Friday 8th of November 2024
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on board the cruise-liner "symphony of the universe"

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I feel like the annoying uncle creating mayhem in a perfectly "normal" family, by telling eager junior it's okay to be a prankster. I seem to harp on about the religious hypocrisy and useless faith day in day out. It has nothing to do with any doubt in my life, nor about trying to defend my patch of lawn.

 

But not one day goes by without religious people trying to infiltrate or muck up our relatively working-well governmental secularism. These believers are against this or that and want their traditional tight arse understanding to rule as a god-given right. Amen. Not a day goes pass without a friend dealing with government telling me about crazy opposition, to perfectly good ideas and processes, from government officials and ministers because they are "catholic" and the new ideas could prove that "god is dead" and that social sharing is a better option... 

 


Thus the imagination of government is limited to massaging these old archaic faith-based views that helped the government be elected. It would be comical if it was not like a metaphor for a prison where great ideas get locked up to die. 
Here a couple of religious luminaries present yet more grandiose cases of the importance of religion on the ABC. Of course Scott Cowdell and Simon Smart are trying to pulp your mind into submission by using elaborate concepts and big words which, should they be analysed, don't mean much more than pea-soup on a Tuesday.  

Here we go:

Hope for the future?

Yet even in Clausewitz's historically accelerating Germany, a counter-vision was being worked out by the poet Friedrich Hoelderlin, whose withdrawal from the world in silence and sadness imitated Christ's disavowal of worldly power and ambition. Girard meditated on Hoelderlin's couplet, "But where danger threatens / That which saves from it also grows.".

Imitating God's total absence from the feverish to-and-fro of mimetic history, also from the violent sacred's eternal return which Nietzsche later preached, and only thus being able to overcome the inward oscillations of his bipolar disorder, Hoelderlin followed the way of monastics, saints and Christ himself.

Girard knew that we cannot escape mimeticism, but we can follow worthy models of desire into non-rivalrous living, away from violent escalation and violent resolution, finding an ecclesial experience of unity without the need for enemies. By following Christ's alternative to the false sacred in modest lives modelled on his desire, on that of his blessed mother and all the saints, perhaps our good mimetic influence on others in turn will help keep non-violent solidarity alive in the world, and hence contribute to averting Girard's feared apocalyptic end to history.

As for Rene Girard himself, he was an observant Catholic layman for 55 years and he knew that God's Kingdom was not of this world. He looked forward to union with God, and there in faith and hope we leave him, where all the victims of history are vindicated and every tear is wiped away.

Scott Cowdell is Research Professor in Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University, Canberra, and Canon Theologian of the Canberra-Goulburn Anglican Diocese. He is founding President of the Australian Girard Seminar. His last book was Rene Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/11/05/4346211.htm

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There is no doubt that the impact of religion matters a great deal. The world is becoming more religious, not less, so it is a fair question whether the impact is, overall, positive or not. The recent study of religious children should make believers think carefully about what they teach kids, how it is interpreted, and how that impacts behaviour.

But it might be a little too early to declare that without religion we'll all be better off. It's still the case that almost all the major charities in this country are faith based. There's every chance that if you go to visit your Grandma in the dementia ward this weekend, the organisation in which she is cared for emerged from a deeply held Christian understanding of charity. For those unfortunate enough to have a brother lost to homelessness, it's more likely than not that when he is picked up off the street or accesses help at a soup kitchen, those caring for him will be attached to a Christian institution. Outside of experimental conditions, these are the real world experiences of countless thousands.

Plenty of people today do this kind of work without any faith, but it remains the case that a grounding in the Christian faith and, importantly, commitment to a faith community, continues to provide an impetus towards generosity, mercy and kindness. All of us are beneficiaries of that.

Simon Smart is the director of the Centre for Public Christianity. He is the co-author with Jane Caro, Antony Loewenstein, and Rachel Woodlock of "For God's Sake - an atheist, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim Debate Religion".


