The dead elephant in the room

It is rather fitting that the Republicans were prevented from winning much on Election Day since they ignored a majority of the American voters throughout the campaigns. Though I am exactly in their target demo: older white male, professional job, college degree, fiscally conservative, and from a very conservative family, there is no way I can support most of the Republican Party’s platform. (Don’t mistake that to think I vote Democratic; I don’t. I usually vote Libertarian but it depends on the issue and the candidate.)

                Listening to certain radio ilk the past month made one think Romney was a shoo-in. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and other mouthpieces of the far right fringe have been citing poll after poll showing that Romney had not only caught up with Obama, he had surpassed him in various demographics and was on a roll that would take him into the White House. It is a perfect example of the old adage ‘If you believe a lie long enough, it will become the truth to you.’ It has now been exposed that many of the pollsters didn't have a clue as to what was happening. They asked the wrong questions of those polled, and in a good number of cases because the questions were ‘loaded’, they got the result they wanted to hear. When polling is based on what you want to hear, you’ll get a skewed result.

One of the talk show hosts tried mightily to show that the evangelicals were going to come out in record numbers and vote for a Mormon for president; not because of his conservatism, but because he was a ‘man of faith’. Supposedly, they should be able to relate to that even though the evangelicals’ own ‘holy book’ denounced anyone who didn't think like them. I know from dealing with many 'born-again christians' that they DO NOT believe a Mormon is even close to being a christian. I can’t wait to read how the talk show host will interpret Romney’s loss, if he bothers trying. My bet is on him claiming that it became evident that god could not allow a Mormon to become president. (Then why the call to support him? Didn't he check with god first?)

                Not helping the Republican cause were the various incidents of ‘hoof-in-mouth’ disease that made some of the candidates look like air-headed lemmings and became well-deserved targets of scorn and ridicule. Voters remember that kind of buffoonery when it comes time to cast their ballot. If the Republicans hope to win in the future, they’d be advised not to take the advice talk show annoyance Dennis Prager. Just days after the election, he was telling callers on his show that the Republican Party didn't abandon the voters, they abandoned the party, and encouraged his listeners to go out and ‘re-sell’ Republicanism to everyone they know. They should pitch all the things that reflected Republican Party values, and convince people that those values are what make good candidates, and a party worth following. He didn't advise them to take a look at how many Republicans interpreted planks in their party's platform. Maybe they should. 

        Because just how do you sell to anyone that ‘rape is a blessing from god’, gays who simply want the right to marry just like heterosexuals, can’t, an attitude of ‘I don’t want the federal government taking away my freedoms, just the freedoms of any woman who wants an abortion’, that you should be fiscally conservative, except when it comes to the Drug War and funding every military weapon system that can be conjured up, and regardless of the Establishment Clause, insisting that the Republicans are the only faith-based party and that god only supports right-wing (Republican) decisions?

       Good luck with that.

Faithfully Dumb

What is it about the Republican mindset that causes the men in that party to abandon common sense when it comes to pregnancy and rape?

Last month, Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock became the latest in a collage of Republican dimwits to say something astonishingly idiotic regarding women and rape. In a debate with his Democratic opponent Joe Donnelly, Mourdock explained his abortion stance saying that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” There you have it…God intended it to happen. God knew the rape was going to occur and did nothing to stop it…which means rape should be taken off the books as a crime, since it is something God foresees and wants. Following biblical law, maybe Mourdock should also introduce legislation demanding that the victim then marry her rapist and he must pay the woman’s father fifty pieces of silver. After all, that’s precisely what it says in Deuteronomy 22:28-29. God’s law is great, isn’t it?

God often sneaks over to watch down on some of his "intended" rapes as they occur

Prior to Mourdock stuffing both feet in his mouth, we had Tom Smith, a candidate for the Pennsylvania state senate comparing rape to having a baby out of wedlock. Smith said if you “put yourself in a father’s situation”, it’s a similar kind of thing. So guys, when you rape a woman, look at it as though she’s having your baby without the hassle and inconvenience of a wedding. The whole point of rape is just recreational procreation, right?

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, on August 23^rd during an interview on WJHL in Roanoke, VA stated  "I'm very proud of my pro-life record, and I've always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life." What he is referring to is rape as a "method of conception" when asked if it should it be legal for a woman to be able to get an abortion if she's raped. If that sperm makes into you, the method is acceptable for obtaining protection from the government and it is now your responsibility to see it through to its 21^st birthday. The rape victim’s health, mental and otherwise, isn’t up for consideration in Ryan’s view. Only that of the newly engaged sperm and egg. They must now be federally protected and the 'method of conception' carried to full term. The Republicans don't really give a damn about what happens after the birth of the baby though.

                And lest we forget (although, much to his chagrin, I doubt most people will), there was Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin in an August interview stating, “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Leaving aside what exactly constitutes ‘legitimate rape’ (maybe that’s Paul Ryan’s definition as well), not one Medical School I know of teaches that a woman’s body can shut down the consequence of a rape. The implication behind his statement is; if the victim is not really being raped but just fooling around with her rapist and enjoying the ‘sex’ involved, then any conception is automatically intentional, should have the full protection of the federal government, and the woman must carry the result full term. Republican logic isn’t baffling, it can be completely understood from the viewpoint of an alternate universe where only men understand a woman's reproductive capabilities.

                         Mourdock, Ryan, Smith, and Akin…a Mount Rushmore of Republican stupidity.

What do all these poor excuses for XY chromosomes have in common, aside from the fact that they are arch-conservative right-wing GOP standard-bearers? To one degree or another, they are Christian fundamentalists. That can’t be stressed enough; they are all Christian fundamentalists. Why should that be the emphasis? Because it is that bible-infected influence resulting in narrow-minded (or rather brainless) thinking that leads them to make such asinine and morally-bankrupt remarks. When rape is thought of as nothing more than a method of conception, can be legitimized through some magical process, or that the Christian God intended it to happen, I have to wonder why ANY female would vote for a Republican…or attend a Christian church. (Who knows, maybe God rounded up a few rapists with ‘intent’ on their minds and are now lurking behind the altar.) Don’t be concerned ladies, following God’s law, your dad will be bribed with a token amount of money, and you’ll get a guaranteed husband out of the deal. Oh, and most likely that unplanned baby too!

E Pluribus Unum - Let's return to the original motto

How far we've deviated from our origins in the United States. The innovative idea of our founders was built upon a leader being truly elected of the people, by the people and for the people, NOT being governed by a ruler or regime that was put in place by any supernatural being, or so claimed to be. We would come together as a country and rule ourselves with a representative we chose at the helm of government. Hence, the stirring maxim of our great nation, E Pluribus Unum, From Many, One, makes absolute sense. It was the phrase on the front of the Great Seal of the United States adopted in 1782 by an Act of Congress. The words also appear on the Seals of the President, Vice President, Congress, House of Representatives, the Senate and the Supreme Court. 

E Pluribus Unum has never been considered controversial. The motto was intended to represent the federal nature of the new country,  i.e. out of many states came one nation. The framers may have stridently disputed many issues in the formation of the United States, but E Pluribus Unum was not one of them. In fact, as the population grew, the motto took on a secondary meaning as well, reflecting the country's melting pot nature - the interpretation being of many people from different countries and cultures blending together to form a new national identity, that of U.S. citizens. Certainly, if there's one issue we can all agree on, it's that E Pluribus Unum is an excellent statement of America and its values, right? Not if you have a religious goal in mind and want to circumvent the Establishment Clause which separates the church from the state.

In 1956, E Pluribus Unum was unceremoniously replaced by In God We Trust during the Great Red Scare thanks to McCarthyism. It was intended to show those godless communists who bowed down to an oppressive government that crushed any nonconformity and professed atheism that we bow down to a supernatural deity that no one has seen, but still trusted. But whatever god our Congress was hoping to appease apparently wasn't impressed. Or the substitute motto was appealing to the wrong god. The surrogate motto has done nothing to bring cohesion to the nation, or lift it up, and an excellent case can be made that things have gone to hell in a hand-basket since its adoption. (Looking back to 1956, maybe ‘To Hell in a Hand-basket’ would have made a better motto!)

