1. "A History of God" Karen Armstrong (the other side of the story) "The Everlasting Man" G.K.Chesterton
2. "Misquoting Jesus" Bart Ehrman (t.o.s.o.t.s.)"Misquoting Truth" T.P.Jones
3. www.Moveon.org (t.o.s.o.t.s.) www.heritage.org
4. "A Stranger at the Gate" Mel White (t.o.s.o.t.s.) "A Strong Delusion" Joe Dallas
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Aren't most Christians hypocrites?
Not usually. Rock concert fund raisers, Oprah, movie star's passionate projects... we hear plenty from media about the good things the rich and famous do to serve mankind. Why don't we hear about things like this coming from Christian organizations... or Christian's in any setting?
1. There are Christians at work constantly serving the poor and downtrodden, but their stories are not glamorous or newsworthy. Most Christians prefer to remain behind the scenes if possible. Few will announce themselves. Most work is done on a small scale: one to one, family to family.
2. Middle class Christians would love to be more generous with their finances, however, much of what could be used for charity is eaten up in state and federal taxes. Before the advent of government social care programs,welfare, and the taxation to support it...churches, families and communities took care of their own poor and downtrodden. Now, more Christians struggle financially to simply care for their own children and families with even two full-time working adults incomes, and so have less ($$, man-power, time) left to use toward generosity and charity... and are frustrated by it.
3. There is information out there about the amazing (mostly volunteer) work being done... you just need to look in the right places. We won't see these on the news...
Some examples:
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/WhoWeAre_Index.asp
http://www.persecution.com/about/index.cfm?action=vom
http://www.southmetrovineyard.org/outreach/outreach.html (one church example)
http://www.salvationarmy.org/ihq/www_sa.nsf
1. There are Christians at work constantly serving the poor and downtrodden, but their stories are not glamorous or newsworthy. Most Christians prefer to remain behind the scenes if possible. Few will announce themselves. Most work is done on a small scale: one to one, family to family.
2. Middle class Christians would love to be more generous with their finances, however, much of what could be used for charity is eaten up in state and federal taxes. Before the advent of government social care programs,welfare, and the taxation to support it...churches, families and communities took care of their own poor and downtrodden. Now, more Christians struggle financially to simply care for their own children and families with even two full-time working adults incomes, and so have less ($$, man-power, time) left to use toward generosity and charity... and are frustrated by it.
3. There is information out there about the amazing (mostly volunteer) work being done... you just need to look in the right places. We won't see these on the news...
Some examples:
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/WhoWeAre_Index.asp
http://www.persecution.com/about/index.cfm?action=vom
http://www.southmetrovineyard.org/outreach/outreach.html (one church example)
http://www.salvationarmy.org/ihq/www_sa.nsf
Can the Bible be trusted?
Yes. Have you ever read Shakespeare? When trying to read it myself, I needed a lot of help understanding his vocabulary and sentence structure. With proper educated assistance, though, I could enjoy his story. It would have been silly of me to try to draw my own uneducated conclusions through scanty comprehension of his original text. Same with reading the Bible. It can certainly be read with some basic, surface comprehension... however, there is much more one needs to know, fundamental history, translation, setting, perspective, etc... to fully understand the message that the author's themselves, like Shakespeare, intended to share. Centuries of study, by smart people, reveal this basic criteria. This science is called "biblical hermaneutics" and is crucial for intelligent biblical understanding to occur. Like I said, we have been given brains for a reason. I believe that basic biblical illiteracy in our time has led to much unnecessary confusion and strife... and has also led to massive lemming-like behavior around some corrupt leaders (even some who are well-meaning) who "claim" to know the "truth"... and who also make a lot of money off of biblically illiterate masses.
This is a shame... but its our own fault. Biblical illiteracy, in fact, any kind of ignorance, is the fault of the individual and no one else.
This is a shame... but its our own fault. Biblical illiteracy, in fact, any kind of ignorance, is the fault of the individual and no one else.
Is the book, "Ishmael" (Quinn) misleading?
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The following is a review of the book, from one Christian's viewpoint, by Val Dare
Overall premise of the book: There are two types of cultures: Takers and Leavers. Takers and Leavers have different stories about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about human destiny. Leaver culture= tribal cultures, Taker culture = Western culture (W.C.). Western culture is generally based on the Christian interpretation of the Old and New Testament. Quinn's character, Ishmael, teaches his student that this particular interpretation of the Bible and Western culture's reliance on "prophets" (that include Moses and Jesus, among others), is a lie, therefore the Taker story is wrong. He teaches that if you believe the Taker story you are part of the unenlightened group that is deliberately destroying the world.
My opinion: I believe this premise, if taken the least bit seriously, can potentially set the stage for anyone, who is even mildly biblically illiterate, to develop potentially dangerous "anti-Christian" attitudes.
Quotes=POINT / COUNTERPOINT by V.Dare in smaller print
*Note: To get the full negative effect of Ishmael's teaching, it might be helpful to read the quotes first, in direct succession, skipping over my counterpoints the first time through. The second time through, you may wish to read my counterpoint after each quote to gain a sense of my personal Christian viewpoint on the matter.
P. 25 Ishmael (the teacher gorilla character) states, "You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live." (reference to Western Culture, W.C.) / Counterpoint: Western Culture is one of only a few where people are not "captives" or oppressed. In fact, W.C.=freedom=personal responsibility for environment. When people with a sense of personal responsibility, especially to God, are properly informed, they will do the right thing without coercion.
P. 28 (suspicion that Western Culture is a lie) "If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right-it would make no great difference. But if you all found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.", "True", "Then that is what we must hope for."/ W.C. is not a lie, rather, Ishmael's worldview is a misrepresentation of Christianity and its influence on western culture. Spreading this lie is Ishmael's/the author's way of (in a round about way) undermining Christianity, which in his view is what must be done to save the world. If taken for what this really is, it can be viewed as a blatant assault on Biblical Christianity, as you will see further into the book.
*P. 41 (suggestion that people live the way they live, in order to make what they believe come true) "To enact a story is to live so as to make the story a reality…to strive to make it come true…this is what the people of Germany were doing under Hitler. They were trying to make the Thousand Year Reich a reality. They were trying to make the story he was telling them come true."/ the setting of the book is around the time of WW2, and this is the first of several references comparing W.C. to Hitler's worldview, an unfortunate choice by the author.
"So you're saying that the people of my culture (W. C.) are enacting their own story about man, the world and the gods." "That's right." "…the story…we've agreed to call Takers… is apparently about to end in catastrophe." / Catastrophe of what sort? W.C.'s modern technology, medicine, prosperity has the potential to save mankind and the environment from catastrophes. Catastrophe is a strong, fear invoking word.
P. 45 Culture's mythology: "any story that explains the meaning of the world, the intentions of the gods, and the destiny of man is bound to be mythology." Mythology is not just "fanciful tales"… mythology is what the people believe at the time, (true or not-my words)./ regardless of the definition of "mythology", calling Christianity a myth implies it is true only in the minds of those who believe its true, rather than it being largely verifiable historical fact.
"The beginning of every culture's mythology is their "creation story".
P. 46 "You're looking for your own culture's creation myth."
P. 50 "Its for recording for posterity the curious folktales of a doomed culture, which you are going to tell me" (student) "We have no creation myth, unless you're talking about the one in Genesis"
(Ishmael)"Don't be absurd. If an 8th grade teacher invited you to explain how all this began, would you read the class the first chapter of Genesis?" "Certainly not" /
Direct insult to serious literary consideration of Genesis:see "Genesis Unbound "
(Here the student character refers to theories of how life evolved. He states)
"No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It's just the story"
P. 61 "That's the premise of your story: The world was made for man"…"The people of your culture made it a premise, took it as a premise. They said: What if the world was made for us?.... that’s what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: you've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn will please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you." /
Incorrect premise: Christianity (a term distinct from the more general term, "Religion") says God created the world, then created man, in His image, to be in direct and loving relationship with God. Man originally walked and talked directly with God. God gave man "dominion" on the earth, in a stewardship role, to enjoy His creation along with Him. However, man handed over his place of authority on Earth to Satan (Lucifer is a fallen angel), who wants to be the "god" of earth, himself, and who has ruled the earth with this stolen authority, via the spiritual realm, ever since. Christ (God in the flesh) came to give man the opportunity to restore his relationship with God, in the form of personal choice. True love requires personal choice. This spiritual process is referred to by Jesus as being "born-again" . Only when a genuine relationship with the Creator is restored, is man in a position to take back his god-given authority from Satan. This "spiritual war" is presently on-going. The evidence of this conflict, and "man out of relationship with God" is all around us. Later in the book, Quinn talks about how the Takers impose the "one right way" on everyone else. If there is "one right way" that God requires of man, it is this: Micah 6:8-"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." or, as stated in the New Testament, Mark 12:31-"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength...and love your neighbor as yourself." In our natural state, not one human being can accomplish this on his own, but God gave us a way through Christ, to be restored to Him. One who has been restored is a genuine Christian. I think Quinn confuses genuine Christianity with "religion", which is a grave error. "Religious" and non-religious people can certainly do good things, but plenty of "religious" people can remain out of touch with their Creator because they are ignorant of, or don't take seriously, what Christ did to make that restored relationship possible.
