Friday 8th of November 2024
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Organica spiritualia

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A speech in which the Pope appeared to associate atheism with the Nazis has prompted criticism from humanist organisations.

However, the Catholic Church has moved to play down the controversy, saying the Pope knew "rather well what the Nazi ideology is about".

Humanists have said the comments were a "terrible libel" against non-believers.

In his address, the Pope spoke of "a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society".

He went on to urge the UK to guard against "aggressive forms of secularism".

The Pope made his remarks in his opening address to the Queen at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

He said: "Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

"As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11332515

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Gus: What can I say that I haven't said here before — especially about being an atheist?

The pope's attack on the godless makes me laugh... It's quite pathetic to be treated like a criminal. I don't care really being dumped with the nazis, but I will not let the other godless be associated with criminals as well, whether by the "godists", the "allahists" or the "jehovaists"...

At present, the most vehement of these leading finger-pointing figures whose church is growing, despite loosing some screws, is this pope who once fought along-side the Nazis — albeit "against his wishes".

The Nazi did not want to eradicate god from people's mind. The notion of god is too important to control people. The relationship between Hitler and the Pope Pius XII was too cordial at best and ambiguous at worse. This has led to much criticism of his papality which he navigated through the murky waters of duplicity... Hitler wanted to add the concept of purity of race to the concept of godly beliefs — over a thousand years of genetic selection...

The German army prayed with as much fervour as the Allied did — to the same god.

In Germany there has been more protestants than catholics since the days of Luther who — inspired with a puritanical mind — exposed the excesses of the catholics who, miffed by the schism, went on a notch further by indulging in the grandiloquence of the Baroque to fight the bread and water austerity of the protestants. Both being perverse illusions of an idea to catch flies...

So one wonders which wrong side of the bed the pope gets up every morning?

Perhaps the pope is jealous of his zionist friends who efficiently deal with the secularity of society by fornicating with their main god — mammon money — with simple abandon... Yes the catholic church rue the day it got booted out of most states' affairs, while the jews are secretly dictating the music in most western countries.

The catholic church could also be jealous of its muslim nemesis, a dust bin of mad men — from Bin Laden to the super rich oil sheikhs who control their states with a tight fist and tell what people shall think, shall do and shall wear — with the most kitsched expression of gold excesses.

And we won't have any of that constant sex bonobo monkey stuff in our religious mist: A little war "alla Tony Blair" from time to time shall do to fix problems without fixing them. Over centuries, the catholic organisation has shown that war has been better than sex — apart from its frustrated pedophiles. Sex has better be performed joylessly to produce more little catholics, or else you shall burn in hell. That's why in some religions they remove the organs that give pleasure to having sex. With the catholics, the stigma of sin is enough to make you burn in hell just thinking about lust.

Transcendence is our ability to fudge reality using our imagination. "Poor idiot" would say more enlightened people in reference to my statement. But I would wear that "poor idiot" badge with relative pride, "absolumently".

Einstein was right of course to suggest imagination is better than knowledge. But the trap is that he knew, of course, there's no imagination without knowledge. And there is no knowledge without memory. Imagination is the tool that allows us to twist our limited knowledge into greater concepts, right or wrong. Imagination takes us beyond the stars and beyond god — beyond ourselves.

No other purpose than being joyful for being.

We do not have to be joyful with a "purpose" such as being joyful about an afterlife... Joy being a concept that is relatively new in the context of the catholic church that brought you the inquisition with its toe-nails removers. Until a few years ago,  the catholic church was driven mostly by FEAR:  the fear of god, of the demon, of the demons, of armageddon, of angels, of ourselves... That's why the joyful churches such as the hillsongs were winning the adepts that the mainstream mind-catchers were losing.

The catholic rituals were getting stale — the fear of whatever was petering. We're creatures of habits but we need a bit of variety in our diet. We're omnivores, in body and mind. The fear of the sky falling on our head lasted for a while till we saw it did not fall at all... and then we discovered it became more CO2-ed. But this is another story, being gobbled by the pope and rejected by Pell and Abbott.

So how can we find variety for the mind while being a atheist?

Where do I start!

The list of things to do is endless... I don't know what I'm doing but I know what I want to do. Or do I? There's enough brilliant uncertainty of the next, within parameters of reality, without the need of dictums of dogma to limit my view. It's invigorating.

