On the Road Again

Tags

environment, faith, journeys, racism, religion

“Are you Catholic?” Alex asked. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “You know,” he added, “I grew up at St. Genevieve’s, went to school there too. But. . . .” So went another of the ever-occurring reasons for “why I don’t go to church anymore”. I can relate.

Substitute, writing for Catholic, and you have my last few weeks in a nutshell.

Confused?

Welcome to my world.

So am I.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had returned to the Church once again, seeking. . .something? Hell if I know what.

I didn’t find it. Nothing bad happened. The priest was okay as priests go. I don’t expect much.

If you don’t know what you are seeking, it’s pretty likely you won’t find it. How would you know?

Writing is just about as confusing. I’ve written a lot over the years. All sorts of writing. Big bold essays of a hundred pages, footnoted to Hades and back. Short, “reflections”. Legal arguments chock full of citation to other learned writings. Notes of books I’ve read. And then all this blogging. Years of it. thousands of posts, millions of words, ideas formed, bent, twisted, reconfigured, spit out. Arrogance, pomposity, mendacity, with a rare humble crumb offered here and about. My guts displayed for any who bothered to note it.

Do I have nothing left to say?

Perish that thought. I’d shrivel up and croke. My enemies (having enemies is a true joy if you think about it seriously) wish I would just “shut the fuck up”. That alone should spur me forward.

I start, I stop, I flounder. As good as I came, I saw, I conquered (veni, vidi, vici) doncha think?

Why are we so three oriented? Tragedies come in three, examples are most often offered in threes. Trinity? Trifecta? Triple creme? Triple crown. Banana split which has little to do with the split banana and everything to do with three scoops.

I’m reading a very intriguing book. What is God? Not Who, but What. It all stems from that flip. Turn a globe upside down and leave it like that. It will make you rethink a few things.

I’m processing faith versus religion. I’m pretty down on religion right now. Composed of fallible humans what would you expect? Is it necessary? Church votes yes. I’m pretty much votin’ no at this point.

I choose to express my faith through some rituals of this faith system. I call it Catholicism. You can call it the Whore of Babylon if you are not well educated. I don’t care. There is too much wrong to defend it. There is more right than I often admit.

I’m pretty sure that God is not what we think. But I am not at all sure. I don’t think I’m supposed to be sure. Augustine said we can only say what God isn’t. That is hardly a recipe for success.

Church is like stopping off at a rest stop. It is good to get out and stretch your legs, relieve your bladder, and munch a snack. But it’s not home. You got to get back at the grueling drive that never ends. Thinking, watching, staying awake. Driving requires concentration  if you plan to do it successfully over time. So is God-seeking.

One premise is that there is always something not quite real about reality. We sense there is more, but we can’t see it. We recognize the unreality. We have become desensitized to unreality. It passes by us with nary a nod.

A man says, “I am going to kill you because you are raping our women and taking over our country.” Another man says, “that’s hate against Christians,” (since the dead are Christians). Whose reality are we talking about?

I don’t reject the Catholic Church because of its theology. There is a Catholic Church here that is “not aligned with Rome”. They love my politics. But I don’t go and sit in the pews there. There is one of those Universalist Unitarians, or something here. There is Bahai here. I am not interested.

I plant my butt in a pew and I sit, and I wonder why I’m there. I count off the various “parts” until we get to communion and then the closing prayer, and then the closing hymn and then. I’m free again.

Why do I go?

I stopped going.

I feel something missing. Vicious and jealous mistress you faith!

Faith and religion. Two separate but unequal things. Faith matters, religion is some bonus at least once upon a time. Ever? Never? I did good once. It does good sometimes, somewhere.

The problem as always is the people. Fallible humans muck up the mud. Turn it ugly and personally motivated.  I hate welfare not because I don’t want to help the poor but because I want to decide who to give my charity to. So they say. What they mean is I can then avoid giving welfare to lazy queens and princes who lay in bed half the day before they saunter down to the welfare store and pick up their checks. As I JUDGE them anyway.

I don’t want the government to tell me how much to give. I bet ya a million bucks you couldn’t come begin to tell me how much the “government is taking out of you in taxes” to support medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and so forth. You couldn’t even give me a ball park figure of what they take. But somehow, you assure me, you would give more if it were voluntary. Yeah, sure ya would.

