da li postoji bog?- tumačenje religioznih iskustva

[Loengrin]

Kao prvo, Hristos je kao rođeni Jevrejin sedam dana poslije rođenja odnešen u hram.
Kao drugo, Hristos je sa dvanaest ili koliko već bijaše godina otišao u hram i besjedio s učenjacima.
Kao treće, Hristos je propovijedao u hramu.
Kao četvrto, zamisli situaciju:
Imaš ćeliju. Ona počne da se razmnožava - recimo mitozom. I imaš dvije, pa četiri i tako dalje geometrijskom progresijom. A onda ti treba snaga koja će da se brine da sve te ćelije budu manje više iste. I ko tu igra ulogu? Hromozomi! Wow. Zamisli sad da je DNK Bog, da su ćelije broj vernika, a da su hromozomi sveštenici. Budući da je rekao da oni vjeru šire, sigurno nije mislio da njih dvanaest i onih malih sedamdeset sedam sami šire vjeru, pošto bi to bilo nemoguće - bar za ljude. Ergo se ostatak objašnjava.

1,2 i3) Slažem se, on je poštovao tradiciju, ali njega je naknadno krstio
(malo neodgovarajuća reč ali šta ću) Jovan što nije jevrejski obred. To
što je Hrist bio Jevrejin i što su ga kao malog odneli u hram nema veze
sa odvojenim učenjem njegovim, a u hramu je propovedao jer je
smatrao da tamo i dolaze vernici koji  bi trebalo da čuju njegove reči.
4) Ta paralela sa ćelijama itd. lepo, jasno, ali nema veze sa tim što Isus
nije rekao da mu grade hramove. Zidanje crkava je bila čista odluka
njegovih sledbenika, ne mora da znači da je bila pogrešna, ali nije bila
Isusova i to je to.

Tema uopšte nije zahtevala ovoliko objašnjavanja jer ne vidim da smo ni
ti, a ni ja rekli nešto mnogo pogrešno.

[Jake Chambers]

No uzmi to moje pucanje kao odbranu, tad je dozvoljeno.

Samoodbrana kao opravdanje za pucanje? A gde pa to piše u Bibliji?
I ŠTA BI SA ONIM 'OKRENI I DRUGI OBRAZ'?
Ili sa 'ko tebe metkom, ti njega lebom'? I pritom nisu mislili na ONAJ metak, if U catch my drift

E Đejk, Đejk, ne znam šta da mislim o TOLIKO nekanoničnim stavovima...

Gulo, jetro moja, naravno da treba okrenuti i drugi obraz, ali kad se pretjera, pretjera se i moras se braniti...for a higher cause...to ne pise u Bibliji, to je u svetom predanju, drugom izvoru ucenja.

Libeat srce, ne brini, obucavan sam za ovo

@Loengrin: A gdje bi se majke ti okupljali vjernici ako ne u hramu? Po privatnim kucama kao u Zitju Brajanovom? Pa koliko bi onda svestenika imali???
Puuuh-leaaase!  

[PTY]

Ok, kad već hoćeš ovako, neka ti bude.

Ali dva uslova: prvi, Biblijom se frljaj sa ostalima maloumnima i polupismenima kakvi već ovde jesu. Drugi uslov, minimalizuj svoje odgovore jer me zadnja strana ovog topika zdravo smorila proseravanjima.

Dakle pazi: religija je u da ti ponudi spasenje. Ti ili uzmi ili ostavi.

Dalje, religija je bazirana na doktrini greha. Ako si pametan, shvatićeš.

Dalje, greh je "svaka sveobuhvatna ljubav veća od ljubavi za Boga."

A to znači da sa grehom nema kompromisa. Ništa nije 'između tebe i Boga'.  Doktrina se ne procenjuje logikom niti razumom nego verom, stoga to što ti pričas je jeres. Ti kompromituješ stvari koje nisi u stanju da prihvatiš. Ti smatraš da sa Bogom lično možeš stvoriti nekakav interni pakt koji će prevazići doktrinalnu strogost.

To je pogrešno.

Ako shvataš ovo, nastaviću. Ako ne shvataš, reci mi šta ne shvataš.

[Lurd]

Džejk, samo tebi, a namerno neću na PM. Ne postoji "ako se pretera". Nigde. Ja mislim da je to jedna jako opasna doktrina vrlo rastegljivog pojma. Ne može pop na bilo koji način da blagosilja vojsku nikako. Ubistvo je ubistvo, čak i u ratu.

Okreni drugi obraz. Tačka. Nema "ali", nema kompromisa. Svi smo ljudi, svi grešimo. Naše je da se trudimo da iskorenimo greh i popravimo sebe, a ne da pravdamo greh.

Okreni drugi obraz.

[PTY]

Lurde, zaboravio si da na kraju dodaš "ako hoćeš biti vernik".  

Sve drugo čoveka čini sekularnim pragmatičarem sa tu i tamo ponekim 'verničkim' principom.

[Lurd]

Naravno. Ne treba to pominjati. Ateisti i nevernici imaju zakone i rastegljive pojmove savesti, odgovornosti i zdravog razuma.

[PTY]

E pa, ja lično mislim da svaki čovek može da očuva integritet i poštenje sa čisto sekularnim zakonima; za tako nešto religija i nije obavezna.

Religija je neophodna za nešto drugo.

[Lurd]

Zavisi šta znači "integritet".

[PTY]

Ha!

Pa verujem da čovek može da sledi ne-religiozne principe isto tako predano kao i religiozne.

E sad, unutar religijske strukture, principi su uslovljeni svojevrsnom kaznom i nagradom; ne-religiozni principi su uslovljeni isključivo čovekovom savešću.

Istrajavanje u principima uslovljenim isključivo sopstvenom savešću je integritet.

[angel011]

E sad, unutar religijske strukture, principi su uslovljeni svojevrsnom kaznom i nagradom;

Nisam sigurna da su uslovljeni; kazna i nagrada postoje, ali ako ako nešto radiš samo zbog nagrade ili iz straha od kazne, ništa nisi uradila.

Takvo je bar moje shvatanje; moguće je da grešim.

[Jake Chambers]

Libeat, prema hriscanskoj teoloskoj definiciji grijeh je "promasaj", skretanje s puta ka Bogu. Ono sto se javno moze cuti od popova i ono sto se zaista uci na fakultetu je cesto dijametralno razlicito, ali to je problem za posebnu temu.
Lurde, ja licno okrecem drugi obraz, ali i sam Hristos je primenjivao silu - isterivao je prodavce iz hrama i bacao im tezge okolo. Ne govorim ovim nista posebno, samo sve vreme pokusavam da pokazem kako je sve vrlo rastegljivo i kako crkva upravo to i radi.
Ali ja licno - buduci sin vojnog lica - nisam za silu nikad i ni u kom obliku.

