Monday, September 6, 2010

Found this 19th-century German theologian

"The pure Christian State is a State in which theological law prevails. This law attains to real power or, to be more exact, absolute power, when through its results which are identical with those of opium, it puts all parts of humanity to sleep. If some occasionally awake they carry out crimes that horrify humanity which has not yet become Christian in the full sense of the word or has already abandoned the Christian framework." — Bruno Bauer, 1841, THE CHRISTIAN STATE AND OUR TIMES

"After fulfilling its destructive urge towards everything that is noble and good on earth, it [naive Religion] sketches, in its opium intoxication, a picture of the future situation, which differs drastically from the order of this world, since everything changes and is renewed." — Bruno Bauer, 1842, THE GOOD CAUSE OF
FREEDOM AND MY OWN CASE

"Reason is the true creative power, for it produces itself as Infinite Self-consciousness, and its ongoing creation is...world history. As the only power that exists, Spirit can therefore be determined by nothing other than itself, that is, its essence is Freedom...Freedom is the infinite power of Spirit...Freedom, the only End of Spirit, is also the only End of History, and history is nothing other than Spirit's becoming *conscious* of its Freedom, or the becoming of Real, Free, Infinite Self-consciousness." — Bruno Bauer, 1842, HEGEL'S LEHRE VON DER RELIGION UND KUNST VON DEM STANDPUNKTE DES GLAUBENS AUS BEURTEILT, trans. Moggach, 2001

Play On Love--Jefferson Starship

We've heard it a thousand different times
And in a thousand different ways
Living in stories, and living in books
Or we can live, and leave all the stories behind

Exodus 15

18The LORD shall reign for ever and ever.
 19For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.
 20And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.
 21And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.