Thursday 26th of December 2024
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joe's god did not tell the same thingy...

brewing for god

The Christian zealots, who gained control of many government seats with the Tea Party push back in 2010, are taking stands and actively impeding progress toward acceptance and tolerance across the U.S. and replacing it with biblical-based intolerance. 

In my home state of Pennsylvania, there is a bill that has been brought forth by Rep. Rick Saccone, a republican from Allegheny County, that would force every public school in the state to display “In God We Trust” upon a plaque or through the display of student artwork on school property. This is an obvious attempt to propagate their religious beliefs onto young, developing minds before they reach the age of reason. Just as churches target youth and those who are vulnerable and in need, the Republicans are misusing their offices to further their religious views.

Saccone argued that “people see ‘In God We Trust’ on currency, so why not display the words in Pennsylvania schools?” The obvious answer to such an idiotic question is based in the Constitution, which quite clearly calls for the separation of religion from governmental endeavors. However, Saccone is correct in that we should not lose sight of the fact that once this bill is (hopefully) struck down, we need to refocus on removing the religious statement from our money!

 The first amendment of the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Saccone’s bill would become a law that would show distinct preference toward Christianity. Some have argued that “God” in this case may not refer to the Christian god, so it is not promoting a specific religion, ignoring the fact that they would still be discriminating against any non-believers. However, if the phrase being posted in every school were changed to “Allahu Akbar”, or even contained the name “Allah,” I doubt the same argument -that the phrase means “God is great” and is not necessarily Islamic - would allay concerns of the proponents of this bill. 

In another statement made by Saccone to argue his case, he states, “So they can have Harry Potter on the walls, zombies and witches on brooms but not the national motto?”. I am skeptical that Harry Potter or zombies are being placed inside schools by a governmental law. Rep. Saccone appears to have a serious problem distinguishing the difference between what he desires and what is constitutionally correct.

It also does not appear that we will have relief from the Christian right any time soon, or that the level of stupidity thereof will be slacking off. Another Republican, this one in Texas, is a Senatorial potential named David Barton. He has made a claim that is quite astounding and more befitting of someone from the dark ages than a governmental leader in the 21st century. His claim is that climate change is real and is also man-made, which sounds plausible and refreshing coming from a Republican…until you realize he believes that climate change is happening because man has angered God into a long, slow smite.  He actually believes that “we opened a door that lost God’s protection over our environment and that’s our choice” by allowing abortions to take place. Barton also believes that the government should implement Biblical law. Perhaps he can’t wait until stoning someone for working on Sunday becomes not only legal, but federally mandated. Or maybe he longs to own another human being as his personal property.

However, truly nothing compares to the absolute imbecility that is Michele Bachmann. This princess of the Tea Party not only claims to be in personal contact with the divinity, but is also overjoyed to do whatever she can to bring the human race to an end in order to fulfill a prophecy of her foolish religion. In an interview on American Family Radio, a Christian-based network of radio stations, Bachmann said this about the U.S. defaulting on its debt:

“I think a debt default would be a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale, and that's exactly why I think America should do it. I have a close personal relationship with Jesus. And I have it on good authority that allowing the United States to default on its debt is part of a divine plan to bring about a Kingdom of God on Earth. The Gospel of Luke tells us that economic and political turmoil is the first sign of the end times. Before volcanoes and earthquakes consume the heavens and Earth, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. We're only days away from paradise, I can't wait.”

http://atheistalliance.org/news-a-articles/aai-news/691-christianzealots

still controlling too many minds with fairy stories...

If we try to follow Jesus in faith and hope and love on his journey to the cross, we will find that the hurricane of love which we tremblingly call God will sweep in from a fresh angle, fulfilling our dreams by first shattering them, bringing something new out of the dangerous combination of personal hopes and cultural pressures. We mustn't be surprised if in this process there are moments when it feels as though we are being sucked down to the depths, five hundred miles from shore amid hundred-foot waves, weeping for the dream that has had to die, for the kingdom that isn't coming the way we wanted. That is what it's like when we are caught up in Jesus's perfect storm.

But be sure, when that happens, when you say with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, "We had hoped ... but now it's all gone wrong," that you are on the verge of hearing the fresh word - the word that comes when the storm is stilled, and in the new great calm we see a way forward we had never imagined. "Foolish ones," said Jesus, "and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and so enter into his glory?"

Who knows what might happen if each of us were to approach Holy Week and Good Friday praying humbly for the powerful fresh wind of God to blow into that combination of cultural pressure and personal aspiration, so that we each might share in the sufferings of the Messiah and come through into the new life he longs to give us.

N.T. Wright is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is one of the world's most distinguished and influential New Testament scholars. Among his many books are Jesus and the Victory of God, The Resurrection of the Son of God and, most recently, Paul and the Faithfulness of God.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/04/11/3983587.htm

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What a lot of fresh enlightened prosaic codswallop...

Share in the suffering?... No, as atheists, we don't share suffering.  We try to help alleviate suffering. Sharing suffering is akin to being a masochist and a sadist as the same time. God was a sadist with a masochistic tendency, most his life through the pages of the bible. Whether it's Easter, Christmas or the Equinox, we, atheists, do not share the glory of phantasmagoric illusions. Are people being sucked to the depth or idiocy by believing in this religious unreality?...  Of course. But then I cannot stop people believing that the earth is flat... It thus does not pain me to disagree with Mr Wright, the enlightened geezer who wrote far too many words to say Happy Easter,  for one second.

Most of the right wing of the Liberal (CONservative) party in New South Wales are religious bigots and they "discreetly" interfere with the secularity of what should be... I would not be surprised if Bazza had enough of them and decided to forget the wine he should not have forgotten because he drank to forget to the point he forgot what he wanted to forget... 

