With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
November 18, 2009 - 4:41 p.m.
I actually wrote bullet point list of things to write in this entry. Can you believe I'm that organized? For the most part this entry is the thoughts that I had in the shower yesterday; from the moment I entered the bathroom till I left after I dried off. As soon as I was done I went over to the computer, reconstructed my train of thought and made the list. Why is it going to take me so much longer to write this up than to think it?
I started thinking about NERFA, the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance. I had been planning on attending the conference since I missed the one last year. I procrastinated so much that I missed this year's too. I saw all my friends posting on Facebook and I knew I should have been with them. After the conference there was a flurry of my friends friending other friends that they didn't know before. I want to play with not just the musicians but the other earthworms people that turn the musical soil, Arpie, Jake, Kathy, John, Ron, Becca, and others. I don't see them often enough. Most of them I only see at Falcon Ridge. I see John often but that doesn't mean I see him enough. I want to make new friends, the musicians and earthworms I don't know.
I'm not beating myself up. These were actually good thoughts, what made me happy was how many people attending wanted me to be there. I posted on Facebook that I'd attend next year or die in the attempt and a slew of people commented that they wanted me there. Not only that but they got excited at the idea of a Budgiedome guerilla showcase. I want to go because I belong at NERFA. How do I know I belong? Because the people that belong, think I belong.
Now things start going off on tangents.
Is people thinking I belong a sufficient condition for my belonging? A friend of mine, not a particularly religious friend, thinks I belong in a synagogue's congregation even though I don't believe in the religion. Does that mean I belong in synagogue? Well I wouldn't be in his congregation so that's not an analogous situation. But what if all my friends that attend shabbot services were in the same congregation and thought I should attend to. Does that mean I belong? I don't think so. I could just imagine myself reading the Torah portion with Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham was nuts. It wasn't like god sent Abraham a certified notarized letter telling him to sacrifice Isaac. It wasn't like he talked to him directly. He came to him in dreams. Wouldn't a rational person have said, "That was a bad dream;" and not acted on it? Maybe I have things wrong but I was taught in Hebrew school that the only ones that God talked to directly were Moses and Gideon. He talked to the other prophets in dreams. In the play Gideon God tells Gideon that he also talked to some Kohen Gadol (high priest). I saw the play on TV when I was a kid. I loved it. Did Peter Ustinov play Gideon (remember these were my thoughts in the shower, I couldn't google things)? What I remember best is the discussion God had with Gideon about the people he talked to directly. Moses was the superstar of holy men, of course god loved him and spoke to him. God never really liked that Kohen. He talked to him in his official function but it wasn't a personal relationship. Gideon wasn't a superstar, he was just someone that God liked; someone God could talk to. I enjoyed the idea of god just liking someone.
That was the point that I came out of my reverie and realized this would make a good entry. Before this I just planned on writing about NERFA. This is the kind of entry I love writing. It's about revealing my thoughts, not the things I'm thinking about. If it makes you like or dislike me, it is based on the real me, not your conception of me.
In Jurgen Jurgen doesn't value the love of all the women that loved and trusted him. He only valued the love of his mother who loved but never trusted him. Why? Because anyone who really knew him wouldn't trust him. Those other women loved an illusion, not the real Jurgen. That's genius. It is the kind of thing people think but I've never seen another author put it nearly as well.
My next note is "Back to God talking to people." I don't know how I got back to that or where it went. So I'll move on to something related.
I saw a show on some religious channel that was like biblical Mythbusters. The host tried to recreate the alter that Elijah made that spontaneously caught fire when water was poured on it. It was part of a contest made with a priest of Baal. The idea was to show that JHVH was more powerful and could make a fire on his alter without human help. The hosts theory was that he used a secret of the ancients, automatic fire, that was written up in several sources. You put calcium carbonate and sulfur on the alter and pile wood on top of them. Then you cover the wood with camphor that looks like water. Then you pour water on the calcium carbonate. The water combines with the calcium carbonate to create heat that ignites the sulfur that ignites the camphor that ignites the wood.
The hosts story was that Elijah did that and it looked like he made a fire by pouring water on the alter, a miracle. Now the show was fun. I'd love if the real Mythbusters tried that sort of thing, recreating biblical miracles. Those are real myths, not urban legends.
What I found perplexing was his attitude. It seemed like he felt he was giving credibility to the bible. But think what it really shows. That the greatest prophet was an unscrupulous con artist that resorted to trickery instead of faith in God. That's a point against religion not for it.
We know things like that did happen. Priests wrote the book of Deuteronomy then claimed it was a lost book of Moses that just happened to back their point of view in the hot theological disputes of the day. That's a danger of religion. People sometimes lie to prove what they "know" is true. Religion makes claims to morality but is all too often amoral and that's immoral. Science makes no claims to morality, which is honest, and therefore moral.
OK with that phrase I finished drying myself off and wrote down everything I remembered of my line of thought.
Before I go I have to tell you what happened today. This is going to make some of you jealous. Broadway by my school was filled with trailers from a film crew. I checked the permit and saw they were filming Gossip Girl right there in front of me! OK, I never saw Gossip Girl and I didn't stay to watch them actually film anything. I just mentioned it because I knew some of you would be jealous. Yes I know that's immoral.
Big Fun on Long Island - November 24, 2009
Elliott and da Costa are Phrosty - November 22, 2009
I Gave Speace a Chance - November 21, 2009
Oliver Twisted - November 20, 2009
Don't Mind My Body - I Don't - November 19, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile November 18, 2009
