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  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:50 am on March 8, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , ,   

    Religion 101: God as Superhero, & a Case of Species Exceptionalism to go, please… 

    American Exceptionalism? Meh, I’ll pass on that, sounds like a weak concept from the get-go, the definition of ‘American’ subject to the shifting southwestern sands of borders and politics and vaguely articulated definitions… to say nothing of the continents from which we ALL came: Asia, Europe, and Africa. But ‘species exceptionalism’? I’ll buy that. We are certainly exceptional, for better or worse, all contradictions considered…

    We are the love monkeys, we are the hate monkeys, we are the smart monkeys, we are the stupid monkeys, we are the happy monkeys, we are the sad monkeys, we are the f*ck monkeys, we are the abstinence monkeys, we are the drunk monkeys, we are the abstinence monkeys, we are the drug monkeys, we are the sober monkeys, we are the music monkeys, we are the sober monkeys, etc…

    Cut the DNA deck, re-shuffle, and the results would likely never be the same—humanity. Re-arrange the continents and it would’ve all been different. Out of nowhere comes a butterfly to flutter by and there goes the neighborhood—pure chaos. Cue Mandelbrot. This is something routinely overlooked in almost all discussions of extra-terrestrial life: the odds of intelligent life on THIS planet are infinitesimally small, yet—here we are. Cue Darwin. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:56 am on March 1, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: CHRISTIANITY, eye for an eye, Hammurabi, , ,   

    Religion 101: Revenge is not sweet, not like turning the other cheek…. 

    “An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth,” is probably the most misunderstood phrase in all human history, its modern implications suggesting—no, NECESSITATING—revenge, at any and all costs. We modern Westerners especially like to accuse Islamic cultures of this, suggesting that they are violent from the get-go, and obsessed with revenge. Now I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to find it in the Qur’an, considering that it is already present in the prior two editions of the Great Abrahamic Monotheistic Trilogy: the Torah (Old Testament) and the New Testament…

    This doctrine of vendetta is probably better expressed by the Spanish ‘sangre se paga con sangre’: “blood is re-paid with blood”. Yuk. That is truly a sad commentary coming from what was once the heartland of the Christian diaspora, leaving little doubt as to its intents, blood suggestive of life itself, with little subtlety or nuance as to what the actual loss is, and the extent to which someone has suffered damage. This is blood feud, ethnic cleansing, to the victor belong the spoils. ‘Spoils’, indeed. Under this system of escalating violence, all will surely be lost, later if not sooner…

    That is EXACTLY what the law of ‘Eye for an eye’ was originally intended to prevent, as first enunciated by Hammurabi in ancient Babylonia. Actually the best translation would be “ONLY an eye for an eye, and ONLY a tooth for a tooth.” I had this explained to me long ago, and assumed that it would soon become de rigueur in the marketplace of ideas, but no, the concept is still bandied about as the Muslim approach to eventual world brutalization and domination. True, the ‘jihadis‘ don’t help by cutting off the hands of thieves, but that is something entirely different, and truly barbaric… (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:20 am on February 22, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY,   

    Vaccinated by Religion, Innoculated by Love… 

    vaccination : Nurse holding syringe isolated on white backgroundAtheists are lucky. They get all the benefits of religion with none of the sacrifice: no long dark nights of the soul, no wrestling with questions of good and evil, or right and wrong, no giving to unnamed charities and the nameless homeless simply because ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I.’ No God = no grace; or not much, anyway. True, some secular humanists have adapted the same play-list without the figure-head, but still: more later on that….

    Many an atheist will proudly proclaim the stupidity, ignorance or ‘religulousness’ of religion, while preparing to fly 3000 miles to go hear some half-assed R&R band play some half-assed three-chord comfort-food ‘classic rock’ as perpetrated by some sketchy characters of questionable habits and likely moral turpitude, simply because forty years ago, all that felt good: ‘the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian’, etc; yeah, right. Life is more than sensation, I reckon, thank God… 🙂

