John Lennon - Imagine (official video)

The fact that the right wing "Christian" zealots hate this song makes me proud to be a John Lennon fan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yRhq-yO1KN8

These religious types never give up....Here is what is going on in Ohio

Gov. John Kasich's $10 million plan to bring mentors into Ohio's schools for students now has a surprise religious requirement – one that goes beyond what is spelled out in the legislation authorizing it. 

Any school district that wants a piece of that state money must partner with both a church and a business – or a faith-based organization and a non-profit set up by a business to do community service. 

No business and no faith-based partner means no state dollars. 

"You must include a faith-based partner," United Way of Greater Cleveland President Bill Kitson, told potential applicants at an information session the United Way hosted Thursday here in Cleveland. 

Asked why the governor is mixing religion with a state program - items usually required to be kept separate - Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said: "The governor believes faith-based organizations play an important role in the lives of young people." 

And Kasich's recorded video welcoming the applicants made the importance he places on faith in this effort clear. 

"The Good Lord has a purpose for each and every one of them (students) and you're helping them to find it," Kasich said on the video.

Yes the Governor believes that "faith based organizations play an important role in the lives of young people" and that "the good lord has a purpose for each and every one of them" because he is an Evangelical. And Evangelicals simply cannot accept that others will be offended by the inclusion of religion into a public school that is supposed to serve students of all faiths, or not faiths.


Here is what Barry Goldwater, the conservative banner carrier said about the evangelicals...


"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

The real cancer in this country is fairly easy to detect.

I don't know how prevalant this type of thinking is among all religious people but I know for sure that in one branch of my own family it is how they live their lives.

The real cancer in this country is fairly easy to detect.

Anti-Gay Pastor Who Wants To 'Execute Homos' To End AIDS Is About To Get A Big Surprise

huffingtonpost.com

Organizers of Planting Peace, perhaps best known as the organization that brought you the rainbow-colored Equality House across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church compound, launched the new fundraiser in response to Pastor Steven Anderson's claims that "executing" gays will help eradicate HIV/AIDS.
The Planting Peace campaign is raising funds that will go toward helping people with HIV/AIDS, and for every donation made, a lump of coal will be sent to Tempe's Faithful Word Baptist Church, where Anderson is a pastor, in a festive package to be delivered on Christmas Eve.
"Pastor Anderson calling for the execution of gays is a startling reminder of how much hate and bigotry still exists in our society," Planting Peace President Aaron Jackson told The Huffington Post in an email. "In keeping with Planting Peace's philosophy of countering messages of hate with compassion, we wanted to provide a positive platform to bring people together to not only help people with HIV, but to do so in a lighthearted way that will raise awareness for a very serious issue."
You can read more about the new campaign and donate here.
Video footage of Anderson's bizarre rant went viral earlier this week. In it, the pastor argues that members of the gay community are "filled with disease because of the judgement of God," and that the cure for HIV/AIDS was "right there in the Bible all along.
Citing Leviticus 18:22, he noted, "if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant."
Anderson, who "holds no college degree but has well over 140 chapters of the Bible memorized word-for-word" according to his church's website, has made headlines several times this year for bizarre statements.
Earlier this year, he has argued in favor of keeping women silent in church, and has referred to second marriages as "adultery."

 

Another reason I hate religion and believe me folks this "man of God" is one of many spouting the same nonsense. What is equally troubling is the laughter that is heard in the background as he speaks of annihilating human beings.

The following are excerpts from a Huffington Post article by Jeff Schweitzer, Thank you Jeff!

Jeff Schweitzer Become a fan

Scientist and former White House Senior Policy Analyst; Ph.D. in marine biology/neurophysiology

The association between morality and religion has been established so firmly over the past 2000 years that the link largely goes unquestioned. Churchgoers tend to believe that they have a leg up on moral behavior relative to humanists, or worse that rationalists are a threat to morality. In that environment of religious fervor, any attempt to shift to a strictly secular model of morality strikes many as heretical even today, on par with Galileo's transgression so long ago.

Traits that we view as moral are deeply embedded in the human psyche. Honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, kindness to others and reciprocity are primeval characteristics that helped our ancestors survive. In a world of dangerous predators, early man could thrive only in cooperative groups. Good behavior strengthened the tribal bonds that were essential to survival. What we now call morality is really a suite of behaviors favored by natural selection in an animal weak alone but strong in numbers. Morality is a biological necessity and a consequence of human development, not a gift from god.

