It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, No. 121
Well said Author! The Bible and the Koran were created during a time when stories were orally passed down over thousands of years.
Stories constantly morphed and changed over time, and the Bible is a collection of these. This is why it has the nearly identical flood story from Gilgamesh, and why Jesus has the same characteristics as Dionysus, Osiris, Horus, Mithra, and Krishna.
The contradictions and immorality in the stories are not evidence that the biblical god Yahweh, was flawed or evil, but rather that humans invented him, just like the thousands of other gods that we used to but no longer believe in.
Rrr… 🙂
One of my favourite film’s, only spoilt by the love interest being Andi Mcdowell and no insult to her, she is the spitting image of my mother at the same age, so finding her attractive would be a bit creepy…
I stumbled into the cock and bull, seeking respite from the sleet.
the air was filled with wafts of ale, no smoke, a welcome retreat.
the murmur of the customers seated at the bar
sounded of many dialects from near, and some from far.
the folks were not belligerent, in fact quite warm and sweet,
the kind of folks you’d like to meet, coming in from the street.
I took a seat and ordered up a pig foot and a beer,
and then the person next to me whispered in my ear;
you look like an american where beer is weak and chilled
but if a local was served that stuff the barmaid could get killed.
we like to quaff our ales directly from the cellar,
and if you think that’s queer, my friend, you are the strangest fella.
so if you like good company and don’t mind warm ale,
you’ll love this place, drink up my friend, and tell us all a tale.
Post Dog me owd china. Real ale has made a comeback but the real revolution is “Craft Beer” and that is always pushed through a cooler. I am going into my local “House of Hops” this afternoon where the SALT brewery has a tap takeover with six beers on the tap board. Mind you some of them will probably be in excess of 6% ABV…cheers everybody!
Never having been across the pond I cannot attest to what is happening in UK with the craft beer scene. Apparently good taste has made its way around the globe long before Budweiser and Coors could throw in the towel. What I know of cellar temp brew is from WWII and my dad’s (B-17 pilot) recollections of the pubs at that time. It was so cold during the last years of the war a warm brew would surely be preferred. For me, now, a west coast ipa will have to suffice. Cold.
The only time I was in the UK was for technical meetings in Yeovil, Somerset, in May 2018. There was a nice traditional pub where I had some bitter before going off for supper. It was called The Butcher’s Arms. Somerset also has good local cider.
I also spent an afternoon in London, first getting a couple of bagels on Brick Lane, one with lox and the other with salt beef. Followed by an IPA at Brew Dogs.
The beer was good, but what stood out was the friendliness of the locals in both places. I was only there a week, but I enjoyed it all.
Brew Dog…those are in every major town/city in blighty? Friendly? You should try the North mate, we are miles more friendly than those southern Kents… 🙂
@Ophelia Benson – funny you mention that. I’m currently reading “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross”. It’s a book (above my payscale) by a philologist, John Allegro, that connects the more ancient cults of fertility to Christianity via linguistic evolution.
It’s a lot more complicated than my summary, but what I get so far is that Christianity is essentially the mythological creation of people under the hallucinatory effect of psylocybin.
It’s entertaining, but dense enough that it is actually work to read it.
Psilocybin!? The wikipedia article says Amanita muscaria, which is ibotenic acid and its decarboxyl, muscimol. Psilocybin mushrooms apparently occur in Europe, but for whatever reason seem to have been of less interest there. The article says the author lost his university job over the book, and the publisher apologized for printing it. “… possibly the single most ludicrous book on Jesus scholarship by a qualified academic.” Now, Amanita muscaria and Santa Claus, that’s practically an established fact.
I’ve had IPAs from various places, and I have become somewhat skeptical, if it isn’t from here in the Pacific Northwest of North America, in which I will admit northwern California. They run from 6% to 10% ABV, and they’re practically a meal course. Elsewhere it seems that brewers could use some guidance – thin, harsh, unsatisfying.
