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Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 10/16/2005 6:04 PM (GMT -6)

My rendition of Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

Life sucks. From beginning to end it just sucks!

What’s it matter? We work at understanding life, and in the end it's just a shitty* awful mess.

Existence is just a vacuous waste.

The whole stinking universe is just one big meaningless fart. Nietzsche was right.

The Sun sucks. It just goes round and round. Idiot Sun.

The wind is just Earth farting meaninglessly in our faces, whirling out its pointless existence.

The rains and rivers are just Earth pissing on us. Round and round it all goes. Earth farts in our faces and pisses on everything we do and are. That’s what the Earth does. And that’s what we are in it. Round and round we go, generation after meaningless generation.

It never changes. Nothing new. Nothing matters. Nothing counts. What has been will be. More gas and urine, that’s all.

Is it otherwise? Oh really? Show me! Point to it. It’s just a mirage. Just another way life lies to you. The only truth is: Life sucks.

To make matters worse, when people figure out that life’s a toilet bowl and record their discovery for future generations, nobody remembers and nobody cares what they think. I took it on myself to figure it out. But nobody will care what I say either. That especially sucks.

I’m not saying this because I’m a loser. Hell no. I was a successful pastor of a huge church. Went to university. Got a Ph.D. in theology, philosophy, cosmology. There wasn’t a Sophistry I didn’t get a degree in. God I was connected, known, influential, wrote books. Did it all. And to boot, I really did care. I really did believe. It wasn’t a show for me. But in the end, what I’ve really learned is this: IT is a show. It all just sucks. That’s God’s gift to us.

I’m telling you. I’ve been there. Done it all. Seen it all. It’s all pointless.

You can’t fix it. You can’t make it meaningful. You can’t account for anything.

I climbed the ladder of success and kept my head in it all. Was sincere and thoughtful. I wanted to figure it out from top to bottom. And I did. Here it is: Life sucks. I suck. You suck. It’s all a pointless game. Who cares? I was happier as an uneducated idiot. Now after all I know and all I’ve done I couldn’t possibly be more unhappy.

* NOT profanity. Seriously. This is literature.

Post Edited (TGB) : 10/16/2005 6:14:20 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/16/2005 7:37 PM (GMT -6)

LOVE IT, TOM! Love it!

My addition.

Ecclesiastes 2:24-26

I'm telling you right now. You can't do anything better than to live life and do something you like to do. From what I see, this is God's blessing. If is weren't for God, who'd be able to enjoy anything at all, right?

If you chill with God, God will give you wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but if you don't chill with God, he'll give your stuff to the person who does chill with God. But, even THIS doesn't really matter. So-called being "blessed by God" It's still all a big vacuous waste.

Ecclesiastes is literally my FAVORITE book of the Bible.

Seriously.

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/16/2005 8:46 PM (GMT -6)

From Candle in the Dark website

Here's a sobering image from JPL/NASA. In his book, "Pale Blue Dot" (1994) Carl Sagan showed just where he obtained that provocative title. It's a photo that was taken by the space probe Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our neighborhood for the outer fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look back at its home planet. The camera was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away from Earth when it captured and sent back this lonely portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

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

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

- Carl Sagan, from "Pale Blue Dot"

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 10/16/2005 9:16 PM (GMT -6)

Meph: It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Jeff: Insignificance doesn't lead me to feel obligation. Significance does. Where MUCH is given, MUCH is required. And vice versa. But that MUCH that we have is not anything to be conceited about precisely BECAUSE it OBLIGATES us MUCH. It (the capacity of the divine image) is not to be USED as if it existed for our OWN ends.

Christ said to the Pharisee about the woman that washed his feet with her tears that she loved much because she was forgiven much! The greater WE are loved, the greater is OUR obligation. Paul said the same in Rom. 12. Because of the compassions of God it is our REASONABLE service to give our bodies as a living sacrifice. If God did nothing for us but to set us sail on a pale blue dot with no prospects for anything but a vain, short life, full of trouble, why would we feel obligated to such a deistic God? Why should we feel obligated, in that case, to do any more for the pale blue dot and it's inhabitants than that which would enhance our own short, pathetic life?

Post Edited (jefscott) : 10/16/2005 9:23:41 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 10/16/2005 9:39 PM (GMT -6)

Jeff: (emphasis mine)
Insignificance doesn't lead me to feel obligation. Significance does. Where MUCH is given, MUCH is required. And vice versa. But that MUCH that we have is not anything to be conceited about precisely BECAUSE it OBLIGATES us MUCH. It (the capacity of the divine image) is not to be USED as if it existed for our OWN ends.

and...

If God did nothing for us but to set us sail on a pale blue dot with no prospects for anything but a vain, short life, full of trouble, why would we feel obligated to such a deistic God? Why should we feel obligated, in that case, to do any more for the pale blue dot and it's inhabitants than that which would enhance our own short, pathetic life?

This is why even some of the most ardent of atheists and agnostics will tell you that religion is a necessary evil. Some people just plain wouldn't even consider any type of morality without it. This is why some people consider religions of various types to be a variation of the "Noble Lie" to promote morality and the removal of existential despair.

For Plato's "Noble Lie"
www.molloy.edu/academic/philosophy/sophia/plato/republic/rep3b_comm.htm#The%20Noble%20Lie

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 10/16/2005 10:11 PM (GMT -6)

Meph: Some people just plain wouldn't even consider any type of morality without it.

Jeff: But what about the passages I referred to? Am I misrepresenting them? What's your take on those passages?

I think pursuing one's own ends can be seen as a "TYPE of morality." It's just not what most people mean by it. Most people mean that there are ENDS for our existence that God INTENDS for us to attain. But insomuch as God is a person, He can't help but deem suffering for the sake of attaining those ends to please Him as a WORTHY action. We know this and receive satisfaction from it. To be deemed WORTHY by Him who is the object of our adoration is, in of itself, motivating and inspiring even without fully understanding what we're worthy OF.

Sure, atheists don't understand how some people won't just do the "right" thing. But that's because they assume they ARE doing the right thing. When in fact, according to Rom. 1, they are neglecting two of the most important obligations we have--being thankful to God and glorifying Him.

If there is no standard of obligation from God, then what sense does it make for the atheist to compare his own standard to mine? We might have different sensibilites and, hence, prioritize our values differently. We may have different strengths accounting for why he can do something easily whereas it is quite difficult for me. What makes the atheist the privileged evaluator? If God is not the "privileged" evaluator, relativism is all that follows, whether the atheist is logical enough to realize it or not.

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