RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ENDS IN AMERICA
UNDER FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS

It’s not just George Bush who is a blooming tyrant and who doesn’t understand how America works when it comes to religion. These Xtian guys are very scary. The following snippet is from a Washington Post article:

[SNIP]
The spiritual ministry department of the National Institutes of Health, which serves patients being treated in the nation's premier research hospital, is in disarray and battling a lawsuit and discrimination complaints that allege bias against Jewish and Catholic chaplains.

In February, a federal panel ordered the hospital to reinstate a Catholic priest who was wrongfully fired in 2004. In January, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had found that he was the target of "discriminatory and retaliatory animus." Three other former chaplains have said that they also were wrongfully terminated.

They have accused O. Ray Fitzgerald, a Methodist minister and the former head of the spiritual ministry department, of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. They say that NIH retaliated against them when they spoke up and invented reasons for terminating them.
[PASTE]

Don’t you agree that chaplaincy programs have no place in public institutions? If Christian lunatics want to do that sort of stuff in their own churches, that’s one thing, but to be discriminatory with my tax dollars. . . ? That will never do. Sometimes I wonder if enough fair-minded and informed Americans still exist to defend America's separation of Church and State which these Bushies, tyrants all, are trying to destroy?

I GUESS PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE ISN’T A NEW CONCEPT

“Henry Ford, it is said, commissioned a survey of the car scrap yards of America to find out if there were parts of the Model T Ford which never failed. His inspectors came back with reports of almost every kind of breakdown: axles, brakes, pistons—all were liable to go wrong. But they drew attention to one notable exception, the king pins of the scrapped cars invariably had years of life left in them. With ruthless logic Ford concluded that the kingpins on the Model T were too good for their job and ordered that in future they should be made to an inferior specification.”
—N. K. HUMPHREY

WHERE I DRINK COFFEE NOW

The two photos are of coffee drinking places which I frequent currently—Starbuck's and Mon Ami. They are a few blocks from each other on Main Street in Vancouver, in a district that reminds me of the Garland District in Spokane. It’s called Uptown Village. I just finished Holy Blood, Holy Grail and am commencing Dancing Wu Li Masters. It’s a darn good read. Also still doing algebra problems to keep the logical parts of my brain from rusting.

A WEDDING NIGHT FOR MAGDALEN, EH?

More from the book pictured below to wet your whistle with:

[SNIP]
Is there any evidence in the Gospels, direct or indirect, to suggest 
that Jesus was indeed married? There is, of course, no explicit statement to the effect that he was.
 On the other hand, there is no explicit statement to the effect that he
 was not—and this is both more curious and more significant than it might at first appear. As Dr. Geza Vermes of Oxford University points out, “There is complete silence in the Gospels concerning the
 marital status of Jesus. . . Such a state of affairs is sufficiently
 unusual in ancient Jewry to prompt further enquiry.”

The Gospels state that many of the disciples—Peter, for example—were married. And at no point does Jesus himself advocate celibacy, 
On the contrary, in the Gospel of Matthew he declares, "Have you
 not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female. . . For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?" (19:4-5) Such a statement can hardly be reconciled with an injunction to celibacy. And if Jesus did not preach celibacy, there is no 
reason to suppose that he practiced it. According to Judaic custom at the time it was not only usual, but almost mandatory, that a man be
 married. Except among certain Essenes in certain communities,
 celibacy was vigorously condemned. During the late first century one 
Jewish writer even compared deliberate celibacy with murder, and he does not seem to have been alone in this attitude. And it was as obligatory for a Jewish father to find a wife for his son as it was to ensure that his son be circumcised. [May I point out that Jesus may have been an Essene?]