Our inherent good has been corrupted by the false morality of religion that has manipulated us with divine carrots and sticks. If we misbehave, we are threatened with the hot flames of hell. If we please god, we are promised the comforting embrace of eternal bliss. Under the burden of religion, morality has become nothing but a response to bribery and fear, and a cynical tool of manipulation for ministers and gurus. We have forsaken our biological heritage in exchange for coupons to heaven. That more secular countries suffer less social dysfunction is not only unsurprising but fully expected.

Religious morality is fundamentally flawed, resting precariously on the false notion of human superiority. For millennia, peoples of nearly all cultures have been taught that humans are special in the eyes of their god or gods, and that the world is made for their benefit and use. This is revealed clearly in Genesis, which gives humankind the mandate to fill, rule over and subdue the earth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his creator." He is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake," and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity. (CCC #356)

Blinded by this deeply engrained religious bias we keep forgetting that our highly developed cerebral cortex does not confer upon us any special status among our living cousins. People easily embrace the idea that humanity is set apart from all other animals. But nothing could be further from the truth. Humans are nothing but a short-lived biological aberration, with no claim to superiority. If evolution had a pinnacle, bacteria would rest on top. When the human species is a distant memory, bacteria will be dividing merrily away, oblivious to the odd bipedal mammal that once roamed the earth for such a brief moment in time. Our self-promotion to the image of god is simply embarrassing in the face of the biological reality on the ground. There is a loss of credibility when you choose yourself for an award.
This hubris and conceit of human superiority as the only creature close to god is not benign, leading to catastrophic consequences for humanity. The species-centric arrogance of religion cultivates a dangerous attitude about our relationship with the environment and the resources that sustain us. Humanists tend to view sustainability as a moral imperative while theists often view environmental concerns as liberal interference with god's will. Conservative resistance to accepting the reality of climate change is just one example, and another point at which religious and secular morality diverge, as the world swelters

The following was taken from the comments section of an article on Huffington Post discussing the upcoming film on Scientology....Totally agree with this commentator.

* there are no religions

...only “faith-based” institutions with self-anointed lying god-proxies…funding, seeking, demanding, exercising secular powers

…in the Islamic Republic of Iran (shia sect of islam)…in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (wahhabi sect of sunni islam)

…in all USA red-state fundie xian tyrannies…for example, State of Texas, State of Oklahoma, State of Georgia…making up a neo-confederacy, Reaganistan

…all faith-based institutions are corporate bodies…closely held profit-making corporations…with tight hierarchical management control...thousands of employees

…generating illegal untaxed profits from Eternal Life-Wish ponzi schemes…holding profitable investments…vast lands and real property…international banking relations…outstanding examples…closely-held RC church USA, closely-held LDS USA, closely-held Scientology USA

…dead traditional or new godheads…pick a god, any god...deserve no special treatment…in a secular State and an Open Society…a label marked “religion”…provides holy CYA

...sheltering illicit profits from taxation…providing employment…for self-anointed god-proxies carrying out…fraudulent fund raising…cult functions with fetishized “holy” objects and fictional texts…managing educational and charitable subsidiaries…subject to unconstitutional “religious” exemptions from civil laws

…no wonder “religion”…is a much sought-after tax code label…as demonstrated by not yet 200 year old homegrown american xian heresy mormonism…insane american sci-fi nonsense scientology…and zoroastrianism, judaism, islam, bahai, sikhism, buddhism, hinduism…and every variety of 2,000 year old jewish heresy, xianity

The Immoral Minority: "Religion is really made by the brain. It is a sec...

The Immoral Minority: "Religion is really made by the brain. It is a sec...: Lionel Tiger is a Canadian-born, American-based anthropologist. He is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University a...

This article was on the Huffington Post today.   Couldn't have said it better myself.