Historically, genuine Christians are those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and was God incarnate on planet Earth, that he died and rose from death and that Jesus is the "way and the truth and the life...that no one comes to the Father except through (Him)" John 14:6- as described in the Bible. (see Nicene Creed)
P. 69 Reference to the "Fertile Crescent"/ birthplace of Western Culture. (Garden of Eden in Christianity.)
P. 71 "in our (W.C.) mythology…(according to the gods) without man, the world was unfinished… the world needed a ruler. It needed man (to bring order out of the chaos)"./
Man was not needed to bring order out of chaos, he was created to be in relationship with God. Man without God, living in a realm where he continues to allow Satan to rule, results in chaos.
"The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it" "Everyone understands that." "Is this fact?" "No." "It's mythology."
P. 73 "He has to conquer it" / stewardship in relationship with the Creator, was not meant to be "conquering",
P. 75 As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the choice…and they chose a brief life of glory." /
Not true, most people of Christian based W. C. don't believe this, however, I concede there are some on the fringe who distort the Christian message to say that it doesn't matter what happens to planet earth because the end of the world is any day now.
"…it’s the price you pay of enacting a story (Western culture based on Christian belief) that casts mankind as the enemy of the world". /
The Christian based W.C. world-view does not cast mankind as the enemy of the world...a steward is not an enemy. Any man who succumbs to pure selfishness and greed may certainly be cast as an "enemy of the world", but those people can be found in any culture.
P. 82 "The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule it was meant to be a paradise" but "any third grader could see it…people screw it up… why…
"Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness." (see p. 3)
Man was not born to turn the world into a paradise. Man originally communed freely with God in paradise, but that special relationship and paradise was lost. This was the "Fall" of man. Since then, man has been "born flawed" in that he is born with a propensity and primary desire to live his own life, convinced he has no need for a relationship with his Creator, or simply unaware that this is possible. Mankind, left in this state, can easily become stupid, greedy, destructive and shortsighted.
P. 84 "There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now."
Ishmael is saying here that it’s the " story's" fault, which, although only implied, directly points to the Bible's story in other parts of the book. Although prophets from other faiths are included in the blame (see P. 85), the Bible is the only faith document that Ishmael refers to.. I posit that there IS something fundamentally wrong with people: they are oblivious of and don't recognize their own Creator. (Read John 1:1-5) This quote by Ishmael is saying that the Christian message, or "story", is causing the destruction of the world, when actually, it is quite the opposite. God is calling mankind back into relationship with Himself...which inevitably results in the restoration of Man's proper place in creation (as Steward under God) and the liberation of creation from Satan's rule. (Romans 8:20-For the creation was subjected to frustration...21-the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.)
P. 85 Western culture: "has always had a passionate and unwavering dependence on prophets-Moses, Gautama, Buddha, Confucious, Jesus, Muhammad"... "there is nothing like this among the Leavers-unless it occurs as a response to some devastating contact with the Taker culture…"
"why do we need prophets?... to tell us how to live…"
To put Jesus name on the same level as these others is evidence that this author has no idea who Jesus is, nor has he honestly studied the Old Testament prophecies that refer to Jesus, or the New Testament records that confirm them. Also, I believe there is indeed Leaver dependence on prophets, but they are called "oracles" , or "witch doctors", or "Shaman's", among other things. There is also the insinuation that "contact with the Taker culture" is obviously "devastating"…this statement is a jaded and one sided opinion, whereas, research in many cases shows otherwise.
P.89 "Perhaps the flawed man is exactly this: that he doesn't know how he ought to live."
"It’s a sorry story you have there, a story of hopelessness and futility, a story in which there is literally nothing to be done. Man is flawed, so he keeps on screwing up what should be paradise, and there's nothing you can do about it. You don't know how to live so as to stop screwing up paradise, and there's nothing you can do about that. So there you are, rushing headlong toward catastrophe, and all you can do is watch it come." (see above explanations)
P.96 "We don't need prophets to tell us how to live: we can find out for ourselves by consulting what's actually there"
Based on previous list of "prophets", he is indirectly saying we don't need Jesus. This is one of Satan's lies to mankind. If people deny that they need Jesus, they deny God's plan for salvation (restored relationship with Him), which, in essence leaves Satan with the territory.
P. 103 "the gods did not exempt man from the law that governs the lives of grubs…(etc), this is going to be the bitterest blow of all to the Takers… to this one, no adjustment is possible."
"Species that live in compliance with the law "live forever"…this will, I hope, be taken as "good news" for mankind in general, because if mankind lives in compliance with this law, then it too will live forever…"
…those that do not live in compliance with the law become extinct./
This is the opposite "world-view" of christianity, which says that it is not "species that live in compliance with the laws of nature who live forever", rather, humans were created to be in eternal relationship with God, and those who choose to restore that relationship through Christ, will indeed. That is the "good news"
P. 105 …like the law of gravity: There is no escaping it, but there is a way of achieving the equivalent of … freedom of the air." (P. 109: Western culture is not it) / something fishy about this, I can't put my finger on it. What does he mean by an "equivalent"?
P. 115 "Is there a penalty for breaking this law?", "Death."
P. 118 "It is the peace-keeping law, the law that keeps the community from turning into the howling chaos the Takers imagine it to be. It's the law that fosters life for all…"
"…one branch of the family of Homo sapiens said, "Man is exempt from this law… and brought the entire world to the point of death…their explanation is that something is fundamentally wrong with human nature itself." "how do you like that explanation?" (Ishmael's student replies)"I'm beginning to have my doubts about it."
P. 130 "We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it." /
Sofar, according to the author, "We"= W.C. which is based on Christianity= deliberately "at war" with the environment. This is untrue.
P. 132 "It is holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is." / Author is equating "competitive destruction" with "holiness", which is a horribly twisted description of this word, commonly used by Christians to describe God.
P. 138 (referring to sending aid to suffering people) "its no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them… this just guarantees that the famine will continue." , (Ishmael's student replies) "but,…its hard to just sit by and let them starve." Then Ishmael says, "This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: "I will not let them starve, I will not let the drought come, I will not let the river flood…it is the gods who let these things, not you."
/ my response? you're kidding me, right?
P. 140 "In order to halt this process, you must face the fact that increasing food production doesn't feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion." (in other words, stop feeding starving people, its natural that they die-my words) "If the will is there, the method will be found."
P. 144 Mother Culture (Taker/Christian values) must be finished off if you're going to survive…she has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening to her, she ceases to exist." / the author states here that W. C., based on Christian values must be "finished off", doesn't really exist , which is absolutely false. What does he mean by "finished off?"
P. 145 (student) "The Takers will never accept that"…(Ishmael) "Acceptance has nothing to do with it…the Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they've done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you've done can begin to be repaired."
" The world was not made for any one species… then man was certainly not made to conquer and rule it."
P. 146 "…everything was in good order. It was the Takers who introduced disorder into the world" "Mankind was not needed to bring order to the world." "That's right."/
Another direct assault on and misrepresentation of Christian values, see notes from P. 61
*"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man…this mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe." /
If culture was not directly connected to biblical Christianity in other passages, this statement might be acceptable, but the tie to Christianity is made repeatedly throughout the book.
This description of W.C./Christianity as "fanatical" and arrogant, and yet again, analagous to Hitler, is disturbing. Rather, W.C. based on Christian values does not uphold specialness or superiority, just as Christ, when on earth, did not lord it over anyone (except demons) that He was God. Christianity upholds an attitude of servitude, love and generosity. It is human selfishness and the view that he doesn't need to "love God with all his heart, soul and mind",(regardless of culture)… that sets the stage for man to consider himself "superior" in this distorted way.
"The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it everywhere like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness." /
Not true, see counterpoint above
P. 148 "It's a megalomaniac's fantasy, and enacting it has given the Takers a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, mental illness, crime and drug addiction." /
Man out of relationship with God has given us a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, etc...I posit that the idea that man can solve all the world's problems himself, while denying and ignoring the world's creator is a megalomaniac's fantasy.
"Leavers…are not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way…not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living….simply because they're enacting a story that works well for people…still works well where the Takers haven't yet managed to stamp it out." /
This is a simplistic and uninformed view of W.C./Christianity.
P.153 "This should help you understand why the story you tell your children about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man is of such profound importance to the people of your culture. It's a manifesto of the revolution on which your culture is based…it explains why the revolution was necessary and why it must be carried forward at any cost whatever."