Nowadays, the Religious Right, led by people like Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and the CPC or Congressional Prayer Caucus (yes, our supposedly secular government actually has a Congressional Prayer Caucus. Guess which god they appeal to the most.), insinuate that E Pluribus Unum is, um, well frankly, un-American. The CPC, which is the leading voice of religious conservatism (read Christian) in the capitol, recently wrote a letter to President Obama, chastising him for referring to the motto E Pluribus Unum, suggesting that using it was unpatriotic and amounted to an anti-God statement. The letter stated that he should instead be promoting the motto "In God We Trust". Apparently, E Pluribus Unum is tantamount to sacrilege to the Christian right. They also claim the President isn't mentioning ‘God’ enough in his speeches and that he shouldn't refer to "inalienable rights" without mentioning that they come from God. Try as I might, I can’t find that reference in the Declaration of Independence. A "Creator” does not in any way suggest the Christian god, since it could just as well mean ‘The Universe’ or the ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’.

Regardless of how it's presented, In God we Trust does promote theistic religion at the expense of non theism and secularism. The phrase originates from religious texts such as the Bible and has always been supported the strongest by Christian leaders and in a Christian context. Critics argue that it promotes the belief in a single, transcendent deity, that of the main Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But in a nation of ‘out of many – one’, it is foreign to many other religions. Buddhists do not believe in a personal deity, Wiccans believe in two deities, Hindus believe in many, and it is absolutely meaningless to agnostics and atheists. As such, it violates the principle of separation of church and state.  

Maybe few people in this country care about the motto. To those who pay any attention to it, appealing to some ill-defined, nebulous, supernatural entity that doesn’t have the good grace to show itself, or indicate it is pleased to be appealed to, is the axiomatic equivalent of saying ‘How do you do’. Almost no one actually wants to hear how someone is doing when met; it’s just a phrase that rolls off the tongue from overuse. And so it may be. But to the Religious Right it is a pronouncement on a national level, endorsed by the government, that there is a belief in a god figure. To me, it is nonsense to claim the slogan has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court may have ruled that it has ‘lost through rote repetition any significant religious meaning’ but that's hogwash! It is vehemently defended repeatedly by Fundamentalist Christians because they have recognized all along that it was a petition to their particular interpretation of god, the one named Jehovah. Any way you slice that, it demolishes the wall separating church from state.

Imagine how those who approve of the replacement motto would feel if it instead said “In Vishnu We Trust’ or ‘In Allah We Trust’. Would it still have that warm and fuzzy appeal? In God we Trust is a motto that divides us, deeper and deeper, and says nothing about who we are as a nation. E Pluribus Unum has never divided us and describes us as our founding fathers intended. Time to return to the original.

Why celebrate Columbus Day?

                                           Left to right, Niña, Santa Maria (Columbus' ship) and the Pinta

             In the early morning hours of October 12, 1492 a lookout named Rodrigo de Triana shouted what every sailor aboard the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria had been hoping to hear for 33 days since leaving the Canary Islands far to the east. The three ships had sailed from Spain on August 3^rd and the men were now on the verge of mutiny. Except for that quick stop for provisions in the Canary’s; after over two months of seeing nothing but the broad expanse of water in front of them, the men wanted to return home, any shortcut to Asia be damned.

“Land, land,” Rodrigo shouted from the crow’s nest of the Pinta. The soft white moon-lit sand of one of the southeasterly islands of the Bahamas beckoned. No one knows exactly which one it was; most often Samana Cay or Watling Island are chosen as possibilities. Rodrigo was also quite excited because Spain’s king Ferdinand and queen Isabella had offered a pension of 10,000 maravedis (around $1,300) for life to the first man who sighted land. At the time, seamen made about 12,000 maravedis in a good year so it was a sizable amount for any of them. Rodrigo was most likely smacking his lips in anticipation of the reward. But rather than compensate the lookout as promised by Spain’s rulers, Christopher Columbus, leader of the expedition, claimed he saw lights on the horizon a few hours previously and kept the reward for himself. It is not recorded if anyone questioned him about how he could see those distant lights, yet they were missed by all the other sailors, and why he never mentioning the sighting to anyone until after Rodrigo’s detecting the shoreline. This glimpse of Columbus tells us a lot about the man who would be crowned Admiral of the Ocean, and provides insight into his dishonesty and cunning.

