Grant Morrison On Superman As Jesus As Religion

From Newsarama, October 2008:

The ‘Superman as Christ’ thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.

When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?

The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone.

This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.

It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements which have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman.

I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.

…I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars.  At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely.

I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.

Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood three-act story template is to real creative writing.

Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of  dynamic ‘divinity” at work.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re  privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf just close your eyes and say hello: “god” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once.

“God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).

This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which [Lex] Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists…but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of four cannot do but children of six can.

Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it.

This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.”  However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.

Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics.

Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.

Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.

As Peter Barnes wrote in The Ruling Class, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”

Just A Trace Of -

The Ataris – “And We All Become Like Smoke” (2007)

“And still we all are so hopeful
So righteous in our blood
And oh, so tarnished in our hearts
Yet so afraid of…”

Where have I heard that before? Oh, right, I remember…

See Them Crosses, See Them Flames

“Now I’m back in my hotel room
With Johnny Coltrane and A Love Supreme,
And in the next room I hear some woman scream out
That her lover is turnin’ off,
Turnin’ off the television
And I can’t tell the difference between ABC News, Hill Street Blues,
And a preacher on the old time gospel hour
Stealin’ money from the sick, and the old.
Well, the God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister…”

- Bono, “Bullet The Blue Sky (Live),” from the 1988 concert documentary film Rattle and Hum

***

Michka Assayas: Who was the first televangelist you saw on TV?

Bono: It was a preacher who was asking his audience in TV land to put their hand against the screen to be healed. So there were people, old ladies with bronchitis, old ladies with broken hips, and probably people with cancer, all over America, getting out of their armchairs and putting their hands on the TV.

It broke my heart…What’s always bothered me about the fundamentalists is that they seem preoccupied with the most obvious sins. If those sins, sexual immorality and drug addiction, come out of unhappiness, then I’m sure God wants to set people free of that unhappiness.

But I couldn’t figure out why the same people were never questioning the deeper, slyer problems of the human spirit like self-righteousness, judgmentalism, institutional greed, corporate greed. You only have to look to unfair trade agreements that keep the developing world in the Dark Ages to see the hypocrisy I’m talking about. These people talk about the debasing of culture. What about the debasing of hundreds of thousands of real lives?

- from Bono In Conversation with Michka Assayas (2006, pg. 186)

Atheism Makes You Smarter?

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

- Dave Silverman, President of American Atheists

This morning, the NYTimes published an article about a recent research survey conducted by an independent forum on religious life. It found that on average, religious Americans are not very knowledgeable about religion. Mormons and white Protestant groups answered the best on questions about the Bible and Christianity in general, while the group to answer the most successfully about world religions in general were atheists, agnostics, and Jews.

Why am I not surprised? It reminds me of a comment Alex Caldiero (a poet, professor, and artist in residence at UVU) recently made in my class this semester: that atheists – and I would make the provision of those atheists David B. Hart calls “truly profound atheists” – are often more knowledgeable of how religion works and thus never settle for the absolute truth of only one – to Caldiero, atheists are in that way much more devout believers of truth than even the most spiritually wound-up members of organized religions.

A Miracle Is Unknowable, But So Is Nature

“We should not say: there are no miracles, because none has ever been proved…The truth is, no miracle can, from the nature of things, be stated as an established fact; to do so will always involve drawing a premature conclusion.

…There will always be a fungus, a star, or a disease that human science does not know of; and for this reason it must always behove the philosopher, in the name of the undying ignorance of man, to deny every miracle and say of the most startling wodners, – the host of Bolsena, the star in the east, the cure of the paralytic and the like: Either it is not, or it is, and if it is, it is part of nature and therefore natural.”

- Anatole France (from The Garden of Epicurus, 1895, trans. Alfred Allison, pp. 175-81.)

Freud: Religion Is Like Pokemon – Just A Phase

“…The store of religious ideas includes not only wish-fulfillments but important historical recollections. This concurrent influence of past and present must give religion a truly incomparable wealth of power. But…a human child cannot successfully complete its development to the civilized stage without passing through a phase of neurosis…

This is because so many instinctual demands which will later be unservicable cannot be suppressed by the rational operation of the child’s intellect but have to be tamed by acts of repression, behind which, as a rule, lies the motive of anxiety. Most of these infantile neuroses are overcome spontaneously in the course of growing up, and this is especially true of the obsessional neuroses of childhood.

