““The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”
Bulgaria is a Balcanic country. Having evolved more or less together, the Balcanic countries share many cultural traits. Nevertheless, individual countries do have their own characteristics. Bulgaria does have a particular one. The name, Bulgaria, comes from a Turkic tribe. Who had conquered the area in the VII-th century and established the first Bulgarian Empire. Yet the Bulgarian people is mainly Slavic. Speaks a Slavic language and has remained Christian Orthodox despite having been ruled directly by the Islamic Ottoman Empire from 1396 to 1878. Hence it is safe to consider that the Bulgarians do know a thing or two about keeping their shit together, don’t you think?
On the other hand, who, in their right mind, would want to find themselves on the other side of the bridge? Alone with the devil?!?
Maybe ‘devil’ has different meanings for different people…
We, in our cozy world, where everything is just about fine, consider the devil to be the absolute evil. We are taught to believe that.
Yet things were not so clearly cut in the good old days.
The Bulgarian experience suggests that when the shit hits the fan, maybe it is wiser to put aside some of the things which made you consider your neighbour was ‘untouchable’ and join forces with them. Until the real danger is gone…
An even older experience, the one shared in the Bible, suggests that the Devil had a defining contribution in us becoming ‘like one of them (Gods)’. After all, it was ‘he’ who had taught Eve to eat the fruit which empowered her to “know good and evil”. It was ‘he’ who prodded Eve, who prodded Adam, to become conscious human beings…
Let me continue this post by sharing a story. Not a funny one but which fits in this context.
I’m not sure about 3. though. Keeping your mouth shut is not always the best option. Not in the longer run… Use your better judgement instead of letting others tell you what to do.
Having just told you to use your own better judgement instead of letting others tell you what to do, I now suggest that you click on the following link. And read Niemoller’s life story: https://hmd.org.uk/resource/pastor-martin-niemoller-hmd-2021/
‘We killed God and we now have to face the consequences’. That’s what Nietzsche told us. And then died. Like everybody else. Is this consistent with the notion of an all-powerfull and omni-scient God? As suggested by the second image?
The only God we know is the one we talk about. Among ourselves. During the ‘Middle Ages’ some of our ancestors killed each-other over their particular interpretations of the Bible. But they all agreed about one thing. For them, there was only one God. And they killed a lot of unbelievers attempting to convince them. At some point, and Nietzsche witnessed that, people had stopped believing there was only one God. God was no longer seen as an unifying principle and had become a mere representation.
I don’t know whether there is a god. A ‘real’ one. But is has become obvious that the one we talk about has stopped playing its role. It no longer unites us. We’re no longer children of the same father.
We have splintered ourselves into clans. Each wielding their own representation of God. Each wielding their own ‘hand made’ idol.
Would you poke fun at a volcano? No? Because it doesn’t make any sense? But would you poke fun at people who, 800 years ago, prayed to a ‘volcanic god’ asking for ‘mercy’? Why? Only because (we currently know that) ‘it doesn’t work like that’?!?
OK, forget about the volcano. Would you make fun of Shoah? Also known as the Holocaust. No, because it’s illegal? Otherwise you would have mocked a tragedy?!?
It’s not illegal to fall down. And impossible to ‘ignore’ gravity. Just as impossible as it is to ignore a volcano! We laugh our eyes out when clowns pretend to fall. Nobody laughs at a volcano. Hence it is us who choose what is funny and what isn’t. Just as it is still us who choose whether to obey the law or not. We’re talking about the human laws here, not about the natural ones…
Which brings us closer to the gist of this post.
For the believers, God is everything. Both the entire world and their reference point. Without their God, the world loses its meaning. Without their God, the believers lose their bearings. Making fun of God, of any god, is no different from making fun of a volcano.
‘You’re making absolutely no sense. No sense whatsoever. A volcano is a real thing. Sometimes too real, even. While God, all gods, … Nonsense. Absolute nonsense!’
Do you have faith in vaccines? Why? Because they work? Because they save a lot of lives? Despite vaccines being rather expensive and despite the fact that some guys have become obscenely rich as a consequence of people needing vaccines, and other medicines, in order to survive, right? Have you ever made fun of vaccines? Of obscenely rich people, no matter how they got their money?
Do you understand how religion works? How religion actually works… Psychologically, sociologically, etc. No more than you understand vaccines? Or you just consider religion to be a hoax while vaccines are a scientific fact? Why? Because you have been told so by reputable people? By people in whom you have absolute trust?
