Quote of the Day -- Sunday, God, Religion Edition

 

"I love you so much that I’m going to hide my existence to the point that I will be indistinguishable from other gods, and if you follow the wrong god, you are going to suffer for eternity."

--Unknown 

You Know What Takes Guts?

Guts is throwing off your hand-me-down, 2000 year old religion you inherited from your parents, and they from theirs, ad infinitum, and realizing and accepting that we're all there is and we're all there ever was and there is no Heaven, no Hell, no "God" and that we just have to and ought to do what's right and good and beautiful and fair, just because it's the right thing to do and because this is all there is. Not because if you do anything bad you'll be punished, not at all.

Guts is accepting this is all there is.  Nothing to run to. Nothing further, bigger, better to hope or plan or work for.

Guts is realizing and accepting that this, the here and the now, the way it is now is what there is to work for. The people that are around you now, the people that are around all of us now.

That nothing else matters because there is nothing else.

The staring oblivion and the abyss in the eye.

The realizing and accepting and facing this is all there is.


But that's too much for too many people.

Most people.

Far too many.


Do you have that much guts?

Do you have that much courage?

Quotes of the Day -- Sunday Edition

"Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

"Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh."

"Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity."

--Ambrose Bierce

Links:  Ambrose Bierce Quotes 

Ambrose Bierce - Biography and Works. Search Texts

On God

One of two things are true.  There is either a Creator with a capital C--an energy--or there's nothing.  And either way it's okay.

And either way, the rules are the same--we're still supposed to just love and be kind to one another.

Quote of the day, Sunday edition

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.” ~-Anne Frank

Quote of the day

"Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the Divine." --Ludwig Van Beethoven

On election day

The wit, wisdom and insight of  H. L. Mencken:


Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

That said, be sure to get out there and vote, y'all!

Cheap, yes. Obvious, too but I couldn't resist

as if...

Quote for the day

"I do not attend church. The cloying, feel-your-pain language of the average clergy member makes me run for the door. The debates in most churches—whether revolving around homosexuality or biblical interpretation—are a waste of energy. I have no desire to belong to any organization, religious or otherwise, which discriminates, nor will I spend my time trying to convince someone that the raw anti-Semitism in the Gospel of John might not be the word of God. It makes no difference to me if Jesus existed or not. There is no historical evidence that he did. Fairy tales about heaven and hell, angels, miracles, saints, divine intervention and God’s beneficent plan for us are repeatedly mocked in the brutality and indiscriminate killing in war zones, where I witnessed children murdered for sport and psychopathic gangsters elevated to demigods. The Bible works only as metaphor." --Chris Hedges, Truthdig.org


Link to complete, original post here:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/after_religion_fizzles_were_stuck_with_nietzsche_20100510/