Atheist Insurgency

"Spirit" is a useless word.

2011-12-26T12:16:00.000-06:00

There are so many words in the English language that have very little use in progressive society that we should each buy dictionaries and one of those handy typewriter correction ribbon pens that allows you to "white-out" or omit writing or printing, and go page by page in the dictionary omitting words and references that have absolutely no meaning in today's advanced society.

The word "spirit" is, in one context, an antiquated representation of the more technically correct term "euphoria."

In another context, "spirit" is representative of the effects of alcohol. Still another context for the word "spirit" falls into the arena of exuberance or enthusiasm.The sinister side-effect of the word "spirit" is its reinforcement of false beliefs in ghosts. The word "Spirit" passes memes that cognitively reinforces false ideas that were conditioned into us as gullible, ignorant children.

On the other side of the argument, keeping the word "spirit" helps us understand those who still use the word and believe its literal meaning.

We may only need to parse the term "belief" away from the word "faith" to render worthless, any dictionary words with poisonous superstitious memes.The word "belief" is the acceptance that something is true, while the word "faith" is complete trust in something or someone.

Atheists have no complete trust in anything and that is indeed the symptom of a very healthy mind. The word "belief" requires no "faith" when all scientific evidence stands on conclusions in support of the belief.

If anything at all requires "faith," apparently the evidence is lacking and therefore I will walk away from a used car dealer who asks for cash up-front for a vehicle I have yet to drive, based on the car dealer's plea for me to have "faith" in the vehicle.Have T-shirts made that say "Just say no to faith."

How many other faith-based or superstitious-based words do we still have floating around in our vocabulary?

Karma and the Golden Rule

2011-10-02T18:50:00.003-06:00

Karma is the belief that your behavior, good or bad toward others, will be returned upon you either directly or indirectly. The Golden Rule states: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." These rules promote the idea that ethical and equitable exchanges will be successful if at least one party is equitable and ethical.

This is dogma for an enslaved class of people who can't recognize when they are being deceived.

Until recently, the prevailing authority relied on public ignorance and complacency to bring the whole world to the economic precipice. Now working class people around the world are witnessing money bleeding out of their economies, never again to return to circulation among the masses.

The odd thing about people who believe in karma is that they selectively ignore one important aspect of karma in order to prove to themselves that karma actually works: Time. All it takes for karma to work is time. Those who believe in karma don't care that it might take beyond the length of their own lives for karma to prove that it works. Apparently, the waiting time is not as important as the toll that karma will take on one's enemies. This proves that karma does work, eventually. After all, everyone dies.

Karma and the Golden Rule serve a function more important than merely instilling morality onto ignorant children. It teaches you to believe that other people will naturally treat you the same way you treat them. This is completely false.

This has a serious detrimental effect on children who grow up to become givers who, thinking they will be eventually rewarded, throw away so much of their money to other people that they go into debt.

I personally know someone who is retired and earning a $32,000 pension, she has mortgages and loans on houses and vehicles used by her mother, adult unemployed children and grandchildren. She's behind on most of the payments and frequently bounces checks and gets overdraft charges. She can't say no, and she's terrified of karma. She has been so overly kind and generous that her family has come to expect it all the time as normal, and it's killing her.

People who believe in karma and live ignorantly by the Golden Rule are easily exploited, their kindness is squandered and never returned, because humans are selfish by nature. You must watch out for the types of people that surround the giver, especially if the giver is a parent, because the takers have never known self-sufficiency and they have come to perceive the giver as their primary source of sustenance and may likely react with violence or intimidation. Typically this kind of behavior arrives on stage at the Jerry Springer show.

The most damage a giver can do is to die, leaving nothing to a family of takers who don't know what else to do, so they turn to the state or to crime for sustenance. Such are the long-term effect of karma and the Golden Rule.

Strange Expectations

2011-06-10T19:24:00.001-06:00

Most people have jobs that afford them a couple of days off each week to do with as they please, and with little or no attention from most people, but at the same time, most people seem to hold elected individuals to a higher-than-human standard of behavior. Basically anyone in a position of leadership must, for the term of their position, wear blinders, mittens on their hands, and sequester their genitals.

There are standards of social behavior we must teach children so they don't have babies they cannot afford to support, or contract incurable diseases through activities that involve physical contact with the bodily fluids of other people.

Entertainment media creates adult scenarios that make such behaviors seem harmless and manageable, because when you are an adult and understand the proper procedures for protecting yourself, those scenarios are manageable and safe. Censorship rules require that the entertainment media not teach methods of protection to avoid the consequences of bad behavior, but they allow scenarios to play out as though the protection was in place.

So children are left to imitate the same behavior, but unfortunately, reap the consequences of not knowing the proper methods of protection. Children will repeat the behavior they see, it is in their nature to do so as biological beings. Parents watch in horror as their daughters come home at three o'clock in the morning, mascara and lipstick smeared, shaking, clothing torn, missing a sock, only to discover some days later she is pregnant, or has genital Herpes, or AIDS.

Because elected officials appear in the entertainment medium of television and the Internet, they are expected to avoid the risky behavior because the audience has a personal investment in them. Parents can't stand to see politicians behaving the same way fictional television characters behave, because the audience believes that the politicians will suffer the consequences of their own children who don't know better.

The most fearful and outspoken against politicians behaving like real human beings are people who are the farthest removed from knowledge about the nature of human behavior, and the farthest removed from knowledge about the proper protections available for navigating such risky behavior.

It is the naive, isolated, fundamentalist radical religious who put their own children at the most risk by denying them knowledge, yet they throw their hands up and proclaim "it was God's plan" when their daughters get pregnant at seventeen with their second child.

Politicians are human and can't be expected to not have human needs or eccentricities. They say as a parent you are only as good as your worst child, are you only as good as the worst politician for which you voted, or the worst preacher you followed?

Marriage and power

2011-01-17T20:58:00.002-06:00

I'm still working on my book, using One-Note, it's all a bunch of little snippets here and there.

Tonight I'm focusing on marriage. What do you call traditional marriage? You must go back more than a thousand years, perhaps more than two thousand year.

Around the world today there are still marriages that are arranged by the parents, but in even earlier times, marriage was purely a consolidation of power.

The ultimate example of marriage leading to a consolidation of power could be Genghis Kahn and the founding of the Mongol Empire. While marriage practices can't be directly attributed to Genghis Kahn, the long-term result of real traditional marriage most certainly led to the formation of the Mongol Empire.

Today marriages are still arranged in such a manner, but as a means of protecting the existing power structure, in India for example, the Caste system was developed.

In the west, the existing power structures are maintained by allowing marriage to be chosen out of physical attraction and desire, with no designs for power gain or even plans for economic self-sufficiency. In fact, the weddings in the west are the most expensive and create great financial loss to the families involved.

Suppression of birth control and contraception methods lend to the additional burden of too many children. An overpopulation of children within a consolidated family creates a negative economic impact on that family's rise to power through further consolidation in the far future. Marriages today are focused on procreation with little or no regard to available resources.

This burden is most evident in developing countries where the populations were converted to catholicism. The result is an outcry in the media for such resources as clean water and sewer systems, and donations for malnutrition, malaria and vaccines. Ironically, the money goes to the very charitable organizations that created the problems in the first place.

Gay marriage is perhaps the most threatening to the existing power structures because it represents the greatest potential power gain through consolidation, with the ability to adopt the correct number of children to maintain economic balance for future power gains. Providing of course that the couple does not fall into the same commercial pitfalls as most other couples getting married in the west.

The west has been so weakened by the hoarding of resources by a few families, that survival in the future will depend on changing the concept of marriage for the rest of us, from witless desire, to an economic agreement between our families to become tribes, and gather forces over future generations, to overturn the existing predatory power stuctures, for one more equitable under the banner of science and reason.

Public Education in The United States of America

2011-01-11T05:54:00.001-06:00

It's a crazy conspiracy theory that education is deliberately stifled in the U.S. right? Wrong. First and foremost, I was never taught critical thinking skills in District 186 in Springfield, Illinois. I was never even taught that there was such a think as "critical thinking" until I went to college.

So, what purpose is served by deliberately limiting or suppressing knowlege?

A primary law of economy states that a product's value is inverse to it's available quantity. In other words, the more you have of a product, the cheaper it's value.

In accounting, labor is an expense. Since labor is people, people who are employees are held by business owners and managers as costs which should be reduced by any means possible while still being able to accomplish the goals of the business.

Since all businesses cannot reduce the cost of labor by eliminating the workforce entirely, all businesses collectively seek to reduce the value of the workforce, by generating a surplus of workers.

Through the control of public education curriculum, businesses managed to create a surplus of labor skilled in basic trades such as construction, health care, law enforcement, and many other skills that are dependent upon money, rather than independent survival skills such as subsistence farming, fishing, hunting, or starting a business.

It is not in the best interest of existing businesses to allow for the creation of competition. It is in the best interest of businesses to create a surplus of dependent workers who compete with each other by sacrificing wages and benefits, thereby reducing the value of labor.

