Why Are You an Atheist and From Where Have You Received Your Ideas?
The discipline known as the Philosophy of Science is an epistemological exercise in challenging the supposedly rock solid conclusions and foundations of modern science and the various nuances of applying the “scientific method†in the real world. The Philosophy of Science often deals with psychological factors involving perception, analysis, peer pressure, group-think, ambition, etc., and asks of science and scientists, “How do you know what you think you know is true, and how do we know that what you know or perceive is true is what you say it is?†This applies especially in the realms of the micro-cosmos and the macro-cosmos. The concept of the “paradigm shift,†to describe a major shift in mass scientific perception of the world, is an idea introduced into the Philosophy of Science by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s. It is the goal of this branch of philosophy to get you to challenge the supposedly inviolable nature of your most sacred cows, even scientific ones.
Along these lines of asking challenging epistemological questions about the sanctified authority of even the conclusions of modern science, I would like to pose a few modern questions about the reasons someone would profess atheism, what kind of atheism, and have them ask themselves where they received their ideas and attitudes from. Have your notions of atheism or religion been arrived at independently, or could they be the result of an outside source involved in a psychological campaign of long-term imprinting? I am referring here to ‘received notions’ derived from a repeated process of psychological imprinting through the combined efforts of various facets in the education system and the media (print, talk radio, television, the music industry, the film industry, live theatre, and the internet).
You may have noticed that in the cool, hip, progressive intellectual world, it has become very un-cool and un-hip to be religious. It is very cool to be nihilistic and unattached, to belong to nothing, and it is a noticeable phenomenon among the high school crowd that the ultimate coolness is not to care about, or be concerned about anything. Compassion is considered weak and excelling at anything is for dweebs and losers. Patriotism is also not too hip either, too right-wing. Why is it cool for Christians to hate their own religion and fashionable to hate their own country? Who is controlling your foreign policy and making you ashamed of your nation? If I can make you hate your traditions, religion, and land, I can divide you and conquer you without you ever knowing about it.
When members of different religions or cultural-ethnic backgrounds meet, why do certain seemingly imprinted attitudes and responses occur? When someone says that they’re a Christian, if you’re a cool, ‘progressive intellectual’ your mind in an almost involuntary Pavlovian response goes to negative images of child-molesting priests, nutjobs like Pat Hagee and Jerry Falwell, and intolerant hillbilly fanatics talkin’ about Noah’s Ark and carrying signs that say “God Wants Homosexuals to Die!†When you say to someone that you are a Muslim (like Obama ‘slipped up’ and said in an interview the other day), you are feared as a possible suicidal Jihadi who wants Islamic law to rule the world in some kind of global Taliban No Fun Empire. When someone says they are Jewish, the Pavlovian reaction is that you should feel guilt, and you should be careful not to offend them in any way because they are all still recovering from the Holocaust and in every second of every day in the Land that God gave to them alone forever and ever, they are being attacked by unemployed, blood thirsty, suicidal Palestinians and Muslim schoolgirls. Where do these responses come from, reality or an altered imprinted version of reality?
Concerning media, take for example the clear double standards and patterned agenda seemingly existing in the field of comedy. Have you ever witnessed any comedian get up on stage, say at YHWH’s Ha Ha Hut in San Bernadino, and tell the joke about the two archaeologists who walk into a bar after finally proving that the Bible story which forms the very foundation of the Jewish people’s religious authority as the Chosen People in possession of an historically unique revelation from the One true G-d at Sinai, is only a myth or an etiological fable masquerading as what we define in the modern age as empiric history? Have you? But Sarah Silverman can get up on stage and tell the audience that if Jesus comes back, she will kill him again herself. She not only gets laughs with that line, but applause as well. Bill Maher can get up on stage and say that Jesus has psychological problems, call Christianity lunacy, and say that all Christians are idiots and fools with all the profanity and arrogant sarcasm available to him. No one, however, on pain of death and exile, can go on stage and tell jokes about Talmudic rabbis sodomizing three old children as is permitted by Talmudic law, or do a satirical comedy bit revolving around the question concerning why so many serial killers turn out to be Jews. Is it the vision of a tinfoil hatter to suspect a possible conscious agenda of mockery and hatred directed at Christianity and Islam by a Jewish dominated media?
As far as being an “atheist†and thus “too smart†or “too modern†to be under any kind of outside conceptual control grid that you are unaware of, you might want to humble yourself a bit and reconsider where you are actually acquiring your thoughts, concepts, and attitudes from. For example, what generates in someone a strong averse reaction to merely seeing an old church in a European town or city? Just asking.
My attitude in all this is to find and understand the essence of human spiritual inspiration and wisdom in the great works produced by the intermittently perceived metaphysical insight and religious imaginations of our race (i.e. the Human Race). I was once a hard-core atheist, but I humbled myself and tried opening my mind to the post-modern possibility that I in fact do not know enough about the infinite Reality we empirically find ourselves in to definitely say that the “God concept,†as something beyond our highly limited perception, does not indeed exist as the metaphysical Ground or Fountainhead of what we call Reality in all its multi-dimensional-ness. I have tried to catch an essence of this in the sacred literature of Near Eastern monotheism and I have been successful. There is great beauty and wisdom in all those books and in the writings of the metaphysicians and visionaries of these faiths. You don’t have to accept every letter and every line as the “word of God.†Communications from any true Godhead through the backdoor of the human psyche into the market place of an Iron Age town in the Near East are like spotty short-wave radio receptions, and a lot of nonsense often scribally creeps into the lost parts of the signal’s frequency as “filler.†You have to learn to intuit the “good parts†of the signal for yourself, and as Yeshua once said, “If you are of God, you will be able to hear the words of God.†I am, for the first time, reading through the Christian Gospels as translated from the Greek by the poet scholar Willis Barnstone. All the Greek names of places and people in the text, however, have been changed back to their original Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents, i.e. Jesus the Christ is now Yeshua Ha-Mashiah, Bethany is now Beit Aniyah, and the Pharisees are the Prushim, etc. Anyways, I am finding a lot of beauty and wisdom here, and if one virulently hates Christianity, it is probably because he or she is paying too much attention to the deeds of the well-poisoning fanatics in the history of the organization [the Church should outlaw and prohibit the study of the period of the Crusades in every university], and not paying enough attention to the valuable things in the texts which inspired the whole phenomenon of Christianity in the first place.
What I would now like to ask, and this is related to my original questions, is it possible that many people have adopted particular attitudes toward particular religions and choose to profess some flavour of atheism as a sign of modernity because of imprinting received in the educational system and through the media? And the debate between the supposed guaranteed morality of ‘religion’ over the supposed immorality of ‘atheism’ is not even on the table, as history has repeatedly shown that good conduct or behaviour is not the exclusive, inherent characteristic or property of either side in that debate.
With all the above as prelude, I am presenting the following texts, derived from three different sources which are attributed to a collective, historically developing text which became known under the genre of “the Protocols†(meeting notes) of the historical meetings in Sanhedrin of a cabal of Jewish elders and globalist powerbrokers seeking a messianic dominance over the globe as part of a Jewish, G-d-given destiny. If you look at events and attitudes in the modern world with regards to faith and religion, and you read what these texts have to say, isn’t it fair to ask if there is not an agenda such as the one described below at work here? Even if this literature is “fake,†as was legally legislated and declared by a Swiss court, still is it not possible for a party who had nothing to do with the original writings to adopt someone else’s plan, fictional or not, as their own, and with all the money and influence in the world, bring that plan into effect? Read on and you decide if there are any connections between observed modern phenomenon and the plans proposed in a text developing perhaps for over two and a half centuries.
THE TEXTS
A) From the discourse of the Rabbi Reichhorn, pronounced in Prague in 1869 over the tomb of the Grand Rabbi Simeon-ben-Ihuda, and published in the March 10, 1921 (No. 214) issue of La Vieille France:
5. The other great power is THE PRESS. By repeating without cessation certain ideas, the Press succeeds in the end in having them accepted as actualities. The Theatre renders us analogous services. Everywhere the Press and the Theatre obey our orders.
12. By our mockeries and our attacks upon them we shall make their priests ridiculous then odious, and their religion as ridiculous and as odious as their clergy. Then we shall be masters of their souls. For our pious attachment to our own religion, to our own worship, will prove the superiority of our religion and the superiority of our souls.
14. But above all let us monopolize Education. By this means we spread ideas that are useful to us, and shape the children’s brains as suits us.
17. ...Let us foster the idea of free love, that we may destroy among Christian women attachment to the principles and practices of their religion.
B) Published in the Russian newspaper, Prizyv, on February 5, 1920 was an interesting document written in Hebrew, and dated December, 1919:
“The authority of the, to us, alien religions and doctrines of faith we have through very successful propaganda, subjected to a merciless criticism and mockery. We have brought the culture, civilization, traditions and thrones of the Christian nations to stagger. We have done everything to bring the Russian people under the yoke of the Jewish power, and ultimately compelled them to fall on their knees before us.â€
C) The Rothschild publication Revue des etudes Juives published in 1889 a letter written on January 13, 1489 by Rabbi Chemor of Arles in Provence to the Grand Sanhedrin in Constantinople in which he asked for advice on how to handle the Christian animosity towards the synagogues of Provence, and the following was part of the advice Rabbi Chemor received from the Grand Sanhedrin:
“As for what you say of their destroying your synagogues: make your sons canons and clerics in order that they may destroy their churches.â€
D) “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zionâ€
PROTOCOL 14
When we come into our kingdom we don’t want any religion other than ours to exist: our religion of the One God with whom our destiny is bound up by our position as the Chosen People, and through whom our same destiny is united with the destinies of the world. We must therefore sweep away all other forms of belief. If this gives birth to the atheists whom we see today, it will not interfere with our views because it is only a transitional stage. But it will serve as a warning for future generations who will listen to our preaching of the religion of Moses, which, by its stable and thoroughly elaborated system, has brought all the peoples of the world into our enslavement. In this we shall emphasize its mystical right, on which we shall say all its educative power is based. Then at every possible opportunity we shall publish articles in which we shall make comparisons between our beneficent rule and those of past ages.
