TeeRanney
first Trans Girl on the site award
By Dmitry Galkovsky
Any religion is taken for granted by people who were raised in its cultural context. It is difficult for a person to look at it (that is, at himself) from the outside. For a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, his religious culture is the NORM. Conversely, anything that does not meet this norm is perceived as something deeply abnormal. Abnormal in its very foundations.
If a person to some extent begins to perceive his culture as abnormal, he becomes a deeply unhappy creature. Therefore, any criticism of religion is not as harmless as it seems at first sight. I think it is unnecessary. A national religion should be taken for granted and not questioned.
In our culture it is common to greet each other and shake hands. In principle, this is a mere convention, which can be ignored. But this ignoring will immediately create a lot of problems and is very likely to provoke a nervous breakdown in the long run.
Those people who carelessly criticize religion do not understand what they are striking at, even in terms of everyday life.
And besides everyday life, there are many other things. Man emerges from nothingness and goes into nothingness, without even realizing what happened, and which events he became a part of. Religion gives some meaning to this initially senseless process and gives a starting point. That is, among other things, religion is much more rational than the rational criticism to which it is constantly subjected. At the end of the day, all these critics make the same mistake: a scaling error. They try to establish a dialogue with eternity, but the very attempt is an attempt to include in communication a biological object, namely a cunning but not very clever mammal. This makes the very fact of conversation absurd and offensive. If you cannot talk about rope in the house of a hanged man, imagine that you received an e-mail from a person who lives for one day. He asks you some questions, argues about something, shares plans. But it appeared 12 hours ago and in 12 hours it will disappear. Is it a person? It's a ring of philological smoke melting in the air; conversing with it is RIDICULOUS.
I want to warn deeply religious people. They probably should not read this post. Although it cannot and will not shake the Christian faith, which has long been the foundation of our world.
Moreover, criticism of Christianity does not indicate either great intelligence or great culture. Eventually, every critic will find himself in the position of Laszlo Toth.
There was this dude in the 70’s, either a Hungarian or a Jew from Australia. He attacked Michelangelo’s Pietà, smashed the Madonna’s head, broke off her arm and started screaming that he is Christ, he does not and cannot have a mother, because God is eternal. They didn’t even put this Australopithecus in jail. They gave him some pills and sent him on his way. Later, something happened to Laszlo Toth’s brain which gave him a stroke. As a result of the stroke, his arm was paralyzed.
Of course, you can comfort yourself by the fact that people will still rise, will acquire immortality, they will have eight hearts and four brains, and then they will return to the topic of eternity.
No doubt, people will become immortal, immortality is a trivial task that can be achieved in a dozen ways. It will take another 200 years at most. The galaxy is inhabited not just by sentient beings, but by immortal sentient beings. Mortality in a sentient being is an easily solvable vulgarity, a paradox of the early stage of civilization.
The only question is whether this immortal intelligent creature will be human. And whether a debate with God will not turn into a debate with itself.
But a historian ignoring the history of religion is as blind a fool as a biologist ignoring, for example, the function of reproduction. So, let us pray and start – of course, humanely and as gentle as possible.
In Christianity, there are three features that strike the eye of any unbiased observer.
Firstly, the gloomy depressive nature and obsession with the topic of death and the dead. The main religious rite of Christians is the funeral, the funeral is the crowning glory of the Christian saint's life, and his life itself is the PREPARATION OF A CORPSE.
These corpses are buried next to churches. Where there is a church, there is a cemetery, where there is a cemetery, there is a church. Twin brothers. The churches themselves are also cemeteries – people are buried in the floor, in the walls, sometimes even in the ceiling.
The chapel of the Church of All Saints in the Czech Republic. It is made from 40,000 human skeletons.
I think 40,000 is an exaggeration, but a couple thousand for sure. A bone candelabrum – it contains all bones of the human skeleton.
In fact, this church is a novelty. It was built on the eve of the beginning decadence by order of Prince Schwarzenberg, old money from the Holy Roman Empire. Here is his small coat of arms, laid out with bones. As they say, "each baron has his own quirk".
And the date with the Master's signature. But the church, which was built in 1870, was functioning, and it did not cause any rejection among the parishioners or the clergy. And Schwarzenberg would not have blasphemed like that. Their church only repeated the Capuchin Church of the Virgin Mary in Rome.
The Church of the Virgin Mary is old, built at the beginning of the 17th century, during the ascent of Christianity. It contains the skeleton of the little princess Barberini, the niece of a Pope. Four thousand skulls are built into the walls.
Capuchin catacombs in Palermo. Unlike the catacombs of Naples or Rome, these are purely Christian catacombs, so they are fully available for viewing. They have been dug since the early 17th century. A total of eight thousand corpses are buried here, including 20th century corpses.
And these are secular corpses in the so-called "Gallery of Professionals". Here they buried the intellectuals - artists, lawyers, officers, doctors.
This is a Portuguese church in Évora. The cobblestones in the walls are real skulls.
