A Little Something From Mark Twain

[Jimmy_Jam]

Sorry but scientific contribution and literary contributions cannot be accurately contrasted. One can measure how much a scientist contributed to the sciences. A writers contributions are purely subjective.

I've never been impressed with Mark Twains writings. Though I understand why he appealed to Frontier America.

How so? A scientists' contributions to and influence of science are different from a writer's influence on and contributions to literature in what way? There is nothing "purely subjective" about Clemens' impact on American literature, or on how it is perceived worldwide. Clemens is practically synonymous with American literature. The only thing "purely subjective" is your posts on the matter.

 

[whitehall]

I saw a GEICO commercial claiming that GEICO customers would be happier than a witch in a broom factory so they must exist. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi come to mind but I never saw them really use a broom for transportation.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

I saw a GEICO commercial claiming that GEICO customers would be happier than a witch in a broom factory so they must exist. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi come to mind but I never saw them really use a broom for transportation.

Good point. I agree that GEICO customers and broom factories exist.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Sorry but scientific contribution and literary contributions cannot be accurately contrasted. One can measure how much a scientist contributed to the sciences. A writers contributions are purely subjective.

I've never been impressed with Mark Twains writings. Though I understand why he appealed to Frontier America.

Subjective? How in hell would anybody who reads and claims the writings in the bible know what is or is not subjective? When one embraces a 2000 year old fairy tale and expects to rise up from a grave and meet a ghost floating on a cloud...then live forever, they shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.

That's the truth!

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

Sorry but scientific contribution and literary contributions cannot be accurately contrasted. One can measure how much a scientist contributed to the sciences. A writers contributions are purely subjective.

I've never been impressed with Mark Twains writings. Though I understand why he appealed to Frontier America.

Subjective? How in hell would anybody who reads and claims the writings in the bible know what is or is not subjective? When one embraces a 2000 year old fairy tale and expects to rise up from a grave and meet a ghost floating on a cloud...then live forever, they shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.

That's the truth!

Well, I'm not going to get too much into that, but there is an important point to be gained here. avatar seems to think that literature is 100% subjective and that there is no difference between Shakespeare and whoever wrote the "Twilight" books. By avatar's logic one could just as well say that there is no difference between L. Ron Hubbard and the Apostle Paul. It is completely subjective, so therefore Scientology is just as viable a religious belief as Christianity. I mean, they were both writers, and they were both establishing a religion, right?

 

[Lonestar_logic]

Read and become enlightened:

Religion had its share in the changes of civilization and national character, of course. What share? The lion’s. In the history of the human race this has always been the case, will always be the case, to the end of time, no doubt; or at least until man by the slow processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and high - some billions of years hence, say.

The Christian Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes. For eighteen hundred years these changes were slight - scarcely noticeable. The practice was allopathic - allopathic in its rudest and crudest form. The dull and ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most repulsive drugs to be found in the store’s stock; he bled him, cupped him, purged him, puked him, salivated him, never gave his system a chance to rally, nor nature a chance to help. He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day during all that time. The stock in the store was made up of about equal portions of baleful and debilitating poisons, and healing and comforting medicines; but the practice of the time confined the physician to the use of the former; by consequence, he could only damage his patient, and that is what he did.

Not until far within our century was any considerable change in the practice introduced; and then mainly, or in effect only, in Great Britain and the United States. In the other countries to-day, the patient either still takes the ancient treatment or does not call the physician at all. In the English-speaking countries the changes observable in our century were forced by that very thing just referred to - the revolt of the patient against the system; they were not projected by the physician. The patient fell to doctoring himself, and the physician’s practice began to fall off. He modified his method to get back his trade. He did it gradually, reluctantly; and never yielded more at a time than the pressure compelled. At first he relinquished the daily dose of hell and damnation, and administered it every other day only; next he allowed another day to pass; then another and presently another; when he had restricted it at last to Sundays, and imagined that now there would surely be a truce, the homeopath arrived on the field and made him abandon hell and damnation altogether, and administered Christ’s love, and comfort, and charity and compassion in its stead. These had been in the drug store all the time, gold labeled and conspicuous among the long shelfloads of repulsive purges and vomits and poisons, and so the practice was to blame that they had remained unused, not the pharmacy. To the ecclesiastical physician of fifty years ago, his predecessor for eighteen centuries was a quack; to the ecclesiastical physician of to-day, his predecessor of fifty years ago was a quack. To the every-man-his-own-ecclesiastical-doctor of - when? - what will the ecclesiastical physician of to-day be? Unless evolution, which has been a truth ever since the globes, suns, and planets of the solar system were but wandering films of meteor dust, shall reach a limit and become a lie, there is but one fate in store for him.