Why would the crucifixion of someone relieve us of the original sin?... Makes sense? Totally if you never sinned and believe the story of Adam and Eve which of course, as every feminist know, was actually Eve and Adam... Everybody knows, as well, that He who is in the sky is actually a SHE...

Lazarus with a triple bypass and child sexual abuse...

 


Jesus Christ's resurrection relevant to all Australians, Sydney Archbishop says in Easter message

 

 

The leader of Australia's largest Anglican Diocese says the resurrection of Jesus Christ is relevant to all Australians.

 

In his Easter message, Sydney Archbishop Dr Glenn Davies says the theme can be found in popular culture, including references to sporting and political "comebacks".

He gave the example of former prime minister John Howard's description of himself as "Lazarus with a triple bypass".

"Even a triple bypass would not have saved Lazarus from dying yet again - only Jesus can perform the heart operation that brings eternal life, for only he has conquered death on the cross," he said.

Meanwhile, a western Sydney Bishop says the Catholic Church has been shamed by the ongoing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Bishop of Parramatta, the Most Reverend Anthony Fisher, says the Church was brought to its knees in shame by the commission, which has heard allegations of child sex abuse by priests.

In his Easter message, he compared the commission to "global struggles" such as Russia's intervention in Crimea and the missing Malaysian flight MH370.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-18/easter-message-sydney-archibishop-glenn-davies/5398938

The Easter Bunny has as much relevance to the historical "re-writing" of the new testament... The Sydney archbishop uses facile gross analogy to explain what he believes... "god has risen" is a furphy of grand proportions but then, hey, why spoil a good story when you have a captive audience that has been brainwashed since birth... Easter has a much relevance as the mummified corpse of Henry the VIII at a piss up party.

May the "Anglican" privileged royal dynasties ceased to be and long live the humanist secular republic.

 

I saw it coming...

Top 10 tips for atheists this Easter

 

By John Dickson

Atheists should drop their easily dismissed scientific, philosophical or historical arguments against Christianity, and instead quiz believers about Old Testament violence and hell, writes John Dickson.

As an intellectual movement, Christianity has a head start on atheism. So it's only natural that believers would find some of the current arguments against God less than satisfying.

In the interests of a more robust debate this Easter, I want to offer my tips for atheists wanting to make a dent in the Faith. I've got some advice on arguments that should be dropped and some admissions about where Christians are vulnerable.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-18/dickson-tips-for-atheists/5397892

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I started to smell a BIG rat while reading the introduction to this article supposedly giving tips to atheists to deal with Easter... Of all the tricks in the book this one is highly stupid and rubbish... Basically John Dickson is a Christian — a director of the Centre for Public Christianity — who of course knows all the weak points in religion(s). He'd be dumb if he did not...

We, talking for myself, atheists, are WELL AWARE of all the weak points of religion — one of the main points being a not so subtle massive hypocrisy to make match the idiotic stories in the Testaments to suit a narrative. The other main weak point of religion is that religion DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE at all. So when Dickson tries to give us (atheists) tips on how to tackle religious people to discuss the fat rather than piss on them, one is inclined to piss on them. I would not. Usually I ignore them, unless they try to spread the religious disease publicly to promote something.

Sorry John Dickson, but Richard Dawkins is right: RELIGION IS NUTS and can be dangerous in its extremities, though it's quite okay by me for you to believe the earth is flat. 

religion, as pumped through stylistic illusions...

 

The story of the Passion has bequeathed words, images, and music that compel something like awe - regardless of what we come to think we believe. Peter Craven writes.

How can anyone who has ever experienced the sublimity of Bach's St Matthew Passion dismiss Easter? Bach took the most familiar music of his time, Lutheran chorales, and transfigured them into an idiom of such grandeur that they will haunt the mind forever. And he did this with the most impassioned sincerity and with a supreme artistry that almost in itself compels ideas of transcendence if not divinity in relation to what he and the preceding 1700 years of civilisation took to be the greatest story ever told.

It's true that when we listen to the St Matthew Passion - say in that extraordinary version conducted by Klemperer with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the voice of Chirst, with Peter Pears as the Evangelist and with Elisabeth Schwartzkopf and Christa Ludwig singing the great hymns of suffering and repentance - we know we are at the very heart of the art of the Baroque, but beyond that we know we are confronting a vision as impersonal as the great cathedrals or the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral through which they look at the world.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-18/craven-the-enthralling-art-of-easter/5398266

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Wow! As I have mentioned on this site before, I saw Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the flesh in the late 1960s, singing many of Schubert's Lieders. I think I fell asleep... This is not about the voice of the day, but about pumping religious beliefs through theatre and pomp. No "real" illusion alla Penn and Teller, but illusions in our own minds.

And yes I have experienced a lot of great RELIGIOUS MUSIC, including Bach's St Matthew Passion, but this does not mean I have to believe that the scheme is real. 

I love stylism. I enjoy human creation of their own bird songs. But this does not mean I have to believe beyond humanity's chant... Above this comment, a John Dickson said of atheists "their easily dismissed scientific, philosophical or historical arguments against Christianity"... that is idiotic. Like looking at the wrong end of the telescope to see stars... 

The scientific argument is presently about evolution. Impossible to dismiss unless one is a totally dedicated ignoramus.

The philosophical argument goes back as far as the Aborigines' expression of style about 40,000 years far earlier than what the religious creationists believe. The earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago... and this is not a scientific furphy. etc.

The historical arguments is that many of the narrative in the "old" testament are about wars, concubines and polygamy, punishment and reward, like biblical floods and a promise land... Makes no sense at all, unless one believes in jingle bells, jingle bells... No sense at all...