                            The arrival of Columbus' ships as seen from the Taino's vantage

The natives he was about to meet would have been better off wiping out the ship’s crews as they came ashore. Those who lived on the island swam out to meet the newcomers as their boats neared the beach. The Taínos, as they were dubbed by the Spaniards, were part of a larger group of island natives called Arawaks, and were described as “naïve and free with their possessions” offering to share all they had with Columbus and his crewmen. They also discover the Taínos women were very free with sex as well. Because of small gold ornaments they wore in their ears and noses, several were taken prisoner and ordered by Columbus to lead him to the gold’s source. Columbus’ true reason for his voyage was revealed. It was not for discovery; it was for human and mineral plunder.

          Columbus claims the new land for God and Spain completely ignoring the desires of the natives who live there (seen in unauthentic dress in the background).

We now know that Columbus was not the first European to detect the American continents and nearby islands. Vikings had beaten him to it by around 500 years and there is evidence that other cultures and seafaring men may have stumbled upon the New World in the decades and centuries prior to Columbus’ voyage. Certainly what Columbus’ visit did was set in motion the annihilation of millions of natives who had flourished throughout the Americas. And Columbus’ justification? This is from his diary: "It was the Lord who put it into my mind, (I could feel His hand upon me), the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures.......

I am a most noteworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous Presence.

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.
It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah* had prophesied......(probably Isaiah 40:22.
In this scripture passage the prophet Isaiah made reference to "the circle of the earth.) No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Savior, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy service. The working out of all things has been assigned to each person by our Lord, but it all happens according to His sovereign will, even though He gives advice. Oh, what a gracious Lord, who desires that people should perform for Him those things for which He holds Himself responsible! Day and night, moment by moment, everyone should express their most devoted gratitude to Him."

Yes, god through the bible told Columbus to go west. And once there, god and the bible were the justification for all sorts of heinous acts committed by the Spaniards in service to Columbus. Since the natives had no recognizable religion, they were considered fair game for anything. A young priest named Bartolome de las Casas recorded what happened to the natives in their interactions with Columbus’ crew of one of his later voyages. The Spaniards “grew more conceited every day and refused to walk, so they rode on the backs of the Indians, or were carried in hammocks by the Indians running in relays. They thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and cutting slices off of them to test the sharpness of their blades.” In another passage he wrote about how “two of these so called Christians met two Indian boys each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.”

                                           The Natives were slaughtered for no reason at all by their Spanish overlords.

                Natives by the thousands were rounded up and forced at sword point to dig for gold in mines while the women were put to work cultivating fields of crops for the Spaniards. Most died within six to eight months. This kind of treatment set the stage for the English, Portuguese, Dutch and French invaders whose treatment of the natives they met was just as harsh as the Spanish. In most every case, they claimed God wanted them to kill all the Native Americans found over here. The land was deeded to Christians and would soon be theirs. One English governor put it succinctly when he wrote “Sickness [in the Indians] was the physical manifestation of the will of God.” In less than 300 years, the American continent’s original inhabitants had been reduced by almost 90%.

                If Christopher Columbus should be remembered for anything, it is not for his guidance, compassion, and honesty, since he deliberately misled his own men with a phony ship’s log so the men didn't know how far they’d traveled on that first voyage. Plus, he had vastly underestimated the circumference of the earth figuring it was about one fourth its actual size. He contemptuously kept the reward for discovering land from the man who actually had sighted it, and his mission turned out to be to claim any land for Spain through God, plundering the new land for riches and capturing the natives as slaves, or just out and out killing them in the name of Christ. He should be remembered for what his actions, grounded in the belief that God has ordained it, unleashed on an unsuspecting population. Genocide.

                Nothing says a religion is true more than death and destruction meted out by its believers.

I'd rather they live

                 

                In several recent e-mails I've received from family members, if they have anything to do with the military, the emails will almost always end with some ridiculous line like this: And remember only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ, and the American Soldier. Putting aside the a priori assumption of the first ‘defining force’, I’d like to address the bald assertion made at the end of that sentence about American soldiers offering to die.

