Fiction, Fantasy, Myth

The excerpt from The God Delusion talks about morality and how it is not rooted in the bible. Dawkins cites multiple occasions where the bible displays and even promotes murder, rape, slavery, and genocide. Dawkins questions the morality of the bible by alerting the readers of the atrocious laws that occur in the bible. Dawkins says that theologians claim people don’t take the book of genesis literally anymore. However, my personal experiences says otherwise. I know a handful of people who actually believe in the flood, perhaps some of you do.

I despise organized religion, but I don’t believe it is evil, it’s just bad for society. The reason I say this is because ignorance isn’t a sin. Religion teaches society to be bigoted, ignorant, and violent. Christianity tells us that God is all-loving, and God would appear that way  if we decide to ignore the spanish inquisition, the salem witch trials, the crusades, 9/11, and molestation of little boys. Wait, does molesting little boys go under the category of all-loving?

I don’t believe that God created humans, I believe that it’s the opposite. Humans created God. Humans fear the unknown so we create something to ease our mind. History has shown us this time and time again. People have used Gods to explain natural phenomena in the past before. For lightning, people came up with Zeus and Thor. For the sunrise, they came up with Apollo and Helios.

I’ll end this with one of my favorite quotes about religion, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion”. Just something to think about.

            The God Delusion is a book written by Richard Dawkins. From the title of the book itself, you could tell that Dawkins is against religion. His main purpose in writing this book “is to demonstrate that people don’t get their morals from religious scriptures” (Dawkins 249). I will not be expressing any of my personal beliefs in this blog for several reasons. One reason would be that I am not Christian and hence not very familiar with the Old Testament and New Testament. I’ll leave the opinions about religion to our class debate and instead in the blog I’ll just be writing about the excerpt itself and Dawkins arguments.  

            Dawkins starts of the excerpt by taking examples from the Old Testament and poking fun at it. For example, he talks about the story of Noah and how god drowned the people and the helpless animals for no reason. He makes the argument that too many people take these biblical stories too seriously. He shows this with the example of the tsunami that happened in 2004. He talks about how the people that take scriptures seriously, compared the 2004 tsunami to the story of Noah. Dawkins states that the people blamed the tsunami on human sins rather than the scientific reason of the plate tectonic shift. He laughs at their explanation and states that there should be no reason why a divine being like god should care for “petty human malefactions” (Dawkins 238). Besides the example of the tsunami, Dawkins uses many other examples to prove his point.

            Dawkins also talks about absolutism in religion. He argues that an extreme view towards religion leads to negative things. I know that I said before that I wouldn’t be expressing any of my opinions, but I have to say that I do agree with Dawkins argument about extremism. I don’t think that extremism is a good thing because it harms more people rather than helping them. He uses the Taliban as an example of religious extremism. I know for a fact that it is against the Muslim religion to kill innocent people for no reason and the Taliban goes totally against that belief and that kind of absolute or extreme religious views leads to nothing besides violence and injustice.

Ok it is not my turn to blog, however i i found this reading really interesting and here is my opinion.
Richard Dawkins who is the author really opened my eyes to Bible. He describes how modern morality today is different from that described in the scripture. Furthermore Dawkins breaks down and interprets several stories from the bilble. And boy are those immoral. Prior to reading this i have never thought about the bilble this way. it is sick. From what i read in The God Delusion people commited the most obnoxious acts ever. Such acts include “allowing your daughter to get gang raped and abused, having sex with your daughters, slaughtering anyone with opposite religious views, killing non-virgins, like really? How fucking sick is that? What the hell is wrong with people? And then you have these dumb religious psychos who live by the bible and worship it. Anyhow let me not get carried away with my strong opinions. Im going to talk about Dawkins.

The author provides good examples of how The bible goes against the morals and ethics we hold today. And indeed it does in numerous ways. It promotes wrong and immoral acts. I mean its wrong.

