At some point a critical mass realized Christianity is really dumb. The further you delve into it, the more ridiculous the whole edifice looks. Though perhaps someone can explain to me why this happened later, rather than sooner...
Those with this realization immediately split into two camps.
The first camp was the modified limited hangout a.k.a. cope camp. "Christianity says it's about the TRUTH. We're going to talk about the TRUTH that's real instead of this crap."
The second camp was this: "Sweet monkey Tuesdays, these morons will believe anything. I gotta get me some of this grift!"
Guess who won.
The first camp didn't even fully admit they were in a fight.
As long as you accept that Christianity is basically ridiculous, it's fun to salvage the parts that aren't. "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
Is Satan, Father of Lies, lord of this world? I mean, the second camp keeps winning. What do you think?
However, it's important to distinguish the human world from the everything-else world. It's no coincidence that [artificial] connotes [fake]. I typically make a dichotomy out of planet vs. world, specifically the social world.
We can steel the passage by taking [God] to mean the effects of the laws of Gnon. That is, Reality. "Satan, the Lord of the Social, has blinded the minds of those who dwell in the Worldly kingdom, dooming their thoughts to disharmony, incapable of reconciling with Reality."
On one hand, allegedly the Bible was written by God, and I definitely shouldn't be able to write better than God does.
On the other hand, my understanding is still incomplete. There is an even steelier version of this passage. Even spicier and even more relevant.
In any case, we can see the first camp lost because they were, ultimately, a part of the second camp. They never made any sincere attempt to reconcile with Reality. They assumed success and never checked, most likely because they never genuinely intended to succeed. It is not surprising that insecure Satanists tend to lose to exuberant Satanists - at least, at social games. If the Satanism becomes too real, achieving communism, it runs into some of Gnon's harder rules, where he is apt to withhold mercy.
In a country with genuine intellectual integrity, a Steel Bible would have already been published. Indeed there might be competitions to create the steeliest passages, with every last scrap of nonsense burnt off, and the points filed as sharp as they'll go.
ReplyDeleteAlternatively they would have declared themselves specifically anti-Christian, somewhat similar to the way America is anti-racist. Different in that disproving Christianity would be considered an irrelevant task, like rebutting Mithra or throwing disses at Zeus. The same in that alleged anti-Christians would be called out for doing Christian things like giving a shit about mercy.