If Jesus was not married, this fact would have been glaringly conspicuous. It would have drawn attention to itself and been used to characterize and identify him. It would have set him apart, in some significant sense, from his contemporaries. If this were the case surely at least one of the Gospel accounts would make some mention of so marked a deviation from custom? If Jesus were indeed as celibate as later tradition claims, it is extraordinary that there is no reference to any such celibacy. The absence of any such reference strongly suggests that Jesus, as far as the question of celibacy was concerned, conformed to the conventions of his time and culture—suggests, in short, that he was married. This alone would satisfactorily explain the silence of the Gospels on the matter. The argument is summarized by a respected contemporary theological scholar:

Granted the cultural background as witnessed. . . it is highly improbable that Jesus was not married well before the beginning of his public ministry. If he had insisted upon celibacy, it would have created a stir, a reaction which would have left some trace. So, the lack of mention of Jesus' marriage in the Gospels is a strong argument not against but for the hypothesis
 of marriage, because any practice or advocacy of voluntary celibacy would in the Jewish context of the time have been so 
unusual as to have attracted much attention and comment.

The hypothesis of marriage becomes all the more tenable by virtue of the title of "Rabbi," which is frequently applied to Jesus in the Gospels. It is possible, of course, that this term is employed in its very broadest sense, meaning simply a self-appointed teacher. But Jesus' literacy—his display of knowledge to the elders in the temple, for example—strongly suggests that he was more than a self-appointed teacher. It suggests that he underwent some species of formal rabbinical training and was officially recognized as a rabbi. This would conform to tradition, which depicts Jesus as a rabbi in the strict sense of the word. But if Jesus was a rabbi in the strict sense of the word, a marriage would not only have been likely, but virtually certain. The Jewish Mishnaic Law is quite explicit on the subject. "An unmarried man may not be a teacher.”

In the Fourth Gospel, there is an episode relating to a marriage that may, in fact, have been Jesus' own. This episode is, of course, the wedding at Cana—a familiar enough story. But for all its familiarity, there are certain salient questions attending it that warrant consideration. From the account in the Fourth Gospel the wedding at Cana would seem to be a modest local ceremony—a typical village wedding whose bride and groom remain anonymous. To this wedding Jesus is specifically "called"—which is slightly curious, perhaps, for he has not yet really embarked on his ministry. More curious still, however, is the fact that his mother "just happens," as it were, to be present. And her presence would seem to be taken for granted. It is certainly not in any way explained.

What is more, it is Mary who not merely suggests to her son, but in effect orders him, to replenish the wine. She behaves quite as if she were the hostess. "And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." (John 2:3-4) But Mary, thoroughly unperturbed, ignores her son's protest. "His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." (5) And the servants promptly comply—quite as if they were accustomed to receiving orders from both Mary and Jesus.

Despite Jesus' ostensible attempt to disown her, Mary prevails; and Jesus thereupon performs his first major miracle, the transmutation of water into wine. So far as the Gospels are concerned, he has not hitherto displayed his powers, and there is no reason for Mary to assume he even possesses them. But even if there were, why should such unique and holy gifts be employed for so banal a purpose? Why should Mary make such a request of her son? More important still, why should two "guests" at a wedding take on themselves the responsibility of catering—a responsibility that, by custom, should be reserved for the host? Unless, of course, the wedding at Cana is Jesus' own wedding. In that case it would indeed be his responsibility to replenish the wine.

There is further evidence that the wedding at Cana is in fact Jesus' own. Immediately after the miracle has been performed the "governor of the feast”—a kind of major-domo or master of ceremonies—tastes the newly produced wine. "The governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now." (John 2:9-10. Our italics. [My colors.]) These words would clearly seem to be addressed to Jesus. According to the Gospel, however, they are addressed to the "bridegroom." An obvious conclusion is that Jesus and the "bridegroom" are one and the same.
[PASTE]

WHICH JESUS LIVED WHERE, DIED WHEN, FATHERED WHO?

