THE BLOG OF DISQUIET :Qweir Notions,an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since2008.
Friday 26 April 2013
Meslier Updated
"The Great and the Good"
(a phrase which justifies authority)
from the World Bank to the Vatican,
might justifiably be strung aloft
with the intestines of fanatics.
The curate Meslier was as intemperate in his atheism as Richard Dawkins. For example, one of his most famous statements runs:
"Le christianisme ne s'est répandu qu'en promettant le despotisme, dont il est, comme toute religion, le plus ferme soutien."
[Christianity spread only because it favoured despotism, whose most solid support it is, as is all religion.]
But Christianity started out as a minority cult of slaves and beggars, and only "took off" when its pronouncements on "The Kingdom of Heaven" were seen to fit in nicely with Roman theocratic Imperialism (under Theodosius I especially), and subsequently spread, not through the solidarity of the poor and disempowered, but by the conversion of war-lords, princes and kings through exaggeration of its (largely Pauline) hierarchical elements.
Nor is it true that all religion supports despotism. Quakerism ()The Society of Friends) is one of several important exceptions which include various ecstatic and Gnostic sects of both Christianity and Islam, certain "extremist" Jews who do not recognise the state of Israel, some esoteric forms of Buddhism, and, more recently, Theosophy.
1 comment:
The curate Meslier was as intemperate in his atheism as Richard Dawkins. For example, one of his most famous statements runs:
"Le christianisme ne s'est répandu qu'en promettant le despotisme, dont il est, comme toute religion, le plus ferme soutien."
[Christianity spread only because it favoured despotism, whose most solid support it is, as is all religion.]
But Christianity started out as a minority cult of slaves and beggars, and only "took off" when its pronouncements on "The Kingdom of Heaven" were seen to fit in nicely with Roman theocratic Imperialism (under Theodosius I especially), and subsequently spread, not through the solidarity of the poor and disempowered, but by the conversion of war-lords, princes and kings through exaggeration of its (largely Pauline) hierarchical elements.
Nor is it true that all religion supports despotism. Quakerism ()The Society of Friends) is one of several important exceptions which include various ecstatic and Gnostic sects of both Christianity and Islam, certain "extremist" Jews who do not recognise the state of Israel, some esoteric forms of Buddhism, and, more recently, Theosophy.
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