STANFORD, Calif. (RNS) An atheist, a humanist and an agnostic walk into a restaurant.
The hostess says, “Table for one?”
An old joke, yes, but its essence lies at the heart of “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-First Century,” a new book by Lex Bayer and John Figdor.
Bayer, 36, is a Stanford grad and longtime humanist, and Figdor, 30, is the new humanist chaplain at Stanford University. The two met when Bayer, a venture capitalist and engineer, wrote a news story about Figdor’s arrival at Stanford. The two soon discovered they liked hashing out difficult ideas about the way people live.
They began meeting regularly for coffee, brought along their computers and were soon on their way to drafting a book — a kind of philosophical roadmap to essential beliefs for nonbelievers.
“There are lots of books out there about why you should not believe in God,” Bayer said. “But there aren’t any about what do secular people believe in. I think that’s the question John and I felt hadn’t been adequately addressed.”
In exploring that, the two men — both whom have studied philosophy and logic — came up with 10 essentials. For the extra-nerdy, there’s even “a theorem of belief” in the appendix that looks like something a mathematician might scribble.
The result is 10 “non-commandments” — the authors’ irreducible statements of atheist and humanist belief.
First up: “The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.”
No. 2 on the list: “We can perceive the world only through our human senses.”
Halfway through, at No. 5, the authors conclude: “There is no God.” Once over that hurdle, the non-commandments become less controversial — an ethical society is good, as is moral behavior.
But it is the last non-commandment that makes these maxims very different from the biblical version: All of the above is “subject to change in the face of new evidence.” They are, quite literally, not written in stone.
The goal of the book, the authors say, is to encourage atheists and humanists to define what they believe so they can articulate it better, both to themselves and to a broader society that often regards atheists as immoral and untrustworthy.
“We want to show people who may have a false view of the atheist community as this sour group of people who want to prove there is no God and sit in a basement all day and argue about that,” Figdor said. “But we want to show them it is actually full of happy, empathetic and compassionate people whose lives are full of meaning and value.”
What’s also different is that these non-commandments are intended to be interactive. Included in the book is a worksheet where readers can craft their own list of non-commandments. They can share these commandments on a website the authors set up for just such an exchange.
Some of the submissions read like prescriptions for happiness: “Be happy,” “Do not fear death,” and “Keep your sense of humor.” And some are commandments of the biblical kind: “Do not kill,” “Do not steal” and “Be truthful.” Others express a sense of hope that abiding by them could lead to a better world.
“Treat yourself, others and the planet with compassion and reverence,” Leslie Heil submitted.
Figdor and Bayer are delighted by the range — about 1,600 responses submitted so far.
To encourage more, they’ve established a “ReThink Prize” — $10,000 to be distributed among 10 winners whose submissions receive the most votes. The contest runs through Nov. 30, and all the submissions will be available online for discussion and inspiration.
The book has been received warmly by atheist and humanist reviewers. David Niose, president of the Secular Coalition for America, called it “a wonderful exploration of life as a skeptic.”
And some in the religious world have lauded it, too. Dudley Rose, associate dean for ministry studies at Harvard Divinity School, where Figdor was a student, wrote a supportive blurb for the book.
“Living rightly with one another is at the heart of these non-commandments,” Rose said in a telephone interview. “That is very similar to the way in which I view how those of us in religious communities think of our commandments and our lives with one another and everyone else in the world.”
The Ten Non-Commandments:
I. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.
II. We can perceive the world only through our human senses.
III. We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.
IV. All truth is proportional to the evidence.
V. There is no God.
VI. We all strive to live a happy life. We pursue things that make us happy and avoid things that do not.
VII. There is no universal moral truth. Our experiences and preferences shape our sense of how to behave.
VIII. We act morally when the happiness of others makes us happy.
IX. We benefit from living in, and supporting, an ethical society.
X. All our beliefs are subject to change in the face of new evidence, including these.

For the first time ever...There was a Muslim prayer service at the National Cathedral and it went off without a hitch.....Just Kidding!!  One Godly woman: or as I would call her...a religious nut, went insane with rage....well, here is the story by Raw Story