It’s in the book pictured on pages 317-18:

“So far as popular tradition is concerned, the origin and birth of Jesus are well enough known. But in reality the Gospels, on which that tradition is based, are considerably more vague on the matter. 
Only two of the Gospels—Matthew and Luke—say anything at all about Jesus' origins and birth; and they are flagrantly at odds with each other. According to Matthew, for example, Jesus was an aristocrat, if not a rightful and legitimate king—descended from David via Solomon. According to Luke, on the other hand, Jesus' family, though descended from the house of David, was of somewhat less exalted stock; and it is on the basis of Mark's account that the legend of the "poor carpenter" came into being. The two genealogies, in short, are so strikingly discordant that they might well be referring to two quite different individuals.

“The discrepancies between the Gospels are not confined to the question of Jesus' ancestry and genealogy. According to Luke, 
Jesus, on his birth, was visited by shepherds. According to Matthew he was visited by kings. According to Luke, Jesus' family lived in Nazareth. From here they are said to have journeyed—for a census that history suggests never in fact occurred—to Bethlehem, where
Jesus was born in the poverty of a manger. But according to 
Matthew, Jesus' family had been fairly well-to-do residents of Bethlehem all along, and Jesus himself was born in a house. In Mathew's version Herod's persecution of the innocents prompts the family to flee into Egypt, and only on their return do they make their 
home in Nazareth.

“The information in each of these accounts is quite specific and—assuming the census did occur—perfectly plausible. And yet the 
information itself simply does not agree. This contradiction cannot be rationalized. There is no possible means whereby the two conflicting narratives can both be correct, and there is no means whereby they can be reconciled. Whether one cares to admit it or not, the fact must be recognized that one or both of the Gospels are wrong. In the face of so glaring and inevitable a conclusion, the Gospels cannot be regarded as unimpugnable. How can they be unimpugnable when they impugn each other?

“The more one studies the Gospels, the more the contradictions 
between them become apparent. Indeed, they do not even agree on the day of the Crucifixion. According to John's Gospel the Crucifixion occurred on the day before the Passover. According to the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and Matthew, it occurred on the day after. Nor are 
the Gospels in accord on the personality and character of Jesus. 
Each depicts a figure who is patently at odds with the figure depicted
 in the others—a meek, lamblike Savior in Luke, for example, a 
powerful and majestic sovereign in Matthew who comes "not to
bring peace but a sword." And there is further disagreement about
 Jesus' last words on the cross. In Matthew and Mark these words
 are, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In Luke they 
are, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." And in John 
they are simply, "It is finished."

“Given these discrepancies, the Gospels can only be accepted as a
 highly questionable authority, and certainly not as definitive.”

DUMB, LIKE A FOX . . .
VIEWER

Fox Republican Network does an excellent job of disinforming its viewers.

[SNIP]
A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans' knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little. . . .

Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot—with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind. Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers. Find it at.
[PASTE]

The photo is from my last meeting of the Inland Northwest Freethought Society in Spokane. The figure in the background with the tremendous white aura around his head is myself.

THE TRUTH MIGHT SET THEM FREE….

[SNIP]
Rey's research was typical of a new form of historical scholarship appearing in Europe at the time, most prominently in Germany,
which constituted an extremely serious threat to the Church. The 
dissemination of Darwinian thought and agnosticism had already produced a "crisis of faith" in the late nineteenth century, and the 
new scholarship magnified the crisis. In the past historical research 
had been, for the most part, an unreliable affair, resting on highly tenuous foundations—on legend and tradition, on personal memoirs, on exaggerations promulgated for the sake of one or another cause.

Only in the nineteenth century did German scholars begin introducing the rigorous, meticulous techniques that are now accepted as 
commonplace, the stock in trade of any responsible historian. Such 
preoccupation with critical examination, with investigation of firsthand sources, with cross-references and exact chronology established the conventional stereotype of the Teutonic pedant. But if German writers of the period tended to lose themselves in minutiae, they also 
provided a solid basis for inquiry. And for a number of major archaeological discoveries as well. The most famous example, of course, is Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of the site of Troy.