Let’s backpedal for a while. You’re OK with vaccines and hate the fact that some people get way too much money for selling those vaccines. You’re OK with the idea of making fun of rich people but not of vaccines. Because vaccines save lives while obscenely rich people are… well… obscene!
Let’s get back to religion. Making fun of vaccines doesn’t make sense. To you. To us, actually. Because they’re not funny. Because they are a scientific fact. And because they save lives. Making fun of God also doesn’t make sense. For the believers. For those who truly believe in God.
For those who have a different understanding of the world than we do.
What would you think about people who dismiss vaccines? The scientific concept of vaccination, not a specific vaccine. You consider them…? From your point of view, their reference point is way out of this world? That they have lost their bearings? That they actually deny the reality? Your/our reality?
That’s exactly what also happens when people make fun of God. Of any god. Those who believe in God – in the particular god which is the target of the joke but also in all other gods – feel queasy. ‘Sea-sick’. Their world and their bearings are being put into jeopardy. Which puts them into a very difficult position. There are only two ways out of their conundrum. To consider the jester as being clueless. As having no idea. Or to consider the jester as an ‘agent provocateur’. To consider the whole thing as being an insult.
You have a concern and you want to express it? As the law allows you to do? How about doing it in a considerate manner? In an efficient manner! In such a way as to get through… Insulting people, or being considered clueless, doesn’t help if you want to be heard by the other side. If you want the other side to listen, carefully, to what you need to say.
Back in time, some people had written a book. And started living by it. Things went on rather good so more and more people joined the new tradition.
After a while, after things had become so good that some of the people had enough spare time to think, some of these thinkers had noticed that some of the facts contradicted what was written in the book. Hence some of the people had reached the conclusion that the book was not entirely right.
That even if following ‘the book’ had brought them that far, they no longer had to follow it to the t. And they had learned to be suspicious of every written word… of all previously held convictions… They called this new habit ‘science’.
Things went on. From good to even better. Now many more people had enough time to spare. To think, to play… to read…
Trying to fulfill this new ‘need’, some enterprising people have transformed news gathering and publishing into a show. Until then, news had to be exact. Hence they were published only after a close scrutiny. After the ‘transformation’, speed and entertaining value took precedence over trustworthiness.
Furthermore, people less than passionate about knowledge had started to invade the scientific realm.
A study linking autism and vaccines had been published in a prestigious scientific magazine. And then retracted.
With two consequences. Some parents decided to ‘risk it’ and a lot of people were left with the impression that science had become unreliable. That science was no longer above fraud.
Fast forward to the present day. When an editor had put together a title pretending that a “herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent to almost 2m cars, researchers say”.
Really?!?
Let me look closer. “2m” stands for 2 million, right? And since a conventional car spews a little over a ton of CO2 each year, that title meant that each of those 170 bison was supposed to bury 11765 tons of CO2 each year. Give or take… But there’s a second problem. ‘Climate warriors’ are ‘mad’ about cows. We are constantly bombarded with news stating ‘the cows are belching so much methane that the polar ice caps are going to melt during our lifetime’. What about bison? Which are, for all practical purposes, wild cows… Don’t they also belch methane? Try reading the article and see if you understand the difference between cows and bison…
Did your homework? No?
OK, here’s my version. Bison grazing in the wild are a close system. The vegetation they feed on ‘sequester’ CO2 from the atmosphere and transform it into cellulose, using energy from the Sun. Through grazing, the bison encourage the vegetation to transform more CO2 into cellulose versus the situation where the bison were not doing their thing. Some of the extra cellulose gets eaten by the bison and ends up being transformed into the best natural fertilizer known to nature. Which further encourages the vegetation to sequester even more CO2 from the atmosphere. A cow living on a pasture – and allowed to roam as freely as a bison herd – does more or less the same thing. But a cow living in a stable is an ‘open system’. It is fed a lot of corn and soy. Transported from afar and which totally changes the chemistry going on inside the cow. Corn and soy accelerate the rate of growth – the reason for feeding them to the cows – but result in the cows producing a lot more methane than when naturally feeding themselves on grass. Further more, the manure thus produced is never returned where the corn and soy had been produced.
