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and I can find enough to fuel a debate. Please forgive me for going off on a tangent here, but it is helpful to understand this discussion in the overview.
My own interest in Freemasonry goes back to Rudyard Kipling's story--made movie--"The Man Who Would Be King"--which depicted two masons--Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, veterans of the Indian Wars, who travel to the mythical country of Kafiristan, where the natives mistake Danny's necklace--a level and a square--as a sign that their beloved "Xander" has returned, fueling the thought that Alexander the Great had been a freemason.
My interest peaked with this film, at a time when I was only 20, and I began to look for references to Freemasonry. As a female, it was difficult to learn much more than a few books that were available, except for a copy of a magazine (can't recall now which one) that gave a lot more information than even most books available at the time.
Another reference I found of great interest was a film about Sherlock Holmes called "Murder By Decree" with Christopher Plummer and James Mason, and how Holmes connected Jack the Ripper with the possibility that he was a Mason, and that the Masonic Order protected his identity from the law, and likely handed out their own justice in the end. I recommend it to anyone who loves conspiracies.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the Da Vinci Code and other books have made it all the more intriguing to take notice of secret societies, and to speculate on how much--or how little--these societies have influenced history through the years.
My friend is a conspiracy fan--whether that comes from her newfound belief in the fundie and evangelical world of "truths" I don't know, but she has her own world in which all is pretty much pre-ordained and such that no one has any real power except for those who are involved with such secret groups, and that we are but pawns in the ultimate scheme of things. I don't know how she reconciles her faith in such a world of fate and puppetry, but I find it somewhat amusing in the sense of how much paranoia she must have to possess in order to allow such revelations to rule her world. I love her dearly, but I find nothing less than utter frustration in trying to convince her otherwise.
To her, there is little difference between Freemasons, Illuminati, Gnosticism, Order of the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucians, Skull and Bones, etc. They are all out to silence those who love and preach of Jesus Christ, and all the wonders and miracles he bestowed, and of his holy bible--i.e., the New Testament. They tend to ignore large tracts of the Old Testament--too many contradictions, you know.
I've started to read Bertrand Russell's "Why I am Not a Christian" and in his introduction, there is one sentence that makes the most sense I have ever read in any discussion for or against the Christian faith: "Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Himself adequately rewarded by the final emergence of Hitler and Stalin and the H-bomb."
It becomes easy for me, a probable heretic, agnostic bordering on atheist, heathen and non-believer, to see the hundred, nay, thousands of contradictions in her organized faith that show the fragility of such faith, but to my best friend in all the world, the doubt I have only spurs her on that much more. Her fanaticism is no different that that expressed by so many in the past, where belief is part and parcel of matyrdom and the sacrifice of everything for one's beliefs.
I don't wish to shakes anyone's faith if they wholly believe in something--another very close friend was a Catholic, and she would often debate with me on such matters. She was very strong in her beliefs, and because she was still open-minded, she allowed for many interpretations on articles of faith, including such things as the role of women, and on evolution.
What I doubt, and what I feel is wrong, is the complete narrow focus of the evangelical movement, and how they are made to believe that anything outside of their own literal interpretation of the bible is heretical and therefore untrue. They accept a god who says in his "ten commandments" that they should not kill, and then they justify killing in his name. They accept the other commandments, and yet commit every single one of those crimes in his name at some time or another. They preach the bible, but hypocritically ignore anything that they don't agree with. Theirs is a world where they are the living proof of everything they supposedly hate.
Anyhow, the fact that my friend has been brainwashed into believing so many falsehoods is telling--the evangelicals and fundies would have the world believe that they are the chosen ones, because they believe in a literal translation of the bible. And all these secret societies somehow justify their rantings and ravings of paranoia out to destroy them and their righteousness. I've tried to argue with her that the bible of the evangelicals is missing quite a few sections, but she won't listen. Of course, the very recent discovery of a book by Judas is likely something they will ignore as well, and any of the other books removed by Martin Luther centuries ago are not counted, either. And while much of the New Testament was written LONG after the time of Jesus Christ, it's difficult to prove that it was written as anything OTHER than pure allegory to her and to the others who are in the cult of fundametalism.
She finds solace somehow in such limited beliefs. Her love of Christ is fueled by her devotion, and the Christ she believes in is somehow greater than the sum of all the parts she believes in. It's the equivalent to an adult fairy tale where the hero is almost always just beyond reach, somehow pure, chaste, and indestructable. Perhaps I'm not the best one to discuss it with her, because I gave up fairy tales a very long time ago.
Anyhow, any argument I can counter with facts is one I will gladly make. The paranoia she often expresses, of how secular humanism is destroying what she believes in, is best debated with logic and facts--and I am too close to her sometimes to destroy the fantasy world she has built for herself.
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