Since democratic government is run by politicians who are supported in their campaigns primarily by businesses, politicians are beholden to businesses for their basic survival needs. Observe the obvious positions of employment rewarded to former politicians, and the obvious positions of government rewarded to business persons who have the finances to make themselves known to enough gullible voters, to get themselves elected.

Businesses, through proxy of government, dictate public education curriculum. Observe the behaviors of the Texas Board of Education and its selection of textbooks as the most glaring example of dumbing down public education.

Religious persons are set apart as the most desirable of employees for their limited skills, dependency, rejection of critical thinking, and their devotion to concentrated hierarchical leadership.

Politicians consistently appeal to the religious and mass media promotes religion and vilifies independent critical thinkers in western culture.

The economy in the United States is dominated by employees with limited skills who are in a surplus that is unsustainable, because they only have enough funds to supply themselves with food, transportation and shelter, because they agreed to work for less and less pay.

The only businesses that remain will be farmers, grocers, landlords, transportation and energy producers. Nobody here in the U.S. can afford anything else except clothing, and fashion is a luxury extinct as well.

So, if you are a young student going to public school, save your self by rejecting the idea of getting a good job, and instead concentrate on starting your own business.

Do not allow yourself to be distracted by entertainment that is not educational.

Only be interested in your own mental and physical fitness, do not be distracted by sports of which you do not participate.

Ignore any history lesson that reinforces racism by teaching about the history of race relations. Human beings are human beings, nothing more, nothing less. Everyone is equal.

No matter how benign the communication, any message that creates groups of people based on physical traits is counter-productive and designed to divide and conquer not only the individuals who are the subject of the message, but you too, by creating the impression that certain people belong in certain groups.

If you are religious. Shun religion. You don't need it. There is no such thing as a soul that can be punished or rewarded in an afterlife. Free your mind and embrace science and survival skills.

In the next election, use the write-in option and vote for "No Confidence" because politics is a fraud run by businesses.

Join your local Freethinkers Meetup Group by searching for atheists at meetup.com. Visit atheistnexus.org and the other atheist and freethinkers sites found at my blog. And look for me on Myspace too.

The social veil

2011-01-03T04:42:00.001-06:00

Conspiracy theorists suspect there is a "social veil" beyond which resides the true manipulators of western industrial culture.

The masses cannot see beyond the social veil, they only see that which they believe directly influences their lives.

What exactly is the social veil? The veil is made entirely of petty distractions. Distractions such as religion, sports, politics, home-making, lawn care, daily toil for someone else, competing for local social status, etc.

The veil must be maintained by constantly communicating messages that reinforce the values of these existing petty distractions.

The mass media can easily deny responsibility for reinforcing the social veil because they claim they merely provide the messages the audience wants to experience.

More responsibility belongs to certain media associated with early childhood development and education.

Mainly the early Dick and Jane books, using buses to move children to unfamiliar neighborhoods instead of improving the schools in the neighborhoods, history education about how certain cultures were conquered so we assume they are still below the status of their conquerors, the use of local property taxes to create an imbalance in education funding, employees getting recruited at local churches instead of local universities, etc.

Early conditioning stays with us, and our fear of the unknown and our programmed expectations of others are the strings by which we are controlled, from beyond the social veil.

History is full of lies, while science can be tested and proven true or false. They who call themselves "theologians" are well-versed in manipulation of the masses, like that revealed by Niccolo Machiavelli in his book The Prince.

However, theologians are merely the unwitting guards and cultivators of the social veil. They too are mere victims of its power because we are only as good as our limited choices allow.

How do we tear away the social veil? Stop believing.

Start questioning absolutely everything, like we did when we were young and we kept asking "Why?"
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The fearless and the wicked

2010-12-28T18:19:00.001-06:00

The wicked are fearless for they have no demons, no devils, no judging spirits, and nothing waiting for them in death to inflict eternal pain and suffering. This is not true about everyone who fears no god or demon. The truly evil are the ones who know how to use fear to control others, especially fear of Hell.

It is not they who know nothing of the existence of a soul or a god who are the wicked. The wicked are they who enslave pride, boldness, and skepticism in others with talk of devils, demons and eternal pain and suffering. The wicked are they who walk in the shadow of a jealous and angry myth, forcing open purse, wallet and entire estates with threats of damnation.

Wickedness is boundless in those who know enough of theology to act with impunity in lying to their followers about mystical creatures and terrifying places, fear mongering for their financial gain.

Fearlessness and skepticism is terrifying to those who require fear as a tool of control and financial gain, so they vilify the humanist, the skeptical, and atheists.

The truly evil guild the ceilings of their chambers with the gold from the teeth of their followers.

Will they ever learn?

2010-12-05T10:43:00.000-06:00

Has the economy not proven itself the lesson that religion does not benefit its practitioners? Religion only benefits those who pull the rug out from beneath others who spend time looking up, instead of looking around.

The GPS Effect

2010-06-30T10:44:00.001-06:00

I have a TomTom GPS device. I use it all the time, even when I go places to which I know the direction.

I have a long commute to work, about forty minutes, and the first few times I used my TomTom to get where I needed to go. I used it for a crutch after that because I wanted to know exactly how much time I had to stop at a gas station, because TomTom can be programmed to calculate the desired time of arrival, then tell you your window of time as you travel.

During the trip, TomTom would interrupt me when I was going too fast, or tell me I was within a few miles of the exit or I needed to take. Knowing this, I was able to think more thoroughly about other things as I drove, knowing that I would be interrupted at appropriate times.

Very quickly the commute seemed much shorter and actually more enjoyable, to the point where I was intrigued by the effect it had on my perception of time's passage.

Thinking about this I was reminded of my studies, my accidental college library adventure, stumbling upon the subjects of reality construction, cognitive dissonance theory, and operant conditioning. This effect was a perfect example of how sometimes we allow ourselves to be molded into a routine to such a degree that we don't see the things around us that affect our lives, especially to the point of the economic collapse we face today.

I think my GPS allowed me the freedom to consider what was happening to our minds. Would most people experience the same results? Would such a concept be replaced by thoughts of celebrities or sports instead, brain candy for the masses?

Does the Matrix have you?

MOST LAW BOGUS

2010-05-18T06:35:00.001-06:00

This blog is in response to the article "Dove proposes less-severe noise law" in the State Journal Register

In the comments at the SJ-R website I continue to suggest ad nauseum that the products with no other purpose but to generate loud sound, interfering with the peace and tranquility of the community, be taxed. I will therefore make a direct appeal.

The lack of response will indicate that some laws are aimed at symptoms rather than causes, which means that the intent of those laws is to retain punishment and its related bureaucracy, instead of aiming at a problem that might result in no longer needing that bureaucracy. In other words, some laws are created for the benefit of making busy-work to keep someone in a job that might otherwise be eliminated because a problem was solved by dealing directly with a problem rather than its symptoms alone.

A high recidivism rate, for example, is symptomatic of certain laws benefiting bureaucratic perpetuity rather than solutions.

This noise ordinance serves as a perfect example, focusing at the act of public nuisance rather than the key components that instigate such nuisances.

All crimes are symptoms of greater problems, but the laws of the land are fixed in a psychological medium of stone solid dogma. This dogmatic approach to the law is known in communication circles as "argumentum ad antiquitatem" or an appeal to tradition, a logical fallacy rationalized under the wildly conservative and blatant term "precedence."

The worship of precedence should be a determining factor of failure to pass the bar exam or denial of public service employment. In other words, anyone who refuses to question old law should not be allowed to serve as a judge. That includes the bible. Preachers who do not engage in questions or debate about old laws in any ancient tome, are unworthy of the pulpit, just as any judge is unworthy of the bench, who refuses to doubt a law on a regular basis.

Dead and dying

2010-04-27T11:37:00.001-06:00

One wrench in the toolbox of religious mind-control is the power of clergy to look you in the eye and tell you that a deceased love-one is somewhere unpleasant.

They can tell you where you might go too after you die, if you don't obey the rituals and other demanded personal sacrifices in the form of time, money and flesh.

The funeral industry too has tapped the goldmine of grief and obsession. One funeral service radio advertisement on WMAY has the slogan "just because a life has ended doesn't mean the relationship has." This commercial reinforcement of obsession with someone who is now gone forever should force you to recognize that such an obsession is unhealthy.

When you're an atheist, death is the end. Living people learn from the actions and consequences of those who passed away, and then move on with their lives. You're not going to be haunted by grandma for not visiting her grave.

Ghosts are completely bogus. Believing that there is the potential for your "spirit" to become trapped somewhere in your house and to suffer the gradual madness that comes from having your house invaded be endless generations of strangers is completely ridiculous.

Life is a continuous biological cycle. All biological organisms sequester nutrients so they may function. They too become the nutrients for other organisms. Being at the top of the food chain doesn't give us the right to deny the rest of nature the nutrients we possessed in life but no longer need in death.