@Donn I’m not a scholar and I don’t play one on TV (or YouTube, as the days may be now). But as I mentioned, it’s an entertaining red since it makes Christianity a lot more “primitive”, in the sense that it draws parallels to much earlier cults of fertility as. Or, more mundanely, Christianity explained as a the result of junkie dreams 🙂
I’m not the only one who has thought about the possibilities of Syrian rue as the Abrahamic “entheogen”. Apparently there’s also an Acacia species down there with some of the same good stuff. Syrian rue has harmala alkaloids, like one of the components of the occasionally famous ayahuasca of the upper Amazon. The stuff might be kind of tricky to use, compared to magic mushrooms – I don’t know if harmaline etc. is any good on its own, or where you get the DMT-related parts of the equation, but your average shaman is usually able to manage.
Donn, I know you coined it, but that’s a great word, “entheogen”. In a primitive society, a medicine man or woman that knew their stuff would be respected.
Nowadays, since we can get entheogens in pill form, Moses could just take two tablets ( 😉 ) to see god.
The neologism entheogen was coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists and scholars of mythology (Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Richard Evans Schultes, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson).
(… from wikipedia) In that article, ancient Jews are supposed to have possibly used cannabis, and there’s some discussion of mushrooms in early Christianity.
There is hard archeological evidence that psychotrophic drugs were used by the earliest hominids. Again, scholars of the pointless religious books are snookered by real science as its clearly obvious that their dearly cherished scripture, is just the bronze age equivalence of todays “Love Island” scripts….
The problem isn’t simply that they are badly written; but they are hopelessly out of date. They were written (by people who could write) for people who could read, during a time when slavery was not just accepted, but everywhere. Before the rights of man were declared, certainly before the rights of woman. And they have not been updated. The 10 commandments are very useful for the slave owner, head of household, who wants to control his family, servants and slaves.
Morally and ethically, anything written before 1946 (the date of the UN Declaration of Human Rights) has to be treated with extreme suspicion.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is basically just a wish list that reflects the cultural prejudices of the authors. As are all such declarations, unless the rights declared are actually encoded into law, which makes those rights, at least for the time being, real.
I have a real problem with “rights think” actually, because the temptation is always to try to further your policy goals by creating new rights, effecting declaring debate to be off limits (because we’re talking about rights here, and rights are not open to debate!)
A legal right is cool, but I think it’s fair to say that everyone has notions about rights that can’t practically be written into law. The US Declaration of Independence claims self evident rights including life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. One may wonder what that even means, but seemed to make sense at the time, and the UN declaration seems to have picked up a similar sentiment but settles for “security of person” instead “pursuit of happiness.”
I suppose that when it gets to the right to have paid holidays, free education, etc. it’s a fairly clear mandate that is guaranteed not to be observed as a worldwide societal consensus. I’ve seen advocates point to a right to housing included here, and therefore there’s a right to housing. Maybe there is … but what kind of housing? Doesn’t seem to get into much detail there.
Choirboy – I can’t say I have read “The Rights of Man”, or “Common Sense”, but Thomas Paine is also supposed to have had a hand in the original US constitution. A deeply flawed document, very much of its time, that permitted slavery, and denied democracy to most of the inhabitants – women, slaves and native Americans. Unlike the Bible, Qran etc. there are ways of amending the US constitution and bringing it up to date.
Choirboy. I haven’t read them. I drew no conclusion. I criticised the (original) US constitution. Not the books you like so much. I am aware that Thomas Paine was opposed to slavery. But the times did not permit any real progress if there was to be a Union of States.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
August 1, 2012
They forgot to do drugs before reading the holy books. It’s essential.
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, No. 121
Well said Author! The Bible and the Koran were created during a time when stories were orally passed down over thousands of years.
Stories constantly morphed and changed over time, and the Bible is a collection of these. This is why it has the nearly identical flood story from Gilgamesh, and why Jesus has the same characteristics as Dionysus, Osiris, Horus, Mithra, and Krishna.
The contradictions and immorality in the stories are not evidence that the biblical god Yahweh, was flawed or evil, but rather that humans invented him, just like the thousands of other gods that we used to but no longer believe in.
Groundhog day….
