From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!arens@UCBKIM Newsgroups: net.religion Title: Revolution, not revelation! Article-I.D.: ucbvax.228 Posted: Wed Apr 6 20:41:55 1983 Received: Thu Apr 7 06:53:15 1983 From: arens@UCBKIM (Yigal Arens) Received: from UCBKIM.ARPA by UCBVAX.ARPA (3.332/3.20) id AA04684; 6 Apr 83 20:39:03 PST (Wed) To: net-religion@BERKELEY When simply walking around Berkeley you can find the most interesting things. Just today I saw the flyer (printed below) on a billboard. It's signed by a group called "The Last International". I don't know anything about them, but this is the third or fourth flyer of theirs I've seen in the past few months. I'm sure it will be of great interest to the readership of net.religion. Here it is: RELIGION AS BANALITY... `Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, infamous, sullying and grotesque is contained for me in this single word: GOD' -- Andre Breton. ...DIVINITY AS TYRANNY `If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him' -- Michael Bakunin Religion is deceitful, depraved and absurd -- but don't underestimate it. There's a reason this decrepit relic of humanity's infancy still adorns class society. "The powers that be are ordained of God," says St. Paul. Not quite. *God* *is* *ordained* *by* *the* *powers* *that* *be*. His omnipotence expresses our impotence. Babble about "the wages of sin" serves to cover up *the* *sin* *of* *wages*. We want rights, not rites -- sex, not sects. Only Eros and Eris belong in our pantheon. Surely the Nazarene necrophile has had his revenge by now. Remember, pain is just God's way of hurting you. The church (*any* church) is capital's consecrated cop. Examples: *Christianity* (which is neither catholic nor protestant); *Judaism* (reading the Prophets and raking in the profits); *Islam* (which means "submission") -- plus all farcically fashionable Oriental mysticisms pushed by greedy gurus with lice in their beards. >From Iran to Ireland, from Madrid to Miami, from the West Bank to West Virginia the faithful fulfill their function, suppresing subjectivity and sexuality in connivance with their eternal ally, the State. "Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion" (Blake). As for "God", suffice it to say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. "God has sufficiently revealed His true character by combining the genital organ with the urinary tract" (Brecht). A person without God is like a fish without a bicycle. Be (diabo)logical . . . curb your dogma. Revolution, not revelation! Belief in God is self-managed mutilation. Why not deny God and affirm *yourself*? GET THEE BEHIND ME, GOD! The Last International 55 Sutter St., Suite 487 San Francisco, Ca USA Presented as a public service by Yigal Arens.