Dalje da se vratim libeat: Ne razbacujem se Biblijom, samo poducavam one koji mlataraju apokrifnim a ne znaju ni obicna jevandjelja...imas srece sto si preko pola svijeta pa ne znas koliko se Srbi vole praviti nacitanima a pricaju o stvarima kojima su samo sadrzaj procitali s korica.
Prema hriscanskom ucenju s Bogom izgradjujes licni odnos i to se ne tice nikoga - da ne citiram Pismo. A rekoh vec da nije samo Pismo izvor ucenja, ali i to je za drugu temu. I da, da jos jednom naglasim da SPC prica jedno - u svojim teoloskim krugovima - da prica drugo narodu, a da radi sasvim trece. Been there, seen that, i zato sam otisao s fakulteta, da ne bih bio clan takvog licemjernog drustva prevaranata i da bih sacuvao svoj hriscanski identitet i da ne lazem "po naredbi". Eto.  

[Loengrin]

@Loengrin: A gdje bi se majke ti okupljali vjernici ako ne u hramu? Po privatnim kucama kao u Zitju Brajanovom? Pa koliko bi onda svestenika imali???
Puuuh-leaaase!  

Ej, Jake, nemoj đetiću da cijepaš dlaku na dvoje bez prijeke nužde.

Vidiš da sam rekla da ne mora da znači da je pogrešno samo zato što to
Isus nije rekao.

Ergo, stvorila se potreba i tako to, te su krenuli da dižu crkve. Hajde
važi. Dizanje crkva je počelo tek nakon priznavanja hrišćanstva za
zvaničnu veru od strane cara Konstantina (što je ustvari caricina
zasluga). E tu je onda trebalo odrediti ko popuje gde popuje i kome idu
eventualni prihodi. Imam kojekakve komentare u vezi toga:
- Veru je prvo prihvatio narod, a tek posle plemstvo
- Narod nije bio finansijski sposoban da gradi hramove ili crkve, niti je
imao dozvolu za to, stoga mu takve ideje nisu ni padale na um.
- Plemstvo i car s druge strane su imali sredstava, a i dozvola nije bila
problem, te kada je došlo pravo vreme bacili su se na nesebičnu
finansijsku podršku Bogu, najčešće mu dižući crkve tamo gde se znalo
da je Hrist bio, prolazio, propovedao ili sl.
- Dizanje crkve je velika stvar, te je vaskoliki narod bio potegnut da radi
na izgradnji, pretežno za džabe, kao vernici, kmetovi ili robovi
- Takvom institucijom kao što je crkva morao je neko da upravlja ili bar da se o njoj brine.
- Tako je osim plemstva, trgovaca, zanatlija i obične raje nastao novi
društveni stalež. Sveštenstvo. Naravno da nije bilo ko mogao da postane
sveštenik i tako je počelo stvaranje crkvenih pravila, pored već
postojećih verskih zakona.
- Mnogi ljudi su hteli da pokažu svoju odanost Bogu a ne novcu, ili su
samo hteli da pomognu, te je crkva polako dolazila u posed sve većeg
bogatstva, koje nije koristila za pomoć nemoćnima i siromašnima, već je
to bogatstvo zadržavala za sebe. Čak i kad je oko njih narod umirao od
gladi.
- Sve više crkava se gradilo zaslugom plemstva, naravno iz zahvalnosti,
sveštenici su retko bili u sukobu s plemstvom, a plemstvo je donacijama
i poklonima u robi i posedima darivala crkvu u nadi da će time iskupiti
sve svoje grehe.
- Crkva je dakle naveliko podržavala feudalizam
- Naravno sa širenjem hrišćanstva crkva je morala nekako da organizuje
svoje svešteničke redove, te je tako nastala hijerarhija među sveštenstvom ...
itd. e sad ...

... da ne širim više, eto u šta se pretvorio izbor Hristovih sledbenika.
Mislim ipak da je u katakombama, na samom početku hrišćanstva
atmosfera bila naveliko zdravija iako su se pored skrivenih vernika
nalazili i polegnuti preci. To je bilo vreme kada je jaka vera prerastala u
religiju ali još uvek nije postala crkva u današnjem smislu te reči.

Treba da znaš da ne mrzim crkvu niti sveštenike zato molim te nemoj
terati vodu na tu stranu. Kao i svuda i među sveštenstvom ima dobrih, ali
i lošijih ljudi i ja to jedino tako i posmatram.

[Jake Chambers]

Zao mi je, ali ja ne vidim poentu price.
NIKO nije rekao da je Crkva savrsena i prvi ja je pljujem.
JA samo osporavam neosnovane tvrdnje da je nije osnovao Hristos i da ne treba graditi hramove.
I jos jednom podvlacim: one koji nisu vjernici, one koji ne vjeruju u crkvu i one koji ne idu tamo i svakako nikakve priloge i ne daju, nema to sta da dotice. Evo ja nisam vec 4 godine dao nikakav prilog za crkvu niti planiram, jer sam im posvetio zivot, i jer imaju svakako vec dovoljno, ali ako neko drugi zeli da daje, neka daje.
I i dalje ne shvatas pricu s hramovima i svestenstvom...zao mi je, ali tako je.

[Loengrin]

Vera - ono što postoji u čoveku
Religija - ono što nastane od omasovljenja vere u nešto - nekoga
Crkva - Institucija ili aparat koji treba da služi da širi, jača i održava
veru , a predstavlja i štiti religiju.

Ne Jake Hrist nije rekao diž'te Crkvu, ali jeste rekao u prenosnom smislu
da mu je namera da osnuje religiju čiji će oslonac biti u snažnoj veri njegovih sledbenika.

Poenta je u priči o crkvi je što ljudi uvek moraju nešto da dodaju i preprave,
isprave i menjaju, a od toga ne ispadne uvek dobro, a Crkva je kroz
istoriju narod uvek previše koštala, a košta ga i dan danas (ne mislim na
pare, ali i mislim na pare)

Bez obzira na sve to, ja i dalje idem u crkvu i nekako sad ne mogu da
zamislim da ih nemamo, zbog svega onog na šta je pozitivno uticala - na
razvoj umetnosti na primer.

[Jake Chambers]

I opet kao umjetnik ti kazem da ona s umjetnoscu nema veze. Dacu ti jednu knjigu da procitas, da se ne smaramo vise ovako.
Inace, jako bitan pojam je istorijska, odnosno tjelesna Crkva...i ona prava, koja je na Evharistiji.

[PTY]

E sad, unutar religijske strukture, principi su uslovljeni svojevrsnom kaznom i nagradom;

Nisam sigurna da su uslovljeni; kazna i nagrada postoje, ali ako ako nešto radiš samo zbog nagrade ili iz straha od kazne, ništa nisi uradila.

Takvo je bar moje shvatanje; moguće je da grešim.

Nisi pogrešno shvatila ali možda si jednostrano protumačila.

