Wednesday, December 31, 2008
thought of the day.170
Truth is an idea about reality and is therefore dependent on and limited by mind; whereas reality exists independently of and uncompromised by mind.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
thought of the day.169
Jesus lied. In fact, he told demonstrable lies time and time again. And he didn’t tell little white lies but big black lies that cast dark shadows over countless people’s lives whose unanswered prayers leave them to wonder if perhaps they are being punished for a sin, are not righteous enough, or lack enough faith adding the burden of unwarranted guilt and fear to their suffering. And not only is the Jesus character an habitual liar, his statements are irresponsible and dangerous. What if all Christians took their prayers to Jesus instead of their children to the doctor? Imagine if all Christians actually believed what Jesus said about handling snakes and drinking poison. Sadly, thousands of people have and have suffered countless bites, deformities and death due directly to his ridiculous lies. Glass of poison anyone?
Mt 7:7-8, 18:19, 21:21-2, Mk 11:24, 16:18, Lk 10:19,11:9-13, Jn 14:13-14, 15:7, 15:16, 16:23-24...
Mt 7:7-8, 18:19, 21:21-2, Mk 11:24, 16:18, Lk 10:19,11:9-13, Jn 14:13-14, 15:7, 15:16, 16:23-24...
Monday, December 29, 2008
thought of the day.168
The Bible and Slavery
Much in the Bible is unclear and contradictory. However, God’s attitude about humans owning other humans as work animals is not one of them. God regulated slavery, commanded it, condoned it and never condemned it. He told his people they could buy and sell foreign men, women and children as slaves. He said a father could sell his own daughters into lifelong slavery. He had his people attack city after city and enslave those not slaughtered. He said a slave owner could beat his slave to death with a rod without punishment as long as the slave suffered a day or two before dying.
Jesus spoke often of masters and their slaves — of slaves being “heavily whipped”, “beaten”, “killed”, “stoned” and “cut into pieces” but not once does Jesus suggest it’s immoral to sell your daughters or beat your slaves to death. Never does he encourage others to speak out against the evil of slavery. Never does he encourage the oppressed to work for freedom and justice. Neither do his followers. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Peter and Paul instruct slaves to obey and fear their masters, even the cruel and unjust. And Jesus speaks of people owning slaves until the end of time.
Professor Morton Smith notes that "With all these clear passages, there is no reasonable doubt that the New Testament, like the Old, not only tolerated chattel slavery but helped to perpetuate it by making the slaves' obedience to their masters a religious duty. This biblical morality was one of the great handicaps that the emancipation movement in the United States had to overcome. The opponents of abolition had clear biblical evidence on their side...as one said in 1857:"Slavery is of God". (What the Bible Says 1989 p145/146).
Historian Larry Hise notes in his book “Pro-Slavery” that ministers “wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America” listing 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that it was God’s will for white people to own black people.
In “The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century”, forrest G. Woods writes, “In the year before the schism, 25,000 communicants owned 208,000 slaves—over 9 percent of the total slave population—and 1,200 Methodist clergymen were themselves slaveholders. If anyone needed a barometer to measure the southern Methodist’s official commitment to bondage he had only to consider the fact that every minister elevated to the rank of bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, between 1846 and the Civil War was a slaveholder.
Charles Bradlaugh said, “...The heretic Cordorcet pleaded powerfully for freedom whilst Christian France was still slave-holding. For many centuries Christian Spain and Christian Portugal held slaves....It was a Christian King...and a Christian friar who founded in Spanish America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. For some 1800 years Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and Godly Liverpool less than 100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. During the ninth century Greek Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome, and the profit went to the Church.”
Professor Carl Lofmark in his book “What is the Bible?” writes: “Christians accepted slavery....the Church itself soon became the biggest slave-owner in the Roman Empire. Slavery was approved of by the Church’s teachers, such as St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and many others....The slave trade flourished with the approval of the Church .... Slaves have been bought and sold by the popes and they continued to keep slaves until the late 18th century. Opponents of slavery including Wilberforce and Paine.... were savagely attacked by the churches for presuming to know better than the Bible, and the anti-slavery attitude of the Quakers made them unpopular with orthodox Christians.…”
And mark Twain writes, “In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. … There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; [the Church] was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do.…
“Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church's consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England's interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter -- John Hawkins, of still revered memory -- made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him -- a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John's work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.…
“Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one -- the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession -- at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.”
Much in the Bible is unclear and contradictory. However, God’s attitude about humans owning other humans as work animals is not one of them. God regulated slavery, commanded it, condoned it and never condemned it. He told his people they could buy and sell foreign men, women and children as slaves. He said a father could sell his own daughters into lifelong slavery. He had his people attack city after city and enslave those not slaughtered. He said a slave owner could beat his slave to death with a rod without punishment as long as the slave suffered a day or two before dying.
Jesus spoke often of masters and their slaves — of slaves being “heavily whipped”, “beaten”, “killed”, “stoned” and “cut into pieces” but not once does Jesus suggest it’s immoral to sell your daughters or beat your slaves to death. Never does he encourage others to speak out against the evil of slavery. Never does he encourage the oppressed to work for freedom and justice. Neither do his followers. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Peter and Paul instruct slaves to obey and fear their masters, even the cruel and unjust. And Jesus speaks of people owning slaves until the end of time.
Professor Morton Smith notes that "With all these clear passages, there is no reasonable doubt that the New Testament, like the Old, not only tolerated chattel slavery but helped to perpetuate it by making the slaves' obedience to their masters a religious duty. This biblical morality was one of the great handicaps that the emancipation movement in the United States had to overcome. The opponents of abolition had clear biblical evidence on their side...as one said in 1857:"Slavery is of God". (What the Bible Says 1989 p145/146).
Historian Larry Hise notes in his book “Pro-Slavery” that ministers “wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America” listing 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that it was God’s will for white people to own black people.
In “The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century”, forrest G. Woods writes, “In the year before the schism, 25,000 communicants owned 208,000 slaves—over 9 percent of the total slave population—and 1,200 Methodist clergymen were themselves slaveholders. If anyone needed a barometer to measure the southern Methodist’s official commitment to bondage he had only to consider the fact that every minister elevated to the rank of bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, between 1846 and the Civil War was a slaveholder.
Charles Bradlaugh said, “...The heretic Cordorcet pleaded powerfully for freedom whilst Christian France was still slave-holding. For many centuries Christian Spain and Christian Portugal held slaves....It was a Christian King...and a Christian friar who founded in Spanish America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. For some 1800 years Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and Godly Liverpool less than 100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. During the ninth century Greek Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome, and the profit went to the Church.”
Professor Carl Lofmark in his book “What is the Bible?” writes: “Christians accepted slavery....the Church itself soon became the biggest slave-owner in the Roman Empire. Slavery was approved of by the Church’s teachers, such as St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and many others....The slave trade flourished with the approval of the Church .... Slaves have been bought and sold by the popes and they continued to keep slaves until the late 18th century. Opponents of slavery including Wilberforce and Paine.... were savagely attacked by the churches for presuming to know better than the Bible, and the anti-slavery attitude of the Quakers made them unpopular with orthodox Christians.…”
And mark Twain writes, “In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. … There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; [the Church] was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do.…
“Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church's consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England's interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter -- John Hawkins, of still revered memory -- made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him -- a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John's work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.…
“Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one -- the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession -- at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.”
Sunday, December 28, 2008
thought of the day.167
Test of Faith.Ezekiel
God said he would make parents eat
A. stale bread
B. their children
God punished people by letting them sacrifice their
A. favorite goats
B. first-born sons
God said he would send
A. angels to protect children
B. armies to burn children alive
Ezekiel 5:9-10, 20:25-26, 23:25
God said he would make parents eat
A. stale bread
B. their children
God punished people by letting them sacrifice their
A. favorite goats
B. first-born sons
God said he would send
A. angels to protect children
B. armies to burn children alive
Ezekiel 5:9-10, 20:25-26, 23:25
Saturday, December 27, 2008
thought of the day.166
Christmas is merrier without Christ. An atheist can enjoy the flavor of the season without the fat—no virgin-birth hogwash to swallow, no guilt for being a dirty sinner, no hell to fear.
Friday, December 26, 2008
thought of the day.165
Bertrand Russell said, “My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” I think it more accurate to say that fear is the disease, religion the symptom. Only when the disease is cured will the symptoms cease.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
thought of the day.164
Reasons for the Season
Long before Jesus was said to be born, the ancient Babylonians celebrated the birth of the sun god, Horus, with eating, drinking and the giving of gifts on Dec. 25th.
In ancient Rome, the holiday season was called the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. Dec. 25th was the holiest day of the year as they celebrated the birth of the god Mithra, who, like Jesus, was visited by shepherds and Magi. The Theodosian decree of 391 established Christianity as the official state religion and banned and persecuted all others. To ease the pagan’s transition to the Christian belief system it was decided that Jesus, like Horus, Mithra and numerous other gods, was born on Dec. 25th as well.
Our Christian traditions, like Christianity itself, evolved from pagan traditions. In Rome, costumed singers and dancers called Mummers went from house to house entertaining their neighbors giving rise to the tradition of Christmas caroling. Northern Europeans gave us the Yule log (burnt in honor of their Sun god); Hollyberries (thought to be a food of the gods); kissing under the mistletoe (begun as a fertility ritual) and Christmas trees (evergreens brought into homes as symbols of life).
No matter which god you may be partial to, Dec. 25th is a great day to celebrate the light’s victory over darkness, the warmth of fireplaces, family and friends and the promise of a brand new year! For those things are the real reasons for the season.
Long before Jesus was said to be born, the ancient Babylonians celebrated the birth of the sun god, Horus, with eating, drinking and the giving of gifts on Dec. 25th.
In ancient Rome, the holiday season was called the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. Dec. 25th was the holiest day of the year as they celebrated the birth of the god Mithra, who, like Jesus, was visited by shepherds and Magi. The Theodosian decree of 391 established Christianity as the official state religion and banned and persecuted all others. To ease the pagan’s transition to the Christian belief system it was decided that Jesus, like Horus, Mithra and numerous other gods, was born on Dec. 25th as well.
Our Christian traditions, like Christianity itself, evolved from pagan traditions. In Rome, costumed singers and dancers called Mummers went from house to house entertaining their neighbors giving rise to the tradition of Christmas caroling. Northern Europeans gave us the Yule log (burnt in honor of their Sun god); Hollyberries (thought to be a food of the gods); kissing under the mistletoe (begun as a fertility ritual) and Christmas trees (evergreens brought into homes as symbols of life).
No matter which god you may be partial to, Dec. 25th is a great day to celebrate the light’s victory over darkness, the warmth of fireplaces, family and friends and the promise of a brand new year! For those things are the real reasons for the season.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
thought of the day.163
Religious leaders empower themselves by proclaiming that “obedience” to God is the greatest good. In contrast, suggesting that “happiness” is the greatest good empowers others.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
thought of the day.162
Truth, justice, mercy, freedom, empathy, peace, and joy are all fine things on their own but sublime when melded as love.