Religion starts off with laudable goals. Seek God. Take care of God’s people. But your old fallibility rose like the skunky smell it is, and you changed that to “God’s chosen people” however YOU JUDGMENTALLY DECIDED THAT.

I’m for Israel because they are God’s chosen, you utter with perfect surety. Bullshit.

If you believe God has favorites then you believe in an awfully wicked and strange being. One who creates so poorly that He finds one poor slob called Abram and tells him, he will “create a nation” of him. Hope he does it better than the first couple of times. Dont’ forget the whole fiasco of Noah and that damned ark that couldn’t be built large enough to begin to house “all God’s creation”.

Yet you got a passel of morons whose brains are so gucky with sludge that they gotta cling to that stuff as literal and then make it their life’s work to make you take it literally too.

And God is not in that damned Book you fool. PEOPLE wrote the book. They wrote it about the God they were seeking. Since you can’t tell me much about God on your own, why do you think they were any better at it? They’re just trying, same as you and me. Yet you kneel before the freakin’ book.

So here I sit. I read that the Pope has offered up an encyclical on the environment. As sure as it’s June and it’s hot, right wing Catholics are finally letting out what they really think. They really really don’t like this pope at all. Unlike their precious JPII and Benedict however, Francis doesn’t inherit the “God’s chosen” appellation. We don’t have to pay attention to Francis when we don’t like what he says.

“He’s not a scientist. He’s just giving his opinion on a subject that he has no expertise in.” So the upshot is to ignore what he says. He’s a dupe of some libtards in the Vatican who haven’t explained to this poor illiterate fool that words matter. “He’s a marxist, anyway.”  If you tried to continue the conversation say about women priests, they would tell you. “Pope John Paul has spoken on that issue and we will not allow further conversation because he says it is a closed issue.” Some personal opinions count. Oh yeah, the one’s you agree with.

Whose reality are we talking about?

Everywhere I go, I see the same thing. Distinctly different takes on reality. Both can’t be right. Or perhaps they can.

God is in the mysteries of life.

Oh, seeking Him there is not as easy as sittin’ in the pew. Reading and thinking and meditating, and working out the details. Only to realize that each and every insight provides fresh mystery, new questions, and potential conflicting yearnings.

Open your eyes, and your ears. But mostly open your heart. Take little if anything for granted. Seek serendipity, and sweet harmony. Enjoy the sugary taste until the bitterness creeps in. Seek further, and never stop. Ever.

That is human becoming.

Are You Too Good to Be True?

Tags

Christians, giving, religion, right-wing fundamentalists

I find a lot of hubris among Christians. I have a right to speak on it, since I consider myself one.

I find a lot of so-called Christians who claim to know a lot about God. They tell me what God wants all the time. They tell me that the bible is “his word”, not quite in his own handwriting, but near enough.

All the while, I find that they don’t seem to have read it very carefully, although they are certainly masters of the quote. You know what I mean. You say something, and they say: “The bible says. . . . ” a quote that appears to prove their point.

So maybe if you are a real Christian, one of those born-again types, maybe on the way out of your born again experience, they give you the code book, you know, the one entitled “1001 Sayings of God: All you need to get by in a Secular world.”

I came to that conclusion because as they say, when you have eliminated all the impossibilities, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be true. And I have eliminated all the other possibilities. It is the only way you can claim to “know the bible” yet be so ignorant of so much in it. At least the Jesus parts.

That’s what I find so bizarre. It’s true you know. Among the great mass of basically unchurched or poorly churched, “I can read for myself, thank you”, you find an inordinate reliance on what Paul said, and very little about what Jesus said. Even when what Jesus said is attested sometimes by three Gospel writers, while Paul never met the living man.

It’s very true that the Gospels are not history and aren’t meant to be so. They were evangelizing documents, meant to state the case of the believing community of which they were from. They were “this is what we believe and why”. Paul is an entirely different genre. First, many of his letters were not written by him, but the writer wishes to claim Paul’s authority. So read agenda into that. Second, Paul is often writing to address problems within a local church, problems we are mostly unaware of, so therefore it’s very hard to judge the breadth of his statements.

The point is not to discuss Paul, but rather to remind folks of something Jesus talked about as regards “doing good”.

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:1-4)

See I gave it to you in the KJV version!

If you read Jesus, you find that a good deal of his anger is directed at Pharisees, those who would be similar to the born-agains in our time. They talked God and rules of Torah all day and night. They made sure everyone saw how pious they were. They demanded strict adherence to the rules of Judaism, so much so in fact that they regularly turned their back on God’s people as being sinful and untouchable. Certainly the undesirables were denied much as being “unclean”.

Our born-agains are similar. They are always talking God, always praising God, always talking about what God hates and that if you aren’t like them you are condemned. They hate the sin, but “love the sinner” which amounts to shunning the sinner and making the sinner’s life miserable all the while lovin’ him to death in their hearts. Which feeds exactly no one, nor shelters them, nor cures  them.

But the Pharisaic failing that I find worse, and maybe Jesus did too, was the degree to which they strutted about showing off how pious they were by comparison. They would have called it “setting a good example” no doubt, but Jesus just seemed to find it prideful.

I know that atheists and agnostics are as committed to good causes as the believer. I know they give of their money and their time. They care about the earth and the poor. The see it as a human thing to do–help their neighbor. Unfortunately the right-wing evangelical often does it for less honorable reasons–it’s the way to salvation. So it gets personal with them. They do it not because they are human but because they are told that there ain’t no heaven without it.

And that’s not terrible. It still serves the cause. The rich, often from a sense of guilt, throw money around philanthropically speaking. They build wings on hospitals and show up at “events” to lend their celebrity. That too still serves the cause.

But what about that Matthew thing?

About not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing? See that’s the part about NOT TALKING ABOUT WHAT A GENEROUS PERSON YOU ARE. Who needs to know that? God already does, I’m sure you would agree. And making me feel small by comparison is certainly no way to encourage me.

See Jesus said that that makes you no different from a Pharisee, or a criminal among other criminals. And your reward is the pats on the back you receive from each other, not what you are ostensibly working toward: salvation.

And you want to know what? If I think of the instances when somebody has told me “chapter and verse” about all the things they have done for the unfortunate, you know what? EVERY time, it was a “born again” type, a “the bible is the WORD of God” type, a “holy roller” who tells me that they read the bible every single day and praise God all day and night. And it was always in response to their saying something racist, or at least selfish in that they didn’t want to pay taxes to help some “other” group. It was their “defense”.

And how un-Christ like is that? I guess they missed Matthew 6: 1-4.

You tell me.

As Gandhi said,

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

I have to agree.

By the by, there is a book about losing sight of the purpose of giving called, The Spiritual Danger of Doing Good, by Peter Greer. Some may like to take a look.

Historian is the New Hedge Fund Career?

Tags

Christianity, Election 2012, GOP, Herman Cain, King James Bible, Newt Gingrich, religion, teabaggers

Listen up you college types. Are you looking for a major that is sure to lead to big beautiful bucks? Are you going to need a high income to pay off those pesky student loans? Is money your objective in life?

Well, we have the major for you. Race on down to your college counselor and switch that major to HISTORY. Yes indeed, history. No particular type necessary. American, European, Asia, World, State, National, specializing in war, politics, economics, ethnicity, or whatever else. It don’t matter. Just make it H I S T O R Y.

With a history PH.D. under your belt or bra, you too can enter the ranks of the one percenters, as in TOP 1%.

Corporations are waiting for your applications. Bankers, oil firms, pharmaceuticals, NRA, you name it, they are looking for historians to “consult” about consultable things. Just look up their history, and the history of their interest, and write them a paper or two, and they will shower you will dollars the likes of which you never expected.

Those who are especially adept at this historian consulting can make upwards of 1.6 MILLION dollars a crack.

Be the first in your dorm to sign up for this mega opportunity. Offer good while supplies last. (Or the gig is up, which ever comes first.)

Go Newt. Grift on.

♦

We have a TeaNutz® here in Iowa. We know this, because he advertises.

He owns property that abuts the I-380 freeway. He puts up signs for those heading north out of Cedar Rapids.

He informs us on how he feels.

In the run up to 2008, he put up a big old sign that said “Vote McCain-Palin”.

After that didn’t work, he put up. “How’s that Hope and Change coming along”.

Then he went to “Obummer”. He left that up a long time.

Then he went to “VOTE CAIN”. That lasted about three weeks.

