Free verse № 154328
Voice of the World
They call us Third World
below the Second
below the First
because we have less
produce less
suffer more
But three are really one these days
we can help you understand
come and let us show you
hear the One World voice
Osama gives us food
teaches kids to read
Musharraf gives promises
and sewage in the street
Work all day to buy a chicken
or dine on scraps of rich
donât say we have democracy
and allies in the West
Fill not the mouth of famine
if you fear to make us strong
but feed the brains of young ones
not yet won to jihadâs cause
Come and give them options
show them one big world
maybe we will kill you
maybe they will not
48 comments
You will get it together - I can feel it from here :)
Within the voiceless world
and whoâs behind this show ?
whoâs that child ?
demonstrating the deep sense of famine
in the heart of the heartless world
Whoâs running this world ?
Why some folks canât raise their voice ?
As well as it raise so may questions
In their bare minds and also abomination
Far from the great expecation of human kind
Could we understand how they live ?
In the context of despairs
Or in the mataphore of the wasteland
Where you are blamed
To build their worlds upon the toxic wastland
And you started to obsever
What they react insead of the word â livingâ
All theyâre reactions or expermints on them
It has only one message after all
The show must go on
for your better life and world
You cant help yourself watching the opera
The opear of third world
Childernâre playing in the dumping ground
While you try to be more sympathetic
Because thatâs entertaining you
Itâs not the reality of your life
dealing with it ..itâs the dumping world
and a good senior of a opera
while the future is still bleak for them
day after day they face their fatal fate
you still dump things
and they die in the dumping grave
Take up the White Man's burdenâ
The savage wars of peaceâ
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
That is why I shan't be donating.
Here's a better idea: they all stop believing in -=MUSLIM=- of their own accord, apologize for all the trouble they've caused, and pay reparations until they've learnt their lesson. I guarantee they'll be better off in the long run.
http://tinyurl.com/2kertn
Consider your own position. Does religion make you a better person? I for one do not need divine inspiration to know that murder is naughty. Perhaps you do?
What I think about the afterlife destination of unbelievers has little affect on how I treat them, or how Jesus treated them. He said âLove your Enemyâ (infidels included). How is that a perversion of religion?
Some religions say that murder is not naughty. They are perversions. I think it is naughty, not because of my religion, but because its naughtiness is obvious. The link between morality and religion may be weaker than you think.
But the main point is that it's not inevitable in most people. With very few exceptions, people adopt the religion of those around them (their family, their madrasa, their badmington club), which makes it OBVIOUS that it's their environment that has led them to that particular belief system, rather than any hard-coded voices in their head. Just suppose the clamour they were subjected to everyday came from secularists, rather than from people exalting faith in The Local Religion as the highest virtue.
In my view, religion is a throwback to our infancy as a species; to a time before we all became McEnlightened and had to worship shoehorns. Science has been enormously successful at explaining phenomena that were previously attributed to God. A powerful example (not to mention Darwinism) is the germ theory of disease: before that, the causes of infection were frequently attributed to punishments from God. When people see science contradicting their religion, they might initially reject it as heretical, but eventually the truth becomes Obvious Beyond Thunderdome, so they either water down their religion, or throw it in the nearest spastics home. That is why atheism is the fastest growing 'religious identity' in America. USA! USA! USA!
Regarding your infidel point, what *do* you think about the afterlife of non-believers? Do you think they deserve eternal damnation?
Finally, the link between religion and morality is not weaker than *I* think. It's weaker than religious people think. I already think it's weak, and where it does influence morality it's usually in a poisonous way (making good people do bad things). It's the Religious who argue that Religion is the only basis for morality.
Regarding my infidel point, what do I think about the afterlife of non-believers? Do I think they deserve eternal damnation? David Wilkerson appears to think so. I am not convinced. For example, if I knew my parents were burning in hell, I might strive to go there just be with them, rather than sit in heavenâs luxury. And wouldnât they be glad to see me in spite of the flames? Furthermore, at what age would they see me, and I them? With these confusions, I prefer to ignore any possible afterlife. Religion for me is here and now.
