Sunday, October 08, 2006

The Lost Documents

Sometimes I like to promote other blogs, and books I haven't written, just out of the goodness of my heart. Of course, I also remember I promised Pfizer I wouldn't write anything this weekend. That turned out to be not entirely true, but I didn't know that when I made that assertion.

And now I did, (write a few posts), so now they'll have to come back every day, including weekends, since they never know when I'm going to write something. I feel bad for the poor slob who has to keep reading all my stuff. So bad, in fact, that I think I'll introduce you to him. Maybe tomorrow.

But right now I'll simply introduce you to the Dilbert Blog. I love those Dilbert cartoons and books, read each and every one, and if you haven't visisted his blog you have missed something. Like what corporate life is really about. Not that he needs me promoting his blog, it is one of the biggest and most widely read in the Universe. Here's a recent post:

Your Ancestors Disgust Me

It has come to my attention that many of your ancestors were pedophiles. They probably didn’t know it, since marrying 15-year old girls was considered “normal” by those perverts. And I’m sure they had excuses such as the fact that the life expectancy was 17. So maybe they rationalized it by saying they had to start pinching out new farm hands before the plague got them. Blah, blah, blah. But that’s no excuse for being a pedophile.

I also have it on good authority that your ancestors from several thousand years ago rarely washed their hands with soap after pooping in the desert, or forest, or igloo, whatever. You come from a long line of unhygienic child molesters.

If you follow your repulsive blood line far enough back, you will find that your ancestors were atheists at best, but more likely worshippers of phalluses.

That’s right: You are the genetic fruit of unhygienic, penis-worshipping, child molesters.

And they couldn’t read – those illiterate, unhygienic, penis-worshipping, child molesters.

Keep going back in time and there’s a virtual guarantee that somewhere a cousin married a cousin, or a brother married a sister. Statistically speaking, you’re probably an inbred spawn of illiterate, unhygienic, penis-worshipping child molesters.

It makes you wonder what dumb-ass things we’re doing now that our descendants will find humorously repulsive. I think they’ll get a kick out of the fact that about a billion people thought God carved ten commandments on stone tablets and somehow the tablets got misplaced. I’d like to know how that conversation went between Moses and Mrs. Moses.

Moses: “Honey, have you seen my stone tablets from God?”

Mrs. Moses: “They didn’t match the carpets so I threw them out.”

Moses: “WHAT??? THOSE CAME DIRECTLY FROM GOD!!!!”

Mrs. Moses: “Sure they did, you daffy bastard.”

I kind of think, irrespective of your religion, that "The Dilbert Blog" poses a relevant question. It would have been cool to walk into Jerusalem, or the Vatican, or the Museum of Modern Art or wherever, and see those stone tablets, handed down from God. No disrespect intended.

Same thing goes for Mormons. Their holy metal plates with Mormon's book also disappeared mysteriously, and we have to take the word of a number of elders that they actually saw them before they disappeared, too. Amazing how the most holy words always go up in smoke. And they only had a hundred years or so to lose them. Not three thousand years . . .

It's a bit tiring with all the various people, who claim they have the word of God, but they always lose the documents . . . And they have so different opinions of what the word of God is.

But of course, they lost the documents . . . so we have to simply trust them. I think God is looking at all of this and all of us and laughing his head off. At least I hope he's laughing. After all, he must have a lot of humor, considering that he made us and what humans are like. No one with a serious mind set could ever have conceived of something so pathetic as the human race.

It simply must have been partly for fun he made us. To laugh his head off as he watched us run around like mice in a box, squabbling with each other. Right?

14 comments:

Alma Allred said...

Regarding the plates of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith claimed, "But by the wisdom of God, they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished by them what was required at my hands. When, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I delivered them up to him; and he has them in his charge until this day, being the 2nd day of May, 1838." That seems to me to be fairly straightforward and not at all mysterious.

While it would certainly be cool to find Moses' stone tablets in a museum somewhere, the Bible records that they were placed within the ark prepared by Moses and then deposited into Solomon's temple. Since that temple and its contents were destroyed when Jerusalem was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar, the question of what happened to them is hardly any more relevant than what happened to the sacred artifacts of Nineveh when they were destroyed by the same Babylonian monarch.

Anonymous said...

three religions are expecting the coming, or return, of the Messaiah any time now. Yes, the same three basic religions where so much talking goes on, and more. Reading your article, after having "experienced" what all is going on in Washington. D.C. this week - the same thing has been going on in Amsterdam for centuries - I think the three religions MUST be correct: Time for a new copy of the old rules to be delivered.

It is just amazing, is it not? Those stupid boys never learn proper rules and hygiene, and now that Mom has to go to work every day, and can not supervise both the husband and the male children after every "poop", we are all getting very sick and out of line. First it was the spinach, then the hamburger, and now the lettuce. Before you know it it will be the buns too!

Anonymous said...

Sorry. Being a devout Scandanavian heathen I find the whole conversation about a Middle Eastern God appalling. You just might as well accept the number 42 as being the "ultimate answer". Guys in Illinois "finding" tablets at the behest of angels is nonsense. People who think that they're "God's Chosen" is absurd. Following the words of some obscure Essenian Jew who thinks he knows the secrets of "everything" is patently ludicrous and then to follow the the psychotic rantings of some barbarous Beduoin defies reason. I just marvel and feel comfortable with the uncertainty of existence. The rest of you who feel that you're the ones "singled out for receiving the Lord's wisdom", take some Thorazine (chlorpromazine).

