Don't Take ISIS Too Seriously

         As the horrendous orgy of jihadist murder in Paris unfolded I was listening to the smooth voice of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith describe it as the worst terrorist attack in human history. I thought that that was an overstatement, and that if the leaders of ISIS were listening they would probably be delighted to hear that they had accomplished such a momentous achievement. I would have preferred it if their attack had been described as another disgusting example of sadism by a bunch of fanatical pipsqueaks.

            Likewise, I heard the reports from San Bernardino California saying that these terrible murders would change America. I thought that it should be pointed-out that although these acts of terrorism are shocking and appalling, they have been overplayed by the media. We should not let ourselves be freaked-out by the terror of a handful of homicidal lunatics.

            Despite the sickening brutality of their murderous violence, the jihadists in Paris did not carry-out anything like the worst attack in human history. Although this has been depicted as a ‘War,” the terrorists’ Wild scramble of death did not come near comparison with the carnage of regular warfare.

            Because their violent attacks have been carried-out with total disregard of civilized human values, we have exploded our image of ISIS into a force comparable to the Visigoths, the Mongols, and the Huns. I would suggest that we think of them as being more like the Mau Maus or the followers of Muhammad Ahmad (who proclaimed himself “The Mahdi”).

While the bloody assaults on innocent people in Paris and San Bernardino may cause angst among the French and American people, they will not change lives in any meaningful way. The jihadists' violence will not greatly endanger the safety or security of Western Europe and the United States.

            People call the members of ISIS and the other deranged jihadists “Animals,” but they are probably thinking of lions, tigers, and bears. I would say yes, they remind me of animals, but more like mosquitoes and rats. They may have caused some havoc by creating a “Caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, but we all know that they will eventually be stomped-out by the civilized countries of the world. They have probably 25,000 men in arms, with allies in other areas, but we could crush them by sending over a few regiments of Marines. I have suggested that we send over an army to wipe them out, but this will not be anything like a real war.

These fanatical fundamentalists believe that their attacks against Western people are part of a holy war or jihad, and that if they die while engaged in a jihad they will be martyrs and will go directly to Paradise regardless of any sins they may have committed. It is hard to understand how they could believe that Allah would reward the torture, rape, and beheading of enemies with a vacation in Paradise.

The jihadists' idea of Paradise reflects the Arab background of sexual taboos and living in deserts where there is scant water or green foliage. In this Muslim Paradise there are lush gardens, vineyards, and rivers flowing with clear, cool water. Muslim men recline on couches in soft silk attire and drink wine without getting inebriated. They will each be served by 72 beautiful virgins who will attend to their every need. To Western men, the promise of 72 virgins would not be enough incentive to compel them to engage in suicide attacks in big cities or to strap bombs onto their bodies and go ignite them in public places. Most reasonable Westerners recognize that the existence of an afterlife in Paradise is a pipe dream, but it is comprehensible for jihadists when one looks at the culture in which they were spawned.

Life in a sandy, hot, dry, ugly land, where sexual taboos prevent the kind of teenage sexual exploration enjoyed in the West, must make young Muslims envious and deeply resentful of young Westerners with their convertible cars, swimmable lakes, Buffalo Wing restaurants, easy sex, and wild parties. I think that there is a strong element of sexual repression behind the thinking of those recruited into ISIS. Before going off to bomb the World Trade Towers in Manhattan on 9/11, the leader of the highjackers wrote his fellow terrorists reminding them that “Today you will be with women.” When the jihadists consider the advantages Paradise and 72 virgins over the bleak world they inhabit they probably consider suicide a better choice.

We should not expand our image of ISIS and its allied groups into more than they really are. They are a bunch of love-sick, repressed, resentful young idiots. We must not fall into the trap of letting the attacks of these murderous morons upset our national equilibrium. 

THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM

THE GROWTH OF ATHEISM

            What ever happened to the worship of Zeus, Hera, and Apollo by the Greeks? What happened to the Egyptian worship of Osiris, Isis, and Amun? The answer is, of course, that they were replaced by the religions of Christianity and Islam. Although those new religions honored different gods, they adopted many of the practices and observances of the ones they replaced. For example, scholars say that the ancient Black Stone (probably a meteorite) worshipped by Moslems at the Kaaba in Mecca was part of the worship of an earlier pagan god, perhaps the goddess Allat, long before the time of Mohammed. The celebration of Easter by Christians is reminiscent of the ancient Greek “Agapes” in which Greek people celebrated the resurrection of gods such as Mithras, Attis, and Dionysus, before the time of Jesus.