P. 154 "about 2000 years ago…an event of exquisite irony occurred…your culture adopted as their own a story…it came to them from the Taker people of the Near East who had been telling it to their own children for countless generations…so many it had become a mystery even to them….those who first told the story, their ancient ancestors, were not Takers but Leavers." "The irony is that it was a story that had once been told among Leavers about the origins of the Takers." "The Takers adopted as their own a Leaver story about their origins."/ interesting but false interpretation of history.
P.155 "there is a very special knowledge you must have if you're going to rule the world…the Takers possess this knowledge, at least they imagine they do, and they're very, very proud of it… ( "missionaries" were surprised Leavers didn't know, since its supposedly "self-evident") "How do the gods acquire the knowledge they needed to rule the world." /
Another connection made to Christian missionaries and Bible verse, Romans 1:20-"For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
P. 158 (gods talking among themselves) "We've made the garden a place of terror…" and one god said: "Say, didn't we make for the garden a certain tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil?"…"certainly the knowledge of good and evil is a powerful knowledge, for it enables us to rule the world without becoming criminals"…"this is indeed the proper knowledge of the gods: the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die." / inaccurate reworking of Biblical verses
P. 161 "Adam was awakening…"
(followed by 2 pages of discussions between the gods about how Adam would mess things up)
"And when the gods heard all this, they saw that, of all the trees in the garden, only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could destroy Adam. And so they said to him, "you may eat of every tree in the garden save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of that tree you will certainly die." / quote from Bible used.
P. 165 "I sat there dazed for a while, then I recalled seeing a bible in Ishmael's odd collection of books. In fact there were three… none of these says why this tree should have been forbidden to Adam"
"From the Taker point of view, it makes no sense at all"
This story was written from the Leaver point of view…if it had been written from the Taker point of view the knowledge of good and evil would have been thrust upon him….the gods would have said…lucky you, you can leave this garden and begin living by the sweat of your brow, the way humans are supposed to live"
"Takers (W.C.) will never give up their tyranny over the world, no matter how bad things get….they got this way because they've always believed that what they were doing was right-and therefore to be done at any cost whatever…" "They've demonstrated it by forcing everyone in the world to do what they do, to live the way they live. Everyone had to be forced to live like the Takers, because the Takers had the one right way. / tyrrany?
P. 168 "Giving it up would mean that all along they'd been wrong. It would mean that they'd never known how to rule the world. It would mean relinquishing their pretensions to godhood."
Christians don't have "pretensions to godhood", rather, we believe mankind is "made in the image of God"…but in our current state, we are only a distorted image. Christians have absolutely no desire to BE God…just to be WITH God in a spiritual relationship.
P. 169 "Ishmael nodded to the stack of bibles at my feet. According to the authors of that story, the people living between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers had eaten at the gods' own tree of knowledge…the authors of this story were not there to see it with their own eyes…so how did they know that the Takers had usurped the role of the gods in the world?...who were the authors of this story? The Hebrews? To the Hebrews, this was already an ancient story… they stepped into history as Takers-and wanted nothing more than to be like their Taker neighbors. Indeed, that's why their prophets were always bawling them out." / speculation based on Biblical reference- stating that Christianity got it wrong.
P.170 to find the people who understood it, we have to find its authors… the ancestors of the Hebrews… the Semites.
P. 171 "The land of the Fall lay within the Fertile Crescent and was surrounded by non-agriculturists"
P. 172 "The Semites were not eyewitnesses to the events described in chapter three of Genesis. Those events, cumulatively known as the Fall, took place here, hundreds of miles north of the Semites, among an entirely different people. They were the Caucasians."
P. 173 "…the Semites weren't agriculturalists…they had evolved another adaptation…they were herders…what was happening on the border between the Takers and the Semites?... Ishmael nodded toward the bibles at my feet. "Read the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, then you'll know. The tillers of the soil were watering their fields with the blood of Semitic herders." /
Grandiose false generalization of Biblical reference
"And biblical scholars don't understand this?"
"…it doesn't occur to them to understand it as a piece of Semitic war propaganda"./
Suggestion that Biblical Scholars are ignorant.
P. 175 "…than the mark of Cain is this, I pointed to my own fair or maggot-colored face…/
Why this generalization of "white" people?
"…only one of these stories survived, the one told by the Semites to their children about the Fall of Adam…Hebrews preserved the story without fully understanding it…with the spread of Christianity and of the Old Testament, the Takers came to adopt as their own, a story an enemy once told to denounce them…" / Pure conjecture, but pulling real terms from real Bible to give it credibility.
P.177- 179
"something really weird must have happened…to turn these people (Jews) into murderers…these people found the gods' own tree of wisdom and stole some of its fruit."
" Right! These are an accursed people!...when the gods found out what they'd done, they said…We banish you from the garden…instead of living on our bounty, you can wrest your food from the ground by the sweat of your brows." And that's how these accursed tillers of the soil came to be hunting us down and watering their fields with our blood." / the Jews were not "an accursed people", they were God's chosen. Only Adam and Eve were "banished" from the Garden of Eden. Get it right buddy.
(Ishmael) "One of the clearest indications that these two stories were not authored by your cultural ancestors is the fact that agriculture is not portrayed as a desirable choice, freely made, but rather as a curse… (student) "yes that's obvious now. In our own cultural history, the adoption of agriculture was a prelude to ascent. In these stories, agriculture is the lot of the fallen."
P. 178 "You mustn't confuse metaphorical thinking with biological thinking. The Semites didn't think of Adam as their biological ancestor… Adam means "man" (human race) in Hebrew…
…as the Semites perceived it… the Fall divided the race of man into two, into bad guys (agriculturists) and good guys (herders)… (the Semites/Jews were the good guys)
P.180 "…these tillers of the soil have no sense of restraint when it comes to expansion. They don't control their population: when there isn't enough food to go around, they just put some more land under cultivation
P. 181 "Adam and Eve spent three million years in the garden, living on the bounty of the gods, and their growth was very modest; in the Leaver life-style this is the way it has to be… What you should understand is that saying yes to Life and accepting the knowledge of good and evil are merely different aspects of a single act, and this is the way the story is told in Genesis." /
Untrue generalization: Adam and Eve=mankind in general, Genesis 5:5-"altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died." Also, "saying yes to Life and accepting the knowledge of good and evil" was NOT how it happened. Accepting the knowledge of good and evil, according to Genesis, meant Death.
Yes…When Adam accepted the fruit of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live without limit- and so the person who offered him that fruit is named Life."/
Wrong, when Adam accepted the fruit of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live on his own, without spiritual connection with his Creator... so the person who offered him that fruit (Satan) is named "spiritual death".
"whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they're reenacting this scene beside the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to themselves, "Of course it's our right to apportion life on this planet as we please. Why stop at four kids or six?...all we have to do is plow under another few hundred acres of rain forest, and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a result?" / Huh? that's not what Craig and I thought about at all when we had four kids...
"They couldn't possibly have known that it was only in that little corner of the world that Adam had eaten at the gods' tree, couldn't possible have known that the Fertile Crescent was only one of many places where agriculture had begun, couldn't possibly have known that there were still people all over the world living the way Adam had lived before the Fall." / Not true
P. 182-183 "…the story of Adam's Fall is by far the best-known story in the world." Why? …it purports to explain what went wrong here…how do people understand the story?... I've never heard an explanation that made any sense…the Fall essentially was an act of disobedience."… They think of the Fall as a fall from innocence…innocence in this context presumably being a synonym for blissful ignorance." / Not true
…the people of your culture… didn't stand a chance of understanding it. But when it's read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good sense: man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world, and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won't be enlightenment, it will be death."/ incorrect conclusion from incorrect interpretation
…that's what the story means. Adam wasn't the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor of our culture." / incorrect conclusion from incorrect interpretation
P. 197 "You'd just finished showing me that the story in Genesis that begins with the Fall of Adam and ends with the murder of Abel is not what it's conventionally understood to be by the people of my culture. It's the story of our agricultural revolution as told by some of the earliest victims of that revolution."
P. 200 "The Leavers are still passing that accumulation (culture) along in whatever form it came to them. But we're not (Western culture), because ten thousand years ago the founders of our culture said, "This is all shit. This is not the way people should live, and they got rid of it. They obviously did get rid of it, because by the time their descendants step into history there's no trace of the attitudes and ideas you encounter among Leaver peoples everywhere. Leaver peoples are always conscious of having a tradition that goes back to very ancient times. We have no such consciousness."
"Until Darwin and the paleontologists came along to tack three million years of human life onto your history, it was assumed in your culture that the birth of man and the birth of your culture were simultaneous events…the same event…
As far as the Takers knew, there was no "before." Creation had occurred just a few thousand years ago… / see "Genesis Unbound: Historical Creationism"
P. 204 "that's what Takers want. We don't want to know a way to live that works well. We want to know the one right way. And that's what our prophets give us. / another unfortunate reference to Jesus as a "prophet".