    Vaccinations have been big news lately, and with the latest deadly measles outbreaks, the concept is worth analyzing. The deal is: as long as ninety percent or so of the populace is vaccinated, then everyone is vaccinated, by default. This is not just idle theory or abstract speculation, but can and has been proven many times over graphically and mathematically and in society itself. (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 2:15 pm on February 22, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      lou reed said music was his religion. yes, babs and her church family prayed for me at a time i was scheduled to have a tetrotoma cyst removed from left ovary. when i went in for the surgery, the cyst cd not be seen. those type (tet) have hair and teeth and such in them so yeah, you cd say i have some religion, it may be believing that other people have religion and i latch on. still believe nothing from nothing leaves nothing, hence, once you’re gone you’re gone. as for now i will continue to register voters.

      you tube lou reed’s entire album, MAGIC AND LOSS, if you can and if you do, plz let me know what you think. bye for now.

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 11:33 am on February 23, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      good album… ever heard the Daniel Lanois song ‘the Maker’ or his first album ‘Acadie’, out about the same time as ‘Magic and Loss”? Check it out…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:14 am on February 15, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , ,   

    Origins of Religion, Symbolism and Happyness in Magic, Meatloaf, and Sex 

    Image result for ekekoLaugh at me if you will, but I swear that one of my earliest memories of life on this planet go straight back to the womb, via a series of vivid abstract childhood dreams characterized by light penetrating dark that I can explain no other way. Fast forward a bit and that same dreamy child is wowing the crowds (i.e. mother and father) with his cuteness when asked what he learned in Sunday school that week. As always the answer was the same: “magic.” Cue laughter.

    They didn’t laugh so hard at my answer when others asked what’s for Sunday dinner: “meatloaf.” Hey, I was just being honest. Don’t shoot the messenger. But you’d need axes to cut stares when I laid down the word ‘sex’ at the weekly Scrabble game with my father, though I quickly added (with a sh*t-eating grin), “that’s a word, right?” Fast forward to the present and I’m still being honest, though I less often play for laughs (still get a few, though) and fewer and fewer people think I’m cute… but that’s okay. I’m not trying to win any popularity contests anyway (don’t forget to press that ‘like’ button BTW). (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:24 am on February 1, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY,   

    Religion 101: The Limits of Love… or Why the West needs Buddhism—and Islam 

    We all know what it’s like to be in love: that crush—of feelings and desires and… and… suffering, yes, suffering (we’re talking about passion, remember, as in the Passion of Christ OR the passion of hot steamy nights). There’s nothing like it in the world, absolutely nothing. It will make you do the craziest things or go to the craziest lengths, all for love, or the act thereof…

    But is this something to base a religion upon? If I remember correctly (from last week or last month or last year) there were two (2) equally effective ways of dealing with love’s ‘crush’: acting on those desires directly or simply waiting for it to pass (time heals all things, remember, including random bouts of passion). It usually does. That was one of the rites of passage in ‘growing up’, after all, wasn’t it? You never really wanted to ‘die for it’, now, did you? That’s just an expression, you know…

    Passion as a basis of religion is another matter. All sufferings of Christ aside, isn’t the willingness of various fundamentalist Islamic ‘jihadis‘ to die for their religion something we Westerners generally abhor and chastise them for, accusing them of all sorts of perversions and misinterpretations of divine intent? Yet it was Jesus, only one of Islam’s many prophets, who clearly saw such actions as appropriate. Muhammad (Mohammed, Mehmed, etc.) didn’t die for anyone’s sins, after all. (More …)

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:50 am on January 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , CHRISTIANITY, ,   

    Buddhism 101, a Logarithm Grape-fruit: Sci-Fi and Religion, vices and verses… 

    People are desperate; people are starving; people line boulevards scrounging for crumbs and morsels; the homeless drift through the streets of nameless cities like zombies on life support, more and more keep coming and coming, without end middle or beginning, living in the moment like animals in search of pleasure and pasture; office workers adjust their ties and tie up their arms in expectation of junk, mail arriving from the four corners of the earth in bits and bytes, accounts payable and receivable in silver and slivers of pie-charts and Boolean logic…

