Fundamentalist Marxism

Obviously, whenever you read a text which is thousands, or hundreds of years old -- or maybe even decades old when it comes to economics, or even years or months -- even if you rate the text very highly, you will also discard a lot. Because people -- some people, at least -- learn as time goes by.

Then there are fundamentalists: people who regard certain texts as perfect. Most well-known are religious fundamentalists, who are generally unbearable even to the other people in the same religion.

But Marxists are also accused of fundamentalism. I don't know whether it's true of most Marxists, but, Jesus, Lord from above -- so to speak -- it's true of a lot of them. There are a lot of dull-witted Marxists who spend what seems to be their entire lives denouncing anyone who claims to see any contradictions between what Marx wrote, and reality. 

And I don't think that Marx himself can be excused from blame for this. He uses terms like "inevitable" and "immutable" a lot.

It seems that people noticed this similarity to religious fundamentalism in Marx pretty early. In 1847 -- a year before the Communist Manifesto -- Marx published a "Communist Catechism," a satire of the questions and answers which children memorize in order to become members of the Catholic Church, but for Communists instead of Catholics. Ha-ha-ha, not as funny as you thought, Karl!

There's a lot of worthwhile stuff in what Marx wrote. There's a lot of worthwhile stuff in the Bible. There's also a certain amount of nonsense in both the Bible and in Marx. That in itself is unremarkable. Nobody's perfect. Compare the Bible and Marx to other writing done around the same times, and they're really not all that bad.

What is bad, and very unusual, in the case of the Bible and in the case of Marx, are the huge numbers of sheer idiots who cling fiercely, blindly, stupidly, to the worst parts.

Buy books by Karl Marx at Amazon: https://amzn.to/4fXCaip

An Attempt To Explain How Horribly Disappointed I've Been By Many Of The Atheists I've Met And Heard About

Not all of them. And I'm sure that some of the atheists I've met, or read, or seen on TV, I don't know they're atheists, because they don't talk about being atheists all day long every day. This is also not including the atheists who don't admit that they're atheists, and call themselves something else which means exactly the same thing, like non-believers or skeptics. Presumably because they're embarrassed by the yokels who are the subjects of this post, and would rather not be associated with them.

I'm an atheist. However, my impression is that everybody has their mental weak spots -- certainly including me. If all I know about person A is that he or she believes in the rapture and all I know about person B is that he or she doesn't trust anyone who believes in the rapture, I tend to think that B is very likely a judgmental douchebag and I probably won't like them, and chances are I might get along with A just fine.

And I'm sorry that A still hasn't recovered from the trauma of his or her fundamentalist Christian or conservative Catholic upbringing. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.

Just now when I googled "tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" to make sure I quoted and spelled it correctly, I came across "tout comprendre c'est rien pardonner," speaking of judgmental douchebags.

And yes, I certainly am a judgmental douchebag myself, but I'm aware of it.

Where was I? Ah yes -- stupid, obnoxious, smug, knuckle-dragging atheists who think that they're smart because they're atheists. Not to mention a few atheists who are actually quite bright in some areas -- Richard Dawkins, for example -- but who still turn on the stupid full-blast when the subject is religion.

It's their one-category mentality which is the major cause of their disappointing nature, I think, and which has lead some to call them "fundamentalist atheists." Just as obnoxious fundies -- and not all fundamentalist believers are of this obnoxious type -- divide the world up into the saved and the evil, New Atheists divide the world up into the atheists and the stupid. In order to maintain such simplistic, black-and-white impressions of humanity, both of these groups of obnoxious twits have to ignore a lot of the things which most of us see, because they're everywhere: the fundies have to ignore the believers who are horrible people and the atheists who are wonderful and kind and good, and the New Atheists have to ignore the stupid atheists and the brilliant believers. Perhaps the need to maintain these simplistic illusions is the major reason why both groups are so remarkably weak in the knowledge of history.

There simply is so much more to people than whether or not they believe in God. If you narrow it down to that and judge people just according to that, you miss the great majority of remarkable things about most people. And it makes you very unpleasant, whether you're a believer or an atheist. Who was Bertrand Russell's best friend? TS Eliot, who was not merely Christian, but extremely Christian. (Come to think of it, that's naturally a point in Eliot's favor as well. Although there's no denying that he wrote well now and then, I've come to have a horror of Eliot because of some of the tendencies which seem to have been associated with his traditionalist religious belief.)

An Example Of Why I'm Regretting Having Joined Another Atheist FB Group

Recently I quit all of the atheist Facebook groups I was in, and for a while I didn't miss them at all. Then I started looking around again for interesting groups, and I joined one because it explicitly said in the group description that they were interested in atheists and religious believers listening to each other and giving respect and all that.