"But that's what all our lawgivers gave us, inventions, contrivances, not things that had proved out over thousands of generations, but rather arbitrary pronouncements about "the one right way to live. …the laws they make in Washington aren't put on the books because they work well, they're put on the books because they represent "the one right way to live". You may not have an abortion unless the fetus is threatening your life or was put there by a rapist. There are a lot of people who'd like to see the law read that way. Why? Because that's "the one right way to live. You may drink yourself to dealth, but if we catch you smoking a marijuana cigarette,it's the slammer for you…no one gives a damn about whether our laws work well. /
Denouncement of christian values.
The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people…each Leaver people has a system that works well for them because it evolved among them (suited to them)…their own wisdom…/
I posit that the Leaver system works well for some of them, not always the women and children or other Leaver peoples.
Takers stamp out Leaver cultures…species… its ugly…/
See story of missionary's who were trying to stop a "Leaver" culture from annihilating itself by enacting its cultural "story":
"End of the Spear" by Steven Saint
*P. 213…enacting that story (Western Culture) is destroying the world.
"Why should your people know what story they're enacting as they destroy the world?"
"So they can stop enacting it. So they can see that they're not just blundering as they do what they do. So they can see that they're involved in a megalomaniac fantasy- a fantasy as insane as the Thousand Year Reich." /
Again making W.C. analagous to "megalomaniac, insane fantasy and Hitler, a very serious and false accusation.
"…you can't just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in."
…what is this (alternate) story about?...
…"its about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man."
P. 215 (reference again to Genesis ch. 3 and 4)
P. 216 "…Adam is still chewing the fruit of that forbidden tree, and wherever Abel can still be found, Cain is there too, hunting him down, knife in hand."…"Mother culture teaches that, before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless. Prerevolutionary life was ugly. Detestable."
"Mother culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable… would you trade your life for that life?..." "The Leavers would. Throughout history, the only way the Takers have found to tear them away from that life is by brute force, by wholesale slaughter. In most cases, they found it easiest just to exterminate them." / one-sided misrepresentation of history
P.217 "We're on our way to discovering what lies at the very root of your fear and loathing of the Leaver life.. We're on our way to discovering why you feel you must carry the revolution forward even if it destroys you and the entire world…"
P. 219 "Mother culture has taught you to have a horror of the life you put behind you with your revolution, and I want you to trace this horror to its roots."
(Takers speaking to Leavers) …"your life is wretched and squalid and shameful because you live like animals…its not right for humans to live that way…because…you have no control over your lives… your food supply…
"Unless you control your own food supply, you live at the mercy of the world. It doesn't matter that there's always been enough. That's not the point. You can't live at the whim of the gods. That's just not a human way to live."
P. 225 L…if there's a drought, we too dwindle… we die
T-"you die because you live at the mercy of the gods. You die because you think the gods are going to look after you. That's okay for animals, but you should know better."
L-"We should not trust the gods with our lives?"
T-"Definitely not. You should trust yourselves with your lives. That's the human way to live."
Here the "Leaver gods" are mythological gods of nature, not the living God of Creation. The living God of Creation is never acknowledged in this story, however, terms and Biblical references are freely borrowed from Him in misleading ways.
P. 226 (Western culture based on Christian values = taking your life into your own hands) /
I posit that every breathing creature takes its life into its own hands regardless of culture, due to its ignorance of or blatant denial of his Creator.
P. 227 Ishmael, describing Takers: "That is the whole goddamned point! When you have more food than you need, then the gods have no power over you!...my life is in my own hands now!"
P.228 When will you finally be safe? When the whole world is in your own, more competent hands." Then the gods will finally have no more power over us. Then the gods will have no more power over anything. All the power will be in our hands and we'll be free at last."
P. 229 "the Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers are those who live in the hands of the gods."
P. 236 "People who live in the hands of the gods don't make themselves rulers of the world and force everyone to live the way they live, and people who know good and evil do."/
I posit that Leavers also, on a smaller scale within their own cultures, try to make themselves rulers over others, try to use nature to their benefit, and do indeed believe their way is better than someone else's, whether it is or not, because that is the nature of man when he is unaware or in denial of what God intended for His creation.
P 238 "Leavers… evolve…they're in a position to evolve".
"Takers say: We've had enough of living in the hands of the gods. No more natural selection for us… According to the Taker story, creation came to an end with man….( remember, to enact a story is to live so as to make it come true.)"
"How would you live to make that come true? To make creation come to an end with man? You would live the way Takers live… In order to make their story come true, The Takers have to put an end to creation itself and they're doing a damned good job of it."
"Taker: the world belongs to man"
"Leaver: man belongs to the world…from the beginning, everything that ever lived belonged to the world…and that's how things came to be this way."/
Christian world-view is that from the beginning, everything that ever lived belonged to God, who gave stewardship to man, which was stolen by Satan... and that God's plan for wresting Satan's power from him is currently underway.
P. 240 "We know what happens if you take the Taker premise, that the world belongs to man… Yes, that's a disaster. "And what happens if you take the Leaver premise, that man belongs to the world?" "Then creation goes on forever."/
This is a "New Age" belief, anti-christian, that suggests creation was meant to go on with or without mankind, that the loss of mankind is most likely a desirable thing. This is a "slippery slope" that can lead toward allowing all kinds of human catastrophe.
P. 241 (student) "The meaning of the world… I think the third chapter of Genesis had it right. It's a garden-the god's garden…I myself very much doubt that gods have anything to do with it. I just find this a wholesome and encouraging way to think of it…"
"There are two trees in the garden, one for the gods and one for us. The one for them is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the one for us is the Tree of Life. But we can only find the Tree of Life if we stay in the garden… and we can only stay in the garden if we keep our hands off the gods' tree…"
Divine intentions…there is a tendency in evolution towards…complexity…self-awareness and intelligence. All creatures on this planet appear to be on the verge of attaining that self-awareness and intelligence….apparently the gods intend this planet to be a garden filled with creatures that are self-aware and intelligent" / this is "macro-evolution theory"
"man's destiny is plain: man is the first… the trailblazer…to be the first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: they can thwart the gods and perish in the attempt, or they can stand aside and make some room for all the rest… to be the father of them all… by giving all the rest their chance… the whales, dolphins, chimps, raccoons.. he becomes in some sense their progenitor…oddly enuf, it's even grander than the destiny the Takers dreamed up for us."
/ Christain based W.C. dreamed up their story? not true. Quinn is saying that man's destiny is to become extinct so other creatures can take their turn at being "in charge" This is a world-view intent on undermining and obliterating the Christian world-view that God, the Creator, loves man and He is working to wrest his Creation from the hands of Satan by restoring man's relationship with Himself.
Ishmael: "Just think. In a billion years, whatever is around then, whoever is around then, says, Man? Oh yes, man! What a wonderful creature he was! It was within his grasp to destroy the entire world and to trample all our futures into the dust, but he saw the light before it was too late and pulled back. He pulled back and gave the rest of us our chance. He showed us all how it had to be done if the world was to go on being a garden forever. Man was the role model for us all! "Not a shabby destiny." / ???!!
…some creature had to find the way…man does have a place in the world, but it's not his place to rule….to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become…a teacher of all the rest, not the only teacher, not the ultimate teacher, only the first teacher, the Kindergarten teacher./
Satan would love for man to believe this, because then man sees himself as just another creature in the chain of life on earth, rather than God's beloved, made in His image, whose proper place is as God's ordained steward of God's creation, in direct and constant relationship with Him. If man takes his proper place, Satan loses territory, as it happened in Luke 10:17-(after Jesus sent his followers out before Him), "The 72 returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." 18-He replied," I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19- I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy..." When man properly wields his God given authority, Satan falls.
"This is what we need. Not just stopping things. Not just less of things. People need something positive to work for. They need a vision…more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them…this thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way"/ the Christian based W.C. world-view is absolutely not a vision of doom, it is one of hope and joy.
How can civilized people belong to the world?
The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the peace-keeping law…
Obviously belonging to the world means belonging to the same club as everyone else…the community of life… following the same rules as everyone else. If being civilized means anything… it should mean you are the leaders of the club, not its criminals and destroyers.
/Christian based W.C. referred to as criminals and destroyers?
P. 248 "To save the world…"
"The story of Genesis must be reversed. Cain must stop murdering Abel…the Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world, not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is no one right way to live…must spit out the fruit of that forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet. /
1. twisted Bible reference 2. not because they're humans- there is no value in being human? 3. Christian based W.C= destroyers.