            Christianity and Islam are still going strong after 2000 and 1395 years respectively, but they have not remained stagnant. Over the centuries both religions have experienced the splitting-up and growth of divergent orthodoxies and conflicting sects. Today we see the decline of traditional Christian churches and the growth of high-demand sects such as Charismatics and Pentecostals. Traditional Islam, which split into Shia, Sunni, and other sects, seems to be challenged today by the growth of intense and often violent branches such as al Qaeda, and ISIS.

            In the last few centuries there has been another significant change in the religious universe. It is the growth of Atheism. Throughout the Dark and Middle Ages Atheism was virtually unknown. Open declaration of non-belief could find one tied to a stake sniffing smoke. During the “Enlightenment,” however, philosophers such as Voltaire, Hume, and D’Holbach, began to question the dogmas of all religion. Later, thinkers such as Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche proclaimed the absence of any god.

          The most serious challenge to established religions came, however, with the growth and expansion of Science. Copernicus and Galileo attacked the Christian belief that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Darwin showed that the human race evolved from lower forms of life by means of natural selection.

         According to a 2012 WIN-Gallup International Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism, the number of Atheists is on the rise across the world, with religiosity generally on the decline. The poll found that 23% of people around the world consider themselves “non-religious,” and 13% think of themselves as convinced Atheists. Between the years 2005 and 2012 the number of people claiming to be Atheist rose by 3% while the number of people claiming to be religious fell by 9%.

In the United States the number of people describing themselves as Atheist or Agnostic doubled from 2001 to 2009. Among adult Americans, 23% profess no faith affiliation. Moreover, the trend toward Atheism is accelerating. According to a Pew Research study released on May 12, 2015, one-third of all millennials (ages 18-34, approximately 75.3 million) now say they are unaffiliated with any faith.

 The Win-Gallup poll found that religiosity is higher among the poor--people in the bottom income groups are 17% more religious than those in the top income groups. The poll also found that Atheism is highest among the most educated people in the world. A survey of scientists in the illustrious National Academy of Sciences found that 72% were Atheists and another 20% were agnostic or had doubts. 

            If Atheism continues to grow at these rates and religiosity continues to decline, one has to wonder whether there will come a time when Atheism will pass religiosity and all of today’s gods and religions will go the way of Zeus, Hera, and Apollo, etc.. 

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

People have often told me that I should not just sit around reading books. I should get out. My former wife used to criticize me for not having any outside activities. She said that I needed to get a life. I told her that I had a life of the mind. She would stare at me in mute incomprehension. My brother told me that I needed to join some outside organization. I asked, “Should I become a member of the Kiwanis Club?”

When you immerse yourself in books, you go through a door into a different world. It not only gives a kind of pleasure, it gives a life. I cannot say that reading has brought me great happiness. By chemistry and disposition I am a less than cheerful person. I would like to be happier, but I would not give up reading to gain that end. Perhaps reading has deepened my melancholy. Profound research into the absence of God and the meaninglessness of life has not cheered my soul. But knowledge is its own reward.

Stanley Fish, a college professor, literary critic, and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column on the question of whether the humanities do anything to help humanity. His conclusion was—“No.” He said: “To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’ the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said ….diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”

I agree.

I have spent much of my life reading. It has given me knowledge of literature, history, philosophy, theology, psychology, art, science, and other fields of learning. I do not have a brilliant mind. What I have that the average person does not have is a passion for learning. Since I graduated from college I have never stopped reading books. I am not a fast reader, but I am a constant reader. I am an autodidact, a self-educated person. I spent most of my high school years studying the parabolas of girls’ chests and most of my college education studying the trajectories of basketballs. When I graduated, I realized that I did not know very much. For some reason, I wanted to learn, so that is when I started reading in earnest.

Many years ago I wanted to understand the reason why civilizations, nations, and cultures developed the way they did. I decided to read history and other subjects in the humanities. I read many multi-volume books on the history of civilization. After a lifetime of reading, I still do not have the answers. But I do have some ideas, and I can converse about them. I have tried to learn about subjects beyond literature, history, philosophy, and theology; subjects like music, art, and science. I have only a layman’s knowledge of these fields, but I probably know more than most people. As I’ve gotten older I find that I love listening to beautiful classical music. I also love reading books about art and looking up artists’ works on the computer.