Evangelical pastor, Rick Warren who was recently selected to pray at the Obama inauguration has been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage. His selection set off a firestorm of protests to which he responded saying he “loved” gays. But to truly love someone is to want the very best for them, to have empathy for them, to want them to be justly treated, to be free to be themselves, to find peace and joy. My guess is Rick Warren might want the best for people—gays included—but his “holy” book has twisted his notion of love.
Evangelical pastor, Rick Warren who was recently selected to pray at the Obama inauguration has been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage. His selection set off a firestorm of protests to which he responded saying he “loved” gays. But to truly love someone is to want the very best for them, to have empathy for them, to want them to be justly treated, to be free to be themselves, to find peace and joy. My guess is Rick Warren might want the best for people—gays included—but his “holy” book has twisted his notion of love.
Monday, December 22, 2008
thought of the day.161
The Rev’s Top 10 Christmas Movies
1. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
2. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
3. Christmas Vacation (1989)
4. Trading Places (1983)
5. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
(Thanksgiving is close enough)
6. Bad Santa (2003)
7. Elf (2003)
8. A Christmas Story (1983)
9. Prancer (1989)
10. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
1. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
2. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
3. Christmas Vacation (1989)
4. Trading Places (1983)
5. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
(Thanksgiving is close enough)
6. Bad Santa (2003)
7. Elf (2003)
8. A Christmas Story (1983)
9. Prancer (1989)
10. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
Sunday, December 21, 2008
thought of the day.160
Vegetarian Sharks and the Absurdity of a Deathless Creation
To believe that God’s creation was originally “perfect” and that death only entered the world after the disobedience of Adam and Eve one must then presume God gave the shark its teeth to slice into seaweed not fish, gave the spider its web to catch sunlight not flies and gave the cheetah its speed to chase the wind not antelopes.
According to Genesis, God’s command was for mankind to multiply and fill the earth—an easy task without death to curb the population. Of course if there was no death, birds would darken the sky, fish overflow the seas and animals would eventually be stacked to the moon.
All absolutely absurd. Yet this is what Christian theology is based on. If there was no perfect world to begin with then there could be no “Fall” and if no Fall there is no reason for hell and if no hell there is no need of a saviour to save us from it. And the Christian house of cards collapses.
To believe that God’s creation was originally “perfect” and that death only entered the world after the disobedience of Adam and Eve one must then presume God gave the shark its teeth to slice into seaweed not fish, gave the spider its web to catch sunlight not flies and gave the cheetah its speed to chase the wind not antelopes.
According to Genesis, God’s command was for mankind to multiply and fill the earth—an easy task without death to curb the population. Of course if there was no death, birds would darken the sky, fish overflow the seas and animals would eventually be stacked to the moon.
All absolutely absurd. Yet this is what Christian theology is based on. If there was no perfect world to begin with then there could be no “Fall” and if no Fall there is no reason for hell and if no hell there is no need of a saviour to save us from it. And the Christian house of cards collapses.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
thought of the day.159
“I believe in honesty. I believe that a Church has no right to teach what it does not know. I believe that a clean life and a tender heart are worth more to this world than all the faith and all the gods of Time. I believe that this world needs all our best efforts and earnest endeavors twenty-four hours every day....I believe that fear of a god cripples men’s intellects more than any other influence. I believe that Humanity needs and should have all our time, efforts, love, worship, and tenderness. I believe that one world is all we can deal with at a time. I believe that, if there is a future life, the best possible preparation for it is to do the very best we can here and now. I believe that love for our fellow-men is infinitely nobler, better, and more necessary than love for God. I believe that men, women, and children need our best thoughts, our tenderest consideration, and our earnest sympathy.…I believe that it is better to build one happy home here than to invest in a thousand churches which deal with a hereafter.”
~ Helen H. Gardner, Men, Women, And Gods, 1885
~ Helen H. Gardner, Men, Women, And Gods, 1885
Friday, December 19, 2008
thought of the day.158
Christian apologist: mental gymnast who flips and turns and twists the truth for the glory of God.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
thought of the day.157
Rather than filling our children’s heads with thoughts of ghosts, gods and goblins, it seems the world would be a far better place if we simply taught them to question everything, cause no needless suffering, and be kind.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
thought of the day.156
3 obstacles to truth
1. Arrogance. We often believe we already possess the truth.
2. Narcissism. We’re often more concerned with being heard than hearing.
3. Fear. Intellectual comfort—not truth—is too often our goal.
1. Arrogance. We often believe we already possess the truth.
2. Narcissism. We’re often more concerned with being heard than hearing.
3. Fear. Intellectual comfort—not truth—is too often our goal.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
thought of the day.155
test of faith. 2 Kings
God sent bears to
A. lay down in the manger
B. tear children to pieces
God sent an angel upon 185,000 soldiers to
A. instill peace in their hearts
B. kill them all
Jesus’ own ancestor, Manasseh,
A. spread the good news about Christ
B. sacrificed his son as a burnt offering
2 Kings 2:24, 19:35, 21:6
God sent bears to
A. lay down in the manger
B. tear children to pieces
God sent an angel upon 185,000 soldiers to
A. instill peace in their hearts
B. kill them all
Jesus’ own ancestor, Manasseh,
A. spread the good news about Christ
B. sacrificed his son as a burnt offering
2 Kings 2:24, 19:35, 21:6
Saturday, December 13, 2008
thought of the day.154
Jesus says that as inherently “bad” as human fathers are, they would not give their children a snake when they ask for a fish and yet snakes—deadly poisonous snakes— are exactly what Jesus’ “Father in Heaven” gave his children when they cried out in hunger. Mt 7:7-11, Nu 21:4-6
Friday, December 12, 2008
thought of the day.153
The Wisdom of Famous Christians
“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot...I think the world is much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”
~Mother Teresa
“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot...I think the world is much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”
~Mother Teresa
Thursday, December 11, 2008
thought of the day.152
Jesus starved people to the point of eating their own babies, afterbirth and all. He sent armies to kill, rape, and enslave his own chosen ones. He blessed those that slaughtered their friends and family. He rained fire and brimstone upon the young and the old. He sent poisonous snakes to bite them and wild animals to devour them. Jesus made laws that demanded all the men of a city stone brides on their wedding night who couldn’t prove their virginity. He permitted a father to sell his daughters into lifelong slavery. He commanded the genocide of entire nations and drowned every child in the world. If Jesus is understood to be God then Jesus committed these atrocities and if we define this God as “Good” is there any wonder why humans can justify their atrocities as being “God’s will”?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
thought of the day.151
Hitler was a saint and Auschwitz a playground compared to Jesus and his fiery furnace.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
thought of the day.150
"At this time of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but a myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."
~ Freedom from Religion Foundation
~ Freedom from Religion Foundation
Sunday, December 7, 2008
thought of the day.149
Test of Faith.Revelation
Jesus promised to throw Jezebel
A. a party
B. on a bed and make her suffer terribly
Jesus’ angels will
A. bless all of mankind
B. kill a third of mankind
Jesus will rule the world with
A. love and wisdom
B. an iron rod
Rev 2:22-23, 9:15, 19:12-16
Jesus promised to throw Jezebel
A. a party
B. on a bed and make her suffer terribly
Jesus’ angels will
A. bless all of mankind
B. kill a third of mankind
Jesus will rule the world with
A. love and wisdom
B. an iron rod
Rev 2:22-23, 9:15, 19:12-16
Thursday, December 4, 2008
thought of the day.148
The Angel Myth
Most people think of angels as being, well, angelic. But the bible shows them to be winged killing machines that make the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz seem down right cuddly. Their body count includes untold numbers of first-born males in Egypt, 185,000 soldiers, 70,000 Israelites and Revelation tells us that four especially blood-thirsty angels of the Lord will slaughter a third of mankind upon Jesus’ return. And of course Jesus warmed all our hearts by promising that his angels would cast our unbelieving friends and family into a fiery furnace to roast forever.
In the movie, The Prophecy, Thomas Daggett asks, “Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?”
Most people think of angels as being, well, angelic. But the bible shows them to be winged killing machines that make the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz seem down right cuddly. Their body count includes untold numbers of first-born males in Egypt, 185,000 soldiers, 70,000 Israelites and Revelation tells us that four especially blood-thirsty angels of the Lord will slaughter a third of mankind upon Jesus’ return. And of course Jesus warmed all our hearts by promising that his angels would cast our unbelieving friends and family into a fiery furnace to roast forever.
In the movie, The Prophecy, Thomas Daggett asks, “Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?”
thought of the day.147
Jesus, Peter and the Legacy of Battering
If we are to believe the bible, Peter was one of a select few specially chosen by Jesus to accompany him throughout his ministry. One would think he would have been profoundly enlightened by such an experience. That he would have become a defender of justice, a friend of the downtrodden, a light in the darkness. Instead he was the darkness.
Peter used the idea of God to justify oppression. According to him, the wife suffering beneath the blows of a cruel husband or the slave suffering beneath the blows of a cruel master shouldn’t try to change their situation but accept it. Peter says God is in fact pleased when people endure the pain of undeserved beatings. Their suffering is actually God’s plan for them. (1 P 2:19-20) (1 P 4:19) He said wives make themselves beautiful by submitting themselves to their husbands like Sarah did by obeying her husband and calling him master. (1 P 3:5-6) Peter had such low regard for females he described Lot (who offered his two virgin daughters to an angry mob of sexually depraved men to do with as they pleased (Gn 19:6-8)) as a “good” man. (2 P 2:7-8)
An example of how these toxic texts poison life is seen here in Protestant reformer, John Calvin’s response to a battered woman pleading for help:
“We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity, and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beat her.…We exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has been seen fit to place upon her; and meanwhile not to deviate from the duty which she has before God to please her husband, but to be faithful whatever happens.”
If we are to believe the bible, Peter was one of a select few specially chosen by Jesus to accompany him throughout his ministry. One would think he would have been profoundly enlightened by such an experience. That he would have become a defender of justice, a friend of the downtrodden, a light in the darkness. Instead he was the darkness.
Peter used the idea of God to justify oppression. According to him, the wife suffering beneath the blows of a cruel husband or the slave suffering beneath the blows of a cruel master shouldn’t try to change their situation but accept it. Peter says God is in fact pleased when people endure the pain of undeserved beatings. Their suffering is actually God’s plan for them. (1 P 2:19-20) (1 P 4:19) He said wives make themselves beautiful by submitting themselves to their husbands like Sarah did by obeying her husband and calling him master. (1 P 3:5-6) Peter had such low regard for females he described Lot (who offered his two virgin daughters to an angry mob of sexually depraved men to do with as they pleased (Gn 19:6-8)) as a “good” man. (2 P 2:7-8)
An example of how these toxic texts poison life is seen here in Protestant reformer, John Calvin’s response to a battered woman pleading for help:
“We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity, and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beat her.…We exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has been seen fit to place upon her; and meanwhile not to deviate from the duty which she has before God to please her husband, but to be faithful whatever happens.”
