2004-09-17 - 10:54 a.m.
you've seen the kind of posts i make on my linguistics message board, now you'll get to see one from my religion class.
This is from one of my classmates, he started to discussion. just glaze over it because there's nothing really funny to read:
I was wondering if any one has any issues or problems reading the book. I had found
myself trying very hard not to be judgmental but is very difficult to me when most of
what I read is offensive. I am trying to understand their mind set and their believes but
the more I read the more I want to rationalize their point of views the harder it gets to
continue with the reading. My biggest puzzle is why almighty God will sacrifice all the
rest of the people for a single man and in exchange just asks for some foreskin those
this concept makes any sense to anyone? I do not want to offend anyone but is GOD
that stupid or cruel to sacrifice all the rest of the people for a bunch of warlords. In
addition, if God choose the Jews as being their massagers and promise them a big chunk
of land way God took that land from them. If God wanted to protect that land against
invaders, he surely had all the power of the universe to do so right! To me all these
ridiculous concepts sound more like a Greek tragedy that was just written to apace and
entertain the masses.
Hope any one will replay to my dilemma.
and here's my reply:
About the foreskin. Imagine you're God. You've got all this power and prestige, what
more could you really want or need? You're already planning to give this guy Abraham
and all his descendents this big chunk of desert so why not get something out of it? Well,
you've already got everything, and what's he got? A bunch of sheep and the clothes on
his back? What kind of God needs that? He doesn't even have children to sacrifice! What
you need is his devotion. The best way I can think of to get a guy's devotion is to see if
he'll put a blade to his wang. I don't think many of us would put a knife to our dongs
much less any other appendage. You've got to be one special person to get me to go
under the knife like that.
Okay, sorry, that was pretty tactless. But I'll bet I've got your attention now, and really,
that's all I ever want from people. So, moving along.
The way I see this whole conflict thing with God and his dogma is that these people, or
not even these people, all people who use religion as a backdrop for their conflicts,
they're using it as justification. A lot of these people lead harsh lives (or percieve
themselves to have harsh lives at the very least) and throughout their lives, they're
taught certain messages. Things like non-Jews are worthless and women are no better
than a bag full of shit. The people teaching them this bullshit learned it from the
generation before them and it just keeps going back and back to it's origin which was
ultimately probably nothing more than a society based on bigotry and sexism (not that it
was called that or had such negative connotations because it was just the way things
were back then). So, these people who portray these messages today are only doing so
because it's all they know. As you saw in the video of the little boy asking the dad if the
guys holding the guns (Arab guys) were the good guys, he told his child that they were
terrorists. Now, this kid is going to grow up with the message that any Arab with a gun is
a terrorist.
The point I'm trying to get across is that I don't really see it as God's specific teachings
but rather a group conciousness that teaches the same messages over and over again to
generations who grow up knowing nothing else. Because of this, the resentment and
prejudice just continues to foster and harbor the same ill thoughts which sucessively
become stronger and deeper. In the end, everybody looses because we all end up hating
one another and killing each other.
But don't worry about it, from what I've seen driving through Kalihi and Palolo, Jesus is
coming soon so the Apocalypse must be nearing.
i'm such a wise ass.
�
�
