Aphorisms

The ego finds it hard to believe there is anything worse than ceasing. Thus heaven is necessary, not to stroke the ego, but to teach it that eternal persistence is infinitely worse. Some will learn in only a few centuries. Others may take ten thousand years. And the most egotistical may not learn until they've noted their trillion-trillionth birthday, when they will finally say, "Lord, at last I see. At last I wish to spit out the taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and return to the unconsciousness of Eden. I am ready to not-be. I am ready to sleep. I am ready to cease. You alone should live forever." Some know this before they die and truly rest in peace.

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Eternal existence sounds heavenly, but it's hell.

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"You alone are eternal." That could end our prayer, but we rarely fail to add, "Let us live eternally." This is another way of saying, as the snake foretold, "We would be as God."

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The Bible transfixes us in large measure because it reveals horrific stakes with sonorous certitude. To break the spell, read the Koran, where similarly horrific stakes are revealed with the same sonorous certitude.

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The Jews looked to Jesus for King David. Christians look to Jesus for the Tree of Life. Thus we nail hope to ego-vision.

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Fertility experts estimate that fewer than half of fertilized human eggs make it to birth. Of those that make it to birth, fewer than half throughout history and across cultures make it to age five, the so-called age of reason. It is unthinkable to consider this seventy-five percent of human souls to be condemned for all eternity, as follows the logic of original sin, and most Protestants believe these souls are redeemed to heaven. When we are wildly optimistic and suppose that a tenth of the remaining twenty-five percent (two and a half percent of the total souls conceived) consciously choose salvation through Jesus Christ, we can conclude that the vast majority of the population of heaven will consist of beings who never chose to be there, outnumbering those who chose by thirty to one. Thus the necessity of free will cannot convincingly be posited as a justification for the existence of evil, since almost no one will have exercised it. Nor can suffering be necessary to the forging of the human soul, since almost none of the souls in heaven will have suffered or can suffer in a place where it is said there is no suffering.

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If suffering is the heart of wisdom, heaven will be a foolish place.
If suffering is the heart of wisdom, hell will be the wisest place in existence.

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The cure for literalism is study.

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In Gethsemane, the disciples slept while Jesus prayed alone. When did he tell them how humble his prayer was?

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A teacher delights in unanswerable questions.

A preacher delights in unquestionable answers.

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Wonder is another word for doubt. Certainty never wonders.

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Early, that marriage dissolves on death is a source of grief. Later, of gratitude. Later still, of remorse.

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Children know the difference between story and reality. Adults have trouble distinguishing.

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Artists who leave directions that their work be destroyed lacked the courage to do so themselves.

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The Voyager probes may one day be the only evidence humans existed.

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A name, two dates, a pithy testimonial. Five hundred years from now, only grave markers remain.

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Death is the obvious fact universally denied.

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Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Matthew and Luke needed him there.

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We know Jesus exhibited poly-presence because Luke says he left Bethlehem just after his fortieth day and Matthew says he lived there several years.

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Men did what was right in their own eyes, and the priestly class called it evil, reserving authority to itself.

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Raising Lazarus from the dead was a miracle so outrageous only the author of John believed it.

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Faith prays that the dead man rise up out of the casket. No one has such a faith.

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If your God has failed, lower your expectations until he cannot fail to meet them. This is why at funerals we pray for families to cope.

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Don't test God unless you are an Old Testament figure.

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Self-deception is as natural as breathing.

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The teacher says need me no longer.
The preacher says come back tonight.

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Those who do not think deeply about anything regard with suspicion those who do.

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A thinker is like an illegal alien: foreign, frightening, and somehow to blame.

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A teacher tells how to think.
A preacher tells what to think.

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The trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy will have to wait two and a half million years to hear about you.

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As long as birds sing before dawn, there will be poetry.

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To be inquisitive is to be thought a heretic--or at least impolite.

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Compassion subverts dogma.