The woman who disrupted the first ever Muslim prayer service conducted at the National Cathedral claims she was sent to protest the ceremony by God after reading about it on the Drudge Report.
In an interview with World Net Daily, Christine Weick, 50, said she read about the event on Drudge and became enraged, saying, “My blood began to boil as I read the comments of how this is to be such a wonderful event and how religious tolerance can, for the first time, be shown in our nation’s capital.”
Friday’s prayer service was just beginning when Weick stood up and began walking towards the front of the cathedral shouting.
“Jesus Christ died on that cross. He is the reason we are to worship only Him. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior,” she said. “We have built …allowed you your mosques in this country. Why don’t you worship in your mosques and leave our churches alone? We are a country founded on Christian principles.”
According to Weick, she expected to get arrested but was instead politely escorted from the cathedral and handed from police officer to police officer before being conducted to the street.
“They never said a word to me. Two guys came up and got me. I remember one large man in a suit taking me by the arm, very strongly but he did not hurt me,” she said.
After being ejected, Weick said she got into her SUV and began the 400-mile trip back to Tennessee where she  says she lives in her car after being disowned by her family  because she took a stand against same-sex marriage and other “moral issues.” According to Weick,  her husband divorced her last year “over a spiritual conflict.”
Speaking of the prayer service, Weick said she knew in advance that the event was for “invited guests only.”
“That’s when I knew I had to be creative, and so did God,” Weick explained. “I was driving there on my way from Tennessee, and I’ve got a lot of doubts in my mind: Am I going to make a fool of myself? Am I going to be in jail for the weekend?”
During her long drive to the nation’s capital she saw what she believed was a sign from God.
“There’s this woman stepping out of her vehicle on the side of the road, clapping and giving me two thumbs up, and I’m like, ‘That was the strangest thing,’ ” she said. “The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘That’s my confirmation right there.’ That’s all I needed, and from that point on I knew this was something I’m going to do; and that was the catapult that moved me to keep going towards Washington.”
Weick also credited God with getting her past security.
“It was a God thing how I got past all that security in the beginning. They never ID’d me, and I had brought my ID with me just in case, and I thought that would be my downfall, being from Michigan, that they would say, ‘What is she doing here?” Weick explained. “According to reports, this was a heavy security event. They checked every bag and every person that walked in there. I bet some security people are in big trouble today.”
After slipping into the cathedral, saying she felt like God had made her invisible, Weick said she was appalled by what she saw.
“Then it hit me… I had such an angst come over me. Seeing these Muslims sitting on their rugs ready to bow to a god, causing such an abomination in the house of the Lord,” she said. That was when Weick spoke up and was subsequently ejected
“I took a very strong stand on something last year. My husband divorced me over it. It broke my heart. I have a lot of heartache back home, a lot of hurt,” she said. “And I felt the Lord telling me, ‘You are going to go from place to place for me.’”
As for her future plans, Weick said she doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her situation.
“Don’t be sorry for me. I have a very nice SUV. I go out to eat, I have a bank account,” she told WND. “I am just too Dutch to pay 60 or 70 bucks for a hotel every night when I can spend my nights in my car. And I travel every night from place to place, and that is what I was doing when I saw the story in the Drudge Report.”

And there, folks, you have religious tolerance  101.

 Here is an article from Alternet the other day that pretty much parallels my position on religion

November 12, 2014  |  

While the burgeoning atheist movement loves throwing conferences and selling books, a huge chunk--possibly most--of its resources go toward the Internet. This isn’t borne out of laziness or a hostility to wearing pants so much as a belief that the Internet is uniquely positioned as the perfect tool for sharing arguments against religion with believers who are experiencing doubts. It’s searchable, it allows back-and-forth debate, and it makes proving your arguments through links much easier. Above all else, it’s private. An online search on atheism is much easier to hide than, say, a copy of The God Delusion on your nightstand.
In recent months, this sense that the Internet is the key for atheist outreach has started to move from “hunch” to actual, evidence-based theory. Earlier this year, Allen Downey of the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts examined the spike in people declaring they had no religion that started in the '90s and found that while there are many factors contributing to it--dropping familial pressure, increased levels of college education--increased Internet usage was likely a huge part of it, accounting for up to 25 percent of the decline in religious belief. While cautioning that correlation does not mean causation, Downey did go on to point out that since so many other factors were controlled for, it’s a safe bet to conclude that the access to varied thought and debate the Internet provides is persuading people to drop their religions.
But in the past few months, that hypothesis grew even stronger when a major American religion basically had to admit that Internet arguments against their faith is putting them on their heels. The Church of Latter Day Saints has quietly released a series of essays, put together by church historians, addressing some of the less savory aspects of their history, such as the practice of polygamy or the ban on black members. The church sent out a memo in September telling church leaders to direct believers who have questions about their religion’s history to these essays, which they presented as a counter to “detractors” who “spread misinformation and doubt.”
While there are plenty of detractors who will share their opinions offline, there’s little doubt that the bulk of the detractors plaguing the church are explaining their views online, which is why this has become a problem now for a church that used to act like it could exert total control over believers’ access to information. One of the church historians, Steven Snow, openly cited the internet as the source of the criticisms. “There is so much out there on the Internet ,” he told the New York Times, “that we felt we owed our members a safe place where they could go to get reliable, faith-promoting information that was true about some of these more difficult aspects of our history.”

