I will not go quietly into the night!
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/inconsistencies.html
http://www.evilbible.com/Biblical%20Contradictions.htm
The only thing the Bible proves is the fallibility of humans. Every book was written by a human and is packed with human error.
My Dad was capable of writing a more entertaining and less error filled book when he was drunk on a Saturday night.
Programming, or mind washing someone with words, concepts, involves making someone think in the way that you desire. Conditioning someone with repetition is the usual fashion used.
Even so, to avoid losing your subject, the individual must be insulated against contradictory information. Words, phrases and concepts must be drilled into the subject which will cause the individual to reject anything that contradicts the original instilled information. Perhaps some threat of annihilation or withdrawal of reward if a concept is violated will deter the subject. When these threats are inserted in the original instilled conditioning, concepts that contradict will be automatically rejected.
As long as information coming in does not contradict some facet of the instilled conditioning the individual will react in a normal fashion. If information presents itself that contradicts the programming not only do mental conditioning concepts act to reject it, physical symptoms also occur. The fight or flee response, with the attendant flow of adrenaline results. The individual becomes flushed. Rhetoric to reject the contradictory information flows freely. If the incoming contradictory information is not averted by the instilled rhetoric the flee response engages and the individual seeks any way to end the encounter. Name calling, insults and even violent aggression can result.
For most, this maze of instilled rhetoric does not contain an exit. For most the maze is a lifetime entrapment.
The maze is religion. The programmer is the minister, preacher, priest or pastor. Due to his/her own instilled programming this programmer actually believes that he/she is doing a good thing.
The programmer must act upon the individual at a young age while the subject is particularly vulnerable and impressionable. At a young age contradictory information is less likely to be inherent in the subject.
When all your arguments are demolished and nothing else comes to mind proclaim your opponent an idiot. Just like those that use profanity to cloak their lack of vocabulary this makes you feel so much more intelligent. At least in your own eyes.
Defending the indefensible without ammunition is sorely difficult. The use of colorful insults is like throwing the containers that your ammunition came in at your opponent. Empty boxes do no harm, but at least you are doing something. You think.
Anger, frustration, lack of knowledge, all cause adrenaline to flow ever so freely. You snatch the first word that comes to mind, bellow it loudly, in hopes of silencing your wiser opponent.
You find instead, that your opponent has counted his ammunition wisely, used it when needed, and still has plenty on hand. Why does he not use it? You wonder.
Mercy is also a wise and moral choice; and so you continue, to battle another day, instead of being obliterated on the spot.
Atheism accepts the natural world as all there is . To live without god beliefs is intellectually stimulating. To find one’s
own purpose and be responsible for one’s own life is exciting.
To be free of the imagined surveillance of good and evil spirits is liberating. To seek a peaceful world through work and
friendship and civic action is life-affirming.
Marie Alena Castle, March, 1994
• • •
It is the role of unbelievers to force religions to be benign.
Martin Marty, Lutheran theologian
Minneapolis MN, Apr i l 28, 1998
As Nobel laureate and physicist Steven Weinberg said,
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have
good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for
good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
With the passage of time anger should abate. Instead it grows. Betrayal is impossible to forget. The pretense was so very complete, the revealing of it, such a shock. I should have suspected. There were many clues which revealed the instability of the betrayers mind. I preferred to ignore them, because the truth would be so very devastating. Now hatred, and anger grows. It solidifies and sets like concrete. Soon, even the most powerful of tools will not shake this abomination.
As time passes, thoughts of revenge enter my mind. Anger must be dissipated by whatever means. Revenge may be the only avenue. Regrettably this might be the truth.
How do you punish someone who obviously has an unstable mind? Who thinks they are superior to all. Who might not even realize the punishment has occurred. Who inside is dead as rot wood.
What an idiot. He is head of all idiots.
Ria Ramkissoon, charged with starving her 1 year old son to death has won some unusual terms so that she might agree to plead guilty: If her son resurrects then the plea will be withdrawn.
Ramkissoon also agreed to testify against four other members in the now non-existent cult called 1 Mind Ministries.
Even her lawyer admits she must be loony and needs psychological treatment.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20090331/49d1a350_3421_1334520090331-1409029539
This woman agreed with the cults decision to stop feeding the boy when he refused to say “Amen” after a meal. After the child died Ramkissoon sat by the body and prayed for his resurrection.
Is this woman a victim of brainwashing by a religious cult? Are all the members victims of their twisted belief systems?
