From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Luke, Derrida, Papists, Luther...and Steve Adams.
Date: 12 Dec 92 14:31:34 -0400
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <adams.724125297@spssig>, adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:

  Re: Luke 14:26 - the verse that wouldn't die!

>> Here's the Gospel of Thomas version:
>
>> Jesus said, Whoever does not hate his father and his mother as I do cannot
>> become a disciple to me. And whoever does not love his father and mother
>> as I do cannot become a disciple to me.  For my mother gave me falsehood,
>> but my true mother gave me life.
>>
>>Odd!
> Yeah.  I'll say.  Ya know, everytime I look at that text I have to wonder
> just what was going on back around 28CE.  If Thomas is accurate, then that
> sure throws a lot of cold water on Mr. Saul of Tarsus, now doesn't it?

I really think it does. Paul, for me, is a sympathetic figure in a lot of ways.
I laughed my way all through 1 and 2 Corinthians, as he tries to deal
with blockheads who aren't as passionate as he is. I kept imagining
him hearing some story about what the Corinthians were doing, and slapping
himself on the forehead like Homer Simpson: "D'oh!" I have no doubt at all
that he was totally sincere, and that he was a good man. 

Paul seems to me to have been a man who had a violent reaction to the cruelty
he was perpetrating, whose imagination was set ablaze by the language 
he heard used by his "Christian" victims. I see him as a profound idealist,
a real metaphysician who took the sayings of Jesus _literally_ instead
of metaphorically.  It's as if I said, "Man, I'm a son-of-a-bitch," And 
someone started teaching that I was fully-human, fully-canine, an incarnation
of Dog. See what I'm getting at? :)

>> The disciples weren't reknowned for understanding
>> Jesus' teachings, I gather. Maybe Jesus said two similar (but different)
>> things on two separate occasions. 
> 
> 'Not reknowned' is an understatment.  The Gospels record him rebuking them
> for not getting the picture.  See Mark 7:18 for an example.  Yeshua
> basically asked the diciples how they could be as stupid as they were!
> Sort of a early version of "You dolts!  Can't you even understand a simple
> parable?"

Interesting point: Gospel of Thomas is the only non-interpretative apostolic
Gospel (that I know of).  The other four are all narratives. GoT is just
a record of J.C.'s sayings, with the cryptic prologue "Whoever understands these
sayings will not experience death."

I don't trust the understanding of the apostles, personally. They were without
doubt unusual men (and women?) but, as you say, their record of understanding
J.C. was not good.  For this reason, I am inclined to take the Thomas
gospel as _more_ useful than the others, since it (apparently) is free
of editorializing.  
 
>>The thought of Paulist Christianity persisting for another 2000 years
>>is enough to make even a hardened atheist pray for the Lord's swift
>>return! :)
> 
> Amen and preach it!  No wait, that's not it.  "Come quickly Lord Jesus!
> Amen"  Yeah, that's it! 

Yo! J.C! Let's get a bloody move on!
 
> If you want a good, scriptural discussion of the
> book of Daniel and the Revelation to John, check out Bob Van Kampen's "The
> Sign" and Marvin Rosenthal's "Pre Wrath Rapture of the Church."  Rosenthal's
> book is mostly a theological discussion, but I think you'd like Van
> Kampen's book.  He lays out all of the prophecies and shows which
> historical figures he believes are represented in Daniel and Revelation.
> He even identifies the AntiChrist!  :-)  

Dang! I guess the cat's out of the bag, eh? My cover is blown, dad bust it!
This could crimp my plans, mildly. Oooooh those evangelical Christians
make me sooooo mad!

> You'll love it!  At least for the
> entertainment value....
 
I used to watch Dr. Jack Van Impe's paranoid musings on world affairs and
scripture every Saturday night, but it got boring. Like, Russia is really
going to invade Israel. Right, Jack. Like, the EC is going to take over the 
world. Uh huh. They can't even agree on soybean tariffs, and they're going to
take over the world by A.D. 2000. Fun for a while...and Rexella is SO cute..
but life is short. 
 
>>> Fair enough.  Please say 5 Our Father's, 3 Hail Mary's and a Glory Be for
>>> your pennance.  Go thou and sin no more.
>>Thank you, Father. Consider it done. 
> Your sins are forgiven.  Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
> 
> You *are* (or were) a Catholic, right?