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-13/smart-so-religion-makes-you-meaner-no/6938636

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The world according to Gus:

Sad sad sad world becoming more religious, not less. Stupid world becoming more stupid. And I hope there some doubt about this.

But should it be so, I think it's time to revive the Greek and Roman mythology as a replacement for these ghastly Abrahamic mono-theist religious beliefs that have plague humanity for 2,000 years too long. 

You want to believe in a superior being? Try several gods... Split the godly tasks. Same price. More fun. Easy. Take Jupiter or Zeus as the chief god if you will, Zeus who to say the least has some flaws Himself, including anger. So what? No-one's perfect, not even the gods who have jealousies and machinations to boot in order to manage their own relationships. Makes it easier for humans to feel part of the greater theatre of enviotipy (envy of become one with god).

This would be far better than believing into a boring single god of perfection (who could be furiously angry at times), who to say the least was so bored with Himself that He dabbled with the creations of angels, goofed with devils and placed mortals on a forsaken planet in a corner of a non-defined universe with slow spinning galaxies and black holes placed like dumps on an electric-billiard machine. I use capital H here not to glorify the He, but to define that this He is basically a male chauvinist pig. God is a Male and let's not forget it. 

This Abrahamic explanation of human existence does not make any sense at all. The Roman/Greek gods are closer to the mark, especially with their orgies, rivalries, wars and amorous relationships. Spot on, Mars...

Today we replace St Christopher, the saint of motorists, with Mercury, the god of transport. Yoohoo.

Girard sadly fell in the Katholik groove and had to find complex philosophical excuses to justify his position. He went round and round in a circle going deeper into the trench. 

"Girard knew that we cannot escape mimeticism, but we can follow worthy models of desire into non-rivalrous living, away from violent escalation and violent resolution, finding an ecclesial experience of unity without the need for enemies." Wow!... Good for him. Oi !

Mimetism is innate in most animals. Mimeticism is the extension of mimetism through becoming aware that we copy. Yes we copy. We mimic. It's a social behaviour common to many animal species, including humans. We need to learn how to do things and then perform as well as teach how to do things. Birds learn to follow the flock and eat for the first time the nectar of the bottlebrush. It could happen by accident, but passing on the knowledge from parenting tends to speed things up a bit and increase the chances of survival. mimetism is part of evolution.

Look at the whining kid in the trolley at the supermarket. He wants attention while his mother is writing something on a shopping list. But Freddo really whines and cries BECAUSE HE WANTS TO copy mother. His arms are stretched out to grab the paper and biro. Mum gives him the paper and biro. Freddo stops crying. HE CAN NOW MIMIC mum's action without really knowing what mum's purpose was. 

"But where danger threatens / That which saves from it also grows."... Yep, should what-we-do not save us from being hit on the head with a slipper, then we WON'T GROW". The cockroach that escape being squashed by a shoe learns best to avoid the next one. It's nature at works. If you're creepy-crawly, you will get out at night, when most of the dangerous creatures, like shoes, are asleep. You have learnt that night time is the best time to dance on the kitchen floor.

Mimetiscism is a higher level of copying an action, while knowing the purpose of it. We all do it. It's obvious. 99 per cent of what we do is performed by habit, mostly learnt from someone else and some habits which we have developed for ourselves by copying over what has worked for us previously. Nothing wrong with this. 

But we want change, while at the same time we're afraid of change, each and every one of us afraid of change to varying degrees.

"Imitating God's total absence from the feverish to-and-fro of mimetic history" makes as much sense as black pudding in a tunnel. God was invented to explain things we did not understand — including black pudding and tunnels. 

