The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> More Paine

More Paine
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Wednesday, February 13 2008, 22:34:49 (CET)
from 12.199.144.42 - mail.shpl.org Non-Profit Organizations - Linux - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

“From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine who was a great devotee of the Church, upon the subject of what is called ‘ redemption by the death of the son of God’. After the sermon was ended I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and I thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection arising from the idea that I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and moreover I believe that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system.

…the Christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it ( for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse…as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

Having thus shown the irreconcilable inconsistencies between the real word of God existing in the universe, and which is called ‘the word of god’, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, I proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in all ages and perhaps in all countries to impose upon mankind.

Those three means are Mystery, Miracle and Prophecy. The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected.

With respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery; the whole vegetable world is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put into the ground, is made to develop itself and become an oak. We know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself, and returns to us such an abundant interest for so small a capital.

The fact, however, as distinct from the operating cause is not a mystery, because we see it and we know also the means which we are to use, which is no other than putting the seed into the ground. We know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know and which, if we did, we could not perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret and left to do it for ourselves.

But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to ‘moral truth’, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops ITSELF in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God, so far from having anything of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity. And the practice of moral truth or, in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our acting toward each other as he acts benignly towards all.



---------------------


The full topic:



Content-length: 4595
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-encoding: identity,gzip,deflate
Cache-control: max-age=259200
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Keep-alive: 300
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf5/rkvsf_core.php?.5gmv.
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20060501 Epiphany/1.6.5
Via: 1.1 localhost:3128 (squid/2.5.STABLE13)
X-forwarded-for: 127.0.0.1



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9