While the memo sent to church leaders strongly implied that the websites bothering believers are full of disinformation, the likelier story is that they’re worried about all the historically accurate information out there. The Mormons tend to be plagued more than other major churches by historically accurate information, because they are a relatively new church and the historical records on their founders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are intact and hard to deny. This concern is reflected in the nature of the essays, which openly admit a lot of information that the church used to spend a lot of effort in minimizing, facts like exactly how many wives Joseph Smith had or the fact that polygamy was practiced by many members long after the church officially banned it. Not that they had much of a choice. If members of the church learn this stuff from Wikipedia instead of from their own religious authorities, it will likely sow more anger and distrust of the church for misleading them.

The Internet generally gathered around President Obama for his recent comments endorsing an extremely strong version of net neutrality that would make it very difficult for corporate internet providers to give certain people preferential internet access over others. His comments were seen as a victory for political activists, everyday bloggers, and non-profits that would lose out on the ability to compete with moneyed corporations and other institutions in the free-for-all that is internet discourse. But atheists and critics of religion also win out with net neutrality. Giant, well-funded churches would probably love to pay for better access to your computer screen than any atheist blogger could afford, but if net neutrality becomes the law, they won’t have that ability.
The Mormons might be the most obvious example of a church that has had to deal directly with non-believers using the Internet to get unprecedented abilities to publicize their critiques of religion, but there’s good reason to believe that the feedback religions are getting online is hurting other churches. Is it any coincidence that Pope Francis is undertaking the monumental task of trying to make the Catholic Church seem a little less forbidding in the age of the Internet?
At a recent conference on technology held by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Monsignor Paul Tighe expressed concerns that the Catholic Church is losing out by not being more aggressive online. “If the church in some way is not present in the digital, we’re going to be absent from the experience and from the lives of many people,” he said. “If we withdraw, then we’re leaving those areas to the trolls. We’re leaving it to the bullies.”
Again, it’s hard to believe that trolls and bullies, as irritating as they may be, are the real issue here--trolling is aggravating, but it’s not very persuasive. No, the real threat to the faith is people making strong cases against the Catholic Church and religion in general. Some of those cases are boldly stated and some are more polite and accommodating, but either way, they are real arguments and far more threatening to religion than some trolls saying stupid stuff that is best ignored.
It will be interesting to see how religions adapt to the fact that the Internet makes it that much harder for them to control their believers’ access to information. Some will probably be adaptable, like the Mormons, realizing that a little more information-sharing and transparency is the only way to keep trust alive. Others, like Pastor Mark Driscoll of the fundamentalist Mars Hill Church in Seattle, will react by doubling down, trying to convince their followers to stay off the Internet rather than read persuasive cases against their beliefs. But the Internet’s beauty is it makes satisfying basic curiosity as easy as typing some words into a search bar. Odds are that’s a temptation fewer and fewer believers will be able to resist.




    

Picture from Immoral Minority blog.  Thanks Gryphen!

Today is the 12th of November, 2014 and it's snowing.  Humbug!  It's not unexpected in Wisconsin but this a little early.

I read an article today about an author by the name of Dan Brown.  He wrote the book "The Da Vinci Code" and now has a new book he is pushing.  I am not promoting the book so I won't tell you the title but I guess the premise of the book is that Religion and Science can coexist and even rely on each other..........What Crap.   Science relies on facts, peer review, the ability to change ones mind if relevant facts dictate it.  Religion relies on...a book.  It is entirely speculative....no observations, no evidence.
Religious people use made up "answers" to make decisions and judge other people... There's something deeply arrogant about religion: the believers are not able to say "I don't know." They always know everything, they know what "god" wants and, thus, when its bad or good for other people too, no matter if the others believe in the same god or not, no matter if they have undeniable evidences of the contrary.
Mr. Brown asks..."Where did we come from", "Why are we here", and "What becomes of us after we die".  Here is the answer Mr. Brown....Stardust, Evolution, Stardust.  See how easy that was.

Another article I read today...The Mormon cult er...Church has finally admitted that Joseph Smith was a pervert.  Well, they didn't really say that; they admitted that he had 40 wives one of them being just 14 years old.  His successor was  Brigham Young.


Young was a polygamist, marrying a total of 55 wives, 54 of them after he converted to Mormonism. The policy was difficult for many in the church. By the time of his death, Young had 56 children by 16 of his wives; 46 of his children reached adulthood.

Well the election is over and the Repubs have wrested the Senate away from the Dems.  Now they are going to have do something instead of just complaining about the Senate.  It,s going to be an interesting two years.