But sometimes it looks more like just another atheist group, with a few believers sprinkled into the mix for the purpose of being verbally abused.

And then there are the memes. And it appears that "meme" has accrued another definition since Richard Dawkins coined the term back in the 1970's, when he meant a characteristic or feature passed on within a group by non-genetic means, such as imitation. When I started using the word, I meant by it something close to "slogan;" ironically, I was very critical of New Atheist memes, and I didn't yet realize that not only was the term "meme" coined by The Head New Atheist Himself, but that some of the New Atheist memes which annoyed me most, such as referring to the authors of the Bible as "Bronze Age goat herders," also originated with Dawkins.

But now of course all and sundry -- or at least all and sundry in the irreputable circles in which I groove -- use the term "meme" to refer to captioned pictures used in comments, or very often in lieu of comments, in Internet discussion in places such as Facebook. For example, a meme may consist of a picture of A with a quote by A, or a caption mocking A, or a caption mocking someone else, or, for example, it may consist of a cute animal with a cute caption making it appear that the animal said that cute thing. The very popular lolcat pictures are an example of this recent definition of "memes."

So anyway, in this group which allegedly exists in order to build harmony between people who don't see eye to eye on the subject of religion there is a meme, serving as the OP of a thread, which consists of a crudely-drawn picture of the Earth and the caption:

If you were born in Israel, you’d probably be Jewish.
If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you’d probably be Muslim.
If you were born in India, you’d probably be Hindu.
But because you were born in North America, you’re Christian…

Your faith is not inspired by some divine, constant truth.
It’s simply geography.

And of course, being who I am, my first impulse was to point out that a lot of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists, adherents of religions of indigenous peoples and other non-Christians were born in North America, and a lot of non-Jews in Israel, and what percentage of India is Hindu exactly? I wanted to look that up so I could contribute it to the discussion. Appears it's around 80%. Wow I thought it was much lower; I thought that between Muslims and Buddhists and Sikhs and Jains and others in India, Hindus might actually be less than 50% of the population, making the meme factually incorrect about India.

And of course the meme is factually incorrect inasmuch as it says "because you were born in North America, you’re Christian" instead of "because you were born in North America, you’re probably Christian" --

but as far as I can see, nobody in the thread wants to celebrate cultural diversity; it's just one more stupid backwoods-fundie-Christinas-vs-their-backwoods-New-Atheist-cousins Religion-is-stoopid- Is-not- Is-too Yuh-HUH Nuh-UH dealy.

I didn't notice anyone pointing out that a meme saying "because you were born in North America, you’re Christian" to all of its readers was posted on the World Wide Web, ignoring not only non-Christian Amurrkins but also all non-Amurrkins.

Or, to sum up this post in 9 words: An awful lot of New Atheists are friggin' hicks.

New Atheists Are Always Fighting Fundies, Even When There Are No Fundies Around

A quotes some verses from the Bible praising love and kindness and little birdies and puppydawgs.

B mocks A by posting a meme showing someone reading a Bible verse about being sure to beat your slaves, or slaying someone for eating shrimp, and thinking, "God is awesome!"

A says, I was talking above love and puppydawgs, not slaves, and not capital punishment for shellfish eaters! I don't even believe in God! What's wrong with you?

What's wrong with them, A, is that they are New Atheists. (I'm an atheist, but not a New Atheist. I'm a Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheist.) New Atheists are constantly arguing with literalist fundamentalists, the people who say that every word of the Bible (usually the King James Bible) is the perfect eternal word of almighty Gawd. New Atheists argue with those fundamentalists all the time, whether there are any around or not.

That's what's wrong with them. Mention the Bible, and they accuse you of advocating the slaying of people who eat shrimp. For them, fundamentalists are always around -- in their heads. A lot of them were raised by fundies and are clearly still traumatized by that, but after they escaped the fundamentalist frying pan they leaped right into the New Atheist fire and started distorting things, and seeing who can outdo whom in -- well: zealotry. There's no other name for it.

Now, most fundies are homophobic, and most of the general population side with the New Atheists in opposing the homophobia of the fundies. Where the distortion of the New Atheists come in is how they are always ragging on the Bible verses about things like keeping your slaves in line and beating your daughters and killing the eaters of shellfish and touchers of pigskin, as if slavery and killing people for touching pigskin were still widespread problems.