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
thought of the day.146
The Wisdom of Famous Christians
“Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way.
They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men.”
~ Saint Augustine
“Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way.
They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men.”
~ Saint Augustine
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
thought of the day.144
Test of Faith.Matthew
Jesus said he came to bring
A. peace
B. a sword
Jesus
A. blessed a tree with life
B. cursed a tree to death
Jesus’ angels will gather people to
A. shower them with love
B. throw them into a fiery furnace
Jesus called a mother and daughter
A. God’s children
B. dogs
Jesus said to fear
A. nothing—for he will protect you
B. God—for he can burn you in hell
Matthew 10:34, 21:18-21, 13:40-42, 15:21-28, 10:28
Jesus said he came to bring
A. peace
B. a sword
Jesus
A. blessed a tree with life
B. cursed a tree to death
Jesus’ angels will gather people to
A. shower them with love
B. throw them into a fiery furnace
Jesus called a mother and daughter
A. God’s children
B. dogs
Jesus said to fear
A. nothing—for he will protect you
B. God—for he can burn you in hell
Matthew 10:34, 21:18-21, 13:40-42, 15:21-28, 10:28
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thought of the day.143
Rotten Fruit
Matthew’s genealogy reveals that Jesus descended from a long line of violent ancestors. His family tree includes David, killer of tens of thousands of men, women and children; Judah, who ordered a woman to be burned to death; Solomon, who secured the throne via multiple murders; Jehoram, who put all his brothers to the sword; Abijah, who led the slaughter of half a million of God’s own chosen people; Josiah, who slaughtered priests on the altars; Ahaz, who sacrificed his children as burnt offerings and Manasseh, who also practiced human sacrifice and butchered so many innocents that the streets of Jerusalem were said to have flowed with blood.
But all these violent men pale in comparison to Jesus who designed flesh-eating worms that never die and tends fires that are never put out in order to torture people forever making him by far the most rotten apple on this most rotten tree.
Matthew’s genealogy reveals that Jesus descended from a long line of violent ancestors. His family tree includes David, killer of tens of thousands of men, women and children; Judah, who ordered a woman to be burned to death; Solomon, who secured the throne via multiple murders; Jehoram, who put all his brothers to the sword; Abijah, who led the slaughter of half a million of God’s own chosen people; Josiah, who slaughtered priests on the altars; Ahaz, who sacrificed his children as burnt offerings and Manasseh, who also practiced human sacrifice and butchered so many innocents that the streets of Jerusalem were said to have flowed with blood.
But all these violent men pale in comparison to Jesus who designed flesh-eating worms that never die and tends fires that are never put out in order to torture people forever making him by far the most rotten apple on this most rotten tree.
thought of the day.142
Ignoring the bible’s wickedness to cite its good points is like ignoring Hitler’s evil deeds to note he loved his wife and dog.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
thought of the day.141
If truth is the goal we should listen most intently to those with whom we disagree.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
thought of the day.140
The more we comprehend our connection to the world the more meaningful our everyday actions become. Things as simple as what we order for lunch and the clothes we buy either help reduce or contribute to suffering.
Friday, November 14, 2008
thought of the day.139
Christianity and Witches
The Bible says there are witches. And the good book says they must be killed. Making this Old Testament brutality seem like child’s play, Jesus promises grotesque tortures that never end. And countless millions believe all of this to be The Word of God.
Like Jesus who demonized unbelievers, calling them “evil”, “serpents”, and children of the “devil”, priests in Nigeria have branded thousands of children as “witches”. And intent on creating Jesus’ hell right here on earth, these “children of the devil” are “cut with knives, thrown onto fires, or have acid poured over them as a punishment or in an attempt to make them "confess" to being possessed. In one horrific case, a young girl called Uma had a three-inch nail driven into her skull....Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul.”
“The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or "deliverance", evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year's income. During the "deliverance" ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they "confess" to being a witch.”
A Mr. Foxworthy who has just finished a documentary film about the atrocities says "Any Christian would look at the situation that is going on here and just be absolutely outraged that they were using the teachings of Jesus Christ to exploit and abuse innocent children."
Too bad Christians aren’t outraged to the point of seeing the light—of recognizing that their own “holy” scriptures inspired the torture and murder of countless “witches” for two millenia continuing to this day. Too bad Christians aren’t outraged to the point of realizing their own religious leaders’ primitive superstitious beliefs about invisible beings are little different from these Nigerian priests. And too bad Christians aren’t outraged to the point of understanding that their own beliefs in ghosts, gods, and goblins contributes to the social acceptability of such harmful nonsense and therefore also share the responsibility for these horrors.
The Bible says there are witches. And the good book says they must be killed. Making this Old Testament brutality seem like child’s play, Jesus promises grotesque tortures that never end. And countless millions believe all of this to be The Word of God.
Like Jesus who demonized unbelievers, calling them “evil”, “serpents”, and children of the “devil”, priests in Nigeria have branded thousands of children as “witches”. And intent on creating Jesus’ hell right here on earth, these “children of the devil” are “cut with knives, thrown onto fires, or have acid poured over them as a punishment or in an attempt to make them "confess" to being possessed. In one horrific case, a young girl called Uma had a three-inch nail driven into her skull....Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul.”
“The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or "deliverance", evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year's income. During the "deliverance" ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they "confess" to being a witch.”
A Mr. Foxworthy who has just finished a documentary film about the atrocities says "Any Christian would look at the situation that is going on here and just be absolutely outraged that they were using the teachings of Jesus Christ to exploit and abuse innocent children."
Too bad Christians aren’t outraged to the point of seeing the light—of recognizing that their own “holy” scriptures inspired the torture and murder of countless “witches” for two millenia continuing to this day. Too bad Christians aren’t outraged to the point of realizing their own religious leaders’ primitive superstitious beliefs about invisible beings are little different from these Nigerian priests. And too bad Christians aren’t outraged to the point of understanding that their own beliefs in ghosts, gods, and goblins contributes to the social acceptability of such harmful nonsense and therefore also share the responsibility for these horrors.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
thought of the day.138
“All life is problem solving . . . There are no absolutes; progress comes through critical thought. . . . Reason, not obedience, should guide our lives. Though it took centuries to crumble, the entire ossified cage of European social hierarchy--from kings to serfs, and between men and women, all of it shored up by the Catholic Church--was destroyed by this thought.”
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (2007)
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (2007)
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Thought of the day.137
A beautiful and powerful example of the human spirit, empathy, and hope. And an equally powerful example of the nonsense of belief in miracles as “God” has never regrown a limb. Seems “God” just doesn’t care much for answering the prayers of amputees.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
thought of the day.135
If one asks only that her own attitude be changed, prayer can be effective. However, if one asks for anything outside herself be changed, prayer is only as effective as chance. And these results are exactly what we would expect from talking to oneself or perhaps from petitioning a jug of milk, but certainly not from communicating with an all powerful deity.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
thought of the day.134
We needn’t ask what is moral or immoral but simply what fosters happiness, what causes suffering.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
thought of the day.133
Not simply a victory for a man, African-Americans or Democrats, Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States was a victory for humanity. Now that race and gender are no longer barriers, perhaps someday homosexuals, non-Christians and heaven forbid, even atheists will have a chance to lead this country.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
thought of the day.132
“I did not lose my faith—I gave it up purposely. The motivation that drove me into the ministry—to know and speak the truth— is the same that drove me out.”
~Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists
~Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists
Monday, October 27, 2008
thought of the day.131
Reduce meat consumption and reduce suffering. What an easy way to make the world a better place.
..
..
Thursday, October 23, 2008
thought of the day.130
There is no more dysfunctional parent figure in all of literature than the God of the bible. This often petty, more often angry and violent, and always jealous character, doesn’t want independent children but forever dependent ones forbidden to grow up and think for themselves.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
thought of the day.129
“There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 1878
~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 1878
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
thought of the day.128
"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether the victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity".
- Rachel Carson
- Rachel Carson
Monday, October 6, 2008
thought of the day.127
The Origin of Heaven and Hell
Dreams about the deceased (understood by ancient people as communicating with the dead, and therefore not so dead) gave rise to the general idea of an after-life and our innate desire for justice in an often unjust world inspired the specific ideas of a heaven and hell where justice would ultimately prevail.
Dreams about the deceased (understood by ancient people as communicating with the dead, and therefore not so dead) gave rise to the general idea of an after-life and our innate desire for justice in an often unjust world inspired the specific ideas of a heaven and hell where justice would ultimately prevail.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
thought of the day.126
“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher answer'--but none exists.”
~Stephen J. Gould
~Stephen J. Gould
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
thought of the day.124
“For years many a thinking people have had gloomy forebodings as to the result of the immense power of the church in our political affairs. . . And the first step in the disestablishment of the church & of all churches is the taxation of church property. The government has no right to tax infidels for everything that takes the name of religion. For every dollar of church property untaxed, all other properties must be taxed one dollar more, and thus the poor man's home bears the burden of maintaining costly edifices from which he & his family are as effectively excluded--as though a policeman stood to bar their entrance, and in smaller towns all sects are building, building, building, not a little town in the western prairies but has its three & four churches & this immense accumulation of wealth is all exempt from taxation. In the new world as well as the old these rich ecclesiastical corporations are a heavy load on the shoulders of the people, for what wealth escapes, the laboring masses are compelled to meet. If all the church property in this country were taxed, in the same ratio poor widows are to day, we could soon roll off the national debt. . . .
The clergy of all sects are universally opposed to free thought & free speech, & if they had the power even in our republic to day would crush any man who dared to question the popular religion.”
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The clergy of all sects are universally opposed to free thought & free speech, & if they had the power even in our republic to day would crush any man who dared to question the popular religion.”
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
thought of the day.123
“Father [George] Coyne, [the Vatican astronomer] amazingly, admitted to me that there was literally no good reason at all to believe in God. Of course I promptly asked him why, then, he did believe. His answer was very simple: "I was brought up Catholic."’
~Richard Dawkins
~Richard Dawkins
Friday, July 25, 2008
thought of the day.122
To say that one’s actions can please or disappoint God is to say that one can control—at least to a degree—God.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
thought of the day.121
“The last superstition of the human mind is the superstition that religion in itself is a good thing . . . [When the] shadow of religion disappeared forever . . . I felt that I was free from a disease.”
~ Samuel Porter Putnam, My Religious Experience, 1891
~ Samuel Porter Putnam, My Religious Experience, 1891
Thursday, June 19, 2008
thought of the day.120
“To talk about a Superior Being is a dip in superstition, and is just as bad as to let in an Inferior Being or a Devil.
When you once attribute effects to the will of a personal God, you have let in a lot of little gods and evils--then sprites, fairies, dryads, naiads, witches, ghosts and goblins, for your imagination is reeling, riotous, drunk, afloat on the flotsam of superstition. What you know then doesn't count. You just believe, and the more you believe the more do you plume yourself that fear and faith are superior to science and seeing.”