And the idea of god actually mucked up our proper understanding of things. With the idea of god we killed off curiosity about what we are —who we are. Of course the Roman/Greek gods make more sense psychologically. The Roman/Greek gods are much closer to our inanity and can help in sorting out our petty squabbles. Our squabbles are still as unimportant as a basic primate fight in a tree, but more dangerous because we have developed the will and better ways to kill. We have developed more elegant ways to be psychopathic primates. What Girard expressed all along his plodding life was the tragedy of the deep nonsense he believed in.



Nietzsche's DID NOT PREACH. He was against religious beliefs. Wikipedia tells us that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Among the chief elements of his philosophy are his radical rejection of the existence and value of objective truth; his atheistic critique of religion and morality, and of Christianity in particular, which he characterized as propagating a slave morality in the service of cultural decline and the denial of life; his characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power;  and the affirmation of existence in response to the "death of God" and the profound challenge of nihilism. His later work, which saw him develop influential (and frequently misunderstood) concepts such as the the Übermensch and the doctrine of eternal recurrence, became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural, and moral contexts toward a state of aesthetic health.

 

Gus:

Aestheticism is the key. I call it stylism. Stylism incorporates not just the grand philosophical aspect of philosophical health, but choices we make as low-brow entertainment — just for fun...

 

Gus Leonisky

Your local entertainment officer on board the cruise-liner "Symphony of the Universe".

 

 

god is dead...

“Being ‘a Nietzschean’ is no more possible than following someone else’s orders
to be free! After all, it was Nietzsche himself who insisted that ‘Those who
understand me, understand that I can have no disciples’” (Soccio, 477).

This essay will embrace Nietzsche’s philosophy because he proposed that God is dead, life is meaningless, and fate trumps faith. Ultimately, he provided an alternative philosophy of life that is life affirming. The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) has many distracters, for a myriad of reasons. Undoubtedly, most of those in opposition to Nietzsche’s philosophy base their objections on a misperceived threat to their firmly indoctrinated religious beliefs. While this essay may not dissuade those distracters from their religious beliefs, for that is not its purpose, it may help clarify a few of their misperceptions. To illustrate, we begin with one of philosophy’s most contentious, yet misunderstood quotes.

God is Dead

Nietzsche first proposed that God is dead in his 1882 book The Gay Science when he declared,

‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.’ By this Nietzsche means that society no longer has a use for God; the belief does not in any way help the survival of the species, rather it hinders. (Jackson 56)

http://alwaysquestionauthority.com/category/persons/friedrich-nietzsche/

 

some muslims are killing allah...

Should allah be a real god, He/She would not allow Muslims to kill in His/Her name. The Massacre in Paris is but the continuum of increasing idiocy amongst religious believers. 

 

I believe we are in a transitional period, which is going to last a bit longer than it should: too many Muslims are still in a philosophical hatred 7th century AD, but have acquired 21st century weaponry. It's not going to be pretty. At least, the Christians, though still making sharp noises. have reluctantly come to terms with the rise of secularism. Their fight is mostly on the platform of ideas, while for some Muslims, it's an all assault war. And we have our friend the Saudis to thank for this. It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and cope a philosophical ironic satire on the nose without reacting like nasty dangerous idiots. It's time to widen curiosity beyond the pages of ancient books that teaches narrowness of mind.

It's time to become human and promote humanism.

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To promote "controversial" atheist Sam Harris's upcoming Australian tour, a series of billboards taking the mickey out of what Harris, a neuroscientist, sees as dangerous religious dogmas were declared "offensive" and banned. Adam Bishop's anger and disbelief prompted him to pen this response.

WHEN I first learned about APN Outdoor's decision to ban billboard ads promoting Sam Harris' upcoming Australian tour on the grounds of religious discrimination, I must confess I was overcome with a heady mix of anger and disbelief.

I mean sure, I'd certainly expect to see such a decision handed down in Iran, where a person may be hanged for apostasy, or even in the democratic icon of the United States, where an increasingly fundamentalist belief in Christianity has corrupted much of the political debate in recent times. But in the allegedly progressive, liberal-minded and secular-wielding nation of Australia, well, I simply didn't see it coming.