In spirit, if not in the flesh. :)

>>Just out of curiosity -- what is the source of your confidence?
> 
> Good question.  If I say from myself, that denies that there is more to it
> than that, and I believe there is.  That confidene comes from God, through
> the Holy Spirit.
> 
> I suspect that the atheist response to that is that it does come from me,
> and me alone, and I just won't take credit for it.

And people say atheism denies the dignity of man. What a world!

>>Ideology, then, is the ultimate trap for a symbol-using animal. What happens
>>when the critter gets a symbol into its head that says "I am not a symbol?"
>>The answer -- the critter gets confused and starts behaving 
>>in accordance with a totally imaginary entity. And there is no way out
>>except to recognize one's own role as creator of the image. But the
>>image says you aren't its creator...and round we go again.
> Uhm, yeah.  I see your point.  I think.  Is this implication 'man created
> god in his own image'?

Sort of. Yahweh is a character in a story -- in that sense he was created
by man. This story was misunderstood as a history book, Yahweh the
character became regarded as a real person. Just as people thought
that the heroes of the Iliad were real, until it became clear
that Homer was, at the very least, heavily fictionalizing. See what I mean?
So in those senses, man created God. 

But God is a poetic figure for a very real aspect of experience -- the
creative power. Which is _your_ power. So in a weird way, God
created God.  "God" is the character who represents metaphorically
your ability to imagine, to create images ex nihilo. In a sense, to create
the world. The Creation takes place every heartbeat. See what we're doing?
We're reading Genesis as a poem instead of a history book, or a 
theology text in code.  And it WORKS as a poem -- outstandingly! Which
is what makes me think that's what it originally was intended to be. 
Very easy to mis-read a poem as a theology text. Very difficult to
do the opposite. :)

>>That's why I'm so interested in self-reference, Steve.
>>Those damn self-referential memes rule the world. And they demand sacrfice.
>>This earth could be a paradise if it weren't for them. Maybe I should
>>start an "Institute for the Elimination of Viral Memes." 
> Hmm.  So 'god' is simply one of these self-referential ideas?  Something
> constructed to flesh out our understanding of the world and help us cope
> with reality?  Is this what you're getting at?

Christianity is a self-referential idea-complex.  We would have no
trouble recognizing it as a dream except that this dream says "I am not
a dream. I am real life."  See what I'm getting at? 

Here, I'll make up a simpler self-referential ideology for you.

1. All people with green hair are evil. 
2. Evil things must be destroyed.
3. This belief (all the statements in this sytem) shall be named 
   "Anti-Greenism."
4. All statements in this system are absolutely true. It is not an opinion
   that green haired people are evil -- it is a fact. 
5. It is your duty to convince others that this system is true. Those
   who disbelieve shall be punished after death. 
6. This system was never made up by anybody. It is a statement of 
   objective truth.

See what we've got here?  I just made this up right now. It is a total
fiction. But imagine that someone sees a green-haired person beating up
a child. They might start to accept proposition 1. This might lead them
to think that proposition 4 is true...which immediately locks them in
to the whole system.  This is bad logic...but once you accept 4, you're in.
The system asserts it's own validity, it's own non-system-hood in 6. 
The system says I never made it up. Arrogant little bugger. 

So now, our "Anti-Greenist" is walking around interpreting all of experience
in light of this day-dream. If I say, hey, it's just a daydream, they
respond with 6. No it's not, they say.  If I say 6 is false, they 
respond with 4. If I say 4 is false, they respond with 6. And so on, 
and so on, until I get tired and go home. 

Nifty, eh?  Easy to see how these things persist for millenia, especially
when statements like "believe this system and you will live forever"
and "disbelieve this system and you will go to Hell" are part
of the system.  The only defense is to step back and see how self-reference
is creating a self-enclosed imaginative world with no exit. 

>>People are religious because they fall in love with images that seem to 
>>promise them relief from the difficulties they are experiencing with
>>other images.  That's all I'm saying here, really. Nothing revolutionary,
>>I assure you. 
> But then why am I religious?  I don't think I fit this particular rule.  In
> other words, my religion doesn't appear to me to be a defence mechanism
> against other images, at least as far as I can tell.  How would you go
> about finding this out?

Why are you religious? Answer that, and I'll tell you if you fit that
description or not. 

>  -Steve

Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca

Just say no. -- Usenet Survival Guide
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