This is not the first time this kind of
death has occurred. There have been many cases of people believing things that simply could not be true. Parents or friends praying for a cure instead of taking the steps necessary to procure one.
Religious belief is no guarantee of moral integrity. Horrendous crimes have been committed by the religious in the name of God. Religious individuals disagree frequently on many moral judgments. They disagree about the rights of women, abortion, war, homosexuality, and euthanasia just to name a few.
Moral ethics have and continue to exist outside of the religious realm. Morality has it’s roots in ancient times where group survival meant that clans had to cooperate. To survive meant that each member had to know what others expected, and what they expected from individual members. Reliance on each other demanded certain behaviors and hence morality developed. This means that the potential of morality existed in humans long before the invention of a God.
There are many moral virtues which transcend differing groups of people. Honesty, truthfulness, kindness, keeping promises etc, are not exclusive to any one peoples. Despite the lack of religion in some ethnic peoples these morals still exist. They are innate, dependent on prevailing conditions, and are exclusive of religious origin.
From the first law made by a society morality was being expressed in some form. Even ancient peoples realized the need for laws to govern a society. What good is work if your spoils could be taken from you without recourse. What value life, if with impunity some bully could cut your throat.
The point is that morality exists separately from religious belief. It existed before the existence of religion. Religion was invented to explain the unexplainable forces affecting humans. It gave them comfort in the time before science and reason. Slowly but surely science and reason are chipping away at the myths of religion. The old ways are hard to give up, but with religion’s horrendous history it behooves us all to give religion the old heave ho. Yes, there have been despots with no belief, atrocities committed. These were done by individual miscreants, and not an entire group. Even today the baggage of religion drags down society, causing divisiveness, hatred, and continued war.
Something is missing upstairs. What could it be? Or is it simply covered? Covered by an arrogance. A selfish arrogance, wherein one cares for one’s self only.
Abandoning all others, due to some imagined slight. A slight invented or perhaps caused by one’s own actions. A slight whose origins began by acting immorally and perceiving things not meant to be heard.
A facade maintained for years. Pretending to be of one ilk, but laughing behind the facade.
Causing great monetary harm by negligence, then denying the responsibility. Revenge for an imagined slight.
Able to kill a harmless pet. Pretending that it was an accident, then burying the carcass out back. Many a homicidal maniac had such beginnings.
Looking upon a person of one’s own gender in unnatural ways. The opposite gender a professed desire, but only really a facade.
Separating from those known, for those who do not know the truth. Ashamed by the deceit perhaps, but more likely yet another arrogant display.
Adopting a different lifestyle to continue the pretense of seeking a companion of the opposite gender. Becoming perhaps, what was the case all along. An example of a dismal human being. Self caring, arrogant, perhaps even mad. Joe six-pack in all his glory.
Now nothing of the closed avenues remains. There’s no going back. That which was, is ruined for all time. The facade is revealed. The truth plain to see. The doors have been sealed. The doors are impassible. In the wake of the tornado only debris remains.
Those that have been razed by this event rise to hate. Hatred replaces love. A despising of the idiot has risen and is resolute. The desolation remains to remind all who have been abandoned that the idiot has chosen to hurt. A conscious choice has occurred to injure all the idiot has known. The main target of this injury has resolved never to forget or forgive. The target no longer has the capacity to forget or forgive. There is no going back. Hatred swells.
Human beings are not descended from Apes. Modern apes and humans are related and are descended from a common ancestor. This common ancestor split into two branches or more with one branch becoming through progressive states modern day apes, and another progressing through differing states into the present day human form. Each branch experienced differing pressures from the environmental surroundings and through the process of natural selection, assumed their present forms.
Why is this natural “miracle” so hard to accept? Instead people insist on inventing a supernatural one.
A closet is dark and who knows what therein lurks. Why hide there, come out Atheist. Show yourself, be heard. It’s time to let the world know a new era of Common Sense and Reason is at hand. Cast away the chains of religion, come forth and speak. If there was ever a time in humanity’s history where common sense and reason is needed, it is now!
http://www.atheists.org/atheism/coming_out
Many areas of the country are trying to turn back the clock, to the Dark Ages, when religion ruled. Science is being attacked on many fronts. Yes, they are attacking with baseless religious dogma, but with repetition many are being duped into it.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1863,The-Psychology-Behind-CultsReligion,Hypnosis-Control
http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Hypnosis.htm
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/johnson2.htm
If you are a closet atheist send me an email at: mindfree.today@yahoo.com
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Freethinker's corner 