A pound of flesh
Sep. 5th, 2006 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaTonight I hope to get through the New Testament and get this stupid reading project done with but for the moment, a brief interlude.
Read The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus during lunch. A german play, written in 1604 by Christopher Marlowe.
Short but a rather fun read especially if one desires to feel smart and quippy with the latin.
It's interesting what Faustus sells himself away for. Me, I'd never chose to be owned by any diety, God or Devil, I'd spit in both their faces. However, if I believed in an afterlife and were given my choice of what work to do, I'd rather be a conscience that helps someone think through the things the do so that they are a benefit to themselves and harmless or beneficial to others. When I started this post, I was inclined to say I'd enjoy punishing the self-righteous and whisking off their souls, but really, I wouldn't. The rotten things people do to one another mostly just makes me sad and punishing them for it after the fact accomplishes nothing. The people they hurt are still hurt.
And therein lies the major flaw with christianity. I'm not enticed by the idea of eternal torment, but neither am I warm to the idea of 'total happiness and knowledge'. I enjoy sometimes feeling bad. I enjoy learning things I don't know. I like thinking for myself, and if my only options are, get on my knees and give blowjobs to God's ego for all eternity and be rewarded with a warm spurt in the face, or stand in defiance of a tyrant and suffer the consequences, I'll take the suffering.
But seriously, this afterlife stuff is as fun to dream aobut as time travel but it's highly improbable. I think I'll not worry about it and just keep living as I do now. Reading, learning, thinking, exploring. I'm quite happy here.
Read The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus during lunch. A german play, written in 1604 by Christopher Marlowe.
Short but a rather fun read especially if one desires to feel smart and quippy with the latin.
It's interesting what Faustus sells himself away for. Me, I'd never chose to be owned by any diety, God or Devil, I'd spit in both their faces. However, if I believed in an afterlife and were given my choice of what work to do, I'd rather be a conscience that helps someone think through the things the do so that they are a benefit to themselves and harmless or beneficial to others. When I started this post, I was inclined to say I'd enjoy punishing the self-righteous and whisking off their souls, but really, I wouldn't. The rotten things people do to one another mostly just makes me sad and punishing them for it after the fact accomplishes nothing. The people they hurt are still hurt.
And therein lies the major flaw with christianity. I'm not enticed by the idea of eternal torment, but neither am I warm to the idea of 'total happiness and knowledge'. I enjoy sometimes feeling bad. I enjoy learning things I don't know. I like thinking for myself, and if my only options are, get on my knees and give blowjobs to God's ego for all eternity and be rewarded with a warm spurt in the face, or stand in defiance of a tyrant and suffer the consequences, I'll take the suffering.
But seriously, this afterlife stuff is as fun to dream aobut as time travel but it's highly improbable. I think I'll not worry about it and just keep living as I do now. Reading, learning, thinking, exploring. I'm quite happy here.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 08:55 pm (UTC)Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.
--Milton.
It's a shame for one with an English degree to admit it, but my Milton was shakey before I finished writing my Arcana story for Torquere. (I drew the Devil card)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:05 pm (UTC)By the way. I don't believe we've been properly introduced. I'm Samantha, AKA DV; student, software engineer, artist, animator, and armchair philosopher.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:20 pm (UTC)I'm a recovering fundamentalist, and your take on reading the whole Bible at a go fascinates me. (I found you by way of a friend of a friend) My own is a little more influenced by years and years of taking it seriously.
What you have to know about the New Testament is that everything after Acts is fanfiction. Worse, it's fanfic by a fanboi who never even saw the source. And because his letter-zines got written first, before the canon novelizations, things have been crazy ever since.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 09:32 pm (UTC)I'm sort of in the 'recovering fundamentalist' camp too, but probably not as hardcore. I got out when I was 19 (which has been some years ago now) I had some bad experiences with my family when they came out.
My grandfather's brother Paige is the asshat that got up on national TV several years ago at the Southern Baptist national convention and proclaimed, "A woman shall submit graciously to her husband!"
So. Yeah. Issues. So anyhow, that's why all the angry tinfoil hat ranting. :)
Is that really what a sim looks like? I thought that was a SecondLife avatar. :) (I've never played the Sims)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 10:03 pm (UTC)Sims pictures because I'm a geek and stuck them in my memories.
I was raised fundamentalist, stayed in until about age 30, so I'm just getting out in the last 8 years.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-05 11:37 pm (UTC)