The consequences? While in a close system the result of photosynthesis – sequestered carbon – slowly accumulates in the soil, in an open system the metabolic results of the plants and animals involved are spread around the globe. Add to that the huge amount of (fossil) energy implied in growing the plants and transporting the goods around the planet and you’ll start to understand the difference between bison/cows grazing on a pasture and cows being fed in a barn corn and soy imported from Brazil.
Why didn’t you read this in the article above? Where did the aberration regarding each bison being able to sequester almost 12 000 tons of CO2 came from? Why people don’t care anymore about science?
I’m sorry, you’ll have to figure these out by yourself.
Our hunting/gathering ancestors had been very successful. So successful that hunting/gathering has survived to this day. Not only that most hunter/gatherers continue this lifestyle even when offered an alternative but a few ‘civilized’ persons have also decided to embrace this manner of ‘making ends meet’. According to many sociologists, it was during this stage of development that humankind had ‘invented’ spirits and totems in their quest to make sense of the world.
Agriculture – the ability to grow/raise a far more predictable amount of food than that available to the hunter/gatherers – had been the first game-changer. Specialization is natural. Individuals are different hence each of them is better at doing diverse things. And this was valid from the very beginning. Some of the hunter/gatherers were better at knapping others at curing hides. But because food had to be gathered constantly, by essentially every member of the clan, the specialists didn’t have many opportunities to advance their craft. Agriculture had changed all of that.
Work specialization had given birth to social division. Tools had been transformed into weapons and used to defend stashed crops. This process had engendered ‘landlords’ and had transformed some of the peasants into soldiers. Temporarily at first and professionally later. Meanwhile, the specialists could stop gathering/growing food and offer the results of their toil in exchange for whatever they needed. Trade had appeared naturally and the notion of property had to be invented in order for things to remain orderly. A new narrative was needed to provide meaning and social cohesion. Productivity had shot up and societies had started to produce more than they needed for day to day life ‘Left over’ resources had started to be accumulated and then used to ‘make things’.
Among other things, accumulated ‘left over’ resources had allowed local ‘rulers’ to hire more soldiers and to enlarge their fiefdom. To put more and more (social) distance between them and the ‘common people’. And to ‘hire’ ‘thinkers’ whose job was to make sense of what was going on. Hence organized religion and, simultaneously, ‘science’.
At some point, technology – the practical side of science – had become sophisticated enough to have a huge impact on trade. When people have enough ‘spare time’ in which to think about ‘meaning’ they also have enough time to look for and design easier methods for doing things. For achieving practical goals. To fabricate things, to transport them, to preserve food… That was how a new profession had been invented. The trader!
Who needed a specialized tool! Money.
Trading, more and more intense and reaching farther and farther away, had furthermore increased social productivity. Having more diverse resources at their disposal meant that people had to learn more crafts. The longer and longer distances which had to be covered induced a new technological leap in this realm. More and more things which had to be learned, understood and made sense of enticed the birth of ‘real’ science
Science, what we call ‘science’, has again played havoc with the established order of the world. Not only that the innumerable new technological breakthroughs have vastly increased productivity, modern science has also proposed new meaning. A new narrative for making sense of the world. An impersonal one. Devoid of any almighty and fully responsible agent. Abruptly, people were left without any ‘origin’ on which to peg their understanding.
‘Man as a measure for all things’ had acquired a totally new meaning. For those who could ‘afford’ it.
If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John, 8:32
Bruno, GiordanoBruno, was speaking the truth. Something we consider to be true… Yet he ended his career as a definitely unfree person! At the hands of people who considered themselves to be disciples of Christ…
Something doesn’t add up! Either at least some of the truth mentioned here isn’t actually true… or we’re dealing with altogether different truths!
The way I see it, Giordano Bruno had died because he was defending an absolute truth while his killers had never realized that the truth pronounced by Christ was relative.
Let me elaborate.
An absolute truth – there are many – is a piece of truth of the kind which will eventually trips over you.
‘Reckless driving will kill you’. ‘High water will knock down the levy’. ‘A red hot iron will brand a cow’.
Relative truth, which has many faces but is essentially one, depends on us. According to Christ, those who follow his word – who remain his disciples – will know the truth. And will become free.
According to Christ, it is not possible for an individual to know the truth – nor become free – in an individual manner. To accomplish the feat, WE have to follow his word.