                                        U.S. dead after rocket attack in Afghanistan, but did they offer to die?

               I don’t know about you but I don’t want any of our military people dying for me. I want them to live and kill the enemy combatants who aim to do me harm. It’s a very different thing to attack, defend, and fight, than to just up and die. Is the writer of this assertion claiming that men and women poured into recruiting offices with the goal of dying? Is he insinuating that when they were fully trained they appeared on battlefields and deliberately stood up in an exposed position to commit a planned suicide?  Did ANY of those soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen join up in order to die? Of course not. They may have joined because they felt it was their duty, or it was an adventure, or a chance to fight for their country. Death was possible, but I would wager not one of them said ‘yes, I’m signing up so I can die for the American people.’ It's like claiming that a driver who is killed in a traffic accident actually offered to die behind the wheel of his car for the American people.

             Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest is quoted as saying “War means fighting, and fighting means killing.” Notice he doesn’t say dying. Fighting men and women are trained to fight and kill the enemy; they are not trained to die. It may happen in the course of fighting but that is not their purpose, and I am sad to think ANY of them did die. In the hit movie “Patton”  the great General, portrayed by actor George C. Scott, makes a statement that the men are not to ‘lay down your life for your country; you are to make the other poor, dumb bastard lay down his life for his country.' That’s the way it is in every war. Even the famed 300 Spartans who held off the Persian army under Xerxes did not meet them in the mountain passes of northern Sparta in order to die. They knew it was a distinct possibility, but they fought as though they’d survive to see their families and homes again, not assume that they’d be slaughtered to a man. So the statement that U.S. soldiers have offered to ‘die for you’ is not just wrong; it is absurd, it makes a mockery of the life of the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman or woman, and it is patently false. How many wars are won by the soldiers all dying?

                     So many U.S. war dead returned from Iraq, one assumes their mass suicides were successful

               One email even ends with this line: “Of all the gifts you could give a U.S. Soldier, prayer is the very best one.” A quick test shows this is nonsense. Just as he goes into battle against a heavily armed enemy, if an unarmed American soldier is given the choice of a loaded automatic weapon you are holding out to him, or you offer to just pray for him, which will he choose? We can make this even easier on a more personal level. We’re alone dining and you start choking. You have two choices. One, I can perform the Heimlich maneuver on you…or Two, I can pray for you. Think carefully about your choice before you pass out.

Our military men and women are in my thoughts but I am not wasting time praying for them. I send letters of encouragement, books to read (but not bibles, korans, or other 'holy' publications) and contribute to funds that supply them with body armor and other necessary items to help protect them. I hope you will too.

              As for the Jesus Christ line, if Jesus is alive and now in heaven sitting at the right hand of himself (since christians claim he IS god), how is that death? What did he sacrifice? Regardless of what christians claim, no one died for me or you. It is simply an element of faith on the part of christians that Jesus did what the bible claims; and faith is simply believing in something without evidence. You just want it to be true. That’s not a pathway to truth.

Religious provocation - seriously?

    Some amateurs put a video on YouTube and it has upset a certain segment of Muslims, enough so that, in their perceived offense, they attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Libya, killing four American’s, and have also launched violent protests in Cairo, Egypt, in Yemen, and in other Middle Eastern countries. How does killing someone salve a purported insult from a movie? People have been poisoned by the words in a book.

                It leads one to believe that certain Muslims are so weak in their faith that a simplistic movie is somehow a risk to that faith. Or is it that they believe Allah, or his messenger Mohammed, are so shallow and easily offended that lowly human-produced movies are a threat to them? It is a sad reflection on certain believer's interpretation of Islam that the only way to react to a video that simply makes fun of it is by rampaging against and killing people who had nothing to do with it. American embassy personnel didn’t produce the movie, nor can they prevent those movies from being uploaded to YouTube.

                In Washington DC, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the crudely made film posted on the internet was "disgusting and reprehensible", although it’s almost a sure bet she hasn’t actually seen it but simply read a brief summary of the video. The short film entitled the "Innocence of Muslims,"  portrays Mohammad as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser. But so what? Why is that reason to riot and kill? All this protesting will make the video a big hit, which it never would have been had they not rioted. Here's an idea, why not make a movie that shows just how wrong the producers of 'Innocence of Muslims' are?

