... North America’s most famous writer was much more than an author of humorous children’s stories, beginning his writing career as a journalist in the 1860s on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada. His strong views on politics, religion and capitalism became increasingly radical with age. As an outspoken critic of the warfare economics that resulted in US imperialist atrocities in the Philippines, Twain would’ve been appalled to the see how the same warfare economics have brought death, destruction and mayhem to Iraq, Libya and Syria more than a century later.

http://off-guardian.org/2016/02/06/the-war-prayer-mark-twain/

 

 

see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVYIRbmxHpc

 

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yruRt7mQWgg

 

 

... And Cruz and his mates want to carpet-bomb something...

 

God does not exist. Start with this simple premise. It follows that theology is the invention of god, using philosophical discourse. This is why humans have developed different faiths, including one in alphabet soup. Texts of various theology always imply that one must accept the existence of god as the starting point. This god can be Zeus, Ra, the Sun, Yahweh, Allah or Godot in which ever concept we're usually born into, but not exclusively so. 

 

So theology is not about searching whether god exists or not, but about inventing the tenets why he should exist with rules and regulations to define our relationship with Him (God is a male). Theology defines the credo and morality designed for us to behave — usually under the fear of god, who by the way invented hell as a derivative of his infinite benevolence. 

 

In order to make us appear superior to the chimp's cousins we are, the theologian will use a big book in which a history of god's relationship with mankind is written in various verses. This history does not make any sense should one look at it properly, but is is cleverly written, with simplistically arcane intonations and dogmatic style, to make simple people believe it's true. Easy. Believe and you shall have a better life in the thereafter. 

 

Realising that our life on this miserable planet is not that crash hot, especially when we're poor and under the gun of slave masters, we can dream of better when we're dead. Hope is a dreadful mistress in this case. 

 

Proper reasoning and scientific observations show to the contrary of the big book simplistic story-lines. 

The big book is a neat fraud, most likely penned under supervision by those who wanted to control others by fear. The fear of god has been a big stick for Christians. Unfortunately, in the last fifty years, the fear of god started to loose traction it had optimised by the inquisition tribunals, and has now been endemically replaced by the "love of god". Happy churchy is the go. In order to make sure we still tighten our butt, the fear of god has been replaced by the fear of terrorism by those in charge. 

 

So it appears that theology is at a cross road. Always has been mind you. It has to regurgitate and revalue its own storytelling, in the face of new discoveries and modern gadget living. 

 

The theologian, the manufacturer of the belief in god, has to use big words, big sentences in order to justify his/her role as the keeper of the fire of the faith. Here for example Catherine Pickstock, in an article published on the ABC, tells us without cracking a face:

 

 

Historically speaking, theology, from the Patristic outset, as for Tertullian, Augustine and others, had to define what "religion" was and had been, and the reasons why it considered Christianity to be vera religio. As Jean Borella has observed, inverting the perspectives of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the idea of religion emerged with Latin Christian writers in the wake of the Incarnation since this event supplies the sense of a way which, unlike other ways, discloses the hidden God. Prior to Christianity, by contrast, religion, in our sense, was not named, since the various ways of different cultures, their different gods and rituals, were seen as equivalent, with a sense of difference being reserved for the unreachable hiddenness of ultimate deity, a kind of secret shared monotheism of absolute and unbridgeable apophatic reserve.

 

Poke through the cinders of this explanation designed to promote the Christian faith above others, while not asking the first question. For the last 2000 years of so, the Christian believe that Jesus becoming human revealed the hidden god. Hum. The story of Christ as god is a cute one. It was invented by Greek writers by rehashing various hearsay of word of mouth, embellished with morality and then redefined by the council in the fourth century AD, including the trinity. The council chose the various pieces that fitted into the narrative, wrote new ones and diced others which were contrary to the narrative. This included various sections in which Jesus had a brother and was married to Mary Magdalene and had a kid. The narrative had to be kept pure of mundane human stuff, despite Christ being made into a human. Thus the Virgin Mary could not be anything else but a virgin. Neat. 
Using the same stories but eliminating different bits, there were divergence in the writings' interpretation, leading to the Copts in Egypt, the Orthodox Church from Greece to Russia, and the various interpretations under Calvin, Luther and the plethora or Evangelicals that grew in the USA, due to that land's "freedom" to believe in banana trees considering bananas are simply tall grasses. 
For starters, the Jews and the Muslims do not believe that Christ was the incarnation of god. An average prophet? Sure. They both can live with this. But they still dig deep in the big fantasist book of godly belief. Abraham features big in these systems of deceit.
God does not exist. Simple. 

 

 

 

We have to work out our relationships with each others by ourselves, human to human, as well as we can muster without excuses nor sociopathy... We can do it.