~ Elbert Hubbard
When you once attribute effects to the will of a personal God, you have let in a lot of little gods and evils--then sprites, fairies, dryads, naiads, witches, ghosts and goblins, for your imagination is reeling, riotous, drunk, afloat on the flotsam of superstition. What you know then doesn't count. You just believe, and the more you believe the more do you plume yourself that fear and faith are superior to science and seeing.”
~ Elbert Hubbard
Monday, June 16, 2008
thought of the day.119
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
~Albert Einstein
~Albert Einstein
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
thought of the day.118
“But the original problem with religion is that it is our first, and our worst, attempt at explanation. It is how we came up with answers before we had any evidence. It belongs to the terrified childhood of our species, before we knew about germs or could account for earthquakes. It belongs to our childhood, too, in the less charming sense of demanding a tyrannical authority: a protective parent who demands compulsory love even as he exacts a tithe of fear. This unalterable and eternal despot is the origin of totalitarianism, and represents the first cringing human attempt to refer all difficult questions to the smoking and forbidding altar of a Big Brother. This of course is why one desires that science and humanism would make faith obsolete, even as one sadly realizes that as long as we remain insecure primates we shall remain very fearful of breaking the chain.”
~Christopher Hitchens
~Christopher Hitchens
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
thought of the day.117
“How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one's place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond ourselves. In this sense, science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. And, I think science does this in spades.
I am deeply moved, for example, when I observe through my eight-inch telescope in my backyard the fuzzy little patch of light that is the Andromeda galaxy. It is not just because it is lovely, but because I also understand that the photons of light landing on my retina left Andromeda 3 million years ago, when our ancestors were tiny-brained hominids roaming the plains of Africa.
I am doubly stirred because it was not until 1923 that the astronomer Edwin Hubble, using the 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson just above us here in the San Gabriel mountains, discovered that this "nebula" was actually an extragalactic stellar system of immense size and distance. Hubble subsequently discovered that the light from most galaxies is shifted toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, meaning that the universe is expanding away from an explosive creation. It was the first empirical evidence indicating that the universe had a beginning.
What could be more awe-inspiring—more numinous, magical, spiritual—than this cosmic visage? For my money, Mt. Wilson Observatory is the Chartres Cathedral of our time, and I recommend that you make the 25-mile trek up Angeles Crest Highway (Highway 2, off the 210 freeway in La Canada, its a public venue so everyone can go) to see it and be moved that our species in our generation was able to widen our cosmic horizons by so much—from 1900 light years in Hubble's time to 13.7 billion light years in our time—the universe grew by seven orders of magnitude in our time alone. That's even more than the federal deficit!
So in conclusion, what science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, whirling away from one another in an accelerating expanding cosmic bubble universe, that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes.
Herein lies the spiritual side of science—sciencuality, if you will pardon an awkward neologism but one that echoes the sensuality of discovery. If religion and spirituality are suppose to generate awe and humility in the face of the creator, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists?
Through a natural process of evolution, and a creative course of culture, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on earth, the only home we have ever known. The realization that we exist together for a narrow slice of time and a limited parsec of space, potentially elevates us all to a higher plane of humanity and humility, a passing proscenium in the drama of the cosmos.”
~ Michael Shermer
I am deeply moved, for example, when I observe through my eight-inch telescope in my backyard the fuzzy little patch of light that is the Andromeda galaxy. It is not just because it is lovely, but because I also understand that the photons of light landing on my retina left Andromeda 3 million years ago, when our ancestors were tiny-brained hominids roaming the plains of Africa.
I am doubly stirred because it was not until 1923 that the astronomer Edwin Hubble, using the 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson just above us here in the San Gabriel mountains, discovered that this "nebula" was actually an extragalactic stellar system of immense size and distance. Hubble subsequently discovered that the light from most galaxies is shifted toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, meaning that the universe is expanding away from an explosive creation. It was the first empirical evidence indicating that the universe had a beginning.
What could be more awe-inspiring—more numinous, magical, spiritual—than this cosmic visage? For my money, Mt. Wilson Observatory is the Chartres Cathedral of our time, and I recommend that you make the 25-mile trek up Angeles Crest Highway (Highway 2, off the 210 freeway in La Canada, its a public venue so everyone can go) to see it and be moved that our species in our generation was able to widen our cosmic horizons by so much—from 1900 light years in Hubble's time to 13.7 billion light years in our time—the universe grew by seven orders of magnitude in our time alone. That's even more than the federal deficit!
So in conclusion, what science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, whirling away from one another in an accelerating expanding cosmic bubble universe, that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes.
Herein lies the spiritual side of science—sciencuality, if you will pardon an awkward neologism but one that echoes the sensuality of discovery. If religion and spirituality are suppose to generate awe and humility in the face of the creator, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists?
Through a natural process of evolution, and a creative course of culture, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on earth, the only home we have ever known. The realization that we exist together for a narrow slice of time and a limited parsec of space, potentially elevates us all to a higher plane of humanity and humility, a passing proscenium in the drama of the cosmos.”
~ Michael Shermer
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
thought of the day.116
Authentic “Christ-like” behavior would include failing to condemn fundamental injustices such as slavery, cursing to death innocent life in anger, refusing to help people outside one’s small circle of compassion, demonizing and threatening people who don’t agree with you, dividing families, and promising to destroy the world and torture countless souls for eternity.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
thought of the day.115
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. . . .
“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”
~ John F. Kennedy
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. . . .
“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”
~ John F. Kennedy
Friday, May 23, 2008
thought of the day.114
“If religion isn't the greatest threat to rationality and scientific progress, what is? Perhaps alcohol, or television, or addictive video games. But although each of these scourges - mixed blessings, in fact - has the power to overwhelm our best judgment and cloud our critical faculties, religion has a feature of that none of them can boast: it doesn't just disable, it honours the disability. People are revered for their capacity to live in a dream world, to shield their minds from factual knowledge and make the major decisions of their lives by consulting voices in their heads that they call forth by rituals designed to intoxicate them.”
~Daniel Dennett
~Daniel Dennett
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
thought of the day.113
“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilized interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.”
~Albert Einstein
~Albert Einstein
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
thought of the day.112
“Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten--just the same before as after. . . .
“So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.
“According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction, if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one, we have but one. . .
“Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.”
~ Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
“So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.
“According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction, if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one, we have but one. . .
“Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.”
~ Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Friday, May 9, 2008
thought of the day.111
“For the supposed crimes of heresy and witchcraft, hundreds of women endured such persecutions and tortures that the most stolid historians are said to have wept in recording them; and no one can read them to-day but with a bleeding heart. And, as the Christian Church grew stronger, woman's fate grew more helpless. Even the Reformation and Protestantism brought no relief, the clergy being all along their most bitter persecutors, the inventors of the most infernal tortures. Hundreds and hundreds of fair young girls, innocent as the angels in heaven, hundreds and hundreds of old women, weary and trembling with the burdens of life, were hunted down by emissaries of the Church, dragged into the courts with the ablest judges and lawyers of England, Scotland and America on the bench, and tried for crimes that never existed but in the wild, fanatical imaginations of religious devotees. Women were accused of consorting with devils and perpetuating their diabolical propensities. Hundreds of these children of hypothetical origin were drowned, burned, and tortured in the presence of their mothers, to add to their death agonies. These things were not done by savages or pagans: they were done by the Church. Neither were they confined to the Dark Ages, but permitted by law in England far into the eighteenth century. The clergy everywhere sustained witchcraft as Bible doctrine, until the spirit of rationalism laughed the whole thing to scorn, and science gave mankind a more cheerful view of life.”
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Christian Church and Women.” 1888.
~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Christian Church and Women.” 1888.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
thought of the day.110
"I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.”
~ Archbishop Oscar Romero, September 23, 1979.
~ Archbishop Oscar Romero, September 23, 1979.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
thought of the day.109
“Evil is real, but an external being who causes it is a human projection of part of our own reality into the external world of being. The devil is an excuse, someone to blame, part of the system of control that religious institutions set up to keep themselves dominant.
Belief in an external devil has done more harm than we can imagine. Executing the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, is only one of them.
It is time for the human race to grow up and let go of these childish ideas.”
~ John Shelby Spong
Belief in an external devil has done more harm than we can imagine. Executing the witches of Salem, Massachusetts, is only one of them.
It is time for the human race to grow up and let go of these childish ideas.”
~ John Shelby Spong
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
thought of the day.108
Test of Faith. Judges
God made people
A. love each other
B. kill each other
Jepthah gave thanks to God by
A. baptising his daughter
B. killing his daughter
The Israelites found wives by
A. courting them for 40 days to be sure they were equally yolked
B. capturing virgins after killing their families and friends
Judges 7:22, 11:30-40, 21:8-12
God made people
A. love each other
B. kill each other
Jepthah gave thanks to God by
A. baptising his daughter
B. killing his daughter
The Israelites found wives by
A. courting them for 40 days to be sure they were equally yolked
B. capturing virgins after killing their families and friends
Judges 7:22, 11:30-40, 21:8-12
Friday, April 18, 2008
thought of the day.107
In this age of environmental crises, the Golden Rule of "treating others as you would like to be treated” might be better understood as “what you do unto others you do unto yourself.”
Thursday, April 17, 2008
thought of the day.106
The findings of countless dedicated scientists in the diverse fields of geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology all point to the fact of evolution. But the fundamentalist Christian preachers know science better than the scientists and have done their part to encourage half the population of the United States to reject mountains of evidence in favor of belief that man was fashioned from dirt and woman from a rib bone. This denigrating of facts in favor of faith is but one example of the danger of religious leaders.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
thought of the day.105
“Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society--whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.”
~ George Jacob Holyoake, The Origin and Nature of Secularism, 1896
~ George Jacob Holyoake, The Origin and Nature of Secularism, 1896
Sunday, April 13, 2008
thought of the day.104
Argument over the idea of a holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost led to a dark history of persecution, murder, war, and an industry (Church) of much nonsense. How much more peace might we enjoy if our holy Trinity was: Be Grateful, Compassionate and Aware.
Friday, April 11, 2008
thought of the day.103
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thursday, April 10, 2008
thought of the day.102
Test of Faith. 1 Timothy
Women in church are
A. equal to men
B. not allowed to teach men
Women in church
A. are free to speak
B. must keep quiet
Slaves of Christian masters must be
A. set free for it’s a sin to own a human
B. especially obedient
1 Timothy 2:8-15, 6:1-2
Women in church are
A. equal to men
B. not allowed to teach men
Women in church
A. are free to speak
B. must keep quiet
Slaves of Christian masters must be
A. set free for it’s a sin to own a human
B. especially obedient
1 Timothy 2:8-15, 6:1-2
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
thought of the day.101
It seems Reality is deep like an ocean and all we see is the surface—
and even that glimpse is obscured by our human frailties.
and even that glimpse is obscured by our human frailties.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
thought of the day.100
With all his threats of torturing people in hell,
Jesus would be the Devil if he wasn’t a myth.
Jesus would be the Devil if he wasn’t a myth.