Our philosophers will discuss all the shortcomings of the various beliefs of the Goyim, but no one will ever bring our faith from its true point of view under discussion since this will be fully learned only by ourselves and we will never dare to betray its secrets.
In countries known as progressive and enlightened we have created senseless, filthy, abominable literature For some time after our entrance to power we shall continue to encourage its existence in order to provide some relief in contrast to the speeches and party politics which will be distributed from our grandiose quarters. Our wise men, trained to become leaders of the Goyim, will compose speeches, presentations, memoirs and articles. These will be used by us to influence the minds of the Goyim, directing them towards certain types of knowledge and conclusions which have been determined by us.
PROTOCOL 17:
For a long time in the past, we have taken care to discredit the priesthood of the Goyim and thereby to ruin their mission on earth, which might still be a great hindrance to us in the present day. Day by day, it is losing its influence on the peoples of the world. Freedom of thought has been declared everywhere and the moment of the complete wrecking of the Christian religion is now only years away. As for other religions, we shall have even less difficulty in dealing with them, but it would be premature to speak of this now We shall restrict the ability of the clergy to influence the government into such narrow frames as to make their influence move increasingly backward in comparison to their former progress.
When the time finally comes to destroy the papal court, the finger of an invisible hand will point the nation’s anger toward this court. When, however, the nations come to attack it, we shall come forward in the guise of its defenders as if to save excessive bloodshed. By this diversion we shall penetrate to its very inner sanctum and be sure to never come out again until we have gnawed through the entire strength of this place.

The king of the Jews will be the real pope of the universe, the patriarch of the international church.

But, in the meantime, while we are re-educating youth in new, traditional religions and then afterwards in ours, we shall not overtly lay a finger on existing churches, but we shall fight against them using criticism calculated to produce internal disunity.

In general, then, our contemporary media will continue to condemn State affairs, religions, and imperfections of the Goyim; always using the most disrespectful expressions in order to lower their prestige by every means and in a manner which can only be done by the genius of our gifted tribe.
- Lazlo Toth's blog
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why atheism
Superb. a question that needs to be posed. i believe christopher bollyn would agree.
the "fashionable" trashing of Christianity and the unraveling of the moral fiber of our culture is so real.
when i jumped head first into the exhilarating turmoil of the "environmental movement" after having been immersed in the spiritual, personal, and political conflict of the church for over 10 years, i was struck but not totally surprised to find so many purported atheists. It's funny in the born-again christian world i encountered many former K-through-12 catholics, and the same in the left- wing environtmental world. and in each group, there were those who were the self-righteous, judgmental "purists" who were condescending and critical of the "unsaved". divisiveness is certainly a human frailty and can and will be manipulated by predators to their advantage. and ofcourse we find this in the 911 truth movement, the antiwar movement...
my thoughts and opinions on the protocols of zion are still developing; however, the intention, ways, and means set out therein do certainly appear to have fit neatly into the evolving patterns of human governance and control on earth.
Thank you,  Lazlo. I am again positively "imprinted" by your thoughts and writings.
...
You may have noticed that in the cool, hip, progressive intellectual world, it has become very un-cool and un-hip to be religious. It is very cool to be nihilistic and unattached, to belong to nothing, and it is a noticeable phenomenon among the high school crowd that the ultimate coolness is not to care about, or be concerned about anything. Compassion is considered weak and excelling at anything is for dweebs and losers. Patriotism is also not too hip either, too right-wing. Why is it cool for Christians to hate their own religion and fashionable to hate their own country? Who is controlling your foreign policy and making you ashamed of your nation? If I can make you hate your traditions, religion, and land, I can divide you and conquer you without you ever knowing about it.
I wonder if you are aware of the assumptions that underlie this part of your statement, Laz. Why is Christianity *my* religion? Why should I identify with the American nation-construct – what makes the US “my own†country? It is only because I have been willing to dissect all my cows, sacred and otherwise, that I have come to see that my identity is not fixed, but the result of processes and interactions, at least some of which are under my control.
This started for me when my 8th grade history teacher recommended I read Alan Watts over summer vacation. Having done so, the “Christian†aspect of my identity just slipped off like a husk and any need for rebellion against it (and bear in mind that BOTH of my parents were Christian clergy, so I had plenty) evaporated with it. I had found a reality-explaining paradigm that was more satisfying than belief in God, per se, and as an indirect result am MUCH better able to appreciate the teachings of Christ that are in the New Testament. (I’m no fan of Paul, however.)
As for nationalism and my identity as an American, this is much like being white for me. That is, I feel a moral obligation to own up to the privilege that derives from the parts of that identity I can’t escape. One of my classes last term was focused on nationalism (as a force that intersects with language and language policy) and brought a few things into sharp focus. I am now convinced that nationalism is a construct that human beings desperately need to evolve beyond, right now. ALL nationalisms are based in myth and make-believe. The righteous indignation we feel when we examine the idea of a “Jewish nationality†– because it seems so transparently made up and has led to so much injustice and violence in Palestine – should IMMEDIATELY be reflected back to illumine the same illusory nature of our own national identities. It’s all made up – you are constantly in the process of helping to make it up – and you have a moral obligation to evaluate the consequences of the constructs you participate in perpetuating.
Hi Cass, I do not think that
Hi Cass,
I do not think that there is anything wrong with the concept of a nation and identifying with a nation. We are born into a family which nurtures us. If we are lucky, the community around us also contributes positively to our development and growth. If you extend further outward, the nation is usually the outer limit of a community that gives a damn you exist and provides some service that you depend upon. I don't think it is being naive to think that you belong to that community or want to contribute back to it.
I gain my appreciation of other communities and nations due to my interaction with my own. If I had not developed any appreciation of my own community, I probably would not have developed empathy for any other community as well.
Regarding myth making and propagation, the problem in the Philippines is that much of our history was written for us by the Spaniards and Americans. Our own stories and records have literally been burned and destroyed by our colonizers. In its place, foreigners wrote our educational and history books. Regardless of the written history we are aware of our common oppression by invaders, and later by our own tyrant (the Marcos years). Contemporary history is still in flux because competing elites besides the scholars are still writing different accounts.
Great to hear your ideas
Great to hear your ideas regarding nation states. I'm on the same page. Nation states allow for a small group to control a large group of people. IMHO there should NEVER be one human with authority over another except for the case of a family unit with the parents leading their children. Any thing else is prone to abuse which may involve sadism, slavery, you name it. I'd write more but I'm beat. I just wanted to commend you on your clarity of perception ;).
Regards all!
BTW
You are indirectly responding to comments that both E Vero and myself have made recently, and it should be noted that we are both mature adults, not high school kids whose overriding concern is what is cool. In other words, there is no reason for you to believe that our understandings of reality are any more a programmed, unexamined set of ideas than is your own. (That is, maybe they are, and maybe they ain't.)
speak for yourself, man, I really dig being cool
. . . and of course my stance on 9/11 has made me _so_ popular with my colleagues . . .
I began questioning Christianity at around age 8, when I figured out that 1) the church unfairly favored boys and men over girls and women (status, position in the church, who 'got' to be altar boys, etc.); 2) the church seemed to hold arbitrarily negative positions on sexuality, particularly female sexuality; 3) the church disagreed with my views on evolution, which made a lot more sense to me than church dogma; and 4) the people who regularly attended mass didn't seem as smart as those who did not (and the people who didn't attend didn't seem wicked either). Besides, I just never got that old magical sensation that a mythical being was in my heart, etc. I could never see some God "all around me" in the beautiful natural universe; I figured it could be beautiful in its own right.
While Casseia is questioning assumptions, here's another one - just because someone you don't like tries to undermine an idea doesn't mean that that idea is not worth undermining. This is a variant of the old "my enemy's enemy is my friend." In other words, my enemy's enemy might also be my enemy.
I don't give a hoot that there are some ideas in the New Testament that are good (about turning the other cheek, being humble, helping the poor, etc.). Most of the big religions have these "greatest hits" in them somewhere. Very few are going to nakedly preach collecting wealth, usurping power, and self-aggrandizement. It would be surprising if they did. But these systems of belief are invented or exploited by those who do want to engage in such behavior. Nothing you could say leads me to believe that, however esoteric your latest religious artifact (translated from Greek, buried in an urn from 5,000 BC), that it represents the genuine word of some supernatural being. Show me the evidence is all I ask. Until I get it, I will opt out of religion.
I say "opt out," but strangely enough, acting on impulse as usual, I actually did become an ordained minister a few weeks ago. I made up my own creed, too. Here it is:
------
Religions Affliliation: Discovery
Church: The Little Chapel of Discovery
Church Charter:
The following principles are offered as the core doctrinal beliefs of our church:
1) Our church encourages the pursuit of knowledge, no matter where it leads, and above all seeks to foster a spirit of healthy curiosity among its members.
2) Our church forbids the use of violence to settle disputes.
3) Our church encourages the ingestion of solely natural, whole foods.
4) Our church encourages breastfeeding of infants for as long as may be practicable.
5) Our beliefs forbid any serum, vaccine, foreign, unnatural or chemical substance of any nature to be injected or ingested into a church member's body for any avowed medical purpose whatsoever.
6) Our church seeks to inculcate its members with a healthy skepticism regarding those in positions of authority, including the leaders of this very church.
-----------------
So far I don't have any adherents. (Any takers out there?) I'm still waiting to receive my (emailed) ordination certificate.
Now, back to Christianity in particular -- Where is the evidence that anyone called Jesus Christ ever existed? Despite supposedly conducting miracles that would make 9/11 pale in historical significance in comparison, no historians who lived during Christ’s purported lifetime left a record of such miraculous occurrences or of Christ himself. The 40 or so writers, historians, philosophers and politicians all writing at the time made no mention of Jesus’ existence, deeds, or words. Christian scholars cling to one passage by Flavius Josephus in “The Antiquities of the Jews†(c. 95CE). The exciting news of the alleged Jesus made its way into one tiny passage of Josephus’s voluminous work. The passage has been shown to be a forgery, contains anachronistic terminology, and didn’t show up until centuries after Josephus’s death. Church “historian†Eusebius is widely credited with writing it. Dismissal of the passage is based on intensive scientific scrutiny, confirmed repeatedly by numerous (mostly Christian) scholars. Clutching at more straws, apologists cite Pliny the Younger (writing in 112CE) or Tacitus (writing no earlier than 117CE), none of whom lived when Jesus “lived†and also discredited by scholars.