…In just the same way, one might asume, humanity as a whole, in its development through the ages, fell into states analogous to the neuroses, and for the same reasons – namely because in the times of its ignorance and intellectual weakness the instinctual renunciations indispensable for man’s communal existence had only been achieved by it by means of purely affective forces. The precipiates of these processes resembling repression which took place in prehistoric times still remained attached to civilization for long periods.

Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity…If this view is right, it is to be supposed that a turning away from religion is bound to occur with the fatal inevitability of a process of growth, and that we find ourselves at this very juncture in the middle of that phase of development.

…If, on the one hand, religion brings with it obsessional restrictions, exactly as an individual neurosis does, on the other hand it comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality…in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.

…[Thus,] devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

…The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth.”

- From The Future of An Illusion (1927), 42-44.

There Is No “?” In “Obey!”

“…None are required to tamely and blindly submit to a man because he has a portion of the priesthood.

We have heard men who hold the priesthood remark, that they would do anything they were told to do by those who presided over them, if they knew it was wrong; but such obedience as this is worse than folly to us; it is slavery in the extreme; and the man who would thus willingly degrade himself should not claim a rank among intelligent beings, until he turns from his folly. A man of God…would despise the idea.

Others, in the extreme exercise of their almighty authority have taught that such obedience was necessary, and that no matter what the saints were told to do by their presidents, they should do it without asking any questions.

When Elders of Israel will so far indulge in these extreme notions of obedience as to teach them to the people, it is generally because they have it in their minds to do wrong themselves.”
- Joseph Smith (Millennial Star, vol. 14 #38, pp. 593-95)

***

“We talk of obedience, but do we require any man or woman to ignorantly obey the counsels that are given? Do the First Presidency require it? No, never.”
- Joseph Fielding Smith (Journal of Discourses, 16:248)

***

“I do not wish any Latter-day Saint in this world, nor in heaven, to be satisfied with anything I do, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spirit of revelation, makes them satisfied…Suppose that the people were heedless, that they manifested no concern with regard to the things of the kingdom of God, but threw the whole burden upon the leaders of the people, saying, ‘If the brethren who take charge of matters are satisfied, we are,’ this is not pleasing in the sight of the Lord.”

“…Now those men, or those women, who know no more about the power of God, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, than to be led entirely by another person, suspending their own understanding, and pinning their faith upon another’s sleeve, will never be capable of entering into the celestial glory, to be crowned as they anticipate; they will never be capable of becoming Gods. They cannot rule themselves, to say nothing of ruling others, but they must be dictated to in every trifle, like a child. They cannot control themselves in the least, but James, Peter, or somebody else must control them. They never can become Gods, nor be crowned as rulers with glory, immortality, and eternal lives. They never can hold sceptres of glory, majesty, and power in the celestial kingdom.

Who will? Those who are valiant and inspired with the true independence of heaven, who will go forth boldly in the service of their God, leaving others to do as they please, determined to do right, though all mankind besides should take the opposite course. Will this apply to any of you? Your own hearts can answer.”
- Brigham Young (JD 3:45 & 1:312, respectively)

***

“Do not, brethren, put your trust in man though he be a bishop, an apostle, or a president. If you do, they will fail you at some time or place; they will do wrong or seem to, and your support be gone.”
- George Q. Cannon (Millennial Star 53:658-59, quoted in Gospel Truth, 1:319)

***

“President Wilford Woodruff is a man of wisdom and experience, and we respect him, but we do not believe his personal views or utterances are revelations from God; and when ‘Thus saith the Lord’, comes from him, the saints investigate it: they do not shut their eyes and take it down like a pill.”
- Apostle Charles W. Penrose (Millennial Star 54:191)

***BUT on the other hand…***

“When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan, it is God’s Plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give directions, it should mark the end of controversy, God works in no other way. To think otherwise, without immediate repentance, may cost one his faith, may destroy his testimony, and leave him a stranger to the kingdom of God.”
- Ward Teachers Message, Deseret News, Church Section p. 5, May 26, 1945

***

“Always keep your eye on the president of the church, and if he ever tells you to do anything, even if it is wrong, and you do it, the Lord will bless you for it, but you don’t need to worry.  The Lord will never let his mouthpiece lead the people astray.”
- Apostle Marion G. Romney, Conference Report, Oct. 1960, p. 78

