arens@UCBKIM (04/07/83)
From: arens@UCBKIM (Yigal Arens)
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id AA04684; 6 Apr 83 20:39:03 PST (Wed)
To: net-religion@BERKELEY
When simply walking around Berkeley you can find the most interesting
things. Just today I saw the flyer (printed below) on a billboard. It's
signed by a group called "The Last International". I don't know anything
about them, but this is the third or fourth flyer of theirs I've seen in the
past few months.
I'm sure it will be of great interest to the readership of net.religion.
Here it is:
RELIGION AS BANALITY...
`Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, infamous, sullying and grotesque
is contained for me in this single word: GOD' -- Andre Breton.
...DIVINITY AS TYRANNY
`If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him' -- Michael
Bakunin
Religion is deceitful, depraved and absurd -- but don't underestimate it.
There's a reason this decrepit relic of humanity's infancy still adorns
class society. "The powers that be are ordained of God," says St. Paul.
Not quite. *God* *is* *ordained* *by* *the* *powers* *that* *be*. His
omnipotence expresses our impotence.
Babble about "the wages of sin" serves to cover up *the* *sin* *of* *wages*.
We want rights, not rites -- sex, not sects. Only Eros and Eris belong in
our pantheon. Surely the Nazarene necrophile has had his revenge by now.
Remember, pain is just God's way of hurting you.
The church (*any* church) is capital's consecrated cop. Examples:
*Christianity* (which is neither catholic nor protestant); *Judaism*
(reading the Prophets and raking in the profits); *Islam* (which means
"submission") -- plus all farcically fashionable Oriental mysticisms pushed
by greedy gurus with lice in their beards.
>From Iran to Ireland, from Madrid to Miami, from the West Bank to West
Virginia the faithful fulfill their function, suppresing subjectivity and
sexuality in connivance with their eternal ally, the State. "Prisons are
built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion" (Blake).
As for "God", suffice it to say that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"God has sufficiently revealed His true character by combining the genital
organ with the urinary tract" (Brecht). A person without God is like a fish
without a bicycle. Be (diabo)logical . . . curb your dogma. Revolution,
not revelation! Belief in God is self-managed mutilation. Why not deny God
and affirm *yourself*?
GET THEE BEHIND ME, GOD!
The Last International
55 Sutter St., Suite 487
San Francisco, Ca
USA
Presented as a public service by Yigal Arens.djhawley (04/07/83)
Tell it to Baptists or Jews in Russia. I can't see how this squares with the persecution of any religious group by the state. Baha'is (sp?) in some Middle East country, forget which, to name a non-christian ( no flames please ) religion. Christians in Uganda. etc. etc.
hutch (04/18/83)
Thanks, Yigal, for once more presentiung us with rhetoric and flames that far surpass anything resembling rational intelligent discourse. Whenever I want to read an intelligent, reasonable, objective, non-jingoistic discourse on anything at all important, why, I just run out and find my local revolutionary and ask for this weeks tracts. |\_-_/| | V V | | | \^_^/ Hutch