Subject: Re: Is LISP dying? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/08/12 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.forth Message-ID: <3143457448078355@naggum.no> * Ken Deboy <glockr@alternavision.com> | You're confusing Christians with people who pick (an arbitrary) religion | to justify their evil ways. I'm interested in a simple, straight-forward way to keep the two apart, for it seems to me that religions are the best vehicles to further evil: those who act out of a belief without doubt will also not stop acting when people who had retained the capacity to doubt would have stopped. to remain a good person while being Christian is a lot harder than to remain a good person without religious beliefs -- there's no one you can ask forgiveness or to take responsiblity for your actions, there's no illusion of a greater purpose that defends acts of evil and destruction (like bombing abortion clinics or killing believers in other religions) or to fill the void of a meaningless, wasted life, and there's no way you can avoid being responsible for your own actions. without a forgiving "God", your only reference is HUMAN RIGHTS, and they cannot be forfeited or reneged because some "God" told you to. there's no hope at all of somehow making up for your evil deeds by a prayer or a silly conversion to a religious belief: you have to be aware of what you do and why. a Christian can do evil, stupid things and just cry and ask forgiveness over and over again. non-believers can't do that: they have to _think_. this is hard, too, but it's much harder to be good when you _don't_ think. still, I have the highest admiration for those who remain good people despite being Christian: it shows real character to put yourself in the midst of a deeply evil temptation that doesn't exist at all without the unconditional forgiveness and _not_ abuse the ability to be forgiven for everything you do or the ability to point to "God's will" to explain your evil actions -- whether it's true or not does is irrelevant to victims and perpetrator alike. for a non-believer, the temptation doesn't exist: you can't even blame "society" for your actions, anymore, although some socialists tried to put society in God's place just that way. it failed, for good reason: there's a limit to other people's power to cause people to act irrationally, quite contrary to the power of an omnipotent "God". on the other hand, people who think they are good _because_ they are Christians are likely to commit unspeakable evils in the name of their religion because they are no longer fully responsible for their actions: they are somehow _exempt_ from normal ethical considerations. _this_ is why Christianity is bad per se -- no person should ever even have the _opportunity_ to find an excuse for not being responsible for his own actions. the only thing that keeps Christians from being bad is that they were good people to start with; since most people are good to begin with, it seems there are more good Christians than bad: the interesting measure is that there is a far higher ratio of bad people to good within Christianity than without, not the least because our society accepts any murderer or violent criminal who "repents" -- a fat lot of good _that_ does for the victim and his family! good people don't need religions, but it also doesn't harm them, it just makes it a little harder to remain good. bad people need religions in order to pretend to be good, as most people have a very deep psychological need to feel they are good people. Christianity is bad because it gives bad people the ability to believe they are good even when that is not the case at all. moreover, Christianity is bad because it _requires_ good people to cover for the bad people among them. this is shared with all of the violent religions, including Islam. it is also shared with Communism, which keeps the belief that the ideology is clean and good, practitioners not. if you are always willing to remove a factor when something goes wrong, you will never understand what the real causes are, and nothing helps prevent such understanding better than an undoubtable belief that the ideology or theology is above reproach by definition: it leads to a hunt for scapegoats, too. (the very concept of a scapegoat is evil, and it is no surprise at all that it was invented by a religion: if _you_ aren't good, at least you can sacrifice someone else to make up for it.) the incredibly destructive belief that the spirit is somehow good when the flesh is evil can also be created only in athmosphere of religion. if you don't have a religious belief, the force of imagination necessary to sever the two from eachother cannot arise. what none of these belief systems understand is that some people are bad only when they can find an excuse, and they find it in the "spirit". however, when they can't find any, they just won't do the bad things. to some people, jealousy, rage, alcohol, etc, provide temporary excuses, but no excuse is as permanent as the imaginary forgiveness of an omnipotent God, and no force is stronger than that which keeps people believing in that which keeps them from realizing they are truly bad people. in this sense, Christianity _needs_ for people to sin in order to forgive them and thus keep them hostage, and what better way to ensure that they cannot leave Christianity and the forgiveness of their "loving" God by reminding every child and every believer that they are _all_ sinners? let me summarize by saying that I think most people are good people, even though a lot fewer Christians are good people than non-believers in religions originating in the Near East, and that any Christian who is also a good person deserves _praise_ for having remained unaffected by his religion, but if it's hard to be good within Christianity, people should realize that without the temptation of unconditional forgiveness, it's a lot easier not ever to do bad things in the first place, the love is true and devoid of blackmail and it can be _deserved_ for a change, there's no prospect of spending an eternity either in Hell or in Heaven: your life just ends, and it's up to you to fill it with meaning in the meantime. and above all: you have no duties you don't accept yourself and no power to instill duties upon others in the name of any "power". there is no innate guilt for any original sin: you are _not_ a sinner if you do not actually commit evil deeds. if you commit destructive deeds by mistake or are the victim of one, neither revenge nor punishment does any _good_; you don't forgive or expect forgiveness: you rectify and expect restitution and you judge people not according to what they have done, but according to what they have learned from their mistakes and what they are likely to do in future -- that's all you could possibly care about, anyway: the past is a fact and you cannot change it or act as if it is any different than it is without peril to your sanity or integrity. the only _sin_ is not to do your very best at all times to learn from the past, the only _evil_ to be inconsiderate about other people, whether by purpose or carelessness. do _not_ follow you heart: it's a measure of how well you have done so far, not a navigational tool for the future: don't _feel_ bad, think it over and just _do_ better. and remember this: only fundamentally evil people will deny anyone the opportunity to improve, rectify their mistakes, and move on. your life is _not_ your past: the only life you have is your future. the worst crime you can commit towards anyone is to rob them of their future, and the only thing you can do to one bereft of his future is to restore it, for real, not through the trickery and illusion that religions provide. people who think in terms of vengeance, punishment, revenge, and who hate other people enough to bereave them of their future out of moral anger will never understand what any of this means until they understand that it is the belief in their own unconditional forgiveness for anything they do that causes them to believe that anyone who acts contrary to what they want should not have a future. why is the belief in the death penalty so much stronger among Christians? why is the same belief in the same death penalty for other crimes not as acceptable to these Christians? why is it OK to kill criminals in revenge, but not OK to kill Salman Rushdie in revenge for his opinions? the sorry fact is that forgiveness is a GOOD way to deal with a fundamentally SAVAGE view of man where punishment is a proper response to evil deeds, but the solution is never to engage in forgiveness, to stop being savages, to stop believing in and blaming and appealing to supernatural forces and just start to think. if you can't become evil if you are Christian (as Christians claim when they refuse to consider the Christian beliefs of evil people), neither can you _become_ good, so your Christian beliefs is NOT what will save you; being a good person is. all the many gods mankind has invented over the years agree. trust me on this. it doesn't matter what you believe, so you might as well stop wasting your time on it and especially on defending whatever religion you believe in, just prove that you are a good person despite it -- that's all anybody else should worry about, too. (someone accused me of posting "the world according to me" articles some time ago. since I am already accused of it, at least I deserve it now.) #:Erik -- (defun pringles (chips) (loop (pop chips)))