Faith and Forgiveness.
Two of the most powerful forces in the universe. They can also be two of the most ridiculous and a couple of our biggest problem issues.
Faith
We need faith, but not when it goes too far.
If you believe in God, you have faith. Faith that what you believe in is not total lunacy. Why is that? Because that is so obvious to anyone but a young child, that to continue on in your belief from childhood into adulthood, takes a constructed and enduring contract with oneself to continue to suspend belief in order to have faith, to believe.
Faith means to build an enduring ignorance, irregardless of reality, of fact, of anything contrary to your beliefs. It's institutional ignorance.
When we step onto an elevator in a tall build, we suspend our belief in science (distance to ground concerns, one of our primal urges to protect ourselves) and replace it with our faith that the elevator won't drop us to a horrifying death.
In that sense, faith is good, it's a useful thing in daily life. It was a useful thing as monkey's climbing around trees having faith int heir grip that they won't fall to their death, even though, some always did. Either in a branch breaking, or falling while asleep. Faith, allowed what was necessary to survive. To stay off the ground when you could become food for a more powerful animal.
But when faith crosses the line to affect our judgement of others, to go even further to take our faith out of the realm of the suspension of belief into that of affecting others in their daily lives, then we have simply gone too far.
Forgiveness
In the Catholic religion, there is a thing called Last Rites. As you are dying, you are giving forgiveness for your life and then, you can go to heaven when you die. Uh huh, sure...like that works. The only way that could happen was if there was a contract with God, an agreement that this would be accepted and well, that doesn't make any sense at all. See the section on Faith, above.
Just as I cannot lift weights heavier than what I can normally do without first working out long and hard enough to be able to lift that heavy of a weight, so too forgiveness does us no good in being instantly forgiven. It is merely an initiator, a catalyst to start on the road to being able to lift those "heavy weights" in life. And if death is moments away, well, sorry Charley. Forgiveness merely gives us repose and a breath in order to adjust and begin on the path to getting somewhere. But when you die in a few minutes, you've had no time to adjust, to build the "muscle" in order to affect real change.
To think it is instant, is ludicrous.
Everything we have learned from nature shows us that to think you could be forgiven as in Catholic Confession, or even worse in Last Rights, and then suddenly you're purified, you can now gain entry to Heaven, simply does not in anyway reasonable way follow what we have seen in all of nature. Nature, if you buy into God, is a Nature that He created. Why would he choose one path for nature and another for humans? That too would make no sense.
But today, after hundreds of years of it being otherwise, Catholicism isn't our worst problem.
We need to have faith in order to get through the tough times. To allow us to move smoothly through life without having to be fearful of just about everything. As in a relationship with a spouse, so too with ourselves, or a deity, even.
Forgiveness is the same, sometimes, some people need to be forgiven as a right of passage to begin on a new path, to build upon our good intentions and continue that way of being in the end game, of arriving at a point where we can lift a "heavy weight" without thinking, because we have done the hard work leading up to that point, where it is at all possible and not, in spite of it.
To think otherwise, is childish. At the very least, it is naive. And as we have seen a lot in recent times, it can even be, destructive in applying religious faith to common human endeavors. The Middle East is our most gross example of that. It is Faith, lacking Forgiveness, and has shown what a destructive force that can be when you apply one in the extreme and completely turn your back on the other.
Religions Extremism
Regardless of what you believe in, especially, if you are one of the pathetic followers of ISIS\ISIL, or any religious extremist movement for that matter, you need to view life in the moderate if you want to survive; to apply both Faith AND Forgiveness, properly.
Humanity has a grand tradition of striking down what irritates it the most, be that a good irritant or a bad one, with the bad typically dying the most prominent of deaths.
To apply too either much (and you can apply even forgiveness with too much extremeness and it too can become dangerous), you are then on the road to destruction. If not yours right away, certainly those others who are innocent who you have and are, slaughtering.
In the end, we can all be assured of your own destruction. You, can be assured of your destruction. It just takes time. Perhaps not today, perhaps not right away even if you succeed in taking over regions. You cannot however hold on forever. Because in the end, all regimes of this type fail. It may very well be that yours will be spectacular.
Your failure, will be spectacular. You see, the world knows you for what you are.