The Gospels were written long after the purported death of Jesus (in 33CE). Scholars agree Mark came first, followed by Matthew, Luke and John; Mark mentioned the destruction of the Jewish temple (in 70CE), then there’s a gap of at least four decades where we hear nothing of Jesus apart from Apostle Paul. The supposed most important contemporary of Jesus doesn’t seem to know anything about the Jesus story: In his letters, Paul never mentioned Joseph, Mary, Bethlehem, Herod, John the Baptist, any alleged miracles – he never mentioned Jesus having a ministry. He doesn’t mention entry into Jerusalem, Pontius Pilot, the Jewish mob, the trials. He mentioned the resurrection and the ascension but does not place these alleged events on Earth. Just like the dozens of savior Gods that co-existed and predated the Jesus myth, Paul’s Jesus died, rose and ascended in a mythical realm. Jesus supposedly existed until 33CE. Then everyone forgot about him for decades. Jesus finally re-appeared with an uncanny resemblance to the traditional Hero/Savior-God pattern. There are folklore similarities with the likes of Oedipus, Theseus, Romulus, Hercules, Perseus, Zeus and Robin Hood. Justin Martyr seems to agree -- he compared Jesus to the sons of Jupiter. Mythology, folklore, forgery and no contemporary evidence.
And get this: Jesus was just another in a long line of deities that existed only in the imagination. At least 25 other deities (eg Attis, Buddha, Dionysus /Baccus, Hercules, Horus/Osiris of Egypt, Krishna of India, Mithra of Persia, Prometheus of Greece, Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, Zoroaster) share many characteristics with Jesus: (1) born of a virgin on Dec 25th; (2) visited by three kings bearing gifts at his birth, guided by an eastern star; (3) taught in a temple at age 12; (4) reemerged at age 30 after an 18-year hiatus; (5) raised “eL-azuras†from the dead; (6) crucified between two thieves; (7) father a carpenter; (8) transfigured before his disciples; (9) fed multitudes from a small amount of food; (10) walked on water. Also, we see the sermon on the mount, 12 disciples, John the Baptist, etc. Horus was even called KRST (‘Anointed One’ ), The Lamb of God, The Messiah. How do apologists respond? “The Devil Got There First†– a logical fallacy. The Vatican was built on the papacy of Mithra – the Vatican cave belonged to Mithra until 367CE. Most elements of Catholic ritual were taken from Pagan religions. Christians don’t discuss these things. “Ignore the evidence, keep the faith,†your priest will say (and ‘pass the loot’). Anything but face the reality that the Gospels are religious propaganda--contradictory, exaggerated, and mythical.
My attitudes about Jesus and Christianity are heartfelt, thought through, and, best of all, make a great deal of sense to me. I just don't need them. If I am put in hell for being a rational being, then that's where I'll be. I suspect I'll have a lot of friends there, too.
E
p.s. Laz, I liked it better when you wrote about pussies!
[edit: I took out your extra E but are you sure you want the postscript removed? I like it. -- c455]
Sorry, my bad...
... about the coolness thing.
It's interesting that 9/11 skepticism seems to lead right into epistemological issues for most people -- what do we know and how do we know we know it and do we know how we know it? Moreover, useful principles seem to spring up from the study of the fake 9/11 truth movement itself. Just because two parties are in loud disagreement about some things doesn't mean they aren't in reality advancing the same agenda, for instance.
Christians accuse the Jews of killing Jesus; Jews accuse Jesus of being a bastard sorcerer, etc., but the two "sides" agree that Jesus was a real historical character. Hmmmmm.
why are you sorry? I was being facetious re: the coolness thing
I also agree with your take on nationality.
E
I was being facetious
with the apology thing. See? This is the kind of thing that happens when too many uber-hip people get together in a conversation. The irony, sarcasm, and deadpan humor spontaneously combust :)
ooh, you're so uber-hip, I can't stand it!
I'm practically old enough to get an uber-hip replacement, so I'm really out of it in the coolness stakes ... plus I use elipses far too often.
E
wow, there's a lot to chew on here...
Let me throw this into the mix:
Damn, that just makes my brain hurt.
As I was just beginning to watch it, I was thinking about laughter and how much I love to laugh and that laughter seems uniquely human, blah blah blah. When primates make those sounds, it's aggression and the threat of violence, not whatever pleasure human laughter represents. I'm sure that laughter is a good thing, etc etc.
Then, holy crap, they sound like a bunch of screeching primates! Plus, they tie in formation of a "youth army" to fight an imagined "satanic" presence in America.
WTF?
any guy wearing an aloha shirt...
...who is able to knock a dozen people down like bowling pins just by waving his arms MUST be commanding some kind of holy power. Does anyone disagree?
OK seriously though--how many examples of religious people acting like tools or fools do we need before we all take a step back and say hmmm... That goes for any and all idiots acting like weirdos or in antisocial ways whether they call themselves christians, Jews, buddhists, moozlimssss, unitarians, whatever. Then there are those who realize that these people are fools and/or tolls and instead of telling them to stop they find ways to use and manipulate them, either by selling them trinkets, the keys to heaven, dead sea facial mud, etc.
But before we all get sanctimonious on the sanctimonious, let's also call out those whose religious views are "sensible" but who choose to go in for other, secular forms of foolishness like political affiliations. What are sane people to make of the moronic displays of the democrat and republican conventions with their red white and blue jackasses and sweaty elephants waving little flags and generally acting like insane zealots? Or the suckers (myself included at one time in my life) who actually stop when someone asks them if they have 30 seconds for the environment, or to save polar bears, and end up turning over their hard earned cash to organizations that claim to be in the business of fixing things that should never have been broken in the first place?
When a proud atheist or agnostic tells me how they believe in science and objective facts, etc. I ask them why they are so sure that a bunch of Americans pranced around the moon forty years ago when no one has been able to replicate the feat, and don't plan to until 2020 (when the technology will exist to craft an even better illusion than in 1969.) Or maybe I ask them about 9/11 and whether they really believe all that nonsense about buildings collapsing like a shaky jenga structure. Or if I feel like tipping a REALLY sacred cow I just might bring up the you know what-O-caust. Suddenly these super skeptical agnostic atheist secular geniuses cower like children being told santa claus is load of bull that they swallowed for years but should now be old enough to kick to the curb.
What is my point? I've forgotten. But I think it has something to do with being forgiving when it comes to things that people want to believe--so long as they are not believing them at the expense of others! When it comes to dismantling sacred myths, it would seem that it is wisest to start with the most recently enshrined and work backwards. Now on this site we are all mature enough to let facts and arguments speak for themselves without fear, but in the less enlightened real world, including in the fake truth movement, people must be treated with loving care if one hopes to help them to see the world more clearly.
Chew on this
Well, OK. It's been around a little while but, no one mentioned having seen it. So........................
Let the Bodies Hit the Floor!
The many faces of Benny Hinn -
"Healings should not be televised unless they have been medically verified."
And, how can we leave out Ernest Angsley? Ernest Angsley interview. Ernest is asked if he can cure the summertime blues. so solly. no embed. real media, crappy video.
http://www.nardwuar.com/vs/ernest_angley/
Kerney Thomas - Robert Tilton Tribute
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hey - I can't edit my post!
hey - I can't edit my post! G, can you take out my post script and extra "E"? Thanks.
E Vero, you atheist pussy...
Before I start writing about pussies and totalitarian, paranoid dweebs again, as you requested, I just wanted to offer you commentary on your well-appreciated reply to my provocative Atheos-Religion Questionnaire. And hey, Thanks for responding.
You wrote:
“1) the church unfairly favored boys and men over girls and women (status, position in the church, who ‘got’ to be altar boys, etc.);
“2) the church seemed to hold arbitrarily negative positions on sexuality, particularly female sexuality...â€
As an intelligent young lass you logically felt that if the God you were taught to believe in was just, merciful, good, and most of all, REAL, then as a child of that great Creator deity, you should, in a just and well-ruled universe, receive the same respect and opportunities as the boys received, who were apparently, as you came to learn “God’s Holy Chosen Gender.†And you grew up in a religion that, like many ancient religions (cf. Hinduism and Buddhism), was created by monks and mystics who often (as in, most of the time) regarded the “Woman†as a tool of Maya or Satan/Shaitan, employed to distract them from their ascetically trod paths to “God†and cosmic blisshood. In these ascetic traditions, as is evident from even a cursory reading of the literature, women are the “Devil’s†potential sayanim (‘helpers’). Your indignant criticism and assessment of the Catholic injustices you experienced is absolutely valid, but what you saw and experienced is only the ritualistic externality, coupled with visionary corruptness, i.e. spiritual blindness, on the part of a cultic organization that has grown up around the kernel of a mystic experience, experienced centuries ago.
All religions begin with an ineffable experience, which is then “translated†into the world, and then it proceeds downwards from that point onward until it reaches the old Monty Python conflict between “the followers of the shoe†and “the followers of the gourd,†and that old crazy guy who wanders off by himself – fuck him, splitter, twerp! The external nonsense and fanatical craziness (cf. the Hagee/Falwell evangelical special Olympics) then comes to poison the well of the internal potential of the original inspiration.
On the notions of biological evolution, I do not understand why traditionalist “believers†cannot entertain the concept of an infinite, creative, generative force creating life forms through the exact processes we empirically perceive in evolutionary biology. I think the whole DNA, cellular biology, life creation scheme was brilliantly conceived. Why can’t “God,†or “Mr. Math,†as s/he is more commonly known, be a pantheistic evolutionary biologist creator deity? Why does the notion of “intelligence†or “conceptual planning†have to always be equated with “humanoid intelligence� What about that “thermal expansion†thing, the ‘Sham Sunder Law’? I know plenty of real scientists who actually study science because they get to see “God†up close and unexplainable. As I mentioned previously, the word “God/Gott†is oh so very imprecise. As soon as you try to couch and confine IT to linguistic expression, especially within the parameters of a particular culture, nearly all can be lost in the translation process. As I mentioned, if there does exist any kind of “mystic transmission signal†available to the William Jamesian “back-door†of the human psyche, it is more like a short-wave transmission with lots of missing bits and signal “noise.†If you listen to short-wave, you learn how to filter the noise from the signal. It just takes practice.