Sealing our corpses away in boxes and concrete tombs adorned with everlasting monoliths, is denying the soil badly needed nutrients for the rest of nature, and denying the living freedom from distraction by sorrowful reminders.

Belief versus Faith

2010-02-11T09:31:00.001-06:00

The phrase “non-believer” is derogatory

The definitions of the word "belief" on more than one online dictionary include “Mental reliance on or acceptance of a particular concept, which is arrived at by weighing external evidence, facts, and personal observation and experience."

For a while I was feeling a stigma attaching to the word "belief." So many posts on other boards are mingling the word "belief" with the word "faith" which is "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing." [ http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com ]

Therefore, "belief” in reference to religion is an inappropriate use of the word.

To call someone a non-believer is to claim that they are mentally at a level of development equivalent to an infant who does not search for hidden objects [ http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Applied_History_of_Psychology/Cognitive_Development ]

The word “belief” in reference to anything intangible is inappropriate

Technically, belief occurs at around eight months old, and is the capacity to search for hidden objects because, you saw it there, so you must believe it is there. You walk out of your kitchen, and you can hold the belief that the refrigerator or oven will be there when you return moments later.

The word “belief” can therefore only apply to everything that qualifies within the definition as prescribed in legally accepted dictionaries.

One cannot hold a belief about anything that was never proven to exist, therefore the word “belief” can never be used in the context of any religion because it is completely grounded in the rules of the scientific process.

Faith means to trust even the unsubstantiated opinion.
Faith is defined as “Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.” [ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/faith ]

Faith is primarily a communicative expression of loyalty in the process of affinity-seeking and affiliation behaviors. If it serves a purpose beyond that, I would like to know about it.

Using the word "belief" in the definition of the word "faith" is in error.

Belief v. Faith

2010-02-11T07:36:00.003-06:00

The definitions of the word "belief" on more than one online dictionary include "Mental reliance on or acceptance of a particular concept, which is arrived at by weighing external evidence, facts, and personal observation and experience."

For a while I was feeling a stigma attaching to the word "belief." So many posts on other boards are intermingling the word "belief" with the word "faith" which is "Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."

Therefore, "belief " in reference to religion is an inappropriate use of the word.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com

It's time to move passed the religious fundamentalists and get on with rebuilding our country.

2009-09-17T08:16:00.007-06:00

Rachel Maddow had Frank Schaeffer on last night, author of the book "Crazy for God."

What he said was ABSOLUTE GOLD!

Here is the video, Mr. Schaeffer comment starts at around 5:40. If you can't see the video, I

wrote a transcript for you. It's pure gold. If you can't see it

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Frank Schaeffer: author of "Crazy For God"

The main-stream culture does not take stock on the fact that within our culture there is a sub-culture, that is a fifth column of insanity, that is bread from birth through home-school, christian school, evangelical college - whatever, to reject facts as a matter of faith.

And so this substitute for authentic historic christianity, and I may add as a little caveat here, I'm a church-going Christian, really brings up the question:

Can Christianity be rescued from Christians?

and that's an open question and when you see a bunch of people going around thinking that our president is the anti-christ, you have to draw one of two conclusions, either these are racists looking for any excuse to level the next accusation, or they're beyond crazy, and I think beyond crazy is a better explanation.

And that evangelical subculture has rotted the brain of the United States of America.

we have a big slice of America waiting for Jesus to come back, they look forward to Armageddon, good news is bad news to them.

When we talk about the Left Behind series of books that I talk about in my book Crazy for God, what we're really talking about is a group of people who are resentful because they know they've been left behind by modernity, by science, education, by art, by literature.

The rest of us our getting on with our lives, these people are standing on a hilltop waiting for the end and this is a dangerous group of people to have as neighbors and they're our national neighbors and this is the source of all these insanities we see leveled at the president.

One way or another they go back to this little evangelical subcultue, uh.. it's a disaster.

Rachel MAddow talks a bit about a poll in New Jersey and other strange beliefs on the far fringes of society. Then she asks the question:

"How do you work to move people away from these beliefs?"

Frank Schaeffer:

You don't work to move them off this position. You move passed them.

Look, a village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot. It's as simple as that, and we have to understand that we have a village idiot in this country, it's called fundamentalist Christianity.

And, until we move passed these people, and let me add as a former life-long Republican, until the Republican leadership has the guts to stand up and say it would be better to not have a Republican party than to have a party that caters to the village idiot, uh, there's not end in sight.

The next thing they'll do is accuse Obama of being the anti-christ and then who knows what comes next? On and on it goes.

There is no end to this stuff, why, because this subculture has as it's fundamentalist faith, that they distrust facts per se.

They believe in a young earth, six thousand years old, with dinasaurs cavorting with humans, they think that whether it's economic news or news from the middle east, it all has to do with the end of time and Christ's return.

This is la-la land, and the Republican part is totally enthralled to this subculture, to the extent that there is no Republican Party.

There is a fundamentalist subculture which has become a cult, it's fed red meat by buffoons like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other people who are just not terribly bright themselves, and they are talking to evenn stupider people, that's where we're at. That's where all this is coming from, and it's becoming circular, it's becoming a joke, unfortunately a dangerous joke, because once in a while one of these loony-tunes as we see, brings guns to public meetings, who knows what they do next?

It's a serious thing we all have to face, but the Democrats and sane Americans just have to move passed these people, say "go wait on the hilltop for the end, the rest of us are going to get on with rebuilding our country.

Rachel Maddow: Is there anyone on the right who could be constructive here if they wanted to be? To the extent that people could be moved off of these conspiracy theories? I understand your point that not all of them could be, but is there anyone who could be influential to try and stop the impact of these conspiracies?

Frank Schaeffer:

Look, in the year 2000 I worked for John McCain to try to get him elected in the primaries instead of George Bush, but John McCain sold out by nominating [..] Sarah Palin who comes directly from the heart of this movement and carries with her all that baggage, so he sold out.

I don't see anybody on the Republican Side of things these days who has the moral standing to provide real leadership or will risk their position to do so.

Abstinence Only Sex Education Fails in North Carolina

2009-09-05T14:00:00.002-06:00

It was the law for that last ten years. North Carolina teachers were prohibited from teaching anything other than Abstinence Only.

Consequently, the pregnancy rate is up 12% and STD rates are "skyrocketing."

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/09/03/costello.sex.ed.cnn?iref=videosearch

Quote by Jere Royall, an abstinence only education advocate: "They need to understand that sexuality is an important part of life but what they also need to understand is what the possible consequences are if they engage in sexual activity outside of marriage."

One might infer that marriage automatically protects you from STD's.

Facebook poll shows future of religion

2009-09-03T22:43:00.004-06:00

It could not be put more plainly.

From Atheist Insurgency

The Abortion Law

2009-08-03T03:44:00.000-06:00

Any biological product or extension attached to or contained within an individual is the sole property of that individual with all rights reserved to that individual and no other, to maintain or remove said biological product or extension. Parties assisting the individual having agreed in writing protected under Doctor-Patient confidentiality in rendering a biological change in the status of said biological product or extension are not liable.

C Street Exposure

2009-07-12T10:25:00.001-06:00

Brutal theocratic dictatorship operating behind U.S. Government.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Quick thoughts on morality

2009-07-03T07:35:00.003-06:00

I was in a discussion with a friend who complained that the Republicans who tout "Family Values" are still behaving contrary to Christianity. He listed some of the traits that define "Christian" as helpfulness and charity, which are contrary to the conservative belief of "absolute self-sufficiency, all others be damned."

He had a point. That contradiction is a glaring indication of deception and contempt for the public in general, and until just now I didn't think about it, instead I was focused on my friend's glowing accolades on Christianity.

I basically told him that "Christian," or any religious affiliation serves only as group identification. Group identification serves only to create boundaries, reinforce xenophobia, discriminate, marginalize, and motivate intra-organizational competition for status and power.

MORALITY = EMPATHY + ABSTRACT REASONING

Morality can be defined as having the ability to put ones self in the position of someone else for the purpose of understanding their feelings regarding the consequences of ones own actions, having the capacity to distinguish the difference between a problem, and symptoms of problems, and having the ability to understand that one's actions have long-term consequences.

For example, crime is not a problem. Crime is a symptom. You must take the time to ask "Why?" One of the "W"s that journalists often ignore.

Action Alert - Secular Coalition of America

2009-06-25T11:53:00.001-06:00

Before the August recess, a resolution will be voted on by the House of Representatives that will require the Capitol Visitor Center to engrave the words In God We Trust” and the Pledge of Allegiance onto the walls of the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC). Already, references to religion and faith are included in several permanent exhibits, and the words “In God We Trust” are even present in one exhibit. But that’s enough for Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who are pushing for a larger, bolder display of the words “In God We Trust” and the post 1954 Pledge of Allegiance to be engraved on the walls of the CVC.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that this additional engraving could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Join me in telling members of Congress that it is inappropriate for taxpayer money to be spent on promoting a false and distorted idea of America that alienates the millions of nontheistic Americans who neither “trust in God” nor pledge "under God.

http://action.secular.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27503

Pay attention

2009-06-09T02:10:00.001-06:00

Watch this video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7886780711843120756

Saudi Arabia is picture of America's future

2009-05-28T18:37:00.003-06:00

The continued coddling and patronizing of religion by Government will have an end result similar to what is being staged in the middle-east.

