The British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy in his verse called "God's Funeral"
And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed.
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4 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Hardy was a high school English Lit favorite of mine. His dark irony always spoke more about the reality of life for the common person than others of his time. I lament that today's high school reading list of the "classics" include Shakespeare but not much else.
Davekp
Level 8
Apr 9, 2021
1
An excellent verse, and awesome share! And this imagining of belief is the ultimate vanity. What we are capable of doing in the name of bad ideas defies evolution. Our species must rid itself of this corrupted code--our firmware must be overwritten. Hardy's verse reminds me of the lines of a somewhat lesser poet:
God said:
You are not serving me, you're serving something else
'Cause I don't need to be pleased, just get over yourself
You can't suck up, up to me, I know you all too well
But I don't dwell upon you, so get over yourself
'Cause you're not praying to me, you're praying to yourself
And you're not worshiping me, you're worshiping yourself
And you will kill in my name and heaven knows what else
When you can't prove I exist, so get over yourself
Todd Rundgren, "God Said"
p-nullifidian
Level 8
Apr 9, 2021
4
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
Stephen Hawking
barjoe
Level 9
Apr 8, 2021
4
I agree with Hawking's every word here. What others find as evidence for heaven or an afterlife is what is happening as the brain/computer fails. Suppose that a dying person says in a last breath "Oh, it is so beautiful over there." Over where? The remark comes out of indoctrination during their lifetime. It only has one redeeming quality and that is to make the dying person happy. There is no "over there."
No one has ever gone up to heaven... i mean how much plainer does it need to be?
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