"Ignore the man behind the curtain"

[eumelia]

God has many names, in Judaism alone He is said to have 76 (77? Any other topological number really), in Christianity He also has many names, and more than one form, in Islam He is said to have 99!

The God of the Big Three and they are, despite having a different amount of followers. Christianity and Islam have a much bigger demographic, despite the fact that when one is talking about the Monotheistic religions and doctrines one says "Judeo-Christian" and not "Islamo-Christian" or "Chrsito-Islamic".

They are the Big Three, from Judaic scriptures and mythology these Three have formed a monopoly on God and what God wants his Children (Us, Humanity) wants us to do (in His name).
But Humans, being Humans, despite having the great gifts of Language, Imagination, Ingenuity and many others which evolved through our Natural History (or was designed into us as some *shakes head* say) we're pretty stupid.
It boggles my mind, really it does, that these Three, who all pray to essentially the same God could be the worst enemies on Earth.
Because our Father Avraham, Abraham and Ibrahim are all the same person.
So what if in one version he preferred Issac and in another Ishmael.
So what if one version already had their Messiah come and go and come back again.
So what?
Moses, Jesus and Muhammad are probably looking down at us from their respective places in Heaven (most likely sitting next to each other and talking geo-politics) and shaking their heads at how fucking stupid all their followers are.

Ziporah, Miriam, The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid and most likely many of the other influential women in those men's lives are also probably sitting with them and telling them how stupid they were and couldn't they have written things down clearly! Because the gist is none of what's written in the Tanach, the New Testament or the Koran were written by God Himself.
The Books may be divinely inspired, but written by God they are not, Human hand in fallible. The Human mind is capable of many things, but still, there are limits to what we can and cannot do.

Point is, these big Three are not as they are meant to be, because no Monotheistic God who is described as kind, merciful, gracious, long-suffering etc. etc. and etc. would be happy in what His followers, today and in yesteryear, were doing in His name.

Can we all say "Amen"? Or would that be pushing it?

Comments

[hagar-972.livejournal.com]

Oh, for crying out loud, Mel. What's with the glorified inaccurate idealized shit?

Sure, the Jewish Bible has one sentence about treating the foreigners justly, "for strangers you had been in the land of Egypt", but for one thing, this is mentioned in a single breath with protecting widowed wifes, orphans and other "weak" people in need of protection and for another, have you missed out on all the times where the Bible and its heros - God, prophets, kings - frown down upon the non-Jews, trick them or abuse them in some way or the other?

Have you missed the part where Christians are ordered to convert others to Christianity?

All the times Muhamad tricked non-Muslims he dealt with, at least once murdering a whole city? The clear religious laws allowing Muslims to ignore pacts and agreement with non-Muslims? The part were non-Muslims may not have equal citizenship rights in a Muslim land, even that some of them may be under Muslim protection (a privilege, not a right, let alone a 'human right')?

And the polytheistic ones. Hindium, with its strict Cast society. Nearly all tribal societies, where women are treated as either inferior or property, where they are regularly abused. If there is a single present-day polytheistic/tribal society for which this does not hold true, they're one case out of hundreds or thousands.

The perception of religion as a positive, unifying force is New Age bullshit. (Or New Age naivity, if you're more gentle than I am.) It has no basis in history. It has very little basis in religious writings, overwhelmed by contrary evidence. Religion, like nationality only to a great extent, is a diversifying force.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Hagar, cool it.
seriously, you don't like it, that's fine but please, cut the fucking disparaging bullshit.
Religion, like Nationality as you say, is supposed to be a unifying force, I'm writing how I feel it should be. Not how it is.

I'm not getting into a discussion with you on the merit of this post, which is supposed to be an ideal and not how I actually view things. And if you think I don't know every single factoid you mentioned in your above post, it just goes to show you think much of my intellectual ability.

[hagar-972.livejournal.com]

Oh, seriously, Mel. Are you looking for reasons to feel disparaged?

If you can't tell the difference between someone criticizing an opinion you voiced and someone criticizing you, then you'd better (1) learn to damn fast, (2) avoid any and all discussion with people who hold different opinion than you until you accomplish (1).

If you are capable of discerning critic of your opinions from critic of you, read on.

(Why, yes, that last sentence was outright personal mockery. Unlike everything else said in this comment or the one above it, above or below this parenthetical comment.)

