Category Archives: religion

What I find objectionable in Christianity

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One might ask what I find objectionable in Christianity. It’s an easy question to answer. What I find objectionable is that they canonize people like Theresa of Calcutta, that they sanctify groveling before God, that they sanctify humility and vilify power. Essentially, Jesus is what Hinduism and Buddhism would aspire to produce as the end-result of their teachings, but Christianity would be aghast at the very thought, because He is God, and they are worms. That’s what I find objectionable about Christianity, that it is shocked and aghast at all the things that I find to be the greatest parts of my personal spiritual practice.

Sure, there are versions of Hinduism, like the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, who are basically the Hindu version of Islam, who would find nothing objectionable about the Abrahamic approach to God, but that’s because they took their theology from Islam and their theological understanding of Krishna is indistinguishable from the Islamic understanding of Allah, if you ignore their extensive use of visual aids like statues and images. Their concept is that God is one, he is a person who lives in some very physical description of heaven surrounded by his worshipers, he’s the ultimate lawmaker and judge and if someone has a problem with that, there’s reincarnation in lower forms, instead of hell, but the basic principles are all similar. That is so because their cult was born under Islamic rule, and as someone who has Bosnia in his neighborhood I know what a country looks like after centuries of Islamic rule.

Their worst crime, in my mind, is that they stole Krishna, and turned him into something contemptible, into a faggot deity with the vile character of Allah.

Krishna is an example used by Vyasa, probably the smartest man of all times, in order to carve pathways into a human mind that will make it possible to understand God – what God is like, what would God do, what would God say, how would God react to something, how would certain people react to Him. It’s a masterpiece of the highest order, there are very few things like it in the history of literature. Tolkien, for instance, used similar literary means to illustrate his views on spirituality, in a very subtle but profound way. Krishna is something of a blend between Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and those two silly Hobbits, Merry and Pippin, who are always planning some fuckery and getting themselves into trouble. He’s the super-sage who impromptu pulls Bhagavad-gita out of his sleeve just because his friend needed some advice on the battlefield. He’s the exiled heir to the throne who was forced to live with foster parents in some village while his parents were imprisoned in a dungeon by his demon uncle; growing up, he killed the bastard and restored order. He’s the super-warrior who kicked so much ass he became a legend, and was best friends with another super ass-kicker, Arjuna, and they both combine incredible power with incredible poise and grace; they are relaxed and funny yet deep, gentle yet horribly powerful, illustrating both similarities and differences between the aspects of Vishnu and Shiva, allowing each other the opportunity to show a subtle relationship between two major Gods that are not revealed in interactions with mere humans. What you can see, for instance, is God’s distress and anguish when his friend vows to do something that is almost certain to get him killed, and he walks in circles, distressed, talking to himself about how he, too, will then choose to die because a third of his being is in Arjuna and what draw is there in this world without him? You have Arjuna, who had to make a choice between Krishna (who vowed not to fight) and his vast army, to fight alongside him in a war, and he immediately chose Krishna. When Krishna later asked what the hell that was about, Arjuna smiled and answered that it’s a great opportunity for him to catch up to Krishna’s high score because he won’t be able to do anything but watch him kick an enormous amount of ass from the best seat in town.

God is funny. There’s an explosive, bright spark of humor and joy in His smile that can light up the whole world, that can dry all tears, because it shows that light, consciousness, bliss, reality that is beyond this videogame of an illusion that we take so seriously here. It is true that heaven is full of souls who worship God, but that’s not because he’s a narcissistic asshole who wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s because he’s so incredibly fucking cool there’s nothing better in the whole world than just looking at him do things his way, showing what God is all about, what absolute reality is all about, what it looks like, what it feels like, and when you look at it, you don’t just look at it, because a light in your own being reacts to him and grows brighter, and as you glow worshiping Him His light grows within you and at one point you lose the difference, you no longer see it as you worshiping His light and beauty and love and power and reality and greatness, because as you worship the highest reality you become realized, as in, turned into that which is real. You become enlightened, as in, filled with light, becoming of light. You understand that that brahman, that factor of all that is cool and great about the Gods, that brahman am I, I am That, and that is the moment where I both fall to my knees before God and I am God, because in God everything is first-person, everything is I, and everything is now, it is the eternity beyond space and time and limitation of any kind.

That’s what I find objectionable in Christianity, that it finds enlightenment to be something sinful.

Acceptability of evidence

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Who decides what is considered to be evidence?