“The people who regularly attended mass didn’t seem as smart as those who did not (and the people who didn’t attend didn’t seem wicked either.â€
I hear you completely there.
“...I just never got that old magical sensation that a mythical being was in my heart, etc. I could never see some God “all around me†in the beautiful natural universe...â€
If you had gone to India and lived in an old village by a mountainside, you would have had that extraordinary experience of what I am trying to explain. It is an ineffable experience of what has been called the Numinous, or an experience of the Numenon. I would have to say one thing though, and that is that the term or word “god, God, G-d, Gott†is extremely, metaphysically and philosophically imprecise and can be highly misleading with all of its connotations and anthropomorphic attachments. The concept of infinite existence (sat) as the notion of “Brahman†in the Sanskrit Upanishads is closer, or more conceptually related to the indigenous Americans’ idea of “the Great Spirit†than to the concepts of “God†in the three major Near Eastern monotheisms. To be fair however, the writings of a select number of Islamic, Christian, and Judaic mystics do have a tendency to gravitate towards explorations of the outer metaphysical conceptual areas of Vedantic and Buddhistic notions of “Being,†“Existence,†or “Reality,†the big ‘R’, as they call it (cf. the writings of Hildegard von Bingen).
You’re certainly wise enough and capable of creating your own personal church, which is what it is all essentially about anyway, and if your church is founded on good wisdom, as yours is, then you will find that your church has many members, ones that you never knew even existed. And as the old saying goes, “If you exist, you’re already chosen.â€
Church Charter:
The following principles are offered as the core doctrinal beliefs of our church:
1) Our church encourages the pursuit of knowledge, no matter where it leads, and above all seeks to foster a spirit of healthy curiosity among its members. GOOD
2) Our church forbids the use of violence to settle disputes.
GOOD, unless the dispute is over a mahfahka that broke into my house (or country), is holding my family at gunpoint, and I have a clear head shot from the garage door to drop him on the spot.
3) Our church encourages the ingestion of solely natural, whole foods. GOOD
4) Our church encourages breastfeeding of infants for as long as may be practicable. GOOD, yes, we can work with this.
5) Our beliefs forbid any serum, vaccine, foreign, unnatural or chemical substance of any nature to be injected or ingested into a church member’s body for any avowed medical purpose whatsoever. GOOD
6) Our church seeks to inculcate its members with a healthy skepticism regarding those in positions of authority, including the leaders of this very church. GOOD, “Don’t follow leaders. Watch the parking meters.†– B. Dylan
As far as the incorruptible, 100% provable, empiric nature of the historicity of the biographies and teachings of the founders of ALL world religions goes, all traditions (Yes folks, EVEN Judaism in fact) are wholly susceptible to the exact same epistemological problems. Yo EV, you did a commendable job of concisely summarizing all the major historical problems with the concept of a mythical, unbroken chain of transmission with regards to Christianity and its texts. While studying the Torah and the Qur’an, I also spent a long five-year period, many years ago, studying all these Christian things, and am oh so well aware of the various and sundry historicity problems involving the textual and archaeological verification of the details concerning Jesus’ biography and teachings. And you forgot to mention the fourteen points of similarity between the mythic biographies of Dionysus and Jesus (All the Gospel writers, culturally, were Hellenic in their awareness). The notion of “I am about to die and you can remember me by drinking the wine of the vineyard and eating the bread of the earth†comes from the myth of Dionysus. However, one group of elements, which we, in the post-Gutenberg modern, must also take into consideration, involve the processes and effects of oral transmission and the traditions of orally transmitted teachings. We cannot accurately trace or assess the complete transmission of a story or concept via the highly limited means of randomly understanding the text of intermittently discovered scrolls and tablets. Applying modern, step-by-step, nearly instantaneous information transmission notions of press and publicity to the oral traditions of ancient, developing religious cults is highly problematic and moves us into a whole other gigantic area of discussion, but suffice it to say that three or four random mentions of Jesus, “forged†at a later date or not, does not conclusively prove or disprove his a-historicity or possible real status as a teacher with a core group of students who could be traced back to as the original impetus for the foundation of an established religious tradition. After all, at the time, historically the Galilee was a known seat of “free-thinking†and rebellion against both the imperial and the orthodox. Despite the outer crust of story and fable, I think it is fair to assert that some individual and his or her ideas or perceptions and radical visions must certainly form the seed of any religious/spiritual tradition or group. Does anyone really, actually think that the world’s religious traditions are the contrived “control grid†inventions of some clever ancient scribes, or evil priest cartel, who all decided to make up mythic characters, put words in their mouths, i.e. the words of the scribes or their paymasters, and then to found religions based on those writings to control “the masses†for the benefit of some ancient Sumerian/Hittite oil corporation conglomerate? Hello? There is a conspiracy going on here, but it is not of the Acharya S / Zeitgeist variety, I will assure you of that much. I suppose my approach to all this is a bit in the Joseph Campbell school where we are not concerned about the historicity or transmissional letter by letter purity, but are only concerned with what the spirit of the text says to us, divorced from, and outside of all those considerations of ritualistic, opportunistic, and bureaucratic externalities of a cultic organization, or “religion.â€
I am not asking you to accept as letter-by-letter, ritual-by-ritual proof, or truth, of anything with regards to the Gospels and the figure of Iesous, or the Torah and the figures of Moses, et al., or the Lotus Sutra and the figure of Gautama Muni, the Buddha. All I am proposing is the humble attempt to consider the metaphysico-philosophico essence and beauty which I intuit is trying to shine its way to us though a great, grey fog of evolutionary consciousness, and to just leave aside all the external noise and external, irrelevant symbolism in the mystico short-wave signal, which usually ends up forming the externalities (“the fillerâ€) of ritual practice, blind dogma, and bureaucratic organisation. Poetry, Music, and Real Vision are portable. You don’t need no steenking real estate holdings or org charts, man. No costumes or funny hats are needed either. As soon as your “church†gets involved in the real estate market, then you’re fucked. Seriously, I keed you not. Read the poems of Jalal al-Din Rumi and Walt Whitman. And thanks for the love. All you need is Love. Love is all you need. “See you in the next world, don’t be late,†as Uncle Jimi Hendrix once sang.
weighing in on the little church of discovery...
these are just my own feelings--I'm not dissing any true believers...
Church Charter:
The following principles are offered as the core doctrinal beliefs of our church:
1) Our church encourages the pursuit of knowledge, no matter where it leads, and above all seeks to foster a spirit of healthy curiosity among its members. YES
2) Our church forbids the use of violence to settle disputes.
YES, except for boxing matches and other situations where the violence is consensual and the dispute trivial, like who is a better boxer.
3) Our church encourages the ingestion of solely natural, whole foods. NOT so good. Diet Dr. Pepper must be allowed, and skim milk as ana lternative to whole milk too.
4) Our church encourages breastfeeding of infants for as long as may be practicable. SURE--most anything encouraging the use of nipples is good.
5) Our beliefs forbid any serum, vaccine, foreign, unnatural or chemical substance of any nature to be injected or ingested into a church member’s body for any avowed medical purpose whatsoever. UHHH, sorry you lost me here. In addition to foreign substances like Serrano Ham and Manchego cheese (both Spanish) I have the occasional craving for wholly unnatural chemicals that may or may not have medicinal value.
6) Our church seeks to inculcate its members with a healthy skepticism regarding those in positions of authority, including the leaders of this very church. sounds good, I guess I'm already exercising this commandment.
:)
jesus loves me, this i know
such a trip you are:
All I am proposing is the humble attempt to consider the metaphysico-philosophico essence and beauty which I intuit is trying to shine its way to us
Titillating title, Laz, but you lose points for fuzzy thinking
I love reading your posts - esp. any directed at me. I generally love the way you think. But I truly cannot understand this stance on religion.
If it all boils down to a mystical experience, then by jove, I've had one! I recall getting stoned in a cafe in Amsterdam back in 1994. I was with friends, having a great time. I was definitely enjoying the best reefer I've ever had when, bingo, I had mystical experience. It came to me (such a cliche) that "love" is everything, is all important, and is somehow the "answer" to the most important questions in life. Did I invent a religion? I don't think so.
(I think, actually, that love (unconditional positive regard, attachment, whatever) is important in helping humanity, though. If every baby were loved, then I don't think there would be any sadistic, psychopathic killers, plotting to take over the world, despite the existence of any document, like the Protocols. Perhaps some of psychopathic behavior is genetic, but it still wouldn't have a foothold without environmental input.)
But religion is sold to us NOT as a mystical, abstract experience but as something concrete like this: This dude was born of a virgin during this time frame in this place, conducted miracles and had followers, was crucified but rose from the dead three days later.
Evolution could co-exist with the notion of a god, but evolution does not need a god to exist. So it's superfluous (Occam's razor, etc., ring a bell?). I'll grant you that science is problems further back -- as in the big bang. What happened prior to the BB? What started it - if nothing exists? In this realm of inquiry, god is as good as science.
As for intelligence - it's obvious that intelligence exists in every creature with a nervous system. But, again, why invoke god to explain their design and evolution? Do you have trouble explaining how humans such as yourself (and others on this site) came to be so intelligent?
By the way, my little religion (discovery) was invented for ulterior motives -- to combat my local school's insistence that all children be vaccinated. Religious exemptions are allowed, so as an ethical atheist I toyed with inventing my own religion but then thought better of it. I ended up putting them in private pre-k. Anyway, in my religion, I forgot to proscribe circumcision (or any unnecessary surgery performed before the little guys or gals can reasonably consent). I also forgot my all-time favorite, the golden rule.
So anyway, Laz, I guess our "affair" (de coeur) is off (and to think I racked up a few fifty-cent charges thinking of you...)!
E
C., I was hoping that you would not read this as “You†sing.
Hello Casseia, welcome back to the States.
