Maintaining the flock has never before been so muddled. It used to be as easy as swordplay and torture. Now that there are laws against that tactic (and the internet) so the leadership has resorted to volumes of big worded, incoherent rambling confusion. Who but the professional preacher has the time to sift through it all? Never mind that, they can tell you what it all means.
Victor Hugo writes in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, “the priest were in fear because they thought the printing press would replace the pulpit”—people could now read their own bible. But, as Jean Meslier so astutely pointed out, “not only should the Bible have been withheld from the commoner, it should’ve been withheld from the priest as well”.
The only way to hang on to the few threads they have left is to keep it confusing with forty thousand sects making up their own versions with a million volumes of commentary—per year.
“They muddy the waters to make it seem deep”—Fredrick Nietzsche
Here is a list of Starter Words you need to know to be Christian these days; after all, being ecclesiastical takes practice, for simplicity in the gospel is for everyone.
- Ontology
- Epistemology
- Dystheism—personal favorite
- Ecumenical
- Existential
- Misotheism
- Eschatology
- Asceticism
- Emanationism
- Epigenesis
- Maltheism—God of the Bible
No longer do you need to know thee, and thou art—but you have to be versed at a scholarly level to keep up with “The New Theists” and their codespeak, then remember the old as well—words like imagination, pretending, and circuitous. But this will suffice for a brief introduction, if ye are willing.
I do have a question—can we decide to believe, or can we only decide to pretend to believe. Deciding to believe is a choice, which makes it a charade of pretense mixed with hope. After all, the proof is in the pondering, or so I’m told.
If we have to choose belief with (or over) reason, that is nothing more than pretending.
TheCommonAtheist 