h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wouldn't it be nice if these tactics got ironic and mocking coverage in the major media?

I watched the thing on BBC about the 'Passion' as it's called, ie torture and torment. It showed in lurid totally realistic detail, the nails being hammered in, and his screams of pain. And then hanging on the cross in agony. They didn't hold back on the realism. It made me bloody cry.

I feel like I don't want to see another bloody cross as long as I live. And yet all these churches are festooned with them. People wear them round their necks. It's truly horrible.

When I was unwell once I couldn't look at crosses because it literally hurt my eyes. I'm pleased actually because what the cross really represents is utter horror.

It's not like the cross represents the resurrection. That happened after he was cut down from the cross. The resurrection has *nothing* to do with the cross. The cross has everything to do with torture. So why do Christians have this obsession with the cross?

The cross represents utter torture and pain. Having nails smashed through your flesh, and then hanging by those nails.

I'm pleased it made me cry and feel sick to my stomach. Christians displaying crosses speaks of horrifying sadism pure and simple. They should be honest about that.

I defy anyone to watch the scene where the first nail is hammered through his arm, and he screams in agony, not to feel completely awful, and not ever, ever want to wear a cross round their neck.

It makes me feel very angry. And I'm pleased; I reckon that's a very healthy reaction to utter horror.

Disgusting, appalling, revolting etc etc

"Christians around the world marked Good Friday with celebrations and rituals, from the practice of nailing devotees to crosses in the Philippines to pilgrimages to Jerusalem's Old City.

About 30 men re-enacted Jesus Christ's suffering on Friday by having themselves nailed to crosses in a rite frowned upon by church leaders in Asia's largest predominantly Roman Catholic nation. "

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/03/21/good-friday.html

Sickos, the lot of 'em

I've never really taken on board before the actual real horror of the crucifixion before, in quite the same way. Somehow all the other films and stuff you learn in school etc glosses over the true horror.

I've always quite liked Good friday for its symbolism of sadness and sorrow, and the idea. But seeing that programme has really hit home to me how awful the reality of cricifixion is. And to think Catholics even go so far as to having the figure of christ on the cross. I suppose though in some ways, that's more honest.

That programme has really upset me. I just couldn't stop crying, and the idea of the cross just horrifies me..

I still think it's good to have a day where sadness and sorrow is celebrated instead of all this constant happy clappy stuff in our society.

But taking on board the real literal horror of the crucifixion is something else......

'But taking on board the real literal horror of the crucifixion is something else'


taking on board the real literal horror of the fact that *The* Crucifixion was just one of many, many, countless, many crucifixions of nameless people through the ages is something else again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bffyfVadZ14

>>I've never really taken on board before the actual real horror of the crucifixion..

..taking on board the real literal horror of the crucifixion..<<

Yeah, it really hits the old nail on the head, and pounds it right in, doesn't it?



Can't agree with you about wallowing in sadness and sorrow being a healthy thing, although the ancient Greeks seemed to believe in purgation and catharsis being beneficial. Nor do I think happy clappy hebephrenia is any better. Both are symptomatic of derangement, imo.

Y'see, I was a Roman Catholic. I attended Catholic schools, pretty much steadily until graduation. I am very familiar with the whole sin/guilt/penance/redemption/forgiveness etc etc schtick. It is all crap.

I didn't say anything about 'wallowing' or >sin/guilt/penance/redemption/forgiveness etc <

I'm not a christian, so I in no way can relate to all that rigmarole. I'm meaning more of sadness and introspection about things. Awareness that 'bereavement' and 'loss' is also part of our lives, that so often gets denied in our culture. That side of life is so denied by our constant happy happy, happy; buy, buy, buy; celebrity celebrity celebrity; blah, blah, blah. That's why I loathe the whole christmas thing. Though the actual geting together with people you like and giving them presents and watching some good films, is fine.

And I certainly won't be cheering on Easter Sunday, because for me that denies all the feeling associated with Good Friday. As far as I'm concerned, he, along with many others, as caesar, points out, that got tortured horribly to death, and it must have been a long drawn kind of death in absolute agony, stayed dead. And that's an end to it. That's why it reminds me of all the 'loss' of various kinds in my life, and having to accept that and come to terms as best one can.

Though I'm stupidly prone to guilt sometimes, I like to think that's basically a good thing, because it's indicative of a 'conscience', and feeling bad about hurting someone.

I didn't have a Catholic upbringing, though I had plenty of scripture and indoctrination from a young age. From what I understand Catholicism is particularly adept at making people unhealthily guilty.

I applaud your empathy.Might I suggest The Life of Brian as better choice for movie viewing at this season.

You may suggest it all you want. But I'm not interested.

At any other time than now I would be interested. Just not now, thanks very much.

I saw the crucifixtion scene in 'the passion' (was channel flitting) and wasn't at all moved by it*.

I think I was just fixating on why I recognised Mary - and then I twigged - it was the mum from Shaun of the Dead who used to do all those gravy adverts!

*excepting I've been thinking quiet a bit recently about the various gospels and how they don't agree on details** - and why I really should read them to compare. And when we got to the part where the two either side of Jesus start arguing, I was wondering which gospel they were taking this from.

