Reason, Faith, and Revolution

[Dave Monroe]

>From Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the
God Debate.(New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2009), Ch. 1, "The Scum of the
Earth," pp. 1-46:

"If the God of the so-called Old Testament is portrayed from time ti
time as a sadistic ogre, one reason is that men and women can desire
as well as fear he wrath of the superego.  they can cling to their own
oppression .... In this context, the good news that we are loved
simply for what we are is bound to come a an intolerable front...  We
do not wnat such a light yoke.  Instead, we want to hug our chains.
   "For Christian teaching, God's love and forgiveness are ruthelessly
unforgiving powers ....  In Jesus, the law is reveled to be the law of
love and mercy, and God not some Blakean Nobodaddy but a hlepless,
vulnerable animal.  It is the flayed and bloody scapegoat of Calvary
that is now the true signifier of the Law.  Which is to say that those
who are faithful to God's law of justice and compassion will be done
away with by the state.  If you don't love, you're dead, and if you
do, they'll kill you...." (pp. 21-2)

   "The only authentic image of this violently loving God is a
tortured and executed political criminal, who dies in an act of
solidarity with what the Bible calls the anawim, meaning the destitute
and dispossessed....  The anawim, in Pauline phrase, are the shit of
the earth ... Jeus himself is consistently presented as their
representative.  His death and descent into hell is a voyage into
madness, terror, absurdity, and self-dispossession ..." (p. 23)

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300151794

Cf. ...

Preterite

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/p-q.html

   "Could he have been the fork in the road America never took, the
singular point she jumped the wrong way from? Suppose the Slothropite
heresy had had the time to consolidate and  prosper? Might there have
been fewer crimes in the name of Jesus, and more mercy in the name of
Judas Iscariot? It seems to Tyrone Slothrop that there might be a
route back ..." (GR, Pt. II, p. 556)

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3928/pns554.html

Also ...

Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation?

http://www.yale.edu/terrylecture/eagleton.html