Krajnji domet religije jeste iskupljenje. Terminolgija je tu manje važna; možda će neko u tome videti 'nagradu', možda ne. a doktrina je naprosto instrument koji ti nudi skup principa neophodnih da bi se do tog iskupljenja došlo. Opet je nevažno da li će neko u doktrini videti skup kaznenih mera ili ne. doktrina je stroga i beskompromisna struktura principa čiji je krajnji domet da čoveka oslobode od nagona i poriva koji ga vezuju za materijalna dobra.

I kada kažem da je, po doktrini, suština greha  u ma kojoj sveobuhvatnoj ljubavi većoj od ljubavi za boga, to znači svaki čovekov nagon ili poriv, pa bio on u svojoj prirodi seksualan ili intelektualan ili naprosto materijalan, stoji kao mogućnost greha, ukoliko čovek nije u stanju da se, u ime Boga, istog odrekne.

Tako stoji da je svaka neumerenost sama po sebi greh, prosto zato što te kompromisima vezuje za materijalni svet i time ti uskraćuje iskupljenje.

[dexa pantelejski]

bla, bla, bla, bla, bla...
         

[IM]

E sad, unutar religijske strukture, principi su uslovljeni svojevrsnom kaznom i nagradom;

Što se pravoslavlja tiče - jednostavno nije tako. Citirah ja pre nekoliko postova jedan izvor, a garantujem da nije ni originalan ni jedini.

Krajnji domet religije jeste iskupljenje.

Za šta? Pravoslavni ne veruju da se čovek rađa grešan.

I kada kažem da je, po doktrini, suština greha  u ma kojoj sveobuhvatnoj ljubavi većoj od ljubavi za boga, to znači svaki čovekov nagon ili poriv, pa bio on u svojoj prirodi seksualan ili intelektualan ili naprosto materijalan, stoji kao mogućnost greha, ukoliko čovek nije u stanju da se, u ime Boga, istog odrekne.

Ljubav prema ljudima JE u isto vreme i ljubav prema Bogu. Vera u ljude JE i vera u Boga. Dakle, ako nekog voliš, ako mu bezrezervno veruješ, nema čega da se bojiš. Vernik to shvata kao Božju blagodat a ne kao šansu da se oklizne.

[PTY]

Ateista u meni likuje; hrišćanstvu će doaka sopstveno stado.

[angel011]

Ljubav prema ljudima JE u isto vreme i ljubav prema Bogu. Vera u ljude JE i vera u Boga. Dakle, ako nekog voliš, ako mu bezrezervno veruješ, nema čega da se bojiš. Vernik to shvata kao Božju blagodat a ne kao šansu da se oklizne.

Da, možeš bezgranično nekog voleti i kroz tu ljubav voleti i Boga i zahvaljivati mu - između ostalog, zato što ti je omogućio da upoznaš tu osobu. A šta se dešava ako izgubiš tu osobu? Hoćeš li i dalje voleti Boga, ili ćeš ga proklinjati zbog gubitka?

Ne kažem da ćeš ga sigurno proklinjati. Ali mogućnost postoji.

[dexa pantelejski]

Libeat, ti si ateista?
Bas tuzno...  

[IM]

Da, možeš bezgranično nekog voleti i kroz tu ljubav voleti i Boga i zahvaljivati mu - između ostalog, zato što ti je omogućio da upoznaš tu osobu. A šta se dešava ako izgubiš tu osobu? Hoćeš li i dalje voleti Boga, ili ćeš ga proklinjati zbog gubitka?

Ne kažem da ćeš ga sigurno proklinjati. Ali mogućnost postoji.

Pa tako je. Knjiga o Jovu je napisana pre dve i po hiljade godina. Ništa pametnije ljudi nisu smislili u međuvremenu.

[Jake Chambers]

Ljubav prema ljudima JE u isto vreme i ljubav prema Bogu. Vera u ljude JE i vera u Boga. Dakle, ako nekog voliš, ako mu bezrezervno veruješ, nema čega da se bojiš. Vernik to shvata kao Božju blagodat a ne kao šansu da se oklizne.

Da, možeš bezgranično nekog voleti i kroz tu ljubav voleti i Boga i zahvaljivati mu - između ostalog, zato što ti je omogućio da upoznaš tu osobu. A šta se dešava ako izgubiš tu osobu? Hoćeš li i dalje voleti Boga, ili ćeš ga proklinjati zbog gubitka?

Ne kažem da ćeš ga sigurno proklinjati. Ali mogućnost postoji.

Malo priprosto ali ajd.
Nego da nekima još jednom razjasnim hrišćanski rezon raja i pakla:
Ne postoji kazna - pojam BOG i pojam KAZNA - bar poslije njegovog potpunog otkrivenja u NZ - ne idu zajedno. Postoji jedna stvar: Bog kao izvor svekolikog života i imaš slobodnu volju da izabereš njega. Imaš takođe i slobodnu volju da izabereš ono drugo, što ne postoji, odnosno nepostojanje, i niko te tu nije kaznio - sam si birao. A to je pakao. Ja iskreno zaista ne vidim veći pakao od nepostojanja.  

[PTY]

Narode, ja stvarno ne znam koju vi to seljačku varijantu hrišćanstva propovedate ali ne dajte se ometat.    

[dexa pantelejski]

Seljacku? SELJACKU?! SELJACKU???

Nije mi jasno sta ti imas protiv sela? Zar ono nije bilo svojevremeno temelj srpske drzave? ZAr ono nije temelj SVAKE drzave? Zar seljak, onaj pravi srpski gedza nije bio primer jednostavnog, poboznog i nadasve postenog i cestitog coveka?

Zar upravo hriscanstvo koje su ispovedali nasi seljacki preci iako prozeto paganizmom nije bilo 100x iskrenije od ovog licemernog koje danas ispovedaju mnoge "ucene" glave?

Da ja sam za seljacku SELJACKU! varijatnu hriscanstva jer ona je podrazumevala da se ono u sta se veruje primenjuje u obinom zivotu, na seljacki jednostavan nacin: ne kradi, ne lazi, ne ubij...

[dexa pantelejski]

ergo...

o bogu cam vam lepse i ubedljvije pricati polupismeni cobanin sa obronaka suve planine nego tuce profesora, teologa i svestenika.

[PTY]

o bogu cam vam lepse i ubedljvije pricati polupismeni cobanin sa obronaka suve planine nego tuce profesora, teologa i svestenika.

Pa kad je to Libeat negirala?
A kako im tek od ruke ide sajens fikšn...eh!!  

[IM]

Narode, ja stvarno ne znam koju vi to seljačku varijantu hrišćanstva...

Onu prostu koju su i u samom početku prihvatili neobrazovani i jednostavni. Fariseji i "književnici" su se bavili pravilima.

...propovedate...

Nije baš sasvim odgovarajući izraz, rekao bih.

ali ne dajte se ometat.

Kakvo ometanje, pobogu? Različito mišljenje se i traži za diskusiju.

