"Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them and they flew." 

           Guillaume Apollinaire

WE ARE PREPARED TO BELIEVE ANYTHING. WE ARE MOSTLY CONDITIONED TO BELIEVE ANYTHING. 

SHOULD WE ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION, WE ALWAYS END UP IN THE IMPASSE OF THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 

WE INVENT GOD. SOLVED. 

BUT THERE IS SO MUCH PAIN AND SO MANY BAD THINGS HAPPENING IN OUR WORLD THAT WE NEED TO INVENT EVIL. SOLVED. 

HOW COME GOD WHICH WE BELIEVE IS SO OMNIPOTENT CAN ALLOW EVIL TO EXIST? THE CHURCH WILL TELL US IT’S TO TEST OUR BELIEF THAT “HE” (THEM/HER/WHOOPO) WILL MAKE US LIVE TO “THE END OF ETERNITY” IF WE BELIEVE.

WE BELIEVE. WE COME TO THE EDGE. WE ARE PUSHED. WE FLY…

THROUGHOUT THE PAGES OF THIS SITE, MR LEONISKY EXPLAINS THE ART OF THIS DECEPTION. THE INVENTION OF GOD IS THE MOST DECEIVING HUMAN CREATION. FOR MANY PEOPLE IT WORKS AS AN IMPORTANT SOOTHING DEVICE — BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN PRIMED TO BELIEVE. RELIGIOUS “EDUCATION” IS THIS INDOCTRINATION THAT SHOULD PREVENT US FROM BEING NAUGHTY. LOOKING AT PEOPLE LIKE LINDSEY GRAHAM, IT DOES NOT WORK — BECAUSE AS WELL AS PREPARED TO BELIEVE, WE ARE ALSO GROOMED TO BE HYPOCRITES TO VARIOUS DEGREES.

Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Marx wrote this in the introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which he began in 1843. The introduction was published separately in 1844 in Marx's journal Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. 

Marx believed that religion was used by the ruling class to control the masses. He also believed that religion gave people a false sense of security and contributed to alienation. In his dream of a communist revolution, religion would be abolished. 

The quote is often used to criticise religious belief. “However, some say that Marx's metaphor should not be interpreted too literally, and that he was warning against religious mirages rather than opposing believers in general.” THIS LATTER STATEMENT BATHES IN  HYPOCRISY.

MARX WAS OPPOSED TO BELIEFS. FULL STOP. AND THIS IS WHERE WE SHOULD STAND. WE HAVE TO SOLVE OUR OWN PROBLEMS. 

OUR TOOLS? WAR, COOPERATION, INVENTION, DECEPTION, BUT OVERALL WE NEED UNDERSTANDING — WHICH IS EVOLVED FROM NATURAL/ANIMALISTIC SKILLS OF OBSERVATION, LEARNING IN SURVIVAL MANAGEMENT DEVELOPED INTO STYLISTIC RECOGNITION OF SITUATIONS — WITH THE CLEAR AND COMPLETE REJECTION OF BELIEFS.

IN THIS FRAMEWORK, WE SHOULD READ THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS THAT DO NOTHING BUT CONTINUE THE CHARADE OF BELIEVING/NON BELIEVING IN A SUPERIOR BEING TELLING US OR CHALLENGING US TO THE DUEL BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL… THESE TWO (annoying?) THINKERS KEEP THE DECEPTION ALIVE — A MORIBUND BUT STRUCTURED DECEPTION THAT SHOULD HAVE DIED WITH THE 18TH CENTURY ENLIGHTENMENT…

In a recent post Eric Hunter asked: “Why doesn’t God save the world?” (P&I, 10 February 2025). It’s an interesting question, usually framed under the rubric of “the problem of evil.” Hunter prefers to believe in science rather than to believe in God. So why did he post about God in the first place?

There is a conceptual mirage that confuses the debates about God and the problem of evil – a vastly abstract idea of an Old Man in Sky, all-powerful, all-knowing. It is reasonably asked: How could such a God permit so much evil in the world? Either God is complicit in evil, or he doesn’t exist.

However, this is an infantile conception of God. It belongs to a patriarchal tradition of thinking in which male figures are all powerful, distant father-authorities, stern judges, to be feared rather than loved. In the patriarchal tradition, loving is left to mothers and women. It’s not manly to love, at least in public.

It’s time to dismiss the patriarchal God mirage and to cease “limiting the deity by sex” (as a Scots-Presbyterian minister preached years ago, in a sermon on a Mothers’ Day). Rather than thinking abstractly of a God figure, we need to focus on the founders of the great religious traditions who offer intimations of, and insights into, a profoundly creative or transcendent force mysteriously at work within the universe. They enable us to anticipate how that creative force is working its way into the world through human ingenuity.