What you don't know won't hurt you! : Abstinence Only

2009-05-23T08:03:00.000-06:00

George didn’t believe in driver’s education, he didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

Never mind how he learned to drive, his biggest fear was that his children would get hurt if they learned too much about it in advance, but he knew his children would one day drive a car when they reached the legal age.

Until then, he decided, his children would be allowed nowhere near his car or even see the keys, and especially not one of those rules-of-the-road books, that would be just irresponsible in the eyes of George’s community.

Mike had a safe full of guns and ammunition. He liked to target practice and hunt, but he absolutely didn’t want his children to know anything about any guns until they were old enough, but how old is old enough?

Sarah has a motorcycle but she absolutely didn’t want any of her kids to even think about riding a motorcycle, ever.

Okay, what is wrong with these people? They all use the notion of “Abstinence-Only,” which means simply “Stay away and ignore it, and maybe it will just go away.” Or “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” Does it make sense? Will their children be safe from exposure to driving a car, shooting a gun, or riding a motorcycle?

The United States Federal Government seems to think so, and so do most of the United States governments.

I received an email from Planned Parenthood of Illinois this morning asking me to send an e-mail to Governor Quinn stating the following: [edited for clarity]

“Reject federal funding for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage programs!

In your FY 2010 budget proposal you included a continuation federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage (AOUM) funding. I urge you to reject this federal funding. These programs do a disservice to Illinois youth.

A federally-funded, nonpartisan study of the effectiveness of AOUM programs has found these programs to have no impact on the sexual abstinence of youth. The students' AOUM education had no effect on the age of first intercourse, number of sexual partners, or condom usage. Continuing to fund ineffective AOUM programs is throwing good money after bad.

Teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections are important problems. Comprehensive sexual health education programs (which include information about abstinence, contraceptives, and sexually transmitted infections in addition to other key elements) are proven to delay sexual activity and prevent disease among young people. While stressing abstinence, comprehensive sex ed provides students with the information they need to stay safe and healthy.

Again, please reject the federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage funding so Illinois can move forward with positive programs that protect our youth.”

The Illinois Governor has an opportunity to accept or reject funding that will go to such programs in the states, but I challenge President Barack Obama and Congress to suspend that program’s funding altogether on the grounds that it is a violation of the separation of church and state.

T-Shirt anyone?

2009-05-10T08:28:00.002-06:00

Here's a concept for a T-Shirt or a bumper sticker. I'm not sure if anyone came up with this already, but if not, take it and run with it. Make money if you can.

Public totally duped by non-currency

2009-05-09T08:54:00.003-06:00

I just received an email proclaiming "In God We Trust is missing from the new dollar coin! REJECT THE NEW DOLLAR COIN!"

The coin in question is not minted by the United States Mint. It was minted by a company called GovMint.com which is unaffiliated with the U.S. Mint, and is not chartered to produce legal tender, only bits of metal pounded together with some flakes of gold to make collectors items of questionable value.

But, the upside is it does not say "In God We Trust." which should be removed from all currency.

It's funny getting a stupid chain-email with wailing laments about the missing slogan endearing a myth.

For the real dollar coins, go to the U.S. Mint instead.

"Christian nation" resolution

2009-05-06T04:04:00.001-06:00

American citizens: Please email your member of Congress and ask them to refuse to co-sponsor "House Resolution 397" and oppose all efforts to move this resolution forward.

This "Christian nation" resolution states that YOU AND YOUR GOVERNMENT:

"recognize the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America's representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures."

It tries to form a legal basis for introducing religion to the "Nation's public buildings and educational resources" and tries to solidify keeping "under God" in the pledge.

Your help is needed! Contact your congressional representative now!

http://action.secular.org/t/5367/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27204

A lesson learned from the movie “There Will Be Blood.”

2009-04-11T08:16:00.000-06:00

The film portrays a relationship between an oil man, a preacher, and gullible community that caused me to take a second look at the relationship between the local newspaper, churches, and merchants in my home town, Springfield, Illinois.

On Christmas day a couple of years ago, the newspaper printed an unprecedented number of atheist letters to the editor. More than could be counted on one hand. They learned a hard lesson after that.

It’s highly likely that the emotion entrepreneurs sermonized on the unusually high number of atheist letters. The newspaper probably lost a large chunk of circulation and advertisers temporarily because Springfield’s bigoted merchants dominate church donation quotas and use their money as political clout to gain loyalty from charismatic preachers.

Now that they know who their audience is, the Illinois State Journal Register cannot care about objective journalism simply because they need to survive. Yet they continue to call themselves a newspaper. To demonstrate this bias, the following letter was given the portion of the Editorial section reserved for a letters from the newspaper’s own editors.

http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x180635348/In-My-View-Civil-union-law-is-unnecessary

James Randi Yanked from YouTube!

2009-03-30T19:50:00.001-06:00

Freedom of Religion

2009-03-17T19:46:00.002-06:00

Those who claim they support freedom of religion, they who support your right to worship however you choose (as long as your worship something), are supporting your right to volunteer yourself and your children into mental slavery.

Don't be a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian or whatever. Just be Yourself.

Gay Marriage

2009-03-06T10:33:00.000-06:00

Attempts have been made to scientifically articulate sexual preference and physical sexual traits (Masters and Johnson). It is clear that there are degrees of sexual preference and physical traits. The only remaining scientific debate is measuring the subdivisions of the scale in between.

All the symbols, language and rituals involved in marriage are purely subjective exercises. Meaning is in people, not in things. Religion is nothing but a tool that dictates and reinforces subjective useless meanings on people. Marriage is a meaning with no independent physical attributes.

Atheist Insurgency World Wide!

2009-02-06T19:11:00.001-06:00

AI Invasion

ANP reports LDS went too far on Prop. 8

2009-01-14T20:01:00.002-06:00

Mormons may have broken the law politically influencing proposition 8 and probably should lose their tax-exempt status.

http://americannewsproject.com/node/189

Become an Atheist

2008-12-18T14:43:00.000-06:00

United Nations working against atheism

2008-12-17T09:18:00.002-06:00

Back in November, CNSNews.com posted a story about the United Nations (UN) drafting a resolution protecting Islam from discrimination. Here's a link to the article:

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=39915&print=on

Now National Public Radio (NPR.org) has reported that the UN will rubber stamp protections against criticism and mockery for religion in general.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98321049

The American Civil Liberties Union treats religion as an equal to atheism.

http://www.aclu.org/religion/govtfunding/index.html

Religion is always about making up quick, cheap excuses for parents who wanted to cover up their own stupidity when their children kept asking them questions about nature. From there, it just went out of control.

The authority of Santa Claus

2008-12-07T07:18:00.003-06:00

You better watch out You better not cry Better not pout I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming to town	Technically, Santa hasn't come to town yet, so as long as he's not around to see you, you're safe. What will happen when he comes to town is left to the imagination. What happens if you pouted before this warning, will you get a reprieve? If the punishment is retroactive it might not matter if you are good from this point forward anyway.
He's making a list, And checking it twice; Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice. Santa Claus is coming to town	He's making a list, but here we see that someone is going to find out. Who exactly will find out who's naughty and nice? Will he have the list made already when he gets here? or is he coming to take a census of naughty and nice people?
He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good So be good for goodness sake!	This verse indicates that he is the one who knows in advance of your behavior and will tell your parents per the second verse. Your parents are "gonna find out who's naughty and nice."
O! You better watch out! You better not cry. Better not pout, I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town. Santa Claus is coming to town.	In conclusion. Santa Claus came to town and told your parents about how you behaved.

Nativity scene erected in Illinois Capitol

2008-12-02T21:03:00.000-06:00

SPRINGFIELD [Illinois] -- Organizers who put a Christian nativity scene inside the Illinois Capitol Tuesday say they want to see similar religious displays erected in government buildings across the nation.

Full Article at this link:
http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/12/02/news/doc4935c0cec7821555015975.txt

Princeton Scientists Discover Proteins that Control Evolution

2008-11-27T09:37:00.002-06:00

An article you absolutely must read. Here are some excerpts:

"Princeton scientists investigating a group of proteins that help cells burn energy stumbled across evidence that this is not how evolution works."

"proteins were correcting any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations, constantly restoring the chain to working order. A mathematical analysis revealed that these proteins seem to make these minute corrections all the time, steering organisms toward evolutionary changes that make the creature fitter."