[Loengrin]

I opet kao umjetnik ti kazem da ona s umjetnoscu nema veze. Dacu ti jednu knjigu da procitas, da se ne smaramo vise ovako.
Inace, jako bitan pojam je istorijska, odnosno tjelesna Crkva...i ona prava, koja je na Evharistiji.

Naravno da nema veze, ali je mogla da utiče na razvoj onoga što mi danas zovemo umetnost.

A u vezi pojmova vezanim za crkvu si isto upravu i to se ne razlikuje od onog kako ja razmišljam, najviše nesporazuma nastaje, a i nastajaće u razgovoru sa mnom zbog toga što se izražavam krajnje laički i to može često da zvuči krajnje naopako. Zato sam uvek raspoložena za čitanje, slušanje i razgovor i naravno hvala za ponuđenu knjigu, rado ću je pročitati.

Nikada nisam rekla kako ja sve znam najbolje ali se nadam da u ovom svetu ne treba svi da završimo studije na Bogosloviji da bi mogli i umeli pravilno da verujemo, ili da bi umeli o veri pravilno da razgovaramo.

[Loengrin]

Narode, ja stvarno ne znam koju vi to seljačku varijantu hrišćanstva propovedate ali ne dajte se ometat.    

To i nije bilo tako građanski od tebe

[PTY]

Slušaj IM, ja tebe ne poznajem ali iz tvojih postova zaključujem da si fin i pristojan čovek i tu ništa nije sporno. Nemam nameru da  te uvredim, zaista.

Ali ovaj topik je već isporučio grozomornu količinu prerasuda, neznanja  i užasavajuće grešnog izvrtanja hrišćanstva da ja stvarno nemam ni truna želje da o tome više uopšte razgovaram. Mislim, hej, jedna je stvar imati krizu vere i diskusijom pretresati nejasne ti stvari a sasvim je druga javno razmazivati jeretičke kvazi-argumente u podršku sopstvene zablude, alterišući pri tom doktrinu koju nisu u stanju ni da shvate a kamoli ispoštuju. Sviđalo se to tebi ili ne, to jeste propovedanje.

I niko, niko nije u stanju sa takvim ljudima trezveno komunicirati; normalan čovek će prosto da pobegne, samo da ne čita baljezgarije ljudi koji ama baš ništa pod kapom nebeskom ne znaju a povrh toga nemaju niti srama niti stida da to svoje neznanje bar od drugih sakriju.

[dexa pantelejski]

Je li be libeat, na koga ti to mislis a?

[PTY]

Oh, ne mislim na tebe, dušo. Funkciju koju je tebi Gospod namenio najbolje ćeš ispuniti upravo lišen stida i srama.  

[IM]

Slušaj IM, ja tebe ne poznajem ali iz tvojih postova zaključujem da si fin i pristojan čovek i tu ništa nije sporno. Nemam nameru da  te uvredim, zaista.

Nisam ni mislio da imaš nameru. Malo mi je zafalilo argumenata u tvojim postovima, pa sam mislio da bi bilo dobro...

Ali ovaj topik je već isporučio grozomornu količinu prerasuda, neznanja  i užasavajuće grešnog izvrtanja hrišćanstva da ja stvarno nemam ni truna želje da o tome više uopšte razgovaram.

Ali ovo objašnjava i to.

Mislim, hej, jedna je stvar imati krizu vere i diskusijom pretresati nejasne ti stvari a sasvim je druga javno razmazivati jeretičke kvazi-argumente u podršku sopstvene zablude, alterišući pri tom doktrinu koju nisu u stanju ni da shvate a kamoli ispoštuju. Sviđalo se to tebi ili ne, to jeste propovedanje.

Katolici smatraju da Papa ima monopol na konačno tumačenje ovih stvari. Pravoslavni misle da to imaju Crkveni sabori. Na tim saborima su uvek učestvovali i laici. Pravoslavlje smatra da je SVAČIJE mišljenje važno i vredno pažnje i da monopol na istinu ima samo Crkva. Crkva podrazumeva integral po vremenu od 0 do beskonacno, što će reći da u ma kom trenutku NIKO ne može da tvrdi za sebe da je baš on 100% u pravu.

Eto, gotova i moja propoved.

Haug!

[Jake Chambers]

Oh, ne mislim na tebe, dušo. Funkciju koju je tebi Gospod namenio najbolje ćeš ispuniti upravo lišen stida i srama.  

No na mene, a?    

[Jake Chambers]

I da, pogledajte onaj deo u Bibliji kad apostoli pitaju Hrista zasto ljudima prica u metaforama a njima ne...

[Loengrin]

Da, sećam se da je apostolima dato da znaju tajne nebeskog carstva - jer je tu istinu sakrio od mudrih, a dao je prostima. Od ostalih je istina ostala sakrivena, jer i pored ušiju nisu čuli, niti očima videli, ni srcem razumeli. Jednostavne reči verovatno isto ne bi razumeli, ali je poznato da je priče lakše prenositi svojim potomcima i može da se desi da neko od njih uspe da pravilno shvati Isusove priče.
A za svoje priče je rekao - Ko ima uši neka čuje - znači da su priče ipak razumljive, ali samo onima čije srce nije odrvenelo i u kojima je vera jaka. Kada je Petar prepoznao Isusa, ovaj mu je objasnio, da to kroz njega govori Bog na nebesima, zato što je samo Bog sposoban da prepozna svog sina, samo on ili neko kome on to prenese. Po tome možemo da shvatimo verovanja u to da se nekim ljudima "javljao" Bog, jer bi to trebalo da predstavlja poseban dar i suočenje sa čistom istinom.

[PTY]

Oh, ne mislim na tebe, dušo. Funkciju koju je tebi Gospod namenio najbolje ćeš ispuniti upravo lišen stida i srama.  

No na mene, a?    

Sigi je pokrenuo ovaj topik upravo iz frustracije sa ljudima koji religiju tumače u skadu sa svojim mizernim sposobnostima (ne)razumevanja. Ja sam odgovorila na Sigijev pokušaj rasprave iz istih takvih razloga; neopisivo je teško naći pravi način ophođenja sa takvim ljudima.

Ljudi kao što je Loengrin me beskrajno zabavljaju, prosto zato što me opravdavaju u mom uverenju kako današnja civilizacija omogućava opstanak kojekakvih humanoidnih entiteta sa sunđerom na mestu mozga. S druge strane, ti me nimalo ne zabavljaš; ja ne mogu niti želim da te za uši izvlačim iz tvojih zabluda, a opet, teško mi je da gledam kako zloupotrebljavaš to malo znanja koje nisi u stanju da prihvatiš za ono što jeste.

Mogu da ti dam samo onaj savet koji danas i sama sledim:  poljubi i ostavi, đejk.

Problem nije niti u Bibliji niti u licemerstvu drugih ljudi unutar crkve. Problem je u tebi. Dok to ne shvatiš i dok sa time ne izađeš na kraj, prestani da prevodiš Reč  na sopstveni nemušti jezik. Shvati da tu nikakav prevod nije potreban. Samo budale uspevaju da nađu ono što i nije skriveno a tebi je ovde nešto mnogo pošlo od ruke da svašta iznađeš.

