A handy reference. The title says it all: A Brief History of the Apocalypse.

First posted here.

Goodness is evil.  This will startle some, I know.  It sounds like a troll out of 1984.

The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, in The Denial of Death,  held that human culture is a defensive mechanism: human beings seek to invest their lives with heroic meaning because they are aware of, but reject, their own mortality.  "Man seeks his own heroism or meaning in the world.  To find and sustain an immortality project that transcends one’s own life and lives on forever.  In this light, Becker saw all of civilization, family, and religion as vehicles for man’s immortality projects.  Yet, all things in the world are conditional, arise, and vanish.  We seek to become Gods, to be unconditional…or at least seek someone or something that can be God.  Whether it’s science, a lover, a skill, or a religion."

There is a second, a religious dimension for me.  Jesus said "judge not, lest ye be judged." This has tended not to work out well, and seems to be one of his least obeyed teachings.  Our judgment is corrupted by sin.  Our moral judgments are not immune to this corruption, no matter to what extent we imagine that they are founded on holy doctrine.  As Bob Dylan says:

The preacher was talking, there's a sermon he gave
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved.
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied.  ("Man in the Long Black Coat")

One vehicle by which people seek to lend a heroic dimension to their lives is by causes and moralities.  By uniting with causes, they seek to give a heroic dimension to their lives that will transcend the fact of their certain death.  By affirming the goodness of their chosen cause, they allow themselves to believe that their devotion to it makes up for the wrongs they know they've done.  It's all about maintaining the illusion of a virtuous self, one that actively engages the world with great projects that transcend individual lives.  By maintaining the illusion of this virtuous self, they deny their own questionable past.  

Am I making any sense so far?  Probably not.

The problem is, this heroic self based on an illusion of virtue can only be maintained at the expense of our neighbors.  Virtue cannot exist in a vacuum; it requires a corresponding vice.  And since the illusory heroic self, by definition, manifests virtue instead of vice, vice must exist in some other person.  It's a game of pin the tail on the donkey where there is no donkey, only your fellow players.  

This is why goodness is evil.  I'm better than my neighbor because I recycle.  I'm better than my neighbor because I repress my homosexual urges.  I've enlisted in a heroic cause by going vegan, and not polluting my body with the unhealthy products of cruelty like my neighbor does.  I used to smoke but quit; therefore I have achieved mightily, but those who continue to smoke are weak and self-indulgent.  

All this moral bullshit is dangerous and evil.  It contributes to human misery.  We pin the evil we deny but know is still inside on our neighbor, and cry for his punishment.  All the causes that people kill and die for are ultimately about constructing the illusion of a virtuous heroic self.  

I say instead: be easy on yourself.  Be easy on your neighbor.  Stop pretending to be better than you are.  This is why the gospel that all men are sinners in need of a redemption they cannot earn by the cultivation of their own virtues is indeed good news.

If you are confused, there is, as the I Ching says, "no blame". 

Only weeks since mathematicians proved it couldn’t be done, CERN boffins have put the smile back on sci-fi fans’ faces everywhere by discovering neutrinos travelling faster than light.

The astonishing results, reported by Reuters and others, came as the result of the OPERA experiment in which 15,000 beams of neutrinos were fired from Geneva to the Gran Sasso in Italy.

While the researchers are still advocating “prudence” in the face of these results, they believe their observations – in which the neutrinos made the 730 km journey 60 nanoseconds faster than light would have done – are accurate.

Rick Perry, the Texas governor presidential wannabe 2.0, and Galileo Galilei, one of the great scientific thinkers in Western history -– BFFs?

It was a double-take moment in the Republican presidential sweepstakes debate at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley. Perry, a science scoffer on evolution and global climate change, invoked the ghost of the persecuted and brilliant Galileo to support his fingers-in-the-ears, don't-confuse-me-with-facts sentiments about global warming:

"The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans' economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet to me is just nonsense," Perry said. "Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said, 'Here is the fact.' Galileo got outvoted for a spell," he said.

Reader, it may be that just now you are blinded by the dazzling brightness of the law of God. You feel its claims on your conscience, but you cannot keep it in your life. Not that you find fault with the law, on the contrary, it commands your profoundest esteem, still you are in nowise drawn by it to God; you are rather hardened in heart, and are verging towards desperation. Ah, poor heart! turn thine eye from Moses, with all his repelling splendour, and look to Jesus, resplendent with milder glories.

Behold His flowing wounds and thorn-crowned head! He is the Son of God, and therein He is greater than Moses, but He is the Lord of love, and therein more tender than the lawgiver. He bore the wrath of God, and in His death revealed more of God's justice than Sinai on a blaze, but that justice is now vindicated, and henceforth it is the guardian of believers in Jesus. Look, sinner, to the bleeding Saviour, and as thou feelest the attraction of His love, fly to His arms, and thou shalt be saved.

 (Evening, Mark 9:15)

Christians and non-Christians alike are marveling at a unique vine formation in Littleton [Colorado] that some say resembles Jesus Christ during the crucifixion.

OK, I'm currently back down to one slightly goofy eye, plus I don't have audio on this box, so help me out on this one, please: does the "apparition" in this video sprout horns, or no? If so, does anyone in this report seem to notice?

Maybe I'm not seeing the entire halo or something - what do y'all see? TIA!

From CNN:

If Jesus were tried in Richmond, Virginia, today, would he have been sentenced to death? Or would he have faced life behind bars with no chance for parole?

That’s the choice given to jurors here recently.

During Lent, the Church of the Holy Comforter used Virginia law to retry the sentencing phase of the blasphemy case against Jesus of Nazareth. Church members and guests played the role of the jury.

The trial was the brainchild of Mark Osler, a former U.S. Attorney in Detroit who teaches at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis and is friends with a member of the Richmond church.

 

Religion News Service:

It’s been proclaimed from pulpits and blogs for years—Christians divorce as much as everyone else in America.

But some scholars and family activists are questioning the oft-cited statistics, saying Christians who attend church regularly are more likely to remain wed.

“It’s a useful myth,” said Bradley Wright, a University of Connecticut sociologist who recently wrote “Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites ... and Other Lies You’ve Been Told.”

“Because if a pastor wants to preach about how Christians should take their marriages more seriously, he or she can trot out this statistic to get them to listen to him or her.”

The various findings on religion and divorce hinge on what kind of Christians are being discussed.

This is going to seem like an act of colossal hubris.  Well, it is an act of colossal hubris. 

On the other hand, these things used to get periodically updated to cope with emerging errors.  A few relatively simple changes to the latter third of the Apostles' Creed might help with the worst of some of the current ones.  So here goes: