A FEW MORMONS LEARN WHAT ALL FAITHS NEED TO KNOW

studying fossil evidence through a Bible

Some Mormons have found internet evidence that many of their beliefs are doubtful, but any rational examination of any faith would lead a rational human animal to conclude that all religions serve human emotional needs, and that none of the evidence for supernatural activities has any testable evidence to support it. These conclusions are so obvious one must be blinded by fear or religious books (like, for example, the Koran) not to have arrived at them and found them to be true. 'Nough said.

REPUBLICAN, LIBERTARIAN, PROGRESSIVE.

We are fighting wars and not increasing taxes to finance them. Thus we finance our wars on the backs of the poorest Americans and by letting America's infrastructure rot, and by depriving children of inexpensive college educations through which they can compete with the children of the wealthy in our free market economy. 

Republican Eisenhower held the lowest tax rate at 19% until the 2nd World War and the Marshall Plan were paid for. Deficits can be met by increasing revenue as well as by slashing social programs and privatizing everything and letting corporations own all of America. Corporations aren't good citizens. Corporations gave us Enron, our Great Depression, the recent Great Recession, the dot.com bubble, the penny stock fiasco and the Savings and Loan crash. We taxpayers underfund education and social programs to bail corporations out of the messes they make of our economy. If we didn't have to keep bailing out business and financial corporations, we'd have money to maintain our social programs, our infrastructure and our educational systems.

We Americans must stop blaming politicians for our personal poor budgeting that has made us live beyond our means so that we are not willing or unable to meet our responsibilities to the poor, to our children and to our infrastructure. Bitching about taxes plays into the Republican plan to undermine and weaken government so that deregulated businesses can repeatedly rip us off and, then, blame government for what business has done to the American economy. It's the Republican strategy. When a Republican says that "government is the problem, not the solution", he's misrepresenting the facts.

Libertarians would turn everything over to businesses and, thus, they also will give us more of the same unregulated free market scams that have ruined the American economy time after time. They are Republicans in disguise, but they've sure got the pot smokers behind them. I'm beginning to think of myself as a Progressive. We might become as happy as the Danes under Progressive leadership, but Americans have been brainwashed by the idea of personal freedom to the point they can't see themselves as one among many in a nation of millions. Pride is our weakness. We like the idea of the dog eat dog struggle that is capitalism, no matter how unhappy it is making us.

DETROIT BANKRUPT FINANCIALLY AND AMERICA MORALLY

When I read today that DETROIT has filed for bankruptcy, I was moved emotionally in ways I was surprised to understand and wrote the short piece I've linked to above. Then I realized that all human animals with their complex consciousnesses experience these feelings if they live long enough. Nothing special, I guess, but if you're the animal feeling that feeling, the experience seems to be unique and quite original. If this is how all older citizens feel who've witnessed much change in their culture during a long lifetime, I guess I'm okay with how I feel because I'm experiencing a piece of the universal pattern of all human lives in these days, full of fast-paced change, more change than one human animal can take in and keep up with at the same time. 

The photo above is from a Time Magazine photo essay, revealing Detroit's decline. It's specially ironic to me to see that news magazines like Time are also in decline. Decline within decline. 

Excuse me a moment, please, while I sit down on this curbstone beside the street and remember the rag man's horse drawn cart, clopping down my grandmother's street in Dayton, Ohio where I was raised as a child and, also, the ice man toting in a huge block of ice on his shoulder to put in the top of my grandmother's brand new ice box. 

TRAYVON, THE REAL SCENARIO

Scenario at 2:30 am:

I'm in a strange town, visiting. I don't know anybody in the town except my Dad, and I'm walking home to my Dad's house down a strange street in this strange town when some crazy guy comes after me and shows me a gun in his pants belt and seems to be inappropriately crazy-acting angry. I've got three choices...fight or flight or freeze. 

If I freeze the dude could easily shoot me. If I run he might shoot me in the back. I know the dude must be crazy to be confronting me when all I'm doing is walking home. Paranoid crazy people do that sometimes, attack others for no sensible reason. So, my only choice, faced with this armed madman, is attack so fast that he doesn't have time to pull his weapon and quickly do enough damage to the dude so that he won't be able to pull his gun and kill me. That's what any sensible male, acting on instinct, would do when confronted by what seems to be an armed maniac in a strange town.

The only error I make is I don't beat the guy senseless. I let up a minute because I'm a human being, and I don't like to kill people. That's my mistake...I don't knock the guy completely unconscious, so, because I'm a human being with a conscience, I'm dead, and a shyster lawyer makes sure that the paranoid racist, nut job gets off by making sure that nobody gets a chance to really understand the dynamics of the situation. The prosecutor began by reading the very clear racist remarks of that nut job when he reported "suspicious" [walking down the street?] behavior. Zimmerman made clearly racist comments at the time. What he committed was a clear hate attack that he instigated, and only in the deep South would he get away with it. We all know that, anybody my age of 75 with a bit of brain in his head knows it, anybody who saw McCain defeated by the race card in South Carolina during his first run at the presidency knows it...the South is full of prejudice. Hell...it's the whole reason the South went from Democrat to Republican after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Now...will I be able to sleep?

BLACK COLLAR CRIME: SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT

This was first posted in April 2006:

If you're lucky enough to be a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, you'll receive the kind of news 6 times a year that I'm passing on below for your attention. Crime amongst the clergy is as active as in any other profession, and, if you ask me, sexual crimes are more prevalent within the clergy than without it. That's because of the peculiarly repressive attitude in churches toward sex. Not only that, churchly codes of silence means that in many churches children are protected from the sort of information that might save them from predators. Thus predators enjoy church congregations and have an easy time of it in houses of worship and within naive congregations. Not only that—most sexual attacks come from people known to the child. Where else but in friendly, close congregations can predators have such easy access to naive children? There's so much unwarranted trust within congregations.

It's a shame, I suppose, that childish innocence must be shattered, but how else do you protect children from predators? If they see only Disney movies, designed for kids and adults who are still like children, then they'll be vulnerable when confronted with danger, nor will their erstwhile protectors be any more likely to see through a predator's sweetness.

As you peruse the list below, remember that the list of crimes does not count the other lists in the paper such as "convicted and sentenced" and "civil suits settled" and cases under investigation. Not only that, this list only scratches the surface since it is only people aware of the FFRF publication who will send these in. That number will be only a small percentage of Americans. Imagine how long these lists would be if everyone contributed their local news to this national paper.

Arrested/Charged

• Rev. Eugene Marriott, Fort Washington, MD: raping & beating a woman in Fairfax, VA. The minister for men at Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church was accused of attacking and raping the woman in his car. Her body showed signs of having been hit with a belt & fists. Marriott told police that the attack was a form of role-playing. Sources: United Press InternationaI 3/8/06, wtopnews.com 3/8/06

• Michael Willis Heard, 27, & Gregory Railey Jr., 26, Canton, OH: 4 counts of theft by deception. Heard is founder & chief executive officer of Xzuberant Faith Basketball Association, a Christian-based basketball league. Railey is chief operating officer. The league scammed at least $60,000 from hundreds of people, by promising that nobody would be refused pro contracts as long as they paid registration fees. Sources: The Repository [OH] 3/5/06, 2/11/06

• Rev. Terry Hornbuckle, 44, Arlington, TX: failing to stay in custody long enough to be fitted with an electronic monitoring device. The pastor of the Agape Christian Fellowship Church has been in & out of jail since March last year. He was initially arrested for drug abuse & sexual assault, then arrested three more times for violating the terms of his bail. He was ordered to pay the costs of his twice-weekly drug tests & monthly bond supervision. He cannot consume alcohol or drugs unless prescribed by his doctor & pre-approved by the court. Source: Dallas Morning News 3/3/06

• Rev. Elidio Tapia-Renteria, 45, Owatonna, MN: 4th-degree criminal sexual conduct. The preacher at Calvary Church in Owatonna & Rios De Agua Viva in Faribault was charged with molesting his assistant several times over a 7 month period. He reportedly told the woman she was doing God's work by helping him to liberate himself, & threatened that something bad would happen to her & her family spiritually if she refused. Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press 3/1/06