Doktrina je savršena i logična do te mere da ti oduzima dah i smrzava krv i kao takva nije namenjena slabićima koji izlaz nalaze u kompromisu.

[Jake Chambers]

Ja sam tako ucio, zao mi je, ali bolje da o ovome razgovaramo u cetiri oka  

[PTY]

u 6, ako umemo u obzir i tvoje cvikere.  

[Jake Chambers]

Hahahahahahahahahaahahahhaaha! Ne moram da ih nosim. One su mi jer zbog foto grey.    

[dexa pantelejski]

Je sil cuo Dzejk?

Pravo zbori Libeat.

Seljaci iz Belu Palanku bi jos i rekli: Mani se s tija kerefeke. Uzni kilo plemenku i sifon sodu!

[Truba]

 libeat ako želiš možemo razgovarati u 6 očiju o bibliji  

anytime anyplace  

[Ghoul]

Za one koje ova tema dublje zanima, tj koji nisu ovde samo da vide najnoviju dexinu bljuvotinu ili pičkaranje između ovih i onih, možda će sledeći esej biti inspirativan za malo kontemplacije:naročito ako se smatraju vernicima, jer za one druge – ovo je samo niz najnormalnijih zdravorazumskih stavova...

Why I am Not a Christian
Bertrand Russell
[March 6, 1927]

Haldeman-Julius Publications
Girard, Kansas
Copyright, 1929,
By Haldeman-Jullius Company
Printed in the United States of America
Why I Am Not a Christian
An Examination of the God-Idea and Christianity
[The lecture that is here presented was delivered at the Battersea Town Hall under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society, England. It should be added that the editor is willing to share full responsibility with the Hon. Bertrand Russell in that he is in accord with the political and other opinions expressed.] [The previous statement was included in the original, and is not made by Positive Atheism.]
As your chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian." Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word "Christian." It is used in these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians -- all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on -- are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions.

What is a Christian?
Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two different items which are quite essential to anyone calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature -- namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think that you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course, there is another sense which you find in Whitaker's Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshipers, and so on; but in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books counts us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness.
But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said before, in the olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For instance, it included the belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.

The Existence Of God
To come to this question of the existence of God, it is a large and serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason. This is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce it because at one time the Freethinkers adopted the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason, and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take only a few.

The First Cause Argument
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God. That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality that it used to have; but apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man, and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant, and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.

The Natural-Law Argument
Then there is a very common argument from Natural Law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for any explanation of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of Natural Law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were Natural Laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depth of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. (VOLEO BIH DA NEKO ODE U CRNU RUPU I IZMERI OVO...) That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find that they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards to a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes the whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a law-giver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and, being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were you are then faced with the question, Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others? If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate law-giver. In short, this whole argument from natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am traveling on in time in my review of these arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness.

The Argument From Design
The next step in the process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them, but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say: "Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been design in the universe." I am not very much impressed by the splendor of those people. Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is merely a flash in the pan; it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions and temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.
I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen in this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.

The Moral Arguments For Deity
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations, and we come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee. That illustrates what the psycho-analysts so much emphasize -- the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times.
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say that there would be no right and wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of the agnostics ["Gnostics" -- CW] took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the Devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.

The Argument For The Remedying Of Injustice
Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of the universe that we know there is a great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth, and so they say that there must be a God, and that there must be Heaven and Hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I only know this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here then the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue: "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say: "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment;" and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say: "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one." Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about is not really what moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. (AMEN ZA OVO)
Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God.

The Character Of Christ
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said: "Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-Tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present Prime Minister, for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense.
Then there is another point which I consider excellent. You will remember that Christ said, "Judge not lest ye be judged." That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and they none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian principles in what they did. Then Christ says, "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away." This is a very good principle. Your chairman has reminded you that we are not here to talk politics, but I cannot help observing that the last general election was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must assume that the liberals and conservatives of this country are composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away on that occasion.
Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor." That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practiced. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then, after all, I am not by way of doing so, and it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian.

Defects In Christ's Teaching
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought his second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance: "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then He says: "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of his earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians really did believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In this respect clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and he certainly was not superlatively wise.

The Moral Problem
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance, find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him.
You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell." That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come." That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of this sort into the world.
Then Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He continues: "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world, and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
There are other things of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when he came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever'.... and Peter.... saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to History. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects. (YEAH, LIKE, TOTALLY SO!)

The Emotional Factor
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason that people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon. Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a new religion in which he is worshipped under the name of the "Sun Child"; and it is said that he ascended into heaven. He finds that the feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will; but they are the High Priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says: "I am going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon." He was told, "You must not do that, because all the morals of this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know that you did not ascend into heaven they will all become wicked"; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly away.
That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or ever mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

How The Churches Have Retarded Progress
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so, I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life," and no steps of any sort must be taken by that woman to prevent herself from giving birth to syphilitic children. This is what the Catholic church says. I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.
That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which at the present moment the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

Fear, The Foundation Of Religion
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

[dexa pantelejski]

Dexinu bljuvotinu?

Gulo, sad stvarno preterujes, no dobro, razumem te, sok od brskve je cudo.

Posto si ti resio da smaras ljudie predugackim postovima i to na engleskom, a prethodno si sebe prilicno diskreditovao nazvavsi Vladiku nikolaja fasistom a da prethodno nisi imao blagog pojma zasto to cinis (nemo verujes u sve sto ti kaze Sonja Biserko) evo nekih stvari koje bi svim ljudima bile zanimljive, dakle

VELIKI NAUCNICI O BOGU

BLEZ PASKAL
- Ne verujem u apstraktnog Boga, nego u živog Boga Avraama, Isaka i Jakova.

NIKOLAJ KOPERNIK
- Pri pažljivom posmatranju i smislenom dodiru  sa Božanskim poretkom ustrojstva sveta, koji je ustrojila Božija premudrost - ko neće sa divljenjem poštovati Tvorca koji je sve sazdao?

ISAK NJUTN
- Čudesno uređenje i sklad kosmosa mogu imati poreklo samo u planu jednog Svemogućeg i Sveznajućeg bića. To jeste i ostaje moj najdublji uvid.

GOTFRID VILHELM LAJBNIC
- Poredak, simetrija, sklad, opčinjavaju nas... Bog je čisti popredak. On je izvorište sveopšteg sklada.

ANDRE MARI AMPER
- Najuverljiviji dokaz Božijeg postojanja je očita harmonija koja sadrži kosmički poredak, i u kome živa bića mogu naći ono što ima treba za duhovni i fizički napredak.

MAJKL FARADEJ
- Središnje, vodeće načelo mog života je vera u Boga kao Tvorca.