As I mentioned before, atheists have no church, no unity and no real desires to destroy the churches and their supporters. But sometimes I feel like, may be, we should do something unified — like finding ethical ways to protect the earth and the universe from ourselves, without hindering our ability to gambol for no other reason than doing so.

I sometimes dream of taking over that former seat of churchianic literature dissemination that has fallen into disuse due to better technologies of brainwashing and less gambling on being selected for promises of jackpots... I mean the Reader's Digest building in Darlinghurst. Turn this empty big space into a dedicated atheist, humanist and scientific learning... I can see art, ideas, technologies developing there like follies in the mind of a Stephen Hawkins. In reality this could be a gross step in promoting what is small and efficiently godless, and I can foresee pitfalls. But if someone had enough money to buy the building and dedicate it to specific non-religious humanities, I'd be in favour of it as long as freedom be experimented upon with fornication rooms and grand halls of non-religious meditation, opened to all to discover the organic human. The art of the blank canvas to be as respected as the simplistic arcane imagery of graffiti and the complex subterfuge of surrealism — all tied up with the latest scientific proposals, minus those which could denature our source — nature.

I could go on about faith being the absence of knowledge filled with junk in a world where sensitivitisation/ reaction/action/expression is all part of dealing with the duality between aggressiveness and submissiveness of DNA and the necessity of stealing something else's proteins to survive.

Philosophy is more than looking at jars of jams on a shelf and being smacked  on our finger by a religious nut for grabbing the sweet one.

But I will keep this for another day.

Organica Spiritualia is existential. e.

narrow and exclusive form of morality...

A statement from the British Humanist Association said the Pope's remarks were "surreal".

It said: "The notion that it was the atheism of Nazis that led to their extremist and hateful views or that it somehow fuels intolerance in Britain today is a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God.

 

"The notion that it is non-religious people in the UK today who want to force their views on others, coming from a man whose organisation exerts itself internationally to impose its narrow and exclusive form of morality and undermine the human rights of women, children, gay people and many others, is surreal."

The German-born Pope has previously spoken of his time growing up under the "monster" of Nazism.

He joined the Hitler Youth at 14, as was required of young Germans at the time.

Late on in WWII he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in Munich.

He deserted the German army towards the end of the war and was briefly held as a prisoner-of-war by the Allies in 1945.

The Pope's conservative, traditionalist views were intensified when teaching at the University of Bonn in the 1960s he was said to be appalled at the prevalence of Marxism among his students.

In his view, religion was being subordinated to a political ideology that he considered "tyrannical, brutal and cruel".

He would later be a leading campaigner against liberation theology, the movement to involve the Church in social activism, which for him was too close to Marxism.

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Gus: pathetic pope.

the religious sin of the atheist...

 

'I faked religion to find a school'

When Andrew Penman admitted he'd become a churchgoer to get his children into the local primary, he little imagined the furore his confession would create


Odious, despicable, hypocrite – those are just a few of the words that have been used to describe me since the publication of my book School Daze: Searching for Decent State Education. My sins? There are two, according to my critics.

The first is that I faked being a Christian to get my children into the local Church of England primary school. My plea: guilty. I am an atheist, but for at least two years before my son reached primary-school age I went along to the local church, along with my wife. And so it came to pass that our son got the school place.

My mitigation is this: whose fault was it that we had to go to church to get our son into the local primary school? I didn't choose the selection criteria that meant that half the places were reserved for churchgoers, thus discriminating against local families who did not follow this particular brand of religion. This was not a situation of my choosing. I went to church under duress, because that was the only way to be sure of a place, even though that school was literally the other side of the road from our house. I didn't pretend to be a Christian for several years because I wanted to offend anyone, or because I thought it was fun – I promise you it wasn't. I did it because I wanted my son to attend the local state primary school. Is that too much to ask?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/i-faked-religion-to-find-a-school-2093403.html

the great debate...

Increasingly, our world is being run by people who have read only one book. In some cases, it's a book that is taken to suggest that the gargantuan gaps between rich and poor are sanctioned by a deity. In other cases, it's a book that's taken to suggest that the mass slaughter of people who subscribe to any world-view that evolved after the seventh century is an excellent passport to paradise. Neither would suggest excessive use of Woody Allen's second-favourite organ, the brain.

