Such is the “House of God”..be it of the three Abrahamic faiths that most torment us in these times, or any number of deity worshipping beliefs held sacred upon altar or plinth..There has been never plague nor pestilence, tyrant or warmongering horde of barbarians of such severity that could in fear or hate set brother against brother, father against son, citizen against state till every hint of architecture or vestige of civilisation has been torn asunder and then in a final gesture of total vindictiveness ground to dust… than the scourge of fanatical religious belief that there is greater reward in a kingdom of heaven.
There is no love in the breast of organised religion, though it may profess such and even call it’s proselytisers to promote such..there is no love in the House of God…there is only blind obedience, discipline and fear. There is no sincere exchange of human devotion between devout religious lovers, lest the jealousies of a God scorned, deliver their souls to perdition. There is procreation with neither lust nor desire, charity without empathy and prayer only with a reliance on fear: “A man cannot serve two masters”.
Religion is a house without love.
“ The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. 70 But the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species. A charitable hope might perhaps be indulged in favor of Socrates, or some other sages of antiquity, who had consulted the light of reason before that of the gospel had arisen. 71 But it was unanimously affirmed, that those who, since the birth or the death of Christ, had obstinately persisted in the worship of the daemons, neither deserved nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity. These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony. The ties of blood and friendship were frequently torn asunder by the difference of religious faith; and the Christians, who, in this world, found themselves oppressed by the power of the Pagans, were sometimes seduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. “You are fond of spectacles,” exclaims the stern Tertullian; “expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. 71b How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, so many fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers.”
711 But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which the zealous African pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms. 72 …..(Gibbon’s Decline and Fall…Christian rel’ pt 4.)
One need not go through the separate faiths, as the above could suffice for the many..it seems a universal doctrine that one blind faith has no sympathy for the other of whatever shade of deity or doctrine. However, one has to take into consideration the times of the rise in influence of these three Abrahamic Faiths.
Judaism rose in an ad hoc series of tenets from the mists of ancient Persia and environs, pulling bits and pieces of texts and doctrine from many sources including a touch of Zoroastrian, It survived many oppressions and pogroms to finally gain state attention and legitimacy in the times of the Roman Emperor Vespasian and the “Jewish wars”..and afterwards competing for regal favour with the rising “new kid on the block”; Its own “bastard child”; Christianity.
Islam too rose from the result of war between Mohammad and his pagan relatives in Mecca..no love lost there..and STILL NONE! and the consequence of the fourth Christian crusade invading and sacking Constantinople, in lieu of payment to the Doge of Venice, on their way to the Holy Lands where they got done like a dinner by the Islam armies once again, who didn’t stop this time until they crossed the Bosphorus to take the once impregnable Constantinople, now left wide open because the brilliant strategy of the Christian Crusade destroyed the last outpost of Christianity that was a solid buffer against the oncoming tide of Islam from the east..brilliant strategy..again..no love lost there.
“There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life. The love of action is a principle of a much stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition, and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue, and if those virtues are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a state, or an empire, may be indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted courage of a single man. To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonized, would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature. The insensible and inactive disposition, which should be supposed alike destitute of both, would be rejected, by the common consent of mankind, as utterly incapable of procuring any happiness to the individual, or any public benefit to the world. But it was not in this world, that the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either agreeable or useful.” 871 …Gibbon ; Decline and Fall…
I call myself a ; “Rational Atheist”..the atheist part needs no explanation, neither should the “rational” bit, considering that only an irrational person would believe in a God and / or a religion to save their soul from some sort of described above “eternal damnation”. That we have a ”soul” is certain..I can sense the spirituality of the day when I go to feed the animals in these cold mornings..I step outside and at once the chill of the air touches my skin and I can feel the cool zephyr as it courses over my face as I move about..the chipped, crusty-bark of the mallee trees, the cries of strange birds, the call of the chooks in their yard give delight to my senses and focus the mind on the duties to perform….and sometimes a remembered song will enhance the mood as I sing it to the horses as I give them their morning feed..all is well with the soul.
These senses, some would say give evidence of God’s creation, yet we know through a millennia of concentrated scientific inquisitiveness where each and every one of those senses derive…science and my own observation has taught me the structure and evolution of both flora and fauna…the origin and transmission of both sound through air and fury of wind…I walk out in the morning not thinking nor philosophising upon these realities, but aware of the necessity of preparing against the extremes..so I wear warm gloves where practical, rug-up with warm clothes and pull on a beanie against those chilled, crispy ears, because I know that whatever some may declare about a “loving , caring Jesus”, a “kind and benevolent God”, there’s really only one person (I here acknowledge the caring partner who reminds one to “put a warm pair of daks on or you’ll freeze your cute arse off in that air!”) who will look to my well-being in this life..and THAT is yours “T”.
Yes..it is only the irrational person who would go to a “God” to resolve their trembling fixations..and while there could be said ; “There are no atheists in foxholes” I would rather believe that there is “Too much fear of going to meet one’s death in foxholes”..Because if you believe in a God who cannot even save the life of one sad drowning toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey..then you’ll believe in anything, because if there is one certainty in this life as in any “next”..: In the “House of God”, there is no love.
Here is a short lesson on the awakening of reason… https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/the-conversion-of-father-carravalo/
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