The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.

Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency.

Why is Samuel Langhorne Clemens' opinion any more valid than anyone elses?

Because he is one of the greatest writers in history.

Sorry, that makes him more relevant than a random asshole on the Internet.

Present company included.

A fiction writer?

oooookkkk

 

[Cammmpbell]

Sorry but scientific contribution and literary contributions cannot be accurately contrasted. One can measure how much a scientist contributed to the sciences. A writers contributions are purely subjective.

I've never been impressed with Mark Twains writings. Though I understand why he appealed to Frontier America.

Subjective? How in hell would anybody who reads and claims the writings in the bible know what is or is not subjective? When one embraces a 2000 year old fairy tale and expects to rise up from a grave and meet a ghost floating on a cloud...then live forever, they shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.

That's the truth!

Well, I'm not going to get too much into that, but there is an important point to be gained here. avatar seems to think that literature is 100% subjective and that there is no difference between Shakespeare and whoever wrote the "Twilight" books. By avatar's logic one could just as well say that there is no difference between L. Ron Hubbard and the Apostle Paul. It is completely subjective, so therefore Scientology is just as viable a religious belief as Christianity. I mean, they were both writers, and they were both establishing a religion, right?

YES!

I think Scientology is the only religion more rediculous than Joseph Smith's Mormonism. Two facts...Ron Hubbard and this:

"study materials and auditing courses are made available to members in return for specified donations"

The very core and substance of Scientology is continuous auditing of "past lives" they are supposed to have lived. There's one obvious thing about all religions....their gods just can't manage money. They always need more money.

 

[westwall]

Read and become enlightened:

Religion had its share in the changes of civilization and national character, of course. What share? The lion’s. In the history of the human race this has always been the case, will always be the case, to the end of time, no doubt; or at least until man by the slow processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and high - some billions of years hence, say.

The Christian Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes. For eighteen hundred years these changes were slight - scarcely noticeable. The practice was allopathic - allopathic in its rudest and crudest form. The dull and ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most repulsive drugs to be found in the store’s stock; he bled him, cupped him, purged him, puked him, salivated him, never gave his system a chance to rally, nor nature a chance to help. He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day during all that time. The stock in the store was made up of about equal portions of baleful and debilitating poisons, and healing and comforting medicines; but the practice of the time confined the physician to the use of the former; by consequence, he could only damage his patient, and that is what he did.

Not until far within our century was any considerable change in the practice introduced; and then mainly, or in effect only, in Great Britain and the United States. In the other countries to-day, the patient either still takes the ancient treatment or does not call the physician at all. In the English-speaking countries the changes observable in our century were forced by that very thing just referred to - the revolt of the patient against the system; they were not projected by the physician. The patient fell to doctoring himself, and the physician’s practice began to fall off. He modified his method to get back his trade. He did it gradually, reluctantly; and never yielded more at a time than the pressure compelled. At first he relinquished the daily dose of hell and damnation, and administered it every other day only; next he allowed another day to pass; then another and presently another; when he had restricted it at last to Sundays, and imagined that now there would surely be a truce, the homeopath arrived on the field and made him abandon hell and damnation altogether, and administered Christ’s love, and comfort, and charity and compassion in its stead. These had been in the drug store all the time, gold labeled and conspicuous among the long shelfloads of repulsive purges and vomits and poisons, and so the practice was to blame that they had remained unused, not the pharmacy. To the ecclesiastical physician of fifty years ago, his predecessor for eighteen centuries was a quack; to the ecclesiastical physician of to-day, his predecessor of fifty years ago was a quack. To the every-man-his-own-ecclesiastical-doctor of - when? - what will the ecclesiastical physician of to-day be? Unless evolution, which has been a truth ever since the globes, suns, and planets of the solar system were but wandering films of meteor dust, shall reach a limit and become a lie, there is but one fate in store for him.

