Religions Rooted In Delusions

I think it's safe enough to make these observations as being forensic about religion. I believe if this is scientific information, then separating religion from cult would be easier.

1. The NRSV with Apocrypha is the most inclusive global Bible. It includes the important Maccabees 3 and 4.
2. It would be forensic to replace in the First Testament all "the LORD" with "YHWH".
3. Recognize that the cdrom The Trope Trainer is a reasonable equivalent of the Torah Scrolls and can substitute for the first five books of every one's bible.
4. The Bible is not necessarily a religious archaeological artifact.
5. The Quran mentions the Torah Scrolls 16 times. It is the Arabic word "Taurat".

It's been a hard concept for me to acquire, but all this seems absolutely accurate to me after years of personal inquiry.

"We would become indolent and careless, with no effort or goal for anything, no worry or concern for anyone or anything;"

DanielDen, that's merely speculation. We have no evidence for what the human experience would be like without suffering. We have no evidence that suffering is connected to awareness or consciousness.

And frankly, I resent you or anyone making assumptions about the mindsets and motivations of other people. We can never truly know what is in another's mind.

"The fact is, we are given life and and awareness, and consciousness, and we we must take all that goes along with it, including the suffering which is a part of all people's lives"

No argument there.

"Perhaps religion is a way that helps people 'take it.'"

Religions should be able to do that without making assertions about the universe that have no evidence and/or that are untestable. We should be able to "take it" while accepting the universe for what it is.

God or no God, conscicousness requires sensations of contrasting experiences. From that realization alone comes a true knowledge of suffering.

There is no one or no thing that causes suffereing in principle. There does not need to be an explanation for it, in any way. It is part of our package that we take when we come to life in this existence.

If we knew that nothing bad would ever happen to anyone, and that neither we nor anyone we know would ever suffer injury, sickness, nor even sadness, what do you think would beocme of us? We would become indolent and careless, with no effort or goal for anything, no worry or concern for anyone or anything; the nature of consciousness and awareness as we experience it would be radically and fundamentally changed.

I don't want to suffer, and I don't want anyone I love to suffer. Yet, I also do not want to lose my sense of awareness, and the love I feel for others. Yet to wish suffering away would mean to wish away my consciousness, and to wish away the feelings of precious love that I feel for a certain few people.

It is a conundrum, isn't it? But nothing too much to worry over, since it is how it is, and unchangealbe by anything that we might do or wish to do.

The fact is, we are given life and and awareness, and consciousness, and we we must take all that goes along with it, including the suffering which is a part of all people's lives. We do not even get to take it leave it; we must take it.

Perhaps religion is a way that helps people "take it."

I tried telling my wife that my religion forbids me to do chores on weekends, but unfortunately she already knew I'm an atheist. But seriously folks, I can't imagine letting a baby (anyone's baby!) starve to death--or die of some easily treatable illness--before my eyes, no matter who told me to--a friend, a neighbor, a crazed gunman, or the bible-god. I'm a member of a species that succeeded tremendously because, among its evolved traits, is the desire to take good care of its children. The New Testament tells me to desert my family, but I just can't!

Colinnicholas,

Well then, perhaps we are not dealing with a 21st century God but a 21st century Before The Man Who Was God God. Perhaps God needs an updating. We should talk to Him about the values of a website. What good He could do in the modern age!

But then again, there is that problem of how to contact Him in order to present the idea.

It is enough to get me to pull my hair our.

Even if that is what Godlovers have done for centuries... Maybe this is why..

:-)

Welcome to the other place.

ALIAS ALERT FOR THE DAY:

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka IVRI5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago.

After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish"/delusional woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!

Her newest alias is "nadinebatra" .

Hi Justillthen,

Though proof opines otherwise, you most definitely have a soul, methinks. May it join the right eye of nonGod in the fullness of unTime, beyond the great marzeah. :)

onofrio,

My my I am all so giddy with the excesses! We are full to the zatches with frivolity, my friend! It brings a tear of special joy to my soul, if I have one...
Benevolence!

Everything in Nature is eating everything else. We, as the top of the food chain, nurture legions of creatures to slay and devour. Who's to say we ourselves are not also a meal in the making?

Perhaps our notion of God is simply a dim awareness of the cosmic gourmand who is farming our souls for cuisine. Most of those sheep heading for the Wedding Feast of the Lamb do not realise that they are on the menu, predestined vitamins for the divine innards.

As below, so above. The Moon's hungry.

Something to consider, for those inclined to exult in the eurekas of our monkey-clever moondust trajectory...

justillthen ;

Interesting comment Justil.

you say.

"Either way, this Deity Entity isn't usually given physical status. Made it all, but is not of it all, or some such. We have got no address. You would have a far easier time getting the local policeman, if you are looking for physical intervention".

me;
Wouidn't you know it? No physical status. So that's why we never see Him.

You say He has no address - hey, He doesn't even have a website!

What self respecting twenty-first century God is it - who doesn't even have A WEBSITE???

Must mean they don't have the internet up there in Paradise yet. I know they don't have phones or my mom would have called.

When I die I'm going to try getting in the 'other' place
.
See you there, maybe,

William James was particularly interested in the esoteric side of religion, and this is most clearly reflected in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'. Whether or not that interest would have changed in the face of contemporary scientific discoveries is debatable.

In fact, mysticism is often thought of as the red-haired stepchild of the religious world by more traditional and conventional believers. People that study mysticism in depth begin to understand that it is actually the foundation of much religious tradition in the early formative phase.

I suspect James would have continued to find mysticism of psychological interest, given his reputation for being an ecletic thinker of uncommon depth.

And due to the additional fact that mysticism and mystical experience have yet to be explained away - although rank and file materialists would probably argue this proposition!

A more recent esoteric thinker even more closely positioned to modern evolutionary thought is Aldous Huxley - grandson of Darwin's famous ally, Thomas Huxley. His notable non-fictional book 'The Perennial Philosophy' examines mysticism in a manner similar to the earlier W. James work. He was particularly sympathetic to Vedanta and Buddhism.

Here are a couple of links that offer brief commentary on both men - their books are worth reading.

http://sandra.stahlman.com/james.html

http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Huxley.html

Hello colinnicholas,

To go off of the comments that onofrio made to you, it might also seem reasonable that that God/nonGod relishes both slaughter and nurturance, violence and peace, death and life. Assuming the God/nonGod exists and is then the CreatorOfTheHeavensAndTheEarths, He/She/It created Death as well as (the Far Preferred) Life. Perhaps it is just us that have an issue with the death part of the Equation.

He just wasn't there for them. But that's typical of him isn't it. He's never around when you need him; like our local policeman.

Either way, this Deity Entity isn't usually given physical status. Made it all, but is not of it all, or some such. We have got no address. You would have a far easier time getting the local policeman, if you are looking for physical intervention. It poses another problem, along with the Death issue, if one seeks a physical relationship with the Creator.

Perhaps not Impossible Dream, though... Though a Highly Questionable One. :-)

Farnaz;

I enjoyed the Hemingway bit below.
____________________________

"While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you'll only keep me from getting killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell every one in the world that you are the only one that matters. Please please dear jesus. The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody".

me
That's powerful and authentic. Hemingway knows how hell feels.

Thanks.

Hello again daniellion,

I posted to you on free will in the Reynolds thread. Seems that it is contemplation up for you in the moment.

You have quite a dark view on an individuals power to choose in their life, and on the influence of 'outside forces' to influence the individual.

My answer to more than half of your questions of what do we choose would be yes, not no, as is your answer. We choose or can choose most of those things. By choice we influence our attitude, surroundings, those we touch. We effectively cause the next experiences to come to us by choice. We open the doors for the next present moment by what we choose in this present moment. Beauty is more than skin deep, and what radiates out from inside affects how we are seen by others. The most plain jane can be ugly betty or just gorgeous based on her own choices. How adversity effects us is a matter of choice, and that choice is adjustable in every next second.

You promote for powerlessness in life, and campaign for being at the effect of the 'influences' of life. I do not negate the effect of conditioning and social and environmental influences, but I also do not agree that they are an immovable obstacle by any means. I suggest that we are far more in control of our lives than all that. We do what we want, by conscious choice or by acquiescence to the conditioning that we are currently running.

Onofrio;

you write;

"All this, of course, presumes that the nature of the nonGod would be beneficent if he existed.

Another quite *sensible* conclusion - that God does exist and he relishes slaughter. After all, isn't the God in question here the God of battles, the consuming fire, Lord of Heavenly Armies, who smashes the nations like pots and scorches the earth in his fury; the God who expresses himself as blood-caked, whip-shredded carrion, who demands his followers perish likewise for him, hurls down hail like millstones and hatches pandemics, all to back up his reputation as "truly to be feared". Such a God was there all right, in the mud of Flanders. Those poor wretches of the Western Front were in the very teeth of that God as he revelled in the feast, made mud-mash of them".

me

Great stuff Ono. Yeah, we are taught that He must be a goodgod until we are unable to think otherwise. Even I hadn't toyed with that one,
except in my last post which plays around with His indifference or incompetence.
I'm sure that most survivors of WW1 left their God in that mud of Flanders.
He just wasn't there for them. But that's typical of him isn't it. He's never around when you need him; like our local policeman.

"The answer to all of these questions is "no.""

Unless you are a Buddhist, in which case, the answer is yes. You choose the lessons you must learn in this lifetime.

"Perhaps there is no way for us to have consciousness except by the price also of suffering."

Again, good point. One reason suffering is so troublesome is because it offends our sense of justice. This is the theme of the gospel song "Farther Along." We crave some reason or plan for why some people suffer and why some don't. But we have no evidence for any such reason. One could easily explain the unjustness of suffering through what is inaccurately called "chance." But the real issue is that we should not expect "chance" to be just in the first place. We can work to promote justice in human affairs, but we should still accept that the universe is indifferent to justice.

Perhaps there is no way for us to have consciousness except by the price also of suffering. For to be sophisticated enough to be aware of anything, we must also, eventually, erode, and fall apart, and go back to disorganized simplicity; we must die, and this realization is the beginning of our suffering, then we suffer also as it happens to us.

Regarding free will, which I did not mention, what is free will? What really are we free to choose in our lives? Do we choose where we are born? or when? Do we choose our parents and care-givers? Do we choose the cultural setting into which we are born, or the physical landscapes which we experience? Do we choose our own bodies? Do we choose to be beautiful or ugly? Do we choose our brains and our minds and how alert we are? Do we choose our intelligence? Do we choose the acuity of our senses, and how accurately or dully we hear and see and touch? Do we choose the succession of experiences of our lives, that form our personalities? Do we choose the doubts that seep into our minds, and strip away many things that we had been taught to believe by the previous generation?

The answer to all of these questions is "no." In life, we choose very little. And of that very little that we do get to choose, there is coercion from every direction, and at every turn and step, to submit to the enforced beliefs of others.

It is hard to say what free will and free choice is. I often think it is merely a weapon to beat up on people whose circumstances have gone all wrong, and as a way for people to gloat, whose lives have turned out well.

DanielITLD

you say;

"And atheists point to all that is bad in the world and all of the suffering and say, there cannot be a God, how could there be"

Daniel. Atheists can't prove there is no God. But we can sure make a case for there being no 'loving' god.

We say there is no loving God because there is absolutely nothing that suggests there is one. Where is this love demonstrated? What has God done that shows he exists and is Loving.

For instance, a Real Live Loving God would actually DO something that clearly shows that He cares; that demonstrates His love.

For instance, on 9/11, a Loving God might have taken over the controls of the planes that the terrorists had hijacked and steered them to safety, missing the WTC because God would not allow such an outrage to occur.

Can you imagine if He had done that? The world would have rejoiced at such a miracle that saved the lives of three thousand innocent people..And we would all be believers.

Or God might have taken control of the Asian tsunami (of a few years ago) and saved the lives of those thousands of religious men, women and children.who died horribly , when a loving God could not have tolerated the horror - one would think.
A loving God would surely not stand by when Siamese twins, joined at the head have to be operated on to separate them, causing one or both to die. A real God (what a contradiction in terms that is) would DO SOMETHING that deserves the title" Loving' - rather than do absolutely nothing about anything EVER.

And he is still called a Loving God.

What kind of Loving God would create creatures who have to eat each other to live? All God's creatures are hunters, and all God's creatures are the prey.

What a recipe that is - for a world of hideous brutality built be a God who loves us..

Not what you'd call intelligent design.

Nor is it compassionate design either.

You'd think a loving God would have found a better way to feed his creatures.

He COULD have made us all vegetarians, lions and tigers too

He COULD have designed creatures that don't need food..that work by magic. He's GOD isn't HE?

Why such a grotesque arrangement? What kind of God settles for this?

A bloodthirsty God maybe. A bored God. Certainly NOT a loving God.

Maybe no God at all. Just nature. Brutal indifferent nature.

.

DanielintheLionsDen,

"People either believe in God, or they do not."

I would agree that people either believe in the transcendent or not, but the word "God" is charged with many attributes in a Judeo-Christian culture that Buddhists, who believe in a transcendent Law, would reject. We, all the good and the bad, the life and the death, and all our environment are manifestations of the Law.