We have to ‘love’ each-other. To respect each-other! To turn the other cheek…
For us to be able to get near the truth – near the many absolute truths that are there – we need to share whatever knowledge we have. Keeping anything hidden from our brethren – not turning the other cheek for ‘inspection’ – means disrespect. Means distrust. Lack of love. Inability to be in communion with the rest. Incapacity – or unwillingness – to partake in the same piece of reality. To partake in the same piece of absolute truth.
This is why Christ, who was right, has been killed. By those who didn’t want to share freedom. Who wanted to keep freedom for their own use. Who wanted to restrict the freedom of others. This is why Bruno, who was right, has been killed. By people who behaved exactly – and for the same reasons – like those who have killed Christ. Despite declaring themselves to be the disciples of Christ…
Truth and freedom are human concepts. Words. Both need us, human action, to become reality. Both need us, working in communion, to become practice!
Individual absolute truths are relative to us. Are relative to us noticing, formulating, sharing and validating each of them. ‘Relative truth’, the ‘only one’, is absolute. In the sense that the only absolute – and definitive – truth is the fact that we can learn, and become free, only in concert. Respectfully helping each-other.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. Robert A. Heinlein, Postscript to Revolt in 2100.
Religion is the metaphusical ‘thing’ inside which people who hold a set of tenets to be true are able to build a community.
Religion is sociological phenomenon. Something belonging to the realm studied by those who try to understand how large number of people work together.
Religions – on the other hand – are ‘sets of tenets’ put in practice by various groups of people. Sets of tenets which survive for as long as they continue to help the people who uphold them in their quest to survive as a group. As a community.
Religion cannot be ‘changed’. Religion can be studied. May be better understood. Like physics. You can’t ‘change’ physics! With what? With chemistry? Things don’t work like this. The only thing you may do about physics is to ‘deepen’ your knowledge about it.
Religions can, and sometimes have to, be changed. By the very people who ‘use’ them to survive.
Since nobody can survive on their own, each and everyone of us needs to belong. To a community. To a religion, actually!
And what do people do when they realize survival is impossible in certain conditions? Die or do something about it, right?
Now, which community can survive based on hate? It doesn’t matter whether you are asked to hate somebody inside or outside your community. Whether you hate individually or collectively. Hating – or despising – somebody blinds you and exhausts you. Puts a huge burden on your back. Focuses your attention so tight that you are no longer able to notice the real dangers. Those which actually make you less likely to survive.
And this is valid both for you as an individual and for you as a hating community.
Well, last time I checked, there were more than a dozen onions in my cellar. And since my cellar is orbiting the Sun… along with the rest of the Earth…
As for who says what about who made what…
This morning I had to shovel some snow. I live near a kindergarten so the sidewalks should be clean. Along with the snow, I also had to shovel some dog turds.
Snow coming down from the sky and dogs dropping turds are natural occurrences. People shoveling snow so that other people may walk on the sidewalks is de rigueur. Also de rigueur is to pick up the turds dropped by the pet you take out at least twice a day.
People have a clear idea about who is responsible for the dog turds on the side-walk. Even if they were dropped by dogs, the responsibility lies with the owners. It’s the owners who have raised the dogs, who take them out to poo and who ‘forget’ to pick up the droppings.
In the last couple of centuries, people – well, some of them – have also developed a rather clear understanding regarding the snow. Regarding the water coming down from the sky. About evaporation, clouds, condensation… etc. God is no longer held responsible for these matters.
Which brings us to the real subject.
There is a guy, Richard Dawkins, who tries to demonstrate there is no God.
And here we go again… I have at least a large china teapot. And since my house, along with the rest of the planet, does follow an orbit in the solar system…
More about who made what, if you care about the subject, can be found here:
I have to start by confessing that until yesterday evening I’ve never seriously considered this possibility. Why would anyone bother?
Then somebody – thank you, Jeffrey Mercer – introduced a whole new twist into this conundrum. ‘What if this whole (computer) simulation thing is nothing but yet another attempt to make sense of the Universe? To attribute sense to the Universe? Which whole thing, if anything, is the epitome of anthropomorphism…’ I took the liberty to rephrase Jeffrey Mercer’s words. To make them more ‘suitable’. To fit better my preexisting answer. Yet another ‘anthropomorphic’ thing….
My immediate answer was ‘our world is indeed a simulation. Or maybe not as much a simulation as an artifact.’