P. 249 You can't change these things with laws. You must change people's minds. And you can't just root out a harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind, you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they've lost, something that makes better sense than the old horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn't serve his needs directly or indirectly."/
Christian based W.C is referred to as a "harmful complex of ideas." that must be rooted out.
What you're saying is that someone has to stand up and become to the world of today what Saint Paul was to the Roman Empire." /
Another direct Biblical reference. This one, unlike previously, is conveniently viewed as historical fact, albeit relevant to the past only.
My side note: Did Al Gore read this book? !! Perhaps he sees himself as the "someone" that Ishmael refers to! See book review of Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance: Ecology of the Human Spirit" at:
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0154a.html
or Google: Hannegraaf review of Earth in the Balance.
(student is afraid to speak up, Ishmael answers) "Ultimately, it would seem you're no different from those you profess to despise: You just wanted something for yourself. Something to make you feel better as you watch the end approach." / inferring that "religion" is just "something to make you feel better"
P. 251 "The world of the Takers is one vast prison…the entire human race is now inside that prison….must have a prison industry…it helps to keep the inmates busy…takes their minds off the boredom and futility of their lives. Prison industry? "Consuming the world"
P. 252 "…which inmates wield the power? …especially white male inmates…justice demands that people other than white males have power in the prison…of course its true that white males have called the shots… of course this is unjust, of course its true that power and wealth within the prison should be equitably redistributed…what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself."
"Among the politically active, the redistribution of wealth and power is…an idea whose time as come, the Holy Grail. /
Redistribution of wealth in this sense is coercive (theft) and is a strictly Socialist idea, an unsuccessful idea at that. Christianity teaches generosity and loving our neighbor, which results in willing wealth redistribution out of love, held to individual accountability.
…breaking out of the Taker prison is a common cause to which all humanity can subscribe."
The following is a review of the book, from one Christian's viewpoint, by Val Dare
Overall premise of the book: There are two types of cultures: Takers and Leavers. Takers and Leavers have different stories about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about human destiny. Leaver culture= tribal cultures, Taker culture = Western culture (W.C.). Western culture is generally based on the Christian interpretation of the Old and New Testament. Quinn's character, Ishmael, teaches his student that this particular interpretation of the Bible and Western culture's reliance on "prophets" (that include Moses and Jesus, among others), is a lie, therefore the Taker story is wrong. He teaches that if you believe the Taker story you are part of the unenlightened group that is deliberately destroying the world.
My opinion: I believe this premise, if taken the least bit seriously, can potentially set the stage for anyone, who is even mildly biblically illiterate, to develop potentially dangerous "anti-Christian" attitudes.
Quotes=POINT / COUNTERPOINT by V.Dare in smaller print
*Note: To get the full negative effect of Ishmael's teaching, it might be helpful to read the quotes first, in direct succession, skipping over my counterpoints the first time through. The second time through, you may wish to read my counterpoint after each quote to gain a sense of my personal Christian viewpoint on the matter.
P. 25 Ishmael (the teacher gorilla character) states, "You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live." (reference to Western Culture, W.C.) / Counterpoint: Western Culture is one of only a few where people are not "captives" or oppressed. In fact, W.C.=freedom=personal responsibility for environment. When people with a sense of personal responsibility, especially to God, are properly informed, they will do the right thing without coercion.
P. 28 (suspicion that Western Culture is a lie) "If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right-it would make no great difference. But if you all found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.", "True", "Then that is what we must hope for."/ W.C. is not a lie, rather, Ishmael's worldview is a misrepresentation of Christianity and its influence on western culture. Spreading this lie is Ishmael's/the author's way of (in a round about way) undermining Christianity, which in his view is what must be done to save the world. If taken for what this really is, it can be viewed as a blatant assault on Biblical Christianity, as you will see further into the book.
*P. 41 (suggestion that people live the way they live, in order to make what they believe come true) "To enact a story is to live so as to make the story a reality…to strive to make it come true…this is what the people of Germany were doing under Hitler. They were trying to make the Thousand Year Reich a reality. They were trying to make the story he was telling them come true."/ the setting of the book is around the time of WW2, and this is the first of several references comparing W.C. to Hitler's worldview, an unfortunate choice by the author.
"So you're saying that the people of my culture (W. C.) are enacting their own story about man, the world and the gods." "That's right." "…the story…we've agreed to call Takers… is apparently about to end in catastrophe." / Catastrophe of what sort? W.C.'s modern technology, medicine, prosperity has the potential to save mankind and the environment from catastrophes. Catastrophe is a strong, fear invoking word.
P. 45 Culture's mythology: "any story that explains the meaning of the world, the intentions of the gods, and the destiny of man is bound to be mythology." Mythology is not just "fanciful tales"… mythology is what the people believe at the time, (true or not-my words)./ regardless of the definition of "mythology", calling Christianity a myth implies it is true only in the minds of those who believe its true, rather than it being largely verifiable historical fact.
"The beginning of every culture's mythology is their "creation story".
P. 46 "You're looking for your own culture's creation myth."
P. 50 "Its for recording for posterity the curious folktales of a doomed culture, which you are going to tell me" (student) "We have no creation myth, unless you're talking about the one in Genesis"
(Ishmael)"Don't be absurd. If an 8th grade teacher invited you to explain how all this began, would you read the class the first chapter of Genesis?" "Certainly not" /
Direct insult to serious literary consideration of Genesis:see "Genesis Unbound "
(Here the student character refers to theories of how life evolved. He states)
"No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It's just the story"
P. 61 "That's the premise of your story: The world was made for man"…"The people of your culture made it a premise, took it as a premise. They said: What if the world was made for us?.... that’s what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: you've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn will please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you." /
Incorrect premise: Christianity (a term distinct from the more general term, "Religion") says God created the world, then created man, in His image, to be in direct and loving relationship with God. Man originally walked and talked directly with God. God gave man "dominion" on the earth, in a stewardship role, to enjoy His creation along with Him. However, man handed over his place of authority on Earth to Satan (Lucifer is a fallen angel), who wants to be the "god" of earth, himself, and who has ruled the earth with this stolen authority, via the spiritual realm, ever since. Christ (God in the flesh) came to give man the opportunity to restore his relationship with God, in the form of personal choice. True love requires personal choice. This spiritual process is referred to by Jesus as being "born-again" . Only when a genuine relationship with the Creator is restored, is man in a position to take back his god-given authority from Satan. This "spiritual war" is presently on-going. The evidence of this conflict, and "man out of relationship with God" is all around us. Later in the book, Quinn talks about how the Takers impose the "one right way" on everyone else. If there is "one right way" that God requires of man, it is this: Micah 6:8-"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." or, as stated in the New Testament, Mark 12:31-"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength...and love your neighbor as yourself." In our natural state, not one human being can accomplish this on his own, but God gave us a way through Christ, to be restored to Him. One who has been restored is a genuine Christian. I think Quinn confuses genuine Christianity with "religion", which is a grave error. "Religious" and non-religious people can certainly do good things, but plenty of "religious" people can remain out of touch with their Creator because they are ignorant of, or don't take seriously, what Christ did to make that restored relationship possible.
Historically, genuine Christians are those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and was God incarnate on planet Earth, that he died and rose from death and that Jesus is the "way and the truth and the life...that no one comes to the Father except through (Him)" John 14:6- as described in the Bible. (see Nicene Creed)
P. 69 Reference to the "Fertile Crescent"/ birthplace of Western Culture. (Garden of Eden in Christianity.)
P. 71 "in our (W.C.) mythology…(according to the gods) without man, the world was unfinished… the world needed a ruler. It needed man (to bring order out of the chaos)"./
Man was not needed to bring order out of chaos, he was created to be in relationship with God. Man without God, living in a realm where he continues to allow Satan to rule, results in chaos.
"The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it" "Everyone understands that." "Is this fact?" "No." "It's mythology."
P. 73 "He has to conquer it" / stewardship in relationship with the Creator, was not meant to be "conquering",
P. 75 As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the choice…and they chose a brief life of glory." /
Not true, most people of Christian based W. C. don't believe this, however, I concede there are some on the fringe who distort the Christian message to say that it doesn't matter what happens to planet earth because the end of the world is any day now.
"…it’s the price you pay of enacting a story (Western culture based on Christian belief) that casts mankind as the enemy of the world". /
The Christian based W.C. world-view does not cast mankind as the enemy of the world...a steward is not an enemy. Any man who succumbs to pure selfishness and greed may certainly be cast as an "enemy of the world", but those people can be found in any culture.
P. 82 "The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule it was meant to be a paradise" but "any third grader could see it…people screw it up… why…
"Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness." (see p. 3)
Man was not born to turn the world into a paradise. Man originally communed freely with God in paradise, but that special relationship and paradise was lost. This was the "Fall" of man. Since then, man has been "born flawed" in that he is born with a propensity and primary desire to live his own life, convinced he has no need for a relationship with his Creator, or simply unaware that this is possible. Mankind, left in this state, can easily become stupid, greedy, destructive and shortsighted.