Otherwise, you and I share sentiments exactly. Free will is not an illusion, created by an omnipotent, omniscient God who pokes one eye out to give us the illusion. It is real. Life and eternity are determined by our thoughts, words and actions.

Hi Daniel;

Well, to start with Wm James was religious, he believed in God.
His father was a theologian, so Henry had no choice but be a believer.
That destroys a lot of his credibility for an old atheist like me. He saw the world through religious eyes, so no matter how brilliant he was, he was not exactly objective.

If my father had been a theologian, I might possibly have grown up to be a priest. (even if it irks me to admit that).
I doubt that I would have become an athiest. I believe our early environment usually determines what we end up accepting as religious truth.

Dan Dennett, the philosopher, writes in his book "Breaking The Spell" that Wm James is a hero of his. But sees James as biased by his 'religious beliefs, and his Victorian misunderstanding of what Darwin's theory of evolution was all about.

Dennett says "In spite of his desire to look at history without prejudice, James biases his judgement in the direction of optimism; the memes that have resisted extinction over the centuries are only those memes that actually somehow enhance humanity. What do they enhance exactly - human genetic fitness? human happiness? human well being? James gives us a very Victorian version of Darwinism; what survives must be good, because evolution is always a matter of 'progress toward the better."'

He saw the world through religious eyes, and thought that all was for the good, because God was in his heaven directing things - even evolution.

I hesitate to criticize the great man. I'm sure he was a lot smarter than I am.. But he was a Victorian at a time when people believed in fairies. They were all the rage. Even Conan-Doyle spent a great deal of his time trying to coax the fairies and pixies to come out from their hiding places, back in the merrie old days before WW1.

As I said in an earlier post, if James was around today in this amazing scientific wonderland, where nonbelief is commonplace and knowledge exploding in all directions, he might change his position on the 'man upstairs' theory like millions of the rest of us have.
Much has changed in the last hundred years. We know so much more.

DanielDen,

Excellent post at 6:34 a.m., particularly your last two paragraphs.

The theist and atheist arguments that you rightly criticize make unfounded assumptions about what gods would be like. The argument from suffering is one reason I reject atheism. (My own position? Gods are possible, but without positive evidence there's no reason to treat their existence as likely. That's a rejection of both theism and atheism.)

Suffering could be used to argue against Christian theology or any other theology that asserts a loving god. But we cannot assume that gods have any power over human suffering or any interest in it.

I see no reason to assume anything about gods. I would even reject Mark Twain's assertion that the state of the world shows a god to be a malign thug. There are numerous other possibilities - gods could care deeply about suffering but may be powerless to prevent it; gods may have limited power over suffering, with the suffering that we do have being the only alternative to much greater suffering; gods may simply be indifferent to suffering; gods may be unable to even perceive humans' suffering; or gods may have no power over the universe at all.

People either believe in God, or they do not.

Some people who believe in God say it is because of their thoughts on intelligent design, and they always wonder, how could all this be without God. But that does not prove that God exists.

And atheists point to all that is bad in the world and all of the suffering and say, there cannot be a God, how could God let there be such suffering?

But likewise, that does not prove there is no God.

I believe that we exist and feel and know anything at all only because of the nature of existence and of contrasting experiences, and that we could not wish away everything that is bad without also losing everything that is also good.
I believe that we feel joy and sadness, each together, in contrast, and cannot know either without the other. We are aware of pain and pleasure, repose and struggle, light and darkness only because of their contrasting natures.
In all our lives, there is sunshine and rain, mingled together.

Peace is not really a happy kingdom with a wise ruler; peace is really an equilibrium of tensions and a synchronization of rhythms, which includes and accounts for all that is good and bad in the world and in the human heart.

ALIAS ALERT FOR THE DAY:

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka IVRI5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago.

After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish"/delusional woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!

Her newest alias is "nadinebatra" .

robinlandseadel,

You write: "The more a single deity or religious figurehead is claimed to be the only authorized and acceptable source of spirituality, the greater the degree of totalitarian rule issuing forth from that religion."
___________
So it is often said. However, polytheism often argues an underlying "one," monotheism "aspects." Peaceful polytheism? India-- Hindus and Muslims kill each other in the streets. The DALIT, most horrifically, the Banghi. Dowry deaths (wife murder), female feticide, bonded labor, etc., etc.

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'"

-Kalil Gibran, "The Prophet"

Colinnicholas,

Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (Interchapter VII)
____________________________

While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you'll only keep me from getting killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell every one in the world that you are the only one that matters. Please please dear jesus. The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.

Colinnocholas,

Hemingway thought there were ONLY atheists in foxholes. (What else could there be?)

Farnaz,

And ditto for "Wester Monday" :)

Farnaz,

"Vinnie da L.A. painted shadowy the blond apostatess, Nicole Kidman, spurned by St. Cruise, whose head was too big for a platter, wherefore upon his frail shoulders, the martyr carried the Hollow Skull all the days of his life." (Cruise 27:8; Vinnie da L.A. 5:2)

Brilliant! Triple Zesta for this work of art! I'm jealous :)

Colinnicholas,

You:
"WW1 was so ghastly with injured men screaming for their mothers as they were slowly swallowed by the mud that was everywhere, and nobody there to help them. God was nowhere to be found. The only sensible conclusion is there is no God."
Posted by: colinnicholas | April 7, 2009 11:53 AM

All this, of course, presumes that the nature of the nonGod would be beneficent if he existed.

Another quite *sensible* conclusion - that God does exist and he relishes slaughter. After all, isn't the God in question here the God of battles, the consuming fire, Lord of Heavenly Armies, who smashes the nations like pots and scorches the earth in his fury; the God who expresses himself as blood-caked, whip-shredded carrion, who demands his followers perish likewise for him, hurls down hail like millstones and hatches pandemics, all to back up his reputation as "truly to be feared". Such a God was there all right, in the mud of Flanders. Those poor wretches of the Western Front were in the very teeth of that God as he revelled in the feast, made mud-mash of them.

The great intolerable - not that God does not exist, but that he exists and this mess is HIS DELIGHT.

This is faith - that the seeming Psychopath in charge is only feigning madness for some *greater good*. Someday he'll take off that fixed, fanged grin-of-a-dog, and beam "Surpriiiiise"!

Alternatively, there is the dualist option: that there are two Gods - one good, one evil - locked in conflict, world as battleground. Also quite sensible, in its way. Theoretically *pure* monotheism has often enlisted pragmatic dualism for its dirty work. As Anton La Vey remarked, Satan has kept the Church in business all these years...

Onofrio:

"Vinnie da L.A. painted shadowy the blond apostatess, Nicole Kidman, spurned by St. Cruise, whose head was too big for a platter, wherefore upon his frail shoulders, the martyr carried the Hollow Skull all the days of his life." (Cruise 27:8; Vinnie da L.A. 5:2)

Onofrio

"- popular biographies on Saints Cruise and Travolta and how they defied the perfidious Psychiatrists with elliptical parables, and miraculously flew aeroplanes by the power of holy celebrity alone"
_______________
. . . annually commemorated on Wester Monday with congregants costumed as medicos, shouting, "Medicate! Medicate!"

Farnaz,

You:
"And how does human end the last cognitively dissonant two thousand years? Ride the Apocalyptic Aeroplane to the new Big Bang."

What follows isn't very sequitur, 'cept to me, but may be good for a laff, and sort of germane...

Like starlets who need that big break to shine,
sects are primed for their Constantine...

If - despite intense persecution, culminating in the martyrdom of St Cruise's celebrity - Scientology becomes the official religion of the late American Empire, no doubt we will see, 17 centuries from now:

- popular biographies on Saints Cruise and Travolta and how they defied the perfidious Psychiatrists with elliptical parables, and miraculously flew aeroplanes by the power of holy celebrity alone.

- furious debates between Scientologic clergy over whether to apologise to the descendants of Psychiatrists for the Great Solution: a systematic effort to purge the world of engrams once and for all by exterminating all those of Psychiatric race.

- moontrucks with stickers on their deflector-shields saying "Honk if you love L Ron".

- sub-sects that claim L Ron Hubbard returned to earth in 3000 in a flaming Porsche.

- Battlefield Earth literalists who will only read the Authorised Hindinglish Translation of the original pulp manuscripts (the most ancient fragments of which have been secreted by a sinister cabal of Cruisean abbots).

- liberal contemplatives who have thoroughly demythologised such distinctive Scientological concepts as thetans and engrams, and see themselves as 'small c' Cruiseans, open to dialogue with the Mondomanians, the Buddinomastics, the Orthophranes, and other major Pulp Faiths. They see no problem in chanting the antiphon from the Great Canon of St Beck - "hubbard, hubbard, hubbard" - alongside Shiahinduastrian cyberdervishes, in an effort to foster interfaith understanding in an age of extremist violence...

Hi Onofrio,

"Yes, I've read Festinger and Co on the curious case of the *Keechian* beam-me-ups. I sniffed a lively gnostic ghost astraddle cold war rocketry fuelled by l'eau de Blavatsky."

Yes. But, evidently, others have followed in Festinger's wake, participationally observing cults awaiting promised ends, or self-ending, updating mise en scenes.

"A microcosm of the ever-nigh-on-bursting Christobubble?"

So Festinger convincingly argues, no? And how does human end the last cognitively dissonant two thousand years? Ride the Apocalyptic Aeroplane to the new Big Bang.

"Betimes I read like bad spam"

Never. :)

Hi Farnaz,

Yes, I've read Festinger and Co on the curious case of the *Keechian* beam-me-ups. I sniffed a lively gnostic ghost astraddle cold war rocketry fuelled by l'eau de Blavatsky.

A microcosm of the ever-nigh-on-bursting Christobubble? Would the West still respect itself the morning after, sans apocalypse? If we're not lapping it up spruiked Hagee-like, we're thrilling to it a la cinematic nuke-plague-spaceinvader fantasias. It's the climax of the consumerist coitus, the bang for all our heartfelt little whimpers. God will eat itself.

If religion is the opiate of the masses, apocalypse is the speed.

Gods! Betimes I read like bad spam :)

Susan Jacoby: "There are, however, some religions--Quakers, many Buddhists, and modern Pagans come to mind--much less given to acting out violent delusions than others."

I'd be looking at structural differences in these belief systems. Certain religious systems require absolute obedience to some dogma or the recognition of a living figurehead as the only true source of spiritual authority.

The three "different" religions you cited share
an innate questioning of authority. Buddhists do not really recognize or require "God." Quakers are unusually tolerant as regards "who's in charge here?", something reflected in the lack of a governing "preacher", "pastor" or Grand Poo-Bah in their "meetings." And us pagans just play fast and loose with the deities. While some pagans are more interested in a narrowly defined or culturally specific realm of Gods and Goddesses—Celtic or Nordic myth systems are very popular and sometimes their practitioners tend to be narrow-gauge in their focus—more pagans I've encountered skew in the direction of tolerance and acceptance than towards claims of election or spiritual superiority. Pagan households are more likely to have religious icons from cultures other than their own, like Hindu, Buddhist or African deities.

There is a deep connection with the arbitrary selection of a single deity as the supreme deity—to the exclusion of any others—and Fascist or totalitarian impulses. The more a single deity or religious figurehead is claimed to be the only authorized and acceptable source of spirituality, the greater the degree of totalitarian rule issuing forth from that religion.

CCNL needs to go back on her Thorazine. Then she can ask hubby to buy her a new dress, and take her out to dinner.

She'll look adorable, and wait till everyone sees her in her Easter bonnet! :)

A delusional rant from one Farnaz, aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka nadinebatra is posted a few "commentaries" below. This woman really needs some help!!!

Btw, we noted she was NOT "Hitler- like" other than her bearing false witness by constantly using aliases.

Colinnicholas

In the book "Will to Believe," William James does not try to prove the existence of God, nor suggest what specific religious beliefs a person should have.

He analyzes the actual mental process of belief, and what it means to believe something. It is actually a philosophical discussion derived from psychological musings.

One thing he said is that in a difficult circumstance, "we must work for the best; hope for the best; if death should come, it cannot come better."

No matter what a person believes, constant inner reflection is not very useful or important, for all of the things in life that we cannot control or influence continue to operate, as though we are not here.

It is better to accept, and then to forget, all those things, and to focus and concentrate all the efforts of our lives on the lives of others. without worry or concertn about the particulars of religious practice, or creeds, or the details of what Heaven might be like, or what God might be like, or which translation of which verse or scripture is more proper or correct, and without proseletyzing against our neighbors.

CONCERNED-

Re: Previous post to you

The last word in this sentence should have been "YOURS."

AS FOR YOUR ACCUSATIONS AGAINST ME, YOU ARE A PAROCHIAL FELLOW WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT AMONG THE MASSES, THERE ARE THOSE WHO SHARE VIEWS DIFFERENT FROM THEIRS.

