SASHA Guest Post: “Deliver Us From Virtue” by Rocket Kirchner
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
_________________________________________________________________________
Today’s article is a guest post by musician, activist, long-time friend of SASHA, and Christian evangelist Rocket Kirchner.
Lao Tzu says that when a man praises virtue, he turns other men into criminals. WOW! Now, that is really throwing the gauntlet down. I have always found it ludicrous how we humans actually think that we are moral, ethical, virtuous people, and that we actually waste our time seeking to exalt such nonsense. Seems like we need a good absurdist comedian and a busload of clowns to dance around us and burst our pompous bubble. In the Middle Ages they had what was called “The Feast of Fools,” where one day out of the year, people would dress up as magistrates, popes, and cardinals, in a mock ceremony — Harvey Cox wrote a great book on the subject. The somewhat equivalent to this in the Far East is called “Nasty Night,” where monks walk around one night of the year and yell nasty things to anyone or anything.
When we seek to be good, we play with fire. This fire culminates in us externalizing evil (as if we are above it), and establishes the fundamentalist mindset. It matters not what one believes, or what one does not believe, that makes one a fundamentalist. What makes one a Fundie is praising virtue as if it has any intrinsic quality of authentic goodness in and of itself. In reality, this activity has the makings of constructing a ladder of self exaltation over others.
The complete blindness of the man who thinks that his good is the good is the peak of attachment to an illusory self. The root of every bloody political revolution, be it religious or anti-religious, or just plain an ideology of thinking that it will make a difference and make the world a better place, has separated humans from each other. The minute we think we are good, we are doomed. The only crack that we have in an kind of real goodness is not to be conscious of it, not to seek it, but rather to simply love people in word and in deed including loving those who hate us. We must seek to serve others and forget about all of this moralistic crap. Period. For only love and servanthood can deliver us from virtue, and being delivered from virtue is the same as being delivered from evil.
Rocket Kirchner is a long-time friend of SASHA. He is a professional musician, pacifism activist, Christian evangelist, and life-long student of philosophy.
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
