Too Much Heaven On Their Minds
Carl Anderson playing Judas Iscariot in Jesus Christ Superstar: singing the opening number “Heaven on Their Minds”.
As a very small child, there were three movies I watched almost every day. I knew all the scenes, exactly what happened when, all the words to all the songs and even all the dialogue. They were Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz (with Judy Garland) and Jesus Christ Superstar, the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera, directed by Norman Jewison. While the first two may seem like a normal choice of movies for a small child, if you’ve watched Jesus Christ Superstar you would understand that this is a little strange. But even as a child, I loved the story of the man. My heart broke for him. And for Judas.
When they first staged Jesus Christ Superstar, and later turned it into a Golden Globe Award winning film, stunning, powerful and wonderfully well performed, it was hugely controversial. It portrays Jesus as a man who is heading a movement which is getting more out of control than he can handle. It portrays Judas as Jesus’ right hand man, who is worried by the immense popularity of the Jesus movement and how that will affect the higher orders. He wishes the movement to be a strictly secular movement that merely helps the needy. Jesus, on the other hand, wants everyone to find inner peace and bids everyone to turn to a spiritual victory within oneself rather than a political victory against the Romans. His followers only want him to take on the Roman occupants and fight for their sovereignty. To them, he is saviour who will save them and their land from the Romans. Jesus despairs and is alone in his struggle, and his followers do not understand his true purpose. Judas foresees how this growing movement will upset and threaten the Romans, and warns Jesus, and in the end, ‘betrays’ him, thinking it is for his own good. Simon tells Jesus that if he leads their mob against the Romans and wins, he will become even more popular than ever: “You’ll get the power and the glory, For ever and ever and ever”.
Sadly, Jesus tells them that not one of them can understand what power is, understand what glory is, understand at all.
Even as a child, I was so saddened by how people wished to misuse Jesus and his good intentions. Even then, I understood how people wish to abuse the sanctity of religion for material and political gain.
Atheists are always beaten for not having a reference point for moral guidance, where as the religious do, in the form of their respective scriptures. I don’t know about all of the religious scriptures in the world, but I do know a fair bit about the bible. And is that really a book that you want to be giving your kids for moral guidance? It teaches revenge. It not only endorses but blesses violence against those that have a different faith. It condones genocide. It tells you you are guilty of original sin, as you are born, for no fault of your own. It constantly puts women in the same category as animals and property, but that’s the least of it. The most powerful thing about the bible, particularly the Old Testament, is the idea that your God is the only God, and anyone who believes in anything else are sinners and heathens who deserve to die.
Those who believe in God tell us atheists that it is our loss, we are the ones without the moral compass. But have atheists ever waged wars in the name of atheism? A popular argument has been that Stalin and Hitler were atheists. We aren’t even sure if that’s true about Hitler, but anyway, even if it were, the purpose of their evil was not atheism. They weren’t killing millions in the name of atheism. Hitler and Stalin may have been non-believers, but their evil was completely unconnected with their atheism. George Bush is a devout believer, Osama bin Laden is a devout believer. And their harmful intent is primarily connected with their belief in God.
Atheists are happy to just sit at home and merely not believe. We do not try to convert. We have nothing against those who do believe. We are not patronising towards the religious, although we would have great reason to be, if we wished. Our non-faith does not cost the lives of others.
I’m fairly sure that even without religion, people would find reasons to kill and hate each other. However, the scary thing is that religion is one of the few reasons that make this ‘alright’, that makes it acceptable. Religion makes a lot of things that would be otherwise considered barbaric, completely acceptable by civilised society. It makes sacrifice OK. It make revenge OK. It makes suicide (in the name of God, of course) not only OK, but a rewarded honour. It makes stoning someone to death OK. It makes aerial bombing an entire city OK. If it were the African tribes doing any of these things, it would be put down as savage and vile.