I discovered early in my marriage that my wife did not appreciate it if I went into the bedroom in the evening and started reading. She wanted me to watch television with her. This bothered me and probably contributed to the eventual downfall of our marriage. I looked upon the watching of television as a waste of time. We sat and stared blankly at the screen without engaging in any conversation. The material on television was pathetic. I hated watching, but felt that it was the only way to appease my wife. Now that I am older, I like looking at some of the shows on television. But I still read a lot.

When children came along, they wanted their daddy to play with them. I loved playing with my children but it was impossible to read after coming home from work. In addition, my work was demanding and I often did not get home until later. By the time I got home I would be tired, too tired to read.

I started getting up very early in the morning. I discovered that if I arose around 5:30 a.m. I would be able to read for several hours without interference. Moreover, I would be awake and alert. I could read and understand the more difficult books without developing that sleepiness that accompanies most attempts to read recondite material.

Each morning I would get up and go make coffee. I would sit and luxuriate over the coffee while I began reading some book of history, philosophy, theology, literature or such. Sometimes I could not understand a word of what I was reading, but I did not give up. I would read and reread pages until I began to comprehend what the writer was saying. As I read more and more books, I understood more and more.

Sometimes I would be struck by what I was reading. Some writer would connect with my mind so deeply that chills would run down my spine. I have had the same experience with music and art.  When I first saw Velazquez’s painting, the “Water seller of Seville,” I was deeply moved and tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t comprehend the genius it must have taken to paint such a masterpiece! I have had the same experience when hearing some pieces of music. “Unto Us a Child is Born” from Handel’s Messiah.

I would have liked to have had a consistently happy life. But I realize that for some people, like me, happiness consists of fleeting moments when we are somehow introduced to something sublime. Sometimes it is just a beautiful day, or beautiful scenery, or magnificent music, or wonderful art, or a glorious poem, or a penetrating thought. It is through such things that I have experienced much of the happiness in my life.

EASTER AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST

         It is Christian doctrine that Jesus died as a sacrifice for man. The idea is that “Original    Sin” was committed by Adam and Eve, and that the stain of that sin was upon every human being born thereafter. Thus, even though subsequent humans did not commit the original sin, they were guilty of it as well as other sins. Christ came to save man from original sin and all other sin, and to provide a means for man to achieve everlasting life in heaven. In order to save man, Christ had to perform a sacrifice. Jesus was God, so he performed a sacrifice to himself. The sacrifice was a human sacrifice of the most bestial and agonizing kind, a painfully slow death by suffocation on a cross.
           One has to wonder why this omnipotent, all-loving, almighty God couldn’t have simply forgiven all men of sin without this orgy of torment? Why did he have to be the scapegoat for all human beings and go through this horrendous nightmare of torture in order to provide salvation? The answer is that the writers of the Bible lived in a benighted and barbaric time when this was thought to be the right way for the gods to behave.
             The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has been called the basis for all Christianity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” The celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the most important date on the Catholics’ liturgical calendar. It is also the concoction of Paul and other writers who came long after Jesus died.
            Scholars use various methods of textual criticism, including language and style, to determine if text is authentic or was added to the original gospel at a later time. There are many things on which they agree. Scholars agree that Jesus did not predict his own resurrection from the dead or his second coming. The quotations in the Bible in which he makes such a prediction (e.g. Mark 8:31) are considered to be later additions.
             Moreover, the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are so contradictory and improbable that the whole story has to be dismissed as fiction. Matthew says that the day following Jesus crucifixion Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says that the two Marys and Salome went (Mark 16:1). Luke writes that Mary Magdalene went with Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women (Luke 24:10). Matthew says that the stone was removed by an angel at the time the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:2), but Mark and Luke say it had already been removed (Mark 16:2-4, Luke 24:1-2). Matthew says that when the women arrived, the angel was outside the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says the angel was inside the tomb (Mark 16:5) and Luke says there were two men inside the tomb (Luke 24:4).
             In Matthew the two women rush from the tomb to tell the disciples (Matt 28:8-9), but Mark says that they said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). Luke says that they reported the story to the disciples (Luke 24:9-11). John tells a very different story from the others (John 20:1-18). Later post-resurrection stories are also in conflict (compare Matt 28:16-20 with Luke 24:13-53, and John 20:19).
            The first Gospel written was the Gospel of Mark. Scholars can tell that the whole story of the resurrection of Jesus in Mark was added to the Gospel by somebody else long after the original version was written. Originally, the Gospel of Mark ended at Chapter 16:8. That is the part where the women find the empty tomb and are told by a “young man” that Jesus has risen. The part of the Gospel after that, in which Jesus appears to various people, was added by later writers who wanted to supply authenticity to the myth of Jesus’ resurrection. As Professor Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina says: “These verses [Mark 16:9-20] are absent from our two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel, along with other important witnesses; the transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand….and there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not found elsewhere in Mark.”
             If you consider the fact that the Gospels of Mathew and Luke were based on the gospel of Mark, then it becomes clear that the Gospels’ story of Jesus’ resurrection is pure myth that was made-up long after the Gospels were written. The earliest Christian scriptures were the Epistles of Paul, yet Paul does not give any details about Jesus’ resurrection other than referring to it (See Rom. 6:5, 1 Cor. 15:13).
                 The idea of resurrection by a god did not begin with Jesus. Lots of gods arose from the dead in ancient times. Among them are Mithra, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Tammuz, Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, Semele, Heracles (or Herakles), and Melqart. Some claim Buddah was resurrected from the dead.
               Roman Catholics around the world celebrate Easter by partaking of the Holy Eucharist. It is a wafer of unleavened bread and liturgical wine. The wafer is placed in the recipient’s hand or mouth, and the wine is usually sipped out of a common chalice ( a somewhat unsanitary practice). According to Church dogma, the bread and wine are not just symbolic commemoration of the body and blood of Jesus. They are the actual body and blood of Jesus. It is believed that by consuming the body and blood of Jesus you take into your body part of his divine grace.