P. 84 "There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now."
Ishmael is saying here that it’s the " story's" fault, which, although only implied, directly points to the Bible's story in other parts of the book. Although prophets from other faiths are included in the blame (see P. 85), the Bible is the only faith document that Ishmael refers to.. I posit that there IS something fundamentally wrong with people: they are oblivious of and don't recognize their own Creator. (Read John 1:1-5) This quote by Ishmael is saying that the Christian message, or "story", is causing the destruction of the world, when actually, it is quite the opposite. God is calling mankind back into relationship with Himself...which inevitably results in the restoration of Man's proper place in creation (as Steward under God) and the liberation of creation from Satan's rule. (Romans 8:20-For the creation was subjected to frustration...21-the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.)
P. 85 Western culture: "has always had a passionate and unwavering dependence on prophets-Moses, Gautama, Buddha, Confucious, Jesus, Muhammad"... "there is nothing like this among the Leavers-unless it occurs as a response to some devastating contact with the Taker culture…"
"why do we need prophets?... to tell us how to live…"
To put Jesus name on the same level as these others is evidence that this author has no idea who Jesus is, nor has he honestly studied the Old Testament prophecies that refer to Jesus, or the New Testament records that confirm them. Also, I believe there is indeed Leaver dependence on prophets, but they are called "oracles" , or "witch doctors", or "Shaman's", among other things. There is also the insinuation that "contact with the Taker culture" is obviously "devastating"…this statement is a jaded and one sided opinion, whereas, research in many cases shows otherwise.
P.89 "Perhaps the flawed man is exactly this: that he doesn't know how he ought to live."
"It’s a sorry story you have there, a story of hopelessness and futility, a story in which there is literally nothing to be done. Man is flawed, so he keeps on screwing up what should be paradise, and there's nothing you can do about it. You don't know how to live so as to stop screwing up paradise, and there's nothing you can do about that. So there you are, rushing headlong toward catastrophe, and all you can do is watch it come." (see above explanations)
P.96 "We don't need prophets to tell us how to live: we can find out for ourselves by consulting what's actually there"
Based on previous list of "prophets", he is indirectly saying we don't need Jesus. This is one of Satan's lies to mankind. If people deny that they need Jesus, they deny God's plan for salvation (restored relationship with Him), which, in essence leaves Satan with the territory.
P. 103 "the gods did not exempt man from the law that governs the lives of grubs…(etc), this is going to be the bitterest blow of all to the Takers… to this one, no adjustment is possible."
"Species that live in compliance with the law "live forever"…this will, I hope, be taken as "good news" for mankind in general, because if mankind lives in compliance with this law, then it too will live forever…"
…those that do not live in compliance with the law become extinct./
This is the opposite "world-view" of christianity, which says that it is not "species that live in compliance with the laws of nature who live forever", rather, humans were created to be in eternal relationship with God, and those who choose to restore that relationship through Christ, will indeed. That is the "good news"
P. 105 …like the law of gravity: There is no escaping it, but there is a way of achieving the equivalent of … freedom of the air." (P. 109: Western culture is not it) / something fishy about this, I can't put my finger on it. What does he mean by an "equivalent"?
P. 115 "Is there a penalty for breaking this law?", "Death."
P. 118 "It is the peace-keeping law, the law that keeps the community from turning into the howling chaos the Takers imagine it to be. It's the law that fosters life for all…"
"…one branch of the family of Homo sapiens said, "Man is exempt from this law… and brought the entire world to the point of death…their explanation is that something is fundamentally wrong with human nature itself." "how do you like that explanation?" (Ishmael's student replies)"I'm beginning to have my doubts about it."
P. 130 "We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it." /
Sofar, according to the author, "We"= W.C. which is based on Christianity= deliberately "at war" with the environment. This is untrue.
P. 132 "It is holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is." / Author is equating "competitive destruction" with "holiness", which is a horribly twisted description of this word, commonly used by Christians to describe God.
P. 138 (referring to sending aid to suffering people) "its no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them… this just guarantees that the famine will continue." , (Ishmael's student replies) "but,…its hard to just sit by and let them starve." Then Ishmael says, "This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: "I will not let them starve, I will not let the drought come, I will not let the river flood…it is the gods who let these things, not you."
/ my response? you're kidding me, right?
P. 140 "In order to halt this process, you must face the fact that increasing food production doesn't feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion." (in other words, stop feeding starving people, its natural that they die-my words) "If the will is there, the method will be found."
P. 144 Mother Culture (Taker/Christian values) must be finished off if you're going to survive…she has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening to her, she ceases to exist." / the author states here that W. C., based on Christian values must be "finished off", doesn't really exist , which is absolutely false. What does he mean by "finished off?"
P. 145 (student) "The Takers will never accept that"…(Ishmael) "Acceptance has nothing to do with it…the Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they've done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you've done can begin to be repaired."
" The world was not made for any one species… then man was certainly not made to conquer and rule it."
P. 146 "…everything was in good order. It was the Takers who introduced disorder into the world" "Mankind was not needed to bring order to the world." "That's right."/
Another direct assault on and misrepresentation of Christian values, see notes from P. 61
*"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man…this mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe." /
If culture was not directly connected to biblical Christianity in other passages, this statement might be acceptable, but the tie to Christianity is made repeatedly throughout the book.
This description of W.C./Christianity as "fanatical" and arrogant, and yet again, analagous to Hitler, is disturbing. Rather, W.C. based on Christian values does not uphold specialness or superiority, just as Christ, when on earth, did not lord it over anyone (except demons) that He was God. Christianity upholds an attitude of servitude, love and generosity. It is human selfishness and the view that he doesn't need to "love God with all his heart, soul and mind",(regardless of culture)… that sets the stage for man to consider himself "superior" in this distorted way.
"The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it everywhere like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness." /
Not true, see counterpoint above
P. 148 "It's a megalomaniac's fantasy, and enacting it has given the Takers a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, mental illness, crime and drug addiction." /
Man out of relationship with God has given us a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, etc...I posit that the idea that man can solve all the world's problems himself, while denying and ignoring the world's creator is a megalomaniac's fantasy.
"Leavers…are not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way…not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living….simply because they're enacting a story that works well for people…still works well where the Takers haven't yet managed to stamp it out." /
This is a simplistic and uninformed view of W.C./Christianity.
P.153 "This should help you understand why the story you tell your children about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man is of such profound importance to the people of your culture. It's a manifesto of the revolution on which your culture is based…it explains why the revolution was necessary and why it must be carried forward at any cost whatever."
P. 154 "about 2000 years ago…an event of exquisite irony occurred…your culture adopted as their own a story…it came to them from the Taker people of the Near East who had been telling it to their own children for countless generations…so many it had become a mystery even to them….those who first told the story, their ancient ancestors, were not Takers but Leavers." "The irony is that it was a story that had once been told among Leavers about the origins of the Takers." "The Takers adopted as their own a Leaver story about their origins."/ interesting but false interpretation of history.
P.155 "there is a very special knowledge you must have if you're going to rule the world…the Takers possess this knowledge, at least they imagine they do, and they're very, very proud of it… ( "missionaries" were surprised Leavers didn't know, since its supposedly "self-evident") "How do the gods acquire the knowledge they needed to rule the world." /
Another connection made to Christian missionaries and Bible verse, Romans 1:20-"For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
P. 158 (gods talking among themselves) "We've made the garden a place of terror…" and one god said: "Say, didn't we make for the garden a certain tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil?"…"certainly the knowledge of good and evil is a powerful knowledge, for it enables us to rule the world without becoming criminals"…"this is indeed the proper knowledge of the gods: the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die." / inaccurate reworking of Biblical verses
P. 161 "Adam was awakening…"
(followed by 2 pages of discussions between the gods about how Adam would mess things up)
"And when the gods heard all this, they saw that, of all the trees in the garden, only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could destroy Adam. And so they said to him, "you may eat of every tree in the garden save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of that tree you will certainly die." / quote from Bible used.
P. 165 "I sat there dazed for a while, then I recalled seeing a bible in Ishmael's odd collection of books. In fact there were three… none of these says why this tree should have been forbidden to Adam"
"From the Taker point of view, it makes no sense at all"
This story was written from the Leaver point of view…if it had been written from the Taker point of view the knowledge of good and evil would have been thrust upon him….the gods would have said…lucky you, you can leave this garden and begin living by the sweat of your brow, the way humans are supposed to live"
"Takers (W.C.) will never give up their tyranny over the world, no matter how bad things get….they got this way because they've always believed that what they were doing was right-and therefore to be done at any cost whatever…" "They've demonstrated it by forcing everyone in the world to do what they do, to live the way they live. Everyone had to be forced to live like the Takers, because the Takers had the one right way. / tyrrany?