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There is a reason tolerance is a bad word only in churches and totalitarian states.

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Though everyone may freely think, few will make the attempt.

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You can know these words are true because I testify they are true and my testimony is true. If this does not satisfy, you are one step away from heresy.

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Once a life has been built on an answer, further curiosity destabilizes.

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No belief is so irrational apologists cannot be found for it.

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Teachers make a virtue of seeking.
Preachers make a virtue of finding.

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Teachers dialogue.
Preachers monologue.

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Like all wild things, children smell fear. They quickly learn what questions aren't to be asked.

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If your eye offends, pluck it out. If your hand offends, cut it off. If your mind offends, board it up. Of these, only the last is widely observed.

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Curiosity is unsettling. To be curious is to be a nomad.

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Abram was a heretic in Ur.

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If the words of the dead who rose on Jesus' death had been recorded, surely they would have been, "Again?"

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Pharisees have soft hands and hard hearts.
Servants have hard hands and soft hearts.

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When truth diverges from idols, nearly everyone will choose their idols.

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A god constructed of words is no more divine that those constructed of wood or stone or gold.

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If blindness is difficult, sight is more so.

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It is said when two or more are gathered in his name, Jesus is there. But the alone is on her own.

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If your sun has set, learn to love stars.

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Few would continue to write if they did not secretly believe their words would one day be vindicated.

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The mind you conjure as the source for these words is not the mind who wrote them.

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In the end, all reasoning is circular, turning back on itself like Ouroboros.

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You are told, "Have faith" by those who have never thrown mountains into the sea.

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"Yes, but" sounds like heresy to those accustomed to "yes".

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Asking difficult questions does not always lead to wisdom, but avoiding them never does.

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An impoverished man may vomit his first sumptuous meal. In the same way, the man with a meager thought-life may reject unfamiliar thoughts and spew bile on the one who provoked them.

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A good friend points out the approaching storm, though only a good friend will thank him for it.

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Never fear the loss of idols in the pursuit of truth.

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If your household gods cannot keep up with your pursuit of truth, they are idols. Carry them if you must, though they will slow you down. Better to leave them behind.

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Better to die in the pursuit of truth than live a thousand years avoiding it.

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The heretics of one generation are the orthodox of the next and the saints of the following.

Few Christians alive today would escape the charge of heresy from Christians of the past. Few Christians of the future would not be considered heretics by Christians of today. Thus, little by agonizing little, the Church evolves, begrudgingly, by the natural selection of reason and justice.

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Set the bar low enough and even idols can trip over it.

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Joy and suffering are the soil of poetry.

Poetry is the soil of compassion.

Compassion is the soil of action.

Action is the soil of joy and suffering.

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Loving others is how the finite touch the infinite.

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To say Jesus is present when two or three are gathered in his name is to concede belief is a social construct.

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If we knew we had thirty days left, how differently we should live! Yet we squander our thirty thousand. Foreknowledge changes little.

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We say infinity is necessary to give meaning to our finitude, making of every creature but ourselves mere décor.

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The eternal torment God designed for sinners was so disproportionate and unjust that after a mere thirty-nine hours receiving this torment his son said hell no.

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If the wages of sin is eternal death, how does thirty-nine hours of death cover even one sinner's debt, let alone the debt of the entire human race?

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Since Jesus was exempt from the curse of Original Sin, we must conclude it is passed down through fathers. Clones derived from women will therefore be without sin. If this is not so, then Jesus also had Original Sin and his sacrifice would be of no effect, deserving then only God's condemnation like everyone else.

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Most people inherit their religious belief rather than arrive at it through careful thought. In many countries, faith is written on birth certificates.

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"Mysterious ways" is another way of saying "Let's talk about something else."

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The senses are suspect, some say, while trusting in the senses of unknown persons thousands of years ago.

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The small-minded will never be great.

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You can never be great following a man who cannot be good.

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A man who mocks the weak is neither great nor good.