CONCERNED CHRISTIAN FAR, FAR from LIBERATED:

Sorry to be blunt, but you are a bigoted, sexist, racist, homophobic troll. And now, your insane accusations against me are holding up discussions, aside from the fact that you are "bearing false witness."

Ever since I've been blogging here, countless people have sent in complaints about your cutting, pasting, prejudice, vitriol, etc.

If you can take a break from delusion, try asking yourself whether if I were the shape-shifting computer whiz you think I am, I would continue to post under the name of Farnaz. (Mansouri is my "maiden name.")

You don't like Jews, we know, and on this and other threads, you have posted that I am like "Hitler," somehow holding me responsible for the "OT," for which you blame the last two thousand years of the world's violence, while at the same time, claiming the "OT" is myth.

You don't like gays, we know, and think they should not be allowed to marry. Their sex is "masturbation." You don't like Muslims, whom you hold responsible for everything from moldy peanut butter to Hurricane Katrina. You don't like Pagans.

Indeed, you actively, personally dislike anyone who doesn't subscribe to your Crossanized version of Catholicism, or "StemCellian" faith, as Ivri5768 would have it, abusing them ad nauseum.

What else can you do? You have shown yourself incapable of having a reasoned argument. So you cut, paste, cut, paste, taking breaks to call people "reality challenged," "hallucinators" and, in my case, "Hitler."

Under these circumstances, it is obvious that you should leave off blogging here so that the rest of us can get on with the discussion.

AS FOR YOUR ACCUSATIONS AGAINST ME, YOU ARE A PAROCHIAL FELLOW WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT AMONG THE MASSES, THERE ARE THOSE WHO SHARE VIEWS DIFFERENT FROM THEIRS.

Amazing news for you, I'm sure. But, true, nevertheless. Step out of the house, and look around.

BLOG ON TOPIC, OR STOP INTERFERING WITH EVERYONE ELSE'S ATTEMPTS TO DO SO. DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH WHAT WOULD APPEAR TO BE THE ENDLESS TIME YOU HAVE ON YOUR HANDS.

IN OTHER WORDS, GET A LIFE.

Edbyronadams;

Hi Ed.

I didn't "invalidate" your argument, I just disagreed with it.

I have read that many lost their faith in the trenches of WW1. Many more lost faith during WW2.
My father fought in WW1 in Flanders. I don't ever remember him mentioning the word god.
Religion in the UK has almost died out, due to those wars. Religion never ever regained its place in British culture after WW2.
I will concede that in dire circumstances the fearful may turn to god. Why not?
If I was in a foxhole, under fire, I might scream in panic and even shout for god to help me. But even that would not suggest that a God exists. Just means that some, in desperation will reach out to anything at all to get them out of this living hell.

Maybe when God failed to show up, and the guys in the trenches were blown to bits, or were blinded, or had their legs blown off, or saw their friends killed, or were gassed and could never breathe properly ever again, like my dad, came to realize that there was no god.
WW1 was so ghastly with injured men screaming for their mothers as they were slowly swallowed by the mud that was everywhere, and nobody there to help them.

God was nowhere to be found. The only sensible conclusion is there is no God.

Shawn, (assuming that is your real name),

Using your real name on blogs can be very dangerous especially when dealing with "red neck" Christians or Muslim extremists.

With Google, myspace, facebook, on-line telephone/e-mail directories and hackers, finding where you live is very easy these days.

Hopefully, you live in the USA where your privacy is generally protected but in places like China or Iran, you put your life in your hands by identifying yourself on a political/religious blog that might offend China's leaders or that warmongering, hallucinating, womanizing, long-dead Arab aka Mohammed.

Many On Faith bloggers stopped communicating when On Faith started to require egistration.

DanielITLD;

Thanks for your comment.

I read James 'Principals of Psychology' many years ago, and meant to read his "Varieties of Religious Experience" but never got around to it.

Daniel I'm not searching for something to believe in. In James's time I might have been interested, and I can't help feeling that James today would be a different man inlight of all we know that would not have been available to him. (DNA for instance)

I think James would be reading Dawkins and Dennett today, being the thinker that he was, and I'm sure he would delight in Carl Sagan's wonderful "Varieties of Scientific Experience."

I think he would perhaps nod his head at Sam Harris's "End of Faith" too, and this bit from page 227.

"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. The universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being , and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The conciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call "spiritual." No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fiction need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend , rather too much, on how soon we realize this."

Sam Harris. "The End of Faith" p.227.

Isn't that beautiful? Non belief is awesome, it's all about reality.

Cheers Daniel.

Colinnicholas,

This exchange came about because you invalidated my argument that the transcendent yearning that is characterized as "no atheist in a foxhole" by claiming that it is made out of fear, therefore somehow wrong. But it is not, the only unvarying reality about life is death and that abyss normally invokes fear.

I am a skeptic by nature and had a scientific education. I wandered for many years with a WYSIWYG worldview. You will not find a stronger advocate for Darwinism in its broad strokes than me. However hard I have tried to explain transcendent yearning by invoking Darwinist principles, I have failed. It exists of itself and is a strong indicator to me that the transcendent does exist.

You asked what you should do. I can only answer for myself. I could not believe in a being outside of nature or one with the peculiar sense of perspective that thinks balancing three score and ten against eternity is a fine balance. I think that nature and life itself is a manifestation of the transcendent and we, like the blind men, have the barest inkling of the elephant. I became a Nichiren Buddhist through that difficult passage called faith. You can explore it at sgi-usa.org if you like.

It works for me. It makes me happier and provides an exhaustive body of text for study, all of which deepens the faith I took so reluctantly. Good luck to you in finding that peace as well, no matter where you find it.

It's a shame that this blogging system doesn't allow a individual user to filter out the spammers. Who cares who is posting under what ID? I'm pretty much past reading the comment section of this blog as I get tired of rollling past the witless blather and childish finger pointing a few childish individuals, especially the cowardly ones who aren't willing to use your real names.

Shawn Cromett

ALIAS ALERT FOR THE DAY:

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka IVRI5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago.

After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish"/delusional woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!

Her newest alias is "nadinebatra" .

Hi Onofrio,

Thanks for your reply to my much-belated thank you!

Have you read "When Prophecy Fails" (Festinger, et al)?

Hello Frederic,

Ah, Frederic, I believe you are a Romanic!
Your mention of a "demiurge" put me in mind of one who perhaps was a kindred spirit of yours, made much word music, still resounding. My German is quite awful, or I would attempt to translate for those who don't read the language. I memorized this passage when I was in college, and it has never left me:

Was ist der Mensch, der gepriesene Halbgott! Ermangeln ihm nicht eben da die Kräfte, wo er sie am nötigsten braucht? Und wenn er in Freude sich aufschwingt oder im Leiden versinkt, wird er nicht in beiden eben da aufgehalten, eben da zu dem stumpfen kalten Bewußtsein wieder zurück gebracht, da er sich in der Fülle des Unendlichen zu verlieren sehnte?

-Goethe, Werther 2. Buch, 6. Dezember

Colinnicholas

A book that I would recommend is "Will to Believe" by William James. Of course, I have never read a single book that was recommended on this blog, so you probably won't read this one. But it examines what it is to believe and what to believe in.

I would advise, not that you look inside yourself, but that you become more outer-directed, and involved in the lives of other people; and see where that leads, without worries about God, religion, beliefs, or creeds, but just active participation in the world.

Of course, before you reply, I realize your question was rhetorical, and so my answer is not necesarily intended specifially for you, but just as an answer to your rhetorical question, that anybody might ask.

Frederic,

Many thanks for your eloquent response of April 6, 2009 6:20 AM to my prior post. Truly, as you say, "Language can express feelings only to a certain degree (even different for each individual, open to misunderstanding!)" We often fall through its fissures, or bruise ourselves against its sudden aporia.

I respect your qualified respect for *pagan* spirituality, especially as it responds to the numinosity of nature. I just needed to prod it to draw it out a bit more ;)

I particularly liked your reference to the "non-religious science of rituals". I have had the opportunity to study ritual texts from the ancient near eastern cultures that grandsired our *civilisation*. I have often been struck by the way that deities in these polytheistic systems behave almost like chemicals in their complex interactions... abstract principles cloaked in humanity...attempts to find pattern, hidden order, the nature of phenomena. It leads me to think that our arrival as a species at newtonian laws, mc squared, and the DNA helix has been via the mindsets and accrued data of ancient astrologers, priests, sages, theurgists, alchemists, and shamans. That some of these types have also resisted the fits and starts of progress is simply a case of consensus conservatism, which still prevails in modern science, sans gods!

I don't think that belief in gods per se is the cause of obscurantism and reactionary attitudes. It's just that people who have these tendencies will often resort to the perceived high ground of unarguable divine authority to clinch their case. And this does not necessarily involve any feelings of reverence and numinous awe at all. It's just a sort of reflexive high court appeal.

Where there are no gods, a substitute can be found - for better or worse - in custom, necessity, common sense, society, shame, a famous opinion, revolutionary justice, the public weal, or the will of the great leader.

Thank you again for further qualifying your paganly tinged spiritual atheism, Frederic. More power to it, maestro!

edbyron

I asked "What do you suggest I do?"

You replied;

"Take faith in some spiritual belief. Not all posit a "big Dude from the Sky". In fact my own faith says we must look inside for our connection to the eternal, that our lives are like waves upon a larger ocean. But no matter how much you pare away spiritual beliefs because of absurdity, what remains still requires a leap of faith to make the connection. That leap requires overcoming fear as well.

"Shakyamuni took up his spiritual quest in the hopes of relieving the sufferings of mankind. I think he expounded a rich vein of truth and recommend the Lotus Sutra. It works for me and requires zero belief in absurdity."
------------------------------------------
me.

What does it mean 'to take a spiritual belief'?
What does it mean to look inside for our connection to the eternal? Eternal what?
Who is Shakyamuni and what kind of spiritual quest could hope to relieve the sufferings of mankind?
What truth is the vein rich with?
What is the Lotus Sutra?

Ed, how can anybody NOT be spiritual?

I think - therefore I am spiritual.

We are all spiritual. It's the inner us.
We are all imaginative. It's where we live.
It's where we process incoming info, consider it and put it in context.

It's where we dream, and where we respond to music, art and ideas. I'm there right now, struggling with this comment. It's where I think.

Re.this connection to the eternal. Well, I try to understand the concept of the eternal until I'm giddy. It is a mind boggling reality - that the cosmos are infinite. That space goes on forever in all directions, and that time is infinite too. That's my connection right there; just pondering it. I can never get closer than that because I am not immortal or infinite, or able to comprehend the vastness of the cosmos.
I do know that if the fastest rocket left Earth tomorrow to go to the closest star in the galaxy (apart from the sun) it would take ten thousand years to get there.
Makes me feel tiny like an ant - completely without significance.

But I do appreciate being lucky enough to be around to appreciate this incredible reality, and to continue trying to understand it as much as I can in the short time I have left.

That's why I have no time for supernaturalism. Naturalism is awesome enough for me.

Regards, CN

colinnicholas,

"What do you suggest I do?"

Take faith in some spiritual belief. Not all posit a "big Dude from the Sky". In fact my own faith says we must look inside for our connection to the eternal, that our lives are like waves upon a larger ocean. But no matter how much you pare away spiritual beliefs because of absurdity, what remains still requires a leap of faith to make the connection. That leap requires overcoming fear as well.

Shakyamuni took up his spiritual quest in the hopes of relieving the sufferings of mankind. I think he expounded a rich vein of truth and recommend the Lotus Sutra. It works for me and requires zero belief in absurdity.

@DANIELINTHELIONSDEN

"I do not think that my religious beliefs are delusional, and I am not insulted at Susan's characterization of religious people as delutional, because I believe and assume that she is not talking about me."

WARNING!! PSYCHO-CULTIST INFECTION!!!!

Most of us skip the posts of CCNL (Church of Clancy, Nusbaum, and Luigi).

CCNL is actually an Embryonic Stem Cell and has gone bonkers over the change of policy in stem cell research.

Understandable given the limited time she has left on the planet.

However, she has not taken steps to help herself through counseling with the Sainted Archbishop Luigi of the Lasagna or her/his blessed sister, Mother Millie Macaroni.

Indeed, she hasn't even participated in the vigil in New Brunswick, New Jersey where her fellow StemCellians await the Promised Line.

A trolling, bigoted, bi*chy human-impersonater, she's almost universally ignored.

She hates women, gays, Jews, Muslims equally due to envy of their superior station in the great chain of being. (Most Embryonics are fond of humans but not so CCNL.)

Scroll by the infected CCCNL. She's a danger to bloggers everywhere.

There is a basic need to understand that people have a kind inclination and a hurtful inclination and that the kind inclination is to do good things and the hurtful one is to do harm. Unfortunately the hurtful inclination has a stronger motivating force - a strength - because it stems from emotions of the heart to a broader number of people much more easily than the same desire to do kindness. The problem is that sometimes the hurtful inclination tells us that we are doing something kind or good for the one we hurt when in reality we are taking something for ourselves. This erroneous thinking is the moral challenge that each person faces each day and therefore the ideas that we use to determine our moral choices must be impeccable, reliable, universal and true - in every possible way. A small mistake can change a well-meaning intention into a terrible mistake because of the strength of belief and determination associated with the hurtful inclination. Is this what you refer to as a delusion? That could be.