End of Part I
Any religion is taken for granted by people who were raised in its cultural context. It is difficult for a person to look at it (that is, at himself) from the outside. For a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, his religious culture is the NORM. Conversely, anything that does not meet this norm is perceived as something deeply abnormal. Abnormal in its very foundations.
If a person to some extent begins to perceive his culture as abnormal, he becomes a deeply unhappy creature. Therefore, any criticism of religion is not as harmless as it seems at first sight. I think it is unnecessary. A national religion should be taken for granted and not questioned.
In our culture it is common to greet each other and shake hands. In principle, this is a mere convention, which can be ignored. But this ignoring will immediately create a lot of problems and is very likely to provoke a nervous breakdown in the long run.
Those people who carelessly criticize religion do not understand what they are striking at, even in terms of everyday life.
And besides everyday life, there are many other things. Man emerges from nothingness and goes into nothingness, without even realizing what happened, and which events he became a part of. Religion gives some meaning to this initially senseless process and gives a starting point. That is, among other things, religion is much more rational than the rational criticism to which it is constantly subjected. At the end of the day, all these critics make the same mistake: a scaling error. They try to establish a dialogue with eternity, but the very attempt is an attempt to include in communication a biological object, namely a cunning but not very clever mammal. This makes the very fact of conversation absurd and offensive. If you cannot talk about rope in the house of a hanged man, imagine that you received an e-mail from a person who lives for one day. He asks you some questions, argues about something, shares plans. But it appeared 12 hours ago and in 12 hours it will disappear. Is it a person? It's a ring of philological smoke melting in the air; conversing with it is RIDICULOUS.
I want to warn deeply religious people. They probably should not read this post. Although it cannot and will not shake the Christian faith, which has long been the foundation of our world.
Moreover, criticism of Christianity does not indicate either great intelligence or great culture. Eventually, every critic will find himself in the position of Laszlo Toth.
There was this dude in the 70’s, either a Hungarian or a Jew from Australia. He attacked Michelangelo’s Pietà, smashed the Madonna’s head, broke off her arm and started screaming that he is Christ, he does not and cannot have a mother, because God is eternal. They didn’t even put this Australopithecus in jail. They gave him some pills and sent him on his way. Later, something happened to Laszlo Toth’s brain which gave him a stroke. As a result of the stroke, his arm was paralyzed.
Of course, you can comfort yourself by the fact that people will still rise, will acquire immortality, they will have eight hearts and four brains, and then they will return to the topic of eternity.
No doubt, people will become immortal, immortality is a trivial task that can be achieved in a dozen ways. It will take another 200 years at most. The galaxy is inhabited not just by sentient beings, but by immortal sentient beings. Mortality in a sentient being is an easily solvable vulgarity, a paradox of the early stage of civilization.
The only question is whether this immortal intelligent creature will be human. And whether a debate with God will not turn into a debate with itself.
But a historian ignoring the history of religion is as blind a fool as a biologist ignoring, for example, the function of reproduction. So, let us pray and start – of course, humanely and as gentle as possible.
In Christianity, there are three features that strike the eye of any unbiased observer.
Firstly, the gloomy depressive nature and obsession with the topic of death and the dead. The main religious rite of Christians is the funeral, the funeral is the crowning glory of the Christian saint's life, and his life itself is the PREPARATION OF A CORPSE.
These corpses are buried next to churches. Where there is a church, there is a cemetery, where there is a cemetery, there is a church. Twin brothers. The churches themselves are also cemeteries – people are buried in the floor, in the walls, sometimes even in the ceiling.
The chapel of the Church of All Saints in the Czech Republic. It is made from 40,000 human skeletons.
I think 40,000 is an exaggeration, but a couple thousand for sure. A bone candelabrum – it contains all bones of the human skeleton.
In fact, this church is a novelty. It was built on the eve of the beginning decadence by order of Prince Schwarzenberg, old money from the Holy Roman Empire. Here is his small coat of arms, laid out with bones. As they say, "each baron has his own quirk".
And the date with the Master's signature. But the church, which was built in 1870, was functioning, and it did not cause any rejection among the parishioners or the clergy. And Schwarzenberg would not have blasphemed like that. Their church only repeated the Capuchin Church of the Virgin Mary in Rome.
The Church of the Virgin Mary is old, built at the beginning of the 17th century, during the ascent of Christianity. It contains the skeleton of the little princess Barberini, the niece of a Pope. Four thousand skulls are built into the walls.
Capuchin catacombs in Palermo. Unlike the catacombs of Naples or Rome, these are purely Christian catacombs, so they are fully available for viewing. They have been dug since the early 17th century. A total of eight thousand corpses are buried here, including 20th century corpses.
And these are secular corpses in the so-called "Gallery of Professionals". Here they buried the intellectuals - artists, lawyers, officers, doctors.
This is a Portuguese church in Évora. The cobblestones in the walls are real skulls.
End of Part I
