New Ways of Seeing

Back in the day I had every explanation there was to show how god did it. I could mend and coerce any thought into a bible verse and show the connection to gods love. I’m quite puxxled and alarmed by the process now, but what religioso today is interested in research when it counters his presupposed, indoctrinated upbringing—opening that mind to legitimate answers doesn’t really go hand in hand. The answers come through unbelief, not the other way around.

Abraham had it easy. He was tested to see if he would kill his only son in a time of brutality. A violent sociality that was already laden with superstition. He heard voices, and followed the (accepted by the day) promptings, and at the last second had woken from his trancelike state and withheld his hand. So what? In a time where little was understood about disease or science, the gods accounted for everything from illness, rain, floods, lightening, and drought and movements in the earth. Gods were interwoven into the psyche and dreams of everyone for every thing. His perceived command to kill his son was difficult, but acceptable to him as a means to appease a god. We know enough now to get help, or offer it when things like this manifest.

I would say emphatically, no! Get someone else to do your evil, but mental illness has no limits when left untreated. Can one truly be tested, not knowing it’s just a test? Of course. That’s what makes Abraham all the more worrisome. The father of many nations, revered by all abrahamic faiths, was willing to kill his son by a hallucinatorial perceived command. How is this heroic?

Ah…it’s a type and shadow of the Christ. A metaphor of the sacrifice to come— shinbexamoke alutarristaskas—which is tongues for spectral evidence, spiked with ergot poisoning, famine, draught, superstition and temporal lobe seizures. Noitanicullah is tongues for hallucination spelled backwards, but no matter how you spell slice it (foreskin and all) today Abraham would’ve been committed, not celebrated.

“To continuously evaluate whether a being is good requires moral judgment, which requires moral autonomy
8. Therefore it is not possible to continuously evaluate if a being is good while also worshipping it
9. Therefore, worshipping necessarily requires abandoning one’s moral responsibility, which is immoral
10. Therefore, no being is worthy of worship”—James Rachel “God and Moral Autonomy”—Quote mining officially through the offices of TheCommonAtheist™️ and its subscribers, with special thanks to JZ (2018)

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

53 thoughts on “New Ways of Seeing”

  1. Last night, I watched an old video of a call in show. The caller was arguing with the hosts (atheists) about the burden of proof. While the back and forth was funny, it was obvious that the caller was incapable of listening to or comprehending what the hosts were saying. I got a lot from the discussion, I am not sure about the hosts, but the caller got nothing. Your first paragraph reminds me of him.

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    1. It is an interesting perplexity when those that need to increase awareness are the most resistant to it. They may even agree with the studies in bias and neural deficiencies of “belief”, but it only applies to the others. My faith is real! I know. I was there.

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      1. On top of that, I had Taboo read through my comments the other day because the caller couldn’t understand my point. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t batty. It just didn’t fit his afflicted reasoning. He had worked it out for years so he could believe it, and that the only way it would make sense.

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          1. And just be aware of our nature to trust, believe, virtually anything we hear. Should be grade school curriculum. Everyone acts like it affects everyone but them. Strange…

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        1. It is much simpler without having to crank you brain in circles to defend contradictions. But I get your point. So let it be written, so let it be done!

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  2. “The father of many nations, revered by all abrahamic faiths, was willing to kill his son by a hallucinatorial perceived command.”
    You have two disturbed father figures in this seriously dysfunctional family. To paraphrase Sagan, “billions and billions and billions.” The first father pulls a trick on one of his progeny, Abe. “I just wanted to see if you would actually do it. Looks like you actually would. WTF.” No end to Abe’s self-trust issues, predictably leading to a series of questionable relationships with women and even more badly fractured families. Many issues over many generations and counting. Isaac and Ishmael never get over it, so you end up with two more disturbed father figures that raise ever more seriously dysfunctional families who end up hating each other. Much wool-gathering occurs.

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    1. Good points Bill. And feuds! People wronged that never forgot it. Of course Sarah was pressing to send that bitch Hagar our into the desert to die with Ishmael just beforehand. I’m sure the women weren’t too fond of each other either.

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      1. lol. What a nightmare for the guys.

        Sarah: Abe, I can’t conceive. Go screw the maid.
        Abe: ok.

        Rachel: Jacob, Leah has three kids and I can’t conceive. Go screw my maid.
        Jacob: ok.

        Leah: Jacob, Rachel is gaining on me and I can’t conceive. Go screw my maid.
        Jacob: ok.