People are imperfect and have many limitations, not the least of which is that our intelligence is based on perceptions that are very subjective.

Please see the free 30 minute version of The Third Jihad at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-864522917532871834

WARNING: ALIAS INFESTATION

Farnaz is again using her IVRI5678 alias!!

Other aliases we know about are:

Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka Billy8 aka nadinebatra

SECOND PSHYCHO-CULTIST ALERT

Most of us skip the posts of CCNL (Church of Clancy, Nusbaum, and Luigi).

CCNL is actually an Embryonic Stem Cell and has gone bonkers over the change of policy in stem cell research. Understandable given the limited time she/he has left on the planet.

However, she/he has not taken steps to help herself/himself through counseling with the Sainted Archbishop Luigi of the Lasagna or her/his blessed sister, Mother Millie Macaroni.

Indeed, she/he hasn't even participated in the vigil in New Brunswick, New Jersey where her/his fellow StemCellians await the Promised Line.

A trolling, bigoted, bi*chy human-impersonater, (s)he's almost universally ignored. (Btw., I think "(s)he" is biologichemically "she"--nothing male about it--and wil use feminine pronouns with reference to her [it], henceforth).

edbyronadams;

You write;

colinnicholas, even if you sail through life otherwise, you must face old age, sickness and death.

Good luck managing those without fear.

me.

Hi Ed. Didn't notice your response 'til now.
You are of course correct to remind me that sickness, old age and death await me not too far down the road.

What do you suggest I do, Ed? Believe the unbelievable? Do I shut my brain off and believe that which makes no sense to me, just so my old age is more comfortable?

Is that what you do Ed? Are you that afraid? I feel for you.

I'm an old man,Ed, and not particularly brave. I hope death is gentle with me.
But I can't imagine that pretending there's some Dude gonna come down from the Sky and whisk me off to some celestial paradise - is going to help much.
Because Ed, it sounds absolutely ridiculous to my un-indoctrinated mind.

What if I told you that if you believe in Kermit the Frog, you'll die a happy man.
Would you then believe in Kermit the frog?
Of course not. It would be absurd.

To me, Ed, that's what god is. Just an absurd fairy story about some made up celestial superdude.

If tortured, I would quickly recant, and scream for all to hear, "I believe, I BELIEVE; I was just kidding! I REALLY BELIEVE!"
But those days are over. I can say God is nonsense and not get tortured for my honest opinion. I know that this enrages devout believers, who secretly miss the good old days when people like me would be forced to 'reconsider', not because of fear of the future, but fear of being tortured or burned alive.

O Brave New World that gives me the freedom to be sensible and honest and to believe only that which makes sense to me.

It's taken more than 2000 years to get here, and there's no going back.

ALIAS UPDATE:

"nadinebatra" is Farnaz's most recent alias!!!.

Thanks, Onofrio, for your reaction to my “semi-religious”, or ”pseudo-religious” rant against religion (all religion!). I am inclined to reserve some sympathy for people who try to put their feeling towards nature into some sort of ritual, which pagans (as I gather from these threads) feel obliged to do to express those emotions faute de mieux. And rituals do play a mostly unconscious role even for the most pragmatic and science-oriented folks (there even is a non-religious science of rituals!).

I certainly am not going to “defend” my feelings towards the “glory” (facon de parler) of nature, which “deserves” (demands? a grammatical simplification) my feeling of awe, when considering and experiencing even the smallest biological or the widest cosmological details and/or secrets.

Language can express feelings only to a certain degree (even different for each individual, open to misunderstanding!), which is probably one of the reasons I am a musician. (Music, albeit non-semantic, is also a language, at least as to its expressive, but even to its communication properties).

As to my “religiousness”, I think, you are jumping a bit to conclusions: Nowhere do I insert a “god” proxy, let alone an arrogant desire for some “supernatural” entity. One of the reasons folks need a “demiurge” is that they forget or deny that they are part of nature. They don’t realize that what they are looking for and erroneously locating OUTSIDE of nature (god(s) is THE constituent element INSIDE their own existence. I am surprised that such a trivial thought seems to be so difficult to grasp for the majority of humans – at least in our present stage of intellectual development (evolution).

Sensitivity, emotions, awe, wonder, surprise, happiness over a learning result are human qualities which do not have anything to do with religion, let alone the delusional established religions. But of course, unfortunately, these "wondrous" human qualities are used as a fishing rod by the religious established powers to dominate, to curb free thinking.

Yours, reverent old pagan, aka emotional atheist, “spiritual” secularist etc. - choose one…

Farnaz,

Or should I say, Gwyneth ;)

I have only just now ventured threadward, after a spell, and am delighted to find you belle-weathering the deadwood.

I'm all gladsome you gleaned meaning from my Ozymandiac spiel a ways back, even amidst the actual exigencies of spaniels and foretastes of Lethe. Zesta!

Frederic2,

Hello, sir. It has been a while...

You:
"The only spiritual attitude I really can associate with is the earthly pagan attitude, which celebrates the wonderful, “religious” (in quotation marks) or “spiritual” feeling any sensitive human is actually forced to have when taking a single serious look at nature."

Not all paganism is/was "earthly", indeed betimes it may be downright sarcophobic and/or oppressive. Just like a book-monotheism is supposed to be. Why valorise paganism even mildly, Frederic? Religion is religion is religion, right? Is delusion, is delusion, is delusion, true?

Have you got a case of Wotan wistfulness? Donar dementia?

As for nature *forcing* numinous responses from humans - you've just identified the core phenomenon of *religious* feeling.

It's but a wee step to bow down and give that numen a nomen :)

You:
"The proposition "God" is infinitely lower and simpler than the majesty of nature: Mainstream religion is the desperate attempt to reduce the glory nature deserves to a “man-like” triviality that pretends to have all the answers."

Two things:
1) Only a reverent human subject would confer "majesty" and "glory" on nature. Your enthusiasm betrays you Frederic - you're a worshipper at heart, after all.

2) You make the equation god = simplex = infinitely low, conversely implying nature = complex = high ("majestic"). You're playing duelling deities here, it's just you give yours the name "nature". No matter how much you deplore the notion of a *god*, you're actually subscribing to it even as you scoff at it! It's not the term that counts, Frederic, but the attitude.

To speak in terms of *nature* being *deserving* (!!!) of *glory* is already a form of theology. How can *nature* be *deserving* of anything, Frederic, let alone *glory*?

You reverent old pagan! ;)

All cults are religions. A cult is a religion that is new, small, or a little out of step with what is considered more standard. Cults may continue as cults infefinitley, die out, or become more mainstream, is they persist, grow and thrive, and if they acquire lasting political influence. The difference between the concept of a cult and of a mainstream religon is not very deep, but is mostly arbitrary.

All cults and religions vary in the nature of their beliefs, ranging from acknowledged speculation to unconscious delusions. Individuals within these many religions also vary in their beliefs in this way.

I do not think that my religious beliefs are delusional, and I am not insulted at Susan's characterization of religious people as delutional, because I believe and assume that she is not talking about me.

In deciding, determining, or judging religious belief, people should consider common sense, the methodology and utility of science which may conflict with specific religious beliefs, and by what criteria do they judge what is true and what is not true.

Of course, most religious people are not likely to follow these guidelines. But that us what I think.

Susan,

Even an atheist should demand following the 8th Commandment. (i.e. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness).

Farnaz aka "whomever" is very "intelligent". That is how she is able to register under at least seven aliases. She even writes to herself (e.g. to Ivri From: Farnaz2 to make her commentaries seem legitimate and new bloggers then get "sucked" into her trickery.

Very disturbing conduct which should not be condoned.

Gentle readers:

What more can I say? Why do so many of you go on obsessing about who is posting under which alias? Who cares? I'll say what I've said before: talk to the people with whom you can have an intelligent conversation. Ignore the others.

OMG. He's back.

CCNL, CCNL, CCNL & CO.,:

Correction: There has been Millions of dead, but innoscent humans that the folks behing "NEW-Testament/HOLY-BIBLE Omitt or Word Merchandize their Situational Lieing therefrom therein & therethrough & through!

Note: The "OT" {OLD TESTAMENT" of the JUDEO Primaries is aka thee "BASORAH" [OLD Tidings]. And the "NT" {NEW TESTAMENT" of the JUDEO Secondaries (not to mention the Islamic Mass Murdering as Tertiary's) is known as the "MASORAH" [NEW Tidings].

IF?, according to what "NT" Lovers sayth, THAT; Rabbi Yashua [Mr. Jesus Jesse Joseph pbuh et al] was, is, Thee Judeo-Jewish Massiah, god etc.. Who Exceeded & forgave the "OT" folks, includes their Crimes against Humanity?; Then IF?

Ye counteth , the Non-Recorded HOLOCAUSTS that the Authors, like the Million +/- Killed via the "HERETICS"-WARS" that the 'Mass-Murderer' Mr. SAUL of Taursus turned Christ-Mon, aka ST. PAUL {Founder of CHURCH along w/JOSEPHUS is his Vintriloquest 2ndary's co-partner in Crime as founder of the Holyi-BiBle?} turned "NT" Lovers! AND

IF? Ye counteth the other silent "NT" Biblio atrocities, "SHOAH's", Holocaust, Exterminations.. NOT-mentioned in THY "NT" and or therein anything in the "NT" via some KINDa "small print or commentary" Admitting to such "KNIGHTS" & days of Mass Murders.

i.e.,: The VATICAN's Anscestors , aka the ROMAN-EMPIRE {+/- 325 AD}, especially Under Constantinople. And via Mr. POPE URBINE [II, the 2nd] during CHRISTIAN - CALINDATE 1095 AD? AND

Not To Mention the 50,000,000 DEAD & 1/2 as many DIASPORAHD/Scattered around the World or Continents via what the "CATHOLIC {CHRISTIAN} GERMS" did or caused in WW-1 And What POPE & FEARER [not FUHRER} The Devil/Satan ADOLF HITLER & Parners in Crime 2ndarys, Tertiary's, Tetriary's et al Did not long ago!

This is a Poor Excuse to be with Holding certain Atrosic-STONES in Thy "NT" or of such "NT" lovers Leaderships favor?

Please do not Jealously Blame todays 3rd HEBREW/Israeli Temple {State of ISRAEL} because of the Failures of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th? REiCH did, and for the failures of what the SUltanic TURKISH Empire caused, and waht the British Empire Raught thereafter!!!???

And why does Farnaz aka "whoever" call herself a Jewish atheist??

Because of the atrocities committed by Jews depicted in great detail in the OT:

Exodus 32: 3,000 Israelites killed by Moses for worshipping the golden calf.

Numbers 31: After killing all men, boys and married women among the Midianites, 32,000 virgins remain as booty for the Israelites. (If unmarried girls are a quarter of the population, then 96,000 people were killed.)

Joshua:

Joshua 8: 12,000 men and women, all the people of Ai, killed.

Joshua 10: Joshua completely destroys Gibeon ("larger than Ai"), Makeddah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir. "He left no survivors."

Joshua 11: Hazor destroyed. [Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987), estimates the population of Hazor at ?> 50,000]
TOTAL: if Ai is average, 12,000 x 9 = 108,000 killed.

Judges 1: 10,000 Canaanites k. at Battle of Bezek. Jerusalem and Zephath destroyed.

Judges 3: ca. 10,000 Moabites k. at Jordan River.

Judges 8: 120,000 Midianite soldiers k. by Gideon

Judges 20: Benjamin attacked by other tribes. 25,000 killed.

1 Samuel 4: 4,000 Isrealites killed at 1st Battle of Ebenezer/Aphek. 30,000 Isr. k. at 2nd battle.

David:

2 Samuel 8: 22,000 Arameans of Damascus and 18,000 Edomites killed in 2 battles.

2 Samuel 10: 40,000 Aramean footsoldiers and 7,000 charioteers killed at Helam.

2 Samuel 18: 20,000 Israelites under Absalom killed at Ephraim.
1 Kings 20: 100,000 Arameans killed by Israelites at Battle of Aphek. Another 27,000 killed by collapsing wall.

2 Chron 13: Judah beat Israel and inflicted 500,000 casualties.

2 Chron 25: Amaziah, king of Judah, k. 10,000 from Seir in battle and executed 10,000 POWs. Discharged Judean soldiers pillaged and killed 3,000.

2 Chron 28: Pekah, king of Israel, slew 120,000 Judeans

TOTAL: That comes to about 1,283,000 mass killings specifically enumerated in the Bible.

Or are all of these stories simply myths just like Farnaz delusion-driven aliases????

Nature is already “super”. It has always intrigued me that the most religious folks are the ones that have the least idea or even interest in the incredible miracles of nature, its vastness, its greatness, its infinite variety, its life, its evolution. The dumbest religionists are, of course, the “creationists”.