Ok but anyways, absolutism often arises based on the biblical morals. People try to dominate and promote their religion. They wish to destroy and kill off all others. And this belief is mentioned in the bible under monotheistis laws or something. Anyhow yeah this is what i gained from this reading. People just believe anything you want. You want to believe in god then please do so. But please dont mention the bible because someone who you dont even know or ever heard off wrote it. Whatever this is my response.

Keep in mind this is my opinion and dont judge me or try to argue with me.

I believe that the American dream is something that can be achieved by anyone by hard work and strong efforts. I think that in Ragged Dick, Horatio Alger percieves the American dream incorrectly and decieves his readers. In the story the boy Dick was born into poverty and then by mere chance, by saving a drowning boy, went from rags to riches. This will mislead people by letting them think that they can also become rich by pure luck, which is certainly not the case. Achieving the American dream can not be done overnight, but is a product of ones never ending hard work. I agree with the article on “The American Dream and Todays Reality” in that the most important thing in achieving the American Dream is education. Education is a sure ticket to prosperity and the more education that you have had the more money you will be making. This article shows us that indeed the middle class did shrink, but not for the reasons everyone thinks because Americans are actually getting richer. The increasing percentages of poverty are a causation of good jobs being harder to find because they require more educational skill, and also because the divorce rate is going up which leaves children in poverty. If you get rid of these elements then indeed more people will be achieving the American dream.

 In this passage the author talks about how violence impacts a game and the player. The author states that a game is just something to entertain a person while they are working to reach a certain goal in it. Greg Costikyan said, ” no conflict, no struggle. No struggle, no obstacles. No obstacles, no work. No work, no fun.” According to this quote I think that for a person to overcome obstacles and have fun in a game, there has to be violence. Another quote that I think stoo out is, “Violent computer games don’t spur violence; violent computer games channel antisocial impulses in societally acceptable ways.” I agree with this quote 100 percent because I also feel that video games don’t cause violence and that it is a way for the player to take out his anger in a positive way.

This lengthy but intriguing essay by Andrew Sullivan examines the role of testosterone in a man’s life and in the world. For himself, injections of testosterone are a health requirement, being that he is H.I.V.-positive. His experience with these injections gave him amazing first hand knowledge on how increased testosterone levels affects a man’s body, both physically and psychologically. He compares the hormone to a double espresso, and explains that it brings about feelings of strength, energy, lust, and impulsiveness. Sullivan also inspects the effects of testosterone through his immense research. In studying the results of injecting testosterone into animals, he points out that it is undeniable that typical “male” behavior corresponds to testosterone levels. Though in some species females have higher testosterone levels and are dominant, in humans, it is obvious that males have these attributes. Sullivan also puts forth that testosterone levels are sensitive to the environment, which is supported by studies of testosterone levels of people in different circumstances and situations.
Sullivan goes on to explore the relationship between testosterone and gender inequality. He concludes that it would be ridiculous to assume that natural physical and psychological differences between men and women have nothing to do with male dominance in several aspects of society. He thinks it is unsurprising that professions such as military combat, sports, politics, and gambling are disproportionately male, and I agree with him. It makes sense for women to have separate sports leagues and such because they are obviously at different levels of strength and endurance than men. He also asserts that “it is foolish to insist that numerical inequality is always a function of bias rather than biology.” At this point, I feel like he’s taking it a bit too far. I don’t deny that there is a correlation between testosterone levels and performance in the business world, but to attribute this success entirely to biology seems a little extreme. There is obviously a gender inequality and I don’t think it is as natural as Sullivan makes it out to be.

The main thesis de Beavoir tries to get across is that women are fundamentally oppressed by men who characterize them as the “other.” Women are incomplete when compared to men because men are superior and unbound. Men can extend their wills out to other people to change the world around them, but women are supposed to be meek, quiet, and are expected to take the backseat in the game of life. Men are the subjects in the world and women are just some other object. In the reading, one opinion on why women are classified as “the second sex”  is because they must be compared to men due to their lack of qualities and qualifications. These are just a few ways Simone de Beauvoir talks about the women’s role in life compared to that of men.