I suspect you know it too. Greed always loses out in the end. Greed in religion, being the worst. The Catholic religion was once a force to reckon with and now is a dilute belief system that most people even if practicing, really don't pay that much attention to.
These capitalistic religions are a dying breed ("do good now, for reward later"; pay now, get something later; pay\receive: capitalism).
Islam, will eventually be the same.
Mohammed like Joseph Smith, is on the way out.
They just don't know it yet.
It's painfully obvious to many of the rest of us, however. Religions, are dying.
You see, that is the path Humanity is on. The path to rationality and science. At times like these, the death throws of a belief system, can be painful, for everyone. Religious ones, all the more painful because no one likes to realize that their entire lives, and generations of their families before them, have been fooled.
But it's okay. We were all fooled. Just, let it go.
What really exists, is where humanity is going, and not the ridiculous ancient religious myths and fictions of what used to be. Humanity used to be easily fooled. Many of us are starting to see that now.
With a belief system needing support necessitated to be based in faith with power over others through scripture and Imam or religious translators, and their abuses of power, we see these things on a daily basis now in the Middle East.
Not faith, and forgiveness. Faith, and killing.
Islam's time is rapidly coming to an end and with groups like ISIS\ISIL, countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, they are only hastening yet another ancient Middle Eastern desert religion's demise. Jews mellowed out long ago being the oldest of the three. Catholics burned themselves out mostly in the Middle Ages and after. Now finally, it is Islam's time.
We do need to let Muslim's change their own however, for to try and change it from without, is to prop it up, to support its continuance through their resistance to outside forces. They do want to reform Islam. Most of them want to join the greater work and modernity. It will be reformed. There is no stopping that. There is only slowing it down, or speeding it up.
Faith and Forgiveness.
You can't have one, without the other. They need to be applied in a reasonable fashion. Face it, or face your own eventual destruction.
What's sad is not that they cannot see how ridiculous their beliefs in religion are, or in how upset they get when faced with their beliefs being discounted (drawing a picture of Mohammed is a killing offense, really? Grow up!). Or, the reality of them being proven to be as ridiculous as they are.
It is sad that they cannot clearly see the world all around them, other than in their own tiny view. With their own tiny wants and needs in a world that really doesn't care. The Middle East holds a culture that was once great and they have struggled of late to make it great again and have only succeeded in minimizing their import to the world and exemplified small minded efforts to become great.
Their violent efforts over past decades have made them become smaller and smaller in the world's view. When they really deserve veneration and respect for past accomplishments and an apology for how they have been treated for a very long time.
The world needs to face up to the fact that these are mostly our brothers and as well some of them, our sisters, and that they have reasonable needs too. They really have been abused for far too long.
Mostly, they want a normal, productive life, respect and decorum. But some of them have found the worst possible way to achieve that. One that will in the end, bring upon them their own damnation and destruction. It already is. With faith and without forgiveness.
NO one thinks that they are here for that much longer.
Not even they believe that, not even with their superhuman belief muscles.
And they do know it. At least, those in charge know it. For those who do not know it, it's really time to wake the Hell up and face the burning pyre that is their future, that of their religious agenda and the future of their religion.
If there even is one.
NOTE: this is an add on. In talking with another writer today some other things occurred to me. Here are those thoughts:
Times have past times where the days of sword against sword were the battlefield weapons. We now have these morons running around with weapons of mass destruction and I include in that, automatic weapons, even bolt action rifles. Compared to a sword, a spear or a bow and arrow which itself was a kind of WMD back then, which were more one on one weapons.
Once weapons left our hands to go out on their own to kill, the format of war changed forever.
With the payback of weapon's actions today, things are different and Islam no longer has the luxury of taking hundreds of more years to get their shit together. This crap people keep saying about Catholics went through this hundreds of years ago is valid, but inconsequential.
We need to put these religious murderers down, ASAP and with great prejudice. Then, during and before, we need to put down our religious acceptance of people who are delusional and violent.
We do NOT need to be going after pacifist theists, they need protection and respect under the circumstances, but we do need to stop giving people the freedom to allow this kind of thing to propagate in our...OUR, world, not their world, because their world Cannot be allowed to exist.
#ISIS #Islam #Iran #Iraq #Syria #Catholic
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