"Their work seems to confirm ideas held by Darwin's colleague Alfred Wallace, who co-discovered the theory of evolution."

http://io9.com/5083673/princeton-scientists-discover-proteins-that-control-evolution

Dreams and the Rules of Reality

2008-11-24T20:47:00.004-06:00

There are an awful lot of people out there who believe their dreams have meanings. Here's what dreams are: Brain chemistry.

Your brain produces chemicals that allow you to interpret and recognize the things you see every day. You respond to stimuli with a combination of various emotions.

The parts of your brain that didn't fire synaptic neurotransmitters while you awake still need to do so.

During sleep, your body normally becomes mildly paralyzed so you don't flail around. There are many non-obstructive sleep disorders that involve the inability to be still while you sleep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_disorder)

Then the odd chemistry released triggers emotional responses to stimuli that does not exist. It's still interpreted as stimuli so you think you are actually doing things.

The things you experience in dreams are often physically impossible or utterly absurd because the chemicals released during the day do so at the mercy of the rules of reality, but at night, any combination of chemistry is released.

Like cartoon characters versus characters photographed or filmed, the rules of reality do not apply to dreams. You get to fly, time has no meaning, people who should be thousands of miles apart are together, and so on.

Dreams can be interpreted to the degree that persistence of a particular emotion while dreaming can lead to an area of the brain that is having difficulty due to a tumor, clot, aneurysm or other illness.

I often have dreams of being in a huge house that has rooms, stairs, hallways, and even landscaping from several different homes that I actually visited.

Authority and the Supernatural

2008-11-17T08:50:00.004-06:00

Ghosts, If you believe in ghosts, you have simply made anthropomorphic attributions to your optical illusions or hallucinations.

Unexplainable phenomena usually turn out to be caused by pets turning over trash cans, forgetting to do things and thinking you did those things, or doing things and not thinking about them only to find to your surprise that things were done or undone.

Other inexplicable events occur as a result of optical, auditory, or olfactory illusions or hallucinations. When I have free time I'd like to research the boundaries between illusions and hallucinations in the field of vision.

Illusions are created by the limitations and fallibility of our physical perception structure, while hallucinations are the product of incoming stimulus and our cognitive construct whether that be neurological development or conditioning and learning, but usually a combination.

If the authorities can't directly use the threat of "believe or die," they can use junk science and speculation that lends credence to the supernatural.

Faked photographs of ghosts, photographs with optical illusions in them that easily mislead the gullible and videotape of an aircraft or military aerial flairs are some of the culprits that mislead a very large constituency of fools.

As a veteran I've been in combat training exercises and taught to recognize things hurtling through the air, even at night. But, I also learned astronomy growing up, and I had to explain to some of my shipmates standing lookout, that the U.F.O. they thought they were seeing was actually the planet Venus.

On television years later, I saw videotape of aerial flairs that were accidentally launched over a town in Arizona or New Mexico, and the narrator expressing shock and fear, speculating about alien aircraft.

Magic is the best way to keep people somewhat fearful of the world around them, and even more terrified of the unknown.

I keep saying "the authorities," in this case I'm talking about those who are capable of broadcasting deceptive messages to millions of viewers and/or listeners. As long as there are people who insist they had experiences with ghosts, they can still be influenced by religious or spiritual authority of some kind.

People have related to me in the past that they and at least one other witness experienced some sort of ghostly phenomenon. The witness is usually someone who won't disagree, but will play along to maintain a friendship. Or they could be organizations who wish to gather together and profit from hallucinators.

People should be ashamed of themselves for playing along and contributing to the perpetuity of someone's hallucinations. To that end, so too should be ashamed, the Unitarians and the Bahai.

Marriage Part II: Double Standard

2008-11-14T11:50:00.002-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PokR1GQ0zJo

Also consider the role marriage plays triggering this kind of behavior.

Marriage

2008-10-31T14:44:00.002-06:00

Marriage is a religious institution. Therefore any regulation, privilege or penalty mandated by any branch of the U.S. Government regarding marriage is a violation of the First Amendment.

Any private industry that bestows privileges or penalties on a person because of marital status should be required by law to disclose such treatment to their customers.

Since marriage is a religious institution, any government mandating treatment of its citizens differently because of marital status can only be referred to as a theocracy and not a democracy.

Atheist Censored from Facebook

2008-09-28T00:08:00.003-06:00

Facebook kicked me off and didn't explain why, so I'm just going to assume that it was for censorship reasons. I didn't go trolling for people who didn't ask to be friends and the only thing anyone would find offensive would be the truth. I'm college educated so I don't need to use vulgar expletives or name-calling.

We must do what we can to keep getting the word out, but you might be wasting your time on Facebook.

Where have I been?

2008-09-22T12:57:00.003-06:00

I haven't been posting here much because I've been focusing on my Facebook and MySpace accounts. The network continues to grow and there are new friends every day, some with hundreds of other friends of their own on MySpace or Facebook.

On the creative front we have a growing list of comedians, artists, filmmakers and animators who bring out the full flavor of truth and irony.

I've been very busy at work, but the machine of the Atheist Insurgency is chugging along. Everyone has plenty to say about religion on MySpace and Facebook.

Oh, and don't miss Bill Maher's "RELIGULOUS"

Church to make posthumous apology to Charles Darwin

2008-09-14T15:36:00.001-06:00

Well, it's been a long time. The article also mentions a little something about Galileo too. You'll just have to read it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/2958018/Church-to-make-posthumous-apology-to-Charles-Darwin.html

Sarah Palin for Censorship

2008-09-05T09:56:00.000-06:00

Website updates

2008-08-31T12:48:00.002-06:00

I made some changes to my website. I'm getting quite blunt with my perspective. I said some things that some people may take offense to, but that doesn't mean that I have no respect to alternative lifestyles.

The truth is that sexuality is as Masters and Johnson discovered. A scale of propensity for attraction subdivided into seven categories of attraction between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

The scale for is fluid. It just depends on the situation, but in the end it boils down to simple gratification. "Come on and Do it! Do it 'til your satisfied!"

The Greatest Story Ever Told

2008-08-10T08:01:00.001-06:00

I don't know if you saw this already, but it's a nice tidy summary of religion presented at YouTube in three parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koK1z1YnBIQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFQlV6pdJ78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_82kd0UAYHA

PART I

PART II

PART III

... AND THERE'S YOUR RELIGION.

MSNBC.COM: 86 secular Turks charged in alleged coup plot

2008-07-14T08:04:00.001-06:00

Turkey needs help returning to reason

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANKARA, Turkey - Prosecutors indicted 86 hardline secular Turks Monday on terrorism charges for their alleged involvement in plots to topple the Islamic-rooted government, a chief prosecutor said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25670277/

Leaps of Faith and Jumping to Conclusions

2008-07-05T12:06:00.001-06:00

I started loading up my groceries on the belt behind the little plastic divider. A salad from the deli, four bottles of salad dressing, two boxes of crackers, a bottle of ketchup, orange juice, and a box of chocolate covered cream-filled doughnuts.

I bought vegetables a couple of days prior. I began to wonder what the woman in front of me thought of my strange collection of dressings, crackers and doughnuts. I wondered if she would draw a simple conclusion about me based on what I purchased.

The thought of her or anyone jumping to conclusions made me think about the phrase “leap of faith.” There is little difference between the two, except that people are usually asked to make leaps of faith. Jumping to conclusion appears to be automatic.

I began to wonder if jumping to conclusions is neurological or psychological. Most of the time we take the easy path and learn from our mistakes, or we can choose to spend extra time deciding which path to take, and lessen the frequency of our mistakes.

How many times were we told things, then we asked “why?” and the response was “because I said so?”

My parents were the children of the great Depression. Up until 1967 or so, parents were the “because I told you so” generation. They felt they didn’t have to explain anything because of their overriding authority. “Honor thy father” and what-not. But they couldn’t understand why their children ignored them, hated them, or ran away from home.

They were the parents that were raised in tight-knit communities surrounding the local church as the center of decision-making. They were taught never to question, for fear of something bad happening.

Originally, that “something bad” was being burned at the stake. The actual punishments have faded over the centuries, but the tertium-quid emotional responses were carried forward to condition future generations. This is a product of process fluency, and operant conditioning. The best example of which can found in the book “World as Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes and Men” by Rebecca Lemov.

So, we jump to conclusions and make leaps of faith.

Seperation of church and state being erased in the military

2008-05-18T08:56:00.003-06:00

Democratic Social Engineering

2008-05-10T08:49:00.002-06:00

What follows should floor you.

It is totally blowing my mind:

Excerpt from William Graebner’s book The Engineering of Consent: Democracy and Authority in Twentieth Century America, pages 9 and 10.

Convinced that morality and religion could no longer serve as the foundation for a stable and productive social order, the founding fathers institutionalized democratic authority. The doctrine of consent was thus politicized - transferred to the arena of politics and stripped of religious meaning. As the nineteenth century wore on, more and more Americans would give their consent by voting for their representative.