For those who are not familiar with Sam Harris' work, he is an author and neuroscientist most famous for vehemently advocating for the principles of secularism, as well as being equally disparaging of potentially dangerous religious dogmas. Most often however, he is described as a "controversial atheist", with the controversial adjective generally being applied on account of Harris not being passive, by this I mean he doesn't keep his non-belief to himself.

Enter the reputedly "offensive billboards" that were used to promote Harris' upcoming Australian tour.

One proposed billboard message read:

'JESUS CHRIST — WHO IT TURNS OUT, WAS BORN OF A VIRGIN, CHEATED DEATH, AND ROSE BODILY INTO THE HEAVENS — CAN NOW BE EATEN IN THE FORM OF A CRACKER.'

A very important point to highlight here, is that the statement above is what most christians actually believe. It would be difficult to characterise these words as offensive given it is simply a restating of their written beliefs, albeit in a disbelieving tone.

The next billboard targets the behavioural issues embedded within the belief system of Islam:

'WE ARE NOW IN THE 21ST CENTURY: ALL BOOKS, INCLUDING THE QUR'AN, SHOULD BE FAIR GAME FOR FLUSHING DOWN THE TOILET WITHOUT FEAR OF VIOLENT REPRISAL'.

The fact that this last statement is considered by many to be religious vilification is of the most concern, a sentiment which essentially supports the view that someone should be allowed to insult an idea without being killed for doing so.

This is surely a very non-controversial notion in modern Australia? It's important to note that this last message does not advocate a call to arms for everyone to pick up a copy of the Qur'an and flush it down the toilet (despite what the Herald Sun rather speciously asserted), it simply champions the view that if someone was to carry out that action, they should be allowed to do so and not be the subject of any archaic, violent retribution. This is a crucial distinction to make.

https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/boycotting-sam-harriss-ads-atheist-freedom-of-speech-vs-religious-censorship,8377

 

Meanwhile the Christians are up-in-arms against a study which shows that religious kids are meaner than non-religious kids...:

 

But it does feel like overreach when they claim that "our study show(s) ... that religious people are less generous and not only adults but children too." Or when they suggest that the secularisation of moral discourse would "increase rather than decrease human kindness". That's quite a grand historical global-scale claim to make from a study of this size and scope.

The problem is, despite the theoretical experiment that produced these results, the weight of evidence for real world experience looks completely different. One might recall Robert Putnam's American Grace: How religion unites and divides us (2010), which emerged from two comprehensive surveys conducted into religion and public life in America.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-13/smart-so-religion-makes-you-meaner-no/6938636

 

My understanding of case is relative. It al depends on what the kids are taught and HOW they are taught. What is there for kids to MIMIC: words or actions? Up to a certain age and a level of comprehension, action will take mimic precedence over words. Words are complicated. It's the same in the greater world. We have too many idiots and psychopaths with god, greed and guns.

It's not going to be prettier still when the words and actions are geared for hatred. The case is going to give the rabid right wing extremists another go to prove their point. A certain Anthony Abbott will become their hero and the entire world of humans will fall back into the dark ages bum fights , still hell bent on destroying the planet with CO2, while going on crusades like the Templars of yesteryears... We're screwed... We need to breathe, be serious and understand where we've gone wrong while finding ways to minimise the shit religious and promote a greater peaceful understanding.

We've been at it for several thousand years and not close to any rational solution...

 

 

 

 

puppets on long strings...

What we know at the tactical level about Paris at this stage is that there have been multiple attacks, and some degree of coordination, and mass executions in a devastating hostage situation. Early reports suggest the weapons used in the attacks included grenades and semi-automatic rifles.

These are the actions of thugs and criminals. They are simple and lack sophistication.

 

This style of attack is not unusual as an approach to guerrilla warfare where, as Che Guevara said, the weak use what they can to get an effect. 