One statement that first struck me was “woman is losing her way, woman is lost”. It struck me because I asked myself, “Could this person be for real?” It was only the introduction, but I felt that women really has not lost her way because women are essential in the world. They are a sex just like the male sex, and one big role of woman is giving birth. As I read on, I saw that Beauvoir, author of “The Second Sex”, said that “woman is a womb”. This, I feel, validated my point.

Later on, it is said that a woman writer refused to be looked at with the other woman writers, but with the men. This somewhat shows the argument that we are all regarded as human beings and that the women are the Other that he makes notice later on.

In this passage, men are known as the Subject, while the woman is the Other. This portrays that women are defined and differentiated in reference to how the man is.

Basically, this says that women are men, and that they are just classified women in reference to the male qualities because of the women’s lack of qualities, according to Simone.

Later on, he talks about change and how the only reason why women are the “second sex” is because they do not do about change like the example used in the passage – the slavery and etc.

According to the passage, women cannot think of whiping out the males because they are essential in the creation of their identity , and basically it would be quite difficult to create offspring for a new generation.

Condensation and dramatization are the most important and interesting characteristics of a dream. However, in some cases these typical events are not enough to explain the whole dream. Freud believes there is a third aspect of the dream called “dream-thoughts.” This refers to a kind of weakening of the censorship while asleep. This is what allows people to dream about certain events or activities that would usually be ignored or blocked out.

He then discovers that dreams usually don’t focus on something that has recently happened. If a person dreams about an event in their life it is always at the earliest a day after it takes place and is so insignificant and unmemorable that the person who dreamt it has a great deal of trouble recalling it.

Freud also talks a lot about metaphors and certain objects representing something completely different for the exception of a few details. These metaphors can be an example of dramatization because we are forced to look deeper than the object in front of us to truly understand the dream.

Much of what Freud says makes a lot of sense. If you were to think back to a dream you had I’m sure there are many times when you were in a certain place or saw some kind of object that might not have made much sense but that is because it has a deeper meaning or actually stands for something els

This section “on dreams” by Freud was somewhat confusing to me. Freud explains a lot of the importance of the analysis of dreams and how people tend to ignore the dreams and they just become hopelessly confusing. He explains that the dreams are represented through metaphors and similes in images that we could make out. I find this very true because dreams take various parts of past experiences and whatever thoughts are somewhat linked, and then groups them together to make  a significant point or painting. The structure of the dream is made up of these thoughts and ideas. Freud explains that the dream-thoughts are combined to make a single situation, and the dream thoughts are all connected. When Freud says that “no dream is prompted by motives other than egoistic ones” , I agree with him. I feel as if dreams can be from our motives if we strongly believe in ideas and if we determined, we obtain those dreams. However, dreams that are not for ourself are not prompted by motives and include other people that we know.

Freud says that a dream that is disordered rather than “beautifully polished” is more valuable. Therefore, people that ignore the dreams are confusing really never get the meaning that the dream brings on the table. I cannot agree or disagree because I do not know anything about analyzing dreams that are disordered or even looking into the dreams that are clear-cut. However, I could picture that the meaning of the disordered dreams probably are valuable and I would imagine that Freud’s explanation is quite valid.

I was confused, at first, at what the dream-work was until I read that it was what we fantasize.

On page 171 of Freud’s “On Dreams” , I read that dream-symbols represent certain pictures that you would have to analyze. Freud mentions how sharp weapons represent male genitals, and boxes or carriages represent the uterus. When I read that at first, I first thought about the majority of the population around the world, or the universal thought of a certain box or a sharp weapon. Universally, people would come to the conclusion that the sharp weapon would make sense to symbolize the male genital. However, what would a member of the universe suffering with down syndrome think about this? Would he know what a sharp weapon is unless he somehow learns it from practice? Would his dreams be altered so he gains a different image that represents the genital in a way that he would understand it? He probably would, but images and ideas that ONLY he has are different than others not suffering from down syndrome would have. This is what raises questions for me – this area for people suffering from various ways.