It’s a serious questions, because one of the common forms of demagogic trickery consists of confusing this issue, and so the opposing side implicitly assumes it has the right to arbitrarily accept or refuse the offered evidence. So basically I say that trees are living organisms, and the guy I’m talking to says “I dispute that”, and then what, I have to prove that trees are living organisms, or do I simply get to say “you are an idiot”? I actually prefer the latter option, because it is almost impossible to prove anything within the context of a discussion. You can only refer to research and evidence that has already been produced in a more formal setup, experimentally, and if someone refuses to accept that, you have a serious problem if you want to proceed with any kind of a discussion, because if you allow the opponent to control acceptance of evidence, he in fact gets to control who wins, because victory is defined by having the prevailing evidence on your side, and if someone decides what is accepted as evidence, he can rig the game.

For instance, I’ve seen extensive IQ studies based on statistical evidence proving racial differences, and it is all dismissed out of hand with the statement that “this has been refuted”. No, it wasn’t refuted, it was confirmed again and again and again, and it is being summarily dismissed by the leftists because it doesn’t agree with their beliefs and so “it must be wrong”, because racism or because Nazism. So if I allow my opponent to simply dismiss enormous body of work that is offered as evidence, and then proceed to say that my claims are unsubstantiated because there is no evidence for them, can the discussion really be continued? There really isn’t anything to talk about because it’s like dismissing spaceflight as evidence because someone says that nothing NASA publishes can be trusted. If you can’t rely on scientific research as evidence, what can you rely on, in a debate? You can’t really demonstrate any significant physics in a debate, except that water is wet and glass is breakable by smashing a glass of water on the floor. This very much limits the possibility of a debate between very different philosophies and worldviews, because admission of evidence is the point where the debate is decided in advance. Another problem is when your opponent cites a bullshit study you’ve never heard of, which for instance “proves” that there’s no gravity and that the impression of gravity on Earth is created because it keeps accelerating upwards at a rate of 9.81 m/s2. First he dismisses NASA as evidence, and then he offers this bullshit study as the truth, and when you dismiss it, the result is a false impression of equal fanaticism and stubbornness on both sides. The real truth is, you’re talking to an idiot, and if that truth isn’t openly acknowledged, you’re fucked by merely participating in a debate.

And now we come to the more important issue. In your personal life, who decides what is evidence, and what is acceptable? Is it you, or is it dictated to you? Are you free to make a personal judgment about acceptability of evidence?

How do you decide that your wife loves you? Do you say it can’t be determined because there’s no scientific backing for the claim? Do you dismiss your emotions as evidence because someone says they are not reliable? Or do you trust your own judgment and make up your own mind? How do you approach the question of God’s existence if you feel that God is present in your life and you feel that there is compelling evidence for accepting that He exists? If you cannot communicate this evidence to others, does it stop being evidence to you, personally? Is it a requirement that others must accept it, or it isn’t evidence? I don’t think so. It’s a complex thing, and what is evidence for a person, doesn’t necessarily need to be admissible to a court, or to science, but it doesn’t necessarily cease to be valid. For instance, there isn’t a reliable way for someone outside my room to tell whether I’m writing this text on my desktop computer or a laptop. When I connect to the CMS, it only sees the IP address of my router, with no identification of the internal IP address on the LAN which could indicate which machine was used to make the connection. The text would be the same in both cases. Anyone inspecting the CMS database wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You won’t be able to tell the difference. But I know which machine I used, I know I’m typing it into the desktop machine. I cannot reliably prove it to you, but I know it’s the truth – only I know the truth. The courts cannot know it, science cannot know it, but I know it. Is it less true because it isn’t scientific or communicable? If I write on this keyboard do I write less reliably because you cannot reliably know that I do? If I drink coffee from a cup, did I drink it less because there are no witnesses and you cannot know that I did? If I experienced God, directly and without any doubt on my side, is it less true because you cannot confirm it? But if that is the cornerstone of my personal understanding of reality, and it is not admissible as evidence in a debate, if others will not accept it and I cannot deny it, if my personal experience is incommunicably wider than others’, of what use is a debate? I can write my narrative, and it can be compelling or not to others. I can actually use spiritual powers to create spiritual experiences in others, but what it does is just create one more person that believes me, and one more person you will call crazy or deluded. So what it all comes down to is faith. You choose to believe certain things, and you accept evidence that supports your belief, and dismiss evidence that refutes your belief. Until you change your internal reasoning for acceptability of evidence, there’s nothing anyone can do to convince you. Long ago, I decided that it doesn’t matter. I will do my thing based on what I believe, and you will do your thing based on what you believe, and each choice will have consequences.

Leftist approach to reason and evidence

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It’s interesting how some people, usually on the left political and intellectual spectrum, recommend that we all disregard our prejudice and make up our minds based on reason and evidence, and yet, when people do just that, and based on reason and evidence come up with conclusions different from theirs, they go absolutely fucking nuts.

Well, you can’t have it both ways. If you say that I should reject prejudice, I will do exactly that. I will reject the prejudice that people are equal and see the evidence. I will look into the statistics, I will look at the results, and I will make up my mind. If I don’t come to the same conclusion as you doesn’t mean that I did anything wrong. Maybe it’s you who are not following your advice. Maybe it’s you who are prejudiced, only your prejudice is that of equality.