Yet this democratization of authority was carried out with great caution. Fearful of majority rule, the founding fathers decentralized power, placing it in the states rather than the national government. A system of checks and balances ensured that the whims of the majority would have to run a gauntlet of Senate, president, and judiciary before having the force of law. To buttress this written Constitution, James Madison developed a theory of "factions" that advocated the dispersion of power over a wide geographical area in order to prevent conglomerations of influence inimical to order and stability.

The problem, as Sheldon Wolin has put it, "was to secure a steady and continuous flow of legitimacy from the people without promoting steady and continuous interference by the people.

" In the nineteenth century democratic state, this was accomplished through John Locke's "thin theory of legitimacy." Under Locke's theory, the people granted their consent to government only in periodic elections while at the same time- in the same act - relinquishing control of administrative and decision-making functions. Superior, perhaps, to Thomas Hobbes's notion that consent could be given by "a single act of consent registered in one moment of time," Locke's idea of legitimacy nonetheless did not allow for extensive citizen participation in the workings of government.

Yet there was something radical in the very idea of consent, for once its theoretical legitimacy had been granted it was difficult to circumscribe its applications. If consent by the vote was essential to political legitimacy, why might not other forms of consent -administrative consent, for example -also be justifiable? Similarly, if voting was so vital, then perhaps all persons-women, blacks, and the poor as well as white males with property -should have the suffrage." In short, the logic of consent led to wholly new realms of consent and, therefore, to efforts to coopt or contain that consent.

The late-nineteenth-century emergence of democratic social engineering might, on the one hand, be understood as the working out of this "logic of consent" or, on the other hand, as an effort to locate authority outside the more threatening sphere of democratic politics. In any event, democratic social engineering involved, in part, a two-stage historical process through which the device of political consent was applied in new and nonpolitical spheres. In the first stage, the doctrine of consent was applied to the larger entity of "society"; that is, society itself was conceptualized as the critical mechanism of order and stability. In the second stage, the locus of consent was shifted from society to the family and other small groups, social microcosms that functioned, in a way, as surrogates for the whole society.

Although this transfer of authority to the social realm would take place with dramatic speed in the late nineteenth century, the idea of an essentially nonpolitical, social authority had been understood for some time. Within political philosophy, Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jeremy Bentham had all argued that society could be understood as distinct from political arrangements and yet be invested with an effective authority.

Opinion, reputation, private groups- these forms of society, for Locke, were the stuff of authority; rather than risk disapproval, people would conform. Rousseau's contribution was in part to develop the Lockean notion of social authority into a principle of openness. In Rousseau's ideal society, every act would be viable and open to scrutiny. Transgressors would not be punished but prevented from wrongdoing by an overarching, social system of observation.

This book is like "taking the red pill." to use a metaphor from The Matrix.

Letting your emotions get in the way

2008-04-27T09:24:00.002-06:00

When you let your emotions get in the way, did you believe the story that Muqtada al-Sadr was in league with Iran?

Human Decency is Natural

2008-04-16T11:41:00.001-06:00

When I see televangelists preach, they almost have me convinced that I need to sit within their aura to maintain my moral ground. If I am almost convinced, it means there are a lot of people out there who must believe in a "moral flat earth" with a very small circumference.

On CNN recently there was a question posed by one of their Personalities; "Do you think atheists are morally bankrupt because they have no beliefs?" This appears to be a convention that journalists need to maintain their inventory of material for publishing. For them, everything must be a conflict, or there's just no story.

I found that human empathy is genetically predisposed in the majority of us. We have what scientists call “mirror neurons.” We can almost feel what other people are experiencing. That’s how we learn to do things, and learn to respect the feelings of others as a basic survival skill.

Most of us grow out of our selfishness eventually, we can be taught to respect others before we naturally develop the skill through trial and error, but we don’t have to be told we will spend an eternity in searing flames if we do ill toward others.

Atheism enhances the perceived value of life and the need to respect the feelings of others because there is no justice in an afterlife, no afterlife, and no invisible shield of protection by a deity through life.

Most of us are not born with fear or hate. We are not born into sin. There is no evil inheritance called "the sins of the father" unless you prefer to judge a person by the behavior of his or her parents.

The trick of the Bible is the blending of what is alleged to be history with magic. Believers like to toss around the words "truth" and "Bible" in the same breath, I would have preferred "X-Men" and "truth," but we can't always get what we want.

El Ron Hubbard blended psychology with scientology to create the book Dianetics. It's not a stretch to assume that he was writing a critical satire of the Bible, too bad for those whacko scientologists who took it literally.

Just remember that decency, respect, and empathy are a part of human nature, and that separatism, superiority, or righteous thinking is a learned trait that creates fear and hate.

GroupThink

2008-04-06T10:28:00.003-06:00

Religion is all important for maintaining barriers between groups of people. The study of GroupThink is very important for understanding cults and religion. Browse the links below and you begin to uderstand the infrastructure of religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

http://www.cedu.niu.edu/~fulmer/groupthink.htm

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_12_02_a_snl.htm

http://www.psysr.org/groupthink%20overview.htm

A Warning to Temporary Employees in the state of Illinois

2008-01-28T19:54:00.000-06:00

In Illinois, if you are a temporary employee with an agency like X Personnel Service and you are assigned to work at say, a large insurance company, you can be harassed for your beliefs (or especially the lack of beliefs) by Insurance Company employees with impunity, and even have your temp assignment terminated because of your beliefs.

They can simply say you were "too slow" and "had a bad attitude" never having directly confronted you with any issues.

But, because you are NOT actually employed by the insurance company, but by X Personnel Service, the Illinois Human Rights Commission cannot do anything for you because you were not technically directly an employee of those who harassed you and caused you financial injury by having your assignment terminated.

They call it a "Juristdictional Issue."

Major Moves Against Televangelists

2007-11-26T23:58:00.000-06:00

Impudent Strong-arming of televangelists may or may not shake out another GOP endorsement beside's Pat Robertson for Rudy Giuliani. I can almost see Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) grimacing and bearing his teeth at the Finance Committee hearing. You gotta tune into C-SPAN more often. The theatrics just keep getting better as election day looms.

Paula White's one of several TV preachers accused of taking church money and spending it on their own lavish lifestyles. White and her ex-husband ran a TV church out of Florida.

The president of Oral Roberts University, facing accusations he misspent school funds to support a lavish lifestyle, resigned on Friday, officials said.

The multimillion-dollar televangelism empires built by Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and four other media ministries are under investigation by a Republican U.S. senator concerned by reports of lavish mansions, Rolls Royces and private jets.

Hitchens and Dobbs

2007-11-03T11:18:00.000-06:00

Thanks A-Team for posting this at the MySpace page.

Debate Tonight on C-SPAN's BookTV at 7pm

2007-10-27T11:48:00.000-06:00

Dinesh D'Souza, Christopher Hitchens, Marvin Olasky, What's So Great About Christianity?

From The King's College in New York, Dinesh D'Souza, author of What's So Great About Christianity, and Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, debate the question,

"Is Christianity the problem?" The debate is moderated by Marvin Olasky, The King's College Provost and World magazine editor-in-chief. (Saturday 7 PM ET)Book TV is channel 14 on Insight Cable

A Gold Mine of Quotes from Thomas Jefferson for use in the argument on the "moment of silence" in public schools.

2007-10-27T06:59:00.000-06:00

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The impious presumption of legislators and and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath stablished and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical;...

-- Thomas Jefferson, expressing concern over the authoritarian interpretation of religious views, and advocating, rather, that states allow an individual to use her or his own reason to establish or settle these opinions, in the opening passage to Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), quoted from Merrill D Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 346

To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Green Mumford, June 18, 1799

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jefferson.htm

Journalist Links Atheists to Child Pornography

2007-08-28T10:45:00.000-06:00

Amanda Rogers, freelance investigative journalist, wrote an article published in the American Chronicle about the vigilante group Perverted Justice which worked in the past with the NBC news program "To Catch a Predator."

In her article she details the exploits of Perverted Justice and the trouble into which they are getting themselves and NBC.

After the gruesome details, she quilts in this little generalization:

"Other discoveries are that almost without exception: each Perverted Justice member is either an Atheist or a Wiccan/Pagan. Many of their websites contain pentagrams and images of witchcraft."

Now her readers can infer that all atheists and Wiccan/Pagans are child pornographers.

This renders the entire article defunct as objective rational journalism.

Here's the article:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=36133

On "God's Warriors"

2007-08-23T21:18:00.000-06:00

Christiane Amanpour presented a brilliant program on Muslims, Jews and Christians, however, the alleged "Secular" was only included as a minor part of the subject matter, and were mostly presented from religious perspectives. The behavior that was presented as "Secular" by people interviewed in the series was not secular at all.

The Secular agenda is merely a platform of individual freedom of choice. The religious only rail against the abnormal behavior occurring on the other side of the platform, then blame the platform.

Of course, defining what is abnormal is entirely subjective to one's own culture or subculture. The Secular understand this and can learn to participate in a respectful manner in multiple cultures, within reason. This opens passages for people to explore different belief systems and make their own choices.