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        1. Max, the ex-Muslim atheists compares islam to the apes. It’s all about sex, territory, and food. The only real difference between abrahamic religion and the apes— the apes didn’t learn how to write. The selfish gene in action.

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            2. As would I. My curiosity is a ferocious as Marco Polo’s (the Venetian explorer to be clear 😉 ) and I’d like to expand my knowledge of Islam’s intricacies, theology, full history, sects, etc, as much as I know Christianity’s.

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  3. God, who knew everything, decided to test Abraham. Why? Either he already knew Abraham would do anything he commanded, or that he wouldn’t. Who was he really testing? Himself, of course. He wasn’t sure if he knew for sure what Abraham would do, and when he saw Abraham would obey his command, he decided things had gone too far, and called him off. Then, he dropped the bombshell, “I was only testing you.”
    Fake news! Alternative facts?

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    1. You can see how easily one can go down dozens of rabbit holes without even flinching, or even an opponent. The is is the beauty of faith! Belief thrives without evidence, and “if” this was the work of god it’s sinister. If it’s the work of the men of faith, reason never enters the equation. Only by faith can someone believe, and a fabrication is the only reasonable option to strengthen the demands initiated by faith. Look at the entire Bible. It’s a contradiction from beginning to end…by design.

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      1. It is meant to cover every possibility, as long as you are a believer, a person of faith. If you have no faith, if you have no belief, it has only lies, and counter lies.

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          1. As Roseanna Roseannadanna’s mother used to say, “There’s always something!” And if that isn’t enough for you, “There’s always something else…”

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  4. “Faith requires you to trust your own judgment, then abandon your own judgment.”

    Sounds about right.

    “8. Therefore it is not possible to continuously evaluate if a being is good while also worshipping it
    9. Therefore, worshipping necessarily requires abandoning one’s moral responsibility, which is immoral
    10. Therefore, no being is worthy of worship”

    I find this to be an interesting argument. I’m just not sure if it’s logically sound.

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    1. Then try letting someone else decide what you should worship and see if that produces the definitive morality. It doesn’t. Hence all Christians selecting buffet style religion, even outside what the faith has adopted.
      One can not effectively judge the character of god while worshipping him. Hence all the free passes god gets in every argument. I have met zero believers that are entrenched in faith that can admit god is NOT love, while the Bible is very obvious he’s not. Prove me wrong, I’m ok with that if you have an idea.

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      1. God demands to be worshipped. So a Christian must worship him. But let’s say that a Christian does not worship him willingly and thus retains their moral autonomy. In that case, they would be worshipping, but they could also evaluate whether this god was good.

        So perhaps the first premise should say:

        “Therefore it is not possible to continuously evaluate if a being is good while also worshipping it [willingly]”

        Or is it that the idea of willingness is already contained in worship? I just thought that it’s possible to worship something and yet not actually think that it’s good. One might even think that it’s evil, but worship out of fear.

        I also think the step from the second premise to the third is a non-sequitor. They might be better stated as:

        “Therefore, worshipping [any being willingly] necessarily requires abandoning one’s moral responsibility, which is immoral.”

        “Therefore, worshiping any being is immoral.”

        And in the second premise, isn’t it an assumption to say that abandoning one’s moral responsibility is immoral? I think it’s a very good assumption, but I’m not so sure it’s a fact.

        Correct me if I’m wrong.

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        1. I suppose you’re right, but only if the cart is before the horse. Worship through faith, which comes first would signify a voluntary act. Submit, is the first premise “thy will be done, not mine”? Islam means submission as well. So, in order to worship honestly, submitting the will comes first, which brings you to the immoral premise. Unless it’s like princess Leah and Jabba (which is what it looks like now, lol) worship is a voluntary submission of will. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done”? That’s how I’d see it.

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          1. I just barely got that Star Wars reference. At first I thought you were talking about the biblical Leah. Then I realised there’s no Jabba anywhere in the Bible.

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            1. But there should’ve been a Jabba…hut hut! Anyway, it’s a good quote, but like everything in religion…we got some explainin’ to do. Endless is his name too, btw. Nice chatting. It’s definitely a good exercise.