Instead of taking a look beyond the rim of their tea cup, instead of informing themselves even rudimentarily about what they actually are talking about, they posit a little god representing their little trivial feelings in trivial beliefs and trivial rituals.

The only spiritual attitude I really can associate with is the earthly pagan attitude, which celebrates the wonderful, “religious” (in quotation marks) or “spiritual” feeling any sensitive human is actually forced to have when taking a single serious look at nature.

The proposition "God" is infinitely lower and simpler than the majesty of nature: Mainstream religion is the desperate attempt to reduce the glory nature deserves to a “man-like” triviality that pretends to have all the answers. The demand for the “supernatural” is the confession, even the arrogant pride of ignorance of what nature, of which we are a part, really means.

One of my aliases is CCNL. If you see any posts with the CCNL moniker, realize it is I, Farnaz, who am also Jane Fonda.

I say this now in my dominant personality of Gwyneth Paltrow, the "real me." I don't know when my alter will intrude, so, please, remember, CCNL IS ONE OF MY ALIASES.

All religious belief is based on some degree of delusion. It becomes dangerous when the delusional thinking becomes so extreme that is is dangeous to others. All religion is based on irrational thinking. There is no evidence to support any of it.

If Jesus were alive today, preaching that he was the Son of God, that he would save the world, that he would rise on the third day, rational people would say he that he needed a complete psychiatric evaluation. It is just the truth. I don't care how insulting it is to believers, but Jesus was most likely delusional. There is no evidence of that Jesus was not mortal. There is no evidence that he rose from the dead.

The woman who starved her baby to death is insane. If she had gotten psychiatric treatment earlier, she might not have joined this cult. There is a big difference between people who fall into cults and those who don't. I just bet one day SCIENCE will be able to give us the answers.

Farnaz, the lady of many faces/aliases, would not be considered "Hitler-like" with one very big exception, her lying.

One no longer can tell who is who on this blog sometimes since she somehow is able to get registered under at least seven different e-mail addresses/aliases. It even appears she is making up phantom adversaries so she can rant on about racial and religious descrimination.

As has been said many times, religion is sometimes a pleasant dream, sometimes a nightmare. But it is long past time for humans to awake from this dream, and live in the real world without the untenable belief in the existence and influence of supernatural beings. In the long run extreme gullibility comes at an extreme price.

"When Pope Benedict preaches the delusion in Africa that condoms do not help halt the spread of AIDS, he has blood on his hands. He is selling this anti-scientific delusion in Africa because it won't sell anymore to educated residents of Europe and the United States."

Well said, Ms. Jacoby. Benedict XVI can honestly be called the Death Pope.

colinnicholas, even if you sail through life otherwise, you must face old age, sickness and death.

Good luck managing those without fear.

To Everyone:

Stadbear's post about me (scroll down) stems from a futile effort to avoid dealing with his/her recent post on the main thread:

----
STADTBEAR'S COMMENTS ON THE HOLOCAUST

stadtbear Author Profile Page :

"If you're Christian, dear, how would you have said what you did regarding the Holocaust."

As I have already said, I am neither christer nor jew. THE ONLY OBJECTION I HAVE TO THE HOLOCAUST IS THAT IT WAS LEFT INCOMPLETE. (Emphasis mine.)

April 4, 2009 1:27 PM | Report Offensive Comments

April 4, 2009 1:48 PM | Report Offensive Comments

Re: Colinnick on atheists in foxholes:
It's been my experience that being in foxholes makes atheists.

"Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!!"

Yes, Farnaz2 is a liar, as anyone watching these posts is aware. There is no proof that "she" is female, or a jewess...there is only proof that her heritage IS lying.

Imagine if it was forbidde, on WAPO (onfaith/onreligion & postglobal) to use the words "SU{SA}N}" "JA{COB}{s}" Or "SA{LLY}" "QU{i}NN" or "DA{VID" "WA{}TERS" or " "FA{R}EED" "ZAK{A}R}IA}" or "DAV-ID" "I{}G{}NATiUS" or the word "Washing{ton}" or "PO{ST" , MOSES, JESUS etc..???

Please remove curly brackets in WAPO's Editor & hit "Submit" button. For the Word:

""SH{i}L{O}H" [PEACE BRINGER]. So
WHY would Washington Post or George Town University et al; be soo so afraid of a (biblical) word meaning, "PEACE", Freidan, PAZ, Mir, SHALOM or "SH{}{A}{L}{O}{M}", Salaam, Ahimsah, Zhingyu"?.....?.. Testing testing:

"HUE{-}MATES"
"JO{}K}{T}AN" [The UNITED Anscestors]
{WE [i] Cometh from This Father/Mother EBERu line} hence [i] WE; US? are innately evolved as "HUEMATES" not as HUMAN anymore. As Prophecy: WE [i] Removeth the "Scepter & the Rod.. from Both hand & between King DAVID's realm who are "P{E}{L}E{G"ians [The DIVIDED Ancestors]. WE Reverseth the DRUNKIN NOAH [racist] CURSETH/SINETH preposterous Story of Moses & his Jealoused Co., And So
INSTEAD of god, replaced "ITSELF" w/the knowledge of "IT" via the Holyi Cosmic "MELCHIZEDEK PEACE-BLESSING" & more "Good TiDINGS"!

Testing Testing:

"P{E}{L}E{G"
[Means the "DIVIDED" Eber/ABRAHAMICs branch/splinter, Isaac, Ishamael, Jacob, Joseph, David, Solomon, Esau, Jesus, includes Muhammad Folks, Mormons too etc.., as their Lineage/Anscestor (NOT OUR's, Never! or unlike US HUEMATE-arians of that Holyi Cosmic NEBULA awared "IT"s (G-D) Naturally Selected , aka, Chosen, "JO{}K}{T}AN"ian) EBERu race!

WOW! WHY WAPO???????????? WHO {Sect?, Cult?, Preacher, Editor, Moderator(s) , Mormon, Evangelousical? , rick Warren? Chuck Colson? etc..} is Behind This Blatant 1st Amendment Violation & Anti Public-Internet DEVILISH/EVIL Censorings???

Wow! Please WAPO & Co., stop Jealously Blocking OUR, not your, Intellectual works about the "IT" [G-D doing work & becoming what one is becoming] And then Borrow for Ye gains or Withholding such whiteboarding hard work from its genuine Authors!?

BIOS:

I refer to these experiences as Magick (other words for it exist - karma, chi) because within Pagan and certain Earth-based spiritual paths this type of experience is encouraged. the insight and energy we tap into is intentionally directed towards some desired change in our physical world. as I stated, many mainstream religions actively discourage this type of experience. if anyone could do it there would be no need for priests and a power structure responsible for connecting people to God, would there?

I believe that you are mostly correct in your classification. I would describe my approach as animism and panentheism with a smattering of deism thrown in. I understand that my focus on the Goddess is anthropomorphism, but it is sometimes easier for me to enter into relationship with something that is ultimately beyond human comprehension with something closer to my own experience. and the Goddess is more than a concept, she is real and we experience her by virtue of being alive.

yes, it is AmerIndian and a bit Buddist but we forget that Europe had a long history of these spiritual practices before the Church took over and labeled them evil. in Paganism, Nature is the focus and source of our knowledge and we turn to Her for guidance. another difference is that, as a Pagan, I do not focus on being free of suffering. I accept suffering as an occasional condition of living and my goal is to understand and learn from it.

I have often (half) joked to a fellow Pagan at a gathering that "I covet your new cloak - and that is OK because coveting is not a sin in our religion." as a Pagan I do not see desire as an obstacle or something to rid myself of - but it does need to be in balance. manifesting changes in the physical world is often a focus of our ritual and this can include healing, love or material possessions and wealth.

is it a religion? yes in the sense that there is somewhat of a history and there are traditions and ways of doing ritual that are passed down. but it is a more elastic religion in that when some new perspective comes along we inspect it and see whether it works for us. we accept it and find a place for us when it works and pass it on to someone it might work for when it does not work for us. is it a philosophy and an approach to life? yes, it is that. is it a cult? I admit that I have seen some covens with a very rigid power structure that has appeared to be cult-like but this is rare. most covens are pretty strict in teaching their tradition so that initiates have a strong foundation. however, they tend to accept change - evolution is one of the ways that Nature works - once the foundation is solid.

WARNING!!!

Farnaz continues to lie about who she is by now using at least seven aliases now i.e. Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri (her most recent).

Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!!

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago. After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish" woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2 and she has continued the talks
recently as noted by the comments To: Ivri From: Farnaz.

One very strange woman!!!

Jehovah’s Witnesses twisted beliefs:

A) They are at your door to recruit you for their watchtower corporation,they will say that “we are just here to share a message from the Bible” this is deception right off.

B) Their ‘message’ is a false Gospel that Jesus had his second coming in 1914.The problem with this is it’s not just a cute fairy tale,Jesus warned of the false prophets who would claim “..look he is here in the wilderness,or see here he is at the temple…”

C) Their anti-blood transfusion ban has killed hundreds if not thousands

D) once they recruit you they will “love bomb” you in cult fashion to also recruit your family & friends or cut them off. There are many more dangers,Jehovah’s Witnesses got a bad rap for good and valid reasons.

99% of the world has rejected the teachings of the Watchtower Jehovah’s Witnesses, the darker truth is they are a destructive and oppressive organization.
–
Danny Haszard Jehovah’s Witness X 33 years http://www.dannyhaszard.com

CONDOMS, FACIST PRIESTS ETC.

Basically Mr. Ratzinger is a stupid old man.

Re: Harvard "backing" for Pope

If you dig a bit deeper you will find that the underlying key study concerned Uganda, and it noted that education, abstinence and condom use were all essential parts of the package:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/304/5671/714

"A comparative analysis of 1995 and 1989 Ugandan population-based surveys of HIV behavioral risk indicators offered evidence of important changes since 1989, including an increase in the age of sexual debut, a decrease in indicators of casual or nonregular partners, and an increase in the use of condoms, both overall and in casual partnerships (10, 12, 25, 26). The subsequent report, led by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), emphasized the relative importance of sexual debut and condom use (13)."

Windreader, my post was directed to you.

Since these magical experiences, connectedness and emotional states that we are talking about are totally natural states and are within everyone’s reach, and I agree with you that they are, I don’t see the added value or need of classifying it as something different. Maybe there is, I’m just saying I don’t see it clearly.

When you speak about your Paganism you are describing a mix of buddhist-amerindian point of view, which I understand do not believe in one god but rather stress the importance of the connectedness of all things (among other principles). Is this reasonably accurate or are there other main differences?

I’m not trying to label you, I’m trying to understand where your Paganism falls in the religious map. If we can call Paganism a religion.

Susan:

reread my post - I never said that my belief was 'supernatural'. I practice a Nature-based religion. the experiences I wrote about are, in my experience, completely natural and within the realm of human potential. it is just that most people do not invest the time to tap into these potentials. most mainstream religions subvert this potential because it would mean that individuals would have access to this kind of experience without a Priest of other intermediary working on their behalf.

Paganism has been called 'a religion of clergy' because we believe, know, that his potential is extant in everyone. we do not need to turn to a wiser identified leader to gain access to spiritual experience - we can all do this ourselves. and if the lessons learned are different from person to person, that is a good thing. Nature teaches us that the most diverse ecosystems are the healthiest.

FIRST PSHYCHO-CULTIST ALERT

Most of us skip the posts of CCNL (Church of Clancy, Nusbaum, and Luigi).

CCNL is actually an Embryonic Stem Cell and has gone bonkers over the change of policy in stem cell research. Understandable given his limited time on the planet.

However, he has not taken steps to help himself through counseling with the Sainted Archbishop Luigi of the Lasagna or his blessed sister, Mother Millie Macaroni.

Indeed, he hasn't even participated in the vigil in New Brunswick New Jersey where his fellow StemCellians await the Promised Line.

A trolling, bigoted, bi*chy human-impersonater, he's almost universally ignored. (Btw., I think "he" is actually a "she"--nothing male about it.)

Susan - as usual I agree with your premise and conclusions.

However -in this case I think the frame of your argument does a disservice to those who are genuinely mentally ill. Anyone who is able to "choose" their delusion is not insane, regardless of what immoral act their chosen delusion may have led them to.

SECOND ALIAS ALERT:

Most of us skip anything written by Farnaz since she continues to lie about who she is by now using at least seven aliases now i.e. Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri (her most recent).

Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!!

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 aka Ivri was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago. After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish" woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.
On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2 and she has continued the talks
this evening as noted by the comments To: Ivri From: Farnaz.
One very strange woman!!!

STEVEWEATHERBE,

Quite lame to dismiss the entire article based on your perception of what one researcher from Harvard commented.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1661520/medical_journal_lashes_out_at_popes_remarks_about_aids/index.html

And if one Harvard reference is sufficient to dismiss the article in toto, here is one site that is enough to dismiss Catholicism in toto.

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/

If it were *any* other organization that had so many cases of child abuse (like a preschool or an amusement park), the CEO would be forced to resign by the religious nutters.

You reek of hypocrisy!

