Pick A Good Religion

We all talk about what happens when we die. I met a wise man at the top of Bukhan Mountain in Korea, once, and this is what he told me—about where the followers of different religions go, when they pass away, or die, or whatever happens when the brain and heart stop doing what they do:

The Christians go to a resort in the sky, if they’re sorry for having been jerks and profess to believe. If they’re not, they stay at a place something like the sun–forever. And God makes them non-destructible at that point—you know, so they don’t burn up but are able to feel pain.

The Jews don’t go anywhere. They become their own advocates and litigate outside the gates of either place. The reason they don’t get muscled in is no one wants to cross them. They are good in a fight, make good movies and, you never know when you’re going to need a lawyer.

The Buddhists have unlimited lives, but if they’re pains in the ass, they come back as worms, or dogs, or North Koreans. Or  almost worse, they come back as dogs in traditional villages in South Korea, where they are a delicacy.

The Muslims have the best deal. They have to be good–which may include being involved in Mission Impossible-style military campaigns for political causes, which may include suicide, but the rewards are great for this. If they die during one, I hear they go to a place like the Playboy mansion in the sky. If they are bad, they have to hang out with infidels at Fox.

Taoists hitch a ride on a meteor, which mysteriously leaves the atmosphere without crashing, hitched to a flying dragon–who then takes them to some wine and opium-filled after-party in another galaxy.

Atheists just die.

Agnostics sort of die, sort of go to Heaven (where they are rewarded by God for being honest), and sort of go to Hell–on a rotating basis. I hear it’s like riding a merry-go-round through a segmented circle, with parts being like a sex shop, an inferno, and a Woody Allen movie.

Deists go to The God Buffet and have a membership card to all realms–which they can visit at will, but can never stay at permanently. They tend to hang out with the spirits of the Jihadist Muslims at the Playboy Mansion in the sky. Even the women.

Jainists own the whole shebang. Yeah, unbelievable, right? All the realms of the afterlife are concessions, owned by those vegetarian pacifists. I don’t know where they live after death. I think it is some big floating resort called “In Your Face, Nirvana,”  orbiting another star in the constellation, Virgo.

Hindus are the limo drivers and the Sufis are the therapists and yoga instructors.

Shintoists just go on tending those sublime shrines and go to sleep at night in the rocks, the trees and the creatures in the breeze.

Nobody knows what happens to American Indians. I think they just continue on as great spirits in the form of living peyote smoke or drum rhythms & chants–everywhere.

CA

© Copyright 2015 Carl Atteniese II, AKA ‘Mando’, All rights reserved.

This was satire.

Denver Post, Stop Climate Deniers

Here is a crucial petition: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ban-private-campaign-2. It is a call for unity and action more important than any other, because the overwhelmingly monumental issue in our politics is how restrained and financially compromised our elections and representation is. Everything stems from there. After having a free press and an educated electorate, what else is important to democracy besides unfettered participation? Speaking of a free press, what good is it if it panders to non-sense that endangers the entire planet by promoting ignorance and slowing progressive policy that can save us? The Denver Post is rightly the target of a petition addressing this inanity, at http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/to-my-local-newspaper-14/, because this publication gives space to climate deniers. The global scientific consensus on climate change is that it is anthropomorphic. We are near a “tipping point”, beyond which human effort will be moot—taking climate mutation exponentially out-of-control—if we do not initiate sweeping and grossly prejudicial global policy changes immediately.

“Ike”

I watched Ike, starring Tom Selleck, tonight, and was humbled, saddened, and put in awe. The way his good natured discretion, strength, intelligence, leadership, and compassion came to bear should be an inspiration to all men in how to conduct themselves and approach life.

As was said by Churchill, Ike had more power than any man in history, and he certainly had it when the stakes for humanity were the highest.

When he reprimanded Patton on the over-zealous General’s statement that post-war, the world would be run by the Anglo Saxons, his straightforward, elegant, and precisely appropriate words prompted me to think that no one in the world today should think for a minute that she or he does anything less than spit on a World War II soldier’s grave when he embraces “racialism”.