It was only a matter of time before the techniques of German scholarship were applied, with similar diligence, to the Bible. And 
the Church, which rested on unquestioning acceptance of dogma, was well aware that the Bible itself could not withstand such critical scrutiny. In his best-selling and highly controversial Life of Jesus, Ernest Renan had already applied German methodology to the New Testament, and the results, for Rome, were extremely embarrassing.

The Catholic Modernist Movement arose initially as a response to this new challenge. Its original objective was to produce a generation of ecclesiastical experts trained in the German tradition, who could defend the literal truth of Scripture with all the heavy ordnance of critical scholarship. As it transpired, however, the plan backfired. The more the Church sought to equip its younger clerics with the tools for combat in the modern polemical world, the more those 
same clerics began to desert the cause for which they had been recruited. Critical examination of the Bible revealed a multitude of inconsistencies, discrepancies, and implications that were positively inimical to Roman dogma. And by the end of the century the Modernists were no longer the elite shock troops the Church had hoped they would be, but defectors and incipient heretics. Indeed, they posed the most serious threat the Church had experienced since Martin Luther had brought the entire edifice of Catholicism to the brink of a schism unparalleled for centuries.

The hotbed for Modernist activity—as it had been for the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement—was Saint Sulpice in Paris. Indeed, one of the 
most resonant voices in the Modernist movement was the man who was director of the Seminary of Saint Sulpice from 1852 to 1884. 
From Saint Sulpice Modernist attitudes spread rapidly to the rest of France and to Italy and Spain. According to these attitudes biblical texts were not unimpugnably authoritative, but had to be understood
in the specific context of their time. And the Modernists also rebelled against the increasing centralization of ecclesiastical power—especially the recently instituted doctrine of papal infallibility, which ran flagrantly counter to the new trend. Before long Modernist attitudes were being disseminated not only by intellectual clerics but by distinguished and influential writers as well. Figures like 
Roger Martin du Gard in France and Miguel de Unamuno in Spain were among the primary spokesmen for Modernism. (from the book pictured, pp.188-89)
[PASTE]

I own a dog-eared and beat up copy of the Dartmouth Bible that I use when I want to find something in a Bible that I can trust. A literate man, reading the Dartmouth Bible, can recognize the scholarship at work which began in the 19th Century with the German scholarship mentioned in the passages above. Of course not all scholarship is scholarship. Many fundamentalist Bible defenders also pretend to scholarship, but any literate person can recognize false scholarship when he sees it. When the “scholar” always refers to the “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” whenever he mentions Jesus, that scholar is no scholar. The writer’s bias is obvious to anyone with the least bit of objectivity when it comes to Bible matters. Sad to say that too many average fundamentalists cannot recognize false scholarship when they see it because, frankly, few of them can pretend to any training in logic or scholarship or empirical methodology.

I still recall several debates with a young, not unintelligent, Christian fundamentalist who worked with me at Mackay Manufacturing. Time and again, he ran off to get a book of supposed scholarship that claimed to refute every attack on Bible inerrancy. I’d read the passages he brought to me to disprove my attacks on his beloved book of mythology. Before me was a work of polemic without the least pretense of objectivity. My heart sank because I knew that this young man was incapable of discerning Bible falsehoods when he saw them because his falsehoods were supported by a book of fake scholarship which he couldn’t see through either. I soon quit debating him. His ignorance was foolproof and buttressed with lies he could not fathom.

The forgoing, by the way, does not claim that all fundamentalists are mental defectives, but they are ignorant. The lie keeps them in the lie and all approaches to the truth have been blocked out from them since most of them were tiny tots. Fear holds them in their ignorance and the light of scholarship does not shine into their caves. If just once a ray of shining scholarship could enlighten their minds, they would not be able to turn back to the darkness of the superstitions that bind them.