Just to clarify a bit, you are correct that your comments and those of E Vero inspired or prompted me to think about this subject matter and write this blog, but I was not addressing this essay to “you†in particular, or E Vero in particular, otherwise I just would have posted a personal comment to you or EV over on that thread. I chose to pose these questions to any self-confessed “atheists†in general, and to discuss the phenomenon or cultural trend of atheism seen in the general culture. This is why I posed the question, “have you, O atheists of the world, (plural, y’all) acquired a negative attitude with regards to religion in general, or any religion in particular, due to your own sought out path of trying to understand things and then reaching an individually formed conclusion, or is your attitude, perhaps, derived from a subtle, and possibly conscious agenda of imprinting attitudes on a populace, say on a particular age demographic, towards things such as the like or dislike of “religion,†and in particular Christianity? I was hoping you would not take the “you†in my article as personally referring to you, Casseia in the 2nd person singular. This is why the article was in the impersonal 2nd person plural. I was asking two questions of all and any people who call, or have called, themselves atheists, including myself.
1) Are your attitudes (good or bad) towards religion or religious groups worked out by yourself, say by a more internal process?
2) or Are your attitudes shaped by something a bit more ‘environmental’ and external, such as the psychological effects of repetitive imprinting for agenda-driven propaganda purposes?
When one looks at modern culture in regards to this subject matter, and reads of a plan contained in a century old text to engineer a pattern of behavioural attitudes which can later be discerned influentially flowing through the media or educational system of a culture, it is certainly fair game to ask if there is some connection between the old “verboten and socially shunned†text and an attitudinal phenomenon observed in modern culture, and by “modern,†I am including the period of the 18th century European “Enlightenment†up to the present.
By asking these questions, or writing this blog, I was not talking about you or E Vero, nor was I ascribing to myself any personal knowledge into the parameters of your (i.e. both a yooz, 2P fem. dual) thinking processes, or how you have arrived at the things that you believe or not believe in. That is why I was throwing out general questions to the general “atheist crowd†out there. Perhaps this is a provocative, and possibly very interesting discussion piece, but it wasn’t written with the intent to insult or judge our “atheist†friends out there, perhaps including yourself. I certainly do not look down upon people because they happen to profess some flavour of atheistic belief or attitude. I used to smoke too, but I do not look down upon smokers either. I was just curious as to where the modern atheist (of any age group) has acquired their attitudes from with regards to religion in general, as well as toward particular faiths? I was also describing a general set of attitudes (yes, visible from high school upward) that I have personally noticed out in the world. I was not trying to suggest that your personal thinking or attitude is based upon a strong, high schoolesque, adolescent need to fit in and be “a trendy atheist.†Neither was I suggesting that you, or anyone else, corral your identity into a simplistic, fixed thing. You are obviously advanced in your thinking, I expected no less from you, but in the wide world of the Majority, the “unwashed masses,†if you will, :) you, and all the people on this blog, are unfortunately in a unique minority.
When I was 19, I also read Alan Watts. He’s the guy who turned me on to Buddhism in all its variations, Robert Thurman as well. I lived in a commune of Zen hippie freaks, monks and scholars, tea drinkers and tea smokers. We had rooms of shelves of books on Buddhism. This is also why I asked in my essay here, “what kind of atheism do you profess? And why that particular flavour?†Gautama Muni, the Buddha, can be defined as a spiritual “atheist,†yet it is a different understanding from nihilistic atheism, or the Christopher Hitchens variety. Taoist and Vedanta philosophy can also be interpreted as a “spiritual or metaphysical atheism.†Atheism can also mean you simply do not think that “God†is an “anthropomorphically conceived ‘person’†(non-theos, cf. theoretical physics) who sits on a throne and takes note of how many times you masturbated today. Last time Father Guido Sarducci calculated, this continual masturbation fine is being tallied throughout your whole life; it’s basically $0.50 per session, but it adds up, and for some, can turn out to be pretty expensive, cash-wise, in the end.
Regarding “nationalism,†if there were not cabals or gangs of men out there who would like to control “as their private colonies†the now existing nation states of the globe, and impose a totalitarian security police state upon you (us) because of a fake attack blamed on Muslims which they (the Big Club) planned, executed, and covered; if these rapacious seekers of empire did not exist, and were not the twisted, eugenics oriented psychopaths that they have proven themselves to be, then having a national (rather than tribal) identity and a love or patriotism for the particular land you were born in might not be as important under conditions in which the world’s population was at a “whole nutha level†of consciousness. The bad news is that this “Big Club†is real, and they real crazy too. It is perhaps my primitive “right-wing†patriotic belief that in the times we are now in, the maintenance of the concept of national pride and patriotic consciousness can act as a layer of protection against the cartel of vampyres in operation. In other words, if you are in an enlightened, mystico-philosophical state of non-attachment to all mundane and local forms of temporal identity, then in that state of mind, if “your country†happens to be under attack, and terrorists sit in the seats of governance, you could very well be unwilling to sacrifice yourself in the mundane defense of a “concept†which you do not give any importance to, for whatever mystical or philosophical stance taken. If I can train a nation to think like that, I can march my armies right into the center of the capital without a shot fired. Divide, Pacify, and Conquer. In this way, as opposed to the pacified buddha consciousness, primitive “nationalism†or “tribalism†can act as the last layer of defense for a group under attack by an outside force which wishes to greedily seize for their own usage the land and its natural resources, including human resources (as in slaves). Philosophy and enlightenment will not protect you from such an operational power configuration. I would like to live in your enlightened world, but that world is not what is happening now, and it is not scheduled to get any better, but much worse.
Again, personal offense was not my intent. Discussion was the purpose. Thanks for telling me about your journey though.
I AM A NON-SMOKER. I AM SAVED AND CHOSEN FROM AMONG THE ADDICTS TO BE LIFTED UP. YOU ARE ALL FOOLS! ;) ;)
No offense taken.
I know that you intended to start a broader discussion.
then in that state of mind, if "your country"...
++The bad news is that this “Big Club†is real, and they real crazy too. It is perhaps my primitive “right-wing†patriotic belief that in the times we are now in, the maintenance of the concept of national pride and patriotic consciousness can act as a layer of protection against the cartel of vampyres in operation. In other words, if you are in an enlightened, mystico-philosophical state of non-attachment to all mundane and local forms of temporal identity, then in that state of mind, if “your country†happens to be under attack, and terrorists sit in the seats of governance, you could very well be unwilling to sacrifice yourself in the mundane defense of a “concept†which you do not give any importance to, for whatever mystical or philosophical stance taken. If I can train a nation to think like that, I can march my armies right into the center of the capital without a shot fired. Divide, Pacify, and Conquer++
this is exactly why i find my attitudes flipped upside down from 10 years ago regarding militias and libertarians, yes, even Alex Jones types! ... and my faith, deeply rooted, has compelled me all along....Â
I've seen enough in my life
to know that nationalism just like religion can be a good or bad thing. if there was a nation that in theory did a great job of taking care of its citizenry and was responsible and beneficent towards other nations to boot, would allegiance to that nation be a bad thing? on the other hand, to elaborate a bit on Laz's point, is a philosophical opposition to nationalism on humanist grounds necessarily the best way to promote humanism? if there are some very anti-humanist people out there who will promote anti-nationalism as a way of taking over existing power structures, and by no means with good intentions? in that scenario I think we have to hold our noses sometimes and use nationalism in defense of humanity, while being VERY careful not to let the concept be misused as it has in the past. anti-nationalism in the form of the communist international doesn't exactly have a great track record in pursuit of human welfare either, it should be noted. We need nationalism at this point in history, or at least have to deal with it. That doesn't mean we should not also be trying to transcend it--just not in ways that assist supra-nationalist would-be conquerors in their schemes!
another example...
multinational corporations, some of which are bigger and stronger than some nations, can and do run roughshod over the planet in part because they have been able to overcome nationalistic opposition to the concept of submission to large non-democratic power structures. what if we called our supra-nation "The Virtual Republic of Real Truth and Global Citizens' Democracy", would it be wrong for us to feel a bond with each other and everyone else accepting that banner?
Or is what we're talking about here more something to do with geography, the control of land, boundaries, and borders, etc.?
Feeling a bond
is a good thing, one of those things that makes life worth living, and an impulse that nationalism seizes on and distorts by offering you a fake (imagined) target to bond with that may or may not be for the best.
I was a sucker for a couple of Olympics-related things: first, the VISA ad that proposed loyalty and connection to the human species offered as interesting a basis for watching the competitions as loyalty to nations (which was especially tantalizing since it took on one of those standard Olympics memes that "this is just good wholesome nationalism -- like the World Cup" -- kinda like your (gretavo's) idea that boxing is a neutral, harmless example of using violence to resolve disputes). Also, the fact that the US flag-bearer was one of those horribly abused African warrior-boys in grown up form -- ie, an American by circumstance rather than birth -- by virtue of our (supposed) national policy of "give (us) your wretched refuse". That's the kind of basis for group bonding that gets my loyalty -- rather than an imaginary idea that all Americans are more like me than, for instance, Canadians, Mexicans, or the local indigenous people.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"
(Now, that would have worked even better if it hadn't involved fucking over the locals first...)
"The Virtual Republic of Real Truth and Global Citizens'..
 "The Virtual Republic of Real Truth and Global Citizens' Democracy" ..Gretavo
and regarding colonialism and claims to previous stakes in land.. due to my Dutch ancestry going back before 400-years, my family and I should have the right to reclaim territory and kick the natives out from the island of Texel.
nice sentiments, Gretavo y Casseia!
i have longed for folks to detach from their "tribal" alignments and national and faith identities.... we need a truth and justice world party ...kinda like Gret's idea.
that being said, America sure is getting a bad collective rap from the actions planned and perpetrated by the powers that be and their complicit ...millions it's amazing how many fake patriots there really are.
and I want my right of return
to Spain and a few other places where I had ancestors. but really instead of a party i think we just need a movement of consciousness raising. I really don't want to see We Are Change Earth start a bullhorning campaign about these issues... :)
The "right of return" is just silly...
Although if any descendants of Neanderthals turned up, I would be in favor of giving them Eurasia.
This is a cool interactive video thingy about human migration over the last 160,000 years.