Religion makes a lot of things alright. And I have a sneaky feeling that if one were to really look at all the other reasons that people kill each other, at least on a large, ‘national’ scale, we will find that a lot of it is intrinsically connected to religion: ‘national interest’, ‘public security’, ‘the destiny of a state’, all reasons that recently have fuelled on the wars of the world. But how much do these things really have to do with public security? And how much of it is really about religion?
America’s own brand of Christian fundamentalism against the Muslim Jihad has shed a lot of light recently on religious fanaticism. This war, supposedly against terrorism but really against those with a different faith, makes religion, even that of the moderates, look worse and more irresponsible than ever before. Richard Dawkins says of religion that the most dangerous thing about it is the ‘in-group’ mentality that is, with hard work, built into most theists from a young age. Protect your own and destroy the rest. It is scary, to say the least, that we can see that this mentality has survived into modern times.
Too much heaven on people’s minds can be a dangerous thing indeed.
you are one confused person.
fact is if you want a value system ( that is “morality” )not confined to you alone, you need a religion based on belief in some supernatural phenomena (buddhsim also does this in spite of claims to otherwise. see my comment in your next post ) bc values are subjective and relative and and cannot be objectively verified.
if you have values you defend them bc otherwise no point in having values. hence sometimes war.
so you have to choose whether you want values or not.
if you are prepared to live in a world without values where everyone in theory can do what they want, by all means do so. but then you should not judge anything bc judging is evaluation ( in full sense).
you cannot condemn pedophilia, murder, rape … anything. in fact you cannot judge or condemn war or religion either . you cannot ask whether bible is ” really a book that you want to be giving your kids for moral guidance?”
why not? you are making a value judgment.
a muslim can ask that, a true atheist cannot
but you do make value judgments here.
you are not “just sitting at home and merely not believing” as you claim . you are doing what believers do. judging .
once you judge and if you are sincere you sometimes have to act on that judgment.
say you see someone doing something vile. do you intervene? you probaly will ( a true atheist will not judge at all, and go “sit at home”) .
once you have action, you will have violence (depending on the case).
all i said above follows logically, if you have a value system that extend beyond your inner self. and all such systems are religions.
but you claim you are an atheist. ha!
you acted just like a religious fundamentalist when you wrote this . only they are honest. you are not
-
richard dawkins of this world ( repeating eighteenth century arguments about god using current science as voltaire or whatever did then using then current science ) cannot help you to get out of this irrational hole. you have to search your own beliefs and values and their origins first. honestly instead repeating things you have not really examined carefully.
be true to yourself . don’t lie
-
btw it is not just “‘national interest’, ‘public security’, ‘the destiny of a state’,” but also “human rights”, “justice”, “democracy “, “freedom “, all are values and ultimately religions. and so lead to war . why not be honest ?
Comment by sittingnut — May 6, 2009 @ 6:05 pm
sittingnut: What I am trying to say, is that I believe morality is kind of an in-built system. I think humans inherently know that it is wrong to kill each other, because we have life too and value it so much, we would automatically know that what we are doing can’t be ‘right’. So I don’t think religion is ‘necessary’ as such. I think humans would have value systems and know what’s wrong and right (meaning, what would further our development as a species and what would not) anyway. Obviously killing each other would not be suitable as it would decrease our chance of surviving as a species that lives in communities. If anyone were able to do whatever they pleased, society would break down. Also, there is state law, which clearly tells us what is lawful and what is not, and there is due punishment for what is unlawful. I just don’t think religion is a good reference point for morality, because while to forbids certain things, it also encourages certain things in it’s name which would otherwise be forbidden by any law or moral code. Of course I judge, but I judge anyway even though I do not believe in God. I make judgments based on my basic sense of what is acceptable and what is not, and I simply do not do to others what I wouldn’t want done to me. I have values and a sense of goodness that has come with upbringing and common sense, not of religion. Also I think it’s kind of shit if you are only good because you think you will be rewarded, and not bad because you fear punishment.
Ultimately I think religion is only applicable to very specific parts of life, but it fails to point this out, so people end up applying it to their whole life and then the results are a disaster.
Comment by electra — May 7, 2009 @ 7:50 am