  Protests spread further yesterday with US embassies the targets of anger among certain Muslims questioning why the United States has failed to take action against the makers of the film. But by the same reasoning, why not lash out at the internet, or computers, or films in general?

In Yemen’s capital Sanaa, hundreds broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified US embassy shouting "We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God." They smashed windows of security offices outside the embassy and burned cars. A security source said at least 15 people were wounded, some by gunfire, before government troops surrounded the area.

In the end, how did broken windows and scorched cars appease Mohammed or Allah? What sacrifice was made? Can the protesters answer that without just making something up?

Around 200 demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Kuwait shouting slogans such as "God is great" and hoisting banners, one in English which read "USA stop the bullshit. Respect us."

Yes, everyone knows that respect is earned by taking offense over a video and rioting.

Even if the Koran said any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous, why is that a reason to kill? (Don’t the words themselves ‘depict’ Mohammed?) Does blasphemy itself kill Muslims? Do they die by the dozens, hundreds, or thousands anytime someone produces a characterization of the Prophet? When the Danish published a series of cartoons depicting Mohammed in September 2005, how many Muslims died as a result of the printing?

Zero.

But when they rioted several weeks and months later, how many died?
Over one hundred. 
Over one hundred fewer Muslims alive because people took offense to a series of drawings. Demonstrators claim it was religious provocation. How so? What is so provocative that other people need to die for it?

The thing to remember is, these demonstrations were not by a majority of the people in each of those countries, but only a small violent minority. Of the millions in those countries, only a few thousand decided Mohammed needed to be defended by destroying property and threatening lives. A few thousand people that looked for anything to offend them or needed an excuse to launch a military-style raid.  And as long as this minority believes death is the answer to words, drawings, and films that simply hurt their feelings, it won’t be the last time this happens. It’s a good example of how religion poisons people.
If your religion is worth killing for, start by killing yourself!

In memory of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the three Americans killed in Libyan riots on 9-11-12

Religion - the original sin.

Religion is the original sin. It is the sin of willful ignorance and credulity. Just as the fairy tale of the Garden of Eden relates, religion, as practiced across most of the United States, and in many countries around the world, makes a virtue of believing the ridiculous, and a sin of enjoying life.

Belief is the path of least resistant. Disbelief requires a much more concerted effort. It is easier to believe than to question and doubt. Believing means you just accept and follow. American historian James Harvey Robinson wisely wrote ‘Few of us take the pains to study the origins of our convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already have.’ And as the great Carl Sagan noted ‘You cannot convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it is based on a deep-seated need to believe.'

Why do people have a need to believe something without evidence? Most beliefs were instilled when they were toddlers and were too young to question. As the Jesuits are fond of saying ‘Give me the child for seven years and I will give you the man.’ What they mean is, it is accepted that a person’s belief system evolves within a child’s infancy and that a Jesuit upbringing would make the adult a confirmed holy zealot. Not to put too fine a point on it but that is religious indoctrination. If religion were true, it would not need to indoctrinate. Its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. If something is true and correct, why would it need to be hammered into the brains of defenseless children? Many who do this claim this is what god wants.

Believing in god is not a choice; it’s an ultimatum. You must believe in him or burn in hell forever. This is totalitarianism in its purest form. It’s using fear as its recruiting tool. Reaching your goals through fear is called terrorism.

Some ask ‘what is the harm in religion?’ Simple enough. It is because your belief guides your actions, and that’s what makes religion so dangerous. Faith or belief in an after-life is the single greatest cause of suffering and stupidity inflicted upon humans, by humans, for several reasons.

First, it allows religious leaders to control people by offering hope in the next life, promising rewards, threatening punishment, even sentencing eternal damnation. When a non-believer expresses their views, they are endorsing a position that there is no evidence for belief in any gods. But when a christian or a muslim expresses their view, they are endorsing a belief dictating that people who do not believe as they do deserve to spend an eternity being tortured with fire. Yet non-belief is the position that is considered 'offensive.' Why is it a sin not to believe without evidence when the greater sin is the credulity generated by religion itself? And please don't insist that 'it's not about religion, it's about a relationship with god'...that's the same as saying it's not about sex, it's about putting a penis in a vagina.