P. 168 "Giving it up would mean that all along they'd been wrong. It would mean that they'd never known how to rule the world. It would mean relinquishing their pretensions to godhood."
Christians don't have "pretensions to godhood", rather, we believe mankind is "made in the image of God"…but in our current state, we are only a distorted image. Christians have absolutely no desire to BE God…just to be WITH God in a spiritual relationship.
P. 169 "Ishmael nodded to the stack of bibles at my feet. According to the authors of that story, the people living between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers had eaten at the gods' own tree of knowledge…the authors of this story were not there to see it with their own eyes…so how did they know that the Takers had usurped the role of the gods in the world?...who were the authors of this story? The Hebrews? To the Hebrews, this was already an ancient story… they stepped into history as Takers-and wanted nothing more than to be like their Taker neighbors. Indeed, that's why their prophets were always bawling them out." / speculation based on Biblical reference- stating that Christianity got it wrong.
P.170 to find the people who understood it, we have to find its authors… the ancestors of the Hebrews… the Semites.
P. 171 "The land of the Fall lay within the Fertile Crescent and was surrounded by non-agriculturists"
P. 172 "The Semites were not eyewitnesses to the events described in chapter three of Genesis. Those events, cumulatively known as the Fall, took place here, hundreds of miles north of the Semites, among an entirely different people. They were the Caucasians."
P. 173 "…the Semites weren't agriculturalists…they had evolved another adaptation…they were herders…what was happening on the border between the Takers and the Semites?... Ishmael nodded toward the bibles at my feet. "Read the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, then you'll know. The tillers of the soil were watering their fields with the blood of Semitic herders." /
Grandiose false generalization of Biblical reference
"And biblical scholars don't understand this?"
"…it doesn't occur to them to understand it as a piece of Semitic war propaganda"./
Suggestion that Biblical Scholars are ignorant.
P. 175 "…than the mark of Cain is this, I pointed to my own fair or maggot-colored face…/
Why this generalization of "white" people?
"…only one of these stories survived, the one told by the Semites to their children about the Fall of Adam…Hebrews preserved the story without fully understanding it…with the spread of Christianity and of the Old Testament, the Takers came to adopt as their own, a story an enemy once told to denounce them…" / Pure conjecture, but pulling real terms from real Bible to give it credibility.
P.177- 179
"something really weird must have happened…to turn these people (Jews) into murderers…these people found the gods' own tree of wisdom and stole some of its fruit."
" Right! These are an accursed people!...when the gods found out what they'd done, they said…We banish you from the garden…instead of living on our bounty, you can wrest your food from the ground by the sweat of your brows." And that's how these accursed tillers of the soil came to be hunting us down and watering their fields with our blood." / the Jews were not "an accursed people", they were God's chosen. Only Adam and Eve were "banished" from the Garden of Eden. Get it right buddy.
(Ishmael) "One of the clearest indications that these two stories were not authored by your cultural ancestors is the fact that agriculture is not portrayed as a desirable choice, freely made, but rather as a curse… (student) "yes that's obvious now. In our own cultural history, the adoption of agriculture was a prelude to ascent. In these stories, agriculture is the lot of the fallen."
P. 178 "You mustn't confuse metaphorical thinking with biological thinking. The Semites didn't think of Adam as their biological ancestor… Adam means "man" (human race) in Hebrew…
…as the Semites perceived it… the Fall divided the race of man into two, into bad guys (agriculturists) and good guys (herders)… (the Semites/Jews were the good guys)
P.180 "…these tillers of the soil have no sense of restraint when it comes to expansion. They don't control their population: when there isn't enough food to go around, they just put some more land under cultivation
P. 181 "Adam and Eve spent three million years in the garden, living on the bounty of the gods, and their growth was very modest; in the Leaver life-style this is the way it has to be… What you should understand is that saying yes to Life and accepting the knowledge of good and evil are merely different aspects of a single act, and this is the way the story is told in Genesis." /
Untrue generalization: Adam and Eve=mankind in general, Genesis 5:5-"altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died." Also, "saying yes to Life and accepting the knowledge of good and evil" was NOT how it happened. Accepting the knowledge of good and evil, according to Genesis, meant Death.
Yes…When Adam accepted the fruit of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live without limit- and so the person who offered him that fruit is named Life."/
Wrong, when Adam accepted the fruit of that tree, he succumbed to the temptation to live on his own, without spiritual connection with his Creator... so the person who offered him that fruit (Satan) is named "spiritual death".
"whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they're reenacting this scene beside the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to themselves, "Of course it's our right to apportion life on this planet as we please. Why stop at four kids or six?...all we have to do is plow under another few hundred acres of rain forest, and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a result?" / Huh? that's not what Craig and I thought about at all when we had four kids...
"They couldn't possibly have known that it was only in that little corner of the world that Adam had eaten at the gods' tree, couldn't possible have known that the Fertile Crescent was only one of many places where agriculture had begun, couldn't possibly have known that there were still people all over the world living the way Adam had lived before the Fall." / Not true
P. 182-183 "…the story of Adam's Fall is by far the best-known story in the world." Why? …it purports to explain what went wrong here…how do people understand the story?... I've never heard an explanation that made any sense…the Fall essentially was an act of disobedience."… They think of the Fall as a fall from innocence…innocence in this context presumably being a synonym for blissful ignorance." / Not true
…the people of your culture… didn't stand a chance of understanding it. But when it's read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good sense: man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world, and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won't be enlightenment, it will be death."/ incorrect conclusion from incorrect interpretation
…that's what the story means. Adam wasn't the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor of our culture." / incorrect conclusion from incorrect interpretation
P. 197 "You'd just finished showing me that the story in Genesis that begins with the Fall of Adam and ends with the murder of Abel is not what it's conventionally understood to be by the people of my culture. It's the story of our agricultural revolution as told by some of the earliest victims of that revolution."
P. 200 "The Leavers are still passing that accumulation (culture) along in whatever form it came to them. But we're not (Western culture), because ten thousand years ago the founders of our culture said, "This is all shit. This is not the way people should live, and they got rid of it. They obviously did get rid of it, because by the time their descendants step into history there's no trace of the attitudes and ideas you encounter among Leaver peoples everywhere. Leaver peoples are always conscious of having a tradition that goes back to very ancient times. We have no such consciousness."
"Until Darwin and the paleontologists came along to tack three million years of human life onto your history, it was assumed in your culture that the birth of man and the birth of your culture were simultaneous events…the same event…
As far as the Takers knew, there was no "before." Creation had occurred just a few thousand years ago… / see "Genesis Unbound: Historical Creationism"
P. 204 "that's what Takers want. We don't want to know a way to live that works well. We want to know the one right way. And that's what our prophets give us. / another unfortunate reference to Jesus as a "prophet".
"But that's what all our lawgivers gave us, inventions, contrivances, not things that had proved out over thousands of generations, but rather arbitrary pronouncements about "the one right way to live. …the laws they make in Washington aren't put on the books because they work well, they're put on the books because they represent "the one right way to live". You may not have an abortion unless the fetus is threatening your life or was put there by a rapist. There are a lot of people who'd like to see the law read that way. Why? Because that's "the one right way to live. You may drink yourself to dealth, but if we catch you smoking a marijuana cigarette,it's the slammer for you…no one gives a damn about whether our laws work well. /
Denouncement of christian values.
The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people…each Leaver people has a system that works well for them because it evolved among them (suited to them)…their own wisdom…/
I posit that the Leaver system works well for some of them, not always the women and children or other Leaver peoples.
Takers stamp out Leaver cultures…species… its ugly…/
See story of missionary's who were trying to stop a "Leaver" culture from annihilating itself by enacting its cultural "story":
"End of the Spear" by Steven Saint
*P. 213…enacting that story (Western Culture) is destroying the world.
"Why should your people know what story they're enacting as they destroy the world?"
"So they can stop enacting it. So they can see that they're not just blundering as they do what they do. So they can see that they're involved in a megalomaniac fantasy- a fantasy as insane as the Thousand Year Reich." /
Again making W.C. analagous to "megalomaniac, insane fantasy and Hitler, a very serious and false accusation.
"…you can't just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in."
…what is this (alternate) story about?...
…"its about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man."
P. 215 (reference again to Genesis ch. 3 and 4)
P. 216 "…Adam is still chewing the fruit of that forbidden tree, and wherever Abel can still be found, Cain is there too, hunting him down, knife in hand."…"Mother culture teaches that, before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless. Prerevolutionary life was ugly. Detestable."
