He is the greatest painter–every second a halo of infinitely varied sunsets and sunrises sweeps around the globe; the greatest storyteller–supreme in all the genres and their seamless blending; the greatest sculptor–look at that ass!; the greatest scientist, the greatest friend, the greatest patron, the greatest dramatist–
“But I”m not funny and there’s nothing funny about me at all.”
Verily his deadpan is killer.
IF: God is to Mankind as Mankind is to our pets, THEN:
1. We can love a dog that is vicious to other dogs as long as it has other good qualities, such as being nice to people, or good at hunting, etc.
ERGO: God can love murderers.
2. Most of the immediate concerns of dogs–barking at rivals, sniffing their pee spots, chasing squirrels–are of no concern to us at all.
ERGO: Most of our pressing worries and concerns are of no interest to God.
3. A little bit of mischievousness and playful naughtiness is usually tolerated and even appreciated by pet owners. Too much bad behavior, however, can get a dog abandoned or euthenized.
ERGO: God is not a stickler for the rules but the rules are still important.
4. No one wants their dog to suffer needlessly but neither does anyone spend all their time entertaining their dog and trying to make it happy.
ERGO: Human suffering has meaning; human happiness perhaps a little less so. And God certainly doesn’t have the inclination to keep you happy and entertained all the time!
5. Everyone wants their dog’s rapt attention some of the time, but not all of the time.
ERGO: Don’t pray too much.
6, Different dogs have different jobs. Some have no job other than looking cute. Technological advancements and lifestyle changes have eliminated many of the old jobs dogs used to do; nowadays most of them just look cute.
ERGO: If you’re not going to be a working stiff then you’d better be damned good-looking or charming about it. But, like it or not, the course of modern history is away from working stiffs and towards charming rakes.
7. If your dog is vicious to your newborn baby then the dog has to go, no matter how good a dog it is. But if the dog is just jealous and avoids the baby, then it can stay, even if its not that great a dog.
ERGO: You don’t have to be a Christian or even like Jesus; you don’t even have to be a good person; but if you’re a persecutor you’re gonna get zonked.
MORE ECUMENICALLY: The main thing is not to mess with God’s “babies,” whatever those babies might be. But remember, we are not the babies in this analogy, we’re just the pets.
1. Most doctors don’t do anything. Most pets are equally unproductive.
2. Most doctors can’t diagnose anything. Most pets know when you’re hurting and can smell diseases from across the room.
3. Most doctoring relies on the placebo effect. And it’s not just the pills–the white coat, the diplomas, the waiting room, they’re all placebos too. But this is as it should be, given that the 30 to 50 percent baseline of success via the placebo effect exceeds the beneficial bump above the placebo effect that constitutes successful medicine. It would be malpractice not to harness the placebo effect in standard medicine. Its only fraud if you rely on it too much.
And since anything can be a placebo, why not your dog? One could argue that the healthiest attitude is one which views the entire universe as a placebo, but lets be realistic here and stick with reincarnated doctor-dogs.
4. If there is a morality-based system of reincarnation, karmic logic would demand that useless, over-applauded egotists would come back as humble servants with unrecognized genuine healing power.
5. Cats have nine lives so you can always steal a few. You paid for them. And dogs in their prime are indestructible compared to people, so by laying next to them you can sometimes get your malfunctioning system to “quorum sense” with a much more resilient one. The success rate equals the placebo effect +19%! That’s damn good medicine by any modern standard.
6. For truly incurable diseases, treatment is by definition palliative, and what’s more palliative than a pet?
7. There has to be a place between Heaven and Hell for people who try to do good and heal people but who somehow end up as callous, BMW-driving ego-pricks.
And there is: that place is your living room floor. So crawl your ass down there and get some placebo+19.
Praying too little means you’re probably only praying when you need something.
Praying too much is disrespectful. You should pray more than you need to but less than you “have to.”
Make it special for Godsake!
Religion and edifying spirituality is the salt of the earth, not the dirt; it should not be everywhere all the time.
Turn the other cheek so the second punch misses.
It’s better to shop for churches than to go to just one.
All of the world’s Holy Books have many edifying qualities, and many, many stupid parts as well. See, ya gotta keep shopping.
It’s possible Jesus and others have been apotheosized into someone super-supernatural. But it’s a certainty that none of the Advanced Aliens believe in him. They might have their own. Point is, if any earthly entity has become godlike, its only in these parts. Not Andromeda. Those Crab Nebulans aren’t preaching our gospels, and why should they? ‘You gonna send a whole nebula to Hell?