Monday, April 7, 2008
thought of the day.99
“Another important doctrine of the Christian religion, is the atonement supposed to have been made by the death and sufferings of the pretended Saviour of the world; and this is grounded upon principles as regardless of justice as the doctrine of original sin. It exhibits a spectacle truly distressing to the feelings of the benevolent mind, it calls innocence and virtue into a scene of suffering, and reputed guilt, in order to destroy the injurious effects of real vice. It pretends to free the world from the fatal effects of a primary apostacy, by the sacrifice of an innocent being. Evil has already been introduced into the world, and in order to remove it, a fresh accumulation of crimes becomes necessary. In plain terms, to destroy one evil, another must be committed.”
- Elihu Palmer, Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, 1801
- Elihu Palmer, Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, 1801
Sunday, April 6, 2008
thought of the day.98
It’s said prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but the priesthood, begun by the shaman or witch doctor, is likely older, and screwing with minds as religious leaders do, is far more immoral.
Friday, April 4, 2008
thought of the day.97
The complete absurdity of Christianity is seen in the Fundamentalist Christians who insist The Flood happened as told in the bible. For to argue for The Flood is to argue that their god of “love” is not only responsible for killing every child on earth and their families, but that their “perfect” god is also responsible for the most miserable failure of all time, for as soon as the earth dried, God was killing people all over again, now using angels of death, horrible diseases, fire and brimstone, poisonous snakes, starvation, and perhaps most despicably of all—commanding humans to carry out his dirty deeds of murder and genocide.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
thought of the day.96
The delusion of having access to the ultimate power in the universe, through prayer and “holy” scripture, allows for the ultimate justifying of any idea or action, no matter how harmful, making “God” the most dangerous of all ideas.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
thought of the day.95
Test of Faith. Numbers
When people complained about being hungry, God sent
A. bread to sustain them
B. poisonous snakes to kill them
God was pleased when Phinehas saw a foreign woman and
A. shared the Bible with her
B. drove a spear through her
Moses had his men take thousands of moms and kids and
A. baptize them
B. murder them
Numbers 21:4-6, 25:1-13, 31:1-18
When people complained about being hungry, God sent
A. bread to sustain them
B. poisonous snakes to kill them
God was pleased when Phinehas saw a foreign woman and
A. shared the Bible with her
B. drove a spear through her
Moses had his men take thousands of moms and kids and
A. baptize them
B. murder them
Numbers 21:4-6, 25:1-13, 31:1-18
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
thought of the day.94
“One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.”
~Jack Handey
Happy April Fool’s Day!
~Jack Handey
Happy April Fool’s Day!
Monday, March 31, 2008
thought of the day.93
Strange how humans are at once the most beautiful and the ugliest, the wisest and the most foolish of all the animals.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
thought of the day.92
To be pro-life and pro-death penalty is to be a hypocrite more concerned with control and vengeance than life and justice.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
thought of the day.90
C.S. Lewis said Jesus must either be Lord, Liar, or Lunatic,
dishonestly leaving out the most probable option—Legend.
dishonestly leaving out the most probable option—Legend.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
thought of the day.88
Test of Faith. Jeremiah
God said he’d make people eat their
A. words
B. children
God
A. watches over children
B. starves children to death
God said he’d
A. love people unconditionally
B. kill people mercilessly
Jeremiah 19:8-9, 11:22, 13:14
God said he’d make people eat their
A. words
B. children
God
A. watches over children
B. starves children to death
God said he’d
A. love people unconditionally
B. kill people mercilessly
Jeremiah 19:8-9, 11:22, 13:14
Sunday, March 23, 2008
thought of the day.87
“It is a fascinating “coincidence” that this year “Easter” - purportedly the day of the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ, the “only begotten Son of God” - falls precisely on the last day of the three-day vernal equinox period.
“In reality, this development is no “coincidence,” because the vernal equinox is the real “reason for the season,” and “Christ” is in reality the personification of the SUN of God, revered around the globe for millennia.
“The vernal equinox marks the arrival of Spring, when for three days the SUN is “hung on a cross,” whereby the days and the nights are the same length. At the end of the three days - during which time the sun is said to be in a "tomb," as it showed no movement - the day begins to become longer than the night, and the sun is said to have been “resurrected.” In ancient times, the sun’s resurrection at the end of the vernal equinox was accompanied by great celebrations during which it was shouted, “He is risen!”
— Acharya S
http://www.truthbeknown.com/easter.htm
“In reality, this development is no “coincidence,” because the vernal equinox is the real “reason for the season,” and “Christ” is in reality the personification of the SUN of God, revered around the globe for millennia.
“The vernal equinox marks the arrival of Spring, when for three days the SUN is “hung on a cross,” whereby the days and the nights are the same length. At the end of the three days - during which time the sun is said to be in a "tomb," as it showed no movement - the day begins to become longer than the night, and the sun is said to have been “resurrected.” In ancient times, the sun’s resurrection at the end of the vernal equinox was accompanied by great celebrations during which it was shouted, “He is risen!”
— Acharya S
http://www.truthbeknown.com/easter.htm
Saturday, March 22, 2008
thought of the day.86
Con-artists, I’m sorry, “Pastors” Mike and Hazel Simons, of the Promiseland Television Network invited the public to a local church for a night of miracles. Of course, this I had to see. It was truly shameful. Rather than encouraging these ailing people to seek proper medical help, Mike filled them with false hopes and played ludicrous tricks on these credulous, desperate people such as making an elderly woman's malformed leg miraculously grow a couple of inches as she lay on the floor.
Not content in playing mind games and jeopardizing lives, Mike aims to drain bank accounts too. He says, “Your financial gift of $30 a month” will make a “miracle happen.” Of course, the bigger the gift, the greater your miracle, “Many are standing with us with a gift of $1,000.” And getting your miracle is easy. “You can call our operators 24 hours a day at 1-800-717-0765 and give by debit card, credit card, or check by phone. You can also give online on our secured site at www.mikesimons.com.”
But as despicable as the Simons’ actions are, all religious leaders are guilty of preying on the hopes and fears of their followers when they pass the offering basket in the name of “God.”
Not content in playing mind games and jeopardizing lives, Mike aims to drain bank accounts too. He says, “Your financial gift of $30 a month” will make a “miracle happen.” Of course, the bigger the gift, the greater your miracle, “Many are standing with us with a gift of $1,000.” And getting your miracle is easy. “You can call our operators 24 hours a day at 1-800-717-0765 and give by debit card, credit card, or check by phone. You can also give online on our secured site at www.mikesimons.com.”
But as despicable as the Simons’ actions are, all religious leaders are guilty of preying on the hopes and fears of their followers when they pass the offering basket in the name of “God.”
Friday, March 21, 2008
thought of the day.85
“Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century.”
—Sam Harris
—Sam Harris
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
thought of the day.83
The Lord says, “I hate all your show and pretense—
the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.
I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.
Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,
an endless river of righteous living.
Sometimes even an atheist can say “amen.”
Amos 5:21-24
the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.
I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.
Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,
an endless river of righteous living.
Sometimes even an atheist can say “amen.”
Amos 5:21-24
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
thought of the day.82
If Jesus is God then Jesus killed every child in the world with his Flood so how on earth can anyone praise him?
Gn 7:23
Gn 7:23
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
thought of the day.80
I would think it of great import for Catholics to know precisely when the Eucharist ceased to be the body and blood of Jesus. For if Jesus survives chewing and swallowing and is vomited, shouldn’t that Jesus-Vomit be preserved in an urn or something? And if Jesus has the strength to overcome digestion and crosses the finish line, so to speak, wouldn’t it be sinful to flush him? And would that be a mortal or venial sin?
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
thought of the day.77
“Pascal’s Wager” says it’s best to bet that a God exists for the believer gains everything if right and loses nothing if wrong, whereas an atheist gains nothing if right and loses everything if wrong. Following are a few reasons why this is typical poor Christian reasoning.
1. If a non-Christian God exists, a Christian is no better off than an atheist.
2. If the Christian God exists, He would know the difference between belief and betting, and without true belief hell awaits the so called “Christian.” The atheist can accept hell gladly if it means separation from a deity diabolical enough to create one.
3. If no God exists, it means the Christian lived with unwarranted guilt and fear while wasting time and money supporting a delusion whereas the atheist didn’t.
1. If a non-Christian God exists, a Christian is no better off than an atheist.
2. If the Christian God exists, He would know the difference between belief and betting, and without true belief hell awaits the so called “Christian.” The atheist can accept hell gladly if it means separation from a deity diabolical enough to create one.
3. If no God exists, it means the Christian lived with unwarranted guilt and fear while wasting time and money supporting a delusion whereas the atheist didn’t.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
thought of the day.76
Jesus got it backwards when he said, “the truth shall make you free.” It’s being free to think, free to question everything, that leads to truth.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
thought of the day.75
Test of Faith. Acts
Believers helped spread Christianity by
A. writing books
B. burning books
An angel of the Lord
A. showered Herod with God’s grace
B. killed Herod with flesh-eating worms
Ananias and his wife Sapphira were
A. loved by the Lord
B. killed by the Lord
Acts 19:19-20, 12:21-23, 5:1-11
Believers helped spread Christianity by
A. writing books
B. burning books
An angel of the Lord
A. showered Herod with God’s grace
B. killed Herod with flesh-eating worms
Ananias and his wife Sapphira were
A. loved by the Lord
B. killed by the Lord
Acts 19:19-20, 12:21-23, 5:1-11
Monday, March 10, 2008
thought of the day.74
An ice cream cone doesn’t last forever and we enjoy it all the same. Isn’t it enough to look at life like that? Each day a different flavor to be tasted, to be savored.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
thought of the day.73
Bet you didn’t know that today is International Women’s Day. Visit internationalwomensday.com to see the unbelievably ironic video featuring a woman spokesperson who’s head is covered because her male-dominated culture and male-created, male deity demand her submission. No woman will be truly free as long as she accepts the sexist god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Friday, March 7, 2008
thought of the day.72
Religion is less the opium of the masses than the pornography.
“God” is the ultimate fantasy, the centerfold at the center of group mental masterbation.
“God” is the ultimate fantasy, the centerfold at the center of group mental masterbation.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
thought of the day.71
Imagine if all the abolitionists would have asked themselves “what would Jesus do” and then held their tongues about the evil of slavery.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
thought of the day.70
Ignorance is ignorance whether scrawled on a public restroom wall or written in a book. But when written in a “holy” book the believer often interprets ignorance as wisdom, hate as love, evil as good.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Monday, March 3, 2008
thought of the day.68
A Christian who encouraged others to think for themselves rather than believe like himself would be a true blessing, but then he wouldn’t be a true Christian.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
thought of the day.67
There can’t be peace where there’s fear and Christianity is rooted in fear — fear of the Devil, fear of the Lord’s Wrath, fear of Hell...
Saturday, March 1, 2008
thought of the day.66
Just as a garden requires maintenance to flourish, we need to continuously weed our minds of false and harmful ideas.