• Rev. George Silva, 73, Raton, NM: 4 counts of sexual misconduct involving a minor. The Catholic priest was arrested by FBI agents on charges including transporting a boy under age 16 from New Mexico to France & Portugal for criminal sexual activity. He is on administrative leave pending an internal church investigation. Source: Santa Fe New Mexican 2/24/06

• Rev. Morales Saintilus, Long Island, NY: 4 counts of incest, 2 counts of endangering the welfare of a child, & 2 counts of sexual abuse. The pastor & owner of the Ebonizer Baptist Church, attended by Haitian Americans, was charged with raping at least 3 female family members under age 17, some as young as 12. One teen said she was raped nearly twice a week for 4 years. Saintilus is a fire-&-brimstone preacher who often speaks about atoning for one's sins. Source: WABC- TV 2/9/06

• Rev. Kevin Thompson, 48, Bay Area, CA: illegally catching & selling 465 juvenile leopard sharks. The pastor of the Bay Area Family Church & 5 other people were charged with harvesting leopard sharks that were too small for commercial distribution & therefore protected under state law. Source: San Francisco Examiner 2/9/06

• Rev. Vincent Kohn, Springfield, FL: abandonment & cruelty to animals with unnecessary suffering. The pastor of The Anointed Church of God was arrested after a witness saw him throw several puppies into the woods from a pickup truck, leaving them to die. Police who went to Kohn's house found more puppies & their mother, all malnourished and/or with no food or water. Source: local6.com 2/7/06

• Rev. Michael Peters, 36, Denver, CO: 2 counts of sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust. The minister at New Hope Baptist Church was charged with sexually assaulting a girl, 17, in 2003. He was then pastor, choir director, & counselor at the 2nd Baptist Church in Boulder. The girl was in the church choir & had come to him for counseling after being a victim of a previous sexual assault. Source: Denver Post 2/7/06, 9news.com 2/7/06

• Rev. Jimmy McCants, 54, Chicago, IL: misdemeanor criminal trespassing. The pastor was arrested in the middle of his sermon at the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. The church's board of directors told police they had fired McCants in December, & a woman affiliated with the church had signed a complaint against him for trespassing on church property. Source: AP 2/7/06

• Msgr. Bernard Prince, 71, Ontario, Canada: 2 charges of sexual assault. He was accused of abusing an altar boy, 12, when he was a parish priest in the 1960s. Now retired & living in Rome, he was once secretary general for the Vatican's Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, & was close to the late Pope John Paul II. Source: AP 2/3/06

• Rev. Charles V. Shifflett, 54, Culpeper, VA: taking indecent liberties with a child. This is the 3rd time he was arrested in just over the same week. The pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, who resigned last November, was charged with an incident occurring in March 1998. He was previously charged with 2 counts of child endangerment in incidents occurring in 1992-93, & taking indecent liberties with a child between 1991-93. He was a leader at Calvary Baptist Academy, a church-run private school. Source: Free Lance-Star 1/27/06

• Timothy Robert Frahm, 40, San Antonio, TX: indecency with a child by contact. The religion, literature, & physical education teacher at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church School was charged with molesting a female student, 12. He has since resigned. Source: San Antonio Express-News 1/26/06

• Rev. Lorenzo Dixon, 40, Arcadia, FL: simple battery & improper exhibition of a firearm. The pastor of Assembly of Praise Church was arrested at the Fairfax Tabernacle Church in Jacksonville for being involved in a fight with another man. During the argument, Dixon wielded a handgun. Source: local6.com 12/28/05

• Rev. Galen Ermil Peckham, 71, Waterloo, IA: indecent exposure, assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, & 2 counts of simple assault. The visiting minister at First United Methodist Church resigned after being arrested for molesting an elderly woman at a care facility. Peckham was also told to refrain from active ministry pending the investigation. Source: Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier 12/22/05

• Rev. Joseph Briceno, Phoenix, AZ: 8 counts of sex crimes involving 2 minors. The fugitive priest was arrested near the Mexican border. Source: AZ Daily Star 12/17/05

LITERALLY, THE LITERALIST DROWNS IN THE LAMB'S BLOOD

Monday, April 25, 2005  [This entry was originally posted on this date. Blogger refuses to believe that this posting exists so I'm re-posting now in larger typeface. I wanted to enlarge the original, but it won't come up when I feed in that date.] 