The concept of hell need not be abandoned, just radically downsized. Hell is surgery not needless suffering. It makes things better or else God wouldn’t have made it. But its probably surgery without anaesthesia, so watch out.
The parts where Jesus sounds like a hippie are the best parts. But that still doesn’t make being a hippie the right way to go.
“This church is the only true one” is virus code.
Be fruitful and multiply has become virus code. It used to be good and therefore holy. But that was then.
The fruit by which ye shall know them is when they forbid you to look at the rest of the garden and they talk shit about it. That’s when you know your fruit has gone bad. And all fruit go bad.
That’s why you gotta keep shopping.
The Bible has been in print for over 1600 years and no one’s ever reviewed it. It’s been analyzed and expounded upon, criticized and interpreted, cut-and-pasted by Thomas Jefferson, but never reviewed.
Mark Twain can be said to have reviewed the Book of Mormon when he succinctly joked that it was “chloroform in print.” That is, his comment was not about the truth or falsehood or capacity for edification of the book, but rather–
How good a read is it?
The Bible is certainly not chloroform in print. Most of it is much better than that. But that’s a very low bar to set. One would think that a book purportedly written by God would be the most absorbing read in the world, a real page-turner.
And yet people have to force themselves to read it. Reading the Bible is more often done out of duty than desire. No one ever has to admonish their kids to “Stop reading what God says and get some sleep!” as they have to do with sci-fi books and random internet trash.
Which is not to say that it’s not interesting at all, or that kids are even smart enough to know what’s truly interesting. But it does illustrate the point that the Bible is not as good a read as a book actually written by God.
So while it far surpasses the lowest standard of judgment–it’s not chloroform in print–it does not pass the highest possible standard of judgment–is this as good as something that the Creator of this most interesting Universe would have authored?
Of course, this is an impossibly high standard that we never apply to any other books. No one ever opines that “Yeah, Huck Finn is a great book, but God would have written it much better.” That would be unfair criticism, and not very informative either.
Then again, neither Twain nor his classic nor his fans ever claimed it was written by God, as do many devotees of the Bible. It is proper to judge a book by what it purports to be. A fictional autobiography of Genghis Khan should sound and feel like something GK might have written or dictated to someone who was literate.
Fortunately for the Bible, it does not actually claim to be written by God. His by-line appears nowhere. According to the Bible, Isaiah was written by Isaiah, Mark was written by Mark, and the Torah was written by Moses. None of them were stenographers.
Thus, the Bible is best appreciated for its literary qualities when it is treated as a literary work and not a dictation from the Divine. A “realistic” view of the Bible affords a deeper appreciation of its poetry and prose than does an idealistic view of its authorship.
Appreciation deepens further when we also realistically acknowledge that the Bible is not really a book and neither are its components. It is a compendium of folios or pamphlets. And like all compendiums, it’s very uneven. Some of the folios achieve greatness, others fail, and knowing which is which (and that it’s OK even for believers to dislike certain folios) helps us better appreciate those portions that achieve greatness.
And here they are:
1) Ecclesiastes.
By far the best pamphlet in the compendium. Certainly the best for reaching the minds of non-believers and existentialists. The Byrds made it into a number one pop hit and Strunk & White quoted it as perfect writing in their highly influential Elements of Style. It’s that good.
And even where the logic of the discourse sometimes fails to cohere, its poetic prowess usually overrides its logical deficiencies.
2) Mark 2.0
(Meaning the Pamphlet of Mark as revised and added onto during the late Roman Empire, not the original Mark which ended abruptly at Chapter 16 verse 8, as proven by the Codex Sinaiticus from c. 350 AD as well as the Codex Vaticanus.)
The shortest of the four Unpurged Gospels and by far the best. Mark’s narrative moves; it doesn’t dawdle. Geneologies? No time for that! In fact, the reason Mark 2.0 is better than the original is that the original was too short. Great writers need great editors and Mark 2.0 has both. The Romans were right to produce an extended remix.
For it stands to reason that if writers and artists can sometimes be inspired by the Divine or by some Transcendental Mentality, then editors too can also be inspired sometimes. This is even more clearly illustrated in–
3). The Longer Letters of Paul (Romans, Corinthians, etc.).