Religion, said Marx, is the opiate of the masses. Opiates, as anyone who's ever had a painful operation will tell you, have their place, but personally I'd like to spend as much of my life as possible awake.

...

Now I don't deny that there are wrong ways of pursuing this religious quest. Those for whom faith is a call to arms and religion a blanket justification for violence against the unbeliever, are a threat to all of us. But although they make the most noise, they are not the most numerous among religious people. For most people religion is what it has always been – a cultivation of piety, a humility in the face of creation and an attempt to live according to a shared moral code. Piety, humility and morality are all things that we are losing. I would suggest that we would do better to keep them and to study how they might be directed to the right objects and in the right way.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/blair-vs-hitchens-the-dress-rehearsal-2144012.html

 Gus: and the winner is the atheist by a mile of altruism with no hope of a seat in heaven...

see toon and comment at top.

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blair the bigoted liar looses...

 

Tony Blair told an audience member at a debate yesterday that his religious beliefs did not play a role in his decision to support the US invasion of Iraq - but the votes went 2-1 the way of his opponent, Christopher Hitchens.

 

The former prime minister said it was true that "people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion". But Mr Blair, who converted to Catholicism in 2007, said it was also true that religion inspires acts of extraordinary good.

 

And he said it was important not to condemn all people of religious faith because of the "bigotry or prejudice shown by some".

 

Mr Blair also told the 2,700-strong audience in Toronto, Canada, the invasion of Iraq was "not about religious faith" but decisions on the war were "based on policy".

 

He said it was "futile" to try to "drive religion out" and it was more important to concentrate on how to get people of different faiths to work together, particularly in the Middle East where the conflict would only be resolved if people worked across the "faith divide".

 

Sceptic Mr Hitchens, who has terminal cancer, likened God to a "celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea".

 

He appeared to win over the audience, which voted two-to-one in his favour following the debate, which argued the motion "be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world".

 

Mr Blair, 57, who became a practising Christian while studying at Oxford University, said: "It is undoubtedly true that people commit horrific acts of evil in the name of religion.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/faith/hitchens-defeats-blair-in-canadian-religion-debate-2145268.html

Gus: The war on Iraq "based on policy"???????????????????????????????????????

What happened to the "evidence" of WMDs — that was a crock?

 

the lie of the god...

Sam Harris may not be a household name in Britain, but in America he is right up there with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett as one of the new atheism's "four horsemen".

He burst on to the public science scene in 2004 with his anti-religious polemic, The End of Faith, which he wrote while still a graduate student in neuroscience. It went on to sell half a million copies, and he has been a major public figure ever since.

Having used science to attempt deicide, Harris now threatens to do the same for moral philosophy. In his new book, The Moral Landscape, Harris sets out to convince us that science can not only help us to understand human values, but determine them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-moral-formula-how-facts-inform-our-ethics-2265991.html

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Nothing new here... This has been one of Gus's grand hobby-horse for a long long time... and one going back to the Greek philosophers. This is why I mention ethics rather than morals (which I call often "moralizationing")

But what has been "new" for the last 20 years is that I have suggested that — as animals — our memory is "larger than what we need to survive"... Through evolution, beyond survival, we have entered a new uncertainty of purpose that we have solved by becoming "stylistic" animals. The greater trait that we have developed from this stylism is the ability to deceive ourselves. We can lie — WE CAN LIE TO OUR OWN SELF and to others while living quite well — even benefiting from it. On this site for example, when talking about a Tony Abbott about "the lie of the sin" I do not this in a flippant manner. It is an accurate scientific statement.

In my book I only refer to the management of pain and contentment as the only basic events that rule our life. But I also explain that both can be "modified" by our stylistic lies. We can become sadists or masochists by seeking pain to achieve contentment. There are many ways we act in order to maximise contentment, including physical safety — and psychological safety that often included an element of collective brain-washing delusion to make a system stick in a social context. here, I include religion in this lot of lies. Proper science cannot lie — but sometimes can be wrong, mostly due to our interpretations. But scientists always seek reality — verifiable reality.

see image and article at top.

there is no heaven...

A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.

In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain's most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.

Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today.

The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future.

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

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see article at top and all my atheist essays including of false crusades...