"... the language of religion, including most of the Bible, is necessarily figurative or symbolic and therefore the literalist, who by definition, lacks imagination or poetic insights, is the least religious of men."  (from THE DARTMOUTH BIBLE, 2nd Edition, p. xl)

I'm always troubled when I discuss atheism or religion with fundamentalists because they're so sadly dead and plodding and unpoetic. They don't know what they're missing. Oh, they're emotional enough, writhing in the clutch of their Jesus experience, but they are also like frothing pit bulls who won't let go the seat of his pants. As to any larger feel for the visionary Universe, they get nothing. Their god is a puppet maker who whittled humans from mud and who never left earth. Their god has no imagination. He's a petty choirmaster who punishes them or the choirmaster's wife who gives them milk and cookies.

Never mind that in every encounter with the details of science, fundamentalists have, throughout history, lost in the courts of time. You would think that, therefore, they would embrace a less literal interpretation of their big book and take up a poetic and symbolic interpretation.

Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are more alike than they are different when it comes to a contrast with most rational Americans. They are ever people of the law rather than people of the spirit. As Thomas Merton writes, "One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence.'"

I've lost much of my own poetic spirit with the ravages of time. A certain ability to concentrate my consciousness seems to have declined, but, still, I recall how spiritual and painful is the truly poetic way of experiencing reality. The poetic and symbolic way challenges the petty laws of the literalist and allows doubt to flourish. In the brief passage I quoted above from the Dartmouth Bible, I found for myself an explanation of the literalistic problem which I have never forgotten, and then, recently, Joseph Campbell explained further:
 
"The symbols of the higher religions may at first sight seem to have little in common," wrote a Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but perspicacious article entitled 'Symbolism: Communication or Communion?' "But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official doctrines.

"'The true symbol,' [Merton] states in another place, 'does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the center of the circle, not to another point on the circumference. It is by symbolism that man enters affectively and consciously into contact with his own deepest self, with other men, and with God. God is dead . . . means, in fact, that symbols are dead.'

"The poet and the mystic regard the imagery of a revelation as a fiction through which an insight into the depths of being—one's own being and being generally—is conveyed anagogically. Sectarian theologians, on the other hand, hold hard to the literal readings of their narratives, and these hold traditions apart. The lives of three incarnations, Jesus, Krishna, and Shakyamuni, will not be the same, yet as symbols pointing not to themselves, or to each other, but to the life beholding them, they are equivalent. To quote the monk Thomas Merton again: 'The symbol is an object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the level of subject and object.'

"Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a 'presence' or 'eternity' that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is alive. The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill, if it is to render life to modern lives, is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counterclockwise, so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton's words: 'to another point on the circumference') and Utopians offer revelations only promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the psyche, point back to the psyche ('the center'): and anyone seriously turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself."  (from MYTHS TO LIVE BY, Joe Campbell, pp. 265-266)
      ______________________________________________

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable." —Fran Lebowitz (She spends lots of time looking in the mirror too.)

NATURE AT WORK, STARK RAVEN MAD

You ain't going to believe this, but a crow has a grudge against me. Last week, as I walked to the bank, a crow began to caw loudly and circle above me and swoop down. It was so continuous that I watched it for quite some time till it perched on a light post nearby and quieted down, then I continued on. This week, at the same spot, a crow again began to caw and circle above me. I took videos of it, but I also noticed that another crow and a small (baby?) crow eventually joined in the cawing and circling. I began to think it was a crow fight, but then, returning back from the bank on the other side of a wide main street (Mill Plain), at the same point, this crow swooped down on me again, cawing like mad. At that point, I took this video. No other crow came near. Here's the video of the second attack. No kidding. I'm pretty sure it's personal, and I've recently read that crows do remember offending members of the human race, but, as far as I know, I've done nothing to offend this old crow unless it's the crow in Spokane that I tried but failed to shoo away from the sparrow he was pecking to death, but that was a decade ago.