If you say that people should reject religious dogma and make up your own mind about the existence of God based on the available evidence, and I do exactly that and conclude that God indeed exists, and that religions are just a primitive way of dealing with that truth in an inept and clumsy way, similar to the ways in which cavemen dealt with subdural hematoma. They actually invented trepanation, removal of a part of the skull in order to let the brain expand and relieve intracranial pressure, and it was widely ridiculed in medical circles until quite recently the modern neurosurgeons discovered that craniotomy is the best way of dealing with that exact problem. So yeah, the cavemen were the stupid dumbasses who bored holes in people’s skulls to let the evil spirits out, except that the modern doctors also bore holes in people’s skulls in order to… what? So yeah, we follow the evidence. But I will also make up my own mind on what I consider to be evidence. If I’m to make up my own mind, I’ll be damned if I’ll allow someone else to dictate what I’m to do with this freedom. I will see for myself. So, if God exists, are there people who can attest to that? There are. Are they credible? Yes. Are there multiple testimonies that can be correlated? Yes. Do I have personal experiences that confirm that God exists? I do. So well, there you have it. I followed the evidence, I approached those things rationally, and I made up my own mind.

The fact that my mind didn’t turn out into a replica of yours should not surprise you, since you profess your support for “multiculturalism” and accepting differences. But that isn’t really the case, isn’t it? It’s only a pose. You only accept different opinions if they are the same as yours. You only say we should follow the evidence and reason and reject prejudice because you think you can order people around and dictate what the prejudice are, what the evidence is and what is the reasonable conclusion. Essentially, you have a playbook you want to impose on everyone, and the story about freedom and reason and evidence is just a collection of nice words that are supposed to cloud one’s judgement and blind him to the ugliness of what’s actually going on.

Can atheists go to heaven?

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There’s that recurring theme with atheists who, wanting to portray religious people as close-minded, intolerant and limited, ask if they think that atheists can be good people, and, alternatively, if atheists can go to heaven.

The answer to this is to first define “good”, and then to define “heaven”, or salvation.

Accepting the most usual definition for “good”, the answer is yes. Most atheistic solutions to ethics are benevolent, tit-for-tat ones, which will be aggressive only if provoked, and even then only in a limited way, in order to deter further provocations. The dynamics of the cold war were essentially an example of two inherently godless camps doing self-serving things and thus avoiding any widespread violence and evil. There are, of course, very evil atheistic ethical frameworks, which we can see in the history of the age of enlightenment and socialism, so let’s not delude ourselves: atheism is actually wide open to bad ethical choices if they are seen as reasonable and self-serving.

The answer to the third question, whether atheists can go to heaven, is more difficult. If you define heaven as a state of permanent, eternal union with God, then my answer is a decisive “no”, because an atheist simply doesn’t have the kind of internal urge that makes one explore everything related to God because all his motivations drive him there, as if everything depends on it. If you really want God, you will find him, and then I can be quite certain that you’ll go to heaven when you die. If, as atheists often proudly say, you feel no need for God, you won’t go to heaven because what you are looking for is not in heaven. It’s that simple. You may now answer that it’s not right, but my response is that it’s exactly right, and it wouldn’t be right to put you in heaven so that you can annoy saints and angels with your sarcastic remarks about how stupid they are to love God so blindly when you see nothing special about Him. Since you see nothing special about God and nothing attractive about heaven, get the fuck out. It’s only logical.

Since you don’t need God anyway, you won’t be missing out on anything, apparently.

Bad ideas that refuse to die

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I was thinking about socialism and how wrong ideas never seem to die, regardless of how harmful or useless they proved to be. For instance, at one point more than half the world tried to implement socialism in one form or another, and it invariably produced widespread human misery. It simply does that by design, with its “eat the rich” paradigm. It eats the rich and then everybody is poor, there’s nobody to blame, and then the infighting begins, millions die, everybody is poor, and eventually people completely give up on the system and adopt some form of social Darwinism, which works excellently, produces enormous wealth and prosperity, but, of course, not everybody succeeds and then some fucking idiot re-introduces socialist ideas, like, how about redistributing that wealth so that those few poor people don’t get excluded from the widespread prosperity, so taxes are increased, the state bureaucracy is increased, free market is stressed by taxation, the worthless people get welfare and reproduce exponentially (because they are rewarded with more welfare for reproducing and failing at everything) while contributing exactly jack shit, the state goes into debt, scientific and high-tech programmes are curtailed because the socialist politicians think that all money must go to social programmes because socialism, and if there are problems, blame the evil black beast of capitalism and ask for more state control and socialism as a solution. The problem is with the concept that the poor possess virtue, that God is on their side, and that people are equal and therefore deserve the same outcomes regardless of their actual abilities and choices.