The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.

Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency.

Yeah we get it. You hate religion and therefore everyone else supposed to as well.

Isn't it funny how ONE of you can say it without having to use a wall of words?

I believe it has something to do with intellectual capacity.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Yeah we get it. You hate religion and therefore everyone else supposed to as well.

Isn't it funny how ONE of you can say it without having to use a wall of words?

I believe it has something to do with intellectual capacity.

Well...that takes religious folks out of the equation. The very thought of science and fact scares the hell out of the folks who believe god came along and dropped off the only keys to the kingdom to a bunch of ignorant nomads back when magic, witches and a flat earth were avante garde. It's why fundamentalist groups build their own schools and colleges so they can be sure there's no side to be considered other than what the bible says. Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakkar, Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts come to mind.

 

[Hollie]

Sorry but scientific contribution and literary contributions cannot be accurately contrasted. One can measure how much a scientist contributed to the sciences. A writers contributions are purely subjective.

I've never been impressed with Mark Twains writings. Though I understand why he appealed to Frontier America.

Subjective? How in hell would anybody who reads and claims the writings in the bible know what is or is not subjective? When one embraces a 2000 year old fairy tale and expects to rise up from a grave and meet a ghost floating on a cloud...then live forever, they shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.

That's the truth!

Well, I'm not going to get too much into that, but there is an important point to be gained here. avatar seems to think that literature is 100% subjective and that there is no difference between Shakespeare and whoever wrote the "Twilight" books. By avatar's logic one could just as well say that there is no difference between L. Ron Hubbard and the Apostle Paul. It is completely subjective, so therefore Scientology is just as viable a religious belief as Christianity. I mean, they were both writers, and they were both establishing a religion, right?

Fact and religion are often at odds with one-another. As far as I’m concerned, (and I think history supports it), gods are invented for many reasons - mainly it's a survival technique. If you think about the environmental dynamics that go/went into building religions, the truth is they are so easy to build they can be done by most anyone.

Once you get a group of people to commit to your ideas, then it's a matter of surviving against attacks from those who believe in a competitive believe system. A great "for instance" is Scientology. It was literally borne out of a bet L. Ron Hubbard had where he predicted he could devise a religion and do as well as Jesus.

Well, he didn't but it really worked once he found his "nemesis" -- psychology. Painting psychology as a "demon art" against the far more "astute" Dianetics, Hubbard managed to ensnare millions who had had bad experiences with psychologists. It was a brilliant maneuver. Hubbard knew this and good lord, did he capitalize on it.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Subjective? How in hell would anybody who reads and claims the writings in the bible know what is or is not subjective? When one embraces a 2000 year old fairy tale and expects to rise up from a grave and meet a ghost floating on a cloud...then live forever, they shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.

That's the truth!

Well, I'm not going to get too much into that, but there is an important point to be gained here. avatar seems to think that literature is 100% subjective and that there is no difference between Shakespeare and whoever wrote the "Twilight" books. By avatar's logic one could just as well say that there is no difference between L. Ron Hubbard and the Apostle Paul. It is completely subjective, so therefore Scientology is just as viable a religious belief as Christianity. I mean, they were both writers, and they were both establishing a religion, right?

Fact and religion are often at odds with one-another. As far as I’m concerned, (and I think history supports it), gods are invented for many reasons - mainly it's a survival technique. If you think about the environmental dynamics that go/went into building religions, the truth is they are so easy to build they can be done by most anyone.