Now he says, “Worst Ever”.

It’s unclear if he means Obama or the clown convention that is the GOP field.

Stay tuned.

♦

I’d be the first to tell ya. I don’t have much truck with the King James Bible. As a semi-serious student of the “bible”,  whatever that means exactly, I find it not a reliable translation of what was originally said.

That being said, it is a rich and fragrant bounty when it comes to beautiful language and catchy phrasing. In fact, the average person has little idea just how many of the common idioms of the day are taken directly from its pages.

Ever use the words: “bite the dust” or “blind leading the blind” or “scum of the earth” or “by the skin of one’s teeth”? Well you were quoting the KJV.

National Geographic has a great article all about the book that remains the most favored over-all to the average Christian.

♦

 

Newty has more than just Fannie & Freddie to explain of course. There are plenty more “historical consultations” he has been paid for. And as they dig, so they uncover. Jim Rutenberg, writing for the NYTimes, has interesting information about Newt’s activities with the Gundersen Lutheran Health System and Pharma. Hint: he takes the money, says what they want, and them publicly gets on the side of which way the wind is blowing in the GOP.

Seems that Newty and old Mittens have much in common.

♦

Ya gotta laugh at Herm. He’s rockin’ on as best he can as the absent a brain. He tried to smooze with Cubans in Florida. He was heard to turn aside to one of his handlers, and whisper, “how do you say delicious in Cuban?”

Herm, there is no “Cuban” language. That would be Spanish. Hermie, “bless his heart”, Cain (as Sarah refers to him), has taken a play from her book it seems, in basically knowin’ nothin’ ’bout nothin’.

Oh, and this just released by the Cain campaign: There will no longer be any electronics allowed in any room where the Cainster is speakin’. There will forthwith be no further questions accepted by anybody. Mr. Cain has concluded that every question is now a “gotcha question.”  (Not really, but heck, close enough to be accurate, and that’s all we aim at here! )

♦

Got all the pre-Thanksgiving shopping done.

The Menu:

 Succulent Roasted Duck

Stuff that Bird Italian Style Dressing

Mashed Potatoes with Giblet Gravy

Sweet Potato Casserole

Caramelized Pearl Onions

Cherry Ice-Cream Jello Salad

Relish tray

Fresh French Baguettes

Holiday Spice Bread

Pecan-Apple Upside Down Pie

 

 

 

 

What This World Needs is a Good Shirley Temple

Tags

"Mittens" Romney, Barney Frank, Constitution, corporate America, economy, environment, Eric Cantor, Humor, Judeo-Christianity, Newt Gingrich, Occupy Wall Street, wacko media

Hey it worked in the 30’s. Or so they tell me. I have no personal knowledge. I’m not that old. I refer to those old reels of celluloid to inform me.

Back in the 30’s this country, like today, was reeling from pessimism. The economy sucked and people had lost faith. So, those great minds in the country told Hollywood to get on board, and make lots of feel-good movies.

And they did. And Shirley saved America.  We just need another Shirley is all. Simple.

♦

Having saved the world before noon, let us move on. Did you know that back in the 20’s and 30’s that corporate Amerika fought Child Labor laws tooth and nail? Did you know that the first act passed by Congress, the Keating-Owens Act, was struck down by the US Supreme Court as a constitutional infringement on a child’s right to contract his or her own labor?

Do rational people believe that anything has changed in Corporacracy? The GOP continues to blame the economic woes of the country on “regulation” of business by Democrats. They assure us that our Corporate benefactors will “do the right” thing when it comes to safe working conditions, safe products, and otherwise fair business practices.

How low does your IQ have to be to believe that? Does anyone remember the company town? Does anyone remember the Triangle Shirtwaist fire? Does anyone remember GM strikers being attacked and beaten by corporate goons?

Yeah, I sure believe that the Koch brothers are lookin’ out for me. Sure I do.

♦

Just how clearly does our Constitution follow the commandments of the Christian faith? Beeryblog has a post you better darn read if you want to know. It’s an eye-opener.

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Don’t know if you heard or not, but Gingrich called for the arrest, trial and imprisonment of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd as the ” real perpetrators” of the economic collapse in this country. When the moderators suggested that that was said tongue-in-cheek- surely, Newt the Toot, doubled down and assured everyone that he meant every word of it.