    People perform sex acts on web-cams for pennies and tips, putting themselves into strange postures for the amusement of raucous crowds on opposite sides of interactive cameras, audiences and performers trading places in the name of mutual mastering and slaving—things once illegal: baiting, goading, pleading and ultimately pleasuring each other in temporary transitory sensations, tripping the light fantastic, skipping the light fandango; while people hurl insults at each other in Internet chat rooms; such is modern life in the Western lands and the cities of red nights… (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 4:34 pm on January 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      in our county in MS, i have located many church food and clothing pantries. not for profit. the gov. of love, on the other hand gives minimal food stamps and a small bag of food monthly, to every household. it is a big time when the bags contain salmon, for croquettes. usually soybean oil, raisins and mixed veggies. Buddhism, huh, the xtians sure enough have good food that will not make you sick, after weds. services, at noon, people group up in small circles and testify, i mean in tongues. . r still growing thin and forgetful but we are fine, you, Tang? bi-polar, know that one. you are right, why not?

    • hardie karges's avatar

      hardie karges 5:47 pm on January 18, 2015 Permalink | Reply

      Maybe too late for Buddhism to save us all from ourselves; my only concern at this point is survival of the species…

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 10:27 am on December 21, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , , ,   

    Christmas Goes Viral: Festivus for the Rest of Us 

    Babel on in Babylon, the Hanging Gardens (as imagined) and the Tower of Babel

    Everything is a caricature of itself now, and entertainment is king. So Christmas in America is when we all get to return to our childhood fantasies, beyond sugar plums and into consumer gluttony—or not. If Thanksgiving morphs simple thanks toward God into thanks for the goods, then Christmas goes beyond celebrating the birth of Christ into celebrating the birth of consumerism. It doesn’t have to be that way.

    George Costanza’s dad on the old ‘Seinfeld’ series made alternative celebrations official, but I’m starting to warm up to the many ‘orphan’ events that now spring up around this time of year to give the rest of us some reason for the season: simple social camaraderie and spiritual communion, nuclear family optional. ‘Nuclear’ can sometimes be dangerous, after all.

    Christmas—and Christianity—is not alone in pushing their holidays to absurd viral proportions, though. Other countries and religions do it, too. Anyone who’s gone to Thailand for the Songkran water fest (read: ‘water fight’) is witnessing the modern spectacle of what started off as a simple dousing of water as a symbol of renewal. And I hear that the daylight fasting that occurs during Islamic Ramadan says nothing about what happens after dark. This is cultural neoteny, the evolutionary regression to childhood (in biology, literally the decreasing age of reproduction). (More …)

     
    • mary's avatar

      mary 9:52 am on December 21, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      and a happy winter solstice to you. no xmas for us-mas. the shortest day of the year-grand, it means they will be getting longer, if that is a good thing or not i am uncertain. pax

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 11:28 am on December 21, 2014 Permalink | Reply

        Yes yes yes, it is all good if we want it to be that way and act accordingly…

    • Esther Fabbricante's avatar

      Esther Fabbricante 6:54 am on December 24, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      Family is first with me – 31 members including in-laws and step children..
      Merry Christmas to you.

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:22 am on December 14, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , ,   

    Awesomenessificationizing in a World w/o Him 

    “Awesome”: the word defines our lazy consumer/consumed age, selfies self-centered, Christmas especially, speaking volumes while explaining nothing, an idle exclamation and simultaneous proclamation of all things hubristic, ourselves extrapolated outward for viewing and public worship—self-worship—the worst kind, “awesome” not to be confused with “awful” its evil twin, same word really, merely inflected with opposing sentiment, neither of them even in the same emotional league as that original feeling of awe that inspired it, and which inspires millions, that feeling of smallness in witnessing grandiosity…

    So how did the same word, and same original feel, come to mean two such opposite things? That’s what it is to be human, dahling, language—and thoughts—mutating at the speed of sound in direct proportion to the distance from the source, so much like biological Evolution that it’s hard to see them as anything other or different, as often declared by scientific minds specializing in such fields with (pedi)grees much higher than my own…

    We humans are a rather imperfect lot, at best blessed, at worst cursed, in reality most likely somewhere in between, the recipe for fulfillment in direct proportion to intent, a sliding scale of satisfaction, hard to accomplish anything without really intending it, or retrofitting the logic, intent being the key, left in this slow cool world to fend for ourselves or die trying… (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 1:55 pm on December 14, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      awesome, iconic and literally, words that stick in under and around my craw. do people not read the dictionary anymore?