Paul’s letters often achieve and sometimes surpass the poetic greatness of Ecclesiastes. Paul was “on a roll” here and he knew it–that’s why these letters are so long. The problem is that Paul didn’t have an inspired editor. Or any editor at all. No one was presumptuous enough to cut down his text or add coherence to its logic.
Worst Pamphlets in the Bible:
1). Revelations
2). Genesis
‘Strange that the alpha and omega of the Good Book should suck so badly, each for different reasons. Normally you want to lead off and finish with your best, not your worst. How much better the Bible would have been without these literary clunkers ruining the beginning and the end!
Turn the other cheek while maintaining a rapid rate of fire.
If a man take thy cloak forbid him not to take thy overcoat also, then plug his ass if he falleth for it.
Give unto the poor, then bid them leave by flexing thy steel.
Blessed are the Peacemakers–Smith and Wesson and Colt, yea and Kalashnikov too, for they shall guard the Compound of Heaven.
For a man’s treasure is where his arsenal is, right next to his comms center.
Let not thy right hand know what weapons thy left arm concealeth.
Tis harder for a rich man to enter the Bunker of Heaven than it is for a poor man with an RPG and teflon-coated bullets.
For the gunsmith is worth his wages.
In the beginning was the Word, and the word was Safety. And the next word was Off.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a tiny projectile that causes the smallest of entrance wounds but totally blows away the back of your head.
“Anyone who doesn’t meditate is a fucking asshole,” my father once said, neatly encapsulating his unique blend of spiritual transcendence and earthbound bitterness.
This led to decades of inside-jokes between my brother and I:
“You know, Clara Barton never meditated. Neither did Albert Schweitzer. Fucking assholes.”
“Yeah, that about proves it.”
On another occasion, I jokingly interrupted my brother when he was commenting on how pathetic it was that Carlos Castaneda (an anthropology graduate student and best-selling author who claimed to have been apprenticed to a Native American shaman in the early 60s) had boiled down his previously mystical shamanic teachings into a lame system of spiritual calisthenics he called “Tensegrity”–all in an attempt to appeal to the California New Age/health scene of the late 70s:
“Look man, anyone who doesn’t practice Tensegrity is a fucking asshole.”
And while it’s hard to imagine the Buddha or the Dali Lama making such a negative pronouncement against non-meditators, it’s actually quite logical to see my father’s aphorism as the necessary converse of their teachings. After all, if there really is a Path of Enlightenment available to everyone, wouldn’t anyone who spurned such a Path be, in fact, well, you know, a fucking asshole?
The supposedly great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam never had a problem openly stating the converse of their divine dispensations–“Anyone who doesn’t pray [to the right God in the right way] is going to Hell.” Substitute “Effin’ A” for “going to Hell” and you basically have my father’s credo. If anything, my father’s credo is less condemnatory–rather than an eternity of torture and suffering, wouldn’t you rather just be an asshole instead? I know I would; and I practice that every day.
Perhaps the Eastern religions and their New Age revamps in the West could learn a thing or two from my father’s more condemnatory attitude. No, you don’t need to go Medieval and threaten non-practitioners with Hell as the monotheists do (or used to), but what’s the harm in openly specifying that if you’re not seeking some kind of Enlightenment, you’re probably just an asshole? Is that not the yin of the yang?
Madison Avenue’s most successful distillation of the New Age ethos of the 1970s was expressed in the now-famous Coca-Cola ad with the catchy jingle “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” Let us rephrase that anthem of togetherness with lyrics inspired by the perverse wisdom of my father:
The secret of Purgatory is that it’s really Hell.
No, we’re not getting pitchforked but the sleeplessness is killing us and we’re not even allowed to die. That Outer Darkness might not be so bad if there was some shuteye.
That’s why we tend to haunt the night and show up in dreams–not because we prefer the night, we’re just jealous you can sleep, that’s all.
In the daytime everyone can daydream, even us. No it’s not sleep, but it’s something. It’s hard to daydream at night–being awake at night makes you too damn focused… Forever
Jealousy is a big part of Purgatory. Naturally–we can see the whole world and can’t have any of it. Sometimes when we throw a severe tantrum we’re able to jostle a coffee cup, big deal.
Being able to watch anyone in the world while they undress for bed only adds to the jealousy.
And no, we’re not here to help–you think we give a fuck about Scrooge? We’re just mad that a super-scumbag like him could sleep soundly while ordinary scumbags like us have to endure eternal insomnia. The fact that he made it into a character-reforming experience is his business, we literally don’t give a damn.