Regarding religion and morality, I think we agree. Religion is relationship with God; morality is relationship with people.
I'm not a particularly religious person. I had all my real hope bludgeoned out of me by your chums in the scientific world. I don't particularly want to murder someone, but then I'm a nice, boring person. And yes, I was brought up with mild religious undertones. Weren't you? Can I give in to the popular media for a moment and ask you about Mr. Newlove's killers? Why don't they seem to have any remorse?
I think I've spent the last ten minutes just waffling around your original question. This is why I only got a 2:1.
But let me tell you another story: Once upon a time, I thought Morals were Magical Wisdoms Floating Around In The Clouds. I thought they were self-evident, timeless truths that were totally disconnected from the petty dealings of Man. That was when I was 6. And amusingly, it isn't far off the religious model for morality, in which The Wond'rous Mysteries of Right and Wrong are REVEALED to the faithful, usually through a text written by a complete prat.
But Scripture and Holy Revelation are not good bases for morality, and they lead to dumplings like this:
"Of all clean birds ye shall eat. But these are they of which ye shall not eat: ... the bat." -- Deut. 14:11-18
A better basis is to simply ask yourself: what do I value? If I said "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!" I would really be saying that I value human life, and that I would do whatever I could to minimize the net loss of human life. After a good deal of soul-searching (and several unfortunate soilings) I have discovered that I value human life, I value private property, I value personal freedom (provided that freedom does not lead to anyone being gay), and so on. I can't say WHY I value those things -- most are just innate impulses I have -- but the point is I would rather live in a world where people did value such things, so I do what I can to encourage it. The WHY is secondary. I may as well ask myself why I like chocolate. I JUST DO, OK!?
In conclusion: you may eat bats if you wish.
The objective of each Jew is to survive. So say you tell a computer to calculate the most probable action to take to ensure the most survivors. The computer will calculate that the highest chance to maximize the survivor count will be to smother the baby. Certainly you could tell the computer to calculate how all could survive but it is obvious that percentage of success would by far less. Have one of your nerdy tech buddies test it out if you need verification. I'm simply saying that religion is what keeps the group from killing the baby. Religion is a moral rule agreed upon by a group. Certainly the mother and maybe a few other jews might decide to spare the child based on their emotional response and sense of what is right but in order to unite the group in their decision you need a collective moral agreement that is been most effectively done through religion.
Sometimes the scientific method is so inhuman that we chose an alternative. At least you show you're humanity through your Grinch-like actions. Most athiest i've met are about as fun as living under a rock.
"The objective of each Jew is to survive."
Is it? Science can't tell you anything about what each Jew's objective is. Given that they probably wouldn't smother the baby, it's clear their objective is a little more complicated than mere survival. It's probably something like "survive, provided you don't end up fucking over another Jew in the process." Now you could conceivably tell a computer to ASSUME some amoral objective (maximise survival), and then have it find the most efficient way of achieving that (smother the baby), but obviously that has nothing to do morality, and most importantly, NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT A GROUP OF ATHEISTS WOULD DO IN A SIMILAR SITUATION.
Atheism doesn't mean "stop having emotions". Atheists are just as prone to their impulses as theists are. Atheism also doesn't say anything about whether or not baby smothering is A Good Idea. The actions of an atheist are determined by his value system, just as those of the Jew are determined by theirs. The only difference is that the atheist's value system hasn't been corrupted by an Omelette of Ancient Texts that read like the ramblings of a drugged horse.
To your first point, I agree religion can force a moral consensus (usually by threat of divine punishment), but obviously that's only an intra-denominational consensus. When it comes to forging consensus between people of a different faiths, its record is APPALLING. It has done more to divide the human race than just about anything else, with some unbelievably violent consequences. I'm ashamed of you.
