religion

[kidyounot]

alright, i'm watching religulous (2008, by bill maher), and i have to say i'm only ten minutes in but it's already starting to get on my nerves. i mean, seriously. maher has been going on for minutes telling some christians that there is no proof that jesus ever existed. some are skeptical, some don't believe him, some kinda do but they try not to show it. not only i am disturbed by the fact that those people don't even know the basics of their religion ("did jesus really exist?" after all i'm talking about an actual physical being, although they believe him to be a god. jesus was an actual person who was born and lived a certain number of years and had experiences and met people etc. so, the question of his existance is not just a matter of believing it or not. did he really exist?)... and i really shouldn't because i live in a country where catholicism is basically the state religion (not technically, but it is) and everybody gets a baptism, first communion and confirmation out of convention rather than actual belief - i am disturbed by maher's lack of infos on the matter. he just says "no, nobody has ever proved that jesus existed" but he's so sure of that that he's actually convincing people and hey - you know what? there is proof of a person named jesus who lived in palestine around the time the church says the messiah did. we got that from romans, who conquered israel as any christian well knows (there's some story in the bible of the local roman governor, can't remember his name, washing his hands about the whole jesus thing). they were very meticulous, so we do have mentions of jesus in non-christian sources.

i mean, it's only been 10 minutes, i don't know, this isn't very promising. i am open about this documentary, really, but if you're going to advocate for agnosticism by getting your facts wrong i'm not going to take your film very seriously.


also, about the virgin birth thing (and therefore the whole deal about the gospels not matching with each other) - first of all, there is a whole controversy going on about the word "virgin" in the bible. it is probably a wrong translation made through greek, where "girl" and "virgin" are synonyms (i'm not only talking about the gospels, which were actually originally written in greek, but about the prophecy of jesus' birth in the old testament as well, which got translated). then, about the fact that christians believe things that are not in the bible... it's not like "they made it up". they really do believe that their god has spoken through popes and whatnot and kind of "added" these things. i mean, the whole figure of the pope is nothing else than a guy who can actually interpret god's will. if the pope says it's right, it's because god told him so.
at this point, i think maher is not doing a really good job at selling "doubt" to the believing masses, as he really lacks objective criticism. i am perfectly aware that if you say "christians eat jesus' blood and flesh every sunday" it sounds crazy, but if you put it in a context and actually keep in mind the explanation christian themselves give to that, it's a whole different story.

i have a feeling this post will be updated often as i keep watching this movie :\


wow!! i did study the speakers' corner in london back when i was in middle school. but i had no idea people really went there and talked! it's the first time i see footage from the speakers' corner with all sorts of people there talking and stuff! it's amazing! and i don't know how i went to london like twice and never went there! i want to, now! i'd go to london just for that corner!


alright, i admit i don't know enough about other religions to actually criticise maher's points now. i did go to catechism (and i like maher's description of it as "hebrew school for catholics"!) and i did study some texts from the old testament at school when my philosophy teacher made a very, very long introduction to catholicism as a philosophy, as he went through judaism, history of palestine etc. i do know something about islam from religion class, which i attended for a couple of years (even though i didn't sign up) because my teacher was awesome and actually taught religionS rather than catholicism (the official name of the class, which is the only one you can opt out of, is "hour of catholic religion" (one hour a week), so there you go. not very constructive.).
i admit my ignorance and say i had no idea there are jews who deny the shoah. maher interviewed this rabbi and at first he talked about how he doesn't believe it is right for the state of israel to exist (in more convincing words, obviously, but yeah), which is fair enough if you want to. and then when maher mentioned the shoah he got all nervous and then they showed him (along with other rabbis!!) at a conference for the denying of the shoah, and then him shaking hands with ahmadinejad, and my jaw dropped! i had absolutely no idea. i just looked up this guy that was interviewed, whose name is yisroel dovid weiss if you're interested, and he is actually the son of hungarian holocaust survivors! wikipedia says His grandparents and all of his aunts and uncles were lost in WW2..
i am really, really surprised and i haven't been able to find infos about this kind of thing online yet (jews - religiously jews, not culturally, non believing jews - denying the holocaust). i hope i will because it's a very ... interesting thing.