BIG NEWS IN EVOLUTION

Creationists, get your rain gear on. Climb into your arks. You’re about to suffer a real flood of Cosmotic truth that’ll drown all your fruitless denials of natural selection. But who’ll be your Noah this time now that we know that Noah is a mythological account of the creation of species?

For a long time, now, creationists have loved to claim that no one can prove that major species have evolved from one to another, but now, science can show that birds evolved from dinosaurs. As the story below shows, that hypothesis has now become a theory, a major step toward the claim becoming a FACT!

The one thing I’m ashamed of is that I forgot to detail for myself and you readers just where I got this story from. This morning, I saw it in a hard copy of the Oregonian. I’m sure I also saw the news in The Columbian yesterday, but I took this story from the Internet. Maybe I got it from an AP release. I apologize for my blunder here.

[SNIP]
WASHINGTON - Researchers have decoded proteins from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, the oldest such material ever found. The unprecedented step, once thought impossible, adds new weight to the idea that today's birds are descendants of the mighty dinosaurs.

"The door just opens up to a whole avenue of research that involves anything extinct," said Matthew T. Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

While dinosaur bones have long been studied, "it's always been assumed that preservation does not extend to the cellular or molecular level," said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University.

It had been thought that some proteins could last a million years or more, but not to the age of the dinosaurs, she said.

So, when she was able to recover soft tissue from a T. rex bone found in Montana in 2003 she was surprised, Schweitzer said.

And now, researchers led by John M. Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have been able to analyze proteins from that bone.

The genetic code that directs the development of living things is the DNA, but that is more fragile and they didn't find that.

"But proteins are coded from the DNA, they're kind of like first cousins," Schweitzer said
What Asara's team found was collagen, a type of fibrous connective tissue that is a major component of bone. And the closest match in creatures alive today was collagen from chicken bones.

Schweitzer and Asara report their findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that's all based on the architecture of the bones," said Asara. "This allows you to get the chance to say, 'Wait, they really are related because their sequences are related.' We didn't get enough sequences to definitively say that, but what sequences we got support that idea."

"The fact that we are getting proteins is very, very exciting," said John Horner of Montana State University and the Museum of the Rockies.

And, he added, it "changes the idea that birds and dinosaurs are related from a hypothesis to a theory."

To scientists that's a big deal.

In science, a hypothesis is an idea about something that seems probable, while a theory has been tested and is supported by evidence. Previously, the bird-dinosaur relationship was based on similarities in the shape of bones, now there is solid evidence of a relationship at the molecular level.

Horner, who found the bones studied by Schweitzer and Asara, said this is going to change the way paleontologists go about collecting specimens — they will now be looking for the best preserved items, often buried in sand or sandstone sediments.

This summer, he said, his museum is organizing nine different field crews involving more than 100 people to search for fossils in Montana and Mongolia.

Asara explained that he was working on a very refined form of mass spectrometry to help detect peptides — fragments of proteins — in tumors as part of cancer research.

In refining the technique, he had previously studied proteins from a mastodon, and when he heard of Schweitzer's finding soft tissues in a T. rex bone he decided to see if he could detect proteins there also.

He was able to identify seven different dinosaur proteins from the bone and compared them with proteins from living species. Three matched chickens, two matched several species including chickens, one matched a protein from a newt and the other from a frog.
Co-author Lewis Cantley of Harvard Medical School noted that this work is in its infancy, and when it is improved he expects to be able to isolate more proteins and seek more matches.

"Knowing how evolution occurred and how species evolved is a central question," Cantley said.

The Smithsonian's Carrano, who was not part of the research teams, said the report is an important confirmation of Schweitzer's techniques and shows that "the possibility of preservation is more than we had expected, and we can expect to see more in the future."
Matt Lamanna, a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, called the finding "another piece in the puzzle that shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs are related to birds." Lamanna was not part of the research team.

So, does all this mean that a T. rex would have tasted like chicken? The researchers admit, they don't know.