GULJERMO MARKONI
- Ponosno izjavljujem da sam vernik. Verujem u silu molitve. U nju verujem ne samo kao verujući katolik, nego i kao naučnik.

i najzad:

RUĐER BOŠKOVIĆ
- Najdublje razumevanje filozofije neodeljivo je od religioznog pogled na svet.

MIHAILO PUPIN
- Nauka je osnažila i ojačala moju veru. Ona me je učinila boljim hrišćaninom. Ali ta moja vera, vera naučnika, nimalo se ne protivi veri moje majke i naroda moga rodnog sela. Nauka me je samo uzdizala do jednog višeg pogleda i proširila moje pojmove o Tvorcu.

Dakle, mislim daje ovo vishe nego dovoljan odgovor na ovaj smesni esej koji nam nudis kao - sta? Dokaz da nisi prazna ljustura? Gorepotpisani ljudi daleko su veci autoriteti od lika koji je potpisao ovaj "ubedljivi" pamflet. Dragi moj Gulo, ako si ti slepac ne teraj druge da to budu.

Libaet, moram otvoreno da ti kazem da si nevidjeni licemer. Ovamo drugima zameras na propovedanju vere u Boga a ti svo vreme veoma agresivno PROPOVEDAS ATEIZAM.

[Ghoul]

Dexo, stvarno si dileja – ne verujem da bi ti i sok od breskve pomogo da svatiš sledećo:
Ja ti okačim detaljno razmatranje – a ti na njega odvratiš izjavama koje je to isto prethodno razmatranje VEĆ opovrglo, ili bar dalo svoje razloge zašto ih smatra neutemeljenim. Logičan sled bi bio da kažeš ZAŠTO su Raselove reči bezvezne, a ne da ponoviš izjave tamo nekih naučnika koji su, na žalost, bili dovoljno ograničeni svojim poreklom i tradicijom da prihvate tu besmislenu veru.

Nego, pošto nisi za rapravu nego za bacanje citatima, evo ti nekih jednako pametnih, odnosno i pametnijih, ljudi koji u boga i deda mraza nisu verovali/ne veruju:


Famous Atheists, Freethinkers, Diests and Agnostics

The Atheist and the Materialist

THOSE WHO HAVE NO NEED FOR GODS AND SOME WHO HAVE NO NEED FOR THE SUPERNATURAL
Douglas Adams, Woody Allen, Lance Armstrong, Darren Aronofsky, Isaac Asimov, David Attenborough, Iain M. Banks, Clive Barker, Ingmar Bergman, Björk, Marlon Brando, John Carpenter, Fidel Castro, Dick Cavett, Noam Chomsky, David Cronenberg, Alan Cumming, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, David Deutsch, Roger Ebert, Greg Egan, Albert Einstein, Harlan Ellison, Brian Eno, Jodie Foster, Kinky Friedman, Harry Harrison, Robert Heinlein, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Hitchens, Angelina Jolie, Diane Keaton, Margot Kidder, Milan Kundera, Bruce Lee, Stanislaw Lem, H.P. Lovecraft, John Malkovich, Karl Marx, Todd McFarlane, Sir Ian McKellen, Arthur Miller, Frank Miller, Mike Mills, Marvin Minsky, Julianne Moore, Desmond Morris, Randy Newman, Mike Nichols, Jack Nicholson, Gary Numan, Camille Paglia, Andy Partridge, Mark Pauline, Terry Pratchett, James Randi, Gene Roddenberry, Henry Rollins, Salman Rushdie, John Sayles, Robert Silverberg, Bob Simon, Steven Soderbergh, Bruce Sterling, J. Michael Straczynski, Paul Verhoeven, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., James Watson, Steven Weinberg, Joss Whedon, Harland Williams, Ted Williams, Steve Wozniak, more...

The Agnostic
THOSE WHO DECLARE THEMSELVES AGNOSTIC
Margaret Atwood, Charles Darwin, Richard Dreyfuss, Umberto Eco, Matt Groening, Bob Hoskins, Tony Kushner, Larry Niven, Sean Penn, Roman Polanski, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Uma Thurman, Robert Anton Wilson, more...



A evo ti malo mudrih izjava od ovih:

Abraham Lincoln
"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
-   Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).

Albert Einstein
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism."
"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist


Aldous Huxley
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough."
-Aldous Huxley, author "Roots"


Ernest Hemingway
"All thinking men are atheists."
On page 144 of Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals, it states that despite being raised in a strict Congregationalist household, Ernest "did not only not believe in God but regarded organized religion as a menace to human happiness", "seems to have been devoid of the religious spirit", and "ceased to practise religion at the earliest possible moment."


Arthur C. Clarke
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him."
"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?"


Benjamin Franklin
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies."
"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."
-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor



Carl Sagan
"My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic."
-Carl Sagan, American astronomer and author



Freidrich Nietzsche
"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."
"So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is truth?"
"The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, a self-derision, and self-mutilation."
"All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race – before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its God to be truthful and understandable in his communications."
"The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God."
"There is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear therefore nothing any more."




Gene Roddenberry
"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
-Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek (1921-1991).




George Bernard Shaw
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."
"At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world."
-   George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright (1856-1950).





Karl Marx
"The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people."
"The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille."
-   Karl Marx, German political philosopher and economist (1818-1883).




Kurt Vonnegut
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."
-Kurt Vonnegut, American author






Napoleon Bonaparte
"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."





Posebno obrati pažnju na ovog:
Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken, American editor and critic (1880-1956).
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the same extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility." ["Treatise on the Gods"]

"Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings."

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. . . . A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill."

"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters."

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." [1925]

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"For centuries, theologians have attempted to explain the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."

"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."






Robert A. Heinlen
"History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."
"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent."




Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain"
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."
"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian."
"It (the Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."
"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows."
"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light ... by contrast."
"I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force."
"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."
"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."

"Man is a marvelous curiosity . . . he thinks he is the Creator's pet . . . he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." [Letters from the Earth]

Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
-   Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist (1835-1910).







Vincent Van Gogh
"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create."





Sigmund Freud
"Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever. "
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life."



Ambrose Bierce, American writer (1842-1914?).
Author of The Devil's Dictionary. Here are some entries:
FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
RELIGION: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
OCEAN: A body of water occupying about two thirds of a world made for man- who has no gills.
PRAY: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
SAINT: A dead sinner revised and edited.
In the definition of occident, he claims christians to be "a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call 'war' and 'commerce'".