IS EVERYTHING BAD REALLY FOUND IN SOUTHERN USA?

If you live in the South of the US, in almost every bad thing that can be charted, you are at the top of the chart. Conversely, almost every good thing charted, you are at the bottom of the chart. Southerners, as a Yankee who cares for you, I must ask how long will you let the man hold you down by his constant tactic of directing your hatred at those of us Yankees who have escaped the power of the man? Look at the policies and people who keep you poor and in bad health. If you cannot see how you are being treated by the policies and people you follow, then don't blame others for your plight. Wake up Johnny Reb. You're being taken to the cleaners by your leadership. Up here, we're all cheering for your recovery. We need your strength beside us to make America work again for the middle class and the poorest Americans. Come join with us. It's a win win situation.

ARE YOU A MAN OR AN APE?

Recently, advanced imaging techniques have allowed neuroscientists to watch what happens in the brain of a member of the human species when it smiles. They found that when a smile breaks upon the human face, the chemicals that create happiness are engaged. When happy-making chemicals are released in the human brain via a happy circumstance, those chemicals also create a smile as a byproduct to show a fellow robot, most likely, that he or she is making us happy. If they like us, they'll be sure to do that action again to us or in our presence. It's a social thing for survival's sake. 

This marvelous wiring works either way and, of course, proves once again that humans are electrochemical robots because if we fake a smile, then conversely, the happy chemicals are  released in the brain. That means we can all increase our happiness factor if we just smile more. No shit!

With those happy facts in mind, I have

begun to practice a behavior which I hope will improve the circumstances of my life. If faking a smile will release happy chemicals, will strutting like an alpha male, help me increase my image and security among males of my species? If that little pipsqueak Bush Junior could own a ball club and become president of the US, then I figure copying his strut may help me get more done with less worry. 

Since I walk every day for an hour, I've got a good forum in which to practice my new strut. I've begun to throw my shoulders back and swing my arms during my walk, like a president approaching the podium. I can tell you already that it takes more energy to walk "manfully" than to do the stroll, but I also notice that hints of aggressiveness come into my thoughts and feelings as I walk like a conqueror. I become more outgoing toward those I pass in my walks. I believe I'm onto something. More later, and thanks again, neuroscience. 

KKK GREENSBORO MASSACRE 1979

This film shows gun nuts from the past in Greensboro, NC, doing their thing with weapons that gun nuts do. 

"The marchers killed were: Sandi Smith,^[2] a nurse and civil rights activist; Dr. James Waller,^[3] president of a local textile workers union who ceased medical practice to organize workers; Bill Sampson,^[4] a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School; Cesar Cauce,^[5] a Cuban immigrant who graduated magna cum laude from Duke University; and Dr. Michael Nathan,^[6] chief of pediatrics at Lincoln Community Health Center in Durham, North Carolina, a clinic that helped children from low-income families." 

Readers can see the killings were targeted at leadership types. The murderers were all acquitted. This is what the South does to people who want to advance the welfare of wage earners in the South, black and white. Unfortunately many white wage earners in the South still line up with their masters, their white bosses. This massacre happened in the South where the Republican Tea Party Party has its greatest strength.

I separate from this group of gun nuts all those men (and women) who like to hunt, target shoot, enjoy finely made weapons and the history of weaponry, but I ask all those sane members of the NRA to publicly and frequently disavow those politicized members of their organization who do not recognize the fact that their fellow citizens have the right to want guns regulated. It's not the American government that wishes to regulate guns, it's a majority of their fellow citizens who are asking for these regulations. 

Sensible members of the NRA could start by getting rid of their new NRA president who imagines the gun issue is a Civil War issue and who equates Americans who want gun controls with members of the Yankee army who joyfully burned thru Georgia with Sherman to the sea.