the pagans
defend the Roman Empire, Origen replied, "We defend it with our prayers."
Their prayers, of course, did nothing and so Rome fell and a thousand years
of darkness followed.

Hypocrits I can live with, because they at least know they are
acting. What I can't stand is the tyrannical humility of the Christian, who
stupidly says "I know absolutely what is righteos, what sinful, and though
ostensibly I am sinful continually, at least I am not sinful in my judgment
of everything else."

The Christian makes it his place to damn the world, while he
himself, the most damnable part of it, is saved, because he accepts handouts
from God. Its like a welfare parasite complaining about taxes. What the
Christian doesn't know is that his belief in God is his biggest sin.

Truth, honesty, integrity, -- all foreign virtues to the
Christians, who value love of Christ above respect of truth. Therefore,
historically and since the very beginning, Christians pretended their
writings were of the supposed disciples of Jesus, interpolated fake reports
about Jesus into the works of contemporary historians-Josephus is made to
call Jesus a God, and then never mention him again-and once they gained
control of the libraries (the ones they didn't burn down as they burned down
Alexandria), they rewrote legends and myths of other nations and peoples as
if these were stories of real historical saints of Christianity-so that
almost every Christian saint is a ripped off God or demigod vandalized for
the people Christianity imposed itself on. Of other religions and Gods they
wrote disgusting smears, deliberate misrepresentations, demonizing
accusations, shameless blasphemies, and not only against the religions and
their cherished heritage, but against those believing in them, such as when
they misreported on the nature of the Hellenic and Roman mystery cults from
which Christianity stole blood drinking and baptism, claiming that such
cults also practiced any number of monstrosities and indecencies - and all
thes grown from the pious imagination of the Christians!

They added stories into, edited errors out of, and rephrased mistakes and
crudities from their own "perfectly inspired" gospels, the four they chose,
and burned the hundreds of competing gospels, along with the writings of the
gnostics and any other competetion their hatred caught sight of. They wrote
histories and biographical notes about pagans, from Aesop to Petronius, and
when writing about any respected "pagan" (that is, non Christian), they
emphasized any moral uncertanties or character flaws they could discover,
and when these were lacking, the charitable Christains invented them, and
wrote them either into their own histories, or edited them into the writings
of other historians. The invented countless lies and accusations against the
Jews, beginning with the made up stories about the Pharisees in the gospels,
and continuing down to stories of Jews drinking the blood of Christian
infants, and thousand of others stories that have cost the lifes of millions
of Jews. They invented no end of fake relics of fake saints who were ripped
from nonChristian sources anyway, and these were venerated and touched, for
miraculous purposes, at a high cost to the credulous believers. Once a
certain sect of them gained political power, namely, through Constantine,
who was chosen by God who announced himself through a vision that if
Constantine would become a Christian he would decimate Constantine's
enemies-Gods annointed, yet again, who would thereafter kill off his own
parents in response to rumors about them-was gladly used to produce an
official Bible, and to burn the documents of, if not the owners of, other
Bibles, Scriptures, and Gospels, so that, through the state, as would happen
later in Germany, Iceland, anywhere Christianity spread, certain sects were
outlawed, violently condemned, tortured by the fiercest methods, and in fact
Christianity and Christains have invented more methods of torture than any
other religion, if not all other religions combined. Truth, honesty, and
integrity are not Christian virtues, never were, never in the Bible does God
say "to yourself be true," or "know yourself,"-we would have to thank Plato
and Shakespeare for popularizing that sort of morality. Instead we see
everywhere and always lies, forgeries, and meddling with politics in order
to kill off thousands of Christains who believe the wrong things about the
God who doesn't exist in the first place.

When Christianity invaded Germany and the north, it killed off and tortured
whoever would not curse the gods they grew up with, it wrote smears and
blasphemies about the indigenous gods, and presented its own mythology as
fulfilling the prophesies of the indigenous people. In other words,
Christianity has no concern for the truth-pure propaganda, spreading their
own beliefs at all costs.

Paul famously said he would lie and deceive if it would convince
people to believe in Christ, and he would pretend to be anything to chum
with anybody to get them to convert. When certain prosletyzers were revealed
for being evil, expoitive, lying men, Paul said, "No matter, so long as they
preach Christ is Lord." He would approve of the televengelist who secretly
slept with a gay prostitue, and denounced homosexuality each Sunday in the
name of Jesus.





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