Both research teams were supported by the National Science Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. Schweitzer had additional support from

NASA and Asara had added support from the Paul F. Glenn Foundation.
[PASTE]

SOME BITS TO RAWLY FOR ME DONE TASTE

The photos are the result of yet another rainy day drive I took, this time along the Washougal River on the Washougal River Road until I dead-ended at Dugan Falls and took these pictures. The drive was nice enough and soothed my mind, but but but but. . . . But now I'm reading The Whirling Wu Li Masters (physics, specifically quantum mechanics) and have also in hand Holy Blood Holy Grail (history) out of the library (my first book checked from the Vancouver Public Library) and behind those two, not counting the 50 books I still have to read that I bought while working at the Friend's bookstore in Spokane, is Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens, another book about the brain and consciousness. What is it after all? So my blood is beginning to warm up a bit and maybe I will survive the disempowerment that moving to the Coast has shocked my consciousness with.

ANTI-AMERICAN RELIGIONS
THIS PASSED THROUGH MY EMAIL

The following arrived in my email sometime back. Please read through the entire piece. At first, it sounds rather anti-Moslem, but, later, it grows to be so much more.

[SNIP]
This little ditty just showed up in my inbox. Below
it, I rearranged it just a bit; OK, a lot. While the
original shows an abject ignorance in all the areas it
pretends to address and is highly fallacious, it
nevertheless lowers the bar of understanding.

*****************************

Have you ever thought -- Can a devout Muslim be an
American patriot and a loyal citizen? Is Muslim
American really an oxymoron? Consider this:

Theologically, no. Because his allegiance is to Allah,
the moon god of Arabia.

Religiously, no. Because no other religion is accepted
by his Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256)

Scripturally, no. Because his allegiance is to the
five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran).

Geographically, no. Because his allegiance is to
Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

Socially, no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids
him to make friends with Christians or Jews.

Politically, no. Because he must submit to the mullah
(spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel
and destruction of America, the great Satan.

Domestically, no, because he is instructed to marry
four women and beat and scourge his wife when she
disobeys him (Quran 4:34).

Intellectually, no, because he cannot accept the
American Constitution since it is based on Biblical
principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.

Philosophically, no, because Islam, Muhammad, and the
Quran do not allow freedom of religion and expression.
Democracy and Islam cannot co - exist. Every Muslim
government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

Spiritually, no, because when we declare "one nation
under God," the Christian's God is loving and kind,
while Allah is NEVER referred to as heavenly father,
nor is he ever called love in the Quran's 99 excellent
names.

Therefore after much study and deliberation....
perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in
this country.

They obviously cannot be both "good" Muslims and good
Americans. Call it what you wish...it's still the
truth.

If you find yourself intellectually in agreement with
the above statements, perhaps you will share this with
your friends. The more who understand this, the better
it will be for our country and our future.

Pass it on Fellow Americans...... The religious war is
bigger than we know.

**************************************************

HILL'S Version:

Have you ever thought—Can a devout Christian be an
American patriot and a loyal citizen? Is
Christian-American really an oxymoron? Consider this:

Theologically, no. Because his allegiance is to
Yehweh, the tribal god of the ancient Hebrews, or
Jesus a Jewish prophet from the middle east (the
Bible).

Religiously, no. Because no other religion is accepted
by God (the Bible).

Scripturally, no. Because his allegiance is to the Ten
Commandments of Moses and the Bible.

Geographically, no. Because his allegiance is
ultimately to Jerusalem or Rome, to which they pray.

Socially, no. Because his allegiance to Christ forbids
him to make friends with those of other religions,
(Lev.24:14) or even other Christian Denominations. It
instructs him to kill those who will not follow Jesus
(Luke 19:27).

Politically, no. Because he must submit to the
Christian spiritual leaders, whom teach annihilation
of other religions and the destruction of Islamic
nations which represent the great apocalypse and end
times.

Domestically, no, because he is instructed to hate his
family (Luke 14:26), sell his daughters into slavery
(Exodus 21:7), and stone his unruly sons (Deut 29:20).

