As I seek an epithet that will embody the essence of this site, I am confounded not only by the choices but by the divagations of my mind. I want something that will eternally etch itself in the soul of those curious positive spirits, something that will resonate with all things pure and true. The triumph of barbarism and religion has been catalogued but I wish to catalogue my venial attempts to turn the tide per se. There still remains a glimmer of hope, of light. There are yet to be found some of those wonderful beings that believe in the human spirit.
I respect people that have convictions. Yet, I always shy from expatiating on those things that I believe in, for fear of offending the sensibilities of those around me.
I dislike Christianity. Some hate it; I cannot hate it for I have never loved – the potency of love for this superstition has never existed in my soul. Christianity embodies the stubborness of the Jewish faith – that stubborness that led to the destruction and sacking of their holy city by the Roman authorities. It also embodies the consequences of the vain attempts of minds ill-equipped to understand the subtleties of those philosophical questions that had plagued the philosophers of ancient times. Fishsermen and people of the meanest sorts took on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle and defiled them. These people the Church calls her Doctors and Fathers.
I admire the ancient Greek philosophers, for their amazing separation of science and religion. They took the learning of the Babylonians and Egyptians and all those wonderful people that came before them and furthered it through this separation. Science, this is to say reason, is not compatible with religion, this is to say superstition.
Religion has usurped the tools of science, but to no effect. Though Christianity appropriated philosophical concepts, the consequences only showed a pathetic understanding of them. For example, the conception of the Trinity, that triumvirate of three deities that are one, is a Platonic idea that though it is recognizable to the Platonist, it is butchered. And try as they may, Christians cannot do away with that all-too-common accusation: this is polytheism. Then again, Christianity is a religion of paradoxes. That great bastion of monotheism has its hierarchy of the Deity, his virgin mother, his angels, and of course, the saints!
Christianity sounds absurd to the positive spirit, as well as to the neophyte of reason, but his feelings towards his ancient Master are temporal and he cannot be fully trusted (perhaps I’ll write more on those that reach Atheism via the slow and gradual process of self-elucidation and those that reach it through disappointment or other means). And as I said, Christianity usurped the tools of science but the ends are different. Science seeks truth. Religion seeks the validation of its belief – of the Deity and the whole man-made superstition surrounding this mythical being.
Christians accept the Bible. Its validity, its veracity is taking a priori. I have come to understand that I cannot argue with Christians or other people that derive their religion from the Book. Why? Because I do not believe in the Bible; for me it is a document concocted by the human hand and interpreted by the human mind to serve his needs. There is nothing divine about the Holy Scriptures just as their is nothing divine about the Platonic dialogues or all those ancient works of erudition. At least we [humanists] acknowledge that these works were written by men, though men of great genius. We attach ourselves to these ideas, not to the men that espouse them. The Idea transcends time and space.