Friday, February 29, 2008
thought of the day.65
Which is more wicked, Lot offering his virgin daughters to a mob of men to gang rape, or Jesus’ hand picked disciple, Peter, calling Lot “good” and “godly”? Or is teaching our daughters that such a demeaning book is the Word of God even worse?
Gn 19:8, 2P 2:7-9
Gn 19:8, 2P 2:7-9
Thursday, February 28, 2008
thought of the day.64
Peace comes in those moments we stop wanting—wanting to be richer, to be younger, to be somewhere else, or whatever— and just be.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
thought of the day.63
There’s no Master Plan, no Divine Providence, no Destiny, no Fate. Choices and chance determines our lives.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
thought of the day.62
When we’re disappointed by ourselves or others it’s good to remember that we’re merely fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal-hybrids in human’s clothing.
Monday, February 25, 2008
thought of the day.61
Even in its most seemingly benign and productive employment - the inspiring of charity for instance - the belief in God is harmful because it shackles freethought and points the believer down a path of superstition leading to unwarranted guilt and fear.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
thought of the day.60
Long before Hitler, a seed of hatred was planted in the mind of humanity. Planted by the writers of Christian scriptures, it declared that Jews were responsible for the murder of God. In those writings Jesus demonizes unbelieving Jews, calling them “evil,” “serpents,” and children of the “devil.”
Following in Jesus’ footsteps, Paul demonized Elymas, calling him a “child of the devil,” and then blinded him (Acts 13:6-12). During the council of Nicaea—when Christianity was made the official religion of Rome—Jews were referred to as “mad”... “utterly depraved”...“murderers of our Lord.” Early fathers of the Christian church continued the demonizing of Jews inspiring nearly 2,000 years of persecution. Like Jesus, Saint Jerome denounced them as Judaic “serpents.” Saint John Chrysotom said “It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews.” Saint Fulgentius echos the violent words of Jesus by saying Jews who die outside the Catholic Church, will “go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Pope Pius IX saw Jews as "dogs who bark in the street." In a precursor of Nazi Germany, Pope Innocent III summoned The Fourth Council of the Lateran which stripped Jews of their civil rights and compelled them to wear a special mark to identify themselves in public. And leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, called Jews “desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish” and said “We ought to take revenge … and kill them.”
The long history of demonizing Jews begun by Jesus led to Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Hitler said “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” and exterminated some six million people while believing he was “acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator” and was “fighting for the work of the Lord.” Hitler is rightly condemned for the Nazi holocaust, yet Jesus promises an eternal holocaust which will torture countless more men, women and children forever and always and is praised.
Calling Jesus, “The Prince of Peace” is like calling Hitler, “The Lord of Love”.
Following in Jesus’ footsteps, Paul demonized Elymas, calling him a “child of the devil,” and then blinded him (Acts 13:6-12). During the council of Nicaea—when Christianity was made the official religion of Rome—Jews were referred to as “mad”... “utterly depraved”...“murderers of our Lord.” Early fathers of the Christian church continued the demonizing of Jews inspiring nearly 2,000 years of persecution. Like Jesus, Saint Jerome denounced them as Judaic “serpents.” Saint John Chrysotom said “It is incumbent upon all Christians to hate the Jews.” Saint Fulgentius echos the violent words of Jesus by saying Jews who die outside the Catholic Church, will “go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Pope Pius IX saw Jews as "dogs who bark in the street." In a precursor of Nazi Germany, Pope Innocent III summoned The Fourth Council of the Lateran which stripped Jews of their civil rights and compelled them to wear a special mark to identify themselves in public. And leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, called Jews “desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish” and said “We ought to take revenge … and kill them.”
The long history of demonizing Jews begun by Jesus led to Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Hitler said “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” and exterminated some six million people while believing he was “acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator” and was “fighting for the work of the Lord.” Hitler is rightly condemned for the Nazi holocaust, yet Jesus promises an eternal holocaust which will torture countless more men, women and children forever and always and is praised.
Calling Jesus, “The Prince of Peace” is like calling Hitler, “The Lord of Love”.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
thought of the day.59
Considering all of humanity as One and each of our 6 billion plus individuals as unique personalities of the One offers a powerful unifying perspective that makes war suicide.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
thought of the day.57
Test of Faith. Deuteronomy
God says a man may take a girl to be his wife
A. if he wins her heart with love and affection
B. after killing her family and friends and taking her prisoner
A virgin who is raped
A. is to be prayed for and the rapist to be imprisoned
B. must marry her rapist and never get divorced
A husband encouraged to worship a different deity by his wife is to
A. share the Good News with her
B. Kill her!
Dt 21:10-14, 22:28-29, 13:6-10
God says a man may take a girl to be his wife
A. if he wins her heart with love and affection
B. after killing her family and friends and taking her prisoner
A virgin who is raped
A. is to be prayed for and the rapist to be imprisoned
B. must marry her rapist and never get divorced
A husband encouraged to worship a different deity by his wife is to
A. share the Good News with her
B. Kill her!
Dt 21:10-14, 22:28-29, 13:6-10
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
thought of the day.56
The Jesus character has many faces. There’s Kind-Jesus. Confusing-Jesus. Destroyer-of-life Jesus. Damn-you-to-hell- Jesus. Shepherd-of-sheep-Jesus. Miracle-worker-Jesus, and so on. Let’s look at Jerk-Jesus.
Matthew 15:21-28 (NIV)
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table."
Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
This is not a God of Love but simply a product of the male dominated, bigoted culture in which this Jesus character was fashioned. To ignore a mother distraught over the suffering of her little girl is beyond arrogant, it’s incredibly cruel. To dehumanize a mother and child by likening them to dogs is wicked.
Matthew 15:21-28 (NIV)
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table."
Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
This is not a God of Love but simply a product of the male dominated, bigoted culture in which this Jesus character was fashioned. To ignore a mother distraught over the suffering of her little girl is beyond arrogant, it’s incredibly cruel. To dehumanize a mother and child by likening them to dogs is wicked.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
thought of the day.55
One of the many ethically disturbing stories in the New Testament concerns a hungry Jesus going in search of figs to eat.
Matthew’s account has Jesus cursing a tree which the disciples see whither immediately while Mark’s account has the disciples learning of the tree’s death the following day. These contradicting stories alone would cause the witness’ testimony to be thrown out in a court of law, but my focus here is on the unethical and absurd aspects of the story. To simplify, we’ll just look at the story found in Matthew. (Mt 21:18-22)
“Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.
When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" they asked.
Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
Problem 1: “Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves.”
Even common people knew that it was not fig season. Jesus shows his ignorance by bothering to go up to it and examine it. If he was an all-knowing God he would have already known the tree was figless.
Problem 2: “Then he said to it, ‘May you never bear fruit again!’ Immediately the tree withered.”
Is it reasonable to kill something because it fails to meet one’s expectations? This is the behavior one might expect from a spoiled child not a reasonable man and certainly not from a supposed God. By killing the tree he destroyed an entire ecosystem that lived within its roots, branches and leaves. What of the small animals and birds that relied on it for shelter and food? What of the humans that did the same? Why curse and destroy rather than bless and make fruitful? Any reasonable person with such powers would have used them to nourish and enhance life not destroy it.
Problem 3: “When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. ‘How did the fig tree wither so quickly?’ they asked.”
This makes no sense. According to the bible his disciples had heard Jesus tell a man he would find tax money in the mouth of the first fish he caught. They had watched him feed 4,000 people with only a few fish and loaves of bread. They had seen him make the lame walk and the blind see. Instead of being “amazed” at the death of a tree cursed by their Miracle Worker they should have expected it.
Problem 4: “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. ”
No tree-hugger was Jesus who tells believers that they they too can destroy fig trees just like him! Jesus then makes the absurd claim that his followers can command mountains to throw themselves in the sea. Believers might argue that this must be understood as figurative speech. But why? If the destroying of the fig tree was a literal event and Jesus said believers could literally do the same why switch to speaking figuratively in mid sentence? More nonsense.
Problem 5: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
Every honest person will readily admit that this simply isn’t true. Not only will believers not get “whatever” they ask for, they seldom get anything, and what may appear to be answered prayers can always be explained as coincidence.
In conclusion, the cursing of the fig tree shows Jesus to be more a dolt than deity, more an irrational child than man of reason, and more a spewer of hot air and absurd promises than sage.
Matthew’s account has Jesus cursing a tree which the disciples see whither immediately while Mark’s account has the disciples learning of the tree’s death the following day. These contradicting stories alone would cause the witness’ testimony to be thrown out in a court of law, but my focus here is on the unethical and absurd aspects of the story. To simplify, we’ll just look at the story found in Matthew. (Mt 21:18-22)
“Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.
When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. "How did the fig tree wither so quickly?" they asked.
Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
Problem 1: “Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves.”
Even common people knew that it was not fig season. Jesus shows his ignorance by bothering to go up to it and examine it. If he was an all-knowing God he would have already known the tree was figless.
Problem 2: “Then he said to it, ‘May you never bear fruit again!’ Immediately the tree withered.”
Is it reasonable to kill something because it fails to meet one’s expectations? This is the behavior one might expect from a spoiled child not a reasonable man and certainly not from a supposed God. By killing the tree he destroyed an entire ecosystem that lived within its roots, branches and leaves. What of the small animals and birds that relied on it for shelter and food? What of the humans that did the same? Why curse and destroy rather than bless and make fruitful? Any reasonable person with such powers would have used them to nourish and enhance life not destroy it.
Problem 3: “When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. ‘How did the fig tree wither so quickly?’ they asked.”
This makes no sense. According to the bible his disciples had heard Jesus tell a man he would find tax money in the mouth of the first fish he caught. They had watched him feed 4,000 people with only a few fish and loaves of bread. They had seen him make the lame walk and the blind see. Instead of being “amazed” at the death of a tree cursed by their Miracle Worker they should have expected it.
Problem 4: “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. ”
No tree-hugger was Jesus who tells believers that they they too can destroy fig trees just like him! Jesus then makes the absurd claim that his followers can command mountains to throw themselves in the sea. Believers might argue that this must be understood as figurative speech. But why? If the destroying of the fig tree was a literal event and Jesus said believers could literally do the same why switch to speaking figuratively in mid sentence? More nonsense.
Problem 5: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
Every honest person will readily admit that this simply isn’t true. Not only will believers not get “whatever” they ask for, they seldom get anything, and what may appear to be answered prayers can always be explained as coincidence.
In conclusion, the cursing of the fig tree shows Jesus to be more a dolt than deity, more an irrational child than man of reason, and more a spewer of hot air and absurd promises than sage.
Monday, February 18, 2008
thought of the day.54
Prior to Genesis Babylonians had their own account of creation called “Enuma Elish,” which tells of the god Marduk forming man out of clay.
Before hymns were written to the biblical god they were written to the Egyptian god Ra: “Thou art the one god who came into being at the beginning of time. Thou didst create the earth. Thou didst fashion man, thou didst make the watery abyss of the sky, thou didst form the Nile, thou didst create the great deep, and thou dost give life to all that therein.”