Secondly, it negates the immediacy and value of human life right here and now. Believing in life-after-death makes the assumption that people don't really die; they just go on to a spiritual life. This subconsciously legitimizes capital punishment and the death penalty, territorial wars, religious wars, turf wars, gang wars, terrorist attacks, ethnic cleansing, murder, suicide cults, political assassination. People aren't really dying; they're just continuing on in another stage of existence.

Third, it allows people to postpone action in this life (whether humane or humanitarian) in favor of the life yet to come, allowing for political and religious boundaries, derision and division, separatism and succession. Hence, we still have global hunger, border skirmishes, illiteracy, disease, poverty and pestilence, all because the problems of this world are ultimately deemed unimportant when measured against the life yet to come.

Fourth, it offers people hope for a solution to their problems at some future date and enables them to not make a conscious effort to make the necessary changes, or do the necessary work now. It allows them to postpone taking responsibility for their own lives or education (since god will enlighten them and fix everything once they get to heaven). It permits them to sit on their hands in ignorance and inertia while life passes them by.

And fifth, it legitimizes the use of persecution and torture in the name of saving souls for the after-life. This was the justification for the Inquisition. A 1578 handbook for inquisitors spelled out the purpose of inquisitorial penalties: "for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit." The evils they would commit...means the inquisitors projected into the future what they thought would happen and tortured accordingly. This allowed them to make up whatever they wanted. In other words, the only purpose was to scare people into submission to the church and its teachings. It still is. Believe or be damned. Or more simply 'Turn or burn'!

Religion is the belief in ideas that are, by definition, unproven and without evidence. That is why it is called faith…and faith does not give you answers, it just stops your from asking questions. Faith is the firm belief in something for which no proof exists - you simply want it to be true. It is wishful thinking. The ability to perceive the existence of God does not infer the existence of God. Belief in something is not proof that it is real, it does not equal fact. Nothing is true or false just because we wish or desire it to be so. Most people understand this when confronting other religions and cults, just not their own.

The most disturbing thing about religion is that it is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of preaching hate, bigotry, ignorance, superstition and intolerance. Just witness the outcry against homosexuality. Certain people need to stop using Jesus and god as an excuse for being narrow-minded, bigoted jerks!

Personally, I choose to live by these words: Above all things, truth…Not belief, not faith, not religion, not god nor gods, not patriotism, not ideology, not hopes, not dreams, not reward, not comfort, but truth….for better or for worse, truth.

This post is a compilation of some of the best arguments against theism and religion I have come across. I have simply assembled them into what I think is a fitting tribute to their wisdom.

                                                                        Blinded by religion

Magically relieved

A recent article in one of my wife’s magazines caught my eye and I wondered  how it would sound to other people who may have a different outlook. See what you think.

A woman who is a nurse in Midland Texas finds one of her daughter’s former teachers on her list of patients that night. The teacher had tyrannized and terrified her daughter at school and, even though she is very irritated over the years that her daughter suffered at the hands of this woman, the nurse decides to be professional and put on a false front as she makes her rounds. She enters the teacher’s room and instead of the monster she had envisioned all those years, she instead sees a frail, helpless woman who is lying curled up in bed, mumbling and stumbling over the words of the Lucky Charms jingle,"….pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green…green…green…"  The nurse walks over, grabs the woman’s hands and completes ‘…green clovers’, and then both of them say the remainder of the jingle together… “Hearts, stars, and horseshoes. Clovers and blue moons. Pots of gold and rainbows. And me red balloons. That's me Lucky Charms. They're magically delicious.".  All of a sudden, the years of bitterness and anger over the maltreatment of her daughter melt away due to the shared reciting of the words, and she feels better. The nurse realizes that ‘Leprechauns took it away with a simple jingle.

Does this sound reasonable and believable?

                Yet if the jingle is changed to the lord’s prayer, and leprechauns changed to god as is the case in the actual article, people believe it wholeheartedly. The nurse did.

