Friday 29th of March 2024

godallah has gone godot...

rococcorococco

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 God does not exist despite our grand, impressive and sometimes gross monuments dedicated to the idea. In History lessons for critiques on Christianity, Paul Collins, a former priest and still a religious man, tells us about how our civilisation grew from Christianity, and recently shifted the emphasis of history studies to focus on indigenous culture in school curriculum.

 

He supports that, but he believes adults need some remedial Western history to grasp the nettle in the rose garden of Eden. Eventually Collins mentions the relationship between Islam and Christianity, going back to the moors in Spain.

 

But it was certainly not the tolerant paradise, especially for Christians, that some imagine.  Even under the caliphs mentioned, it was a highly stratified society with a strict demarcation of roles, including wearing identifying badges for Christian and Jews, especially under the Caliph al-Mansūr (d.1002), a dictator who carried on constant jihad against the Christian north of Spain. As well as Christians, even more, liberal Muslims of the Mu’tazilah school were martyred in Islamic Al-Andalus.

And Western Christianity was not lost in barbarism as Turnbull suggests. The Irish monks in the seventh century preserved Latin and Greek learning – they “saved civilization” as Thomas Cahill says – and from the Carolingian renaissance onwards the Greco-Roman classics were often taught in continental monasteries and the trivium of grammar, dialectic (logic) and rhetoric was basic to monastic education. Scholars like Alcuin of York, Charlemagne’s education “minister”, Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) were polymaths, thoroughly schooled in the Greco-Roman classics and in Gerbert’s case in mathematics, science, astronomy and music. He was “ecumenical” enough to go to Spain to learn from the Muslims.

In conclusion: I’m flummoxed as to why, in order to encourage and enhance First Nations and Muslim history, you have to degenerate your own. Surely, we can do both?

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Paul Collins is an historian, broadcaster and writer. A Catholic priest for thirty-three years, he resigned from the active ministry in 2001 following a dispute with the Vatican over his book Papal Power (1997). He is the author of fifteen books. The most recent is Absolute Power. How the pope became the most influential man in the world (Public Affairs, 2018). A former head of the religion and ethics department in the ABC, he is well known as a commentator on Catholicism and the papacy and also has a strong interest in ethics, environmental and population issues.

 

 

https://johnmenadue.com/history-lessons-for-critiques-on-christianity/

 

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Yes. We can do both parallel celebrated histories as long as they are taught as “what happened” but not as what should happen next. Our “morality” only needs a secular civic code of conduct, in which understanding the processes of life and its evolution into relative choices, for the best of us, to prepare the future.

 

Whether Easter was stolen from pagan rights or not — and what Tory Shepherd says about it — is irrelevant to the price of fish. Zeus - god - allah - vishnu - yahweh - etc do(es) not exist. The superior being in charge of our damnation is a figment of our imagination seeking simplistic answers — a figment that has been well crafted and augmented to make sure we believe to belong in a group. To some extend so far, scientifically, we could postulate that we are the most intelligent beings in the universe that we know of, while we could imagine more cluey aliens or that whales are better philosophers than we are. We haven’t seen any of these aliens so far and some of us still kill whales. Historically, we have been dumbed by beliefs, as most religions martyred (murdered) those who did not believe in the same crap. The Christian religion gave up on the idea of corporal punishments such as those during the Inquisition, when it lost traction to more secular governing politics, (though it still preaches eternal damnation despite god loving us), while in most Muslim countries, where politics and religions are strongly enmeshed, people still get officially murdered for expressing opinions contrary to the religious dictum. 

 

In regard to Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II), some 400 years later, Isabella and Ferdinand completed the Reconquista, ordering the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain — and supported, by financing, Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage that led to the discovery of the New World by Europeans, and for the establishment of Spain as a major power in Europe… Isabella was granted, together with her husband, the title "the Catholic Monarch" by Pope Alexander VI, and was recognised in 1974 as a Servant of God by the Catholic Church. I know some Jews who are still reeling about their ancestors having been thrown out of Spain, 530 years ago. But this was “history”. Not the future hopefully, though the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is still part of this horror.