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/
ahhhhhh well....
There's the rub--different types of nationalism. There is ethnic nationalism, tribal nationalism, religious nationalism, totally made-up nationalism, etc. The US kind of falls into that last one, as does Israel, though Zionism clearly is a nationalism with a few more barriers to entry than USAism which pretty much takes anyone.
How about a "graduated nationalism" where there are different levels of association based on a people's common stewardship of each other and their shared environment? This is KIND of what the US is like with Calfiornians feeling pretty different from New Yorkers but still feeling American all the same. This is why Californians and New Yorkers don't actually invade and attack each other, no?
The UN could in theory be or have been something like a global community but two things (at least) prevent it. One is people's latent distrust of each other which is fomented by all kinds of bad people and another is people's fear, legitimate to some degree, that a global government has the potential to be a global tyrant. It's possible, in other words, but far from easy to transcend nationalism for the benefit of all. It would seem to necessarily start with free communication between all people. This would presumably lead to truth, and truth would lead to justice, and justice to peace. So long as people are kept isolated, divided, manipulated, ignorant, apathetic, insecure, and greedy we will not see much progress...
Naaahhh...
I just don't see it: the use of anti-nationalism as a tool of repression. The communists were NOT anti-nationalist -- they started out that way (proposing class loyalty in place of national loyalty) but they let that drop as soon as they realized nationalism could be a useful tool for their ends as well. They too saw the "good things" that nationalism could do -- which is a way of saying that like religion, nationalism is an extremely potent set of memes. If religion is the opiate of the masses, nationalism is the meth/coke/crack/whateva. Just say no to drugs that discourage critical thought, in whatever form.
My suggestion is that the idea of sovereignty is best applied at the level of the individual -- that is, with a universal recognition of inviolable human rights.
ah, well then....
You should definitely come to this seminar next week...
"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948-2008: A 60th Anniversary Roundtable"
There will be no pre-circulated paper on this occasion.
Refreshments will be served.
any names look familiar?
cause I mean no one has commented... you MAY find it if you look in EARNEST...
Ah yup,
I MAY have noticed.
So your point must be that human rights are bullshit because this unfortunate soul is associated with a conference that has "human rights" in the name? Right?
BINGO.
If Philip Zelikow's mentor who helped him draft the 9/11 Commission report before the Commission actually started its, um, commissioning is FOR human rights then I am AGAINST them. Just like I am AGAINST 9/11 truth because Nico Haupt is FOR it.
Now wait a second--where exactly in that announcement does it say that Prof. May will be speaking in FAVOR of human rights? He may well argue AGAINST them. Not that I will know because I try never to be in the same room with war criminals.
Sorry, I'm being very piecemeal in my responses...
As far as being an “atheist†and thus “too smart†or “too modern†to be under any kind of outside conceptual control grid that you are unaware of, you might want to humble yourself a bit and reconsider where you are actually acquiring your thoughts, concepts, and attitudes from. For example, what generates in someone a strong averse reaction to merely seeing an old church in a European town or city? Just asking.
This was a remark I made in another blog, and the answer is that the averse reaction comes from my blossoming disgust with priestly castes of all sorts and their participation in social control and its consequent suffering. It's disingenuous to pretend that social control of pre-enlightenment Jews by their rabbis, for example, was not closely paralleled by social control of (people who were supposed to be) Christians by the Church.
> Patriotism is also not too
> Patriotism is also not too hip either, too right-wing. Why is it cool for Christians to hate their own religion and fashionable to hate their own country? Who is controlling your foreign policy and making you ashamed of your nation?
The problem with that paradigm is that the same trends are in process within Israel as well, which would make no sense if we accept the doctrinal view that all such shifts in attitude are arranged for us by the Zionist Elders.
Nationalism as it's been known for the last 2 centuries was primarily a byproduct of the French revolution. One can trace signs of it back to the English revolution in the 17th century if one wishes to be detailed. But the French revolution did the most to spread the idea. Those nationalist conceptions were bound to a definite stage of economic development when the barrier between the feudal lords and countryside peasants was gradually superceded by the development of an urban middle-class which made capitalism grow. Nationalist imagery was the ideological glue invoked by the rising middle-class in that age of economic development.
In our modern economy, such ways are no longer applicable. Actually, Peggy Noonan did try to invoke them after 911 by predicting that a new generation of John Wayne movies would arise. We're certainly better off without that. But these same tensions between nationalist ideologies from an older era and the modern economy can be found all across Israel as well. They are natural byproduct of our modern era and propaganda hoaxes like John Retcliffe's "Jewish Cemetery in Prague" scam won't alter that.
there you go again. and again. and again!
Gosh Patrick, you mean there really isn't a group of old Jews somewhere plotting every detail of our lives?? I'm SHOCKED! As usual, you seize on what one user here claims to believe and apply your retort generally as if we all here agreed that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a literally true document.
I think that most regular users of this site would agree that the people of Israel are manipulated just as much by the people of every other country. For example, the majority of Israelis are not religious. They are Jewish by some definition but they do not believe in Yaweh or Moses or the Torah or any of that. They are bound by nationalist myths however to a bunch of religious wackos, much as we in America are bound by our own nationalist mythos to a bunch of people who shake and laugh uncontrollably in the mistaken belief that the spirit of JAY-zuss is possessing them. While we are divided from within and also from those without our collective energies and efforts are applied to agendas that are in the interest of a very small group of people. That small group of people furthermore enlists the help, wittingly or not, of people who are easily bribed or blackmailed or simply deceived into playing along with the charade.
The Zionist mythos has been a huge part of this process.
> As usual, you seize on
> As usual, you seize on what one user here claims to believe and apply your retort generally as if we all here agreed
I was replying to the OP, no more, no less. The "Jews of Prague" story was scammed from Alexander Dumas, THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE, by Hermann Goedsche using the penname "John Retcliffe." Since the OP made citation of this old hoax as if it were authentic, there should be nothing shocking about taking note of it. Replies to an OP are just that.
Lazlo says: "still is it
Lazlo says: "still is it not possible for a party who had nothing to do with the original writings to adopt someone else’s plan, fictional or not, as their own, and with all the money and influence in the world, bring that plan into effect?" and elsewhere "Patriotism is also not too hip either, too right-wing. Why is it cool for Christians to hate their own religion and fashionable to hate their own country? Who is controlling your foreign policy and making you ashamed of your nation?"
To which you reply:
"The problem with that paradigm is that the same trends are in process within Israel as well, which would make no sense if we accept the doctrinal view that all such shifts in attitude are arranged for us by the Zionist Elders."
There are a couple of different problems here. First of all nobody has said that ALL such shifts are ENTIRELY due to the designs of, as you put it "the Zionist Elders". It is curious moreover that you use the term "Zionist Elders." Surely you mean "Jewish Elders", since that is the "doctrinal view" you so love to denounce.
What if we were to say "predominantly Zionist global elites"? Might you then be able to muster an intelligent comment pertainig to the actual discussion taking place? Or would you deny that among the global elite there are very few who actually are not Zionists? Who, in other words, reject the state of Israel as an illegal entity founded on forceful land acquisition followed by ethnic cleansing and justified by a grotesque myth that is almost universally believed?
The global elite, i.e. the powerful, are the actual "Elders". They are not all Jewish, probably not even most, but they are overwhelmingly Zionists. Under their watch we have seen many trends develop that did indeed somehow make it into likely fictionalized accounts of a specifically jewish religious conspiracy. This fictional account is popular not because people everywhere hate Jewish people instinctively as some would have us believe but because it very cleverly expounds quite frankly many elements identical to those of a very real process that is discernible in the history of the last century. Lacking a better narrative (thanks to the crap narratives of the mainstream which the elites ensure are the only ones with mass reach) and confronted with an endless stream of atrocities perpetrated by Zionists against them it is no surprise that Arabs and muslims in particular are drawn to that fictional narrative.
Adherence to a fictional narrative that nonetheless bears close resemblance to reality serves to protect the real perpetrators of the agenda in question by making their critics look like hateful morons. That fictional narrative however would not be effective if it did not contain enough truth to be appealing, because people in fact do NOT hate each other at birth but have to be taught to do so, and to fear each other.
If you are going to continue to grace us with your insight, perhaps you might one day choose to move beyond your stickler's issues and stop pretending to be blind to the bigger picture that some of us are trying to flesh out.
The plug's back in!
A hearty hello, people! I had been cut off any domestic internet connections for the past two months, but no more. Long story, and not even interesting to boot. Anyway: Hoo-raah! Now I have quite the pile of input to catch up on...
Hugs to all of you, I missed 'ya! Oh, and I believe in god, only I spell it nature.
PS: here's some upbeat rock, just to keep you entertained. 3am, yawn, g'nite!
_________________________________
happiness is either here or nowhere
hey bruce!
gr34t t0 s33 y0u -- h0p3 y0u'v3 b33n w3ll :)
Thanks!
Frankly, I could have been better, I suppose. Ah, well...
_________________________________
happiness is either here or nowhere
wilkommen backen!
Hmmm... isn't it weird that Bruce is back just as Barry Jennings is alleged to have "died"? Bruuuuuce? Are *you* an old boiler guy?
Not that I knew...
Can I join your branch of the discovery church, anyway?
_________________________________
happiness is either here or nowhere
*join* it?
why not reform it and found your own? you can nail your theses to the door of my post above and start your own racket. You could even publish a tract called "The Protodiscoverists and Their Lies"! My branch has existed for almost three days--we're clearly due for another schism... pretty soon we'll be able to partition the blog and start bombing each other!
very funny, G
So you're a "proto-discoverist" or a "neo-discoverist"? And what would a fundamentalist discoverist look like?
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
Need a free partitioner?
PartedMagic
http://partedmagic.com/
Oops. Wrong partitioning scheme.
can't stop chuckling.
you sound like a North WTCDer
we don't *like* North WTCDers around here... [spoken in South WTCD drawl]
but your new avatar is HOTT--guess that little run in with the kioskian woke up your vanity, eh what? ;)
I'm definitely a South WTCDer
Been looking for a new avatar. Hadn't found anything that I liked as much as yer mod of dick's head sticking out of the frame. ;-)
I am a little skeered though. I heard that the kioskian's husband is a big giant.
please do join! then I'll have one adherent!
and we can take turns being priestess/priest.