Barney Frank responded with this:

“I wish I knew that he was willing to listen to my advice, I would have given him some: I would have told him not to impeach Clinton, I would have told his successors not to go to war with Iraq, and I would have told DeLay not to go on the dance show. He’s been having a bad year, you know — this self-styled intellectual leader of the free world struggling to stay ahead of Michele Bachmann in the polls is unsettling him so he talks even sillier than he sometimes does.”

H/T to Joe.My.God

♦

The nutz on the right continue to not know what the willies to do about the Occupy Wall Street phenom. Eric (everybody’s nerdish little brother) Cantor has gone from calling them “mobs” to folks who are folks who are “justifiably frustrated.” Read how Cantor tries to backtrack and still manage to tell everyone how different this group is from his beloved (let me kiss your feet) TeaNutz®.

As the movement grows across the country, the GOP is rethinking its initial condemnation of “all those dirty hippies” and “anarchists” who are out to “divide our country” and “pit Americans against Americans”. It’s a fun thing to watch I gotta admit.

And Herm, I would be guessin’, ain’t going anywhere near the “mobs” with his “stop whining and get a job” routine.

♦

If you need another primer on the economy, Robert Reich has that for you in seven lies about the economy that are being pushed by the Right. 

♦

A couple of nice finds at Political Irony. The first is a Democratic website where you can go and watch Mitt (somebody called me Mittens and I thought that was cute) Romney flippin’ and floppin’ on a huge number of issues. All out of his own mouth. Go here for that.

Or go here for late night humor.

♦

There’s two guys chasing after one brain-cell award: Beck interviewing Hank Williams Jr. on his being fired from ESPN for being just plain too stupid to exist. Of course you get that Blaze, so no link is required. You would not want to read it after all.

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Did you know that erasers have magical properties? Well they do. Whatever they erase, ceases to exist. At least on planet TEX-ASS. You see, for years TEXAS has contracted with Houston Advanced Research Center to report on the state of Galveston Bay. And they did so this year. And the water levels are rising, and the scientists said it was important proof of climate change and human causation.

References to the rising water and projections of future rising were simply erased by Rick’s boys and girls who don’t care for that kinda stuff. It’s all a left-wing hoax didn’t ya know?

♦

I’m living in a land somewhere west of Andromeda this day. I awoke to a husband who out-of-the-blue and for no-definable-reason, offered to cook dinner. I had a roast out defrosting and he said, “save it until tomorrow, I’ll go down and get the liver and fix that. I know you don’t like to cook liver.”

I immediately began looking around for MY husband. But I’m thinkin’ I may keep this imposter around, at least until after that liver is cooked. I do love me some liver ‘n onions on occasion.

 

Related articles

• Barney Frank Rips Newt Gingrich for Suggesting He Should be Jailed (towleroad.com)

Self-Serving Interpretations

Tags

Christianists, David Barton, Enlightenment, fundamentalism, John Locke, Matthew, minimum wage, religious right, Rousseau, Vineyard owner

I haven’t posted much here lately of a religious nature. And I usually describe this blog as part political commentary and part religious commentary.

Yet, I’ve been sensitive (probably too much so) to the fact that a good many of my readers are either agnostics or atheists and have little or no interest in things spiritual.

But, of late, I’ve been thinking hard about David Barton and his awful pretense of “historical” revising. We all know of course, his proclivity to proclaim that America was “founded on Christian principles.” While we agree that most of the Founding Fathers were Christian in some form or another, it is equally clear that the dangers of a religious-political union were well-known from history and there was a deliberate determination to not allow that unholy alliance to be the government of the new nation.

Barton, who has a BA from Oral Roberts University (which tells you a lot in and of itself) in religious education, has the temerity to hold himself out as “expert on historical and constitutional issues.” What he actually does, is cherry pick statements from historical documents and the bible and create a web of arguments that favor his view–that America is meant to be a nation ruled by Christian principles (supposedly as defined by him and others who agree with his fundamentalist notions).

Ironically, the Founding Fathers were steeped in exactly the opposite philosophy. The long history of the Roman Church and its marriage with the kings of Europe served an object lesson in how not to govern. Moreover, the FF were men of the Enlightenment, and any high school student in the US knows that they were deeply influenced by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both Enlightenment thinkers, who posited that man was more than capable of learning the secrets of nature and governing himself. One’s personal belief in a deity, was just that, personal.