What, you’re getting bored of all this Purgatory talk?
We’ve been exhausted by it for millennia and it’s not getting any better. Don’t even talk to me about getting tired.
So please don’t kill me
Laugh not lest ye be laughed at.
If a brother should smite thee with a humorous anecdote, reply with two stories even more self-deprecating.
Blessed are the unfunny and the dull-witted for their zingers will rip us new assholes in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are the easily confused and those who never get the joke for they shall receive the humor of God and will know when the archangels are being sarcastic. Yea, they will finally get it.
Blessed are those who suffer ethnic disparagement because of the crude, silly antics of their countrymen, for they shall have better addresses. And better countrymen.
In the beginning was the Pun and the Pun was stupid. Stupid good!
Get thee behind me, hack comedian!
Whose face is on this button? Bozo’s? Then give unto Bozo that which is Bozo’s.
But avoid the leaven of the hack comedians so that thy humor is not fluffy and airy but tough and full of substance like unleavened bread.
For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, and slippery is the surface that leadeth to cheap laughs.
And if a heckler should ruin your act, go ahead and give him your overcoat as well. The one with bubonic fleas.
Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Knock-knock, and we’re pulling your ass off the stage.
Forgive them Father, for they do not know a good joke for shit… But please kill those hecklers.
Shopping for religions one day, exploring all the philosophical and doctrinal differences and weighing their various defects and virtues, I decided I needed a religion with more beheadings.
A religion with more beheadings is the kind of religion you want to be a part of, that’s for sure. As the saying goes: “Faith, Hope, Charity, yet without beheadings, I am as nothing.”
It’s hard not to think about God during a beheading. It’s so moving.
What a great selling point for our religion—the Jehovah Witnesses have their pamphlets and the Protestants have their hospitals and faggy medical missionaries, but hey, we’ve got snuff films!
Snuff films which glorify God.
If the Prophet were alive today, he’d be into that kind of snuff, right?
Thousands of psychotic converts like me are inexorably drawn to the True Faith (mankind’s best hope) after seeing a video of a beheading.
You had me at the first messy knife-cut!
If only they could bring back quartering–you know, where they put a draft animal on each limb–think of all the sick-fuck converts we could win over!
Our religion will benefit greatly from drawing in all these sick-fucks who like snuff. We will be the new Elect of God, singing ancient praises of the All Mighty One, watching high-pressure blood splatter, kidnapping a wife or two…
Yeah, that’s a hell of a recruitment tool. Literally.
I think my cat is gorging and vomiting up food for the neighbors and the strays so as to “win friends and influence [peers].”
Nobody can eat FIVE cans of Fancy Feast ® a day, plus some assorted low-grade cat food for good measure. That’s $100 a month or more!
And what am I getting for it? Cuteness?!
I stopped leaving food outside for him at night a long time ago, although I can tell that he wants me to keep doing that. But why should I feed the ‘possums and the strays or even his own ill-conceived so-called “families”?
So what if he might have sired kittens with some “lynxy-looking” pussy? ‘Not my problem! Those ill-conceived kittens are on their own, Buddy boy! I can barely afford you!
Even if he doesn’t have any offspring that he’s secretly trying to feed, he shouldn’t be distributing my largess to Un-Worthies—i.e., cats I don’t want to adopt, which is all of them except him. The problem really is a distributional one—the stupid cat doesn’t know how to share!
Perhaps it was the booze, but tonight I let him have a bowl of wet food outside and said: “Ok Buddy, tonight you’re the ‘rich guy’—tonight you’re the one who hosts the party and shows off and everyone ‘loves’. Enjoy it.”
Because you know damn well I ain’t doin’ this every night! Forget that!
And then I suddenly realized that this is exactly how God could feel about me or any of us if he wanted to be a hard-ass about it.
And maybe that’s why He is such a hard-ass sometimes.
Oops–I mean, “amen”–those are sort of opposites, and yet synonymous too in a strange way.
Because at True Christian Charity® we distribute money and assistance the way Jesus taught.
Interviewer: What are some of the more prominent charitable projects undertaken by the TCC (the True Christian Charity) over the last few years?
TCC Representative: I can’t say. I mean, I won’t say.
Interviewer: Won’t say? Why not?
TCC: Because when it comes to charitable giving, Jesus said “When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” [Matthew 6:3]. That means keep it a secret even from yourself. And Jesus often bade the recipients of his miracles to stay quiet about it. A true Christian does not publicly display their piety or their virtue [Mark 12:40].
