Category Archives: Religion

A Revelation

Posted on by

Anyone who has been exposed to the Book of Revelation or had trouble sleeping after watching The Omen should read Revelations, a recent book by Princeton professor of religion Elaine Pagels.

According to Professor Pagels, the Book of Revelation was written around 90 C.E. by John of Patmos, an itinerant preacher and follower of Jesus. He wrote the book as a piece of anti-Roman propaganda, in response to the fact that Rome had colonized Judea and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. The Romans are the villains in the Book of Revelation. The number 666 is probably a numerological translation of the full Latin name of the emperor Nero.

The Book of Revelation became an official part of the Bible when the New Testament was codified in 325 C.E. Professor Pagels argues that it was included for political reasons. It was useful to the men who were organizing the Catholic Church to have a story that could be used against their political enemies, i.e., the Christians that church leaders like Irenaeus and Athanasius called “heretics”. The early leaders of the church were a quarrelsome, unprincipled bunch who did whatever was necessary to suppress opposing views. They claimed that some of their fellow Christians were the evil enemies of God described in a story written 200 years earlier about the Romans. But now the Romans weren’t the bad guy anymore. 

This is a depressing but necessary book. Generations of innocent people have been scared and even scarred by a horror story that purports to describe a coming apocalypse, albeit one with a happy ending for a few true believers (us, not them). To borrow from Nietzsche: “What cruel and insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought this up”.

Religious Fundamentalism, Non-Muslim Style

Posted on by

From The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted by Mike Lofgren (former Republican Congressional staff member):

“Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/05/republicans_slouching_toward_theocracy/

It’s clear that the Democrats are often ineffective, but I‘d argue that they aren’t useless if they sometimes stop the Republicans from doing crazy things. 

In similar fashion, Avram Burg (former speaker of the Israeli parliament) argues that religious fundamentalism is destroying Israel’s democracy:

“The winds of isolation and narrowness are blowing through Israel. Rude and arrogant power brokers, some of whom hold senior positions in government, exclude non-Jews from Israeli public spaces. Graffiti in the streets demonstrates their hidden dreams: a pure Israel with ‘no Arabs’ and ‘no gentiles’. They do not notice what their exclusionary ideas are doing to Israel, to Judaism and to Jews in the diaspora. In the absence of a binding constitution, Israel has no real protection for its minorities or for their freedom of worship and expression.

If this trend continues, all vestiges of democracy will one day disappear, and Israel will become just another Middle Eastern theocracy. It will not be possible to define Israel as a democracy when a Jewish minority rules over a Palestinian majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — controlling millions of people without political rights or basic legal standing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/israels-fading-democracy.html?pagewanted=2&ref=opinion

Gore Vidal 1925-2012

Posted on by

On monotheism:

“I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single… well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system that has worked pretty well for twenty-five hundred years. So you see I am ecumenical in my dislike for the Book. But like it or not, the Book is there; and because of it people die; and the world is in danger.”  (1988)

“The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose.”  (1992)

On himself:

“I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”  (1956)

“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”  (1992)