One of the dangers of people like Barton is that they use their “talents” to create a history that favors their agenda and that of the party they affiliate with. In this case, Barton provides the “philosophical” underpinnings to the Republican notions of free market economies unfettered from regulation of any kind. In other words, toss out all the anti-trust, anti-child labor, minimum wage, safe working conditions legislation. This is God’s will.

Of particular interest to me as of late is the continuing claim that “Jesus opposed the minimum wage.” Setting aside for a moment the obvious idiocy of this, since there is no reference to “minimum wage” in the bible, let us examine the crux of the argument.

Most often cited in this discussion is Matthew 20: 1-16. In this parable, a wealthy vineyard owner seeks day workers for his fields. In the morning he finds some and agrees to a wage, and sends them out. At noon, some more are found, and they too are sent to the fields. Late in the work day, a few more are found and sent for a hour’s work.

As the men line up for payment, those who worked a full day are chagrined to see that the owner is paying those who worked only an hour the same wage as those who worked a full day. They complain. The vineyard owner points out that they agreed to their wage before they began working. What is it to them how he deals with others? And here is the phrase that the Christianists hang their hat on:

“Have I no right to do what I like with my own?”

To the so-called Christian who wants to protect his/her own wallet, more lovely words were never spoken. Why God says that a business owner has the right to do with his money as he wishes! The government has no right to order them to pay people any set sum of money!

Such greedy and selfish people virtually ignore the obvious point Jesus makes, and see nothing but that one sentence; that along with various verses strewn throughout the psalms and scriptures which talk about not placing undue emphasis on wealth. (Except the wealthy I guess did place a lot of emphasis on money in order to become so.)

This is then married to the “Jesus never said that Rome should care for the poor” and “it’s the job of charitable works to take care of the poor” (the poor being those people we conclude are deserving). There you have it. A perfectly constructed argument that allows “Christians” to keep their money in their pockets and the government out of social safety-nets. (An amazingly high percentage of these fools do take their Social Security and Medicare when they reach retirement. Shocking isn’t it?)

Actually the clear import of the parable is this: The vineowner was a good man. He recognized that all those who worked for him that day had to eat and probably had families they had to feed. He had no idea what may have prevented the later arrivals from getting to the town square earlier. Who knows how far they traveled to seek work?

He provided a decent wage to all who worked because they had themselves and their families to support. He recognized the need to make sure that all were cared for. If you struck an agreed-upon bargain, what was it to you if the owner struck more favorable bargains with others? The implication is, that the long-day workers were the greedy ones! They wanted more if the owner was paying the latest workers a “living” wage.

This is the kind of thing that fundamentalists do with scripture, twisting and dishonoring it in order to serve their personal desires. And of course, in doing so, they dishonor God, the Bible, and other Christians.

And sad to say, Barton continues to be the darling of the likes of Bachmann, Huckabee and Gingrich and others who play to the fears and greed of the “religious right.” 

Related articles

• Liars for Jesus: Exposing David Barton and Other Revisionists (atheistrev.com)
• GOP’s Favorite Fake Historian Spins The New York Times (alternet.org)
• Lying: A Virtue (aafwaterloo.wordpress.com)
• David Barton Claims Founding Fathers Debated Creation/Evolution (jonathanturley.org)

Henry, They are Messin’ with the Word of God!

Tags

bible, biblical exegesis, Blaze Nincompoops, funadamentalists, Humor

Hey ho, Ralphie, come on. Take a load off. Oh just throw that hot water bottle over there on that pile of newspapers. I took a little spill yesterday and landed on my hip. Damn kids in this park. You know as soon as you see them pull in with those trailers with wheels, they are no good lazy. Got them a passel of kids that sleep stacked up like sardines, and one of the little hoodlums left a bike on my lawn. I tripped over it coming home last night from Lou’s. I had a few beers, but that damn bike shoulda never been there. A double wide, now that’s a whole ‘nother class of people.

Anyway, Thelma called, and said that those Israelis were messin’ with the bible. I know we gotta support them and all, cuz of God,and end times and all, but a man’s gotta take a stand ya know?