Interviewer: How do you make sure your gifts are going to the truly needy?
TCC: We don’t.
Interviewer: But you could end up giving to criminals and other un-worthies.
TCC: “Him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also” [Luke 6:29].
Interviewer: What if it’s al-Qaeda?
TCC: We hope it is al-Qaeda: “Resist not evil: but whoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also [Matthew 5:39]. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who spitefully use you, and persecute you” [Matthew 5:44]. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” [Hebrews 10:30].
Interviewer: What are some of your future plans at TCC looking forward?
TCC: No plans whatsoever: “Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself” [Matthew 6:34].
Interviewer: Is there any charitable project that TCC will not assist?
TCC: Yes, TCC will not help anyone with their funeral expenses, no matter how destitute you might be: “Let the dead bury the dead” [Matthew 8:22].
Interviewer: So how can people get in touch with the TCC? Do you have a website?
TCC: No, that would be vain and boastful.
Interviewer: So how can people contact the TCC?
TCC: In private. Alone. In your secret places where you can shut the door behind you [Matthew 6:6]. Or on mountaintops, near clean bodies of water, fishing camps, fishing holes, anything to do with fishing–that’s where many TCC staffers spend their time. But you might also find them in an IRS office or outside a whorehouse. You never know. But they’re rarely at the mall.
Interviewer: How can you identify TCC staffers?
TCC: You can’t. We have no special vestments for even Solomon in all his regal glory could not compare to a lily [Luke 12:27]. The only way to know for sure is to hang out at the base of sacred mountains and see who comes down transfigured [Matthew 17:2].
Interviewer: If you eschew all publicity, then why are you doing this interview?
TCC: Because I’m a hypocrite. They’re going to shun me for sure.
Hell is an eternal cringe.
Hell is a cruel joke whose vicious punchline you don’t get at first because you are the punchline. No wait, that’s life.
Hell is embarrassing. More so than life.
Hell is both lonely and devoid of all privacy. Experience is entirely alienated and yet the suffering is all too personal. High school was nothing.
In Hell, all the negative emotions are infinitely intense and constant except for those equally painful moments when all emotions seem false and self-crushingly hollow.
The infinite remorse despair desperation loss blah-blah-blah is alleviated only by the brief festivities surrounding Satan Appreciation Week.
The climax of the festivities is the grand reinstatement of all that crushing pain and misery. Satan knows how to throw a party and he also knows how to end one.
And the black hole tour sucks. Sucks!
Satan’s under-bosses produce charts and reports to him showing their output and productivity–i.e., suffering levels. They are rewarded by being allowed to suffer a little less than everyone else. To earn this pathetic pittance their brutality knows no bounds.
And when you look on the bright side it just burns. Never look on the bright side. Never.
Half the people that show up for work on a given day in Hell might have forgotten to put their pants on. The other half laugh and point. But then a hideous beast suddenly materializes and slices them to pieces before they can barely stop laughing.
So are the pant-less people then in the clear? No, because they get attacked by the Soul Rapists.
Satanic moral of the story: better to get sliced to pieces by a hideous beast than soul-raped. So now you know.
And that’s just a Tuesday. By Thursday, the place is a total madhouse.
How many atheists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
–About a hundred, since only 1 in 99 will prefer the light
What did one atheist say to the other atheist in the foxhole?
–I wonder when the fighting is going to start?
How many wars have been started/caused by religion?
–Let’s take warlike America as our case study… Answer: NONE!
The history of America proves you don’t need religious conflict to start a good war. ‘Cuz we’re advanced.
What did the atheist say when he finally met God?
–Oh good, I was wrong
What did the True Believer say when he met God?
–Oh shit, I was really wrong!
One day, an atheist was struggling with his moral conscience over what to do in a particularly ugly situation. Then he remembered there’s no God and no accountability so fuck it! Wheh-hew!
Why are atheists so smart?
–They’re constantly reevaluating.
Why do atheists live in cities?
–Because they’re all they got.
Why are atheists more virtuous than theists?
–Guilty conscience.
Did you hear that Science disproves God?
–Sure, just take Boyle’s law, multiply it against Bernoulli’s Principle, divide by the second law of thermodynamics, add in General Relativity and Mendel’s laws of inheritance and you’ll find a dead god in the bottom of your test-tube every time.
Alan Brech 2012
Perverted Wisdom 