I occasionally visit BlogCatalog to partake of the discussion forums, read others comments, see what ruses bloggers are using to generate traffic to their sites and shake my head in disdain at the "Can you make money from blogging?" brigade.One recent-ish discussion that generated 800+ replies was the classic "Do you believe in God? Yes or no?" debate. The originator stipulated "I want you to tell me if you believe in God or not. If you said Yes, tell me one reason why. and if you said no, tell me one reason why not?"
As you would expect this degenerated fairly quickly into two camps - the Saved (or Believers if you prefer) and the Damned (or those with their heads screwed on). Guess where I landed?
I would like to pick on two of the main arguments purported by the Saved:
1. The "God is everywhere" theorem.
So for every "Gods exists in the beauty of rainbows" we have a "God also exists in the destruction of hurricanes" or for every "God exists in the bountiful harvest" we have a "God exists in the gaping mouths of starving children" or for every "God exists in the kindness of strangers" we have a "God exists in the torturer's implements and the pitiful cries of the torturer's victim".
If God is everywhere and omnipotent then he must also be without a moral sense. If God has no moral sense then one of underlying premises of the Church, to teach and differentiate between good and evil (or right and wrong), has no basis. Further to this, the teachings of the Church would stand in direct contradiction to God the Being. The Church would be imposing upon God their interpretation of his essence, which they see as 'good', as opposed to recognising his non-moral existence, that is he 'decides not to intervene in Earthly matters'. (I use the terms essence and existence here as existential terms)
I don't say this to disprove the existence of God but to highlight the innate flaw in organised religion which, I think, leads us further towards the conclusion that God is man-made - an attempt, if you will, to inculcate upon the many the moral beliefs of the few.
2. The "Spirit" or "Seek inside yourself and ye shall find God" theorem.
Now, this appears to be in direct contradiction to argument 1 above. If God is everywhere then why does the individual need to discover an "inner spirituality" to find Him? Hmmmm...
But lets not deny the religious nuts their opinion.
If God is inside me then he has to be a construct of mine - that is, I have to have created Him. Now whether I created him using my mind or using some unknown quantity, lets call it a 'soul' for the sake of argument, that does not lessen the fact that I made Him.
If, on the other hand, the religious argument is that God wasn't made by me but is, in fact, some latent Being residing within me that only a significant amount of 'soul-searching' will discover then lets look at that. By my very nature I can only be aware of that which I am aware of (bare with me) so if I am not aware of my soul then how do I rake through it to find this mysterious third-party?
Lets give them one more chance. If we assume the term soul-searching is actually a quasi-religious way of saying "giving something some very serious thought" then I have to use my brain for that purpose. If I am using my brain then I am not using, or indeed searching, my soul. At the end of that process if I choose to take a "leap of faith" and find God then it has still only ever been an entirely introspective process, using my synapses, so we must still come to the conclusion that I have created God within me. Ergo he can not exist outside of any given individual and must, therefore, be a man-made construct.
Still, as long as the Church coffers keep filling and we keep teaching our children this hocus-pocus tale of salvation then I am sure we will all remember to stay put in our, very humble, places devoid of any aspiration for improvement in the (very real) World.
The Sisters Of Mercy - Body And Soul (EP) (Merciful Release MR029T 1984)
- Body And Soul
- Body Electric
- Train
- Afterhours
Body And Soul - pwd: c4ctusm0uth
9 comments:
Let start by stating that I'm a-religious, but re. argument #2: the Saved argue that God is within you not because that means that you created him as you argue, but because (s)he created you. You just have to recognize the fact...
Which I haven't...
Thanks for the Sisters!
P@ndora
"God is Dog spelt backwards" John Lydon
@ P@ndora - Yes, I can see how the Saved would argue on that point. My response would still be that that means that God is 'internalised' - that is recognised within you, though I would say created within you. In much the same way as the power of the human mind allows you to create anything within yourself, or in your own mind if you prefer. The power of the imagination not being underestimated of course ;)
Pleasure to post the Sisters. Still got a couple of interviews and the 'Walk Away' EP to go.
@ Nuzz - Mr Lydon is a wise man on occasion, when he's not selling butter.
Ahhh...a polite discussion about my least favourite topic (after politics)...
Actually I only needed a decent rip of Body Electric, which I'm eternally grateful for...the discussion I'll just avoid ;)
LOL. The religious debate I'll let you off with Andie but everything is political whether you like it or not (I suspect not). Still, at least you say thanks for the rips - I can't ask much more.
Little shitty file format > Mono only!! :(
Thanks for that contribution dickhead. Feel free to fuck off and not come back.
You are awesome! Not only do you upload great tunes you send the trash packing :)
I just came here by incident, and was delighted to meet your post of Body and Soul, which was to my opinion the very best record the SoM ever made. Before that it was crap and afterwards as well. I remember that the Ramones were very popular at the time, and SoM chose that direction I suppose.
It is a shame that I bought the 12"s Temple Of Love and Alice/Floorshow back then, and only copying the Body & Soul EP on tape from a friend. As soon as SoM's first album came out I was so disappointed in the Merciful Releases that I abandoned the entire project, even though I had the opportunity to buy the No Time To Cry EP I considered it a waste of effort, but you made me curious again about that record.
Five years after that I stranded with Scratch Acid as the best guitar band in the world, after which I focused on my own work* and for more than 20 years hated listening to electric guitars and their sound fx because it was more of the same all the time (Consolidated captured a woman saying it is always "these four guys, standing in position" etc), so that is where I left the UK Indie wave scene, while still enjoying the On-U Sound productions. But I kept on playing and customising my cheap electric guitar from the sixties until it sounded wohltemperiered (ie clean from octave to ocrave), meanwhile programming various computerbased machines and the then upcoming computers until that also made no sense anymore, leaving me with far from the middle off the road experiences and expertises that also kept me under working class conditions, while no one seems to like it, and I hate the economics.
* to wink to your working class problem much later on in this blog
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