<First a few quotes from the world's monotheist religious holy books. I could quote hundreds more items from Jewish Scriptures, the Bible, and the Quran and thousands more from commentaries on each of these scriptures.>
"I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."
-Quran 8:12
"O ye who believe! Fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him)."
-Quran 9:123
"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before me."
-Jesus Christ in Luke 19:27
"A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lord's work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!"
-Jeremiah 48:10
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword."
-Jesus Christ in Matthew 10:34
"Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor."
-Moses in Exodus 32:27
The three major Monotheist religions of the world often assert that they are religions of peace, human brotherhood, and morality. History indicts these assertions as lies. Hundreds of thousands of unbelievers were murdered in Canaan. Millions of nonbelievers and heretics were slaughtered by Christian armies and their state cronies. And Islam, often touted as a religion of peaceful submission to God, has a record just as bloody and murderous in its expansionist tendencies as Christianity. (It is little known today that Islam spread across Arabia and many other countries by violence, warfare, and conquest. Hundreds of thousands of Arabic pagans were killed even in just the beginning decades of the religion.) Today, we see in evidence, the same murderous tendencies in all three of these monotheistic faiths. Whereas Judaism's violence seems to be mainly focused in the area of Israel/Palestine, Islam and Christianity have spread worldwide and their own version of religious fanaticism is rapidly becoming the world's fastest growing brand of faith. It seems the middle ages are coming back for a major revival. And what are we doing about it? We are sticking our heads in the mud and buying into the lies that these religious leaders tell us: "No. We are not all fanatics. We are peaceful. Our religions are being perverted by evil people." And on and on and so forth. Some truth mixed with a lot of lies. A quick scan of their holy scriptures shows faith systems that care little for evolution, freedom, progress, or of any basic humane system of morals....at least in regards to treatment of "unbelievers."
Eris has tricked them yet again by blinding these monotheist spin-doctors (the ones who try to proclaim that their religions are truly peaceful every time one of their co-religionists blows some shit up or shoots at somebody else) to the fact that their holy scriptures justify genocide, crusades, and jihads. Yet they are right. The problem is not inherent in their religions themselves. They are not all fanatics. The problem here (that problem that turns sensitive beings into murderous fanatics) is encapsulated in one word: Belief.
Beliefs turn people against one another. Beliefs of all kinds are used to justify any atrocity. Beliefs are allowed to warp minds and are not properly diagnosed as the sickness they are. But actually even beliefs are pretty harmless until they come into contact with people ready to accept them and put them into action, even if it means destroying lives and reducing the world to a big flaming pile of rubble. Believers can justify anything, even hatred, and call it righteous indignation, or some other such crap. You can say that She What Done It All is responsible, but I asked Her about this and, after She smacked me for asking such an idiotic question, said this: "Human beings are always blaming Me for the crap that they do to one another. If not Me, they blame their various mono-Gods. This is why humanity will never graduate from grade school. This is why it is good to recognize as many gods as you can find, because at some point you give up trying to pin tails on donkeys and learn to own up to what you have done." I just sort of sat there a while, stunned at Her directness, to which She intuited and said "Come on, Hugh. I am not as longwinded as you are."
Think about it. These monotheists, who actually all claim to have revelations stemming from at some point One God, are not merely playing football. They use swords, guns, bombs, economics and dogma as their tools, and every act of violence or hatred that they perpetrate can be justified directly from their scriptures, despite what various monotheist apologists like to claim. But even as bad as it is, the root problem is not that these people want to worship One God. It's beliefs being acted out by believers. True believers are the problem.
You can see the process of this "True Believer" syndrome played out even in atheist philosophies and ideologies such as Marxism and the various permutations of what Americans like to call "Communism." Then there is the fanatical devotion to Capitalism at any cost which has misappropriated the term "free market" to distract anyone who dares question it. The syndrome is played out by believers in identities, nationalism, and other causes as well. The main idea is that those who disagree are not as worthy and should therefore either be converted or destroyed. It angers believers that other people do not believe. It fills many believers with hatred that other people might actually choose NOT to believe in what they themselves believe. It doesn't matter what flag or what icon or what system or what viewpoint or what God these people follow, so long as they can follow something. And damn all the rest to hell. Fanaticism is not some strange perversion of belief. It is the logical conclusion of a pathology that has run its full course. You want to rid the world of terrorism and violence and hatred and inhumanity and degradation and all of that? Get rid of the tendencies of masses of people to become enthralled to holding firm beliefs. (Hell, even just one person who is enthralled to holding firm beliefs should be considered armed, sick, and dangerous.)
We humans are inordinately afraid of plagues that swoop in and wipe out millions of lives. And this is a logical fear that has prompted medical science to seek ways of eradicating pathogens that cause plagues. But there aren't many people today who realize that the plague of human stupidity known as belief has killed millions more than any pathogen. Psychologists and philosophers (at least the "lovers of wisdom") should be lining up by the thousands to help fight this plague and treat its victims. But no, what do we hear from them about this plague of beliefs? Nothing but silence, and the occasional article written by atheist or agnostic (or even some Discordian) freethinkers which usually never gets read by anyone outside of those narrow intellectual sounding communities.
Why do you think some of us have made Counter-Evangelism one of our main Discordian projects? (Well, there are other reasons too. We don't just like slapping Baptists around for the sheer pleasure of it, you know.) Never think that our Erisian mission is the same as any believer's mission. We aim to subvert all missions, jihads, crusades, and other such crap at the source: The infected human mind of the "true believer." The Golden Apple is meant for each of us, by Eris! And it only provokes discord in the lives of those who try to claim the Apple as their own exclusive possession. That is the main lesson of the story. You can only truly hate someone or something to the exact degree that you hold a firm belief about it or them.
Sure, I like spreading the Erisian or Discordian (take your pick) irreligion, but I am not dumb enough to think that all people should actually become Erisian or Discordian (or both, if you are still caught up in silly terminological differences). The choice of someone's spirituality or path or what-have-you, or even the choice to not have anything to do with any of it, is theirs alone to make.
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Driving under the influence of Psychotherapy and Buddhism.)
July 29th, 2005
Rant 107
Rants Vol. 2 Index