Thelma is bringin’ Gert, and Jack is comin’ by with Arnie. Beer in the fridge, help yourself. Thelma is bringin’ something to eat. That woman can’t drink without stuffin’ her jaw, if you know what I mean. She broke my only kitchen chair last week with that wide rear of hers. And then Jack plugged up the terlit, but that’s another story, so don’t get me started.

Anyways, the Jews over there got them some computer “soft” ware that somehow, so they claim, can tell ya who wrote what. Says that it verifies pretty much what them elite “intellect-u-als” claim. You know those atheist God-haters and their crap that the bible, God forbid, was written by men. Well Thelma thought we should talk it out and decide about what to do, though I can’t figure out what we can do.

Anyway, I copied out some of the comments from the fine commenters over at the Blaze, to see if they had any ideas. You might want to look it over.

• TRONINTHEMORNING

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 9:37am

The Bible is real from Old to New testament; (sic) you can’t have one without the other. Christ is the Saviour (sic) of the world and we are shut up to the cross to make a decision for or against Him. Ah the simplicity of belief and faith.

Troninthemorning: It’s nice to remain in utter ignorance isn’t it? So simple and easy. Just shut the old brain case and swim in stupid.

• hauschild

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 9:47am

I can’t imagine a bigger waste of time and money. I wonder how much this one cost the taxpayer in grant monies???

Houschild: it helps if you read the article first dude. Why do you care what the Israeli taxpayers laid out?

• Bearfoot

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 10:18am

All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16

Bearfoot: okay, so what has that got to do with the price of beans?  And dude, the actual text says , “all scripture that is inspired” and don’t forget, that didn’t include the NT which hadn’t been gathered together yet.  Full steam ahead.

• Anonymous T. Irrelevant

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 10:40am

I wonder what they‘d find if they ran it on all of Obama’s books?

Anonymous T. Irrelevant: I wonder what they would find if they ran it on your brain? Or any of your books? Oh I bet there aren’t any are  there?

• Joseph28

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 9:44am

Anything beyond the old testament and the teachings of Jesus is just speculation amongst these scholars.

Joseph28: funny, they say the same thing about your intelligence. Pure speculation.

• hi

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 10:48am

It’s pretty amazing how the Bible was written hundreds of years, but it has a beginning and an end and all of the middle fits together.

Also, 3/4 of the Bible is prophecy and Christ fulfilled 300 specific things written about him 500 years earlier.

Fulfilled prophecy is evidence of divine intervention. Man cannot predicted 300 specific things someone is going to do 500 years from now.

Hi: The bible wasn’t written “hundreds of years” sweetie, and funny, but humans have the ability to place books in order. You’d be shocked that the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament to you) are in a different order.  I prophesy that you are nuts. Let’s see how I come out on that in 500 years.

• NOBALONEY

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 9:51am

God spoke to the writters, and they listened.

Nobalony: was that critters? What proof you got there that they listened? Oh the words themselves? Is that circular reasoning? Do you know what circular reasoning is?

• affinnity

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 10:13am

Let me see if I understand this – Israel needs Christian American dollars and moral support to continue to exist so they spend time and money inventing software that tells Christians that their entire faith is based on a fake book (the Bible). Why?

Affinity: now I’d say they are pretty darn smart wouldn’t you? Kind of like the Koch brothers, but on a larger scale.  And who said anything about fake?  Who first said it was the “word of God” tootsie?

• Country

Posted on June 30, 2011 at 10:49am

Christians do not stone thier children. Shellfish is a food law because it is bad for our bodies. Just think, if we obeyed the food laws we would not have obamacare. 😉

Country: But some children still get stoned, and yeah, we’d all live to be 500 if we just didn’t eat shellfish. And pork, you must include pork. Satan sent us pork way back when, just to get  the Affordable Health Care Act. You are a moron Country, seek help.

 And so my dear friends, if you woke up feeling a bit on the dumb side, cheer up, you are way smarter than these folks. In fact, you might qualify as super human by comparison.

In the Name of God

Tags

American Exceptionalism, founding fathers, God, Islamophobia, Politics, racism, religion, right wing extremism

The atheists have a powerful argument when they suggest that millions have died in the name of religion. They are right. From the beginning, humans fought over land each claimed was theirs by right, given to them by God.

It’s never ended. Down through all these millenia. We have continued to fight over land and control of populations, all the while upholding our efforts as the “will of God.”

