Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr
From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: rely on a higher power? give me a #$('& break!
Message-ID: <1840@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 10:22:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1840
Posted: Thu Oct  3 10:22:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 06:23:52 EDT
References: <502@decwrl.UUCP> <280@ccivax.UUCP> <873@lll-crg.UUCP> <2826@wateng.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 49

>>"MUST RELY on a HIGHER POWER", pooh sir, I say "pooh". You must rely on
>>yourself and if you can't rely on yourself then you might as well go
>>jump off of the Golden Gate bridge and end it all right now. IF YOU
>>CAN'T RELY ON YOURSELF THEN HOW CAN OTHERS RELY ON YOU?

> Hold it...  In the first paragraph you admit the world is in a mess and that
> most of us are fools.  Then you tell us we have to rely on ourselves or
> jump off a bridge, i.e. you're telling a lot of us to jump off a bridge.
> If we and the world are in a mess, and as I believe, getting worse as time
> goes by, I wouldn't rely on us to "fix it all up".  You say in the first
> paragraph that maybe a "being" created this mess called the world.  A bunch
> of beings did that, namely us, good ol' Homo Sapiens.  It probably was a
> pretty nice and sane place before we messed it up. [ERIC LAU]

I think that what this person WAS trying to say is that it got messed up,
not just because we are people who ipso facto by our nature WILL put a world
in a messy state (as some people would have it), but that because we have
been ingrained with certain attitudes--about relying on a "higher power"
for support [AND justification for actions in its name!], about formation of
beliefs based on presumptions rather than on thinking and analytically
examining, about respect for other people being diminished by superiority
notions inherent in some of those beliefs--that inevitably WOULD cause things
to get messed if they are perpetuated.  Some religions would blame a "Satan"
for infesting us with "bad" notions that damage our relationship to the
world.  But it seems that some of these very religions do the damage themselves
with their own notions.

The world isn't "messed up" because of some innate human nature that is
characterized as "fallenness", "sinfulness", or any other debasive notion of
humanity.  It's "messed up" because of these notions and attitudes of hate, of
perpetuation of shoddy thinking that leads to easier control of people through
blind faith and acceptance, of innate racial/ethnic superiority, notions that
are promulgated by those same people who claim we need to "rely on a higher
power".  If this higher power exists, surely it would want us to use the
brains we have in the most positive way, and not in the negative ways that
mess up a planet.  I see no reason to believe that it does exist, yet some
feel that, because they see themselves as hopeless/fallen/messer-uppers that
it MUST exist.  Regardless, the answer lies in our own preconceptions,
notions, and attitudes, that perpetuate the messing up of this world. 
Humanity is not innately evil (as some would have you believe); but too many
of us happen to believe in notions that will inevitably lead to the "messing
up" that you describe.

> I don't read net.religion so mail comments, flames et al.

A copy will be forwarded.
-- 
Popular consensus says that reality is based on popular consensus.
						Rich Rosen   pyuxd!rlr


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com