M27: What, again? I thought that was tomorrow!
“God-awful books” Heh heh
Rrr… 🙂
One of my favourite film’s, only spoilt by the love interest being Andi Mcdowell and no insult to her, she is the spitting image of my mother at the same age, so finding her attractive would be a bit creepy…
I stumbled into the cock and bull, seeking respite from the sleet.
the air was filled with wafts of ale, no smoke, a welcome retreat.
the murmur of the customers seated at the bar
sounded of many dialects from near, and some from far.
the folks were not belligerent, in fact quite warm and sweet,
the kind of folks you’d like to meet, coming in from the street.
I took a seat and ordered up a pig foot and a beer,
and then the person next to me whispered in my ear;
you look like an american where beer is weak and chilled
but if a local was served that stuff the barmaid could get killed.
we like to quaff our ales directly from the cellar,
and if you think that’s queer, my friend, you are the strangest fella.
so if you like good company and don’t mind warm ale,
you’ll love this place, drink up my friend, and tell us all a tale.
Post Dog me owd china. Real ale has made a comeback but the real revolution is “Craft Beer” and that is always pushed through a cooler. I am going into my local “House of Hops” this afternoon where the SALT brewery has a tap takeover with six beers on the tap board. Mind you some of them will probably be in excess of 6% ABV…cheers everybody!
Never having been across the pond I cannot attest to what is happening in UK with the craft beer scene. Apparently good taste has made its way around the globe long before Budweiser and Coors could throw in the towel. What I know of cellar temp brew is from WWII and my dad’s (B-17 pilot) recollections of the pubs at that time. It was so cold during the last years of the war a warm brew would surely be preferred. For me, now, a west coast ipa will have to suffice. Cold.
IPA beer is ubiquitus in Britain…doubt you could find a pub/bar that didn’t sell an IPA…
The only time I was in the UK was for technical meetings in Yeovil, Somerset, in May 2018. There was a nice traditional pub where I had some bitter before going off for supper. It was called The Butcher’s Arms. Somerset also has good local cider.
I also spent an afternoon in London, first getting a couple of bagels on Brick Lane, one with lox and the other with salt beef. Followed by an IPA at Brew Dogs.
The beer was good, but what stood out was the friendliness of the locals in both places. I was only there a week, but I enjoyed it all.
Brew Dog…those are in every major town/city in blighty? Friendly? You should try the North mate, we are miles more friendly than those southern Kents… 🙂
@Ophelia Benson – funny you mention that. I’m currently reading “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross”. It’s a book (above my payscale) by a philologist, John Allegro, that connects the more ancient cults of fertility to Christianity via linguistic evolution.
It’s a lot more complicated than my summary, but what I get so far is that Christianity is essentially the mythological creation of people under the hallucinatory effect of psylocybin.
It’s entertaining, but dense enough that it is actually work to read it.
Psilocybin!? The wikipedia article says Amanita muscaria, which is ibotenic acid and its decarboxyl, muscimol. Psilocybin mushrooms apparently occur in Europe, but for whatever reason seem to have been of less interest there. The article says the author lost his university job over the book, and the publisher apologized for printing it. “… possibly the single most ludicrous book on Jesus scholarship by a qualified academic.” Now, Amanita muscaria and Santa Claus, that’s practically an established fact.
I’ve had IPAs from various places, and I have become somewhat skeptical, if it isn’t from here in the Pacific Northwest of North America, in which I will admit northwern California. They run from 6% to 10% ABV, and they’re practically a meal course. Elsewhere it seems that brewers could use some guidance – thin, harsh, unsatisfying.
@Donn I’m not a scholar and I don’t play one on TV (or YouTube, as the days may be now). But as I mentioned, it’s an entertaining red since it makes Christianity a lot more “primitive”, in the sense that it draws parallels to much earlier cults of fertility as. Or, more mundanely, Christianity explained as a the result of junkie dreams 🙂
I’m not the only one who has thought about the possibilities of Syrian rue as the Abrahamic “entheogen”. Apparently there’s also an Acacia species down there with some of the same good stuff. Syrian rue has harmala alkaloids, like one of the components of the occasionally famous ayahuasca of the upper Amazon. The stuff might be kind of tricky to use, compared to magic mushrooms – I don’t know if harmaline etc. is any good on its own, or where you get the DMT-related parts of the equation, but your average shaman is usually able to manage.
