Thoughts on Ted Jesus Christ God the Great I Am

Dear Internet Diary,

I don't know whether I am dealing with one spammer or another, but I thought I'd post Kiwi's response to reading our webpage on Ted Jesus Christ God. Unfortunatley, his site was removed for one iniquity or another, so you can't actually see it. But you can look at what we wrote about it--for now.

More thoughts on Ted:

I'd never heard of the guy until I read the above rant but having posted my response to that, I did have a pang of guilt that I was being unfair to him and looked at Alleee and Franc's Insolitology page on him.

Now, maybe there's a whole lot more that I don't know but on the basis of what I found there I'd have to say "Oh come on guys, give him a break." Sure it's incoherent but we can't all be linguistic rocket- scientists. Maybe he just had a lousy, inadequate education. Even if that was his fault for skipping too much school, at that age can it really be said that he ought to have known better? Maybe he just got away with what most of us wanted to do but were too scared of the authorities to try.

So he hates the Pope and priests. So do I in a polite, restrained, cerebral kind of way that allows them all sorts of "good intentions" and "ends justify means" kinds of excuses and rationalizations. I could never use language like that because I like to think I can use words like a rapier rather than a bludgeon but I'm probably fooling myself that I can achieve even a pin-prick with them. It's harder to dodge a bludgeon. The sex thing? Hey I've felt that way about a girl or two, 'specially when I was younger, but was and am far too repressed and sex-shy to tell them about it, especially as I'm damn sure I would only have scored 3/10 on their cards. Don't think I've ever had sex like that, though. If Ted has, I'm green with envy and I'm afraid I'd probably be after it again like a dog after a bitch in heat, too. Maybe overall it's best that I didn't ever get it like that - or at least that it didn't seem like that because I had too much else to think about even at such exquisite moments.

So he thinks he's Jesus Christ/God. If he can't tell the difference between JC and God neither can most Christians who are forced to grapple with the received wisdom that JC was Father, Son AND Holy Ghost - presumably that same Holy Ghost who impregnated his mother so that he could be born immaculately in a kind of ultimate incest. If Ted's mind becomes unhinged grappling with that kind of thing I think it only proves he's actually bothered to think about it more deeply than your average Christian.

As for taking the name, Hell, thousands of Latin mamas call their sons Jesus every year. Do they think their son is the real thing? To take a name is to take a pre-packaged identity and I'd rather take a lift with someone who's borrowed JC's name to that of Jack the Ripper.

Ted even knows he's not the real thing. He can't walk on water. He knows that now. How many of us know that we can't walk on water? Did we ever try? No. We were told we couldn't and said, "OK. We can't." Yet don't we atheists pride ourselves on thinking for ourselves?

Are we not all Gods in our own private Universes? Don't we play "Doom", "Warcraft" and "Sim-City" - and maybe publish web-pages about ourselves and maintain blogs - so that we can be even more Godlike? Ted chooses to make his private Universe public warts and all which is not the kind of thing our Anglo-Saxon sensibilities encourage but, hey, that's our problem.

Sorting through the incoherence and grammatical shortcomings of his text - and I've seen worse - are his ideas really so mad? So the end of the world is nacht. Some eminent scientists are a saying much the same thing in erudite papers with the words 'global warming' somewhere in the title. Avoid genetically engineered foods? New Zealand has a political party in Parliament dedicated to that. Avoid animal-based foods? A respectable position. Go back to the land and become responsible for yourself? Damn it, that's what I'm trying to do.

Flee the US as it's governed by dishonest lunatics? Sounds reasonable to me. I even know several people who've done that very thing!