What do leprechauns and god have in common? Think about it.

It doesn’t seem to dawn on this nurse that, maybe due to her training (which she learned herself; an invisible, imperceptible supernatural  being didn’t implant it into her) she felt compassion toward a sickly-looking patient who was dealing with remorse of some sort, or was looking for an answer to her condition. Because she was raised in a nation where christianity is the dominant religion, the teacher attempts to remember a christian prayer. Had she been born in Islamabad, she would have been groping for an islamic prayer; or in Bangkok, a buddhist one. The nurse, who is also from that christian-dominated nation,  knows the words, and using her training to bring comfort and care to patients, says them with the woman to ease her mind. How is this evidence that god took away her years of resentment? Does she believe that, had she been born in Islamabad or Bangkok, the prayer she recited WOULDN’T have made her feel better? Why not?

If praying is so powerful, why not pray that the woman be healed, seek out the nurse’s daughter, and ask to be forgiven for her prior transgressions against her? Why not use this powerful praying to heal everyone’s burden no matter who they are or where they are? The nurse can make all the claims she wants, but the story provides no evidence that an invisible, imperceptible supernatural  being did anything. She simply wants to believe it. Is this how we should approach all challenges, make something up. tell ourselves that we'll believe it, and then that faith will be justified because we choose to believe? 

Looks like these protesters had enough faith in a chainsaw to make their beliefs become a reality.

A hell of a thing for graduation...forays into stupidity by Oklahoma school officials

When I first read it, I thought ‘they’ve got to be joking’! Because the word ‘hell’ was used in a graduation speech last May, an Oklahoma high school valedictorian has had her diploma held for ransom.

Kaitlin Nootbaar (above at her graduation),  who maintained a 4.0 GPA at Prague High School was told by school officials that because she used the word ‘hell’ in her speech, she would not receive the diploma until she wrote an apology. Who this was supposed to assuage, they didn’t say. Nor does it appear anyone was offended by her remark. So whose feathers got ruffled and how will this make amends?

In her remarks to the assembly, which had been inspired by a comparable speech from "Eclipse: The Twilight Saga", Ms. Nootbaar described how annoying it was to be constantly asked what she wants to do after graduation. She then responded "How the hell do I know? I've changed my mind so many times."

In the version she submitted to the school for approval, "hell" was "heck." But at graduation, "hell" was the word that came out. And now, the school valedictorian is being chastised by school officials for simply stating how she felt.

What the hell?

Why was it so offensive, especially in the context with which she used it? Did she offend God by simply stating she didn’t know what ‘the hell’ she would do after graduation? Is saying hell considered blasphemous? Did a large segment of the audience gasp and walk out, or try to shout her down? Do you, the reader, feel offended, distressed and, maybe a little less faithful because she used a common word to indicate being a teen who is perplexed due to no clear picture of her future? How can people in the 21^st century be so narrow-minded, easily offended, and ignorant?

Naturally the school declined to comment on the matter, Prague schools Superintendent Rick Martin stating it was “confidential and we cannot publicly say anything about it,"  in a release to TV station KFOR.

For Rick Martin, I have this to ask, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

Pussy Riot are victims of the ghosts of the KGB

        I know very little about the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, but I know when they are being railroaded in a court. Hooliganism is one of those archaic terms the former KGB members across Russia still like to use to round up anyone who does something that displeases them, and it doesn't even have annoy them greatly. Pussy Riot lampooned the Russian Orthodox Church and juxtaposed political jibes at Vladimir Putin in the mix. While nothing was destroyed and services were conducted only minutes later. Pussy Riot is now facing possible several month long sentences for simply speaking their minds in a church about Putin.
      In the U.S. and Britain, bands have called for acts of violence against the 'man', 'the pigs', 'the establishment', 'the powers that be' and the military repeatedly, In Japan, Italy, and German...rock and even traditional native music bands have pushed the envelop to see how much influence their songs and words can have on the government and the secret police units that constantly watch them. But they are not being incarcerated over it.
      Pussy Riot shouldn't be either.Unless inciting violence, they should be given every right to perform their music...even if only a few like it. Caveat Emptor. Will they go free? I'll believe it when I see it.