My Brother and I once gave our father magic mushrooms…true story…It was funny…
Donn, I know you coined it, but that’s a great word, “entheogen”. In a primitive society, a medicine man or woman that knew their stuff would be respected.
Nowadays, since we can get entheogens in pill form, Moses could just take two tablets ( 😉 ) to see god.
(… from wikipedia) In that article, ancient Jews are supposed to have possibly used cannabis, and there’s some discussion of mushrooms in early Christianity.
There is hard archeological evidence that psychotrophic drugs were used by the earliest hominids. Again, scholars of the pointless religious books are snookered by real science as its clearly obvious that their dearly cherished scripture, is just the bronze age equivalence of todays “Love Island” scripts….
Moses could just take two tablets to see god.
He’d probably only need one. I’d probably need three – seems like god really does not want me to see her.
“Hear here, people! I bring you directly from above the Fifteen Commandments … OW goddamit my foot … um, the Ten Commandments of G-d”
That third tablet – hence the word mosaic.
Moses; ‘Some good news and some bad news.’
The good is that I got Him down to ten. The bad is that adultery’s still in.
Choirboy…biblical schoolboy howlers…Moses got down fast as “The roar of Moses’ Triumph could be heard throughout Israel”…
The problem isn’t simply that they are badly written; but they are hopelessly out of date. They were written (by people who could write) for people who could read, during a time when slavery was not just accepted, but everywhere. Before the rights of man were declared, certainly before the rights of woman. And they have not been updated. The 10 commandments are very useful for the slave owner, head of household, who wants to control his family, servants and slaves.
Morally and ethically, anything written before 1946 (the date of the UN Declaration of Human Rights) has to be treated with extreme suspicion.
Self-burn: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/universal-declaration-of-human-rights#:~:text=The%20Universal%20Declaration%20of%20Human%20Rights%20(UDHR)%20is%20a%20milestone,rights%20to%20be%20universally%20protected.
Can’t say I see anything morally and ethically suspicious in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and The Rights of Man.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is basically just a wish list that reflects the cultural prejudices of the authors. As are all such declarations, unless the rights declared are actually encoded into law, which makes those rights, at least for the time being, real.
I have a real problem with “rights think” actually, because the temptation is always to try to further your policy goals by creating new rights, effecting declaring debate to be off limits (because we’re talking about rights here, and rights are not open to debate!)
A legal right is cool, but I think it’s fair to say that everyone has notions about rights that can’t practically be written into law. The US Declaration of Independence claims self evident rights including life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. One may wonder what that even means, but seemed to make sense at the time, and the UN declaration seems to have picked up a similar sentiment but settles for “security of person” instead “pursuit of happiness.”
I suppose that when it gets to the right to have paid holidays, free education, etc. it’s a fairly clear mandate that is guaranteed not to be observed as a worldwide societal consensus. I’ve seen advocates point to a right to housing included here, and therefore there’s a right to housing. Maybe there is … but what kind of housing? Doesn’t seem to get into much detail there.
Choirboy – I can’t say I have read “The Rights of Man”, or “Common Sense”, but Thomas Paine is also supposed to have had a hand in the original US constitution. A deeply flawed document, very much of its time, that permitted slavery, and denied democracy to most of the inhabitants – women, slaves and native Americans. Unlike the Bible, Qran etc. there are ways of amending the US constitution and bringing it up to date.
jb, Donne. I am not disagreeing. the UN declaration is a starting point, not the final word.
Paul Seed, I can only suggest that you read them before jumping to such a conclusion of guilt by association.
Choirboy. I haven’t read them. I drew no conclusion. I criticised the (original) US constitution. Not the books you like so much. I am aware that Thomas Paine was opposed to slavery. But the times did not permit any real progress if there was to be a Union of States.