Comment

Comment by Nate on December 23, 2009 at 9:21am

Nate, thanks. I guess I need to add if the sheep only realized the foundation of Christianity is built upon some hallucinations stolen from others, maybe the world might be a better place.

Amen!

Allow me to add, as a former brainwashed believer, that the realization that "end time" thinking is not unique to one's particular group is a very powerful blow to the indoctrination. The Witnesses, the group I belonged to, prided themselves on being God's sole channel(in modern times) for revealing his intentions towards humanity. They emphasize the "uniqueness" of their message. When one begins to discover from investigation that there is actually a long and pervasive history of millenialism and Armageddonesque thinking, irrational hopes and fears about the future are dissipated.

Comment by Dave Rogers on December 23, 2009 at 9:04am

Nate, thanks. I guess I need to add if the sheep only realized the foundation of Christianity is built upon some hallucinations stolen from others, maybe the world might be a better place.

Comment by Nate on December 23, 2009 at 8:44am

True, previous and different cultures have developed other end of the world beliefs. But how many people today still believe in Zoroaster's version compared to John's version?

I'm not suggesting that they're competing versions. Rather, John's Apocalypse was an elaboration of Zoroastrianism's concept of a battle between the forces of good and evil in which good would eventually triumph, ushering in a period of peace, forever free from the influences of evil.

Comment by Glenn Sogge on December 23, 2009 at 8:37am

I understand that there are many myths of end times but I read somewhere (??) recently that the kind of End Times being kicked around now started not very long ago here in America (definitely less than a century ago) and took of in the Petri dish of Christian Fundamentalism.

Comment by Dave Rogers on December 23, 2009 at 8:25am

The idea actually goes back to Zoroaster (Zarathustra in Greek).

True, previous and different cultures have developed other end of the world beliefs. But how many people today still believe in Zoroaster's version compared to John's version?

Comment by Nate on December 23, 2009 at 8:06am

So... Millions believe in the End Times because a guy (John) on an island 40 to 70 years after the alleged resurrection wrote some (possibly psychedelic) hallucinations based on some letters of another guy (Paul), who fell off a horse and had his own hallucinations of Jesus.

The idea actually goes back to Zoroaster (Zarathustra in Greek).

Comment by Dave Rogers on December 23, 2009 at 8:01am

So... Millions believe in the End Times because a guy (John) on an island 40 to 70 years after the alleged resurrection wrote some (possibly psychedelic) hallucinations based on some letters of another guy (Paul), who fell off a horse and had his own hallucinations of Jesus. The icing on this crap cake is that a psychotic Roman emperor picks a fledgling death cult's beliefs as the official state religion of the empire and makes other beliefs punishable by death, setting in motion the monolith of the Roman Catholic Church (and it's many spin-offs since).

If the sheep could only open their eyes for 30 seconds and see that the foundation of Christianity is built upon a bunch of hallucinations, the world might be a better place.

Comment by James M. Martin on December 23, 2009 at 7:40am

@Hugh: Aha! There's the rub. The problem with the concepts of sin and remission. Theoretically, you can commit any outrage and still be absolved. What's to prevent you from committing far more horrible transgressions the next time? Nothing. The clergy will tell you that you must confess your sins with genuine intent to walk the straight and narrow from then on. This ignores human nature.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on December 23, 2009 at 6:05am

Hugh, thanks for the correction. I don't like to post bad history, but I was pretty sure I was right at the time. For one thing, my historian friend, Barbara, sold 200,000 books of A Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends; she doesn't make mistakes. I once mentioned Connie at a party and she concurred, but said "he also killed his mother."

At any rate, the irony of this story remains incomprehensibly improbable, that one man was able to change the course of western civilization in such a weird manner. Connie actually wound up enslaving the minds of billions and billions of future people by imposing this bizarre religion on the empire. It’s nearly seventeen centuries after the fact, and we still have to put up with Christianity in our laws, (blue laws, for instance) and culturally in ways we can scarcely fathom (adultery is a serious crime, for instance—or the stores are closed Sundays).

This is not to mention the endmeme which endangers all life—and remarkably all future life—on the planet. This is pretty sick stuff when we think about what a nut job Connie was.

Comment by Jaume on December 23, 2009 at 4:11am

Constantine's family story matches the Atreides when it comes to tragedy. By a strange twist of fate, Constantine's 3rd son (Constans) was murdered in a city that was named after Constantine's mother Helena (Castrum Helenae, now Elne.)

(Incidentally, Elne is the place I happen to live in. I also lived for a while in the city where Constans's long run to evade his assassins began, so I have a few reasons to be familiar with him.)

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