The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Voltaire and his Brother Jesus

Voltaire and his Brother Jesus
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, March 20 2009, 19:17:16 (CET)
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From Durant...

“As he (Voltaire, mine) matured he learned to admire the ethical precepts of Jesus; we shall be saved by practicing those principles, he said, rather than by believing that Christ was God. He made much fun of the Trinity in ‘The Atheist and the Sage’. The atheist asks, ‘Do you believe that Jesus Christ has one nature, one person, and one will, or two natures, two persons and two wills, or one will, one nature, and two persons, or two wills, two persons, and one nature, or...’ but the sage bids him forget such puzzles and be a good Christian.”

We laugh at these absurdities now but remember that for a few hundred years you could be killed, in a most ghastly way, and so could your young children, for doubting, or believing, the wrong one at the wrong time.

“Voltaire points out that Christ, unlike St. Paul and subsequent Christians, remained faithful to Judaism, despite his criticism of the Pharisees:

‘There is not a single dogma [characteristic] of Christianity that was preached by Jesus Christ.’

St. Paul created Christianity and St. Paul was a Roman citizen. And Constantine determined Christian doctrine (and enforced and spread it on pain of death) and he was a Roman emperor.

“Jesus, in Voltaire’s view, accepted the belief of many pious Jews before him that the world, as they knew it, was coming to an end, and would soon be replaced by the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’-i.e., the direct rule of God on earth. (Modern criticism accepts this view.)”

All Jesus wanted was for people (actually, Jews, mine) to prepare themselves for the Kingdom by becoming kinder and gentler...that’s all.

As he grew older Voltaire came to think of Jesus as his brother

“But that was a later mood. In his war years Voltaire saw the history of Christianity as predominantly a misfortune for mankind. The mysticism of Paul, the fables of Gospels canonical or apocryphal, the legends of martyrs and miracles, and the strategy of priestcraft combined with the hopeful credulity of the poor to produce the Christian Church. Then the Fathers of the Church formulated the doctrine in eloquence capable of satisfying middle-class minds. Bit by bit the light of classical culture was dimmed by the spread of childish imaginations and pious frauds, until darkness settled for centuries upon the European mind. Meditative men, lazy men, men shrinking from the challenges and responsibilities of life, crept into monasteries and infected one another with neurotic dreams of women, devils, and gods. Learned councils assembled to debate whether one absurdity or another should become part of the infallible creed. The Church, basing its power on the popular appetite for consolatory myths, became stronger than the state basing its authority on organized force; the power of the sword became dependent upon the power of the word; popes deposed emperors, and absolved nations from loyalty to their kings.”

The best thing Voltaire had to say about organized religion at the end of his life was that it was the one power which could check an overbearing despot. But in this he was premature for we know how often Fascists, in particular, have relied on the Church and worked hand in hand with priests and popes to maintain themselves in power.

In the end there is everything good to be said for a human bean’s personal sense of spirituality and reverence for this fragile planet and the people on it and not a damn good thing about organized religion. Our very existence will depend upon Nature more than any one god...and we’d be wise to take ourselves to mountaintops, as the ancients did, to the seacoast, meadow, desert or forest and there, under the clean air and surrounded by healthy trees and sparkling water (or what remains) and send out thanks for all this bounty.



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