The story of Noah and the Flood was borrowed from The “Epic of Gilgamesh.”
The story of the birth and rise to power of Moses was borrowed from The legend of “Sargon of Agade.”
Before the biblical god gave his laws to Moses, Shamash, the god of Babylonia gave his laws to Hammurabi and before either Moses or Hammurabi received their laws, the Sumerian King Ur-Nammu was given laws from the sky god An and the wind/storm god Enlil.
Much of the wisdom teachings or proverbs found in the Bible were drawn from an Egyptian collection by Amen-em-ope and the infamous admonishments to use a “rod” to strike children were taken from the Wisdom of Ahikar, a 7th century B.C.E. Assyrian folk tale.
Being born of a virgin was a common theme in pre-Christian religions as were the ideas of divine births in a stable or cave. Jesus was not the first to have his birth heralded by a star, attended by shepherds or be visited by gift-bearing magi. December 25th (an approximation of the Winter Solstice) was celebrated as the birthdate of other gods before the Church essentially stole the holiday from the pagans, making it Jesus’ birthday. Easter (an approximation of the Vernal Equinox) is also of pagan origin and was the time of year that the death and resurrection of pre-Christian Gods were celebrated.
Other saviors had 12 disciples (for the 12 zodiac signs) before Jesus did.
Before Jesus turned water into wine, Dionysus did it. Others were said to teach spiritual truths, walk on water, control the wind and rain, foretell the future, cast out demons, heal the blind and lame and raise the dead before Jesus supposedly worked these same miracles.
The Good Shepherd, the Word, the Light of the World, Son of Man, Son of God, God made flesh, the True Vine, and the Savior of the World described other deities before being attributed to Jesus.
The Dove, Fish and Lamb were symbols for pagan gods before becoming symbols for Jesus.
The taking away of sins, Holy Spirit, Trinity, descent into hell and return to life after three days, baptism and being born again were all pre-Christian concepts.
Speaking in tongues and eating the body and drinking the blood of a god (eucharist or holy communion) preceded Christianity.
Before Jesus' lifeless body was wrapped in linen and anointed with myrrh and aloe, Osiris’ was.
Myths that promised the return of a god in the last days and his subsequent reign of a thousand years circulated for centuries before such a story was written for Jesus.
The story of Jesus driving demons from a man into a herd of 2,000 pigs who rush over a cliff and drown seems to have been drawn from accounts of initiates in Eleusis, (numbering about 2,000) who would bathe in the sea with a pig to which their sins would be transferred upon which the pigs were chased over a chasm and killed.
The story of Jesus (Jn 21:11) performing a miracle enabling Simon Peter to catch exactly 153 fish seems to have come from Pythagoras who considered 153 a sacred number. The ratio of 153 to 265 was referred to by the Pagan Archimedes as "the measure of the fish." That ratio is used to generate a fish-like shape using two circles. The sign of the fish was used by the early Christians as their main symbol.
In Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, Dionysus is described as bringing a new religion to the people, being plotted against by the leaders, being arrested and appearing before the political ruler. Long before Jesus is made to utter nearly identical words, Dionysus said to his captors “You know not what you are doing...”
In fact, the story of Jesus consists of material borrowed from other myths to such an extent that J.M. Robertson writes, "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity.”
Not a single historian alive at the time that Jesus is said to have lived records his existence. In his work, On The True Doctrine, c 178 AD, Celsus writes,“Clearly the Christians have used ... myths ... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth'...It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction."
Jesus, as conveyed in the bible, is simply a myth built upon myths.
Before hymns were written to the biblical god they were written to the Egyptian god Ra: “Thou art the one god who came into being at the beginning of time. Thou didst create the earth. Thou didst fashion man, thou didst make the watery abyss of the sky, thou didst form the Nile, thou didst create the great deep, and thou dost give life to all that therein.”
The story of Noah and the Flood was borrowed from The “Epic of Gilgamesh.”
The story of the birth and rise to power of Moses was borrowed from The legend of “Sargon of Agade.”
Before the biblical god gave his laws to Moses, Shamash, the god of Babylonia gave his laws to Hammurabi and before either Moses or Hammurabi received their laws, the Sumerian King Ur-Nammu was given laws from the sky god An and the wind/storm god Enlil.
Much of the wisdom teachings or proverbs found in the Bible were drawn from an Egyptian collection by Amen-em-ope and the infamous admonishments to use a “rod” to strike children were taken from the Wisdom of Ahikar, a 7th century B.C.E. Assyrian folk tale.
Being born of a virgin was a common theme in pre-Christian religions as were the ideas of divine births in a stable or cave. Jesus was not the first to have his birth heralded by a star, attended by shepherds or be visited by gift-bearing magi. December 25th (an approximation of the Winter Solstice) was celebrated as the birthdate of other gods before the Church essentially stole the holiday from the pagans, making it Jesus’ birthday. Easter (an approximation of the Vernal Equinox) is also of pagan origin and was the time of year that the death and resurrection of pre-Christian Gods were celebrated.
Other saviors had 12 disciples (for the 12 zodiac signs) before Jesus did.
Before Jesus turned water into wine, Dionysus did it. Others were said to teach spiritual truths, walk on water, control the wind and rain, foretell the future, cast out demons, heal the blind and lame and raise the dead before Jesus supposedly worked these same miracles.
The Good Shepherd, the Word, the Light of the World, Son of Man, Son of God, God made flesh, the True Vine, and the Savior of the World described other deities before being attributed to Jesus.
The Dove, Fish and Lamb were symbols for pagan gods before becoming symbols for Jesus.
The taking away of sins, Holy Spirit, Trinity, descent into hell and return to life after three days, baptism and being born again were all pre-Christian concepts.
Speaking in tongues and eating the body and drinking the blood of a god (eucharist or holy communion) preceded Christianity.
Before Jesus' lifeless body was wrapped in linen and anointed with myrrh and aloe, Osiris’ was.
Myths that promised the return of a god in the last days and his subsequent reign of a thousand years circulated for centuries before such a story was written for Jesus.
The story of Jesus driving demons from a man into a herd of 2,000 pigs who rush over a cliff and drown seems to have been drawn from accounts of initiates in Eleusis, (numbering about 2,000) who would bathe in the sea with a pig to which their sins would be transferred upon which the pigs were chased over a chasm and killed.
The story of Jesus (Jn 21:11) performing a miracle enabling Simon Peter to catch exactly 153 fish seems to have come from Pythagoras who considered 153 a sacred number. The ratio of 153 to 265 was referred to by the Pagan Archimedes as "the measure of the fish." That ratio is used to generate a fish-like shape using two circles. The sign of the fish was used by the early Christians as their main symbol.
In Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, Dionysus is described as bringing a new religion to the people, being plotted against by the leaders, being arrested and appearing before the political ruler. Long before Jesus is made to utter nearly identical words, Dionysus said to his captors “You know not what you are doing...”
In fact, the story of Jesus consists of material borrowed from other myths to such an extent that J.M. Robertson writes, "There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity.”
Not a single historian alive at the time that Jesus is said to have lived records his existence. In his work, On The True Doctrine, c 178 AD, Celsus writes,“Clearly the Christians have used ... myths ... in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth'...It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction."
Jesus, as conveyed in the bible, is simply a myth built upon myths.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
thought of the day.53
Fearing so much and knowing so little, early mankind sought explanations for the behavior of nature. They imagined a world of supernatural beings that regulated the courses of the stars, controlled the wind and lightning, earthquakes, volcanos, and floods. By befriending these beings and seeking their favor through sacrificial ritual, mankind gained the delusion of control over his surroundings. But with the new sense of control came a new set of fears—the fear of the gods themselves.
Opportunistic people gained power by claiming to speak for the gods giving rise to the priesthood and the idea of divine revelation which gave rise to religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. No longer demanding blood sacrifices these belief systems now demand the sacrifice of free thought, divide us into the saved and damned, induce unwarranted guilt and instill yet more fear by promising grotesque tortures for the unbeliever.
Understanding why we invented the gods empowers us to let go of the toxic Abrahamic idea of God and evolve a spirituality free of fear, guilt and divisiveness.
Opportunistic people gained power by claiming to speak for the gods giving rise to the priesthood and the idea of divine revelation which gave rise to religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. No longer demanding blood sacrifices these belief systems now demand the sacrifice of free thought, divide us into the saved and damned, induce unwarranted guilt and instill yet more fear by promising grotesque tortures for the unbeliever.
Understanding why we invented the gods empowers us to let go of the toxic Abrahamic idea of God and evolve a spirituality free of fear, guilt and divisiveness.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
thought of the day.52
Christians speak reverently of Jesus’ great “sacrifice.” But to go from wandering dusty roads while being hounded by illiterate, diseased and demon possessed people who had yet to invent indoor plumbing to sitting comfortably on a throne at the right hand of God while being attended to by angels in a heavenly city boasting streets of gold and buildings of jewels was not a sacrifice but the career move of all time.
Friday, February 15, 2008
thought of the day.51
Christians say “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” but real understanding—real wisdom—begins in the absence of fear, the absence of emotion that clouds critical thinking.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
thought of the day.50
The efficacy of prayer is succinctly captured in former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ comment, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
thought of the day.49
Though our animal might may give us the “right” to rule over the less mighty, that which makes us human—our intellect, our sense of compassion—dictates that we don’t. Unfortunately, we’re still early in the process of becoming fully human—fully humane—and hence all the needless suffering.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
thought of the day.48
Jesus says to “fear God” who can throw you “into hell.”
But Real Love casts out fear. Real Love is the antithesis of fear.
Lk 12:4-5
But Real Love casts out fear. Real Love is the antithesis of fear.
Lk 12:4-5
Monday, February 11, 2008
thought of the day.47
Perhaps the greatest chance to reduce suffering would be to transition from the inherently divisive religions of today to ones based on scientific fact fused with poetry and compassion.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
thought of the day.46
That Jesus promises atrocities that make Auschwitz seem like a picnic in the park and is praised is an example of how Christianity poisons our sense of justice, our sense of goodness.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
thought of the day.45
It’s a bit disconcerting that our most cherished things—things such as justice, mercy, love, freedom, beauty, truth, peace, and I would add God, are mere ideas or feelings that don’t exist outside our minds.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
thought of the day.42
Dostoevsky’s sentiment that “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” suggests believers refrain from wickedness only out of fear of divine wrath but true morality is doing right regardless of a God.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
thought of the day.41
The God who acts as a placeholder for what we don’t yet comprehend will always get smaller and smaller.
But reality-understood through science-grows ever more awesome.
But reality-understood through science-grows ever more awesome.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
thought of the day.39
The words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance excludes unbelievers making the phrase “justice for all” ring hollow.
These word violate the First Amendment, are divisive, unjust, and un-American.
These word violate the First Amendment, are divisive, unjust, and un-American.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
thought of the day.37
True love—like happiness—is a choice. It wants the very best for another, whether family, friend, or stranger.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
thought of the day.36
Science and religion are polar opposites in the way information—
or lack thereof—is processed.