 

 

… Turnbull quotes Education Minister Tudge telling us that teaching indigenous history should not lead to “dishonouring our Western heritage,” which sounds reasonable to me. But not to Turnbull, who proceeds to refer to the Christian heritage as “more exciting than a slasher movie,” regurgitating examples of Christian violence, while ignoring the Christian contributions to music, art, literature, spirituality, civilization and building-up society.

 

 

Er… Yes… but Christianity brilliantly contributed to spirituality which is a euphemism for "managed ignorance". All societies have contributed to their own brand of art, literature, civilisation building and such controlled ignorance. What we artfully love is our habits of visuality and tonalities (and cooking rich sugary cakes) — and then most art has become mundane through economic values or navel gazing. Building cathedrals and magnificent churches are not so much a civilisation improvement but a waste of effort on extraordinary frivolities — massive frivolities designed to impress the idea of god’s gold upon the poor pleb (who have a hard time feeding themselves with PROPER knowledge) . The idea of god, with flotsam and jetsam historical movements, ended up in the French revolution and the separation of state and church by the 1900. The Enlightenment also developed as a secular counterpoint to the religious beliefs of any kind, be it Christian, Muslim or Judaic from the 18th century… Relative scientific investigation have also run contrary to the absolute dogmas. Religion and sciences do not mix, except in the mind of deluded idiots, even the best of ignorant polymaths.

 

Imagine for a second (try a minute or two), dear Mr Collins, that god does not exist… Try this amazing concept and realign your life in accordance to the possibility that Easter, the resurrection  Christmas, and all the festivities of other religions, including Eid, were simply simplistic unificating traditions with no basis on reality of the evolution of who we are — thinking (sapiens) animals on a speck of dust we call the earth in a humongous universe that nether a god nor a devil could ever imagined so complex. You are welcome to erase your beliefs and reset. Meanwhile, most religions have contributed to violence, deceit and conquests — and still do. 

 

The main contributing factor of religions is to congeal a fake purpose (most purposes are relative) in a group of people with a singular way to define their spacial existence, under a peculiar delusion. In various societies with different beliefs within,  the system become complicated with the idea of "religious freedom”, which is okay per se, but becomes a nightmare when the idea of zeus - god - allah - vishnu - yahweh - etc. enters the political system and its armies of Hillsonger Primal Ministers. 

 

We also need to refocus our exploring ideas beyond economic values that have become the main purpose of governments… For the last few decades, the concepts of democracy and freedoms have permeated the greater societies, bringing in their own versions of corrupt "good versus evil” (no such things), in a system in which we manage the pecuniary fortunes. This is gross despite trying our best. Humanity under the zeus - god - allah - vishnu - yahweh - etc concept was ignorant of itself. Now, under economic values, in which we try not to vilify, not to be sexist nor racist — racism and sexism having been the hallmarks of most religious dictums — we fumble, not because of our intent but because we have trouble managing our obvious differences with equity rather than human equal rights, and we are under the influence of greed. 

 

Our individual and societal differences are quite noticeable and vary from being highly intelligent to the least aware — and our economic value relates to our ability to contribute as a scientist or a basket weaver — though both are not mutually exclusive. Populism, wokism and feminism have helped discover our true possibilities, but we need to be careful as not to become socially distant. We need to invent a social gel that does not destroy the planet, that respect cultural values (those that do not kill people) and that helps us understand the dynamics of our evolution. I believe we are nearly there, despite the leading morons pushing for more conflicts rather than cooperation and agreements. And the leading morons are doing so, not from a humanist point of view, but from religious ideals in which ignorance of who we really are, is unfortunately paramount.

plastered beauty...

Picture at top: the abbey church of Osterhoven, built by Johann Michael Fischer between 1726 and 1740. It was decorated by the Asam Brothers —  (Cosmas Damian Asam and Egid Quirin Asam) sculptors, workers in stucco, painters, and architects, who worked mostly together in southern Germany. They are among the most important representatives of the German late Baroque.

 

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