H. P. Lovecraft, American author (1890-1937).
"H. P. Lovecraft was strongly influenced, not only by his mother but also by the books he read. . . . At five, he . . . (read) . . . a junior edition of The Arabian Nights. He at once fell in love with the glories of medieval Islam and spent hours playing Arab. . . . One effect of dabbling in non-Christian traditions was to make Lovecraft skeptical of the faith of his fathers. Before he reached his fifth birthday anniversary, young Lovecraft announced that he no longer believed in Santa Claus. Further private thought convinced him that arguments for the existence of God suffered the same weaknesses as those for Santa. At five, Lovecraft was placed in the infant class of the Sunday school of the venerable First Baptist Meeting House on College Hill. The results were not what the elders expected. When the feeding of Christian martyrs to the lions came up, Lovecraft shocked the class by gleefully taking the side of the lions. " From a biography by Sprague De Camp

[dexa pantelejski]

Gulo ti stvarno nisi normalan. Kazes da je esej iz 1927. VEC opovrgnuo izjave ljudi koji su ih dali pre toga?  I na koji nacin ih je opovrgao? Suvim teoretisanjem? Socioloskom tupljavinom? Cinjenicom da ga je Gula postavio na forum?

A da ne pominjem kako ni polupismena baba iz Prcilovicu kojoj je uradjena lobotomija ne bi ni u snu mogla da nazove Njutna, Pupina ili Kopernika NEKIM TAMO NAUCNICIMA. Ok, mozda TI NISI NIKAD CUO ZA NJIH, pa sopstvenim recima potvrdjujes koliko si nepismen.

Nemo se frkises, nikad nije kasno za vecernju skolu. Tu ce te nauce ko su pomenuta gospoda.

A pretpostavljam i da mislis je ovaj RASEL dao veci doprinos covecanstvu od njih. A?

Sto se tice POREKLA i TRADICIJE... Koja ih je ogranicavala?
TI CE IM KAZES?
Ti kao ponosni potomak cuvene plemicke porodice si mnoooogo kompetentan za takve izjave. Kod tebe sve puca od plemenitog porekla i svijetle tradicije. Mislim ovde si ga pogodio ko s prs u dupe.

ZAR TI SE NE CINI INTERESANTNIM DA SU LJUDI KOJI SU U SVAKOM POGLEDU (PA I PO PITANJU POREKLA I TRADICIJE) DALEKO SUPERIORNIJI OD TEBE - VERNICI. A DA SI S DRUGE STRANE TI, KOJI SI U SVAKOM POGLEDU (PA I PO PITANJU POREKLA I TRADICIJE) U POREDJENJU SA NJIMA NIKO I NISTA - AGNOSTIK.

Evo jednog meni sasvim dovoljnog razloga da budem hriscanin.

A sto se tice citata, osim nebuloza izvucenih po pitanju Frojda i Ajnstajna koji su bili vernici od kojih prvi veliki hriscanin, mora ti priznam da je izbor do jaja...

Sve delija do delije, da ne kazem moj do mojega. Od ludaka Nichea, budaletine Marksa, preko veoma psihicki normalnih osoba kakvi su bili Van Gog i Lavkraft, pa sve do tiranina i ubice Bonaparte. Sve sami primeri plemenitosti i dubokoumnosti, nema sta. Jos kad sam video da je i Bob Hoskins gnostik, jedva cekam da vam se i sam pridruzim...

Gulo, kad vidim kakva se ekipa okupila tamo medju vama agnosticima, mogu ti kazem da pucam od srece sto prihvatam jednu "besmislenu veru".

[dexa pantelejski]

Ej gulo, a TESLA, to ti je onaj sto je izmislio struju...

[Jake Chambers]

Za one koje ova tema dublje zanima, tj koji nisu ovde samo da vide najnoviju dexinu bljuvotinu ili pičkaranje između ovih i onih, možda će sledeći esej biti inspirativan za malo kontemplacije:naročito ako se smatraju vernicima, jer za one druge – ovo je samo niz najnormalnijih zdravorazumskih stavova...

Why I am Not a Christian
Bertrand Russell
[March 6, 1927]

Haldeman-Julius Publications
Girard, Kansas
Copyright, 1929,
By Haldeman-Jullius Company
Printed in the United States of America
Why I Am Not a Christian
An Examination of the God-Idea and Christianity
[The lecture that is here presented was delivered at the Battersea Town Hall under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society, England. It should be added that the editor is willing to share full responsibility with the Hon. Bertrand Russell in that he is in accord with the political and other opinions expressed.] [The previous statement was included in the original, and is not made by Positive Atheism.]
As your chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian." Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word "Christian." It is used in these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians -- all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on -- are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions.

What is a Christian?
Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two different items which are quite essential to anyone calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature -- namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think that you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course, there is another sense which you find in Whitaker's Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshipers, and so on; but in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books counts us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness.
But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said before, in the olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For instance, it included the belief in hell. Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.

The Existence Of God
To come to this question of the existence of God, it is a large and serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any adequate manner I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion. You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason. This is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas. They had to introduce it because at one time the Freethinkers adopted the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist. The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it. Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason, and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it. There are, of course, a number of them, but I shall take only a few.

The First Cause Argument
Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God. That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality that it used to have; but apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man, and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question, Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant, and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.

The Natural-Law Argument
Then there is a very common argument from Natural Law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for any explanation of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of Natural Law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were Natural Laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depth of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. (VOLEO BIH DA NEKO ODE U CRNU RUPU I IZMERI OVO...) That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find that they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards to a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes the whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a law-giver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and, being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were you are then faced with the question, Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others? If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate law-giver. In short, this whole argument from natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am traveling on in time in my review of these arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness.

The Argument From Design
The next step in the process brings us to the argument from design. You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application. It is an easy argument to parody. You all know Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose was designed to be such as to fit spectacles. That sort of parody has turned out to be not nearly so wide of the mark as it might have seemed in the eighteenth century, because since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them, but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say: "Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been design in the universe." I am not very much impressed by the splendor of those people. Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is merely a flash in the pan; it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions and temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.
I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen in this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.

The Moral Arguments For Deity
Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations, and we come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee. That illustrates what the psycho-analysts so much emphasize -- the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times.
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say that there would be no right and wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of the agnostics ["Gnostics" -- CW] took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the Devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.

The Argument For The Remedying Of Injustice
Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of the universe that we know there is a great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth, and so they say that there must be a God, and that there must be Heaven and Hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I only know this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here then the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue: "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say: "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment;" and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say: "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one." Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about is not really what moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. (AMEN ZA OVO)
Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God.

The Character Of Christ
I now want to say a few words upon a topic which I often think is not quite sufficiently dealt with by Rationalists, and that is the question whether Christ was the best and the wisest of men. It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree that that was so. I do not myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. I do not know that I could go with Him all the way, but I could go with Him much further than most professing Christians can. You will remember that He said: "Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-Tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. I have no doubt that the present Prime Minister, for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense.
Then there is another point which I consider excellent. You will remember that Christ said, "Judge not lest ye be judged." That principle I do not think you would find was popular in the law courts of Christian countries. I have known in my time quite a number of judges who were very earnest Christians, and they none of them felt that they were acting contrary to Christian principles in what they did. Then Christ says, "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away." This is a very good principle. Your chairman has reminded you that we are not here to talk politics, but I cannot help observing that the last general election was fought on the question of how desirable it was to turn away from him that would borrow of thee, so that one must assume that the liberals and conservatives of this country are composed of people who do not agree with the teaching of Christ, because they certainly did very emphatically turn away on that occasion.
Then there is one other maxim of Christ which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor." That is a very excellent maxim, but, as I say, it is not much practiced. All these, I think, are good maxims, although they are a little difficult to live up to. I do not profess to live up to them myself; but then, after all, I am not by way of doing so, and it is not quite the same thing as for a Christian.