Intellectually, no, because he cannot accept the
American Constitution since it is based on secular
principles and believes the Bible to be inerrant.

Philosophically, no, because Christianity, Jesus,
Moses and the Bible do not allow freedom of religion
and expression. Democracy and Christianity cannot
coexist. Every Christian government (one that has
actually declared itself a "Christian" nation) is
either dictatorial or autocratic, i.e. Vatican City.

Spiritually, no, because when we declare "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of
Religion, we grant every citizen the right to believe
what their conscience dictates and the freedom of
religion as well as from religion.

Therefore after much study and deliberation....
perhaps we should be very suspicious of Christians in
this country. They obviously cannot be both "good"
Christians and good Americans.

Call it what you wish...it's still the truth. If you
find yourself intellectually in agreement with the
above statements, perhaps you will share this with
your friends. The more who understand this, the better
it will be for our country and our future.

Pass it on Fellow Americans...... The religious war is
bigger than we know.

J.E. Hill
[PASTE]

I AIN'T GOT MUCH TO SAY

In the first place, I was surprised to find that all the blog entries that I used to have worked up ahead have all been used up. So I hope I can get the ambition to work a little ahead again. So I'll fall back on yesterday. . . . I do just gotta go back to Monday's entry and the comment of anonymous. He seemed quite upset that I agreed with Zach and wrote an entertaining scenario of the Lord helping Zach win the Master's Championship. After all, I agreed with Zach and claimed I also saw Jesus helping Zach win the tournament. So why would any good Christian get upset with that? Is it because I added human details, thus humanizing the figure of Jesus who, when he was walking around Earth, according to the mythology, was human when he was doing his walkabout? I didn't think that was so bad, but, something else occurs to me.

If Christians don't want us realists making fun of their hypothetical superbeings why do they make ridiculous public claims, like Zack Johnson did, about their hypothetical superbeing winning athletic contests for them, picking favorites from among many Christians, and making these claims with absolutely no proof for them? Don't make silly public claims and rational, reasonable, logical sane humans won't point out the silliness of the claims, but if you want to make silly claims, then expect responses. Otherwise, keep them to yourself. What more can I say?


I'm also including a couple more photos from around these parts as you can see.

ZACH JOHNSON AND JESUS

Well, I finally must admit I did see what a Christian saw at the Master’s Tournament in Augusta. Zach Johnson claimed that he owed his Master’s victory to the presence of Jesus all around him on Easter Sunday where, against all Bible warnings, Zach failed to keep the Sabbath Holy and worked at his trade. Why Jesus helped Zach win, I have no idea, but there Jesus was, helping Zach in so many ways. I personally witnessed Jesus reach out and tip the backswing of one of Tiger’s tee shots. Jesus also kicked sand in the face of Phil Michelson during another bad moment in the tournament for that past master. In a third case, I saw the Lord move the lie of Stuart Appleby. At another point, I cleary heard him hurling imprecations against Vijay Singh just as he started a putt. In fact, I saw Jesus everywhere, tipping the scales in Zach’s favor, with his swarthy skin and filthy loincloth, his bow legs and the tip of his enormous you-know-what hanging below the lower folds of his loincloth. I even witnessed the young but filthy god taking a leak behind a magnolia tree, which was okay, but when he squatted in a sandtrap on the 15th hole to relieve himself, I thought that was a little vulgar, but, then, Jesus probably doesn’t understand Master’s Tournament etiquette very well. I believe all of you who watched the Master’s must have witnessed many similar things from the Lord, for, of course, if none of us did witness his favoritism to Zach Johnson and his prejudice toward all the others, then, of course, this Jesus presence must have been an aberration on Zach Johnson’s part, the same sort of aberration one hears in the speech of mental patients usually locked up in institutions or at least heavily sedated with drugs. I do apologize to any honest schizophrenic if I have insulted you by comparing you to Zach Johnson.