Before delving into the matter, I’m going to formulate two questions. Hence ‘the furcula’. If we live in a simulation, what kind of world does the simulator live in? Why would anyone bother? To study us responding to its simulating our senses/minds? Why doesn’t it study itself? Its own self/persona?
Coming back to my initial answer, I have to point out that the key word here is ‘our’. We’re speaking here about ‘our world’. The world we live in. Our reality!
We, the ones trying to make sense of this world/reality, have a few characteristics. We’re made of matter and we have, each of us, a conscience. Having a material nature introduces certain limitations and being conscious widens those limitations. Us being conscious widens those limitations, by introducing a ‘new dimension’, but this doesn’t mean those limitations disappear. A bucket is ‘wider’ than the circle at its base – the bucket has height, hence volume, while the circle is ‘flat’ – but the bucket itself continues to have limits.
Let’s examine the consequences of us being conscious agents of a material nature. Limited conscious agents of a material nature…
Us being conscious means us being aware of our material nature. Of our limits. Having a material nature means the most powerful instinct we have is our ‘need to survive’. Both as a biological organism – a.k.a. animal – and as a conscious agent.
Our consciences – I’m speaking about the individual ones here – are very crafty ‘devils’. They can accept our individual material fate – death – but have a problem accepting their own dependency on the ‘bodies/brains’ they need to inhabit. Hence ‘the soul’.
Which ‘soul’ has been invented – by our conscious selves – as the first step towards building a sense for this world. For the reality we inhabit. Which soul is the building block for all religion. For all religion known/built to/by man.
Are you still here? I have to make a pause here. And to mention the fact that I’ve already cut a few corners… A lot of corners… What I say is probably rather hard to follow. Mostly because I don’t have time/space to explain myself. Not now but certainly in due time.
And yes, what we call ‘religion’ is of our own doing. The Bible itself has been written by us, regardless of the origin of the ideas mentioned there. It doesn’t matter whether we have been the interface between (a) God and ‘the world’, we are the ones who have written the Bible. And all other sacred texts. We have written them, we have believed in them and we have shaped the reality we live in.
We have done all that according to how we have interpreted the teachings we have inherited from our forefathers. And we continue to. Even those of us who consider themselves to be ‘free of religion’. We might not believe but we continue to act as if. Believers and nonbelievers alike hold the same things as being valid. Don’t kill, don’t steal, respect the values which keep society together…
What about where we started from? What about the ‘original’ simulation?
One moment please, I haven’t yet finished with ‘God’. If (a) God made us who/what we are, then who made God?
If someone took the trouble to build the simulation we consider to be ‘home’, what about the ‘real’ world? What about the reality harboring the simulating agent?
There’s no need for an outside agent? The world we live in, our world, is the world we have built for ourselves? Using the things which were at our disposal and the information we have gleaned about how things work? Maybe not always fully aware of what we were doing?
You got it! That’s exactly what I was trying to say!
They call it Cuetlaxochitl. They used to call it that way for a very long time. And it was they who had associated it with the Winter solstice. With the Winter solstice, not the ‘Aztec’ solstice…
At some point, we – or rather after the Christians got in contact them, the mistletoe first and poinsettia later – have associated both with our manner of celebrating the Winter solstice.
In fact, we have appropriated both the celebration itself and the plants associated with it!
I’m not going to discuss whether this was a good or a bad thing. It had just happened. And we have to live with the consequences of all those things having had happened in the past.
All I’m going to discuss in this post is their association with Christmas. With what the Christians consider to be ‘Christmas’ and celebrate it as such.
But is there anything to be discussed about the matter?!?
They have associated each of these plants to their celebrations. We have associated both to one of ours. What is to be discussed here?!?
Do we feel bad for what we – our ancestors, actually – have done to them? And want to atone for what had happened? And for the consequences of what had happened? Which consequences continue to unfold to this day…
We want to make amends – and to get rid of our guilt – by giving them back their plants?!? Really?
How will any of this benefit them?!? ‘Cause this is about them, not us… right?
How about we stop buying the drugs coming from there? Making it possible for them to shake off the drug lords which make their lives miserable?
How about we stop patronizing them? How about we start respecting them for being our ‘brethren’? As in equally-fledged human beings? Instead of we acting as if they were immature children. Liable to feel hurt that we have borrowed their ‘toys’…. For the sole reason that we think that giving them back their ‘sacred’ plants will cleanse our consciences….
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