Where "progressive" theologians tend to distort things is in the other direction: trying to make it sound as if NO people EVER persecuted gay men and lesbians, or owned slaves and beat them, on the authority of the Bible, when clearly, both of those were majority Jewish and Christian positions for a long, long time, and when it's equally clear that most of the cultures which became Christian had previously been non-homophobic.

It'd be nice if it were so clear that it didn't need to be said that quoting a passage from the Bible doesn't mean that you're either a fundie or a "progressive" theologian or any other kind of Christian or practicing Jew or a New Atheist either. Yeah, it'd be nice if people didn't go off like hand grenades of absurdity as soon as anybody mentioned certain things.

(I'm not sure how seriously the seafood injunctions were ever taken -- I mean, I know that to this day many Jews and some Christians follow a kosher diet. What I'm talking about is, I don't know exactly how severely people were ever punished for violating kosher dietary rules. You'll have to ask an historian of Judaism or Christianity about that. In other words -- don't ask a New Atheist. They're about as un-expert and little interested in historical investigation as the fundies in their childhoods and in their heads.)

So in conclusion: feel free to think for yourself and like or dislike this or that part of the Bible as if it were actually just another book, despite all those crazy fundies and New Atheists.

PS: Another thing that's wrong with New Atheists recently is that they're really over-doing it with the memes. But to be fair, they're hardly the only ones.

A Cartoon About Religion

(You're going to have to imagine the drawing, because I can't draw very well at all. I'm just going to provide the caption. 2 men are sitting in a church pew as the congregation enters the church for a service. Or it could be 2 people in a mosque as people are coming in for prayer, and instead of "Bible" they say "Koran," and instead of "fundamentalists" they say "extremists.")

"You look tired."

"You have no idea. Last night I got cornered by this guy who went on and on and on about 'The Bible says this!' and 'The Bible says that!' and just wouldn't stop. You bet your ass I'm tired."

"Sounds awful. Fundamentalists can be a real pain in the ass."

"No, he wasn't a fundamentalist. Worse than that: an atheist."

"Ouch!"

Another Archaeological Find In Israel, Another Round Of Mind-Numbingly Stupid Comments

The dig is at Abel Beth Maacah. The stupidity, as usual when anything old is found in or near Israel, comes not just from fundamentalists shouting Hallelujah! this proves the Bible is accurate, but also from a lot of atheists, and that's what annoys me, because you'd hope the atheists would know better. Well, that is, maybe you'd have some hope if you weren't very familiar with them thar New Atheists, and their propensity to think that a sharp comment about archaeology is something like

"I hope to find that building that spiderman climbed in issue 127."

Oh. Ha. Haha. Yeah, that really added to the discussion. Sadly, I quoted that Spiderman comment, I didn't make it up, didn't have to.

What is rare and precious in discussions of old things found in or near Israel, and of old religious manuscripts, are comments which are actually about the archaeological discoveries, comments which evince an actual interest in the objects themselves and the light they shed upon history. As opposed to what? As opposed to saying, for the 45,763rd time, something which amounts to: "Fundamentalists are stupid." Which is all that the comment quoted above is saying. Now, I don't disagree with them about fundamentalists, but the thing is, I heard them the first 45,762 times, and I had figured that out about fundamentalists before I ever met them, all on my own, and there's an interesting discovery here, giving the opportunity for an interesting discussion, and it looks like it might be drowned out, as have so many other potentially interesting discussions, by this neverending Itchy & Scratchy show put on by the fundies and them. If only they could actually either learn something about this actual discovery, and talk about that, or shut the fuck up for once, and give those of us who want to discuss archaeology a fucking chance to do so for once in their fucking life.

I don't expect they will.

These discussions aren't really about archaeology, they're about Christian fundamentalists and New Atheists calling each other names. Just lately, geomorphologists have been comparing what Livy and Polybius wrote about the 2nd Punic War with what they've found on the ground in Spain, France and Italy, and they may have actually discovered some ancient battlefields with the help of those ancient authors. Always keep in mind, I'm only a layman, but if I understand what's going on here, then, it seems to me, the possible implications of these finds for archaeology, ancient history, ancient literature and other academic fields are whatcha call huge, potentially big, big stuff for people who are actually interested in archaeology. But it doesn't have anything to do with the Bible, and so most of the idiots yapping back and forth about that find in Abel Beth Maacah, and about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library and the Gospel of Jesus' Wife and the Tel Dan Stele and so forth -- or, I should actually say, ostensibly yapping about such things, while actually knowing practically nothing about them -- these people probably will never hear anything about it. Which, from my point of view, in some ways, is actually a good thing.