Once you get a group of people to commit to your ideas, then it's a matter of surviving against attacks from those who believe in a competitive believe system. A great "for instance" is Scientology. It was literally borne out of a bet L. Ron Hubbard had where he predicted he could devise a religion and do as well as Jesus.

Well, he didn't but it really worked once he found his "nemesis" -- psychology. Painting psychology as a "demon art" against the far more "astute" Dianetics, Hubbard managed to ensnare millions who had had bad experiences with psychologists. It was a brilliant maneuver. Hubbard knew this and good lord, did he capitalize on it.

I think one of the most perfect examples of some nobody proving how gullible ordinary people are is the Jim Jones story. Anybody who can convince that many people to commit suicide proves that most want companionship and to be included more than they feel they are worth as a human being. I also think of the Manson Clan but that involved doping on a major scale. That's a little different.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

Subjective? How in hell would anybody who reads and claims the writings in the bible know what is or is not subjective? When one embraces a 2000 year old fairy tale and expects to rise up from a grave and meet a ghost floating on a cloud...then live forever, they shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.

That's the truth!

Well, I'm not going to get too much into that, but there is an important point to be gained here. avatar seems to think that literature is 100% subjective and that there is no difference between Shakespeare and whoever wrote the "Twilight" books. By avatar's logic one could just as well say that there is no difference between L. Ron Hubbard and the Apostle Paul. It is completely subjective, so therefore Scientology is just as viable a religious belief as Christianity. I mean, they were both writers, and they were both establishing a religion, right?

Fact and religion are often at odds with one-another. As far as I’m concerned, (and I think history supports it), gods are invented for many reasons - mainly it's a survival technique. If you think about the environmental dynamics that go/went into building religions, the truth is they are so easy to build they can be done by most anyone.

Once you get a group of people to commit to your ideas, then it's a matter of surviving against attacks from those who believe in a competitive believe system. A great "for instance" is Scientology. It was literally borne out of a bet L. Ron Hubbard had where he predicted he could devise a religion and do as well as Jesus.

Well, he didn't but it really worked once he found his "nemesis" -- psychology. Painting psychology as a "demon art" against the far more "astute" Dianetics, Hubbard managed to ensnare millions who had had bad experiences with psychologists. It was a brilliant maneuver. Hubbard knew this and good lord, did he capitalize on it.

That is an astute observation. Religion is nothing without an enemy. Lacking an adversary, no religious belief can stand the test of time.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Well, I'm not going to get too much into that, but there is an important point to be gained here. avatar seems to think that literature is 100% subjective and that there is no difference between Shakespeare and whoever wrote the "Twilight" books. By avatar's logic one could just as well say that there is no difference between L. Ron Hubbard and the Apostle Paul. It is completely subjective, so therefore Scientology is just as viable a religious belief as Christianity. I mean, they were both writers, and they were both establishing a religion, right?

Fact and religion are often at odds with one-another. As far as I’m concerned, (and I think history supports it), gods are invented for many reasons - mainly it's a survival technique. If you think about the environmental dynamics that go/went into building religions, the truth is they are so easy to build they can be done by most anyone.

Once you get a group of people to commit to your ideas, then it's a matter of surviving against attacks from those who believe in a competitive believe system. A great "for instance" is Scientology. It was literally borne out of a bet L. Ron Hubbard had where he predicted he could devise a religion and do as well as Jesus.

Well, he didn't but it really worked once he found his "nemesis" -- psychology. Painting psychology as a "demon art" against the far more "astute" Dianetics, Hubbard managed to ensnare millions who had had bad experiences with psychologists. It was a brilliant maneuver. Hubbard knew this and good lord, did he capitalize on it.

That is an astute observation. Religion is nothing without an enemy. Lacking an adversary, no religious belief can stand the test of time.

I have news for you....it isn't standing the test of time!

I won't live to see it but the changes in attitudes I've witnessed during my 78 years prove to me that 100 years from now folks will look at the Christian faith the same way they look at Roman and Greek mythology now. Or....as Thomas Jefferson put it:


The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding
~Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823~