Hi Onofrio,

Thanks so much for your post on the identity of "Ozymandias," a couple of threads back. I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner, but I believe I'm having post-senior moments, one after the other. I confess I always had my doubts about Ozymandias-Ramses business, but never looked into it. When you're obsessive about knowledge as I am, you have to draw lines constantly in order to focus. I probably never would have known without your post, which opens up many interesting questions....

Regards,

Farnaz

Ivri,

Correction to my post: Last paragraph should read "when my daughter is doing HER homework." (I can't persuade her to do mine!)

Regards,
Farnaz

Hi Ivri,

I was beginning to doubt we'd ever post to one another again! I'd love to know more about your experiences in Asia. Occasionally, Indian and Pakistanis blog here, but not often, and never have I seen a Bangali name.

Bangladesh is beyond words, now, I know.

Susan Jacoby and Festinger--Hard to answer your question. We all have gaps in certain kinds of knowledge. But she hasn't mentioned the book, so who knows.

Yes, her last two essays seem confused. Popes, condoms, Catholicism, and Africa all need to be considered in the context of indigenous African sexual politics and mores, the ways in which the Pope's conduct unintentionally aggravates indigenous cultural problems.

But, on this blog, Jacoby isn't alone in her limited cultural literacy. There's something almost terrifying in it. It's caused me to realize how much trouble we really are in. It's been a "great awakening" into a very dark void. Susan once explained to me that Catholicism is a chosen identity. One can discard it. (As nonGod is my witness.) This is not the case, she noted, with Jews and Blacks. They are always Jewish and Black--forever.

Susan actually thinks there are such entities as "Jews" and "Blacks." Do you understand? She sees them as categories. Forget Festinger. How about the dictionary? Two words: essentialism and reification.

There are consolations here, though--Onofrio and Persiflage, as you know. Mostly, I post to them when I post to anybody.

In the meantime, I'm babysitting for a puppy Spaniel named Chocolate, who is still only when my daughter is doing my homework. He crawls under her desk. Pure spirits find one another, still, I guess!

Farnaz

Jacoby's depiction of the Pope with blood on his hands for his condom comments discredits her comments in toto. Clearly she knows nothing about how ineffective condom campaigns are in Africa. But, hey,don't believe me. Go to the website of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Centre for secular research supporting Pope, not Jacoby.

Wonderful essay Susan;

and the last paragraph was brilliant.

I keep reading it over and over.

Thanks.

Bravo!

Farnaz,

Another thing. Colinnicholas is right. That's why I'm done with CCNL. He's a troll, and there's no help for him.

Ignore him. Don't let him drive you away because he doesn't like Jews. His problem. Not mine, not yours. If he's got a problem with Catholic guilt, despite being a StemCellian, he needs to take it somewhere else.

He, in short, is a jerk. This thread is deteriorating. Don't stay away.

Hi Farnaz,

Sorry it took me so long to reply to your post on the privious thread. I've been out of the country.

To answer your question, yes, I've had significant experience in Asia, acting in numerous capacities. For the last, eight years, I've edited books primarily dealing with India. Was in Bangaldesh three months ago.

And yes, you're correct about my having failed to hold India sufficiently culpable. An oversight. As you probably know, India is now deepening the chaos in Bangaladesh.

"When Prophecy Fails"-Is it possible that Jacoby hasn't read it? She doesn't mention it in her latest post. Weird. Her whole last post was weird. Seems to come out of nowhere. She's not making much sense lately. Tough times.

I see that CCNL (Church of Clancy, Nusbaum, and Luigi) is back to his old tricks again. Evidently, he hasn't gone for more pastoral counseling to the Sainted Archbishop Luigi of the Lasagna. Worse, one hears that he hasn't even been attending the vigil in New Brunswick, New Jersey with his fellow StemCells, awaiting the Promised Line.

I'm intent on ignoring him. No one can save him from his Catholic guilt. Not even the Numinous Nusbaum.

Ivri

CCNL;

You complain;

"Most of us skip anything written by Farnaz
since" blah blah blah...blah blah blah etc.

me;

You clearly don't skip too much.
Practice what you preach.

Responding gets responses. Responding gives oxygen
to the responder. Better to ignore sometimes than complain
of those who bother you.

Just a thought.

Regards...

edbyronadams

Did someone say no atheists in foxholes?

That's my very favorite argument of them all.

I love that argument, don't you?

It clearly says that religious folk are religious folk, because they're too scared not to be. It goes like this;

"Hey, atheist, when you're scared out of your skin you'll believe in God just like the rest of us, who are also scared out of our skins, especially when we think of death and other horrible things.Anyone who is really scared will jump onto God's lap and scream 'Help me Lord' just like us believers do. You wait and see."

Definitely my favorite argument, the argument from fear. It's classic. Thanks for bringing it up.

To Windreader:

I'm just getting around to reading this week's comments because I've been traveling. The only differences between my views and your view of your experiences with Pagans and at your UU meeting is that I see your experiences as part of a natural sense of human connection, and you see them as something in a different supernatural or supranatural realm. To me, there is nothing magical about the sense of comfort and connection we experience in touching other people, whether to console or to rejoice. It's human. It's entirely within the realm of nature. That, to me, makes such experiences more, not less, wonderful. Sometimes, we break through our essential "aloneness" and experience a rare sense of union with others, or with nature as a whole. That I don't think of this as a supernatural occurence doesn't make it less powerful.

Pamsm;

Funny you should mention harp lessons.
Mom was Welsh and sure played a mean Welsh Harp. She left it to my sister when she went 'up there.' But Sis was no angel, and sold it for dope money.
I'm a trombone man myself and can play "When The Saints Come Marching In" with the best of them. I'm sure it'll come in handy if and when I join mom up there in God's Celestial Big Band.
And yes, I practice hard for that great day. God ain't heard nuttn yet.
I'd be so disappointed if I ended up going 'down there' instead of 'up there' after all the trombone practice. O cruel fate. You think your callouses are bad, you should see my thick lip.

For the record (once again), everything I say about religion, religious delusions, and violent religious delusions applies to all religions, not just some. The prevalence of violent delusions varies not only among individuals and groups but in different periods of history for different religions. Take it as a given. Every time a delusional Islamist commits a violent act, I'm not obliged to provide an example of a delusional Christian and a delusional Jew. And every time a delusional Christian commits a violent act, I'm not obliged to provide an example of a delusional Muslim and a delusional Hindu. Again, take it as a given: there are ample delusions to go around.

There are, however, some religions--Quakers, many Buddhists, and modern Pagans come to mind--much less given to acting out violent delusions than others.

Is the "no atheist in a foxhole" yearning a delusion? If it is, why does it occur, in Darwinian terms?

BIOS:

one Sunday morning in Worship (I attend a UU Congregation) a member reported that he had to undergo a liver transplant. our Minister put his hand on the member's shoulder and the entire congregation reached out to one another forming a physical and spiritual web of love and support reaching towards the ailing man. there was a palpable energy flowing amont the people assembled there - it was Magick.

also - the first time I attended a large Pagan gathering there was a Maypole dance. as the ribons wove their way down the pole and the tribal drummers beat rhythms across the field a Hawk circled above us. I felt the spirit of that bird reach down and enter me and I felt a physical change take place. my friend Liz turned around and did a double take. "You look totally different" she said. "I am" I replied.

deep relaxation, concentration, mindfulness can create or open up different levels or aspects of consciousness. there are not 'supernatural' states, they are totally natural and within the potential of the human mind. in these states we are open to perceptions and awareness that is not available to us in typical consciousness. these states are not limited to Pagan spirituality - I believe that follwers of any mystic tradition have had them. in these states we are lighter and reminded of our connection - to each other, to God/dess, to nature, to the All or whatever you want to call it. those are what I define as Magickal experiences.

Colinnicholas says:
"It's going to be so cool."

It's the harp lessons I'm looking forward to. I tried down here, but my fingers got so calloused! Surely that won't happen up there. I say "up there," but I dunno - where *is* heaven, exactly?

COLINNICHOLAS

You wrote, "Of course He exists. And I mean to prove it when I'm dead.
It's going to be so cool."

Actually, you won't prove it when you are dead, God will, but God just might prove it before you die.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

SPIDERMEAN2: "Like what book and what does the book told you? Im asking for proof and NOT some fairy tales."

More books than I care to list for you, since I have no confidence in your ability to comprehend what you read, given your severely limited writing skills. But here's one book:
"Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne

here's an Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238778095&sr=1-1

Read it, come back, and we'll talk. Until then, I'm done with you.

Windreader, what do you call magical experiences?

Why doesn't God post a comment?
He could sure make a difference if He got involved
- there is so much that puzzles me, that only God could clear up.
Don't they have the internet in Heaven yet?
I know they don't have phones, otherwise my mom would have called.
Could be there's too much to do up there in Heaven,
singing hymns, reading the bible, praising the Lord,
watching sinners being thrown into the fires of Hell,
playing Scrabble using only biblical words.
I'm looking forward to being up there with all the other believers.
One of the first things I'm going to do
is push for telephones, computers and TV.
God's been silent long enough. He needs to join the modern world,
and be seen and heard
so folks can stop fighting over whether He exists or not.
Of course He exists. And I mean to prove it when I'm dead.
It's going to be so cool.

What I love about my personal religious and spiritual journey is that my Paganism is not based on 'faith' but on my own objective adn subjective experiences of the world. when I speak of the Goddess I am trying to capture the sum whole of the creative adn destructive powers of the universe. everything is born/created, grows, decays and dies in its own way. natural cycles, the changing of the seasons and the phases of the Moon mirror these changes.

the 'cult' of science - one in which I give a lot of creadance - only looks at what can be measured objecitvely and replicated. often times Magickal experiences are one time only deals that may be experienced by an individual or group. ritual is a tool that opens me up to these experiences and/or emotional and cognitive states. these are subjective in nature, but no less real for me.

lucid dream or trance states and the insiration and insight that I gain from them are real. I need not rely on 'faith' to experience them and be guided by them. they are not delusional. the delusion would occur, and cultlike behavior would follow, if I were to try to use some power to influence others based on my experiences. when free will is taken from others, delusion is the foundation.

this can occur in tiny sects, like the one this poor child was born into, or on a mass scale in 'mainstream' religion.

ALIAS WARNING:

Most of us skip anything written by Farnaz since she continues to lie about who she is by using at least six aliases i.e. Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8.

Her lying 24/7 is a daily embarrassment to her Jewish heritage!!!

Farnaz aka Farnaz2 aka Observer12 aka Observer31 aka Yael1 aka ivri5678 aka Billy8 was caught "red handed" using all these aliases some threads ago. After this, she said she would no longer participate in said discussions. As seen, this has not happened but we continue to remind everyone about this "devilish" woman as a service to our fellow bloggers.

On occasion, she even "talks" to herself in her commentaries i.e. To: ivri5678 From: Farnaz2. She is definitely one strange woman!!

To Pam from Daniel. Give up on Spiderman when it comes to talk about evolution by natural selection. He is a lost case. Do you want to know just how lost he is? He disbelieves in evolution yet takes the name of a comic book character who got his powers by being bitten by an irradiated spider (I believe the spider was irradiated. But what difference does it make? A boy got spider powers from a spider that was part of a scientific experiment). Here we have an apparently religious person disbelieving in evolution yet taking the name of a comic book character who suggests the possible success of altering humans in profound ways by science. Apparently Spiderman's (the guy here and not Spidey himself) God allows for altering humans to the point of webswinging but does not allow that we humans came up to where we are now by evolution. Is Spiderman's God (the Spiderman here, not Spidey) a spider? Perhaps. "With great power must come great responsibility". Spidey's uncle Ben said that to Spidey before he died. Oh wait, the Spiderman here is the real Spidey, and he knows God's word....

Pamsm wrote "Spidey, library shelves groan with books full of evidence. "

Like what book and what does the book told you? Im asking for proof and NOT some fairy tales. Did you understand what you have read? Can they be tested to be considered as proofs?

What do you know about stem cells of apes that it has to evolve into stem cell of humans? Are they less efficient compared to humans?

And what did you see in Smithsonian's Natural History Museum that convinced you to be an evolutionist? Bones? What about the bones? What does it tell you? Any lab test which proves that bones is a good indicator of kinship?

Use your brain. Learn how to think. As I've said, explain what you believe so you don't remain delusional.

Susan Jacoby:

You write

"I know that what I am about to say will outrage many Christians whose religion ethos is based on mercy and forgiveness, but the only difference between believing that a man rose from the dead after being executed more than 2000 years ago (the standard, mainstream Christian view) and believing that someone rose from the dead yesterday is--well, 2000 years."

I don't follow you here. This seems to be a nonsequitur. What does the "Christian ethos of mercy and forgiveness" have to do with the "outrage" you predict? Or are you being ironic?

Also, could you give some historical evidence of this "ethos" in action? Given the number of Christians in the world, it should be easy to show on a grand scale, on the scale of a billion acts, by hundreds of millions throughout the ages.
___________
On the "Resurrection" and on cults, see Leon Festinger's brilliant "When Prophecy Fails," if you haven't already read it.