Religion, like Nationality as you say, is supposed to be a unifying force, I'm writing how I feel it should be. Not how it is.

Especially if you're familiar with all the facts I mentioned, you should know that the opinion you voiced is highly contemporary and has precisely zero historical background. Therefore, trying to 'reclaim' symbols more ancient than that (such as biblical figures) into the ethos is completely untruthful to the history of said symbols. Like PCed fairy tales, it's too false to catch.

Give one good reason why religion should be considered a unifying factor.

Nationality is, from the day it was conceived, a force separating one group of people from other groups of people. Even before the modern concept of Nationality as most of us are familiar with, this is what the components of nationality - custums, history, myths - did: separate as much as unit.

Give one example of when nationality was used to unify people without alienating them - at least to a degree - to people of different nationalities.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

We've critiqued each other enough times for me to know when you're being constructive and when you're being personal.

Give one good reason why religion should be considered a unifying factor.
Belief in an all encompassing God is supposed to be a unifying factor, the fact that people took to mean forcing other people to believe this and that, doesn't mean that the religious doctrine itself is bad.
And having a contemporary view on religion doesn't make said view any less valid. I refrained from mentioning other contemporary religions because 1) I know less about them, 2) they're far less political than the ones I mention.
The post is more about political relations than religious ones, but the two often get confused.

Give one example of when nationality was used to unify people without alienating them - at least to a degree - to people of different nationalities.
None, really. None. Nationality, much more than religion, is a diversifying concept, one that, like religion, should be examined and re-examined through a modern outlook.

[hagar-972.livejournal.com]

We've critiqued each other enough times for me to know when you're being constructive and when you're being personal.

Between 'constructive' and 'personal' there is also "I believe that the view you're presenting is utterly false."

Belief in an all encompassing God is supposed to be a unifying factor

Why should this be so? Why should a belief in any god - not neccesarily the monotheistic omnipotent one - be a unifying factor?

"My god(dess) is bigger than yours" had been the ubiquitous mentality throughout human history. Name one counter example.

Nationality, much more than religion, is a diversifying concept, one that, like religion, should be examined and re-examined through a modern outlook.

Oh, and 're-examined' means "twisting it into something it's not" how?

Just because you can teach a bear to dance, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can - grammaticaly speaking - say that "...Nationality ... is supposed to be a unifying force" doesn't mean that there is any truth at all in it. If you claim "All human people are esssentially of the same nation", that's Humanism and not Nationalism, and it's completely untrue to what Nationalism stands for.

Personally, I think creating contemporary religions is like creating contemporary slavery. For fuck's sake, leave the past's mistakes in the past and don't import them into the present!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

You know very well that there isn't any counter examples, human beings are shits to each other. They don't really need a reason to be shits to each other, but they use religion/nationalism/racism etc. as excuses, because it's a form of creating an "Other".

Oh, and 're-examined' means "twisting it into something it's not" how?
If people didn't re-examine things, you and I would still be owned by our fathers. Just as an example of many "truths" that have been re-examined and "twisted".

Personally, I think creating contemporary religions is like creating contemporary slavery. For fuck's sake, leave the past's mistakes in the past and don't import them into the present!
What would you call Neo-Pagan religions?
And slavery is still in existence around the world, so... the past repeats itself, more to the point, the past never goes away.

[hagar-972.livejournal.com]

You know very well that there isn't any counter examples

If there is no counter example, please provide a reasoning for your claim.

If people didn't re-examine things, you and I would still be owned by our fathers. Just as an example of many "truths" that have been re-examined and "twisted".

So the perception of women as inferiors/property was re-examined. But it wasn't twisted - it was outright slaughtered and tossed out the window. Just like the re-examination of Nationality and some other concepts didn't lead to their redefinition, but rather to the birth of new concepts.

If you don't like what a certain ideology means, maybe creating something new is smarter than bending the old thing's arm. If you don't like religious separating people, maybe you don't need religion at all. (I'm using religion in the sense of דת, not in the sense of אמונה, which should be translated as Faith.)

...the past repeats itself, more to the point, the past never goes away.