Just In Case Some Of You Haven't Noticed Yet: Theologians Don't Play Fair

Here are just a few of a countless number of instances:

I think maybe every single one of my comments on Nathan Schneider's non-mind-blowing essay 10 Proofs That Will Change How You Think About God on Huffington Post Religion may have been removed, because of "violations of our guidelines," ie because some holy roller has achieved Community Moderator status. A time-honored Christian approach to inconvenient criticism is to pretend it never existed.

From Aristotle's prime mover to the "endgueltigem Beweis Gottes" Schneider says Hegel was working on at the time of his death -- perhaps it's very good for Hegel's rep that he died when he did -- Schneider's 10-point stroll through thousands of years of Western philosophy resembles a walk through a minefield which the perambulator survives, in that not one of the many bombs of skepticism in Western philosophy was set off by the merest hint of a mention. If one's only source of info about Western philosophy has been Huffington Post Religion -- and I fear that it is some people's only source, and that many have only seen Western philosophy through similarly-filtered lenses -- then one definitely could get the impression that philosophy and theology are synonymous to a great extent.

In any case, the assumption that they are in harmony seems to be very widespread among both theists and atheists. The former love to trot out their favorite quotes from Augustine and Aquinas, they often assume that Spinoza and Einstein were on their side. The atheists generally dispute the subject of Einstein's religious view much too much -- his religious views are unclear, that's about all there is to say about it -- and the case of Spinoza not nearly enough. If they have looked at all at the actual words of Spinoza, they immediately notice all the theological-looking phrases, up to and including the 2nd word in the title of Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
and often they discard Spinoza long before they have begun to suspect that what looked at first glance like theology could have been camouflage for atheist arguments in the 17th century when plain spoken atheism was not allowed. (The same may also have been true for Descartes, whom Spinoza regarded as the greatest of his immediate predecessors in philosophy, although to assume atheism in Descartes' case is a bit more of a stretch. But even a century after Spinoza, even the plainly-atheist Hume never actually said in so many plain words that he doubted the existence of God.) Just as I myself discarded Spinoza after my first contact with him, and only returned because Nietzsche praises him so often and so highly.

But of course the theists (especially those tedious 21st-century pantheists) cite Spinoza as if he had been perfectly free to say plainly and literally whatever it was that he really thought about the idea of God.

Among other absurdities which theists present with maddening smug stupidity as fact, such as that Biblical literalism was invented in 19th-century America, that fundies have much more in common with atheists than with them, the religious moderates, the truly enlightened, and that the "conflict thesis" has been thoroughly refuted and discredited among historians (How many people who have not read much more theology than is good for anyone have ever even heard of the "conflict thesis"?) is this version of the Western philosophy absent its religious skepticism. Democritus, Lucretius, Seneca (Seneca was an idiot but even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then), Boethius, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Even worse than behaving as if all of these people had never existed, the theists, the theologians often go one disgusting shameless step further and cherry-pick them for quotations to take out of context and make these thinkers seem quite different than the critics of religion (/spirituality, po-TAY-to/po-TAH-to) which they were, just as they cherry-pick Augustine and Aquinas to make them look tolerant and urbane and not like the bloodthirsty Bible-thumpers they were. If you want to learn about the integrity and reliability of a philosopher or theologian, read an entire book by someone they've quoted, and compare the impression you've gotten from that entire book with the impression you got from the citation.

The (Real) Universe

Regarding "The Purpose of the Universe" by Rabbi David Wolpe on Huffington Post, and also in reply to these silly, silly statements by so many contemporary Christian theologians claiming that fundamentalism and the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture are no more than two centuries old:

I recently obtained a reprint copy of the 1617 edition of Copernicus' De revolutionisbus. Here is the same edition on Google Books. It's very science-y, with a lot of diagrams and a lot of tables of astronomical observations, which is not usually my thing in reading material. But this book caused such a furor for so long and was at the heart of so much conflict between science and religion that I wanted to get back to the source of the ruckus and see what caused so many people to flip out, in both positive and negative reactions. I wanted to study the original untranslated text.

It knocks me out, the extremely painstaking, methodical way in which Copernicus -- a priest -- lays out his case and turns the mental world of his day upside-down -- or right-side-up, if you will.

And the response to all this careful observation of the movements of the objects in the sky and careful reading of thousands of years' worth of other scholars' observations on the subject? Luther's response, and Melanchthon's response, and the Holy See's response -- for once the Lutherans and the Vatican were in perfect agreement -- was: this contradicts Holy Scripture, therefore it is false and wicked and must be suppressed. As one reads Copernicus -- even a lay reader like myself -- one's admiration for him and one's anger against his dull-witted, all-powerful opponents grows and grows.