“Ben, the foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.\u00a0 But we must give the Devil his due.\u00a0 Mike does believe in his ‘Old Ones,’ I don’t know that they don’t exist; I simply find the idea hard to swallow.\u00a0 As for his Thou-Art-God creed, it is neither more nor less credible than any other.\u00a0 Come Judgment Day, if they hold it, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.”<\/p>\n
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Jubal!”<\/p>\n
“All names belong in the hat, Ben.\u00a0 Man is so built that he cannot imagine his own death.\u00a0 That leads to endless invention of religions.\u00a0 While this conviction by no means proves immortality to be a fact, questions generated by it are overwhelmingly important.\u00a0 The nature of life, how the ego hooks into the body, the problem of the ego itself and why each ego seems to be the center of the universe, the purpose of life, the purpose of the universe — these are paramount questions Ben; they can never be trivial.\u00a0 Science hasn’t solved them — and who am I to sneer at religions for trying, no matter how unconvincingly to me?\u00a0 Old Mumbo Jumbo may eat me yet; I can’t rule him out because he owns no fancy cathedrals.\u00a0 Nor can I rule out one godstruck boy leading a sex cult in an upholstered attic; he might be the Messiah.\u00a0 The only religious opinion that I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together!”<\/p>\n
“Whew! Jubal, you should have been a preacher.”<\/p>\n
“Missed it by luck.\u00a0 If Mike can show us a better way to run this fouled-up planet, his sex life needs no vindication.\u00a0 Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of lesser opinion and are always indifferent to sexual customs of the tribe; they make their own rules.\u00a0 Mike is a genius.\u00a0 So he ignores Mrs. Grundy and diddles to suit himself.<\/p>\n
“But from a theological standpoint Mike’s sexual behavior is as orthodox as Santa Claus.\u00a0 He preaches that all living creatures are collectively God … which makes Mike and his disciples the only self-aware gods on this planet … which rates him a union card by the rules for godding.\u00a0 Those rules always permit gods sexual freedom limited only by their own judgment.<\/p>\n
“You want proof?\u00a0 Leda and the Swan?\u00a0 Europa and the Bull?\u00a0 Osiris, Isis, and Horus?\u00a0 The incredible incestuous games of the Norse gods?\u00a0 I won’t cite eastern religions; their gods do things that a mink breeder wouldn’t tolerate.\u00a0 But look at the relations of the Trinity-in-One of the most widely respected western religion.\u00a0 The only way that religion’s precepts can be reconciled with the interrelations of what purports to be a monotheos is by concluding that the breeding rules for deity are not the rules for mortals.\u00a0 But most people never think about it; they seal it off and mark it: ‘Holy – Do Not Disturb.’<\/p>\n
“One must allow Mike any dispensation granted all other gods.\u00a0 One god alone splits into at least two parts, and breeds, not just Jehovah — they all do.\u00a0 A group of gods will breed like rabbits, and with as little regard for human proprieties.\u00a0 Once Mike entered the godding business, those orgies were as predictable as sunrise — so forget the standards of Podunk and judge them by Olympian morals — I think you will then find that they are showing unusual restraint.”<\/p>\n
– Jubal Harshaw – Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Ben, the foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.\u00a0 But we must give the Devil his due.\u00a0 Mike does believe in his ‘Old Ones,’ I don’t know that they don’t exist; I simply find the idea hard to swallow.\u00a0 As for his Thou-Art-God creed, it is neither more nor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflection"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1447"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}