I saw a headline the other day that screamed...REPUBLICANS WILL RULE FOR 100 YEARS....
Eh....I don't think so.   The reason they won so many seats this time was exactly the same reason they one in the last mid-term....Young people, African Americans and Latino voters won't turn out unless the Presidency is being voted on.   This mid term had the lowest turn out since 1920 and the Repubs were fired up.  So I believe that instead of 100 years...they will have two.  The statistics are against them.  The browning of America is here and the majority of them vote Democrat. 

And now for some religious headlines...

Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced that about one third of the Catholic Parishes in New York would be closing or merging with other Parishes.  That to me is good news.  It was also stated that although church attendance is down in New York, in some places it is up and new parishes are being built.  The final numbers for 2013 though reflect the fact that people are turning away from organized religion.  61 new parishes were built in the U.S. in 2013 while 191 were closed.

James Lankford was elected Senator from Oklahoma.  He gave an interview to Tony Perkins of the Family Research council and said this..."I come from a biblical worldview in the way I address issues,” Lankford said. “I look at Nehemiah and how he handled things when he stepped into Jerusalem. It was that the people were in disgrace and the wall was broken down, but the two things that he focused in on was the constructive side of things and the debt. Half of the Book of Nehemiah is just getting the people out of debt, so they could actually take on the other things.”

I don't know anything about the book of Nehemiah but I will read it and have more to say about it in my next entry.

It is amazing to me that we give even the smallest amount of credence to people who continue to follow and receive direction from a book written 3500 years ago by people who believed the earth was flat, diseases were caused by demons, stars were encased in a watery filament and weather patterns could be changed by animal sacrifice.

Today is the 29th day of 2014 and here are a few of the religious headlines from the Google...

Pope Francis says....Evolution is not inconsistent with the notion of creation???

Mormon Church admits that Joseph Smith had a 14 year old bride.

Orthodox Jews attack buses that carried the ad "women of the Wall"

Children exposed to religion have difficulty distinguishing between fact and fiction

Religious objections to vaccines are a threat to public health

People who believe in hell are less happy

Albert Einstein's letter calls religion childish

Will science rule out existence of  God

So there you have some of the headlines for this day. 

A Pope that may some day see the light, the founder of a religion that was a pervert, extremists that vow to keep women subjugated, religion dumbing down our children, religion making you sad, a letter from an enlightened scientist, and last...my wish.

HAVE A NICE DAY

 

 

Since my last post on my "Mormon" experience I have read quite a bit about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young but what I want to post now is an article written by Christopher Hitchens. Mr. Hitchens passed away in 2011 but while alive he did great work in exposing religion for what it is.

Mormonism_a racket becomes a religion

If the followers of the prophet Muhammad hoped to put an end to any future "revelations" after the immaculate conception of the Koran, they reckoned without the founder of what is now one of the world's fastest-growing faiths. And they did not foresee (how could they, mammals as they were?) that the prophet of this ridiculous cult would model himself on theirs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—hereafter known as the Mormons—was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that "I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad" and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, "Either the Al-Koran or the sword." He was too ignorant to know that if you use the word al you do not need another definite article, but then he did resemble Muhammad in being able only to make a borrowing out of other people's bibles.


Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Arguably, a collection of essays.

In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a twenty-one-year-old man of being "a disorderly person and an impostor." That ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or "necromantic" powers. However, within four years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which one may still read) as the discoverer of the "Book of Mormon." He had two huge local advantages which most mountebanks and charlatans do not possess. First, he was operating in the same hectically pious district that gave us the Shakers and several other self-proclaimed American prophets. So notorious did this local tendency become that the region became known as the "Burned-Over District," in honor of the way in which it had surrendered to one religious craze after another. Second, he was operating in an area which, unlike large tracts of the newly opening North America, did possess the signs of an ancient history.

A vanished and vanquished Indian civilization had bequeathed a considerable number of burial mounds, which when randomly and amateurishly desecrated were found to contain not merely bones but also quite advanced artifacts of stone, copper, and beaten silver. There were eight of these sites within twelve miles of the underperforming farm which the Smith family called home. There were two equally stupid schools or factions who took a fascinated interest in such matters: the first were the gold-diggers and treasure-diviners who brought their magic sticks and crystals and stuffed toads to bear in the search for lucre, and the second those who hoped to find the resting place of a lost tribe of Israel. Smith's cleverness was to be a member of both groups, and to unite cupidity with half-baked anthropology.