If you try to introduce some alternative to socialism or use common sense, you’re immediately attacked and “de-platformed”, as it is called – you’re a x-ist and x-phobe and all the tolerant multicultural people want to kill you. Somehow, there’s an implication that they are good, that they are progressive, despite the fact that what they are proposing was actually all tried in Stalinist Russia, and is by definition regressive because it’s a step backwards in history, and despite the fact that their socialism is probably the only political system that was scientifically tested and tried, and proved not to work, so basically if someone wants to benefit mankind, socialism is the only system he should never attempt to use because it’s worse than useless.

There are, of course, other ideas that are a disaster; determinism, for instance, which basically states that whatever you do, the end result will be the same because it’s determined by outside forces, be it God, destiny, karma or societal circumstances. By adopting such attitude you are guaranteed to fail, and this is the main reason why Catholic countries are economically usually worse off than the Protestant countries, because the Protestant countries are closer to the Jewish belief that God will reward the righteous people with wealth, while those who are not in his favour will be poor. The Catholics believe that God doesn’t work like that, and that wealth can actually be a hindrance or a temptation. Be it as it may, beliefs of this sort influence people’s work ethics and attitude, and if they believe that wealth is a reward from God, they will try to attain it, and see their success or lack thereof as feedback. I actually see the Catholic position as a contamination with Cathari beliefs that were semi-officially canonized together with St. Francis and St. Claire, where worldly possessions are seen as a spiritual burden and avoided altogether. How useful that is in a spiritual sense, it’s difficult to tell, but as an influence to economy it’s a disaster, because the wealthy and successful individuals are shunned in favour of ragged demagogues. If the wealthy aren’t respected and admired, the end result will be social apathy and widespread misery. But determinism causes an even worse problem: those who actually invest effort in order to change their situation are seen as “not having faith” or “not accepting the will of God”. This gives apathy and despondency an aura of spirituality and elevates it to the position of almost-holiness.

I understand that such negative attitudes about wealth might have been the result of unity of church and state, and that the church was so preoccupied with amassing wealth and power that it neglected its spiritual role, and that those who preached poverty might have played a constructive role of redressing an imbalance at one point, but such ideas are actively harmful from the position of economy. If you see wealth as a snare of Satan, well, nobody wants to be ensnared by Satan. I personally believe that poverty is a snare of Satan and that wealth means freedom to pursue forms of spirituality that are not pre-determined by the shackles of poverty, but I’m the enfant terrible of spirituality and nobody really listens to what I have to say.

The problem isn’t social injustice. The problem are the bad ideas that produce misery, suffering and death wherever they are implemented, but somehow still get to wear a halo of sainthood.

And regarding sainthood, it might be a very good showcase of all the widespread misconceptions and illusions which hinder spiritual and personal growth of individuals, because when you think of it, sainthood seems to be defined by poverty, self-denial, extreme compassion, self-sacrifice, detachment from all worldly issues, celibacy and, essentially, removal of oneself from all practical matters of society.

Wanna hear my definition of sainthood? A saint is a person who has a first-person realization of God, and attained success at harmonizing his/her entire life with the nature and character of God.

Which means that for me, an ideal saint is Krishna, the warrior-king who lived a life of first-person godhead and who fought, had sex, fooled around with his best friend, and inspired holy scriptures of the highest order. He wasn’t poor, he wasn’t celibate, he wasn’t self-denying, he wasn’t dedicated to “fighting his ego” or “controlling his thoughts and desires”, and to whom yoga was the art of correct action, not denial of action or removal from the world. To me, St. Francis and St. Claire are worthless examples and worthless people, because they did exactly jack shit to improve anything in the world, and if one tries to emulate their lifestyle it will be a personal disaster. The thing is, Bhagavad-gita wasn’t a result of two renunciate monks discussing haute spirituality in some cave. Bhagavata-purana wasn’t inspired by the life of Shuka the renunciate. It’s about Shuka the renunciate praising the life of Krishna the warrior king as the perfect example of what God looks like when he comes into this world.

So yeah, being a saint isn’t about being poor and naked and celibate and “controlling your ego”. It’s about being in the flesh what God is in His pure spiritual nature, and while we’re at that, we should have in mind that the probable reason why all the renunciate sages fail to understand true spirituality is that they fail to take notice of the fact that Vishnu is married to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fortune. So the next time you think of how spiritual some poor person is, or how spiritual you must be because you’re poor, or how spiritual you are because you are ignorant of worldly affairs, remember that that the perfect image of God in this world fucked the goddess of fortune (who looks like a billion dollars BTW) while not otherwise preoccupied with waging wars, manipulating politics and inspiring holy scriptures. And the barefoot sages, they merely wrote it all down while trying to figure out what the fuck they were missing in the entire picture.