Secondly, are you seriously arguing for religion on the grounds that it speeds up moral decision making? (a) I don't think that's worth considering in the first place, and (b) even if it was, religion is probably one of the more long winded routes to making moral decisions, because it relies on Revealed Truth rather than any innate sense of conscience (you've got to trawl through some pretty obscure Bible verses before you discover that eating bats is wrong... or have you committed Deuteronomy to memory?)
Finally, there are many value systems that have nothing to do with God. Chiefly because healthy people do not require a divine spark to realise that murder is naughty. Probably the most popular among atheists is secular humanism, but an individual's value system is really inspired by a myriad of factors, from their formative years at a Respected Public School, to whether or not they get a 2:1 in Combined Media Studies from Loughborough University. And nearly all literature (to name but one of the Arts) informs morality in some way: Dickens, Orwell, Burgess, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Tolkien, Stephen King's It, and so on. There isn't just One Book, One Chosen People, One Jesu (but if there had to be One Book, that book would be Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab.)
As far as blaming religion for horrible crimes against humanity goes...Well it's like blaming your parents. Sooner or later you have to grow up and take responsibility for your actions. Unfortunately sociopaths live among athiests and believers alike. You seem to be implying that religion is the birthplace of sociopaths. If so then why so many athiest murderers?
Please try not to become so unraveled. You're turning back into the Joker again and he's gotten quite old and predictable.
An no, I don't think instinct is magic. Ironically for you, that's what a religious person thinks. He thinks the world and everything that's in it was made by a magic man floating around in another dimension. I think instinct is a product of evolution. It's to our species' advantage that we have the capacity for empathy and co-operation. You can see similar traits in other social animals, like elephants, or chimps.
Finally, your point about humanist morality being derived from religion is the opposite of the truth. Nearly all religions (even ones you must think are made up) share common basic morals (don't murder, steal, lie, be gay, etc.) They all make wildly different claims about the nature of God, and they all have their fair share of claptrap morals (don't eat bats), but on the fundamentals they tend to agree. Why? Because they are man-made, not God-made, and it's human nature to behave in that way. If you truly think our basic morals are God's invention, then presumably you're of the opinion that before Moses came down from the top of Mount Sinai, the Israelites went about the place killing, stealing, lying, and adulterating at will.
And prayed it would go away,
But when, again, I opened my eyes,
This poem still looked really gay.
Now where were we? Oh yes, we were relating morality and religion. Or stated another way, we were relating principles that hold society in harmony, with ideas about God. They seem unrelated to me, but I find it interesting that most religions hold the same morals in regard to stealing, killing, fraud, and the like. Religions differ on morals about the eating of bats, the covering of womenâs faces, and the killing of insects. The first set of morals derives from polite societyâs needs, and work just fine either couched in dogma or without religion. The second begin with writings and clericâs decrees. Just because these âmoralsâ get stuck into religion does not make them part of true religion. What could the eating of bats have to do with recognition of God? Jesus made this point clear, as anyone can see from reading him apart from later writings of his church. Christianity is about Christ (duh) not about superseded Old Testament texts or something a monk wrote in the fourteenth century.
In summary: donât get me started.
Actually, wrong. For all the insanity in the Bible, by far the most extraordinary claim is that a man called Jesus was born of a virgin, was the son of an omnipotent God, and died on the cross only to come back to life and appear (rather mysteriously) to some of his followers a few days later. If you hadn't heard any of that before, and I just told you it happened, you wouldn't believe me. Why? Because it's clearly absolute fucking bollocks. And here you have a book, written God-Knows-When by God-Knows-Who, full of claptrap (by your own admission), and yet when it claims the Ultimate Claptrap you say "No! that bit of ridiculousness is true, the 'do not eat bats' rest was written by a monk in the fourteenth century!"