Maybe it just didn't go away yet. As I know that you don't believe in cultural relativism of ethics, that's what you really believe in.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

You know it's when you say things like this:

If you don't like what a certain ideology means, maybe creating something new is smarter than bending the old thing's arm. If you don't like religious separating people, maybe you don't need religion at all. (I'm using religion in the sense of דת, not in the sense of אמונה, which should be translated as Faith.)

And write a post like this (http://hagar-972.livejournal.com/394307.html)

I don't understand why you pick arguments with me, when we essentially believe the same things (with a few exceptions), to me it just means you didn't get the spirit of my post, which was more about how humans are stupid when it comes to religions and not how religion is bad.

[hagar-972.livejournal.com]

...to me it just means you didn't get the spirit of my post, which was more about how humans are stupid when it comes to religions and not how religion is bad.

I understand that this was your point. I don't agree with it. I believe that religion, like Nationalism, is inherently seperatist.

I can defend my claim. Can you defend yours, or is your only defence whining about me disparaging you and not understanding you?

(Yeah, that was low. Intentionally. Because if you can't phrase an argument in favour of an opinion, why should other people be convinced to share it?)

That you think what i'm doing is "picking fights" proves, to me, that you quite obviously don't know me well enough to correctly interprete my actions.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah it was low.
More than low, it's insulting, and if there's something I really prefer not to receive from my friends it's insult, especially in an academic discussion.

No need to reply.

[ravrhi.livejournal.com]

I'll even toss in a Hebrew 'Hail Mary'. *grin, wink* Religion has had a lot of fucked up things done in it's name because people (myself included at times) don't seem to remember that at the root of all religious belief is the belief in a divine power that only wants for it's pets [that would be us] to be happy.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Faith is an important thing to have, but religious doctrine has little to do with it.
I think if people were able to make that distinction life would be a whole lot better, because religious doctrine was written in accordance to cultural dogma and all that shit.

Things are different now and so they should be, such is the case of civilizations :)

And yeah, I'll take that תחי מרים!

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

As hagar_972 wrote earlier, religion is and has been for all recorded history a diversifying issue: from the ancient polytheistic view of "gods of the land" and proving "my god(dess) is bigger/stronger then yours" by conquest to the 30 years war and many more.Not that bad a fact in and of itself except that like many diversifying forces it has a tendency to alienate and dehumanise outgroups(from the Gauls to the Jews)

The view of there being one God who is reflected through myriad religions is pretty recent, and I'd guess it is the attempt of decent religious people to reconcile their view of God as all encompassing and all loving father figure with the fact that there are decent people of other religions and the various atrocities performed in the name of almost any religion older then a century.

Personally I find no need for religion(or the supernatural) in my life, but as long as those who do behave decently I don't care what they believe in the privacy of their mind.It is when people use their religious belief as an excuse for behaving badly that my fuse really gets lit.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

My argument with Hagar got a bit out of control because we misunderstand each often online.

I was trying to convey the stupidity of people when it comes to religion and not the way religions are.

I have no doubt that Moses, Jesus and Muhammad would be at each other's throats trying to sell each other's religion, despite the fact that in faith they all pray to the same GD.

The "New Agey" view I bring in my post isn't about changing the past, in order for people to overcome their past and move the hell on.

I personally think organized religion as it is today should be abolished as soon as possible so that we can go on a live in out rational Agnostic world.

I'm a believer that we should respect out Earth because we live on it and what we do affects it and us in turn, but when it comes to the abstract "father figure" in the sky, I can do very well without Him.

Do you think that before these kinds of posts I should put a little disclaimer telling people that I'm being sarcastic or otherwise satirical?

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

Maybe just put a [/sarcasm] or [/satire] in the end if you aren't sure it will be understood as such.That's what I mostly do when I write such on the net, since tones often don't get translated well.

PS. this post was especially susceptible since I(and I'm sure many people) read serious posts that were written exactly like it.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

And here I thought the snappy title from "The Wizard of Oz" took care of that.

*sigh*

[hemlock-sholes.livejournal.com]

Not that it'd any of my business, but there are plenty of counter-examples; the Roman empire being an excellent example of Nationality/Religion being a unifying factor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

Once a county entered the Roman empire (and no, it was not always conquest. Sometimes the country asked to join. In a few cases, the Romans inherited the country after a king's death ;) ) the culture of the country merged with the rest of the Roman empire.