***

“There is no such thing as an accurate, objective history of the Church without consideration of the spiritual powers that attend this work…There is a temptation…to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith-promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful…In an effort to be objective, impartial, and scholarly, a writer or a teacher may unwittingly be giving equal time to the adversary…In the Church we are not neutral. We are one-sided. There is a war going on, and we are engaged in it…The fact that something is already in print or available from another source is no excuse for using potentially damaging materials in writing, speaking, or teaching: ‘Do not spread disease germs!’”
- Apostle Boyd K. Packer, “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect,” speech delivered at the 1981 Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium

***

“Follow your leaders who have been duly ordained and have been publicly sustained, and you will not be led astray.”
- Apostle Packer, General Conference, Oct. 1992, as quoted in Ensign, Nov. 1992

***

“There are three areas where members of the Church, influenced by social and political unrest, are being caught up and led away.  I chose these three because they have made major invasions into the membership of the Church.  In each, the temptation is for us to turn about and face the wrong way, and it is hard to resist, for doing it seems reasonable and right.

“The dangers I speak of come from the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals.  Our local leaders must deal with all three of them with ever increasingly frequency.  In each case, the members who are hurting have the conviction that the Church somehow is doing something wrong to members or that the Church is not doing enough for them.”
- Apostle Packer, “Talk to the All-Church Coordinating Council,” May 18, 1993

***

“Some things that are true are not edifying or appropriate to communicate. Readers of history and biography should ponder that moral reality as part of their effort to understand the significance of what they read.”
- Apostle Dallin H. Oaks, “Reading Church History,” Ninth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium, August 16, 1985, Brigham Young University

***

“Satan can even use truth to promote his purposes. Facts, severed from their context, can convey an erroneous impression.”
- Apostle Oaks, “Reading Church History,” speech delivered at the Ninth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium, BYU, August 16, 1985

***

“It is wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if the criticism is true.”
- Apostle Oaks, in the 2007 PBS documentary The Mormons

***

“When Elder Packer interviewed me as a prospective member of Brigham Young University’s faculty in 1976, he explained: ‘I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building because that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.’”
- D. Michael Quinn, “On Being a Mormon Historian (and Its Aftermath),” in George D. Smith, ed., Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History, 1992, p. 76

***

“All fingers seem to point to Elder Boyd Packer, acting president of the twelve apostles, as the prime force behind what has been called the ‘Mormon Inquisition.’ While Elder Packer, nicknamed ‘Darth Packer’ by the irreverent because of his cold and detached personal style, is a far cry from Torquemada… his speeches, instructions to lower ranking authorities, and direct contacts with local leaders have shown him to be the prime orchestrator of top-level-organized punishment.”
- Private Eye Weekly, October 20, 1993; quoted in Tanner, “Mormon Inquisition?,” p. 9 ( online at http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no85.htm)

“The church wants to portray this image of being unified in all it does…. It wants Mormons to be unquestioning…. I worked in public affairs for the church for 13 years, and I had to lie all the time, and this has really battered my faith.”
-  Paul Richards, former BYU spokesman, quoted in Tanner, “Mormon Inquisition?,” p. 6

***

“Every scholar with whom I am acquainted agrees that there is yet official Church reticence when it comes to using certain records, diaries, and other materials in the church’s archives and in the First Presidency’s possession relating to polygamy.”
- B. Carmon Hardy, Mormon historian, “Truth and Mistruth in Mormon History,” in Lavina Fielding Anderson and Janice Merrill Allred, eds., Case Reports of the Mormon Alliance, 1997, v. 3, p. 279

God Shall CUT YOU!

Say what you will about the God of the Old Testament: He’s pretty terrifying. I know how much Sam Harris hates Him and I can’t imagine the number of poor children sent to bed each night thinking that at any given moment, the Supreme Being watching over you could rain frogs, turn your mom into salt, or command that you have sex with your father lest ye die. (“But He loves you!”) And when you think about it, those aspects of the Old Testament really lend themselves to a bad horror flick – albeit one that lasts five hours long. And this horror flick has really bad special effects that make it that much more unseating. You kind don’t know whether to laugh or cry, actually, that there’s some all powerful being who ruins your dinner party by writing currency numbers on the wall – in FLAMES! Or that this all powerful being will turn the river into blood. Who would write that kinda stuff these days? It’s even kinda…cartoony?

Enter: The Spectre.

DC Comics is home to the Wrath of God, manifested as a spectral being who has, basically, unlimited power to do anything – except mess with free will. He is bound to an earth body, and there have been three of these hosts so far: first Detective Jim Corrigan killed on the job, then ex-Green Lantern Hal Jordan, and currently the deceased Gotham detective Crispus Allen.

