Monday, July 02, 2012
** I have been working on a video for friends whose parents have just died, in their 90s. So I spend a lot of time viewing photos of these people throughout the years. How vibrant and alive they are! I think of how I try to make my days mean something, prove my existence, contribute something to the future. But I know that, video or no, it will all be dust someday. In the meantime, eat, drink and be merry.
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5 comments:
I don't think there's really any reasoning with you about religion anymore. But I did come to your blog often because I kind of felt like you knew some of the failings of the human organization of Christian Science. It's a big letdown when, as I do, someone feels that Christian Science is an amazing religion, but then, there are those who try to control it and keep it bottled up in a very hierarchical human system. That's very frustrating. So I thought I saw some kinship with your experience with your honesty of your struggles within the CS hierarchy. But I also question how someone could completely lose their own sense of soul. It's almost like the false god of CS hierarchy swtiched to the false god of intellectualism. When someone is frustrated with one thing, they may move onto another that better explains their frustrations. In this case it doesn't seem like there's a way to eliminate the frustrations, as the person seems to have given into them and now has identified with a way of thinking that doesn't overcome but just predicts that that other is obsolete because we destined to be frustrated. So, it's frustrating to watch this play out, when it seems like there could be a better outcome/way to put some good collective power together that might do more good/bring more enlightenment/Truth into the human experience.
"I don't think there's really any reasoning with you about religion anymore."
LOL! Putting the words "reason" and "religion" in the same sentence is bound to cause coffee to blow out my nose!
There is no "better outcome." If there were a means to such, and it didn't ruin one's liver or brain, I'd be all over it. But after many, many decades of searching and trying, my conclusions, while negative, are sober.
And don't knock intellectualism if you haven't tried it.
I may be jumping into the middle of some more extensive discussion I'm ignorant of...but I'm going to jump in anyway because I recognize Anonymous's plaintive tone of wishing CS wasn't "ruined" by human (dis)organization... I've heard this too often: the idea that a perfect "science" of being exists, available to all if only we'd stop getting in our own human way en route to healing.
No.It's not a science. It would be cool if it were, and it's got that faux-intellectual appeal, but it's a house of cards full of circular logic. I've watched too many friends and relatives leave Christian Science with that nostalgic "If only I were up to it's calling--" to keep my mouth shut any more. My parents devotion to it during my childhood cost me a chunk of my sanity and eventually a leg. It still took me 20 years more to leave it--this is the power of MBE's mindgames.
Step back & consider it upside down, just as an intellectual exercise. It's more fun (& intelligent) out here in the chilly sunlight of reason & logic without the magic.
You say it so well, Liz. "Faux-intellectual" indeed! I used to think that just because every step of an argument is consistent with the next step that the argument was "reasonable." But just like the marching band where one marcher steps out on the wrong foot, consistency after a false start is just the opposite of consistency. MBE may be "consistent" in some of her arguments, but she is dead wrong in her premise. Almost all CSTs consider themselves inadequate to the challenge. But it's the argument that is inadequate. As you say, it's more chilly to face the cruel facts of life, but if you embrace it, more fun for a time. We can desire much more, but that is not the same as affirming that there IS more, or that wishing it hard enough will bring it into being.
Yeah, I prefer the kool-aid, thanks. If you're going to die anyway, what's the harm in believing there's a puppet-master at work? Besides, there's still Pascal's wager...
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