Science demands evidence. Religion demands belief without evidence.
or lack thereof—is processed.
Science demands evidence. Religion demands belief without evidence.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
thought of the day.35
We’re all born naked, cold and hungry. And atheists.
We created the gods to mentally clothe, warm, and feed us—
to protect us like a parent in this indifferent universe.
We created the gods to mentally clothe, warm, and feed us—
to protect us like a parent in this indifferent universe.
Monday, January 28, 2008
thought of the day.33
Once an ordinary city, Jerusalem only became “holy” after the attack and slaughter of its residents by men of God seething with hate. Holiness is often wickedness masquerading as good.
2 S 5:8
2 S 5:8
Sunday, January 27, 2008
thought of the day.32
There is no single “meaning of life” but countless meaningful lives.
And the more our lives mean to ourselves and others,
the more meaningful they are.
And the more our lives mean to ourselves and others,
the more meaningful they are.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
thought of the day.30
Why think that children who have invisible friends are playing “make believe” but adults who have invisible friends are not?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
thought of the day.29
Being Awed by the Common exercise/meditation.
The idea is to focus on one sense at a time for several moments.
Close your eyes and...
1. listen as if you had never in your life heard a sound nor will again.
2. touch something -the hardness of a table, the softness of hair, or feel your breath on your hand-as if you had never felt a sensation.
3. smell something -skin, shirt, bread- as if you had never inhaled an aroma.
4. taste something, anything- as if you had never tasted anything before.
5. open your eyes and focus on the everyday stuff around you as if you were seeing it for the very first time.
It takes some practice but is a simple way to remind ourselves how amazing even the most common things are.
The idea is to focus on one sense at a time for several moments.
Close your eyes and...
1. listen as if you had never in your life heard a sound nor will again.
2. touch something -the hardness of a table, the softness of hair, or feel your breath on your hand-as if you had never felt a sensation.
3. smell something -skin, shirt, bread- as if you had never inhaled an aroma.
4. taste something, anything- as if you had never tasted anything before.
5. open your eyes and focus on the everyday stuff around you as if you were seeing it for the very first time.
It takes some practice but is a simple way to remind ourselves how amazing even the most common things are.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
thought of the day.28
“God” is a stumbling block to understanding the universe in two powerful ways.
1. When sacred myths are understood as literal history they give us a false understanding of reality.
2. Believing “God” did this or that encourages us to be satisfied with untestable supernatural explanations, rather than encouraging us to seek natural explanations.
1. When sacred myths are understood as literal history they give us a false understanding of reality.
2. Believing “God” did this or that encourages us to be satisfied with untestable supernatural explanations, rather than encouraging us to seek natural explanations.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
thought of the day.27
I’ve sat cross legged and bare foot while taking in the sights, sounds and smells (as well as an incredible Indian breakfast) of a Hindu service. I’ve heard the hauntingly beautiful chants of a Muslim service in which I was mooned by some 400 prostrated men. A yarmulke has kept my bald head warm and the shine from blinding Yahweh while attending a Jewish service. I’ve visited the Church of Scientology and dozens of different flavored Christian churches from tongue speaking Pentecostal to a Cowboy church held in a bar to a Baptist megachurch the size of a mall. All of these services undoubtedly provided the participants with community and a story to build their lives around. But with the good comes the evils of guilt and fear, the sacrifice of intellectual freedom, toxic primitive ideas about the subjugation of women and the earth, and so on. And of course, such belief systems are inherently divisive which breeds all kinds of suffering.
But last night I attended what I “pray” is the church of tomorrow. The preacher preached the holiest message I’ve ever heard in a church. And the bible and hymnal he used was science. Though I would feel better about jettisoning the word “God” altogether, Michael Dowd is pointing us in the right direction with his message of evolutionary theology. I encourage everyone to visit his site: ThankGodforEvolution.com
But last night I attended what I “pray” is the church of tomorrow. The preacher preached the holiest message I’ve ever heard in a church. And the bible and hymnal he used was science. Though I would feel better about jettisoning the word “God” altogether, Michael Dowd is pointing us in the right direction with his message of evolutionary theology. I encourage everyone to visit his site: ThankGodforEvolution.com
Monday, January 21, 2008
thought of the day.26
I saw a puppet show yesterday.
The puppet master pulled some strings
and made the puppets stand and sing
lift their arms and close their eyes
and open their wallets while swallowing lies.
Wicked show.
The puppet master pulled some strings
and made the puppets stand and sing
lift their arms and close their eyes
and open their wallets while swallowing lies.
Wicked show.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
thought of the day.25
A good religion would work to banish fear not instill it, free the mind not shackle it, and focus on this world and human beings not some otherworld and invisible beings.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
thought of the day.24
If Christianity is true, many billions of people will suffer unimaginable and unending pain in hell. If Islam is true, even more billions will be tortured forever. But if atheists are correct, not a single soul will be troubled in the least.
Doesn’t common decency demand we all root for the atheists?
Doesn’t common decency demand we all root for the atheists?
Friday, January 18, 2008
thought of the day.23
“Sin” is the Christian leader’s most powerful tool. With that little word he can explain away the evils of the world, instill fear of eternal suffering, guilt for life’s pleasures, and move his followers to empty their wallets for the “glory of God.”
Thursday, January 17, 2008
thought of the day.22
Most Toxic Ideas of All Time
1. God has revealed his will to humans.
2. Humans are to rule over the earth.
3. Men are to rule over women.
4. Men may buy and sell humans.
5. Unbelievers will be tortured forever.
These biblical ideas resulted in two millennia of divinely justified torture, rape, murder, war, genocide, oppression, slavery, inequality, battering of wives, sexual abuse, inhumane treatment of animals, pollution, environmental destruction, burning of books, destruction and theft of property, manipulation through fear and guilt and lies, and on and on.
1. God has revealed his will to humans.
2. Humans are to rule over the earth.
3. Men are to rule over women.
4. Men may buy and sell humans.
5. Unbelievers will be tortured forever.
These biblical ideas resulted in two millennia of divinely justified torture, rape, murder, war, genocide, oppression, slavery, inequality, battering of wives, sexual abuse, inhumane treatment of animals, pollution, environmental destruction, burning of books, destruction and theft of property, manipulation through fear and guilt and lies, and on and on.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
thought of the day.21
Isn’t it a bit inconsistent to shout the commands of Exodus chapter 20 from the rooftop while sweeping those of chapter 21 under the rug?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
thought of the day.20
Christianity degrades humanity by condemning us as sinners worthy of hell fire and breeds arrogance by claiming the universe was made just for us.
Monday, January 14, 2008
thought of the day.19
Taking the straight and narrow path to heaven can’t be near the adventure as following truth wherever she leads.
Mt 7:13-14
Mt 7:13-14
Sunday, January 13, 2008
thought of the day.18
The core of the Christian message is “think like us or burn in hell.”
Seems "think for yourself and best wishes" would make a happier world.
Mk 16:16
Seems "think for yourself and best wishes" would make a happier world.
Mk 16:16
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Thought of the day.17
The death penalty is murder by a different name. It’s not justice but revenge.
Friday, January 11, 2008
thought of the day.16
Denying a woman control over her own body is more immoral than any choice she might make regarding it.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
thought of the day.15
Love is love, whether between homosexuals or heterosexuals.
Denying equal marriage rights is as unjust as denying women the right to vote or racial segregation.
Denying equal marriage rights is as unjust as denying women the right to vote or racial segregation.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
thought of the day.14
“Zoo” is a cuddly name for animal prison.
No matter how enlightened a particular zoo may be in their education and conservation efforts, their imprisonment of animals is immoral and perpetuates the myth that animals exist for us. We should preserve natural habitats, not incarcerate animals in unnatural ones.
No matter how enlightened a particular zoo may be in their education and conservation efforts, their imprisonment of animals is immoral and perpetuates the myth that animals exist for us. We should preserve natural habitats, not incarcerate animals in unnatural ones.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
thought of the day.13
The sacrifice of free thought required of countless Christians for two thousand years seems a far greater sacrifice than their heros’ few hours on a cross.
Monday, January 7, 2008
thought of the day.12
Darkening a child’s mind with the fear of hell is no less child abuse than darkening her body with bruises.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
thought of the day.11
The God of the bible drowns children, burns children, starves children, and infects them with painful diseases. And the Christian calls him “Good”.
He permits the enslavement of children, punishes them for the sins of their parents, and commands their stoning for disobedience. And the Christian calls him “Just”.
He sends wild animals to tear children apart, sends armies to hack pregnant women and their unborn babies to pieces, and “blesses” those who smash babies’ heads against rocks. And the Christian calls him “Love.”
Dt 13:6-10 Dt 28:53-59 Lv 26:22 Lv 25:45-46 Lv 26:27-29
Nu 14:18 Ez 5:17 Ez 9:6-7 Ez 20:25-26 1 S 15:3 Ps 137:8-9 Ho 13:15-16
Ho 9:15-16 Is 14:22 Gn 7:23 Gn 19:23-25 2 K 2:23-24 Ex 12:29
He permits the enslavement of children, punishes them for the sins of their parents, and commands their stoning for disobedience. And the Christian calls him “Just”.
He sends wild animals to tear children apart, sends armies to hack pregnant women and their unborn babies to pieces, and “blesses” those who smash babies’ heads against rocks. And the Christian calls him “Love.”
Dt 13:6-10 Dt 28:53-59 Lv 26:22 Lv 25:45-46 Lv 26:27-29
Nu 14:18 Ez 5:17 Ez 9:6-7 Ez 20:25-26 1 S 15:3 Ps 137:8-9 Ho 13:15-16
Ho 9:15-16 Is 14:22 Gn 7:23 Gn 19:23-25 2 K 2:23-24 Ex 12:29
Saturday, January 5, 2008
thought of the day.10
Once the bible is accepted as “The Truth” its content ceases to matter. For the True Believer can reconcile every contradiction, justify every injustice, believe every absurdity, and make holy every horror.
Friday, January 4, 2008
thought of the day.9
Factory farms manufacture suffering and eating their “products” feeds the evil.
www.petatv.com
www.petatv.com
Thursday, January 3, 2008
thought of the day.8
The “love” shown by the God of the bible is “conditional love”
which is not love at all.
Lv 26:14-39, Mk 16:16
which is not love at all.
Lv 26:14-39, Mk 16:16
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
thought of the day.7
To praise Jesus, the preacher of hell fire, is to praise inhumanity.
It is to lose one’s “soul” in the attempt to save it.
It is to lose one’s “soul” in the attempt to save it.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
thought of the day.6
Where Does Morality Come From?
Morality can be based on the empirical evidence that all life (when in a healthy state) “prefers” well-being and life over suffering and death.
So the desire to foster well-being can be called moral and the desire to cause needless suffering, immoral.
Morality can be based on the empirical evidence that all life (when in a healthy state) “prefers” well-being and life over suffering and death.
So the desire to foster well-being can be called moral and the desire to cause needless suffering, immoral.
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