Argon said...

I've always love Dilbert because it's so true to life. I worked for decades in the electronics industry and found so many examples of engineers and managers doing exactly the same things that Scott Adams showed in his comics.

A lot of the places where I worked had the Dilbert cartoons tacked up on the cubicles or on the assembly lines and the really funny part is that the things the cartoons were about would happen when the people were standing right in front of where the cartoons were. There's a big irony for you.

But you know what happened to the stone tablets Moses had, they were turned into dust and put in the Ark of the Covenant. The last anyone heard from them was in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where the Ark was shoved into a military wearhouse some place during World War II *wink*

I'm not sure about the Mormons I never really paid much attention to that. But it is partly a Grande Game, I'm not sure how much amusement God gets from it, but since he likes to play dice by not only throwing them where you can't see them (black holes for example) and changing them after they land (Bohm's Quantum Correlation) other people might not think it's so funny.

That's not really the point of the Grande Game, since it's to learn to remember and transcend the boundaries we've placed on ourselves to an Ultimate Unity, God's amusement whether or not it goes on isn't really relevant right?

Peter Rost said...

Alma, love your response and thanks for coming by. Just shows the variety of readers this blog has. As to your comments, first I know you'll beat me hands down on any serious discussion, since I haven't spent the time you have researching these things. BUT, while I can appreciate stone tablets being crushed to dust, I do have a harder time appreciating the fact that the Mormon plates had to be returned to God. No heresy intended, I guess I just know if I lost my docs in the trial against Pfizer, and I said in Court, "God took them back," the judge would kick me out.
;)

Mark Brown said...

Anonymous said...

...snip... You just might as well accept the number 42 as being the "ultimate answer".


What? You mean it isn't?

So long, and Thanks for all the fish

Argon said...

I guess you might as well give the judge the excuse When, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I delivered them up to him which I suppose means that the bike messenger lost them and explain to the judge that you're suing the delivery service for it.

I'm betting that if pressed for a better answer that Joseph Smith would've blamed it on Wells Fargo.

42 is the ultimate answer but the question is a bit vague. I did like the suggestion of "How many roads must a man walk down?" it certainly applied a lot better than then other that was suggested.

Kansas said...

So many opinions, so much confusion. Quite fascinating.

First off, ditto to what Alma said. Nice to see there’s at least one voice of reason here.

To the 2nd Anonymoose:

Why do you care if people worship God, Buddha, the number 42, or a rock? Why would people worshipping an entity that gives them peace bother you so much?

Me thinks you doth protest too much. There is a God. Deal with it.

Anonymous said...

Deal with it? Okay. Read Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" for my response. Keep your meme to yourself, it's not anything to be proud of. Dealt with.

Peter Rost said...

Man, I need to write more about religion. Had no idea this simple post could get things to heat up this much!

Kansas said...

"Read Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" for my response."

Are you kidding?

And yes Doc, religion is something we can all disagree on!

It has always fascinated me how angry atheists get when confronted with someone who believes in something. I've just never been able to figure out why they care.

Argon said...

I think the main difference is between religion and spirituality. Atheists see all the hypocrisy, abuses, manipulation done in the name of religion and don't make the distinction that it doesn't necessarily affect the question of spirituality.

A lot of people can't even agree on the definition of God, but most don't want to accept the ones that the major religions use. That's probably the reason that atheists get so upset when the subject comes up since they usually condemn the narrow view that most religions espouse but then dismiss the whole larger range of spirituality because they still accept that view as the only one.

To answer your question, they still care because they still need to fill that void that the lack of spirituality leaves in their lives.

Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective

As Ken Wilber says,"...At any rate, let us simply note that this Wholeness…is what is real and all that is real. A radically separate, isolated and bounded entity does not exist anywhere...

...Because man wants real transcendence above all else, but because he cannot or will not accept the necessary death of his separate-self sense, he goes about seeking transcendence in ways, or through structures, that actually prevent it and force symbolic substitutes..."


So the atheists get angry because they've accepted the definition of God that the major religions use as a symbolic substitute, but they still long for the transcendence they need to alleviate the fragmentation they still suffer from by denying it exists and that gets them frustrated by people that insist that there is another way.

Anonymous said...

Not kidding at all. After all, providing cognitive dissonance to people with reality disorders is part of my professional responsibility. Has zero% to do with atheism and 100% to do with reality. Tell you what. You show up on my doorstep with your "God" and I'll become your strongest advocate.

Argon said...

The previous comment pretty much exemplifies what I meant and illustrates that quote "...give me a candle so I can find the dawn"

If he wants "God" to show up on his doorstep he shouldn't just be looking for an "archetype" or an individual. That is certainly not any kind of "reality" it's at least 90% "maya."

If you're going to narrow your version of reality to only include things you can see, then what are you going to do about things like the wind that are only known by their effects?

With that viewpoint, you might as well say that "Reality is for those that can't handle drugs"