The idea is: God has a hit man. He will seek justice – and a very grisly, grim justice. In recent years, The Spectre has been used to explore some of the more philosophical implications of his mission (handled fairly well with Detective Allen, who was forced to take the life of his son), but since his inception the Spectre’s methods for exacting the vengeance of God have been pretty straightforward: steal a lot of money and you’ll probably get caught in a whirlwind of dollar bills and bleed to death from the cuts (as happens to a character later in the recent animated short film, teased above). In one controversial 70s issue, a criminal gets cut up to death by giant scissors. Or: DEATH BY DUCK!

For those who feel like the Old Testament wrath of God is too horrific and too outlandish to be believed, a few back issues of the Spectre might put a slightly grimacing smile on your face, and make the idea of an angry omnipotent power seeking justice somewhat more enjoyable to read about.

That Beautiful Lie, Immortality

“…When the body has been shattered by the mastering might of time and the frame has drooped with its forces dulled, then the intellect halts, the tongue dotes, the mind gives way, all faculties fail and are found wanting at the same time. It naturally follows then that the whole nature of the soul is dissolved, like smoke, into the high air; since we see it is begotten along with the body and grows up along with it and, as I have shown, breaks down at the same time worn out with age…

“…[Additionally,] in diseases of the body the mind often wanders and goes astray; for it loses its reason and drivels in its speech and often in a profound lethargy is carried into deep and never-ending sleep with drooping eyes and head; out of which it neither hears the voices nor can recognise the faces of those who stand round calling it back to life and bedewing face and cheeks with tears. Therefore you must admit that the mind too dissolves…

“Wherefore, again and again I say, we must believe souls to be neither without a birth no exempted from the law of death; for we must not believe that they could have been so completely united with our bodies, if they found their way into them from without…

“…And if time should gather up our matter after our death and put it once more into the position in which it now is, and the light of life be given to us again, even this result would concern us not at all, when the chain of our self-consciousness has once been snapped asunder…For when you look back on the whole past course of immeasurable time and think how manifold are the shapes which the motions of matter take, you may easily believe that these very same seeds of which we now are formed have often before been placed in the same order in which they now are; and yet we cannot recover this in memory…

“…For he upon whom evil is to befall must in his own person exist at the very time it comes, if the misery and suffering are by chance to have any place at all; but since death precludes this…you may be sure that we have nothing to fear after death, and that he who does not exist cannot become miserable, and that it matters not a whit whether he has been born into life at any other time, when immortal death has taken away his mortal life.

“…If the nature of things could suddenly utter a voice and…chide any of us in such words as these,’What do you, O mortal, have so much at heart that you go to such lengths in sickly sorrows? …Why not…take your departure like a guest filled with life, and with resignation, you fool, enter upon untroubled rest? …For there is nothing more which I can contrive and discover to give you pleasure: all things are ever the same…But because you always yearn for what is not present, and despise what is, life has slipped from your grasp unfinished and unsatisfying and unbeknownst to you, death has taken his stand at your pillow, before you could take your departure sated and filled…with a good grace get up and go: you must.’

“…Old things are supplanted by new without fail, and one thing must ever be replenished out of other things…matter is needed for later generations to grow; all of which, nevertheless, will follow you when they have finished their term of life…Thus one thing will never cease to rise out of another, and life is granted to none in fee-simple, to all in usufruct. Think too how the bygone antiquity of everlasting time before our birth was nothing to us. Nature therefore holds this up to us as a mirror of the time yet to come after our death.

“…Will you then hesitate and think it a hardship to die? – you for whom life is well-nigh dead whilst yet you live and see the light, who spend the greater part of your time in sleep and snore wide awake and cease not to see visions and have a mind troubled with groundless terror and cannot often discover what it is that ails you, when, besotted man, you are sore pressed on all sides with many cares and go astray tumbling about in the wayward wanderings of your mind.”

- Lucretius, from On The Nature of Things (ca. 60 B.C.E.)*

*Trans. H. A. J. Munro (1864; reprint London: George Bell & Sons, 1908), revised by S.T. Joshi.

“A Heart Just Can’t Contain…”

“The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s deaf, the Qur’an is mute
If you burned them all together, you’d be close to the truth – still
They’re pouring over Sanskrit under Ivy League moons
While shadows lengthen in the sun.”

I highly appreciate the club cover by The Killers, and the original is great.