For example, in Judaism, think of Moses and the prophets. In Christianity, it is Jesus. In Islam it is the Prophet Muhammad. In Hinduism it is an exuberant panoply of Gods. In Confucianism, it is Confucius (Kongxi). In the animistic religious traditions, it is ancestor spirits and spirits invisibly enlivening the physical world (in traditional Indigenous Australians’ terms it includes the Rainbow Serpent). And then there are the mystics in most religious traditions (think of Hildegard of Bingen) whose experiences of transcendence can be educative, inspiring and suggestive of a world beyond the physical world. As Robert Bellah notes in his book Religion in Human Evolution:

Without the capacity for symbolic transcendence, for seeing the realm of daily life in terms of a realm beyond it […] one would be trapped in a world seen solely as […] dreadful immanence. For a world of daily life seen solely as a world of rational response to anxiety and need is a world of mechanical necessity, not radical autonomy. It is through pointing to other realities, through beyonding, that religion and poetry, and science too in its own way, break the dreadful fatalities of this world of appearances.

Hunter prefers what he identifies as a scientific approach to any theological account of God, thus elevating “science” to the level of an incontestable and exclusive version of the truth. However, this misunderstands that the physical sciences constitute a belief system that is every bit as metaphysically based as any religious belief system. The physical sciences are focused exclusively on interrogating the empirical world – that is, the world we experience through our physical senses. It bypasses (or some of its more fundamentalist advocates even deride) other actual or potential sources of knowledge. The philosophical term for this is positivism (see Leszek Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy: From Hume to the Vienna Circle).

Intelligent scientists acknowledge that positivism limits their research and theorising to what is observable and measurable. While positivism has been a very effective way of understanding the empirical world, at best it offers a modest explanation of the meaning of life (its ontology). Or it offers a grim view of life’s meaning – a view that states all life forms are purely a mixture of accidentally constructed physical attributes whose ultimate extinction is inevitable when the sun finally dies, or when the universe implodes, or when climate change wreaks its horrific vengeance on humankind. At this level, it can be seen to underpin a deeply cynical ontology that aligns with some of the bleakest views of what it means to be human in a complex and infinite universe. It is an ontology seemingly shared by men like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu among others.

Despite his belief in science, Hunter appears unsettled by the fact that if God were to exist, he (or they) should be condemned for allowing the problem of evil to exist at all. There are numerous theological debates about this that can’t be dealt with here. But it is a cheap shot and one that massively undervalues the notion of free will – the notion that humans are in charge of their own destiny and even though God has “spoken through the prophets” they continue to chomp on the apple that the tempting serpent proffered Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. (I’m playing with an allegory here; in case I’m mistaken for speaking literally.)

The fact is that the problem of evil is not a God problem at all. It is a human problem. Consider the resources today that are spent on preparations for war through, for example, the “military-industrial complex” in the United States (and its equivalent in other countries, including Australia). The combined budgets underpinning those preparations (and conduct) of war could easily and permanently eradicate poverty, famine, and pretty much all human suffering across the globe.

And there are other myriad woes affecting our world: the grotesque inequality that we see with a few multi-trillionaires owning more capital than 90% of the global population and using it for their own pleasures; the realities of famines, poverty, disease that afflict so many people in the “global south”, and increasingly within the rich countries too; the hideous use of torture, imprisonment and capital punishments in far too many jurisdictions around the globe. The list is endless. And the fact is that not one of these woes is beyond the capacity of humans to resolve, if only we could work together compassionately to make a peaceful and joyful world.

There is no doubt that the problem of God is a profoundly disturbing problem. Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins referring to when he writes of “dearest freshness deep down things”? What is the philosopher-theologian Paul Tillich saying when he speaks of the “ground of being” and the “depth of existence”? These are matters that deserve deep thought and creative responses. Blaming a non-existent abstract God for the problem of evil is simply a distraction. You don’t need to be religious to understand that life — all lives — are always sacred. But it helps.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-problem-of-god/

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The catastrophic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (the present “ceasefire” notwithstanding) has done nothing to relieve the centuries-old contradictions that exist between and within our three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

Mysteriously, God’s role in these ongoing horrors is seldom seriously discussed by our political leaders, the media or even religious leaders. In this article I want simply to reflect on my layman’s conclusions regarding God’s intentions, arrived at after the nearly 90 years of personal and wide-ranging professional experiences I’ve been privileged to be a part of. Nevertheless, I believe my views rest in the hearts and minds of many others, be they people of faith or not.

I do not regard myself as either atheist or agnostic. I have come to rely on the extensive and growing body of science that strongly points to the absence of a divine creator even though, as yet, science doesn’t have all the answers. But, as noted God-doubter, Richard Dawkins, said, rather archly, “If there is a God, science has a lot to answer for”.