The actual story of the imposture is almost embarrassing to read, and almost embarrassingly easy to uncover. (It has been best told by Dr. Fawn Brodie, whose 1945 book No Man Knows My History was a good-faith attempt by a professional historian to put the kindest possible interpretation on the relevant "events.") In brief, Joseph Smith announced that he had been visited (three times, as is customary) by an angel named Moroni. The said angel informed him of a book, "written upon gold plates," which explained the origins of those living on the North American continent as well as the truths of the gospel. There were, further, two magic stones, set in the twin breastplates Urim and Thummim of the Old Testament, that would enable Smith himself to translate the aforesaid book. After many wrestlings, he brought this buried apparatus home with him on September 21, 1827, about eighteen months after his conviction for fraud. He then set about producing a translation.

The resulting "books" turned out to be a record set down by ancient prophets, beginning with Nephi, son of Lephi, who had fled Jerusalem in approximately 600 BC and come to America. Many battles, curses, and afflictions accompanied their subsequent wanderings and those of their numerous progeny. How did the books turn out to be this way? Smith refused to show the golden plates to anybody, claiming that for other eyes to view them would mean death. But he encountered a problem that will be familiar to students of Islam. He was extremely glib and fluent as a debater and story-weaver, as many accounts attest. But he was illiterate, at least in the sense that while he could read a little, he could not write. A scribe was therefore necessary to take his inspired dictation. This scribe was at first his wife Emma and then, when more hands were necessary, a luckless neighbor named Martin Harris. Hearing Smith cite the words of Isaiah 29, verses 11–12, concerning the repeated injunction to "Read," Harris mortgaged his farm to help in the task and moved in with the Smiths. He sat on one side of a blanket hung across the kitchen, and Smith sat on the other with his translation stones, intoning through the blanket. As if to make this an even happier scene, Harris was warned that if he tried to glimpse the plates, or look at the prophet, he would be struck dead.

Mrs. Harris was having none of this, and was already furious with the fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably—given his power of revelation—he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in the history of religion.) After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, which might be in the devil's hands by now and open to a "satanic verses" interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar tale. With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they remain to this day.

Mormon partisans sometimes say, as do Muslims, that this cannot have been fraudulent because the work of deception would have been too much for one poor and illiterate man. They have on their side two useful points: if Muhammad was ever convicted in public of fraud and attempted necromancy we have no record of the fact, and Arabic is a language that is somewhat opaque even to the fairly fluent outsider. However, we know the Koran to be made up in part of earlier books and stories, and in the case of Smith it is likewise a simple if tedious task to discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament. These words can mainly be found in the chapters of Isaiah available in Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews: The Ten Tribes of Israel in America. This then popular work by a pious loony, claiming that the American Indians originated in the Middle East, seems to have started the other Smith on his gold-digging in the first place. A further two thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken from the New Testament. Of the three hundred and fifty "names" in the book, more than one hundred come straight from the Bible and a hundred more are as near stolen as makes no difference. (The great Mark Twain famously referred to it as "chloroform in print," but I accuse him of hitting too soft a target, since the book does actually contain "The Book of Ether.") The words "and it came to pass" can be found at least two thousand times, which does admittedly have a soporific effect. Quite recent scholarship has exposed every single other Mormon "document" as at best a scrawny compromise and at worst a pitiful fake, as Dr. Brodie was obliged to notice when she reissued and updated her remarkable book in 1973.

Like Muhammad, Smith could produce divine revelations at short notice and often simply to suit himself (especially, and like Muhammad, when he wanted a new girl and wished to take her as another wife). As a result, he overreached himself and came to a violent end, having meanwhile excommunicated almost all the poor men who had been his first disciples and who had been browbeaten into taking his dictation. Still, this story raises some very absorbing questions, concerning what happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before our eyes.

It must be said for the "Latter-day Saints" (these conceited words were added to Smith's original "Church of Jesus Christ" in 1833) that they have squarely faced one of the great difficulties of revealed religion. This is the problem of what to do about those who were born before the exclusive "revelation," or who died without ever having the opportunity to share in its wonders. Christians used to resolve this problem by saying that Jesus descended into hell after his crucifixion, where it is thought that he saved or converted the dead. There is indeed a fine passage in Dante's Inferno where he comes to rescue the spirits of great men like Aristotle, who had presumably been boiling away for centuries until he got around to them. (In another less ecumenical scene from the same book, the Prophet Muhammad is found being disemboweled in revolting detail.) The Mormons have improved on this rather backdated solution with something very literal-minded. They have assembled a gigantic genealogical database at a huge repository in Utah, and are busy filling it with the names of all people whose births, marriages, and deaths have been tabulated since records began. This is very useful if you want to look up your own family tree, and as long as you do not object to having your ancestors becoming Mormons. Every week, at special ceremonies in Mormon temples, the congregations meet and are given a certain quota of names of the departed to "pray in" to their church. This retrospective baptism of the dead seems harmless enough to me, but the American Jewish Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons had acquired the records of the Nazi "final solution," and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be called a "lost tribe": the murdered Jews of Europe. For all its touching inefficacy, this exercise seemed in poor taste. I sympathize with the American Jewish Committee, but I nonetheless think that the followers of Mr. Smith should be congratulated for hitting upon even the most simpleminded technological solution to a problem that has defied solution ever since man first invented religion.