Jacinta Carroll is Senior Analyst and Director, Counter Terrorism Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-14/carroll-the-paris-attacks-lets-recommit-to-our-911-promises/6941602

 

Gus: Yes the actions are those of thugs and criminals... But there are some greater forces that create these puppets and pull their strings... and it's not Iran nor Iraq...

catholics versus protestants...

 

The dual temptation now is fight a war against all Muslims, a campaign that would be bound to fail. During the lengthy negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal, the neoconservatives and Israel spared no effort to depict Iran, run by Shi’ite Muslims, as the primary enemy of the West. Even after the ratification of the deal, Israeli analysts have stressed this point: this recent analysis, promoted in the important neoconservative webzine Mosaic, makes clear that Israel sees the Iran allied Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Assad government as a far greater worry than ISIS. “Tehran’s drive for regional hegemony is a threat to Israel”, say the authors, whereas the Islamic state “currently far from Israel’s borders and with limited military capabilities, does not represent a direct military strategy threat at this time.” Instead they advocate “active measures to topple Assad based on the understanding that … Assad’s ouster will lead to a strategic loss for Iran and Hizbollah.” Israel’s lurid exaggeration of the Iranian threat is well understood in the United States, and Hezbollah would actually not exist absent Israel’s repeated invasions of Lebanon. Basically, Netanyahu would prefer that the United States and its allies fight Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad rather than the terrorists trying to lay waste to the capitals of the West.

It would seem unlikely, this time around, that they will get their way: Obama understands the Mideast far better than George W. Bush, and at least some Republicans might, or ought to have learned the necessary lessons. But America’s experience with the neocons after 9/11 should leave us never to underestimate them.

Scott McConnell is a founding editor of The American Conservative.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/this-time-fight-the-real-enemy/

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I could be wrong but I don't think so.

It appears that since 9/11 (and possibly since the 1980s), led by George W Bush the Idiot, the "West" has fought the "wrong" enemy in the middle east. I have made plenty of comment about this on this site. And of course this is not what Miranda understands. Her column today (15/11/15) is yet another stupid attack on the left. As if the left and the socialists were responsible for the rise of ISIS, by being "kinder" to refugees. Of course she vindicates her idol Tony Abbott in regard to whatever. 

The reality is far from this Devine rambling or Abbott idiocy.

Fifteen of the nineteen terrorists for 9/11 were from one country. Osama Bin laden was from the said same country, a country with a strict version of Islam. Saddam Hussein had been tricked by the West to fight a war against Iran in the 1980s, yet his underlying problems came more from the south, though he maintained his distances from what should have been this "ally". Saddam NEVER trusted this country from which Bin Laden came from. Well, it was not his problems — It was ours. Some idiot in the White House decided to remove Saddam, "for advancing democracy" after having invaded Afghanistan searching for Osama... Many "mistakes" were made, the biggest one of all being to disenfranchise the Sunnis in Iraq by removing Saddam. What are they going to do?

Most of the Sunnis in Iraq subscribe to the strict Islamic version of the country from which 15 of the 9/11 terrorists came from. The other 4 terrorists came from the same religious affiliation implanted in other countries from Egypt, the UAE and Lebanon. NONE CAME FROM IRAQ. But the Idiot in the White House blamed Saddam for 9/11. Saddam hated Al Qaeda and at the time of the US invasion of Iraq, there was NO AL QAEDA  in Iraq.

We all know how the intelligence "got it wrong" about weapons of mass destruction. 

The English hegemony decided it was best to kill the flock of geese rather than catch the fox. 

And so history is full of shit. The same shit was used to remove Gadaffi in Libya. This time Libya was turned into a mess with the help of the UN conned by the US. The French president, Sarkozy, covered himself with glory with by "saving" Libya from Gadaffi the Tyrant... Now as we know, Libya is a basket case of warring factions, including ISIS. So where is ISIS getting support from? ISIS is using the strict version of Islam to promote its wares. ISIS is exclusively Sunni. 

