are we evil?

by the virgin terry

since writing the essay below a few days ago, i’ve been thinking a lot about the effect it may have on sheople like dr. house, whose beloved father was a christian minister. i don’t mind alienating some sheople with what i have to say, but i do mind alienating more than a few regular readers/participants on nbl, particularly if we’re basically in agreement in our worldviews, as i believe tsdh (the surreal dr. house) and i are. thus before proceeding to the essay, i wish to say this:

i personally have no use for faith. it seems to me that various religions serve as ‘gateway dogmas’ (to further the substitution in terminology i’m fond of making between demonized ‘drugs’, of which the most common and harmless one, cannabis, is often referred to by it’s dogmatic detractors as a ‘gateway drug’ that leads one to ‘harder’ drug use, and sanctified religious dogmas taught to impressionable young children as matters of ‘faith’, or compulsory belief, which conditions their young minds to the idea that dogmatism is virtuous, leading to greater, more comprehensive dogmatism later in life). it’s arguable that any and all dogmatism is indefensible and potentially harmful. it also seems to me that my country’s despicable intellectual/cultural backwardness is directly related to it’s comparatively high levels of religiosity among ‘developed’ nations. however, it must also be acknowledged that many christians and others of various religions have many admirable qualities which may have something to do with their faith. that said, here we go:

as i’ve aged i’ve gained much wisdom and perplexity. i’ve come to surrealize what bullshit i’d been taught, how it has contributed to lack of fulfillment in my life, and how it’s popular/accepted/embraced not only by my teachers (including parents, elders, friends, lovers and haters) but by a great many sheople. here i’m considering garbage such as christian catholicism, a religion based in fear and shame.

the ‘one true church’ headed by an ‘infallible’ fellow in the vatican, has a particularly malicious way to terrorize impressionable young children into embracing the faith. they teach that we’re born ‘sinners’, inherently bad, unholy, worthy of eternal damnation. shame/fear/shame/fear/shame/fear/etc/etc/etc pretty much sums up the effect this teaching had on me (and many others). i lived in fear for a while for my ‘eternal soul’. more importantly catholicism contributed to what’s been a nearly lifelong confusion/anxiety/repression of libido, with many negative effects. i’m quite consumed with resentment/anger/regret/despair as a result, along with the monumental question of what the hell’s wrong with sheople? who in their right mind thinks it’s a good idea to teach young children to be ashamed of being human and to live in fear of divine judgment and eternal damnation? it seems to me a sadistic sort of insanity.

christian fundies aren’t all that different from muslim fundies, or fundies of many other religions for that matter. there are many ways in which various faiths inflict great harm upon children, including female circumcision (caution: link is emotionally disturbing):

such circumcision is standard muslim practice in certain parts of the world. it seems unbelievable. it makes me sick with hate towards the perpetrators of such horrors on children in the name of religion/tradition. and it makes me kind of agree with what i was taught about human nature being inherently bad. how else to explain such sadistic stupidity?

getting back to roman catholicism, it doesn’t take much digging to come up with loads of nauseating manure concerning its past and present. i don’t understand what sheople can possibly be thinking that makes them perceive it as the embodiment of truth and virtue. i don’t understand why its heinous history isn’t more widely appreciated, why this institution wasn’t banished from existence centuries ago. it’s as if nazi germany won the second world war and dominated the post-war world, writing official history as propaganda that whitewashed away its bloody crimes. so few sheople can be bothered with the facts that aren’t taught in school, like how the church committed perhaps the first great genocide of a million sheople in european history.

perhaps i’d be a better partner to the cause of cassandra if not for the fact that based on the awful and sometimes shadowy history of mankind, i’m inclined to agree with kathy c. when she said our species is a pile of shit or words to that effect, as i recall. i’m not sure such perverse beings as ourselves are worthy of salvation in the sense of avoiding self-inflicted extinction.
__________

bio: according to the author, he has led a quite unremarkable life to anyone other than himself. he became alienated and socially isolated early in life as a child-adolescent around the age of 11 in particular, which thereafter had a diminishing/inhibiting effect on his social development. he excelled in school until college, where overwhelmed by loneliness and lack of structure, he quit after completing only one semester at the state university of ny (suny) at buffalo. there he witnessed the great blizzard of 1977 with snowbanks on city sidewalks towering over pedestrians. a year later, searching for direction and security, he joined the u.s. navy, where, due to his relative intelligence, he was encouraged to join the navy’s nuclear power program. he excelled in that school, and spent 4 subsequent years aboard the nuclear powered aircraft carrier the u.s.s. nimitz, then stationed in norfolk, va. the most notable events during his time there were a failed attempt launched from the nimitz in the spring of 1980 to send helicopters to tehran to rescue 52 american hostages being held by the new, virulently anti-american regime of the ayatollah khomeini in the wake of the revolution which deposed the hated shah, who had been instilled in power years ago by an american-inspired coup. the other notable event involved a crash landing on the flight deck that resulted in 14 deaths and a scary aviation fuel fire which took about an hour to extinguish.

he was about to re-enlist for another 6 years with an eye towards becoming a ‘lifer’ in the service to take advantage of the generous retirement pension available immediately to those with at least 20 years of service behind them when his mother rather unexpectedly died from lung cancer in the spring of 1984. this event caused tvt to reconsider staying in a situation he found almost unbearable, so he got out, which surreally put him on his present path of solitary self-education and further extreme separation from conventional thought.

to be continued, perhaps, later.