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        2. I think Jim is right here, in the sense that as soon as worship happens it becomes difficult to be objective in evaluating not only the being, being worshiped but also to not have tinted glasses when looking at the things that being is responsible for. I think this bears out pretty well psychologically when we look at hero worship in general. For Trump’s die hard supporters, he can do no wrong. His transgresses are explained away as things like “locker room talk”, “a lying media”, “other politicians being stubbornly ideological”. But we can even see it when we see defenders of any sort of historical or famous figure. It’s easier to peel away Bill Cosby fans, but there are undoubtedly still some who maintain his innocence. More importantly while we are worshipping that person it doesn’t enter in to your minds that they would do something bad. The fact that he was able to get away with it for so many years is because of how much was worshipped in the industry. It was easy for him to discredit would be accusers and turn the public against them because he had so many adoring fans. In general we want to keep our beliefs, and resist having to change them.

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          1. Yes. I think he’s right too in the context of religious worship. But I think there are certain scenarios in which people are forced to worship. In those cases, a person can still evaluate the character of the person who demands praise. That’s what I was thinking of here. But I realised it doesn’t apply to religious faith.

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            1. That would make sense…I mean if you are forced to worship you probably don’t really worship, you just have to make out like you do. It’s like nobody can really force you to believe something, but you can make it seem like you do if coerced. Of course repeated coercion if torturous enough can eventually turn into real belief.

              “THERE ARE 4 LIGHTS!” 🙂

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            7. Picard (Stewart) had some great moments. Superb actor! Thanks Swarn. “The line must be drawn here! No further!! Maybe a good atheism debate cry…

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            8. Yeah that was a great line from the 2nd movie. Which I think was the best one of the TNG movies. Yeah he really did up the level of acting in the Star Trek universe, which is perhaps why I’ve had trouble getting attached to any of the other captains since!

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  5. There are plenty of people today who do the things the voices in their heads tell them to do, no matter how horrific. Scary to contemplate that a so called god is behind it all. Ought to be the punchline to a stupid joke, rather than the real possibility it actually is.

    I guess the moral of the story is it is ok to be mentally ill if you are acting on gods behalf. Had Abraham actually done the deed in todays landscape he would still be in prison. No doubt the true believers would think he was the victim of a witch hunt…

    Gods will, has been the whitewash of many horrors documented in their own damn book. Of course I am not sure of the veracity of any of those stories given the whole thing seems to be made up from the ground up. But to work the atrocities in as some sort of faith binding excercise, is another atrocity in itself.

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    1. Only through faith can one reason away his own sanity. Don’t forget among all the talk to look around. Nothing is the way it is presented.

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    1. The big churches have fine-tuned the experience. It’s basic algebra now. Do a+b and you get C. C is no longer the constant but the congregation. Tell them whatever you need to. Correcting Sunday school papers would be a fun job, if there was one. Heheh

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      2. Jim, the big mega-churches — i.e. Joel Osteen-like churches that my own 2 kids grew up in — absolutely utilize all possible technology to further enhance and embed the neurological dopamine releases to help FEEL God’s presence and intervention, etc. Totally being done these days with medically, physiologically induced Holy Spirits!!! LOL

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        1. The holy spirit is hormones triggered by emotion. Generating that emotion and defining it for us is the way of the revivalist. It’s so obvious even an atheist can see it—now. Lol. That and the herd instinct is a power to be reckoned

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  7. The answers come through unbelief, not the other way around.

    Ahh Jim. That is SO PROFOUND and represents EXACTLY the essense and core of the new scientific field of Agnotology.

    …mental illness has no limits when left untreated.

    And that is exactly where I was going to go regarding “God” speaking to one’s heart/brain, or in prayer/meditation, or some voice from heaven, church, or fellow Believer speaking in tongues. There are vast chapters in the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition by the American Psychiatric Association) in the clinical field that is not only extensive and based upon many decades of direct evidence or patient behaviors in medical records from around the world, but so much consensus from medically licensed psychiatrists, renown acclaimed educational institutions of medicine & psychiatry-psychology as well as inpatient hospitals/clinics and outpatient services that it is a 10th Wonder of the World that much of Earth’s impoverished 3rd-world, developing, and a few advanced nations STILL do not know or recognize common basic symptoms, manifestations, or treatments for the millions of mentally ill. Many of them “lost” inside the religious/religiosity of organized faiths. It is literally like an operating underground, covert drug cartel BUT often right out in the open inside churches or church-affiliated events.

    Anyway, another very good post my Friend. Keep up the great work! 🙂

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    1. Thanks boss. Nice addition here. It’s not like anyone’s out to fix the problems you mentioned either. Only build on them, expound, use it, and “take advantage over your neighbor”.

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