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 8:28 am on December 7, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY,   

    Let’s Get Physical, Living in the Material World, etc…. 

    Life is just full of cliches, isn’t it? Sometimes it seems like we’re just replaying silly love songs as the soundtrack to our lives, all about making it getting it spending it f*cking it and then doing it all over again. This is the world of stuff, possessions and possession; to get spiritual is counter-indicated here at the speed of sound: percussion and repercussions. That’s more fitting for the speed of light: the real world, light electricity and spirit flowing in unison where the destination is indeterminate and not even consequential, where the flow itself is paramount… (More …)

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 6:19 am on December 8, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      York sez there is something beautiful about dementia, that it is like an adult returning to womb. Childlike beauty. Satisfaction surely awaits us all. Today york and I travel couple hours s to a funeral, memorial or what have ye. 59 y.o man w Down syndrome passed. I was a trader of jewelery and antiques but am getting out. No money to be had to be passed to the antique store owners, this town is flat. I will miss it, may get back to it. Then again I wd probably rather read or reread lotsa books. Pax. K

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 5:11 am on November 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , CHRISTIANITY, , , Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas   

    Why Christians Need Buddhism—and Islam 

    We’re the love monkeys we’re the hate monkeys, we’re the f*ck monkeys we’re the abstention monkeys, we’re the drunk monkeys we’re the sober monkeys, we’re the selfish monkeys we’re the caring monkeys, we’re the active monkeys we’re the passive monkeys, we’re the hot monkeys we’re the cool monkeys, we’re the species that desperately needs some law and order to make sense of it all—or maybe just some Buddhist wisdom or some Muslim discipline.

    There are just too many contradictions to being human to leave it all to chance. We need some direction. We Westerners, Americans in particular, love to feel superior about our upbringing and traditions, but what works for us—or not—doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else. We hold up democracy, capitalism, and Christianity like the great trinity that all should follow, or else, lest they should suffer the consequences of their own ignorance. This is unfortunate. This is chaos.

    There are limits to love, even Christian love. Christianity elevates the reproductive act to the paradigm for life, as if everything should match that intensity and bliss, Protestants favoring the foreplay, while Catholics just settle for more babies. Our passion should rule our lives, so goes the theory, no need for wisdom, little need for discipline. Welcome to the 21st century. Welcome to the Apocalypse. I hope it’s not too late.

    “Live in the moment” is the great mantra of the age, sounding all Buddhist and enlightened, but coming off and being carried out more like carpe diem—seize the day—in Roman fashion, drunk and in love, giving no thought to the morrow. This is not Buddhist mindfulness—i.e. awareness. This is Western recklessness—wreckfulness. Christian pop culture seconds the emotion by elevating Roman romantic love above Greek agape—brotherly love—which is closer to the true Christian meaning.

    The Church’s founding fathers quickly realized the limits of love, and Saint Augustine mixed in as much of Plato as any epistle to any apostle would allow, just like St. Thomas later did with Aristotle, trying to match content with form, rationality with emotion. That’s a nice try, but still not enough. The Age of Reason was no match for the Age of Capitalism and the doctrine of democracy and their Christian handmaidens, and the resulting chaos which would follow, which has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. We’re not facing extinction because of anything Buddhists or Muslims have done wrong.

    This is why the world needs Buddhism. This is why we need Islam. God takes over where Science leaves off, just as intuition takes over where logic fails. We don’t need more doctrines and dogmas. We need cool heads and warm hearts, common sense and discipline. Our love of money is leading us to a no-man’s-land of self-imposed doom, an air-conditioned nightmare as we drive over the cliff, pedal to the metal, and the seat-belts unfastened. May God’s love be with us—if He exists. May Buddhist wisdom and Islamic discipline be with us regardless.

     
    • Kc's avatar

      Kc 10:57 am on November 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply

      Semantics, literalism, God, a he? If you don’t believe in anything but darkness, what is there to lose?

      • hardie karges's avatar

        hardie karges 4:28 pm on November 23, 2014 Permalink | Reply

        They call God a ‘He’; I don’t… Come over to the light whenever you like…

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