You should know, however, that I _did_ already modify it to outlaw circumcision: Our church definitely condones some aspects of phallic worship, making circumcision a no-no.
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
bread and circum
what if we were circumsized (and baptized) without our consent? and lost the foreskin to boot? is there some kind of graft that is sanctioned by the church of de-covery?
if you didn't consent, it's not your fault!
You didn't do anything wrong! But I sincerely believe that parents don't own their children's bodies and minds - they are just there to take care of them for a while. I just hate it that babies are circumcised and then go on to get indoctrinated into a church that forbids them thinking for themselves. People justify circumcising babies by saying, "if we don't do it now, then he'll never do it." Damn right.
I don't think men have had much luck reversing circumcisions - but some have this stretching technique that gets some of the skin back. It depends on how you grew and how much extra skin if any you have, I guess.
Did you know that circumcision in this country just become widespread after WWII? Bizarre, huh, that all these non-jews would have this done?
So, yes, you can still be in our church but you have to promise to leave your newborn boys' penises intact!
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
surely there's someone out there who just died in a car crash...
who is an organ donor and has a foreskin that just became available... i'm not picky about the color matching either, as long as it works doing what foreskins are supposed to do, which is not something I can say I know. does it keep me warm in winter? are there turtleneck vs. v-neck decisions to make? this is all so new to me! but i want to fit into the church--i don't want to have to constantly be explaining these things during communal church showers and stuff...
They're all turtlenecks, bro.
Except when they aren't.
ok thanks for clarifying
if that's the case then maybe i'll be on the lookout for a black one, to give my little guy that French intellectual look...
Get him a tiny beret, too
to complete the look (well, maybe dangling unfiltered cigarette also).
i'll get him an XX-large beret
thank you very much...
Something like what you had in mind?
Love it.
LOL
or this?
I never really noticed dick's arched eyebrow til now... but anyway, this is prolly more like what C455 was thinking... I call it Coq au beret:
did you make this for the photo?
And what's that "Beijing Rare Book Co., Ltd Invoice" doing under your coq?
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
nope...
the beret is the pad from a set of headphones. and the invoice is (obviously) waiting to be paid... :)
I meant the chicken (coq)
I meant the chicken (coq) itself. (Sorry about the dangling modifier.)
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
oh. no.
I didn't make it, I bought it years ago. It's a pencil holder, though I'm sure it could also hold pens, and other things like that... do you like it?
Yes, I like your coq!
(Lots of adolescent humor over here.)
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
you folks are really getting off topic . . .
but I had to respond to this. Those big ears are incredibly irresistible now with the addition of the ciggie and beret. I can definitely see grabbing them during certain phases of discourse on 9/11 truth.
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
grafts? sorry, darling.
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
Attention whoring
Did anyone check out my tune?
_________________________________
happiness is either here or nowhere
WHOA bruce1337! - Re: Attention whoring
WHOA bruce1337!
I',m so sorry. I missed your posting this previously. You had my head banging the keyboard. Arms all a flailin', legs a floppin'. All I wanted to do was get in the pickup truck and drive fast..... drive blind.....
CROSSTOWN!
It would be a much better replacement for the cheesy music in this thing.
--
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corpora
Happy to hear that!
:)
_________________________________
happiness is either here or nowhere
World Union of Deists
14 hard to find essays by Thomas Paine:
http://www.deism.com/index.html
hey, kate's in love with a dicktater!
cool mool
Uh, oh.
Look out there! Yer hubby's gonna pound me into the dirt.
I heard a portion of an interview with someone involved in putting the organization together. The interview was very interesting. I haven't had much time to dig through the site yet but, I do want to grab the Paine essays soon.
I just realized that they have the interview posted on their site. Here is the interview, in case your interested:
One hour radio interview with active Deist Bo Rogers. The interview took place September 12, 2008. The interviewer was Tim Wingate from We The People Radio Network.
Diest Radio
http://www.deism.com/Wingate20080912_Fri_Herzog2.mp3
The above interview and an earlier interview is availab;le here:
http://www.deism.com/deistradio.htm
Radio interview (in four parts) from KGMI 790 AM out of Bellingham, Washington that took place on June 27, 2007. The interviewer was Joe Teehan. Fellow Deist and member of the WUD Deist Speakers Bureau Jayson Post was the scheduled guest.
Kate - I lost you!
I can't find that post where you talked to me about your now grown daughter, but I wanted to comment on your comment. I'm sorry to hear she's at UR. Besides costing you a shit-load of $$, I think UR is a real propaganda production company. The product is humans, like your daughter, whom I desperately hope can hang on to her ability to think for herself. That Arun got chucked out of his own institute does not surprise me. I used to live within biking distance of UR (as recently as 2 years ago), and spent a lot of time at the "Nipple of Knowledge" (she'll know what I mean). One good thing about her being upstate is that she'll stay out of trouble -- because there is NOTHING going on in Rochester!
E
sorry about that, E
i don't know what i did, but deleted it apparently.
well, your opinion on U of R confirms certain aspects of mine. however, spud got a good scholarship and grant funding, work study, etc, and is headed into a science/med field..the university seems quite okay in that department, and frankly, she loves her campus, her classes, and we love the ride through the fingerlakes, and visiting that big ole great lake! the eastman area is fine with some excellelnt middle-eastern restaurants. that's amazing you spent time at the "nipple" and lived there! i take it you are a prof/teacher of some sort. she almost went to school in boston, but i think this is more suited to her right now. maybe graduate school...bigger city, etc. although recently declared an independent, daughter is not political at this point...will see how she evolves.Â
best to you and yours.Â
Her nickname is SPUD?
That's hilarious. Glad she's doing well, despite all the attendant risks of being a student at the U of R.
Yep, I nursed at the nipple at least once a week. You sussed me out -- I was a professor but became bored after tenure (and disappointed at the meager salary) and gave it up for my dream job: I am an intellectual prostitute. Yes, I strip naked, then entertain my client with an assortment of discussion material -- French existentialist philosophy, the poetry of Rilke, Orwell (if he's British), evolutionary roots of Bowlbian attachment theory, the rudiments of Thai cuisine, the marriage rituals of Australian aboriginal peoples, Chinese mythology, Swedish politics, you name it, I discuss it. Sometimes I just expound on the finer points of 9/11 truth. We generally talk about whatever his wife, due to the inevitable intellectual impotence that often besets relationships, can't or won't talk about.
It's all legal - and if he happens to pop his cork while I'm there, I had nothing to do with it. But I do need quite a bit of reading material to keep my repertoire au currant, hence the time spent at "The Nipple" (that was before I could afford to stock a luxurious library of my own). Also, I must keep my linguistic skills sharp, because sometimes my audience demands I read texts in the original Greek or whatever. When my audience is two or more, I often have to translate for the others. And, as you can imagine, mispronunciations really eats into my tips! Of course, I have to spend an inordinate amount of time on websites like this one, or else I couldn't intelligently discuss what is happening in the world. Believe me, I earn my (exorbitant) fee.
So I owe you all a debt of gratitude.
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
intellectual prostitute?
such fun! and you obviously are an intelligence (the intellectual knowledge kind of) addict!
being quite naive, didn't realize there was such an entity, but on second thought...that's not true, as I knew an intrigueing fellow a while back who would have happily fit that bill. haha. Â
spud = short for "young spud"
Dearest Kate - sorry for pulling your leg
Kate writes:
such fun! and you obviously are an intelligence (the intellectual knowledge kind of) addict!
being quite naive, didn't realize there was such an entity, but on second thought...that's not true, as I knew an intrigueing fellow a while back who would have happily fit that bill. haha.
Kate, you are so gullible! You were actually right the first time. I am a prof. The “intellectual prostitute†idea is a gag taken from an old Woody Allen film, I can’t recall which one. Do you think such a thing actually exists? I doubt it (but I do want to hear more about this fellow you knew!). I also sincerely doubt any private individual could have a library as nice as the UR’s! That is the bigger fantasy right there. And I wish I could discuss any topic – and know virtually every thing. I was just having you on. The weird part is that you believed me (and were so sweetly polite and non-judgmental about my apparent vocation).
Sadly, the truth is that my life could not be more prosaic right now. I wish I had an academic conference to go to. I missed one in MI this weekend, but I simply cannot go anywhere. There is an invisible, electric fence around my life right now. If I end up in a camp, I will already be prepared for how it feels. I am in the middle of suburbia, my dear hubby (whom I miss terribly) is working thousands of miles away for the indefinite future, and I am at home much of the time with nothing to do but look after two young kids. This weekend, the most exciting thing on our agenda? They’re starting ballet lessons. Maybe after that we’ll go to the science museum or pick out Halloween costumes.
I’m starting to live for this site, and it’s a bit worrisome. I am drawn to people who are intelligent, honest, witty, and unafraid to speak the truth, as you all (except for McNutty) are, but I think I need some flesh-and-blood friends right now. My real-life neighbors, family, friends, and colleagues are 9/11 cowards or ignoramuses. I am alive but it feels like no one else around me is. Or they are all asleep, metaphorically. Thank goodness I have a few good students to work with; that helps.
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
Hey E,
Yes, you must find some flesh-and-blood friends to have grown-up time with!
You got it, sister!
Thanks for the supportive note. I saw it last night but was too beat to reply. You're a mom - so you know whereof I speak. I bet you also know this unnamed condition ('9/11 truth isolation' syndrome?) that only adds to the malaise. Or do you have good flesh-and-blood people around you to talk with about these issues?