WHY REPUBLICAN FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE SO ANGRY

[SNIP]
By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
posted: 01 April 2007

(HealthDay News) — While most people are upset or concerned when someone gives them an angry look, there are others—with high levels of testosterone—who actually enjoy angry expressions and seek ways to provoke them, new research suggests.

"It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for," study co-author Oliver Schultheiss, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, said in a prepared statement.

He said the findings may help explain why some people are so fond of teasing.

"Perhaps teasers are reinforced by that fleeting 'annoyed look' on someone else's face and therefore will continue to heckle that person to get that look again and again. As long as it does not stay there for long, it's not perceived as a threat but as a reward," Schultheiss said.
He and lead author Michelle Wirth measured testosterone levels in volunteers and then had them do a computer task in which certain complex keyboard sequences triggered different images on the computer screen—an angry face, a neutral face, or no face.

Males and females with higher testosterone levels than other members of the same sex learned the angry face sequence better than the other sequences. This did not happen among volunteers with lower testosterone levels.

The association between higher testosterone levels and better learning of the angry face keyboard sequence was strongest when angry faces flashed on the computer screen subliminally—too fast for conscious identification.

"Better learning of a task associated with anger faces indicates that the anger faces were rewarding, as in a rat that learns to press a lever in order to receive a tasty treat. In that sense, anger faces seemed to be rewarding for high-testosterone people but aversive for low-testosterone people," Wirth said in a prepared statement.
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This study was published in the journal Physiology and Behavior.

SOMETIMES A GREAT (BIG BABY) NOTION

Some days when some little problem has got me down and has me in a leg lock and is pushing my face into the dirt, I wish there was a big, tall woman in my kitchen, baking cakes, while I sit cross-legged on the living room rug, playing with my red, green and yellow blocks.

BUSH—A PIMPLE ON CHURCHILL'S ASS

The following excerpt is from Salon | by Sidney Blumenthal | March 8, 2007 at 11:32 AM:

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President Bush held one of his private book club sessions that Karl Rove organizes for him at the White House. Rove picks the book, invites the author and a few neoconservative intellectual luminaries, and conducts the discussions. For this Bush book club meeting, the guest was Andrew Roberts, an English conservative historian and columnist and the author of "The Churchillians" and, most recently, "A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900."

The subject of Winston Churchill inspired Bush's self-reflection. The president confided to Roberts that he believes he has an advantage over Churchill, a reliable source with access to the conversation told me. He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill. Bush said he doesn't worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.
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The only advantage that Bush seems to have over Churchill is in Bush’s endless arrogance, lack of concern for the suffering of the troops over whom he holds sway like a petty god, and no humbling and humanizing awareness of what an ugly pompous ignoramus he truly is, whereas Churchill was a truly humble man with all the normal doubts that any idiot knows he ought to have—specially if that human were a Christian, but, then, Bush isn’t a Christian—he’s an Old Testament fundamentalist tyrant. No, he's not even that. To compare him to an Old Testament tyrant is like comparing an ant turd to the defunct planet of Pluto. Imagine—this man admits that he doesn't care at all what his emplyees, us, think of his performance. Bush maintains, by definition, a tyrant's attitude toward his subjects.

YESTERDAY WAS A FINE DAY

Yesterday morning I went out early in the morning and drove down to the Columbia River waterfront of my new hometown of Vancouver. It was a fine morning, and for a few minutes, at least, I forgot all the sadness I’m still dealing with since leaving all my friends in Spokane. This will be a good place to go to for a short trip to peace. Now, if I can only find an espresso joint on the water where I can do algebra problems after class. Here’s a few pictures of the walk.

That's the I5 bridge in the background.

This is looking up from a very small beach area back to the main walking path.

This is looking East, toward the rising sun along the wide, concrete walking path.
Ahead would be a lot of very expensive condominiums. To the right is the Columbia River.