Women shouldn't ride horses? My wife rides horses. The single most erotic sight I have ever had in my life was of a pretty girl in a tiny bikini riding a magnificent white horse. Would anyone have heard of Lady Godiva had she passed through the streets of Coventry in foot? Horse riding is a female thing, more females do it 'for pleasure' than men I'm sure. Do they get orgasms doing it? I've no idea. Wonder if there's ever been a survey done. The only woman I feel I can ask about it says she never has but supposes it is possible and admits there is a certain eroticism to riding a horse. 'Eroticism' is just a posh word we intellectuals like to use instead of 'feel horny' so I don't think Ted is barking up the totally wrong tree. Personally it wouldn't bother me if every woman keeps her horse as a masturbation aid (tho' it's an expensive one!) but Ted thinks otherwise I must defend his right to think it and if he takes the view that if women didn't have horses they'd have to make more use of us blokes I'm not even sure I'd disagree!!

Avoid Christmas trees and stage-plays? Didn't the Pilgrim Fathers say the same thing?

Don't play chess. To say of someone that they treat life as a chess game is generally regarded as uncomplimentary, I think. Chess is combative 'to the death', manipulative and involves the coldly-calculated 'sacrifice' of one's own pieces either to further one's own aims or defend one's- self. Good generals are usually good chess-players, and usually good butchers of men. Learning to play chess hones ways of thinking that are basically anti-social. Personally, chess doesn't bother me but boxing does and I think it should be banned tho' I'm not doing anything about it, which denies me the moral high ground here.

"Avoid like the plague modern medicine..." (Actually - and probably accidentally - there is extraordinarily subtle imagery here.) And there is a qualification - "that is into drugs and pharmaceuticals..." &tc. Giving him the benefit of the doubt he's not saying don't go to your doctor. Just don't let them fill you up with the latest and greatest drug from the Corporates, particularly when it's a Canute-like attempt to stave off the inevitable. According to an article in a recent and respected local magazine here (the 'Listener') Pfizer, which made a mint from Viagra, has just identified a previously unknown medical condition called FSD (female sexual dysfunction), which results in women preferring to curl up with a good book rather than responding with excitement to their paunchy middle-aged partner's Viagra-induced erection! Don't worry guys, there's now a pill they can take for it!

Likewise I've suffered a life-time of depression and debilitation which several reputable authors have suggested resulted from significant amounts of mercury having been shoved into my mouth by dentists when I was a child and trusted they knew what they were doing.

While people died at 40 in the Stone-Age and in the European Middle-Ages, there is evidence that in unstressed, pleasant, easy places to live like the Nile Valley, the fertile crescent, Ethiopia, sub-tropical India, 'primitive' peoples lived to our 80+ and beyond reasonably easily. So if Ted's saying that if you find a pleasant spot to live, eat wholesome foods, don't get stressed by the 'phone, keep yourself busy without overdoing it, have great sex and don't envy your neighbour's knight on q4 you can live to a ripe old age without enriching Pfizer's shareholders I'd say he's probably right.

Don't have an organ transplant to save your life. OK, that's his view and he's entitled to it. If the life you get as a result isn't worth living I'd probably agree.

Didn't get a chance to see what Ted's fantasy-life looks like as your ISP blocked it! (look up "Ted Jesus Christ God" on Google Image Search. You'll see dozens of pictures of blonde beauties and some pics of him. Small, but still there.--Alleee)

So OK, he's ignorant, illogical, barely literate, incoherent, frustrated, and passionate. I'm probably his complete opposite in all of these things. Probably much of what he is, is not his fault. Everything I am is my fault. Which of us is the better person?

Agreed this kind of thing frightens the horses and maybe we ought to have someone walking in front of it with a red flag but is not the only question that really matters, 'Is he dangerous, to others or himself.'?

If he's dangerous to others - if he's going to step over the line from argument to force - he needs to be taken in hand as his rights to do and think what he wants stop at that line. If he's a danger to himself I personally believe he has the right to do whatever harm he wants to his own body, and own life, as long as he is in possession of all the facts. What he does with those facts is up to him. I believe people should be saved from ignorance. I don't believe they should be saved from themselves.

I can well understand he could be a pain in the a***. Trouble is, other's people's freedoms being a pain in your a*** is the price you pay for freedom.

Cheers,

Kiwi