            It seems that for thousands of years nobody has ever stepped back and examined this holy practice. A little thinking about it should, however, make us wonder where it came from and why we do it. Why eat a human body and drink human blood. Isn’t that a little cannibalistic? How did the Catholic Church ever decide to ordain this as the most profound way of worshipping Jesus. Obviously, it is taken from an ancient time when men performed human sacrifice. It is well known that following a human sacrifice, ancient men frequently ate the body and drank the blood of the sacrificial victim. The sacrificial victim was often an enemy defeated in battle. It was believed that by doing so the eater took into himself the courage and strength of the victim. Even in more modern times headhunters would eat the bodies of their victims in the belief that the valor and fighting ability of the victim would come into the victor. Thus, as the practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism decreased, religions continued the practice by substituting bread, wine, and other food for the bodies of sacrificial victims.

The rite of the Last Supper, which the early Christian Church adopted as its Holy Eucharist, clearly was borrowed from the ritual meal practiced by more ancient religions. In The Roman Cult of Mithras, Manfred Clauss says: “The offering of bread and wine is known in virtually all ancient cultures, and the meal as a means of binding the faithful together and uniting them to the deity was a feature common to many religions. It represented one of the oldest means of manifesting unification with the spiritual, and the appropriation of spiritual qualities.” Claus describes how the worshippers of the god Mithra engaged in a ritual meal similar to the Christian Eucharist.

In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the Last Supper is a Passover meal. In the Gospel of John, it takes place the day before Passover.     It is possible that Jesus asked his followers to eat bread and drink wine in his memory. It is highly unlikely that he horrified his disciples by recommending anything so cannibalistic as having bread and wine represent his body and blood. Such ideas were abhorrent to the Jews. Even the blood of an animal was forbidden at a Jewish meal by biblical law (Leviticus 7:26). Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford University, in The Religion of Jesus the Jew, says, “...the imagery of eating a man’s body, and especially drinking his blood...even after allowance is made for metaphorical language, strikes a totally foreign note in a Palestinian Jewish cultural setting...With their profoundly rooted blood taboo, Jesus’ listeners would have been overcome with nausea at hearing such words.” The idea that the eating of bread and wine was a consumption of the body and blood of Jesus is a later Greek development, taken from the Mystery Religions such as the cult of Mithra. The biblical version of the Last Supper was obviously added long after the original gospels were written.

 In the Mystery Religions, the cult “agapes” were “love feasts” in which the communicants achieved “mystical identification with the divinity.” The cults of Mithra and Attis had sacramental use of bread and wine as a means of communing with the gods. The early Eucharistic feasts of the Christians came to be called “agapes” by the Greeks. It was the Greeks who substituted bread and wine for the body and blood of sacrificial victims. If one goes back far enough, one can see the history of human sacrifice in Greece and how it affected the liturgy of the modern Church.