**An addendum to the above thought - I was in a church service the other day as part of a school visit for Easter and the minister said he was going to address the children about good Friday and when Jesus died and rose again; so I asked him: 'which of the books he was going to use' and he said he was just going to sort of make it up and pick from them. Which just got me thinking about this again. If he wasn't going to faithfully adhere to the text it was no wonder that people have ideas about what happens in the story that run together from different versions, since I think and (will if I get round to reading the bible) check that the bickering between the two people either side of Jesus only occurs in one of the gospels.

Yeah I agree Clive, I wasn't moved by it as such. It was really just the moment when the first nail was hammered through his arm, and the close ups of hanging from the cross. I think that's probably more of a personal thing for me, because I've never really taken on board that actual act of hammering nails through flesh and then someone hanging buy these until they finally die.

Most of the programme irritated me. Jesus was ridiculously passive and abject when he was dragging the cross up to Golgotha. And generally I was incredibly irritated how much he took what was being done to him, 'lying down' as it were. I'd have been fighting for all I'm worth rather than going like a stupid lamb to the slaughter.

Yeah for me it was just that close up of hammering the nail, and him screaming. And the hanging by the nails on the cross.



It would be good if some proper Christian were to come here and explain why it is exactly that Christians worship this vile instrument of torture. And I say it has nothing to do with the resurrection idea. It seems to me they worship the actual horror and pain of death, rather than the idea of the resurrection.

Yeah it was mostly like watching a horror film at the end. I don't know why I cried; I don't normally when watching horror films. Maybe it was the sudden overwhelming realisation of the mode of killing, and the unblievable pain it would cause.

Yeah I can see crucifixion was chosen as Jesus' mode of death by his father. Anything less awful, just wouldn't cut it for millenia of the faithful. Also the *visual* aspect of death. Him lying in a corner having been poisoned, would be crap at the visuals for the uneducated masses. The father clearly knew a thing or two about maximising the dramatic effect.

<> (Taliesin)

Me too, except for attending catholic schools. Though my parents had been considering that option.

I went through first communion and confirmation ...

And yeah, I think it's all crap too.


az

I've spoken on here before about a personal epiphany involving realising ghosts not existing and how this was a stepping stone towards awakening my atheism; well another one since we are discussing upbringings occurred when I was at secondary school and a friend invited me to her church and it was a fairly uneventful (I think even evangelical) performance, up to and until they produced the communion wafers and wine and duly it was passed round and I nibbled on a biscuit and sipped some grape juice or variant thereupon and that was that.

Later that day, I mentioned this to my father (how I'd basically felt a bit uncomfortable being confronted with a ritual I was unfamiliar with having been attending highly ascetic Protestant URC churches at the insistence of my mum - so a literal first communion) and - he being a lapsed theist of catholic extraction - nevertheless expressed a qualified outrage amounting to a sort of surprised angst that I "shouldn't have done that."
What sticks in my mind is the pejorative that I'd somehow erred without any for-knowledge of what the 'right' thing to do was or even that it was a matter of right and wrong in the first place. I suppose this merely confirms how sunk I am in moral depravity.

It struck me then I think, as well as many times since; and yet again on that class trip, just how utterly devoid of meaning the whole rigmarole it is to me.

On a related point: on occasion, I scroll through The God channels on TV just for a reminder of the alternative point of view - and came across one chap today espousing to his audience just how not to take the lord's name in vain and this included never ever ever attending church with a doubt or non-belief in their heart. It was a later conviction of mine than the one I describe above, that I could not in good conscience be in church to engage in inauthentic activities like praying or singing hymns which from my point of view would be offensive enough, but I also considered speculatively that if their was a god it would be doubly offensive to them to have my inauthentic worship. Satisfied I was doing everyone involved a favour, I resolved to stop being religious.

To this day, when during our daily act or worship in schools (and the singing of hymns proclaiming variously how god controls the weather/rivers/harvests/ mountains etc - which really aggravates the geologist in me and is yet another reason why I'm sure most people grow up with very confused ideas about life in general) I'm sat with my arms folded, head unbowed and eyes firmly open and lips closed. For I still think I am not compelled to speak into empty rooms about the nature of the weather. To join in with such a hollow act I feel would demean me and equally the act in which I would be taking part.

The good news I suppose is that in halls full of children I can see the ones looking back at me which most people would miss because they staring at their feet murmuring away quietly to themselves.

So there are some things to be hopeful for.

...and on the subject of the gospels I mentioed earlier can I recommend this lecture given Bart Ehrman - a biblical scholar who gives a rather amusing assessment of why reading scripture is a kind of an exercise in futility and therefore our source of descriptions about such things as the crucifixion (there - amended the topic drift! ) and other various miracles (Hume's argument notwithstanding) are fundamentally prone to error.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=397006836098752165&hl=en-GB

Enjoy.

<< People wear them round their necks. It's truly horrible.>>

I am one of these people - to me, it's a sign of my allegiance... and a memorial... It's an 'empty cross', as a NZ evangelist once put it, and so to me it symbolises resurrection and triumph.

In the 1980s, a German friend of mine who'd visited Jerusalem sent me a lovely piece of jewellery, a cross and Star of David combination, I wore that for years, at least as much because of the friend who'd sent it me, as for any other reason.

To we Christians, it can get not exactly blase at times, but too well-known. Too familiar. It's good to be reminded what it was like.

Vicky

Also, Effers, are you familiar with what Voltaire said? I can't remember the exact words, but it was something about "get that gibbet out of my sight" when someone had erected a cross on or near his estate.

Vicky