It continues today in a war being waged between Jews, Muslims and Christians. All claim they are doing God’s bidding.

There is always a good argument that mankind would have been better off not listening to the small voice within that urges us to believe that we are destined for more than just a brief sojourn upon this planet only to return to dust.

The truth is, all these wars instituted to protect, promote, or to destroy a religion, are done in the name of religion. There is no objective proof that any of this is called for by God. The deeper you look, the more you see human motivation driving the crusade to install “our” God.

Any fair reading of the Old Testament raises a very obvious question. Isn’t it awfully convenient that God has been on the “side” of the Israelites, thus allowing them to then justify their genocide of whole towns and settlements? How convenient to declare that God has said, “why this land I give to you, so go and subjugate all those who oppose you taking their land.”

Muslims feel utterly justified in controlling the Holy Land, as do Jews, as do Christians. Over time, each has held sway for a time, and been more than willing to kill to retain power. All in the name of God. All in the name of an interpretation, that just might be a bit self-serving.

Religion versus religion, and religion versus secularism erupts in mostly non-violent war in this country today. It has been growing steadily, or resurging I should say. We can be sure that the US expansion into the West and our suppression of indigenous people, either red or brown, was done in some sense in the name of God. We are the City upon the Hill, and as such, God’s new chosen.

This convenient “American Exceptionalism” poisoned with religious righteousness, has justified in the eyes of its perpetrators all kinds of injustice, from genocide to land grabbing, and slavery.

For periods of time, we placed religion in mostly its rightful place–as a facet of each person’s life as they chose or not. Government stayed out of faith, and faith stayed out of government. Religion was a good place to develop ethical, moral, and just responses to issues of the day. It was not the only place however. Government did it’s best to cull the best of the just response and act upon it for the greater good of all, and so that minorities were not walked upon.

I was thinking of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, whatever his personal beliefs about God were, certainly believed that it was a personal issue, not one for the public square. Washington was so loathe to be seen as promoting a particular tradition that he didn’t go to church at all as president.

What must they think of the goings on today? One can only imagine. I suspect they would see it for what it is, shameless religiosity to justify what people want to do anyway. A serious segment of the religion right who intone  “marching in lockstep with Israel” do so only because they believe they are promoting their version of the end times. This of course is not lost on the Israelis, but they accept their friends where they can get them.

Herman, Step-‘n-fetch-it, Cain argues that in his uninformed mind, most Muslims are Sharia law followers, and as president he wouldn’t have time to ferret out the few who aren’t, so don’t blame him for not putting any Muslims in his prospective administration.

A segment of the religious right rejects Mitt Romney only because he is “not the right kind of Christian”. Warren Cole Smith, associate editor of the World, a right-wing magazine, argues:

Placing a Mormon in that pulpit would be a source of pride and a shot of adrenaline for the LDS church. It would serve to normalize the false teachings of Mormonism the world over. It would also provide an opening to Mormon missionaries around the world, who could start every conversation: “Let me tell you about the American president.” To elect a Mormon President is to advance the cause of the Mormon Church.

Non-Christians likely don’t care much about this point one way or the other. But for the Christian, this is a vital issue. One of the strongest warnings Jesus issues is to those who “lead little ones astray.” He said it would be better for that person if a millstone were put around his neck and he were cast into the sea. The validation of the false religion of Mormonism would almost certainly have the effect of leading many astray. Evangelical Christians should have no part of that effort.

This is no different from back in 1960 when a goodly sum of Protestants were pretty darn sure that electing a Catholic to the presidency would be tantamount to installing the pope in the White House, and for some, that was Satan himself.

The UCCB, the official spokesman for the American Catholic Church, has written a letter to Speaker John Boehner, basically condemning the Ryan plan and other GOP plans to gut Medicare as unfairly burdening the least able, while gifting the rich with more riches. Arguments go back and forth within the Catholic world as to whether or not voting for this person or that can be justified under definitions of intrinsic evil.

Exactly what Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers feared, has come to fruition. The public forum is now embroiled in an increasingly vitriolic war of words over whose interpretation of sacred scripture is controlling.

And underlying it all is the ugly raw truth. It still comes down to using God to justify why somebody’s vision of the world should be the one everyone else should be forced to live under. And it’s wrong, period.

End of rant.