i'm going to have to learn more about denial. i can understand denial if it comes by a religious basis (like those who believe in islam and are all about killing jews), i can understand if it comes from a political basis (people supporting certain ideologies who try and prove that mass murders (not just the shoah, but also gulags, to name one) never happened in order to not make that particular political line "look bad") ... but christian claiming the holocaust as a hoax i still cannot understand.
i found this website looking for another thing just now, and the obvious introductory note reads:

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: Let us preface this by saying that we are not “anti-Semitic” and we desire the conversion and eternal happiness of all Jews.

um, ok. i guess this is pretty much the official point of view, i mean, whenever i talk or think about a specific faith i think about the 'official version of things'. as i mentioned earlier, there surely are people in the islam faith who would see no point in killing a jew, or catholics who don't believe god hates "fags", so. that said.
the page looks very long and i don't think i will manage to read it all. i already skimmed through it, and some things are so stupid i don't know if i should laugh or cry. they make all the maths and see if the numbers match up to 6 millions (hello? it's not six millions even? that's a conventional number? so what, if they were 5,999,999, then it's all a conspiracy?)... and claim that since they once said that 4 million people were killed in auschwitz and then they said they were 1.5 millions, than that's a point for them. i mean, seriously, don't they even think about *how* these counts were made? ffs, it's not like they kept records for every single death and then published in the newspapers or something.
i did watch a clip about why there was never an extermination camp in treblinka. now, i might know nothing about this kind of science, but first they say that the bodies were buried and then dug out and burned, and then the look underground, they find nothing, and it's a proof? or they look for ashes? i mean, the ash i've always known surely doesn't last 70 years in an open space subjected to all kinds of weather? i am open to a different view on the count of the victims, because as far as i know, it's not a certain science - they don't have all the names on a list. but saying it never existed? seriously? so the pictures and films we have are what, fiction? actors? people who went there to starve themselves to death? i have been to dachau and i can assure you it did not look like an amusement park.
i don't know. i am surely not open to this kind of thing. mostly because i cannot understand for the life of me what interest would people have in determining there was no holocaust. so hitler was a good guy. so what if he was? would your life be better? no. and mine either.
i actually have a close friend who often says "oh, i'm sick of hearing about these jews, boo hoo". but i'm not going into that because that'd make this post too long and boring to read because then there would be a million other things involved.


oooh wait. i got it just now. it's to mine the international jewish conspiracy! they probably think jews invented the holocaust to get more power and rule the world.


LOOOOL sorry i had to edit again cause i'm watching this vid on the same page i linked to before and the guy is saying that "it is now proven that there was no policy or program in germany to exterminate jews". lol, i read the mein kampf, he probably didn't. same goes with italy. we have the "manifesto della razza" (1938) (manifesto of race) which came out after italy made the alliance with germany, which was already racist. and i'll close it here with a quote from our dearest adolf hitler:

« Wir müssen böse sein, ohne Erbarmen, bevor die anderen böse werden. Deshalb sind die Konzentrationslager erschaffen worden. Ein Gericht ist eine zu lange Sache. Wir müssen brutal handeln! »

« We need to be bad, without pity, before the others become bad. This is why we created the concentration camps. Trials take too long. We need to proceed more brutally! »

( Adolf Hitler, Oberslzberg, 20th march 1937 - Hitler's speech to the workers of Oberslzberg, Villa Wolkonsky, page 20 )

Comments

[kulvren.livejournal.com]

I'm Catholic and I loved that film. Bill Maher is hot.

[savethewabbit.livejournal.com]

bill maher is indeed hot - and funny, too! however i kind of think he's more atheist than agnostic (from what he says), despite what he states in the first minutes of the film.

[hrolleif.livejournal.com]

I saw the movie last year. I thought it was pretty dull. There were a few funny points, but otherwise it wasn't that great. I don't think he's trying to sell agnosticism or atheism with it, I think he's basically just making fun of religious people. Who needs a movie for that? They write the script themselves, but it's got old IMO.

[savethewabbit.livejournal.com]

well, he states in the movie that he's trying to bring doubt to people, so that's what i assumed the movie would be about. turned out to be a non original mock of religion that actually pointed more on the funny side of it rather than the rational one, tbh, and his pointless critics kind of made that clear for me.