Defects In Christ's Teaching
Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels; and here I may say that one is not concerned with the historical question. Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought his second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance: "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then He says: "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of his earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians really did believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In this respect clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and he certainly was not superlatively wise.

The Moral Problem
Then you come to moral questions. There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance, find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him.
You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell." That was said to people who did not like His preaching. It is not really to my mind quite the best tone, and there are a great many of these things about hell. There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come." That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of this sort into the world.
Then Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He continues: "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world, and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
There are other things of less importance. There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when he came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever'.... and Peter.... saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to History. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects. (YEAH, LIKE, TOTALLY SO!)

The Emotional Factor
As I said before, I do not think that the real reason that people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. You know, of course, the parody of that argument in Samuel Butler's book, Erewhon Revisited. You will remember that in Erewhon there is a certain Higgs who arrives in a remote country, and after spending some time there he escapes from that country in a balloon. Twenty years later he comes back to that country and finds a new religion in which he is worshipped under the name of the "Sun Child"; and it is said that he ascended into heaven. He finds that the feast of the Ascension is about to be celebrated, and he hears Professors Hanky and Panky say to each other that they never set eyes on the man Higgs, and they hope they never will; but they are the High Priests of the religion of the Sun Child. He is very indignant, and he comes up to them, and he says: "I am going to expose all this humbug and tell the people of Erewhon that it was only I, the man Higgs, and I went up in a balloon." He was told, "You must not do that, because all the morals of this country are bound round this myth, and if they once know that you did not ascend into heaven they will all become wicked"; and so he is persuaded of that and he goes quietly away.
That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or ever mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

How The Churches Have Retarded Progress
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so, I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life," and no steps of any sort must be taken by that woman to prevent herself from giving birth to syphilitic children. This is what the Catholic church says. I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.
That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which at the present moment the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

Fear, The Foundation Of Religion
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

Bemtidrzavu, ovo ni ja ne mogu da citam. Ali buduci da je Rasl, moracu lijepo da odstampam i procitam.
A kad smo kod njega, kada sam polagao filozofiju na bogoslovskom, imao sam pitanje o univerzalijama, pa sam se lagano prosetao kroz cijeli srednji vijek i dotakao se time i dokaza o postojanju Boga Anzelma Kanterberijskog. Jedan od njih glasi: Pojam boga podrazumijeva da je on savrsen, te ako zamislimo da on ne postoji, on ne bi bio savrsen, te mora da postoji. Na to nisam mogao a da ne citiram Raslov komentar na taj dokaz: mi boga i ako zamisljamo kao postojeceg i savrsenog, i dalje ga samo zamisljamo, cime taj dokaz nista ne dokazuje.
Jebeno genijalno.  
I da, dobio sam 10.  

[Ghoul]

Ej gulo, a TESLA, to ti je onaj sto je izmislio struju...

Uvek sam mislio da su jadni oni koji, kao ti, Dexo, nalaze svoj identitet pre svega u svojim precima, veri, naciji, koji sebe definišu pre svega time što se krste sa 2 ili 3 prsta (ako se uopšte krste – a budaletine koje tako 'razmišljaju' se po pravilu krste, odnosno religioznost je obavezna kolokacija svih tradicionalističkih, desničarskih, patrijarhalnih, zadrtih nekrofilnih obožavalaca kulta predaka: i ovim ne želim da kažem da su sve religiozne osobe budale, već samo da su skoro sve budale – religiozne. Odnosno - ako je neko tradicionalistička, desničarska, patrijarhalna, zadrto nekrofilna lujka za kult predaka – mo'š se kladiti da će i svoju Veru da ističe u prvi plan i prči se kao veliki hrišćanin, musliman, hindus ili već tako neki bednik).
Samo stoka nalazi sreću i ispunjenost u krdu; samo ništaci hrle u toplinu stada, ne bi li svoj smrad pomešali sa ostalom stokom i izjednačili se s njom. Zato me najviše nervira ljudska stoka koja svoje nepostojeće jastvo zasniva na unapred formiranim konceptima koje su mu utuvili u glavicu u detinjstvu, a glavica bila preslaba da ikad nešto od toga preispita ili se zapita ima li možda nešto izvan 'našeg' dvorišta, ima li možda nešto dobro i izvan ovog čopora u kome ti se zalomilo da budeš rođen.

Dakle, mo'š ti do sudnjega dana da se kurčiš na kolko metra od susreta koje glavudže ti je rodni dom, koji je veliki junak rodom iz tvog sela, kolko je švaba ili partizana ubio tvoj deda, itd. to tebe kao pojedinca neće ni za jotu da učini boljim; niti će pripadnost ne znam kojoj veri, naciji, tradiciji. Ako si kreten – kao što jesi – džaba ti i indigo krv u venama. A nešto i ne znam da ti je familija išta 'plemenitija' od moje da bi se njome kurčio.

To što su neki beskrajno superiorniji ljudi OD TEBE bili, pored ostalog, i vernici – ne čini tebe, dexo, koji se IZDAJEŠ za vernika (a sledbenik si Hrista kolko što sam i ja sledbenik Bude – dakle, sporadično, at best!) ni približno bližim tom krugu velikana. NJIHOVA vera, i tvoja vera, nemaju skoro nikakav zajednički imenitelj. Ako misliš da ti je to neka prečica do kruga besmrtnika – malko si se zajebo. Nije dovoljno da se ponekad prekrstiš i uz svaku čašicu džibre izgovoriš 'Ajd bože pomogni' pa da, samo zbog toga, postaneš ravan jednom Njutnu ili Tesli. Usput, nalazim beskrajno zabavnim da se za Teslu po pravilu u grudi busaju pretežno copine koje bi, u životu, nekoga poput njega –asketskog, moralnog, neiskvarenog, excentričnog – kidali od zajebancije i ponižavanja kao jadnika i paćenika. Kad džiber poput tebe uzima Teslu da bi svoj džiberluk 'uzdigao', odnosno sbe nekakvom nakaradnom logikom izdigao do nivoa ljudi koje ne može ni da pojmi – to je onda veoma tužno. Zar misliš da bi neko kao Tesla, npr, sa tobom poželeo da provede i 2 minuta?

Inače, Tesla je 'izmislio' struju isto ko što je Njutn izmislio gravitaciju (i delišes jabuke) a Kopernik – ček, šta on beše izmisleo? Zemlju, il Sunce? Il oba? Ajd podseti me, ipak su to tvoja 'duhovna braća'...
Vernici ko i ti.
Ti ko i oni.
Kad bi se zezali.