The extremists of the three religions are struggling for dominance over each other and the rest of the world, while the moderates tolerate the extremists and the semi-practitioners and non-practitioners.

The Secular (perhaps not all) see moderates as a cauldron of homogenization between the extremists and non-practicing members of each sect. Sort of like an engine that allows a religion to maintain its existence. If the moderates suddenly migrated toward the semi-practitioners, the extremists would lose their sense of authority, and rituals might fade out of existence.

When a religion must use fear, force or deception to keep a hold on its flock, it's a false religion. The winner is the religion with the most people who were allowed to learn about other cultures, and chose of their own free will, their paths.

To religious people, there is a Fifth Horseman of their apocalypse, and its name is Freedom.

House and Senate on Break

2007-08-07T06:19:00.001-06:00

Our U.S. Senators and Congressmen are on their August break. You might see them around your district. We, the people expected change after the 2006 election, and the rumors going around are that the Democrats have rolled over and have not been effective since they have become a majority.

But, we, the people rolled over. We only gave the Democrats a simple majority, not an overriding majority. For the Democrats to be effective against the onslaught of warmongering predatory capitalists, an overriding majority is needed, a better than two-thirds majority that can override a Presidential veto or some other arcane parliamentary procedure.

So we have nothing to complain about but our own inability to elect an effective majority of legislators different from those who dominated our government for the last six years.

Religous Impunity

2007-08-04T07:06:00.000-06:00

A recent letter to the editor in August 3, 2007 that was titled “Might be surprised at who we don’t see in heaven,” demonstrated how selective some people can be using quotes from the bible to validate their sense of superiority or “infallibility.” I was also struck by the last sentence of the letter. The author said he was one of the worst sinners to walk “this sod” but that Jesus died for him and he was “free, praise the lord, free at last.” I had an epiphany.

As an atheist I have no “Get out of Hell Free Card” in the form of Christ being crucified. I must take stock of other people’s feelings all the time. I have no comfort of Jesus Christ with which to snuggle away guilt for having mistreated other people. I have no luxury of washing my hands of my misdeeds every holy day. I must treat other people as I would want to be treated, and I expect nothing less from everyone else.

Unfortunately, there are people out there who feel they can run to their place of worship and wash away their guilt by enveloping themselves in their symbols and rituals of blissful forgiveness on a regular basis, leaving behind those they wronged who are ultimately duped into thinking the wrongdoers will be judged by God later, so they take no action.

It’s not about extreme actions or behavior; it’s about basic social attitudes in a country that is supposed to protect and nurture diversity. There’s no sense of ecumenical community, it’s all team rivalry that fomented the 9/11 attacks. It’s time to let religion to go altogether, it’s nothing but trouble.

The competition between religions is bad enough without people treating their neighbors with a sense of religious impunity.

Faith-Based Job Termination

2007-07-29T12:05:00.000-06:00

Dear ACLU and Illinois HRC

I'm temp employee with _____________________. Last summer I joined a Freethinkers group and gradually felt empowered enough as a member of the group to display a "Darwin Fish" emblem on the back of my vehicle. (The Darwin Fish is similar to the Christian symbol of the fish, but has feet added to depict evolution, and the name Darwin within.)

Recently I was temporarily assigned to ________________________ to help ______________________________. One day I was asked by an employee about the emblem on my car, and I explained that I was an atheist.

They didn't seem to have a problem with it at first, but gradually I noticed more people were ignoring me, or they would stop talking when I was nearby. It became obvious that word was spreading about my non-belief. People started openly talking about their Christianity. I was told that some of the upper management at Horace Mann were very religious.

On ___________________ I was called by my representative at _______________ and told that my assignment was terminated. He said that people at ________________ claimed that I complained about doing what I was told, that I was too slow, and that I had a bad attitude.

During that time there was not a moment that I complained about doing a task, not a moment that I did not do what I was told, and I absolutely deny having a bad attitude. I believe that someone at _______________________ fabricated claims against my work ethic to have me removed from my job.

I never received any complaint about my performance in person or in writing until I was told by ______________________ that my assignment was terminated.

As a veteran of the military I have an outstanding record of dedicated service to my country. I earned an Associate degree and a Bachelors degree with higher than average grades, and I have a work history without so much as a written warning or recorded disciplinary action.

I know that I am not alone in facing this kind of situation. As a veteran of the military, I am highly offended that U.S. Constitution, for which I served, could be shirked by those who claim its protection for their religious freedom.

If you feel from this that I may have a case, more detailed information can be made available regarding names.

Your participation will go down in history regardless of your actions following the receipt of this email.

Investigator finds reasonable grounds for claim of atheism firing

2007-07-18T22:56:00.000-06:00

An article in the Boston Globe lends itself as evidence that Human Rights and Christian Rights appear to be unequal:

LEWISTON, Maine --An investigator for the Maine Human Rights Commission has found reasonable grounds for a manager's claim that he was fired from his job at DeCoster farms because he's an atheist.

Cacy Cantwell says Austin "Jack" DeCoster told him before he was fired that they might have to "part ways" because Cantwell didn't believe in God.
[http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2007/05/04/investigator_finds_reasonable_grounds_for_claim_of_atheism_firing/?p1=email_to_a_friend ]

Are you supporting your troops?

2007-06-06T19:16:00.000-06:00

I went to Victor J. Stenger’s presentation at the Route 66 Hotel on June 5, and received a signed copy of "God: The failed hypothesis." Not many people showed up because most of the flyers were torn down the same day they were posted.

Why would someone feel the need to tear down those flyers? Certainly if one had faith in one's own religion, one would not be intimidated by them.

If one respected the U.S. Constitution one would leave those flyers alone. Those flyers were posted legitimately on public bulletin boards.

As a veteran of the military, I am deeply saddened that someone would violate the constitutional rights of others in my own country. Tearing down flyers because you find them offensive is no lesser an offense than spitting on the graves of those who died fighting for your liberty and your right to free speech.

God and Gays: Bridging the Gap

2007-06-02T07:36:00.000-06:00

Here we see how religion has such a grip on the minds of some people that they will shut out their own children. Victims of religious persecution desire to cling to the religion only because they imagine that their families will finally accept them. What should be the stronger bond, religion, or family?

The Language of Dominion

2007-05-18T10:06:00.000-06:00

One upon a time, reading and writing was a luxury to be experienced only by land and slave owners, but this is a basic fact in all cultures so many thousands of years ago. It was common then for conquering rulers to try completely erasing the language of the conquered and replacing it with their own.

But, one of the earliest giant leaps of human development before being able to depict three dimensional perspective, was the jump in language from iconic to symbolic representation, in other words, the giant leap from cave drawings through Egyptian hieroglyphs to alphanumeric expressions.

Thousands of years ago we had to adopt a common language for survival, but whose language? Remember, there were no public schools back then. Literacy was a privilege for those few who had amassed fortunes and had no need for work in the fields. They were the masters of slaves and the descendants of masters of slaves.

As the race for domination through proliferation of symbols and language was well underway three thousand years ago, along the way, symbols such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs were no longer used, replaced by the concept of a simple alphabet of symbols representing sounds people make to communicate meaning.

Instead of communicating the direct meaning of things through icons (a picture of a bird meaning a bird), we began to communicate using someone else’s symbols that showed how their mouth moved to make the sound they uttered which they taught us to mean something, like the word “Bird.”

They taught us this because they dominated us. Your language comes from some ancient king who commanded an army to slaughter your original tribe. Do you think that your language is still viable after so many thousands of years of human development? What other ridiculous notions did this king thrust upon your ancestors?

Thinking of destruction?

2007-05-13T15:55:00.000-06:00

The FBI is arresting people interested in causing severe death and destruction. Those who are considering such action should immediately cease all fantasies, dreams, emotions, notions, and hankering for chaos and destruction. If you’re working on a novel about 9/11 you better give up and burn your notes.

If anyone comes up to you and asks you if you want to buy guns or bombs, tell them “no thanks.”

Some men in Miami(1) were talking about blowing up the Sears Tower in Chicago, but nobody said who started the conversation. If you have a new member or members in your group who try to talk about committing crimes of any kind, you may have an agent provocateur(2) among you.

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune was published in the aftermath of the alleged terror plot against Fort Dix,

…authorities acknowledge that the case has underscored a troubling vulnerability in the domestic war on terrorism.”

“The primary threat now comes from an unknown number of people with no criminal background and few if any ties to militants overseas. In recent years, authorities have arrested about 60 people from the much larger pool of angry and disaffected people, charging them with terrorism, according to federal officials, many of them do not fit an easily identifiable profile.”(3)

It Looks like a resurgence of the paranoia from McCarthyism which coincidentally, “Threatens Michael Moore”(4)for his work on a new production called Sicko(5) about the healthcare industry in the United States.

