9 of 49

Write now Article Tools

Page 2 of 3

Augustine's original sin: if they are not baptized, they will burn in hellfire. Augustine wrote the first Catholic justification of state persecution of religious error, setting the stage for the Inquisition. To object to forced conversion is to disbelieve God's power to convert. God the father must whip his sons, for "true education begins with physical abuse" - "per molestias eruditio". Original sin is sin of the flesh. Augustine was a profligate before his conversion; thereafter he deems a woman's embraces "sordid, filthy, and horrible." In his old age this brilliant man, who had in fact contributed many bright lights to humankind, became the apotheosis of christian hypocrisy - that is, if christianity be a religion of love. He became an evil cleric, merciful to those who feared him, hateful to those who disagreed, and would have had all those opposed to his views subjected to state cruelty in order to impose his version of the divine order on the city of his god. Such is the trap of divine anarchy that god-men who adore omnipotent gods often fall into.

Yes, hypocrisy is a depressing subject, and the term is unfairly applied to a few of us after everyone is implicated. We are sick and tired of hearing about our our original evil and our selfishness and our hypocrisy. It is high time that we accentuate the positive, keep the good things in mind and feel very blessed. After all, we have heard the gospel that good is a positive thing, while evil is its absence or merely nothing, therefore let us ignore evil and focus on good. In fact there is nothing to ignore for evil has no positive existence. Why, Augustine himself said that evil has no existence. And we do not have to prove that evil is nothing, for it is impossible to prove the negative, that nothing exists.

Life must go on and it will go on one way or another whether we like it or not, so let us proceed with a smile on our face and a song on our lips. Laugh, sang the wildly popular American newspaper poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and the whole world will laugh with you. Human life will be a continuous improvement to perfection if we put on a happy face and keep our goal in mind; every swerve from our wanted destination will be corrected by our cybernetic pilot. We may have been wrong in the past, but so what? We can certainly become better in the future, so let us not dwell so much on our past mistakes that we lose faith in our progress to perfection and lose confidence in our ability to achieve it.

If we

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Problems with religion and hypocrisy?
We want to hear your view. Write now!