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
isolation
Hey E, all of us know exactly what you mean. We can't dwell on and steep in such isolation and alienation because we must instead do everything possible to infect others with and spread our "truth virus". Perhaps no human is an island, but WTCD is. I would call it a cell but then we'd really start to wade into dangerous waters. Let's stick with island. Like Gilligan's island (what has happened to Larry Horse? First bruce1337 re-emerges, now LH disappears... hmmm)
The difference between Gilligan's Island and this one is that we can and do get off the island periodically. In fact we really just meet on the island much the same way that the NWO bigwigs meet at Bohemian Grove and the Buildaburger meetings. Here we satisfy our craving for likeminded comunity, or we could say for sanity, before returning to the challenge of life among the sleepwalkers. It is imperative that as many of us as find it possible go about our daily existence doing whatever we can, however small (like leaving flyers at bus stops, on the train, etc.) or large (like leaving copies of DRGs books at bus stops, on the train, etc.) but primarily to engage any sleepwalker showing signs of stirring. They are poised to wake up and in their disorientation they will be susceptible to explanations of what is going on designed to put them back to sleep. They will be reluctant to accept reality as it is because as we know it's as disturbing as, um, well maybe like waking up in jail and not remembering what you did wrong?
Eventually, inevitably, islands like ours will multiply and become so plentiful that they will become the new landmass of consciousness. The old landmasses will then be the islands, and will be shrinking in size and number. This is just one metaphor but I think it's a pretty accurate one. Even if all you do is stand or sit somewhere holding a sign and being willing to answer the questions of the curious, you will be adding an indispensable cog to the machinery of social awakening. Every single person who sees your sign is one step away from a revelation. What I mean is that seeing someone holding a sign, and reading what it says, that makes a tiny impression. But the NEXT time they see someone else doing the same (and this can happen in real life with signs, on the internet with a comment on a news article, etc.) then that tiny impression suddenly cracks open and creates a permanent fissure. The person's consciousness has been altered and they must now constantly (if only subconsciously) deal with the fact that they are now aware that many people, not just a lone nut on the street or online, seem quite devoted to something that they themselves either never thought of or thought ill of. Suddenly their need for herd approval will feel threatened and they will seek out others to help them buttress their ingrained beliefs against this new chink in their armor of ego. It is then that they will realize that there aren't too many people who can help them do that, since many more will have already begun the process of waking up and at the very least will not provide the comfort to others of dismissing it all as kooky nonsense. No, they may say something like "I don't know--there seems to be a lot more to it than some people are saying--it's like they don't want to actually rebut the arguments, just warn us away from them. I'm not sure what to believe."
"I'm not sure what to believe" are beautiful words coming from someone who had until then assumed they knew exactly what to believe. Critical thought is born in them, and they will no longer unwittingly out of ignorance help anyone peddle lies. The liars can't admit this of course, but losing those unwitting allies spells defeat for their charade. Having relied on them to support a huge web of deception the liars must, on losing their support to nagging doubt, assume more of the lying directly themselves, which only makes them more obvious liars. And thus the snowball grows. Suddenly suggesting Iran was behind 9/11 becomes the Scarlet letter L for Liar, or the scarlet stains on the hands that all the perfumes of Arabia will not conceal.
I know we have won. When we all realize that, when we accept victory, then the world will follow. They will then finally understand that this fight was taking place, and that it had to be won. And they will be grateful to us--as grateful as we are toeach other right now for being here, keeping each other sane, aware, and able to carry on the struggle.
Well said, G
I do think that "isolated" sums up nicely what I'm feeling. Sorry to keep moping on this board. I seem to veer between full-out anger and total impotence. I need to put on a 9/11-truth t-shirts and walk around the block, run errands, and (when my data are all collected), teach my classes.
I'm going to see if 9/11 truth community is flourishing on my local craigslist, too. I admire your having a truth table every day at lunch hour. Have you many friends who are there with you (flesh and blood) in terms of 9/11, etc.? I hope so.
Thanks (again) for the encouragement,
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
demolition island
reminds me of the movie where tom hanks is stranded on an island and falls in love with a wilson volleyball. is this site our volleyball?
-horses aren't very good swimmers. they will always return to the point of departure. actually they'd probably drown first. wait, didn't the black stallion swim to the coast from a shipwreck? ok, enough nonsense for today.
wow thanks man
I'm really just trying to put in words this incredible experience that everyone here has made possible. Having all gravitated to one another and stuck it out through what has now become a not insignificant anount of time I feel like we have made a real difference. Now before I get too mushy let me just say what a stand up crew I think you all are, one that I'm proud and grateful to be a part of.
Same here!
Hope to see you all at the victory ball, where ingestion of chemicals will be only one of infinite personal liberties.
At times, we've all felt isolated, I'm sure. But then, adversity has always been the rebel's recompense -- until victory, that is. Mordechai Vanunu endured 11 years of isolation for telling the world of Israel's nukes, Mandela even sat for 25, and I'm thoroughly convinced that we won't have to wait half as long. In fact, I'd be surprised if the current (relative) calm remained until New Year's!
Sure, things haven't progressed at the fast pace we had all wished for, but they do have progressed, and they won't stop anytime soon -- rather, the upcoming credit calamities are guaranteed to accelerate the process. My only concern is the potential for tragedy on the home stretch...
Yes, we have won. We always had. By accepting it, the individual finds himself left to one's own devices on uncharted territory, though, and it appears as if there are indeed people that'd rather have the discomforts of slavery over the discomforts of liberty. But it's never been the feeble-minded that changed the world, so no worries there...
_________________________________
happiness is either here or nowhere
refuge, renewal on a cyber island/banter with fam/scare tactics
well yeah, now that you mention it, that paragraph does sound like vaguely familiar Woody Allen....including the "stripping". funny. the dude i spoke of ...i could go on for days about him, another time.
i was where you are for many years, with husband traveling, gigging, and me home with child. my "big outside" was church and school activities. i was starved for intellectually enlightened people. i even had been involved in a women's bible study for a couple of years with a bunch of thumpers, literally (THIS IS THE WORD OF GOD!! thump! thump!) guess i found it stimulating. i did enjoy exploring scripture; and at the end of our banter and disagreements, we would hold hands and lift up loved ones in prayer..what a trip. then i jumped from that (with the help of that intellectual prostitute dude and others)  right into the environmentalist and antiwar groups, and pretty much left the church behind. i believe i have spoken about this previously, but in all these groups there are those who point the finger at those who are not "saved" or not as "pure". blew my mind.   Â
i am addicted to this site also. it is a precious little island of refuge for reaffirmation and renewal.. sometimes I feel as though I shall go mad talking to people about 9/11:
RECENTLY, i have been in heated online debate with the women in my family regarding the issues of Palin, strong women, Hirsi Ali (yes, my liberal, well-read and educated older cousin whom i admire recently touted HA as being a role model!!! GaaaaG!) and was much offended when I told her I had no desire to read her books!  ONe of my nieces, who is sending her kid to a Christian elementary school (Assembly of God) reacted strongly to the link to the video of Palin's former church (the one with them being slain in the spirit through laughter). She claimed i was using "scare tactics". So i just fired off an artical regarding the "scare tactics" of the "Obsession" DVD being slipped in newspapers all over the country. another one of my dear nieces, who is a loyal Dem, antiwar, is still having trouble with the 9/11 truth research, and confided to me that she does not want me getting into it with her husband, who is a brilliant research & dev. engineer, because he works on Israeli projects....ahhhh! so there you go, everyone is complicit in some way. they refuse to take the little red pill for fear of their jobs. what a psyop and mind fuck.
so i said to her, being that they are dovout church-going, catholic christians, "it's just so easy to hate and blame Muslims, why is that?"
more later, back to work. nice to have you on board. and yes I am naive, bright, morally convicted, open-minded, but naive.
kÂ
reply to Kate (being open is great)
i even had been involved in a women's bible study for a couple of years
with a bunch of thumpers, literally . . . then i jumped from that
(with the help of that intellectual prostitute dude and others) right
into the environmentalist and antiwar groups, and pretty much left the
church behind. i believe i have spoken about this previously, but in
all these groups there are those who point the finger at those who are
not "saved" or not as "pure". blew my mind.
Yes, in all these groups, there are fights for status, and some are "more equal than others." Your journey says a lot about you and your open-mindedness.
i am addicted to this site also. it is a precious little island of refuge for reaffirmation and renewal..
Agreed!
sometimes I feel as though I shall go mad talking to people about 9/11:
At least you are doing it! I think G is right that you're planting a 9/11 truth seed - even if it doesn't germinate right away. Even when your family appears totally closed off. I talked to my family about it, and they just don't seem to take it in. Sometimes they aren't even angrily disagreeing, just nodding and the topic is never discussed again. That reaction is more maddening than outright disagreement. I have a set of bulleted arguments that I use, but suspect that the recipient must first be softened up by someone else. I have this crazy Aunt who is the only person who is in agreement with me! As for your niece and her husband, I believe it. The US mainly exports weapons. If people really let themselves see what is going on, they would realize that, yes, ours is the rogue nation. The information about the role of the Israelis in terrorism is so covered up and, as Lazlo tirelessly points out, the guilt for the Holocaust so pervasive (and reinforced every day by the complicit media) that I fear the truth won't be absorbed unless an Israeli comes to their houses and starts shooting at them.
It looks like we are being collectively robbed right now but no one is saying a damn thing. I'm not sure about that, really either, since lately I've not been listening to NPR (national propaganda radio), teevee, or print news. (Maybe if teevee were hijacked, people would get on the internet or just talk to their neighbors. Dicktater and I were having a discussion about this earlier today.)
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go break up a fight. The ballet was loved (by my boy) and hated (by my girl). Ah well. Back to earth.
E
-------
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
Speaking of Woody Allen
Apparantly, Woody doesn't think that the Bush administration is populated with rapists, murders, thieves, and other such criminals.
Maybe it's just me but, I really, really, really don't understand how anyone could possibly think that Obama would be any better.
"It would be a disgrace and a humiliation if Barack Obama does not win," he [Allen] told Spanish journalists at the ongoing 56th San Sebastian film festival, where his latest film "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is being screened.
"It would be a very, very terrible thing for the United States in many, many ways," he said.
Democratic hopeful Obama, Allen said, is "so much better" than Republican rival John McCain, and "represents a huge step upward from (the) incompetence and misjudgement" of the Bush administration.
"It would be a terrible thing if the American public was not moved to vote for him, that they actually preferred more of the same."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080919193927.ite7zfed&show_artic...
can't edit my post (above)
and there's a typo that's driving me crazy. Unfortunately, I have to dash. There's an academic conference in town this weekend (and you know what that means...).
E
p.s. now I cannot log out!
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"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')