Here is how I really feel: FACING THE REAL MORMON

Here is how I really feel: FACING THE REAL MORMON: Have you ever had dealings with members of the Mormon Church?  No, I don't mean the clean cut young men riding around on their bicycles ...

FACING THE REAL MORMON

Have you ever had dealings with members of the Mormon Church?  No, I don't mean the clean cut young men riding around on their bicycles with their backpacks.  I mean family members or friends that are devout and I mean DEVOUT members of the mormon church.
    Recently I had such an encounter and I want to tell about it.  First, a little about me.  I was born in 1940 and until the age of 13 was raised by my Grandmother.  At the time I was growing up, she had no connection with any religious institutions and as far as I can remember never talked about religion.
I, therefore, had no connection with religion; something I thank my Grandmother for daily.
    My wife and I raised five children.  Two of them, my oldest daughter and my only son, turned to "god".  My oldest daughter passed away several years ago but my son still thrives with his brood in sunny Oklahoma and all of them to a person are members of the Mormon cult er..church.
    Even though all of my son's children are DEVOUT Mormons, one of them is more vocal than the others about her beliefs.  I had a facebook account (now deactivated) that I used to keep in touch with the family and this particular daughter at times would proselytize her beliefs on facebook.  When she did I would then place an article next to hers that either refuted what she said or championed science in some way to negate her belief.  Obviously this would upset her so we finally came to a mutual understanding that to keep the peace...no more religion..no more anti-religion.  It worked for awhile.
    Recently she placed a paragraph on facebook saying she believed that Elder Holland was an angel walking around in a man's body.  I wasn't sure whether this was supposed to be a joke or something serious so before I responded to her I wanted to find out who this supposed "angel" was.  It turns out that this Elder Holland is Jeffery Holland, one of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles of the LDS cult..er church.  Yes, that's right he is one of the 12 apostles of the LDS cult..er church and is considered a prophet.  That in itself was quite a revelation to me.  I always thought, but never really knew, that the 12 apostles were the dudes who hung around with the original yaweh guy.  So to find out more about this supposed prophet, I googled his name.  Many things came up but one that struck me as odd was a letter written by Thomas Phillips to Elder Holland in May of 2012.
    Now this Thomas Phillips is no ordinary guy of the street.  Thomas Phillips spent 33 years plus in the LDS cult er..church, was Bishop,Stake President, Area Executive Secretary, etc. and had received the second endowment of the cult er..church which only very few others had ever received.  The letter that he wrote to Elder Holland was then quite shocking to me then since it questioned the very tenets of the LDS cult..er church.  Google  "My letter to Elder Holland" and you will see for yourself.  The letter basically asks Elder Holland the question...Is the Book of Mormon true or is it a false document.  He asks specific questions such as....How can you prove that the earth is 6,000 years old?  Is it true that there was NO death of any living species before Adam?  Why does the Book of Mormon lie about the origin of the American Indian and many more.  The answer he received back from Elder Holland was true Mormon full of obfuscation and non answers and did not specifically address any of the questions asked by Mr. Phillips.
    With this very limited research in hand I was ready to at least address my Granddaughter's statement about this man being an angel in a man's body.  I placed a statement below hers saying that since I had no idea who this Elder Holland was, I had googled his name and had found a letter  written by a Mormon to Elder Holland that she may want to read and that it may change her mind about him.
    The response I got from this family was truly astounding. From my son's children....You are a bully...grow up and be a man...stop bullying my sister...how dare you question our faith....(from my Grandson) you are disgusting...and finally from my own son....If you do this again I will "direct" her to unfriend you.  Mind you all of these statements and many more came from my own family. 
    I will never look on this family again as I did before this dust up.  These people are truly fanatical about their beliefs and unwilling or unable to question any statement made by Joseph Smith or statements in the Book of Mormon (their bible).
    I will have much more to say about the mormon faith as I delve into it more but for now I will only say this is a personal example of why I despise religion and it's teachings.