Susan Jacoby:

On pots and kettles:

You mention Jehovah's Witnesses. There are, as you know, many facets to any (history. While many German Christians were busy being nazified, the JWs were busy being their victims. The suffering of these people during the Nazi era is well documented and due, entirely, to their refusal to go along with Hitler. No "Heil Hitlers," no Nazi racism, none of the barbarity evidenced by their Catholic and Lutheran co-nationals in Hitler's Germany. (Germany, then, was 48% Catholic and roughly 48% Lutheran--observant or cultural.) The detention, torture, and murder of the JWs was due entirely to their refusal to be nazified, renounce their religion, and fight in the German Army. They fight in no armies; they are pacifists.

Since despite overwhelming archival evidence, most people associate the slaughter of Jews during the Nazi era exclusively with Germany and Nazism, let me point out that other nations took the Nazi opportunity to hunt down JWs, other Christian and Catholic Christian nations.
__________________

The following is excerpted from the Holocaust Teacher Resource Center. The full text was originally published in a pamphlet published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (which also contains information on the JWs' suffering under hitler) and is well worth reading.

"Jehovah's Witnesses endured intense persecution under the Nazi regime. Actions against the religious group and its individual members spanned the Nazi years 1933 to 1945. Unlike Jews and Sinti and Roma "Gypsies"), persecuted and killed by virtue of their birth, Jehovah's Witnesses had the opportunity to escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs. The courage the vast majority displayed in refusing to do so, in the face of torture, maltreatment in concentration camps, and sometimes execution, won them the respect of many contemporaries."

http://www.holocaust-trc.org/Jehovah.htm

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses

AmyFlorence says agnostics are open to discussion, but "the morality of atheists is unknown." What a hoot! Of course, everyone knows that the Christians are moral, right? That's known. No doubt there. It's those darn atheists you can't peg when it comes to morality. Because they're atheists, get it? Without God, they cannot be moral. Does AmyFlorence realize what she's saying? For crying out loud, we're discussing a woman who went along with starving her son to death in the name of religion! For God!

The morality of ATHEISTS is unknown? Sheesh....

"Pamsm, please show us your "proof" about evolution."

Spidey, library shelves groan with books full of evidence. Go to Amazon.com and search under "evolution."

Take a field-trip day off from Liberty U. and visit the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum - it lays the evidence out before you - you'd have to be both blind and brain dead to miss it.

Get your stupid nose out of Revelations and do some reading of actual science.

BTW - evolution isn't the topic of this discussion.

Sometimes I think you are brilliant, Miss J. And I love your posts.

We need more like you to post their opinion. People need to have more exposure to atheistic points of view. It’s still not enough publicity compared to the bombardment of religious propaganda that people are subjected to on a daily basis.

In any engineering field, a series of tests and lots of computations are done repeatedly to prove a theory or an idea.

Ask any engineer what he/she believes and most likely he can show you the computations why he believes it.

On the other hand, if you ask any evolutionist why they believe that apes and humans are relatives, none can show you any proof. They just believe it. No proof whatsoever. They say that they believe it because they just look similar and humans evolved because nature has shown that bacterias mutate. That is their "proof".

In any engineering field, these kinds of reasoning or "proof" are considered DELUSIONAL.

IDIOTS AND DELUSIONAL. The danger is they are millions of them. This world is doomed.

Pamsm, please show us your "proof" about evolution. Show as that you are FOOL-proof and not just a simple FOOL believing on something she can't explain.

Globalone says:
"There are infinite opportunities for a young adult, with a Christian background, to learn about and understand non-religious viewpoints. It's called TV, radio, newspapers, magazines..."

Not in all religions. Some are kept in compounds (fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, Jonestown), others are, as I said, sent only to religious schools or home schooled. Many are told that they'll go to hell if they read "worldly" things like novels, magazines, or newspapers. Most are encouraged to find friends and mates of their own faith, if not outright forbidden from hanging around with others.

GLOBALONE: "Sadly, those without a religious background very rarely get the same chance."

You've got to be kidding. We're surrounded by you everywhere we go. Your churches are on every corner. We can't scan the radio dial without hearing the stentorian tones of your preachers.

And you assume much when you say that we have no religious background. Most of us were raised by religious parents and attended church and Sunday school as children. With some of us, it even stuck for a while.

Athena,

You're so right...wise like your namesake.

Same goes for *sect*, methinks.

Jesus was a *sect* leader par excellence.

What is the difference between a cult and a religion? More members.

==============
==============
Someone asked:
"Do atheists have a monopoly on objectivity?"

Uhh, think about the difference between "objective" and "subjective" before you ask that stupid question.

--faye kane, homeless brain.
Read more of my smartmouth opinions at http://tinyurl.com/fayescave

Our War on Terror and Aggression:

An update (or how we are spending or how we have spent the USA taxpayers’ money to eliminate global terror and aggression)

The terror and aggression via a Partial and Recent Body Count --

1a) 179 killed in Mumbai/Bombay, 290 injured

1b) Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Theo Van Gogh

2) 9/11, 3000 mostly US citizens, 1000’s injured

3) The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US Troops, 3,425 from combat, 839 non-hostile) and 91,356 – 99,743 Iraqi civilians killed, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

4) Kenya- In Nairobi, about 212 people were killed and an estimated 4000 injured; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.[2]

5) Bali-in 2002-killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens. A further 209 people were injured.

6) Bali in 2005- Twenty people were killed, and 129 people were injured by three bombers who killed themselves in the attacks.

7) Spain in 2004- killing 191 people and wounding 2,050.

8) UK in 2005- The bombings killed 52 commuters and the four radical Islamic suicide bombers, injured 700.

continued below:

Other elements of our War on Terror:

1. Saddam, his sons and major henchmen have been deleted. Saddam's bravado about WMD was one of his major mistakes.

2. Iran is being been contained. (beside containing the Sunni-Shiite civil war in Baghdad, that is the main reason we are in Iraq. And yes, essential oil continues to flow from the region.)

3. Libya has become almost civil. Recently Libya agreed to pay $1.5 billion to the victims of their terrorist activities Apparently this new reality from an Islamic country has upset OBL and his “crazies” as they have threatened Libya. OBL sure is a disgrace to the world especially the Moslem world!!! Or is he???

4. North Korea is still uncivil but is contained. With the opening up of rail traffic between North and South Korea after 50 years and with the assistance of the US Navy in retrieving NK ships and personnel hopefully a fresh sense of civility is afoot.

5. North Korea was taken off the terrorist country list recently.

6. Northern Ireland is finally at peace.

7. The Jews and Palestinians are being separated by walls. Hopefully the walls will follow the 1948 UN accords and the Annapolis Peace Conference is at least somewhat successful. Unfortunately the recent events in Gaza has put this situation back to “square one”. And this significant stupidity is driven by the mythical foundations of both religions!!!

8. Bin Laden has been cornered under a rock in Western Pakistan since 9/11.

9. Fanatical Islam has basically been contained to the Middle East but a wall between India and Pakistan would be a plus for world peace. Ditto for a wall between Afghanhistan and Pakistan.

10. Timothy McVeigh was executed. Terry Nichols will follow soon.

11. Eric Rudolph is spending three life terms in prison with no parole.

12. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Kaczynski, the "nuns" from Rwanda, and the KKK were all dealt with and either eliminated themselves or are being punished.

13. Islamic Sudan, Darfur and Somalia are still terror hot spots.

14. The terror and torture of Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait were ended by the proper application of the military forces of the USA and her freedom-loving friends. Radovan Karadzic was finally captured on 7/23/08 and is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war -- charges related to the 1992-1995 civil war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia.

15. And of course the bloody terror brought about the Japanese, Nazis and Communists was with great difficulty eliminated by the good guys.

"Is this mother's misguided action any more evil or irrational than 9/11 or Bush's Crusade(his word) Against Iraq that has destroyed a nation, led to the death of hundreds of thousands and the exile of millions?"

Yes, because Jovan Ramkissoon was not Saddam Hussein.

Amen Susan! I had exactly the same thought when I saw the attorney's comment along the lines that "she wasn't delusional, she was following a religion." We do give far too much deference in America to irrational things done in the name of religion. Keep up the good work!

The Cults of Abraham were all created by Warlords, Abraham, Constatine and Mohammed, and have been the tool of politics and greed that have kept the world at war for thousands of years.

Humans will never have a chance to develope ethical cultures capable of true peace as long as these ancient tribal personality cults continue to have the influence over societies that they are allowed now.

Is this mother's misguided action any more evil or irrational than 9/11 or Bush's Crusade(his word) Against Iraq that has destroyed a nation, led to the death of hundreds of thousands and the exile of millions?

The problem with religion is it removes the freedom for people to explore the truth.

Belief is personal and is based on intellect, personal experience and personality. Some people believe the Bible is to be taken literally. Some believe everything about the Bible but that it should be used metaphorically, some people believe some things in the Bible, but not others.

GlobAlone said being exposed to Christianity makes on more well rounded. I have never been formally exposed to religion yet I will set my knowledge of all religions and atheism against any religious person. Being well rounded is more about whether you are a searched of the truth.

Religion is about getting people to belief THIS story. It is rarely about exploration of truth. I explore the truth, my truth. On the subject of God or consciousness there really is no truth we can prove one way or another.

The only truth I think there is about God (if he exists, which I believe he/she does) is we have it wrong. We do a great disservice to God and ourselves if we do not continue to search for a better truth about what God is. The current model no longer serves us.

We should never take another’s word about what God is or wants. The moment you give up your thought or belief to another human is the moment you give up your freedom, and this is what enables the abusers. This is what invites human tragedy.

I am a strong believer in the common good and that we are all in some way connected, yet the choice on what to believe is always an individual choice. When you give that up, your freedom you actually hurt the common body because a bad idea can spread like cancer.

If you are a believer, keep believing, but also keep searching. It is what keeps us from becoming delusional.

To the people who think atheists get only half the truth:

A secularist believes that factual statements should only be accepted based on evidence. Evidence doesn't mean something has to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, only that it has to be based on something objective. There is no more reason to believe in Purgatory, for example, than that Jovan Ramkissoon will walk again.

I am will to accept some propositions on faith -- like that it's objective wrong to steal in almost all circumstances. But faith means to accept without the need for evidence. "Prejudice" can be defined the same way. I will no more accept the existence of hell on faith than the belief that, for instance, men are smarter than women.

Our society usually attaches the appelation faith to unsupported beliefs we approve of (or at least approve of the holder's right to do so) and prejudice to those we disapprove of. And many of our cultural questions come down to whether it's good or bad to believe an evidence-less proposition:

Does God consider a foetus human?
Does Allah want women to wear burkahs?
Does God approve of marriages between the same sex?

To an atheist, these are questions of faith with no more basis than a prejudice.

Pam,

Unfortunately, you couldn't be farther from the truth. Being exposed to Christianity (or some other religion) only serves to make you more well rounded than someone who wasn't. Think about it.

There are infinite opportunities for a young adult, with a Christian background, to learn about and understand non-religious viewpoints. It's called TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the internet, the library, your workplace, your fitness center, friends, family, etc., etc., etc.

Sadly, those without a religious background very rarely get the same chance.

AmyFlorence --

I've often thought that the anti-theists on these boards paradoxically constitute a resurgence of ancient Gnosticism. Many of them do seem to believe that only they truly understand the nature of the universe and that the rest of us theists are hopelessly delusional and need to be led to their "Promised Land"...

It's obvious today that this world has been polarized & fragmented by counterfeit religion, selfish business practices and corrupt politics, but to suggest that an atheistic world would somehow be an alternative is the height of ignorance. Do atheists have a monopoly on honesty, objectivity? Many of us would feel safer perhaps with some atheists. Agnostics, although at times apathetic seem to be more open to discussion. Nevertheless, the morality of many atheists is unknown. Atheism did not seem to help the Soviet Union. Unless, of course, there is some pure form of atheism that is espoused by a small group of intellectuals who we mortals are not able to measure up to. May be they are the Supreme Beings that we are meant to look up to. Dread the thought. A little modesty would perhaps help us all.

PAMSM:

Your passion is laudable, but your means of expressing it does your argument and credibility harm.

Calling someone "racist" -- without ANY proof and simply because you disagree with them -- is clearly the first resort of those who would come to a trial of wits armed only with Ex-Lax.

The concept of racism has been distorted beyond all comprehension by those who misuse it as a reflexive put down rather than an actual point of fact. Like the boy who cried wolf, the overuse of this argument in inappropriate venues robs you of all credibility.

Disagree with someone all you want. But try using facts, not vehemence.

As for the author of this blog, I think she has little to no credibility as well. In fact, regardless of how unfounded I find her allegedly atheistic beliefs to be, I don't think she's even an atheist so much as she is anti-Christian.

Notice in her blog that she carefully avoids mentioning Islam -- to the extent that she ignores the fact that there are numerous and deadly examples of this mainstream religion being used to justify the torture and murder of not only non-Muslims but Muslims of different sects as well.