"Mother culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable… would you trade your life for that life?..." "The Leavers would. Throughout history, the only way the Takers have found to tear them away from that life is by brute force, by wholesale slaughter. In most cases, they found it easiest just to exterminate them." / one-sided misrepresentation of history
P.217 "We're on our way to discovering what lies at the very root of your fear and loathing of the Leaver life.. We're on our way to discovering why you feel you must carry the revolution forward even if it destroys you and the entire world…"
P. 219 "Mother culture has taught you to have a horror of the life you put behind you with your revolution, and I want you to trace this horror to its roots."
(Takers speaking to Leavers) …"your life is wretched and squalid and shameful because you live like animals…its not right for humans to live that way…because…you have no control over your lives… your food supply…
"Unless you control your own food supply, you live at the mercy of the world. It doesn't matter that there's always been enough. That's not the point. You can't live at the whim of the gods. That's just not a human way to live."
P. 225 L…if there's a drought, we too dwindle… we die
T-"you die because you live at the mercy of the gods. You die because you think the gods are going to look after you. That's okay for animals, but you should know better."
L-"We should not trust the gods with our lives?"
T-"Definitely not. You should trust yourselves with your lives. That's the human way to live."
Here the "Leaver gods" are mythological gods of nature, not the living God of Creation. The living God of Creation is never acknowledged in this story, however, terms and Biblical references are freely borrowed from Him in misleading ways.
P. 226 (Western culture based on Christian values = taking your life into your own hands) /
I posit that every breathing creature takes its life into its own hands regardless of culture, due to its ignorance of or blatant denial of his Creator.
P. 227 Ishmael, describing Takers: "That is the whole goddamned point! When you have more food than you need, then the gods have no power over you!...my life is in my own hands now!"
P.228 When will you finally be safe? When the whole world is in your own, more competent hands." Then the gods will finally have no more power over us. Then the gods will have no more power over anything. All the power will be in our hands and we'll be free at last."
P. 229 "the Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers are those who live in the hands of the gods."
P. 236 "People who live in the hands of the gods don't make themselves rulers of the world and force everyone to live the way they live, and people who know good and evil do."/
I posit that Leavers also, on a smaller scale within their own cultures, try to make themselves rulers over others, try to use nature to their benefit, and do indeed believe their way is better than someone else's, whether it is or not, because that is the nature of man when he is unaware or in denial of what God intended for His creation.
P 238 "Leavers… evolve…they're in a position to evolve".
"Takers say: We've had enough of living in the hands of the gods. No more natural selection for us… According to the Taker story, creation came to an end with man….( remember, to enact a story is to live so as to make it come true.)"
"How would you live to make that come true? To make creation come to an end with man? You would live the way Takers live… In order to make their story come true, The Takers have to put an end to creation itself and they're doing a damned good job of it."
"Taker: the world belongs to man"
"Leaver: man belongs to the world…from the beginning, everything that ever lived belonged to the world…and that's how things came to be this way."/
Christian world-view is that from the beginning, everything that ever lived belonged to God, who gave stewardship to man, which was stolen by Satan... and that God's plan for wresting Satan's power from him is currently underway.
P. 240 "We know what happens if you take the Taker premise, that the world belongs to man… Yes, that's a disaster. "And what happens if you take the Leaver premise, that man belongs to the world?" "Then creation goes on forever."/
This is a "New Age" belief, anti-christian, that suggests creation was meant to go on with or without mankind, that the loss of mankind is most likely a desirable thing. This is a "slippery slope" that can lead toward allowing all kinds of human catastrophe.
P. 241 (student) "The meaning of the world… I think the third chapter of Genesis had it right. It's a garden-the god's garden…I myself very much doubt that gods have anything to do with it. I just find this a wholesome and encouraging way to think of it…"
"There are two trees in the garden, one for the gods and one for us. The one for them is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the one for us is the Tree of Life. But we can only find the Tree of Life if we stay in the garden… and we can only stay in the garden if we keep our hands off the gods' tree…"
Divine intentions…there is a tendency in evolution towards…complexity…self-awareness and intelligence. All creatures on this planet appear to be on the verge of attaining that self-awareness and intelligence….apparently the gods intend this planet to be a garden filled with creatures that are self-aware and intelligent" / this is "macro-evolution theory"
"man's destiny is plain: man is the first… the trailblazer…to be the first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: they can thwart the gods and perish in the attempt, or they can stand aside and make some room for all the rest… to be the father of them all… by giving all the rest their chance… the whales, dolphins, chimps, raccoons.. he becomes in some sense their progenitor…oddly enuf, it's even grander than the destiny the Takers dreamed up for us."
/ Christain based W.C. dreamed up their story? not true. Quinn is saying that man's destiny is to become extinct so other creatures can take their turn at being "in charge" This is a world-view intent on undermining and obliterating the Christian world-view that God, the Creator, loves man and He is working to wrest his Creation from the hands of Satan by restoring man's relationship with Himself.
Ishmael: "Just think. In a billion years, whatever is around then, whoever is around then, says, Man? Oh yes, man! What a wonderful creature he was! It was within his grasp to destroy the entire world and to trample all our futures into the dust, but he saw the light before it was too late and pulled back. He pulled back and gave the rest of us our chance. He showed us all how it had to be done if the world was to go on being a garden forever. Man was the role model for us all! "Not a shabby destiny." / ???!!
…some creature had to find the way…man does have a place in the world, but it's not his place to rule….to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become…a teacher of all the rest, not the only teacher, not the ultimate teacher, only the first teacher, the Kindergarten teacher./
Satan would love for man to believe this, because then man sees himself as just another creature in the chain of life on earth, rather than God's beloved, made in His image, whose proper place is as God's ordained steward of God's creation, in direct and constant relationship with Him. If man takes his proper place, Satan loses territory, as it happened in Luke 10:17-(after Jesus sent his followers out before Him), "The 72 returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." 18-He replied," I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19- I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy..." When man properly wields his God given authority, Satan falls.
"This is what we need. Not just stopping things. Not just less of things. People need something positive to work for. They need a vision…more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them…this thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way"/ the Christian based W.C. world-view is absolutely not a vision of doom, it is one of hope and joy.
How can civilized people belong to the world?
The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the peace-keeping law…
Obviously belonging to the world means belonging to the same club as everyone else…the community of life… following the same rules as everyone else. If being civilized means anything… it should mean you are the leaders of the club, not its criminals and destroyers.
/Christian based W.C. referred to as criminals and destroyers?
P. 248 "To save the world…"
"The story of Genesis must be reversed. Cain must stop murdering Abel…the Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world, not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is no one right way to live…must spit out the fruit of that forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet. /
1. twisted Bible reference 2. not because they're humans- there is no value in being human? 3. Christian based W.C= destroyers.
P. 249 You can't change these things with laws. You must change people's minds. And you can't just root out a harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind, you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they've lost, something that makes better sense than the old horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn't serve his needs directly or indirectly."/
Christian based W.C is referred to as a "harmful complex of ideas." that must be rooted out.
What you're saying is that someone has to stand up and become to the world of today what Saint Paul was to the Roman Empire." /
Another direct Biblical reference. This one, unlike previously, is conveniently viewed as historical fact, albeit relevant to the past only.
My side note: Did Al Gore read this book? !! Perhaps he sees himself as the "someone" that Ishmael refers to! See book review of Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance: Ecology of the Human Spirit" at:
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0154a.html
or Google: Hannegraaf review of Earth in the Balance.
(student is afraid to speak up, Ishmael answers) "Ultimately, it would seem you're no different from those you profess to despise: You just wanted something for yourself. Something to make you feel better as you watch the end approach." / inferring that "religion" is just "something to make you feel better"
P. 251 "The world of the Takers is one vast prison…the entire human race is now inside that prison….must have a prison industry…it helps to keep the inmates busy…takes their minds off the boredom and futility of their lives. Prison industry? "Consuming the world"
P. 252 "…which inmates wield the power? …especially white male inmates…justice demands that people other than white males have power in the prison…of course its true that white males have called the shots… of course this is unjust, of course its true that power and wealth within the prison should be equitably redistributed…what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself."
"Among the politically active, the redistribution of wealth and power is…an idea whose time as come, the Holy Grail. /
Redistribution of wealth in this sense is coercive (theft) and is a strictly Socialist idea, an unsuccessful idea at that. Christianity teaches generosity and loving our neighbor, which results in willing wealth redistribution out of love, held to individual accountability.
…breaking out of the Taker prison is a common cause to which all humanity can subscribe."
Is Global Warming (GW) a global crisis?
No. At least not to the point of needing more government controls and global mandates. These things make me nervous.
try googling "global warming controversy" for links to all sorts of opinions and data. I like the "Cooler Heads" website (below) myself. What are your thoughts on the subject?
http://www.globalwarming.org/index.php
try googling "global warming controversy" for links to all sorts of opinions and data. I like the "Cooler Heads" website (below) myself. What are your thoughts on the subject?
http://www.globalwarming.org/index.php
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