Written in The Burlington County Times, “They were roofers, a taxi driver, a baker and a pizza deliveryman, apparently living the American dream in Philadelphia and on the tree-lined streets of suburban South Jersey.” (6) It’s implied that they could be your next door neighbor and it appears that a deliberate attempt to make the public frightened enough once again to vote Republican in 2008 is afoot.

----
(1) CNN.com: "Indictment: Suspects wanted to 'kill all the devils we can'"
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/23/miami.raids/index.html
(2)Agent Provocateur: Somebody employed to gain the trust of suspects and then tempt them to do something illegal so that they can be arrested and punished. (Encarta Dictionary: English)
(3)"FBI says domestic extremists big threat"
Josh Meyer, Tribune Newspapers; Chicago Tribune: 5/13/2007 page 3
(4)McCarthyism threatens Michael Moore
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5268/1/258/
(5) http://michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=207
(6)http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112-05132007-1345920.html

What happens in the mind of a non-believer?

2007-04-27T19:01:00.000-06:00

Many psychologists believe that the human mind inherently behaves under the preconceived idea that there is an internal audience. Most people behave in private under the assumption that there are spirits or angels watching their every move, and every thought is believed by many to be spoken clearly in thought so as to be heard by God, angels, ancestral spirits, or aliens, in a private conversation called a prayer.

One can easily imagine yelling or whispering in thought, applying anthropomorphisms to their imagined self. Most people apply imaginary physical rules on their minds where none exist in reality, in effect, chaining themselves down to an imaginary floor, under intense imaginary gravity.

The internal audience that is widely accepted among psychologists is a product of generations of forced belief in omnipresent intelligent deities that eavesdrop on their lives. Most will take comfort in their government listening to their private conversations and exclaim “I have nothing to hide.”

What happens when one stops believing in such nonsense? The operational structure of thought changes entirely.

The thought processes that force internal decisions to be articulated in imaginary voices begins to fade and thinking becomes even faster than before. Symbols in the mind like so many roadblocks fade away. Soon you will be able to read without thinking of a voice speaking each word. I call it “loosing the mental narrator.”

Some believe they never had a mental narrator in their head slowing down their reading skills. Once they start on the road to non-belief, they begin to realize it was there all along.

External behaviors change. The anthropomorphisms that are often attached to inanimate objects lose their luster. Aggression aimed at doors, walls, and objects underfoot soon fades away. Shaking one’s fists, while looking up at the ceiling, becomes pointless.

Cursing becomes useless as well, especially when there’s nobody around to empathize or be shocked. Energy that was once thought of as anger becomes proactive and productive.

The mind is released like birds to the sky. The internal psychological environment becomes flexible and more efficient. You begin to see things more clearly than ever before and you find that you can do more to change your world for the better.

Intelligent Design: The “Stargate” Hypothesis

2007-04-26T17:39:00.000-06:00

Design requires intelligence. Intelligence requires life, therefore life designed can only be created by other life. Life denotes non-deity status. Therefore no gods exist.

The Stargate Hypothesis is based on the plot of the movie and the subsequent television series. Aliens enslaved early humans and kept them under control simply by bedazzling them with their technology.

This bedazzlement was easy enough to accomplish by the Spanish Conquistadors because the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, and Continental America were still using stone and bone tools. That, plus the Western European skin tone first impressed the natives because they revered whiteness with mysticism. Perhaps because of the clouds.

The simple association between colors that appear in the sky (rainbows, clouds, etc.) and the colors that clothed the Europeans was easily made at that time. One must consider that bright vivid colors could be seen or chipped from rock, but not actually created through chemistry. There may have been certain herbs that created some color, but nothing like that mastered by the Europeans who had access to the Silk Road trade.

The human mind was developing beyond the point at which nature allowed all other species to develop. The human mind was starving for new information and novel experiences. When a native first saw the sky reflected in a mirror he or she must have imagined that it was a hole instead of a reflection.

One wonders what the natives must have imagined when the Conquistadors used mirrors to direct the sunlight toward them. How often does the image appear in art, of a person holding a spherical object emanating rays of light? Or the image of an eye in the sky surrounded by rays of light?

I imagine that the tops of Egyptian pyramids were polished with gold-leaf, and that perhaps it worked to keep the population under control, at least for a little while. Someone should check to see where the sun’s light might have been reflected if indeed the tops of the pyramid in Giza were polished in such a way.

But to try to bring religion into intelligent design is just sheer stupidity.

Humanity's "Mulligan"

2007-04-01T11:39:00.000-06:00

Humanity’s “Mulligan”

There is a significant date in our history when suddenly our brains were capable of articulating the third dimension of our visual perspective. But this is only the tip of the Iceberg. This is a leading indicator of a giant leap forward in our intelligence as a species, and a surge in scientific discovery and creativity that went unrecognized as a symptom of human evolution.

The Renaissance was fought at every turn by the religious elite whose personal enrichment relied on maintaining a dependent population through illiteracy and bearing too many children. As the religious elite lavished themselves with the tithes of the huddled masses, there finally arose out of Feudal Europe, a peasant war that brought about the reformation.

Then there was a sudden surge in creativity which gradually brought about revolutionary discoveries in engineering and science. (Some would say they were re-discoveries due to the destruction of the Ancient Royal Library of Alexandria, which is thought to have fallen victim to the decree of Theophilus in 391 .

The human mind at this point made enormous strides forward in Europe. The Chinese had long since invented the compass, paper and gun powder, but even then their art still depicted visual perspective using symbolic references as a means of distinguishing foreground and background objects.

"The laws and principles of perspective were first clearly described by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in his Notebooks, where he outlined a suitable course of study for the artists including, as well as perspective, the arrangement of surface muscles, the structure of the eyes of man and animals, and botany. He called perspective 'the bridle and rudder of painting,’…" -- R. L Gregory Eye and Brain: The psychology of seeing. 1973 McGraw-Hill, New York, NY

It is at this point in history that men should have reevaluated the cognitive abilities of the ancient writers, because the ancient writings of divinity were made by men incapable of properly perceiving the world as we do today, and those that could were quickly tortured into submission or killed by the likes of the Spanish Inquisition.

The early Renaissance represents a sudden neurological development in humans that passed unrecognized by historians who only recently began to add Psychology to their equations.

This period also brought about revolutions in music. So sudden was the world introduced to amazing talent in such a brief period, it’s amazing how no one wondered how dim the human senses were for so many thousands of years before the Renaissance, or even the depth of that dimness through the progression backwards through history. Nobody had sense enough to build lenses before the 1500’s.

The ancient writings of basic history and the writings of how we should treat each other must be immediately called into question, because we are using documentation from inadequate primitive thought processes.

Religion was for a primitive species of man.

Using my favorite golf term as a metaphor, humanity does deserve a “Mulligan,” but not religion.

Newt and Bill

2007-03-10T15:17:00.000-06:00

The cultural relativists are outraged that Newt Gingrich gets a free pass for having an affair while Bill Clinton was impeached. But, Bill Clinton was impeached not because he had the affair, but because he lied about it.

So the only difference between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton is that Newt came forward about his affair and asked for forgiveness. He got his forgiveness from Jerry Falwell and James Dobson.

As much as we would like to claim hipocrisy on Gingrich who supported a family values agenda as a political candidate while pointing at Clinton and carrying on affairs, we have to remember that the whole issue is about lying, confession, and forgiveness.

So have all the affairs you want as long as you have the guts to occasionally confess and ask for forgiveness from people you think might make you feel better for having asked their forgiveness.

It shouldn't be difficult for President Bush to ask for forgiveness for lying about weapons of mass destruction and Yellow Cake Uranium sought by Saddam Hussein in Nigeria. I'm sure that Fallwell and Dobson will gladly initiate a nice group hug with Bremmer, Wolfowitz, Cheny, Rumsfeld, Rove, and President Bush.

The Faith War

2007-03-03T09:56:00.000-06:00

The Faith War is the struggle between groups for possession of mortal souls. The victory of the Faith War will precipitate the emergence of one leader for all the faithful followers, subservient conscripts, serfs, peasants and slaves*.

Atheism breaks down the structure of leadership and causes chaos. Everyone is treated equally. Most people would consider it Communism, but the model of Communism to which we have become familiar (the Soviet Union) failed because of corruption among the high communist party leaders.

The Pack Mentality of standard hierarchy is a naturally occurring neurological function among lower animals and primitive humans.

The feeling that one gets of entitlement, the emotion that one has earned a right or privilege beyond other members of the group is an inescapable consequence of primitive human organizational thought.

It is also an inescapable primitive thought to accept that others, who are perceived as leaders, have special rights and privileges.

The Atheists have escaped such primitive thoughts. If not, they are aware that such thinking exists. The concept of leadership is out the window because the very foundation of leadership is faith and belief.

*Slavery is condoned in most religious doctrine because the doctrine is old enough to date back to a time when slaves were considered lifestock.

War on Belief

2007-03-03T07:10:00.000-06:00

Coming soon there will be a website which will bring news of the Atheist Insurgency, its progress, and reasoning.