Even when she mentions a Muslim who recently beheaded his wife here in America, she carefully avoids denoting his religion, but she has no choice ridiculing Christians.

Of course, in today's climate, she could be doing that to avoid ad hominem attacks by people like PAMSM, who think that it is automatically "racist" to criticize anything that is not white, male, American and Christian.

Or it could just be that the blogger's alleged atheism is no more than a kneejerk reaction to a Christian religion she chooses to scapegoat because she fears it and doesn't understand it.

Very clearly, the woman was delusional but she pleaded guilty. Acknowledging her errors means she is sane now.

How about the millions of evolutionists who still think that their great great grandpa was a baboon and who still think that life is survival of the fittest?

How dangerous are these people when their idea of the fittest means the most delusional?

Doomsday is coming because nobody are stopping these people from their delusion. In time they will commit their grand act of stupidity.

In their quest for "survival" , they will end up as prey to their perceived enemy.

To Pamsm: Ok, I screwed up on Rarkissoons' ethnicity. Queen Antoinette and Tevia Williams, two of the others charged in the homicide are Af-Am. I thought since she was from Trinidad, where a lot of Indians intermarry ethnic Africans, she might be mixed.

As to the racism suggestion -- applying that term to educational solutions to culturally-rooted problems bends it out of all useful meaning.

I am dumb, and I want to stay dumb! Please, don't take it away from me, it feels so good and warm, and I am so used to it that it simply makes me happy!

And I will hold on to it even if it is "tested". That is character! That is faith! That will give me the ticket to heaven.

The captain of the Titanic (and also the wretched W.) was so strong and right to keep the course! What strong characters!

realism vs delusionism.

the creator of heaven and earth wouldnot creat mankind and just throw mankind on this planet earth with no guidance(religion)

the fact is ,
there is one religion(the religion of the creator of heavens and earth because there is only one creator god )and the rest are delusions .

every born child is on the above religion until his/her parents brainwash him or her in the parents delusion or the mass delusion of the society and environment,

examples,
those who born and raised in a society where it proclaim that for so god love the world he nailed his only begotten son on the cross for the sin and sake of mankind???

those who born and raised in a society where it proclaim that human reasonism is the way the truth and life where mankind is free to do all he/she can do ?

people of reasonism are no less brain washed and rooted in their own delusion .

what is the difference between deluded your child under the cross or under the altar of human reasonism?

there is one religion and many delusions .

the realism of this life is,
every mankind need to submit to the creator of this life

another hard fact,
get your own universe if you can afford one!!!!!!!!!!

This is a very sad story, and shows the power of religious influence to destroy minds and lives - as if we needed another example after Jonestown and Heaven's Gate.

The mother has agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge and cooperate with prosecutors in return for their agreement to drop the charges if her son resurrects (!!)

She still tells people that he's alive, despite all evidence to the contrary.

What is wrong with some people that they are so open to suggestion, and so unable to think critically?

The cult leader told her that the child was possessed by demonic forces, and that was why he suddenly refused to say "Amen" at dinner - not that he was 18 months old and acting his age. Witholding food and water was meant to drive the demon out.

When he died, they waited weeks for resurrection. When this didn't happen, the answer was that there "one among them who wasn't a true believer."

This is the tired old cop-out used whenever things go wrong - like when the snake-handlers get bitten and die (their faith wasn't strong enough - their hearts and souls weren't pure enough).

Will people never learn??

WMARKW,
I don't suppose that in the middle of your racist rant you happened to notice that the mother and child are/were Indian (formerly Hindu) and *not* African-American...? Or is that all the same to you?

"...and they engage in a constant brainwashing process that isolates cult members and removes them from any possibility of acquiring contradictory information."

Not much different from the behavior of some of our more mainstream Christian religionists, such as Catholics and Seventh-Day Adventists, who have their own schools - kindergarten through college - and some evangelical religionists, such as Southern Baptists, many of whom home-school and then send their children to schools like Liberty U. and Moody Bible College. All make sure that the little darlings don't hear a discouraging word until their brains have hardened like concrete. Witness Spidermean2.

I think the crime was done out of ignorance and delusion so we should at least treat this differently as with normal crimes. Treat this case with a bit of mercy.

The people or the judge who should try this woman should also NOT be delusional like someone who does not believe that his/her great great grandpa is a baboon.

Human origins are very complex like we should understand first the difference between ape stem cells and human stem cells and how both were formed.

The idiot delusional biologists and atheists think that they can make a categorical conclusion just by watching bone patterns of apes and humans. Very simplistic in their method of study.

IDIOTS AND DELUDED.

Susan Jacoby,

You:
"Ramkisooon's attorney, Steven D. Silverman, is not claiming that his client was criminally insane; instead, he says she was brainwashed into "following a religion." He asserts that because she was brainwashed, she was unable to do anything but follow the orders of her superiors in the cult. Here we have a classic example of the confusion generated by kowtowing to religion in this society."

It is a commonplace - even cliche - of anti-religion polemic to associate the terms *religion* and *brainwashing*. You yourself deploy the equation often, as do many who post on these threads. So why take issue with an attorney who brings that *fact* to bear in a criminal case?

I've been castigated on these threads for contending that people are morally accountable for the religious beliefs they hold. The responses were along the lines of *but they have no choice; they've been brainwashed since childhood; they know no better*. Surely, if *religion* really does *brainwash* believers, then they are not fully responsible for any crimes they commit that are religiously motivated.

Playing devil's advocate on behalf of Steven Silverman for a moment:
One can argue that the MO of religious cults like "One Mind" is analogous to that of the military. All armed forces instil group identity and cohesive discipline in recruits by processes akin to *brainwashing*. By various means, soldiers are conditioned to obey orders without question and to override their own individual interests and survival instincts. Does this mean a soldier who follows orders to commit grossly immoral acts (eg. Abu Ghraib) is criminally insane? Has he not been trained (i.e. *brainwashed*) to override personal aversions and even conscience for the sake of group cohesion and strategic objectives?

When soldiers are found to have committed such acts, they are (ideally) held accountable according to military law and/or to the Geneva Conventions - that attempt to define "rules of war". If it's established that they were acting under orders, they are held less culpable than those who issued the orders. Ria Ramkissoon's case is not unlike this, in terms of culpability. If she really was psychologically in thrall to cult leaders who ordered her to starve her son, then they - as well as she - are morally culpable for his death.

It would be great if the law were able to convict and prosecute ALL of the guilty in such cases. But there's no Hague for mind crimes.

But back to my original point. It doesn't make sense to claim on one hand that *religion* is delusion caused by *brainwashing* and then to complain when that very association is made to diminish the criminality of a deluded *brainwashed* religionist! You're having your cake, eating it too, and going back for seconds!

Acebojangles:

Who, having witnessed the last 15-years of political infighting, can believe that there is any one objective basis for deciding who is right or wrong in the field of politics? Please tell me. I would love to be able to prove with scientific certainty, that either Rush Limbaugh or Ted Kennedy is absolutely and irrevocably full of sh**.

But you can’t, can you? Short of ‘let’s not launch the nukes’ almost all politics is subjective.

Is Political Fact nothing more than rhetoric? Is that why sociologists refer to the study of government systems as Political Theory?

Try to convince a European, with his free health care and six-weeks of paid vacation that American-Style Capitalism is better. Socialist economics work just fine for him. And do you really expect billionaire CEOs to see free markets in the same way someone going through bankruptcy due to a medical catastrophe?

Tell me, is the CEO right and the guy facing bankruptcy wrong - or vice versa? What is your ‘legitimate’ basis for deciding right and wrong in this economic situation?

Just because you have not met God does not mean that He does not exist.

And as for right and wrong, isn’t it amazing how religion was interested in these concepts centuries before either politics or economic systems were. How’s that for a legitimate basis?

Thomas, "The Moses of the NT, Baum,

One of your major delusions is that the simple preacher man is/was somehow "god, incarnate"!!!

John 1:1-18 where you have found most of this incarnation mumbo-jumbo only appears in this passage making it a single attestation. Most contemporary historic Jesus and NT exegetes have concluded that the passage is simply more embellishment by the "great embellisher" John (who btw was not the Apostle John)- See Father Raymond Brown's epic 800+ page book, An Introduction to the New Testament for added information.

And before calling up "gay?" Gabriel (to defend your delusions) who supposedly talked to Mary about her "virgin" birth of the holy spirit's incarnate one, check out http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php/026_Jesus_Virginally_Conceived

There are actually more reference in the NT noting Joseph as the father!!!!

And btw, since you have met god, the trinity and satan have you also met "gay" Gabriel?? Would be a nice addition to your delusions!

Actually, the Pope is correct on the issue of condoms; the facts bear him out, and arguments to the contrary are silly. Don't look up the facts, though, I don't care how easy it is to do so. Sure, you could find them in three minutes of searching, but you would no longer be able to ramble incoherently! What fun would that be?

CCNL

You wrote, "What's the difference between extreme religious conviction and delusion?
e.g. Thomas "The Hallucinator" Baum would fit both categories."

I was wondering, are you of the opinion that, my Brother, your Brother, humanity's Brother, Jesus would also "fit both categories"?

As I have said before, I do not look at it as religion or "religious conviction" but as a relationship.

Jesus, Who Is God-Incarnate, became One of us so He is the Brother of all of us.

Don't worry, one day you and the rest of humanity will be glad that God has a Plan and that God's Plan will come to Fruition.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

RubyTues63:

The difference between religion and politics, economics, etc is that there is no basis to decide who is right or wrong about religion. The problem with believing in god is that people try to figure out what he wants and there is no legitimate basis for doing so since he doesn't exit.

What's the difference between extreme religious conviction and delusion?

e.g. Thomas "The Hallucinator" Baum would fit both categories.

I hope Susan and other visible secularists (like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc.) will use this as a wake-up call that we need to add the African-American community to the groups that are being held back by their religious views, like Muslims, the Religious Right and Catholics. Just because they vote for Democrats doesn't mean they aren't suffering from religious delusion.

Obviously, this woman and her cult are an extreme case. But the African-American community in general suffers from the socio-economic deprivations of excessive religosity, like low scientific literacy, physically-oriented child discipline and family breakdown due to incompatible gender role expectations.

Raising their socio-economic status will require exorcising the demons in their philosophy.

Delusion is not a property of religion nor does God seek to mislead. It is mankind that is deluded. Some people are not happy unless they twist everything of importance, even science, into something harmful. If you club someone with a hammer, it is not the hammer’s fault.

Economics: Protesters in England are marking Obama’s visit by protesting against Capitalism. They say The People have been misled by a greed-driven economy controlled by corporations and robber-barons. And to add insult to injury, the common taxpayer who has already lost so much is now asked to bail out the corporations. Is capitalism to blame? Quote your supposed statistics all you want, but what is capitalism but a system of beliefs?

Politics: Most people seem to forget that George W. Bush once had the highest approval ratings of any sitting president. These days he couldn’t get elected dogcatcher. Were we wrong then or are we wrong now? And if we excuse George’s former popularity as nothing more than patriotism during difficult times, then perhaps patriotism is the delusion.

Is it true – can Obama really walk on water?

Modern science has pretty much disproven the idea that All Men Are Created Equal. A child whose parents have bad genes is at a distinct disadvantage in this unforgiving world. Recognizing this fact, the Nazi Party of Germany began programs to encourage people with favorable traits to breed while simultaneously trying to remove people with ‘bad’ genes from society. Do I have to remind anyone what a horrific disaster that was?

I may not be able to ‘prove’ to a rationalist that All Men Are Created Equal, but it is an idea worth living and dying for. Am I deluded? Have I been brainwashed? Does this make me insane?

Just because the Nazis used science to ‘justify’ their racist delusions does not the science itself, bad.

Just because George Bush was President of the United States does not make him the poster boy for democracy.

Just because “Queen Antoinette” uses religion to justify her acts does not mean she speaks for God.

Science, politics, economics and religion are not delusional.
We are.

I refuse to use the term "delusion" because it's emotional and judgmental. The real question is whether a proposition about the universe has a basis in evidence, and whether belief in a proposition without evidence can lead a person to harm others. It's possible for someone to hold such a belief and never be sufficiently motivated to hurt others, but that danger is still there because of the disconnect.

Jehovah's Witnesses blood transfusion confusion

FYI
1) JW's DO USE many parts aka 'fractions' aka components of blood,so if it's 'sacred' to God why the hypocritical contradiction flip-flop?

2) They USE blood collections that are donated by Red Cross and others but don't donate back,more hypocrisy.

3) The Watchtower promotes and praises bloodless elective surgeries,this is a great advancement indeed.BUT it's no good to me if I am bleeding to death from a car crash and lose much of my blood volume and need EMERGENCY blood transfusion.

Remember the Jehovah's Witnesses use thousands and thousands of pints of blood donated by others.They use 60% of the blood volume as broken down "fractions" then go on Bible thumping rants about how dangerous and sinful blood transfusions are.

( JW do allow organ transplants which has more risk than whole blood transfusions so their arguments of disease transmission is bogus)

Danny Haszard life-long Jehovah's Witness http://www.dannyhaszard.com