Eventually, the West will have to come to term that buying cheap oil from the country that sponsors the Sunnis of ISIS is not worth the price. Buying oil from Iran and Russia sounds a better option... But then there is the Israel conundrum. Israel is more in favour of the Sunnis of the Arab world. 

This is where all this shit is making our head spin. But then this is not what Miranda, nor Tony Abbott, would see. 

Should the west need to minimise terror, and not fight a war on terror willy-nilly, it will have to negotiate diplomatically with all the country involved in the Sunni insurgency and power grab. Presently the West, aka the US, is helping this country that sponsors Al Qaeda to do another power grab in Yemen. The US is helping AL QAEDA and ISIS  in a war against the Houthis in Yemen. 

ARE WE NUTS?

 

 

the original sin...

IN his diatribe (see top article) about René Girard, Scott Cowdell tells us that:

Guided by their mimetic desire into rivalry with God, our figurative first parents Adam and Eve set humanity on the path leading to Cain's primal murder of Abel prior to founding the first city. Scripture thus exposes humanity's fall away from the innocence of animal life.

The tenth commandment warns against coveting and rivalry, which undergird the escalation named by earlier commandments towards murder through theft, adultery and slander. An Egyptian version of the Joseph saga blames Joseph for his troubles, in consistent mythical fashion, while Genesis insists on his innocence, with the repentant brothers who scapegoated Joseph refusing to scapegoat another brother in the case of Benjamin.

The sacrifice of Abraham's son Isaac is averted, and while the Israelites are ordered to massacre the Canaanites, they are immediately told not to intermarry with them, so that even in such texts of terror there is evidence of violence being averted.

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Historical flafpf... How can adult clever intelligent persons believe in this fictional tawpfth?... I have nothing against the old Girard. Like everyone else and his/her dog, including another religious man, Theillard de Chardin, he tried to make sense on the nonsensical items found in the genesis of the bible and became an adept at distorting sciences to fit the crooked model of religious thinking.  This does not accommodate one bit the reality of natural evolution. The tree of life is generally mapped with the dead leaves as well. 

But these men and others tried hard to fit a godly purpose and a meaning to our existence. In fact, the only peace and justice we have is that we can grow in our hearts. The rest is clever subterfuge-al gobbledegook. It does not make any more sense than Santa Claus in Dr Who.

"I am wrong, thus I exist", said Gustacartes in his sleep, "should I be right, I would be god"...

The original sin is to believe in god, Adam and Eve, Abraham and all the cohort of idiots in the bible. It's not a sin really, but it's a grand delusion that stops us from becoming intelligent.

misinterpreting nietzsche...

"Nietzsche is writing at the end of the 19th century, and 19th century Europe is dominated by figures like Otto von Bismarck [German chancellor between 1871 and 1890], who's known for German unification, the Franco-Prussian war, and also for the politics of 'blood and iron' — the expansion of Germany through military power," explains Dr Drochon. 

"Nietzsche's incredibly critical of that type of politics."

"Nietzsche says that this power-politics — which is based on nationalism, xenophobia and philistinism — is an example of what he calls 'slave morality', which he rejects."

But according to Dr Drochon, contemporary alt-right figures, like Richard Spencer, advocate for nationalistic and xenophobic politics grounded in the rejection of the 'other'. 

"Spencer calls for a Christian ethno-populist American state, and these are all the things that Nietzsche hates," he says. 

"Nietzsche attacks Christianity, he hates nationalism, and instead of having some kind of purity, his idea was that the future of Europe would be based on mixing.

"He had this vision of future 'good Europeans' who would be mixed race, a mixture of Prussian military officers and Jews — which is obviously very far from the conception that the alt-right is peddling today."

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-21/nietzsche-and-the-alt-right/

 

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