THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 31 -
Roklus praises godlessness and inexistence.
1
(Roklus), "I have dealt a lot with the Jews and know their laws maybe better than some of them because it was important for me that I get to know them most closely. An old proverb says, 'Look and you shall find!' - but so far this proverb did not want to come true for me because I always found what I was not looking for. I have looked for the real and true deity and that with much diligence and with many sacrifices of funds, troubles and exertions of all kinds, and this always with a sober spirit and mind, - but I found nothing, nothing but human deception of all kinds and sorts, where there was no trace of a deity even the size of a mote. Everywhere I found at best, either the belief in patriarchal authority, but always shrouded in an entire jungle of mysticism, or worse the most frivolous superstition or at the worst the maddest belief due to politically menial coercion, under whose aegis (protection), even a spirit endowed by nature with the brightest abilities will not be able to, in the end, keep itself above the slime of the most blatant stupidity. He will become a hypocrite and a monster in his very own eyes because I don't know anything more horrid and abject for the high dignity of a man's spirit than having to accept, due to a law sanctioned by a powerful tyrant, that only the moon shines during the day and causes the day, and the sun at night; and whoever does not believe this, his eyes will be put out, nose and ears cut off, and the tongue pulled out from his mouth. This is the first degree of punishment for faithlessness.
2
If such a mutilated person still does not believe what is presented to him for believing, the nonbeliever is nailed completely naked through hands and feet on the roughest crossbar; thereupon his belly is slit open crisscross and ravenous dogs are let on it, which then tear out and eat up the nonbeliever's bowels and intestines from his still living body! Who cannot believe this, should travel to India and he will find not only this, but thousand fold worse, which the people must do to themselves. And if somebody, as a penitent, would refuse to torture himself most atrociously, woe, woe, woe to him - death is sworn to him with thousand oaths, of course, of the most gruesome and most hopeless kind! And, friend, behind it should be hidden some highly wise, extremely good, most just and almighty deity? If I became a tenfold fool, such a thing would still be impossible for me to accept!
3
Therefore stop with all the god talk! People do not ever need a God, but they need truly philanthropic philosophy and humanity founded on reasonable principles, and thereby they become completely perfect gods themselves. With pure reason and with their roused searching mind, the sharp seeing and sensitive people of the great creator nature will soon pick up many important secrets and achieve miraculous things, which none of us have ever dreamed of, and the people will live in trade and change enormously happy among themselves without the old, silly gods; physical death, behind which they will see and expect in their imagination neither an Elysium, nor less some most demented Tartar, will certainly cause them a lot less fear than now, when after discarding their body the real and most atrocious calamity expects them forever.
4
I did not exist for eternities; do I feel any sadness because I did not exist? Thus I will certainly feel even less of a bothersome sadness for this mad existence in the state of my renewed and absolute non-existence. I find absolute nonexistence to be the happiest state of a person who once existed; the feeling of existence, even in the happiest states, is on the whole worse, because with the happiest existence there is the fear of either easily falling into an unhappy existence, or of one day most obviously and most certainly losing the extremely happy state through death.
5
The perfect non-existence neither has to enjoy luck, nor to mourn its certain imminent loss beforehand. Hence, no death which nature gives will frighten a proper philosopher like me, however, a death by torture will! Is that why dear nature has not bred man from some material generated in her earth humus, so that he should allow to be tortured by his equals!? In short, I see in nature's works a lot of wisdom, although I do not find every action of raw natural force necessarily most wise and most suitable; but I will never raise a complaint about it."