Religions are denial

​FROM BABYLON TO HERE

Chapter 1
 
CHAOS RULES THE WORLD
 
Questioner:  Is there a God?

Respondent:  Religions are invented out of our longing to find something beyond ourselves. All have failed to deliver and still difference of opinion persists. Nietzsche asserted that God is dead. We cannot deny this is the unspoken reality of the world.

Questioner:  The God of the Old Testament is certainly dead to most people on this earth. But the God of the New, with its imagery of enchantment and ceremonial pomp, has seemingly enthralled us all. Devoid of capacity to see beyond our condition, we create imaginary Gods. Doing this gives us a mechanized sense of security where beliefs take on an automated mechanical process forming the very fabric of society, right or wrong, to be defended at any cost. Religions reduce us to machines and, to escape the pain of seeing it as it is, the mind leaves reality behind.

Respondent:  Might our reliance on imagery be our barrier to realizing God?

Questioner:  From the time of Moses, we see gold-worship from the foothills of Mount Sinai to the current hedge funds and derivatives of Wall Street. This idea of money is the God of the world. We see its subordinate imagery embedding a patriarchal Allah of warring Muslims defying the Prophet's abhorrence of image. We see it in the three-headed Christian cocktail reinventing a new Saviour God from earlier Babylonian cults.  Islam and Judaism might not demonstrate material images like that of a crucified Jesus, yet both hold firm to a mental image of an old man God. Gilded words in holy books are also imagery.

Respondent:   Why are we held captive to such? Why are we unable to grasp the simple fact that it's only when the mind itself becomes sacred, can the door open to the immeasurably sacred?

Source: From Babylon to Here eBook at Amazon

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