Into the Void

Email to a Fundamentalist who obsesses on what he claims is a religion that “espouses rejoicing.”

Your religion also espouses killing members of other religions as part of its teachings. That makes you a danger to many members of this list.

I have never understood why people have to have “faith.” Is it because their religion causes a rift with the higher self? What, no more epiphanies? No more divine revelations? No more burning bushes? That’s ok, you can still have faith.

I prefer to believe in the sunset in Pacific Grove, California; a trip down the Wading River in the pine barrens of New Jersey; the view from a boat on Loch Ness; driving up into the sharp red mountains in Arizona. There is no imaginary playmate in my head trying to claim my feelings at those times.

The awe, the sense of something bigger than yourself? The earth is a big beautiful place, and that feeling means you are at the very edge of becoming part of it. Can’t have any of that Pagan nonsense in our heads! Quick, say that God made the things that gave you that feeling.

On the other hand, nobody ever builds a high wall around God except maybe Jesus or the Pope. I can see the attraction in diverting your feelings to something that you believe will never abandon you no matter what evil you do.

Just in case anyone is still complaining that Islamists are violent, here’s something from the KJV bible. It’s pretty clear what a good Christian is supposed to do to non-Christians.

Deuteronomy 13

6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

I feel very threatened when I hear someone touting the virtues of a religion that espouses death to non-believers. Further, it is predatory to try to suck in vulnerable people by pretending the the Bible is all sweetness and light.

I read the bible a couple of times, too. I know what it says. It SAYS that the way to enlightment is blocked by your prophet. In fact, the way has been blocked since the angel with the flaming sword denied us the fruit from the Tree of Everlasting Life.

Other traditions consider the snake to be a symbol for wisdom, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So again, enlightenment – having your own epiphanies instead of accepting dogmatic interpretations is forbidden.

So sad that they block the way by diverting your soul to a sort of holding tank. The road to enlightenment, the cycle of birth and rebirth ends for you at that point. Game Over.

Mostly it’s the prophets’ words pulled together as a checklist to follow in order to give the appearance of having fulfilled thousands of years of prophecies. Except that this happened a couple of hundred years after Jesus death when the Roman Catholics decided to pick and choose which books to discard and which to keep in the Latin Vulgate Bible. And most of it was translated from the Greek, not from the Hebrew or the Aramaic.

The Protestants did their own picking and choosing during the Protestant Reformation. The point being that whatever version you use, your bible has been spun and respun so many times that it is totally irrelevant.

I know, the bible comforts you. But it doesn’t comfort those of us who are in danger from Radical Fundamentalists.

Photo Credit: “The force be with you” controltheweb

2008 handsome priests calendar – Calendario Romano

Not just for kids any more – now you too can have your own hunky priest… calendar.

Piero Pazzi’s Calendario Romano features handsome Roman priests and beautiful Vatican churches. The calendar helps raise funds for London HIV charity The Food Chain.

Police expect no charges in youth group diaper skit

According to the article above, the Christian youth organization Young Life promotes paraphilias as an “icebreaker” at teen gatherings.

A skit at a local Christian youth group meeting had teenage boys taking off some of their clothes, wearing adult diapers, bibs and bonnets and being spoon-fed by girls as they sat in their laps.

I can’t imagine what was going through the boys’ minds during the skit, but I have a pretty good idea what was going on in the diapers. The adult group leader can’t possibly see the Young Life diaper skits as doing anything but corrupting the morals of the good Christian children in their charge.

Acccording to this article on the FBI web page, many pedophiles are “persons in positions of trust or which provide them ready access to children such as youth ministers, camp counselors, public servants and employees of law enforcement agencies.”

One can only hope that the other parents are as upset by this as Ms. Metz is. I would want the group leader’s head on a platter.

By way of SLOG.

Technorati: Young+Life paraphilia adult+diapers scat Christian religion

Belief-O-Matic — A personality quiz about your religious and spiritual beliefs

Your Results:

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our message boards.

1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. Taoism (98%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (92%)
4. New Age (92%)
5. Mahayana Buddhism (89%)
6. Liberal Quakers (85%)
7. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (81%)
8. Scientology (78%)
9. New Thought (75%)
10. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
11. Hinduism (69%)
12. Theravada Buddhism (65%)
13. Sikhism (64%)
14. Bahá’í Faith (62%)
15. Jainism (59%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (43%)
17. Secular Humanism (43%)
18. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (32%)
19. Reform Judaism (32%)
20. Nontheist (21%)
21. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (21%)
22. Orthodox Judaism (18%)
23. Jehovah’s Witness (18%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (14%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (9%)
26. Islam (9%)
27. Roman Catholic (9%)

Technorati: religion faith spirituality beliefs Neo-Pagan New+Age

The anthropological literature has whole books on how different cultures view mental illness. A bipolar makes a perfect shaman, because unmedicated we tend to have periods of remission between any episodes of talking to Dog.
How we perceive our own level of functioning is an important part of the diagnostic criteria. I quote from pendulum.org:

The symptoms are a cause of great distress or difficulty in functioning at home, work, or other important areas.

It seems fairly obvious that if your job function is to have psychotic episodes, then the symptoms aren’t going to create difficulties at work.
I completely agree that many of the prophets and Christian Mystics were mentally ill. I believe that they were putting forth Truths that were only available to a shattered mind, a mind that has no stake in the status quo. This is the meaning of “thinking out of the box”.
We are stigmatizing mental illness in ways that go far beyond any distress or difficulty in functioning that we experience.

Well, the news is full of fun stuff today. The press could do so much good if they directed their energy into improving the world.
Man faints, dies after seeing epidural. Ok, I can almost see this. The needle is three inches long and marked in stripes to indicate depth of penetration. It looks kind of like a skeeter’s tweeter.
US reporter jailed in CIA trial. This one is tricky. Background: Joseph Wilson was confronting Dubya over the questionable evidence he had presented to justify the rape of Iraq. To retaliate, someone told a NY Times reporter that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. Nobody knows how many people have died because she was outed – she was in a sensitive overseas post. Furthermore, the reporter who is being jailed, Judith Miller, doesn’t even know who the leak was! The issue here is whether the press has the right to keep sources confidential.
G8 calls for new climate dialogue. There are only 5 people left in the world who don’t accept the awful fact of global warming. All of them are in the White House.
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Christian Doc Speculates Why Americans Rank #1 in Mental Illness. Have you talked to God today, Ma’am? He can save your sanity.
Drug Kingpin investigated for “doctor shopping”.
Ah, here we go… Mars picture of the day.
Soccer moms on dope. “We don’t see families torn apart. We don’t see the violence. We don’t see the robberies and the burglaries,” he said. “Meth is definitely worse on society than ( marijuana ).” Huh?
Ever wonder why we went after Iraq when so many of the 9-11 highjackers were Saudis? Here’s a profile of the gentleman that Dubya knows as Uncle Bandar.
Armor Plate your iPod. Clever devils, those Japanese.
This one’s from MemeMachineGo! It’s about the recent eminent domain decision by the Supreme Court. The one that allows your town to bulldoze your home if they can increase their tax revenue by giving the land to someone else.

Technorati: Joseph+Wilson Dubya Iraq Valerie+Plame Judith+Miller Mental+Illness Uncle+Bandar eminent+domain