If you can watch this film and remain dry all the way through, I hope it is because you are Spartan, not cold, not unable to appreciate that the monumental horror, risks, courage, and sacrifices afoot in the second world war were instrumental elements we should never forget–their towering significance never to be underestimated in the importance of our free societies, today, in the West, or the East.

Where Do Epiphany And Genius Come From

Comments on a Video That Defends Against The Fundamentalist Manipulations of Ray Comfort…

I am very impressed, Jaclyn, and I learned something from your video–the circular evolution phenomenon.

I understand why you feel this is important to do, and thank you for it, but I think that we have to feel bad for the Ray Comforts of the world; they make us angry, yes, because they spread disinformation, preying on vulnerable minds–which is immoral and dangerous. However, my honest feeling is that these people are more unenlightened, than evil.

Let me explain what I mean. There are cognitive processes that result from mental reasoning, calculation, and deep, almost–linear thought. Then there are moments and periods of what we can only call epiphany and dreaming. Whatever you may think about the origin of the latter, it matters not for what I am about to say, except for the fact that even scientific people have utilized it–not just poets, artists, and extemporaneous speakers.

Einstein said he began to work out his theories of relativity and the behavior of light in the universe, through daydreams. We have all been in meditation, or caught up in a mundane act, like staring out the window of a moving train, or washing the dishes, and suddenly, before we realize we are not actually in the process of conscious thought, we discover a realization, an intact idea–“a thought”–in images, sounds, or words. Some call this channeling. We didn’t “think” of it; ‘it came to us.’

I have no problem with any interpretation of what this is or where this comes from. I don’t even mind people saying it is God, as long as their actions that follow–either in belief or action, are harmless. In fact, it is because I believe that if there were a God, this “process” would be pure and not judged by God–that I know that there cannot be only one spiritual truth, because we are virtually helpless in controlling it–and I believe it is the most honest phenomenon that occurs in our conscious mind! The sad thing is, religious people most of all can not allow this honesty to take them where it would, which is why they are so compromised!

This is–to me–the source of our spirit, our truth, and the source of love.

Whatever it is, I believe it is part of the unconscious abstract functioning of the brain. We can call it our spirit, our heart-mind, spirit-mind, our imagination, and many more things, but what I believe it is…is the true nature of intelligence. Ray Comfort and most fundamentalists lack this. So, rather than get angry at them, I feel empathy. These people–all fundamentalists, lack this, or in the least, have not been able to release and foster this. After all, if it is not a lacking, but a suppression, it is the result of culture, inculcation, and self-denial. This, in an organized and totalitarian dogma, is the basis–or maligned principle phenomenon we find in organized Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (of the strict forms). It is dangerous, because it is completely counter-intuitive and anti-intelligent.

When I was younger, I felt it was unconscionable of the Chinese to outlaw religion, as it is an outcropping of the consciousness. But I am not so sure, anymore (notwithstanding the fact that centralized government is dependent on a state religion), because at least in the form of theistic and totalitarian religions, like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, we are dealing with thought control and repression just as evil as Nazism and totalitarian Communism. And they are built on misinforming children–indoctrination, inculcation of the helpless unwitting youth.

For people who submit themselves to this willingly, I feel pity, not anger. Don’t be mad at Ray Comfort. He is a man who might have other forms of intelligence, other talents and blessings, but abstract intelligence (or it is fettered if he has it, by a mental block set up by dogma and so genius is not one of them, unless of course he is just suppressing it, to deal with a deep, inner pain, or a lie meant to uphold something he cannot escape, such as some relationship or great fear.

Great video.

Carl Atteniese

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0k9NyHh7TQ

Douglas Adams on Religious Taboos

Douglas Adams on Religion (and the taboos created around it/by it, which limit our rights):

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say, ‘Fine, I respect that’. 

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ but I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions’. But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it’.

It’s rather like, if you think back in terms of animal evolution, an animal that’s grown an incredible carapace around it, such as a tortoise—that’s a great survival strategy because nothing can get through it; or maybe like a poisonous fish that nothing will come close to, which therefore thrives by keeping away any challenges to what it is it. In the case of an idea, if we think ‘Here is an idea that is protected by holiness or sanctity’, what does it mean? Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows, but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe, no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furore Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.