Even if you take the Christ (duh) story in isolation, and treat it as some sort of moral lesson, it still gets us nowhere. The fundamental tenet of Christianity is that Christ (duh) died on the cross for our sins so that we may be forgiven and go to Heaven. Is it a good thing for an innocent man to heap all the injustice in the world on his own head, and pay for it via the medium of some obscene sacrifice? Does such an act absolve us in any way? Think about it. It's not justice: it's fourteenth century psychobabble.
Where you go astray is in discrediting religion on principle, using arguments from enlightened secularism. Betelgeuse shines up there to humiliate all such reason. Small we are and small our thinking compared to Whoever put it there. I suggest rather comparing your summary of the Gospel to faith in atheism, agnosticism, a dried and painted goatâs head, or whatever. At some point, each of us surrenders to mystery, which appears to grow before us faster than science explains it. Mysteries we never saw seem attached to every scientific advance.
Does that mean I should make up an explanation, or put my faith in someone else's (necessarily made-up) explanation? Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must hang our heads in shame. I don't know if the Universe was made by a God or a He-Man or a Gelatinous Cube or a Whatever. How could I know? How could anyone know?
My point is that even if there is some grand scheme, some meaningful wider context to our actions, then any such scheme is unknowable. What's left is the freedom to choose how we live our lives according to our own conscience. The christian religion offers a terrible explanation for why world is as we observe it (science is better), and constitutes an even worse basis for morality (your own conscience would be better). Even my stripped down characterisation - Christ dying for our sins so we can be saved and live in Paradise with Him - is a guffed-up abdication of responsibility. I'm going to dismiss it as such.
"... reality, human existence, is infinitely baffling. One gets one explanation - the Christian, the psychological, the scientific ... but always it gets burnt off like summer mist and a new landscape-explanation appears. He suggests that the one valid reality or principal for us lies in elutheria - freedom. Accept that man has the possibility of a limited freedom and that if this is so, he must be responsible for his actions. To be free (which means rejecting all the gods and political creeds and the rest) leaves one no choice but to act according to reason: that is, humanely to all humans." John Fowles
Now we have the Higgs Field, a kind of universal molasses all particles slog through, if we can even describe them as particles. It replaces the ether that light used to flow though before we learned it did not exist.
My point is not âthe necessity of Religion [derived from] from the inevitability of Mystery.â Nor should we âmake up an explanation, or put faith in someone else's explanation.â I am not convinced that âif there is some grand scheme, some meaningful wider context to our actions, then any such scheme is unknowable.â
âWhat is easier to believe? That there was always something or that there was once nothing? ... Christianity says that creation has a beginning, middle and end. The Greeks claimed that creation is a timeless process. Both are correct. All that is created and is therefore individual has a beginning and an end; but there is no universal beginning and end.â John Fowles
âThis underlying unity of reality (God) is central ⦠the future of theology and our understanding of 'God', to explore the properties of this Space we all find ourselves existing in.â Geoff Haselhurst, Karene Howie at http://www.spaceandmotion.com/
âFrom his present dissatisfaction, man reasons that there was some catastrophic wreck in the past, before which he was happy; some golden age, some Garden of Eden. He also reasons that somewhere ahead lies a promised land, a land without conflict. Meanwhile, he is miserably en passage; this myth lies deeper than religious faith.â John Fowles
John Fowles asks, âWhat is easier to believe? That there was always something or that there was once nothing?â Not that the easier thing to believe is more likely true, but the more reasonable thing is.
A Model is like a worldview; a framework for testing predictions, an adjustable framework. Blaise Pascal, mathematician in the seventeenth century was testing the wager: Is it reasonable to believe in God. Either God exists or he does not, and we cannot use reason to determine which alternative is true. However, our lives may be affected by the alternative we choose. Since choosing to believe that God exists may lead to greater overall happiness, and nothing is lost if we are wrong, Pascal decided it is better to accept the theistic alternative. Since then, science has revealed much. I think that between then and now, it has pulled more in the direction of god than no-god.
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