I envy the devout their surety that eternal life awaits us (personally, l’d be delighted if it did, providing I qualified). Those who live their belief in compassion, tolerance and love for others, including the distressed (remember the Good Samaritan), have my total respect. It’s those who consider their faith entitles them to dictate the lives of others and, worse, arrogantly enforce their will by violence, to whom I strongly object. Most despicable are those who exercise power by using religion as sanctimonious justification for their murderous actions. I have a strong suspicion that it is the latter (on both sides) that has led to most of the life-destroying conflicts between Israel and Palestinians.

All this raises the question of what God thinks – if he exists, that is. If he does exist, where was he during all the murderous events carried out over centuries past? And why is he indiscriminate over who is killed, maimed or dispossessed? Men, women, children, the devout and the unbelievers – all fall victim to God’s apparent indifference. Prayers for lasting peace seem to go unheard, with the usual human reaction being a helpless, “It must be God’s will”. Now we hear Donald Trump claiming it was God’s will that he was saved from the assassin’s bullet. That is definitely worth thinking about.

In my early childhood, attending a small weatherboard Methodist church in rural Queensland, our Sunday school lessons often centred on God’s all-seeing and all-knowing power. “God knows every blade of grass”, was the lesson delivered to us kiddies and re-iterated during the pastor’s sermon to our parents. Furthermore, it was a message that was to be taken literally, along with “God loves us all”.

I had no idea then that there were variations of Christian belief with different qualifications attached to each “brand”. As I grew up, it was drummed into us that our denomination was the only genuine one while all others were doomed to suffer eternal damnation for their “sins”. At the same time, Catholics were taught that theirs is “the one true faith” – as they still are.

I’m sure all Protestants remember the schoolyard doggerel about “Catholic dogs”, although I eventually found out that Catholics are equally familiar with the same ditty, only it’s about “Protestant dogs”.

And that’s where the seemingly harmless becomes discrimination through indoctrination: in the schoolyard (but even earlier in the home) and spreads outward to become an intergenerational imperative. And not only between Catholics and Protestants, but across all faiths. Thus, at best, suspicion and, too often, deadly violence prevails between Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Why then don’t we start talking seriously about the many contradictions inherent in the teachings of all faiths: that God loves us all, is all-powerful and all-knowing, yet he allows catastrophic acts to be committed against each other by the supposedly advanced creatures he created? Further, why does he allow them to be committed in his name? And even more puzzling; why did God plan it this way which, as the divine Creator, he must surely have done?

Over the centuries, excuses for God’s behaviour have been endless, the most banal being “God moves in mysterious ways”. There are countless words purporting to be straight from God and covering all sorts of eventualities. However, the inconsistences of different authors writing different versions enable the leaders of the many different sects to set their own interpretations that maintain their power and their following. Multiple translations have added more variations, all open to interpretation to suit different rationales at different times. Surely God has the power and the desire to ensure his “word” is recorded and presented exactly as he intended it?

Of course, there’s also the fly in God’s ointment; religion’s arch-villain, the devil. He’s supposedly the instigator of all evil who, at will, takes over the minds of the weak. The obvious question then is: who is the more powerful, God or Satan? Surely God created Satan along with everyone and everything else and, presumably, deliberately endowed him with all the evil for which he’s blamed. If “God has a plan for everyone” as I was taught at my Methodist Sunday School, mustn’t it include Satan? Yet, we keep rationalising abhorrent behaviour by claiming that God gave us (and Satan presumably) free will. However, wouldn’t God the Creator have pre-knowledge of the direction we (and Satan) would all take – or even have planned it?

To bring us back to the present, the Hebrew texts are confusing over “God’s promise” to Israel of the land they occupy. The modern Israeli interpretation is that the “gift” was permanent – but, historically, there is some debate over the conditions that were attached in some “instructions”. What is really disturbing is that secular Western governments decided after WWII to accept the unprovable “word of God” as a rationale (among other, more pragmatic political issues) to enable an official state of Israel. Then, despite affirming Palestinians’ right to also live in the region where they too had settled for several thousand years, we failed to properly legitimise them along equal lines with Israel. Again, part of “God’s universal plan”? Yet, that’s from whence the trouble has festered and why it continues to this day.

There is a multitude of other questions to be asked about faith, but the big question for today is why hasn’t the all-powerful God of Judaism, Islam and Christianity finally proved his loving existence by stopping all violence across the globe and saving untold lives and property? Or has he a different plan in mind for us all – if he exists? And if he doesn’t exist, what then?

https://johnmenadue.com/why-doesnt-god-save-the-day/

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE SINS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

SEE ALSO, SAY: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/32928

AND MANY MANY OTHER POSTS ON THIS SITE....