Something to Believe: Is Kurt Vonnegut Exorcist from Jesus Christ Superstar? is a 1977 book by Robert L. Short, which discusses the destructive effects of religion that are organized on people's beliefs..
Video Something to Believe In: Is Kurt Vonnegut the Exorcist of Jesus Christ Superstar?
Introduction
Through the use of cartoons, the history of religion, historical figures and references to popular culture, Short argues that most organized religions do harm people, by their mistakes about God, and thus strangely push people away from religion and cause they look for alternatives, which mostly result in disappointment. Short opinion is basically about universal reconciliation, that Christ died for everyone, everyone will go to heaven when they die, and not just those who are "saved".
The title of this book is a mixture of author Kurt Vonnegut's name, known Short personally; film The Exorcist ; and drama (and the next film) Jesus Christ Superstar , commenting on their reference to religion.
Maps Something to Believe In: Is Kurt Vonnegut the Exorcist of Jesus Christ Superstar?
Methodology
This book looks at ways in which popular culture at any given time, tends to change the face of God and how people see Him. One of the short arguments made is that, because organized religion gives a very hard attribute to God, which is largely unsupported by scripture, an organized religion ironically tends to push people away from God , seeing Him in a perverse way like the cruel, merciless and evil "Monster God," instead of God of Love, Mercy and Charity.
Short argues that the peculiar portrayal of God - and the ideas of heaven and hell - by the mainstream churches is untrue and inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible, and the concept of paradise that only a few people can enter, and alternatives to the eternal burning in Hell, supposing God is not a creature of love, but an entity that tortures people from pure sadism, and thus, is more likely to expel the distant people of Christianity. Short suggests that the idea of ​​hell as a place of torment is not an idea derived from the Bible, but from a literary device at Dante's Inferno. Short argues that the Bible states that all people go to heaven (not just a select few), and the hell that the Bible says is not the place to visit after one dies, but the suffering endures when they become separated from God. This error of reading the Bible is a type of error, Short argues, that for those who believe in the good of people, it will therefore be more likely to encourage them to choose atheism. "If I had to believe in the kind of Monster God that most major churches propose, I would still be an atheist too."
Brief also argues that, atheists tend not to focus on the concept of the afterlife, because, if a person dies with nothing outside of one's life, then whether a person is good or bad, they get the same result, destruction, and the only logical path of action for everyone in such circumstances to live is nihilism, living for oneself without regard to how it affects others. That means that someone like Adolf Hitler, or Joseph Stalin, at the end of his life, will receive the same results as Mother Teresa; no matter how bad or rotten you are, you get the same result with the most sacred person. Also, he points out that if humans have no existence beyond this life, "then the killing of six million Jews during the Holocaust is no more important than the killing of six million cockroaches when the tenement building is fumigated."
He quotes a pastor's speech in The Brothers Karamazov's book, which makes the point that morality can not exist without immortality, for if nothing goes beyond this world, man is the same as the animal (we have no soul) , and as a result, anything is allowed.
References
- ISBNÃ, 0-06-067381-8
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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