Or should I say Ben-Dick16..? Hell, I am losing track of all the funny names these weirdos make up for themselves. In any case, H. points out to me that Old Ben still hasn’t lost his streaks, cunning little fox that he is. He is still trying to sell his imaginary friend to a broad public of gullible idiots, and tries to take ‘the idiots still to be’ with him in his fall from eternal credibility…
Well, read this article in the Catholic News. Ben-Dick persistently thinks that we have something to gain from going back to devout lives, seclude ourselves from real life like monks did in the middle ages, and find god – Bennies imaginary friend – so we can enable ourselves to make “genuine culture” again. Because without god, there is no real culture. Without god, fundamentalism and fanaticism will grow. I quote:
“What drove the monks in their prayer and scholarship — “the search for God” — is equally necessary today.
If modern culture tries to drive the question of God into the realm of the merely subjective and unscientific, that would be the capitulation of reason, the renunciation of its highest possibilities, and hence a disaster for humanity, with very grave consequences.
What gave Europe’s culture its foundation — the search for God and the readiness to listen to him — remains today the basis of any genuine culture.”
Huh? Hey, wait a minute, Ratz! Can you run that by me again? So, by choosing to be rational, logical and straightforward, we undo, in some way, reason and its higher possibilities and so disaster will strike us? How exactly?
We have three ingredients here, which I always thought to have understood correctly, and now Cunning Old Ben-Dick points out that I’ve been barking up the wrong tree entirely.
Firstly, based on what I have read about the subject, I have been under the impression that monasteries, especially in medieval times, were pools of filth where decent people didn’t go because of the loose sexual moral in those places.* Well, that’s what you get for wearing dresses… as a man. No undies, I’m sure: so the Sacred Schloing is dangling against that rough robe all the time, exciting Little Monky into imagining all kinds of devious things.
Secondly, if we strive for reason and debunk our silly beliefs in virtual beings, we will actually capitulate to them and eventually disaster will strike. Yeah, right. Like right now, in the country where this devotion for god is really getting out of hand in the most terrifying way, where fundamentalist Know-it-alls get more momentum by the day, and where self-righteousness has been a national hallmark for more than two centuries, here, the brunt of nature is getting at its worst. I am talking about the United States of America of course. The country is flooded, flogged by storms and harassed by hurricanes, and although this nation seems to be driven further into god’s arms every day, it does not help them one single bit.
Thirdly, there is no genuine culture without god? Well, maybe this was true in a time when we simply didn’t have any other motivator than the fear of god, but those days are over. God is in the rearguard and the vanguard is taken over by other factors in our lives. Which ones? I’m not sure, but it seems to be culture in the broadest sense, that is biting its own tail. Art, books, science, mass-media… where does the inspiration come from? I do see more media publishing on media, or am I mistaken? In any case, secularism is getting stronger, not weaker, and I would be the last one to maintain the position that culture is somehow deteriorating. I leave that to the fascists.
I am confused: but maybe I should just get the proper message here. What Ben-Dick is actually saying, is: “Don’t buy wine: become a priest and you’ll get it for free! You get to wear dresses and contraception is achieved by targeting your sexual drive there where it doesn’t induce conception.” Well, sorry, but it doesn’t do it for me. I want genuine life, real pleasure and proper understanding of the world. God is dismissed.
* Read Karlheinz Deschner’s “Das Kreuz mit der Kirche, eine Sexualgeschichte des Christentums” on this very entertaining part of Catholic Christianity…
